The Theory of the Karaoke Gene

/in /by

I was lucky enough to be the honoree recently at a book signing/celebration to introduce the denizens of my hometown to my new book, “Extracurricular Activities.” My hometown is not very far from the town I live in now—just twenty miles—but because we’re separated by a bridge, it seems to be harder and harder for me to get home and for my extended family to visit me. Look for a future blog entry where I discuss “the theory of why we won’t cross the bridge to see each other.”

But cross the bridge I did and I was happy for the opportunity. My parents have decided that every year an Alison Bergeron mystery is published, a book signing extravaganza will take place. Last year’s party, to celebrate the release of “Murder 101,” the first book in the series, was a free-for-all held on a Saturday night, complete with open bar, DJ, food, and dancing. It ended, as many of our family’s gatherings do, with the manager of the Knights of Columbus hall respectfully asking the attendees—we’ll call them “fans” for brevity’s [and ego’s] sake—to leave quietly so as not to disturb the neighbors. And to leave the silverware and the napkins behind. So, when the subject of this year’s book signing came up, I said to my parents, “Why don’t we have it on a Sunday afternoon? You know, make it a little more low-key?”

“Great,” they responded, they who go to bed at seven thirty and rise at four in the morning, “Sunday afternoon it is!”

“But more low-key,” I reminded them.

“Yes! More low-key! We’ll have karaoke!”

At this point, I guess I should mention that I have a reputation as a bit of a party girl. But when I say “party girl,” I mean that in the most wholesome way possible. But I guess at this point in my life, I think it would be more authentic to say that I’m a “party woman.” I’m not a lampshade on the head type (except for that one Christmas) and I’m generally fairly responsible. I’m usually the first one on the dance floor and the last one to leave and that’s without the benefit of liquid courage. But even in my warped view of a “good time,” I didn’t think karaoke qualified as “low-key.”The reactions to the news of the centerpiece of the frivolity were mixed and ranged from “Oh, good Lord, no!” to “I’ll sing a song—maybe, if I have a couple of beers,” to “You’ll have to pry the mic from my cold, dead hands.” (The last one being mine.) All of the interesting feedback leading up to the event lead me to surmise that there is definitely a karaoke gene.

And proof of this came when my niece, Erin—three years old and full of spit and vinegar—grabbed the mic from her mother (my sister) and belted out “Twinkle, Twinkle.” Who knew it had fourteen verses?

My sister looked at me dolefully. “I gave birth to you.”

Because growing up, even though we didn’t have karaoke, specifically, I spent many a day singing along to the Supremes on my close-n-play record player while my sister practiced her foul shots on the back driveway with the neighborhood boys. (They were very tall and she was not but she always kicked their collective butts. And probably still could if she wasn’t a respectable mother of two.)

I begged my sister all day long to do a song with me. In another life, my sister was a professional musician, so I thought it would be a no-brainer. But she doesn’t have the karaoke gene so she kept ducking me until it was no longer possible. After about an hour of exhaustive searching through the folders of potential songs, we finally decided to do a duet of Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” a song I consider my signature tune. I thought we were good to go until a certain young lady, clad in a green velvet dress, approached the stage and said, “I want to sing, tooooo.” I dare you to try to sing the song successfully with someone else singing “shot!” three seconds behind you.

Based on the theory of the karaoke gene, then, it would seem that it is not a direct blood line from mother to daughter, but aunt to daughter, a maternal bloodline, if you will. Yes, the theory needs work, but all in all, makes a bit of sense, no? We’ll check back when Erin’s thirteen, and hopefully, a little more inhibited.

Maggie

More on Valentine’s Day

/in /by

Hubby and I have been married so long I have a hard time remembering. I know it’s over 50 years, we were married the year I graduated from high school, ‘51–you figure it out. We met on a blind date during my senior year. He was the cutest sailor, all decked out in his bell bottom pants. With a whole group of my school friends and their dates, we rode the streetcar to downtown L.A. to Chinatown. A favorite hangout for us back in those days. We ate dinner, everyone danced except my date and me–he said he didn’t know how. (This was remedied in later years and he later could tear up the dance floor.)

