~A Letter from Julie~

Happy brink-of-fall, kittens! For some reason, September always feels like the beginning of my own personal new year— much more so than January does. Could have a little something to do with an impending birthday for yours truly (ahem), as well as residual memories of the start of a school year and all its attendant sights and smells. Like...mmmm ...vinyl. There's nothing like that new binder smell, is there?? Or the smell of a bag lunch you forgot for a few weeks in the back of your locker, for that matter. Not that I, um, ever did that. (Not more than twice, anyway.)

Anyhow, this September I'm particularly excited about two things: 1) Ways to be Wicked will be out practically any minute, and my early readers so far seem to be gaga about it (we'll talk about that in the books section); and 2) now that you've waved the kiddies off to school, I have the world's best homework assignment for you. Hint: It involves a lot of reading. :) More on that in the contest section.

What else is new? Well, here's where we talk about blogs: For example, The Julie Chronicles is my new blog, and if you go there you can see unflattering photos of me, learn about the perils of satin sheets, the mysteries of anagrams, and my writing process, among other things. Oh, it's riveting. I sometimes update five times a week, sometimes twice a week (how often is how you can tell just how busy I am.) And sometimes, completely on a whim, I give away signed books. Like....right.... now! (hee!) In fact, if you stop by before Monday evening, 9. .m., the 10th, you might just win one.

And calling all bloggers who'd like a free signed copy of BATS! If you have a blog—either your own, or one you share with a group—and you're game to post an excerpt from Ways to be Wicked sometime during the last week of September or the first week of October, I'll send you a signed copy of BATS and some signed bookmarks as a thanks! Pass the word on to all your blogging friends, too, if you don't think they're on my mailing list. If you're interested, just send me a note with "Wicked Blog" in the subject line, and tell me about your blog. I'll mention your blog on MY blog, and in my newsletter, too. It might be fun!

I'll be visiting a few blogs, soon, too: the Idea Boutique on September 26th, and Romantically Inclined on October 16th and 17th, and I'll let you know about a few other events coming up next month in my October newsletter.

And in case you're wondering, up there to the left, just for fun, is a photo of one of the things I did this summer—that's me and my date Toni Blake dolled up for the Rita ceremonies at the RWA conference in Atlanta this year, which were both a blast, and a bit of a blur.

Hope your summer contained at least one moment that was both a bit of a blast and a blur, too, and hope you made some wonderful new memories over the past few months. But here's to a fabulous fall! As always, feel free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you think might enjoy it, and take good care for now!


Warm Regards,

Julie :)

A bit of ballet: In Ways to be Wicked, Sylvie is a French ballerina, the toast of Paris, and the bane of her existence—and the reason for her excellence—is a certain Monsieur Favre. Monsieur Favre was very loosely based on Jean-Georges Noverre, an influential French dancer and ballet master born in Paris in 1727 and eventually became ballet master at the Paris Opera. Noverre wrote Lettres sur la Dance, one of the most influential documents in dance history, in which he proposed a number of dramatic reforms. "I would cut down by three-quarters the ridiculous panniers of our ballerinas," he said, thus freeing the dancer's movements. And he wanted to get rid of the masks still traditionally worn by dancers at that time (a custom originating in the theatre rituals of ancient Greece, and for some reason still embraced), "calling them hideous faces which conceal nature." Not a man to mince words, our Monsieur Noverre. He also suggested that ballets should be based on character and situation rather than purely personal display, thus paving the way for the story ballets we know today. Read a bit more about Noverre's significance to ballet here.

Another little interesting ballet tidbit: Many of the dance movements familiar to us today—the turned out legs and pointed toes, the arms held gracefully wide—evolved from courtly dances in the 1600's: elegantly pointed toes were meant to show off shoe buckles and ribbons, and arms were held wide to avoid brushing the full skirts worn by both men and women.


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