So Many Men...

By Juliet Waldron (Guest Blogger)

So many men,

Again and again,

Coming and going and

Going and coming…

This is an excerpt from the seductress Lili von Schtupp’s funny, suggestive song in “Blazing Saddles”. These are laugh lines at my house, but it does raise a question.

When orgasmic, do we “go” or do we “come?” Today’s lovers definitely “come,” but in the 18^th Century vernacular, they “go.” I learned this reading Fanny Hill, an 18^th Century “pillow book” which was banned almost as soon as it was written and was still banned when I was a teen. Like most people of that age, I had an intense interest in sex. Anything “forbidden” was a must-have. So, while working in New York City back in the 60’s, I found my first copy of Fanny’s adventures at a properly dark and dusty bookstore in the East Village, the same one which stocked the equally forbidden novels Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Having read quite a few 18^th Century novels by way of course work—Tom Jones, Moll Flanders and Dangerous Liaisons among them—I was not put off by the circumlocution and flowery descriptions. The writers of that time were determined to show off their language skills by using as many words as they could jam into a sentence. 
 

Fanny never uses a dirty word. Nevertheless, even after 200+ years, she remains a pretty decent turn-on. She was a great help to me when, many years later, I wrote Mozart’s Wife and My Mozart. As these novels are both first person narrations, I wanted the language to have a definite old-fashioned flavor—not too much to hinder the modern reader—but a good dollop. Graphic talk was in order in both of these novels, about women who gave bodies and souls to the first musician who acquired rock’n’roll status in his lifetime—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Excerpt

…He had me now, had the sweet vulnerable center beneath skillful fingers.

"Ah, here's what she's wanting. Easy, my pretty, easy. I'll make you go. Oh, yes, I will."

My tender secret part was hostage of that knowing hand. As his expert fingers played, I responded exactly like any other instrument Wolfgang touched, alive to his mastery.

The lamp burned quietly in the summer night. His face was half in shadow, but his eyes shone. He lay half across me, one arm cradling my shoulders, the hand below moving, moving among the little curls, eliciting bead after bead of helpless dew. Pleasure burned.

"My first lover taught me this," he whispered. Lips ranged across the altar of my body, his touch at once so bold and tender. "So generous a lady."

Wild with the thing he was doing, I clung to him. Bliss spurted. Repeated passages splashed the sweet liquid he'd discovered everywhere.

My Mozart

http://amzn.com/B0089F5X3C

Mozart’s Wife

http://amzn.com/B004XNZVXQ

About Juliet

“Not all who wander are lost.” Juliet Waldron was baptized in the yellow spring of a small Ohio farm town. She earned a B. A. in English, but has worked at jobs ranging from artist’s model to brokerage. Twenty-five years ago, after the kids left home, she dropped out of 9-5 and began to write, hoping to create a genuine time travel experience for herself—and her readers—by researching herself into the Past. Mozart’s Wife won the 1st Independent e-Book Award. Genesee originally won the 2003 Epic Award for Best Historical, and she’s delighted that it’s available again from Books We Love. She enjoys cats, long hikes, history books and making messy gardens with native plants. She’s happy to ride behind her husband on his big “bucket list” sport bike.

http://www.julietwaldron.com

Post Possession Confession

By Juliet Waldron (Guest Blogger)

Talk about obsessions! They’ve been a feature of my life since childhood. There’s always some dead guy—some heroic figure from history—hanging around my imagination, ruining any kind of real life I might have had. Back in the fifties, when I was a preteen, when other girls had pictures of Elvis, the Frankie Avalon or Ricky Nelson on their walls, I had pictures of…well, you don’t want to know, really. Just let me say that he’d been dead for 150 years, and that the last time he thrilled the heart of any teen girl was in the 1770’s.

As I matured, so did my desires. Needless to say, it’s a bit difficult to start living with a dead man, no matter how much you adore him. Still, I had to try. My interest in history wasn’t always pure of heart, to say the least, but I confess, it motivated a lot of research. My imagination wasn’t the kind that could put on something approximating period dress and then go for it with my ghostly lover, oh no! I craved authenticity, even if it meant that one side of me froze while I made love on a bear skin rug in front of the fire.

So, when Mozart walked into my life in the early ‘80’s, he set off a fateful--at least for me--train of events. I had to get it on with this ghost, and he made it easy. “Mozart’s Spirit Sends Telepathic Messages” was not just a headline from the Enquirer, it was, for a lot of us Mozart Heads, the real deal. 

 

People in posh NYC apartments sued neighbors after months of Mozart’s Requiem played endlessly and at full volume. Like so many star phenoms, Mozart had surged to the top of the charts in our poor brains. He sent urgent telepathic messages to hundreds of thousands of us.

Love me! 
 
I was one of those crazed fans, devoting almost twenty years to writing novels about his women. I constantly revised them and marketed both over years, all the time listening to nothing but him! It was on fire for the guy.

