Actually, there’s not much of a debate. From what I can tell, from the age of about, oh, two, most women have come to a conclusion and that conclusion is pretty much universal and irreversible. This is it. The words every woman has said at every stage of her life:

I hate my hair.

In my whole long life, I’ve never met any woman who liked her hair. In listening to my mother talk about the women she knew in her whole long life, she never knew any woman who liked her hair. I’ve never met any woman who *knew* any woman who liked her hair.

That’s a whole lot of women.

See my photo? See how the sides pop out? My hair started doing that when I was still in diapers. I’ve tried for most of my life to fight it. I have a couple of cowlicks that don’t help me out.

I’ve permed it. Not only was my hair kinky, it was also stinky. And it grew out funny.

I’ve cut it super short. I’ve grown it to chin length. I’ve used prickly rollers. I’ve used bobby pins. I’ve used hot rollers. I’ve used sponge rollers. I’ve used curling irons. I’ve used blow dryers. I’ve squeezed lemon juice on it. I’ve high-lighted it. I’ve colored it.
Long story short: I’ve learned to deal with it.

Long story long: I write books in which every heroine, every sidekick, every walk-on character has Great Hair. Women deserve Great Hair and if they can only get it in books, living life through another woman’s bangs, that’s okay. At least in romance, a woman can have Great Hair because, the real love/hate relationship that lasts the whole of a woman’s life is with her hair.

So, what about you? Is there anyone out there who loves her hair? Anyone you know who loves her hair? And what was the best hairstyle you ever had?

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We got 256 original entries.  It was gruelingly hard to judge.  I laughed until I cried.  Then I waffled, which I am wont to do.  Then I said, “Oh, heck, I can’t choose two!” 

So this is the deal:  I chose the hero I liked best, the heroine, and because I write nasty murdering villains, I picked 2 villains.  So four people get books, two get Julia’s and two get mine.  I choose who gets which book at random and nobody moans after the fact.  Winners should please send me their addresses at:  karen@karenrosebooks.com so we can send their contest prizes.  Put GODDESS in the subject line so I know you’re not trying to sell me body part enlargers or slimmers.   I added the runners-up after the winners. 

THANK YOU to everybody who entered.  I loved them all!  You’re all GODDESSES!

And the winners are … Drumroll please!

Best Heroine:  Amanda Snugglewythe by KMB25
Best Hero:  Eli Zontopper by ladydawgfan
Best Villain (Tie): Anita DeMoola by Kasey AND Hunter DeKeeler by SuzyQ

Honorable Mention (but no prize, sorry): Best couple - Eileen Dover and Phil Oph (tragic lovers from “It Happen’d On A Clifftop)

Runners up:

Best Heroine:  Amanda Dew by Erica, Sharon DeLove by Kasey, Lady Bettina Thyes by ladydawgfan

Best Hero:  Howell Endowed by Kasey, Neal Down by KimW, Justin Thyme by Sara

Best Villain: Ivan T. Hurtya by Kelly Ann and Viola Notsonice by KMB25 (this was my husband’s favorite, btw)

Again, thanks to everyone who made our second Goddess contest such a success!

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When the Goddesses asked me to blog, I was so excited I was sure you could hear me screaming around the block. I mean seriously. Look at these ladies. If their Goddess poses aren’t enough to get excited about, then there’s WHO they are.  Let me see.  There’s Rachel Gibson who I’ve been addicted to since forever, Nicole Jordan who I read and love, Julia London and Karen Rose who were my Levy Bus Tour Buddies, Karen Hawkins whose author photo I have been jealous of since the day I first saw it, Sabrina Jeffries who helped me when I did the WRW Retreat speech, Suzanne Enoch who I’m happy to meet here, and Claudia Dain who dragged me kicking and screaming into the PAN workshop world. Talented ladies, all of them and they want ME to blog. They’re Goddesses and I’m a Plotmonkey (www.plotmonkeys.com) Wow. No pressure or anything. So I decided to go with the blog theme. GODDESSES. 

As writers, when asked about the best part of our job, we say rolling out of bed and going to work in pajamas or sweats.  I think we’ve all admitted to that at least once. But not a Goddess.  A Goddess doesn’t roll out of bed and stay in sweats.  A Goddess is perfection personified day in and day out. A Goddess has creamy skin and perfect hair (no frizz) and perky boobs and a small waist.

As romance writers, we don’t write about true Goddesses because part of the way to endear characters to our readers is by making them real and real people are flawed or at least they have insecurities.  And yet when we create our heroines, we envision perfect, beautiful people to go with our gorgeous heroes. 

