Author: kira a. gold

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Lost Cherry

lost cherry edge
Grainy pic of cerise Lost Cherry photo, decant vial and my reading glasses, which I lose at least once a day.

Well named–there’s absolutely nothing virginal about this stuff.

Maraschino stem teasing over a powder puff of musk, cyanide sweet foreplay for hours, ending in a melting dish of Ben&Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream.
Pure sex.

This song is also pure sex.

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Dragon’s Blood

spirtual sky dragons blood edgy
Roll-on oil against a tie-dyed bedspread

Spiritual Sky oils are an iconic staple of head shops and non-profit food co-ops everywhere–Strawberry, Rose and China Rain are on the altar of every wicca-chick from the East Village to Haight Ashbury.
Cheap and artificial and easily scrubbable, they are the washable kid’s markers of perfumery.

Dragon’s Blood is a resinous dark musk with some wannabe myrrh, sweetened with benzoin. Great fun for a young changeling on a pagan exploration.

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This is cute.

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What Fragrance would that Fictional Character Wear?

(Scentbird asked me to write an article for them! The original post is over here.)

What Fragrance would that Fictional Character Wear?

Authors are always looking for inspiration—from real life, from TV shows, from other books. Many of us make chapter playlists or cast their book as a movie while writing. As a romance author, I often look to perfume or cologne for a deeper sense of my characters’ personality.

Scentbird’s samples are the perfect amount to write a few chapters in a new point-of-view. Here are some of my favorite romance archetypes—matched up to a scent that tells us more about them—from the Scentbird subscription catalogue:

spicySpicy

Our Heroine, intelligent and curious, armed with lowered lashes and snappy comebacks. She keeps a Swiss Army knife in her fox-shaped purse, and laughs at the weather. She’s a Veronica Mars or Lucy from The Hating Game kind of girl.
TRULYjoyful by Kate Spade suits her perfectly, with orange zest and sweet peppercorns and candied ginger, warm and breezy and bright.

woodsyWoodsy

The Brooding Hero with a pedigree and money he tries to hide behind hard work, tough callouses yet soft underneath, hard spine and melting heart. He’s the Mr. Darcy type, or T’Challa from Black Panther.
He’d wear John Varvatos, leather polished with amber, sweetened with vanilla and balsam fir needles in the spring.

floralFloral

No good story is complete without a gorgeous World-wise Woman With Impeccable Style—à la Jada Pinkett Smith’s Rome from Magic Mike XXL—who offers our hero stinging advice and smirks when he blushes.

Bright Crystal by Versace has that kind of elegance, peonies and pearls and a high slit skirt, tea served in a lotus garden.

fruityFruity

The Quirky Underestimated Sidekick who cleans up nice out of the lab coat and saves the day with science—Sherlock’s Molly Hooper, or James Bond’s Q.

I am Trash by Etat Libre d’Orange is that clever, taking the peels left behind and turning them into an elixir of apples—pink blossoms, ripe fruit and woody stems.

citrusCitrus

The Sympathetic Bartender, the one who listens too close—breath brushing your skin—but you don’t move away. They could be the villain, but we won’t know until the end. Starring David Bowie, or Ruby Rose.
Juliette has a gun’s Moscow Mule is their signature cocktail: a double twist of lime over ginger ale and crushed ice, slid across a hardwood bar with a wink.

sweetSweet

The Little Sister who causes trouble everywhere she goes—sometimes even on purpose—wears vintage silk skirts and glitter dust on her cheeks. She’s a grown up Luna Lovegood, a bohemian Alice Cullen from Twilight.

Get A Room by Confessions of a Rebel, with its lemon cream candy pillow-talk vibe, matches her flirtatious nature.

freshFresh

Our hero has a brief rival, the Unassuming Nice Guy, who steps in with a joke and a sweet crooked smile. (In our screenplay, we write the part with John Cho in mind.) His eyes whisper promises, but he doesn’t voice them.
He wears Versace’s Eros, cool spearmint and bright ambroxan, sweetened with tonka and spiked with vetiver, but he leaves lonely, until the third story in the series.

What perfume or cologne would your favorite characters wear?
And if only we could scent the pages!

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L’eau en Blanc

blanc edgy
Sunlight and shadows through a frosted and white version of the Lolita Lempicka apple, with pink juice–one of LL’s prettiest bottles.

A pretty lover you grow out of quickly.

Baby pink powder puff of irises, maturing slightly to raspberries and flirty cherries, with an almost clashing note of L.L.’s signature green violets, just to make one stand up and take notice.

A long finish with hydrangea musk and artificial vanilla, and a touch of regret.

I liked it for a while.

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This is fun–

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Velvet

velvet edgyVelvet takes the roughest wool sweater and turns it into the smoothest silk.

Opens with almond, coconut and clove, but immediately blends into hot chocolate, with a faint whiff of patchouli rising with the steam.
Half an hour in, rose blooms with an intriguing hit of root beer. Eventually settles into vanilla and sweet woods, with a cool blue ambroxy undertone, and the most comfortable sillage ever.

So well named, and perfectly unisex. This stuff could turn alpha stock market bulls into teddy bears, and the sharpest battle-axes into kittens.

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Pear

pear edgesCrisp roadside pear slices and lemonade, then a big swallow of juniper gin that fades into the musk at the end.
Sunny day pretty, but there’s a haze underneath, like diesel fumes.

Not for me, but I would crawl inside the clothes of the man wearing it.

Here’s Dwight Yoakum’s hit from the album Three Pears.

 

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Fleur Narcotique

Fleur Narcotique edges

This one makes me feel clumsy, like that time I had a Bellini at the sushi cafe. The glass was garnished with jasmine and so delicate I was afraid I’d break it.

Starts out watery–peonies in the rain.
Peaches bloom for an hour or two with a bit of orange flower and breezy musk, then woody bottom notes fade into the skin.

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Si Lolita Eau de Minuit

White cat sniffing dark purple and gold four leaf clover shaped bottle.

Gets better after an hour.

(The guy called it a mean old lady perfume.)

Edit – 2/24/23

I was so hoping this would be as fun as the dark flankers to the original Lolita Lempicka.

Si Noir is a lot richer and sweeter on the bottom, but still has that pink pepper and sweet pea sharp pinch on top and the patchouli cigarette ash in the middle, but I’m not willing to wait for it.

Better than the first, but it’s no Minuit Noir.

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“Mean old lady caused me to weep and moan…”