Whenever I seek professional help (no, not that kind of professional help, marketing professional help!), I am invariably told: "R.B., you need to BRAND yourself." So I ask the talented Lilah E. Noir to send me a "signature," I visually adapt my social media accounts to match, and I attempt to provide consistent writing "columns" or weekly prompts in the form of #sixwords Saturday or #ShakespeareSunday or #writingromancelines or #foundpoetryFriday to everything in between.

And that's just the problem. I cannot categorize myself or exactly what it is I do. I am a writer who doesn't fit into a "branding" category. My mood and my writing runs the gamut on any given day. Those who have met me through The Nu Romantics (http://thenuromantics.weebly.com/) might know me as the sweet romantic; those who met me before I published "for cash" on Literotica might see me as the dark, dubcon erotic writer who later turned those stories into what has become the Thorne series and the Imogen series; others may see me as a writer of BDSM with a fetish for orgasm denial (it is a fetish, sometimes, but that is a topic for another day!) if they followed my Natalie's Edge series ; and still others, who may have found me on Facebook as a "friend," may not even know I've published a damn thing! 

Happy birthday, Louisa May Alcott! Today I revisit something I wrote for The Nu Romantics Facebook page, something we call #LAPH (Literature, Art, Photography, and History.)

​Louisa May Alcott published her very first in 1852 in the Saturday Evening Gazette, “The Rival Painters: A Story of Rome.” Of course, we know her best for her book Little Women (1868) and The Fruitlands in Harvard, MA, a now beautiful museum and place to visit, literally in my backyard (okay maybe not literally but close enough!).

First purchased by Charles Lane, a farm of 90 acres and old red farmhouse to start a communal utopia based on principles of transcendentalism with Louisa’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott, The Fruitlands “experiment” lasted only 7 months. A total of eleven adults eventually joined Fruitlands (some sources say a dozen and of course, there were several children), but it doesn’t detract from what they thought and did.

I have always been fascinated with transcendentalists as thinkers and transcendentalism as a literary movement. Sound familiar? Transcendentalism emerged from English and German Romanticism, Biblical criticism, the skepticism of David Hume, and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism, to name a few. It was also influenced by Hindu texts on philosophy of the mind and spirituality, especially the Upanishads.
Here are some basics:

1. First, they were looking for literary independence from England. They deliberately went about creating literature, essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writing that were clearly different from anything from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation.
2. Most of the Transcendentalists became involved as well in social reform movements, especially anti-slavery and women's rights.
3. Transcendentalists were strong believers in the power of the individual. Their beliefs were closely linked with those of the Romantics, but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science.
4. A core belief of transcendentalism is in the inherent goodness of people and nature. Emerson believed that people were naturally good and that everyone's potential was limitless. He inspired his colleagues to look into themselves, into nature, into art, and through work for answers to life's most perplexing questions.
5. They believed in the soul (the oversoul) as: the human soul is immortal, and immensely vast and beautiful; human conscious ego is slight and limited in comparison to the soul, even though we habitually mistake our ego for our true self; and at some level, the souls of all people are connected, and this includes everything, down to nature.
6. Emerson went further to describe nature as the closest experience there is to experiencing the presence of God. To truly appreciate nature, one must not only look at it and admire it, but also be able to feel it taking over the senses. This process requires solitude, in uninhabited places like the woods. His “transparent eyeball” is a representation of an eye that is absorbent rather than reflective, and therefore takes in all that nature has to offer. Emerson strongly espoused that the individual become one with nature.

IT'S FINALLY HERE!
​It takes courage to put your work out there for others to see and read. It's one thing to write; it's another to make it available. For each time we write, we share a bit of who we are, and many of us are still struggling to define exactly what that is. Writing is one way to get closer to that answer, and oftentimes, the journey isn't neat or easy but instead, a messy introspection that often doesn't reveal itself to us until we read it back to ourselves. And sometimes, it's startling. Our writing is a mirror and not all mirrors are created equal, but they usually don't lie.

The Nu Romantics was formed to revolt against the preconceived notions of ROMANCE and to elucidate, through all mediums of art, particularly writing, that the
"romantic" is found in more than happy endings, that it can be found in everything
from nature to pain to the erotic to even death...

Read the article here that started it all: 

​Pieces of Us …where light and dark come together in a beautiful mosaic.

Like the pieces of a puzzle, both smooth and jagged, fitting together to create a beautiful picture, or a thousand snowflakes falling together against the blackest of nights, so, too, do The Nu Romantics come together to bring you a one-of-a-kind collection of art, poetry, short stories, and flash fiction. Written from the heart--or heartbreak-- of its creators, The Nu Romantics redefine romance.

Delve into the minds and emotions of these romantics as word by word, piece by piece, they tear apart preconceived notions of the romantic and put them back together into a beautiful work of art they define as nu romanticism, where the romantic is found in life, love, pain, death, the unexplained, and everything in between.


Pieces of Us is a collection of short stories, poetry, and flash fiction, encompassing nu romanticism across multiple themes: Hope and New Beginnings; Supernatural, Unexplained, and Horror; Erotic; Romantic; and Nostalgia, Longing, and Heartbreak.

The Nu Romantics: Redefining Romance.

With Thanksgiving coming up next week, it does make you ponder what you’re thankful for. I know some days seem impossible and grueling, days we want to give up. But I do know I have a lot to be thankful for. And my “woes” almost seem petty when I really think about it. But the mind—it can be a dark place, our worst enemy, the mirror we talk to, sometimes spitting venom.

