Meg Amor ~ interesting Q's ~ DARK WAR, Charlie's vulnerabilities and writing as a New Zealander

Aloha everyone!! J This week, my adventure was with esteemed Chris Speakman at Muse It Up Publishing who asked interesting questions that go with my life theme right now.

 

http://chrischattalkscreativity.blogspot.ca/2014/07/with-meg-amor.html - Other Muse authors were interviewed here with these questions if you're interested, people give such interesting answers!

 

One of the things attracting people is my character Charlie. People love Henry and Izzy, but they’re mad about Charlie. Why?

I think because he’s the most vulnerable. The most conflicted at times. He’s struggles with being vulnerable, letting the world see the parts of himself he deems not so acceptable. He’s so busy doing his ‘Rico Sauvé charm offensive’ as Izzy calls it, that  when she first meets him, she says, “Charlie’s gorgeous, but you wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with him.”

Izzy thinks he’s charming, but you’d never get close to him or get to know him very deeply. His walls are thick and deep. He only shows people what he wants them to see.

But what happens as he watches Henry and Izzy’s relationship is Charlie realizes he has to take his own walls down to get what he wants in his heart.

They’re not protecting him anymore.

They’re keeping him shutoff from the world, the love he wants and the happiness that’s somewhat elusive for him.

He knows he has to open himself up, be vulnerable, look at some of this stuff, and be real.

I know the more you open up, and show your deeper stuff, the more people like you.

Most of us just want to be accepted for who we are ~ all of us. Not just the PR bits we trot out for show and tell purposes. ‘The Happy Face’ syndrome, I call it.

In the movie Strictly Ballroom the mother character says slightly maniacally to someone, “I’ve got my happy face on today.” She instantly pastes a fake smile on her face, while gritting her teeth through the thing that’s driving her crazy. Later, she ends up screaming, “I’ve got my happy face on, my happy face on,” and having a breakdown.

I don’t want to be that person.

And that’s what Charlie has to let himself be. A person who feels what they’re feeling. Who’s not afraid to be all of who he is. Yes, he’s complex, but that’s what makes him really, really interesting.

I think we all forget that our very humanness is what makes us attractive. People relate more to the real us, than the false ‘happy, happy’ us. It gives them permission to also be real.

So, here’s the interview on my characters. J I’ve added a couple more thoughts as I’ve gone along, but it’s basically the same interview with Chris. Thanks!!! She does great interveiws :-)

I’ll talk a bit more about feelings over on my other blog www.themysticmanfiestor.blogspot.com on Monday as well. It’s been a bit of a theme lately.

I first introduce my characters in a book called DARK WAR. Then they go on to have a trilogy written about them and their relationship with each other. I darkened them slightly for Dark War, but their essential character is still there in the Troika Love Series trilogy, coming out soon.

This book is on special for one more day on Amazon and Muse this weekend at .99 cents. If you want a taste of my three lovelies, it's a good time to grab a copy.

Amazon

or

MuseItUp Publishing

 

ChrisChat: Why did you write the book that brought you to MuseItUp Publishing?
 

Meg:

Aloha Chris,  

I wrote Dark War as part of an antho collection. But the characters from that story came from a trilogy that has the first book HENRY AND ISOLDE in submission right now.  
 

When I hit 50 last year, some part of me simply rebelled!  

I thought I'm not going to shrivel up and die. I'm only 50 for god’s sake! I'm going to claim my wild sensuous side back. I found myself secretly closeted in my office, compelled to write a 'nice wee romance'—but I wanted it to be steamy. I was sick of books that went from the magical first kiss to the 'Oh God, that was amazing,' stage. I usually said to myself—Oy! Where's the bit in the middle!  

I started off with my two main characters Henry and Izzy in a deep steamy love story. Then Henry's best friend Charlie turned up and it got complicated... 

He’s affectionately known to me as 'Bloody Charlie.' (I'm a New Zealander, we’d consider this as similar to saying damn in the States.) He just wouldn't go away. He wanted to be in this scene, that scene. He wanted a bigger part. He wanted this and that. He drove me nuts. Finally, I spoke to a mentor who said, "Write him in, see what happens."  

