Novelist Eryn LaPlant

Author to the best selling series Falling for Heroes

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The Art of Filmmaking

The Art of Filmmaking

Many of you know how I love to celebrate creativity here on my blog. It’s even better when that creativity runs in the family. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing Tyler LaPlant, my nephew, to the world of filmmaking.

Tyler LaPlant – filmmaker

Tyler is a budding artist in the film world, interning for New Sky Productions and studying cinematography at Emerson College in…

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Goals - Play Like Balto Campaign

Goals – Play Like Balto Campaign

As many of you know, I have started a donation shop for two dear friends of mine, Darcy Storer and Michael Loy. They lost their dear Cowboy Corgi, Balto, in a freak accident about a month ago. He was only 1 1/2 years old… just a pup. In order to try and save his life, their vet bill rose into the four digit mark, and in the end they had to choose having the little guy euthanized.

This…

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Play Like Balto

Dogs exist all over the place. Vet bills are outrageous for everyone. Everyone loves their pets. So what makes Darcy and Michael so different? Why am I so gung ho with the Play Like Balto campaign, you may ask? It’s because of what Balto did during his very short life that makes him so special.

This week and next, I will be focusing on the little aspects to Balto and his “parents” lives, to…

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Six Years Ago...

Six Years Ago…

I’m finding it poetic how Falling for Strength’s release just so happened to come just two days after the release of Falling for Shock, the first book in the Falling for Heroes Series. Ha! Series…

Falling for Heroeswas never intended to be six books long. It was never intended to be one book long. This little story started from an idea that hit me after walking the streets of Plano, Illinois…

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Life Imitates Art - Pt. II

Life Imitates Art – Pt. II

For some reason I have a knack for inventing fiction that later turns out to be true. First of all, I just love it when this happens, and secondly, I will keep sharing these odd coincidences with you as they occur.

In 2017 Falling for Hope debuted with this cute team of Annie and Bob Romeo, a pair of celebrity reporters, who ran a gossip show much like Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood,…

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What's New for Author Eryn LaPlant in 2020?

What’s New for Author Eryn LaPlant in 2020?

Between fatal viruses, already ridiculous campaigns, and ex-royals and helicopter crashes shaking up the world… how about I give you some good news?

This year there won’t be ONE Eryn LaPlant book released but THREE! Yes, I said three. I know, exciting huh?

MARCH 2020 celebrates the release of the Author’s Edition: Beneath the Wall

The Amazon Bestselling epic historical fiction is coming back…

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Leaps and Bounds: The One Year Anniversary of Penny the Pomeranian

Leaps and Bounds: The One Year Anniversary of Penny the Pomeranian

Happy One Year Homecoming to Penny!

Last year, 20 days after we lost our Pomeranian Marley to a freak car accident, this little love popped up on the Humane Society’s website.

The Humane Society has named her Patty but it didn’t fit. She was a coppery blonde and I renamed her Penny.

She was estimated to be about 8 years-old due to her bad teeth – which had recently been pulled the same time as…

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Dean Cain the Writer

  Dean Cain in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

As many of you know I created my character Mack in Beneath the Wall after the then 28-year-old Dean Cain from Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997), but just recently I also made a more up-to-date version of him in my latest novel, Falling for Shock (now available on Amazon – just click the title). Dean was in my…

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Ode to Feet (not in a creepy way)

Ode to Feet (not in a creepy way)

Sorry if you’re grossed out by feet but I feel the need to comment on these vein-popping feet of mine. I’m on my feet a lot. I run to keep in shape. I walk to exercise to my dog. I scurry to stay busy at work. I bolt when my child needs me. I leap with joy when my family is home. These feet have had a tiresome time lately. They hurt. They ache. They’re numb in certain toes from constant use.

I…

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Fiction Friday: The Titanic

Fiction Friday: The Titanic

I thought I’d do something a little different today and give you one of my very first public historical fictions ever. I knew early on that I wanted to be an author. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I started out writing New Kid on the Block “fan fictions” back in high school with my best friend, Dawn Taylor. For our senior project in school we illustrated and wrote a children’s book…

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Bunnies & Leprechauns & Reindeer... oh my!

Bunnies & Leprechauns & Reindeer… oh my!

With Easter around the corner, I wanted to dive into some fiction… not fan fiction or one of my novels, but the origins of the fictional characters related to holidays.

