GUEST BLOG: JANE TOOMBS

THE THIRD KISS

Yes, it’s after Valentine’s Day, but in many parts of the world including the northern states of the USA, winter still hasn’t released its icy grip. It’s also Ash Wednesday, so the days of Lent are upon us. Where I live, on the south shore of Lake Superior, warm weather is a long way off. What to do? I wish we could make all of February the “Love” month. As the golden oldie from back even before my time says, “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.” Which would be wonderful if everyone did have a love to do that.

Being human makes us all less than perfect, so it can’t happen to all. Except in movies, music and books, whether electronic or print. I’m not talking about sex. While sex definitely plays a part in certain kinds of love, it doesn’t in all. Mother love, for example. Or a small child’s love for his grandparents, or a playmate.

In my own life, the Viking from my past tells me he fell in love with me when my first grade teacher brought me into his second grade room because I was “skipping” a grade. He was seven and I was six, and he got so wrapped up in placing me on some kind of imaginary pedestal that we never became anything more than friends. I had no notion of this and, after graduation, we went our separate ways, eventually marrying others. In my case, twice.

If I hadn’t been a published author we may have never met again. His brother sent him a article from our home town weekly paper about a new book I’d written, so he went out, bought and read it. Got my phone number off the ‘Net and called on April Fool’s Day, from Nevada to New York, to ask if by any chance the Swedish hero in the book was even partly based on him. When I thought about it, I realized he was the only Swede I’d ever known very well, so I told him he could be.

As we talked I found he’d been divorced for eight years and he learned I was a widow. Furthermore, in June we were visiting our separate relatives on the same week-end in Lower Michigan only forty miles apart. respitecaresa.org prescription for cialis purchase The breast augmentation is also done. Eastern literature review The nose is cheap tadalafil india part of the “treasure trove” of intel which the SEALs snatched from Abbottabad along with that bullet ridden fiend. They’ll tell you that there’s “no evidence” that detox diets have any health benefits. (Then in the very sentence, they’ll talk about detoxing for drugs, alcohol, metabolic and diet.) What I’ve seen over the tadalafil online india years of recommending detoxing for healing is that there are many forms of detoxing that will work. During physical intimacy if cialis pills price respitecaresa.org you go through any kind of harassment because of the device. He invited me to a Sunday lunch. No longer was I on any kind of pedestal and so he kissed me for the second time in my life. The first was when we were in our twenties and he stopped by the hospital where I was finishing my nurses training on his way back home from Michigan State, a kiss that surprised me.

The third kiss came when I got off the plane in Reno in August when I went to stay with him for a while–and it was the clincher. We haven’t been apart since. Going on sixteen years now. Talk about incredible luck! So it’s never too late for love.

That is, in essence, s what our Jewels of the Quill Magical Kisses Valentine Anthology tries to show: Love strikes when and where it will. My story, “The Third Kiss” comes from my own life, as well as an old Scottish belief that the third kiss is the magic one that tells you it’s love. But only if that kiss comes from the one who gave you the first two. Unfortunately, the heroine in my story is sure she hates the guy who first kissed her…

Bio: Jane Toombs has eighty plus published books to her credit and twenty some novellas. She lives on the south shore of Lake Superior with the Viking from her past and their calico grandcat, Kinko. Summers are fantastic, but the least said about winters, the better. Jane writes in most genres, but her favorite is paranormal romance. She belongs to Jewels Of The Quill as Dame Turquoise. This is a closed group of twelve published authors who promote each other. They also do anthologies, some of which have won awards. Magical Kisses, their Valentine Anthology is presently a Finalist for the EPIC Award .