Litquake video - Oral Sex!

Well it's been ages since I have been able to put up a blog. Sorry. Life is just life sometimes. I have been busy, busy, busy enjoying myself. I have also been writing for two anthologies that are being published in December.

Last week, I was honoured to be invited to read at Litquake (an amazing San Francisco literary festival) as part of fantastic social network A Band of Women's anthology series, Nothing But the Truth ..." about Transitions. For some unaccountable reason, I decided to write about sex, not knowing at the time I would then have to read an extract from it in front of 150 + complete strangers in a posh art gallery in the heart of San Francisco! That'll teach me. My wonderful husband videoed me and, due to popular demand, I am publishing it below.

After my reading, which was wedged in between heart-rending readings from a variety of very accomplished writers about women refugees in Afghanistan, children with autism, gender transition and infertility, and made me feel like I was a bit of light, fluffy relief in the interval, I was hugely relieved when some people came up to me afterwards and asked if I had a book for sale because they had enjoyed my reading so much. I am now feeling very motivated to finish my memoir.

R is for Ripples (by Maria Dudley)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated here or it would also be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog. Thanks and look forward to reading your blog.

Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

It was a rather ripply spring, that spring when I was fourteen.  It wasn’t just because of all the sailing I had been doing that season.  The breeze on the San Francisco Bay certainly did cause the water to ripple as my dinghy cut through the small waves.  Every Sunday my junior sailing program met for the day for instruction and racing.  I had been doing this ever since I was ten. 

But that spring was different.  I know it sounds silly, but do you remember that feeling when you had your first crush?  Ripples going through you, like little electric currents?  His name was Seadon, Swedish Seadon, another fourteen-year-old in my sailing program. 

After a long day of sailing, the two of us wandered into the small boatyard after it had gotten dark.  (Our parents were still lingering at the bar of our yacht club.) The halyards clanged in the breeze against the metal masts of the boats parked on their trailers.  The stars twinkled above us.  He led me behind one of those boats, and pulling me closer, kissed me. 

Ripples.


For 20 years, Maria Dudley has been an elementary and middle school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She recently opened up her own business, offering writing classes to home schooled students.  She finds that most of her own writing gets erased from the whiteboard she uses in her classroom, but hopes someday to submit her stories somewhere.

B is for Bug (by me!)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Today is my turn! I decided to write a limerick and I also recorded an audio too. Enjoy :)



Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

My recording of Bug Poem (download)

A British divorcee called Claire

Sent an email one night for a dare

To her first love at school

Who’d been horny and cool

And no man since then could compare.

~~~

When they first met he had a nickname

She wondered if it would be the same

He quickly replied

Bursting with pride

He was still known as Bug, he proclaimed.

~~~

The years apart had been more than thirty

But they found that they both were still flirty

She’d forgotten that Bug

Was not like a slug

Coz when it came to romance he was dirty.

~~~

Two years later in a town by the sea

He declared his love and proposed on one knee

She jumped up and down

With the ring he had found

And with no thought accepted with glee.

~~~

 From her family it was very hard to part

But she needed to follow her heart

To live in the sun

Sounded plenty of fun

Bug had always been Right From The Start.

~~~

A-Z Challenge: B - Bug

B is for Bug

Left: Bug

I first laid eyes on him when I was at boarding school. I was only thirteen years old and had never had a boyfriend. He was a couple of years older and had an air of confidence and experience about him which made the age difference seem more than that. He looked so cool, with a faded denim jacket casually worn in place of his school blazer, the top few buttons of his white shirt undone, and fashionable black boots under the school uniform trousers. He was small and skinny and I remember him staring at me, all floppy black hair and intense brown eyes looking out under enormous bushy eyebrows, like a giant hairy caterpillar crawling across his forehead. I wasn't the least surprised when he said his name was Bug.