Welcome special guest: author Lisabet Sarai

Foreign Affairs By Lisabet Sarai
     I want to start by thanking C.R. for giving me the opportunity to meet some of her readers here at her blog. I thought I'd use this chance to talk about one of my life's passions - travel - and how it relates to my writing.
     Anyone who's even slightly familiar with me or my writing knows that I'm a travel junkie. I've been to every continent except Australia and Antarctica. I'd rather take a trip than own a car, or a house, or a fancy smart phone, and my husband feels the same way. Nothing turns us on like the chance to set foot in a new country and experience a new culture.
     Needless to say, my travel mania spills over into my fiction. I've set novels in Thailand (Raw Silk), England (Ruby's Rules), and Guatemala (Serpent's Kiss). My short stories might take you to Prague, Provence, Amsterdam, Laos, London, or Bangkok, not to mention New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Minneapolis or Omaha, Nebraska. (Hey, exoticism is in the eye of the beholder!)
     Muse It Hot Publishing recently released another of my travel tales, this one set in Cambodia, among the ruins of Angkor. Citadel of Women draws heavily on my memories of the voyage we took half a dozen years ago to see the fabled remnants of the great Khmer empire. The plot and the characters are purely imaginary, but the tropical landscapes and the marvelous sights come from my own experience.

     Citadel of Women is a cross-cultural love story, though not, strictly speaking, a romance. Doa George is a bisexual New Yorker who's never visited Asia. When her female lover severs their relationship just before a long-planned trip to Angkor Wat, Doa stubbornly decides to travel alone. The magnificent temples and palaces from the long-lost Khmer civilization do little to heal the rift in her heart. Che, the mercurial young man serving as her tour guide, senses her loneliness and offers her comfort and passion. Their connection is far more than physical – but how can two people from such different worlds have a future?
     The path along which Che leads Doa and her fellow tour members mirrors my own steps. He starts at the gates of Angkor Thom, a moated metropolis that in the thirteenth century was the largest urban center in the world, with more than a million inhabitants. Images of the founder, King Jayavarman VII, adorn the city gates, which are precisely aligned to the points of the compass.

     Within the precincts, both we and Doa visit the ruined Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King, the state temples of Phimeanakas and Baphuon, and the magnificent Bayon temple, adorned with dozens of serene faces simultaneously representing both the Buddha and great King himself.

     Of course the most famous and imposing edifice in the region is the enormous Angkor Wat complex. Doa visits it at dawn, following decades of tourist tradition. My husband refused to get up that early, especially when he felt the only reason to do so was the fact that this was what everyone else was doing. (He's definitely not a morning person and a bit of a rebel besides.) Even at the respectable hour of ten AM, the temple was amazing.

     The heart of my tale, though, unfolds in the lovely temple of Banteay Srey, a thirty minute drive from Siem Reap (the modern town closest to Angkor). This monument was perhaps my favorite sight on the trip.  The temple has been dubbed the "Citadel of Women" because it is fashioned of warm pink sandstone, rather than the cold gray granite of most other Angkor edifices, and because it is decorated with many sculptures and reliefs of buxom goddesses (asparas and devatas).

     Unlike the massive buildings closer to Angkor Thom, Banteay Srey was built to a smaller scale - a woman's scale. It features gloriously detailed carvings and lovely, graceful towers.

     My goal in writing Citadel of Women was to lead my readers on a dual journey: a real world trip to view one of the wonders of the world, and a voyage into the heart. It's a story about love and loss, about passion and the distance even the most intense emotional and physical connections cannot bridge. If you're interested, you can read a PG-rated excerpt at http://www.lisabetsarai.com/citadelex.html. The story itself is sexually explicit but a far cry from the playful free-for-all you'll find in some erotica (including my own). If I've succeeded in my intentions, Citadel of Women will both excite and move you. And it might just make you want to embark on some foreign adventures of your own.
     Thanks again, C.R., for having me by! For more about me, my work, my travels and my peculiarities, please visit my website, Lisabet's Fantasy Factory (http://www.lisabetsarai.com) and my blog, Beyond Romance (http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com).
     ~ Lisabet Sarai