Hello again

Hello, friends, it's been three months since I posted. To update you, I did go on that museum trip. I had a lovely time on my own and didn't shed a single tear. Christmas was another story, but it's in the past now so we'll fast forward a bit.

My ex-husband and Bambi are engaged. Yes, it was quick. They plan to get married this month. I feel guilty for referring to her as Bambi. After all, she did graciously accept my olive branch. Still, in the interest of privacy, I'm not sure what to call her. I do call her friend again, though, and for that I'm grateful.

In other news, my computer's hard drive fried itself. I have a new drive but need to buy Windows and Word. Once I have my computer up and running, I will complete the revisions for the sequel to The Vampire's Submissive. Right now, I'm typing on my phone.

I have another project in the editing stages, a short story to be published by The Wild Rose Press. I'm delighted as I very much enjoy reading the stories published by TWRP.

I received a rejection letter from another publisher for a different story. I plan to revise it and submit it elsewhere. In addition to the sequel to The Vampire's Submissive, I have yet another tale which needs editing and revising. Plus, I'm in the process of writing two new stories. How I'm going to keep all these lovely characters straight in my head, I have no idea.

What are you reading (or writing) these days? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

Have a wonderful day wherever you may be.

Violet

A Change of Plans

NaNoWriMo Update:

I had big plans for NaNoWriMo, intending to write a novel inspired by my past. Turned out, writing my personal story took a huge toll within just two days. The word count required coupled with the vulnerability the story itself inspired broke me. I cried. A lot. I fell apart. I slept more than I should to escape the memories my work had unleashed.

I decided to shelve my idea for a book until a later date.

Then, I dreamed of Little Me.

I woke up and knew I had to give her story another chance to be written. Scared, I decided to just write stream of consciousness to get myself started. I wrote about my fear and misgivings. I wrote about where I am right now. Freshly divorced and working so damn hard to figure out who I am. And then, her story started to come out onto the screen. In free verse.

I haven't written in free verse since college. At first, I fretted. This wasn't what I wanted. I wanted the story to come out like a novel. Beginning. Middle. End. Not this string of seemingly unconnected free verse poems. But then I remembered I was writing this story for Little Me, and if this was how she remembered her pain, then this would be the way I would write her story.

Here is one of the poems:

Peering backwards 
Shadowy images 
An unwilling momma 
A monster who grins. 
Like fireflies little moments 
Brother and me 
Pretend we are safe.

Little Me and I have a long way to go before her story is finished. That's okay. It's taken a long time to get to where we are...ready to write. The telling will happen in its right timing.

Violet

NaNoWriMo ~ Are you in?

National Novel Writing Month kicks off this Friday. Are you in? I'm giving it a go even though I'm not super confident I can finish. Why? Because I'm not writing a fun erotic romance. Instead, I am writing a novel about a woman living with the effects of childhood sexual abuse, something which is all too familiar for me. This will be a much lengthier project, too. I am accustomed to writing short stories and novellas. For NaNoWriMo, the goal is to write 50,000 words in a month. That's a lot of words.

The title of my book will be The Broken Doll, a metaphor for the way my  heroine, Poppy Blake, views herself. Here's a short synopsis:

For years, the past has taunted Poppy Blake with the things she couldn't remember. Ancient wounds have a way of showing up anyway, though, and Poppy knows in her soul something went very wrong in her childhood. Her fear of sex, along with her obsession with her children's safety, drives twin wedges between her and her husband, Evan. In a relationship marred by tension and anger, she clings to her marriage with a desperation which suffocates Evan, pushing him farther and farther away from her.

When Poppy rediscovers an old, beloved doll, a lock clicks open inside her brain, and memories, good and bad, come tumbling out, some fully formed, some mere fragments. Old moments of horror fall to the floor of her heart, side by side with recollections of love and grace.

Estranged from both of her parents, Poppy looks to her younger siblings for insights. Her brother, Jimmy, having made peace with his past, has no desire to go back into the darkness. Her sister, Lily, close to both of their parents, refuses to claim a childhood fraught with abuse, choosing instead to live with manufactured memories of sugar-sweet perfection.

Alone on her journey of remembrance, Poppy begins to experience mystical visions. When her younger self appears to her and speaks four little words, "Daddy did it again," she must challenge everything she thought she knew about herself and her life.

Just two more days until NaNoWriMo begins. What will you be writing? If you'd like to add me to your buddy list, you can find me here.

Of oatmeal, ex-husbands, and a love long dead...

I haven't written much of anything this week. Every time I try to write Peter and Pippa's story, the words come out in clumps that are as intriguing and compelling as lumpy oatmeal. Figuring out the reason for this icky, sticky case of writer's block isn't hard to do. Him.

A couple of weeks ago, he said to me, "You know our marriage ended ten years ago."