We came back to my girlfriends home as her mother was supposed to be there to drive me home. She didn’t turn up. Finally this cute sailor and I walked the five miles to my house–arriving around 2 a.m. All the lights were burning, both my parents were waiting up. (I’d only left a note that I was going on a blind date, needless to say they were worried and angry.) After a lot of explanation on my part, and my father giving my new, good looking friend the third degree, my parents invited him to spend the night. Turns out this cute sailor was going to school at Port Hueneme Sea Bee base, quite aways from L. A. He managed to make the trek back to my house nearly every weekend via bus or thumb.

When his schooling was nearly up, he proposed. He was so darn cute I had to say “yes.” (And I still think he’s pretty cute.) The problem was he was leaving for the East Coast and probably overseas deployment. I was only 17 and he was 20 and our parents weren’t willing to give permission for us to marry. In October, we’d both reached the magic ages, and he asked if I’d come back East to marry him. Of course I said, “yes.” Mom and I traveled to Washington DC on the train–an adventure in itself. We went to hubby’s family home in a dinky town in Maryland where I wasn’t greeted with great enthusiasm. They had the idea that I was some sort of wild gold-digger–after all, I came from California.

My family hadn’t been all that enthusiastic either. My grandfather thought sailors were worthless. No one thought our marriage would last, after all we hardly knew each other. We know each other pretty well now.

Hubby works with the kids at church at the Wednesday night Awana program. The kids made cute Valentine’s as a project–hubby made me one too. Yep, he still loves me after all these years–and the feeling is mutual.

And that’s my Valentine’s story.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

John Madden, Whoopi Goldberg, and Me

/in /by

Also: Isaac Asimov, Aretha Franklin, Woody Allen, the list goes on and on.

We’re all perfectly sane, rational people, who are reduced to whimpering, pathetic blobs or medicated walking zombies when we click on an airplane seatbelt. We’re aviatophobic or as Erica Jong would put it, we’ve got a fear of flying.

Have I gotten on an airplane in the last five years? Yes. Does my husband still have full circulation in his left hand? For the seven hours it took to fly to London last year, I had him in a death grip that made Darth Vader look like Barney Fife.

Personally, I believe that if God had wanted me to fly, she would have given me feathers. I’m still holding out for the Star Trek transporter. “Beam me to Paris, Scotty” or if I’m being energy efficient, “Beam me to Paris, after you drop off Uhuru at the mall.” I’m not sure why I think trusting my molecules to Scottie is safer than a Delta flight, but at least the Enterprise’s engineer had a perfect on-time record.

Unlike a fear of rectangles, aviatophobia is not so debilitating that I have to deal with it on a daily basis. Most of our family is within driving distance, if you define driving distance as being on the road for 15 hours straight. Oddly, I have no fear of putting my loved ones on planes. What does that mean Dr. Freud?

I’ve got bus envy. John, Whoopi, and Aretha all have luxury-fitted buses to criss-cross the country. Me? It’s either Greyhound or drugs. Consider Madden’s motor coach (since it cost $800,000, it’s no longer called a bus or even an RV). In any case, his home on the road has a master bedroom with its own bathroom and steam shower, a full kitchen with granite flooring and countertops, a satellite TV, three plasma television screens, surround sound and high-speed Internet access. Sounds better than the house I live in. Think how incredible book tours would be if you had one of these babies to fire up and go.

Best flight I ever had was last October. I flew to Jacksonville for a family wedding. My doctor had prescribed Ativan for me – a wonder drug that doesn’t take away the fear, but at least makes sure that I don’t make a total, hysterical idiot of myself during the flight. I’d successfully tried out this medication a few months earlier on another trip and felt like I’d finally found a solution. Not a cure, mind you, but a way to endure, if not enjoy, a longer trip. Dutifully, I refilled the prescription the day before the flight. I popped two pills just before I walked down the gangway.

