I’m sure you all remember my local TV story last year when everyone in the studio started screaming “Nipple! NIPPLE!!!” because my hero had boldly exposed his nipple in the stepback art of AFTER MIDNIGHT. (This was shortly after the whole FCC/Janet Jackson debacle.) So I just wanted you to know that everything went smoothly this year during my appearance at our local station to promote THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME.Well...almost everything. Except for the part where I slid into the car to go to the TV station and realized I was too fat to sit down in my suit. You know how your skirt gets just a teensy bit snug around the hips and you notice the buttons down the front of your jacket are gaping open a meager 1/2 an inch so you try to squinch down your shoulders only to realize you’re developing a startling resemblance to the Hunchback of Notre Dame? That’s when I began to suspect that I’d developed the most dreaded of all female complaints—back fat. I knew that someday I’d have to pay for all of those torrid midnight flings with dozens of hot, anonymous Krispy Kremes, but why today of all days? I expected them to go directly to my thighs, not wiggle their way up my spine!
I drive to the station, hunched over so that I can barely see over the steering wheel, but with all my buttons intact. Before going in, I glance into the rearview mirror to freshen my lipstick. I blink in horror. What fresh hell is this? How could I have sprouted a full-fledged handlebar mustache in the time it took to get from home to the TV station? So there I sit in the parking lot, New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros, trying to trim her heretofore invisible mustache with a pair of nail clippers. I could only pray that perhaps I would accidentally clip an artery and put myself out of my misery!
Being an optimist, I assume that things can only get better. Until I walk into the station to find every man in the place leering at me. Turns out the host has been reading my love scene aloud to the entire camera crew. ("As she took him deeper than he ever thought possible, he arched off the bed with a guttural groan,” he recites with all of the gravity and glee of Olivier doing Richard III.) Since said host just happens to be a friend of mine, I gently try to explain that the love scene is the culmination of over 200 pages of courtship, tenderness and emotion and that reading it out of context is a Bad Thing. He leers more deeply and all but twirls his own mustache as he explains, “But I’m a man. We like things out of context!” (Hey, you can’t fault him for being honest!)
I’m happy to report that the interview went well. The host was charming and debonair and didn’t read (or act out) a single one of my love scenes on-camera. My TOP TEN REASONS FOR LOVING A VAMPIRE a la Letterman was a big hit. Now if I could just get rid of this back fat!