No. No, I didn't know that. Ten years ago, I was still madly in love with him. Ten years ago, I was fighting to figure out why after ten years of marriage, I still struggled with painful intercourse. In spite of my pain, I endured because I thought I didn't have a choice. Three years ago, when the flashbacks started, I had my answer. Years of childhood sexual abuse left me fearful of and unable to enjoy sex. It's only in recent months that I've found I can write about sex in the context of my erotic romance short stories and novellas. I believe my ability write these tales is a good sign. :-)

Last night, I asked him a stupid question. "When did you stop loving me? Ten years ago? Fifteen?"

He replied, "I can't really pinpoint it."

Well, ask a stupid question, get an answer you don't want.

Why does this bother me so much? Because I feel stupid and pathetic. I loved, lived with, and made love with a man who didn't love me for more than a decade. *face palm*

Okay, so I'm thinking of the Hanging Man in Tarot and how he challenges us to look at things from a different perspective. How can I view my ex's words in a new way?

*light bulb* I have felt tremendous guilt for not being the woman he needed and wanted. Hmm, so if he didn't love me anyway, do I really need to feel guilty?

Nope! :-)

Will his words come back to haunt me tomorrow? Maybe. Maybe not.

In the meantime, I'll sit in peacefulness, happy and guilt-free.

Why I Write Erotic Romance

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my itty bitty blog. I'm so glad you are here. If you scroll down a bit, you'll find posts on my two self-published titles, Submitting to Ethan and "The Vampire's Submissive." I'd love for you to give them a read, and if you do, I'd be honored if you would leave a review on Amazon. Thank you!

*sighs*

I want to try to express my reason for writing erotic romance. I've been sitting here staring at the screen for half an hour. As it turns out, writing fiction is far easier than explaining the why behind the story.

Why do I I feel the need to share my motivation for writing erotic tales? The compulsion probably has something to do with being raised in a strict Christian household where such stories would have been considered shameful.

As a child, my young body was abused and derided by my mother and defiled by my father. Don't all mothers call their six-year-old daughters whores? Don't all fathers fondle and rape their little girls? This was my mindset as a child. Abuse and pain were normal, every day things for me, as ordinary as corn flakes in the morning and the moon in the sky in the evening. I was taught to behave at all costs, and every minor infraction resulted in severe punishment. I was taught to fear my parents' wrath, and they became god-like in my young brown eyes.

I recall my father digging a hole in the backyard one summer afternoon. He made my little brother write the letters RIP on a sheet of white paper. Daddy told me to climb in the hole and my brother held my mock gravestone above my head. Terrified, I worried Daddy would cover me up with the pile of dirt. How would I breathe? Would I die? Did he want me to be dead? My mother took a Polaroid of my dad with his shovel, my brother with my gravestone, and me lying in the hole, too frightened to move. My parents laughed at their joke and my daddy reached into my grave and pulled me out. I dusted the clay dirt from my shorts and ran inside, eager to push the memory into the far reaches of my mind.

The memory of my grave kept company with all the other bad memories, and it's only through therapy that I've begun to reclaim them. Up until three years ago, much of my childhood and teen years remained a giant void, a black hole of terror. When friends would ask, "Remember when we...?" I would shake my head in confusion, having no recollection and wondering why so much of my life was inaccessible in my memory.

While I endured physical, verbal, and emotional abuse at the hands of both parents, my father's choice to sexually abuse me left the deepest wounds, the ugliest scars. Last fall, I confronted him...sort of. I wasn't brave enough to drive three states away and knock on his door. I am still far too afraid of him. I sent him an email. He came back with a message proclaiming his unconditional love. He expressed his regret that I was mentally ill and encouraged me to find Jesus. He denied ever having touched me. I broke apart. I'd needed him to say he was sorry. Instead, he took my Truth and stamped it into the dirt. Worse still, my sister took his side.

Sexual abuse at my father's hands left me feeling broken, dirty, and damaged. My fear of sex and my difficulty enduring intercourse destroyed my marriage a little bit at a time until finally my husband requested a separation two and a half years ago. We are currently waiting for our divorce to be final. I believe my father harmed me sexually as a way of exerting his power. I have no doubt he was abused in some way when he was a child. I can't change his childhood. I can't change mine. Instead, I chose to change me. I chose to break the cycle of abuse and to give my children the childhood I could only dream of as a little girl.

While enduring my father's sexual abuse, I had no control, no power, no Voice. I could only endure and hope that he wouldn't kill me.

No control. No power. No Voice.

I've been in therapy for quite awhile, and I'm making progress. I no longer run when I see a man with graying hair, glasses and a beard. I shudder, but I don't run. Baby steps.

For a long time, I couldn't even talk about sex during therapy. Now, I can. And, I've found I can write about it, as well.

