Love is paradise, I think.

Feeling alive, excited, desirable, safe, and oh so much still in danger… feeling like every inch of skin could tingle, that our breath could lift us up towards the loved one….

That’s paradise.

Writers are strange creatures sometimes.

To think that sweetness can be found etched into the formerly simple paper of a publishing contract… It doesn’t make sense, if you think about it. Paper is paper. Relationships of any kind are not usually unconditional love and great sex all the time.

Sometimes they are. I keep up my hopes.

The relationship dance often starts with a very small whisper.

A smile on the bus.

A 300 word pitch.

It ends because the other person already has a girl friend.

It ends just because my name wasn’t on the list.

That 300 word pitch.. that was from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.

I’ll confess that I’m broke enough that the promise of a coupon for a free proof copy enticed me. I’ll also confess that I had my moments of day dreaming about winning the contest. Then I’d be splendid and brilliant and everyone would know it!

The little slights I’ve felt recently would all be redressed! People would see how magnificent I am!

Now, I would like to point out that I’m not alone in either wanting the proof coupon nor in day dreaming about winning.

10,000 of us showed up.

It was a huge Bachelor, and the prize wasn’t even a hunk with a lot of money. Just a little scrap of paper and 15,000 dollars.

There can be such a hole in a person’s soul when a relationship is not accepted, either with a pretty person or with a publisher.

When I’ve come up to the edge of this hole in the past, many people have told me, with great self-righteous certitude I might add, that you have to love yourself first!

As I’ve stood there at this big gapping hole in the past, with those proud ‘wise’ words ringing in my ears, I’ve wondered… just how in the hell does one do that?

It’s not like I don’t want to believe in myself or love myself.

I didn’t wake up and decide that my art was pathetic or my stories lame, or that I, as a person, was just not really up to the standards of our species.

That hole can be filled up with the crazy promise that I will win this time! I’ll win next time! One of my personal favorites, I’ll win a Nobel Prize!  OR So-and-So loves me!

Of the 10,000 hopefuls that entered that contest, gave up their best 300 words, and waited, only 2,000 made it forward. Of those, only 500 will move forward again.

Here’s my pitch:

Don’t go in the cellar.

Cain’s problems didn’t get smaller in Iraq.

Whiskey doesn’t fix anything long enough.

His last chance gets him a job as a caretaker for an old mansion.

It comes with more ghosts than he had before.

Don’t go in the cellar.

A hundred years before a triple homicide made the house notorious.

Shelly Comstock-Gray is still the celebrated murder suspect.

Cain can’t believe the smiling, cheerful ghost hurt anyone.

Mistakes can be deadly.

Don’t go in the cellar.

I thought that was a decent smile… but with nervous fidgets.. looking back, things can always be made better, different, to the point that the pretty person gets off the bus before any smile has even happened.

I expected it to hurt.

Looking down that list, looking for my name… there was a  Winter, but it wasn’t me.

It didn’t hurt though.

Well, maybe just a little.

But it was completely balanced and overcome by kind words from friends, by the strength I have in my close friends.  (The people over at Ethan Day’s group are fantastic, I might add!)

I’ve been doing good things over the last year. Working on my art, writing novels, smiling at people, trying to build friendships… and now I stand at that hole, staring down, and it’s filled up with leaves.  I’m not really sure how it got that way. I wasn’t really doing anything differently than I have done all my life.

I’m pretty sure that those little leaves managed to fill up that hole in my soul because a few great people decided I was worth loving.

Some people like my art. Some people like my writing. I’m making both my art and my writing true to who I am. I like their writing and art.

I don’t feel alone.

So when I smile at some pretty girl on the bus, or boy on the bus, and they aren’t interested in me… it’s just not a good fit. I’ll smile at the next one that catches my eye.

Same thing with publishers. I know my work has good points, bad points. I’m a difficult person to work with sometimes. I’m way too skittish and independent.

I’m not nearly as submissive as I used to think I was. If I was polite and good with lots of rules I had no hand in creating.. then I’d be at a lot of publishers.

I think that relationships and publishers really have a lot in common, or at least our relationship to both does.

