Dear Scammer,

By the number of fake Facebook “friends” you send my way, I must conclude that you really want my attention. Well then, you need to get better at this.

First, get your names right. I can’t tell you how many times you’ve sent me men—always older men—with two first names. You know, like Bob John, Bill Steven, Lloyd William. These appellations are a dead giveaway that these people are probably fake.

Then there are the photos you put on these pages. I’m not sure why you think I’d be enticed by men surrounded by little children—kind of creepy—colorful balloons, flowers, and puppies. Not that those things aren’t nice, it’s just that you’re not putting enough imagination into it.  Come on. Take a little time and check out what I like, before you fabricate my dream man.

And speaking of my Mr. Dreamy, why is he so often in a uniform? While I admire and respect those in the military–as well as those cuties in their firefighting gear–the uniform thing is just a cliché. If you were one of my students, I’d give you a C- there for lack of imagination. And can you please stop sending me doctors and widowers? I’m curious as to why you think those guys are especially appealing.

Now, get rid of those round headshots. I don’t see many real people going for that look. And when that’s the only thing we see on the page that’s rather suspicious. Not to mention off-putting. That said, your fake folks do nothing but display pictures of themselves in hackneyed situations—the aforementioned children, balloons, flowers and puppies. Again, this does nothing but ramp up the creep factor.

I realize that someone on your end is tasked with supplying fake interests for your fake people, and, if nothing else, I usually get a laugh out of them. Richard Dick: Interests: power-lifting, scrapbooking, motor sports, flower arranging, and long walks on the beach. Really?

I’m not sure why, but I am periodically tempted to make friends with you, Scammer, just to see where our relationship goes. I know you’ll tell me I’m beautiful and that you love me and that you need money to escape a bad situation. And you’ll want my Social Security number and access to my bank accounts, all the while assuring me of your undying love.

While this stuff is mostly funny, it’s also depressing. I’m guessing there are millions of scammers like you out there, and the only reason for your proliferation is that this approach works! How is that even possible? Who could be sad and lonely enough not to see through your masquerade?

That said, shame on you for taking advantage of those poor people. Can you even look in the mirror? Go ahead. Try it. I dare you. Are you proud of yourself after your day at the office? Or, more likely, in your mommy’s basement?

Here’s an idea. Make your own Facebook page. Let’s see what you’re about. Let’s see how many “friends” you can get sharing your own picture and interests. Methinks, not so many.

Perhaps, you now think I’m cruel, Scammer, but you deserve any derision sent your way. You use people, probably with no thought about the damage you cause.

Your mother would be appalled.

Sincerely,

Anne Montgomery

A WOMAN FLEES AN ABUSIVE HUSBAND

AND FINDS HOPE IN THE WILDS OF THE ARIZONA DESERT.

Published by Liaison – A Next Chapter Imprint

Rebecca Quinn escapes her controlling husband and, with nowhere else to go, hops the red-eye to Arizona. There, Gaby Strand – her aunt’s college roommate – gives her shelter at the Salt River Inn, a 1930’s guesthouse located in the wildly beautiful Tonto National Forest.

Becca struggles with post-traumatic stress, but is enthralled by the splendor and fragility of the Sonoran Desert. The once aspiring artist meets Noah Tanner, a cattle rancher and beekeeper, Oscar Billingsley, a retired psychiatrist and avid birder, and a blacksmith named Walt. Thanks to her new friends and a small band of wild horses, Becca adjusts to life in the desert and rekindles her love of art.

Then, Becca’s husband tracks her down, forcing her to summon all her strength. But can she finally stop running away?

Order your copy here: http://mybook.to/wildhorsespb

Sports are good for you! They keep you healthy and active!

I have heard and adhered to that mantra my entire life. I don’t remember learning to swim. I started ice skating at five and skiing at eight. When I was 24, I started officiating sports and called football, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball games, an avocation I practiced for 40 years. When I was 30, I got my first health club membership and I’ve had one ever since. I’ve lifted weights, utilized aerobics equipment, practiced yoga, and been a regular lap swimmer for 35 years. I’m a scuba diver.

I will admit here, I have always been rather smug about working out, mentally tut-tutting those who eschewed exercise. But it seems they have had the last laugh.

