Madhuri Pavamani's Blog, page 10
January 22, 2016
#Poesia -DNFWM
DNFWM
All that stood upon her
and was her world
understood she could not be defeated
would not be defeated
and so retreated and regressed
until she rose and shouted for all to hear
Do Not Fuck With Me
As always, these #Poesia pieces on this blog and Write Bitches are works of fiction, erupting from my incredibly over-active imagination. This piece in particular is inspired by the words and poetry of Rilke and was part of an exercise for my writing group, The Inky Path. These #Poesia pieces are unedited and unscripted, super loose and probably some of my favorite works. They are perfect in their imperfections and I hope you enjoy.
January 21, 2016
On Writing Women
Flipping through a post I wrote last year on writing sex, I came across an exchange with another writer friend as we discussed our thoughts on women main characters in erotica, and literature in general, and how they should be written, how they are often written, and how we would like to see them written more often.
Here are my thoughts on the matter:
Stop creating women who only exist within the prism of desire they feel for the object of their lust. I love women so if you’re going to write about them, please make them fully-developed, fully-realized, confident, badass, intelligent, wondrous, sexy beings.
More than a year later, those words still ring true.
#ThursdayThoughts
January 14, 2016
January 13, 2016
#WomanCrushWednesday
I have a huge crush on Juma Landry, one of the main characters from my soon-to-be released (fingers crossed) erotic romance, THE KEEPER SERIES. She’s confident, smart, brash, and sexy. She’s an in-your-face, knows-what-she-wants kind of woman and is not shy about getting some. She kind of reminds me of Darby from The Sanctum Trilogy, except where Darby is all fire and sass, Juma is sensual and light and just so damn sexy.
So yeah, I love her. Madly. I think you will, too, once you meet her.
She’s my woman crush for this Wednesday and to celebrate her, I’ve got a teeny-tiny snippet from JUMA, book II in The Keeper Series, that I’m working on right now. It’s short and sweet but it captures her perfectly.
January 12, 2016
Random Thoughts
1. The wink. I don’t even need to discuss it. If you know me, you understand.
2. Also, he is pure sex. Like good lord he makes it difficult to breathe. And again, if you know me, you understand.
3. For various reasons that I shall not go into on these pages, writing is difficult these days. I’m so used to either opening the Notes on my phone or flipping up the top of my laptop and just going with the flow…and for years the flow has been a goddamned river of words and characters and battles and sex and love. Serious, gut-wrenching, earth-shattering, fall-on-your-knees love. It’s in my blood, lives in my bones, it’s what makes me happy. But these days, getting it onto the page is tough. I have to push and pull and tug in ways I’ve never before had to struggle, my words wanting to stay in my head, bumping around in my brain, rather than sit on the page for someone else to enjoy (or rip to shreds). Thank the gods for my poetry – for some reason, that’s what’s easy for me these days. Maybe it’s the rhythm or the brevity or the subject-matter, whatever it is, it works and it’s keeping me grounded and living in my words and hopeful that soon enough, my prose will start gushing forth again. I can feel it, that twitch in my fingertips and the dreams of Dutch and Juma…I’m just waiting, I know my muse will return.
4. Speaking of words, I read a short story written by my friend and fellow Write Bitch, Kayti Nika Raet, and let me tell you, her way with words is gorgeous. You want to fall into her words and just lose yourself for a while. Grab her stuff – you won’t regret it.
5. The Kid was rummaging around in my office, something he knows he’s not supposed to do, but does anyway because for some reason, my office holds great fascination for him, and found an old belly shot of me when I was pregnant with him. Not being a huge fan of the belly shot, I’ve kept that sucker well-hidden since we moved to the new house, but The Kid ain’t having it. He has discovered that and some other shots of him as a baby and has created a timeline of himself, of which he is quite proud, and has it displayed in the upstairs hallway (thanks to my parents, who love to co-sign all of his nonsense). He is insanely cute but hot damn, I hate that belly shot.
6. Gael Garcia Bernal in Mozart in the Jungle – PRICELESS. If you’re not watching, I am so sorry for you.
7. In a similar vein, Robyn Wright in season three of House of Cards – holy fucking shit, she brought it and she brought it hard. That final scene, and her smirk – god, I love her.
