Tag Archive for: maria geraci

Lessons Learned from Dancing with the Stars

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I love Dancing with the Stars. Every Monday night if I’m not sitting in front of my TV, my faithful DVR is recording away every beat of every samba, rumba, quickstep or waltz that’s taking place. I love the costumes, the music, the dancing, the so called “stars” and the professionals. Every season I quickly get attached to my favorites and agonize when they get voted off.

This season there’s a lot of good going on. All the celebrities are decent dancers (with the exception of Psycho Mike and Wendy Williams who both quickly got the boot). I love that every week a different couple comes out on top on the Leader board and that as of right now, it’s any one’s season to win.

It occurred to me while watching this past week that there’s a lot I could correlate between the show and my career as a writer.

First, there’s the skill element involved. Every season there are celebrities who start out with an edge. Some previous dance experience. Or natural talent, that kind of thing. But then there is the celebrity who rises above their talent level with good old fashioned hard work. They continue to improve week after week and the audience sees this and rewards them with votes. These are my favorite celebrities. Like Emmitt Smith, the ex-professional football player who won his season. Sure, Emmitt started out with some rhythm, but by the end of the season he was a dancer.

Lesson learned? Work hard and keep working harder and it will pay off. Make each book better than the one before.

Then there is the judge’s criticism. In case you’ve never watched the show, there are three judges: Len, Carrie Ann and Bruno. Sometimes I honestly think Len is smoking crack. But, I have to say, for the most part he’s pretty consistent in what he likes. Len loves a good clean dance. He doesn’t like the fru fru stuff. He wants to see the dance elements done properly. Bruno is more about the “feel”. He’s the emotion behind the judging and I love his crazy comments. Carrie Ann is somewhere in between Len and Bruno. She’s also the Lift Nazi. Heaven forbid your feet come off the floor in a dance that doesn’t allow it. She’ll dock you a point for it. Count on that.

So here’s the thing. The judges’ opinion is important. They give you a score and that score is averaged in with fan votes and decides whether or not you are booted off the show. But you can’t choreograph your dance each and every week to please the judges, because you simply can’t please all three of them. You have to dance to entertain. To tell a story. You have to have fun out there. You have to take risks. The best dances do all the above.

Lesson learned?  Write the best story you can. Have fun. Take risks. Dare to go where no writer before you has gone. Never forget who you are writing for (and it isn’t Publishers Weekly or Bookreview or Kirkus). It’s for you and your fans (the people who buy your books!)

Every season, there are celebrities who earn my admiration and celebrities who end up disappointing me. The show puts a lot of pressure on the stars. Besides keeping up with a grueling dance schedule, many of them are still doing their regular job- filming talk shows, soaps, shows in Vegas, etc. I understand that the pressure can get to them, but there’s something to be said about showing grace under said pressure. No one at home wants to hear about how horrible your life is because you have to catch your limousine or miss your private jet to go on your television tour and how you are working fourteen hour days to keep everything afloat.

This past week, super model Petra Nemkova got the axe. I was so disappointed! I’ll be honest, I had no idea who she was before the show. But I sure do now. She’s a survivor of the 2004 tsunami that hit Thailand. Her fiancee was killed and Petra suffered serious injuries. She has since founded a charitable organization called Happy Hearts Fund that helps children who have suffered through a natural disaster. Petra was not only beautiful and a graceful dancer, she let us see her heart. She made herself vulnerable. She took the judges’ criticism like a trooper and vowed to work harder each week. The show is really going to miss her.

Reality star Kendra Wilkinson, a former Playboy bunny and Hugh Heffner love interest is another story. I’ll admit, at first I kind of rolled my eyes at Kendra. But I saw her working hard week after week and I began to really like her. Then last week, she kind of got into a brouhaha with Judge Carrie. Kendra blew her dance and instead of taking the judges’ criticism like a woman, she interrupted Carrie’s critique and told her she didn’t care about being elegant. I’m not sure how Kendra survived last week. The judges gave her extremely low marks and you would have thought that the American public would have kept their votes to themselves. Still, I think Kendra’s days are numbered. No body likes a crybaby.

Lesson learned? Criticism is there to help you grow. Listen to it, take what you can from it and be better. Show your audience your vulnerabilities. People love people who are real. If you can’t be a professional, at least learn to hold your tongue.

So that’s it. My Dancing with the Stars lessons on writing. This season I’m rooting for Ralph (Karate Kid) Macchio (who knows how to take criticism with a smile), Kirstie Alley (who shows us her vulnerabilities and makes us like her more each week), Hines Ward (who works harder each and every week to improve) and Chelsea Kane (who takes the big risks and gives the audience a super performance each and every time)!

