Author Archives: F Dot Leonora

Wicked Wednesday Prompt #97 — "Hotel"

Eliza was always waiting. As a younger woman with her friends in bars looking for Mr. Goodbar like the novel and movie she had read and seen. Now she was in the hotel bar waiting for her fiance. Curled protectively over her drink, she thought about all the things going on in her life, all at once at a pace she could barely control. Slowly, a man sat beside her at the crowded bar, everything about him was slow, measured including his smile at her. Eliza felt inside her as if everything had stilled in that moment.

She tried to be still, still curled over her drink. The man did not even seem to notice her after he smiled, which she felt was for the best as she stirred her drink aimlessly with the cutoff straw that was inside it. She crossed her legs, hooking her ankle so her legs seemed crossed twice.

“You’re engaged?”

Eliza’s lips had just touched the rim of her glass, as she looked up at him startled by his sudden speech.

“Yes,” she choked slightly even though she had not had a sip. Looking around nervously to avoid looking in the man’s eyes, she remembered she was waiting for her fiance conveniently.

“Looking for your fiance? He’s probably not going to come.”

“What do you mean?”

She was sure her eyes darkened like Rafe told her they did when she was mad at him. The stranger was taken off his game for a moment which pleased her.

“I mean I don’t think your fiance is going to come, and I think you are coming with me.”

He held her upper arm loosely, but his grip was firm nonetheless.

“My fiance–”

His finger on her mouth was soft, almost a caress, and she was lulled into silence. She knocked over her drink, and burned with embarrassment. When she looked up at the bartender, he waved her off and she got off the stool as she was being gestured to by this man who she did not know. Her heart was beating calmly, nothing about her was wild as he took her out of the bar.

They waited near the elevators, as he took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered her one, she shook her head but he kept the cigarettes extended until she took one.

“You are going to have a hard time with the obey part of the vows, aren’t you?”

“They do not have that in the vows anymore.”

“They should,” he said inhaling smoke.

Eliza raised her eyebrow at him as he lit a cigarette for her. She had stopped smoking a few years ago when she became domesticated, or rather when she started living with Rafe. But now the feeling of the cigarette in her mouth made her feel happy. Made her think of a time when she was free. It was almost as if she were that person again.

“You think so, huh?” she said blowing out her own cloud of smoke. “Does your wife obey you?”

He snorted.

“I’m not married. But if you vow to be with a man you should obey him, and he should protect you.”

Eliza inhaled and shook her head. She wondered if Rafe was looking for her now. It was a very dim thought in her head, she did not think it would be awful for him to wonder where his perfect fiancée was for a moment.

Perfect, perfect, that was what he said about her and what he expected. She did obey him, and he did protect her but it was hard to be perfect.

“My fiance is perfect,” Eliza said out loud what she was thinking.

“Then what are you doing out here with a stranger when he is looking for you?”

Shrugging and swinging her cigarette back with her arms, from her perfect black dress that Rafe loved her in so much, she declared.

“I am not perfect.”

He grabbed her and kissed her so hard she thought she would lose her breath. Her lips throbbed from his after he pulled away from her, and put his arm about her.

The elevator was right on time and they walked into it. It was mirrored all around and she could see every angle of their bodies.

He kissed her again, this time she was not out of breath but wanted more even as he gave it. When they pulled away this time, he lifted her chin so she looked up at him.

“Are you going to obey me?”

“I am not getting married to you,” she stuck out a her tongue with insouciance.

He pulled her close to him.

“But I will protect you if you do.”

“Protect me from what?” she questioned looking up into his eyes. He looked down at her without blinking.

“From what will happen if you don’t obey me.”

Her eyes fell to the floor, she felt him looking at her. When he tilted her chin to look up at him again, she tried to avoid his gaze, but he made her look.

“I have simple rules: no names, no questions, no guilt and you keep your ring on.”

“That’s it?”

He nodded then pressed her to the coolness of the mirrored wall, kissing her so that she almost believed she would go through the glass. Peeking for just a moment as they kissed at the overhead mirror to see how it looked to have him cover her. The view made her so wet she shifted her legs, so he pressed himself all the more to her. She moaned unexpectedly even to herself, as he kissed her neck which was always her weakness.

