At long last, I’ve brought Weaving Erotic Wonders into the 21st century via WordPress. I’ve tried to preserve as much of the site’s overall look while turning clutter into consolidated clean lines and I still have some odds-and-ends wonkiness to clean-up, but the site is done enough to launch and I hope you find the results pleasing.

When I started blogging almost a decade ago (!) at my signature site, Pursed Lips, weblogs were primitive things. Believe it or not, the tools that allowed a comment section didn’t yet exist (well, outside of the alpha versions of Things To Come). Neither did blogrolls. Really, we just listed our links and wrote pointed little insights about them. If other bloggers wanted to comment on something you said, they linked to you and lent their two cents via their own blogs.

God, what cavemen we were back then!

The cavemen is me is going to be a tad agitated that I have to trust WordPress’s architectural over my own primitive (and often limited) coding instincts, but I’m delighted to have so many tools on hand. Special thanks to my good friend, Roger, who dragged me by the hair into modern times.

If you’re looking at WEW via a blog feed, please come visit directly. And whether you’re a long time reader or have just discovered me, comment! Honestly, having caught the twitblog bug this last year, I can’t believe what a hermit I’ve been through the years. Maybe I’ll turn into a social butterfly now!

Regardless, I welcome your participation and camaraderie.

I’ve been away in France buying books, but life’s been a touch more mundane than that. On the accomplishment side of things, I turned in my second novel to Ravenous Romance, a fantasy entitled Desire’s Pursuit that the start of a four-part series. It was hard work, but wonderfully rewarding. I’m about to start the second volume, which will return me to the craziness of immersing myself in a fantasy world for a some hours most every day of the week.

Somehow, I have to figure out how to blog both here and at Pursed Lips at least a couple of times a week. No more once every few weeks, damn it!

That said, what did I mean about France and book-buying? Well, a recent episode of CBS Sunday Morning included a story about book shopping in Paris, covering everything from your obsessive bibliophile to the odd-job, eccentric raconteur known as a book scout but ultimately portrayed Paris as center of the book-selling universe.

Honestly, this kind of story waxes completely romantic for me. It beckons me. Bibliophile that I am, I’ve added Paris to the Book Trips I Want to Make over the next decade. Why? Because I love hunting for books. I love the pursuit, scanning piles for elusive titles. I love the rush of joy I feel when I spot a find and take it into hand.

Don’t let my modern propensity for the e-book fool you. While I embrace New Tech, I still love the Old Form. So much so that I must see Paris before I die.

Finishing the work on my next Ravenous Romance novel, Desire’s Pursuit, is commanding almost all of my time, but I have taken time out to post a book trailer for Blind Seduction at YouTube. And I’ve written a couple of entries for Ravenous Romance’s author blog.

To introduce myself to Ravenous Romance readers, I blogged about how I came to write erotica and erotic romance, first with The Transition and then with Then There’s the Sex. I’ll write about different schools of thought in my next entry.

Soon you’ll find some newly update links in my Novels section and here on the template. Keep an eye out!

It grips us, this cold, and I try to seal myself off from it. I stay indoors to avoid breathing it, to avoid the headache and asthma that threaten at first breath. I close my curtains at night, a barrier that deters the cold and insulates me in warmth. Yet as I sit in relative comfort, I’ve noticed how many notable people have died in recent days. Every day a new report — sometimes as many as three — tells me of another passing.

Usually, I chalk it up to this hard winter’s cold and move on with my day. But today I felt its chill. Andrew Wyeth has died.

The art world will forever debate his merits as a artist, whether he qualifies as contemporary or parochial, but I remember him for one thing: The affect his noted Christina’s World had on my late mother. Perhaps my mother was drawn originally to Wyeth’s work because, like the rest of America, she was drawn to its realism in an age of abstraction and confusion. But when she saw Christina’s World, she felt someone had captured the essence of her experiences as a thirteen-year-old girl. No other painting ever resonated with her like Christina’s World and I will always remember her telling me, her ten-year-old daughter, about the work as one of the most revealing stories she ever divulged to me.

When she looked at it, she saw herself in that field, crippled by polio and shunned by the rest of the world. When she looked at the field, she saw not the rough, hilly lands of Maine, but the broad open expanse of the prairie of Illinois. She saw obstacle and ostracism. When she gazed at the dour, distant house, she saw the deep poverty of The Great Depression. She saw a place where rural Midwestern jobs were so scare, her father would not find work until the World War II forced the railroads back into business.

