Tag Archives: psychology

Billionaires and Why We Love Them

 

money-hands-thumb15490930With the plethora of billionaire stories that have burst on to the scene since the 50SoG phenomena and the second film fast approaching, I found myself wondering the other day while I was doing the ironing just what it is about billionaires that we find so appealing.

OK, I suppose that sounds like a stupid question. People are always curious about how the other half (or in this case less than 1%) live. That’s only natural. And who hasn’t fantasized about how their lives would be different if they won the lottery or a long lost relative died and left them with a fortune? So here are just a few of the reasons I think billionaire romances appeal to readers so much.

 

THE FREEDOM

It they can buy it, they can have it. Billionaires don’t have the financial constraints the rest of us constantly live with. Helicopters, jets, palatial mansions in south France, yachts the size of the QE2 are all just an afternoon’s shopping spree. There’s something very appealing about the freedom that buys, which leads me to my next reason.

 

THE RULES DON’T APPLY

If money is no issue, then many of the rules that apply to most of us are no longer relevant. While money may not be able to buy love, it can certainly buy sexual satisfaction in more than fifty shades and way more colours than gray. There’s something very edgy and exciting about the idea of buying sexual control over another person. It’s a Dom/sub relationship based on wealth, and we live in an age when money is power and money is control. It’s not surprising that money is also very sexy. Neither is it surprising that many of our fantasies involve ‘being bought’ in some way.

 

LIVING THE LIFE

The typical billionaire story involves a billionaire loving or at least lusting for someone who is very average. And while we read that story, we fantasise ourselves right into that role. We become the character who is wined and dined, whisked away in the private jet and shopped for by a very exclusive personal shopper. In essence, we get one helluva makeover, readying us to walk in the rarified air of the billionaire’s world. It’s the luxury and adventure of our fantasies along with the hot nasty steamy sex of … er … well … our fantasies.

 

THE LOOK

In billionaire novels the polished, airbrushed look of wealth is associated with the look or our dream guy or girl. We want our billionaires to conform to our personal fantasies of what sexy and rich look like, and it’s amazing, though not surprising, how often the two go hand in hand. If we’re going to have a fantasy man, he might as well look good AND be rich. And of course, he will lust obsessively after US!

 

SUFFERING BILLIONAIRES

Our billionaire must suffer or have suffered. No silver spoons in these stories. Our billionaires must have suffered tragedy, been raised by crack whores, lost a loved one, had an abusive childhood, secretly suffer from self-doubt, self-loathing, horrible nightmares, think themselves unworthy of love. In the eyes of readers, there has to be a cost for wealth. Most of us can’t really imagine what it’s like to have that much money and power. If we’re being honest, we resent the hell out of people we feel have it but don’t deserve it. We find it gratifying to know that, yes, the wealthy really do put their pants on the same way the rest of us do, and they don’t get off without suffering. We need to see that suffering to make that love connection.

 

SALVATION IS AT HAND

Enter the love interest, just your ordinary girl/guy (insert your own name here) whose soul purpose in the story, as in all love stories, is to rescue the hero from himself, lift him above his self-doubts and heal him. The heroine’s job is to bring the wounded hero, even if he’s a surly billionaire, to a shared HEA. There’s something very satisfying about a billionaire who has everything, but is totally lost and impoverished until the love of his life saves him and brings him true love.

 

BALANCE OF POWER

It’s essential to the story that the love interest has something to offer to the billionaire that he needs, craves, can’t buy with his money. No one really wants to read a story about two perfect billionaires falling in love with each other in their perfect billionaire world. I’m convinced the billionaire story works because if offers the non-billionaire reader a balance of power. There’s something outrageously satisfying about an ordinary person having exactly what a billionaire needs, but can’t buy, what a billionaire is willing to give up all his/her wealth to have. The HEA in a billionaire story is that balance of power, when the billionaire and the ordinary heroine come to a state of equilibrium that allows love. Because the contrast in the beginning is so great, the achievement of this balance of power can be spectacular to watch. And the HEA can be very satisfying because of that contrast.

There! That’s K D’s analysis of the billionaire romance in a nutshell. What do you think?

