[fusion_builder_container background_color=”” background_image=”” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_webm=”” video_mp4=”” video_ogv=”” video_preview_image=”” overlay_color=”” overlay_opacity=”0.5″ video_mute=”yes” video_loop=”yes” fade=”no” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding_top=”20″ padding_bottom=”20″ padding_left=”” padding_right=”” hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” menu_anchor=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][fusion_title size=”2″ content_align=”center” style_type=”none” sep_color=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” class=”” id=””]The 2001 Purple Prose Parody Contest[/fusion_title][fusion_text]July 15th, 2001:

We posted 20 entries in our fifth annual Purple Prose Parody Contest. Instead of announcing only one winner this time around, I am proud to announce two winners. Because AAR staff is permitted to enter this particular contest, I indicated early on that if one of their entries received the most votes, two winners would be proclaimed. That is precisely what happened – Marianne Stillings’ Parody in Death received the most votes and we congratulate her. Which means that Andrea Geist’s Brothers: The Cowboy is our other winner. Congratulations as well, Andrea! Here is what the winners had to say:

  • Marianne:
    I had a great time writing Parody In Death, and I’m pleased it was so well received. Thank you. All the entries were wonderful; what a talented group! Also, congratulations to Andrea Geist for her hilarious entry Brothers: The Cowboy. It had me in stitches.
  • Andrea Geist:
    I’m excited to hear I am a winner for the 2001 PPP Contest. I feel honored to be in the company of AAR’s Marianne Stillings’ Parody in Death, and prior years’ winners like Marsha Canham.Now don’t get me wrong, I love romance novels. I obviously read them all the time, thus my ability to poke fun. The Brothers: The Cowboy is a satire of series romances. It doesn’t matter if the secondary characters are exciting or important to the story, the fortunate author has a contract. Maybe it’s just contract envy on my part.At a recent RWA chapter meeting one of the published authors who writes categories about Cowboys was contracted for a series, her assigned topic was a sheik. This started me thinking and the next thing you know, I wrote a parody of a 3 book series, starting with a Cowboy, then a Navy Seal (Suzann Brockman has made Seals the perfect heroes), and a sheik. Add a few other silly items: like making love uncountable times throughout the night, hence poor Mamie had to leave, she was “sore”, suddenly devoted daddies, and the quick set up for the next two books in the series. Voila! my satire.I love romance, so my parody must be ‘contract envy’. Hopefully someday I’ll be published and will see a parody based on one of my books.

If you’d prefer to go right to the entries now, please click here.

Based on feedback after last year’s contest, and in an attempt to make the contest even better and to keep it from getting long in the tooth, we made additional changes this year. Last year one entry was more than 3,200 words, the equivalent of 16 types pages. Last year’s winning entry was roughly 1,200 words; we made that our length limit for this year.

Also, rather than limiting the purple prose parody concept to simply love scenes, we expanded it and encouraged as well the parody of other romance novel scenes, including: epilogues; Regency Romance ball scenes; the first meeting in a “love at first sight” romance; the Big Mis; the prologue of a romantic suspense novel; a skanky sex scene between villains; or a draft proposal of a category romance publisher featuring things such as secret babies, cowboys, virgins, amnesiacs, etc. This expansion of the original purple prose parody was in addition to earlier expansions, such as homages to favorite romance authors as well as the “merge-matic” concept we began last year. We still haven’t received a parody entitled Whitney, My Savage Love, but we can always hope!

Three lucky entrants, simply for sending in a submission, were awarded author-autographed books – they will be sent to Deb Meister, Kathryn Lewison, and Anna C. Bowling this week. The grand prize winner, of course, got to choose two books from our stash of author-autographed books – she has chosen Kathryn Shay’s The Man Who Loved Christmas and Ronda Thompson’s Isn’t it Romantic?. Those books will be mailed as well this upcoming week.

You’ll find the entries to the contest below. First, however, I’d like to share some of the comments we received about some of the submissions we received this year.

  • “There were four parodies that made me LOL, but while reading Parody In Death I laughed all the way through it! The sentence structure, the content and especiallly the names were (using Nora’s words) ‘a hoot’!” — Sharon L
  • “I vote for Parody in Death by Marrianne Stillings. It certainly was a dead-on parody of the In Death series – and I made the mistake of reading it at work. Laughing out loud in front of your computer is somewhat frowned upon. I thought it was brilliantly done!” — Kathleen Roesle-Blush
  • “Not only is Andrea’s writing funny in Brothers: the Cowboy, she tagged the series set up and the suddenly happy daddy. She targeted the preoccupation with cowboys, navy seals, and shieks, the secret baby, and made me laugh.” — Delaney Ash
  • “This year’s entries were particularly good. I believe opening up the definition of this contest to be parodies of romance in general has really freshened up the competition. As a longtime traditional Regency Romance reader, I really enjoyed the many parodies of that genre – A Waltz at Almacks! was particularly good, what with the incredibly overblown use of adjectives and the overattention to details of clothing!“Love’s Savage Gamble was a riot, and when I shared it with my dh (a great Yahtzee fan), he could not stop laughing. I also liked the way that Brothers: The Cowboy skewered so many of the details of the series romances. But my winning vote goes to The Humanitarian Hero. Anything that manages to parody both Regency romances and Suz Brockmann’s SEAL series in one entry (while ribbing at the crummy Get Lucky cover, the penchant for bad use of titles in Regencies, and the lousy lemonade at Almack’s) is deserving of my vote. Great work, Blythe!” — Mary Lynne Neilsen
  • “I chose Desperate Hunger as my favorite because it was so original and unexpected.” — Meg Pirkle
  • “(My vote goes to) Murder in Mississippi – I liked the ‘surprise ending.’ You don’t often get redneck cops murdering people with knives!” — Nadia Evans
  • “I vote for Kyla Arden’s “A Waltz at Almacks!” It was just so adjectively exciting!” — Jane Quinn
  • “I vote for The Humanitarian Hero. The Chris Farley reference made me laugh out loud – and I was at work!” — Julia Nelson
  • “I vote for Anne Marble’s Lady Jane and the Elusive Tome. I L’edMAO at this one! Very good, very good.” — Amy
  • “My vote is for Marianne Stillings’s Parody in Death. It was, quite simply, one of the funniest things I have read this year. I was reading it at work – good thing I have an office – and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was so well done and so accurate that I couldn’t look at the stash of J.D. Robb books on my keeper shelf without cracking up. (I eventually overcame that problem and reread the most recent one.) I liked everything about this one-the Canadian “eh,” the painful consequences of the love scene, and especially, “Sometimes she sits for the dead, but that’s only if she’s really, really tired.” (Ok, I am laughing again.) Everything about this one is right on target, and I loved it. I think I am going to go read it again!)“I also really enjoyed Kyla Arden’s A Waltz at Almacks!. It would have had my vote if not for Parody in Death. I read a lot of regencies, and this one showcases what can happen when good regencies go bad. The sentences that go on and on and on are terrific and the details are very funny. I really enjoyed ‘that horrible, fat, drooling Squire Stevens’ and all the exclamation points, not to mention ‘Lord Boredrake’ and the heroine’s ‘cow-patty coloured eyes’ with stubby eyelashes.” — Jen Campi
  • Brothers: the Cowboy by Andrea Geist was the best. I think it was the Navy SEAL that did it. I really did laugh out loud. I enjoyed Andrea’s the Introductionas well. Love at First Blight by Heidi Lyn was fabulously sick and deserves honorable mention!” — Victoria McManus
  • “Well, I obviously want to vote for my own story (Murder in Mississippi), but I’m not too sure how this works. I wanted to cast votes for two others as well. Two that I loved, and thought were equally hysterical are Marianne Stillings’ Love’s Savage Gamble, and Andrea Geist’s The Introduction. The former read better than many love scenes I’ve read in published works. It was extremely vivid, and had a wonderful end. I actually laughed oput loud in the middle of my office after reading it. The latter also was written beautifully, was quite funny, and I guess the best part about this one was I wanted it to keep going. It made a great beginning to an entire story and I was sorry when it ended.” — Nancy Lepano

 

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Our Entries:

[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_4″ last=”no” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”3_4″ last=”yes” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_accordion divider_line=”no” class=”” id=””][fusion_toggle title=”Deb Meister’s Desperate Hunger” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Deb Meister:

Desperate Hunger

It had been a long time since Matteo and Jill had been marooned on this deserted island. White beaches, orange sunsets. Blue azure water ebbed in and out of this gorgeous place. A school trip gone awry; all others died tragically, leaving only the teacher and her beloved student. Strangely, there were romance novels littered over the isle. Sadly, the combination of purple prose and blistering heat began to turn Mrs. Hilliard’s head, and Quixotic thoughts invaded her once sensible mind. As the hot sun warmed her blood she finally gathered her courage and professed her love for her favorite student, without fear that she would get into trouble. But she knew she would have told him eventually anyway. Nothing, she thought, nothing would come between her and her young man! No matter if there were tightassed principals or petty laws – true love knew no age!

For Matteo, who hated how his name rhymes with Fabio, it was the worst trip he’d ever had. A steak lover, Matteo had gone without much food, much less any meat, since the day his fellow students perished in the sea. He sat and stared at Jill’s plump body, running his tongue sensuously over his lips, wondering what it would be like to taste her. He walked to where she lay in the shade under the palm trees and with one hungry slow glance, imagined what he would do to that body with his mouth.

Feeling very warm from his long stroking stare, she parted her lips and whispered his name, only to be silenced by his finger as he began to stroke her spaghetti-like hair. Good God, he thought, her tattered clothing revealed a thigh that looked just as sweet as one of those fine Virginian honey cured hams.

He now sees why, for so many years, man had called those deliciously drooping mounds “melons.” Those wrinkled orbs made his mouth water at the very thought of biting into the luscious cantaloupes to drown his thirst and appease his appetite. He was so hungry, starved, he hadn’t been full for so long…

He began to trail his tongue down the side of her throat and couldn’t help but to began nibbling while he followed that wonderful scent of meaty flesh that was she. She heard him groan; it was almost like the sound of grumbling stomach. As his nipping got more and more violent, she felt a sensation so ecstatic that it was close to pain. Her head felt woozy, as if blood has drained out of her as he continued down, down, down, suckling, licking, tasting, like a connoisseur of fine worldly cuisine.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Rachel Potter’s Irish Eyes” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by AAR Reviewer Rachel Potter:

Irish Eyes

Seamus squinted his eyes against the smoke. The room was dark and full of people dancing, drinking, milling about. No one had seen him yet, and he had to make certain no one did. It was imperative that no one saw him. Lives, a whole people, hung in the balance. The welfare of his beloved country depended on his prodigious spying abilities. Somewhere within the smoky darkness was his contact, but who he was Seamus had no idea. He was called the Cat, and Seamus assumed that he had been so named for his stealthy, steady ability to land on his feet in any situation. But no matter whom it was-the old crone rocking in the corner, the young hothead about to start a brawl, the merry dwarf leading the dancing – Seamus would find out.

All of a sudden a shot rang out, and several men in dark red military issue stalked through the low door. The men were all ghastly ugly, their faces and bodies were covered with old pockmarks, scars, oozing sores. If their uniforms hadn’t given them away, Seamus would still have known them. Their very hideousness would have revealed them to be the English scum they were. Seamus slunk back into the darkest corner, assessing the situation with his shrewd, wizard-like abilities. The crowd grew still, hypnotized into a false calm by the sudden appearance of a primary color. The dancing ground to a halt, and the shrieking instruments ceased their wailing. Then a woman screamed, and someone had the presence to throw water on the low-burning peat fire. It sizzled out and the already dark cottage was plunged into blackness. Seamus felt an insistent tugging on his sleeve and a low voice said, “Here, through here. There be a back way.” He followed the tugging and found himself being led outside and then behind the row of cottages, down a rocky path. It was quite dark outside, and all he could make out about the figure in front of him was the slightness of his form. A boy.

After a minute the boy turned and ducked under a low-hanging branch, dragging Seamus into somewhere even darker. A cave. It was narrow, and its walls were jagged. He was just beginning to adjust his vision again to this new level of darkness when he heard a match being struck. A small lamp bobbed in a hand and then the boy carefully hung it on the wall. Seamus turned to look more carefully at him-and fell into his green, green eyes.

Her green eyes. Grass green, or green like the shoots of the new onions his mother had planted outside her cottage every year. Green like potato leaves murdered by the blight. Green like the Eire. He narrowed his eyes. “Do I know ye?” he asked.

“Nay,” she said. “I’ve never seen ye before in me life.” Her short black hair curled in a riotous fury around her tiny face. Looking at her was like peering into a black hole – the green sucked him into the black. He shook his head to clear it. Something rattled. He looked down to see her bending over. She had something clutched in her hand, something metal. It was making a low rattling noise. But his attention was distracted from the object in her hand by the shapeliness of her round little bum. He stared at it. It was so curved and soft. He’d have bet all the money in his pockets that both of those sweet little mushrooms would have fit in the palm of his manly hand. He reached out to touch it

She turned back around quickly and he snatched his hand back. She looked at him strangely and then focused all of her attention on him, as if suddenly there was something about him that interested her. “What be ye called?” she asked abruptly.

“Seamus,” he said, as if in a trance. “Seamus O’Reilly O’Kelly. Be ye certain then that I’m not knowing ye? I would swear by the holy cross that yer face is familiar.” He leaned over and fingered one of her hacked-off curls. It was soft and glossy and smelled ever so slightly of his home – that damp, potato-blighty smell. He inhaled deeply. “What be ye named?”

“I won’t be telling ye that,” she said darkly. “Because if I were telling, I’d have to be killing ye.” Then she turned away from him and began twirling about that little metal object. It made more rattling sounds. And from far away, as faint as an echo, came another rattling sound. A signal.