I wish I could tell you that it was a smooth flight. I wish I could tell you that it left on time and arrived early. Actually I could tell you that, but it’s all hearsay. I had no more than sat down in my seat than I was asleep. In a move that would be perfect for a murder mystery, Death by Not Paying Attention, I had inadvertently ingested double the prescription dose. (Each new pill was 1 mg, instead of the .5 mg pills I had taken months earlier. Had I read the prescription, I would have realized that I was only to take one pill, not two).

“When is the plane taking off?” I roused myself from a very comfortable nap.

“It did, it flew, and it landed. You missed it.” My husband explained, not totally unhappy to have enjoyed a trip with the use of both hands.

“Huh.” I wasn’t very coherent (that day or the next). But it occurred to me that it was as close as I was going to get to Scotty and the transporter. A trip that was over in what felt like a minute. Granted I slept through it (at what point is it considered unconscious?). But worked for me, worked for my husband.

We’re thinking of a trip to San Diego next summer. Think that Aretha or Whoopi want to share a ride?

Evelyn David
www.evelyndavid.com

I’m a Mystery to My Husband

/in /by


Guest author Susan Konig joins us today.

I was trying to arrange an evening to meet with a group of residents in my town. We threw a few dates around. “How about next Thursday?” someone suggested.

“Isn’t that the 14th, Valentine’s Day?”

“It is, and I can be there,” said a mom of three young boys. “We’re not doing anything special.”

I laughed and understood. My husband and I hadn’t made any plans either. Was it because we had four kids?

One of the senior citizens weighed in. “I have to take my wife out to dinner,” he said firmly. “So, let’s see, dinner at six, home by seven. I’m available at 7:05.”

Sad, but true. This group of marrieds, young and old, were not the target audience to be whooping it up on Valentine’s Day.

Just as well. I do not make it easy on my husband. I get very irritated when he swears he is not getting anything for me and then caves to the pressure of all the other husbands riding on the commuter train home with boxes of chocolates and huge bouquets of flowers.

He arrives in our town and the florist who plans her fiscal year around men like him is waiting for him. Sure, he passed up vendors in the city selling for $40, $50 bucks a bunch. Now that he is steps away from our idling minivan full of cranky kids and shedding dog – not to mention stressed-out wife – he has no choice but to hand this woman $60 to save his rear end on this special day.

The purchase hurts financially but he feels as though he has done something good and noble by following the pack.

He hands me the overpriced blooms and I smirk. “What did you pay for these?”

I don’t want him spending all that money when he could have probably picked up a dozen perfectly acceptable tulips a day earlier for $10.

He doesn’t know that what I really want him to do is offer to watch the kids for an entire day or evening so I can go off and exercise or shop or think or write without interruption.

If I told him that’s what I want, he would swear up and down that he offers that all the time and I always turn him down. He’d be half right.

Sometimes he comes home from work after hanging out with his friends for a little while and working out to find me completely at the end of my rope as a wife, mother, and housekeeper (OK, I don’t really ever keep house).

He will say to me, “That’s it. Get out of here. Go, you’re off duty.” Sounds great, no? Except that there is no food for the kids and the baby needs a bath and he doesn’t know how to help our sixth grader with his math and American Idol is on and he won’t understand the staggered bedtime schedule of who has to go to bed when.

So I don’t go out and then I am even crankier. I guess I need him to come home with a bag of sandwiches and a plan. He tells me that if he’s home with the kids, he gets to watch them his way. But if I let him, I come home to weeping tales of “Daddy didn’t let us watch American Idol because YOU DIDN’T TELL HIM.”

I may get out of the house but I’m the bad guy when I return. Hardly worth it.

So he can’t plan and I’m no fun.

Another husband told me this week that he and his wife don’t make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day because every day is Valentine’s Day for them. Oh, please. I’d rather be grumpy and misunderstood one day a year and normal the rest of the time.

