Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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The Science of Sex – a new topic for the blog

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For a long time now, I’ve been trying to come up with a regular blog post topic that really defined my thoughts on the erotica genre and was pretty descriptive of who I am as an erotica writer. I don’t do romance, no straight up sci-fi or fantasy. My erotica is not simply stories of sex scenes between two or more people. I write weird stuff to be honest; stories about plants having sex, and aliens discussing gender roles, etc. During a discussion with Nobilis Reed and Ann Regentin on our joint podcast The Good Parts, I realized that I get a lot of my best story ideas from scientific articles in newspapers and magazines, like National Geographic or Psychology Today. And this got me to thinking. If I were going to teach someone what I know about writing erotica, it would be to look at science for intriguing story ideas.

For instance, a couple of months ago, National Geographic ran an article on orchids, including one particular species familiarly called the “prostitute orchid?” This particular species of orchid cross dresses as a female bee in order to lure male bees in to mate with it. While the male bee is busy getting his insectile rocks off on the fake femme, the orchid gets busy securing pollen to the bee’s nether regions. By the time the bee finally figures out he’s been duped into humping a flower, he’s already been coated in pollen (or as I like to call it, orchid sperm). The poor bee flies off in search of a real female bee, only to run into another cross dressing flower where he ends up depositing the pollen from the first orchid, thus becoming an unwitting courier in the mating rituals of flowers.

Bizarre story, isn’t it? And yet fascinating too. Imagine being the flower, trying to lure the bee in so you could hose him down with your seed. Or better yet, imagine being the bee, looking for LUV in all the wrong places. What if there were a society of sentient beings where this sort of mating was carried out as a ritual? The males and females of the species would have to rely on a member of a separate species to carry out an important and very intimate transaction in order to breed. Would the courier species charge money for their services? And how would humans react to encountering an intelligent alien species in which this sort of activity was the sexual norm?

These are the sort of ideas I love to sink my teeth into and write about. And since I think this is something that makes me a bit unique among erotica writers, I’ve decided to work on a semi-regular post that I’ll put up on Fridays called The Science of Sex. Some weeks, I’ll post links to articles I’ve come across on the web about sex and scientific discoveries in the news. Other times, I’ll give my thoughts on what I’ve read or researched recently, and how I might spin a particular bit of science news into a story idea. And folks are free to run with any ideas I come up with. I don’t mind discussing my thoughts or inspiring people to write stories of their own.

For this week, here’s a link to the National Geographic article on orchids that I mentioned above, entitled Love and Lies – http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/09/orchids/pollan-text/1.

And if that isn’t enough for you, here’s an article from Web MD on the health benefits sof sex – http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/features/10-surprising-health-benefits-of-sex. Interesting stuff to know, and could be the basis of some intriguing story ideas. I know I’ve got one brewing in the back of my head even now!

Read it and enjoy and I’ll keep my eye out for more Science of Sex topics for future posts!

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Rats! Episode 09 – Good Morning Sunshine!

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Ah, first call to formation. How well I recall performing that lovely little duty. First call was essentially the wake up call freshman made to let everyone know that formation was coming up. Basically, all the rats met in one room in the company area to argue over who’s turn it was to perform first call. Then one poor rat was shoved out into the hall where he had to drag to one end, stand at attention, and shout as loud as he could…

“First call to formation, Sir!”

“First call to formation, Sir!”

“First call to formation, Sir!”

Three times in a row, just like that. Then the rat took off dragging and escaped back into the room. About 5-10 minutes later, he came back out again to call “Last call to formation, Sir!” During first call, there might be a few upper classmen out in the hallway, waiting to be spoken up to. By last call, frikkin’ everybody was out there. As soon as last call was made, all the rats came pouring out to line up along one wall, where they were then chewed out for whatever god-forsaken reason the upper classmen came up with that morning. Sometimes the cadet first sergeant would just lay in with a very vigorous speech about how lousy we all were and how we’d better straighten up. Other times, it seemed like every upper classman in the company pounced on us, conducting on the spot inspections and drilling us for new cadet knowledge. New cadet knowledge, by the way, was trivia we all had to study about the VTCC and Virginia Tech. To this day I can still tell you which building on campus serves as a compass (Burruss Hall), and the names of all the Pylons on the Drill Field (Brotherhood, Ut Prosim, Loyalty, Leadership, Service, Sacrifice, Honor, Duty). I cannot recall though how many alumni went on to receive Medals of Honor for their military service, nor all the names of the university presidents. Some stuff was just bound to leak out my ears eventually, I suppose.

