Interview with Jeanette Anderson, part one

 

Jeanette Anderson may be new to novels (I reviewed her first novel here), but not new to writing. The best of her blogs share a little something about her life. Here she discusses growing up in poverty near Snake River. She expands on that with a couple of personal anecdotes here, including this description of a UFO sighting:

Unbelievable to us, our eyes took in the image of a slowly moving saucer-shaped object, with red, green and white lights blinking around the perimeter. It moved directly over our heads toward the church, and I was sure it was too low to clear the steeply pitched roof. Much to my surprise, it did not hit the building but glided over it and disappeared.  We scattered and shouted the news to the boys who meandered around in the side lot. They yelled and jumped on their motorcycles and peeled into the vacant field behind the church property to see if the saucer had landed there. They returned disappointed. There was no sign of a flying saucer.

In her bio for a book-review blog, she wrote about this experience on a mountain road:

Years ago, I was steering down the steep, windy lane from the Sundance Ski Resort when my heart began to pound. The car behind me had closed the gap between us on the mountainside. Maybe he was a psychopath who would drive me off the road, attack and stab me to death. Maybe I was being chased by my handsome lover who had begged me not to leave him, was aching to hold me in his arms and wouldn’t let me go. Maybe it was both. My hands froze on the steering wheel when at the T-junction the suspicious driver pulled up beside me. When he turned in the opposite direction, and the chase was over, I decided it was time. As an accomplished and published ghost writer with over twenty-five years of experience, my subconscious was calling me to enter the world of fiction.

These demonstrate the power of Anderson's creativity and ability to enthrall with literary thrills. Though some might suggest a measure of credulity, you'll also notice the skepticism that also governs the imagination--that it is fiction that propels us forward. Just as she navigates the Charybdis and Scylla of politics, she threads narrative creativity as a skilled pilot, testing her readers' imagination with wild aplomb.

 - - -

How did you get started writing?

My mother read literature to us as kids around the kitchen table, and I was fascinated how the words could make her cry and give me goose bumps. I picked up a pen and began journaling as a young teenager and still journal to this day. I must have a dozen volumes now.

Have you mined those journals to write new works? Or are they workshops in craft? Or just personal records?

I used journaling to hone those emotional expressions and clarify life’s experiences which as you know is a huge part of storytelling, to get all that emotion onto the page and into the heart of the reader.

 

Who were some of your favorite writers back then? now?

I loved Nancy Drew Mysteries growing up. Now I enjoy the mysteries of Mary Higgins Clark and the romance of Nicolas Sparks.

What was the origin of the novel?

It was quite unexpected, really. I met a Palestinian woman on Shepherds Hill just outside of Bethlehem who thanked me for being willing to write a story of her people and their struggle. I felt embarrassed as I reflected on her words because I realized I was not even close to describing the conflict of that war-zone. I traveled home and changed my story. Instead of trying to avoid the conflict I put my protagonist into the center of it.

 

On her blog, she expands:

[The Palestinian woman and I] sat together and talked about the despair she had experienced; the bus searches and beatings, the laws prohibiting her from ever seeing her birthplace, Jerusalem. How in her desire to worship on the Sabbath she’d snuck through a hole in the security fence to reach the Mount of Olives and been shot at by soldiers. It was chilling.

 

Part two of the interview is here.

Interview with Jeanette Anderson, part two

Part one of the interview began here.

A review of her romantic-suspense novel can be found here.

 

What did you do for research?

I spent six years researching and interviewing friends from Palestine and Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and of course I traveled there and did onsite interviews. I had great support from both sides of the story.

Studying Palestinian poetry was a phenomenal experience. They have a flavor so unique and powerful that I loved playing with that.

What were some of those flavors?

The poems I studied had a unique style, with carefully placed words born of suffering which might seem angry and morbid to some, blood, death, despair and ruin, but because they were so beautifully written, they fall on your heart.

An American friend who studied there said that he had Muslim and Israeli friends with whom he freely discussed and debated important issues, whereas in the US, we're afraid to talk politics, except with like-minded sorts. What was your experience?

