A few days ago, Alice left the loveliest of comments on this blog, asking where I’d gone. She wanted to know when we were going to publish the novel I’d promised, or if the Seven Brothers series was ever going to be finished. She was so nice that I knew I needed to respond with a new blog post. After all, my latest post was almost two years old (!) I was shocked that it had been so long since I was last here.
 
Before I explain my absence, the image I’m using is my painting of Zeebie, the Health Zombie. Zeebs, as I call him when I’m being informal. You might think he’s only a mass-produced, rag doll toy that I picked up at clearance while at a Barnes & Noble. You’d be right, but you’d be wrong. He’s my comfort zombie, and I bring him along when I’m seeing a medical specialist. I ask him to protect me. So far, so good.
 
The last time I posted, Glynn and I had recently visited Texas, had a grand but hot time, and we were working on a new novel. Shortly thereafter, we went traveling again. This time, we went to see someone we both loved a lot. She was in the hospital, falling a fall, but we were there to take her home. That didn’t happen, not for days, and Glynn had to return to Arizona. I stayed behind to learn that her lab results were a little off, so more labs were drawn, more tests were done, and the diagnosis was devastating. Just typing these words, I still remember how I felt when the doctor told us the prognosis.  
 
Zeebs wasn’t with me. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he had been.
 
She was strong, so I tried to be, too. There were tears, but there was laughter, too, almost every day. There were good times, but it was all so terrible. Glynn returned, but we all knew we were going to lose her. We did. And the people who say the hurt will get better in time are right, but it never gets better enough.
 
There was a hole in my heart, and I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t care to write this post, either, because I didn’t want to share what had happened, but I wasn’t in the right place to put up something lighthearted or fun. I couldn’t ignore what had happened, so I ignored my website. For quite a while, I let everything slide.
 
Then, one day, it was time to start writing again. I was feeling guilty that the Seven Brothers series hadn’t been completed, and Glynn wanted the novel finished, so we came to a compromise. We’d complete the novel, then we’d finish the Brothers. Nothing would be published until everything was wrapped.
 
And that’s where we are today. The novel is finished, edited, and ready to go. The first of the two remaining Brothers novellas is completed, placing a few of the final pieces in the Wetherford puzzle. The second and final story is halfway done. It’s threatening to turn out to be the longest of the novellas, but we think we’ll type THE END sometime in the next three months. For anyone who wonders how Flora’s tale concludes, you should know shortly after Halloween. It’s such a romantic time of year. 
 
We hope you’ll think it was worth the wait.

Let me offer one last "how to write popular fiction" tip. Dean Koontz has adopted it in his latest opus (which, by the way, nails most of the earlier points I mentioned) so you're in good company if you choose to do the same. Write short chapters. Embarrassingly short chapters. You've tapped out five pages that exist as a single moment in time? Now they're a chapter! You've just completed a single page that connects to nothing else in the story line? Another chapter!
  
James Patterson is famous for using buckets of chapters in his books -- some of those chapters are no longer than a paragraph -- and he's done okay in the book biz. When Dean adopted the shorter-is-better philosophy for The Silent Corner, he was simply following in the master's footsteps. I've heard a couple of theories as to why the bite-sized chapter is so popular. One of my friends, Sue, believes multiple chapters creates an artificial sense of urgency to a story. Look how quickly those chapters are flying by! -- and the reader doesn't have time to be bored before another chapter has come along. The Good Witch says she thinks it's because today's readers are so easily distracted, they lose their train of thought if they have to stop mid-chapter...so make every chapter so short, they NEVER have to stop mid-chapter. And, yes, the readers might lose their train of thought, anyway, but they won't puzzle over it for long because they have a new chapter to read! 
 
I'm not a fan of the nugget-length chapter, but I'm in the minority here. All I know is, my next manuscript is going to have thirty chapters because that's the deal I made months ago. So how am I doing on that manuscript? I managed absolutely zip-a-dee-doo-dah work on my writing this week. Instead I went to San Antonio. The picture above? A not very good shot of San Antonio.

