The Problems Of Being An Elgon

The problems of being an Elgon - other than the obvious, that my first name is downright weird!

Okay, first off, I wasn't born an only Elgon. Hard as that may be to believe, it is a name my dad was stuck with. He never used it except for legal things like anything dealing with banks, lawyers and the government. Otherwise, he always went by Bruce. His middle initial was 'B' and since he had always went by Bruce, it was assumed to be his middle name. (More on that later).

When I came along, my mother didn't want me named Junior, so she refused to name me Elgon Bruce. Instead she insisted I be named Elgon B. - middle initial only. In that way she believe I was not, nor ever would be, a Junior. She argued and arm wrestled with the attending nurse about it. Looks like a nurse would know better than to contest with a pregnant woman's hormone levels and such but there you go. We all do stupid things sometimes, especially when we're convinced we're right even when we are wrong.

The reason Mom didn't want me named Junior was because of a kid in Kentucky she grew up with whose name was Junior Williams. As far as I know his real first name was Junior. Yes, we are talking about full-blooded rednecks here. That is my heritage.

Junior had some very bad habits like he was extremely gifted at farting on command or at will. He used to cup his hand, fart in it and stick his hand under a baby's nose and laugh hysterically when the baby made a sour face and gagged. Yeah, we're talking about classy people here. So, I fully understand my mom's reluctance to name me Junior.

Here's the kicker, though. On my dad's official birth record, which he had to get from the State of Kentucky when he applied for Social Security around the time I was 20-years-old, he learned that all this time his real, honest to God, officially registered birth name was Elgon B. - middle initial only - same as mine. So you see, I am a Junior, just not on paper.

Now, since my dad passed away in the Spring of 2000, you might think I am now an only Elgon - but not so fast. Early on in life I wanted to know what the heck an Elgon was, so, around the time I was learning how to read, I tried looking up my name in the dictionary. No luck. However, my parents had bought a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In that, under Elgon, is a whole write up about this mountain in Kenya, which is an extinct volcano as I understand it.

Okay, so my name is African. Funny, I don't look Kenyan. And I certainly can understand the President's reticence at having anything to do with being mistaken for someone from Kenya because I have gotten a lot of strange looks in the past - every time I have answered the usual question about my first name. "Is that ethnic?" Well, it could be. It's Kenyan. "Funny you don't look Kenyan." By the way, I am maybe the second palest person on the planet. I get a sunburn from walking past a painting of the sunset. So, yeah, it's not likely I have Kenyan roots or any other connection to Africa other than my namesake mountain.

It got some laughs in college whenever a professor was stupid enough to ask me if my name was ethnic, which was a lot more often than you might think. Still, when I was twenty-something, sharing my name with a African mountain was sort of cool, I guess.

Around the time I published my first book, I ran my name through a search engine and found a lot of hits about Mount Elgon, of course. There were a few about some guy whose last name is, ironically, Williams who did a lot of climbing on my namesake. Interesting. And then, ahead of my name and my book's listing with Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble I see the world's third Elgon, some company in Italy, a cosmetics concern, I believe. As i don't read Italian all that well, I'm venturing a guess.

The reason all this came to mind is that, just today, I got a friend request some someone associated with the latter Elgon, the company. Found that ironic since just today FB told me not to be sending out friend requests to people I don't know. I accepted the friend request. It might be good knowing another Elgon. I'm not expecting the pile of rock in Africa to be much for conversation.

Interview With Dying To Be A Centerfold Author Terri Lenee Peake

In the October 1987 edition of Penthouse Magazine Terri Lenee Peake appeared as the centerfold, culminating her lifelong dream of fame, elevating her star into the stratosphere in a world few of us know anything about. Her memoir, Dying To Be A Centerfold is a frank account of what her life was like from growing up an abused child to becoming the fiancée of a gangster. It is a compelling read told in her own words not as a commentary on the objectification of women but as a warning of all the pitfalls on the way to success in adult entertainment.

Currently, Terri lives in Hawaii where she is still recovering from the effects of her former life that robbed her of her health. After reading her book I decided I wanted to interview her and contacted her. She graciously consented to answering a few questions.

Q. It’s not an easy task to write a book, especially a memoir containing a lot of personal and painful details. When did you decide to write it? How long did it take you to write it? And what was the reason for writing it?

A. I have been wanting to write it for 20 years, it took approx. 9 months, I wanted to write it for several reasons, one of those reasons was to be able to share my experience with the implants, it took me 9 years and thousands of dollars trying to get to the bottom of why I was so sick. When I heard a story on the news about someone that was sick from her saline implants, she described everything that I had gone through. It was through my research that I was able to uncover a lot of formerly unknowns about the adverse effects of the implants. Also I wanted to talk to young women about the dangers of Hollywood and how you can get swept up in the alcohol, drugs and violence that goes along with it. I figured they might listen to a Penthouse Centerfold. I felt compelled to write my story.

Q. Your book starts off with some pretty dramatic revelations about your complicated relationship with Mac and your letter from Penthouse Magazine, leaving the surprises in the details. How did you arrive at this structure?

A. I mean it’s exactly as it happened one of the happiest days of my life took place in the driveway and it also turned out to be one of the worst experiences that being the murder of Mac.

Q. In the book you win $5,000 playing Keno in Vegas and use the money to go to Hawaii. Although you came back to the mainland several times afterwards, you always returned there. What is it about Hawaii that made you want to make it your home?

