Welcome Julie Hayes

A very good morning to Julie Hayes who shares the 'chatting' sofa with me today. I wonder who she likes...a lot!!!!!!! Here is a bit about her.

Julie Lynn Hayes was reading at the age of two and writing by the age of nine and always wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Two marriages, five children, and more than forty years later, that is still her dream. She blames her younger daughters for introducing her to yaoi and the world of M/M love, a world which has captured her imagination and her heart and fueled her writing in ways she'd never dreamed of before. She especially loves stories of two men finding true love and happiness in one another's arms and is a great believer in the happily ever after. She lives in St. Louis with her daughter Sarah and two cats, loves books and movies, and hopes to be a world traveler some day. Currently unemployed, she continues to write her books and stories, and is also a copy editor and reviewer for animeradius.com, and director of yaoiradius.com.. Her family thinks she is a bit off, but she doesn't mind. Marching to the beat of one's own drummer is a good thing, after all. Her published works can be found at Wicked Nights, Dreamspinner Press, and Silver Publishing.

Morning mags. Love your new sofa!!


Until last March, if you’d have said anything about Timothy Olyphant to me, I’d have said, “Who’s that?” Now, not only do I know, but I really know! Ask me about him now and my response is, “Timothy Olyphant rocks!”
I first met Timothy when I saw the trailers for Justified at the movie theater and decided to give it a go. I began to watch the show, because the trailers intrigued me, and I quickly got hooked, not just on the series, but its star. In the show, Timothy plays Raylan Givens, a US Special Marshal who got into a mite of trouble over a justified shooting in Florida for which he gets sent back to the place where he originated – the coal mining country of Harlan County, Kentucky. There he’s back in his roots, and that isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially when you factor in an ex-wife he still has a thing for and a jailbird father who isn’t going to be nominated for Father of the Year any time soon.

While I was watching Justified, which comes on Wednesday nights on F/X, 10 est/9 cst, I saw an ad for Hit Man, and at first I didn’t make the connection, til I realized that the shave-headed guy in the promo was none other than Timothy. The one with the bar code on the back of his skull. Well, that intrigued me, so of course I had to check it out. I found it at my library and borrowed it and watched it – and then I went to Amazon and bought it. I’ve seen it three times already. Timothy plays a hit man – naturally – who was raised by a religious organization since he was very young to be just that. No name, just a number, and a bar code tattooed onto the back of his head. He’s very good at what he does, but it must be a lonely life. He receives his instructions over his laptop from an anonymous user with a feminine voice. Things start to go wrong, when his current assignment gets changed, and then a girl gets thrown into the mix – you know how that goes – and if you want to know more, watch the movie. It’s worth it.

I just found out by reading his bio that he was born in 1968, is six foot tall and married to his college sweetheart, raising three children. And he manages to stay out of the tabloids. Kudos to him.
My next stop in my Timothy Olyphant fascination was Deadwood. This was a series that ran on HBO for a couple of seasons before it died, a victim of the writer’s strike. There has been talk of a movie to be made, but I think that that rumor too has finally been laid to rest. Deadwood takes place in the town of the same name, in the territory of South Dakota before it was South Dakota. About 1876, I think it was. Deadwood is a raw and wild and untamed city, still early in the throes of its existence. The town is under the control of Al Swearingen (Ian McShane) who owns the notorious Gem saloon/brothel. Two men come to town to open a hardware store – Seth Bullock (Timothy) and Sol Star (John Hawkes). At one time, Seth had been a Sheriff, but he’s looking to settle down, start a business and establish himself in order to send for his wife and child (not his child, but that’s another story).

Where to start here? Timothy completely energizes what is already an amazing cast with his portrayal of Seth Bullock, one of the two pivotal characters in the series, the other being Al. There are also so many other great characters, both real and fictional, that it will boggle your mind. For example, Keith Carradine as Wild Bill Hickok. I don’t consider it a spoiler to say he dies in the first season. C’mon, it’s history. No more than if I would mention while you watch Titanic that the boat sinks, right? Powers Boothe plays Cy Tolliver, rival saloon/brothel owner; William Sanderson is sleazy hotel proprietor E.B. Farnum; Brad Dourif as Doc Cochrane, whom I swear was modeled after Doc Holliday – and so on. But oh the fascination, the energy, when Seth Bullock is on the screen. Perhaps it was this role that helped to engender his receiving the lead in Justified. I saw somewhere that Elmore Leonard said that Timothy was the only actor that delivered Raylan’s lines and made them sound like he’d heard them in his own head.

So, two officers of the law and a hit man. What else? I did some digging, and discovered that he was the featured villain in Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard. I hadn’t seen that yet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but after learning he was in it, it became mandatory. Guess what? It’s now my second favorite Die Hard Movie, only surpassed by the first one – seriously, you can’t top Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber for anything; that first Die Hard just works on too many levels (does anyone else think the guy at the front desk looks just like Huey Lewis?). In this incarnation and final (I hope) entry in the Die Hard series, John McClaine (Bruce Willis) is reduced to taking a young hacker into custody and escorting him from one location to the other. Sounds simple enough, until strange things begin to happen, starting with an explosion in his apartment. And then the traffic lights. The hacker seems nervous, almost scared, and when John presses him, he posits a textbook scenario for a possible terrorist takeover. It turns out not to be so farfetched as it sounds, and the man behind it all is computer genius Timothy Olyphant. It was actually interesting, and fun to watch – look for a cameo by Kevin Smith as a computer nerd actually living in his mother’s basement.

I haven’t seen The Crazies yet, so I can’t comment on that, but I intend to – I hear he did really well. I did see Catch and Release, where he plays opposite Jennifer Garner. She’s a young woman who, on the verge of her wedding day, has her fiancé die tragically, as the film begins. She is living in the house that they were to live in together; he’s never moved out of his own house yet, where he lives with two roommates, one of whom is Kevin Smith. She can’t afford the new place on her own, so she ends up moving into his place, with them, and with his friend Fritz, who has come from California, played by Timothy. Jennifer finds out stuff, and secrets are revealed, as she tries to cope with the death of her fiancé, and she and Timothy get closer, etc. It’s a very sweet film, I really enjoyed – a very satisfactory watch indeed. Timothy is great as Fritz – he has a vulnerable quality about him that just makes you want to huggle him. I recommend watching this movie. Although I cried, it was nowhere near as much as I bawled for PS I Love You – I barely stopped crying in that film.

What’s Timothy working on now? Other than Justified, it looks like he’s got a voice part in Rango, the Johnny Depp animated flick which is coming out in March, I think, and he plays the guardian of Alex Pettyfer in I Am Number Four, but I don’t know anything beyond that. Luckily, we have Justified to hold us for a while, the new season begins February 9th. And the first season is available on Amazon – I already own it.
Get to know Timothy Olyphant – you’ll be glad you did. The man is sex on two legs!

This is where you can find Julie and her books.


My blog:
My Website<
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My Goodreads:
Silver Publishing:
Wicked Nights:
Dreamspinner Press: