Adriana Kraft

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

sexy

It’s a Tie! Love it? Hate it? Depends on your point of view. #EroticRomance #SlutShaming #BadGirl

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Our sizzling novel about a bad girl who meets her match averages exactly three stars on Amazon reviews. There are a smattering of 3-star rankings, but 44% of readers give it four or five stars, and 44% give it only one or two stars.

What’s going on here?

Kitty is a bad girl. We knew that going in – that’s how she popped into our fertile imaginations. Our son is both a contractor and a real estate agent. There aren’t a vast number of women who do both, but through him, we chanced to meet a few, and our story took off.

Our heroine wears stiletto heels when she visits her construction sites, both to bolster her own confidence and to exude authority. She revels in the power of flaunting her sexuality and keeping men guessing – employees, and other men as well. She takes no prisoners. She’s clear about what she wants and she goes after it – on the construction site, in her sales office, and in the bedroom. Or any place else she decides to be sexual.

I suspect part of the negative reaction derives from a marketing mistake on our part – we released this book nearly a decade ago, and at the time, we labeled its genre as contemporary romance in addition to erotic romance. We didn’t give readers enough warning about what was coming, and lots of readers who picked it up found it wasn’t to their taste. Those words pop up in some of the negative reviews.

But underneath the negative rankings and comments lies a dynamic that troubles me: Slut Shaming.

Slut-shaming is the experience of being labeled a sexually out-of-control girl or woman (a “slut” or “ho”) and then being punished socially for possessing this identity. Huffington Post

The bottom line is that Kitty is what many would label a slut. Almost 40, she’s always been sexually active. She has pursued and conquered a series of men. She’s always looking for the next exciting sexual experience.

I don’t judge the reading preferences of others, any more than I judge sexual orientation or someone’s favorite color. Perhaps we owe an apology to readers who picked up The Best Man expecting something different. But what I want to say here is that we celebrate Kitty, and other women like her, who aren’t afraid to go after what they want in whatever realm.

EXCERPT

The Best ManFrowning at the unfamiliar number on her caller I.D., Kitty nodded at the contractor she’d hired to do the rehab on a nineteen-twenties four-square she planned on reselling within the next six months. She’d been making the rounds of the four construction projects she had underway. It was her experience that if she didn’t keep routine tabs on them, the projects slowed. Contractors often responded to the squeaky wheel.

She smiled as she carefully made her way across the sub-flooring, making sure her high heels resonated through the empty house. She knew that sound translated into power with most construction workers. As usual, she’d chosen her wardrobe with her day in mind. This was not a day for refined, potentially high-paying buyers. This was a day for making sure the men she hired didn’t forget they were working for her. In addition to her blue high heels, she’d chosen a beaded pair of blue denim hip huggers and a simple canary yellow cardigan that failed to reach her jeans.

She avoided eye contact with the workers as she made her way to her car. She saw no need to embarrass them as they fantasized about her ass. One of her goals was to be the squeakiest wheel contractors ever heard. So far, she seemed to be meeting her goal.

She chuckled, leaned up against the car, and glanced back toward the four-square. Men working on its siding quickly found something to do. Damn, she loved being a woman.

BLURB

Bad boy meets bad girl – is that all there is?

Passionate, hardworking, and every inch a businesswoman, Chicago realtor Kitty Paige likes her sex raw and edgy, and she sees no reason to limit herself to just one man. Never married and not quite forty, the striking blonde has successfully raised her daughter, Susan, and is already pushing her new-found freedom to the limits.

Wealthy commodities middleman and racehorse owner Jared Jacobs is father of the best man at Susan’s wedding. He is smitten by the vision in yellow who exudes sex as she escorts her daughter down the aisle. Also single, the handsome mustached California ranch owner with mischievous eyes views his sex life as a series of splendid love affairs and sets out to make Kitty next on the list.

Together and apart, their chemistry is explosive, and their sparkling repartee and steamy sex catch both partners by surprise. Jared is first to recognize he’s fallen in love. When Kitty panics, can Jared finesse his every move and reel her in?

BUY LINK

UBL https://books2read.com/u/bzKpPq

A Sexy Workout Fave

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Here’s one for all you baby boomers out there. I was thrilled in 2012 to shed those final few pounds and reach the weight I enjoyed in my twenties, pre-pregnancy. Did I mention said son is now over thirty? So it’s been a while, and as any baby boomer will tell you, it’s not arranged in quite the same way, even though I’ve never not worked out. I have wonderfully strong abs, snazzy legs – and love handles at my waist, in spite of everything.

But I found the perfect move to whip them into shape, courtesy of Beyonce and Women’s Health Magazine: Side planks with knee tuck twist. Caveat – I am not a trainer, so if you want to do this move, go to the Workout Link and do exactly as they say! Essentially, the move is a side plank, upper arm bent at the elbow with hand on head, in which the lower leg comes forward in a knee tuck while the torso and upper arm bend so the elbow reaches toward the moving knee. Got that? Look it up :)! According to the instructions I read, Beyonce does ten reps on each side, three sets.