I grew up, and still believe, Easter should be celebrated as the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, but many don’t and as a curious person I wanted to know where the other origins came from.

Easter Sunday –  Easter Bunny 

The…

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Lately, I’ve been noticing how people on the internet have been “shaming” entertainment works that weren’t made recently and taking offense with things in those shows, songs, and movies. Now, normally I wouldn’t say anything about this thing because people are going to think what they think, but when one of my all-time favorite movies ever, Gone with the Wind, was criticized, I had to say something.

To begin, though, I need to say that I think of myself as a proud, strong woman. I delight in women’s right, and love seeing how women are finally punching back to things that have been wrong in the past. I’ve been a victim of men’s superiority and have been pushed around and not taken seriously for being a woman. I’ve been grabbed, squeezed, kissed when I didn’t want to be kissed and it’s not fun. But here’s the thing… you can’t change the past, you can only learn from it. And this is where I take a stand on history.

So, this thought process started when I was reading an article in the New York Times where it mentioned how movies in the past romanticized women being taken advantage of. No consent was given before the men in the movies simply grabbed them and kissed them. Some of the movies that were mentioned were Gone with the Wind, The Quiet Man, Blade Runner, and surprisingly, Baby Boom. I get it, I do – Rhett kisses Scarlett arrogantly, she struggles against him, but gives into the kiss after a moment, draping her arms around his neck and holding him tight. He was an ass… it was even mentioned it in the movie:

Scarlett: Kathleen, who’s that?

Kathleen: Who?

Scarlett: That man looking at us and smiling. That nasty dog.

Kathleen: Why, dear, that’s Rhett Butler. He’s from Charleston. He has the most terrible reputation.

Scarlett: He looks like… like… he knows what I look like without my shimmy [clothing – a slip].

Kathleen: Scarlett, my dear, he isn’t received. He’s had to spend most of his time up north because his folks in Charleston won’t speak to him. He was expelled from West Point, and then there’s that business about that girl he wouldn’t marry.

Scarlett: Did he… (The girls whisper)

Kathleen: No, but she was ruined just the same.

With that all, have we forgotten this movie was made in 1938-39? Not only that, it’s based in the 1860s. Yeah, it’s going to have forceful, superior, egotistical white men. It’s going to have slavery. It’s going to have men taking advantage of women. We were just as much property as slaves were and mistreated similarly. Slaves, of course, were treated worse. Gone with the Wind is a glimpse into the past. We have come a very long way since then. Even still, the women that worked on this movie, Vivien Leigh, Butterfly McQueen, Hattie McDaniels, all of these fantastic women were so strong and so beyond their years. Vivien – Scarlett O’Hara, hated kissing Clark Gable. She didn’t hang out with him in between takes, she refused to do many a scene because she plain and simple didn’t want to. Ms. Leigh had a huge voice on set. Butterfly and Hattie did too.

In a time, when civil rights were still in their infancy, both women, who played slaves, refused several scenes such as being hit, certain lines, and other demeaning things they would not do on principal alone. Hattie McDaniel went on to be the first African American person to win an Academy Award ever! She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress over fellow GWTW actress Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Wilkes).

  With that all, have we forgotten this movie was made in 1938-39? Not only that, it’s based in the 1860s. Yeah, it’s going to have forceful, superior, egotistical white men. It’s going to have slavery. It’s going to have men taking advantage of women. We were just as much property as slaves were and mistreated similarly. Slaves, of course, were treated worse. Gone with the Wind is a glimpse into the past. We have come a very long way since then. Even still, the women that worked on this movie, Vivien Leigh, Butterfly McQueen, Hattie McDaniels, all of these fantastic women were so strong and so beyond their years. Vivien – Scarlett O’Hara, hated kissing Clark Gable. She didn’t hang out with him in between takes, she refused to do many a scene because she plain and simple didn’t want to. Ms. Leigh had a huge voice on set. Butterfly and Hattie did too.

Hattie McDaniel, Best Supporting Actress 1940

  In a time, when civil rights were still in their infancy, both women, who played slaves, refused several scenes such as being hit, certain lines, and other demeaning things they would not do on principal alone. Hattie McDaniel went on to be the first African American person to win an Academy Award ever! She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress over fellow GWTW actress Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Wilkes).

