Missing Winter - #snow #NewEngland #nostalgia #99cents

More than a decade ago, I moved from a rural town in New England (the region where I grew up) to a city in the tropics. For the most part, the relocation has been tremendously beneficial. I love my adopted country, my new profession, and the fact that I have more financial security than I ever had in the U.S. Urban life agrees with me. I much prefer to walk or take public transit than to use my own car. Although I didn’t move for the climate, I mostly enjoy the freedom of wearing relatively few clothes and sandals, even to work. Still there are times when I really do miss my original home—especially around the winter holidays.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t miss the hassle of preparing for winter: getting out the heavy sweaters, coats and boots; installing storm windows; arranging for the driveway to be plowed; installing snow tires and checking the anti-freeze. I’m grateful to be spared the nail-biting terror of trying to drive on an ice-slicked road. New England is famous for two particularly unpleasant kinds of winter weather, slush and freezing rain. I’ve had enough of both for one lifetime!

However, winter in New England sometimes has a unique, transcendent beauty that isn’t matched by anything here in my new home. After a snowfall, there’s a hush, a peace that comes over everything, soothing and freeing. I associate this tranquil feeling with the holidays, even though Christmas weather in New England is just as likely to involve leaden skies and bare ground, or chilly rain.

Being a writer, of course, I can indulge my nostalgia in my stories...

Suzanne had never seen stars so bright. The night sky was a black bowl above them, studded with blazing jewels. The snow blanketing the yard gleamed with some faint inner radiance. At the edges of the property, evergreens clustered in deeper shadow like silent sentinels.

She took a deep breath of the crystalline air, so cold and sharp it hurt her lungs. The tiny hairs inside her nose stood on end. Her earlobes felt like icicles. From the neck down, though, she was bathed in delicious warmth. The bizarre contrast almost made her giggle.

Smooth, hard muscle brushed her thigh. After a moment, roving fingers skittered across her lap and burrowed into her pubic fur. A fiery bolt of lust struck her core.

That’s a bit from my holiday MMF ménage tale Almost Home. There’s a lot more winter nostalgia in that tale (entwined with the romance and the sex) including a blizzard and a session of shovelling afterwards. If you crave a bit of winter warmth, why not pick up a copy? It’s only 99 cents, from the publisher and selected bookstores.

By the way, the photo at the top of this post was taken one long ago winter, from my living room window. This is part of what I do miss.

https://kinkyliterature.com/book/906-almost-home-yule-be-mine/

https://www.pride-publishing.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1018

https://www.amazon.com/Almost-Home-Lisabet-Sarai-ebook/dp/B004RJ3KR0/

Sunday Snog #151: Almost Home

I can feel it in the air. The holidays are coming. I'm thinking about evergreens and mistletoe, candy canes and egg nog, all the delights of the season.

Snow, too. I won't get snow here in the tropics, but I've been thinking about it and writing about it (a new holiday story in the works for you). And so I thought I'd share a very sexy and emotional snog from my snowy M/M/F holiday romance Almost Home.

Home is a state of heart.

Suzanne and Gino have history going back to high school, but for years Suzanne has been three thousand miles away, preoccupied with her challenging career. A mistletoe kiss at a holiday party reminds her of their old bond and proves that some things get better with age. When Gino rescues her from a New England blizzard, though, she discovers that she's not the only love in his life. Gino shares his bed and his colonial-era farm house with taciturn painter Harris Steele. Snowed in, without electricity or running water, the three explore the many shapes a triangle can assume. Although she's far away from her everyday existence, Suzanne realizes that she's almost home.

After you've enjoyed my snog, please visit Victoria's Snog Central, where you will find many more delicious Sunday kisses (probably with holiday themes, too!)

Now Gino shimmied his tight jeans down over his narrow hips. His rigid penis sprang out, a fat arrow of flesh pointed at the ceiling.

Suzanne’s breath caught in her throat. She licked her lips.

He turned his back to her as he eased the pants over the luscious curves of his bare butt and pushed them down to his ankles. With a flourish, he stepped out of them and kicked them away. Finally he stood before her, gloriously naked except for the gold chain around his neck and his impudent grin.

“No underwear?” teased Suzanne, holding out her arms.

