Hob-knobbing with celebrities....

by Brittany Geragotelis

I know this e-mail is LOOOOONG overdue, but I've been a bit busy—in and out of town, getting some much-needed R&R, catching up on my reading, etc. Better late than never, right? Okay, so what kind of delicious dish do I have for you today? Well, a few weeks ago, I headed to LA for a few more celebrity photo shoots. The girls were amazing and after we were finished, I walked away with some pretty crazy/awesome memories. So, if you can keep a secret, I'll give you a sneak peek at what (and who) we shot.

Debby Ryan: Sure, she's a Disney channel girl—well-mannered, pretty, multi-talented—but this one's got a little bit of edge to her. Don't get me wrong, the former "Suite Life on Deck" co-star and upcoming "Jessie" star is fully worthy of her mouse ears, but there's more to this fiery redhead than the kid-friendly shows she's a part of. (Hint: Disney's toting her as the next Miley or Selena!)





















Corrine Foxx: As Jamie Foxx's daughter, she's become a regular on the red carpet as her dad's arm candy. Though she's not planning on following in his footsteps anytime soon, she proved to us that she's learned a little something from the Oscar winner over the years.






















Christa B. Allen: She played the young Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30, and the comparisons don't stop there. This upcoming "Revenge" star is smart and sweet and totally one to watch!






















Jasmine V: Look familiar? Besides having a killer voice and an album coming out later this year, Jasmine once had the Biebster singing "Baby, baby, baby" to her. The two were an item before he moved on to Selena!






















Bella Thorne: Turn some music on and watch her go! The star of "Shake It Up" on the Disney channel claims she never took dance classes before scoring the role on this booty-shaking show.






















Megan Park: The "Secret Life of the American Teenager" star was even more beautiful in person than she is on the show. Though not at all a faith bully, Megan was opinionated and intelligent just like her character Grace.






















Sasha Pieterse: You'd never know that the girl who plays manipulative and conniving "A" on the ABC Family show "Pretty Little Liars" would be so young, but Sasha is actually only 15! She was sweet as pie and had a quiet confidence about her that left you wanting to know more about the girl who plays bad so well!
















Ayla Kell: Okay, I only recently began to watch the ABC Family show "Make it or Break it," and though I don't usually like watching gymnastics, I couldn't help but fall in love with this show. I'd liked Ayla's character, Peyson, from the start, but it wasn't until I met her at our shoot that I realized just how freaking COOL the she is! A bit of a tomboy, Ayla has a strong sense of self as well as an extreme background in dance (she's a classically-trained ballerina and even danced at ABT!). But beyond that, she's just really down to earth, a hard worker and.....did I mention she's so freaking cool?!?!?!















Hope you like the pics! Tomorrow, I'll be posting pics that I took while hanging out at Jamie Foxx's house. Oh yeah, I said it! Stay tuned!

5x5,
B.

Guess which celeb's house I'm hanging out at this weekend?

by Brittany Geragotelis

Before I get to the celeb-studded weekend plans, can I just mention that yesterday I reached #23 on the HOT list on Wattpad, the site where I've been publishing my book, Life's a Witch? This is the highest up I've ever been and it's no surprise that it happens to coincide with publishing the chapter where I reveal who the traitor is in the book? Have you read it yet? What did you think of the reveal? Were you surprised? Did you kinda already know? Were you happy or frustrated? Whatever you thought, be sure to leave your comments below. I'd love to hear what you think.

photo credit: American Cheerleader magazine

On to more celeb-related info...I'm about to embark on another weekend in LA for two celebrity photo shoots. The first is with new Disney It-Girl, Debby Ryan. If you have a younger sibling or child between the ages of 5 and 14 (or are an adult who just LOVES the Disney channel....hey, there's nothing wrong with that), you likely know who Debby is. If you don't, Debby spent the last three years on "The Suite Life on Deck" playing Bailey Picket, with twin cuties Dylan and Cole Sprouse. Well, this cutie-patootie just turned 18 and is starring in her own Disney show called "Jessie", debuting this fall. Disney's already toting her as the next big thing and since Miley and Selena have both moved on, it looks like there's a spot open for a new Disney Princess.

