Disproportionate pride.

Disproportionate pride is what occurs when you are as proud at an event or a thing that is as if you accomplished it yourself yet it is not your own!

I have a few of those floating around my sphere right now but none so profound as this little sweetie right here.

My friend Sarah published a NOVEL.

Yah. Pretty much.

Now it's one thing to have a group of friends that you almost suspect was pre-ordained before your actual birth, it's another to have an almost supernatural bond to a group of people where, no matter how much time passes, no matter how long the daily grind of life gets in the way, you seem to grow closer. That odd phenomenon wherein you don't speak to somebody for three years and when you do you feel like,..."Didn't we just talk on Monday?"

But it's quite another thing when your group grows up and starts doing "adult things" that were, when you formed your little pubescent bond, seemingly unattainable or seemed like Herculean feats that only adults could accomplish.

Well,....Sarah is foremost among my group of particular mutants, (although none of us has yet developed claws and super-healing powers but hope springs eternal. We are nothing, if not optimists).

Sarah and I , as well as having the spooky ability to read eachothers thoughts with disturbing regularity, also have a juggernaut of a work ethic so when she told me she was going to self-publish a novel,......I simply said, "Cool!" and waited.

Of course, it took some time,....motherhood, (a key component in the novel and brilliantly illustrated), is a full time job and God bless my buddy Pete,...the ever dutiful husband, fellow mutant and MOTH, (man of the house), for holding down the fort while Sarah retreated to, "The writing cave".

I have the extreme honor of having read several drafts of this as it was a work in progress and it was such a joy watching this come along.

So here it is,....."What happens when love won't take a time out"?

You get Stay at Home,...a new work of fiction, (Goddam brilliant fiction), by Sarah Phelan.

It's a great book,......Sara's turn of phrase and handling of dialogue is reminiscent of the descriptiveness of Stephen King with rapid-fire witty exchanges worth of Vince Vaughn delivering them.

The plot twists are varied, and tragically human. Through the laughs and chuckles and playful scenarios is the underlying spectre of things not achieved, forbidden attraction and the unavoidable yearning for excitement, (forbidden or otherwise), that is sometimes, (oddly so), a side-effect of a good safe suburban existence.

The characters, (especially the main character Janie), are very real, and though one may rush to judgment that they are sometimes bad people,....they are in fact, good people making bad, (and very relateable, and again very human), decisions.

Everytime I look at the book on my nightstand, I get a swell of pride that, as I said,...is as if it were my book, and I wouldn't say this if I didn't feel it either.

You can get the book here,.....

http://www.billysmitts.com

You can also get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders Books and Music.

Go buy it or I'll punch you in the kidneys.

Well,...not really. But go buy it.

Seriously.

Sean