Liz Everly's Blog, page 14

Your Next Book Boyfriend Awaits You

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Five awesome romances,
$25.00 Amazon gift card
AND a few surprises.
Come back on Friday to enter & win!

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Running Full Tilt Into the End of 2017

by Kiersten Hallie Krum

Early last week, after about seven months of searching, first for a house, then for an apartment that would take me and my fur babies, I finally found a new home for all of us–that I will move into in around a month’s time. This means I have about six weeks (if I’m super lucky) to pack up the place where I’ve lived for the last nine years and move (in-state) to the place I’ll likely be in for at least the next seven or eight years to start.

Yep, I’m running full tilt right into the end of 2017. Full steam ahead. Phasers on stun. No rest for the wicked. Power on through. Every weekend from here on in is a packing weekend (with the exception of Thanksgiving day, of course). A drawn-out, slow trip down a sometimes painful, bittersweet memory lane.

It’s be a lousy year, Lady Smutters. Politically for all of us, and personally for me as it kicked off with the death of my mother in January. Don’t get me wrong, there has been a lot of good among the bad–first trip to Florida, new book released, award win for debut novel–but I’m sure ready to kick the holy hell outta this year and plunge into the next, hopefully better one soon as the ticking clock can get me there.

New Year. New Home. Nothing but good times ahead.

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There’s been a lot of news lately about the sexual exploitation and harassment of women and, God save us, children by men in political and professional power. News that makes my stomach curdle and my soul ache. Many of the responses have been equally repellent as the women making these accusations have found their lives and their credibility shredded and shamed on the public altar of social media and media in general. I have a lot of thoughts about all of this, thoughts and feelings that are still processing only to be newly outraged with each new announcement of horror and violation. Each squirrely, slimy justification made for the unforgivable abuses these men have committed.

But it’s the woman who are shamed.

It’s mind boggling.

I wrote a post some time ago about our culture of shame. of how people are publicly shamed almost before the full story has been realized, a shame that can follow people for years and even drive some to suicide out of unbearable shame.

More than ever, public accountability is key to keeping TPTB, well, accountable. Yet in a world rife with cyber bullying to the extent that people have committed suicide because the feel their lives have become unbearable as a result of being bullied, the culture of shame has almost become a spectator sport. Where do we draw the line between holding entities accountable for ofttimes severely shitty behavior and effectively flogging them in effigy in cyberspace?

 

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Happy Thanksgiving, Lady Smutters. Thank you for being such an integral part of what we do here. Hug your loved ones, drink some wine, eat too much pie, and be grateful for all the good you generate in each other’s lives.

If you’d like to read about women without shame and the SEAL heroes who fight to win them, be sure to check out my award-winning debut novel Wild on the Rocks and its follow-up, SEALed With A Twist, both available exclusively from Kindle.

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Follow Lady Smut. We’re proudly, endless, fully shameless.

 

Kiersten Hallie Krum writes smart, sharp, and sexy romantic suspense. She is the award-winning author of Wild on the Rocks, and its follow-up, SEALed With a Twist. She is also a past winner of the Emily Award for unpublished novels.

A member of the Romance Writers of America, the New Jersey Romance Writers, and the Long Island Romance Writers, Kiersten has been working in book publishing for more than twenty years in marketing and promotion. At other times in her career, she’s worked back stage for a regional theater, managed advertorials for a commerce newspaper in the World Trade Center, and served as senior editor for a pharmaceutical advertising agency.

Writer, singer, editor, traveler, tequila drinker, and cat herder, Kiersten avoids pen names since keeping her multiple personalities straight is hard enough work. Born and bred in New Jersey (and accent free), Kiersten sings as easily, and as frequently, as she breathes, drives fast with the windows down and the music up, likes to randomly switch accents for kicks and giggles, and would be happy to spend all her money traveling for the rest of her life.

The post Running Full Tilt Into the End of 2017 appeared first on Lady Smut.

Sexy Saturday Round Up

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By Elizabeth Shore

It’s countdown to Thanksgiving here in the U.S. The turkey, the relatives, the shopping – oh my! But before your world explodes into holiday insanity, take a moment for yourself to unwind and enjoy the titillating reads we’ve got in store for you. We’re talking wine condoms, new ways to three ways, and oh yeah. Pioneers. Sexual pioneers. Have fun! xo

From Madeline:

Let’s talk about Ross Poldark’s best “I want to fuck” stare.

No mimbos here! Cover model Scott Nova gets coffee with Rae Latte from I love Books A Latte– Follow her blog!

We’re looking at threesomes a whole new way these days.

Why John Stewart’s “Louis C. K. did that? I had no idea!!!” hand waving doesn’t play after this exchange happened years ago. (BTW, notice how very patient and reasonable the guy asking questions is as he keeps trying to go deeper into the questions.)

American sexual pioneers who aren’t straight, white dudes.

We’ll talk about this more next week:  What if instagram and goodreads had a baby? 

Why would a guy even want to force a woman to watch him masturbate? Why? Why? Why? Here’s a sex therapist with some answers.

From Elizabeth SaFleur:

Forget stoppers, wine condoms are the wave of the future.

Mile high club members reveal best techniques for enjoying the friendly skies.

