The story of life as an intelligent, though chubby and braces/glasses wearing teenager, at a small-town high school in the American South where getting a boy's class ring is on par with winning the Nobel Peace Prize.


 

 

 

The story of the battle between Alpha Females at the office of a publishing house, and how one stupid decision can change the course of one's life forever.





 

 


The true story, told to me by my grandmother, Ella Mae, about her affair with her husband's best friend and the child that came from their union. She was 24, my grandfather was always on the road with work and nature took its course in a small town. Mack was also married to a woman unable to have children so, when baby Alice came along, Mack & Lillian took her in as their own. Even after all that, my grandparents were married well past the 50-year mark.


 

 


A story about the Vincent sisters, Courtney and Avery. Avery was born when Courney was in the sixth grade. Since she already considered herself to be long past dolls, this new squealing sister was less of a plaything and more of a hindrance to the cool, pre-teen life she was desperately trying to create for herself.  So while she lived the typical self-involved life of a teenager, Avery was there at every turn, a tiny blonde shadow mimicking her every move.

While both girls had inherited their mother's fair complexion, Courtney was tall and broad-shouldered like their father, whose auburn hair had lightened to a fiery strawberry blonde on his oldest daughter. She'd inherited her mother's clear blue eyes, the kind that are usually described as "ice blue" which gave her an air of aloofness that really wasn't there. The contrast between her fiery hair, when she actually let it loose from its customary pony tail, and the cool eyes was dramatic and, coupled with her 6' height, caused the leech-like modeling companies to come calling when she was still in junior high school.

Instead of the frivolity of modeling though, Courtney spent her time making nothing less than a "B" in her classes, was the starting center for the Lady Cardinals basketball team, sang as a soloist with the school's award-winning Show Choir and was a passionate and eloquent captain of their state-championship-winning debate team. Courtney spent more time at school and in extra-curricular activities than most adults do in their full time jobs.

Avery, on the other hand, had more of a slender, delicate beauty next to her sister. Though the same height, Avery always seemed like she could be blown over in a strong breeze. Her hair was a true ash blonde, much like that of a young Lauren Bacall. Avery's eyes were a rich, deep royal blue, and were filled with flecks of navy. They'd been described by their old-school pediatrician being as a, "heartbreaking blue." Dr. Hampton had seen the girls ever since they were born, which was about 10 years past the time he could have retired.

While Courtney's life was one of activity, Avery's was like that of a leaf blown on a breeze. She'd never shown interest in developing any talents of her own, though her voice was arguably better than her sister's, but she lacked the gumption to do much more  than drag herself to and from school every day.

After Courtney went away to an out-of-state college, there was nothing left for the quiet, unobtrusive Avery to do but find someone new to shadow. Danica Harris was first rate trailor trash. She was a senior when Courtney was a freshman and soon figured out that as long as she allowed Avery to hang out with her, Avery's middle-class allowance would supply her with all the beer and pot she could want.

While Avery was falling under the spell of the hell-raising Danica, Courtney was doing her best to live the life of a young woman making her way in the big city, and spending less and less time with her quiet, slightly mysterious sibling. Without her sister to anchor to, the lighter-than-air Avery flies straight into the heart of drug use and promiscuity.

What happens to Avery? It's the same story of so many young women who develop a taste for escape, be it though drugs and alcohol or sexual adventures. She drops out of her first semester of college, pulls more and more risky stunts that almost land her in jail and eventually has to have an abortion.

This scares her somewhat straight, and she marries a man much older, popping out two children almost immediately. But her husband, Rick, is controlling and arrogant. He slowly pulls her into a life of "swinging" and even more hard-core drug use. Their two children live a hand to mouth existence and are eventually pulled away from their parents by social services and delivered into the hands of their aunt, a surprised and unprepared Courtney.


 

This is the story two sisters who happened to be named after the towns where they were born. Alex Easthope was born in Alexandria, VA as her mother, Kate, was finishing her Masters in Divinity at the Virginia Theological Seminary.

Her younger sister, Lexi, was born in the town where their family had lived for as long as Alex could remember, Lexington Park, MD. They'd moved to southern Maryland when their father inherited his mother's house on Lewis Creek. During the summers when they were little, Alex and Lex hardly ever wore anything besides their bathing suits, even fighting to wear them underneath their church clothes so they could jump back in the water as soon as their mother's Sunday morning service at St. Mary's was through.

