Title: Cocktales: An After-50 Dating Memoir
Author: Morgan Malone
Publisher: Turquoise Morning Press
Pages: 264
Genre: Romantic Memoir
An After-50 Dating Memoir…or Eight Years, around Eighty Men, but not nearly Eight Thousand Kisses.
There I was. Approaching 50, widowed for 15 years, alone for all that time, except for two kids, one dog, a full-time legal career, a house, a mortgage, some dear friends…and a wish. I just wanted to feel like a woman one more time. Not “Mom.” Not “Your Honor.” Not “Sis.” But, a desirable and desired woman.
I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t fall in love again. My heart was buried in a grave in Brooklyn. But, I could offer a sense of humor, big blue eyes and intelligent conversation. I wasn’t sure about kissing or anything else; it had been a long time and I was not sure that sex was like riding a bike (which I could no longer do, given a bad knee and too many extra pounds). I was willing to try. Would anyone be interested?
To my surprise, the cyber-world was full of men like me; men who were looking for a second chance at love or lust, with a real woman, a woman just like me.
Cocktales is the true story of my adventures and misadventures in the world of online dating. It is full of practical advice (never wear knee-high hose on a first date, NEVER), giggles, groans and my growth as a woman. I cried a few tears, I made plenty of mistakes, but I also made many friends. I even fell in love.
Join me on my journey. It is a roller-coaster ride I think you will enjoy.
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- Cocktales: An After-50 Dating Memoir is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
Book Excerpt:
Right before my forty-ninth birthday, I asked my husband if he minded if I had sex with another man. He didn’t answer me, so I persisted.
“Listen, I’m almost fifty years old, I know. Who would want me? I’ve had two kids and a hysterectomy. I’ve got stretch marks, scars and cellulite. And I know I need to lose at least fifty pounds.”
No response.
“It’s been a long dry spell, you know. Almost fifteen years. I think I’m entitled to at least one more orgasm that doesn’t come from something powered by a nine-volt battery.”
Still nothing.
“Okay, then, I take your silence to mean I am on my own in this. You don’t have an opinion one way or the other. Right?” Silence.
It was March and the Yankees were still in Spring Training so I knew so there were no distractions from current league standings or the pitching staff. His side of the bed was ghostly quiet. And empty. He had been dead for almost fifteen years.
I talked to him all the time. Not every minute of the day, but an ongoing dialogue in my head where I kept him informed of the day-to-day minutiae of our lives. I announced major developments then I waited for an answer. Call me crazy, but there were times when I heard his response in my head as clearly as if he had just spoken directly in my ear.
Sometimes, like now, there was nothing. Figure it out for yourself.
So, I turned out the light and sent a silent prayer Heavenward. “God, just once before I am over fifty, let me have sex with a man who wants me, let me remember how to do it. And let me feel. Amen.”
~~~~~~
My pen-name is Morgan Malone. A twist on the old “What is my stripper name? A combination of the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on: Dino Homestead. I opted instead for the name of my first cat and my hometown to create Morgan Malone, an erudite yet brazen hussy, who decided, after 15 years of widowhood, to see if there were any men in America (and parts of Canada) who wanted to have sex with a 50 year-old woman. At least that is what I told myself I was doing. Along my almost ten-year journey through the online dating sites, I discovered men who were just as unsure of their intentions as I was. As I flirted with them, met them and even slept with quite a few, I began peeling off the layers of my emotional armor with less reluctance than I was peeling off my carefully coordinated lingerie. I found some really nice men, some very sexy men, some real dogs and a handful of genuine human beings who became friends as well as lovers. And I started to find myself: not just a mom, a lawyer, a wife and a widow but a woman I did not recognize. Yet there she was: a woman I did not like at times, a woman I thought no man would ever love, a woman who spent the first part of her life being the woman she thought she must be, a woman who was facing the last third of her life, finally, with anticipation.
My adventures and misadventures were met with disbelief by my friends who were convinced, almost to a woman, that the only men interested in a woman of our years was nigh on to 80 and in need of “a nurse and a purse.” So Cocktales has become not only a chronicle of my personal journey from widow to woman, from alone to independent, from needy to satisfied, but an instruction manual for the thousands of women facing the last half of their lives lonely and lacking confidence.
I am a published author of Katarina: Out of Control, an erotic romance with shades of “grey.” In September, my country singer-feisty reporter erotic romance, Unanswered Prayers, will be released by Turquoise Morning Press. I belong to several romance writers groups, with an online membership of several hundred voracious readers, authors, reviewers and bloggers, many of whom encouraged me to write. My blog is read regularly by many of these readers and also the growing audience of listeners who have heard me read my mainstream essays on NPR’s “51%”, a nationally broadcast show directed at women, and also on “Roundtable”, a popular program heard on WAMC, Northeast Public Radio.
I have just turned 62. I live near Saratoga Springs, NY with my chocolate Labrador Retriever. We enjoy occasional visits from my daughter who is a clinical psychologist and my son who is works in internet college sports reporting in Seattle. I paint watercolors, swim as often as I can and still practice law in between writing romance and memoir.
Her latest book is Cocktales: An After-50 Dating Memoir.
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