#and she has the bonus excuse of saying her sense of time is skewed from being a ghost for so long

[aroaceleovaldez]

HoO is so funny to me when you actually think about the ages of all the characters. Octavian is 18. Percy and Annabeth are 16, almost 17. Reyna is presumably 16. Frank just turned 16, Jason’s about to turn 16. Leo and Piper are like 15. Hazel’s like 14 and a half, and Nico is 13.

The Death Sibs are both the youngest and oldest on the Argo II. Octavian is a college freshman getting into petty drama with a bunch of high schoolers. He gets told to shut up at one point by a random 8th grader. Everyone is scared of the 8th grader. We Sent A 13 Year Old To Superhell and he came back weirder, Just Like Middle School. TLH was just three high school sophomores being sent to do a task and it going Exactly Like You’d Expect. Percy’s the only demigod on the ship who can legally drive (though Reyna gets her drivers license at some point before TOA). What Is Happening.

[gldngrl7]

Karamel Fic: Edging Toward Synchronicity (6/8)

Author: gldngr7

Rating: Explicit

Began: March 11, 2017

Chapters: 8

 Feedback:  Encouragement and constructive criticisms are always welcome.  Flames are destroyed with my freeze breath.

 Author’s Notes:

 We’re back to it.  This is a smut chapter, folks.  The first half is plot though.

 Tagging: @mon-kai-el, @actualpuppychriswood, @pwettypwita, @contygold86, @karamelizedlove, @kelbottumbles, @starcrossed-comets, @emarasmoak, @fangirlintheforest, @ships-sailing-in-the-night, @lostin-the-desert, @somos-poeiraestelar

      Oh lights go down

          In the moment we're lost and found

               I just wanna be by your side

    If these wings could fly

            For the rest of our lives

    --Birdy – “Wings”

 Chapter 6/8

 “But that wasn’t your wife,” Ral’s voice reassures him gently.  “Nor was it your child.  You know that, right?”  His brother places a hand on his shoulder.

“It was so real,” Mon-El says, shaky hands wiping away the salty streams of tears on his cheeks.

“And so it was,” Ral explains.  “But it wasn’t your story.”

“But it was Kara and she was….”

“In dreams our mind mixes up all sorts of things.  It’s like a subconscious….” Ral searches for the right word.  “What’s that children’s party game with a stick and the candy?”

“Piñata,” Mon-El supplies.

“It’s like a subconscious piñata.  Hit your brain with the sleep stick and there’s no telling what goodies might spill out…all in a glorious mixed up mess.  Your mind is trying to process a lot of information right now – some of it new and some of it very old, but freshly remembered.  Memories with a new coat of paint,” Ral chuckles darkly, “but no less ugly.”

“Trel Gand,” Mon-El realizes.  “And Gata Fal-Ur.”

“Yes,” Ral confirms.  “At least…most of it was.”

“But…were those my feelings or his feelings?” Mon-El wonders.

“Probably a little bit of both.  Or a lot of both.”

“It was so real,” he breathes, slowly gaining control of his emotions.  “The terror, the rage, the love…all of it.  So real.”  A shiver he can’t control races down his spine.

“Remember when we were kids and we found the chest with their personal effects—the ones that survived the Purge?”

It had been a single chest, hidden away by someone who had hoped the disaster of Trel Gand and Gata Fal-Ur might one day be forgotten, but couldn’t bring themselves to destroy what parts of them were left.  Hidden away by someone who must have loved them, despite the stories that circulated.  “I remember.”

“We found the letters inside.  And the journals.  They were real paper, remember?  So their communications couldn’t be intercepted on the Daxcess.  That’s probably why they survived,” he suggests. “No one was looking for them.”

“We were just boys, looking for treasure,” Mon-El recalls.  “I hoped the pages told stories of battles.  Glorious stories of Daxamite victories over the evil Kryptonians.”  He felt mortified on behalf of the bloodthirsty boy he’d once been, before being confronted with the truth of death and loss and the cost one’s soul must pay to learn of such things.  “I wanted to impress Father.”

“That was before we learned the truth.”

“And when you lived for making trouble.”

“Those letters and journals were how I learned of love,” Ral reminds him. “I dreamed of finding a mate like Gata. Someone who would see the obstacles to loving me and laugh in the face of them.”

“You were obsessed,” Mon-El pointed out.  “You tortured me by making me read the damn things out loud until I begged you to let me stop.  I just wanted stories of glory and…heroic deeds.”

“Well,” Ral sighs.  “You were just a child at the time.  You didn’t have your priorities straight.  And you needed the practice reading.”

“I was a year younger than you,” Mon-El counters, affronted on behalf of his childhood self.

“A year can make quite the difference, huh?” Ral shrugs, dismissively. Only the sparkle in his green eyes betrays that he’s teasing.

“You were always softer than I was, Ral.  Father would say it was your mother’s influence.”

