Women of a Certain Age - jd Seamus

As part of his blog tour for Pump Up Your Book Promotions Virtual Book Tours, jd Seamus, author of LAST CALL is guest blogging here today.

Seamus has lived and worked among some of the most amazing characters ever to have walked the Earth. After decades of working in the world of retail finance, e-commerce, and venture capital, Seamus began writing a series of novels based in Manhattan. Today, Seamus is happily at work on his sixth book in South Florida and dividing his time between his family and Braves and Jaguar games. You can visit his website at http://www.jdseamusbooks.com/.

A friend from the past called out of the blue the other day and the conversation reminded me of my recent past.

I was living in midtown Manhattan and ran my own venture capital firm. I was successful which meant sixty to eighty hour work weeks. Naturally my schedule left absolutely no time for a social life. As the firm grew and I was able to bring in a supporting cast, I decided to live a little and discovered I didn't have a clue regarding where to go to meet women. There were lots of women at work but you never do that. Most functions I was invited to were art or business related. I didn't know enough about art to start a conversation and business is business. On my own, I came up with using the Internet and that was a joke. Most of the ads were prostitutes, married women looking to fool around or couples interested in threesomes. Okay if you're horny (and I was) but dangerous. I hit bottom when my friends discovered I was looking. I was bombarded by myriads of suggestions. I quickly discovered that almost all were either trying to unload female relatives with extraordinary amounts of baggage or live their lives vicariously through me. That's scary. And if it's that way for me, imagine how tough it is for women as most men tend to really load up on baggage.

Oddly, all tended to lean toward younger women for me. I actually was attracted to women my age but was intrigued by visions of young hard bodies. I liked that idea. I'm mid fifties, somewhat athletic with anti jogger abs that I blame on my Irish inheritance. But what the hell, I can hold my breath for a long period of time.

One friend did suggest an ad in the New Yorker. Seemed reasonable so I gave it a try. WRONG! There is an underground language in using ads that I was unaware of. Petite means short. Good shape means round. Looks younger than my age means really old. Most lied and provided a very old picture or a picture of another person (so did I- I used Robert Redford). There were a lot of pictures of the really good looking actress in the Butch Cassidy movie, Katherine Ross. Another favorite picture was the girl that got dumped in Friends. The magazine didn't work. I didn't like the women that responded to my ad. Owners of the ads I responded to didn't like me. It wasn't working but I was dating a lot. Sort of dating a lot. Almost all of the one date variety but I was getting out at night.

Soon I grew tired of gum popping and having to explain 1950's television. I mean jeez, you don't know who Howdy friggin' Doody is? They stare vacantly when you mention a Slinky and don't laugh at the fact that you've learned the words from the Alka Seltzer commercial. I was forlorn and giving up. What was the point. I didn't want to spend time with a thirty year old. Nice to look at. Ego boost. I didn't understand them and they didn't understand me. And I'm SIMPLE. Then one day, sitting in a bar at West 43rd and Sixth Avenue, I laughed at an old Hula Hoop commercial on Fox for some news story. The person next to me laughed also. A feminine laugh. I dared to look over and a beautiful woman was sitting next to me. She was close enough to smell her exquisite perfume. She was in my age group and wearing a business suit that I found incredibly sexy. And we talked. And she knew Howdy Doody. She even knew Buffalo Bob. We had dinner. We went to her apartment. We didn't make wild, passionate love. We made slow, comfortable, sensual love. AND WE TALKED. And I'll never go back to the silliness of getting away from what I like and what I want again. Women of a certain age............

LAST CALL - jd Seamus

Nathan Melton is a former football player turned e-commerce entrepreneur. He's moved to New York City and is looking for a place to meet people. After several failed attempts he finds himself in the middle of an ATM heist that ultimately leads him to Jimmie's.

The proprietor of Jimmie's is Jimmie Collins, an Irish immigrant who, in addition to running the bar, "finds" and sells things that happen to fall off the back of trucks. He also collects toys and plays Santa Claus to underprivileged children each year. All the patrons at Jimmie's love Jimmie: the mobsters, the bookies, the cops, and now Nathan Melton.

Jimmie's wife is in the late stages of MS and his daughter is mentally retarded; they live together in a nice retirement community in Florida where they can be well cared for. So, when Jimmie learns he has cancer, he works to collect all the money he's stashed in off-shore accounts (from his various occupational pursuits) and set it up in a trust to take care of his family. However, after Jimmie passes away, the money vanishes; the bills aren't being paid and Nathan is contacted by the retirement community.

Jimmie's loyal patrons band together in an effort to find and return Jimmie's money before his family loses the roof over their heads.

The mystery aspect of LAST CALL doesn't come into play until about 2/3 of the way through the novel. The first part of the book is more of the daily routine of the various patrons of Jimmie's bar: couples meeting, the cops on stakeouts, a couple of the mob guys going to jail, etc. This made me think of CHEERS with a bit of THE SOPRANOS mixed in. With the frequent, detailed sex scenes, if LAST CALL were a television show, it would need to be aired on a
deluxe cable station.

LAST CALL doesn't have the drama of a SOPRANOS, however. Instead it has more of the qualities of a comedy like NAKED GUN. Once the mystery kicks into high gear, a comedy of errors commences.

While the majority of the novel revolved around the more far-fetched plot events, Seamus mixes in a rather interesting theme. New York is filled with fancy clubs and highfalutin restaurants, but Jimmie's is a stereo-typical bar filled with stereo-typical bar patrons: they're rough and tough and crass, etc. But when Jimmie is facing his imminent death, the rough-tough ex-football player, Nathan, ponders the macho requirement that men can't express the emotions they really feel. They have to be restrained and hidden, as if they don't exist. This also comes through when Nathan's girlfriend Terri grows angry with him for never being serious, always joking. LAST CALL is kind of like that male character. It's always a joke, but underneath, hidden and restrained, is the emotion that isn't supposed to be revealed.

jd Seamus is presently on tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours. You can learn more about jd and LAST CALL at his website.

LAST CALL (ISBN: 978-0-9802256-0-0) is being released by Capital Press in September.