Maria Geraci writes fun, romantic women’s fiction. Visit her website or connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.

Survival of the Smartest

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Last October, I attended the Novelists Inc one day conference in St. Petersburg. It was a panel style workshop comprised of industry professionals and the topic was the future of publishing. I’m happy to report that yes, publishing does have a future. It’s just a different future than some of us might have envisioned ten years ago. E-books are here to stay and they will take over print books. Like it or not, it’s a reality. Twenty years ago the only people who had cell phones were doctors and drug dealers. Now, even ten year olds have them. Technology is growing at an exponential rate and E-readers were one of the hottest selling items last holiday season. People are not going to stop reading. They are just going to use a different medium and we, as writers, have to adapt to that medium or see our futures in publishing go the way of those big old fashioned stationary rotary dial phones (remember them?) Yeah, there’s a whole generation out there who have no idea what I’m talking about.

This past week I’ve been following the Amanda Hocking story. If you don’t know who she is, don’t feel bad. I didn’t either until she started making publishing headlines. Although apparently, plenty of other people did know who she was. She’s the chick who self-published her novels, selling them on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and has made 7 figures since putting up her first book last year. Yes, you read that correctly. According to this NY Times article she’s made almost 2 million dollars. The interesting thing is that she made news recently because despite all her mega success in the world of self-publishing she’s just signed a huge deal ($2 million) with St. Martins Press for 4 YA novels, the first scheduled to debut next year. You can read about the deal right here.

In an interesting twist, Barry Eisler, a best selling author of traditional published books, has turned down an offer from the same publisher (St. Martins Press) to self-publish. He thinks he’ll end up making more money in the long run, by going it alone. I have to say, he makes sense. You can read his reasoning right here on Book Beast.

This all takes me back to last October, sitting in that big conference room listening to the panel talk (one of the panelists, by the way, was self-pub guru Joe Konrath) about the future of publishing. I think after the events of the past couple of weeks, I can say that almost anything can and will happen. We have to adapt. We have to write smarter and be smarter businesswomen. Our books are our merchandise and we have to get our merchandise in front of people to read. Any way we can.

Maria

My Favorite Sports Movies

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I’m not a big basketball fan, but I have to admit that I’ve succumbed to March Madness. Partly because I can’t escape all the basketball going on in my living room as my husband enjoys our brand new 47 inch LCD tv (yes, up until just a few weeks ago, we still had the old box tv) but mostly because my beloved alma mater, the FSU Seminoles have gotten to the sweet 16 (Go Noles!)

It’s been thrilling to watch every dramatic, suspenseful, nail biting second of the games and as I sat down to write the other night I thought about how movies that revolve around sports make such great stories.

And that led me to think of some of my favorite sports movies and what I loved most about them. So I picked one favorite movie from each sport:

Basketball: Hoosiers. This one was a no brainer for me. The absolute best basketball movie of all time for me is Hoosiers. Set in the 1950s in small town Indiana starring Gene Hackman, Dennis Hooper and Barbara Hershey. It’s got heart, soul and romance. I get teary eyed every time I see it.

Football: The Replacements. This is about a bunch of ex-players and semi-losers who fill in for the real players during a pro football players strike. Coincidentally, it also stars Gene Hackman, along with Keanu Reeves. It’s got heart, soul, laughs, and romance.

Hockey: Mystery, Alaska. If you’ve never seen this movie, then run out and rent it. I fell in love with Russell Crowe while watching this! It also stars Burt Reynolds. This film has heart, laughs, and romance (did I already say I fell in love with Russell Crowe in this film?)

Baseball: Bull Durham. This is probably the sexiest sports movie you’ll ever watch. And the funniest. I’m a huge Bull Durham fan (as a matter of fact my first novel- Bunco Babes Tell All- has a Bull Durham subplot to it). It stars Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon and has probably the best lines of almost any sports movie ever.


So what about you? What are some of your favorite sports movies?

Books from the Heart

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by Susan McBride

I’m kind of in a crunch this week with revisions for LITTLE BLACK DRESS due Friday (as you’re reading this!). So I’m going to make this easy on myself by rehashing a book talk segment I did for “Great Day St. Louis” on Valentine’s Day.

Since love is in the air this month, I discussed four “romantic reads,” all dealing with the topic of home and heart in different ways. Only one, ANGEL’S REST by Emily March, is considered a traditional romance while the other three are novels with romantic elements–THE GIRL WHO CHASED THE MOON by Sarah Addison Allen, THE OTHER LIFE by Ellen Meister, and THE BOYFRIEND OF THE MONTH CLUB by Stiletto Ganger Maria Geraci (yay!).

