About halfway through the film Broken English:

“What are you thinking?”

Nora is laying her head back on Julian’s chest. The bath suds cover their nakedness. His arms intertwine with hers and wrap around her torso. He waits for a response, but she simply stares into space from behind blank eyes.

“Hey.” He splashes some water on her.

They have just made passionate love, and they were happy. She was happy. And if her pattern holds, the happiness will soon reach its abrupt end.

April Fools!

A couple months out of date…

From the April 1 Twitter blog:

Starting today, we are shifting to a two-tiered service: Everyone can use our basic service, Twttr, but you only get consonants. For five dollars a month, you can use our premium “Twitter” service which also includes vowels.

Unfortunately, the post had to be withdrawn from the Hebrew and Arabic versions of the site, because no one understood the joke.

(Not really. I made that last part up.)

In early August, while the girls were at camp, I spent a lot of uninterrupted time with Tessie-cat. At almost-19 years, she’s even older (in cat years) than I am. I call her “my geriatric cat,” which is what she is. All she did for the whole week was to sit on the back on the couch, in her favorite spot, and sleep, taking brief breaks to eat or pee or poop or remind me that she depends on me for everything, including attention. After so many years, when it comes to our relationship, she’s really still just a kitten.

And during this time we had to spend together, a truth acutely implanted itself on my consciousness, that no relationship lasts forever, because all creatures die, for one reason or another, and probably far too soon. My relationship with Tessie, I thought, will eventually end as well, and probably not too many years hence.

A thought like that really puts in perspective how annoyed I get at her when she begs and begs and begs for attention, at the most inconvenient opportunities.

This is so très kewl!

I was watching on NetFlix a Discovery Channel documentary, The Science of Sex Appeal… research for my next novel.

Anyhow, at one point during the program, anthropologist Helen Fisher said:

I think that we’ve evolved three distinctly different brain systems for love. One is the sex drive, the craving for sexual gratification, associated with testosterone in both men and women. The other is romantic love, that elation, the focused attention, the obsessive thinking of early love. And the third is attachment, that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner.

(Helen Fisher is the author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love and other titles.)

So why is this so très kewl?

Mark, timid little creature, he stammered through, asked me to “dinner or something, sometime.” I smiled and told him I’d love to, because he’s cute and sweet, and he plays a beautiful guitar. He’ll never dominate the top of the heap, but you always know where you stand with him, and you can trust him always to be faithful and to do the right thing. Mark, it turns out, is also a great kisser, which I knew he was going to be. And deeply passionate. Sigh.

Tony, on the other hand, he lives the life of the stereotypical alpha male. Six feet, 190 pounds, works out at the gym every day and benches 350. Top dog in his world, and he knows it. So when asked me to drinks, he already knew I’d say yes. You could see it in his eyes. He strolled by while I was halfway through my run on the treadmill, stopped for a minute and admired me— I wanted him to take me right then and there.

Happily Domesticated: Musings on life, love, parenthood, malfunctioning appliances and marital bliss
Kevin Cummings
Humor Essays
[rating: 5/5]
Available in...
• Kindle
... from...
• Amazon
Also in paperback

Some time ago, I asked humorist Kevin Cummings if I could interview him on one of my blogs. He agreed, and also sent me a personally autographed copy of Happily Domesticated (and I also sent him one my books in return). I enjoyed his book, and now I follow his humorous-essay blog religiously. So you can see, when it comes to reviewing this book, my opinion is obviously skewed.

So this morning, running late again, as I rushed through my shower and shave (Ow!), I tried to think of something useful to say about the book. It took me some months to finish it, because I’d pick it up when I was down, read one or two chapters, and that would lift my spirits. Kevin made me laugh sometimes even as Dave Barry does—which says something—and even after I set the book back down, it made everything seem funnier. I finally finished it last week, just in time to begin a memoir about post-traumatic stress disorder, which I promptly laughed at. (I guess I should’ve smoothed out the transition between those two books a little.)

The book contains 54 essays, most of them previously published on Kevin’s blog and podcast, except for a dozen pieces from a newspaper humor column he used to write. He talks as a typical middle-aged male about a variety of topics, including marriage, children, health, home, and garbage disposals. Basically, Kevin gives useful advice on all the major issues that face middle-aged men today.