They came to his floor and managed not to look so disheveled, since she could see in the mirrored hallways. But in his room, he did not turn on the lights. There was just the light from the moon outside.

“No lights?”

She clapped her hand over her mouth.

No questions.

He took her hand from her mouth and kissed it. She did feel protected from herself when he did that, as if to say he was okay that she had forgotten for a moment.

He pulled her hands up over her head, and pulled her body closer than close to his. Eliza was on a tilt as if dangling from a puppeteer’s string, pressed herself to him and closed her eyes opening herself to the darkness. His mouth on hers was so divine she almost wanted to pull out all of her hair as he tugged at it, her hand rose tugging at her hair with his until he kissed her fingers after pulling her hand away.

Everything she experienced was going to be him: his hands, his mouth, his body. And he was much more gentle than she would have expected considering how brutish he came off at the bar and in front of the hotel smoking. She liked the smell of cigarette smoke on their clothes as they floated past her against the wall.

Against the wall he pounded into her, her head rolling and bobbing, knocking her into another reality. He held her so close she almost could not breathe, she closed her eyes and embraced this other world she was in where she was not perfect. A world in which her arms were tight around a man whose name she did not know, but whose savory scent she wanted to scrape with her teeth.

Because it would end, this would end…

They dressed in the moonlight, and he walked her back out into mirrored hallway, and into the mirrored elevator where she watched him cover her overhead in the mirror again with a kiss. The elevator opened and revealed the bar from a distance. Eliza walked out first, Rafe was standing facing the opposite way at the bar. She walked over to him with a spring in her step, knowing she was imperfect.

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photo by f dot leonora

I'm Going Hopping

My friends Lise Horton and Del Carmen were doing this blog hop, and I decided to hop along! It never hurts for me to remember why I do this:

1) What am I working on?

I am working on a variety of things including editing several projects for Ravenous Romance, posting to this blog and trying to write some short stories. I have been very inspired to write since attending Eroticon 2014, editing is a lovely thing and I love it but creating is something I love as well.

2) How does my work differ from others in its genre?

One thing I learned when I was taking writing courses was that no one is going to break the mold. All the stories have been told, the only difference is that I am telling it. I like erotic romance, I like stories where people love like their life depends on it. Love that is inconvenient and dominates the people who fall in it. I like the dark side of things not always BDSM, but the darkness that is revealed when people love that hard. When they are exposed and vulnerable…I love exploring the madness on the other side of that.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I wanted to be an actress at one point, a psychologist at another. I had more of a inclination to be creative, but acting was too much exposure for me. Writing allows me to take the risks I might have taken with acting, but instead I research it and probably go deeper with words on a screen. I was always told I was a good storyteller, and it seems like I let people talk me into believing it. I have always been driven to tell the stories people do not see or they may not want to see.

4) How does my writing process work?

This morning I got inspired by a name of a restaurant. It reminded me of an old actress, and I wanted to name my character that. Since I write nothing but love stories, it was how is she going to fall in love? Then I remembered I was already working on a story, and I know that character is going to fall apart in love. I do not really need to do anything but write the story. Sometimes I create a character who does something I am not familiar with, and I have to research to make it real. The same way that I will explore something that a character in a novel does like the time I was in a Tibetan restaurant and had tea with butter and sugar like I read about in Nicholas Christopher’s Veronica, that is the same way I will explore something just to get an idea of what it is like so I can make it ring true. I learned early on to write about what I know, some of my stories are very far from what I know, but I have stepped into the shoes of my character’s in some way so that I can tell it. Writers are really only mediums as I see it.

photo courtesy of www.feltmusic.it

Skimming

Jade A. Waters had the best blog post this week, recounting firsts. Aside from being dazzled by her eloquent writing, I became nostalgic about my own first reading of the erotica genre.

Until I was in my late teens, I was always sneak reading books I was not allowed to read in the open. Beside my mother’s bed was a treasure chest of romance novels (like mother, like daughter). There was a well-worn copy of Jackie Collins’ Chances that if my mom left me alone in her room, I tucked into while listening for her footsteps so I would not be caught with it.

