I wanted to post this on Tuesday, but I was distracted by the recent holiday. Naturally, I’m referring to National Guys in the Floral Department Day.

Every year around this time, if you go into any store with a floral department, you are likely to see a dozen or so men wondering aimlessly in the vicinity, browsing from flower arrangement to flower arrangement, obviously lost but unable to ask for directions.

Why do they do this? Well, it’s the law. And if any man in a relationship of any sort fails at this task, the consequences are serious indeed, let me tell you.

Stores plans for this day, and every year they stock up on pretty young attendants to help out the guys who don’t know what they’re doing. Except for the store that I went to, which had a fat dude telling a pimple-faced guy with a scooter—and this actually happened—that they didn’t have bouquets of roses half red and half pink. Meanwhile, I thought, if he wanted a mixture of red and pink roses for his one true love, he should have gone to a real flower shop and paid more than 20 lousy bucks on an arrangement. Then he could have swept her away on his scooter, fading with her into the horizon and the setting sun.

As for me, I chose a bouquet of a dozen roses for my Beloved, pink blossoms just beginning to brown around the edges.

She loved them, especially the brown spots. Apparently, I have her well-trained to expect almost no attention from me whatsoever. Congratulate me.

(I was just kidding about that last part, in case you couldn’t tell.)

When French equestrian Claire Delacroix loses her fiancé in a tragic accident, she comes to live at the Paris Opera during its 1890s heyday. Life is not easy for a woman in fin de siècle France, where her rights are determined by a male guardian. Claire, both intelligent and independent, chafes under the strictures of her time. Whilst working at the opera, she meets a mysterious, masked stranger: Erik. Is it possible that the two of them will heal the pain of each other’s past?

I’m giving away a paperback copy of this book by Sharon E. Cathcart, In The Eye Of The Beholder: A Novel of the Phantom of the Opera, which I enjoyed immensely. Sharon has also sent me an autographed card to include with the giveaway.

In the Eye of the Beholder: A Novel of the Phantom of the Opera
Sharon E. Cathcart
Historical Romance
[rating: 5/5]
Available in...
• HTML/TXT/RTF
• PDF
• Mobi/Kindle
• ePub/iPad
• LRF
• PDB
... from...
• Smashwords
• Barnes & Noble
Also in paperback

In the Eye of the Beholder stars Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, and is set some time within the epilogue of the famous story by Gaston Leroux. But the real story of In the Eye of the Beholder revolves around the heroine, Claire, an educated but simple woman, who had lost her fiancé, the only man she loved, in a disaster just before they were to be married. Even though she is intelligent and capable, because of the way the law is written, her cousin has been given complete control over her estate, unless and until she marries, leaving her with no possessions and little spending money. She gently tends and performs with the horses at the opera house, a job that embodies her passion… until someone tries to murder her and make it look like an accident.

My first impression: If 90% of everything is crap, then this definitely falls within the remaining 10%. And in the end, I retained that impression, even though along the way, I had a number of complaints:

• For those of us (like me) who had never read the original Phantom of the Opera, I would have appreciated just enough background to understand Erik's predicament.
• Just under half through the story, the story really slowed down, so much so that I felt no reason to read on.
• The plot structure turned out to be a series of tales strung together by boring bits, reminiscent of (my worst memories of) The Pickwick Papers.
• I never understood why Claire feared Erik might possibly, could ever conceivably, leave her. Either I missed that part, or else it simply wasn't there.
• I didn't like the ending. In fact, I skipped the epilogue after reading its first sentence, preferring instead to imagine my own ending.

Yet for all those complaints, I still ended up rating it 5 stars. Yes, I teetered on the edge between 4 and 5, but I finally came down on the higher side. Why?

I’m focusing on finishing up a couple of books, so that I can bang out reviews for them on my new eBook Reviews blog, just launched this week. For the launch, I’m extending huge deals on my e-books. Then the price goes up by over 300%.

One of the books I’m anxious to review is Sharon E. Cathcart’s In the Eye of the Beholder, which I started reading a few weeks ago. I’m still enjoying the book, and it’s still in the top 10% of not-crap, but there are slow sections—not calm sections, but godawful slow ones. And the story is starting to take on a feel like The Pickwick Papers, which I never finished for the boredom it inspired. (If you’ve never read The Pickwick Papers, it’s about Mr. Pickwick and his cohorts and their random adventures. And that’s all well and good, but most of the time I was reading it, I wished that Dickens had given me some reason to care how the adventure turned out.)

I’m sitting here in my virtual living room with author Sharon Cathcart, to talk about psychological depression—which I’ve had my own experiences with, as you may know if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time.

Sharon has been a journalist, a newspaper editor, and an award-winning poet. Now, she’s authored a novel, In the Eye of the Beholder, as well as a memoir—more a collection of thoughts on various subjects—called Les Pensées Dangereuses, “Dangerous Thoughts."

Hi, Sharon.

Hi, Tim.

In Les Pensées Dangereuses, you talk about your experiences with depression. Some people think depression means that your brain has basically shut down, that you’re not even thinking anymore.

Not at all. Everyone’s experience is different, but in my case—and in the case of many people whose work I have read or with whom I have spoken—the opposite was true. I couldn’t stop thinking. There were so many ideas whirling around in my head, like a carousel that was out of control. None of the ideas had a chance to get off and stand on their own. It is easy under those circumstances to feel overwhelmed and helpless—as though starting any task, even a tiny bit of it, is monumental and impossible because of the relentless thinking. Much of the thinking in depression is distorted to boot—it doesn’t bear up with the reality of situations in many cases.

Last week, I started reading I See You by Holly Lisle. I still am reading that book, and loving it. The entire story so far has been written at least competently, and in some instances, Holly has excelled. I totally get her characters, even when they don’t make normal sense, because she shows me who they are.

That’s my paper book. But I’ve also picked up an ebook by Sharon Cathcart (who will be visiting with us on this very blog on Thursday), her short novel (about 50K words) In the Eye of the Beholder. My first impressions: If 90% of everything is crap, then this definitely falls within the remaining 10%. I’m about ¼ through, and I’m very much enjoying it. Unfortunately, time flies when you’re having fun, and so do books; I’ll probably have finished both of these books in a blink of an eye, and then I’ll be looking for something else that I love reading.