Seamus frowned and turned her back to him, enjoying the feel of her soft shoulders through the tattered remnants of her clothing. “Tell me. By Saint Padraig, I swear I know ye. I’ve seen yer face before…in me dreams.” His thumbs began to move rhythmically against her collarbone.

She sighed and relaxed her body against him. “If ye must be calling me something, call me Seosaimhthin. It be one of me code names. That will have to be pleasing ye for now.”

“Shoh-sa-veen,” he repeated slowly. “How would ye be spelling that?”

She rolled her eyes at him and then pulled him to her fiercely, grabbing onto his damp lapels. “Shh,” she said. “Just be closing yer fine Irish mouth, Seamus. I’m trying to keep me fantasy going here, and ye’re making it a wee bit hard.” She pushed her lips against his. “If ye weren’t so unearthly handsome, and I weren’t hoping so badly for tall children, I might just be” She trailed off and her tiny wet tongue explored the cave of his mouth. They kissed and kissed. And then just as suddenly, she pulled away from him. She looked up at him with saddened green eyes, eyes that looked just like the sea, and sighed. “Oh, Blessed Mary, save me,” she said in a tight voice. “I do know ye.”

He nodded dumbly.

“But yer name been’t Seamus, it be Roibhilin.” She frowned.

He shook his head dumbly. “Ro-bin? No, I’m not thinking so” But then visions of dark forests and evil sheriffs began to pelt him with high intensity. He stared again at the tiny vision before him. There was something about her that was so familiar, so damn familiar. He’d sensed it from the first light of the lamp. Then he remembered the feel of her soft hair; it had been blonde then, not black. But still… He opened his mouth and a rough voice croaked out a question, “Mairin?”

She began to sob and then she pulled him again to her and pressed her forehead tightly against his chest. “Roibhilin!” she said. “Roibhilin, I’ve found ye again, and now we can live as we always dreamed, now that we’re not being stalked and terrorized by the evil English authorities”

He clasped her against him just as tightly, and then tilted her chin up so he could repossess her lips. She responded to him like a wild animal only just freed from its cage. And his last thought as they toppled to the floor in a frenzy was, I should be reminding her of the English forces ready to starve us, kill us, annihilate us like cockroaches, but I just need this night with her. This one night….[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Kyla Arden’s A Waltz at Almacks!” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Kyla Arden:

A Waltz at Almacks!

Miss Gladys Countrymiss gasped in childlike, innocent, amazed awe as the fancy, well spring, well-lined, comfortable coach, competently pulled by four sleekly-muscled, midnight black, ebony, spirited and lively horses, drew even with the vast portals of that bastion to which all eligible young females in want of a husband desired entrance. Almacks! She, a country vicar’s middle, plump, plain, freckled daughter with straight brown hair that would not hold a curl unlike her beautiful blonde younger sister’s, was comfortably ensconced in a coach awaiting entrance into Almacks!

Gladie shivered with enthusiastic yet tremulous and apprehensive delight at the thought of the much desired and sought-after vouchers in the indigo reticule of her long-lost, well-off godmother who, although she hadn’t seen Gladie since the christening due to a small misunderstanding, was extremely desirous of launching her into the ton and contracting the perfect, ideal marriage for her long lost goddaughter. Gladie Countrymiss was to dance at Almacks! And, if all was as she had hoped and dreamed, Gladie would acquaint herself with any number of charming, eligible, well acquainted men of reasonable fortune, one of whom would fall madly, passionately, wildly in love with her, allowing her to realize her secret dream of a love-filled marriage like that of her parents, and gaining her younger, more beautiful, blonde, curly-haired sister admittance to society and a chance at a decent marriage, so neither of them would have to marry that horrible, fat, drooling Squire Stevens!

Descending slowly and carefully down from the carriage, holding her new, elegant, stylish, alabaster white ball gown, with sky blue periwinkles embroidered on the hem and neckline, in one delicate hand, encased in white alabaster gloves embroidered with sky blue periwinkles, Gladie’s cow-patty coloured eyes with short stubby eyelashes rounded with anxious anticipation at the glorious sight of the patronesses of Almacks, waiting inside the arched entranceway. Another tremulous shudder shook her from head to toe at the sight of their stern, unyielding faces.

“Have no fear, Gladys, my dear”, disclosed Lady Fairie. “ I am of the opinion that you will be granted permission for the waltz. Lady Jersey and I made our own come-outs together and I believe that she will look upon you with no small favour. You shall dance the waltz!”

“The waltz!” breathed Gladie. “Oh, my dear Godmother, do you indeed think I shall waltz tonight?” As they approached Lady Jersey, Gladie felt her butterfly-filled stomach plunge to the bottom of her new, alabaster white, dancing slippers, embroidered with sky blue periwinkles. “ But, Godmother, what if no gentleman should seek my hand for a waltz! For myself I should not care one jot, but the scandal would ruin my beautiful sister Elegantina’s chances of a decent marriage!”

After making their curtseys to the smiling Lady Jersey, who had indeed granted the charming long-lost goddaughter of her friend Lady Fairie permission to dance the waltz, they descended down the grand white marble staircase leading downwards into the vast, elegant, candlelit, crowded ballroom of Almacks!

“Have no fear, Gladys, my dear”, consoled Lady Fairie. “I have asked my nephew, Lord Boredrake, to solicit your hand for the waltz.”

As Gladie and her godmother, who was dressed in a dark plum, indigo ballgown and a matching turban decorated with four dyed, dark plum, indigo dodo feathers and a large, round, diamond-cut amethyst, reached the base of the grand white marble staircase, Gladie’s eyes locked with those of a man dressed unfashionably in black, with only his white cravat and the diamond pin nestled within its draping folds for colour, who approached them both, his eyes fixed on Gladie’s. Once he reached them, he bowed low, his gaze staying fixed upon hers.

“Very good, my dear Lucien”, pronounced Lady Fairie. “Miss Countrymiss, please allow me to present my dear nephew, Lord Boredrake.”

Unable to do much else, for she was much shaken by the boldness, directness and frankness of his gaze, Gladie curtsied, glad of the chance to gain some control over her boiling, turbulent and rolling emotions. It was him! The man who had so thoroughly kissed her last night in her godmother’s library after midnight when she had gone down to find a book to aid her sleep and with whom she had fallen deeply and passionately in love with after only one brief glance was none other than Lord Boredrake! Caught off guard, Gladie stared at him, her eyes burning, accusingly, waiting for him to expose her shameful, forward behavior of the previous evening, waiting for him to denounce her as…as…shameful and forward and to thus destroy all of Elegantina’s chances of happiness which were resting entirely on her. Oh, why had she not resisted his advances in the well stocked library last night? Oh, how she loved him!

“Charmed, my dear”, he spoke in the gravely, deep, pleasing voice she remembered from last night’s encounter that had remained in her mind long after she had broken free of his arms and run upstairs to breathlessly barricade herself in her room. “May I solicit your hand for the first waltz of the evening?”

“No, you may not, sir! I am fully engaged for this evening’s dances!”, she boldly exclaimed, without thinking of the consequences of her unthinkingly rude and impolite behaviour.

Disregarding the gasps and indrawn breaths from those around that had heard her rude and impolite words, as well as the shocked, unhappy and displeased countenance of her godmother who under normal circumstances Gladie longed to please, she turned to flee breathlessly from the grand and elegant ballroom. But before she could take more than one tiny step in her alabaster white dancing slippers, Lord Boredrake stepped swiftly and quickly into her path. He manfully claimed her white alabaster glove-encased hand, raised it to his lips, noted the delicate sky blue periwinkles, and declaimed, loudly enough to reach all of those around her, “My dear, as an engaged couple, we are entitled to dance together.”

“My dear Gladys,” quickly inserted Lady Fairie, “I fear that you have misinterpreted my words concerning respectable behaviour. You are allowed to dance two dances with him, my dear, as befits your lifelong betrothal.”

Gladie gaped stupidly at Lord Boredrake, at his unfashionably long coal black hair tied behind in a queue which reminded her of the tails of the horses drawing the carriage tonight, her eyes caught in his angry, mesmerizing, strangely attractive and compelling gaze, and felt a warm glowing feeling in areas in her abdomen that she had not realized existed until last night. Oh, how she loved him!

And now Gladie might be his beloved wife! She stilled, thinking over their two encounters. He had not said that he loved her. What if he was marrying her simply to avoid the scandal? Gladie could not bear that she had trapped him into a loveless union, and knew that she would slowly wither and die if he did not love her as she did him. But for her sister’s sake, she would marry him! Gladie gracefully nodded, smiled at her godmother, turned with Lord Boredrake – no, Lucien – and headed towards the dance floor and her first waltz at Almacks![/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Marianne Stillings’ Love’s Savage Gamble” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by AAR Reviewer Marianne Stillings:
(Marianne has written a second parody, which you can link to here)

Love’s Savage Gamble

Lady Hermione scooped the dice into her trembling hand. Her heart slammed a violent tatoo against her breast as she shook the dice, the ivory cubes sliding against each other sensuously, erotically, the little clicking sounds matching the rapid beat of her pulse.

Dirk Dresdyn, Lord Hungwell, never took his eyes from the beautiful woman who had so boldly challenged him. “Lay the dice down, my lady, or suffer the consequences.” The score sheet was damp from the moisture of his palm as he held the pen poised above the paper. Already, little droplets were forming at the tip, and he feared the ink would spurt forth onto the paper before he had a chance to score.

She readied to toss the dice, but at the last moment, held. “It comes down to this then, my lord? A single toss and the game is won or lost?”

“Toss? Lost? Poetry, my dear,” he murmured as he moved forward to unbutton her blouse. “Sheer poetry, but a single toss is far less than I would have of you.”

His long, elegant, tapered, masculine fingers with the well-trimmed clean nails continued on their journey down the buttons of Hermione’s bodice. She leaned back, away from the table and let him do with her as he wished. Her breathing became a hungry panting as he shoved her skirts up around her hips. He groaned as he settled himself between her creamy thighs. Urging his own buttons to part, his heated manhood sprang into the cool evening air, shocking Hungwell’s system, and thwanging hard against Hermione’s soft skin.

Barely able to catch his breath, he put himself to her. “Throw the dice, my lady,” he urged. “I must know the outcome. Throw the dice, and let the chips fall where they may. God, I must have you now!”

With a practiced flick of her wrist, Hermoine gave the dice a final toss. As Hungwell pushed her back into the soft, buttery luxury of the leather setee, Hermoine gave one last glance at what the dice had cost her – and a slow smile curved her lucious mouth.

He entered her fully then and filled her and stretched her taut, and she screamed for all the world to hear, “Yahtzee! Oh my God, yahtzee! Yahtzee, yahtzee, yahtzeeeeeeee…!”[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Heidi Lyn’s’ Love at First Blight” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Heidi Lyn:

Love at First Blight

They fell in love over dessert.

Over a chocolate, strawberry, whipped cream covered confection, that neither one bothered to sample after their eyes met across the proverbial crowded room. Their reactions were simultaneous and similar in the devastating impact upon their various senses. He experienced a churning in his belly as he felt his heart plunge to his stomach at the impact of her gaze; while she became dizzy, all the blood leaving her head in a mad dash to her heart and other, lower places.

This is ridiculous, she thought to herself, shaking her head as if to clear it I’m a modern woman, modern women do NOT swoon. Yet, she was unable to control her reaction to his devastating maleness. I must have him.

Although he was at least 200 ft away, she instinctively knew that his eyes were silvery gray, the color of moonlight reflecting on storm clouds. She watched with both trepidation and excitement as he rose from he seat, his intentions clear. His piercing gaze never left hers, never wavered in its intensity as he approached. In turn, she was mesmerized by both his look and the tumult of emotions that assaulted her. Her heart was racing; her limbs mysteriously weak as she thanked God she was already sitting for she knew her legs were incapable of supporting her.

At last he stood before her.

“Would you care to dance?” His voice was so hoarse with emotion it was unrecognizable and the tender question came out as more of a growl.

“I..wo…duh..OK.” Her tongue felt large and swollen in her dry, heated mouth.

“Would you rather wait?” He asked, unable to look away from her impossibly blue-green eyes, “You haven’t touched your dessert.”

“I’m allergic to strawberries!” She gasped, her heart racing. “What about yours?”

He smiled, “Me too.”

The fact that they shared so much in common only increased their sense of connection.

He reached for her hand and her feeling of lightheadedness increased. The weakness in her arms and legs seemed to increase. As he pressed her against his body, she could feel the ripple of steel-like muscles beneath the silk of his tuxedo. Every muscle in her body tightened, clenching almost painfully, in response to his heated flesh.

I’m on fire!, he thought, sweating, I’ve never felt such desire before!

As they danced, a fine sheen broke out on his forehead and upper lip, yet at the same time, goose bumps covered the column of his spine. His stomach continued it’s churning from the close contact of her delectable body. He noticed the fragile pallor of her perfect complexion as she trembled uncontrollably in his arms.

He knew in that instant he would kiss her.

Totally consumed by each other, they were unaware of the multitude of stares from the other guests. Neither of them had noticed that the band was on a break and they stood swaying drunkenly to their own internal music. In fact, it appeared as though they were braced against each other in their desirous embrace, unable to stand alone.

He lowered his head towards her, licking his hot, dry lips in preparation. She understood his intent and parted her lips, waiting breathlessly for the kiss she had waited a lifetime to receive.

Closer, his hot breath fanned her quivering lips. Her trembling increased, becoming violent in its intensity, her fingers and toes tingled unpleasantly. His stomach roiled and sweat ran in rivulets down his forehead, burning his eyes.

He brushed his lips across hers in a feather-like caress. He was so hot. She still trembled.

He could feel the stuttering, faltering beat of her heart against his own when, suddenly, awareness hit them both in a blinding flash of realization. It couldn’t be! Staring into each other’s eyes, they tried to deny what they knew to be true. These intense feelings and physical responses could only be one thing….

