Adriana Kraft

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

Boomers

Time for a confession #MFRWAuthor #BabyBoomers

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It’s confession time.

An author friend posted the question why do you write? on one of our author loops. As I pondered how to answer, I realized it’s so embedded in our own personal story that I couldn’t give a short answer.

Our readers know we are baby boomers. If they’re anywhere close to our age, they also know that midlife can bring a host of challenges in the bedroom. For us, that was complicated by health issues: A heart attack (in his forties!) for him, abdominal repair issues for me. Add onto that the fact I have three stepchildren. From the moment we married until our own son turned 20, I always had at least one teenager in the house. Time for sex? Interest in it? Not so much, for longer than I’d like to confess.

But neither of us was willing to give up. Our parents, it turns out, lived very long lives. Who, at midlife, wants to look forward to three or four more decades with no sex? We started looking for resources and found some great ones. We started watching videos – yes, Those Kinds of videos, in the bedroom, as a prelude to our own activities.

After a while we started saying things like “I’d like that story better if…” and “what would really turn me on is if she…”  As you might guess, we started setting down stories that better met our needs. Gradually we didn’t use the videos so much – we read out loud from our own material.

So why do we write? We want to save the world from boring sex.

Feel free to take a peek at our Swinging Lifestyle stories and our Polyamory stories and let us know if we’re succeeding!

The first 2000 steps #MFRWAuthor #Health #Boomers #Motivation

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“Watch that first step, it’s a doozy!” Sometimes just taking that first step towards a more healthy lifestyle is a giant undertaking. But here’s the thing – those steps have to happen over and over, just like Groundhog Day, which popularized but probably did not originate the “doozy” phrase.

Now that I’ve discovered 8000 steps a day is the threshold that makes a discernible difference in my energy level and mental alertness, the challenge is how to fit them in.

I’m an early riser, usually up without an alarm between five and six a.m. I wake with a mental list of the tasks I hope to polish off in the two hours before my husband gets up. I usually wake feeling energetic and motivated, not wanting the rest of my day to get cluttered up with what I leave undone in the early morning.

BUT I’m starting to learn that if I don’t take advantage of the cool morning hours to make a significant dent in my daily 8000 steps, I don’t reach that goal. Polishing off 2000 steps before breakfast seems to be the minimum required to get to 8000 by the end of the day.

Now my marching orders become a little more daunting: I have to fight my urge to “get things done” and decide that staying fit, healthy, energetic and alert outranks whatever I might accomplish short term. It matters more. I have to give up maybe twenty minutes worth of tasks (and feelings of accomplishment) and convince myself that the mood elevation, long term benefits, and yes, feeling of accomplishment from reaching my steps goal is worth it. Every morning. Over and over.

How to motivate myself to keep doing it? I’ve got lots of tactics and will share more about them down the road. Right now, a picture might be worth a thousand words (and it sure helps with 2000 steps!)

We spend much of the winter in southern Arizona. Almost every morning, the Arizona sky puts a smile on my face as I’m walking. That’s a draw to at least set foot out the door – and as I’m sure you know, taking that first step is all important, whether or not it’s a doozy.

So far, so good!

Every step counts… #health #boomers #MFRWAuthor

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Are you interested in your health? How much time do you spend thinking about it on a daily basis?

More important, how much time do you invest in doing something about it on a daily basis?

When I was in my twenties, I probably didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, though through a quirk of fate (friends in college in the 60s) I’d already developed a daily exercise program.

We got excited about the RCAF routine and got together in the dorm halls (not co-ed, in those days 😊) most evenings to run through the 10 minute routine. It stuck with me. I liked what it did for my body – probably more motivated by what I wanted to look like than health concerns in those days!

But as I’ve grown older (Baby Boomer, here), my health concerns and activities have increased. Though each of my parents lived a very long time (95 and 101), both developed forms of dementia late in life: My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and needed care for her symptoms for her last five years, during most of which time she didn’t know who I was (or her husband, either). My dad’s was more classic age-related dementia, and he continued to know me (the “blue-eyed” daughter), remembered raunchy jokes from his youth, and kept his assisted living staff entertained and engaged by laughing with them often. If I have a choice, I’d prefer his trajectory.

Fast forward to today: Each time a new link surfaces with information about preventing Alzheimer’s and dementia, I’m all over it in a flash. Whatever my genes have in store for me down the road, it’s clear a great deal is within my control. At the very least, if this is my future, I can delay onset and significantly decrease symptoms through how I live on a daily basis. And even if my genes aren’t poised to take me there, I’ll experience vastly greater quality of life through my remaining years.

So I’m going to take up blogging about it again. If you’re interested in what I’ve had to say about it in the past, you can explore the Stay Sexy column we published in 2013 and 2014.

