A Modern Day Romance~ Life of a Boring Married

I've been slacking on the blogging lately. To be honest, I've been slacking on the writing. It's dumb really, all I want to be when I grow up is be a full-time writer, but life gets in the way.

My day job has taken over. All good things. I have a new position which brought on some training and I am working new hours. I'm enjoying it, but adjusting. There seems to be less time for author and publishing stuff. And then I spend the time I have on publishing stuff and then my author stuff suffers. And when I have time to write (like right now) the words won't come—I stare at a blank screen and think about all the other things I could be doing with my time.

On top of that, I am back into the roller derby swing of things, complete with a fresh crop of bruises and a sore ache-y body from practice this week. Nothing better to make a girl feel alive!

And then there's this man I live with. You know, my husband, that guy I say hi to in passing when I whisk in from work and then back out with my derby gear. Oh yeah, him.

I think that's the problem with the blogging and writing as well, I often like to blog about the kinkier side of life. The spanking, sex and crazy fun we've been enjoying. Is it terrible to admit there has been none?

There's been nothing of that sort to blog about. I'm not lamenting or looking for sympathy. And I know it won't last forever. I think it's something that happens now and again. Nothing is wrong with us, life is happening. Outside stressors and things keep popping up. Family issues, health things, just all around suck-age.

If anything this short-term, sex-less, kink-less period has made me appreciate the marriage I have and the man I am sharing my life with. When the day has completely beaten me down and my feet are aching as hard as my soul, there's no one else I want to collapse onto the couch with. We sit in companionable silence and watch shows that have piled up on our DVR. Or we run some errands together and talk about anything and everything on the car ride. 

Is sex important in a relationship? Yes, I think it is. But I also think, since delving into the kinkier side of things, we have come to realize that communication is probably the most important thing in any relationship. I can get through this unsexy time because we're doing it together.

Life's been boring with nothing much to talk about. Maybe we've become boring married people. I'm trying to find the proper outrage within myself. I definitely never aspired to be a boring married person. But when you see the person you decided to spend the rest of your life with struggling and hurting and all you can do is hug them and tell them you get it. Kiss them and tell them you wish you could fix it. From the problem he's having at work to the biggest of life's biggest unfair things. And he smiles at you and says he knows, and he loves you.

And you realize you're his person. I mean, I've known all along that he's my person. You know, the person that can make everything seem better by doing nothing at all, but just being there for you. I guess I knew somewhere deep down that it probably did go both ways. I just didn't realize it until recently.

So here we are. The very (at this moment) un-exciting McKay's slogging through life much like the rest of the world. Is it any wonder I can't seem to finish this book jam packed with sex and kink and other lovely things? It's coming I swear.

In the meantime, I am in the middle of editing some very deliciously erotic, downright panty-dampening things that will be coming to you soon!

I'm sure life will be back to normal soon. Actually, this probably is normal. The ebb and flow of things, or life in general. Sometimes you just have to take a step back and figure shit out.

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Anonymous Hotel Sex~ #WipItUp Wednesday

Hello my friends! It has been ages and ages since I've been a part of Wip It Up Wednesday. I thought it was about time to share something I've been working on.

I'm trying my damnedest to get the end of Masters of Fetishes Book 4 finished up. This one revolves around Dani, who was a minor character in Bound, Book 3 of the series.

You don't have to have read Bound in order to enjoy Dani's story, but Book 4 is not quite finished yet, so you have some time to read the first three if you need to catch up!

I'm hoping for a March release (fingers crossed that I can get it all done in time). In the meantime, here is the opening of the book. Dani dabbles in BDSM, but has decided going to clubs is not her scene. So what's a girl to do? She sets up sessions online with a mysterious man, whom she meets at a hotel for some anonymous sex.

Here's an excerpt from Masters of Fetishes, Book 4- tentatively titled Claimed.

Dani shook as he circled behind her. She wanted this. Craved this. It was the anticipation that killed her. And he was good at drawing out the moment. That’s what she liked about this arrangement, he ticked all her boxes. He seemed to be more familiar with what would turn her on than even she was. He was so in tune with her—they were in tune with each other. It was too good to be true. Almost.

It would have been too good to be true if they were in some sort of relationship. Sometimes she let her mind wander and imagine what it would be like to have a man like him all the time. Could she live with this intensity every hour of the day?

“Ask me for it, gorgeous.”

He brought her back to the present, away from her childish fantasies of turning her hired Dom into boyfriend material.

