Gifts for the Senses

The post below originally appeared on an old blog of mine in January, 2006. Because my senses, and sensual things, please me, I decided to repeat it. Great erotic moments engage all five senses, and the brain, too. Enjoy!

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Gifts for the Senses

One of my closest friends sent me a present. I received it yesterday. She and her husband are spending nearly four months in Santa Monica [note: they have since moved to southern California permanently], so she sent me her favorite California scents--lavender and sage. The lavender is in a sachet bag; the sage is wrapped in a bundle. (Some people burn the "sage sticks" as a way to purify their home. It's a New Age thing, I think.) She also sent me some hand-made soap that contains both scents.

Our sense of smell is our most primitive sense. Some think it's our most powerful because of the way it stirs our old, reptilian brains. I am in that camp.

Certain smells make me smile. They make me feel better, emotionally and physicially. They help me create.

Smells I dislike make me feel bad physically and unhappy mentally and emotionally. All I want to do is escape them.

Have you ever explored which smells affect you? I tend to like flower/herbal/woodsy smells. I am wild for lavender and pine/evergreen, in particular. Sage isn't far behind. Lemon and rosemary (I have a candle with this combination) seem to help me create. But it all makes me smile and feel good.

If you've never taken the time to explore different smells, I urge you to do so. You might find a scent that makes you feel better when you're down, or that helps you create. Even if you don't consider yourself creative.

If discussions of how our senses interest you, discover Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses, a well-written and fascinating book.

As for me, I'm off to sniff my lavender again.

Barrie

My Favorite Writing Books

Apropos of absolutely nothing (except to help other writers), here are the writing-related books that I will always have on my shelf. They are in no particular order.

Fiction Writer's Brainstormer by James V. Smith, Jr. A book chock-full of exercises that will help you brainstorm/get you "unstuck" in a story.

Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card. Perhaps my favorite book on characterization.

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. I don't write SF/F, but Card has fantastic tips for world-building. Every story must build a world, or there is no setting, so the book is valuable regardless of the genre you write.

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting the Words Right by Bill Bryson. Bryson is one of my favorite authors--he's funny as hell--but I mention this book because it's a great resource when it comes to distinctions among similar words, such as imply/infer and practical/practicable. If this sort of thing matters to you (and, if you're a writer, it should!), it's a must-read.

A good paperback thesaurus--I use Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus. You don't use a thesaurus to find synonyms just because you want to pepper your writing with "different" words you think will make you look smart or erudite! You do use a thesaurus when you can't think of exactly the right word, so you look up synonyms. The older and more forgetful I become, the more valuable this book is to me.

Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies by Leslie Wainger. Ms. Wainger is a huge muckety-muck at Harlequin/Silhouette, and knows her stuff--she's spent her entire career as an editor of romance. If you need help constructing your first romance novel, or just need a refresher, this book will do it. My favorite "how to write romance" book.

Well, these should get you started.

Barrie

Woo-Hoo! Cowboys Rule!

It's a day to celebrate and crow a little!

The results are posted, and LICKED is the #2 best seller at Amber Quill Press two months in a row! (Doggone it, Caitlyn Willows keeps edging me out, LOL.) I don't know what LICKED's position is in the quarterly results yet, but will post them if they're anything to get excited about. I'm hoping they are!

LICKED also received four angels from Donna at Fallen Angel Reviews. She said, "Ms. Abalard gives the readers a spanking story that has more substance than just the heat between these two characters. She shows how these two also share in the love and caring that they have for the horses... With her eleven years of writing spanking stories she's shown she knows what the readers want and just how to deliver them." Thank you, Donna!

My October contest will be run at Author Island. Win an autographed CD of LICKED plus a ginormous bag of lollipops to keep you licking while you read the story. Simply scroll down to find the LICKED contest about two-thirds of the way down, and answer the question posed there.

