by Olivia Wild
Book Description
Come read a sneak preview of With Every Temptation (Church People, Book #1), the first thrilling pages of the saga, where we take a peek inside of the start of the diary of...
Selah John, a stunning 41-year-old married writer and mother who has her humdrum days shaken and stirred when she falls into a controversial emotional affair with a younger married man, who's aptly named...
Paul Sinclair, a 30-year-old Lothario who shares the same first name as Selah's non-churchgoing, emotionally-unavailable husband, Paul John.
Paul S has recently been appointed leader of the Tech Team ministry that Selah joins at the newly launched local branch of their 50,000-member megachurch.
However...
Gina Sinclair, 33 -- Paul's weary wife -- is getting hip to this next strange woman in the assembly line of ladies in her handsome husband's scope. As infuriating clues of infidelity increase along with her pregnancy hormones, Gina fights like a lioness for her marriage, and searches Google like a sleuth to uncover hints of betrayal in Selah's writing -- no longer counting on warnings from people like...
Vanessa Thompson, Selah's personal prophet and "bestie," a woman who serves on the same ministry team with the "married, but not to each other" duo. As nightmarish scenarios of illicit sexual escapades play out in her action-packed lifelike dreams, providing dark and foreshadowing omens of danger to come, Vanessa's own jealousy rears its snaky head as she watches her BFF frolic in fires of lust with Paul S and leave the trio's three Musketeers-like friendship in the dust in favor of the hot duo's May-December dalliance.
Stayed tuned to mounting episodes in coming books, as one soul-baring confession followed by a severely shocking search-engine spied-out revelation rocks then restores two marriages -- and brings Selah from the brink of suicide and divorce to the heights of Hollywood success and heavenly wholeness.
INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK #1, YOU WILL FIND:
Episode 1: Somebody That I Used to Know
"I need you both to F me," Paul S quips to Selah and Poppy, a cute multi-racial 21-year-old who is one of the youngest in a cadre of megachurch concubines enamored with the handsome and charismatic rising star. Surprised that a younger man finds her clearly as attractive as she finds him, Selah focuses her attention away from her inattentive husband at home and races full speed ahead, launching a weight-loss journey that will put her even further in her leader's vigorous line of vision.
Episode 2: Cheating in the Next Room
One body-rocking hug with her spiritual superior. One all-night fellowship session with the Tech Team. One cursed-out-by-her-husband Selah. Paul S is making inroads into his kind cougar's heart -- and potentially her PayPal account. So why is Poppy all of a sudden rising from the role of understudy to leading lady in Selah's movie-star mental picture of her romantic drama with him? If you are simply previewing this book, choose "Buy now with 1-Click" on the book’s Amazon page to send it to your iPad, Kindle, Mac, laptop, PC, or plenty of other devices to find out!
Also, be among the first to know about each new episode by clicking "Selah John" and selecting "E-mail me when there are new releases by Selah John" on the right-hand side:
WITH
EVERY
TEMPTATION
BY SELAH JOHN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pilot Episode #1: Somebody That I Used to Know
Scene #1: “I always feel like somebody’s watching me…”
Scene #2: “The first time ever I saw your face…”
Scene #3: “Who is he and what is he to you?”
Scene #4: “Come on and go with me…”
Scene #5: “The men all paused…”
Scene #6: “Get me bodied…”
Scene #7: “You make me promises, promises…”
Scene #8: “Tell me more, tell me more…”
Scene #9: “I got the hook-up…holler if you hear me. Ugh!”
Scene #10: “You’re that lady’s husband…”
Scene #11: “Leave me alone, I’m a family man…”
Scene #12: “Is it all over my face?”
Scene #13: “Whooooo are you? Who, who? Who, who? I really wanna know…”
Scene #14: “Sexy, sexy…”
Episode #2: Cheating in the Next Room
Scene #1: “Just a touch of love… a little bit…”
Scene #2: “Don’t worry, be happy…”
Scene #3: “It's just a fantasy…”
Scene #4: “Just me and you…”
Scene #5: “Why can't we be friends?”
Scene #6: “I can't let go…”
Scene #7: “I'm so into you…”
Scene #8: “Let's get closer…closer than close…”
Scene #9: “This don't feel like love…”
Scene #10: “Who's that girl running around with you?”
Scene #11: “I’m special…so special…”
Scene #12: “I gotta have some of your attention…”
Scene #13: “Talk to me…like lovers do…”
Scene #14: “You're a rich girl…”
Scene #15: “Rejection is the greatest aphrodisiac…”
Scene #16: “Push up, push up, come on, work it out cousin…”
Scene #17: “I'm so deep inside of you…”
Pilot Episode #1: Somebody That I Used to Know
Scene #1: “I always feel like somebody’s watching me…”
Thursday, August 12, 2010
He sees me before I see him.
