In Sickness and in Health

In honor of Veteran’s Day, thank you to all the men and women who serve, and have served, in our armed forces, including my dad, (Navy, WWII), my father-in-law, (Army, Vietnam), and my brother in-law, (Marines, Iraq, Part Deux).  Without the bravery of our vets, and their commitment to protecting the freedoms I pretty much take for granted all 364 other days of the year, it’s possible I wouldn’t be sitting here today writing my stupid blogs.  So, thank you.

My weekend represented an entirely different celebration of freedom … a little ritual known as the bachelorette party. A bunch of the girls … (uh, sorry M) …a bunch of us friends took off to the bachelorette’s cabin in Big Bear for a last surge of single-girl madness.  Though, to be honest, we were all really happy for her upcoming nuptials.  And not just because our bachelorette looks like a young Marilyn Monroe, is smart, funny, successful, and generally the type of woman the single ladies of the world would just as soon see with an inactive profile on Match.com.  More because our bride, and her husband-to-be, took such an unusual route to “I do.”  One that makes us all ask ourselves, “What would I do?” in that situation.   After everything that went down, I’m fairly sure the whole “get married,” response is the right one for them.

Our bride and groom met years ago, in one of those love-at-first-sight scenarios.  They’ve been together ever since.  But our bride had tried married life in her early twenties and gotten a big dose of heartache for her trouble, so, when it came to marriage, she was in the “Been there, done that, no need to do it again,” camp.  She wore her old married name around like a drunken tattoo, I suspect to remind her not to repeat past mistakes.  So, instead of exchanging vows, our happy couple quite elegantly lived in sin.  They bought a beautiful place in a South Bay beach city, traveled together, bought a vacation cabin in Big Bear, and supported each other through life’s professional and personal transitions. 

Like all good, smart women with a family history of breast cancer, our bride got regular annual mammograms.  This year, however, while she was away from home on a business trip, her doctor contacted her to say the mamo revealed “several masses” in one of her breasts and they needed to schedule a biopsy right away.    After a hellacious night alone in her hotel room, grappling with the information, the unknowns, the specter of the BIG C, she did something she’d never done before.  Admittedly in a bit of a fugue state – she texted her boyfriend:  “Will u marry me?” 

He texted back, “Yes.” 

It gets even better.  When she got home, he sat her down and told he was in, no matter what, but asked her to take some time to think about what she wanted, because he knew her history and her philosophy, and didn’t want her making big decisions about their future based on fear over a potential diagnosis.  Good guy.  Good call.

She thought.  She soul searched.  Nothing changed.  He was The One – had been for a long time.  She wanted to make that proclamation to God and everyone … “for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part.”   He said, “Me too,” and they started planning a wedding – a small ceremony as classy and unique as the couple themselves.

Now comes an interesting development.  Our bride goes in for her biopsy and … the masses are gone.  Not gone like smaller.  Gone like they never existed.  They can’t find anything to biopsy.  Maybe the lab made a mix-up with the films?  Maybe it was some kind of miracle?  We’ll probably never know.  Believe whichever explanation makes the most sense to you.  But, in a nutshell, medical crises averted.

With the instigator of the nuptials suddenly out of the picture, (thank you, Fate, God, Universe, or what have you), we had to wonder if this changed their plans.

Absolutely not.  They’re tying the knot next month.  Congratulations, S & E.  I wish you a lifetime of health and happiness.

Have a non-traditional love story? A roundabout route to "I Do?"  Care to share?

Next week:  A helpful warning on the dangers of mixing Ambien and a sleep loft.

To Spank or Not To Spank – NOT A Blog about Parenting Techniques

Just to be doubly cautious and avoid any nasty-grams, if you’re looking for a post about how to discipline your kid, keep right on blog hopping, desperate parent, this is not the place for you.  If you have an opinion on how much “slap” should accompany the “tickle” in a good love story, park yourself here and read on.

Okay, now that it’s just us, here’s my deal:  Is it me, or is there a whole lot more light BDSM going on in supposedly mainstream romantic fiction these days?  I mean, even Roarke has given Eve an occasional playful swat on the ass, which, granted, doesn’t exactly qualify as boundary-pushing, but at the time, it caught my eye.  The erotic upswing kicked in several years back, so I attribute the trend to more than everyone wanting to go Greyer, Deeper or Free-er.  And I’m not complaining about the overall shift, mind you.  For me, the best journeys to happily-ever-after include lots of vicarious thrills.  But part of me wonders … are there new rules for mainstream?   

