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The Great Jellybean Taste Test: A Woman's Guide Through Relationship Blunders

by Francine B. Ivey, illustrated by Kathi Smith

158 pages; Black coil; illustrated; catalogue #04-2209; ISBN 1-4120-4401-4; US$18.81, C$24.00, EUR15.60, £10.81

Join Georgia on an outrageous journey as she delves into the delicious link between jellybean flavor combinations and male personality types! Get ready for a bittersweet journey of life, love, loss, and hope!

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

The Great Jellybean Taste Test is a wacky tale of one woman's search for the right male combination and her discovery of the mysterious link between male personality types and jellybean flavor combinations. The incomparable Georgia is the narrative voice of this outrageous story as she leads the reader on a fun-filled adventure through her past, doomed romantic relationships, while using jellybean combinations to not only navigate the way but to pinpoint the exact cause of their failure. In the end Georgia will reveal the deeee-lectable intricacies of male/female interaction--told tongue in cheek--no pun intended!

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About the Author

Francine B. Ivey has been writing and publishing since the age of ten. She is the author of three novels: Ingress Rising, Playing for Keeps and The Great Jellybean Taste Test. Ms. Ivey lives in Chicago, Illinois and is currently at work on the follow-up novel to Playing For Keeps - Cheater. Ms. Ivey is also producing the play adaptation for The Great Jellybean Taste Test, which will be appearing in Chicago theatres in 2005

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Excerpts

Introduction

My name is Georgia and maybe because my name has such a famous namesake--you know the song: Georgia On My Mind, I've had the singular misfortune to encounter so many male cheap one-liners. The better part of my life has either been spent in the pursuit of, or in contemplation of, Mister Right. And on numerous occasions I've thought that I was just about ready to pull into the driveway when—FOILED, I've realized I'd forgotten the toilet paper again! In other words, why on earth have I continually gone out to the male market place only to return home without that essential male personality item which I require in order to feel happy and contented?

The other day, after a completely frustrating encounter with a flashy salesman who wore a thousand-dollar smile to match his thousand-dollar suit, I began to get at the root of my problem with the male species. Not only did this jerk stop by my office unannounced but he plopped himself down in a chair and began to ply me for my Company's favors with a decorative bag stuffed with jellybeans. I'm ashamed to say that if the guy were not sooo good looking, I would have sent him packing immediately. But he was very handsome as he used his dark probing eyes and sexual innuendoes to try and pop me right out of my pantyhose. Since I've become a regular on The Male Hip Parade, I wasn't overly impressed with him, and yet, there's that feline part of me that enjoys a good stroking every now and then. It was during the course of his too slickery sales pitch that I began to touch on what the problem was with my many doomed, past male relationships. I made this startling discovery after my disinterested eyes and flat voice shooed the salesman from my office.

Leaning back in my chair, I mused aloud about my male benefactor from the nether world, blindly broke open the bag of jellybeans and groped about its contents until my fingers came away with a few treasured cherry flavored candies. While my unseeing eyes stared out my office window, I popped the jellybeans in my mouth, bit down, and at the same moment my taste buds registered the spicy flavor of cinnamon, my unfocused eyes zeroed in on the slick salesman who had just left my office: The Grand Poobah was hopping into a beat-up GEO. I blinked with a jerk, blindly bent over, grabbed my trashcan, and promptly spit out the half-chewed, offensive jellybeans. YUCK! Both my eyes and taste buds were deeply offended.

Irritated beyond reason, I watched the chameleon drive away in his smoking, sputtering heap of junk. Realizing the salesman had neatly escaped my wrath, I turned to the bag of jellybeans and sneered at it. Tricked again and this time by a harmless bag of jellybeans. Was nothing what it appeared to be? I picked up the card and noted that the bag contained up to 40 different flavors of jellybeans.

When I was young, jellybeans, as were males, were relatively simple matters. What I mean to say is that there were basically eight different colors and flavors: Green tasted like lime; Red tasted like cherry; Black tasted like licorice; Pink tasted like sugar; Yellow tasted like lemon; Orange tasted like, what else, orange; White tasted like coconut; Purple tasted like...like...? Okay, so there was one great mystery flavor in the lot. As my mind wandered, I realized that when I was young, males fell into the same eight categories: jocks; bookworms; bullies—often associated but not to be confused with jocks; the sensitive, quiet boy who was the teacher's pet; the boy that liked to play with the girls and their stuff; the boy that always tried to look up your skirt; the boy who had a bowl haircut and never spoke; and finally, the strange, dirty, crayon eating weirdo who nobody talked to.

Ahh, how simple it was when I was young: eight simple categories for males and jellybeans, each category straightforward and easy to remember. There was no confusion or dark mystery to solve, except for the crayon eating little bastard, standing in the back of the room, picking his nose and eating a purple jellybean.

Maybe it was because I was feeling rather tragic, having been driven into a socially forced celibacy. Or maybe I just had PMS. Whatever the reason, I suddenly saw a perfect parallel between my inability to find Mister Right and Jellybeans—there were just too many flavors. "BUT NO!" my mind instantly protested. Forty flavors is admittedly a bit obnoxious to be allotted to such a simple water and sugar confection but I'm a quick study. If I only had a like guide for men, I'd be fine. As my eyes dropped down to the bottom of the leaflet, and started reading all of the jellybean recipes, I realized the true source of my frustration—those damn combinations!

I suddenly realized that while I was living in a world filled with Male Combination Meal Specials, I'd been strategizing strictly from a Male Happy Meal point-of-view. Men weren't just berries or orange sucky treats; they were berry smoothies and potent Mimosas!

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Catalogue Information

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