MSI Press Blog

  In your 20s, you didn’t have an exit strategy. You had optimism, caffeine, and the belief that you could “see where things go.” By midlife, you know exactly where things can go—and you’ve developed a finely tuned set of escape routes to prevent them from going there. The midlife exit strategy isn’t rude. It’s self‑preservation with style. Here are the classics. 1. The “I Have an Early Morning” Classic This is the Swiss Army Knife of exit strategies. It works at dinner. It works at coffee. It works at 3 p.m. on a Saturday. You say: “I have an early morning.” You do not specify when or why . It could be a sunrise hike. It could be feeding the cat. It could be waking up at 7:30 because your back says so. The beauty is in the ambiguity. 2. The Bathroom Break of Clarity Sometimes you need a moment to regroup. You excuse yourself. You go to the restroom. You look in the mirror and ask, “Is this worth staying for?” If the answer is no, you return with a serene smile and say, ...

  Excerpt from  A Movie Lover's Search for Romance  - HENRY, OR PATHETIC CRUSH #2 Just as my crush on Adrien Brody began to wane, I began crushing on Henry. Henry, as in Henry Cooper, direct descendent of James Fennimore Cooper, who wrote the well-known classic, The Last of the Mohicans. Henry Cooper, of the Coopers of Cooperstown. Until I met Henry, I’d never actually heard anyone who sounded like George Plimpton. I thought that high, guttural, WASP accent was an anachronism, like hula-hoops and the Ed Sullivan Show. If Henry was not the highest of high WASP, he would be a parody of rich Americans. But Henry is the real deal. He has piles of the Social Register stacked casually around his living room, along with old copies of The New Yorker , for which he once wrote. Henry is my father’s friend. They went to Andover together in the late ’40s and early ’50s. My father is not high WASP. Dad is the product of four Eastern European Jewish grandparents, each of whom travele...

  Excerpt from  57 Steps to Paradise  by Patricia Lorenz--   Sam, First Husband   I’m writing this book for women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s who are single, divorced, or widowed and who are interested in finding a good man with whom to share the rest of their lives. In order to do that I must first unzip my soul and expose my foibles. Think about it. Nobody wants to read about the perfect woman in the perfect house wearing the perfect designer outfit with the perfect man at her side. We women want the real belly-in-the-muck-of-life story. We want to read about the tough parts, the sad, anguishing parts of a real woman’s life, and hopefully learn how she wiggled out of the mud and muck into the light with a pretty good man’s arms available for a great bear hug every so often. So, that’s what I’m going to give you. The truth. I’ve made many mistakes when it comes to men, but I don’t think I’m that much differently from many women. After all, th...