I guess the short answer for a writer is to check the submission guidelines for the line you’re targeting.  But that doesn’t always yield a clear answer.  Brazen by Entangled, for instance, says this about their line:

We want stories that focus on the hero and heroine’s physical relationship as it pertains to their developing romance … We will not consider erotica, but explicit sex scenes and erotic elements or kinks organic to the characters’ sexual tastes are musts.

Harlequin Blaze offers the following explanation of their story requirements: 

Harlequin Blaze is Harlequin's sexiest romance series, yet there's more to these books than simply sex. We ask our authors to deliver complex plots and subplots, realistic engaging characters and a consuming love story you won't be able to forget. Blaze stories are fun, flirty and always steamy! 

Harlequin Blaze is not erotica. While our books are very sensual, they deliver on the Harlequin promise of one hero, one heroine and an implied committed relationship at the end. Blaze books give readers a glimpse into what it's like to be young and single today.

In either case, a fastidious read of the guidelines takes only a handful of situations completely off the table, right?  Each of the guidelines makes it clear the magic number is two, and by virtue of the reliance on the terms “hero” and “heroine,” both ought to be human beings, of the opposite sex.  Both imprints also make it clear in other parts of their requirements they seek heroes and heroines safely above the age of consent.  Both lines want a fully developed romance by the time the reader reaches “The End,” or, as Blaze puts it, “… an implied committed relationship at the end,” which I take to mean some version of the happy couple riding off into the sunset.

Other than these mandates and hints, we’re left to our own devices as to how far the characters can go with each other and still stay within the boundaries of a, “fun, flirty and steamy,” love story.

No worries.  I can fill this, (ha!), gray area with inspiration drawn from an arsenal of Cosmo articles featuring toys and positions I’m way too uncoordinated, un-limber, or unadventurous to try in real life. I’ll try ‘em in fiction.

Ideas really aren’t the problem.  If you read enough or the genre, you’re going to be brimming with ideas.  I think the problem comes when trying to create, as Brazen puts it, “erotic elements or kinks organic to the characters’ sexual tastes.”  I’ve read a lot of category romance and, sometimes, it seems like those erotic elements or kinks come out of nowhere.  For example, in the final sex scene of one novel, the hero suddenly whipped out a vibrator and went to town on the heroine, (which was hot, of course), but until that point, I hadn’t seen the man display any proclivity for, or interest in, gadgetry, so it kind of felt like a different guy than the one I’d spent the last 45,000 words getting to know.  Same deal when an early sex scene involves a specific erotic nuance, (bondage, spanking …whatever), that then that aspect disappears without a trace from the rest of the novel.

Like any writer, I want to keep the action exciting and inventive.  I want my characters to grow during the course of the story and I want their physical relationship to reflect an intensifying emotional connection … and deepening trust.  A surprisingly difficult balancing act.   
Any favorite scenes or stories where you felt the author hit the elusive balance between a crazy, wild, can’t-wait-to-see-what-they-do-next sex, and a heart-gripping, cry-my-eyes-out-in-a-good-way love story?

Scare Tactics

Though these days I write lighthearted, sexy, rom-com, as a kid, I loved me a good, scary read.  This started back in the days when my parents wouldn’t let me see all the horror movies my friends with cool parents were watching every Friday night at the cineplex. 

There was a point in my life where the only thing I craved as much as oxygen was to see, “The Amityville Horror,” (starring an uncharacteristically creepy-looking James Brolin and a young, doe-eyed Margot Kidder), but that wasn’t going to happen, so I did the next best thing.  I went to the library and checked out “The Amityville Horror, A True Story,” by Jay Anson.   That book scared me right out of my pre-teen disco jeans.  Which, frankly, were scarier than anything I could have read or screened, but, of course, I didn’t realize it at the time.   Those things only haunt you years later.  Anyway, scary book.  I believe it also introduced me to the word “tits,” (as in, “that walking set of tits George calls a secretary”).  The term hadn’t previously hit my lexicon.  A proud milestone for my parents, I’m sure.

Eventually, as an adult, I stumbled across the movie while channel surfing.  I watched with the teensy sense of letdown you can only experience with something that completely fascinated you as a child.  Sadly, the financial horror story terrified me more than the cheesy, low-tech special effects.  When George and Kathy talk about buying the big house – a house they can’t really afford – that’s when I’m screaming at the screen, saying, “Oh for the love of God, don’t do it!” 

I found the 2005 remake, starring Ryan Reynolds, much more frightening.  This might have been because the special effects were better, but probably had more to do with the sight of gorgeous, yummy Ryan all scrounged out with a wild beard and ratty flannel shirts.  

