Special Guest: Gemma Halliday!

Today we have a special guest post from Gemma Halliday, and she has a contest for our readers!



Take it away, Gemma!

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Thanks so much to the lovely Fictionistas for hosting me today! Not only are they all fantastic ladies, but I’m also bordering on mega-fan of their books.

My Hollywood Confessions Blog Tour is in full swing, so please check out my website for more tour stops, as I’ll be giving away cool prizes (including gift cards, free books, cameo appearances, and Hollywood Headlines collectibles) at each stop!



Hollywood Confessions explores the sensational world of Hollywood through the eyes of tabloid reporter, Allie Quick. Allie has high aspirations - much higher than reporting on the latest celebrity gossip for the L.A. Informer, Hollywood's most notorious tabloid. But if she's going to join the ranks of the real reporters, she's going to need a headline worthy story under her belt. Luckily, she gets just that when the producer of the trashiest reality shows on TV winds up murdered, and Allie convinces her editor, Felix Dunn, that this story has her name written all over it. Between an aging dance-off judge, a family with sextuplets and triplets, and the star of a little person dating show, Allie has no shortage of reality stars to question. But when she finds herself falling for her prime suspect, Allie's relationship with her editor is suddenly on the rocks, and her life is in danger. This is one deadline Allie can't afford to miss!

One of my favorite things about writing this book was coming up with the fake reality shows that the victim, Chester Barker, had created. I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a reality TV junkie myself. And with so many great slash trashy reality shows to choose from lately, it was hard creating unique ones of my own. Here’s what I came up with:


Little Love
A reality dating show where one eligible bachelor is put into a house with twenty hot, young single girls. Every week the girls tried to out-flirt each other on group dates to earn a rose at the end of the hour-long show. The last one left standing at the end of the season gets a proposal from the bachelor. The twist? All the contestants on the show are little people. Including the ‘Little Bachelor”, who happens to have serious anger issues and ends up taking out a couple cameramen during the course of the season.
(Cleary this was my homage to The Bachelor/Bachelorette, Little People Big World, The Little Couple, and maybe a smidge of explosive Jersey Shore tempers. )


Don & Deb’s Diva Dozen
Don and Deb Davenport are the parents of 12 little girls: two sets of triplets (ages six and ten) and a set of sextuplets (four-year-olds), and all of them compete in the Tiny Tot beauty pageants. In their fourth season, the ratings hit a high when Don was photographed with a string of young co-eds at trendy Hollywood nightclubs. Don and Deb announced a trial separation for Fall sweeps, Deb taking the sextuplets and doing the Southern Glitz pageant circuit, while Don took the triplets to the West Coast Sunshine pageants. But, thankfully, by May sweeps, the couple announced they were going to give marriage a try again, and the season culminated in an hour-long Don & Deb’s Reunion show where the couple took all twelve children to Vegas for a long weekend, renewing their vows at the MGM Grand.
(Take a dose of Jon & Kate, Quints by Surprise, and 19 Kids & Counting… or are they at 20 now? 21?... throw in some Toddlers & Tiaras, and just a *slight* hint of Octomom, and voila! Reality gold.)

Stayin’ Alive
Currently in its ninth season, this is the granddaddy of all reality shows, pitting fifteen strangers against each other to fight for the title of Last Survivor Alive. Each season contestants are dropped in the middle of nowhere, the only location requirements being a beach (where the female contestants can wear their teeny tiny bikinis), torrential rains (that wet said bikinis suggestively), and lots of big, hungry mosquitoes (just for kicks). All fifteen contestants have to brave both the elements and each other, fighting it out in reward and immunity challenges. Anyone not winning immunity is forced to go to the tribal staging area, where someone is sent home each week. However, they aren’t voted out on their survival skills. Instead, the contestants participate in a dance-off, where a panel of judges vote out the contestant with the worst ballroom skills.
(Survivor vs. Dancing with the Stars vs. American Idol – the ultimate competition show!)

So, what are you fav reality shows? Any great combos you’d love to see? Leave your answer in the comments below and you’ll be entered to win a prize! Since Hollywood Confessions is the 3rd book in the Hollywood Headlines series, I’m offering a FREE autographed copy of the 1st book in the series (Hollywood Scandals) in print format. I’ll pull a post at random tomorrow and announce the winner here.

Happy reading!

