Last night I sat in my rig and watched the movie “It’s Complicated”.  All I could think about was how this fit my life right now.  As many of you who have read my blogs both here at at “My Uninteresting Life” know, my life is full of twists, turns, screeching stops and power forwards.  I have tried time and again to have a life other than work.  But it seems that every time I think I have it all worked out, here comes my estranged husband (who just cannot seem to find the money to sign our divorce papers and mail them to me even though I have asked for them for years now) wanting another chance with me.  In January, I agreed to try again, but it did not take long before he had me in tears again with him changing his mind.  What most of you might not know, is that my ex (and yes I call him my ex after 7+ years separated I am divorced in all but paperwork) is an addict.  He was born addicted to cocaine, he was what is commonly called a “snow baby”.  This does not make what he has done in his life right but it is an underlying cause of all his problems.  It seems that every time he gets clean for a small amount of time he thinks I should take him back.

Good movie btw.

I talk about this cause yesterday I opened my email and found one from James.  He was again asking me to give him another chance.  I called him to see just what is going on.  Lo and behold the guy is “clean” again and is sorry for all he has put me through.  Damn my life sounds like a bad movie to me.  I contemplated it for a while, but came to the conclusion that I just cannot go through that again.

My life is finally starting to find a balance.  One that James just keeps upsetting every time he comes around.

I am working over-the-road driving truck again.  The company I am with which will remain unnamed for the moment.  Is not one I would have picked if I had much of a choice.  At this moment in time they are the only ones that would give me a shot, so I took it.

While at orientation, I met a cute guy there.  Unfortunately, he got sent home cause he did not pass their driving test.  All he did wrong that we know of is bumping a stop sign on a tight turn.  He did not knock it down and it was already leaning towards the road to start with.  But because he brushed up against it, he was not hired.  He is now in the process of trying to get hired by SWIFT.  As some of you know, I use to work for SWIFT when I first got my CDL.  In fact, the more companies I work for and the more time I spend out on the road, the more I want to return to SWIFT and work for them long haul.  If he gets hired on, then I am going to try and go back there like now.  Even if he does not I believe that I am going to keep trying until they are willing to rehire me.  I want a chance at a life where I am important enough to my guy that he takes the time to talk to me and be with me.  Not just wants me to take care of him.  Time will tell.

Hey like I said…. It’s Complicated.

Audrey and Lawrence are so excited to see all their adventures in a single collection, they’ve created a whole website for it! Okay, so they had a little help from an author friend, but I’m trying to stay humble about my contribution to their great endeavour…LOL

While I was trying to think of a topic for the blog today, my thoughts drifted back on past relationships and this poem I wrote shortly after a painful break up.

The last three lines are oh so true don’t you think?

“The words I love you have no meaning… When they are just words… Nothing more”

How can we express our love without actually saying the words I love you? You don’t have to spend a ton of money on flowers or jewelry.  How about a Saturday afternoon when the kids have gone wild. It’s the perfect time to express your love by drawing her a bubble bath, complete with candles and relaxing music. Then take the kids out for an afternoon at the park. Trust me, it will be worth the effort *wink

Or, turn the tables for that special man and drop the kids at your mothers’ house for the night. This will work if you have no kids too. Plan a surprise candlelight dinner for just the two of you, and wear that short black dress you know drives him crazy.

Sometimes it’s the little things we forget after being with someone for a long time. We grow comfortable, even complacent. How about on the next nice evening when the stars are out, ask him/her to go for a walk and hold hands.

More often than not these random acts will make your partner feel loved without having to say the words, I love you.  I’m curious, how do you show him/her you love them without saying those three words?

When my girlfriend and I went out for Sunday brunch this weekend, I ordered something I’d never tried before–Eggs Benedict.

“The first of my Audrey and Lawrence stories,” I told her, “starts with a joke about Eggs Benedict.”

She popped a red grape in her mouth. “What’s the joke?”