“If you’re a good little girl and you beg the way I like, maybe I’ll let you come tonight.”

otredieolo.tumblr.com

That's it for now, just a little teasing taste!

Make sure you check out all the other Wipsters this week!

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Holly Golightly~ Your Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

I love older movies and all things Audrey, so when a local theater was advertising a screening of Breakfast at Tiffany's to kick off Valentine's Day weekend, I made plans to go.

The only thing was, I didn't know why they were marketing this night as a romantic date night. I've seen the movie, dozens of times, but haven't in the past few years. I realized I hadn't re-watched the movie again, starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, since I read the novel by Truman Capote.

I forgot that Hollywood changed Capote's original novella, so it does indeed play out like a romance with the Hollywood HEA and all. The book's ending is a bit more believable, but leaves you a little depressed. At least, it left me a little depressed.

On the surface, Breakfast at Tiffany's has all of the elements of your modern day rom-com. Scattered brain single girl trying to make it in the big city. A meet-cute with her new, insanely attractive neighbor. Let's pretend, just for a moment, that her crotchety upstairs neighbor, Mr. Yunioshi, isn't a horribly racist portrayal of a Japanese man played by Mickey Rooney.

Come on, Hollywood. Was this ever a good idea?

Holly Golightly is an iconic movie image. Just about everyone can recognize the poster even if you haven't seen the movie. Despite George Peppard's Paul being enamored with Holly, she's a crazy person. It's actually ill-advised that anyone get into a relationship with her. In all honesty, Holly has ever right to be as crazy as she is. She was an orphaned runaway, trying to care for her younger brother Fred when a rancher and veternarian takes them both in. Oh, and he marries her when she's fourteen, and enlists her to help in raising his four children. 

To his credit, Doc Golightly seems like a very nice man. Even if he is tracking down his child bride and trying to take her back to his ranch. He even tries to emotionally black mail her, telling her he'll throw her brother out onto the streets if she doesn't come home. Who wouldn't be a little messed up with a back story like that?

Holly and Paul are equally flawed, and aside from being neighbors in the same apartment building, they realize they lead similar lives. Paul is a writer, his older girlfriend pays for his apartment and gives him money—so she has the ability to visit whenever her husband is away. Holly makes a living as a high paid escort, she informs Paul, "Men give me fifty dollars everytime I get up to use the powder room." They're both just getting by, essentially selling themselves to make ends meet.

A glamorous life funded by other people.

They have a mutual friendship and a somewhat off-balance attraction. Paul falls in love with Holly, from her zany ways to her wounded past. Holly seems to love Paul in her own way, but she calls him Fred because he reminds her of her brother and she almost seems to be replacing Paul in her life with that of the brother she feels she abandoned.

Holly shrugs off Paul's advances and tries her hardest to land herself a rich husband (a gold digger long before Kanye was writing songs about them). Her motives are pure though, her brother Fred is getting out of the army and she needs a way to support him especially since Doc's threat of throwing him out. She longs to have her brother back again and to make amends for abandoning him. You can respect her for that.

In the book *SPOILER ALERT* (if it is even possible to spoil a book written close to 60 years ago) Paul doesn't even have a name, he's just the narrator, and he does love Holly and she doesn't return that same love. But in the end she leaves. She dumps her cat in the alley, "We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other." And she's off, leaving the narrator to wonder what became of her.

In the movie, it all clicks for Holly when Paul tells her she's afraid of letting someone love her. They retrieve the cat from the rain in the alley way and they share a big romantic Hollywood kiss right there on the New York City sidewalk. Because even though Holly's mantra this entire time has been that no man can keep her, Paul has convinced her in the span of thirty seconds that he can.

And I'm supposed to believe they lived happily ever after? Neither of them even have any skills! How are they going to support themselves? They're both used to the finer things in life which have been provided for them by their richer and older lovers. This relationship has doom written all over it. It's certainly ending with Paul's clothes scattered all over the fire escape as Holly dumps them out the window, throwing him out of her apartment and out of her life before she leaves on her quest to find herself a rich man again.

Even if I found the ending to the book slightly depressing with Holly disappearing into the ether, I at least had the small fraction of hope that she was working through her shit and maybe getting her life together.

You can't fix her, Paul. Let her work her life out without butting in. As a matter of fact, maybe you should examine your own life and stop trying to fix other people.

This all might sound like I hate this movie and I'm telling you not to watch it. That's not at all what I'm saying. It's one of my favorite movies and if you get the chance to watch it, please do, it's full of interesting characters and great actors. But maybe read the book after your done watching and see if you don't agree with me.

