Is having breakfast for supper a Southern thing?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last night I decided that I wanted breakfast for supper.\u00a0 Okay, maybe recalling that IHOP<\/a> has those cheesecake stacker pancakes<\/a> right now had something to do with it.\u00a0 The other factor - if one needs more than the idea of cheesecake as an incentive - was that at suppertime we could get into IHOP.\u00a0 You've got to remember that the family Graham resides in Myrtle Beach which is a tourist town.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tourists, God love 'em, come down on vacation talking a good game.\u00a0 You'll hear them in line at the grocery store or passing by at the mall talking about how stupid folks are to\u00a0travel to somewhere different and still eat at the chain restaurants.\u00a0 Like I said, they talk a good game.\u00a0 Anybody who lives in Myrtle and has tried to get into an Olive Garden for supper or an IHOP for breakfast knows that it's all talk.\u00a0 Locals will drive up to those places, see the throngs crowding around, and leave and go somewhere else.<\/p>\n So there was a stroke of genius in my madness last night.\u00a0 It occurred to me that maybe breakfast for supper was a Southern thing and maybe IHOP wouldn't be crowded.\u00a0 And EUREKA!!\u00a0 Once in a great while - I'm right.\u00a0 It was so not crowded that my kids, seeing the nearly empty parking lot, wondered if it was open.\u00a0 But it was and not only did I get my cheesecake stackers (strawberry), but\u00a0we were seated in\u00a0a nearly empty section\u00a0that allowed the family to have a loud and raucous debate.\u00a0 (Apologies to the one smart diner - a single man - who decided to leave and likely swore off the ideas of marriage and children for life.)<\/p>\n Mr. Quack brought up a debate we'd been having at home as he is in the throes of designing the man tittie cover for the serialization of my WIP, a regency historical.\u00a0 He doesn't\u00a0get my\u00a0reference to \"Eden Without The Apple.\"\u00a0 He's also convinced that readers wouldn't get it either and would be confused by theological implications.\u00a0 I replied that\u00a0women drawn in by\u00a0 man titties wouldn't be thinking about the\u00a0Bible at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Men are such linear people.\u00a0 They seem to lack the ability to compartmentalize their thinking the\u00a0way women do.\u00a0 If women suffered from the same malady, they'd never be able to plan a grocery list while doing laundry, fielding calls from their boss and working on their new book.\u00a0 But anyway, Mr. Quack asked the ducklings - what does the apple in\u00a0Eden mean to them?\u00a0 \u00a0The eldest promptly replied - temptation.\u00a0 Mr. Quack raised a brow at me and looked at his seedling approvingly.<\/p>\n I said, no, don't just think about the apple.\u00a0\u00a0Think about the whole phrase.\u00a0 What would Eden have been if the apple hadn't existed?\u00a0 The eldest duckling - whose genius IQ made him a National Merit Finalist and won him a full ride at UCF (The University of Central Florida)- then said the following.\u00a0 That without the apple Eden would have been a perfect place occupied by beings who had the intellect and sentience of animals.\u00a0 Mr. Quack nearly burst with pride.\u00a0<\/p>\n I ground my teeth in frustration.\u00a0 No, no, said I - you're thinking too logically.\u00a0 Just consider the image.\u00a0\u00a0A man and woman in Eden without the apple would\u00a0be perfectly happy forever.\u00a0 The youngest duckling suggested that if the Mommy title was too confusing,\u00a0Mommy should consider a different title.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0eldest, King of All Things Linear, suggested \"Eden Forever\" or \"Eden Always.\"\u00a0\u00a0Ahm, yeah - it's been done.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much fun ensued while the men of the family (everyone but yours truly) listened to me describe my vision for the book and what I'm trying to emphasize with the title.\u00a0 Ideally, I'd like to get the concept across that my hero is a Duke or, more accurately, a Duke Regent - meaning, he'll lose the title to the person who marries the heroine. And I'd like to communicate the whole Eden without the apple thing that's based on a conversation between the hero and the heroine's late father (the\u00a0Duke).\u00a0 I've even considered \"The Duke's Eden Without The Apple.\u00a0\"<\/p>\n Mention of the latter title re-ignited the whole debate about imagery, biblical implications, sentient beings, etc.\u00a0 Likely to shut everyone up so he could have the floor, my baby duck (a 12 year old destined for a career in talk radio if he doesn't achieve his goal of being a history professor) came up with a brilliant suggestion.\u00a0 Drum roll, please... \"The Duke Of Eden.\"\u00a0 To me, that might get the message across.\u00a0 It would convey that the hero would come to realize that his Eden isn't the title.