My new series of posts will have the somewhat broader focus of overall health, though of course you can count on us to never ignore sex 😊. I’ll share tips, new research, what has worked for both halves of Adriana Kraft, what hasn’t, and opportunities for guests who have a similar focus. Drop us a line (use the contact button in the r.h. sidebar) and tell us what you’d like to blog about as our guest.

For today, I’m sticking to counting steps. FitBit has sold millions of step counters with its campaign about the benefits of walking 10,000 steps a day. Is the hype true? The answer, in general, is yes. A 2017 HuffPo article supports the benefits, with some caveats that are worth noting: slow steps don’t have the same benefit as a faster pace, and there’s no magic threshold at 10,000. More is simply better.

After researching step-counters, I invested in a FitBit Charge 2 (Mr. Kraft gave it to me last Christmas, actually). I love it. I always know where I am relative to my goals. What I especially appreciate is being reminded to move – at least 250 steps – every hour. I spend much of my day sitting at the computer (imagine that!). Not moving, it turns out, can be lethal.

What’s more, I’ve discovered that the bottom threshold, for me, happens at about 8,000 steps. If I get less than that in a day, I feel more sluggish, less energized, and less alert the next day (and Mr. Kraft is far more likely to beat me at WordStreak). I’m on much more of an even keel if I’ve reached at least that much, though my goal continues to be more. Every step counts.

What works for you? We’d love to hear from you, in comments below or via our email contact on the sidebar.

Stay Sexy ~ We’re Not Making This Stuff Up!

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…well, of course, in our erotic romance fiction, we make up lots of stuff. 🙂

But today I’m talking about those phrases you may have seen out there like sixty is the new forty, reverse the effects of aging, stay forever young, and the like. Pie in the sky? Nope, it’s true!

Of course we’re not going to actually stay young forever – but increasingly, there’s compelling evidence that certain healthy lifestyle habits do, in fact, reverse some of the effects of aging.

Earlier this week, NPR covered the most recent entry into this database. In a five year study authored by Dean Ornish, of heart-health fame, participants who engaged in a select group of healthy practices lengthened the telomeres on the ends of their chromosomes significantly, while the telomeres of the control group actually shortened.

It would take a lot of brain science to delve into a thorough understanding of telomeres and how they function, but here’s a short version: telomeres protect the dna within the chromosomes, and shorter telomeres are associated with shorter life span and an increase in many chronic diseases.

Prior to the present study, it’s not been known whether healthy living creates longer telomeres (and decreased susceptibility to disease), or whether people with longer telomeres simply have a healthier lifestyle, perhaps because they enjoy greater health. This exploratory study demonstrates in a small sample that the lifestyle differences can be causal.

So yes, sixty can be the new forty – or at least, in our sixties, we can still reverse some of the effects of aging through our habits. What habits? Ornish elaborated as follows:

A whole foods, low-fat, plant-based diet that’s also low in refined carbohydrate.

Walking for a half an hour a day.

Doing various stress management techniques, including yoga and meditation, for an hour a day.

Spending more time with their loved ones, including friends and family.

Apropos of all of the above, my husband and I went dancing last night. It’s part of what we love about being so close to Las Vegas, where great dance bands are easy to come by. We were fascinated by a highly energetic and broadly smiling elderly couple who hardly sat out a dance – fast or slow, western, rock and roll or hip-hop. I would have guessed their age to be early seventies, at most. A friend set us straight: both member of this couple are ninety years old. Not only that – where did they meet, after they’d each lost their spouse? They met at the gym, where they both still work out regularly.

That’s what I want to be when the time comes – ninety, vigorous, and happily dancing my feet off!

Don’t Waste Your Money!

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Cruising the web last week to update buy links and review links for my back list, I ran across a reader’s review for the first book in our Swinging Games series at Extasy Books, Anticipation. Let me say first that, like most authors, I’ve developed a tough skin for negative reviews of our work. I’m not writing this blog to refute a negative review – everything this reader wrote is, in fact, true about this book. Here’s her one-star review:

 This is a short story about meeting another couple that they never actually meet. I read it in about 15 minutes. Don’t waste your money.

My husband and I write erotic romance together, mostly ménage, and mostly with heroines who are bisexual. We started writing our Swinging Games series about three years ago because we were fascinated by the Swing Lifestyle and thought it would be a fun device to deliver a wide range of ménage and other hot sex scenes for our readers. We created our lead characters – a Baby Boomer couple whose kids are grown. Brett and Jen Andrews have decided to try swinging to spice up their sex life, and because Jen has newly realized she’s bisexual.

