Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
Beatles Trivia April 19, 1998, South Bend: Mom, Stephanie, and I saw City of Angels at University Park Mall. I liked it because it was a celebration of why it’s good to be human. Afterward we went to Denny’s and had pie and coffee. Later, sitting in my room reading a People magazine with Tammy Wynette on the cover, I heard on the radio that Linda McCartney had died. She and Paul had been together for the past 30 years.
Bummer April 19th
April 19, 1824: George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, dies of malaria while fighting in Greece for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He is 36 years old.
April 19, 1995: The federal government building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is destroyed by a terrorist truck bomb. White supremacist domestic terrorists destroy the building in retaliation for incidents in which civilians were wrongly killed by the federal government. An estimated 168 people are killed and almost 700 more are injured. Among the dead are six children who were in day care inside the building.
April 19, 2000: Ten-year-old Candace Newmaker dies of suffocation after taking part in a “rebirthing session” initiated by her adoptive mother Jeane. Candace reportedly had behavior problems while adjusting to being removed from the home of her biological parents, entering foster care, and being adopted. A psychologist in her home state of North Carolina referred Jeane Newmaker to unlicensed Colorado therapist Connell Watkins, who worked with co-therapist Julie Ponder.
Watkins and Ponder wrapped Candace in a flannel sheet and covered her with pillows, then told her to free herself to simulate the experience of being born. They hoped Candace would then start to bond with Jeane as a newborn baby would naturally born with its biological birthing parent, based on the theory of reactive attachment disorder. Candace complained that she couldn’t breathe and vomited inside the wrappings, but the therapists did not offer any help in releasing her. After Jeane left the room, Ponder releases Candace, who is not breathing and unresponsive. Candace is taken to a hospital in Denver, where she dies on the 19th without ever regaining consciousness.
Watkins and Ponder are sentenced to 16 years in prison for child abuse; Jeane pleads guilty to a lesser charge and receives a 4-year suspended sentence, which is later expunged.
And then I made a fan edit with Ghost's "Kiss the Go Goat" as the soundtrack. And then I made another, better one that looks like the goats are at the goat disco.
January 22, 1915: More than 600 people die in Guadalajara, Mexico, when a trains derails and plunges into a canyon. The 20 cars of the train are filled with soldiers who had fought for General Victoriano Huerta. When Huerta’s army was overthrown by Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa, the revolutionaries ordered Huerta’s troops to be deported from Guadalajara to Colima. The train derails on its way to Colima in one of North America’s worst railroad disasters.
January 22, 1987: R. Budd Dwyer, the treasurer of the state of Pennsylvania, knows he is soon to be arrested on corruption charges, of which he claims to be innocent. At a televised press conference, he passes out a 20-page statement to the reporters in his office. He then pulls out a handgun, places it in his own mouth, and dies by suicide. His death is captured by the traumatized reporters and, as of 2022, could readily be accessed to watch online.
This event is the inspiration behind the Filter song "Hey Man, Nice Shot."
Filter lead singer Richard Patrick is the brother of actor Robert Patrick, who was in Terminator 2.
January 22, 1993: Two-year-old Brenda Nole dies of kidney failure in a Seattle hospital after eating food contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, a species of bacteria that creates a toxin that causes hemolytic-uremic syndrome in humans. Hers is the second of four eventual deaths of children traceable to contaminated hamburger meat from the Jack In the Box fast food chain. More than 730 people become sick from eating the same contaminated beef.
January 22, 2008: Actor Heath Ledger dies from an apparently accidental overdose of prescription anti-anxiety and painkiller medications. He’s 28 years old and leaves behind a 2-year-old daughter, Matilda Rose.
April 8, 1994, South Bend: On my last real day of spring break, I woke up rather late in the morning, then had some leftover Taco Bell for breakfast. I took Maggie the dog for a walk without incident, which was a shame because I was hoping there would be incident. When I got back I turned on MTV and involuntarily learned that Kurt Cobain had been found dead at his home in Seattle. Very sad, not only that he left behind a wife and a very young daughter but also that Nirvana only had time to record four albums.
April 8, 1997: 49-year-old singer/songwriter Laura Nyro dies of ovarian cancer. Nyro’s mother Gilda Mirsky Nigro had also died of ovarian cancer at the age of 49.
April 10, 1931: Lebanese-American novelist Kahlil Gibran dies at age 48 of cirrhosis and tuberculosis.
April 10, 1962: Stu Sutcliffe, the 21-year-old Scottish musician and original Beatles bass player, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage. This internal injury, a ruptured aneurysm, may have been related to a head injury Sutcliffe suffered in 1961 as a result of a street fight in which John Lennon also suffered minor injuries.