I imagine when your life is rooted in conflict and you are living in a war-zone you are not afraid to share your opinion. They disagree with each other, for sure and will correct you when they think you’re wrong. I found the opinions of people in Palestine well informed through their personal experience.

The novel did feel like you'd worked hard to understand the culture(s). In one part the community protects a criminal of their people, but at the same time tries to help a woman find her child. People make grave mistakes and feel shame with no way to atone--and are treated as if the mistakes were purposeful.

It is a complex society and my experience is limited, but I loved being with them. I found these people extremely loving, caring and helpful on both sides of the conflict.

How many of these events are based on stories you've heard?

This story was definitely inspired by the people I interviewed. I worked hard to get as many of their stories into the work as I could. The true stories from the book Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef really touched me and informed my story.

 

Have you heard back from anyone from the area about the novel--or friends whose stories helped shape the novel?

Yes. They’ve asked for boxes of books for their friends. Some Palestinians wished I would have told more of the atrocities they had endured. Some of my Israeli friends felt I was a bit tough on the Israelis. I’d hear, “I can tell you’ve been talking with your Palestinian friends!” Then I would hear, “No. An Israeli doctor would never do that,” from the Palestinian side. Yet, I personally interviewed the Israeli director of surgery at the facility where the surgeon plugged the bullet hole in the student’s heart with his finger, and saved her, while the Palestinian shooter was in a stall down the hall. This doctor had personally flown with a Palestinian father and his child who was dying of cancer to a special facility and overseen his treatment. I wish I could have told all their marvelous stories.

What were some of the difficulties you had in writing it?

I had a hard time walking the line between being anti-Israeli or anti-Palestinian. I am neither. My goal was just to get people to think about their thinking. Open some minds to a new way to see this battlefield. Expose them to something they hadn’t thought of before. It seems to have been successful in that way.

It was also hard to figure out which genre this story fit into. It was not a good fit for romance because of the thriller aspect, but in the end, I chose to go with romantic suspense and hoped people would find it refreshingly different.

It is refreshing and different. I was constantly surprised when sections became a thoroughbred thriller. Who are some of your influences?

Everyone close to me, my husband, children, extended family and friends, all believed in me and encouraged me, and said that I could do it. What a blessing.

I definitely would have to say that my greatest mentor is David Farland. I have no idea how someone can write so stunningly. I started out careening from wall to wall trying to figure this writing process out, but he was right there with me. He has coached and edited and corrected and nudged me along this path and always with profound kindness. I couldn’t have done this without his expertise and encouragement.

What are you working on now?

This time I am taking the story to Southern Spain. I was on one of the southern beaches collecting shells when I saw my next love interest. He came out from an abandoned hotel and with a spear in his hand waded out to claim his catch. I asked myself. Who is this squatter and what is his story? I named him Marcos and he is a fascinating character in my next novel.

Good luck to your current and follow-up novels. I look forward to reading what you conjure up next. Thank you for the interview. 

My pleasure,Trent.

Love Behind Enemy Lines by Jeanette Anderson

 

Here's a contemporary romance thriller or thrilling romance for those who have a penchant for thrillers and romance. Both play a significant role. 

Glancing at the cover, I assumed that the novel was primarily romance, and put it on the back burner--to read as soon as I'd read these others. Romance fascinates me but usually as part of a mix, so the title and some of the subtle imagery should have suggested the strong impact of the thriller genre. 

In the novel, Jannah has a reason to become an activist. Effron and she make mistakes and hide secrets that get them in trouble. But even in a desert, they will bloom.

The strength of the writing took me by surprise. Anderson takes on a bestselling style, as expected for the genres she's mining, but puts effort into making her scenes vivid, more than most bestselling writers do.

Let's prove this by opening the book at random and picking a passage that illustrates this:

"When Shaphier came into view, Jannah’s heart quickened. She cranked the window down and leaned her head out to feel the stiff breeze on her face. Though home to 23,000, to an outsider, it appeared a backward town with unpleasant residents. She admitted it was a broken-down community. The power cables sagged between pine-log poles and gusting wind cartwheeled plastic grocery bags across the fields of gray stubble—after being a prisoner, it was a sight to be cherished."