I was hardly a stranger to early mornings when I joined the VTCC. My high school had an early seventh period which I took advantage of to earn extra credits toward my diploma. In fact, being able to wake up and get moving early in the AM was probably the only advantage I had as a rat. I hated it, but I could do it, and I could get to where I needed to be on time, regardless of the hour of the morning. Many upper classmen did sleep in, so it was always kind of fun in a mean way to have to wake them up early on mornings when we knew they had planned to sleep late.

BTW, I’ve been getting emails and feedback on the “Rats!” cartoons from a lot of former and current cadets. Thank you all for visiting and reading these cartoons. Be forewarned though. You see the logo at the top of the web? The one that has this cartoon of a woman with horns and says “Cynical Woman: Stay-at-home Mom and Erotica Writer?” Yeah, I’m not kidding about that. That’s me as I am today. If you’re only here for the “Rats!” cartoons, be careful poking around the rest of the site. I am far from politically correct, and I take my smut writing very seriously. Well, as seriously as I can. I do cartoon about that too, and if you’re interested, you can see those cartoons here.

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ACW Episode 59 – Huzzah! It’s Monday!

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This happens to me all too often. I look forward to Mondays because Monday is my first opportunity to work without interruption after a weekend of screaming kids and Hubster (Hubster does not scream, but he does keep me busy on the weekends). I enjoy my time with my family, but I do need time to work, so by the time Monday comes around, I’m usually chomping at the bit to get started. Then wouldn’t you know it? One of the kids is sick, there’s a doctor’s appointment to go to, Hubster decides to work at home which always completely disrupts my routine…

The last couple of weeks’ worth have been totally eaten by sick kids, sick me, and doctor appointments. And yesterday, when I thought I’d finally have the house to myself to work, Pixie came down with a fever. It’s been frustrating, I tell ya. I do most of my writing in the evenings after the kids are asleep and while Hubster is busy up in the office, but I still need a couple hours during the day to handle email, finances, story critiques, website updates, blogging, etc. If I don’t get that time, those tasks start to build up fast, and pretty soon I find myself staying up all hours of the night just to keep up. I hate it!

I recently read an article on author Jodi Picoult, a woman who’s written 17 novels in 18 years (and no, I haven’t read a single one of her books). She gets up at the crack of dawn, goes for a three mile walk, and then works until 3PM when her kids get home. I started to think, “Man! Wouldn’t that be great, to just write for six or seven hours straight? Think how much writing I’d get done! I wish I had her schedule.” Then I read that she gets 200 fan emails a day and she personally responds to all of them, and suddenly I realized I pretty much do have her work schedule. Not with the 200 fan emails a day of course (though I wouldn’t complain about that). But Jodi Picoult is also handling those same minor tasks that eat up so much of a writer’s time, and if she has kids, I’m betting she also has days where she’s got to take care of a sick child or spend all day in the doctor’s office instead of at her desk writing. And yet she still gets stuff done.

And I get stuff done too. A short story a week, two web comics, commissions for my computer graphics business, etc. In spite of all the juggling, it does all somehow get done.

Huzzah, it’s Tuesday. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work!

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Move It Mama Monday! Combinations In Wii Fit Plus

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Last week was an interesting week, exercise-wise. If you recall, I made the decision to switch up my schedule, saving my writing time for the evenings after the girls were in bed and using my mornings before the girls got up to exercise on the Wii.

That plan sort of worked. Last week I was still recovering from being sick with a sinus infection, and then Princess came down with some sort of stomach bug, and then we had a snow day so all my usual carefully laid plans went right out the window. I did manage to get on the Wii to exercise most mornings, but many days that was the only exercise I got, and I’m really striving for 2-3 periods of exercise each day. Those periods include: early morning Wii session before everyone else gets up; daytime fitness class at the Y or dojo; and half an hour or more outside working on the yard and garden. I only managed to get all three sessions in on one day, Friday. I must admit I felt tired when Friday evening hit, but I also felt good. Thanks to getting up early, the day’s schedule had gone well and I got in plenty of activity and even some fresh air. But that was the only day I accomplished all my physical activity. Most of the week I only got to workout on the Wii, and I was frustrated with that because those workouts were not as challenging as I would have liked.

