After reading Madeleine's Masterpiece, several people have asked me who I imagined as the famous celebrity, Charlie Evans. I think Eric Dane would fit the bill. Brad Pitt and even Rob Lowe were mentioned, but Charlie is supposed to be 42 and both those guys are in their early 50s.

It's fun to imagine my latest novel as a movie and, of course, as I wrote it, I watched it play out as a film in my head.

​Let me know who you think would be the perfect Charlie Evans, an ego-driven, handsome, sexy, but not too bright movie star.

I was thinking about the men I've known, either through dating or work and two appear in my memories more often than the others. I call them Psycho Yeti and Nick the Dick the Prick the Hick. I know. How immature -- if you only knew how they achieved these monikers. I'm about to tell you how and why they go down in my history nooks (and crannies in my mind) as the most egregious liars I'd ever met.
Let's begin with Psycho Yeti, thus named because he not only was the hairiest little varmint I'd ever seen naked (his back looked like a bathroom mat) but his stories about conquests, achievements and financial wealth were concocted out of very thin air. I met him through my son. Charlie was friends with his son, Matt. They lived in the neighborhood and though I had met Matt several times, I never met his father. That changed when PY called and invited me to Matt's birthday party. I accepted after being somewhat charmed by the smooth talker. I walked over to their rather rundown house expecting to find a man who resembled his son or vice versa. Instead, I was met at the door by a short, bow-legged, Stetson-wearing, cowboy in his late forties. Instantly, he reminded me of the Marlboro man. He had crystal blue eyes and, despite his weathered face, a strong jawline. I found him handsome, but when he began talking about his bronco riding days, I was turned off. Rodeos disgust me. Humans are the only willing participants in the brutal form of entertainment and I didn't want to be with a man who harassed bulls.

It should be noted that when the Stetson was taken off, PY went from the Marlboro Man to Uncle Morty. His comb-over gave him the appearance of a harmless old relative that sits at the Thanksgiving table barely saying a word, picking at his food like a homely bird.

PY was interested in dating. I wasn't. I told him we could be friends and get together for a drink or two as neighbors. He agreed and during that time, I was regaled with stories of him being a Formula One race car driver before he even had a driver's license (he was 15), winning bronco riding contests and even winning medals as a Green Beret. He owned a commercial painting business and bragged about how successful it was, how many employees he had and that he was so well off he could buy me anything I wanted (even though he never bought me anything except for dinner once). He also offered me a job as project manager at $50,000/year. This was back in 1998, so the offer was highly appealing. He offered to take me with him the following week on a job. I agreed readily, but the night before I was to go, he had to cancel. After two weeks of a platonic relationship, I am embarrassed to admit that I fell for Psycho Yeti. Up until this point, I had never questioned his veracity. I should have wondered why a wealthy man would be living in an old, cheap tract home in a lower middle-class neighborhood. My bad. The allure of being with a man took precedence over common sense.

It was when PY cancelled a second time that I began to question his stories. My brother offered to look him up online, something at the time wasn't possible without working for a company that had access to private records. What he found out rocked me to the core. He had at least two aliases, was in arrears with the IRS and his business lost its contractor's license years ago.
 (to be continued)

I've been procrastinating  about writing on my blog page for about a month. I tell myself that I'll do it today. I said that yesterday and the day before and the week before. I usually plan out what I'm going to say but since I get hung up on that minor detail, I thought it best to sit down and write without the aid of an outline, so here goes: 

People pretty much agree that we're composed of energy. If we're broken down into atoms and those atoms are broken down, only energy remains. So, wouldn't it be fair to reason that what we watch and eat and do influences who we are at an energetic level?

I don't believe that our planet is becoming more enlightened -- the opposite is happening. Wars exist on almost every continent, if not between religious factions, then between gang members, neighborhoods, individuals warring against the system, even families. All that negative energy pervades our psyches. We can't help but feel the pain and suffering.

What about eating animals? Animals that have been raised in intense confinement. From their loveless birth to their untimely death in a slaughterhouse filled with fear and suffering, their flesh is packaged in cellophane, shipped to the supermarket, bought, cooked and eaten. If the creature's energy is trapped in its muscle and tissues, the humans that consume it are ingesting its pain, isolation, terror and fear. 

Unless you're aware of what happens in these mega-factory farms, you have no idea the brutality that is encased in those massive walls. Videos of unwanted piglets being slammed against the ground in order to kill them, will remain in my mind forever. Newborn male calves born in a dairy farm being taken away moments after birth and isolated in a veal crate will also never leave me. the thought of dining on an animals' flesh is as repulsive to me as murdering the animal myself.

Isaac Bashevis Singer said it best: "As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together."