The Bachelor by J.D. Ruiz was inspired by the popular reality TV show of the same name, where dozens of contestants compete to win the affections of one highly eligible guy.

One competition, one man, twenty-five women, and a bet. Zachary Astor wanted to be the Bachelor for one purpose alone: to prove to his friends that he can ditch twenty-five women without ever looking back at any of them. But will he be able to keep his word when he meets Julianne Grey, the only woman who seems to regret being in the competition? Despite what he thinks, Zachary will find his thoughts preoccupied by the weird, silent, and mysterious girl he keeps giving a rose to, much to his own amazement and her disappointment.

It all started with a bet.

“I’m serious man, if you ditch twenty-five women, I will believe everything you said,” Liam uttered, looking his friend in the eyes. “You’re telling me love is trash, right?”

“Exactly,” Zach nodded, tipping his bottle of beer towards his friend. “And that’s why I’m going to take your bet seriously.”

Liam raised his eyebrows. “You are?”

“You bet I will,” he said proudly. “Okay, you don’t believe me?” he straightened on his chair, but before he turned his full attention back on the topic, he winked at the blonde lady sitting just three stools away from them. “Okay, you don’t believe me?” he repeated, turning his head back towards his friend.

“Sort of,” Liam answered, more like provoking him than doubting his words though.

He leaned closer, his head bent. “I’m going to prove to you that I can ditch women without glancing back at any of them. And I’m going to do that on national television,” he grinned at his friend’s appalled look.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to be the next Bachelor,” he pointed at the television screen at the bar. “Hell, I’ll embarrass myself—and probably lose a few gals for it—just to prove to you, that I, Zachary Astor, can ditch twenty-five women.”

“You’re not really kidding, are you?” Liam seemed to have finally realized that he was not fooling around.

“Of course I’m not. In fact, I will set the rules myself,” he grinned wickedly and counted with his fingers, “There will be twenty-five women in that damn competition, right?” his friend nodded and he continued, “I will not choose anyone by the end of the season—not one—and I will not go after any of the girls after the show ends.” He looked at his friend straight in the eye to show how serious he was. “You hear me? I’m going to ditch those women and I will not meet one of them after I’m done. And you know how hot the women who join, right?”

“I don’t know man, I think you’re going to lose this one,” Liam said after a while.

“Why?”

“Because you might just meet The One?”

“Oh, come on, that’s why I’m doing this, right? To prove to you that there is no The One,” he smiled and gulped down his beer and when he saw his friend’s doubtful look, he sighed and took his phone from the back of his jeans pocket. “See this? I’m going to call some people.”

“Okay, I was just joking around, man. You don’t have to be serious—”

He held up one finger to silence his friend, placing his phone against his ear. “Yes, Jeffrey, this is Zach Astor, yes, yes, I’m fine. So, I’m wondering if you have any idea about who the next Bachelor is. Yes, I’m talking about the show…” he winked at his gaping friend as the man on the other end answered his questions. Just for suspense, he stood up and walked away for a few moments, talking with Jeffrey.

He was grinning from ear to ear when he came back and sat back on his stool. He held his beer to his mouth, as his friend asked, “Well?”

“My friend, I will be the next Bachelor. And I’m going to ditch twenty-five women.”

Click here to read all of The Bachelor on Wattpad.

Post from: Crushable

A new e-book published by addiction recovery site The Fix contains many never-before-seen stories about Courtney Love‘s life and struggles with addiction, many of them told directly to the author by Courtney herself,

As you might imagine, the stories are alternately sad and funny. Courtney was good at math when she was on crack! Courtney bought Dr. Phil‘s house and couldn’t sell it! Courtney hangs out with Sam Lufti, that creepy guy who used to manage Britney Spears! But perhaps the saddest part of the book details her eroding relationship with daughter Frances Bean Cobain, who took out a temporary restraining order on her in 2009.

In details from the (previously sealed) deposition papers, Frances described what it was like to live with Courtney as her caretaker. In a word: bad.

She took her on field trips to yell at her ex boyfriend’s house:

In a sworn statement to the court on December 10, 2009, Frances recalled accompanying her mother to the home of a former boyfriend, James Barber, years earlier. “She took me in a taxi to his house in the middle of the night, and from outside the house, in her bare feet, she screamed at him, threw rocks at the house, and threatened to burn his house down. His children were inside the house, but that did not stop my mother.”

