So good to be back!

I've been writing, on napkins, in the notes app on my phone, in pretty little notebooks scattered around my house but that's as far as the stories have gotten. My oldest has grown up and out of the house and the youngest is in school so I've been gathering up all my stories bits and have decided to publish them myself.  Look for me on Amazon!

Renewing My Vows

Much has happened since I last blogged. Here’s the long emotional story bulleted short.

• Anxiety because I got the opportunity to write an article about phone sex for Granta Magazine!
• Horror when I realized that hubby was unaware of this particular chocolate chip in the cookie of my past!
• Suspense while I summoned enough courage to confess.
• Joy (I think)when he says he knows me better than I think. Joy (for real) when email announces that the article is accepted.
• Anxiety mounts as I anticipate how quickly and awfully this publication will knock over our picket fence.
• Horror as I try to mentally explain away this article to my family members in the generation above and below me.
• Joy when I get an email from a Granta requesting to publish the article anonymously as part of a new iphone app they have coming out in a few weeks.
• Relief as I email back a simple “god bless you”.
• Anxiety re-mounts when I get invites to the Granta launch party in NYC.
  

This is where I wanted to start but felt I had to give you some background. I got the invitation to the party and realized that in my nine years as a wife and mother I have not gone anywhere without the armor of my husband and children. I am his amusing wife, their dependable Mommy. My life is a series of well-rehearsed pirouettes. I spin around and around at the center of their lives, my arms radiating out gracefully to encourage them up and out to work, to school, to life. I have become a permanent part of my home; there is the couch in the living room, the microwave in the kitchen, the bathtub in the bathroom, the bed in the bedroom and Mom a portable feature in all of the above rooms keeping the family happy. My car briefly offered freedom but now is an extension of my house, giving me access to places in the city that I need to frequent in order to meet my family’s needs. This invitation upsets my balance; I cannot pirouette and go to NYC. I find that I am suffering from suburbia-induced agoraphobia. I begin to feel out reasons for not going and make the mistake of telling one of my more brutally honest sister-friends (heinafter to be referred to as Honest) all the reasons that I should not go. She listens patiently then tells me that if I don’t go I will resent it and then later resent hubby. I email another, more sympathetic sister she sends back a note:
What’s the matter with you - you used to do this kind of thing all the time. Throw a jacket and some pumps in your purse and quit complaining.
I resort to a third, very mild sister, who is quick to betray my assumption of her.
“What would you do if you were a man?” she says.
The three sisters work their magic and before I know it hubby is kissing my cheek bye and I am on my way to New York with Honest at my side.
We are in NYC at the door of Coco de Mer, an upscale sex shop I give my name shyly at the door while my panic due to agoraphobia rises rapidly.
“Of course,” says the man at the door and lets us in. In my city almost everyone is black, the postman has dreadlocks, the UPS man has cornrows, and I have to discourage my toddler from staring when we encounter white people at the bank. Honest and I are the only non-white faces at the party. I am sure his ‘of course’ is in answer to his own mental question about why these two black women are at the door: of course he’s thinking you are the one with the funny last name. I find out later that his ‘of course’ was because he has been instructed to look out for me and the other writers. Cultural shock replaces agoraphobia as the more current cause of my anxiety. Honest is impatient with me.
“You are here as a writer, for this magazine. Now mingle!”
A reddish brunette girl comes to talk to me. I am still feeling unbalanced and very house wifey so I can’t come up with anything to say to encourage the conversation. Only when she walks away do I notice that she is dressed in underwear and fishnet tights. I try to take in my surroundings but I am in survival mode swallowing down the adrenalin which is urging me to choose between fight or flight. Flight is out. Honest has long legs and would easily catch me and bring me, back even in peep toe heels. Fighting is the remaining option. I vaguely recalled being told to look for someone called Patrick upon arrival. A photographer spots Honest and her beauty heading for a couch - I failed to mention before that Honest has flawless skin, Nefertiti’s sharp profile and the grace of a gazelle.
“Wait” she says as he aims his camera, “I want to be in the picture with one of the writers.”
She grabs me. We pose between two paintings of pleasantly rounded female figures. Once the picture is taken Honest pushes me back to work on my mingling. I ask the photographer if he knows a Patrick. He does not but is kind enough to introduce me to a Hugh Laurie look alike named Doug. Doug guides me to a circle of conversation which breaks up enough for lovely Patrick to appear with ‘Ahhhs’ and hugs and kisses. I am introduced to a group of young men. Steve works for a corporate firm but confesses to having a bleeding heart. I ask who it is bleeding for and we have a long conversation about education policies. Steve is going to drive across America, with some of the friends he names in the circle. I beg them to blog for me because I want to follow the trip. I even name the blog for them “Cape to Cairo - Not”. I meet bright-eyed Joe with disobedient hair who tells me he is an actor. He asks what I do. I answer that I am a Mom most of the time but I write too.
“I love moms!” he exclaims, bending his knees on the “love” for emphasis. “I love mine so much. Moms are the best.”
I suspect his gushing is fueled somewhat by the wine but his eyes are sincere. I ask what he has been in and he names a movie. Honest reappears.
“There you are,” she says to me then peers into his Joe’s face as he is summarizing a movie he’s been in for me, I am not yet sure if I have watched it.
“It is you!” says Honest, not in the least bit star struck. Her kids loved the movie and she loves anyone who makes her kids smile. They giggle at each other. Joe and Honest chat while I turn to a guy who looks like he should be a Bob, Scott or Jim. His name is Kai. We translate names for each other and discuss the joys of carrying an unusual name. Somewhere between meeting Patrick and getting to the bottom of my glass of wine I have an in- then out-of-body experience and I see the Diana that I remember. I am smart, charming, intelligent and well spoken. I repeat Honest’s words “There you are.”
On the way home I feel transformed. I don’t want to hide in safe places anymore. I want to take life as a writer seriously. I want to take turns pirouetting with my husband, older daughter and, if necessary, hired help. When I arrive home I am happy to be back. I inhale the day I missed from my children’s hair and kiss their cheeks. I spoon with my husband, my chest to his back, arms around his, he adjusts against me in his sleep. As we bend our knees to the same angle I close my eyes and I take my vows again, this time I choose to be a his wife, their mother and my self.