I’m not chasing. I’m inviting.

But I’ll go right to the source! No dating service. No agent.

Come here, my sweet reader, come here my darling! I have something wicked and sweet for you!

Come into the river of life with me, my love.

Do you remember your first love?

I think I was 13 when I first fell in love with Allen. He was my 15-year-old next-door neighbor and had the most soulful deep brown eyes and golden blond hair. He played all the sports, had tons of friends, and went to the ‘big’ school, lol. And for the longest time, I didn’t think he even knew I existed.
Way back then, I went to a catholic school in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I was in the middle school, and he was a FRESHMAN in the bigger building just next door. The students over there always looked like they were having so much fun . So, I loved him from afar for a year and a half, and he never knew.
Then came the summer before my freshman year.
Suddenly, he’d stop in front of my house if I was out there or say hello through the window if we happened to catch each other’s eye. Gradually, he began to walk ‘down-street’ with me or come up on the porch to sit and talk for a while at night.
I was beside myself. This Adonis I’d been lusting after for almost two years had finally noticed I was alive. Unfortunately, I became ‘one of the guys’ to him. We hung out all the time, went everywhere together, but he never gave me even the tiniest indication that I was more than a pal. *sigh* Still, you never heard me complain, lol.
August came, and I was really excited about finally going to the ‘big’ school, a freshman. YEAH!

Whoa!! Put on the brakes, missy. Not so fast.
My mother came into my room and dropped the bomb that was sure to decimate my life. “We are moving to Vermont.”
VERMONT?!? Are you effin kidding me? We’re leaving this great city, all my friends, and ALLEN for some hick town in some long forgotten state? Really?

Life was over as I knew it. I was heartbroken, crushed, destroyed, distraught, devastated and any other adjective you can think of. I may have even been a little MAD!
The day we left, I sat in the doorframe of my mother’s VW bus (his name was Willie, but that’s another story), waiting for her to finish up inside the house—okay fine, I may have been sulking—when across the back lawn saunters Allen in all his golden glory. I swear, he always had a golden aura surrounding him. Oh, why am I being punished so greatly?
“So, this is it, huh?” he states with all the esteemed knowledge of the older man he was.
“Yup. It sucks,” I reply. I so don’t want to talk about this with him because I know I’ll start bawling like a baby.
And here it comes folks…
Since I’m here writing this, I obviously didn’t die…but I damn near did. And as I’m remembering all this and jotting it down, the butterflies are swarming in my tummy and my chest is constricting. I shit you not; the memory still gets to me. Wow.
“It sure does suck, Debbie,” he replies. “But I’ll always love you, and I’m gonna miss you forever.”
Before his words even registered in my foggy little brain, he leaned in and planted a 90 second kiss on my lips, came up for air, and goes in again. At this point, I know I’ve transported to some other realm of reality, because when his lips touched mine this time, his hands cradled my head and his tongue begged for permission to enter.
PERMISSION GRANTED, HELLLOO.
The kiss must have lasted for hours—okay well, until we couldn’t breathe any more. Then he just turned and walked away. (Not the last time that happened to me, but alas that’s another story as well.)
WHAT??? I mean, come on! He loved me? Just kissed me like I’ve never been kissed before or since and now he’s gone and I’m leaving for some god forsaken cold-ass country backwoods state and I’ll never see him again? Did it even happen? I touch my hand to my mouth and the moistness remains. Hell yeah it happened.
NOT FAIR I TELL YOU!!
And so began the story of my life. Yes, I am happily married, and yes, I survived the heartbreak (that one and the others to follow) though I don’t know how. But I will never forget my golden boy neighbor and the irony that was our relationship.
As an aside, the following summer I went to the Jersey shore to visit a friend and her family for a couple of weeks. The day before I was to leave, I saw Allen’s sisters on the beach. (Oh, did I forget to mention he had sisters?) Anyway, I asked them if he was there and they said he was working and wouldn’t make it to the beach till the following night. UGGHH!!
I have so often wondered where he is now, what he’s doing, and who the lucky woman is that grabbed his heart. But I like to tell myself I was the first one who had it. Ah, well.
So, who was your first love?

