Liz Everly's Blog, page 95
March 9, 2015
My Favorite Guilty Blog Pleasures
By Liz Everly
Photo by Dollen.
One of my guilty pleasures is surfing the web. I am of an age where I’m still enamored with the fact that I have all of this information at my fingertips. I find it either maddening or inspiring much of the time—so I tend to go back to some favorite blogs, especially on long winter days when my family is home from school and work. I adore them, but I can only take so much family time and must sneak away for mama-time.
And you all know by now that I have a streak of the naughty in me. I thought I’d share some of my favorite grown-up blogs with you. This is not like our weekly “Sexy Saturday Round-Up” feature because our weekly feature is more news-oriented, you know, the latest interesting blog posts we find. This is more like my own personal tried and true list.
Easily Aroused: Erotic Fiction by an oversexed Englishman I’ve been a big fan of EA’s for a long time. (He goes by EA, very mysterious and intriguing. ) Once you start looking, there’s a lot of blogs that offer free erotic short stores. None of them are as good as this one. And this man is quite up my own personal naughty alley.
Remittance Girl Erotic Fiction I find this site and this writer intriguing. I enjoy most of her stories. Some of them are a bit too edgy for me. But wow, I keep coming back because the writing is good. It’s also, um, quite educational for me.
On a WAY different and more serious track, yet it’s absolutely on of my favorite blogs is The Honest Courtesan. This woman writes from experience and gives great information on being a sex worker. Stuff that will shift your paradigm about sex workers and give you much to think about. Take your time and read through the archives. You won’t be sorry.
On yet another track, I love Brain Pickings. Have you read it? No, it’s not necessarily a sexy site, but it does offer some great posts about sex sometimes. Once again, the writing on this site pulls me in and I love how in-depth some of the posts get. Here’s one of the sexy posts I really liked: http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/13/the-origins-of-sex-dabhoiwala/
And right now my favorite romance-writer blog (other than Lady Smut, of course) is Wonk-o-Mance. I love the voice, the diversity, and the wonkyness. (Is that a word? I don’t care. It’s perfect.) They seem to have a different take on a lot of all-things-romance. I find the blog thought-provoking and enjoyable.
So those are my favorite blogs that you probably don’t want your kids to see you reading. If you can find some time and hide away from them, (or whoever else is lurking in your house), I promise my go-to escape blogs will do a better job of taking you away than you might imagine. (Lady Smut can do that for you, too. Don’t forget to subscribe.)
Do you have any favorite blogs that you visit? Please share!
In the mean time, the first book in my SAFFRON NIGHTS series is free on Amazon. Scoop it up now– I’ve no idea how much longer this promotion will last.
Accent ist gut
by Kiersten Hallie Krum
This week, I read a book by Cara McKenna called Her Best Laid Plans in which a mid-20s woman, Jamie, goes to Ireland for vacation after a bad breakup and meets and falls for hot Irish bartender, Connor. Sounds like a perfect vacation to me. It’s a good, fun, sexy read and not only because I’ve been to several of the places she visited (horseback riding on The Dingle FTW!).
An Irish accent adds a lyrical lilt to the English language and is, in my experience, something better captured as an essence rather than recreated verbatim by reforming words. It dances like music on top of the vowels and consonants. Throughout Her Best Laid Plans, McKenna uses a light hand to highlight these inflections in Connor’s language. Occasionally, Jamie repeats a word or two in her head with an exaggerated spelling as she enjoys the verbal music. I found myself sounding them out with her, often with an entertained smile on my face as I heard a male Irish-accented voice in my ear. Dayam, but I love me a man with an accent.
It’s become cliche now to say that. Like that subplot in Love Actually where Colin Frissell goes to the American Midwest to get laid because he knows, dorky looking as he may be, American women will find his British accent hotter than Atlanta on fire. It’s funny because it’s true. But why?
None of us think we have an accent but likely all of us do. I’d swear up and down that I don’t sport a Jersey accent (unless I want to or am trying to make a point) but one of my college roommates liked to needle me for the particular “aw” flavor I add to the word “office.” Whether regional dialect or foreign influence, we all mark where we come from by how we speak–and sometimes how we don’t speak.