I didn’t want to tell her, at first. My mind was barraged by images of my past and my bed before she was in it, and I remembered the first time I heard the joke. I was young then, like Audrey. Like Audrey, I welcomed a married man into my apartment every Sunday morning. It was from him I heard this joke.

Excerpt from “Kiss the Cook” by Giselle Renarde,
From Audrey & Lawrence: The Complete Collection

“How are Eggs Benedict like oral sex?”

“I don’t know, Lawrence. How are Eggs Benedict like oral sex?”

“You don’t get either at home,” he chuckled.

My stomach plunged six stories. You don’t get either at home? I guess he meant it as some kind of a veiled compliment, but still…Lawrence wasn’t usually so crass. Even if the insult wasn’t aimed at me, it still hurt to hear him say something so mean-spirited.

“Groan,” I said, pretending to find his joke merely innocuous. Why did I always do that? Pretend to be perpetually un-offended, I mean. Kissing my way across Lawrence’s fleshy abdomen, I nuzzled his pubic hair from top to balls, taking in that quintessentially male aroma of spent cock. Pure sex. Now that was good stuff! What a bad joke, though. So bad I couldn’t relax after the rather incredible blowjob I’d just given him. This time, I had to say something.

“I don’t like it when you criticize your wife,” I confessed, running my fingers through those curly greying hairs.

Shaking his bald but beautiful head like he was scrambling eggs in there, Lawrence looked down at me.

“It’s very unbecoming,” I continued.

 “I don’t know what you mean,” he claimed. He claimed.

 “Eggs Benedict? Look, I know you and…” I tried to say Ruth, but it just wasn’t happening. His wife’s name was the only taboo word in our repertoire. “I know you and she don’t have a satisfying sex life…”

 “It’s not a matter of satisfying or unsatisfying,” Lawrence interrupted. “There is no sex life. It doesn’t exist.”

 The jealousy I’d felt only a moment earlier was eagerly consumed by schadenfreude. I was the only girl for Lawrence. Audrey LeBreton plus Lawrence Galloway equals (heart) 4-ever! At least that’s what I chose to believe.

As I poked my egg to release a runny yoke into its base of toasted baguette and Swiss, I pushed my past aside and looked into the face of my future. Sweet smiled. When I’d told her the Eggs Benedict joke, she was quiet for a moment. And then she laughed and said, “That’s true.”

Should I take that as a joke?

Giselle Renarde
Canada just got hotter!
www.gisellerenarde.webs.com

Find out more about Audrey & Lawrence: The Complete Collection at the Audrey & Lawrence website! Audrey & Lawrence is available now for pre-order, and for purchase March 28th, 2010 from eXcessica Publishing.

I’m sure every one of us has experienced this at some point (lots of points?) in our writing careers. The finished product – be it e-book or print – arrives, all pristine and shiny. We gleefully open it – by click or by turning the cover and about thirty seven pages in we find it. The typo. We must have looked that bit over a bajillion times and we still missed it; I’m sure that’s because we see what we want to see and our brains didn’t register the error until it was too late. 

Now, typos are almost inevitable – in the sheer volume of words and punctuation that goes into a book they may well be almost statistically inevitable. But what about the mistakes the author could have avoided? Have any of those ever slipped through in your work or have you had any near misses? I’ve seen a few complete banana skins in stories, both at checkover stage (no, you can’t have your hero in Queen Anne’s London hearing Big Ben)  and in the finished product, so I asked my fellow authors from the Last Gasp anthology if this had ever happened to them and they confessed all. 

Erastes: “My historical blooper WAS made. I have Dracula (the book) in Standish. Gah.  The worst of it was that I KNOW that I researched it at the time, because later in the book, Ambrose and Fleury speak of Polidori’s book The Vampyre, which WAS published at the time, but I forgot to change all references from Dracula to The Vampyre. Oh well. Lesson Learned! 

Chris Smith: I have a WIP (De Ruinis Mundi) where I had to go and change all the dates. I was out by six years and had Savonarola having romantic liaisons in Florence when he was really going mad and burning books. All changed now.