Much as I love my guy, I couldn’t live without my sisters. I’m lucky to have three (all older than me, ha ha!). They were my mentors, my friends, my cheerleaders, my confidants. Thankfully, never my rivals. I still turn to them when I need a quick boost. No one else understands me like they do. And vice versa. It amazes me how we sometimes have the sensibility of twins. I once bought a new bathroom ensemble – shower curtain, window curtain, rugs. Imagine my surprise when I visited my next-oldest sister Claudia’s house only to find the very same ensemble! We live nearly three hours away, so I had no idea she’d been shopping. Our tastes are deeply ingrained in our DNA apparently.

Because we used to help each other practice our French, we still sometimes lapse into silly routines from years ago. I’ve long forgotten the meaning of the phrases, but when prompted, still respond in a lilting tone, “Oui, qui a ta la pareya” (spelling verification needed!). Our humor tends to run toward black, so

I’m lucky to have several good friends whom I count as sisters as well. We’ve known each other since grade school, and our lives have shot off on trajectories we’d never imagined as kids. But as soon as we’re together, it’s like coming home. We talk and laugh as if we’d never been separated.

Cheesy as it is, the Hanes Sisters in White Christmas captured the essence of sisterhood. My sisters and I actually sing it to each other.

So today, I raise a cheer for sisterhood. My sisters knew how housebound I’d been this winter, so for my birthday surprised me with tickets to a Broadway play. I can’t wait! We’re going to see A Behanding in Spokane, which is advertised as “explosively funny” – just what I need. Christopher Walken is such a wide-ranging actor, who “finds the sunny side in the spookiest of souls,” as the New York Times wrote. His SNL skits kill me. But I love that he wanted to play a regular, nice guy – with a wife, house and dog. Okay, so he happens to be a creepy character too.

After the play, we’re going to eat at the fantastic Carmine’s,  “NYC’s Legendary Family Style Italian Restaurant.” Oh you haven’t tasted tiramisu until you’ve tasted Carmine’s. Bellisimo! And their margaritas are great too.

So look out, New York – my sisters and I will be on the loose in your city for a Girls Day Out. But now for the all-important question: What to wear??

Do you remember the first piece of erotic fiction you ever read?

I do.

At University, I took a course in sexual diversity studies. Censorship was on the syllabus. We studied the case of the Little Sister’s Bookstore in Vancouver. As part of our studies, we were assigned to read a short work of erotica that appeared in one of the books stopped at the border.

The book was “Macho Sluts.” The story was “The Surprise Party” by Pat Califia. It’s about a lesbian who’s picked up by three gay cops, and taken to a dirty hotel room to be subjected to an enema before they take her in every orifice.

To this day, Califia’s story is one of the most intense works of erotic fiction I’ve ever had the sexual pleasure of reading. But that’s not the only reason I remember it so specifically. It just so happens that when I read this story from my unassuming Printing House collection of essays and articles, I was sitting squished between two complete strangers on a city bus.

I remember glancing side to side, praying neither would look down and see the words on the page. Cunt. Cock. Blowjob. Leather. Yes, I was reading a school assignment, but Califia’s work is no statistics textbook. This was hard-core stuff. Far beyond anything I’ve ever read since, and beyond anything I’ve written myself as a writer of LGBT erotica.

Looking back, I find it difficult to believe I’d never read a work of erotic fiction before University. Certainly, I’d seen pornography before then. Perhaps the intensity and situation surrounding Califia’s story simply made it stick with me. Or, maybe my internal definition of erotica is too narrow. My grandmother, who is the greatest supporter of my career in erotic fiction, considers Gone With the Wind an erotic novel. Perhaps my generation is too over-exposed to view the hardness in anything soft.

But I leave you with my initial question: Do you remember the first piece of erotic fiction you ever read? And were you, like me, between strangers on a city bus at the time? For your sake, I hope not.

Bright Blessings,
Giselle Renarde
Canada just got hotter!

http://www.freewebs.com/gisellerenarde

http://twitter.com/GiselleRenarde

…of the fence, that is!

