First Stirrings: Liquid Lightning

Posted by:

It’s a feeling in our belly.

It’s a pulse in our chest that surges down through our stomach, lower, into our pelvis, aching, longing to be relieved.

It’s the slant of an eye, or a bashful look through his eyelashes.

What and who stirred feelings of sensuality for you?

We pick up Shadow Heart just after Ryan Tilton, almost 25, introduces himself to Nicky Young, seventeen.  He begins a very careful, slow, sensual plan to bring her heart and mind to him ...

Continue Reading →
0

Intimacy-how can I get it? What conversations do I need to have?

Posted by:

“You don’t date?” Alex asked, once again joining Tara and me sitting in the bleachers.

“No,” I said.
“Why ever not,” she asked.

I was ridiculously naïve and socially backward in so many ways. Being raised in an alcoholic family can do that. It was better to hide away and shut down rather than feel the extreme joy or intense pain of life.

Like most of us, I had learned from what my parents taught by how they relate to one ...

Continue Reading →
0

Emotional and Physical Shock: How do we numb ourselves?

Posted by:

My sister came home in shock.
She looked dead.
In some ways, emotionally, we were all dead.
My father numbed his body and mind with alcohol.
I numbed myself with staying busy.
My mom numbed herself escaping into her romance novels.
Now my sister would be numb in a different way.

“Where have you been?” My mother asked angrily. “I was so worried.” Calmly and without emotion, her body in shock, Jenise answered, “I was raped.”

I saw my mother’s face become stone, trying her best ...

Continue Reading →
0

My dad’s an alcoholic and I hate my body

Posted by:

At seventeen, Nicky confides in cheer team mentor Alexandra Flowers and Tara Summers about her family’s dysfunction and also her fears and doubts about her body. Her hips, breasts, and stomach are more developed than her peers, she is getting looks from older men, and she’s uncomfortable in her own skin and with others. She sits in the bleachers talking with the two women.

“My dad’s an alcoholic, Alex,” I confided while she waited with me in ...

Continue Reading →
0

A Romance Novel, Coming of Age, Intimacy, Addiction, Family

Posted by:

So to recap Chapter 1 of Shadow Heart, the first novel in the Broken Bottles Series.

What are the challenges of our  heroine, Nicky Young?

The story opens up as we hear her voice, at some age, talking about a time when she was eight years old and witnessed her father’s rage toward Jenise, her sister, just because they wouldn’t eat the cold creamed corn their father served them.

We also hear Nicky open her story by talking about her little prayer, the ...

Continue Reading →
0
Page 2 of 2 12