I nearly had a huge blooper in my Cambridge Fellows series. I had faculty departments – both as bodies and as physical buildings – appearing the wrong side of WWI. As my daughters would say, “Uuuummmm…” Caught it at the last minute, although there is at least one (to me) glaring mistake in the books that remains, which I didn’t find out about until I read a biography of Siegfried Sassoon. I have my explanation ready to hand…

That’s right! THE BIRTHDAY GIFT by Giselle Renarde just won’t quit being popular! Many e-books enjoy a burst of popularity when they first hit the market, and then sales and awareness dwindle. THE BIRTHDAY GIFT is different. Even after a few fine years on the e-book market, it’s as much in demand as ever!

Why do readers enjoy THE BIRTHDAY GIFT ? One reader told me “it has something for everyone” because, as an MMFF menage story, there’s gay male, lesbian, and hetero naughtiness. Another reader calls THE BIRTHDAY GIFT “A Must Read!” Me? I like the surprise ending. I go for that sort of thing. Oh, and the cover is g-g-g-gorgeous!

What’s it all about? Read on

Meredith is a cake-baking, apron-wearing small-town Canadian mom. Her
guiding principle in life is, “What would June Cleaver do?” That is,
until a curious set of circumstances cause her to crash an outdoor
gathering where she stumbles upon a pair of delicious hunks getting a
little hands-on with each other. Surely June Cleaver would have headed
for the hills at the sight! Not Meredith. This relaxed get-together
really heats up when one man’s wife appears on the scene… and encourages
Meredith to join in.

Whew! Hot stuff! But the story’s not over yet. There’s still the
tropical vacation, the confinement in foreign prison, the trial for
freedom… and, hey, where’s Meredith’s husband in all this? It is his birthday, after all…

Intriguing, right? Well, it would be rude of me not to share a spicy excerpt, so here’s tidbit for those of us who love the image of two built guys getting frisky:

Excerpt from THE BIRTHDAY GIFT by Giselle Renarde

As Meredith drew her lids open, her heart nearly stopped.  On a built-in bench at the opposite end of the isolated deck sat Richard and Ash.   No clothes.  Two men—two strangers—naked in Joyce’s backyard.  A flutter of nervous excitement turned Meredith’s body into a battlefield.  Leave!  No, stay.  Watch!  No, go.

But how could she leave when, just a stone’s throw across the deck, Richard’s hard cock surged toward the well-defined muscles of his tight stomach? A tingling sensation culminated at the summit of Meredith’s lower lips when Ash reached over to stroke Richard’s rigid cock.  Was this an unwelcome act?  Apparently not!  Richard’s magnificent hairless chest glimmered with sweat as he swept a hand across Ash’s brawny thigh.  Close your mouth, young lady!  You’ll catch flies.

This must have been a common occurrence, because Joyce didn’t seem surprised in the least.  Meredith tried to be unnerved, offended, angered, upset by the men’s behavior, but it was impossible.  Two gorgeous men lying side-by-side in the summer sun and stroking each others’ rigid shafts?  June Cleaver would have been long gone by now, but Meredith was in awe of the men’s breathtaking bodies, of their surging muscles, of their cocks sparkling with pre-cum.  This was the single sexiest image she’d ever seen.  Richard and Ash didn’t seem to mind her being there, so what was the harm in watching?

A white hand firmly took hold of a thick brown cock while a brown hand slowly jerked off the large white rod.  This act ought to be the new symbol of international peace and brotherhood. Two masculine males pumping each others’ stiff rods was far more stimulating than a simple black hand shaking a white hand.  A warm tingling sensation took over Meredith’s body.

She clutched her fruit platter for fear she’d drop it and send porcelain and mango flying.  Maintain a safe distance.

* * *

Maybe you’ve read THE BIRTHDAY GIFT already.  If you haven’t, why not pick up a copy?  You can buy THE BIRTHDAY GIFT from eXcessica Publishing , All Romance e-books , Amazon , or any respected e-book retailer!