Having trouble climaxing? There’s an app for that.

The post Sexy Saturday Round Up appeared first on Lady Smut.

Five feminist moments from Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 3

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Last night the most magical time in my life as an erotica editor happened: I received a box of my latest anthology, Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 3. The official print pub date isn’t until December 12, but I order my copies directly from the printer so I can get them as fast as possible. At a time when nearly every day we are hearing accusations of sexual misconduct, abuse or assault by predatory men misusing their power such as Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K., I’m extremely proud to have my name on a book of sexy, powerful, female-driven stories by 21 women authors from around the world.

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Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 3

Though I don’t have a book fetish like the protagonist of “Bibliophile” by Dee Blake, one of those 21 tales, as I paged through one of these beautiful, sexy books, I was enamored and excited. [And by “sexy book,” I don’t just mean what’s inside; there’s something deeply sexy to me about touching a book’s glossy cover, about seeing pristine, hot-off-the-press pages, about admiring the design and care that went into it.] I was also thinking about feminism, and some of the standout feminist moments I’ve found between its pages. While this isn’t marketed as a book of “feminist erotica” and I can’t claim it is one because I don’t know if that’s how the authors would describe their stories, there are some timely and some timeless elements to these tales that I think will appeal to anyone looking for erotica that doesn’t speak down to women, but builds them up. Just as I believe sexual knowledge is power, I also believe that having women see their true desires reflected in erotica is also important. For me, this means that while characters can of course question themselves, their fantasies, and their bodies, they also talk back to a culture that does plenty of questioning, blaming and shaming.

In some cases, this means defying the need to categorize us as straight or gay; it could mean engaging in polyamory or other forms of non-monogamy; in others, it means defying the still-prevalent cultural taboo against mixing sex and money. While I intend my books to be erotic entertainment first and foremost, and selected the stories I think will make the hottest anthology possible, what I see when I read these tales are stories that respect women and our ability to make our own sexual choices. A year from now, Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 4, will have a theme of outsiders and risk, chosen directly because of the election of Donald Trump and my desire to capture diverse, multicultural erotica.

But right now, Volume 3 is here and while, as I said, I can’t speak for the authors as to whether they intended these tales to be “feminist erotica,” nor can I get in the minds of readers as to whether they’ll agree with my assessment, I read these as powerful feminist moments in a book already packed with bold, smart women who go after what they want regardless of what society tells them they “should” want.

1.The naked woman showing off for another woman in a Pussy Grabs Back t-shirt during a sexy photo shoot

In “Watch Me Come Undone,” August McLaughlin’s protagonist Belle recounts a life-changing photo shoot that gives her a lot more than she bargained for. One aspect I especially liked is that she weaved in the power of being an exhibitionist with Belle’s bisexual desires in a seamless way. Here she also gives a nod to the fact that while women don’t want our pussies grabbed without our consent, we are still deeply sexual beings. The key difference is that we get to decide. Here’s part of how that plays out (there’s much more after this initial encounter):

I placed my other hand in my pants, pressing a finger between my dripping, swollen lips. As I added my drenched digits to my mouth, tasting my wetness, I swore I heard Jayden stifle a moan. How hard he must be. How hungry.

Outside the window, I glimpsed a woman walking by. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a PUSSY GRABS BACK tee. The irony. She did a double take, then paused. I looked her in the eyes, encouraging her to keep watching, continuing to suck my fingers on one hand and moving the other to my protruding breasts.

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From “Watching Me Come Undone” by August McLaughlin in BWE of the Year 3

2. Becoming a drag king

What drew me to “Romance and Drag” by Lyla Sage was how it utterly upends the concept of gender roles. Both main characters play with gender and, through that process, get to reclaim aspects of themselves that the culture around them had told them were incorrect or problematic. As Max Notorious, our narrator gets to live out a side of herself that fulfills here. Here’s a little more on her introduction to drag:

Ever since a former fling took me to a drag king show years ago, I’ve been mesmerized by male drag. I’d heard of drag queens before, and I’d seen some actresses and female models dress up as guys in magazine layouts, but this show was a different kind of animal altogether. These kinds served up the entire male illusion, down to the chest hairs and the bulges in their pants.

Coincidentally, when I started doing drag, I realized that I was attracted to women in addition to men. I hooked up with girls who swooned over my boy look. And I knew I was doing drag right when some men mistook me for one of their own. The bi guys in particular were intrigued by me, intrigued that I was the best of both worlds: I looked masculine enough to fulfill their male-loving side, but I also had a vagina for them to fulfill their love of women.

3. Roleplaying as a cheerleader

Kim and Jody, the lesbian couple in “After the Heist” by Aya de Leon (who can also be found in her Justice Hustlers #1 novel Uptown Thief), are thieves by profession. On their own time, they entertain each other and part of that involves roleplaying in a way that defies our cultural stereotypes of cheerleaders as straight girls. We learn later in the story that Jody’s family “had wanted her to be a cheerleader, but she wanted to date one.” Together, they queer this common image and turn it on its head.

In the center of the bed, Kim wore a yellow and green cheerleading uniform. She was posed in a half split, with pom-poms in the air.

“Go Jody! Go Jody!” she cheered.