~Gemma Halliday
http://www.gemmahalliday.com

HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS
available now in:
Paperback Print
Kindle
Nook
Ebook

To Age or Not To Age, That is the Question

My good friend Gemma Halliday posted a question on Romance Divas yesterday, and it got me thinking.

If you're reading a YA series, do you expect the characters to grow up?

JK Rowling did it in her Harry Potter series, of course, which correlated nicely with how her original readers were aging. But that was a fantasy world, and the characters were dealing with fantasy issues very far removed from our own everyday world.

For a contemporary, if the main character is 16 in the first book, would you expect her to be in college by the end of the series? Is this a good idea?

On the one hand, if you're putting out 1 book a year, and your target audience starts out in the 12-15 age group, then by the time you're 3 or 4 books in, your readership has "outgrown" this type of book, so aging your character might be a good idea.

On the other hand, what about your readers who find you once you already have a backlist? As a mom, would you want your 12-year-old daughter to start off reading books with a 16-year-old protagonist and then continue reading that series all in a row, even if the main character is now in college? It wouldn't be a big deal if your daughter is now 16 or 17, of course, but if she came upon the entire series while she's a preteen, it could get awkward.

But then again, keeping your main character in a vaccuum and never aging her, Nancy Drew style, is unrealistic.

YA writers...what do you do?

YA readers...what do you prefer?

Great Couples

In keeping with our Valentine's Day theme, today's topic is about your favorite fictional couples. Think back on all the books you've read, which blossoming romances were your favorites? And why?

Maybe they were reluctant, and at first claimed to hate one another. Maybe they were funny. Or sweet. Or they beat all the odds. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that they had amazing chemistry and you rooted for them throughout the entire book. You laughed during their highs and cried during their lows. And maybe even fell a litle in love yourself.

Here are just some of my favorite couples from books:

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Well, if that single man is the Mr. Darcy , you can bet that the readers will root for that wife to be the most worthy heroine of all.

Like many girls, I totally want to be Lizzy Bennet. She's so witty and smart and rather unconventional for her era. And Mr. Darcy? *swoon* Put off by her mother's vulgarity and the ditzy behavior of her youngest sisters, at first he's unable to see Lizzy's worth. But in time, he falls in love and his struggle to suppress those feelings, eventually ending in not one, but two, proposals is the stuff of magic.

Maddie Springer and Jack Ramirez


Adorably ditzy Maddie is a shoe designer with a penchant for stumbling across dead bodies. Ramirez is the sexy, tough detective assigned to investigate the crimes. Gemma Halliday writes fantastic sexual tension and you find yourself just as frustrated as Maddie when Ramirez keeps getting to the crime scene in the second book just as they're about to get romantic in this series. And add in a potential love triangle when tabloid reported Felix keeps snooping around and you've got the makings of a deliciously fun romantic comedy.

Lady Julia Grey and Nicholas Brisbane
The most conventional of her very eccentric family, wealthy young widow Lady Julia Grey is extremely unconventional for her time. She's smart and sassy, and holds opinions that would shock most of her set. So it's not surprising that when she discovers that her husband did not die of natural causes, she decides to find the murderer. Enter the sexy and enigmatic Nicholas Brisbane, a private enquiry agent who her late husband had engaged to find who was threatening him. Is he the right man to make her consider a second chance at love? But this is the Victorian era, after all, so their relationship progresses at a maddeningly slow pace...but the tension is smoldering hot.

Amy "Bugaboo" Haskell and Jamie "Poe" Orcutt
In the first two "Secret Society Girl" books, Amy Haskell's nemesis in Rose & Grave was a senior (and later, recent graduate) codenamed Poe. He was sullen, moody, and incredibly disagreeable. Not even worth Amy's acknowledgement, particularly when there are so many other hot guys around, like the delectable George. But author Diana Peterfreund was a literature major at Yale, and an avowed Jane Austen fan, so "the sudden, startling transformation of a mysterious Rose & Grave patriarch from sheerly evil to utterly...appealing" is not exactly terribly shocking. But it's still really fun to read!

Amanda Brice and Mr. Brice

Oh, wait...they're not fictional. ;)

So those are a few of mine. Who are yours?

Going, Going, Gone!

Hey y'all! Blondissimo (my jewelry company) has donated some fun pieces to the auction Gemma Halliday is sponsoring to raise money for a homeless fan and her mom. You can read about it and place some bids at Romanctic Inks. Here's what I've donated:

A beaded book thong:

A crystal heart necklace:

Now go bid!