Humor
humor, comedy
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PARTNER PURSUIT COVER REVEAL
I’m excited to reveal the cover for my debut novel PARTNER PURSUIT available in paperback on Amazon. The e-book will release on October 18, 2021 and is available for pre-order.
Partner Pursuit Cover by COVER EVER AFTER It was designed by COVER EVER AFTER in Australia. I love it! I asked her to add the little briefcase on the back of the bicycle because Audrey is a lawyer.
Here’s the blurb:
Workaholic lawyer Audrey Willems is not going to take any chances with her bid to become a partner at her New York law firm—especially with only six months until the decision.
Until she bumps into Jake—her new neighbor. Jake is a fun-loving music marketing executive who might just be The One.
He’s funny, caring, supportive—and able to kill water bugs in the bathroom.
But Jake will never date a woman married to her job. His father was a workaholic lawyer who never had time for family.
And she’s just got the case of a lifetime—the one she needs to win to make partner. Working 24/7 at the office may not even be enough hours to pull off a victory.
If only she had not met him now.
Audrey is determined to prove that she can juggle work and romance—even if managing court cases, candlelit dinners, and bike rides around Manhattan is a lot harder than it looks. She keeps canceling dates for yet another case crisis.
But when making partner is like a game of musical chairs and the last seat is a business-class alone, which partnership will she choose?
Let’s Talk: COVER REVEAL
I hope you are doing well. What do you think of my cover?
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Why I love HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS
How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days movie There are so many reasons why I love HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS. In my Gotham screenwriting class, we had to list our favorite movies and I said HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time my teacher heard that movie listed. I think he even did a double-take 🙂
Kristen Buckley, Brian Regan and Burr Steers wrote the screenplay based on the comic book by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long.
WHY I LOVE HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS
- Brilliant Premise
- Sparky Dialogue
- Set Scenes
- Inner Conflict
- Romance
- Rule of Three and Callbacks
- New York
PREMISE
The premise is brilliant because it insures that the two romantic leads in direct conflict. She is writing an article on how to lose a guy in 10 days making the mistakes some women make when dating (like being clingy or paranoid), so she is doing everything she can to lose him. He has to make a woman fall in love with him in 10 days and bring her to a client event in order to be able to pitch the diamond advertising account he wants. Basically no matter what she does, he is going to keep dating her.
The “diamonds are forever” angle adds another layer of conflict. He reminds himself that diamonds are forever, so this isn’t a one night stand. He wants to take it slow, changing the music and moving away from the bed; she is trying to make sure he is hooked by kissing him.
It’s also a twist on the “clumsy, emotionally open” romcom heroine because Andie is super cool and is only acting like the clingy and immediately emotionally open girlfriend to write the article.
SPARKY DIALOGUE
This one word dialogue exchange is so sparky and immediately showcases their chemistry and connection.
“Andie: Unattached?
Ben: Currently.
Andie: Likewise.
Ben: Surprising.
Andie: Psycho?
Ben: Rarely, Interested?
Andie: Perhaps.
Ben: Hungry?
Andie: Starving.
Ben: Leaving?
Andie: Now?”
From the script of HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS.
SET SCENES
The premise leads to some hilarious set scenes as she gets more and more desperate in her attempt to lose him. There’s the scene where he’s cooking a lamb dinner (“bringing out the big guns” to make her fall in love with him), and she has brought over a box of girly things to move into his apartment, even though it’s only the second time she’s been there. The frilly toilet cover was a particularly good touch. Her interrupting his poker night with the boys is another hilarious scene.
INNER CONFLICT
What’s also well done is that Andie and Ben are falling for each other, which renders Andy conflicted about behaving like a crazy girlfriend and even about writing the article.
Meanwhile, Ben feels like he’s dating two people:
Thayer:
“I thought you said after the Knicks games, she was a goddess.”
Ben
“Oh she was. That was the good Andie, this amazing, fun cool, sexy woman. I’m talking about the evil Andie now. It’s like a crack-enhanced Kathie Lee Gifford”
HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYSThis personality switch first happens at the Knicks NBA final basketball game. At first, they’re both having a great time, and then Andy remembers that she has to be a nightmare girlfriend, so, in the last minutes of a tight tied game, she asks Ben to get her a soda.
