Here’s My Five Favorite Books of All Time….

(and I hope to find out about yours too…)

A year or so ago on Facebook I made a list of some of my favorite books of all time. I didn’t say why I cared about my top choices, so I thought I’d do that now. Also, I’d love to know your favorite books, and why you chose them.

Well, Jane Eyre will always be at the top of my list. Nothing can replace it because it impacted me in a huge way. I read it way back in 1965 when I was eighteen years old, and until the moment I got my hands on it I’d only read books by men. Not intentionally, mind you, but because I hadn’t known of any women authors. This was before contemporary women’s fiction started being published in the 1970s and I entered reading heaven.  (These 70s women’s books were first put down by patriarchal society as confessional writing and later evolved into being referred to as chick lit. So very sad.)

Anyway, at eighteen I had never been exposed to classic novels, like Jane Eyre or any other women’s classics, and Jane Eyre came to me in a strange “meant to be” kind of way. That is, the novel was left behind by a previous tenant in an empty house my family moved into. It was sitting on the floor in the bedroom I would occupy. I took this to be a spiritual action.

So let me start by saying that I strongly identified with Jane’s life from page one. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day, Charlotte Bronte began her novel, and the words no possibility reached out and grabbed hold of me. I knew by that opening line that Jane in her present state was living in a world of no possibilities, and this mirrored my own sad life. It turned out that Jane lived with her mean Aunt Reed and her nasty-ass cousins who were cruel to her. As for myself, I lived in a household where daily abuse was the norm. Jane was stuck in a world she hated, and I had been too. Therefore, I thought of Jane and I as soul sisters. Here was someone so much like me–and isn’t this what literature does at its finest–allowing the reader to see themselves in a character?

As Jane moved through the pages of her fictional world she little by little grew stronger and stronger. When she arrived at Thornfield Hall where she worked as a nanny, she came upon difficult decisions but she relied on God to guide her. She had morals. She had integrity. She refused to compromise herself. I loved her strength and read this beloved book over and over again.

Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood was another one of those novels that I dove into head first, and I read it in my late twenties. It’s been decades since I first read about Joan Foster, Margaret Atwood’s main character, but I can still remember being in a book store on Castro Street in San Francisco where I bought it. Once home and reading it, I didn’t stop until I’d finished it at midnight and it was about three hundred pages long. I’d never done that with a novel before–finished it in one day–and the feeling that I got when I turned the last page was one of sadness because I loved the novel so much and regretted that I’d never get the chance to read it for the first time again. Never ever get that experience.

The part that I related to the most was Joan dealing with her weight. This was an era before Jennifer Weiner began publishing her novels that often dealt with large heroines and body image and I was hungry to read of these experiences. I had dealt with being heavyset for most of my life. As a kid I had always been the largest girl in the class, put down by being called fatty. I distinctly remember being in the sixth grade and one of the student’s mothers yelling Look at fatty run! when she was chaperoning the playground. All during my childhood I was told that no boy would ever like me unless I first lost weight which was too bad for me because I had a pretty face. Me and my fat, unloveable. So when I found Joan struggling with issues involving her weight I related to it, her mother being the instigator, and my mother being one of my instigator’s also.

Joan Foster helped me to not feel so alone in the same way that Jane Eyre did, only this time it was about my body size. Here’s a quote from Lady Oracle that stands out in my mind:

A woman’s worth is not determined by her size or shape, but by the strength of her character.

Next up is Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. I don’t know anyone who has read this book who hasn’t been emotionally moved by it. And I mean deeply moved, their heart exiting the book on a pair of crutches. Oh, the story of John Singer, the deaf mute who everyone confided in. And I was so moved by thirteen-year-old tomboy Mick Kelly, a young teen struggling with loneliness and dreaming of becoming a musician. Mick describes her world as her inner room, and we readers are privy to that psychological room of hers. I felt as if I was right there with her when she ached to take music lessons but had no money for them. She hoped to hear Mozart or Beethoven being played as she walked about her town. I touched her loneliness, felt it, living alongside her.

