I’m always behind the times when it comes to music. By the time I get turned on to a song it’s likely been on the charts for months and on its way into the archives.
In the case of Zac Brown Band’s “Heavy is the Head,” featuring the late rocker, the incredibly talented, Chris Cornell, I’m at least five years too late. I found the song while listening to country music on my Amazon Echo as research/mood enhancement for a romance novel I’ve been working on. “Heavy is the Head,” though, is definitely not a country tune, and it immediately got my attention, albeit half a decade after the fact.
Damn, Chris Cornell was something special. And Zac Brown Band has become one of my favorite country groups these last few weeks. What else am I missing?
I’m roughly three paragraphs from completing my second novel. The groove is right, the words are flowing, and bam! My keyboard stops communicating with my laptop. I started pushing buttons. Nothing happened.
I’ve tried all of the easy suggestions:
Now I’m going to bring in the experts:
Thank goodness I’ve backed all but the last 500 or so words up on a thumb drive, but I’m still frantic to get my computer up and running again.
I’m very near the end of the little romance novel I’ve been working on, and my main characters finally consummated their relationship. Without giving away any details I’m just going to say that I needed a cigarette after writing that last scene, and I don’t even smoke.
If I’d known before how much fun it was to live vicariously through one’s characters, I’d have gotten involved in writing books years ago.
My life hasn’t held all that many remarkable moments, but my characters’ lives are full of excitement and drama, adventure and romance. And when I’m in their world, I’m totally engaged.
As I nudge the characters in my little romance novel towards a satisfying ending, I’m already pondering where my next characters will take me. Best of all, there’s no virus in their world.
My copy of Manhandled by E. L. Scobie arrived in the mail on Saturday afternoon. Studly brought the mail in, and I didn’t see the book until Sunday.
This is me before reading the book.
Immediately I set about reading this salacious looking novel that was published in 1963, a Midwood Book, by Tower Publications in New York City.
Having read my share of romance novels over the years I imagined this particular book would be tame in comparison to the bodice rippers I’d devoured in my twenties and thirties. I was both right and wrong.
This novel is hardly tame; however, the sex scenes aren’t titillating at all. With one really sweet exception, they’re just sad and tawdry. The front and back covers had more campy sexual appeal than the entire contents of the book combined.
I tried googling Scobie, with no luck, and I’m certain the author used a pen name. This seems to be his/her only published work, but it was, indeed, published which makes me think the author might have been trying a different genre. I’ll give the author this much—he/she wrote lyrically about the beauty of the area in which the book is set.
The book was disappointing. It didn’t make me want to lure Studly Doright to my boudoir for a night of passion, which had been on my mind. Instead, it inspired me to daydream about fishing in a cold mountain stream. And I dislike fishing. Go figure.
Does anyone else think that the so-called “panhandle” of Texas, land of my birth, might be better thought of as a cutting board?
Hardly handle-sized.
At one time I believe there was a campaign to change the nomenclature. A panhandle resident argued that the term “panhandle” was derogatory because it was also a term used to describe begging.
As I recall, his campaign for change didn’t get much traction. Maybe if he’d lobbied for “cutting board” or “postage stamp” he’d have gotten some support. Maybe not
At any rate, the panhandle in Texas is one of several in the United States.
Currently I live in the Florida panhandle. I’d argue that its shape comes closer to fitting the description of an actual pan’s handle.
Although, to me it’s reminiscent of the barrel of a gun with the peninsula as the gun’s handle.
I found something kind of cool while searching Pinterest for pictures of panhandles. Earlier this year, “Rolling Stone” did a feature on a West Texas band called The Panhandlers, including a link to one of their songs. I got a kick out of the song, and thought it worth sharing here.
If there’s one thing I’m really good at, it’s worrying. I come by the skill honestly, having inherited it from my mother who was a world class worrier.
She was full of “what ifs” and “might could happens” and she handed them down to me in a messy little package made up of sleepless nights and tied up with great big bows constructed from fatalistic flights of fancy.
Studly Doright, on the other hand, never worries, or if he does he never mentions it. Oh, he ponders deep stuff, like how to rig his bicycle with a battery and a throttle and a golf bag holder so he can use it on the golf course instead of a golf cart.
He might obsess a bit, but he never worries that he won’t get the bike to work or that he’ll crash and break a leg on the hole farthest from the clubhouse and have to crawl to safety. No, he leaves those worries to me.
His mom, Saint Helen, is not a worrier either. Even when she was on her own, raising five kids, she didn’t expend any energy worrying. She knew worrying wouldn’t solve a thing.
So, is this a nature versus nurture issue? Did my mom pass the worrying gene down to me, or did I learn from observing her that one should fret over situations one cannot control? Did Studly choose to emulate his mother, or is there a single speck on a gene that prevents him from worrying?
It’s probably a bit of both. We may never know. What I do know is that the old saying that opposites attract rings true in this case. Thank goodness.
Praying for Eyebrowz 