Forty Minutes for Romance.

Excuse me: I have about forty minutes for romance.

In Project: Passion, the first of a series of three novellas, Sister Heather breaks free from her fears and indulges her erotic fantasy during a week at the lake with a guy she met on the internet. His name is Braden Mitchell.

Here is a brief precis of Rendezvous:

Sister Heather is just dying to see Braden again. Her fantasy has become reality, bringing with it new challenges. Using a contrived excuse, she escapes for two whole days to meet him at a trade show, with the pair hoping to pack as much sex and fun as possible into a limited time. Heather is falling in love with Braden, who understands her needs and is surprisingly gentle. It’s not just about kinky sex anymore.

Spring is in the air.

Spring is in the air, blah-blah-blah. Young men aren’t the only ones whose fancy turns to thoughts of love.

I was trying to figure out when I might actually squeeze a little romance into my own life. It’s not like I have much of a schedule. I probably have forty minutes a day of free time. Other than that, I’m too tired to give a shit the rest of the time.

Maybe that’s why fantasy is so important, huh?

Basically just a single mom who prefers to use her brain rather than sell her body (or merely some head) to feed her kid, once Meredith is off to school I can sit on the couch and watch TV. There are shows I do watch, but I’m more likely to be at the computer with the TV going in the background.

Some days it’s the radio, some days it’s pure blessed silence. I’ve gotten to know the sounds of the place pretty well. When we first moved in here, I scraped off the carpet and underlay and just let the floor breathe for a while.

The floor snapped, crackled and popped for about three or four months afterwards. I like hardwood floors, though. The old rug was almost enough to get the place condemned.

The fridge has a sound. The traffic outside has a sound. A baby is crying near an open window somewhere in this little neighbourhood. There are thumps from an adjoining unit. There are trains in the distance. It never ends, it just ebbs and flows.

How do I balance my life? All that mom/career stuff? I don’t, really. I just do everything that’s work and very little that’s fun. I can squeeze in forty minutes here and there to write. When I hear of great novelists spending years visualizing their masterpieces, I can only envy them all of that unlimited free time.

While doing a laundry, or loading up the dishwasher, I can see a few things in my head. It’s like daydreaming in technicolour. I remember the first bits, and then build on it, until it’s a whole imaginary world inside of my head. When I sit down to write, it seems to fall into place in a natural progression, unforced, vibrant and spontaneous. When it’s over, I end it.

Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

It’s only natural to begin with short stories.

Right now, I have the basic plot for the third and possibly final novella in the series involving Sister Heather and Braden. I have an idea for another short story, and another one on the go.

That’s one up to about five or six thousand words. Only one problem: no sex in it so far, so I kind of set it aside. If it’s a novel, I don’t want to commit to it right now. It takes too long to get to the naughty bits.

A short story is a quick fix or something. I don’t really know what it is about short stories, but I like doing them. I might as well keep doing them and learn as much as I can about writing erotic tales. When I’m ready to do a novel, I’ll give it a try.

END

Here is 'Rendezvous' on Smashwords.