Next up. Enter May Sarton. To discover May Sarton’s journals was a wonderful experience for me, and there were so many of them that truth be told, they were all pretty similar but I didn’t care. Her journals opened a door to a world of privacy where it felt as if May and I were sitting at a table together and she was telling me about her life rather than writing about it and me laying on the bed and reading it. I felt that close to her, as if I was May’s confidante. Sarton wrote about living alone in an isolated area of New England and finding solace in being hidden away. Being alone didn’t frighten her and I’m pretty much like that. I’m an introvert by nature and do much better by myself than with people. I like people all right, but I fiercely need my alone time in order to feel sane. May went to bed alone, woke up alone and wrote about her pets, her gardening and her writing process. (She also wrote that she was hard to get along with, and I witnessed her crankiness when I met her in person at a reading, but hey, I’d been forewarned.)

Here’s a quote of hers:

I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged, damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea also had a soulful effect upon me. The opening line:  He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. So Santiago, the main character, ends up all alone at sea. He’s searching for meaning while searching for a big fish after going a long time without catching one. He needs to prove to his aging self that he still has what it takes. It would have been a whole different book if it had been titled The Young Man and the Sea. Santiago didn’t have that much time left, which increases the urgency. I hadn’t expected to like this book so much, but his quiet endurance, his slow spirituality hooked me, no pun intended. Hemingway made me root for Santiago, wanting him to succeed, involving me in his journey.

And then there’s Steinbeck….

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no fambly. They don’t belong no place.

George, from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

Well, just rip my heart out. Two men. George and Lennie. George as caretaker. Lennie with the mind of a child. An unlikely pairing. Two powerless migrant workers with a dream of owning their own land.

Reading about their relationship mesmerized me as I’d never read of such an intense relationship between two men before. Men sharing a common dream, a dream that seemed so unattainable. I identified with their dream of a home. A real home. All my life, until I left home as an older teenager, I had moved around from one place to the next. I had gone to eighteen different schools before graduating from high school as my mother was mentally ill and couldn’t tolerate living in any one place for very long. We were very poor and would get behind on the rent and sometimes would sneak out at midnight with our suitcases. I so wanted to belong to what I considered a normal family, a family who put down roots. And so I saw myself in George and Lennie and shared a dream with them.

Jane, Joan, May, Santiago, George and Lennie.

Please tell me about your favorite characters and books….

We’re Old, and Yes, We Still Kick Ass (an essay I wrote about aging)

Me at 79…

Published by Literary Yard

When I was writing my novel Sex, Love and Makeovers in the City of the Ancient Cougars, a novel about a make-believe South American town that hosted a beauty pageant for elderly women, I wanted to depict women in their late seventies and beyond as still going strong, even if encumbered–in the case of one of the main characters–with health problems. We all know that women my age and older are generally presumed by society to be over the hill and are seldom seen as full of life force. 

This isn’t true. Many of us are full of life force, and the only over the hill I seem to be aware of would be me panting up ten flights of decorative stairs in San Francisco’s Sunset district. It seems that nothing can keep me down for long, not even the stroke I had a year and a half ago. Yeah, a crummy stroke that was followed by a neurological condition where every few months it feels like I’m having a stroke all over again. Apparently, the front part of my brain–the executive center–isn’t always able to control the back of my brain, and this is causing the feelings of repetitive strokes. Great! Just what I needed! Anyway, enough of that. What I meant to write about was life force, that nothing can stop both me and the women I know who I consider the elderlies–a term I came up with that I like a lot. Question: is there something happening with the older generation in American society these days? Have you noticed how attractive we are? Take a look. How we not only dress chic but often dress with our parts–boobs, stomachs, hips hanging out–no matter what we weigh, no matter how big or spindly-legged? That we accept and love our bodies? You see, we’re not concerned any longer with pleasing anybody other than ourselves. We don’t give a crap about what others think because we are the new kick ass elderlies, out and about doing things we want. As for me, I’m retired but I still work two or three days a week, and I spend at least two hours a day writing my new novel plus I trek up and down the San Francisco hills at least a couple of miles each and every day–have I already mentioned this?–I can’t remember.  There I am over there panting–do you see me? Sure, the younger generation hikes up the hills while I plod along, but who gives a flying tomato? 