April 10, 2003: When the United States invades the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to depose Saddam Hussein, officials at the Iraqi National Library and Archives fear that its archives of papers related to Hussein and his Ba’athist Party will incriminate them. They hire local people, many of them poor and likely motivated by the money, to loot and set fire to the library. These acts destroy about 60% of the archives and 25% of the library materials, including one of the oldest known copies of the Koran.
April 12, 1204: Christian Crusaders turn on the Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, in three days of looting and burning. The rampage destroys the Library of Constantinople and other priceless works of art and ancient artifacts.
April 14, 1865: U.S. president Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth.
April 14, 1922: Shortly after she hears a radio program on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes his Spiritualist beliefs, a New Jersey woman named Maude Fancher decides she wants to live in the spirit world with her 2-year-old son Cecil. She kills Cecil, then attempts to kill herself by drinking a bottle of Lysol cleaning solution. Maude Fancher survives.
April 14, 1965: Perry Edward Smith and Dick Hickok are executed by hanging by the state of Kansas for the murders of the Clutter family on November 15, 1959.
April 15, 1865: After being in a coma for eight hours, Abraham Lincoln dies from the bullet wound inflicted on him by John Wilkes Booth.
April 15, 1888: English poet Matthew Arnold dies. He has suffered a heart attack while chasing after a streetcar.
April 16, 1689: Playwright Aphra Behn dies. She is 48 years old.
April 17, 1998: Linda McCartney dies of breast cancer that has spread to her liver. She’s 56 years old.
April 18, 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake strikes Northern California. About 80% of the city is destroyed. The collapse of so many buildings and subsequent fires are responsible for around 3,000 deaths. Fire chief Dennis T. Sullivan was among the victims of the earthquake, so the interim fire chief requested help from the U.S. military. Both psychologist Henry James and writer H.G. Wells (on his first visit to the United States) remarked on the positive attitude and general helpfulness of the survivors in the rebuilding effort.
April 18, 1966: A fire at the Jewish Theological Seminary library in Manhattan destroys 70,000 books. Fortunately, most of these were additional copies of books housed on the ground floor of the library, which was not damaged in the fire. The library’s collection of rare manuscripts is also unharmed.
April 19, 1824: George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, dies of malaria while fighting in Greece for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He is 36 years old.
April 21, 1910: Mark Twain dies in Redding, Connecticut, as Jill Badonsky writes in The Awe-manac, “just one day after Halley’s Comet’s perihelion.” The author born Samuel Langhorne Clemens is quoted as having said, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year and I expect to go out with it.”
April 21, 1978: English folk-rock singer Sandy (Alexandria) Denny dies at age 31 from head injuries sustained from a fall down some stairs at her home. Denny, who had bipolar disorder, was known to use falls as a form of self-harm and had sustained a previous head injury from another fall down the stairs. Denny was being treated for headaches with a medication known to mix poorly with alcohol, so it’s unclear if Denny’s ultimate fall was an act of self-harm or an accident precipitated by mixing her medication with alcohol.
April 21, 2016: The musician who performs as Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) is found dead in an elevator inside his home. He has apparently passed away from taking pills of the opioid medication hydrocodone, to which he was addicted, which were counterfeit and laced with fentanyl. He is 57 years old.
On the same day, true crime writer Michelle McNamara dies in her sleep of an accidental overdose of street drugs and prescription medication. McNamara’s husband, actor Patton Oswalt, has acknowledged that McNamara was addicted to opioids. Her health condition was caused, in part, by her harrowing research on her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (this is an affiliate link). The book tells the story of a serial rapist and murderer who was not caught until 2018, two years after McNamara’s death.
April 22, 1915: 27-year-old poet Rupert Brooks dies of sepsis due to wounds he received fighting for the British Royal Navy during the First World War.
April 22, 1987: 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy, who lives in the Grace Abbott Homes public housing project in Chicago, called the police to report that, “...some people next door are totally tearing this down, you know–” When the dispatcher pressed her for clarification, McCoy said, “Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down...I’m in the projects, I’m on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom.”
What the dispatcher didn’t know was that in the Grace Abbott Homes, the contractors who built the building had left the apartments’ back-to-back bathrooms connected by a narrow tunnel, which had made access easier for the plumbers. Neighborhood residents intent on burglary had discovered that by removing the bathroom mirror of one apartment, they could crawl through the narrow tunnel and reach the bathroom of the apartment on the opposite side.
This is what happened to McCoy: would-be burglars came through the space where her bathroom mirror had been and shot her to death. A second 911 call from a neighbor reported the sound of gunshots coming from McCoy’s apartment. Police knocked on McCoy’s door that night, but when they received no answer, they left without entering the apartment. Apparently they were unwilling to break down the door due to the prospect of being sued.
McCoy’s lifeless body is found the next day; she has been shot four times. The tragic story of urban neglect and the intruders who entered the apartment through a bathroom mirror inspired the movie Candyman.
April 22, 2000: Playing Judas in an Easter play in Rome, Renato Di Paolo dies by accidental hanging. His death is caught on film by a member of the audience.