She’d get really jazzed up about her claims of “fraud,” which Frances seems to think are, themselves, fraudulent:

“My mother is obsessed with uncovering fraud and spends much of her day raging about the fraud that has been perpetrated on her and on me,” her statement continued. “She incessantly rages about her many theories relating to the supposed incidences of ‘fraud.’ She slams doors, breaks things, stomps around the hotel or apartment and spends hours on the phone, yelling.”

She’s dependent on prescription drugs and occasionally starts fires:

Love “has taken drugs for as long as I can remember. She basically exists now on…Xanax, Adderall, Sonata and Abilify, sugar and cigarettes. She rarely eats….She often falls asleep in her bed while she is smoking, and I am constantly worried that she will start a fire (which she has done at least three times) that will threaten our lives.”

According to the deposition, she also threatened to jump off a balcony and commit suicide while her daughter watched. But perhaps the most heart wrenching detail is the assertion that not one, but two of Frances’ pets died entirely preventable deaths under Courtney’s watch. Died. And I’m not just talking turtles, but a cat and a dog:

Frances further claimed that her cat died after getting entangled in piles of Etsy fabrics, boxes of paperwork, trash and other possessions, and that a dog died after swallowing a pile of Love’s pills. In addition to keeping Courtney away from Frances, Frances’ grandmother and Frances’ aunt, the restraining order also prevents Courtney from contact with Frances’s dog, Uncle Fester.

Etsy fabrics she may or may not have paid for! This all begs the question: how the hell did Frances Bean survive to adulthood? The girl must have some amazing instincts.

(Via The Fix)

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• Courtney Love Is Getting Evicted From Her Townhouse For Treating It Very Badly
• Questionable Choices: Courtney Love Wears A Wedding Dress To The Young Adult Premiere
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The Internet is abuzz today with the realization that Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother has written, and is about to publish, a memoir called One Big Blissful Thing that’s about taking ayahuasca with a shaman in the rainforest of Brazil. The book’s description has actually been up online for a while now, but it’s flown remarkably under the radar until now.

Here is how the book’s publisher describes it on Amazon (not to be confused with the Amazon, harr harr):

The story of one man’s unlikely spiritual awakening—this is Eat, Pray, Love for those who would rather be reading McSweeney’s.

Josh Radnor grew up in Ohio. He was driven to school in a big yellow bus. He watched The Cosby Show and John Hughes movies. He also went on to become a successful actor in Hollywood. How then, in 2007, did he end up drinking an indigenous plant medicine called ayahuasca with a shaman in Brazil?

I’m pretty sure it’s not as huge a leap as the book description thinks to go from “successful actor in Hollywood” to “New Age spirituality drug tourist.” In fact, I’m pretty sure successful Hollywood actors are some of the only Americans with the time, money, and taste for appropriating the religions of other cultures to actually go and do a thing like this. And “Eat, Pray, Love for those who would rather be reading McSweeney’s” is makes about as much sense as “Kelly Clarkson for those who would rather be listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor,” but the important thing is this: Josh Radnor is not a square, you guys. He consumed an ancient hallucinogenic vine with a shaman in the rainforest of Brazil, and it changed his whole goddamn life. Perhaps it was even the key that unlocked his gripping, tour de force performances on How I Met Your Mother. Read the book and let me know, okay?

(Via Gawker)

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• First Look: Katie Holmes As The Slutty Pumpkin On How I Met Your Mother‘s Halloween Episode

Post from: Crushable

Don’t get me wrong—even though I proudly read my Kindle on the way to work, I honor books. That said, I’m more tickled than scandalized at art projects like this one by UK artist Kyle Kirkpatrick: He takes old books and carves new landscapes into them. Out of yellowing pages he makes caves and wells simply by cutting away various layers.

Then, to complete the illusion, he inserted tiny figures to explore the nooks and crannies he’d created. It’s really mesmerizing to look at. And anyway, it was an old encyclopedia; that’s what you’ve got Wikipedia for. (Kidding!) Better that than a novel, anyway.

[Colossal via The Mary Sue]

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The novel, Actors Anonymous, will be published by Amazon and is supposed to be a fictionalized account of Franco’s trials and tribulations as an actor. He’s done everything else, so he might as well tackle this end of the art world as well.

However, since he’s made it clear with this last attempt that writing isn’t exactly his forte, we’ve decided to a make a list of 10 suggestions for the darling for which he may be better suited. Besides self-involved fawning, of course.

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• Video: Watch James Franco Pet His Monkey On General Hospital

Post from: Crushable

Today’s excerpt is from The Survivors by Amanda Havard. The book is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors.

