Sonja Foust, Romance Author

I did a post about a month ago about buying shoes from ShoeDazzle to fight heart disease.

I take it back.

Fight heart disease some other way. Just don’t join ShoeDazzle. Let me tell you why, in the format of a series of events:

Wednesday of last week: I wore my super adorable ShoeDazzle shoes to work– the ones I wore to the company holiday party that I got a million compliments on. I love these shoes. (However, I’d only worn them 3 or 4 times.)

Around lunchtime, I noticed that the upper part of the shoe was ripping completely out of the sole. There’s about a 2 inch rip in both shoes in the same spot.

No problem, I thought to myself. Most online companies are excellent about quality concerns and will gladly do what it takes to make their customers happy, no matter what their return policy is. I dashed off a quick email to ShoeDazzle client services to let them know about the problem.

Hours later (so good on them for at least being quick about it), I received the following email response: (more…)

**UPDATED: Everything in this post is ok except for the part about, you know, buying shoes. DO NOT BUY SHOES FROM SHOEDAZZLE!**

Today is National Wear Red Day. I know, another stupid made-up holiday in February, but I’m ok with this one because you don’t have to support the greeting card industry to participate in it. National Wear Red Day is all about education. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women. Yes, everyone is affected by heart disease.

So today you can commit to being heart healthy: Eat healthy stuff, move around a lot, and stay tobacco-free.

You can also help fight heart disease by… buying shoes! One of my favorite sites, ShoeDazzle, has this sweet red pump available in February. 10% of the purchase goes to Women Heart to provide education and training for women so that we can take charge of our heart health.

Stay healthy, friends!

This post is in loving memory of my father-in-law, who passed away 2 years ago from a heart attack. We miss you, Charlie.

I did. You didn’t miss much. Here’s my Twitter stream from the night:

The Zac Brown Band just got a new fan. Their opening number was awesome, and I generally can’t stand too much for patriotic songs.

I did not know an acoustic guitar could make that sound. Awesome.

@becs1017 They need to autotune Taylor. Poor thing. #Grammys

@pinkpodster I think it’s more the pitch than the strength. Ugh. Pretty awful. #grammys

@ellenlynch I just said, “Oh, TAYLOR!” with a tone of disgust. (#grammys ) Should probably watch #Emma instead. (more…)

It’s the thing that holds a book together or causes it to fall apart. It’s the thing that writers will tell you is the essential piece to making your characters realistic. In my opinion, it’s one of the hardest things in the world to get right.

It’s motivation.

“Excuse me, excuse me. What’s MY motivation?” The characters in your books (not unlike those high-maintenance diva-like actors) need motivation in order to be true and convincing. We need to know what’s causing them to be happy, or seek revenge, or act petty, or have sex.

Some motivations are simple: I am hungry, therefore, I will eat my supper.

Some motivations are not simple, and those are the ones with which I am most concerned. Let me give you an example from real life. (more…)