They would always pretend to be mermaid princesses who ruled the land of X-Is-Tent-Shoal, a word Alex had heard her mother use, but whose meaning was lost to the young girls. She did her best to make their own unique spelling. They chose that name for their fictitious underwater kingdom because it, like the two girl's names, had the letter "X" in it.

But the harmony of their pre-school days ended once Alex discovered books. Her close-to-genius IQ had her reading several grades above her level and she was soon devouring books the way their dog, an overweight daschund named Hamhock, would devour anything that found its way to the floor....even if it mean that Lexi had accidentally dropped her cookie. All was fair in love and leftovers in the world of Hamhock.

Lexi's lonliness was, she hoped, to be short-lived once she started school and could start to read everything Alex read. She longed to dangle her legs off their little dock, splashing her feet in the water with a casual, distracted air the way Alex did when she had a book in her hand. Lex would sometimes take her own books and try to emulate her ever-so-cool older sister.

But Lexi didn't do very well in school, struggling with everything from phonics to simple math. She had a slightly-more-than-mild learning disability, paired with the patience of a gnat. Togetehr, these character traits made school and exercise in torture. And unfortunately, as Alex sailed through her classes with above average grades, her ego also sailed off, as full of itself as a full-masted schooner. This made the ever-growing rift between the once-inseperable sisters expand, until they did little more than fight whenever hey were forced to be in one another's company.

What does the future hold? Lexi is eventually held back in first grade and the near-clinical depression that follows has the entire family in therapy. Alex learns that, not only is calling her sister disLEXic mean-spirited, it also exhibits that she has a shortcoming of her own - that she's "Loving Disabled" and lacks the ability to feel true compassion and empathy for the little sister she's always adored.



 



The story of the complicated, and highly improper, relationship between a college-aged color guard choreographer and the young band director for whom she works. He knows his job would be on the line for becoming involved with someone only a couple years older than his students. But he also knows that a five year age difference wouldn't matter at all if they weren't working for the school board.

In addition to the drama that's playing out between them, their angst-ridden, sexually-charged students create plenty of drama of their own. This "forbidden" romance is set against the high-pressured world of competitive marching bands and the near art-form of flag corps, where military precision meets modern dance.

 

A Young Adult Novel Series about four summers in the lives of fraternal twin sisters, Chloe and Zoe. Chloe is a socially awkward but very smart 9th grader who's the tallest girl in her class, has both glasses and braces, red hair, green eyes and freckles. Her twin sister is popular and petite, blond and blue-eyed and is a natural at everything from ballet to cheerleading. The two go through their parents change is social status and divorce in the first book, June Bugs in July, followed by living apart for the first time, Chloe's psychosomatic muteness and Zoe's near miss with a date rape in Cicada Summer.






 

Maggie is an only child, though she actually prefers to be alone with her books and her dolls and her cat, Jubilee. Jack is Maggie's new neighbor and, though she would rather eat brussel sprouts than play with a boy, Maggie's curiosity soon overcomes her male prejudices.

Jack is sick. He has something that sounded a little like the name of the boy who sits in the third row of Miss Beverly's class, Luke Ames. But this sickness had four syllables, like the tonsilitis Maggie had suffered with last Christmas. But her mother told her that this Luke disease is much worse than her sore throat that actually garnered her more ice cream than discomfort. 



 

Synopsis coming soon.


 

 

The story of an ill-fated cyber couple who are separated by 3,500 miles. She lives in the US and he lives in Eurpope. The painful realization that their families and jobs won't allow them to be relocate nearly destroys them. And the agonizing decision they make to end their attachment after meeting in person only once, changes their lives forever but sets on course an extraordinary meeting two decades in the future.




Confessions of an Impossible Love

from Right Here Waiting

Practical dreamers we never did seem,
 As we scoffed at the miles and ocean between.
Our hearts bound to one another, knit together by a net,
Internet lovers now filled with regret.

Souls on fire, yet our bodies stayed cold,
Left to self-love and listening as we told
The stories of passion and the loving embrace of sleep.
Planting the seeds for a future we can’t reap.


The weddings and children about which we dreamed,
Are nothing but shadows in our minds it would seem.
We’ll never grow old, living side by side,
We’ve only an impossible love to confide.