What a keen eye for choosing the right word to carve out an image.

This is no easy love story. Setting it in one of the most controversial regions on the planet would probably not occur to most. But that challenge becomes a draw.

Does it accurately portray the conflict in the Middle East? That I cannot address. It feels like she has made a valiant effort to portray the conflict with difficult and admirable nuance, but those closer to the issue might have another perspective.

The opening sample might suggest whether you'd be interested:

Chapter 1

Wrongly Accused

For too many days, Jannah al-Jorbouni lay on a frayed and smelly mattress in her dim jail cell in Lachish Detention Center. The corridor light cast a yellow glow on a colony of ants climbing through the concrete cracks. Their black oval bodies darted into the bedding, food, and clothing.

Jannah clutched a handful of knotted sheets as the pain in her stomach spiked. A bizarre fever had raged through her body all night.

Like ice crystals on a frosty windowpane, she was freezing cold one moment, clutching the thin blanket under her chin, then suddenly, burned hot, her bedding drenched in sweat. The noxious odors of sweaty bodies and sewage further sickened her, and she felt like a caged animal.

She licked her cracked lips, which did little to moisten them, and stared at the two swallows of water left in the cup she held.

She leaned up, took a sip, swished it around to let the liquid bathe her tongue, then held it in her cheeks before swallowing.

As the gray days passed behind bars, each day drearier than the one before, a kind of hopelessness gripped her. She struggled against despair more than she did against the pain in her abdomen and ran her hand over the tally marks scratched into the wall near her bunk. Six months in this hellhole. How much longer can I hold out? she wondered.

The first few months at Lachish, she’d believed she could handle anything, but her Christian spirit had been drained. Too much wrath and retaliation had left her soul riddled with holes. The only evidence that she had not been entirely broken was when she left the boiled egg yolk or crust of bread on the dinner tray for Besan, who was more sister than cousin.

“The Goddess on the Street Corner” by Margaret St. Clair

First appeared in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, reprinted by David G. Hartwell

Summary:

Because a Greek goddess appears, you’d think the result would be humdrum. It isn’t. A man finds her on the street corner, takes her home and recognizes her as a goddess, feeling her transcendence in her touch. He treats with delicacy and brings color to her cheeks with liquor—liquor he won’t touch since she touched it. 

Commentary with Spoilers:

St. Clair holds off on the revelation of which goddess she is until the ending. This is something of a cheat if he’s known all along, but maybe she thought it might cheapen the theme had the reader known in advance that the mystery goddess is Aphrodite. His love for [worship of?] her leads to him spend all he has and sell his blood to keep her in expensive brandy he cannot afford. She rewards him with the gift of love, promising that women fall for him. He goes out and returns with amorous tales of his supposed conquests to please her of her power, but she still wanes, less and less substantial. She feigns the creation of flowers below his window and [he thinks?] he sees a single pink flower. He claims to see a whole street of them. She disappears. 

Is this story about gods? or about love? Possibly both. He despairs at her disappearance, worried who will take care of him, when plainly he was taking care of her. But in a psychological sense she had been taking care of him although the irony of his feeling remains palpable—simultaneously both true and untrue. My one complaint would be--if she is disappearing due to lack of believers--how did she live this long? If her meeting this gentleman makes him a strong adherent (and she's gone this long without adherents), why would she disappear now? 

Not a classic in terms of speculation, but a thought-provoking keeper to file among her best. Contrast this to her most famous tale, “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” (my first, briefer response to the story) which is the inverse: speculatively rich but not nearly so thought provoking.

The Romance of Romance (II)

 

[For the beginning of this article, go here.]

So I subscribed to Audible Escape and have read several to get a sense of their structure. Also, a female poet and I are collaborating on a book about a relationship that evolved over time. This structure might be worth knowing to follow or to buck. I didn’t know how to tell which writers were good, which not, so I skipped around, sometimes looking at popularity, sometimes brevity to get a feel for the genre.

