Note: Alyssa Harad is the author of Coming to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bride, published in hardback last year. The new paperback edition comes out later this month. You can read our Q&A with Alyssa here, or read an excerpt from the book, The Tuberose of My Resistance. Also check out this video interview from Idaho Public Television, or just read through all her old posts on Now Smell This — she used to be a regular contributor here.
Well friends, it’s been quite a year. When Robin first suggested I someday write a guest post about the move “from blog to book,” I was living in the frenetic state of suspended animation common to new authors a month before publication. There were endless things to do, but none of them felt real. Every morning when I woke up, my palms tingled, a symptom I still haven’t deciphered. Life was so uncertain that I slipped into perfume monogamy, reaching for the cheerful elegance of L’Artisan’s Fleur d’Oranger over and over again.
My primary emotions were excitement, terror and gratitude. I was excited because the thing I had just spent nearly three years working on was about to make its way into the world. I was terrified for exactly the same reason.
Coming to My Senses is a true story, a portrait of people and communities I love. I wrote it hoping I could recreate for others the intensity of the pleasure I’d found, not just in perfume and its beauties, but the people and stories — a whole new way of life, really — that came along with it…
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Posted by Aleta
on
16 April 2013
…I easily imagine this perfume floating in the wake of a tall, slender brunette, whose moves are confident, who voice is accustomed to giving orders, and who fingers are slightly darkened by tobacco. She is one of those women who always wears a suit, even at midnight at the Savoy; one of those women captivating to watch at the casino in Monaco, who after having lost a sum of money, takes bills and a money order from a love letter hidden in her fine leather handbag, where they have taken on a pungent, slightly wild odor, and with great calm throws them on the green baize of the gaming table.
In her review of Chanel Cuir de Russie, Angela hoped the writer of this 1936 publicity text went on to a career as a novelist. In any case, author Kathleen Tessaro paints a worthy past for this Cuir-scented brunette with The Perfume Collector…
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Posted by Robin
on
28 March 2013
Indie line Smell Bent has launched Smell Bent — The Comic Book, Issue 1…
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Posted by Aleta
on
19 March 2013
Think of a perfume that has a way of wearing you, instead of the other way around. Now imagine if one day that scent began to emanate from your pores, and had the power to seduce everyone around you. That’s what befalls the heroine of Margot Berwin’s Scent of Darkness, a contemporary fairytale that takes fragrance out of the lab and into the realm of Louisiana folk magic.
Evangeline is the granddaughter of a gifted “aromata,” a perfumer who is a wise woman and folk magician more than a cosmetic chemist. When Evangeline is 18, her grandmother dies, leaving Evangeline her house — and a vial of perfume: “Do not remove the stopper, Evangeline, unless you want everything in your life to change.” And change her life it does, as the perfume becomes a permanent part of her and its scent fills anyone who smells her with desire. Though the perfume snares the man she longed to be with, its unfading presence continues to draw dangerous attention. Evangeline follows her love to New Orleans where she hopes the city’s own sultry mugginess will dampen her scent.1 But instead of safety she finds a painter with his own dark power of attraction who offers the key to understanding her grandmother’s gift — if she’s willing to pay with heartbreak…
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Posted by Robin
on
13 March 2013
Aedes de Venustas in New York City is holding a cocktails + book signing event to celebrate the US edition of Denyse Beaulieu’s The Perfume Lover…
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