My heart swings between anger and grief,
And I wonder if I allowed this thief
Called fate to steal my one true love from me,
Or am I trapped by circumstance, never to be free?


 

 


Olivia Drucker lives at 652 S. 10th Street in downtown Philadelphia in the year 1812. Her bedroom is on the second floor and faces the garden behind the house, though she prefers to watch the goings on of the busy city street. She dreams of becoming one of the first female journalists for The Philadelphia Inquirer and already has had several pieces published under her pen name, Oliver Drucker, with the help of the sweet widower next door, Mr. Frankfurt, who turned them in as his.

Olivia has created her own private "office" in the attic of her family's row home where she scibbles away her afternoons, dreaming of writing newspaper stories she would someday be famous for. While sitting there, she notices that appearing on the parchment before her are words....funny words like blog and hi-def plus lots of abbreviations like SUV, STD, LOL, WTF, TV, DVD and BTW. She thinks she's over tired so she opens up a tiny window but the words continue....and start to make sense. It seems that the diary of a man is taking form, right on her papers, without her pen touching the ink.

Bruce Hendricks happens to be sitting at the exact same old desk, in the attic of 652 S. 10th Street in downtown Philadelphia in 2012. As he takes a break from typing fast and furiously on his personal blog, expressing his dissatisfaction with his fiance, Megan, and her plans to turn the old home they just into a construction zone as she planned their remodeling, a funny thing happens - words begin to appear on his screen....old-fashioned words like charming and serendipitous and some of them were spelled strangely, like humor was humour and theater was theatre.

There is a guardian of old, well-loved furniture named Lignarius, which means "carpenter" in Latin, has allowed these two people to communicate through time. Olivia needs Bruce's encouragement to make her dreams of journalism come true while Bruce need Olivia's advice to see why he once loved everything Megan, especially her take-charge attitude.

Despite their generation gap, the two become close friends. And when Bruce researches Olivia and her family, he sees that she not only became journalist Oliver Drucker, but scandalized all of Philadelphia when she was caught in men's clothing at a slave auction where she was writing about the horrors of how entire families were decimated by the selling of human beings.

He was also surprised, and touched, to find that her son Bruce became a physician and abolitionist. This bit of news inspired him to name his daughter Olivia as well.



Reading Between the Lines


The story of Beatrix "Trixie" Moorhead, The Queen of Erotic Fiction. Nicknamed Trixie at a young age, and cursed with a suggestive last name as well, is a wildly successful erotic/romance novelist. Her work is so famous that, in pop culture, the term a "Trixie" now referred to a woman who sleeps with a lot of men. Likewise a "Trixter" was a man who did the same. Tired of being thought of as a fluffy author, she writes her first piece of non-fiction on the life of screen siren, Hedy Lamarr.Excerpt from Stand Still & Look Stupid - The Secret Genius of Hedy Lamarr

Thought to be the world's most beautiful woman, Hedy Lamarr had a secret brilliance hiding behind her famous limpid green eyes - a genius IQ and creative ingenuity that lead to her invention and patent of an idea that later became the crutch of both secure military communications and mobile phone technology.

Though she conquered Hollywood and took glamour to new heights, one of her most famous quotes was, "Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” 
Lamarr was born in Vienna and began her acting career at the age of sixteen. Then in the 1930's, Lamarr appeared in the film that launched her stardom. In Extase, Lamarr appeared nude for over ten minutes in a swimming scene, a highly scandalous move for the time, but one which garnered her a contract with MGM. She starred in 36 films over 50 years and was known to be "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World."

In 1933, 19-year-old Hedwig Kiesler (Lamarr) married Austrian munitions manufacturer Friedrich Mandl. Mandl sold munitions to Nazi Germany, where he and his wife socialized with Adolf Hitler. In addition to munitions sales, Mandl's company also conducted research on radio control systems. Hedwig, an actress, left her husband, changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, and moved to the U.S. in 1937.

Nine years and 10 films later, 28-year-old Lamarr invented, along with her neighbor, composer George Antheil, what the pair called “A Secret Communication System” after a casual conversation by the pool. The original idea, meant to solve the problem of enemies blocking signals from radio-controlled missiles during World War II, involved changing radio frequencies simultaneously to prevent enemies from being able to detect the messages. While the technology of the time prevented the feasibility of the idea at first, the advent of the transistor and its later downsizing made Hedy’s idea very important to both the military and the cell phone industry.