Why write about sex?

Control. Power. Voice.

When I write erotic scenes, I am in control. I have all the power. I have a Voice.

You will see a scene of attempted rape by a villain in my short story, "The Vampire's Submissive." I was in control of that scene. I saved the heroine. She had a Voice, and she was heard. Help came.

In Submitting to Ethan, Rose fantasizes about being raped by her best friend, Ethan. Again, I was in control. I wrote the scene as an expression of her fantasy. No, Rose does not wish to be raped in reality. She only wants the fantasy with a safe partner. Many women share Rose's fantasy. Myself included. Sound strange? In my fantasy, I control who I am having sex with and what they are doing to me. I direct the action. I am in control. I have all the power. I have a Voice.

Control. Power. Voice. Writing erotic stories provides me with these three things I so desperately need to continue being who I am. A Survivor.

With hope,

Violet

National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1-800-656-HOPE

What's the waiting period for writing about divorce?

What's the waiting period for writing about a divorce?

I don't want to write a memoir. Just something. Some words put down on paper or hammered out on the keyboard. I'm not looking to pen a nonfiction retelling of the past twenty years and all the ways I fucked up. No, I much prefer weaving bits and pieces of myself into my fiction, hidden carefully so no one who knows me will suspect the neuroses belong to me.

Thankfully, He doesn't know my pen name, so I suppose I can write whatever I please, whenever I like. Let's start now.

He and I signed divorce papers on Wednesday, September 25th. 61 days later, we'll be divorced. Happy Fucking Thanksgiving, to me.

Twenty years of marriage deleted, splattered with Wite Out, bleached out like a blemish on His finely lined forehead. When I asked him if it felt like a big deal...signing away twenty years of our lives, he replied, "No, not really. But then I don't get all emotional about stuff."

Too true. And I, of course, am too emotional: one of the reasons he wanted a divorce in the first place. I believe his words were something like, "I'm sick of riding the *emotional roller coaster. I want off."

What I didn't understand was the timing. Why live with an emotional roller coaster (me) for twenty years then suddenly decide you want to hop off the ride?

Did you guess "shiny, new girlfriend?" If so, you're our winner! Ding! Ding! Ding!

So you know, I'm not usually this cynical, but if I don't learn to laugh at myself and scoff at his reasoning, I'll go insane.
Then there is his choice of  new woman. One of my best friends. Or, so I thought.

Let's call her Bambi.

Bambi and I became fast friends at age twelve on the first day of that well-known horror called junior high. For the next eight years, we shared crushes, cookie dough, and clothes. We fixed each other's hair and make-up. We argued over who was the hottest New Kid on the Block. When one of us asked if the new dress our mom bought made us look like the world's biggest nerd, we lied and said, "Of course not! You should be on the cover of Seventeen."

We exchanged secrets and vowed to carry them to our graves. She's the only person who didn't think my infatuation with and determination to marry Him was a futile quest. She believed, right along with me, that one day he'd be standing at the altar watching me walk up the aisle. We both knew he would totally rock a tux. I met Him in seventh grade study hall. We were twelve. I had bad hair, bad skin, and braces. He had the most amazing hazel eyes I'd ever seen. Then, he smiled. And I fell.

Four years later, he succumbed to my charms. Okay, so more likely, he was simply tired of saying, "Please stop following me around like a puppy dog." Yes, I was that pathetic. He was my first boyfriend and my last. My first kiss and my last.

Three years later, the **monster I called, "Daddy," walked me down the aisle. Bambi was my bridesmaid. Two years later, I was hers.

Funny thing is, I'm not hurt by his choice of shiny new girlfriend. I'm hurt by her choice, her decision to set aside the sisterhood of friendship and fall into his arms.

You see, friendships became my life raft over this past year. On October 6, 2012, I decided to die. Why? Because he said we were never, ever, ever getting back together. I told myself a dead mother is better than a depressed mother, and I started writing letters. I prepared myself to walk away from life, my kids, everything, because He walked away from me.

Yeah, I know I was stupid, but thanks for verifying it.

 I swallowed every pill I could find. In the backyard, He had set up a tent to test its waterproof-ness. I climbed inside and laid down, presumably for the last time. I don't remember anything else. I'm told he came home with our kids. They saw me weaving through the house. Next stop: ER. I recall drinking charcoal. Beyond that, I have no recollection of October 6-9th. My first moment of clarity came in the hospital on October 10th: "Well, damn. Guess that didn't work."

A few days later, still in the hospital, I began to feel grateful. I couldn't fathom why I was still here, but I decided to have a go at the Life thing one more time. And here I am, one year later, still giving Life a go.


Violet Gray


*emotional roller coaster - His term for bipolar disorder, which I have.
**monster - the man who abused me sexually, physically, verbally, and emotionally