Beds and Blue Jean, a sexy modern romance

Beds and Blue Jeans is the story of a young American couple, who are not a perfect romantic pairing.  They have a baby, and that is the main reason that they have ended up living together.  Sam is a handsome young man, who appeals to middle aged women, and who is happy to spend his time with them rather than with his girlfriend.  He loves his music and works hard at it, but he’s not sure if he should throw it all up and look for a conventional job, now that he is a father. Pattie is pretty but not very clever, and she’s letting herself go, in terms of her looks. She doesn’t seem to have any ambitions. Sam is thoughtless and selfish, but he is lonely.  Pattie is not much of a companion for him and he is tempted by other women who offer interest and companionship as much as sex. Over a few months, things slowly change….

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/dp/B01370SMFO/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1451048583&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=nadina+sutton

Beds and Blue Jeans a sexy non romance

I am presently working on a couple of stories, which I hope to publish in the near future.
But for the moment, I’d like to say a word about my latest story “Beds and Blue Jeans.”  It’s not a romance with a happy ever after ending.  I wanted to write something that was  more realistic, than the usual romances.  I wanted to explore a story, where people face real life problems and make mistakes and don’t always find it easy  to put the mistakes right.   Sam is a selfish, average young man, who uses his looks and sex appeal to get plenty of action.  Like a lot of men. He tries to be a good father, and he tries to live with the difficult young woman that he ended up in a relationship with.  He’s very far from perfect.  But I wanted to write about someone ordinary and average, who had real faults, not very minor ones.
I realise that many people won’t like a story like this, but I wanted to write it and publish it, and I hope that some people will find it interesting.

. http://www.amazon.com/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/dp/B01370SMFO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1443024514&sr=1-1&keywords=beds+and+blue+jeans

BEDS AND BLUE JEANS.a love story

This is my first try at a realistic story, about a young man trying to sort out his life.  Sam is young, attractive and talented, but he is also thoughtless and selfish.  He loves his musical career, but he wants to do more than make a bare living at it.  He loves his girlfriend, but he’s tempted by other women.  He is at a stage of trying to make decisions which will affect his future.

http://www.amazon.com/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/dp/B01370SMFO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1438496954&sr=8-2&keywords=nadine+sutton

Beds and Blue Jeans By Nadine Sutton. A taste!

Pattie’s face, which had been tired but smiling, suddenly froze.  She sat up rapidly.  Her moods changed so fast….

“Oh I see. I guess you’re out fucking some woman.  Where are you meeting her?  What time have you made the date?  I’d hate to disturb you by calling your cell phone.”

“No, hell, no, honey, I ain’t. Don’t be so stupid. Honey? “

He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away and walked out of the room.  Slammed the door so that the little house almost shook.  Oh God, he thought. He had made the date with Sherry, but that might be best to cancel. 

BEDS AND BLUE JEANS a new novella by Nadine Sutton

Meet Sam, who is a young singer, who loves country and rock music and his dream is to be successful in the music world.  He’s never really wanted to do anything else.   He’s a handsome young man and gets plenty of attention from female fans.   He likes the ladies, but he’s beginning to want something a bit deeper and warmer than a sex session.   He has a woman in his life, and a kid but he’s not very happy.  He meets other women, who seem to offer a real close love affair, but he’s unsure what to do, or where to turn.  He’s often selfish, and mixed up, but at heart, he wants love. 

http://www.amazon.com/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/dp/B01370SMFO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1438496954&sr=8-2&keywords=nadine+sutton

Dennis Wheatley 1897-1977

I’ve just been re-reading a book by the now forgotten author Dennis Wheatley.  He was born in South London, to a middle class family in 1897 and was sent to a good school (Dulwich college), but was expelled, allegedly for forming a secret society.  He wasn’t into schooling and then ended up in the Merchant Navy.

 Soon afterwards he served as an officer in the First World War.  His family wine business occupied him after he left the army in 1919, but by the 1930s, it was doing badly and he decided to sell up and become an author.  He wrote his first novel in 1932, but it didn’t get published for some time.

He wrote historical and contemporary thrillers with a strong military bent.  He had war and “secret ops” and propaganda experience which helped him with his plots.  He also had some interest in the occult, and wrote several Black Magic based thrillers though he always warned his readers against getting involved in such things.  

He was an extremely conservative thinker and felt that Britain was “going to the dogs” and that socialist reforms would make people lazy and weak.   In his writing he usually champions the conservative cause, backing the English Tories against the Whigs and the British government against the French revolutionaries or Napoleon.

