Everything You Always Wanted to Know...

Here it is. THE book. Note the author's name.

This is the Human Sexuality textbook that Roger has been writing for ... well, years. And now it's here, in actual hard-cover form, all ready for college professors to adopt for their classes and college students to buy. It's an actual REAL book now, finally. I think he signed the contract back when we were in the process of adopting Caroline, so that's about 10 years ago. And it has moved forward in fits and starts, due mainly to the appearance and disappearance of several co-authors along the way. So, in one way or another, it has consumed Roger's life -- and conseqently, mine -- for all of this time.

Roger's a psychology professor at Mendocino College here in Northern California. Ths isn't his first text book, actually. He wrote one just before we met, Forty Studies that Changed Psychology, which explains how 40 different ground-breaking research projects influenced what we know about psychology. (It actually made me understand in a much better way a lot of what I'd learned only briefly in my Intro Psych college course, and of course, what's what it's used for in college courses.) It's been a very steady seller and is in its 5th edition! He and a colleague also co-wrote a trade paperback called "It's My Life Now: Starting Over After an Abusive Relationship or Domestic Violence" which is also a well-respected book for survivors of domestic violence.

Can you tell that I'm very proud of my husband, the author?

That fact that it is finished is a huge accomplishment and an enormous relief. Actually, I don't know how Roger was able to keep plugging away on this thing. Me, I get paid by the hour, so I know that as I work I can tally up my time, send off an invoice, and get paid. It's pretty fast gratification for work completed. But for a textbook author (or any author, I guess), you don't know what you'll earn, if anything. You keep working and working with the hope that somewhere down the line (years away, possibly), you'll earn royalties. So the discipline required to keep going is mind-boggling to me. I really admire Roger for his persistence with this huge, seemingly never-ending project.

When we got the book in hard form, Roger said, "Wow, it's a big fat book full of stuff I know!"

Should you need a reference guide on this topic (!), it's available here.