Rhinestone Cowboy

Drumroll please.

Drdrdrdrdrdrdrddr . . .

Here’s the photo of the Christian fiction Rhinestone Cowboy I promised you a few weeks ago. Steve Bly like you’ve never seen the man.

Is the guy smashing, or what? (Gals, don’t fall too hard. He’s married.)

Story behind the photo: Glorieta Writers Conference, 2005. I walk into the huge room where all the faculty is set up at tables to meet with conferees. I’m sporting the sunglasses. They're completely encased in light blue rhinestones, front and sides. On one side hangs a little rhinestone-encrusted heart. I head over to my table against the wall, one I’m sharing with Allison Bottke of God Allows U-Turns fame. Allison is a babe after my own heart, into glitter and glitz. She takes one look at the sunglasses and goes nuts. Grabs ’em off me, puts ’em on. Searches for a mirror to check herself out.

“Girl, where did you get these? I just got to get a pair!”

I fill her in on the details. $60 at Marie’s Boutique at the Coeur d’Alene Resort in Idaho. (Right across the water from our house.) I promise Allison next time we’re in Cd’A, I’ll try to buy her a pair.

She reluctantly hands them back to me.

At a nearby table is Steve Bly, wearing his ever-present cowboy hat. He’s watching Allison and me. At the moment his wife, Janet, is not around. Which is probably why he does what he does, because any good wife (and Janet certainly is one) would have made him think twice. I ask him if he’d like to try on the sunglasses.

“Oh, no.” He holds up a hand.

What happens in his head after that is still a mystery to me. I turn away, minding my own business—and the next thing I know, Steve Bly is taking the glasses out of my fingers. Putting them on. Straightening his back and looking around to see what chicks might be checking him out. Whoa. A few notice. Cameras magically appear. Steve is posing like Mr. Splash.

Jim Bell wants in on the act. (Lawyers always do.) My other pairs of glitter glasses are in my room, so he grabs Angie Hunt’s bright green, flowered reading glasses and puts ’em on. Both men are now posing. More cameras click.

These writers conferences are so mundane.