You see, I turned 65 last year, right about the time the pandemic hit. Then, my health club shut down, after which I physically fell apart. One day my legs started to hurt for no apparent reason, so I limped off to the doctor.

“See here?” he said, pointing at myriad splotches on my MRI. “Your hamstrings look like old, twisted celery.”

While I did look, all I could see was something resembling a Rorschach test. Still, I took his word for it, which is how I happened to be face down on an examination table with my pants at my knees.

“Um…should I take off my underwear?” I knew where they needed to stick those big needles that were now filled with my very own platelets that had been spun from the blood they’d just sucked out of my arm.

“Well…I think we can work around it,” an assistant said. At which point he bunched up my underwear and gave me a wedgie.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor said.

I wondered what he meant. Was he sorry I might be embarrassed that my mostly bare bottom was exposed to them or was he sorry to be gazing at a 65-year-old bum? “We’re all professionals here,” I muttered.

The platelets would have to be injected into the spot where my hamstrings were attached. I felt the cold needle tickle my butt. Then, I screamed. All thoughts of me as a tough girl vanished in an instant. The call for fentanyl did nothing. I yelped again as the assistant wiggled the needle about. Someone shoved a squishy football into my hand. I wanted to hit her in the head with it.

“Almost done,” the doctor chirped pleasantly.

“OW…OW…OW!”

“Okay! We’re finished”

I  relaxed despite the burning in my butt.

“Now…let’s do the other one.”

As I continued to scream, I was struck by a thought. If I was a captured a spy, I would have told them anything they wanted to know. State secrets? No problem. The names of my spy friends? Fine. Where to find my children? Probably.

When it was over, I was helped from the table. I felt like two softballs had been lodged in my bottom. I was deposited in a chair, where I squirmed so much the doctor called for more fentanyl.

“The pain will get worse before it gets better,” he said in a cheery tone. “It may take several weeks to feel better.”

I wished I had some James Bondish-type weapon on hand to stick him in the eye.

A short time later, I faced another MRI in a different office. The doctor pointed at the image of my shoulder. “See here?”

I did not, but I let it slide.

“Your rotator cuff is torn.”

“No, wait! I had rotator cuff surgery six years ago on that shoulder. Shouldn’t I have a life-time warranty?” I remembered the operation and the miserable, eight-months rehab and wanted to weep.

Next week, the surgeon will be plying his trade inside my shoulder. And let’s not forget my knees that are annually pumped full of a strange Jello-like substance so I can walk and my arthritic spine that boasts an old fracture and two bulging disks. Is it any wonder that my physical therapist recently discussed putting my name on a parking space at the rehab clinic?

The point, of course, is that most of my medical issues have been caused by sports. Falls on the ice. Twenty-plus years of crouching behind home plate as an umpire where errant foul balls made me feel like a piñata. Repetitive-motion injuries from lap swimming. Four decades of football officiating where players periodically ran me over on their way to the endzone.

Sports are good for me? Apparently, I’ve been misled. And yet, given a second chance, I would do it all again.

That said, I’ll now work on getting better acquainted with my couch.

A WOMAN FLEES AN ABUSIVE HUSBAND

AND FINDS HOPE IN THE WILDS OF THE ARIZONA DESERT.

Published by Liaison – A Next Chapter Imprint

Rebecca Quinn escapes her controlling husband and, with nowhere else to go, hops the red-eye to Arizona. There, Gaby Strand – her aunt’s college roommate – gives her shelter at the Salt River Inn, a 1930’s guesthouse located in the wildly beautiful Tonto National Forest.

Becca struggles with post-traumatic stress, but is enthralled by the splendor and fragility of the Sonoran Desert. The once aspiring artist meets Noah Tanner, a cattle rancher and beekeeper, Oscar Billingsley, a retired psychiatrist and avid birder, and a blacksmith named Walt. Thanks to her new friends and a small band of wild horses, Becca adjusts to life in the desert and rekindles her love of art.

Then, Becca’s husband tracks her down, forcing her to summon all her strength. But can she finally stop running away?

Order your copy here: http://mybook.to/wildhorsespb

With Valentine’s Day approaching, many of us are filled with thoughts a of romantic love. Kissing is the natural next step, which had me wondering recently where the meeting of lips as a form of romantic expression began.

