What are your current projects?

My big project is getting out the word on my book, VoiceMale, which is being published by Simon & Schuster this month (January 2006). I'm preparing for a seven-city U.S. book tour, including an appearance on “Good Morning America” on Jan. 9.

The good thing is that I love talking about the book. I spent a couple of years interviewing men about their marriages. I gave them anonymity, so I got juicy material on how they deal with sex, housework, raising kids and other issues. Now I get to tell the public what they said.

And they said a lot. The book is based on the notion that men – though quiet in comparison to women – actually have lots of opinions about marriage and relationships. And my findings challenge gender stereotypes. For example, I found that men are not commitment-phobic; that they don’t have only sex on their minds; and that they are willing to be changed by their wives. The good news is that despite the many marital problems they have, married men generally love being married; more than 90 percent would marry the same woman if they had a chance to do it again.

Do you have any specific training in male psychology?

I have 15 years of on-the-job training. As a newspaper reporter for the San Jose Mercury-News, I began writing about “the men’s movement” in 1990. Then, in 1992, I launched a freelance syndicated column on men. The column was picked up by Universal Press Syndicate and distributed to about 35 newspapers weekly. Each week for four years, I wrote on an issue of the day from the man’s point of view. I focused on a largely unexplored niche: the personal lives of men. This involved interviewing hundreds of men about their wives, marriages, children, jobs, fathers, mothers, and more.

In 1997, I retired the column to devote extra time to my first book, FatherLoss: How sons of all ages come to terms with the deaths of their dads. That book was released by Hyperion in 2001. I began work on VoiceMale the following year.

Why should males read VoiceMale? Should females read it?

It's for both sexes. A man who reads VoiceMale will gain insight into himself. He'll see how other men deal with marriage and intimate relationships. A woman who reads VoiceMale will better understand the man in her life. She’ll find out what men as a group think and feel about their marriages. This is a good launching point for more specific conversation with her own husband or boyfriend.