I have some really exciting news! Last week, I learned that I am a finalist for a RITA award for Unspoken. What’s a RITA, you ask? Well, it’s a very prestigious award given out annually at the Romance Writers of America’s Conference in July. According to RWA, “The purpose of the RITA award is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas.”

And Unspoken is a finalist in the Young Adult category. I have been pinching myself and walking around on cloud nine all week! So, wish me luck when I head off to RWA’s Conference July 13-16!

Now, on to this week’s blog…

I’m sure there has been a time you’ve been sitting in a bar with your girlfriends. You catch the eye of a guy across the room. Maybe you think he’s cute, and you hold his gaze for just a second before looking back at your drink. A few minutes later, he’s standing next to you, leans down and whispers in your ear something like, “Call me Mr. Flintstone. I can make your Bedrock.” And you want to punch him in the face!

Yes, my friends, this week I’m talking about pick up lines. Let’s face it, most pick up lines are really BAD. And do they ever work? Well, you tell me. What are some of the worst or even the best pick up lines you’ve ever heard? I’ve collected a few for your entertainment.

But if Ryan Reynolds said this to me–it just might work. Would it work on you?

Do you have what it takes?  Could you be a Christie Craig Character?  A few months back I listed the first 5 of my 10 requirements for a Christi Craig character in my Divorced & Desperate Series.

Just to review, the first 5 were:

1, Flaws, wonderful fabulous flaws

2. Lots of emotional baggage

3. Be willing to compromise, improvise and be flexible

4. Secrets–the dirtier the better

5. Family who either left you or drive you mad

Now if you want more details on the first 5 requirements, you can revisit my October 20, 2015 Do You Have What It Takes? blog.

Now for the rest of my Christie Craig character requirements list…

 6. At least one enemy that we would all love to hate

I’m sort of known for my suspense.  And for something to be suspenseful, I need a villain.  Generally speaking, a villain is someone in your past or your family’s past.  And chances are you or this family member did something to piss this person off.  And for my book to be good, I need you and this villain to butt heads, and probably more than once.  Sorry to say, but it ain’t gonna be pretty.  So make sure you bring your own can of whoop-ass, because you’re gonna need it.

7. Lover of animals, small children and old people

You can be flawed, you can be weighed down by extra baggage, and come from  a family nuttier than a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup.  However, my cat better like you, even my goldfish better think you are the finest worm on the hook.  Oh and you’d better love dogs, and it doesn’t matter if they pee on your rug or your leg.  In Divorced, Desperate & Daring Sheri has an English Mastiff and nothing is messier than a giant, drooling dog.  But you better see past the drool to the gentle beast.  Because deep down where it counts, you’d better have a heart of gold.  And animals, children and old people can detect a fraud quicker than you can say lickety split.

8. Physically appealing

Now, don’t think you have to be cover model perfect.  Men, you can have a crooked smile, and few scars, but seriously, no shed for your tools, if you know what I mean.  A nice set of abs and wide lean-on-me shoulders are always a plus.  Women, there’s going to be something you hate about your looks—thighs that could be a tad thinner, one boob a little bigger than the other.  If you are cheerleader perfect, I’m not gonna like you and neither will my readers.  Now don’t get me wrong, you can’t be the one who fell out of the ugly tree and hit all the branches on the way down.   But my heroes won’t measure your looks by cup or pant sizes and toward the end of the book, neither will you.  There’s just something about seeing the desire in your heroes eyes that makes you know you’ve got what it takes.

9. A willingness to expose it all and to be laughed at in the process

When I say expose, I mean both physically and emotionally.  Yup, emotionally you’re gonna be put through the ringer and left hanging out to dry.  Oh, you’ll get through it and be a better person for the trouble, but there are gonna be times you’d like to yell uncle, but that man’s already left the building.

Physically,  your butt is gonna get naked and while you may think it won’t ever happen–that’s called sexual tension and my agent insist I put it in there—but you are gonna get lucky.   Just to put it bluntly, a Christie Craig book is supposed to be hotter than a goat’s butt in a pepper patch.   So don’t worry, you will have some steamy fun, and so will my readers as they laugh while you fall headfirst into love.  But that fall isn’t gonna be swift or easy, you’ll slip on a few banana peels, and attempt not to step in the piles of poo along the way.

In Divorced, Desperate & Daring, Sheri has a wax job go bad— and I don’t mean her eyebrows—and let’s just say the outcome makes getting naked a little funny.

