The Wide World of Men

I’ve always been mystified by men.  Maybe it’s my single-parent-mother upbringing that adds to the fascination. A lack of testosterone around the house had me wondering if boys wore pajamas to bed like me or just their underwear. Did they slept with socks on or curl up with their blankets?  Somehow I couldn’t imagine my latest teenage crush doing these things.  Boys were way too cool for any of that. Soon, I found myself seeking conversation with guys just to understand what made them tick. 

Of course those conversations were sometimes pretty transparent, focusing on how my skin tight guess jeans looked on my 14 year old booty, but I digress. Back then it was the rare conversations with boys about the world around us, the things they cared about, the people they looked up to, that had me hungry for more. The male was a foreign species and I wanted to know everything I possibly could. 

Yesterday morning while caught in traffic on the highway, two model-worthy guys sat in a white Jeep Wrangler deep in affable conversation.  Dark-hair with scruffy beard was driving. Sandy blond hair with a bashful smile was in the passenger seat.  Blond guy laughed and covered his face with his arm while dark haired guy cut sideways glances at him and goaded him on.  I watched them in my rear view mirror and inserted my own dialogue.  What a captivating pair they were. 

The most intriguing part was being on the outside looking in.  These guys were friends; close friends, I’d venture. I also got the impression they were hetero. All the macho bluster and posturing the addition of a female usually inspires was missing from the scene.  What I saw was just pure guy time, simple and easy, males in their natural state. 

In my own house I am surrounded by males.  I am the lone chick.  I watch football, play Xbox, wield a tool or two.  I am no dainty flower.  And yet, the girl in me is still enthralled.  For this reason, I adore writing male characters.  I love their dialogue, their quirks, their swagger and their vulnerability. I can only hope I do my dudes justice.

Polished Cover Reveal

My new MMF Polished has a cover.  Isn't it lovely?   Available 5.24.13

It seemed like they had everything, but they didn’t have Jack.

Without question Spencer Hartley burns hot for his girlfriend, Rory, but his other desires are hidden down deep. He might blow things up for a living and climb mountains for kicks, but the scariest thing in his life is the truth about his sexuality. 

Jack Rothman works hard and plays dirty. After long, demanding days in his family's engineering firm, he indulges in the pleasures of silk restraints and fine wine. Lots of hot meaningless sex helps him forget that he’s suffocating, with no one to give him a reason to breathe.

When a catastrophic accident traps Spencer in a flooded subway tunnel with Jack, they need each other to survive. But something strong stirs down there in the darkness, and it’s more than their desperation to live. There’s a spark between them that’s impossible to ignore.

Rory Campbell would love to give Spencer the one thing he doesn’t have, the freedom to explore his secret desires. But how does that fit into her picture-perfect relationship? When Jack invites the couple to his sprawling Hamptons beach house, Rory realizes that she has secret desires of her own—the kind only Jack’s Dominant hand across her bare bottom can satisfy.

It’s not conventional, it’s not easy, but fate has brought the three of them together. Will real life tear them apart or can they let their special connection shine?

Holding It to Heart

The other day I was in a crowded mall going about my busy little business, taking quick steps, oblivious to much of everything around me.  People passed by me in swarms.  I wasn’t particularly looking at any of them.  I had my mundane errands to run.  And then as luck who have it, my eyes dropped at the right moment to a clutch of teens and their hands.  Some held bags, others gripped their precious iphones as they chatted and laughed, but at the back of the of the group two unassuming young guys held hands as innocently as any fourteen or so year olds on a first “date” to the mall.  I smiled, not so much at them, but more to myself. 

I unfortunately know a time when such young and nervous heart strings wouldn’t be so confident to show affection.  I also know a time when I’d have been afraid for these skinny little fellows who looked like they may not be able to fend off some jack ass bigot.  But these are not those times and that sweet image has lingered with me and made me smile ever since I so surreptitiously glimpsed it that tedious afternoon. 

For too many years, so many have struggled to find the strength to be who they are, without the poison of guilt, fear or regret.  In my upcoming release, Polished, Spencer Hartley makes a long journey to find comfort in his needs and desires.  That kind of struggle is a painful one if the steps taken are wrought with doubt and judgment.  Good thing there are happy endings in my stories.  Even better is the fact that there are now so many in real life.

We are moving in the right direction.  The hearings on marriage equality today made me giddy with hope that HEA will soon be a right for everyone!  

My M/M/F Fascination

What is it about two beautiful men wrapped around each other that ignite the imaginations of so many women?  Expanding our horizons past the familiarity of our own sexual experiences is a powerful aphrodisiac.  Forever we’ve expected straight men to drool over cutie-pie lesbians rolling around on a picnic blanket.  But the fascination flows in both directions.     In my early years of sexual exploration I snagged my first copy of Playgirl while “naively” looking for some hetero stimulation and found a much more interesting bonus publication shrink wrapped inside.  That was my first peek at manlove and I’ve been a fan of the genre ever since.

It’s commonly agreed that no person is all gay or all straight.  That Kinsey’s scale of homosexual and heterosexual ratings gives us a way to quantify our same-sex tendencies is old news at this point.  Still the attachment to labels is almost as conspicuous as it was when Kinsey made his ground breaking studies.  Nicholas, one of the main characters in my new release, By Surprise, struggles with the idea of being attracted to a woman.  Having self-identified as gay, it’s frightening and confusing to feel his body react in her presence. I truly enjoyed exploring this idea and walking the journey with him towards the realization that his body wasn’t at odds with his mind.  In the end, his heart would speak for both. 

For fun I took this ultra-simplified version of the Kinsey study.  Can’t say I was surprised by the results.  Would you be?  As times have changed and the discussion about sexuality has broadened, many feel that Kinsey’s scale is way too broad to correctly designate a person’s degree of sexual preference. Too broad or too narrow, labels only serve to limit.  I don’t need a study to know that.