Did you ever like to play pretend when you were a kid? Get dressed up in Mom’s high heels and beads and clomp around the house affecting a British accent with an aristocratic nose in the air? Or sink your feet into Dad’s rubber boots and chase your siblings, yelling, “Fee Fi, Fo, Fum?” Did you turn curtain 
rods into fencing swords and Zorro the heck out of anyone who’d play with you? Did you ever throw a blanket on the floor, imagine that it was a raft and you were Tom Sawyer (I was a tomboy, Becky Thatcher was boring) and you and Huck were navigating the mighty Mississippi? Did you memorize the words to Romeo and Juliet and go around saying, “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” Did you write plays and force the neighborhood kids to act out the parts with you?
No? Okay, so maybe that was only me.
But my heroine, Roxie Stanley, from Zero Control was a weird kid like me (and you too if you’d just 
admit it. I know how you are. I’m an introvert with a vivid imagination just like you.) She lives too much in her head, indulging in fantasies. And fantasies are all they are…until her boss sends her to get the lowdown on his competition, Eros Airline and “adults only” vacation resorts. At Eros, Roxie meets her match, a man who not only indulges her most forbidden fantasies, but takes things to a whole new level. Too bad Dougal Lockhart just happens to be an undercover air marshal out to nab himself a corporate spy.
There’s lots of pretending, wish fulfillment and erotic fantasies in this one. So come on, get your game on, join Roxie and Dougal as they learn firsthand how dangerously fun it is to live their deepest fantasies.
Oh and while we’re at it, fess up. What was it you used to pretend to be when you were a kid?
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I liked to play cowboys and Indians and be the damsel in distress and let all the boys come rescue me. I also played restaurant where I was the owner and chef–still love food way too much–, and the only other pretend game I remember playing a lot was Rock Band. We’d put on the Beatles album (oh, that dates me, doesn’t it) get the broom and yard stick out (our guitars) and lip sync to the songs, rockin out like crazy.
I hadn’t thought about those days in along time Thanks Lori!
Good to see you here and can’t wait to read ZERO CONTROL!
HEY LORI,
GROWING UP WITH 3 BROTHERS WHO HAD THEIR FRIENDS OVER DAILY, I WOULD PRETEND THAT I HAD A SISTER TO DO FUN THINGS WITH.
I always played house with my brother. We also used to act out kids shows we used to watch. We went on many adventures using our bikes as horses lol My brother and I had big imaginations. Used to use the laundry baskets as boats and we couldn’t touch the carpet or the sharks would get us. We would think all sorts things. It was a lot of fun, some fond memories.
We used to play Doctor/Nurse when I received a dr. kit for Christmas one year.
Me and my brother used to play house and I remember making cabbage rolls from mud and wrapping them in the liners from soup cans- this was done outside.
My cousin and I would play school and take turns being the teacher. Her Mom would say ‘haven’t you had enough of school for today’? LOL.
We used to play house. Mom would get so mad at all the mud pies. My brothers loved wrestling and of course I was the guineu pig. I really loved getting quilts and putting them up like tents and pretend we were hiding from the bad guys.
Wow Lori! I just started Zero Control…. YUM!
This blog brought back one reallly fun memory for me. I grew up on a dead end block on Long Island, NY and every year all 13 houses participated in a marathon block party full of relay races, lots of food and drink and tuns of fun and every year all the girls on the block and one poor boy we forced to join us would do a rendition of the latest hot musical from Broadway. My favorite was Grease! Of course we just knew we rocked it more then the original cast ever could….
Jean
ps: Just ordered Sweathearts Knitting Club … I’m stalking our mailman!
My friends and I played house all the time when we were kids and then when my mother gave me some old prom dresses we were brides.
I always acted out my fav cartoon characters with my friends… we would be Smurfs, Voltron, Thundercats… then I started to pretend to be a teacher… I created tests for my sisters and friends and had them do them!
For me I loved getting lost in the world of books. I loved to read and get lost in the world that the story built. I also built stories for my dolls.
There were five of us kids so there was a lot of make believe. I found out early that you don’t take high heels out in the front yard after it rains, you sink cause the heels punch right through. We had pretend wedding ceremonies. I married just about all the guys in my neighborhood. With four younger brothers I played match box cars and made whole cities in the dirt. And the tree in the front yard was a favorite, anything could happen there and when I climbed high enough I could see the screen of the drive in theater.
When I was younger I used to walk around the house with a towel wrapped around my head and pretend I was a nun!?!?
We definitely pretended to be princesses and walked around in my mom’s high heels. I also played cops and robbers with my friends.
My friends and I played house in a tree house.