I lay on the floor on my side as instructed, bent my lower arm at the elbow and placed that forearm on the floor, raised my torso until my weight was only supported by my forearm and my feet – and promptly rolled forward, falling out of the plank. This, in spite of years of regular cardio workouts and occasional yoga. Definitely some muscles in need of a new workout!

So the first hurdle was strength and balance. Needless to say, once I got the balance thing figured out, adding the knee tuck (never mind the torso bend!) immediately rolled me forward flat on the floor again. Or sometimes, backwards. Three sets of ten reps? Not gonna happen.

Start small is my main motto – and truly, that is what I did. My first day, just getting one rep accomplished on each side was a major miracle. I wisely skipped the next day. Day three – still just one on each side. Day five I was finally able to bump it up to two. And so it went, a little more each day, until I could crank out a full ten reps on each side without falling out of the plank.

Am I there yet? Way improved – and in any case, it’s a process. But when I put on my low-rise jeans, that irritating roll of flab over the belt is missing, so I’m happy, and that’s motivation to keep at it.

One more thing: Did you notice my main motivation for adding this routine to my workout was vanity? Guess what – it doesn’t matter what it takes to get you started on something that’s good for you. Turns out this routine has fabulous payoff in the bedroom! It works your obliques and strengthens your core, so you’ll experience improved stamina, not to mention better Kegel squeeze power. And yes, my husband noticed – he loves it. Try it out – your sex life will be glad you did.

What’s your favorite workout move? We’d love to hear about it.

Have fun – and Stay Sexy!

Stay Sexy: The sexiest thing you can ever do…

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…is get your heart rate up there!

Okay, so you already know being sexy probably has to involve our hearts – we want to be sexy with the person we give our heart to, right? And after all, this week is Valentine’s Day, so talking about our hearts is a natural.

But here’s the thing: elevating our heart rate into that aerobic target zone, even a little bit, does something magical for both our bodies and our brains. Turns out it helps us be both more desirable and more interested in being sexy!

Body-wise, it helps us burn fat (and, if you saw our Stay Sexy column last week, you know having sex burns as many calories as lots of other forms of exercise). Plus, there’s more, according to the Mayo Clinic. It makes our metabolism more efficient. It’ll improve our stamina, in case we’re aiming for a marathon session. It reduces pain – maybe that’s why my migraine episodes decreased as my workouts increased. I’ll take it! It revs up our immune system, reducing our likelihood of getting sick. And, naturally, it’s good for our hearts. It strengthens the heart muscles and helps clear out our arteries by boosting our HDL cholesterol (the good kind).

Did that list sound sexy? Not so much, by itself – but even just sticking with what it does for the body, I’ll look better, feel better and live longer, and that’s sexy.

The brain magic is even more impressive – and less well known. According to Dr. John Ratey, in Spark, spending time in our target heart rate zone decreases depression, reduces anxiety, relieves stress, decreases dementia in later life, and even increases our brain capacity. Personally, I think that’s very sexy – I’ll be happier, more relaxed, smarter, and possibly even more inventive!

I hope this list of benefits has piqued your curiosity – I’d love to answer questions about how all this works (see, I told you it makes us smarter 🙂 ). Stay tuned – in future Stay Sexy columns, we’ll be sharing more personally about the impact this information has had for both my husband and myself.

In the meantime – Happy Valentine’s Day, have fun, and stay sexy!

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!

The Cougar Image – Positive or Negative?

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When author/editor Jolie DuPre conceptualized The Cougar Book and put out her call for submissions over a year ago, both halves of Adriana were thrilled. We knew immediately we wanted to be in that book and we had no problem coming up with our fantasy of a perfect evening for an older woman’s first time out with a stunning younger man. We’re proud to have made the cut – our story, “A Taste of Ginger,” is one of the twenty-two stories finally selected for the anthology, released on Valentine’s Day 2010 at Logical Lust and available in both print and e-book.

We’ve never hesitated celebrating the powerful and enticing imagery we associate with the image of the cougar. In the words of The Cougar Book’s introduction by Valerie Gibson, Canadian TV personality and author, cougars are

“skilled—and creative—in the sexual arts . . .They love to make love and enjoy it for what it is—a joyful, satisfying, energizing, and life-enhancing activity that keeps you youthful and vital. What’s more, it’s fun! It’s a rare and precious attribute for any woman, but when it comes with enthusiasm and few strings attached? Priceless!”

 

Both of us are also longtime fans of TV and film star Kim Cattrall. In her role as “Samantha” in Sex and the City and in her personal life, she epitomizes the positive qualities we associate with “cougar.” Through her books and many personal appearances she continues to encourage women to embrace their lives, their bodies and their sexuality. Some quotes:

Asked by Amazon.com to explain what she means by sexual intelligence: “A person who knows what they like! And has some idea why … I used the word intelligence in the title of the book and the documentary because it reflects my desire to gather whatever insights, inspirations, and information that could nourish the part of us that is sexual and sensual, so that it might be strong and function well.”

