Sunday, April 12, 2009

Guest Blogger, Sephera Giron----Author of the Sexstrology Series


Today we welcome astrologer and erotic romance author Sephera Giron to the blog. This is a very long post, but I'm happy to post it in its entirety. Enjoy!

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Love, Erotica, and Astrology
Sèphera Girón peers into her crystal ball and sees many erotic romance books....

Is spring here yet? We’re waiting oh, so patiently here for it just outside of Toronto! While we’re waiting for the weather to break in the northern climates, lots of writing gets done! The best thing about living in Ontario and being a person that finds no joy in snow related activities means that I do a lot of writing in the winter.

This past winter, I was especially prolific, even for me. I delivered six books to Ravenous Romance.

Admittedly, I edited one of the books, The Sexstrology Anthology, but it’s related to the other books. Twelve authors wrote erotic romance astrology stories set in my fictional town of Hermana.

The Sexstrology series was created for Ravenous Romance’s Lovestrology line. These are books that can be read alone or as a series. You don’t have to read the other books to enjoy any of these erotic romance books. For the series, I combined several of my interests and talents. These include: astrology, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witchcraft, tarot cards, and sex
I’ve been reading tarot professionally and casting horoscopes for years. At Ravenous, I’m the one who casts the daily horoscopes.

To draw together my many interests to create a base to weave my tales, I created the mythical town of Hermana which was founded by witch sisters escaping the Salem prosecutions. A couple of centuries later, the town is thriving and draws a lot of tourists. Many of the residents of Hermana are psychics and witches of some sort and my Sexstrology series concentrates on twelve main women, each single and a different sign of the zodiac. They form a coven under the guidance of eighty year old Lucy and every month, they meet to celebrate one of the ladies’ birthdays and to cast a love spell.

The first book is about a Sagittarius tarot reader, Maggie. It’s great fun to write about a different woman each month and to follow her adventures in love. Maggie is a hedonist, and sleeps with pretty much every sign of the zodiac in her book while trying to figure out how she feels about a Virgo that has captured her attention.

The Capricorn woman is a vampire and medium. She sees ghosts (is haunted by some of her victims in fact), plays the violin and is discriminating in her sleeping partners and her prey. She meets a gorgeous Gemini on New Year’s Eve and the book follows her rather dark adventures in trying to find him again.

For Aquarius, I created a journalist who has a bit of psychic ability and can see ghosts. She’s a natural skeptic but many weird experiences in Hermana have convinced her that ghosts do exist. She explores a haunted asylum in California with a hunky Scorpio man she met through the internet on her paranormal group.

My Pisces lady is an aura reader and teaches art class. Her new, much younger student, a Taurus, has many talents that make her drool. Their lust sends them through a painting where they must discover what evil is leaking into Hermana.

Exploring the signs of the zodiac and their different attitudes towards sex has been interesting. I use the most basic popular views of the sun sign to create my characters. Sagittarians as a rule are very enthusiastic and adventurous people (Walt Disney, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Woody Allen). Capricorns are dark and mysterious (Edgar Allan Poe, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson). Aquarians are analytical (Lewis Caroll, Oprah, Abraham Lincoln) and Pisces are passionate (Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Harlow, Tammie Faye Baker). At least, those of the traits I chose to focus on for the purpose of my stories. The different degrees of lust have been interesting to play with. Some characters, like my Sagittarian, view sex as a necessary pastime while other signs are pickier about it.

People who follow astrology may complain that sometimes I match lovers in signs that are noted to be incompatible. Since none of us know the characters’ full charts, we can’t judge them on their sun signs. And as we know, humans tend to do what their loins tell them to do no matter what their sign!

As an example, in my own life, in my twenties, I married a Sagittarian whom I should have been totally compatible with and intellectually, we are. It was fun and adventurous and a whirlwind romance. We met at our summer jobs and discovered we attended the same university and actually had good friends in common. We were married by Valentine’s Day while still in school. After graduation, we decided to start a family and had two boys. Then around the ten year mark, we parted ways because in the big picture, we married before we actually knew each other very well and it was the day to day lifestyle stuff that was dragging us down. Impulse is typical for Sag and Aquarius. In fact, we are still friends, but just not good marriage partners.
My second husband is a passionate, clingy, emotional Pisces who is supposed to not be compatible with an impatient, analytical, detached Aquarius like me. We met when he came to me for a tarot reading at a flea market. Sparks flew (literally, when our hands accidently touched, a jolt surged through me, not a carpet shock!) though I didn’t know what I would do with him, he was so not the type I was “used to” but I told myself “open heart, open mind” (since what I was “used to” obviously wasn’t working for me!) and after a few dates, I was hooked on my fish man. He proposed a few months after we met but I had cold feet from the first time around. We lived together for six years before getting married in 2008 since we both had impulsive city hall first marriages with people we didn’t know. His first marriage didn’t even last five years but it was with a Gemini (who became pregnant in the first month or so of their dating, so there’s that air sign impulse thing again on her end and of course he’s the clingy water sign with romantic notions) and I can’t imagine how they even survived that long with all the mind changing and flip flopping from both of them! My second husband and I share Virgo moons and that is where our own compatibility lies. It also means that we both enjoy experimental sex and are open to adventures...He was a willing participant in helping me research which 64 positions of the Kama Sutra to use in “Kama Sutra Seductions Deck,” which I call “flashcards for lovers.”

So I approach my lovers in my astrology books with an Open Heart, Open Mind, which incidentally is the name of the first Sexstrology book (Sagittarius) and the concept is used in the monthly love spell, because, hey, it works for me!

The love spell that the women perform every month consists of three parts. There’s the actual ritual or spell that they all gather together to perform. There’s the required feng shui of their home by Cancer Ellie and astrology charts prepared by Gemini Gwen. If the lucky lady follows all the advice, she may wind up with Mr. Compatible.

The idea of each woman having a specialty such as tarot reading or aura painting is exciting to me, for I’m curious about so many things. This gives me a chance to explore subjects that I enjoy while writing about love and sex.

People who have read my other work (such as Hungarian Rhapsody, Mistress of the Dark, Borrowed Flesh, The Birds and the Bees) know that I deliver when it comes to the racy bits. This is because I enjoy writing about sex and like to explore different ways to experience pleasure. (My Virgo moon is showing again!) My characters sometimes have more balls than I do when it comes to the bedroom. It’s a fun way to express myself and I hope you enjoy reading the “naughty bits” as much as I enjoy writing them.

So that’s a bit of what I’ve been trying to do with my new series. I hope readers enjoy the erotica, the occult aspects and the stories.

Thank you, Jamaica, for letting me crash your blog.

Now, everyone, go read your free daily horoscopes at Ravenousromance.com and let me know what you think!

Here are links to trailers I made for Open Heart, Open Mind and Cursed. Bear in mind, these are the first trailers I’ve ever made but they give the idea.

Sagittarius: Open Heart, Open Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch1Vy_HiuwI
Capricorn: Cursed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98GnU9fV8yk&feature=related

Sephera Giron
I’m on Facebook, My Space and Twitter. Come on by and say hi. You can join my newsletter through my website.
http://www.sepheragiron.com/
http://www.ravenousromance.com/component/option,com_author/Itemid,70/id,12/lang,en/task,view/

1 comment:

  1. Well, Sèphera, I'm going to have to try the Sagittarius book, mostly because I can't see it working with the Virgo guy! LOL. My first husband was a Virgo -- big mistake for this Sag. Ay yi yi. Now I'm curious!

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