On how to recover from a bad experience...

I found this quote on how to recover from a bad experience in an old Oprah Mag (I can't help it, it's an addiction...I've subscribed for years!). I just love it:

"Write yourself a new chapter-a hopeful, happy one that involves your being insanely well-dressed and sexually fulfilled."
---Faith Salie

Amen!

Romance on Ice

Last night my husband and I were lounging on the couch and looking for something to watch since our usual Simpsons/Family Guy hour was smoked by football. We ended up watching ice dancing. The reigning champs, Meryl Davis and Charlie White danced to Billie Jean. I was so swept away by the pair, I had to check out their winning Phantom performance on you tube. Oh. My. God. It doesn't hurt, of course, that Charlie White bears an uncanny resemblance to my first celebrity crush...I'll leave that one up to your imagination rather than date myself too much... I'll definably be tuning in for the Olympics now & hoping to find some more inspiration for stories!

free verse refections

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

--William Carlos Williams

This poem infuriated me in high school; I wasn't much for subtleties. Lately, though, I find myself thinking about it from time to time. It has a beautiful simplicity, and a stark truth I never could have grasped then: we often take for granted the things most important. (Ever try and remove yard waste without a wheel barrow?) Those things most important we forget to honor, we leave in the rain, we fail to notice...at least until something contrasts with it.

Writing erotica has been the "white" to my "red"--the thing that made me notice things I've taken for granted...from the feel of a nylon stocking to the erotic possibilities of secret-sharing. It's a bit of a surprise, but not an unwelcome one.

And since I was appreciating subtleties, I decided to poke around the internet and read some other poets who infuriated me. I found this gem by ee cummings. (And I'm certain if this one was included in the anthology, I would have had ALOT more interest in free verse!)

i like my body when it is with your body.

It is so quite a new thing. Muscles better

and nerves more. i like your body. i like

what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel

the spine of your body and its bones, and

the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which

i will again and again and again kiss, i like

kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly

stroking the, shocking fuzz of your

electric fur, and what-is-it comes over

parting flesh . . . . And eyes big

love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

--ee cummings

BDSM? or BDIL?

Like I say in my Bio, I never set out to write erotic romance, let alone BSDM-inspired erotic romance. (BDSM is, of course, an acronym for bondage, discipline, sado, machoism) However, despite the fact that I indended to write "vanilla" romance, intimacy is what fascinates me. And in what other case is true and complete intimacy as paramount as in a consensual power-exchange relationship? Every developing relationship requires honesty and communication but in a power-exchange relationship, the consequences go beyond emotional pain. To admit to an unusual desire (I will NOT use the word deviant) is to make oneself vulnerable, so the couple interested in exploring their less common needs is, from the outset, risking more. Aned, if that were not enough, there is a risk of true injury if boundaries are not properly set and comunicated. I like to play with this charged need for intimacy in my stories. How does a couple go about communicating their needs? How to they set bounaries? What happens if one balks? Because I write romance, however there is always a happy ending to these negotiations! So in my world, it is not so much BDSM but BDIL: Bondage, Discipline, Intimacy and Love.