Crying over curdled milk?

When ever I ask a woman stuck in a sad place about her wrong doing man, “was he your best?” the answer is never, ever yes. I have a standing monthly dinner date with a delightfully naughty friend of mine. This month she asked if she could bring someone along and I agreed because she has very good taste in woman friends. By the time I got to the restaurant they were already well warmed up, drinking delicious potent small glasses of this-that and what-not.
My delightfully naughty friend (hereinafter to be known as Delightfully) is as happily married as you can be with a few kids a full time job and no maid. More on her later. The friend she brought with her a newly divorced friend (hereinafter New) with no kids and looking for some settling down love so she can start reproducing. Delightfully revealed to New that I was Diana of the story she had emailed her previously. It seems that as soon as I am revealed as Diana to a naughty sister (and give the disclaimer that anything that they say to me can and will be cleverly disguised and written into a sexy story) the conversation turns and the deepest confessions and juiciest stories start to emerge from the most unlikely sources. I guess we are just all dying to talk to somebody about the ups and downs of our loves and flaming lilies.
Anyway, New was lamenting the fertile years she had wasted on her ex-husband and was feeling a bit intimidated by the prospect of starting again. Delightfully and I reminded her that she was lucky she got away from his awfulness while she still felt young and pretty. To cheer her up a bit I asked her the question I always reserve for my naughty sisters who are crying over split milk that was curdled and should have been thrown out anyway. “Was he the best lover you ever had?" The lesson behind the question being that sometimes we need to let our flaming lilies light the way to an honest perspective. New immediately brightened. Just thinking of her flaming lily’s real champion was making her glow. Delightfully downed the rest of her pineapple this-that and leaned in for details.
New proceeded to describe her post-marital lover’s skills explaining in great detail how he filled in where the ex had fallen short, a virgin when she got with her ex (and a virgin when she left if you ask me seeing as she’d never orgasmed with him) she always suspected there was something better out there and she was still dizzy from her happy discovery. Once the unfortunate ex was dropped from the conversation we were on to an evening of steamy stories and priceless sex tips. So, the next time you are weeping over curdled milk my naughty sisters cheer yourselves up by reminiscing about the one that left you feeling like God herself had given him a book titled "How To Make (fill in your name here) Call Out My Name In Five Languages She Doesn't Even Speak Yet".

How do you feel about you?

Fresh new love or flaming lily which comes first? I have concluded that fresh new love makes you feel good and in turn feeling good inflames the lily. So do we really need the fresh new love to get our lilies flaming. The general theme in the erotic/romance stories I have read is that a strong almost perfect man falls in love with a woman that the reader can identify with or at least wants to identify with. In “The Way You Look At Me” I was exploring how a large woman, Karla, felt with her husband who was not attracted to her versus how she felt with a sexy younger intern, Bryce, who wanted her badly because of her voluptuousness. It’s the concentrated focus, the single minded desire that Bryce has for Karla that I hope gets the reader’s “armpits burning” (as my good friend Scarlett P. says). But if feeling sexy is more about being wanted than wanting what does that say about us, my naughty sisters? Thinking on that is leading me to my next story about a woman who already knows she’s sexy and so is driven by her own desire, could be dangerous. What would you do if it was only about what you wanted?
P.S. - Congratulate me, “The Way You Look At Me” just got it’s first rejection which means I am one rejection closer to publication. I am going to look at it and see what I can change before I send it out again. If you want to read it and see if it gets your armpits burning write me a note and I will email it to you.