ROMANCE
The romance is also well-developed, starting from their cute meet to their clicking at the basketball game. But it’s at the weekend with his family in Staten Island, when Andie is herself again, that their feelings deepen and they both acknowledge that they feel something real for the other. She plays Bullshit with his family and learns that she’s the first girl he has ever brought home. He then teaches her how to ride a motorbike. And she gets emotional about the fact that his mom hugged her. Their kiss then is a more heartfelt, slow kiss.
CALLBACKS
HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS illustrates certain comedy techniques, namely Callbacks. First, in the dinner scene, she brings the baby fern over: “it’s a baby fern, just like our relationship, a helpless little baby in need of tender, loving care.” Second, when she interrupts his poker night, she sees that the baby fern is wilting (“Our love fern! You let it die!) and asks if he is going to let their relationship die. And finally, when Ben is pursuing her to win her back, he picks up the wilted love fern from her office and brings it to her.
The basketball game is also a recurring callback:
- the first game, when she makes him miss the final moment
- the second game: he thinks they will watch it from home, but she says she doesn’t eat meat so they have to go out and eat at a restaurant where he can’t see the game
- the third game: he thinks she has front row tickets (she doesn’t)
- the final game: they don’t watch it in at Madison Square Garden because they’ve broken up
Similarly, there’s a callback to the Bullshit game when she says she has to go to Washington D.C. to write the more substantive articles she wants to write and he says “bullshit.”
NEW YORK
And finally, it’s a love letter to New York with all the street scenes, the Knicks games, and even a visit to Staten Island.
Let’s Talk
Those are the reasons why I love HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS. What are your favorite lines and scenes from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? What do you love about it? Do you have other favorite romantic comedies?
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Romantic Comedy Book Recommendations For Gifts
Christmas Shopaholic in a Mini Bookstore Here are my romantic comedy book recommendations and some of my favorite children’s books if you are looking for gifts for the holidays.
Romantic Comedy Book Recommendations for Gifts
All of these books made me laugh out loud. There are many light-hearted, feel-good moments, but they also touch on serious issues. (This is in addition to my recommendations in my earlier post.)
- Christmas Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
- Big Sexy Love by Kirsty Greenwood
- Star-Crossed by Minnie Darke
- Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
Some Favorite Children’s Books
- The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak
- Corduroy by Don Freeman
- Elephant and Piggy by Mo Willems (or anything by Mo Willems)
- Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton (or anything by Sandra Boynton)
- Is there a Dog in this Book? by Viviane Schwarz
There are frankly so many children’s books that I love, but I like to give the above as gifts. I’ve read both The Book with No Pictures and Is There a Dog in this Book? to my son’s class, and the kids laugh and love them. For older elementary kids, I recommend Dog Man and anything by Rick Riordan.
I love the dedication in Hippos Go Berserk: “I didn’t invite them. Did you invite them? (For Mom and Dad, with love.)”
Favorite Non-RomCom Book
My favorite non-romcom book was Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. It does get very dark and I had to put it down a few times because I was like “noooo!” But it has a happy ending and I was strongly rooting for the character of Queenie. And the voice is very funny. (It is also quite explicit.)
It won the British Book Awards, among others.
What do you recommend?
Do you have any recommendations? What romantic comedies have you read in the past year and loved? Why? What children’s books do you give as gifts?
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Analyzing the new OVERBOARD
Overboard movie poster So OVERBOARD (1987) with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell is one of my favorite movies, but I still wanted to see the new OVERBOARD (2018) and to spend some time analyzing it. (It’s free right now on Amazon Prime). And I enjoyed it in the end, but on its own terms. Since I’m writing a romantic comedy, and since I love watching romantic comedies, I also love discussing and analyzing romantic comedies. And there were some interesting lessons.
