Jensen Ackles

My interview with Supernatural's bodyguard, Clif Kosterman

On Saturday, June 12, a dream came true for me when I got to interview Clif Kosterman, the close protection specialist for Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki for the last 15 years. Anyone who’s followed me on social media for long knows what a huge fan I am of the CW’s Supernatural, a fun horror-fantasy series that has the distinction of being the longest-running horror series in history.

I didn’t interview Clif for pure fan’s sake. I’d become fascinated about the job of close protection specialists — or bodyguards — when researching my bodyguard romance, Serving Sin.

Clif is a true good-guy hero in real life!

Some highlights from our interview include:

  • How he got involved with Supernatural way back in the first season

  • That time he had to go rescue Jensen, who’d been abandoned on the side of the road

  • The first time he knew Jared was head-over-heels for a woman on the show

  • How he and the guys feel about the enthusiastic Supernatural fandom

  • The incident when police handcuffed a man for trying to enter Jared’s house

  • Why this close relationship works for these “three musketeers”

Click below to watch full video!

Win a paperback copy of SERVING SIN signed by Clif Kosterman!

On Thursday, June 24, I’ll be releasing my monthly newsletter with an opportunity to win one of four paperback copies of Serving Sin with Clif’s signature! Sign up now and enter Thursday!

Supernatural and self-care: The value of escapism

Every time there’s a crisis in my life, I escape into pop culture. After 9/11, I read all three books of The Lord of the Rings and spent hours watching Star Trek: Next Gen. When my dad died, I got addicted to Bones (yeah, I know it’s weird).

And when a social anxiety disorder brought my fantastic son home during his freshman year in college, forced him to put on hold his dream to be a physicist and made me learn new skills to be parent and person, I turned to a little, weird show that my romance author friends had been talking about for years: Supernatural.

Sam and Dean Winchester. The boys. Baby. Chuck be with you. Or not.

“This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.”
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This November, this little cult-ish show will air its final episode after 15 seasons. I was a late adopter and didn’t start watching until 2017. But when it bit – phew – it bit hard. I went to my first Supernatural convention in the fall of 2017. I went to my second in 2019, where I asked co-star Jensen Ackles to pose my book cover with me. The smoldering look he gave me has become famous in some circles (called my friends) and is the basis of my next book in The Filthy Rich series, Serving Sin. I am currently in the middle of my THIRD Supernatural re-watch. THIRD. And the show has more than 300+ episodes!

I don’t know what the special sauce is that has made Supernatural such a phenomenon for myself and so many others (yes I do, it’s two hot good ol’ boys totally devoted to each other without love interests so there’s no chance of jumping the shark). But what I do know is that the show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me.

What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control. Watching an episode – apocalypses and all -- before bed relaxed me enough to sleep. Reading the fanfiction kept me from fixating in the middle of the night. Adding the stars’ gorgeous images to my ridiculous Pinterest page “Supernatural is Lady Porn” gave me an endorphin shot and made me smile.

This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.

I learned the value of self-care in escapist form in the eighth grade. I’d just moved to San Francisco and it was my first experience with mean girls. I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t reason with them. I wouldn’t change for them. And I knew, for the course of that year at least, I couldn’t escape them. So I had to withstand them.

The way I did that was by going to B. Dalton after particularly rough days, buying a romance novel and a bag of Ruffles potato chips, and camping out on my bed for the next seven hours. My mom let me skip coming down for dinner. But those classic romance novels were the one thing that allowed my brain to relax and freed me mentally from a situation I couldn’t change and had to withstand.

To this day, I believe those books helped me to learn an important skill at an invaluable time.

Part of the reason I’m a romance writer is because I believed in escapist self care, of getting lost in fantasies that allow your problem-solving brain to relax. And, oh baby, there is no better fantasy than that of the handsome Jensen Ackles smoldering at you. I want to give adults escapist fairy tales because I believe they have value.

“The show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me. What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control.”

Now, as an adult with two adult-aged kids, I feel like there’s even less under my control. Many of us Americans are feeling this way as we stare in shock and awe at the way our federal leadership continues to ignore this pandemic. I’m not advocating we be like them (him) – I’m not saying we throw up our hands and stick our heads in the sand.

I’m saying that after you’ve worn your mask and washed your hands and helped your kids and finished that Zoom call and registered to vote, you allow yourself to sit down with a good romance book and embrace it as one of the things that allows you to take care of you.

Or turn on the tube and start watching a weird little horror sci-fi show. With 300+ episodes, it’s that escapist fantasy that you won’t get tired of anytime soon.

Join me Saturday, June 12 at 5 pm CT/6 pm ET when I celebrate the release of Serving Sin with Clif Kosterman, the bodyguard for Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki for the last thirteen years. Click here to learn more and register.

Announcing next book in Filthy Rich series...

In Lush Money, book 1 of my Filthy Rich series — about powerful, wealthy women who get what they want because they’ve earned it — we met self-made Mexican-American billionaire, Roxanne Medina.

In book 2, Hate Crush, coming June 29, you’ll get to read about millionaire winemaking princesa, Sofia de Esperanza y Santos.

Now, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Mexican heiress-turned-CEO, Cenobia “Cen” Trujillo, in book 3, Serving Sin. Serving Sin will be available early 2021.

Serving Sin is about Roman Sheppard, the half-brother of the royal family of the Monte del Vino Real, who we met in Lush Money and Hate Crush. He’s a decorated ex-Army Ranger raised in a Texas trailer park. Thirteen years ago, he became internationally famous for rescuing a kidnapped Mexican teenage heiress. Now, he's the head of a successful security firm and, although he's been named advisor to his kingly brother, he's known in the media as the "reluctant prince," unwilling to fully accept his place in his family and the small wine-growing kingdom in Northern Spain.

The teen heiress, Cenobia Trujillo, is now a 30-year-old CEO of the largest automobile manufacturer in Mexico who needs Roman's help again. There have been serious threats against her, and with a month until the launch of her car that will change the Mexican auto industry for the better, she doesn’t have the time to be distracted. She asks him to come to Mexico to protect her.

Protection isn’t the only reason Cenobia – who asks people to call her “Cen” – wants Roman around. She’s ready to dispel the teenage fantasy notion that he’s her “one” with some womanly real-life pleasure. And there’s a reason Roman has stayed a continent away. He’d been a 26-year-old soldier who knew better than to be fascinated by the girl on the cusp of 18. He’ll go and protect her. But the last thing he’s ever going to call her is “Cen.”

Serving Sin will be available from Carina Press early 2021.

Inspiration for Roman Sheppard and Cenobia Trujillo. To see more inspiration, check out my Pinterest board

Inspiration for Roman Sheppard and Cenobia Trujillo. To see more inspiration, check out my Pinterest board

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