Man Writing a Romance

Making a case for romance

2012-02-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

When I took German in college, a professor tried—mostly in vain—to teach us 1970s kids the true meaning of Romantic. That’s with a capital R, because I’m talking about an academic and artistic movement of the 19th century that elevated imagination and emotion over reason, glorified the individual and transformed the artist into a hero.

Or something like that.

Anyways, the professor showed us a series of slides—kind of like a beta version of PowerPoint, if you’re too young to know what a slide is—and asked us to identify Romantic symbols and themes in art.

One slide depicted a woman who could use few trips to the gym, gazing at a full moon over a placid lake at midnight. We all waxed professorial in pointing out the painting’s obvious and important Romantic characteristics.

And then got our butts chewed.

“Oh, my God,” the professor wailed, “look at the insipid look on the woman’s face! The moon and water are overwrought clichés. The painting is so leaden with treacle, it makes one’s teeth ache just looking at it.”

Frenzied note-taking ensued. Everyone wanted to be prepared in case this woman showed up on the final.

And yet, here I am, thirty-five years later, still a sucker for treacle.

The other night I was driving home along Lake Michigan and noticed the full moon paving a shimmering path over the calm black water. I pulled over to spend a minute taking it in without having to suffer the annoyance of making the car stay on the road. Moon River, wider than a mile. I’ll never get enough of that.

On the other hand, I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand the 19th century Romantic Movement. But I do highly regard imagination. I have deduced that people aren’t very good at reasoning. And I’m all for the Romantic notion of going out and beyond—following that siren lure of the undulating moonlight on the water into realms shrouded in darkness but dotted with beckoning luminaries.

OK, that’s overwrought. But I was born under the water sign of Cancer—in June, a month whose birth stone is pearl and whose “planet” is the moon. My psyche overflows with water and romantic symbolism.

What draws me to sights like the moon over the lake is not, as many people asset, the reminder of how small we are against the backdrop of the cosmos. God knows we're presented with myriad reminders of that each and every day. No, with me, it's the way our minds connect to the cosmos to make us so much larger than our physical bodies.

And here, I think, is where romantic meets Romantic. Just as experiencing the expanse of the sky or a great lake can meld us to bigger things, being in love gives us a hero—an ally against powerful forces that would just as soon squish us like upside-down June bugs writhing on a sidewalk on a hot afternoon.

Maybe that’s overwrought, too—but so what? Give me an F on the exam. We in the 21st century could use a new romantic movement.

One with a lower-case r.

Do you see what I see?

2012-02-05T20:16:00.000-08:00

If thou includest a scene in thine manuscript in which a woman gazeth upon herself in a mirror, allow her not to be pleased atwhich, lest thine gender be exposed as male.

I open this week’s sermon with a passage from the Book of Verisimilitudes, the chapter devoted to telling men how to write the way women think. I kind of touched on the topic of what woman think when they look in the mirror way back in October 2010, when I cited the following passage from Daily Kos contributing editor Laura Clawson:

“My editors at Harlequin used to joke that they could always tell when a man had written a manuscript. Somewhere in the first fifty pages the heroine undressed in front of a mirror...and liked what she saw. That sounds like a good idea, having a body that you can admire when you are buck-naked in your own bathroom. But what clearly seems a better idea, a more appealing fantasy, is to walk by that mirror and simply not care.”

The fantasy, Clawson wrote, “is not to be beautiful but to have an identity for yourself that is not caught up in your appearance. Romance heroines rarely know how beautiful they are. This isn't because they are too stupid to look in a mirror or too low in self-esteem to understand what they see there, but because they are presenting the fantasy of being something other than body, of not having any of this cosmetic-advertisement stuff matter.”

Point taken.

But then I read this in The Hunger Games, which was written by a woman:

The Creature standing before me in the full-length mirror has come from another world. Where skin shimmers and eyes flash and apparently they make clothes from jewels. Because my dress, oh my dress, is entirely covered in reflective precious gems, red and yellow and white and white with bits of blue that accent the tips of the flame design. The slightest movement gives the impression I am engulfed in tongues of fire.

I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.

OK, Katniss is not naked. But she certainly likes what she sees. Later on, she’s so intoxicated with her new look that she twirls around on stage like, as she says, “a little girl.”

So is the book endorsing the idea of having “this cosmetic-advertisement stuff matter”?

I don’t know. It seems to me natural that human beings like looking good. The definition of “good” can vary greatly, but dressing up has the power to knock down seemingly unbreakable barriers. I’ve witnessed, for example, the secretly pleased smiles of metal heads who usually wear jeans and black blood-dripping-wraith tee-shirts when they slip into their tuxes before prom.

Not caring about what you see when you're wearing nothing at all? Sure. Actually liking what you see? Why not? I mean, really. Who’s stopping you? A man in your life? If there's a man in your life who makes you think something's wrong when you’re naked, you need a new man, not a new body.

And here’s a little secret: When a guy writes a scene with woman standing in front of a mirror naked and liking what she sees, what he sees is a naked woman.

And, believe me, he’s liking it.

The existential nature of badassiness (Badassitry? Badassitration?)

2012-01-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

When I recently read an installment of Metal Mom to my writing group, a couple people said they were glad to see the main character, Anna, finally acting more badass. One person even said Anna should have been more badassy from the very beginning.

Which made me wonder: If this is a story about a woman learning to better assert herself, how assertive can she be at the start? And if she’s bad at the beginning, what does she end up being? Metal Mommy Dearest?

I happen to be reading The Hunger Games right now. The star of that book, Katniss Everdeen, is pretty much a badass when the book opens. But the book is not about how Katniss got to that point. It’s about how she gets to a point beyond that.

You also find out early on that Katniss was not born bad. In fact, flashbacks reveal that Katniss was at one time so timid and ineffectual that she almost starved to death in the apocalyptic dystopia she lives in. She learns to defy the rules and push herself not only to survive, but also to provide for her family.

Stories about characters who overcome self-doubt and gain the confidence to buck conventionality are my favorite. In It’s a Wonderful Life, for instance, George Bailey displays an indomitable spirit all along. But what if he said, on page 1 of the script, “You know, everyone wouldn’t be better off if I had never been born. I’m an important guy!” Who would watch that movie? It would be only one minute long—and a boring minute at that.

George Bailey and Katniss Everdeen have badass in their souls. Well…Katniss more than George. It’s there in all of us. Great characters, though, have to earn their badassity. They have to develop and learn how to use their innate powers in constructive ways. In my novel, Fast Lane,, Lara starts out feeling angry and victimized. She’s badass enough to try to rectify the situation, but following through teaches her how to use her innate powers in ways she never knew she could.

The same goes for Anna Petrovic in Metal Mom. She’s not trying to survive gladiatorial games or save the town from a greedy oligarch or even cut a billionaire playboy down to size. But she is trying to find fulfillment as an artist while bucking societal expectations and rock band egos. And her family—the very people who should be helping her instead of holding her back.

A third of the way through Metal Mom is where Anna starts flexing muscles she’s only just started to develop. Her badassedness grows from there. She eventually kicks some butt. Constructively.

But if she was kicking butt at FADE IN, I shudder to think how much damage she’d do by the time the closing credits rolled. And that would be a different story altogether.

Seven things that keep me awake at night

2012-01-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

Now that the three-day Fast Lane giveaway is over, I can get back to pondering the hard questions that have haunted the corners of my reason forever.

What is an extravagance? I don’t know anyone who has even one vagance, let alone an extra one.

What’s the difference between extra virgin olive oil and olive oil that’s just virgin enough?

And for that matter, if you can’t be too rich or too thin, can you be too virgin?

Why can something be god awful, but not god wonderful?

How come knowing jack and not knowing jack are the same thing?

In the prayer, “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food,” why is it necessary to say God is good after already saying he’s great?

BTW: The promotion went very well. More on that another time.

ManWARriors, have I got a deal for you

2012-01-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

Actually, the answer is yes, I do have a deal for you. This weekend—January 20, 21 and 22—Fast Lane will be available from Amazon for the amazoningly low price of $0.00.

Let me restate that. From Friday through Sunday, it’s free.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Why, Dave?” And the answer to that question is that I decided to give Kindle Select a try. The author (in this case, me) agrees to sell exclusively through Amazon for 90 days, and Amazon lets the author (again, me) raise awareness of the book through the miracle of the 100%-off sale.

If you’re a Kindle Premium member, that promotion lasts all 90 days. You can borrow Fast Lane for free any time.

But for everyone else, this is a limited-time offer. So if you haven’t already downloaded your copy of Fast Lane to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone (plus some other devices), get thee to the Internet on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and get the entire book for less than the cost of the electricity you’ll consume when you settle in to read it.

I’d be thrilled, too, if you’d tell someone else about this deal. You know—on Face Book, Twitter, Linked In, your blog, the bathroom wall at work…whatever. When it comes to social media, I love them all.

And that goes for you, too, ManWARriors. I dub you the Fast Lane Army.

Girls in cars

2012-01-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

Academics in Saudi Arabia have determined that women who drive have more sex than women who don’t. That finding adds fuel to a debate in that country about whether women should be allowed to drive. The debate over women voting, on the other hand, is apparently already settled, with suffrage coming in 2015.

Which raises a couple of questions.

First, is driving sexier than voting? I mean, what guy hasn’t seen a pair of appealing legs below the curtain of a tolling booth and wondered about the top half?

Second, do the Saudi academics have a point? The article I saw had no details about the study—and commentary on geopolitics would not be part of ManWAR’s mission statement if ManWAR had one—but a scene in Fast Lane seems to support the Saudi scholars.

A favorite among readers, the scene takes place on a salt flat in Southern California just after Clay invites Lara to drive his $300,000 Lexus LFA supercar at 200 mph. Lara’s exhilarated. Clay kisses her.

Clay’s lips were firm. He had not shaved, and Lara enjoyed the bristly feel on her cheeks. Clay tasted somewhat salty, too, a reminder of where they were at the moment.

But was it THE moment?

It seemed they were heading toward it. This is a good thing. This is the plan. Still, Lara found herself looking down when their lips parted. Not to be demure. She was straining to stay cool. To avoid revealing what was going on in her head—and other parts of her body.

Clay broke the silence. “Well.”

“Yes. Well.”

Clay’s hand dropped from Lara’s face to her thigh, warming her leg as he stroked it through the thin cotton.

“This is getting to be a much more exciting day than I had originally planned,” Clay said.

“What was your original plan?” Lara could feel his gaze, but still averted her eyes.

“Pick up a car. Drive around.”

He kissed her neck. Right below the ear. Ahhh, yes. Lara closed her eyes and tilted her head back to make it easier for him. She felt herself sinking. Willingly. Into the car seat’s embrace. Into a spell. Into the dark corners of her mind. Clay moved his hand along the curve of her hip to her waist.

Lara exhaled and sank even deeper. “What's your plan now?”

Clay tugged on the seat belt and grunted. “Tight fit in here,” he said.

Watching as Clay’s elbow bumped first the shifter, then the steering wheel, then the head rest, Lara could see things weren’t likely to go much further in this setting.

Maybe the hood…

“I think we need a little space,” she said.

Clay nodded and extricated himself from the cabin. Lara watched from her side of the car as he stretched out a Charlie horse in his shoulder.

“So, are you coming over here, or do I have to come over there?” he said with a sneaky smile.

“We could meet halfway,” Lara responded, mimicking his look.

She nonchalantly moved forward to rest her arms on the foxy rake of the LFA’s roof. But the blazing sun had cooked the steel there as hot as a stovetop, making Lara’s next maneuver—a spastic recoil accompanied by a pitiful yelp—anything but nonchalant.

She rubbed her arms where they’d been scorched by the searing metal.

Clay zipped to her aid. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, geez, it’s just a little—”

She couldn’t even finish the sentence before Clay grunted.

“What’s wrong?”

Clay rubbed a spot under his arm.

“Nothing…”

“No, what?”

He pushed gingerly between two ribs. “It’s stupid. I wasn’t paying attention and banged into the door.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Forget it. Let me have a look here.” Clay lifted Lara’s arms so he could see the underside of her wrists. “Doesn’t look so bad.”

“Oh, now you’re a doctor?”

“No. And I don’t play one on TV,” Clay said. “But this much I know: Scientific studies show that simply touching any part of a woman is good for a man’s health. Elevates his heart rate.”

“Fascinating. But who’s the patient?”

“Good question.” Clay kissed Lara on one wrist, then the other. Then he continued kissing her arm all the way to her shoulder.

Feeling better already.

Lara took a deep breath. Clay moved closer until his body pressed against hers. And then pressed her body against the gutter that ran along the roofline above the car door, giving Lara a clear notion of what it must feel like to be branded. She jerked forward, ramming Clay’s nose with her shoulder.

“Omigod! I’m so sorry!”

Clay’s lips moved, but his face was clenched so tightly that no words came out.

“Are you bleeding?”

“No. Just a little bump.” Clay opened his eyes as far as he could in an attempt to illustrate his point. “See? Good as—”

He sneezed.

Lara yelped again.

“That was suave.” Clay daubed Lara’s cheek with his sleeve. “I’ll have to add that to the Pit Stop Blog: ‘How not to blow it by sneezing on your date.’”

Lara burst out laughing. “It is a fun car, but it’s got its drawbacks.”

Clay sneered. “I’ll use that line in my review.”

Lara stopped laughing when she saw a dime-size spot of blood on Clay’s shirt. “You are hurt.”

The sight of the crimson circle made Clay only laugh harder. “I’ve been going through a lot of shirts since I met you.”

Lara gave him a playful push. “So I guess it doesn’t hurt?”

“Pain’s all in the head,” Clay said. “And right now, I’m focused on other things.”

He put his hands on Lara’s hips and drew her to him. She put her hands on his shoulders and turned her head to accommodate his kiss. But just as she closed her eyes, her upper arm grazed that damned branding iron of a gutter.

And she swore. Again.

Clay looked stunned. Lara turned red.

“Oh, my,” Lara said. “Another F-bomb. Not particularly ladylike.”

“What is the ladylike reaction to being burned by a car roof?” Clay checked out Lara’s elbow. “Looks red. Maybe we—”

Lara interrupted. “Should go somewhere else?”

“Good idea,” Clay said. “I know a place.”

Say hello to Anna

2012-01-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

Maybe you’re wondering what the man writing a romance is writing now that he’s done writing the romance. Or maybe you’re not. No matter, I’m telling you.

I plan to tweak some screenplays I wrote that have prominent female characters and make them available on Amazon. By “tweak,” I mean doing a little updating, making sure the women are woman-y enough and maybe adding a few details that wouldn’t ordinarily appear in screenplays. Details like what people are wearing (something a screenwriter is supposed to leave up the wardrobe designer) and how characters are saying their lines (that’s up to the actors).

I started writing screenplays twenty-five years ago because I watched a lot of movies, and novels seemed too long and too complicated. I ended up finishing twenty scripts, some of which pecked tiny nicks into the hard shell that encases the movie business. One was Metal Mom, which I hope to have on the bookshelf before March 1.

Metal Mom isn’t a romance, but it is a comedy. It’s about a woman, Anna Petrovic, who rekindles her singing career when her kids are in high school. They don’t like it. Neither does her husband. Even the lead guitarist of her new band, Brains on the Wall, has issues when it looks like Anna’s pushing him out of the spotlight.

Metal Mom was first optioned by a fledgling producer who already had one independent movie under her belt. She started out with micro-budget aspirations and ended up signing Michelle Phillips to play the lead and nearly convincing people with money to finance a Hollywood studio-level project.

A company behind a popular kids’ show optioned Metal Mom a few years later, but that deal didn’t come to fruition, either.

Not that I’m complaining. In Hollywood, Metal Mom has a track record of success. Seriously. Most screenplays get no attention at all. But Metal Mom earned me some money, and I understand why. It’s funny. It’s a good story. It has a female lead that female actors would like to play.

Anyone—male or female—who’s had dreams while growing up in the rock ’n’ roll era will identify with Anna.

And anyone who’s ever been to a movie might like to read a screenplay.

Screenplays aren’t like novels. They don't divulge a lot of back story. You can’t delve into what characters are thinking. And adroit asides in italics are strictly verboten. That goes for anything else you couldn’t see or hear in the theater.

But reading a screenplay isn’t like watching a movie, either. You don’t see what a director, cinematographer and editor want you to see. You see what you want to see. You get to be the director, cinematographer and editor—and the actor. All of the actors, in fact.

And screenplays are fast reads. Theoretically, you should be able to finish a ninety-pager in an hour and a half.

It takes a lot longer than a minute a page to write a screenplay. Or rewrite one, even. But that’s okay, because if I do my job well, your imagination will shoot and show you a movie as real as any you'll see on the screen.

How fast you read it is up to you.

It says "love" in the title, but it's not exactly romantic

2011-12-15T08:27:00.000-08:00

Some things you just can’t explain.

Like, with Christmas approaching, you’d think my dominant earworm would be “Ding Dong Merrily on High” or “Deck the Halls.” Hell, I get “Deck the Halls” in my head all year, every time I do laundry, but for some reason, no matter how often I pop in my Mannheim Steamroller CD, the only song I’ve been hearing for a month has been Head East’s “Love Me Tonight.”

It’s like the doctor implanted the track into my brain at the same time he was implanting a fake knee into my leg.

If you’re not familiar with “Love Me Tonight,” I’m not surprised. Head East was a fairly arcane group back in the 1970s. Midwestern fan base, mostly. Which is why so many of my friends had the album “Flat as a Pancake.” Midwestern kids loved Midwestern bands. Styx, REO Speedwagon. Cheap Trick.

“Love Me Tonight” is the third song on side one. It’s a first-person account of a rock star who’s driven two hundred miles to a place he’s never seen, where he meets a woman that he’s enamored with even though he doesn’t know where she comes from and whose face he’ll probably never see again.

Not a problem. He’s seen enough and, it turns out, he’s resourceful when it comes to making use of the materials on hand:

I don’t know where you’ve been
And I don’t know who you’ve had in
But I know you’ve got
Exactly what I need.

He never actually says what it is he needs, but it’s not too hard to figure out. The problem, he says, is that “I’ll be leaving here at 3, so love me tonight.”

Now, we all know what’s going on here. But back in 1975, when I was sixteen, I actually knew people—female people—who thought this was a pretty romantic song. I kid you not.

In retrospect, it seems pretty crass, this dude trying to lay down some logical jive about loving the one you’re with and all. You know: I’m here, you’re here, we’ve got limited time…the only thing that makes sense is that we should have sex.

But I don’t think it was that clinical approach that got the hormones flowing through the veins of my teenaged lady friends. I think it was the last line, in which “I’ll be leaving here at 3” morphs into “I believe in you and me.”

Smooth. Suave. Deboner, as we said back in the day.

None of this explains why this song would be in my head in the wake of my knee replacement surgery or at the height of the Christmas season. I sure hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the idea of a guy going down a chimney and leaving behind gifts.

Maybe my titanium knee is sensitive to radio frequencies, and I keep getting the all-Head-East channel. Or maybe my mind is tangled up in a mangled reference to the Kings of Orient Are. Well, they headed west, but they were from the east.

Or maybe it’s one of those things you just can’t explain.

It's not a great video, but you can hear "Love Me Tonight" while looking at a photo of guys with long hair, beards and shirts with big collars and open necks on You!Tube.

The Man Writing a Romance talks about the romance he wrote

2011-12-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

Authors Donna McDonald and Karen McQuestion have posted the first post-publication of Fast Lane interviews of me on their blogs. What a kick it is to have the tables turned after interviewing people for newspapers and magazines for thirty-some years.

And to find out that I apparently talk the way I write blog posts.

Donna's blog is Never Too Late for Romance.

Karen's is McQuestionable Musings.

Karen's interview will give you insight into why I ended up not writing an "erotic" romance. In Donna's, you'll find out what I think about women not shaving their armpits.

News you can use.

When you check out the interviews, check out their books. These two ladies are not just nice to new authors, like me. They also can write.

A taste of Fast Lane

2011-11-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

Hey, ManWARriors. Welcome to the official preview of Fast Lane, which is now available as an ebook. We start, appropriately enough, at page 1:

The limo jerked hard to the right, sending Lara Dixon sliding across the slick leather seat.

That can’t be good.

The man seated across from her—the man Gina had found to introduce her to Clay Creighton—scrambled upright and banged on the plexiglas partition separating them from the driver, a uniformed woman who had quarter-inch silver hair peeking from beneath a livery cap.

“What the hell?” he demanded as the partition slid open. “Did you hit something?

The driver met Lara’s questioning gaze in the rearview mirror. “Oops.” The partition slid shut.

That really can’t be good.

Lara flipped down a mirror to fix her hair. Her natural color shimmered through the semisweet chocolate veneer. Hard to get used to after thirty-two years as a blonde.

“Just a bump in the road.” Anton Roche worked his neck like a preening turkey and settled back in as the limo raced past Paradise Cove on the road to Malibu.

“As I was saying, the girl thought she was the aurora borealis, Liberty’s torch and the leprechaun’s pot o’ gold rolled into one. But she knew she looked even hotter in my bustier.”

Lara suppressed a sigh. How does Gina put up with this guy? The lingerie designer had prattled about his life with the glitterati from the minute he’d picked her up at her humble Santa Monica apartment. She wished he’d let her concentrate on this new experience of riding in luxury. After tonight, she might never step into a limo again. Then again, Roche had put his turkey neck on the line to talk up Lara to Clay Creighton.

He has his own axe to grind, but I should at least pretend to be interested.

“Why is it the ‘STP’ bustier?” Lara asked, though after weeks of researching Creighton’s Fast Lane empire, she knew the answer. Never hurts to practice. You’ll be lying all the time if everything goes right tonight.

Roche straightened with pride. “‘Seconds to Paradise.’ It’s goddamn brilliant. Builds up the bust—and a man can unhook it one-handed like that.” He snapped his fingers. “You know how much money Creighton’s made from that thing? It’s the biggest seller in the Toy Store. But do I get the credit?” He looked more closely at Lara. “It wouldn’t have been a bad idea for you to wear one tonight.”

Lara had considered buying one from Fast Lane’s notorious online gift shop back when she was married. “I thought STP had something to do with gasoline.”

“Yeah, well…Fast Lane: Racy cars, the high life…and all that.”

Fast women, fast cars, fast living. I know all about Fast Lane and Clay Creighton.

Lara looked out the window as Roche chattered on. The sun drifting down through the maritime haze toward Point Dume reflected in her diamond-blue eyes. The conflagration of red, orange and purple looked no different from here than it did from the bluffs on the other side of Santa Monica Bay.

The limo jerked again as they turned up a gravel road. Lara’s heart quickened. We must be close.

“We’re here!” Roche announced as the car turned into a driveway that twisted skyward through desert terrain. “Are you ready?”

Lara thought about the weeks she’d spent in the gym. The coaching sessions on how to lie with a mysterious woman whose name and accent changed daily. The hours poring through the enormously popular Fast Lane website, reading Creighton’s daily encyclicals on materialism and carnality until she could easily extemporize on the advantages of gadgets she’d never use and the attributes of running backs she’d never cheer for.

But everything she learned did nothing to change her opinion: Fast Lane was nothing but a place where men like her asshole ex, Kyle, could leer at naked women and find validation for believing they deserved their own harems.
An instructional guide on how to fuck over your wife.

She closed her eyes and her mind to escape Roche’s jabber. When she had approached Gina Wray, creator of the pro-woman website HardCoreGrrrls.com, with the idea of infiltrating Fast Lane to reveal its sordid secrets, Lara had never expected to be the one doing the infiltrating.

“I know plenty of people who’d like to bring Clay Creighton down—people who’d pay big bucks for an exposé,” Gina had told Lara. “Putting an end to The Rotation wouldn’t be so bad, either.”

The Rotation consisted of three women who were at Creighton’s beck and call 24/7. Every six months, he dumped the most senior member and introduced a new plaything. Relationships arced, he said, starting out passionate and ending up routine, so a man had to bring in “new talent” to keep things exciting. Gina’s plan was for Lara to become the first woman in The Rotation’s disgraceful sixteen-year history to dump him instead.