April 22, 2012: Brazilian actor Tiago Klimeck is taken off life support and dies. He has been in a coma since accidentally hanging himself while performing as Judas Iscariot in an Easter passion play in Itarare, Brazil. Klimeck is 27 years old. He may have accidentally gotten some of his clothes tangled in the safety harness meant to give him the illusion of hanging by his neck.
April 22, 2021: 57-year-old Gregory Jacobs, the musician who rapped under the name Shock G and other aliases, dies of an apparently accidental overdose of fentanyl, alcohol, and methamphetamine.
April 25, 2002: Rapper Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is driving an SUV in La Cieba, Honduras, where she’s filming a documentary while on a spiritual retreat with her two siblings. She swerves to avoid an oncoming vehicle, only to swerve into the path of another vehicle, causing her to swerve sharply to the left. She strikes two trees, throwing her and three passengers from the SUV. Lopes, who is only 30 years old, dies instantly of severe head trauma. Her passengers are injured, but survive.
April 27, 1932: Poet Hart Crane, age 32, dies by suicide by drowning in the Gulf of Mexico. He jumps off the steam ship on which he’s traveling from Mexico to New York. Crane is believed to be heavily intoxicated when he jumps and had recently been badly beaten when he made advances on a male crew member. His body is never recovered.
April 27, 2000: Broadway actress and dance music singer Vicki Sue Robinson dies of cancer at the age of 45.
April 29, 1986: A fire at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library destroys 400,000 books and other circulating materials.
November 11, 1994, South Bend: In Brit Lit, we read excerpts from Paradise Lost.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free: th’Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n.”
- Paradise Lost, Book One, lines 254-263
This is, of course, a paraphrase of something Bender says on Futurama, not a John Milton quote.
But that only reminds me that I edited the above poetry over an image of Mark Pellegrino, Lucifer on the CW television series Supernatural.
Ah, but that is just making me horny for Lucifer (fictional character). (Why does his hair look like he just got out of bed after having a very, very good time in bed? I don't know but I do care to speculate.) As I said in this post about Truman Capote's "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood:
"Mark Pellegrino is pretty, too. Blond and blue-eyed like Dick Hickok but, one presumes, without the homicidal tendencies, he's part Italian and part Russian and various kinds of Northern European. I don't quite understand his fascination with Ayn Rand, but still, he's a pretty one."
If you'll excuse my Tumblr.com lingo for a moment: I'm sexualizing that old man. (He's 12 years older than me.)
2014 me didn't even know Mark Pellegrino's name. I said in this post about an unhinged SamStiel dream that his character was Satan. He's not Satan, he's the archangel Lucifer. (To understand that distinction without a difference, consult a Christian theologian.) She was so young and naive.
2016 me saw the Philip Seymour Hoffman film Capote. Playing Richard "Dick" Hickok, the real-life convicted murderer, pedophile, and all-around lowlife slimeball, Pellegrino brought some of his Luciferian energy to that relatively small role. And good hair. And vintage tattoos that suited him as a villain (whose pedophilic tendencies were somewhat downplayed for the film adaptation. The movie doesn't want you to root for the murderers, exactly, but you as an audience member must at least accept their common humanity with Truman Capote and Harper Lee).
So please, try not to judge me too harshly if you catch me in the Lucifer (Supernatural)/reader tag on ao3. It's all John Milton's fault, really. If he hadn't written bad boy Lucifer as what the Romantic poets would later describe as a Byronic hero, we might not be in this mess.
But here we are, just like Lord Byron before us, reading Milton and getting horny for fictional!Lucifer. Am I going to hell? Maybe. Given the current political situation in the United States of America, I have to admit, I'm in much more of a rebelling mood than I am an obeying authority mood. I might be ok with that.
I celebrated Adrienne Rich's Day by eating breakfast at my local poet house. A poet house, you’ll find, is like a pancake house, but with better coffee.
Adrienne Rich's Day (May 16) is a made-up holiday. It doesn’t exist, although Rich was born on the 16th of May. But that doesn’t stop me from celebrating Adrienne Rich's Day to the fullest. I’d already written out my Poets’ Day cards, trimmed the Poets’ Day tree and opened each one of my Poets’ Day gifts. All that was left to do was brunch at the Poet House.
There I heard Lewis Carroll as he ordered the seafood omelet with extra oysters.
"We cannot do with more than four," his server responded. "To give a hand to each."
Carroll frowned, and when his omelet came, he complained that the lobster was baked too brown. "I must sugar my hair," he said in frustration. He had the server take away the omelet and bring the soup of the evening, beautiful soup, instead.
George Gordon, Lord Byron said that he wasn’t hungry, but I caught him staring at Emily Dickinson’s waffles. Dickinson led the poets in saying grace in the name of the butterfly, and of the birds, and of the breeze, amen. She washed down her waffles with the sherry which the guest leaves.
