Monday night we returned in the middle of the storm from a week of sunshine and exploring and reminiscing in Rome. It was a fabulous week of pasta and tiramisu, espresso and wine and Roman ruins mixed liberally with the wild hubbub of Christmas preparation. There were leisurely hours of reading simply for pleasure in quiet café’s – something I’ve not had much time for recently, there were long walks beneath the rainbow wave of Christmas lights along the Via Del Corso. There were quick stops into bars in the middle of the afternoon for espresso. There were walks in the Palatine and outings to Tivoli and to Ostia Antica. And there were wonderful memories.
Raymond and I are quite familiar with Rome in the winter. We married in mid-December and spent part of our honeymoon in Rome and Italy. The place is full of good memories for us. It’s always magical and romantic and irresistibly sexy. It will also be the setting for the third Holly novel, so this was a chance to soak up atmosphere and do a little research.
It’s been eight years since the last time we were in the Eternal City, and we both agree that’s way too long in between trips. Even though there have been plenty of changes over eight years, it still felt like coming home. There were more excavations in the Forum and the Palatine area. Above the Forum there was a different band dressed in Santa Clause suites playing Jingle Bells endlessly in that uncommon alto sax and accordion combo. The pasta and pizza at every little trattoria was delish, there were too many pastries to sample in three lifetimes, let alone one week, and the rule about not making eye-contact with the drivers during that heart-stopping moment when you step into the traffic at the crosswalk still applies.
In the Forum, we spent quality time in the ruins of the House of the Vestal Virgin, with its climbing pink roses and with its thin skin of ice on top of the reflecting pools. We were early enough to miss the worst of the crowds.
In the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, we walked among the fountains and plotted wonderfully sexy stories about love run amok in a Renaissance garden. The place was, in no small part, an inspiration for my novella, Surrogates.
We arrived early in the ruins of Ostia Antica and stayed until the whistle blew at the end of the day and we were chased out. I could have lingered for hours in the ruins of the temples from the Roman Republic, the temple of Hercules, and the Domus of Psyche and Eros.
It’s not difficult to understand why Rome is called The Eternal City. It’s not difficult to get caught up in the layer cake of modern and ancient and the manic honk of car horns and the shove and push of Christmas shoppers.
Our flight home was delayed by the heavy wind storms that have plagued the UK the past couple of days. We sat in the lounge at Fiumicino Airport drinking coffee, then wine and reading for pleasure, not really worrying too much. When the window of opportunity presented itself, we left the sunshine for the windy wet British shores. Ours was one of the last planes to land as the storm closed in again, leaving us sitting on the tarmac for an hour and a half waiting for a stand. But we made it home, with little prep made for Christmas – though we never have stood on tradition where Christmas is concerned. Ours will be the hodge-podge of our own non-traditional Christmas treats along with the memories of our first Christmas together when we were only just married, living in a cold flat in Croatia, decorating our tiny tree with chocolate ornaments and watching the cornbread for our turkey dressing bake in the oven. True, we had no television, but even more important, the kitchen, in front of the oven, was the warmest place in the house.
Ah, but I digress! The thing is, we celebrated then and we celebrate now. We celebrate not Christmas per se, but all things that are good in our life, and all things that this year’s brought, all things that our life together has brought. We celebrated in Rome, we celebrated in Croatia and we celebrate now in soggy, windy England while we catch up on our laundry and prepare to cook our Christmas favourites. And we wish all of you many, MANY wonderful reasons to celebrate during this holiday season and many more in the year to come.
It was my pleasure to be a part of the wonderful Guildford Writer’s Group for several years and getting to know the very talented writer, Amy Kernahan, was one of the highlights of that experience. At the time, Amy was writing her wonderful travelogue, Orion is Upside Down, so once a fortnight the whole group got to experience Amy’s amazing pilgrimage, with her father, to Antarctica. I couldn’t be more pleased to introduce you to Amy and the story behind Orion is Upside Down. Welcome, Amy!
