Just Not Average…

There’s no denying that I don’t fit in any specific box. Let’s just start off with the obvious–I am a 56 year old woman who gleefully drives a yellow sports car. To give you the full picture, I must point out that this isn’t a sunny yellow, fun Miata. Nothing against that car, but I drive my Honda s2000 because it handles with excellent precision and incredible speed. It is a race car. I’m not nearly so graceful. The car is kind of like my exoskeleton.

car2I’ve never been a minivan/SUV kind of person. I cried when my husband and I bought our first four-door vehicle.

This leads to another way in which I’m not average. I have two daughters, but never craved children. I loved my husband and he wanted kids desperately. I made a choice to become a parent and having decided to bring them into this world, I love my daughters a lot. One is a ER resident in Brooklyn and I love hearing her sometimes gory ER stories.

My older daughter just graduated with her Ph.D. in psychology. Which brings me to the other way I’m not typical. I have a Ph.D. in counseling and a whole other career in that area. My daughter–who fits this career as well as her sister fits hers–followed her father and I into the helping profession. What we do is the same, but not the same. She actually likes giving tests and working with hospitalized clients, I don’t. (No–I never use what clients say in the books I write because my imagination is so rich and vivid, it’s actually more interesting. Besides, clients deserve complete confidentiality.)

I also swear and I have no shame about it.

The words usually called “bad”, originally came from the Anglo-Saxons several decades back. Words with the same meaning that are acceptable(and even used from the pulpit, like “fornicate”) are of Norman or Olde French origin. The bad words became bad when the Normans overthrew the Saxons.

Seriously, it’s just as simple as that. We use the language of the winners of that war and spank our kids for using words from the losers.

When my daughters were young, all words were acceptable in our household. We didn’t call names or throw verbal insults around, so words didn’t have an ugly power. I did make it clear with my girls, however, that the world has a different view of language than I do. If they use certain words in certain places–like with school teachers–they would have consequences. This was never a problem.

I write sexually-explicit romances. These are not–the consensus is–erotica or lady porn. My books are relationship oriented and the characters just happen to have really great sex.

I have been married–I’m almost embarrassed to say this–for 37 years and I still like him. A lot. We married very young, going through college and grad school together. I write steamy sex about people in this world in relationships that help them be better at who they are. This is exciting to me and I resist(my critique group will tell you) the idea that romance has to be fantasy.

So, I’m weird. I’ve mostly accepted my differences and strange contradictions. You’ll find evidence of my unusual perspective in my books