Then I stumbled across a comment on the Wii Mommies forums about the “Combine” feature in Wii Fit Plus. One mom noted that when she combined the preset routines in Training Plus, she got a really good workout that burned 200 calories. That’s far more calories than I’ve usually been able to burn using Wii Fit Plus, so I decided to give this a try.

Sunday morning, I popped in Wii Fit Plus and went straight to Training Plus. I selected the Routines option and hit the “Combine” button where I picked six of the routines available and told Wii to let ‘er rip. Forty-two minutes later, I had actually worked up quite a sweat and burned 146 calories. Amazing! By combining the various routines, I was able to go through all areas of Wii Fit Plus – cardio, balance games, yoga and strength – and I even had fun in the process. The combined routines mixed everything up so I did a little of this, a little of that, and never got bored.

What I really liked is that I did all that exercise, burned plenty of calories, and still managed to take it easy on my knees. It’s that time of the month, folks, and with my hormones in full swing, my knees are really killing me. Wii Fit Plus is about the only home exercise I can do that won’t leave me crippled for life during this time. But compared to EASA and Gold’s Gym Cardio, Wii Fit Plus seemed seriously lacking in the calorie burning department.

Well, no longer. I’ll probably spend most of this week doing combined workouts so I can continue to take it easy on my knees. With luck, I’ll be able to work up a sweat every morning, and then go on to my next exercise period ready to rock and roll. We’ll see how this works out!

If anybody else is using Wii Fit Plus and has thoughts on the Combine function, let me know. Or if you have any tips on getting the most out of Wii Fit Plus, feel free to leave them here. I still think Wii Fit Plus is the most fun of all the fitness games I’ve tried, but I really want to sweat with it. If you can help me figure out how to do that, I’d be very grateful!

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Sunday Contentments – My New Love Affair

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My apologies for missing last Sunday’s blog post, but we were in DC to celebrate my mother-in-law’s/Princess’/my birthday that weekend, and Princess and I were sick on top of all that. Yes, we had a lot of fun on that trip 😉

But now we’re all home and I’m content to sit on the couch and contemplate what’s currently going on in my life. And what’s currently going on is my budding new love affair…

With my local hardware store.

You have no idea how giddy and excited I am right now. Yesterday, after taking the kids to swim class, I headed to the post office to mail a couple packages. Post office was closed, unfortunately, but rather than declare the trip a bust, I decided to visit the nearby hardware store. It’s a Taylor’s DIY store, far smaller than Lowe’s or HQ, and I wasn’t expecting much from it, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I felt the first blush of attraction.

You see, the girls and I just planted seeds last week, in preparation to start this year’s container garden, and I’d been thinking about buying compost instead of potting soil, but wasn’t sure where I could easily get some. Well, there in the parking lot of Taylor’s was several bags of the stuff, along with bags of peat moss and vermiculite and other garden goodies. “Yes!” I thought. “Here’s a place where I can get exactly what I need for this year’s herbs and veggies, and maybe this time we’ll have a shot at harvesting more than two tiny shriveled tomatoes!”

Then I walked inside the store, and that was when I really fell in love. The place was clean and well lit, and I could clearly see the signs for where everything was. This place was not a massive, monumental maze of confusion like Lowe’s or HQ. It was small, tidy, and well organized. And it had staff! Helpful friendly staff! The girls and I weren’t even in the store two minutes before someone asked if they could help up find anything. And as soon as someone noticed I was in the store with a couple of antsy kids, a clerk headed over to the old-fashioned popcorn cart and started heating up a batch of fresh popcorn! I got to spend 45 minutes wandering through the entire store while the girls happily munched on popcorn!! There was no whining, no fussing, no arguing; just the quite munch-munch of two little girls happily devouring large bags of free popcorn!

And if that wasn’t enough to seal the deal on my undying love, Taylor’s had a very nice selection of stuff I actually would use, like heirloom vegetable seeds and bird feeders and gardening tools and pots. Lots of nice pots at very reasonable prices for my small container garden. I drooled my way through the store, smiling happily at the clerks who showed up every ten minutes to ask if I needed help or more popcorn. I left with a bag of dried corn cobs and a squirrel feeder to put them in, but I made plans to come back soon, very soon, with a long list of must-have items for my garden.