My mother saw the sorrow of her young life in that painting, but Wyeth gave her something in return. He gave her a sense of dignity, a sense of acknowledgment and validation. Yes, he seemed to say, your experience was real. Claim it and move on.

Typical hardened Yankee stoicism.

I suspect Wyeth had to be stoic about Christina’s World. The The Museum of Modern Art paid a measly $1,800 for it, and today it hangs not in a large exhibit room but in a small, obscure hallway of the museum along with a few other pieces MoMA had no idea what to do with.

I know. I came across it last summer when my daughter and I spent an afternoon there. She had gushed with excitement, finding herself surrounded by the very works she’d studied in college art history and media classes. I had basked in her enthusiasm, glad I lucked out in giving her such a meaningful experience. But when we turned that one corner and brief in that small, cramped hallway and spied Christina’s World, I almost started crying.

I did not expect to find myself before the very revelatory work that had once give me such insight into my mother’s heart. I did not expect to find myself passing on the tale of my mother and Christina’s World to my daughter then and there, right before the very symbol of my mother’s crucible.

Coincidentally, it’s 9 degrees Fahrenheit in Cushing, Maine where Wyeth painted Christina’s World and it’s also 9 degrees in Shelby County, Illinois where my mother experienced polio and poverty. Somehow, we’ve managed to reach a balmy 16 in here north central Connecticut. But I’m even warmer, thanks to an old memory made fresh.

As the snow flies, I’m celebrating the recent release of my new Ravenous Romance novel, Blind Seduction, and my gay romance tale, 10 Lords A Leaping. It’s a wonderful way to see out the year, especially as the snow flies here in New England.

It’s deeply rewarding to see ideas imagined and put to prose see publication, and I’m happy to be in the new media mix that’s the e-book world. (This, despite a home filled with printed books and the collector’s habits that go with it.)

For quite some time, I felt like my novels would never see the light of day. I couldn’t find a print publisher to save my life that was interested in any romantic erotic that stepped beyond light bondage and role-playing and into authentic BDSM storytelling. (This, despite the 20-plus year popularity of Anne Rice’s Beauty books.) But Carnal Desire Publishing and, later, Ravenous Romance, changed all that for me, for which I’m deeply grateful.

I’m also grateful to Lori Perkins at RR’s blog where she acknowledged me as a “prominent short story and e-book author who really knows the BDSM territory. In this novel, she’s written an amazingly romantic tale of a couple’s visit to an S&M retreat as an anniversary present.”

To top it all off, Ravenous Romance has bought my four-book fantasy series that follows a devotee to a goddess of sexual pleasure as she journeys from initiate to captive to outcast, only to return to avenge her goddess against a usurper. Lori calls it a cross between “Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series and Anne Rice’s Beauty books.” I’d add “with a dash of George R. R. Martin” for those of you who like multiple characters rotating through each chapter. Regardless, it’ll be exciting to see my Kith series into publication.

Before this entry threatens to turn this blog into a gratitude journal, let me wish you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year. And you can guess what my one resolution will be — BLOG MORE!

What a way to usher in the holiday season!

I’m happy to report that Ravenous Romance launched today, bringing its cache of provocative erotic romance to avid readers everywhere. You’ll find a handful of initial novels and short stories there in ebook and audio formats — with more to coming daily mid-month.

My first novel with Ravenous Romance, Blind Seduction, will drop December 20th. And I couldn’t be happier. The editors I’ve worked with appreciate solid, exciting story-telling, dedicate the resources to copy editing necessary to make a strong book exceptional, and are remarkably, enthusiastically open to most any erotic variation you can think of.

I’ve also contributed to what will be a Twelve Days of Christmas selection of short stories, scheduled to debut during the holiday season. Ambitious me, but I ran with Ten Lords A’Leaping, making it a hot, M/M tale of guys getting it on. Yum.

And I’ve almost completed my second novel for RR as well, a fantasy tale called Desire’s Pursuit that I hope will become a multi-novel series. More on that as it develops.

FYI, fellas: Yes, Ravenous Romance is primarily geared for women and, yes, you will find romantic elements in its offerings, but I can guarantee you that if you like the erotic word, you’ll enjoy this publisher’s titles. Personally, I haven’t had to scale back any of my erotic writing with Ravenous Romance; I’ve only had to expand the connectedness of my principal characters, an element that existed in most of my previous erotica, just to a lesser degree.

