And the Award Goes To . . .
I watched the Golden Globes last week. No real surprises. The usual mix of cleavage and bones. Meryl Streep was charmingly witty when she won (is it me, or does Ms. Streep pick up an award every year?), and Helen Mirren proved that you can be over 60 and still be sexy. Annette Bening and Warren Beatty are finally starting to look like a real couple to me, instead of another old dude with a much-younger wife (that dowdy dress she had on went a long way toward that.)
But two things made me really happy. Grey’s Anatomy, which I don’t watch all that often, won for best something or other, with the award accepted by Shonda Rhimes, probably the most powerful black woman in television today. (The happy occasion was somewhat marred by Isaiah Washington’s unfortunate reference to his co-star, T.R. Knight . . . but that’s a column for another day.) Another was to see Ugly Betty recognized by the . . . the body of people who vote for the Golden Globes, I believe, the Hollywood Foreign Press. America Ferrara looked anything but ugly in her purple dress, and her speech was so heartfelt. I’m glad that Vanessa Williams has landed a decent acting job. It’s always been slim pickings out there for black actresses, and it gets tougher the older they get. I haven’t even seen Alfre Woodard lately, and she’s been popping up everywhere the last couple of years. I still think somebody ought to give Vanessa a recurring part on Desperate Housewives, now that they’ve found their way back to less ludicrous storylines this season, being in the same age group as the rest of the broads on the block (and certainly just as skinny.)
The SAGs come on tomorrow night. In my mind these carry less prestige than the Golden Globes, but I’ll probably tune in anyway, even if I’m multitasking, just for GP (that means general purposes, for all you young folks out there.) But when the golden boy (and I mean that literally,) the Oscars, comes on the end of February, I’ll be glued to the TV.
Now I'm off to check movie times. I'd like to see Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland. My suspicions tell me that this sophisticated film will be playing closer to Chicago rather than up here in the sticks, so if we're faced with a 20-mile drive, we'll probably end up seeing Martin Scorcese's crime drama The Departed.
Wish us luck!
Life in Bettieville
People ask me all the time, “How do you write a whole book?”
That’s easy. When you love something, you manage to do it. Sure, creating roughly 850 pages of manuscript (in 11-point Dark Courier) a year for the past three years, 325 pages of which eventually become a contemporary romance and 425 a mainstream women’s fiction, may sound daunting, but I consider myself fortunate. With my writing (and with the all-important approval of my respective editors,) I can create my own world. Call it Bettieville.
The whole process, from germ of an idea (“Hmm, I think I’d like to do a rags-to-riches Cinderella story”) to an entire novel (in this case, my own From This Day Forward) can be frustrating, especially when I hit a brick wall (there’s a lot of those in Bettieville, despite my efforts to bulldoze them.) So when I’m ready to take a break from contractually obligated manuscripts, I pull out my story outlines that are in progress. Sometimes absolutely nothing happens. Other times a light bulb goes off in my head, the missing link that makes it all come together, or the subplot that’s needed to meet the word count. Having a ready synopsis helps me keep on schedule.
Of course, ideas can come from anywhere, so my antenna is always turned on when watching the news, or when skimming through magazines, or when watching those Lifetime TV movies. I once got the idea for a fake pregnancy subplot for my romance A Love of Her Own from the latter, and an article in People magazine filled in the blanks for the aforementioned From This Day Forward.
Then there are the books that practically write themselves. Sometimes the storyline just flows, like the juice in that glass you accidentally knocked over. The ideas for my books Prelude to a Kiss, Straight to the Heart, and Where There’s Smoke came to me in the snap of a finger, and they were the easiest to write.
Funny. I always dreamed of writing mainstream women’s fiction. The happiness I felt when I obtained my first contract for this will always be a vivid memory for me. But although I knew this was my first preference, I found that I enjoyed writing romance too much to just stop. Why wouldn’t I? I wasn’t pressured to write to anyone’s specifications but my own. When I felt like I couldn’t write a fresh-sounding love scene, I stopped including them until I was ready to tackle them again, four books later. When I wanted to write about a heroine with an extensive sexual history because I was tired of heroines with just one miserable sexual encounter in their past or heroines who only knew one sexual position (including one who had been married [?!]), I was given the green light (that book, A Love For All Seasons, will be out this spring.) And no one insisted that I write an organized series (I have done series, but unofficial and unplanned,) which are very popular in romance but not a particular favorite of mine. So I continue to pound out those 850 pages annually for both genres, loving every minute of it.
