I wonder if that's why romance writers write romance. I wonder if that's why most romance writers are women. And I wonder if it correlates with the fact that it's women's sexuality that's been suppressed out of fear by men for centuries, because if it were unleashed, it'd smite patriarchy like a bug. I wonder. I don't know if any of it is true but I do know it's true for me. Writing Janna is unlocking things I didn't know we're locked. I didn't know they were there.

I'll explain. By the way, if you're squeamish about things conventionally perceived as taboo and explicit, which I think is yet another shaming bullshit designed to control women, I suggest you read no further. If you're open to it, however, what follows might just be the ticket for you. 

Get yourself comfortable, loosen your belt or your pants, or just plain read this naked. Ready? Here we go.

I get aroused by images of sexual violence.

I was very uncomfortable with this fact for a very long time and I suppressed it in me until I understood where it was coming from. It was coming from my childhood. As I was hurt and stimulated to orgasm without understanding what it was, my brain connected pain with pleasure and then both of them got connected with confusion and shame. This powerful cocktail became the foundation for my sexuality. I wasn't abused severely and consistently enough to become a psychopath or a serial killer or both (which is extremely rare for women, but things are changing). Thank God. But I did develop and internalized this drive in me, and I buried it deep. But the drive didn't go anywhere, and after I have started shedding my suppression and exposing my pain, it started coming out too. Simply put, when I write violent scenes describing Janna castrating men in all the gory details, my heart starts beating fast and he blood goes to my groin and my vulva gets all swollen and I have to either grab my vibrator and masturbate on the spot, or if Royce is home, rush downstairs and give him this look he came to know lately, which means, "You up for a little quickie?" Unless he is very sick, which is rare, he is always game. What a relief for me. 

Now, back to the vibrator thing.

I can't achieve an orgasm by simply touching myself or having someone else touch me. It has to be done with something else, an inanimate object, like a vibrator or a water stream from the shower. The reason for this is in the abuse again. I came to hate and fear hands, especially fingers touching me, and I was told not to touch myself, and again I was confused about how it was okay for someone else to touch me and for me not to touch myself? I'm 40 now and I still don't know how to do it. It's a very powerful stopper I have to kill. So, interestingly, while writing Janna I started touching myself.

We talked about it with Royce for years. He tried helping me in all possible ways, and then he said, "You know, I don't think I'll be able to help you with this. I think you have to learn how to do it with your own hands, learn how to touch your body with love." And I said, "Damn. You're right." And I was scared, so scared and so ashamed to try, and now it's slowly happening. Just the other day I was describing a vagina when Janna falls for another woman, and I realized that number one I get very a roused by this idea, and number two I wanted a woman's hand touch me, and that hand would be mine.

I did make love once to a woman. Or, rather, we made love to each other. It wasn't sex. It was making love. I was heartbroken over my husband at the time, having walked in on him with another girl in our bed, and she was heartbroken over her boyfriend, and so I came to her house and we cried and drank wine and cried some more, and then we started hugging, and then kissing, and then loving our bodies that needed love at that moment, love from a woman to a woman, without any men. It was beautiful. I never did it again and I will remember it for the rest of my life, but that scene is making it into Janna for a reason, and it's also helping me understand myself and my body better. 

Wow! All this just from writing? Yes. Have I convinced you to write a book yet? No? All right. I'll tell you some more.  

I've been controlled when I was little, and when I was old enough I ran away but I was still controlled, only I did it myself in my own head. I never knew how to let go of that control. My body never belonged to me, it always belonged to someone else, and that someone else used it. So the very idea of actually reclaiming my body back is not something that crossed my mind in connection with writing until it started happening. Namely, when I do feel aroused and want to touch myself, instead of suppressing this need which I was doing for all of my life, I take a break from writing, I call it now a "pleasure break," and I give my body what it needs. It's like I'm learning to love it all over again! How amazing is that? 

Now you see how important this book is to me, and how important all my previous books are because they brought me to this point. It's like I'm on a road to endless happiness and pleasure. Oh, the two dreaded words that send all patriarchal constructs spinning out of control! This is precisely what it wages its war on, women's happiness and pleasure. And, unfortunately, by doing so, it also hurts men's happiness and pleasure. It perverts it. It connects it with pain. Many men don't even know how to be gentle and loving as they have never known it's okay to be that way! They have been brought up to be "men" which in our society means the opposite of loving and gentle and sensitive and vulnerable. So in effect those who seek to destroy women's pleasure destroy their own. They'll never know what it's like to be fulfilled, and that is exactly what we see happening today, from online trolling to high school shootings to wars. Imagine what the world would be like where women allowed to display their sexuality without restrain, freely, where shaming no longer existed. In this world men would lose their power over women, and that is why those who are threatened by it fight it like the blind idiots they are, without seeing what exactly they're destroying. 

You see how we got from the small sketch of a woman touching herself to the idea of world peace? Jesus Fucking Christ. It all starts with a word, doesn't it? That first word of your book. And if I can do it, you can do it too, and the more of us do it, the stronger we get, the easier it will be for us to finally be free of this oppression.

So do it. For you. Write that book, girl. Yes, I'm talking to you. Write outrageously crazy sex scenes, gentle scenes, brutal scenes, bloody scenes, cheesy romantic scenes. Write whatever the hell you want, and then touch yourself, adore yourself, love yourself. GIVE YOURSELF PLEASURE FOR NO OTHER REASON BUT TO PLEASE YOURSELF. You're worth it. I'm worth it. We're all worth it.  People who tell you otherwise have no business telling you shit and can go fuck themselves (and I'm sure they're bitter to begin with precisely because they don't fuck themselves enough). Let's reclaim our bodies, our minds, our lives, one book at a time. Deal? Deal. 

Tell me your stories in the comments. This is a safe place. If any troll dares to stink up my blog, I'll deal with it the Russian way. I have my axe here, and my Kalashnikov, and my trained Moscow bears. So don't fear. I love you. Onward.