RANDY ELROD

Sensual | Curious | Communal | Free

“As I read The Purging Room, I am searching for all the words to express all the feelings about this masterpiece…”

V.C. Texas USA

Kindle $7.99 https://amzn.to/3TdUevV
Audiobook $8.99 https://amzn.to/4exvqJa
Paperback $14.99 https://amzn.to/4npozFt
Hardback $24.95 https://amzn.to/3TgjuBG

Category: Seven Minute Read

  • My Barcelona Moveable Feast: An Eleven-Day Sabbatical in the City of Dreams

    My Barcelona Moveable Feast: An Eleven-Day Sabbatical in the City of Dreams

    When Gina departed for Ireland, I found myself staring at eleven empty days—a blank canvas that felt daunting and delicious. My previous sabbaticals were mountain solitudes in Colorado, desperate escapes from the authoritarian evangelical mega-churches where I served as artistic director, always misunderstood, perpetually out of place. Those Rocky Mountain retreats demanded adrenaline—solo summiting 14,000-foot…

  • I Survived Hell

    I Survived Hell

    As anyone who knows post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will tell you, days and nights can be unpredictable. It can be the brightest day, in the loveliest place, or the most cozy night, nestled in cotton sheets, and you still feel like your being is sucked dry. I fight a relentless battle with shame, fear, guilt,…

  • What’s Making Me Happy

    What’s Making Me Happy

    Many of us are anxious during election seasons, particularly this one when so much is on the line for my birth country. When I’m feeling freaked out and depressed, I turn to things that make me happy, i.e., soothing music—something I put on while I’m cooking comfort food. Here are a few things that make…

  • My Erotic Awakening (as an Eleven-Year-Old)

    My Erotic Awakening (as an Eleven-Year-Old)

    I am trying to remember how I discovered Robert Heinlein’s books. I may have picked them up while working as an aide in my public school library in the 5th or 6th grade or, more likely, at Goodwill, where Mom would take us to buy second-hand books. Thanks to a minister father, I was raised…

  • Candid Thoughts After Four Months of Life in Spain

    Candid Thoughts After Four Months of Life in Spain

    At this writing, we are immersed every weekday for six weeks in a Spanish language class. Studies show that language shapes the way we interpret reality. So far it has been fascinating and our teacher is excellent. Learning a different way to speak, read, and write helps discover new ways to see the world—it is…

  • An Intimate Look Into Our Life: The Style of Our Book Shelf

    An Intimate Look Into Our Life: The Style of Our Book Shelf

    Books and the shelves that hold them have always been an integral part of my life—from early childhood until now I’ve always had bookshelves. About twenty years ago, I began styling them to reflect not only my reading habits but the intimacies of my personal life.  It is a perplexing cause of vexation that on…

  • A Portrait of The Artist as a Grown Man (Video and Text)

    This post includes the video and text version, the art displayed on the easel in the video, and an exclusive 48-second look at my new atelier at Montecinos in Barcelona. Enjoy. Please click to SUBSCRIBE. A Portrait of The Artist As A Grown Man  (A Stream of Consciousness with Apologies to James Joyce) I did…

  • Life in Spain: Two-Month Update

    The moment I walked out of the Barcelona El Prat airport in December I felt a stimulating sense of belonging, it seemed to defy the angst of my life in fragmented America—a country I no longer recognize or feel comfortable in.  There seems always to be an inner breeze of excitement, joyful gratitude for Barcelona…

  • The Search for an Equal Companion

    The Search for an Equal Companion

    9/21/2023 Eighteen years ago, in 2005, I sat down with my wife of twenty-six years in our dream home on Main Street in the utopian town of Franklin, Tennessee. I will never forget it: the classy Lane recliners, the marble fireplace, the horrendously expensive Oriental rug, the aroma of Spring flowers coming through the open…

  • Think Getting Older Sucks? Think Again.

    Hollywood, culture, and yes, even the medical industry tells us that getting older sucks and that people over fifty should slow down and act their age. Guess what? We are not listening. Instead, many of us are living out our dreams. A growing number of older people are showing there is much to enjoy in…

  • Why Does God (and His Followers) Hate My Penis?

    If one believes the creation myth, the ideal Adam and Eve were created nude. Then God proclaimed, “It was good…except for Adam’s penis.” Nope. The story did not include a disclaimer. It seems that God was quite pleased with his handiwork. Ahem. I’m sure Adam had an uncircumcised tool that John Holmes would have envied….

  • The Joy of Books (For Serious Readers Only)

    Some people eat to live while others live to eat—books are both for me. I read to live and I live to read. My confession: I am a hopeless bibliophile who could possibly be enjoying the initial symptoms of bibliomania. Recently, I came across a fascinating list of books on stacker.com “100 of the Best…

  • In Praise Of Free Time

    What could be more delicious than to wake up without the incessant intrusiveness of an alarm? These instruments from hell make one’s skin crawl, like nails on a chalkboard. And what could be more decadent than finishing a dream and waking up naturally, flushed from a sexual tryst on a beach in the French Riviera…

  • From Fundamentalism to Freedom

    It is still a shock to my system when I encounter a person who is fundamentalist or evangelical. The experience is much like a friend of mine who served in Vietnam when he would have a flashback. Psychologist Marlene Winell has coined a term for the devastating effects on those of us who have left…