Allen Ginsberg let me have a bite of his kosher Zen New Jersey nowhere, howling as he sipped his hot matzo ball soup. Meanwhile, Lawrence Ferlinghetti ate a good deal of spaghetti.
Along came Adrienne Rich, who ordered strong black coffee. It came nestled sensuously between the waitress’s breasts.
Langston Hughes had the raisin toast in the sun, but said that it was dried up. Edgar Allan Poe had the toast as well. His came with cognac and three red roses. When asked if he wanted a side of bacon with that, Poe said, "Nevermore." When the check came, Poe was nowhere to be found.
Oscar Wilde went wild when served his Oscar Meyer wiener. Robert Frost stopped by to watch the powdered sugar fall on my french toast, but he couldn’t stay. "I have promises to keep," he said. "And miles to go before I sleep."
William Shakespeare ordered the turkey dinner, and made much ado about stuffing. But all was as he liked it in the end. He washed down his meal with a winter’s ale.
It was impossible to tell what Robert Pinsky wanted for an entree, so we put him in charge of ordering dessert. He chose Basho, banana pudding. It was the perfect ending to the perfect Adrienne Rich's Day celebration.
***Author's Note: An earlier version of this poetic fantasy appeared in Wild Violet literary magazine. ***
The Crystal Ship is an inspirational fable by Oliver Frances. I received an e-book copy from the author in exchange for an honest review. I was not compensated in any other way for reading the book.
Since Frances uses the very poetic language of fairy tales and fables, it may be necessary to read this book more than once before the reader completely understands the narrative thread. So, for the sake of convenience, here is a chapter outline (omitting 10 and 11, which are largely rhetorical).
1. A child playing in a garden wanders among some oak trees, soon finding himself lost in the woods.
He tries to hide behind a tree, but its branches open up like arms. The boy then witnesses a strange parade of men (or perhaps angels), leading a man dressed in rags whose rags burn him alive.
2. The reader learns the child is named Frederick, and that he'll be referred to in the narrative as Our Wise Man. He has been a handsome youth, but now he's growing older. Frederick sits in his parlor contemplating his relationship with the young man he mentors. He falls asleep and dreams about a courtroom with walls that appear to be made of a blue gas.
Frederick sees a trial being prosecuted by Satan himself, with angels serving as the defense. He is accused of not coming to the aid of the burning man, whom it turns out is the father who abandoned him and his mother.
3. In the course of the trial, the reader learns of a pair of lovers, and Frederick's soul is accused of instructing an ignorant young man, to the young man's ruin.
4. Waking from his dream, Frederick meets his mentee, Tino. Tino is also called "the coastal boy" because he comes from a small coastal village.
5. Frederick and Tino read Don Juan by Lord Byron. Tino picks up on a reference to Simon de Bolivar. Frederick tells Tino Bolivar's story, explaining that Bolivar liberated his people only to become as bad as the Spanish.
6. Frederick attends the Festival of Madonna to teach Tino a lesson about the vanity of religion. He tells Tino that Jesus was the only man who was never vain.
7. Tino witnesses the death of a young woman who is mourned by her grandparents. Tino thinks he is wise by being detached rather than grieving, but Frederick reminds him knowledge for its own sake leads to grief, and that real wisdom demands love.
8. Frederick and Tino travel to Venice. Here Tino learns that no one, not even Jesus, knows what their mission on Earth is before it's time for them to know it.
9. Tino breaks into Frederick's house in the middle of the night. He's been reading the letters from the deceased young woman and is upset. Frederick reminds Tino about how cold Tino was to her, instructing Tino that loyalty is essential for love.
12. During the trial of Frederick's soul, we learn that the young woman died by suicide. Frederick is accused of abandoning Tino, who now lives a lonely existence in the coastal village of his birth.
Frederick is found guilty.
13. Frederick's soul is taken away to be punished for his crimes. Too late, he realizes all the pain he has caused. Hypocritically, he wasn't any more loyal to Tino than Tino was to the young woman who took her own life.
At the very end of the tale, Jesus appears and says, "My beloved son, everything is love."
Book clubs and church groups may find it a good fable to read and discuss. It contains no vulgar language or adult situations, and so it is appropriate for everyone approximately 12 and up. There are a few misspellings and errors here and there, but they don't keep the reader from being able to understand the story.
Large parts of my
novel Sometimes in Dreams is set in
the beautiful old city of Venice. It became one of my favorite cities in the
world during the time I lived in northern Italy. Old Venice is now more museum
than city. The old powerhouse Venice is now on the other side of the
lagoon. The canal city is like an
elderly, but still elegant, aunt who surprises you with gifts unlooked-for but
still welcome.
In the novel, a couple of Campos are mentioned. Those are small squares where businesses of
one sort and another are located. Campo San Vio is mentioned because St.