I did and the rest is history—so to speak. He became the main character in all three books. He's essentially the wild part of me that needs more 'air time.' These books have been a way to claim myself back.

 

ChrisChat:

NICE!!! I love it when a character takes over. I have one who keeps nudging me in the back of my head, he’s a right crazy pain. Did you find the writing process change once you let Charlie in? Some have explained it becomes easier, but difficult because the story goes in directions you didn’t want. Outside of just sitting down and actually writing, what should any writer keep in mind with the process? Had to come back and add something else… “the wild part of me that needs more ‘air time’.” What does the freeing feel to you?

Meg:

 

Thanks Chris!! :-) I love it when a character takes over too. I just trot around briskly after them to keep up, scribbling furiously. :-) LOL on your head nudger. Oy!! I do love them when they turn up though and won't leave us alone.

Yes, I think the writing process did change when I let Charlie in and he did his own thing. I learned to let go a bit and just wait for 'them' (the Muses) to turn back up. I stopped being so worried about the story and started to trust it would come. I didn't really have to 'control' the process. I just had to trust that once I got this bit down, they’d give me the next piece. Previous to that, I always thought I'd get stuck or writers block. But once Charlie turned up and I let him run riot :-) I realized the story was out of my control anyway. I was simply channeling the story and had to trust that another piece WOULD turn up.

I got to throw the odd idea in, but really, they tell me their own stories now. :-)

I think ultimately for me, I had to trust that 'they' know what they're doing. And to be okay in the stage where you've written down what they've just given you, but nothing new has filled the vacuum yet. And to not force it.  

If they'd just given the whole story to me at once, I wouldn't have slept for weeks. Nor been able to take breaks to eat, go to the bathroom etc. LOL. It's quite intense for me when it happens. I'm literally hunched over the keyboard for hours, typing like a lunatic. This is when I go—thanks so much Gran for making me take touch typing. LOL.
 
In answer 'to the wild part of me that needs more air time.' I get to be very vulnerable and quite open through my character Charlie. Charlie's raw in many ways. He's articulate, good at introspection and highly intelligent. Sometimes getting to the real him can be a challenge though. He's so used to doing the PR charm machine. When he really gets to take some walls down and starts letting Henry and Izzy in, it takes a lot of trust. But he gets to be all of who he really is. The good, the bad, the ugly. Some of the scary bits, he thinks people will find frightening and hate about him. But being able to be who are you, that's a huge gift. We're all looking for that. Just to be accepted for who we are.

I can 'tamp' myself down a wee bit at times, because I’m very exuberant. I have a loud laugh, I find all sorts of things funny. I'm crazy and wild. I don't live by other people's conventions.  

Henry says to Charlie at one point, "Maybe your crazy self is your sane self."  

And that applies to me too. I think I'm at my best when I'm my crazy wild self. But sometimes that's still hard to do. To trust it's okay or that people won't run away screaming into the night. :-) It's freeing, but also very vulnerable. It's like showing the soft underbelly of yourself to the world and hope you won't get kicked in the guts for it.

Boy, you ask good questions. :-) Thanks. 

ChrisChat:

When I was younger we would visit friends and one was from Australia. I loved learning her phrases. My brother lives in Scotland…dad’s first marriage…so I know a few phrasings/slangs from him and my sister-in-law, let alone from my friend from Jamaica. This is going to show, I haven’t read Dark War, yet (so many great reads, so little time ) but does your New Zealander words/phrases slip in? How much do you have to fight not to allow them in?
 

Meg:

LOL. Great question. One I worried about a wee bit when I first started out. How fabulous that you have all these nations of people around you. :) I love it. Anyway, back to the question. I 'solved' the problem in a way, by making my main character a New Zealander. And even in a Christmas story I recently submitted, I did the same thing. I've lived in the State, on and off, for twenty odd years. So I have some Americanisms on board. And sometimes they do get muddled up. LOL.

