Vivien Jackson

Short fiction: Not a Date

2012-02-14T06:50:00.034-06:00

AN: I'm posting this month's free read a day early. For obvious reasons.

~520 words
Rating: PG

Summary: You and I don't date. Especially not on Valentine's.

Tonight isn't a date. Nothing date-like about it.

You and me, we don't date. Valentine's night when we were nineteen, we met at a kegger off campus. We both had dates: I rode there with Carl and went home with Jevon; you stayed with Christi-giggles for three years after that, if I remember correctly. The sound my car makes when it needs new brake pads still reminds me of her. I bet you have even more painful memories. But you're persistent, I'll give you that. And somewhere in west Texas there's a dry lake bed that could be filled by the booze it took to get you over that chick.

On Valentines when we were twenty-eight, I married Carl (yeah, the same one from the kegger… you were so right about him). You were kind enough to get him smashed the night before at his stag party. He fell asleep four minutes into the honeymoon, and if you say "I told you so" one more time, I'm going to tell the waiter tonight that you're in AA, I swear. It'll be tap water and burnt churros for you, buster. See if I won't.

At thirty-three, and two divorces -- one each -- later, we swore off dates for Valentine's entirely. There's a comforting simplicity to being single on this celebrated night of love. Plus, we’ve made heckling the dating folks an art form.

This year, I doll up like a tart, shimmying into a dress that would take a very unsexy amount of time to get out of. Which is okay, right, since I plan on staying clothed all night. I remind myself, as I snap on my garters, that what we do is a hell of a lot more fun than dating. And you'd never date me anyhow. That's not what friends like us do.

You meet me at Besitos with a rose in hand and a starched collar and cologne. Cologne! Ha! You're really doing this up snazzy, you. We take a table in the corner and order wine and an appetizer, and then we watch the parade. The lovebirds don't disappoint. One after another, couples mince into the restaurant, nervously clutching flowers and promises and infantile optimism. Valentine's Day three years ago, we made a drinking game out of their misguided joy, and we go over the rules tonight.

You nod at two squirrel-nervous and blushing twenty-somethings over by the bar. "I think holding hands should just be a sip."

"Yeah, we kind of overdid it last year. But note the new décor: no long tablecloths. I betcha we get a peek at some footsie. That's got to be good for a gulp."

"Or ten." You're still looking at the couple by the bar, and you don’t smile. "God, they're young."

I glance over again. Apparently the younglings didn't make reservations, and getting a table is taking some time. I'd sympathize, but they don't look bothered by it at all. The blushes are gone. They're staring at each other and grinning like loons. "Amen. You gotta admit, sometimes love looks flat-out hilarious."

You don't say anything, so I keep staring at the bar couple. She perches on a stool, and her dude sidles up close. Aha! There it is: the point of her stiletto touches his trouser leg. I take a gulp of my wine. It warms my throat, which was beginning to feel oddly tight.

You mutter something under your breath, and I ask you to repeat it but the waitress comes by with our appetizer -- a giant tray of deep fried TexMex oozing cheese. I lift a quesadilla-looking thing and let the melty bit drip onto my tongue. It burns but tastes delish, so I suck in the strand of cheese, biting it off before the whole tortilla triangle can follow. That spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp pops into my head, and as I swallow I turn to you to share the reference. The look on your face almost makes me choke on my cheese.

"Real thing isn't so hilarious, actually." Your expression is dead serious, and you aren't looking at that other couple anymore.

I drop the quesadilla and shove my hands under the table. They're not obeying me suddenly. I try to chuckle but it sounds like a quack. "As if I'd know anything about that…" I meant it to sound wry and jaded, but it comes out breathless.

"You could. Right now. If you'd just look." You've never been big on words. Hell, you were an EE major. I was the only way you even got through those writing-requirement courses, not to mention your dissertation. But right now it occurs to me that you don't need the long flowery speeches. You don't need poetry or chocolates or promises. Below the miasma of jalepenos and cumin, I swear I can smell that white rose lying between us on the table.

"If we left now, I bet that couple by the bar would get a table faster," I say. You drop some bills on the table. I add a tip.

We don't speak as we drive back to my apartment, leaving my car behind. What in the world would we say? And more importantly, how the hell would I make this nervous throat push out words? I consider asking if you're sure, but we've known each other half our lives so you had plenty of time to think and rethink this. Plus you've always been the decisive one, the friend whose advice was always dead-on. Annoyingly so. And you've never been scared of making decisions and then acting on them.

Me, on the other hand, well, I am terrified. Terrified like a teenager, damn it. Terrified that I've misread everything for twenty fucking years. Terrified to trust, to jump, to want. And, God, I do want. You. I've always wanted you. I fist my hands in the slinky skirt, forcing myself to calm as you keypad past the gate and find a parking spot just steps from my unit. You cut the engine, get out, and come around to open my door, and that's when I realize I left the rose behind at the restaurant.

You reach a hand to help me out of the car, and I look up as you say, "This isn't a date." The half smile on your mouth doesn't mean you're joking. The smolder in your eyes totally gives you away.

"No," I reply. "It's quite a bit more than that."

--
Story copyright 2012 by Vivien Jackson. Image borrowed from Dessy's Inn -- it accompanies a very romantic short poem that deserves to be read.

Why the best stories are lickable

2012-01-23T07:00:00.002-06:00

I'm probably the last person on the planet to have read Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games books, but I finally did, over the winter holidays. Wow, what a ride. Out of so many things Collins did right, I want to talk about just one.

Food.

And no, this post is not in any way related to my New Year's resolutions or the calorie counter I just installed on my phone. Instead, it stems from a longstanding fondness for food imagery. From Katniss's efforts to forage sustenance for her family to Peter's too-tempting Turkish Delight in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to the near-constant pizza runs and Cluck in a Bucket visits in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, food details really bring a story home for me.

Sometimes food is the centerpiece, such as in magical realism stories like Chocolate and Like Water for Chocolate, and I get that. But even when it ain't magical, the food references can move a story. Can't tell you how many e-romance bits I've read that feature chocolate or marshmallows or whipped cream or cherries. And yet I still keep reading 'em because the mastication masturbation symbology works. Even when authors make the metaphor literal, there really is something compelling -- visceral even -- in reading about food.

Eve and the apple, display cases where the voyeur glutton can indulge without ingesting a single calorie, the shape of a lollipop bulging through pursed lips...whetting the appetite? How about the libido? Because, of course, food is also erotic. In her book Female Desire, Rosalind Coward writes, "Cooking food and presenting it beautifully is an act of servitude. It is a way of expressing affection through a gift... That we should aspire to produce perfectly finished and presented food is a symbol of a willing and enjoyable participation in servicing others." D/s themes in food prep? Bingo.

You know the old adage that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I'm beginning to think it applies to readers, too.

Short fiction: Dead Things and Magic

2012-01-15T07:00:00.017-06:00

1,163 words
PG Rating

Summary: The last golden-born fae struggles to find a purpose in a life with no wings.

Once upon a time, deep in the thicket, below the curtain of bluebells and ash leaves, a fae princess was born, the last of seventeen sisters to emerge from shimmering gold chrysalids. Golden-born fae had long patrolled the glen, guardians of all the flowers and of light, but this one, the last princess, won no march of her own. Because she had no wings.

She'd emerged that way, flat-backed and bare but already able to stand. Her sisters dried their nascent wings and wept blood-tears, certain to a one that she would not live past dawn. For how could a grounded fae escape those who might harm her? And how would she ever reach a flower to eat? They could only look down in pity as a line of ants circled the hobbled fae, surely set to claim her for their supper. The sisters stretched their still-wet wings in impotent agony, but to their surprise, the ants took pity on the last golden-born and brought her food instead of death. They fed her from their stores and gave her a place in their line. She marched with them thereafter, though she never really became an ant.

Well, of course she did not.

Still, she grew strong and worked hard at her tasks among her benefactors. And though she applied her talents as best she could, her fae soul surged at the end of its tether sometimes, tugging her off her path with unexpected violence. And daily though she trudged through the rot on the forest floor, she paused and basked in sunbeams when they bled through holes in the canopy. She could not resist the lure.

At first she experimented with stringing narrow vines and anchors, seeking always a way up, but climbing wasn't flying, and at the end of all her work the forest still loomed far above her, insurmountable.

Oh, certainly she gained respect for the layers of loam and delved deep enough that she could touch the dust cool of magic in the earth -- things that no fae had ever known -- but the only time she caught the perfume of her sisters' flowers was when someone was kind enough to bring a petal back. The only blossoms she knew were dead ones.

One day, all her sisters left. Inexplicably and without farewells. The last golden-born fae assumed that they had matured and mated, a pattern she'd noted with other forest creatures. She imagined iridescent-blue swallowtails and lacewing children, and she envied. To find a place or purpose for her tears, she assigned herself a new duty, that of tending the dead. Everything flying or footed eventually ended up on the forest floor, her demesne. She might not be able to soar or protect or produce offspring, she reckoned, but she could do this. Birds, beasts, and kin, she mourned them all and then sorted the carcasses. Her soul grew hard against such constant onslaught of transience, but the task only reinforced her desire to be something other than what she was. Or at least a better, more complete version.

She grew bitter and pale and fierce and stubborn. Moonset after moonset she wrapped the dead and covered them with beetles, and every time she did that a little less of her felt alive. At last even the generosity of the ants failed to move her. So she brushed their hill-tunnels clean and made certain their stores were full, and then she crept off one night, when all the other daytime beasts lay sleeping.

The last golden-born knew all the hovels of this forest, knew all the small places. And deep there, alone and fired by a lifetime of exclusion, she twined those vines again in a new pattern. She filled the holes in her design with leaf litter and dead things, furling bird-feathers and fashioning, at last, a set of wings: ghastly, bile-black and heavy, but wings. Wings!

All night she climbed with this hideous machine upon her back, purposing a thousand plans beneath the stars, and she knew it when dawn came, though her world was dim as ever. At the edge of a limb she stood, bent beneath the bulk of her self-crafted wings. Above, still, stretched the canopy. Below, she could no longer see the ants. Or the fallen leaves. Or the dead things. She stretched out her arms, hitched a breath, and jumped.

A baby bird might have told her, had she asked, how flight works the first time. Her own sisters might have advised her not to panic, to let the wind lift her. She had consulted no others, though, and all she knew was dirt and death and dreams. A summer breeze caught briefly, and she flapped her mechanical wings, giving them impetus with her own will, but sacrificing her aim. The breeze captured her and pulled so hard that her body moved faster than the breath she needed. Her world dimmed again, even as she tumbled through the air, and she spun within the wind's grasp, hurtling with such speed that she knew she would not survive. And then, when she thought that surely she'd hit her end, light bathed her, all at once, a vast wash of heat and bright and perfume and air. She didn't blink against the glory, determined not to miss even a moment of it. She'd lived her whole life for this vista, soaring at last above the canopy.

Toward the edge of trees, where she knew the copse gave over to wide swathes of meadow, she stretched her vision, searching for the flowers her sisters had spoken of. Her birthright. It was here, she thought. It should be here. It should be ... but all she saw were neat lawns, stubbled by machines and crisped yellow by the unrelenting summer sun.

This is it? she thought. She adjusted the levers and knots, gliding herself low over the lawns. The heat burned the back of her throat, and in all directions, save the little copse of trees she'd just left, identical squares of burnt grass lay slashed by ugly gray ribbons. An organized chaos.

The last golden-born fae tried to turn her mechanical wings, tried to get back to the forest she knew, but her attention had wavered and her eyes had grown wet in her sorrow. She couldn't find her way back, and she had glided too low on the breeze -- another thing that more experienced fliers might have taught her. She did not feel the crack of her wing as it broke on a metal wire in the sky, but she did feel the shift in balance, and despite the horror of the moment, a thrill surged: if she was falling, that meant that she'd flown.

That thought propelled her spirit, though the wings failed in parallel. The last golden-born fae fell, cushioned unhelpfully by a wad of paper-trash in an alley. And no one tended the forest dead.

--
Story copyright 2011 by Vivien Jackson.Image of wings is derived from game costuming described here.

Short fiction: Wonderbeans

2011-12-15T06:44:00.019-06:00

~800 words
PG rating

Summary: Evelyn has just moved in with her boyfriend, Dave, and finds that figuring out the toilet-seat situation and other cohabitation conundrums is much easier than breaking the news to her mother.

Mom stared down into the metal bowl of Kentucky Wonder Beans by the sink, snapping the prickly ends off. The snaps cracked like a whip in the otherwise silent kitchen. On a stool near the oven, Evelyn squirmed.

"It's not like I killed anybody, Ma," Evelyn muttered.

Snap.

"Think of all the money I'll be saving. I could go to back to college or..."

Snap. Amazing how Mom managed to interrupt even when she didn't open her mouth. A waft of disapproval rose from Mom's bowl of beans.

"Look, I love him,” Evelyn went on doggedly. “This is a good thing."

Mom sprayed water over the trimmed beans, rinsing imaginary dirt off. Evelyn didn't have the heart to remind her mother that the grocery store cleaned the vegetables nowadays. Waxed 'em, even, and made 'em pretty for the customers. But she knew it wouldn't serve. Mom wore her worries like badges, and dirt on veggies was right up there with cooties on public toilet seats.

"Reach up in the pantry and grab me some pepper, Evie, will you? That big can of it," Mom said.