Here are the Goddesses (Hollywood style) that I’d pick as perfect. I’m only going to choose three, so I don’t have to ask the Goddesses to upload too many pictures.  But here we go.

Sydney Bristow -  I’m an Alias fanatic still in withdrawal. Boy do I wish I could be Syd for a day … those expressive eyes, those MOVES!   Okay, okay, I admit Michael Vartan as Agent Vaughn is a big part of the reason. <g> But seriously, Jennifer Garner’s my favorite actress in whatever she’s in.

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Izzy Stevens on Grey’s Anatomy– just beautiful and angelic looking.  (Okay, okay, so Denney Duquette has a lot to do with wanting to be HER for a day.  A day when Denny was still alive, mind you <g>) I think that Katherine Heigl is just beauty personified.

Carly Corinthos on General Hospital – Ever see Carly cry? She does it often and she never once looks bad doing it. Add to that, she has her choice of Sonny or Jax. Rough life! And the actress who plays her,  Laura Wright stepped into a role created by one actress and that another one made her own, and dominated it from day one.  Plus that mane of gorgeous hair I’d take any day of the week.

I’m sensing a theme here – the Goddesses I would want to be for a day aren’t real people but TV or movie characters although their alter egos are pretty awesome themselves – and the reasons I chose each of them mostly all come back to the men in said character’s life.

Does that say something purely shallow about me?

So who are your favorite Goddesses – and why?

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We had a whopping 256 original entries!  Thanks to all for your witty, wonderful names.  Come back tomorrow (Saturday) for the results!

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Don’t forget to stop by tomorrow, Friday, 3/30, for Guest Goddess NYT Bestselling Author Carly Phillips!

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This is our second GODDESS CONTEST.  Read on, goddesses, for the intro and the info on the “A Rose By Any Other Name” contest.

So what’s in a name, really?   Many times a name has special meaning.  Perhaps it’s a family name (like Rose is my grandmother’s name) or perhaps it was chosen for its cultural meaning.  In American Sign Language, a name sign often symbolizes the person’s physical attribute, hobby, or characteristic.   A name then, can be far more than a label.  Names are important, whether or not they started out with special meaning.  We become defined by our name.  When my friends think ”Karen Rose”, my face pops into their mind.  (Hopefully it is not my morning face without makeup or it will scare my poor friends.) 

I’m sometimes asked, “How do you think up your characters’ names?”  It depends.  Sometimes it’s a name I just like.  Sometimes it’s a name I’ve recently heard in passing and my brain grabs it.  Jenna, the heroine in my second book HAVE YOU SEEN HER, was the name of my youngest daughter’s best friend the week I wrote the proposal.  Solliday, the last name of the hero in my latest book COUNT TO TEN was the last name of my elementary school crush.  The Solliday boys were identical twins so their first names were interchangeable, but their last name stuck in my mind since the third grade.  Do I ever give my villains and/or victims names of people who’ve ticked me off?  I’ll never tell!

Sometimes the name of a character becomes associated with a specific attribute, to the point it becomes its own descriptor.  Some examples: A “Dudley Do-Right” is a squeaky-clean man.  A “Calamity Jane” is an accident looking for someplace to happen.  A “Cruella DeVille” - an evil b-witch.   A “Pollyanna” is an eternal optimist.  Rambo, Scrooge, Sherlock.  All of these evoke a mental picture.

When I first started writing, my husband tried to “help” me come up with names for my hero and heroine.  My husband is the most supportive man on the planet.  He is, however, a big kid and big kidder.  He christened my heroine “Victoria Vonderhooters” and my hero  “Malcolm Hungwell.”   So now, almost fifteen years later, he still asks, “How are good old Victoria and Malcolm doing?” and no matter how stressed I am by impending deadlines of doom, I still grin.

So - the contest challenge:  Come up with your own names for heroines, heroes, and/or villains.  Make them funny, sexy, sappy, a little suggestive, or even sweet - but the name has to evoke an image.  Contest ends at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, March 29 (that’s today). 

I’ll judge the names I like best and pick two winners.  One winner will receive my February romantic suspense COUNT TO TEN and one winner will receive Julia London’s THE HAZARDS OF HUNTING A DUKE, which is the prelude to her April release THE PERILS OF PURSUING A PRINCE.

So goddesses, start your engines.  On your mark, get set … NAME!

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The other day I was flipping through a woman’s magazine while waiting to get my hair cut when I came across a sidebar asking a celebrity what books had most influenced her life. Now Newsweek magazine has started a weekly column that asks important people what they think the most important books ever written are.