Antarctica was once the very essence of inaccessibility. One of its poles (the Pole of Inaccessibility) is named so. Did you know that Antarctica is home to more than one pole? It’s home to more than one Pole as well, assuming Arctowski Base s occupied. Several years have passed now since I visited, but the Polish research station on King George Island is still going.
The working research station may or may not be on the itinerary, but Antarctica is now firmly on the tourist trail and sojourns there are as common in print as they are becoming in actuality. So why is my journey, made only shortly after the first so-called ‘cruises’ to the White Continent, and my journaling of it any different? What qualifies me? To my knowledge, no Antarctic chronicler in print has ever seen their own island home reflected in the islands of the sub-Antarctic. But for the Gulf Stream, the Outer Hebrides, where I was born and raised, would, like South Georgia, be permanently robed in glaciers. As it is, they are a twin to the Falklands. Thus I have an affinity with the land itself.
Antarctica is more than the penguins.
Antarctica is more than history.
The Nordnorge
Been and gone is what is called is called the Golden Age. (But who’s to say the best is not to come?) Sir Ernest Shackleton, in whose Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition’s wake the bark of my journey sails is an archetypal giant of polar exploration. But alongside my awe of Shackleton, I have the simple affection of a shared heritage with Thomas MacLeod, Able Seaman on board Endurance, Shackleton’s ship. Shackleton, known for bestowing nicknames upon his crew called him ‘Stornoway’ after his wee… my wee… our wee home town.
So there are my credentials: Antarctica herself and one of her lesser-sung heroes are a part of what I call ‘home.’
Out of whose womb
The Peregrinatio is the ancient Celtic search for one’s true home. Orion is Upside Down chronicles mine.
Blurb:
This sea story from the bottom of the earth takes the reader on a philosophical voyage through many realms, religious and secular, mathematical and poetic, natural and mechanical. Something akin to a Scottish Bill Bryson, Amy Kernahan, who was born and grew up on the Isle of Lewis, the largest of the chain of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland, sets out with her travelling companion, her father, to journey in the Antarctic and follow her dreams of seeing, and even standing in, the places where Sir Ernest Shackleton had been.
Casting Shackleton in the role of Virgil to her Dante, she follows his trail through the ice fields around the Antarctic Peninsula, a vision here on earth as hellish as the frozen Lake Cocytus at the centre of Dante’s Inferno. Along the way, the might of the sea, and the glories of the Antarctic set Amy pondering themes of Judeo-Christianity, seeing Antarctica as a remnant of Eden, unpopulated by both mankind and sin. The mathematics of nature reveals itself to her, and she is awed by the prophetic soul of Coleridge and his Ancient Mariner.
Paradise Bay
Amy has set out on her journey believing it to be a pilgrimage to Shackleton’s grave, but as she sojourns beneath striking southern skies where even the familiar is alien, she realises that she is on another more spiritual pilgrimage, called by the ancient Christians of her homeland peregrinatio, the search for what they called ‘the place of one’s resurrection’ or true home. The outcome, although perhaps not surprising, is not quite as clear cut as it might have been.
Polarising Filters Kick Butt
Excerpt:
We were surrounded by giants. Nootaikok, the Inuit god of icebergs, and his court. Tradition describes him as ‘large and very friendly.’ I wondered which space-time continuum that was in. Certainly not this one. I had mourned the results of his handiwork since I was six years old. Nordnorge lay motionless, like one prepared for martyrdom, unarmed before the executioner, yet daring to bring her petition to a god not renowned for mercy, whatever tradition might say.
Shackleton’s Grave
Of course, the couple of hours of outward inactivity were taken up with the crew’s preparations for landing, out of sight down in the car deck, but standing out on deck beneath the lifeboat that had offered so little shelter as we rounded Cape Horn, in the stillness that seemed to be as much a part of the place as the mountains and the water were, it was easy to imagine that the ship was holding parley with the god of the ice, bargaining for the safety of her passengers. Nootaikok acquiesced and the landing began, but the little boats, that the previous evening had gambolled around like puppies, seemed subdued. They waited patiently for their charges under the lee of Nordnorge’s hull, huddling in to the mother-ship for protection.
