Guacamole: Truth or Sex Aid?
Hello again, dear readers.
I'm hoping the subject line of this post doesn't scare you away. It must be said: I have a passion for avocados. I have several tasty guacamole recipes, but I like my guac smooth, without red peppers. Finely diced onions are good, and a bit of hot is OK, but guacamole on the whole is to balance out the spiciness of salsa. The bite of lemon in guacamole preserves the gorgeous color as well as giving a tang.
My topic today is only peripherally about guacamole. Primarily, it's about a broken story I'm trying to fix. It's a work-in-progress featuring a djinni who's been cursed to an eternity of enslavement to a wandering family. To the djinni's dismay, he's fallen in love with the last of the line, a mild-mannered accountant named Laura.
While I like this story, I know it is broken. It lacks something that will make it resonate with a reader. In the words of a top-notch beta reader of mine, the story is not quite cotton candy, but neither is it a good meal. It's a lot like mashed potatoes: bland. I wrote the story as a light, frothy piece, something erotic and sweet without a heavy load of angst.
But even frothy, fluffy stories need that germ of reality in order to ring true. The best humor always overlays some deeply familiar situation we can all relate to; it's what makes Bill Cosby's humor so universally popular, for example. Humor is tough to write well, for me at least. Much more difficult than an angsty story. How to connect my djinn and his sweetheart with my readers? Guacamole isn't the right answer, though it's part of what will fix the story. I need to add the right ingredients to that guac, though. A little pepper, a little onion, a little lemon, and a lot more mixing. And some time to let the guacamole stand, for those ingredients to develop into something rich and flavorful.
I like fluffy stories. I do. But even fluff must have something for a reader to chew on, or else it's simply empty paragraphs, quickly consumed and as quickly forgotten.
Still...I can't quite get away from the guacamole in the djinn's story. It's both truth and sex aid...truth, because we've all had the experience of putting things together and hoping they'll work, whether that be a simple recipe, or a complicated relationship. And sex aid, because...well, I'll just leave you with a little snippet from that work-in-progress, "Genie, No Bottle", and you can see for yourself. Meet Samir, my djinni hero, and Laura, the light of his life.
"Why don't you have a bottle, Samir?" Laura asked, when the scantily clothed female genie on the television smoked herself into her bottle and was corked. It had certainly taken her a long time to get around to asking that question. Her mother had asked it immediately, and most designees of the past had wondered why he had no lamp.
Laura turned around on the bed to look at him, dropping a fair-sized splat of guacamole on his belly. "Whoops." She bent and slurped it into her mouth. Samir's entire body went rigid at the touch of her lips on his skin. She was thorough, too--surely that was her tongue, sweeping every molecule of avocado away. He willed his manhood to remain quiescent and soft, but it had, as always, that one-track mind of its own.
"It's...uh, not that sort of binding." He could hardly speak coherently with her mouth on his skin and her hair brushing his belly and groin. And there was still that smear of guacamole on her cheek. His hand lifted, his index finger reached out, and--she raised her head and looked at him, licking her lips.
It was fated, surely. He sat up slowly, as did she, and when his mouth touched her cheek to rid her at last of the guacamole, her eyes closed. Samir felt her turning her head so that her mouth brushed over his lips. Brushed past. Halted. And returned, so slowly and lightly that he might have imagined it, except for the heat that swarmed over his skin, and her breath against his mouth. Every bodily impulse was to grab her, press her into the bed, thrust his tongue into her mouth, strip those silky blue panties from her hips and satisfy the vastness of his hunger now now now. But in his head rang all those taunts about the feckless, unskilled boys of her youth. He could not afford to become one of them.
Samir slammed the lid on the inferno of his desire, and concentrated on giving Laura the best kiss of her life, drunk or not, rebound or not...here was his chance, and he was taking it.
And once again I have a question: what's your favorite fluffy romance? What keeps you going back to it, why is it you remember that particular story? What's the truth in your guacamole? Inquiring minds want to know.