I've put in things that Henry or Charlie have said and my editor came back with, is that a New Zealand or Kiwi phrase? Oh... LOL. Then I'll go and look it up and yes...it is. :-)  

The thing with being here for so long, is that I’ve retained my Kiwi accent, but have picked up lots of American words. So sometimes I really don't know which country something belongs to anymore. Also, our phrasing is often different and my syntax is odd anyway. So I have to work on that stuff sometimes. :-)

We swear a lot more. So parts of my speech and a lot of New Zealanders have to be toned down for an American audience. We also use words that are considered upsetting to some people here. Like Jesus, God, Christ etc. New Zealand is a largely secular country, for us, they're just words that have some energy to them, or everyday words, rather than sacred words. So I have to tone those down too. Although, I did question whether religious people would be reading my sultry steamy romance novels. :-)

I ended up attaching a list of Kiwi words for Henry and Isolde—book one of the Trilogy because there were quite a few words Izzy uses, that people may not know. They’re also on my website under Kiwisms. www.troikaromance.com. I say Crikey and Crikey Dick all the time. It's an exclamation of surprise, similar to wow. I had Isadora saying, “He wouldn't have a bar of it.”  

 

 

It wasn't until my editor asked and I looked it up, that I realized it was a New Zealand and Australian phrase. It means, you won't touch it, or be interested in it. I had to change it to “My Daddy wouldn't cotton to it.”

So, yes, I need my editor for my speech patterns and Kiwi words. 

 

I do try and keep most of Izzy’s words Kiwi ones as I’d use here. I say “the kitchen bench,” instead of “the kitchen counter.” A washcloth is a facecloth. I know that if any of the NZer read it, and I have something wrong—they’ll write to me. Not “write me” as Americans say. J  

I need my editor for obviously her brilliant editing (and she is good!) but also to get my American words right too. My one thing I didn't change for Izzy was that she calls underpants for women—panties. New Zealand women generally just call them pants or the dreaded U word (undies.) But I thought that was just too confusing, so went with the Americanism on it. I think I can get away with that, because Izzy has lived in the States ten years and will have a few Americanisms onboard. LOL. I occasionally use the word toilet, but mostly, it’s bathroom now.  

New Zealanders find this word an American ‘affectation.’ But I realized when I came here to live that it’s because most of the time, the toilet IS in the bathroom. In New Zealand, it’s nearly always in a separate small room, like a WC or water closet. The more modern home have a toilet in the bathroom now or refitted houses.  

 

 

I have to work harder with Henry and Charlie obviously on words. Henry’s a real old Southern gentleman and has a soft Louisiana cadence to his voice. So he speaks in a less 'decisive' style in some ways. I've heard Morgan Freeman speak like that and he's from the South. He'll use “It was a good review, I guess.” Not meaning, it was doubtful it was good. But as a soft modest acceptance that it was good.  

And Harry Connick Jr. is a native born New Orleanian, he has the soft cadence, but not the full Southern drawl. These are the voices I hear when I hear my Henry and Charlie. J

Thank you Chris, this has been really fun. :-) Great questions. :-) Thanks and aloha everyone Meg :-) 
 

Next week: I’m going to interview my characters, so you can get more idea of who they are. Thanks everyone for reading! I appreciate it so much!!!

Why DO we women like gay male porn so much?

Aloha everyone! (NSFW) (Just warning you now. :-) )

 

This week I was on the wonderful blogsite 

~  Coffee and Porn in the Morning

 

 

This blog... is about men, and coffee, and porn, and sex, and wine, and music, and intelligence, and fun, and women, and really hot photos, and giveaways. And it's about how all that stuff is absolutely normal and we will no longer apologize for any of it.

 

It's very fun. Has some lovely piccies of beautiful nudes. And Evaine and Shawny are really nice  women! I also agree with them, that 'all that stuff is absolutely normal and we will no longer apologize for any of it.' Just so. :-)

 

Go and check them out, if you click on their title above, it should take you over there. If not: www.cupoporn.blogspot.com. I do have this blog feeding over, but I wanted to keep it on mine as well. :-) Apologies for weird formatting in places. Blogger and I are not in agreement lately. LOL.

 

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Wednesday Whine & Wine with Meg Amor

Why DO we women like gay male porn so much?

Aloha everyone. I keep looking at this question because I write a ménage series. I love watching gay male porn and writing about male/male/female sex. And judging from this blog and others, I’m not the only woman who feels this way.

I stumbled across this realization when my‘nice wee romance’ turned into something else. Charlie was supposed to be my main character Henry’s, best friend, occasionally putting in an appearance, being a sounding board then disappearing again. But he didn’t get the memo. Or the hints to bugger off! I nicknamed him ‘bloody Charlie.’  