Trixie, like Lamar, is highly underestimated. Her president of her publishing house, Edison Parker Radcliffe, III laughs at her and her long-time editor, a flamingly homosexual gentleman named Oliver (also Trixie's best friend) when they suggest the work.

The sexual tension between Trixie and Ed serves as the backdrop of the Hedy Lamarr story and her quest to have the book published. A competition ensues as Trixie shops the book to other publishing houses, all of whom salivate at the idea of having such a money-making author on their roster. Ed is driven crazy by the threat of financial loss, though he hates publishing such "simple" work, but is really driven mad with jealousy by the other publishers, agents and editors who vie for Trixie's body, as well as her writing.

Hedy Lamarr, i.e. Hedy Keisler Markey, Actress & Inventor

Lamarr's Sketch of the "Secret Communications System" with her maiden name and signature


Hymns At Heaven's Gate


Torch Song for a Trophy Wife

Vivian Garrett is overwhelmed with the planning of her daughter's wedding. Julia is dropping out of school, giving up her childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian, to marry Justin Morgan, a successful entrepreneur 15 years her senior who spent as much time at his club as his office and had long-term political ambitions.

Julia had been a first runner up in the state's Miss America pageant due to her myriad philanthropic works, her 4.0 GPA and her incredible performance of John Coltrane's My Favorite Things on soprano saxophone. Of course, no doubt the judges also noticed that she'd inherited her father's piercing green eyes and long legs along with her own glossy auburn curls and hourglass shape. She was a particular crowd favorite during the swimsuit competition, much to her conservative father's chagrin.


 

But Vivian knew that her beautiful daughter was heading down the same path that she'd trod all these years. She was, and had always been, what she now knew was referred to as a "Trophy Wife." 

She'd been Mrs. Charles Covington, partner at Lexington's largest CPA firm - Conners, Carter & Covington - for so long that she'd forgotten her maiden name was Kelly and that in her family's native Ireland, a KELLY was a warrior woman of unequaled ferocity. 

She'd looked good on her husband's arm. She'd kept their home beautiful. And she'd given him two gorgeous children, Julia and Jeffrey. Julia's older brother was finishing his law degree at Duke and was the image of a young Paul Newman. All her friends said he was just perfect, and he was....if one overlooked the fact that he and his college roommate shared more than rent. They'd been lovers since their freshman year and only Vivian knew it. She was honored to have her son's trust and to be able to share in her son's happiness.

So as Vivian looks back on her life and the compromises she made in order to keep her husband happy, she feels her long-absent backbone begin to strengthen. She suddenly resents the fact that the closest she got to use her anthropology degree was digging in the sand at the beach with the kids. She resents throwing dinner parties and learning to play golf so that they could play in couples' tournaments. She resents that Charlie refused to let her have her own bank account and still insists on giving her a weekly grocery allowance, though the advent of debit cards gave her financial freedom a long time ago....but she still wanted to have her own "mad money," as her mother called it, so she wouldn't have to answer for any purchases she made that were over $100.

But mostly, she resents that she's forgotten the taste of anything but artificial sweetener since she turned forty when her middle-age spread started and the 4x a week sessions at the gym began....and the fact that she's been turning a blind eye when Charlie was working late for over a year has finally worn her down to a place of strength.

So Vivian quits the gym, starts putting real sugar and cream in her Starbucks and, for the first time, orders their huge, mushroom-topped muffins that have more fat grams in them than a full steak-and-potatoes dinner. But more importantly, she begins to talk her naive daughter into taking the road less traveled and her son into coming out of the closet...both of which shock the complacent Charlie into realizing that the sweet little girl he married all those years ago is as strong and bold as her maiden name implied.




Lifestyles of the Large & Luscious

Cassie writes a syndicated newspaper column about living a healthy lifestyle while being overweight called, "Lifestyles of the Large & Luscious." Citing the thousands of half-baked nuggets of "research" that the media use to fuel "fat-phobia" in the US, she used her platform to attack these "scientific facts" and make the world better for those who are less than slim.

Dr. Robert J. Morgan, or Bob for short, is a leading researcher on the genetic links to obesity. When the two are interviewed on CNN during an expose on shoddy research called "Big Fat Lies," the debate becomes heated, as does the sexual chemistry between the Cassie and Bob.