When my mother was my age and even younger, the women of her generation dressed in plaid housedresses that buttoned down the front and were belted in the middle and with boring full skirts. They wore their permanented hair in short, tight, unflattering curls close to their heads, but at least they did wear red lipstick and darkened their eyebrows–the only excitement in their appearance. There were no black yoga pants, no form-fitting tops or hoodies, no converse, and wearing your hair long and untamed, or any way you wanted, wasn’t a societal option. 

The older women in my novel (and here’s where the parody comes in) are seeking attention from the young men in their twenties and thirties who travel to Ciudad de las Pumas Antiguas, or Ciudad as it’s referred to, to romance elderly women for different reasons–gigolos, fetishists or those with a genuine desire to fall in love with an elderly woman–and the women, generally self-conscious about their aging bodies, don’t let that stop them from sexual activity or entering the cougar beauty contest. 

I doubt the women I know would date someone fifty years younger than themselves or enter a cougar beauty contest, nor would I. I do, however, love their fictional spirit. And let it be said that I wear yoga pants that show off my spindly legs, spindly, I am told, because of losing muscle mass, and my tight tops cling to me and show off my figure. I have red henna’d hair and let it go wherever it wants. My make-up includes black eyeliner and flashy red lipstick that I also rouge my cheeks with, and I paint my ridiculously long nails a shiny black color. 

Can you see the outline of our Depends through our yoga tights? Does it bother you? Too bad! Get over it, people, because we don’t give a flying radish! We have weak bladders. Many of us birthed children. An incontinent friend of mine refers to herself as the Urinator, proudly picturing herself as an aging Terminator.

My aging friends. I love how they do what they want and dress how they want and take as long as they need while crossing the street without feeling bad for holding up traffic. They put in their time and deserve utmost respect. I love how they/I shout the F-word when on their laptops: This password isn’t working! 

And this is what I think, that there’s a new generation of women my age who rock it– am I repeating myself? Just like the women in my novel, we are a force. Are you one of us? Please let me know.

Majestic!

A LITTLE SOMETHING I WROTE ON MY WRITING LIFE…

When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher returned an essay I wrote (don’t remember what it was about much less her name–crap!) with the word Majestic! written on top. At the time, I hadn’t known what majestic meant but it looked pretty impressive, especially with that exclamation point behind it. I looked it up to find out that the word meant quite beautiful, powerful, and admirable. Wow. I’d written something majestic. 

I had never thought of myself as a writer before but did from that day on, and I took a special pride in writing my essays. When I entered college I signed up for a creative writing class and I was in love. And then more writing classes, and more and more. From these classes I began writing poetry and then short stories, and I joined a writer’s group that met every few weeks. This went on in one way or the other for several years. My group-mates and I shared our writing, critiquing it. I never missed a meeting.

It wasn’t until I reached thirty that I began writing a novel. The funny thing about my novel is that I had no plans on publishing it, not until decades later when I’d finished two more. Then I began the grueling task of pitching them to agents at writing conferences. Up until this point, I’d been writing because I had to. In other words, I could not not write as it was a force that took me over. The business aspect of writing was separate from the inner world I daily entered where the world slipped away and it was just me and the words and our love affair.

Two years ago I decided to self-publish, for after all I was seventy-seven at the time and didn’t want to die without seeing my work in print. So I put my three novels on KDP and now am working on advertising. For someone my age, this is known as Tech Hell!

I will never stop writing. I can’t. There will be no divorce. And it all started in that sophomore class of mine by one teacher who took the time to praise my writing. Let it be said that I graduated from college and became an English teacher. Yeah! And you know what? I’ve had two of my students contact me and thank me for helping them to learn how to write. 

Do I remember just what I said or did to bring these two situations about? Not at all. All I know is that I helped to awaken them to writing.

Sophie Can Dream

The avocado is the vagina of foods. A slick-rich treat of green heaven. A green world waiting for the tongue. It also waits for the toast. 

The toast. That square gluten bed of arousal. Day mattress where the knife spreads the green.

Sophie has been single for so long that yes, she now ascribes sexual meaning to her food. Her olive salad is a bed of eyes waiting for her to undress. Her carrots are tall orange strangers that make her faint.  

Tonight, yes tonight, she will have rib-eyed steak. Near the bone, the fat sops up the juices.