It was a last minute thing, this trip, but it provided an opportunity for us to see, hug, and kiss some family members that we haven't seen, hugged, or kissed for much too long. We rented a car, drove for two days, and did the Airbnb thing when we got into Texas. Neither of us had ever been to Texas or San Antonio before, so we hugged/kissed, did the River Walk, ate gloriously-delicious Mexican food, and touristed our way over to the Alamo.
 
When one of our family members asked if we wanted to see the Alamo, I told him, "I think I've heard of that. What is the Alamo, exactly?" "You don't remember the Alamo?!" he replied, shocked, and I told him I was only kidding. I don't think he believed me. This is my cell phone shot of the Alamo, which is much smaller than I imagined from the movies. It was fun to see but, overall, my feeling is I won't need to see it again for a decade or so.

We made some lovely new friends (but they refused to move to Arizona, so we'll probably see them as often as we see the Alamo) and had such a good time, we decided we didn't even mind the long drive, the damage to our bank account, or the mosquitoes that fed upon us as if we were the insect-version of gloriously-delicious Mexican food.
 
But then there was the heat....
 
How hot was it? This is the gooey image of the vitamins I left in the car one morning, and only remembered by the afternoon. It was sweltering in Texas, sweltering in New Mexico, and sweltering in Arizona when we returned. When we stopped for lunch in Phoenix, it was 119 degrees. But it was, according to Glynn, "A dry heat. A terrible, strength-sapping, life-devouring dry heat" so we had that going for us.
 
Now that I'm home, it's time to focus on that slow-growing manuscript. If this is the last blog you see for a few weeks, please know I'm hard at work, trying to finish...well, some piece of the story. It's time, don't you think?

Last week, I offered my eight tips on writing popular fiction because I was aggravated that John Grisham promised to do the same but only managed to provide some standard writing advice. I may not have provided much that was fresh or new but I gave it a real try. It's not too late, J.G. You can still step up and give it the ol' college try.
 
Today, let me offer two quickies in regards to writing popular fiction before I go sit in a corner with my notepad and try not to melt. In my usually happy hometown, we're in the middle of a miserable heat wave. In our town, the weather doesn't usually come this hot, this soon, so -- fingers crossed -- let's hope this is the worst of the summer in Arizona. Somehow, I don't think so.
 
As an addendum to last week's post on writing popular novels, let me add that it never hurts to add an adorable animal into the story. I'm told that pet lovers are just a touch more ready to buy if their favorite creature is part of the mix. As you probably know from a generation of best-seller lists, cats have a large fan base. So do dogs, and some authors (I'm looking at you, D. Koontz) are eager to feature them heavily. I have a pair of friends that can't understand why horses aren't more visible in current fiction and I've met a few people who feel that ferrets are the best pets of all.
 
Since I've never shared my life with one of those long-tailed beauties, I'm not ready to embrace ferret fiction. I think it's good to write from a position of passion, and I've loved all of my cats and dogs. If you find a Chihuahua in one of our books, you'll know why.
 
My second and last tip for today? Write more quickly than I do. For years, publishers believed that authors should write only one manuscript a year. If they dared to exceed that count, said the Great Publishing Brain Trust, their readers would tire of them and go away. It turns out, the publishers were incorrect. There are many, many readers who are ready to buy as many novels as their favorite author can create. If you want to be one of those authors, you're best served by putting out at least two novels a year. More would be better. If you can somehow knock out a novel a month, you'll only build your readership.
 
If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to the next chapter on my novel. As the Good Witch was kind enough to remind me on Monday, it's taking me f-o-r-e-v-e-r. *sigh*

Last week, I mentioned that John Grisham was offering his Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction to the outside world. For free. I provided a link (here:) so that we could all learn from the master’s feet. J.G. is fantastically successful and his advice is worthy of notice. After all, he produces best-sellers like I produce terrific home-cooked meals – once, sometimes twice, a year.

The informational piece was short, under 400 words, and John only had eight suggestions to offer in regards to writing popular fiction. Going over it twice, I found it a ten minute read, tops. Not a bad deal, as far as I was concerned. The New York Times got an exclusive, John squeezed out a little extra newspaper space, and Grisham fans got some free Grisham. Me, I had an excuse to write an extra-short blog, allowing me to get back to my current manuscript. It was a win-win-win from all angles.
 