“Mother would say you grew up with a skewed sense of self.  You had to keep things inside.”

“She wasn’t wrong,” Mon-El replies, sadly.

“But Earth has done wonders for you, brother.  Cracked open that shell you built to protect yourself from his expectations.  Who’s the soft one now?”

Mon-El snorts, throwing Ral’s words back at him.  “A year can make quite the difference.”  It may have been closer to half a century since they’d actually stood in a room together, comparing and contrasting each other’s faults with good-natured jibing, but it felt like only a short while ago—thanks to pod stasis.

“Maybe in some ways Kara is right.  Perhaps Rao brought the two of you together to…make up for what happened to Trel and Gata.  A second chance at reunification.”

“You don’t believe in Rao,” Mon-El reminds him.

“I’m you, brother.  I believe in what you believe.  Make of that what you will.”

Mon-El considers the implications of Ral’s declaration for a moment before forcing himself to move on.  “What’s left to reunify?” he questions.  “Both of our planets are gone.  Krypton is in pieces and Daxam a wasteland of solar storms and nuclear winter if the reports are accurate.  There’s just…us.”

“Exactly,” Ral rejoices.  “You’ll have things so much easier than Gata and Trel.  None of that palace intrigue and back-stabbing traitors nonsense.  Seems like Rao has conveniently removed most of the obstacles.”

“Most of them?”

“Well, there have to be some obstacles,” Ral lectures, as though this should be obvious, “otherwise it wouldn’t be any fun.”

“I’m having difficulty in seeing where the fun is in the extra vivid memories of Daxam’s destruction, Ral—of your…death.  Oh!  And the added bonus of dreaming about the tragic story of two people I’d never even met.”

“Fun might not have been the right word,” Ral backtracks.  “But obstacles, and overcoming them together, makes you stronger.  So that you can face anything together.”

“I don’t want her burdened by this,” Mon-El laments.

“We take on the burdens of those we love,” Ral counsels.  “It’s our right…our privilege.  Their hurts become our hurts, their scars our scars. Wouldn’t you do the same for her?”

“But she’s never said that,” Mon-El shakes his head.  “She’s never mentioned love.”

“And neither have you.  Does that make it less true?  Would you hesitate, even for a moment, to take her pain as your own?”

“I wasn’t how we were taught,” Mon-El adds.  “How we were raised.  To love one’s mate is unnecessary.”

“But we learned it, brother.  We learned it in their journals.  We saw the other side, and how loving someone can be its own kind of glory.  We saw the lengths Trel went to in order to ensure that their love endured.  You read his last letter, don’t you remember?”

“Loving someone can also be the key to your own destruction.”

“A risk worth taking,” Ral insists.  “Would Trel not say the same, I wonder?   If he were here right now.”

“Not if loving her…destroys her.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Ral groans, melodramatically.  “She’s made of steel.  She can handle it.  Don’t let your fear dictate what happens next.  No one’s ever made a decision steeped in fear that they didn’t regret later.”

“If she does…you know….”

“Love you?”

“Yeah, that.  If she does…then finding out the truth…about what Father did.  That could destroy her,” Mon-El says, twisting the hand towel between his fists until it threatens to split in half.  “That could destroy us both.”

“Or maybe you’re not giving her enough credit.  Look, brother, splash some water on your face and get back to bed. You promised her you’d wake up with her in the morning and sunrise isn’t far off.”

Despite the dream, he’d managed to get about four hours of sleep, more than he’d cobbled together in the last few weeks.  Mon-El heeds Ral’s advice and splashes a few handfuls of cold water on his face, until the red rims around his eyes begins to clear.

“And can I just say…before we go back to radio silence…congratulations, brother!  She truly is a gift…from Rao, if you like.  I never would have taken her for a nestling in bed.”  

“Her surrender…her zeal…was a pleasant surprise,” Mon-El boasts.  

“The caretaker role suits you, Brother…especially when your heart is engaged.”

“I just want to give her what she needs.”

“Tell yourself that all you like, but it’s more than that, and you know it. As a child, your instincts were always to take care of people.  How many cliffs did you pull me back from, huh?  Then you spent nearly two decades trying to deny that part of yourself – trying to find peace in excess and debauchery--”

“Because I knew I’d never find it any other way,” Mon-El interjected.

“Now you have the chance to be true to yourself, both in your relationship and in the outside world. Makes it hard to not believe in a greater plan at work, my friend.  Your needs are perfectly matched to one another.  She needs a caretaker, and you a nestling.  You both find it arousing…fulfilling.  And what’s more…I’m not sure you even realized how much you needed to be a caretaker…excuse me…a ‘Daddy’, until you heard that word come from her lips.  A hole inside of you closed up when she called you that.”

