Modern Romance Novel Sex Scenes

Years ago we followed the loving couple to the bedroom door, only to have it closed in our face. Now, not only do we go all the way with them in the bedroom, we often find that they don't wait to get there. Sex can take place almost anywhere--in a parked car, in the middle of a field, on the side of a mountain [not a good idea]--just like in real life. Nor does the heroine always have a wedding ring on her finger.

Donna Baker, Writing a Romantic Novel, 1997 

Two of B. R. Myers' Rules for "Serious" Novelists

1. Be Writerly

Read aloud what you have written. If it sounds clear and natural, strike it out.

2. Play the Part

Take yourself seriously. Practice before the mirror until you can say things like this with a straight face:

"It's because I want every little surface to shimmer and gyrate that I haven't patience for those lax transitional devices of plot, setting, character, and so on, that characterize a lot of traditional fiction."
(Mark Leyner)

B. R. Myers, A Reader's Manifesto, 2002

Who Do You Trust?

     An AP-GfK poll conducted [a few years ago] found that Americans are suspicious of each other in everyday encounters. Less than one-third expressed a lot of trust in clerks who swipe their credit cards, drivers on the road, or people they meet when traveling.

     What's known as "social trust" brings good things. A society where it's easier to compromise or make a deal. Where people are willing to work with those who are different from them for the common good. Where trust appears to promote economic growth.

     Distrust, on the other hand, seems to encourage corruption. At the least, it diverts energy to counting change, drawing up 100-page legal contracts and building gated communities….

     People do get a little more trusting as they age. [Perhaps that's why so many old people are victimized by swindlers.] But beginning with the baby boomers, each generation has started off adulthood less trusting that those who came before them.

     There's no single explanation for Americans' loss of trust. The best-known analysis comes from Bowling Alone, author Robert Putnam's nearly two decades of studying the United States' declining "social capital," including trust. Putnam says Americans have abandoned their bowling leagues and Elks lodges to stay home and watch TV. Less socializing and fewer community meetings makes people less trustful than the "civic generation" that came of age during the Depression and World War II.

      Crime rates fell in the 1990s and 2000s, and still Americans grow less trusting. Many social scientists blame 24-hour news coverage of distant violence for skewing people's perceptions of crime.

Connie Cass, "Poll: Americans Don't Trust Each Other," Associated Press, November 30, 2013 

A Reason To Write

I write because, if I don't, my characters will murder me in my sleep.

Astrid Gruz

Casey Anthony: The Mother From Hell Wants A Baby?

     On July 15, 2008, Cindy Anthony, the grandmother of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony, reported her missing. Cindy had not seen the little girl for 31 days. Caylee lived in her grandparents' Orlando, Florida home with her mother, 22-year-old Casey Anthony. In reporting the child missing, the grandmother said the trunk of her daughter's car smelled like it had contained a dead body. Casey Anthony, during the 31 days her daughter was missing, had been partying with friends. When confronted by the police regarding the missing child, she said her daughter had been abducted by a nanny who, as it turned out, didn't exist.

     In October 2008, the authorities charged Casey Anthony with murdering her daughter in the first degree, and promised to seek the death penalty. Two months later, the child's skeletal remains were found in the woods near the Anthony home. The little girl's nose and mouth had been covered by duct tape. The medical examiner ruled her death homicide.

     Casey Anthony went on trial for murder in May 2011. By now the case had become a media sensation with virtually all of the TV talking heads and their on-screen experts predicting a murder conviction. There hadn't been so much true crime unanimity since the O.J. Simpson trial. The expert commentators ridiculed the defense attorney's theory that the girl had drowned in the family swimming pool on June 16, 2008. Surely the jury would accept the prosecution's version of the death: the defendant had killed the child by administering chloroform, then duct-taping her nose and mouth.

     On July 5, 2011, with millions of TV views sitting on the edges of their seats, the judge announced the jury's verdict: not guilty. For the next two weeks, the talking heads discussed nothing else. How could this murderous mother walk free? What went wrong? Who blew the case. What will become of Casey Anthony?

     In January 2012, a video diary recorded the previous October by Casey Anthony, surfaced on YouTube. In speaking to her computer three months after her acquittal, she said..."things are starting to look up and things are starting to change in a good way..." Casey never mentioned Caylee in the four minute video, but talked about a dog she had adopted and loved.

     Since 2012, the story of Casey Anthony and the murder of her daughter, particularly in the world of true crime television, remained in the public eye. In 2013, a made-for-television movie about the case aired on Fox. Four years later, true crime buffs were treated to a mini-series based on Caylee Anthony's disappearance and the investigation of her murder. The series featured Casey Anthony's trial and controversial acquittal along with her parents' belief in her guilt.

     In 2017, Casey Anthony told an Associated Press reporter that she didn't plan to have any more children. "I would not be dumb enough to bring another kid into this world," she said, "knowing that some little snot-nosed kid would say something mean to my kid. I don't think I could live with that."

     Casey Anthony also said, regarding her unpopularity and the fact so many people believe she had murdered Caylee, "I don't give a shit about what anyone thinks about me, I never will. I'm OK with myself, I sleep pretty good at night."

     In May 2018, Casey Anthony's father, George, said he did not want a relationship with his daughter. As far as he was concerned, he and his wife Cindy "must have raised a bad seed."

     Casey Anthony was back in the news in June 2019 when she announced that she and Fox were working on a "risque" tell-all movie about her life after Caylee. She acknowledged her reputation as one of America's most hated mothers, and that during the 31 days her daughter was missing, she "drank and carried on like nothing happened."

     In September 2019, "sources close to Casey Anthony" told reporters that because her biological clock was ticking, the 33-year-old was thinking about having more children. According to these sources, Casey Anthony was hoping to find some meaning in her life.

     Perhaps the best one can hope for is that Casey Anthony, through these unnamed sources, put out a phony story to generate publicity for her upcoming movie.

The Pablo Martinez Child Exorcism Murder Case

     Pablo Martinez, his wife Romelia and Pablo's 6-year-old son resided in a small, one-story stucco house on the Pascua Yaqui Native American Reservation near Tucson, Arizona. The federally recognized Indian tribe operates its own criminal justice system that includes a police department, a prosecutor's office, a public defender's service, and a courthouse. Native American reservations are subject to federal law, therefore the FBI has joint law enforcement responsibility in these jurisdictions. Pablo Martinez was not a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, but his wife Romelia was.

     On Thursday afternoon, September 26, 2019, 31-year-old Pablo Martinez was supposedly giving his son a bath. The boy was a special needs student at the Lynn/Urquides Elementary School in Tucson. Mrs. Martinez, the 6-year-old's stepmother, heard loud gurgling sounds coming from the bathroom. When she tried to enter the bathroom to investigate, the door was locked. Pablo Martinez refused to let her in so she found the key and unlocked the door.

     What the boy's stepmother witnessed in that bathroom shocked her. Her husband was holding the child's head under the bathtub faucet as steaming hot water poured into his mouth. She yelled for him to stop, but the father said he couldn't, that he had to do what he was doing. At that point, Romelia Martinez called 911. (There are reports that Mrs. Martinez, before calling 911, called, but couldn't get in touch with, a local priest. Her first instinct to call the priest stemmed from the fact she believed, as did her husband, that the child was possessed by demons, and needed to be saved.)

     When members of the Pascua Yaqui Reservation fire and police departments arrived at the Martinez house, they encountered the couple waiting for them in the front yard. A first responder's question to Mrs. Martinez brought this response, "Talk to him," meaning her husband.

     Inside the dwelling, the officers found the boy tucked into his bed. One of the fire department responders propped the naked child on a pillow and tried, without result, to revive him.

     The unresponsive boy was rushed to the Banner University Medical Center in Tucson where doctors pronounced him dead. The drowned boy had burns on his forearms, elbows, and head from scalding water.

     In speaking to officers with the tribal police, Pablo Martinez admitted pouring hot water down his son's throat in an effort to cast out the child's demons. He said his son had been possessed by something evil that had caused what the father described as the boy's demonic behavior.

     In a followup interrogation by FBI agents, Pablo Martinez confessed to running hot water into his son's mouth for up to ten minutes. He thought the hot water would force the demons out of his son's body.

     On October 1, 2019, a federal prosecutor charged Pablo Martinez with first-degree murder. He was held without bail.