“The Shining,” starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, also made my parent’s blacklist, so I marched back to the library to check out the Stephen King novel of the same name.   Now, I’ve read, and loved, a lot of Stephen King, yet for whatever reason, the story didn’t leave much of an impression on my malleable young mind.  But the film version … holy freaking Moses!     A piece of cinematic terror that destroyed my sleep for months – and I was a grown-assed woman by the time I saw the darn thing.

My parents didn’t, technically, stop me from seeing “The Exorcist.”  The movie, starring the unforgettable Linda Blair as little Regan MacNeil, had its theatrical run before I reached the age where I would have pestered them non-stop to take me, but William Peter Blatty’s novel made it my poorly monitored library book basket at some point during my formative years.  I remember it scared the crap out of me, so I should have known better, years later, when I watched the movie version.  “The Exorcist,” chills me to the bone in either format.

This Halloween season offers cinema lovers a batch of kid-friendly spooky movies to choose from, including “Hotel Transylvania,” “ParaNorman,” and “Frankenweenie,” so hopefully today’s parents aren’t constantly telling their ten-year-olds, “No, you cannot go see Paranormal Activity 4, and if you ask me one more time you’re going to see something a lot more frightening than a @#& movie!”

Ah, memories!  How about you?  Which book or movie from your misspent youth scarred you for life? 

The Wrong Bed ... Always So Right

This weekend I let the latest issue of Time sit, untouched, on my night table in order to finish Katee Robert’s super-hot Brazen Wrong Bed, Right Guy.  (Okay, nitpickers, maybe it was Us Weekly, but whatever.  The point being, it sat, untouched). Why?  Because I’m a sucker for a good wrong bed story.

 In case you’re unfamiliar with the trope, I’ll give you my summary.  I consider a “wrong bed” story as, basically, mistaken identity, sexified by sticking the clueless couple in the sack.  And yes, in my mind, at least one of ‘em has got to be clueless as to who they’re actually hooking up with, or it doesn’t count as WB.   It’s one of those situations that almost never happens in real life – if it does, someone’s probably pressing charges – but occurs all the time in fiction.   Although some folks may take issue with my narrow definition.  Harlequin Blaze publishes a long-running wrong bed series, and applies the label to a wide range of fling-y, WTF I’m gonna do him just this once scenarios.

I like a good fling story as much as the next girl, but when it comes to wrong bed, I’m a fundamentalist.  I want more than a little bad judgment or a weak moment.  I want the “oops” factor.  Maybe there’s alcohol involved, maybe identical twins, or maybe, as in Wrong Bed, Right Guy, a fun, sexy, farcical combination of mistake and happenstance.  To me, that’s the key.  I see the set-up in a contemporary novel and I know the author aims to make me laugh. And I hope she succeeds.  I’ll read the friggin’ Time magazine if I want to think real hard.

Since I enjoy this particular device so much, it stands to reason I’d try to write one of my own.  Not easy.  I grappled with the right scenario, and ended up eschewing a bed in favor of a Santa costume, a supply closet and a racy impulse on my heroine’s part that promises to land her on the naughty list for life.  Fun, and funny, I hope, but the real challenge came in taking the action out of the closet, so to speak.   For me, the wrong bed, as a storyline, didn’t exactly write itself – it’s more of a hook than a full-blown plot.  

As hooks go, I found this one surprisingly tricky. I mean, the mistake has to be plausible, or the lead character comes across as a hopeless bonehead, and the reader can’t invest in him or her.  Paint no character as a victim or you’ve turned the other participant, (the one who is supposed to be your hero or heroine), into a bad guy.  And it is dang hard to get to happily-ever-after when your hero, for instance, is serving time for trespassing, stalking, etc.

After all the effort spent setting up and navigating the wrong bed situation, I still had to come up with novel-sustaining conflict, both internal and external.  Next time I’ll simplify my life and write a marriage of convenience story.  Yeah, yeah … those are big right now!  Or secret baby.  Or, I know, how about … Fifty Shades of Santa?

Do you have a favorite storyline … some back-cover buzzword that always sucks you in?  I’ve shown you mine.  Share one of yours, if you dare!  And if you’ve gone so far as to use the trope in a story, give me the deets.

Sweet Weekend

Hope y’all had a great weekend.  Ours was particularly sweet.  Why, you ask?  Buckle up, my friends, ‘cause I can sum it up in two words:  Pie Festival.  For the uninitiated, which we were, I refer to the 23^rd annual Pie Festival hosted by the Malibu United Methodist Church.  We’ve lived in Malibu a long time, but somehow we never made it to the Pie Festival until this past Saturday.  I really don’t remember what we had going on during the previous years that we considered more important – but we were wrong.  So wrong.  Nothing is more important than fresh, home-baked pie, (clarification:  fresh, home-baked pie created by someone not named Sam Beck).  Well, maybe voting is more important, and, okay, the Five Cent Wine Sale at BevMo!, but that’s it. 

