Crawl in Bed With Jean Joachim

Crawling Into Bed With

Jean Joachim

And a Good Book

Important things first, are these sheets silk or cotton?
 The finest Egyptian cotton, 600 thread count. Only the best for you, Lee. *wiggles eyebrows*.

What are you wearing?
 A short black jersey “nightie” with stretchy straps ending in tiny red bows. It’s barely long enough to cover my…well, you know.

What are we snacking on in bed while we read tonight?
 Hmm, nothing crunchy, with crumbs. How about a hot fudge sundae with mint chip ice cream and whipped cream on top? Or maybe with soft ice cream? All the better to lick off your…uh, fingers. Yes, fingers. Whew!

If I open this nightstand drawer, what will I find?
An unmentionable toy, my Nook, a copy of Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis, and peppermint flavored…oops, naughty naughty, Jean. That’s a secret!


Do you roll up in the blankets like a burrito, or kick the covers off during the night?
 I roll up in blankets, perhaps leaving a foot sticking out. I’d love to roll up with you, Lee. Just slide over here…that’s right, get up close.

Can I put my cold feet on your calves to warm them up?
Let me turn the electric mattress pad on. Okay, now bend your knees, rest your feet flat on it… the pad, of course. It will turn you on…your feet will heat up anyway. Or I could heat them up manually. heh heh.

What are we reading?


The Renovated Heart!! Here’s an excerpt:

Sipping her Cosmo, Kit looked around La Nuit Française—a posh, intimate French restaurant decorated in turquoise, red and gold, tucked into the west side of Manhattan. Beautiful people dressed in expensive clothing pretending to be someone important filled the restaurant. In addition to paying through the nose for the good food, they were also paying to be seen. Save me from such pretention. Wearing a sexy dress in midnight blue silk, her dark cerulean blue eyes shining, her spun gold hair draping well below her shoulders in loose curls, she was the loveliest woman in the room.

A man approach her table, she smiled at her husband, Johnny, as he plopped down in the empty chair across from her.

He ordered a beer plus another Cosmopolitan for Kit.

“You look great, Kit,” Johnny said, taking a swig of his beer. His gaze lowered to her neckline then returned to her face.

“A fresh look for a new start…tomorrow I launch a new life. We both do.” She picked up the second Cosmo and took a sip.

“We need to talk about tomorrow,” Johnny said, looking down at the silverware.

“I’m ready. I’ve crossed off almost everything from my to-do list.”

“You and that damn list. Always lists. Look, the trip…the trip is… Well. The trip is just for me, Kit.”

“What do you mean?” Her brow furrowed, her eyes darkened.

“I mean, I’m not taking you with me,” he replied, shifting in his seat, avoiding her stare.

“What?” she asked as her breathing became shallow, her chest tightening. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

“This is my big break. I’ve been playing in crummy clubs for ten years, waiting for this chance. I…I want to do it alone,” Johnny said, finally able to look at her.

“Johnny, you can’t be serious?”

“I am. I filed for divorce, Kit.” His hands toyed with his beer glass.

“Divorce?” Tears stung the back of her eyes.

Buy links:

Amazon http:     http://www.amazon.com/The-Renovated-Heart-ebook/dp/B008O8FFSW

Barnes & Noble   http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-renovated-heart-jean-joachim/1112214883?ean=2940015017380

Secret Cravings - http://store.secretcravingspublishing.com/index.php?main_page=book_info&cPath=13&products_id=373

ARe  http://www.allromanceebooks.com/storeSearch.html

Bookstand - http://www.bookstrand.com/the-renovated-heart

Website – http://www.jeanjoachimbooks.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jean.joachim.5
Twitter: @jeanjoachim

Cheating Heroes With Jean Joachim

Please welcome back an author I am proud to call my friend, Jean Joachim. Jean is sharing with us today her views on cheating in romance novels. 

CAN A CHEATER BE A HERO?

Before we can discuss cheating, let’s define the term.  In romance novels, a cheater is someone who violates the rules of a relationship. The hero and heroine or two heroes can be lovers who have made a pact, simply strayed into monogamy or actually gotten married. But if there is a spoken or even unspoken bond that the couple will remain sexually faithful and the hero sleeps with someone else, he is cheating.

Escape from life

Why can’t a hero cheat? Plenty of men do in real life? Why don’t romance publishers want to publish books with cheating heroes? One reason readers flock to romance is to escape from real life. Some romance books are more realistic than others. I write contemporary romance and strive to make them as realistic as possible within the boundaries readers are looking for: faithful heroes and happy endings. That rules out cheating men.

Makes the hero look untrustworthy

Another reason cheating leaves a bad taste in the mouth of a romance reader is that it’s a break of basic trust between the hero, his lover and the reader. A relationship doesn’t work if trust is broken. Once the lover discovers a cheating partner, it’s practically impossible to regain the same level of trust. And if that trust is violated in the bedroom, where else is the lover being dishonest? Suspicion created by cheating taints all aspects of the hero’s life in the mind of his lover and the reader. 

Faithful heroes become supermen

            Romance readers are the first to admit they love the men in their lives. But those men are flawed, as are all human beings. In romance novels we read about the perfect hero. One aspect that makes him perfect is being sexually faithful to the heroine or significant other. I like to write imperfect heroes, slightly flawed men, but my men are never so flawed they can’t stay faithful to the heroine.

