Must Watch Friday - Scrubs

This Friday Fiona Lowe visits to chat about one of her favourite shows - the very quirky SCRUBS!

Here ‘Down Under’ we’re usually a beat behind on US television series so I didn’t discover Scrubs until the summer of 2003 and I was instantly hooked. Perhaps it reminded me of watching the British comedy, Doctor In House when I was a kid. Over the last few years I’ve dragged in DH to watch it and now the boys have grown some and it’s become family viewing. Santa even brought series 6 and 7 on DVD for Christmas.

What’s not to like about Scrubs? With its off the wall comedy, great music as well as dealing with some real life issues, it just makes me smile, laugh and occasionally cry. As well as the zany stuff ….my boys love ‘Floating Head Doctor (Series 5) the writers have given the characters arcs. Perry started off as a lonely, bitter divorced alcoholic. He’s now a loving dad in a relationship that for most wouldn’t work but somehow allows him to thrive and keep his flaws mostly under control. Carla and Turk have found their way and even Dr Kelso has had moments where we peek past the administrator and see the man. For me, the most frustrating character is JD. My rational side says the writers are always leaving it open for JD and Elliot to get back together but the rest of me is screaming, ‘GROW UP NOW’.

My Musical (Series 6) is a family favorite. We’re not aghast at sitting down to watch the old Hollywood dancing and singing extravaganzas so we loved this episode and had fun working out which type of musical they’d drawn inspiration from for each song. Perry’s ‘Patter Song’ suited him perfectly because he is ‘a-always’ ranting in an extended monologue. And Guy Love…well check out the YouTube clip below!

It’s a bit embarrassing to be caught humming ‘Everything comes down to Poo’ in the supermarket but anyone who has been a hospital patient or worked in a hospital totally gets this song. Both boys put the soundtrack on their ipods!!

While writing this piece I discovered that since Series 5, we’ve been told Scrubs is in ‘its final season’ and yet I have just found out that Series 8 is being shown in the US right now. How excited am I? Very!

So if you haven’t caught up with Scrubs, try it today. The writing is tight, clever and they poke fun at anything and everything…nothing is sacred, which is probably why I enjoy it so much!

Fiona Lowe writes for Harlequin Mills & Boon Medical Romance. Her current release, The Doctor Claims His Bride is out now in the UK and available online in Australia now and will be on shelf in April. She’s an avid fan of most TV Medical shows!

Thursday Talk-Time - Lynne Marshall

Here's Lynne Marshall with a fairy-tale take to our Thursday with TO KISS OR NOT TO KISS THE FROG!



It is said that first impressions last, yet I’m surprised by how often friends and relatives admit that the first time they met their spouse, or current boyfriend, they thought he was a jerk. How did they get past their negative opinion? Could it be the influence of a certain fairy tale we’ve known since we were little girls?

The Frog Prince is best known from the Brother’s Grimm. Though in their version, the reluctant princess befriends the repugnant frog, she throws him against a wall and only then does he turn into a prince. More modern and romanticized versions of the age-old fairy tale require a kiss.

Why must we kiss that frog?

And more importantly, why do there seem to be such an abundance of them? Optimists that we girls are, we give the guy a chance to prove he isn’t nearly as jerky as he seemed at first, and we are often disappointed. However, there are enough tales floating around out there about the Jerk-to-Gem phenomenon as I like to call it, to keep us kissing those overly-confident jocks, cocky-not-charming career guys, self-proclaimed funny men, and mucho-macho dudes.

Think of how long it took Harry and Sally to figure out they were the perfect match. And poor Joan in Romancing the Stone, think of what she had to put up with from Jack before he proved himself to be a real prince. Or Hans Solo from Star Wars, or any character Hugh Grant has ever played in any movie. Or Dean Robillard and Blue Bailey in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Natural Born Charmer. Though in that wonderfully entertaining book, Blue and Dean were both frogs in the beginning!

When I met my husband, he was a rough-around-the-edges cop, and I didn’t hear a single bell or whistle. I wasn’t the least bit impressed with his swagger and street talk and let him know it right off. He had issues with me, too, but rather than throw each other against a wall, we went out on another date, and … we kissed. You’re probably expecting me to say a miracle occurred, but I’m going to be honest and say the only thing amazing was that we didn’t break up in the first four months.

Now twenty-seven years later I recently pondered what qualities I’d discovered once I’d kissed the frog, as it were. And though I’d never call my husband a total jerk when we met, he wasn’t what I thought I was looking for, but he did turn out to be a gem in many ways. So what are the qualities that mattered to me? He was accountable, trustworthy, responsible and dependable, ethical, honest, brave, and protective, even though at times he gets a bit overly protective. And yes he was sexy! And the best part about kissing my frog was he wasn’t afraid to commit, which automatically made him a prince!