This weekend, though, I read the column a third time and decided that Mr. Grisham was playing a shell game. He was offering his advice on writing popular fiction, but his “little pearls” of wisdom were rather bland. To his credit, his opening disclaimer admitted he was providing absolutely zip in the way of originality. These simple and oft-repeated tips had everything to do with producing some kind of novel (in a short two years), and nothing to do with producing a popular novel. That seemed like an important distinction to me, and I had to wonder why he wrote what he did.
 
I’m still wondering, but there’s a chance the answer was to be found in a different section of the NYT. In his interview there, J.G. shared that his novel sales have slumped – “The biggest change for me has been that I’m selling about half the books I sold before the Great Recession” – so he may have hesitated to share any real wisdom with the outside world. No one wants new competition, and John may have been less than eager to have a thousand would-be Grishams going step-by-step to replicate his success. The secrets he’s learned, he’s keeping. Only a dummy would spill the good stuff.
 
Which is why it’s so clever of you to come by this website. I absolutely got to where I am as a writer by doing foolish things, and I’m going to do another one here. Since J.G. wasn’t willing to really provide the goods, I will. Better yet, you don’t need a newspaper subscription to read them.
 
Anne Glynn’s Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction
 
Grisham started his article with a few disclaimers so I’m going to throw some in mine. The first thing is, there are always exceptions to the rule. The second is: Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules. A lot of successful books don’t touch any of these marks, I know it, you know it, and so what? If you’re a decent writer who actually plants her butt in a chair and gets words written, I believe you’ll find a larger audience if you follow these suggestions.
 
Also, I’m not a big best-selling author, so you’re right to wonder if you should pay any attention to what I say here. Fair enough.
 
 
1.      HIGH CONCEPT IS A GOOD THING
 
John’s first novel, A Time to Kill, had a strong concept: What if a girl’s father killed her assailants? On release, it sold less than five thousand copies. His second novel was high concept: What if a young lawyer found his dream job, only to learn he was working for the Mob – and the Mob killed all of the lawyers who tried to leave the firm? It was the stronger “what if” of the second novel that intrigued the movie studios, insured a bidding war, and launched his career.
 
The high concept novel I had to buy, the second I heard the story line? Michael Crichton’s JURASSIC PARK.
 
2.      YOU WANT TO BUILD AN AUDIENCE? BUILD A SERIES
 
Buckets of best-sellers are one-and-done, but others have built an audience more slowly. Robert B. Parker inched his hero, Spenser, onto the best-seller list, one novel at a time. He ended up writing almost forty Spenser novels – and still more were produced after his death, because, as you know, money. Parker went on to create another series character (Sunny Randall) and another (Jesse Stone) and another (Cole and Hitch)…because series sell.
​ 
Dean Koontz, a writer who follows publishing trends with an eagle eye, has developed a couple of series characters, too, over the course of his career. According to USA Today, it paid off: “In recent years, his series featuring Odd Thomas – a young fry cook with paranormal powers, including the ability to see the spirits of the ‘lingering dead’ – has been particularly popular.” If he did it, you should think about doing it, too.
 
3.      J.G.  DID OFFER THIS LITTLE NUGGET: NO PROLOGUES
 
The fourth of Grisham’s eight NYT “little pearls” was for writers to avoid offering prologues to their stories. He doesn’t say why, so let me share: Some readers skip them automatically. If the prologue is important to the storyline and the reader didn’t bother with it, confusion will soon follow. On the other hand, if the prologue isn’t important to the storyline, why was it written in the first place?
 
Agents and small publishers have both told me they don’t want to see prologues, either. You can probably offer a best-selling exception to this rule (for example, William Goldman’s MARATHON MAN), but you should know that the world doesn’t get more excited when a story opens with one. Sometimes that’s all it takes for a would-be reader to put your novel down.
 
If you think no one will notice if you sneak by using a “foreword” instead of a “prologue”, ding dong, still wrong.
 