In romances, the above barriers are often just initial hurdles to appreciating these books. I really like Debbie Macomber’s [Debbie Macomber?] Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, which is about a man who owns an ailing vineyard and has neglected his wives in the past but will turn around here. The title refers to not only a Bible verse, but also three angels [angels? can a good book be written about angels?]. But it unfolds a sweet, lovely tale with a semi-sophisticated theology along the lines of the prodigal-son parable. Its closest literary kin would be “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens.

Cassie Edwards wrote a few with the word Savage in the titles, which I had no idea what they meant. Maybe a primitive or “violent” love, but instead it referred to a racial slur about Native Americans and turned that into steamy romances about falling for Native American men in the Old West, which repurposes something negative into something positive although some may still balk. Caucasian cowboys tend to be the bad guys.

Often, both protagonists are struck by the “thunderbolt”—an unreasoning, unreasonable love-struck state that Mario Puzo described in The Godfather (discussion here). However, since there are often a good guy and bad guy who both are struck by the thunderbolt—why should one thunderbolt make her fall in love but not the other? Sometimes in the novels it’s sheer persistence (if she has only one suitor), which men aren’t supposed to do any more. If she says no, then that’s supposed to be it although some romance novels suggest otherwise, especially if it’s an opposites-attract type.

A number of romances—especially from decades prior to #MeToo, which went from confession to a political movement—involve the male pushing physical boundaries, not simply pursuing with words. The man presses her lips with a kiss, which if she doesn’t melt immediately, she will eventually. You can glimpse it even in literary speculative fiction like John Crowley’s Little Big, so it seems to have been a literary expectation in romances. In fact, it is often male desire that initiates female desire. I read an article that romance writers vowed not to write this way, anymore, but I’m guessing, given the nature of the humanity’s distribution of tastes and attributes being cast along bell curve, it will continue to be written.

Not that I’m taking feminist stance, but romance stories without reason were most striking from a “scientific” or objective study of human nature, but I’d be more interested in tales about like minds uniting—a type I never found in my forays across the genre (undoubtedly, they exist in a dusty library alcove). Often, the couple’s reaction is immediate and without logic. This isn’t to say that love isn’t like this, but why aren’t there stories where people slowly fall in love, taking tentative steps forward? Yes, this seems right. No, I’m not sure about that....

You’d think caution would be reasonable since the commitment is supposed to last, as the novels often conclude with this being “forever” or “always.”

Usually the couple are of unlike minds; bizarre circumstances thrust them together; and the couple accidentally fall into each other’s arms and unable to resist falling in love. There sure are a lot of alpha males out there with money breeding in their pockets.

In some stories, the male protagonist is conveniently contrived to know exactly what’s happening in the female’s mind, which would be nice, but highly improbable, especially if he’s an alpha. If he’s a beta, he may well have the ability to sense emotion, but not read minds.

Think about it. One type takes action. The other observes. Which will be more likely to read? But there are exceptions to any rule—probably someone who has spent time in both categories.

Why not a romance where, strangely enough, the characters might be able to gauge emotions, but not know the reasons behind them? Or maybe they mistake emotion “X” for curiosity. Perhaps this is too literary and complex for a genre romance—much as male lovers of thrillers want definite good guys and bad.

Romances seem to be more wish fulfillment than an attempt to mirror reality, which carries no shame. That vein is the same men mine from James Bond, especially the early films. Whether or not a romance story stretches credulity throughout, most seem to be sweets for those weary of a dismal life and dismal news reports.

(I may or may not revisit this topic as I finish this Audible Escape trial. My plans include more, ahem, Debbie Macomber, Georgette Heyer (Kij Johnson recommended her, if I recall correctly), and the usual literary suspects, and anyone else who comes recommended.)

The Romance of Romance (I)

 

When I worked on a dredge ship as a lad, I had a boss who recommended that I read romances so that I could understand the feminine mind and woo them. I didn’t (see four reasons why below)—at least, none but the Pulitzer-winning Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and literary classics like those by Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Bronte sisters, etc.