But what if you’re not a typical middle-aged male? What if, for example, you’re a newlywed, 20-something woman? Well, you too should read this book, because it will warn you what to expect in the years to come. And maybe if you’re lucky, you can get out before it’s too late.

EyeLeash: A Blog Novel
Jess C. Scott
Contemporary Romance/ Alternative
[rating: 4/5]
Available in...
• HTML/TXT/RTF
• PDF
• Mobi/Kindle
• ePub/iPad
• LRF
• PDB
... from...
• Smashwords
• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• MobiPocket
Also in paperback

EyeLeash is the private journal of Jade, a 17-almost-18-year-old girl, who recently graduated from an all-girl high school. She wants to lose her virginity with Novan, a boy she knew from earlier in her life, and she struggles with how she should accomplish that.

Jess C. Scott sent me a PDF of EyeLeash, her first indie novel some months ago, in exchange for an electronic copy of one of my books. We also swapped blog interviews.

This novel is written in an alternative format, as a personal online journal, and it’s risqué for a YA novel, because of all the talk about sex. Surprisingly, the format did not distract me, and the story kept my attention. It became clear to me early on that not only did Novan have an emotional attachment to Jade, but Jade also was whipping herself up into an emotional attachment to Novan, even though they both said there was nothing between them. As the story progressed, Jade descended from confused to disturbed to pitiful. I began to feel sorry for Novan, wanting to tell him just to forget about this girl, because she has to get herself together before she could be a viable partner to any man.

Jade spends too much time online, which seems to isolate her from those around her, including her parents, though she clearly doesn’t realize it. This leaves her with some pretty crazy ideas about sex and some pretty dysfunctional obsessions. She dwells on sex with Novan almost exclusively, obsessively, so much that I sensed she was using these thoughts to cover up for something else that was troubling her, like her inability to love. Then when Novan backs off from the friends-with-benefits deal, she automatically assumes there’s something wrong with her, while it was obvious even to me that it had nothing to do with her. (Don’t worry about what people think about you, because if you knew how little time they actually spent thinking about you, then you’d really be worried. People spend more time figuring out what they want for lunch than they do thinking about you.)

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 sitting here in my virtual living room with Sandra, of one of my favorite blogs Add Humor and Faith…mix well. I absolutely love her stories, especially the ones about her and her Hubby. And I actually wanted to have her over (virtually) for Valentine’s Day, to talk about love and marriage. But because of things happening on my end, I couldn’t pull it together. But I’m happy she’s able to spend some time with us today.

Hi, Sandy.

Hi, Tim!

As I understand it, you and Hubby will be married 45 years this coming June—the day, in fact, just before I turn “only 42.” A city girl and a country boy. And you’ve been in love with him since you were 15. How did you and Hubby first meet?

On New Year’s Eve when I was 15, I was staying overnight with my friend, Robyn. Her boyfriend, Wayne, called from a party he was at to tell her that he would like to stop over for a little while at midnight to see in the new year with her. But, she explained that I was there. No problem. He said he had a friend that he had wanted me to meet anyway, and that friend just happened to be right there at the party too! Okay, Robyn told him they could both stop over for just a little while.

A romance thread at Sherry the Redhead Riter’s “BlogNTweet” forum reminded me of this story. Sherry asked how often we date.

Now, of course, I don’t date, because my Beloved (formerly “the Missus”), she doesn’t let me date. (It’s probably better that way.)

But we do “date” each other, occasionally… Well…

We used to date, even if we didn’t call it “dating.” For example, when we first got married, we moved into a tiny, third-floor, attic apartment. I worked down the street, and my Beloved was still finishing up her college education. (In fact, our wedding date we chose because it was during a break from classes, which gave us a couple weeks for a short honeymoon.) We had plenty of time during our off-hours to hang out together, spend time with friends, do chores together, or whatever. We used to go grocery shopping together every week, and then we’d carry all those bags up all those stairs. We had to do the laundry at the laundromat, so every week, we loaded up the car with our dirties and drove across town to the “good” laundromat. While the clothes were drying, we walked across the parking lot and got a bite to eat at Burger King. Not fancy, but it was special, and these memories I now look back on fondly.

Then we had kids.