Life changing circumstances are what makes a story interesting. Stories that lay bare the grit and muscle of life are the stories I like to read. Tales that get into the essence of a character’s soul. If you feel the same way, Erotic Tales for Enlightened Minds is for you. It’s available at Amazon, both in a paperback version, and on Kindle.
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THE STRANGE HAUNTING OF JOHNNY FEELWATER
Since I’ve been working on this collection, I’ve been asked a few questions. Here’s a sampling:
You normally write novels; why short stories?
It mainly has to do with my interest in human diversity. There are scenarios that make great novels. Other situations people find themselves in can be told on fewer pages. Born in the Wrong Body, for example, is a story about a woman born in a man’s body who goes through a series of sex reassignment procedures. Having normal female desire, she falls in love with a man, who doesn’t know her history, before the final operation that will create a vagina from her penis. Her heart beats just like everyone else’s, yet her circumstances are vastly different. That’s what makes her story interesting, though the essence of her story can be told in a couple dozen pages.
Who are you writing these stories for?
When I first started publishing, it surprised me such a large percentage of my audience are women. Why, I’m not sure. They’re entitled to be as intrigued as men are in man to man relationships. They get turned-on by reading about two men having sex just as men do with two women having sex. I think they’ll be equally interested in this collection of tales, especially Two Husbands, a story about a straight wife married to a bisexual man, and the way she deals with the situation in the end. This is the first time I’ve included women in the main relationship on a sexual basis. Basically this book is for intelligent people with open minds who are fascinated by the diversity of human nature.
Which is your favorite story?
That’s tough to decide. Writing them, I was totally into them all. If I had to chose, it would be Charlene’s Daughter. Not that I condone incest or sex with under-age girls, but I do understand human nature. This story gets you in the gut. Maybe because of the way it’s told. Maybe because the characters are flawed but endearing. Maybe because the story would make a good novel. I am also fascinated by the concept in Two Husbands.
Are these stories erotica?
Although there are erotic scenes in this collection, I wouldn’t classify the stories as erotica. Erotica is about and revolves around sex and sexual tension. Short stories are snapshots of certain events or certain chapters in a person’s life; in this case, life changing chapters. The stories in Erotic Tales for Enlightened Minds revolve around circumstances that lead to romantic self-discovery.
Why don’t you use traditional publishers?
I did, once, my first novel. The first publisher that read it, bought it. Thrilling as that was, it turned into the most dreadful experience I’ve had in my writing career, and put a very badly edited book on the market in my name.
What do you like best about writing?
Other than the creative process, I like most hearing from people who have read one or more of my novels. I like reader input and opinions. A writer learns from things like that. I like hearing from people who have enjoyed the story and perhaps have identified with one of the characters. By virtue of reading my novels, the reader knows me. I hope the response will be as gratifying for Erotic Tales for Enlightened Minds.
Use the link below to order a copy in paperback. Click here for the Kindle version.
November hasn’t provided me the time to generate as many posts as I may have liked. I’ve been working on my next book, a collection a of short stories called Erotic Tales for Enlightened Minds. I’m seeing it as my most interesting work to date, dramas that involve the human condition in its infinite varieties, created for men and women that have an interest in such things.
The first draft of some of these tales are currently posted on this site. But as I say, they are first drafts. Think of them as rose buds; genuinely pleasant to look at, though you don’t see the petals or smell the fragrance. This is where an author’s work begins. The story has been outlined, but to smell the fragrance and see the colors depends on the author’s propensity for just the right keystrokes.
It should be available on Amazon by the end of the year. In the meantime, if you haven’t read any of my novels, you might give one a try. Or if you have and enjoyed it, try one of the other ones. Just click one of the links to Amazon in the right margin.
Some of the most interesting and intriguing emails I get come from the women who read my novels.
I hear from women of all ages, backgrounds and circumstances, and I hear from them for different reasons. It goes beyond the fact there are strong female characters in all of my novels: the wives in Five Married Men; a sister and a nurse in A Song in the Park; a colleague in The Partisans; a wife and a seductress in The Strange Haunting of Johnny Feelwater; characters women relate to or sympathize for. But the two main reasons seem to be: women readers are touched by human romance and intimacy, no matter the characters gender or sexual orientation; or they have found themselves in similar circumstances (their husbands, boyfriends or brothers are gay or bisexual).