Analyzing the New OVERBOARD
Here are some of mythoughts on the new OVERBOARD:
- Still like the set-up of the scam
- Shows how to make an unlikable love interest likable
- Uses double entendre in comic scenes – based on the scene with the male buddies
- Missing the chemistry of the original OVERBOARD
The Comedy Scam
According to John Truby, “the plan is always a scam in comedy.” So that’s the case in OVERBOARD, since Anna Faris’s character decides to pretend that Eugenio Derbez is her husband. This also brings in the “fake dating” romcom trope, which is one of my favorites. Only, OVERBOARD has a clever twist since only one of them is aware that they are “fake” married.
P.S. I highly highly recommend John Truby’s course on Comedy. It is one of the best courses on comedy I have taken so far.
Making an Unlikable Love Interest Likable
I REALLY disliked Eugenio Derbez’s character initially. He was so so awful. He had to be awful so you sympathize with the Anna Faris character taking advantage of him. So I was impressed with the scriptwriting because I started to like him. BUT am I really that easy? He makes lunch for her and I’m like, okay, I guess you’re a good guy. I guess I am really that easy. His amnesia, though, also allowed the audience to give him a fresh start.
My Favorite Scene in OVERBOARD
My favorite scene was actually when Eugenio Derbez was hanging out with the guys and he says: “I don’t think this is my life. I don’t have sex with my wife.”
The other guy says that the last time he had sex with his wife was 9 months before our daughter was born. And our daughter is now 2. (So there you have the set-up, the joke, and then the topper (and now our daughter is 2).) And that nobody thinks that this is their life.
Eugenio says that he feels that he should be the guy owning the pool, not building the pool. And all the guys say that they think that.
So it has the double entendre aspect because you know that this is not Eugenio’s life (and that in his former life, he did have sex all the time and was the guy owning the pool) and that makes that funny. But the conversation also has truth to it (everybody thinks that), which adds to the humor.
Missing the Chemistry of the Original OVERBOARD
I think that from a romantic point of view, it was missing the chemistry of the original OVERBOARD. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell definitely had more chemistry. Maybe that’s because they have chemistry in real life, but I also think that the OVERBOARD (2018) script had less flirtatious banter between the leads. I’ll have to go watch the original again to see if my theory is correct. 🙂
I remember that I wrote one scene in my draft novel where the male romantic lead was doing the dishes and my writing tutor in my Penguin UK Constructing a Novel Writer’s Academy course found this boring and said I needed to add more sparks. Meanwhile, as someone who hates doing dishes, I thought that the male romantic lead doing the dishes was sexy. Lol.
Sexy man doing dishes But she was right and I did add more banter to the scene.
Meme that I want you to want to do the dishes from The Break-Up Exactly. Why would anyone want to do the dishes?
Three Take-Aways from Analyzing the New OVERBOARD
- Use a scam in your comedy. Add a twist if you can.
- Make sure there is flirtatious banter between the leads
- Comic scenes that play with double entendres work.
Let’s Talk
Have you seen the 2018 OVERBOARD? Did you like it or hate it? What was your favorite scene? What was your favorite scene in the 1987 OVERBOARD?
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Happy Valentine’s Day 2020!
Happy Valentine’s Day 2020!
Yes, these are dolls. My husband refused to model 🙂 I personally like spending Valentine’s Day reading or watching a good romcom. Although if some attractive guy wants to make me breakfast in bed, I’m all for that too!
Yummy! Plus all that unruly hair! Until I met my husband, I don’t think I ever had a date for Valentine’s Day. It was Galentine’s Day for me. When my daughter was due in February, I was really worried that she’d was going to be born on Valentine’s Day. A friend asked, “Why?” And I said, “I gather you’ve always had a date for Valentine’s Day!” (Thankfully, my daughter was not born on Valentine’s Day.)
Fallen Chocolate Cake Recipe for a Happy Valentine’s Day
Fallen Chocolate Cakes in Ramekins. Image from FamilyStyleFood (with another recipe I will have to try) Here’s my go-to recipe for Valentine’s Day: the fallen chocolate cake from Cooks Illustrated. In my draft MS, my protagonist Audrey makes this for Jake when she wants to impress him with her cooking. He is duly impressed. 🙂
Ingredients
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), plus extra for ramekins
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate coarsely chopped;
4 large eggs plus 1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
ÂĽ teaspoon table salt
½ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour plus extra for ramekins
Butter and flour (or use cocoa powder) eight 6-ounce ramekins.
