Murder by Massage...once more with feeling

It's the book "The Man" didn't want you to read! It's the book suppressed because of its daring and provocative subject matter! It's one of the top ten books that the hard-right conservatives want to see burned! It's the book that...that...

Okay, all of that is a lie. Kinda, sorta.

I guess "The Man" didn't really stop you from reading this book before when it was printed by another publisher. Nope, that was down to a couple of old romance writing ladies who didn't understand my rollicking sense of humor, outlandish characters, and ludicrous mysteries. So, I guess in a way, "The (Wo)Man" did hold you back.

On the other hand Boundless Book Reviews says, "Murder by Massage is chaotic, fun and hilarious!"

So, YOU be the judge!

Because Murder by Massage is back in print! What is Murder by Massage, you ask? Cool! I'm stoked to tell you...

It's the second book in the Zach and Zora comedy mystery series (following Bad Day in a Banana Hammock), that details the adventures of an unusual sibling sleuth duo. Zach’s a vapid male stripper prone to stumbling across dead bodies; Zora, his sister, is a very irritable, very pregnant, very competent ex-security specialist who bails her bro out of trouble (with three kids in tow).

Mix in a cult of "Furries;" a bewigged, pompous pastor and bratty kids; a dance-off; a g-string clad chase through the streets of Kansas City; radical revolutionist old hippies; lots of body oil; and laughs, murder and mystery.

Now, thanks to the good folks at Crossroad Press (*ahem* Clive Barker's publisher *ahem* shameless name drop, name drop, name drop *cough*), you can once again sit back, relax, and enjoy the adventures of Zach and Zora from the comforts of home. Or mass transit. Or work, if you're a slacker.

The third book in the series, Nightmare of Nannies, will follow and I'm currently still working on the fourth book, Massacre of Mustaches (yes, it's been a while; Hey, I'm getting old! My fingers ain't as swift as they used to be!).

SURGEON GENERAL WARNING: Do not read Bad Day in a Banana Hammock or Murder by Massage while operating heavy machinery. Do not attempt to read this comic mystery series while drinking liquids (particularly in front of any electronics). Pregnant women should avoid the Zach and Zora series as the books have been known to induce labor. The books may cause general dizziness, diarrhea, and halitosis. If symptoms persist, see a doctor and tell him Zach and Zora sent you. Don’t drive while reading the series because that’s just dumb.

That's Murder by Massage, part of a kinda cozy, kinda funny, mystery series, available here.

Attack of the Killer Gingerbread Men

Or to keep things more precise...gingerbread women and men. (Must be politically correct, after all).

A week or so ago, my daughter drops me one of her typically and aggravatingly information-withholding texts: You'll never believe what I got talked into doing as a civic-minded citizen.

WHAT, WHAT, WHAT??? I clumsily texted back (Tap, tap, tap, crap! Start over...tap, tap, tap, crap!...Tap...).

I'm going to run down Main Street in a giant inflatable gingerbread man suit, she responded.

Huh. My daughter sure gets caught up in some squirrley shenanigans (her words). But there was no way in hell I was going to miss it.

Apparently, her small town had planned a Christmas celebration in downtown and as an up-and-coming town shaker and mover, my daughter was chosen to be a participant in a gingerbread man race down Main Street.

So the big day came and my daughter sorely regretted agreeing to do it. Particularly with the new information she had recently heard: she'd be racing against a couple of physically fit marathon runners. She (like me), on the other hand, had put her running days behind her sometime around...oh, I dunno, childhood. She didn't even own tennis shoes.

Race day arrived. My daughter's apprehension grew. As did my chuckling. A half an hour before the big event, I drove her downtown where the sidewalks and street were fairly abandoned. Except for a suspiciously derelict Santa hanging out in an alley in front of a Charlie Brown tree for photo op purposes with unsuspecting kids. ("Aieeeeee! Mommy, Santa smells funny!")

I said to my daughter, "Wow, there's practically nobody here. What a shame."

"Good," she said.