The best thing about Bettieville are the people who drop by, i.e., the reading audience who enjoy my work. I don’t write because I expect to get rich from it. I write because I love doing it. Of course, reader requests are important, and I do listen to and plan to honor their requests asking for more about particular characters. On the other hand, being able to write what I want to write is, as they say, priceless. The public can be very fickle, and my personal tastes are admittedly a bit offbeat. Like most writers, I have to be true to myself and write what I love to write. I have no interest in being a hack, like the James Caan character in the movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel Misery, who'd grown tired of the character that made him wealthy and provided for his daughter.
Ah, Bettieville, where I get to indulge myself by creating stories I want to tell. It’s the best place on earth for me.
Life is good.
People ask me all the time, “How do you write a whole book?”
That’s easy. When you love something, you manage to do it. Sure, creating roughly 850 pages of manuscript (in 11-point Dark Courier) a year for the past three years, 325 pages of which eventually become a contemporary romance and 425 a mainstream women’s fiction, may sound daunting, but I consider myself fortunate. With my writing (and with the all-important approval of my respective editors,) I can create my own world. Call it Bettieville.
The whole process, from germ of an idea (“Hmm, I think I’d like to do a rags-to-riches Cinderella story”) to an entire novel (in this case, my own From This Day Forward) can be frustrating, especially when I hit a brick wall (there’s a lot of those in Bettieville, despite my efforts to bulldoze them.) So when I’m ready to take a break from contractually obligated manuscripts, I pull out my story outlines that are in progress. Sometimes absolutely nothing happens. Other times a light bulb goes off in my head, the missing link that makes it all come together, or the subplot that’s needed to meet the word count. Having a ready synopsis helps me keep on schedule.
Of course, ideas can come from anywhere, so my antenna is always turned on when watching the news, or when skimming through magazines, or when watching those Lifetime TV movies. I once got the idea for a fake pregnancy subplot for my romance A Love of Her Own from the latter, and an article in People magazine filled in the blanks for the aforementioned From This Day Forward.
Then there are the books that practically write themselves. Sometimes the storyline just flows, like the juice in that glass you accidentally knocked over. The ideas for my books Prelude to a Kiss, Straight to the Heart, and Where There’s Smoke came to me in the snap of a finger, and they were the easiest to write.
Funny. I always dreamed of writing mainstream women’s fiction. The happiness I felt when I obtained my first contract for this will always be a vivid memory for me. But although I knew this was my first preference, I found that I enjoyed writing romance too much to just stop. Why wouldn’t I? I wasn’t pressured to write to anyone’s specifications but my own. When I felt like I couldn’t write a fresh-sounding love scene, I stopped including them until I was ready to tackle them again, four books later. When I wanted to write about a heroine with an extensive sexual history because I was tired of heroines with just one miserable sexual encounter in their past or heroines who only knew one sexual position (including one who had been married [?!]), I was given the green light (that book, A Love For All Seasons, will be out this spring.) And no one insisted that I write an organized series (I have done series, but unofficial and unplanned,) which are very popular in romance but not a particular favorite of mine. So I continue to pound out those 850 pages annually for both genres, loving every minute of it.
The best thing about Bettieville are the people who drop by, i.e., the reading audience who enjoy my work. I don’t write because I expect to get rich from it. I write because I love doing it. Of course, reader requests are important, and I do listen to and plan to honor their requests asking for more about particular characters. On the other hand, being able to write what I want to write is, as they say, priceless. The public can be very fickle, and my personal tastes are admittedly a bit offbeat. Like most writers, I have to be true to myself and write what I love to write. I have no interest in being a hack, like the James Caan character in the movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel Misery, who'd grown tired of the character that made him wealthy and provided for his daughter.
Ah, Bettieville, where I get to indulge myself by creating stories I want to tell. It’s the best place on earth for me.
Life is good.
And I Am Telling You It’s Oscar Time Again
The nominations were announced this morning, and the omission of Dreamgirls, the most honored film of the year, from the Best Picture category ignited cries of foul from lovers of the movie.