And yet, having a certain kind of accent ups the hotness factor almost as much as one of the wrong kinds of accents can lower it. Serve up some Tom Hiddleston reading poetry or sprouting Shakespeare and I’m gonna need a moment in my bunk.
Or how ’bout Ioan Gruffudd performing 13th century poetry live? Ya huh. It’s like that.
Why do women (and men, I’m sure) find foreign accents so attractive? A quick Google search reveals a surprising lack of any serious information on the subject, outside of some forum discussions and their adorable overall lack of veracity. The idea that a man (or woman, but mostly men) is made more attractive with an accent is just nearly universally accepted. There’s even a dating site designed to hook you up with a partner who sports the accent of your choice. An accent can up the attractiveness quotient of a man by at least 40% and that’s before adding tequila to the equation. Think of a man talking dirty in bed with you and crank it higher imagining that voice tinged with an accent. Hoo. Shah.
Yeah, he’s a bit of a woolly mammoth here, but can’t you just hear his brogue growl “is that how you want it now, lass?”
Is it the intrigue of the unfamiliar, the lure of something different? As Americans, we’re kind of conditioned, by Hollywood or an Old World remnant not quite washed out of our DNA by the Revolution, to believe men with accents, particularly that sophisticated, upper class Oxbridge British accent, are automatically more intelligent and cultured than their American counterparts. Welshmen have the fast patter with a particular way of hitting soft on hard consonants that lift the meaning of the most mundane items. Irish and Scottish men are charming and suave, seducing women as much with their voices as anything else.
Step outside of the UK and add a more continental flair with a Spanish or Frenchman or the lush seduction of an Italian accent. This CNN list of the world’s 13 most favorite accents includes Nigerian, Thai, and Argentine. There’s also this list of the top 10 sexiest accents in the world, a list first name checked by our own Elizabeth Shore way back in April of 2014. People dig the accents and I may not know why, but I’m right there with ‘em.
Do accents turn you on? Do you have a favorite? Does it really matter?
Follow Lady Smut. We’re internationally accredited for all accents.
March 7, 2015
Size Does Matter. Doesn’t It?
Of course he’s happy to see you, you perverts. Look at the size of that … smile.
By Alexa Day
The big news in science this week? It’s all about cold, hard facts.
Actually, in this case, we’re probably talking about hot, hard facts.
Thanks to science, we now know that the average erect penis size is a little over five inches long. Average erect girth runs about 4.6 inches. These numbers come from a gathering of about 20 studies, which examined more than 15,000 penises. The author of the study, quoted here in Men’s Journal, says there’s nothing terribly special about the study. “It’s a very simple study,” he said.
Oh, really? Fifteen thousand dicks, finally measured in one place, is no big deal? Maybe this has just been a slow news week. Maybe the weather has people trapped indoors, contemplating the deep questions about whether their bodies are normal. (I tend to think of this as a warm weather question, but hey, your kink is okay.) But whatever the reason, the news has been all over the definitive answer to the question of normal dick size. Sure, I expected to see coverage from GQ and Cosmopolitan and even CNN, but NPR passed along this very thorough story about the study, too. Not that NPR isn’t totally sexalicious. The judgmental trollop who lives in my head is just surprised, that’s all.
I don’t mean to minimize (heyo?) the importance of establishing an average dick size. You don’t have to be an expert to know that lots of men are a little wound up over the question of how big they are, in comparison to other men at large (heyo!) and the rivals they set up in their own minds. I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear that plenty of men have wondered at one point or another whether they were bigger than Tom Brady or Shane Diesel or that guy at the gym.
My question, though, is not about why science isn’t addressing women’s body image issues in the same way. (I think I know why; I’m just not getting into it.) I’m not even going to ask why science is so involved in solving the great mystery of average dick size.
Here’s my question: Do women care what the average dick size is? Beyond idle curiosity, have we ever really cared what’s average?
When we’re choosing our partners, even the casual ones, we have no way of knowing how big they are. (The study debunks all the myths about the hand-foot-cock correlation.) Once that choice is made, well, we’re not likely to unmake it because of size. I would never tell you that size doesn’t matter — it definitely does — but it doesn’t matter as much as I think guys believe it matters. Technique matters more. Confidence matters more. Personality matters more. All the other little individual preferences we bring to bed matter more.
