My Husband, My Roommate EPISODE 1 St. Augustine

My Husband, My Roommate (MHMR) is a book about Digital Romance. Except, unlike other books in this emerging genre, our focus is less on the pleasures and possibilities of fast, convenient and interactive sex (disconnected pornography?), and more on the role technology promises modern relationships that are searching for new domains of loving and caring commitments.

Most ordinary computer users are not wanderlust gamers or Matrix wizards. Most don't really think much of online interactivity and donít give anonymous encounters or secret trysts much attention. Instead, they are more likely to try to use these new inventions as a way to make life better. This is what tech is supposed to do and it is what it can do if given the chance to pair with everyday sex and intimacy.

My Husband, My Roommate is an introductory story showcasing how this could happen. It is meant to be a straightforward story of how a couple can learn from real-life (and perhaps real-time) linkages and virtual closeness. Later parts of the series will take the reader to other heights of excitement and some erotica. Not all relationships are healthy and technology canít fix the twists and turns of life plots that have a touch of the good, the bad and the ugly built in! (Okay, so we've been known to watch a few telenovelas!)

MHMR in particular follows a couple (at least one half of one though we give a taste of the other side of the story) through a few days of separation. The story starts with Beverly -- a caring, committed, progressive wife and mother -- readying herself for a vacation week away as part of an annual outing she has with lifetime and college friends and professionals. Their cohort arranges these fun-loving, carefree experiences yearly to give them all a chance to stay in touch and escape from the ordinary and routine. Only this year, Beverly finds herself confronted with dramatic situations and a series of text and email communications that suggest to her that something is not quite right on the home- or love-front! Yet, being away and with a group that doesnít want to be distracted by life's problems, she seems unable to deal with the problems and confusion that just keeps getting sent her way.
This story is about Digital Romance but also about Distance Loving -- what happens when miles and communication barriers get in the way. MHMR has been set in St. Augustine, Florida. We choose to do this to allow us to integrate the kind of a real-life separation that many couples face (separate vacations) while also having access to some fascinating unique elements relating to art, history and southern living. The featured family is multi-racial (Beverly is Black, her husband a less-progressive white guy). St. Augustine is thus perfectly ripe with a celebration of past and present racial confrontations, injustices and deceptions that can be used to highlight the struggles they face. Some people say St. Augustine is the city where the rich and powerful of the Civil War era learned to mask and flower over the ugliness of slavery and exploitation against Blacks, Spaniards and Native Americans -- all in the name of making Florida seem like the place for love and romance.

Story two (already under development) will likely be called My Wife, My Roommate. A sampling has been added at the end. In that variation on the theme, we will see Todd, Beverlyís husband, come to terms with his side of the experience that we live through with Beverly in My Husband, My Roommate. We learn some of where Todd starts and ends up in this book but get to explore more of what it means for him when he and Beverly explore a taste for 'Sugar Skyping' (real-time video 'touching!') and the potential they can have by using technology to their wild and passionate advantages.

My Husband, My Roommate contains more suggestive intimacy than graphic sexual details ... so far.