I like this guy..

I've become a stat junkie over the last months, though I'm trying to wean myself away from that screen.

But this popped up as a search term yesterday "Help my wife feel more sensual".

GO DUDE!

Seriously though, good on that man (assuming it was a man of course - I'm nothing if not sexually liberal) for seeing a problem and wanting to find a solution. How many other men could you say the same of? I say men here because, when it comes down to it, women are the 'fixer's', it's just the way we are. But like anything there are exceptions to the rule.

Too often people get caught in the 'well it's not my fault' rut, when in fact yes it is your fault as well as your partners. Hell, we're all guilty of it at some point - humans can be very selfish beings.

I say that both parties are at fault because neither of them have turned and said 'when you do X it makes me feel bad/angry/upset/insignificant/lonely/worthless etc etc etc. I'll cite myself as a point in case.

Recently my sex life has been, well fairly non-existent unless I was writing it. Hubby was having problems...ahh... (how ironic, giving what I do for a living, I'm strapped for words)...lets say, reaching a climactic conclusion.

Now most days my sense of self worth is right up there, but I'm not a small person, I always have a niggling question in the back of my mind that he's going to turn round someday and tell me he's found himself a size 8 skinny girl (This is totally unfounded FYI), and that he's gone cold on the idea of me. I think this is a fairly rational niggle - for me it's fat/skinny, someone else it will be dumb/intelligent, ugly/pretty etc etc. However this perfectly normal niggle got a little bit bigger when this started happening. Then got a bit bigger again when it kept happening, till I got to a point where I said to myself I was being totally irrational and I had to say something.

Turns out he was as worried as me, but for a different reason. He thought he might have a prostate problem. He kept envisaging the big C - cancer.

Now that it was out in the open, he went to the doctor the next day to get some tests done. Turns out he had an infection (no not that kind of infection!). A round of antibiotics later, and his groin didn't hurt and waddaya know, everything's in working order again. Simple.

And so easily solvable months ago! If either one of us had said something sooner, we wouldn't have internalized the problem and let it become more than what it was(okay, I wouldn't have thought it more than what it was).

Sure, this was a medical issue, but the same reasoning still applies in other situations: you don't like the way he or she does X, say so and show them the way you do like it. The way he smells at the end of the day makes you gag, and he gets angry when you constantly put off a little pre-dinner nooky? Easy, tell him to get in that shower, heck, join him in the shower. The same can be reversed for women - face it at the end of the day, we don't smell like daisies and roses down there either, of course he doesn't want to stick his nose in it! Your wife doesn't seem at all interested in sex? What medication is she on? Talk about being a passion killer - even the pill, taken so you can indulge safely at the drop of a hat, can kill a woman's libido.

And seriously, 'lay back and think of mother england', is so not a happening thing - that's bad selfish! All that mess for no personal gain, I don't think so!

Sex and Marriage

I've noted that there's not a lot of marriage in romance. (Sorry we are not going to be discussing the sad state of my sex life lately)

'What land is she living in' you all say '99% of romance is about marriage'. Sure I won't disagree, 99% of Romance is about obtaining the state of being married. But so little of it about what happens after the big/small over-the-top/poignant everything-I-ever-wanted/OMGWTFBBQ-I'm-getting-married?? scenes play out?

I don't know about you, but marriages are damn hard work. Hell, I'm already onto the second one (we won't go into the shortest marriage in existence, where I was left for a younger woman when I was only 22!). Bitter much, me?? Not much after 10 years.

So, when so many of us read romance - of any genre, and especially erotic - why are there not more stories about marriages on the rocks and the ways the characters solve them. And no, I'm not talking about an Oprah and Doctor Phil special here - I'm talking hot, sexy stories, just like all the ones where people are single.

Genuine, sexy, my husband/wife doesn't find me sexy anymore, what went wrong and how do I fix it story lines about people with a kid or two, a dog, and a mortgage, stories.

Are us married folks with kids just too unsexy? Are we over the hill erotically? Is the idea of bits that don't look the way they did at 25 a turn off, even if the story is a wonderful journey?

And most importantly, if I was to write it, would people buy it?

I've had a number of hits with the term 'couples erotica', it sounds like an interesting term. I wonder if they are searching for stories that would appeal to husbands and wives (stroke flicks in effect), or containing husbands and wives in the plot line.

Give me some opinions people.