Even when we’re reading about a new book boyfriend (or even a book one night stand), are we paying lots of attention to how well endowed he is? Maybe I’m just not noticing, but aside from mentioning that he’s big enough, are authors dwelling on how big a man’s cock is any more than we focus on the rest of his body? Who has time to be hung up on size when there are so many other things to fantasize about?
Ultimately, I guess I’m happy to know what the average penis size is, just for the sake of knowing. I’m not sure it changes my day-to-day life all that much, but good for science for handling this weighty issue!
How much does size matter to you, though? You know you can tell all right down there in the comments. It’s for science.
And follow Lady Smut while you’re at it. We’ve got it and we know how to use it.
March 6, 2015
Sexy Saturday Round-Up
By Liz Everly and the Lady Smut Bloggers
Hello, Sexy! Welcome to your Saturday reading list. This week, we’ve got a little of this and a little of THAT. Will redheads eventually take over? Do sex workers enjoy their work? What does an ex-dominatrix really think of FSOG? Read on, my friends.
From Liz:
The Harris List of Convent Ladies, a Georgian guide to Sex Workers.
Hygiene and hot sex in the historical romance novel.
Study finds that sex workers enjoy their work.
From Elizabeth:
Stressed out? Anxious? Check out these four tips to help cope that actually make sense.
Think only the skinny girls get the glamorous photo shoots? Check out this body-positive photo gallery for bodies not normally celebrated.
Oh dear. For many of us in the U.S., we lose another damn hour of sleep on Saturday night. Here are ways to cope with springing forward.
An ex-dominatrix reviews 50 Shades.
You know you love it when it happens, but what actually occurs biologically during a female orgasm? Here’s what you need to know.
From Madeline:
So you say you’re a crazy cat lady? Hmmm. Here’s a test just to make sure.
Will you have a place in the new world order when The Redheads Eventually Take Over?
The end of safer prostitution? The End of Redbook.
Stay Hungry,
Liz
Lady Vice: The Historical Scandal Behind Wendy La Capra’s Debut Novel
Seymour Dorothy Flemming achieved infamy in history by confessing to her numerous lovers in a court of law in order to save her lover from being stripped of his fortune due to a law suit brought by her husband.
WELCOME TO FRIDAY ROULETTE where a variety of fabulous authors post on range of excellent LadySmut-worthy topics.
Today we welcome historical romance author Wendy La Capra. Wendy is here to share with us the infamous inspiration behind her debut novel Lady%20Vice (Entangled Scandalous)
LADY VICE.
A few years back I purchased a non-fiction book by Hallie Rubenhold called LADY WORSELY’S WHIM (later released in the USA as THE LADY IN RED). The book told the fascinating and heartbreaking story of a young woman named (oddly enough) Seymour Fleming, later Lady Worsley, who marriage to Sir Richard Worsley in the 18th century ended in scandal and divorce.
The characters are vividly rendered, and although Lady Worsley was often her own worst enemy, I found myself in sympathy with this strong-willed, highly sexual woman whose loveless marriage brought out the worst in her husband and in herself.
Seymour Dorothy Fleming inherited a fortune in land and rent that was generously augmented by her step-father at the time of her marriage. At one point she was worth 52,000 pounds (approximately 66 million today). Her prospects on the marriage mart were exceptional, but this strong-willed social butterfly chose for her husband a careful, mathematical loner primary concerned with securing the good opinion of others. They were not equal in temperament, outlook, hopes, interests or education.
In the early years of their marriage, she became a leader of high-fashion. So elevated was she in popularity, she was fictionalized by the playwright Sheridan in his hit SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. But even as she rose in popularity, she complained she felt slighted by her husband, implying he’d left her a virgin until three months after their marriage.
Her growing sense of alienation led to mischievous behavior directed at the symbols of her husband’s interests–one of them being the military. She and two friends stole three cart-horses and went on a three day rampage around the outskirts of Leeds. The young ladies used hot pokers to break into an inn housing militia and then proceeding to set uniforms on fire. Inn innkeeper suggested the ladies urinated on the fire to put it out.