 10. A willingness to risk it all

At times, you’re gonna stay busier than a cat covering up crap on a marble floor, just to stay alive.  And it’s gonna get really bad because there’s going to be a lot of crap right at the end.  Don’t blame me, it’s another thing my readers and my agent insists on.  She calls it a black moment, only sometimes it last a hell of lot longer than a moment.   You might even think death is imminent.  The thing is, happily ever afters don’t come cheap.  You gotta work for them.  But here’s the thing, the promise I make to you and all my readers, you will get your happy ending.  You’ll find the love of your life, and when its all said and done, it’s gonna make a hell of a story.

Do you fulfill most or at least some of these requirements? Could you be one of my characters? Only the brave need apply!

I dug back into my blog archives and thought this one deserved another posting.

 Mustashes

How do you ladies feel about mustaches?  No, I’m not talking about on us!  That is another subject for a whole new day.  I’m talking about on our men.

Do you like ‘em?  Love ‘em?  Detest ‘em? Do you find them . . . kissable?

Personally, I mean . . . they kind of tickle, and I guess a tickle could be good, or bad, depending on the individual’s feelings on certain types of tickles.

Now I’ll admit, I’ve seen some hot guys with mustaches.  I’m thinking Tom Selleck in his younger days.  Mustaches that could lead to a kiss-me-now mood and possibly end with very good tickle. Ahh, but I’ve seen other mustaches that look as if someone could hide a small child under all that hair. Mustaches that could lead to a keep-that-thing-away-from-me mood and end with no tickle at all.

Just out of curiosity, I did a quick Google search on mustaches and found that there was a lot I didn’t know about this hairy little subject.

For example, we have the standard Handlebar mustaches, not to be confused with Walrus mustaches, or the Fu Manchu Mustaches, (Now does that not sound like someone is hiding dinner under their hairy lip?) and then there’s the interesting one called, “Friendly Muttonchops.”  I’m really not kidding!

Oh, but I’m just getting started, because I nearly choked on my coffee when I read about the “Pornstache.”  Then there’s the “El Bigota.” Is it me, or do those two not sound as if they’re one in the same? I know you think I’m making this crap up, but nope and just to prove check out what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moustache#Moustache_styles.

Now, you might be wondering what brought up this whole subject.  I’m very relieved to tell you that it is NOT because hubby is thinking about growing his own Pornstache.  (But you do know my hubby is going to kill me for this one, don’t you?)

Nope, hubby’s not thinking about a mustache. You see, Faye Hughes and I got the cover for our book, The Everything Guide To Writing a Romance Novel.  And much to our surprise, we discovered that Fabio was on the cover and he had grown a mustache.

Okay . . . we may be stretching it just a bit by calling our cover model, Fabio.  But, you gotta admit, the similarities are there. The long flowing hair.  The puffy shirt with the lack of buttons.

So . . . what are your thoughts on mustaches?  Kissable, not kissable?  Do you know anyone with a Pornstache?

It’s almost spring here in Houston.  I know this because as I sat down at my desk to figure out what I was going to blog about this week and something scuttling across the French doors caught my eye.  It caught my cat’s eye, too, who was sitting on my desk.  It took a minute for me to identify the object.  It was a lizard.  One of those lime green lizards who, when horny, puff out their bright red throats to catch the attention of all the hot-looking female lizards.  Males of all sorts resort to cheap tricks, don’t they?

And thinking about spring and about horny lizards, well, I . . . I think about . . .  men and about what happened a couple of years ago on one fine spring morning.  I was working, writing a tender, sweet love scene, when my husband, who is in the backyard doing his annual spring backyard cleaning, yells out, “Come here!  Right now!  Hurry!  Bring your camera!”

Now, my hubby is one of those sweet men who love nature.  He’s always calling me outside to take pictures of butterflies or flowers.  Why, it’s not uncommon at all for him to stop the car, just to get a look at some beautiful wild flowers blooming on the side of the highway.  He’s constantly pointing out birds, or even the color in the spring leaves.  (I do love this about that man.)

So, with camera in hand, imaging a beautiful Monarch fluttering its wings on a bright yellow flower in our backyard or maybe a red-headed wood pecker clinging to the bark of one our pine trees, I hurried outside.

Unfortunately, on this particular day, my husband wasn’t in his nature frame of mind.  On this day he was thinking more like…well, more like most men think—below his belt.

“Where is it?” I asked in a low voice, not wanting to send the butterfly or bird into flight.

He pointed to the back of the house.  “There.”

I looked around, I didn’t see a butterfly or a bird, I don’t even see any brightly colored flowers.  “Where?”