Jody chuckled and blushed a little. “Oh goodie,” she said. “We’re playing the girl soccer star and the cheerleader.”

“You did great out there tonight,” Kim said. “I thought you deserved some appreciation on the home field.” Kim did a series of high kicks that revealed that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Jody grinned and walked slowly over to the bed, letting her towel drop. She lay down below Kim.

“Gimme a J!” Kim said.

“J,” Jody said.

Kim planted her feet on either side of Jody’s head and spelled out her name, while shaking her hips from side to side.

Jody grinned from beneath her. “I’m loving this half-time show,” she said.

4. Hiring a male sex worker

In making it “Making It Feel Right” by Annabel Joseph, Myra hires a man to dominate her. This act alone is something we’re not used to hearing about from women. But where things get really interesting is that he doesn’t simply arrive and perform his job in a rote way. He listens to her, and in turn, gives her space to discover an aspect of her kinky impulses and desire to dominate (without necessarily being a Domme) that she hadn’t considered before. What I particularly loved about this story is that Myra gets to discover what she truly wants at this specific moment, without labels, without pressure. That her hired guy, Daniel, makes that happen for her in a delicious way is icing on the cake.

Personally, I sometimes think there’s pressure on women to always know exactly what we want in the bedroom and if we don’t, it can feel like we’ve somehow failed to live up to a different kind of cultural ideal: the strong woman. But questioning who we may have thought we were can lead us into sexual pleasures we could never have imagined. Here’s what happens when he asks her why she wants to dominate him:

“I don’t know. I think it’s because you’re so strong and beautiful, and I want to be in control of . . . of . . . ” She waved her arms, delineating all of him, broad shoulders to manly feet. “Of all this strength and beauty, just for a while. The thing is, I don’t know how to do it.”

He refuted that statement with a tilt of his head. “I think you know. You’ve already imagined what you want, so make it happen. You’re paying for me. Use me.”

Use me. Why did those words give her such a thrill? Because you’re not submissive, sweetie, and apparently never have been.

5. Claiming a fetish after childhood abuse

In “Infused Leather” by Dr. J., Angie and Hal bond over a mutual fetish for leather, but their interest goes much deeper than simply the feel of the sensual material. For Angie, as she explains to Hal, after surviving abuse at the hands of her uncle, “When I take control, I win.” Together, the pair use their fetish to transcend their painful past. Writing about a heavy topic like sexual abuse and still crafting an erotic, arousing story is no easy feat, but Dr. J. does it marvelously. Here’s how they decide to take their up to their relationship to a new level after a shoe-shine event:

“Hmph, we’re a pair.”

“Yeah, confirmed little leather freaks.”

For a long moment, we held each other’s gaze, locked in our own space, transported away from everything around us.

“Angie?”

“Yeah, Hal?”

“You want to take it another step?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Sex.”

“Sex?”

“Yeah, let’s put pleasure into something that hurt us in the pst.”

“How?”

“In any way it feels right, like how we just marked our leather for each other when we shoe shined.”

“Do you think it will help us?”

“I can hope, Ang.”

And that’s how our leather sex began.

You may find other moments in the book that strike you as feminist, or you may find none. What I can promise  you is that all of these stories sizzle with sexual tension, heat and realistic desires, whether the women involved are fulfilling outrageous sexual fantasies or falling in love.

Order Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 3 for Kindle, Nook, Google Play, iBooks or Kobo, or in print from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells or find it at your local independent bookstore via IndieBound. For international orders, click here.

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Rachel Kramer Bussel (rachelkramerbussel.com) has edited over 60 anthologies, including Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 1 and 2, Come Again: Sex Toy Erotica, Begging for It, Fast Girls, The Big Book of Orgasms and more. She writes widely about sex, dating, books and pop culture and teaches erotica writing classes around the country and online. Follow her @raquelita on Twitter and find out more about her classes and consulting at eroticawriting101.com. You can follow Rachel on BookBub to get notified about new releases and ebook sales.

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Whiny, Pathetic Losers Who Can’t Get Laid – And Why You Should Know About Them

[image error]By Elizabeth Shore

Remember right around this time last year when many of us were more than ready to kick the hot mess of 2016 to the curb? Don’t blink, but we’re now practically through 2017. While this year has had its share of crap, there’s positive momentum as we’re heading into the home stretch. It’s empowering and showing no signs of slowing down, and I for one am completely pumped. How ’bout you?

Let’s review. After the paralyzing shock of having a misogynistic, narciscisstic man baby elected president had subsided enough for rational thought to emerge, women roared to action. March on Washington 2017 in January saw millions-millions!– participating across the globe. Take that, you disgusting, self-professing, I-grab-women-by-the-p**ssies jerk. It was a good start. And we’re headed toward a strong finish. Women in 2017 decided their crap meter had reached its limit. A few brave souls spoke up, and then more, and then the tsunami wave began. Now it seems like every time we turn around there’s another male celebrity being exposed (as many of these cretins were wont to do toward their victims) as sex offenders. And that’s a very good thing.

Except, not everyone thinks so. Enter, the incels.