Without even thinking about it, Evelyn hopped down from the stool and over to the pantry.

"You can call me Evelyn, you know. Everybody else does. I'm 23, not a kid," Evelyn noted, handing down the bulk-sized container of pepper. Mom believed that black pepper overdoses were the secret prevention for cancer, so she'd always doused her dishes with the stuff. Evelyn had been the only kid in her school with a quarter-inch of pepper on her ham sandwiches. Thank God Mom had stopped short of peppering the Twinkies.

Mom paused, one brow raised, and took the can of pepper. She made a huffing sound and turned back to the sink, not bothering to comment on the name suggestion. Or anything else.

Evelyn watched her mother dump the beans into a giant vat and add water, bacon fat, a pressed cube of chicken bouillon, and, of course, a half ton or so of black pepper. Despite the overuse of pepper and garlic (good for the heart), Mom's soul food was positively epicurean. Evelyn had missed these dinners with her mother, she realized. Not the chatter and the guilt, but the food. And maybe some other things.

Mom rinsed her hands and dried them on her tacky frilled apron. Evelyn took that as a signal that her mother was ready to talk.

"So Dave and I were thinking ... we’d like to have you over. Hey, maybe I could even cook dinner for you. Wouldn’t that be weird? What do you think?" Evelyn decided to recast the conversation. It sounded less defensive if she framed her Grand Announcement as an invitation. Her mother was a stickler for social niceties, to the point of once using that walking-with-encyclopedias-on-the-head method of improving Evelyn's posture. Mom didn’t usually decline invitations if she didn’t have a specific schedule conflict. She considered it rude.

Mom's hands were still bunched in her apron. Her mouth tightened, but her eyes didn't look angry.

"Would you like some peach cobbler for dessert?" she asked.

"Mom, I just invited you to dinner. Can we talk about that first?" Evelyn pressed. She'd never noticed those lines around her mother's mouth before. Had they always been there? Her mother was old-fashioned, sure, but never old. Evelyn felt betrayed by those lines.

She tried again a few other times to bring up the topic of her recent change in living arrangements, but Mom didn't bite. Stoic, that one, Evelyn thought. Stubborn, even. Finally, halfway through cutting up onions for the baked chicken, Evie gave up. She told her mother about work, about the schizophrenic behavior of her Subaru (probably an alternator problem, her mother diagnosed), about how her high school best friend Jasmin had moved to New York for no good reason and had a bathroom the size of a pizza box. Mom offered the extended family update: Cousin Daniel was doing well in rehab, Aunt Marie had gotten a new puppy who'd already eaten the dining room drapes, and Granna's last visit to the cardiologist had been uneventful.

When they finally sat down at the tiny table in the corner of the kitchen, divine-smelling food laid out between them, Evelyn wondered at the lack of tension. Hadn’t there been tension earlier? But it had wafted out with the smell of roast chicken and garlic. It was almost like she'd never moved out. She looked across at her mother, lines around the mouth and all, and felt so much at home that she wanted to cry.

Mom’s eyes gentled; she speared a piece of chicken with her fork. "So this house you and Dave are living in, is the stove gas or electric?"

--
Story copyright 2009 by Vivien Jackson. Image from MarthaStewart.com.

Is that that and is?

2011-11-22T07:11:00.008-06:00

November is a month of words. Folks participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) write their fingertips raw to log 50,000 of the suckers. NaQuaWriMo (National Quality Writing Month) players agonize over their 100 per day, searching for the best and most evocative.

We prep holiday cards, attempting to achieve that balance between chipper upbeat and just plain annoying. And when the weather turns crisp, we huddle indoors, reading words, writing words, speaking words, placing words on a board to get the most points and make our friends cringe in Scrabblenvy (a word: look it up).

However, in this season of word glut, might I suggest two that seem, to me, to be overused, that and is? After all...

That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is.

(And also, I lied about Scrabblenvy.)

Six Sentence Sunday: Sneaky

2011-11-20T05:48:00.008-06:00

From the piece I'm working on right now, which will probably never be read by anyone but me. Sih is her duke's minister at a diplomatic conference and is planning on doing a bit of spying.

"My duke, you're so used to bestriding a battlefield that when you walk into a plain little room you take up all the air. Another body can barely breathe for your overwhelming presence. Have you ever even tried to sneak?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever succeeded?"

He figured it was safer not to answer that.

Thank you for visiting. I encourage you to read through some of the excellent Six Sentence Sunday offerings.

Difference between writer and author

2011-11-16T08:31:00.000-06:00

From Webster:

writer (n.) one that writes

author (n.) one that originates or creates

The distinction is small but important. Writing is a technical discipline, not an art form. Anyone with enough diligence and practice can put words together and construct logical sentences. She can even get pretty good at what I call the microlevel of writing: strong verbs, lack of dangling participles, careful attention to word repeats and adverb avoidance and that kind of thing. The sorts of things that authors generally get smacked around about at FLEs.

An author, on the other hand, creates, births a whole story -- sometimes a whole world -- from flat nothing. Think about that for a second. In many respects, an author is a god, or at least a demigod, a mystical creature who can play a reader's emotions, make social arguments, change the real world... all based on some words.

I'm a damn fine writer who aspires to be an author.

Short fiction: Unqualified

2011-11-15T07:36:00.093-06:00

~600 words
Rating: PG-13 for language and insinuation

Summary: Ali interviews a potential candidate.

Ali had him cornered on a balcony, seated opposite and facing her over a low patio table, poolside. She could tell he'd expected the interview to be in a typical office setting. He'd even dressed up, poor thing. She poked her glasses with her index finger till they sat more comfortably atop her nose, but she didn't let her gaze falter, not one bit. She wanted her latest candidate to squirm a little. Okay, a lot: She liked it when they squirmed.

"Name?"

"Lucas Holmes."

"Three syllables, and the first name is on our approved list: promising start." Ali clicked the appropriate check box on her tablet. "Okay. Ever been in the military?"

"Er, no. I'm kind of a pacifist." He shifted his feet on the patio cement, scuffing the bottoms of polished dress shoes that couldn't have been worn more than once or twice, by the look of them. Ali noted the callouses on the thumbs slung over his chair arms. No, Lucas wasn't a dress-shoes sort of guy. She'd put him in work boots and jeans, either with a tight tee-shirt or no shirt at all.

"Pacifist as in you volunteered in the Peace Corps or chained yourself to a tree? I could make that work. Ever do anything vigilante and awesome in the pursuit of your ideals?"

He'd left his mouth open slightly after his last answer, and he only just now got around to closing it. He wetted his dry lips -- a necessity after leaving them open for so long, she suspected -- and worked a big bronze hand through his dark hair.

"I voted for the Green Party candidate in the last election," he said. "That the kind of thing you mean?"

Ali frowned and touch-typed on her tablet, Kind of pussy, not to mention political. Still, she soldiered on. "How's your relationship with your parents?"

Lucas shifted again in his lawn char, and Ali didn't miss the play his starched suit trousers made over those thighs. For visuals, if nothing else, he was definitely a contender. The loose wool left a lot to the imagination, and all of it good fantasy fodder.

"Good, I guess. I forgot Mother's Day and got an earful about it, but then I dog-sat for her and my step-dad Dave when they went to Jamaica in August, so I guess that made up for it some."

"What about your exes?" Ali pressed, frowning behind her glasses.

"What about them?"

"Any secret babies, festering grudges, or restraining orders?"

"Um, not that I know of?"

Answering a question with a question: typical beta behavior, Ali noted. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, letting her stockings shish, and happily Lucas's gaze followed all the way down, like he couldn't help himself. Physically aware: check.

"PTSD?"

"..means?"

"Post-traumatic stress disorder. You got it?"

"No."

"Former addictions?"

"No?"

"Fucking hell, Lucas, what's wrong with you, man?"

"I don't understand. I thought this was an interview for the job of adorable hero in a romance novel," he said. "Figured I was decently qualified. I'm, um, employed and reckon I'm okay looking. Also, I can dance a little and do enjoy, you know, the oral. Been known to buy flowers here and there. See on that paper, says all that on the resume. I brought an extra copy in case you n--"

"I've read your fucking resume," Ali snapped. She set the tablet on her knee and narrowed her eyes. "But clearly you know nothing about strong heroines in romance novels. They need the bad boy, Lucas, the broken dark and brooding hero. How else could they possibly be awesome enough to totally save him and change his life?"

"Whoa, wait a second: change me? But I like me."

"Yeah, well, readers won't."

To his credit, he didn't look away, not even when Ali seared him with her most pointed and snarly look. He could still save this, she thought. He could go all alpha, lunge across that low glass-top table, and pin her to her chair with some clit-throbbingly sexy line. Ali waited for it. Do it.

Lucas just raised both eyebrows and met her gaze steadily, burning through the early afternoon sun. "Don't reckon I'd like them much either," he said, stretching out those god-gorgeous legs and standing up. "Thank you kindly for having me here for the interview, ma'am, but I'm not your guy."

He nodded politely and ducked into the house, careful to catch the door before it knocked too hard on the frame. Ali listened to his footsteps retreating and just sat there for a moment in the warm sunshine. Then she leaned over her tablet and typed: Beautiful and idealistic and a gentleman to boot. God, what real-life woman wouldn't want one of those for her very own? Consider for role of the nice guy heroine rejects in favor of her bad boy.

--
Story copyright 2011 by Viv Jackson. Photo of David Gandy (uncertain of the image copyright, presumably his).

Six Sentence Sunday: Mommy issues?

2011-11-13T05:44:00.002-06:00

And another snippet from that just-for-the-helluvit story, "Unqualified," which will go live here as a free read on November 15th.

"How's your relationship with your parents?"

Lucas shifted in his lawn chair, and Ali didn't miss the play his pants made over those thighs. For visuals, if nothing else, he was definitely a contender. The loose wool left a lot to the imagination, and all of it good fantasy fodder.

"Pretty okay, I guess. I forgot Mother's Day and got an earful about it, but then I dog-sat for her and my step-dad Dave when they went to Jamaica in August, so I guess that made up for it some."

Thank you so much for wandering by here. Means a lot to me. And please do read the other Six Sentence Sunday goodies this week.

Free reads section opening soon

2011-11-11T05:53:00.025-06:00

A friend sent me a quote the other day that got me thinking. The quote, and I'll just summarize rather than relate it in full, claimed that writers don't like writing: what they like is to have written. Note verb tense. The point being that folks like having a catalogue of their work, of looking back over it and preening, or of selling and sharing it with others.

For more veteran writers, sharing their work involves subbing, waiting, worrying, editing, re-editing, promoting, wincing, and finally closing their eyes and hoping that the story doesn't get slammed in review and/or sales. I do have a couple of manuscripts that I'm looking forward to putting through that process, but I also do a lot of writing that isn't long-form or complicated character or plot development. Writing those little one-shots gives me a lot of pleasure. I have dozens of the things hibernating on my hard drive, and I wonder if they might just be feeling lonely. There's no reason why I shouldn't let them breathe a little.

So starting next week, I'll be posting free reads here on my site. They'll show up on the 15th of every month, because every month has a 15th. No charge, no demands for comments (though, if you enjoy the story, a comment would be nice), no promo. Just fun. Because that's what writing is all about.

My heroine does laundry

2011-11-09T09:28:00.001-06:00

Was chatting with my mom recently, and instead of talking about family members or her puppy's peculiar skin allergies or whether I would or would not use a coupon for Lysol spray, our conversation turned to my grandma, her mother. I remember Granny as something of a steel pixie, five whole feet of chuckle and tsk-tsk and fresh dinner rolls warm from the oven. But that was just a child-sized view of the whole woman.

Granny lived in an era of profound lack of self-pity. Didn't have time for that shit. She spent Mondays shoving laundry thrice through the wringer after dunking each piece in water of various heat levels. Tuesdays she ironed the stuff she'd washed and line-dried the day before. Wednesdays she baked all manner of fattening goodness, from scratch, and she canned stuff from the garden if it was ready. She cooked fried chicken from scratch, too, after raising, feeding, loving, and killing those chickens. Thursdays she waxed the wood floors. By hand.

She didn't drive, didn't have a car or a license, but she would carry her two preschoolers down to the bus stop, ride into town to purchase necessities, and then haul groceries and children back home. Makes me want to smack myself for complaining about carrying the bags in from the car after a grocery run, but whatever.

Fridays she leapt tall buildings in a single...wait, no, that was a different super hero. But it does bring me to my point. Strong female characters? I know one. I think a woman like this deserves to be novelized.

Six Sentence Sunday: Revelation

2011-11-06T05:21:00.006-06:00

Alice and her not-quite-human new buddy share that moment.

“I hate being the first one to explain," he grumbled. "But you are ready to know, so here it is, sweet Alice: I’m an angel.” He tacked on a reassuring grin, like an extra ruffle on an especially silly prom dress.

Alice bleated a laugh. Or it might have been a hiccough. "Of course you are."

Thanks for visiting and reading. I really appreciate all this support and camaraderie. Feel like one of the gang. And speaking of the gang, will you just look at all them goodies on the Six Sentence Sunday site this week?

Six Sentence Sunday: Dare you

2011-10-30T05:36:00.002-06:00

From my interminably-WIP angel story, A Halo for Alice. Alice's boyfriend has just texted her and dared her to do some exhibitionista things at a dance club.