13 pieces of purple prose - TT#12

Lets start with some classics:

• His hot and heavy manmeat
• Her overflowing honeypot
• His seed of life
• Her love chalice cried out to be the recipient of his seed of life
• And of course the always usable, shaft of love

Lets get a little more, umm... well take a read, you'll see:

• Raging tower of desire - anyone else wondering how on earth that's supposed to fit down there?
• Filled her with the hot wet tumult of his love (I filched that from here)
• Convulsion of bliss (well, some guys do make it look painful when they come!)
• He was ringing my bell - You can ring my be-e-ell, ring my bell
  
• And this one just sounds painful to me "He was going to bust a nut if he didn't get inside her hot box"
  
• Hitching on the Hershey highway - it was a guy who came up with this, no woman would ever defile chocolate in that manner!
• Making mouth music - play that flute baybee!
• Yodeling in the canyon of love

If you find one of these in any of my manuscripts please feel free to email me a slap upside the head - if I use one of these I'll need it to jump start my brain!

Erotic Romance and Faith

There is something that I've noticed when it comes to erotic romance, and its slightly more smutty sister, erotica - faith, or a visible lack thereof.

Oh, I'm not talking those highly involved fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction types of faith that an author might build a world around. I'm talking good old, everyday religion in a contemporary setting.

Are Sex and Faith mutually exclusive?

I've mentioned before that I enjoy reading Catherine Anderson. Her stories, more and more (just personal observance, she might not think so at all, and neither may you) are verging into inspirational, but I wonder if they will ever quite make it as she is just too frank with her language and pretty open with sex, too.

What appeals to me is not the sense of Faith running through her work, but the reality of her characters. They swear and fight, they have premarital sex - though often suffer for it in some manner - they have jobs they have to to before they can run willy nilly through the crabgrass and clover of their love lives. They are human.

But when I was sitting down staring into the ether at the Golden Trough on Sunday while scarfing my over sized plate of chicken, green beans, and spuds this is what popped into my brain. Why you ask? - the group of people who before seating themselves prayed over their table.

Now, I do live in a city that, religiously thinking, would love to name itself the reigning Baptist center of the world, so you might think I would see more of this type of behaviour. We don't really. A few quiet murmers, some dipped heads or clasped hands, but not a very public display. So Sex and Faith just jumped in there as an interesting blog topic.

Personally, I'm an agnostic. Yes, I'm one of those people who wants proof. I believe what I see, so Faith has little meaning for me on an intrinsic level in a story. But it does have a great deal of meaning for me for understanding a character though - their personality, their core beliefs etc. Does this translate over into romances hot-to-trot cousin, erotic romance?

I mentioned that there is no lack of faith or religion when applied to an imaginary world. After all it's a chance to be your own mini god, isn't it? Getting to make up the ins and outs of your own religion. The same with historicals - it's just a given that religion plays a big part in the mores and strictures of life. But what about in a contemporary setting?

BDSM and religion - now there's the mother of all debate topics. Submission, degradation, action and consequence, forgiveness, control of power, release - trust.

I think I understand the concepts behind BDSM, although it's not a hot trigger for me; still, the correlations between the two ring bells, big bells. Why then do I not see more content involving faith? Not the type of story line that involves someone ritually purging themselves through pain, but the kind where they trot off to Church on Sundays and make obvious dialogue about their religious beliefs. And I'm not talking "Oh my GOD, it's so huge!" That's finding religion of an entirely different genre.

Are erotic romance readers people who embrace religion?

I know there are readers and authors alike who are Pagan, but what about the traditional churches - Catholic, Baptist, Methodist etc? What about Asian or Middle Eastern faiths? It's not too far a jump from some Pagan beliefs to paranormal, romance, and fantasy. After all, that's where it all started - Greek and Roman myths and legends coming to life; mother nature at her finest; Druids, Witches and Warlocks.

Can traditional religions make the leap and keep the sexy heat? Is religion in an erotic story a turn off - the guilt factor chiming in? Face it, most erotic romances do not involve a married couple (or triple, but then that's another big no-no for most religions). Is the reminder that premarital sex is supposed to be a big NO, the reason I don't seem to see religion as a part of the current erotic romance selections?

I know I don't write about it - don't practice, how can I preach it? Could this be the new big thing? Inspirational Erotic Romance? I think it could be done. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to tie BDSM up with a healthy religious aspect, rather than using it in a protaganistic manner?