Incel is a portmanteau of involuntary and celibate. Incels are frustrated dickheads whose interaction with women has been so horrendously unsuccessful that it’s resulted in them never getting laid. Not surprisingly, they don’t like that. It’s made them angry. Very, very angry. Like any really pissed-off group of people, they come together to vent their frustrations. In the case of the incels, to rue the day they ever met a woman. After much gnashing of teeth and spewing of venom, their unified conclusion to deal with the double X chromosomes also known as woman is to encourage violence against them.

These sad sacks used to gather virtually in the subreddit r/Incels, but recently Reddit announced, as part of their policy to ban content that “encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people,” that they were shutting down the incels’ subreddit. Incels can gather there no more. Good on ya, Reddit! Alas, there are plenty of alternate options. Widespread misogyny on the internet is alive and well. But it’s a start.

Odious incels love to cry like babies at how horribly women have treated them, never for one milligram of a second acknowledging that maybe their creepy disgusting behavior has a little something something to do with whatever shunning they’ve received. The thing about incels is that they’re not just a forum of lonely hearts. Oh, no. In the incels’ simplistic world view, their lack of sex has nothing to do with them and everything to do with women. It’s 100%, entirely, wholly those vile women who’ve caused these men to involuntarily have no sex. Because, I guess, if it weren’t for women they’d be having lots of sex…with women? Who they hate? Or…?

A part of me – while not feeling sorry for these creeps – does try to understand where the anger is coming from. Identifying the motivation behind someone’s behavior can be enormously helpful in trying to address the problem, right? So it’s a pretty safe bet that the numerous rejections from women that incels have received eventually pushed them over to the dark side. No guy wants to be emasculated. It’s the rawest form of humility for a man. So rejection from a woman, the “weaker” sex, can strip down their very maleness and turn them into stark raving, violence-promoting, scary wackos. That’s why you should know about them.

One thing the revolting incels seem to have conveniently forgotten is the shit-ass treatment that women have received from men ever since the f**king beginning of time. Rape and bullying and violence and unfair treatment from men toward women for no other reason than because of their sex. Not because women have “done” something that in their twisted minds justifies shitting on them. No no. Men have simply been brutally horrific toward women because they can be.

What do we do? We stand up and fight. We speak up. We create a movement (hello #metoo). And if we’re romance writers, we still in our minds think up beautiful, wonderful stories about the awesome relationships that can be had between the sexes. We conjur up our dream men. Men who are kind and thoughtful and supportive and generous. Oh, and super scorching hot.

So incels, how about a challenge? Why don’t you start your own romance novels? Why don’t you dream up a woman you’d love to be with and write a story about it. A story in which you’re not rejected and in which, after a few bumps along the way (cause it’s not really a very fun story without a conflict to resolve), you work together, as partners, to form a relationship. You have hot amazing sex. You share laughs. You support each other. And you always end up happy at the end.

This whole girl power thing has worked pretty well for us. I dare you to give it a try. If you’re man enough.

Elizabeth Shore writes contemporary and historical erotic romance novels. Find her on Twitter, Facebook or her website. Her next release will be Hot Bayou Fire, the second of her steamy, sultry series after Hot Bayou Nights set in the Louisiana bayou. Look for it in 2018. Release date announced here as soon as it’s known! 

 

 

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Sexy Saturday Round Up

[image error]By Elizabeth Shore

We’ve got it all for you this weekend, fellow Smutters. Movie previews, kinky authors, and how about those awesome Egyptians?! Before the holiday madness kicks in, kick off your shoes and dig in to these fun reads.

Great news! In addition to being the go-to destination for all your latest porn insights, Porn Hub now has a line of sex toys.

There are lots of things to do in Iceland. What not do? Get married.

Technology lending a hand in the fight against sexual harassment.

A look back at the orgasm machine that revolutionalized sex. Happy Birthday, Real Touch!

What to do when you’re treated like one of the guys – and prefer to be treated like a lady.

Harvard’s anal sex workshop. Yes, that Harvard.

From Madeline:

How Egyptians connected changes in a woman’s pee to her pregnancy loooooong before western medicine did.

You want to go there? Okay, let’s go there! Slutever has an interview with kink author Katherine Gates about deviant desires. (Includes some pictures! Will these turn you on? An *interesting* question!)

A good marriage is based on realistic expectations.  The bad marriage–not so much.

Going to see Thor this weekend? Yeah, me too.  This article says Marvel has a Hela of a villain problem…(see what I did there?) I read it up to the spoilers, but I’m sticking it here so I can go back to it on Monday after I see the movie.

 

 

 

 

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Femdom back in the day: thanks Ingrid Pitt for starting something awesome

Thanksgiving is awesome, family is great, shopping–online or actually in a store–it’s all wonderful stuff, but if you’re like me…sometimes you just need some sexy, over-the-top drama. If you’re fan of classic vampire movies, campy horror, or sexy girls, you have to watch Hammer Film’s, The Karnstein Trilogy.

[image error]This first one, The Vampire Lovers (1970), centers features a lesbian vampire who uses her awesomeness to lure young women to her. Not just any gorgeous vampire, but the courageous Ingrid Pitt, a woman who spent her childhood in a Nazi concentration camp.  It’s based on the 1872 novella Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu. Coolness from back in the day.

