Did you happen to catch the new Lifetime TV show, DietTribe? http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/shows/diettribe   It’s about five friends who have a goal of losing thirty pounds each in ninety days, before one of the women gets married.

It’s similar to The Biggest Loser, but much more realistic and, might I add, much more compassionate. The Biggest Loser lost me when I saw that the show revolved around unrealistic weekly weight-loss results and brutal workouts that would send the average person into cardiac arrest. The one time I watched TBL, one contestant lost thirty pounds in a week.

Get real.

Real is what DietTribe is all about. These women (all over 200 pounds) have faced life-long battles with weight and confess that they got to this point because they’ve turned a blind eye to the issue – at times being downright obstinate about it because they wanted people to love them for who they are. Not for what they look like. As women, I think we can all relate to that. Though, when pressed, they all finally admitted the emotional stress of being overweight has ruled their lives – and even more importantly, it’s taken a toll on their health. 

Losing weight is simple math: burn more than you consume. But it goes beyond that. The psychologist and trainer who are working with them agreed successful weight loss is just as much a mental and emotional endeavor. One of them (I can’t remember which) said, “Bring the mind and the body will follow.”

It’s one of those basic things you know, but it still makes you smack your forehead and say, “Wow, that’s right.” If your head’s not in the game then it’s a lost cause.

That was one of the things that hooked me on the show – that, and the way that the friends look to each other for support. They’re achieving their goals not by competing against and “voting each other off,” but by being there for each other.

Sister Quill Kathy Garbera and I have been friends for more than twelve years with another woman named Mimi. http://mimidish.blogspot.com/  The three of us have joined forces to form our own DietTribe of sorts. We’ve known each other through thick and thin. Literally. Now that our friendship has reached a new “decade,” so to speak, we’ve given up the fantasy of fitting into our old college jeans, but we haven’t given up being the best – and the healthiest – we can be at this time in our lives. I don’t want to be cover-model svelte (Good thing, because I was born bigger than that!)  But I do want to get my weight and BMI (body mass index) down to a healthier range.

Basically, we’re going to follow the DietTribe plan of cutting calories to 1,500 per day (eating 5 times per day–three 400 calorie meals, two 150 calorie snacks) and getting some form of exercise five times per week.  Our plan is to check in with each other once a week via e-mail and offer each other support in between.

I’ll admit the prospect of shedding pounds is daunting. I’ve been a yo-yo dieter all my life and have a love-hate relationship with food. But I’d love to get to the point where food was not the illicit seducer. I’m confident I can do it… with a little help from my friends. 

Some of the other jewels gleaned from the DietTribe show: It takes 21 days to make (or break) a habit; excuses are the stories we tell ourselves and believe. We must learn to recognize our excuses and expose them for the saboteurs they are; and most importantly — to be healthy, you must take responsibility for your health and habits.

Awareness makes change.

Anyone out there ready to take on a similar challenge? Or if anyone has lost a large amount of weight do you have any tips or suggestions?

Elisabeth Naughton writes sexy romantic adventures for Dorchester. Her debut release, STOLEN FURY, the first in a trilogy, has been compared to both Indiana Jones and Romancing the Stone, and Publisher’s Weekly calls it “A rock solid debut.” Her second book, STOLEN HEAT, is set to release in August, 2009. Learn more about Elisabeth and her books at her website: www.elisabethnaughton.com

Thanks to the girls here at the Jaunty Quills for having me as a guest today. I’m thrilled to be here.

For those of you who don’t know me, my debut romantic suspense, STOLEN FURY, released just two weeks ago. The last month has been hectic, exciting, and scary all at the same time, but an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Long before I sold this first book, I used to envision publishing as a big glass skyscraper. Those of us “wannabe’s” were all stuck on the outside, peering in the through the shimmering glass at the party going on inside. Friends of ours – the ones with agents we longed to have as our own – could be seen milling around the lobby, socializing, making contacts, making progress. And though those of us toiling on the outside longed to be where they were, even they were looking elsewhere, up toward the glass enclosed elevators and each floor above where still others – our peers – could be seen having the time of their lives. In my mind, publishing was one great big party, and each floor, a level those of us below and outside longed to reach.

