Friday's special is...Queen of the Road!

Queen of the Road by Doreen Orion

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Doreen's Blog

Hi all, this is Shona here and it is my pleasure to present to the grill, ahem, to you, the mellifluously named Doreen Orion.

Doreen was just an ordinary housewife...well, no she wasn't. She was a psychiatrist with a thing about shoes. What does that mean? Ask a psychiatrist...hey Doreen, what's that thing about shoes mean?

Anyway, Doreen was also clearly a good wife, because when her husband came up with the idea of abandoning their lives for a year to drive themselves, their pets and her shoes across the US in an RV, she didn't offer him divorce papers. She did it.

The story of how, why and what happened is told in 'Queen of the Road'. And well told, too - check out the reviews:

"A Charles Kuralt-Albert Brooks-style romp where they meet up with nudists, robbers and more." - "Required Reading." The New York Post

"Orion has every good travel writer's ability to make readers feel they are there, to capture the telling details of places, and to present the account in a witty, accessible way. Reading the book makes you want to hit the road and have some of your own grand adventures. This is a fun read that will make just about anyone start itching for a road trip. Grade A." - Rocky Mountain News

What's more, Borders has chosen it as their Featured Book Club Selection for June and Target has chosen it as a Breakout Book.

Given that there is nudity, I think we can expect Miss Savannah to turn up for this one.

Read the excerpt, then answer the three questions that follow and I'll see you in the comments trail!

*****


When my long-dreaded thirtieth birthday arrived, I really wasn’t as upset as I imagined I’d be, for I had achieved a much more important milestone: my sartorial centennial. I owned one hundred pairs of shoes. Then, at age forty-four, I found myself trying to cram a mere half that number into a living space of 340 square feet.

The whole thing was Tim’s fault.

When he announced he wanted to travel around the country in a converted bus for a year, I gave this profound and potentially life-altering notion all the thoughtful consideration it deserved.

“Why can’t you be like a normal husband with a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?” I demanded, adding, “I will never, ever, EVER, not in a million years, live on a bus.”
Something less than a million years later, as we prepared to roll down the road in our fully outfitted, luxury bus, it occurred to me that Tim had already owned a Corvette, long ago when he was far too young for a midlife crisis. While I pondered who he might be seeing on the side (and whether his having an affair might prove less taxing than living in a metallic phallus on wheels), I wedged and stuffed – and, oh my GOD! bent – the cutest little Prada mules you’ve ever seen into my “closet,” which was really not a closet at all, but much more resembled the cubbyhole I’d been assigned many pre-shoe-obsession years ago at Camp Cejwin. How had I let myself go from “never ever” to . . . this? Both Tim and I are shrinks, but he’s obviously the better one. It took him five years, yet he whittled down my resolve, no doubt with some fancy, newfangled brainwashing technique ripped out of one of our medical journals before I could get to it.

That wouldn’t have been the first time my sneaky husband tricked me into doing something I didn’t want to do. Well, OK. It was only the second time (that I know of), but the first was a doozy: Almost twenty years before, Tim lied to get me to go on our first date.



Questions:
1) At this moment in time, how many pairs of shoes does Doreen own?
2) Besides 'metallic phallus on wheels,' what are two other nicknames Doreen has for their bus?
3) What was the lie, and how long did Doreen fall for it?