Sorry I missed you last week. Life got busy, as it will for all of us on occasion, but last week was terribly busy in my part of the world. As I write this, there’s a stucco guy in my back yard, trying to save my once lovely (stucco) fence from total destruction. I’m waiting on a call from a plumber in regards to a different issue. I’ll be seeing a painter in two days for an estimate on still another concern. Last week, on the very day I was supposed to blog, Poison was under anesthesia to have dental surgery.
 
​My banker is weeping as he contemplates the damage that’s being done to my depleted savings account. Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t have enough money left in my account to rate a personal banker. Considering our monthly statements, I’m lucky the banking industry allows me to keep a personal ATM card. The way things are going, they may come to regret that decision.

So I’ve been distracted and a little anxious, cash-wise. I’m also feeling a little pins-and-needle-y because my new novel is so far from done. It moves along, slowly, slowly, because other events keep interrupting my progress. Glynn is more than ready to start Third Brother (and a few readers have let us know, they’re ready for Third Brother, too) so I feel as if I’m letting people down. The good news is, I like what I’m doing with the new book; the bad news is, as long as I keep the pages from Glynn’s eyes – I want the completed story to be a surprise -- I don’t have anyone to tell me if they think I’m on the right track. If I’ve gone horribly astray, I could always throw my pages away and move into our next sequel to One Bride.
 
The truth is, I just wanted an “Atta girl!”  It’s been awhile since I’ve had one. I know the story is okay. In younger days, I might have drifted into the wrong direction but I’ve been at the keyboard for enough years to realize when things are shaping up nicely. The new novel will be fine, if I can just get enough time to finish it.
 
At the neighborhood Game Night (I won the first game), one of the neighbors said she’d heard that Glynn and I write romances. When I told her I was in the midst of a mail-order bride novel, she couldn’t have been more excited. “Those are my favorite,” she exclaimed. “The innocent bride. The dark and brooding hero she has to win.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my hero was neither dark, nor brooding. He’s kind of an upbeat optimist. The heroine doesn’t have to win his heart; he falls for her immediately. He’s a good man, without a trace of bad boy in him. Then I remembered how many readers do like a bad boy, do want a man of mystery colored by the tragedies of his past. I immediately decided I needed to rewrite the hero of my novel. Instead of smiling when he sees Faith, Sam will frown. Instead of chasing after her, he’ll…oh, I don’t know. Stare mournfully off into the distance, or something.

Worried about this, I lost the next three games before returning home. You want to see dark and brooding? Come to my house.

​Here’s something I’ve learned this week. I’ve discovered that head wounds, even small ones resulting from clumsiness and general inattention, bleed copiously. Fingers are not an effective bandage in this situation.
 
Here’s something I didn’t learn for the first time this week, but which was recently reaffirmed: People don’t mind talking politics and religion, as long as the person they’re talking with largely agrees with them. Disagree on too many points or too vigorously, and the conversation can come to an abrupt end – or a sudden fight.
 
While a good fight can be a cleansing experience, most of us would rather avoid the aggravation. As a result, the MSNBC News crowd generally doesn’t play bingo at the Fox News media center. When it comes to religion, there aren’t too many church picnics where a group of Mormons have gathered to enjoy a bit of egg salad and watermelon with the Presbyterians from down the street. Instead of trying to understand one another, we’ve all decided the other guy is wrong and we’d rather not hear anything they’ve got to say.
 
This is how weird it’s gotten: When Glynn and I published our novel, The Atheist’s Daughter, under our non-romance pseudonym, we had readers tell us they wouldn’t buy the book because the heroine’s mother was an atheist. It didn’t matter that the heroine’s best friend and romantic interest was deeply religious. Since those readers never bought and read the book, they’ll never know about him.
 
The title was my choosing, by the way, and we walked from an attractive contract to keep it. I wanted that title because I intended for us to do a three-volume set of stories: The Atheist’s Daughter, The Preacher’s Son and The Minister’s Wife. I’ve often wondered if our sales struggled because of the title I wanted for Book One. I’ll never know for certain. I do know that there are several novels out there entitled The Preacher’s Son, but no other publisher has come out with another Atheist’s Daughter.
 