 After I dropped her off, I parked and hung out until the Big Race.

The sight of the cookies taking a practice walk down Main Street was the stuff of nightmares. Six large, lumbering cookie people bouncing their way toward me. Surely this was an image ripped from the headlines of Hell.

The cookies lined up at the starting line. Tension mounted. Sugar dusted legs stretched. Crumbs fell. And my daughter's costume kept deflating.

"On your mark...get set...GO!"

The "cookie monsters" bounded down Main Street as 23 onlookers cheered and guffawed. And...my daughter came in dead last. By a large margin.

(Old Man Note: while I got great practice footage, during the actual race, I had a senior moment and filmed the pavement somehow.)

I left, got inside my car. A few minutes later, my daughter yanks open the passenger door and says, "Get me outta here. Now."

Completely mortified, I responded the only way a caring father could: by giggling non-stop.

Let this be a lesson to all of you civic-minded people. It's just not worth it.

While on the topic of horrifying creatures running rampant through the city, there are quite a few beasts, varmints, monsters, and unspeakable things on the loose in my short story collection, Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley. You've been warned! Remember the gingerbread people! Brrrrrrrr...

 

Making an Honest Woman

Since when were all women considered dishonest? Sure you got your Bonnie Parkers, Martha Stewarts, and Marjorie Taylor Greenes, but that's hardly a blight on all of womenhood, right?

The other day I was watching some lousy, dull, supposed romantic comedy starring James Garner and Natalie Wood. (It was so awful, I'm intentionally not mentioning the name of the movie so YOU don't have to watch it.) Near the end, tall, hunky James Garner pretty much demands that he's going to marry Ms. Wood because "I'm going to make an honest woman out of you." He says it again a minute later.

Yow!

What does this imply? That all women are born dishonest (kinda like we're all born innocent until we sin) and women's only salvation is to have some big, dumb caveman swoop in, clobber them with their clubs, and drag them to the altar? Praise be to all big, dumb men for saving women!

Sigh. 

You know, I'd heard this stoopid saying many times before when I was just a wee tot (probably from my grandma or mom), and just stored it away as another silly nonsense saying that had no business in the "real world." But it all came rushing back to me with this dumb movie.

Wow. How insulting. First of all, some of the strongest people I know are women (I'm looking at you, wife). Second, this ridiculous saying treats women as nothing but problems to be fixed by men (the forerunner of mansplaining? And we men just LOVE to fix problems for the helpless ladies, who for years we have envisioned as lil' Mary Tyler Moore crying in the kitchen over burned biscuits, so it'd be up to us men to swoop in, patronizingly tell them they were being silly, chuckle at their helplessness, and show them how to scrape off the burned sections. Ta-DAAAAA! You're welcome!). Third, why are women dishonest and not men? Particularly when it's been proven that men are liable to be more crook-worthy. I point you no further than to politicians.

As your man in the field, I chose to look into this sexist, dumb saying. In fact, I'll mansplain it very simply for my female readers. (Ducks and covers.)

First up, let's take a look at what old, wise Ms. Merriam Webster had to say. The definition is "to marry a woman (especially a woman one has had sex with)." Horrors! Living in sin! And it's entirely the woman's fault, natch, wink, nudge. There's that classic double-standard that's still prevalent today; a man who sleeps around with a lot of woman is admired by his fellows, while women who do the same thing are denigrated. Been that away since I was a teen. Hey, I don't make the rules, I just report them.

Another website claims the saying has been kicking around since the 1600s. Henry Fielding used it in his popular comic novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, back in 1749. Others claim the saying originated in the 1950s, that last bastion of human decency (or so the ol' folks think) where premarital sex was as abnormal as women in pants. I daresay the Bible may have had something to do with it...you know, with Eve, the temptress, leading Adam astray with her apple of evil seduction. Things don't get much more dishonest than that, right?

On the flip side, there is the phrase, "I'm going to make an honest man out of you." But, alas, it basically has the same meaning: the woman has led the decent man astray with her temptations and the only way out is to force him into marrying, thus making him "honest" again.