Over the years there have been plenty of nominees and winners that left me scratching my head. Like how on earth could Art Carney have won a Best Actor statuette for Harry and Tonto over the likes of Dustin Hoffman in Lenny, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, and Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II, for instance. Or why Malcolm X failed to make the final cut for Best Picture (okay, maybe that one can be explained by the Academy not liking Spike Lee.) Or why Rocky beat out Taxi Driver, Network, and All The President’s Men for Best Picture. Or how any movie can be nominated for Best Picture without receiving the same recognition for its director. Don't the two go hand in hand? Whose picture is it, anyway?
I for one am not too upset by what many perceive as a snub. Granted, I haven’t seen Dreamgirls. It was on my To Do list during my recent five-week break between temp assignments, but I got so bogged down going over 850 pages of copyedits and doing rewrites here and there, plus working on new proposals, that I didn't make it, and now I'm been called back to another assignment. But I did ee the play back in the 1980s, with its original cast of Sheryl Lee Ralph as Deena, Loretta Devine as Lorell, Jennifer Holliday as Effie, and Obba Babatunde in, if I recall correctly, the role of Effie's brother. Even then, I thought that, while glittery and a showcase for 1960s costumes and wigs, the story seemed a little thin and the songs unmemorable (while Jennifer Holliday undeniably put everything she had into her big number, her voice was always too raw for my taste . . . and if I only had a quarter for each time an amateur show contestant has screamed out that song in the years since.) I was quite surprised when I heard they were making it into a feature film.
Some people are crying racism. Others say that the movie only came to life when Jennifer Hudson or Eddie Murphy were on the screen, and lackluster at other times. Others have said that Jennifer Hudson - at this point in her career more of a singer than an actress - wasn’t even all that hot, other than her shining moment when she sang that song, but that the seasoned Eddie Murphy really shone throughout.
I’m inclined to discount the racism factor, based solely on the stage version that I saw, which was enjoyable at the time but largely forgettable, like most musicals. God forbid people take a page from the Jet magazine playbook, always whining about all the performances that were overlooked by the Academy (and then proceeding to list every single performance by black actors in the year.) Someone at Jet actually wrote that Whitney Houston’s acting in Waiting to Exhale was worthy of a nomination.
Many folks upset by the Dreamgirls flap have stated courtesy of the Internet that they will not watch the broadcast when the awards are given out. I’ll be tuning in on Oscar night to root for Forest Whitaker (who might lose to Peter O’Toole, an excellent actor past 70 (he looks 90) who, if he loses again will hold the record for the most nods with winning.)
But there's something to be happy for. Since only original compositions written specifically for film are eligible for award nominations, I won’t have to sit through another performance of that song.
The nominations were announced this morning, and the omission of Dreamgirls, the most honored film of the year, from the Best Picture category ignited cries of foul from lovers of the movie.
Over the years there have been plenty of nominees and winners that left me scratching my head. Like how on earth could Art Carney have won a Best Actor statuette for Harry and Tonto over the likes of Dustin Hoffman in Lenny, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, and Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II, for instance. Or why Malcolm X failed to make the final cut for Best Picture (okay, maybe that one can be explained by the Academy not liking Spike Lee.) Or why Rocky beat out Taxi Driver, Network, and All The President’s Men for Best Picture. Or how any movie can be nominated for Best Picture without receiving the same recognition for its director. Don't the two go hand in hand? Whose picture is it, anyway?
I for one am not too upset by what many perceive as a snub. Granted, I haven’t seen Dreamgirls. It was on my To Do list during my recent five-week break between temp assignments, but I got so bogged down going over 850 pages of copyedits and doing rewrites here and there, plus working on new proposals, that I didn't make it, and now I'm been called back to another assignment. But I did ee the play back in the 1980s, with its original cast of Sheryl Lee Ralph as Deena, Loretta Devine as Lorell, Jennifer Holliday as Effie, and Obba Babatunde in, if I recall correctly, the role of Effie's brother. Even then, I thought that, while glittery and a showcase for 1960s costumes and wigs, the story seemed a little thin and the songs unmemorable (while Jennifer Holliday undeniably put everything she had into her big number, her voice was always too raw for my taste . . . and if I only had a quarter for each time an amateur show contestant has screamed out that song in the years since.) I was quite surprised when I heard they were making it into a feature film.