George’s Anglican Church is located there. It is the only English speaking
church in Venice, consequently tourists from all over the world who speak
English come there if they happen to be in the city on a Sunday. The campo and
the Church are real and can be visited if you are ever lucky enough to visit La Serranisima which is what most
denizens of Venice call the city. It
means “the Serene One.” I understand why
it is called that now with its smooth flowing canals and slow moving gondolas,
but I don’t understand how it came by the name from its past. Venice was a
bustling trade center for centuries and I can imagine the canals being as
jammed as a New York street when La Serranisima
was queen of the Adriatic and points east.
Another campo mentioned in Sometimes in Dreams is Campo Redemptor the place where Daniel
and Kit have their star-crossed meeting. I am sorry to sayit doesn’t really exist, though Bar Redemptor does actually exist.
It is in a much more bustling part of the city than where I placed it and is
much more of a ‘dive’ than the one I created.
I borrowed the look of Bar Redemptor from a couple of other places not actually
in Venice . I used a place called Mario’s which is in Aviano, a little town closer to the Dolomite Alps than Venice. My
apartment was there and it is pretty accurately described in the book, though I
stretched it into a house there.
It is pretty hard to get lost in
Venice now-a-days because almost every corner of every narrow alley has a sign
posted on it pointing toward St. Mark’s Cathedral, but it can still be done.
The streets are very narrow in most places and the buildings multi-storied. They
can be rather oppressive making one feel like a cow being driven down a loading
chute, but after walking down one of these alleys you suddenly burst forth into
a campo, just as I described in the book
and all feeling of oppression or claustrophobia evaporates. Every window
of the campo is decorated with overflowing multi-colored geraniums giving the
impression of finding one’s self in a multi-level garden. This is true during
the summer when the geraniums are meant to keep the flies away since no one has
window screens, and the flowers do an admirable job of insect control. In
winter, most of the flower boxes are filled with another type of flower, the
name of which I don’t recall. They equally beautiful but have no insect control
purpose. They better tolerate the damp chilly weather of Venice in winter.
Sometimes
in Dreams is a picture of Venice accurate enough to help the reader understand
why poets and writers like Thomas Mann, Lord Byron, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra
Pound fell in love with that fabled city, and why I love it so.
***
Synopsis:
Daniel Pentland is a broken man;
torn between the two women in his life. He is tormented by guilt over his love
affair with a beautiful English girl he met while living in Italy, and the
loyal devotion of his wife, Amanda.
Two years after the tragic death of
his lover Kit, he is continually haunted by her memory. Across the sands of the
Mojave Desert, her voice calls out to him, pulling at his heart and his
memories.
Each night as Daniel wakes screaming
and fighting against the phantom of Kit’s killer, his wife does her best to
soothe his pain and help him overcome his grief.
Sometimes
in Dreams is a story of redemption through a love that simply refuses to
die.
G. Lloyd Helm is a 'ne'er-do-well scribbler'—novelist, short
story writer and poet—who has tramped around the world for the last forty years
thanks to his long-suffering military wife. He has lived in Germany, Spain, and
Italy. His epitaph will read, “He married well.”
You can read my review of Fifty Shades of Grey here. I'll give you my impressions of Fifty Shades Darker in a moment - but first! I have a new release that just came out yesterday.
Here's the blurb: Food and sex – sex and food: two great things that can be even better together! From soothing chocolate to spicy meatballs the stories in this brand new erotic anthology edited by two masters of the genre - M.CHRISTIAN and ALYN ROSSELINI - feature stories by the crème-de-la-crème of sexual and literary cooking and will tickle your sensual taste buds and stir your pot of erotic thrills. Basting lovers, cooking orgies, steaming hot encounters, straight as well as queer taste treats ... the stories in HUNGER: A FEAST OF SENSUAL TALES OF SEX AND GASTRONOMY will push boundaries everyone's pleasurable buttons – both erotic and gastronomic: these are stories that will arouse, amuse, amaze, and whet your appetite for more! Authors in this so-very tasty anthology include: SUSAN ST. AUBIN, DOMINIC SANTI, GISELLE RENARDE, ERIN O'RIORDAN, OLIVIA LONDON, JESSICA LENNOX, KIRSTEN IMANI KASAI, CÈSAR, SANCHEZ ZAPATA, GREGORY L. NORRIS, HEIDI CHAMPA, and BILLIEROSIE.
My contribution is called "Hungry Things." Follow the link to read a short sample; you'll notice the working title of the book was A Lover's Feast: Sensual Food Tales. "Hungry Things" is a sexy tale of George Gordon, Lord Byron and John William Polidori, transported to a modern setting. The physician Polidori has a consuming passion for the poet, even as Byron is struggling with his disordered eating. It's not about trying to make an eating disorder "sexy." It's about trying to love someone who's trying to rally the strength to fight something potentially life-threatening and not always rising above.