We always played secret agent. We had this very cool radio that turned into a machine gun, a camera that became a pistol, and (dating myself here) something called “6th finger” — it looked like your index finger, you held it between your thumb and index finger, but it was really a small pistol. Dating myself even more, I still know what U.N.C.L.E. and THRUSH mean, and I know Illya Kuryakin’s middle name. Yikes, I’m old!
I used to love cutting out people and things from the sears catalogue and creating whole towns of families and using each of them to act out their interactions and roles with each other. The towns were complete with the usual grocery stores, school, police, etc. I would spend hours on end with my paper people before carefully packing each with their family and things and putting thein a shoe box until the next day when I would yet again layout the town, families and pick up from where we left off the day before. It was vicariously living the perfect life, with the perfect families, and perfect people. It was my way of sharing in this perfect world I created, which was so very different than my real one.
Lori,
This is a great exercise. Thank you.
As I dig deep into the corners of my mind the memories appear to me as if it were yesterday, even some 40 years later. My long term memory still works good even after sleeping!
Pretending and make believe are something as children we do so easily.
My favorite was the love scene from Cleopatra. I was Elizabeth Taylor just so Richard Burton as Mark Anthony could kiss me, I am sure I floated on a cloud every time. Hmm this is a ten on my childhood romance list.
I had a magic blanket that would become the most magnificent robe when I acted out a scene from Macbeth or Mid Summer Night Dream.
I used a reel to reel tape recorder when I was prerecording shows as the local radio announcer. I spent time editing by cutting out the tape I did not want and used scotch tape to join the pieces back together. I would play the latest hit songs from the Beatles, Beach Boys and Jan & Dean. Oh let’s not forget the Monkeys, oh Davy.
Using my Dads classroom I would teach my student the next lessons. The blackboard became the tapestry my teachings. Sometimes I even got to use the typewriter and I would create the next Shakespeare Tragedy.
Tomorrow with breakfast I am taking two helpings of imagination just to get me going!
Hi Lori, I didn’t really play many make believe games when I was young. I was just too busy being a “real” mom taking care of my siblings. I really wish that I had that. I have your current release sitting here on one of my TBR piles…yep, I have a couple…one in the bedroom and one in the living room. I really love the premise of this story. I find that nowadays, I wished that I lived in the land of make believe.
Peace and love,
Paula R.
i
your books
i just bought the blaze book on eharlequin.com
I used to pretend I was a librarian. I glued date due stickers in the backs of my books and everything. The only problem was I would never loan my books out to anyone . . . they were too precious to me and I didn’t trust anyone else to take care of them as well as I did.
My wild sister and I had so much fun when we were kids…we played at being Indians, Gladiators and Gypsies!
We didn’t play make-believe very often, we mostly played outside riding bikes, and playing games. When we did play make-believe it was a few of my friends and I playing house, taking care of our “babies”.
I have twin brothers, who are 7 years younger than me – my own live baby dolls to play dress up with. I just didn;t like the real diaper changing – back then they didn’t make pampers.
A Navy pilot.
I can still remember the moment when my cousins-all boys-said girls couldn’t fly Navy planes. I’m showing my age here. I was crushed.
Ain’t it great times have changed?
Hope I’m not too late to get in.
I would pretend to be Julie Newmar as Catwoman from the Batman TV show. I just loved her and I thought she was such a cool character at that time to go against Batman even though she cared for him. I know the acting was cheesy but I still watched them all the time.
In our basement we had a great big Chalkboard like we had in school and I loved to play teacher with my younger brothers and my friends.. I alway though I would be a teacher some day, but it did not turn out that way.. But we had many happy hours with this make believe game as kids..
I wanted to be a detective. Blame it on Nancy Drew.
I even made a little badge and “borrowed” from my brother one of his cowboy guns.
My pretending in my childhood centered around the fact that I wanted to be
a movie star, a singer and dancer. Of course that never happened, but there
was much fun in the pretense. We even acted out some of the movies we
had seen! LOL
Pat Cochran
My sister and I would play with our barbies and ken dolls. I’d always pretend that barbie would be in trouble and ken would always come to her rescue. The catch always was that barbie was us. It’s fun when you get to play pretend because as an adult you don’t get to that often. Lori I got Zero Control as a gift for my birthday and can’t wait to read it.
Michelle Schmoll
I used to pretend I was a house wife! With you know, kids (dolls), and a husband (nonexistant haha) to cook for and all that!
I used to pretend that I was a teacher, and when I grew up I became one!
Actually, I guess I still play pretend as a grown-up… I am the heroine in every book I read!
I read when I was younger and then stopped for a while and started back with a vengenance….when I was younger and reading, I put myself into the character of whatever book I happened to be reading at the time…I was Nancy Drew several times!!