Hubs, son and I headed out to the Festival with a vague idea about supporting a local tradition, and because we thought the little guy would get a kick out of the live music, balloon animals, face painting, and, of course, the pies.  He did get a balloon animal, but after that, he was all about the pie.  We have a difficult time with decisions, so we walked away from the pie line with a slice of chocolate, (with whipped cream, of course), a slice of lemon, a slice of apple, and a slice of berry. Yes, that’s one more slice of pie than people in our family, but the lemon, apple and berry all qualify as fruit, in my book, and fruit is good for us, so how could we afford to pass up such healthy options?

I told my son I’d share the chocolate pie with him.  I sat him down at one of the guest tables, put the slice in front of our chairs, and said I’d be right back with our drinks.  Five seconds later – seriously, it couldn’t have been more than five seconds -- I returned and the pie was gone!  The little guy didn’t even have the decency to look guilty about his gluttony.  He just sat there, happily licking chocolate off his face.  Apparently, we are still working on the whole “sharing” concept.

Although one of the highlights of the Festival is the pie eating contest, I was a little too self-conscious to chow down on our remaining three slices right there at the church in front of God and everyone.  Instead, we packed the slices in some handy to-go boxes they provided and headed home.  Now, here we are, Monday morning, and every last crumb is gone.  (Well, not gone, gone.  They’ll live forever on my rapidly expanding ass).

Malibu Pie Festival, I salute you!   But I know we’re not the only berg around with a yearly sugar-vice festival.   So please spill.  What’s your annual guilty pleasure?   

Men With Tools

Just lately, I can’t walk from one end of my house to the other without tripping over a strapping guy with a tool. Sadly, the situation is not as hot as it sounds.  We’re having some work done.  Well, a lot of work done. 

The whole thing started out, innocently enough, with a stripped diverter in the master bath.  Simple fix, right?   Not so fast.   Two different plumbers advised us the part we needed couldn’t be found anywhere in the free world – or at least not anywhere on the Internet – which meant we could either: A)  become a one shower household; or B) replace all the hardware in the master bath.  Our addiction to constant, simultaneous hot running water guided us to option B.  Because the original designer of the bathroom apparently never heard of an access panel, option B involved taking down a wall in the shower.  Once we got our heads around that, it sort of seemed stupid not to go ahead and update the tile, change out the jetted tub I never liked in the first place and then, you know, wouldn’t a seamless, glass shower enclosure look way better than the sliding glass doors?  The master bath promised to be a showplace, the contractor we discussed the project with assured us.   What a shame the other bathroom – the one guests actually see – wouldn’t get the same treatment.

So anyway, now that we’re remodeling two bathrooms, adding architectural detail to the ceiling in our entryway, putting in a little closet-slash-laundry area, and, oh yeah, fixing the diverter, the whole house is torn up and there are these dudes walking around the place from seven-thirty in the morning until three-thirty in the afternoon.    This has impacted my habits ever-so-slightly.

First off, I have to be showered and dressed by seven-thirty most mornings.  By “showered,” I mean brushed my teeth, and by “dressed,” I mean pulled a sweatshirt over my t-shirt and flannel Hello Kitty sleep pants (gift).  Yeah, technically, the seven-thirty part constitutes the only true change in my routine – eight-thirty being my normal BICHOK time … okay, nine-thirty … ten-thirty at the absolute outside.   I think you get the picture.   I handle the seven-thirty wake-up call with slightly more grace than, say, Dracula.

Next, I have to write in the kitchen, because my actual writing cave is: A) the bathroom; or B) a built-in desk located in our entryway.  Both of these areas are construction zones at the moment, so now I’m in the kitchen.  This puts me unpardonably close to the fridge.  That diet killbox just sits there, whispering to me, constantly.   Samaaaanthe?  Remember the cheesy potatoes from last night? They were so goood, and I’ve got them right heeerrreee!     I’m going to weigh five hundred pounds by the time this project ends.  I won’t even fit into either of our beautifully revamped bathrooms.

Finally, these workmen, sweet and respectful as they are, have completely thrown off my writing.  I know I’m supposed to be a professional writer, with serious discipline and dedication to my art, not a jumpy teenager guiltily penning fantasies about the cute guy from Chem Lab in her diary.  I should have a little focus, for God’s sake.  I owe my Entangled editor a manuscript by the beginning of next week. But I’m telling you, it’s distracting to have Everest Construction’s finest interrupt with questions about interior door widths, or drawer pulls, right when my heroine shoves my hero into a supply closet and wishes him the kind of Merry Christmas, that, if written correctly, ought to come with a parental warning label attached.  In the current version of the scene, I fear my heroine is a little too focused on the polished oak panel door and brushed d nickel hardware.  My Mommy Porn is starting to read like a Restoration Hardware catalog.

