I’m a car nut. Certifiably insane. I have always loved sports cars. My very first dream car was
a 1957 Thunderbird in pea-green with a white hardtop. (You know the one with the portholes in the top). That dream quickly fell victim to my dad’s bank account.

In the name of my obsession, I have owned a series of roadsters: a candy-apple-red 1964 Jaguar
E-type; a yellow 240Z, a British Racing Green MGB-GT (not a convertible), a dark blue Triumph TR-6 with British flags on the flanks. Then the convertibles disappeared and I didn’t own another sports car until Mazda introduced the Miata in 1989. Much to my then-husband’s dismay and disapproval, I bought a red Miata. After my divorce, my next Miata was a Mica-Merlot—a beautiful deep burgundy with saddle-tan interior and mica paint. The third Miata was a 2005, burnt orange, MazdaSpeed turbo-charged critter.

That brings me to current day and my little Z-3. I found the car with a shotgun Google search
in Pennsylvania. I flew to Mechanicsburg and drove the vehicle back to Houston. This was a utopic journey in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, and I’ll never forget the experience—just me and Z3PO on the road again each morning.

For fun, Saturday a couple of friends and I went to the BMWUSA Team Drive--basically, a test drive, without the sales pressure. They drove a 650i convertible, but I thought the car too big for my tastes, so I wriggled my way into getting to drive a black-on-black hardtop convertible M3.

When I first asked to switch to an M3, the salesman apologized that he only had a manual transmission M3. Fine that’s what I drive! And Black Beauty was fast as a scalded cat. The salesman said “kick it” and I did. I don’t think he expected a lady of my years to really kick it or to downshift! I had a great time. Does anyone else just go driving for the fun of it? I could spend a few happy Saturdays test driving different cars.

I’m not only a nut, I’m a writer (NOTE: These may be synonyms). My latest release Night Before Doomsday is now available from Amazon. And under the Nom de Plume Bianca Swan, The Wild Rose Press published two erotic romance novellas: Celestial Sin and Hot Spanish Nights. Check out Bianca’s blog for trailers, excerpts and blurbs (as well as a free read).

It was a dark and stormy day.

Or at least by the time we left Bryan, Texas and the MessinaHof Winery. Our car club zipped along the curvy (for Texas) roads from Houston to Bryan, 90-mile trip, yesterday to have lunch and a wine tasting at the winery.

There were long straight-aways on the road and at one time I got to push my little roadster, Z3PO, to 100 mph. He has a lot of get-up-and-go, and I had a great time downshifting on the curves. We went through real horse country, and my co-pilot Beda and I found it difficult to maintain the pace when we wanted to look at the paints, palominos and greys dotting the stretches of green fields. There was one particularly gorgeous farm that I would have loved to own. The house was made of stone, as was the barn, and the fences were pristine white, but I know what it takes to maintain a place like that. I bred, trained and showed Andalusian horses for thirteen years.

At one point, we had left part of our caravan of 9 cars (there were 50 in the group) behind and stopped in a quaint little town to wait for them. The assembly of fine motor cars was divided into groups of 8-9 with a lead driver and a tail gunner, bringing up the rear.
When we resumed, one of our members almost backed into me. I swerved, glad that zippy Z is so agile, because I just got him back from an accident that occurred on evil Friday the Thirteenth. I started to wonder if he was wearing a sign that read “hit me.” Then I was told that one of my headlights wasn’t working. Great. Back to the shop on Monday. The body shop disassembled the car. It is their duty to put all his parts back correctly.

We arrived at the winery. The restaurant was quite elegant with stained glass window of vines and grapes and atmospheric lighting but…they must have known we were a rowdy crowd and we were seated in a large room at the back of the restaurant. The food was excellent and the wine good. I had an appetizer of calamari, the main course seared tuna with a spicy red-pepper sauce with a rather nice Riesling. Dessert was Tiramisu (yummy!)