Women just can't win without men. Or so men think. 

Speaking of really dumb men, my corporate satire/horror/mystery novel, Corporate Wolf, is just chalk full of them. Give it a read, ladies and see if you can't recognize some of them. I'll wait right here until you're done reading.  Hello? Anyone still out there? HeLLOOOOO?

The Fatal Sting

Some years back, I used to take my daughter down to see her grandmother in Florida for a week during the rough Kansas Winters. Our vacation. My mom, being a "snowbird" and all, offered us a place to stay in her apartment, so hey, cheap vacation. Sure, I had to sleep on a leaky air mattress, but it was free board. (Just tell that to my back).

Anyway, one fateful trip, while my mom and daughter were hanging out, the weather had grown warm enough for me to venture into the ocean. I dipped my toe in the water. Kinda cold, but I wasn't going to let that deter me. After all, it gave me bragging rights back home for swimming in Winter.

However...and this is a HUGE however...I had been made painfully aware that Daytona Beach had a jellyfish problem that year.

"Be careful in the ocean, Stuart," my mom had warned me. "The jellyfish are bad this year."

"Jellyfish? Ha!" I scoffed. "What's the chances of one getting me? C'mon! I mean, yeah, they're gross with their translucent umbrella heads and hanging tendrils and itty bitty brains that you can see and all, but how could a mass of jello hurt a man?"

"No," said Mom, "their bite can kill you. I'm just saying..." And she did say it, all the while shaking her head in that manner she had.

But she was just being Mom, no problem for me. Stupid, stupid, way stupid me.

But it was a gorgeous day! Surf's up! Cowabunga! Where the hell's Moon Doggy and Frankie and Annette?

I went running down the beach like an out-of-control, out-of-shape maniac while kids and teens spread in my insane wake. 

Splash!

Ahhhh. Hmm, I thought, damn cold now that I think of it. But I lingered on, a man on a mission.

Suddenly, I felt this sharp sting on my ankle. Holy crap! I looked around and saw something swimming away, but couldn't make out what it was in the water. But I knew, oh yes I KNEW, it was a jellyfish.

First I was in shock. Then the pain started spreading, the poisonous venom traveling through the highway of my body. I trudged out of the ocean, ready to drop dead at any instant. 

Apparently I'd been in the water longer than I thought as the beach had cleared out. All but one boy building a sand castle.

"Hi," I said, trying not to act like stranger danger. "What happens when you get stung by a jellyfish?" I asked this as calmly as I could, thinking it was a perfectly fine question for a grown man to ask a young boy on the beach.

After finishing building his latest parapet, the kid calmly said, "You die." And not once did he take his eyes off his sand project, the little son of Satan with his cold, dead voice! Couldn't he see I only had minutes to live?

Then like an inspirational bolt of lightning, I remembered something. Somewhere I had read that if you're stung by a jellyfish, get someone to pee on the wound.

I was caught in a real dilemma. On the one hand I was near death, nailed by a stupid jellyfish with its stinging cells it uses to fight off predators. On the other hand, I might appear as a predator, asking a young boy to pee on my leg.

Decisions.

Death won out. I thought of what my daughter would think if I got busted for lewd behavior or worse. Better to face an agonizing death by jellyfish then wind up the most unpopular guy in prison.

I stumbled up the beach, made it across the highway, and back to my mom's apartment. The sting had subsided a bit. No longer did I feel its mighty, stupid power coursing through my veins. Sure there was a mad welt on my leg, but I'd take it. After all, I had looked death in the eyes of a jellyfish (wait...they don't have eyes, do they?) and beat it!

But I stayed land-locked the rest of the trip.

While we're on the topic of predators, in my book, Corporate Wolf, there appears to be a werewolf picking off various corporate raiders and go-getters. Some might say "no loss," but hey the fun's in the trip, right? Check it out on Amazon here. I understand it makes a great stocking stuffer (as long as your loved one has damn big feet).