I recently reread Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, which is labeled as a romance although I’m not sure why. A man abandons his wife for a younger woman who has been living with them—a cousin whose father and former wealth have both passed on. What makes the novel powerful is not the ill-fated couple’s love despite a wife who tries to separate them, but that of long-suffering wife’s who by the end is suddenly thrown into new light by the foolish impetuosity of the other two. (Your mileage may vary, of course.) If it is a romance, then the modern romance seems to be riddled with tragedy.

See also Henry James’s DaisyMiller, which is also lumped into this category. Two men fall in love with a woman, and she doesn’t seem to love either although she seems to love them being in love with her. And then she [Spoiler redacted. See link for spoilers un-redacted.] This is a love story?

Maybe just the fact that someone is in love with someone else—requited or not—is enough to qualify a story to be a romance. In other instances, the romance seems merely pleasant, not involving romantic love at all. So maybe in some instances, a romance could be a story with a happy ending.

Four things barred my interest in the non-literary romance.

The first being their covers. Bare-chested men—or otherwise, a hunk. Women with wind-blown hair. Sometimes together, sometimes separate, with nothing more to indicate their complicated situation. The covers are often fluffy, brightly colorful and designed to catch the feminine eye. I like the kind of cozies and locked-room mysteries that Agatha Christie wrote but so many modern covers of this ilk are littered with dogs, cats, prettily colored cottages. The mind reels. Make the sign of the cross, to protect yourself.

The second are the openings. The characters are way too idealized. This perfect woman meets that perfect man, but the imperfect community strives to keep them apart (or the man is imperfect until she reforms him). Despite being the lead characters, too few have imperfect women like Gone with the Wind. Although Scarlett may have been a little too imperfect, she eventually makes herself admirable. And spoiler alert, she doesn’t even get the guy. Is that romance?

(It is interesting that readers of these books long for the idealized view of people, rather than a realistic picture. Maybe men are the same: idealizing men as unflawed, conquering heroes, battling mastermind criminals, but I don’t think most men see themselves in place of such heroes but rather wished they could be that flawless. I’ll discuss James Bond in a different post.)

Third, the initial scenarios are hard to buy. Jennifer Blake’s Roan starts enticingly enough: A woman is kidnapped but she escapes with a gun only to be shot at by the police, thinking she had Stockholm syndrome like Patty Hurst. [Consider the rest of this to be spoilers although it’s necessary to establish the length the genre goes to stretch credulity.] Her shooter is a rugged cop who lives in the beautiful country and takes her to be a prisoner under house arrest in his own home because the prison is full of evil men who might touch and leer at her, which of course the cop does when he makes her a prisoner, but it’s ethically okay because he’s a handsome cop and one of the good guys. She, of course, is a rich heiress which she cannot tell us or the cop until toward the ending when they happen to bump into her former fiancé.

Finally, the writing at times is awful. Some passages may be nice enough description, but it’s awkwardly done: Why would the character be studying her house now? Why is she looking in the mirror to observe her over-looked beauty? It’s almost as if she knew the reader was present and she’s trying to sell us on all her good points while at the same time pretending to be modest about her good points.

Last February, Audible had a free two-month trial of their Escape program, one of which was James Lee Burke’s Black Cherry Blues, which I wanted to read anyway—possibly his best book. His main character, Dave Robicheaux seems to embroil himself with men still haunted by Vietnam, twenty years after the war, but here he has lost his wife and his job and is trying to clear himself of a crime he didn’t commit all while trying to raise a young orphan. Somehow not being chained to being a cop frees the book to become a literary mystery, which I suspect has been his aim. There has always been an element of this in his books, often digging into character pasts to realize them, but here the characters pop out. Go read it. (I’m not sure why it is bundled with romance books except maybe his love of wife and child is almost idealized, but the usual genre awkwardness is eschewed.)

[See part II here, available on Wednesday, early]

Marriage, Money and Class

After hitting the trifecta of stressors early this year, I exhumed the literary classic novels (and some plays and narrative poems) to uncover large structure meaning of what this world is supposed to be about. I've had crises of faith before where I dove into scriptures seeking answers, so this wasn't new. But I hadn't ever asked what do most authors in history think the point of life was.

