I’ll sit right here and admit to hating every second of yesterdays almost two-hour test. It started the minute I had to eat a bowl of radioactive sickly sweet oatmeal. Did I mention this was in a cold, tiny trailer closed off from the hospital because of the materials I just swallowed? Let me tell you that I’ve been quite sick for a couple of weeks now. The little amounts of food I did manage to eat often came back up. This wasn’t a great beginning.

I did have a very nice tech who then escorted me to where I would be for the procedure. That meant I stood from the teeny spot where I enjoyed my tasty breakfast and took one step backwards. Did I tell you I had to lay flat on my already aching back on a metal ‘bed’ sized for a ten year old? Was it mentioned that part of this machine would close down right over my chest? He was surprised no one told me I couldn’t move for NINETY MINUTES.

I shivered even with the blanket wrapped over me. This was my lucky day. Every three years they are inspected and one chose today to pop in. I got to listen to all the greek that went along with the questions and answers until he was satisified and left. Then I heard all the bragging phone calls to the boss how they received no citations. I thought time must be moving pretty good by now and asked. The kind technician informed me I was two minutes short of half way done! He did add a towel under each shoulder to stop the metal points from digging into my skin when I complained.

I tried not to puke or move so I didn’t ruin the pictures. Oh yeah, if I did, the test was over. Remember too it’s radioactive. Please don’t make a mess or they would have to clean the trailer and cancel the afternoon appointments. Thus, I was handed my very own garbage bag to hold for the entire test.

Now, I’ve gone through a few tests in my life. Some you don’t want to hear about. I can take pain and discomfort. Most of the time I just imagine myself in another place and soon it’s over. It wasn’t that way in this dinky little trailer. Not after he put part of the machine up to my chest and mentioned something about how he hoped I wasn’t claustrophobic. Not after he told me I couldn’t move for NINETY MINUTES.

I couldn’t stand it and knew time must be over. My leg was numb and my body hurt everywhere. I checked with him again and he told me there were six minutes left. I talked. I rambled. I apologized. I have no clue what all I said. My mind was screaming at me to get up. He knew I had a hard time and walked over to me. So we’re talking about five steps from his desk area to where I was trapped under this monster. I don’t remember what was said but we had a conversation. Then it was thirty seconds.

He told me to listen for the buzzer and that was my signal I’d finished. At that point he would move the machine away. I never heard it but I saw the evil eyed monster pull away and felt the tech remove the blanket. He encouraged me to sit up but I hurt from being in the same position so long. I stretched my leg and it cramped. When I looked at the ceiling the thing laughed back at me from the hooks. My fingers cut into the trash bag still in my hand in case I puked.

The tech helped me sit and when I did stand waited until I had my balance. He made sure I kept the trash bag in case I got sick on the drive home. Nice of him right?

Did I mention that I’m claustrophobic? No one told me how this test was before hand. The trailer closed in on me until I almost ran down the ramp for the exit.

I think the radioactive stuff zapped my brain a bit, too. All the ideas for my blog today were gone. Someone should have warned me about men in funny white suits offering…oatmeal.

My readers ask me “Vern” (I prefer Vernon but what the heck) “How do you come up with all them stories? Where’d you get all them ideas? Do you write fast, or half-fast?”

I tell them it’s a combination of diligence and research. Think up a plot, look up the relevant information to support the premise and don’t stop typing ’till it’s finished.

Excuse me. The doorbell rang.

Great, it’s those DVD’s I ordered. I’m a film noir fan. Several interesting titles here…

Oh yes. Story writing. I find a marked level of concentration is crucial to good story writing. I usually…

Whoops, microwave beeped. Just a sec.

Yummy, beef tips in pasta. It’s been a while since lunch…

As I was saying, I do a lot of research before I…

Now this is interesting. Did you know the male porcupine urinates on the females quills to soften them before they mate? Neither did I. Don’t want to get pricked while your using your…

Okay, back to the subject. I usually sequester myself in my den and concentrate on what I’m writing and…

My cell’s ringing. Hello? Excuse me for a minute..

No kidding? Okay I’ll be there in a few. Yes, I’m leaving now…

Darn it, I forgot my dart tournament was tonight. My team was wondering where I was.

Can I get back to you on this? Thanks.

Anyway, let me leave you with this advice.

Both diligence and concentration are the keys to being a successful author. It has always worked for me.

Shoot, they’re calling again.

Gotta run. caio everone.

I don’t know about other authors, but my life is hectic at the best of times. My writing is something that has to be fitted in around two jobs, three kids, assorted pets, not to mention other interests. Some days I truly wish I had multiple personalities and could therefore delegate some of the more boring tasks. Failing that, I wish my kids could be more [bleep] helpful!

Most of my work is written in hurried bursts during quiet interludes at the office, or whilst waiting for a pan of assorted items to cook for the evening meal. At the office, I have devised several methods for hiding the true nature of my writing. Any document I work on whilst there is always re-named as something innocuous. I often use acronyms of the true title so that any passing colleague is blissfully unaware that SMH.doc is in fact erotica, as opposed to an innocent letter.

One particular story was named html.doc for ages as I was supposed to be working my way through a HTML and CSS tutorial. Well I was – but I was also writing pages of steamy sex at the same time.

Working at home is less fraught. Since my laptop is password protected and strictly for my use only, I can work on anything I like without the risk of being caught. The only problem I have there is the constant distraction of domestic chaos.

Have you tried writing a sex scene while WW3 is raging in the adjacent room? No? Then try it sometime and see how far you get!

He slowly unbuttoned her blouse, revealing the curve of her breasts as she held her breath almost to the point of asphyxiation. When she felt the first touch of calloused fingers, Melissa moaned softly. Her traitorous body wanted him, even if every nerve in her body screamed that it was wrong to feel this way about her cousin. . .

“MUM! Issy won’t let me go on her computer. I hate her!”

“GO AWAY!”

Cue the sound of screaming before my bedroom door rudely bangs open. “Mum! Tell him! He’s annoying me!” my younger daughter cries petulantly as her brother throws things at her from the relative safety of the bathroom.

“Oh for [bleep] stop bickering!” I mutter crossly as I minimise my document window. Once the argument has been sorted out in the best tradition of parental diplomacy (both offspring sent to their respective rooms under the threat of extreme violence), I return to my story.

Ryan pushed her down on to the hard mattress and smiled slowly as he raked his gaze across her semi naked body. Melissa watched helplessly as he unzipped his jeans. Even though she was aware that anybody could walk in on them, the fear of reprisal was not enough to make her run away. When the denim finally slid down his taut, muscular thighs, she gasped out loud in shock. . .

The phone rings, jarring my concentration once again. A sullen teen on the end of the line asks in a monosyllabic tone to speak to my eldest daughter.

“Phone for you!” I yell, trying to make myself heard above the thumping dance music emanating from my daughters bedroom. The music momentarily deafens the entire neighbourhood as her bedroom door opens. My Britney Wannbe flounces in and snatches the phone from me with a disdainful toss of her dyed hair before flouncing back out, talking a foreign language of ‘yeah, whatever, he’s so fit…yeah…like well fit!’

I pull a face at her, but she is oblivious – I don’t blip on her radar unless she wants my cash, my clothes, or my make-up. In that order.

By now my characters are in a state of severe coitus interruptus and frankly I know how they feel.

I wistfully dream of a sun kissed patio beside an azure pool, where I wish I was sitting in the shade of a lemon tree, able to write for hours with no distractions. However, knowing my luck, I would probably end up being cursed with writers block in the unlikely event opportunity gave me a winning lotto ticket. Still, I’m certain the pool boy and a nice bottle of Chianti would soften the blow.

In the meantime, I should be able to give my characters a mutually satisfying orgasm before the Bolognese is ready . . .

Dinner’s cummmmmiinnng!

Pasta anyone?

Rachelle LeMonnier

Ah yes, the full moon. Odd, isn’t it, that the word “lunatic” is derived from the Latin for moon? Anyone who has worked at a crisis hotline knows that the full men is when all the crazies come out. And here I am.

I am excited to be joining eXcessica. Among other things, I like the way it sounds. I have a distant memory of a movie called “The Sunshine Boys,” starring George Burns and Walter Matthau as a couple of cranky ex-vaudeville comics. One of them propounds the theory that all funny words have the sound of the letter “k” in them. H. L. Mencken wrote something similar many years ago. “K, for some occult reason, has always appealed to the oafish risibles of the American plain people, and its presence in the names of many places has helped to make them joke towns - for example, Kankakee, Kalamazoo, Hoboken, Hohokus, Yonkers, Squeedunk, ‘Stinktown’ and Brooklyn.”

“eXcessica” partakes of both the sussurant “s” sound of lust and the comic “k” sound of “chuckle.” It is in that sense exactly like “sex,” itself a product of the very same two sounds. When sex is very good, it seems to me, is a delicious combination of lust and, if not of laughter, then at least of joy. I hope that my writing will live up to that ideal. I am an author of romantic comedies or, as I wrote in my biography, of comic romances. Sex is not exactly an afterthought, although I have been known to write “insert sex scene here” while I am writing a story so as not to break my concentration on the flow of the narrative. But it is secondary to love and laughter. I cherish a comment I received once to the effect that the gentleman had gotten so caught up in the story that he found himself skipping over the sex scenes. I hope he went back and read them, because they’re not that bad, and some of them have a special kind of sexual humor all their own.

I hope you enjoy this site as well, perhaps for my work, perhaps for the some works that are a few levels of “heat” above anything that I’m likely to produce. In the meantime, I’m going back out to sit underneath the full moon. I need inspiration.

Marshall Ian Key