 

sexyjustgotrich coverSexy Just Got Rich Anthology blurb:

Billionaires have it all but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to work hard to get what their hearts desire. In this anthology of erotic BDSM stories the Brit Babes offer heroes and heroines who aren’t shy about taking what they want. From farmyards to luxury penthouses, wealth is all about sating needs, connecting souls and taking pleasure to new highs. Whether you’re looking for a coffee break read or something longer to curl up in bed with, you’ll find something to suit your needs in Sexy Just Got Rich.

‘Buying the Farm’ blurb:

Cassie Fielding is at her wits end trying to save the family farm from bankruptcy after her father’s illness. But when Cassie returns from university, she finds that, in spite of their financial situation, her father has hired the mysterious Simon Dennis to help run the place. As Cassie and the new hired hand experience an unprecedented heat wave of lust, Cassie comes to suspect that her father and Simon may be in cahoots with their own plan to save the farm, and the whole scheme depends on her.

Excerpt

When Simon came to her, she was standing with her back to the open sliding door, arms braced against the stalls they had renovated. He wanted to breed horses – not on a grand scale, but mostly as an experiment in the beginning, a part of their plan to diversify. The planning was still in the early stages, but it was filled, like most of their plans for Fielding Farm, with exciting possibilities.           

‘I’m sorry, Cassie.’ For a long time he stood silhouetted in the door, his shadow stretching out before him, merging with the gloom of the barn. Then he moved to stand behind her, slipping his arms carefully around her waist, as though he feared she might turn on him. In truth, she wasn’t sure his fears weren’t justified.

At last, she relaxed and leaned her head back against his shoulders, feeling his sigh of relief, warm and humid on the soft flesh of her neck. ‘Is any of what he said true?’

‘Some of it, yes. I wanted to buy Fielding Farm. I made your father a very generous offer, one I didn’t think he could refuse.’

‘But he did.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Well, not exactly.’ He kissed her ear and tightened his hold just slightly, not sure what her response would be. ‘He told me he wouldn’t consider any offer until I’d worked as his hired hand for six months.’

Cassie laughed in spite of herself. ‘And then he threw in the farmer’s daughter to sweeten the deal?’

He nuzzled her neck and kissed her just below her ear, sending shivers down her spine, and she pressed back against him. ‘I think he knew all along what would happen. I think he knew that when I got to know the farmer’s daughter, I’d want it all, lock stock and barrel, and buying the farm was gonna cost me way more than I expected to pay.’ One hand moved up to cup her breast and for a long second, he seemed to have lost himself in the soft flesh of her nape and along the top of her shoulder. ‘But Christ,’ he breathed against her throat, ‘it’s worth the price.’

 Buy Sexy Just Got Rich Here:

Amazon UK
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Amazon CA
All Romance eBooks
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Sarah Blake: WLTM Handsome Prince… Seeking the Truth Behind the Fairy Tale Hero

Sarah Blake 8I can’t tell you how excited I am to have the totally awesome Sarah Blake as my guest today. Sarah is a playwright, theatre director and story teller, and founder of Cabinets of Curiosity. I had the pleasure of seeing Sarah’s fabulous play, Five Clever Courtesans, in London before it toured the Edinburgh Fringe, the Brighton Fringe and the HoffART Theatre in Germany. Most recently I’ve enjoyed her wonderful Fairy Tales for Adults, giving a whole different view on Happy Ever After and the story behind the stories. An audiobook of her trilogy of Fairy Tales For Grown Ups is now available to download worldwide from Amazon, iTunes and Audible. For further information, visit: www.soundscurious.net 

 

 

Welcome, Sarah! Do tell! 

 

By Sarah Blake

Sara Blake 5“Some day, my prince will come,
Some day, I’ll find my love
And how thrilling that moment will be!
When the prince of my dreams comes to me!”

So Snow White sings, in the Disney version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The lyrics are simple, yet potent – in one short verse, they seem to echo back all the wistfulness and longing that we feel when we are waiting for… what, exactly?

Who, precisely, is this Prince of our Dreams? And why, even now, is he still seen as a shortcut to a happy ending?

