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Philosophical Quotes from "Fireflies"

Below are some of my favorite philosophical quotes from the novella, “Fireflies.”  Although the story contains some explicit erotic scenes, it does raise many questions about the meaning of life.

Pierre is a dreamer and is satisfied with keeping his fantasies nothing but that. My dreams become goals and I learn to make them real... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

She doesn’t snarl. She smiles instead, but it is a half smile. She is hiding something, an imperfection. There is something about her teeth, the sides of them that she doesn’t want me to see. I am fascinated by this unseen flaw. I want to know what she is hiding. Perhaps this is what is missing from my life, some mysterious flaw that I won’t want to correct... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

How can I not go back? Was it not just the other day that I was musing to myself how perfect my life is? How perfect it was? And even then I wasn’t satisfied until I did something to perfect it even more... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

Memories frequent my mind of a time when making love was not so rushed, when I was the one being seduced, before it became so important for me to finish the kill. For so long, the need for food and the isolation from mankind has left me indifferent to such thoughts. But lately, I find them plaguing me more and more. Then I meet her... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

After all, I start to think, when we look back, and I mean, really look back on our lives unconditionally, isn’t it the beautiful moments in time we remember? We might analyze the stories. We might question the feelings of the past, but our true, most accented memories are the brief moments that meant nothing at all, except that they were beautiful in one way or another. I might ask myself many times whether or not I loved this girl. But I’ll never question the fact that we stood on a bed of moss, surrounded by fireflies... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

She was stronger, but I managed to outmaneuver her. She needs to believe I’m far more powerful. It’s the only way. After all, being nice doesn’t seem to be working... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

What was it about us? What do we have in us that allowed us to cheat death and change into something new?  I suppose the two of us were already a bit wild. Maybe it doesn’t take as much of a transformation as I think it does. Perhaps we were already halfway to becoming beasts. —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

“No, I should go. You’ve been much too kind.”

“Don’t lose yourself out there, my dear. This city can eat you right up if you let it.”

“I won’t,” I respond reassuringly.

“But there’s always something,” he continues. “Something keeps us going when everyone else has left. Even if it’s a small thing, something is bound to fuel our will to go on—even if it is just a beautiful lady, who is open enough to let me help her.”  He smiles faintly... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

The fireflies, though scarce, hover in the darkness, watching me. What do they want? How are we connected? —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

Questions are something I thought would never bother me again. They only bother human women, women who are bogged down with the demands of civilization. Yet they bother me now. I thought I had changed... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

I no longer see fireflies glowing in the surrounding bushes and grasses. I do not see their patterns of flashing light blessing the vast landscape of the great park. There are a few still lingering and they stay close to me. Why are they here in the summer and gone in the spring? Just like Natasha, their lives are transient. What was her fascination with them? Why are they fascinated with us? Vampires live forever. We read about them in strange books. I know the fireflies do not. They are here and gone within the span of a season. In the stories, there are rules. There are answers. People learn quite easily how to kill a werewolf or a vampire. In stories, people find answers to their dilemmas. In stories, people are handed the answers through the advice of a doctor or mystic. I read somewhere that you can make yourself human again if you kill the first vampire in the legacy. I wonder if Jesse believes such crap. Maybe she is just trying everything, hoping that she will find an answer eventually. What will that crazy girl try next? —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

We’re diseased, is what we are. We aren’t some new species of animal. We’re human and those who don’t die by our hands catch what we have. —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

You compare your life to that of a firefly but it is never that simple or fantastic... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

“We aren’t social creatures,” Natasha once said to me. I believed her. Then why do I feel so alone? I realize now that I was a fool to believe her. What could she have known? I know nothing as does Jesse. —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

When Writing about Sex Vampires is "Writing What You Know"

I had been writing plays for so long, but after having a family and moving away from NY, I lost interest in workshopping plays and spending hours working with actors and creating something for an audience.  I had written a play that might have been too big for a non musical stage and decided to turn it into a novel.  That novel turned into a life's work of trying to perfect a very complicated theme and story.

I realized that I hadn't written prose in a long time.  I had grown accustomed to writing nothing but dialogue.  In playwriting, unlike screenwriting, we are asked to use as little stage direction as possible.  I needed to hone my skills in descriptive writing.  Someone told me to write what I know.  I'm very uncomfortable writing about real life but he meant to draw things from within.  I am a fitness instructor and personal trainer so I should know a lot about the human body.  I used to be an actress so I should be able to describe a look or an emotion well.  I was also getting burned out from writing something with so much meaning and spiritual significance.  I needed a break.  I did some research and learned that most publishers do not want a ton of meaning.  They aren't looking for what impressed our English teachers.  They just want to publish something entertaining.

So I set out to write something entertaining, something descriptive, something with very little dialogue as an exercise to become a better writer.  I read a blog where a woman talked about her "button" and it started a thread on how women can multiply orgasm.  Men wrote in and confessed that their orgasms are quick and that not much happens afterward.  Intent on writing what I know, I drew on my martial arts and yoga training.  In studying Chi Kung, I learned that the practitioners believed in Chi, or energy control.  Jieng Chi was described as something you are born with.  It is also your most powerful energy.  It is your sexual energy, what came from what your parents created.  It is creation itself.  You can't get anymore powerful than that.  I decided to write a short story about a species of vampire that feed off of this powerful sexual energy.  Of course, they hardly waste their time on men because their orgasms are so short.  What could be more entertaining than lesbian sex vampires?

It is written in present tense because, for a long time, I didn't know what would happen next.  I made it up as I went along.  I discovered a lot about myself as I practiced my ability to describe the human body.  I did make the story entertaining and entertained myself with the idea of these women being controlled by creatures that had the ability to suck orgasm and orgasm out of them until all of their jieng energy had been released.  There is an awful lot of sex, gore and violence.  But on top of that, my protagonist struggles with issues such as free will, her humanity and her animal instinct.  She also struggles with her identity and her feelings towards other characters in the story.  It's a love story on top of the graphic sex.  My friends who have read the story have said it is so much more than a smut story and they were the ones who encouraged me to actually do something with it. You can be the judge.  

It's now available everywhere books are sold.  You can check it out here:

http://www.amazon.com/Fireflies-Lacey-Reah/dp/145028163X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367443389&sr=8-1&keywords=lacey+reah