Saturday, May 30, 2020

Lovers and Losers

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: His name was Mark Shaw. He was in the same biology class as I was. It was 1965, or so. And he was—so cute. And he loved cars. Cars. I didn’t care at all about cars, but okay. I tried to figure out some common ground for the casual conversation that would lead him to see how perfect I was for him.

So I channeled a Beach Boys song—what’s a little deuce coupe? I remember asking him. What’s four speed duo quad positraction 409?

He told me. And then he asked someone else out. I have to say that he crosses my mind from time to time. And, talking to the lovely and dear pal (and SinC Guppy, yay!)  Judy Penz Sheluk, I learn I am not alone.

Heartbreaks and Half-truths

I’ll admit it, I’ve been dumped, and on more than one occasion. The first time was just before grade eight graduation, when my prom date dropped me after I cut my waist-length hair into a “windswept bob.” Admittedly, the hairdo was a disaster, and not only because I’d gone to my mom’s hairdresser (whose idea of fashionable was perm it and roll it). I have wavy, unruly hair, which tends to frizz, and this was back in the day without flat irons and styling products.

 But my father had laid down the law: Cut my hair short so that people could see my earrings, or leave it long and go pierceless. I suspect he never believed I’d do it, but off it went. I really wanted pierced ears.
Judy and her hair. 

Next up was my first chaste kiss, grade nine, after our school’s spring music concert (he was shorter than me and had to stand on the curb to kiss me, but I walked on air for weeks).

 Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before he’d set his eyes on a long-legged track and fielder. My best efforts to master hurdles and high jump with two weeks of training failed to impress, and I gave up both sports at the same time I gave up on him.
But getting dumped aside, I was fifteen the first time a boy really broke my heart. With shoulder-length hair, the bottom of his blue jeans frayed to perfection, and a history of changing schools, albeit not entirely by choice, he was the bad boy to my good girl.

And, of course, I fell madly, passionately in love with him.

Years later, he would get an honorable mention in my first published short story, Cleopatra Slippers. What I didn’t mention in that story was the way the boy dumped me without warning.

By phone.

On Valentine’s Day.

For a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl he’d been seeing behind my back. A girl with “experience.”

I wonder, sometimes, if any of the boys mentioned even remember my name. My guess is, probably not. After all, to the best of my knowledge, they aren’t writers, we of the very long memories.

 But thinking of Blue Jean Boy got me thinking about the theme for the second anthology  I wanted to edit  under the Superior Shores Press umbrella: heartbreaks and half-truths.


Coming up with a theme, however, is just the first step in what is actually a very long process. For this collection, a callout was sent out in mid October and thanks to social media, the first anthology published by Superior Shores Press, word spread quickly. By the time the submission deadline of January 15 arrived, I’d received 106 submissions from the US, UK, Scotland, France, Germany, Australia, Argentina, and Canada.

Culling 106 submissions down to a manageable number was a daunting task, but the result is a diverse collection of mystery fiction in which one common thread emerges: Behind every broken heart lies a half-truth.

And behind every half-truth lies a secret.

HANK: Congratulations on the anthology, Judy! And what a fabulous line-up of authors! Wow. In clduing longtime friends of Reds  Kate Flora! James Lincoln Warren! John Floyd!  Steve Liskow! KM Rockwood!  Paula Gail Benson! Fabulous.

How about you, Reds and readers?  Is there a love from your past who did you wrong?




Lovers and losers.
Heartbreaks and Half-truths
Whether it’s 1950s Hollywood, a scientific experiment, or a yard sale in suburbia, the twenty-two authors represented in this collection of mystery and suspense interpret the overarching theme of “heartbreaks and half-truths” in their own inimitable style, where only one thing is certain: Behind every broken heart lies a half-truth.
And behind every half-truth lies a secret.


Edited by Judy Penz Sheluk. Featuring stories by Sharon Hart Addy, Paula Gail Benson, James Blakey, Gustavo Bondoni, Susan Daly, Buzz Dixon, Rhonda Eikamp, Christine Eskilson, Tracy Falenwolfe, Kate Flora, John M. Floyd, J.A. Henderson, Blair Keetch, Steve Liskow, Edward Lodi, Judy Penz Sheluk, KM Rockwood, Peggy Rothschild, Joseph S. Walker, James Lincoln Warren, Chris Wheatley and Robb T. White.