I've been fascinated with Polidori since I read Gothic by Richard Davenport-Hines.
I've been fascinated with Byron ever since 12th grade, when we read "Sonnet on Chillon" in British Literature and Mrs. Hess told us Byron was bisexual. The rest of the class was like, "No! Ew!" but that seemed perfectly natural and normal to me. Hunger is available now from Renaissance E-Books, and it will be available from Amazon and through iBooks soon. You can get it right from your iPad or iPhone. I have not seen it pop up on GoodReads yet, but I imagine it will once it hits Amazon. (Update: Goodreads link.)
I've read the first three stories in my contributor's copy so far. "A Meal" by Susan St. Aubin is, in part, about the proper amounts and types of foods to eat so as not to ruin the sex that might come afterward. It's also about jealousy and the balance of power in open relationships. It's honest writing, and I really appreciate that. "Jeb's Wife" by Dominic Santi is about three military buddies and, well, Jeb's wife, who become a foursome when said wife becomes pregnant and insatiable. It's scorching hot - really sexy stuff. "The Sweetest Burn" by Giselle Renarde describes the erotic pleasure/pain possibilities of mole poblano - Mexican food porn in the more literal sense. (See, because when people tag posts with "Mexican food porn" on Tumblr, they're just pictures of really yummy-looking Mexican food. It's not actual porn.)
Without further ado, thoughts on Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James.
I remember that I quite enjoyed the first book, which ended with Ana and Christian breaking up. The last sentence: "I curl up, desperately clutching the flat foil balloon and Taylor's handkerchief, and surrender myself to grief." This is like The Twilight Saga: New Moon ending with the blank pages that signify Bella's depression, and I wanted to know what happened next.
Somewhere - possibly on another book blog - I read a snippet of Darker and it involved another woman. I wondered if perhaps Christian and Ana were going to let another woman into their relationship. That's not the case, though. (Spoilers if you haven't read it yet.) There's Leila, a mentally unstable woman who used to be Christian's submissive. When Leila's boyfriend dies, she becomes vaguely threatening to Ana and Christian, but mainly to herself. There's also "Mrs. Robinson," the older woman with whom a teenage Christian had a relationship; Ana considers her abusive and hates her with a passion.
But Christian never suggests adding either of them to his relationship with Ana. If anything, Ana and Christian's relationship is much more conventional in this book than in the previous one; they become engaged.
In my review of the first book, I called Christian Grey an alpha but not an alph-hole, suggesting there are reasonable limits to his controlling behavior. I don't think that anymore. Early in Darker, when Christian gets into Ana's bank account without her knowledge or permission, I really started to dislike him.
I still sympathize with his horrible childhood. I'm confident that my favorite romance heroes are the really damaged ones - see, for example, why Lover Awakened by J.R. Ward is my favorite romance novel - but that shouldn't be an excuse to give a character a pass on emotionally abusive behavior. Or should it? This is fiction, after all, not an actual relationship in which I am a participant. I enjoy Heathcliff as a character in Wuthering Heights even though he's physically and emotionally abusive to his wife, Isabella, and abusive to the woman he essentially forced to become his daughter-in-law, Catherine Linton the younger. I can't help feeling that much of Heathcliff's negative behavior is really the fault of his mistreatment by Hindley and betrayal by Catherine; they forced him into an untenable position.
In real life, I would never tolerate his behavior in a domestic partner. In life, I make no excuses for domestic violence - one instance is reason for an immediate end to a relationship, no questions asked. Fiction is different. In fiction, the author gets to control the consequences of all the characters' actions.
I'm of two minds on this, because whether it's right or wrong, I care about Ana and Christian as a couple. I didn't really love Darker - the middle part bored me, with no real crisis to move the plot along briskly. I feel like it dragged out (but that have been, in part, because I left the book at home while my hubby was in the hospital and I read it only in little snippets each day). Ana comes into conflict with her sexual predator boss Jack (the embodiment of the entitled male privilege mentality), but she handles that like a ninja, although it does seem at the end that Jack will try to get some kind of revenge on Ana and Christian. There is a moment in which it seems Christian and his helicopter are in some danger, but this isn't until almost the end of the book, and it's resolved within a few pages.
Do I want to read the third book? Of course I do - I hate to leave a trilogy unfinished. But I don't have the same enthusiasm for this series that I had when I read the first book. I can't even really remember why I liked it so much in the first place. Yet somehow, I still want to be reassured that Christian and Ana will get married and live happily ever after.
On the plus side, I don't think Ana used the word "crap" quite as many times as she did in the first book.