He published his first novel “Three Inquisitive People” in 1933 and it sold very well, and he went on with his writing career. His heroes are usually aristocratic and independent minded and often pretty ruthless in how they achieve their ends.  He is not greatly sympathetic to left wingers but he is usually fair to them, and while there are times when he comes across as dated, and bigoted, generally speaking, he was a good story teller.  His works are well researched and while he is not an elegant word smith, he knows how to keep a readers’ attention and to be a page turner. His Gregory Sallust series, about a former army officer who is involved in spying during World War Two, and who marries a beautiful German aristocrat who is anti-Hitler, are said to have been a partial inspiration for the James Bond novels.

His women characters are usually less active than the males, but are often involved in spying as well, and they are not above using their physical charms to lure people into confiding in them, and using sex appeal to contribute to the causes they serve.

However, he is sympathetic to women, and usually if not quite the equals of the male adventurers, they are seen as fairly much equivalent.  As a man of his time, he does not like women to be quite as promiscuous as men, and doesn’t expect them to be as active physically but there is definitely a role for them and he does not criticise female characters for being sexually active, but celebrates it. One of his best novels, Desperate Measures, convers the end of Napoleon’s reign, and Waterloo, where Roger Brook, his British agent, uses his identity as Colonel De Breuc to foil the Bonapartist cause, and tires to marry his beloved mistress Georgina.

Dennis Wheatley was married twice, and died in 1977.

Anne Boleyn

These days there are endless books and films and novels about Anne.  Many of the novels are wildly inaccurate…but it shows how Anne is still thought about and discussed and debated.  She was always in her own day a controversial figure.

She never had much public support in her years of glory; both the ordinary people and the nobility disliked her, on average.  She was seen as the young and sexy temptress who lured a man away from his middle aged worthy virtuous wife and as such, seen as a frightening and controversial figure. She was also seen as sympathetic to the cause of Protestantism -which was not very popular.

She was born probably in Norfolk around 1501 or so.  The date of her birth is not clear, and some historians gave it as 1507.  However she went into court service in 1514 and generally girls did not do this until they were about 12.   Her family were considered upstarts, since her great grandfather had been a merchant and lord Mayor of London but over time they had retired from business, bought land and married into the nobility and her father was a diplomat in Henry VIII’s service.

As a writer, I’ve often thought of writing a novel about Anne, but as a romantic novelist, it is hard to fit her story into the traditional narrative.  She didn’t achieve a happy marriage.   She may have loved the King to some extent, but the other men in her life, Henry Percy and Thomas Wyatt, were kept from marrying her... The first because his father disapproved and Wyatt because he was a married man. She was executed for adultery in 1536…

But to a romantic novelist, she is a fascinating figure... in that she was possibly the first “other woman” to succeed in marrying the man that she “took from his wife”.  There is speculation as to what her relationship with Henry was, during the six years before they were able to marry.  It is probable that it involved some sexual contact but not full intercourse, as she did not become pregnant until 1532.  So she is in a way the prototype for the mistress who lures a man with her beauty and charm, has an affair with him and then persuades him to leave his wife and marry her... And sadly Anne got the “traditional” comeuppance of such a mistress, because Henry deserted her for yet another woman.
So she’s interesting to someone who thinks a lot about the history of “romantic love.”  In the years of their marriage, Henry and Anne were often quarrelling and making up.  They were one of the few royal couples at that time, who had married because of being in love and who promoted the idea that marriage should be for love.  The drama of courtship, and a love match!  so she’s a boon to us romantic writers.

Suite Francais Film

This is  a likable film set in the aftermath of the Fall of France, when the Germans occupied the country. The chief character is a young woman called Lucille who lives with her mother in law, and is lonely because her husband is now a prisoner of war in Germany.  She doesn’t get on with her mother in law, who is a well to do and cold hearted widow.  Lucille feels bullied by her and hates the way that her mother in law is harsh towards their tenants.

 When a German regiment come into the town, Lucille notes that the older women freeze them out, but the young women lonely without their menfolk who are away at war, find it hard to ignore them. Before long, some of the younger women take German soldiers as lovers. Lucille is lonely too but her mother in laws strict watchfulness controls her life. When a German officer is billeted at their house, her mother in law refuses to talk to him, but Lucille who loves music, gradually develops a friendship with him. But in the end, she realises that she cannot ignore the fact that he is German and the occupier of her country.

Suite Francaise is about wartime love and sexual passion and captures very well the loneliness of soldiers away from their homes and loved ones, and the loneliness of the young women whose men have disappeared into Germany or been killed.  And the furtiveness and passion that this gives to their love affairs with the Germans.

