Joss Whedon

I’m currently still in the Chris Farley phase — "Dude! Remember when we had dinner with Joss Whedon? It was awesome..."

And in fact, much of the dinner was spent with me going (internal dialog of course) "Oh, my God, that’s Joss Whedon." (He has very pretty eyes, and he’s unafraid to let people look into them to see his truly beautiful heart.)

I’m going to be writing a long, LOOOOONG account of the entire experience and posting it on my website as part of my Countdown to FORCE OF NATURE.

See, I have a hardcover coming out on August 14th, and I am working like a crazy-woman to make sure it launches with enough velocity to hit the major lists. I do this for every book, but this one is extra special to me because it features my gay FBI agent, Jules Cassidy — it’s the next installment in his romantic story arc, which is something you don’t see very often in mainstream romance — a gay romantic subplot. I’m working hard not just to kick down doors, but to blast them open, a la Buffy (good role model!) — and putting the book into the top five or ten on the NYTimes list would be a Major Statement — not just to the world, but to the publishing industry.

So this is requiring my full attention. I’ve got YouTube interview videos to edit (not of Joss, sorry to disappoint, but of a friend who’s a Navy SEAL), a website to overhaul, and an impending virtual signing to prep for. (On August 14th, I will buy, sign, package and send somewhere close to 800 book in a single day. (Please feel free to visit my website at www.SuzanneBrockmann.com/fonvs.htm and make it 801 books!)

I’m thinking that My Dinner with Joss musings will go up early in the second week of the countdown (think around Aug. 7th) — and I apologize to you on this board for that. I know you want it now, but my focus has to be on FORCE OF NATURE.

I will tell you this — it was amazing how the date of the dinner lined up with my schedule. I spend so much time touring and promoting (or huddled in my cave, writing), that when the news of Joss’s dinner came up, I was stunned that it fell on a date that I could conceivably attend. It seemed like fate. Then came the news that another of my older books was being reissued — which means I’m finally going to get paid for something I wrote ten years ago, for slave wages. (I figured out, for one of my earlier books, that I earned 47 cents an hour while writing it!!!!)

Some writers buy themselves cars or jewelry when this "found money" thing happens. Me, I like to spend my money on things that really matter: Equality Now and an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have dinner and say thank you to my writing hero. It was a no-brainer.

And I bought two seats, because I’m totally still in love with my husband of nearly 25 years, and everything is better when he’s by my side. He loves Joss and Buffy and Firefly and Angel, too, but not as obsessively as I do, which is good. Every relationship needs balance, right?

So, again, thanks for your patience — and I *will* have an indepth account of the dinner on my website in a week or so.

Suzanne