Let's not forget about my September release: PLAY HARD is available. Don't miss this tale of two wounded people who discover that winning love requires them to play hard.

Finally, a reminder that I added a second poll a couple of days ago. I'd like to know the hot activities you prefer to read about--vote for as many as you like. And, like the first poll on my blog, if you send me an email telling me that you voted (you don't have to tell me how you voted), I'll draw one person's name to select the ebook of their choice from the seven I have available. Send your email to barriea [at] gmail [dot] com. And don't forget to vote in the first poll, if you haven't yet! Scroll down on this blog to see the contests in the right column.

A writer shouldn't rest on her laurels, so I'm off to write some more.

Barrie

Forget the Lusty Month of May--How About October?

I don't know about you, but for me, October rivals May as the time I'm feeling the, uh, lustiest. Must be the crisp air that makes me feel frisky. So, writing sex scenes at the moment is a natural for me. And I'm writing a lot of them!

And, speaking of sex, I'm excited to announce that Amber Quill Press is compiling six of my stories into a paperback anthology--yep, they'll be together in one paperback book! Release date is mid-December, so remember to ask Santa for a copy of "Sex-Pack," um, I mean, "Six-Pack." Remember, naughty gals need love, too.

More on sex: did you know that New York City has a Museum of Sex? I want to go--it sounds so cool. NYC's about two hours from me, so I could make a day of it, and probably will. After I go, I'll report back what it was like.

The folks over at Slate Magazine must also be feeling frisky--their "sex issue" is now available. Tons of interesting material, including a slide show on the history of the vibrator that is a must-see. I'm not kidding!

Finally, I'm adding another poll. I'd like to know the hot activities you prefer to read about--vote for as many as you like! And, like the first poll on my blog, if you send me an email telling me that you voted (you don't have to tell me how you voted), I'll draw one person's name to select the ebook of their choice from the seven I have available. Send your email to barriea [at] gmail [dot] com. And don't forget to vote in the first poll, if you haven't yet!

Have a super-sexy October!

Barrie

Marry Me, Carey

I've always had a thing for tubby dorks in glasses. Just ask my husband. So my passion for Drew Carey is no small thing. Yeah, I think he's sexy.

But, seriously.

Drew Carey was someone who caught my eye years ago, just before he hit it big with his own TV show. So, over the intervening years I was pleased to discover that he, like I do, has a "live and let live" philosophy, as well as loathing for the Hollywood celebrity culture. The man has a brain, he's funny, and he likes a good time--in my book, he's batting three for three.

No, I don't want to marry him--I picked the title for this post because the rhyming pleased me. (It takes so little to entertain me some days.) For one thing, I already am. For another, I think he'd be a better drinking buddy and friend with benefits than husband. For a third, marriage would keep me from entertaining James Spader, should he ever appear at my door. Mmm, James Spader...

But I digress.

Carey's involved with something named, natch, "The Drew Carey Project" which is, in Carey's words, "about freedom." If you want to see the advance clip, you'll need the password, which is sizzle.

One of these days, I'm going to start a MySpace page. And when I do, I'm going to friend Carey. Who knows? Maybe he'd agree to do an interview with me, right here on this blog.

In the meantime, Drew, I salute you, you handsome, intelligent devil, you.

Barrie

Tips for Writers Who've Lost the Joy

(This is a cross-post from my other blog. But I think the information is important enough to justify my duplicating it.)

If you're a beginning writer, you may be thinking, "Lost the joy? I'm bursting with ideas and can't wait for the times when I can write. How could you lose the joy of writing? Why are you still writing, if it's no longer fun?"

Once it becomes a job, with contracts and real deadlines and such, you can lose the joy. For me, when I lose the joy is often when writer's block rears its ugly head.

I took an online course last week all about "block-busting" and recapturing the joy of writing. The presenter, Laurie Schnebly Campbell, presented an interactive workshop that gave me a whole new way to look at things. And, you know what? The joy has come back!

