The Lovely Lyra

Morning!  It turned out to be a snow day today, which suits me fine.  The kids are playing in the basement (ah, the joys of a finished basement), and since I've already got one cup of coffee in the tank, my head's full of ideas for the work in progress.  Works, I should say...I have a proposal going as well. 

Anyway, I'm looking at my bulletin board as I write.  It's actually covered in useful things, for once.  I have my motivational Jareth picture:

Yes, I work beneath the Goblin King's disapproving glare, but it works.  I also have my new calendar, which I desperately needed because I have an awful habit of losing post-it notes.  The pic I showed you yesterday of Jaden is up there, tagged with his name.  And beside him is my current heroine, Lyra Black.  Figured I would show you all what she looks like today, as I was very proud of myself for finding a character model.  Heroes aren't nearly as hard for me...probably because I like looking at hot men:-)  But it's much more difficult for me to match a woman in my head with a real person.  Maybe it's tougher simply because Hollywood gives us a lot of different ideas of male beauty, but what they consider the ideal of female beauty is a lot more limited.  A LOT.  I do have a soapbox I could get on about that, but I'll spare you for the moment.  What I will say is that I tend not to go for emaciated bobbleheads with blonde hair and bolted on boobs.  What's a writer to do??  Well, in this case, I had a single idea of who might work, because IMO she's one of the most gorgeous actresses working right now.  And lo, I quickly came across a picture of her that was all Lyra, right down to the hair: curly and brown but threaded with blonde streaks. 

And there she is, my tough-yet-feminine werewolf heroine, as played by Kate Beckinsale.  I'm not even far into the book and the sparks are flying!  But then, that's what happens when you put a wolf and a vampire cat together:-)  Have a great one, and if you got any rough weather, hope you have a relaxing inside day!

A Little Inspiration

Gah, it's raining.  Again.  And it's supposed to turn into sleet/snow/something I won't want to drive in later this afternoon.  On the one hand, it's good writing weather, if I can get my butt in the chair.  On the other hand, I am going to come down with a raging case of Seasonal Affective Disorder if this sort of weather continues.  Yuck!  We can't even have a proper snowstorm down here.  It's just this wet STUFF all the time.

Oh well.  I decorated my bulletin board yesterday with a new calendar I bought (slim pickings at this point, but I found a pretty one), along with printed out pics of my new hero and heroine.  I am aware that not everyone loves the Moody Emo Vampire look, but still, this isn't such a bad thing to look at every day:

That's Jaden, in my world.  My editor had asked for a character pic the other day, and seemed to really like this, though she did tell me that the art department would probably NOT put guyliner on the cover hunk.  I suppose I understand, though really, everything is better with guyliner:-)  Here's hoping they match him as well as they did Ty on the cover of Dark Awakening...which, by the way, I googled out of curiosity yesterday, and is starting to turn up on lists of books people are interested in buying because they love the cover!  I want to get it blown up for my office wall.  Hmm, maybe for my birthday!