I particularly liked it because I like to read of illicit or non-traditional love. Of course married and settled love has many satisfactions but there is a special thrill to love that is not accepted…

Royal Paramours by Dulcie Ashdown

I’ve been reading this book lately, and I can remember reading it many years ago.  It covers the illicit relationships of Britain’s Royals from the medieval era to the time of Edward VIII.
However it misses the later revelations of infidelity from the 1980s onwards.  I’ve greatly enjoyed the stories of Edward VII’s many mistresses, the love affairs of the Stuart Kings and the intense friendships of the Stuart Queens Anne and Mary, both of whom seem to have had close relationships with women as well as with their husbands.
Dulcie Ashdown said, very truly that “normal” conventional respectable married love, is not as interesting as illicit love.  I don’t think that that is always the case but there’s a nugget of truth in it.  We love to read about the loves which should not happen, or about the deceptions and secrets of love outside of marriage, which can result in scandal. We like to see the problems in a love relationship, rather than the boring years of settled married life, which is why love stories usually end at the altar.

 

Love is Strange -a charming Gay Film Spoilers!

I saw this film recently and enjoyed it very much.  It is a simple story of an aging gay couple, one English, the other American, who live together in New York.  Al Molina’s character teaches music; John Lithgow’s character is an artist. When after a long relationship, they get married, things start to unravel.  Molina is let go from his job, in a Catholic school, who seemed to have accepted him while he was gay but drew the line at his getting married.  Then their finances take a turn for the worse.   They lose their apartment and have to ask for help from family and friends, to find somewhere to live.  They end up living in different apartments, with friends or relatives and feeling out of place and unwanted and lonely.

They try to spend time together and to resolve the problems, but time is against them. By the time they find a place where they can be together Lithgow, the older of the 2, has developed serious health problems and dies.

There is a good deal of sadness in the tale, but also happiness.  They never stop loving each other and try to find ways to combat the problems that have beset them.  And the story, while it takes note of the “gay issue” does not blame “Society” for all their problems. Some of the loneliness and problems are related to the fact that they are not that well off and aging.  Lithgow’s ill health could be the fate of any older man with a wife…and their financial problems are not entirely to do with Molina’s losing his job because he made his gay marriage public...It’s also that they are not good at managing money.  And their loneliness is the same as for a heterosexual couple who have had to separate for financial reasons… Both of them feel out of place with younger friends and relatives, however kindly they are….
There are references to gay issues, to the struggle for gay rights, but they are lightly touched on.  I would recommend the film to anyone who enjoys a good story about 2 people in love

 

Nicholas Sparks

I picked up a Nicholas Sparks some months ago, when I was on holiday in America.  And it inspired me.  Since then I’ve read several more of his books, and have come to the conclusion that he’s a hit and miss writer.

But there’s something very likable about his books and he comes across as a man of warmth and feeling and I enjoy his work even if it is not “great literature!”  The first book I read was “Dear John”, a novel about a young man from a poor background, in the South, (like most of Sparks’ heroes).  He lives alone with his father, who is not close to him, and is not doing well at school or showing any ambition.  Then after a few years, he goes into the Army and finds a purpose in life that he hadn’t had before. He then meets a young woman, Savannah, from a different background, who is at college and is a Christian.  He falls in love with her, but the novel is about the difficulties of maintaining a relationship when one of the partners is in the military.  John means to leave the army after his hitch is up, and marry Savannah, but “9/11” intervenes. After the terrorist attack, he -like many others -ends up re enlisting and that puts a major strain on his girlfriend. She and John don’t have much time to spend together and he begins to feel uneasy with her college friends.  They quarrel at times and then when he is serving abroad, she writes to him to say she wants to break off the relationship. 

John returns to America, later, because his father is very ill. His father dies, and he goes to see Savannah who is now married to a friend of hers called Tim.  Tim’s younger brother is autistic and because of this, Savannah wanted to run a ranch for children with similar problems. They set one up then, Tim became ill with cancer and is dying.  Savannah takes him to see her husband.  John makes a big sacrifice to try to save Tim’s life and protect Savannah’s marriage.

I like this ending, as while it is not “happy ever after”, it shows that love can make things better and that real love may demands a sacrifice. And that not all love affairs have a happy ending. 

In some of Sparks’ other works, he ends with something even sadder than a near death of a character, and indeed I have to say that at times he seems to be searching the medical dictionary for illnesses to make his characters unhappy.