Be careful, she warned them. If your propellers hit the ice…
Ice littered the bay. As well as the bergs, many of them level with the ship’s superstructure, the water teemed with brash ice, up to three feet exposed, and the comically named ‘bergy bits’ that filled the taxonomic gap between brash and true bergs, anything over fifteen feet. And then there were the infamous growlers, barely visible submerged ice that lurked just beneath the surface, like the submarines of some hostile alien power.
South Georgia Rainbow
The ice here is glacial, ancient. I have heard people say of Titanic, ‘How could crashing into ice sink a ship?’ No one would doubt that crashing into a rock could sink a ship. Glacial ice, the stuff icebergs are made of, is harder than rock. It is not frozen water, it is compressed snow, the ice at and below the surface the oldest, the hardest, compressed over aeons by the mass of hundreds of feet of snow-becoming-ice above it as it makes its slow, unrelenting journey to the sea, gouging its path out of the rock, tearing away the surface as though it were topsoil. Anyone who doubts its destructive power need only look at the fjords of Norway, their sheer cliffs dropping to the sea – ice did that. Destruction that creates.
Stromness Warning
Tomas helped us ashore again, but he didn’t need to hold the Polar Cirkle boat’s nose quite as firmly as he had at Deception Island; she was making no attempt to bolt.
‘Welcome to Neko Harbour,’ he called out. ‘Our first landing on the Antarctic mainland.’
Close to our landing point stood a little wooden hut, painted bright red to make it stand out against the natural white, a white so bright it seemed almost unnatural. The hut was a refuge erected by the Argentineans in 1949. And what a refuge it must have been to anyone who had run the gauntlet of ice that guarded the Harbour. But now, like the crumbling remains of the station at Whalers’ Bay, it was home only to penguins and seals.
Thou rash intruder
The Harbour is named after a Norwegian factory ship which operated there between 1911 and 1924. Looking out into the bay I tried to picture her (tried because I didn’t really know what a factory ship looked like) lying there surrounded by the ice, which tolerated her with disinterest as it did now another Norwegian vessel. Nordnorge looked suddenly small, disappearing behind one of the aquatic white mountains that patrolled the bay.
They stood at the gates of Dis, the threshold to the nether-hell, Dante and his guide. No way to go but onward, for no-one can retreat out of Hell. You can’t go back the way you’ve come. If you do, you may leave Hell, but Hell will not leave you.
And as the demons at the gate appraised them with scorn, ‘Thou with us shalt stay,’ they say to Virgil.
No.
But did Shackleton, man of words and eloquence and frustrated poet himself, Virgil now to a reluctant Dante, ever think that perhaps he would?
The guide turns to his charge.
‘Have no fear, no matter what they do to me. I’ve been here before.’
Top of hill Paradise
Is that why we journey through Hell? So that once we’ve been there and know the way, we can guide another through?
The paradox of Antarctica began to manifest itself. A place that could be Eden, unsullied, un-fallen, could just as easily be Hell.
Or vice versa.
This terrifying place, with its monstrous inhabitants, was equally the last haven of peace and innocence. But we were banished from Eden.
This is the ice’s world, and we really have no business being here.
About Amy Kernahan
Amy was born and brought up on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, but she’s now an ‘economic migrant’ to the South East of England, where she work as an assembly, integration and test engineer for a company building small satellites in Guildford, Surrey. That’s the ones up in space, not the dishes on the sides of buildings.
A fascination with technology led her to choose a career path that she believed would bring her to its cutting edge, gaining along the way a Masters in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Glasgow and studying for a time at the prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse. But the reality is somewhat different and whoever said the space industry is glamorous has never worked in it!