 

 

 

 

A Matter of "Moist"

Pity the poor, little, abused word "moist." For whatever reason, this word has been relegated to being the unloved, misunderstood, red-headed stepchild of the ABC's. Its power is phenomenal as a large number of women have taken to hating the very sound of the word, reducing them to shuddering in revulsion.

Why?

Let's look up the definition. "Slightly wet; damp or humid." Seems pretty innocuous to me, right? Further research leads me down a giant, moist rabbit-hole with one source calling it "possibly the most hated word in the dictionary."

This phenomenon escaped me for a while until several years back when I caught an episode of the amiably goofy sit-com, "How I Met Your Mother," wherein Allyson Hannigan's character confessed to a deep hatred of the word "moist," so naturally Neil Patrick Harris' character repeated the word over and over and over in a one-man, off-off-way-off Broadway show. Funny, but hardly damning evidence. And honestly, I kinda thought this was where the rare phenomenon began and ended: a dumb punch-line in a dumb show.

Until I started meeting women who confessed to despising the word. Someone tell me why!

I know, let's consult a very knowledgeable source, "the BroBible." They take it a step further and claim that EVERY woman hates the poor lil' word. But I'm kinda hesitant to take anyone who calls themselves "the BroBible" at their word.

So let's move onto a more credible source (barely): Cosmopolitan Magazine. They report that an Oberlin College psychologist, Dr. Paul Thibodeau, conducted a study (the doctor was having a slow year, I suspect) on why the hate for "moist." Interestingly, he discovered that men dislike the word as well. Out of a study of 2,500 people, 18% had issues with the word. Those most likely to be impacted moistly tended to be highly educated females.

Doc Thibodeau and his colleagues threw a bunch of words at the study's participants, some rhyming with "moist," like "hoist." No one had problems with hoist, foist, or anything else that sounded like it, so he came to the conclusion that it's not the sound of the word.

The study also found that the word is generally associated with gross bodily functions. (Now I could give examples, but I don't want you spitting out your morning coffee).

One final hypothesis is people think moist is gross because everyone else does. You know, the lemming effect. Kinda like The Big Lie (wait, how did that slip in here? Sorry, sorry, sorry...). 

Bouncing back to the BroBible for one last tidbit of interest (true or false and not mentioned in the Cosmo article) is they claim Dr. Thibodeau's study found one other factor in that women were disgusted by the word because they'd heard it associated with another foul word, such as a body part or article of clothing. Well... Sounds to me like these women are hanging out with the charmers at the BroBible headquarters, maybe.

It got me thinking about other reviled words (and whether other college studies waste money studying these phenoms).  Oxford Dictionaries and other sources have compiled a handy-dandy list of the nine most hated English words. Topping the list is--wild guess--"moist," the clear winner. The next word is a puzzler: "flap." C'mon, those birds aren't going to fold and unfold their wings! Third is "whatever," which I totally get (even though I use it constantly), as it's extremely dismissive. The following two words must've come from old fuddle-duddies: "dude" and "like." Granted, I've heard some, like,  teenagers who use these words, like, five times in a sentence, dude. Hey, how did "literally" get on the list? Probably because people overuse it? I mean, like, literally! "Flaccid" comes in next, no explanation necessary. "Panties" has the number 8 position. My sister-in-law is both affected by this word and moist. Recently, she said, "they're not panties! They're underwear!" When you come right down to it, it does seem kinda...I dunno, baby-speak. Finally, rounding out the list is "pus." WHAAAAAT? Who doesn't like pus?

There you have it.

As a writer, of course, it's my duty to write as many of these words into a sentence as possible: "Literally in the wind, the moist panties flapped flaccidly on the clothes-line, next to the dude's pus-stained Tee-shirt...like, whatever." Hey, I never said it'd be a good sentence.

Moist is a perfectly fine word. Truly there's no other way to describe good cake. "Man, this cake is damp" just doesn't cut it. And moist has been a word since 1325 A.D. so it has legs (although maybe that's why France invaded England. You know, for their overuse of the word). Don't you all take "moist" away from me!

