Videos from tour!!

Check out my new videos I posted from my last tour!!
There are two up so far & more to come!!

Enjoy,
Lisa
www.lisadaily.com

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Meet Zeus- God of Publishing.

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Save Holt! Deleted scenes from Fifteen Minutes of Shame
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

As many of you know, Fifteen Minutes of Shame was published in the strangest of ways and I miraculously (insanely? stupidly?) sold it with no novel-writing experience whatsoever.

So, check and deadline looming, I sat down and attempted to actually produce a novel.

Something I wasn't exactly sure how to do.

Here's the gist of the story: America's favorite TV dating expert Darby Vaughn finds out her husband Will is cheating on her, live on national television. She throws up and passes out, and becomes the national laughingstock and fodder for late night comedians.

Darby has become particularly close to her stepchildren Lilly & Aidan, who are her husband Will's children from his former marriage. Her divorce attorney Holt Gregory informs her she doesn't have a chance of getting custody of her children unless she gets back together with Will.

As I was writing the story, I needed to give Darby a really good reason to resist a relationship with Holt. (Otherwise, there would be no love triangle, just one philandering husband left in the dust on page 72.) Holt is a tall, funny, rakishly yummy, well-mannered, brilliant attorney with a southern accent and Patrick Dempsey hair. No sane woman would ever walk away from that. I had to give him some flaws, some serious flaws.

So, I did what any inexperienced novelist would do. I tried to kill him off.

I gave Holt a fatal, meticulously researched heart condition. And poor Darby, who had already had so much loss in her life, just couldn't bear to play nursemaid to a dead man walking.

My editor, Allison Dickens, called me as she emailed my editorial letter.

"I love the book," she said, "but you can't kill Holt."

"But his illness is the thing that's keeping them apart!" I argued, freshly fortified with all of the Novel Writing For Morons/How to Write a Novel books I'd devoured in the previous eight weeks.

"I think you need to find another thing," she told me. "Darby has been through a lot, this feels like the kitchen sink."

I thought about it that afternoon and that night, and I realized she was right. I needed to find a more interesting (and frankly, less Movie of the Week) reason why Holt and Darby shouldn't be together.

(Also, I kept flashing back to my mother, who called me after she read the manuscript wailing, "Why, why, WHY, does Holt have to die? Isn't there an operation? Some miracle cure? A Czechoslovakian pacemaker? Something???")

I was very aware of my inexperience with writing a novel, and had promised myself I would give careful consideration to any editorial suggestions, even if my immediate impulse was to dig in, throw my computer out the window or hit the drive-thru at Dunkin Donuts for an emergency case of jelly donuts.

I wanted for Fifteen Minutes to be realistic, unpredictable, cheese-free. I wanted it to be good.

That afternoon I got to work on saving Holt.

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Get a goodie bag worth $500 when you purchase FIFTEEN MINUTES OF SHAME before midnight Monday.

Get a goodie bag worth $500 when you purchase FIFTEEN MINUTES OF SHAME before midnight Monday, July 14.


As you may know, my debut novel Fifteen Minutes of Shame was just released. I am very excited to report that it's getting fantastic reviews, and has just been optioned by Hollywood to be made into a movie. (Okay, I'm more than excited. I'm trying to act cool. I'm over-the-moon delirious. :-) Writing a novel has been a lifelong dream for me.


Fifteen Minutes of Shame is a romantic comedy about what happens when America's favorite TV love guru finds out her husband is cheating - live, on national television. (Fiction, I swear!) Not only is the most humiliating moment of Darby Vaughn's life splashed across every supermarket tabloid and celebrity gossip show, but fans are turning on her, and her love life is fodder for late-night comedians. If Darby breaks her own zero-tolerance policy for cheaters and takes her philandering husband back, her career will be over. If she sticks to her own rules, she'll lose the only man she's ever loved.


To celebrate the movie deal, we're launching Fifteen Minutes of Shame in red-carpet style.


Monday you can get an online swag bag worth $500 when you purchase Fifteen Minutes of Shame at Amazon.com.


The free Fifteen Minutes of Shame swag bag includes:


* a free week's rental at Bag, Borrow or Steal,
* two free months membership at Cupid.com,
* an exclusive T-Tapp exercise video download
* a free lip- plumping serum,
* free mineral makeup,
* free cellulite firming cream,
*sneak peek chapters of not-yet-released books and tons of other goodies,


To get the free $500 online goodie bag, just purchase Fifteen Minutes of Shame before midnight on Monday, July 14 at Amazon.com (where it's currently bargain-priced around $10) and email your receipt to swagbag@lisadaily.com.