Mon-El studies himself in the mirror, his body already reacting to Ral’s words.  He wants to go back out there and wake her.  Make her his again, in ways they hadn’t even tried yet.  His cock, a moment before just a limp, dangling appendage, is already halfway to hard.

“But…Princess?” Ral asks, his expression one of dubious certainty. “Wasn’t that a little on-the-nose?”

“It’s what they say here when they practice Dexaris,” Mon-El rationalizes.  “Or one of the pet names, at any rate.  It’s no more literal than her use of a term commonly associated with one’s father.”

“Okay,” Ral intones, but in that frustrating way he has in which he implies he doesn’t believe the tale that Mon-El is spinning.  “Whatever you say.”

Mon-El uses the facilities and washes his hands before flicking the light switch and slipping quietly out of the bathroom.  Though he doesn’t know why he bothers – despite her super hearing, she sleeps like the dead.  Somehow, by some miracle, a genuine scream for help will wake her, but he could sing the Daxam Anthem at the top of his lungs to no effect.

She appears not to have moved an inch since he left her in the bed nearly half an hour ago.  A glance out the window reveals that light pink horizon that promises sunrise in the making.  He slips under the comforter with her, his arms itching to tug her into his embrace, but afraid doing so may disturb her so few hours left for her to slumber. Instead, he rolls away from her, settling on his side with his back towards hers while he orders his rapidly heating blood to cool down.

Mon-El closes his eyes and attempts to find a calming tempo for his breath, in hopes that he can get a few more, hopefully dreamless, hours of sleep.

 *****

 In her sleep, she reaches for him, and when she comes up empty, her eyes shoot open.  Had it been a dream? Falling asleep in his arms?  Slightly disoriented from sleeping so heavily, Kara looks around taking stock. Her bed is a shambles, her headboard cracked and off kilter.  She is most definitely stark naked, her body still feeling as though it has been well used.

‘Definitely not a dream,’ she breathes a sigh of relief.

A sliver of light spills from the bathroom and Kara opens her mouth to call for him when she hears the mumbling sound of him speaking.  Without thinking, she turns up her hearing to listen.

“What’s left to reunify?” She hears him ask.  Who is he talking to?  Reunify what?  “Both of our planets are gone.  Krypton is in pieces and Daxam a wasteland of solar storms and nuclear winter if the reports are accurate.  There’s just…us.”  He’s talking about her…about them.

“Most of them?”  After a brief pause he continues.  “I’m having difficulty in seeing where the fun is in the extra vivid memories of Daxam’s destruction, Ral—of your…death. Oh!  And the added bonus of dreaming about the tragic story of two people I’d never even met.”

Ral!  Kara gasps. Wasn’t that the name of his step-brother?  The one who died on Daxam?  He’s having a conversation with his dead brother, she realizes, covering her mouth to hide the sound of her shock.  Perhaps he’s just dreaming.  Sleepwalking? Kara’s mind tries to convince her of this possibility but the sinking feeling in her gut tells her the truth she wishes she could un-hear.  Mon-El sounds completely lucid and comprehensible.  He’s…hallucinating.  

She continues to listen, hearing what she now knows is only one side of a two-part conversation.  Each of his answers revealing the deeper insecurities that lie hidden in his psyche.

“I don’t want her burdened by this,” Mon-El’s voice laments.  He’s worried about the flashbacks and, as she now realizes, his hallucinations.  How long has this been going on?

“But she’s never said that.  She’s never mentioned love.  I wasn’t how we were taught,” Mon-El adds.  “How we were raised.  To love one’s mate is unnecessary.”  Her heart cracks open at his words.  Of course he’s never mentioned love either, but she always thought…hoped.  There had been some uncertainty in the beginning, but she’d thought they were working through all of that.  That choosing each other meant something more.  He’s always seemed so open to it, which is why his words sound incompatible with his behavior.

“Loving someone can also be the key to your own destruction.”

“Not if loving her…destroys her.”

“If she does…you know….”

“Yeah, that.  If she does…then finding out the truth…about what Father did.  That could destroy her,” Mon-El says.  “That could destroy us both.”

She decides to listen no more and powers down her hearing, squeezing her eyes shut as if that’s going to help shut out the things she’s heard. There’s something he’s not telling her, something he’s afraid will destroy her…and by extension…him?  She isn’t entirely sure since she can only hear half of what’s going on in his head.  If only J’onn could read Daxamite minds, she might be able to get some insight.

What had his father done, and to whom?  And what could have possibly been so bad that it even now, so far removed from Daxam, it might threaten to destroy them both?  Her mind races with more questions than she can possibly answer.  She worries over the secret he clearly doesn’t want revealed, but her mind keeps coming back to the hallucinations.  Her mate is having full-blown hallucinations of a dead person and, first things first, that needs to be dealt with.