Or his wife.
“Can I tell you something, Selah?”
He will ask me this question approximately 14 ½ months from now, as I writhe and roll my 5’ 10 ½”-body around on the bed I share with my husband, talking to the man who is not my husband until my black Droid 2 phone grows hot against my left lobe and beeps and vibrates with low battery warnings.
Today – the first day he spots me – I will not pick up his animalistic musky scent like my senses will be honed to discover in the years after he breaks up with me, or more rightly, when online writings that I never intended for him nor his wife to find cuts off our relationship for good.
In the future I will learn to recognize when the wind blows the smell of something lusty and nonhuman and stinky into my nostrils as I walk alone with Jesus in the woods, picking up smells as swiftly and deftly as a Native American deer hunter.
During those coming sweet days, when my olfactory senses warn me of an animal in close proximity, I will oftentimes slow my steps or even stop completely on my path as my eyes scan the horizon like a periscope until I spot the thing that my intuition already warned me to the presence of before my sight did.
I will feel a delightful one-upmanship the times I pick out the beast’s body from among its camouflaging surroundings – flipping the script from being preyed upon to preying on with my newfound insight.
However, this sultry August day I am more akin to a happy fool about to walk off a cliff, or tromping around nature paths lost in thought – one who is eventually startled by the brownish face and blackish snout and eyes of a deer lurking in 7-feet-tall cattails, staring from a too-close-for-comfort 50 feet away at the curious human being who has caught his attention.
I don’t see the man who will change my life nor hear his voice yet, but as if pre-written in time, I will love the way he comes to say my name, with so much emphasis on the first syllable, in a manner that no one has spoken it before.
See-lah, he will spew charismatically and strongly – as in, I see you.
“It’s not a secret, but it’s exclusive,” he’ll say in that soft tone of his, ever careful with his words and using semantics to his advantage, as if he knows that some day his own admissions could be used against him in a court of law.
I keep feeling like your words aren’t just for me, but for the whole world. ;-)
“Yes,” I’ll tell him. I’ll almost always tell him yes.
I will soften my tone back to him just as gently – almost as tender
as the day I watched my own lips in my lighted portable makeup mirror while I responded “okay” to his quiet query over the phone in a manner so womanly and romantic that we sounded like lovers.
I will climb onto the floor near the power strip where my marital king-sized bed nearly meets the window, propping my long legs into an M-shape as I plug the dangling charger cord into my phone so I won’t miss a word – like I’m listening to E. F. Hutton divulge insider trading tips.
“I remember the day I first saw you,” he will wax nostalgically, emphasizing certain words with length and implicit inflection, like he’s prone to perform, better than a learned Shakespearean actor.
“First I said to myself, ‘Dang, she’s tall as heck…’”
We will break into giggles, as we’ll often do throughout hours and hours of talks.
I will stare out the front window of my bedroom into the dank and gray sky, desiring more. Deeper and deeper feelings beyond the faux “mighty man of valor” façade that this Christian guy in my ear feels he must show everyone else at church.
And I will get more of him, too, but it will come with a penalizing price and pretty profit.
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
First off, let’s get the names straight.
The man whom I’ve never laid eyes on yet in my 41 years on this planet – the one that I’ll eventually come to view as my 30-year-old “church husband” – à la a Christian version of the “work wife” and “work husband” phenomenon played out in sitcoms like The King of Queens – I’ll call “Paul S.”
The “S” will practically stand for “Satan” in my mind in impending months – or “strictly sinister,” if I’m feeling more generous. Never does it mean “sweetie” or “soul mate,” because I’ll really never want this man as my own husband. Perhaps “speed” as in “Godspeed” is the best prayer I can give in the wake of the madness I’ll describe to you soon and very soon.
But let’s tag the “S” surname initial with the song title “Somebody That I Used to Know,” because that’s exactly what Paul Sinclair will become to me about a little more than one year from today, and will hopefully stay that way forever. (Forever, ever?)
I have to distinguish him from my husband, Paul J – who shares the same popular and strong first name of mi amor – or, more correctly, is mi amor – mon mari, s'il vous plaît.
That “J” actually stands for John, the beautifully biblical moniker that I gladly adopted soon after marrying Paul in 1998 on the western shores of Maui, granting me a common first yet uncommonly used last name – unless you think of celebrities who’ve chosen it for their stage personas – like Elton John, which reminds me of being a superstar.
Rabbit trail.
Okay, back to the present in the space-time continuum that is my life’s line, on this sweltering midsummer’s day, when perhaps Paul S is already comparing his own diminutive stature to my lengthy frame and considering what a mismatched pair we would make.