Alice considered it, she really did. However, what stoked Mero's imagination was less likely to impress some stranger at a bar. Were she to actually lift her shirt up, she had a strong notion half the guys here would choke on their spit. The others would look away in horror. On a hotness scale of one to ten, Alice pegged herself right at a three, maybe four in this shirt. It was new and black and made her feel somewhat prettier than a turnip.

Thank you so much for stopping by, and by all means don't stop here. There's just too much goodness to swallow over at the Six Sentence Sunday site.

Geography or trajectory?

2011-10-26T10:45:00.001-05:00

I need to let y'all know where I am. No, not sitting at my desk, not broiling slowly down here in neverwinter Texas, not parked at a longitude and latitude: I mean where I am on this writing journey.

When I learned how to scrawl out whole sentences in Kindergarten, the very first thing I did was write a story. I think it was about eight pages in my Big Chief tablet, but written in pen because the roll of a ballpoint on Big Chief paper felt so delicious. The story was about two kids, a brother and sister, whose mother disappeared and they went to a magical land to find her and bring her home in time for dinner. Hot on the heels of that story was a Han Solo fanfiction (though I didn't know what to call it back then) and similar flights of fancy. So I've been doing this a long time. As far back as I can remember, I've been telling stories.

The difference lately is that I've been trying to sell the things I write, and so far that part of the adventure has included both ups and downs. Some downs I've mentioned here, some I haven't. But recently I had a little up that feels pretty important. A short story I co-wrote with Christa Paige has been contracted by Harlequin Spice Briefs and is due out next autumn. I'll set up a news item/section here on the site when I get more details.

I know that release date is whole year from now, and at first I was thinking that it would be hard to sustain this level of hell-yeah for twelve flippin months… but maybe not. See, I took a photo of the contract with my signature scrawled all over it, and I put it up on my computer's desktop. I aim to look at it every day and treat it as a road map.

This is where I am. And the view from here is pretty damn sweet.

Spare some change, mister?

2011-08-31T08:08:00.006-05:00

Change is good, right? Now, I'm not talking about the kind that you stick in a vending machine to get a Coke back (or underpants, if you're in Japan: more on that later). I'm talking about the other kind of change.

For the last couple of years, I've called myself a published fiction writer. I mean, those three stories were up for sale. Some folks even paid good money for 'em. That made me real, right? I didn't go around hollering about it, granted, and it was a small inroad to make on the path to being a Real Writer, but it was progress. Was. Because, as of today, I'm back at square one. The publisher of those stories has closed up shop, and the rights have reverted.

I have to do some serious thinking about where I go from here. A blank slate means I can sort of start over, write any old thing I want. Doesn't even have to be smutty. I can take some chances. I can jump off a cliff onto a pirate ship with an appletini in one hand and a bazooka in the other. I can be a word ninja, a clairnaughtyent, a rainbow princess fairytale dominatrix!

I can be terrified.

Well, then. Changes ahead, for better or worse. What? You read through that whole whinge just waiting for me to talk about buying panties out of a vending machine in Osaka? Really? Fine. They were black.

Six Sentence Sunday: Interview

2011-08-28T05:28:00.007-05:00

First, I know that this Sunday is very unusual in that East Coast folks either don't have power or don't have time to read hot goodies. Thinking about and worrying about y'all. Take care, please, and we'll get back to regular programming sometime later.

For everyone who has wandered by and isn't (obviously) inundated, don't you worry about commenting. Read if you like, but please don't feel the pressure to comment.

The first six sentences of "Unqualified":

Ali had him cornered on a balcony, seated opposite and facing her over a low patio table. She could tell he'd expected the interview to be in a typical office setting. He'd even dressed up, poor thing. She poked her glasses with her index finger till they sat more comfortably atop her nose, but she didn't let her gaze falter, not one bit. She wanted her latest candidate to squirm a little. Okay, a lot: She liked it when they squirmed.

As always, thank you so much for stopping by, and please don't forget to peek at the other Six Sentence Sunday entries this week.

Cringe, but do it anyway

2011-08-21T10:16:00.000-05:00

Right now, the Muse and I are spatting. She ain't talking to me, and I'm doing my passive-aggressive best not to let my disappointment show. We probably need counseling.

In the mean time, to keep my storyteller's brain going, I've been reading a lot, published and unpublished, genre and literary, fiction and nonfiction. Fun, right? Well, yeah. And also informative. I've been keeping notes on what works for me (as a reader) and what doesn't, but the thing most startling to me is this: the big gamble, smearing darkest id all over a story, often pays off.

When I'm writing, I tend to scribble stuff down and then blushingly, furiously edit it out later, certain that readers would roll their eyes at my overdramatic, twisted silliness. I read, you see, the review of John Ringo a few years back, and I always stress about letting my id out of its box. Ids, after all, are rarely pretty things.

However, this spate of reading lately has reminded me that even uglier than an id on a wild hare is a story that goes nowhere and dares nothing. So many books are content-edited to a glossy sheen, and I slide right through and off them, and nothing about them lodges in my memory.

The books that take the chances are the ones I recall and reread and recommend. Instead of coming off overdramatic and embarrassing, books that put the characters through the wringer succeed more often than not. Granted, when they fail, it can be pretty epic (see Ringo review mentioned above), but when those id-inspired bits work, they make me bawl like a baby, giggle like a loon, go frisky as a cat in spring (spoilers ahoy, so highlight only if you wish to read: Lyra dying in The Amber Spyglass, about 80% of the plot points -- starting with twincest and moving quickly to attempted child murder -- in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, the gruesome details of how Henry's mother died in the book version of The Time Traveler's Wife, violent in-character romantic sex in Ruthless by Anne Stuart). You get my point.

So I'm giving myself permission now, as a writer. I'm letting the id out, Muse be-damned and reader be-warned. (Only, if it really sucks I might just hoard it on my hard drive with all the other unpublishable drivel I've churned over the years. I don't hate readers that much.)

Six Sentence Sunday: Distraction

2011-07-31T01:46:00.002-05:00

Note: I didn't sign up for Six Sentence Sunday this week because I'll be doing family stuff all day Sunday and won't have time to reciprocate right away. However, it looks like some folks found this post anyhow and commented. Thank you so much! I will definitely come by your site and see what you've posted, too, just maybe not today. Again, thank you: it was so cool to wake up to comments in my mailbox this morning! --vj

First lines of first POV for John Mero. I kind of like writing in his head.

Mero's first sight, as he hauled himself eye-level to the edge of the pier, was of Alice Dearling's pretty pink heels, a slightly darker shade than the tops of her feet and smooth as satin ribbons. She was lying on her stomach on the wood planks, her skirt hitched up to her thighs and her shoes and stockings nowhere in sight. Even as he looked, she bent one knee and pressed a toe against the pier. Sunlight licked her skin like a lollipop, and when she flexed her ankle to the side, Mero got a clear look up her skirt.

Jesus. Well, that was a sight to distract him permanently from the grim thoughts he’d been having all morning.

May you all have just such a lovely morning, and don't forget to wander back to the Six Sentence Sunday list for more snippets.

All-night-writin: On tap

2011-07-29T13:08:00.028-05:00

On the Drew Carey show the guys made and marketed Buzz Beer: booze with caffeine. I'm going to attempt my own such concoction tonight, by alternating cups of coffee with glasses of this lovely Chileno Carmenere. Resultant brain output could get frisky.

Jen Galbavy is on board, sez she, and I anticipate ghosts, sombreros, and ginormous embarrassing antique cars. Also somebody named Fang.

Other folks might drift in and out. I'll be around on Facebook chat, YiM, and maybe Twitter. Coherence not guaranteed (see libation plans above).

For my contribution, well, a very polite lawyer contacted me this morning, which made me think of certain characters. I will be writing something to do with that. But shhh: it's a surprise.

p.s. -- In case you're wondering, all-night-writin is this.

--
Photo in all-night-writin graphic copyright PoopDogg.

Six Sentence Sunday: Baby, it's hot outside

2011-07-24T05:26:00.035-05:00

This week, Alice waits outside, in high summer, for her bus. It's hotter'n hell, a thing that a chatty technologically savvy fallen angel would know a lot about. Well, of course he would.

When her phone vibrated against her hip, it felt a little like a sizzle, which made her think of bacon, naturally. Alice slipped the phone out of her pocket and touched the message icon.

Hellion10: You’re hot.

Dearlingerer: Clearly you have me confused with the bacon.

Hellion10: I do not. Shall I perform a taste test?

Happy summer, folks. Stay cool and read hot: Six Sentence Sunday.

Would I read me?

2011-07-20T11:34:00.001-05:00

Here is what I like to read: deep angst, two people who need to be together though everything and everyone is keeping them apart, who brave all sorts of peril in order to save/succor/smooch each other. High drama, bawling my eyes out goodness.

Here is what I write: snarky characters who, if they met me, would raise an eyebrow and ask me to fetch them something. Mediocre drama, lots of sarcastic observation with a side of just-get-over-yourself. Also quite a bit of swearing and orgasm.

I wonder who I am on that continuum, but I think it's better not to ask.

Six Sentence Sunday: Yes, Ma'am

2011-07-17T00:14:00.010-05:00

Regency villains who deserve each other, Archie and Ginny, again. Because we could all stand to be more obedient.

He obeyed, but she only scowled harder. It felt interesting, looking down at her, towering above her. Archie rather liked the vantage, though he would have liked it a great deal more if she'd been wearing a bosom-baring evening confection instead of this decorous morning gown.

Ginny made a sound in the back of her throat that Archie could only describe as a growl, and she turned, stalked to the enormous bed, and climbed atop it.

Archie resisted the urge to follow. God, he resisted a lot of things right then and even more when Ginny rose up on her knees there at the foot of the bed, pinned him with a black-eyed stare, and instructed him sternly to "Come here."

Thanks for visiting. Now clicky back to Six Sentence Sunday for some more goodies, do.

All-night-writin: In the works

2011-07-15T21:30:00.009-05:00

Tonight I've got a couple of earfuls. On the left is a dom wielding something called "sade's sweeper" and making it all hurt better. To the right a suddenly chain-smoking girl's seeing ghosts and on her way to the big sombrero. And those are just my partners in crime tonight. Percolating in the back of my brain are seven eras of dragons, an ancient queen, a secret, and a whole world predicated on what it means to breathe fire. Beneath my fingers, four Regency lords plot their final ruse, now that the war's over, and the result of such plotting may lead to scandal. Oh hell, of course it will: this is my world, after all, and everything ultimately leads to scandal. And sex.

A happy place.

What're you writing?

--
Photo in all-night-writin graphic copyright PoopDogg.

All-night-writin: What it is

2011-07-08T14:05:00.010-05:00

I think best when it's dark outside. Also when I don't have grade schoolers monkeying through the house and reading over my shoulder.

So three weeks ago I brewed up a fresh pot o' coffee after the kids went to bed and wrote until I literally could not focus on the keyboard anymore. 3am ... and nearly 4,000 words. Good ones, even. Christa Paige rah-rah'd me through it and got some hot goodness of her own down in bytes, too. The whole experience was such a win that I tried it again last week, with Christa and Jen Galbavy. All three of us stomped that word-count bitch, and then swapped our fresh-out-of-the-oven goodies after.

How does one participate in All-Night-Writin', you ask? Easy.

1. Sit down on a Friday night to write.

2. Sign on to Facebook chat, YiM, or some other chat (and let everybody else know who you are and where they can reach you). I'm spacellamaprincess on YiM, VivJack on Facebook, and Vivien_Jackson on Twitter.

3. When we announce a sprint, write for the full allotted time, as fast as your fingers can go.

4. If you feel comfortable, share your sprint output with other ANWers.

5. Keep going until your words all conk together and your stomach says, "Absolutely NO MORE COFFEE."

6. Fall asleep exhausted but thrilled with all you've managed to accomplish.

I'm aiming to all-night-write again on Friday. Now, to decide on the wip what needs the most lovin'.

--
Photo in all-night-writin graphic copyright PoopDogg.

Naughty Romance Writers blog opens

2011-07-01T10:46:00.000-05:00

The Naughty Romance Writers Blog officially opens today. Come by to peek in at the festivities and sign up to win a whole boatload of goodies.

In the coming months, we'll have blog posts, of course, but we'll also roll out a serial round-robin romance set on the Mediterranean coast. It promises to be, er, warm.

The commatizer strikes, again

2011-06-22T17:08:00.001-05:00

Some discussion today about commas, a subject dear to my heart. Although, I have to admit that, being so near my heart, those little fuckers do give me the heartburn from time to time. The thing that makes me sickest, though, is apparently grade-school punctuation teachers who categorically informed their wee pupils that every "and" or "but" must be preceded with a comma.

Er, no, Mrs. Whatsyername. And thank you so much for producing an entire generation of excessive comma users.

Here's the skinny:

When you are joining two independent clauses (definition of an independent clause: noun+verb) with a connector such as and, or, or but, then yes, you do need a comma.

Example:

George licked a lollipop, and then he licked Edgar.

First clause = George(noun)+licked(verb); second clause = he(noun)+licked(verb... can you tell how much I love this verb?)

However, if you do not have a second noun, you do not need a comma.

Example:

George licked a lollipop and Edgar.

No comma. Please. Similarly:

George licked a lollipop, but Edgar licked George. (correct)
George licked the lollipop but not Edgar. (correct)
George licked the lollipop, but not Edgar. (incorrect)

Clear as mud? Good.