When she landed on Earth and went to live with the Danvers, she had grieved. The first step, denial, hadn’t been an option open to her.  No one was coming for her.   No ship would breach the sky to retrieve her, to tell her there had been a mistake and that Krypton had survived after all.  From space, in her swiftly escaping pod, she’d seen the bright flash of Krypton’s core overtaking the planet until it exploded, she had felt the shockwave strike her ship.

Transplanted to Midvale USA, Earth, Kara Zor-El spent many nights, in that shared bedroom crying into her pillow, screaming into her pillow, even unexpectedly bursting into tears at the slightest reminder of home and family. On her worst days, sweet Kara Zor-El acted out in ways that could only be defined as a desire to spread pain, and then swamped by guilt, she made promises to Rao that she would be the best possible girl she could be, if only He would bring it all back.  Bring them all back.  

But Mon-El had been allowed none of that.  

Was it because he hadn’t allowed himself to grieve, or because he hadn’t been given the freedom to?  Kara recalls in the early days of their acquaintance, after attempting to send a distress call back to Daxam, had shaken off ‘dreary’ thoughts in favor of more diverting activities.  At the time, she had dismissed this action as the frivolous behavior of a typically boorish Daxamite, rather than the act of man in an intense state of denial.

He’d been given neither the room nor the time to process the sheer enormity of his loss.  Is it any wonder that his mind would find a way to force it, even if it was only internally?

Why hadn’t she seen it for the mask it really was?  Perhaps if she had, his grief might never have progressed to this dangerous state.  A nightmare likely drove him from their bed to seek sanctuary in the bathroom, where he could converse openly with his hallucinatory step-brother while she presumably slept.  These are the types of signs for which Eliza warned her to be on the lookout.

Out of her depth in this arena, Kara recognizes that she will have to seek help in the morning, from J’onn and her mother, and even Alex. Perhaps together they can determine a plan of action.

Kara hears the toilet flush and the water in the sink turn back on, moments before he emerges from the bathroom, at last.  Lifting the comforter, he slips into the bed, and she waits for him to pull her back into the warm shelter of his arms, but he doesn’t. Instead, after a few moments hesitation he rolls over, turning his back to her.  When he clearly needs her most, he eschews even the simplest comfort she has to offer in a ludicrous, and frankly hurtful, effort to keep her at arm’s length from what he’s suffering.

Still and silent, Kara sends a prayer a Rao, seeking His guidance and some sign of where to go from here.  She could be angry, she knows, about the things he holds back from her, about the lack of trust and faith he has in her – after all the trust she’s bestowed upon him.  She could rage and rant about all of it, but a voice whispers inside that such actions would solve nothing and serve only to push him further away.  And she can’t afford that.

Right or wrong, for good or for ill—broken or whole—she loves him, and it’s a love stronger than she could have ever imagined in her girlhood fantasies. Even if that love may not be returned yet, she places her faith in Rao that someday it will be.  That his love is a fait accompli…meant to be…and so she will move forward into the future as his ordained mate.

As his stardust.

Tomorrow she will seek help, but tonight she can offer the kind of comfort of which she has endless amounts.  Even while ostensibly sleeping.  Eyes closed and trying to give her movements the appearance of shifting in her sleep, Kara thrashes about as though searching for his warmth.  She butts up against his broad back, pressing into him so that her naked skin seals against his.  Placing her forehead between his shoulder blades, Kara breathes into him, breathes him in, relaxing into his solid form as she tucks her legs against the backs of his and snakes one arm around his chest.  Slowly, their breathing synchronizes until they’re both back on the edge of sleep.

Everything will start getting better tomorrow, she tells herself. Help is just a phone call away. She needs to make him see that she’s here for him, no matter what.  Once he understands that, they can get him on the road to recovery.  Kara feels the fingers of one of his hands interlace with hers, and she takes it as a sign that he accepts her offered comfort.

His hand now in hers, Kara allows sleep to overtake her once more.

When next she opens her eyes, the morning sun streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows of her bedroom, high in the sky, but not too high.  A quick glance reveals that her alarm clock is twenty-three minutes from total meltdown. Her body is already needy because sometime during sleep, their positions had reversed and Mon-El now spoons behind her, one of his legs wedged between hers, his lower thigh pressed to her gathering heat.  One of his hands cups a breast like it’s the touchstone anchoring him to this reality, as his steady breath tickles the sensitive crook where her neck and shoulder meet.  His cock is like a red-hot poker sandwiched between her ass and his pelvis, so she’s acutely aware that at least part of him is awake.

Kara rolls her hips, simultaneously teasing his cock and riding his knee until she can feel the heat banking within her.  Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she attempts to bite back a greedy moan, and fails miserably.  Kara reaches for his thigh, urging it upwards to provide more pressure to her increasingly sensitive core.

She knows the exact moment Mon-El comes fully awake, because his grip on her breast tightens and his knee takes over some of the work of pushing her to the brink.  His mouth latches onto her shoulder, nipping and sucking at her skin, working his way up to settle at the shell of her ear as she rides his knee with masochistic languor.   “Does my little nestling need me this morning?”