I said to him, “You can’t be in this book. It’s a male/female romance. What would the readers think? People won’t go for that. Go away!” 

He just gave me that slow sultry smile, his hot black eyes spearing me. “I just want one sex scene with them.” He brushed the back of his hand against my face, the smoldering sensuous burn and I caved…

 

I thought this piccie would be lovely for my Aloha Friday segment on fb. But I thought someone might object.

 

Okay, it wasn’t quite like that, but fairly close. I talked to my mentor, who said, “Let him have a scene, just run with it. He’ll be satisfied and that’ll be that.”

So…I did.
 

And he wasn’t.
 

Four books later, Charlie’s the strongest character, and the one most loved in my Troika Love Series. LOL. People love Henry and Izzy, but Charlie captures their heart and soul.

So, what the hell IS it about male/male sex scenes? Why do we find them so attractive? My lovers are in a committed loving troika relationship. They usually make love together, but occasionally it’s a twosome. Initially getting everyone’s bits and bobs in the right place, making sure everyone got looked after, well, it wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked.
 

I decided I’d do some research. Stop laughing. I really did start watching porn ‘for research only purposes.’
 

The hetero porn was jaw droppingly—boring. The women all looked like they were mentally doing their grocery list. That vacant stare you get, as you twiddle your pen, thinking…do we need more air freshener? No one looked like they were having a lot of fun. Some of them laughed like they were at a coffee morning. And the action was mechanical. Part A slots into part B, C or D.
 

But then, I stumbled across a gay ménage or just male/male and wow…okay…that’s a turn on!

 

 

Why?

The men seemed to be enjoying themselves for a start. They talk quietly, there’s a connection—the soft groans and genuine smiles. They kiss. A good kisser can do anything with me. A bad kisser and the whole thing’s not happening. Ugh. It’s a turn-off.
 

They touch each other. Nipples are tweaked, stomachs are stroked, skin nuzzled. And yes they do laugh. But you get the feeling it’s in genuine enjoyment. It’s arousing.

I write what I want to read, the steamy sensuous explicit sex scenes because I really hate reading a romance where this happens. …his zipper came down…

My God, that was the best orgasm I’ve ever had…

Er…hang on a minute? Where’s the juicy bit in the middle? I’ve been robbed!

Hinting at something delicious and sexy, but it never rears its head, so to speak.

I like men. And I like men’s genitalia. Here’s what Izzy said to Charlie once about men.

“I like men naked. They’re very sexy, Charlie baby.”

“A lot of women think men are ugly naked.” I wanted to see what she’d say.

“Oh no, men are gorgeous. I like men’s penis’s and balls. Sooo sexy. You get great shapes and textures. They hang nicely and a penis changes shape. Such soft velvety skin, then you turn someone on and you get a hard silky cock.”

"Christ woman,” I’d said, as images flashed through my head, my cock growing.

She also thinks this when she’s turning Henry on in his sleep.

I love these slow ones, watching and feeling the stages it goes through. The soft flaccid penis to the blood engorged cock with its soft velvety skin and rock hard interior. It’s very sensuous.

And I suspect most of us women who like gay porn movies and still shots are the same.

Last week on Coffee and Porn there was a shot of a lovely man with an erection walking across the room. The lovely sway of his cock was mesmerizing. I couldn’t take my eyes off it either! Just so damn delicious!

And in gay male porn, you get two penises, two sets of balls and for me a personal favorite, two sets of pubic hair. Yummy. And there’s just something a wee bit illicit about two men having sex, isn’t there. It titillates and arouses. All that gorgeous male energy poured into an intimate connection. Oh yes!

  

 

****
 

My romance erotica short story Dark War was published this year with Muse It Up Publishing. You get to meet my three Charlie, Henry and Izzy. They were darkened up slightly for this story, but their essential characters are still the same. The love connection between them doesn’t change. Three hearts entwined in a deep velvety love story.

 

Dark War

This sensuous sultry romance is set in an old planation house in The Bayou of Louisiana. Three hearts entwined between two beautiful Creole men and one wild redhead woman. Thunderheads roll in off the bay on a hot and sultry night. The wind chimes are going wild. This heat flash has been building for a few days. Anything could happen...