Now, one final note: Don't get the combining-two-sentences comma confused with the serial comma. Most styles (Chicago especially but also most publishers' house styles) call for a comma before and when you have a list. So:

George licked a lollipop, a grapefruit, and Edgar.

A few pubs and definitely the AP style book (last time I checked) do not want this comma and in fact argue against use of the serial comma, so in their little proprietary world, this would be rendered:

George licked a lollipop, a grapefruit and Edgar

.

There are times when a serial comma serves the meaning of a sentence (for fun, everybody should read Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss), and I honestly don't know what the AP has to say about those times. Probably nothing, with hilarious results.

At any rate, please take the time to look up comma usage if your line editor is dinking around with your commas a lot. And don't believe everything your second-grade teacher, God bless her, had to say on the subject. She probably also put two letterspaces between sentences.

p.s. -- For anyone who wants to totally geek on this, I do have some reading recs. The gold standard is the Chicago Manual of Style, the Cliff Notes would be The Elements of Style, and the pro-level in-depth goodness would be Amy Einsohn's The Copyeditor's Handbook.

Swirl on a cone

2011-06-14T14:24:00.003-05:00

Sometimes my characters get to chattering about things that have nothing to do with the story they're in. Sometimes I start thinking about a topic or issue but get sidetracked wondering what a particular character has to say about it. That's what happened here. No, the "I" here isn't me. It's Alice the Librarian. And I've just discovered something new about her sexual preferences.

Lots of disparaging of the term vanilla out there. As in, sex isn't hot if it doesn't involve semi-permanent injury and barnyard animals. As in, if only two people get it on, the stakes can't possibly be high enough to create that special frisky tension. As in only getting the shit beat out of you could ever be enough to evoke orgasm.

As in, if you don't lay your spiked dildos and dentatas right out on the coffee table for everybody to see you're somehow... vanilla. Anti-chocolate. Boring.

Frankly, I love it when folks assume that I'm vanilla. Never even say a dirty fucking word? Yeah, that's me. Wear the knickers that go all the way down to the knee? Sure. Think what you want.

I don't need pain to get me off. I come sweet at the slightest lick.

Vanilla.

Six Sentence Sunday: Watch this

2011-06-12T02:02:00.011-05:00

From a wip about a Regency villain, Archie, and the dark-hearted Lady Ginny who gives him his comeuppance.

"Is it the listing of your crimes that has you so aroused, Fenwick?" she asked, stroking him with that voice even as he stroked himself with his hand. "Are you so iniquitous that the mere memory of Julia in the dark stokes your ardor? Or is it the knowledge that you cheated your own death by telling me the truth?"

She moved then, took a slight step toward him. The tallow light bathed her face as she leaned forward, and he swore he could see the outline of hardened nipple against the twill of her morning gown. "Or it is because I am watching you?"

Thanks for wandering by, and please do check out the other lovelies on #sixsunday (now at its brand-new digs!).

Flowers and vaginas

2011-06-02T13:14:00.003-05:00

I changed the background image for this blog. Did you notice? That's okay. I can see how it might have snuck up on ya. (Spelling checker, desist! "Snuck" is perfectly fine Texan. Get a grip.) At any rate, I chose a big flesh-colored flower for the same reason I enjoy making icons of my initials.

Vaginas are cool.

Everybody knows about Georgia O'Keeffe's vagina flowers, right? Good.

Just wait, though, boys: I'm cooking up a penis-themed layout, too. But I ain't changing my name.

Dirty secrets of editing

2011-05-27T11:56:00.002-05:00

Every writer has a dirty secret or two. Most of us have loads more, if we’re honest. I have a bad habit of killing off tertiary characters for no good reason, for instance, and an even badder habit of making up words. (You saw that, right?) One thing I do in edits, though, is a standard search-and-destroy. If I search the doc for these words or patterns and try to rephrase them, it always makes the story read smoother:

1. was (Everybody knows about the evil To Be, right?)
2. just
3. a verb followed immediately by a preposition (“looked over at him” as opposed to “looked at him”)
4. adverbs (an easy way is to doc-search for “ly”)
5. –ing (or, actually, just “ing”; progressive tense is rarely helpful for rhythm)
6. soft
7. still
8. sentences that contain two adjective + noun phrases (“She fetched her blue sweater from the wood table” sounds a lot duller than “She fetched her blue sweater from the table,” even though the latter has less information.)
9. little

Granted, not all of these things are wrong every time, and I do a lot of out-loud reading to see if whether the rhythm and clarity of the story are served by keeping these bits in, but it’s always a good idea to review them. Most times, they just bog stuff down. And I have a bad habit of bogging.

Sweet like cotton candy

2011-05-26T22:11:00.007-05:00

Gem Sivad, I don't know what possessed you to hook me up with this blog award, but it is awfully sweet of you. Many, many thanks.

Folks who don't already read Gem Sivad, I do recommend you checking out her site and taking a peek in at her work. She writes Westerns so immersive you can feel the grit of dust in your teeth and seriously require a cowboy to lick it off. Right the hell now, even. You can also look her up on Twitter @GemSivad.

Anyway, the rules of this award are as follows:
1. Thank and Link To the Person who Nominated You. —Done. (But folks I'm tagging, please don't feel like you need to do this, okay? Y'all just happened to be some people who were on my mind for one reason or another, most often because I admire your work. So it is an award, not an obligation.)
2. Share Seven Random Facts About Yourself. —Look Below
3. Pass the Award on to 10 deserving blog buddies. —Also below
4. Contact those buddies to let them know. —Will do my best.
_______________________________________________________
Seven Facts About Me:

1. In the theme of sweet: My first car was a 1966 Mustang 289 that roared like a banshee.
2. I'm married to a man I call The Bunny, though he thinks it's more macho if I say El Conejo. El as in The, just like Antonio Banderas in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Rowr.
3. Speaking of movies, my favorite is The Princess Bride.
4. Yes, despite the fact that I'm a lifelong J.R.R. Tolkien fan and, um, dressed up a little bit when the movie adaptations came out.
5. I'm not legally a little person, but my official height is whisker close to the cut-off.
6. I've diagrammed most of Sting's lyrics because, yes, I am that nerdy of a grammarista.
7. I'm so scared of heights that if I were for some reason mixed up in a summer blockbuster action plot, I wouldn't climb the precarious crane dangling off the edge of a forty-story building. I'd just let the bad guy shoot me.
_____________________________________
And my 10 winners are, if they decide to play:

1. Christa Paige
2. Patricia Preston
3. Dawne Prochilo
4. Elizabeth Black
5. Lucy Felthouse
6. Sarah Grimm
7. Doug Starr
8. Cara Bristol
9. Lori Green
10. Marcos London

Six Sentence Sunday: Divine intervention, just not the good kind

2011-05-22T01:23:00.004-05:00

From Grey Heron, that post-cyberpunk erotic romance I've been teasing. It's deep in polishing right now, so this is probably the last snip I'll post of it for a while.

But she didn't have much time to ponder on that, 'cause right up there, smack dab above them, the sky looked a whole lot darker than it had any right to be. No stars, just black.

"Um, Heron? Remember when you said that we were safe from everything but the hand of God?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t look up.”

Also, I want to just briefly thank you folks for all your comments over the last couple of months. Several times I got down on this story and thought about abandoning it, but those comments, even the brief ones, kept me engaged, kept me going. Y'all don't know how important those rah-rahs were, and I am grateful for 'em. Thank you.

Finally, as always, please do check out the rest of the lovely bits (some even dangly!) at #sixsunday.

The idea machine

2011-05-10T01:36:00.000-05:00

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could write like a Mad Lib: insert character names, a general conflict, and some strong verbs, and then presto, out pops the story? I covet such a machine to do all the hard thinking for me, but instead I’m left with this silly life and even sillier brain, and then folks have the comic genius to ask how I get ideas for stories. Well…

Gathered round a tiny table on a girls’ night out, we all watched the same tall drink of water cross to the bar. He was smokin. One pal mentioned that she’d have to go home and do laundry, which I thought was a funny thing to say. I pressed, and she explained that the vibration of a clothes dryer when you’re sitting on it can be an excellent clitoral stimulant. Next day I got the oil changed in my crappy broken-down Honda, and this sweet vintage muscle car rolled in awash in candy-apple hotness. I thought about the clothes dryer and looked at the car, and then I wrote Negotiations.

On a Saturday morning made for lazy, I lay on the sofa reading a classic bodice-ripper. My husband wandered in, fresh out of the shower, and asked if I was reading something good. I said yes, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Was distracted by the bead of water that slid down his neck, wept by his still damp hair. I told him the book was good. He asked if it was good enough. And that led to, among other things, Unless.

When I was thirteen, I went with my older sister to a dancehall in backwoods Texas to see this unknown crooner named George Strait perform. I let Sis dress me up in appropriate duds: jeans, boots, and a belt buckle the size of my head. The place had two open walls and no air conditioning, and it was high summer. Sweltering. But something about the thrum of music so loud I could feel it at the base of my spine and in my throat, combined with the sweat of the crowd, saw dust on the raw pine floor, and the purr of that man’s voice stuck in my brain for long years later. And when I was sitting down to write about a cowboy, I knew right away that’s where he’d be, in that dancehall, sittin' back and nursing his beer. (This story isn’t available anywhere yet, but it’s complete.)

So, really, I guess I do have an idea machine. It’s just plain old living, coupled with a filthy mind. TM. No batteries needed.

Six Sentence Sunday: Elementary electronics

2011-05-01T01:25:00.008-05:00

From a later scene in my post-cyberpunk WIP. Heron is a posthuman, "more machine now than man," and Mari's, well, on her knees.

She swallowed, wet her lips with her tongue. God, that thing looked delicious.

“I need a standard operating manual,” Mari said, wrapping a hand around his leg, teasing her thumb behind his knee and watching his prick swell at her touch. “For instance, which parts are electrical? Are there, you know, places I oughtn’t get wet?”

“Mari, you may put your mouth all over me.”

Thank you so much for stopping by, and please do read through some of the gems on #sixsunday.

(Geek points for knowing where that quote comes from, though, granted, it isn't super esoteric.)

Inspiration and muse

2011-04-25T18:41:00.000-05:00

Been thinking about inspiration and muse and making it all fit together. These bits seemed appropriate to my brain space.

A Sort of a Song

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
--through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

-- William Carlos Williams

Learn to Fly

Run and tell all of the angels, this could take all night
Think I need a devil to help me get things right
Hook me up a new revolution ‘cause this one is a lie
We sat around laughin’ and watched the last one die

Yeah, I’m lookin’ to the sky to save me
Lookin’ for a sign of life
Lookin’ for something to help me burn out bright
I’m lookin’ for a complication
Lookin’ ‘cause I’m tired of lyin’
Make my way back home when I learn to fly high

I think I’m dyin' nursing patience
It can wait one night
I’d give it all away if you give me one last try
We’ll live happily ever trapped if you just save my life
Run and tell the angels that everything’s alright

-- Foo Fighters

Six Sentence Sunday: A lesson in manners

2011-04-24T01:27:00.002-05:00

Snippet this week is from that post-cyberpunk romance WIP. Mari and Heron are on the run inside an arcology, and they've ducked into a private living unit.

"Of course I know her; it would have been rude to just barge into a stranger's home."

"Heron, you're bleeding out the back of your skull, not to mention the fact I'm mostly naked and we sure as shit didn't knock before we came in. You could let some of them manners slide a bit."

"I see no problem with the way you’re dressed."

Heron turned, straightening Mari's bath robe in the process so that she was semi-decently covered. Couldn't get the blush to cool down, though, and the kicker of it all was that Mari wasn't sure whether she was blushing because she'd just gotten caught feeling up her partner, or because she'd just gotten caught sneaking uninvited into a stranger's living unit, or because she wished that this Mrs. Weathering person had waited maybe ten more goddamned minutes to butt in.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I know there are a lot of entries for Six Sentence Sunday to read, and I'm honored that you've taken the time to read mine.

Six Sentence Sunday: Contractually obligated

2011-04-17T00:30:00.005-05:00

From the first scene of my near-future post-cyberpunky WIP. Mari contracts all sorts of illegal activities; Heron is her remote, sort of a tech-savvy lookout. She also has it real, real bad for him.

“You have a flight reservation for eleven. I’ll take you to my place for a shower and debrief first.”

Mari studied the itinerary message, but her mind was stuck on the words my place and shower. She’d never been to any of Heron’s homes, and she admitted to a little thrill at the opportunity to see one up close and personal. Naked even, which she had to confess was how she liked things most of all. She wondered if his remote contract included soaping her down after a hard afternoon’s work.

Thanks for stopping by, and please check out the other goodies at Six Sentence Sunday.

Nude (not naked) men

2011-04-17T00:14:00.000-05:00

I've heard artists claim that the female form is a better starting point for pure art, but I like the male form just fine. In fine art, too. But I got sick of comparing my heroes to David or Adonis, so the next time I wax artistic about a hero, I'm slipping in references to

Nicholas Guy Brenet's Sleeping Endymion

Jacques Louis David's Patroclus

John Singer Sargent's Thomas E. McKellar

... or I might just refer folks here: penis art FTW.