“Yes,” Kara sighs, her hips continuing their drive, as she grows wetter and wetter.  She maintains her arousal, like stirring a pot to keep the concoction from boiling over, but she wants to wait for him before letting go.  Her need for him is a conundrum, because the more she has of him, the more she desires, like a boundless gluttony in the face of an unending banquet.  Each time they finish, sweaty and sated, she believes her desire quenched, only to have it return more quickly than she could have imagined and with twice the fervor. Is it like this for everyone?  Or is it simply because the yellow sun radiation constantly replenishes their energy stores?

Mon-El bites down on her earlobe hard, eliciting a gasp from her and driving her shoulder up protectively towards her ear.  “Yes…?” he growls, expectantly.

“Yes…Daddy,” she provides, the smile that lazily crosses face uninhibited and completely reflexive.

“Good girl,” he purrs.  She can practically hear his smile as he tucks his face into her neck and cants his hips into her ass, rubbing his cock into the crease between her cheeks.  With his thumb and forefinger, Mon-El pinches her nipple, drawing the bud out with a tug and a sharp twist.  The initial pain she feels, causing her to moan, settles into warm charge that travels straight to her core, providing another gush of lubrication.  Her body prepares the way for him each and every time, and with very little effort on his part.  “I need you now,” he rasps.

Mornings are an all-fire rush for him.  He can exhibit the same kind of control he usually does, but there’s something about surrendering to his body’s primal urges first thing in the morning that he finds particularly satisfying.  And judging from the warm, wet heat on his thigh, she requires no further cajoling.

“I need you, too, Daddy,” she mewls, her voice barely above a whisper. “All the time,” she confesses. “It never stops.”

“I know, Princess.  It’s the same for me.”  Abandoning her breast, his hand slides up and clasps her chin, turning her face to his waiting mouth.  Kara opens for him even before their lips touch and they taste of each other, dinking down each other’s flavors like it’s the rarest of wines.  “Every time,” he tells her when he’s capable of prying his mouth from hers.  “I only want you more afterwards.”

Twisting her torso a bit, Kara reaches behind her, in between their bodies and locates his hardened length of patient steel.  Her fingertips tease but don’t grasp and the sensation is so staggering that his throat swallows reflexively and he must force his hips to remain still so that they don’t demand more than she’s willing to give.

“I like the way your cock feels, Daddy.”

“Do you, Princess?”  His hand still cups her chin, encompassing her lower face, fingers on one cheek, while his thumb strokes her bottom lip.

“Mmm-hmmm,” she replies, licking her lips and catching a taste of the tip of his thumb.  “Like velvet.”  A pout forms on her lips and a crinkle grows between her eyebrows.  “I wish there could be nothing between us.”

“I know,” he commiserates.  “And you felt like heaven around my cock the one time there wasn’t. Gods, you are so perfect, Kara. Soon,” Mon-El promises.  “One way or another.”  He imagines taking her when she’s ripe with his child – as ripe as she was in his dream.

“One way or another,” she echoes.  “You’ll fill me up, won’t you?  Fill me with you?”  A mischievous twinkle lights her eyes before she sucks his entire thumb in to the warm cavern of her mouth.

Like giving his thumb a blowjob, she sucks and sucks, bobbing her head up and down, her tongue swirling around the tip, until he’s finding it difficult to think straight.  “Hand me a condom,” he orders quickly, before the raging beast inside that wants to fill her with his seed—wants to breed her—takes over.

Lest he change his mind, as if he would, she scrabbles for the box in the open drawer of the bedside table at speeds invisible to the human eye. “Stay right where you are,” he commands, taking the package from her and shifting to his back just long enough to roll the condom down his shaft and secure it in place.

Losing access to the pressure of his thigh between her legs, she burns for him even more now and leans into him when he rolls back into her. Skin to skin, she can feel him from head to toe, his back against her back, his massive, muscular thighs pressing to her toned, but far more delicate ones.  She heaves a sigh of relief when she feels the head of Mon-El’s cock line up to her covetous entrance, the burn for him becoming nearly more than she can handle.

“Will you—“ he begins.

“Yes, please!” she interrupts.

“If you won’t let me ask, then tell me so I know I have your permission.” His fingers at the base of his cock, he teases her with the tip, sliding back and forth through the slick seam, from the entrance to clit and back again, over and over as her hips writhe with anticipation.  “Say the words.”

“You know what I need, Daddy,” she pleads, her breath coming hard fast as she throws her head back.

“I do,” he concurs, “but I will never take you without your word. Our games can be tricky, Princess. I need to know you want it as much as I do, every step of the way.”

“I do,” she whimpers, nodding her head.  “I want it so bad.  I need you inside me.  Fuck me, Daddy.  Please? Please, fuck me?”