Many believe the origination of kissing developed from a wholly unromantic source. It seems that in many ancient cultures, mothers, by necessity, chewed their food and then transferred the mashed bits directly into their babies mouths, much as mother birds do today. Historically, Mommy as food processor was a necessity, as one couldn’t just hop down to the local supermarket to pick up a case of baby peas and carrots.

The leap however to romantic kissing remains a tad vague. Originally, folks went around kissing hands and cheeks in a show of respect or fealty. The Romans, especially, were big kissers, though they had rules on how and when you kissed certain people.

Somewhere around the second century, the Kama Sutra was complied. The Indian text, that was the precursor to the best-selling, 1969 book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask, has an entire chapter—that would be Chapter 3, if you’re interested—on kissing. And it’s illustrated, just in case the verbiage confuses you.

Romantic kissing had been around for a while when, near the end of the 16^th century, Shakespeare penned what is arguable the greatest love story of all time, the tale of the doomed lovers Romeo and Juliet. “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand. To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss,” said poor Romeo. We all know how that turned out, though the demise of the young lovers didn’t seem to dissuade others from smooching their hearts out.

While romance novels can be traced back to ancient Greece, the genre as we know it today appeared in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and anyone who has ever cracked the spine on one of those babies knows that kissing is a big deal. In fact, it’s an actual plot point: the steamier the buildup to the event the better.

It might surprise you to know that there are cultures around the world that completely eschew kissing, mainly pointing out how dirty our mouths are, since they contain between 500 to 1,000 different types of bacteria. Still, for most of us, the pleasurable aspects of kissing override the inherent ewww factor.

Today, kissing is under assault. We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic courtesy of Covid-19, so we are tasked with holding others at arm’s length. Social distancing is keeping our lips seriously separated, and we can’t work up much kissing action from six feet away.

Perhaps, when the virus has run its course, we can return to the lip locks of yore. In the meantime, can anyone recommend a good romance novel?

A WOMAN FLEES AN ABUSIVE HUSBAND

AND FINDS HOPE IN THE WILDS OF THE ARIZONA DESERT.

Published by Liaison – A Next Chapter Imprint

Rebecca Quinn escapes her controlling husband and, with nowhere else to go, hops the red-eye to Arizona. There, Gaby Strand – her aunt’s college roommate – gives her shelter at the Salt River Inn, a 1930’s guesthouse located in the wildly beautiful Tonto National Forest.

Becca struggles with post-traumatic stress, but is enthralled by the splendor and fragility of the Sonoran Desert. The once aspiring artist meets Noah Tanner, a cattle rancher and beekeeper, Oscar Billingsley, a retired psychiatrist and avid birder, and a blacksmith named Walt. Thanks to her new friends and a small band of wild horses, Becca adjusts to life in the desert and rekindles her love of art.

Then, Becca’s husband tracks her down, forcing her to summon all her strength. But can she finally stop running away?

Order your copy here: http://mybook.to/wildhorsespb

As I’ve often mentioned, I’m a rock collector. Have been my entire life. Somewhere there is a picture of me as a toddler putting rocks in a cup, so perhaps my predilection is genetic. I mention this now, because sometimes rock-collecting trips go astray, as anyone who has ever ventured outside the confines of civilization knows.  One trip I took with my friend Alice went a bit off target.

Alice, who was in her mid 8os at the time, had us driving off-road trying to locate a mine. Arizona is awash in abandoned mine sites, with some estimates hitting one-hundred thousand, and neither Alice nor I could imagine anything more enticing than mucking about in old tailings piles in search of rock treasures. I will admit here that often we didn’t locate the sites we were looking for, but that’s part of rocking. Sometimes you find rocks, sometimes you don’t.

Alice and I were scanning the desert looking for our target when the truck stopped abruptly. I gunned the engine, but we went nowhere, except deeper into what had been an invisible sand trap. We’d broken through the rocky top layer of the desert floor and were now stuck.

We looked at one another, then got out to survey the situation. After trying several options and not succeeding, Alice squinted at the truck. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere,” she said.

