VitalityPress just hit a trifecta — by having deft artist/cartoonist/graphic designer Joe Marciniak create a light-hearted cover for MysteryDates®.  

His latest effort comes on the heels of his doing an equally playful front for The Roving I, a collection of 70 favorite newspaper columns I’d written over a 12-year period, and both the marvelously imaginative interior illustrations and cover for Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical children’s fantasy about a sorcerer who frequently has to get two young fairies out of trouble when they mess up their magic spells. 

Marciniak over a decades-long career has created dozens of TV commercials, tons of digital/website work, and even a series of national park children’s book titles. 

The only Woody Weingarten book he didn’t illustrate was Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, a memoir/chronicle and love story that tracks the lengthy dual healing journey of my wife and me, and a comprehensive guide to scientific research, meds, and where to get help. The cover of that book was created by Edward Marson.

MysteryDates is a memoir/travel guide that explores hundreds of ways you can keep the sizzle in your relationship. It includes not only a wealth of amusing and imaginative personal anecdotes but endless tips on what to do, how to do it, and where to go (locally, nationally, globally). 

It can delight you to read about free food or a $30 million gown, about beer-bathing or the International Spy Museum, about the annual testicle festival or the time when Nancy Fox, my decades-long partner, and I helped each other turn into clowns in San Francisco.