“Helena told me you were expected,” Gino replied, stretching out beside her. He toyed with her nipples. She retaliated by grasping and stroking his substantial erection.

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she commented. He gasped as she smoothed her thumb over his knob, spreading the liquid leaking from his slit.

“Not particularly. But I’ve always been an optimist.” Suzanne watched, fascinated, as he rolled a condom onto his cock. He settled on top of her, careful not to knock them off the the narrow couch, and nudged her thighs apart. His hardness prodded her lower lips. “Now—can I fuck you, Suzy Q?”

“Oh yes! It’s about time.”

He slipped into her like an old lover, smooth and sure. She moaned with delight and wrapped her legs around his waist. She hadn’t felt this good in a very long time—perhaps ever. He was a perfect fit, with enough bulk to stimulate all her sensitive spots without stretching her to the point of pain. He used long, slow strokes, letting her appreciate every inch of his flesh sliding over hers. She clenched her inner muscles along his length, and was rewarded by his moan.

“Oh God! Oh—Suzy!” He picked up his pace, fucking her hard and fast, just as she craved. His strong arms supported his weight while his pelvis jerked and drove his cock into her depths. His face hovered over her, lit by the flickering fire. Suzanne watched his expressions as he rammed into her. His blissful smile grew wider at the deepest point of each stroke. His eyes were screwed shut as if the pleasure was too much to bear.

“Look at me, Gino,” she whispered, arching up to meet each thrust. He heard and obeyed, locking his eyes to hers. She tumbled headlong into their luminous depths.

He opened his soul to her gaze. All his hunger was there, more than twenty years of pent-up desire. She saw the laughter, too, gentle and mocking, both his weapon and his armour against hurt. Regret flickered in the background—why had they waited so long, their youth lost to stubbornness or blindness? And woven through it all, glowing in his face as he finally, royally fucked her, was simple love.

The realisation rocked her harder than his cock slamming into her cunt. This wasn’t just fucking—Gino, the boy and the man she’d known for most of her lonely life, was making love to her.

She dragged him down so that his weight mashed her breasts. She wanted him closer. “Gino,” she whispered. “I never knew…” His mouth was on hers. They shared their breathing. She felt his pulse, racing even faster than his cock, beating against her skin. She tightened around him, pulling him deeper, trying to meld their two bodies into one.

Mouth to mouth, eyes locked, they writhed together. Gino slid his hands under her buttocks and held her aloft, driving into her again and again. She floated there, cradled in his strength, ravaged by his lust.

The climax welled up from her depths, powerful, pure and irresistible. The pleasure built and built until she was sure she would shatter, but instead it only drove her higher. The room glowed golden. Gino’s eyes were jewels. She felt herself ripple like water around his cock, then the answering surge from his flesh. She sensed every flicker as he came, hot and sweet, inside her.

He kissed her with quiet passion. She tasted honey and salt, eggnog and peppermint, and came again, deep and soft as falling snow. 

 

Living Without Winter

It's the season for snow. Every place I turn, I see gorgeous photos of evergreens wreathed in white, or delicate flakes drifting past the candles on the window sill, or kids bundled up, three or four to a sled. I have to admit, I feel a bit left out.

For the past eight years, I've resided in a tropical country where we have three seasons: the hot season, the rainy (and hot) season, and the laughably-titled "cool" season, when the temperature occasionally dips into the seventies. Thus, I've been deprived of winter for the better half of a decade. Before the move, though, I lived in rural New England for more than twenty years, so I have plenty of experience with all the joys the season brings: blizzards, ice-storms, and that nightmarish anomaly that seems to be a Massachusetts specialty, freezing rain. I remember winter only too well: power outages, snow tires, storm windows, shoveling, hauling firewood, pulling all the winter clothes out of the attic, making sure your anti-freeze is full... After spending two years in balmy California then returning to my native clime, I came to realize that winter in a place with serious weather is an incredible amount of work.