Even after this incident, Sir Richard did not figure out pissing off his wife was unwise. Things between the two seemed to settle a bit until, at the encouragement of Sir Richard, Lady Worsley took a lover. Relieved from his wife’s social and sensual needs, he gladly invited her lover, George Bisset, to live with them in Maidstone.
Unfortunately, impetuous Seymour could not, as Jane Austen said of Marianne, love by halves, and she eventually ran away with her lover, hoping for a divorce that would free her to marry.
An actual “here’s how the crime happened” illustration from the time. This shows Lady Worsley in the bathhouse just before her husband assists her would-be lover to spy on Seymour while she’s undressing.
Sir Richard was not cooperative. He sued Bisset for thousands of pounds, claiming in an 18th century tort lawsuit called a Criminal Conversation that Bisset had despoiled his wife. Proving her adultery was easy. Among other things, the housekeeper at the inn where the eloping couple stayed testified to seeing them in bed “at one o’clock in the afternoon.” *gasp*
Yet Seymour’s hatred of her husband ran as deep as her desire to protect her lover from financial harm. In a surprising turn, she wrote to the court, suggesting all her past lovers and a doctor who had treated her venereal disease come and testify. The defense was happy to fulfill her wishes and claimed her husband had not only acquiesced to her lovers, but had encouraged her behavior.
In one particularly vivid story, a maid recalled how Sir Richard hoisted Bisset up to stand on his shoulders so Bisset could get a glimpse of a naked Seymour in the bath-house. It was also implied in the testimony that Sir Richard liked to watch his wife with her lovers through the keyhole in her door. In the end, the court conceded that Bisset was guilty and awarded Sir Richard one shilling.
Following the trial, Lady Worsely refused to ‘go gently’ into exile. Instead, she defied polite society with her lover at balls and masquerades and used the press to taunt her former husband. She reveled in her place with the demimonde, reported holding conversations on the unfairness of marriage with her fallen sisters.
However, her husband had absolute control over her fortune, and when she was forced by debt to flee to France, Bisset’s affection could not withstand a lack of financial resources and the lovers parted. Her time in France started out as a reprieve but turned turbulent because of political unrest and may have included imprisonment during the terror. When she returned to London in 1797, she was more subdued. In probably the only bright point in her remaining life, she outlived Sir Richard.
Following his death, her fortune was restored and she married a Swiss musician more than twenty years her junior.
Lady Vice (Entangled Scandalous)
Click to buy.
The plight of a woman trapped in a marriage to a husband who not only did not love her, but appeared to be incapable of human connection and true affection touched me deeply and was the inspiration for my debut novel Lady%20Vice (Entangled Scandalous)LADY VICE.
The concept of fallen women banding together to survive forms the basis of this series titled THE FURIES. As it turns out, I am not the only one who was struck by the story. This year, the BBC is slated to release a BBC Drama starring Natalie Dormer titled LADY IN RED.
Thank you Wendy! Check out her novel Lady%20Vice (Entangled Scandalous)LADY VICE. Here’s a blurb:
Not every lady plays by the rules.
Lady Lavinia Vaile knows what happens to a woman who puts her faith in society. For her, it was a disastrous marriage to a depraved man-one she threatened to shoot when she left him. Now Lavinia lives outside of society’s strict conventions, hosting private gambling parties. It’s only when her husband is shot dead that Lavinia finds herself in terrible danger…
A former judge in India’s high court, Maximilian Harrison will do anything he can to help Lavinia. In the darkest of times, he held on to thoughts of her and the love they once shared. Now he risks his own position in society―along with his ambitions―in order to clear her name. Yet as desire reignites between them, Lavinia remains caught up in secrets and shame. Her only salvation is to do the unthinkable…and trust in both Maximilian and love.
Find out more about Wendy La Capra by visiting her website HERE.
Meanwhile, follow us at LadySmut.com where we’ll bring you all the sexy scandal that’s fit to print.
March 5, 2015
Katy Perry Fist Pump
by Madeline Iva
We’ve been having a Katy Perry moment at our house. We’ve watch her video “Dark Horse” I don’t know how many times a day. Should I be embarrassed by this? I don’t think so.
I’m trying to think back to when I became aware of Katy Perry. I know I saw her in magazines first and because for a long time I thought of her as ‘that woman who wears the colorful wigs’. I know that I was aware of the song “I Kissed a Girl” at some point in my life, but it wasn’t until recently that I became aware that it was a Katy Perry song. So that wasn’t it.
