If you liked When Harry Met Sally, you’ll fall in love with Robb and Gertrude from Strangers on a Bus…
Robb is crushed by a failed relationship with the love of his life and finds himself unexpectedly on a long bus trip from his adopted home in the U.S. back to his native Canada.
At the first stop in NYC, a girl gets on and so begins a contemplation of life, love, and strange events that will bring tears of laughter and heartache streaming down your face.
Is this girl Robb’s real true love or just a rebound? How far can they get on a bus ride anyway?
This is a true story.
EXCERPTChapter 4
A Rose by Any Other Name
The moon chose that moment to emerge from the clouds and illuminate an angel surely sent from God to save this book. Nay, an angel never looked as beatific as the radiant vision making her way down the aisle towards me.
An angel is an unfair comparison. An angel would weep, for no angel could steal breath the way this woman stole mine. And angels don’t have breasts nearly as nice. I don’t think there are silicon artists in heaven.
What the he– was that!?!
That was edit #2.
I had to give up my vacant seat to a character I’ll refer to, for now, as “girl.”
We haven’t settled on a name for “girl” yet, and my original intro for “girl” was:
Okay, so I saw this hot girl coming down the aisle toward me. But she was right behind this buffet nightmare, a guy who got every penny he ever paid for an “all you can eat” buffet. I’m too kind to resort to fat jokes, but if he could wash every crevice that needed daily washing I would be genuinely surprised. And I bet there are parts of his anatomy that have seen neither soap nor sunlight in years.
And he was eyeing me like the last piece of pizza on the Titanic.
I make me laugh, the last slice of pizza on the Titanic? Even I don’t know what the he– that means, and I’m sure that might be the worst metaphor in the history of word putting together.
So the guy needing a serious Weight Watchers intervention was shaking the entire bus as he made his way towards me, and I couldn’t insert a digit up my nose because I was smiling coyly at the hot girl behind him in case this dream guy somehow chose not to sit next to me.
At least I hoped I was smiling coyly at “girl.” My seduction techniques are so refined sometimes my flirting leaves me looking simple, and other times completely mentally deficient.
So that’s how “girl” originally entered the story, but she demanded something better, hence the angel nonsense.
I think I’m going to call “girl” Gertrude. That’s as close to a consensus on a name we’ve come to after an exhaustive series of negotiations that went a little like this:
Gertrude: “If I’m going to be in your book, I want a great romantic heroine name.”
Me: “What’s wrong with your name? I like your name.”
Gertrude:” It’s so plain, so ordinary, I hate it. Come up with something better, something sexy.”
Me: “Okay, how about Melba?”
Gertrude: “Melba? Like Melba toast? Melba’s not a sexy name.”
Me: “I have an Aunt Melba. She’s very sexy for an eighty year old. How about Gertrude?”
Gertrude: “Gertrude’s almost as bad as Melba.”
Me: “Hey, I’ve got an Aunt Gertrude, another very sexy senior citizen.”
Gertrude: “Why would you want to name me after one of your old aunts? You’re so weird. Give me a sexy temptress name.”
Me: “I got it… you ready… it’s a good one… Florist!”
Gertrude: “Florist? Florist? How about dentist? Or plumber? Florist is a job, not a name.”
Me: “I have an Aunt Florist, but she’s not very sexy. She really kinda looks like my Dad in drag, but years ago my Dad shaved his mustache.”
So I was left with the daunting task of coming up with a secret identity for “girl”. I think she’s Gertrude.
Robert Manary is an international playboy and man of mystery, with the charm and sophistication of James Bond shaken not stirred with a couple ounces of Cyrano de Bergerac, a dash of Rasputin, and garnished with the rapier wit of Thurston Howell the Third.
That’s how he sees himself, anyway.
The truth is Robert Manary is a construct created to protect the dubious reputation of his Clark Kent like mild mannered writer/puppeteer/the man pulling the levers and breathing life into the Great and Powerful Oz (don’t look too closely behind the curtain).
Manary is an award winning blogger, an erotic romance novel writer, the author of a pretty decent romantic comedy, and for a brief period in the early nineties served as dictator of a small South American country.
Most of that is true.
Manary is also an experimental artist who has no clue how to write an Author’s Bio, and definitely no idea how to end one.
P.S. He is also a shameless plunderer of pop culture.
So, if you missed my previous post about this book and its accompanying giveaway, you now have another chance! Check out the book, and be sure to enter the international giveaway!
