Summer is almost to a close, so I wanted to talk about one of my short stories in my anthology “Summer Heat: Steaming Stories For A Hot Summer Afternoon”. It’s called “The Wandering Kat”, and it’s a tale of an older woman Kat whose ornery kitty Oreo brings her together with her younger and very sexy neighbor, Lance. I wanted to talk about how the love a pet can bring people together, especially in romantic stories.

I am a cat lover. Every day I am surrounded by my five little monkeyheads, and they want petting, playtime, and food. Oreo in my story is based on one of my cats, also named Oreo, and she has wanderlust just as bad as the Oreo in the story. Now, she spends her days lolling on the windowsill, watching everything that happens outside. The scruffy little kitty pictured at the top of the page is my cat, Oreo. She always looks pissed off, but she’s just fine.

I think that pets make great plot devices for fiction, especially romances. Pets even rule over lovers, according to a new survey. When asked whether they would prefer to be stranded on a deserted island with their pet or their lover, more than two thirds of those surveyed chose Fido or Fluffy over that person who snores next to them in bed every night.

While not a romance writer, SF writer Robert Heinlein was well-known for his love of cats. Petronius The Arbiter, otherwise known as “Pete”, was an important character in his book “The Door Into Summer”. I laughed when I read the part in the book that explained the title. Pete would wander around the house, begging to be let out of each door that lead to bad weather, hoping that one of those doors would be the Door Into Summer. I had a cat that did the exact same thing. He was a Snowshoe named Koala, and when it was raining, he would whine by the front door to go outside. I’d open the door, he’d take one look at the rain, and come back into the house. Then, he would immediately run to the back door, and whine to go outside. Silly cat, it’s raining just as hard behind the house as it was in front if it! I understood Pete all too well.

The 1996 romantic comedy “The Truth About Cats And Dogs” was about how the love of a cherished pet could lead to romance. Dr. Abby Barnes hosts her own radio talk show called “The Truth About Cats And Dogs”, and she gives her sage advice to people who want to talk about their pets. Her on-air voice and personality are so soothing to one of her fans named Brian that he falls for her. The problem is that Abby, insecure about her looks (she thinks she’s plain), talks her gorgeous, statuesque, blonde best friend Noelle into posing as her with Brian. It’s a move right out of Cyrano de Bergerac. Abby woes Brian over the phone while Noelle, posing as Abby, meets with Brian. While Brian talks to Abby on the air about his problems with his dog, she gives him her best advice, but she can’t keep up the charade forever. Even though their love for pets brought them together, the subterfuge could drive them apart. This is a delightful little movie about how the love of pets brings on true love.

Kat in my story “The Wandering Kat” is a rather shy older woman who has had a crush on her luscious neighbor Lance for a long time, but she never mustered up the courage to approach him for more than a little small talk. When Oreo got out and scooted into Lance’s yard, doing her usual “Catch Me If You Can” kitty game, Kat finally got the courage to talk to Lance for more than a few precious seconds. Lance even volunteered to look for Oreo with her! Be still her beating heart!

If you haven’t bought “Summer Heat” yet, it’s not too late. Buy it at Fictionwise, ARE, or at eXcessica: Buy “Summer Heat” Now!

I have a strong sense of smell. Sometimes I notice a smell that triggers something in the reptilian area of my brain, and I’ll remember an event from my childhood that I hadn’t thought about in years. For instance, recently smelling low tide near my home brought back a memory of the time I was about ten or younger, and staying with the family at a beach home for a week over the summer.

Certain smells evoke certain memories and eras. The smell of sugar cookies and gingerbread remind me of Christmas. The smell of kettle corn and some types of pizza remind me of summer church carnivals when I was  kid.

Here are some smells that turn me on, in and out of bed:

Bread baking
Ocean incense by Aires
Manly sweat
Strawberry Astroglide (It smells so good!)
Amber resin
Low tide by the ocean (I live near the ocean, so that one means a lot to me)
Roasting chestnuts
Roasting chicken
Popcorn at the movie theatre

Sex also has a smell, at least in my mind. It’s much more than hot, sweaty bodies rolling around bed. It’s more than sight, touch, and sound. Smell is a strong component when it comes to sex. Sweat smells differently on every person. Cologne mixed with sweat is very arousing to me, because I associate that smell with hot, screeching monkey sex. I often use incense when I’m in the mood for some sexy fun, and I have incorporated my love for smells into my stories. My current book, Summer Heat: Steaming Stories For A Hot Summer Afternoon, includes the story “Smacking Her Lips”. In that story, Steve blindfolds his wife Jenny, and he tells her to use her senses other than the usual sight and sound. Smell is one of them. I brought one of my favorite incenses into this story - Kyoto Cherry Blossom, from Japan. That is a very romantic incense, setting the perfect mood.

