Celebrating Romance : A Guest Post from Jodie Griffin (Incl. Giveaway of Twice in a Lifetime)

 

Hi, I’m Jodie Griffin and I write kinky erotic romance as well as contemporary romance with high heat levels. I jokingly say I don’t write NA, I write MA — Mature Adult. My latest book, TWICE INA LIFETIME, is a contemporary romance which features two women falling in love. They’re both about 50 years old—Eve just under, Talia just over.

As a woman in my 50s, it was so much fun writing in my own age-lane, especially when it came to the way Eve and Talia speak, their idioms and their word choices and even their behavior.  No worries about “would they say this?” or “would they do this?” because I know they would—I do, and my friends do, and this is a book about us.

And in spite of the fact that media and advertising try to tell us that women of a certain age are no longer sexual beings, I am here to call bullshit.

Because women in their fifties are having sex…and they’re more comfortable than ever in expressing their desires.  So in TWICE IN A LIFETIME, Eve and Talia talk about sex, and they have sex. Lots of sex. HOURS of sex. Completely unapologetically.

Like…this scene:

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but that first day you asked me if I wanted to join you? My brain went right to in the shower.”

She groaned. “I know it did. It was all over your face. I thought for sure you’d turn around and never come back. I’ve never been one to spew sexual innuendo, but I can’t seem to help it around you.”

“Not even close. I wanted to join you there, to see if you were as sexy under your clothes as you looked.” I leaned over and kissed the scar, then grinned up at her. “And you know that’s just a dare, right? I’m going to be leaving things wide, wide open now.”

A strangled laugh. “You’re a dangerous, devious woman.”

“Thank you.”

She laughed again, but it choked off as I followed long-buried desires and put my tongue on her, licking around her belly button, then sucking gently at the soft curve of her hip.“You always smell like apples and cinnamon. I like it.”

“Good to know.” She shifted her hips and I realized I wasn’t the only one who was fighting the ache of arousal.

I shoved her shirt up further, baring her breasts to my gaze, and my breath caught. They were small, but what she had was lovely. Firm, smooth, her pebbled nipples a darker brown than her skin. I glanced up at her face and hid a satisfied grin. Her jaw was tight, as though she had to force herself to stay still.

“Can I touch you?” I asked, my voice deeper than usual. I wanted this more than anything I’d wanted in a long time.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t put your hands on me right now.”

I hadn’t meant with my hands. I cupped her breast with my fingers while sucking her nipple into my mouth, hard, just the way I liked it.

She nearly bowed off the sofa. “Jesus, Tal. Warn a girl.” When I sucked again, she groaned. “And you say you’ve never done this before? God help me.”

When widow Talia Wasserman applies for a job with the local police department, she’s shocked to discover she’ll be working for Lieutenant Eve Poe, an officer she’d met—and been attracted to—during a long-ago citizen’s police academy workshop. Fifteen years later, the spark is still there, and no one’s currently in Talia’s life or in her bed. But there’s just one teeny, tiny problem. Eve is her boss, so she’s completely off-limits.

Eve feels a sizzling connection

with Talia from the very first, but Talia works for her, and that’s just a bad idea. Besides, Eve needs to focus on the person sending disturbing emails to her office, and not on the woman who quickly makes herself invaluable to the department. It’s too bad her heart doesn’t agree with her.

Then Eve is badly injured in the line of duty, and Talia’s worst fears are realized. She may lose her chance at happiness with the woman she’s come to love, and she can’t survive that kind of loss twice in a lifetime.

 

And this one:

“…if you keep touching me like that, we’ll wind up in the bedroom and our kids can fend for themselves.”

My body quickened. “I’d be fine with that.”

Her eyes heated. “You are a bad, bad influence, Talia. And if it all didn’t smell so damn good, and if the kids weren’t here? Dinner would wait.”

Since we’d wound up in bed with dinner burned several times, I knew it wasn’t an idle threat. “Eve is easily tempted, eh?”

She let out a half laugh and then spun me so my back was against the wall. “So easily.” She fiddled with the buttons on my shirt and made like she was going to undo one. “What do you have on under this?”

I smiled smugly. “Nothing but a bra. A new one, just for you.”

She groaned. She knew my propensity for lacy bras and panties, and she liked me in them . . . and liked divesting me of them. “They’ll save us leftovers, right?”

I kissed her on her nose. “Doubtful. Let’s go be sociable and grab some goodies.”

“So you know, I’m agreeing because my baby’s only here a few days. Otherwise your goodies would be naked and under me in thirty seconds.”

“Augh!” Lila’s voice floated down the hall toward us. “I was going to tell you we were starting to eat, but . . . gah. Don’t you two ever stop?”

 

I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of reading books where I can see more of myself in the characters. And that means, for me, older characters in romance. I want to see men in their 50s with women in their 50s.  Maybe characters getting married for the first time, or ones deciding they never want to get married but having a steady sex partner or two would be nice. Maybe ones dealing with life changes, like an empty nest or losing a partner or something else big.  Because life doesn’t stop when you reach 30 or 35. You don’t suddenly give up on the idea of finding that special someone, or sharing your life. You don’t stop having goals, and plans, and dreams.  There are so many opportunities for stories about people who’ve lived full lives already… and I want to write them.

Do you want to read them?

 

You can find me mostly on twitter as @Jodie_Griffin, or visit my website at jodiegriffin.com.

One lucky commenter can win either a  paperback (US only) or an ebook of TWICE IN A LIFETIME.

Jodie Griffin has always been a reader, but she didn’t always want to be a writer. She’d spend hours reading, but school papers were written one painful word at a time, and never over required word count.   Then, one ordinary day, something changed. A story idea came, demanding to be put on paper. She resisted at first, but the wicked muse refused to leave her alone. After several years of practice, she took the leap and submitted her first story – and hasn’t looked back since.

Jodie’s own happily-ever-after includes one incredibly supportive husband, one future heroine, and two kitties who keep her company as she writes.