When Faking It Is Better

Last week, my BFF, our mothers and I went adventuring. We enjoyed a luxury night in Louisville's Brown Hotel enjoying a private dinner prepared by the chef and a series of cocktails featuring Kentucky's luxury spirit: Bourbon.

BourbonWomen.org at the Brown Hotel

But that's not all we did...oh, no! That's not all!

My Crys and my Momma.

We spent the next day on Millionaire's Row at Churchill Downs (home of the Kentucky Derby) enjoying the horse races, a wonderful buffet, mint juleps and a bit o' gambling.

Millionaire Row are the 4th and 6th floor upper balconies/banquet halls. They're called that because on Derby Day, if you ain't a millionaire you ain't getting in.

We admired the hats on display in the Kentucky Derby Museum and I went back to the buffet for seconds.

This is NOT a Derby hat. But if you ever get into the museum, you'll see that people wear far crazier things on their head during the first weekend in May in Louisville, KY.

The Kentucky Derby is considered the two most expensive minutes in sports. After our tour of Churchill Downs, we understood why: The seats in Millionaire's Row--the very seats we were sitting in!--run about $20,000 during the Derby. They are filled with the likes of Queen Elizabeth and Saudi royalty. If you or I show up on Derby day, we won't even get near the door.

We got close enough to touch the horses. And the jockeys. But we restrained ourselves.

We did not spend $20K for our day of luxury. We spend $40 apiece for the buffet and a shared tabled for eight. We spend $15 on the museum admission. We spent $8 apiece on mint juleps in souvenir glasses from the 2010 Kentucky Derby. And we gambled about $20 apiece. (I, for one, was a winner--coming away $3.30 ahead!)

If you're ever in Louisville, I strongly encourage you and yours to spend a day faking the high life at Churchill Downs!

For those of you disappointed that this post had nothing to do with sex, here's a chance at a consolation prize. For YOUR sake, I had a SECOND mint julep, and now can give away a Kentucky Derby souvenir glass (which I washed, I swear!) to a random commenter on this post. Please say hi in the comments before midnight, Sunday 11/27/11 for your chance to win--and I'll throw in an autographed Stone Kissed coaster to set your glass on.

I am a Magician

I am a Magician.

As you read this, I am looking across a room full of virtual strangers. I will speak a two-word invocation—and each and every one of them will go down on all fours and stick their butts in the air.

All week we’ve been debating in this country the power of words. From the role of rhetoric in the tragic shootings near my old grocery store in Tucson, to the role a mother’s words play in crafting her child’s future, we ask, “Is the speaker responsible for how his speech influence the actions of others?”

My first reaction is, "Well, duh. That's the whole POINT of language." My more reasoned, analytical conclusion is still a limited “Yes.”  Sure I’ve been misread. I’ve been misunderstood. I’ve been mistaken (and spread my error like a disease to others). And yet, when I ask someone to please pass me the butter, he generally does.

Language is magic. We use it to change the minds and behaviors of others. We want them to love us. We want them to serve us. We want them to leave us. We want them to fear us.  We want them to pass the butter. We want them to stick their butts in the air.

Words cross time and unfathomable distances—my signature has gone to Mars, but I certainly never will. The wishes of a dead woman written in a will have power and authority far beyond the requests she made when she was alive.

People I’ve never met are emailing me that they’ve begun talking to inanimate objects in their house and yard since they’ve read Stone Kissed (in which the statues talk). Did I anticipate or intend such an effect? No. But I’ve changed their behavior, nevertheless.

In my faith tradition, words go beyond a magic tool or weapon we wield. I’ve been taught, quite simply, “…the word was God.” It doesn’t get much more powerful than that.

So I write romance. If I’m going to put ideas in people’s heads, I want them to be good ones. I want to convince someone (anyone, everyone) we are each worthy of and able to find love, in spite of the most horrible things that happen to us. Love survives and triumphs in the face of everything from abandonment to the zombie apocalypse.

Through romance novels, I sneak into that space just over your left ear and secretly sway you to my way perspective. Through the stealthy application of romantic fiction, I will change the world.

I don’t think that’s unreasonable. Do you?

And can you guess my magic phrase?