Sexy enough?

As I search for blog topics, I started looking into how I feel about the books that I enjoy reading. I read paranormal but I also like historicals, regency, romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and a few young adults. This being said, I also have a certain heat level that works for me. Yes, I've read sweet romances (I've even published two) to erotic romance and on a scale from 1 to 5, I'm great with a sultry 3, give or take :-)

If the sweet romance is high on sexual tension, then I can be just as satisfied (hehe) as with a sex scene that ends in bed posts being broken. My sweet romances have deep kisses and a spot of making out but nothing further on the sheet clinching level. My steamier book, Andromeda, has a higher heat 

rating as the couple actually have sex, but not in a graphic way.

I have friends who write BDSM and menage, which is fine but can actually make my ears blush. I'm not sure if it's the cough cough "attention to detail" or the word choices but I just can't act cool while I read it. Can I blame it on my upbringing? Please? 

Well, I'm a girl who likes things just spicy enough to have my lips tingling for more. If it's a sneak of a touch on the back of a trembling neck or the hottest kiss that could incinerate the pages, just give it to me. I see it that there are different types of romance so there should be levels of what you are comfortable with, and I don't mean just what your mother sees on your bedroom shelves. 

My mom always read Harlequin Intrigue and would then pass them onto me, after remarking that I wasn't old enough to be reading any of the sex scenes.

It started something as my rebellious side wanted to dig right into it but my shyness took over once the page turned. Until recently, I couldn't even watch a movie love scene (like after the dance scene inThomas Crown Affair or after the fight scene in Mr and Mrs Smith) without wanting to hide my face from the others in the room. If you know me then you don't see how that could be, but it's a fact.

In my head, romance can be just as sexual as actually grabbing me up for a twisting dance of tongues. Subtle moves can seduce me more than a whisper in my blushing ear. I know that I'm not alone in this as I have friends who will be just as "moved" over a couple touching bare skin in a regency romance as they are over discussing the newest erotic romance series. 

And don't forget that many of us authors are judged upon by not only our genre but by the heat level that we're involved in. It's sad but true. I'm not as self conscious about this as I used to be when family would see me with a Harlequin stuffed in my book bag. Back then, I would hide it but now I'm proud to write what I do. (I hope that my readers are happy with it too.)

This leads me to ask you, what is your heat level of choice and why? I'd love to hear what you guys are interested in. 

)))Corset Hugs(((

Ginny Lynn 

Wench Writer

Expressing Yourself

Expressing yourself is such an easy thing that you don't even realize that you're doing it. Some expressions are wordless and yet they scream with meaning. Others are like a shoe waiting to drop. Do your hands say more than your words as you flap them around in excitement?

 In life, we can pout with a simple extension of our lower lip and it's unmistakable. As we get stressed out it could come about in the form of a vein that is protruding from your sweaty forehead. When my blood pressure goes up, whether from pain or stress, my nose lights up light a Rudolph WannaBe.

How do you express yourself? Do you stomp your foot when no one seems to be listening to you? Is there a "tell" that shows when you're bored, other than yawning rudely in someone's face? Do your eyes roll as someone talks your ears off? Do you get visibly tense in your shoulders when you're ready to run from the anxiety riddle room? Does your body become one with the wall corner as you aspire to fade into the scenery? Is agitation rippling off of you in waves when you flex your fists at an annoying item of discussion?

Now, I ask you, did this all come cross as realistic and scenic? Did you get the picture of these expressions from the use of my words? I hope so, because if not, I failed. 

This was my tip for  the day. The words on the page of your novel should convey feelings even though you do't have an actor portraying the words in your dialogue. A movie can show you every feeling under the rainbow but can your book do the same without it seeming mundane? This is where you have to use power words instead of just getting by with the usual way of describing normal every day things. 

If I had said, bottom lip sticking out or my nose simply going a little red then it wouldn't have been as informative or descriptive as the way I started all of this out.  I had to amp it up to get the words to convey the expression. Sometimes it can take the use of a thesaurus to get the right word for what your characters are feeling in that simple ink dialogue.

It's just words but we owe ourselves the liberty to express how we really feel, fictionally or in person. The world would be boring beyond words if we couldn't spice things up a bit (pun intended). As a writer, I'm nowhere near the Land of Boring, so I have to make these words count. I'm getting better at it and I hope it's paying off.

