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Adult Entertainment in the Roaring Twenties
by
Stephanie Draven
It Stings So Sweet is a novel in three parts--a literary
threesome, if you will. And, no question about it, much like the middle part of
a threesome, it was the story in the middle that had the most fun. Or, at the
very least, it was the most fun to write.
Inspired by legendary
silent screen star Clara Bow, I wanted to write a sassy, brassy heroine with a
secret her lover could exploit.
Where to turn, but to
Hollywood? The Roaring Twenties kicked off the Golden Age of movies. It was a
time before television and millions of people went to the movies every week
five times or more. There were neighborhood Nickelodeons where couples necked
in the back aisles, and luxurious Movie Palaces where the ritzy folks went to
rub elbows in style.
This much I knew. What I
didn’t know was just how naughty those films could be.
They said, in the
twenties, “Anything Goes.” And there were no movie ratings or restrictions on
filmmakers at the time. So just how randy did these films get?
Well, if you were ever
under the impression that pornography was a Boogie Nights invention of
the 1970s allow me to shatter your illusions as mine were shattered when my
research led me to a vintage stag film called Nudist Bar.
I admit to staring agog
at one of the few surviving films to have been digitized from that glitzy era.
What I learned--after I
recovered from the shock--was that stag films from the Jazz Age were not only
explicit, but experimental. Every coupling you can imagine was caught on film,
and sometimes it was more than just couples. Threesomes, foursomes, and
moresomes, too!
But in spite of the
graphic nature of the films there was a sort of charming tenderness to such
films utterly lacking in the modern adult entertainment industry. The cheeky
winks at the camera, the hand-holding, the courtly behavior of a vintage porn
star towards his leading ladies is arrestingly different than what we have come
to expect--and somehow seemed far less exploitive than its modern equivalent.
It was, for me, a real
eye-opener about the evolution of sexuality in the 19th Century. And it also
helped inspire my heroine’s secret. You see, in It Stings So Sweet,
glamorous Clara Cartwright starred in just such a film before becoming a
Hollywood legend...and is now being blackmailed by the mysterious WWI Flying
Ace who gets his hands on the reel.
When she decides to meet
the war hero for a private screening, to make sure he isn’t bluffing, the
sparks fly! And I think you’ll fall in love with her blackmailer just as hard
as she does.
About The Author:STEPHANIE DRAVEN is a bestselling, award-winning and RITA-nominated author of historical, paranormal, and contemporary romance. Her newest project, IT STINGS SO SWEET is a collection of 1920s historical erotic romances that celebrate sex, women, and the Jazz Age. Her most recent novel with Entangled Publishing, IN BED WITH THE OPPOSITION, is a mix of humor and sex-appeal set against the backdrop of a zany political campaign inspired by the career of Baltimore legend William Donald Schaefer. Both novels are fun departures from her more serious Greek mythology-inspired series for Harlequin's Nocturne line, the debut novel of which was nominated by Romantic Times for Best First Series. The series has earned critical praise for its originality and awareness of social issues and garnered the 2012 SWIRL award for excellence in multi-cultural romance literature as well as the CataRomance's Reviewers Choice Award. Writing historical fiction about Cleopatra’s daughter as Stephanie Dray, she won the Golden Leaf Award for SONG OF THE NILE. Stephanie is currently a denizen of Baltimore, that city of ravens and purple night skies. She lives there with her favorite nocturnal creatures–three scheming cats and a deliciously wicked husband. And when she is not busy with dark domestic rituals, she writes her books. StephanieDraven.com
Blurb:
They vibrated with incendiary Jazz.
They teemed with sexual abandon. The Twenties were roaring and the women–young,
open, rebellious, and willing–set the pace and pushed the limits with every man
they met…
In the aftermath of a wild,
liquor-soaked party, three women from very different social classes are about
to live out their forbidden desires.
Society girl, Nora Richardson’s
passionate nature has always been a challenge to her ever-patient husband. Now
he wants out of the marriage and she has just this one night to win him back.
The catch? He wants to punish her for her bad behavior. Nora is offended by her
husband’s increasingly depraved demands, but as the night unfolds, she
discovers her own true nature and that the line between pain and pleasure is
very thin indeed.
Meanwhile, Clara Cartwright, sultry
siren of the silent screen, is introduced to a mysterious WWI Flying Ace. If
Clara, darling of the scandal sheets, knows anything, it’s men. And she’s known
plenty. But none of them push her boundaries like the aviator, who lures her
into a ménage with a stranger in a darkened cinema then steals her jaded heart.
Working class girl Sophie O’Brien
has more important things on her mind than pleasures of the flesh. But when her
playboy boss, the wealthy heir to the Aster family fortune, confronts her with
her diary of secret sex fantasies, she could die of shame. To her surprise, he
doesn’t fire her; instead, he dares her to re-enact her boldest fantasies and
Sophie is utterly seduced.
One party serves as a catalyst of
sexual awakening. And in an age when anything goes, three women discover that
anything is possible…
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