 

In a recent interview for TheaterMania.com promoting Sex and the City II: “We have encouraged a lot of women to change the way they feel about being single, about having cancer, being lonely, and I think that’s a powerful thing in this era of post-feminism. I think we have helped to find what it is to be successful, smart, and feminine.”

 

But it turns out she – and many others – think the term is derogatory and the cougar trend is on its way out. PopEater.com puts it this way in Saying goodbye to the Cougar Trend:

“And so now it looks like we’re going to have to look at Pfeiffer, Cox, Cattrall and other aging actress for what they really are: confident, successful women whose talent has kept them in the spotlight beyond an arbitrary media-determined sell-by date. Rather than agree to hide behind some sort of cartoon send-up of what an attractive older woman is, these ladies are redefining how we see life after you spot that first wrinkle.”

 

Cattrall recently turned down a cover spot on a major women’s magazine because they wanted her to pose with a cougar – and to her, that term and that imagery are derogatory. She told Extra “I really take umbrage to the code ‘cougar’ …I think cougar has a negative connotation, and I don’t see anything negative about Samantha and her sexuality, sensuality and choice.” Over at The Today Show in an interview with Meredith Viera she clarified, “I feel there is nothing predatory about a woman of a certain age. The stereotype is that the woman is searching for young men like they’re prey, and I just don’t think that’s good enough.”

We’ve received lots of positive comments from readers who are inspired by the cougar concept and love the fantasies, so we’re curious – what does the cougar image mean to YOU? Positive or negative, celebratory or derogatory, powerful or demeaning? Eager to hear from you!

Hot Swinging Stories for the Sexually Fluid!

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Here’s a fascinating quote from a blog about a Scientific American research article on bisexuality: “Interestingly, [the author] also found that as women age, they become more aware of their sexual fluidity, and thus tend to turn more toward bisexuality than away from it.”

That would definitely be true at our house, where we discovered a few years back that both of us love to read f/f erotic scenes as well as sizzling m/f scenes. It wasn’t much of a leap from reading them to writing them – and once we’d opened up that possibility, new ones beckoned: three-way, four-way and more, in all sorts of combinations, crafted for heightened erotic excitement. Writing them is a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it!

For sure it’s true in the home of Jennifer Andrews, heroine of our Swinging Games series at Extasy Books. Discovering her bisexuality is the main reason Jen and her husband ventured into the swinging world at mid life. Reviewers at Whipped Cream, San Diego Erotica Books Examiner and Fallen Angels Reviews all agree the series is a smashing success!

SWINGINGGAMES

San Diego Erotica Books Examiner  – Four Stars!

This is a sexual tale of a woman named Jennifer, who discovers after many years of marriage that she is bisexual. Her husband Brett, is more than happy to indulge her by getting into the swing of things. This story is hot … imagination takes on a life of its own. Don’t let this one pass you by. Excerpt

 

hookupsFallen Angel Reviews  – Five Angels!

Hookups is a fun quick read full of sexual fantasies, lust and passion. If Adriana Kraft writes to entertain, she has succeeded with Hookups… While the sex scenes are explicit, Ms. Kraft handles the content well. She has managed to write a unique love story with a twist. The characters are well rounded, each with their own idiosyncrasies that endear them to the reader. I’m interested to see if we are going to find out more about Jen and Brett and their band of merry swingers; I hope so. Excerpt

 

ATEMPTINGTASTE

 Whipped Cream Reviews  – Four Cherries!   
 
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading A Tempting Taste Swinging Games 2. The title pretty much summarized the premise, but my oh my, did I underestimate just how scorching hot those next seventy or so pages were going to be!…Brett and Jen are not your typical gorgeous twenty or thirty-year olds. They are in their fifties, and some of their “partners” are older than that. It was also refreshing to read, and is something that is rarely found…This is something you read when you want straight up hotness, because there is plenty to go around! Excerpt
 

The next installment in the series will be out in just two weeks, on November 15:

What happens when the neighbors find out? Jen and Brett Andrews’ swinging world turns upside down when it comes too close to home – will their friends keep their secret? Will they have to stop swinging, or worse yet, move? What if the friends want to join in? Delectable complexities unfold as Jen and Brett continue their swinging adventures!

Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite:

“Most every time I try to fall asleep I think of you with another woman.” Donna slanted a finger across Jen’s lips. “Please, I have to tell you. I admit I’m so jealous. I’ve dreamed about us together before. I hadn’t had that dream for years until recently. Then I’d wake up feeling so guilty I didn’t know if I could face you. Now I wake up soaking wet, certain we’ve been making love for hours and that you left before I could awaken fully.”

“But…”

Donna’s finger slipped into Jen’s open mouth.

Was it reflex, instinct or lust? With her eyelids closed, Jen didn’t spend much time trying to explain why she was suddenly sucking Donna’s finger deeper into her mouth.

“That feels so good,” Donna cooed.

Jen heard Donna scooting closer. She kept her eyes closed hoping not to frighten or encourage her friend. She felt Donna’s warm breath on her cheek. And then her best friend’s lips brushed against the corner of Jen’s mouth.