Deedee Divine’s Totally Skewed Guide to Life is my second book of humorous essays. I like to think the book has earned the “Divine” part of its title—as in Divine Intervention—but I’ll share more about that in a minute. Deedee is the nickname my oldest granddaughter gave me when she was a toddler. I added the “Divine” part. And then the character became my alter ego and sort of took on a life of her own. She made several appearances on Youtube. The next thing I knew, she was hijacking my columns. So I just got out of her way and let her have the book title too. For several years I wrote a monthly humor newsletter. But thanks to all the new improved spam filters, many subscribers were unable to retrieve their copies. Eventually, I switched from writing the newsletter to maintaining a blog. There I receive many comments each day. Unfortunately, a number of them are from someone named “Cheap Viagra.” Some suggested that I should wait for a better economic climate before releasing my new book. But after much contemplation, I realized that it’s during difficult times that people most need the healing power of laughter. Humor…

Are you one of those people who tend to crack a joke when you’re in trouble? Is it because fear brings out the urge to laugh, or is it that laughter helps us get though the worst of times? And maybe it depends on who’s in it with you. Like a good buddy you can count on to watch your back. Our heroine, Brooklyn sex therapist Saylor Oz, and her sidekick, Benita Morales, are buddies who race through crime adventures bickering and bantering, sometimes blaming, and always forgiving. Kind of like our marriage. Being a husband-wife team writing under one pseudonym, we sometimes feel like we’re living a reality TV buddy movie. Aside from combining our opposite qualities — a guy who loves boxing and a woman who loves perfume — we use the roller coaster dynamics of a relationship between two strong-willed people to help shape the fun and exciting relationship of our characters. Not that we’ve ever been given a deadly ultimatum by a hit man called “The Monster.” Or that we’d go poking into dangerous situations. Like Saylor does, only to find herself knee-deep in trouble against some slimy, nasty dudes. But we love combining a gritty,…