A love/hate relationship ensues where the 0% body-fat vegetarian Bob continues to try to convince the if-I-want-it-I-eat-it Cassie that she's on a sure path to death. Finally, to convince him that she's healthy, she goes through a barrage of tests which confirm that she's perfectly healthy from top to bottom, except for a small lump they find in her lungs.

With this news, Bob feels both guilty and yet is overwhelmed with fear. He suddenly realizes that all this time he's spent fighting with her has actually been his way of covering that he's been fighting his overwhelming attraction and adoration for this feisty, talented woman who can hold her own against him.


The Power Between: 21st Centruy Courtesan ~ 15th Century Rules

 


Hope Hardwood just got fired. Downsized was the word they used but FIRED is the word that echoes around her head. And she's behind in the rent and her car payment...plus her roots are showing and she really, really needs to visit Julian, her colorist, but she can't afford Ramen noodles, much less $180 highlights!

Since she has plenty of time on her hands between job interviews, Hope starts reading the dozens of books whose spines she never cracked, though she bought them with the full intention of broadening her horizons. When she reads the biography of Isabella Perugia Esposito, a courtesan in 16th century Venice, she has an epiphany.

Isabella was an orphan, hence her last name of Espositio, which literally means 'exposed' (from the Latin expositus, past participle of exponere 'to place outside') so she was given the Italian surname commonly denoting an orphan. She'd been abandoned in the practical, if cruel seeming, revolving baby-leaving door at San Francesco delle Donna, i.e. the Church of St. Francis of the Women, which belonged to the Benedictine sisters.

There she learned weaving at the pedal­-operated, wooden looms that were typical of the countryside around Perugia, which were used to produce the simple, yet elegant cloth called, rustiche, (rustic cloth). But Isabella had an insatiable mind, reading everything possible, even late into the night. Between the eye-straining work at the looms and reading by candle-light, her vision was nearly ruined.

The sweet Sister Pasqualina Esposito, who had also been left in the church's baby-leaving door on Easter Sunday, hence her name, arranged for "Bella" to have a pair of broken spectacles that had belonged to Father Rosario de Luca. They found a way to repair the eyeglasses and saved Bella from blindness, though she was plagued by frequent eye-strain headaches for the rest of her life.

Having no other real prospects, Bella was encouraged to join the sisterhood. And she'd resigned herself to this fate until she read the poetry of celebrated courtesan, Veronica Franco, and realized that there was another life available to her. She left the church and made her way to Venice, trading her virginity for the passage to a man with a group of traveling Romanies (gypsies).

On the first leg of the 250 mile trip, she was passed from man to man, until a the wife of the apparent leader of the group, a sweet woman named Drina, who was only a few years older than Bella but seemed to rule over her husband, a man decades older who held the group under his thumb, or so Drina allowed him to believe since she was the one who was truly at the reins.

After learning of Bella's plans to become a courtesan, she and her friend Samanta, decided to protect Bella from the men of their troupe and began to teach her how to use goat's milk to smooth her skin, lemons to lighten her hair and to use crushed roses to color her cheeks and lips.


Along with their beauty regimen, they also taught her the skills of seduction. Bella remembered reading the forbidden poetry of Sappho after one of the girls found the old tome in the convent library. So, though she was surprised by their overtures, she was grateful for their protection. She also knew that she would never be able to deal with the life of a courtesan if she had to endure the frantic fumblings and hurried pounding she'd known from the dirty men in their troupe till now. 

The women’s touch was soft and comforting and their promise that love-making was truly enjoyable soon came to fruition. After their lessons in male seduction were complete, they turned her tutelage over to a young, healthy and handsome man named Giuseppe, who took Bella’s education to new heights.

Bella eventually made it to Venice, and was introduced into Venetian high society by the very woman whose poetry had inspired her, the independent and nurturing Veronica Franco. With her quick wit and profound insights, she became a high-level courtesan known as La seducente sirena con il volto di un angelo (The seductive siren with the face of an angel).

Since she had an innocent face like a little girl, complete with slightly chubby cheeks, she became famous for her talents at playing a favorite Venetian bedroom game, the acting out of the story of Leda e il cigno (Leda and the swan).