Essay on Grief — I finally wrote about my friend’s passing

“Hello. Am I speaking to a Ms. Eliza Mimski?”

I was at work, substituting for a middle school class that had just filed out. Another rambunctious class would be coming in soon. “Yes, it’s me, but I only have a minute. Can I ask what you’re calling about?” 

“I’m Ms. Allen, the building manager for your friend Rececca. She’s listed you on her application as her contact person.” 

My heart dropped. I sensed what she was calling about. “My friend’s okay, isn’t she?”

*

Rebecca died. It’s been two years now. She just didn’t wake up one morning. We always joked that when we left this world behind we hoped we’d go this way. 

She was my buddy, my pal. She was my good friend. Rebecca was younger than me by about four years–I was seventy-six when she passed–and for a long time she’d been part of our group of four female friends who went out to dinner every few weeks. She was the quiet one, the rest of us noisy and laughing too loud and leaving big tips to hopefully compensate for our boisterous behavior. But after a few years Rebecca stopped coming to the dinners because of her chronic fatigue and bodily aches and pains that made her too tired and took too much effort for her to leave her apartment. 

Because of her physical problems our friendship shifted and we became phone friends. I couldn’t visit her because that took too much energy for her to deal with. We’d talk most every day in the late afternoons when I’d take my beloved, precious and very reactive dog Tiger for a walk. Before I called her, I’d make sure my brindled pitbull had pooped a couple of times and I’d thrown away the poop bag since I only had two hands–one for his leash and the other for my phone. On the days when Rebecca didn’t answer I’d feel so disappointed and hoped she’d call me back.

What did we talk about on my long walk with Tiger that lasted a good hour or more since he had to stop every few feet to pee, to smell every blade of grass, every plant, every bush, not to mention asking her to hold on as I crossed the street to avoid another dog? Just that Rebecca and I recounted the minutia of our day, details interesting to no one but us. How she’d watched TV while thinking about getting up off the couch but it just took so much energy. How she’d finally managed it and made coffee. How she’d taken two naps, one for an hour and one much longer. I would listen as if this were headline news, sorry for her continual health problems. 

My minutia. If I’d substitute taught, I’d tell her about the lesson plan or the two mischievous boys who wouldn’t stop hitting each other and acting out, or the fire drill where I’d forgotten to take the roll sheet with me outside. And if I hadn’t worked, there’d be the recap of how I’d gone to the grocery store, or worked on my latest novel, etc.

One of the things that must be mentioned about Rebecca was how she excelled at listening. I’ve met very few people in my life who have had the ability to really make me feel heard, and truth be told I’m not that great of a listener myself. She was quiet in her listening, never tiring of it, never butting in and taking over the conversation, and she didn’t seem to need as much attention as she was willing to give. I could talk about the minutia but also talk about my fears. Fears like I’d never get my novel published or the huge fear that blocked my foreground, my fear of losing Tiger who’d been diagnosed with cancer. 

Another thing about Tiger. When he was a puppy he’d been bitten on the face at the dog park and he’d never gotten over it. He’d been reactive ever since. So when I’d walk Tiger and the neighborhood German Shepherd would appear with its owner, the two of them coming down the sidewalk, I’d tell Rebecca I had to cross the street. Only I wouldn’t say it in quite that way. Instead I’d say: That Mother Frucking shepherd is coming right at us, whereupon she’d shout, and this would be the most energy she’d exhibit on anything: Mother Frucking shepherd! Tell it to go back from where it came from. And the same would go for the Chihuahua that Tiger hated, and the French Bulldog and the Yorkshire Terrier, etc, all of whom Rebecca and I called the Mother Fruckers as if the dogs were responsible for Tiger’s behavior…  

It was horrible, learning about her death while I was working. This kind of thing should never happen to anyone. The call came through about ten in the morning and I didn’t get off until three-thirty that afternoon. The next class swarmed in, took their seats and there I was, acting as together as I could as their substitute teacher. This swell of emotion that I was experiencing needed to be held down. Yeah, I could have called the office and told them what had happened but I chose to stay at work. I just didn’t have it in me to say the words aloud. 