Hugs,

Giselle Renarde

Canada just got hotter!
http://freewebs.com/gisellerenarde/

http://donutsdesires.blogspot.com

Okay…I’ll admit it. Time just kind of slipped away from me…and here I am again. Another month gone by and I’ve not thought of one interesting thing to blog about. Sorry! I swear, it was like a time warp between last month and this month. ZOOM! And it seems like everything in my life just kinda went berserk in between. So, here I am adding another shameless book promo… 

 On The Fringes
  Publisher: Cerridwen Press
  ISBN #9781419916281
  Categories: Futuristic,Sci-Fi
  Book Length: Super Plus Novel

 Blurb:

“You’re alive,” Sabien said.

“Of course I’m alive,” she snapped. “No thanks to you.”

“I just can’t believe it.” He raised a hand to touch her.

“Stop,” she warned him, “or I’ll have to shoot you.”

His hand froze and his eyes widened in surprise. Didn’t he understand the gravity of his situation? He was a thief and he was in her custody. Just because they knew each other didn’t mean she wouldn’t do her duty.

He lowered his hand to his side. “Sorry,” he said with a smile that made her heartbeat quicken. “Forgot. I just couldn’t believe you were really here.”

“Well, I am,” she said in a no-nonsense tone.

“How did you escape the explosion?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, trying not to stare at his lips. “What matters is I’m here and you’re under arrest.”

“You don’t need to point that at me,” he said, indicating her gun with a nod of his head. “I won’t try to escape. I’ll do whatever you say.”

She didn’t trust him. Of course he’d try to escape. Why wouldn’t he?

“Protocol,” she said.

“I just want a chance to explain,” he said.

“There’s nothing to explain.”

He ran a hand through his sandy brown hair and said, “I want to make things right.”

“You can’t make things right, Sabien.” Her grip tightened on her gun. “Things are what they are.”

“But I wanted to—” He stared at her, his azure eyes beginning to simmer.

“I found out where you’d been stationed,” he said. “I’d planned on coming to see you, to talk with you.”

Lies. All lies to distract her from her duty.

“But things got a little crazy and then I heard about the satellite blowing up. I thought you were…dead. I regretted not seeing you sooner.”

He took a step toward her and she knew she should pull the trigger, but she couldn’t.

“Not talking to you,” he said, moving closer.

His eyes were liquid fire and she could feel his heat radiating against her skin. Her hands began to shake.

“Not,” he reached up and lowered her arms to her sides, “kissing you again.”

She didn’t want to lower her weapon. It went against everything she’d ever learned. But she was caught by his gaze, by his hypnotic words, by an uncontrollable desire raging deep within her.

“I can’t do this, Sabien,” she whispered.

“Yes, you can.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I was growing up, no one ever had ‘the talk’ with me. My mother was against discussing anything sexual at all. My father? Well, he liked to joke and would have been a more open parent had he not been married to my mother. But that’s another story for another day.

The reason I’m blogging about sex ed today is because my little boy was talking about it a few days ago, and I thought it would be a good topic to get some opinions on. I guess I’m pro sex education, however, I don’t feel like they are going about it the right way. According to my kid, it appears to be more about reproductive parts and how the body works rather than the things that a kid needs to actually learn.

They don’t teach them about putting slot A into slot B, for instance. Now some of you might think that isn’t something they need to know—that if you tell them, they’ll go out and practice. I think that you’ve already got kids out there having sex and that those who do were going to anyway and those who don’t, well, knowing the details isn’t going to matter to them.

So why do we have some kids having sex at an early age when others refrain? I’ve heard a range of answers on that one for sure. Every excuse from seeing it on TV to peer pressure. Now I don’t doubt that kids watch too much TV, see things maybe they shouldn’t too soon, but I can’t blame their sexual activity on being exposed to too much too soon. Nor can I blame it on peer pressure completely. If we raise our children to be strong in mind, no amount of ‘overexposure’ to TV, video games, and movies could possibly sway them. And most certainly not little Sally Jane Doe from up the street.

