Read this the next time you are desperately longing for encouragement:

Don’t let fear decide how you live, what you wear, what you say, or what you do.  Identify your fear, understand it and accept it, and move on.

Coco Graham

I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make me happy.

Terence McKenna

 

From Pure Joy springs all creation.

By Joy it is sustained, toward Joy it

proceeds and to Joy it returns.

From the Sanskrit.

Welcome to my Literary Lair.

Hi, I'm Linda Mercury and I write very sexy paranormal romances!

Dracula's Secret is my first book and the first in the Blood Wings trilogy. The second and third books, Dracula's Desires and Dracula Unleashed, are currently being re-edited and will be released in 2017.

As you may guess, it's about Dracula. :)

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 Curse of the Spider Woman is a stand-alone novel that blends Ancient Greek Mythology with the action-adventure tension of a James Bond movie.

With consensual sex, that is.

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 Vamping It Up is an erotic coming of age novel with a very special breed of vampire.

Read about Holly getting her mojo back here at

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 The Little Sexy Workbook is for all the people who want to have a joyous, uninhibited sex life. If you want to be able to communicate fearlessly with your lover, this is the book for you!

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Hello, and awesome to meet you! 

How you can get out of your way and write already.

The Shanameh,the world's longest epic poem by a single author.

I meet many people who want to write. They yearn to express their thoughts, feelings, knowledge, and opinions. Yet, something holds them back. Here's a few ways to get out of your own way and write already.

1.  Keep it secret, keep it safe.  Too many of us show our work to the wrong people, too soon. When your work is in a beginning place, it is like a delicate seedling. It needs encouragement (sunshine), kindness (water), and the proper nutrition (feedback). Your first draft is not the right time to show it to that certain someone whose respect you have been wishing for.  At first, treat your writing and dreaming like a precious, radical secret. Later on, when you become a sturdy tree, you can open it up for more critical input.
2. Tell the truth. If someone had wanted you to write nice
   things about them, they would have behaved better. Naturally, change their details, change their names, change the planet, if you want, but those evil teachers, horrible bullies, and nasty parents are your characters. Use them.
3. Lower the stakes. Don't try to write a book that people will study for the ages (for some reason, men get caught up in this trap more than women). Focus on getting words on paper by any means you need, like hand writing, keyboarding, or by making something up on your Facebook page during your break time. Make it fun, make it whimsical, make it crude, if that is your personality type.
4. Fake yourself out. You don't need hours of uninterrupted time to write well. Set a timer for 9 or 13 or 20 minutes and write stuff down, even if it's, "I don't know what to say, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to say." 
5. Surround yourself with other writers, especially fun, generous, and enthusiastic ones. Look for people who believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, who care about your success, and believe in celebrating all milestones, especially rejections. Do I even need to say that you need to be one of these people, too?

And when you are ready, edit the hell out of that manuscript and publish it!

***

Come read my books!

Sex, Writing, and the Importance of Romance!

Come on over to Nicole Antoinette Armstrong's Podcast!

We talk about Sex, Writing, and the Importance of Romance!
https://www.nicoleantoinette.com/podcast/linda-mercury/

Yes, yes, yes! or The Re-release of Dracula's Secret!

I am thrilled to announce the re-release of my first book, Dracula's Secret.

Dracula's Secret is the first book in the Blood Wings Trilogy. I've revised it and I'm super pleased with it.

Buy Here!

Summer Fun Scavenger Hunt!

I'm excited to be part of Night Owl Reviews Summer Fun Scavenger Hunt!

Go HERE to participate!

Come and find some awesome books and get into summer. Along the way get entered to win Amazon Gift Cards!

All Amazon cards will be purchased via the Amazon.com website. This contest is open worldwide. Void where prohibited.

What's sexy about men?

As a romance writer and healthy, red-blooded American woman, it is my fate, nay, my DUTY to identify what makes a guy yummy. Not just biological men, but trans men and every other man, too.

Eugene Jaques Bullard, a WWI pilot.

Of course, the whole 6-pack, big guns thing is super tasty, but I want to let men know that they can have a regular guy body and still rock that sex appeal.

1. Pride
Not the deadly sin sort, but the kind that lets another person know that you can overcome adversity and have learned competence. A competent man is a sexy man.

An unidentified Australian WWI soldier

2. Expressive eyes.
I love looking at this photo of this soldier. I see someone who would be willing to tell what he has lived through.





3. Forearms.

 

Yes, I know Jeremy Renner is not a normal sort of guy, but bear (bare! Bare arms! Ha!) with me.

