Rose wished she'd never agreed to that picture.

The look, the provocative stare, running her hands through her hair like that? That wasn't her. How did she expect to be taken seriously as an author when her picture looked like an ad for those 1-800 numbers, the ones they put on late at night with the skimpily clad women.

Maybe she could play it off. "I write humor; it was a joke!" she'd claim. The truth was, authors got paid almost nothing to bare their souls to their readers. It didn't matter if it was humor, scifi, or even detective novels; authors exposed themselves through their work. So was it really such a leap for her to expose her flesh?

Thank the gods she'd had the sense to keep her clothes on. At least now she could claim she was mocking the media by making a fake 'model face.' You know the kind, open mouthed, staring sensually at the camera.