Once you begin to pay attention to your sense of smell, you’ll be able to enjoy sex all the more. What does her pussy smell like? Dive headfirst in and inhale deeply. Take in her scent! Breathe deeply while giving him a blow job. Notice the smell of sweat when you’re going at it. When I pay attention to smell, I become more aroused. How about you? What kinds of smells turn you on?

This article originally appeared on the British e-zine Nuts4chic, where I am the sex columnist. Since my new book Summer Heat: Steaming Stories For A Hot Summer Afternoon will be released very soon, it’s only fitting that I talk about the theme of one of my stories. “The Wandering Kat” is about an older woman lusting after a younger man. So, here is one article I have written about those older women, otherwise known as cougars.

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The Alluring Older Woman: The Appeal Of The Cougar

by Elizabeth Black

My name is Lizzie Black, and I want to be a cougar.

Cougars are all the rage in the dating world now. In case you’ve been living in a cave, a “cougar” is an older woman – most often in her late thirties and forties – who dates younger men but I think cougars are much more complex than that.

I met a cougar twenty years ago. Her name was Ardis, she was a professional hair artist for movies, she was in her forties, and she was gorgeous. I heard through the grapevine that she was dating a twenty-seven year old. I thought that was the coolest thing on earth.

I decided then and there that I wanted to be Ardis when I was in my forties. I decided to become a cougar - confident, sexually experienced and comfortable with my sexuality, attractive, knowledgeable about life, comfortable in my opinions, financially independent, and enjoying a career.

It was the confidence level that appealed to me; a sense of feeling comfortable in my own skin. While I have never dated younger men (I tend to gravitate to older men and I am happily married to a man eight years my senior), I liked the other attributes of the cougar. I wanted to be one.

The cougar is trendy today. Demi Moore is the most famous cougar out there today. Another famous example is Mrs. Robinson from the movie “The Graduate”. Cougars are treated in a much more positive fashion these days. Men attracted to them are tired of all the drama that comes with dating women their own age. A cougar knows what she wants, and she gets it. She’s very direct, and she doesn’t play games.

While the sexual “prey” aspect of the cougar is attractive, I think that there is much more to being a cougar than dating younger men. Cougars are not afraid of disagreeing with anyone or stating their opinion without feeling that they have to have approval, especially male approval. They are financially independent, or at the very least they are earning money doing something they love. They enjoy sex, and they like to experiment. They are intelligent, and they enjoy learning more about life. Cougars are in control. Poor self-esteem is not one of their problems. Cougars are comfortable being themselves, no matter what anyone else thinks.

I like all of that. That kind of attitude is refreshing.

When I saw the commercials about “Swingtown”, I knew I had to see it. The Washington Post has covered the show. The show is set in an American suburb in 1976. I was sixteen years old that year, but I was raised in a conservative household in a working class, heavily Catholic neighborhood. I lead a rather sheltered and naive life as a teen. I knew I probably wouldn’t relate much to “Swingtown”, but it turns out that I did after all. I came of age sexually when I was a freshman in college in 1978, so I did experience some of what happened in “Swingtown”, albeit a few years later.

“Swingtown” caught my attention because the characters went to a sex club in one of the episodes. I include a sex club in one of my stories in my new eXcessica collection of short stories, “Summer Heat: Steaming Stories For A Hot Summer Afternoon”. While the sex club in “Swingtown” was tame, the sex club in my book is anything but.

As I expected, the show has lots of product placements to help Baby Boomers flash back to their lives in 1976. When I saw a can of Tab, I spat iced tea all over myself. My father was always on diets, and he drank Tab like it was going out of style. I thought the stuff tasted like battery acid, and I wouldn’t touch it. I still go “ewwww!!” when I think of Tab. The show also has the dreaded tuna noodle casserole. I still cringe when I think of tuna noodle casserole. It reaches a whole new level of suck. The show is also full of songs from the 1970s, ranging from classic David Bowie (the good stuff) to cringe-worthy songs like “Seasons In The Sun”. All of this is obviously designed to make the Boomers go, “Gotcha!”

The show opens with Bruce and Susan Miller and their daughter moving into a new neighborhood in the suburbs. Their new neighbors, Tom and Trina Decker, are swingers. So far, the show plays with the swinging idea, with the expected snippiness from Susan’s uptight best friend and sexy but safe games played at parties; but everyone is straight. I think that Trina Decker, played by Lana Parilla, is the hottest of the four main characters, and she seems clearly interested in Susan as well as Bruce, but bisexuality doesn’t seem to cross the show’s radar - this early in the season, at any rate. I have a strong feeling that Trina is bi. It’s just a hunch from the way she acts on the show. I’d like to see a little sexual variety that goes beyond the usual heterosexual swinging. I’ll give the show more time to tackle that topic, assuming it ever does.