I usually go back to the U.S. once a year to visit family, but in the spring (during the excruciatingly hot season in my adopted country). Winter is a vivid but increasingly distant memory. I do find myself romanticizing a bit. I imagine the crisp, hushed beauty of a frigid night, when the stars glitter like faraway diamonds in the velvet sky. I remember the excitement of waking up to find the trees cloaked in a soft white blanket, the river frozen, the footprints of a rabbit the only sign of life in the snow-smothered world. I find myself missing the camaraderie of working with my husband to clear a path up our long driveway to the street - conveniently forgetting aching backs and frost-bitten extremities. Memories of childhood delights return to entice me: racing down a snowy hill on my Radio Flyer, digging snow houses out of the piles left by the plows, sitting on the wooden bench next to the flooded and frozen tennis court to don my cherished white figure skates. The scent of wood smoke hanging in the air - Campbell's tomato soup topped with Cheerios and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch after stripping off my soaked snowsuit - real cocoa topped with marshmallows to warm my numb fingers... I could go on and on. Yes, I do miss winter, no matter how hard I try to focus on the dangers and inconveniences it brought.

One of the side benefits of being a writer, though, is that we can use fiction to recreate what we've lost. I definitely do that when it comes to the erotic aspects of my work. The faraway sexual adventures of my youth provide seeds for many of my stories. I write partially to recapture the thrill of those heady days when I was exploring the joys and perils of passion.

In a similar vein, I can relive the experiences of true winter by incorporating the season into my fictional worlds. My holiday tale Almost Home takes place during a New England blizzard, which traps the two heroes and the heroine in a eighteenth century farmhouse (modeled after the home of one of my former neighbors). My M/M novel Necessary Madness is also a winter's tale. In one of my favorite scenes, the protagonists, driving home in a storm, stop at a closed, snow-clogged highway rest area because - well, they can't wait any longer.

When I wrote that scene, I was there. All the sensory details were clear. I could feel the sickening swerve of the out-of-control vehicle plowing through six inches of snow, hear the pines groaning in the wind and the muted splat of snow blown onto the windshield. I shivered in the bitter chill of the unheated building, the scent of disinfectant rising in my nostrils, goosebumps prickling my bared flesh. While the focus is on the sexual tension building between the characters, winter is in there in the background, a contrast to the heat of my characters' desperate coupling.

Unlike some people who move to the tropics, I didn't leave my former home to escape from winter. Life is easier now, I'll admit, but I sometimes hunger for a taste of the cold, dark, snowy season and the complex emotions it evokes - fear, frustration, comfort, awe, hope. When the temperature drops below zero, you truly appreciate warmth. When the sun sets at four in the afternoon, you kindle a fire on the hearth to remind yourself light will return. Living without winter, I write to keep those feelings alive.

A Voyage on the California Zephyr

Last weekend I returned from a three and a half week visit to the U.S., my annual pilgrimage to see family and friends, mail forwarders, lawyers and accountants. A highlight of the trip was our two day, two night journey across the west on Amtrak's Calfornia Zephyr.

We flew from the east coast to Chicago to catch the train. Originally we'd planned to go all the way across the country, but it turned out that the stretch from Boston to Chicago was almost twice as expensive as the rest of the trip, although it's only a quarter of the distance. The train left at the highly civilized hour of 2:00 PM from Chicago's historic Union Station. We had to check out of our hotel at noon, but Amtrak provided a comfortable lounge with secure baggage storage for its "first class passengers" - that is, anyone who had shelled out for a sleeping car! We left our suitcases and went to grab lunch at the station food court. By the time we got back, the train was ready to board.

Chicago's Union Station

We'd purchased a so-called "roomette". This turned out to be a compartment about the size of a small closet, with a window and a sliding door lockable from the inside. During the day, it contains two facing seats. At night the bottom seat folds down into a bed, and a second bunk drops from the ceiling. It's a good thing my husband and I are short and not too fat! And I will forever bless him for being willing to take the top bed, where there wasn't even enough headroom to sit up.

We'd traveled in a roomette a few years before, on a twenty four hour trip from Florida to Boston, but this one was smaller because the Zephyr is a double-decker train. There was no room for anything other than two bodies. We had the devil's time finding space for even the small bags we'd packed with our toiletries and changes of underwear.

Fortunately we were on the lower level; the motion of the train is much less noticeable there and we were also closer to the toilets and the shower. The shower was "interesting". It had hot water, but you could only get it in 30 second bursts. I decided that I'd wait until the end of the trip to try washing my (very abundant) hair!

