  Well, it’s that time of year, where happiness and glee meet sadness and longing. It’s the second year without my mom but I don’t quite remember last year and so this year, I’m cognizant and feeling and breathing in and out every moment. It’s calm. Yup. Without rehashing it all, put simply: It’s calm without my mom. My mom was the serious one. The boss. The rule maker. My dad was the goofy one. The artist. The rule breaker. He died too young. And I miss him. A lot. Not every day. I’d be lying. Life is too hectic and crazy for that. But he seeps into my spirit often, especially this time of year. One thing we all did as a family, and my brother and I have tried to continue, is that on Christmas Eve Eve—tonight—we watch It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve written about this before. Somewhere. Not here. Egg nog, spiked of course when we got older, the night my mom let her hair down. The night we giggled. The night we cried. And the night we just had nowhere to go but be together in the warmth of family. I never didn’t want to do this. Not as a teenager. Not when I went away to college. And not now. It’s still one of my favorite movies. You see, and of course I couldn’t have known that then, the movie reminds me of my dad. In so many ways. My dad was George Bailey. He was a thriving businessman who lost almost all of it by the end—and that was because he had such a kind heart. Trust me. I’m living proof of that. He started his business with just himself. He had a dream. Soon, he had a few employees. By the end, he had over 70 employees working for him. He truly lived the American dream, even if things fell apart at the end. And they fell apart because of others’ greed. Disloyalty. Dishonesty. And it never stopped him from being kind. I know he hurt. But he didn’t show it. And he certainly didn’t retaliate. And his friends were still aplenty. He truly was the richest man in town. I went to a private college. And even when we were financially struggling, my dad refused to take one dime he had saved for me to go and come out from an extremely expensive college with a 500-dollar-only debt. He gave me that gift. But the gift he really gave me was love and kindness and the gift of laughter. Tonight, as I watch It’s a Wonderful Life, I watch it full-well knowing that, though I am not religious, he long ago got his wings and my mother is now right there beside him.
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12/11/2016 Don't Tell Me What I or My Writing Is or Isn't...This Erotic Writer Has Had EnoughRead Now I wrote another blog today about feminism and the submissive and BDSM and the current state of my country with the biggest misogynist alive about to rule the free world. I wrote about how you can be both submissive in the bedroom but not out in the real world, in our careers, for instance. I’m sick and tired of people saying that BDSM is abuse or that it’s misogynistic. It’s not. Not done right. Not done well. Not with consenting adults.  Don’t tell me my writing is misogynistic or anti-feminist just because I or my heroines like to be controlled in the bedroom and find great satisfaction and freedom with it. That is the most anti-feminist statement I have ever heard. Feminism is all about letting women be who THEY want to be. Not how YOU want them to be. So just cut that shit right out. I am both a feminist AND a submissive in my sexual fantasies and reality. You are the one who is anti-feminist who tells me I can’t be. Further, let fiction be fucking fiction already.  Instead, I woke and discovered there was something else on my mind too. Something less serious. Something that made me laugh. While reading a small excerpt, I came across a passage filled with purple prose. What is purple prose? Well, it’s something I see over and over again in my genre of writing, and it makes me laugh my ass off so hard that it defeats the whole purpose of erotic writing. It’s anti-eroticism. Talk about a mood breaker. In basic terms, purple prose is defined this way in the urban dictionary. I rather liked its example:
"a term used to describe literature where the writing is unnecessarily flowery. It means that the writer described the situation (or wrote the entire book, passage, etc.) using words that are too extravagant for the type of text, or any text at all. Basically, over-describing something. With stupid words. normal writing: she lay on her bed dreaming. purple prose: she lay upon her silken sheets in her ornately embellished robes of satin, her chest ascending and descending easily with every passing second, deep inside the caverns of her subconscious mind." An article that does a better job, can be found here: http://thewritepractice.com/purple-prose/ We all have different works we are drawn to. Authors’ styles. You may find my writing “boorish” or simplistic. But one thing you can’t say about it is that it’s dotted with absurd purple prose. To me, that is the biggest sin created in modern-day erotic writing. And because I am a feminist too, I don’t need to listen to misogynistic men who don’t know the difference. |
I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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