Release Date: June 18, 2020, now available for pre-order on Kindle and trade paperback

FIND IT ON
AMAZON
BARNES  NOBLE

65 comments:

  1. Judy, your anthology sounds amazing! I’m looking forward to reading it . . . .

    I’m happy to say my past holds no broken heart or love gone wrong . . . .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Joan, I hope you enjoy it. I can't believe you've never had a love gone wrong!

      Delete
  2. Congrats on the new anthology. Great choice of theme.

    There was the girl I started to fall for in high school, but she had a boyfriend already, and I knew it. It was my own fault.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks Mark, and you know, it usually is our fault. I knew Blue Jean Boy was no good and yet...

      Delete
    2. I don't know that your stories were your fault. In my case it definitely was.

      Delete
    3. The heart cannot help what it wants..xoxo

      Delete
  3. So wrong is how I was done by the older boy during the summer between my high school graduation and my first semester of college. He was a good boy/bad boy. He was three years older, sang in a gospel quartet, and had a motorcycle. My mother knew he was bad news, but I thought he was just the sexy guide to romance this goody two shoes girl needed. In between going to his quartet appears at churches I found him to be quite the good kisser and adventurer. Lucky for me he left me for a more “experienced” girl his own age before I became an experienced girl. But, he left me abruptly, and it broke my heart. Funny forward 48 years later is that he’s a preacher now. Well, he certainly knows about sin. Hahaha!

    Judy, Heartbreaks and Half-truths sounds like a great read for this summer. I’ll be looking for it on June 18th.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great story, Kathy. Thanks for sharing that. (oh and the book is available on pre-order :-))

      Delete
    2. Oh, the bad boy! And yes, there are buy links throughout the post!

      Delete
  4. Jack. He kept asking me out until I finally said yes. Drive-in movie. I fell asleep during the first movie and woke up after the second, as he was driving me home. Feeling guilty, I let him kiss me good-night. All saliva, no lips. And then a month in bed with mono. When next we met, I asked if he'd ever had it. "Oh, yeah, but I'm better now." A very expensive kiss.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha, that is funny, Victoria. Drive-in. Yes. I dated a guy who worked at the drive-in. Cheated on me, as I recall. I had poor taste in boys as a teenager.

      Delete
  5. Congratulations on the anthology, Judy!

    I went out with Roland during my last year at the University of Waterloo. We were in the same class but he was a few years older than me since he had to do mandatory military service in Singapore after turning 18. He was my date at the graduation dinner but after that, I was the one that dumped him. Roland was kind, smart and... a devout Born Again Christian. Me, I was an agnostic so I had no interest in joining Roland in his busy schedule of Bible studies and other religious duties that he was pressuring me to do. So...bye bye!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Grace, great story! U of Waterloo...are you Canadian? My niece lives in Waterloo.

      Delete
    2. Such adventures! Sounds like a good decision, Grace!

      Delete
    3. Yes! Grace is from Toronto and lives in Ottawa now.

      Delete
    4. How cool. I'm also from Toronto. I wonder where she grew up.

      Delete
    5. Judy, I grew up in Willowdale (now called North York) as a kid. As an adult I lived in Lawrence Park (Yonge/Lawrence) from 2001-2014 before I moved to Ottawa.

      Delete
  6. I'm looking forward to reading this!

    My first big love was a gorgeous (tall, tan, huge smile) brilliant tennis-playing Hungarian a year older than me. When he asked me to the prom, I was sure it was the first step toward marriage. He dropped me right after his graduation. Just..dropped. I was devastated. I finally just drove to his house a week later and asked his mom if I could see him. He told me (nervously) he wanted to date a Hungarian girl he knew.

    I seem to have survived it - and we're facebook friends now. ;^)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Edith and love the story. And that you're now FB friends. So fun!

      Delete
    2. That's great! (I can picture young you driving to his house..awww.)

      Delete
  7. Wonderful stories Judy! and you've channeled them beautifully!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Roberta. I'd forgotten how ugly my prom dress was. That color cannot look good on anyone.

      Delete
    2. SO funny! Yes, I wish there were more photos of our seemed-good-at-the-time choices!

      Delete
  8. What a great idea for an anthology, Judy. Welcome to JRW. I am really excited to read these stories.
    So, I am not going to divulge old loves, let's just say that I didn't marry my mistakes! There was a poem in one of the teen mags when I was in high school, last lines: "Night on night I prayed and cried that he would be my dear, Thank heavens God was occupied with something else that year."
    My husband and I are married 39 years now, and it's still joyful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Judy, thank you. And yes as Garth Brooks would sing, "Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers."

      Delete
    2. Yes, perfect! (These stories are so great..)