Back to my point, yeah there are some crappy ways women were portrayed on film, but that’s what happened back then. We can’t judge the movie and television on today’s standards. I also have read in some comments about shows like Seinfeld, Friends, and M*A*S*H, being racist, sexist, agist…etc so on and so forth. Good Lord, what would they say about Leave it to Beaver, Bewitched, All in the Family or Three’s Company? Back in the 60s through the 90s, entertainment was based on those things being funny. No one was sensitive to jokes in those decades, people just laughed. Yeah, they were crass, racist and definitely sexist, and today it wouldn’t be tolerated. But my point is still – you can’t change those shows now, so in that sense you can’t complain about them now either.

It’s the same with songs. Over Christmas this past year there was a lot of hubbub about the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside. People wanted it banned and have it taken off the radio because it romanticized rape culture. This is where I first started shaking my head about the comments I had heard in the public. People, the song was written in 1944! It’s a song about a couple being coy. The woman in the song wanted to stay but knew she would get in trouble with her parents or her public reputation would be ruined if a woman stayed out past curfew with her boyfriend. Listen to the words, she wanted to stay. The man was giving her reasons to stay. Society back then would’ve pegged her as an easy woman if she had stayed. She was not her own woman and yet she wanted to be independent and say, ‘hey yeah, I’ll stay with you’. This is picked up by the line, I ought to say no, no, no, siree, but at least I’m going to say that I tried. She was limited by her family, by her neighborhood, by society. If anything, be upset about that, not about the fact that the guy was giving her reasons to stay if she wanted to.

Oh and the line, “Uhh what’s in this drink?” She wasn’t getting roofied. The way Bette Midler sang this song in For the Boys, accurately depicts what that phrase meant back in the day… the guy had skimped on the alcohol and she wanted more. You can hear in the inflection in her voice that she was doubting there was much alcohol in the drink she’d just asked for.  Remember, it had only been recently in 1944 that the Prohibition had been repealed. People wanted strength in their drink. It was sarcastic. Kind of like, ‘have some coffee with your milk’, to people who like really light coffee – it’s barely coffee. Take a listen:

And speaking of Prohibition, imagine what the old Victorians thought about the flappers in the 1920s?

They went high collared, long skirted fashion to thigh high skirts, frayed up to the waist, and low cut, spaghetti-strapped dresses. Those flappers’ parents must’ve been outraged, but there was nothing they could do about it. Times had changed.

It’s the same way now, but in reverse. Instead of not being able to control the future, we can’t control the past. Please don’t take offense over things in the past that we can’t change. What you can do is learn from it. Take what people did wrong then and make it better from here on out. No more racist jokes, no more pushing women aside in the work place, no more grabbing and kissing us without permission. This is where we teach our children that stuff like this isn’t done anymore and we need to fix it.

  The Past Isn’t Now Lately, I've been noticing how people on the internet have been "shaming" entertainment works that weren't made recently and taking offense with things in those shows, songs, and movies.

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With Illness Comes Understanding

With Illness Comes Understanding

Over the last two weeks, thanks to a trip a waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells, I’ve been suffering with a severe and aggressive case of viral conjunctivitis. My right eye was scarlet red, leaky, painful, and swollen. I looked like the losing side of a boxing match and it wasn’t pretty.

Besides looking like a mess, I felt like a mess. The virus set off my lymph nodes all down the right side of my…

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Coming Soon in Eryn's World

Coming Soon in Eryn’s World

Good morning readers, I thought I’d give you a little update on some of the projects I have planned this spring and in the year to come. Writing… writing… writing…. that’s the biggest activity going. My plate is super full of new work. Currently, I’m writing the sixth book in the Falling for Heroes series entitled Falling for Strength. In this book will take place between the end of Falling for…

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Fan fiction Friday - A Star is Born - Perhaps

Fan fiction Friday – A Star is Born – Perhaps

This very short story came to me after watching the performance of Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga on the Academy Awards this past Sunday. Everyone in the media has been speculating whether or not these two actors were indeed a couple, but when I watched them sing… I didn’t see Bradley and Lady; I saw Jack and Ally from A Star is Born. From there I wondered, if this was part of the movie, how would…

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This weekend, I had the great pleasure to meet the man that inspired my character Alexander Bronwyn from Falling for Hope, actor Adam Croasdell.