The Prince is a standard figure in most fairy tales – and in stories that have a female protagonist (such as Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, or Sleeping Beauty), he is the ultimate goal – both the readers and the heroine know she has made it to happy-ever-after, once she has met and married him. But even outside the fairytale world, the figure of the Prince pervades contemporary folk and pop-culture genres – rom-com films, romantic novels and tv dramas are full of him. He remains the ultimate symbol of wish-fulfillment, and with the exception of a few surface tweaks, his persona has changed very little over the past few decades, in spite of the rise of feminism. So why does he persist? What drives contemporary storytellers – as well contemporary audiences – to continue to conflate the Prince with happy ever after?

Sarah Blake 1The psychologist Carl Jung theorised that all standard fairy tale characters (or ‘archetypes’) – such as the Prince, the Witch, the Stepmother, etc. – actually represent aspects of our subconscious selves. Viewed in this way, every story can be seen as the reflection of a person – and the interplay and conflict that occurs between the characters within the story mirrors the interplay and conflict that occurs within our own minds, as our subconscious traits and desires vie for dominance. In Jungian terms, the Prince/Hero archetype represents our desire to seek out a better way of life and find greater fulfillment – but practically-speaking, what does this mean?

Forget the fairy tales for a moment – in reality, for hundreds of years, women had no right to work, own money or property, or to engage in politics and vote. In other words, they had no power over their own fates whatsoever. The only way they could attain any degree of influence, privilege, security, comfort, or social status was by marrying well – and so

Sarah Blake 6literally, marrying the Prince (or the closest you could get to one) was your only chance to better your circumstances – both practically, in the material sense of having more wealth and security, but also personally, because society judged your worth by your husband – and all too often, society’s external judgements were (and continue to be) internalised within women’s own minds.

Today, women can and do seek independence. They can make their own fortunes and fulfill their own destinies. They can, theoretically, do anything a man can. Yet we still live in a patriarchal society. Any cursory glance at employment figures (where there is still a huge wage gap between men and women), the justice system (where the majority of female victims of sexual violence still see their attackers walk free), or the media (which still focuses unrelentingly on how women look, rather than on their characters or achievements) quickly demonstrates the inequality that still exists. So, too, do those societal judgements of women and the corresponding internalisations of self-worth that such judgements foster. And so, within a patriarchal society, the Prince remains an external symbol of internal desire, especially for women – because he represents a degree of privilege and freedom that most women can still only dream of. No matter how handsome he may be, it is rarely the Prince himself who is truly yearned for… rather, the privileges of liberty, autonomy and self-esteem that go along with him.

Sarah Blake 9The potency of the Prince as a representation of female desire is particularly heightened when we think of him in terms of romantic/sexual fulfillment. Even now, in our far less repressed age, women are still judged for their sexual appetites. They are frequently condemned as ‘sluts’ or ‘whores’ if they exercise their right to sexual liberty, or express their sensuality on their own terms – whereas similar behaviour in their male counterparts is often approved of by society at large, or merely shrugged off with an indulgent “boys will be boys” attitude. Women’s erotic lives are still all too often parcelled up with being looked at – being seen to be desirable, rather than having the autonomy and freedom to enjoy what feels desirable. So the Prince can also represent a woman’s license to roam freely, explore extensively and and enjoy (without fear of judgement) any and every erotic fantasy she can conjure. As long as an imbalance of power continues to exist between men and women, the Prince will always be there, representing a woman’s yearning for empowerment.

I would suggest that, for many women who sigh after a Prince-type hero – be it onscreen in a Disney Sarah Blake 2film, or within the pages of a romantic novel – what they are actually sighing for is autonomy and self-fulfillment. It might be sexual fulfillment, or intellectual, or economic, or social, or spiritual – or all of the above. The specific details of the desire don’t matter, so much as the desire itself. Whatever a woman yearns for, or feels is lacking in her life – freedom, self-knowledge, self-esteem, romance, adventure, recognition, a sense of connection – is what the Prince is there to provide. Historically, that has always been his role. And psychologically – while we continue to live within a patriarchal society – it remains so.

