Happy Saturday, darlings!
Today's visitor is a man I've known for quite some time. A man I adore and respect. A stellar author, a stellar person. And---don't tell him I told you this---but he's also a marvelously handsome fellow!
Lloyd A. Meeker.
Lloyd is one of the most fascinating persons I know. A man very much in tuned with an avenue that thrill me---spirituality, the beautiful world beyond the here and now. Mysticism. Facets that, as he explains during his visit, we all possess.
He's also going to tell us about his brand new release, The Companion. Wait until you see the cover below. It's a sensual work of art. And it appears the book is going to be a match for its sublime cover!
So...here is is, folks! Welcome one of my favorite people...Lloyd Meeker!
* * * * * * * * * *
Thanks,
Carol, for having me today. Okay, I admit this probably qualifies as a rant,
but I’m claiming it's a legitimate one: I object to being classified as an
author of paranormal fiction.
Most
of my characters have psychic or mystical experiences that are central to their
character arcs. I do understand the need for for a convenient system of
classification for the stories we write, but it still irks me when experiences
that I consider to be perfectly normal are categorized as paranormal – that is,
not normal or beyond normal. Don’t get me wrong, exercise of logic is normal,
too! I’m a big fan of logic. It’s just that today my focus is not on the many
beauties of the rational.
We're
all psychic, so don't fight it. Join us! Just accept that and learn by
listening, paying attention. Let your perceptions be an ally. Intuition, which
is often used as a descriptor for a complex variety of experiences and
sensations that are the product of our psychic sensitivity, makes a terrible
commander-in-chief but an excellent ally and source of useful information.
It
may be that it takes some practice to trust the information we get through our
psychic sensitivities as being relevant. It certainly has for me. But when we
start listening respectfully to the information we receive through non-linear
sensitivity we open to a life far richer than we previously knew, full of a new
kind of wonder.
Have
you ever said, "I just have a gut feeling about this" or "this
place gives me the creeps?” Because we rarely listen to those messages with any
more attention than just acknowledging them, it's not surprising that most of
us don't get more specific information than a general gut feeling or sense of
unease. It takes practice.
One
of the results I've experienced from paying attention to the less organized
messages that come through my psychic sensitivity is that I have a much
stronger sense of the continuity of life than I ever had before.
Long
ago, when I worked as a minister, one of my duties was to sit with someone who
was dying. My job was to simply be with them and to maintain an atmosphere of
peace and respect as they moved on. I also attended quite a few births. I began
to notice the similarities between the two – entrances and exits on the stage
that we usually think of as life. But on the other side of the journey – where
the person was coming from, or where the person was returning – was a realm of
beauty that showed itself, sometimes even becoming tangible at that very moment
of transition. I began to form a belief which I still hold that although a
death may well have elements of grief connected to it, the transition from this
life to the next should be revered and celebrated with the same quiet joy as a
birth. I’m certain it’s another kind of birth.
So
how does all this relate to my stories? I believe that the finest stories show
internal and external forces at work in the protagonist. These forces bring a
change in the hero that we call the character arc. I love the challenge of
including those internal forces from the perspective that the hero has more
resources – wisdom, strength, courage, and compassion – available to him as he
opens to that intuitive or nonlinear part of him — it is the door to his
psychic and spiritual life.
That
mystical thread is a central component in the plot and hero’s character arc of
my stories. The first reason for that is my own way of experiencing life. That
dance of the visible with the invisible is fascinating to me. It shapes the way
I experience the world around me. Another reason is that the human heart is not
linear by nature, and our responses to internal and external stimuli or events
are born out of an alchemy of logic and feeling more complex and deeper than
anything I can hope to write. So this mystery becomes my muse as well as the
way I make sense of the world around me.
Thank
you, Carol, for letting me rant on your blog! I really do hope for the day when
those experiences that are presently considered to be paranormal are considered
perfectly normal, beautiful, and profoundly important.
Shepherd
Bucknam is the protagonist in my new story, The Companion. He is a Daka,
a professional companion who coaches men in the art of sexual ecstasy. In this
excerpt Detective Marco Fidanza, who is investigating the murder of Shepherd’s
protege and is quickly becoming Shepherd’s new love interest, is having dinner
at Shepherd’s apartment. Without discussing it they both know that the evening
will end in bed—for the first time. Marco asks Shepherd what sex means to him.