Mon-El loves to hear her beg, loves that high pitched tone only he gets to hear, but has no desire to torment her.  At least not this morning.  He enters in one slow stroke, as deep as he can go in this position. Spooning from behind, on their sides, this position isn’t about depth, it’s about proximity.  It’s about being close to her, their bodies aligned from head to toe, her pressing back to meet his thrusts as he whispers filthy things into her ears.

Her body remembers him, welcomes him into her like a he’s a soldier come home from war, jubilant and reverent at the same time.  Their position prevents the deepest penetration but the sensation of his hot breath on her ear and the way his hand snakes under her arm and grasps her shoulder for leverage helps to compensate admirably.

Mon-El pumps in and out of her slowly at first, just enjoying the searing heaven of her slick, clasping clutch.  The same muscles that grasp at his cock as he retreats provide an excruciating resistance upon his return that is nothing short of sublime.

Kara turns her head looking for his mouth and he is only too happy to oblige, feeding her his grunts of effort while rapaciously dining on the mewling whimpers of her unguarded pleasure.  He savors her inarticulate pleas as she devours the fruits of his labor and for both, it is a gluttonous banquet of the richest cuisine.

Words of encouragement or instruction quickly become unnecessary as they’ve learned to read between the lines of each other’s body language.  The way her body tenses, her legs and thighs quivering, fingers clamping down on the comforter like a vise grip tell him that all she needs is the final push over the edge.

His grunts vibrating into the skin of her neck and shoulder begin to resemble to long, purring growl of a predator on the hunt and his thrusts turn feral, so she knows he won’t last much longer.  Kara bends her outside leg, pivoting it upwards and lifting it closer into her body, opening herself up more for his hungry cock.  Sliding a shaking hand between her legs, she dips two fingers into the wet seam of her exposed folds and locates the swollen bundle of nerves that cries out for attention.

Mon-El slithers his bearing arm between her head and the pillow, wrapping it around until it crosses her neck and clasps onto her opposite shoulder. His free hand bats hers away, which was busily manipulating her clit to very little effect.  “I’ve got you, baby,” his voice grates like sandpaper against her ear, sending a shiver down her spine.  “You just let go.”

And she does.  Kara’s body melts into him, allowing herself to be ridden by the rhythmic pounding of his cock, the sensations of fullness, of heat racing through her veins and sparking her nerve endings, and of something inescapable washing over her like a tidal wave.  Everything goes white and bright behind closed eyelids, her mouth opens wide for a scream that is silent but no less…there. Kara hears his voice praising her.

“That’s…my…girl,” he raves, fucking her through the climax, prolonging and amplifying it.  “So tight…gods…your clutch wants my cock so bad.  Do you want my come, too?”

“Yes,” she cries.

“I’m going to fill you until your womb can’t hold anymore.”  Finding something inside of himself he never before could have imagined was there, Mon-El’s hand slips from her snatch and settles on her belly.  “Do you know…what it…does to me?”  

In his heightened state of arousal it would not have taken much to send him reeling, but just the thought of it, of his child growing inside of her, does the trick.  A streak of searing electricity causes his heavy balls to constrict, like drawing taut the band of a slingshot before letting loose its ordnance.  “Fuck!” he curses when he finally lets go, his pelvis bucking into her backside with stinging force.  Reflexively, his arms tighten like a vise around her as he empties the rest of his load with three more thrusts.  Each plunge is more debilitating than the last, as if every release passes something integral from him over to her, leaving him utterly enervated by the time he finishes.

With the last shudders of his orgasm Mon-El’s arms go limp around her, and he has just enough lucidity remaining to kiss the back of her neck and along her shoulders.  Reverently, in the bubble of communion their lovemaking has created, he showers her with the love he feels but cannot yet say.

As always, separating from her is a near-traumatic experience for the both of them, but as he must for now, he carefully withdraws and rolls onto his back, his body spent.  His mind, however, experiences a brief, post-orgasmic moment of clarification that will fade all too soon as his heart rate returns to normal and his body enters its refractory period.

Perhaps he can blame it on the nightmare, the emotional conversation with Ral afterwards, or waking up with her in his arms and the sun peeking through the windows, but something about the morning sex with Kara has taken its toll on him.  Physically and emotionally.  Learning that she could be pregnant, a phenomenon unseen on Daxam since Gata Fal-Ur and another seven generations before her, and then seeing it so vividly in his dreams, had stirred up emotions he had never imagined himself capable.

He remembers, like the itch of a phantom limb, the way their son moving under her skin felt against his palm and he wants to weep with the incomprehensible loss of it.  But despite the desolation, there had been emotional profit in the dream as well.

