Adriana Kraft

When it's time to heat things up...

Adriana Kraft

Stay Sexy!

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Announcing our launch of a new weekly column, Stay Sexy, where we’ll bring you everything we’ve learned about staying sexy and healthy.

Stay Sexy!

What comes to your mind when you see those words? For me, it’s about staying vibrant, healthy, excited about my partner, open to new experiences, creating variety…and, oh yeah, writing the erotic romance for two, three, or more that hubs and I so enjoy.

It’s hard for me to separate what we do from who we are. We invest a great amount of time and energy in staying active and healthy. Our activities feed our writing, and our writing definitely feeds our activities!

By now you readers know he and I are both baby boomers, that special group of folks born between 1946 and 1964. I’m not saying exactly when, but we’re not the youngest members of the cohort. If you’re younger than us boomers, you may not have run into many of the health challenges we face as we age – but, the more you stay fit and sexy in your youth, the fewer preventable problems you will face. It goes without saying, the better your sex life will be in your fifties and sixties!

For all the above reasons, tomorrow we’re launching a weekly feature on our blog aimed at sharing tips we’ve learned along the way for keeping vibrant, healthy, excited and sexy across the life cycle. We’re calling it Stay Sexy, and we’ll be running it every Sunday.

We’ll continue to scour the web for new information, tips and resources and bring you the best ones that catch our eye. Sometimes we’ll simply share something that happened to us and what we’ve learned from it. And we’ll be reaching into the romance writers’ community, featuring interviews with some of your favorite authors who are also on the road to fitness and health.

It’s all about one of our tag lines, Hot Sex at Any (Legal) Age. We love to write it, we love to read it, and we hope to embody it. We’re excited to be sharing that journey in this new way with you, our readers.

Be sure to check us out tomorrow, February 3, when we get behind the so-called myth: does sex burn a lot of calories or not?

Stay sexy!

Nina Hartley Changed My Life #AVN Expo

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Wow. We did it – hubs and I, who co-write Erotic Romance for Two, Three, or More, sprang for the cost of the tickets and went to yesterday’s Adult Entertainment Expo, part of the AVN Awards celebration this week in Las Vegas.

If there was one person I wanted to meet (and never dreamed I could), it was Nina Hartley. We started watching her videos more years ago than probably she or we would like to confess, though it’s clear we do share baby boomer status with her.

As fans of our Swinging Games series can probably guess, we accessed adult videos (and yes, they were video cassettes) to spice up our own sex life, a daunting challenge with young kids still in the house and the inevitable effects of aging starting to settle in.

We were in the right place at the right time. Nina’s part of a new lifestyle website (more on that in an upcoming blog) – we had no clue, but were just browsing booths and saw her pic. I asked the staff person if she would be there – YES! In ten minutes! You can believe we waited for her – and I was first in line.

What I said:

“Nina, you changed my life.”

What we talked about:

I was astounded. After I told her how much we’ve loved her films, she started talking about how our bodies change as we age, and how important it is to believe in ourselves inside, remember what it felt like to be twenty nine, and enjoy our bodies as much now as we did then. More, in fact – she shared that, and I totally agree. I am having more fun in my body than when I was twenty nine, for certain!

What I wish I’d said:

That she was at the center of a profound series of changes in my life, and I am grateful beyond words. Of the videos we started watching, hers were the most engaging – it’s no surprise I like a storyline, which so many of hers deliver, and I loved watching her body and her sensuality. Naked Hollywood was my favorite series, and we bought them all.

We definitely benefitted from a jump-start to our libidos. That led us, somewhat later, to try our hand at writing the kinds of stories we liked to watch – so Nina, if you’re reading this, I don’t think we’d be a published erotic romance author, if it wasn’t for your adult films.

Good luck at tonight’s Awards Ceremony!!

Sex Positivity, continued.

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Every morning I troll my FaceBook “Likes” looking for posts to share with readers. Hubs and I write erotic romance together because we love it, we love great sex, and we want to be part of helping our readers not only find hot spicy reads, but expecially find joy and pleasure in their sexuality.

Two posts crossed my path this morning and they kind of go together. The first is from Life On The Swingset – a real-life swinger who is blogging about his journey in the lifestyle. He came out about his poly lifestyle to a friend, and it cost him the friendship. Here’s the blog LINK. Go like his Facebook Page, if you’re looking for a window into the poly lifestyle.