Instructions:
Melt 8 tablespoons butter and chocolate in medium heatproof bowl set over a pan of almost simmering water, stirring until smooth; remove from heat.
Beat the eggs, yolk, vanilla, salt, and sugar until the ribbon stage – the color will be pale yellow and the volume is nearly tripled. The mixture will drop from the beaters in a heavy thick ribbon. This usually takes about 10 minutes with the hand held mixer.
Pour egg mixture over melted chocolate and butter; sprinkle flour over egg mixture. Gently fold egg and flour into chocolate until batter is completely mixed.
Pour batter into prepared ramekins. (At this stage, you can put them into the fridge for about 8 hours. They’ll need to come back to room temperature [about 30 minutes] before you bake them)
Bake in a 400 degree preheated oven for about 12 minutes or until the the cakes have risen over the rims. They’re done when they have a thin crust and the center jiggles when you tap ramekins.
Run a knife around the edges to loosen the cake (didn’t need to do that last night cuz Kellie had buttered so enthusiastically) and invert onto a plate. Let the cake cool for about a minute before removing the ramekin.
When Adam Met Evie
When Adam Met Evie by Giulia Skye And if you’re looking for a fun escape read, my friend Giulia Skye just published her book When Adam Met Evie. Woohoo! We met on the train to the Romantic Novelists Association conference in Leeds several years ago.
I highly recommend When Adam Met Evie. The characters are very believable and engaging, the story hooks, and the setting is the Australian outback–what more could you ask for?
Here’s the blurb:
“When former Olympic Swimmer, Michael Adams—now reluctantly Canada’s hottest reality TV star— insults his fake showbiz wife on social media, he escapes the ensuing scandal and jumps on the first flight to Australia. Desperate to experience ordinary life again—if only for a few weeks—he becomes “Adam”, just another tourist traveling through the Outback. But with a reward out for his safe return and his fame’s nasty habit of catching up with him when he least expects, he needs a disguise… and he’s just found it.
Sweet and scruffy British backpacker, Evie Blake, is taking a year out of her busy London life. Tired of lies and liars, she’s looking for adventure to heal her broken heart. So when the hot Canadian she meets at the campground offers to be her travel partner through Western Australia’s wild Kimberley region, she grabs the chance, unaware he’s got the world out looking for him. He’s just a down-on-his-luck traveler, right? ” From Goodreads.
Let’s Talk
What do you like to do on Valentine’s Day? Do you have any romcom or romance book recommendations? Any recent romcom movies you’d recommend? Happy Valentine’s Day 2020!
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Where do you hide your holiday presents?
Taking advice from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Purloined Letter (Hide it in plain sight) Where do you hide your holiday presents? We live in a New York City apartment, so hiding spaces are few (even for when you play hide-and-seek, as you do with kids).
And we are using all almost our space. We have even put in storage space abover our bathroom ceiling. That’s one of the main places I hide presents. You need a ladder to get up there, so it’s not easily accessible.
However, even my main hiding spots are beginning to fill up. My usual spot in the basement is storing toys which haven’t been played with in awhile. But they are in the purgatory period – will my son notice that they have disappeared? If not, in six months, we can donate them. (Not that that always works.)
But I’ve found a new spot. Can you spot the hidden presents?
Where would you hide them in this closet? Feel free to post your guess below. (I can use that next year in case my daughter reads this article).
The presents are in the laundry bags! (And yes, I have a lot of black clothes. And my closet looks nothing like The Container Store closets or any designed closets. :). Although I do love the Container Store plastic boxes and highly recommmend those.
My tip is to wrap the presents in case they are found.
And then the key is to remember where you hid them. I often forget where I’ve put the presents if I deviate from my usual spaces. When I am older, I plan to spend December hiding presents for myself, so I can spend the rest of the year finding my presents 🙂
Have a great weekend! Where do you hide your holiday presents? And how do you remember where you hid them?