Twice recently I’ve had the chance to put down my poacher’s bag and take up my gamekeeper’s gun as part of an acquisitions team for a charity anthology of short stories. As an experience ‘on the other side of the fence’ it was by turns inspirational, educational and exasperating. Why exasperating? Because there I was, this naïve little author with all sorts of assumptions that were about to be turned on their heads.  

You know, I thought people would read the guidelines before they sent us submissions. That if we said “We want a short story,” they wouldn’t send us a novella. But they did. And when we said, “Please don’t submit fanfic” that they wouldn’t send us fanfic. But they did. And then they’d get into a great long e-mail correspondence arguing that their offering somehow wasn’t fanfic even when it was.  

I’ve since found out that there’s a condition where children think that the rules are there to apply to other people and that they’re somehow exempt. It can manifest itself in schools where they tell their mates off for running in the corridors but go mad if anyone tells them off for the same thing. Maybe these authors had the same problem? Whatever it was it, in the immortal words of my 16 year old daughter, “Did my head in.”

So I started thinking about all the other times I’ve seen ‘it applies to you and not to me’ going on around me. First thing I thought of was driving, where the bigger and more expensive your car, the more likely you are to think you’re exempt from the Highway code. Then I thought of queues, where the people who moan loudest and longest about the way the person at the checkout is taking forever are the ones who can’t seem to find their shopping bags/wallet/credit card when it’s their turn.

I wonder if it’s just an element of human nature, that rich tapestry of life?  As part of my ‘other job’ I get to talk to schoolchildren about their learning. When you ask them if anything stops them learning the answer is usually, “Other people mucking around.” Never them, of course; certainly surveys suggest that children rate their own behaviour much more highly than that of their peers and I bet we all tend to do the same when we look at our kids compared to other people’s.

Perhaps I’ll be more understanding, if there’s a next time, about the submissions-guidelines breakers. Still won’t let their stories through, though.

What is the old adage?  Do girls make passes at—? No, that’s not it.  It’s Do guys make passes at girls who wear glasses? Ah, that age-old question. 

When Dorothy Parker’s famous quote hit print in 1937, Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses, it cemented the concern in spectacle-wearing dames from that day forward. Doomed them to a life void of passes from gents. The poor Janes! Cursed for having four eyes!

Did anyone ever stop to wonder if girls make passes at guys who wear glasses? Why did Parker single out girls to be the heirs of that blight?

I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. But thinking about it did make me realize something: I adore men who wear glasses!  I find them sexy, incredibly so. I’m not sure why, though. I study men who wear glasses.  I look close at photos in magazines of men who wear them. And I wonder. What is the allure? 

I’m not sure, but I can tell you this…

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big fan of silent films, and, right up there with my beloved Rudolph Valentino, is Harold Lloyd, the comedic genius of the silent era. His talent is unparalleled. He didn’t need sound to be funny.  

But what really attracts me to him? His glasses! The horn-rimmed spectacles that stand between me and that hidden tiger. The optical paraphernalia that promises mystery just the other side of those two circles of glass.  A terribly handsome, sexy man lurks behind those frames. 

If you don’t count Timothy from my second grade classroom, then Harold Lloyd is the object of my first imaginary love affair with a spectacle-wearing fellow. I fell in love with the silent hunk with the manly charisma and boyish good looks the second I laid eyes on him. 

Oh, I know what you’re going to say. It’s the Clark Kent syndrome.  You’re going to tell me that I think there’s a Superman behind those specs. Nah.  It’s not that. Or is it?  

You just might be right. I stumbled across an interesting piece about my silent film hero, and this information would not only interest Superman lovers, but Harold Lloyd fans as well. Seems that the character, Clark Kent, was based partly on Harold Lloyd. Who knew? And I found it even more interesting that Kent’s name was derived from combining the names of two actors, Clark Gable and Kent Taylor. Go figure. 

So my darling Harold is a super man after all!

But still. I couldn’t have known that in second grade, when I daydreamed about Timothy, when I had the most agonizing crush on him. Later, in high school, there was Michael. And Alex. Ricky. And then later, Billy.  Bill. Tom, my husband.

