Anytime you need a friend

For erotic romance authors love and lust, sweet emotion and hot sex, are inseparable. Can't have one without the other. Relationships are not sealed with a mere kiss, unless it's one that touches everywhere, and desire is no good without devotion. That is our cocktail of choice, one we serve in flavors ranging from vanilla to spicy hot.

Of course love is more protean, more multifaceted than that. We know that, but our craft is crafting tales of hanky panky with a happy ending so love's other facets and faces tend to get less coverage, often none. Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Or in this case, when in Scandinavia, do as the Norsemen do.

These bastions of brotherhood, these champions of equality, dedicate the 14th of February as much to friendship as courtship, maybe more. Maybe they're just not that into romantic antics, you say? They're just not into imported festivities, especially those that come with costly commodities attached, I say.

I find friendship one of the dearest faces and loveliest flavors of love. To do as the Norse do, I now use Valentine's Day to celebrate the gift of good friends. My oldest friendships span over three decades. Yeah, that's how young/old I am. It's a case of till death do us part with these two women, women I've grown up with and women I plan to grow old with. I have friends. And then I have them.

They know who they are. You know who you are because I will never tire of telling you how much I love you and admire you for who you are and respect what you do for others. What you've done for me. Without you, where would I be now. That's a dedication I stamp wherever I can. That's a dedication waiting to see the light of your e-reader's screen. I have...I had...have...gah...two Romantica WIPs where friends play an important part. Friendship is a theme right up there with courtship.

They say authors should never use a friend as a plot device or a mouthpiece. They can stop right there. I mean, what did you just say? Use. A. Friend. Use a friend. What kind of girl, what kind of author, do you take me for? I would never use a friend. My characters would never use a friend, unless they're monsters who would use and abuse a friend in which case they are headed for a world of hurt. My characters can speak for themselves, thank you very much, and the plot advance just fine without puppets. That's not what friends are for, how can you say that, how can you even think that?!

I am shocked. Taking a moment to breathe in and out of a paper bag, that's how shocked I am. Use a friend. Tut-tut. Share with a friend. Trust. Be loyal. Be honest. Dependable. Offer an ear and a shoulder, a place to stay, sustenance. Have fun. Get serious. Get mad without fearing disapproval. Get sad without fearing rejection. Travel. Talk. Keep a secret. Keep in touch regardless of geography, or life situation, or lifestyle. Be there. Be here now.

That's what friends are for. That's what a friend is. Someone whose heart and door are always open.

Something's gotten hold of my heart

'Tis the season, sweetie darlings, wedding anniversary season, a season that makes an insufferable lovey-dovey-shiny-happy-want-to-throw-my-arms-around-the-world girl out of me, a girl brimming with love; romantic, platonic, filial, maternal, sisterly...you name it, I'm feeling it, dearest dearest denizens. So I decided to celebrate this many-splendored thing with thoughts on the subject ranging across time and continents. Just because. Because love! So what's your favorite?

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times. 
~ Rita Rudner

We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter. 
~ Mignon McLaughlin

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 
~ Blaise Pascal

The eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. 
~ Margaret Atwood

Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.
~ Lao Tzu

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
~ Victor Hugo

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
~ Bertrand Russell

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
~ Dr. Seuss

A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
~ Jim Morrison

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
~ William Shakespeare

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
~ Pablo Neruda

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. 
~ Zora Neale Hurston

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve. 
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stand by me.
~ Ben E. King

I'll stand by you.
~ The Pretenders

The Romance Horror Picture Show

It's Halloween, dearest denizens, the perfect time to not let reality get in the way of some tomfoolery. Or a good story.

I like jokes, verbal and practical, and I like a good story as much as the next gal. But sometimes a gal needs a little gas, some fuel to the flame, you know? You do know? Well, whaddya know, here you go: 10 pics to help you tell a tale.

Fantasy or reality? Secret rendezvous or an exhibitionist's night out?

Ooh, Poe-esque. Black magic woman? Shifter?

He wants to kiss you. No, kill you. Kiss you. No. I don't know.

So hard to pin down. So many possibilities. So lovely.

