Cris Anson is my guest today as her hero, Adam Putnam gets his cards read. Here is what Cris says about herself :
“After the death of my husband of 22 years, it took me three years to come out of my grief and feel alive and open to new experiences. Now I
consider myself a senior citizen and “cougar” —hey, one is never too old to dream about, or experience, romance. I’ve been writing since the ‘90s and read voraciously across all genres. I enjoy my garden during warm days and have just discovered Zumba for fun exercising. My wish list includes sleeping on the floor of the Grand Canyon and dancing a tango or two with Gilles Marini.”
Meet James Adam Putnam, the hero of Cris Anson’s latest. This one is a very hot historical erotic romance. Do you think you can handle the heat? Now, join me as I read for Adam, a perplexed Puritan dealing with some complicated issues. And don’t forget to visit Cris on her site.
1. How do you see the people around you?
The card here is the card of the man who has withdrawn from society for some reason. The Hermit has lessons he needs to learn. It may be that you need to go down into the people to learn from them.
If you have been removed from those around you, Adam, it is time to reach out. This can be very hard to do particularly if you have always done for yourself. People, to you, seem to need guidance but that means joining them, doesn’t it?
Adam’s Response:
Yea, I have become a hermit, cutting myself off from Mercy and Seth, from my father and my brother—all of whom I hold close to my heart—because of my inner torment. The pain in my soul at this loss has nearly brought me to my knees. Even after I fled the town and all those I loved, I held myself aloof from those who surrounded me, because I could not allow my love for Mercy to surface. But with your encouragement, perhaps I can reach out and attain my dream.
2. How are you seen by the people around you?
The injured warrior is at the heart of this card. The 4 of Swords is a card that indicates solitude and perhaps a removal from your faith. It could be that you have experienced something that has made you question that faith. Someone around you wants to offer you comfort but is afraid of your response.
You need to realize that your external battles may be over, but you have more spiritual struggles ahead. Let those around you guide you. There is a deep strong woman who has been watching you for a while now.
Adam’s Response:
Perhaps people could see me as an injured warrior, battling my inner demons and suffering such solitude as can scarce be borne. Even though Mercy and Seth love me and fervently wish my return, they have respected my need to do the honorable thing. I long for the strength to ignore society’s strictures against loving the wife of another, and even more so against the loving of the husband. Yet I know Mercy has the strength to love me and Seth both, if I could only be brave enough to follow my yearning heart.
3. What is your most important goal?
Wow. Death is a hard card as an important goal. I think this has several layers of meaning for you, Adam.
The first is the physical act of bringing Death. You have seen a lot of that and possibly been on the giving end as well. It’s a harsh life and it will change a man.
The next layer is about learning to change yourself. You have to burn through some of your own hidebound notions so that you can grow.
Your goal is to change something profound in your world. This could be a new way of thinking and getting others to see it your way as well. It will not be easy, Adam, but you can do this. Death is a card of incredible inner strength.
Adam’s Response:
Yea, Arwen, you depict me well, I think. But in honesty, I draw my strength from those I love and who continued to love me with such steadfastness and resilience even when I turned away. It was not an easy road any of us chose, but I would travel it again in a heartbeat. Perhaps, then, I am the man I have become because, in the end, none of us were prepared to settle for half a life. That is what Mercy and Seth taught me, and thanks to God that I embraced it with them.
4. Where do you get your strength from?
Your father or a father-figure (leader?) gives you strength. Either in being like him or being so unlike him. You want to show people that you know how to be a good ruler/leader. It is important to you.
You are an incredibly virile, passionate man. Much of your strength comes from harnessing that energy for yourself. Remember that sharing your passion can also bring you strength.
Adam’s Response:
I owe a great debt to the blacksmith who opened his home and heart to me and taught me a trade, a trade in which I soon eclipsed my Teacher and Master. Yet I found the need to leave and find my own way and, more so, the strength to follow my heart. Sharing my passion and my love with both Seth and Mercy has made me stronger, because I have fought my demons and bested them. I learned to embrace love and life and, in doing so, found the enduring happiness which had so long eluded me.
5. Why do you want to be remembered?
For taking chances. For choosing the right path. The Fool is the card of innocence as well. I think you are a protector of innocence, Adam. But this card really is about those chances we take and the optimism that we will do the right thing. You have a desire to be remembered as someone who created their own life through chances and gambles…not with other people’s lives though. This is about your own need to expand your horizons.
Adam’s Response:
Ruefully I say the innocence I had been protecting was mine. I did not want to harm others by committing what many consider a sin, but my need for Mistress Mercy had overcome all my objections, all my reservations. In the end, yes, I chose the path of loving both Mercy and Seth without reserve—I could not do otherwise. My artistry in ironwork will stand long after I am dust. But my descendents will remember me as someone who took the greatest gamble of all. The gamble of opening myself to love.
Book Blurb: Widowed Mercy Walcott is too wanton for the repressive Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1694, so when she gets flogged in the village square for sexual congress outside matrimony, her father forces her to marry the blacksmith, Seth Burroughs. Strong, virile, dominant and insatiable, Seth tames her. Up to a point.
The young acolyte, Adam Putnam, falls hard for the delectable beauty he’s forced to subdue while the Reverend doles out her punishment. Watching her bare ass getting redder and her delectable thighs wetter, he experiences his first
orgasm under his churchly robes—in full view of the citizenry.
Mercy remembers the feel of him as she squirmed away from the whip and against his sinewy body. She inveigles Seth to indenture him as an apprentice. Adam is torn between his carnal desire for the woman he’s coming to love and his innate scruples. How can he withstand temptation when Seth encourages his wife to make love to Adam? And how can Adam look his friend in the eye after he does?
You can read an excerpt here.