As Hope read about Leda and the Swan, she looked up at the Cezanne poster, Leda with Swan, on her wall and knew this was a sign. She should become a modern day courtesan!


She immediately sets out to transform herself from the typical girl-next-door into a sophisticated seductress. She goes to the local beauty college and gets a bargain makeover; haunts every consignment store in the city in order to get a lady-like, yet sexy, wardrobe; starts reading about everything that would be of interest to a wealthy and powerful man, from the Wall Street Journal to Sports Illustrated; and she even began to take golf lessons so that she could be out on the greens as often as possible.

She also changes her identity and goes from being Hope Hardwood from the small town of Shrewsbury, PA with a run-of-the mill history degree from the massive Penn State University that prepared her for not much of anything to, instead, becoming Holly Haywood, who has her master’s in art history for Bryn Mawr and works in an up-and-coming art gallery on Sansom Street in the Avenue of the Arts district.

This part was true, though she made $10 an hour plus a paltry commission should she actually sell any of the gigantic, usually disturbing looking, pieces of modern art that hung like vultures around the open studio. The truth was her knowledge of art was limited to a couple of undergrad courses she’d taken at Penn so she’d self-taught herself by using the free services of the library and the internet.

She also gave up her generic one bedroom apartment in the suburbs and answered a Room Mate Wanted in the classifieds. She now lived in a rather chic Midtown Village area of center city, and could walk to work. She shared a two-bedroom apartment in the former Philadelphia Stock Exchange building with a 28-year-old sous-chef named Antoine who had a steady boyfriend, with whom he spent most weekends, and who worked all the hours Holly tended to be home, making it a perfect living arrangement. Sharing an apartment in an artsy district of town was just what her newly invented resume needed.

Holly follows the Bella's teachings in her essays entitled: Tra il Potere: Come utilizzare il potere tra le gambe e la potenza della vostra mente per il controllo di un uomo (The Power Between: How to use the power between your legs and the power of your mind to control a man) and struggles to not only juggle her lovers, but to stay emotionally detached from more than a few of them.

Hope Hardwood & Holly Haywood

Artists paintings of the celebrated courtesan, Isabella Esposito. 

La seducente sirena con il volto di un angelo


Lover's Repose by Isabella Perugio Esposito

My lover lies in the sweet sleep of release,
His breathing now slow, his vig'rous form so at peace.
Yet moments ago, he loomed fierce, full of might,
His shoulders too broad, preventing my sight,
‘Cept for blazing black eyes, the longing which showed,
As he immersed himself in that river which flowed.
Yet there was power between us, his body on top,
And suddenly, all of time seemed to stop.
The ancient rhythms, of time before time,
Swept away to a place that words cannot rhyme.
Where even the Heavn'ly host fear to grace,
Finding the joys of the flesh too course to bald face. 
That miracle for which our true God intended;
Consuming the body, so the soul is then mended.
My lover's repose is one of plain, mortal man,
Tho’ on golden wings we soared, above barren lands
Of bitterness and politics and struggles for power,
We landed but softly, lying folded like a flower.
My arms, now petals, wrap tight 'round his form,
But dawn’s light will bring tears, as he is soon torn
Away from our secret, and sinful, love nest,
To return to the prim, dried up old breasts
Of his wife, her stature, and political course;
He swears his fidelity, his heart filled with remorse.
Leaving my bedfellows of sorrow and pain,
Writing this poem my only refrain.
To face once again, this life I have chose,
Colorful and sweet, yet the thorns of a rose.



Leda with Swan, Paul Cezanne
Poster hanging in Holly's bedroom that gives her an epiphany when she reads a biography of Isabella Esposito, Bedroom Politics: The Power of the Courtesan

Leda & the Swan
William Butler Yeats


A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?


Queen of My Song

Loose biography of Stephen Foster, the "Father of Amercian Music" and the woman who inspired his most popular song, Beautiful Dreamer, a.k.a. Jeannie with the light brown hair. The story goes that it was written for his wife Jane Denny McDowell, but I'm writing it - FICTIONALLY - that it was writen for Genevieve Filiatreau (pronounced Zhon-vee-ehv Fil-ee-at-row), a light-skinned slave at Federal Hill, or "My Old KY Home." 