“I don’t know,” Lara had protested. “I’m not exactly Fast Lane material.”
“The material is there,” Gina had assured her. “You just have to move it around a little.”

Nothing’s simple. The world is warm and cool and open and mysterious and bright and muddled—all at the same time. How do you live with that?

Lara opened her eyes to see Roche staring at her chest. He frowned. “Can’t you show a little more cleavage?”

Lara reflexively looked down the ruffled collar of her dress—a sleeveless midnight blue Roland Mouret crepe Gina had purchased for this night. Lara marveled at how easily the twenty-five-hundred-dollar price tag convinced her the dress fit and felt better than anything she’d ever worn.

But does it look good enough?

Even with her new body and hair, even with every follicle below her forehead sugar-waxed and ripped clean, her nails filed, polished and buffed to a mother-of-pearl sheen, her feet soaked in lavender-scented Dead Sea salt water and tucked neatly into a pair of Guillaume Hinfray platform slingbacks, even after two months of Gina’s pep talks, she had to ask this clown, “Do you believe I can even get into The Rotation?”

Roche leaned back against the velvety leather, his beady black eyes taking in Lara’s slender five-foot-eight-inch frame, long legs, toned and spray-tanned arms. She held steady under his gaze. He reached up and pushed a lock of hair off her forehead. She knocked his hand away and moved the hair back.

“Eh,” Roche said. “Stranger things have happened.”

Just what I needed: a big boost of confidence.

The limo crested a hillock and slowed to a stop. A busty young woman wearing the lowest-cut Lakers jersey Lara had ever seen opened the door. “Welcome to the ICE House!”

Fast Lane is available as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords for $2.99. A print version should be available within a few weeks.

Fast Lane’s for sale!

2011-11-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

The romance novel that launched Man Writing a Romance is now available as an ebook. Find it for $2.99 at Amazon and Smashwords.

A funny thing happened on the way to getting Fast Lane up and running. I had a knee replaced.

This wasn’t a surprise. I’d known for more than five years it would have to be done. I knew the exact date for more than a month. And that date became my deadline for incorporating all the comments from my writing group critiquers, beta readers, editor and proofreader.

But, man, those readers kept finding ways for me to make the story, the characters-- the whole book--better.

I prepped Fast Lane for publishing the weekend before Knee Day. Two days before, I thought I was set. One day before, Kindle Direct Publishing alerted me to a submission error. So, one night before, I tried again. And screwed up again.

Oh, well.

Today, Fast Lane is on the electronic bookshelf. My knee is on the biological mend. And with the holidays nigh upon us, I’m grateful to everyone who helped me write Fast Lane and get the word out--and to anyone who downloads a copy and gives it a read.

If you do the latter, please let me know what you think. And if you like it--really, really like it--please don’t hesitate to let someone else know what you think.

Because it’s pure joy to be up and running. Crutches or not.

Approaching the finish line

2011-11-10T19:03:00.000-08:00

It comes to this. Fast Lane is written, rewritten, rewritten, rewritten, rewritten again, and proofread. Only the hard part is left.

Formatting.

Actually, I didn't find formatting anywhere near as difficult as I was told it would be when I put Man Writing a Romance, the Ebook, up for sale last month. If you want to self-publish something, I heartily recommend Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide--How to Format Your Ebook.

I'd like to be able to tell you Fast Lane is available right now, but life intervenes for a few days in the form of house guests. Since the Packers don't play until Monday night, I do have all of Sunday and Monday to get the book in shape.

In the meantime, please tell everyone to come here and admire this wonderful cover designed by Connie Gage. How lucky I am to live two blocks from an art director who has worked with international stars.

The cover for ManWAR the book was easy--all I needed was a free graphics editing program, a $4.99 photo of two good-looking people, a warped sense of humor and a desire to spend a great deal of time photoshopping my head onto a hunk's body instead of working on important stuff like Fast Lane. And my day job. But Fast Lane? That cover would require talent and vision.

Mission accomplished.

You've been given fair warning, ManWARriors, so free up space on your Kindles or whatever you use to read ebooks. An old-fashioned paper version of Fast Lane will be along pretty soon--in time for the holidays, for sure.

I've already started to work on what I plan to publish next. More on that in future installments. I've got a feeling I'm not so much almost done with Fast Lane as almost beginning something you and I will enjoy for a long time.

You Gotta Lotta ’Splainin’ to Do, Karen McQuestion

2011-11-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

Fast Lane is with a proofreader now, and it is my hope to make it available in the next week to ten days. In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy a look into the mind of Karen McQuestion, whose newest book, Secrets of the Magic Ring, comes out Nov. 8.

M Magazine reported a couple months ago that Karen had sold half a million books. That puts me only 499,995 behind her, but she has no problem remembering what it was like when the counter was at zero, since she started publishing them just two years ago.

Some of her books, especially Easily Amused, contain elements commonly found in romance novels, but she says they’re not really romances. I asked her to ’splain, and here are her ’splanations:

A Scattered Life, Easily Amused and Favorite pit your heroines against female antagonists. Do you think readers can identify because every woman has a female nemesis somewhere in her life?

When my kids were little, I did daycare in my home, and I noticed a striking difference in the way boys and girls treat conflict. Boys (and I’m generalizing here, of course) were more forthright. If they had a problem with another kid, they put it out there, front and center. And when the conflict was over, it was over. It was never spoken of again, and no grudges were held.

Girls, on the other hand, could be sneaky. The girls in my care had the faces of angels, but were masters of duplicity and manipulation. They’d target another little girl and say things like, “I’m going to have the biggest, best birthday party in the world, and I’m inviting everyone but you!”

How do you fight against something like that?

In my opinion, women make more interesting opponents. I’m actually surprised that there aren’t more women villains in fiction and the movies. And yes, I hope readers can identify, because it seems to me that every woman has had a female nemesis in her life at one time or another.

If Easily Amused isn’t a romance novel, what is it? How is it different from a romance?

In the past, I’ve referred to it as a romantic comedy with more comedy and less romance. It’s probably technically a chick lit novel, but since I’ve read that chick lit is dead, I was reluctant to label it as such.

How is it different from a romance? Heck if I know.

In Easily Amused, Lola says she never wondered what Hubert looked like naked. I don’t get that. They knew each other in high school, and when I was in high school, I wondered what all females looked like naked—even my platonic friends. What does it take for a woman to wonder what a guy looks like naked?

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Dodger dogs? Did you know they have their own Facebook page? And a best-selling book in which they were rated the best hot dogs in baseball.*

I’m sorry to say I really don’t know much about Dodger dogs. In Easily Amused, I used the Dodger dog reference to get a cheap laugh, and kind of forgot about it until I saw your question.

But thanks for letting me know their status as best hot dogs in baseball. I’m always up for learning something new.

As for Facebook, I’m really out of the loop in that department. I have an author page that my publicist set up and I try to update it, but sometimes I completely forget about it. To me, that’s the joy of the Internet. You can be plugged in when you want to be, and opt out if it gets to be too much.

* From Facebook: Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks: And All the Wieners In Between is a 1988 bestselling book by author Bob Wood. In 1985, the then-28-year-old Wood was a high-school history teacher in Seattle, Washington when he took a trip to all 26 Major League Baseball stadiums in one summer. Wood decided to assign a letter grade in each of eight categories and rank the stadiums from best to worst. Dodger Stadium and Royals Stadium tied for first, while the Astrodome and Exhibition Stadium finished as the two worst.

Kinda free

2011-10-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

I took the epublishing plunge over the weekend, managing to upload Man Writing a Romance, the ebook, at Smashwords and Amazon without dying or killing anyone.

I love the Internet. But I hate it, too. Ya know?

At any rate, Smashwords lets a guy give away his book if he wants to, so if you'd like a free copy of every ManWAR post plus some extras, like the complete text of my Valentine's Day radio essay about goofy love songs, an interview with author Karen McQuestion and a preview of the first chapter of Fast Lane, go to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98192.

If for some reason you'd rather pay a buck, go to http://tinyurl.com/3eqctrw, though I suspect Amazon will invoke a 100% off deal as soon as it finds out about Smashwords.

The ManWAR ebook is just an appetizer for sumptuous feast that Fast Lane is still becoming. Fast Lane will be up for sale before Nov. 15. Damn it.

At any rate, I already downloaded Man Writing a Romance to my Kindle from Amazon, which means I've now either made 35 cents as an author or lost 64 cents.

It still feels good.

Give a guy a break

2011-10-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

I was recently unfollowed on Twitter because I replied incorrectly to a tweet about how a guy loses “man points” if he exfoliates.

Thinking it was a joke, I said, “How does scraping your face with jagged shards of apricot pit make you less manly?”

The unfollowing that followed made me wonder if the original tweet really was a joke. And if it was, do you lose man points for not having the sense of humor to field a jest with grace?

But what if the tweet was serious? What’s your score if you’re too insecure to butt heads with a challenger?

The episode reminded me of the movie Heathers, in which Winona Rider and Christian Slater plot the murder of two hard-guy jocks by luring them to a secluded area on the promise of kinky sex (with Rider, not Slater). To cover up, the stars plant items at the scene to suggest the victims were gay. One of those items: bottled water.

And, guess what? As ridiculous as it sounds now, in 1988 it was the bottled water that convinced the authorities the pair were, in fact, gay.

In other words, not manly.

And then there’s the character in A Mighty Wind, the Christopher Guest parody of folk music, in which Harry Scherer’s character gets interested in skin care—exfoliating!—and that leads him to discover that he’s really a woman trapped in a man’s body.

Those two, dear ManWARriors, are examples of brilliant satire.

I mean, really. If removing unhealthy dead skin cells from your face makes you less manly, are there other good ideas men should avoid? Wearing seat belts? Giving up smoking? Sitting down with the missus to watch Secrets From a Stylist on HGTV, which is hosted by this blond, bewitching babe, Emily Henderson?

I do the laundry in my household. Why wouldn’t I? I wear clothes. Doing laundry is tedious and requires physical effort. Would it be more manly for me to stick my wife with a household chore I thought was too hard, too dull or beneath me? Shouldn’t I think that if something’s beneath me, it’s also beneath the woman I love?

I cook dinner. Why wouldn’t I? I eat. Besides, my grandfather was an excellent cook, and I’m sure there were many people who had all their teeth because they possessed the wisdom not to contest his masculinity for putting a pot of tomato sauce on the table.

I wash the floors. Why wouldn’t I? I walk. Again, would I be more manly if I made my wife move around furniture and get down on her knees with a wet rag in her hand?

Come to think of it, how does being incapable of doing anything that’s “so easy a woman can do it” make any man more manly?

But, ladies, don’t think you’re immune to this kind of nonsense. While staying home with my infant daughter twenty-four years ago, I got into line at the grocery store and heard this from a woman in front of me: “No man should be home taking care of babies.”

My daughter turned out fine. She graduated with honors from a top university and is going to law school. She’s traveled the world, lived in other countries and is pretty good at taking care of herself. Does any of that make her less womanly?

We have clean clothes and nice floors and eat well around here—because I’m not manly?

Ask my wife. In spite of the chores—and the tube of St. Yves exfoliating gel I keep next to the sink—she’s never in 29 years threatened to unfollow me for being a wuss.

P.S. My daughter also turned me on to washing my face with a mix of one part castor oil to three parts olive oil every other day, and I’d recommend it to everyone who thinks it’s a good idea to have skin covering their skull.

Love at first write

2011-10-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the best feedback from a beta reader doesn’t make you change a word, but nonetheless helps you better understand your work.

One of Fast Lane’s readers, for example, thought Clay was a little too head-over-heels for Lara after just one date. It’s a particularly interesting comment because I’m a guy and this reader’s a gal—and that, oddly, puts me in a position to understand something about romance that maybe she’s not genetically engineered to perceive.

Which is that men are more likely than women to experience love at first sight.

Some British scientists studied this—is there anything scientists don’t study?—and found that, according to The Times of India, one out of every five men says he’s fallen in love at first sight or has been “smitten with a partner after only one meeting.”

Not after one date. After one meeting.

Men also report having been on the wrong side of an unrequited love more often, and pining longer for lost love.

Women? Not nearly so romantic, what with only ten percent getting hit with the love bug on initial contact.

"Women are better at reading social situations and are more likely to ask more questions of themselves after meeting someone, like is he going to make me feel secure and will he be a good father to my children," the study’s leader said. "They are cannier than men at making a lifetime choice.”

For men, on the other hand, it’s “just one look, that’s all it took.”

Superficiality is as superficiality does, I suppose. Are women really looking at Brad Pitt’s baby blues and thinking, “Well, he makes twenty million a movie, so he’ll do”?

Anyway, this very bright reader’s comment makes me feel very good about Clay. Dudes fall fast. And hard. And, according to the study, often.

Take it from me: These eggheads know what they're talking about.

And since I haven’t been bashful about telling you ManWARriors about what I had to go back and fix, I feel perfectly justified in reporting that I got one right. And on the first try, no less.

Doggy style

2011-09-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

In Jennifer Crusie’s Faking It, Steve, the dog, shows up with a gash across his nose and Tilda, the heroine, wonders how he got it.

“He met Ariadne on the way up the stairs,” Nadine said, shaking her head at him.
“And she attacked you, poor baby?” Tilda cuddled Steve’s little furry body.
“No,” Nadine said. “He jumped her and tried to, well, hump her.”
Tilda stopped cuddling to look into his beady, clueless eyes. “Steve, she’s a cat.”
“And he’s a guy,” Nadine said.

I laughed. But why? Guys will hump anything that moves. Is there a hoarier cliché than that?

Not in light of author Gail Konop Baker’s Huffington Post essay that says women are increasingly on the make while guys increasingly make excuses.

“Men are taking on the ‘honey I have a headache’ role for the same reason some women do—and it doesn't necessarily have to do with not wanting sex,” says a psychologist Konop quotes.

Some women take on that role, according to Konop, because it's the only power they hold in relationships. Men who are dating or married to successful women may be taking on the role—as well as saying they'd rather just cuddle.

The shrink calls this "a power grab by men who feel powerless."

So, if a woman has a headache, it’s a joke, but if a man pops an Excedrin, it’s a problem? That can’t be fair to men or women.

Konop calls for the sexual liberation of men from “vestiges of a traditionally macho perspective. Much richer, more exciting relationships await men who embrace the fluidity and current evolution of male/female roles, in and out of the bedroom.”

I’m for that. Poor Steve the dog needs a break. Depending on your point of view, what Crusie’s saying is either that boys will be boys or that men will be pigs. I don’t think it’s the latter—Crusie is always very fair to men.

Still, the jokes get old fast. Saying all men are perpetual horndogs is a lot like saying women who like sex are sluts. Either way sets up nothing but a lose/lose situation for everyone.

It comes down to this: People, in general, like sex. Just not always at the same time. And negotiating that inevitability is part and parcel of true romance.

What's so funny?

2011-09-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

If you want to know how men really feel about women, grab a newspaper and turn to the comics page.

In Arlo & Janis, the strip about a Boomer couple entering middle age, Janis digs through a drawer stuffed to the brim with sexy lingerie. This, she declares, is enough to last a lifetime, though the same would be true even if the drawer were significantly less crowded. The next day, Janis asks Arlo if he remembers a particular item he gave her as a gift. He throws it on the floor and says, “Yes!”

In Zits, which chronicles the adventures of your average sixteen-year-old boy, a girl walks past Jeremy, the star, and his friend, Pierce, sending the dudes into paroxysms of pleasure. When they come back to Earth, Jeremy says, “You gotta love the way girls smell.”

In Mr. Boffo, a 21st century riff on The Born Loser, Nadine asks her husband, Earl, to get her lipstick, which is in her purse, “in a gold make-up case in the pouch on the inside second zipper under the notebooks and the folding chairs.”

The last one is brilliant. The purse is obviously a metaphor for the daunting, sometimes frightening, world men enter when they engage women. The purse is little, but there’s a lot in it—and he can’t explain what it all is, how it got there or even why it’s there in the first place.

Zits takes that idea one step further. Women are scary, but damn, it’s hard not to love everything about them. If the wiggle in the walk and the giggle in the talk don’t nab you, something else will. There are, after all, five senses.

The first one maybe isn’t all that deep. It’s just true. I’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating: If a guy’s buying you sexy lingerie it’s not because he thinks you have something to hide, but something he likes to see. Lingerie is the setting; the woman is the stone.

Does any of this apply to Fast Lane? I don’t want to give too much away, but Clay wants people to think he knows his way around a female. Does he? In the end, only Lara knows for sure.

Romance can be funny that way. Or, rather, it should be. If it wasn’t it would just be scary. Like the stuff you see every day on the front page.

Butt, yes

2011-09-11T17:36:00.000-07:00

Experts agree there is no room for sarcasm in a healthy relationship. Oh, that sounds realistic.

No, really. The subject of sarcasm came up for two reasons, both having to do with Fast Lane.

First, there’s this exchange between Lara and Clay after an obnoxious ingénue interrupts them shortly after they meet at a party:

Clay turned back to Lara. “Sorry about that.”
“You don’t have to apologize. It probably happens all the time.”
“Welcome to my life.”
“Pobrecito. Always being hounded by women.”
Clay raised one eyebrow. “Sarcasm. I like that in a woman.”

Upon further review, Lara’s retort isn’t sarcasm, which is harsh or bitter, like a heavy hammer of irony. It’s more like verbal sparring or repartee. A tickling feather of irony.

Then there’s this note my editor wrote in the margin where I listed a character’s age as twenty-one—after I’d already said in an earlier scene that she “arched her back and stuck her little twenty-three year-old butt into the air.”

Her butt, at least, is 23.

Sarcasm? Hmmm. This was information I needed to know. And the presentation made me laugh. So I took my editor on a romantic getaway to a bed and breakfast out in some godforsaken—I mean wonderfully rural—burg forty-five minutes from downtown Milwaukee.

Don’t worry, my wife knew all about it. Mary Jo has been my editor for twenty-nine years.

It was our anniversary, and we dined and engaged in repartee at a quaint Irish pub, then went back to the B & B to play cribbage and drink champagne and stuff, then had breakfast served to us in a lovely Victorian dining room.

A healthy relationship always has room for breakfast.

The margin note? This was my response, via email: “In my mind, the character is 21, but she has the butt of a 23-year-old, which, as we both know, is better.”

So I’m going with repartee on that one.

And, by the way, I’ll take an older butt over a younger one any day.

Not in your dreams

2011-09-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

I’m reading His Secret Life by Bob Berkowitz. It’s about male sexual fantasies, and offers this startling revelation: Men’s fantasies usually have no dialog.

Five hundred guys submitted fantasies for possible inclusion in the book. Most of the scenarios go like this:

I see a woman. She wants to do it. Our clothes come off. We do it.

There are details, of course. In most cases, really well-written ones. It appears a lot of men who work as accountants, car dealers and house painters might be very good at writing romance novel sex scenes.

As for the scene-setting and pre-coital talking that female readers demand, well, someone else would have to fill all that in.

It’s fascinating that, even in their fantasies, men and women have different approaches and desires. She wants him to light a candle, pour her a glass of wine and tell her how pretty her eyes are. He wants her to take off her shirt. Right now.

Even more fascinating, though, is that Berkowitz found that the No. 3 male fantasy—behind orgies and menage a trios—is being with a woman who not only accepts being an equal romantic partner, but also likes to take charge a good percentage of the time.

“It doesn’t take a lot of deep analysis to spot the recurring confident-woman theme in these fantasies (in which) women do not have to be persuaded, cajoled or coerced into sex,” Berkowitz writes. “These fantasies and those women are hot.”

And it’s not because every man deludes himself into believing he’s God’s gift to womankind. Berkowitz says fear of inadequacy and rejection lead men to think about what would happen if Jessica Alba knocked on the door wearing only a bustier and black stockings while the missus was visiting her sister for the weekend.

Just sayin’.

Posits Berkowitz, “Fantasy women never say no. They never say, ‘You were lousy.’”

Romance novels are fantasies, are they not? And how often are those fantasies about women facing their own fears of inadequacy and rejection as manifested in heroines’ body insecurities and seething anger over being humiliated by crummy past lovers?

These fears must be part and parcel of being human, not of being male or female. Where the difference lies, Berkowitz says, is that while women usually don’t want to be valued just for their bodies, men do.

In their fantasies, at least.

How does this figure into Fast Lane? Lara thinks she’s not hot, and has a hard time figuring out why Clay’s interested in her. Clay, on the other hand, is fed up with women who are attracted to him for his hot bod—plus a billion other reasons tucked away in his bank account.

So is Clay a fantasy guy? He is willing to talk.

And Lara? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens with her shirt.

You Gotta Lotta ’Splainin’ To Do, Donna McDonald

2011-08-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

I thought you’d like to know not just what I think about some other writers’ work, but also what they think back.

Donna’s a fervent ManWARrior who’s authored six iconoclastic romances. I shot her a couple of prompts and asked her to ’splain. And while it says in the title she hadda lotta ’splainin’ to do, I limited her ’splanations to two hundred words.

ManWAR is about my learning the “rules” of romance. You seem to be doing very well breaking rules. For example, your protagonists are over 40 and one of them gets pregnant by a man who’s married to another woman.

I wasn’t always a rebel. Agents and publishers rejected my stories about older characters saying they wouldn’t sell. There were sub-genre lines about the over 40 group, but one publisher said my sex scenes were too hot for older people. Boy, have I got some emails to show them. Readers write all the time to thank me.

Making the heroine older than the hero was actually an okay rule to break, but I also make them wealthier, which is supposed to make a woman less appealing. I guess if a woman has money, why does she need a man? I don’t understand the thinking. My experience says it’s not true. My heroes don’t care.

The storyline in Dating a Saint made me very nervous when I released it. For me, it was a test from the Muses to see what kind of writer I was going to be. I have more details in a Q&A blog about what inspired the risk. That story hovers on the edge of becoming some other kind of book. I kept it a romance by using loads of humor, lots of sex scenes, and the hardest, most satisfying happily-ever-after I’ve written to date.

If we’re going to talk about breaking rules, I broke the BIG one when I pulled up my big girl panties and published my work all by myself.

An article by another successful author said protagonists should never be satisfied with their bodies, but just not care what others think. Your protagonists go a step further by regarding their “body issues” not as stemming from something “wrong” with them, but from something wrong with societal attitudes.

If you ever hear a woman say she loves everything about her body, copious quantities of drugs or alcohol are involved. Females are socialized to be modest (find fault), because liking your body (not finding fault)—well, gee, that would be bragging, right?

If I created an older heroine who didn’t admit to having at least some age-related issues, readers would not find me credible. Why? Clothing ads for older women contain models that look like clones of Alexa, the hot ex-model of Dating a Cougar. Where are the 5-foot-tall models or the size 12 or larger ones? They exist, just not as role models.

I’m in the process of creating a 40-year-old, divorced, size 14 heroine whose ex had problems with her weight. In my recently published book The Right Thing, the hero’s 72-year-old father experiences E.D.

Perfection is subjective. I write about the challenges real people face. I think the author of the article you mention is right, but starting a new physical relationship can highlight body issues. It takes time to get to the point of not caring what others think.

Good stuff. And, as a bonus, she used my new all-time favorite word, "panties."

Click to find out more about or buy Donna’s books.

Keeping it fresh

2011-08-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

I just read The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen. It’s about sex, but while sex is all any of the not-quite one-dimensional characters ever think about, it is not a romance. Erotic or otherwise.

It is an anti-romance—unless you recognize it as a satire that skewers stereotypes about how men think about women.

I love satire. There are elements of it in Fast Lane. Elements also found in Kultgen’s best-seller.

The Average American Male opens with the unnamed character in the eighteenth month of a relationship with a girlfriend who bores him. She talks too much. Likes lame music. Has a fat ass (the character’s words, not mine). Doesn’t play video games. Won’t take a supplement to enlarge her B-cup-size breasts, forcing him to sneak it into her food. Refuses to have sex often enough, which is to say, less than twice a day. Doesn’t like the sexual activities he enjoys most.

Worst of all, she starts pushing love and marriage and “tricks” him into engagement. That makes him break up and get a new girlfriend. One who talks the right amount. Likes cool music. Has an ass that is “perfect beyond belief.” Excels at video games. Volunteers to take the supplement even though he’s happy with her B-cup-size breasts (“I like her tits as they are and I’m not completely sure increasing their size would improve their overall quality”). Wants to have sex at least two times a day. Prefers the sexual activities he enjoys most.

Best of all, she’s averse to love and marriage. After witnessing a guy in knight’s armor proposing in a restaurant, she says, “What we just saw basically defines all marriages—some guy makes an ass out of himself and the girl is too overwhelmed by it to think straight enough to say no.”

Fast-forward to eighteen months later when it dawns on the guy that the new girlfriend talks too much--especially about love and marriage--and performs fellatio too little. Her breasts aren’t any bigger, but he’s sure her butt eventually will be. He sadly “realizes” that over time, every woman he’ll ever know will become just like every other women he’s already known.

Like I said—you’ve got to think of it as satire.

So how is all this in any way like Fast Lane? The claim to fame of my male lead, Clay Creighton, is The Rotation—three women who serve as his consorts. Every eighteen months, the one who’s been in The Rotation the longest has to leave to make room for someone else.

The Fast Lane philosophy is that new relationships are filled with passion. Things remain interesting for a while as two people get to know each other. In the end, though, familiarity and routine snuff out the flames. The Rotation is the ultimate bachelor fantasy—and it’s what Lara sets out to destroy.

Unlike the guy in The Average American Male, though, Clay—and Lara—learn a lot about love, romance, relationships and each other. They arc in ways I’m confident you’ll like.

Because, really, you don’t have to be all that romantic to believe that, sooner or later, you’ll meet The One who stands out from all the others. Now. Eighteen months from now. And even after that.

Lament of the triple-X goddess

2011-08-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

“There is no beautiful thought a man can have about a woman that isn’t followed by an absolutely disgusting thought about the same woman. We can’t help it. It’s what we do.”

I lead with this quote from comedian Louis C.K. because it was the first thing uttered from my DVR when I got back from vacation—and my annual bacchanal of reading the Biblical Archaeology Review.

You read that right. BAR is the only magazine I subscribe to, but I never find time to read it except during the one week when I can spend mornings catching up on a year’s worth of issues while sunning on an empty beach on a northwoods lake.

I’m fascinated with how discoveries of potsherds and old bones lend new insight into stories that sound so familiar, yet seem so odd. Like Sodom and Gomorrah: “No, you may not have relations with my sons, you perverts! Here, take my virgin daughters instead.” Tragedy averted.

Hmmmm.

This year I read an issue in which BAR dug up fodder for a more modern controversy. Namely the staid magazine’s penchant for running pictures of bent-over, scantily clad, twenty-something archeological babes.

Father Bruce Perron, an Orthodox priest, complained in 1990 that such pictures made him wonder if, rather than scholarship, ars mores dissoluti—love among the ruins—was the publication’s focus.

Donna Canalizo, the T-shirt and shorts-clad object of Perron’s rage, responded by saying his “interpretation was a result of projecting his own thoughts onto the image. The object in the image to be focused on is not my body, but rather the hypocaust tiles, one of the most spectacular finds in my grid last season.”

She also wondered why the priest did not object to a picture of a shirtless man in the same spread.

A male reader subsequently thanked Perron for “reminding me to look at the picture again. Praise be God who has made such a work of beauty.”

The issue still had legs fifteen years later, when a woman noticed her octogenarian husband, who, she said, “still appreciated female pulchritude,” studying the magazine. “It’s an unusual cover,” he said. She followed with, “You don’t think an Iron Age clay bead is an appropriate subject?” And he said, “What bead?”

As Doris Day sang, a guy is a guy.

Three years after that, a middle-school Sunday school teacher decried the magazine’s use of a photo of a millennia-old figurine of the Canaanite goddess Asherah with her hands cupped beneath her breasts. “How can one teach young boys that purchasing pornographic books is wrong?”

Proof of Louis C.K.’s assertion? Maybe. But the person who wrote that last letter’s name was Barbara.

So maybe thinking about women is problematic for everyone. But what we’re talking about here, scholars say, is “a characteristic expression of Judahite piety.”

And, really, the only thought anyone should have when looking at this picture is how amazing it is that someone could turn nothing but a bunch of mud into a thing of beauty.

A character comes alive

2011-08-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

The other day I was in a restaurant in Chicago, a hundred miles from home, when in walked someone I know: Sushma Vishnuveda. She was half a continent—and a whole world—from home.

Sushma, you see, is a character in Fast Lane.

So now you’re going, “What the—?”

It’s not new for me, this experience of having a character skip dimensions. The first time was when an MRI machine gave me visions of Dani Stahl, the lead character in my screenplay Terminal Sex. Unfortunately, they weren’t happy visions.

I saw Dani in my office, the very place where I created her, but she was lost. I felt like I was responsible for her sadness. And then someone reminded me that Dani was a reflection of myself.

Why was Dani sad? She'd had her day in the sun. Two days, in fact. The first was when she snagged me representation from a player agency in Hollywood that sent Terminal Sex to about two dozen producers. The result was lots of compliments, but no sale.

Dani’s second shot at fame came when a writing team that had penned a highly successful movie-of-the-week took Terminal Sex to one of the Big Three TV networks. Everyone there loved it. Except the president of the network’s movie division.

The next time a character of mine became real was when I discovered a garage band called The Mydols. These working-class moms from Detroit embodied Anna Petrovic, the housewife who joins a hard-rock band otherwise composed of scraggly teens in my screenplay Metal Mom. Anna, too, had a couple shots at the big time. She even had Michelle Phillips signed up to play her.

Michelle Phillips! I hadn’t conceived of Anna as a babe, but moms can be pretty sexy.

Fast-forward to Monday, when Sushma walked in.

She was actually a young woman I’d only previously seen in this excerpt in Chapter Four of Fast Lane:

Sushma wasn’t what you’d call an imposing woman. She stood barely five feet tall, but with her fully fleshed-out curves, there was a whole lot of sexy packed onto her frame. She had dark olive skin and a heart-shaped face dominated by round eyes with long lashes that made her look like Bambi when she blinked.

I’m such a doofus. If I had had one of my official Fast Lane book marks with me, I could have given it to her and hoped she would become a ManWARrior and a reader. Who knows? Maybe she still will.

Anyway, seeing her made my day. Well, the Paul McCartney concert at Wrigley Field that started an hour later was pretty good, too.

But I didn’t make up Paul McCartney.

What was I thinking? And why?

2011-07-31T16:51:00.000-07:00

Random thoughts on a hot summer day. (Seriously—I thought all this stuff in just one day.)

• Why is it okay to wear a bikini to the beach, but wearing a bra and skimpy underwear could get you arrested? What’s a bikini but a bra and skimpy underwear?

• A weed whacker becomes a weapon of mass destruction when you’re trying to trim grass without ripping the blooms off of moss roses.

• Moss roses?

• The fully dressed women on AccuWeather.com are way hotter than the naked ones in Cinemax soft porn movies.

• Kate Middleton made Ask Men.com’s list of “women adult men are most sick of hearing about.” I’m like, “Kate Middleton…Kate Middleton.” So I Googled her and, oh, yeah. I’m not sick of hearing about Kate Middleton because I never paid any attention in the first place. In fact, I’m in favor of more Kate Middleton in the media because, frankly, that’s one less thing to think about.

• Who made it an Immutable Law of the Universe that the first chapter always needs the most revision and is the most difficult to revise? And why would I rather spend a whole afternoon trimming the damned crabapple trees instead of revising the opening to Fast Lane?

• One more thing about Ask Men’s list: Wouldn’t a man who wasn’t an adult be a boy?

• In Fast Lane, Lara says, “Mmmmm.” I couldn’t adequately vocalize that to my writing group, but every woman said it perfectly. Hmmmm.

• Sophia Vergara.

• When someone wants to sell magazines to men, they put a hot woman on the cover. So why is it that when someone wants to sell magazines to women, they also put a hot woman on the cover?

• What are the job qualifications for the guy who spots women in the stands for close-ups during baseball game broadcasts?

• If evolution works the way I think it does, and if for the past three million years men have been obsessed with big boobs, why are there still small-breasted women? If women are so enthralled with six-pack abs, why do so few men have them?

Okay. The trees are trimmed—and so is the sidewalk, the hedge and the forsythia. Time to stop thinkin’ and start rewritin’.

If he seems too good to be true…

2011-07-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

A Marie Clairen blog post pretty much concludes that nice guys should finish last. Deserve to, even.

Why?

Well, take this guy named Dave who’s mentioned in the post. He had the audacity to go to a New York subway station to pick up a woman on their first date.

“We were none too pleased with this,” says writer Rich Santos, a guy whose name suggests he’s a saint but whose use of the royal case reveals higher aspirations. “Maybe we are not old-fashioned enough, but we figured if a girl makes it out of the New York subway, she should easily be capable (and independent) enough to walk five blocks to a bar.”

Other problems?

A nice guy might be ruining his chances by being “too easy.” By seeming too much like “a friend.” By creating an impression he’s a "closet psycho."

Think my paraphrase of that last one is over the top? Here’s the full quote:

“Sometimes people are so nice that it seems like they might have sinister overtones. I always see it on Lifetime movies: the guy comes into the woman's life and he is just perfect. Then he slowly disintegrates into a psycho freak. Perhaps a guy can come off as so nice in the beginning that he appears to be covering up for something bad.”

So…being openly bad is a good thing? Any kind of bad? Or just a kind a specific woman likes?

I’ve known guys who were “too nice.” One even thought he would look more sophisticated and sensitive by moving certain records to the front of his collection when he thought a woman might see them.

Talk about psycho.

Here’s what I say. If I brought a girl back to my place who thought I was a cretin because I liked the Sex Pistols and The Who, well, then…goodbye.

Marie Claire Dave's fault isn’t that he's too nice. It’s that he’s being the wrong kind of nice to a woman who wants something else. That doesn’t make her a bad person. But I don’t think it makes him one, either.

The post appeared a couple of years ago. I hope Dave, like my buddy who put his Supertramp and Steely Dan records up front to impress women, has found a girl who appreciates him for who he is.

On the other hand, a guy who came on like a psycho and slowly disintegrated into a decent person? Now that would be a movie I’d watch on Lifetime.

She's got legs. But does she know how to use them?

2011-07-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Quick! Somebody don't tell Nicki Minaj this isn't done any more!

I have been informed of many things while writing this blog and Fast Lane. Crazy things. Things my man-brain could never have conceived of. But now I have been informed of what may be the craziest thing, which is—and I quote:

“No one wears stockings with heels any more.”

Which raises the question, “If not with heels, then with what would one wear stockings?”

Apparently nothing, if possible. I was also informed that men like seeing women wearing stockings more than women like wearing them.

This was just one revelation imparted to me at my Tuesday writing group. The other is that no woman would have problems running in three-inch heels. A shocker, for sure, since I can barely run if I’m wearing the wrong kind of sneakers.

The demise of stockings, I was told, has come about due to the rise of waxing and something called “spray tanning.” Now, I got nuttin’ against bare legs. But legs with stockings on them? That’s what heaven looks like.

The conversation about stockings and heels quickly morphed into a jeremiad for today’s young women.

“I’d hate to be twenty-five,” ManWARrior and information source supreme Judy said. “Young women have to do so much these days. Nails. Hair. Tanning. Waxing almost their entire bodies.”

I can clearly remember being twenty-five and not being all that concerned about whether a woman did any of this stuff (though legs and armpits that had regular encounters with razors were always appreciated).

With apologies to Cameron Crowe, “You had me at female.”

Upon further research, I’m pleased to find that stockings have not disappeared entirely from the fashion landscape; in some circles they’re considered the perfect accessory for Army boots. Fine. I can imagine that. Already have. A character in Fast Lane does exactly that. I thought I was making up something quirky and clever, but I guess it’s another case of fact preceding fiction.

I will, though, have to go back into the manuscript to expunge the errant reference to stockings in one scene and add this spray tanning thing to another.

The writing group ended with a woman reading a comical lament about how she's getting laid (her words, not mine) with diminishing frequency as her age advances. She posits reasons for this, but I could see the true root of her problem.

“Have you tried,” I suggested in the most helpful, friendly tone I could muster, “parading around the house in stockings?”

Another post about hare

2011-07-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

We have bunnies. Not pets in a cage. Wild beasts that prowl our backyard and chow down on the creeping Charlie I’ve worked so hard to cultivate in place of grass over the past decade.

Usually these monsters hot rod into the bushes as soon as we step out the back door, but a couple mornings ago, two of them were too preoccupied with doin’ what comes natchurly to succumb to the flight imperative.

Just watching that courting ritual wore me out. Think of playing one-on-one Kill the Guy With the Ball, only there’s no ball.

But then I got to thinking. What would a bunny romance novel read like? I’m guessing no one’s ever written one. So I did. I call it Love in the Grass.

Jacqui Rabbitson emerged from the garden and drank in the warmth of the day. It had been a long time since she produced that litter with that no-good Bud Bunnye. She hadn’t seen him in months. Probably flew off with some bird, she thought. All males are no good, anyway. Who needs ’em?

And then she saw Lago Morpha sunning himself. What a conceited jerk. Thinks he’s so hot, with that mottled fur, Latin name and, ooh, hairy chest. And such tall ears. She sighed. A buck like him would never see anything in a doe like her. There had been a time when she was considered quite a fluffy piece of cottontail. What giving birth twenty-six times over twelve weeks will do to one’s figure.

But, wait. Was...was Lago looking her way? He approached her, cocky and sly. He was the epitome of sylvagus floridanus hunkitude Quiet…and lean. He sniffed her rear. Jacqui had longed for a male to do that ever since the runt of the last litter finally weaned and made its way into the next yard. That was thirty-six long, lonesome hours ago.

Jacqui dashed two feet to the left. Lago chased her down. Jacqui ducked right. Lago was upon her instantly. Ah, this one means business. Jacqui leapt a full eighteen inches straight up. She couldn’t help herself. Lago was bunny enough for two hutches.

Lago made Jacqui a part of his territory by rubbing the secretions from the scent glands in his chin all over her face. She reveled in the bedeviling heat of his pheromones. Also a delectably sweet hint of partially rotted crabapple. He mounted her, and when his bunnihood entered her, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and hear carrots crunching in his teeth.

Their bodies became as one. Jacqui’s mind raced back—back forty seconds to when she did not know Lago—and felt as though she had known him forever. Or at least for the entire ten months of her life.

Two hours later, Jacqui lay atop the very fur she had ripped from her own body to line the nest where she would raise her next litter of kittens (or whatever the hell baby rabbits are called). She knew she would never see hide nor hare of Lago again, that she would have to be content with glimpses of his speckled visage in the faces of the four to twelve little darlings that would arrive in about twenty-nine days.

That was more than enough for Jacqui, though. She smiled. Lago’s pungent scent still clung to her fur, but even when it was gone, no one could take away the one-hundred-and-seven seconds they’d shared in the grass that glorious summer day.

* I really do not think our bunnies are monsters. It was just funnier to say that.

Something new every day (Breasts! Sex! Panties!)

2011-07-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

One of these is a sheath and one is a shift. Which is which I have no idea.

It’s the first anniversary of ManWAR, and so a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned. I mean, since that’s the whole focus of the blog, and all.

Stuff I learned

• Women will go to the mall specifically to buy panties, but won’t call them panties once they’re wearing them.
• People from all over the world will read your blog if you put words like sex, breasts and panties in the headline. Especially panties.
• Men think about sex every seven seconds.
• Any scene can be improved by simply describing what everyone’s wearing.
• There is nothing subtle about the difference between a full Brazilian and an American wax.
• Never say a woman likes what she sees in the mirror.
• Men think about sex every seven seconds. Wait—oops.
• Women love their sex scenes.
• Writer’s conference attendees will be tickled to receive a bookmark that touts a blog that chronicles the development of an e-book that isn’t finished yet. Of course, writer’s conference attendees are tickled to receive anything that’s free.

Stuff I already knew but had to be told nonetheless

• Women don’t like the feel of unshaven cheeks scraping their thighs.
• Women’s clothing sizes ascend in increments of two, which means you look like an idiot if you say one negligee is twelve sizes larger than another.
• More women will read a blog post illustrated with a topless picture of David Beckham than one graced with a nearly topless shot of Anna Semenovich.

Stuff I’ll always have to look up

• The difference between a sheath and a shift. (And even then I can’t tell. How does anyone?)

Most of all, though, I found out that writing a romance novel is a blast. I’ve also made new friends along the way, and that’s made the experience even more worthwhile.

Fast Lane, an idea conceived twenty-four years ago, is finally a 283-page novel. It’s not the novel I thought it would be back then—and that’s a good thing. Especially since I was originally writing it as a screenplay.

My editor and some other beta readers have it now, which means I’ll have more work to do later. But that’s okay. It’s not really work if it’s fun.

And that’s something I already knew but did not have to be told.

New breasts? New mouth? Noooo way!

2011-07-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

Someone thinks Cameron Diaz needs breast implants. That someone is Elizabeth Halsey, the character Diaz plays in Bad Teacher.

To which I say, “Nooooooo- ooooooooo!”

What’s sad is that there are, no doubt, real women who look like Diaz and have similar thoughts about themselves. Sadder still is the notion that Elizabeth thinks implants will help her score the affections of a very rich, very handsome man.

That’s kind of like saying the Mona Lisa would get more attention if someone painted over it to show some tooth.

News flash: Some guys do, in fact, like big ones. But, believe it or not, some guys don’t. And some guys don’t really care, because they’re less interested in the rack than they are in the woman who comes with it.

Spoiler alert for anyone who’s watched only two movies and thinks Bad Teacher should be No. 3: Cameron—Elizabeth—never gets the breast enlargement because she realizes she looks good the way she is.

Apparently, real-life actress Eva Mendes had a similar epiphany about another body part without going through the drama of the three-act structure. She recently told Access Hollywood: “I used to hate my mouth. My teeth were just big and my mouth was big and when I’d laugh I’d go like this,” she said, covering her face with her hand. “About 15 years ago I started accepting things I disliked about myself growing up.”

So what does any of this have to do with Fast Lane?

I’ve already discussed Lara’s insecurities in Whatchoo lookin' at, beach? and Define dowdy. She thinks of herself as being nothing special, but when she’s vying with some of the most beautiful women in the world for the affections of a very rich, very powerful, very handsome man, she confronts issues similar to those addressed by the fictional Elizabeth and real-life Eva.

What are Lara’s solutions? Well, they’re in the book. But I think when you get to the last page, you’re going to say, “Yesssssssssssssss.”

We were talking about…

2011-06-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

Romance author and ManWARrior Donna McDonald says she works hard to get the male point of view right in her novels. I think she nailed it with this comment in Dating Dr. Notorious:

Regina hadn’t said Alexa was engaged, but then Ben hadn’t shown an interest in the details of her friend’s life.

Ah, yes. This brings to mind a discussion I once had with a woman about intergender communications. She said that when a woman doesn’t understand what a man’s saying, it’s because he’s talking wrong. When he doesn’t understand her, on the other hand, it’s because he’s listening wrong.

I said it could be that men and women just communicate differently.

In Donna’s example, Regina’s reasoning might go like this: “I care about my friends as much as I care about myself, so if Ben doesn’t care about my friends, he doesn’t care about me.”

What Ben’s thinking is, “I care about you, but it’s somebody else’s job to care about what’s going on with Alexa.”

What he means is, “It’s hard enough keeping track of one woman.”

I have a buddy who calls me now and then to take 45-minute walks. When I get back home, Mary Jo asks what we talked about. The answer is “I don’t know,” not because I don’t want her to know we were talking about famous women we’d like to do, but because I really don’t remember.

On demand, at least. I invariably produce an unprompted tidbit or two at breakfast the next day.

Besides, what’s most important is that we walked and talked and hung out for a while. But he never solves any of my problems, and I doubt I ever solve any of his. And I really would not care if Mary Jo didn’t care if she heard a full account of our conversation.

For the record, the conversation usually revolves around the music we liked when we were fourteen, how the Brewers or Packers are doing, what’s up with our work or kids, and what famous women we’d like to do.

We also talk about religion and politics, but Mary Jo’s already heard—and is sick of—those rants.

One important thing I want to say about Donna’s Ben is that the next line is, “He was going to have to work on handling Regina’s revelations better.” And, believe it or not, that’s realistic. We really do think about such things.

In Fast Lane, Clay’s first Rule of the Road for his followers is, “Make her feel like she’s the center of the universe.” And really, if paying attention helps get the job done, why wouldn’t you do it?

Just like a woman…kinda

2011-06-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

My writing group doesn’t always tell me what I’m doing wrong. In fact, just the other day, Kris said, “You know more about women than I do.”

Which is quite a compliment. Kris writes about women. Oh, and she is one.

I think she was employing overstatement, but it still felt good to hear. I have been told before, though, that I write credible female characters. Why would that be?

If you believe in such things, it could be in the stars. I was born with the sun in Cancer, the most unfortunate name in the zodiac. Scorpio. Sagittarius. Virgo. Cancer. Ugh. Ophiucus is better. Even Uranus, which isn’t a sign, but was still available when the signs were getting their names.

Cancer is associated with domesticity and family. It’s also a so-called feminine sign and a water sign, which signifies being more likely to fill a vessel than to be one.

Add to the equation that my numerological “life number” is 2, a feminine digit associated with partnership. Plus, I was born in a Year of the Pig. Or, if you don’t like the connotation, Boar. Like that’s an improvement. Either way, it’s a yin, or female, sign, an “excellent year to marry and have children,” according to the Universal Psychic Guild.

No one believes me when I tell them all this. My rising sign is Aries, so people think I come on like a tough guy. Plus, Cancers have a cantankerous side. With our shells, we’re kind of like those hard candies that have gooey stuff in the center, only grumpy and brandishing pinchers.

If you don’t give such things much credence, I will say I grew up in a traditional 1960s-style family with a mom who stayed home and two sisters. Both of my grandmas lived nearby and I visited them often. Every teacher I had until middle school was a woman.

My first job after high school was as a teller at a savings and loan. I was the only male teller in the company—and maybe even in the city of 100,000 people where I lived. Believe me, the opportunity to hang around women in their early twenties every day will motivate an eighteen-year-old dude to get to work on time just as much as the $3.10-per-hour paycheck.

In college, I worked for a female yearbook editor and some of the people who had the biggest influence on my writing style when I was a journalist were women.

I also stayed home with our infant daughter for three years and have been married to the same woman for twenty-eight.

So I would hope I’d know something about women. Probably not more than Kris, but I appreciate the sentiment.

Zipless schmipless

2011-06-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

“Straddling him, Lara reached behind herself to unzip her dress and let it fall in silky folds onto his waist.”

Here you have it, for the first time ever, an actual line from Fast Lane.

That I’m going to change.

I read part of my rewrite to my writing group—again, with only women in attendance—and every one of them liked the passage overall. Laurel, though, illustrated, with gyrations that made me fear for the well-being of muscles and tendons in every part of her body, the line’s impossible physical requirements.

“First,” she said, making like she was trying to scratch an itch between her shoulder blades, “Lara would have to reach up here and move the zipper down as much as she could, which isn't very far. And then she’d have to go down around here and…”

This time she squirmed the way you might if you had ants crawling up your back, while crooking her arms in the way you fold a turkey’s wings before jamming it into a roasting pan.

Do all women’s clothes double as instruments of torture?

Anyway, here’s the thing. It wasn’t a sex scene. It was a fantasy. A man’s fantasy. Could a guy really be expected to know the rigors of shedding any article of clothing that might adorn a woman’s body? I don’t know about you, but in my fantasies, nobody’s thinking about the logistics of clothing removal. The clothes come off. Period.

But here come those turkey wings, wrenching all the fun out of Clay’s zipless fuck.

Okay, I know the term “zipless fuck” is mostly about sex without emotional involvement. But in Fear of Flying, Erica Jong does say that “when you came together, zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff.”

Sounds like fantasy to me.

Still, I’m going to change the line. Laurel even had a good suggestion on how. She put both hands to her hips and shot them up over her head. Ending with a flip of her fingers, she said, “Pffft…the dress comes off.”

Works for me. Plus, now I can use “silky folds” somewhere else in the book.

Good words from people in the know

2011-06-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

I attended the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books on Friday and got lucky.

No, not that kind of lucky.

What made me fortunate was that two sessions on romance writing did not coincide with the session on screenwriting I moderated, so I got to hear several authors say interesting—and encouraging—things, like

• “Alpha” male characters should have some “beta” characteristics to make them seem more real.
• Stories involving billionaires are popular.
• You don’t have to use terms like “sword of flesh”* or “velvety steel shaft” when writing sex scenes.

I don’t want to say too much about Clay’s beta characteristics, other than that he’s got some. Of course, he is a billionaire. And I steer clear of “sword of flesh” and “velvety steel shaft (though I might start using the latter in other situations).

The most encouraging thing I heard, though, was a round of applause when one of the panelists noted there was a man in the room who was writing a romance. Another example of how it's always better to show, not tell.

Here’s what the panelists had to say on various other topics:

Why read romance?

“I have a friend who reads a lot of romance, and you know why she says she likes them? They’re easy to read, they go fast and they make her feel good.”

—Publisher’s Weekly blogger Barbara Vey

“Pirates of the Caribbean is the number one movie, and everyone’s fine with that. Some people can read a category romance in two to three hours, so it’s a lot like going to a movie for them. What’s wrong with having a book that’s purely entertainment?”

—Author Helen Brenna

Why write romance?

“I’ve always been a very positive person. In romance, you can set your characters up in a tree and throw rocks at them, but as long as they get together in the end, everything’s OK.”

—Author Ilona Fridl

“I’ve had the satisfaction of people saying to me, ‘This isn’t as bad as I thought.’”

—Author Isabel Sharpe

What about sex?

“To me, what makes a romance sexy is sexual tension, not necessarily the sex part. In my books, sex never solves anything. It always makes things worse.”

—Brenna

“In my new book, I named a character after my hairdresser and the character is…kind of a slut. My hairdresser is a Pollyanna, and she’s dying to read the book. I think she wants to live vicariously through the character.”

—Brenna

“In my first book, the male character was based on that Stetson ad with Matthew McConaughy, the one with his shirt open to…yeah.”

—Author Stacey Joy Netzel

I get the sentiment behind that last one. I feel the same way about episodes of Entourage that feature Carla Gugino. Nonetheless, I still think of Lara as more of a Sandra Bullock type.

OK, time to get back to my rewrite while that clapping still echoes in my ears.

* I've got to mention author and editor Elizabeth Ridley contributed "sword of flesh" to the discussion. I believe she rolled her eyes as she said it.

All dressed up and going no place

2011-06-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

Yahoo News has this first-date fashion advice for men: Avoid khakis, striped shirts, white socks and anything with neutral colors.

And be yourself.

Well, the article actually says, “What you wear should speak to your individuality.”

But what if you’re a guy who wears business casual everywhere? Or who sports his local team’s colors 24/7? Or lives in skinny jeans? Or shorts and flip-flops, even when the temperature dips below zero?

My hasty and by no means exhaustive search of the Internet revealed a similar article at The Dating Pages.com. that warns women not to over- or under-dress for a first date and to avoid being too trendy. It also says to wear what’s comfortable—unless what’s comfortable is strapless or low-cut, because “guys are simple creatures and they have a difficult enough time focusing without your bare skin distracting them.”

On the other hand, leave your face relatively bare because “too much makeup scares dudes.” And, yes, the editors thought it necessary to boldface that sentence.

This all speaks to one of the great conundrums of love and romance. You have to be yourself, but you have to be open to improving yourself, too. The question is whether wearing a polo shirt, as theYahoo article suggests, instead of a pinstriped button-down makes you a better person.

When Mary Jo and I met in 1979, she was wearing a slinky purple disco dress and I a deep blue, wide-lapel velour suit with a tie impeccably knotted into a double Windsor as big as a baseball. Only one of us looked great, but apparently both of us made good first impressions. I’m guessing my John Davidson hair compensated for the suit.

Neither of us, though, was what you’d call a fashion plate. Even for 1979. Mary Jo liked wearing bib overalls. I liked wearing a ratty heather gray hooded sweatshirt under a ratty green windbreaker. She says I wore the sweatshirt and windbreaker on our first date. Neither of us remembers what she wore, but she says it wasn’t the bibs. Even so, I saw her in her full-body denims plenty of times those first few weeks.

If one thing was certain, it was that each of us was looking at the real thing. And I liked the way she looked in overalls. So much so that I got her a new pair for our first Christmas together, which her mother hated and she loved. I got her a necklace, too, but legend has it that it was the bibs that won her heart.

(Or maybe it was my ’65 Plymouth convertible. Two-tone, rust over baby blue. With at least three of the hubcaps in place most of the time. Mary Jo says she married me for my mom’s ultra-comfy 1971-model couch, now the central fixture in our living room.)

At any rate, what I have to say about Yahoo’s advice re first-date attire is, if you’re a guy and you think you’d like to spiff up your wardrobe, do it. But if you love khakis or hoodies or ratty windbreakers or untucked heavy metal T’s, wearing a polo shirt on a first date ain’t gonna fool anyone for long.

Besides, if you like untucked heavy metal T’s, do you really want to go on a second date with a woman who thinks more of you in a polo?

Whatchoo lookin’ at, beach?

2011-06-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

After I read the new, improved opening to Fast Lane, one woman in my writers group nodded and said, with a faraway look in her eyes, “Women can be so insecure about the way they look. I really get that.”

To her, showing more evidence of Lara’s insecurities was evidence that the opening to Fast Lane had, indeed, gotten better.

Not that I can't identify as well. Men have these insecurities, too. That’s why you see ads for Rogaine, Cialis and weight-loss elixirs during NFL games. Sometimes we even confront these insecurities in literature, movies and plays.

And rock ’n roll. The Rolling Stones sum it up nicely in Beast of Burden: “Am I hard enough? Am I rough enough? Am I rich enough? I’m not too blind to see.”

At no time do these insecurities raise their ugly heads with more ferocity than during the teen years. I come from a generation that was forced to take showers after gym class. The strong with the weak. The skinny with the ripped. The hairy with the baby smooth.

Thank God I’m old enough now to not give a damn. If I’m in a locker room and need a shower, I’m in the shower—I don’t care who’s hanging around. And since I work out at a college rec center, who’s hanging around is always some buff young lion. Heading for the sauna with a swimsuit on and a towel wrapped around his waist.

Then there are the old lawyers, lollygagging in all their glory for hours with towels draped over their shoulders as they try to out-Republican each other and argue about a hinder call someone made on the racquetball court three months ago. I once heard a comedian ponder this very phenomenon by asking, “Why is it that the older you are, the more naked you have to be in the locker room?”

I know why. The older you are, the less you fret over blemishes and bulges—or lack thereof.

I don’t know if it’s like that for women. But I know this: Riding my bike past a popular Lake Michigan beach the other day when the temperature was ninety-four (a coincidence, I swear), I noticed that a significant number of younger women seemed not to be pathologically concerned about how they look in two-piece swimsuits, even though their bodies did not resemble, shall we say, Angelina Jolie’s.

Which I take as a good sign.

Maybe somewhere there’s a Rubinesque twenty-two-year-old woman who’ll read Fast Lane on the beach wearing a skimpy bikini and say, with a faraway look in her eyes, “Why can women be so insecure about the way they look? I don’t get that at all.”

Define “dowdy”

2011-05-31T14:56:00.000-07:00

Look at these two photos. Is the woman in the red dress hotter than the one in the blue dress? Or is the one in the blue dress simply not hot?

Or are they the same woman?

If you said C, give yourself an A. You know a trick question when you see one.

Yahoo! Movies referred to the Jennifer Lawrence on the left as “the stunning blonde Oscar nominee…unveiling her new brunette do and posing in character as Katniss Everdene,” the starring role in the upcoming movie of The Hunger Games.

The Jennifer Lawrence on the right was billed as looking “almost dowdy—her curves covered up—in a simple blue dress and sneakers and seemingly little makeup.”

Which only proves you don’t have to be a Rhodes scholars to be a journalist these days.

I mean, really.

The first problem is the implication that if you’re a woman and you want to ugly yourself up, the first thing you need to do is hide up your gorgeous blondness with some yucky brownth.

Good luck with that one.

In a 2005 study at Florida State University, nearly half of the men who where shown pictures of women said the brown-haired ones were the hottest. With less than twenty percent of the vote, blondes didn’t even come in second—women with black hair did.

You might be tempted to pity the poor redheads, who got only seven percent of the vote.

But you’ll be dashing off to Walgreen’s in search of a box auburn dye if you believe Women’s Health magazine’s contention that redheads should “stock up on condoms” because “according to one study, they get a lot more action” than blondes or brunettes.

You know what they found at Florida State? That what men really want—when it comes to long-term relationships, at least—is a gal that looks like…themselves. And since most men have brown or black hair…

You do the math.

Anyway, the second problem with the Yahoovian logic is that a dearth of makeup and a plain blue dress are enough to make Jennifer Lawrence look “dowdy.” You know, the way wearing their hair up and putting on glasses turns supermodels into librarians.

Commenters ripped the commentary on the two Jennifers, calling it sexist and biased. But the two that get thumbs up each from me are, “Love the brunette look much better! I think it draws more attention to those beautiful eyes,” and, “The trained eye can still spot the rockin' hot bod 'neath the ‘dowdiness.’ I'd tear it up!”

Another guy, commenting another story at another website, though, got to the pith. “It’s all about variety,” he wrote. “If everyone had the same preference, we’d all be going after the same woman.”

The bottom line? Dowdy’s in the eye of the beholder. And, apparently, more than skin deep.

What was that again?

2011-05-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

Somebody asked me how the rewrite is going, and I had to say that I’m having more fun rewriting Fast Lane than anything ever.

I always start out gangbusters, going from zero to sixty in a hurry no matter what I’m working on—screenplay, novel, short story—and then grinding it out in the middle. As the end comes into view, though, I pick up speed because the characters, who were formless and void at the beginning, start telling me things I need to know.

Lots of the time, what they tell me renders stuff from that gangbusters beginning irrelevant. Not a problem, since they also tell me what is relevant.

For example, the first time around I didn’t really know what Clay and Lara were going to say to each other right after they met, so I just wrote a bunch of description. Stuff like, “they talked about this and laughed about that,” without going into detail. Without even using quote marks most of the time. That made it easy to maintain my breakneck pace for the time being.

Of course, the people in my writers group all noted in the margins that they’d like to see what the two characters were actually saying. They were right. The only problem was, I didn’t know.

Slowly, but surely, Lara and Clay’s voices rang clearer and truer as the pages passed. They matured, in a way—and so did their relationship. Eventually, they talked differently with each other than with other characters.

So now I know what they say and how they say it.

Creating Lara and Clay and all the characters Lara meets on her journey has been a blast. And during this rewrite, I’ve even gotten to make up a couple more characters. That’s one of the great things about fiction: You get to just make up people you might like to meet. Or definitely would not ever want to meet. Either way, it’s fun. And in the process, the characters you create end up feeling real to you.

And, hopefully, to your readers—which is the whole point of rewriting. The icing’s on the cake; now it’s time to swirl it into aesthetically pleasing patterns.

So, anyway, that’s how the rewrite is going. And I think it shows on the page.

Brazilian? Hollywood? Sugar? We’re talking wax, right?

2011-05-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

Reading in a writer’s group gives me an opportunity to show eight people just how ignorant I am every two weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I read my first revamping of Fast Lane’s opening and was told I needed to show more of Lara’s transformation from plain old average Lara into Leading Lady Lara.

This transformation thing is kinda tricky, since the whole book is about one woman’s transformation. But I’m talking here about an initial transformation that Lara has to go through just to get to the next level. Preparation, more or less.

In man books, the lead character preps by doing a few push-ups, running an obstacle course and picking out the right machine gun. In woman books, according to my female readers, there is the need to show far more detail. Where does the heroine shop? What kinds of dresses does she try on? How much does she spend?

And the shoes. What about the shoes?

So I added all that, and then found out that Lara couldn’t just “go to the gym.” We had to know what exercises she was doing. And toning up wasn’t enough. She’d undergo a makeover: new hairdo, manicures, pedicures, professional wax jobs on various parts of her body. But just getting the wax jobs wasn’t enough. We’d have to know which parts and what type of wax.

So I added all that, too. And, you know what? Fast Lane got better.

It was with great confidence, then, that I read the re-revised opening to see if I’d covered all the bases. Well, yeah…but not necessarily adequately. This time, I was informed that Lara absolutely could not attend a party with Beautiful People in a dress that cost—be prepared to LOL, ManWARriors—$258.

“There’s no way she would go to that party in a dress that cost less than $2,000,” said Judy, my ultimate beta reader.

I added a zero after the eight. Problem solved.

But it also illustrates just what I’m up against. Only once have I spent more than $258 on a single piece of clothing. It was the Hart Shaffner & Marx suit I bought. In 2007. Having worn it only about two dozen times, I’m pretty sure it has at least four more years left in it, too. As long a wide lapels don’t roar back into style.

Anyways, all this thinking about fashion reminded me of an actual conversation I had with my mom after I’d attended the wedding of a high-school friend.

MOM: What did the bride wear?
DAVE: A wedding dress.
MOM: Well, yes. But what color was it?
What color was it? It was a wedding dress, for crying out loud. How many colors are there?
DAVE: White.
MOM: White-white? Off-white? Ivory? Cream? Eggshell? Ecru?
Ecru? There’s no such color as ecru.
DAVE: I don’t know, Mom. It was a white dress.

And then came questions about sleeves, shoulders, skirt length and gloves.

I was twenty-one at the time, and I’d apparently made little progress since. But now I know. So thank you, ladies, for educating me. And thank you, Internet, for making it possible for me to find a $2,000 dress without actually having to drag my butt to the mall.

The lesson? Do your research. A writer’s ignorance reduces a reader’s bliss.

Not just what the doctor ordered

2011-05-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

My quest to better understand all things female has often led me down delightful paths. Just the other day I spent twenty minutes online looking for the perfect bustier, followed by another twenty minutes in pursuit of the perfect little black dress.

Both searches netted important details that made Fast Lane better. Honest.

On the other hand, I’ve been reading a little more “women’s fiction” lately, and I’m surprised at how someone getting sick—with cancer in particular—is so often an important part of the plot.

Or maybe not.

First of all, I’ve recently read were Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a stunning piece of journalism about a woman who died of cancer, and Michael Perry’s Population 485, a stunning memoir of an emergency medical technician. Not exactly “women’s fiction.”

Cancer rears its ugly head, though, in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, as well as in Karen McQuestion’s A Scattered Life. I asked McQuestion about this, and she said, “I wasn’t aware that there is an overabundance of medical stuff in women’s books—just as much as is necessary to tell compelling stories of life and loss.”

This echoes Jan O’Hara, a romance writer, former physician and author of the popular Tartitude blog, who said, “We often read fiction to see heroic people cope with challenging situations, but we also want to see average people cope with common problems in heroic ways.’

For sure, medical themes abound in stories by the women in my writer’s group. One of them, Christi Craig, who’s read her flash fiction on the radio and blogs at Writing Under Pressure, said women may be drawn to write and read about medical themes because “so many procedures include a lot of poking and probing. It's all so disconcerting, we probably want to know how we each get out alive and with our dignity.”

Now, this is something every man should be able to empathize with. I’m talking about prostate exams. Then again, no one takes prostate exams too seriously. What male comedian doesn’t have a joke that starts with a doctor slipping on a latex glove?

In her book Cupcakes, Lies and Dead Guys, Pamela DuMond injects a few laughs into the subject with hilarious depictions of mammograms and cervical exams. “Humor is a great way to see your way past all the unpleasant stuff,” she told me. “A woman might bite your arm off during a 70% off sale at Nordies over a pair of Jimmy Choos. But that same woman would share a certain camaraderie with a sister over the indignities experienced during the majority of doctor visits.”

She said he uses humor to help her make it through doctor’s visits. “A couple of years ago I broke my arm. At the doctor’s office, the tech took my blood pressure. Apparently it was high. The doctor told me I high blood pressure. I responded, yes, I know, I just broke my arm.”

Maybe the issue is that no matter how scary the modern world can be, what with terrorism, environmental devastation and the prospect of being tossed out of our homes in a double-dip recession, there is still nothing scarier than cancer. Our own bodies plotting to do us in, sometimes silently until it’s too late. Or friends and family members get it.

I understand that fear, but I didn’t learn it from a woman. I learned it from my father, for whom every twinge in a body part not used directly for playing softball is a potential carcinoma announcing its presence.

So maybe women aren’t alone when it comes to medical drama. Sure, you can cite Terms of Endearment and Love Story, but you can also cite Brian’s Song and Up in the Air.

Plus, Craig noted that “mothers can't help but sit around sharing ‘war’ stories” about being in labor.” Anyone who knows me knows I loves to tell my own war story about the death of my right anterior cruciate ligament in a basketball game.

The number of women suffering similar injuries is on the rise, so it’s possible that—if you figure in prostate exams—I have more in common with more women than I initially realized. Lesson learned.

Still, I’d rather research camisoles and cocktail dresses than cancer and cholera any day of the week.

When a sex goddess speaks, I listen

2011-05-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

If you’re looking for advice on how to succeed at something, you should make sure your source has some cred. That’s why whenever I see a promo for a late-night talk show’s tips on how to be romantic from the 23-year-old movie star of the month, I change the channel as quickly as possible.

But when Betty White comes out with a whole book on the subject, I’m all eyes. If you want to know how to work your goddamned computer, ask a child. If you want to know what makes a woman tick, ask a woman—even one who titled her book, If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t).

I am happy to report that some of what White says in a Chicago Tribune interview echoes stuff that ManWAR’s already covered, especially in the post called “List off” (March 31, 2011).

Q: Is it better to give a lady a handwritten letter, a dozen roses or jewelry?
A: Jewelry is lovely and the obvious answer. But I think a handwritten letter—a lot of guys don’t realize what that means.

She explains that her late husband, game show host Allen Ludden, gave her notes all the time during their eighteen-year marriage. “It’s those little romantic touches that tell a lady, ‘I like a lot of people, but you have a special place in my heart.’”

She also says that being polite is romantic, an idea other sources pooh-poohed. “The worrying thing,” Newlite TV.com said, “is husbands and boyfriends actually think they're being romantic when they let their partner watch their favourite soap on TV, but they're just being courteous.”

White’s take: “If you’re walking with your lady on the sidewalk, I still like to see the man walking street-side to protect the lady from traffic. I still like to see that a man opens the door. I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing. It’s just polite.”

I’m also happy to report that White, who called herself “an incurable romantic” on Larry King’s show, is as enthralled with crashing waves as I am. She lived for a while in Oak Park, Illinois, not far from where waves pound the rocky shores of Lake Michigan. Living within blocks of the same lake for most of my life has instilled in me an appreciation for the way the interaction of water and granite can, if you stand close enough, engage all five senses at once.

The most romantic place in the world to take a lady, White says, is Carmel, California—specifically for the waves. Much of Fast Lane happens in Malibu, which, to my thinking at least, is still pretty dog-gone romantic. Same ocean, just different rocks.

At any rate, I find this this all encouraging. I mean, agreeing on such matters with a luminary who brings eighty-nine years of experience to the field of being romantic surely means I must be onto something.

Experts say…

2011-04-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

It’s always a joy to discover after I’ve done something that people who know what they’re talking about say it's exactly what I should do.

And so it was with much delight that, while researching a presentation for my screenwriting group, I came upon writing guru Michael Hauge’s “Essential Elements of Romantic Comedy.”

They are:

•The heroine must be involved in some sexual or romantic pursuit, trying desperately try to win (or win back) the love of another character.

• The heroine must pursue an additional desire. Pursuing two goals adds originality and accelerates the pace, and when the desires come into opposition, the conflict increases.

• The characters never think their situation is humorous. Motivations grow out of pain and loss; humor arises from the heroine’s overreaction to her situation—including devising fantastic plots, telling enormous lies and adopting false identities.

• Romantic comedies are sexy.

• Romantic comedies have happy endings.

• Romantic comedies usually involve deception, which increases conflict and humor while forcing the heroine to confront her inner conflicts.

All of these are present in Fast Lane. (Remember, I have thumbs-up proof from actual females attesting to that bullet point about Fast Lane being sexy.)

Hauge devised his list for screenwriters, but the screenplay and novel paradigms are rapidly merging. Novelist Lani Diane Rich even teaches an online course that essentially applies screenwriting principles to novels—and uses movies as examples to augment her lessons.

I consider Hauge’s list an imprimatur for Fast Lane from an impressive source. Feels good to me…and I hope, ManWARriors, it’ll help you in your writing pursuits as well.

Spotlight on women’s lit

2011-04-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

A (female) friend of mine sent me a link to an interview at Woman’s Fiction Writers.com of a man whose upcoming book has been classified as “women’s fiction,” and I liked what he had to say.

The man is Keith Cronin, a rock drummer whose book, Me Again, is due out in September. I was pleased because, like me, he says he “consciously set out to write a book that women would want to read,” appreciates Jennifer Crusie's writing style and sense of humor, and has kind of a cynical streak.

That streak is represented by his definition of women’s fiction as “fiction that men won’t read.”

Saying he feared that definition was truer than he’d like to admit, he added that women’s fiction should involve a central character who’s “responsible for solving her own problems” and “storytelling that takes the issues women care about seriously.”

Neither of these should be controversial. I mean, are there really still people who think women—that is to say, adult female human beings—are not capable of solving their own problems? Are there still people who think “things women take seriously” are not things men also take seriously?

I suppose there are. Don’t ask me why. Listen to any contemporary or classic hard-rock radio station for one hour and tell me men don’t care about love and relationships.

Or women.

Who knows? Maybe making lots of noise with drums and guitars and looking tough makes it more acceptable in the minds of some men to reveal glimpses of their innermost feelings without running the risk of looking too sensitive. You know…like sissies.

Cronin also pointed out that the Romance Writers of America’s definition of women’s fiction refers to stories about women “on the brink of life change and personal growth” and transformation.

That’s interesting to me because it’s what screenwriting gurus drum into you. A script can be about two people falling in love or about a cop chasing a serial killer, but the main character must change, grow and transform.

I got that down while writing twenty screenplays, including seven with female protagonists. And I pride myself on never having written an important female character who was stupid or weak. Not in any screenplay, or in Fast Lane.

And if only women end up reading Fast Lane, that’s fine by me. I’m assuming my readers will be smart, whatever gender they may be

Short-shorts vs. evening gowns…sort of

2011-04-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

A little while ago the folks at TVSquad.com came up with a list of “TV’s Greatest Women,” by which they meant not real women like Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey who actually accomplished something in life, but characters.

Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show was No. 1 out of 75, which is cool, and Lucy Ricardo from I Love Lucy was No. 3, which seems a lot less cool. Elaine Benes, one of Seinfeld’s self-absorbed retinue, was No. 7, one ahead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s selfless avenger. Marge Simpson was 24th, Miss Piggy 26th.

Shirley from Lavern & Shirley was 42nd, while two the most-talked-about female TV characters of all time, Ginger Grant and Mary Ann Summers of Gilligan’s Island were…conspicuously missing.

You gotta be kidding me.

Yeah, Gilligan’s Island was stupid. But stupid in a great sort of way.

The question on everyone’s mind since 1964 has been, “Ginger or Mary Ann?” As in, which one would you rather…you know? Okay, so maybe that particular question has not been on the mind of everyone who isn’t male. But my question is, has anyone ever thought of asking females?

Not exactly the same question. More like, “Who would you rather..you know…be?”

This question never occurred to me until today, when Mary Jo said it. Marriage can be great that way: Opens the mind.

What Mary Jo actually said was, “Who wants to be Mary Ann, cooking and sewing and being nice all the time? Maybe I’d like to be Ginger. At least every now and then.”

My subsequent hasty and far-from-exhaustive search of the Internet found a gajillion sites devoted to asking men whom they’d prefer as a sex partner—as though, one time, the answer would come up Ginger.

No, really—Mary Ann is always the answer. Always.

I found just one place where what women thought was addressed, though rather obliquely. Here’s what women had to say on a forum at a site called City-Data.com:

When I was a little girl, I used to dress up in my mom's full length slip and high heels and pretend I was Ginger. I thought she was so pretty.

Mary Ann totally had more sex appeal.

Mary Ann.....simply put she isn't as high maintenance.

Ginger might have been the sex symbol but Mary Ann was prettier.

Mary Ann was very pretty, in a more natural way. Ginger looked more "store bought.”

BTW...why are Mary Ann and Ginger wearing pumps with their bikinis?

Good question, that last one. How many men are going to think of that? “Wait—they’re wearing shoes?”

Surprisingly, the women in this chat seem to be on board with men in general, voting 4 to 1 in favor of the farm girl from Kansas—but not necessarily because she’s “hotter.”

So, whattaya think, ManWARiors? Let me know who you’d rather be—glamorous, but high-maintenance Ginger or sexy-sweet Mary Ann. And why.

Blueprint for a romance

2011-04-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Printed out Fast Lane today, which is kind of weird because it may be the only time it ever sees paper. Love the promise of e-publishing: Printing is such a pain in the butt.

I printed the manuscript so I can read it at a writing retreat. A retreat that will, if I want it to, offer plenty of time to write in an environment unpolluted with distractions. Not such a good idea, maybe, since I thrive when the writing environment is absolutely lousy with distractions—the byproduct of having worked as a reporter in newsrooms rich in opportunities for goofing off and shooting the shit with other reporters.

Other writers, in other words. Just the kind of people who will be at the retreat.

Of course, there were always distractions as I pounded away at the first draft of Fast Lane. Not the least of which were the pop-up ads for lady's underthings that started showing up after I did my most-read ManWAR post, “No panties, my ass.” The computer is a veritable distraction machine.

At any rate, as much as I love writing on a computer instead of a typewriter—and yes, I had to clack away on dull, grainy newsprint in college—I have to say that seeing my words on paper puts everything into a whole new light. All kinds of things I needed to change jumped off the printed pages of my screenplay The Sky Below, making it that much easier to kill them all with a trusty, and very sharp, No. 2 pencil.

I’ve forwarded a PDF of Sky to someone who promised to look at it, and so now I cross my fingers on that one and turn my attention back to Fast Lane.

I already know lots of stuff I’m going to change, especially at the beginning, before the characters were wholly formed and weren’t talking to me as loudly as I need them to. Or, should I say, before I was listening to them as closely as I need me to.

I’m not ashamed to admit that over time I fell in love with my heroine, Lara Dixon. Don’t worry, that’s happened to me before. Dani Stahl. Anna Petrovic. Leti Washington-Gonsalves. Mary Jo knows about them all—and doesn’t seem to mind. Too much.

What’s weirder, though, is that I’ll probably be surprised at some of the things I wrote. I’ll no doubt wonder from time to time what the hell I was thinking. And I’ll most certainly roll my eyes when I happen upon vestiges of Fast Lane’s initial incarnation as an “erotic” book. I still may try to write one of those again some day, but for now, I’m very pleased about what my romance novel has evolved into.

And very eager to see what it will become. In whatever medium.

A whole latte love

2011-04-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

“Wine, women and song,” the saying goes. But some research suggests a guy who wants to make a woman sing should eschew the shiraz and treat her to a jigger of Joe.

“Caffeine may put females in the mood.” So begins an article on WebMD about a Southwestern University study in which females who consumed a shot of cappuccino not only got muy grande romantic, but also were “quicker than uncaffeinated females” to demand seconds.

I did say we’re talking about rats, right? That could be important.

In a study called Coffee, Tea, and Me. researchers gave female rats who were caffeine virgins a dose of jitter juice, then observed how they behaved after hooking up.

In the study, the article says, “the caffeinated females didn't just skitter around their cages aimlessly. Instead, they specifically sought a male sex partner.”

The obvious question is whether this means ground Arabica beans are the secret ingredient that makes Love Potion No. 9 work so much better than its eight forgotten predecessors.

Maybe not.

First, WebMD stays this business of “revisiting” the male is “a normal behavior for female rats.” Being hopped up apparently made the randy rodents scurry back faster and be a little more insistent about having their needs met.

Second, the study observed only rats who were tripping on the Big C for the first time, while their human counterparts are likely to have experienced daily doses in coffee, tea and soft drinks. On the other hand, if rats that regularly used caffeine behaved the same as those in the study, Guarraci said she’d be “more confident in saying that it would be something useful for women to consider."

For women to consider? There must be a reason God put a Starbucks on every corner. Asking a gal out to coffee couldn’t be cheap—but have you checked the price of pinot lately?

The flip side of romance

2011-04-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

This is gonna sound crazy, but I watched Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf the other night for the first time since high school, and I’m thinking it’s probably one of the most romantic pieces of fiction ever.

That’s right: More romantic than Romeo and Juliet. After all, the histrionic Tweenagers of Verona end up dead, so there’s not a whole lot of “happily ever after” going on there. In Virginia Woolf, this couple who love to show their love by declaring—loudly—their undying hatred for each other live to scream another day.

For anyone who’s never withstood the shrill voyeuristic torture of this movie classic, here’s a fairly biased and wise-assed summary:

Liz Taylor and Richard Burton are unable to have children, so they belittle and antagonize each other all the time just for sport. They come home tanked after a party one night, only to have George Segal and Sandy Dennis come over to participate in the sick, sad games while they all pour enough booze down their gullets to kill a couple of horses.

In the end, Dick says his and Liz's son who never existed has died, which sends Liz into paroxysms of overacting that make George say “I think I understand” about fifty-seven times.

I’m glad somebody gets it. I’m pretty sure I don’t. Even after reading it for a college German class as Ver Hat Angst vor Virginia Woolf and finding out from the Cliff’s Notes of our day, Wikipedia, that the whole shebang is supposed to a metaphorical to-do about “living in illusion.”

I always thought the movie, which was based on an immensely popular and universally acclaimed play by Edward Albee, was overheated claptrap about how a million little jabs in the boxing match of the sexes will knock a romance to its knees.

I don’t know. I don’t seem to be living that life.

Or writing that book.

One thing you gotta like about romance novels (and most romantic plays and movies) is that while there’s plenty of fun and games and sturm und drang, they ultimately do have happy endings. That added greatly to the joy of getting to the end of Fast Lane. Wow! After all that, unlike poor Romeo and Juliet, they have their whole life ahead of them—and unlike Dick and Liz, that’s a good thing.

But, hey, if two people find themselves happiest when they’re most miserable, we should be glad the central characters of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf hooked up and left the rest of us alone.

Finding your perfect match. How much more romantic can it get?

List off

2011-03-31T07:48:00.000-07:00

You know that website I previously quoted that said men can’t possibly be thinking about sex all time because they’re also thinking about sports, food and work? Well, according to other websites, when men think about those things, they’re being romantic.

The website NewsliteTV.com says a survey of 2,000 people conducted by a British e-tailer determined that “cooking a meal without being asked” and “listening about her day at work” are the top two things a fellah can do to convey his hunka hunka burnin’ love.

And a columnist for Yahoo’s Associated Content.com suggested that gals who want to show their affection would do well to spring for a couple of tickets to a sporting event.

Damn. This is easier than it seems. Until you look a little closer.

Newslite’s survey produced two lists: “Odd Things Men Think Are Romantic” and “What Women Actually Find Romantic.”

You know what’s coming: The lists don’t mesh very well.

For one thing, men think ironing, taking out the garbage, vacuuming, picking up and doing laundry are romantic. None of that, it turns out, gets women’s juices flowing. They want that hot meal.

Seriously. Cooking—and without being asked—is the only chore on the distaff list. Still, I can’t imagine a man will make his lady feel more loved by doing less work around the house.

Also, women in the survey didn’t seem too impressed by men who’ll watch chick flicks and let them control the TV remote. Ways a dude can score points, the dudettes said, included offering to watch the kids so she can shop, holding the door for her when she’s heading out to the mall and making her a mix tape during the time intervening.

Not of songs he thinks she’d like. Of her favorite songs. Bonus if the mix tape is an anniversary present.

“The worrying thing,” Newslite said, “is husbands and boyfriends actually think they're being romantic when they let their partner watch their favourite soap on TV, but they're just being courteous.”

Being courteous isn’t romantic? Isn’t holding a door for someone also being courteous? Hell, I do that for people I’ve never met and have no intention of ever being romantically involved with.

The Associated Content column has a different take on the subject, telling women what they should do if they want to send romantic signals to their men. The No. 1 tip is “leave a cute note” on his clipboard so he’ll see it at work or jammed into his wallet to find when he’s paying for his morning latte on the way.

That’s fine. But in the Newslite survey, “leave a cute note” is something “Women Actually Find Romantic.” It didn’t make the men’s list.

It almost seems as if these two sources are suggesting that if women want to do things that men find romantic, they should be cooking, vacuuming and do the laundry.

Man, I do not want to go there. Why don’t we just say it’s nice when people do nice things for each other and leave it at that?

And when people do nice things for people they love, maybe that’s what romantic is all about.

(P.S. Mary Jo—please leave a comment telling all these wonderful ManWARriors that I cook, vacuum and do the laundry—and am willing to watch a home decorating show now and then, as long as I get to keep the remote.)

Thinking about sex...as usual

2011-03-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Everyone’s heard the Alfred Lord Tennyson quote, “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

My question is: Really? Just in spring? After all, everyone also knows that men think about sex constantly. Or, at least, nine times a minute, which is pretty danged close to constantly.

Could be I’m confusing sex and love here. Or maybe men think about sex all the time, but love only muscles its way into the mix from April through June.

Or maybe there’s something else going on.

“The idea that men think about sex every seven seconds, like the claim that we only use ten percent of our brains,” Psychology Today says, “is often repeated but rarely sourced.” The magazine notes that, according to the Kinsey Report, fifty-four percent of men think about sex every day or several times a day, forty-three percent a few times a week or month, and four percent less than once a month.

The website What Do Men Really Think.com says men can’t possibly be thinking about sex all time, what with sports, food, bills and work keeping brain cells occupied.

“Having constant thoughts of sex has nothing to do with a lack of character or maturity,” the site says. “In men, ‘thinking’ about sex happens almost unconsciously. Sometimes they look at a curvy girl and have thoughts like ‘wow she’s hot’…without even realizing that this reaction happened. Men undress women in their mind almost unconsciously, too, without any real intention. It just happens.”

Hmmm. What study determined all that?

WebMD , no doubt a more credible source, says a Florida State University survey of studies showed most men under sixty think about sex at least once a day. The survey also said women typically fantasize about sex about half as often as men. Which means that if men think about sex every seven seconds…well, you do the math.

Anyway, what got me thinking about all this thinking wasn’t so much Tennyson as Borgman. As in Jim Borgman, author of the comic strip Zits. A few weeks ago Jeremy, the sixteen-year-old star, stared blankly into space while three bikini-clad babes used his cranial cavity as a hot tub. Jeremy’s mom said, “I can’t image what’s on his mind.” Jeremy’s dad answered, “Seriously?”

Oddly, hot tubs play a prominent role in Fast Lane. I just read a key tub scene in my writers group and got thumbs up all around.

Yeah, I’ve had my share of Jacuzzi daydreams. And not just at this time of the year.

But, honestly…every seven seconds? What with sports and food and all, who has the time?

Are you…talkin’ to me?

2011-03-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

A wise person I know hates when the conflict in a book she’s reading could easily be resolved if the two dingbats who are at odds would simply talk about their problems. I get what she’s saying. But then, doesn’t lack of communication cause all kinds of problems in real life?

Talking it out. A thing that, ironically, is easier said than done.

Along comes a book called 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage From Good to Great, in which University of Michigan research scientist Terri Orbuch tells us talking more will improve your romantic life.

And by talking more, she means ten minutes a day. Not ten more minutes. Ten minutes total.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. You can’t just drag out a discussion about who’s going to pick up the kids and who’s going to pay the bills until you’ve met the requirement. You have to, for instance, ask something like, “If you could pick up the kids in any vehicle from all of history, what would it be and why?” Or say, “The Highlights subscription is up again, and even though one of our kids is in college and the other graduated from college two years ago, I’d like to continue because Goofus and Gallant and The Timbertoes are my favorite cartoons of all time, and here’s why…”

Orbuch calls that “self-disclosure,” a.k.a. “sharing your private feelings, fears, doubts and perceptions with your partner.” And if you’re fifty and telling someone you love you can’t live without your monthly dose of Goofus and Gallant, you’re really laying it out there.

Expressions of love and support are good, too, as are actions or words “that make your partner feel loved, cared for or special.” These can include a random hug, saying thank your or buying your partner’s favorite food, even if the favorite food is green beans.

Or maybe, especially if the favorite food is green beans.

At any rate, doesn’t this all seem to come from a dusty file in the back of the cabinet labeled “Duh”? And yet, here’s a $26 book that gets all five-star reviews on Amazon from people who can’t say enough about what great advice that ten-minute rule is.

I don’t blame the author. It just amazes me that people need a book to tell them they have to communicate with someone if they want the relationship to keep going. For God’s sake, the word simple is right there in the title!

Except maybe this only helps prove that talking ain’t all that simple.

In real life, at least. Maybe our expectations are a little different in fiction. It’s probably not a good sign when you find yourself screaming, “Just freakin’ say it already!” to a ream of paper in your lap.

The way I address that in Fast Lane is by making it impossible at first for Lara to share certain secrets with Clay without blowing her cover. And later, when it seems like blowing her cover might not be such a bad idea, those same secrets look even more sinister.

Fun times. And pass me the green beans.

Guru hoodoo

2011-03-20T18:30:00.000-07:00

Good gurus provide sound advice and insights into how to live well. Bad gurus, not so much.

But even good advice from a good guru can be problematic if it’s misunderstood.

Take this example from the files of sex advice columnist Dan Savage. A reader recently complained that her boyfriend nodded in agreement during therapy sessions they attended to get over an affair she had, but did a 180 later because of something he heard in a Dan Savage podcast. She signed her letter as "Your No-Good Counsel."

Could this be any more complicated? They’re not married. She cheated. He’s a flip-flopper. And it’s all an advice columnist’s fault.

Savage said it sounded like the boyfriend was still angry, which was understandable, but also jerking her around because he can’t forgive her, which was unjustifiable.

Sounds to me as though what’s going on is a romance novel being playing out in the flesh. Of course, while we all know a romance novel with these elements would have a happy ending, there’s no telling where things will lead in the real world.

Which may be one reason romance novels are so popular.

At any rate, I’m glad I caught this installment of “Savage Love,” not because I like reading about other people’s sadness, but because the reason behind this couple’s sadness is very much like the reason Fast Lane’s hero and heroine get together in the first place.

Lara is convinced her marriage broke down not because her ex is a jerk, but because he was influenced by this jerk Clay Creighton, whose advice seems to give men the right to treat women like objects. That makes Lara so angry she burns with the desire for revenge.

Which, to me, sounds a lot like what’s going on in Your No-Good Counsel’s mind.

Good advice misunderstood can be a problem. But good advice intentionally taken out of context and twisted around to justify bad behavior is a lot worse.

Of course, “worse” is a good thing when it comes to creating dramatic tension in fiction. You just have to wish it didn’t happen so often in real life.

Of minds and men

2011-03-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

Just finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and I wholeheartedly recommend it even though it is 440 pages long. It’s about two black maids in Mississippi in 1963 and a white woman who creates a stir writing about the life of black maids in Mississippi in 1963.

It's not a particularly romantic book. It does, however, have a passage that is fixed in my memory forever.

One character, Celia Foote, is a rube—“white trash” is how someone in the book describes her—and doesn’t know the “proper” way to dress for the formal holiday benefit dance. The other ladies are demure in “swaths of material that hide their bodies” and “ruffles that clutch at their throats,” but Celia…well, this is what her maid, Minny, has to say:

“Oh, my Lord. I might as well be Little Stevie Wonder I am so blinded by that dress. Hot pink and silver sequins glitter from her extra-large boobies all the way down to her hot pink toes…She is rouged, painted (and) one leg peeks out in a high, thigh-baring slit.”

Now, her husband comes from the side of tracks opposite Celia’s, so he knows this is non-conforming attire. “Celia,” he says, “you think that dress might be a little too…um…open at the top?”

“Oh, Johnny,” she responds, “you men don’t know the first thing about fashion.”

And then they arrive at the cotillion.

Husbands drinking their whiskeys stop in mid-sip, spotting this pink thing at the door. It takes a second for the image to register. They stare, but don’t see, not yet. But as it turns real—real skin, real cleavage—their faces slowly light up. They all seem to be thinking the same thing—Finally…But then, feeling the fingernails of their wives, also staring, digging into their arms, their foreheads wrinkle. Their eyes hint remorse as marriages are scorned (she never lets me do anything fun), youth is remembered (why didn’t I go to California that summer?), first loves are recalled (Roxanne…). All of this happens in a span of about five seconds.

But wait—it gets better!

“Look at the chest on that one,” an old geezer says. “Feel like I’m not a year over seventy-five looking at that those things.”

The geezer’s wife lets him feel the brunt of her displeasure, and he says, “Well, what do you want her to do, Eleanor, leave them at home?”

Man, oh man. I cannot read this passage enough times.

Throughout the entire book I had no trouble believing that what Stockett’s black characters were thinking was dead-on. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I trusted her all the way.

But so accurately does she portray what would be happening in the mind of every heterosexual male in a situation like this that I have to wonder if she...had some help.

Yay for me

2011-03-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

Fast Lane is now 57,123 words long. More significant, the last two are “the” and “end.”

It feels great to make it all the way through but, of course, I’m not really done. I have a pretty good blueprint and comments from the wonderful members of my writers group, so I’m as excited about moving into phase two as I am about finishing phase one.

Sometimes it seems I’ve been writing Fast Lane forever. By the time I started this blog last July, I’d already been pounding away at it for several months.

And thinking about it for several years. Twenty-four, to be exact.

The first time I started writing Fast Lane was for a night course in screenwriting at Marquette University. I never finished—and I’m glad I didn’t.

While some elements survived the decades, the plot I had in mind back then now feels convoluted and pretentious. What I have now is delightfully unpredictable and refuses to take itself too seriously.

Still, I love how certain themes seemed to develop by themselves as I proceeded through the first draft. I’m not going to name those themes, because there’s a good chance anyone else who reads Fast Lane will likely find different ones. Suffice it to say that the experience so far has been highly satisfying.

For the next month or so, I'll be focusing on making some suggested changes to a futuristic sci-fi/action screenplay called The Sky Below. But I'll still be a Man Writing a Romance. Fast Lane slow-cooked in my subconscious, working out plot points and character arcs, for more than twenty years. Twenty more days in the crock pot of my mind will no doubt help bring all the flavors together even more.

In the meantime, thank you for reading ManWAR What with topics just throwing themselves at me almost every minute of every day, I will continue to post here—and you’ll be the first to know when I again click on the file marked Fast Lane.doc.

(BTW: If anyone you know in Hollywood is looking for a futuristic sci-fi/action screenplay that was a Slamdance semifinalist and a Los Angeles Film Festival Honorable Mention winner, tell them to contact me at rowrite@gmail.com.)

Stormy whether

2011-03-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

The headline read: “Center of NU sex storm.”

Attention-getting, for sure, though a verb would have been nice.

NU, in this case, is Northwestern University, a Big Ten school on the shores of Lake Michigan a little north of Chicago. “Sex” and “university” appearing in the same sentence…when has that ever happened before?

Well, context matters, and the referred-to storm comes, as it were, after two human sexuality class guest speakers wanted to demonstrate to dozens of students the workings of a...what? “Bedroom accessory?” “Personal massager?” How many euphemisms are there for “dildo attached to a reciprocating saw”?

At any rate, the professor initially considered putting the ixnay on these ijinkshay, but “just a little while earlier he’d been thinking about the knee-jerk negativity so many people have about sex, about sex research,” Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich wrote. “As a man who believes everything is worth studying, he had to wonder why he was hesitating.”

“I could not come up with a good reason,” he said afterward, “so I said OK.”

Now, as someone who’s taught college courses, I could give this guy lots of good reasons to hesitate all the way to the point of just saying no. Seriously, even though many of the young ladies in my journalism writing classes thought it was a good idea to show up looking like Barbara Hershey as Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ, I was the one who had to pass a course on sexual harassment every semester.

Still, the prof has a point. Sex is everywhere. The Internet. Movies. Magazines. Popular songs. Posters. Direct mail. TV shows. TV ads. TV magazines. TV movies. Movies on demand on TV. It’s in the malls. It lines the highways. It’s even on born-again Christian radio. Really—have you ever listened to one of those stations? Those people don’t seem to think about anything but sex—and no wonder, given how much of it there is in the Bible.

Why is sex everywhere? Because it sells, sure. But it sells because we like it. It's fascinating. It makes us feel good. No matter how much we kick and scream and protest and fight, we loves us some sex.

It’s apparently even all right in a college classroom…as long as it’s not actually happening.

Maybe that’s the problem down there in Evanston, Illinois, in the heart of “the real America.” We don’t mind sex going public, as long as it’s confined to pixels and paper. But start baring actual skin, and you’ve got a problem.

And maybe that’s not a bad thing. What would we fantasize about if there were no taboos?

I don’t remember where I heard it, but I nonetheless remember hearing this tidbit o’ wisdom: “No one should object to your sexual fantasies; your sexual fantasies are where you can do things you wouldn’t do for real.”

Think about it: In that class there was, Schmich wrote, “A man. A woman. A dildo on the base of a power saw." Was it really necessary to turn the thing on?

The ageless quality of teenagers

2011-02-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

One thing I’ve learned as a man trying to write in a genre that is mostly of the women, by the women and for the women is that I have plenty to learn. Something that happened during my writers’ group meeting last week suggested maybe we all do.

In a YA novel about a sixteen-year-old who runs away from her country home to live in the city in 1919, a woman has her heroine doing something she’s never done before: fret over her appearance.

A man in the group said he couldn’t imagine a girl reaching age sixteen without doing that. The women in the room whole-heartedly agreed.

All settled, then right? Maybe not.

My far-from-exhaustive research shows that girls today get concerned about their looks at an earlier age than their counterparts of a century ago.

A report in Women’s E-News blames teen media for doting on appearance, noting that “it wasn't always thus.”

"The body has become the central personal project of American girls,” Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, says in the article. “This priority makes girls today vastly different from their Victorian counterparts. Although girls in the past and present display many common developmental characteristics—such as self-consciousness, sensitivity to peers and an interest in establishing an independent identity—before the 20th century, girls simply did not organize their thinking about themselves around their bodies.”

A Los Angeles Times article posted at an endocrinologist’s website says another problem is that puberty is rearing its monstrous head earlier due to environmental pollution and the overuse of hormones in food production.

Decidedly unromantic either way.

When I was listening to the writers’ group discussion, my mind wandered to a more innocent time. Not the 1910s. The 1970s. And, yes, as wicked as they were, the ’70s still qualify as more innocent than now.

I can remember getting ready in my room for a Friday-night dance, putting on a Mott the Hoople record and combing and recombing my pathetically straight, limp hair until I had something resembling that cool Gary Collins look. The look lasted only until I went outside, of course, which meant that as soon as I reached the dance, I was in front of a restroom mirror along with several dudes with similarly pathetic hair trying to achieve some mythical look that would snare us the Terri Garrs and Jaclyn Smiths of our dreams.

Who, apparently, were in a bathroom just a few feet away, combing their hair to death.

And I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that something very much like this went on back in 1919.

You gotta like what you're seeing

2011-02-21T15:42:00.000-08:00

I’ve read a lot of screenplays written by people who want to break into Hollywood, and most of them are memorable in some way. The most unforgettable character description I ever read was by a guy whose name I can’t recall, but the line is as clear in my head as it was one second after I read it:

“She is extra-beautiful, due to her extra-large breasts.”

Hey…he said “breasts.” Think of all the other words he might have used instead.

I was reminded of the line on Sunday morning, when I flipped through a department store flyer and happened upon the women’s underwear page. One of the items was described as the “daisy fuentes® Extreme Lace push-up bra,” which made me wonder what the extreme part was. Push-up? Lace? Daisy Fuentes?

At any rate, the model didn’t appear all that extreme to me. Certainly the guy who wrote the line above wouldn’t cast her—or any woman built like her—to be in his movie. Which is okay by me, since I’d like an actress who looks like this model to be available to play Lara when the Fast Lane movie comes out.

That’s right—size can matter to men, too. But “size” doesn’t necessarily mean “bigger.” It’s a neutral term, and some guys appreciate the axiom “less is more.”

When I suggested this to one woman in particular, she quipped, “They say love is blind," then added, "but if it is, why do they sell lingerie?” To which I replied, “Because lust has 20/20 vision.”

If not X-ray vision.

Either way, with apologies to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, I may not always be able to describe hot, but I know it when I see it.

Same goes for the guy who wrote the "extra-beautiful" line. And for Dr. Love, himself, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, who told the Discovery Channel show Biography that women should stop worrying about their thighs and their breasts and their hair.

“What we want is what you have,” he said, looking directly into the camera. “All we ask is that you give us some of it every once in a while.”

Here’s another axiom: Extra-beautiful’s in the eye of the beholder. And, believe me, there’s always somebody looking.

Guys as dolls

2011-02-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

Ken turns fifty this month, which means it’s time to wax philosophic about the sexless beau of the iconic plastic woman whose measurements no quantity of silicone could ever replicate.

Over the years Barbie and Ken have been A-list celebrities with unsurpassed staying power, even though the former has been vilified as the reason behind every twinge of inadequacy felt by any flesh-and-blood American female, while the latter has been, largely, a joke due to a certain inadequacy of his own.

All that seems to be forgotten now, though. A recent Chicago Tribune article hails Barbie as “the alpha female” in a category of toys known as “fashion dolls.”

No matter how anti-feminist her physique, she’s certainly always been the alpha in her association with Ken. Always the breadwinner—accounting for 90% of their combined income—she was decidedly equipped to kick Ken’s butt if he ever hit on those Bratz Girlz hottiez, Phoebe and Roxxi.

As if the slutty twinz ever presented a threat to Barbie. G.I Joe is clearly more their type.

Ken’s rep as a weakling, though, is getting a much-needed makeover in a direct-to-Hulu reality show that pits a passel of real-life bros against each other to win the title of Genuine Ken. The winner will be whoever kicks hiney in events like “cooking” and “decorating an apartment on a budget.”

On a budget? For crying out loud, Barbie has a dream house.

I further wonder if there’ll be anything new about the so-called “Great American Boyfriend” who emerges from this show. In 1965, when Barbie and Ken were mere youngsters, “Mystery Date” debuted. Girls exchanged playing cards to assemble an outfit appropriate for a date with a fellah who was waiting behind the door. The fellah would be dressed for a day at the beach or a night at the ball. If the bowling date fellah showed up but you were dressed for skiing, you lost—though I’m not clear on why anyone thought spending time with beer-swilling keglers in a smoke-filled alley was anyone’s dream.

You lost big-time, though, if the door opened to reveal the Dud, a dude who had the audacity to show up in blue jeans, boots and a Henley shirt, with his hair all awry. In other words, a true catch for an Aquarian Age chick just two years hence.

I guess the new Ken is supposed to have more substance than his predecessors and his Mystery Date buds—if by “substance” you mean “does things that stereotypical males don’t do.” One of the unlucky losers, though, who talks about “expecting excellence” of himself and the importance of being patient, supportive and a good listener, got his butt booted because the toes of his shoes pointed up a little too much.

So much for depth.

We all know what it really would take to make Ken a man. Something to fill the space between his legs? Nah. I’m talking about the space between his ears.

Cooking and decorating are a good start. The mystery is how, in half a century to date, did he manage to get only this far?

Check out the original 1965 TV commercial for The Mystery Date Game.

What’s so bad about looking good?

2011-02-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

You’ve got to feel at least a little sorry for Disney’s poor, little hot girls. They always get the guy—but they always get the guff, too.

A new study at Appalachian State University determined that physical attractiveness “predicted how positively (characters) were portrayed” in animated Disney movies, and that led the Chicago Tribune to conclude that the beauty Belle is turning our kids into beasts.

In other words, because in Disney’s wonderful world hotter = gooder, Cinderella “taps that bibbidi-bobbidi magic (while) her ugly stepsisters get boo.”

I dunno. I watched Disney’s Cinderella probably three hundred times when I was staying home with my two-year-old daughter, who absolutely had to see the movie every day, and I came away with the impression that crooked intentions, not crooked teeth, lead to the stepsisters’ comeuppance.

Pop culture is lousy with characters who have pretty faces and ugly souls. How about the diabolical meteorologist played by Nicole Kidman in the movie To Die For, which is based on a Joyce Maynard novel? And the mean-girl Heathers in the movie Heathers. And, for that matter, the mean girls in Mean Girls.

The list goes on and on. It gets so long, you could argue attractive people are as likely to be unfairly characterized as evil as ugly ones are.

The punch line, though, is that while watching movies with comely good guys led adults in some studies to say they’d rather befriend attractive people, the Appalachian State study determined that six- to twelve-year-olds are less susceptible to such bias.

I’m not worried about Fast Lane. Everyone’s physically appealing—and everyone’s got good traits and bad. They, like real-life people, are conflicted. They’re sometimes motivated by self-interest, sometimes by altruism. And they can mistakenly believe they’re doing good when they’re really doing bad. I'm hoping all that makes them more appealing overall.

I’m certainly not writing Fast Lane as appropriate bedtime fare for six-year-olds, but I’m confident ’tweeners of average intelligence would have no trouble seeing what’s going on behind the pretty faces.

And, I gotta believe, adults wouldn’t, either.

Love is more than Skins deep

2011-01-31T08:49:00.000-08:00

After reading a Megan Daum column that promised I’d see what amounted to a documentary reenactment of life in Babylon, I set up my DVR to record the latest episode of the MTV series Skins.

What I saw was a ramped-up, warmed-over Degrassi, only with disappointingly cartoonish adults.

Some real-life parents are apparently up in arms about this show, calling it kiddie-porn. A scripted drama, it bills itself as being about “real American teens.” At least real American teens who suck down fistfuls of pills, fifths of vodka and one another’s naughty bits on a daily basis.

In the episode I saw, a hot lesbian named Tea whines about how all the girls she sleeps with are so uninteresting, compared to her, that she just cannot find a suitable match. That, at least, sounds real. No one cursed with that level of self-absorption should expect to find true love. And aren’t we all so cursed between the ages of twelve and twenty-one?

Anyway, Tea’s dad could be a top Mafioso, but his family disowned him when he found true love and married Tea’s Jewish mom. Being disconnected, though, doesn’t make it hard for him to round up thugs to threaten a loser who threatens Tea by calling her a dyke.

Except what Dad hears is “kike.” So he, unlike all the kids at school, remains clueless as to his daughter’s true romantic inclinations—a good thing, since he’s a hater. And, boy, is he clueless, since some of Tea’s conquests have come while he was asleep one room over. On school nights, no less!

On the other hand, all those other kids are just fine with Tea’s true sexual identity. As screwed up as they are, they apparently never got the text message about how the No. 1 way teens today insult other teens is by calling them homosexuals, only using more pejorative terminology.*

Things work out for Tea, though. Her Nana lives with them, which isn’t so great most of the time, since Nana inhabits a dream world where she holds nonstop conversations with people who aren’t there.

Nothing gets through to Nana, except Tea’s laments about the L words, by which I mean “love” and being a “lesbian.” And, guess what? Not only is Nana the latter, but she also suddenly develops the presence of mind to tell Tea about how she had found the former. Until her soul mate was forced by her family to marry a farmer in Wisconsin.

It’s presented in cheesy fashion, but I don’t doubt things like that happened sixty years ago. Hell, it happens now, with parents convinced there are TV programs like Skins trying to “convert” their kids to “the homosexual lifestyle.”

Then again, my own gramma once told me about two "spinsters" who lived down the street when she was growing up—in Wisconsin. “Everyone in the neighborhood knew what was really going on,” she said.

And then shrugged. No big deal.

True, it was a “don’t ask, don’t tell” world back then. But if people were willing to allow others to experience true love wherever they found it during the Jazz Age, why is it such a big deal for the parents of the MTV generation?

* According to the BBC, eight of the top eleven “terms of abuse” among teens are derogatory words for “homosexual,” with “gay” being far and away the most popular. OK, so they’re talking about British kids, and I can’t imagine an American kid calling someone a “batty boy” (No. 5). Still, I couldn’t find a similar list specific to the U.S., so this one will have to suffice.

Songs to put you in the mood

2011-01-27T09:21:00.000-08:00

I was wondering what the Lady GaGa song, “Bad Romance,” is about, so I Googled it. Mostly what came up were links to blogs that claim to reveal some “occult meaning.” Not much help.

The first line of actual words, “I want your ugly, I want your disease” is a bit disturbing at first hearing. My guess, though, is that it’s just some Gen Y hipster way of saying, “I want you just the way you are,” which is how Billy Joel put it in Baby Boomer terms thirty-some years ago.

Romance is as romance does, I guess. But it’s not the first pop song to try to finesse the term “warts and all.” In “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen follows his uber-romantic exhortation to “have a little faith, there’s magic in the night” with the uber-dorkorrific “you ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right—and that’s all right with me.”

Some guys just know how to relate to chicks.

Then you’ve got Marc Bolan telling his lady in T. Rex's “Bang a Gong (Get It On),” “You’re built like a car, you’ve got a hubcap diamond-star halo.” And Freddie Mercury noting that while there “ain’t no beauty queens in this locality,” “fat-bottom girls, you make the rockin’ world go ’round.”

“Plastic Fantastic Lover,” Jefferson Airplane’s ode to a TV set, compliments the object of affection with “sexy lady, chrome-colored clothes you wear ’cause you’ve got no other.” And in “Greasy Heart,” Grace Slick sings of a couple who are “made for each other, made in Japan.”

Then you have The Who going on in “Bargain” about how “I’d lose myself just to win you.” These days, we’d say that’s codependency, or something. At any rate, wouldn’t it be better to find someone who could help you find yourself?

So “Bad Romance” isn’t out of place. It’s got to be better for dancing than the go-to tune at every eighth-grade basement party I ever attended: Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them.” So what if it’s about man’s inhumanity to man—it’s slow! And, hell, how many times can you dance to the opening of “Stairway to Heaven”?

Here are some more song’s that’ll put you in a romantic state of mind:

“Magnet and Steel” by Walter Egan: Kind of a guy’s love song. “There, I told you, so that you ought to know. It’ll take some time for our feelings to show.” To the point, you know?

“Romeo’s Tune” by Steve Forbert: He asks his girl to “bring me southern kisses from your room,” but I don’t think he’s making a literal reference to cocktails made with whiskey, peach liqueur and pineapple juice. Still, I can’t think of a better song at evoking the feeling of new young love. “Meet me in the middle of night, let me hear you say everything’s all right. Let me smell the moon in your perfume.”

“Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes:” Yeah, it’s silly. Putting this one on the list even freaked out my wife—and she’s used to my eccentricities.

“I Feel Love” by Donna Summer: Play it and try feeling anything else.

“Sharing the Night Together” by Dr. Hook: Oh yeah. All right. ’Nuff said.

How ’bout it ManWARriors? What are your favorite and/or funniest examples of romantic songs?

Which way to the locker room? (part 2)

2011-01-20T11:58:00.001-08:00

Before I get into the promised discussion of Danica Patrick, here’s a photo of David Beckham because, hell, it’s only fair. This shot is from the New York Daily News slide show of the Hottest Male Athletes.

Oddly, while Bleacher Report.com had no problem finding a hundred hot female athletes for its list, the Daily News could only come up with thirty-nine males.

It’s also funny is that while all of the BR babes are wearing almost no clothes, most of the Daily News hunks are wearing sports gear. Is Tony Romo in full pads sexy?

I don't know. What I do know is that Danica Patrick looks pretty good in her racing suit (though I couldn't find any shots of her wearing just flame-retardant Nomex underwear).

No. 42 on BR’s list, Patrick has been a lightning rod for controversy. NASCAR driver Kyle Petty called her “a marketing machine,” and said that when she doesn’t do well on the track, no one can blame the car, the engine or the team.

Janet Guthrie, a prime-time driver thirty years ago, had reservations about Patrick’s move to NASCAR, and driver Juan Montoya said, “Danica, I think she's got the talent and everything but I don't think she knows what she's getting into."

BR’s take is that Patrick’s fame owes less to her success as a driver as it does to her “selling herself as a sex symbol.” Still, the website said Patrick’s critics are jealous—men because they can't make the money she pulls down, and women because “they wish they could look this good.”

Patrick talked about being a sex symbol when she appeared in Sport Illustrated’s 2009 swimsuit issue.

Of course, the magazine asked her questions it doesn’t ask all its subjects, like, “Do you think modeling is hard?” “What makes you feel sexy?” “People have said I look like…” and “If you had to play matchmaker for a day, what celebrities would you pair up?”

Do you think SI cares about what makes Michael Phelps feel sexy? Or who people think Kobe Bryant looks like? Or which celebrities Derek Jeter would match up?

For the record, Patrick’s answers were, respectively: Modeling lets her enjoy her feminine side, having her husband acknowledge how she looks in a “nice dress and a pair of sexy high heels,” and Demi Moore. She evaded the stupid matchmaker question.

She also said that happiness is love, “whether it's just having friends and family around or racing or a new car or pair of shoes or the man you're married to.”

So she’s a romantic.

BTW, she also said her choice for World's Hottest Athlete is a guy who's “pretty good-looking, confident and comfortable…not real cocky…and doesn't have to try that hard.”

I was glad to read that, because those are all qualities I’ve given my Fast Lane hero Clay.

Oh, yeah…the guy Patrick was talking about? No. 4 on the Daily News list, David Beckham.

Which way to the locker room? (Part 1)

2011-01-16T10:22:00.000-08:00

I know: More pictures of hot women. But what do you expect? I am, after all, a man writing a romance.

These, however, are not just random shots of hot women. Alison Baver(top) and Anna Semenovich are, according to Bleacher Report.com, two of the 100 Hottest Athletes of All Time.

Not the 100 Hottest Female Athletes of All Time. The 100 Hottest Athletes of All Time, period. The number of men on list is zero.

Not that I disagree.

You could, I guess, throw in photos of, I don’t know, LeBron James? David Beckham? Ochocinco? I remember once being impressed with a picture of James Lofton making a long-jump leap in his underwear. Impressed, as in, “What are the odds of me ever looking like that while making a long-jump leap in my underwear?”

Here’s how the website itself justifies its picks:

Hot athletes are fascinating. With models, their talent is looking attractive and nothing else. With hot athletes, not only are they beautiful, but they can also kick your butt in whatever sport they play. That's awesome.

Twenty years ago we didn't really have hot athletes. Attractive women didn't gravitate towards sports. Now it's hard to name a famous female athlete that's not good looking. That’s probably a sad commentary on our culture.

Why? Do scantily clad babes win roster spots while serious athletes of considerable skill but scant sex appeal sit on the sidelines? Is the U.S. Olympic softball team studded with outfielders who have big breasts instead of big swings? Has the WNBA loaded up on point guards who have sweet asses instead of sweet jump shots?

The Bleacher Report list includes surfers, synchronized swimmers, poker players—poker players!—and participants of something called MMA, which I had to look up. And learning that MMA meant "mixed martial arts” didn’t enlighten me much.

At any rate, I asked a woman what she thought. Are female athletes who become models, pinups and sex kittens liberated or exploited—or something else?

“Maybe it’s because they don't get paid as much as men for playing their sports,” my source said. “If men got paid what women got paid, maybe we’d see more men posing in their underwear on websites for women.”

Makes sense to me.

In the meantime, I did have my Fast Lane heroine Lara hit the gym before embarking on her quest to destroy Clay. If you want a mental image of her, though, I’d say she’s more Baver (No. 42 on the list) than Semenovich (No. 8).

But, hey, while the latter is a figure skater, the former made her name in speed skating. And the novel is, after all, called Fast Lane.

(In Part 2: Insights from No. 41, Danica Patrick.)

Science vs. romance: Tears

2011-01-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

You know the joke about how tears give a woman an unfair advantage in a fight? Turns out it’s no joke.

It’s evolution.

So say researchers who collected tears from women who were watching sad movies and then had men rate the sexual attractiveness of other women after sniffing the tears or vials of salt water.

The result: Being high on tears lowered men’s testosterone levels—as well as the hotness scores they dished out.

In other words, bawling and balling don’t mix.

Sadly, the researchers also concluded that “actual tears didn’t make the men empathetic.” I say “sadly” because it means that, if these people are right, the pangs of doubt and regret I felt every time I “made” a woman cry didn’t indicate I’m really an old softy at heart. Just a cold-blooded animal reacting to pheromones and eons of genetic mutation.

Bummer.

That just doesn’t seem right, though. For one thing, one researcher said he authored the study because he wondered if human tears contained pheromones similar to ones that were discovered in mouse tears. “After all,” said the Associated Press article I read, “we tend to hug a crying loved one.”

So when my mom was worried about an injury that could have cost her the use of her hands, I hugged her not because she’s my mom and I love her, but because I just couldn’t help myself? When a high school girlfriend broke down because her sister had been abused by her husband, what was going through my head was, “I don’t care, but due to reasons I'll never understand, here’s some freakin’ consolation”?

That’s not how I remember either situation.

On the other hand, the researchers also concluded this pheromone thing probably isn’t exclusive to women. That tends to confirm a point central to the movie Adam’s Rib, in which Katharine Hepburn breaks into tears to break down Spencer Tracy, then breaks down herself when Tracy turns on the waterworks.

What does this mean for Fast Lane? I’m not sure. There will be tears, but I guess it'll be up to the readers to decide if Lara’s being stereotypically manipulative and whether Clay’s reaction makes him a nice guy or a brute that’s just doing what nature compels.

On the other hand, if Clay were to do the crying, would he have the advantage? Or would that just be a big joke?

To-do list

2011-01-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, a trend I suspect will continue in 2011.

For example, I was thinking this might be a good year to stop smoking, but that’s impossible. Unless I started smoking first.

On the other hand, I could just state a few goals.

Goal #1: I will finish Fast Lane and, one way or another, foist it upon the marketplace.

Goal #2: I will rewrite my script The Sky Below, because after it made it to the semifinals of the Slamdance and Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum’s contests and won an honorable mention from the Los Angeles Film Festival, two people who work in Hollywood said they’d help get it into some player’s hands if I made a few changes.

Fortunately, they also made good suggestions as to what those changes should be.

One of my stuff-blows-up scripts, The Sky Below has some cool futuristic tech, rockin’ action scenes and a killer premise built around a dystopia two hundred years hence. The hero needs a fatal flaw, though. And the story could use—duh!—a romantic subplot.

You may think I should have seen that second one coming. Fortunately, The Sky Below already has a kick-ass female character who’s a natural love interest. And I can apply what I’ve learned from Fast Lane about what makes a smokin' romance.

Two things to do in one-one. Here I go...

Rx for hard times: Sex and a good laugh

2010-12-29T15:46:00.000-08:00

I read in the paper (yes, a newspaper made of newsprint that was dropped onto my doorstep at four a.m.) that Hollywood’s pumping out the downers in droves, and people are avoiding the box office in similar numbers.

The economy takes the blame, of course. But it’s not that people who have seen their net worth plummet can’t afford a night at the multiplex. It’s that they don’t get a lift out of seeing other people suffering even more than they are.

“There’s a lot of strife in the world, and maybe people don’t want strife in the cinema right now,” Mark Romanek, who directed Never Let Me Go, told the L.A. Times.

On the other hand, you apparently have to be careful not to let your characters be too happy when spending their money. Rotten Tomatoes quotes one reviewer of Sex and the City 2 as saying, “It’s a fairy-tale about fashion, jewelry, gowns, Maybach automobiles, private jets, Rolex watches, style, sophistication, and glamour, and I couldn’t wait for it to end.”

The economy is bad news. But I see these two comments as good news for Fast Lane.

First, it’s no downer. It’s a romantic comedy. Love and funny are in vogue no matter what the economy’s up to.

Second, while one of the main characters--Clay--is rich, the other—Lara—is not. And infiltrating Clay’s world is, for Lara, a path to a big payday that promises to make all her financial hurt go away.

But because of that romantic part of the equation, I don’t think I’m giving up any spoilers here to say that in the end, it may not be all about the benjamins.

Sure, mentions are made of Egyptian cotton shirts, the Lexus LFA supercar, Cynar liqueur and pricey designer swimsuits, but it’s pretty clear that something’s missing from Clay’s life in spite of all the coin at his command.

As for Lara…not being rich is pretty much where most of us stand most of the time. But, of course, most of us also know there’s a line we won’t cross even though doing so promises to significantly beef up our bank accounts.

Lara finds herself standing toes-to-the-line and asking, “What do I do now?”

That’s where fantasy plows into reality, where romance runs up against reason and, I hope, where readers will find their reward

Read this, Olivia Munn

2010-12-22T19:08:00.000-08:00

Insight can come from unexpected places. For example, I just finished reading Olivia Munn’s book, Suck It, Wonder Woman, and now I know more of what I need to know to write Fast Lane.

In Chapter 31, “How to Make Love Like a Zombie,” the model, G4 network TV show hostess and sometime Daily Show correspondent recommends guys be good listeners, go slow and fondle women’s brains.

You read that last one right. Phone sex, she says, is one good way to stimulate a “brain erection—or ‘brection.’” Baking your significant other a pie works, too: “I think you will be pleased by the effects of the wafting aroma of apples baking. This will tease the brain that’s connected to the body whose bones you wish to jump.”

On the other hand, she says in Chapter 17, “Dating Tips to Totally Help You Score,” that “girls know if they like a guy pretty much from the first moment they see him. No pickup line will work. Even if you come up with the wittiest, funniest, most brilliant I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that-please-allow-me-to-rip-off-all-my-clothes-right-now-line, it won’t matter if she’s not physically attracted to you.”

The best pickup line? “’Hello, I’m Jeff.’ Especially if your name is Jeff.”

The book also recounts a bunch of quasi-sexual encounters with creepy Hollywood types, including an aging, bed-ridden producer who gifts every female visitor with a sex toy, an agent who decorates his home with photos of his girlfriend’s vagina and a big-time director who unexpectedly masturbates in her presence while eating red sauce-drenched shrimp with his free hand.

I took special note of those passages, icky though they were, because someone who read the first few pages of Fast Lane thought it wasn’t seamy enough to be set in Hollywood. Hey, I love Entourage and all its gratuitous female toplessness and booze-fueled orgies. But, Fast Lane’s just not that kind of novel.

Oh, wait. There actually is a booze-fueled orgy in Fast Lane. I’m not going to say any more, except that my writer’s group thought it was done in good taste.

At any rate, thanks, Olivia Munn, for inspiring me and making me laugh out loud more often than I expected to. Next time you’re coming to Milwaukee, shoot me an e-mail first. I know where they serve good pie.

Last-minute gift guy

2010-12-19T11:55:00.000-08:00

In the comic strip Baby Blues, the husband, Darryl, is Christmas shopping for his wife Wanda. A clerk asks what Wanda has on her wish list, and Darryl reels off "me listening better" and “doing a load of laundry once in a while,” her “sleeping more and cooking less,” a “better, safer world for our kids” and “to be appreciated for being the good woman, wife and mother she is.”

The clerk informs him that the store doesn’t carry any of those, so Darryl opts for a push-up bra.

Typical guy, right? Who’s he want that for? Wanda—or himself?

It may sound like a slam-dunk question, but it’s not. Trust me on this. Darryl is no doubt thinking, “Wanda would look hot in a push-up bra.” And if you focus on the last three words, he does sound self-centered and clueless.

But if you focus on “Wanda would look hot,” it’s a completely different thing.

And it’s not as though he believes she has to wear sexy clothes to look sexy. In my first novel, Chick Flick, the lead character watches his wife get dressed and thinks about how her body is like a jewel and bras, panties, teddies, bustiers and stockings et al are like settings. A diamond looks good enough just sitting there on a table, but a gold band or a silver pendant really sets it off.

