Friday, October 16, 2009

The not so perfect Alpha Male


If women didn't love the Alpha male, I wouldn't have a job to aspire to. Namely writing all about them. I think what's 'it' in the land of male-dom changes just like it does for women; but let's ignore the fleeting moments of who is on the hot list.

The Alpha male...strong, sometimes silent sometimes not. Dominant. Knows his mind, knows what he is and doesn't have to talk about it. We write them as leather wearing bad boys, sometimes more of a suit and tie type but still just as intense. Flawed, sure, but strong enough to overcome any flaw and when it comes down to it he can be soft with the woman he loves.

So who is your ultimate Alpha male? The Brad Pitt type? Smooth, mischievous grin and perfect face? Matthew McCaunaughey, bad boy through and through but he could still talk your panties off? George Clooney? Keanu Reeves (a personal fave..thank you) or the late great Patrick Swayze?

Here's a couple of my personal faves; rough, tough, and if he lifts that eyebrow and gives that look I'd be handing over my 'free pass' in a New York minute. (Ladies...you KNOW what the free pass is...) Maybe not your typical choices, but for me, it's more in the intensity, the power within, the brain that never stops moving encased in all that really nicely formed muscle as window dressing. Ok..so even with Fangs (or maybe more so...) this guy totally embodies my ultimate Alpha Male:

Liev Schrieber.



This guy just has to look and you can see he's sizing it up, got it totally going on. That smart ass grin telling you he's got you down and he'll be using every thing he's figured out about you in the last thirty seconds to get you to do whatever the hell he wants.



Cleans up pretty good too.




Perfect? No. Probably not a typical choice either but I'd take him hands down over almost any of the model types. Smart, tough, tall (six foot three thank you very much) solid enough to take whatever. I can picture this guy as the ultimate Alpha hero and he in fact inspired one of my tougher heros (the one who scared my crit partner she thought he was so bad ass at first!).

I have to give props to the man Gerard Butler too. God love the accent. Humor, always a button pusher and every time I see a picture of him I know he's the type of guy I would want to get close enough to just to see how he smells because you just know it would be good.


I guess it's clear at this point I like 'em a little scruffy, tough, a smart ass sense of humor and bad boy enough to take my intimidating attitude.

So comment on your favorite alpha male. The not so perfect? Perfect? What does it for you? The smile, cocky grin, humor, or just the all around tough guy vibe?

Either way...we love em, we write em..thank the universe for the Alpha male in all their variety and glory!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Tuesday Temptation




Mmmmm LOVE a guy in a nice dress shirt. That's enough to get my muse working...how about yours?

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Do you Kink?




It is a Foolish Dimwit, who doesn't realize it a waste of time unless a thing concerns fucking

-Pietro Aretino, ca 1527




My writing partner and I have discussions that would likely, if we sat in a coffee shop and had them, curl the toes of most of the ‘normal’ people around us. Ahem…cough…we are normal, by the way.

Normal; adjective - Conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.
1. free from any mental state – sane
2. approximately average in any psychological trait, as intelligence, personality, or emotional adjustment.

I assure you, by the definition of the word, I am normal. My writing partner too. But if you heard us saying ‘do you think sex on the first page is too soon? Should they have anal sex? If the two guys having sex with her are…. When a man is fucking another man do they… Was her head upside down when she was giving him a blow job?’ Yep, real conversations. You’d never know it to meet me on the street. I am certainly sane, well emotionally adjusted, an extremely responsible adult / parent member of society who reads, votes, and does all that every day crap you do.

If you were in my head, would you think I’m normal? I’m not even going to go there. Depends on where you are standing, I think. How about any of the other writers I know? Same thing, I suspect. It’s how we go where we go when we write, our minds don’t have a lot of borders, in most cases. We wander, we dream, we write.

So; kink and erotic romance. There are some with kink, some without. Some read, some don’t. Some m/m, some m/m/f, some m/f/m, some just m/f. Some plain old love, lust and HEA and some BDSM, to a whole spectrum of degrees. Have no idea what those are? I need to improve your reading list!

What makes people go there? This is a question in the mind of my writing partner, for sure. I read all of the above including BDSM and write on the edges of it. Her? Not so much. The tone of a lot of it makes her tense, and some authors do use it to push plots forward with some pretty heavy pain / punishment type themes. Me, I like the mental part of it, but this isn’t about what I write, it’s about what reader’s read, and why they go there, or don’t.

I like kink when it’s used well, as part of a person’s mind set, but it doesn’t always make the story better. For her, it often makes it worse. Sometimes the essence of a man being dominant is enough, sometimes, it needs to go much further.

I often wonder, do people who live kink, read erotic romance with kink? Does it even come close to the real thing? Obviously for most readers they love to stretch their imaginations and read, but it’s a fantasy they don’t live it. I know a lot of the readers can’t share with family, even husbands what they write and read and not even the really kinky stuff, because it’s ‘out there’. Does that make it more exciting for them, taking the risk of someone finding out what they read?

So, do you kink? Does it scare you? Why do people go one way or the other. I remember a famous quote that applies I think. When asked why he climbed Mt. Everest, George Mallory replied “because it’s there.”