1. The Great and Secret Show - Clive Barker
2. Dune - Frank Herbert
3. Jeeves and the Tie that Binds - P.G. Wodehouse
4. Necroscope - Brian Lumley
5. The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
8. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
9. Antic Hay - Aldous Huxley
10. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
11. Sunglasses After Dark - Nancy Collins
12. The Mummy - Anne Rice
13. Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
14. The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
15. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

There's that old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I'm told we're all human and have moments of weakness. Sometimes we make bad choices. I can relinquish myself to that fact. Unforuntately, I also believe we have to suffer the consequences of our bad choices, regardless.

The question is whether a cheater will continue to cheat. It's hard to say, as everyone has their own idiosyncracies. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. What I think is more important than that is whether you can find it in yourself to trust them again. Forgiveness shouldn't come with strings attached, and misgivings about their future fidelity will be trying over the course of the relationship. I know I've never forgiven infidelity, but that's my short coming more than hers.

So, if you are better than I am, and can take a chance and feel secure in the relationship again, I'd say salvage what you can.

I can't say that there's anything I would "never" write about. I'm of two minds on certain subjects, but it really depends on what sort of reaction I'm looking for. I'm almost always concerned with entertaining more than I am with raw shock value, but there's a time and place for both. I've also got a bad habit of exploring subjects that unsettle me. Call it self therapy, if you like, but I like poking at the wound, figuring out why a certain topic bothers me.

More often than not, I end up hating the finished product, but then, that's all of my stories. However, if I can write something base and horrible, but put it together sensuously enough to still get an aroused reaction from a chunk of readers despite their proclivities, I'm more than pleased.

Cheaters never prosper, they used to tell me. I've made a life of cheating, and while I wouldn't say I've prospered,  I wouldn't complain. My wife never really understood me. Hell, I never much understood her. But over the years, we managed to develop an "understanding". We don't pry too deep into each other's affairs, business or otherwise. I still remember the first time I broke those...

Added 29 Jun 2009 | Category Taboo | Votes 13 | Avg Score 4.23 | Views 2,918 | 4 Comments