If you aren’t a vampire classics fan, there’s another reason to watch this: to see if you think the girl on girl action is hot. Or, in this case, how hot. Maybe ask yourself why. What is it about two woman being sexual together–without a man–that’s so intriguing to mainstream audiences? In the past this scenario was a ‘naughty pleasure,’ something to be enjoyed but not taken seriously. However, in recent years, female-driven erotica and erotic romance has taken off. The popularity of cuckolding and femdom stories is also on the rise.

My thinking is that there are two reasons for this. Social media, the obvious one. Privacy and easy access afford the opportunity to enjoy, or experiment with, whatever intrigues. The second reason is the increase in younger readers. In the past, the typical age of the romance reader was about 30-60. Thanks to the popularity of YA books, and the creation of the new adult genre, younger women are reading romance–and women this age don’t want ‘the usual.’ Young women aren’t looking to reinforce their traditional values, they want to test boundaries. They want adventure. They seek vicarious thrills.

[image error]Readers of Pink Bow, my cuckolding story on Wattpad, are over 70% female and mostly under thirty. A story about a husband who arranges a ménage for his new wife is untraditional, to say the least, but with 31,000 reads, its definitely popular.

Have I gone off topic? No. Not at all. There’s a history for everything and this sexy, forward thinking, if campy, film is part of the history of female driven entertainment. Curious? Want to check these evil-but-gorgeous vampires? Start with the trailer. It isn’t as awesome as it could be, but it gives you an idea of the treat you’ll be in for if you hunt down this 70’s classic

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No matter how you watch it, plan ahead: red wine and dark chocolate will be a must.

In the meantime, shout out in the comments, let us know what you think about femdom, cuckolding, and other female driven erotica or erotic romance. And, follow us at Lady Smut! But wait, there’s more: Subscribe to our saucy monthly newsletter!

Isabelle Drake writes erotica, erotic romance, urban fantasy, and young adult thrillers. Her latest story, BAIT, features a woman who hunts and sells zombies, can be found in the horror anthology Gone With The Dead.

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Sexy Saturday Round Up

[image error]By Elizabeth Shore

A snap is in the air, leaves are changing, and the New York City marathon is happening this weekend. But instead of pounding the pavement, run on over to your computer, tablet, or phone and check out all the cool stuff we’ve rounded up for you this weekend. Now that’s our kind of racing.

What did these 25 women do when people said they couldn’t? They changed the world.

Want to lose weight? Don’t exercise.

Get your groove on with the sexiest songs of all time.

What’s wrong with the sex you’re having? Apparently, quite a lot.

Judge doles out fabulous punishment for douchbag who wrote 144 nasty texts to his ex.

The brutal disconnect between men who rape and why they won’t call themselves rapists.

The horror the horror the horror: Where alt-right lurks on reddit, what kind of slang they use, and how it’s all one big connected horror show.

A new TV show: it’s like The Wire with Prostitutes, but it’s more fun, apparently.

Does honesty turn you on? Then check out this guy:

Are you “selective” or “picky” when it comes to men?

 

 

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Don’t Call Me Darlin’

By Alexa Day

Darlin’.

It’s a popular term of endearment in Romancelandia.

I hate it.

The word darlin’ inspires in me the same disgust many people experience upon hearing the word moist. If I had to choose between the two of them (and please don’t make me do that), I might actually choose moist. I hate darlin’ just that much.

I’m not totally against pet names and such. Honey and sweetheart always sound condescending to me; perhaps this new Age of Sarcasm has sucked the sugar out of them. Speaking of which, I could be sold on Sugar, under the right conditions. I’d pick babe instead of baby. I like the idea of the secret nicknames that my special friend(s) and I might choose for each other. Hell, I wrote a short story in which the cowboy hero called the birthday girl Sugar Tits. Perhaps a bit coarse for some people’s tastes, but the heroine didn’t mind it one little bit.

Sugar Tits, coming from the right mouth with the right intent, would sound like music. Hot, sexy music. The kind a woman tells stories about later. Darlin’ lacks that potential.

But why?

Maybe it’s the newish trend of assigning cutesy-boo nicknames to things that once bore more straightforward nomenclature. Ghosting and submarining, for example, refer to specific classes of behavior that we used to call fuckwittage, or simply being an ass, back in my day. (For those unfamiliar, ghosting is when someone disappears in the middle of an established pattern of communication, forming in the early stages of courtship. Submarining is when the ghost suddenly reappears as if he had not been an ass in the first place.) I guess a single girl is more likely to read advice about how to handle submarining than she is to seek insight about what to do when a man is being an ass. No one wants to feel responsible for communicating with an ass. Still, calling it submarining or ghosting or whatever makes this fuckwittage sound like normal, acceptable behavior.

Darlin’ strikes a nearby nerve. It sounds like baby talk to me. Something women think men say. Something a little phony. The kind of thing a man calls a woman when he doesn’t remember her name. My knee-jerk reaction upon reading it is to wonder what led this man to call this woman darlin’. Where did he hear it? Isn’t it straight out of country songs and black-and-white movies?

As I was taking my notes for this part of the post, I thought of my esteemed colleague, award-winning author Kiersten Hallie Krum. In my mind’s eye, I could see her smiling and shaking her head. In my mind’s eye, Kiersten called bullshit.

