Adriana Kraft

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

erotic romance

Sex Positivity

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Consent, Pleasure, Well Being. The term Sex Positivity has been around for a while and can mean many different things to different people.

Lately I’ve been following blogger and Sex Educator Charlie Glickman, and I like his definition best of all. The only criteria for evaluating any sex act, he says, are consent, pleasure, and well being.

Being sex positive doesn’t mean that we love sex, or have lots of it, or think everyone should practice free love. In fact, it means we don’t judge what anyone else wants to practice – gay, straight, kinky, vanilla, monogamous, polyamorous or celibate – beyond those three cardinal parameters:

Is it consensual? Are all the parties adult, are they aware and informed about what they’re doing, and have they agreed? Is it pleasurable for the parties involved? Does it contribute to the well being of all who are involved? I am reminded of the Wiccan rede, An it harm none.

What does this have to do with the erotic romance my husband and I write? Right now, we’re polishing off another entry in our Swinging Games series at Extasy Books. In that series a married baby boomer couple have expanded their sexual practice to become part of the swing lifestyle. Being sex positive means we don’t judge them or their practice, so long as they agree it’s consensual, pleasurable and contributes to their well being. And, of course, we hope that reading about what they’re up to is consensual, pleasurable, and contributes to readers’ well being!

Swinging Games: Too Close for Comfort is due out from Extasy Books early this summer. Books One through Eight are available now at Extasy Books.

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

Fictionwise

I went to Cancun and I took…

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Did you ever play that alphabet game, “I Went to California and I took…” where each player must remember all the items that came before and add one for the next letter of the alphabet?

Hubs and I just got back from an incredible vacation in Cancun and I thought it’d be fun to play that game. I’ll get started today – keep track, though. In June I’ll say more and run a contest involving some of the items on the list, and I know you’ll want to play and remember. To whet your appetite, here is the view from our balcony!

Here we go!

A – Attitude. In spades. Embrace the moment, Stay Open to Surprise, Choose your Attitude, If not Now, When? If you decide to try a new adventure, might as well give it all you’ve got. We did!

B – Bindis. Nikki of Nipple Charms – did you know your bindis, temporary tats, swingers silver charm anklet and belly button jewelry went to Cancun? I had a lot of fun and got some great comments! I’m especially fond of this Swarovski crystal butterfly bindi – wore it to the disco, more than once.

C – Clothes. Not so much. Can you guess what kind of resort we went to?

D – my Dancing Shoes. Great disco every night, live bands, hot DJ’s – we’ve been practicing, working out to Dance Central on our XBox 360 Kinect, building our stamina and honing our moves. Look out world, Boomers can dance!

E – our Ebook Readers. He has a Nook and I have a Kindle. Easily more than half the peeps who were reading while they tanned had Ebooks instead of print. I think there’s a revolution going on. I’ll blog later on about my beach reads, might surprise you!

F – Fantasies. A girl can dream…That’s the stuff our erotic romance is made of – cougar fantasies, ménage fantasies, swinging fantasies, the chase, flirting, teasing, touching, tasting. I’ll tell you one thing, it was never like this in high school!!

G – G-string. You think? Maybe I’ll keep you guessing – but I have to add, it’s fun to wear sexy clothes, whether or not anyone else knows…

H – my Sun Hat, of course. Wide brimmed, squishable, cotton for coolness, light beige to reflect the sun – sunburn was not on my agenda! If sometimes it was the only thing I wore, would I tell?

I – internet. Well, not really – we didn’t take our computers. This was VACATION. The resort did have a small computer center and I checked in every so often, but really, there was hardly time, so much else to do.

That’s it for now, a third of the alphabet – I’ll be back with two more installments sometime in June. For now I’ll just say it was beautiful, balmy, invigorating, exciting, restorative, and filled with inspiration for new stories we can’t wait to put on the page.

If you’re curious about the swing lifestyle, check out our erotic romance series Swinging Games at Extasy Books. Six stories available now, book seven is scheduled for summer 2011!