Lonely Charlie Laralde aches with pent-up sexual tension and love for his two best friends, Henry and Izzy. His desire for them is torn to shreds by a vicious woman convincing him, he's unlovable trash. Like the inner Dark War struggle he's fought his whole life, he gives in to the darkness. Frustrated and hell bent on destruction, he disappears with an unsavory crowd on a depraved death wish booty-call.

Will Henry and Izzy rescue him in time? Can they convince Charlie he's their hearts desire? And the deep passionate love and desire they have for him?

BUY LINKS:

 

Muse It Up Publishing

Amazon US

 

 

 

 

Troika Love Series Trilogy

~ Henry and Isolde

~ The Chi Circle

~ The Flame Still Burns

Henry and Isolde~ A steamy love story, set in modern day New Orleans. Henry, an older black musician feels his life is nearing its end. Until he falls in love with Izzy, his white New Zealander, younger, richer, married boss. To his joy—she feels the same way about him. He comes into his sexuality for the first time in his life. But will Izzy leave her husband? And how does Henry's best friend Charlie fit into their lives? It's complicated...

The Chi Circle~ Charlie comes back early from seeing Mea in New Zealand. It's not working, why? Because he's in love with someone else. Well...two someone's actually. But do his best friends have any idea how he feels? Is this a one sided frustrated fantasy? Or is it possible, they feel the same way? Follow the CHI - Charlie, Henry and Izzy, as their life takes them from Hawaii to New Orleans and France. Where they discover a lifetime just after World War I in Paris—two Russian émigrés cousins and a young Frenchman become lovers.

The Flame Still Burns~ Life has settled into a happy easy rhythm for the three lovers. Charlie's Club is sold and they are getting ready to go to France, to research the Russian/French lifetime, when there's a knock at the door. Standing on the doorstep is a kid from a rough neighborhood of New Orleans—the spitting image of Charlie. How will they cope with Alex, who twangs at their heart strings? When he gets shot after a gangland shooting, they take him to France, where they unravel the rest of the French lifetime, they're all involved in.  

The first of this series will be released later in the year. Look out for it on Amazon.

www.troikaromance.com

 

Coffee and Porn in the Morning: Wednesday Whine & Wine with Meg Amor

Coffee and Porn in the Morning: Wednesday Whine & Wine with Meg Amor: Why DO we women like gay male porn so much? Aloha everyone. I keep looking at this question because I write a ménage series. I love watc...

The Six Month Anniversary of a Death.

This photo appeared on Aaron's facebook page after he died. Two pictures had 'mysteriously'
(thanks Aaron) blended into one. Aaron in spirit, flying home.

Aloha everyone. A slightly different blog from me, but I’ve had to take some time off in the past month because of exhaustion. In case you’re wondering why that’s been happening, I thought I’d explain some things.  

I didn’t expect to be a widow at fifty-one. Even that feels slightly fraudy to say. Perhaps if I was in my 60’s or 70’s, I might feel more justified in calling myself a widow. I’m not sure why I feel this way. Like I’m too young to have become a widow or something.  

And I am too young.  

Who dies at forty-five from the flu for God’s sake?  

My husband Aaron did. Yes, it was the H1N1 virus. And he had an enlarged heart. I always said he had a big heart… 

But despite that, it’s not what you expect from the ‘flu.’ You think, in this day and age, nobody dies from the flu for God’s sake!!! And it’s this sense of ‘unreality’ that constantly slams into you after a death. The fact that the person simply isn’t here is surreal. Some days you just can’t comprehend it.  

I’ve had two significant deaths previous to Aaron dying, but this one has been a different experience altogether. I have just gone past the six month anniversary of him dying. Now I am seeing patches of ‘sanity.’ Where before, there were none.  

My own reaction to the death on every level has been the strangest thing for me to deal with in some ways. I noticed as I’ve written this that I’m switching back and forth between first person ‘I’ and second person ‘you.’ It does feel like that. At times, you feel completely disconnected from yourself and everything around you.  