If Jason Isaacs called you darlin’ just one time, Kiersten said, I bet you would abandon this line of complaints forever.

She’s not wrong. Two weeks ago, I did a giddy little dance while throwing six dollars plus a generous tip at my television. (That’ll make more sense if you click here.)

There’s also a rumor that looking directly into Jason’s eyes renders one susceptible to suggestion. So I suppose that if we were looking right at each other, I would not be inclined to make much fuss over darlin’. I’d prefer Sugar Tits, but it should be noted that no one has asked about my preferences in that regard, least of all Jason himself.

This is an exceptional case, though. It matters, but it doesn’t alter the general rule.

Don’t call me darlin’. Or Sugar Tits, just to be safe. Maybe avoid honey and sweetheart. The sound of my own name, on a familiar tongue, is endearing enough.

For now.

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Curious about that Sugar Tits story? Well, signing up for my newsletter is the only way to learn how a woman goes looking for a mechanical bull and ends up finding a hot cowboy. Click here for that win-win story and the fast track to news about my new releases, free reads, and other exclusive content. See you there, darlin’.

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Halloween With The Mother

by Kiersten Hallie Krum

Halloween was one of The Mother’s favorite holidays, which, on the surface, was slightly incongruous. But her beloved grandmother’s birthday was on Halloween, and her death marked one of my mother’s biggest life losses. So to honor her Gran, The Mother decorated our house with somewhat antique Halloween decorations. Every year, the same spiders and witches and ghouls on our windows, never anything truly scary and always with a bit of fun to celebrate the season, and, by extension, her beloved Gran.

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She put out buckets of candy on the front porch if we weren’t going to be present for trick-or-treaters, and, when the razor blades started to show up in candy bars (this was the 80s), was one of the few (if not only) mom in our neighborhood to switch to pencils or other non-edible items as a Halloween giveaway (something that didn’t make me popular in grade school, but then, nothing did).

Our youth pastor’s birthday was also on Halloween; one year, The Mother got Big Sis and I up on Halloween at the crack of ever-lovin’ dawn to go fill his church office with balloons before he got there. We were late for school; she wrote us notes. We had a blast. Even after she moved in with me and then when her health derailed and failed, there were always pumpkins and window decorations, even a few wonky gourds. One night, I came home from the day job to find a witch had slammed into my front door–face first.

Her love of Halloween is one of the many things I neglected to share about The Mother when I gave the eulogy in January at her celebration service. I’d planned to write it out rather than do my usual pantser protocol, but I wound up instead staying up till 4 AM the night before, scanning old photos to put into a slide show (that never happened because of a technical miscommunication) while scribbling down notes on a cue card as scattered thoughts about her life came to me.

So pants it, I did.

Grief is a motherfucker that screws with you left, right, and center, and one of the many ways it’s dicked with me over the last nine or so months is the regret I feel when I think of something long forgotten about The Mother–usually while driving or showering or, (awkwardly), while sitting across from my OKCupid date–now that I’ve lost the designated platform on which to share it. I expect there will be years of these moments when something 20 years old or more that I learned from her, or because of her, will come to me, sparking the never-far-from-reach grief back into the foreground of my life.

Halloween is tomorrow and while my personal appreciation for the event has ebbed and flowed over the years (I don’t find it entertaining to be scared, but I do like to wear costumes), I thought this an appropriate time to share a few of the things The Mother taught me that I failed to share back then. This will not be everything–there is likely not enough bandwidth in the world for that. But it’s a taste of who she was and why I loved her madly. Thank you in advance, lovely Lady Smutters, for this indulgence.

Always drive a block ahead. That way, you can see what you’re headed toward. I still do to this day, even if it’s at 80 mph.

Know your material and you cannot fail. As a young woman, The Mother played professional accordion. She hated it; she wanted to play the piano, but my grandfather told her they couldn’t afford a piano, so accordion it was. She’d happily left it behind by the time I came along, but would pick up piano lessons here and there until her arthritis or her financials made it impossible. Once, she forgot her music and played an entire gig completely from memory.

The sign of a true professional is in their recovery. The Mother was at nearly every voice lesson I took. She actively tried not to listen to my lessons because she didn’t want the instructor to feel as though two people were learning for the price of one. My voice teachers never saw it that way, but that was The Mother. I made many mistakes when I performed, I can’t think of any performance where something didn’t go wrong, but she had long ago taught me that professionalism isn’t in being flawless, it’s in recovering and carrying on to an excellent finish no matter what.

Put your clothes out the day before an event. This way, you can see if you need stockings/pantyhose and get to the store before Sunday morning. This was a a lesson almost always related to being ready for church on Sunday morning. I rarely was, ready that is, and the few times I was solely happened because I followed The Mother’s instructions and laid my clothes out the night before. She’d be tickled, no doubt, to know I now mentally prep my day job wardrobe, sometimes even planning multiple days ahead at once. The Mother was big on “being prepared” and often laid us down for camp and whatnot with preventative items no one else would think of (but which are now fairly commonplace), which is probably why in my purse now there are band aids, wet wipes, antiseptic gel, eye drops, eyeglass repair kit (even though I wear my contacts every day), wallet, checkbook, protein bar, backup charger for my mobile, compact, business cards (in a business card holder, natch), 14,000 lipsticks, three pairs of sunglasses (in case one or the other breaks), breath mints, and a small hairbrush. I carry a big purse. Sue me.