It’s crazy, I know. I’m hopeless as a gardener, and an even worse do-it-yourselfer, but being in that store with all those helpful friendly clerks and actually being able to find stuff made me feel like I could do anything! Or at least made me feel like I could tackle a few simple home projects this Spring and Summer and come out with half-decent results.

Where is this crazy new love affair headed, you ask? What will the results be? Here are the results I’m hoping for:

  • A bigger, nicer container garden that produces plenty of herbs and even a few heirloom veggies!
  • Pixie’s clunky old cargo box bed disassembled, sanded down, and painted a lovely shade of girly pink with little blue flowers and dragonflies on it.
  • A small bookcase to fit in my master bathroom, so I finally have someplace nice to store all those books and magazines I like to read while I’m in the tub.
  • Maybe even re-finish a few pieces of the old cargo box furniture in our living room to give the whole room a new look!

And so on and so on. I’ve got a list of home improvement and redecorating projects as long as my arm, and I’m just dying to get to work on them. Now that I’ve discovered my local hardware store, I think I might actually have a shot. Though to be really successful, I may need to expand this relationship. You know, make it a threesome? I hear there’s a very attractive fabric store in our area…

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Rats! Episode 08 – What do you say to that?!

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And this week’s cartoon pretty much sums up everything in the previous seven episodes – uncomfortable uniforms, mandatory football game attendance, required show of spirit, and bad haircuts all around. Plus evil upper classmen having fun at the rats’ expense.

But it was all good. I recall the above incident actually happening, though I can’t say if I was a rat at the time or an upper classmen. I just know it happened, and it struck me as funny.

I do believe this is the last of the 2×2 format comics. I know I’ve said that before, and then continued uploading more 2×2 comics. I have no idea why I went with 2 panels across by 2 rows down. Where on earth did I get the idea for that format? It certainly looked like nothing I ever saw in a newspaper. I have no idea how the Collegiate Times worked around my idiotic formatting choice, but they did, and they never sent me any nasty-grams about it, so I am forever grateful to them for that. They were very patient with me, and mercifully criticism-free to a newbie comic artist.

What really puzzles me is the format and quality of the cartoons that follow. You’ll see what I mean next week. I know that the 2×2 cartoons were the first ones I drew and the first ones that ran in the CT. After that, I have a hard time establishing what order the cartoons ran in. I spent an evening or two sorting through all the strips I had, and was able to sort them into Year 01, Year 02, etc. But I can’t necessarily say I got them in the correct order beyond that. I do know that the artwork suddenly started to look a lot better, probably because I found a different pen to ink with and because I got better at erasing my pencil lines. But for some reason, I never seemed to stick with the same kind of pen or paper for too long. You’ll see examples of what I mean as we get further along.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Next week, we get more into the day-to-day details of life as a rat!

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Writing Wednesday – “Afternoon of a Faun” available at All Romance eBooks

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Afternoon of a Faun, a m/m erotica short story I wrote for Coming Together: Al Fresco, is available as a single story at All Romance eBooks for just 69 cents! Coming Together has recently begun re-publishing the original anthologies as well as individual short stories and new material. The proceeds from these stories and books/ebooks go to various charities. Proceeds for Afternoon of a Faun will go to Conservation International.  Afternoon of a Faun is a “delightful tale (tail?) of empowerment and revenge featuring a mythical beast with an insatiable appetite.”  You can buy Afternoon of a Faun here.

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ACW Episode 58 – Personal Projects

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For some reason, these sorts of conversations happen to me all the time. I’m sitting in the dojo or at the park or in the play area of Chic-Fil-A, working on my latest evil project, and a mom I don’t know will ask, “So, what are you working on?” Fortunately, these conversations never last long…

I have not made a voodoo doll exactly. I did crochet a zombie and then a ninja, both of which I believe I’ve shown off here in the blog. Right now, I’m sewing a felt pillow/creature for Princess – a one-eyed, winged heart doll. It’s based on a little doodle I often like to draw. Princess is also sewing these days, making a heart dolly of her own for Pixie. Nobody is quite sure what Pixie is doing, but here is her latest artistic effort.

Apparently one of these figures is me with blood on my teeth, one of these figures is the Hubster with blood on his teeth, one of these is Pixie with blood on her teeth, and the shortest character is a baby with blood on its teeth. We’ve been talking about adopting a third child, and Pixie very much wants a baby sister. Princess was very upset not to be in this family portrait.

