Guest Blogger: Joan Reeves

Posted on

Please welcome author Joan Reeves to the blog today. So glad to have her here with us and she has a giveaway for the lucky commenters.

ss_200px300p

Love At First Sight?

by Joan Reeves

 

What a treat to be on this blog that celebrates the often other-worldly realm of love. Don’t run away, but that’s not the kind of love story I write. My stories, full of romance and passion – not to mention sex and humor – depend only on the magic of love itself. That condition wherein a man and a woman discover that they are made for each other.

 

Ah, that kind of love is true magic as anyone who knows it will attest. Sometimes that love occurs in an instant. I know many couples who have been married for scores of years who said they took one look and knew in that instant that they were going to marry that person.

 

Head over heels in love at first sight. Every culture has an expression meaning love at first sight. In Italy, they call it colpo di fulmine which, roughly translated, means struck by a lightning bolt.

 

Does love at first sight really exist? Or is it a figment of our collective imagination? I think it exists, and there may be a sound physiological reason for love at first sight, but perhaps it should be called something else.

 

Exploring Love at First Sight

 

For my latest romantic, comedy Scents and Sensuality, I did a lot of research about the Science of Smell in relation to Sex Appeal. I’ve always been fascinated by smell. Maybe it’s because I had a mother who wore the most wonderful perfume. I can remember thinking she smelled better than any other person I knew. When she hugged me, the most wonderful fragrance wafted around us.

 

I couldn’t pronounce the name of my mother’s perfume then. I can now, but I won’t be purchasing the fragrance anytime soon. Mom’s favorite scent was by Lucien LeLong. The parfum came in a bottle as beautiful as the smell. Recently, I priced it online and was dismayed to discover it was $250.00 for a quarter ounce.

 

Perhaps that is what created my love for fine perfumes and my interest in the science of smell.

 

Smell, So Primitive and Powerful

 

Smell is the most primitive of all our senses. We inhale and odor molecules float into our noses, traveling back to the nasal cavity behind the bridge of the the nose. There, those odor molecules get absorbed by the mucosa containing receptor cells on which there are microscopic hairs called cilia. About 5 million of these receptor cells fire impulses to the olfactory bulb, or smell center, in the brain.

 

If you kill a brain neuron, it won’t re-grow. Neither will cells in the eyes or ears, but you grow new nasal neurons about every month. These neurons wave in the air much like sea anemones. When your olfactory bulb detects something, it signals your cerebral cortex and sends a message straight into your limbic system, that primitive, emotional part of the brain that houses your feelings and your desires.

 

Smell Differs

 

If a visual stimulation occurs, your brain immediately starts trying to process what you saw. The same thing occurs if you hear something. Your brain goes to work immediately to interpret the sound. That doesn’t happen when you smell something. You don’t need your brain to do anything. What you smell creates an immediate effect that needs no translation, thought, interpretation, or anything. The primitive part of your brain reacts immediately.

 

This is why you can smell something and immediately be transported to your grandmother’s front porch when she served hot cinnamon rolls on Saturday mornings when you visited. Smell is a sensory time machine. You smell, and bam! You remember an event, and the way you felt during that event. You can see it so clearly. Memories triggered by smell are sharper than other memories.

 

Love At First Smell

 

In Scents and Sensuality, heroine Amanda Whitfield, is a perfume designer. What a great career for a romance novel heroine because smell is so closely linked to sexual attraction. Scent goes hand in hand with sensuality. Knowledge of smell and sexual attraction is all about the science of pheromones, those below-conscious smells we all breathe in without knowing it.

 

When Amanda explains smell and the science of sex appeal to her Mr. Right, I hope you’ll find it as hilarious –  and sexy –  as I thought it was when I wrote the book. Yes, it is certainly true that love at first sight has little to do with sight and much to do with smell.

 

In fact, if you want to know how to attract a member of the opposite sex, be sure and read Scents and Sensuality!

 

Available at all ebook sellers including:

 

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/SCENTS-and-SENSUALITY-ebook/dp/B00BTIDUHW/

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/scents-and-sensuality/id622554909?ls=1

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/scents-and-sensuality

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/scents-and-sensuality-joan-reeves/1046247317

 

Book Giveaway

 

I’m giving away free copies of this romantic comedy. Make a comment and leave your email address, and I’ll send you a coupon for a free copy of Scents and Sensuality.

 

 

 

Bio: Joan Reeves writes Romantic Comedy. She’s multi-published in print, ebooks, and audiobooks. Her first ebook Just One Look was in the Top 100 Amazon Bestsellers, for more than 3 months, and she has followed that up with 7 more novels and 1 nonfiction. Look for her next book Cinderella BlueBook 2: San Antone Two-Step, in October/November 2013.

 

 

 

2 Replies to “Guest Blogger: Joan Reeves”

Leave a Reply to Joan Reeves Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *