Quacking Alone

I've been very, very bad.  I haven't been keeping up with the blog.  I'm sorry about that but I've been bad for a mighty good reason - I've been working hard on Peter's story -  "A Magical Forever."  It should be out before Christmas so y'all be sure to add it to your wish list.

This will be a quick blog and mostly b/c I saw another blog that caught my twisted fancies.  It was by Ellen Arnison and titled:  "Why Fifty Shades of Grey Hero Christian Grey Has To Be A Scotsman." It's no mystery why that caught my fancy and drug Muse away from Peter's Regency England.

Anyone who has read my book - "A Faerie Fated Forever" - knows that I love me some Scots.  I especially love that rugged, no nonsense breed that inhabits the Highlands.  Don't we all?  And notice I said - inhabits, present tense.  I've not yet had the privilege of seeing Scotland personally.  In my imagination the Highlands of that land are still full of warring clans led by lairds who hate the English and still manage to fall madly mad for a lovely English Rose.

And anyone who has read this blog knows that I love me some Christian Grey too.  I see him in my twisted mental meanderings - he's standing by the wall of windows, outclassing everything in his posh Escala condo.  His hair is even more rumpled than usual and he's wearing those pants - yes, the grey ones cut just so.

Ms. Arnison's article links to a Guardian article relating that the French are turning up their "snooty Gallic noses" at "Fifty Shades."  Why?  Here are Ms. Arnison's thoughts:

Instead of Mummy Porn they call it Housewife Porn

Well, they would, wouldn’t they? The French think they invented sex – doing it or writing about it. Dangerous Liaisons, the Marquis de Sade (who gave us sadism, in every sense) Anne Desclos (secret author of Story of O), all French. They even invented the phrase “cinq à sept” – five to seven – that couple of hours where every self-respecting Frenchman nips off to his mistress after work before returning to his family.

All they need to deploy is a well-timed shrug and that erotic accent of theirs for knicker elastic to automatically loosen. Or so they think. I can’t speak for French women, but here it doesn’t work. Oh non, pas du tout.

Ms. Arnison's article relates that the women in Scotland adore Fifty and "have been snapping up this publishing phenomenon. Mummy porn, S&M lite, call it what you like, the book explores bondage and various other shenanigans in millionaire Christian’s red room of pain." Having considered all this, Ms. Arnison's decided that a Scotsman has to play Christian in the movie.

Arnison says "Christian is as your typical Scottish male might be; uncommunicative, finds it difficult to have a normal conversation with a woman, thinks nothing of giving his girlfriend a good slap (on the rump)."  And she thinks that all the Hollywood hunks fighting for the role should be out of luck because she believes Christian needs more than "white-toothed, rippling-abs perfection."  Arnison thinks that he needs "that kind of swagger that you only get from carrying a large chip on your shoulder."

You know, Ms. Arnison might just have a point.  Now I've got a picture of a rumpled-haired Christian standing high atop a Scottish mountain as bagpipes play in the background.  He's wearing a kilt that's fifty shades of grey and cut just so ...  Yes, Christian Grey - the Highland laird.

The mind boggles, doesn't it?  Well, mine boogles and boggles but that's just me, I'm sure.  Now, on to imagine Christian as a Rhett Butler-style Southern gentleman.  (Oh, I know.  Rhett would deny it but he was as courteous and Southern and gentlemanly as they come.  Anyone else would've strangled Scarlett long before he didn't give a damn - or so he claimed, anyway.)

Laters, y'all!

Facebook is more addictive than smoking, according to a new study from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business study.

The group found that people are more tempted by Facebook and Twitter than sex.

The study focused on 205 people in Germany, inquiring about their urges to measure their ability to withstand regular, daily temptations. Participants ranged in age all the way from 18 to 85.  Each was given a Blackberry for a week and told to check in every 30 minutes to let researchers know about their "desires" and urges to check their social media sites.

The hardest sites for participants to resist were Facebook and Twitter.  The study's author, Wilhelm Hoffman, says it's becoming harder and harder to escape the urge to look at the social news loops one last time.

The author of the article linked here, Barbara E. Hernandez, says:

We wonder if anyone is surprised that many would choose to read and post on Facebook rather than sleep. Isn't that why we have all those mobile devices, so we can still use them in bed? And maybe many of us are spending more time interfacing with those devices rather than loved ones.

You know what I wonder?  I wonder who these people are would would rather post on Facebook than sleep.  And I really wonder who in the name of all duckness would rather update their Facebook status than have sex.  Maybe we need an intervention for these folks - lets donate some inspirational reading material.  If they trade Facebook and Twitter a few good erotic romances on their e-reader or smartphone, they'll be skipping sleep for the right reason  - and it won't involve Facebook.

You know what else?  If these people prefer Facebook to sex, I think someone's doing it wrong.  Maybe they need some  training along with the inspiration.  Erotic Romances work for that too - take a few pages of A Sixth Sense of Forever or a chapter of Brotherly Love, mix in a little Dangerous Relations:  Griffin's Law and the former Facebook addicts will know what to do, how to do it and they'll stay anxious for their next practice session.

Someone needs to show the Facebook addicts that some of the best gadgets don't have buttons!

Love threatens your existence while it drags you in.

No, that's not my thought.  This was the theme of a recent piece by Sadhguru for the Huffington Post.  It's written from a Hindu perspective.  I am not of that faith or belief system, but as I read it, I saw the wisdom in the thought process so I wanted to share it with my readers.

According to the article, the Hindus believe that people are made of 4 components:  the body, mind, emotion and energy.  Of these 4 parts, the strongest force is emotion.  A big part of the force of emotion is the power of love.  Sadhguru notes that in acknowledging that you love someone, you have acknowledged another person as meaning far more to you than you mean to yourself.   It threatens your existence.

The moment you say "I love you" to somebody, you will lose all your freedom, you will lose everything that you have. You can no longer do what you want in your life; there are innumerable problems. But at the same time, it drags you in. It is a sweet poison, a very sugary poison. It is self-annihilating.

Sadhguru believes that to know love - to truly experience it - some part of you must die.  The person you love must destroy the space formerly occupied by your single-minded independent thoughts, choices and values.  Choices must be made and weighed based on the scale of 'our' rather than 'my.'  "Somebody else has to occupy that space within you that was you all this time. If you do not let this happen, there is no love, only calculation."

In discussing Shiva, a Hindu deity widely regarded as the most powerful god in Hinduism,  Sadhguru says:

...continue reading "Does Love Kill?"

I read an interesting piece the other day in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.  It was a column by Jack Sheehan titled:  "Every Writer Struggles To Tell The Next Great Story." The piece was about how much more there is to writing a book than telling a story.  It's a great piece and well worth a read.  I completely agree - but I also disagree.

The story is the message in the bottle.  If you're hanging out on a dock and a bottle floats by - you might be angered at the thought that someone disrespected the planet enough to turn a lake into a trashcan.  You might give the thrower the benefit of the doubt and wonder what extreme emotion or life-changing peril the thrower was experiencing that sent the bottle flying towards a watery future.  But it'd be all about the bottle.

What if a man's been alone since his ex skipped off with his business partner and the company bank account.  Now, he's nearly decided there's nothing left to lose - nearly.  He chooses to take one last gamble, writing a note to a lady he's met only in his dreams.  He tucks it in a bottle and lets the water decide his fate.  The note is the story.

Mr. Sheehan's right that the best tale in the world won't carry a reader if it's not told well.  He relates meeting a lady who perked up when she found out he was a writer.  Yes, she had a great story to tell and needed someone to write it down.  Sheehan says:

The clear implication when folks say they have a great idea for a book or movie and just require a scribbler to put it on paper for them is that the person making the pitch is holding all the valuable goodies in this proposition and that the prospective writer is merely a necessary nuisance to be tolerated on the path to stardom.

This is akin to telling Herman Melville, "Hey, Hermie, I have this story about a big fish and a guy who's mad at it. If you can just toss some verbiage around and put the commas in the right place for me, I can take credit for one of the great novels of American literature. … Oh yeah, the fish's last name is Dick."

...continue reading "Is There More To Writing It Down Than Writing It Down?"