That's also Clay's philosophy in Fast Lane.

Getting back to our hapless comic strip hero, after three kids and several years of marriage, Darryl still thinks his wife’s pretty hot. And isn't that a present any woman would love?

The mind’s ayes have it

2010-12-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

The votes have been counted in the first ManWAR poll, and the results are definitive.

• 57% of you said not to mention body hair on Clay in Fast Lane
• 28% said you’d like to see some fur on his legs
• 14% gave a thumbs-up to chest hair

A veritable mandate…or womandate, if you will.

I think this demonstrates something model, TV show host and sometime Daily Show correspondent Olivia Munn says in her book, Suck It, Wonder Woman: Women like to have their brains fondled. In other words, the imagination is a powerful erogenous zone.

Which we already knew.

What we didn’t already know, companies that make shaving implements are happy to tell us. For example, a survey conducted by Remington determined that while three-fourths of women want men to “at least trim their backs to avoid looking like Neanderthals” and fourth-fifths want men to “do a little neatening to their bums,” only three out of five of ladies who are “casually dating” would like to see some trims around the groin.

We’re talking exclusively about hair, of course.

My question is: How casual can the dating be if people are getting a peek at each other’s groins?

In the Remington poll, only two out of five women under age forty voted in favor of any degree of pubic depilation. Not what I would have expected.

Chest hair was the most evenly divided category, with just over half of the casually dating and divorced respondents preferring “a simple trim so it doesn’t look like a sweater.” Two out of five, however, said dudes should leave their chest hairs grow wild and free as “a sign of masculinity.”

By contrast, respondents to a survey at a website called Mister Poll pretty much preferred guys who look like the hunks portrayed on packages of men’s underwear.

Whatever. The ManWARriors have spoken, and I will listen! Does Clay look like the Missing Link—or a clean-shaven field of flesh? It's all in your mind's eye.

Thanks.

What up, bra?

2010-12-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

What do you see here? What are you thinking?

If you’re a woman, I’m guessing you’re seeing a diamond-studded bra worth $2 million and thinking, “Is that thing comfortable?”

If you’re a man, I’m going with, “Adrianna Lima—Jesus Christ!”

And, maybe, “Oh, yeah, nice underwear. It would look better on the floor.”

I’m going to add something like this to the Clay Creighton Fast Lane line of lingerie.

But in a panty.

Another hairy question

2010-12-08T20:27:00.000-08:00

Clay has been naked twice now in Fast Lane, but I’ve never mentioned anything about him having hair anywhere on his body, except for his head.

Mistake? Or shrewd maneuver? I mean, would readers rather I be specific, or let their imaginations run wild?

Mary Jo and I saw a play called Bombshells, in which a woman reads from a romance novel about a man taking his shirt off to reveal a “glade of hair on his chest.” Squirming in her chair, the character repeats “glade” several times, saying it from way down in her throat and drawing out the vowel.

In other words, body hair good.

Then there’s that commercial where a woman watches a slide show on the laptop of a guy sleeping in the seat next to her on a plane—until a shot with his shirt off reveals a wolfmanlike mat of fur that causes her to close the computer.

In other words, body hair bad.

And then the woman on the other opens the laptop top back up so she can revel in the man’s flocculent studliness.

Body hair good again.

On the web, though, the opinion seems to be that only an ogreish lout who aims to send sensitive ladies screaming from the boudoir would allow even a single follicle to go unshorn.

An ezinearticles.com article puts it like this: “A woman's body is a playground of softness and smoothness, so don't you think she'll appreciate the same on you?”

Hmmm. If it’s softness and smoothness like a woman’s she prefers, wouldn’t she be better off frolicking with Freda than Fredo?

A site called Campus Men, which sports the clever “Advice for Men” as its tagline, gets downright nasty: “Older guys are still stuck in the era of Playboy...When they grew up, the only hair a man shaved was on top of his head. However, the average college student has been shaving his balls since high school.”

If that’s not proof enough of the righteousness of this trend, the site offers this as a clincher: “Howard Stern frequently talks about how he shaves his nuts.”

Howard Stern: Role model and arbiter of good taste.

The bottom line in most of these articles—some of which just happen to direct you to “men’s grooming products” you can buy—is that the modern chick digs a fellah who’s shaven as clean as a six-year-old boy. Especially you-know-where.

Can Armageddon come soon? Please?

At any rate, my opinion doesn’t really matter. I gotta go with what readers will want. So I’m counting on you, ManWARriors. Check out the poll way down at the bottom of the page and let me know if I should make Clay a bear, a baby seal…or something in between.

Musteline mammals in heat

2010-12-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

Referring to animals to describe sex can be, well, sexy. Cats—including, but not limited to lions, tigers, panthers and cougars—foxes, minxes, sharks and even snakes all look, move or behave in ways that can come in handy when describing human sexual activity.

But otters?

Anyone who’s ever watched a wildlife show on TV knows otters are the alpha clowns of the mammalian world. Their Facebook status always seems to be “having fun”— but in a greasy, hair-slicked-back, boys-roughhousing-in-mom’s-living room kind of way.

Maybe otters are what distinguish The Guardian’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award-winning passages from Rowan Somerville’s The Shape of Her from mere pretenders.

He caught her rhythm, pulling and releasing, cradling and crushing; pushing up through his fingers with each swing, mining up, like an otter through wet sand.

Or maybe it’s the use of unnamed fauna:

He unbuttoned the front of her shirt and pulled it to the side so that her breast was uncovered, her nipple poking out, upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night.

This image is particularly disturbing to me, as my daughter has a pet hedgehog, an ornery, quill-covered nocturnal creature with a proboscis that all too much resembles a nipple that can twist and turn enough to capture ambient scents without forcing the beast to turn its head.

Cute, kinda. But not sexy.

Then again, maybe the clincher for Somerville was bringing fowl into the equation:

She loosed his trousers, pulled away his underwear and gripped him with fingers tender enough to hold a tiny bird.

It doesn’t make me hot, but it sure does make me want to read more. And so to you, Rowan Somerville, another man writing a romance, I give my seal of approval: Whale of a job, bro!

Sex scene, not heard (part three)

2010-11-29T14:07:00.000-08:00

The scene we’ve been discussing is actually the second “big” sex scene in Fast Lane. I learned a lot from the first one and previous scenarios that take place in Lara’s imagination, but I still found myself wondering what made a great sex scene great.

In erotic romances I’ve read, the sex scenes remind me of the decidedly male-oriented “letters” to Penthouse magazine’s Forum that I find more comical than arousing.

Fortunately, I live with a woman who has read, reread and re-reread every Jennifer Crusie book. She took Welcome to Temptation and Faking It from their exalted positions on our bookshelves and pretty much opened each to within a page or two of some noteworthy carnality.

I love Crusie’s sense of humor, particularly the way she blends humor and sex. After all, sex is kinda funny—but the key is that in Crusie, the funny aspects enhance the arousing ones.

Crusie also demonstrates how an author can achieve huge popularity without writing Forum-like “clinical” descriptions or euphemistic purple prose. A few snippets from the two aforementioned books:

He kissed his way down the curve of her neck, into the hollow of her shoulder, and found a nerve there she didn’t know she had.

He moved higher this time until he hit something so good that Sophie jolted against him and said, “Oh, God, there.”

She gasped once as he licked inside her, and she grabbed the arm of the couch over her head to keep from sliding off, and then he licked her again and got serous and she gave herself up to the pressure he built slowly in her, thinking, This boy has a great mouth.

Top-notch stuff worthy of emulating.

To wit: “Clay kissed his way down the open V of the robe, and when he came to where it was still closed, he buried his face in the pink nap and pushed aside the dense fabric as he continued on his way. Lara sighed when Clay parted her legs and slid his clean-shaven chin up her thighs, stopping to tease her with his breath.”

Did I nail it? The Women of the Roundtable thought so. YMMV—and if it does, let me know.

Sex scene, not heard (part two)

2010-11-22T17:39:00.000-08:00

The reason it’s “sex scene, not heard” is that I did not read it out loud. I needed to know if the women at the table found the scene arousing when they read it, and me barking the words at them didn’t seem like an effective approach.

As I thought they would, the ladies of the round table approached the assignment like pros.

“Excellent use of senses and description,” Kate wrote. “Sensual…delicately written…I tried to hide my blush.”

Judy liked reading what Lara was thinking while she was “stroking Clay through his white cotton briefs.” At this point, Lara’s seriously conflicted about her mission to destroy Clay, and the readers agreed the tension added an interesting dimension.

Christi enjoyed Lara’s musings about Clay’s unexpected underwear, but suggested I better describe how Lara grabs Clay by the face to pull him up from in between her legs.

On a related topic, more than one reader noted that as much as a gal likes looking at a guy with an unshaven face, she wants him to put some mileage on his razor before putting his face anywhere close to her thighs. Duh.

Sheila didn’t write anything, but she gave the scene a thumbs-up and a nod. High praise, indeed.

Finally, there was some disagreement about duration. Fodder for a stand-up? Not really. Kim thought there “could be even more of the scene—building up excitement and anticipation.” Judy, though, was glad the scene played out in six hundred words.

“In one book I read,” she explained, “there was eight pages of sex in a row, and I kept thinking, ‘Get on with it already.’”

Sex scene, not heard (part one)

2010-11-19T09:04:00.000-08:00

The most recent batch of pages I brought to my writing group included a sex scene. Should be no big deal for serious adults, right?

Well, sure—except for the part about reading this kind of material at a table with women filling half of the seats. That problem got “solved” when the other men in the group decided to stay home for the evening.

Oh, well. What they would have said wasn’t really the issue.

Of course, there was also the chance someone would laugh. Me, for instance. Once a sixth-grader, always a sixth-grader.

But let’s be honest. Sex writing can be funny. It was a thread at a website called All About Romance, where commenters said words like “throbbing,” “pulsating” and “turgid” and references to men with “hard thighs” made them want to throw the book across the room. One said that when “aching buds” stand in for erect nipples, she “skims over it to get to the story.”

“What to do?” one commenter lamented. “We don't want to go back to the days of the Hayes office, when one foot had to remain on the floor at all times.”

The scene in Fast Lane contains no turgidity. Nothing pulsates or throbs. There are no buds, aching or otherwise. But Lara and Clay don’t exactly have one foot on the floor. They go down on each other, have a little fun rolling a condom into place, then have sex.

It’s better than that, really. No…really! I have proof in the form of written notes from five actual women who, in the end, really did handle the assignment like serious adults.

The full report on what they said will appear in part two.

Hang up the phone and bring on the thigh-highs

2010-11-15T18:59:00.000-08:00

Maybe you’ve seen ads like this: A guy’s with a beautiful woman and he has to choose between her and beer.

And he chooses beer.

Man, these ads are not selling beer. They’re selling sickness.

Sorry to be so serious, but there is nothing funny about a man picking beer over a babe who’s obviously interested in him.

Neither is the one with a bunch of people who are so fixated on their phones they’re oblivious to what’s going on around them. One of them is a loser sitting in bed unaware of the gorgeous female parading around in a teddy and black thigh-highs.

The key word here is “loser.”

I guarantee you, if the choice is between a phone that shuts you off from the world and black thigh-highs, I’m going with the stockings 100% of the time.

I don’t see how there’s even a choice. And neither does my hero, Clay.

Upon further review…maybe not so sexy

2010-11-10T18:25:00.001-08:00

I watched 9½ Weeks the other night for the first time since 1986 and I have one question.

What the—?

It’s about a newly divorced woman who gets into a dominance-and-submission relationship with a mysterious stranger. After a while, though, she gets tired of their games and tells him to go fuck himself.

Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s there was a spate of movies about how our society’s love/hate relationship with sex makes people crazy. Sex, Lies and Videotape. Dangerous Liaisons. Fatal Attraction. Basic Instinct. Jade. Disclosure. Sliver. The Color of Night. They were all marginally erotic—and thoroughly unromantic.

Sex, Lies and Videotape was about a guy who couldn’t get off with an actual woman. Basic Instinct theorized that repressing homosexuality could lead one into an alternative (psychopathic) lifestyle. Disclosure and Fatal Attraction warned histrionically about sexuality in the workplace—and threw in a recipe for rabbit stew.

No one had any idea what Jade, Sliver and Color of Night were about, but Dangerous Liaisons featured people wearing wigs, so I am genetically incapable of understanding any of it, except where Keanu Reeves says, “Whoa.”

For some reason I remembered 9½ Weeks fondly. Maybe it was how good Kim Basinger looked in a business suit. Then again, every woman looks good in a business suit, so maybe it was the scene in which ice is dripped onto the Basinger belly. Or the one in which Basinger goes solo in Soho. Or where Basinger bags the benjamins as she crawls across the floor.

Hot. Hot. And kinda hot, but you probably wouldn’t admit it if you wanted to run for president someday. Still, keeping those scenes and junking the rest would have made for a fairly compelling six-minute movie.

I know, you’re thinking, “But, Dave, the scene that had everyone talking was Mickey Rourke pushing olives, cherries and Jell-O past those luscious lips and dumping milk and mustard all over Basinger’s bodacious bod.”

My take: Like the sex-in-the-sink-with-the-dirty-dishes scene in Fatal Attraction, this scene is, shall we say, icky.

Some critics call 9½ Weeks a “self-destructive romance” that explores darker aspects of human sexuality. But any time a man in a movie says to a woman he hardly knows, “Will you take off your dress?” and she does, I’m only left wondering, “What the—?”

Pick-up game

2010-11-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

Is the first thing a man says to a woman he’s attracted to necessarily a pick-up line? Maybe. But that doesn’t make it something sinister. My guess is a sizable percentage of “pick-up” lines are conversation starters gone awry uttered by regular Joes guilty of nothing more than trying too hard.

But, gee…you have to say something.

I met the woman who’s now been my wife for twenty-eight years during my sophomore year of college at a party at her house. A noisy, crowded party. I said, “You’re in my English class!” And she said, “No…I tested out of English.”

A defining moment in a relationship if ever there was one.

Since my hero and heroine in Fast Lane have never met, I have to have one of them say something to break the ice. A mutual acquaintance leads Clay through a noisy, crowded party at his house to where Lara waits at a railing, silhouetted against the moonlit sea.

He says, “The view is amazing from here.”
And she says, “Yes, I’ve always loved the ocean.”
And then he says, “Me, too. But I’m not talking about the ocean.”

Comments I got from my writing group were:

“Typical—what a line!”
“Groan—but great in how it establishes the character” and
“So suave.”

Whoever wrote that last one didn’t write a name on the copy, so I can’t tell if it was a guy being sincere or a woman being sarcastic.

I suppose women hear so many lines that, eventually, none of them sound good. If Clay’s line is romantic, great. If it’s funny (groan) or funny (typical), also great! That’s an advantage of writing a funny romance. I can’t lose—especially if I succeed in establishing character.

I looked around online and found no shortage of sites offering doofy pick-up lines. The best I saw were, “Is it hot in here, or is it just you?” “If I could rewrite the alphabet, I would put U and I together,” and “Nice shoes. Wanna fuck?”

I have a pretty good idea what would have happened if I had opened with that last one all those years ago. But I know for sure my life might have been a lot different if I had used that second one. As everyone reading this knows, the correct grammar is “U and me,” not “U and I,” and the mere suggestion I didn’t know the difference could have made my first line my last.

More about underwear, with cross-dressing thrown in

2010-10-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

Now when I open my Yahoo! email page, the first thing I see is a banner ad for those Vanity Fair…underwear.

What could be better than that?

I’ll tell you what: When I scroll over the banner, it switches to those Elle Macpheresons!

A sign from God?

Probably not, but I think I’ll take it as such nonetheless.

BTW, Mary Jo and I were watching Phineas & Ferb the other night, and there was a mention of unmentionables. I believe the word “underwear” was used. Who could have predicted this would become a theme?

I should have, I guess. It’s Halloween, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the time I made a skirt out of old blue jeans, then hit the local Walgreen’s for a pair of the biggest fishnets in the world and a 42DD bra that, with enough tugging, just barely circumnavigated my torso. A scraggly wig and a bunch of lipstick transformed me into a decent Dee Snider.

A few years later, that wig and a maternity smock that wasn’t otherwise in use at the time transformed me into a fairly hideous witch. (I’m in no way saying all witches are hideous; I’m talking about me in a scraggly wig and a maternity smock.)

Then there was the time I donned green tights and draped a purple skirt over my head and went as a grape. And the year when a Packers jersey bearing Desmond Howard’s No. 81 plus a ballerina skirt equaled a costume I referred to as “Desmond Tutu.” And the year I wore a blue taffeta dress over a red full-body devil costume.

I know--that last one's a little on-the-nose. But did it me a woman, or a song?

Is there a difference?

No panties, my ass

2010-10-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

I have been informed that it would be unwise to use the word “panties” in Fast Lane.

Panties.

First, a female editor I work with told me:

One of the things that I never liked about some of John Updike’s writing is that he tried to write as a woman. I don’t think it worked very well for him. In fact, I remember talking about Updike in a lit class in college and most of the men liked the book and the women didn’t (I think it was “S.”). The reason? One of the women said that when Updike called women’s underwear “panties,” it gave him away cuz that’s a decidedly male term. We all agreed that women never use the word “panties” and just call it underwear or underpants.

Then I asked my other editor, my wife, for a second opinion, and she told me “panties” is juvenile: “It’s what little girls wear.”

That sent me directly to my most recent Victoria Secret catalog. (Yes, VC sends me several of these a year, and it’s not a bad investment on their part.) I turned to my favorite spread—the one where they show mostly panties—and saw words like “brief,” “V-string,” “bikini” and, of course, “thong.”

And “panties.”

You’ve got your Hipster Panties, your Stretch Mesh Panties, your Signature Cotton Panties, your Secret Pink Panties and your ever-popular (I’m sure) Brazilian String Panties.

In fact, “panties” was the most common term for women’s underwear—and there was not a single depiction of anyone who might be confused for a “little girl.”

I was subsequently informed that this is because VC is aimed not at women, but at men.

What to conclude, then, when a Google search for “panties on sale” produces a Shopzilla screen that promises “great deals on panties,” followed by links not only to VC’s Sexy Little Things Satin Lace-up Hiphuggers, but also to Elle Macpherson Momamia Bikini Panties, Stretch Cotton Hicut Panties from Sears, Vanity Fair Caress Cotton Hi-Cut Brief—a smooth hi-cut panty, Regular Nylon Hi-Cut Panties from Land’s End and Hanes Women's Perfect Panty Opaque Hi-Cuts, 2-Pack?

I don't know about those Sexy Little Things and Elle Macphersons, but I guarantee you the target audience for the others was definitely not men.

None of the five women in my writer’s group objected to “panties” in the hottest of Fast Lane’s sex scenes, but if it’s not cool to use it, the word dies. A search found it lurking six times in the manuscript, including one in which Lara is being sarcastic.

And so I have some decisions to make. Just what kind of panties are Lara—and other women—taking off when they're about to get it on? I’ll have to do more research—lots more research, in fact—but I can tell you one thing: Those Vanity Fair and Land’s End briefs, comfortable though they may be, are not in the running

Fast Lane fantasy, Ochocinco reality

2010-10-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

The “history” of the titular website in my novel, Fast Lane, is this: Clay Creighton’s father, Chase, started a men’s magazine in the 1960s that featured articles about cars and booze and pitching woo.

And pictures, of course, of scantily clad women.

Chase died when Clay was 21. Clay took over and introduced The Rotation—three women hand-picked to be his consorts. Members are constantly cycled through The Rotation to match what Fast Lane trumpets as the three stages of romance: Phase 1, the excitement of primal physical attraction; Phase 2, deepening knowledge; and Phase 3, comfortable familiarity.

In this philosophy, though, familiarity also leads to boredom. So, every few months, the girl who’s been around the longest has to go, replaced by a new Phase 1.

Sound far-fetched? Only if you’re oblivious to recent dating/mating shows on TV.

Not that I’m an aficionado. Outside of Pawn Stars and American Pickers, I’ve watched exactly sixty minutes of “reality” TV: One episode of what has to be—what for the sake of Western civilization absolutely must be—the nadir of reality entertainment: Ochocinco: The Ultimate Catch.

The premise is that Chad Ochocinco, a wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, travels the country to find eighty-five women who would like to date a rich, famous, world-class athlete. After culling the herd to sixteen, he assigns the survivors to brackets like teams in a basketball tournament, then subjects them to tests so he can eliminate the losers and crown a champion.

In one test, Ochocinco goes on a date with two hopefuls at once so they can “compete” head-to-head.

What did this vulgar display tell me?

My conception of Fast Lane is not at all unrealistic. This kind of thing not only exists in America in 2010, it’s also big business.

And there are women who are more than happy to get involved. Why? I don’t know. Maybe some want to claim their fifteen minutes of fame or view it as a launching pad to a career. I suppose some actually believe they could find love and happiness with what some media outlets describe as “a serial dater with four kids” who is known to football fans as a sometimes controversial, but harmlessly amusing, flake.

It almost is Fast Lane. And it’s what Lara sets out to destroy. The question is, what will she find when she cozies up to Clay and sees the view from inside?

Naked in the mirror

2010-10-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

I don’t particularly want readers to be thinking about whether Fast Lane was written by a man or a woman. So I’m constantly evaluating.

On one hand, Judy Cornfield, a member of my novel writing group, wrote in the margin, “You’ve found your niche: women’s fiction.” She based this conclusion not only on Fast Lane, but also on my first novel, Chick Flick, which puts a married couple through a night of hell but is, as Judy phrased it, “a sweet love story at heart.”

On that same hand, Peggy Williams, a screenwriting pal, wondered how my script Metal Mom—the one that got optioned twice—could so accurately reflect her life as a forty-year-old mom/wife/working woman.

On the other hand, there’s this comment from a Daily Kos post by Laura Clawson:

My editors at Harlequin used to joke that they could always tell when a man had written a manuscript. Somewhere in the first fifty pages the heroine undressed in front of a mirror...and liked what she saw. That sounds like a good idea, having a body that you can admire when you are buck-naked in your own bathroom. But what clearly seems a better idea, a more appealing fantasy, is to walk by that mirror and simply not care.

Not so clear over here.

Of course I had a scene similar to that. On page eight. Lara (my heroine), didn’t undress, since she was at a party, but she did see her reflection in a chrome pillar and thought that, after months of working out, she looked pretty good.

There I was, being a man. I immediately changed it to Lara realizing that while everyone else at the party is and looks ten years younger, fuck, the man she’s after, Clay, is seven years older—and he can just grow up and deal with her more mature appearance.

Clawson wrote that “the fantasy…is not to be beautiful but to have an identity for yourself that is not caught up in your appearance. Romance heroines rarely know how beautiful they are. This isn't because they are too stupid to look in a mirror or too low in self-esteem to understand what they see there, but because they are presenting the fantasy of being something other than body, of not having any of this cosmetic-advertisement stuff matter.”

Which is great. I’m all for that in real life, anyway.

Of course, then there’s a Romance Writers of America study showing that when it comes to what women want in a hero, being well-muscled and good-looking trumps being smart.

Talk about what’s sauce for the goose…

Still, I get what Laura Clawson is saying. If you’re overly concerned about body image, the fantasy would be not to be. So Lara’s all about that now.

But Clay…he’s still got his six-pack abs and the smoldering gaze of a gorgeous teen vampire.

Winning over Eric and Larry

2010-10-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

My writers group has two dudes, Eric and Larry, who weren’t eager to get on board with Fast Lane. The first few times I read pages, they prefaced their comments with, “Well, it’s all right for your audience, but…”

I wondered who they thought my audience was, though I was pretty sure they didn't think it was members of the Association of Female Rocket Scientists.

A Romance Writers of America study revealed that 63% of romance readers have attended college, 21% are college graduates and 10% have attended post graduate programs. The ladies over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books don’t have any stats, but they do have ire to burn.

“I’m not sure when enjoying romance novels became equated with being stupid,” the Smart Bitch called Candy wrote, “but I know it’s a stereotype that’s been kicking around for a long time. Why? Is it the fact that they’re not viewed as being realistic, and that one would have to be stupid to buy into all that nonsense? Is it because a genre this popular could not possibly have any intellectual merit? Or is it something else entirely?”