In ANGEL’S REST, Nic Sullivan is a small-town veterinarian with a broken heart. She’s divorced and semi-happily single until she rubs shoulders with hunky Gabe Callahan, a loner escaping past tragedy by hiding out in the mountains. Serious sparks fly between the two, only–sigh–their pasts and the things they don’t/can’t talk about, keep them apart. It takes a bit of angelic intervention to bring them together.

THE GIRL WHO CHASED THE MOON is Sarah Addison Allen’s third book after GARDEN SPELLS and THE SUGAR QUEEN (and her fourth, THE PEACH KEEPER, is out next month). If you haven’t read her Southern tales of home and heartache, you should. She writes beautiful prose that sucks you in, and in MOON, she gets us wrapped up in the life of a teenager, Emily Benedict, who goes back to her mother’s hometown of Mullaby, NC, to meet her grandfather and find out the dark secret that drove her mom away.

Ellen Meister’s THE OTHER LIFE is a tale of two lives, both of them belonging to Quinn Braverman. In one, she’s a wife and mother in the Long Island suburbs, awaiting the birth of her second baby and missing her deceased mother. In the other life, she’s got a high profile career and a high profile beau, a shock jock like Howard Stern, and, most importantly to Quinn, her mom is still alive and kicking. She can go back and forth to each life through a portal in her basement wall. But once the portal begins to close, she has to make a choice or risk getting caught in a life she might not want after all. (Just optioned by HBO for a TV series!)

In Maria’s BOYFRIEND OF THE MONTH CLUB, a cheating boyfriend and a really awful first date lead Grace O’Bryan to forgo the book club and start a “Boyfriend of the Month Club” with her friends. Like most things in life that we start for fun and giggles, this club turns into more than Grace bargained for. She’s got her heart in the right place, and she finally finds a man worthy of it, too!

Here’s the video in case you want to hear each summary like I’m talking to you right from your computer:


I recently did an informal poll on my Facebook page, asking friends what their favorite romantic books of all-time are, and the top five results:

1. GONE WITH THE WIND
2. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
3. WUTHERING HEIGHTS
4. THE THORN BIRDS
5. THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE

Do you agree? If not, what’s your fave? Inquiring minds want to know! (At least, this one does.) 🙂

What can we do to save bookstores?

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I woke up yesterday morning to the news that Borders had finally done what everyone in the publishing industry knew was inevitable. The company filed for bankruptcy. They are also planning to cut 200 of their stores nationwide.
Go ahead, call me a weenie, or maybe just pre-menopausal, but I couldn’t help but feel my eyes water up. And it’ s not just because that as a writer, I’m petrified of what’s happening in publishing right now.
One of my most favorite things to do in the whole world is visit bookstores. I rank buying books above shopping for clothes, purses, perfume and yes, even shoes (hopefully this admission will not get me kicked out of the Stiletto gang!) But with bookstores closing right and left, the days of walking into a bookstore, buying a cup of designer coffee and gleefully perusing the aisles may soon be gone. Amazon and the ballooning ebook industry is doing to bookstores what WalMart (and please believe me, I have nothing personal against WalMart) did to mid level grocery stores and small mom and pop shops against the country. It’s putting them out of business. This a conundrum I have no idea how to solve.
I love my e-reader (yes, it’s a Kindle) and I spend more money at Amazon than my husband would like me to. I also spend a lot of money in brick and mortar bookstores. But like a lot of writers and people who read heavily, I’m probably in the minority on this. I really can’t blame someone for opting to buy a book online for 9.99 with free shipping and handling from the comfort of their home vs. getting in their car and using their precious gasoline to purchase the same book for a couple of dollars more at a store (which may or may not even stock the book).
Last October, I attended the Novelists, Inc. one day conference on the future of publishing in St. Petersburg. There were some really big names on the panel and the discussions were eye-opening to say the least. The bottom line was that publishing is in a huge state of change right now. Publishing houses are scrambling to keep up with the e-pub phenomena. E-publishing is to us what the advent of the printing press was in it’s time. We know we’re in for some big changes, but everyone is unclear how those changes are going to effect everyone else.
As one little person against the tide of change, my hope is that, whatever happens, people keep buying books in whatever form they come in. But I hope there will still be places (real, physical locations) that people can go to and talk to one another in person about books and peruse aisles to see fabulous covers and touch a page with their own hands. I can’t save the world but I can recycle and pick up my own trash. I probably can’t save all the bookstores, but I can continue to patronize my local store and buy books in person.