Genevieve Filiatreau was the daughter of a free Creole quadroon who'd been celebrated as one of the most beautiful women living on Rampart Street in N'awlins during the heyday of the Quadroon Balls. Her father, a rich sugar plantation owner who traveled to the West Indies to check on his business. He grew jealous of the time her mother, Gabriella, spent alone and eventually went into a rage when he found her having tea with his New Orleans import partner. He cut her face from earlobe to mouth, forever ruining her beauty.

She ended her days raising their three children on a dressmaker's wages. And though she taught her children to read and write, they were still left to a life of servitude, though they were free. After her mother died from Yellow Fever, Genevieve left the often disease-ridden city of New Orleans for Kentucky. Her two older brothers were traveling with their employer and had been promised endless work on the plethora of tobacco farms in the region.

The threesome settled on Federal Hill in Bardstown, KY. Genevieve went to work as a ladies maid to the mistress of the manor, Rebecca Rowan, and was present when she welcomed their cousin, Stephen Colins Foster, to their home. When Collins seemd to turn ill during his stay, the family feared a recurrence of the 1833 Cholera outbreak that had taken four of their family members and 26 slaves.

Foster's illness was no more than overindulgence in Jim Beam bourbon and a bad case of the blues. He and his wife Jane had fallen into a marriage of convenience as they continued to argue over finances. Jane had threatened to leave him when Foster left her alone with their one-year-old daughter, Marion, to take this trip to see his cousins, the Rowans, at their home in Bardstown.

Genevieve was give then task of caring for their guest. Foster, whose lonliness and depression could be crippling, milked his "illness" and assured the Rowan family that they could leave him to the healing hands of "Genie," the nickname  Foster had given Genevieve. Since Judge Rowan was its first president, Rebecca had organized the first Kentucky Historical Society ball and the family was to travel to Louisville to attend the event. The party was to be held at the new "Locust Grove" which was the home of William and Lucy Clark Croghan. William was the brother-in-law and surveying partner of George Rogers Clark, founder of Louisville and Revolutionary War hero.

Genie and Foster fall madly in love and spend the time while the family is away as if they're the owners of Federal Hill and are married for a lifetime. But the illusion comes to an end when the couple fails to hide their attachment from Judge Rowan, who threatens Foster with telling his wife if he doesn't leave.

Thus, the sad strains of "My Old KY Home" harken to his brief housekeeping with Genie and later, he cleverly changed the spelling of her nickname to Jeanie and lightened her hair in the lyrics of "Beautiful Dreamer."



Genevieve Filiatreau,  i.e. Genie

My vision of the Foster's real "Beautiful Dreamer."


America's First Great Composer, Stephen Collins Foster

Portrait of Foster



MACABRE: The Revolutionary Genius of Edgar Allen Poe





Nora & Ned: The Story of Billie Holiday's Best Friend

Eleanora Fagan (Billie Holiday)

Edward Pierce Piedmont


Screwback Earrings

 


Story of the artistic daughter of a Vietnam veteran who finds her father's trophy of shriveled up ears from Viet Cong that he killed while in country. This, along with his late night post traumatic stress disorder prowlings, causes her to go slightly crazy herself. She becomes obsessed with ears and obsessively collects vintage "screwback" earrings.


The Ghost of Gertrude Greene

Synopsis coming soon.


Bringing Up Betty

 

Dr. Betty Harris is a successful genetic engineer who's work could someday mean the end of things like diabetes and cancer. Her life is full with her girl-friends, her family and an unending supply of new boyfriends who tell her she looks Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire with her white blonde hair and cat's eye glasses.

But there's one problem....Betty really wants to be a mother. She's approaching her forty-second birthday and none of her suitors seems like father material. So she takes matters into her own hands and clones none-other-than HERSELF!

Passing off a fatherless child as one that came from a "spermcicle" isn't a problem....raising a mini-me is! Betty has to face all her inner demons as she raises her daughter Devon. From weight gain to bad eyesight...all her physical shortcomings are center stage in her child. But, as Betty will soon see, though she shares the same body through and through, Devon has a heart and soul as unique as any other.



SymBiosis: The Fetal Parasitic Phenomenon


The Albatross

Synopsis coming soon.


Broad Stripes, Bright Stars:

Feminism in the American South



Do you have any comments on the Novel Ideas? Write me!

 

CLICK on the Pin-Up Girl to email me.