Prologue

After a while, things had gotten back to normal. The children forgot she'd hollered at them, Leroy seemed to forget they'd argued, and they fell back into their daily family routine: Leroy's landscaping business and Samantha's struggle to keep her business afloat, tend the house and manage the children.

But Samantha did not forget the little nuggets missing in her marriage. She needed her husband to come up behind her and kiss her on the neck sometimes; she needed him to tell her about his day, and ask about hers; she wanted him to listen to her when she talked, instead of changing the subject in the middle of her sentences; she wanted him to tell his big-ass family, "No, we can't come over this weekend, because I'm spending quality time with my wife and kids."; she longed for him to say, "Get dressed baby, we're going out to dinner, so I can have some alone time with you."; and, yes, she needed him to send her flowers on some other day than damn Valentine's Day.

Things had gotten back to normal, and that was not necessarily a good thing.

There was a loneliness growing inside of Samantha, laced with a lingering distrust. She was woman, and she had needs beyond the physical that were blossoming into cravings; yearnings that had grown from quiet internal whispers, to deafening screams ... cravings she could no longer ignore.

And then she saw Frank, again, after all those years.

Overview

Samantha's Cravings is a fictional story told from the perspective of a New Orleans-based African-American woman journeying through marriage and the familiar midlife crisis more often associated with men.

It's a novel about love lost, love found, temptation, deception, and consequences.

There are no villains, heroes, or damsels in distress.

This author believes many women have traveled the journey of infidelity but have chosen not to speak of it as it was -- or perhaps still is.
_______

"When I first started this book, I researched the Internet high and low for insight on writing about infidelity -- from a woman's point of view. The Bridges of Madison County didn't even pop up. Does it have a different label when the gender is woman? Or, is the meaning something other than what perhaps our husbands, fathers, uncles, and brothers have experienced? Alas, Samantha, and her silent cravings, right or wrong, come to life."

Cassandra Black
a/k/a Amber Creek (pen name)


The New Face of Infidelity

(Excerpt from a Huffington Post article.)

"A broader cultural shift may also be at work. According to a Match.com study conducted earlier this year by the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, women are becoming less traditional about relationships. Men, interestingly, may be going the other direction. Do women account for more of today's affairs? Probably ..."

See full article on Huffington Post's website.

____________

Midlife Crisis: His vs. Hers

According to excerpts from a WebMD article entitled, Midlife Crisis: His vs. Hers, ... these days, the old midlife crisis of yesterday is more likely to be called a "midlife transition," and it's not all bad. Males and females are equally likely to experience a midlife transition, or midlife crisis, but it looks different in both genders.

The stereotype is a man goes out and purchases a red sports car, Dan Jones, PhD, Director of a counseling and psychological services center, alludes to in the article. That's not always the case, of course, but Jones goes on to indicate men do seem more intent on having something to prove. For example, men may gauge their worth by their career performance, he says. Men may want to look successful, for example, even though their achievements don't quite measure up to earlier visions they had of themselves.

Women, on the other hand, often get validity through relationships. The article indicates this can be true even if a woman has had a lifelong career. At midlife, women are more likely to evaluate their performance as a wife, mother, or both.

See the full article on WebMD.

__________

Article Promo:

Does True Love Really Exist?

Does true love really exist? You know, the kismet kind. The kind that envelopes two spirits before they've even met; the kind Shakespeare must have been writing about in Romeo and Juliet; the kind that makes you give up everything familiar, moral, safe, to walk in the direction of destiny. See cassandra-black-author.blogspot.com/2013/05/questions-of-true-love-does-it-really.html.