When she’s not writing or hidden away in a big white scrupulously clean laboratory wearing a silly hat and static-deflecting overalls, Amy does milage. She is now saying ‘never again’ to another marathon, but her year wouldn’t be complete without her trips to Cardiff and Liverpool to run in those cities’ half-marathons. And she likes to trek the long-distance paths of around a hundred miles, five to six days walking. In a world where we can hop on a plane and be almost anywhere within twenty-four hours, Amy likes to travel in the most primal, human way she can. Ironic, perhaps, for someone who spent four years of her life learning to design aeroplanes.
But Amy’s first love has always been the sea. You don’t get much more primal than that.
It’s been ages since I was last in Bath, and upon our return Wednesday afternoon I very quickly remembered why I love the place so much. For this visit to Bath, we had Raymond’s sister, brother-in-law and niece with us. It was their first time.
We had a plan. Raymond would play tour guide while I wrote. I was feeling a bit panicked for having had a week with very little writing — lots of fun with the rels, but very little writing — so I promised I’d write at least part of the time then reward myself with a bit of Bath on the side.
So, being the well- behaved writer that I am, Wednesday afternoon, I bade everyone a fond farewell as they all headed off to take the open-bus tour. Then I hung out in the hotel gardens and lounge drinking tea and writing like a crazy woman. I joined the happy gathering in the evening for fisherman’s pie and a pint of Abby Ale at Sam Weller’s Pub. I figured I’d earned it after finishing off 3K on the WIP for my day’s efforts. In fact I was pleased enough that I went on the tour of the Roman Baths with the rest of the gang the next morning. I love the Roman Baths. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen them, and every time I do they excite me and inspire me. How amazing is it that something as simple as water can so powerfully draw for so many people to one tiny place for so many centuries? It’s taken the water that now fills those ancient Roman baths ten thousand years from the time it fell as rainwater in the Mendip Hills and percolated down through the layers of rock to make its way back up to the hot springs below the baths. That’s some seriously vintage water!
After a picnic lunch near the River Avon, complete with fresh cherries and French school children having a water fight, I said good-bye to my compadres and headed back to the Lansdown Grove Hotel for another close encounter with Stacie and Harris and another two thousand words written on The Exhibition. That evening I joined the crew in front of the Pump Room to listen to a little opera from the street buskers, which got us all in the mood for a nice Italian dinner later.
Friday, before we took the train home, we visited the Jane Austen Centre a little bit of a pilgrimage, for me, to honour one of the literary goddesses of all time and definitely one of my heroines.
The Jane Austen Centre is a quiet little place off Queen’s Square, not far from where Jane stayed when she was in Bath. What I remember most about the visit was hearing that Jane delighted in Bath when she went there as a young woman, and out of that delight came Northanger Abby. But later when she returned in her late twenties she found the place shallow and depressing, as evidenced in Persuasion.
Though much of Bath looks like it might have looked in Jane’s day, things have changed considerably since then. Now it’s easy for me to find inspiration walking the streets between the honeyed sandstone buildings of Georgean Bath. It’s easy to be inspired painlessly and happily in the far-less stratified hodge-podge of tourists and locals scurrying about in the bright June sunlight. And, for me, it’s impossible to walk where Jane Austen walked and not be awed by the stunning creative force that came from one small, seemingly powerless woman, whose novels didn’t even bare the name of their author until after her death.
KD Grace proudly puts her claim to authorship front and centre on everything she’s ever written, as does Grace Marshall. My name, my creativity, my essence. I wrote it! I claim it! I can’t imagine what it would be like to have been such a creative person as Jane Austen was in a time in which women had very little control over their own destinies. I’m only saying that it’s good to be reminded that nothing comes without a price, and that price is no less dear because I wasn’t the one who had to pay it. Having said that, I’m pretty sure every writer suffers for her art. I believe that whole-heartedly. Most of us suffer in ways that mean nothing to anyone but us, in ways that are quite often neurotic and unnecessary (at least I do).
I hope at this point, you’ll pardon my groupie-ism and hero-worship, but really, how could I go to Bath and not be at least a little bit star struck.