As the day wore on I was practically jumping out of my skin. I don’t know how I made it through sixth period without breaking down but I somehow did. I guess we do what we have to do. The moment the bell rang I grabbed my stuff, ushered the students out and locked the classroom door. I checked out in the office, gave back my classroom key and fled the building. Once in my car I drove a few blocks and pulled over–I didn’t want anyone from the school to see me breaking down–and with my forehead on the steering wheel I finally started sobbing. 

After a few weeks, when the reality of her death had sunk in, I was relieved that she had died because she wasn’t in distress anymore. I suppose everyone says this when someone they love who’s been in a lot of pain passes away. For Rebecca, it meant no more awful aches and pains or being wracked with depression, no more being a prisoner of the couch, no more loneliness of living all alone. No more sorrow, and I picture her up there above the clouds, satisfied, comfortable, and finally at ease.  

I remember after she passed away how lonely I felt without her and our check-ins. It was just me and Tiger up and down the San Francisco hills. I’d tell him how Rebecca was gone and I wouldn’t be talking to her anymore, and I wondered if he missed her calls too. 

A year came and went, and then Tiger’s cancer suddenly got worse and he passed away within a week’s time. Then it was just me. No Rebecca. No Tiger. At first I’d wear his leash around my neck, taking it for a walk. I’d tell Rebecca how lonely I was without him, without the both of them. Just me walking down the hill all by myself.   

My memories of Rebecca are precious to me. She’s gone and this is what I have left of her.

Journal Much?

A short essay on my personal journaling/action plan… published by Literary Yard

Journal Much?

I am one of those people who keeps a daily journal of sorts. That’s me–I’m 79 now– and I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. From the moment I wake up in the morning (well, after spending an hour or two hidden beneath the covers while watching dog videos on TikTok) I grab my $3.99 black and white composition book off the nightstand, open it and go to the next clean page and get started. 

My basic journal routine, different than most:

First, I center the date on the top line of the right-hand page, and then I number the lines from one to ten, knowing I can add more later.  This first part of the list is very repetitive, things I do every day: writing the name of the current novel I’m working on and how many words I commit to writing that day; reminding myself of my physical therapy exercises (I do these because I suffer from vertigo–at 79, you wouldn’t believe the multitude of ailments I suffer from); reminding myself to read something as it keeps the brain active. After that, I write Walk, as I record my daily mileage, which ranges between a mile and three and a half miles. Yes, I am a walking junkie and never skip a day. I’m like one of those people who works out at a gym, only my gym is the sidewalk. Have you seen those ten flights of stairs in the Sunset District? Yes, I walk up them. And then the rest of the list is devoted to the random things I need to accomplish that day. 

Are you bored yet? I can imagine you are, for journals of all kinds are for those who write them, not for the eyes of others, and, I imagine, they are generally bland. Journals are not diaries that hold our secrets, our hidden truths. And for me, my journal helps me to organize my life and I could never express how much satisfaction I get from checking something off my list when a task is completed. It’s my drug! It’s a serotonin high!

Let me just say that I’m careful about what I write down because it means I really have to try and do it–(believe me, I’m a chief procrastinator). So it’s a kind of promise I’m making to myself. Sometimes it happens that I’m unable to complete a task through no fault of my own, like someone I need to talk to being unavailable. In this case, the task ends up on the bottom of the page under COs, or CarryOvers, and hopefully I’ll accomplish it the next day. The things I generally detest doing on my list are making customer service phone calls, but who likes them? No one I’ve ever met. I try really hard to keep my cool and not utter curse words at the robotic voice. 

I guess if there was a quasi-interesting part of my daily journal it would have to be what goes on the left-hand side of the page. What I generally need to work on is my lousy thinking because it tends to get me into trouble. I criticize people in my head, especially those who try to get close to me since I learned in my childhood that intimacy can be a dangerous thing. This is also the place where I write down the things that I’m grateful for, forcing myself to be positive. I will write down a person’s name in a kind of hieroglyphics (just in case they should get hold of my journal) and how the relationship is going, what resentments I have against them (I am the resentment queen of all queens and as a Pisces, believe me I can remember verbatim what they said that offended me, what time of day it was and even what they were wearing). I also keep it positive by writing the things I love about them, what I appreciate, trying to train my mind, opening up the nice part of my brain. The part that appreciates. The part that sees the good.