So how do we modern day woman convince ourselves to give a guy who seems like a jerk a chance? For an opportunity to win my latest book, ASSIGNMENT: BABY, leave a comment and share either a success or horror story about your personal amphibian lip locking adventures. I can’t wait to hear them.

I’d like to thank the Pink Heart Society for inviting me to guest blog for Thursday Talk Time. As always, it has been a pleasure and great fun!

One baby … One meant-to-be marriage?

Assignment:Baby by Lynne Marshall HMB Medical Romance, is currently in stores in the UK and will be available in Australia in April and in North America in July.

Visit Lynne Marshall’s website: http://www.lynnemarshall.com/

Temptation Tuesday - Frozen Fancy

‘I can resist everything except temptation’ to quote Oscar Wilde. In my case it should read ‘I can resist everything expect temptation and chocolate ice cream’. I don’t know why it should be that I can pass on any other flavour of ice cream except that one. You can keep your ‘Cherry Garcia’ and your ‘Chunky Monkey’. I resolutely turn from ‘Pralines and Cream’. For some reason I just want a few scoops of unadulterated old fashioned chocolate ice cream.
I know it isn’t fashionable. I know it isn’t trendy. Why should some Michelin starred chef serve chocolate ice cream when he could serve something exotic and clever like ‘Rosewater and Orange blossom’ or even ‘Nitro-Scrambled Egg and Bacon’ (I kid you not!)? I mean chocolate ice cream is just chocolate ice cream, isn’t it?


But it isn’t! Wherever you go there is always something subtly different about this frozen wonder. Some are milk and some are dark (I don’t count white chocolate as proper chocolate ice cream). Some of it with little pieces of chocolate dotted through it and although I don’t usually condone adding extra flavours, if you combine it with orange it becomes the wonder that is Green & Black’s ‘Chocolate Orange’ ice cream. Yum!


And then of course there is the joy of ordering gelato in Italy, a country that KNOWS its ice cream. A cup of gelato di cioccolato whilst wandering round San Gimignano last April with the girls is emblazoned on my memory. The sun setting light to the Tuscan stone as my mouth is awash with a creamy bitter sweet icy treat.


Or there was the April before wandering round Paris, it was the first truly sunny day of the year and everyone was wreathed in smiles. As was I, admittedly a little bit of a sticky smile. I was indulging in the joy that is Berthillon’s glace au chocolat. The Berthillon’s shop is on Ile Saint-Louis, and although others sell the ice cream, Parisians like to make the trip to the island to buy it from the shop. So we sat legs dangling on the banks of the Siene discussing our next shopping stop (I was with the girls again) and where we were going to head for drinks later.

It isn’t as though I haven’t tried any other flavours, I have. In fact a particularly wonderful dessert of poached Williams pears with a red wine ice cream figures high on my list of gastronomic experiences. It is just that for me there is no other flavour that excites me, tantalises me and comforts me like a few scoops of chocolate ice cream. And if it is homemade and served on a naked Hugh Jackman with a strawberry garnish… ahem where was I?

So if you ever see me in a restaurant looking through the dessert menu, it is only for show. Because as soon as I’m asked what I want I’ll always say the same thing,
“Do you have any chocolate ice cream?”

What is your favourite ice cream flavour? What great memories does it bring back for you?

As Biddy waits to hear back from Richmond on her Modern Heat she can be found tasting her way round the restaurants in Pimlico, London. She recommends Kazan as having a particularly fine chocolate ice cream served with a strawberry but so far no Hugh Jackman, naked or otherwise.

Male on Monday - Jon Hamm

In her first ever Male on Monday slot, Modern Heat/Presents author Heidi Rice waxes lyrical on the seriously sexy model for her latest hero.

When I finally nabbed a Male on Monday slot, there could only be one guy to fit the bill (although I did treat myself to a bit of tottie surfing purely for elimination purposes!)

I give you the classically handsome, exquisitely buff and reassurringly mature (sorry, no Zac Efrons or Shia LaBeoufs for me) Jon Hamm.

Now, for those of you who are saying ‘who the hell is he?’ I’m thinking you don’t watch Mad Men.

So first, a brief(ish) description of the series that has made Jon a star (not exactly overnight, but we’ll get to that later) and the character he plays that so captured my imagination.

Set in the early sixties in a Madison Avenue advertising agency, Mad Men is a colour-soaked Douglas Sirk-style drama which explores the dark side of America’s Golden Era.

