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 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.

I used to know, but I don’t anymore.

Fifteen years ago I could predict exactly the type of person I would develop a crush on. I knew every last characteristic. That person would be:

• Male
• Healthy & Fit
• Aged 48-60
• Bald
• Highly Intelligent/Academic
• Refined Manners and Tastes

Think Patrick Stewart. Yeppers, that was the man for me. Every time a man like that crossed my path, I’d melt into a gooey puddle of crush-juice.

Ten years ago, I noticed a shift in my crushes. Bald men stopped turning my head. A different type of person started attracting my attention:

• Female
• Artsy/Quirky
• Aged 18-30
• Small in Stature
• Eclectic Tastes
• Dark Hair

My rockabilly babe, pin-up model Bernie Dexter, should give you some idea of the kind of girl I’m talking about.

Now…I just don’t know anymore! I can’t predict when a crush will come along and what she’ll look like or act like. It’s like there are absolutely no commonalities anymore, except that I haven’t had a crush on a boy in a good ten years. What is my “crush type”? I’ve been mulling this over for a couple days now and…I’ve got nothing!

I mean, I think about my girlfriend of two years, and she doesn’t fit into any known category. Sweet’s:

• MTF Transsexual
• Tall
• Redhead
• “Curvy”
• Generous
• Wise Woman
• Geeky/Trekkie
• Tells Really Bad Jokes

Mind you, I don’t remember ever really having a crush on Sweet. I knew there was something special about her, and I fell in love. Or maybe I did have a crush on her…and maybe I still do. I certainly do find myself fantasizing about kissing her while I’m dozing on the subway. I still think about her all the time. Every time I’m in a store, I can’t resist buying her a present, even if it’s just a bottle of iced tea.

But that doesn’t help me in establishing my crush type. When I think about the women I’ve crushed on over the past five years, I see no similarities. Maybe we only see the similarities in retrospect. Maybe five years from now, it’ll all be clear.

What about you? Are there certain physical qualities you know you’ll be attracted to in any given person? Or do the physical qualities have to accompany personality qualities? Can you clearly identify the kind of person you’ll develop a crush on?

What’s your crush type?

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

Seriously, no pun intended, but is erotica on the rise? Does it seem like the trend for erotic fiction is moving from erotic romances to pure erotica, or is it that erotica is merely experiencing a surge in popularity for a short time? Or perhaps it will become the other sexy fiction genre and run neck-and-neck with erotic romance?

I think it’s going to give erotic romance a run for its money. Erotica fiction has always been around, but now that the taboos of sexy fiction are beginning to fade and erotic het romance, f/f, and m/m romance seems to all be accepted by society (well, more or less…there are always those out there who rebel against anything, everything, and especially change), I feel erotica fiction will become the norm and be as easily available on both physical and cyber shelves as any other readily accepted genre.

Erotica has existed since the dawn of time. The Egyptians wrote about it on the walls of their dwellings, tombs, and places of worship. Pompeii and another neighboring city, whose name escapes me, focused on sex as a huge part of their economy. Their bath houses also served as places for prostitutes to hang out, and even public areas for sex—stone rooms without roofs—were used to meet and shag, for a price. Even the cobbled streets had phallic images carved on them to point the horny guy or gal in the right direction where he or she could scratch their itch. Ancient Rome, too, is known for all its sex fests—some quite gruesome, I might add—that occurred within the walls of its home city or its conquered ones.

In 1798, Fanny Hill by John Cleland was first published in England, and then it grew in popularity in America. LOL…imagine the outcry by those involved in The Great Awakening! I can only envision the dark corners, basements, saloons, and caves where there are hidden copies of Fanny Hill’s adventures!

So, erotica has been around a long, long time indeed!

About three weeks ago, I mentioned I had resurrected an old pen name of mine: Molly Diamond. In the past two weeks, I’ve secured two contracts under MD’s name. What actually urged me to bring the pen name back was the fact that my hubby’s employer recognized the name from reading Gent and various men’s magazines. This impressed me so much I incorporated it into my author bio on my MD site (http://mollydiamond.wordpress.com).

But as I submit erotica stories, as I take note of what’s selling on cyber shelves, and what I see in brick-and-mortar stores, one thing jumps out at me: Erotica is becoming more and more popular.

When I put on Molly Diamond’s writing cap, I write contemporary stories that are real life. People meeting people who are attracted to one another. Sometimes you’ll find a bit of m/m erotica too, but the characters are still portrayed as real people. Oh, sure you’ll find some paranormal erotica, or maybe a li’l magic realism will appear in one of my erotica stories, but overall, it’s real life.

Real life and real people doing real things is the appeal of erotica—well, that’s my theory anyway, lol. Erotica gives readers a glimpse into the “real” world of characters who just want to enjoy sex, and the reader can do it without having to walk a mile in the character’s shoes. They’re only along for the ride, and therefore can “get off” anytime he or she chooses. No fuss, no muss, no mess, and no broken commitments.

