The Influence of Parental Influence

As I get older, I recurringly see the extent of my parents’ handprints on my own life (and truly hope that mine on my children's lives have been for the better).

It is amazing how frequently I think of my now deceased parents… especially when I’m having great fun (“Gees, I wish Mom and Dad were here!”) as well as when I’m stressed, under pressure or feeling down (“Gees, I wish Mom and Dad were here!”). Interestingly yet poignantly, in my pop-psych book, Mom and Dad’s Pearls of Wisdom… You Gotta Love ‘Em, I say the following:

I vividly remember talking to my mother about my going away to college, a scared to death freshman, and the words just came out of my mouth, “Mom, there will be times when I will wish you were there with me.”

In a blink of an eye, my Mom calmly said, “Bill, I may not be with you, but I’ll always be there.” And when I did encountered those tough moments and Mom wasn’t with me, the sounds of her words in my head were very comforting.

Like it or not, somewhere our parents’ influence(s) are intricately involved in our lives. For example, in our co-authored book, My Loving Relationships, Dr. William A. Lambos and I identify three ways in which our parents indeed can influence us:

Daddies teach their little girls how to deal with men – they teach them many things about loving a member of the opposite sex. Daddies also teach their little boys how to deal with men – they teach them about male bonding.

Mommies teach their little boys how to deal with women – they teach them many things about loving a member of the opposite sex. Mommies also teach their little girls how to deal with women – they teach them about female bonding.

Together, Mommiess and Daddies teach their children how to deal with loving relationships – they teach them many things about how two members of the opposite sex can love each other, be in love with each other, and be loving toward each other.

My three romance novels, with foci on critical adult loving relationship issues, parental influence is vividly portrayed. For example:

in My Sweetpea: Seven Years and Seven Days, Sheila eventually contemplates how her dad influenced her in her choice of a husband, and Troy eventually sees how his alcoholic father and passive mother influenced him in terms of his relationship with Sheila (and their marriage);

in Fear of Feeling Loved, Marcia thinks about how her developing and future relationship with Michael compares with her parent’s marital relationship;

and in If Ever Again, It’ll be for Love, Diane struggles with how her alcoholic mother’s drinking and recent recovery have influenced her, as well as how she and her mother may affect her daughter, Becca.

Should you be a parent, while you are considering how your patents may have influenced you, you also may want to consider how you may be influencing your children. In my recent pop-psych book, Living Life, Anyway – 2^nd Edition, I specifically say:

"The most loving thing any parent can do is to facilitate his or her son or daughter's autonomous development, self-esteem, and skills and abilities in taking care of themselves."

Here are two questions you may wish to ponder (and address in a response Comment):

How have your Mom, Dad and their relationship(s) influenced you?

How are you (individually as well as with your significant other) influencing your children?

Bill

Our Fascinations and Obsessions with our Cars

An automobile, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods. And, interestingly, the United States is home to the largest passenger vehicle market of any country, which is a consequence of the fact that it has the largest Gross Domestic Product of any country in the world. Overall, there were an estimated 247,421,120 registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2005 DOT study. This number, along with the average age of vehicles, has increased steadily since 1960, indicating a growing number of vehicles per capita.

Over the years, people have been obsessed and fascinated with specific kinds of cars – from powerful muscle cars to sleek sports cars. I vividly recall when I took my first job after graduating from undergraduate school as a high school English teacher – while I was saving money so I could go to graduate school, I still was fascinated and at times obsessed with the possibility of buying a new, 1966 Jaguar XKE Convertible (which at that time would have cost approximately my whole year’s teaching salary -- $5,000). I still think about it (and if you look at the picture herein, you may understand why), but today that car, in excellent condition, would cost about $100,000. But let’s remember, our dreams fortunately are free.

Many of the characters in my novels have their fantasy cars – for example, in My Sweetpea: Seven Years and Seven Days, Troy drives a vintage Corvette convertible and after their divorce Sheila buys a new, red, sporty two-door car with a sunroof; and in Fear of Feeling Loved, after a few paychecks at her new job, Marcia buys a new Chrysler Sebring Convertible. (See, it’s not only the boys with their toys.)