Yeah. Real steel. That goes for my blade, too.

Apocalypse Yesterday. But do you run to him or do you run from him?

Model by day, aspiring actor by night, hampered and pissed by constant comparisons to James Dean. Until one day...

Rescue or kidnap? Runaway bride? Groom, best man or best friend?

This beach was supposed to be private. So what's he doing here? Is it a merman? Is he dozing? Drowning? Better go see if he needs help...

Sexy? Sinister? Your call.

But that's just me. What do you see? Share if you dare or start scribbling away, as long as you're writing. Those brave enough to take on NanoWriMo: May the Force be with you...

Happy Halloween to all, and to all a good fright!

P.S. All pics purchased from 123RF.com, in case you want one of your own.

No need to argue

Sorry, I'm not in. I'm on Delilah Devlin's blog talking about heroes in romance, why readers love them and authors love to write them. Am I right or am I wrong? You tell me, but I had an epiphany.

Sign O' The Times

Do you romance buffs remember a time when the hero expressed his undying love by punching the heroine in the face, or when a forced seduction scene was all force and no seduction?

No? You lucky things; I gave up on reading romance for a while after coming across those instances. I don't remember the titles or the authors but I distinctly remember two books, or rather the moments the heroes turned villains in my view.

They were contemporary romances, one starring the wealthy and arrogant and, as it came out, abusive type, and the other a sheik who turned out to be a rapist. The 'heroes' were profoundly sorry afterwards. They only did what they did out of love and desperation. I only wanted to perform a citizen's arrest.

I still have not forgiven them. When I next picked up a (contemporary) romance a good decade later, I hadn't forgotten those two, but to my relief their kind had become extinct sometime during the nineties. Good riddance, I said, and started enjoying reading romance again.

There are so many wonderful sub-genres these days; so much variety, so many versatile writers to choose from. The heroes may be alpha but the heroines are by no means beta, and I much prefer today's couples to the pairings of the days of yore.

Popular culture and media mold women's self-conceptions but I'm so glad to see the advances in the daily lives of women (be they huge leaps or baby steps) cross over to culture as well. Women still write to women about the marital abuse of women. It's important to do so. What is even more important is that there is no more mistaking who the villain is.

Lovestoned

Can you hear it? No? It makes my ears ring just thinking about the belly laughs and gasps of horror I got when I came out with writing romance, some of it the steamy stuff.

Some people just looked at me funny and then made sure I hadn't quit my job or given up on writing in other genres or languages. No, on both accounts. Others asked outright if my marriage was doing okay. No, seriously. My husband's evident indignation assured them I wasn't deprived in the love and sweet loving department. I knew who my friends were when I heard "You go, girl!" I had no idea there were so few of them...

What bothers me is that romance is the only genre I have to justify and explain. It's derogatory to those who love reading it and it's offensive to those who write it; the stigma, that is, if you can call it that. I would call it that after being told by well-meaning commentators that I had just shot myself in the leg.

A beauty queen is an ex-beauty queen for life. Write romance and be branded and labeled forever after and never dream of publishing in another genre. Right? Really...

Why would I do that, they asked me? I was tempted not to answer that particular cartload of condescending horse maneur, but it gave me pause. I wanted to know too. So I took my walking stick and limped to my den to think about it and came up with this:

It's a language thing. For me, English is an extremely expressive language and it's a highly emotive language. I write in another language as well, but writing romance in it is out of the question. It's a language of a totally different color and temperature and I use it for other genres. But those two languages are of equal importance to me, as are all of the genres. Period.

It's emotionally fulfilling. I love loving and I love writing about love and loving. Don't give me the reinforcing and playing into the hands of patriarchy theory. If women stopped reading romance right this very minute, there would still be inequality between the sexes come next year. Damn right romance can be used as an escape route, who doesn't need a breather every now and then? It's pleasurable like any other type of reading or hobby is.

Ask me to toe the line and I will step dance on it. Tell me I cannot and just see if I don't. Reading and writing romance is not submissive, it's subversive. That's what it feels like when you're asked to explain yourself.

It's an opportunity to feel brave.