I never was caught with a book that I was not supposed to be reading.

I skimmed so extensively piecemeal, that I practically had read the entire book by the time I was allowed to read it in the open, Shanna by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. It was actually funny when I read the entire book, I was finally able to put all the love scenes into some context. And even discovered some additional love scenes that I was not sophisticated enough to decipher because I was looking for the obvious ones.

Now the thing that intrigues me about how guarded we are about children these days, and what they see on television and read, is what happened to me from my experience of skimming books with material that I was not supposed to. It is how I became an erotic romance writer and editor. I was not taught that sex was dirty, my mother was always forthcoming with sexual information from the time I was six. My Barbie and Ken slept naked side by side like I saw on television, and my mom did not say a word to me about it or make me separate them.

When I skimmed Chances, I formulated a plot in my preteen head for a Montague/Capuletesque family saga with one family on the wrong side of the law, and the other family on the right side. I have to say writing the bad family was much more fun than writing the good family. In an issue of Cosmopolitan, Jackie Collins said she never used an outline for her stories. This is how I structure my stories as well, and since I am not capable of ending a love story badly, I usually know how it is going to end!

Shanna I think, and honestly any Kathleen E. Woodiwiss novel is the gold standard for romance. After skimming it, reading it in full and still skimming to this day for the good parts (which are not all sex scenes), I become lachrymose when I read Shanna. It is one of the best love stories I have ever read. My mother and I quoted from that novel, it left that kind of impact on us. The only time I have ever missed my stop on a train, was reading Forever in Your Embrace written years later by Woodiwiss. Kathleen Woodiwiss taught me how deep a love story has to be. If you are going to write a romance and not just an erotic piece, that love has to be everything. Something to die for, something to strive for…

None of this was a stretch for me, because I have always been violently, hopelessly romantic. I always look for love, I probably skim life looking for love…

photo courtesy of Amazon.com

Sticky Notes No. 1

I met a lot of luminous people at Eroticon 2014, and attended equally as luminous sessions there. A lot of people were able to do a roundup of everything on their blogs, I fear I am not that gifted to capsulize everything in that way. Today is three weeks since the conference began, and it still is impacting me. For all the sessions I attended it was nice to compare notes with everyone else, especially when they attended a session I did not.

Being Blacksilk attended a conflict session that she described to me, and promised she would post her notes from it. She did, and I was so appreciative. I was even more appreciative when I saw her latest post. I attended Kristina Lloyd’s Flash Fiction session, and had every intention of trying my hand at it. However seeing Being Blacksilk’s sticky note micro-fiction prompt made me realize even I could do that! So I did on the train this morning, and took a picture of the sticky note on my lap with my iPhone.

I really liked this story, after I knew what I would name my protagonist I was ready to go. I actually am itching to finish this story, and just might. At first I was like maybe I would do it as a series of sticky notes, but that is not going to be powerful enough for me to explore it all. I am thinking I might start more of these in the future on sticky notes, and I will probably share them intermittently. I need inspiration however I can get it, so I will be keeping a pink post-it pad in my purse…

Below is the transcript of the story in case you cannot read it, although I do pride myself on my very neat penmanship acquired from Catholic School!

Eliza was always waiting. As a younger woman with her friends in bars looking for Mr. Goodbar like the novel and movie she had read. Now she was in the hotel bar waiting for her fiance. Curled protectively over her drink, she thought about all the things going on in her life, all at once at a pace she could barely control. Slowly, a man sat beside her at the crowded bar, everything about him was slow, measured including his smile at her. Eliza felt inside her as if everything had stilled in that moment.

photo by f dot leonora

What Makes You Stop?, Part II

I had not planned on writing a sequel to yesterday’s post, but the irony of this situation made me have to…

Just as I was about to lift the handle to the gate to my place, I saw that the red window was still not lit across the street. However someone in another house across from me had a poster of Mohammad Ali. I found that striking, because I could not see the whole thing, but I did see that it looked like a scene from a match that he won. I assumed it was in a bedroom, and wondered if it was there for inspiration? For the aesthetic?