Carry condoms. Don’t rely on the guy; protect yourself. If you’re not too embarrassed to have sex, you can’t be too embarrassed to buy your own condoms. The Mother was an RN and spoke frankly and naturally about sex to her two (mortified) teenage daughters. Mortified or not, we grew up with a healthy “yeah, and?” attitude about where we came from and what was happening to us through puberty. Though not one to go so far as actually hand out condoms to her teenage daughters, when I went to the senior prom as a junior in high school, The Mother wrote me this beautiful, emotional note about not giving my virginity away, but to be sure I was making the choice to end it, if that’s what I decided. There was no shame or recrimination in her words, no talk of morality or religion, merely the recognition of opportunity and the desire to be sure her daughter was as prepared for such an event as she could make her–and above all know she was loved no matter what decision she made. Though I didn’t read the note until the next morning, she had nothing to worry about. She’d taught me well enough already.

Be proud of your beliefs, but always, *always*, respect others who believe differently. I grew up in a community with a predominantly Jewish population. Most families who weren’t Jewish were Catholic. My family was (is) evangelical fundamentalists. Around Easter when I was in 5th or 6th grade, it became trendy in evangelical churches to have a “Birthday Party for Jesus!”. I don’t know why this was around Easter and not Christmas, but whatever. Maybe I remember it wrong. What I don’t remember wrong is that The Mother called each and every Jewish family in my class to explain that their lack of an invitation to this party was out of respect for their beliefs and the desire not to insult them with such an invitation that they would have to refuse as the party was in direct opposition to Jewish teachings. She didn’t want the kids to feel excluded or rejected, but she also didn’t want to put their parents in an untenable situation. I don’t remember the conversation that led to me being made aware of this, but I remember the complete “of course I did” attitude with which she told me. It was the natural, respectful, and appropriate thing to do. So she did it. That too was The Mother.

Stand up for what’s right, even when your kid might hate you for it. Sophomore year of high school, I delayed a term paper on Edgar Allen Poe for months. When I was finally given a firm deadline, I wrote the thing in a Coco-Cola infused rush that had my 15-year-old self bouncing off the walls at 2 AM. I got an A on the paper; the teacher said it was one of the best things he’d ever read from a student. The Mother was aghast; she thought this rewarding of my procrastination and late-night cramming was not teaching me how to plan for adult life. She told my teacher and principal this when she dragged me into the principal’s office to demand my grade be lowered. Yes, lowered. The principal, already well aware of the futility of opposing The Mother when she was in a state–and right–order the (amused) teacher to lower my grade. I got an A-.

Play to your strengths, but never sell yourself short. She always pushed us forward, even, no, especially when we didn’t want to move. She liked to tell the story of how I screamed at her all the way up Millburn Ave after my first English honors class, yelling how it was not for me and she had to get me out of that level because the kids in that class used words like “eloquent” and “moving” to describe a poem when all I could come up with was “I liked it”. (Incidentally, this was the same class in which I wrote the Poe term paper six months later.) She insisted I stay, and she was right to do so. She also taught me to recognize when all the eloquent and movings of the world are simply complete bullshit. Throughout the rest of my life, the phrase “eloquent and moving” was one we used to recognize when it was all just bullshit and I needed to press on.

The Mother was a great cook, but a self-confessed crap baker, creative, but completely incapable of sewing anything. She once, under protest and due to extreme best-friend pressure, helped with the children’s Christmas pageant costumes; hers was the only donkey with crooked ears. Her creativity shined in decoration and hospitality. She was the Hospitality Coordinator for our church for many years, a full-time job on its own, and put on extensive missions’ banquets for hundreds of people, creative Superbowl parties to be enjoyed around evening service, somber funerals, and monthly pastoral breakfasts for some of the leading evangelical figures of our era. Big or small, each event under her tenure featured The Mother’s special flare.

She was uncomfortable in front of people, but determined to be heard. Little phased or cowed her. The Mother was one of the few women in our church of her generation to have a full-time job and not be a stay-at-home mom once Big Sis and I were full-time grade school students, and boy, did she catch flack about that. She loved the ocean but never learned to swim. She could (and did!) sit for hours on the rocks on Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine and watch the tide go in and out. She loved antique stores and at one time collected silver spoons and antique books. She was terrified of fire and of the dark, almost irrationally so. She adored music, especially classical and jazz, and took particular pleasure in complex and unusual arrangements. About ten years ago, I got her tickets to see Itzhak Perlman at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. Her joy was too great for words. When they saw her alone with her walker (I could only afford the one ticket, so I took her in and turned her over to a docent charged with her care), the staff upgraded her to an empty seat in a box right above the stage from where she was able to see Perlman’s hands move on the strings of his violin. He played the entire concert from memory, choosing pieces at random that sent his pianist scrambling through pages, while Perlman merely tuned up and dredged the notes from whichever memory vault in which they’d been stored; The Mother was gobsmacked. When she emerged from the concert, she was bubbling over with effervescent glee. A life-long dream realized. The ticket hangs on her bedroom wall to this day.