Women also want to know what goes in inside a man’s head. Stories that involve his sexuality are intriguing. Some women are intrigued by the notion of intimacy between two males; there are some female fans who read one novel after another that involve male relationships. It’s everything from simple curiosity to the pursuit of a fantasy to full blown fascination with male physical interaction.
Five Married Men inspires most of the e-mail I get from women, often a wife who just found out and is looking to understand and cope with her new dilemma. She reaches out for a sympathetic listener, a neutral third party that might offer insight on what she might expect to happen next. Given the fact she has an otherwise happy marriage, I’m honored to be able to offer words of encouragement.
Actually I’m honored to hear from all the women who contact me. I’m often thinking about them when I write. Simply put, no matter how attracted to men he might be, women are important factors in every man’s life.
I received the following e-mail just recently:
HI , I WOULD LOVE TO THANK YOU FOR 2 WONDERFUL HELPFUL BOOKS. FIVE MARRIED MEN AND A SONG IN THE PARK. MY LIFE UNRAVELED 4 YRS AGO WHEN I DISCOVERED MY HUSBAND OF 17 YRS WAS HAVING SEX WITH MEN. HE IS BISEXUAL. IT WAS THE MOST DEVISTATING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. I AM SLOWLY RECOVERING. WE ARE STILL MARRIED. BOTH WORKING ON PUTTING THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER. I AM DOING MOST OF THE WORK BY MYSELF. HE DOES NOT LIKE TO TALK ABOUT HIS BISEXUALITY. HE IS NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THAT PART OF HIS LIFE YET. YOUR BOOKS SHOWED ME HOW THE MALE MIND WORKS. THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO LOVE A WIFE AND WANT SEX WITH MEN. HE IS NOT HAVING SEX WITH MEN AT THIS TIME. NOT FOR THE LAST 2 YRS TO MY KNOWLEDGE. TRUST IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE. I AM ALWAYS ON GUARD FOR ANY SIGNS. I DISCOVERED HIS BISEXUALITY WHEN HE HAD LEFT HIS EMAIL UP AND I SAW HIS POSTS TO MEN. IT WAS EYE OPENING. MY WORLD WAS FOREVER CHANGED. ONLY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE KNOW. THIS IS HARD TO DISCUSS WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT LIVED THIS. YOUR WRITING HAS THE ABILITY TO HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD. YOU CAN GET DEEP INTO MY FEELINGS AND HELP ME TO UNDERSTAND THEM. I AM GRATEFUL FOR THAT. THANKS FOR THE BOOKS. KEEP WRITING ON THIS SUBJECT. YOU ARE TRUELY A GIFTED AUTHOR. THANKS, (name withheld to protect her privacy)
Sadly, no one has ever ask me that question. However, I found this article on www.taschen.com to be interesting and entertaining.
The Big Penis Book. Excerpt from the introduction by Dian Hanson
No racial or ethnic group is uniformly large and no group is uniformly small. Women, we are constantly assured, care nothing about penis size. Men may be more candid, but there are also male fans of the small penis, either as a symbol of youth or for its amazing ability to make one’s own penis look larger.
All that out of the way, who can deny the allure of a big dick? Flaccid or erect, it is aesthetically stunning – commanding every onlooker to consider capacity and consequence. Many viewing the photos for this book blurted out, “I wouldn’t let that near me!” As if anyone were offering. Everyone takes the big penis personally, as an object of fear, arousal, and endless fascination, that last derived from the Latin fascinum, meaning both phallus and magical spirit. Big shoulders, big lapels, and big hair may come and go, but the big penis never goes out of fashion. And because humans walk upright, their penises are a more obvious accessory than those of most animals, a quirk that has hardly escaped man himself.
The medieval codpiece began as a practical addition to European menswear in about 1420. Men wore just tunics and stockings at the time, as underwear didn’t exist, and when tunics got shorter a simple triangle of cloth was designed to hide the genitals. Over the next hundred years this flap of cloth was refashioned – first to lift and project, then padded, then padded a great deal more, then molded into an elongated oval that projected up and out from the groin, giving the appearance of a monstrous permanent erection. By 1,500 codpieces were worn from England to Italy, with every country vying to outdo the others in size and originality of adornment.