I think it had to be when I started hearing a lot of her songs on “The Voice”. I’m such a Voice-whore, people. You have no idea. Show me a TV moment where someone who’s working hard on their dream suddenly gets a helping hand upward and I’ll show you me on my couch, crying.
Is Katy sad because she’s an extraterrestrial or because she’s working with Kanye?
At some point this whack “lost in the 80’s” duet performed “E.T.” on The Voice. I was like “Man that song is hella cool, I’m gonna look E.T. up on You Tube and see who first performed that awesome sh**.”
*That* was when I became aware of Katy Perry. There she was spinning around in space with all this bat-sh** weirdness going on. That Kanye was there spinning with her as a part of the duet was just another part of the whole Big Crazy. Well, dear reader, I loved it.
That lead me directly to her “Wide Awake” video–and how could any true-blue fan of Labyrinth not love *that* video? but I also got some Lady Gaga and other artists (David Guetta? Who’s David Guetta?) mixed around in that whole learning curve. (Now, Sia I know–because she was on The Voice.)
So how did I find out about “Dark Horse”? Can’t remember. THIS is the song that not only rocks my world, but I just can’t get over how awesome the video is as well. I like her song “Roar” a lot, and “This is How We Do” is quite catchy. But for me “Dark Horse” is IT. The lyrics are awesome, yet the video is a whole other level of amaze-balls, cray-cray, over-the-top imaginative bliss.
My “Katy Perry Moment” epiphany started when I began thinking about how positive her message is, and how she’s much stranger and more layered that I would have thought back when she was “that woman wearing all the colorful wigs.”
And she is strange. Did you know she was raised in a poor yet super-uper-duper religious family? Pentecostal, people. I don’t know what that signifies to you all in the mid-west or the West Coast, but here in the south the Pentecostals are those folks who sometimes like to handle the poisonous snakes during a religious service. As one friend put it: Pentecostal people are enthusiastically whack about Christ.
Katy Perry does not look like what she is. She looks like she came from some happy upper-middle class background where she was super-popular in high school. She got her GED from some crap-tastic high school in California and lit out for a musical career–get this–a religious musical career. Finally turning to mainstream pop, it was one long struggle through the swampy backwaters of the “I signed with a record company but then they dropped me” jungle, where she managed at last to get some true believer record execs on her side. They hooked her up with a crazy-good song writer and that is when “I Kissed A Girl” got written. The rest was a hard climb upwards to stardom.
The last thing I want to note about Kate Perry as you watch this video is she has a woman’s body. It’s not a girl’s body, and it’s not a crazy sexy body exactly. It’s an amazon body. “She’s got amazing thighs,” DH points out. That is a challenge to navigate in today’s pop culture.
And she’s a leetle bit awkward in that athletic bod of hers. Frankly, if you watch her in other videos you can see that she’s most comfortable with being a comedic over-the-top kind of funny girl. When it’s time for the dancing stuff? Not so much. Oh, she’ll do a wee bit — perhaps not even the same moves as the other dancers. Yet there are expectations of being able to dance and being in touch with one’s sexuality–whatever that sexuality is–in the biz. Katy doesn’t seem so interested in that, really, and I don’t know–I’m kinda loving it. It’s a breath of fresh air. She just isn’t (poor girl–I sympathize with her so) the *best* of dancers, but hey, she’s Katy Perry with a message of crazy-cool empowerment for us all, so they’re working around it.
What I respect is that it’s clear Katy Perry is a hard worker. What I like is that she’s powerful — both physically and mentally. And she’s supremely playful–even when being powerful. Lurve it! There’s a part of me that wants to say she’s a great model for young girls growing up today, but f*** it, she’s my role model.
Thank you Katy. With a little help from you, I’m getting up every day ready to come “atcha like a dark horse.”
And all you other dark horses out there, follow us at Lady Smut. We’ll help you roar.