As for Holly Golightly and her iconic look? Definitely emulate it all you want, she nailed the little black dress before it was a thing. But don't try to be like Holly Golightly, she's the original crazy ex-girlfriend and no one needs that in their life.

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A Blizzard and a Blur~ Making Things Awkward with the Neighbors

We had a blizzard here on the east coast a few weeks back. Feet of snow. They closed down my day job for the day, which never happens. It convinced me the world was ending. (The world did not end and we had oddly warm days following the blizzard so most of the snow piles are gone.)

Mr. McKay and I took the opportunity of being snowed in together and watched some movies we'd been saving. We had just finished some drinks and were queuing up a second movie when I heard our neighbor out front shoveling the path.

We live in a townhouse so we share a porch and a sidewalk with our next door neighbor. They just moved in this past summer and this was the first snowfall we had to contend with. Earlier in the day, I had cracked the door open to inform him that the landscaping crew normally comes around to dig us out. I didn't want our new neighbor to think we were being lazy or not pulling our weight. Well, we were being a little lazy. I'll stay snowed in until someone else comes to dig me out.

So now it was night, the snow was not letting up and our new neighbor was outside shoveling for at least the fourth time that day.

Fearful that our relationship with our new neighbors would end up like our relationship with our old neighbors (she didn't even make eye contact with us anymore by the time she moved out), I urged Mr. McKay into his winter things and got some beers from the fridge.

"We're helping him shovel?" Mr. McKay asks, eyeing me skeptically.

"No, no. We're going to persuade him to stop." I hold up the beers and wrap my scarf tighter around me.

Our peace offering and thank you gift of one beer on the porch in the blizzard, turned into several. Our neighbor's girlfriend came outside in her pajamas and drank a bottle of wine. We stood outside, in the falling snow, draining beers and chucking them into the snow mound beside us.

Remember, we had been drinking before we even went outside... things devolved quickly. We ended up inside our neighbors' house (which satisfied so much curiosity in me as I have been trying to figure out the layout of their house since day one). We talked, we drank, we played a board game (?). I took it as our cue to leave when, at least two bottles of wine in, the female half of our new neighbor couple laid down in the middle of the kitchen. "At least she hasn't taken her pants off yet," her boyfriend helpfully supplied.

That last comment made me feel like I found a kindred spirit. Sometimes you just have to get drunk and take your pants off. It happens.

We stumbled back home and only then realized how drunk we were.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I woke up feeling sick. Cursing myself for getting a hangover, I bolted to the bathroom only to meet Mr. McKay in the hallway who staggered into the wall. "I think I'm still drunk," he commented as I whizzed past him in just enough time to retch into the toilet.

Later in the day, once the incessant pounding in my head stopped, we assessed our night. "You invited them to our St. Patrick's Day party," Mr. McKay informed me.

I nod, remembering that bit of the evening. Also, I get super friendly when I am drinking and invite people to hang out with us all the time. So if we ever meet in a bar, buy me a drink, you can come party at our place!

The night is a blur, we pieced most of our conversations back together. But it turns out, aside from being around the same age, we have almost nothing in common. There was a conversation where female neighbor was bemoaning the fact that everyone in the world seems to be pressuring them to get married. I piled on with how everyone in the world seems to think it is vitally important for me to produce offspring right at this very second. I guess societal pressures like that are pretty universal and they make everyone who is feeling pressured completely miserable. We bonded over that and had ourselves another drink.

"She was laying on the floor when we left."

"Yeah, she was way drunker than you," Mr. McKay concedes.

"Win!" I throw my hands up in the air. I am always the drunkest person at the party, mini victories.

"You tried to recruit her to your roller derby team."

"I try to recruit everyone to my roller derby team." It's true. Derby gives me life and I can't understand why every person in the world is not playing it! She probably just thinks I was recruiting her to join some kind of cult with the way I was going on and on.

Something flits through the fuzziness of my memories and I grab my phone to confirm. "We traded phone numbers," I say, scrolling through the drunk texts from the night before.

I think my exact words to her were, "You know, if you ever need anyone to get a package from your porch, or to tell you when your house catches on fire." True story, one of my number one fears is my house burning down with my cats still inside—there is a morbid person hidden under this ray of sunshine.