No one knows how many married men live their lives hiding a secret.
Men who have chosen a traditional life, who have concealed their sexuality, who have tried in vain to ignore the pulls and tugs inside them, who have never allowed themselves to explore their attraction to other men. Perhaps you married one of them. Perhaps he lives next door. Perhaps he’s your father, your brother, your cousin or your best friend. Perhaps you are him.
Five Married Men is a story about men who have found themselves in this situation, their lives and their emotions; five happily married men who finally decide to act on their urges. The reader sees inside their minds, sees how this dilemma affects their lives and the women they are married to.
An Excerpt from chapter 11:
In a room high above the city, a small island of space and time, five men plan to give themselves over to the mysteries ingrained in them before leaving the womb. In their hearts they had become brothers-within the privacy of four walls they were five nervous men on the threshold of an age-old fantasy. Together in secrecy they would explore the compatibility of their minds and bodies, knowing very little of each other, yet more than the rest of the world would ever know.
The first to arrive, Tim rented the room. One by one they dialed his cell phone from the lobby, and he let them in when they knocked on the door. The last to arrive, James took a chair near the window that overlooked the downtown skyline. They sat around the room in skittish knots, the world that would condemn them locked beyond a bolted door. They were a collection of sweaty palms and bodies comprised of identical poetry, of minds filled with doubt and adventure; five men standing shoulder- to-shoulder, trying to cast off their guilt on a road with no clear horizon.
In a complex world a man can wake up and realize he has chosen the wrong road, realize he is not happy with his life. Another man might find himself stuck the time warp of some life-changing event. A Song in the Park is the story of two such men.
Justin Brooks realized something was not right as he watched his beautiful bride come down the aisle. He panicked, fled, became a pariah in his own east Texas home town. Confused by the demons that kept the answers hidden, he bummed around Texas and ended up in Big Bend, working as a park ranger and living a solitary life.
Fifteen hundred miles away, Michael Anderson, a San Diego surgeon, lost an eight year old girl on the operating table. He had stayed out the night before, indulging his misguided lifestyle. Rightfully so, he blamed himself for the little girl’s death. He vowed to abandon his profession, abandon the endless bathhouse sojourns, the countless faceless men. He would leave San Diego and set out to find himself and start a new life.
Heading east, driving through the vast west Texas desert, he discovered the inspiring beauty and mystery of the Big Bend, where he located a secluded place on the Rio Grande and built a small campfire for coffee.
Four days later, driving his routine patrol of the River Road, Justin spotted the illegal campsite and stopped to write a citation. After a few awkward moments, somewhere in their conscious minds, both men realized, in addition to an intriguing man, they were looking at the answer to many unanswered questions. A friendship was born.
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
So goes the opening sentence of Middlesex, a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides.
From Jeff Turrentine, The Los Angeles Times: “Eugenides has had nearly a decade to relax, and the happy result is a novel that’s as warm, expansive and generous as its predecessor wasn’t. (…) Among many things, Middlesex is the author’s love letter to a city that could probably use a few more. (…) Middlesex isn’t just a respectable sophomore effort; it’s a towering achievement, and it can now be stated unequivocally that Eugenides’ initial triumph wasn’t a one-off or a fluke. He has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being.”
A review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann on Amazon.com:
From the first sentence of Jeffrey Eugenides’ MIDDLESEX, I was hooked by this complicated tale of a young girl who grows into a man. The story of Cal Stephanides begins generations before his birth, in a small Greek village, when his grandparents succumb to incestuous desires. Immigration to the United States keeps Desdemona and Lefty’s secret intact – until their grandchild Cal reaches puberty. Told with both humor and earnestness, the story grows more engaging with every page.
The brilliance of this book emerges not from the superficial story of a hermaphrodite but from the context – historical, scientific, psychological, political, geographical – of Cal’s birth and subsequent rebirth. MIDDLESEX is about much more than gender confusion. Cal’s mixed gender can be taken as a metaphor for the experience of first- and second-generations born of immigrants.
While the context of this story provides the substance, the characters provide the vibrancy. Cal emerges as a reliable and likeable narrator. He is sensible, good-humored, and intelligent. The spectrum of his experiences provides a smooth transition between childhood and adult, enabling the reader to embrace the character as both male and female. Cal’s family is affectionately portrayed, even with their failings. (Cal’s brother, Chapter Eleven, annoyed me with his name, a running gag, but even he ended up a full-blooded character by the end.)