Have a moist day.

Now that I've got that off my chest, Corporate Wolf is a particularly moist book. I mean that in the best horror novel tradition possible, of course! In this werewolf, darkly comic tale, the blood flows moistly. Check it out here!

The Traveling Insominac

Recently, my brother-in-law suggested I devote my blog to hotel and motel reviews based on my notoriously trouble-prone visits to such fine establishments (you guys remember when a raging redneck woman and her seven foot tall, taco-eating, cowboy boyfriend tried to beat me up at a hotel?). While the idea has a certain bit of merit, I'm not quite all in because of two reasons: 1) I don't want to sleep my way across the country (you know what I mean!); and 2) I pretty much don't sleep in hotels because the crazies and screamers always seek me out. I guess I'm a crazy magnet.

Be that as it may, I've deemed myself "the Traveling Insomniac." Case in point...

Couple weeks ago, my family and I found ourselves hunkered in at The Rodeway Inn in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Now, Broken Bow is near both the Texas and Arkansas borders, so you can pretty much guess what the townsfolk are like (or at least the ones I kept running into at the hotel). Masks were nowhere to be found and accents were so thick, you could cut them with a chainsaw.

Upon entering our hotel room, I plopped down on the bed to test it out. Suddenly, thunder boomed. Or I'd been magically transported to a bowling alley as echos bounced, rumbled, and crashed through the room. Upon further inspection, the box spring appeared to be a metal filing cabinet. All of the rooms had these hollow, metal "box springs." Clearly, the hotel owner got a good deal at an office supply store fire sale.

My wife had business to attend to in town, so she stranded me in the room. Well, I thought, at least I have the TV to keep me company. When I turned it on, polka music blared out of the speaker. A huge, grimacing old guy in a red suit was torturing his squeezebox and grimacing down at a poor woman, sweating all over her like the alien queen drooling onto Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. The credits came up: "Big Joe Polka Show Classics."

When I tried to change the channel with the remote, Big Joe went nowhere. Desperate, I tackled the buttons on the side of the TV. Still nothing but Big Joe polkaing his way into my nightmares. Truly I was in Motel Hell.

When I turned the TV off, some guy started screaming outside, pounding on a nearby door. His continued rant of "Hey! I ain't no peepin' Tom! Hey! Hey! I ain't no peepin' Tom! Hey!" hardly lent him credibility as to his peeping Tomlessness. Regardless, whoever was behind the door felt the same way as he finally left unfulfilled.

There were quite a few suspect fellow motel inhabitants. One old guy decked out in camo kept walking by our open door and peering inside. Maybe he was the "Not No Peepin' Tom" guy. I'll never know and I sure wasn't going to ask.

Later that night, nearing the wee hours, I began to drift off. But it didn't hold, as people started yelling. Worse, there was a small dog yipping above us, little paws click-click-clicking across the uncarpeted floor. Not to be outdone, a large dog started barking next to us. In some colossal inside joke of the Fates, my wife and I had been placed in the "Dog Wing," while the rest of the family had nice, quiet rooms.

After very little sleep, the next morning I dragged my way to the coffeemaker, my only salvation. Yet the tray to hold the coffee was missing. My wife told me to just go next door to the combination casino/convenience store to get some coffee.

"Unacceptable," I shouted. "The hotel already lied about the free breakfast (everything was under construction), so I'm not about to give up on my coffee! It's one of my rights as a hotel-stayer! First Polka Joe, then the not-a-peeping-Tom, then the dogs, then--"

"Yes, dear."

Grousing and grumbling, I stumbled my way to the front desk. Except the back door was locked. Freezing, I walked around the building to the front door. Only no one was there. "Back in a minute" stated a hastily scrawled message on the desk. So I waited. And waited. And waited...

Finally--FINALLY!--a young woman wearing her daisy dukes cut-off shorts (who should've known better) trots in through the previously locked back door. Smiling, she says nothing. For whatever reason, the onus was on me to start the conversation.

