Meet Pat Ballard:
Queen of Rubenesque Romances

by Lisa Klobucar, Regular Contributor to Elegant Plus Magazine

Elegant Plus  is pleased to have author Pat Ballard share some of her work and wisdom with us. Pat has written such novels as, Abigail’s Revenge and A Worthy Heir.  Her central female characters are BBW’s.  Pat, who is the self proclaimed, “Queen of Rubenesque Romances” writes witty, romantic tales of men and women who struggle and fall in love. If you are looking for a time out, these are novels that are the perfect escape.

EP: In Abigail’s Revenge, the central character, Abigail is a Plus-size woman. You have the male character Desh, describe her rounded, full frame and her beauty, “…don’t ever be ashamed of your beauty. Don’t run from it. You are a beautiful woman.”

Do you feel that larger women tend to shy away from their curves, their beauty over all?

PB: I think, in most cases, it’s very hard for larger women to accept and believe that they can be beautiful. On a daily basis, we’re told that we can’t be beautiful if we aren’t tall, thin and young.

EP: When writing Abigail’s Revenge, did you have someone in mind for the character of Abigail or was she a product of a fertile and active imagination?

PB: Abigail was mostly a product of my imagination. I wrote the prologue of Abigail’s Revenge one day, just “playing around” with a different writing style. Just to prove that I could write in a more “mysterious” voice than I usually do. I liked the prologue, so I sent it to several reading friends and their reaction was very strong. So I decided to tell Abigail’s story.

EP: The characters within Abigail’s Revenge are rather startled to see Abigail’s new larger frame. Yet, Abigail feels good being a larger woman and makes no apologies for her larger voluptuous figure. Do you feel that Plus-size women need to take a stand for themselves and accept who they are size and all?

PB: Abigail knew a lot of hunger in her childhood, so when she was sent to prison and started having regular meals, her body sought and found its natural fullness. So Abigail couldn’t grasp the concept that she should make herself hungry again by dieting just to be skinny like she used to be. And that’s the point I was trying to bring out to my readers. Each of us has our own mold that our bodies fight to maintain. When we diet, 99% of us gain it right back if we aren’t hungry. So, yes, each of us should accept the size we are, look the world in the face and say, “Hello! This is me! I’m not apologizing for who I am. And I’m not changing who I am just because society thinks I should.”

 EP: The lead female characters in, Abigail’s Revenge and A Worthy Heir are Plus-size women who face personal and emotional obstacles by other characters within  the book due to their size. Do you feel that larger women are treated in a similar fashion say within the workplace, their homes, or in general by society overall?

PB: Yes. I use these other characters in my books to bring out the issues that larger women face. I always have the “opposition” character that I use as the mouthpiece of what we hear and have to deal with every day in our society.

EP: Your books have an underlying tone of self-acceptance and even on your website you have, “10 Steps to Loving your Body”.  Do you feel that in today’s thin-centric society it is important for women of any size to wave their self acceptance banners and proclaim, “I like who I am?”

PB: In two of my books, Nobody’s Perfect and A Worthy Heir, my heroines come into the story as self-confident women. There’s a lot of “me” in those heroines. In three of my books, His Brother’s Child, Wanted: One Groom and Abigail’s Revenge, I’ve brought the heroines into the story not quite as confident. The reason I did this is because I wanted to address some of the issues that most of us have had to deal with, or are still dealing with when it comes to self-acceptance. But what I try to accomplish at the end of my books is to have all my heroines, and hopefully the reader, feeling so good about themselves that they want to walk out into the street and shout, “Hey world! I like me just the way I am!” No matter what size they are. My goal is to remind all women… of any and every size that we’re okay just the way we are.

EP: What inspired you to write about larger characters in your novels?  Do you feel that any of your characters are a personal reflection of yourself?

PB: I discovered romance novels when I was a teenager. My favorite author, at the time, was Emily Loring. I loved her books because they weren’t just romance novels. They also had wonderful “life-messages” written into the story. I knew I wanted to write novels, but I wanted my novels to have a message that would make the reader feel better about themselves when they’d finished my book(s). But at the time, and until I was 33 years old, I was busy starving myself, trying to stay thin.

After I stopped dieting and decided to love whatever body that developed from eating healthily and exercising moderately, I realized that there was no representation of us “big girls” in the media, movies, or books. Then, one day, that proverbial light bulb went off over my head… romance novels with Big Beautiful Heroines. I immediately started my first novel with a Big Beautiful Heroine, Nobody’s Perfect.