8. And finally, I’m getting that itch, the one where I feel the need for some new ink. I know exactly what I want, it’s just a matter of taking my ass down to Rising Dragon, cornering Jason, and getting my design started.
January 10, 2016
#SundaySnippet – THE WARRIORS
The other day I received a note from someone who had just finished reading The Sanctum Trilogy and wanted to know when she was getting more, really kind of begged to get more of the crew. More Wyatt and Dev, Ryker and Jools, Darby, Abha, Asher, Qi, Sam, and possibly even Carter.
I mean, as shitty as he is, you know you kind of want to know what happened to that motherfucker Carter Breslin.
So I can’t promise Wyatt and Dev, but there is more Ryker and Jools in the works. The Warriors to be exact. And just to whet your appetite, here’s a snippet.
He slipped into the room through the window, sliding it up noiselessly, as if he had done it hundreds of times before, then turned and closed it again. He gave himself a moment to adjust to the light while removing the blades from his back and setting them on top of the drawers, out of the way. Out of his sight. He then unwound the leather straps of his holster from around his shoulders and allowed the harness to fall at his feet.
Then he saw it.
Red.
Covering his boots, screaming at him in the darkness. A reminder of all he witnessed.
He froze as a cry formed in his throat, animalistic in its nature. His knees gave way and he collapsed against the wall, remembering it all.
Every detail, every smell, every scream.
Through a haze of pain and sickness, she heard him and knew something brutal, something unlike anything previously witnessed befell him. She stumbled from the bed, pulled by the horror of his cries, and cradled him to her as he wept.
He never fell apart, never gave into the sadness, the brutality of their existence, so this display of pure, unfiltered despair shook her but she tamped down the well of fear growing within and held onto him as tightly as possible. And finally he settled and calmed and met her gaze.
“Let’s go,” Ryker whispered, “now.”
Hope you enjoyed…stay tuned…The Warriors are coming soon.
January 7, 2016
#ThursdayThoughts
January 3, 2016
Five Books + One – My 2015 Must-Read List
2015 is in the rearview mirror and loads of folks have regaled us with their “must read” lists, so I thought, why not me? I’ve never done this before, mostly because I don’t like telling people what to read, especially since I indulge in vast amounts of filth and raunch, much of which I am certain is not the average reader’s cup of tea.
But 2015 was special.
I read some amazing books, met some brilliant writers, and just generally thrilled to the literary landscape. It was a great year for wondrous and varied writing; the stories haunted and chilled, excited and educated, and I feel fortunate to have gotten lost in a few of them over the last twelve months.
So here you go – my list of must-read books for 2015
ALL AMERICAN BOYS by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely – if you haven’t read this yet, you must. If you haven’t heard about this book yet, goodness. Find it, read it, then pass it on to someone else. Buy it for yourself, your parents, and your children. It is just that important. Every single one of us needs to read the story of Rashad and Quinn, written by Reynolds and Kiely respectively. A unique creative formula, both Reynolds and Quinn embrace the challenge fully, giving authentic and poignant life to their characters, trading off chapters as the story unfolds in all of its brutal honesty. BOYS begins as a typical adolescent Friday night of messing around with friends and prepping to party, but quickly turns into something altogether adult and dangerous following a violent run-in with a police officer. The experience forever changes Rashad and Quinn in ways neither ever imagined. Told through both boys’ eyes, the story is haunting and uplifting, a testament to our lives and times, a hope that we can become better. Trust when I say, the hashtag #RashadIsAbsentAgainToday will stay with you long after you close this book.
THE TRUTH ABOUT AWITI by CP Patrick – told through a series of interconnected stories, CP Patrick brilliantly weaves her historical narrative of the slave trade and its continued effects on people, society, and the human spirit in Awiti. An incredibly powerful piece of fiction – so much so that many times I had to step away from it for a few days to let my body and mind recover from the horrors relayed – Awiti is also beautifully written, Patrick’s prose sometimes brutal, other times soothing, always enchanting. Historical fiction is rarely my go-to genre, but Patrick is so skilled she manages to make you forget the “historical” aspect and simply get lost in her fiction, and what a world it is to get lost in. This is a story and these are characters that will find a place in your bones, a room in your soul, and that’s not a bad thing.
WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – simply stated, this tiny book is a gem. My notes throughout FEMINISTS are copious, the book is marked up and annotated everywhere because damn near every word is perfect and moved me in some way or another. It’s feminism and the belief that all people should be treated equally, broken down into brilliant, evocative vignettes on what it means to be a woman around the world today, and what we need to do to improve the state of womanhood. It’s so well-written, interesting, and important, especially in this day and age of misinformed and misguided young women taking to social media to state “I am not a Feminist”. It explains in the simplest, most human of terms why there is nothing wrong with being a feminist and there is nothing dirty about the word feminism and if it’s not already on your TBR list, please do me a favor and add it now.
MONSTER by Kayti Nika Raet – with her fourth installment of The Outsider Chronicles, Raet does it again, bringing the fierce and amazing. Set mostly in the city of Cherai, MONSTER recounts Niko’s desperate struggle to maintain control of the city while killers roam the streets, Slithers haunt the dark spaces, and death and desire commingle in such unfair interplay that one can only close their eyes, hold their breath, and hope. There is not a single extraneous word anywhere in Kayti’s manuscript, each one matters, and you get the sense they’ve been pored over and considered and studied with the eye of a meticulous word warrior determined to bring her readers to their knees. And here she succeeds tenfold. MONSTER, for all its horror and despair, is full of the feels. Everywhere. It’s brutal and gorgeous and stunning and you find yourself wanting to stay lost in Kayti’s world of perfect words forever.
SHADOWSHAPER by Daniel Jose Older – I’ve been waiting to meet Sierra Santiago for a long time. Thank you, Daniel, for bringing her to life in such bold and badass color. There is so much good on these pages – the characters, the stories, the streets of Brooklyn – but what stands out for me most is Daniel’s way with women and love and race and words, hardly the usual themes for an urban fantasy and probably why I enjoy Older’s prose so much. Yes, there is the exciting and unique story of Sierra and the legacy of the Shadowshapers, from which she’s been “shielded” until it’s impossible to do so any longer, and the epic battle that unfolds between Sierra’s Brooklyn crew and the antrolpologist Wick, but there is so. much. more. There is gentrification (“it looked like a late-night frat party had just let out”) and colorism (“Not light enough. Morena. Negra. No matter what she did, that little voice came creeping back, persistent and unsatisfied. Not enough.”) and girl scientists (“Bennie had spent every year of the decade that Sierra had known her obsessed with one branch of the natural sciences or another.”) and the pain of racism (“But the words crept in, made a home in Sierra’s mind no matter how much she fought them off. her wild, nappy hair.”) and love (“he looked at her like she made sense, like they shared some secret language that no one else knew, and that they spoke it even when they weren’t speaking at all.”) and it’s all so damn good. Grab this for Sierra and her badassery, enjoy it for all Daniel gives his readers because it’s one hell of an adventure.
Bonus: THE BOY IN THE BLACK SUIT – I know Jason already made my list once, but I couldn’t not include Matt and Lovey, Chris and Mr. Ray in this missive because I love them so much. So much. I met them a year ago and they still sit in a teeny-tiny place of my heart, the one space that isn’t black and cold, but resonates with all of their light, love, and raw honesty. For me, BOY is a love letter to Brooklyn – whose streets and characters and bodegas are so vivid and real and perfectly captured by Jason that I often felt like I was back on my old block in Bed Stuy. Told through the eyes of Matt Miller, a high school kid coming to grips with the death of his mom and the downslide of his dad, we pay witness as Matt tries to hang on and make sense of life and death and loss and love. Helping him along the way are Chris, Mr. Ray, and Lovey, well-crafted, poignant characters, each playing their own, very unique roles in moving Matt forward one step at a time. Towards the end of the story, Matt is gifted with a Sempervivum, a plant whose name originates from the latin roots semper and vivus and means “live forever.” That’s exactly what these characters will do with me – live forever. Thank you, Jason, for being fierce and amazing and for giving us awesome books (and a month of unforgettable poetry) in 2015.
SEMPERVIVUS!!
Happy 2016, gorgeous people, and happy reading.
