Brenda: A Whimsical Look at a Fallen Star
A beautiful you run-away lands on the streets of Hollywood where drugs and sex go hand-in-hand. She is lured into the world of porn and reigns as “Queen” for several years before her bubble bursts and a new beautiful girl replaces her. That was yesterday. Today another new face, another awesome body rises past Brenda also grabbing for the ring of glamour and fortune that porn will provide. Brenda realizes days of despair and agony missing the adulation that had once been her own ticket to an emotional high and financial reward – now conspicuously missing.
Professor Malcolm Hughes, Psychology Department at USC, obtains a federal grant with which to determine a means by which to re-integrate pornography “has-beens” back into mainstream society. Hughes learns of Brenda and intends to use her as his “lab rat” for his government granti-funded research. Unfortunately, Professor Hughes is both dimwitted and hornier than empathetic. When he encounters Brenda it all spirals out of control until his end and Brenda’s emergence as a legitimate movie star.
Brenda’s “girlfriend” inserted herself into the equation to get rid of Hughes and maintain the emotional stability of her friend and by using her own body gains an opportunity for Brenda at a huge personal cost. Who wins? Who loses. . . and how big?
Ruthie – A Life Out of Focus
Ruthie is born on a night periled by a devastating ice storm. Driving home from the hospital, the family is thrown into tumult when a cement truck slams their car. Ruthie lives but suffered brain damage. She limps through and to her teen years with an awkward demeanor, frumpy clothes, and is overweight. She finally finds meaning and worth in the arms of “the Dude” a hill-billy drug dealer who offers glitz and clamour from his Cadilac. The Dude leads Ruthie down the path of self-degradation and humiliation. For his part, the Dude is awestruck by the awesome sight of Ruthie’s buxom chest. For her, the reason she can’t see her feet; for him, the reason he can’t see anything else. When the Dude is drafted and sent to Vietnam Ruthie’s life spirals even further down life’s sewer. When she encounters the three “amigos”, the Dude’s drug suppliers from Indianapolis, she undertakes a whole new level of debauchery. Through rehab, Ruthe is given a new lease on life as a 400-pound Go-Go dancer at a sleazy club south of downtown – only to have that opportunity dig her even deeper into lost morality. Gyrating her 400 pounds of lustful flesh about the stage for the college crowd who bang their “longnecks” on the tables as they laugh and verbally degrade the self-worth of the young woman who only wants a life. The club is satisfied, however, as she manages to sell a zillion bottles of beer – the reason she was hired. In the end, a priest finds her and finally gives her life some meaning as a belly dance instructor to older women in a senior center. She dies happily for having been given this last opportunity.
* Note: The writer has kids and grandkids, ergo, this is not a pornographic book nor are the others in this series.
Betty – A Life Rejoined
A debutante from the aristocratic Meridian Hills district of Indianapolis whose family wealth is what legends are made from marries and shortly thereafter has 3 children in quick succession. It becomes an overwhelming burden and Betty unravels from post partem depression and sinks into psychological oblivion. Her money-grubbing husband has her committed in quick order and then summarily divorces her. He’s paved the way to access the family wealth and guarantee that Betty not return by bribing a corrupt official at the sanitarium. Actually, Betty’s illness runs its course in quick order – it was no more than a minor setback but her husband used it to “shoehorn” himself in the family money.
The hospital administrator see these actions as a green light ot rape and sexually buse Betty routinely. However, during one of his drunken stupors, one of his staff see to it that Betty is given a spontaneous hearing relative to release – she passes and gains her freedom after 25 years among some severe nut cases. But this is where the real nightmare begins. For his part, the hospital administrator uses a corrupt local cop as his tool to gain wealth of his own by providing personal files on patients. The cop robs the homes of patients’ families and along the way has made several kills to throw evidence in a different direction.
What will it take for Betty to once again have a life?
Catherine (Catroina)
From Irish Famine to American Discrimination
This writing is an historical fiction account of the life and times of the author’s great grandmother, Catroina O’Croinin. From the time that she was born as a spindly little child in the far southwest of County Cork, with the humbling cold and perpetually wet climate of Ireland and through all the agony of the rape and pillage of the Irish people by England. For nearly a thousand years the raiders had posed a major threat to the farmers and artisans that were the Irish but none like the English who stole and murdered their way through the country for most of those thousand years. All of Catroina’s family had fallen under the English boot by the time she was in her middle teens. She escaped and found a man to love and protect her and eventually help her flee Ireland at the height of the an Gorta Mór – the Potato Famine.
Escaping on one of the Death Ships to Boston she and her husband were emotionally distraught to find that conditions in Boston were not markedly different than in Ireland. No Irish Need Apply – the sign that greeted them at every turn disabled their hope of making a living so they scraped their way to the Midwest to farm. . . .