courtesy of Corinne Fox

We're also shooting Corinne Fox, Jamie Fox's daughter. Now the cool thing about Corinne is that she's actually a cheerleader NOW. And if that weren't enough, she actually cheers on the same squad as Kendall Jenner (can you imagine what it's like to be on that squad?). So, we're going to spend some time with the teenager to talk to her all about her cheer experiences, as well as the fact that her dad credits her as the reason his music career is what it is today. And Corinne herself seems to have a natural talent for the music world...she's been spending a lot of time in the studio behind-the-scenes learning all there is to creating records. So for this shoot, we've been invited over to Jamie's in-home recording studio to shoot Corinne in her element. Jamie's even offered to take a few pics with Corinne for the magazine! How cool is that? I'm going to be hanging out at Jamie Fox's house this weekend! How random.

But the celebs don't stop there. We're also shooting Christa B. Allen (ABC's new show "Revenge"), Jasmine V (Sony/Epic recording artist and Justin Bieber's ex!), Bella Thorne (Disney's "Shake It Up"), Megan Park (ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager"), Ayla Kell (ABC Family's "Make It or Break It") and Sasha Pieterse (ABC Family's "Pretty Little Liars). It's going to be an INSANE shoot, but I'm beyond excited to see what these girls are like in person!

photo credit: ABCFamily/PLL

photo credit: Seventeen magazine

photo credit: ABCFamily/Randy Holmes

photo credit: Disney Channel/Shake it Up

courtesy of Jasmine V

photo credit: ABC/Revenge

I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures and I'll be sure to update after the shoots!

5x5,
B.

I've been a bad, bad blogger....

by Brittany Geragotelis

First off, I know I have some serious apologizing to do. My life has gotten crazy insane lately: I've been hot in the middle of writing Life's a Witch, which is coming along nicely, but since I'm publishing it as I go, there's a lot of pressure for me to get things right the first time. I've been having to edit it as I go along, which is new for me, because I usually wait until the end to do this. So, it's taking a lot more of my attention away than usual.

I've also been away the past few weeks on business trips. First, to beautiful Hell-A to do a photo shoot with the beautiful and sassy Francia Raisa from "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." I'd never seen the show before, but when I found out we'd be shooting her for the cover, I gave myself a crash-course in the very popular ABC Family show. At first, I thought it was silly....basically "7th Heaven" only preggers. But the more I watched, the more obsessed I got. So now, I am officially a fan, and meeting Francia (who plays Adrian on the show) was a real treat. She was very sweet, a little sassy (in a good way), and totally up to play dress up. And whereas I've run into some trouble in the past when asking actresses about their personal/love lives (some have basically shut down the interview!), Francia wasn't afraid to dish on this side of herself. You'll have to wait for the feature to read exactly what she said, but it was a great time.

Next, we headed over to Universal Studios for a shoot for our back-to-school fashion with the cast of Blue Crush 2. I'll let you in on a little secret....usually when you go to celebrity shoots, the stars are perfectly nice and professional. We have a great time, but in the end we all know that they're doing a job and we never really connect in a real, meaningful way. Don't get me wrong, with some of the people we've shot, I really would have loved to become friends with them outside the realm of the entertainment world...but it doesn't happen often. This shoot was totally different.

So, the star of the movie is Sasha Jackson, a beautiful blond from the UK. I met her for the first time when she came into the office with my contact at NBC/Universal for the Bring It On movies. Right away, I knew she was different than most actresses. Sasha was HILARIOUS (in an amazingly inappropriate way), she has THE best accent, but can switch to an American accent seamlessly. She's gorgeous, has this teeny-tiny little figure, while not looking like skelatore. In short: the girl is freaking awesome!