Silly, huh? But for someone on the outside looking in, that’s how it felt.

This past Sunday I ran my second half-marathon. I don’t know if any of you are runners, but there’s a point during a run at which your brain shuts down and all mental capacity switches over to simply focusing on telling your muscles to keep going. For me, this generally happens around mile nine, but yesterday, before I hit that point, I was remembering back to my first race and, ironically, comparing it to my publishing journey so far. And I realized something profound…publishing isn’t a glass skyscraper at all. But it is very much like the race I was running.

It’s the rare writer who one day decides, “I’ll write a book,” writes it and sells immediately. But even for those phenomenal writers who achieve that goal right out of the gate, the journey is the same. We write, we revise, we edit, we write again. We practice our craft and train, just like a runner trains for a race. And when we feel like we finally can “do it”, we start submitting. The race begins. Every request – for a partial, for a full; every contest final, every win…each one is a mile marker toward our ultimate goal of completing the race and being published. Some of us move faster through these first few miles, others of us may take months or even years, but those of us who are dedicated keep on pushing forward.

And then, when you feel you’ll never get there, something magical happens. You reach the turn. Someone wants to buy your book. You’re not yet published, but you know now you will get there. You suddenly have a burst of renewed energy. You work harder, longer, stronger. You can see the finish line in your mind’s eye. From here, every new experience is another mile marker passed: your first revision letter, your first set of line edits, your first cover! You struggle, toil slow down and speed up, and sometimes this part of the race feels longer than the first, like it will never end. Until you round the last bend, and there, just off in the distance, is the red ticker tape. Waiting for you to cross. You’ve worked so hard, gone through so much, and there, finally, the finish line.

When you cross, you feel not only excitement, but satisfaction. And something else. Something you didn’t expect. You don’t care who finished ahead of you. You don’t care what your time was or how long it took you to get here. All that matters is that you finally made it.

Yesterday, during my run, I realized the way I felt during my first half-marathon was very much akin to how I’ve felt with this first published book. There’s a high you get from the first one of each that can’t be recreated. Each subsequent finish is special, but with each one, a whole new set of concerns: Did I better my time/sales? Did I run/write better? Do I have as many people cheering for me at the end as I do now?

Like writers, every runner has different worries. Some focus on where they finish in relation to others, some are more concerned with bettering what they did the last time around. Still others are simply thrilled they were able to run and finish again at all. And also like writers, runners come in all shapes, sizes and varieties, and it’s those differences that make a race, and publishing in general, more fun to be a part of.

I’m savoring this first release, much the same way I savored my first half marathon. This book, STOLEN FURY, will always have a special place in my mind and heart, one because it’s a story I love, but also because I worked so hard to see it come to life. Will there be other races? You betcha. Will there be more books? Without a doubt. But none will ever be the same as this. Do I still see publishing as a glass skyscraper? No way. I see it as my own personal half-marathon, where how I run and reach the end is completely up to me.

How about you? Is there any one goal in your personal or professional life that you worked hard for and finally reached? And if you’ve repeated the journey, was it the same as that first time?

***

In honor of my release, one lucky commenter will receive an autographed copy of STOLEN FURY in a random drawing!

Also, I’m running a fun contest on my website until the 17th of January.

Seeking Fortune & Glory? Then enter and play!
Embark on your very own quest, partner up with a sexy treasure hunting guide and enter to win a $100 VISA gift card!

The New Year always seems like a clean slate for me and this year particularly.  Without going into too many details I’ll just say that 2007/2008 were rocking for me.  The ending of a long marriage and adjusting to being single for the first time in my adult life.  Suffice it to say I’ve come out on the other side with a new love and a new leash on life.