Not every guy has big biceps. But forearms are the Every Man's sexy body part. You don't have to wear tee-shirts, just find a shirt with sleeves and roll those suckers up. It's a good look on *everyone*.



4. Bondage.
 Seriously. Every man looks good in bondage.


Or maybe that's just me....

Nah. 

Wowee!

Pace Smith

I am so thrilled to be a part of Pace Smith's Podcast Wild, Crazy, Meaningful Life!

In my very first podcast ever, Pace, her wife Kyeli, and I talked about the gender

Kyeli Smith

binary, trans issues,writing, spirituality, and Not Shouldn't All Over Yourself. :)

I was crazy honored to be part of these wonder women's lives for an hour.

Wanna hear it?

Right over here. :)

 ***

For those of you visiting my blog for the first time, here's my Amazon page! 

I write smart, sexy, adventurous, paranormal romance novels (if I say so myself :).  Come play in me!

Think James Bond meets Greek Mythology. With consensual sex. :)

A rollicking Cinderella story full of fun, fun sexy goodtimes.

Pornography vs. erotica.

Add caption

Seriously, I'm so sick of this discussion. I feel that John Preston, famous gay advocate and pornographer, wrote the last words on this tedious debate back in 1993.

"For as long as I have been involved with pornography, there has been a great deal of pressure to disown it. As I gained some status as a writer, critics and friends invited me to classify my erotic stories and novels as "erotica". There is an attempt to somehow separate some sexual works as being aesthetically or politically more acceptable than other works. People would try to say that my sexual writing - or Samuel Steward's or someone else's - was "too good"  to be discarded as pornography. I disown that distinction completely. Pornography and erotica are the same thing. The only difference is that erotica is the stuff bought by rich people; pornography is what the rest of us buy."

From My Life as a Pornographer (emphasis mine).

Steaming up your spring.

I have a saucy sequel to Vamping It Up in Mind, but it's still not quite right. Until I get it figured out, I think I'll tease you with some parts of it.

****

      Holly Barros loved Valentine’s Day. The hearts. The flowers. 
       The emphasis on oral sex.
       “Sit on my face and tell me that you love me.” Lincoln S. Jones, her head of security, clasped her thighs and rolled them over, settling her pussy right on his face. The sturdy table in the Vilnius University Library in Lithuania creaked underneath them, but held firm,
  Holly giggled, actually giggled, until his smart mouth latched onto her clitoris. She gasped and pinched her own nipples. Linc dug his fingers into her butt cheeks guiding her where he wanted her to be.
    

“Delicious,” he moaned around her hood. The vibrations sizzled her overwhelmed nerve endings.

“Harder.” She pushed down on him, forcing his mouth deeper into her wet folds.

       Like a good former Marine, he obeyed her order with enthusiasm and determination. His tongue flicked over her flesh faster than a vibrator. She had no idea how he could move so fast, but she loved it. Holly rode the crest, nearing her orgasm. He snaked a hand between them and shoved two fingers into her sheath. She needed it. She needed so bad she could barely breathe. 

Blast from the Past: Primary Source Research

A blast from the past - a blog post from 2010.

For Dracula's Secret, I had to do a lot of research into the Nazi war effort. I wasn't satisfied with the usual secondary and tertiary sources, so I went hunting.




 I got sidetracked by some research. I was figuring out how modern Berlin differed in layout from World War II Berlin, especially what happened to the land where the final bunker was.

(It's an apartment block and playground now. How very cool!)

In the course of looking that up, I found a book called In the Bunker with Hitler by Bernd Freytag von  Loringhoven.

Von L, as I started to call him, was a Captain in the regular Army, and was aide-de-camp to the Army chiefs of staff- Guderian and Krebs. He describes his experiences in the Bunker from July 23, 1944 to April 29, 1945.

It's a fast,  fascinating read, and I suddenly wanted to do a paper on Group Think and the Third Reich. Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, by Irving L. Janis is one of my favorite books. This would be an amazing study, full of footnotes and quotes (and parenthetical statements).

But alas, there is only so much time in the world. So instead, I'm going to use In the Bunker... as a primary source on Hitler's behavior and personality in the last days of World War II. Some of my notes:

1. Never underestimate the power of charismatic, motivated, deluded idiot.
2. As much as it sucks, it really does help to listen to people who disagree with you.
3. As nice as it is in your own little world where your soldiers are at full strength with plenty of food, ammunition, fuel, and not being killed by your enemy, you might want to maybe, just maybe try playing make-believe.
4. The regular Army really didn't know about the war atrocities. I never understood that before, but after hearing how Hitler ran things, I see how he did it, and why. (Secret meetings with the Nazi party because he didn't trust or like the regular Army men).