Sex gone awry

I have a few author blogs that I keep up with - Isabella Snow's Smut in G minor is one of them. Recently she made a post about your folks getting jiggy with it.

It made me think of an experience, not involving my parents, but me, as a parent.

Imagine if you will, getting a little morning nooky in, presumably before kiddo is up and awake. Things are going along, as they do, heading for a climactic conclusion, when whomph! Hubby body slams you and knocks all the wind out of you (really it wasn't welcomed at the time, erotic asphyxia I am not into!). Then the unholiest of all sounds peals out around the room, "Giddy up horsey, giddy up!", along with the corresponding sounds of little boy feet pounding into the sides of his fathers back, and his boney little bottom digging its way into the exposed soft flesh of my husbands lower back as he bounces up and down, urging his horsey to go faster and win the race!

Talk about giving a four year old horsey rides around the house coming back to bite you on the ass...bad pun not intended!

Meanwhile, poor ol'me, being on the bottom of the pile is having an extremely hard time breathing...what between the laughter and the impacts on my sternum from hubby being slammed down, repeatedly, in search of the finish line.

It's a pity it wasn't quite the finish line we were aiming for...

You know, there is a book in there somewhere!

Chest hair...?

Yes? No?

Ladies, what are your opinions on the matter? Personally none of the men I have been that close to have had much in the chest hair department.

Coarse, wiry, soft, silky? How does it run through your fingers?

I <3 the internet

You have to love the internet. People used to wait for the freakshow to arrive to get good quality, weird and wonderful entertainment. Now, we have the internet.

An odd statement you might say, considering after all, I am an e-published author. But the internet is so much more than that, it is a constant source of amusement for me. It keeps me warm on cold winter nights, it feeds me, it supports me, it loves me!

For example : Where else can I find anonymous support groups for strange bodily afflictions, where with a single post I can gather my friends around, so they can cosset me and assure me that my life is not over.

Another: Food...the world is my oyster, so to speak - I really wouldn't recommend oysters purchased on the net, salmonella is such a horrible way to go.

And yet another: Condom Mania Who ever would have thunk it! a condom wizard!



Now, I have seem some unusual duckies in my time - check out www.orientaltrading.com sometime, they have duckies for all occasions...well, except for this one...



Now, this truely is something new to me.
Need to hide the evidence from Mom? Dad, the kids? A Flower Power Personal Massager should do the trick! And if this isn't the ultimate accessory for a VW beetle flower vase, I don't know what is!


You know what, this site is so damn groovy I am going to add it to my weird and wonderful links list. Everyone deserves to know what Debbie and Dick get up to in their bedroom!

Personally I am kinda curious about the "See Debbie Swallow! Oral Sex Spray".

It's the weekend!

Yay...I think. It's a big weekend here in Jacksonville.
The Florida Georgia game - potentially the most contested non nfl game of the year - if you are a Floridian or Georgian at least!
Then there is the Air show at NAS Jax...I wonder when the blue angels are due through? I think NAS Jax is their home base? Or is it the blue hornets or something and the blue angels are the NZ squad. Can you tell I am not an airshow geek?
Then, of course, there is halloween. The zoo had their big spooktacular that I might convince the family to wander along to, though more than likely they won't be much interested. We totally suck when it comes to this stuff...I guess it's coming from another country where rabid devotion to a topic is not quite the same.
I have been hunting down different promo op's and dropped into Cata-Network on Thursday with some other LI authors, and a few excerpts on the Joyfully reviewed loop.
Any readers dropping by do you have any suggestions of loops/sites that you haunt that have good promotional value?

Trying something different

So the first version of Position Vacant sucked, right?
But I really want to attempt something a little more sarcastically whitty, something a little more...like me, I guess. So I am trying my hand at another short story about a Miss Priss, who has a first of a lifetime one night stand, and instead of being left with a hickey gets a love-bite of the Were-folk kind.
Of course she doesn't know that yet - despite the legions of stray dogs following her around.

So how does this catch you?

------

“Come on, Shaun, let me in!” Pearl banged harder on her girlfriends front door. “Wake up you lazy cow and let me in before they eat me…” She turned around to look at the yard full of adoring canines. “…or something…”

She refused to look down to find out if it was something more than slobber on her shoe. Too many of the dogs looked too happy by far. La la la laaaa…don’t think about it, Pearl, just don’t think about it.