This year I will celebrate a milestone birthday (40!) and I’m really looking forward to entering this new phase in my life.  It seems to me like I’ve turned the page and that I’m onto an exciting journey.  One that is all the more exciting because it was unexpected.

I have the usual resolutions for the year, lose some weight, eat healthier, balancing writing with living, travel, but more than that I want to really experience my life.  No more letting days go by without making a sense memory, or learning something new.

What about you?  New year, new you?  Or are you pretty well balanced and happy where you are?

Kathy

The winner of “Things That Make Me Smile” is Jane. Congratulations! A copy of WILD will be on its way Monday morning!

I have friends who love baseball. When I wrote Claiming the Rancher’s Heart, which will be out in March, there was a scene in it where the heroine attends a small town baseball game. Unlike my friend, who’d have know exactly what to write, I had to look up a few facts to make the scene accurate and authentic. That’s because I’ve never cared much for baseball. I never liked to watch it or play it or really think about it.

But if I was writing about football, I wouldn’t have needed to do any research. Because from the time I was a little girl, I’ve loved the game. In Nebraska, we don’t have any Pro teams. We have college football. Or more specifically, the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. When the stadium is filled on a Saturday, it’s the third largest city in the state.

I cheered the Huskers on in the years we were one of the best teams in the country…and I stuck by them when a new coach from the West coast nearly ruined the program. Now we’re on the upswing with a new coach and a 9-3 season this past year.

When I’m not focused on football, I love to watch the Husker women’s volleyball team play.

Our team is consistently ranked in the top five in the country. But, even if they weren’t successful, volleyball is a game I simply enjoy watching. Unlike football, volleyball is a recently acquired passion.

Golf– Yes, if Tiger is playing.
Basketball–only when Michael Jordan and friends were paying for the Chicago Bulls.
Hockey–too violent
Soccar–Snooze-fest

What about you? Do you have a passion for any sports??? Or any that cause you to nod off when they come on the tube?

We’re more than a week into 2009. Have you set those resolutions? If not, it’s not too late.

Actually, I like to call them goals rather than resolutions. That word – resolution – just begs to be broken! But I’m a firm believer in goals.

Here are seven tips for setting your own goals/resolutions and making them stick:

1. Make sure the goal(s) you are working for is/are something you really want, not just something that sounds good.

2. Develop goals in 6 areas to ensure a more balanced life:
Family and Home Financial and Career
Spiritual and Ethical Physical and Health
Social and Cultural Educational

3. Write your goals down and write them in the positive.

4. Write your goals out in complete detail. Not just, “I’m going to lose 10 pounds.” But, “I will lose ten pounds by cutting calories to XX per day and exercising on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”

5. Make sure your goals don’t contradict each other:
For example, if you’ve set goals to improve your health and write that novel that’s been brewing inside you, staying up all night to work on your manuscript only to get up early to go work at your full-time day job, will probably send you into a spiral of burnout causing you to not be able to meet any of your goals. Take special care to keep the balance.

6. Take care that most of your goals are “performance” goals (things you have control over) rather than outcome goals (things you have no control over). If this is the year you want to meet your soul mate, set a goal of putting yourself in a position where you’d be more apt to meet the person of your dreams rather than simply saying, I’m going to meet and marry my soul mate. Though, it’s fine to have a mix of Performance Goals and Outcome Goals (Maybe an 80/20 mix of performance/outcome)

7. This is the most important step — WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS. I know we covered this in step 3, but it’s so important I wanted to revisit it. Writing down your goals is your roadmap to success. It proves that you know what you want and how you’re going to get there.

Have fun with this! Just out of curiosity, do you usually stick to your resolutions?

I have a very good friend who is in the midst of a difficult divorce (their troubles have been going on for a number of years) and she just had to pull off a major intervention for her 18 year old daughter – taking her 2000 miles away to a theraputic boarding school for girls. My friend’s last 10 years have been one disaster after another. I can’t remember the last time I saw her smile.

