Buried Alive!

by Susan Sey

So I broke up with my old gym. We'd been happy together for two years or more but things had gotten stale. Boring. Expensive. It wasn't any one thing but sometimes you grow apart, you know? It's not you, it's me. These things happen. Maybe we should take a break.

I decided to have a look around, see if there was an option that fit my life a bit better. As it happens, there was. The Community Center.

The Community Center has a pool. My old gym did, too, but this pool is a zero-depth-entry, chock-full-of-slides-and-toys, warmer-than-bathwater type pool. Much better for my skinny children whose lips turn blue when they so much as stroll past the beach.

The Community Center also has an indoor playground, access to which comes free with membership. A nice bennie when you live in The Land That Summer Forgot. Snow'll be flying up here pretty soon--an indoor playground will be nice to have.

The Community Center is also next door to the library (this family's idea of nirvana), has a preschool (which my youngest attends), and costs less than half what my old gym did.

Sold.

However, the CC (as it will henceforth be known because I am a lazy typist) lacks one thing. TVs on the cardio equipment. Our old gym had TVs on all the treadmills & elliptical machines. You just plugged in your headphones, picked a station & off you went for your sweaty twenty minutes or whatever.

At the CC, there's a bank of TVs hung on the wall & you have to tune your personal radio (who the heck has a RADIO anymore??) to the FM band indicated on the wall under each TV. That's the only way you can listen to the audio. Otherwise, you have to read the closed captioning they've conveniently turned on.


Now this isn't a problem for me. I'm happy to read the screen. My husband feels this is a crime against fitness but that's a different blog. No, what I want to talk about today is the joy of being forced out of my usual TV watching rut.

See, running isn't fun. When I run indoors, I need to be diverted. I need to be absorbed or I spend too much time thinking about how very unpleasant running is & wondering if it's over yet. (It's not.)

So I need some gripping TV, & I'm not interested in taking a chance on an unknown quantity. I like shows I *know* I like: reality shows where talented people work under time & material pressure--Top Chef or Project Runway. I like a good soapy drama--Dawson's Creek is a big favorite. Or something clever and quick--That 70's Show still kills me. (I have a friend Kitty Foreman only wishes she were.) The West Wing is a good one, too.

But at the CC now I have a whole smorgasbord of shows on at once & none of them are what I usually watch. It's talk shows (Ellen Degeneres), trashy talk shows (Maury Povich, I think), and soap operas.

I went with the soap. Now I haven't followed a soap opera since I used to watch the Bold & the Beautiful in college and I have to say, it's nice to see they're still burying people alive. (And putting them in comas and having secret babies, all of which happened in the time it took me to log four miles.)

My favorite was the buried alive story line. They'd sealed this woman (an exquisitely groomed sixty-something) into a crypt with a cell phone & a security camera. This allowed her to both see and rail against the idiotic young things who wandered by for some crypt-side musing, and have vitriolic chats with the villain who'd buried her.

Watching a grande dame shriek, "I'M IN THE CRYPT, YOU STUPID COW!" at a clueless mourner remarking on the unlikeliness of her sudden death was awesome, too. We don't get enough scenery chewing from Women Of A Certain Age. I'm all for more of that. I wish they'd bring back the turban as a hairstyle, too, now that I'm thinking of it. Liz Taylor rocked the turban. More turbans!

I think I'm going to like my new gym.

So how about you? Do you follow any soaps--now or ever? What's your favorite storyline? Secret babies? Long lost lovers? Premature burial? Back-from-the-dead lovers? Evil twins? Do you watch TV while you work out? What do you watch? And if they brought turbans back, would you wear one?

Hooked on Soaps...and the Men Who Star in Them?

Then today is your lucky day. KJ Howe welcomes suspense author Alison Gaylin to the lair. Alison is one of those lucky women who knows all about those dreamy daytime men...

My new book, HEARTLESS, focuses on a soap opera magazine writer who has a secret affair with a hunky soap actor and travels to an idyllic town in Central Mexico with him, only to find that the town – and the actor – could be much more dangerous than they seem.

Now, I’ll tell you right up front – it’s based on experience. No, I’ve never had a passionate love affair with a gorgeous yet potentially deranged soap actor (Sorry!) – but I did work for quite a few years as a senior editor at Soap Opera Digest. And I’ve seen first-hand how irresistible those daytime leading men can be.

Besides going on set to interview the actors, I covered quite a few fan club luncheons and events for my job. And, though the fans were always thrilled to meet superstar actresses like Susan Lucci or Robin Strasser or Melody Thomas Scott, they went nuts – absolutely blushing, screaming insane – when someone like Maurice Benard (Sonny, General Hospital) walked into the room. It didn’t matter whether they were happily married new moms or 80-year-old grandmas, the soap hunks could turn any woman into a shrieking adolescent girl.

It got me wondering about the source of that appeal. Don’t get me wrong. Soap actors are gorgeous – washboard abs seem to be a job requirement – and from my own experience back in the 90s, most are incredibly nice to boot. But lets be real: It takes more than good looks and politeness to turn the average, sane woman into a quivering mass.

I’d say it comes not from the actors themselves, but from the lines they deliver on screen. Lines like, “I can’t stop thinking about you.” And “you’re driving me insane.” Lines that say, “I may be a ruthless mob boss/underworld spy/police commissioner/rock star/multi-millionaire businessman, but in my mind, it’s all about you.”

The soap hero may be immersed in a world of intrigue, but the most important thing in that world is always, always his woman. These guys will stare longingly into your eyes over countless candle-lit dinners, yet they rarely seem to eat a bite -- or for that matter, watch TV, go out to sports bars with their buddies, or even hit the gym to work on those abs. They rarely complain about their jobs, back pain or mounting bills, yet they will talk endlessly about their feelings for you. And when you’re not around, they’ll tell their friends how completely whipped they are. Often, they will spend weeks, months or even years trying to get you in the sack, down the aisle and into their lives forever, devising ingenious, labyrinthine plots solely for that purpose. In short, they’re like no real man we’ve ever met. And we kinda love them for it, don’t we?

Who is your favorite soap hunk – and what it is it about him that you adore the most?

Alison, I can answer that question. My favorite soap hunk is Jason Morgan from General Hospital...with a nickname like STONE COLD and eyes as blue as the Caribbean Sea, what's not to like? This suspense gal loves antiheroes with an Uzi and killer smile!

Suspense writer Alison Gaylin is the author of HIDE YOUR EYES, which was nominated for an Edgar in the “Best First Novel” category and its critically acclaimed sequel YOU KILL ME. She used her 15 years’ experience as an entertainment journalist to write her first standalone (and first hardcover) TRASHED -- a thriller revolving around the tabloid industry. TRASHED received strong reviews and is now out in paperback. Her latest novel, the standalone HEARTLESS came out in hardcover in September and is currently in bookstores.

Called a “spine-tingler of a thriller” by the Chicago Sun-Times, HEARTLESS centers around a soap opera magazine writer, whose romantic trip to Mexico goes very, very wrong. It is available in hardcover from NAL/Obsidian at a bookstore near you.