I thought about what windows reveal, what they say about the person behind them. I thought about the desire to have things around you that create an atmosphere. I usually keep my windows closed, blinds drawn, no Edward Hopper voyeurism into my place. Things I have hung up inside for my aesthetic and inspiration include a map of Paris, various pictures of butterflies, postcards from friends including one of Sophia Loren staring at Jayne Mansfield’s breasts, and an old calendar with an old pulp cover that is subtly erotic. And books. Everywhere. I am used to it all, but I love it all around me just the same.

Tonight for a change, I was able to remember that I saw this poster across the street, and wanted to write about the irony. Oh irony!

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

What Makes You Stop?

There is a house on the top floor across the street from me that lights up completely red. Every time I see it, I stop to wonder what is going on inside that all red room? For the past few days the light has not been on, and I wonder why? What has stopped happening in that red room?

It could be a story, it should be a story, but by the time my key gets in the door and I start thinking about whatever it is that I need to do–or the nothing I plan to do after a day of work–that story never gets written by me.

I always have the urge to write. Even when there is nothing to write about. It is soothing to me to think about something that I might write, or something that I will write. I was stalling on a post for this week, and then this idea came to me because it was exactly what I was doing.

Stopping.

Is it writer’s block or fear that prevents you from getting the words on a page? I wrote this post when I was planning on writing whatever it was I wanted to on March 1, but yet I have not written very much at all. It is fiction that I am lamenting now, because I have been keeping up with this blog and morning pages. I want to create a world though, a sultry one. I crave this story even though I have not written it yet, or completely imagined it yet, but I know it. I know every contour of it, its breath, its passion…I especially know its breathless passion.

What makes me stop is time, and the perfectionist that lives in every writer. I have gotten better about the perfectionist in me, constantly reminding myself words are not indelible. Ideas honestly need to be jarred like fireflies, because if you forget them no matter how bright they are their light will permanently dim.

I hate to make excuses, but stopping is natural to the course of a writer…fortunately so is starting again…

photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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Renee Rose is the Boss Lady

Renee Rose and I are both tired from Eroticon 2014 which was held in Bristol, but Renee has had four releases in the past four weeks! Her latest is The Bossman, from Riverdale Books the brainchild of Lori Perkins. When we decided we would do this interview which was something I used to do in a previous blog life, we just looked at each and knew what we wanted. Renee crackles with energy, and this is not surprising since she revealed to me she is a healer in her professional life. There is a tremendous calm about her, but there is no doubt that she is quite a dynamo in everything she does.

“I am a little manic, there is no other explanation!” Renee jokes. Voted America’s Next Top Erotica Writer during Eroticon USA, her impressive two-year career displays her stamina and deep passion for what she does. The first day of Eroticon in Bristol, Renee distributed wooden paddles with her brand on it that shows off her dancer’s legs. She is this amazing combination of hard, business and soft, intuitive woman. Being around her, her warmth and sincerity is infectious. I feel so comfortable with her even though we have only met a few times. She is completely authentic, writes hot erotica and is totally the master of her universe. Scroll below for Renee on Renee…

I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I used to ski, but decided it wasn’t worth a knee injury that could end my dance career.

I was taught that genre fiction was bad, so after abandoning Sweet Valley High at age 14, had not read any romance other than Jane Austen. Got my degree in English.

During a plane ride I needed a book, and a friend gave me a romance novel and I really liked it. It was a feel good book–a hot guy, a hot woman get together!

Spent a year devouring romance and decided I would write one, but would edit out spanking because it was not PC.

I wrote a book in six days, it was pubbed two weeks later and had an Amazon ranking of 3000. The stars aligned to tell me I was on the right track.

I am a mom, modern dance teacher–had my own dance company for ten years. I am a PTA president, and a healer. I do body work for people to move out of pain. With some people I use energy work in addition to the Feldenkrais Method, with others, I just use energy as an intuitive guide.

As a child I was the usual overachiever. My parents put me in dance because I had a lot of energy to burn.

Had to have surgery before I got pregnant with my daughter. I could not survive because I could not dance.