Laurie gives courses on a regular basis at Writer U. The courses are a very reasonable thirty bucks--we're talking month-long courses here. I'm signed up for her October workshop, "Creating Your Hero's Fatal Flaw", and, boy, am I looking forward to it!

I highly recommend her workshops. (Plus, she's a great person.) The one I took came at the problem from a psychological angle, tapping into fears you might not know you even have that are blocking you.

Below is a small amount of information I learned from the course. Happy writing!

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Things that work, or have worked, to jump-start my writing:

--Timed writing.
--Club 100
--Writing every day, because momentum helps me (which is difficult for a number of reasons)
--Establishing personal deadlines (I've always responded well to deadlines, because I procrastinate!)
--If blocked on one WIP, work on another (though this isn't feasible if I have a committment and have to work on WIP #1)
--Going for a solitary walk - sometimes this frees the stuck place in my head. (It used to work like gangbusters when I was a tech writer.)

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Things that I could do if I weren't blocked:

I could finish my two novels and sell them to a publisher with whom I'd make more money.
I could finish my two novels and land an agent.
I could finish my two novels and land a multi-book print contract.
I could send my current novella to the editor who really likes my work, and make more money.
I could write books faster.
I could become financially successful.
I could make enough money for my husband to retire.
I could be productive and not feel guilty about taking time off when my daughter returns from Egypt in five weeks.

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As you can see, I have a lot of anxiety around money when it comes to my writing. And worrying about money always blocks me. The workshop reminded me that I need to write, and leave the money worries outside of my little writing sanctuary.

Wishing all writers productivity and happiness (which may be the same thing, who knows?)

Barrie

Writing: Find Your Core Theme(s)

A few years ago at a writing workshop, the presenter (I believe it was the marvelous author Barbara Samuel) stressed that, as writers, we come back to the same themes over and over in our stories. We need to figure out what those themes are in order to find our voices. Knowing our core themes also helps us write new stories.

I remember the astonishment I felt to discover that my core themes, especially in my longer works, all have to do with family. Questions like, what defines a family? How do we create our own families when our birth families cause us serious pain? How do we get past old wounds? feature in my stories.

I was also surprised to figure out that, duh, I tend to make my characters either orphans, or estranged from family. In fact, the hero/heroine and secondary hero/heroine in my novel, "The Baker's Man" (currently serialized on the internet--scroll down on the site to read a bit of it--only eighteen or older to view this excerpt, please) are all orphans! Their orphanhood and difficult childhoods create a bond among the four.

"Alice in Boogieland," an unpublished novel of mine set in the Seventies, also deals with alienation from birth families--but the core dysfunction in "Alice" is dark despite being partially played for laughs. Alice has a birth-family younger sister whom she does her best to protect, and whom she loves like no one else. Alice works hard to create her own family, because, when she arrives in Boston, she is deeply and fundamentally alone.

The sisters theme reappears in one of my current works-in-progress (or WIPs), tentatively titled "Shirley Goodness and Mercy." In it, two very different sisters who can't stand each other, and who come from a family that is perhaps the darkest one I've ever written, must reconcile in order to reach a common goal--and to achieve a kind of peace between them.

Finally, in my erotic romantic suspense WIP "Burning Questions," (only eighteen or older to view this excerpt, please) the hero and heroine are childhood friends--the man, raised by a single mom, and the woman, raised by her great-aunt after her parents die when she's very young. Of course, the single mom and the great-aunt are both gone now. Orphans again!

In fact, the thirst for connection drives just about every story I write, even though the plots and characters differ.

If you're a writer, take some time to explore what your recurring core themes are. Try to find the common threads among your stories. It will make you a better storyteller--I cannot stress this enough. All you need to do is read your writings, and think about which theme(s) run through most or all of your stories.

And readers, consider which novels and authors are your favorites, and why. I'm betting you'll find the same core themes in the books you enjoy most.

Barrie