What is a Good Swing?

I've written a scene or two that involved a swing - "Highland Heat" and "An Invitation to the World: China" come to mind - and the Encyclopedia of the Exquisite tells where the inspiration for such a device came from, at least it has to my writing.

"A suspended seat that oscillates backward and forward." is the brief description and pretty much states the basics, but the good stuff is in the details.

"In this diversion there are very many pretty shrieks, not so much for fear of falling off as taht their petticoats should untie," The Specatator noted in 1712.  "The lover who swings his lady is to tie her clothes very close together with his hat band before she admits him to throw up her heels."

Even better were the from Honore Fragonard who made swinging appear to be a bit of naughty foreplay.  Her skirts aren't tied and her lover is looking at her, um, dainty ankles and lovely legs.  Back in the day, The Swing [to the right] by Fragonard was denied entrance into England, but it now hangs in that country's Wallace Collection.

Best of Torrid Teasers Vol. 2 - Tilly Greene's excerpt #3

AN INVITATION TO THE WORLD:  CHINA [Contemporary Erotic Romance]

On her lunch break, Jia Li is kidnapped off a busy street in San Francisco's Chinatown, and wakes up on an airplane. Terrified and blindfolded, she doesn’t understand what is happening, until her captor reveals himself as her ex-boyfriend Yi Burton. He is determined to save her life and bring her back into his arms, and this can only happen on his private island. 


Excerpt (G-rated)

Chapter One

She was on a flight from hell!


Time had no relevance for her. Days, hours, minutes no longer mattered. She was scared for her life.

Having her wrists cuffed to the armrests and her ankles to the legs of the seat didn't help either. Gooseflesh flashed along her skin, the terror of her situation causing her to feel colder than she was.

Her breath shuddered from her chest in great gulps of air. She couldn't stop hyperventilating, and it didn't seem to matter that she was well on her way to passing out. Every pore in her body was reacting to her fear. She was shaking uncontrollably. The hood they'd covered her head with shut out all sense of sight, leaving her fear to feed upon itself. Her lips quivered pitifully, as her tears gathered strength for another deluge.

Jia Li was absolutely terrified. Reality slowly settled in, relentlessly squeezing her chest like a vise. One thing was for sure, this was really happening to her.

Trying to catch her breath, she forced herself to think back to how she'd ended up in this nightmare. Anything to take her mind off what was coming next.

The day had been a typical Monday afternoon in San Francisco. It was a beautiful warm summer's day with the usual breeze chilling things down just enough for a light sweater to be necessary. She'd been running errands, the last one putting her in the heart of Chinatown during the busy lunch break. After having fought her way through throngs of tourists, she'd finished and had started to make her way back to her apartment when she was grabbed. In a flash she'd been pulled back into a narrow alley.

A strong arm had wrapped around her waist and a hand pressed against her mouth, instantly silencing her. Jia faced the street and watched people passing by without so much as a glance to witness her mounting trouble. She dropped her bags and clawed at the hand covering her mouth. She tried to kick back at the man holding her but only managed to trip herself as he dragged her backwards.

Without anyone seeing them, they slipped through a door, and she was gone.


Now available from Whiskey Creek Press Torrid

The good news is flowing!

Okay, so on Friday I received the news that three of my Torrid Teasers [New Zealand, Russia and China from the An Invitation to the World series] at Whiskey Creek Press Torrid would be released in a The Best of Torrid Teasers Vol. 2 [January 2010] along with three teasers from Susan M. Sailors and three from Cheri Valmont!

Great news!

And then, on Saturday morning, I was going through my emails and opened one from All Romance eBooks that informed me my contemporary erotic romance, And She Scores!, was accepted for their special project for February 2010. Every day of the month dedicated to all things red they will release a new ebook with the proceeds going to benefit the American Heart Association - really cool news!

So, it's only November, and 2010 is shaping up to be a fun year!

In January, The Best of Torrid Teases Vol. 2 and Double Punch will be released from Whiskey Creek Press Torrid and Tease Publishing respectively.

In February, And She Scores! will be released from All Romance eBooks.

And over at Whiskey Creek Press Torrid, Call Me Lucifer and My Angel release dates are still to be determined.

I'm not wishing the time away, but I can't wait for 2010!

Fabulous Fashion News!

Judith Leiber has been making unique, fun, and stunningly beautiful handbags for years, and she still creates the must have handbag! Well, to celebrate self-publishing her biography [which I'd love to read], she's hitting the road. Alongside her travel mini-museum exhibition of her bags, she'll be signing her book "No Mere Bagatelles: Telling the Story of Handbag Genius Judith Leiber & Modernist Artist Gerson Leiber".

While it doesn't appear as if the book will be widely available, it would definitely be worth it to attend one of her retrospectives at either Neiman Marcus or Bergdorf Goodman, view the exhibit and purchase a book for her to sign. If you live near East Hampton NY, you can always stop by the Leiber Museum on Old Stone Highway, check out her bag collection, and most likely pick up a copy of her book there as well.

On a side note: Did you know that there are a couple of white peacocks in "An Invitation to the World: China"? There are and they're called George and Gracie.

eBook Talk!

I'm watching a show on French Polynesia/Tahiti and Paul Gauguin was how the show started. Even though it's a food/travel show [truly enjoy Anthony Bourdain's books and tv series No Reservations] the host talked about Gaugiun's desire to drop out of European society and submerse himself in the local life.