The very next post in my feed was from The Pleasure Coach (another page I highly recommend you “like”) – it was the graphic below:

So I always reach back to the Sex Positivity credo (with a shout-out to sex blogger Charlie Glickman) when I run into these things: There are only three criteria for judging any sexual act.

  1. that it takes place among consenting adults
  2. that it brings pleasure to the participants
  3. that it brings no harm to anyone involved.

That’s it. Period. No judgment, no censure, no shame in someone else’s choices, as long as it meets these criteria.

So that’s my hope, on this mid-January day in 2013.

Go have some intensely erotic, normal fun!

It’s a Tough Job…

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But somebody’s got to do it!

“Research,” I mean. No, not that kind, though hubs and I enjoy our share of that, too.

I’m talking about combing the web every morning for the latest tips, guides, and resources to spice up your sex life. Of course, we hope you include sharing sizzling scenes from our erotic romances – that’s why we write them, after all.

When we find something we like, we share it on our Facebook PAGE – hop over there and “like” us to feed our finds into your Facebook newstream.

Already we love how this is enriching our own life. I’m an early riser, so most mornings by the time I take my husband his first cup of coffee, my brain is buzzing with sexy ideas I’ve found and I’m ready to plot new scenes and stories (or activities :)). We’re sure finding more ideas than we’ll be able to try out in one lifetime – but we’ll bring you the best of them, and sometimes also blog about them.

One of our faves is the Good Vibrations online magazine, The Buzz, at http://goodvibesblog.com. This morning, they had some great tips for staying present during sex – you know, not leaving our bodies or making the holiday to-do list or fostering anxious thoughts that take us away from the pleasure of the moment.

It’s a fabulous article packed with good advice. My personal favorite (and one I practice regularly) is #3: “Third, before sex, spend 30 minutes to an hour doing whatever makes you feel hot.” This can be a marvelous prelude to set the mood and ramp up the eroticism. It can be whatever works for you – perhaps a soothing bubble bath, your favorite adult videos, a massage with scented oils, or reading a spicy erotic scene, alone or together.

Here’s the link – enjoy!

http://goodvibesblog.com/staying-present-during-sex/

It’s only maple leaves…

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The moment grabbed me from out of nowhere. Hubs and I were walking in the neighborhood (a daily practice, whenever weather permits). We rounded the corner, scuffed through the rustling golden maple leaves that had magically carpeted the sidewalk since only yesterday, and I was suddenly a five year old child in the front yard of the house I grew up in, where four mature sugar maple trees dropped their colorful bounty just for me, without fail, every autumn. A child’s paradise!

I’ve been thinking about the moment and about writing fiction – about the power of our sensory memory to transport us across time and distance, about the power of sensuous imagery to propel us into the moment. Four of my five senses were involved (well, okay, I never tasted them, now or as a child :)). Any sense by itself might have sufficed, but the combination was compelling. You can scuffle all sorts of other leaves in your path, but maple leaves have a light crisp sound all their own. It must be the sugar in them that creates their unique scent – I can smell them coming, and I wait for it every autumn. There’s the common musky autumn dried leaf scent, but there’s an added punch if it’s maple. The touch? Well, I didn’t pile them up for a tumble (they were my neighbor’s leaves, after all), but I did pick one up, crumble it in my hand and remember. And the sight – the intense color of any single leaf, the transformation of entire neighborhoods from green to gold (some years, mixed with some red and orange.)

Skillful authors use these details to pull us into the scenes they’re creating – here’s to more sensory images in everything we read, write, and do! And here’s a little taste of the autumn bounty from our neighborhood ~ the end of the lane, the view from our deck, and across the road from the front  of our house:

 

 

If you like it sizzling hot…

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…check out this EXCERPT just posted at a Sex Toy Review site in the UK! Nymphomanic Ness is an official reviewer of sex toys. She went looking for erotic excerpts featuring toys, and we answered the call with a scene involving three women and a double dong, fresh from our newest release, Triple Play.

We love to write scenes with toys (heck, we love toys, plain and simple), so we’ve got lots more we’ll be sending her.

What are your favorite toys? Maybe we’ll write one into a new scene for you!