Mr. President, Take Care of My Book

Hooray to Stephanie H, the winner of A Blue So Dark. Stephanie is spending her summer going to school and hanging out with her daughter. I loved reading everyone's summer plans. Sounds like many of you are going to Disney World. I'm not jealous though. (I considered asking you to never return to my blog.)  Lots of girls doing the summer job thing. I used to get a new job every summer as a teenager. My favorite job was answering phones in a seed mill. The phone rang like twice a day, so all I really did was scrub the toilet daily and read romance novels.

I saw the movie Killers with Kutcher and Heigl last week. I give the movie a C- at best. It had pretty much no plot, but you don't know this for absolutely sure until the end. It's an odd movie and a letdown, but the strange thing is, a week later, and I'm still thinking about it. It had so many elements in its favor. It wouldn't have taken THAT much work (says one revising a book right now) to make it significantly better. Things it had going for it that would make it worth seeing, especially if you are interested in writing rom-com or romantic suspense/comedy:

1. Snappy, well-written dialogue. I just learned (from reading Meg Cabot's latest release Insatiable) that soaps can have dialogue writers. Can movies? Because the screenplay seemed very split-personality to me. Dialogue was the show stealer and Grade A.  The actual storyline? I think someone wrote his part on his Blackberry.

2. The chemistry between Heigl and Kutcher. It wasn't like Mr. and Mrs. Smith chemistry, but more like the Huxtables. They were really cute together. They were weirdly normal. Hollywood usually doesn't portray normal. But this couple, married 3 years, liked each other, and it worked well. I saw the movie with some friends, including a 20 year old who is looking for her Mr. Right. I said, “Ashton was a great example of the guy you need to be looking for. . .Well, minus the killing people part.” I just really loved Kutcher's portrayal of a devoted husband. Hard to explain, but if you see the movie, you'll know what I mean. Something in this flick was just…different.

3. The pairing of Heigl and Kutcher was kinda old school classic like Hepburn and Grant. Kinda Philadelphia story-ish. An odd combination of actors, but somehow, probably thanks to great dialog and onscreen humility, it worked. The Killers plot was not classic though. It was past the point of believable and elementary and didn't really make sense.

4. It gave me a better feeling about Heigl playing the starring role as Stephanie Plum, the zany mess of a heroine in Janet Evanovich's famous summer release series.I can sleep peacefully now over that casting. (this is not a book recommendation, so don't send me hate mail. At least not about that.) ; )

Anyone else see the movie?

Moving on.

I've always been fascinated with the adult version of the Olsen Twins. Or the Dual Mrs. Havishams. They are curiosities worthy of their own museum. People magazine has announced that the OTs have new summer hair. I was hoping it was a nice trendy cut of this century. Or at least something that involved a close encounter with some Biolage shampoo. But the twins are too cool for that. Check them out HERE.  (And seriously, if you're so rich you pay a man to walk near you holding an umbrella over your day-glo head, you seriously need to reevaluate your priorities. And your green roots.)

Lucy, the character in my next book  Save the Date, has a love for all things sci-fi/fantasy. She would appreciate this Adidas ad. That Snoop Dog. My friend Sheila has a theory that Snoop Dog is a secret genius and I've yet to find anything to prove her idea wrong. The guy shows up everywhere. I mean Adidas+Snoop Dog?

YA author Holly Schindler had the forethought to have someone record our Teen Mania YA panel from last weekend at the Springfield library. If you turn the volume WAY up, you can hear all our answers to the question about when we first knew we were writers. You can check it out HERE.

Under the heading of “Happy News that Came Out of Nowhere,” So Over My Head is going to Washington, D.C.!   The Arkansas Center for the Book is sending Bella Kirkwood to the National Book Festival. So Over My Head will represent Arkansas and YA. Some big time names will be at the festival, put on by the Library of Congress. (The people who insist on listing my birth year on the inside flap of every book. Thanks so much for that.) I'm hoping Katherine Paterson or Isabel Allende will breathe on the book. And maybe Mrs. Obama. Because maybe if Mrs. Obama breathed on the book somehow I would at that very moment be overcome with the urge to to bicep curls on a regular basis.
Probably not.

Have a great weekend.
JEN