John Steinbeck On Starting A Journal

Here is the diary of a book [The Grapes of Wrath] and it will be interesting to see how it works out. I have tried to keep diaries before but they don't work out because of the necessity to be honest. In matters where there is no definite truth, I gravitate toward the opposite. Sometimes where there is definite truth, I am revolted by its smugness and do the same. In this however, I shall try simply to keep a record of working days and the amount done in each and the success (as far as I can know it) of the day. Just now the work goes well. It is nearly the first of June [1938].

John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel, 1969 

Black Girl At Christian School Perpetrates Hate Crime Hoax On The Media And The Public

     In 2019, 12-year-old Amari Allen attended the Immanuel Christian School outside the District of Columbia in Springfield, Virginia. She had been a student at the $12,000-a-year private evangelical institution since kindergarten. Vice President Mike Pence's wife Karen worked two days a week at the school as an art teacher. She had been with the school for twelve years.

     On Thursday, September 26, 2019, while the 12-year-old's grandmother, Cynthia Allen, was doing the girl's hair, she noticed that a portion of her granddaughter's dreadlocks had been cut. When asked about that, Amari Allen broke down in tears, and with some prompting, told her grandmother a horrific story.

     Three days earlier, during recess at the Immanuel Christian School, three white boys who had ben bullying her since the beginning of the school year, approached her after she slid down sliding board. They laughed at her, said her hair was nappy, and called her ugly. The bullies, according to the story, told Amari that she shouldn't have been born, and that she was an "attention-seeker."

    The schoolyard harassment didn't stop with insults. One of the bullies covered Amari's mouth with his hand as another boy held her hands behind her back. The third white kid took out a pair of scissors and cut out a patch of her dreadlocks. The school bell rang and the mean boys ran off laughing.

     Amari Allen said she didn't report the incident to the school out of fear of bully retaliation.

     Cynthia Allen, understandably crushed and heartbroken over what had happened to her granddaughter, called the school and demanded that the three bullies be immediately dismissed from Immanuel Christian. Head of School Stephen Danish called the Fairfax County Police who promised a full investigation into the alleged hate crime.

     A local CBS television affiliate came out first with Amari Allen's hate crime story. A statement released by the school read: "We take seriously the emotional and physical well-being of all our students, and have a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of bullying or abuse. We are deeply disturbed by the allegations being made, and are in communication with the family of the alleged victim to gather information and provide whatever support we can."

     After the local television station aired Amari Allen's hate crime account, the story was picked up by the national media.

     Although reporters had been hoodwinked over the past few years by numerous hate crime hoaxers, the story was published as gospel without a hint of skepticism. Amari Allen's ordeal was presented as further evidence of America's rampant and growing racism.

    On Monday, September 30, 2019, following the Fairfax County Police investigation, CBS News reported that Amari Allen had made up the hate crime story.

     Stephen Danish, the head of Immanuel Christian, announced that Amari Allen admitted her accusations against the three white boys were not true. "While we are relieved to hear the truth and bring the events of the past few days to a close, we also feel tremendous pain for the victims and the hurt on both sides of this conflict. We recognize that we now enter what will be a long season of healing."

     A spokesperson for the Allen family issued the following statement: "To the administrators and families of Immanuel Christian School, we are sorry for the damage this incident has done to trust within the school family and the undue scorn it has brought to the school. We understand there will be consequences, and we're prepared to take responsibility for them."

Free Speech In America Is On The Line

One presidential candidate wants Twitter to suspend the U.S. President's account because she doesn't like what he says on it. Another presidential contender is telling cable news networks not to book a certain guest because he will say bad things about him. If one of these politicians get into the White House, say goodbye to your right to speak feely in this country. Kiss the First Amendment goodbye as it walks out the door and never looks back.

Houses That Have Been Scenes Of Famous Murder Cases

It's hard to know what to do with houses that have born witness to sensational crimes. Knocking them down seems like a futile attempt at repression, as if bulldozing a building could erase what happened there. Leave them up, though, and they risk becoming tourist attractions, drawing the kind of gawkers who cruise by slowly, looking at something banal--a high school gym, a brick apartment building, a two-story house in the suburbs--and picturing something horrible.

Rachael Moore, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, 2019