)))Corset Hugs(((

Ginny Lynn

Wench Writer

Second Week Snippets - my WIP series (Work In Progress)

~~A few pages into my paranormal novel, we come across the main character running into a drunk customer at the bar she runs.~~

My attention was then directed to the hand that had grabbed my butt.

Leaning down to the man, I noticed that he was non-blessed, paranormally speaking. I smiled.

“What else can I get you, doll?” He’d already gotten a hand full of my posterior so a drink was the only other thing he could have as I twitched away from his hand.

“I’ll have a whiskey sour, with only one ice cube.”

I noticed that he had four empty glasses stacked up in front of him and was looking a sick shade of green, so I pulled rank.

“How about I send you a carafe of coffee and then we see if you want that whiskey in an hour?”

His breath reeked. He stood up slowly. If he’d moved any faster then I would’ve been holding the man up.

“I said I want the whiskey, not your lip. Go take your ass over there and get it for me.”

I sighed. I looked him in his basset hound eyes and said as sweetly as pie, “Sugar, you’re in the wrong place for this. I‘ll be more than happy to get you a skoash of whiskey but first you need to sit your sweet little self down for a spell, okay?”

My accent always got stronger when my emotions got involved. I felt his stir with my other gifts, this was going to be a might more sticky of a wick.

“Look, whatever you are, just shut those gabbers and tottle that fine ass back here with my whiskey.”

Yeah, it struck a cord. I looked into his eyes and used what my boss had allowed me to use, my power. The alcohol laden breath waved in my face as his eyes dilated. I was glad when he held his breath with shock as I got nose to nose with him.

“You will calm down. You will sit down for an hour and enjoy the coffee, and then you’ll call a cab to take you home. You will be happy and not be a jerk, okay?”

Whiskey emanated as he repeated my compelling request, “I will not be a jerk,” he whispered.

I broke my eye contact and patted him on the shoulder as he slid back into his seat.

“I’ll be right back with that coffee, sugar,” I left him to shake it off.

I headed toward the kitchen for that coffee and got side tracked on the way.

“I was wondering if I needed to intervene, but I guess you didn’t need me after all,” Silas said.

I looked up from his swelling chest, into his concerned eyes, and wasn’t sure how to read him. He seemed hurt but I decided it was more of an issue with how I’d handled it.

“Well, I do admire a knight coming to save the damsel, but this damsel has a few stages of distress before she requires a ride to safety,” I decided to make a joke instead of being defensive.

“Hmm, I heard the riding of a damsel can be worth a few flesh wounds.”

“Yes, I’m sure they can be, when the damsel is in desperate need of said action.”

“I will gladly throw my services into the bargain if they are indeed ever needed by that damsel,” he bowed and I walked past him. Smiling.

)))Corset Hugs(((

Ginny Lynn

Wench Writer

Firsts - Laurell K. Hamilton books

I'm a big believer in reading series in their proper order but it doesn't always work out that way.  If it's a story that can completely stand alone,  then I'm good with reading content that's about several people in the same fictional community or even a series spin off.  But a true blue series deserves to be absorbed in the timeline that the writer configures. Well, my adoration of Anita Blake came nine books into the story. It came about as I was at my brother's house many years ago. He handed me a blue covered hardback book titled Obsidian Butterfly. Ron had seen it at a local bookstore and had thought it'd be an interesting read. Once he was done. he realized that it was right up my vampire alley. He offered it to me and I had been smart enough to have taken it.I was lost.

The story and it's main character, Anita Blake, had me enthralled. I began researching what other books Laurell K. Hamilton had written and was pleased to see that it was a full series. I got the list and hit the bookstores, but wasn't able to get my hands on all of them. I then went to the library and found the ones that I was missing. I put Obsidian Butterfly on my Keep Forever Shelf and went about seeing what other characters that I had missed as I'd picked up in the middle of the series. I was even happier to know that she had other lines and I could get my greedy hands on them all. 

I added all the newer ones to my Christmas Wish List and bought them for myself when I had been given enough money to complete what was current on the bookstore shelves. I had been lucky enough to have even gotten double copies of some of them so I shared them with my best friend. 

So began my love affair of Laurell, Anita, Jean-Claude, and Richard.  few of my friends debate about who the best secondary characters are but I enjoy them all. 

Now I have over 20 Anita Blake books on my Forever Shelf and I read them over and over again. I love them and I aspire to have a series that can somehow be in the same realm as these wonderful stories. Yep, I'm working on it. 

)))Corset Hugs(((

Ginny Lynn

Wench Writer