Literary Research

Fiorella will tell you that the reason she writes contemporary romances is because she doesn't want to bother with research, but don't believe her.  She might not have to research petticoats and bloomers, but she does have to learn about such things as the places her characters live, what they do for a living, what cars are  appropriate for them, and their supposed backgrounds and life experiences.

For Where the Heart Leads, which will come out on November 11, Fio peppered five rancher friends with endless lists  of questions about life among the cows.  She also consulted an architect, a nurse, a firearms expert, two friends with Master's degrees in theater,  a high school principal, a foodie, an expert on Britishisms, a fire builder, and a wine expert.

And tomorrow, for Phillipa's unnamed novella, she's going to sally forth and visit a place that sells landscaping materials, drop by Dairy Queen to check out how a Blizzard and a small ice cream cone would be eaten, and stop at Walgreens to pick up a home pregnancy test.

Don't ask.

Insights and Idiocies

Fiorella offers stray thoughts and conjectures to round out 2014:

1) Given time, all things are possible.  The conditional clause is the problem.

2) Detroit is our Chichen Itza.

3) What does torture do to the torturer?

4) Does any cow ever die a natural death?

5) The tabloids have had Doris Day at death's door for the past twenty years, but, at ninety, she's still going strong.  Of course, the same sources have also had Jennifer Anniston pregnant more times than Michelle Duggar.

Zion's Barnyard

One more thing about the FLDS and then Fiorella will let the topic drop--maybe.

The ratio of women to men--doesn't it make you think of a herd of cattle with just one bull? Of course, Jeffs was generous and allowed subservient bulls to accumulate their own small herds, but he kept the sweetest, freshest heifers for himself.

To further the bovine analogy, consider the African tribes in which wealth is measured in cattle. Using that standard, Jeffs, with his seventy-nine wives, is a modern Croesus. And with him collecting welfare checks for seventy-eight unemployed single mothers, he may be even richer.

Yes, the FLDS women are not just cash cows, but the geese that lay the golden eggs.