There are so many things that nobody tells you will happen. Your memory goes in the strangest way. I normally have a fairly good memory, but whole tracts of information simply disappeared on me. I skipped ahead from Tuesday to Friday one week. God knows how I did that. As in, I thought it was Friday and it was Tuesday?!  

They don’t tell you that simple things that used to be a five minute job will now take you half an hour to do. I’d say to a girlfriend, I’ll be over in an hour. Two and a half hours later, I’d arrive, completely baffled by how long everything seemed to take. I only stopped for cat food, gas and Macs?  

I was expecting the odd things like, working on my book one night, lost in the ether space of writing… I looked up and thought, oh, Aaron must have gone to bed already. Then I realized… No, he hasn’t. He’s gone. Not here anymore. Never coming back… 

Those things I expected.  

Nobody realizes how exhausting everything is. Or how certain things feel like Everest to scale. A simple phone call takes on nightmare proportions. I’m a normal introvert and dislike the phone, crowds, malls etc like most writers, but now, it seems even worse.  

 

Strange things take on odd proportions. Selling some of the books and DVD’s we had because they were Aaron’s and I don’t watch, read them, makes me feel funny. Like, if I sell anything, they might make me forget who he was. Today, I bagged up some of his clothes to give to the men’s shelter. I cried, but it was okay. I kept the things that had meaning for me. Various clothes, a pair of underpants for God’s sake and some socks. But they are all memories of him.  

I have mostly been on my own dealing with this. And the long days often drag into long weeks. It’s been really hard to deal with. I like my time on my own, but this is overkill. I don’t have a lot of support where I am. And yet sometimes, the effort to pick up the phone can be beyond me. The feeling of a lack of a future for me has been daunting at times. You do wonder if you’ll ever laugh and love again with abandon. I wrote a Christmas story about it.  

You feel like fifty shades of grey. Grey, old, tired, exhausted. You look in the mirror and think, who is that?  

Small things overwhelm me. Big things I simply stopped dealing with… 

I manage to feed the cats and me. I do the washing once a month. The house is a tip and I don’t care. I gave my stray puss Mr. Beaumont a toilet roll to play with (because he gets bored) and now have shredded toilet paper everywhere. As well as all the feathers he pulled out of another toy I got him. I just step over it.  

 

But I see small improvements in me. My hair starts to look like mine and it’s not bone dry from stress.  

I’m just starting to get my memory back.  

I’m sleeping deeply again and for longer.  

I cooked up home fry potatoes and eggs the other night. The first time I’ve cooked something ‘real’ since Aaron died.  

I got my toenails painted.  

I wore a pair of pretty earrings the other day.  

These are the ways that measure my improvement.  

I think that is the thing that has floored me the most. The incredibly slow increments of movement. I had a heart attack when I was forty. It took me a good eight weeks until I could do things ‘normally’ again. I remember measuring my progress by how much it took out of me to walk from the toilet to my couch every day. When I could walk that small distance without it feeling like a descent on Everest, I knew I was getting there.  

This has felt the same.  

I come from a culture that doesn’t do grief or feelings well. The New Zealanders are all pissed off with me because I’m not being ‘tough, rugged and durable.’ They want me to be coping better than I am. In the end, I stopped taking their calls, answering their emails. They just made me feel even more defective than I was already feeling. I realized that I had to heal in MY time. Not theirs. They wanted me to be better so ‘they’ could cope. I knew I couldn’t take their feelings into consideration because they weren’t taking mine into consideration. In the end, I walked away.  

I asked a couple of people how they coped with deaths they’d had. One person said she drank vodka for a month. Another said she slept for a year and a half. I respect that. It’s real.  

I probably began to heal the most when I stopped trying to be what everyone wanted me to be. Today I’m not coping. If you’re not coping with that, there’s the door. I simply didn’t have the energy to take into account everyone else’s sensibilities. In a strange way, I got to show myself some self love. The gentle art of saying NO.  

In Top Gun, when Maverick can’t reengage. There’s a scene where’s he on the ground and his Reo has a go at him. He grabs him hard and says, “I’ll fire when I’m damn well good and ready.” 
 

Good advice.  

I’ve always said you don’t get over a death but you go through it.  

And this is particularly so.  