Actually, I think all my heroines have a little of me in them. After all, they’re seeing the world through my eyes.

EP:  Do you have any words of wisdom or self encouragement you would like to pass onto other women who read your books?

PB: Just like a snowflake, each one of us is unique. Each one of us is a one-of-a-kind work of art. There never has been, nor will  there ever be another individual like us. So we don’t have the right not to love ourselves.__________________________

 In addition to romance novels Pat is working on her first non-fiction book, 10 Steps To Loving Your Body, that should be in print by late spring or early summer. If you would like to know more about Pat Ballard and other works by her, please visit her web site.

Popularity: 19% [?]

 What Readers are saying about Patrick Sanchez and The Way It Is:
 
 ”This book is drama drama drama from start to finish…..You’ll find it hard to put down and if you read it in public you’ll find people staring at you for laughing out loud.”
 
 ”… It was so refreshing to read a book about two truly large women and see how each one of them handled it so differently. The book was hilarious, well written, and has a great ending. BUY IT!“

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Book Review: The Way It Is

By Jen Henderson of Dangerously Curvy Novels for Elegant Plus Magazine

Heroine’s Body Types: Varied

 They don’t know it but they are on a collision course with each other, three women who will change each other’s lives:

           Rubenesque Ruby wants to be thin and craves her mother’s and society’s acceptance almost as much as she does food.  But every time these opposing desires start bickering in her head, the food demons win out and she finds herself agonizing as each bite she consumes carries her farther away from her size six ideal.  Anxious to love something other than food Ruby fixes her eye on her gorgeous coworker, but her low self esteem keeps her from trying to reach out to him.  Or to any man she wants.  Up until this point the peaks of her romantic experiences have been flatter than Kansas, and the only men in her life now are her lackluster ex-hubby and her gay pal.

           Bootylicious Wanda is anxious to make it big in the plus modeling world, but she has three strikes against her: size, age, and race.   Add to that a snotty, rich, daddy’s girl coworker who undermines her at every turn, Wanda will be lucky not to wind up in the slammer for wringing the chick’s neck.

            Luscious Simone is dying to get out of the local TV news racket and into the limelight of the entertainment industry.  Literally.  She even figures the notoriety of leaving behind a trail of boy toys might add to her cachet.  But she’s got tunnel vision where her career is concerned and doesn’t see that her life is unraveling around the edges.  Living fast and furious might be her ticket to the top–or to six feet underground.

What worked for me:

This book has a great cover!  It’s sexy and sassy, colorful and eye-catching.  And most importantly it doesn’t downsize the big girls.

            The story is funny, has interesting characters, good plot twists, and a great if not completely pat (the way I like it) ending.  Yet it takes the time to insert insightful comments on various social issues rather than deliver up pure fluff.

           The characters have some flaws that render them unlikable at times, but it’s these same flaws which make them leap off the page with realism.  (The author also did a great job nailing down the behavior and  innermost thoughts of an unhappy-to-be-fat woman.)

            Size-wise Ruby and Wanda were abundant and Simone was petite but shapely.

What didn’t work for me:

I slurped this story down in one sitting.  So honestly, the few technical issues I saw barely registered with me as I was so anxious to keep cruising along.

Overall:

The Way It Is  is: . . . outrageous!  You’ll laugh, cry, and possibly throw a few things while reading this book. Don’t miss it!

Popularity: 19% [?]

  An Interview with Author Patrick Sanchez:  The Way It Is

by Elegant Plus Magazine

    Elegant Plus Managing Editor, Thea Politis, takes a few minutes to chat with Patrick Sanchez, the hot author who penned the voluptuous and entertaining current  Chick Lit hit  The Way It Is .    A native of the Washington, D.C. area he currently lives in Arlington, VA with his daschund, Gomez.  He loves to hear from his readers and you can drop him a line at:  PO Box 4493, Falls Church VA 22044.

EP: Patrick, glad to have you here. Tell us a little about what led you to write novels from the perspective of a woman, let alone a plus size woman?  And how do you get so well into their/our heads?

