When I was a na\u00efve scholar of thirty-two, I was asked to edit a romance novel for a well-loved author in the south. This being my very first romance novel\u2014ever\u2014to crack the covers of\u2014 let alone, read\/edit\u2014I propped myself up on a pile of pillows and set out into unchartered waters with wonder and awe by the soft glow of my book light. Astounded by hunks of burning love and heaving bosoms, sexual tension racketed up, and \u201cgoodness, how many pages can I read without violating my slumbering husband…\u201d You can imagine my shock when totally unprepared I reached page 157, where upon I discovered the protagonist, Zoe, love goddess extraordinaire, perched on her sweet sized two buns. With one bronze leg slung over the other, her sultry upper body stretched out like cat woman so that her elbows rested on the edge of the table, her cleavage teased and beckoned, and that’s when it happened\u2026 she began to \u201cworry a hair on her chin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wha-uutt?!\u00a0I yelled-whispered in the dead of night, rocketing forward from my reclining position. My sleeping husband thought we were being robbed and bounded out of the bed.<\/p>\n
This gorgeous vixen of love did NOT worry a chin whisker. I\u2019m all about fatal flaws and keeping our characters real, but this is why we have editors\u2014why I was employed at that very moment. I tried to explain how the weight of the situation to James, but he was busy checking the front and back doors for intruders.<\/p>\n
The manuscript was surprisingly good\u2014characters, plot, pacing… I made several corrections and helpful points throughout. And yes, included was a polite editorial comment in the margin of page 157 suggesting that the author delete the \u201cworrying of you know what\u201d so as not to interrupt the descriptive flow of the protagonist\u2019s irresistible beauty.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
A decade later, I sit slumped over my computer, cheek resting in my palm while deep in scene development of my own novel, when my finger brushes a flaw on my face. My mind isn\u2019t registering physical reality at all and mindlessly I rub my ring finger over it, over it again, over it again, doing exactly what mother told us never to do, \u201cDon\u2019t touch you face with your hands, you\u2019ll get clogged pores.\u201d Finally, my finger\u2019s message reaches my brain, \u201cWe have a gate crasher,\u201d and curiosity gets the best of me. I need a stretch break any way.<\/p>\n
Leaning in close to the magnified 15x mirror with ungodly lighting, I see staring back at me a creature so vile it deserves its own name. Roger. At this magnification, Roger is nothing short of hideous. Roger is not hanging out with his cousins where he belongs. No, he\u2019s had made a break for it, gone rogue, planted himself a daring half inch above and to the left of my upper lip. He\u2019s built like a bouncer, solid. Rooted.<\/p>\n
I flash back to my debut gig of editing of romance, and am very pleased for rescuing the lovely fantasy Zoe from such humiliating invasion.<\/p>\n
Grabbing the tweezers, I grit my teeth. \u201cThis means war, little fella.\u201d There will be no \u201cworrying\u201d of anything here. One quick yank and it was over. I sounded like the boss, but I shuddered a little. The women of my family sport ‘staches young men only dream of. Truth is, lest I laser or electrocute Roger, he and the rest of the multiplying lip clan will be with me the rest of my life, despite my best laid plans of refusing to speak of their existence, secretly waxing, tweezing and going to war with them on a weekly basis.<\/p>\n
Let it be known: though I entrust my confession of this rude and unsightly imposition to you, my dears; Roger will never get a role in my romance novel. Nay, not even a cameo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a na\u00efve scholar of thirty-two, I was asked to edit a romance novel for a well-loved author in the south. This being my very first romance novel\u2014ever\u2014to crack the covers of\u2014 let alone, read\/edit\u2014I propped myself up on a pile of pillows and set out into unchartered waters with wonder and awe by the soft glow of my book light. Astounded by hunks of burning love and heaving bosoms, sexual tension racketed up, and \u201cgoodness, how many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,20],"tags":[23,7,3],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-writing-2","tag-humor","tag-women","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}