I thought long and hard about whether to put this blog up. But I’m not the only person who’s experienced a death and wondered what the hell’s going on. Or been on the end of ‘well meaning’ but dreadful things people say. Thoughtless, insensitive, uncaring, crap. 

My stepmother actually said to me, “Well, you’ve been on your own before, you’ll be okay.” Like perhaps I had lost my job and another better one was just around the corner.  

Seriously? I didn’t speak to them for ages, I just couldn’t cope with it. I then had a go at her and she came back later to apologize. She realized if my dad died suddenly, how would she cope?  

The guy in the supermarket I talked to quite often said, “Bummer.”  

Really? I just gave him the death stare and walked off. I’ve never spoken to him again.  

And there have been some wonderful, kind, caring people. Thank you to all of you, who know who you are. Who have understood. Who have encouraged me to simply grieve and take it easy on myself. THANK YOU.  

It’s the strangeness of it all that is the hardest to cope with. The unrealness and disconnection from my own self. When you measure a week by, I had one good day this week. Ugh. Where being able to take out the trash, stack and turn on the dishwasher, clean down the counters, possibly wash the kitchen floor feels like a monumental achievement.  

The sadness is the hardest thing to deal with. Aaron and I loved to travel together. I realized that was one of the things that were getting to me. All the places he didn’t get to see. All the things I know he would have loved and had a ball at. All the stuff he’s missed out on. My mum died at the same age as Aaron and I didn’t feel those things with her.  

 

Time is the only healer in any of this.  

And it’s a long slow process.  

In six months time I will write again about where things are at. I hope to see more of my life force back. Just having my memory starting to function again seems like a huge thing.  

So, be especially kind to anyone you know who’s had a death. You’re probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what they’re dealing with on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis.  

So many of us feel ‘we should’ cope for ‘other peoples’ sensibilities. Encourage people to simply grieve. Do not push them into your time frame for things. Your time frame is wrong for them. Do not ‘jolly’ them along. You are wrong. We have to be falsely up while you are there. Then we sink into the lonely depression afterward. It’s bad for us.  

Realize that people have an inbuilt survival instinct. That even if it looks like they’re barely living, somewhere, somehow they are managing to do some things to keep functioning. It might not be how ‘you’d do it,’ but they’re standing. When you have to deal with exactly the same situation, get back to me and tell me how well you’re doing with it.  

I don’t recommend that people ‘keep busy.’ It just delays grieving.  

I don’t recommend that people ignore their feelings. It just delays grieving.  

Don’t be brave. Be real. Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to grieve. It goes faster. You heal quicker. I know this, because I’ve just gone through it. Don’t let other people push you. Tell them to ‘eff off’ if you have to. This is not the time to keep up appearances. It’s time for you. I say all this back to myself, as much as to anyone else.  

I miss Aaron. I miss my friend. I also miss myself…  

 

 

The Maori Haka done at Aaron's Wake

 

 

 

What genre do I write in? You tell me and we'll all know!!!

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What do I write? You tell me and then we’ll all know!  I’d love to know people’s opinions on this. Feel free to comment and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the 4^th of July weekend. I’ll send you out a copy of Dark War, my short story that’s a…um…romance erotica, women’s fiction, soul connection relationship, deeply emotional steamy love story?  

 

I have no idea how to classify myself.   

Looking at various things this last couple of weeks, where I took a sabbatical from my ever exploding life, working sometimes what felt like 16 hours a day. I began to wonder if I knew what I was doing? I began to have doubts about my writing or being A writer. Given the chance to stand back and assess things, I wonder about the genre I write in. Do I love it? Well…yes…I do actually. So, what’s my problem? 

I was recently interviewed by the Good Men Project on whether we women erotica writers thought it was true that women wouldn’t read erotica written by men. Surmising that if it was written by a male, we’d automatically dismiss the story. But that’s not true. It more comes down to the splits and layers I see as I involve myself in this industry and specifically the genre I write in.  

 

 

Most women, but not all, want to read romance erotica and not stroke, if they’re going to pick up a story in this genre. So, do we automatically dismiss the male writers? No, we don’t. But my personal experience is that male writers generally write stroke. Stroke is a nice way of saying porn. And all of us in the Lush and Blush Club are ‘hot’ writers. We all say clearly, we write romance erotica and NOT porn. Two of our writers pen BDSM books, but they still say, it’s romance erotica we write.  