Susan Konig

Valentine’s Day Blues

/in /by


I think Valentine’s Day is kind of a wimpy holiday. For a lot of people, it’s an afterthought. For the others? The ones with great expectations of romantic gestures and heartfelt expressions of undying devotion? Well, the results are usually a disappointment.

By the way, if you haven’t already figured it out, the author Evelyn David is really two people. The smart, witty posts on Mondays are written by the Northern Evelyn. The “what the heck does that have to do with writing” posts that show up on Thursdays are done by me – the Southern Evelyn.

Today, in between annoying coal miners, legislators, and federal regulators, all within the same eight hours (a personal best for me at my day job), I’ve been worrying about this blog. It should be easy for me to write 600 words on anything. Normally, I can’t even write the opening to a scene in less than 300. But today (which is yesterday if you’re reading this) my mind was scattered. Gathering any blogging ideas was much akin to herding cats (I know, I know, that phrase has been overused, but it’s still a favorite of mine and I intend to use it until I find another that means chasing down elusive, furry things that bite and scratch when you finally nab them.) I drafted several blogs – one on lying before congressional committees (don’t go before them and don’t lie) and one on the powers of the number 3 (don’t ask, I was digging deep for that one).

Valentine’s Day was an obvious topic choice. But what to say that hasn’t been said before? I could discuss the impossible search for a perfect card and color coordinated envelope (a real feat if you shop in a super store.) Ever notice how many people don’t take the envelope that the card gods intended to go with a particular card? What’s with that? By the time I start looking, the remaining cards and envelopes don’t match up – not even in size. Sometimes I’m choosing the card not for the design or sentiment inside; I’m picking it because it fits in the one remaining uncrumpled envelope.

And then there’s the chocolate . . . . I’ve always thought that chocolate was an excellent gift choice on Valentine’s Day – but please don’t give me those heart shaped boxes of chocolate wrapped in red foil and ribbon. For me eating the chocolate in those boxes is a scavenger hunt with some nasty surprises. I don’t like nuts. I don’t like coconut. I’m not crazy about caramel or hidden cherries. My favorites are those pieces that taste the most like a plain 3 Musketeers’ candy bar.

When I was younger, my brother always parked himself by my side when I opened the boxes of Valentine’s candy. One tiny test bite and I was usually handing off the offensive piece to him – who, like the Mikey of cereal commercials, would literally eat any kind of candy. One time I made the old fashioned fudge – the cooked kind with butter, salt, cocoa and sugar. I got some measurement wrong. The stuff set up harder than a brick and I literally used a dishtowel-wrapped hammer to break it into pieces. It was also lacking in sugar. I couldn’t eat it. My parents couldn’t eat it. It took my brother a couple of months, but he finally finished off the whole batch. He was a real trooper! Thinking of it – I probably owe him some money for dental bills.

Before leaving work, I took an informal survey of the other ladies in the office. What were they expecting to get for Valentine’s Day? Surprisingly, the answer was much the same. To avoid a lot of hassle and hurtful recriminations, they now bought their own gifts and picked out exactly what they wanted. Their husbands and significant others reimbursed them later for the costs.

I think I’ll do the same. Anyone care for a Klondike ice cream bar with a red ribbon?

Maybe, I’ll just skip the ribbon.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Evelyn David

All Hail Teachers!

/in /by

I promised I would come back to the topic of teachers—a topic about which I’m passionate—and here I am.

I’m talking about why I’ll never be a teacher. And why you shouldn’t be one either, unless you identify with the information below.

My protagonist, Alison Bergeron, is a teacher. And I’m married to a teacher. An experienced, dedicated, innovative, effective seventh-grade homeroom teacher, who also happens to specialize in teaching French. Nobody, besides all of us here at Chateau Barbieri, sees what he does when he’s not in the classroom: grading papers, planning classes, calling parents, responding to emails from colleagues. Nobody sees him get up at five o’clock in the morning so that he can catch the 6:18 a.m. train so that he can be at his desk by 7:45 to drink his one cup of coffee before students arrive. And nobody sees him get off the train at 6:00 at night because his school day is eight hours long and ends after four.