The single party I gave every year was for his birthday. My writer friends were also struggling with manuscripts, with a search for agents or publishers, with jobs and family who could not understand our financially unproductive and endlessly humiliating passion for writing, attended faithfully. Some of them drove through snowstorms from other states. There was wine, and 18th Century food of all kinds, steak and kidney pies and syllabub prepared by the hands of Juliet the Certifiable.

Even in a consensual spirit possession, the living participant is playing with fire. I’d done my homework; I should have known. I’d channeled, not only his wife, but also a secret mistress who’d lost her mind. These women knew all about him, about what it was like to be seduced and abandoned by a matchless musical genius, a man at once uniquely sensitive, brilliant, utterly charming--and, in the end, utterly fickle. In the long reach of his possessing erotic spirit, my writing, my twenty lost years, were about as important as one of his wife’s cute little maids.

I did get two books out of this mad “relationship”, stories which will time travel you back to the riotous nights when the World’s First Superstar rocked Vienna.

Have you ever been obsessed by a public figure - living or dead? Tell me about it in a comment and you might win your choice of a print copy of Mozart's Wife, or a PDF of My Mozart. 

Blurb for Mozart's Wife

Giddy sugarplum or calculating bitch? Pretty Konstanze aroused strong feelings among her contemporaries. Her in-law's loathed her. Mozart's friends, more than forty years after his death, remained eager to gossip about her "failures" as wife to the world's first superstar. Maturing from child, to wife, to hard-headed widow, Konstanze would pay Mozart's debts, provide for their children, and relentlessly market and mythologize her brilliant husband. Mozart's letters attest to his affection for Konstanze as well as to their powerful sexual bond. Nevertheless, prominent among the many mysteries surrounding the composer's untimely death: why did his much beloved Konstanze never mark his grave?

Mozart’s Wife, Constanze’s Story

http://amzn.com/B004XNZVXQ

Blurb for My Mozart

Mozart was her teacher, her mentor, her rescuer--and, finally, fatally, her lover. ..

At dawn, in the marble palace of a Prince, a nine-year-old sings for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then at the peak of his career. Always delighted by musical children, he accepts Nanina as a pupil. Gifted, intense and imaginative, she sees the great "Kapellmeister Mozart” as an avatar of Orpheus and her own, personal divinity.

His lessons are irregular and playful, but the teacher/pupil bond grows strong. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro premieres, and Nanina, now twelve, is given a solo part. For her, this is the beginning of a long stage career. For Mozart, it marks the start of his ruin. His greatest works will be composed in poverty and obscurity.

During the composer’s last summer, his wife has left him. Chronically in debt and suffering the emotional isolation of genius, he takes refuge with his disreputable Volksoper friends, who want him to write a “peasant opera” for their audience. Nanina, now grown, and still in love with Mozart, is among their number. As he seeks solace among the women of the Volksoper, the charms of his young fan become increasingly alluring. No one, least of all the composer, understands the depth of her obsession or how a brief affair will permanently alter her life.

My Mozart, Nanina’s Story 
http://amzn.com/B0089F5X3C

About Juliet

“Not all who wander are lost.” Juliet Waldron earned a B. A. in English, but has worked at jobs ranging from artist’s model to brokerage. Twenty years ago, after raising her children, she dropped out of 9-5 and began to researching her way into The Past. Three of the resulting thirteen historical novels are now published. Mozart’s Wife won the 1st Independent e-Book Award. Genesee won the 2003 Epic Award for Best Historical. She enjoys putting what she has learned about people, places, and relationships into her stories.

Visit her website:
http://www.julietwaldron.com

Her blog:
http://yesterrdayrevisitedhere.blogspot.com/

A Few Lines from...Juliet Waldron

A Few Lines from Nightingale by Juliet Waldron

"By the Blessed Mother, I shall not be your slave forever. I swear it!"

Max stopped at the door, one powerful hand resting on the high latch, gazing back at her.

"The day will come when I shall relinquish you to whatever fate devises," he replied evenly, as if this, too, was an outcome he would control. "But, Klara, haven't your teachers explained that words should be chosen precisely? You are not my slave. A more perfect metaphor would be that of a little brown nightingale kept in a fine and luxurious cage for her own good."

"Your pet!"

"My sweet, sweet songbird." Tenderness, for the first time in this encounter, entered his voice. "My beautiful and wonderfully talented Nightingale."

As she began to weep, he'd said, "Now listen to me, Maria Klara and listen well! I charge you to always remember, I am the one who holds the key to your cage."

Buy Nightingale from Amazon.com

For links to other sources visit: http://julietwaldron.com/nightingale/index.htm

For more info about Juliet and her other books, visit her Books We Love page

Stop by next Friday for a few lines from BWL author Kat Attalla!

Miss Gottlieb Tells All!