On the bottom of that page I write down singular words I want to live by. Here’s what I wrote today: professionalism (this comes in handy with dealing with the public–I substitute teach during the school year and try my hardest to keep the classroom a happy place and not to get into it with the mischievous ones); courage; acceptance, patience with myself and others; tolerance. These are the things I could definitely improve upon, and writing them down over and over guides me in that direction. 

Once I finish writing the left-hand side of the page, I focus on my daily tasks. For example, I’m writing a new novel and I’m one of those writers who don’t follow an outline. Rather, I just sit in front of my google doc and my fingers start tapping the keyboard. Sometimes I say to myself, don’t write that!, and this is when I know what’s about to be written is definitely the right thing. I try to get to my novel as soon as I can because I’m also the queen of all queens when it comes to procrastination, and it’s hard for me to get started. It’s only the customer service calls, if there are any, that exceed my writing.

I know there’s a lot of people out there in the world–millions and maybe billions–who don’t use a journal in any way. Their mind is a box where they keep their list of things that need to get done. That’s just not me. And it’s not so much that I just don’t remember things as much as I feel safe with my journal. Does that sound weird? Safe in the respect that my day is ordered, that I generally know what to do next, and once again that I get to reach that magnificent high when checking off a task, the satisfaction that it’s been completed. 

I had never written such a violent action scene until my new science fiction novel that is titled The Metamorphosis II.

Lights off. I waited, hands in my lap, steadying breaths. Soon, I lapsed into a dream world. Drifting, drifting through a thin line of waiting. And then a pop, pop, pop jolted me. My eyes widened as I sat bolt upright.

I knew that sound and dove beneath my desk. Shots fired. I squeezed myself into a ball, my body shaking. My chest beat. I had ten hearts. And then, a deadening silence. 

I stayed put, my arms wrapped around me. I squeezed myself tighter, tighter, tighter. 

Michaela, where are you? Are you hurt? Are you okay? The diva? Sinn? Gregorson? What was happening?

Soon, a message over the loudspeaker. Everyone stay put. The shooter still at large. Someone was whimpering. I realized it was me.

The past washing over me. Mama’s house. Me retrieving her photographs. Her bedroom light flicking on. The cold metal in my hand. Me killing someone. Me, shooting Jimmy Y and kicking him in the head.

I heeded the announcement. Arms wrapped tight. My mind swirled. Everyone soon dead. Myself dead too.

Help us! the brains telegraphed. We’re being held captive. Bokomoso wants to keep us alive. The lab. Had the shooter been in the lab? Were the diva and Sinn dead?

Bokomoso. How did he find out about the brains? Which employee tipped him off? Who? Was there more than one? And a bigger question–how did Bokomoso get into the building with a gun, much less at all? 

My hopes and dreams stepped forward, crowding in beside me. The dream of my depression lifting, being free at last. Michaela’s dream. Rhonda’s dream. The diva’s. Dave’s and Gregorson’s. What we were living for, hanging onto. Where our hopes lived.

I couldn’t let this happen.

Maybe it was stupid, what I did then, uncurling my body from beneath the desk and standing up. I crept toward the door. I listened. Nothing but sirens in the distance. Carefully, inch by inch I opened it, stuck my head out and looked one way and then the other down the hallway before I entered it. Standing against the wall, my palms spread out against it, I edged my way toward the staircase, my heart pounding, sweat breaking out on my forehead. 

Detached from myself, I watched my hand as it opened the stairway door as if this hand belonged to someone else, my feet then proceeding to climb the stairs two at a time to the floor above where the lab was located. Help us! the brains telegraphed. Help us! 

The diva and Sinn, I telegraphed them. Are they alive? Are they wounded? 

No answer.

Me, in my body but outside of it at the same time. Yes, watching myself. Nothing seemed real. Me, at the door. Me, opening it. The sirens louder. My feet advancing. I wished I had a gun for protection. 

I twisted the doorknob, shocked that the door was unlocked, but then maybe Bokomoso had left? I opened it a few inches before I kicked it open, expecting gunfire to come my way. When it didn’t, I figured that he and whoever else might have joined him had fled the lab and were hiding in another part of the building.