4.      YOUR HERO SHOULD BE AMAZING. ALSO, AMUSINGLY IMPERFECT
 
The Spenser character that Robert B. Parker created? He’s a skilled fighter, a terrific amateur chef, a gifted lover, and catnip to almost all of the women he meets (Glynn doesn’t remember a single Spenser novel where one woman or another doesn’t lust for the detective upon meeting him), yet he’s cursed with an inability to stop offering funny quips at the wrong time. Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz’s guy, can see spirits, but he also knows everything about every gun ever produced, as well as being an incredible shot…but he’s also a quirky optimist, undeterred by the misery of his visions.
 
That’s what Glynn has told me on those two characters. Me, I favor Sherlock Holmes (supernaturally brilliant, not so good with people, enjoys cocaine maybe a bit much) and Hercule Poirot (genius detective, humorously fussy, and there’s the egg-shaped head thing), but they fit into this category, too. One of the bold, underlined points here is, your hero has to be close to perfect but with a flaw or two. These shouldn’t be an unpleasant flaws.
 
What do I mean by an unpleasant flaw? In real life, the Good Witch knew a very handsome fellow (so far, so good), who was also a gifted sculptor (even better), but he unfortunately had a habit of picking his nose in public. She said he indulged in this so frequently, it almost seemed like his hobby. If you want to write popular fiction, keep the handsome, keep the sculptor, lose the nose hockey.
 
5.      YOUR HEROINE? AMAZING, BUT ALSO JAW-DROPPINGLY BEAUTIFUL.  SOMEHOW, SHE DOESN’T REALIZE THIS
 
That Dean Koontz best-selling writer guy? He’ll happily create a hero who is fairly ordinary in looks (yet nearly a superhero in other aspects of life), but darned if the hero’s significant other can be anything less than a supermodel in appearance. She somehow can’t know this, because vanity is an unappealing feature in people, but everyone else is quite aware of her beauty. It makes me laugh each time I see this in one of his novels, but I keep reading.
 
Glynn can be a little less agreeable about such things, though. He’d only started Jeffery Deaver’s THE STEEL KISS when he threw the paperback into the donate pile. One of the main characters, Amelia Sachs, is an ace detective and championship marksman (therefore, amazing) who used to be a high fashion model. She’s a cop, but remains a breath-taking redhead (jaw-dropping beauty) even while hunting the bad guys.
 
“Baloney, baloney, baloney,” Glynn told me, not using the word ‘baloney’, “never happen!” I’m telling you, if you want to collect Jeffery Deaver-like royalties, your heroine needs to be a knock-out.
 
6.      AVOID A FRAGMENTED NARRATIVE
 
If you’re hoping to reach the largest possible number of readers, you want to provide a clean storyline that goes from beginning to middle to end. Throw in a few flashbacks (or, God help you, a flash forward or two), and there’s a certain part of the audience that will abandon you. They want their stories to go from A to B to C, without a sharp, surprising return to B a little later on, or a sudden swing forward to Q. They don’t want to struggle to understand the narrative.
 
Think of it this way: When you were little, and your father carried a book into your room at bedtime, you couldn’t wait to hear the story he was about to tell. When Dad sat at your bedside, reading “The Three Little Pigs”, you felt the tension building as the Wolf prepared to blow the first pig’s house down. You wished he’d turn the pages faster, so that you could hear what happened next. But if Dad interrupted the narrative flow to say, “As he prepared to huff and puff, Wolf couldn’t help but remember when he was 15 and on the junior varsity track team. As a young athlete, he hadn’t built his lung capacity as he should have, causing him to embarrass himself during the big track meet. Let us go now to his days at Franklin High,” you’d lose interest. The next time he carried in a book, you’d hope it would be “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.
 
Don’t give your readers the opportunity to lose interest.
 
7.      TELL THE STORY FROM A SINGLE POINT OF VIEW
 
This is almost 6-B, and the bit of advice you’re most likely to discard. Feel free to do so, but know that you’ll lose some of your audience along the way. When you flip the P.O.V., there are a tiny percentage of people who will get confused. A tiny percentage of that tiny percentage will leave the story then (or offer a review that includes, “It gets confusing at times, but…” which is deadly for new sales).
 