So tell me…do you enjoy reading erotica, or are you a die-hard erotic romance reader only?

We’ve all been in love. Laughed with silly jokes, shared silly phrases, called each other silly nicknames. Played in the sun, in the dark, while the rest of the world slept or worked or did other very responsible things.

And we’ve all been to the gloomy place where all that loses its lustre. Where silly just becomes stupid, where watching a movie or reading a book sounds better than spending time with our significant (?) other. Where what was once the reason we got up in the morning is now another thing to check on our to-do list.

Surprisingly, that’s the good way to end a relationship. Yes, I know ending and good should create an oxymoron, but it’s true. When you want something to be over, you heal easier, you move on faster, you place the good memories in the treasure-chest of your heart and delete the bad with a small sigh.

But what happens when that magical bond between two people is broken abruptly?

When it’s not the logical result of a succession of events? When someone cheats, lies or just plain lets us down in a way that’s unforgivable? Big words fly high and low in the heat of the moment, even more so when someone is impulsive. “It’s over” is a prevalent phrase we throw around, but how true is it really? Maybe it’s just something we say to hurt the other person the way they hurt us.

Bitterness flows when love ebbs and the hurt takes over. Walking away sometimes is the only thing to do. Or maybe it’s the easiest. Whether it’s heartache or pride that forces us to run, we do. More often than not in this day and age. But what we always seem to forget is that we can run but we can’t hide. From our feelings, from the truth. They follow us around like an annoying shadow, forcing us to go back and pick up the pieces of our broken relationship. Be adults and own up to our mistakes.

You can’t have a fight with only one person.

Greek saying that fits the bill in most cases.

So what happens when the bill’s too much for us to pay, and we realize that we spoke too fast? It’s not always possible to take such a small but powerful word back. Sometimes the hurt we’ve caused by walking away excedes the pain we felt in the first place, and we’re left in limbo. Nowhere to go back to, nowhere to move on to. The chain of reactions has wrapped around our neck and strangles us.

That’s the bittersweet beauty of life though. Pain is also needed so we can learn, adjust, evolve, and hopefully do it right in the future.

So are you a man/woman of your four-letter word? Do you mean it when you tell someone it’s over or do you later regret it?

When love is new and fresh it’s called “puppy love”. It’s called so because of the devotion a puppy oftentimes gives its owner, and we see that in the boy with a crush following a girl, or vice versa, that happens in our younger years. Sure, wikipedia says it’s also called “kitten love”, but here at the Winter household, we have true kitten love. We have the cute and cuddly kind like you see in the picture. And we have the other kind too, which more often than not resembles an old married couple. Baxter (He’s the spotted guy in the picture), will stand on Delta and do his “thing” (even though they’re both fixed), while she’s sleeping in the kitty bed. She’ll give him a look that says “not right now, I’m trying to sleep” and put her head back down while he’s stomping away on top of her. Eventually he’ll figure out she’s more interested in snoozing and flop over right on top of her.

Yep, sounds like an old married couple.

The truth is the love and devotion these two show each other would be the envy of any couple from a romance book. I’ll see them curled up together in the recliner. Or sometimes, one will come to snuggle with the other, providing lots of ear and face licks in the process.

So I vote we rename it “kitten love”, because really, who needs puppies when you have these two around?

And you know what’s better than kittens? The guy who let you adopt them.

Ok first off I am going to apologize…my blog is a couple of days late and I am a few dollars short.  But then my usual day fell on a Monday and Monday is of course our jump day here at work.

Work, shall we go into that subject.  My roommate is a jerk from hell.  The lowest rung of hell at that.  He seems to think that everything should revolve around him.  As in suck my cock, each my shit…whatever I want goes.  Yes my roommate is a guy…no I am not fucking him.  Wouldn’t if he was the last dick on earth and having sex with him meant that the world would be saved and all that.  He is just rude and to make matters worse thinks he is God’s gift to women.  I have curtains in my bunkhouse room.   In this picture the curtain is up in the air…but for some reason he has a problem with it being closed at night.  He always comes in and opens the corner of the curtain “so that he can have the air conditioner” yet he then closes his curtain which goes all the way to the ground?  HUH  this makes no sence to me, but then I am not a guy so.  He also seems to think it is alright for him to move my fan so that it is pushing the air towards his room instead of towards mine.  The result is that my room ends up hotter than hell while he gets a small amount of air.

Now as for him thinking he is God’s gift to women.  He had tried on several occasions to have sex with me.  I am so not going there.  One is is not my type.  Two he is nasty.  Three I know for a fact he tested positive for an STD not that long ago.  I know this cause he got arrested and my boss found out about it and told me about it.  Hell when I said something to someone else about him having tested positive for one, he yelled at me for talking about him but did NOT deny that he had to get treated for one.  He is one of them guys that has at least 2 woman a week he is having sex with.  The final straw for me today was something that is actually pretty stupid but it was just the be all to end all.  He took the garbage bag out of my room (sounds nice right) filled it with his garbage and left it open just outside the door.  Where if I had not bitched about it, it would have sat for most of the rest of this week.  Until someone else took it out to the big can to get collected.

