Susan Mallery: To App or Not to App

Hosted by Kate Please give another warm, Bandita welcome to my good friend, Susan Mallery, who just happens to be one of my favorite writers, too! I asked Susan to come back today to tell us about her new iPhone and Android app. It's the coolest thing--and I should know because I raced to download it onto my Droid! She’s the only person I know who has her own app!!! Go Susan, go Susan! Take it away!

Thank you, Kate! I’m thrilled that you invited me back to visit the Romance Bandits. Yes, it’s true. People around the world can go to the iTunes App Store or the Android Market, search for my name, and presto! there I’ll be, Susan Mallery in app form. And did I mention that it’s free?

Why did I decide to get an app? The shallow but honest answer is that I wanted an app because apps are new and shiny and having my own makes me feel fancy. The deeper, more professional truth is that our online world is becoming more mobile, and I want readers to be able to find me wherever they look.

I will admit, though, that it’s disconcerting to turn on my phone and see my own face staring up at me.

Virtual Tour of the Free Susan Mallery App

When you click the Books button, the first thing you see is ALREADY HOME, my latest release! After clicking the cover, you can read a free excerpt, reviews, a description of the book, and you can find links to buy the book. The links are for paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats, so whatever you’re looking for, it’s here.

Under the News button, you’ll find all my latest news alerts, Dear Reader letters, recipes, Fool’s Gold between-the-books updates, and you can even tap into my tweet stream. Don’t ask me how it all gets there. I don’t know, and I don’t need to know. But isn’t it fun that it’s right there at your fingertips?!

Within the app, you can watch videos, listen to podcasts, and even see the massive wardrobe of my toy poodle, Nikki. Every time I have new media available, you’ll be able to find it on my app and in the Members Only section of my website, http://www.susanmallery.com/.

There’s a second page of buttons on the app, which is where you’ll find the fan Chat Wall, and one really funky button that had me really confused. The QR scanner. Do you know about this? QR codes are like barcodes for apps. I saw a QR code on a home for sale in my neighborhood recently, so I whipped out my phone, opened the free Susan Mallery app, and scanned the QR code. Voila! I went on a virtual tour of my neighbor’s house while standing outside holding my phone in my hand! How cool is that?

Do you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or an Android? If so, what apps have you downloaded so far? What else would you like to see inside the free Susan Mallery app? If I added a tip calculator, would you use it? If I added a Playlist of some of my favorite songs, would you be interested in that? If you don’t have an iPhone or Android, how do you prefer to connect with the authors you love?

Guest Author: Susan Mallery, ALREADY HOME

Hosted by Kate

Hey, banditas, I'm thrilled to welcome my good friend, Susan Mallery, to the Lair! Susan's next book, ALREADY HOME, is coming out in a few days and I can't wait for you all to read it! It's a step away from the romance she usually writes. ALREADY HOME is a fabulous, emotional story about a woman with two mothers. Take it away, Susan!

Does anyone else get ticked at advice columnists when they advise people to see a therapist? I mean, okay. I understand that therapy is healthy and is sometimes necessary, but I feel like that answer is a cover-your-butt protective move.

When people write to an advice columnist, they want honest-to-goodness advice. They do not want to be told to ask someone else for advice.

Plus, it deflates my voyeuristic balloon. (Yes, it’s all about me.) I want to read about the crazy things people do and think and say, and then I want the advice columnist to present a solution that I can either cheer or mock.



Here are letters from three characters from ALREADY HOME. I want you to give them advice. I promise not to mock you… unless you tell them to see a therapist.

Dear Banditas,

I made a big mistake. I opened a kitchen store. What was I thinking?! I don’t know anything about running a store. I’m a chef. Or at least, I was. I seem to have lost my mojo in the kitchen, which is why I thought opening a store might be a good idea. But it was an impulse, and now I’m drowning. I have three years of lease payments to make and no clue what I’m doing. The last thing I need is another complication…

So of course that’s exactly when my birth parents show up unannounced in my store. And Banditas… they’re weird. They said the Universe told them to come. They’re from California, they would have named me Butterfly, and they don’t eat dairy. Seriously, what kind of person chooses to live without cheese?!

But they said I have two brothers and a niece on the way. And my birth mother looks a lot like me. I am a little curious about the life I didn’t have. But what if I hurt my real mom by spending time with the woman who gave me birth? What should I do?

- Torn in Texas

***

Dear Banditas,

My daughter! My little Butterfly! For 31 years, we celebrated her birthday. Missed her. Waited for her to find us… until the Universe told me not to wait any longer. Finally, our family is reunited. Why is she fighting it? I want to share the world with her, and we’ve lost too much time already. If she doesn’t open her heart to me, how will she open herself to the man I’ve found for her? I don’t want to wait any longer. How can I convince her to stop turning me away?

