Guest Blogger Julie Cohen

I feel so popular...we get all the cool kids on our blog. Y'all welcome Julie Cohen and make her feel at home.

Ready to rock?

First, thank you ladies for having me here in the playground, and especially thank you to Problem Child who invited me here to talk about my long-running obsession.

I started my writing career in high school, in chemistry class with my best friend. We wrote a book together about us and the Beatles, circa 1965. She loved George Harrison and I loved Paul McCartney, and I’d write the bits about her and George, and she’d write the bits about Paul and me. We gave Ringo and John to two of our other friends, who weren’t writers but who liked to read. The plot was, I must admit, mostly a vehicle for lots and lots of sex scenes.

The best bit was writing a scene about Kathy and then passing it to her. Second best, but only very narrowly, was reading a scene that Kathy had written about me. The complete joy of giving someone a story from my own head, is still one of the most amazing things about writing for me.

After the Beatles, we wrote a story about us and the Monkees (I had Peter Tork, she had Davy Jones). Then--I’m sorry, but I must admit it, though it betrays our age--us and the New Kids on the Block (I had Joey McIntyre, she had Donnie Wahlberg).

Our writing interests wavered into different channels as we grew up; she wrote about vampires, I wrote about celebrity chefs. The musician-love never died, though: I moved to England and married a guitar-playing Englishman who works for rock stars.

Which made it useful when I had to do research for my latest release, HONEY TRAP.

A couple books before, in SPIRIT WILLING, FLESH WEAK, I’d introduced a character called Max DeMilo. Max was a former rock star, a guy who used to be famous in the 1980s, who was planning a comeback tour. I loved him. He was in his early fifties, he wore lots of silver jewellery and leather, he had long hair and tattoos. Max was so laid-back that he was nearly horizontal. He told long, pointless stories about his crazy life on the road and for the past few years he’d been retired on a farm in Yorkshire, raising llamas. (He always wore his leather trousers and silver jewellery in the fields, whilst mucking out, etc.) I don’t know if it was the llamas or the years on the road, but Max had a sort of skewed wisdom and true kindness that helped heal everyone he was with.

I knew I had to write about him again, and show his comeback tour, which I knew was going to be fraught with peril. For one thing, This Is Spinal Tap is like one of my favourite movies. But the problem was, Max wasn’t hero material: he was too old for my target audience, and I’d also paired him off with someone in the previous book.

So I made up another rock star: Dominick Steele. Max had come out of the other end of fame and fortune with his soul intact; Dominick is his dark shadow. He’s tall, dark, sexy, brooding and immensely talented, the former front man of Dirtysweet, one of the most successful bands in recent years. He’s also an alcoholic who has systematically destroyed everything he’s ever had or cared about.

Oh yeah. This is a hero I can sink my teeth into.

In HONEY TRAP, Max needs a bass player for his tour. He calls Dominick, who has utterly dropped out of the musical world, and pretty much the real world, too, since his wife divorced him and his band broke up. Dom, on the verge of bankruptcy with nothing else to lose, agrees, because this is his last chance. But he instantly regrets his decision when he sees who else is on the tour: Sophie Tennant, the former private detective who broke up his marriage.

I’m not sure why I’m attracted to the darker side of the rock star world: the temptations, the self-abuse, the tortured geniuses. I wouldn’t put up with my husband indulging in any of that crap. But in fantasy, how I love it. It’s Jim Morrison, it’s Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry, it’s Mick Jagger, it’s Jeff Buckley and David Bowie, it’s all those darkly sexy men and their leather trousers.

It is, perhaps, not quite so much Joey McIntyre. But we all grow up, right?

Who’s your favourite bad-boy rock star? And why do you find him so sexy?

Julie's going to give away a copy of HONEY TRAP to one of today's commentors. (Although I think it should be me since I can't believe I just put one of the New Kids on my blog...)

Visit Julie at http://www.julie-cohen.com/

Find Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak here or here and Honey Trap here or here.