Tag: erotic romance

22

Strange sex toys, a secretive author, and Fifty Shades of Grey meets Shakespeare

I love the Internet. It’s an endless river of information at my fingertips. A few quick key taps and I can find out about pretty much anything. But, lately, you know what I’ve really developed a thing for? Google Alerts. Having the ability to use words and phrases to throw up all sorts of news articles, blog posts, commentaries and clips that directly – and sometimes very tenuously – relate to things that interest me. So today, I thought I’d share some of the more intriguing Chintzy links that have arrived in my inbox, courtesy of GA, over the past week or so …

 

15 Real Sex Toys That Will Give You Nightmares
Source: http://www.cracked.com/

Dear God but this article from Cracked.com made my eyes bug out on stalks. I’m a pretty open-minded person but, boy, this post was a bit of an education. The title pretty much says it all and apparently, it’s a follow-on from the ‘most disturbing toys’ articles the author, Ian Fortey, wrote in 2008 and 2009.

The writing in this blog post is very funny and extremely witty – ensure you don’t have food or liquid in your mouth when reading because you will choke and/or spit them across the room – but a note of caution: if you’re easily offended or freaked out, steer clear. The article doesn’t feature any overt nudity or sex acts and there are a bunch of images that have been pixelated out in full to preserve your sanity but it’s still something of a trip. Favourite quote: ‘Finally, the sexual thrill of being a supermarket pork chop can be yours’. NSFW (Not Suitable for Work). Continue reading →

14

Back to our regularly scheduled programme

You’ll be pleased to know that Chintz is back to normal from today; we’ve had a short short posting break as I’ve (Jane) been on holiday in Italy for the past week or so.

Although I did quite a bit of lazing about, I managed to get a fair amount of holiday reading in amidst all the olive and wine consumption and had the joy of discovering three stand-out erotica books: Slave and Need (both from Sherri Hayes’s Finding Anna series) and Uncle Charles’ Girls by Anne Randolph – all of which I’ll be writing reviews for over the next few days. There are some new toy reviews on the way, too, and The Garden of Earthly Delights [*no longer available on the blog] is also due some further instalments. (Unfortunately, the latter suffered a bit in the forty degree Umbrian heat and I didn’t get as many new episodes written as I planned!)

Finally, a word on the image heading up this post (if you follow the Chintz Facebook page you may have spotted this picture already) … As I wandered though the picturesque hilltop town of Urbino (birthplace of the famous Renaissance painter Raphael, home of Piero della Francesca’s iconic ‘Flagellation of Christ’ and site of Federico da Montefeltro’s breathtaking Ducal Palace) what did I see for sale?

Cinquanta sfumature di Grigio.

I wonder if it’s better in Italian?

01

Tied Up, Tied Down – Lorelei James

Title: Tied Up, Tied Down (Rough Riders)
Author: Lorelei James
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd. (July 2008)
ISBN: 9781605040646

What is it about men who work the land, round up cattle, and ride horses? Cowboys, in a word. Why is it that they’re so compelling? Is it because they seem capable? In touch with nature? Able to withstand the elements and whatever other hardships are thrown at them? Whatever the source of their appeal, Lorelei James captures the essence of the modern cowboy in her Rough Riders series and Tied Up, Tied Down features one of my absolute favourite Rough Riders characters, Kade McKay.

A brief synopsis … Skylar Ellison is a transplant from California, having moved to Wyoming to start a skincare manufacturing business on land left to her by her maternal grandmother. Bright and savvy, she’s determined to make a go of things despite having suffered recent traumas in her personal life, including the breakup of her marriage and the death of her mother and grandmother. But an encounter in a carpark with local cowboy Kade McKay leaves her with a baby to manage as well as a company, and when she can’t find Kade to tell him she’s expecting, she resigns herself to raising the child on her own. Continue reading →

05

Fifty Shades of Grey – E.L. James

Title: Fifty Shades of Grey
Author: E.L. James
ISBN: 978-0099579939
Publisher: Arrow (26 April 2012)

I’ve procrastinated over whether to do a review for Fifty Shades of Grey because, frankly, there’s not a lot that I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. The coverage of – and the furore around – this book has been absolutely massive and you can’t seem to walk five paces without bumping into someone who’s reading it or having a conversation about it. It’s broken sales records set by J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard, Harry Potter, and is the first book ever to reach the one million sales mark on Amazon Kindle. If you’ve been living in a parallel universe and haven’t a clue what I’m going on about, here’s a brief run-down …

Fifty Shades of Grey is an erotic romance written by British author E.L. James (a pseudonym for London T.V. executive Erika Leonard). It started life as fanfiction based on the characters and stories from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, which James later reworked to create Fifty Shades of Grey and the two subsequent books in the series, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. To boil it right down to basics:

- Edward Cullen (wealthy blood-sucking vampire) becomes Christian Grey (wealthy flogger-wielding sadist);

- Bella Swan (virginal high school student) becomes Anastasia Steele (virginal college graduate);

- Forks (small Pacific North West town) becomes Seattle (large Pacific North West city). Continue reading →

04

The Dirty Bits for Girls – India Knight

Title: The Dirty Bits for Girls
Author: India Knight (editor)
ISBN: 978-1844082285
Publisher: Virago UK (March 1, 2009)

The Dirty Bits for Girls has been around for a while – it was first published in 2006 – but I’m offering it up because 1) it’s a great read and 2) because it gives you enlightening glimpses into books that you might not have considered picking up otherwise.

This collection of ‘dirty’ excerpts runs the gamut – Georgette Heyer, Anaïs Nin, John Cleland, Jilly Cooper, to name just a few of the authors whose work appears in it – and, as such, caters to pretty much every taste. From the over-the-top soap opera sex of 80s Judith Krantz (Scruples) to the dark eroticism of Pauline Reage’s Story of O, Dirty Bits serves up a tasting menu of sex in literature and is perfect as means of steering you towards the books that do it for you and away from the ones that don’t.

The extract from Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck with its smouldering, rakish hero, the Earl of Worth (a.k.a. Julian St John Audley), is toe-curlingly good. At the risk of sounding like a giddy thirteen-year-old, the guy is hot. He’s handsome. He’s arrogant. He’s dominating.  He’s insolent. There’s not a single ‘traditional’ sex scene in the excerpt (or in the entire book for that matter) – the raciest it gets is a raised hem and a kiss in the back of a curricle-and-four – but the sexual frisson between him and Judith, the heroine, is brilliant. Reading this particular snippet sent me into something of a Heyer frenzy and I consumed a number of her Regency ton romances in short order after reading the Dirty Bits taster. A perfect and satisfying example of Alpha male versus feisty, spirited heroine, with sexual chemistry to boot. Continue reading →

03

It’s not about curtains

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 →