Springtime

2011-04-14T13:24:00.000-05:00

The rest of the hemisphere is celebrating Spring; here in Texas we're bracing for 100F, full-on summer. That's just the breaks of living in a place with two seasons: hot and slightly less hot but plenty wet.

At any rate, I'm feelin' all fluttery and silly and easter-bunny, hence the new blog color scheme.

I'm sure I'll feel darker and edgier later on, once this Lent-derived sugar deprivation is over. One can only hope.

Dithering, lollygagging, and procrastinating

2011-04-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

I don't have a Six Sentence Sunday offering today. To be honest, I've been holding out on my main WIP, not sharing snips from it because, dude, what if folks told me it was crap? Not like I don't suspect as much myself, honestly, but it'd sure suck to hear that from somebody else.

Am still searching for my niche, my comfy spot in writing. Alternately I write angsty Regency, sarcastic urban fantasy, gruesome sci fi, and stuff that skirts the wee edges of porn but still might be called erotica.

Right now, I'm writing grocery lists. Come on, Muse: wake the hell up.

Six Sentence Sunday: Bite me

2011-04-03T00:01:00.002-06:00

This six follows straight on from last week's interlude between vampire Jacek and dishy Chelsea.

He turned a stare on her that she secretly called his hot-for-teacher look: his brows drew down like he was about to reprimand her, but she so wanted him to. Maybe with a ruler. On a desk.

The slip between her legs intensified, and she squeezed her knees together, seeking friction. Damn it, if only she had her hands free, she could get herself off without having to disturb him from whatever was distracting him so hard.

Of course, if he bit her first, the sex would be better.

Thanks for stopping by, and if you haven't already, please check out the other Six Sentence Sunday offerings.

Confidence

2011-03-30T00:21:00.000-06:00

Confidence is a slinky bitch. Sometimes she sidles up close, rubbing her warmth all over me, making me feel big. Sometimes she giggles at me and tickles in spots that nobody else even knows are sensitive. Sometimes she makes me laugh out loud and drive fast and belt out songs in my shower and leap off shit that's way too high for safety. And sometimes she sits on her dais and surveys me coldly, untouchable without even having to say so.

Right now, she and I aren't pals. Right now we're mortal enemies.

But I'm not going to stop writing, bitch. You're just gonna have to sit there and watch me.

Toys toys toys

2011-03-29T00:15:00.025-06:00

I like toys. No, I'm not talking Matchbox and Polly Pockets. Am talking Hitachi and B.O.B. And talking about these things with me today is Brie Sheldon, who, as a Pure Romance representative, is kind of an expert on such things.

Viv: First the myths about toys and aids. Shall we start by blowing some of them up? Explode these, please:

Myth 1. If you have a great sex life (compatible partner, good sex drive, etc.) you don't need any toys or aids.

Brie Sheldon: I disagree! Toys are useful for more than just people without partners or who feel they don't get the most out of their sex life (although they are certainly very useful for those people!). The key to using toys in a great sex life is using them to experience new sensations and make your sex life AMAZING instead! Toys can be good for mutual masturbation and for assisting oral sex, too. Ever hear of a hummer? They're amazing when you hold a bullet vibe to your cheek!

Many women don't experience orgasm from vaginal penetration only and need clitoral stimulation, so bringing a bullet vibrator into the bedroom to use in tandem with your partner can make it more likely that you'll have more orgasms -- good for the body, good for the soul! Not to forget the g-spot -- stimulating the g-spot can give women an orgasm that's completely different and even stronger. The more you stimulate it with g-spot toys, the more likely you are to orgasm from penetration, and the easier it is to orgasm in general.

It's also good for men -- stimulation of the prostate can make sex even better. Using anal toys (with the proper safety and sanitary measures in consideration) can really feel good for guys, and can change the dynamic in the bedroom.

Toys are good for couples who spend time apart, too. The male masturbation aides can help women feel a little more secure if their male partners travel a lot (particularly nice for soldiers), and it makes phone sex even better when you have a hand-operated partner to help you out!

Myth 2. Only porn actors or tramps use toys.

Very untrue! Toys are for everyone (of age). I have met people in many different lines of business and of nearly every age that use toys. They are helpful for people in almost any situation -- from young people still trying to learn about their bodies, to seasoned adults trying to learn about their bodies! They're good for improving your relationships both by experiencing new sensations and increasing communication. Often, bringing a toy into the bedroom will spark conversations about preferences and kinks -- something that every couple should talk about.

Myth 3. Playing with bondage accessories means you're into BDSM.

Not necessarily. Using a small whip or cuffs in the bedroom on occasion is just an enhancement -- it isn't a lifestyle or something that cements you as being into the culture of BDSM. It's something to spice things up. Some partners really enjoy having just something new, a new type of situation, roleplaying, that kind of thing. It doesn't mean you're a masochist or that you like it rough, from my perspective -- it's just something fun.

Myth 3a. And that's a bad thing.

When it comes to sex and sexual preferences, I don't really think there is a "bad" kink. So long as the people involved are consenting adults who both have agreed to the terms, and both parties know and use a safe word, I think it's a matter of what makes you happy and what fulfills you sexually and emotionally. Even in vanilla sex, a safe word is always a good idea -- sometimes you just need to stop doing what you're doing. Communication is key in that. BDSM is not, as a rule, a dangerous or bad thing. In fact, experimenting with bondage can really give an opportunity to exercise trust and learn boundaries with partners.

Myth 4. Using a toy means you're lonely or can't get a real live partner.

No way! Sex -- even sex by yourself -- is healthy! If you aren't having sex regularly with a partner, masturbation is a good way to learn your body, get your heart pumping, and increase all those feel-good hormones. The thing is, the more you have sex, the more you want it and the more your skin glows and your confidence grows. Even if that sex is with B.O.B. or P.E.T.E., you can bet that having a little "you" time before you head out dancing will make you feel more confident and sexy. Isn't that what people always say they want in a potential partner: confidence?

It's also really important to know that not everyone wants a partner, and even for those people who do, sexual activity still can help lower blood pressure and increase confidence in all areas of life. When you know your body and you know what you like, it makes a lot of things easier. That's part of what I get out of my job -- knowing that I am helping people feel better about themselves, helping them own their bodies and their sexuality.

And now a couple of general-purpose questions. First, what do you suggest for folks who are allergic to latex but don't want to use hormones or surgical prophylactics?

As far as other options for birth control measures when it comes to latex allergies, the best option (aside from avoiding actual sexual penetration) is polyurethane condoms -- they're just as effective and solve the problem with ease. Most female condoms are made of polyurethane, and they also have the benefit of putting birth control in the hands of the woman -- something I think can give women more security with sex. There are also options like contraceptive sponges, but they are less effective and have a risk of increased infections (yeast or urinary tract) and have no impact on protecting against sexually transmitted infections or diseases, and lamb skin condoms, which are reliable to prevent pregnancy, but again, not sexually transmitted infections or diseases.

Finally, I really hate that chemical smell of KY and other lubes, but I hear tell that natural lubricants like plain old oil or lotion aren't as effective. Solution?

As I like to tell my friends, we totally have something for that! If you're not into KY and you want a lubricant that doesn't smell or feel weird, you want to use a water-based lubricant like Just Like Me. Just Like Me is one of my favorite products -- I call it my Holy Hand Grenade of sex. It's water-based, so it works just like the natural lubrication in your body, and it has a unique rewetting quality so it keeps you lubricated longer. It's great for women with sensitivities, and it's an excellent "everyday" lubricant.

For longer "sex sessions" and shower fun, there are silicone-based lubricants like our Pure Pleasure and Pure Silk. They last longer, but still have no weird scents or flavors, and work well with your natural pH.

Another option is a playful lubricant -- if you love oral sex but aren't too big a fan of the flavor, we have products like Great Head (which really helps with the gagging for fellatio), Sensations -- a warming lubricant that frankly tastes delicious, and Whipped, which is great for the male masturbation aides and c-rings. Whipped also tastes fantastic!

Thanks for weighing in on all things Toy, Brie. You've certainly given me some good ideas for behaving badly.

--
Vivien Jackson writes about characters having sex. A lot.

Brie Sheldon is an official Pure Romance representative. Her online storefront is here, but she encourages folks interested in products to e-mail her beforehand, just in case there are any specials.

Six Sentence Sunday: Delicious reprimand

2011-03-27T00:04:00.003-06:00

This six is from my contribution to a little hot somethin' that the gals over on Romance Writers Behaving Badly are cooking up. Jacek is a vampire, and Chelsea is his favorite dish.

"You know what makes you so delicious?" Jacek asked.

"My charming personality?"

"I meant humans in general."

"Yeah, that'd nix the charming personality thing. Belly buttons?"

He turned a stare on her that she secretly called his hot-for-teacher look: his brows drew down like he was about to reprimand her, but she so wanted him to.

And, as always, if you haven't already salivated your way through the list, please wander over to the Six Sentence Sunday buffet for a nibble.

(And please forgive me for the food metaphor. It's late and I just couldn't resist.)

Six Sentence Sunday: May I come in?

2011-03-13T00:05:00.010-06:00

Nibble from "Unless," which is about a woman, a book, and a secret lover who comes in from the cold and warms her up nice.

The last lock slid free, and she stepped back, hauling the door open. It creaked on old hinges. Air rushed in from the stairwell, doing its best to cool her off. It failed. Laura faced her lover with the flush of libido on her face and the musk of sex on her fingers.

"May I come inside?” he asked.

And if you haven't already, please wander through the list this week on Six Sentence Sunday. It's better than Sunday morning crosswords, I promise.

Six Sentence Sunday: Nasty

2011-02-27T00:01:00.014-06:00

And speaking of letting folks eat cake*, this snip is from my work-in-progress, an 18th century romp. This time Marian and her duke talk dirty:

“I think that having your plans for the succession upset might have hurt you as much as actually losing him,” Marian observed.

“That is a nasty thing to say.” He paused. “And yet it is true.”

Her finger slipped down behind his ear, smoothing his dark hair against the pillow.

“I could say other nasty things,” she offered.

If you haven't already, please do browse the other offerings on the Six Sentence Sunday site, and thank you for stopping by.

* Happy Anniversary to the Six Sentence Sunday adventure. Let us all eat cake.

Six Sentence Sunday: On the 'Cuda

2011-02-20T00:06:00.005-06:00

This six is from "Negotiations," about a man, his car, and the mechanic who tunes 'em both.

Greg blinked and shook his head, again trying to soothe the burning images.

Lindsay leaned in over the steering wheel and turned the key, and the V8 426 roared to life. She tossed a look over her shoulder, back at Greg. Her eyes were dark. “Hot, huh?”

There was really only one good way to answer that question.

And if you haven't been there already, please check out the other goodies over on Six Sentence Sunday.

Flirty Friday Flirting Tips

2011-01-28T00:45:00.004-06:00

I hooked up with my husband when I was fifteen, so my memories of flirting are very John Hughes: staring longingly across the cafeteria at the popular high school senior. Keep that image in mind when I tell you this: Not too long ago, one of my pals got a divorce and was, in her effort to define and gain confidence in her post-marriage self, thinking about hitting the bar scene. But she had a problem. She confessed that she'd been with her (recent) ex for so long that she no longer remembered how to flirt. She asked me for advice.

Surely I, as a writer of salacious things, would be able to help her. Er, good thing you can't see me blushing in my complete humiliation. Undaunted, I did what I usually do in situations like this: I went a'Googling. And yowie, the things I found out!

The Best Internet Advice on Flirting

1. Stock up on cologne, breath fresheners, and lip gloss. (Never mind that there's a whole segment of the population that is either allergic to or can't stand the aforementioned chemical-o-rama.)

2. Lower your expectations. (Now there's some good advice for folks already on the low end of the confidence spectrum.)

3. Look nervous, but don't be nervous. (That is, play with your hair, nibble your lips, giggle for no good reason, and fidget, but don't worry about the bleak inevitable looming failure.)

4. Pretend to be offended or annoyed with the person you wish to entice. In addition, this expert advises invading your target's personal space and in general being as sitcom irritating as you possibly can. Try poking, punching, and insulting, too. (I am assuming this is fourth-grade advice, but it looked pretty literate for the ten-year-old set.)

5. Preen. "Try some hair stroking, posture enhancing, neck exposing, hip tilting (if standing), clothes straightening or lip licking -- all with the intention of calling attention to [your] attractiveness."

In the end, my friend chose to do none of these things. She asked a guy pal to come over and watch some sci-fi TV reruns, and lo! they've been married a few years now. I deeply suspect that the Internet experts are a little off when it comes to stoking romance.

Semantics of subbing

2011-01-26T09:07:00.000-06:00

Even though I am not in the process of subbing, I have it on the backburner of my brain, like preparing for a hurricane in March. Various publishers want different pieces with a submission: synopses, queries, sample chapters, and so on. Sample chapters is easy: I know what those are. But the rest of it can get a little muddled. Here's a great resource for sussing out the differences among synopses, jacket copy, query, and blurb.

Jennifer Represents...: A Query Query, with Vocab Lesson

Get the coma write

2011-01-05T12:06:00.005-06:00

I have a dirty little (not so) secret: by day, I fix other people's commas. Confession of this dark secret has led some astonishingly good storytellers to send me their genius in progress, asking for my editorial opinion. They're rarely satisfied when I reply with a lot of fangirly bouncing and one or two semicolon fixes.