No—what people see is a man who is off for two weeks at the end of March, has a few extra days off around the holidays because he’s on a private school schedule, a man who takes his class to Cape Cod for a seafaring, science adventure every fall, and a man who takes over the lion’s share of the parenting duties in the summer, dropping the kids off at their various camps and activities while his wife slaves away in an un-air conditioned attic (that’s a choice, by the way. I like the heat. It keeps me “hungry.” And it’s a better climate for my shoes, which I keep stashed next to me. At least that’s what I tell myself.)

People’s reaction to seeing him around? “I should be a teacher. That’s some schedule you’ve got!”

Yes, go ahead. Be a teacher. Good luck with that.

To me, that’s like saying to your dentist, “Wow! You’ve got all of this neat oral hygiene equipment AND you make a lot of money? I should be a dentist!” Or to the local police officer, “You mean you can drive fast whenever you want? And wear a sexy gun belt dripping with weapons? And you won’t get a ticket for talking on your cell phone while in the car? I think I’LL be a cop! It sounds fun!”

You know what teaching is? It’s a calling. You don’t wake up one day and decide to teach, you teach because it’s the only thing you ever wanted to do or thought that you’d be good at. You teach because you love kids, want to see them grow and learn, and help them find their own path. You teach because you love learning and want to pass that on to your students.

Which is why I work in an attic, by myself, all day long.

Why, you ask? What about the summers off? What about the extra three days around Christmas? Here’s the god’s honest truth: I don’t like the kids in mass quantity part, and am menze menze (I apologize to my Italian friends for bad spelling) on the learning part (although I would love to learn how to make my own California rolls…and pole dance). But I’m grateful to, and astounded by, the people who want to do it.

Two of my best friends are also teachers—one teaches four-year-olds at a preschool and the other teaches high school students who have various learning difficulties, two very different types of teaching positions. And while they have their bad days—someone eats too much play-doh and hurls in the classroom, or someone can’t figure out how to write an essay in under three days flat and the SAT’s are around the corner—both are committed, dedicated, and professional above all. I admire and respect them and even if there were not another person on the planet and they needed a sub for the day would I say, “Hey, I’ll fill in for you! Sounds like fun!” I’d rather have a colonoscopy than get in front of a class of kids. Because you know what? I’d be really, really bad at it.

I was born to make up stories about women who can’t keep their noses out of police investigations, not to spend the days with a bunch of kids who can’t keep their noses out of their own armpits.

I wonder, sometimes, why Alison Bergeron—my protagonist and aforementioned nosy sleuth—is a teacher. Is it an homage to the profession? Or, does it just allow me to fill her days with interesting and slightly off-beat characters? Because if you’ve been on a college campus, in a middle school, or even around a bunch of elementary-school children, you know that the halls of academia are filled with characters. But whatever it is, she’s a teacher, she’s smart as hell, and she also has the summers off, which allows her extra time to play Nancy Drew.

So, here’s to our teachers who are specialized, trained, passionate, committed, and teaching our kids. Respect what they do. Thank them occasionally. And never, never say, on a hot summer day, “Hey—that’s some schedule you’ve got. I should teach!”

Not unless you want to be hit in the face with a flying eraser.

Maggie Barbieri

Weather and Other Items of Interest … or Not

/in /by

Hubby and I just returned from the Central Coast (California) community of Arroyo Grande. The weather was wonderful! Sunny and gorgeous. As we drove down the coast, the ocean sparkled. People who want to visit California beaches would be smart to go in February when the weather is often sunny as can be. In the summer, often the fog rolls in, making it chilly.

The weather was quite a contrast to the previous weekend when we were in snowy Chicago. We loved that too, though. In fact, I thanked the organizers of Love is Murder, our reason for being there, for having such a lovely snow storm for our entertainment.