This is a time and place where men were back-slapping, bourbon-swilling misogynists (or pretending to be), women wore corsetry to work and were still on the wrong end of the women’s lib movement and everyone chain-smoked and had skeletons in their closet.

And in this dog-eat-dog world of repressed passion, tortured desires and overflowing ashtrays, Jon Hamm’s Donald Draper is the smooth, sexist, smoulderingly sexy alpha wolf in the pack.

With his slicked back hair, his bespoke single-breasted suits (think Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair), his beautiful model wife, his many mistresses, his darkly handsome good looks and his corner office, he’s the man’s man that every man in the place aspires to be. But subtext is king in Mad Men and Don has hidden depths and hidden traumas behind that cool, implacable effortlessly smooth exterior.

Don’s a very bad boy indeed — and anyone who’s ever read one of my books knows how much one of those can make my mouth water.

So now we’ve got a handle on Jon’s alter-ego, let’s get a handle on Jon himself.

And straightaway, I discover he’s really a very good actor (all right his Emmy nods and his Golden Globe win were a bit of a clue), because he’s nothing at all like Don Draper. Turns out, unlike Don, his biography just screams excellent husband-and-father material.

Born on 10^th March in 1971 in St Louis Missouri (great, not too young), he caught the acting bug at age six playing Winnie the Pooh (big ahhh, there) and eventually won a scholarship to study Theatre at the University of Missouri.

But during those early years his life was marred by tragedy. His parents divorced when he was two and he was brought up by his mum. But she died from cancer when he was only 10. He then had to move in with his distant father who, after a long illness, left him an orphan at 20.

While at college he paid his way by working as a day-care teacher (another great big ahhh) and went on to teach high school (he’s a man who can connect with kids then, or at least keep them in line when necessary), before deciding to pursue a career as an actor.

He struggled for over a decade in Hollywood, working as a waiter, getting bit parts in movies, roles in TV pilots that went nowhere, racking up parking tickets and rent arrears and even got dropped by his agent. But he persevered. He finally landed a recurring role in a TV series called The Division, gave up waiting tables, paid his rent (but not his parking tickets) and at long last got sent the script for Mad Men. He’s typically modest on the subject of landing the part after seven auditions. ‘People really needed convincing that they wanted me.’

In the same interview for the London Observer Magazine he’s also quick to point out that he’s no alpha male like Don Draper. 'I was raised by a single mother and I've been in a 10-year relationship with my girlfriend. My whole life I've been surrounded by women.'

God, I feel yet another Ahhh coming on.

So who is the lucky lady friend? It’s writer and actress Jennifer Westfeldt. Hamm has said when they first met she thought he was ‘a cocky ass****’, but she offered him a part in her movie Kissing Jessica Stein anyway and they’ve been together ever since.

They have dogs instead of kids at the moment but he’s not ruling them out. Although he seems a little iffy on the subject of marriage. ‘We may not have a piece of paper that says we’re husband and wife, but after 10 years, Jennifer is more than just a girlfriend. What we have is much deeper and we both know that.’

Only men ever say daft things like that, don’t they? Okay, maybe we’re talking excellent long-term-boyfriend-and-father material here.

In the Observer interview he comes across as a modest, smart, savvy, sensitive, deep-thinking (but not in a creepy way), chivalrous and frankly gorgeous man. He’s had a lot of hard knocks in his life and he’s more pessimistic and thoughtful because of it, but he’s come out on top.

The interviewer comments at the end that he not only picked up the tab for lunch as if it were perfectly normal (when it’s completely unheard of in Hollywood by an actor being interviewed) but he also gave her a lift home.

Oh, sorry, almost missed his vital statistics. Deep unfathomable brown eyes, dark hair, half an inch over six foot (okay Trish?) and athletically buff (being an enthusiastic golfer, tennis player, swimmer, etc).

Jon was the sinfully sexy dark chocolate spongecake foundation for my hero Luke Devereaux in my latest book Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition — although I did add lots of scrumptious alpha icing on top. Just to add that crucial element of calorific fantasy.

So ladies, I'm totally sold. How about you?

Heidi’s fourth book Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition hit the top spot on the Waldernbooks Series Romance Bestseller list this week and is out now in the US as a Presents.

Her fifth book Hot-Shot Tycoon, Indecent Proposal is due out in June in the UK as a Modern Heat and will be out in September in the US as a Presents.

For more info on her other books, her writing life, her movie nerdiness or whatever hottie she’s currently diligently Googling (strictly for research purposes, of course) check out her blog and/or her website.