That is because, I think, good writers are inherently nervous about their command of language. No, I'm not kidding. The people who ought to be more nervous -- some PR and marketing folks come to mind; definitely a lot of lawyers who've long eschewed real English anyway -- generally aren't, and the people who rarely make a language mistake that isn't a typo generally work themselves into knots with worry.

It isn't enough to just tell you talented folks to do what I do -- write the damn story and leave the commas to the post-writing polish phase. You need more. Enter the Before You Hit Send self-editing course with Angela James. Check it out, even if what you really need is just confidence that you're already doing it right.

(Psst: You are.)

Six Sentence Sunday: In the parterre

2010-11-28T07:30:00.004-06:00

1786, Marian and Strathmore in the parterre of Lord Percy's country estate:

To her chagrin, he laughed again. A quieter laugh this time, and warmer, personal. He stroked a leaf, taking its dew upon his fingers and working it about the knuckles. Marian watched in fascination, knowing that the show was for both her and any onlookers, though its intention was completely different for the two audiences. To others, it must have seemed that he discussed the merits of box over yew in this arrangement; to Marian, however, his movement evoked clear memory of other fingerwork entirely. She felt a slip of wetness between her thighs, and she paused along the gravel walk to contain a shudder of delight.

Dangerous research

2010-11-22T00:01:00.007-06:00

I’m writing an 18th-century romp at the moment, and I’m finding that the only thing more fun than writing sex-in-a-chemise is researching chemises (and other things). Granted, research has a way of sucking up my time, but it’s all for a purpose, right? The dishes can wait: I must know about morganatic marriages and antique iron strongboxes right now.

The funnest part so far has been in taste-testing all those drinks of the day: port, claret, Madeira, sherry. I thought about trying to get my hands on some laudanum, just to experience the loopiness for myself, but el hubby convinced me that I might get into some legal trouble. Boo.

At any rate, fun as it might be, there is also a danger in researching, and in writing in general: what if I get it wrong? I’ve seen so many decent books heckled over nitpicks: chocolate and tomatoes in pre-Colombian Europe, Regency ladies wearing knickers, inaccurate modern police procedure, incorrect forms of address for titled folks. Can a book recover from such a flaw? Can a writer move past a humiliation like having her red-shirt tertiary character bleed out from a paper cut or allowing her hero to hack an alien computer with a wholly inconceiveable operating system based on bubbles? *wibble*

Personally, as a reader, some of my favorite authors play a little fast and loose with the facts, and I don’t mind one bit. It’s their stories, their characters, that draw me in, and I’m willing to forgive them a lot of research oopsing. As a writer, though, I guess I’m not comfortable enough with my own skills yet to cut myself the same slack.

And the tension – as well as the pile of reference books – mounts. Think I need an absinthe and a bubble bath to get my muse back on track. Only, absinthe is 19th c. Noooo! Very well, will apply head to desk instead.

(Okay, this post was only partially an excuse to ogle Johnny Depp in the bath.)

--

This post written for and cross-posted to Romance Writers Behaving Badly.

Six Sentence Sunday: Didja miss me?

2010-11-21T07:00:00.006-06:00

My offering for Six-Sentence Sunday this week is a snippet from my 18th-century romp. I'll spare your blushes and skip right past the good stuff:

The thunder of orgasm faded slowly, and it was a long time before the chill of the room invaded their embrace. Strathmore straightened, tucked his cock back into his breeches, righted Marian’s skirts, and led her around to the front of the chair. She sank into his lap when he sat, and he held her close against his still-pounding heart. Though they hadn’t long before someone -- probably the aggravatingly observant Lady Percy -- noticed that they had not joined a game at the tables, he was loath to relinquish this moment.

“I have missed you,” he confessed against her hair.

“Well, if that’s what you want to call it,” Marian said, nuzzling her head beneath his chin, “then do miss me any time you wish, Alexander.”

Searching for the forbidden

2010-11-16T10:28:00.003-06:00

We are a culture that loves rule-breakers, mavericks, rogues, and sassy nonconformists. Our popular press lionizes difference to the point that a phrase such as “new and different” no longer describes itself. We want to be first-adopting, edge-living, seat-of-our-pantsers. We want to shock everybody, even as they do their damndest to shock us back. Maybe we believe that if we challenge everything enough, we will exalt ourselves among this (oh please don’t call it a) norm.

And again, as is happening with alarming frequency in my brain these days, I’m linking this penchant for rules-breaking with my current steamy affair with the 18th century and seeing a disconnect. Or maybe a connect.

You see, to break all the rules, one must live in a society that has them. Rules, I mean. And as far as I can tell, there just aren’t many rules in 21st century Western civilization. Exhibitionist cross-dressing Twinkie fetish? Dull. Polyamorous gender-curious single mom who wants to be chained naked to a muscle car? Cliché.

And I think that’s one reason why historical romance endures as a genre and as a dirty little secret. See, all those tropes that we giggle about and sometimes make fun of are real in this 21st-century take on a couple centuries ago. When a writer implies that it’s a bad thing to screw a virgin before marrying her, we buy it because the concept is so foreign to us, so deliciously fuddy duddy that it makes us want to tsk and thank Gucci we don’t live back when.

When a heroine in a historical blushes, we recall how fun it was to be shocked. By anything.

It’s kind of weird, I think, that in order to indulge our deep desire to embrace the forbidden, we have to transport ourselves to other times or other worlds where things actually are, you know, forbidden.

The best piece of clothing ... to take off

2010-11-09T00:01:00.013-06:00

I have to admit it: in fiction, I have a thing for men in leather pants. I spent two seasons drooling through Farscape and three long films admiring a certain ranger-king's leather-clad, er, legs, damn it: I have a right. Yes, yes, I know that in reality getting those things on and off would be more comical than sexy -- and would probably require a terribly stinky amount of baby powder -- but a girl can still appreciate the form factor.

Which leads me to ponder other clothing items on men.

Like boots. Nothing says rowr alpha like a man in boots. Cowboy, Hessian, motorcycle; they all string my bikini.

As do loose jeans. Worn commando. Mmm hmmm. True, the zipper-down maneuver in such a situation is tricky, and it has to be done sloooow, but doesn't that just make it yummier, in the end?

I also like me some slinky boxers, for when commando isn't an option (and boo to those times, incidentally). Nothing says touchable ass like the feel of one through a thin layer o' slink.

And, you can call me fetishy all you want, but I have a thing for men in lace. Like, those long early-18th-century court cuffs. Don't blame me: it's all Lestat's fault.

There's also something dangerously sexy about a guy wearing a weapon. In historicals, the sword makes me salivate. In sci-fi and space opera, I am all about Han Solo's blaster. (Mind out of gutter! I mean it, now. I'm talking about clothing, not metaphor.)

Of course, there are also clothing items that completely unsexify a hero for me: item one, those silky smoking jackets that the dudes in sitcoms always seem to wear when they're trying to get their smolder on. 'Cause nothing says trying-to-be-Hef like a silky smoking jacket.

Also: tightie whities. Why do so many lurid photos of men show them in these things? Reminds me of laundry.

Finally on the not-sexy side: droop-booty trousers. Can't tell you how many hot bods are ruined by the droop-booty look. Ruined, I say. Pull those things up! Or down. It matters not to me.

--

(Written for and cross-posted to Romance Writers Behaving Badly)

Writing wanted: no skills necessary

2010-11-05T18:50:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time, I had a crummy job writing technical manuals for computer software. Crummy, yes, but I felt pretty good about it because at least I was writing for a living, and that struck me as definitely Of The Good. And then my contract was up, and the mucky-mucks told me that it wouldn’t be renewed. I rolled with that, too, because I’d written several manuals that I thought were pretty decent and helpful, and I felt accomplished.

And then the boss told me that they would write a new contract for me… to come back and teach the programmers how to write their own manuals. How long would I have to impart the knowledge that I’d spent a decade and a uni degree acquiring? Four weeks.

Because, after all, anybody can write.

A good portion of folks out there don’t think that the skill of communicating well, or even of telling a story well, is anything special. They figure anybody with some brains can do it, and things like blogs and NaNoWriMo certainly reinforce the perception.

I saw another real kicker this morning when I was reading some quotes from Jessica Alba’s interview with Elle magazine (what? Ms. Alba was Dark Angel, and that makes her groovy in my universe). Here’s what she had to say about the ultimate worth of screen writers: “Good actors, never use the script unless it’s amazing writing. All the good actors I’ve worked with, they all say whatever they want to say.” Really? *sadness*

I’m not sure, honestly, what I feel about this trend, this notion that anybody can write or improv tight dialogue. On the one hand, I think it’s great that so many folks are interested in learning how to be good communicators. That can only be a net plus for our society, right? And I certainly don’t think that I’m so precious that all would-be writers who haven’t spent a lifetime doing it should bow to me. I do, however, kind of regret spending a lifetime learning a skill that, after all, anybody can pick up. In four weeks.

In search of Halloween hotness

2010-10-29T00:01:00.005-05:00

My pal Christa Paige had a blog post topic last night and was skimming the 'webs with the topic "Halloween Hotties." Like a loyal friend, I tried to help out. It hurt us, precious. Srsly. But all that web-wandering did lead to …

What I Learned Whilst Trying to Find Content for a "Halloween Hotties" Blog Post

1. Men don't dress up sexy on Halloween. They dress up gross or evil or political or frightening or hilarious. Not sexy.

2. Pirates who aren't Johnny Depp kind of look like extras in a cheap production of Peter Pan.

3. Fabio is not and never was hot. His imitators are significantly less so.

4. There's something to be said for a kilt.

5. The reason why guys don't wear leather pants is that you have to buy all sorts of powder and slime and stuff to get the damn things on and off. This getting-off problem is a complication most randy gals do not want to deal with.

6. It isn't the foam padding that makes Tony Stark turn into Iron Man.

7. A hula skirt and a pineapple do not a Sawyer from Lost make.

8. Guys don't know how to apply make-up. Therefore, they should keep it the heck away from any sensitive areas.

9. Any Google Image search that takes the form of "sexy male ____ costume" and includes fill-in-the-blanks such as "cop," "cowboy," or "pirate" inevitably yields pictures of the Village People.

10. Mmmm, guyliner.

In sum, I do hope you all have a safe Halloween, get lots of candy, and lick lots of lollipops. Stay spooky.

Tiaras for tatas

2010-10-25T00:01:00.026-05:00

I write erotica, so it should be no surprise to see me blogging about boobies. Boingy, bouncy, squishy, saucy boobies. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the U.S., which is why you might have seen burly football players wearing pink shoes or sweaty NASCAR guys driving pink cars.

In fact, there are a lot of ways to get involved in the greater effort to save boobies, but one of the funnest I've seen is this:

Tiaras for Tatas
“Fighting breast cancer, one sparkly headpiece at a time.”

Here’s the promo text lifted directly from the Tiaras for Tatas community blog:

Who we are: Five women who aren't afraid to wear a tiara in public, because we’re just that awesome, and because breast cancer is decidedly NOT awesome.

What we're doing: Using our powers of awesome and sparkly pink tiaras to raise money to support the ongoing fight against breast cancer by auctioning off special tiaras4tatas items. Who knows? We may even be able to get a photograph of your favorite celebrity in one of our fabulous tiaras.

All proceeds will go to support the Susan G. Komen Foundation through the Global Race for the Cure being held in Washington, DC, on June 4, 2011.

Note that I'm not actually on the team; I just think it's one of the funnest strategies in the greater push to save boobies ... plus, there's an outside chance that this effort will result in pretty pretty pictures of Ben Browder and Jason Momoa wearing tiaras, and I could go for that with a side of shirtless.

If you're keen to do it, you can follow Tiaras for Tatas on Twitter at @tiaras4tatas, spread the word, or donate directly to the tiaras4tatas team here.

Hooray for boobies. Boo for cancer.

Squicky sticky terminology

2010-10-21T00:01:00.010-05:00

Was watching tweets squawk by the other day and noticed this gem:

@eroticawriter retweeting @rantyeditor: Phrases that shouldn't be used as euphemisms for vagina: womanly gash, secret garden, love nest, pleasure pit.

Right on.

I've been reading in romance and erotica for a long time, long enough to have my own personal list of Wince-Worthy Words (and Phrases). I'll just go on ahead and share:

Top 13 Squicky Sticky Words

--heaving
--turgid
--creamy (as flesh; okay if you're talking about risotto)
--orb
--cup (as a verb; the noun is fine)
--knob (unless you're talking about a door or a stereo)
--helmet (unless mentioning protective headwear)
--teat
--weeping [genitals] (eek! get thee to a medical professional!)
--grasping [female genitals]
--sculpted [muscles/faces/etc]
--satanic (as generally positive description of a man)
--ministrations (perhaps my least favorite word of all time)

As an addendum, I contend that the phrase "to her very core" should be used chiefly when writing about sex among planets or apples.

Well, then. Yes, I do feel better now. Nice to get that out of my system.

How's about you? Got any terminology least-faves you'd like to ease off your brain before you dive into that next steamy novel? How about newfangled knock-your-socks off good phrasing that you've come across in your reading? Or, if you're a writer, have you turned one of these oldies-and-baddies into something fresh and new? If so, please share: my brain could use the happy of some well-done terminology.

--

This post was written for and cross-posted at Romance Writers Behaving Badly.

Romance Writers Behaving Badly: Tempting Tuesday - Gimme Chocolate

2010-10-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

Fun info about chocolate. Because you know you want to.

