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/