      Delete
  9. Great hook for an anthology, Judy!

    Like you, Judy, I remember all their names, but until now it never occurred to me to wonder if they remember mine. Maybe half of them do.

    I had a crush on a guy in high school who would give me rides home sometimes and we'd stop and make out a little on the way. He only asked me out once, to see a movie, and then never picked me up. When I asked him what happened the next time I saw him at school he said, "It was raining." Turned out he had planned to take me on his motorcycle. Duh. It never occurred to him to call.

    He asked some other girl to prom, the rat. (An "experienced" girl, natch.) But a month after we graduated he showed up to ask if I wanted to go to the drive-in in his graduation present, a brand new Super Sport. Of course he tried to wrestle me into the backseat, the final flame of my ardor fizzled out, and I made him take me home.

    Now we're friends, half a century later (gulp), and once he tried to say I was the girl he got stuck in the school elevator with. Nope, never happened. I'd never have forgotten that as long as I live. I told him I call him my pretend boyfriend, and he said, "Well, I guess you were my pretend girlfriend, too."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Karen. I love your story. And that you're friends now.

      Delete
    2. That's adorable...xoo A Super Sport!

      Delete
  10. Congratulations on the book Judy!

    Heartbreak? Well, there's plenty of stories in my past...well not really but it sounds good doesn't it?

    I figured out rather early on that the fairer sex wasn't going to spend much time swooning at my feet or waiting by the telephone in the hopes that I might deign to give them a ring.

    I mean Jodie Foster turned out to not be living with Helen Hayes at "Candleshoe" and by the time I discovered Hayley Mills in "Summer Magic", she was actually already 40 and the Disney movies were far in the past for her.

    And it only went downhill from there. By the time I was 11 I'd discovered basketball which effectively became my great love affair over the next 28 years both as a bad player and a sometimes good coach. I can count the number of dates I even bothered to acquire on one hand.

    The junior prom date who only said yes to going because as a sophomore she wanted to be there. And then just as quickly blew me off. And that's probably the most successful of those five or less dates so let's not rehash pre-2014 any further, it's like a Three Stooges short with just me and no slapstick humor.

    And since 2014, there's been The Disaster, The Aftershock and The Regret. Those three attempts live up to their titles.

    The Disaster got pissed because after we'd been together for a month, I wouldn't move in with her, then cheated on me for a month and then dumped me over Facebook the day before Halloween at 7:30 in the morning by saying "I think we should be friends". (As you might surmise, that one left a mark) The cheating was discovered when she posted a six month anniversary notice to the guy she dumped me for while failing to account for basic math because the date she said was the anniversary was 29 days before she broke up with me. And to top off this epic tale of woeful stupidity, I then discovered that technically I was helping her cheat on the guy that came before me. Because despite telling me she was single, she hadn't broken up with the guy until a couple weeks after we'd been dating. Let's just say I was pretty ticked off because Jay don't play that way.

    The Aftershock's break up with me: "Oh I went out with friends last night and I met a guy and we started talking all night long and I really want to give it shot with him so you're out."

    The Regret...a woman that I've known and had a thing for since we met in the 7th grade was finally single and fancy free. And she said yes to a date. And six weeks later it was "It's not you, it's me."

    So I've taken down my banner and retired from the battlefield of purported love. After all, not even I'm dumb enough to continue onward when the universe holds up a sign that says, "Yes...but not with you."

    *off to buy one of those monk robes from Amazon*

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jay, you make me laugh out loud but no monk robes, please. My mom always said every pot had a lid. Yes, there are some double boilers out there, but you'll find your lid, who'll be looking for an unattached pot.

      Delete
    2. Jay, my mom said, "There's a squirrel for every nut!"

      Delete
    3. You never know, absolutely! I didn't meet Jonathan until I was 46!

      Delete
  11. So looking forward to reading the anthology.

    My first love dumped me and it took me years to get over it. We met in English class in college. He taught me to scuba dive, his mother nursed me through a case of the German measles - then he went to the University of Colorado for summer classes. At the end of summer he called to tell me he wasn't coming back. I never saw him again, but a million years later we did run into each other online. He was between wives at the time and wondered if I would be interested. I let him down easy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Kait and love your story. In between wives. Too funny!

      Delete
    2. Oh, yeah, like you were waiting, pining away..

      Delete
  12. Great to see you here at Jungle Reds, Judy, with your second anthology. I'm still stunned by the number of stories you received and read (!)

    And of course I'm thrilled to be among the writers in your collection.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Susan. I loved your story, Deep Freeze in Suburbia. I know others will too. And yes, it was a LOT of reading! But the hardest thing was choosing. Most were really good.

