Welcome to Authorpalooza Day 3!

I’m a huge fan of Seasoned Romance: love stories featuring characters beyond the first blush of youth. As someone who found true love in her late 40s, I know in my bones it’s never too late for an HEA.

Today’s author would agree. Shirley Goldberg’s newest romantic women’s fiction title will make you laugh and swoon over the dating adventures and misadventures of a mature woman.

Sunny Chanel’s marriage is circling the drain when her husband marks his colonoscopy on the calendar and ignores their anniversary. With divorce papers instead of roses on the horizon, she says “au revoir” Paris and croissants, and “hello” cheap New Haven apartment and ramen noodles.

With the encouragement of her friends, Sunny jumps into online dating, twenty-three years and twenty pounds after her last date. To her surprise she discovers dating might require a helmet, and occasionally armor to protect her heart, but after years of being ignored, her adventurous side craves fun and conversation. She’s middle-aged not dead. Then suddenly, on the way to reinventing herself, life takes a left turn when the one man she can’t forget calls with an unexpected request.

Let’s peek inside:

Noah unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Come in, make yourself at home. My little place. I’m happy you’re here.”

I stashed my picnic basket on the floor under the television, and crossed my arms, but no matter which way I turned, it was there. The bed. Gigantic…and exactly what I had expected in a motel room anyway.

“Let me show you around.” He took me by the hand, led me around the room stopping outside the bathroom. “Yes, we have our own private facility. There is also, as you can see, a king-size bed so my legs don’t hang off the edge.”

He fiddled with the lights for a few seconds, found the dimmer, and turned off the bright overhead.

“I need to kiss you,” he said. He pulled me close, the kissing teasing, holding back and then not holding back, his mouth insistent, his arms pressing me into him, mine wrapping around his neck, pulling him down. We were like that until my legs got wobbly.

“Can we kiss sitting down?” I asked.

“No.” He kissed my nose. “What’s in that basket you brought?”

“Please?”

“Yes, dear,” he breathed, lowering me to the bed. He kissed my neck, my most vulnerable area—well, one of many—and worked his way up to my mouth. My lips parted, and I groaned. “What’s in that basket?” he said in between kisses.

“You’re getting repetitious and…” I tried holding in a moan, “You think that because I am groaning, you can lure me down a path of no resistance.”

He threw back his head and laughed, his Adam’s apple sticking out. “I think no such thing. What I think is we should read for a while. I brought a couple books. We both could use a cool down.” He saw me glance at his crotch. “What are you looking at?”

“Me?” I smoothed my sweater. “What books have you brought?”

“A few. My self-help books.” He pointed to his bag. “In there. And you?”

“I’ll read you some stuff from Catcher.”

“Catcher?”

“As in, The Catcher in the Rye.”

“Of course, in the rye.” He stood, turned around to adjust his pants. “I think I read that.” I could see him fiddling. “In high school. Or college.” He walked over to the desk and opened his wallet, closed it.

“Did you like it?”

“I guess so, don’t remember much.”

“Didn’t think it was funny? Funny-sad. But very funny in places. How everything’s bastard this and that.” I reached for a tissue. “I’m rereading it with a friend.” Well, we were thinking about reading it. “So you—it wasn’t a book you remember fondly?” I got up, took off my cardigan.

   He took the sweater out of my hands and held it for me. “I don’t remember much,” he said. “Sorry.” Then Noah eyed the picnic basket on the floor. “Your basket is for real. The picnic. You weren’t kidding around.”

   I nodded, got up and brought the basket over to the bed. I reached in and pulled out the package of figs, tore it open, and gave him one to taste. I’d spent time wandering the aisles of an upscale grocery store on Orange Street, the kind where the owner speaks with a heavy Italian accent and offers hot, home-cooked dishes prepared with love by Mama.

“Ah,” he said. “My first fig.” He took a small bite, held the fig in his fingers. “Thanks for the fig, honey,” he said and pulled me to him. He kissed me. The kissing lasted several minutes. “Maybe now is a good time to dine?” He didn’t let go.

I kissed his cheek and pulled away. “Right,” I said. I opened the basket, began taking out goodies, one by one, and displaying them on the bed.

“We have a nice French Emmental. Some Swiss sliced. And a pungent spread. Fatty but delicious.” I gestured, palm up, and took out a container. “Then there’s a little potato salad, bought not made. A vegetarian pâté. Crudités in the form of cucumbers, carrots, peppers. A few slices of roast beef. Mediumish.”

I pulled a round plastic container out. “Sliced fruits. Fruit. Condiments.” A little horseradish and mustard in tiny jars I’d discovered when unpacking my box of spices. I’d cleaned Laurent out spice-wise, lifted those jars with the nifty French labels, shipped them over in half a crate. Souvenirs. “A nice bottle of white, properly chilled.” I’d slipped the wine into a thermos bag. “A baguette. And fat paper plates so you won’t spill.”

We were living out an old movie scene, Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in Two for the Road. Poor and starving, they’d smuggled food into their hotel room and hidden it under the covers. We ate slowly, sipping the wine, sitting side by side, touching. Afterward, the food got chocked aside, and there we were, making out again. The horizontal was wonderful, as I’d imagined.

***

 “I can’t let myself go,” I said. We were on the bed, making out again. The horizontal was wonderful, as I’d imagined.

