Chintz has been an idea in my head for a very long time and I’m so excited to finally be welcoming you all ‘behind the curtain’.

I’ve always adored books and have been an avid reader throughout my life. And I’m fascinated by just about all forms of writing – books, blogs, newspapers, the labels on cleaning products … You name it. If it’s got text on it, I want to pick it up and read it.

While I can’t remember how old I was at the time, I can vividly remember my first-ever encounter with a book that hinted at sex and sexuality. It was called Brown Cows (unfortunately, no longer in print) and etched forever in my brain is a scene in which a boy is given the opportunity to touch a girl’s breast for the first time. Despite the fact that the moment portrayed was actually quite emotionally awkward, it was something of an awakening for me and from that moment on I began to seek out and take notice of sex and relationships in the books I was reading.

Fast-forward to my teens and the discovery of the 80s ‘bonk busters’ on my mother’s bedside table (think Judith Krantz, Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins), which resulted in me lying in bed for hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings, practically inhaling the words from the pages and being at once fascinated and slightly horrified by the sexual antics of the characters (why would anyone put THAT in their mouth?!). With a few more years on the clock and a bit more maturity, however, the shock factor I’d initially experienced was considerably lessened and I began to enjoy some much deeper, more edgy erotica and romance titles, ineffectually hiding the ones with the raunchier covers from casual passers-by by bending the front covers backwards against the bodies of the books. (God bless eReaders.) Continue reading →