Blurb
Shepherd
Bucknam hasn’t had a lover in more than a decade, and doesn’t need one. As a
Daka, he coaches men in the sacred art and mystery of sexual ecstasy all the
time, and he loves his work. It’s his calling. In fact, he’s perfectly content—except
for the terrors of his recurring nightmare, and the ominous blood-red
birthmarks on his neck. He’s convinced that together they foretell his early
and violent death.
When Shepherd’s young protégé
is murdered, LAPD Detective Marco Fidanza gets the case. The two men are worlds
apart: Marco has fought hard for everything he’s accomplished, in sharp
contrast to the apparent ease of Shepherd’s inherited wealth—but their mutual
attraction is too hot for either of them to ignore.
Shepherd swears he’ll help
find his protégé’s killer but Marco warns him to stay out of it. When an
influential politician is implicated, the police investigation grinds to a halt.
Shepherd hires his own investigator. Marco calls it dangerous meddling.
As their volatile
relationship deepens, Shepherd discovers his nightmares might not relate to the
future, but to the deadly legacy of a past life—a life he may have to revisit
before he can fully live and love in this one.
Excerpt
“Do you want
dessert?” I asked.
“Not yet.” He
stared at me. Hard. “Later.”
“More wine?”
“A little. Not
much. It’s incredible, though.”
I felt some
tension mounting in him, but he didn’t say anything. He just stared into his
wineglass, as if there were a message in it that he needed to read. I cleared
our plates and sat back down and waited. I put my hand on his, wanting him.
He looked up at
me like a wild animal, fierce and wary. He put his wineglass down. “What does
sex mean to you?” he asked quietly.
“I think it’s
essential to a happy life. I’m a big fan.”
He scowled.
“Don’t be cute. I want the real answer.”
I was in his
interrogation room again, with the recorder running and the pine disinfectant
stinging my nose. I took a sip of wine to banish the smell. “My real answer?”
“That’s the
only kind. Zero tolerance for frauds, remember?”
I tried to
lighten his seriousness. “The real answer is complex. I might ramble.”
“You can take
your time. I need to know.”
I took a deep
breath. “Remember... you asked,” I said.
“Before
anything happens between us,” he repeated, as if each word weighed as much as
he could lift, “I need to know.”
I took a deep
breath and let it out. “Okay.” To my surprise, the truth bubbled up easily,
asking me to tell him things I’d seldom told a therapist, and never a date. The
sacred essence of my work.
“My first
sexual attraction to a man comes in a feeling that somewhere in his body lies a
secret, a story I need to learn. Maybe a story he doesn’t even know he’s
keeping.”
I looked out
the window onto the lights of Westwood Village and UCLA winking in the purple
evening, feeling dangerously exposed. But he’d asked, and I’d promised.
“It sounds
arrogant to say it out loud, but sometimes, I feel he’s asking me for help—can
you take the journey to where I keep my secrets? The ones I can’t find unless
we share our bodies?
“If a man can
tell you a story with words, he’s giving you one of his surface ones—his
history, his wounds, his hopes. Very few of those stories arouse me.
“Can I get to
the deeper ones? That’s the challenge. Will he let me into the sweet dark
archives of his body? The haunted places in his heart? His sacred stories, the
powerful, wordless ones, are there, waiting, stored in his skin, his breath,
his seed. Those are the ones I love.”
I bit my lip,
certain this sounded daft to him. I needed him to understand. What if he
didn’t? Or wouldn’t? I looked into his eyes. They told me nothing. Ruthless
poker-player’s eyes.
“I may sound
crazy, but you wanted the truth.” He just stared back, not moving.
Gathering
myself, I plunged forward. “Somewhere under his skin, stored in some guarded
place like a prisoner, lies that memory, or maybe a dream—a longing I can
awaken, excavate with my touch, my body, coaxing out his stories aching to be
heard. We become allies, then—brothers in some ancient tribe, preparing for a
sacred ceremony of spirit and flesh. A ceremony greater than either of us.
“There are
clues how to start. He shows me in the way his hand moves, or the stretch of
his throat when he turns his head. The way he holds his mouth when he throws
back his head and laughs. The way he speaks of small regrets.
“When the
ceremony begins, he unfolds as if he’s an entire foreign country, a different
culture, a story in a strange language I can understand only when my tongue is
on his skin, when his flesh is inside me, when his flesh welcomes mine inside
him.
“As we go
deeper, his body guides me. When did he get that tattoo? What did it mean to
him at the time, and what does it mean to him now? When did his eyes become so
deep? When the first lines of age creased his face, did he laugh in his
strength, or did it take time for him to wear them with grace? When his heart
was first broken, where did he store the pain?”