Romance Writers Behaving Badly: Tempting Tuesday - Gimme Chocolate: "Chocolate or sex? According to a recent poll 59% of the women polled chose sex over the 41% who chose chocolate. I say, 'Gimme Chocolate!..."

Wise Words: What does your rejection letter mean?

2010-10-12T10:29:00.003-05:00

I stumbled across this post on Wise Words today and considered it interesting. I haven't gotten a lot of rejection letters, probably because I haven't done a lot of submitting, but this is a nifty guide to interpreting the stock phrases editors seem to use in form letters.

Wise Words: What does your rejection letter mean?:

"How many rejection letters have you got so far? Do you keep them all? Neatly in a folder, in date order, or are they chucked into the recycling bin in disgust as soon as they plop onto your door mat?

Or do you, like me, analyse them, and try to understand what they really mean?

I've been sorting out my rejection letters (yup, I'm the person who keeps them neatly in a folder in date order) into piles of content ie "our lists are full" to "sounds good, send more".

I've deciphered the replies and made lists! It's official, I'm sad.

Here is my list:."

Football, sexy?

2010-10-03T00:01:00.003-05:00

It's a Sunday in autumn, so I have football on the mind.

Yes, football. American football, specifically (though there is something to be said for those South American yummies in their short shorts playing futbol in the hot hot sun). Ahem, well then, as I was saying: football. Now, don't you dare clickity: this post is erotica-related. I promise. Not only is football replete with all those delicious metaphors that stimulate the intellectual sixth sense (tight ends, touch downs, and huddling over balls, yeah?), it's also the entry drug to a whole bag of fantasy goodness.

Exhibit 1: The salty smell of smuggled-in hooch. Say you're lingering in the stands during the third quarter of a game that is, to all intents and purposes, over. Surrounding you are a dozen or so nubile uni boys. Half of them are shirtless. The other half are tanked. Not a girlfriend in sight. And then, filtering through the stench of popcorn and spilled soda, you catch it: the whiff of smuggled-in hooch. You turn to the dark-eyed stranger on your right, the one with the white letter T smeared all over his perfect pecs, and ask him for a sip. Deepen the conversation by asking exactly where and how he smuggled in his flask, and the game is suddenly much more interesting.

Exhibit 2: The under-blanket one-hander. Nothing says autumn like a cool night at the game with your hunny. Only, by the time you’ve nibbled the hot-dog-on-a-stick (not nearly as titillating as it sounds) and buffed your nails and hollered a little and texted your BFF, you’re getting bored. At the same time, Hunny is way into the game and has rebuffed all your attempts to distract him. That’s when you remember the stadium blanket. Of course! You draw it up snug over the both of you and take the chill off your ungloved hands in the warmest place you can think of. Once Hunny has forgotten the game entirely, you can gently remind him that the blanket is on your lap, too, and you always did enjoy a tie ballgame. Voila: you both have something to cheer about.

Exhibit 3: Sunday afternoon overtime. He’s watched two games already, and now it’s getting dark outside. You’ve been patient with him all day, even nodded sweetly when he invited Nick and Andre over to watch. And after being a good girl all day long, you’ve decided that’s a splendid idea. The watching, that is. You nip into Hunny’s closet and find his last-year’s lucky jersey, the slippy polyester one in extra large. You put it on. And take everything else off. You slink into the basement viewing cathedral with a beer in hand and smile on your face. Time the boys to see how long it takes each of them to notice that there’s a half-naked woman among them, lounging on the beanbag. If they mention it, remind them that they’re only here to watch. Unless you’re game, of course.

See? Football is very sexy. Now get out there and score.

(Written for and cross-posted to Romance Writers Behaving Badly)

Behaving badly. Always.

2010-09-27T10:35:00.000-05:00

So, because I'm bored and have nothing better to do (down, muses, down I say), and because they are a swell group, I've joined up with the wonderful folks at Romance Writers Behaving Badly.

As a sort of introduction, they were kind enough to interview me. Did I go too far to prove my erotica cred? But it's all true, every bit.

I'll be posting there from time to time, but will probably cross-post here because the topics will be relevant.

Hooray for literary exhibitionism!

Bedpost confessions in Austin

2010-09-06T12:44:00.001-05:00

Attention all erotica lovers living (or visiting) in Austin: Bedpost Confessions, a live reading series, is about to get underway. Hostess Sadie Smythe describes it thusly: "an intersection of sex-positive people – kinksters, polys, swingers, sex-pos gay, bis, lesbians and transgenders; plus actors, improvisors, writers, dancers, and filmmakers who identify as sex-positive."

Mia Martina is co-hostessing, which just increases the fun factor.

The skinny on the kinky:

When — Thursday September 9th and continuing on every 2nd Thursday of the month.
Where — The United States Art Authority (next to the Spider House), 2906 Fruth Street Austin, TX 78705
Time — 8-10pm
Cost — Free!

Excerpt Monday

2010-06-20T15:54:00.001-05:00

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work, or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click the banner above.

For June's Excerpt Monday, I'd like to introduce folks to Alice Dearling: college drop-out, tech geek, lousy housekeeper, and recently hired personal assistant to John Mero, who just might be hunting fallen angels. In this scene, Alice meets one of Mero's targets face-to-face in a mall lingerie-shop dressing room.

#

He should be scared, thought Alice. He should be horrified by the idea of Mero’s assistant finding his hidey-hole. Instead he’d given her that information on a platter. For all her talk of exchanges, her payment for this information had been way cheap.

What was really going on here?

Asahel leaned forward, and Alice thought for a heartbeat that he was going to touch her. Parts of her really wanted him to, granted, but the main part of her was wondering if Mero was done with his call out in the main part of the mall. Would he come looking for her? What would he do if he found Asahel with her? In a dressing room, no less. Oh, yikes.

But Asahel didn’t touch her again. Instead, he reached out with the business card and set it beside Alice’s heap of clothes on the bench.

Alice let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.

He stood up straight, as if he was about to leave, and Lord help her, Alice was relieved at the thought. She liked orgasms as much as the next girl, but something about Asahel was bothering her. She couldn’t put her finger on it exactly, but ...

“May I?” he asked, and Alice wondered if she’d missed something.

“May you what?”

“Have a good-bye kiss.” Again with that close-mouthed smile, the one that seemed calculated to wibble her innards.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him no, but really, what harm could one kiss do? Especially after all the other stuff he’d done to her. She nodded almost imperceptibly and braced herself for one heavy-duty mouth-wallop.

Asahel scarcely moved; he pursed his lips, gazed at her, and blew her a kiss. Didn’t even touch her; just blew it. It hummed on the air between them and smacked her squarely in the forehead. She felt it more than heard it; it rippled on her skull, down her spine, and all along her bones. In places, the skull-hum tangled with the hiss-sparks just below her skin and exploded.

One of those explosive places just happened to be her clitoris.

“Holy fuck,” Alice bit, grasping the edge of the bench with desperate fingers. She sank to it bonelessly, no longer able to stand. Something not unlike orgasm -- could one not-even-touching kiss really result in an orgasm? -- rushed her from all directions, and she just held on for the ride. It ripped, pulsed, flashed, and howled like a grease fire all through her sex, her nipples, her fingernails, the valleys beneath her toes. She closed her eyes tight against the immolation.

When it was done, and Alice determined that, yes, she was still alive, she took a deep shuddering breath and opened her eyes. Asahel was still leaning indolently against the dressing-room door, his legs crossed at the ankles and his long arms folded against his chest. He hadn't touched her. Hadn't even fucking moved.

“Soon,” Asahel murmured, grinning.

"Not fair," Alice managed.

The angel just smiled beatifically. Then he turned and sauntered off down the dressing-room hallway.

#

[This is a work in progress, uncontracted and unsubbed. All comments are welcome. Thank you for reading.]

Links to other Excerpt Monday writers

Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and
be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

Writing doesn't have to be so isolating

2010-06-16T14:28:00.000-05:00

One of the dirty secrets of writing is that it's a lonely business. Often the only feedback a writer gets is from an editor who may or may not be supportive. We all try to solicit support from our partners and friends, but the success rate for that varies.

So we need to support each other, I think.

If you've stopped by because I've bugged you about this topic recently, thank you. It's good to see you 'round.

Anti-porn is anti-romantic

2010-04-12T19:45:00.002-05:00

Since I'm currently writing about mid-18th century folks getting frisky, I've done a lot of reading on the biggies of the era, including Madame Pompadour. What's most interesting to me is how she managed to secure the king's affections for so long, even as she aged. Turns out, it wasn't just because she started out pretty. Her big plus was a really commonsense thing: she played with him. I don't even mean that in the kinky way (though that was probably true as well). No other female -- especially not his wife -- ever went hunting with him or indulged at cards with him. Madame Pompadour did both of these things. She shared his hobbies.

Which brings me, in a circuitous way, to porn.

I read this salon article today, and it reiterates the longstanding problem that wives have with their husbands looking at porn. A quote contends that porn is the great household and marriage destroyer of the 21st century.

Really? It's not because those women have no respect for their husbands and prefer to criticize the men's hobbies rather than join them? It's not because they've settled for a "my way or the highway" system of compromise in their households?

See, the old argument that all porn is for men just ain't true anymore. Plenty of it exists to titillate women as well. The trick is not to belittle your partner's proclivities but instead to find a playground that's mutually appealing. Explore your fetishes together through stories and videos; it doesn't even matter if you don't have the same fetish. It's the notion that you respect your partner enough to join him (or her) in the exploration, to be part of it.

I think that Madame Pompadour's greatest trick was truly respecting her sexual partner, and probably more relationships would thrive if folks would get off their high horses and figure that out.

I'm a real girl now

2010-04-11T17:30:00.001-05:00

Well, I finally got around to gussying up the bland default template on this blog. I could write a long scene about her brand new knickers, but I hate those useless scenes in novels where the author goes on and on about clothing.

She ain't nekkid anymore, and that's about all I have to say.

Hooray!

Breaking all the rules

2010-04-08T17:42:00.000-05:00

In a recent interview, Autumn Piper noted that she likes to bend "the rules" of romance fiction. I know some of those rules, but probably not all of them. My question to you folks is this: What are "rules" and what are just tendencies in the genre?

Becky, if you could weigh in on this, I'd appreciate it. I know that, as a habitual rule-bender, you're pretty well-versed on this topic.

So far, these are my best guesses for hard and fast rules for romance novels, mostly gleaned from reading a shedload of them:

1. Happily ever after (or happy for now, depending on the publisher) seems to be a required element, no exceptions.

2. All sex should feature the hero and the heroine (with or without others, but never just the heroine with someone else or the hero with someone else). Or is this a breakable rule?

3. The dude has to be alpha or relatively close. Aberrations from this tend to get the writer slammed in reviews. Yes, even though nice guys, in real life, are unbearably hot.

Interviewed. Dude!

2010-04-02T18:58:00.001-06:00

First, this (mostly for Kattsu, but also for anyone who aspires to or is deep in with geekery):

The Most Badass Alphabet Ever

For instance:

And secondly: I was interviewed! No shittin. It's up on Lux Zakari's blog. It's my first interview ever and I'm feeling all important and crap. Let the glow last at least until I'm done with this beer, 'k? (Thank you so much, Lux!)

It's been a good friday.

Whip me, beat me, shock me, sell me.

2010-04-01T14:35:00.002-06:00

I read a historical a couple days ago that reviewers consistently call controversial. I don't understand why. It has some non-con toward the beginning and definitely some fucked up characters, but shocking? Not really.

Things that probably should shock me seem trite and a bit overdone: dark abuse secret in character's past, bi-curious frolics, bdsm, bloodplay. If I meet another brooding hero with a dark past that really isn't so dark and mostly consists of crappy parents, I'm gonna whimper.

Maybe I've been reading smutty books for too long, because I haven't been shocked by a story, any story, since I found out that Kevin Spacey was Keyser Soze. The day a romance novel does that to my sense of literary whiplash, I will buy everything that author has written or ever will. I will fangirl like a wild thing, oh yes I will.

At any rate, my question is this: what would actually be shocking in a book? What would shock you?

Liar! Liar! Get back, witch! I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!

2010-03-23T12:06:00.000-06:00

Good gravy. Bald-faced liar? Me? Oh, all right (thanks a heap, Christa). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to determine which of the four statements below are true and which are flat-out fibs.

I have, in all honesty

1. Achieved the summit of Mt. Vesuvius and the main temple at Chichen Itza. In the rain, both places.

2. Eaten something that looked like eyeballs in a Japanese ryokan. Woke up face-to-face with a deer, which might have been a god.

3. Introduced my U.S. Congressional representative at a fancy dinner event, only to discover that he was shorter than (or short as) me and so ended up proving that hobbits have infiltrated my government.

4. Survived an auto collision with a Winnebago driven by a drunk guy who fled the scene which just happened to be right in front of a fire station.

5. Changed clothes in front of an audience of thousands.

6. Worn underwear that was purchased from a vending machine.

7. Broken my nose on a ceiling fan.

The lack of comma in number 4 was intentional, for rhythm. Suck it, Strunk & White.

Also, I'm supposed to tag other blogs and/or author sites for ongoing hijinks. But, honestly, since I'm pretty much the only person who reads this blog, I'll spare myself the silliness.