March 3, 2015
RIP “Queen of Steam.” A Tribute to Bertrice Small
Last week Tuesday saw the passing of one of the pioneers in the romance industry, Bertrice Small. Before Fifty Shades of Gray and the explosion of electronic and indie publishig, Bertrice was one of the original “Avon Ladies” who helped shift the genre toward including sensual, detailed descriptions of love scenes between hero and heroine. Bertrice’s books were unapologetically full of graphic sex, eyebrow-raising at the time and earning her the moniker, “The Queen of Steam.” Her romance Skye O’Malley, published way back in 1981, is still in print, and I’d encourage anyone who’s never read it to do so. There are twists and turns in the plot that were groundbreaking at the time. The heroine takes multiple lovers! Some of them die! It’s a delicious, sensual, feast of a romance and represents much of what we write today: strong-willed heroines who take no shit. In many ways, Small’s heroine Skye O’Malley was a lot like the author herself: feisty and prickly and sometimes demanding. But Bertrice was also incredibly generous with her time and never failed to lend advice whenever asked. She was a mentor to me, as well as my friend.
Back in 2002 when I wrote under the name Liz Madison I got my first contract, a two-book deal from Kensington. I was, as only writers can understand, 
absolutely over-the-moon elated. After all the time I’d spent writing and submitting and getting rejected, this was Christmas and heaven rolled into one. But for me the news only got better: one of the books I’d get published was a stand-alone historical romance, but the other was a novella that Kensington editor Kate Duffy asked me to write for inclusion in an anthology entitled Delighted along with Bertrice Small. Whhhaaaat??!! Bertrice Small?? I’d been reading her stuff for years and gobbled it up with the gusto of a starving person eating pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. Now I was going to be included in an anthology with Bertrice being published by Kensington! It felt akin to a struggling actress finally getting her big break and being cast in a movie alongside Meryl Streep. Talk about euphoria. And pressure! I had to make sure my story was good enough to get the Queen of Steam’s nod of approval.
I decided to write her a letter. As in paper. Snail mail. Hey, I didn’t have her email address and wanted to reach out, so actual mail was the way to go. I recall being nervous – what if she didn’t respond? As it turned out, those nerves were for naught. I’d included my own email address and right away when Bertrice received my letter she contacted me. From that moment on until her death last week, she and I remained in touch.
After my first publishing deal, a series of unfortunate events led to a twelve-year drought before I’d get another contract. I almost quit but Bertrice urged me on, telling me I was a good writer and that publishing just took persistence. A f**k ton of it, yes, but persistence nonetheless. One of the single best things she ever did for me was recommend, more than once, that I join RWA. If she hadn’t done that, and if I hadn’t taken her advice, who knows where my career would have gone. But with her encouragement I found my local chapter, made amazing friends who are also now my critique partners, and finally got another book deal.
It feels now as if I’ve come full circle: just last week I received a contract for an erotic historical novella I’d written several years ago. I’d hoped, at the time I wrote it, that it would get published in another anthology along with Bertrice. That’s not going to happen, but it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that someone who didn’t need to spend time with a novice writer chose nevertheless to do so, and for that I’ll always be grateful.
RIP Bertrice.
Love in the Cards?
Okay, here’s a cool thing: I was showing my friend Mary my tarot app on the iP*d and she said, “Oh, I have to show you something.” She came back with this deck of cards and now I have to do some research! The box says ‘Fifth Avenue Playing Cards.’ They look maybe 1920s or 30s, I think. But that’s not all —
Every card has a pair of fortunes on it. They look like stickers, once perforated, so I guess they came with the cards and you put them on yourself if you wanted to use them for telling fortunes as well as playing pinochle.
Clearly they expected the audience to be mostly women. The Kings and Jacks represent men you might meet who might be good or bad for you, but the Queens represent rivals or friends.
It’s fascinating, all the ways people hope to know the future and find whether love awaits them. I suppose sometimes we just want to have a little hope. This seems like a cool way to make something both useful and magical.
Have you ever had your fortune told? Do you read tarot or scrye or anything? One of my first romance stories was about a tarot card reader, “Turning Cards” (it’s in Love on a Spoon). I’ve used tarot cards while writing novels to get past stuck places. I used to read cards for other people but I got a bit weirded out when I realized how many people were depending on me to provide answers. You have to be in charge of your own life.
