A friend of my friend, Gena Showalter (esteemed novelist and sizzling hot chick), is having a contest on her blog - rewrite her bio! The prize is your choice of novel from the selection she's offering. You can read the rules by visiting her blog. The joke is that she has this massive inferiority complex and thinks that everyone only sees her as Gena's friend. She's so paranoid! What is her name again? Hmmm.....

Anyway, here's my entry. I posted it as a comment on her blog, but I noticed one typo and a line that was truncated, so I'm copying and pasting it here. Basically, we were to take 1 sentence from her bio and rewrite it so the bio is about us, not her. Here goes:

"Grandparents firmly believed their grandkids should experience the satisfaction of hard work…by harvesting potatoes in 100-degree weather. " As I, Kelli McBride, read this startling statistic, I flashed back to my own childhood, shackled to unfeeling grandparents who made me work the sod, even though I was allergic to dirt. As I dug for potatoes, my tears and snot mingling together to form a thick muddy paste, I swore, as God was my witness, I would never dig dirt again. Somehow, with that mantra, I connected to the part of the universe that revels in romance and tall, dark, handsome alpha males. Growing up, I studied Hollywood adventure romances set in Casbahs, Desert Tents, and Spanish Castles. I drew inspiration from the tragic loves of heroines, vowing to write stories where every disguised princess reunited with her long-lost love (a deposed Arabian prince).

My fight continues to rescue fiction from the clutches of literary prose that seeks to set high that which brings us low, that defies the boy-gets-girl ending and embraces the "boy-dies-in-tragic-fire-incident and girl-has-affair-with-his-best-friend (a gay cocaine-addicted alcoholic) who dumps her for his art" ending. I especially want to thank the girl for crying out at my class reunion "Yes!!" Though I don't remember what she looks like, her passionate affirmation of the affirmative reaffirmed my passion for writing and romance.

Thank you mumpy-looking girl with Diet-Cherry-Coke breath.