Be Careful (and maybe a little more specific about) What You Wish For

Glenn Ronsom had barely gotten to work when the phone rang.

“Hi, Honey.” It was Rita.

“What’s up, dear?”

It was probably some small family emergency. Jed was sick or something and refused to get on the bus or something…

“Do you know what day this is, Honey?” she said and his heart sank.

“Oh? Um?” he said in a low tone.

“It’s your birthday, dummy!” she cried happily. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

Glenn’s heart soared. Thank God, but it wasn’t the anniversary of their first date or something totally irrelevant like that. He was at work, after all.

“Remember when I asked you what you wanted?” she asked.

“Er, no,” Glenn admitted.

“This is going to be the best birthday of your life,” she told him and a quick, cold shot of adrenalin shot through and fired up his heart a notch or two.

“Really?” he asked in some doubt, and no wonder after last year’s trip to Marineland, with Jed all of seventeen and very, very unpleasant to be with, as Glenn recalled.

Still only half listening to her, his wife seemed to be awkwardly shy about something.

“Who’s there?” she asked obscurely, but familiar with her ways, he took a quick look around.

“Fred’s in today,” he noted. “He’s on the service desk.”

“Oh,” she said doubtfully.

“It’s okay, honey, now what is it?” he asked patiently.

“Do you remember when I asked that one time what was your wildest…um, uh, fantasy?” she gushed, sounding suddenly very close to the phone and all breathy.

“What?” he asked in confusion. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Glenn had this dreadful feeling; and he knew damned well she didn’t go out and buy a Winnebago…she couldn’t have…could she?

“Baby, what’s going on?” he asked firmly.

“I want you to pick up a few things on your lunch hour, and I want you to promise that you’ll never, ever tell anyone about this, and I want you to promise that you will be coming straight home from work,” she pleaded.

“Um, ah, okay,” he said. “But why? What’s going on?”

She said one word, but it was enough: “Threesome.”

It was a whisper, admittedly an awkward, shy, diffident and even shaky kind of whisper, but she said it for sure and it was enough to make Glenn sit up and hold that phone away from his head and stare at his reflection in the pane-glass window for a moment.

He barely restrained the urge to shout ‘halleluyah!’ at the top of his lungs, but hurriedly hunched over and put his hand over the earpiece.

“Really?” he gasped, heart pounding and pulse rate rising and the middle-aged Glenn even noted some initial signs of arousal, a somewhat unusual occurrence after nineteen years of marriage.

Tearing a leaf from the recycled paper note-pad, he took down the list she gave him and slipped it carefully into his right shirt pocket.

Oil! Candles! Fishnet stockings! A big plastic dildo! Two bottles of champagne! The list seemed to go on and on, somehow surprising in its details. A plastic drop-sheet, for crying out loud!

With Jed gone for the weekend, something he didn’t even know about, it looked like a hot time in the old Ronsom household that night.

***


Several things came up and Glenn half forgot about it. He even missed lunch, as their part-timer didn’t call in sick, but nevertheless failed to appear. Someone had to relieve Fred, and Glenn was the only one available.

It was only after about two-thirty when it came back to him, and he got this short, sharp, little shot right in the guts again.

Glenn worked with half a mind on his job for rest of the day, and then drove at what was record speed for him to the nearest pharmacy, and then on to the lingerie store, and then the hardware store. He threw everything on the credit card and hurried home to the best birthday present a loving wife could ever give a man.

God, she was the best girl in the world.

Holy! When he thought of all the years when he had begged and begged for a threesome…but at least it was finally going to happen now, he thought gleefully.

***

Glenn threw the car into park and lugged all the packages out of the trunk. He was almost hyperventilating, and he had the most amazing erection for most of the drive home, and even had to endure it while shopping for certain items. Thank God for winter and long coats!

Glenn entered the hallway, and took off his coat, and then picked up his packages from the boot-bench, and strode happily into the living room.

“Honey! I’m home!” he called triumphantly, only then becoming aware of a well-dressed young black man sitting casually on the end of the couch, one ankle across his knee.

Glenn’s jaw dropped open, and he was about to greet the man, whom he assumed was some kind of an insurance salesman, or an estimator for an interior decorator…or maybe even a police detective.

Hearing his wife’s heels tapping down the long, polished hardwood corridor from the back of the house, Glenn’s voice rose above the clatter.

“Honey? Is everything all right? Is Jed okay?” he asked.

Just then Rita came around the corner, dressed in red, patent leather high heel shoes, and a black garter belt and stockings, a corset and smelling absolutely wonderful…

“What…?” he asked in wonder, ever so slowly placing the parcels on the coffee table.

“Honey,” she said brightly. “I’d like you to meet Malcolm.”


END

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Time Management: more time for Russian Brides.

A Time Management Guy.

For a writer time management is crucial. It doesn’t matter whether you do it full or part time.

When I run out of story ideas, there are plenty of other things to work on. Right now I have a story that was just rejected. The best thing to do is read it, make any small changes that are required and ship it off to the next market’s long-suffering editor.

Over the last year I have produced eight print-on-demand paperbacks, which all link up to my products on Amazon. On Smashwords there is provision for a link to where your ebooks are sold in print. Speaking of Smashwords and Amazon, last night I made a small correction to one of my books and uploaded the revised file to both sites. I don’t like spelling mistakes and typos in my books.

With four email accounts, two major sales platforms, multiple Twitter accounts, plus all the usual Facebook crap, I spend a lot of time checking e-mails to see if I’m following someone back. So I’m trying a free followback service. They do it once a month for free. If you pay money, they’ll do it more often. I never pay money. I can wait to follow you back.

It was taking three or four seconds to delete an email, and up to forty-five seconds to open one up and read it. It was extremely frustrating, but this computer is just an old Pentium II and my internet is low-budget, i.e. not much bandwidth.

Now I have another pen name. In order to work his accounts, I have to sign out of my usual accounts. So I tend to work on him exclusively for a while and then go back to being me.

Right now the pen-name’s first novel is about ready, and the editing of that took x-number of man-hours.

Since New Year’s Day I have written fifteen or so new short stories. With rejections, that’s about twenty-five or thirty subs.

Normally I can produce the first draft of a novel in about two months. But all them shorts add up to probably well over sixty thousand words. One of them, at 17,000 words, stands alone just fine as a novella at a different price point. It represents another type of product.

It’s not that difficult to bundle up a dozen short stories and produce an ebook and a POD paperback. It’s another chance for the customer to find you. Stick that out on all those different retail platforms, right?

I still have ‘Core Values’ and ‘Selected Poems,’ to do yet from my alleged backlist, but formatting the poems would be a quick job. The cover image is adequate just the way it is.

A writer should never run out of words. You can talk, can’t you?

If I keep going, I’ll have another nice little blog post, later on I’ll check pen-name’s emails and follow back a few people for him so as to build up an audience as quickly as possible. The little bugger has given away ten copies of his novella on Smashwords for Ebook Week. I’ve only given away three copies of ‘The Assassins,’ so I have to admit I’m a little jealous, but he’s a good kid, and I’m glad I created him. If he can sell books better than me, boo-hoo.

So far his name has been withheld. It’s an experiment.

Other than that, the key to good time management is just to keep busy, right?

Every day, and in every way—

We just keep getting better and better.

And if you run out of things to do you can look for a bargain in Russian Brides.

(As long as she’s willing to pay her own way, there shouldn’t be a problem. - ed .)