Writing as a house of sticks, constructed.
In 2005, at the writer’s conference I go to, I was three years past my mother’s death. I already had a whole slew of published short stories in the web at both Cleansheets and Erotica Readers.com — but they weren’t really in order.
I had my character The Velvet Babe, and a website in her name, too.
I talked about those things with a few different literary agents and I found one I liked the best.
Except?
I felt too scared.
Well there comes a point for every writer, I expect where you cannot let fear stand in the way, anymore.
The best thing that happened for me this year was listening to a lecture by the writer Simon Van Booy. Of all the speakers at the Conference this year what he said resonated the most. Ironically, the death of my friend the other writer in 2000 was what started me on this course. I wrote my serial “Man in the Moon” about him over at Cleansheets.
I try and write from life in my stories. Literary people do, because they want to leave something that was real. One night I was reading the fiction there and I sent the first piece of it. My editor there Susannah gave me all the courage in the world to keep going. There is a much larger story I will write one day, about that time. Maybe grief or loss is one of the things that seasons a writer? If so? This decade has been that and a half.
So, there comes a time when you have to own all that you have written. Other writers I knew in the Literary Erotica world did that by writing under their own names, pretty fiercely. I didn’t until yesterday, I guess — because now the books, and the bio, and all the rest. So, I’m doing a trial run on my bio and my synopsis here! I guess what this means is owning these things that came from the grief decade. I know I couldn’t have written Heart of Clouds except from a place that was so deep it was like the “madness” Van Booy spoke about at the conference.
So, here is my bio — that I worked up yesterday:
Adrienne Wilson writes about love in all its forms. Her short stories and poetry have been published under the noms de plume Valentine Bonnaire and Adrianna de la Rosa at Cleansheets.com and Erotica Readers and Writers.com. She holds a master’s degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and this informs her present work in children’s literature. Her first novel “Heart of Clouds” was written with interventions in mind for a generation of children calling themselves “emo.” After extensive research on this generation, Adrienne has begun a series of Teenie Alexander novels that address age-appropriate coming of age from a heterosexual perspective in a non-vampire filled world, that is bright and beautiful like her own childhood was. “Gardenias” is her first collection of Erotica for adults, the stories gleaned from her years writing for Cleansheets where she was a Pushcart nominated poet. She is a member of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and the sea is her muse.
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It’s not a problem writing stories, but writing about oneself as a writer is very difficult. The stories come from an unconscious place in the writer? I wrote this synopsis below for my manuscript “Gardenias.”
The initial manuscript has only 156 pages — all previously published pieces at Cleansheets and ERWA with the exception of the story “Kodo” which was the finish for my Haiku trilogy.
I chose the collection on purpose? I did. So I have tried to think what the collection is about as it leads to the finish. I came up with this as a synopsis — so let me know your thoughts if you want? Much appreciated by this writer, I can tell you that. I never had to try and write anything harder than a synopsis. Today I’m going to write the one for Heart of Clouds — so here is “Gardenias.”
Synopsis:
What is the sensate experience of erotic love? Gardenias will leave you breathless as it rambles through a woman’s experience of sexuality in all its various aspects. From the opening story to the close it is an homage to males. This book explores interiority and sexuality in ways that have not been seen since Anais Nin, for heterosexual adults.
The book opens in the City of Light as a fragrant swoon while the narrator muses on a tiny box of Chanel’s Gardenia perfume and the feel of her lover’s lips against the back of her neck as she stands at a window murmuring the collection’s key reverie, “Cet voyage entre nous, pas de ce monde.”
Red Leatherette is pure steam heat as Sabine imagines a chance encounter that delivers her from the boredom of a sultry evening out on the town with old friends. From there, we segue into the coolness of a haiku trilogy — a blindfolded man, in rain, waiting to be bathed by a woman who plans to write a poem on his skin with her kisses until they are “washed clean as the sea tumbles stones.”
Lace explores how heterosexuality begins in a smoky look back at the power of lingerie while Absolut Wife pays homage to Virgina Woolf’s room of one’s own. What really happens to women who are married but still want freedom as artists? Why is pink so safe as a color for married women, or milles-fleures sheets?
Inscapes and Magic Feeling drift sinuously towards “The Beloved” and what happens in a yoga class under the spell of a handsome teacher as he performs adjustments. What makes this little book different is poeisis when describing sexuality as a series of tone poems meant for adults. Like my favorite literary authors such as James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence I wanted to write the emotions in a way that transcends the physical into a deep poetics of the soul. A side benefit to this book is that it provides a glimpse of the female psyche that men may not have seen because usually it has been banned? Song of Solomon is on the loss of virginity, and sexual innocence set to jazzy chinoiserie and Stan the Man Taylor as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong in love.
Bukowski Girls wends a humorous romp through Big Sur and revenge because of Baxter, the biggest artiste in town while American Daddy-O explores the all-too-human dimensions of a man whose wife has betrayed him for his best friend. How does sex cure?
All the short stories in the book lead to a crescendo that ends with “Man in the Moon” a poignant treatise on love, and love lost. How do we survive after loss of love in our lives and what does sex really mean between two people? What is intimacy?
This collection of tales was chosen from my published works at Cleansheets.com and Erotica Readers.com where I wrote with the top writers in the Literary Erotica genre. What makes this book so different is that it explores actual love between men and women, even in the fantasy pieces. It is both a cautionary tale and an invitation for a world saturated with cheap pornography to experience love and sex in a more aesthetic manner. I have tried to portray the beauty of the dance between lovers as an extended poem.
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I hope that sounded good?
I do!
xxoo!
Adrienne
(next up — the synopsis for Heart of Clouds)
wish me luck! ❤
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 