I'm not a classics girl. I never read Austin. The Brontes tended to worry me. I was pretty sure there wasn't a classic I could stand. And then I met Tennesee Williams. Powerful, passionate writing, honest and raw and hot and deep and honest and angry. It was a sea of emotions that I must admit, I never quite recovered from and probably a huge reason why I write romance and not one story was as influential to that as "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof".

TMC was doing a Paul Newman retrospective and I happened to scroll in pretty early in the film. I love that movie. Newman smolders. Taylor's painful longing. I was maybe thirteen when I first saw it and I admit, so much of it went right over my head. Watching it tonight, though, siiiiiigh. Those needy arguments. The desperation of a woman hanging on, unable to let go. It's a beautiful, beautiful play.

Apart from the romance, I started really watching the dynamic between father and son and realized just how much is going on there. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Brick and Maggie are an estranged couple very much together in their broken marriage--Brick is an angry alcoholic who claims to hate his wife and Maggie is a desperate woman, unable to stop loving her husband and doing her best to work through their problems. They've come home to wait on word of the health of Brick's father, Big Daddy, who has been gone at a clinic for weeks to find out if he has cancer or not. The story begins as Big Daddy comes home, thrilled to be given a clean slate, especially since Brick's brother and his annoying wife (and their even more annoying kids) have been campaigning to receive the bulk of Big Daddy's huge financial holdings and land when he passes. The problem is, Big Daddy has been lied to. He's not well. And everyone knows it but him.

That's what you call a powder keg.

And last night, I was absolutely transfixed. Big Daddy had enough of Brick's drinking and he pushed and pushed, hanging onto his son with the patient hands of a loving father, dragging him through the dark of his own troubles with a booming voice and hands big enough to hold onto the world. It was brilliant. You just don't see parents represented that way anymore. As if the world had changed somehow and maybe parents aren't allowed to tear your crutches away to show you you can still walk.

What exactly am I blathering on about here? Well, I think it comes down to revisiting stories you loved. Have you ever gone back over your work or a story and found some new thread? Some new angle that touches you in a completely different way? Or get the feeling that you've read the same story, a thousand times in a thousand different covers, but you still want more?

Maybe it's not about classics. Or even about the world changing how we represent characters. Maybe its simply that good writing is always worth a revisit. So how about this. You tell me what your favorite story is--movie, book, series--and why and you'll automatically be entered for a free download of any of my books. Winner will be randomly chosen from the comments, but you must be a registered Cigar's user!