Which makes me appreciate my good life all the more. My husband is a loving, understanding guy. My kids are all pretty well-adjusted, and moving forward with their lives in good, healthy directions. They make me smile. So do a lot of other things:

My big, dumb dogs
iPod

My new Mama Mia DVD
The smell of ‘comfort food’ in the kitchen on a cold, winter day

My GPS cell phone that can get me anywhere I need to go!
A new president, and hopefully – a new era

A new book release!
The cat that’s sitting on my lap and getting in the way of my keyboard.
My stationary bike

Masterpiece Theater
My own Starbuck’s store
A call from my daughter
Silly jokes
Pictures of my mom

What makes you smile? I’m going to do a random drawing of all your replies and send the winner a copy of WILD, my new release from Avon.

It’s been a while since I made my big confession that I’d become a new Nora Roberts fan. It started with the JD Robb books, but I’ve read (and loved) some Nora books as well. But still those JD Robb books keep me coming back for more. I can’t go very long in between them or else I get a little twitchy. Lucky for me, I found them a decade late and have plenty to read.

Now I don’t know if any of you are JD Robb fans or not, but they’re really great. More police procedurals than romances, but the characters are fantastic and even though the romance is more or less resolved early in the series, they still sizzle on the page. This week my fellow quills have been talking about actors and characters and whatnot so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to talk about something similar. As a reader I often cast someone in the role as I progress through the book. The picture becomes even clearer when it’s a series and I can visit the characters over and over again.

I think I really noticed this many years ago when I was hooked on the Stephanie Plum books. I knew that Oded Fehr would make the perfect Ranger. Stephanie herself was always a bit of a mystery to me for some reason though. But in the JD Robb books I have pretty clear pictures of the main characters. Eve I see as a younger, grittier Marg Helgenberger. Not like her character on CSI, Eve is one of a kind.

Roarke, on the other hand, well if you’ve read the books you know that Roarke is like the ultimate Alphamale. He’s super rich, sexy, smart, tough, smooth, suave and Irish. I mean come on! Normally I’m not really a huge fan of Pierce Brosnan, okay it’s not that I don’t like him, I do, but I just don’t think he’s like the ultimate man or anything. But when I read Roarke, I see Pierce, only with longer hair and again a little more grit.

I have mental images of most of the recurring characters and opening a JD Robb book is like revisiting friends even though they’re friends who end up embroiled in really icky murder investigations. But I get sucked into the world again and again.

So how about you, do you imagine certain actors or other famous faces when you’re reading books? And hey, are there any other JD Robb fans out there?

I’m taking my inspiration today from Kristan’s wonderful post yesterday. She got me thinking about how–when it comes to movie heros–it’s not the actors I love, it’s the character they play. I find Viggo Mortensen is very sexy in Lord of the Rings, but much less in so in almost everything else. On the other hand, I love Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean, but not in Lord of the Rings. Of course, every woman is different. What floats one woman’s boat will sink someone else’s. But here’s my personal list of sigh-worthy movie heros, in no particular order.

Harrison Ford as Han Solo — Let’s face it, for women of my generation, he’s the man who taught us to love bad boys. He’s disreputable, dishonorable, and just a little bit vulnerable. The sexual tension between him and Princess Leia is off the charts. We all love the way he redeems himself at the end of the first movie, but it’s his great response to Prince Leia’s proclamation of love in the second movie that cements his place on this list.

Bill Pullman as Jack Callaghan in While You Were Sleeping — Sure he’s not as handsome as his brother Peter and he’s certainly not as rich, but he’s 100% hero. My favorite moment is the one in which he plays blackjack with his sleeping brother  trying to win Lucy away from Peter.

Jude Law as Graham Simpkins and Jack Black as Miles in The Holiday –(***Spoiler Alert***)  I’ve never been much as a fan of Jude Law. Sure, he’s very handsome, but none of his characters have appealed to me, until the moment in this movie when he spells out the word “widowed.” To me he’s more appealing as a single dad than in any other role. As for Jack Black, well, there are few men who seem less like romantic heros than Jack Black, but in this movie, he pulls it off. And he has the best line in the movie. When describing the song he’s written for Iris he says, “I used only the good notes.” Very romantic.

Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice — If you have eyes, a brain and a pulse, I don’t really need to explain this one, do I?

Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven in Speed — He stays on the bus to protect Annie. For me, there’s nothing sexier than a man who protects the woman he loves.

Ed Harris as Bud Brigman in The Abyss –There are tons of great moments for him in this movie, but my favorite is when he throws away his wedding ring and then fishes it out the toilet. 

Val Kilmer as Simon Templar in The Saint — Okay, I’m probably the only person who loves this movie, but I’m a total sucker for that whole “Stay with me if you want to live” line.

Li Shang in Mulan — Yes, I know he’s a cartoon, but that doesn’t make him any less appealing. Robyn, back me up on this.

Oh wait … that’s only nine. Which leaves one slot open. Who would you add to the list?

Looks matter. Especially to us romance writers.

When I was a gawky adolescent, all the romance novels featured extraordinarily beautiful people. The heroes were chiseled from stone with devastating smiles and sapphire / emerald / topaz / silver or onyx eyes. They were all tall, all muscular, all possessing catlike grace with an underlying predatory thing going on. Mm-mm! The heroines were your basic goddesses — silken tumbles of curly raven black / golden blond / fiery red hair. They were beautiful…breathtakingly so. Alluring, full lips and dimples. They were all petite yet curvaceous, slender yet fully rounded. No one was flat-chested. No one was taller than the hero. No one had difficult hair.

Luckily (or not, depending on your viewpoint), reality made its entrance into romance fiction. Our heroines were allowed to be overweight and clumsy, our heroes on the nerdy side. Granted, those average-looking females usually could throw on an evening gown, brush their hair and suddenly they’re Catherine Zeta-Jones, but still. A few actresses can pull of the ugly duckling bit. Sandra Bullock leaps to mind, as does Renee Zellwegger as Bridget Jones. As for the men…it’s always entertaining to me when a director throws a pair of glasses on, oh, let’s say Daniel Craig, and we’re supposed to believe he’s a dork. I remember seeing A Beautiful Mind…there’s a scene where Russell Crowe is teaching at Princeton, and the woman behind me muttered, “My math teachers never had arms like that!”

Personally, I’m drawn to interesting faces, rather than beautiful faces. Should George Clooney and Daniel Craig vie for my attention in a bar someday (please, God!), I’d have to go with Daniel. At least, based on looks alone. Brad Pitt does nothing for me, though I admire his works of philanthropy, but the brawling, arrogant Russell Crowe sets me a-quiver. I think Meryl Streep is so much more appealing than Keira Knightly.  Even as a kid, I was always irritated at those Disney heroines who were only heroines because they were pretty (Sleeping Beauty, I’m gunning for you, missy!).

Some of the more interesting faces in romance to me have been unusual. The first line of Gone with the Wind tells us that Scarlett was not beautiful, but men seldom noticed it, too caught up in her charm. Such a great description! Loretta Chase had Dane in Lord of Scoundrels, a hero who was widely acknowledged to be downright ugly. Deliciously so.

When I write a character, I have a face in mind, but I try not to overwhelm the reader with my impressions of it. I focus instead on one or two characteristics to describe and leave the rest to my readers’ imaginations. Crinkling eyes or a curling smile, a scowl, a laugh. And I usually focus on how the hero looks, because my books have all been in first person thus far. It would be unnatural, I think, to have a heroine say something like, “I flipped back my sun-streaked golden curls and narrowed my emerald eyes,” so the heroine’s looks are not usually described all that much in my books.

What do you think? Do looks matter when you read a book? Do you prefer a lot of description or a little? Why did a hero or heroine’s looks matter to a story that you loved, and what did that character look like?

Kristan