On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, Sadie witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the world she’s sought to belong to and send her back to her Puritanical family.

When my cell phone started playing Chopin at 9:45 am, what seemed like an eternity had passed.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Corrina’s voice cooed over the phone.

“Hey, bride,” I said. “How’s the best day of your life going so far?”

“It’s going okay,” she said. “It would be better if you were here instead of twenty-five middle-aged women from my family who are poking and prodding me and trying to give me wedding night advice.” She laughed. I knew she wasn’t kidding, though.

“Want me to come over?” I asked. “I will neither poke nor prod, and I surely have no wedding night advice to give,” I said. “Scout’s honor.” As I said that last line, I wondered where I had picked that up. I knew what it meant, but I had no context for it.

“Would you really brave it? There are so many people here!” she said, stressed. It was clear, even over the phone, that she really needed me to come but didn’t want to come out and ask because she knew how I felt about being around a lot of people. Though I was using my talents to know this for sure, I could have guessed it just by knowing my best friend.

“I’d brave anything for you,” I said. I meant that. She smiled, I could tell. She also swallowed to hold back tears. I realized her emotions were running high. It was, after all, her wedding day. “Do I need to bring anything?” I asked.

“Hmm,” she said. “I wonder if… Hold on, Sadie.”

“Okay,” I said, not able to tell clearly what was going through her mind.

“Play along,” she breathed, almost too quietly for a normal person to hear.

“What?” I asked.

“Have you eaten breakfast yet, Sadie?” she asked, her voice louder and brighter now.

“Oh, I’m good…” I began, but Corrina cut me off.

“Oh, you haven’t? I’ve got some downtime here before we have to go to the salon. But we just ate here, so we can’t feed you. If you don’t mind picking me up, though, I can totally go with you to get something to eat,” Corrina said.

I finally understood and laughed. “Oh good, because I’m so starving and I couldn’t possibly find something to eat in this whole town by myself,” I said.

“You sure you don’t mind having to come out here to get me?” she said.

“Of course not, Corrina.” I was giggling. She had just clicked me onto speakerphone. “I don’t mind at all. I never get to see you, so I want some serious Rina/Sadie bonding time.” Corrina said, “Aww” and a few other female voices I didn’t recognize echoed.

“Now, Sadie, you listen here,” I heard Corrina’s mother’s voice. “Go find one of the boys staying at the hotel and tell them where y’all are going for breakfast. Tell them to make sure Felix does not go anywhere near there! He cannot see Corrina today, or we will call off the wedding, do you hear me?” Corrina sighed in the background, and I laughed.

“Will do,” I said. “Rina, I’ll be there in about ten minutes. I’m already dressed. I just need to find a boy.”

“Wonderful. Cole is in room 323. You could try that,” she said, pushing her agenda. I rolled my eyes. “Tell him to keep Felix away from Finney’s.”

“Got it. Thanks,” I said. “See you soon.”

Grabbing the hanging bag with my dress in it, my giant tote bag full of shoes and other things I might need at the wedding. Cole’s room was one floor down, and I took the stairs so I could move more quickly. I didn’t know how long Corrina would last.

I found room 323 and took a deep breath before I rapped twice on the door. A few moments later, it flew open. A very nice-smelling, clean, and still dripping-wet Cole was standing in front of me with only a towel wrapped around his tanned waist. With all my social anxiety, I had seriously underestimated the shape he was in; his body was phenomenally fit. He was gorgeous. He looked as surprised to see me standing at his door as I must have looked to see him half naked.

“Well, hello,” he said, his voice pleasant, almost cocky.

“I have a message for you,” I said as soon as I regained my faculties. Just like the night before, I couldn’t get a read on him. It was so frustrating.

“Oh?” he said. With one hand holding his towel—what I hoped was firmly—in place, and the other on the open door, he still managed to relax his posture and lean against the doorframe. He was flirting! Reading ability or no reading ability, he was definitely flirting.

“Corrina and I are going to breakfast,” I said.

“I see your attempts to claim her for yourself will never cease,” he joked. “Will you stand up and object at the wedding, or will you draw the line at that?”

His joke brought me back to the night before. I smiled, suddenly lighthearted. “I suppose I will let Felix have her,” I said. “We’re going to a place called Finney’s,” I said. “You’re supposed to make sure that Felix goes nowhere near it so they don’t see each other. This is your job. I leave it in your capable hands,” I said.

“Wait just a minute, sweetheart,” he cooed. Sweetheart? “I thought Finney’s was a lunch place.”