\u00a0 Not bad.\u00a0 It bears considering.<\/p>\n Since the evening had kindled my romance author\u00a0side,\u00a0I came home and watched \"Kate and Leopold\" on Starz on Demand.\u00a0 That reminded me of a blog debate that ensued over on the Dear Author website when someone wrote a blog post<\/a>\u00a0that savaged Johanna Lindsey's new Malory book - \"That Perfect Someone<\/em>.\"\u00a0 I, of course, had to chime in with a comment in defense of Lindsey, since all the earlier commenters had sided with the author.\u00a0 After my comment, a few folks typed more favorable messages.\u00a0<\/p>\n I adore Ms. Lindsey and admire her creative genius with the Malory family saga.\u00a0 My favorites were James' and Warren's tales.\u00a0\u00a0Many of the commenter said it was \"undeniable\" that she'd lost her touch with writing the series.\u00a0 Hogwash!\u00a0 I'm currently reading one of the later tales - Boyd's story - and am enjoying it greatly.\u00a0<\/p>\n What sort of got my goat about the blog piece and the comment trail was that\u00a0several folks were irate about the books' lack of \"historical accuracy\" in scenery, descriptions and dialogue.\u00a0 Imagine - Ms. Lindsey throughout the series has DARED to employ a writer's license to create the world she chose!!\u00a0 What was she thinking?\u00a0 Isn't a writer locked into the historical reality?\u00a0<\/p>\n That brings me to my point about \"Kate and Leopold.\" As far as I can tell, it was a movie that wasn't based on a romance novel, although I'd surely have enjoyed reading the book if it had existed.\u00a0 The hero of the piece was the dashing and charming Duke of Albany and he'd invented the elevator, naming it after his butler, Otis.\u00a0 Are these details historically accurate?\u00a0 Well, no.\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 There was a Duke of Albany - and the first was Leopold who was\u00a0the youngest\u00a0son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.\u00a0 The real Leopold, being a\u00a0 royal hatchling, never had money troubles and was never forced to\u00a0sail to New York to marry an heiress.\u00a0 The real Leopold\u00a0sought a bride because he thought marriage would get him away from his mother.\u00a0 In the end, he\u00a0couldn't secure his own bride and\u00a0the Queen arranged a marriage.\u00a0 The lad was a hemophiliac who died before his son was born.\u00a0 Needless to say, he had nothing to do with inventing the elevator.\u00a0 Did any of that interfere with my enjoyment of the movie?\u00a0 Heck no.\u00a0 I was in the writer's world and the writer's reality was my reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n So what if Ms. Lindsey's characters don't use titles \"correctly\" by\u00a0regency standards?\u00a0 So what if\u00a0they don't speak in the stilted verbiage typical of the time?\u00a0 Those and other things bothered the author of the blog piece and many of the commenters.\u00a0 They didn't bother me and they don't bother legions of Lindsey's fans and they don't interfere with the story -- they advance it.\u00a0<\/p>\n When I open a book - whether it's science fiction, fantasy or romance - I enter the writer's world.\u00a0 The writer can change the\u00a0Regency or Victorian era - rules, tradition, dialogue and all -\u00a0to suit her story.\u00a0\u00a0I bought the book to experience the author's vision and I don't give a re-fried frog if that vision mirrors or twists history or\u00a0reality.\u00a0 If I'd wanted history, I'd have bought a history book.\u00a0 I want ROMANCE and I want the story to take me somewhere different, somewhere better.\u00a0<\/p>\n So you see, IHOP Insanity causes a strange aftermath.\u00a0 Eat breakfast for supper and pretty soon you think you can spend a meal creating a book title.\u00a0 Then, you think you can go home and immerse yourself in a fictional world where reality is suspended and rules don't exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Humpf, what's next?\u00a0 People who think they can write books on their own terms, without crawling into a box and closing the lid?\u00a0 Writers who think their story tells about their characters in their world?\u00a0<\/p>\n The next thing you know,\u00a0the world may be full of\u00a0writers like me who think that readers have enough\u00a0imagination and creative prowess to open a book because they want to visit a place where love trounces rules, limitations and boundaries, a place as limitless as ...Eden Without The Apple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is having breakfast for supper a Southern thing?\u00a0 Last night I decided that I wanted breakfast for supper.\u00a0 Okay, maybe recalling that IHOP has those cheesecake stacker pancakes right now had something to do with it.\u00a0 The other factor - if one needs more than the idea of cheesecake as an incentive - was that ...continue reading \"IHOP Insanity and Its Aftermath\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1055,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}