Growing up, he’d always known that siring a child, continuing his bloodline, was a duty he would one day have to fulfill—would be forced to fulfill, one way or another.  To say he had been preveniently resentful of any future offspring would be an understatement of galactic proportions. The very thought of having a child, of giving his father exactly what he wanted, was abhorrent to him.  Mon-El had actively taken measures to prevent siring offspring, both by receiving secret injections of the male hormone suppressors that would prevent his seed from taking root, and by purposefully choosing women with who to cavort that his father would view as genetic undesirables.

But those feelings of resentment are gone now, evaporated like an ice cube in the face of Kara’s heat vision.  Falling in love and letting go of the reasons that, brick-by-brick, built that resentment, means that he can see the possibilities that lay ahead and look forward to them.  Even if he and Kara aren’t quite ready to dive in head-first.

Kara rolls to her back next to him, not quite willing to muster the energy to shift all the way to her side yet.  She splays an arm across him, the back of her sifting through the patch of hair on his abdomen, so that she can maintain an intimate contact with him.  So addicted to him, to his attentions, it’s emotionally difficult for when he has to pull away.  “What are you thinking?” she asks.  

A flash of concern strikes her and she wonders if he’s seeing or hearing from his hallucinatory step-brother right now. Kara stuffs down the bubble of jealousy that rises within her.  She doesn’t want to share him when they’re like this, but at the same time…it doesn’t make sense to be jealous of something that isn’t real.  It’s a waste of emotion, her brain tells her.  Too bad her heart doesn’t seem to listen.

Mon-El removes his condom and ties it off as best as he can, curling it into his fist, because he’s not quite ready to crawl away from her.  Reaching up, he tucks his other hand under the back of his head.  “I never wanted children,” he says.  “The idea was…well…repugnant isn’t too harsh of a word.”

Kara’s breath comes to a full stop, and her stomach clenches involuntarily with dread.

“But the reasons for that are all gone now.”

“They are?” she asks, trying not to sound too hopeful.  Though he doesn’t explain, Kara thinks she understands what he’s saying.  That his promises the night before of being in this together were about more than mere lip service.  And something happened between then and now to make that more concrete for him.

“Huh,” he says, a notion popping into his head fully formed, liked being handed an infant from the birthing matrix, without having watched it grow or develop.

“What?”

“Losing Daxam didn’t take everything from me,” he declares, feeling a piece of his shattered soul reform and shape into something new.  “Losing Daxam gave me some things, too.”

“Like…what?” she urged softly.  She didn’t want to press too hard, or force him to say more than he was ready to admit.

“The freedom to find out who I am without being told.”

“Krypton was like that, too,” she commiserates. “Birthing matrices were more efficient and resulted in fewer anomalies and mutations.  So they thought they could shape us into what they wanted, what they thought society needed, before we took our first breath.”

“And what did Krypton make of you?”

“My father was a scientist—a seeker—and my mother fought for justice.”

“So reporter and superhero….”

“I guess I never tried to fight my nature,” she comments.

“Because it’s a noble one.”

“What did they want to make of you?” Kara wonders.

He sighs, wondering if the time to tell her the truth is now, but knowing that he doesn’t have the courage, at least not completely. Not while he’s this naked…this vulnerable.  “A breeder,” he replies.

“I don’t…understand.”  Finally, she finds the energy and the wherewithal to shift her body towards him.  For the most part because she sends a wave of ennui pouring off of him in waves.  “Why would they want to breed a palace guard?”

“I have good genes.”

Kara grins and places a flirty, suggestive kiss on his pectoral.  “I can’t argue with that.”

Her joke draws a smile from him, helping him to shake off his lingering melancholy.  “Anyway…no one’s telling me what I have to want anymore.  I’m making my own decisions.  Or trying to…anyway.  It’s sad I had to lose my whole planet to gain that.  And I know that I want you and everything that comes with you.  I want a life and a partnership and a secret identity and a suit,” he chuckles.

“And…the other?”

“Whenever it happens…however it happens.  It’s not just something…I’m here for.  It’s something I want to be a part of.”  His hand slips out from beneath the back of his head and seeks hers, their fingers interlacing.  “Something that would…honor me.”

It’s another reason to feel that sense of relief, because the pink elephant hasn’t stopped weighing down her since that night in DEO gym and not just because of the bad timing of it all career-wise (for both of them), or because it’s so early in their relationship, but because of something far more worrisome and potentially sinister.

“What if…?” she begins, second-guessing whether she should share this burden with him – plant this seed on his already haunted mind.

“What if…what, Kara?”

“What if they won’t let us?” she asks.

“What if who won’t let us?”

“There’s a Senator in Congress, the one who submitted the bill for Alien Registration,” she explains.  “Alex heard rumors that she’s working on something new. Something that will make it legal to take away our reproductive rights.”

“Can they do that?” he queries.  It seems excessively cruel that he could be taken from a planet that tried to force its reproductive agenda upon him, only to end up on a planet that might seem determined to vote away his right to parenthood.  He and Kara both come from dead planets, they should have the right, if not the duty, to salvage of that what they can.