*grin*
Nina
Crossposted to Nina's LiveJournal Account
Amber Heat Authors blog
Nina's blog
I'm hoping the subject line of this post doesn't scare you away. It must be said: I have a passion for avocados. I have several tasty guacamole recipes, but I like my guac smooth, without red peppers. Finely diced onions are good, and a bit of hot is OK, but guacamole on the whole is to balance out the spiciness of salsa. The bite of lemon in guacamole preserves the gorgeous color as well as giving a tang.
My topic today is only peripherally about guacamole. Primarily, it's about a broken story I'm trying to fix. It's a work-in-progress featuring a djinni who's been cursed to an eternity of enslavement to a wandering family. To the djinni's dismay, he's fallen in love with the last of the line, a mild-mannered accountant named Laura.
While I like this story, I know it is broken. It lacks something that will make it resonate with a reader. In the words of a top-notch beta reader of mine, the story is not quite cotton candy, but neither is it a good meal. It's a lot like mashed potatoes: bland. I wrote the story as a light, frothy piece, something erotic and sweet without a heavy load of angst.
But even frothy, fluffy stories need that germ of reality in order to ring true. The best humor always overlays some deeply familiar situation we can all relate to; it's what makes Bill Cosby's humor so universally popular, for example. Humor is tough to write well, for me at least. Much more difficult than an angsty story. How to connect my djinn and his sweetheart with my readers? Guacamole isn't the right answer, though it's part of what will fix the story. I need to add the right ingredients to that guac, though. A little pepper, a little onion, a little lemon, and a lot more mixing. And some time to let the guacamole stand, for those ingredients to develop into something rich and flavorful.
I like fluffy stories. I do. But even fluff must have something for a reader to chew on, or else it's simply empty paragraphs, quickly consumed and as quickly forgotten.
Still...I can't quite get away from the guacamole in the djinn's story. It's both truth and sex aid...truth, because we've all had the experience of putting things together and hoping they'll work, whether that be a simple recipe, or a complicated relationship. And sex aid, because...well, I'll just leave you with a little snippet from that work-in-progress, "Genie, No Bottle", and you can see for yourself. Meet Samir, my djinni hero, and Laura, the light of his life.
"Why don't you have a bottle, Samir?" Laura asked, when the scantily clothed female genie on the television smoked herself into her bottle and was corked. It had certainly taken her a long time to get around to asking that question. Her mother had asked it immediately, and most designees of the past had wondered why he had no lamp.
Laura turned around on the bed to look at him, dropping a fair-sized splat of guacamole on his belly. "Whoops." She bent and slurped it into her mouth. Samir's entire body went rigid at the touch of her lips on his skin. She was thorough, too--surely that was her tongue, sweeping every molecule of avocado away. He willed his manhood to remain quiescent and soft, but it had, as always, that one-track mind of its own.
"It's...uh, not that sort of binding." He could hardly speak coherently with her mouth on his skin and her hair brushing his belly and groin. And there was still that smear of guacamole on her cheek. His hand lifted, his index finger reached out, and--she raised her head and looked at him, licking her lips.
It was fated, surely. He sat up slowly, as did she, and when his mouth touched her cheek to rid her at last of the guacamole, her eyes closed. Samir felt her turning her head so that her mouth brushed over his lips. Brushed past. Halted. And returned, so slowly and lightly that he might have imagined it, except for the heat that swarmed over his skin, and her breath against his mouth. Every bodily impulse was to grab her, press her into the bed, thrust his tongue into her mouth, strip those silky blue panties from her hips and satisfy the vastness of his hunger now now now. But in his head rang all those taunts about the feckless, unskilled boys of her youth. He could not afford to become one of them.
Samir slammed the lid on the inferno of his desire, and concentrated on giving Laura the best kiss of her life, drunk or not, rebound or not...here was his chance, and he was taking it.
And once again I have a question: what's your favorite fluffy romance? What keeps you going back to it, why is it you remember that particular story? What's the truth in your guacamole? Inquiring minds want to know.
*grin*
Nina
Crossposted to Nina's LiveJournal Account
Amber Heat Authors blog
Nina's blog
posted by Nina Merrill at 2:30 AM
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