you for your kind words. Christmas is one of my favorite holidays so writing the descriptions was fun! Many of them were obtained as I drove around looking at decorations while listening to Christmas carols.
I felt something between a pang and a jolt then, recalling last year when Shelby and I tooled around the neighborhood with a thermos of hot chocolate listening to Bing Crosby and Mannheim Steamroller songs and taking in the rooftop Santas, outsized manger animals, high-voltage light displays. I teased her but had to admit that the over-the-top exhibits and booming music had made me smile. I read on:
Much of what I write is made up, or fictional, though sometimes I will model an event after a real-life experience or a character after someone I know. I hope that answers your question! Please check back for publication information on my next book, Urban Safari: Hunting the Two-Legged Beast.
Happy reading!
Shelby
I replied of course:
Thanks for your quick response. Being as I am a man, I was wondering how men feel about your insights into the male psyche. For example, I think you were spot on in that a jerk like Nick does not deserve Holly and that he should be punished—maybe he will even learn a lesson about how to treat women. But I was wondering what was so horrible about, say, a gift of perfume or a gift card or even a pedometer in the current health-conscious craze. Again, just curious!
Thanks,
Clint
I waited until, as a writer might say, the sun fell into the far-off hills and the stars filled the sky and I grew tired. The next morning, I checked my Gmail before work and found only an Olga’s coupon, a GoFundMe request and a loan consolidation offer. All day at work, as I greeted customers, calculated estimates, and kept loose tabs on the porters, I wondered if Shelby had figured out it was me. I thought I did a good job of masking my identity, but maybe she understood the complex workings of the web in a way that I never would, somehow following the string of my fake name and account back to me. My paranoia dissolved when I saw her response later that evening.
Dear Clint:
While I know that more women than men read my books (and romances in general), I do think lots of men read them and understand that certain behaviors are unacceptable. The presents listed in the book are fine for, say, your aunt or your mother or even someone who requests those gifts specifically. But when Nick offers Shelby those gifts, he reveals that he has not considered who she is and what she needs from him. Generic merchandise will not please her (or any girlfriend, especially one he is hoping to win back). Hope that answers your questions!
All the Best,
Shelby
But when Nick offers Shelby those gifts? Was that a Freudian slip, a revelation that Holly is Shelby’s alter ego and Nick is me, or at least a symbol of my thoughtlessness? I finished the book that night, though of course the ending was predictable: the party guests openly mock Nick’s pathetic attempt at reconciliation, and after he is physically thrown from the house he stares through the front window as Kris bends to one knee, pulls a black velvet box from his pocket and looks hopefully up at Shelby/Holly. I threw the book across the room while simultaneously wondering if Alice Candello might be more palatable if she laid off the wine.
The next day I decided that I would have dinner with my best girl: Mom. I bought the fixings for her favorite meal: chicken, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic, white wine for the crock pot cacciatore accompanied by baby potatoes smothered in butter and finished off with a dessert of chocolate ice cream. Though she had been the author of the torment I had endured on numerous blind dates, she’d always had the best intentions. When she arrived, I greeted her at the front door and took her coat. “Right this way, Madam,” I said and offered my arm.
“My,” she exclaimed, “all those dates turned you into a gentleman!”
“I was always a gentleman,” I protested.
“Yes, but you’re nice again!”
I was trying. She sat down in the living room as I trotted to the kitchen to check on the potatoes and fetch the remainder of the wine I’d used in the recipe, and when I returned my mother was bent over, pulling something from under the sofa. Shelby’s book.
“What’s this?”
“A poorly written book,” I said, reaching for it, but she just stared at it, mesmerized.
“Shelby wrote a book?” She looked from me to the cover and back again. “It’s so … bright.”
“Here.” I pried the paperback from her hand and ushered her to the table, where I would painstakingly steer us clear of anything resembling a serious conversation. After commenting on each element of the meal—the peppers were cut in perfect strips, the chicken was not at all dry, the potatoes were very white—my mother insisted on helping me clean up. When she entered the kitchen she stared at the counter, spellbound.
“Isn’t that the crock pot you gave Shelby?”
I trod lightly. “Yes. How about some chocolate ice cream?”
“Why is it here? Are you back together?” she asked hopefully. “Is that the reason for this special dinner?”
“No, Mom. She didn’t want it. She left it. That’s all.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.” Then she considered for a moment. “Who wouldn’t want a crock pot?”
“Shelby, Mom. Shelby didn’t want a crock pot.”
Over dessert I caught my mother staring at me pityingly and in response I offered an almost manic performance to demonstrate that I was fine, just fine—happy, in fact—laughing like a maniac at her Reader’s Digest jokes, springing from the couch to refill her wine glass, saying that the blind dates had not really been so bad.
“I’m so glad,” she said. “Because Mrs. Sitterly’s daughter Sally is lovely. She owns her own daycare center. Can you imagine?”
I could. A room full of diaper-clad, sticky-fingered puking machines.
“I think kids could cheer you up,” she stated confidently as she patted my knee. “Bring you back to your old self.”
I wanted to ask about this alleged old self she clearly missed, but I understood what she meant: effortlessly cheerful, consistently engaged, much more tolerant with her and even Mr. Bojangles, who I suddenly recalled had urinated on my new leather gloves with impunity last Christmas. Even Shelby, who must have paid a hundred bucks for the now piss-soaked clumps, patted the unapologetic cat on the head and tsked about aging and bladder control. Why couldn’t she have been more patient with me?
“I’m fine,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced myself.
“How about another date,” she said with a wink. “Get you right back in the saddle!”
When my mother left I spent the rest of the evening imagining what I would rather do than embark on another blind date: undergo a root canal, take a punch in the mouth, get thwacked with a cattle prod.
SALLY SITTERLY WAS LATE, BUT that was all right with me, the new and improved, back-in-the-saddle, determined-to-be-patient
