Something Came Up

Something Came Up is my fictionalized search for the reasons for my failures. 
            Mitch Gaines had always tried to do the right thing and see himself as others saw him.  Even sex had become a duty rather than a desire.  When Mitch's wife started looking around, his image became negative and when his wife walked out; his image disappeared.
Mitch left New York City to escape the woman he blamed for his problems.  He met three married couples on a converted yellow school bus and learned that blame for a bad relationship can lie on two heads instead of just one.  While hitchhiking, he met an Elvis worshipper and a gun-toting truck driver and saw that happiness wasn't necessarily found in the eyes of others. 
But when Mitch reached Oregon, doing the right thing for him made things even more wrong and even sexual pleasure felt identical to the release of his temper--and he got scared. A divorcee in Eugene and a hitchhiking stripper fleeing a failed marriage of her own showed Mitch that sex without compassion was just lust and that, right or wrong, he had no one to blame for his problems but himself.

I have lived in and written about Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Haiti, Shanghai and the US.  My novels are The Missionary Position, about Angela Benedetto's adventures in Irian Jaya, My Enemy, My Friend, about a love affair during the Iranian Revolution, Something Came Up about a young man's search for himself hitchhiking across the US, Shanghai'd about a Chinese/Israeli plot originating in 1930's Shanghai, Maiden Shanghai, about Shanghai's Green Gang's covert aid to China's Xinjiang Separatists, Laidback & Co. about an athletic team in Jakarta, Indonesia, The United Hates of America about two rival preachers who join forces against common enemies THE TORAH-The Director's Cut, God, a humorous retranslation of the Torah and Four Guys Gospels about an advertising company hired to promote a Jewish man with a Hispanic name as the Messiah.  I have written published articles for Channel East Magazine, West-East Magazine, Media Magazine, Asian Hotel and Catering Magazine, zingasia.com, chinaOnline.com and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.