We once went to a piano recital at the Steinway store; I made sure to get us seats where she’d be able to see the pianist’s hands. She didn’t only want to hear the music, she needed to see the excellence with which it was crafted. She thought herself Salieri to everyone else’s Mozart, able to recognize the genius but not produce it herself. She was wrong; she sang in church choirs her whole life until her steroid breathing treatments stole her voice. She often said her biggest fear was of losing her mind and her voice; she felt those were the only things of her worth mentioning. She was humble and gracious, truly appreciative for what people gave and shared with her, honored to be the one with whom they did. She was also demanding and picky, sometimes hard to please because of both, even as she took genuine joy and pleasure in the smallest and simplest of things Big Sis and I did or gave her. We are lucky women to know how proud she was of us and how much we were loved because she told us every day. Yet she could also be judgmental about how things should be. A properly complex and challenging lady.

Remember to be silly and laugh at life. Our family vacations were spent in the Pocono Mountains and usually involved my father, bless him, making an extra trip up in our VW Rabbit with luggage and supplies. Back then, the closest supermarket was a 45-minute drive away, so we brought everything in with us. One year, after we’d arrived and were all unpacking, we heard The Mother laughing hysterically from her bedroom. She’d packed every single pair of shoes she owned…and not a single pair of underpants. Every time she pulled out a new pair of shoes from another bag, she started laughing all over again, until she and I and Big Sis were sprawled across the bed giggling our asses off.

She once ran out of the house for work in a flurry, coat on, briefcase in hand, turned around to lock the front door, looked down…and realized she’d completely forgotten to put on her skirt. She was standing there on the front stoop in her full suit and overcoat and her half slip. While working for a healthcare review company (a job she loathed, as it made patient care into a numbers game), The Mother did a short stint with nail extensions. She didn’t even make it home before the cackling began–she’d stuck the extension into the seat-belt holder. Then she couldn’t figure out how to pick her nose with the extensions on. The list went on and on. She once, incensed by her job, drank an unusual two glasses of wine on an empty stomach, and only afterwards remembered she and my father had an event that night at church. We wound up keeping a book to record the silliness–which we called “The Book”–and the phrase “put it in The Book!” became regular lexicon for our family.

There’s no reason to be afraid of old people. The Mother worked in nursing homes. She was a gerontologist with a true heart for the elderly. From a young age, she had Big Sis and I visit her at the nursing home where she worked. She introduced us around and we even “adopted” a woman named Gladys as our honorary grandmother. Gladys went on to get her high school diploma at the age of 90 and we were there for her graduation. I don’t remember how or when Gladys died, but I remember how she lived and what she accomplished no matter her age. That too was The Mother.

Choose your signature scent. The Mother always smelled good. Chanel No 5 and Red and Shalimar and White Linen. These were the scents that would waft over me when she bent over my bed to kiss me goodbye before she left for work. She once told me a story of being at a bar when she was in nursing school. A guy she was dating at the time was there with another girl, but he had yet to notice The Mother was also there, and not so very far away either. It wasn’t too long though before she heard him say, “I smell Shalimaaaarie! I didn’t know you were here!”

Always leave the dance with the man who brought you. The Mother dated. She was a size six and 5’7″ in the 60s with hazel eyes and red/brown hair, so yeah, she was a hot ticket. At one point, she dated five guys at the same time who all had names that started with “D”. But when there were three guys waiting for her at the hospital front desk, she went out the back door with my father.

Goodbye is not forever. When I was fourteen and had to have spinal tumors removed, life-threatening tumors that were wrapped around my abdominal aorta, The Mother, the RN, had to let me go into the operating room alone to face death and maybe conquer it. (Spoiler alert: I did.) She couldn’t and didn’t know whether she would again see me alive. But she had faith that she would see me soon one way or the other–either in this life or in eternity. And so the last thing she said to me before they wheeled me away was “see you soon” trusting that indeed, she would.  After that life-changing event, whenever we took leave of one another, for the day, for a month, for however long we’d be apart, we would say “see you soon”, sure that we indeed would do just that, one way or the other.

When I took my leave from her after her passing, my final words to her were “see you soon”.

That too, was The Mother.

 

Kiersten Hallie Krum writes smart, sharp, and sexy romantic suspense. She is the award-winning author of Wild on the Rocks, and its follow-up, SEALed With a Twist. She is also a past winner of the Emily Award for unpublished novels.

A member of the Romance Writers of America, the New Jersey Romance Writers, and the Long Island Romance Writers, Kiersten has been working in book publishing for more than twenty years in marketing and promotion. At other times in her career, she’s worked back stage for a regional theater, managed advertorials for a commerce newspaper in the World Trade Center, and served as senior editor for a pharmaceutical advertising agency.

Writer, singer, editor, traveler, tequila drinker, and cat herder, Kiersten avoids pen names since keeping her multiple personalities straight is hard enough work. Born and bred in New Jersey (and accent free), Kiersten sings as easily, and as frequently, as she breathes, drives fast with the windows down and the music up, likes to randomly switch accents for kicks and giggles, and would be happy to spend all her money traveling for the rest of her life.

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