So I’m going back into revisions for Hot Shot again – the beginning this time, and till I’m done, you get to look at George Clooney, my model for Gabe.



I watched Good Night and Good Luck and didn’t get the big deal. Yeah, GC and Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Daniels and Frank Langella were in it, but I didn’t get the big suspense.

Last week I may have revealed a little too much of myself to the teachers at lunch. One of the teachers is married to a cop, and she was talking about how when they’d go dancing before they were married, she’d feel his gun under his shirt and it would make her feel safe.

I said it would make me hot.

I love writing cops and firefighters and soldiers. Big, strong guys, trained within an inch of their lives to take care of themselves, to protect others. I love writing guys who are able to take charge, take over. I have a scene in DLB where the heroine watches the hero fire an automatic weapon and it’s like her hero, the man who’s saved her life, has come back to life before her eyes. She doesn’t find it sexy, per se, but reassuring.

In Where There’s Smoke, the heroine falls more in love with the hero when she sees him in paramedic mode, taking charge to save a child’s life.

In Second Chances (yes, most used title ever), it’s the contrast between the take-charge FBI agent who can also be gentle with a victim that softens the heroine’s heart.

So what does that say about me, that I like these take-charge guys? Well, I can hazard a guess. But I also have a feeling I wouldn’t like them as much in person as I like them on the page.