“Th-the chicken?” he rasped

“Yes!” she groaned.

As he collapsed, his mouth crushed down upon hers and they fell to the floor. Their last breaths mingling, rising into the heavens. Their bodies locked in an embrace for all eternity.

Slowly, reverently, the other, beef eating guests gathered around them as well, crying in joyous despair at what they had witnessed. A love so strong and pure that it could not survive this mortal coil? A love so complete and all encompassing that human flesh could not withstand the physical and emotional impact? Or, was it E-Coli from the slightly undercooked Coq-au-vin the two lovers had unwisely ordered?

Only an autopsy would tell.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Kathryn Lewison’s The Missing Item” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Kathryn Lewison:

The Missing Item
Lucy stuck her head around the corner. Nobody was there. Excellent. She slowly got down onto her hands and knees and started crawling on the hallway floor. Along the way, she looked under tables, behind chairs, and even in the occasional potted plant. No luck.

Sighing, she stood up again and rubbed the back of her neck in that age-old sign of weariness. Lady Sara’s wedding was in one hour, and Lucy still couldn’t find the missing item for Lady Sara’s dowry.She fervently hoped that everything would go well with the wedding. Lord knew enough had happened over the last day and this morning.

It all began when Lord Adrian returned home three months ago wounded, yet a hero, from the war. Upon hearing that his good friend and neighbor’s son was home again, and with such renown, the Marquess of Glensfield had immediately insisted on looking the “lad” over. Of course, the son of the Duke of Arlesborough could hardly be found lacking, so Glensfield and Arlesborough immediately started conspiring to match their two lovely children up. The two old cronies were delighted by the prospect of being related through marriage, and more importantly, having two old and valuable pieces of land joined together through the children.

Returning home from their nefarious plotting, Glensfield had affected the drooping stature of a man beyond hope three feet from the house. When fussed over worriedly by his daughter, he confessed to a gambling debt of gigantic proportions to none other than the Duke of Arlesborough. Lifting a weak hand to Sara, he told her that the only way to appease His Grace was that if Lady Sara would marry his younger, not-the-heir-but-certainly-not-impoverished, somewhat-rather-good-looking, who-rides-and-shoots-well, son, Lord Adrian. Within three months. Sara, being the proud yet familial, beautiful yet pitiful, spirited yet obedient sort immediately agreed.

Meanwhile back at Arlesborough, the grand old Duke was excercising a similar ploy on young Adrian. Adrian, being in possession of a good fortune, was of course in want of a wife. And also being the familial sort, he agreed to help his father out. After all, he vaguely recalled the Lady Sara in her pigtails and pinafore days, and noted she couldn’t altogether that bad.

After being carefully warned by both parents not to let on about how the wedding was to come about, the courtship began.

Lucy remembered the first time she saw Lord Adrian. It was two months, twenty-nine days, six hours, nine minutes, and fifty eight seconds ago. He was paying a call on Lady Sara. The next day (two months, twenty-eight days, six hours, nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds ago [note from the Editor: In the time that it has taken to you to read the previous sentence, a second has passed] ) they were engaged. No one was really sure how, it just happened.

Well, there was no doubt about. Lucy was smitten with Lord Adrian. And he with her, after he helped rescue her kitten, Paris, from a tree. (Which, unfortunately was two days after the engagement was announced.) How he managed to do this without aggravating his wound, she did not know. In fact nobody knew. That was the Secret of the Wound. It rather reminded her of the Secret of the Hound, in which nobody could find the Hound of Basker’s Ville. That dog had torn through the entire grounds of Glenfield, and worst of all had trampled Lady Glenfield’s favorite magnolia.  It had upset the entire household. Lady Glenfield was in tears for the entire day. Of course, that upset Lady Sara, which in turn upset Lucy, which in turn upset Paris, which was really upsetting. And that reminded her of the time when Reeves the butler was just upset in general. It could have been the housekeeper’s fault (It couldn’t really be the butler, since it was the butler who was upset), but it might just have been the different smell in Lady Sara’s handkerchief’s lace’s threads. Oh, and remember that incident when Henry……

[Ed. Note: And now, back to our normally scheduled program.]

Anyway, Lucy thought, the happiest day of her life (yesterday) was when her beloved Adrian had declared his love for her. However, they both new there duty and were deteremined to do the correct thing, which was, of course, two let go of there knew love and sacrifice for the betterment of the plot. (Did the course of true love ever run smooth?) Lucy knew she would never forget the way Adrian’s lips had moved when he sadly looked at her and said, “Well Lucy, we’ll always have Paris. I won’t forgot, and niether will you.”

But that really didn’t compare to this morning when: Lucy found Lady Sara crying in her room and sent Adrian to look after her. Sara’s red hair promptly manifested itself and she declared that she couldn’t marry Adrian that afternoon because she had fallen in love with Adrian’s man-of-affairs-slash-valet John. (John? What kind of name is that?) {“It is a far, far better thing I do, Adrian, to break it to you now than leave you at the alter.} Adrian was delighted and confessed to Lady Sara his love for Lucy. Which was all well and good until the two papas stormed in. The two heretofore-unseen-mamas (ha! You thought they were more motherless, damaged-youth heros and heroines, didn’t you?) came in afterwards. While the papas were understandably upset over the loss of a marriage connection, it was later revealed that the mamas (who had not seen each other before for unexplainable reasons) were long lost twins separated at birth. Fraternal. So the connection was back, but Sara and John and Lucy and Adrian were not allowed to marry because of Lucy and John’s social status. However, it was later revealed that Lucy was the impoverished daughter of a Duke and that John was granted a peerage for his service in the war. (He was just waiting for the proper time to tell Adrian. Good help is so hard to find.) That made everything just fine and dandy, and double engagements were set for that afternoon. To make everything just fantastic, it was revealed by John (who was working for the War Office-secret spy division) that Adrian was really NOT wounded in the war. He was a hero, of course, but the supposed wound was just a result of the amnesia he briefly experienced while abroad. (Details to be told in the sequel.)

Lucy sighed happily in reminiscence. Moreover, she finally found the missing item to Sara’s dowry in the kitchen. She found the sink.

(1) Ed. Note: The magnolia is a white flower that actually comes from a tree. Obviously, our author is mistaken as to the magnolia’s origins. She also never really specified the setting. We presume this is Regency England, but it is really anybody’s guess.

(2) Ed. Note: Our copy editor was working during this paragraph. We apologize for the inconvenience.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Blythe Barnhill’s The Humanitarian Hero” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by AAR Managing Editor Blythe Barnhill:

The Humanitarian Hero
Sequel to her entry from last year
Lt. Ted Grubowski, US Navy SEAL, surveyed the Almacks assembly room proudly. Everything was going according to plan. People were dancing, laughing, and enjoying the refreshments. They were even loosening up a bit, sometimes dancing two and three times with the same partner. The patronesses didn’t seem to care; indeed, they were having a great time too. The only thing missing was her – Shelby Mackenzie. They had met last year in Scotland, and he had had the best mind-blowing sex of his life. It wasn’t just that, though; they’d talked too. She was perfect, but he’d blown it. Intimidated by their growing intimacy, he had retreated inside his tough Navy SEAL persona. After all, who would want to marry a SEAL? Like Ted, or “Sparky,” as his teammates on team eleven’s illustrious alphabits squad called him, most SEALS had silly nicknames, and were liable to leave for long trips to dangerous places with little notice. No one would want to be married to anyone like that. Sure, everyone else from Alphabits squad was marrying left and right and having the most wonderful relationships in the world, but he was different, and he knew it would never work out for him. So he had invented an emergency top-secret mission to the fictional “Koalastan.” Even to his own ears, the lie had sounded a little lame.

So when the SEALs had perfected their time travel technology, he had signed up for a week of humanitarian outreach work in the Regency period. So far things were going well. His mission seemed to be a success, and his rock-hard body seemed to be attractive to women of any era. Then he saw her, and he nearly dropped his sexy quizzing glass! Heavens. To. Betsey. This was…well, it was mind-blowing. What was Shelby doing in regency England?

Of course, he approached her. Maybe she wouldn’t recognize him in his fawn colored skin tight breeches, maroon striped vest and bottle green waistcoat, and cravat tied in the elaborate “kama sutra” style. He’d see if he could keep his cover first.

“Good evening, Miss -”

“Sh-Charlotte Mackenzie,” she replied.

“Would you do me the honor of dancing the next with me?”

“Of course, Sir.”

As he led her to the floor, he introduced himself. “My name’s Theodore Sextant, Earl of Dysdale. That makes me Lord Sextant, but most people call me Lord Sex.” He winked rakishly.

Shelby/Charlotte looked puzzled. “Why would they call you Lord Sex?”

“You know – Sex! Because I, uh, get a lot of it!” This was going badly.

“Well, Lord Sex right now, in 1815, there is no ‘having sex.’ The term refers to your gender, you idiot. And anyway, you would be Lord Dysdale, not Lord Sextant. But let’s just cut the crap, Ted. Why don’t you tell me why you’re ruining my fantasy again? Things were going great until you got here. I’m here on a special mission, and I was looking for a real member of the nobility this time. I’m not paring up with a mere Mister unless his last name is Darcy.”

“Geez! Sorry, Shelby! I think we’ve already established that my author is a little better with contemporaries. And I’m sorry about last time too. All during our long separation and Big Misunderstanding, I was only able to think of you.” He gave her his saddest puppy-dog face, hoping she would at least be impressed by his waltzing ability.

Shelby sighed and continued to glare at him. “Ted, we didn’t have a Big Misunderstanding, unless you are referring to your stupid story. Couldn’t you come up with something better than ‘Koalastan’?”

“Look, I’m sorry, Shelby. I just got scared. You’re everything I dreamed of, and I threw it all away. But I’ve changed, and there is this…”

He pulled her close and gave her the most mind-blowing soul kiss she had ever experienced. Golly. Gee. Willikers.

“Oh, I don’t care who you are – Ted , Tavish , Lord Sex. All is forgiven.” He kissed her again, and she could feel his hard body, honed by a jillion daily push-ups, twenty mile runs, and that mysterious ritual knows as BUD/S training. Oh. My. Stars. “Even if you aren’t the fantasy I started out looking for, you’re all the man I need. And with the success of my mission, I just couldn’t be happier.”

Ted eyed her quizzically. “What mission?”

“Well,” she said conspirationally, “You know how everybody always hates Almacks? Well, I fixed it!” She smiled proudly.

You fixed it?”

“Yes! Right before I traveled back in time, I stopped at the 7-11 for five bags of ice. I put it right in the lemonade. It’s cold, Ted! Cold, icy lemonade at Almacks! Just look at how happy everyone is!”

“Yeah. Mrs. Diamond-Barrel is singing and dancing in the card room,” Ted supplied.

“Drummond-Burrell, honey. And it’s all thanks to me.”

“Well, the SEALs pitched in a little too, baby.”

“Oh!” Shelby brightened further. “Did you add ice too?”

“Something like that,” Ted equivocated. “But enough about these people. Shelby, we are our own fantasy – our own story! We’ve gotten past the separation and my stupid lie, and we can go straight on to the mushy part. It’s all written, honey, and the author even has her advance copy. Here it is, but don’t look at the – ”

Shelby grabbed the book, and let out a screech that could be heard all the way to Cheapside.

“Cover,” Ted finished dispiritedly.

“Oh. Holy. Mike. Ted, I look fine, but you look like -”

“Chris Farley. I know. Fortunately, in real life people call me ‘Navy Stud’.”

“Well, thank God! Listen, Ted, let’s leave and find somewhere more private. They have these great little booths at Covent Garden, and if they are all taken there’s bound to be an abandoned hunting lodge lying around somewhere.”

Ted smiled a wicked, fox-like grin. “You read my mind, baby. Listen, I’ve got one more thing I need to do. Just get your cloak and meet me at the door.” He gave her another mind-blowing, soul-searing kiss then headed for the refreshments.

As soon as her back was turned, he stealthily approached the lemonade, pulled out a bottle secreted under the table, and poured in another quart of Scotland’s finest.

Suzanne Brockmann had this to say about Blythe’s parody:

“LOLOL!
“You know you’ve made it big when…

  • someone writes a parody based on your books
  • you’re stalked.

“Thank you so very much for not stalking me.
“I find the parody significantly more amusing.”

[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Marianne Stillings’ Parody in Death” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by AAR Reviewer Marianne Stillings:
(Marianne’s earlier parody for this year can be linked to here…and click here for her epilogue parody as part of AAR’s tenth anniversary online)

Parody in Death
The year is 2058. The city is New York. Lt. Ivy Duluth is a cop. A damn good cop. An excellent cop. Hell, cops just don’t get any better than Ivy Duluth.

Ivy Duluth. Abused and abandoned as a child, she was found wandering the streets, starving, alone. They called her Ivy for the floral print on the ragged dress she wore, and then for the Minnesota city in which they found her. Ivy Duluth. Every day she thanked God they hadn’t found her wandering the streets of Fresno or Peoria or Yonkers.

As a homicide detective, Ivy stands for the dead because, well, they can’t stand for themselves. I mean, how can they? They’re dead. Sometimes she sits for the dead, but that’s only if she’s really, really tired.

“What the hell is it, Beanbody?” Ivy growled over the rim of the old cup that held Cop Central’s crappiest coffee. Officer Feelya Beanbody stood in Ivy’s doorway looking cool and efficient, her ruthlessly straight bangs nearly as perfect as her ruthlessly polished uniform shoes. Everything Feelya did was done with a ruthless eye on detail.

Ivy suppressed a smile … ruthlessly. She loved the young cop like the sister she’d never had. But Ivy couldn’t tell her. Lt. Ivy Duluth of the NYPDPMS didn’t “do” love.