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
 
8.      A HAPPY ENDING IS A GOOD THING
 
Glynn hates it when people flip to the back of one of our books to see how the story ends. Stephen King hates this kind of thing, too, so my guy is in good company. It turns out, there are a lot of writers who feel the same way. They’re all in the wrong, mind you, because they’ve forgotten the most important thing. Once a manuscript is in print, it’s the reader who is king (sorry, Steve).
 
When I pick up a novel, I read the pitch on the dustjacket or from the back of the paperback. If the storyline intrigues me, I flip through the first few pages to see if I like the writing. If that keeps me interested, I turn to the last chapter. If the story appears to end unhappily – love is lost, life is lost, the heroine loses – I put down the book and walk away.
 
There are a lot of people who feel the same way. In real life, justice doesn’t always prevail, the good guys sometimes lose, and we’ve all shed too many tears. That’s real life. When it comes to fiction, most of us welcome a victory. No one has ever turned to the back of a book, read the ending, and said, “I’m worried this will leave me feeling good. I’d better not get it.”
 
See you next week.

​​John Grisham is hitting the book circuit to promote his new novel. As part of this effort, the best-selling author allowed The New York Times to print his “Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction”. He opened that piece by admitting his suggestions aren’t strikingly original. I’d hoped he’d offer some super-cool secret tips (such as, “I became a best-selling author only after I pledged my undying loyalty to the Great Old Ones. Hail Cthulhu!”) or provide anything that might possibly spark a lively conversation (like, perhaps, “Eliminate the competition. I’ve invited James Patterson to my island fortress, where I’ll hunt him for sport”).
 
So what advice did he offer? The biggie was that a writer needs to produce a new page of words every day. To quote Grisham, “That’s about 200 words, or 1,000 words a week. Do that for two years and you’ll have a novel that’s long enough.”
 
This led me to realize a couple of things. First, John Grisham believes a novel needs to total roughly 104,000 words to be worthy of publication. Secondly, what a relaxed life he lives if he limits himself to his recommended page count. Today’s blog, for example? It’s 200 words.

​Over the weekend, my guy and I went out for a walk. When we’re writing together, we often walk around the neighborhood, talking about plotting or characterization issues. Since the current writing project has a single author, I was the only one with an issue to share during this stroll. My issue on Sunday was the difficulty in changing my hero from a happily pleasant civil engineer to a dark and brooding…well, civil engineer. There’s no reason a civil engineer can’t be dark and brooding.
 
Or am I wrong? I’m still feeling my way around this kind of character. I’m not a dark-and-brooding kind of woman on most days, which has resulted in the majority of our heroes being pretty optimistic kinds of men. In an effort to mix things up a little, I’m going against my natural tendencies to create a hero that’s comfortable in the shadows.
 
It wouldn’t be that big of an issue for me, I imagine, if I was starting from scratch. Instead, I’m on Chapter 22 of a 30-chapter romance. It feels like quite the challenge, indeed.
 
When I spoke of my troubles in making my adjustments, Glynn made agreeing-noises and sympathetic sounds. Except for football season, he’s as far from dark and brooding as any man can be so he doesn’t truly understand my plight at all. During a break in conversation, he said, “You should make the hero someone like me,” and he said it in all seriousness. Since I didn’t know how to reply at that moment – he’s my joy, but not so much a Harlequin hero – I pretend I don’t hear him.
 
He lets it pass, and we go on.
 
As we walk, I can hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. Living in California and Illinois, I’d often heard thunder, but it never sounded like this did, growling as it rolled across the Arizona mountains. I could smell the presence of rain all around us; another trick of these mountains is how rain can pour in sheets directly across the street, and never spill a drop on your own house. It’s Nature’s own CGI. Fairly magical.
 
I stop walking to enjoy the sight of the dark storm clouds in the not-so-distance. Glynn steps in behind me and puts his arms around my waist. The smell of fresh rain grows all the stronger, and I inhale deeply.
 
“I love this smell,” I tell him.
 
“What smell?”
 
“This smell. The smell of rain in the air.”
 
“Oh, that’s just me,” he says softly at my ear. “It’s my new cologne.”
 
