1) Pat on the Back. Have won an open bid RFP to provide the first round of a half-day “Building Stress Resiliency: Managing Stress, Conflict and Change” workshop for the US Patent & Trademark Office. If the program is well-received, more classes will follow. Hey, with the economy and the traditional summer slowdown, I’m ready to give up my role as a struggling “word artist” for a while.

2) Pat on the Back and Book Review. A colleague and good friend, Bob Rudney, currently a policy analyst with the Air Force, has recently published his first novel, Lovers Lame. It’s a unique romance and passionate, poignant, and sly if not wickedly humorous exposition of the oft-hidden personal everyday struggles, Catch-22 career challenges, and nuclear family conflicts for control, along with the sensual and tender, fiery and edgy intimate relations of people with significant disabilities. With left side paralysis from birth, Bob deeply understands and vibrantly portrays his characters colorful and complex mix of disabilities and talents. Here’s my “Amazon” review of “Lovers Lame.” It really is a great read!

Click here: Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Lovers Lame

A "Lame" Book that Sizzles with Multidimensional Life and Love, June 16, 2012
By Mark Gorkin, the Stress Doc

This review is from: Lovers Lame (Paperback)

The protagonists may be "lame" but this book sizzles with characters whose disabilities are overshadowed by a fearful yet still fierce fire in their hearts, loins, and guts. In other words, Rudney's men and women are all too human yet also uncommonly human - and deliciously and neurotically obsessed with sex - just like the rest or most of us. (And necessity is the eye-opening Madame of invention when it comes to an awkward agility yet surprising suppleness in the bedroom.)

Alas, some of the characters' passion, compassion, and smoldering anger is fueled by a "gated community" mentality of the larger society and a disability-rehab-government culture whose Catch-22-like policies and practices mock the verities of genuine support, self-sufficiency, and "survival of the fittest."

Rudney pulls back the curtain from an array of oft-hidden worlds - from the poignant struggles and small triumphs of a “disabled boy” - learning to tie his shoes and make a tie knot with one hand - to the challenging social life-job networking, mobility confounding, and impenetrable (without the right connections and comfort-inducing professional image) "Inside the Beltway" culture. And another gift is that his multi-dimensional actors comprise an organic jigsaw puzzle of disabilities and talents - the characters are as colorful as they are complex. (Also noted by the author: the largest minority in this country is people with disabilities.)

But most important, Lovers Lame, with its deft weave of compelling dialogue, sensual ebb and flow, wise insight, and ever-present sly and self-effacing humor never loses sight of the vulnerable yet vital individuals (with plenty of hard-nosed and pointed edges) caught up in the universal struggle for personal integrity and one's authentic place in the world. It's a world often cycling from the cold to the compassionate, with one underlying constant - grappling with, not running or crawling from, the chaos just may yield redeeming moments of individual creativity and intimate community.