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Hello Friends,
Welcome to my first ever newsletter! I’ve been gaining subscribers as of late, and knew I needed to get one going, but didn’t know what to write about. But, as it turns out, my latest book, Erotica for the Refined Palate: Volume 1, is being featured on some blog sites this week, and I had to answer some questions for the bloggers, so I decided to share this same personal information with you. I hope you'll find it entertaining.
Tell us about Bridget Doone's formative years.
I was born in Toronto, Ontario but grew up in a tiny town on the Grand River where my parents owned a hotel. As you might imagine, growing up in a hotel was never boring, and it was quite an education. Those experiences, which frequently find a place in my writing, are truly stranger than fiction. Case in point: When I was about 10 years old, the Province of Ontario decreed that topless dancers would soon be legal, and my father was damned and determined to have the first one. He hired Carmen based on an advertisement in a big city paper, and alerted the town she was coming to The Queens Hotel by sketching mammoth-sized mammaries on poster boards, which he stapled to the trees and poles up and down Main Street.
When Carmen arrived with her entourage, who I will later refer to as pimps, suffice it to say she looked nothing like the ad. Mum thought she was Carmen’s mother and wanted to fire her on the spot for false advertising, but dad said, no - the whole town was buzzing with suspense, counting the minutes until they could get a gander at Carmen’s cantaloupes and lay claim to being witness to the historic event.
By 8 pm, the bar was so full, dad was afraid the fire marshal would show up and start kicking people out. Then he realized the fire marshal was already there, right in front of the stage, along with the police chief and mother’s gynecologist. When the band fired up, my younger brother and I snuck downstairs and positioned ourselves just outside the kitchen door where we could spy the goings-on from behind the milk machines. Then through the saloon doors she burst, dressed in a satin robe and stilettos, her over-processed hair as course as a bale of hay, her makeup shiny and thick, as if applied with a trowel.
The bass player took Carmen’s nicotine-stained fingers in his own and hoisted her onto the stage where she faced the band and began to sway her narrow backside. Everyone cheered and clapped, and I’m sure my heretofore nervous parents thought all would be well and the till would runneth over, but seconds later their hopes were dashed when Carmen slipped the robe from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. What was left was a string bikini draped over 99 pounds of bad decisions. The crowd, stunned into silence, watched as Carmen slowly pulled the string behind her bony back, then threw the bikini top over her head, like a new bride tossing a bouquet. I can still see the dumbfounded faces of the band who were first to behold the reveal; they looked almost frightened.
Carmen spun to face the audience, and when her breasts caught up to her, they tick-tocked left and right then hung like beanbags from her sunken chest - the nipples pointing due south and resting alongside her belly button. The crowd gasped and then broke into hysterics, and my parents were so embarrassed, they fired her as soon as the band took their first break. Later dad would say that was a mistake, because the next night, the line to see ‘the comedy show at The Queens’ wrapped the block.
As it turned out, my parents felt bad about the whole thing and let Carmen and company stay the night in the hotel, where Carmen conducted business into the wee hours, solicited by her pimps while she’d been on stage. And as if that isn’t crazy enough, the following night I had a pajama party in the room that she had occupied, and in which she had left a brown paper bag full of condoms that my girlfriends and I promptly unwrapped and tried to put on like socks. On the Monday, I took some to school for show-and-tell; that was unwise.
So you see, I lived a charmed childhood in that tiny town, taking over empty hotel rooms with my friends, ordering breakfast, lunch, and dinner off the menu, and showing up at parties with cases of beer I’d pinched from the hotel bar.
I was a big fish in a little pond - that was until my parents moved us to Florida when I was 16. I cried the whole way there, which is here, on the Space Coast where I live today. I still visit my hometown every year and stop by The Queens Hotel to say hello. It’s nice to see my old babysitter; she bought the place from my parents.
How and why did Bridget start writing erotica?
Before I retired in 2022, I was a Network Engineer, first teaching at a small college, and then as a corporate trainer at a large science and engineering firm. During my time at the college, I coauthored two textbooks under my real name: one on networking fundamentals and one on wireless technology. Being a corporate trainer involved a lot of writing as well.