The train also includes a dining car (all meals are included if you buy sleeping accommodations) and an observation car with big windows so that you can appreciate the scenery. We opted to spend most of our daylight hours in the observation car rather than in our own cramped quarters. After all, a major reason for taking this trip was to enjoy the glories of the American west.

View from the Observation Car

Amtrak provides an attendant for each sleeping car, rather like a concierge. He or she is responsible for making up and breaking down the beds, providing linens and towels, making coffee, emptying trash, and so on. Our attendant, Marion, told us that she'd been working on Zephyr for thirty six years. I immediately started to think about how I could incorporate that into a story, although Marion was far from glamorous

A break for leg-stretching and our attendant Marion

The schedule very cleverly transits the flat areas at night and saves the mountains for the daytime. The first afternoon, we covered the plains of Illinois and Iowa. We reached Omaha, Nebraska, sometime around midnight and arrived in Denver right after breakfast the next morning. Our first full day on the train was mostly devoted to Colorado. The route took us through Rocky Mountain National Park and spectacular, rugged Gore Canyon. Unfortunately, it's a bit difficult to get good photos from inside the train, because the window glass creates reflections. You'll just have to take my word for it - the views were spectacular.

Eastern Colorado plains

In the Rocky Mountains

As night fell, we headed into Utah. Salt Lake City passed us by while we were asleep. One feature of the dining car (aside from fairly decent food) was the fact that you could purchase very good California wine. We availed ourselves of that opportunity both evenings. As a result, we slept quite soundly!

The morning of the second day found us entering California. We stopped briefly at the picturesque border town of Truckee, which looked like something out of an old Western, and picked up an extra engine to help us over the Sierras.

Main Street, Truckee, California

Once out of Truckee, we began to climb, the train taking switchbacks as the elevation increased. We'd first seen some snow in the Rockies (an exciting moment for us since we've been living in the tropics for a decade) but things got seriously snowy in California.

Snow-covered conifers

Sun in the Sierras

When we crossed into the state, two volunteer guides from the Railroad Museum in Sacramento joined the train. Throughout the day they provided us with fascinating information about locations along the route and the history of the area. According to what they told us, just the previous week heavy snow had closed the regular tracks and the California Zephyr had been rerouted south (resulting in significant delays).

The route traverses the infamous Donner Pass, where during the winter of 1846-1847 nearly forty pioneers died of starvation and illness on the road to the Gold Country. As the Zephyr crested the pass and headed down, the sun broke through the clouds, turning Donner Lake an exquisite shade of blue. Magnificent scenery continued to surround us. Above the valley of the American River, our guides pointed out a spot that had been the end of the wagon trail. At that point, they told us, the covered wagons were dismantled and the pieces lowered by rope more than 2000 feet to the valley below. Several companies apparently provided this service to arriving pioneers.

Donner Lake

I had expected that when we reached the lowlands, the view would become boring. However, the train traversed the marshes of the Sacramento River delta and then skirted Suisun Bay, which turned out to be quite dramatic. The brilliant green of the springtime hills was a delightful change after hours of snowy, monochrome mountain vistas.

Suisun Bay

Sacramento River Delta

Springtime in California

The train arrived in Emeryville, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, at 3:20 PM, almost an hour early. We were amazed, since every Amtrak train we've ever taken in the past had always been late.

It turns out that a long train voyage like this is very social. Seating at meals is handled by the dining car staff rather than by choice, since space is limited. As a result, we sat with different people at every meal, and had lots of opportunities to chat and share stories. Almost everyone we met was a railroad veteran. Some people regularly traveled on the Zephyr.

As for us, we had fine time, but I don't think we'll do this particular trip again for a while. On the other hand, we'd love to take the Coast Starlight at some point, which runs along the Pacific Coast from Portland to Los Angeles.

Historic depot, Grand Junction, CO

One slight disappointment: although the historical aspects of the trip had an element of romance, it would pretty difficult to find much that was erotic in our journey. Tiny, narrow, one person bunks - the same basic clothing for two days - thirty second showers - let me just say that this was not the lavish world of the Orient Express! It was more like camping, to be honest. Of course, I could use my imagination and ignore a few of these inconvenient facts...

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed our journey on the California Zephyr. If you're considering doing a voyage like this yourself, I encourage you to go ahead. It's surprisingly affordable and great fun - as long as you're not in a hurry.