HUNKA-HUNKA BURNING LOVE by Reese Mobley

I have to confess something. I’m a slow writer so why I put off writing this blog until the last minute, I will never know. I started composing this while getting dressed and putting my face on. Normally I can multitask with the best of them, but today, not so much.

That’s why I’ve got on one dark blue sock and one black sock. And I’ve got one eye closed. You see, I was attacked by the mascara wand and now, may or may not be permanently blinded in my left eye.

Note to self: Separate my socks better and under no circumstances DO NOT type and attempt to apply make-up at the same time.

Now to the blog topic. Heroes. Pause for the appreciative sigh………… and batting of my one good eye. How do you take your heroes? Tall dark and handsome with magnificent hair they sweep away from their piercing blue eyes, chiseled jaw lines and full lips ripe for kissing, broad shoulders, a dusting of chest hair veeing down to their rock-hard abs, narrow waists and just enough hip action to hold up their pressed Wranglers.

Unless your heroine is Barbie, you should shoot from something a little less Ken-like.

Some might argue that we read to escape reality, and I’d have to agree, but I love reading and writing about men who’ve been tossed headfirst into the throes of real life and escaped with their dignity intact. I love men with battle scars and life experiences under their belts. Having said that, I believe it’s our job as writers to make these regular Joes interesting enough for us to fall head-over-heels in love with as much as a the picture perfect man in the listed above.

If you want to read about an on-the-run hero who is so beat up and unrecognizable the heroine calls him Frankenstein for the first half of the book, read Walking After Midnight by Karen Robards.

The hero in my latest work-in-progress is a small town sheriff. Ho-hum right? What if I tell you he’s an on-the-wagon alcoholic that he struggles to keep secret? And his brother owns the local bar. The sheriff plays the saxophone in a weekend band—at the bar where everyone is more than willing to buy him a drink. A little more interesting, right? What if I told you the sheriff always seems to need a haircut, a shave, an ironing board, and just rescued the heroine from an amorous pig hours after he arrested her for having a gun the bank parking lot? A little more intriguing? Hmmm. Still lacking that awe factor. What if I add that the sheriff gave up his dream to raise his ex-girlfriend’s teenage son—a kid that’s not even his—just to give the kid a better life?

Heroes come in all shapes, sizes and degrees of hotness. So, tell me, how do you like your heroes?

Hugs,

Reese

Happy Mothers Day! (Rox Delaney)

Good Grief, It's Mother's Day!....Charlie Brown


I didn't plan on being late, but because it's Mothers Day and many of us reading here are mothers, not to mention we all are children of mothers, I started doing a little research. Because I'll get another stab at this month's topic later, I decided a blog about mothers and literature might be appropriate.

So here we go...


MEMORABLE MOMS IN LITERATURE   (Warning:  I did not come up with all of these myself.)

Cinderella's mom - Classic fairytale --- This would obviously be her step-mother and not on the plus side of the list. ;)
Mrs. Bennett - Pride and Prejudice
Marmee - Little Women
Mrs. Weasley - Harry Potter
Mrs. Darling - Peter Pan --- Certainly much better than Peter's mother, who allowed the pram Peter was in to roll away, while she was chatting with a friend about Peter's future.
Charlotte - Charlotte's Web
Mary - The Bible

A quick note:  Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein, was also an author.

I'd like to add one of my own contemporary favorites:  April Robillard in Natural Born Charmer.

But why stop with literature?  Why not add TV Moms?
(from my childhood:)
June Cleaver - Leave it to Beaver
Margaret Anderson - Father Knows Best
Harriet Nelson - (The Adventurers of) Ozzie and Harriet
Kathy Williams - Make Room for Daddy
(and later...)
Shirley Partridge - The Partridge Family
Marion Cunningham - Happy Days

Now is your chance to add your own favorites!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all of our WARA members, mothers of WARA members, mothers who are reading this and their mothers! :)

From Frankenstein to Ghosts to Witches by J Vincent

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, a novel Mary Shelley started writing when she was 18. It was published anonymously in London in 1818 when she was 19. While horror stories existed in regency times, the period my characters live in, I have never been a fan of it. I refuse to see or read anything remotely related to horror because my mind has the uncanny and extremely uncomfortable tendency to replay scenes I desperately want to forget! But I digress.

Today mention of Frankenstein does not immediately bring to mind Lon Chaney but rather Mel Brooks. The only kind of “horror movies” I ever watched were made in the 1920-30’s. Lon Chaney’s Quasimodo (1923) and Boris Karloff’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) were ones I did watch and was deeply touched by. These movies however are nothing like today’s Dracula or Chain Saw. They wanted to elicit sympathy and pity and did not overwhelmingly terrify or repulse despite the gross disfigurement of the characters who were victims of fate. To quote form Lon Chaney, “I wanted to remind people that the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice. The dwarfed, misshapen beggar of the streets may have the noblest ideals. Most of my roles since The Hunchback, such as The Phantom of the Opera, He Who Gets Slapped, The Unholy Three, etc., have carried the theme of self-sacrifice or renunciation. These are the stories which I wish to do."

Another quote from Ray Bradbury that I found really hit the mark: "He was someone who acted out our psyches. He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen. The history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that's grotesque, that the world will turn away from.”

Beside ancient horror movies I like what some call comedy/horror though not of the Mel Brooks mold. My early introduction to this class of movie was the hilarious Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948. They did several more of these involving Dracula, Wolf Man etc.

Another kind of movie I like is the ghost story—the old Casper films also from the 1930’s (not the friendly ghost but the man who can only be seen by the couple who accidentally hit him with a car) and who doesn’t love The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Then there are the witch movies among which one of my favorites is Bell,Book, and Candle released in 1958 starring Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, and Hermione Gingold.

An average, modern-day witch (Kim Novak), lives in a New York apartment with her Siamese familiar, Pyewacket. Oone day a handsome publisher (Jimmy Stewart) walks into her building and Gillian decides she wants him--especially as it turns out he's marrying an old poison penpal from the witch’s college days. She casts a spell over the publisher. But her powers are in danger of being exorcised by something stronger than the bell-book-and-candle routine: Love. She loses her powers but does she lose the publisher?

Hocus Pocus (1993) with Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy is another one I liked. Bedknob and Broomsticks (1971) with Angela Lansbury. Definitely lighter fare but my kind of Halloween enjoyment.

But then there is Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane . . . . almost too scary for me but then the more I thought about this topic the less simple it became!