“Got another one, Duluth,” Beanbody said, thinking her boss sure was in a bad mood. Probably needed a good lay. But like, who didn’t?

Ivy’s head snapped up. “Another one? Like before? Shot, stabbed, beaten, dragged behind a car, hanged, cut up into tiny pieces and burnt to a crisp on a Hibachi?”

Beanbody swallowed nervously. “Yeah. Got it all on tape. Gosh,” Beanbody murmured. “How’d we ever solve crimes before everybody taped everything for us to look at and find all the clues? Oh, and our old pal, secondary character and computer whiz McAroon says he thinks our guy’s violence is escalating.”

Ivy ignored Beanbody’s sarcasm. “Escalating? What makes him think so?”

“Well, this time the perp added teriyaki sauce and onions.”

“Oh, my God.” Duluth sat back, running her fingers through her short, brown hair. Ivy looked down at her outfit: boots, jeans, t-shirt, thread-bare jacket, gun, knife, machete, rifle, shoulder holster, bullet belt, ice pick … God she loved this job.

Beanbody swallowed again. Nervously. “McAroon traced the Hibachi. It was manufactured by Doarke Industries. The teriyaki sauce and onions were purchased at an International wholesale foods multi-plex, also owned by Doarke Industries. The apartment where they found the body – well, body kabobs – is owned by Doarke Industries, too. The roofing materials and plumbing …”

Ivy grimaced. Doarke again. Doarke. The richest man in the Universe. Oh, she’d met him once. Impossibly tall. Handsome. Eyes as blue as … as something really, really blue. A mouth carved and sculpted and molded and turned. A mouth to die for. Her tongue began to quiver at the thought.

He owned everything on Earth and bits and pieces of Mars and Uranus. She’d been to Uranus; what a hole.

Females threw themselves at Doarke; it was said he’d slept with every woman on planet and off. Every woman, except Ivy Duluth. Because, Ivy was a cop. A damned good cop. Yeah, pal. An excellent cop. She stood for the dead, and spoke for the dead, and wrote for the dead, and sometimes she even danced for the dead, but that was only when she was really drunk. Nevertheless, she did not get involved with a suspect. And Doarke was a suspect. Doarke, damn his handsome hide, was always a suspect.

She pushed herself away from her battered desk. It was time to confront Mr. Doarke, Ivy thought with a frown on her face and a heat beginning to rise from her innards.

Doarke’s secretary showed Ivy in. He sat sprawled behind a desk the size of Rhode Island. He looked handsome as ever. Impossibly handsome. Ruthlessly handsome. Especially that mouth. That perfect, hot mouth. Ivy licked her dry lips and swallowed. Ruthlessly, nervously. Oh, God, she was beginning to read like Beanbody –

Doarke rose from his desk and came around to stand in front of Ivy. “Nice to see you again, Lieutenant. Eh?” he murmured looking deeply into her compost-brown eyes. A hint of his native Canada rolled so easily off his tongue. His tongue. Ivy groaned.

She looked around his fabulously appointed office. “So, how’d you make your money, Doarke?”

Doarke smiled and Ivy felt her temperature rise and her pulse quicken. She was tall, yet he towered over her, all heat and masculinity. He smelled good, too. Like coffee and whiskey, like soap and leather, like eggs and Canadian bacon; sautéed mushrooms with a hint of garlic over a tornado of beef accompanied by an insolent little wine sauce … Ivy’s stomach growled. She really had to learn to stop for lunch once in a while.

“I killed a man when I was two years old,” he began, the Canadian lilt in his voice growing stronger as he spoke. “I took the money from his pockets and set up a lemonade stand, eh. It did very, very well.” He smiled down into her eyes, and Ivy’s heart leaped so hard, she cracked a rib. She hated hospitals, so she’d just have to ignore the pain. “I took my profits and ran some numbers, cheated my investors, knocked off a few banks, picked a few pockets, bought a few politicians … but that was a long time ago,” he grinned. “Now, I’m legitimate.”

Ivy took a breath. “Well,” she said, “just as long as you came by it legally.”

Suddenly, he reached for her. “Sleep with me, Lieutenant,” he growled, his palms warm on her shoulders. “I’ve never met another woman like you, so rangy, such beautiful eyes, and that haircut … What in the hell did you use, a can opener?”

“Yeah, pal,” she murmured, pressing her breasts against his rock-hard wall of chest. “I don’t like to fuss, so I just hack it off when it starts to get too long. Dr. Mirror says it’s just my little way of emasculating every man I find attractive, but she’s so full of sh…”

“Ah, Lieutenant,” Doarke interrupted. “I don’t give a damn what you hair looks like! It’s your body I’m after.” He grinned like the cat who just bought the canary. All the canaries. All the canaries everywhere in the world. “I want you, eh. I want you now.” Lowering his head, he kissed her. More, he devoured her, using his lips, his teeth, his tongue to let her know how much he wanted her. She resisted, so once more he used his tongue, his lips, his teeth, but when she resisted still, he used his tips, his leeth, his pongue …

“This isn’t going to happen!” Ivy gasped as she squirmed out of her blouse, undid her bra and whipped off her belt.

“The hell it isn’t!” Doarke growled as he cupped her small yet perfect breasts in his warm palms. Unbuttoning her fly, he thrust one hand down the front of her pants, running his fingers through the thick, springy, bouncy thatch of fur at the apex of her thighs. Ah, that reminded him. He made a mental note to have the carpets in the den at home replaced.

“Doarke, oh Doarke -” Ivy sighed against his wonderful mouth. “After what happened to me as a child, I can’t believe I can have sex this easily with any man, let alone one who is so strong and domineering.”

As Doarke released his enormous rooster from his pants, he pressed himself into her throbbing heat and whispered against her ear, “Come with me, Lieutenant.” As Ivy fell to the floor, him on top of her, she bumped her head on the corner of the desk. Rolling off Ivy, Doarke slammed his leg into the water cooler, slicing his thigh open on the sharp edge of the stand. He pushed Ivy back down onto the floor and heard her spine crack in three places.

In the outer office, Doarke’s secretary heard the muttered oaths: ouch!, damn!, eek!, oompfh!, yeow!, ugh! … and realized her boss was in love. Never had he treated a woman with the gentleness and care, the tenderness he was showing Lt. Ivy Duluth.

Running his fingers up her naked hip, Doarke found the center of her desire and rubbed until she cried out in ecstasy. Immediately, she relaxed against him like a dead limpet, body sated, energy sapped. “Again,” he murmured as he covered her breast with his hot mouth and sucked hard.

Ivy shoved him off. “Hey!” she snarled. “Don’t you know anything about women? Give me a minute, will you?”

“But, Lieutenant Duluth, darling!” he snapped, clearly ready to go at it again, perplexed that she would stop him. “My lips, my teeth, my tongue …”

Ivy encircled his powerful neck with her arms. Laying her head against his chest, she said, “Okay, pal, you win. But let’s catch our breath first.” She smiled up at him. Maybe she could learn about this love business. Maybe he would be the one to teach her. Perhaps he could throw in a little course in accounting or auto mechanics while he was at it.

As he lifted her in his strong arms, her stomach burbled. “I’m hungry, Doarke,” she said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a Hibachi around here anywhere, would you?”

J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts had this to say about Marianne’s parody:

“It’s great! I absolutely loved it. A complete hoot.”

[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Marcelle McCoy’s Lord Leonard’s Folly (Scene I)” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Marcelle McCoy:
(Marcelle has written a second parody, which you can link to here)

Lord Leonard’s Folly (Scene I)
“What a good wife gives my dear fellow, is the impression of a solid unit, a team.” Sebastian flicked his cuffs, allowing the gleam of the chandelier to bounce off the gold. “The marriage contract is looked upon favourably by both the ton and the business affairs world Leonard.” Sebastian gave Lord Leonard an arch look, raising one eyebrow so high, his quizzing glass popped out. “At thirty-nine, you’re not getting any younger you know.”

Lord Leonard let out a gusty sigh and looked across the sweeping expanse of the glittering ballroom. That old busybody Lady Poopenheimer III certainly had outdone herself this evening.

He glanced over to a group of young pups vying for the attentions of a chit with ample bosom. “You see that Sebastian, old chum? Fops and dandy’s at play,” Leonard sneered. “Barking and sniffing around that slip of a girl’s slip’s as if she had a meaty bone hidden in her undergarments.”

Sebastian sniffed inelegantly and mopped at his brow with his monogrammed kerfchief.

Lord Leonard turned his attentions to the dance floor as the orchestra struck up a melodious waltz that had many a beautiful and refined young lady twirling and swirling around the perimeter of the ballroom like pretty little butterflies.

Except for one.

Lady Elizabeth Blackbush-Harcourt-Rutherford. Clad in a ghastly brown gown, she looked more moth that butterfly.

Was she here for the Poopenheimer pearls too?

“I say Leonard dear chap,” Sebastian peered earnestly through his quizzing glass. “Wasn’t that that gadawful Blackbush-Harcourt-Rutherford woman?”

At the sound of her name Leonard felt a hot rush of desire pool in his crotch, as his already too tight breeches became unbearably uncomfortable giving him a bad case of britch itch that was not unlike the mild case of clap he had picked up on the continent the year before last. He scratched indelicately at the source of his irritation, drawing gasps of delight and swoons of ecstasy from nearby pre-pubescent chits and sex starved spinsters alike.

He rubbed and he tickled, he poked and he prodded.

Incredibly, his pantaloons appeared to burst their seams as his member threatened to break loose as he stroked and caressed it’s hot, rigid length. Lady Poopenheimer III looked on lasciviously as he panted and groaned to the strains of “The Winchester Waltz.”

Stroke, slide, grasp. “Aaahh.”

“Confound it Leonard! What in the blazes do you think you’re doing man? Put your manroot away this instance. Gad! I’ve told you before man, not in polite society.”

Leonard flushed and looked down. His turgid tumescent tip was gleaming with unshed pearly drops of manseed. A whirling flash of mission brown skirts disappeared at the top of the wide, sweeping staircase.

Pearly drops. Pearls. Poopenheimer pearls!

“I must dash after the bluestokinged belle,” Leonard said above the tinkle of fine crystal glasses.

“Wait man!” Sebastian boomed as he clasped his hand around Leonard’s firm and tightly corded muscly forearm. “Ar’nt you forgetting something Leonard?” Sebastian looked down pointedly at the turgid beast of carnality rising forth from the thick black thatch.

“Unhand me Sebastian,” Leonard glared down impatiently at his friend. “I must find Lady Blackbush-Harcourt-Rutherford.”

“I think you are the one who has unhanded yourself my good man.”

“Ah yes,” Leonard slid his gloved hand slowly down his thick shaft before tucking the offending member back in his breeches. “A trifling matter, old chap.”

“Egads man,” exclaimed Sebastian. “Your manroot is quite obvious under your pantaloons Leonard. I fear it’s rigidity may hamper you somewhat in your pursuit of the Blackbush-Harcourt-Rutherford personage.”

“Don’t worry Sebastian, I’ll be fine,” Leonard said over his shoulder as he strode awkwardly through the crowd. Wincing inwardly, he shuffled and limped past buxom society matrons trying to push their overly bright and gaudy daughter’s on him, and took the stairs one at a time.

Lady Elizabeth Blackbush-Harcourt-Rutherford made her way stealthily down the dimly lit passage. The cold, hard chisel she had wedged inside her underthings was causing delicious frissons of excitement in her nether regions. She paused briefly at the door to Lady Poopenheimer III’s chamber and wondered not for the first time in her seventy-five years what these strange, yet pleasant feelings in her most private woman’s part’s could be. The sound of uneven footfalls on the staircase made her heart gallop. A cripple? She wondered. Dash it! The Poopenheimer pearls would have to wait. It must be Lord Leonard, London’s foremost rake and pursuer of ugly old maids! She entered the hostesses chamber and spotting a large wardrobe, climbed inside, pulling the door shut.

Pausing briefly at the top of the staircase, Leonard saw a flurry of brown skirts and heard a door closing at the end of the passageway. He hastened along the passageway as best he could, clutching and pulling at his breeches. This way and that way. I can’t wait to get these gadawful breeches off and give my manroot a good scratch, he thought as he entered Lady Poopenheimer III’s chamber. In the dimness he found the bed, sank down, and hurriedly pulled off his pantaloons. The sound of someone outside the door had him scurrying for a hiding place. Looking around the large chamber, he spied a large wardrobe and clasping his clothing to his generous chest, he hurried over and climbed inside.

Inside the wardrobe Lady Elizabeth tensed as she heard the door open and then shut. Hastily she lifted her skirts and groped around for the chisel. Got it! Lady Elizabeth thought to herself as her gloved hand closed around the warm object and tugged and pulled. Dash it! The chisel was stuck fast, she thought frantically as she tightened her grasp and pulled hard.

“Ah! Confound it woman. My appendage!”

“Appendage?” Lady Elizabeth frowned. “Lord Leonard!” She gasped.

“My manroot Lady Blackbush-Harcourt-Rutherford.” Leonard smiled in the darkness. “Lady Elizabeth, I’m glad we find ourselves alone under such uh, stimulating circumstances. But I must confess I cannot erase you from my mind, my heart.” Slowly he trailed his strong hand up Lady Elizabeth’s soft, buttery thighs drawing a long low moan from her lips. She lowered her hand and cupped him.

“What do you call these?” she enquired innocently.

“They are my ah, my love sac’s, my sweet.” Lord Leonard groaned mightily. “Mmmm.” He continued, “the big one I call mama, and aahhh, the little one I call baby,” he rasped unevenly.

His questing fingers found their way home amidst her dewy moist petals, allowing the bud to bloom under his expert ministrations.

“Oh, Lord Leonard you make me feel strange things in my untouched parts.”