Eugenides has written an expansive, compelling book. Despite its length of over 500 pages, the novel is not a slow read – unless the reader wants it to be, to make it last. Accessible, intelligent, well-paced and plotted, it should appeal to a wide range of readers.
I can’t recommend this novel highly enough.
Mother nature can be an inventive force, even cruel (considering the eye-of-the-beholder). In Cal’s case, the narrator and main character in Middlesex, he was born a hermaphrodite. After his confused early years, he learned to accept his condition, even cherish it, though it led to challenges most of us can’t begin to imagine.
Cal tells us his family history which leads to why he emerged in the world with characteristics of both sexes. He tells us about his emotional and confused early years, his challenges and trials, his failed romances, and then how he came about to accept his unique fate. It’s a must read for anyone looking for something different.
The Strange Haunting of Johnny Feelwater is a story about a thirty-two year old man who realizes, during a onslaught of astonishing circumstances, he has set his stride on the wrong path.
Like countless men like him, another man lives inside his head, a man he can’t allow himself to be, a confused identity shunted into the darkest corners of his consciousness. He had married Marrilee, started his career, took on a mortgage–he was normal.
Then, one morning he innocently steps into another world, Cassandra and Julian Mott’s world, and everything begins to unravel, his career, his marriage, his peace-of-mind. He comes face-to-face with the other side of his sexuality. After lifting his legs and resting them on another man’s shoulders, nude and vulnerable, he realizes, if he is to get his life back, he needs help.
Johnny knows that a man called Dr. Brian Fowler is the one who can help him, the one man that can deal with Cassandra and Julian Mott; but Fowler is in Africa, where he goes every summer to donate his time to the people of Kenya known as the Maasai. For Johnny, there’s no choice other than to exhaust what remains of his finances and journey to Africa, where he finds answers to his unmasked questions.
Johnny’s senses are overwhelmed during his stay with Bryan Fowler in the Maasai village, the human smells and visuals, humanity’s oneness with the earth. His imagination is set ablaze and his self-recognition begins to blossom as he lives among these dynamic people and sleeps so close to Brian in the tiny confines of a Maasai hut.
One day he and Brian attend a traditional ceremony, where the two of them sit on a knoll with the village elders, watching the festivities. Here is what he sees:
(From The Strange Haunting of Johnny Feelwater) . . . It was a time of waiting. Puffing their pipes, Johnny and Brian continued to observe the activities from their positions on the knoll. Johnny’s reprieve held. There were no omens in his hands. Locking his fingers around a knee, he sat comfortably, the pipe clenched in his teeth, his shoulder and neck muscles tension free. While the elders next to him spoke among themselves of their important concerns, Johnny continued his private study of Maasai contentment. He watched young mothers with newborn infants at their breasts, tiny babes engulfed within loving arms and gazes. A toddler emerged from a forest of long legs, wailing. So distraught was his small face that Johnny’s heart felt a pang. The child had lost his mother, not yet old enough to know there was no safer place on God’s earth he might be. The younger men, the warriors, stood in small groups, conversing and comparing adornments and body paint. From them came no shortage of teasing; for it seemed where go the warriors, so go the girls and the catcalls and flirting.
Johnny had been watching one of them in particular. A young man who would be king, Johnny surmised as he leaned forward and stared, resting his forearms on his knees, letting his hands hang limp. The warrior, shouldering no more than twenty-five years of life’s trials, stood an inch or two taller than his companions; a stature enhanced by a magnificent, horseshoe-shaped headdress, feathered with stuffed orioles and kingfishers. Flaring nearly as wide as his shoulders, he wore it like a crown. Chalky white paint formed a raccoon-like mask around his eyes and strands of beads crisscrossed his forehead. Set in the perfect symmetry of a longish, oval-shaped face, his eyes shone with self-confidence and arrogance, his nose long and broad with large nostrils, his lips a voluptuous, omnipotent smirk. Tied at the back of his neck, a bright red cape draped down over his torso to his knees. It hung loosely open down the back, which allowed shadowy hints of rich black skin and the masculine contours of his lower back and buttocks. (more…)
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