Coming Up for Air

I have been writing a lot, just not on the blog. I am in the middle of novel writing and not procrastinating at all. The things that are stunning me most are my ability to write and keep going! As well as the way my mind has been going...Sexually this story, is like nothing I have ever written before and I am happy. Erotica is such a vast vehicle and people seem to be surprised about that! When I tell people I write erotica, they think that I am a typical Catholic School girl. I never wore a short skirt, and I am not anymore precocious that I am or ever will be because I went to Catholic School. It stays with you I promise you, but I do not think that it completely defines me. Besides eroticism is not unholy, how do we reproduce without it?

I produce erotica and I do not think that that says anything about me other than I write erotica. Which is no different to me that a writer who kills a character for a mystery, or creates a new world for a sci fi novel...

Caring Enough to Send the Very Best

I am sending a dear friend this book. I judge all of my friends on if they like Anais Nin. I am certain if you do not like her writing, you are not worth knowing. Unless you did not know about her--so the book is going out to someone who I know is very worthy...

Post Valentine

It was amazing to me how many people were so blasé about Valentine's Day. Everyone was so above it! Thinking that it is not a fair representation of love. It is not I fully agree, but it is a day to be had and if you are with someone they should come through. Not automatic candy and chocolate (although I never balk at chocolate), but something warm and good should be done between the two of you is all...

It is with the addition of my MacBook, that I have discovered there is very little in the divide between sex and computer. A cornucopia of smart and cheap sex. This recent find is lovely, and always my standard. Ahhh, and the perverse pleasures which I do not have to direct you to...

I am working on my own erotic masterpiece, loving that inspiration comes where I am and am not looking for it. I am pleased that although I was interrupted by a must read from a man who has me hankering now to read Balzac, that I am back to reading Split. I adore Kristina Lloyd, really.

Formula, Formula

I watched the pilots for Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, and I have to say I was amazed.

Sex and the City is coming out as a movie in May, and I will be there to see it. I am still watching the reruns every night to be honest, and already have a date with one of my girlfriends to see the movie. This I say to demonstrate that I have good girlfriends, so when I say that I am APPALLED that I am watching a show about women who are beyond successful, and the focus is on the things that they need their girlfriends to huddle with them for a perfunctory group hug camera shot?

There is something wrong with American television and film. This desire for formula--if it worked once it will work again! Even if there are failures--and there have been predecessors to Cashmere and Lipstick that have gone down for the count--yet the need to have another Sex and the City has not ended! There is only one Sex and the City, as it should be. I am afraid even that Sex and the City will not be the same as a movie. See my post in May or June after I see it.

It amazes me how we keep at this formulaic television and film when there are so many writers out there, and hopefully more formulas? I do not get it. The idea that we want to see women at the top of their game brought down by the rest of their lives with their friends for buffers...Let me be at the top and see how much time I have to worry about the domino effect...My relationships are important to me with the men and the women in my life, and I would feel bad about anything that went wrong with them. But if I was at the top of my game careerwise? Believe me that would be my buffer more than any human. But that is me--I am another formula I guess not on television or film.

Sex in the Rain


Desdmona's new contest is to write an erotic piece that somehow involves rain. Okay, so I have two months to get the 1000 words written. There might just be hope for me to compete normally this time! If I do not let myself become preoccupied. Which sometimes is hard for me...but the erotic exercise would be good.

Don't you adore double entendres?

Even After A Century...

The thing I love about this picture of Simone de Beauvoir is even though I think it is deplorable to catch a woman from behind (as was featured by the Le Nouvel Observateur in recognition of what would have been her 100th birthday), I applaud de Beauvoir for being able to strike up controversy even now and am thankful for the, ahem, exposure that will get people to Google her who do not aleady know about how remarkable she is.

Am I alone in believing the worst ism is and always ill be sexism?

Sex--Nothing Revolutionary

Read this, that I read on The Huffington Post by Rachel Kramer Bussel. Sex, thoughtful and without cliche? Who would imagine?