A. The only stability I have ever had in my life was with my ex husband Glen, even though the relationship became more of a friendship than a true love. When I was at my sickest and was planning my explant surgery I asked Glen to let the kids come so they wouldn’t be scared. I didn’t know how the surgery was going to turn out. I had lost everything due to my illness and no one was helping me. Glen simply said come home, to hear that I had a home and didn’t have to worry about rent or taking care of the children I felt blessed to have that offer.

Q. You’ve been a celebrity and experienced good times and bad throughout your life. If you could go back in time and change anything at all, what would it be and why?

A. I would change the alcohol and drugs, I spun out of control and right when I was at the top of my game I threw in the towel. If I had a clear head and didn’t choose to take drugs I wouldn’t have been so willing to be with the type of guys I chose, I chose to be around the drugs because I relied on them.

Q. You’ve started a second book. What will it be about?

A. It’s a secret, I don’t want to take the chance that someone else will do My 2^nd Book, it will be another sobering cautionary tale.

I’d like to thank Terri for her candid answers and I hope this interview helps her get out the word about the dangers and long term health consequences of implant surgery.

If you’d like to read Dying To Be A Centerfold is it available on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Dying-Centerfold-Terri-Lenne-Peake-ebook/dp/B00IA8L94U/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392895569&sr=1-1&keywords=terri+peake

Terri Lenee Peake’s Facebook address is:

https://www.facebook.com/teresa.peake.33?fref=ts

Interview With Novelist Regina West

Regina West is the first novelist in this series of interviews I’m beginning here and elsewhere in my social media. Someone has to be the first, right? Well, why save the best to last?

She’s a romance and erotica novelist who signed with Pandamoon Publishing last year. Her first novel, The Long Way Home is due out later this year:

Forty-two-year-old Twilah Dunn has it all – a thriving ad agency in Los Angeles she shares with her business partner who is also her fiancé. But one phone call changes everything and leaves Twilah with a dead father, a cheating fiancé, and a score to settle.

She returns to her small hometown in North Carolina determined to sell her father’s horse farm and use the money to buy her business out from under her cheating fiancé, but her plans change when she sees the farm’s dilapidated state. She can’t bear the thought of leaving it that way.

Against all reason, she trades her fast-paced, high-stakes city life for a down-home, country one to restore her childhood home to its former glory. But she knows she can’t do it alone.

She hires sexy, forty-something cowboy Aidan Perry to help her do it. Soon, she can’t keep her mind or her hands off him, but rumors of his dark past loom. Besides, she’s been burned before by mixing business with pleasure.

Will Twilah push through her fear and let herself love Aidan? Will his mysterious past prove too dangerous? Has she really left Los Angeles behind? For some, the way to happiness is the long, winding road home.

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Regina is a mother of two boys, plays Classical guitar, lives in Lakewood, Colorado and says she’s a huge fan of chocolate. I asked her a few questions and this is how it went.

Q. Imagine for a moment that you’re a famous, bestselling author. They’re making a movie out of your last book. What do you do next to top that you’ve already achieved?

A. I gotta say…if that happens, I doubt I’ll bother topping it.  I’d keep writing, sure, but I’d spend an inordinate amount of time rolling around naked in my piles of money while sipping umbrella drinks at my beach house in Tahiti.

Q. Creative people tend to be spontaneous. In particular, most people think that writers are at least a little crazy. Tell us the most unusual thing you have done in your real life that doesn’t directly relate to writing.

A. I am way too much of a control freak to be spontaneous.  Crazy, yes.  Spontaneous, not so much.  I suppose the most unusual thing I’ve done was go-kart racing.  Most of the time, I was the only girl racing, and, believe it or not, I was good at it.  Not many women have that claim to fame.  I tend to think of myself as a NASCAR driver – driving too fast, doing fishtails in empty parking lots. Just ask the Colorado Highway Patrol.

Q. Creativity comes in many ways – for example, painting, photography, sculpture, music and theater. What other things do you do or have you done that are examples of using your imagination or other artistic talents?

A. As a child, I took dance lessons for many years and spent a great deal of my spare time choreographing routines.  Even now, if I hear a catchy song on the radio, I can envision dance steps in my head.  In adulthood, I began taking classical guitar lessons and fell in love with that, but, unfortunately, with all the other things going on in my life, I’ve had to put it down for now.  I truly miss making music.

Q. Where do you see yourself at this moment in your life had you never decided to write a book?

A. I think I’d be right where I am now.  Writing is a lovely, all-encompassing experience, but the pay sucks.  So, for the most part, I think I’d still be working full-time, spending time with my kids, and generally growing as a person.  I’d probably spend far less time on social media, though.

Q. Family and relationships are important in peoples’ lives and so, it is little surprise that there are relationships between characters in books. How closely do the interactions in your books mirror your real life?

A. Well, I write romance, so I take the sexual tension everyday real-life people might feel and ramp it up about a thousand notches.  That said, there are bits and pieces of me and people I’ve known in all the characters I’ve ever created, so the interactions are similar, albeit far more dramatic.

A prime example from The Long Way Home is when my introverted main character, Twilah, meets her future best friend, Victoria.  Victoria is bold, outgoing, and has nothing to lose, which chafes against Twilah’s more cautious nature, so her first reaction is an odd mixture of curiosity and mistrust.  I’ve had the same initial response to my extroverted friends.  It can take a long while for someone who spends a lot of time hiding behind her personal inner walls to understand someone with no walls at all, but once the trust is built, these two opposites become inseparable pieces of a puzzle.

Thank you, Regina for taking the time to answer a few questions.  The Long Way Home, her first novel, will be released through Pandamoon Publishing on June 30, 2014. For more information about her book check her out on her website or the social media links below:

reginawest.com

@ginawestauthor

facebook.com/reginawestromanceauthor

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7223916.Regina_West