Some people are crying racism. Others say that the movie only came to life when Jennifer Hudson or Eddie Murphy were on the screen, and lackluster at other times. Others have said that Jennifer Hudson - at this point in her career more of a singer than an actress - wasn’t even all that hot, other than her shining moment when she sang that song, but that the seasoned Eddie Murphy really shone throughout.
I’m inclined to discount the racism factor, based solely on the stage version that I saw, which was enjoyable at the time but largely forgettable, like most musicals. God forbid people take a page from the Jet magazine playbook, always whining about all the performances that were overlooked by the Academy (and then proceeding to list every single performance by black actors in the year.) Someone at Jet actually wrote that Whitney Houston’s acting in Waiting to Exhale was worthy of a nomination.
Many folks upset by the Dreamgirls flap have stated courtesy of the Internet that they will not watch the broadcast when the awards are given out. I’ll be tuning in on Oscar night to root for Forest Whitaker (who might lose to Peter O’Toole, an excellent actor past 70 (he looks 90) who, if he loses again will hold the record for the most nods with winning.)
But there's something to be happy for. Since only original compositions written specifically for film are eligible for award nominations, I won’t have to sit through another performance of that song.
Will we ever overcome?
Yesterday was a good day. Both the NFL teams I rooted for won their respective championship games.
I've never been much for football and still am not, but living in Chicagoland I can't help but get caught up in Bears fever. I've always been a Colts fan; Indiana is my husband's home state, and I've been listening to him and his son cheer for them for the last 15 years. My hopes for the Super Bowl victor? The Colts. (Said softly, lest any Bears fans be lurking around.)
To my surprise, the final story featured on the network newscast this evening was the fact that both teams are going to the Super Bowl guided by African-American lead coaches. This was compared to the sports firsts by heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and major league baseball player Jackie Robinson (in 1910 and 1947, respectively.)
I heard this fact mentioned on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, but I would expect that. After all, Tom and the gang often present issues of interest to the black community. But it seemed out of place given such emphasis on the network news, a broadcast which, unlike the aforementioned syndicated radio show, does not have a predominantly African-American audience.
Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl game, was interviewed for the piece and said the media is making too much of it. At least one of the coaches said that while he is proud, in this day and age it really shouldn't be a huge deal. I agree.
I guess race will always be with us, just like death and taxes.
Yesterday was a good day. Both the NFL teams I rooted for won their respective championship games.
I've never been much for football and still am not, but living in Chicagoland I can't help but get caught up in Bears fever. I've always been a Colts fan; Indiana is my husband's home state, and I've been listening to him and his son cheer for them for the last 15 years. My hopes for the Super Bowl victor? The Colts. (Said softly, lest any Bears fans be lurking around.)
To my surprise, the final story featured on the network newscast this evening was the fact that both teams are going to the Super Bowl guided by African-American lead coaches. This was compared to the sports firsts by heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and major league baseball player Jackie Robinson (in 1910 and 1947, respectively.)
I heard this fact mentioned on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, but I would expect that. After all, Tom and the gang often present issues of interest to the black community. But it seemed out of place given such emphasis on the network news, a broadcast which, unlike the aforementioned syndicated radio show, does not have a predominantly African-American audience.
Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl game, was interviewed for the piece and said the media is making too much of it. At least one of the coaches said that while he is proud, in this day and age it really shouldn't be a huge deal. I agree.
I guess race will always be with us, just like death and taxes.
Can I Get A Drum Roll, Please?
As a writer, it seems like I always have something to work on. For the last three years I've written two books a year, roughly 900 manuscript pages. I do have another life outside of being hunched over my laptop. There's my husband, my household, my puzzles, my bowling . . . reading for pleasure gets pushed to the bottom of the heap.
But last year, during which I had more leisure time because I didn't do a whole lot of working at an outside job, I made some time to read, just for the heck of it. I started reading a few titles that I could take or leave, some of which I have yet to finish, others which left me with a that's-six-hours-of-my-life-I'll-never-get-back feeling. I can't say that I came across a single book that I couldn't put down . . . that free-falling carefree life is a thing of my twenties; now my deeply ingrained notion of get-your-work-done-before-you-pick-up-a-book precludes letting the laundry or dinner or food shopping go because I've just got to find out what happens to So-and-So . . . but I read some books that I greatly enjoyed.