“Prepare yourself my untried one, I can wait no more!” he cried as he entered her in one powerful thrust, sheathing himself to the hilt. Thrust after thrust brought forth rapturous cries of ecstasy and surprise from Lady Elizabeth. Hastily he reached down between them and stroked her nubbin until he felt her tense and shudder. Shortly after he cried out as he found his own earth shattering release.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Anne Marble’s Lady Jane and the Elusive Tome” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by AAR Reviewer/AARList moderator Anne Marble:

Lady Jane and the Elusive Tome

1812

Clandestinely, stealthily, and surreptitiously, Lady Jane peregrinated into the dim room and fixed her gaze upon the shelves of tomes. She clutched her favorite book, her companion, her already threadbare copy of Peter Mark Roget’s “Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases” to her bosom. This beloved volume was always with her. When she failed to think of a word, her dear, cherished, sweet Mr. Roget helped her.

Oh, goodness. Would someone espy her entrance or discover her presence? She passionately and even fervently prayed that she could arrive at a suitable excuse for her appearance in the library. Even more so, she hoped she could think of something to say without having to flip through the pages of her thesaurus. People looked at her so strangely when she did that.

After being expelled from his service, Lord Wordsmyth’s greedy and avaricious valet had furnished her with a map of the collection of books. How fortuitous, and yes, lucky, that the valet had been secretly studying the art of collecting rare books in an attempt to make some extra money on the side! Jane thought of the map, recalling it with her extremely helpful photographic memory. The volume she was seeking should be on the third shelf down, near the window.

Jane simultaneously skulked, slithered, and crept to the window – through the pane of glass, she could see the bloodless whitened crescent of the moon outside, illuminating her path. Just then, she observed a tattered and threadbare volume. There it was! Aristotle’s “Poetics” with the missing second book on comedies! Only it was no longer…well, missing.

She reached for the tome, but just then, a hand reached out and grabbed her. A disembodied hand?! Oh, it was attached to a body. That was a relief. But wait, it was attached to Lord Wordsmyth’s body. And the brooding lord was glaring at her. Oh, no!

“What are you doing in my library?” asked he. Oh my, he was so direct.

Unable to help herself, Jane snapped open her beloved thesaurus. “I am.” . flip, flip, flip. “endeavoring to find.” .flip, flip, flip. “funding to assist my.” . flip, flip, flip. “patriarch, who is.” . flip, flip, flip. “recuperating from.” . flip, flip, flip.”an illness.”

He seemed puzzled, bemused, bewildered, amazed. All of them at once. “You need to steal my Aristotle to pay your father’s medical bills? Oh, posh! This book is priceless.”

“He is very very.” . flip, flip, flip.”. ill.” She sighed. “In fact, he is.” She stole another glance at the page. “unwell, afflicted, and enervated.”

Suddenly, with a sharp intake of his breath, Lord Wordsmyth gasped. “You know what enervate means!”

. flip, flip, flip. “Yes. Of course. Certainly.”

He gazed at her, his gaze amazed. “But most of the women of the ton think that enervated means full of energy. But you know that it means to weaken.”

“To lessen the vitality or strength of,” she remarked. “My father.” . flip, flip, flip. “.taught me well. He ensured that I had a very good .” . flip, flip, flip. “.vocabulary.”

“I think I’m in love,” Lord Wordsmyth whispered, speaking in a low voice. He grasped her hand, clutching it in his. “Would you like to become my bride? I’ll make sure your father has the best medical care available. Oh, and we’ll play word games all night long.”

Jane felt the thesaurus drop to the floor. “Okie dokie!”

She gestured at the thesaurus, pointing at it with her free hand. “Wow! Looks like I don’t need that thing anymore.”

Author’s Note Yes, I realize that Roget’s Thesaurus wasn’t published until 1852. Poetic license moved me to move the date up publication a teensy bit.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Andrea Geist’s The Introduction” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Andrea Geist:
(Andrea has written a second parody, which you can link to here)

The Introduction

Serenity Patience Faith Arbothnot was the 34-year-old virgin, spinster daughter of the wealthy Duke of Forthtamshire.

When Serenity Patience Faith had been a young, nubile, fresh, and inexperienced seventeen-year-old heiress, she had had her season in London. Many suitors had courted her, no less than 3 Dukes, 5 Earls, 2 foreign Counts, and several lowly Viscounts had vied for her hand.

During the season she had danced in her virginal white dresses and sometimes racy, risqué pale pink gowns with many wealthy men. They were all rakes; they had many mistresses and all were badly in need of a rich, virginal heiress in a white or pink ball gown to save their family holdings.

Serenity would find herself growing embarrassingly moist when she danced with them. Her young fleshy globes of pale, full womanhood would yearn to press closer. She was embarrassed that her breasts were yearning mounds of womanhood that always seemed to yearn, and for men so unworthy.

So seventeen years passed, and poor Serenity was still a virgin. Still yearning. Still a embarrassingly moist, dried up prune of a spinster. On the shelf. A virgin. Her yearning melon sized globes of female flesh were about to wither on the vine of her spinster body. She needed to find salvation. Or at the very least find some young, poor, rake take matters in hand and stop this yearning, yearning, yearning.

Our hapless heroine decided she needed to ride her fine horse in the park. So she went riding, with out a chaperone (GASP); in the park. Of course it is a park with private admittance, only the wealthy and titled are allowed frolicking about in this park, so she should be safe from any unsavory elements. She just felt like a little adventure.

Quickly becoming bored with riding, Serenity delicately dismounted her sidesaddle. She considered riding astride but what if someone of the nobility saw her? And since only nobility was allowed in the park, it was a possibility. Oh the constraints placed on maids and spinsters were so unfair. Her lovely spinster lips, never touched even in a chaste kiss by a man, pouted as prettily as they could.

While she was pursing her lips, she sensed that she was not alone. Aside from the horse she was not alone. Aside from the birds and the squirrels in the park she was not alone.

She non-chalantly looked about the park. Her eyes widened like giant pools of spring water with innocent curiosity as she spied a handsome man, a very handsome man, a very, very, handsome man, staring at her. He was tall. He was tall and dark. He was tall and dark and handsome. That spelled dangerous. Well it didn’t actually spell dangerous, but our sweet heroine had been led to believe that Tall, Tall and Dark, Tall and Dark and Handsome meant danger.

“Hello,” she said, her eyes fluttering their lashes, “Are you following me about this exclusive park?”

He opened his perfectly formed mouth with strong looking lips on his rugged jaw, darkened by stubble, and said in the most deep, masculine of voices, “I say dear lady, have you something in your eyes?”

“Why, no sir,” pouting her pretty rose colored lips.

“Oh, well they were fluttering like butterflies wings, I was concerned for your eyesight. If I may be so bold, have you had some type of trouble?”

“Sir, it is not proper to be bold with a stranger.”

“Excuse me, but as a second son of an excessively wealthy and notable member of the nobility, I have chosen not to be proper. I am a disreputable second son, don’t you know?”

“Oh, I see. Are you also a rake? A rake of the first order? As opposed to a rake of the second order, I mean to say. A rake whom perhaps I should not be speaking to in the park? Alone? Unchaperoned?”

“Ah, you’ve heard of me then?”

“No sir, I just assumed you were a rake since you identified yourself as an improper second son of an excessively wealthy and notable member of the nobility. One can draw the logical conclusion that you are rebelling against the strictures of society since society places no value on your person. Due to your birth order in an excessively wealthy and notably noble family.”

“Did you just draw a logical conclusion?” He cocked one perfectly arched eyebrow on his forehead.

Her head down in shame she replied with a breathy whisper, “Yes, my sincere apologies, sir. I was indeed articulating a conclusion to a known outcome by following the vector of logic down the path of the standard regency romance formula.”

“Well stop it immediately! And don’t use so many big words either!” His hands were on his narrow hips below his broad chest. A riding crop was jutting out from one of his hands. Serenity hadn’t noticed the riding crop before; it added a debonair flare to his overall countenance.

“I asked if you had heard of me?”

“I am just a sheltered daughter of an overly protective Duke, of course I haven’t heard of you.”

“Well, I am notorious. You shouldn’t be speaking to me, it could ruin your reputation!” He smiled, his teeth gleaming white and perfectly straight. They were beautiful teeth.

“Well, you started this conversation, sir. I was just taking an innocent walk in the park.” His smile was causing Serenity’s breasts to start to yearn. Darn those unpredictable and uncontrollable breasts, they were smitten by his disarming smile and white, straight teeth.

Slade Rafe Falcon Parker, the disreputable second son of the Duke of SubWales, Count of Periodhamshire, and Earl of Leavenworth, found this spinster intriguing. She was also acting like a proper hoyden, out without a chaperon, drawing logical conclusions, and speaking with a man alone in the park. He found her beguiling.

This woman was different than any he had met before. She had purple eyes for one thing. He’d never seen purple eyes before, one would think purple eyes might be frightening, but on her they were rather lovely. Her eyes looked like a cornflower or a dark blue poppy.

She was dressed in a smart riding habit with an even smarter hat on her head. The hat had a purple feather to match her eyes and it curled down to her jaw line. She was the daughter of an over protective father who was a duke. That could only be one person. She must be the spinster daughter, only child of the wealthy Duke of Forthtamshire.

The Duke of Forthtamshire was his family’s mortal enemy. He would only be doing his duty to his family if he were to court her, seduce her, and then ruin her. What a delicious idea and a delightful way to past the time. His only regret was that she was a virgin. He really didn’t care for virgins preferring more skillful and experienced women. Oh well, the things one does for ones family.

“My dear lady, allow me to introduce myself.”[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Marcelle McCoy’s Heavens Baby!” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Marcelle McCoy:
(Marcelle’s earlier parody for this year can be linked to here

Heavens Baby!

“Oh Josie, I wish I had a big bouncing beautiful baby to love and cherish,” Susie-Lizzie hobbled over to the sofa, pushed her spectacles back up her overly large yet dainty nose and sank her spaghetti thin frame down next to her best and dearest friend, Josie.

“Why, Susie-Lizzie what with your gammy leg, huge concord like nose and pancake flat chest, you’d have no trouble gettin’ laid.” Josie emphasised the last point with a determined nod of her head that sent turnip coloured ringlets cascading like a waterfall around her butt-ugly, yet strangely beautiful face.

“And not forgetting my pockmarked cheeks, Josie,” Susie-Lizzie added, warming to the idea of actually getting laid.

“Yup. In fact, if you dress up like a stripper and go down to the locker-rooms of the Dallas Cowboys, you could be pregnant tonight Susie-Lizzie.”

The music pumping rhythmically through the speakers had a thrumming, throbbing, pulsing (heck! orgasmic) quality to it as Susie-Lizzie gyrated her bony hips to the sensuous, sinuous, carnal beat.

Jockie ‘Long Schlong’ O’Leery heaved a long, drawn out sigh and shifted uncomfortably on the cold hard locker-room bench. Uncomfortable because the bench was hard and cold, or uncomfortable because his jockstrap had yet another case of grey mould. He couldn’t tell. Maybe it was jock-rot. He had had a nasty shock when the woman and her friend had turned up. The two were so ugly they should have been drowned at birth to spare the human race from their collective ugly face. Eh, poetry in motion, Jockie chuckled to himself as he watched the one called Susie-Lizzie slide her panties down her chopstick shaped thigh, and over an incredibly sharp and bony knee that he bet could take an eye out if it had a notion.

Although she reminded him of the cruel nun at the orphanage he had fled from as a child, it was only natural for him to become turned on.

As she hobbled closer, her warm, lusty womanly scent greeted his nostrils. A smell that reminded him of Mother Superior’s unwashed bloomers on a hot July afternoon. A smile spread slowly across his granite chiselled features as he felt his manly shaft harden and bulge out the top of his jockstrap.

Wow! He really likes me thought Susie-Lizzie as she reached down between Jockie ‘Long Schlong’ O’Leery’s sweaty muscular thighs and ripped off his jockstrap. The rich, thick odour of sweat mixed with mould, mildew and urine drifted up and teased her senses. Mmmmm. The smell bought back fond memories of long, lazy summer days cleaning out Grammy Larkin’s over crowded chicken coop.

Quickly, as quickly as her gammy leg would allow, Susie-Lizzie straddled him, taking him into her slick love tunnel, extracting every drop of the precious milky dew like an electric orange juicer.

“Touchdown!” Yelled Jockie as he found his release.

“Oh baby!” Yelled Susie-Lizzie.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Doozie MacFloozie’s Kitty’s Illegitimate Baby Cowboy Twins, One With Amnesia” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Doozie MacFloozie:

Kitty’s Illegitimate Baby Cowboy Twins, One With Amnesia

Dear Editrix,

I have been a writer all my life and would really like you to give me money for my hard work. Here is a quick summary of my romance novel, Kitty’s Illegitimate Baby Cowboy Twins, One With Amnesia.

It starts out with Kitty, who is a six-foot tall, size two model who has beautiful bone structure and big green eyes who thinks her breasts are too big and her hips too small. Kitty has to go out West for a photo shoot for Buttilicous Jeans, but her charter plane crashes and she is stranded in the Wyoming desert with only her makeup case. The pilot, Biff, a former stockbroker who made a million and then lost it, also survives, though his shirt is so horribly ripped up that he has to throw it away. Kitty can’t help herself from staring at his chest, so finally she uses a Desert Peach lipstick to draw a smiley face around each of his nipples (the nipples are the noses). He is so aroused by the touch of her makeup that he immediately snatches the tube from her and applies it to his own lips.

Then they kiss, of course, and an incredibly sexy sex scene ensues in the grass, with a herd of wild Arabian horses galloping by on their way to drink at the beautiful waterfall.

Afterwards, unfortunately, Biff realizes that not only is he a crossdresser, but he is gay. It took Kitty’s understanding conversation to make this clear to him, and now he knows he can be rich again because all of his problems are solved. So, sharing her makeup, they travel across the mountainous terrain back to civilization. Kitty almost dies of hypothermia and frostbite three times, but Biff manages to save her.