So today I thought I’d stop and pause to focus on what I’m grateful for. I could write all the cliched things I should be thankful for and am, but I choose something else. And ask you to join me in sharing something, or someone, you are grateful for; sometimes, it’s even a negative person that has shown us the direction we need to take that is productive rather than debilitating, and even that is something to be thankful for.

Today I am going to focus on being thankful for being a woman. Many ask: If you could be the opposite sex for one day, what would be the first thing you would do? A fun exercise, but it makes me realize I love my femininity. I enjoy the daily emotions I go through, even the negative ones. I feel. I empathize. I think women have that gift at its highest level. I think it’s our greatest treasure. I don’t live life in dull hues but dark ones and bright ones and all the hues in between. Some may think being emotional is a flaw; perhaps they are right. But e.e. cummings once wrote, “since feeling is first,” and I think he’s right. If we don’t stop and feel, why are we living? Love is the ultimate in this spectrum of emotions women are capable of feeling. The meeting of someone, the fall, the ultimate in finding true love…it’s what makes us human, it’s really why we hope and dream. It’s why we breathe. Even heartache has its place as we come down from that high. And they are all emotions I think women are graced to feel on high throttle. (And perhaps a lot of men too.)

On a more superficial level, I also love my curves and clothes and shoes; I love the way adrenaline from dancing or love-making reaches my cheeks. I love my long hair and the way his fingers feel running through it. I like to touch my lips and look at them look in several different shades of lipstick And yup. As you know, I love the color pink.
​
My life isn’t perfect. I am not perfect. So far from it. But I do think my gift of femininity allows me to feel in uniquely womanly ways. And so, however I came on this Earth to live as a woman, that is what I am grateful for.

“what is stronger than the human heart which shatters over and over and still lives” 
― Rupi Kaur

Life is a funny thing, isn't it? When you're in love? The mixed myriad of emotions. It's exhilarating but also completely frightening. It's almost painful. How can that be? How can something so beautiful and exquisite that makes you feel things so vividly, things you have always longed to feel, also produce pangs of longing or fear or an intensity that just makes you want to run?

I think I know. It's because you know, deep down you know, this too shall pass--a phrase usually used to overcome pain--oh the irony! It won't last. It's bound to end. Does that mean you shouldn't allow yourself to love? (Romantically I mean.) Somedays, I think, yes, as I watch friends I love suffer at the hands of Love, hurt by people that should have cared more for them, their well-being, but instead cause such destruction and pain for them, I, myself, having been hurt by those I have loved or thought I loved.

How about you? Has Love hurt you? How do you get past it? How do you get over a lover who was supposed to care for you but who does the opposite? People always answer Time. But I wonder if going in knowing, really intellectually knowing, it won't last is what will save you. And what will, in the end, ensure that you don't stop yourself from diving back under again and again, breath held to let go, even in the awareness of the pain you know it will inevitably cause.
​
Am I being too pessimistic? Perhaps. And right now, I will simply close my eyes and try to live in this moment, the only moment I know exists.

Good morning, friends. You know when people ask you: What is your favorite color? And at first, you think it's such a silly or simple question. But is it? I don't think so, because it begs the question of why. Why has it come to be your favorite color? We wouldn't have one if it didn't speak to a part of who we are. Sometimes, it's the simplest questions that shed the most light. So I ask you: What is your favorite color? Why?

For me, I have two, but I'll focus on the one that gets the most guff. When someone asks me that question, immediately, I say, "Pink." And immediately people think: What a girl! Yes. And no. Pink reminds me of my love for dance. My youth. The innocence of being young. Tutus. Strawberry frosting on a vanilla cake (my favorite). And lipstick. I love lipstick. It also reminds me that I should take pride in my feminine traits, in being a woman. There is nothing remotely wrong with enjoying femininity. Curves. Hips. Lips. Empathy. Vulnerability. Sensuality. Patience. Intuition.
​
But even beyond all that? Remember the kid books: Pinkalicious? The brother loved pink but hid it? That. That is why I also love pink. We need to take pink back. It's not a bad thing. And it shouldn't mean "girly." And boys who like it shouldn't be labeled as inferior. "Stop acting like a girl" pisses me off. Pink is a damn pretty color. Ever see a pink sunrise? Coral in the sand? How about cherry blossoms? Or Rose Champagne? A pink rose? Or a pearl? Exactly.
And that, my friends, is my thought for the day. 

“The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.” 
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Good morning, friends. Join me for my #ThursdayThoughts.

Last week, I had asked a question that, as many of you know, has now sadly disappeared. So because I lost all of your responses, I hope you will humor me again and answer: At what age did you first fall in love? And was it really love or looking back, do you understand it differently?

I first fell in love (I'm not counting my crush at 8 in the hospital when I got my tonsils out ;)) when I was 13. Sigh. He was a football player; I, a cheerleader. And he was a poet, a brooding poet, who left me morsels in my locker and on my notebooks and kissed me for the first time under my favorite tree as he trailed his hand up the side of my body, giving me goosebumps I won't ever forget. And I know it was real love. We still have a relationship today. He moved. And then I took up with his best friend. But that I shall leave alone.

So how about you? Share with me. And--was it real?
​
(For the record, I first asked for a WIP I'm working on.)