This is why primary source research is the most fun of all.

Lousy self-esteem gets in the way of being fabulous.

Behold what I found in the depths of my filing cabinet.

 When I was a young Ms. Mercury, I knew I wanted to write and I knew I wanted to write erotica.

Alas, I let the haters stop me. I tell ya, lousy self-esteem gets in the way of being fabulous. So my list of naughty things languished in my filing cabinet for over 25 years.

So here's to making up for lost time. Let's be fabulous, let's break the rules, and let the good times roll. :)

Photos of the Moment

The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona is a magical place. Upstairs, each country on each continent is represented by their musical instruments.

Here are some Pacific Rim copies of European instruments. Since the Philippine Archipelago is low on metals, they recreated these instruments in bamboo.  What a way to make what you have work for you!

What's up in the new year?

Back in 2012, Kensington Publishing Corporation published my very first novel, Dracula's Secret.

And by Halloween 2016, I will re-release Dracula's Secret (and the rest of the Blood Wings trilogy, too), revised, re-edited, and resuscitated.

To get myself back in the mood for Valerie Tate and her wacky hi-jinks, here are some of the photos I used for character references.

The Coat.

Valerie and her dragon coat. I love her strong nose and her ability to admit her vanity.

I really enjoyed writing such a dark leading lady. I wonder what this revision will reveal about her.

Those lips could light my way any day.

Daniel Craig and his beautiful mouth were the inspirations for Lance Soleil.

I wanted a story where the hero was the light bringer to the heroine. She needed redemption and he was the one to show her the rest of the way.

Let us not forget The Car.

And of course, Ilona, Valerie's Shelby Mustang. What hot, dangerous woman doesn't own a bad-ass car? (by contrast, I own a Prius)

My new office.

Me, daunted.

When I found out that I had nerve damage, I felt pretty lousy. I had to completely tear down how I worked and start from scratch. It was a daunting task.

So first, I had to order a sit/stand desk. I went through the reviews and chose The Ergo Depot's Jarvis Bamboo desk. Dig it folks! A motorized sit/stand for under $1000 dollars. And some seriously fast delivery, too.

Isn't it pretty?!

Next, I had to completely tear down my office. That was a mess and a half. I got the desk assembled and then The Charming Man and I made our office space bright, spacious, and much more usable.

 Check out my fantastic new layout! The desk is smaller, but I have more usable room.

I even cleaned the walls and rehung pictures and two of my three collage diplomas (the third fell behind a book case).

A few days later, I found my Muse in an antique shop -

A Minoan snake goddess from Knossos, Crete.

All the Wikipedia goodness over here.

She looks very fierce, but also very patient.

Lessons in Ergonomics.

Not *my* elbow, though.

So, yeah. That bad ergo thing had really done a number on my body. In the past, I've had sore wrists, Olecranan Bursitis (aka Popeye Elbow. Very attractive.), and now, damage to the nerves descending from my sacrum.

So let's avoid all of this pain, irritation, and general slow-down. Here's what we do.

Grab a good image from the web with the all the proper angles for your joints.

Doesn't she look comfy and happy?

Here's a pro tip - don't try to adjust all these things on your own. Have someone else help you! There's no way you can tell if your knees are at a 90 degree angle by yourself. Not even with that beat up protractor you still have from high school Geometry. Make some other sucker use that horrible thing.


Can you tell I wasn't so great at geometry?

I just got a sit/stand desk. Here's the info for that.

A standing desk can be crazy comfy, but it will mess up your hand writing. Next week, what my desk looks like now!

Back in the saddle.

Buy HERE

The last month has been rough on me. As a result of my push to finish Curse of the Spider Woman, I ignored my body's warning signals and ended up with nerve damage in my hip. Leg numbness and tingling has resulted. As a result of the chronic pain and discomfort, I'd fallen into a depression.


After several months of hoping it would go away, I finally went to a physical therapist. I'm slowly getting better, and that means I'm slowly feeling my mojo coming back. To kick start the whole process, I've taken a short retreat to the Oregon Coast.

Haystack Rock

 To the right is my view from my hotel room. The big monolith is Haystack Rock, the little guys are called (get this), The Needles. Oregonians are pretty funny, no?

Cool sand and oil patterns

Couldn't seem to prevent getting in the water.

World's comfiest pants from Kim Sakkara, natch.

Something about the waves and the wind help me find where my boundaries are broken.

Slowly finding my smile again.