“God damn it, Shaun, Let. Me. In!” The door swung open and a short, petite sprite like creature stood in the doorway. Black as coal hair in disarray and raccoon eyes from smearing last nights eye makeup around with her fist as she tried to wake up.

“All right all right all ready. Keep your pants on.”

“Too bloody late for that now, isn’t it.” She shouldered her way past her kooky best friend and into the hallway, shaking off an eager paw so she could cross the threshold. “Hurry up, shut the door!”

Shaun had managed to clear her vision up enough to take in her front lawn. “Hey…what’s with all the dogs?” She took a closer look at Pearls disheveled state and gasped. “What the hell happened to you?”

Usually primly proper and schoolmarm like, she dressed in skirts, blouses and her namesake pearls. But today she had on a ratty old pair of jeans, a T-shirt on backwards, and her jacket was on inside out. Then Shaun spied the big hickey just down from her neck and tried very hard not to giggle. Going so far as to stuff her little fist in her little mouth; but she couldn’t contain her very big roar of laughter.

“Ohmigod! Miss. Prissy got laid last night!”

-----

Or is it just the farmers daughter in me that thinks this is funny?

New Reviews

Two from the same site, and both of them pretty good, if I do say so myself!

http://www.cupidslibraryreviews.de/persuadingjoad.php
http://www.cupidslibraryreviews.de/persuadingjoad2.php

"Persuading Jo" is an excellent read. To read about how loveable Matt and Brian act in order to help Jo to overcome her shyness is really sweet and something you want to read and read and read again. That the two men love Jo from the bottom of their hearts and that they want Jo really in their relationship is a heart-warming experience to read about.

The love scenes are sorchingly hot and the only sad thing about this book is that there has to be an end.."

"PERSUADING JO is a ménage-à-trois reader's dream. All three characters are written very well and are very likeable. Matt and Brian are dreamy and would make any woman desire and want them warming her bed. Despite Jo having a hard and victimized history she is quite strong and has an inner drive and desire to succeed at what she sets her mind to. In PERSUADING JO there is light humor and a tad bit of drama, but what the focus of this story is, is to get Jo to accept and be in a relationship with her two best friends. The way in which the author does this is through a series of sensual steps that get your heart racing and Jo sexually primed for her two friends. Brian and Matt are any girl's wet dream so their seduction of Jo is not a difficult process. Yet because of some of her emotional scars there are a few road bumps in the way. The scenes with Jo and her men are very hot and take place in some wonderful places like outdoors and a shower scene to die for. The relationship between Matt and Brian in and of itself is very hot and these two men are very loving and physical with one another and eventually this includes Jo. The conclusion of this story is quite passionate and tender. I really enjoyed how MS. DOUGLAS made this steamy ménage-à-trois believable and work. The feelings and desires between all the characters are intense and their bond sexually is only highlighted and strengthened by their friendship. The respect and love they all share is quite enviable and their erotic scenes are not easily forgotten. I am so curious about the next book in this series."

YeaHa!

Midlife and sex...

I was wondering, as you do, why so much romance of every sort is about young/ish single people finding the right person.

Now you can look at me weird, but I was thinking about my Mum. Shes reasonably attractive, heading toward 55 - definitely not looking like it, most days (sorry mum!) - and to my knowledge doesn't date (and hey I have been out of the country for 5 years so there is ample opportunity to date with me knowing it but I have sisters who gossip it would have got back to me). Surely reading about hot little 20 somethings can't do it for her. I mean it's all good an well to have a fantasy life, but you need to have some basis in reality somewhere along the line...right?

Why is there so little about 40+ (unless they are the distinguished uber riche bachelor who hunts himself a trophy wife) men and women. And what about married couples. It's great and all to get your jollies, or your rocks off to great erotic romance then nab your hubby in bed, but what about some stories that have husbands and wives overcoming the evil dude, and having ultra hot sex along the way. Or about trying to keep your marriage and hot sex alive while trying to avoid the "hey, daddy is playing horsies with mummy, lets jump on board daddy's back, YEA HAW" moments.

What about dedicated husbands and wives who want to explore their sexuality...surely that can be made into a sexy romantic story without delving too far into the realms of straight erotica? Or of course turning out a complete and utter balls up and ending in divorce?

What? ...Your stilling imagining the whole "gi'up and ride em cowboy moment with the kid aren't you? I can't be the ONLY one that has happened to, surely?