Passion is the bread and butter of romance novels, but Jason Baca, who has appeared on the covers of more than 600 paperbacks, says that's just the thing he's lacking in his side gig.
"I still enjoy being on a book cover, but the passion isn't there," he told People recently.
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It wasn't always this way for the 45-year-old Los Gatos native: "I knew what I wanted, being on covers was the object of my desire."
Since the late-1990s, Baca has posed as a cowboy, Scottish warrior, centaur, falconer and more. There are over 630 book covers in his portfolio — nearly enough to fill a two-year calendar of washboard abs and female fantasy.
His modeling aspirations arose while a student at Los Gatos High. He told People: "I remember back in high school, I was over at my buddy's house watching the game on TV and a commercial came on for Entertainment Tonight. For the first time in my life, I saw Fabio. I'll never forget it. I remembered they showed him walking through the room with all the women and they just looked at him in complete awe."
He vowed to his pal that if his baseball career didn't take off, he'd become a romance novel star.
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His big break came while working as a double in "I Know What You Did Last Summer." An on-set photographer took some sample photos of Baca and shared them with fashion photographers.
After a decade working as a model, Baca said he was preparing to bid farewell to the career until he "stumbled upon romance novels." He contacted dozens of authors asking how to "go about it," until one wrote back asking him to serve as her cover model.
Though Baca is retiring from modeling, he'll keep his day job as a housing assistant for the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara.
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There is one thing that might get Baca back in the romance ring: "I mean, unless I get a call from my agent saying Jennifer Aniston wants to do a romance book cover with you, I'm done," Baca told People.
Read Michelle Robertson's latest stories and send her news tips at michelle.robertson@sfgate.com.
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