But in Dear John, I enjoy the problem and the resolution. I think that in his later books perhaps Sparks is under pressure to produce regularly and finds it harder to come up with plots.   But I enjoy Dear John because it seems realistic in its looking at the differences between the 2 characters  - John as someone to whom the army was important because it had provided him with a purpose, and Savannah who was more privileged and interested in intellectual matters.   She is young and inexperienced and it’s understandable that she might be attracted to John but not feel able to cope with a long distance relationship for years to come.
I’ve tried not to put too many spoilers in this!

Hazel Holt and Mrs Malory

I just saw with sadness that Hazel Holt has written her last “Sheila Malory” cosy mystery and I rushed to buy it on Kindle. I’ve read most of her books and I enjoy them very much.  They are about a middle aged widow, in a small town in rural Devon, who gets involved in mysteries and murder cases.  Sheila Malory is in her early 50s when the series starts and as I’m getting around that age now, I tend to enjoy the stories about a heroine who isn’t young and “hot”.  Titles include Mrs Malory and the Festival Murder”, “The Cruellest Month” and many more.

Sheila is a writer, who writes literary criticism and occasionally takes temporary posts in teaching and lecturing which enables her to go to other locations, such as Oxford, America and a prestigious girls school, so as to get away from the rural town location for a book. 

Her mysteries are “cozies” in the American phrase which means that they are not usually about the criminal classes, but murders in “private life” among the comfortable middle class.  And there is no real violence or gore. 

In fact in many of her books the murder victim is a very unsympathetic figure, - such as a busybody or a nasty bully, or even a potential murder.  If they are male, they are often bullying and domineering over their wife and children… and the murderer is often someone who has been wronged by the victim, who has snapped and killed him or her.

I like the characters in her books, they are older people usually and more pleasant and well-mannered than many characters in modern fiction.  More “Inspector Morse “types than characters from “The Bill”.  
One of the small problems with the books is that because the victim is usually a nasty type, (this often emerges only after his death when family problems are outed), it is hard to wish for the mystery to be solved, because you sympathise with the murderer to an extent.  Sheila does sometimes feel that she has an ethical dilemma of not wanting the murderer to be caught…  Even when she does find the murderer she often accepts their request to “put their affairs in order” before going to the police, and allows them the gentlemanly option of committing suicide. In one of her earlier ones, she and her son, Michael (who becomes a lawyer which gives Sheila access to inside knowledge about law and property deals etc.) trap the murderer into a confession and it is one of the few cases where the killer (presumably since the novel ends with his being caught) is tried and found guilty.  But again this is a case where the victim (a woman) was a bullying selfish creature who used blackmail and spite to get her way, much of her life.   I’m not quite sure why this was one of the few cases where the murderer (who was not an unsympathetic person) was caught in the normal processes of the law.
Hazel Holt’s world is pleasant and cosy, albeit she does touch on modern problems such as secret affairs, child abuse, homosexuality etc. and she shows a tolerant and intelligent viewpoint.   I’m very sorry that she’s stopping writing the novels, and hope that maybe she’ll change her mind.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley….

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley….

Famous opening words of a novel which although it is not great literature, has a resonance for me and I’m sure for others who write romance. 

Daphne Due Maurier’s Rebecca has a haunting theme... the death of a beautiful woman and her influence on the lives of those who come after her.  The narrator of the novel is the second wife, of Maxim De Winter an English gentleman. A quiet shy rather plain girl of modest background, who marries him when she meets him abroad and finds that she is in competition with his first wife, the beautiful voluptuous and mysterious Rebecca.  She doesn’t fit in to his country home, Manderley and she feels that everyone there remembers the first wife and that she cannot compare favourably to this beautiful and dead woman.  She becomes unsure of her husband’s love

Du Maurier used the device of having her narrate the story but not giving her a first name, in order to emphasise how shy and unconfident and shadowy her heroine felt and how she changed later in the book. 

Rebecca is a romance which begins with a wedding, so that the heroine an hero are married very early in the story, rather than working their way towards love, understanding and marriage. They marry and then the heroine finds that she and her husband don seem to understand each other and she begins to doubt herself and him.  She is hurt by what seems like his indifference.  He begins to question her love when she is too shy and unsure to reach out to him. 

After a terrible misunderstanding which drives the young Mrs De Winter into despair, the mystery is finally solved.  She learns how her predecessor died and she realises that her husband never loved his first wife. As a writer, I am intrigued by the nature of the misunderstanding and the way that the climax plays out, with the heroine assuming a much more dominant role when she learns about the truth of her husbands’ first marriage