No, this isn't a postcard or a screen saver. This is where I just spent 9 days sailing around the British Virgin Islands - just me, my husband and my best friend and her boyfriend. And this is an actual picture from my camera.

I've just returned and my brain is still in vacation mode, but here's something that's been bothering me all week.

I read 5 books on vacation - all teen books, the oldest being from 1999, the latest a print proof for a book that hasn't even come out yet.

And some I loved, some I liked and some not so much. But you know what I hated the most? Blushing. Yes, I have never read so much about "flaming cheeks," "prickling cheeks," "red burning cheeks," blah, blah. I am so sick of characters being described by their ability to blush. Honestly, I can't think of a single person who I have witnessed blush to such an extent. Yet it seems to be the physical trait of choice for teen girls who are feeling flustered/embarassed/caught off guard/attracted to someone/stupid/inept, etc.

I hereby boycott all flaming cheeks in every book I write. I don't think I've ever blushed in my life. I've never seen my best friends blush, and believe me, they've had plenty to blush about. Enough with the blushing. I shall seek new innovative ways to physically demonstrate an emotion - or not.

To think that teen girls are simply a hotbed of cheeky blood vessels is to do them a supreme injustice to their emotional range.

Just my opinion. And, for the record, that's a vacation sunburn on my face, not a blush.