Praise for Fifteen Minutes of Shame :


"A smart, hilariously funny gem of a book that will delight fans of Jennifer Weiner and Sophie Kinsella. It's no surprise that one of Hollywood's hottest screenwriters has snatched up rights to turn it into a movie."
--Lisa McLeod, Buffalo News


"I'm not a gusher, unless I truly love something. But today I have to gush."
--Kristi Gustafson, Albany Times-Union


"I was instantly hooked...had me laughing and cheering."
-Clare Naylor, bestselling author of The First Assistant


For more information, visit www.lisadaily.com/swagbag


Thanks, and I hope you have a fantastic summer!


Happy reading!


Best,


Lisa

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The 20 Hottest Authors Alive

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Beat Me, Whip Me, Send Me on Book Tour

Beat Me, Whip Me, Send Me on Book Tour by Lisa Daily

The business of publishing can really knock the wind out of you.

There are dozens of people involved in turning a big stack of paper into a book — the writer, agents, editors, publicists, marketing people, print managers, sales people and tons of support staff.

But sometimes it feels like the loneliest gig in the world.

If it's your first book, you probably won't go on tour. You probably won't get rich. You probably won't get on Oprah. And you'll probably show up for at least one book signing where nobody else does. And sometimes, when you call your publisher, you'll feel like that old publishing joke "the only good author is a dead author" might actually be real.

I was lucky enough to go on tour for Fifteen Minutes of Shame.

When I say "book tour" most people get this really glamorous idea of five-star hotels and limousines, formalwear, a ready-made entourage, and non-invasive paparazzi hanging around to take photos from your best angle outside your hotel, while a handler whisks you from party to interview to party to every author's fantasy, a book-signing with throngs of your adoring fans lined up around the block.

The reality of a glamorous book tour is that you either a) take a flight at the crack of dawn, or b) show up in an airport the night before, and take a cab to a Ramada, or some other similarly-ornamented halfway house for business travelers. In the morning, you'll drive yourself all over a strange city in a rental car, or if you're really lucky, an author escort named Marge, or Betty, will pick you up in her late-model Toyota with used Starbucks grande cups and McGriddle wrappers littering the floor of the passenger seat.

Marge will know all of the gossip on every author on tour over the last five (to twenty) years, and can tell you who's nice, who sleeps with bookstore managers, who takes uppers before she does the local morning show, and what bestselling spiritual author let his ratty little dog poop in the back of her car and didn't even offer to clean it up.

You might head to a radio station at the crack of dawn to do a morning drive show, or a local TV station to do Good Morning Little Rock! or Good Morning Tupelo! or Good Morning Wherever The Hell You Are! and do your four minutes with a host who is graciously small-talking with you on-air, despite the fact that he probably doesn't know or care who you are or what your book is about. Then, you'll go to your bookstore signing, where even if you're well-known, you can expect to sit at a faux wood table, looking a lot like those survey people in the mall, hoping to God that at least ten people will show up, so the bookstore manager won't believe your appearance and frankly, your existence, to be a complete inconvenience and utter waste of her time. Typically, you'll just be sitting around for two hours trying to catch any customer's eye as they enter the store so you can psychically will them to your table. Mostly though, you'll be giving them directions to the bathroom.

Whenever there are breaks in your day, you'll drive-thru for coffees or sandwiches, then drop in at bookstores en route to your next gig, where you introduce yourself to as many unfazed bookstore employees as possible, and offer to sign any copies of your book they happen to have in stock. Which, if you're a first or second-time author with a major publisher, will probably be one.

After you sign the single, lonely, copy they'll rummage around the desk for one of those gold foil "signed by the author" stickers to slap on the front.

After your day is done, you'll head back to the airport. You'll grab a quick slice at Sbarro before your nine pm flight, and head (in coach) to your next glamorous destination. Maybe Akron.

You'll miss your family or your sweetheart, you'll gain ten pounds from eating crap at the airport, and you'll spend much of your week(s) trying to figure out where the hell you are.

But here's the reality that's better than the perception:

Seeing your book, the book you wrote, for the first time in a bookstore. (Actually, that never gets old, even after the hundredth time)

And the best part, meeting your readers — the people who thought enough of you to spend $20 of their hard-earned cash on your book, and nice enough to tell you that your work means something to them personally.

For a writer, it just doesn't get any better.

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Where is Your Mother?

Where is Your Mother?

I've written several posts about my amazing, wonderful mother, which you can read here: (thedebutanteball.com)

So, for a change, I'm going to write about someone else's mother.

Sadly, I think she may be trapped in a well.

Marche Taylor is the high school senior who was kicked out of her prom because school officials deemed her dress was too risqué and insisted she leave. She refused. She asked for a refund of her prom tickets since they would not let her enter, the school official refused and told her she could go home or be escorted out by police.

So she was dragged away in handcuffs.

According to an ABC news report by Emily Friedman, a representative for the school district, Terry Abbott, said,
"The young lady came to the prom wearing an inappropriate dress after the students were told what the guidelines were."