I don't think we will ever be close friends with them. Our interactions have gotten supremely more awkward. I told Mr. McKay that it feels like we had a one night stand with the neighbors. Like when you would get drunk in college and make out with your friend's boyfriend's roommate and then you didn't know how to act casual when you saw him in the cafeteria the next day. No? Just me then. But you get the picture.

Our crowning achievement from the night of the drunk blizzard?

Mr. McKay pointed out, "Hey, as drunk as we were we didn't tell them that you write smut, or that we publish it."

Win! Maybe we came off more normal than we actually are.

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Pushing Boundaries~ Adaline Raine Visits!!

I have Adaline Raine over today sharing from her new book Her Leading Man. At this point in the story Gretchen has entered into a D/s relationship with Tristan and they're still working out the nuances. Or rather, Tristan is warning Gretchen to behave and she's, well, you'll see...


“If you rebel to get a reaction later—”


Gretchen placed her finger over his lips and waggled her eyebrows. She was feeling suddenly confident and didn’t want him to enact any sort of consequences this early in the morning.


“If I rebel later then I’m sure you will respond accordingly but I don’t plan on it.” She yanked her finger away when he stuck his tongue out. “Ew! Gross.”


“Fine, I’ll take your word for it.” He cocked a smile as she wiped her hand on his shirt. “Don’t push today, you won’t like the reaction.”


“You think I’ll push?” Gretchen went back to her pancakes and took a large bite. She chewed thoughtfully then washed it down with a small sip of coffee. He kept his eyes on her as she took another then another. “What?”


“Just remember good behavior gets rewarded.” His smile slowly widened into a grin that spread across his face. “Bad behavior gets punished. Choose to act however you decide, but I’ll be paying attention.”


“These pancakes are like an orgasm in my mouth.” Gretchen completely disregarded his warning. She couldn’t think about it right now.


“I’m not playing, Gretchen.”


“Neither am I! Your cooking is seriously orgasmic.”


“You’re going to be in so much trouble later, aren’t you?” Tristan shook his head.


“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” She stood and cleaned off her spot. “Like I said, I don’t plan on it...”

Gretchen Williams had finally been offered her dream job. After years of writing—screenplays, various freelance jobs, and erotic spanking romance—one of her book series had been adapted for television. She had been over the moon at the invitation to join the crew on set and overlook day to day operations. 

Of course she never expected to wind up as the whipping girl. The main actress balked at the idea of a hand coming anywhere near her perfect round behind, and after some deliberations Gretchen offers up her derriere for showbiz . She never dreamed her bottom would be on display for everyone to see, but the bigger problem is the sudden attention from the male lead actor. 

Tristan Callahan knew exactly what he was signing up for when he accepted the contract for a one year term, tentative for a second season at best. The subject matter appealed to him for a variety of reasons, ones he kept to himself. Until Gretchen throws a temper tantrum like a true diva. He takes her in hand, right in her own trailer, proving that he’s been doing very little acting so far. 

They embark into a secret D/s relationship. 

When photos of them together at a local BDSM dungeon surface and leak to the media, they find themselves with tough choices to make. Will their relationship overcome the scandal or is Gretchen doomed to say goodbye to Tristan in true Hollywood fashion? 

Buy It Today:

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All Romance

Barnes & Noble

Find Adaline Raine:
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Catching Up and Catching My Breath!

Hello, my lovely blog readers. For reasons unknown to me I am having a very busy week. It seems every single day has been scheduled up to the minute. By the time my day is done and I have finished everything, I collapse on the couch at 10pm and will myself to keep my eyes open for one more hour so I can spend some time with Mr. McKay.

He's still awfully sweet and awesome to hang out with even if he is neglected at the moment. (Don't worry, I scheduled a full one hour block of time last night to eat dinner and watch Downton Abbey with him.)

Some things have happened since last I blogged. First and foremost, Spanking Romance Reviews has a vote going on for the Best of 2015.

Click Here to take a look and cast your votes. Mastered was nominated for Best Menage and Dani, from Bound, got nominated for Best Minor Character.

I'm in the middle of working on Dani's story so this was exciting news for me!

So go on and vote!! You don't have to vote for my books, but vote and show some love for your favorites!

One other thing I would like to share: Bound got a really nice review from Vivi on Insatiable Readings. Hop on over and take a peek if you are so inclined. It really brightens my day when someone tells me they like what I have written, and it definitely helps the writing process of the new book.

That's all for now. Sorry, it was kind of a business-y post, no funny anecdotes today.

Thanks for stopping by and I promise a real post soon!

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