March is here and spring is right around the corner. Look for Decadent Kane at Amazon and other online booksellers. He stepped up, went above and beyond, and I have the life I have right now because when I was eight years old, a man who sometimes drank too much and sometimes said things that broke my heart walked into my life and changed the world as I knew it in all the best ways. I can appreciate my daddy’s liking of him and if there was ever anything I wanted to tell my daddy, it would be that he’d always be my John Wayne, the one that didn’t just do what he had to do. I’ve seen him be a down right jerk, saying all the wrong things, and still save the girl or the kid. I’ve seen him be a drunk and be a good guy. I’ve never put much stock in John Wayne, never really asked him why he liked that man so much. He’s a bit of a hero and has some villain in him too. My daddy’s favorite actor was John Wayne, the old western guy.

“I’ve had worse cuts on my lip and never stopped whistling.” And one of these days a character in my books will say that line. There is one line he always said to us kids whenever something went bad, or we were hurt. And that’s the kind of man I want in my life. And he did that, every day with me, my little brother, my step sister, my step brother, and my alcoholic mother. The kind of person that could see past faults, work through problems, and stick with it until the end. Looking back, I can see how I searched for a partner who would be, at least in part, the kind of man he was. The real love, the kind that I have come to see as true love, is the kind of love that doesn’t give up when things get bad. I learned that love could move past arguments, throwing shoes at each other, even mixing two separate families together. But I learned to see the better part of people because of him. Because no matter how much of a hero he was, he was also still a man with flaws. I’m not going to say all of it was easy, or that he never did anything wrong. It takes a hell of a man to walk into a broken family and put them back together while loving children that he didn’t make. If there is one thing I could say without a doubt in my mind, I have no clue what hell hole I might be in if he never would have showed up in our lives. I met him when I was eight years old I think it was, and I didn’t call him daddy then. He’s not my biological father, but he is and always will be my daddy. That’s what my daddy taught me without realizing it. There is a little bit of a hero and a villain in all of us.

Today she’s here not to write about elven troubles or other mystical dilemmas, but to pay tribute to a very important man in her life. From Christina: You probably know Summer Ross through her alter ego, Decadent Kane.

Tempting Clover by Decadent Kane