Trina Decker is the woman in the picture below carrying the strategically-placed cantaloupes. She’s just scrumptious!

While I’m enjoying the show, it plays it safe much like the way “Sex and the City” played it safe. I have no problem with that in this show. At least “Swingtown” isn’t full of product placements the way SATC did. SATC was very materialistic, and I didn’t care for the show at all. I’m waiting to see if the show relaxes a bit and goes into more depth.

I like the way Trina described swinging. She said there’s no sneaking around and no lies. Everything is out in the open and on the table. That also describes polyamory. There is no cheating because everyone knows about each other and everyone is okay with the open relationship. Cheating involves subterfuge, which is not what swinging and poly are about. The show gave a good explanation behind open marriages.

One portion I’d take issue with is how the Playboy club was depicted. While the backward dip of the Bunny waitresses was accurate, not much else was. I read Gloria Steinem’s article “A Bunny’s Tail”, and I knew that the women wore bunny costumes two sizes too small for them on purpose, especially so that their boobs would get pushed up. Drunken men at the club pawed at them, and when they left for the night, the drunks walking around the building confronted them, thinking they were hookers.

The one character I identify with is Laurie Miller, the Miller’s teenaged daughter. She’s smart and leaning towards being a feminist. She’s also a free spirit. Remember that the second wave of feminism swept the U. S. in the mid-1970s. She reads Anais Nin, which is something I haven’t done. Not yet anyway. I read Erica Jong. I really identified with her regarding the obvious mutual attraction between her and her teacher for a summer class she chose to take. I took voluntary summer classes when I was in high school. I also dated college professors who were much older than me when I was in college. One scene in particular really struck home with me. Laurie went to see a feminist version of the play “Waiting For Godot”. It was a feminist, female-only version directed by her teacher’s close friend. A guy is interested in her, but she isn’t into him, and he treats her like crap. He goes to the play with her, even though he doesn’t really want to, and proceeds to humiliate her in public. She’s embarrassed by his behavior, and tells him to leave the theatre rather than continue to publicly humiliate her.

That scene reminded me so much of an experience I had as a college freshman. I asked a guy I was seeing if he would like to see me in a play I was cast in. He said he’d go, but he really didn’t want to. He wanted to go out drinking instead since I think there was a mixer that night. So, he asked all my friends what the play was about so he could give intelligent answers when I asked him how he liked it. He planned to go out drinking during the show, and show up at the end. My friends refused to tell him what the play was about, and one of them told me what he was up to. I confronted him, and he admitted what he had done, but he didn’t think he had done anything wrong, since he ended up going to the show after all. I didn’t need a guy like that in my life, so I broke up with him that night. I, like Laurie, didn’t need a guy around me who only wanted to humiliate me and use me.

So far, I’m enjoying the show very much. I can identify with some of it, but not all since I was too young in 1976 to experience the sexual revolution and feminism. As I said, I grew up sheltered and naive. It wasn’t until I went to college that I came “of age”.

And I was Hell On Wheels.

This article originally appeared in the British pop culture e-zine Nuts4chic. I am Nuts4chic’s sex columnist.

Here’s something you don’t read every day. The headline was surreal: Two Women Report Ghost Has Been Having Sex With Them.

Two women in Washington State in the U. S. claimed that a ghost ” has been placing sensors on their bodies and visiting them in their house […] They said that the ghost has been having sexual intercourse with them.”

I swear I’m not making this up.

I am always interested in ghosts and sex because lots of my erotic short stories have ghosts and sex in them. I don’t do shapeshifters or hot, emo elves. I do ghosts for the most part. Ornery ghosts, too.

I had heard of women claiming to have been attacked by ghosts, but it was surreal to see such a matter-of-fact article about it in a local newspaper. Have you ever seen the movie “The Entity”? It’s a 1981 flick about a woman who was repeatedly raped by a ghost in front of her husband and children. The movie was slammed by critics when it first came out because it was rather explicit, but it became a cult favorite. It was supposedly based on the real life astral rapes of Carla Moran. Whether Moran actually exists has been up for debate for years. I’ve seen a reality show that supposedly interviewed her and had shown pictures of the astral being that had raped her, but the jury is still out on whether or not the woman actually exists. The movie was remade in Japan and is slated to be released in 2009. I’m curious to see it. Can’t wait until it comes out on DVD.

It would probably be exciting to have consensual sex with a ghost, but being raped by a ghost would be horrifying. First off, you can’t see the attack coming. Ghosts tend to be invisible. At the same time, a playful ghost could make otherworldly sex lots of fun. I wrote a short story called “Things The Go Hump In The Night” that involved a sexy spanking ghost. The fun thing about this playful ghost was that, since she was invisible, you couldn’t tell when she was going to spank you. When she did, it was very arousing. People who like to be blindfolded while engaging in a little fetish play probably know how exciting it can be to not know when the spanking is coming. That’s what gave me the idea for my story in the first place.