Anticipation is a 5,000 word short story that sets the stage for the series. It drops in on our couple just before their first lifestyle encounter. We get to experience with them the delicious buildup of fantasies, expectations and sexual tension – not to mention the tantalizing impact of those fantasies when Jen and Brett make love, just the two of them.

So, if you only want to spend money on actual ménage, absolutely, don’t waste your money on this one – plunge right in anywhere in the series and taste the decadence with Jen and Brett in any number of swinging adventures. By now they’ve been active for three years, and six more books have followed Anticipation.

  

  

We’re excited to announce that Book Eight, Pushing the Limits, is scheduled for release this coming Sunday, January 15, at Extasy Books. Here’s a blurb and a link to an EXCERPT:

BLURB: Swinging Games Pushing the Limit

Their new Unicorn Sarah Creston may be out of town, but that doesn’t stop Jen and Brett Andrews from burning up the wires with some scorching three-way phone sex. While they’re waiting for Sarah, Ryan eagerly pursues Brett for some hot male action, followed by a house party that challenges Jen and Brett’s stereotypes. Sarah finally arrives, exhausted and drained from weeks spent helping her aging parents. Jen and Brett provide total tender care for three days – but when Jen invites Sarah to move in for the whole summer, Brett asks himself, what’s the limit?

Advice to Baby Boomers: Get Rejected!

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It was the late seventies, I was freshly divorced, and I was in shock and definitely not happy. So when my new counselor handed me the flyer for an Association for Humanistic Psychology workshop entitled “How to be Happily Unmarried,” I was all over it. I desperately needed hope from somewhere, and I was sure willing to learn from anyone who dared put the words happily and unmarried in the same sentence.

I can still remember my nervousness as I entered the large ballroom in a downtown Chicago hotel – there must have been over two hundred people in the room. I almost turned around and walked out, but desperation won the day and I walked in. I probably slunk to the nearest seat – still royally ashamed that I was not only single, but divorced. I’m quite certain I didn’t make eye contact with anyone.

My heart sank again when I saw our presenter: short and unassuming but reasonably trim, she was neatly dressed in slacks and a sweater, and her hair was gray. How was anybody that old going to have anything useful to say to me?

Once she started speaking, however, she energized the room. Lively and charismatic, she could have made a living as a stand-up comic. She swiftly broke us into small groups, handed us assignments, shuffled the groups, gave us a new task, and only then did she tell us her story. In her mid fifties, she was divorced after a life-long marriage, and she was taking no prisoners in her determination to form relationships and build happiness back into her life.

We had a one hour lunch break that day, and she gave us marching orders for that, as well. Our instructions were to start conversations with at least four strangers on the streets of downtown Chicago. It didn’t count if the person ignored us – we had to keep trying until four different persons at least responded to something we said. (f.y.i., she didn’t say form a relationship or take these persons home to our bed – just start a conversation!)

The day was a total success. I sailed through her luncheon assignment with flying colors (and probably made eye contact, too), and by the end of the day I had dates with three other workshop participants, my first dates since the divorce. I considered it money well spent: I could taste happiness again, and I began to have hope.

Those three men are long gone from my life, but something else from that day has stuck with me. During Q&A, a timid-looking woman raised her hand and asked something like the following: “Aren’t you afraid of rejection?” I’ll never forget our presenter’s answer: “Honey, if I don’t get rejected at least once a day, I’m not trying very hard.”

I won’t say I follow her advice every day, but I know it made a difference in my life, and that difference is part of why I now write erotic romance with my husband of three decades. It’s also part of why I so much admire Claire Johnson, heroine of our latest Baby Boomer release, Ripening Passion (Whiskey Creek Press Torrid):

Claire Johnson’s dedication to sex—the cornerstone of her career—led her to found the Center for Sexuality and Sex Practices. Now in her fifties, she knows the Center must keep pace with the rapidly growing Baby Boomer market, so she agrees to go back on camera for a series on sex and aging. But work with her nemesis?

Former English Professor Max Wilson has championed the cause of the Center ever since his deceased wife sought the Center’s help to rekindle the nearly extinguished sexual flames of their relationship. He loves working on camera and welcomes the challenge to perform with the svelte but feisty temptress.

Sparks fly immediately on and off camera. Can either Claire or Max transform those sparks into a fire of sexual desire for their viewers? And if they succeed, what will happen when the movie’s over?

I don’t think Claire ever had a need to take a workshop like my success story from the seventies – but she sure could have taught it. The other piece of wisdom I gleaned from this look backwards in time? Mid-fifties doesn’t seem nearly as old as it used to! Something else I couldn’t have known that day – hot sex after fifty is a good thing.

Purchase Ripening Passion at

Whiskey Creek

Amazon Kindle

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