Bravely, slowly, stupidly I entered, my eyes roaming the stark white room filled with  long tables, brain jars lined up on several of them. I’m here. I’ll protect you, I told the brains. Okay, but where was the diva and Sinn? 

My eyes, afraid of what they might see.

I took steps. My gaze swept. And then I saw him, Sinn, laying on the floor, his thin body, his dark pointy hair, his sloping mouth fallen open, blood collecting on his shirt near his heart. I looked away, then looked back again. My feet said run, but I stayed, forcing myself to walk toward him. I knelt down and stared at the kaleidoscope of blood. Surreal. Not real. Sinn. Yes. Sinn was dead. 

My hand cupped my mouth as I stifled a scream, my body uncontrollably shaking. Pulled back–I was pulled back into the past. Jimmy Y, laying on the floor. The smoky smell of gunpowder. And the silence. The screaming silence. 

Time stopped. Time sped up. Reality. Back to reality. Where, where was the diva? I stood up, afraid of what I might find. And then I looked around and saw her. 

No, I screamed, the sound escaping my mouth. I rushed to her and knelt down. No, no, no! She was dead, her neck on sideways. Blood gushed, pooled at her throat. Her face, contorted, destroyed, her skin black with blood.

*

It was actually fun writing this. I know it sounds weird, saying that writing a violent scene was fun, but it was an adventure, going in a direction I’d never ben before.

This is an excerpt from my novel Sex, Love and Makeovers in the City of the Ancient Cougars.

Below is from a scene where Dixie, in her 80s, waits for Freddie, her young lover who is just out for her money, to meet her. Dixie’s beloved husband has died and she thinks that maybe joining the cougar beauty contest and taking a young lover will help to break her grief.

Dixie, standing across town outside the pricey Cafe Verve, began to worry. In her new little black dress purchased from a boutique appropriately called Little Black Dress after Freddie had remarked that black would set off her blonde hair, she watched the couples passing by, a few entering the restaurant. Still, no sign of Freddie. She texted him but received no answer.  

In response to Freddie’s comment about her blonde hair, she’d jokingly replied, You mean this straw broom on top of my head? She’d been trying to be funny, but she had to stop putting herself down. This kind of humor might have worked with Harold, but Freddie was young and energetic and Dixie had to be her best self, her most attractive self, no apologies. She had to sell herself. What a funny choice of words. She was so new to all of this.

Two older women approached the cafe. “I’m his sugar momma,” she heard one say to the other, an odd sound to Dixie’s ears, “and he’s my sugar baby.” Sugar daddy was a phrase she was used to hearing, but sugar momma? Sugar baby? Yet sugar momma summed up Dixie’s new identity, for why else would she be hanging out with Freddie, or rather him hanging out with an old woman like her, and why else would she be giving him presents? Presents that he expected, like the alligator wallet she’d bought for him, or the hour and a half massages she’d paid for at Rub Me Right. He’d chosen to meet at Cafe Verve, and of course he’d expect her to pick up the tab.  

“Yes, you’re his patroness,” the other said, laughing as she followed the first one inside.

The words rolled around in Dixie’s mind. Sugar momma. Sugar baby. Patroness. She stood waiting.

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Available on Amazon

Blue Tames Red

…an excerpt from my novel Sex, Love and Makeovers in the City of the Ancient Cougars published on Amazon…

The novel takes place in a fictitious South American town where a beauty pageant for elderly women is going on. Cecilia is one of the contestants and this is during the swimsuit competition.

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Cecilia, a large woman with a round face and bangs like fur, who was the first contestant scheduled to go onstage, her body resembling the Venus of Willendorf with its curves upon hanging curves, had let go of seeing her body in terms of what was wrong with it. She no longer fretted over her weight, no longer agonized over losing this pound and that pound, no longer held her breath while perched atop the scale, peering over her stomach and cautiously reading the dreaded number. Years ago, she’d made the decision to accept her body as is. Once onstage, she planned to walk center stage, open her robe and let it fall to the floor, exposing the ebb and flow of flesh, the huge sag of her breasts governed by the thin straps of her bikini, her bikini bottom barely visible beneath her overflow of stomach. She planned to walk in a slow circle and show it all off.