Meanwhile, I am inside my own world in this throng of about 35 peeps, mostly black church folk, who’ve gathered in the hallway of a local high school to listen to a woman give us instructions.
“All the souls should flow through here on opening day,” she says, with a sweep of her arms past the rows of tall, dull lockers flanked by peeling painted murals of rocket-ships high above their heads over to a set of black doors.
“But these doors here are for ministry workers only, and will be guarded by police.”
I pause and survey the crowd. Unafraid, I raise my hand.
“Yes?”
“Will there be childcare available?” I ask.
“Yes, CCC will be down here in the cafeteria,” she says, and the entire group instinctively follows her forward into a large lunchroom, well-lit by natural light spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows that surround the space.
I am already in the know like most of the “brothers and sisters” in the group. We all attend the 50,000-member megachurch dubbed True Love Center (TLC for short) that sits a 25-minute drive north of this school that now serves as the first offshoot Center #1 satellite branch of the growing church.
As such, we automatically understand that “Christ’s Children’s College” is the full name of the code-word CCC, an alliterative acronym given the childcare area that bespeaks of a hot and happening house of worship not so milquetoast, boring and bland as to merely call it “Sunday school” or “the nursery.”
I furiously scribble notes about hours of operation and childcare requirements as she talks, and others mill about.
“You looked so serious,” Paul S will admit.
“The way you held that pen to your mouth, I said to myself, ‘She probably has about eight kids.’ But now I’ve come to know that look – it means you’re in deep thought…”
I’ll tell him that “I was probably thinking, ‘Hmmm… lasagna for dinner?’” and we will both crack up some more.
In actuality, I am jotting copious notes for the article I plan to write about this new church center’s grand opening day – and am praying like silly that the piece makes it into a prominent position in Google News.
After all, the decade-old “bright lights, big city” megachurch that took our region by storm – a huge venue that my “bestie” Vanessa Thompson and I officially joined in 2008 – is now launching its first off-shoot center in our smaller city of Greenville, smack in the eastern part of the country – a lush and truly green place of about 250,000 individuals.
This is a big f-ing deal, as “Crazy Uncle” Joe Biden would say.
I can only imagine all the people in this mid-size town that may soon flock here – and I want to help that process along by using all the tools at my disposal, including the inroads with the online news organizations that employ me to write local and national happenings for them.
It should be spectacular.
Scene #2: “The first time ever I saw your face…”
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Our gaggle of church people sits deep in the bowels of the 55-year-old high school’s auditorium that is showing her age. Downward sloping aisles separate lines of well-worn hard wood seats festooned with the ink imaginings of many a restless teenager long graduated and gone and working inside industrial plants in this town.
I’ve landed next to a pretty girl with big bright eyes and an easy smile in the center section. Our conversation is so like-minded that it seems fated, scripted even.
“I wish they had more YouTube videos and clips of the sermons online,” I say.
Her eyes grow even wider, her smile broader. “Me too! I wonder how they even get Pastor’s message onto a DVD…”
We chat about technology a little longer as Pastor Henry Evans – a handsome man around my age, early 40s, but with a boyish charm and impish grin – talks with a group on the deep crimson-carpeted floor space in front of the faded black stage.
I’ve readily come to accept Pastor Evans as my new pastor as soon as it was announced he would chair this Center #1 a few weeks ago from the stage at the Central Base – what us members have nicknamed the original large location.
His face is familiar and preaching style energetic, so when the Senior Pastor and First Lady poured oil down the heads of Pastor Evans and his wife with sober ceremonial flourish and prayed and laid hands on the kneeling couple, I was on board.
I’d hoped for years that a center would open near my home – a place that didn’t require me to jump on the highway Sunday in and Sunday out – but I never thought it would become a reality.
Now real life is staring me in the beautiful face with potency and a spirit of revival, and I actually have an opportunity to be an integral part of the revitalization.
“Okay, let’s break into groups and decide what ministry looks interesting to you,” Pastor Evans says, projecting his mid-range voice above the din of chatter.
My new techie friend stares wistfully behind us; I follow her gaze, twisting my neck up and to the le
ft to spy out a group of about five women perched near the back row.
I do not know that I have probably just seen Paul S’s wife Gina – and will soon see him.
“I think that’s the childcare ministry.”
I exhale with exasperation and say, “Well, I guess we should see if they need any help.”
I have a forlorn flashback of memories of getting roped into working in the nursery of my former megachurch. Sure, it was a great way to meet people and help kids learn about God – but not fun and gift-fulfilling like the newsletter writing ministry I enjoyed before it disbanded due to the prohibitive cost of printing and circulating those magazines in full-color ink.