Feeling Fresh New Love

A friend of mine is in fresh new love. Her lily is in full flame and she is glowing with it. I get a contact high just from sitting next to her. I watch her carefully and warn her that I am stealing her every word and expression for my next story. I need to capture what she's feeling, all the excitement of love and attraction untainted by time. She swears she's "never felt like this before" and she asks me if that's how I first felt about Husband and if I did had the feeling lasted.

Husband comes home right then, looking clean and respectable with his tie off, top button undone and suit pants just snug enough to be sexy yet respectable. I can tell he's had a good day as soon as he shines his smile at me. I say yes, because at that moment that is just how I love him. I decide right there and then that tonight there will be some "special" marital attention.

I know that fresh new feeling isn't there all the time, it comes and goes - or I let it come and go - or he lets it come and go. I look at Miss Fresh New Love and realize that after ten years of being with Husband that having that fresh new feeling is a choice.

I've solved that for myself but I have a new question, my naughty sisters, it's a chicken or the egg thing what comes first the flaming lily or the fresh new love, fresh new love or flaming lily?

A Luta Continua!

I finished "The Way You Look At Me", my first erotic short story. I have sent it off to a good friend (hereinafter to be referred to as Guardian Angel) for a final once over and then it will be ready for submission.
Husband hasn't read it nor has he asked to read it, I think he appreciates my Flaming Lily but may be a little bit wary of what she may say now that she has been given a voice. I don't know if he has noticed but while I was writing I watched him more carefully because I was trying to capture the little things that make him sexy to me.
At the end of the day sexy is all in the details isn't it? I watch him watching me making dinner and I want to ask him "what makes me sexy babe?" but - to my surprise I find that I am too shy so instead I say,
-Whatcha looking at?
And he says
-you,
with his mouth and,
-ooooooh weeee wait til the baby's asleep!
wth his eyes and I have another sexy detail for myself but he still hasn't told me anything.

So I season broccoli and drain pasta while I imagine what he is thinking. Then later I write a short scene in the story where the main character is being watched while she cooks and I put in the sexy little details I think would turn Husband on.

I don't know why I couldn't just ask him what makes me sexy. I guess the conversation to follow would have been impossible to have with backyardigans blaring in the background so I'll save it for a more intimate time. More on that later...

Send out positive vibes, my naughty sisters, so my story will be accepted for publication.

I don't want to write a blog about writing because I know there are already a lot of writers doing that. I have pretty much the same mental and physical blocks and all of the insecurities that they have. I am plagued by thoughts of "what if they hate everything/anything I write, what if I am not good enough...blazi blah and soron and sofoth." Yes, I even have the same husband and kids swearing that they support my craft but making absobloodilutely sure that my hands and my head are never free to write anything longer than a grocery list.

But that's not what I am writing about. I am writing about where my journey into writing romance and erotica takes my flaming lily. So what, she asks, is a flaming lily? My flaming lily is my sexual force, you know like your Chi or your Num is your life force? Same concept. I used to take my flaming lily for granted until I was separated from it for a while. It doesn't sound right calling my flaming lily an "it", so my flaming lily will hereinafter be referred to as "she". Anyway, I thought my flaming lily was gone after I had my second baby and she left me a woman who didn't care if she had sex or not as long as it didn't wake the baby and who subjected her husband to poor-guy-looks-hopeful-let-me-give-him-some sex or one-bonus-position-only-coz-its-your-birthday sex. I thought I didn't mind the change in me until about six months later when Husband and I were lazing the evening away watching TV in our bedroom. The baby was in a deep milky slumber and I was propped up on the pillows. Husband was lying diagonally across the bed when I noticed how his bottom curved perfectly up and over in his sweatpants. My lily stirred and touched his bum with my foot to remind herself of its firmness and Husband clenched said rear end just the tiniest little bit to acknowledge my foot. In that moment my postpartum lily stretched, yawned, shook off her hibernation and reignited herself back into my flaming lily and Husband and I were rolling about the bed in mutual joy in no time.

I have since been very careful to observe how my environment affects my flaming lily. And that is what brings me to this blog. As I research for my erotic writing career, conceiving characters and mapping out stories my flaming lily reveals more of herself to me and this journey, my naughty sisters, is what I will be sharing with you beginning with the creation of my first story.