I was born in Eastern Europe and lived in Los Angeles for forty years. I am a practicing physician and a widower of 12 years. At no time in my life had I felt the desire to pen black written sentences on a white computer screen. Never, and in any shape and form, in none of the six languages I speak. This time, however, it was different. At a 'young' age of 73, my life, by the luck of the draw, intersected with an amazing and drop-dead-gorgeous, carnality oozing divorced lady, mother of two kindergarten-age children. She, Vronica (an 'e'-less Veronica), was a 31 springs younger lass. On our blind date, the calendar chronicled December 20th, 2009! I am a published author in the American surgical literature, yet to write a potentially readable short novel for the public at large was a different ball game. My mother tongue and my schooling were not in English. Slowly, I had to overcome the many restrictions a writer faces to secure a higher quality narrative. Among them, Stephen King's "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." Or, the baroque writer Baltasar Gracian's, "A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the original one." There were many other hurdles, such as episodes of lack of confidence and writers' block. Yes, it was very challenging, and time-consuming, but I have no regrets. With all the roadblocks, it was fun writing it. Editing, editing, and re-editing was endless and draining possibly more-so than writing. After almost three years of a gestational period, the book, like a newborn, arrived to revel in the world. We just celebrated a decennium together. No age-gap managed to separate us. We never married, and we do not live under the same canopy, possibly one of the reasons for our longevity. The narrative describes our unique lust-morphed-romantic relationship that, by some rigid criteria, could easily be called inglorious as well.