He pointed again.  I moved in, sure I’d see the awe-inspiring photo op that I was sure I could use in my gardening articles.  Then I saw it!  Oh ,boy, did I see it.

He hadn’t called me out to capture some beautiful piece of nature.  He’d called me out to photograph . . . lizard porn!

I swung around and gave him the LOOK.  “I thought it was a butterfly.”

“Nope.”  And that’s when I noticed the all-telling twinkle in my husband’s eye.  (You know the twinkle, don’t you?  The twinkle that has gotten women in trouble since Adam winked at Eve when he wanted her apple.  And people still blame Eve.)

I rolled my eyes.  “Let me get this straight.  You actually want me to take a picture of that?”

“You write about love.”  He laughed.

While that should be the end of that story, there’s more.  My hubby, being the man he is, came up with a bright idea.  (You’ve heard about some of his bright ideas, right?) Well, this one was a doozy.  He decided it would be funny to send a faux blackmail letter to the . . . the Geico lizard.  He copied the picture and sent a note to our Geico representative that stated, “Hey, Bloke, do you know what your wife was doing last weekend?”

They never answered him back.  He was so disappointed.

Has spring come to your area of the country yet?

Ever been through the Big “D?”  And as the country western song so elegantly puts it, I don’t mean Dallas.  I’m talking about divorce—that life-altering place where your heart feels like chicken liver that got run through the garbage disposal . . . not once, but twice.  That empty place where being lonely feels better, or at least safer, than risking your soul again.  Unfortunately, far too many of us can say we’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt, wore the T-shirt, burnt the T-shirt along with a few of the ex’s pictures.

Or did you go with the scissors technique with the old photographs?  The one where you decapitated the ex?  Perhaps you chose my favorite, the dart approach, the one where you pinned a picture to the wall aimed below the belt, and hit the bull’s eye. Yeah, a dart right to the groining is especially sweet when adultery played a part in the breakup.

You might have guessed that I’ve got an ex and even a few stories I could tell. Thankfully, I moved past that painful place.  I survived, though I can’t say the same for the old photographs.  But I still remember the pain, and I also remember how difficult it was to give love another shot when it had already left me so defeated.  Lost love can leave scars, insecurities and doubtful futures.

But like myself, my Divorced and Desperate characters meet someone in all six of my books.  Someone who makes them suddenly realize how lonely they are.  Someone who has them wondering about the probability of second chances.

Not that it’s easy, because their Big “Ds” were far from being amicable.  We’re talking running across a YouTube video of your spouse playing pin the secretary to the elevator wall, or finding out your spouse had been looking into hiring a hit man.  Is it a bit dramatized?  I’ll admit I write big scandals to add humor and emotion.  Most of the time, I toss in a dead body or a villain for suspense sake.  But honestly, the feelings these characters deal with are the same ones I dealt with as I was dragging my broken-hearted butt through that painful place.  Chances are you probably felt them, too.

The first three books in the series focus on three of my heroines who are dealing with the lingering effects of their big breakups.  They have sworn: Never again!  Never to let another smooth-talking, sexy-in-his-jeans male get anywhere near their hearts or their bra hooks again. Do you remember that stage?

But let’s face it, this is an equal opportunity world we live in and women aren’t the only ones who walk away from a divorce with their pride in a sling.  So the last books showcase three guys who love has bitten in the ass.  These three guys swear to never let a woman get above their belt buckles, all in the name of protecting their hearts.

But love, as scary as it is, is hard to walk away from.  In all six of my books, my characters fall down that slippery slope landing in a place where warm soft touches, laughter, and steamy nights makes a second chance seem possible, and walking away from it, impossible.   And for you readers, I hope the journey of humor and heart helps you put away the matches, scissors, and the darts and open up to new opportunities.

So here’s to love, laughter and second chances in both fiction and real life.  And to all of those still caught in the throes of the big “D,” may you find your way through the pain, and back to a place where romance and humor is part of being alive. If you need a little help falling back in love with love, pick up one of my books that promises to be sexy, suspenseful and seriously funny.

Oh, the first book in the series, Divorced, Desperate and Delicious, is free wherever e-books are sold.  I’ll give away an e-copy of one of my other Divorced and Desperate books to one person who leaves a post.

Winner!!!

I want to thank Cheri Allan again for being my guest on last week’s blog. The three lucky winners of her book Deal Me In are Mary Anne Meyne, Katrina Hall and Becka Lynn. You’re gonna love her book! Please email me at christie@christie-craig.com and tell me if you prefer an Amazon or Barnes & Noble ecopy.