Hope you’ll check out the site and buy a couple of ebooks. Hey, it keeps us lusty writers working!

As immersed as my daughter is in studying electronic arts, fine art, and science, she considers herself a part-time graphic designer. She mentors underclassmen in digital imaging, but to earn credit for the work, the duty’s rolled into an intense independent study. This time around, she focused that study on tile patterns. Spinning out of that study: the commercial application of such patterns.

Which led her to Zazzle.com where she’s applied some of her patterns to Keds sneakers — isn’t that cool? Her newly-launched store is in its infancy and its two sneaker designs are also accompanied by a couple of t-shirt designs unrelated to her tile project. But you can see why I’m a proud mother.

I’m not sure how she struck on the green apples design, but I suspect the sheep design was inspired by a recent visit to a sheep and wool show, knitting fiend that she is. More designs will follow.

I know the economy sucks and these items aren’t cheap, but they would make unique gifts for the holiday season. And my daughter earns some pocket money with every sale. Here’s the link; pass it on!

And I love the one designed for my first novel with them, Blind Seduction.

The single-most reason I didn’t enter the e-book realm sooner was a lack of attractive covers. I simply didn’t like what I saw publishers putting out and found them so lacking that I didn’t want my own work associated with them. Yes, I’d been spoiled by the beautiful covers that graced the anthologies in which my short stories appeared, but I also found many e-book covers so off-putting that I seldom bought an e-book.

When I finally stuck my toe in the waters of e-book publishing, I was lucky that Carnal Desires Publishing allowed me a lot of leeway in cover art. (I’m forever thankful they were so wonderfully collaborative in the process.) Giving up that collaboration when Ravenous Romance came along was difficult for me.

Their first batch of covers began to allay my fears. Their design was crisp and energetic. I especially loved those like Playgirl and Cybill In Between. Granted, I’m given to fetish/BDSM imagery, but it remained important because it revealed Ravenous Romance’s approach to subject matter.

When I saw Blind Seduction’s cover, I was flattered and flabbergasted. The designer symbolically caught key elements of the novel’s pinnacle scene (and, no, I’m not going to tell you what they are). The title treatment echoes the prominent blindfold — deliciously so! — and I’m impressed to find a statute representing the book’s key protagonist in what I interpret to be symbolic of the subtle objectification she experiences throughout the tale.

So, wow. Impressive. I’m one happy author in waiting.

So I give you Crunch, our favorite tabby who has a habit of laying claim to people’s shoes. Give him half a chance and he’ll claim yours. This particular episode happened one day after work when my husband was changing out of his work clothes. Just try putting your shoes away when the cat’s glaring at you like that.

Crunch also has a habit of laying claim to computer bags and backpacks, anything you might want to carry your goods in. I caught him yesterday sleeping on my computer sleep sleeve.

But what are you going to do? He’s lovable cat, full of purrs and kitty kisses.

Of course right now he’s playing the despot, waiting near the staircase with a glare in his eye that says “feed me.”

Typical cat!

The final crunch is about to descend on my next novel. My proofreader is devouring the final pages, pen in hand, but I’ll be the one clearing up all the typos and a couple of inconsistencies. In many ways, it feels great to have the book drafted and so close to being done. In other ways, not so much. I have another novel that I’ll resume work on almost immediately and a third one that’s half way through its editing cycle. And I know the editors might come back with changes on this book.

But you know what? That’s all part-and-parcel of being a novelist. Through all my years as a short story writer, I worked on novels. I finished two, had three in various stages, and more story ideas than I knew what to do with. (Oh, for a forty-hour day and endless energy!) However, until I had publishers to work with, I didn’t feel like a working novelist. A working writer? Yes. But not a working novelist.

I tell you, having a contract and deadlines make all the difference in the world. Each day, the workload before me is part of the avenue each book must travel to see publication. And like an avenue on a map, there’s starting place and a finishing line to the process. Before now, writing a novel was like a scenic hike done during one’s leisure time. It was enjoyable, rewarding, and worth the undertaking. But it had no real end point; the process had an intangible feel to it.

All that evaporated when Ravenous Romance signed me on for two books. And boy, does that feel nice.

BTW, Ravenous Romance has a new free short story, Hot Fling, on its site. Download and enjoy, please!