KARMA, DECEPTION, and a Pair of RED FERRARIS is a fast, fun, rewarding journey. One wise-ass line and sharp observation leads to another until you find the story pulling you on--not where you expect it to take you, but to someplace raw and real and heart-changing.
Everyone searches for love. In KARMA DECEPTION and a Pair of Red FERRARIS, Elaine Taylor tells what she had to do to find it. With a sassy, Lone Star attitude and a combination of raw, honest insight and self-deprecating humor, her story will have you laughing out loud as often as it breaks your heart. Her ultimate discovery—that we cannot find love until we believe ourselves worthy of it—just may be the key to finding the love we all yearn to invite into our lives.
How to Find Long-Lasting Love
by Elaine Taylor
author of KARMA, DECEPTION, and a Pair of Red FERRARIS
When anyone asks my dignified, stiff-upper-lipped husband, how a guy who’s been an investment banker in financial capitals of the world—London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York—ended up blissfully hitched to a broad from red-white-and-blue Texas, he deadpans in his clipped British accent, “We were channeled together by the spirit of Elaine’s dead lover.”
Hundred percent true; but not as effortlessly mystical as it sounds—even if you’re into that stuff.
I grew up in redneck, white-trash, blue-collar Texas, where a girl was a big fat nothing—less valuable than a good huntin’ dawg.
Terrified to wake up thirty years later and find they were right, I scratched out a role in the corporate testicle festival. By age 40, I earned fat, man-size paychecks. The price? A heart as tough as armadillo hide, and my “love life” a dispiriting trail of relationship roadkill.
Desperate for a peek at my future I consulted an astrologer-psychic who fanned out her Tarot cards, did her California woo-woo thing and assured me I would someday have the kind of love about which stories are written. “But,” she said, “not until you’re ready.”
Sheesh. How much readier could one woman be?
The psychic pointed me down the path of a 1-2-3 Get-Ready-for-Love Plan:
1. Write a Perfect Mate List: Let’s face it: if you’re “on-the-market” you have some form of that list running through your subconscious 24/7, right? And it works! My first iteration, decades earlier, was, “tall, dark and handsome.” Yep. Exactly what I got . . . and pretty much nothing more. This time I went beyond the kind of description found on a driver’s license. Honed and refined that list over multiple years. (Sadly, this was not an overnight process; but isn’t the possibility of a soul mate worth the time?)
2. Define what “love” will look like when it finds me: Seriously? How no-brainer is that? It will be, “Wonderful! Spectacular! I will be ecstatically happy!” Which, of course, was just another lazy variation on the driver’s license list. To my surprise I struggled with this—couldn’t figure out even how to start. Until Emily Dickinson inspired me:
Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
3. Unload the emotional baggage: No emotional baggage here! OK, OK . . . I was a Peterbilt truck with no side mirrors, hauling a semi-trailer of festering emotional manure that rocked along in my blind spot. Yeah, it probably couldn’t hurt to drop a load. After much mewling and twitchy dithering, I hunkered on my therapist’s sofa, unleashed a lifetime of repressed tears; and summoned the courage to face down all those hurts and betrayals—both those done to and by me. Over time, the volume diminished on the “you’ll never be good enough” sound track that had been hammered into my psyche.
Painful? Absolutely. Emancipating? Beyond words.
Over this years-long process I discovered three critical truths:
· It is not possible to find long-lasting, deeply satisfying love unless you believe yourself worthy of it. I had to learn to love, and find contentment with, myself.
· As a woman clawing her way in a man’s world I defined “emotional strength” as all sharp-edges and impenetrable boundaries. I had to relearn that tenderness and vulnerability are the DNA of true emotional strength. When the time came, I used that strength to love a dying man who had once broken my heart. A man who desperately needed to receive love, even as he could not return it.
· I accepted and found peace with the fact that I might never share my life with the Perfect Mate. So what would I do with all the love my heart yearned to give? I stopped focusing on what I did not have . . . and sought a way to give what I could offer to those who needed it. I began to volunteer at a homeless shelter for families—the kind of place that, but for the grace of God, I might have needed to land in my early, below-the-poverty-level, single-parent years.
My journey through the Get-Ready-for-Love Plan was neither easy nor quick. But it was worth it for the lessons learned, for the woman I worked so hard to become, for the love and respect I feel for that woman.
As it turned out, my reward was exponentially greater. That dying man I loved fifteen years ago? Two years after his death the psychic told me he was sending my soul mate—a lover who would bring “warmth and light” for the rest of my life.
Seriously! She said it. And he did!
That soul mate, my husband, has been my Perfect Mate since 2001. Thankfully I was ready for love—I was ready for him . . . when he found me.
Elaine Taylor is the author of KARMA, DECEPTION and a Pair of Red FERRARIS: A Memoir. Find her at www.KarmaDeception.com
For Immediate Release
Contact: Lynn Coppotelli
856-489-8654 x 312
KARMA, DECEPTION, and a Pair of Red FERRARIS: A Memoir
by Elaine Taylor
Was it written in the stars?
FLAWED SOUL-MATES, A KARMIC DEBT,
AND A TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEY TO LEGENDARY LOVE
“I never wanted to write a memoir,” says Elaine Taylor. “Like just about everyone else in the sane universe I like keeping the embarrassing and the unflattering private. But this story ain’t just another all-hat, no-cattle tale of happily ever after.” Taylor has written an honest and raw recounting of her journey to make peace with the betrayals and hurts of the past – both those done to and by her – that led to the love for which she so yearned.
Taylor grew up in a Texas culture where girls were less valuable than a good huntin’ dawg. As a teen mom her best job opportunities were rife with leering mouth-breathers. But over the next two decades she clawed her way out of her dead-end “destiny.” Moved to San Francisco and built a successful business career with man-size paychecks. And gouged a dispiriting trail of relationship roadkill. Taylor’s one true love walked on four legs and woofed for her breakfast.
Desperate for a peek at her love-life prospects she consulted an astrologer/psychic who told her she would one day have the kind of love about which stories are written. But not until she was ready. Enter Ferrari-driving Dr. Rich&Dateless who turned out to be the key to that love. Just not in a way anyone ever could have imagined.
With her funny, sassy Lone Star attitude, Taylor’s extraordinary love story, KARMA, DECEPTION, and a Pair of Red FERRARIS (May 5, 2015), is a memoir that unfolds like a novel. A must-read for anyone searching for the love of a lifetime, Karma explores how Taylor:
• Shed the emotional baggage that made her feel unworthy of love
• Found the courage to put aside defenses, open her heart and give the love she yearned to receive
• Ignored the warning sirens of logic, trusted the Universe and followed her intuition
• Never gave in to the “destiny” others tried to impose on her
“I have been blessed to live this story,” says Taylor. “Perhaps by sharing it, I can inspire and encourage others who are searching for their own path toward contentment and love.”
Elaine Taylor is a former IT headhunter and Contingent Workforce Management consultant to Fortune 500 companies. She previously served on the Board of Raphael House, a shelter for homeless families in San Francisco. She teaches Story Structure through OLLI at Duke University in North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and two highly indulged Weimaraners. She has written two suspense novels: FINAL BETRAYAL (to be republished in autumn, 2015); and FINAL PUNISHMENT (to be published in spring, 2016.) KARMA, DECEPTION and a Pair of Red FERRARIS: A Memoir is her only work of creative nonfiction.
Website: www.KarmaDeception.com
KARMA, DECEPTION and a Pair of Red FERRARIS will be available May 5, 2015 through Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and wherever books are sold.
Review Copies Available Upon Request
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