Life is Not a Pleasure Trip (Guest Post)

Beautiful bathroom, but where’s the soap?

Hey all, 
This is the first in what I hope to be a series of guest posts from other bloggers around the web who want to contribute to the blog. This one is from Marilyn Baron with slight edits by me. Her bio is below. Tell me what you think :)

“Does everything in life have to be fun?” That was one of my father’s favorite expressions, right after his pronouncement, “Life is not a pleasure trip.” And my answer to that question was always, “Yes.” Life isn’t always fun, but a lot of things we experience every day are funny.
Like yesterday, when the woman in the grocery store deli handed me my sliced cheese order, followed by a cheery, “Come back to see us.” Of course I’m going to come back to see her—if I want to eat. No wait, I think I’ll skip going to the grocery store for a few weeks and see how long it takes me to starve. I know she was just trying to be nice and of course I know there are other grocery stores in my neighborhood, so they’re just trying to keep my business, but some things just strike me as humorous. When they do, I write them down and try to find a way to incorporate them into my stories.

Like the other morning when I asked my husband to hand me a plate while he was making his breakfast, and he said: “You can’t multitask when you’re making oatmeal.” The proof of which is splattered all over the inside of my microwave at least two or three times a week.

Last Call to Missoula

Earlier this week, we were at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas waiting to fly back to Atlanta when the airline representative announced over the PA system, “Last call to Missoula.”
“Where’s Missoula?” I asked my husband.
“I think it’s in Montana,” he answered.
After the third or fourth “last call,” my husband said, “They must still be trying to scare up some passengers, as in “Are you sure no one wants to go to Missoula? The doors are closing.”
Then the fun began on our flight home. I was getting settled when a giant of a man who looked like a hefty linebacker (think Refrigerator Perry) sat next to me and his biceps literally spilled over into my seat as the mass of humanity poured through the aisle.
Then one of the flight attendants announced, “This is going to be a full flight.”
“Surprise.” When is any flight these days ever NOT a full flight?
Are we having fun yet?
No, because a woman behind me was shuffling a deck of cards over and over. She wasn’t playing cards or dealing cards, just shuffling, VERY LOUDLY. “The Shuffler”
continued to shuffle the cards throughout the entire 3 ½-hour flight. At least there were no screaming babies.

The Great Soap Conspiracy

I’ve been traveling a lot this summer and I think I’ve detected what I call The Great Soap Conspiracy. Is there a global shortage of soap I don’t know about? I understand the need to conserve water, but soap?

It started on my trip to Spain. My sister and I stayed in 5-star hotels. They provided one bar of soap between us and we had to use the same bar in the sink as we did in the shower. After two days of not replacing the soap, I called the front desk and asked for more soap.

When my husband and I went to Aspen over the summer I noticed the same phenomenon at another first-class hotel. One bar of soap that was never replaced. Chintzy.

In Las Vegas, however, our hotel actually provided a bar of soap for the bath and one for the sink. I guess you have to throw the soap away in order for them to replace it. Or I’ll have to bring my own soap next time I go out of town. I don’t find that very funny.

I try to inject humor into every story I write, from romantic suspense and paranormal to women’s fiction. My favorite books to read are humorous. I like to laugh and I think my readers do too.
Leaving readers laughing is not always easy to do because many of my stories have serious themes. However, every one of them has a humorous element and a heartwarming, surprise ending. For example, “A Choir of Angels,”  starts out with a fatal house explosion on the eve of a young girl’s wedding. Nothing funny about that, but the story is written in a humorous tone. In “Follow an Angel,” the themes of loneliness and rejection are balanced by humor when an angel on a mission drops into a 5th floor Florida beach condo to help the heroine find her soul mate on Twitter. “The Stand-in Bridegroom,” opens with a missing bridegroom. Each story involves a death and an angel, and yet all have happy endings.

When I read, I like to be entertained. Reading relaxes me. I don’t like books where I have to slog through obscure literary references and decipher hidden meanings. If a book makes me laugh or smile, so much the better. So if you’re a writer, keep a notebook handy and write down things you find funny. If you’re a reader, sit back and enjoy the read because when you read, life really is a pleasure trip.

Bio:

Georgia Author Marilyn Baron, a public relations consultant in Atlanta, writes humorous women’s fiction, humorous paranormal short stories and romantic suspense. Her latest release, Dead Mix, is available from TWB Press at http://www.twbpress.com/deadmix.html; Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Mix-ebook/dp/B008P4LFI4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1344028502&sr=1-1&keywords=Dead+Mix; and Barnes & Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dead-mix-marilyn-baron/1112257979?ean=2940014991049. To read more about her women’s fiction, “The Edger,” visit her blog at Petit Fours and Hot Tamales at http://www.petitfoursandhottamales.com/marilyn-baron/; Find her angel stories, “A Choir of Angels,” “Follow an Angel,” and “The Stand-in Bridegroom, “ at TWB Press: http://www.twbpress.com/achoirofangels.html. Find her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Marilyn-Baron/286807714666748 and Twitter at https://twitter.com/MarilynBaron. Her next book, “Under the Moon Gate,” a romantic thriller set in contemporary and WW II Bermuda, will be released from The Wild Rose Press in spring 2013. Marilyn is a member of Romance Writers of America, Georgia Romance Writers and Marketing For Romance Writers. She is a finalist in the Georgia Romance Writers 2012 Unpublished Maggie Award of Excellence in the Paranormal/Fantasy Romance category for “Sixth Sense.”

Hope you enjoyed the first guest post! Tell me what you think in the comments below, and if you want to write your own guest post, send a message to my Facebook page (link below). New post Thursday that I'm excited for, so see you soon.

-The Anon Blogger

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