Adam Croasdell – a man of many talents

Adam Croasdell as Eccarius – Preacher _ Season 3, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Alfonso Bresciani/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

Reign Episode 408 “Uncharted Waters Trailer” (screen grab) CR: The CW

Adam is best known for his acting on stage, television, and film; as well as voice acting for a video games and cartoons. I met him through social media about three years ago when he introduced himself to the Once Upon A Time fandom as “Papa Hook” (Captain Hook’s estranged, dastardly father). Incredibly friendly and tweetative (talkative), he and I hit it off. I happened to just be finishing Falling for Phoenix and desperate to go right into the next story. I had a loose plot but no particulars until Adam starting tweeting about what life on the seas with little Killian and Liam Jones would be like. Somehow that triggered my thoughts into seeing him play a father to young children.

My tweet to Adam with the buds of plot thoughts in my head. Oct. 27, 2015 – notice his icon is the gold triangle and he’d liked it.

My bud of a plan about a man searching for his birth family in order to find a blood marrow donor for his son suddenly had a father figure –Adam.

I wrote him back then about my idea and asked if he minded if I based this character after him. He was honored, and the book was written.

But after all this time with notes back and forth, becoming online friends, and professional colleagues we had never met… that is until this past Saturday afternoon, February 16, 2019.

I caught my first glimpse of the back of his head walking into one of the convention’s room where he was going to do a panel on acting and voice acting, and decided to peek around the corner to see where he had gone in the room. He was sitting in a chair behind the other guests finishing up the panel in session. I waited. Then as the guests began to file out, I started in.

He didn’t see me at first, then looked over his shoulder as perhaps my presence was felt. With a big smile on his face, he said, “Eryn, I was wondering when I’d see you,” and immediately stood from his chair with open arms. We clasped each other in a long awaited embrace, laughing with glee for finally meeting each other. He wasn’t some fancy-dancy television star; not a voice actor with the most perfect baritone British accent… he was my friend and even more so — he was my Alexander Bronwyn in real life. I was more than elated.

After pleasantries and compliments, Adam asked if my husband and son came with me. I said, “Just my son,” and called Cameron in.

With a big handshake and rich baritone British accent he said, “Cameron, nice to meet you, mate.” (I did giggle a little then over the fact that he called my son mate… probably the only fangirl thing I did).

Adam spoke with Cam a bit about video games and the convention. When the conversation turned to how long did the drive take and who else we liked here, we could honestly say, “We only know you.”

Adam was genuinely touched. It was then I could tell him how important his being was to me seeing he was the reason my character my created. Now, as I’ve discussed on my website before and now with Adam, I had a very rough time in losing my precious Marley last October. My motivation was shot, my creative ideas were gone, any concentration I had was lost; I honestly didn’t know if continuing writing was possible for me. Seeing a character of mine in flesh and blood was important to my healing but what I didn’t expect was the uplifting motivation Adam gave to me from one professional in a tough career to another.

From the long table that sat before the audience of cosplayers and comic enthusiasts, Adam introduced me as his friend, and published author. He went on to tell the room how important writing is as a craft. “Acting is wonderful,” he said with grandiose bravado, “But writing… ahh, there you have all those thoughts and words down on paper and you can pass them across a desk and say, ‘not only am I an actor, but I am a writer as well.'”

He continued to say hone your craft, keep working, keep improving and never ever give up. Don’t leave an unfinished job as it is detrimental to the psyche. Such wonderful, uplifting words not just for me, but everyone to hear.

Later, during the autograph session, Adam was a love and signed a few things for me, including the dedication page of Falling for Hope, and happily posed for a few photographs with the book included. I won’t share what he wrote inside that book, because it is very touching and special to only me, but let’s just say it is a day and a character that I will never forget, and my dreams will never die. You will see more from this author… a lot more.

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Meeting Alexander Bronwyn aka Adam Croasdell This weekend, I had the great pleasure to meet the man that inspired my character Alexander Bronwyn from…

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Books and Wine... Be Mine?

Books and Wine… Be Mine?

Are you tired of crappy Valentine’s Days? Tired of waiting for dates or even to find that special person your heart has been longing for? Well, this year, if you are near Bloomington, IL you don’t have to worry about that at all! Four amazingly talented romance authors and I will be in the Hy-Vee Tasting Room reading samples from our books, giving away prizes, and selling and signing our…

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