“Yes you can. Don’t worry. I’m in full  control, and I won’t do anything you don’t want to do,” and he unbuttoned my blouse. Kissed me. “You have a nice chest and nice breasts.” He pulled down the strap of my bra. I grabbed his hand, preventing him from unhooking it. “But don’t trust me.”

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? Turning me on so I’ll lose my brain.” He was looking into my face. “What’s all this trust stuff about?”

“It’s for your own protection not to trust me,” he said, slowly kissing my neck, my breasts. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You could get hurt.”

“That’s right. I could.”

“So the horizontal takes care of itself?” I held his hand still. “Flows along. Horizontal making out is so easy.”

“Very easy.” He paused. “I’m still infatuated.” He looked at me, rolled onto his side, and rested on an elbow. “I’m still infatuated, but I want to be with you because of the other, too.” I said nothing. “When I’m with you I’m always thinking about touching you. Well, when I’m not with you, I’m thinking about touching you. That worries me.”

Visit my website for another excerpt from the book. Sign up and grab a copy of Happy Hour, a short story about an online meet and a tiny misunderstanding. https://midagedating.com/

BUY Middle Ageish  AT YOUR FAVORITE BOOKSTORE:

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y29ao9wq

APPLE   https://tinyurl.com/y37cbc5u

Nook/Barnes and Noble:  https://tinyurl.com/yyuwpq6o

Google: https://tinyurl.com/yypcdp7t

Kobo: https://tinyurl.com/y3ezzmhk

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3916624.Shirley_Goldberg

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/3531427862

Meet the author:

Shirley Goldberg is a writer, novelist, and former ESL and French teacher who’s lived in Paris, Crete, and Casablanca. She writes about men and women of a certain age starting over. Her website http://midagedating.com offers a humorous look at living single and  dating in mid life, and her friends like to guess which stories are true.  Middle Ageish is her first book in the series Starting Over. Her character believes you should never leave home without your sense of humor and Shirley agrees.

Thanks for hosting me, Sadira. I love your website. Lots of interesting author interviews, and I’m thrilled to be a part of your world.

Today, I’ll talk about what drove me to write about a fifty-year-old who starts over and online dates. A lot.

The old cliche about readers asking writers where their ideas come from? No one’s asked me that question. What they do ask is, “Did you really date 25 guys like your character in your book?”

They’re curious about how much of my book is autobiographical.

It’s complicated.

Some of Middle Ageish is based on real online dates I’ve––cough––enjoyed. So yes, I did meet a man who talked about his son way too much. (See the excerpt from the book.) As anyone who’s indulged in online dating knows, talking about one’s son is nothing more than an irritation when compared with the criminal acts perpetrated on well-meaning daters. (Now I sound like my Aunt Patty, who watched a lot of cop shows.)

What did these guys do? Everything from canceling at the last minute to waiting outside the restaurant to look me over before introducing himself. 

We writers draw, in part, from our lives. But it’s call fiction for a reason.

You get to lie.

Lawrence Block, a crime writer with a column in Writers Digest for many years, wrote a book titled, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. It’s a collection of his columns with highly entertaining tips about writing and the publishing industry.

Lying is the fun part because…well, I’m not writing a memoir.

I’m a reader. All writers are readers. Although I read across genres––recently dipping into paranormal and fantasy––my favorite is women’s fiction. Now that’s a broad category, and it ranges from the serious to the super light and fluffy.

These days, I look for humor in my reading life with an occasional detour into more substantial reads. What grabs me? Relationship stories of all kinds. A believable meet-cute that’s not over the top. Conversations between characters that are realistic yet entertaining and show why they’re attracted to one another. Subtle yet playful. A great break-up scene where the guy deserves to be kicked in the nut sack––metaphorically, of course. Or telling off the big boss and walking away, corny as that sounds. Haven’t we all wished we’d had the nerve? Also love relating to the changes a character undergoes as the story unwinds. These are the elements that resonate for me in a story.

So back to the autographical stuff.

I’ll admit it, I exaggerated in the dating scenes. For example, I took a mediocre date with a man who talked way too much about his son. Then added my frustrated heroine who grabs her chance to get back at him, if only a little bit. In real life, there was no phone call from another date, and I didn’t cut the evening short. (The excerpt of this scene is on my website.)

Many times, I’ve wished I had the guts to follow my instinct, or my character’s example.

The thing about using real life experiences as a foundation for a scene? After a while I tend to forget what’s true and what isn’t. The more I read over and edit the fictional version, the more it becomes, in my mind, the real thing.

The teaching scenes in the book came from my experience as a teacher, and anyone who spends time with adolescents, especially fellow teachers, will identify with Sunny, my heroine. Kids are masters at finding your weaknesses.

As far as the online dating, yes, I did a lot of online dating. I carried a small notebook around, took a few minutes in my car––or in the restroom if it was too good an anecdote to risk forgetting––to jot down notes. Here are a few examples:

Asked nothing about me. Talked for 45 minutes straight.

Didn’t make eye contact.

The waitress knew him by name.

“I’ll treat if I can take home the leftovers.”

Widower, three months since wife died. Too soon to date?

Long nails on pinkies.

Short comments that eventually led to a book, even though writing a book wasn’t a plan, not at first.

And I still have that little packed-with-memories journal. 

Follow Shirley Goldberg on all the socials:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/midagedating

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shirleygoldbergauthor/

AMZ Author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/shirleygoldberg