I bet some of you are thinking, “Well, gosh, just grab your trusty cellphone,” but like many wilderness areas, there was no signal when Alice gave the obvious a try.

“Maybe, I can get a signal if I hike out to the road,” I suggested.

Alice handed me her phone and then retrieved one of the folding chairs from the back of the pickup. She placed it in the meager shad of a scraggly mesquite tree and nibbled on some trail mix, as I shoved off to find some bars.

I traveled on a faint trail, glad it was not the season when the desert is blistering hot, when the sun will melt the skin from your body, not to mention kill you in a frighteningly short amount of time. The walk was easy, so I wasn’t concerned.

Finally, I got a signal. I briefly considered summoning AAA, but from experience I knew their tow trucks would not venture off a paved road, so I called the sheriff’s office.

“What is your emergency?” the operator asked.

“Oh, no emergency,” I explained. “We got stuck in a sand trap.”

“And who is with you?”

“My friend is back with the truck. I hiked out to the road to get a cellphone signal.” Then, for no apparent reason, I mentioned Alice was 85.

“Where are you?”

I backtracked over our course and did my best to explain.

“Stay by the road.”

I assured her I would.

As I waited, I wondered around checking the ground, because one never knows when a nice rock might appear. Let me mention here that I wasn’t the least bit worried about Alice. She was one of the toughest people I’ve ever known. She could take care of herself.

So, imagine my surprise when a helicopter came into view. I could see it was looking for something. The aircraft seemed to be flying on a grid. And it kept getting closer. I couldn’t have been more stunned than when it touched down about fifty yards away in a great whipped-up cloud of dust.

I had the sudden urge to flee, quickly realizing that there’d been a bit of an overreaction. Then, out of that swirl of dust, a man appeared. A living, breathing Ken doll clad in the cutest flyboy jumpsuit I’d ever seen.

I’m embarrassed to admit that my first thought was my hair, which was sweatily squashed beneath my ball cap. He strode toward me, all pretty purpose and determination. He looked concerned. I wanted to hide.

“Where is the elderly woman?” he asked surveying the area.

“She’s back at the truck,” I said, tugging at my dirty shirt. The guy could have been a GQ model.

He nodded, displaying a jawbone that could cut diamonds. “Okay, ma’am—”

I now felt my age and realized no amount of makeup would have made the least bit of difference. I quickly explained that I was sure Alice was fine, still he seemed incredulous.

Then a truck appeared from the direction in which I’d come. Two hunters waved us over and explained that they had happened on my stuck truck and pulled it to safety. I smiled and thanked them.

“And how is the elderly woman?” the Ken doll asked.

I’m glad Alice wasn’t around the hear his question. The hunters answered that she was fine and was sitting in a folding chair awaiting my return. I thanked them and waved as they drove off.

The pilot turned to me. “Is there anything else I can do for you, ma’am?”

I thought of several options, but kept them to myself. Then, I smiled and thanked him for dropping from the sky on my behalf. I watched as he walked back to the helicopter, admiring the view. As he lifted off, I wondered briefly if I would be getting a bill from the county, quickly calculating the cost of mustering the man and his aircraft.

Then, I walked back to retrieve Alice, where the word elderly was never mentioned.

A WOMAN FLEES AN ABUSIVE HUSBAND

AND FINDS HOPE IN THE WILDS OF THE ARIZONA DESERT.

Published by Liaison – A Next Chapter Imprint

Rebecca Quinn escapes her controlling husband and, with nowhere else to go, hops the red-eye to Arizona. There, Gaby Strand – her aunt’s college roommate – gives her shelter at the Salt River Inn, a 1930’s guesthouse located in the wildly beautiful Tonto National Forest.

Becca struggles with post-traumatic stress, but is enthralled by the splendor and fragility of the Sonoran Desert. The once aspiring artist meets Noah Tanner, a cattle rancher and beekeeper, Oscar Billingsley, a retired psychiatrist and avid birder, and a blacksmith named Walt. Thanks to her new friends and a small band of wild horses, Becca adjusts to life in the desert and rekindles her love of art.

Then, Becca’s husband tracks her down, forcing her to summon all her strength. But can she finally stop running away?

Order your copy here: http://mybook.to/wildhorsespb