I honestly believe that children, and when I say children I mean those eleven to fifteen years old, are inclined to seek out another person to share something with if their lives are somehow lacking. That it’s all about getting the attention they need. Maybe it’s about being touched in general. An awful lot of kids don’t get as many hugs as they should. I remember hearing a ten-year-old child say to me once that she wanted a baby. I knew her parents and knew that the child received no attention. That the child was actually hungry—and in more ways than one. Hungry for not only food, but love. That child was pregnant at age twelve. I saw that girl not too long ago, now all grown up and with three children. She’s probably twenty-five or so. She works as a caregiver to the elderly and is married, her husband employed in construction. I looked at her children and was immediately impressed with how they were dressed. She’d taken such care with them. Their hair was nice and shiny, clean clothes and shoes, and all were smiling and you could just tell they loved their Mama. It was nice to know that she’d broken what could have been a vicious cycle. That’s not to say I recommend anyone getting pregnant at age twelve. Hell no. But to explain that this child had nothing and so wanted something. She seemed happy now, and I can’t imagine what she had to go through to get to the place she is today.

Children crave love and affection. They need to know that parents are there to talk to and support them no matter what. The answer to preventing children from having babies isn’t in a sex ed class that never really does anything other than teach them about reproduction and whisper don’t do it because it ruins your life. The answer lies with good parenting. Open communication with children. Setting a good example.

And hugging.

I remember a girl in high school who evidently was learning disabled. Her mother gave birth to her late in life (well fortyish isn’t too late, but not the norm maybe) so she was fifteen and her parents were in their sixties. This girl thought she could get pregnant if a boy stuck his tongue in her ear. That’s one of the things her parents had told her. I’m all for protecting children, but that kind of lie doesn’t protect them, does it? The girl was pregnant by the end of her junior year.

At least sex ed is getting rid of the lies. I’ll say that much for the system. But it needs to go further. Instead of the gym teacher (that’s who teaches sex ed in our school system) getting up in front of the P.E. class for three weeks out of the school year and talking about sperm swimming and eggs traveling through tubes, it would seem that someone more qualified needs to be doing this. Someone who can speak to these children about their fears, their needs, and the consequences of their actions. These things are only touched on by that three week session. It might be different in other school systems, but where I live, the entire process is sorely lacking. I honestly believe that school systems should turn up the focus on the child/teen pregnancy problem a couple of notches and possibly even go so far as to have counselors in the schools that are trained to address this single issue. The systems could target schools where there seems to be a major problem.

In the meantime, I talk to my kid. I’m very open with him, and he’s very open with me. Sometimes his questions are a bit more than what I’d like to discuss with him. But it’s answering those hard questions despite the momentary embarrassment that makes us good parents, isn’t it? Staying involved in your child’s life is the single most important thing any of us will ever do.

And that involvement doesn’t end at age eighteen. Though I’ve had it said to me a hundred times in recent months that once they turn eighteen there is nothing else for me to do, I subscribe to the theory that with love comes responsibility. And my kids will always have me driving them crazy about this or that. I’ll always be their cheerleader, mentor, and staunchest critic. I’m not above ‘tough love’. But in the end, my actions are always fueled by my love.

I’m posting this for Regina who is out of town.

Personally, I don’t think I want to know anyone who doesn’t have a little quirk or two. After all those are the things that make us ‘different’ and yeah, maybe a little weird…but in a totally good way. These little eccentricities stamp us as unique individuals, don’t they? I certainly have a quirk or ten and my family knows them well.

I have a funny thing about my dishwasher. When my kids were little, their job was to clear off the table and do dishes. I didn’t have a problem with anything they did until it came to loading the dishwasher. I ALWAYS rearranged things after they’d left the kitchen. Don’t know what it is but I like certain things in certain places in the dishwasher and it drives me nuts if they aren’t loaded JUST RIGHT.

