Inaugural Tiger Beat Crush of the Week: Danny Pino

I'm not sure why, but I'm feeling a little depressed today. So maybe this is a good time to start the promised Tiger Beat Crush of the Week feature*. Because hot men make me happy.

First, a little background: Since I was a little girl madly in love with David Selby, who played Quentin Collins on Dark Shadows (okay, I just dated myself), and writing really awful fanfiction with him as the hero, I've appreciated a good-looking guy. My crushes have been many, because I'm a teenybopper at heart and I always will be. BTW, you can expect a Hall of Fame TBCotW post on Mr. Selby someday very soon, because he really WAS my first Tiger Beat crush, TB magazine photos on the wall and all. 

My wonderful husband Mr. Bud accepts this about me, because he knows he will always be my firstest and bestest love (and probably because I let him look at boobacious actresses to make up for it). So we're cool. He just rolls his eyes and goes on about his business when I start my squealing.

The girls I work with (Pam, Cathy, and Angela, the previously-mentioned Girls of Megacube) think my crushes are a riot, and they've been after me to start a Tiger Beat Crush of the Week feature for ages. They just don't understand that it's all about the art, not about the lust--as you might remember me saying in an earlier post, I often use my crushes as models for the heroes in my writing. So really, I'm not shallow--okay, wait, let me stop giggling. I'm not shal...oh, hell, I can't keep a straight face. Yes, it's all about the hotness with me. 

So let's kick off the Tiger Beat Crush of the Week series with the extremely hot guy I picture as the hero of my work in progress: Danny Pino (Danny Pino - IMDB).

You may remember Danny P as the extremely hot, angsty, and unable-to-keep-it-in-his-pants detective Scotty Valens on Cold Case (I love that show! Best use of music ever, and I cry at the end of every episode). He currently plays the extremely hot, somewhat angsty detective, father, and husband (but I'm laying bets that marriage isn't gonna make it in season 14) Nick Amaro on Law & Order: SVU. Yes, he's Chris Meloni's replacement, if you're a Stabler fan. Sorry about that. But not really, because it keeps Danny P on my screen every week. 

I first saw Danny Pino as I channel-surfed past L&O:SVU one Saturday night when there was nothing else on TV. I'd never watched the show before, but my first thought when I saw  him was, "Ooh! Hot Latino detective! Pretty! I'm watching this!" What can I say? I'm a sucker for dark-haired, dark-eyed men like my own Mr. Bud.

Well, I not only got hooked on the show, I got hooked on Danny Pino, too, and systematically began searching out everything I could find with him in it. I was pleased to discover that he's a darn good actor. BTW, latest DP discovery: Flicka. The movie is meh and I want to slap the spoiled teenaged heroine silly, but it has Maria Bello, who rocks, in it--and best of all, Danny P has a shirtless scene. Yes, my shallowness knows no bounds. And that link with the shirtless photo is an awesome Danny Pino site, btw. Not that I go there much. Shut up.

But even more than the uncontrollable drooling he induces in me, know what I like the best about Danny P? I mean beside the fact that this Cuban-American makes my knees weak, especially when he speaks Spanish on Cold Case in that lovely deep voice of his?  (That's a YouTube clip that'll show you what I mean. Es muy sexyyyy, to quote a very articulate commenter there.)

I like that he's (from all accounts) an extremely nice guy, that he's close to his family, that he's a good dad to his two little boys, and that he remembers where he came from by giving back to his community. Most of all, I like that his wife, who is his junior high sweetheart, is not a Botoxed, anorexic starlet-slash-bimbo and yet he appears to be absolutely nuts about her. Take THAT, you society with unrealistic expectations of what a real woman is, you!

Personally, I think his wife is adorable (see the YouTube clip below, and this photo)--she's short, she's a little rounded in all the right places, just like the rest of us, and she looks like someone who'd be fun to hang out with. She'd fit right in as a Girl of Megacube. Hmm...I guess I need to add Lilly Pino to my list of girl crushes (yes, I have those too, but they're more the "I want to be like her when I grow up" variety).

Anyway, back to Lilly's yummy husband, his is the face I see and the voice I hear as I write the character of Daniel Joseph Esposito, Manhattan real estate broker extraordinaire, love interest of heroine Kelly Reid, and hero of the third book, which I'm writing now (in a future post, I'll tell you more about the book and its other characters, and talk a little more about how I "cast" the characters I write. Right now, we just care about Dan).

Dan Esposito was the secondary love interest in the first book Shelley and I wrote, not the hero. We wrote him (and I have to give a lot of the credit to Shelley, since she developed the bio for his character) as the quintessential Italian bad boy and heartbreaker--a metrosexual-but-manly confirmed bachelor (and a good, loving son, because we ladies all have a soft spot for those guys) who will never settle down.

Since the book as it was didn't appear to be destined for publication, and Dan consistently ended up being most people's favorite character--in fact, Shelley and I both liked him better than our hero, which should have told me something right there--we completely trashed the storyline and I came up with a new story. The original hero exited stage left (maybe to be resurrected some day when he's not overshadowed by Dan Esposito, Super Broker, maybe not), and Dan moved into the spotlight as the new hero. 

My original model for Dan was Mark Consuelos, Kelly Ripa's husband, who is also a handsome, charming devil and will be a future TBCotW ("Who won't?" I can hear the Girls of Megacube hooting). But almost the second I saw Danny Pino I knew he was the new Dan Esposito I needed, and just that quickly Dan was recast in my head (sorry, Mark). To me, Danny P has the additional gravitas, depth, and alpha masculinity needed for the more mature, morally conflicted, ready-to-settle-down Dan Esposito.