BTW, today’s cartoon also features my best friend Mary. I’ve known Mary since I was 11, which means I’ve now known her 30 years. Kind of scary. Mary knows pretty much everything about me, and yes, she would enjoy watching me give someone a heart attack and as a nurse, she’s more than qualified to perform CPR on my victims. Love ya, Mary!

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Move It Mama Monday! My Jeans Are Tight!

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Uh-oh. It seems I need to slim down a bit. Normally, I do not worry about the number on the scale. But today I put on my jeans and they were tight. Not so tight I can’t zip them, but tight enough that I can’t get down on the floor, play with the kids, and then get back up again without a bit of struggle. That’s too tight in my opinion. And that means I need to focus a bit more on my eating and exercise habits.

I was doing pretty good with EA Sports Active for the first 4 weeks of the 6-week challenge, but then I hit a week where my hormones went all wonky. Two things happened then. I packed on about 4 lbs of water weight and I got massive sugar and salt cravings. I knew what was happening, but that didn’t stop me from throwing my healthy diet out the window so I could gorge on salty snacks and drink way too many sugared drinks. Now I’m paying the price for that.

I was sick on the couch all last week, so now that I feel better I’m going to restart my exercise and healthy eating plans. Starting today, I’ll be getting up at 6AM to exercise with Gold’s Gym Cardio and Wii Fit Plus on the Wii for 45 minutes or so. I did 6 weeks straight of nothing but EASA on the Wii so I’m a little bored with it right now. Gold’s Gym always makes me sweat and Wii Fit is good for fixing my balance and thus my knee problems as well.

In addition to this, I’m going back to my usual two diet rules. First, eat 2 vegetarian meals a day. Second, drink a glass of water before I drink anything else. I’m not giving up my 2-3 cups of tea a day, but drinking the extra water always seems to help slow down the appetite a bit.

I’ll be doing a denim check each Monday as well, trying on the same pair of jeans I tried on this morning to see how they fit. Again, it’s not about the number on the scale. It’s about eating healthy, getting plenty of exercise, drinking lots of water, and FITTING INTO MY JEANS!

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Rats! Episode 07 – Let’s See Some Spirit!

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Ah, football. How I hated that sport.

The Virginia Tech Cadet Corps was required to attend every home football game when I was a cadet. I’m sure they still are. The year I became a freshman at Tech was the year after the university had been involved in some sort of recruiting scandal, and as a result they were forbidden to recruit for the next four years. Or something like that. Remember, I didn’t really care for the game so I wasn’t paying attention to the details.

But even I had to notice that the Hokies lost more games than they won that year… And the year after that… And the year after that… And that was a problem for me and every other freshman cadet who came along. You see, we were required to cheer for our team, and if the Hokies didn’t win, it was because we didn’t cheer hard enough! Yes, folks, this was the kind of logic I was dealing with in college. And whenever the Hokies lost a football game, we rats lost privileges like weekend pass. No weekend pass meant we didn’t get to go anywhere but the dining hall and the toilet that weekend, and let me tell you, that kind of sucked.

What also sucked was the uniforms we had to wear to the game. The one I’ve drawn here is the dark blue blouse with the white ducks. The blouse is that heavy hips to neck thing, made out of wool. The white ducks are the pants we were wearing. The blouse sucked because in the fall, the weather could go anywhere from freezing to “OMFG! I’m dying of heat prostration here!” And the blouse wasn’t really adequate clothing for either end of that spectrum. Plus it had a really stiff collar that chaffed like nobody’s business. The white ducks were bad because they had to be pressed and starched just so, and because they got dirty if you even so much as looked at them. Seriously. I’d put my pants on and before I got out to formation, they’d go from white to grey. I got into a lot of trouble for that, let me tell ya.

The cup chain incident really did happen, by the way. One of the ways we rats could show spirit was by collecting the plastic cups everyone got their drinks in and stacking them into a chain that ran up and down the stadium. We never had enough cups so we always had to beg the civilian students for them. Well, one time the civilians got a little too enthusiastic with the giving and the next thing you know, the stadium pretty much exploded with plastic cups. They were coming at us from every which way, and a lot of them still had soda in them. We got into a little bit of trouble for that one.

I’ve been getting feedback from some former cadets of the good ol’ VTCC. Thank you all for the kind comments. I hope you are all enjoying the cartoons. I got plenty of ’em!