I also have a thing about shoes. They need to be lined up in a certain way in my closet and in the right order. By that I mean the left shoe should never be on the right side. Make sense? It makes perfect sense to me. Everyone in my family shakes their head at me when they grocery shop with me. I buy two of almost everything. I never buy only one box of cereal. I always buy two. Two tomatoes. Two cucumbers. Two heads of lettuce. Two cans of green beans. The only exception is with meats, milk, and other things that already come in very large sizes anyway. Need some potato chips? That’s fine. I have two bags.

Do you have quirks that drive your friends and family crazy? Come on and share them.

People have said that middle age and getting old is a state of mind and they are both wrong and right about that. Your body is going to age and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Even a botoxed body is still aging. The surgeon has just shaken out the wrinkles as you would a sheet from the dryer. But what about your mind, your brain? As a woman of “a certain age” I can tell you that some point my brain stopped having birthdays. Yep. Totally stopped maturing. I see that gray hair when I look in the mirror and my brain rebels. It does not believe that is me.

This is most forcefully brought to my attention when I sit some place and people watch. Or more accurately, ogle men. I sat at lunch one day with a co-worker, she with her back to the window, in a trendy (and really yummy) new burger place called Habit. Behind her head, a plethora of men passed by. My brain, which still thinks like a 35 year old, had my eyes following the hot bodies of the men in the twenty and thirty something age range.  My libido, which also thinks it’s thirty-ish, created little fantasies in my head.

Hot dude in suit pants and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, looks up at the window to find me staring at him. A slow smile curves his mouth. His eyes glitter with some emotion I can’t name and don’t care to analyze just yet. He rolls his sleeves higher and my eyes follow the movements of his long-fingered hands, the ripple of muscle in his forearms. He flexes his shoulders and the shirt tightens over biceps that I know my fingers can’t wrap around.

He sits down at one of the outside tables and unwraps his burger, his gaze never leaving mine. He bites and chews. I see the strong column of his neck flex with the movement of his jaw. He flicks his tongue at the corner of his lips, capturing a drop of sauce. He swallows and his Adam’s apple bobs with a slow, seductive movement, the skin of his throat rippling slightly. My breath catches in my throat as he leans forward, opening his mouth, white teeth gleaming, the pink of his tongue beckoning…His fingers squeeze the burger as his teeth sink into it. My panties dampen…and my co-worker starts packing up her trash so we can leave. Lunch is over.

No matter how many birthdays my body has, my brain has stopped having them. What I find attractive in a man hasn’t changed from my thirties. My fellow FAB blogger Tess MacKall has a thing for silver foxes. The only silver fox to ring my bells is Anderson Cooper and he’s prematurely gray. When I look at men, I realize that my tastes haven’t changed in lo these many years. I’ve gone from being a cougar to a dirty old woman. Well, not really. I’m not really old enough for that yet, but I can see that my brain is headed in that direction with regard to men.

What I find attractive in a man just has not matured along with me. I’m not sure what that means. I’ve always been a cougar, attracted to men younger than me. Oddly, men my age and older have never shown any attraction to me either. It’s always been the younger guys who’ve hit on me. There’s something very odd about how the universe works with this stuff. If I believed in karma, I’d say it was at work here.

So what happens when your body gets older but your brain doesn’t? For starters, the pickins get mighty slim when it comes to sexual partners. Sure, there are some hot thirty something guys out there who dig women in their forties and there are a lot of guys who will tell you age means nothing. Of course, age truly doesn’t mean anything to their cocks. If you get it hard, you just better be prepared to take care of it whether you’re ten years older than the guy or twenty.  Men are usually practical about a hard on. If they don’t like your gray hair, they’ll fist their hands in it and close their eyes. Dicks do not always see gray hair. Thank God for that. Like I said, if you can get their cock hard, at that point they do not care if you’re as old as their mom. They just want you to deal with the consequences of your actions.

I guess that will be my new thing. Don’t worry about age. Worry about whether you can arouse that hot younger guy. Sometimes, it’s not about looks but about actions. Not all men (or women) care about age or looks so seek out men who are all about attitude and sexuality. And enjoy those lunch hours where you can sit and ogle the manflesh. After all, there’s no law against letting your immature brain strip them naked.