On a happier note, this is my first post as a bona fide member of the Stiletto Gang and I would like to thank the rest of the gang members, Susan, Evelyn, Maggie, Rachel and Marilyn for inviting me to be a part of this fabulous group. I promise, my next post won’t be so serious.

Hasta luego!

Maria

Just Put the Word “Club” at the End

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by Maria Geraci

First off, I’d like to thank Susan and the rest of the Stiletto gang for hosting me on their blog today. The minute I heard the name of the blog it brought a smile to my face, and I immediately knew the theme of my post. I’m here to talk about gangs (not the east LA kind. That would be a different post all together). I’m talking about the sort of gangs we women know and love–and that would be Clubs.

I looked up the word in my handy dandy online thesaurus because I was curious how many synonyms I could find for the words gang or club. There were roughly a few dozen. Here are some examples: bunch, circle, clan, clique, cronies, assemblage, pack, posse, bunch, clump, galaxy, squad and yes, even mafia. I could go on, but you get my drift. There are a lot of words to describe the same thing. The word gang itself has several different meanings, but the bottom line is this: it’s a group of people with something in common.

I think I must be drawn to gangs. My first two books were about a group of women who play Bunco. If you don’t know what Bunco is, I’ll tell you. It’s a fun, fast paced dice game usually played by women. Think men’s poker night but substitute the cards and the cigars and the beers with dice and gossip and frozen margaritas. What it really is is an excuse for women to get together. Women crave the company of other women. The phenomenon starts all the way back in preschool, when little girls are drawn to each other to play and hold hands and giggle and talk. That camaraderie is something I think we crave till the day we hit the nursing home. I also think it’s the reason why books with the word “club” in the title are so popular. As women, we love reading about the relationships we have with other women and the word “club” is keyed in our brain to trigger some sort of pleasant reaction (work with me here).

Here’s a few examples:

The Friday Night Knitting Club
The First Love Cookie Club
The Sex Club (he!)
The Babysitter’s Club (starting us out early with that theme)
The Joy Luck Club
The Hot Flash Club (yes, this is a book and I just might have to go get it!)
The Professors’ Wives Club
The Coffin Club (not one club I’d necessarily want to join…)
The Wildwater Walking Club
The Cougar Club (great read!)

I could go on and on because there are dozens more literary titles that end with the word club. And while there are countless awesome synonyms that mean the same thing, somehow The Cougar Mafia or The Joy Luck Posse just don’t sound quite right.

So I’m hoping that my latest foray into literature, The Boyfriend of the Month Club, will be as successful as some of those books I just mentioned. It’s a romantic comedy about a woman who turns her dysfunctional book club into a boyfriend club, where women discuss the men they’ve dated comparing them to classic literary heroes and villains. I got the idea for the book while attending a friend’s book club meeting (book clubs–another great excuse for women to get together!) It’s getting some great reviews, but the one I personally like best comes from Julie at What Women Write, who calls it “Dorothea Benton Frank Meets My Big Fat Greek…er Cuban Wedding.” How perfect is that?

The Boyfriend of the Month Club
Berkley Trade Paperback
December 2010

At thirty, Grace O’Bryan has dated every loser that Daytona Beach has to offer. After the ultimate date-from-hell, Grace decides to take matters into her own hands and turns her dwindling book club into a Boyfriend of the Month Club, where women can come together to discuss the eligible men in their community. Where are the real live twenty-first century versions of literary heroes such as Heathcliff and Mr. Darcy? Could it be successful and handsome Brandon Farrell, who is willing to overlook his disastrous first date with Grace and offers financial help for her parents’ failing Florida gift shop? Or maybe sexy dentist Joe Rosenblum, who’s great with a smile but not so great at commitment? Unfortunately, just like books, men cannot always be judged by their covers…

If you’d like to know more about me and my writing, please visit my website at http://www.mariageraci.com/. I’m currently holding a fabulous contest. Purchase The Boyfriend of the Month Club on or before December 12, and you can enter to win a grand prize of a $100 Amazon gift card, plus a bag filled with some wonderful autographed women’s fiction. There are also 5 runners-up prizes of a $20 Amazon gift card and a special edition Boyfriend of the Month Club desk top calendar. Contest details on are the homepage of my website. I’d also love it you joined my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/MariaGeraciBooks

**Maria, thanks so much for visiting our little gang (hee hee) today! We loved having you and wish you loads of success!!! Also, Maria is giving away signed copies of The Boyfriend of the Month Club and Susan McBride’s The Cougar Club today on her Facebook page! All you have to do is comment to be entered!