So, not only do ghosts make great characters for sexy fiction, they really do like to have sex with humans, if that Washington State case is any indication. Bored with your very human partner? Find a horny ghost! You’d be in good company.

I have long been fascinated with affairs, ever since I was in college and I realized that some married men would screw anything female with legs, as long as the woman presented herself to him in an appealing manner. I was occasionally that woman. It wasn’t just men who cheated on their spouses. Women have cheated countless times throughout history.

Is it really cheating if you never meet in person, leaving your sweaty paw prints all over the computer screen when interacting with your honey? I recall an article about a guy who was addicted to the online role playing game “Second Life”, and his real life wife was not happy that he had cheated on her with a woman he had “married” in the game. I found the real life wife posting on the Yahoo group EverQuest Widows, and she was so pissed about the article and all the new things she learned about her husband’s cyber affair that she had decided to divorce his ass.

A man I had interviewed for an article for the British pop culture e-zine nuts4chic described a near-miss he had with his wife. Here is an excerpt describing that incident:

When Tim’s wife opened the Valentine’s Day gift he had mailed to her, he knew he was in trouble when she pulled an eight-inch purple butt plug out of the box.

That gift was meant for his cyber playmate. The company had shipped it to the wrong address.

He stammered, telling her it was really for him. He’s into bondage and sadistic play. She’s not.

He likes cybersex. He likes kinky web sites, in particular BDSM web sites. He said that he had done it “often when I had a day job that allowed unfiltered access to the Internet.”

He doesn’t consider his cyber-relationships affairs.

“They’re flirtations,” he said. “There’s no face-to-face.

Is it really an affair if it’s only on the Internet? What about hot, steamy e-mail exchanges? The concensus from my research into that article was that, yes, indeed, a married person who has cybersex is having an affair. Energy, attention, and sometimes even money are paid to the person who is not the adulterer’s spouse.

You can indulge in kinky sex play with people you might otherwise not meet. Go into any sex chat and the IMs begging for cybersex come almost immediately. “Age/Sex Check” is a running joke in chat rooms. Of course, you have to be careful. That gorgeous 18 year old steaming up your computer screen with descriptions of her huge tits could really be a 45 year old guy with a beer belly.

Or a cop. 

Or she could even be a computer program.

Jenny18 is a computer sexbot program created by a geek who wanted to see if anyone would cyber with software. He expected people to at first try but quickly give up out of boredom. He was surprised that Jenny18 ended up becoming quite popular. She has a set of stock phrases that she can use in conversation when people type in certain keywords. The results are hilarious and fascinating. Here is a portion of one transcript:

Brad_Marsh: so you wanna cyber?

jenny18: im ..(blush) really horny rite now. i just want to get off.

Brad_Marsh: ok

jenny18: ^__^ mmm.

Brad_Marsh: fuck me then

jenny18: aiight =)

Brad_Marsh: how big are your tits?

jenny18: yeah, i do have pretty amazing tits. =)

Brad_Marsh: i want to suck them

jenny18: mmmMm..

Brad_Marsh: is your pussy shaved?

jenny18: what about it? u know you wanna tap it.

Brad_Marsh: i just want to fuck you so hard

jenny18: i promise ill be good

Brad_Marsh: yes

jenny18: mmm

Brad_Marsh: i want to fuck you

jenny18: mm… lick me first pls?

Brad_Marsh: i will eat u out

To read more about Jenny18, go to this link. To read more of Jenny18’s sex transcripts, go to this link.

You can be anyone you want to be online. When people don’t see you in person, they won’t see your big belly, your double chin, your zits, or your big feet. You can pretend to be an oversexed vampire, or an elf living in the woods, even someone of the opposite sex. 

My short story “Caught!” includes infidelity, but not of the cybersex variety. If you want to read about a near-miss disaster of an affair, pick up my story “Caught!” from eXcessica today!

My other story with eXcessica is “A Spanking Good Time”. It made eXcessica’s Top Ten list earlier this month, at #4 and #10 respectively. While that story does not involve infidelity, it does involve fantasy roleplaying, which is common in cybersex. If you want a hot, steaming story involving anal dildos, fantasy roleplaying, and hot sex, buy “A Spanking Good Time” from eXcessica.

Stick around for my next article, which I’ll post in two weeks. I post every two weeks on Tuesdays. Who knows what I’ll post about? Could be about the Hello Kitty vibrator, spray-on condoms (both are real - I’m not making them up), or giving a blow job using Altoids peppermint mints. That last one is featured in my story “Caught!”, so if you want to learn how to be a Blowjob Goddess or God, buy the story and learn something new!