Dark clouds had begun to shadow the sky. Beda and I decided to skip the tour and tasting in the interest of time—and being caught in a thunderstorm with one headlight. So we raced the storm back to Houston and outran it by a couple of hours.

It was a spectacular day out, but made me really miss the country and the wildflowers and the horses. I’m something I never thought I’d be, a city dweller, but I came home and worked on rewrites of my next erotic novella from The Wild Rose Press, working title Eden, but I think I’m going to rename it Do Angels Dream?

Speaking of writing—I have a release date for my (writing as Bianca Swan) erotic novella Hot Spanish Nights from The Wild Rose Press. October 29, Halloween weekend! And it’s not a paranormal romance as most of my work is. Below is the blurb for Hot Spanish Nights:

Southern vixen Erica DeLongpre journeys to Spain to find the horse of her dreams, never expecting to find a man capable of stirring her sexual awareness. Damián Xérès, a renowned bullfighter is deliciously skilled on a horse—and in bed. But a woman from Damian's past rattles Erica's confidence and threatens the very essence of her trip. With Lucia waiting for the slightest chink in her armor, Erica can't help wonder what lies ahead in those Hot Spanish Nights.

(Photo is Z3PO in the NC mountains)

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine and I participated in a Gimmick Rally sponsored by the Jaguar Club of Houston. Beda owns the Jag—a sea frost green beasty she calls Catnip. Her license plate is STRAY1 because she got so lost in a real rally once that she got the “Stray Cat Award.”

I have no sense of direction. Left/right/east/west are just words to me. I do know up from down however. (I probably should write I HAVE NO SENSE OF DIRECTION in capital letters). The reason for this tidbit of information is that Beda drove and I navigated. So you can imagine my terror that we would never make the end of the rally.

In a Gimmick Rally, you aren’t running time v. speed v. distance as in a normal rally. You are given a sheet of directions—Turn right at Royal Drilling (which may be a sign on a post or an actual structure). You are also given a list of questions to complete as you go on your merry (and fast if Beda is driving) way. Example: On what road can you buy goats? You are scored on the answers to your questions and your odometer reading (to see how many times you got off course).
Beda blew past the very first turn, and we spent so much time driving up and down this one street that the residents thought we lived there. But then we retraced out steps and got back on course, thinking that we had blown the odometer part of the rally, but just having fun with the top down and the wind in our hair. Beda laughs a lot, and with me as a navigator, I suspect she thought it would take a GPS to get us to the barbecue restaurant at the end of the rally. In Texas, it always seems to be a barbecue place!

Now the amazing fact is that we made it to the end. The incredible thing is that we won third! With me navigating! I still haven’t gotten over the shock.
We received a carry bag with goodies: a Jaguar pin, 2 Jaguar hats, a club patch. The fun thing is taking my car in for service wearing one of the Jag hats. It’s a sports car, too, and the techs give me wondering looks.

There’s a car club for almost every make—enjoying camaraderie with people with the same passion—and other fun events like slaloms (running as fast as you can in and out cones set up in a challenging course) and autocross (running as fast as you can around a course with real curves and straight aways).
Cruising top back in the country top down, barbecue and a third place win. My idea of a great day.

As you can see, the cars in the photo are not Jags. I didn’t have a picture of Catnip, so I am posting a picture of 3 little Z-3’s. The gray one is Z3PO, my handsome boy.

I think it was Confucius (and not Oscar Wilde) who said that "One picture is worth a thousand words," or maybe it was Woody Allen...whatever... I'm going to let the pix I took on our "little" drive (1042 miles in 1.5 days) speak for us:

1. View from the seat of Z3PO
2. Linda feeding Z3PO
3. Riverview from hotel in Li'l Rock
4. More riverview
5. Houston seen from the freeway
6. Me in the pool
7. Beach in Galveston
8. Me contemplating the shore (notice TWRP cover T-shirt)
9. Linda contemplating the ocean
10. More beach