The reason we were in Arroyo Grande was for me to participate with the Central Coast chapter of Sisters in Crime in a library presentation–which I did, of course. I’m always up for talking about my books and meeting new people. A chance to go to the coast was a huge incentive. We used to live in Oxnard (which is near Ventura) about one mile from the beach, and frankly, I miss the proximity to the ocean.

It was in Oxnard that I first became interested in writing about law enforcement. Our first house was in a neighborhood with police officers, firemen, and Navy personnel and their families. We partied and had coffee with our neighbors and got to know them all very well. Years later, my youngest daughter married a police officer who loved to tell me stories about what happened on his shift–he even took me on a tour of the police station and on a rather scary ride-along.

In my Rocky Bluff series (much darker than my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series), I’ve drawn quite a bit on my experiences from the days I hung out with those policemen and their families. If you’re interested, here’s a video about the latest book, Smell of Death,

http://au.youtube.com:80/watch?v=B1Q_1YJe2XQ

And to bring this back around to the beach, the Rocky Bluff series is set in a fictional beach community somewhere on the coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara–with some resemblance to Oxnard back in the time when I lived there.

Traveling around to promote books is fun, though not at all profitable. What I truly like best is meeting new people and my travels have been a great way to do it.

Now, back to working on my income taxes. Ugh!

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Fiction is easy; Living is hard

/in /by

We all know that feeling. Those times, we’ve stared at the computer screen for an hour and found that we couldn’t even compose a shopping list, let alone the next chapter of an overdue book. We’ve all experienced that panicky sensation that our muses have taken a Celebrity cruise through the Panama Canal and forgotten to take us along or even send a post card.

And then there are those moments, when I’ve worked myself up into a frenzy, when I’ve started checking the want ads for administrative assistant jobs because I don’t think knowing how to make a fabulous matzoh ball soup is a marketable skill, and something happens which essentially is a message directly from the Lord telling me to “chill, girl.”

I had one of those epiphanies a few weeks ago. I was visiting the M. Allan Fogelson Regional Branch Library in Voorhees, New Jersey, with fellow Stiletto author Maggie Barbieri. It was a lovely, lovely event, billed as “Tea and Crumpets with Mystery Authors.” The turnout was great (and the refreshments were fantastic!).

I had just started talking about my book and the creative process when a group of 10 teenaged boys joined the audience. While they’re not the standard mystery fans found at these events, they listened respectfully as Maggie and I talked about our work.

Afterwards, one of the boys shyly approached me, encouraged by a man I assumed was the group’s leader. The teen told me he was 14 and liked to write. I asked him to tell me about one of his stories. It was a fantasy tale about a young boy who was locked out of his home for three days. He detailed a series of adventures and dangers, and the surprise twist at the end — the hero wakes up and finds it was all a dream.

Later, privately, the group leader explained that these teens were from a program funded by the Juvenile Justice Commission of New Jersey. They were at risk kids who’d already entered the court system. This program was an alternative to a detention center. A final chance to turn around lives headed for big trouble. And the fantasy tale this boy wrote? Not so much a fantasy. He lived it.

My emotions were all over the place.

I was furious that any child should have to worry about where he will sleep at night. That should be a given.

I was worried about this youngster’s future. On a basic level, would he learn from the program, get an education, pursue his dream? Or would he ditch this chance and end up back in the courts? Would he be locked out of a future?

And then there was the reality check. Was this child smart enough, strong enough, stubborn enough to pursue a life as a writer? For all the thrills and satisfaction that writing brings me, I also know how frustrating and disappointing this career can be when the mail brings another rejection letter. The odds of a high school basketball player making it to the pros are .03 percent. I’d bet that those are the same odds for a high school kid making it as a professional writer.

I don’t know what I can do to help that child – and the millions of others like him. Writing – his and mine – can be one answer. For him, it can be a way of channeling his emotions and using words, not violence, to handle the frustrations of his life. For me, writing can be a way of exposing the underbelly of life, with all its glory and despair.

I always end my library talks with the explanation that I write mysteries because I want the good guys to win. How I hope that there can be the same neat, clean resolution for the real-life story I heard in Voorhees.

