This is Deliverance, by Manuel Nuñez. The same artist who did Strait is the Gate, which I mentioned previously.
Looking him up, I’ve discovered he does commissioned portraits, so now I’ve got this whole fantasy spinning about how I’ll take money from my first wildly successful contemporary fantasy novel and have a portrait done.
Hey – a girl can dream.
At any rate, I’d had an image in mind of a painting of his I *thought* I’d seen, that looked like a woman laid out for a funeral, but I didn’t find it in his gallery. (On the other hand, I see the piece I own has gone up considerably in value, so I’m feeling all nifty about that.) And then I see Elizabeth Taylor passed, so an image of a lovely woman resting in peace seems all fraught today.
My point is: I’m giving up the Jennifer Paris alter ego.
I know, I know. She was with us such a little time. We hardly knew her.
It was just over a year ago that I announced I’d use Jennifer Paris for my Loose Id erotic novella, Petals and Thorns. March 4 of 2010, actually, and now I’m feeling all astonished that it’s been that long. I was all set to type something like “six months ago.” Tempus fugit and all that.
At any rate, in conversations with the lovely Angela James over my contract for Carina Press, she pointed out that if I intend to use Jennifer Paris as an author name, then I should have her as a social media identity.
Angela is quite savvy about social media, I think. Her blog posts and challenges are frequently cited. She’s all over twitter. And she’s really a terrific person to work with. She has emailed with me, answering my questions with genuine friendliness. In an aside, the contracts/legal guy at Harlequin headquarters is also really warm and friendly. I’m already so impressed with this corporate climate. All of this makes me think they know something about creating a virtual community.
So, I’ve bantered back and forth with Angela on Twitter long before this. And with my fabulous new editor, Deb Nemeth. They know me there by my twitter handle, @jeffekennedy. In fact, I was pretty sure the Carina gig would be a go, because I saw Deb started following me on twitter a couple of weeks before I got the actual phone call. Some of that was to see if I’m psycho, I think. Fortunately I managed to fake that well enough not to set off any alarm bells. I would be very carefully composing tweets for a while, thinking through the potential impacts, then I’d forget myself and go off on riffs with someone and – oops.
It’s a good argument for just being yourself on social media – cuz you’ll forget and do it anyway.
I told Angela I was doing the “Jeffe Kennedy writing as Jennifer Paris” thing and she said no, no, no. Actually she said it’s not the same thing at all. Since I really don’t want to “flesh out” Jennifer Paris and tweet or blog as her (she was only a cardboard cut-out anyway), I decided to retire her.
Besides, there’s also now a transvestite porn star with that name. I don’t have to tell you that link is absolutely NSFW (not safe for work), do I? Yeah, click at your own risk.
So, there you have it. Jennifer Paris is officially a one-off. Goodbye, darling – it was fun while it lasted.
Now I’m All Jeffe, All the Time.
Let’s get this party started.