By Juliet Waldron (Guest Blogger)

Thanks, Lisabet for having me as guest on your blog. It’s good to be included among so many talented contributors.

Sex and the Story

The most interesting thing about the “sexual revolution” of the sixties, at least for me, was the open admission that women naturally liked sex, and that there was no good or bad about it. There had always been pornography for men, but that, we were told, was the nature of the beast—but not his mate. Then, the old taboos began to disappear.

An 18^th Century novel, Fanny Hill, was re-released with great fanfare. For two centuries Fanny was one of those “under the counter” books, obtainable only in certain back street shops. Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus, written in the 1930’s, reappeared, along with the startling BDSM tale of, The Story of O. Anne Rice contributed The Sleeping Beauty trilogy. The e-book revolution has continued to add content and a new business model for genre fiction was born: Erotic Romance. The sales success that followed this innovation exploded the traditional romance industry’s staid notion that women didn’t want to read explicit sex.

With all this social history in mind, I didn’t worry much about being put down because I included a generous helping of sex in two of my books. What goes on in a bedroom can show the reader a great many things about characters of any gender, and also about the dynamic of a relationship. Because I write historical novels, part of my task is to set the manners and morals of yesterday up for the reader’s inspection, and to demonstrate what the socially approved games of status and power between men and women of the past were actually like.

I’ve been a little surprised to discover that a writer can still be rapped on the knuckles for being “bogged down in sex.” I recently received some negative reviews for a book called My Mozart. I don’t write erotica per se, but this novel is the first person narrative of an 18^th Century fan-girl, a young musician with a big talent who is in love with an older—and married—artist. I believed (and I still do) that sexual experiences with her idol are central to this story. Certainly, we all remember the first surges of passion and the wet fantasies which went with them. In My Mozart, an orphaned heroine, growing up in the fast, loose 18^th Century theatrical scene and musical to the bone, is utterly susceptible to the man who has been for years her teacher and mentor. 

 

"Mozart, Ich liebe dich. I love you. Love you."

"Come here, Nanina Nightingale. Come and give your poor old Maestro some of your ‘specially sugary sugar."

My mouth on his - the friction produced warmth and sweetness, with a decided undertone of the expensive brandy he liked, flowing from his tongue to mine. I slid my arms across the brocade of his jacket, none too clean these days, and swayed a slender dancer's body against him.

Let me assure you that my sophistication was assumed. It really doesn't matter, then, or now. I was young, foolish, and drowning in love. I was seventeen. He was thirty five… I believed he knew everything, that he could see right through me with those bright blue eyes. He probably could. He'd been my music master--and, more--my deity, ever since I'd met him, in my ninth year.

His jacket, now spotted and stained, must have been fine enough to wear in the presence of the Emperor. Bright blue, it perfectly matched his eyes. I can still feel the fabric sliding under my fingers as my arms passed over his shoulders and around his neck. I can still see him a woolly frizz of blonde hair, long, aquiline nose--a ram that had once been an angel. Sometimes, when he was loving me in some exquisitely naughty way and joyfully smiling while he did it, I could almost see horns.

So you will understand exactly how I loved him, so that you will know that it was a real passion, I'll tell you that I adored the feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him. They've tried to turn him into a tinkling porcelain angel, but I'm here to tell you, here and now--he was not.

Mozart's eyes were big, slightly protuberant, and as I’ve said, so blue. Alarming, those eyes! Once they'd shone with the pure light of genius, radiant and blissful as a summer sun. Nowadays, they were simply wasted. My adored Maestro was mostly either drunk or hung over.

He'd fallen from grace. Everyone knew it. Creditors hounded him. There were too many wild parties, not enough money. His wife had given up coping, had gone back to the Baden spa where she had an on-going romance with a big, handsome Major. And who could blame her? Pretty Constance, in the last ungainly stages of yet another pregnancy, fleeing Vienna after a winter of freezing and begging for handouts...

Even a seventeen year old idolater could recognize her defection for self preservation. I didn't judge her. I didn't judge myself. I was simply glad to have her out of the way. When she was gone, he was restless, at loose ends, spending most of his time hanging around our theater. Of course, nothing could have suited me better…

As I immersed in Nanina’s story, she started to wake me up at night. She told me how it was for her, this brief, searing experience of love. Even the death of Mozart could not bring about the death of her passion. Her sexual memories were hoarded, treasured, exactly like any modern fan-girl’s memories of a single night spent with a rock star idol. Moreover, those memories would be physical—each passage of the hand, taste of tongue and flesh, each kiss—etched into the mind, ecstasy preserved for endless re-runs. Not to tell the story as Nanina told it, to pretend that the last fifty years of freedom to talk about sex--about what it means to us, about what it does to us, about how it lifts us up and casts us down—wouldn’t be true, either for this character or for me.

~~Juliet Waldron

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