“I’ve never heard of it. For all I know, it could be a karaoke bar, but it’s where Corrina told me to keep Felix from going. And, by default, it’s where Corrina’s mom told me to tell you to keep Felix from going. Now can I go get the bride?”

“I suppose,” he said. He shook his head a little to clear the hair from his eyes. Then he dragged one of his hands through his saturated sandy brown locks. It was an absent-minded mannerism I’d seen him do a couple of times already.

“All right then,” I said, turning to go.

“Wait,” he said, reaching out to my arm. I had already turned to walk away, so I couldn’t see but wondered earnestly whether it was the towel or the door he had let go of to catch me. I wasn’t sure which I was hoping for. “If you’re going to play bride’s-right-hand today, and you came to me to control where Fefe goes, thereby sort of making me groom’s-right-hand, have you just made it so that we can’t possibly see each other all day?” he asked. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I hadn’t thought of it any way.

“Perhaps. Or,” I said, throwing him a bone, “maybe I made each of us the point person for our respective teams. That way no one talks to the opposite team except through us. So I may just have made it so that we’re going to see each other all day, no matter how much we wish we could avoid each other,” I joked. I was smiling broadly now. I couldn’t help it. He had roped me in.

“Really?” he said. His voice actually cracked.

“Maybe,” I said, deciding not to commit. It was the safest way. (How the humans were rubbing off on me!) I realized then that he was still holding my arm. He realized it at the same moment I did and dropped his hand.

“Well, see you soon then,” he said.

“Not if I see you first,” I said as I had already made it several doors away from his. I didn’t have to turn around to know that he watched me walk away until I was out of sight.

Read the rest of The Survivors here on Wattpad.

Post from: Crushable

Post from: Crushable

Today’s excerpt is from “Life’s A Witch” by Brittany Geragotelis. Coming out on December 8, the novel tells the story of Hadley Bishop, a modern day girl whose life has become irreversibly linked to her family’s history and the legendary Salem Witch Trials.

I don’t remember the drive home although I faintly recall someone—maybe it was Jinx or possibly even Jasmine—calling up the other cars which were a few minutes behind us and telling them that there was a change of plans and that we’d be driving back to my place instead. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever actually offered for everyone to come back to my house, but given the circumstances, I might’ve said just about anything to get away from the wreckage that used to be the construction warehouse.

There was so much wreckage.

As soon as I’d recognized exactly what it was I was looking at, I’d gone numb with fear. The place was a charred mess. Everything was burned to the ground, and what wasn’t completely incinerated, was covered in black soot, masking any proof of what had once been standing in its spot. What was once probably a large and impressive structure was now a depressed wasteland of torched and forgotten equipment. One look at the steaming acre of burnt wood and steel and I knew nothing had survived.

And no one.

Before I knew what I was doing, I began to stagger forward, stepping onto the weak remains, not realizing until I’d already walked a few feet, that the remnants were hot enough to melt the bottom of my shoes.

That’s when I knew that I was officially out of it. I was aware that my brand new Jimmy Choo’s were being destroyed and I didn’t even have the energy or peace of mind to stop walking. I kept moving forward, not even slowing as I slipped on the loose pieces below my feet. About twenty steps in, I slowed when something caught my eye amongst the sea of black.

It was something shiny and small.

I veered over to the right to see what had been reflecting off the light of the moon, and slowed as I approached where I thought it might have been coming from. The ground wasn’t as hot here and I crouched down, hoping to see a little better.

There it is again. Just a tiny hint of gold among the darkness.

I got down on my hands and knees, and began to pick up items and then tossed them onto what I assumed was the engine of a nearby tractor. Then again, it could have just as easily been a metal chest. It was sort of hard to tell in the dark.

I was clawing through the debris and starting to think that I might’ve been seeing things when my hand felt something cold and smooth hiding in the dust. Pulling my hand back from the mess, I knew from the feel of it that it was something on a chain. Either a necklace or a medal maybe. Pulling my scarf out of my hair, I spit on the object and begin to polish it. I briefly thought how disgusted my girlfriends would be to see me crawling around in the dirt and spit-shining trash, and then decided I didn’t care.

All I cared about was trying to figure out what the hell had happened here. And whether my worst fears had actually come true or if this was all some kind of unfortunate misunderstanding.

When I was sure I’d gotten the object in my hands as clean as I could without taking it to my jeweler, I tossed my scarf aside and held it up in front of me—and gasped.

