A Novel-in-Lessons · Relationships & Self-Help
Archetypes of Love: Microwaves, Stoves, and the Dogs They Choose — a plain-language guide to why we love the way we do, from Abbott V. Tellis, MBA, PMP.
Publishing October 15, 2026 · Wide release on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Nook & more
The Book
They stop calling confusion "chemistry" and stop calling suffering "love."
— from the Introduction
Relationships feel confusing when people keep repeating the same painful patterns but don't have words for what they're seeing. Guard Dogs and Microwaves uses everyday types, simple stories, and direct explanations to help readers understand why attraction, conflict, safety, and heartbreak so often follow predictable routes.
Set on one block in Houston's Third Ward, the book follows a small group of connected adults as they learn to name what they're actually doing in love — stove, microwave, guard dog, lapdog, or street dog. After each story, the lesson gets translated into plain talk you can use tomorrow.
The goal was never to trap anyone in a label. It's to make behavior easier to see — because once a pattern becomes visible, it can be interrupted. And once it can be interrupted, a healthier love life becomes a lot more possible.
Meet the Archetypes
Five ways people show up in love — drawn straight from the block, the porch, and the group chat.
Keeps things warm, keeps things running, and gets so good at being reliable that people start treating it like a given. If you're a stove, you already know the feeling of doing the most and getting thanked the least. The right person notices — not after you're gone, while you're still there.
Drawn to fast emotional heat — not shallow, but if unhealed, it confuses intensity with meaning. Everything is electric, the room rotates around it. Microwave growth means learning that peace can feel unfamiliar without being wrong.
Reads the room for exits, inconsistencies, and the subtle shift in someone's energy before they've said a word. The value is awareness and readiness — guard dogs make people feel protected. The shadow side: hypervigilance, where peace starts to feel like a gap in the surveillance.
Present. Warm. Attentive. Makes people feel seen in the small moments. But there's a trap in it — becoming so agreeable, so focused on keeping the peace, that your own preferences go underground. The growth is learning your voice isn't a threat to the relationship.
The inability to stay still. Oriented toward motion and sensation, where chaos is genuinely comfortable and stability genuinely isn't. Waiting on a street dog to curl up on your couch is its own kind of lesson.
Inside the Book
Publishing October 15, 2026
The retailer link isn't live just yet — join the list below and you'll be the first to know the moment pre-orders open on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Nook, and more.
Wide release via Draft2Digital · paperback and audiobook to follow