Karma Girl has been offi­cially released! Hooray!

It’s been a long, hard road to get to this point. There are so many peo­ple out there who have helped me along the way, from my sig­nif­i­cant other and fam­ily, to friends, to my edi­tor and agent, to every­one who read and cri­tiqued the book, to all the oth­er writ­ers who have answered my never-ending ques­tions. Thank you all. Book lovers are some of the best peo­ple in the world.

And for all you folks out there who haven’t sold yet, keep this in mind: I wrote six books over a period of about seven years before Karma Girl sold. In other words, don’t give up. Keep writ­ing and keep get­ting bet­ter, and it’ll hap­pen for you one day too.

And don’t let any­one tell you that you are wast­ing your time. Even if your work never sells, writ­ing still feeds your soul — and that really is the most impor­tant thing. If it makes you happy, do it — no mat­ter what any­one else thinks. To quote Galaxy Quest … Never give up, never surrender!

If any­one out there sees Karma Girl on their book­store shelves, I’d love to hear about it. I’d also love to hear what you guys think of it — what you liked, what you didn’t like. Give me some feedback! Send me an e-mail at jennifer@jenniferestep.com.

Happy read­ing!

Jen­nifer

May 1 is finally here, which means that Karma Girl has been offi­cially released. Hooray!

May 1 means it’s also time to announce the win­ners of my newslet­ter con­test. Con­grats to these folks, who each won a $20 Barnes & Noble gift card:

Cathy Mac­Don­ald

Beth Caudill

Chris­tine Enta

Amy Adams

Kim West­gaard

Con­grats also go to these folks, who each won a gold Rubik’s Cube, pro­vided by David Hed­ley Jones of Seven Towns:

Deb­o­rah Brent

Tracy Broyles

Greg John­son

Laure Estep (no rela­tion to me!)

Sky­lar Massey

Carol Thomp­son

Win­ners, please send your snail mail address to jennifer@jenniferestep.com so I can mail you your prizes.

I’ll be doing more con­tests in com­ing months to pro­mote Karma Girl and Hot Mama. All you have to do to enter is sign up for my newslet­ter. The form is on the home page.

Until next time … happy read­ing!

And it occurs to me today, after I’ve set up all my blogs and stuff, that this is the week­end of the Roman­tic Times con­ven­tion. Which means that every­one is there hav­ing a good time and not at home read­ing my blogs.

Geez. I’m an idiot.

Ah well. I guess my plans for world dom­i­na­tion will just have to wait a lit­tle longer …

I’m going to be busy with a vari­ety of work­shops and blogs the next few days in antic­i­pa­tion of Karma Girl’s release on May 1. Here’s what I’ve got on tap:

I’m doing a work­shop on how to cre­ate dif­fer­ent kinds of para­nor­mal char­ac­ters over at RWC: Romance Writ­ers’ Com­mu­nity through April 27. It’s a Yahoo group you have to sign up for.

I’m doing my reg­u­lar reader’s blog over at Romanc­ing the Blog on April 28.

I’m also doing a blog about how to sur­vive the edit­ing process at Mag­i­cal Mus­ings on April 28.

On April 30, I’m the guest author for the day over at The Good, the Bad, and the Unread.

Hope you can check them out and sup­port my mis­sion of world dom­i­na­tion … one blog at a time.

Jane has an inter­est­ing post over at Dear Author today about real­ism vs. ide­al­ism in romance nov­els, espe­cially in the Bob Mayer-Jenny Cruise book, Don’t Look Down.

The post talks about a male char­ac­ter sleep­ing with some­one other than the hero­ine dur­ing the course of the book and whether that was real­is­tic or not. I read the book. The scene in ques­tion didn’t bother me.

But Jane’s post made me think about some­thing else that’s not so real­is­tic in romance nov­els — the per­fectly ripped guy with fan­tas­tic hair, obscene wealth, and a killer smile. My sig­nif­i­cant other brought this up a few days ago, ask­ing me why most guys in romances (and espe­cially on the book cov­ers) are the male model of perfection, when most guys in real life, well, aren’t.

And I didn’t know how to answer him.

I have to admit that I’m guilty of writ­ing the per­fect guy in my books, while I tend to make the hero­ine more relat­able (or at least with a more real­is­tic body type). But I give the hero quirks too — a shy per­son­al­ity, guilt over a friend’s death, a desire for revenge that threat­ens the romance with the heroine.

But Jane’s post also struck me as funny because I’m work­ing on Big­time 4 now — and the hero isn’t the per­fect guy when it comes to looks. Oh, he’s wealthy and witty, but he’s more of a mor­tal super­hero — one with­out any super­pow­ers. Which means his body is cov­ered with scars from all his bat­tles, his nose is crooked from being bro­ken, etc. I’m mak­ing an effort to make him more of a nor­mal guy (in the looks depart­ment anyway).

Of course, the hero­ine thinks the hero is hand­some — after she gets to know him. I think that’s just part of the process of falling in love — learn­ing to appre­ci­ate what’s beau­ti­ful about your part­ner. The more you love some­one, the more you over­look their thin­ning hair or poochy stom­ach or thun­der thighs in favor of what’s great about them (their smile, their laugh, their smok­ing eyes).

Which do you pre­fer? Gor­geous, chis­eled heroes? Or more real­is­tic guys when it comes to looks? Inquir­ing minds want to know …