I have narrowed down my short list of best reads for 2006 to two titles, two very different types of stories. Bettye's picks for 2006 are (drum roll, please . . . .)
I read one at the beginning of 2006, the other at the end of 2006. Both had babies at the center of their storylines. RM Johnson's The Million Dollar Divorce was a roller coaster ride of emotions, including desperation, despair, a thirst for revenge bordering on obsession, and most important of all, hope. Adrianne Byrd's She's My Baby was a charming story of a female publishing executive (referred to in the book by the outdated term career woman, which belongs with stewardess and Betamax) with no maternal instincts whatsoever, and a sexy neighbor who gives a sistah a hand. But both were great stories, highly entertaining, enjoyable to the last page.
What more could you ask for in a book?
The Personal Price of War
"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young," Boxer said. "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."
These were the words of Senator Barbara Boxer to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, which made perfect sense to me. Personally, I am grateful that neither of my boys are in the military.
But the White House and certain other people - mostly likely Republicans - are all up in arms, calling the remark "outrageous," claiming Senator Boxer attacked Secretary Rice for not having children, etc. Leave it to these people to attempt to whip up a loaf of bread with no yeast.
Life allows us to feel only a certain degree of empathy for the bereaved; it simply isn't normal - indeed, it's probably an inkling of a mental disorder - to literally feel someone else's pain. I do remember crying when I saw that movie that was made about the five Sullivan brothers, who were all killed when the ship they served on together went down in World War II. The scene when the family was informed of the deaths still stays with me today ("Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, I'm afraid I bring you very bad news . . .")
As bad as most of us feel when we see the photographs on the news of military men and women who have been killed, the cold, hard fact is that no one feels these deaths more keenly than their loved ones, and everybody knows it. Why do you suppose the rich and powerful use their connections to keep their children out of it, whether it be the Civil War or the war today?
Senator Boxer merely pointed out that neither she, with children too old and grandchildren too young to serve, and Secretary Rice, an only child who did not have children, do not have direct familial connections to the men and women serving in the military. The Secretary is a woman of high intelligence; there is no reason for her to be confused by the Senator's statements. Her reaction is nothing more than a staged attempt to turn the focus to women's lifestyle choices, and off of the real issue, the lives being lost in the ongoing Iraq war.
I just hope Senator Boxer sticks to her guns. The last thing the Democrats need is another John Kerry, whose comments about the unlikelihood of seeing college grads serving in Iraq were dead on, but whose waffling of the issue during the ruckus that followed did in his political career.
"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young," Boxer said. "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."
These were the words of Senator Barbara Boxer to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, which made perfect sense to me. Personally, I am grateful that neither of my boys are in the military.
But the White House and certain other people - mostly likely Republicans - are all up in arms, calling the remark "outrageous," claiming Senator Boxer attacked Secretary Rice for not having children, etc. Leave it to these people to attempt to whip up a loaf of bread with no yeast.
Life allows us to feel only a certain degree of empathy for the bereaved; it simply isn't normal - indeed, it's probably an inkling of a mental disorder - to literally feel someone else's pain. I do remember crying when I saw that movie that was made about the five Sullivan brothers, who were all killed when the ship they served on together went down in World War II. The scene when the family was informed of the deaths still stays with me today ("Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, I'm afraid I bring you very bad news . . .")
As bad as most of us feel when we see the photographs on the news of military men and women who have been killed, the cold, hard fact is that no one feels these deaths more keenly than their loved ones, and everybody knows it. Why do you suppose the rich and powerful use their connections to keep their children out of it, whether it be the Civil War or the war today?
Senator Boxer merely pointed out that neither she, with children too old and grandchildren too young to serve, and Secretary Rice, an only child who did not have children, do not have direct familial connections to the men and women serving in the military. The Secretary is a woman of high intelligence; there is no reason for her to be confused by the Senator's statements. Her reaction is nothing more than a staged attempt to turn the focus to women's lifestyle choices, and off of the real issue, the lives being lost in the ongoing Iraq war.
I just hope Senator Boxer sticks to her guns. The last thing the Democrats need is another John Kerry, whose comments about the unlikelihood of seeing college grads serving in Iraq were dead on, but whose waffling of the issue during the ruckus that followed did in his political career.
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