But again, I didn't know if this was just her doing her job promoting the film or really just her coming through in the meeting. When we eventually got to the shoot at Universal, I realized that this is just Sasha. She's friendly. She's outgoing. She's real. Sasha will be a total professional when the situation calls for it, but when she gets to know you, she's got a dirty kind of humor and won't censor herself around you. This kind of honesty had us in stitches and to be honest—we all sort of had girl crushes on her. While on set, we goofed around, hung out, talked about dating, our personal lives, dancing around our rooms to loud music and bonded over our mutual love of McDonald's. This time, when we left the shoot (and our new fave starlet) behind, I think we actually had a friend. We're now friends on FB and I have the luxury of getting bits and pieces of her wit and talent on a daily basis. How lucky am I!?!?!

But the awesomeness didn't stop there. Because after we wrapped that shoot, we headed over to Kendall Jenner's house—yes, her ACTUAL house. The one she lives and tapes in! We followed her cheer coach over to their gorgeous house (if only I had the money to get a place like theirs....sigh.), and waited (nervously) in the dining room for Kris, Kylie and Kendall to join us. Our staff were all nervous (I mean, how often do you get to hang out at the Jenner house?) and I was just hoping Kendall and her momager, Kris, would like the cover and her feature. As we waited, we checked out a wall full of black and white family portraits over the years. This was truly amazing; to see how the whole fam changed year after year was really cool. We even saw the infamous half-naked pic of Kourtney when she was preggers! Getting a glimpse into their personal lives off-camera was unbelievable.

We'd set things up so E! would come by to cover the unveiling and waited for everyone to arrive. When all the introductions had been made, we got straight to the interview with E! and then dropped the cloth that was hiding Kendall's first magazine cover EVER! Her reaction was perfect; you could tell that she genuinely loved it and was so excited to be honored for something she loves to do. And Kris was gushing over it (this was a far cry from the nightmares I'd been having for weeks that included Kris finding something she hated about it and threatening to sue me. In actuality, Kris was SO nice and complimentary of the magazine and cheerleading.). You could tell that Kris LOVES her kids and is their number one fan. On another note, you have to respect her for being such a great business-woman. She really took charge during the shoot (but not in a control freak sort of way) and knew what she was doing the whole time. It was very impressive just being around her. Oh, and Kylie was there too....a little bundle of energy and was so excited to talk about how she wanted to join the cheer squad next year. Of course, I offered to shoot her for the magazine when she finally does become a cheerleader. Now if we can only get them to let us shoot at their house.....

To round up this little celebrity update, one of my co-workers went to comic-con last weekend and, knowing that I'm a big Buffy fan, got me autographs of the actresses who play Harmony and Glory. He also got pics of them holding up signs for me! How sweet is that?!?! (And expensive...apparently it costs $35 apiece for the signatures and pics!).

So, again, sorry for being MIA....I'm going to try and be better about this from here on out. I hope all these pics made up for it!

5x5,
B.

Meet Francia Raisa from "The Secret Life of the American Teenager"

by Brittany Geragotelis

When we decided to shoot Francia Raisa, one of the stars of "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" I wasn't super psyched. Not because I didn't like her...but I'd simply never watched the show before. So, after we had the actress on board, I knew I had to do a little research. Yes, a lot of my research for work involves watching TV.

How jealous are you?

Anyway, I began to watch the show and at first was like, "Really? This is what has teens obsessed these days? (It's ABC Family's number one show and is a fave among teens; even celebs like Kendall Jenner and Selena Gomez are fans) It was like "7th Heaven" pregnant (an astute observation, since I later found out that creator Brenda Hampton, was the mastermind behind this show as well).

But as I continued to watch it, I slowly got hooked. Now, only partway through season 4, I'm officially a fan. So the prospect of meeting one of the show's stars is way exciting for me now! And on that note, I'm sure a lot of you out there would be psyched at the chance to meet her, too. Sooooo, because I love you all AND because it's Friday, here's a way you can make your dreams come true!

5x5,
B.

(click to make the pic bigger!)