Butterfly of Some Sort

Even though I have not been blogging, and feeling guilty--you can take the girl out of Catholic school but you cannot take the Catholic school out of the girl. It was reading someone else's blog and finding this, which I now display on my sidebar that might not make me think it is a sin not to blog as much as I maybe would like.

Not blogging, made me oblivious to this saga. It is nice to be in a cocoon sometimes, but still interesting to see what is going on in the world.

I have been working on my psychologically terse, but finally becoming erotic piece. My characters are there. This is the part where it gets fun. The best part of reading the novels I like to read are to read the "dirty" bits. In the case of writing the novel, it is best to write the dirty bits. As well as to create the psychology that makes the dirty bits necessary.

Off I go to my cocoon again, to emerge as a butterfly of some sort...of creativity...of negativity...of something with something more to say...soon...

No Split Here...

I was delighted beyond delight to find Kristina Lloyd's Split in the bookstores as promised. It was released in the UK earlier, but I just bought my copy and the first page was fabulous! I feel lucky to have discovered an author that inspires me, as I work on my own novel. One of my friends is working on her own opus, and it is another inspiration.

A good book in my hands and a story on the burner--can the new year have begun any better?

Red Underwear and No Resolutions

I am wearing red underwear today. In Spain, people wear red underwear for good luck, one of my friends who lives in Germany tells me. So I am today--why not?

I have a new story idea that might be the one! I am very inspired by the darkness and eros that are swirling in me to produce this hopeful charm.

I do not believe in resolutions, but I do want to write more as my mother who I lost this year (in body) wanted me to. It's funny, I started the year with her and end it without her. Part of me wants to hang onto the year because she lived in it...another part wants the promise of a new year with less sorrow.

Either way, Happy New Year, and here's to a lot more blog posts. Sometimes I am lazy!

Insulation

Finished NaNo but as usual, my new passion is a new piece I am working on. I know it is a reflection of me not being able to follow through. But at least the passion for it will fill me a bit. This is my first Christmas without my mother and there is a draft inside me. My creativity is a bit of insulation for me. It is the thing that warms me when I feel cold inside. Not every bit of creative thought comes from a cold place in me, but when it does it warms me, revitalizes me that I can reconstruct everything that happens to me.

This story is a new theme for me. A spin off from the themes in my NaNo novel, very dark and at the bottom of Pandora's Box. Opened it and like a yoga pose, my head down to the bottom to get up every last bit of what I should not have even known. For this story, I have to be fearless. It is getting easier and easier for me to be so...

Finished!

I completed NaNo at the witching hour. I have never been opposed to being a witch!

So this novel took me to some dark places and let me feel the hum of recurring themes of mine that were lurking in some of my places all along.

I have discovered the mind might try to hide, but the body will not or vice versa. The things that fascinate us are part of us. Just beneath the skin, or right on the surface.

I finished the novel, but I opened Pandora's box and I am not afraid...

Whew

At the mid point of NaNo, at 25000 words I can say whew, and what a sigh of relief, almost like a bath in rose petals while it is still warm. I won last year, and am on the fast track this year. I have been reading and writing nonstop erotica so I am infused with it like a good flavored vodka. It was reading a lot of Black Lace novels two by Kristina Lloyd who I raved about in several previous posts that inspired me to go out of my comfort zone with erotic writing. I was talking to a male friend of mine who is pretty unshockable, and when I told him one of the ideas I was toying with he told me it was DAMN NASTY. I was kind of startled by that, but shocking him encouraged me to shock myself more. When you have to finish a 50000 word novel you do not have time to censor. I will let you know who I am December 1...

Alive

That is the ultimate sensation inside me. I am alive, when my mother died I was not so sure I would be. But I am here, on the shore of what is the ocean of me. I am connected, I am cohesive, I make sense. I sustain myself.

I have been writing like mad, one of my friends every time he comes near me he creates a story inside me. I am nursing one of those, and a woman I met today--a sock fetishist--raved to me about socks that she got from Barcelona. Does anyone love socks that much?

