Inspiration!

Ideas are everywhere, but my favorite place to get hot images and  thoughts is Filament Magazine.

You want images of skinny men with tattoos, piercings, and letting their freak flag fly?

They have them.

You like more a more traditional, masculine look?

They have that, too.

What they don't have? Diets, celebrity gossip, and fashion. This magazine assumes that women are intelligent, sexual, varied, and curious.

Go over to their Facebook page and check out their hot, hot men. And subscribe!

(all photos from Filament. No copyright infringement intended, nor am I getting any presents for talking about this magazine. I'm posting these because I want every writer and photographer out there to look at this groundbreaking work!)

Research

Some days, you just gotta do some research on blue-eyed men who deliver the cool - Paul Newman and Daniel Craig for today.

Oh, YUM.

Today, The Flaming Chef and I wandered downtown Portland before settling in to write. Quite by impulse, we stopped by Verdun Fine Chocolate & Gifts.

The sweets here were AMAZING. Since I cannot share smell nor taste here on the Web, I can only share my pictures.

This is their drinking chocolate. Unlike other drinking chocolates I have experienced, this is super rich and thick, nearly syrupy, with lovely butter and vanilla undertones. Incredibly fragrant, and highly satisfying. I licked my lips for half an hour after drinking it.

Their classy and stylish displays do not do justice to their smooth, exotic confections.

The Flaming Chef enjoying his drinking chocolate. We bought some of their sweets to take home to our husbands. The Charming Man was thrilled with his treat!

The Houdroge Family owns Verdun Chocolates. Can we talk about classy and talented folks? They were incredibly nice.


I can't recommend this place enough!

Why I fear description.

I do fear description. If I'm going to write a story that actually has plot and action, I tend to scrimp on setting. And I'll show you why. Here's a quick, off the top of my head snippet to show what happens when I describe.

In Champaign, Illinois, the main road through the University of Illinois campus is Green Street. On the north side of the street reside the engineers. To the south are liberal arts, ag, LIS, and the rest. And the cities of Urbana and Champaign had been built over a swamp that had been drained. So when it rains, the water table rises quickly and fiercely. The Boneyard Creek flows fast and hard and the streets flood (along with basements and sewers). On Green Street, when it rains, the water gathers and runs in the gutters, overspilling into the street turning this road into a fountain.

During the brutally hot summers we get here, the summer rains are a blessing and a curse. Sometimes they bring cool relief, sometimes they just bring more steam. But they bring flooding to the cities, too, dangerous, slippery. And they fill the streets with water, warm, inviting, cleansing. I have splashed in puddles as deep as my ankles and waded in ponds up to my hips on Green Street.

One very rainy day, my lover and I had walked to get food at AJ Wingers. This was a very special man. Of course, all of my lovers were wonderful but this one....Ah, words fail me. Skilled, compassionate, loving, passionate, uninhibited, no words can fully explain this one. Someone once tried to pin me down on his most wonderful trait. Stammering, I had replied that he was a good listener.

As we walked, the rain kept coming. We watched the rain fall as we ate and we kissed the sauce off of each other's faces. We began the walk back - giggling over our folly at not driving or taking the bus. The rain kept falling. Our shoes immediately drenched through, no matter how much we tried to avoid the puddles. Our jeans clung to our skin. We took off our shoes and splashed through parking lots, curbs, and streets. Cars would pass and splash water as high as our heads.

We got to his apartment, and shrieking with laughter at ourselves, we peeled our clothes off and draped them over chairs and doors. We wrung out our socks in the bathroom sink, and put our shoes over radiator vents. We eventually showered, embracing the heat and steam of this water as gleefully as we had embraced the rain. We kissed and kissed and kissed under the hissing showerhead. His hands, so large and competent, lathered my back and legs, rubbing circulation back into my feet and neck. I stroked soap into his chest and armpits, playing with his body hair. We kissed some more. For the rest of my life, I will see him like this, his head tilted under the streaming water, his hair slicked back, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open at the pleasure of taking a shower.

We dried off using his one towel (for all of his wonderful traits, sometimes he was almost a stereotypical single man), still kissing, still giggling. His kisses remain on my mind - so intense that the sensation of his lips blotted out the world and destroyed rational thought. How to describe it? He kissed like my mouth, my pleasure and his, were the only things that existed or ever will exist. He kissed as if kissing alone were the most divine pleasure ever given, not as a prelude or introduction, something perfunctorily done to satisfy protocol. He kissed me like my mouth was his Holy Grail and his True Cross combined. He kissed as though he meant it.

We shimmied under his covers and our bodies entwined, wrapping around each other. Sometimes I felt like our bodies were two pieces of rope, coming together in a knot. We kissed and touched and sucked. We made love.

Even now, my hips curl and my stomach clenches at the memory of that afternoon - at a lovemaking so profound, so powerful, so intense. It was the sum of my universe - it was slow and powerful, it was fast and fierce.

We were falling in love.

In a way we never had before, and never will again.

And our bodies betrayed it.

It's emotional and lovely and nothing happens. There is no plot, there is no conflict, there is no character development.

I was going for a little slice of life with this piece- I wanted to record a beautiful memory. I succeeded at that. Unfortunately, I can't use it anywhere else since it doesn't move any action forward.

Dammit!

Hmmmm.

I think today is a good day to make cheesecake.

Of course, is there a bad day to make cheesecake?

What exactly do I tell people when they ask what I do?

Photo by Michael Baxter

As a pre-published author, I'm not someone who can say, "And X is the title of my new book!" This leaves me a bit at a disadvantage in social settings. When people ask what I do, I bravely say, "I write very very sexy paranormal romances."

Thus far, I have had positive responses to this statement. I wondered why, when I'm straight up admitting to being a freak who writes in a denigrated genre.

I found an answer:

A bad reputation can set you free. After all, if you've already declared yourself to be a pot-smoking, acid-addled slut, your opponents are forced to oppose your ideas on their merits, rather than strategically revealing your hidden depravities. Shame is no weapon against the shameless.
-- John Perry Barlow

(For the record, I am neither pot smoking nor acid-addled.)

As for the slut? Well, in most people's definition of the word, I am one simply by writing sexually adventurous characters. 

Hi. I'm Linda Mercury. I write very very very sexy paranormal romances. I refuse to be shamed by that. I hope my refusal invites you to enjoy life's pleasures.