It was a gold necklace, about an inch in size, thin and delicate. The medallion read, “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” and it hung from a fourteen-inch chain. In short, the piece was beautiful and obviously hand-made.

And completely familiar to me.

Because it was the same necklace that my mom had worn since as far back as I could remember. My dad and I had both bought her other jewelry—some expensive, some one-of-a-kind, one was even priceless—but she never took off the necklace featuring the quote from Ghandi. We teased her about it all the time and I even tried to steal it once while she was in the shower, but apparently she wore it there too.

Except she wasn’t wearing it now, because it was here in my hand, covered in soot and still warm from the fire. As I thought of what that meant, my hands fell to my sides and my head drooped to my chest defeated.

And that was when I officially checked out.

Read the novel on wattpad.com or buy it on Amazon, December 8.

Post from: Crushable

Sure, the official movie companion will have tidbits on the screenwriting, casting, and shooting, but what I’m really excited about is the “illustrated” part. Will we get to see artists’ renderings of Suzanne Collins‘ world? Because that’s the main thing I remember about the Star Wars fan books of my childhood.

For someone less concerned with the various districts of Panem and instead wanting to know all you can about the Games themselves, the Tribute Guide is what you need. Here’s what you can expect in the book, courtesy of Hollywood Crush:

…the Tributes’ journey from the Reaping to the Games, with a look at all the highlights along the way—the Tribute Parade, the stations of the Training Center, the interviews, and more. The book will include exclusive information about the Tributes’ strengths and weaknesses, their weapons of choice, and their experience in the Capitol before entering the arena.

However, I’d also like to point out another Hunger Games fan book: The Panem Companion, written by one of my fellow Fireside Chat podcast panelists V. Arrow. Set to be released in December 2012 by Smart Pop Books, it offers in-depth analyses of the characters’ upbringings, names, sexualities, and so forth, with a perspective that’s part academic and part diehard fan. I’ve got to say that as a fan, this is the book I’m most excited for.

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• The Capitol’s Creepy Beauty Standards In The Hunger Games Movie Remind Us Of Hollywood’s Plastic Surgery Obsession
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• Video: The Full-Length Hunger Games Trailer Looks Incredible

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Snooki‘s appearance on The Jimmy Kimmel Show last night was so close to satire that it made me think she might be playing just a little bit dumb for the cameras. I know, I know, some people are just not that smart, but listen: she pretty much claimed not to know books exist. Neither the books you must read to graduate high school, nor the most popular fictional series of the past decade. No books at all.

First, Jimmy Kimmel asked the (ugh) best-selling author how she manged to “write” three books in a year while it takes authors like J.K. Rowling three years to write just one book. (Granted, this was sort of an evil question to ask, because Rowling is a real author and Snooki is sort of assumed to have all her books ghostwritten.) “I don’t know who that is, but I’m here,” she replied. When told Rowling wrote Harry Potter (come on Snooks, even people who don’t read at all like Harry Potter, or at least know about it) she said, “oh, those movies are cool.” Is it just me, or did she show just a glimmer of a knowing smirk when she said that?

Then, she admitted that she doesn’t actually “write” her books, in the traditional sense of the word:

I can’t really type with these nails, I mean they’re pretty serious, so you know, I just talk it out on a recorder and that’s that.

Oh, girl. If the lady at my local DMV can type with those curling talons she has (I’ve seen it, it’s impressive), surely you can type with yours.

And lastly, the pièce de résistance of my “Snooki is pretending to be stupider than she is” theory. When Jimmy joked to her that she managed to use the word “friggin’” enough times in her book to break a record previously held by Maya Angelou, she said, “I don’t know who that is…I don’t know who anybody is!”

How can you attend high school in America and not know who Maya Angelou is?! I’m pretty sure it’s written into the charter of every school that you must read and analyze at least one Maya Angelou poem to graduate.

Additionally, in that infamous New York Times profile, Snooki claims to have only ever read two books: Twilight, and Dear John. I’m pretty sure you have to read more than two books in order to pass high school. I know some schools are so overwhelmed with problems that they let illiterate students slip through the cracks, but Snooki didn’t go to one of those. She grew up in a solidly middle class community and graduated from Marlboro High School in 2005, at least that’s what I’m told.

In conclusion, one of these things is true:

1.) Marlboro High School is a shitty, failing institution that regularly allows people to graduate without completing their coursework.

2.) Snooki was one of those smart slackers who is able to bullshit all their essays based on the Cliff’s Notes (doubtful).

3.) Snooki is lying about how few books she has read.

Which one do you think it is?

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Post from: Crushable