There are many things about which I, Blake Deveraux am ambivalent.  I don’t really care who wins the Superbowl this year.  Hell I couldn’t tell you who won it last year!  I could really care less who wins American Idol,  it’s a predetermined fact that winning that show only proves one thing, you have the ability to get people to spend nine nine cents in a futile attempt at fame.  The list of things I’m ambivalentabout grows daily as the minutia of life grows more and more mundane.  However, there are a few things that anyone who has spent more than ten minutes in my presence will attest.  I love my family more than anything in life, I love writing more than a sane person should, and I finally I think Julian Fantechi is the best looking man to ever walk the earth.

Okay, maybe that’s being a bit broad, but it is a fact that the man defines what makes a man sexy, at least for me, ***winks***.  The guy has a body straight from any honest straight woman’s or gay  man’s wet dreams.  He has the face of an angel, hair that just begsto have your fingers muss it, and a smile that could convince satan himself to give the guy a second chance if he’d been bad, and eyes that are deep wells of passion in which many people both male and female have longed to plunge.

I met Julian at a conference in Ohio this June.  In all fairness, I was prepared to hate him.   Mind you for no other reason than my own rather average apperance is eclipsed by the man that is Julian. No one with a body like that, a smile like that, and eyes… God, where do I start about his eyes, could be a decent human being.  He simply mustbe vacuuous, vain, and devoid of any common sense.  I knew nothing, mind you about the man, or his life other than the fact that he was perhaps the most handsome guy I’d ever lain eyes

on.

Life is not as easy as the universe would like to paint it for  Julian Fantechi, or anyone with good genetics, a handsome face, and a willingness to work tirelessly to possess the fittest image, your body will create.  In order to achieve that package you have to be willing to excersize more than most people sleep. As well you need to be willing to forsake anything that resembles good food (french fries, ice cream, the list goes on…)  Having the body that, as I prefer to call him “his royal hotness” possesses, is a full time job in itself, one that I am far from having the willpower, or the genetics, to possess.

The simple truth is, though, that Julian Fantechi, is far from vacuous, or vain for that matter.  He is an amazing man.  I don’t simply say that because I am enamored with the guy,  true as it may be, it simply is.  If you put aside the fact that his chosen field is in the pursuit of helping developmentally challenged children, or the fact that he is active in a number of charitable ventures for which he asks no public acknowledgement, his is still a great guy.  His academic accomplishments are stellar.  What doesn’t this guy have going for him? When I met him I have to admit, I was a shameless fan.  I asked for the obligatory autograph, and bought whatever items the company that sponsored his visit to the conference offered without frankly pausing to see what it was.  The thing that made me pause, and look deeper into those amazing eyes, was the exchange after that.

The purpose of his visit at the conference was obviously to proffer some business for the company that sponsored his visit, as well as to pose with the various authors and readers at the convention.  He is after all, the epitome of what a romance novel cover model should be.  The image is unblemished, therefore very marketable, I get that.  I’m a business man too.  It is good business to further the “image” that sells.  That image doesn’t include muddying the “waters” as it were by making nice with the gblt community.  Most models that market themselves to the masses do one of two things, either embrace the obvious draw of the gblt’s love for a good looking man and therefore risk  limiting his marketablity to the “straight” community, but usually, they avoid any potential activity that questions his staunch masculinity, and heterosexuality,but  Julian Fantechi is no body’s puppet.  As the only male author there, I was frankly very conspicuous.  It would have probably been prudent for his “image” to avoid the m/m erotic author completely.  He was, however, gracious and just as attentive to my questions, and interest in his career as to any of the women there.  Frankly, amongst the “cover model” crowd, that is rarely the case.  It simply isn’t viewed as “good business” to get too friendly with the gay community.  Sure most male models will give the lip service, but rarely is there anything of substance there.  Julian has gone out of his way to let the gay community know that he recognizes them as ardent fans, and has been gracious in reaching out to those fans as well as his massive following amongst the heterosexual community.

As a fairly new author, with a reasonably small publishing house, having the man himself do a cover for me was, I thought, a wild dream.  One that most certainly wouldn’t be happening since I was sure that his manager, or other business contacts would certainly steer him away from such a “small time” venture.  This fact would be compounded of course by the fact that to my knowledge he’d never been on a m/m erotic cover before.  Upon meeting him,  the fact that he was as kind to me as he was, as well as the fact that he seemed genuinely interested in what had brought me to the conference, caused me to throw caution to the wind and ask if he’d be on my next book cover.  The rest, as they say, is history.

It is an unusual thing to find someone who is as handsome as Julian to be even more intellegent, and talented in many many ways that have nothing at all to do with his face or his abs.  When many other “cover models” are desperately grasping to keep up with the young models coming up behind them, and struggling to keep the “image” up, it is nice to know that there is someone who’s managed to have the best of both worlds.  One day, Julian Fantechi, the cover model will retire, hang up the image, and leave it to the “boys”, but when the sun sets on his modeling career, he will still be one of the best looking men on the planet, because his beauty truly does come from within.