At last, they are rescued by a dark and handsome Park Ranger who eventually ends up with Biff. Kitty goes on to her jeans shoot and finds out she has lost her job. She is also pregnant, and has put on twenty pounds in all the wrong places.

Kitty’s only solution is to bear Biff’s children and then train them to support her in her infirmity. She hides in the empty bunkhouse of a giant cattle ranch in Oklahoma, where she is discovered by the Hero, Willy, who it turns out is a Cattle Baron and the owner of Buttilicious Jeans who she met at the beginning of the book and who she fell in love with, and her disappointment on being spurned is why she had a fling with Biff, the crossdressing gay man with amusing mannerisms.

Willy takes Kitty in to be his housekeeper, but he eyes her lecherously. One day, Kitty can’t stand it anymore and flees. She gives birth to twins, Rod and Shaft, in the shade of a saguaro cactus and raises them to be teenage rodeo stars. Sadly, Shaft is thrown from a maddened bull and hits his head, forgetting his beloved mother and brother! He wanders the desert until he is taken in by Willy, who recognizes Shaft’s resemblance to his mother and realizes his eighteen-year search is over. But Shaft has amnesia, so cannot tell Willy where Kitty is.

There is some plot, and then with the help of Biff and his Park Ranger, Willy and Kitty are happily reunited. They have bubbling sex near the geysers of Yellowstone while the happy twins, one amnesiac and one not, feed the bears. Afterwards, we know that Kitty is pregnant again! This time with triplets!

As I know you will want to buy my story immediately, rather than just a sample chapter I have enclosed all 27! The layout is already done in a very romantic font and I will ship the oil paintings for the cover and illustrations separately. When they arrive, you’ll be all ready to send my book to the printer immediately!

Congratulations on purchasing my novel.

Sincerely and romantically yours,
Doozie MacFloozie[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Violet Rupcich’s Honey and Muffins” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Violet Rupcich:

Honey and Muffins

Honey Sweetheart saw him from across the room. She doubted there was anyone there who had not made note of the broad-shouldered fellow. He stood out like a turkey amongst peacocks. His brown hair was unpowdered, his clothes were too big (as though they had been borrowed from a heftier person and one with atrocious taste in clothing at that) and his face was weathered, scarred and chiseled.

There was a certain appeal to him, though. Was it the stories his face hinted at: the hard life, adventures. Was it his sherry brown eyes that had her suddenly harboring the urge for a drink? Or perhaps even the primal attraction that oozed from him as he shifted his position, the kind that promised sexual fantasies and fulfilled them?

No. It was his nose! His nose was-big! Wasn’t it supposed to be relative to the size of his-no, no, wait-it was the hands that were used to measure a man’s manly potential. Darn! His hands were in his pockets. Feet should probably follow the same rule, shouldn’t they?

Honey attempted to catch a glimpse of his feet through the crushing crowd. She moved closer. She noticed that Mary Easylay was attempting to peek into his pockets. The slut!

Honey picked up speed-she had to move fast. Suddenly, like the parting of the Red Sea (or Mary Easylay’s legs) there they were, his feet. They were veritable skiffs! Hot damn!

Honey’s training in lady’s school came in handy as she accidentally tripped and fell against the man. The hard-bodied, muscle- rippling, swift- reacting and well- endowed fellow with the large, strong and capable hands. They were callused, too. Did that have any bearing on the rest of his anatomy? Honey felt goose bumps jostling for space on her skin. A delicious heat swirled in her nether regions. She was becoming quite giddy. She practically swooned in his arms, vaguely registering Mary’s pout of frustration.

“Are you all right?” He asked as he attempted to put her back on her own two feet. Her feet were not the problem, it was her knees-they were boneless jelly. She kept toppling back into his arms.

Manly Studmuffin was becoming annoyed at the floppy female in his arms until he got a whiff of her womanly aroma, the scent of her aroused passion. A smell so heady that his manly manhood sprang to attention with an abrupt swiftness which brought him pain-he dropped the woman and she lay stunned on the floor. He could take her now, he was so hot and hard, he could start and finish before anyone knew what had transpired. Including her.

Too late! She sat up, her eyes reeling and crossing yet managing to convey her annoyance. He looked into those rolling, green eyes and found himself enchanted with her quaint flirtatious ways. Manly picked her up, knowing how much women liked to be swept off their feet, and carried her out into the moonlit gardens for their passionate romp. He was more than able and willing to accommodate this hot, passionate vixen with her wily ways and red hair. His need to imbed himself within her hot, moist, welcoming sheath was becoming very painful. He started to limp. He tripped and fell atop her.

Ooommph! Honey’s eyes almost popped out of her head as the air was momentarily expelled from her body. The result, however, was that her body was tingling and she was seeing stars! Was this what she had been waiting for? They were very pretty stars and the feeling of breathlessness and the lightheaded, weightless buzz in her head was definitely unique. Somehow it just didn’t come close to what she had been expecting. She was vaguely (very vaguely) aware of him – what was his name? – between her legs. When she was able to think and breathe again, she realized that he had accomplished the act of sexual gratification without any participation from herself. He had been in and out before she had time to enjoy or dislike or comment on what had passed. This was most unfair!

She lay there, floundering, her mouth agape, her legs still splayed wide as she tried to understand how this could happen. He was grinning smugly as though he had just bestowed her with a wondrous gift. Honey thought it safe to assume that, whatever it was, she had never received it. Or, at least, she didn’t think she had but then she had been witless but a few moments ago. She was still waiting for it-whatever it was.

Her eyes drifted down to his flaccid-tool of pleasure? Immediately, as though she had the power to conjure life, it rose and stood to attention.

Coming to a sudden decision, so suddenly that Honey had no idea where it had come from, she grabbed his partly undone shirt front and pulled him to her, nose to nose.

“This time,” she ground out, her eyes flashing magnificently, “you will see to it that I enjoy the act as much as or more than yourself, do you understand? And,” she continued forcefully, forestalling his attempt to interrupt, “if you do not ensure this, I shall rip your manhood from your body and feed it to the dogs. Do I make myself clear?”

Manly simply nodded, his passion rising with her aggressiveness, and set about fulfilling this new and challenging task.

Two hours later, they entered the ballroom separately, each with a flushed and contented countenance.

Honey sought out the hostess, Virginia Love, and asked her to introduce her to the fashionably illiterate but oddly appealing fellow in the ill-fitting apparel.

“Honey Sweetheart,” Virginia began, pretending she didn’t notice the odd grass stain on their clothing or the whisker burn on Honey’s face, “may I introduce you to Manly Studmuffin.” Virginia tried not to be too obvious as she peered at his neck. There were purplish hickeys on his neck, Honey must have been sucking quite passionately-perhaps, she had been trying to draw blood. Virginia had heard of Manly’s less than satisfactory ways in gratifying a woman’s needs.

At last, Honey thought, I know his name. She smiled. The rest was a piece of cake. Or a muffin.

Her muffin.

The End[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Andrea Geist’s Brothers: The Cowboy” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Andrea Geist:
(Andrea’s earlier parody for this year can be linked to here)

Brothers: The Cowboy

Mamie Jones pulled her mini-van to a stop and opened her door. Checking herself in the mirror, she pinched her cheeks for color. With a deep breath for courage, she walked to the front door and knocked. Getting no answer, she followed the sounds around to the back.

There he was. Her one true love, Max Martin. He was dressed in worn blue jeans sporting several holes and a dirty white T-shirt. She watched as he removed his cowboy hat and finger combed his beautiful ebony hair away from his beard stubbled face. His eyes glowed a crystalline blue. His nose was a sharp blade down the center of his face, his lips so full and kissable.

Turning and seeing Mamie, Max reached her side in two very long strides.

“Never thought to see you again,” he said in a throaty, sexy, masculine voice.

“Well, here I am.”

Grabbing her arm, he pulled her away from the corral where he had been taming the un-breakable horse. As he was about to speak, an Arab sheik rode by in gleaming, clean white robes, on a white Arabian horse.

“Who was that?”

“Oh, my half-brother, Shah.”

“I didn’t know you had a half-brother.”

“Several, as a matter of fact. Cougar is around here someplace, he’s a Navy Seal.”

Mamie raised her eyebrows, “Really, where is he?”

Scratching his firm jaw line Max said, “Who knows? He’s so good at war and underwater demolition, and camouflage, we could be standing on him.”

Mamie looked down at her feet, searching for the illusive navy seal brother.

“You won’t see him. And he wouldn’t even let you know if you were standing on him. Seals are good at dealing with pain. Kind of like the cowboy you’re talking to.”

Eyes welling with glistening drops of tears, like dew in the morning, Mamie said, “Why would you be in pain? Who hurt you, Max?”

“You did, Mamie. You did.”

“I did?”

“Heck fire, yes! What do you expect? After a night of the most incredible sex in my life you just up and leave.” Max looked out to the distance remembering. It had been the best sex of his life. Slow and gentle, fast and hard, rough and ready. It had been slow and fast, gentle and hard, and ready and slow. It had been pretty damn good.

“You just left. I heard you sneaking out of the ranch house. How could you leave me like that? I was so hard I couldn’t stand it! I could have made love to you at least six more times that night.”

“Well, I was sore, Max.”

“That’s no excuse, Mamie. So why are you here?”

Max’s brother Shah ran back by on his horse toward a gleaming white tent?

“Where is he going?”

“Probably home. See that tent,” he pointed. “It’s where he prefers to stay, says the ranch house doesn’t give him enough freedom. He’s a nomad.”

Mamie nodded and followed his arm to see the next tent.

“That tent holds all his loyal retainers and servants,” pointing to a blue tent.

“What’s the tent done up in primary colors?”

“Ah, well that’s Shah’s harem and nursery. All his wives and concubines, children and bastards lived there.”

“Didn’t they want to live in the house?”

“Of course they did. But you know how I hate children!” Max looked at her pointedly.

“That’s why I had to leave you, Max. Do you think there will ever be a chance you’ll want children?”

“Not in this lifetime, Mamie. I’m just not father material.”

Mamie thought she would break down and sob. She’d come all this way with Max’s surprise triplets, a dog, and a pregnant cat, to tell him something important. She needed to tell him he was a father and ask for his help. Getting Max to help protect her from the fiends who wanted to kidnap her was going to be hard enough, but she also had three unwanted children in the mini van.

“Max, I need your help. Some fiends have been trying to kidnap me.”

“I’ll protect you, Mamie. I’m a cowboy. With my brother the sheik and my other brother, the navy seal, why you’ll be as safe as a tick on a coon dog.” He patted her back reassuringly. Just the touch of her back made him so hard his zipper broke on his jeans. Damn, he was hard on jeans. “But there is a price.”

“There is?”

“Yep. And you’ll have to pay it, sweetheart.”

“But I don’t have any money Max. I think I’m going to start sobbing now. Please hold me in the safe haven of your strong, muscular arms,” she cried.

Max clutched her to him, chest to chest. He could feel her heart beating like a quarter horse. “What is it Mamie? There is something else you’re not telling me.”

“You may not want to help me, after you see what I have in the mini-van parked in front of the ranch house.” She sobbed all over his dirty white T-shirt, getting it wet with her tears.

“Well, let me be the judge of that Mamie. Let’s go check the mini-van.”

Walking away from the corral with his price stud horse and the unbreakable tamed horse, Max went around to the front of the house. He saw a purple mini van with a bumper sticker that said ‘soccer mom’ on the back. His heart pounding with dread or excitement, he wasn’t sure which but it was pounding, he strode over and looked in the open window.

Three pairs of glowing crystalline blue eyes stared back at him. Three faces that looked just like his, three bodies dressed in little cowboy outfits with hats and cap guns in holsters sat in the car.

“These are your children, Max. I knew I had gotten pregnant that night. That’s why I left you. I knew you didn’t want children.” Mamie’s face still was fresh as a daisy on a sunny day as she cried, “But I was hoping you’d change your mind.”

“My children? Oh, Mamie, I love you!” He wrapped his long arms around her and picked her up, twirling her around in his joy. “Thank you for giving me this gift.”

“I thought you didn’t want children?”

“I’ve changed my mind, seen the error of my ways. I’ve been a fool, Mamie.” He gave her a hard long lingering kiss. “Now introduce me to my kids.”

Mamie pointed through the window. “That’s Donny, he’s four. That’s Joey, he’s four and that’s Max Junior,” she sobbed tears of relief and joy. “Max Junior is three.”

“Donny and Joey are four and Max Junior is three?”

“It was a long hard labor.”

“I wish I could’ve been there for you, Mamie.” He cupped her face in the palm of his work-roughened hand.

There was a movement in the dirt at their feet. A handsome man who looked a lot like Max moved with grace of a predator, like the Cougar he was nicknamed after.

“Mamie, this is my brother, Cougar.”

“Congrats, brother,” he said slapping him on the back. “I just wanted to give you my best. I’ve got to go, I was just called up to rescue some Ambassador’s daughter from terrorists.”

A helicopter flew overhead and dropped a rope. Cougar grabbed the rope and jumped, starting to climb. He yelled down, “Take care of Shah, I think he’s in love with your housekeeper.”

Max and Mamie, holding Donny and Joey and Max Junior in their arms, waved farewell. Max turned and looked at his new family. “I love you, and now we’ve set up the next two books in the series.” He grinned his devilish smile and lead his family into their ranch house, their home.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Susan Brewster’s Olovia OR The Woman who Loved Men who Loved a Woman who Loved Men” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Susan Brewster:

Olovia OR The Woman who Loved Men
who Loved a Woman who Loved Men
Part One – Serial style Gothic Redneck Romance
It was a dark and stormy night. Olovia had only been on her own without a man for six point two hours, and she could feel the aching need rising in her blood. The storm seemed to fill the room, reminding her of all the loves that were meant to be forever and had filled her life with such joy; the loves that really just needed another chance. And there had been a “whole lotta love” to put it in the vernacular.