For the second time on this walk, I don’t know what to say.
 
He continues, “It’s called Rainglow. My cologne, I mean.”
 
Honestly, he said these nonsensical things because…that’s all I’ve got. Just because. He said them with a straight face, as if lightning had struck my head and I might be so confused, I’d believe him.
 
Turning around to face him, I said, “Your cologne.”
 
“Picked it up when I made a Target run. Last Thursday.”
 
“Did you? Interesting. Products have commercials. I don’t think I’ve seen any commercials for ‘Rainglow’.”
 
“Probably missed ‘em. We DVR everything, so you probably just zipped right past it. Maybe more than once.”
 
“That’s a shame.” I wasn’t going to give up so easily. “Products also have slogans and tag lines. Hai Karate had, ‘Be careful how you use it’.” (I don’t know why I remembered that.) “Old Spice used, ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’. What’s the slogan for Rainglow?”
 
Without missing a beat, he said, “Rainglow: Be Your Woman’s Rainbow.”  
 
“That is the saddest, least sexy slogan ever!” I said. He smiled. Then we agreed that maybe we should get inside before lightning struck either of our heads.
 
And that whole silly exchange is why my partner will never find himself as a romance novel hero in a book I write. But if I were to start a comic strip….

Sorry I missed you last week. Life got busy, as it will for all of us on occasion, but last week was terribly busy in my part of the world. As I write this, there’s a stucco guy in my back yard, trying to save my once lovely (stucco) fence from total destruction. I’m waiting on a call from a plumber in regards to a different issue. I’ll be seeing a painter in two days for an estimate on still another concern. Last week, on the very day I was supposed to blog, Poison was under anesthesia to have dental surgery.
 
​My banker is weeping as he contemplates the damage that’s being done to my depleted savings account. Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t have enough money left in my account to rate a personal banker. Considering our monthly statements, I’m lucky the banking industry allows me to keep a personal ATM card. The way things are going, they may come to regret that decision.

So I’ve been distracted and a little anxious, cash-wise. I’m also feeling a little pins-and-needle-y because my new novel is so far from done. It moves along, slowly, slowly, because other events keep interrupting my progress. Glynn is more than ready to start Third Brother (and a few readers have let us know, they’re ready for Third Brother, too) so I feel as if I’m letting people down. The good news is, I like what I’m doing with the new book; the bad news is, as long as I keep the pages from Glynn’s eyes – I want the completed story to be a surprise -- I don’t have anyone to tell me if they think I’m on the right track. If I’ve gone horribly astray, I could always throw my pages away and move into our next sequel to One Bride.
 
The truth is, I just wanted an “Atta girl!”  It’s been awhile since I’ve had one. I know the story is okay. In younger days, I might have drifted into the wrong direction but I’ve been at the keyboard for enough years to realize when things are shaping up nicely. The new novel will be fine, if I can just get enough time to finish it.
 
At the neighborhood Game Night (I won the first game), one of the neighbors said she’d heard that Glynn and I write romances. When I told her I was in the midst of a mail-order bride novel, she couldn’t have been more excited. “Those are my favorite,” she exclaimed. “The innocent bride. The dark and brooding hero she has to win.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my hero was neither dark, nor brooding. He’s kind of an upbeat optimist. The heroine doesn’t have to win his heart; he falls for her immediately. He’s a good man, without a trace of bad boy in him. Then I remembered how many readers do like a bad boy, do want a man of mystery colored by the tragedies of his past. I immediately decided I needed to rewrite the hero of my novel. Instead of smiling when he sees Faith, Sam will frown. Instead of chasing after her, he’ll…oh, I don’t know. Stare mournfully off into the distance, or something.

Worried about this, I lost the next three games before returning home. You want to see dark and brooding? Come to my house.

​Here’s something I’ve learned this week. I’ve discovered that head wounds, even small ones resulting from clumsiness and general inattention, bleed copiously. Fingers are not an effective bandage in this situation.
 
Here’s something I didn’t learn for the first time this week, but which was recently reaffirmed: People don’t mind talking politics and religion, as long as the person they’re talking with largely agrees with them. Disagree on too many points or too vigorously, and the conversation can come to an abrupt end – or a sudden fight.
 