Hot Sex After Fifty…And Beyond

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Yup, you got it – both halves of Adriana are over fifty, and you’d better believe we’re still after hot sex – for ourselves, and for our readers. Our quest has taken us to some fascinating places and I thought we’d share some of our finds with you in today’s blog post.

 

Of course you already know we’ve been dipping into the swing lifestyle. We’ve met and talked with a host of swingers and checked out some lifestyle clubs. If you think swinging is just for the young and lithe, think again – it seems no age is too old, if the interest is there and the body is willing. We’ve met swingers in their seventies and heard tales of folks into their eighties. For more information and tips on the swing lifestyle, check out our interview of Swinger and Life Coach Chantelle Austin, HERE. And of course if your interest leans more toward erotic swinging fantasies, we now have six books released in our Swinging Games series over at Extasy Books. Here’s a link to a short sample from our newest one, Who’s the Coach? Our hero/heroine couple in this series are empty nesters who are baby boomers, btw.

 

Two more themes pop out at us from the sexy over-fifty crowd. One is health and fitness. You don’t have to stay fit to keep having hot sex, but it sure makes a difference – in stamina, energy level, arousal, responsiveness, and mood, not to mention attractiveness. That’s a LOT of benefits, worth the effort. Some baby boomers have been following healthy eating and workout routines all their lives. For those who haven’t, it’s never too late to start, and there are lots of websites with tips for keeping older joints and muscle groups happy and healthy. Here’s a sampler:

          http://movingfree.blogspot.com/

          http://www.lifescript.com

stillvital.com

 

The other theme is, for want of a better term, keeping up appearances. It’s a combination of self confidence, pride, presence, and attractiveness – looking one’s best, flaunting it and enjoying the heck out of it. Cougars are pretty famous for exuding these qualities, and here’s one I like, filled with tips for looking as young as you feel: Linda Franklin’s The Real Cougar Woman. She’s based in New York City. Her counterpart across the pond is Fab After Fifty.

 

And of course we’re writing new heroes and heroines who’ve crossed the magic fifty line. Coming in July to Whiskey Creek Torrid, Ripening Passion continues our series on a (fictional) sex institute, begun with Smoldering Passion. We’ll tease you with the blurb here and keep you posted on its progress as we approach release day!

 

BLURB

 

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?

Sex – and Everything Else

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Did I get your attention?

I’m an author of erotic romance, so naturally I like sex: reading about it, writing about it, watching it (there was some great discussion this past week on adult films for women at The Examiner) and of course having some for myself.

But November was a strange month and it’s made me sit back and re-focus on what I stand for.

Sexual Freedom, for starters: the freedom to read, write, watch and engage in hot sexy activity – with the partner of my choice, without any government intrusion into my bedroom or wherever else I choose to be sexy.

Equal Rights and equal protection under the law for all of us. That means I support marriage equality, the repeal of DADT, strong anti-bullying legislation for all our schools, and the Trevor Project and It Gets Better. And NOH8. Most of our books focus on LGBT characters, especially bisexual heroines. I want both the real world and the fictional world to be safe for them.

Great Sex – goes without saying. Tips, toys, information, resources, anything out there that increases sexual enjoyment, especially in romantic relationships, of whatever genders and combinations.

Health. The man I’m married to – half of the pen name Adriana Kraft – is a cardiac patient. Probably that’s a major reason we write erotic romance together. We live our lives by the “if not now, when” mantra because there’s no telling what’s promised. We also devote countless hours each week to staying healthy – by how we eat, how much we exercise, how we practice stress reduction and how we enjoy our time off. 

Some of these things are political and some are more individual, but for me they’re all intensely personal and hard to separate. I went off line for the last ten days leading up to November’s elections to work for local candidates who share my values. On November 2nd, my causes took a huge hit both here in Iowa and across the nation, even though both my candidates won.

So the last item on today’s “what I stand for” list is Happy Endings. Our characters deserve them and so do we. We’ll keep writing them in our fiction and working for them in our real life – to #MakeItBetter for all of us.