When she was very young, it was Dillon. Okay, so he was a hobo that worked in the trainyards for pennies, but she knew if they had just had a real chance, it would have worked. If only! She thought of Dillon on this dark and stormy night. He was the start of something big!

But thoughts of Dillon reminded her of Jack. In terms of monetary gains Jack was way up the food chain from Dillon, as Jack had flipped burgers at McDonalds. Jack, she knew, was THE ONE. If only there hadn’t been that horrific grease fire, she knew it would have lasted. But really, how could she have stayed with a man with no face? Maybe she should look him up; she’d heard there were new developments in plastic surgery. Really, how could she live without the love they had shared over french fries and ketchup?

“I’ll call Jane. She’ll know who I can talk to about that plastic surgery. I’ll do it tomorrow!” Olovia vowed with a fierce exhalation during one of the flashes of lightning.

However, thoughts of Jane reminded her of all that she owed Jane. Not just the $762.50 for that weekend they went to Atlantic City, but all the nice people Jane had introduced Olovia to. “Oh, remember…” thought Olovia. And off she went on a tangent again, thinking of Michael, Michael, oh, so sweet. Kissing Michael was always an incredible event. Michael was like candy bars melting in the car…sweet, sticky and hot. Michael worked at Baskin-Robbins and could really bring a lot of fun and games to the hot fudge sauce that he bought retail from his supplier. Michael wasn’t a lot brighter than Olovia and didn’t realize he could buy it wholesale.

But thoughts of hot fudge and suppliers reminded Olovia she needed to call the beauty supply store in the morning. She was almost out of her favorite hairspray/gel/shellac called “Holds it Higher than a Kite” and knew she needed to look her best. Tomorrow she was going out to breakfast with Stan. Stan really had to be the best man she knew. He had such a great job at the ACE Hardware store. His work in the plumbing and heating department was so interesting she could listen to him discuss PVC pipe for hours. Of course, that was a good thing because he did talk about PVC pipe incessantly. That was okay though. Olovia knew that a man in such a fine position of responsibility needed to have relief from the stress of his high-powered job.

“I better call Renee now. If I forget to get my hair gel, it could be a catastrophe! Maybe Renee could stop on her way home and drop it off. Oh, I know Stan is the one! We are meant to be! I know it, I know it!”

And Olovia started dreaming of the time when she would be a joy and comfort to Stan every day after his hard work and efforts in the world of plumbing brought him home to her. “I know if we just work at this, it will be the relationship that makes Oprah’s show for Romance of A Lifetime.”

So Olovia kept a thought in her head long enough to pick up the phone and call Renee at Blondes R Us, the hair supply store across town. Olovia and Renee had met when Olovia had a hair emergency of major proportions on her way to a lunch date with Ralph. Without Renee, Olovia didn’t know how she would have survived such a catastrophe. The blonde cream rinse had mixed tragically with the blonde highlights rinse and the Super High shellac and the pale brown streaks rinse to make Olovia’s head look like a pile of dogshit. And that wasn’t dogshit by a poodle, no, no. It was a pile by a St. Bernard the size of Kevin’s.

Well, Renee had known just what to do when Olovia came to the store that day, and their friendship grew from that point on. It lasted through Ralph and Kevin and Jim and George and Lou and Ricky and Benjamin and Junior and Tim and Harold and John and Scott and Tom and Jeff and that was only the first month of the friendship.

“Renee? Are you still at the store?” asked Olovia. Considering she had just dialed Blondes R Us, Renee had picked up the phone and said, “Blondes R Us, Renee speaking,” this seemed a little redundant. But that was Olovia. Her TSTL syndrome sometimes crossed wires with her blonde genes and everything went to hell from there.

“Yes, honey. I am here still. What’s up?” Renee asked at the other end of the line. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but Olovia was both a good friend and an incredibly important customer. Just the dogshit hair episode alone had kept Renee’s store in the black for weeks. Renee figured a couple more emergencies like that one and she could franchise.

“Well, I am going to breakfast with Stan tomorrow and I am almost out of Holds it Higher than a Kite. Can you stop on the way home and drop some off? I hope this isn’t a horrible inconvenience?” Olovia queried.

“Yea, I can stop by on the way home. It should only be another half-hour or so until I can leave. I’ll see you about nine-thirty? That is, if the storm doesn’t slow me down.” Renee replied.

“Oh, Renee, you are the best! The storm can’t stop you! It just can’t! I really need my gel!” Olovia exclaimed.

After finishing the call, Olovia started to put together supper for herself and Mitchell. She hadn’t seen Mitchell in what seemed like forever and wanted to make sure everything was just right for an intimate little get together for two. Or was it three or four? Mitch was a nice guy but with his multiple personality disorder she was never sure if she was with just him or not. It got a little wearing, but he was so nice when he was Mitch. Of course, intimacy was a little odd too; that time she was hollering “ Mitch, Mitch, give it to me, Mitch!” and his personality morphed into his Great Aunt Augusta was a little startling, to say the least. Who’d a thunk a ninety-two year old scripture quoting crone would have appeared at a moment like that? But really, a little time together and she knew they could make a really great future for the two or ten of them.

Suddenly, the power went out. While Olovia had focused her miniscule attention span on putting paper plates on the table to go with the leftover McDonald’s takeout forks and spoons and knives, the storm had begun to howl. “Oh no, what if Mitchell and all his many happy personas can’t get here? What will I do? Oh God! Renee has to get here with that gel, she really does!!!!” Olovia was frantically thinking. Actually, as she had two thoughts in a row, it was kind of a wonder that her circuits didn’t fry and her head didn’t explode but miracles do happen now and again.

As the stress and strain went through Olovia’s brain, there was a knock at the door. Olovia rushed to answer it and found a Sheriff’s Deputy standing there.

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” the deputy stated. “My name is Bubba Wrednek, and we need some assistance. There is a situation in the neighborhood tonight that I think you can help us with.”

“Come in, come in. What can I do?” asked Olovia.

“Well, first off, Renee from Blondes R Us got stuck when a tree fell down the street. She asked me to deliver this package of hair gel to you, and certainly I was more than happy to,” Bubba told Olovia.

“Also, as I said, we need your assistance. A friend of yours, Mitchell Whuuam I is having a spell and the medication isn’t helping so he’s out in the street saying if he doesn’t see you soon, he’s going to morph into Great Aunt Augusta at the next town council meeting. Well, this wouldn’t normally be a problem, but the storm has set a trailorpark between him there and you here and we are going to need to take you to him to calm him down.” Bubba continued.

“Oh, anything I can do! Especially for you, such a kind man you are! You brought me my hair gel in this horrible weather!” exclaimed Olovia. She went on, “And I need to get to Mitchell! He could be the Love of my Life! I might get on Oprah’s show!”

And so this tale comes to a close, with so many questions unanswered. Did the hair gel make it through the storm with enough potency to hold up Olovia’s hair as “High as a Kite” like the promise on the bottle? Would Stan make Olovia the love of his PVC-filled life? Would Mitchell make a spectacle of himself at the next town council meeting, by morphing into Great Aunt Augusta and reading from scripture as she was always doing, or would the love of his life, Olovia, bring him through to the safe harbor of her love? Would Bubba fall into the frenzy that was Olovia’s love life and marry her and have Wrednek’s with her? Would the visit to Mitchell where the trailorpark fell due to the incredible storm cause Olovia to meet a whole trailorpark of potential Romance of a Lifetime candidates? And if so, would Olovia date them all?

And really, the biggest question of all…how quickly will Renee be able to franchise due to Olovia’s hair care catastrophes?[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Nancy Lepano’s Murder in Mississippi” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Nancy Lepano:

Murder in Mississippi
There was an ear splitting, unrelenting knock on the door. Terror wrapped it’s long, sweaty, fingers around her heart and squeezed unmercilessly. Six murders. Six murders in just three days. Six murders in just three days in the same hotel. It almost made her wonder why people were still staying there, in the Fates motel on 66th street. But hey, who was she to judge? After all, this was Amanda Lynn, and she was new to the town of Hotbox, Mississippi.

It still amazed her that it had been three weeks since she settled in Hotbox Mississippi, leaving her overprotective parents, alcoholic sister, unfulfilling job, and abusive, recently deceased first husband behind. But she had managed. She had gotten through, and she had gotten away. And she would get through this. This incessant, repetitive, horrid knocking sound.

“Anyone home” a deep, authoritative voice asked. “This is Detective Time from the Hotbox PD. I have some questions to ask you”

“How do I know you’re really from the Police?” Amanda asked, voice quivering, hands shaking, feet twitching.

“Open the door and I’ll show you” he answered, innuendo lacing through his melodic voice.

That being a good enough answer for her, she slowly, cautiously opened the door, and found herself looking at the most strikingly, dangerously handsome man she had ever seen. Looking at him she felt her knees start to shake, her palms get sweaty, and she nearly forgot her resolution to give up men and devote her life to the Save the Whales campaign.

He cleared his throat, as soon as he was done undressing her with his eyes. “Again, my name is Detective Time. Detective Justin Time. I need to ask you your whereabouts for the past three days, when these brutal murders have taken place.”

Amanda wondered why he had chosen her, singled her out, found her of all people to ask about the killings. As if reading her mind he added,

“When we found the last body, there was a piece of paper with your name, address, height, weight, and directions to your house written on it, Thought you may have left it there for us to find you”

“No sir”, she answered. As he began moving closer to her she recognized raw desire burning deep within the depths of his green eyes. Eyes the color of pea soup when it just begins to cool.

“Well now, that’s good, cause I sure would hate to have to arrest anyone as pretty as you” he said and he reached his hand out to caress her rosy pink, soft, full, cheek. As he did, a shock of electricity jolted them both back. She had never before felt such a connection. Such a sexual charge, such a destined meeting between two kindred spirits brought together from a tragedy.

“Sorry” he rasped “I shuffle my feet when I walk”

It dawned on her then to wonder why he chose this lead to come to her house. To search her out. It seemed so obvious, all her information on a piece of paper, certainly he couldn’t be that thick to think finding the killer would be that obvious. He must have already exhausted all the other options, looking into the alibis of all the priests, teachers, town officials, men disguised as women, women disguised as men, cops with murky pasts, siblings with different biological parents of the victims, and the town sweethearts already, and come up empty handed. When she asked him this he answered,

“No. Why would I look into the alibi’s of those people?”

Good Lord, didn’t this man read fiction? Didn’t he know that these and not her were the most likely suspects? Or was there another reason burning deep within his loins. His eyes were still piercing through her soul. Looking, searching, devouring. Slowly she walked up to him, running her hand down his arm, feeling the bulging, protruding, ripples of his rock hard muscles. She stepped even closer, his breath hitched, his eyes clouded, his face paled as she reached for him. Bringing his head down closer to hers, she lightly, like a feather, or a dewdrop brushed her lips against his. He fisted his hand in her hair, and brought his mouth down on hers hard, fierce, demanding, sucking all the protests out of her. Her heart raced, she felt as if she was being sucked into a fog of desire, toes curling, knees buckling, she fell back quickly, startled by the rustling she heard out her back door.

“Wait right here for me” she whispered. “I think I heard something outside, I’m just going to check on it”

He knew he should go with her. After all, he was the cop, with the gun, the badge, the billy club, tear gas, handcuffs, and arrest warrant, but she just looked so damn pretty, with her cheeks all flushed he didn’t think he could move. Suddenly, an ear splitting, blood-curdling scream interrupted his thoughts coming from the back door of the one room cottage where Amanda had just exited. He rushed out, taking two long strides, and threw the door open in time to find his partner Det. Billy Bob John Jr., holding Amanda’s limp, lifeless, bloody body in one arm, a knife dripping with blood held high in the air as if about to strike in the other hand.

“Criminy, Billy Bob John Jr.!” Justin shouted, “What in the hell happened??”

“I just found her this way, I didn’t kill her, I know it looks that way, and if you check out my other alibis you’ll see I have none, but I swear it wasn’t me” he answered, and ran off into the woods behind the house. Odd, Justin thought. He’s a cop, why would he be running? I mean, it’s true, no one knew much about his past, but he just said he didn’t do it. Oh well, probably just doesn’t like the sight of blood. And even though the identity of the killer still eluded him, Justin figured out the clue. Amanda’s information was left as a clue to show who the next victim was, not who the killer was. Man it annoys him when he figures out the clues too late. Falling to his knees, he cradled Amanda’s body, and began to weep. He wept for the loss of Amanda and all that they might have shared. He wept for the lives which will still be taken since he still can’t figure out who the murderer is. He wept for the whales. But most of all he wept because yet again, Detective Justin Time was too late.[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Anna C. Bowling’s Too Stupid to Live” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Anna C. Bowling:

Too Stupid to Live
Bluestocking spinster Kate MacKenzie was hopelessly on the shelf at the age of twenty-seven. She had no prospects for a good marriage for herself or her equally bluestocking sisters, Annie, Mary and Nora. No matter how many colors of stockings they saw in the shops, they only bought blue ones. They were quadruplets and so alike that even they often could not tell each other apart. They were also all very bad with names, so checking each other’s possessions for monograms rarely helped.

They had the sight, however, like all the women in their family for countless generations. Every morning when they woke up, they opened their eyes and there it was. Sight. They could also hear and smell. Touch was kind of iffy, depending on whether or not they remembered to take their gloves off first. They could all see tolerably well, except for Kate, who was nearsighted. That was also why she found herself on the shelf, having mistaken it for a very tall settee. The ladder had fallen down, and though her sisters were also attending the same house party as Kate, they were sequestered away in dusty libraries, reading forbidden and scandalous novels.