Then there is DC…he is one of the drivers for the show.  He is another one that gets pissy cause I have turned him down.  He is a pot head.  Now I have smoked a little in my time, but I have never done it and then gotten behind the wheel of anything.  He will get stoned then drive a rig, or even worse he smokes it while driving.  He has been pissy lately cause I won’t do what he tells me to do.  In our weekly “church” meeting…we have a work meeting everyweek that the boss calls “church”…a couple of weeks ago, he tells everyone at the meeting that he will take the show bus to do laundry in the morning and that I am going to drive it that night to take them all to Walmart.  I informed him in no uncertain terms that he had no right to volunteer me for anything.  When he tried to say that Timmy(the boss) does it all the time, I let him know that he was not my boss and he couldnt volunteer me to do anything.  Ever since that night, see I embarrased his ass in front of the whole show, he has been really bitchy with me.  Today in fact, he got pissed cause I parked my truck where he did not want it.  When I called my boss Mary and asked her if there was some place that I could or could not park the pickup and told her where I was and that DC was telling me I couldnt park there, she said fuck him tell him I told you to park there.

It is all not that bad…Really it isnt.  I had 5 interesting weeks with my teenage daughter out here.  Unfortunately, she has decided that she in in love with a guy I was sort of involved with.  I do not mind them dating, he was nothing to me but a friend with benefits.  What bothers me is that everyone else has a problem with it and I am getting all kinds of flack about letting them even hang out together.  Everyone else is convinced that he is taking advantage of her.  Yet I have talked to both of them…they really do like each other.  He is a nice kid…he maybe 26 but he is in so many ways still just a kid himself.  He does his best to take care of her AND he REFUSES to do anything physically with her until she is at least 18…which mind you is in March.  In fact to listen to her, she tried to get him to but he said NO.  They talk on the phone every day now.  He is suppose to be paying her phone bill so that they can continue to talk daily until she is either 18 or no longer living with her father.

I do not have a problem with the age thing, cause I have dated older guys…guys that were a whole lot more than 9 years older than I was.  I have also dated much younger guys.  In fact, at one point I was like 32 and dating a guy that was 17…with his mother and legal guardian’s permission.  So I am a firm believer that I have no ground to stand on to bitch about their age differences.  And I have watched them when they did not know I was looking…the look on both faces is someone that is in LOVE.  Yes she is young…yes she may very well change her mind about him…but I also remember being 17 & 18 and my parents telling me NO…I was bound and determined to prove them wrong.  I was old enough to make my own decisions and I was going to.  I would much rather let them date and have a modeum of control over something than to forbid it like her father wants to do, and have her run off as soon as she turns 18 and have no way of knowing if she is safe or if she is still in school.

She is just a sophmore in high school this year.  She had to stay back in kindergarten and in 5th grade so she is 2 years behind where she should be.  But I want her to GRADUATE high school.  My boyfriend/fiance had to drop out of school in order to support his child when he was like 16 or 17.  He has fought for the last 13 years to finish high school.  He just this year finally got his GED.  I am so proud of him for doing this…but even he says it is so much easier if she just stays in school and does it that way.  I agree.

I have just about 2 weeks left until it is time to leave for home.  I am counting the days…almost counting the hours and minutes until I am able to pack up my stuff and head for Savannah and be with my boyfriend again!!!  The days cannot pass fast enough.

Okay, maybe not beer, but I find it completely amusing how my horse has gone from a “pasture pet” to a stalled little princess in the space of a few months. I’ve had my mare, Fortune, since she was three months old. She’ll be ten in August, so yeah, we’ve been together a while. And since generally she’s treated like my 1000-lb Barbie^TM (add to that the fact that I don’t ride), well she’s had a pretty cushy life. Hang out in the pasture with her buddies, get fed, grained, and can’t forget the horse cookies, then every once in a while be brought inside where she’s fussed over, brushed, made pretty, and then we walk around for 20 minutes or so. Read the rest of this entry »

Because, as the Kentucky Derby showed on Saturday, sometimes the little guys can score one against big guys with deeper pockets. And the cool thing is, when that happens, it’s probably an even bigger win, because it revitalizes interest in the sport (or in the publishing industry).

For those who don’t follow horse racing (and shame on you), a $9500 gelding (from Canada) named Mine that Bird came from way behind to stun the field. I suspect, in reality, that there were probably traffic jams, which created the perfect opportunity. But that’s okay. Because things like that happen in both industries. And it’s a good thing when it does.

Why? Because it inspires hope. Read the rest of this entry »