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The hero in my NaNo novel is beta. He’s the heroine’s best friend and a computer geek. He’s quiet and laid back, and while he takes charge of situations, no one would accuse him of being an alpha.

I was watching The Office and realized Jim is the ultimate beta hero. Best friend, laid back, cautious about making the first move.

I went through my TV schedule trying to figure out who were some other beta heroes.

The boys from Big Bang Theory.

Rick Castle

Will on Glee (LOVE a man who sings and dances)

I debated about McDreamy. I think his arrogance removes him from this category.

What other betas can you think of? Do you like reading betas?

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I was reading pages for a cp this weekend, the beginning of a story. She introduced the hero as having a goatee. I'm like, okay, RDJ, I can go along with that. A few pages later she mentioned he had springy curly hair.

SCREECH. He went from RDJ to Zohan.

I heard a workshop that talked about not going into too much detail about your hero, because what one woman finds sexy, another might find a turnoff. I know I've toned back descriptions of my last two heroes because what I find attractive in the two, others might not. And things I've never found attractive before, I do in these two. Does that make sense?

Then there are some things I include in my heroes - almost all - that other women might not agree with. For example, I love stubble. Most of my heroes are stubbly at one time or another.

Anyway, some of my deal breakers - something I have to consciously avoid thinking about when reading a hero if the author mentions it - are these:

1) hair long enough to put in a ponytail (unless it's a historical)
2) moles
3) excessive tattoos - I love Jeffrey Dean and Justin Chambers, but too many tattoos! In fact, in my books, only my heroines have tattoos.
4) excessive body hair

You know, I had more when I was thinking about this, but now I'm blank. What about you?

I took my new story to critique this weekend, the story I love. I want to enter it in the Merritt Magic Moment contest, and so I took chapter 7, which is where the heroine decides she will go after what she wants (the hero), everything else be damned.

Okay, consider that my critique group has been reading Breaking Daylight, where Alex, the hero, is alpha, overtly sexual and pretty darned crude. He swears a lot and rarely has tender thoughts toward the heroine. They thought my new hero Noah wasn't physical enough. That he thinks about wanting to touch her, but they didn't feel like he FELT it, you know?

Noah is nothing like Alex. He doesn't swear - the one time he does, my heroine is surprised. He goes to church, though his thoughts when he sits by my heroine are NOT on the service. He doesn't think the same words Alex would use.

How do you write a beta guy without making him into a woman?

I finished my revisions on Vanished last night. I need to do a query letter this AM, then I'm starting Wayback from scratch. I plan to be done by April, though.

Okay, I've written two query letters and it isn't even 6 AM - go, me!

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I came home from my Christmas party last night to find Breaking Daylight finalled in the Golden Palm! I have a week to revise, then send it back and it's going to Leslie Wainger. It's been a long dry spell between finals, y'all. This feels GOOD. Wow, and I just got the results for Don't Look Back...if they'd had 4 finalists instead of 3, it would have finalled, too!!

I should get to write today. I need to make a quick trip to the grocery store, and then the SARA party tonight, but in between, no obligations.

Okay, heroes....I was reading this book recently where the hero was just, well, horny all the time. All. The. Time. It went a bit beyond the level of being sexy and was actually a little creepy, especially since he'd wanted this girl since she was 17. (He was about 10 years older.)

When I read Shelter Mountain, I had trouble getting past the hero's bald-big-be-earringed appearance.

I read another book where the hero made unfortunate choices in footwear. Just. Not. Appealing.

And another where the hero was, shall we say, hirsute. I didn't mind that quite so much because I have a feeling my current hero is as well, but I wasn't going to go into that in the likelihood it would be a turnoff to someone.

What hero characteristics turn you off, either physical or not?

Look what Natalie found!

School itself wasn't too bad. I like doing centers, because once you set them up, you can run them for days without a lot of prep.

Then the reading specialist asked if I knew what I was going to present on parent night on Wednesday. PANIC! Found something on honing reading skills by watching TV and reading the paper. Shocking, I know. Then I updated my class website. Still, the kids went to computer for an hour, not bad. I tried to work on some plotting stuff - I have quite the number of things happening in my Nano book - but paper was too static. I needed a project board.

I got home to find two Amazon boxes - the ds's book order and mine, which included the new Supernatural novel, WITCH'S CANYON. Can't wait to read it.

Opened my email to some bad news for a good friend (but not insurmountable, thank God) and edits on the first 6 chapters of Smoke for WRP. Went to JoAnn's Fabric for a project board and buttons after picking up the boy from school (he stayed late for journalism) then came home and made a boring supper. Then I played with my storyboard as we watched last week's episode of My Name Is Earl. The writers are kicking butt on that show. I was going to go to the computer to write, but since dh's laptop died, we're sharing. So I got my lapdesk and my Alphie. When I got the computer, I had an email from the editor about how to do things, I emailed Trish and my friend with the bad news. Meanwhile, the dh was holding Heroes on pause and I was getting nervous, so I returned to the lapdesk and Alphie and we watched.

WOW. Just, wow. Much bigger stakes than last year, but will they run into the 24 syndrome - trying to find a new evil to fight every year?

Okay, going to do edits now.

My iPod should be here next week - I ordered a refurb from Apple. I'm thinking of naming it Metallipod. Or Mandroid. Obvious, I know.

Only 5 pages in 2 days - eek! Watched 3 episodes of Robin Hood, 2 Burn Notices, 2 Smallvilles and Psyche. Also did the driving thing and critiqued 2 1/2 chapters for my online group.

I know, I know, I ALWAYS talk about bad boys. But I finished watching the Robin Hood DVDs and was disappointed that Marian didn’t marry Guy of Gisborne.




I thought the chemistry between Marian and Guy was great, I think he really loved her, and she felt he could be redeemed.




Trish was – not of the same mind. Guy IS a bad guy. He tried to kill the king, he’s the sheriff’s right-hand man, but I feel he WANTS to be good. In fact, he told Marian that he needs her to wash away his sins. (Not like THAT! PG blog, remember?)

Of course, I’m back on this because I’m getting ready to revise my own wicked bad boy story. We discussed it on the SARA forum and at the plotting meeting and the ladies suggested I come to you and ask what heroes in romance novels are really bad boys that are redeemed. The only one I can think of is BLACK ICE by Anne Stuart. Which ones can you think of?