PS:  I actually sort of fell into writing from the perspective of women.  I wrote my first novel, Girlfriends, when I was still in my twenties and part of the whole bar scene.  I spent so much time in different bars and nightclubs and thought it would be fun to write about how ridiculous the single’s scene was and that’s where Girlfriends came from.  But originally Girlfriends was more about both women and men making they’re way and finding romance; however, when I sold the manuscript to Kensington Publishing, they requested that I work it into more of a women’s fiction, Sex and The City-type book (now referred to as “Chick-Lit”).  They thought the book would be more marketable that way.  So I did as I was told and scaled back the male characters and beefed up the female characters.  Luckily, Girlfriends was a success, so I decided to stay in the genre when I wrote my second novel, but I wanted to do something a little different.

When I started The Way It Is, I was in my thirties and rarely saw the inside of bars or nightclubs anymore.  I had grown out of the whole club scene and wanted to write about more mature characters (the characters in Girlfriends are in their twenties while the characters in The Way It Is are in their thirties).  I’d read a few books about large woman and noticed that most of them ended with the heroine losing vast amounts of weight and then finding love and having her whole life come together.  I thought it would be fun to write a book where the heroine never loses weight but, instead, learns to love herself for who she is.

I’m not sure how I “get so well into women’s heads” or if I even do.  Believe it or not, there is so much of me in all my characters.  I did do a lot of research and interviews when writing The Way It Is, but most of who the characters are just came from my gut and my instincts about how they would react in certain situations.

EP: Are your characters in The Way It Is drawn from real life people? If so, whom?

PS: I think all writers borrow traits and personalities from real life people and weave bits and pieces into our characters.  None of the characters are based on any one real-life person, but they do share some traits of people I know.  Although, like I mentioned earlier, there is more of me in all the characters than anyone else.  A lot of my own life and personal struggles where channeled into Ruby.  I thought a lot of Queen Latifah when I was writing about Wanda as both Queen Latifah and Wanda are confident and beautiful plus-size African American women.  I thought about Jennifer Lopez too when I wrote about Simone.  I certainly have no knowledge of Jennifer Lopez having an eating disorder, but I think she and Simone share the same raw determination to succeed.

EP: Ruby, one of your main characters, in the opening scene is enduring what has clearly been a lifetime of put downs about her size from her own mother. This is something many plus women can relate to. What is it about our  society, do you think, that makes this sort of cruel behavior towards our loved ones acceptable?

PS:  I think it’s all about equating being thin with being healthy and happy.  Even though their words hurt, I think loved ones may think they are ultimately helping their fat family members or friends by motivating them to lose weight.  I also think there is this misconception that it’s okay to degrade fat people because fat people “choose to be fat,” that it’s “their fault” and “if they just had some self control they could lose weight.”

EP: Not only are your main characters in different head spaces in regards to their weight — Ruby battles self-esteem issues and related “feel good” closet eating, Wanda is supremely confident in her own skin, and Simone is a once fat, skinny girl who battles her fear of becoming fat again — but they are also each of different races: Caucasian, African-American, and Latina, respectively.  Do you think that any of these weight related behaviors are typical of one American sub-culture or ethnicity or another?  Or were you trying to draw characters to which almost any woman in America could relate?

PS:  I absolutely wanted to draw characters to which almost any woman in America could relate, but at the same time I think there are some cultural differences related to size.  Although I know a number of African American women who diet themselves to death to try and be thin, it does seem that a larger number of plus-size black women seem to be comfortable with their size.  And it’s been my experience that large African American women are much more likely than their white counter parts to dress in sexy revealing clothes.

EP:  What was the significance of including the gay guy pal in the story? The gay community often struggles with many of the same “buff body” ideals that  women do in our society.  Is this significant?

PS:  Absolutely!  Not only are gay men just as obsessed with body image as straight women.  Gay men and fat women seem to share a bond.  It’s like gay men and Cher…for whatever reason where ever you find gay men, you find fat women.  We are both often treated badly by society, misunderstood, and crazy loons are always trying to make us into something we are not…something/someone that fits their ideals and complies with their agenda.

EP:  Do you like the artwork on the cover of your book? Does it capture the essence of your characters in the way you envisioned them?

PS: There are things about the cover art that I do like and things about it that I wasn’t thrilled with.  I like the bright yellow background and, although she is portrayed as impossibly thin (her neck is as big as her waist), the artist’s rendition of Simone was pretty much dead on; however, in my mind, I pictured both Ruby and Wanda much larger than they appeared on the cover.  I’m glad they were not represented as stick figures.  At least they appear as voluptuous women, but I still would have liked them to have been larger.

EP:  Your first novel, Girlfriends was a huge success.  And The Way It Is  looks like it is following suit. What was the difference in your experience in getting the two published?  How did you get the interest of the publishers the first time out?