I was a born a spanko, spanking (my) dolls. In a way (spanking) goes with the overachiever thing. I was always the good girl, I was never spanked. I was the pleaser, I would do my homework, be on time. The psyche of a spanker is the need to please, the desire to be right, to please someone.

I am always a bottom.

(There is) a slight difference in BDSM v. spanking. (With spanking) the shame and humiliation is part of the turn-on. The truly being naughty, paying for punishment.

If you asked me for a natural healing alternative, I could probably have five suggestions, maybe ten.

I was never the type to chase my kids, my kids chased me (they were) like mom is going let’s go!

photo courtesy of http://www.reneeroseromance.com

HELLO EROTICON FOR REAL!!!

Bristol is completely decadent, sadly my flight here was such I am not sure I am going to be able to do more then just attend Eroticon. Yet isn’t that enough?

Tea in my hotel across from the river was zen. I love that I am one of those rare people who is employed to do something they love. My entire life has been devoted in one way or another to writing and editing. Erotica was always a fascination, picking out the good bits from my mother’s novels. And mine, still! I have to pick a good bit of my own work Sunday–I am reading at High Tea, gulp.

I’m anxious and nervous in the best of ways about everything…

NWWTHYWM

Today I am joining Donna George Storey in NWWTHYWM, or NaWriWhaTheYouWaMo. It is a kind of reverse of NaNoWriMo, which I have done several times and won. The last time I did it I lost, it was sad because I had to give up due to my work schedule. I never had a problem with pushing myself until the loss, and believe me pushing yourself to write seven to ten-thousand words a day was a necessary evil. I am not bitter about it though, that is not why I am doing NWWTHYWM. But I do want to write and have it be complete ignorant bliss. To write because I want to. And yet, I found myself editing myself when a story came to me today, thinking to myself it is not related to anything that I am working on professionally. And yet is that not the point of this challenge?

This story arrived unexpectedly, much like I drove past a restaurant today I have wanted to try, saw it and remembered I wanted to go. I saw something that intrigued me creatively and built a scenario like a brick layer. The story stands alone–erotic, glass-covered and full of possibility. It is just something I want to explore, and I am going to explore it and free to do it because of NWWTHYWM. I want to feel free to write for the sheer pleasure of it, and not be invested in a numeric limit or an angle that agrees with something I am working on.

I will write just because I want to, will you join me?

That's What Friends Are For…

Even though I have an insanely busy schedule, I make time for meeting up with friends. There is the data that supports longevity with having a good support network, but friends are good for a lot more too. Especially as a writer I can say I am really appreciative of the contributions of my friends.

My friends especially the non-writing ones see what I do as almost if I have a wand and apply fairy dust everywhere! As a writer of fiction, I can pull a rabbit out of a hat and create a story. It’s a pleasure for me to think of an idea and execute with words. Additionally, no one can resist a smile when they ask me what I edit and write because there is still a stigma about sex in our society. Everyone alludes to it in all artistic mediums, but no one wants to go all the way. I do, as an erotica editor and writer. My friends have been supportive and impressed with what has become of my career and my dedication. Half the time I am looking down at my iPhone, it is for work. One of my friends and I had to take a time out from our phones while out together, yet we still managed to talk shop.

Another friend is a copyeditor of something other than erotica, she is my official beta reader. She told me it was a pleasure not to have to read the word-heavy material that she edits. I feel the same I would much rather edit erotica, than sit with the journals she sits with!

My friend who is a talented photographer, draws and studies art, advised me in her apartment as I was telling her about a career move I was contemplating. She paralleled it to something she had done before, and gave sobering advice about the pipe dream I was entertaining that I had not even considered…

My girlfriend who has been through a lot with me over the years reminded me of dreams I had put on the shelf. Didn’t you say you wanted to do this? Yes, I did, and now I am thinking about something I had forgotten I wanted to do.

And at last but not least, a writer friend told me about a ton of things she was planning, and I followed her advice with my own writing. The result was extreme happiness because it makes my work even more layered than a mille-feuille.

There is nothing magical about me. I think my friends are fairies, all of them beautiful and sprinkling their fairy dust on me…