This immediately made me think about multicultural mixes and did you know I've written a few of those? Guess what? I have and truly enjoy doing them. Cultural differences tickle my imagination. So, let me tell you about a few of them.

I've mentioned this one before, in the tattoo/piercing blog, but in An Invitation to the World: New Zealand has Kiri Kanawa, half Maorian and half Anglo, Timu Tuhaere, a Maorian hunk of a rugby player, and Luke MacAlister, also a rugby player but an Anglo with blond hair and blue eyes. This threesome makes for a unique triumvirate.

The other story in the first book is Russia. Vasiliy Beketov, or Vasya, is a Russian and his soon to be lover is Zura Girard, a French-American.

Now, I imagine you believe the second duet in the An Invitation to the World series is also multicultural. It isn't, at least not like the first set is. India has Bodhi Burke, and English-Indian and Sati Chaudhari, pure Indian, and China has Yi Burton, a Chinese American, and Jia Li, pure Chinese.

On top of the characters in this series being a mix, the settings are as well, although they all end in the same place. New Zealand and India start in those countries, China starts in San Francisco, California, and Russia is pretty much set in the final location for all these stories. The lovers all make there home on a private island [shaped and located in the archipelago like their homeland] in The World is located in the Persian Gulf, Dubai, UAE.

Book Talk!

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, is one of my all time favorite books and I highly recommend it as a great read. This is a non-fiction account of a daughter, mother, and grandmother figuring out how to get along together while coming from their various eras. There's a great timeline giving what was happening personally and politically in China. The first paragraph of the Epilogue is what pulls you in to read about this family of strong women.

"I have made London my home. For ten years, I avoided thinking about the China I had left behind. Then in 1988, my mother came to England to visit me. For the first time, she told me the story of her life and that of my grandmother. When she returned to Chengdu, I sat down and let my own memory surge out and the unshed tears flood my mind. E decided to weite Wild Swans. The past was no longer too painful to recall because I had found love and fulfillment and therefore tranquility."

Wow! Well, I couldn't leave this wonderfully rich world behind so picked up Cao Xueqin's The Story of the Stone [also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, volume 1 - The Golden Days]. Called a great novel of manners in Chinese literature, I struggled to get through, but I did. Then, for a trip I picked up volume 2 - The Crab-Flower Club, and my bookmark is still set to page 135. These books are beautifully detailed, most likely too much for me at that time in life. The Jia family is at the center, but my memory is that it was more about the son and how cherished and beloved he was.

Okay, so my second foray wasn't a success, but I was far from done. The next book I picked up was Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China by Sterling Seagrave. Oh man, yes, this was another gem! While this woman is often remembered as a monster, the book takes you to her beginnings:

"We do not even know her name. She was too private for that, and the world she lived in was uniquely designed to hide her behind multiple layers of court ritual and etiquette. Nobody ever spoke the name of the Son of Heaven or his wives, because they were demigods. She was born on November 29, 1835, the sme year as Robert Hart, somewhere in China, bu where exactly we do not lknow. Nor are we sure of her father's name or occupation, the name of her mother, or event the girl's mil-name, the name she was called as a nursing infant. She was an obscure daughter of an obscure Manchu officer and might have lived out her life in obscurity except that she was chosen to be one of the emperor's lesser concubines and had the good fortune to bear him his only surviving son. Thanks to Hart we know that she had three younger sisters and one brother who survived to adulthood. It is also a matter of record that she was fond of pretty clothes, Pekingese dogs, and chrysanthemums."

This non-fiction account of Tzu Hsi is simply rich. This woman went from being considered nothing to everything. What could possibly be next? I tried Marina Warner's The Dragon Empress, but it wasn't fulfilling so my quest for something more for the China section of my collection went unfulfilled for some time before it was broken.

While in Canada I was trolling through a bookshop and found Dragon of Heaven: The Memoirs of the Last Empress of China, story by David Bouchard and paintings by Zhong-Yang Huang. YES, finally, a scruptuous visual to go with all the words floating in my head. I love this book and often give it as a gift.



So, is my China collection closed?

Nope. This year the cutie bought me Madam Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Eternal First Lady by Laura Tyson Li. I haven't finished this book yet, time and work snuck up on me, but so far she's interesting. I'm already curious about her family so the next book might be The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave - I liked how he wrote the Dragon Empress so we'll see.

So there you go, another peek into a tiny part of my book collection.

An Invitation to the World 2: China and India is OUT!

Ever wondered how wild and kinky life can get on a private island?

The World is an exclusive enclave of 300 manmade islands, laid out to resemble the continents, set in the Arabian Gulf, and a paradise for lovers.




China tiptoes through the dangerous backlash of someone who chose to live outside the law.

On a busy summer’s day, Jia Li is kidnapped off a busy street in San Francisco's Chinatown, and wakes up on an airplane. Her ex-boyfriend Yi Burton is determined to save her life and bring her back into his, will they rekindle their love affair while hiding out on a secluded island?

India dabbles into the world of Bollywood film stars and businessmen, and the fulfilling personal lives they seek.

Sati Chaudhari is a beloved Bollywood starlet who falls for and secretly marries Bodhi Burke, a hotel mogul. Busy lives pull them apart but a private island paradise offers them a chance at reconnecting, creating new rules for their future. Is it too late to save their love?

Get your passport and pick up a copy of Tilly Greene's An Invitaion to the World 2: China and India. If you want to see more of the world, then read An Invitation to the World: Russia and New Zealand, also currently available at Whiskey Creek Press Torrid.