While a good fight can be a cleansing experience, most of us would rather avoid the aggravation. As a result, the MSNBC News crowd generally doesn’t play bingo at the Fox News media center. When it comes to religion, there aren’t too many church picnics where a group of Mormons have gathered to enjoy a bit of egg salad and watermelon with the Presbyterians from down the street. Instead of trying to understand one another, we’ve all decided the other guy is wrong and we’d rather not hear anything they’ve got to say.
 
This is how weird it’s gotten: When Glynn and I published our novel, The Atheist’s Daughter, under our non-romance pseudonym, we had readers tell us they wouldn’t buy the book because the heroine’s mother was an atheist. It didn’t matter that the heroine’s best friend and romantic interest was deeply religious. Since those readers never bought and read the book, they’ll never know about him.
 
The title was my choosing, by the way, and we walked from an attractive contract to keep it. I wanted that title because I intended for us to do a three-volume set of stories: The Atheist’s Daughter, The Preacher’s Son and The Minister’s Wife. I’ve often wondered if our sales struggled because of the title I wanted for Book One. I’ll never know for certain. I do know that there are several novels out there entitled The Preacher’s Son, but no other publisher has come out with another Atheist’s Daughter.
 
All of which came back to me when our neighborhood’s get-together luncheon was canceled on Saturday, secondary to gale force winds. Instead of going home, I joined my friend, Sue, and her friend, Thorny. (“Thorny” isn’t her real name, of course. She’s a nice woman with a very pleasant, ordinary name. Wouldn’t it be cool if her name was Thorny, though? I want that name!)
 
We were all discussing music when Thorny volunteered that she used to like Bruce Springsteen’s songs. Even though the music hadn’t changed, Thorny no longer listened to the songs because of Bruce’s outspoken political beliefs. She didn’t mind that he had political beliefs, she told me, she simply felt he shouldn’t share his with the rest of the world.
 
“What if you shared the same beliefs?” I asked. I assumed she didn’t. “What if Bruce came out in a way that supported your party?”
 
It took her a minute to think. “That would probably be okay. But I’d rather he not say anything at all.”
 
Then Thorny shared that she no longer enjoyed Jim Carrey movies (because the actor sang a song about Charlton Heston and, as I understand it, in favor of gun control) and she’d stopped watching Harry Potter films, because Daniel Radcliffe had revealed that he was an atheist. I volunteered that I no longer followed Woody Allen’s projects and hadn’t for years, but she didn’t ask why. Maybe women of a certain age already know why.
 
There was one other actor who Thorny avoided these days, too. “Tom Cruise.”
 
I wondered, “Is it because he’s a Scientologist?”
 
“Because he seems so pleased with himself,” Thorny said. “Whenever I see him on screen, that’s the feeling I get. I think he likes himself too much.”
 
I didn’t have a response for that. I’m guessing there are many, many celebrities who are pleased with themselves, and several of them have good cause for those feelings. If I was as successful as the top stars, or was as genetically-blessed as they appear to be, I’d be ordering more mirrors for the house at this very second. (Well, no, I’d be sipping my expresso. I’d have one of my assistants do it.) Or maybe I’d have more sense than that. Maybe I’d realize that I’d gotten lucky, and decide to make-do with the twenty-four mirrors in my fifteen bedroom mansion.
 
I’d keep Glynn, too. Stephen Amell, you’ll have to find a different Sugar Mama.
 
Except for Mr. Allen, I don’t have too many celebrities on my “Don’t Watch” list. I don’t tend to follow anyone’s latest tweets, posts, Instagram messages, or Facebook musings, so I don’t know or care about their political and religious leanings. Consequently, I can continue to watch Gotham and Agents of Shield and Supernatural without feeling grumpy about the actors on those shows. In other words, Clark Gregg, you’re still my guy.
 
I do try to keep up with the Real Housewives, but those women don’t seem like celebrities to me. They’re more like the trashy neighbors in the really big house at the end of the street. It doesn’t matter what they mutter about God or country because they’re crazy. When they talk, I giggle.
 