      Delete
  13. Oh, this is a painful topic. I was too tall too smart and too everything-else-that-appealed-to teenage boys to be of interest... not until I got to college. What a great idea for a collection! Finally a constructive thing to do with all that bile - Write about it! Best of luck with the anthology, Judy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Hallie. And yes, we take our pain and we turn it into "fiction." As Toby Keith would sing, "How do you like me now?"

      Delete
    2. Oh, Hallie, that makes me think of Youngest, who was also too tall and too smart and too outspoken, etc. I kept telling her "Wait for college." The older boys get, the more they appreciate those qualities.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, high school. Too smart and too weird. SO not pretty. College. Too weird and too bookish. SO not pretty. I started getting more confident at about 21.

      Delete
    4. Yes, some of us don't blossom until later in life.

      But then look out!

      Delete
  14. Many thanks to Hank and the Jungle Reds for welcoming me back. You know I wouldn't share that grad picture with just anyone...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Judy, I love it. I'm pretty sure my mother had the exact same dress your mom is wearing. It made me smile.

      Delete
    2. OMG Julia, really? I thought maybe my mom sewed her dress, she was sewing for a while, mostly stuff you wouldn't want to wear!

      Delete
    3. Thank you for your confidence in us, dear Judy!

      Delete
  15. Judy, welcome to Jungle Reds! It was great to see you at the mystery conference in Vancouver, Canada. And congratulations on your new anthology.

    Diana

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Diana. I had booked LCC San Diego but cancelled a week before re COVID. Hoping for Albuquerque in 2021. Maybe our paths will cross again,

      Delete
    2. Judy, I was at LCC in San Diego for one day and I learned after I arrived home on the 12th that they cancelled the rest of the conference due to COVID 19. I scheduled one night since I have an unfortunate habit of getting sick in American hotels.

      Hank, I just learned that Thrillerfest is doing a virtual event in July! I wonder if the pandemic continues, will the LCC in Albuquerque hold a virtual event where everyone can register via Zoom? will Malice Domestic do that too? Will Bouchercon do that too?

      Diana

      Delete
    3. Gosh I hope not. My hubby hates to travel and so these conferences are my way of seeing places and he stays home because it's my "business."

      Delete
  16. My first reaction was no, I never crushed or was crushed. But I was thinking high school. In college I dated a guy, wrote to him when he bailed out of school and enlisted. Was there when he returned. After a fraught few months (he had a little PTSD, I was depressed)he broke it off. Gave me the speech about how wonderful I am, etc. etc. and I would find another blah blah blah. After a year I found myself briefly in his home town during summer break and gave him a call. My excuse? I wanted my math book back I had loaned him. I had remembered how nervous he had been when one of his H.S. girlfriends had shown up while we were dating and I thought, being a Scorpio and vindictive, I would give him a scare. I had my revenge. Reader, I married him.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Judy, what a fun idea for an anthology! Looking forward to reading it!

    My first real heartbreak happened when I was sixteen. I was crazy about my two years older, long-haired, drop out boyfriend. And then he dumped me for my best friend!!! She was more "experienced", um, willing. Seeing a theme in these posts, ladies!! I was friends with his younger sister, so whenever I went to the house afterwards, ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend would be entertaining visitors, sitting naked in bed like John and Yoko. That was painful. You bet I remember his name. He remembers mine, too. We ran into each other a couple of years ago and had a good catch up. I long ago forgave him, but not her.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Deborah (but not for the John and Yoko image...)

      Delete
    2. OH, my imagination!!!! Ahhh.... that's quite the story, Debs. :-)

      Delete
  18. I agree with Debs - it's a great concept to hang a LOT of plots on!

    Looking back, all my experiences were were either completely unrequited longing, or I wound up being the one to break things off. Sometimes with good cause - I remember my last serious relationship before I met my husband. The guy said he loved me, and he wanted to marry me... if I lost 25 pounds. Reader, I dumped him.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Julia. And good for you for dumping him. Seriously. Who needs it?

      Delete
    2. EXACTLY.In the 70's I was dating a really terrific smart lawyer--who told me--Hank, you'd be perfect if you'd just learn to play tennis. A-di-os, buddy.
      He came to one of my book events in DC in December--awww. SO nostalgic. (His wife--who apparently did play tennis :-) did not attend, but he brought his all grown up 30-something (?) son. I almost burst into tears. We both made the right decisions. And maybe he just simply being honest.

      Delete