Viewed in this light, it’s easy to see why the Prince remains such a popular figure. However, this perspective also highlights the hazards for women who seek the fulfillment of all their desires through a literal prince – as well as for the men who find themselves unwittingly cast in that role. Whether you are male or female, patriarchal Sarah Blake 4expectations can place you in a trap, because the Prince was never meant to be real. He is an internal figure – an aspect of your own psyche – and finding your happy ending has as much to do with discovering and developing his characteristics within your own personality, as it has with finding another person to love. For far too long, women have been raised and encouraged by popular culture to view the Prince as a real, flesh-and-blood alpha male, who will swoop in and rescue them from all their troubles and worries. This is not only patronising to women, it is also extremely hard on men – after all, why should one flawed, fragile human be made to carry the full burden of another’s every hope and expectation?

Fortunately, fairy tales can provide us with a way past these traps and hazards. When viewed symbolically, what they teach us – at their deepest level – is that romance is only one aspect of joyful fulfillment and, ultimately, the only person who can rescue you, fulfill all your deepest desires and give you your happy ending is… yourself.Sarah Blake 3

This is the premise behind the three fairy tales in my own trilogy of stories – Fairy Tales For Grown Ups. The clue is in the title – they are stories for those of us who have been around the block a few times and are genuinely ready to help ourselves to a more balanced and fulfilling life. In some ways, they are very traditional tales – full of comedy, adventure, wit and, yes, even romance… fear not – the happy endings are still there! But I’ve also written these tales from a perspective of conscious awareness – so as well as serving to entertain, they can also be used as lights to illuminate the dark places in your mind and heart… and light up your path, as you venture forth into the deep forest.

Which path you decide to take, once you enter the forest, is up to you – and perhaps, like many a fairy tale heroine, you’ll discover that the path you choose end ups taking you somewhere completely unexpected. But whatever it is that you are wishing for – and no matter how you decide to pursue that wish – fairy tales are there to help you along your path. So is the Prince. He is waiting within you, ready to set forth on a perilous journey and brave unknown hazards, in order to find and fulfill your heart’s desire (whatever that might be). So, saddle up… and get ready for the quest of you life.

 

 

About Sarah Blake:Sarah Blake 7

 

Sarah Blake is a playwright, theatre director and storyteller. An audiobook of her trilogy of enchanted stories – Fairy Tales For Grown Ups – is available to download worldwide from Amazon, iTunes and Audible. For further information, visit: www.soundscurious.net

Doing Lip Service

Lipssugar-lips-kisses-hd-desktop-wallpaper-widescreen-backgrounds-for-mobile-tablet-and-pc-free-images-download

(From the Archives)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like it’s a proper sex scene, or even a proper PG love scene, unless there’s some serious lip action. Here are a few fun factoids about the lip lock from Psychology Today , How Stuff Works and Random Facts:

 

 

 

  • The science of kissing is called philematology.
  • Lips are 100 times more sensitive than the tips of the fingers. They’re even more sensitive that the genitals!
  • The most important muscle in kissing is the orbicularis oris, which allows the lips to “pucker.”
  • French kissing involves 34 muscles in the face, while a pucker kiss involves just two.
  • A nice romantic kiss burns 2-3 calories, while a hot sizzler can burn off five or even more.
  • The mucus membranes inside the mouth are permeable to hormones. Through open-mouth kissing, men introduced testosterone into a woman’s mouth, the absorption of which increases arousal and the likelihood of rumpy pumpy.
  • Apparently men like it wet and sloppy while women like it long and lingering.
  • While we Western folk do lip service, some cultures do nose service, smelling for that romantic, sexual connection. Very mammalian, if you ask me, and who doesn’t love a good dose of pheromonal yumminess?
  • Then there’s good old fashion bonding. It’s no secret that kissing someone you like increases closeness.

 

While all that’s interesting to know, what really intrigues me about kisses is how something seemingly so fragile can become so mind-blowingly powerful when lips, tongue, a whisp of breath, perhaps a nip of teeth are applied in the right porportion at the right time on the right part of the anatomy. And with the size of the human body in proportion to the mouth, the possibilities for a delicious outcome are only as limited as the imagination.

 

Kissing-LipsOne theory is that kissing evolved from the act of mothers premasticating food for their infants, back in the pre-baby food days, and then literally kissing it into their mouths. Birds still do that. The sharing of food mouth to mouth is also a courtship ritual, and birds aren’t the only critters who do that. Even with no food involved the tasting, touching and sniffing of mouths of possible mates, or even as an act of
submission, is very much a part of the animal kingdom.