According to the report, "Only one inch of an attendants' midsection was permitted to be shown and slits in dresses could be no more than three inches above the knee" and "see-through fabrics should not be worn in places which reveal private body parts."

Marche made her own prom dress, according to news reports. And I think we can all admit she showed a great deal of creativity in her design. (Although not a great deal of fabric.)

A young girl who goes to the prom dressed in a gold lame ace bandage is looking for attention, and now, thanks to YouTube and 24-hour news cycles, she's got it in spades.

Google Marche Taylor, and you get 506,000 hits.

My question is, how did Marche get out of the house in that highly creative dress?

Why did Marche's mother not stop her at the front door and say, "young lady, you are not going to the prom unless you march yourself right back upstairs and put on some clothes."

I am not in favor of schools dictating how students dress, I think that's a parent's job. I also think one of the most important ways that young people express themselves, as they are trying to figure out who they are, is through the way they dress.

And if that creativity is thwarted, via school uniforms or color-coded students, they will express themselves some other way, like with piercings, or tattoos. Or in my day, with legwarmers and mall bangs.

It's disturbing to me that schools have found it necessary to create a rule that specifically states that see-through fabrics which reveal private body parts are not allowed.

Who are these parents who are letting their kids go out in public dressed in translucent loincloths and boob tubes?

More importantly, where are they?

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First Date Killers

10 First Date Killers 

By Lisa Daily

Boy meets girl.  You flirt.  You make a date. 

You eat, you drink, you connect.  You have the time of your life. 

And then, you never hear from him again.

One of you has a really good time, and the other one tries to suck down his plate of linguine as quickly as possible so he can leave and make the pain stop.  Or says he had a really great time, promises to call, and then drops off the face of the earth.

What makes a date go from a romantic possibility to "never again"?  Chances are, it's one of these 10 dating disasters:

1) You mistook your date for your therapist

2) You slept together on the first date

3) You tried to determine if he was marriage material (intentions)

4) You're holding the him and/or the entire male sex responsible for the ghosts of boyfriends past (trust issues, paranoia, etc.)

5) You acted more like a private detective than a good conversationalist (are you trying to analyze your dates)

6) You brought your kids.  (Talking about them for the entire time is almost the same as having them slurping spaghetti at the dinner table.) If you have kids, you should limit discussion of them to names and ages only for the first date.)

7) The green-eyed monster.  Giving him a hard time for flirting with the waitress,

8) Trying to create a relationship out of a date.

9) You made it clear he wasn't gong to get sex, and he was only in it for sex.  (Don't stress – he wasn't going to call you back for the second date anyway!)

10) You just didn't click.  You're a great girl.  He's a great guy.  But the vibe is more friendly than fiery.

www.lisadaily.com

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Book Tour 9-1-1

Book Tour 9-1-1

Last night I had an idea for a new cable television show.

It would be sort of like SuperNanny, except instead of convincing delinquent, tamper-prone four-year-olds not to flush Sparkles, the family hamster, down the toilet; quick-thinking publicists would jet off across the country to help authors faced with dire publishing emergencies.

Or maybe they'd travel in a nitro-powered bookmobile.

The show would be called BOOK TOUR 9-1-1.

Armed with only tic-tacs, a mega-powered Blackberry, and a case of duct-tape, SuperPubbies would step in to save the tour and bravely help authors in need.

When the microphone accidentally drops off your shirt during a live television broadcast, your SP would dive across the concrete floor like she was stealing home in the World Series — sliding under the camera line to retrieve your microphone before it became necessary to shout your interview answers into the microphone stuffed in the host's bra, so that you could still be heard by all in TV Land.

The SP would psychically know if the bookstore where you're scheduled to do a stock signing was demolished three weeks ago, and instantly re-direct you to a building that is still standing.

The SP would be infinitely more helpful if you happened to be late for the airport and the only route your high-priced navigation system could come up with was over the bridge that collapsed last winter.

The SP could casually stick a blueberry café muffin into the mouth of an enthusiastic heckler before he has a chance to tell you and the three kind people who came to see you about his idea for a novel. Again.

And of course, the SP could build a raft out of Sharpies if you're ever caught in a flash flood.

SuperPubbies, where are you?

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10 Reasons Men Are Like Cats

They say opposites attract, maybe the reason men hate cats so much is because they have so much in common...

10 Reasons Men Are Like Cats

10)  No matter how much you scold them, they always miss the litter box.

9) They rub up against you one day, and the next, they act like they've never seen you before.

8) They leave all those little hairs all over your bed.

7) Feed them once, and they'll keep coming back.

6) They keep your feet warm when it's cold outside.

5) If they make a mess, they just leave the room and pretend it's not there.

4) They have their own agenda, which may or may not include you.

3) They disappear for days on end, and then show up at your door as though nothing has happened.

2) They groom themselves in front of company.

1) Just about the time you're ready to make them sleep outside, they do something really cute.

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