Okay, now I ask you: what car or cars are you or have you been fascinated and/or obsessed with?

Bill

Humor: A Nice Spice in Novels

Humor tends to play an important role in my life… in addition to the entertainment factor of good old “funny,” comic relief can be very relieving in daunting and stressful situations. To wit, I spice up my novels with humor; my reading fan tell me that they appreciate the humor in itself and also recognize that the placing of the humor releases some of the tension they are feeling for and with the characters at that respective moment. There are, moreover, different kinds of humor.

In Chapter 6 of My Sweetpea: Seven Years and Seven Days, for example, we can see what I call “funny yet sad” humor. Frank, the hero’s father – an alcoholic who treats his wife, Doris, in ways that would make Archie Bunker look like a saint – treats the hero and the heroin and her parents to dinner at a fancy restaurant. When everyone has finished eating and is readying to leave the restaurant, Frank asks everyone to go to the bar so he can treat to a round of drinks. Everyone politely says, “No thank you…” The scene ends, however, in a humorous yet sad way:

As the waitress returned to the table with a stack of Go-Boxes, she neatly set Henry and Susan’s two boxes in front of them. “Frank, thank you again so much for dinner. This was a wonderful opportunity for all of us to finally meet,” Henry cordially said to Frank.

“My pleasure I assure you. And you sure you don’t want to join us in the lounge for a nightcap? I don’t want to have to go into the lounge with Doris and be by myself.”

In Chapter 18 of Fear of Feeling Loved, we can see what I refer to as “funny wording” humor. Marcia, the heroin, and the hero’s (Jack’s) teenage daughter are at Jack’s house trying to be helpful by doing some house painting. While in the garage they accidently spill a can of green paint on Jack’s beautiful Harley Davidson Road King motorcycle. They decide to wait until he returns before trying to clean it up. The scene is described as follows, humorously describing Jack’s reaction:

Twenty minutes later, they heard Jack pull up to the garage. Then they heard the garage door open and the door to Jack’s SUV close. They also heard the faint sounds of the opening and the closing of the backdoor hatch as he got things out. Marcia and Christine looked into each other’s eyes, visualizing Jack entering the garage.

Then they heard it – the sound coming from the garage was somewhere between a coyote howling at the moon and an opera singer passing a stone.

And in Chapter 9 of If Ever Again… It’ll be for Love, we can see what I call “cute” humor. Diane, a divorced single mom, is on a five-day vacation at a resort in Jamaica. She meets the hero, Michael, and before leaving her room to meet Michael for dinner she is missing her little girl terribly, calls home and speaks to Carol (her friend who’s been watching her five-year old daughter, Rebecca) and then Rebecca:

Diane’s heart glowed when she heard Rebecca say, “Hi mommy!” A few minutes later, after hearing Rebecca tell her all about how Teddy was being good and taking care of her, Diane said, “Mommy has to get ready for dinner, so I have to go. I love you, honey. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“I know,” Rebecca replied excitedly.

“And what are you doing tonight, honey?” Diane nonetheless asked.

“We’re not making a chocolate cake for you.”

“Oh, okay.” Diane could hear Carol laughing.

In my latest pop-psych book, Living Life, Anyway, I have a chapter on “Living Life, Humorously.” Simply said, there are many speed bumps and pot holes in the road of life – the ability to appropriately laugh at them, and at times even at yourself, indeed can make ones life-journey more pleasant, happier and functional, as well as less stressful and more meaningful.

If you have a humorous experience that was simultaneously funny and helpful in some way, please share it.

Bill

E-books, Old Dogs and New Tricks

One of my Christmas presents from my girlfriend, Sharon, was a Kindle e-book reader. Being an “old dog” who for the past half century has been a veracious reader of “tree books,” I approached my enjoyment of e-book-reading suspiciously. To my surprise and delight, however, I have been enjoying my Kindle immensely. Then a couple of weeks ago, I attended an excellent Florida Writers Association “E-book Publishing Workshop” conducted by my friend and fellow writer, Jim Swain, and left with my enthusiasm for e-books ratcheting onward and upward. This is the future!