To me, there is something so very sexy about a man stopping to take off his glasses before he begins to—well, make love. There. Oh, geez, I said it.  Yes. I admit it.  What a wildly wonderful experience, as a guy pauses to pull off his glasses and, with that careful deliberation (partly not to break them, of course), folds them shut and sets them on the table. Now he’s ready for business. Can you sit there and tell me that is not kind of sexy?  He’s undressing without undressing? 

Oh, calm down. I never made ‘whoopie’  with Timothy in second grade!  But maybe, just maybe, I sensed, even at that delicate age, the future allure those pieces of metal or plastic and glass would have on me. 

So, to my darling Harold. To Timothy, Michael, Alex, Bill, Billy, and Tom—wherever you are, I salute you! May the women you meet make passes at you! May the women who cross your path see your hidden Clark Kent!

You already know yours truly thinks you’re a hunk!

My three boys. I love ‘em. Truly I do. But as each day passes, I’m starting to believe that they’re conspiring to drive me nuts. I imagine them, meeting in my oldest child’s room, devising a plan on how to systematically undermine my control and destroy any sense of order I’ve set in place. And man, are they good.
     I know when they have their meetings, too. That part is pretty easy to figure out. The oldest and middle boys go in their bedroom under the pretense of playing video games or watching a DVD, and then a few minutes later, the youngest toddles in after them and closes the door. Don’t let that sweet 18-month-old smile lure you in…he’s in it with them. I know it.
    My husband and I used to refer to our youngest as Lil Sampson because when he was learning to walk, he pushed chairs, his playpen, and the ottoman all around the room. It was so cute. But now he’s grown and moved on to bigger and better things. Why just the other day, he managed to pull his crib sheet off. Have you ever put a crib sheet on a crib mattress? I pulled a neck muscle just forcing the elastic-lined sheet over the final corner. I swear, I almost lost a finger when that puppy snapped into place. But what I struggled with, Lil Sampson removed with ease. And if that wasn’t enough, he managed to rip off one corner of the outer plastic covering on the mattress. How he managed to do that, I’ll never know…but I’m sure it involved a great deal of patience.
    In my little guy’s plan to show who’s in charge, he greeted me this morning with a cheerful, “Mom-mee!” while he stood there in nothing but his diaper. In his hands, the offending clothes that he didn’t want to wear. It was like he was telling me, “You dressed me in this outfit, and I want you to know I didn’t care for it.”
    But I know, just know he’s got something far worse planned for me. When he’s sure he’s worn me down and maneuvered me to his liking, that diaper will come off. He’ll wait though. Yes, until he’s had an upset tummy and filled his diaper with the good stuff. Then he’ll send Mom-mee over the edge by wiping that diaper on everything he can reach.
Baby: 3 
Mom: 0

My middle boy had multiple personalities. When he smiles, the sun shines, birds chirp, and a choir of angels sing from on high. He body slams me and professes his love. An hour later, his narrow-eyed glares make me wonder if I’ll be clutching my heart and heading for the hospital. And after that, he’s in tears, wanting me to fix a toy his older brother broke.
    One of his tactics to drive me over the edge is to wipe his face on my clothes. Drives me crazy! “Use a napkin,” I say, and he grins. I just know he’s waiting for the day I allow him to eat BBQ ribs.
    For now, his dream is to win the gold in the Burp Olympics…and I think he’ll do it, too. For a 4-year-old, he’s beyond his years in talent. He’s burped his ABCs, named shapes and colors, and even burped, “Excuse me,” in order to offset his actions with a normal apology. But the night he burped the blessing? That was too much! That was too far!
Middle child: 3
Mom: 0