All of which came back to me when our neighborhood’s get-together luncheon was canceled on Saturday, secondary to gale force winds. Instead of going home, I joined my friend, Sue, and her friend, Thorny. (“Thorny” isn’t her real name, of course. She’s a nice woman with a very pleasant, ordinary name. Wouldn’t it be cool if her name was Thorny, though? I want that name!)
 
We were all discussing music when Thorny volunteered that she used to like Bruce Springsteen’s songs. Even though the music hadn’t changed, Thorny no longer listened to the songs because of Bruce’s outspoken political beliefs. She didn’t mind that he had political beliefs, she told me, she simply felt he shouldn’t share his with the rest of the world.
 
“What if you shared the same beliefs?” I asked. I assumed she didn’t. “What if Bruce came out in a way that supported your party?”
 
It took her a minute to think. “That would probably be okay. But I’d rather he not say anything at all.”
 
Then Thorny shared that she no longer enjoyed Jim Carrey movies (because the actor sang a song about Charlton Heston and, as I understand it, in favor of gun control) and she’d stopped watching Harry Potter films, because Daniel Radcliffe had revealed that he was an atheist. I volunteered that I no longer followed Woody Allen’s projects and hadn’t for years, but she didn’t ask why. Maybe women of a certain age already know why.
 
There was one other actor who Thorny avoided these days, too. “Tom Cruise.”
 
I wondered, “Is it because he’s a Scientologist?”
 
“Because he seems so pleased with himself,” Thorny said. “Whenever I see him on screen, that’s the feeling I get. I think he likes himself too much.”
 
I didn’t have a response for that. I’m guessing there are many, many celebrities who are pleased with themselves, and several of them have good cause for those feelings. If I was as successful as the top stars, or was as genetically-blessed as they appear to be, I’d be ordering more mirrors for the house at this very second. (Well, no, I’d be sipping my expresso. I’d have one of my assistants do it.) Or maybe I’d have more sense than that. Maybe I’d realize that I’d gotten lucky, and decide to make-do with the twenty-four mirrors in my fifteen bedroom mansion.
 
I’d keep Glynn, too. Stephen Amell, you’ll have to find a different Sugar Mama.
 
Except for Mr. Allen, I don’t have too many celebrities on my “Don’t Watch” list. I don’t tend to follow anyone’s latest tweets, posts, Instagram messages, or Facebook musings, so I don’t know or care about their political and religious leanings. Consequently, I can continue to watch Gotham and Agents of Shield and Supernatural without feeling grumpy about the actors on those shows. In other words, Clark Gregg, you’re still my guy.
 
I do try to keep up with the Real Housewives, but those women don’t seem like celebrities to me. They’re more like the trashy neighbors in the really big house at the end of the street. It doesn’t matter what they mutter about God or country because they’re crazy. When they talk, I giggle.
 
When it comes to you and me, I’d like us to get along so, while we can talk politics and religion, I’d rather we not. Not on this blog, not on this website. But if you want to discuss Phaedra Parks and those Atlanta girls with me – Can you believe that last reunion show? – I’ll brew you a cuppa and we’ll have a fine time.
 
See you next week.

And life has gotten in the way of my words today. Not only am I spending too many hours dealing with the stucco guy, and painters, and the sprinkler man, and the money men (because you can't surrender you savings account to the stucco guy, painters, and the sprinkler man without meeting with a "finance team"), but I've just somehow punched a divot directly above my right eyebrow and the bleeding isn't in a particular hurry to stop.
 
This happened because I am not a particularly graceful person. I'm almost as clumsy as our much-missed kitty, Pinky. Now I'm wondering if I'm going to have a scar when this is done. A scar would only be fun if it was achieved in a particularly memorable way.
 
What happened to me wasn't particularly cool.
 
Oliver Queen couldn't help but notice the mysterious scar above her right eyebrow. Too late, he realized she was watching him.
 
"The scar? It happened in the Spring of 2017," she said in a smoky voice. "Hurrying to enter my car, I thunked my head into the edge of the roof as the front door swung into my legs. And what of you, Mr. Queen? How did you get quite so many scars?"
 
"Oh, hey, look at the time," Oliver said. "Gotta go!"
 
Me, too. So no blog this week. If this bleeding doesn't stop, maybe no blog next week, either.