One website says fantasy and escapism are the elements that make romance novels popular. I don’t have stats or ire, but as someone who leaves his cares behind by putting on a Green Bay Packers shirt every Sunday and watching a football game I can only fantasize about playing in, I can’t really judge anyone else’s intelligence based on participation in escapist activities.

At any rate, Eric and Larry are now riding the bandwagon. After one reading, Larry wrote in the margin Fast Lane had “moved beyond quasi-porn” into “novel material” that requires “worldly experience to understand.”

That was pretty early on. It took Eric a while longer. On page 83, he wrote, “I’m ready for what’s next and believe the reader will be, too.”

Great! But who is that reader?

“You’ve actually got me rooting for Lara and Clay to escape this madness and go off and be happy together forever,” he announced to everyone at the table after I’d finished a section that ended on page 120.

Later, I also saw what he had written in the margin: “I'm such a sap.”

Viva la vulva

2010-09-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

I was at a journalism function at my alma mater, a Catholic university where I sometimes teach news writing, when the subject of vulvas came up.

Actually, the subject came up at a restaurant after the function—and a few gin and tonics—when I told a former classmate I was writing a romance novel and mentioned some of the research I’d been doing.

He was interested in what one women’s health website called “V fashion.” The website reported on a survey that found a significant percentage of women shave off at least some pubic hair, while increasing numbers scrape it all away.

Yikes!

Several sources said it’s the influence of porn, where the question apparently has gone from whether the carpet matches the drapes to whether the floor has any covering at all.

In the HBO show “Katie Morgan Porn 101,” the actress—in character and in costume—waxes snarky after showing clips of blue movies from the ’60s and ’70s, quipping, “Didn’t they have razors back then?”

Well, yeah. But, apparently, no one had thought of using them to turn grown women back into little girls.

Hundreds of men agreed with this sentiment in a Salon.com poll a few years ago. Other studies have shown that younger women are more likely to go bald than older ones, which makes me glad I turned nineteen when I did.

At any rate, I have to give my old college bud credit for summing things up so well. “It’s a destination,” he said. “You want something to be there when you arrive.”

It’s not electric sex—but then, who doesn’t need eighty bucks?

2010-09-28T10:06:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while since I last posted, but I have excuses.

First, I’ve had a full plate of paying work, which is always good news. Second, we’ve had some busy weekends, including the last one, when I picked up my major award.

I know what you’re thinking and the answer is no, I did not receive a leg lamp. I did, however, receive an $80 check for having the third-place entry in the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association’s short story contest.

Those who’ve read my fiction know I usually like to write about people having sex or things blowing up (and, in more than one case, things blowing up while people are having sex). I do have a soft, squishy sentimental streak, though, and my winning story, “Twenty-three-and-a-half,” falls into that category. At least, that’s what I thought. The judge wrote the story “could have been predictable or sentimental…but it’s not.”

It doesn’t say much for my ability to judge my own work, but I’ll take it.

Thanks to the WRWA—and to the dozen or so writing group compatriots whose comments helped me make “Twenty-three-and-a-half” as good as it could be.

Chocolate and me

2010-09-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Women are supposed to have some kind of mystic relationship with chocolate. My question is, “Who doesn’t?”

The Field Museum’s website says the Maya first harvested cacao beans, roasted them, ground them up and mixed them with water and spices to create a frothy, spicy beverage they used in religious ceremonies. Twenty-four hundred years later, I eat a couple of squares of high-cacao-content dark chocolate every day.

Religiously.

My love of chocolate gives me one more thing to talk with my mom about. We talk often and about lots of topics, but when chocolate comes up, the first thing I do after hanging up is head for my stash in the spice cabinet.

When the kids were small, it was impossible to keep any chocolate around for long. Candy bars. Kisses. Chocolate chips. Cocoa Krispies. So I started secreting away Lindt, Ghirardelli, Hershey and Seroogy bars in a Tupperware container on a high shelf above the curry powder and behind the Pyrex measuring cup. Everyone knows to stay away.

Except my dad.

One day when he was visiting from Arizona, my son dashed into Mary Jo’s office in a panic and said, “Grandpa Buzz is looking for Dad’s chocolate!” Mary Jo acted fast, diffusing the situation by directing him to a communal stockpile.

Chocolate makes an appearance in Fast Lane as part of Lara’s musings about Clay before she meets him: “He was creamy and smooth as the ganache in a Lindor truffle. And as much of a threat to the heart as coconut oil. Women found him irresistible.”

Yes, coconut oil. So gooey in the arteries, so yummy on the tongue.

Wait.

Be right back. I have to run down to the kitchen for a minute.

Sex as a second language

2010-09-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Romance novels and other fiction aimed at primarily women sometimes use phrases that turn English into a second language for me. And I’m not talking about clothes or shoes here.

First, there’s the idea that feeling someone’s weight on top of you is particularly arousing. The second is wanting to have someone else “inside” you.

I come to Fast Lane with some points of reference about the first notion, only from the other side. For instance, I recall a buddy describing a night of passion with a particular woman, and what remains vivid thirty years later is what he said about how she felt underneath him. So vivid, that my mind still has no trouble photoshopping myself into his place. (No trouble at all.)

I’m all for having human flesh pressing down on me from above. It’s just not something that regularly wends its way into my fantasies. I don’t remember ever thinking, “I long to feel the weight of her body on mine.”

Another way to describe it comes from—I swear—a newspaper column that referred to “nail-her-to-the-mattress sex.” Google didn’t help me identify the source, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Dan Savage. Or Cal Thomas. I’m guessing maybe Kathleen Parker or Maureen Dowd. I suppose I could have jotted down a note at the time, but I seem to have had no difficulty remembering the important parts. That image will stick with me until three weeks after the end of the world.

At any rate, I get the idea of wanting to feel someone’s weight on top of you. It translates just fine from Chickish into Guyese.

That other one, though, I’m going to have to take on faith.

That post about breasts

2010-08-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

I started thinking about breasts…well, when I was 12…but, more specifically, last month while I was reading Jennifer Crusie’s novel, “Bet Me.” In one scene, the hero, Cal, tells Crusie’s chubby and buxom (Crusie says “round”) heroine, Minnie, that she has great breasts that lots of men would love access to. In a different scene, another character opens her blouse to show a man her “perfect B cups.”

What I was thinking was, “What’s up with those things, anyway?”

You ladies push and prod and pull and squeeze them to draw men’s attention, then get all huffy-puffy when they do. You know what I’m talking about: “A man’s intelligence varies in direct proportion to the size of a woman’s breasts,” and, “Hello! My eyes are up here.”

Admit it: You know you’ve got our heads spinning in real life. But that leaves me wondering what to do in a romance novel.

“Your eyes are like jewels.”
“Ooh, Miguel…”
“Your lips are like sweet, ripe cherries.”
“Ooh, Miguel…”
“Your tits are like two Jell-O molds that I long to squish between my fingers and smear all over my face.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mike. Turn on Sports Center. I’m going to bed.”

OK, so Miguel could use a lesson in pitching woo. Or two. Nevertheless, I’ve been informed that in “Bet Me,” Minnie asks Cal for an assessment of her body, which makes his comment all right. Second, what Minnie hears when Cal says nice things about “the girls” is that Cal finds her attractive. Not just her breasts. Her.

I suspect, too, though, that Minnie’s attitude is important here: We already know she’s attracted to Cal.

As for B cups, all I have to say is that if they were a problem, evolution would have eliminated them by now. In fact, in “Fast Lane,” Lara Dixon has B cups, which doesn’t stop Clay Creighton, who could have any woman in the world—and pretty much has—from seeing her as the hottest babe ever.

Romance novel heroes are a lot like their real-life counterparts: They know the breasts are there even without any pushing and prodding and pulling and squeezing. The trick to gaining access to them, though, might just lie in bringing them up at the right time and in the right way.

FWIW

I looked up “breasts” at Urban Dictionary.com and found these titbits:

•“The softest, tastiest most tender part of a chicken…(or) woman.”
•“Girls’ body part that boys love to squeeze and girls don’t like it.”
•"Bulging flaps of skin on a woman that have magical powers because they produce a tractor beam to suck men's eyes and sometimes their hands.”
•“Men wish they had them, women with big boobs want small ones, and women with small boobs want big ones.”

More important than mogambos

2010-08-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

I know, everyone’s eagerly awaiting that post about breasts. Once again, though, circumstances draw my attention elsewhere.

Jan O’Hara mentioned MWAR and me in her blog, Tartitude—and said nice things in the process. As you can see, Tartitude is on my “blog list,” and I am now going to say nice things about it.

Jan’s pretty funny, and she accomplishes techno-wizardry things like photos and videos that I’m afraid to try because I think I might damage the Internet or something. The first post of hers I read was about going to the mall in men’s underwear, which I approve of wholeheartedly.

Also, being cited in Jan’s blog means MWAR is now international, as I am told she resides in a mystical land called “Canada.”

Next time, titties. I promise.

T & A (but hold the T for now)

2010-08-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

My apologies to Kirk Farber for promising him this post would be about tits. Circumstances demand it focus on ass instead.

Research follows me wherever I go. I got a catalog from NFLShop.com, “the Official Catalog of the National Football League.” Not expecting to see anything even vaguely girly, I was delighted when I turned to page 52 to find:

The Reebok Women’s Super Soft Thong
65% polyester, 35% cotton knit.
Sizes S-XL.
$14.99.

Unfortunately, while models are shown wearing various types of fleece wear, this particular item is pictured lying benignly flat against a blank background. So that’s a little disappointing. Judging by what female comics say in Comedy Central half-hours, I’m guessing they had a hard time getting a model to put it on. Then again, judging by what I saw a few rows in front of me at Wrigley Field a few summers ago, maybe they were just asking the wrong people.

But, who would buy this thing? Dudes thinking they’re being romantic? Women with a sense of humor? Women who are really big fans of the game?

The front of the thong in the catalog features an Indianapolis Colts logo. Would a woman wear this thing while watching a game, all the while contemplating the possibility of Payton Manning going deep?

The mind boggles. However, it did give me an idea for Fast Lane: One of Clay’s enterprises should be an online store where dudes can buy stuff for their ladies.

So, ladies…what should be for sale in that online store?

The funny story about sizes

2010-08-15T19:50:00.001-07:00

In one scene of Fast Lane, Lara’s in a high-end hotel room that has a closet full of lingerie for guests to use. I had her grabbing one in a pinch that I described as being six sizes too big.

Giggles all around from the women in the writers group.

One of them, Judy—Judy’s great, she’ll be coming up more in the future, for sure—explained it to me this way:

“I was thinking, even if Lara’s a size 6, this negligee would be an 18.”

Oh, right. Women’s clothing manufacturers don’t know about odd numbers. And here’s me, thinking six sizes larger than a 6 would be a 12!

So, everyone had a good laugh, which isn’t all bad—Fast Lane is supposed to be funny. It just can’t be funny because of mistakes like that.

Which is another reason I love my writers group.

Research is key (Really, that’s why I’m looking so closely at the bra ads in the Sunday paper)

2010-08-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

Men, we have pants, shirts, underwear and shoes. Well, there’s suits and ties, too. But the pants that come with a suit are just pants. And, yeah, we have specialty stuff, like sweaters, sweatshirts and sweat pants.

Now, women…women have lots of names for all this stuff. So I can’t just have Lara wearing “a dress.” She has to be wearing a “scroll border print chemise” or a “ruffled tie back dress” or a “cold shoulder dress with pleated detail on the skirt and bodice.” (That one looked pretty freakin’ hot in the photo I saw at Overstock.com. As far as I’m concerned, Lara wears stuff like that all the time.)

I’m also told that if I put her in a pleated tuxedo dress, “everyone would know what that means.”

I don’t know what that means, though, so I have to do research. Which I do not mind at all. Well, I kind of mind when it comes to shoes, because I really don’t see what the big deal is. Back when I was single, I do not remember ever thinking, “Ooh, she has great shoes. I have to meet her.”

(BTW: Lingerie research is easy. Victoria’s Secret sends it to me via snail mail six times a year.)

The Sunday paper helps out that way, too. One time, while my coffee was still steaming and the sports section was sitting in my lap yet unmemorized, I came across a photo of Lara in the—yeah, this is gonna sound dorky—Kohl’s circular. Hey, but it’s right. Being divorced and left penniless due to her ex’s bankruptcy, she’s on a budget. She would shop at Kohl’s and Overstock.com.

I cut out the photo and keep it nearby when I work. Lara—I mean, the Kohl’s model—is wearing something called a Maidenform Control It seamless strapless slip. Maidenform doesn’t exactly sound, to borrow terminology from Liquid Silver publishing, molten, but it does help get me into the mood to write.

In fact, I feel a chapter coming on right now.

Bringing it on

2010-08-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

I love my writers group. The members give good comments, and I get a lot out of reading and analyzing their work.

Every now and then, though…

A woman said the other night that “feminists” would be angry about the name “Hard Core Grrls” for the website that supports Lara’s undercover operation. “It sounds like a porn site,” she said.

And so it does.

On purpose.

The site’s owner, Gina Wray, chose the name to “reclaim” something she believes to have been stolen from women. The term “hard core” isn’t specific to the porn industry. It also means “devoted” and “steadfast.” Why would feminists object?

When I was kicking around the idea of this blog, a friend said I should discuss what I feel my “male perspective” has to offer the genre—and how it might cause me to struggle with it.

I have some ideas about the second suggestion. I’m not sure about the first.

Every woman who writes romance does not bring the same things to the genre just because she’s a woman. For example, one publisher’s guidelines for authors say pedophilia, bestiality, “rape as titillation” and “bodily functions as sexual activity” are verboten. Another lists levels of “heat” to give a head’s up to buyers who might not appreciate reading, for example, LGBT fetish scenes with anal sex.

Since almost all of the writers who submit are women, it’s telling that the publishers feel the need to articulate these as taboo. It means that what some women “bring to the genre” isn’t the same as what other some other women bring.

So where does that leave me?

The same friend pointed out that Fast Lane might appeal to men as well as women. Let’s see…it has hot women, hot cars and (at least some) hot sex. Things guys love.

Sure, I’ve struggled with some of the “woman” things. For example, my egregious ignorance of the dress-sizing system has been called to my attention. I’ll tell that story in full later.

For now, I can say one thing I intend not to bring to the genre is the idea that all women think alike. Feminists included.

More about that contest

2010-08-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

One of the judges said this: “I’m wondering if you’re really intending this to be an erotic novella.”

Well, yeah, that was the intention. But you know what they say about how the best plans of mice and men get laid.

There’s no actual sex in the first twenty pages, so, no, Fast Lane seems not to be an erotic novella.

Great!

I no longer have to follow the rules of a genre I’m probably not cut out to write.

I celebrate my freedom by forging ahead not with the story I’d intended, but with the one that’s emerging.

Whore schmore

2010-07-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

Someone said Lara is “driven in the beginning and loses all of her resolve almost immediately” and called her “a modified whore who wants to be a have for once and buy that $12,000 dress.”

Sure, Lara would like to be “a have,” but she’s not planning to bed the rich guy to get her hands on his money. She’s planning to take him down because she thinks he’s a menace to womankind. Everyone else who’s read the opening has been absolutely clear on that.

Was Mata Hari a whore? Or Cleopatra? Both of these women, it seems, were willing to take one for the team, so to speak. Both used sex appeal to make men believe she was on their side. When you go undercover, you have to make your opponents think you’re on their side.

And so, when Lara lets Clay think he’s seducing her, she’s actually seducing him, not “losing her resolve.” She’s pretending. It’s part of the plan. And I’m betting readers will be smart enough to figure that out.

Is Clay a jerk because Lara says he is?

2010-07-21T20:45:00.001-07:00

I entered the first twenty pages of Fast Lane in a contest that offered critique. I didn’t win, but I got some helpful notes—and plenty of food for thought.

One judge said Clay lacked respect for women because he maintains his “mystique” by always having three women who act, shall we say, as his “official” consorts. “The three girl rotation is completely repulsive—to me in any case,” the critique said. “I won’t say that respect for women is mandatory in a romantic hero, but it sure helps.”

That last part sounds right.

But all we “know” about The Rotation at first comes from Lara’s description, and it raises the question, Is a character a low-down, dirty rotten skunk just because another character says so? Especially right at the beginning?

I mean, what if Lara’s wrong?

Let’s say a thriller opens with darkness. Two shots are fired. The lights go on, and all we see is Suzy Q. holding a smoking gun and Senator John D. lying dead with two holes in his chest. Case closed, right? Suzy did it in cold blood. Spark up the electric chair.

Of course not. And readers know it. They know there’s a good chance Suzy didn’t do it, or if she did, she had good reason.

Boo Radley gets some bad PR in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Is he really the monster the kids suspect he might be? Ebenezer Scrooge is quite a dick at the outset of “A Christmas Carol,” but does that make you want to close the book?

In every one of these cases, the whole point is to find out what’s really going on. And what’s really going on isn’t necessarily what we’re told up front.

Lara’s unflattering description of Clay—the one that offended the judge—comes in the first couple of pages of Fast Lane. The same judge also said, “Nice opening scene! Interesting premise,” and added that she “was open to liking (Clay),” so that’s encouraging. My takeaway is that the opening and premise are fundamentally sound, but could use a tweak or two.

At any rate, I hope this judge gets a chance to read the whole story some day. I think she’d end up pleasantly surprised.

The cloak of implausibility

2010-07-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

Tell me how this happens:

I picked up my Chicago Tribune recently and the top headline on the front page included, in all caps, the words “FAST LANE,” while the most prominent feature on the cover of the business section was a photo of Hugh Hefner. Not that any of Fast Lane’s characters are based specifically on Hefner: I really don’t know much about him. But since Clay Creighton is a playboy (with a small p), comparisons are inevitable.

Here’s another recent coincidence: A few days after a member of my writing group wondered if it was plausible for one woman, Lara Dixon, to bring down a commercial enterprise like Fast Lane, an e-mail update from Writers Digest magazine listed this as one author’s favorite advice: “It doesn’t have to be probable, it just has to be possible.”

Is it plausible that Bernard Madoff could bilk a bunch of savvy investors out of billions of dollars? What if someone made that story up? How many intelligent people would say, “Couldn’t happen. Someone would figure it out long before it went that far.”

I’m sure I don’t need to include a spoiler alert here, but it did happen.

So, yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s possible—and therefore plausible—that one woman could topple a commercial empire like Fast Lane, which comprises a popular webzine, a Palm Springs resort and lines of clothing and exotic liqueurs. The company’s success is based on the notion that Clay is in charge in his relationships. If he’s not, he ceases to be the go-to guy for regular schlubs seeking advice on sex, cars and how much Cynar to mix into a Little Italy cocktail.

Fast Lane isn’t journalism. It’s fantasy. A fish-out-of-water story. An in-over-your-head fable. A be-careful-what-you-wish-for cautionary tale.

More important, though, is that Lara’s on a mission and believes she can do it.

Beginnings would be easy if...

2010-07-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

...they weren’t so hard

I usually breeze through opening pages, and it was no exception with Fast Lane. I think it’s because I don’t write something unless I have what I believe is a winning premise and a clear idea where the story should go. Setting up the action, introducing the characters, establishing a tone…it’s all very exciting. The first several pages seem not to flow, but to gush forth.

And then, bam! The time comes to write everything after the opening, which is to say ninety, ninety-five percent of the piece. The gusher slows to a trickle. Every day the plot and the characters bash against rocks, swirl in eddies and get stuck behind dams that redirect the flow into tributaries out of the main channel. The trick is to get back on course and make it look natural in the process. You can trim the sails or drag an oar in from time to time, but if the readers notice, it will seem forced and untrue.

If writing a book were a marriage, this would be after the honeymoon, the part about which people say, “It takes hard work to make a relationship successful.”

And then, there is apparently no good way to start a story. If you write a page and a half of back story near the front, someone will tell you that’s way too much. If you cut back on the back story, someone will complain about having no idea who your characters are or why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Here’s my take: The opening can’t do everything. And why should it? It’s not everything. It’s only 1 or 4 or 10 percent of the whole. Two things I think an opening can’t do:

• Reveal all there is to know about the main character. You don’t know everything there is to know about someone the moment you meet them. You find out stuff along the way—including interesting stuff, stuff you like and stuff you don’t like. Isn’t learning about a character—and sometimes being a little surprised—part of the fun of reading a book or watching a movie?

• Reveal the exact course of the story. I mean, really. You can guess in the opening moments of “Romancing the Stone” that Kathleen Turner is going to go an adventure, but what adventure? And how many directions could a book go that opens with, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”?

As it turns out, the easiest part to write, the opening, is the part that gets picked apart the most. Yet it’s the middle that seems to be the most arduous for the writer. Screenwriters even refer to the middle as “the second act desert.”

As Fast Lane opens, the heroine, Lara Dixon, is pitching her expose to a publisher, justifying the project by making a broad-strokes argument about why the king of Fast Lane’s empire of pleasure, Clay Creighton, needs to be taken down. Some back story is woven into the dialog. But how much about Clay do readers really need to know at this point? About Fast Lane? About Lara? Some of my readers say more than I have, others say less.

And so I go back into the first two pages with the challenge of trying to please everyone by using fewer words to say more.

Uncharted territory

2010-07-11T20:03:00.001-07:00

I pecked the first lines of my would-be erotic romance a few days before Thanksgiving 2009. Fast Lane is about a divorcee who aims to avenge all women by romancing the magnate of a men’s webzine so she can dump him and write an expose about his sordid, misogynist empire. I was entering uncharted territory.

So why was I doing it? Because one day I descended from my attic office to find my wife, Mary Jo, in her work nook on the first floor, ready to click on the purchase of an e-book.

An erotic romance.

It was a bad time for freelance writers. Mary Jo and I have endured ups and downs during our 10 years in business, but during the last quarter of ’09, most of our advertising and business-to-business clients simply had no work. An erotic novel might not seem like the wisest purchase for a self-employed couple who had a kid in college, $1,000-a-month health insurance premiums, a mortgage, a car payment and no income, but there was a method to this madness. The 25,000-word novella had been written by a member of Mary Jo’s online writing group, and she thought she might use her unwelcome free time to write something similar, sell it and start earning royalties before we went broke.

Or Christmas. Whichever came first.

The e-book Mary Jo was reading reminded me of letters in Penthouse Forum that are purportedly from readers about their sexual exploits. Letters so graphic, so consistent in style and tone and so much like my 19-year-old-male fantasies that I’ve always had a hard time believing they’re really letters. Now, I know for a fact that Mary Jo had never written anything remotely like this book nor, as far as I could tell, had even read anything like it. Mary Jo can be X-rated at the right moment, but since she aspired to publishing novels for 10-year-olds, I never thought she’d even consider writing something in which the word “cunt” would be not only welcome, but required.

And aimed at women, no less.

Well, I thought, if Mary Jo was willing to try this, I should, too. A husband-wife duo writing explicit literature for women? Could be a real selling point. And so I downloaded an erotic romance by a different author. Marking up and dissecting the sex scenes as I went, I realized pretty quickly that I was about to undertake a daunting task.

Yes, daunting. Neither Mary Jo nor I approached this with a cavalier attitude. Neither of us ever said, “Hell, it should be easy to bang these out in no time, and we’ll be rich.” We’ve both been writers for way too long to think anything like that. Writing is hard, whether your bread-and-butter is a newspaper column about groundbreaking automotive technologies or novels about women savoring a stud’s quavering manhood in ways that seem kind of new, but probably aren’t. The only thing I was absolutely sure of was that the people who wrote these books could do something I might not be able to.

I’d written sex scenes before, but not sex scenes specifically for women in a style that not too long ago would have been considered inappropriate for “mixed company.” When it came time to describe the deeds, would my fingers be able to type the words? And would my lips be able to speak them when it was my turn to read to my writing group two times a month?

As I approach page 100, some answers are starting to materialize. Apparently, not a lot of romance novels, erotic or otherwise, are written by men. But I’m doing it, and it’s been an interesting ride so far. I’m not going to give away too many spoilers, but I hope you’ll find the adventure as fun and as funny—and as illuminating—as it’s been for me.