WIP Wednesday: " Good news, everyone! My m/m erotic short story Hungry Things" has been accepted for the A Lover's Feast: Sensual Food Tales series of anthologies, to be published by Renaissance EBooks. The main characters are Dr. John William Polidori and George Gordon, Lord Byron, not in the 18th century but now. A small sample:
"His Lordship looked suddenly serious. He flicked off the telly, set down the remote and reached over. His long, thin fingers intertwined with mine. 'Give me your arm, Poli.'
"I couldn’t imagine what he wanted with my arm. To sink his teeth into my flesh? To inject me with an experimental diet drug? Still, I obeyed him, unbuttoning my cuff, rolling up the sleeve of my favorite robin’s-egg-blue shirt and presenting the underside of my bare forearm to him.
"He took my arm in one hand and brought it to his lips. The kiss was soft, faint, but distinct. In his other hand he brandished a fountain pen, the kind he used in the old days. Without saying a word, he took the pen to my arm and wrote I love you."
Winter Solstice Wednesday: Last week I promised more on the goddesses of Winter Solstice, and in particular, Amaterasu and Sarasvati.
Amaterasu is the Japanese sun goddess, says GoddessGift.com. She was "born" at the Winter Solstice.
According to Encyclopedia Mythica, Amaterasu was so bright, her divine family placed her in the sky. She retreated to a cave when her storm-god brother made too much racket. She was offended by his violence, says GoddessMyths.com. Much the way Demeter's search for Persephone threatened the earth, Amaterasu's retreat was a disaster in the making. She was finally lured out when the goddess Uzume did a comical burlesque dance, and the laughter of the other gods piqued her curiosity. Amaterasu sustains the world, being in charge of the cultivation of rice and wheat.
This incident was captured in Eternally Bad by Trina Robbins, the ultimate guide to goddesses gone bad.
In ancient times, the celebration of Amaterasu's reemergence from the cave at Winter Solstice was observed with a night-long requiem for the dead, which ended when the sun rose. Japan's celebration of Amaterasu at the Winter Solstice seems to be a metaphorical reference to the fact that it gets lighter (longer days) after this astronomical event, as if the sun were coming out of a cave of darkness.
According to GoddessGift.com, Sarasvati is India's goddess of knowledge, and her birth is celebrated around the Winter Solstice.
Also the goddess of the arts, Sarasvati holds a book, prayer beads, and the musical instrument known as the vina. She is the shakti (power) and consort of Brahma, the Creator, and thus is considered Mother of the Universe, according to Stephen Knapp.
With a little further research, however, it seems that the major holiday dedicated to Sarasvati, Sarasvati Puja or Vasant Panchami, takes place in February. It was held on February 8th this year and is set for Feb. 4th in 2012. This places its significance closer to Imbolc than Winter Solstice. Interestingly, yellow and white are the colors associated with Sarasvati Puja, and people wear yellow garments on that day - also an Imbolc custom.
Sarasvati image: Raja Ravi Varma, public domain image
This just-for-fun post was provoked by the author Elizabeth Black and her Man Candy Tuesday post this week. (Elizabeth and I both wrote stories in Torquere Press's Vamps anthology.) In celebration of her May-December erotic romance Don't Call Me Baby, Elizabeth posted photos of some of the hotties who inspire her work.
I had a ton of fun writing "5 Jewish Dudes I'd Most Like to See Lewd," so I now present the older dudes I'd most like to see lewd. Harrison Ford made my Jewish dudes list, and the day I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two I blogged about my crushes on Alan Rickman and Colin Firth. These are the other three.
I was really good and used public domain photos from Wikimedia Commons, with proper attribution - but they weren't the best photos. So I replaced them. Sometimes you have to bend the rules a bit.
1. Jean Reno. Two words: The Professional. P.S. He speaks French and starred in the film adaptation of one of my favorite books, The Da Vinci Code.
The French song I'd like to insert here is "Judas Mon Ceour" off Belly's Sweet Ride, album, but since no one seems to have uploaded it to YouTube, this is my "French" alternative. Ooh la la indeed, Harry Potter's long-lost sister Grace. Jean Reno, voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?
2. Chow Yun Fat. I do not care about your stereotypical remarks about Chinese dudes and baby carrots, Austin Ruth. Chow Yun Fat is hot.
3. Gabriel Byrne. It's not just the Irishness, or the fact that his lips have touched Ellen Barkin. It's not just the fact that he played history's hottest poet, Lord Byron, in the off-the-wall Ken Russell film Gothic. There's something about his piercing stare, his beautiful blue eyes...even when he's playing the devil, you've gotta root for him.
Some people say Stigmata is a bad movie. I say, "How could it be? Gabriel Byrne is a horny priest who makes out with Patricia Arquette. She's the hottest of all the Arquettes." Plus, I love the idea of a female, 21st-century Francis of Assisi.