Thank you, Miss Jane Austen for writing the human heart in such a moving way in a time when it wasn’t cool to do so, and especially in a time when it wasn’t cool for a woman to do so. My efforts to write the human heart often feel bumbling and less then eloquent, but they’re sincere and full of hope, hope your words helped inspire.
On a less serious note. Near the end of our tour at the Jane Austen Centre there was a place with regency costumes for visitors to try on and take piccies in. I have to say, Raymond makes a far more striking Darcy than I do Elizabeth.
It’s my pleasure to welcome international woman of mystery and Queen of Travel Erotica, Sharazade, to share with us the story behind her moving, sexy train story, Flaws.
It’s always fun to hear from readers which story in a collection was a favorite. You never get the same answers from everybody, of course, but if we go by the majority, the short story “Flaws” from Transported: Erotic Travel Tales is the most popular. It’s a story told in the first person, from the point of view of a young woman traveling across the US by train, who lacks confidence in her attractiveness because of what she views as her body’s “flaws”—the sorts of things that the reader can see a lover probably wouldn’t even notice, let alone care about, but that can drive the owner to distraction—a scar, unusually large nipples, a few hairs out of place, a belly that isn’t flat.
I’m often asked if any of those flaws are mine. Well—that you don’t get to know. But the real “flaw,” of being hyper-critical of myself, that is sometimes mine and it sometimes isn’t. Like the character in the story, I’m quite aware that confidence is sexy; but like that character, I know how hard it is sometimes to pull yourself up when you’re not feeling confident. It takes more to feel good about yourself than just giving yourself a stern talking to. I confess I get a little impatient sometimes with websites (and people) who say that you should never base your feelings of confidence or self-worth on someone else’s perception or evaluation, but only on your own. Of course there’s truth to that, but come on. What if you’re feeling very down about yourself? Or what if you’re feeling very confident, but … no one else seems to agree with you? Hey, it happens.
So in the story, I let the woman gain some confidence from the unexpected (well, to her, anyway!) advances of an attractive man. His obvious attraction to her and her body is the boost she needs to pull herself out of her low spot. Is she going to base her future sense of self-worth on a fleeting encounter with a guy (or… two guys…) on a train? Of course not. But she sure steps off that train feeling good; and then the cycle can work its way up, instead of down. When you feel good, you look good, and when you look good, you feel good, and so on. Enthusiastic appreciation and lust from a partner contribute to one’s self-image—a good reminder that we should express our own appreciation and lust for our partners in very obvious ways.
On a more personal note, I also like “Flaws” because a lot of the plot line is autobiographical—I have taken that train trip, and I was reading “To the Lighthouse,” and I did get a free sleeper car from the conductor for the second half of the trip. And the rest? Well, I’ll leave that to the readers’ imaginations.
Excerpt:
His compartment is small, and I accidentally brush against him as I enter the room. (I was right, he is well-muscled.) The bed is actually a bunk, with a lower and upper berth. There’s a full-length mirror on one wall, and a little doorway on the other side that must go to the bathroom area. I notice he has two suitcases, which seems a bit extravagant. Perhaps one needs a wealth of material to describe the deeds of Herbert Hoover, or maybe he’s just a clothes horse. Some men are. Now that I’m in his room, I feel a bit awkward. How exactly am I going to take a shower? Surely he’d have to leave for a while? But he makes no move to go, and I feel to shy to ask him to. To cover my nervousness, I lean over the bottom bunk and look out the window. Of course, it’s dark, so I can’t see a thing, so now I must look like a complete idiot. Maybe he’ll think I can see the stars, or something.
Suddenly I feel his hand on me, on my side. Startled, I jump up and back into him, there being nowhere else in the little room to go, and now both of his arms are around me, turning me around. He looks at me without speaking, and brushes a lock of my hair out of my face with his hand. Oh. My. OK, I didn’t know this was on his mind, I didn’t suspect this at all. I’m so naïve. Or just dumb. I don’t know what to do. I make a sort of a half move to go, but his arms are firm and keep me there.