Smut biscuit: "Come Hither"

2010-03-14T19:49:00.000-06:00

"Come Hither" is now available on Paper Bag Press.

Over drinks after work, Angela's competitive side gets the better of her, and she challenges co-worker and mentor Sean to a friendly game to decide who has the better come-hither technique. She quickly discovers that Sean's talents extend beyond the professional, and tonight he's focusing them all on her.

3700 words.

10 Rules

2010-03-12T12:55:00.000-06:00

In expectation of a how-to book by Elmore Leonard, The Guardian has compiled lists of "10 Rules of Writing" by well-known novelists. Some of the tips are things we've all heard in workshops ("Read it aloud to yourself" -- Diana Athill, and "Write" -- Neil Gaiman). Others defy consensus("Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting," advises Jonathan Franzen; take that, all us "strong verbs negate a need for adverbs" folks).

My personal faves are these two bits, almost back-to-back: "You can also do all that with whiskey" advised by Anne Enright, followed by "Don't drink and write at the same time" by Richard Ford.

I've thought about putting together my own authorial list with gems like "just put words on screen every day," but I feel that it would be pretentious. I'm not even a fish in that pond. Having never sold a novel-length manuscript, I really oughtn't.

How about this, as an alternateive: 10 Rules of Writing, from the Point of View of the Copy Editor Who Eventually Has to Read Your Stuff and/or the Person Who Paid Hardcover Full-Price for Your Book and Now Must Slog Through It?

'Cause I can do that.

1. Adverbs: don't. Just, don't. If you do, someone will eventually have to take them out with a red-ink pitchfork anyway, so save yourself the trouble.

2. In medias res = love. If every book started off with the dead body and went from there, I'd be a happy camper.

3. Info dumps can be done elegantly. If you have no idea what I mean by that, please delete all background information from the running text and just give us the action. Just because it's in your notes doesn't mean it has to make it into your word count. (Do you hear that, Tom Clancy?)

4. Search and ~~destroy~~ reword all instances of "as to," "thus," "alot," "there was," and "was verbing."

5. If you have a beautiful descriptive passage that you're very attached to but wherein nothing important happens, please delete it. Very likely you are the only person who will ultimately find it beautiful.

6. Don't tie on a satin bow of happily-ever-after just because your publisher or editor or godmother tells you that you should. You shouldn't. Be true to the story and follow it to its logical conclusion. Readers can tell when you're blowing sunshine up their ass, and they hate that.

7. If you flash me back too much, I'm gonna get whiplash, and you don't want dizzy folk reading your opus.

8. If you have to look up "opus" in the dictionary to make sure it isn't a slur, please reconsider writing as a career and/or hobby.

9. Don't get bogged down in the technicalities. I can tell, when reading a book, when someone has stressed too much about workshoppy "rules" of writing. The novels I like best defy all those rules, and joyfully so. Mary Balogh uses "was" waaaay too often. Janet Evanovich hasn't chosen a tense yet. Harlan Ellison makes free with double end punctuation. But most of all, these writers make rule-defiance work for them. They create a strong voice, and that is why I love them.

10. Sometimes it's okay to feel good. That goes for characters, too. The older I get, the less I want to read about depressing people doing depressing things and being depressed by them. Make me stand up and cheer. Make me believe. There's a reason, after all, that a story as simple as Avatar has made so freakin much money.

"Negotiations" reviewed by Naughty Editions

2010-03-05T16:57:00.001-06:00

...aaand "Negotiations" was reviewed by Naughty Editions. The reviewer was very generous (four hearts!), though she had some trouble with the car technobabble. I think most folks will be okay with it, though, since (a) the story is shelved with the fetish stuff and (b) the whole thing is about sex all over a car.

Actually, it's kind of encouraging because I worry all the time about my research and whether I'm including enough detail. This review eases my concern there somewhat.

And what she said about writing another story featuring Greg Who Knows How to Have Fun? We shall see.

Many thanks to the fine folks at Naughty Editions.

"Unless" reviewed by Heart

2010-03-03T11:10:00.000-06:00

"Unless" has been reviewed by the kind folks at Heart.

This is my first-ever review of a published story, so it's big news in my little pond. I'm a little late and a little slow to the pro-writing world, but news like this certainly galvanizes me.

Thank you, Jasmine, and also Amy Barnes of Paper Bag Press, who submitted the story for review. Y'all totally made my day.

Come'ere, Snookums

2010-02-25T11:18:00.000-06:00

Come'ere, Snookums

The Psychology Today article on lovers' nicknames got me thinking (randomly: you have been warned) about the topic of pet names. No, not names for the furry critters who beg for belly rubs: I'm talking about nicknames for lovers.

Years ago, I worked with a woman, just an ordinary woman, a little pudgy and not somebody who'd be offered a centerfold anytime soon, but she seemed really happy. Like, out of the ordinary happy. A lot of that, according to her, had to do with her "Pookie." I met Pookie several times when he came to work to have lunch with her. He radiated that same deep happiness, and it was really hard to be stressed or bummed when I was in the room with both of them. I'd worked with her about six months before I learned that he had a nickname for her too: she was his "little chimichanga." How's that for toothache-inducing cuteness?

Here's what I can't stand, though: grown-up people who call each other "baby." Grosses me out: do they even know what babies smell like?

At any rate, I have a character who has a pet name for another. Hey, it seemed to work when Janet Evanovich did it! But, you're right, I'm no Janet E.

Am not really a little chimichanga, either. *sigh*

On the value of copy editing

2009-06-22T16:37:00.001-05:00

Some few of you folks know that by day I do some copy editing. I imagine that menial servicepersons in all industries have internal conversations much like mine:

Me: *deep sigh* Nobody even knows I exist unless I muck things up. Even when I do a good job, readers just assume that the writer is mechanically on top of things.
Me, too: Oh, shut up. You're speshul and a princess and totally Important (with the initial cap, even) to the world at large. There. Is that what you needed to hear?
Me: Yes, thanks ever so. Of course, you didn't have to be such a pfft about it.

So, yes, I've been pufting out my I-am-important feathers for a long time, holding on to standards like Use Serial Commas! and Oh God, Please No More While Phrases!

But you know what? I think that maybe I've been doing a disservice to my brain. What if mechanically messy, stylistically vomitous prose can be good communication after all? What if the story is bigger than a few misspelled words?

What if all this time I've been, well, pompous?

Oh, yikes.

Shall write with fragments more, I promise. And try not to cringe when I read "as to" phrases. Cross my heart.

Observation

2009-06-20T01:46:00.001-05:00

It's hard to write erotica when the X key on your computer is stuck.

Alpha : good, bad, or cheesecake?

2009-05-26T17:47:00.000-05:00

I like me the alpha boys. It's a weakness.

If they're growlier than Harleys, Cro-Magnon hairy, and only minimally verbal, even better! After all, nothing says love like popped buttons and grunting. Alpha Boy doesn't back down when he's wrong, doesn't waste time considering alternatives when he can go for an impulsive frontal assault, and skewers (or shoots, or pummels) anyone who so much as looks at his gal, because at the core he's a jealous (insecure?) beast.

I know you're thinking what I'm thinking: How can she love Alpha Boy?

The hell if I know. But we do: Romance readers do love him. Despite the fact that he's not very charming and is, genetically speaking, probably not a good prospect. On second thought, maybe we like him because he's so far removed from our reality and logical sense of what makes a good mate.

Maybe we like him the way we like cheesecake: because he's decadent and delicious and totally bad for us.

Maybe we like him because he makes us feel like princesses certain to be rescued.

Whatever the reasons, I know one thing for certain: The novel I began writing about a middle-aged balding Regency baronet named Nigel isn't getting a lot of traction with the muse. Who'd've thunk.

Smut biscuit: "Negotiations"

2009-03-27T20:34:00.000-06:00

My second-ever piece of purveyed smut is now for sale at Paper Bag Press. The title is "Negotiations." It's even fascinatingly shelved in the fetish section -- a first for me -- probably because it features a muscle car and a girl mechanic.

Here's the low-down:

Stuck in Barstow with car trouble is not the place to be on a carefree weekend. However, Greg begins to care a bit more after meeting his mechanic, Lindsay. With just enough axle grease and a sweet ride of her own to show off, Lindsay turns Greg's weekend into more than he bargained for. And there is plenty of bargaining to do.

You faeries -- in particular SierraPhoenix -- remember hood sex? Yep.

An early version of this story was written for the lovely and talented Sarita, who still owes me an arrow-sharpening adventure. Thank you, Lissa, for the quick edit a couple months ago.

Whee!

When metaphors attack

2009-03-22T14:22:00.000-06:00

For a laugh -- an an example of whoa how not to spice things up with metaphor -- read this. And don't forget to then reference the subsequent fan art.

I am inferring that Princess Bronwyn has pink hair, but I know pfft-all about leopard tongues, really.

Unintentional hilarity

2009-03-03T19:04:00.001-06:00

So, I have a crack-reading weakness, and her name is Mary Balogh. Yes, yes: alpha boys in Regency Hessians visiting their clubs and mistresses, and demure virgins batting their eyelashes at balls. (Wrong kind of balls: head out of gutter, now.) At any rate, Miz Balogh has a new crack-let out, and I scuttled over to Amazon to order it today.

... And wandered across a discussion (who knew they had discussions there?) about the most blatantly ridiculous smutty scene you've ever read. There was some wild hilarity on that discussion, lemme tell ya.

I'd be interested in hearing your worst of the worst.

It's hard to rhyme a word like ...

2009-02-19T19:48:00.001-06:00

Oh ooh oooh: I have one. A question, that is. One that's been discussed to death and never answered to my satisfaction. It's this: what's a four-letter word for penis... that doesn't muck up the whole tone of a scene?

Pat answer is that it depends on the character and POV, right? A modern-era, no-nonsense, macho man might call it a cock. (I happen to imagine my lace-bedecked 18th century libertines doing the same.)

Modern jerks might call it Mr Happy or something else similarly eye-roll-inducing, but I woudn't give a shit because I wouldn't be writing from their point of view, anyway. And even if I were, they wouldn't be getting any action. Moving on...

Modern women with way too much sass might call it, euphemistically, willy wonka (and then imagine naughty things about Johnny Depp in a bad wig; this I can see), buttered noodle, flag staff and reveille, or "tented Levis."

But say you're writing a shy 19th century virgin. She's staring down the overfluffed duvet of her marriage bed, watching her brand-new husband (who, happily, sports neither mutton chops nor smallclothes) disrobe. She'd call it ... what? I mean, other than *blush!stammer!hyperventilate*? She's a relatively intelligent lass and usually doesn't find herself at a loss for words, but this instance has left her flummoxed.

Please don't tell me to call it a "manhood." I just can't, sorry.

Are condoms sexy?

2009-02-17T11:49:00.001-06:00

Sheathe up, or not?

Something that's been on my mind lately is this: How sexy are condoms, really?

I mean, it totally ruins the flow, doesn't it? You've got Jack and Jill (or Jack and Joe, or Jack and Jill and Joe and Rhonda... whatever) slicking each other up like hot cinnamon buns, moaning and groaning and talking delicious filth. And then,

"Wait a minute, mate: Let me roll this on, yeah?"

Yeah, Jack. And another bucket of ice water while you're at it.

Oh, I know writers (and folks in real-life, who actually get out from behind their computers once in a while: go you) try to doll up the interruption, sometimes by having Joe and Rhonda tongue on the rubber -- which is much harder to do than you imagine. Sometimes they bring a buffet of condoms to a smut event and put on a new one for every new encounter/position/insertion, until the discard pile begins to resemble a flavorful rainbow.

And sometimes they're just so into the moment that they forget. Oh, they might worry about babies or something the morning after, but they don't angst too hard.

Which is a pity. Because, ugly as that rubber rainbow pile is, it's a lot sexier than syphilis. Or chlamydia. Or warts. Or ... I don't need to go on.

So, decision decided: horny folks need rubbers.

Now, the challenge: making those rubbers sexy.

Hmm.

Smut biscuit: "Unless"

2009-02-15T16:39:00.000-06:00

New smut biscuit up at Paper Bag Press:

Laura's romance novel and night alone is interrupted by her sometime lover, whose passion and skill never fail to please her. How long will he stay this time?

"Unless"

Hello, my name is Viv and I write smut.

2009-02-14T17:12:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time, in a faraway place called Texas, a long-time aspiring writer and English grad despaired at last of creating the great American novel. Or any other kind of novel, really. See, although she was really, really good at placing commas, her underplotted, overboiled Russian-tragedy-esque post-modern desconstructed bits of verbiage just weren't working out the way she'd hoped. And who could blame them.

So, desperate for inspiration, she consulted a mystic in a deep cavern by the sea (er, downstairs, doing the dishes).

"It has to be about what you love," the wise man said, slathering on some warm liquid soap and swirling it all over with a sponge. Way his hands were working caught her attention and held it. She licked her lips. Something dawned her on her right then, and it stuck in her mind like sand in a bikini.

Something she loved? Well, that was easy. Our girl loved the hot sex.

So she scuttled into the bedroom (where else?), flicked open her computer, drowned her ears in slinky music, and wrote the most scorching smut she could imagine. And she could imagine plenty.

Finally, too red-faced to read it herself, she e-mailed it to the wise man. After that, he did the dishes quite frequently.

And thus was a Smutstress born.

#

That she is me. I'm Viv, and I'm really happy you stopped by.