March 2, 2015
Toronto or Bust
by Kiersten Hallie Krum
I’m in Toronto today, on the tail end of a long weekend mini-break to one of my favorite cities that isn’t New York, London, or Florence. Road trip! It’s deeply cold, as to be expected, but the city is still a jewel to visit. I needed to get out and get away, take a few days in a place where no one could make demands of any nature. No small bit of this need was a jones to break in my brand spanking, new car. I love to drive and dig me a road trip, so February or not, it’s Toronto or bust.
I unexpectedly (thanks Mapquest) took a different route than the last time I made this trip, which took me on some secondary roads for a few hours, weaving around and through sprawls of farmland in upstate New York that looked like a source file for Currier and Ives. It was dusk and the fields looked hushed and waiting and if it hadn’t been 15 degrees outside, I may have pulled over for some pictures. But I didn’t.
I feel a charged glee when I cross over into Canada, that thrill of something new and different, like when I get off a plane in a new city for the first time. It’s such a surreal thought, that I’m in a different country when I just drove to get there. New money. New roads. Words with an extra “u” like a verbal mic drop. The big things don’t change–a Starbucks on every block–but the more intimate differences still charm.
Driving has always represented freedom for me. The opportunity to control where and how you go somewhere; the chance to break out and go when you want to…or don’t. The endless options for new adventures.
Bring me that horizon.
Meet Moxie.
Do you like to road trip? If so, where would you/do you like to drive?
Follow Lady Smut. We’re quite the trip.
March 1, 2015
A Hellion Schools a Know-It-All: How Bertrice Small Broke the Mold
Mom’s favorite Bertrice Small novel. What’s yours?
By Alexa Day
I was a very typical young person — the sort who already knows everything about everything in the most tiresome way imaginable — when my mother really got into reading Bertrice Small. Mom never made any secret of her reading habits. Her interest in the romance genre was open and notorious.
Of course, at the time, that embarrassed me. All those books were the same, I said. Those little blonde girls who didn’t know anything fell instantly in love with the first person who looked at them the right way, and then they got married at the end of the story. Whatever Mom was reading, it was basically the same old story, I said.
Mom is sharper than I am, and she’s very patient. She’d stopped wasting her time on arguments with me over her reading choices. Instead, she sent me a copy of Bertrice Small’s Hellion. It probably arrived in one of my law school care packages. By that time, I’d started reading romances because law school will have a woman desperate to read anything that isn’t about the law. But even as my own romance habit took hold, I was still pretty sure the books were all the same, and I was vocal and obnoxious about it.
Bertrice Small put a stop to that with Hellion.
Isabelle of Langston is no little blonde girl. She’s inherited her father’s land. She’s refused to swear fealty to the new king. She’s not going to marry some stranger at the king’s command.
Isabelle impressed me. It only took her about 20 pages. I forgave her for marrying Hugh because she did that a few pages later, at the beginning of the book. She was full of surprises.
My copy falls open to the threesome. Click for your own copy.
Before the story is over, Isabelle sets off on a mission to rescue her husband. Her master plan exposes her to dark sexual magic, and she has to examine whether she enjoys the things she’ll have to do with one partner to regain her husband. She has to confront her attraction to these new sex acts and to the man who holds her captive. She isn’t mindlessly swept along by these depraved strangers. She isn’t begging or bargaining or pleading. She’s working the situation to achieve her goal. I loved it.
She also has a magically enhanced threesome with her husband and her captor. I loved that, too.
Definitely not the same old story. Multiple partners, strong-willed heroines, deep questions about sexual power and why we desire the things and people we think to be forbidden. I enjoy exploring these themes and characters and situations in my own work, and I absolutely love to read about them.
And I wouldn’t have known any of that without Bertrice Small.
Mom called after I texted her that Bertrice Small had died last week. “I really loved her books,” she said.
“I remember,” I said.
“Do you remember when you used to think all romances were the same?”
Mom has waited a pretty long time to mention this. I don’t want it to sound like she sticks me with this every day, but she was certainly entitled to.
“I was totally wrong about that,” I said.
“That you were,” she said, and then she started telling me about The Love Slave, which she preferred to the O’Malley series.
What was your favorite Bertrice Small book? Did you go for harems or highlanders? Hit me up in the comments.
And follow Lady Smut. Who knows where that will lead?