How is the world so filled with life and stories, and I am such a procrastinator? Am I surviving or barely making it as a writer? Well maybe the ideas are alive in me. I read my astrological chart and it says I am due for much success in my middle age. I am not quite there yet...

Smell The Daisies

Finished Darker Than Love. I love to read people who inspire me and stretch my mind as a writer. Kristina Lloyd is so daring and creative erotically! Fearless! Maybe there is some karma granted from reading her novels for my own writing. I have a degree in Creative Writing, but the true lessons in writing is reading and loving what you read. You in turn learn to love what you write, or write what you love.

One of my friends just submitted an erotic story for an anthology, and was like Leonore, you should try doing that! What a novel idea! Me writing! Submitting!--there is a double entendre there, yes?

I am definitely game for doing this very thing. Writing! Submitting! Stay tuned...Right now, I am reading and letting ideas churn. Taking time to stop and smell the daisies until they are blurred...

Black Lace

I just bought a copy of Kristina Lloyd's Darker Than Love, and dropped everything I was reading to start and finish it. She was a pleasant discovery of mine in a favorite used bookstore, when I found Asking For Trouble. If you have not already, drop everything and pick up one or the other! She is the kind of author I read once, and become a devotee. I was like this with Emma Holly and M. J. Rose before her...

Skin Story

I met a woman who participated in this. I am not sure how long it has been going on, but I am tempted to become part of it! The woman I met had a bevy of tattoos, but this one stood out to me as a writer. I went on the site, and discovered that one of the requirements is that you have to use a standard font for the tattoo, which underscores again why I was so drawn to the lovely tattoo. I love to play with fonts, but all of the books that we read are in classic fonts. I am not going to tell you what word she had on her, but is it not fascinating to imagine that all of these people are out in the world and that if they were all put together they would tell a story?

Open to Everything

Three weeks into my yoga practice, I have become a completely different person. Not that I was not mellow, but I am mellower.

I take an anusara yoga class, and my instructor is an artist/yoga instructor who forces us in the most gentle way ever to do more than we think we can. The first week with her I was sore in places I did not know that I could be sore! The following week, I got my leg well close to my shoulder and did not feel a bit of pain. She has a never say never approach, and I just go with the flow. She did a difficult pose, and I said a little bit aloud that I was not going to be able to do that. She said that we were not having a competition, but that we have to be open to at least trying everything.

My body and my mind are open to everything. In terms of my art, I am still tabula rasa, but the new ink is smeared all over my head like henna.

My blogging is like yoga too. I am way past baby steps, I am walking...

Tabula Rasa

Whatever I did, I do not know in terms of what keys I pressed on the computer. All I know is that I lost approximately 10000 words on the novel I have been working on. I was not sure about the direction, so maybe this was a sign, like I have a chance to go back in time and change fate. How many times in your life do you have the chance to go back and change everything? Well writers are a special breed because we are always going back and changing things, but with the kinds of thoughts I was having maybe it is a good thing that I can go back smarter with these characters. I had just begun writing out of sequence, so those pages do not bother me that much, but the pages that led to those hurt me a lot more. I just have to pretend that I have been given a chance to do better and go with it...I cannot stop working on this piece, I have too much personally invested in it...

Lachrymose

Lachrymose, just left MoMA, after seeing Le Notti di Cabiria. I do not want to give away any of the story, but there is a scene with a hypnotist...there is a part where a man says to Cabiria that we all are pure and innocent at heart, that there is romance in all of us--he did not say it like that but that is how I heard it. He said that we wear masks of cynicism. I think we do, we all say that we do not need love but the minute we meet someone who makes us change out minds we are all suckers. I have a cut out piece of paper that reads love makes fools of us all.

I think it does, and that it is the best part of all of us. That love has the ability to take us all out like a two bit gangster. It roughs us up, hangs us over a fish tank with piranhas in it and breaks our bones and hearts. But it is still the thing we all crave and go after blindly. Maybe because I am a violent romantic, but don't we all know it is true?

As long as out of it we can stand on our own two feet and go on like before...