But I like the “influence your life” question better. Because the books that influenced my life profoundly are not really considered “important” to anyone but me. I can name five such books, and four of them are romances.

The first two are PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, because those not only started my love affair with romances but fostered my love of reading. When I was very young, my mom would read those stories aloud to me, and I even did a skit in 4th grade where I played a French captain of the guard who let the Scarlet Pimpernel escape with a bunch of aristos in disguise and avoid the guillotine. (I paid for my mistake with my life!)

The next was THE SHIVERING SANDS by Victoria Holt. I was twelve when I first read it while babysitting some neighbors’ children. That story scared me silly, but it began my adoration of Gothic romances, which is how I discovered wonderful writers like Mary Stewart.

There was also ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand (which is supposedly meaningful philosophical literature), because it influenced my outlook on the business world a good deal.

And finally, there was TEARS OF GOLD by Laurie McBain. Even though back then I didn’t have a clue what the term “sexual tension” was, the sparks between the characters were so wonderful and sizzling that I stayed up until five in the morning to finish reading and shamefully missed work!

Since that moment, sexual tension is the crucial element I need in the romances I read for pleasure in order for me to be satisfied. What’s more, that experience started me dreaming about someday writing my own stories – which changed my life significantly. My entire existence would be totally different today if not for that book.

So are there books – important or not – that shaped your life in any way? Or that twisted your outlook on life? Or that led you to new discoveries? Or that simply started your love of reading?

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There is a little of me in every heroine I write. Sometimes it’s a bit of who I want to be, and sometimes it’s a bit of who I am already.

This week, I’m writing a heroine who is a quick thinker, amazingly gifted in languages, a conservative dresser with no patience for female furbelows, and is a bit of a klutz. Guess which part of this heroine is based on one of my own personal traits?

That’s right; the klutz part.

Here’s the honorary Klutz Badge. I’m one of those people who can fall up the stairs as well as down. I’ve slipped in water and put my foot through a fish tank, stumbled down the aisle at my own wedding, fell into a birthday cake and caught my shirt on fire, ended up on my arse with a nacho on my head in front of a crowd of 3,000 at a high school football game, had toilet paper on my shoe at my first job interview …

And these are just the highlights.

So tell me . . . are you a klutz, too? Or are you one of those annoyingly graceful creatures who seem to float instead of walk? What personal trait do you have that would make an interesting addition to a romance heroine’s character? Better yet, what special flaw do you possess that might make another reader think, “Oh, I’m SO like that!”

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 Please join us in welcoming our guest Goddess, NYT best-selling author CARLY PHILLIPS!  She’s here this Friday, 3/30!

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I had a birthday recently and got the usual gift cards to major department stores. I thought, cool, I’ll go get me some new spring togs. I am tired of wearing flip-flops and Tshirts and old cut-offs everyday—I want to look like someone who has a book coming out (April 17:The Perils of Pursuing a Prince. Just sayin’).

But in one shopping trip I remembered why I wear flip-flops and Tshirts and old cut-offs everyday.There is no fash for women over thirty to get on! I went to a high-end department store (Nordstrom’s) and was dismayed to find that the shorts I had hoped to purchase were way too short for these thighs. No thanks; I might as well walk around the house in my bathing suit.

Spring dresses? Forget it. Love the look on models, but do not love the look of my arms in spaghetti straps. Seriously—who can wear these dresses? And don’t talk to me about cute little sweater tops that hide the arms—I live in Texas. There are approximately two days out of the year we can wear sweaters without risking heat stroke.

But it’s the jeans that are killing me. Pencil leg? Are you kidding me? I have long legs—unlike the rest of you pipsqueaks, I am 5’9”, and there was a time in my life that me in a pair of pencil jeans would have made you all swoon with envy (it’s my fantasy, I can pretend what I want), but that was more years ago than I can count on my fingers and toes.

And the lo-ride jeans! That is the cruelest joke yet the fashion industry has played on women. Britney shouldn’t be wearing them and I definitely won’t wear them for fear of frightening pets and small children. But I don’t want to wear mom jeans! I wanna be hip and fabulous at my sort of indeterminate age!
I finally found a pair of Calvin Klein’s that almost reached the belly button (which interestingly, has seemed to migrate north in the last couple of years). They’re okay—they aren’t Mom jeans, but they aren’t very hip, either. Frankly, I am still miffed about the jeans and have discovered that photoshop is great therapy.

Got your fash on? What spring fashion can you do without? What is a must have? And do you know where a grown woman can get a decent pair of jeans that at least come within the vicinity of the belly button, or a pair of shorts that cover all the offending parts?

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