And then he kisses me. Oh god. It feels so, so good. I haven’t been kissed in so long. His kisses are gentle, but firm, and… confident. Unbelievably sexy. I give in and kiss him back. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe he’d want to kiss me, but he does. Our kisses grow more passionate, and now his hands are traveling around my body, caressing my back, squeezing my ass, pulling me to him. I think again that I have to get out of here before it goes any further… and then I think, well, why not stay? Why not? I’m young, I’m single, I’m on a train, I’m here with an absolute dream of a guy who wants me. Who cares if it’s only because he couldn’t find somebody better? He’s with me now, and it feels amazing. And with some new confidence that surprises me, I slip my hands under his shirt to feel his body.
He takes this as a sign to remove his shirt. I was right—he has an amazing body, smooth and strong. And now his hands are at my shirt too, lifting it over my head. Oh god. Oh no. I’ve just remembered. It’s not a flaw, exactly, because it’s something I can fix, but … I also have just a few hairs that grow on my nipples, at the edges of my areolas. They’re not normally a problem, I just pluck them out, but I haven’t checked in several days, and I don’t know if they’re there now or not. The light in the cabin is certainly strong enough that he’d see them if he looked down. What can I do? I consider breaking away and saying I need to go to the bathroom, and then I can check for hairs and try to pull them out with my fingers if I need to, but won’t it look weird to just leap out of his arms like that?
While I’m trying to decide whether I’d look worse if I bolted into the bathroom or if he noticed some nipple hairs, I’ve lost my chance—he’s got my shirt off and is unhooking my bra and it’s too late. Each hand is caressing a breast now. I don’t dare look down, and just close my eyes. His hands feel heavenly, touching me with firm, sensuous strokes, his fingers pinching my nipples. I feel a rush of warmth between my legs.
He bends down to kiss my breasts. At least I don’t need to worry about sagging nipples now, because they’re taut and erect, aching for his kisses and light bites. And then… he stands back up, just a little away from me. I open my eyes to see what he’s doing. He’s looking at me. He’s looking right at my chest, touching me while he examines me. He traces my scar with his forefinger. I look at his face, to see what he’s thinking, but I can’t really tell. He runs his finger back and forth over my scar, and then bends and kisses it.
Monday night we returned in the middle of the storm from a week of sunshine and exploring and reminiscing in Rome. It was a fabulous week of pasta and tiramisu, espresso and wine and Roman ruins mixed liberally with the wild hubbub of Christmas preparation. There were leisurely hours of reading simply for pleasure in quiet café’s – something I’ve not had much time for recently, there were long walks beneath the rainbow wave of Christmas lights along the Via Del Corso. There were quick stops into bars in the middle of the afternoon for espresso. There were walks in the Palatine and outings to Tivoli and to Ostia Antica. And there were wonderful memories.
part of our honeymoon in Rome and Italy. The place is full of good memories for us. It’s always magical and romantic and irresistibly sexy. It will also be the setting for the third Holly novel, so this was a chance to soak up atmosphere and do a little research.
step into the traffic at the crosswalk still applies.
we were chased out. I could have lingered for hours in the ruins of the temples from the Roman Republic, the temple of Hercules, and the Domus of Psyche and Eros.
coffee, then wine and reading for pleasure, not really worrying too much. When the window of opportunity presented itself, we left the sunshine for the windy wet British shores. Ours was one of the last planes to land as the storm closed in again, leaving us sitting on the tarmac for an hour and a half waiting for a stand. But we made it home, with little prep made for Christmas – though we never have stood on tradition where Christmas is concerned. Ours will be the hodge-podge of our own non-traditional Christmas treats along with the memories of our first Christmas together when we were only just married, living in a cold flat in Croatia, decorating our tiny tree with chocolate ornaments and watching the cornbread for our turkey dressing bake in the oven. True, we had no television, but 
even more important, the kitchen, in front of the oven, was the warmest place in the house.