Now the Bible is a curious document and doesn't really say what the point of this life is except as transition period to the next although some suggest that the point of this life is God, which is true enough as far as ancillary activities (or perhaps the motivator of primary activities), but what about primary activities themselves? What should they be?

For most novelists, the point of life has been the struggle for marriage, money, and attain one's class (one can only surpass one's station in life only through luck and marriage). Few writers seem vested in the spiritual realm (Tolstoy being one)--possibly because religion was too divisive.

The most curious fact for most of these books is that each one--marriage, money and class--is largely magical. How does one fall in love? It's just a thing that happens. No reason is involved (or if reason is involved, it's criminal, such as the pursuit of money or class). The closest that uses reasoning about why people fall in love might be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë where some explain why they're in love (or not) although the primary couple isn't fully explained.

I forget the Trollope novel, but one has a guy who falls for a woman who pressures him into marriage. He likes her, but isn't ready for marriage. Once he commits himself, however, it becomes scandalous that he doesn't want to marry her until he earns enough money. Later, he falls for a higher class woman and does the unthinkable: He rescinds his offer of marriage in order to marry into class. Then he suddenly gets a raise and prefers the first woman he proposed to, but he is far too scandalous now to marry. And he ends up with no woman and loses his attractiveness.

But why should this be scandalous to change one's mind before marriage? This is never explained but accepted. Women, though, can change their minds up until marriage, however. Perhaps this is their primary power. This becomes a major issue in Dickens and Tolstoy novels although in Tolstoy it also becomes scandalous that Natasha changes her mind before marriage. In twentieth century movies like The Graduate, this change of mind is not only accepted but also cheered.

Class also conveys a social magic just by its presence. If the king or queen wanders into a hospital, then one should expect an amelioration of pain. Their random assortment of genes somehow has them touched by God. If I exaggerate, it isn't by much.

Money is a curious, powerful but lower pursuit. It too is magical in that there is no explanation of how one attains a large sum except often through a rich dead relative, which at the end of a novel usually falls into the lap of a poor sap who has been a good soul. But the monied themselves are often striving to reach up, which is seen as vulgar but sometimes necessary. The relatively poor but high class might, with reluctance, marry below themselves. It is the job of the monied to help out these poor, high classed to return them to their former glory.

Now a classy guy can gamble away his family's fortune which makes him foolish, morally lax, yet pitiable. If a poor guy does the same, he gets what he deserves.

All nineteenth century writers buck against the idea of class not marrying below themselves. Dickens is quietly subversive in that his best characters end up having to work for their money (as opposed to being lackadaisical rich just because you belong to a certain class). Writers like Henry James wrestle against his English predecessors in his work by coming from the angle that the monied may be the true moral center, albeit still there to support the classed who are lovely fools.

In twentieth-century America, we abandoned class in favor of "status" or job where factory owner > doctor > lawyer > architect > etc. Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy has an interesting examination of these topics from this new American point of view.

Many Mary Higgins Clark suspense movies (I read a few novels when I was a kid) support a very traditional view of marriage, money and status. And they are still magical quantities. [Note: I refrain from discussing the quality of these films except as a sociological lens to examine the world we live in--to see how we see the world.]

A curious phenomenon is society's increasing separation from the original trio of life pursuits. Where does an Edgar Allan Poe story fit into this schemata? Maybe these represent quirky returns to the spiritual via various physical or mental crises.

One store's forgotten 1970s hit by Herbert Hunter spouted lyrics that sounded something like "I was born to love you. You were born to tear my heart apart." Very strange. Is this desire or his belief in what reality is or should be? Considering the long history of those who have laid claims on our life's purpose, where does such a world-view come from? Is the lyric-writer (and those who buy into this philosophy) asking for a life of pain? Well, it wouldn't surprise me that I got the lyrics wrong as I can't find them online.

What should the point of life on Earth be?

"I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno" by Vylar Kaftan

First appeared in Lightspeed. Up for the Nebula award. Online. Interview.

Note: This is not a story that is spoiled by revealing the plot's events. However, it is available online, so read it first if you are concerned with spoilers.