 

The sharing of food is one of the most basic functions, the function that kept us all alive when we were too small to care for ourselves. The mouth is that magical place where something from the outside world is ingested and becomes a part of our inside world, giving us energy and strength. Not only is the mouth the receptacle for food, it’s the passage for oxygen. Pretty much all that has to pass into the body to sustain life passes through the mouth. I find it fascinating that the kiss, one of the most basic elements in Western mating ritual and romance, should involve such a live-giving part of our anatomy.

 

But the mouth does more than just allow for the intake of the sustenance we need. The mouth allows us voice. I doubt there are many people who appreciate that quite as much as we writers, who love words and the power they give us. And how can I think about the power of words without thinking about the power of words in song and poetry? Our mouths connect us in language, in thought, in the courtship of words that allow us to know and understand each other before those mouths take us to that intimate place of the kiss. And when that kiss becomes a part of our sexual experience, it’s that mouth, that tongue, those lips that allow us to say what we like and how we like it; that allow us to talk dirty; that allow us to vocalise our arousal; that allow us to laugh or tease our way to deeper intimacy.Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss

The fact that the mouth offers all those wonderful, life-giving, life enhancing things, AND can kiss,

makes it one of my very favourite parts of the body

 

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 5

William Shakespeare

Paranormal Baddies: Why we Love ‘Em

As I approach the finale of In The Flesh, my online dark paranormal serial, I’m struck once again by waterhouse_apollo_and_daphnejust how much fun it is to write the baddies. In The Flesh is based on a very creepy short story I wrote a long time ago, a short story whose baddie didn’t even have a name. His lover thought he might actually be god! The idea of having a god for a lover, having a lover who is more than human and at the same time way less than human, who like the gods of mythology, considers himself above human law and ethics, never stops intriguing me. I revisited the idea in the Lakeland Witches novels and in the sequel serial novella, Demon Interrupted, as well as several other stories I’ve written. The baddie, of the short story is exactly the reason why I felt compelled to expand In The Flesh. At first, I planned only a novella, but the story was too big for even that, and the baddie opened up a whole new realm of questions to be answered. Just what makes a baddie, and how thin is the line between the monsters and the good guys? And more important still, why do we always on some deep level, want to fuck the baddies?

The best baddies, the ones I want to revisit over and over again, the ones I want to know more about, are the ones who are as intriguing and seductive as they are terrifying. The best baddies, the ones that I love most to read about or watch in the movies, are the ones by whom I’d secretly like to be seduced IF I could get away with it unscathed, which of course is always impossible. For a baddie to really work his magic in a novel, he has to entice the reader into the shadows. There needs to be something about him that we want. There needs to be depth and dimension that are well-rounded and dark enough to balance the hero in the seesaw of plot twists and turns that lead to the Happy Ever After. The best part about writing In The Flesh as a novel is that so many of the characters are ambiguous, so many of them could be viewed as monsters, and almost all of them walk a very thin line between hero and villain. That has made the novel one of the most exciting and fun works of fiction I’ve ever written.

Bernini's Hades and PersephoneI think the baddie has to do more than just make the hero shine. He also has to hold up the mirror that reflects back the hero’s own dark side. He has to elicit more than hate from the reader and the other characters. I think for a baddie to really make a plot sing, he has to elicit our own dark lusts and our own voyeuristic walk on the wild side. The baddie attracts us because he’s brave enough, bold enough, not to
care about convention, not to care about what civilised society expects. He’s quite comfortable with his dark side. And he gets what he wants because he doesn’t mind doing whatever he has to in order to get it. Of course none of us wants that for ourselves, and yet all of us want to know, vicariously through fiction, what that might feel like

As In The Flesh evolved from a short story to a novel, and the dark villain, though still nameless, acquired the title of the Guardian, I often found him terrifying to write because even in his darkest, most wicked moments, his logic seems to make perfect sense. His passions, lusts and desires seem so reasonable, and even when they don’t, the very conviction with which he believes them to be worthy makes everything he does seem almost sympathetic. Even as I wrote him in all his monstrosity, I found myself wanting to make excuses for him. I found myself wanting to redeem him somehow, and yet is there redemption for a proper baddie? Would they ever seek it out? If I’m being honest, it’s the villain’s darkness I love, and it’s his darkness that makes the fire of the hero and heroine burn brighter. It’s also the darkness that makes them question themselves and everything they believe in.