When it comes to you and me, I’d like us to get along so, while we can talk politics and religion, I’d rather we not. Not on this blog, not on this website. But if you want to discuss Phaedra Parks and those Atlanta girls with me – Can you believe that last reunion show? – I’ll brew you a cuppa and we’ll have a fine time.
 
See you next week.

And life has gotten in the way of my words today. Not only am I spending too many hours dealing with the stucco guy, and painters, and the sprinkler man, and the money men (because you can't surrender you savings account to the stucco guy, painters, and the sprinkler man without meeting with a "finance team"), but I've just somehow punched a divot directly above my right eyebrow and the bleeding isn't in a particular hurry to stop.
 
This happened because I am not a particularly graceful person. I'm almost as clumsy as our much-missed kitty, Pinky. Now I'm wondering if I'm going to have a scar when this is done. A scar would only be fun if it was achieved in a particularly memorable way.
 
What happened to me wasn't particularly cool.
 
Oliver Queen couldn't help but notice the mysterious scar above her right eyebrow. Too late, he realized she was watching him.
 
"The scar? It happened in the Spring of 2017," she said in a smoky voice. "Hurrying to enter my car, I thunked my head into the edge of the roof as the front door swung into my legs. And what of you, Mr. Queen? How did you get quite so many scars?"
 
"Oh, hey, look at the time," Oliver said. "Gotta go!"
 
Me, too. So no blog this week. If this bleeding doesn't stop, maybe no blog next week, either.

You should skip this week's blog. It has little redeeming value, there aren't enough words in it to fully count as a complete blog, and I'm sorry to subject you to it. I'm willing to take responsibility for discussing the upcoming ridiculousness, but I'm not to blame if you proceed past this point.
 
From here on in, you're on your own. Consider this fair warning.

My allergies have been terrible this year, for whatever reason, and I've been feeling miserable. Coughing and sneezing, getting too little sleep, I was thisclose to demanding that Glynn take over the blog and force some magic from Microsoft Word...except that his week has been exceptionally busy, and I didn't want to put too much on his plate. Since my magical shoe-cobbling elves don't do words, this meant that I still didn't have a blog for 04/27/2017 and I didn't have any energy to write a blog for 04/27. All of which left me thisclose to leaving this space blank today -- which was something I didn't want to do.
 
My head is clouded, my mind is foggy, and I didn't even have a subject to discuss. Or I didn't until I learned, just today, that dinosaur erotica was a thing.
 
I read about the subject on a much more reliable website than my own. I didn't believe it truly existed, then couldn't wait to mention the idea to the Good Witch. She said, "Oh, sure, I've seen it. The covers, anyway. Go to Amazon, you'll find loads of the stuff." So I went to Amazon. I found loads of the stuff. I was -- and am -- fairly astounded. Not only are there buckets of these stories, many of them have glowing reviews.
 
I'm not saying that the crowd views this stuff as Pulitzer material, but it has its audience. 
 
It turns out, if you're of a particular mind, you can pick up a copy of Ravished by the Triceratops at this very moment. The story led one reviewer to offer, "I like the triceratops sex better than the human sex; after all, there's only so many things two people can do" -- and, at $2.99 for 15 pages, I don't care how many things that triceratops did, I'd want a little extra value for money. In seeking more pages for my dinosaur-erotica buck, I came across Helicopter Man Pounds Dinosaur Billionaire Ass. This is the oft-told tale of a man with the ability to transform into a helicopter who falls in love with a terribly wealthy male stegosaurus. One reviewer referred to it as, "The new 50 Shades of Grey." Other reviewers claimed that they, too, were able to transform into various flying machines and were happy to finally find a novel that featured one of their kind as the hero.
 
For $3.99, the reader gets 114 pages of dino lust. Or, if you should so choose, you can pick it up in paperback for $7.99.
 
In case you're wondering, I didn't pick it up but I did hope the subject matter would make for an amusing blog. G.W. told me I shouldn't bother. "Everybody knows about dinosaur erotica," she shared. "That's so two years ago."
 
That being the case, I'll see you next week. Bring some Kleenex.