The oldest boy we’ve dubbed Mr. Chaos. When a situation goes wrong, when life is just kicking you in the butt, the oldest has to go bananas and make it all a million times more chaotic. He thrives on chaos. I know he does.
    But he did get mom’s gene in the storytelling department. For Cub Scouts he had to create a frame, put a picture in it, and then show it to his den. The frame turned out fabulous. The story however…
    “This is the frame I made,” he said, proudly holding it up. “This is the sweetest baby in the world. His name is Tyger.”
    Okay, so far so good. I smiled, watched my son with pride. But we all know about pride…
    “This is my other brother, Kaspir. He’s the toughest little guy you’ll ever meet. But there’s only one thing that he does that drives me nuts. After he goes to the potty, he forgets to flush. And then I have to go in there find it. It’s really gross.”
    While all the other parents chuckled, I wanted to hide beneath the table.
    And then there was the cleanliness conversation he had with his Nana and Grandpa in the Mexican restaurant.
    “Oh, mom makes us wash real well. We wash all over so we’re clean. Our arms. Our legs. Our bottoms. Why, I wash my wee-wee until it sparkles like a diamond.”
    Yeah, the tables around us cracked up. My parents found his profession hysterical. I, on the other hand, wanted to crawl under the table…again.
Oldest child: 3
Mom: 0

Yes, there’s a conspiracy. I have no doubt. Three against one? Yeah, I don’t stand a chance. And did I mention I’m home schooling?
Yep. I’m insane. Certifiably nuts.
But I love ‘em.

Laura
L.J. Garland
Intense. Involved. Unforgettable.
www.lj-garland.com

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.

There’s a secret war being waged. It’s been going on for thousands of years while we go through life blissfully unaware that someone—something—is out there jockeying for a place in our quiet existence.

The battle to determine how best to cover our men’s genitalia continues to rage.

I was at a big Valentine’s Day chat on the Midnight Seductions Authors group Saturday- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midnightseductions -and just happened to post a pic of two truly hot guys in their underwear—one in boxers, one in briefs. The caption read: boxers or briefs?

This little pic generated some hoots and hollers, lots of playful chatter, with women lining up on one side or the other. By the end, however, we’d all decided commando was the true preference. And that should probably end this blog post right here and now. Nope. I’ve got lots to say on the subject of underwear. Stand back, give me room.

Here in the South, a lot of our guys still cling to the traditional whitie tightie—pun intended, and that’s just fine with me. I think I’d be really upset if ol’ Bubba stripped down to a thong. To each his own, of course, but there’s something oddly comforting about those bright white Fruit of the Looms. They’ve been around for quite a while, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to become obsolete any time soon. At least I hope not. Besides, on the right man, they’re not going to stay on him that long anyway. Commando is indeed where it’s at.

People have actually written about the history of underwear. Men’s and women. When I saw that, I kind of figured they’d start out with the old stand by—the fig leaf. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a reference to it anywhere, although I did see a nice pic in a men’s muscle magazine the other day with a guy standing in front of a waterfall wearing nothing but a leaf. I kept imagining him taking a step back and the force of the water knocking that leaf right off his…

Well, the caption said it was a fig leaf, but unless it’s some variety of fig tree I’m not aware of, that leaf was way too big—which made me wonder about the fig leaf cover up in the Bible where Adam and Eve hid their nakedness behind the leaf as a result of their shame over eating the forbidden fruit. The metaphor being pejorative in nature, of course. It didn’t hide much. In other words, everyone saw their shame.

Leather loin cloths were around seven thousand years ago. Now, I know some men wear leather today, but to me that would be pretty sweaty—and not the good kind of sweaty either.

The ancient Greeks used wool to cover their manhood. Talk about chafing! I’m beginning to wonder about who invented baby powder. But that’s for another blog.

Today’s underwear can be over the top and sexy as hell. In addition to those whitie tighties, boxer briefs, and plain old boxers, men now have a choice in a range of explosive color and style. How about thongs, jockstraps, and slingshots? Mesh, please? The pic up top is a sheer mesh jockstrap. It comes in a variety of colors too.

I love the slingshot. I even used that design in my latest book, Latin Rhythm. Here’s the snippet:

Wet, black hair buffeted his shoulders. His swarthy skin glittered with water droplets in the dazzling sunlight. Ripped muscles moved up and down his torso with fluid grace. And, oh my god, barely-there fluorescent orange-and-black swim briefs left nothing to the imagination. His bulky load packed into a tight slingshot said it all.