So do yourself a favor and check out some of Danny Pino's work (especially Cold Case. Scotty Valens and Lilly Rush = my favorite TV cop team ever. 

But bring some Kleenex, because I am NOT kidding about the crying every episode). 

And Danny, I promise, as soon as the book is finished and published, and the movie rights are sold and the screenplay is done (wow, it's so pretty here in my happy place, isn't it?), I'll send you the script. You you don't even have to audition--the part of Dan Esposito is yours. Just make sure you bring your Lilly with you on location, and while you're filming the Girls of Megacube will take her to lunch at our favorite restaurant (known fondly among us as Crack Salsa). We'll even have a special Crafty Day in her honor and make our special dishes for her. We're a really fun group; I think she'll fit in just fine.

*Sorry there are only links, rather than photos. There seems to be a rash of legal action being taken against bloggers who insert photos into their posts, even if they credit the photographers. So better safe, as they say.

Sweat, Determination, and...Delusion?

"A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work." 

--Colin Powell

I'll admit, the hard work that writing actually is was a bit of a surprise to me when I started writing fiction. But it was work I took to immediately--it's the first "job" (non-paying at the moment, of course) I've ever had where I'm happier the harder I work. I'm like a pig in mud, as they say, when it comes to learning more about the craft of writing, which I've done through reading, taking classes, joining professional associations, networking with other writers, and going to conferences. It's a LOT of work, and it takes up a lot of my time (ask poor Mr. Bud, again, the most patient of the patient). And I love every minute of it...

...even though sometimes (okay, lots of times) it seems like I'll never pay back my investment of all this time and effort. I still despair that my work will never be good enough to be published, because there's just too much to learn and it's all so contradictory and confusing.

But once in a while, I'll read back over a paragraph or section--or even a whole chapter--I've written, and I'm shocked by how good it is because I've subconsciously applied something I've learned in my studies, and I think, "Wow. Maybe I do have a chance of being published one day!" Then I read something I did that absolutely sucks and think, "Or not." And that's when I realize--the reward in my writing may very well have to be my own personal one, and even if I never get published, maybe I can at least leave some really, really good manuscripts that my nieces (and nephew, but I don't think he's much of a chick book reader) can read and say, "You know what? Aunt Linda was an amazing writer!"

Oh, well, live in hope, die in despair as an obviously cynical friend of mine used to say.

One thing I think (hope) I'll never be, though is as deluded as this little guy. And if I am, you hereby have permission to smack some sense into me.

So You Want to Write a Novel - YouTube

Back to (Blog) Life

Wow, I forgot I even had this blog (as you can tell by the five-year gap in posts). But since I need a blog to link to my in-development writer's site, this one will do just fine.

Lots has happened in the five years since I wrote my last post. I started a new job as a marketing writer, and am now also the managing editor of my division's client magazine, circulation 36,000 (love, love, LOVE that part of the job--I can set my inner control freak free). The jerk of a downstairs neighbor I referred to in my first post moved out a few months ago, so the world has (to its unending gratitude, I'm sure) been deprived of my rants about how the space he takes up in the universe would be better given to someone who actually has a soul; warnings about how, if Mr. Bud and I turn up dead, to check downstairs first; and my promises that, if said neighbor was sprawled on the side of the road injured and bleeding with vultures pecking his eyes out, I'd wave cheerily and drive on by. Ooh, there, see? You've just been caught up on it all in the Cliff Notes version. Less angst for you, residual catharticism (yes, I like to make up words) for me.

Most important (well, to me, anyway), I've started writing again. For a few years after my mom became ill, and especially after she passed away in 2006, other than my writing for work I just couldn't pick up a pen. Er, keyboard. 

But in mid-2010 my friend Shelley and I cooked up a scheme to write a fluffy chick lit-type book (she'd plot, I'd write). And we actually finished it! Sent it out to agents and everything! Only to find out that chick lit is supposedly dead! So it didn't get published! And rightfully so, looking back on it! But hey, I wrote, and--most importantly for the Queen and Almighty Supreme Empress of The Kingdom of Startem and Dropem--completed a freakin' book! And then wrote and finished a second one! And actually plotted about half of this one myself! And I'm starting to query on it as we speak! And now, I'm working on a third one! That's a total trash and rewrite of the first one! Which had some great characters, but all the agent feedback we got on it said the story was way too cliched! And it was!

So there will be updates coming on not only the progress of the second book's queries, but on the third book's development. And lots more, too. For instance, at the suggestion of my work posse, Pam, Cathy, and Angela (aka The Girls of Megacube--the 2013 calendar will be on sale soon, guys), I want to start a regular feature we've dubbed "Linda's Tiger Beat Crush of the Week," in which I will channel my inner 50+-year-old teenybopper and highlight my current celebrity crush (I have lots of them, not to mention an EXTREMELY patient and tolerant and wonderful husband, the aforementioned Mr. Bud, who will probably be the subject of future posts, too, heh, heh, heh, thank God he's not much of an online guy). My celebrity crushes in many cases are the inspiration for the characters in my writing, so when the books are finally published you can already have a picture of them in your mind (and trust me--they're all hot, because I have REALLY good taste. You're welcome).

Oh, and I may even include some non-mind-meltingly fluffy posts, for those of you who prefer some substance with your drivel.

So we have lots of fun planned, kids. Make sure you tune in regularly. This time, I promise it won't be five years till the next post.