My editor is going to be disappointed, unless she too is remodeling, in which case, she may understand … perfectly.

Distractions ever threaten to hijack your work – or derail it completely?  How do you retrieve your focus?  Do tell.   

Family Traditions

This week my little family – husband, three-year-old son, and self – flew three thousand miles, from Southern California to Northern Kentucky, to spend a little quality time with the in-laws.   It’s been a couple years since we’ve visited, due, in part, to the aforementioned three-year-old and our concern that the average Delta flight couldn’t stock enough liquor and earplugs to make the journey bearable for the rest of the passengers.   But we mustered up our nerve, and our mood-stabilizers, and made the trip. 
I’m incredibly glad we did, not so much because the flight was a breeze – it most definitely was not – but because setting foot inside my in-laws’ house is an adventure, in the best possible way.  They’ve got family traditions I just can’t replicate in my own home.   And I don’t mean Bourbon and Euchre.  I could replicate those, though I flat-out suck at Euchre.  Given enough Bourbon, I don’t notice my epically tragic skills as much, but the traditions I speak of are slightly harder to emulate.

Tradition number one:  Home with a capital “H.”  My in-laws live in the same circa 1970’s rancher in which they raised my husband and all five of his siblings.  They bought the three bedrooms, one-and-a-half bath slice of the American dream new when it was part of a small, affordable suburb reasonably close to work, school, etc., and they eventually built-out the basement to accommodate their expanding family.  Over the years they’ve re-painted, re-carpeted, modernized the kitchen and bathrooms, but the fundamental character of the place remains unchanged.  It’s a home … comfortable, functional, and welcoming.   Nowadays Grandma and Grandpa have six adult children, a handful of sons and daughter-in-laws, and seventeen grandchildren ranging in age from twelve weeks to college freshman.  All of them, except us, live in the general vicinity.  There’s a relative or two, or twenty, running through the house at any given moment, which yields a kind of cozy chaos we don’t see in our three-person household.

This brings us to tradition number two:  Food.  If you’re going to have upwards of thirty people passing through, you’ve got to have plenty of food, and it’s got to be handy.  Because of this, my mother-in-law’s kitchen table serves as a shrine to the snack aisle at Kroger’s.  The opulence of colors, textures and shapes covering the surface are enough to make a Dutch painter weep – shiny Mylar chip bags, transparent-topped pastry boxes … an indescribable piece of decadence called a “chocolate ho-ho.” 

For the past few days our son has happily stuffed his little face with every crunchy, salty, sugary treat within reach.  Don’t get me wrong, he consumes plenty of junk at home.  But we can’t compete with the sheer variety offered on the all-you-can-eat buffet of crap he’s discovered here. 

After chomping into his very first Frito, he turned to me, face full of awe, and asked, “Mommy, what is this?” 

“It’s a corn chip.”

“How do you make it?”

“Um … you buy them at the store.” 

His eyes went wide.  The look he shot me said clearer than any words he could possibly string together:  Are you freaking kidding me?  This culinary excellence has been within reach my entire life?  Our trust is dead, lady.

How could I respond?  I shoved another handful of Fritos in my mouth and looked away.

The little guy also now knows the day doesn’t actually end at seven thirty p.m. -- and I have learned there is absolutely no point in trying to put your kid to bed at his normal bedtime when there are seven hundred other kids under the age of fifteen running around downstairs having the time of their lives.   Trust me on this.  Do not bother.

Yesterday introduced yet another tradition – the monthly birthday celebration.  In a family this size, celebrating each birthday as a stand-alone occasion becomes a logistical nightmare.  Instead they gather at the grandparents’ house on the designated Sunday, play in the backyard, talk, laugh, eat, sing “Happy Birthday,” and take a bunch of pictures.  No bouncy houses, no hired entertainers, and (gasp), no gift bags for the attendees.  The birthday folks leave with their presents and the rest of us walk away with the joy of the shared celebration.

And you know what?  I love it.  The whole thing is wonderful to the point I almost cry.  Many of the siblings own beautiful houses, just as centrally located, but, to me, at least, changing the venue would mess with the magic.  I think part of wonderfulness the lies in the perfect simplicity of gathering at a place full of memories and meaning for all of them … of coming home.

Have your own home-spun traditions?  I’m sitting here, munching on Fritos, waiting to hear all about them.