Regarding some basics, an e-book is an electronic book (also e-book, ebook, digital book) is a text and image-based publication in digital form produced on, published by, and readable on computers or other digital devices. E-books were originally developed by Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to “encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.” Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, PG it is the oldest digital library. During our Workshop, moreover, Jim mentioned that:

• by 2009, sales of digital books were 2.5% of the book market;
• in September 2010, Publisher’s Weekly announced that sales of e-books in the United States had reached 8.5% of the total book market, representing the only growth segment in the book industry, worldwide; and,
• in November, 2010 Publisher’s Weekly reported that the sale of e-books will reach $1 billion by 2011, and may account for 50% of the total book market by 2015.

This indeed is the future!

My own relatively brief research on e-books revealed numerous websites and assorted information – such as poignant articles on advice and information; copyright resources; e-book compilers, promotions, readers and resellers; e-publisher services and associations; and web publishing. I also enjoyed a very interesting online article on “How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write.”

As my fan-base readers know, three of my 27 published books are novels – romance novels involving assorted, pivotal and psychological aspects of loving relationships between a heroin and a hero, and interwoven with family issues, courtship, marriage and divorce, and single-parenting issues, among others, and spiced with wit, humor and what has been described as “subtle steamy sex.” Having the digital rights for such, I worked with an excellent e-book formatter, Michael Campbell, who did a superb job of formatting my three novels into Kindle and e-Pub formats. Then I posted the three novels on the Internet and they now are available from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com:

· My Sweetpea Kindle NOOKbook

· Fear of Feeling Loved Kindle NOOKbook

· If Ever Again… It’ll be for Love Kindle NOOKbook

You also can see these three novels are now spotlighted on the first page of my Website: http://emenerbooks.com/default.aspx

I invite you to check them out… and remember: if you have a Kindle, you can download a Sample of each of these novels: if you don’t like what you’re reading, no harm, no foul; and if you like what you’re reading, you can purchase them (for about 20% of what they cost in their “tree book” versions).

In closing, let me remind you of something I have said on numerous occasions – verbally as well as in writing – something very pertinent to the essence of this blog:

“Old dogs are capable of learning new tricks…

sometimes it just takes a little longer.”

Ciao for now,

Bill

New Pop-Psych Book – Living Life Anyway – 2nd Edition

As you very well may have seen in my November 11, 2010 Post, after retiring from the University of South Florida last May I took a much-needed hiatus from writing. Yes, I do have my next novel about 80% outlined and have been reading voraciously since, but I also have been busy doing other things with my wordsmith passion. For example, I recently have been working hard on getting my three “tree book” novels up and available as e-books (which will be the topic of my next Post). Moreover, I completed and published the second edition of my 2002 pop-psych book: Living Life, Anyway – 2^nd Edition.
Numerous friends and fans have been asking me about this latest book and thus I thought I’d take a moment to tell you about it.

The double entendre in the title of this book captures it all. Living Life is what it’s all about– not existing through life or struggling through life, but living life. Moreover, you can live your life anyway –anyway meaning “any way you want to live your life” and anyway meaning “in spite of the unwanted and undeserved dirty deals your life may have handed you.” For many people, life’s most important journey is an inward journey… a life of inward travel. Seriously and humorously, the book’s 22 chapters address living life: Consciously, Presently, Hopefully, Autonomously, Interdependently, Congruently, Trustingly, Honestly, Fearlessly, Temporally, Passionately, Responsibly, Structurally, Compartmentally, Purposefully, Serenely, Spiritually, Morally, Genuinely, Lovingly, Peacefully and Happily. This book, an enjoyable and fun read, and offers many opportunities to seriously look within and appreciate that in spite of outside turmoil and difficulties, a person still can live a meaningful and happy life, anyway.
If you have any questions or comments regarding this 2^nd Edition of Living Life, Anyway, please let me know. If not, enjoy reading it (if you already haven’t).

Til next time when I’ll tell you about my three soon-to-be-published e-books,

Bill