Jina with her Thanksgiving turkey

On this cool autumn day before Thanksgiving, I can’t help but think about how giving thanks for all the wonderful blessings in our lives is universal.

It became so real to me when the heroine in my upcoming novel, The Blonde Samurai, is in 1874 Japan celebrating Thanksgiving with her samurai family.

Check out my blog at NAUGHTY AUTHOR CHICKS and see what my heroine, Katie O’Roarke, wrote in her memoir.

Best,
Jina  

Jina reading j"The Blonde Geisha"

I’m thrilled to be a Harlequin author and I’m often asked about writing for Spice so today I’m blogging over at NAUGHTY AUTHOR CHICKS with my thoughts and experiences about writing for the line that I hope will answer those burning questions.  Check it out!

Best,

Jina

…and here on WordPress at Cleopatra’s Perfume Prequel.

Check it out at:

Naughty Author Chicks Blog on Wednesdays…

Collage of items belonging to Lady Eve Marlowe

…and you can read all about Lady Eve Marlowe’s adventures in 1928 Weimar Berlin (the heroine in Cleopatra’s Perfume) at my Cleopatra’s Perfume Prequel.

Thankz!

Best,

Jina

February 2010: meet The Blonde Samurai
“She embraced the way of the warrior. Two swords. Two loves.”

I just put up Episode 2:  Eve discovers the sublime delights of paddling in my ongoing series:

The Berlin Sex Diary of Lady Eve Marlowe

Check it out!

Best,

Jina 
 

Red "Carneval" Mask like the one Eve wears that night in the Berlin hotel room

Cleopatra's Perfume by Jina Bacarr

CLEOPATRA’S PERFUME

Jina Bacarr
Harlequin Spice, Apr 2009, $13.95
9780373605309

In 1939 affluent Lady Eve Marlowe, following the death of her spouse in Cairo, rejects widows clothing. Instead she comes to London to enjoy sexual escapades that she obtains at the wealthiest clubs. However, Eve admits that American pilot Chuck Dawn is the best lover she ever had though she expects to be bored with him soon. Due to an incident involving crazed hardened Nazis, Chuck and Eve are separated.

Chuck wants to see his English lady soonest especially after the near lethal encounter in 1941 just outside Berlin, and reading her journal that he possesses only adds to his need for her. Following her trail, he goes after the woman he madly adores even as he knows she is wearing the ultimate enticer CLEOPATRA’S PERFUME.

This is a wild fun erotic historical romance that brings a unique perspective to WWII. Chuck is a brave aviator, but this heated war drama is owned by the audacious heroine as she brings danger and humor to the bedroom and a several other locales. Fans will relish the misadventures of Lady Eve as uses CLEOPATRA’S PERFUME to entice war secrets from the Nazis in Cairo, Berlin and London, and to lure her American flyer into her honey.

Harriet Klausner

Are you a member of RWA  (Romance Writers of America)?  It’s a fabulous organization for published and pre-prepublished writers.

 I belong to the Orange County, California chapter: OCCRWA and every month I do an audio podcast of our upcoming meeting. 

Jina Bacarr

Check out the audio podcast I recorded for the April 11, 2009 meeting of OCC/RWA, Romancing the OC:

 Jina’s Audio Podcast for April 2009

I hope you enjoy it.

Best,

Jina

What’s it about? you ask, anticipating aromatic Tweets.

To quote several book sites: “As the world teeters on the brink of war in 1939, the privileged classes pursue the delights of the flesh in exclusive clubs. Lady Eve Marlowe possesses a treasure–an elixir of ancient origin with a power so great it sweeps her into a dangerous erotic game.”

 It was a different world back then before cell phones, the Internet–and Twitter.  What if I Twittered about what life was like when Cleopatra’s Perfume takes place (from the 1930s through the early 1940s) so that you, the reader, could get a better understanding of the world my heroine, Lady Eve Marlowe, lived in?
 

Think of it as a Twitter time machine…and you’re at the controls.

Best,

Jina

 Here are Tweets from 1939 when Cleopatra’s Perfume takes place:

 –You can buy a new 1939 Dodge sedan for $815–no GPS system or air bags back then, but a spare tire and bumpers were included and something new: safety glass.  Dodge was a sponsor of the Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour–the American Idol of its time. 

 –Give your dry, lifeless skin a boost with Palmolive soap made with palm and olive oils.  No surprise here since it says so in the name, though ads at the time claimed olive oil was the secret ingredient.

 –Make your teeth shine with Calox Powder–yes, powder, not toothpaste.  I call this early teeth whiteners.  FYI, the first toothpaste came in a jar in the 1870s, but the familiar toothpaste tube didn’t make the scene until 1892.

 –Try a new method of sanitary protection: Tampax.  This was a innovation that gave women the freedom, according to the ad, to wear sheer evening gowns without detection.  A month’s supply, a box containing 10 Tampax, costs 35 cents.   

–Write your next novel on a portable Smith & Corona typewriter with back spacer–Swinging Shift–84 characters for only $29.75.  The typewriter weighs only nine pounds.  Best feature about this typewriter: no Spam email to distract you!

 I so enjoyed writing this story about a woman looking for love in a time filled with danger and intrigue…3 men…3 loves…3 obsessions.

RT Rating:
Category: EROTICA
Publisher: SPICE
Published: April 2009
Type: Erotica Fiction

I’ve been working on a video for my new Spice release, Cleopatra’s Perfume, about a titled Englishwoman who has an insatiable appetite for sexual adventure in 1939 Europe.  What pictures could I use to evoke her story? I wondered, which takes place in that time when the world was teetering on the brink of war, but the Lady Eve doesn’t see it coming.

She’s unbelievably rich, beautiful and lonely…

I put together this collage of items belonging to her as she begins her journey in the duty-free port of Port Said, a city in Egypt which “harbors a white slave trade flourishing in its hidden places, bars, and houses where young girls languish and perish under the thumbs of men.”

Collage of items belonging to Lady Eve Marlowe

It all begins in a seedy bar when Lady Eve has her fortune told:

 “You will meet a man within a fortnight,” he insisted, “and his fire will peel the skin from your bones, making you lose all control–”

            I pulled my hand away.  “Sounds unpleasant.”  I tried to keep my voice steady, not let him see how his prediction affected me, nurtured the elusive dream I craved, but even as I said the words, my lower belly ached and {edited for explicit content}

            The fortune teller continued, “With him you will find immortality.” 

I pondered this, though not for long.  Immortality?  What nonsense.  What near eastern alchemy he was peddling I could only guess.  I doubted I could find a man to fulfill the incompleteness haunting me since my husband’s death and assuage my hunger for the pleasures long denied to me.  Still–

               “Where will I meet this man?” I had to ask, wanting to believe I could escape my loneliness through this pre-destined encounter.  I held my hands together in my lap to stop them from shaking.  If I found such a man in Port Said and found sexual pleasure with him, that would mean I’d crossed the line into another world.  I couldn’t go back.  I sensed I was at a dangerous impasse by snubbing the staid world of British royals, forcing me to face what I thought I’d left behind: My taste for the sweetest of tortures.  I’ll not regale you, dear reader, with details.  They will come later.” –from Chapter 2, Cleopatra’s Perfume

So begins the Lady Eve’s journey that will take her to Cairo, London then Berlin in the spring of 1941…

Best,

Jina