"Hi. Um...do you work here?" I had to ask, because daisy dukes hardly seemed like professional hotel attire.

"Yeah." Still grinning at me, she offered nothing else.

"Okay, well, my room doesn't have a coffee tray. Could I bother you to get one?"

"Well, I would, but I'm locked out of there." She hitched a thumb toward the front desk. "There's supposed to be somebody else here."

"Huh." Clearly, Hell was shoving me into round two. None of this made any sense, particularly to my addled brain.

"Somebody should be here soon," she says.

So, again we waited. And waited. And waited...

"I guess someone decided to sleep in this morning," I offered.

"I guess. I'll bet things were pretty rowdy here last night."

"You could say that again," I said (hoping she wouldn't, so I don't know why people use that tired cliche). 

"Last weekend, we had to call the cops, 'cause ever' body got drunk by the pool (which was closed and "under construction") and started just a'wailin' on each other."

"Sorry I missed that," I said. "But I sure didn't miss all the dogs last night."

"Oh, yeah." That one really put a smile on her face.

At long last, some other guy (again in shorts!) shows up and unlocks the front desk door. I explain to him my coffeeless problem. They appeared to be at a loss as to where to find a tray.

"Well, how about I just get a new coffeemaker?" I asked.

At their wits end, they finally tell me that they'll bring a tray to my room. Thirty minutes later, the tray was delivered. Right at the moment when I was finally falling asleep to the dulcet sounds of Big Joe and his polka horrors.

While not quite as nightmarish as my recent motel stay, nightmares do abound in Dread and Breakfast, probably one joint you might want to avoid if you value your life. 

 

The Penis Patch

It's my finger!

 

No, the title doesn't refer to a perverted pumpkin patch. Get yer minds out of the gutter! Rather I'm here to relate a true, traumatic tale of tears and...well, a tear.

Everyone who knows me is familiar with my constantly fluctuating body weight. What can I say; I'm an ever-evolving work in progress. Alas, these days, my pandemic pounds are on the upper end of the scale.

What's the point to all of this when you want to read about the "Penis Patch," I hear you shouting at your computer screens? Patience.

Anyway, my added weight makes it pointless to go drop sixty bucks on a new pair of jeans when I hope to lose the weight again. So, I go shopping at "Savers," a local chain of so-called, higher quality thrift stores.

And when I say "shopping," it's a guy's favored way to "shop:" dash in the store, grab something that looks passable and is close to the desired size, and get the hell out.

That's what I did. 3 minutes, Boom! "New" pair of jeans. Or so I thought.

Of course I hadn't tried them on until we were out of town recently. And after trotting them out in public, getting comfy in them all day, it wasn't until I sat down when I realized something ghastly. There was a denim patch right over where the penis sat.

 Horrors! 

The mere thought I was wearing some guy's hand-me-down jeans and his monster junk burst the jeans wide open was nearly too much to handle. I felt a good need to scrub with a Brillo pad. And now that I'd finally noticed the patch, it was extremely noticeable.

Quietly, I called my wife over. She responds with a laugh, and says, "We need to go get you some new jeans. Now."

I poo-poohed the notion, assured her they'd be fine. After all, we had places to go, people to see, and penis patches to show off.

That's when things got worse. Much worse. Exposingly worse.

The penis patch didn't hold. Soon it ripped open and there I was, flapping in the wind. In public. Now I knew what it felt like to wear crotchless chaps. Mercifully, my two nephews were with us, so I had them run subterfuge and walk in front of me.

Later, at the hotel, I just accepted my loss and pitched the ill-fated jeans into the trash, where I can only imagine the house-cleaning staff's reaction upon discovery.

So, let my tragic tale of tears, a tear, and undesired exposure ring as a warning to every guy out there; there's a reason used jeans cost seven bucks.

While we're on the topic of "tearing," in my short story collection, Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley, there's a Bigfoot tale that's a "ripping" good time, if you get my drift, along with many other fine stories beloved by a couple of my relatives.