-Earth Mother



***

Dear Banditas,

My daughter’s birth mother is getting to be a pain. I don’t hate the woman; how could I? I was born to be a mother, but I couldn’t have children. Serenity made my life complete when she gave Jenna to me. I want to be open-minded about this whole thing, but Serenity is being way too pushy, and my instinct is to protect my daughter. Why is Serenity so insistent that Jenna jump whole-heartedly into a relationship with the birth family she just met? Why does everything have to happen now, now, now?

How can I help my daughter? Should I step in and tell Serenity to back off? Or should I encourage Jenna to get to know the people whose DNA she shares?

-A Real Mom

Okay, Romance Banditas, put on your Advice Columnist hats. Pick a question, or respond to all three. What advice would you give the women of ALREADY HOME?

And while you're thinking of Susan, you absolutely must rush right over and join her Members Only area at http://www.susanmallery.com/. There, you'll find extended excerpts, contests, freebies, exclusive short stories, games and videos, and more.

Guest Blogger Susan Mallery: Why Athletes Make Such Yummy Heroes

(And It's Not Why You Think)

by Kate Carlisle

I'm thrilled to welcome my friend, bestselling author Susan Mallery to the lair today! Susan's latest series, Fool's Gold romances, launched recently with the release of Chasing Perfect. As always she managed to make me laugh throughout the book while delivering a story with a real emotional punch.

Welcome, Susan!

Admit it. You saw the title of this post – Why Athletes Make Such Yummy Heroes – and your mind immediately went to the muscles. Then, of course, you lingered. Because seriously, who wouldn’t want to linger a while on an athlete’s muscles? The long, lean muscles of an Olympic swimmer, the shadowed hills and valleys of a football player’s arms...Sigh.

But I honestly don’t believe that muscles are the most important reason why we love our athlete heroes so much. It goes deeper than that. The contemporary athlete hero archetype has a lot in common with knights and warriors of days gone by. These are leaders of men, conquerors.

Here are just a few of the traits I find so appealing.

Confidence

When a man excels at something, his confidence soars in all areas of his life, and a confident man is a good man to have around. There’s something very appealing about a little swagger. He’s not afraid to try new things. No, our athlete relishes the opportunity to conquer new challenges, to learn new skills. Confidence puts a sparkle in a man’s eye. When he flirts, no woman can resist his charms.

Work ethic

A professional athlete rises to the top of his profession after a lifetime of practice and hard work. Lucky is the woman who is on the receiving end that focus and dedication! An athlete hero is a terrific lover – he won’t quit, by God, until he gets the job done!

Sportsmanlike behavior

The athlete hero we admire is a true gentleman, in sport and in life. He won’t do anything to win – he draws the line at breaking the rules. He wants to win, but honorably.

This sense of honor extends to other areas of his life. Or at least, it does in my books. In real life, we sometimes hear about not-so-honorable athletes. I read an article in which Tiger Woods says that he is doing the very best that he can. I don’t want to beat Tiger up any more than he has been, but that statement just strikes me as odd. How can you try not to sleep with women who are not your wife, then fail? Major disconnect there!

When an athlete hero makes a commitment, he keeps it. He doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t lie. And if a woman happens to best him in verbal battle, he accepts defeat with a sense of humor… and renewed determination to take her down next time they spar.

Teamwork

Our hero has been part of a team since he was a small child starting out in organized sports. So when he falls in love, he immediately accepts that he and his woman are a team. He has her back. They work together, and he will gladly carry his share of the load. He looks out for her. When she looks overworked or tired, he’ll make sure she takes a time-out. He will do anything to protect his love (and their children, when the time comes.) The sense of security that comes with knowing a man will do anything to protect you is lovely.

And okay, yes, the muscles

I will confess, the muscles are a very nice bonus! The hero of Chasing Perfect, the first Fool’s Gold romance, is a champion cyclist in the vein of Lance Armstrong. Josh Golden won two yellow shirts in the Tour de France. He made a good living as a cyclist, but he became rich through endorsement contracts. Advertisers know the selling power of a cyclist’s muscular, uh… legs.

Poor Charity Jones can’t escape Josh no matter where she goes – the women of Fool’s Gold have posters of him all over town. Charity’s assistant even has a Josh Golden screensaver. I’ll let you read the book to discover exactly what the screensaver shows… and why it makes Charity blush.