I pointed to
Marco’s face. “When he got the scar that cuts through his eyebrow, what was he
doing?” His eye twitched, but he said nothing.
“Our union
forms a unique Rosetta Stone, making us each understandable to the other so
long as we’re joined. Then we speak the wordless language that men know only
when they are filled, overflowing with pleasure and respect. Everything about
him radiates his meaning to me, from the folding of an eyelid to the slow
unfurling of foreskin, drawing away to reveal more of his power.
“We fall into
beauty together. No matter what he looks like, there isn’t a man so open and
alive as that—so hungry to welcome the mystery of another, so hot to share
himself, to know the secrets he can’t find in himself except through the Other,
secrets to be poured back into him through the breath and pulse and saliva and
seed of another—who isn’t beautiful to me.”
I leaned
forward, buzzing with the pleasure of speaking so openly. “Then afterward—very
rarely—when a man is soft and vulnerable, in the moments before his breath returns
to normal, before he closes himself again to the outer world, putting his outer
body back on like insulating armor, I can touch the one who tells the stories,
the one who reaches through them to be known, even if only for a moment. I
believe that connection lasts forever, and becomes a new, shared story we each,
if we’re lucky, can tell others.”
I had nothing
more to say. The AC whispered down on us, the only sound in the room.
Marco drained
his glass, not meeting my eyes. I made to pour him more, but he held up his
hand to stop me. He stared at the dregs for an uncomfortably long time. I
wanted to defend what I’d said, but I’d already said far more than I should
have. I’d been an idiot to give him the truth just because he’d asked for it.
When I thought about it now, it must have sounded like pretentious bullshit to
him.
“Did that
happen between you and Lewis?” His voice had cooled and hardened. “Touching the
one who tells the stories?”
With a shock, I
realized it had. Often. Effortlessly, no excavation needed, so naturally it
hadn’t even registered as the rare magic I’d been describing. That had to be
the reason Stef meant so much to me.
“Yes.” I looked
away, missing Stef and unable to look Marco in the eye, afraid I’d see his
sneer. Even if it meant a sudden end to the evening, I wouldn’t let Marco pass
judgment on the beauty Stef and I had shared. That was off-limits.
He pushed his
chair back and stood. I looked up but couldn’t read his face at all. He
gestured with both hands, palms up. I stood.
He hooked his
fingers inside my belt and led me into the bedroom.
HE WASN’T
rough, but he’d taken charge without negotiation. My heart raced, unsure. Was
he angry? Scornful? I had no idea. He stopped me at the foot of the bed,
putting his hands on my hips. Without once breaking eye contact, he began
pulling my shirt out of my jeans.
Soft with
compliance, I lifted my arms as he drew the shirt over my head. He tossed it on
the floor. In the dim light, his fingers traced my throat, pausing at the three
bloody marks at the base of my neck. “There is a God after all,” he chuckled.
“I was afraid you would be too perfect to be real, but now I see you are not
perfect, but beautiful instead.” His conqueror’s smile was dazzling. “Beautiful
is much, much better than perfect.”
His eyes were
dark lamps burning into mine. He found my belt buckle, and he opened my jeans,
softly scraped his nails across my skin just above the waistband of my shorts.
“Take those off,” he ordered softly. I obeyed.
He pulled his
own clothes off in swift efficiency and was waiting for me, naked and erect, by
the time I had finished. The black hair I’d glimpsed before covered his
muscular chest. It dusted his belly, too, pushing into a heavy trail that
plunged to his groin, then spread to forest his thighs. He stood, muscles taut,
poised—sinuous, dark, powerful.
He put his
hands on my hips again and pulled me into him. He lapped the hollow of my
throat with an aggressive tongue, biting softly as he grazed.
“Just so you know
up front,” he said, “you are not going to be digging for my stories tonight.
I’m going to shout them into you until you cover your ears and beg for mercy.
You will not escape me until you’ve heard everything I have to tell you.” His
eyes blazed. “This could take a long time.”
* * * * * * * * *
Oh, mercy sakes alive! See, I told you the book promised to match the cover's sensuality! But, then, too, Lloyd is a wordsmith with that wonderful talent for verbalizing the simplest of thoughts, the un-obviously obvious beauty of life, such as in this....“Beautiful
is much, much better than perfect."
Lloyd, thank you so much for visiting today. It's been a huge honor and a delight!
And, you, lovelies! Here are links for YOU to buy this delicious read!
Links:
e-book:
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5243
print:
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5244
www.lloydmeeker.com
https://twitter.com/LloydAMeeker
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