The narrator falls for a man who keeps eluding her--from her perspective, almost purposefully despite being attracted to her. First he flies off at relativistic light speeds, so she marries a German who dies and when her lover returns, he marries her despite the difference in relativistic ages.

She, then, takes off on her own relativistic journey, which may or may not be spite, but her reason for leaving is otherwise unclear.

Despite life-extension, she gets a disease that requires cryogenics. Later, she uploads her personality and still waits for her lover to join her.

Although these characters seem confused about their attraction, they are not especially unreliable, except for this:

" 'I’ll marry you,' you said once, 'if you can’t find anyone else.' I laughed because I thought you were kidding. You couldn’t even propose right."

At first she's humored, perhaps a shade incredulous or flabbergasted. She believes that there is a proper way to propose "you" did it incorrectly, yet she recognized it was a proposal, which should be flattering.

There are a few reasons why someone might say such a thing:

1. Lack of self-confidence.
2. Belief that the other person is superior or too good for him.
3. Long shot: A complimentary put-off. However, the lover appears to return to her, even when she is relativistically thirty years his senior, which erodes this possibility.

Later, she writes:

"If I can’t find anyone else. That’s a terrible proposal. It makes a woman feel like you’re just putting up with her.

This makes the narrator unreliable. That's not really explicit or implicit in the statement. More likely, it's justification for marrying someone else--lies a person tells herself to break off interest in someone she cares for. Maybe that's the point of the story: How we unnecessarily confuse ourselves in matters of love. As silly as many romance-based sit-coms are--usually some stupid misunderstanding arises that could be clarified with a sentence or two--they may be nearer reality than one would suppose.

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Note: I do not necessary advocate books listed here. I may not have read them. Sometimes I'll comment, sometimes not, depending on time. I research different items and put it in my wish-list and viola, they're on sale. Eventually, maybe I'll be able to show what I used them for. I have read John C. Maxwell's Failing Forward: How to Make the Most of Your Mistakes, which memory says was good. I bought and have been meaning to read the Stanley Wiater titles.

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$2.51

How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less 
by Nicholas Boothman 
$2.99

How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You in 90 Minutes or Less 
by Nicholas Boothman 
$2.99

The Flirting Bible 
Fran Greene 
$2.99

Free and reduced ebook lunches

ROMANCE-ology 101: 
Writing Romantic Tension for the Inspirational and Sweet Markets 
by Julie Lessman
Free

Doyle After Death
by John Shirley 
$0.99

Where Things Come Back 
by John Corey Whaley 
$1.99

The Golem and the Jinni 
by Helene Wecker 
$1.99

Christmas in Venice: A Short Story by Meadow Taylor

Christmas in Venice: A Short Story by Meadow Taylor
Free

I don't tend to read romance, but I hunted down several as I was writing one of my own and came across this bright thing.  The problem with many a romance is that the males are over- or under-idealized.  As this is a short story that opens a novel, maybe Taylor falls into the same trap.  But for this tale, she succeeds.  Her character has just arrived in an airport in Venice when a handsome if rough officer grabs and wants to know about her bag.  She makes what seems to be hard-headed foolish choices, which turn out to be was when she she explains herself.  A nice flavor of mystery/suspense stirred in.

Writing & "Bad science" links

Karen Heuler on her story collection

Nathan Ballingrud on his story collection

David Farland on romance

DF Lewis on Sein und Werden's latest issue, The Ironic Fantastic edited by Rhys Hughes

(next issue's guidelines:  Exquisite Corpse)

Steven Barnes on writing (blog)

Bruce Bethke's Stupefying Stories provided ebooks of the Campbell award nominees's stories

Rachel Pollack's stories read:

"The Souls in the Trees"
"The Pickpocket's Destiny"

George Orwell on politics and language 

Science animation

Animation of asteroid that passes near Earth

Bad Science (possibility of)

Reader smartly challenges interpretation of scientific study about chewing gum aiding concentration.  (however, I heard of a similar study several years earlier, so their study might have tried more to explain an earlier study's finding, but still smart and worth reading).

Likewise, another study possibly confuses causation with correlation, but it's hard to tell as the article is full of ax-grinding.