Visit the Fool’s Gold website, www.foolsgoldca.com, to learn more about Josh, Charity, and the rest of the gang in The Land of Happy Endings. While you’re there, send a free epostcard to a friend!

Who are some of your favorite athlete heroes? Why do you like them so much? Which athletes in real life do you think would make good romance novel heroes? Why?

Another May Winner!!!

I'm excited to finally announce the random winner of an autographed copy of the first book in Susan Mallery's fabulous new Lone Star Sisters series, Under Her Skin. The winner is ...

Cheri2628!!!

Congratulations, Cheryl!!

Please send your snail mail address to me at katecarlisle99@yahoo.com and I'll forward the info to Susan.

Susan had a great time visiting the Banditas! Thanks to everyone who came by say hi!

Susan Mallery is in the Lair!!!

By Kate Carlisle

I am absolutely thrilled to welcome New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery to the Lair today!

Not only is Susan the amazing, beloved author of over one hundred wonderful romances (most of which can be found on my keeper shelf), she’s also a dear friend and the smartest, funniest person I know.

Today Susan is going to share with the Banditas one of her most closely held secrets. She's a reality show fanatic! But don't worry, it's all for her art. No, really, it is. But I'd better let her tell you all about it.

Without further ado, here's Susan!

I have watched every episode of every season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette at least once. My finger’s dialing 1-888 as soon as the credits begin to roll on American Idol. Project Runway even inspired my February release, Sunset Bay.

I tell my husband that watching these shows is work. “It’s research, honey! I have to understand the human mind and emotions. This is what I do.”

I doubt very much that he’ll read this blog, so I’ll tell you the truth: I watch reality shows because I love them. LOVE them. Can’t get enough of them. If I could watch my neighbors 24 hours a day without getting caught, I’d probably do that, too. At heart I’m a voyeur. I’m fascinated by how real people behave when they’re under constant surveillance. I wonder how I would react. Would I climb into a hot tub and kiss a man – on the lips – even though I was relatively certain that he had kissed another woman the night before in the same hot tub and would probably do so again with a third women the following night?

So you can understand my excitement when I heard about Oxygen’s new show, Pretty Wicked. The promos said that ten beautiful women who used their looks to skate through life would be forced to rely on their inner beauty, instead. The producers would give the women a “make-under” to frumpify them and then send them out into the world. In another episode, the women would be challenged to make a good first impression on a group of blind men. It sounded fabulous! Pretty Wicked promised to fulfill both my need to watch how caged humans behave, and my love of talking about bitchy women behind their backs. What could be better?

Except.

I cannot get into this show! It has missed the mark with me. Turns out, I haven’t been completely lying to my husband, after all, because understanding the “why” behind my disinterest has led to new understanding about my writing.

Pretty Wicked underscores for me the importance of starting a book with empathetic characters. They don’t have to be perfect, by any means. (In fact, how boring if they were!) But they need to be people whom the readers want to stick with through the course of the book. The premise of Pretty Wicked, it turns out, is fundamentally flawed. Although it made me giggle and got me to tune in for the first episode, that was the extent of its value. In order to make that premise work, the producers were forced to begin by showing the worst side of all of the contestants so that viewers would be able to see how much they’d changed and grown by the end of the season. This made the women all seem very shallow, unappealing, and one-dimensional.

I am much more interested in people who are accomplished in their own way. The Titan women of my new series, Lone Star Sisters, each have something they excel at. They don’t rely on their beauty or their rich father to get ahead in the world. They’re strong, independent, ambitious, and talented. It’s not enough for the heroines to just possess these traits. I have to show it, and I have to show it fast so the reader will want to stick with that character for 400 pages.

Under Her Skin, the first of the Lone Star Sisters books, starts with Lexi Titan meeting with her banker, who tells her that she has just three weeks to come up with two million dollars to save her business. Most readers can relate to money pressures, which creates instant empathy. Lexi’s emotional reaction – frustration, embarrassment, but still with a splash of self-deprecating humor – makes the reader feel that she’s a good friend going through a rough spot. I hope this means the reader will lean back, put up her feet, and settle in for a fun read.

Lexi’s sisters, Skye and Izzy, will get their chance with my June and July releases, Lip Service and Straight from the Hip. In November, their best friend Dana will round out the series with Hot on Her Heels.


Take another look at a book you’ve recently read and enjoyed. Did you like the main characters immediately? Why? How did the author make you empathize with the characters in the first scene? I’d love for you to share examples with us here so we can get a fun discussion going.


Susan is giving away one autographed copy of Under Her Skin, the first book in her new Lone Star Sisters series, to one lucky reader!