PS:  When I finished the manuscript for Girlfriends (which I had called Misery & Company when I was shopping it around), I sent query letters and the first few pages of the manuscript to several agents with no luck.  After a little retooling, I contacted some additional agents and actually approached some publishers directly.  This time around I got some interest from two agents (in addition to about 30 rejects), but I also got a direct offer from Kensington Publishing.  The advance was tiny, but I was so thrilled to find a publisher I immediately accepted their offer.

When I was ready to shop around an outline for The Way It Is (after you publish one book you can usually get an advance based on just an outline for later ones) I hired an agent to represent me and negotiate my contract.  This time around the advance was much more substantial and the terms of the contract were much better.

EP: Thanks for chatting with us Patrick!  Readers, , if you like Chick-Lit, this one is a must read! To learn a little bit more about Patrick Sanchez, you can also stop by his web-site.

 NOTE:  Since this interview was first published in 2003, Patrick Sanchez has gone on to write Once Upon a Nervous Breakdown and Tight. 

Check out the hilariously funny  Once Upon a Nervous Breakdown Video below!

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=q89ijBycfHI]

Popularity: 23% [?]

  REVIEW: Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
Reviewed by Jen Henderson of Dangerously Curvy Novels

Heroine: tall and plump

Spirited entertainment journalist Cannie Shapiro is completely floored when her “ex” boyfriend lands a plum job writing for Moxie magazine, and subsequently uses their former love life as fodder for his new column.  How dare he publicly expound upon his trials and tribulations of “loving a larger woman”?! 

Heartbroken and confused, normally sassy Cannie, who was only looking to take a break from their relationship, finds herself wandering through the achingly familiar territory of abandonment once more.

  What will it take for Cannie’s emotional inner compass to stop spinning in crazy circles and finally point to happiness and true love once again?

What worked for me:

    I thought that this was a delightful peek into the sometimes painful life and mind of a curvy young American woman, who is struggling to remain sane while carrying around a ton of emotional baggage.  Although she was a deeply-flawed character, I felt sympathetic towards her and was glad to see her finally begin to grow by the end of the novel.

      Some other characters worth noting were: Cannie’s divorced-”turned”-lesbian mom, who made a pretty good foil for her angst-ridden daughter by providing an example of a larger woman who’s gotten herself together, and the handsome, helpful doctor from the weight loss clinic who kindly offered Cannie his support when he discovered that she was “C.” from the Moxie articles.   ( I also loved the anecdote about the history of Cannie’s odd little dog and how he got his name.)

      And how refreshing was it that it was the guy who was the inexperienced half of the couple for a change?!

      Size-wise, well… it was hard for me to really picture Cannie.  She described herself as feeling as though she was rather abundant, but then tacked on the fact that she was quite tall and a size 16.  I know that in our society any woman bigger than a single digit size is considered “large”, but I think that a tall, large-framed size 16 woman sounds healthy and lovely, like Valkyrie supermodel and fashion correspondent Emme.

What didn’t work for me:    

     Some folks might find a few plot points in the story to be predictable and perhaps even a little unbelievable. (The Hollywood scenes, for example.)  But it was all right by me.  I enjoy a big-girl-makes-good “comfort” read as much as the next gal.

     Perhaps not everyone will care for Cannie’s constant reflections upon her weight, but her actions and attitudes are typical for a lot of women in Western society, especially when there’s some other emotionally painful situation at hand for them to (not) deal with.  And for those who feel her self-effacing is excessive and merely for the sake of drama, I can honestly say that it is not.   This book just barely scratches the surface of that societal condition known informally as “girl disease”. (This is not to say that men do not experience similar feelings.  They certainly do.  But this particular slang terminology stems from how publicly vocal women are with their feelings about fatness, and eavesdropping in any restaurant, department store fitting room, or public restroom will bear testimony to this fact.)

Overall:

   “Good in Bed” is a witty, bittersweet Singleton faerie-tale that reads quickly but stays with you long after you finish it.

Warning: there is some coarse language, a few steamy scenes, and some discussion of lesbianism in this book.

Special Note:  I’m glad that I have finally read and reviewed this particular book, because it is the one that started my quest for plus-size literature.  I saw a review on it in MODE magazine and found myself wondering if there were more stories of this sort around.  That innocent thought has led me through nearly a year and a half of querying authors, readers, librarians, and publishers. 

Popularity: 7% [?]