The leap from technical writing to erotic romance was prompted by a physiological event. I had a hysterectomy and naturally this threw me into menopause, which I refused to accept gracefully. When I found out I could replace my exhausted hormones with bioidentical ones implanted in my hip, I did, and it was life changing. Within a week, I was jumping out of bed and at the gym by 5 am, and at work, I was kicking ass and taking names. But when I wasn’t thinking about exchanging packets securely over the Internet, I was thinking about exchanging bodily fluids over the armrest on my leather loveseat. I was hornier than a choirboy in a porn shop, and when I approached a man squeezing melons in the produce section, and almost whipped mine out for his consideration, I knew I might do something not condoned by my religion.
And that’s when I noticed him - a friendly stranger at the gym: 55-ish, muscled up, tanned, great smile, and as I watched him from the treadmill on those very early mornings, he became the outlet for my pent-up passion, and that manifested itself as a novel that was published as Sally Rides Single in 2020. Rowland (yeah that’s his name) never knew the part he played in it, until a few months ago when I decided it was time to enlighten him.
“I’m going to tell you something that’s going to make you smile,” I said. He looked confused as he sat up on the bench where he’d been pumping iron. I navigated to my website on my phone, showed him the book, and told him he’d been the muse for the male protagonist. His jaw dropped. The next week, I brought him a hard copy with a personalized thank-you on the inside cover and a 4x6 headshot. It’s fun to imagine him showing his wife, then trying to convince her he barely knows me - which is true! God help him if she ever reads the book! As for the hormones, I wouldn’t be without them, and every 6 months when I get a boost, man-o-man, the creative juices boil over.
How did Erotica for the Refined Palate: Volume 1, happen?
With much of my second erotic romance novel, Sally Rides Double, written, I suddenly found myself at a crossroads with respect to the plot twist. I decided to leave it alone and write a short story in hopes that diversion would spark some needed inspiration. I called the story The Conjugal Visit, and I wrote it in first person/present tense with the intention of making my female readers feel like the steamy carnal encounter was happening to them in real time. But fueled by a steady diet of estrogen and testosterone, I had managed to cram a novel’s worth of salacious activity into 3,200 words; there was barely a place for the reader to take a breath. It was so over-the-top naughty, I felt more comfortable sending it to my male beta readers, and so I did. Surprisingly (or not), the men enjoyed my overly explicit and immersive narrative, and I got so excited about their enthusiastic response, I forgot all about my novel and immediately embarked on writing another short story, and this time inspired by one of those reviewers. I called it Me and You and a Wife Named Sue, but having reached the end of it, I realized there was much more I could do with it, and so I added two more chapters. At that point, it wasn’t a short story, but it wasn’t a novel either; it was a novelette, and along with its cousin, the novella, these formats became my preferred word-count range. Over the next 18 months or so, I wrote three additional novelettes/novellas. I put the four together and Erotica for the Refined Palate: Volume 1 was published in June 2023.
I’ve been told that novelettes/novellas are not that popular, but I find them to be a perfect fit for my writing style. I have so many stories to tell and 10,000 to 20,000 words gives me just the right amount of room to balance all of the erotic activity with character development and background. And because they’re shorter than a novel, I can compose them in a shorter time frame and get them to my readers in a more timely fashion. Having said that, I’m not abandoning novels and short stories. In fact, I’ve already written a second short story. It’s called The Accidental Unicorn, and like The Conjugal Visit, it is first person/present tense titillation from start to finish. If you want liftoff in under 15 minutes, check out the shorts at bridgetdoone.com/short-stories-2.
What does a typical day look like for Bridget Doone?
I get up about 8:30 am, unless the neighbor’s dogs wake me earlier, then I grab a coffee, turn on Murder She Wrote or Columbo, open my laptop, and check to make sure no sex offenders have moved anywhere near my daughters. After my second coffee, I turn off the TV and start working on whatever story I feel like; I typically work on more than one at a time. Often I take a one-hour break and exercise. About 4 pm, I switch from coffee to wine - it’s a handoff - literally. If it’s Friday, I go to happy hour, typically with my 92-year old mother. On Sundays, I go to mass and then out to breakfast, and Tuesdays, I play golf with the ladies and drink beer instead of wine - and much earlier. So far, it’s been a pretty good retirement. |
