Cooking the Hook

"So, you want to learn how to dance, really dance, not that disconnected, spazzy gyrating that you could do alone at a bar and no one would notice.  I'm talking about BALLROOM dancing." She waved her hand in the direction of the street-front windows where the lurid purple neon sign burned night and day. "We have a man and a woman, moving together to music." She walked inside the circle as she talked, looking each couple over, seeing who was going to be the most work. "There's the beat, and the melody, of course. Then muscles, bones, and skin...touching! And the desire to make it all work smoothly. If it sounds a little like sex, well, there's no denying it, which is why we keep our clothes on."  Everyone chuckles or blushes to one extent or another and they relax a little. Jack and Paco study their feet to keep straight faces. If they giggled, Connie would ream them out for it later. Giggling was for girls. They were supposed to be men. Jac

Now comes the part I have to stop saying I hate, because what will that get me? Hives, boils, constipation - the writer's plague loosely called marketing. I've decided (the calendar decided for me) that I'm going to self-publish Prophets Tango as a serial. Yes, something a little different. I don't have time to query an editor/agent and wait six to eight months to get an email saying thanks, no thanks or whatever. Too old for that kind of waiting. Besides, there's another book waiting in the wings. Feedbacking friends and beta readers have been worth their weight in gold, but the best I'll be able to do is spell their names right in the acknowledgments and signed copies. And let them ride in the limo with me. Dear Ed. has given me a to-do list and I'm scratching things off one at a time, with varying degrees of success. One of the things I'm NOT supposed to be doing is imagining that I can do my own cover art. See? There are two distinctly di