Want to see a slingshot and some other sexy male underwear? Take a look at this site: http://cocksox.com I so love the header. Although I do have concerns about what that guy is reaching for—or is he scratching?

For a look at male underwear over the ages visit: http://manstouch.com/mensunderwear/historyofmensunderwear.html I particularly love the slide show on this site. There’s one image/painting of a man looking a bit Sir Walter Raleighesque (not sure how to spell that), and his dog is in the pic. The dog seems to have homed in on what I can only describe as a codpiece. Gives new meaning to the term ‘boner’ and looks a lot more like the dog’s lunch than anything else. I guess this look helped with advertising a man’s size too. But as a woman, I’d have questioned the authenticity of the packaging. Hell, I do that now!

Any way you cut it, men’s underwear has changed over the years. It makes me wonder if men pay attention. Well, I guess they do or there wouldn’t be a need for all the changes. But I suspect a man decides early on which style suits him best, and all the wilder variations are reserved for playtime.

I’ve got a kid who lounges around in silk South Park, X Box, Rolling Stones, and Bugs Bunny boxers. And that’s just for hanging out. He prefers the boxer briefs for actual underwear. The men in my life have mostly worn briefs. Although, a few have enjoyed the freedom of boxers. In the early nineties, there was a trend amongst young women (sixteen to twenty-five, I’d say) to wear a pair of men’s boxers on top of their jeans. Thank God that trend is over!

So what’s your SO’s preference? Is he into the form fitting briefs or those loose-fitting boxers? How about the combination boxer-brief? Have you ever purchased him a pair of naughtier-than-hell thongs? Did he look at you like you’d lost your mind or grin and put them on, following up with a sexy dance just for you?

Ya’ll will have to excuse me now. Bubba is calling.

For a look at my slingshot-wearing hot Latin hunk, pick up a copy of Latin Rhythm at Pink Petal Books. http://pinkpetalbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=84

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Yeah, I know Valentine’s Day is officially over but I’m still in a hearts and flowers state of mind here, so bear with me. Still feelin’ the Valentine spirit! Love is in the air on almost every channel on tv during February and over the past few days I’ve tried to watch as many gooey, mooshey, make-me-swoon movies as possible. Pure heaven for a romantic gal like me. Nothing does it for me quite like a three hanky movie that makes me laugh, makes me sigh, and gets me geared up to write my OWN romances. These days, since my daughter is off in college, I’m on my own in the romantic movie department. Mr. Regina doesn’t like anything that doesn’t feature exploding heads and lots of ick. That’s okay with me. I can go it solo. I’ll have my romance with popcorn please and a box of tissues on the side.

My favorites are historical romances, especially those based on books by Jane Austen. Who couldn’t love the scene at the end of Sense and Sensibilities where Edward (Hugh Grant) professes his love to Eleanor (Emma Thompson)? I swear, I have watched this one a million times and I cry each time…right along with Eleanor. And who couldn’t love the angst, the passion, the twists and turns of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett with their complicated personalities and mutual craving for that most basic need of all-love? Even Emma, the darling matchmaker who is so busy putting others together that she doesn’t recognize a love that has been right in front of her all along! They are movies that take me to another place, in another time and I can’t get enough of them. I suppose I should mention Gone With the Wind. Yes, it’s a classic and features the best movie kiss of all time…kiss me, Scarlet, kiss me… but, damn it, I can’t. No happy ending and that is a must for me. Maybe that’s why I can’t get into Nicholas Sparks…his books or the movies based on them. They are too heart-wrenching. Yes, I know that real life isn’t hearts and roses. It’s often painful and hard but I sure as hell don’t want painful and hard in my entertainment.

Which brings me to funny.

I’ve decided I want to be Nora Ephron when I grown up. The woman writes and directs some of the funniest stuff ever and I can’t get enough of her, especially when her work features Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, a modern-day version of Tracy and Hepburn. Give me Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail and I’m a happy camper.
So Mr. Regina can keep his blood and guts, I’m fixing snacks and popping The Princess Bride into my dvd player.