Romancing The Smoke will light you up...

Big thanks to the Ojai Valley News for the 

kind press! I will be reading from the book, 

Romancing The Smoke 6/23  8:30 pm at 

the World University as an author of 

Well Read, part of the Ojai Writers 

Conference...

The book goes to print this week.

Take a deep breath....

Romancing The Smoke Art Exhibition and Book Launch

Smoking in Fashion

In the 30's and 40's, the fashionable professional woman had

special gloves to carry her Chesterfield cigarettes.

Back then it was fashionable to smoke like a chimney.

Romancing The Smoke-Story about the Cover Art

A story in Rolling Stone tells of the time that Johnny Depp 

was staying in the basement of Hunter Thompson's place 

in Woody Creek, CO while preparing for his role as the writer 

in the film, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

As the actor pored over the script one night, chain-smoking 

as he worked, he struck a match and noticed, for the first time

 that his nightstand was, in fact, a keg of gunpowder.

Hunter said he always wondered where that powder keg had gone.

Johnny never smoked in the house again.

Watercolor, Mixed media copyright 2011

At The 2nd Annual Ojai WordFest...

Our Lady of The Respiratory Assistance...

As I pondered my fate right after I quit, I was in the drug store check out line 

when I noticed the tiny elderly woman standing behind me. Our Lady of the 

Respiratory Assistance. She had tubes in her nostrils and was hauling 

around a heavy canister of oxygen on a little wheeled cart. 

She reeked of smoke. 

Abject terror mounted inside me as I realized how close to her condition 

I actually was, while being younger by decades-maybe. You can never 

tell with chronic smokers. In a raspy, failing voice, she asked for two 

cartons of the cheapest generic filtered brand. It was the most frightening 

mirror I’d ever stared into. She was never going to quit. Seeing her 

stopped me from buying a pack. Hearing her convinced me that I could 

never go back.  Whoever and wherever she is, I’d like to thank her. 

I’m sure she doesn’t realize how much she helped someone that day. 

But I'm not buying her a pack of cigarettes.

 

When the cure may prove worse than the disease....

This story about CHANTIX was published 

in the Health Section of CNN.com July 5, 2011

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/05/chantix.smoking.suicide/index.html