Tarnishes the Lover

Whether the object of desire for our hero is a man or woman, if the hero is cheating it makes his lover look less than wonderful. If he’s off making love to someone else, we tend to think less of his main squeeze. We wonder what’s wrong with him or her. If the SO is painted as irresistible, how come the hero is screwing around? Why does he need someone else if he or she is so great? So his unfaithful behavior taints his lover as well.

The Strength of Love

            Hopefully everyone reading our books has experienced true love at some time in their lives. True love is a powerful emotion. It can move mountains, start wars and heal the sick. If our hero and his lover have true love, it should be so strong, so captivating that he is overwhelmed with enormous desire for his lover. This won’t ring true if he is off bed-bouncing with someone else. Their love loses power, credibility if the hero is messing around with someone else. We don’t believe he truly loves the principal man or woman in his life. We think he’s a phony, a liar and we cease to believe the love story.

What do you think? Can a hero be a cheater without losing you, the reader? 

Jean Joachim is an author, married, a mother of two boys and owner of a rescued pug named Homer. She lives in New York City. She writes contemporary romance and has ten books published with two more scheduled to be release within the coming months. Jean has one book in the Amazon top 100 listing. She also has seven non-fiction books published. Her bestselling activity books are frequently in the top 25 on Amazon. Jean has been writing non-fiction for over twenty years and fiction for three. Her review column, "Movie Choices for Kids" has been syndicated in weekly and parenting newspapers and on websites for the past twelve years.

Find out more about her books on her website: http://www.jeanjoachimbooks.com

Buy links for Now and Forever 3, Blind Love

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Now-Forever-Blind-Love-ebook/dp/B007Z4V0A8/

Are

http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-nowandforever3blindlove-786809-149.html

Secret Cravings:

http://store.secretcravingspublishing.com/index.php?main_page=book_info&cPath=13&products_id=310

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Now-and-Forever-3--Blind-Love?keyword=Now+and+Forever+3%2C+Blind+Love&store=ebook

 Bookstrand

http://www.bookstrand.com/now-and-forever-3-blind-love

Men and Romance...never the Twain Shall Meet?

Welcome guest blogger Jean Joachim today. She's adding her two cents to the topic of the month: Men Can't Write Romance.  That's not my opinion- it's a statement I picked up over at GR.  Some people believe it's true- others don't.  Read Jean's column today and let us know what you think.  Everyone who comments on each post in this series will be entered to win an Amazon gift card worth $10. The series will run every Tuesday in April, and that gives you four chances to comment to win!

Who Says Men Can’t Write Romance?

 Men have been writing romance longer than women. For example, William Shakespeare’s timeless, romantic play, Romeo and Juliet has been played, replayed, imitated and rewritten, countless times. Other Shakespeare plays: “The Taming of the Shrew”, “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Twelfth Night”, to name a few, have strong romantic themes. Miguel de Cervantes, sixteenth century Spanish author, wrote of the chaste love of Don Quixote for his Ducinea.

Women in those days were forbidden from writing under their own names and later on, a few brave, talented women wrote under the pseudonyms of George Eliot and George Sand. Hey, this article is about men!

Men continued to write great literature with romantic elements like, Sons and Lovers and Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller, From Here to Eternity by James Jones and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, to mention only a few.

And that, you may say, is that for men in romance. And I say WRONG, Cupid-breath. Men are still incredibly romantic today and while some, like the phenomenally talented Brindle Chase and Nicholas Sparks write heterosexual romance books, others, like the brilliant Lee Brazil and a countless number of his friends and colleagues write gay romance books.

Some men, intrigued by romance but looking for bigger bucks, have moved away from publishing into the higher-paying realm of screenwriting. Many of the best romance movies, past and present, have been written by men. You’ll find men’s hearts take flight in this most visual of media, creating romantic situations, great dialogue for women and scorching love scenes on celluloid. From Casablanca written by Julius Epstein to Ghost, written by Bruce Joel Rubin. From The Philadelphia Story by David Ogden Stewart to, Serendipity by Mark Klein, men have been penning romance for the big screen since movies began.

Many of our favorite classic romantic movies are written by men…almost any Fred Astaire movie, It Happened One Night, While You Were Sleeping (okay, this is my favorite) and Sabrina. 

And when it comes to a more present-day movie romance, one male writer shines through the rest. Richard Curtis, a non-descript man, has written several of the most popular, most romantic movies in recent history, including: Notting Hill, Love, Actually and both Bridget Jones Diary movies.

            While women lay claim to soft hearted romantic notions, men buy most of the flowers, fancy chocolates, expensive jewelry (engagement rings) and kneel in humiliating positions to claim the hand of their lady fair. Or put their proposal on the big screen at Yankee Stadium. According to Wikipedia, Valentine’s Day, as we know it, was created by poets (men) during the time of Geoffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages. And what of poets? Who are “The Romantic Poets”? All men: William Blake, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Percy Shelley and John Keats, to name a few.

            What about romantic music? The most romantic music in the United States, except for Jazz, came from early Broadway musicals, dominated by men. Composers and lyricists like: Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Lerner and Loewe, Rogers and Hammerstein, Rogers and Hart, wrote some of the most romantic music ever.

            So why shouldn’t men take their romantic notions back to the written page, where it all started? No reason. Men, I hand you a pen and a pad. Please, put your sexy, romantic notions down on paper. I’m reaching into my purse and getting in line to buy your sigh-inducing, heat-producing, all-encompassing romantic books. Write on!  

             

Find out more about Jean and her work at : http://jeanjoachim.blogspot.com/