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com/

Where Have All the Bad Guys Gone?

/in /by

Guest Author Sheila Curran joins us today.

Back in the day, I wrote a murder mystery. As in – back in the day – before I was published. Looking back, I realize the problem. I am a terrific wimp when it comes to violence, since I will absorb all information about such things and imagine them happening to me. As my dear friend Julianna Baggott said to her children when they wanted to watch a scary movie with her, “I get scared playing CLUE.”

Me too, which is why I don’t think I could bear to do the research involved in creating a convincing murder-mystery. It’s the way I am. There’s a deep niche in my brain that collects danger, disaster, death and destruction, and a long slippery chute by which all things happy drop through a trap door, never to be seen again.
Despite, or perhaps because of, this character flaw, I have to say that the most common complaint/compliment I hear from readers is this inability to murder those who deserve it. I speak of the many letters I’ve gotten having to do with a particular character in my first novel, DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN. Readers are vociferous, they are unequivocal, and many of them are after blood, or at least justice. You see, my protagonist, Diana, is married to an overbearing, some might even say vile man. As my most recent email, from an eminent, internationally known scholar of comparative religions, proclaimed “And as for Ted–what a shmuck! A really memorable literary asshole!”

One of my first letters came from a federal prosecutor in Arizona who was deeply disappointed by my ending, only because he felt that Ted had gotten off far too easily. (Of course, I reminded him that this is what sequels are for.) Sweet little old ladies with names like Eustice and Bertha write to ask why I would have neglected the opportunity to ‘cut off the man’s balls and hang him up to dry.’

Certain reviewers and friends alike have quibbled that surely there did not really exist in nature a villain as bastardly as Ted, while others still have congratulated me for finally ‘outing’ what they see as a fairly pernicious trend among certain people who manage to be both successful at their subject area but complete failures when it comes to those things for which their careers don’t give awards, say kindness, generosity, a propensity to ask others (including their wives and children) about themselves, that sort of thing.

Now, on the other hand, I have many many professor friends who are the opposite of this. I’m married to one, my very best boy friend, who is, at this very moment mixing me a martini and cooking dinner. I hang out with the good ones, and there are many. However, I must report, gentle readers, that there does exist, both in nature and way more frequently in culture, such a creature as Ted.

If you clicked on the links above, you may have noticed my vile husband contest. First, I apologize that the deadline of December 31st, 2005 has come and gone, but the truth is that 1.) I didn’t get a single entry and 2.) I don’t have the technical wherewithal to change the date or details of the contest without falling into the rabbit hole known as the learning curve of internet protocols.
Poor web management aside, I’m flummoxed. Is there not a single woman who can tell me a story I might share with others? (Believe me, I will change his name and yours too.) I myself have seen real, live, vile husbands on other women’s arms and wondered how in the world they managed to STAY MARRIED. In fact, it was curiosity about that general question, the witnessing of some seriously difficult husbands and just the slightest bit of imaginative fairy-wand-waving that made me write the book in the first place. (The fairy-wand thing came from my niece, Tasha, who, when she was in second grade would wave her hand through the air at people she didn’t love a whole lot and say, with a flourish and a pointed finger “POOF, you’re gone!”)

So that’s the sort of mystery I’m bent on solving. Where have all the vile husbands gone? Has some group of geriatric vigilantes come along and hung them out to dry, their most precious valuables removed for safekeeping? Or have I set the bar too high, asking for a completely vile person when no one is exactly such. Even Ted had his strengths, which will, if I ever publish the sequel, be tested. The poor man will already suffer at least a short exile to Wales, sans alcohol and professional status, plus shallow in-laws, wandering wife, and a baby-on-board.. Until then, I leave it to my hosts, women with gumption, gumshoes and at least a little glitter, to bravely go where few before them have gone, into the Ass-Hat-Sphere, magnifying glasses in hand, to seek revenge, or even revelation, of the crimes no one, or at least no one in my cyber-circle, is willing to commit. (At least to memory.)

Sheila Curran