And NEVER say to me I write stroke. I will take umbrage with you.  

It’s not because I don’t want people to say I write porn. It’s because I really do want to convey the love and connection, all the lovely emotions that go with a relationship when I write a story. And you rarely get any of that in stroke. Mostly it’s sex and that’s it.  

 

 

Then I realized too, I’m caught in a conundrum. A couple of people have also told me I don’t really quite write romance erotica. And I thought I did. But the truth is, I write about soul deep relationships. Yes, they are romances, but more deeply, they’re relationships. But am I mainstream? Noooooo…I’m not.  

Because…I have explicit sex scenes in my work. Am I just trying to wrap a romance story around some sex scenes to flesh it out a bit. Again, no. If it didn’t annoy me so much to not have the explicit sex scenes in a book, I’d take them out and just have the connected relationship interplay between my characters. But I can’t separate the sex part of their relationship like it doesn’t happen or happens between closed doors. Because for me, good soul connected deep sex is very much a part of a relationship.  

Then on top of that… I also apparently…have paranormal ‘elements’ in my work.  

But I don’t write about werewolves, vampires, shape shifters or anything like that. 

 

 

I write about something that is quite every day to me. I was quite startled when a writer friend came back and said, ‘and with the paranormal aspects.’ I thought, what paranormal aspects? I suddenly realized they meant the past lives and perhaps the telepathy at times between the main characters. The stuff that’s picked up intuitively between them. The flashes of insight that happen. To me…this is pretty everyday stuff and doesn’t come under paranormal. Charlie’s a good clairaudient and can speak clearly with the Guides. Again, an every day thing for me. So, do I write paranormal romance erotica? I don’t feel I do…but I could be classified that way. As soon as someone says that, I go directly to vampires and werewolves. This could be just my perception.  

Well, okay, moving past that confusing part. I then come to the next classification.  

I recently took part in a Pride Chat Month. Again, I was a wee bit startled to find myself included in this. I don’t consider what I writer as gay or bisexual, but I suppose it is. I consider my m/m/f relationship to simply be the result of three souls who deeply love each other and ‘just happen’ to find themselves in a committed loving relationship with each other.  

 

 

What I also didn’t realize was that there were the ‘straight’ writers who wrote about LGBQT relationships. But then there were the LGBQT writers who wrote about LGBQT relationships. And that seemed like another separation on some level of genre or what we write. Again, it may not be. But I did feel a bit of a fraud in some ways, writing about bisexual experiences when I’m not bisexual myself. But then my stories don’t have a bisexual female, just bisexual men. So, am I okay in this category? 

Yesssssssssssssss… 

That’s what happened to my brain too. It sort of exploded on me. So what the hell do I write? I was talking to a girlfriend about this and she said, I ultimately write about deep relationships. And I do. But they don’t have that classification on Amazon or anywhere else. It’s SO annoying!  

I’m also ‘classified’ as a ‘vanilla’ writer. I was hoping for strawberry, but no, apparently I write vanilla sex. Which sounds incredibly boring. But what it means is there’s no kink or fetish, BDSM or anything like that in my work. But hang on…does having a m/m/f relationship come under kink for some people? It’s not everyday, no. But I don’t find it ‘kinky’ as such. I’m probably more along the lines of ‘pony play’ is kinky. Go and look it up…  

 

 

So do I write Paranormal Vanilla Romance Erotica? Or Bi-racial? My main characters are Creoles and a New Zealand woman. Why? I don’t know. That’s who turned up. And I like brown skin, it’s lovely.  

All I know is that I write about deep relationships between people. If you took out the explicit sex scenes, it would be a mainstream relationship women’s fiction story. There’s no werewolves, vampires, zombies… Just people who still know how to use their other senses we’re all born with. I think I write steamy romances with deep soul connections. Lots of love and emotions. And a really good sexual connection is part of a fabulous relationship.  

So this is what my good friend Tina Kavanagh and I came up with in the end: J

Women's fiction. Modern romantic soul connection relationship stories that focus on love and emotions.

Steamy romantic fiction for open minded, emotionally intelligent women

What do you think? Please comment and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the weekend. Thanks and aloha Meg J