An erotic delight. This book is composed of three linked novellas revolving around a trio of San Francisco friends: Lydia, Molly and Cassie. Lydia runs a fashion magazine. When her boy-toy photographer suggests a photo spread at Libri Antiqui, a used book store, Lydia has no idea she'll be so intrigued by the bookshop's owner, Nicholas. Lydia's frosty personality makes her tale the hardest for this reader to warm up to.
Much better is "Discovering Molly," in which the auburn-haired socialite is challenged, intellectually and sexually, by an adventurer-journalist named Harker Trevane. Harker is part Anderson Cooper, part academic/adventurer (think Indiana Jones/Robert Langdon/Daniel Jackson/Alaric Salzman). He also has a BDSM streak, which he pushes Molly to explore with him.
In the final story, Cassie, an English professor studying the three-way relationship between feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, poet/painter William Blake and painter Henry Fuseli, discovers her interest in Olive, Nicolas' assistant at the book shop. Scholarship imitates life as Cassie and Olive open up their new relationship to include Cassie's hippie research partner (and Tantric guru) Adler.
In a neat little footnote, Adler intends to study the relationship between Byron and Shelley. Even before I saw Gothic, I was intrigued by the sexual possibilities of Byron and Shelley, so aptly portrayed by Gabriel Byrne and Julian Sands in that film. I recently wrote a short story, "Hungry Things," that riffed on that relationship.
There are no traditional happily-ever-afters in The Transformation, but each woman enjoys the experience. Rostova acknowledges she based these contemporary tales on the skeletons of the classic fairy tales of the princess and the frog, the princess and the pea and Thumbelina. There are very few fairy tale elements in the resulting trilogy, but much to satisfy the grown-up reader of tales.
I purchased this book at Borders and was not compensated for this review in any way.
"The Boy" is a short fiction piece I wrote, literally, in my sleep. I was dreaming this right before I woke up this morning, in almost these exact words, as nearly as I can remember. Parts of it recall George Gordon, Lord Byron, but it isn't strictly historical fiction. It's only a dream.
What am I? A poet, some would tell you. A monster, others would say. They call me “monster” because they have never known one like me. What they call badness I merely call enjoying the full range of pleasures bestowed on me by my Creatrix.
I traveled with a man-servant I was in the habit of calling The Boy, because he had been in my service since, when he was eleven, his aristocrat mother turned him out of the house, deciding he should make his own way in the world. That was nearly a decade ago, and he was certainly a man now, with a beard and a physique any Classical sculptor would have killed to reproduce in stone. Not that I thought of The Boy like that…until the occurrence at Lillian’s.
Lillian is my grandmother’s first-born grandchild, my cousin, and blessed with all of the privileges of a first-born. She possesses a superior intellect and beauty beyond what any painter has ever captured in oils. She was my friend and confessor, naturally my lover, and occasionally my drinking partner.
We had just finished one such drinking binge and were lounging carelessly in the large, luxurious tub of one of her bathing rooms. She was sitting on my lap, and though penetration was quite out of the question given our drunken state, I was nonetheless admiring the shapely form of her buttocks and enjoying the feel of her skin caressing mine. That was when The Boy walked in, despite my explicit instructions to the contrary.
I hurried from the tub, quickly wrapping Lillian in one of her fine towels, though I took no measures to cover my own nakedness. I upbraided The Boy, then turned to Lillian and apologized to Lillian for her embarrassment.
“No matter,” my lovely, nonchalant cousin replied. “I was about to go to bed anyway.”
“Sweet dreams,” I said, kissing her. “Dream about your future husband, who I am certain will be a great scientist with whom you will make many bold discoveries.”
“Only if you promise to dream about your future wife, who I’m certain will be a charming aristocrat without a thought in her head, whose immense wealth you will recklessly squander.” We laughed, and she went off to bed.
When she’d left the chamber, The Boy turned to me with fire in his eyes. “You know she is your cousin.”
“And what difference does that make to me? I’ve done the same with three of my four sisters.”
“I want you to do with me what you do with her,” came The Boy’s bold reply.
“No,” I answered flatly. “What you are talking about is called sodomy, and they put men in prison for it.”
“Then let them put us in prison, where we’ll be alone together to do it again and again.” With startling speed he closed the space between us and pulled me into him for a powerful kiss. The Boy’s inclinations came as some surprise to me, as he had never before shown interest in any of my romantic entanglements, either with women or with any of the other men. Still, the drunkenness seemed immediately to clear from my mind, and my erection sprang to life, vying for space against The Boy’s solid cock.
Perhaps this is why they call me mad and dangerous, and why I am unwelcome in most any society I visit, but I threw all caution to the wind. I sent The Boy to my chamber to fetch the special ointment I keep for such occasions, then bent him over the edge of the bathtub and applied the ointment liberally to his entrance. If The Boy felt any pain from the taking, he made no sign of it, though his cries of enjoyment were loud and frequent. Though I had never thought of The Boy like that before the occurrence at Lillian’s, he was to be the love of my life.