There were no books whatsoever on this particular shelf, which was why Kate had been able to sit there for the past three hours. The books were one shelf down, so Kate amused herself by knocking them to the floor with a kick of her slippered foot. Surely someone would hear the repeated thunks as the precious volumes plummeted to the floor.

Mere moments after the unabridged dictionary smacked into the antique desk chair, demolishing the priceless wood to a pile of kindling, the door flung open, admitting the tall, dark, sardonic form of Percival Sinister, the Duke of Slut. That was his actual title, which caused much giggling among the members of the ton (as well as pretty much everyone else,) but nobody would ever say it to his face. He was rumored to punch those who did. Kate had heard that the title dated back to some Norman ancestor, or maybe just some ancestor named Norman. The gossip was never clear on that. Being only zircons of the third water, the MacKenzie girls rarely got into the really good society balls.

Though Kate had never seen the Duke of Slut in person, the mere mention of his name caused her to blush from head to toe. The resulting color combination caused her blue stockings to appear purple, which was why he noticed her.

Bubba (Short for Beelzebub, which was what his insane mother had actually named him, even though his father was quite the devout Anglican) Sinister had eyes as blue as Kate’s stockings, and hair as black as the cover of the black leather book he held in his large, manly hands.

Kate gulped. What was it Annie had said about the size of a man’s hands? Or was it Mary who said it? She couldn’t remember which one of them was the loose one. Spreading the fingers of her right hand wide, she ticked off the options one by one. There was the loose one, the tomboy one, the one who wanted to start a newspaper, and then there was…oh, bother. She never could remember which one of them had amnesia. “Halloo, down there,” she called. “Is my bodice ripped?” The loose one usually had a ripped bodice.

Bubba’s eyes grew smoky. He gave a violent cough and extinguished his cheroot. “No,” he drawled, “but I could fix that if you want, Mary.” He scowled, pulling at his cravat until his eyes bulged out. “Or Annie. Nora?”

“Try again,” Kate teased, wiggling her toes. Bubba might have noticed, but she still had her shoes on, so the gesture was completely lost on him.

Bubba put down the book and raked a hand through his carefully brushed crop a la Brutus. Brutus, Kate knew, from eavesdropping on Annie telling Nora about how Mary liked to listen at servants’ doors for the real dirt on their hosts, was the name of Bubba’s valet. Or possibly his dog. The doors were pretty thick in Sinister Manor.

So, unfortunately, was Bubba. He started to leaf through the book he held, ignoring Kate with his eyes, though his manly form might soon tell a different story.

Kate fanned herself with her hand, though it was still tired from counting sisters. Something within her quickened as she watched Bubba turn the pages, wetting his thumb on his tongue each time. Oh, that she might be that thumb! She sighed. That was not possible, even if she wished really, really, really hard. She remembered that much when she and her sisters had all wished for their parents to not dump them on the doorstep of their endearingly dotty Aunt Dottie when they were eight years old. Everybody said Aunt Dottie drank a lot, but nobody had noticed such behaviour before the girls moved in.

Suddenly, Bubba looked up, his face a mask of pain and anguish. “What does k-i-s-s spell?” His finger paused on the page as he looked to Kate for the help that only she could give.

Kate scrunched her nose and closed her eyes. Blasted sight! Who could spell when all she wanted to do was feast her eyes on the way the dark blue superfine stretched across Bubba’s super-fine shoulders.

K…, why, her own name started with K. Secure with the familiar letter, Kate brightened. Why, Bubba was spelling a word that was on nearly every page of the forbidden novels she and her sisters shared. “Kiss,” she cried. “Kiss! It spells ‘kiss.’ Oh, Bubba, my darling, how very romantic!”

This, she knew, was the sign she had been waiting for; the cryptically romantic innuendo from a mysterious member of the nobility. It was how MacKenzie women trapped – erm – found, their husbands since time immemorial. The MacKenzies were known for their short memories, so really, anything beyond last Thursday counted as “immemorial.”

Kate threw caution to the wind and nimbly hopped the three and a half feet from the shelf to the floor. “Yes, yes, I will kiss you!” She landed in a heap, her Grecian knot of fine brown hair coming undone and falling over her face.

Bubba closed the book, setting it on the now-empty shelf before coming to Kate’s aid. “If,” he said in a husky whisper, brandy fumes causing Kate to scoot backwards like a rapidly retreating sand crab, “you would care to meet me in the cemetery at midnight, I think I have an arrangement that would benefit us both.”

Kate scooted back toward him like a rapidly advancing sand crab. The mere mention of the word ‘arrangement’ set her heart a-flutter. She hoped it was a floral arrangement, since the one she already had on her dresser was starting to wilt. “Oh, yes, dearest Bubba. I will come whenever you want.” And she would, she vowed as she pressed her lips to his. He wasn’t done talking, but she didn’t care. What were directions when it came to love?[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Victoria McManus’ Pure Love” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Victoria McManus:

Pure Love
“I have won!” Samantha Seersucker purred, dancing about the living room of her expensive Manhattan highrise apartment that was furnished all in white and the fur of various small helpless animals. “Martha Goodgirl will never have Chest Pectoral as her husband! Never! Never! Never! I have made sure she will never trust him again! And he will give his business to me! To me! I will be the biggest silicon dildo supplier in the Upper West Side!” She paused. “Or supplier was that of the biggest silicon dildos? …I forget.”

The door to her apartment, made all of white marble, thudded open and cracked right down the middle, and Mutt Polartec strode in, his manly muscles rippling under his elegant Armani suit and his Tommy Hilfiger underwear and his fine leather shoes with little metal buckles. He’d somehow beaten up or bribed her faithful doorman Igor and climbed up the elevator shaft that she’d blocked with the bodies of her enemies! She had to run!

There was no where to run. Samantha Seersucker scooped up a clear-as-Austrian-crystal silicon dildo from her white marble sidetable and brandished it above her head. It was the “Yeah Baby” model from 1995, and possessed a titanium core, so it would be a good weapon if she only had a chance to use it. “Back off, Polartec! I don’t care if you love Martha Goodgirl! She’s ruined now, ruined I say, and you can just leave and take my broken door with you!”

Mutt Polartec stripped off his Armani silk exquisitely tailored to his manly and muscled form blazer and flung it to the white marble floor with an oath. (Samantha wasn’t sure which oath. It was something about “I swear by Apollo the physician.”) Then he ripped all the buttons off his vest, including the little gold watch chain that Samantha knew Martha Goodgirl had given him when they were toddlers playing together in the huge mansion of his stepparents who were also her adoptive parents, while Samantha had to scrub all the dirty pots down in the basement and out in the back yard until her hands were all red and raw and unable to wear a wedding ring. Then he ripped off his shirt and the buttons went everywhere, ping, ping, ping. Samantha threw the “Yeah Baby” at him and screamed, but he caught it in his big finely manicured hand and licked it. Her thighs turned to mush and so did her well-sculpted abdomen – damn that plastic surgeon anyway.

Mutt said, to her complete and utter and amazed surprise, “I swear by Apollo the physician, Martha Goodgirl can go somewhere…well, somewhere where I’m not. It’s you I want, you, Samantha. It’s always been you.”

“Me?”

“You. In fact, I went over to Martha Goodgirl’s house and kicked her fluffy brown puppy before I came here to be with you.”

“Oh, Mutt,” Samantha sighed, as she puddled to the hard marble floor, which was as hard as his rampant manhood which was now poking up out of the top of his Armani silk pants. “Come to me, you hunk of hot burning love! Take me now!”

With a groan Mutt ripped open his pants and his red-white-and-blue Tommy Hilfiger jockey shorts and pitched over and landed on her, his rearing manly sexual self leaving bruises on her skim milk-white flesh with its eagerness, like an eager little puppy that has heard a can opener and starts to hump your leg. He used his male strength-hood to tenderly unbutton her white cotton L.L. Bean shorts and perforate her fluid woman’s parts that gushed for him. Samantha moaned soft woman’s moans and flicked the switch on her video camera so she could relive this moment over and over in case he left her an hour from now. With a great cry, Mutt laved her panting breasts with his white fertile seed and then began it all again, loving and lusting and loving her, and lusting and loving some more, and even begging her plaintively to use the “Yeah Baby” on him, until the sun sank behind her huge plate glass windows that looked out on Central Park and the muggers came out, hopefully to attack Martha Goodgirl as she wandered by the reservoir, crying for her kicked, lost puppy.

The End[/fusion_toggle][fusion_toggle title=”Lady Pen’s Dear Romance Readers & Writers” open=”no”]

Purple Prose as written by Lady Pen:

Dear Romance Readers & Writers

My name is Lady Penelope. When I was seventeen I married a wonderful man. I wasn’t really in love with him, it was an arranged marriage, but while he was a bit older, he was nice and the things that he taught me in the bedroom! I was shocked I tell you, shocked! (But boy were they ever fun. )

Unfortunately, my dear Herold died after only three years of marriage. Surprisingly, he left me a great fortune. Knowing that I wasn’t an idiot, he gave me as much control as the courts would allow. Which means I’m independent! Do you realize how rare that is here? Ladies, women are chained to their fathers then they’re chained to their husbands. I’ve discovered that widowhood is grand. But after a year of mourning I’ve become a bit in need of some bedroom fun.

That brings me to my current problem, and why I’ve decided to write to ya’all. (You don’t mind this perfect Regency woman using you, do you? I just think it’s the cutest expression, and while no one uses it here, I’m sure that somewhere, someplace it’ll become vogue.)

Anyway, it has come to my attention that I’m not really living in Regency London but merely exist betwixt the pages of a romance novel. I’m only going to say this once ladies, let me out!!!!!!!!

You see, I don’t want to remarry. Really. I mean, dear Herold was fine and all, but I’m independent! I’m happy and I’m free and I don’t have to answer to anyone. It’s fabulous. It’s marvelous. But, let’s get to basics here, ladies. I want sex.

Never, in a million, trillion years did I imagine that now that I’m free, no longer a virgin, have a comfortable independence, that I would not be allowed to engage in all those exciting, lewd acts with some of the gorgeous men of the ton who never looked at me when I was marriage bait. Yes, dear Herold was fine, but he wasn’t the most virile specimen of manhood if you get my drift, and while we had a fabulous time in the boudoir, my friends talk. And while it might shock you all, I’ve heard stories of some of these men, and I wanna try. Pretty please, with sugar on top?

But, no, that’s what my mistress keeps telling me. Every time I ogle one of these men (and get ogled in return, thank you very much. I am somewhat of a beauty, if I do say so myself.) she slaps me. Figuratively speaking of course. I’m not allowed to have these thoughts. I have to remain chaste and have no interest in sex or else a majority of women will consider me loose and have no interest in reading my story. Agggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

And to make things even worse, she’s going to make me suffer for another three years. Ladies, I’ll die I tell you, really. Orgasms are great fun. Haven’t you heard? Really they are. And I didn’t love Herold. I mean, he was my husband, I was fond of him, but this is Regency England, we don’t marry for love, we marry for money and heirs. Ya’all seem to know that intellectually, but I don’t think you really get it.

I mean, my mistress told me she was being nice to me because she let me enjoy sex with Herold. She said that ya’all would have preferred it if I had had to think of England. I didn’t really understand what she meant by that, I mean I live in England and it’s a nice enough place, but if I have to fantasize during sex I can think of a lot of other more interesting things then England. Honestly. (Then my mistress smacked me because I was doing it to her again and she really hated that) Suffice it to say, you guys are mean and cruel and I really don’t want to play for you anymore.

Because I saw what else my mistress was writing when my back was turned. Here she was, tying me with the chastity belt. Keeping me on this horrid, country estate because I’m not supposed to have enjoyed London. Are you crazy? I want to visit my tenants instead of going to parties? Yeah, right. (Unbeknowst to my mistress I’ve been throwing out lures to some of the cute stable lads but they’re all pretty scared of her so none of them are biting. Sigh. )

To continue, I’m stuck here, not getting anything other then a backache and guess what the guy she’s pairing me with is doing. Just guess. You’ll never, not in a million, trillion years, guess what he’s doing right this very minute. He’s having sex! That’s right, you heard it from me first ladies. He’s rolling around, having loads and loads of fun with his mistress and I’m here alone with my eccentric family of fifteen including several pigs and a donkey.

And what’s more, this jackass has been doing this very thing for years. I’ve heard from people that it’s all that he likes to do. It’s his favorite pastime. Well, la di da da da. Isn’t that special. When I asked my mistress about this, I was sure she’d tell me that I was mistaken. I mean, surely ya’all don’t think it’s okay for him to do this, while I can’t? I mean, It’s not fair!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She tried to explain it to me, but frankly, I wasn’t listening too hard. I was trying to figure out how I could possibly get out of her book and into one by Emma Holly. You see, I’ve been asking around, and I was told that my best bet for sex, if I didn’t want to be tortured and kidnapped, was to get betwixt the pages of her books. But,you see, I discovered that there’s a huge line for this. I mean massive. I saw debutantes up the wazoo and even some women wearing jeans and suits from what I was told is the future.

They all explained to me that I’m not alone. That really, I was better off then them, because at least I’d had sex and enjoyed it. Many of them had been raped and were supposed to be massively afraid of the act, the one in the suit said that her mistress told her she just didn’t have time. (Yeah right.) All the debutantes said that it wasn’t the fact that they were virgins that appalled them, but they too had witnessed their future spouses having sex with other women in their novel and they didn’t want to share the spotlight. (They were eventually informed that Emma might be a bit much for them and were instructed to head over to the Mary Jo Putney or Jo Beverley lines.)

So, anyway, as things stand, I’ll make it into an Emma Holly book by 2015. I’m very much afraid however, that my author will find me before then. Please, ladies, for my sanity, can’t you relent a bit?

Sincerely,

Lady Pen[/fusion_toggle][/fusion_accordion][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]