And that leads me to the true job of the villain in a good read, the villain is there for the hero and heroineIn the Flesh 11880534_1463650103936599_545702979581425574_n to spark against, the baddie is there to help the reader get a better picture of who the hero and heroine are. And the baddie is the knife and chisel that sculpts the hero and heroine into something better, something stronger.

And finally the villain is the reader’s (and the writer’s) voyeuristic walk on the dark side. We can go on that dark journey with the villain and we can go there safely, have a totally wicked time, and be back in time for dinner with the hero and heroine. And the Guardian promises to take both reader and writer on a seriously dark and terrifying, as well as outrageously sexy, journey.

 

There’s a new episode of In The Flesh up every Friday, and on Wattpad as well. You can read it in its entirety by following these links: In The Flesh, Wattpad.

 

 

Reflections from Face Book Prison

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The Face Book Police

 

jail cell

 

 

I’m doing my time in Face Book prison at the moment, carving my name on the unassailable walls with a
rusty ink pen nib next to the names of all those who have gone before me. I was incarcerated without a fair trial and, though I’ve made some pretty good guesses as to why I’m blocked from many of my groups, I can get no actual response from Face Book. I’m told that the usual sentence is two weeks, so I’m halfway through.

It’s strange, this Face Book Prison. I can comment and share pics and updates on my own page with no problems, but with all of the groups to which I belong, I can only see the posts and press my nose to the window longingly while I offer up only a feeble little ‘Like.’

I suppose it’s a writer thing, working in isolation as we do, but the pull of social media is a powerful one. That’s not too surprising since it’s a way of building and having community that we otherwise wouldn’t get. Plus, best of all, it’s words! We writers can all interact with each other in short little status updates and tweets and have meaningful conversations and share witty banter while safely and comfortably seated at home in our jammies. It’s introvert paradise. It allows us to talk about writing and books with lots of other introverted writers for hours on end. We writers are notorious for considering every word we put on the page precious. Yes we may have to ‘cut’ those precious words in the final draft, BUT we never throw them away! We just cannibalise them for the next work or the one after that. And yet, thousands of words are lost to us every single day, set adrift in status updates and tweets to end up somewhere out there in the cold outer reaches of cyberspace.

Words treated carelessly – that’s one of the side effects of social media, I think. Words are way more Book stacksthrowaway now than they’ve ever been in a history that’s treated words pretty precious because they tell stories, they tell our story! Now stories are nipped and snipped to status updates and 140 character tweets. Oh, the story is still there. It just has to be unpacked and teased out, and tomorrow it’ll be lost and forgotten.

What does that have to do with Face Book Prison? Well as much as anything it means I’ve been forced back into a world where words are creatures of leisure, words are a little bit more precious and treated with a little bit more respect. I’ve been forced back into a world where words line up to in long serpentine queues to tell their story and they take their own sweet time to do it. Anticip-a-a-ation. They’re making me wait, and the wait is bloody well worth it!

The thing is, as much as I enjoy the interaction, and I truly do, I have to admit that I’m really enjoying the enforced time with my own thoughts, time to allow my own enormous collection of words to come out and play. And strangely enough, in the midst of all those wild frolicking words, I’ve taken incredible pleasure in the silence. I had no idea that Face Book was such a loud place, but then it makes sense that
social media, by the very act of being social is psychologically loud. I had nearly forgotten that in the Writing pen and birds 1_xl_20156020midst of all my words there could be such delicious silence.

I miss my friends in the groups. Efforts have been made to send files hidden in cakes, but the Face Book
police are far to savvy for that. Though I do appreciate the efforts. I just want to tell everyone on the outside that it’s not so bad to be temporarily banned for crimes I would have enjoyed a helluva lot more if I’d only know what they were. I miss the connection, but in its absence, I’ve been reminded of other connections, creative connections that don’t come in status updates and tweets and, while I’ll be glad to be welcomed back into the fold, I don’t want to forget the frolic and gambol of words and the way they come in their own time in their own way, and I don’t want to forget the exquisite silence in between that connects them all so seamlessly and gives me a place to rest a bit and regroup.