“They can try,” Kara replies.  “But, honestly…the government isn’t what worries me the most.”

It doesn’t take Mon-El long to connect the same dots that Kara already has.  “Cadmus,” he breathes, a red-hot fury rising up within him, utterly destroying the post-coital cloud upon which he floated only a moment ago.

“After the lengths they went to capture me just to get some of my blood.  It frightens me to think what lengths they would go to just to get their hands on our child.  What they might try to learn from her…or him.  How they could….” She can’t bear to finish the thought, let alone the sentence.

“That is never going to happen,” Mon-El vows, rolling towards her and taking her face in his hands, his Teflon-eyes boring into hers, sharp like knives.  “I swear to you…if anyone ever tries to harm our child, I will burn down the world to end them.  It may not be what Daxam taught,” he adds, “but it’s what my heart knows is right.”

Ending anyone, even the worst of villains, has always been a last resort for her.  Bringing death and dispensing justice are not the same things, because sometimes death is too pat an ending for those who toil in the service of harming others in the name of power.  People like Lillian Luthor.

But this is different.  This isn’t about being a superhero or playing by any set of rules designed to keep the general public safe and to maintain their trust.  This is about adhering to a set of rules designed to keep one person safe and an authority higher than she can possibly overrule instituted those rules.  These new rules are primal and unassailable and she knows that she is only getting a glimpse of the true allegiance they will compel.  

“We’ll figure something out,” she says, quirking one side of her mouth in a smile meant to be reassuring.  “If I’m pregnant we’ll find a way to…hide it from the public.”

“Hide it?”

“Well, yeah,” she replies with a shrug.  “Private Citizens Kara Danvers and Mike Matthews can have a child, but Supergirl and Valor should probably keep things professional. Lillian Luthor is savvy; she would make the connection easily, especially based on what she already knows. If she hasn’t already.”

“You don’t think your adoptive father would have…?”

“No,” she shakes her head.  “Never.  Not after everything he’s done to keep me safe.”

“We’ll find a way,” he promises.  “If I have to change my name again, change my disguise, and change my job…I swear to you, I won’t let anyone harm our Kryptamite.”

Kara’s forehead creases with a mixture of humor, confusion, and intrigue. “Kryptamite?” she echoes, a smile slowly spreading across her face.  “You didn’t want to go with Daxatonian?”

Mon-El chuckles, remembering the blissful moments of the dream as if they had been real moments from a long-lost past between them.  “No,” he tells her.  “Kryptamite sounds better.”

Kara nods and smiles.  “I think so, too.”

  TBC

  ·      

[timothyakoonce]

Transcript of Turn Your Hunch Into the Next Big Thing

Transcript of Turn Your Hunch Into the Next Big Thing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Have you ever had a hunch about something or you saw something and you went “Gosh, somebody needs to make that or fix that or do something about that?”

There’s this unmet need. A lot of times data isn’t available for that hunch or for that unmet need and a lot of great business owners … a lot of entrepreneurs over the years have just gone with their gut, gone with a hunch, and it’s worked out spectacularly. I think that there are qualities of people who have those hunches, that do come up with winners, and on this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, we visit with Bernadette Jiwa. She’s done a bunch of research on this idea of a hunch and has a book called “Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into the Next Big Thing”, and I think there’s some tremendous lessons and some tremendous exercises in this thinking, so check it out.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Bernadette Jiwa. She is a recognized global authority on the role of story in business, innovation and marketing and the author of five bestselling books on marketing and brand storytelling, and today, we are going to talk about her newest book called “Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into the Next Big Thing”. So Bernadette, welcome back.

Bernadette Jiwa: Thanks, John. It’s a thrill to be back talking to you.

John Jantsch: So essentially, what we’re talking about now is using intuition to make decisions. Did I sum the whole book up?

Bernadette Jiwa: You summed it up really well.

John Jantsch: How does that play when you go into to talk to somebody and say, “Just trust your gut.” I mean that’s kind of, that’s another … I don’t know if that translates to Australia. That’s a very common US idea of business owners making decisions, just kind of on a hunch, as you’ve put in the title. How do you crystallize that idea and make it more than just luck?

Bernadette Jiwa: Well, there are couple of things, John, that I want to start with, which is you’re not ignoring data, it’s just that there are different kinds of data. There are data all around us. People who … like Jeff Bezos or Howard Schultz, they’re not ignoring data they’re just possibly not looking at historical data or data in the sense that we think about which is in a spread sheet. So there is a piece to it, which is noticing problems, noticing what’s happening and that shouldn’t be enough seeing what’s not happening that should be and looking at patterns with practice.

There are three traits that I’ve, in my research, noticed and uncovered that these kind of entrepreneurs have and their curiosity, empathy and imagination. So it’s not just a lucky guess. It’s not just a case of crystal ball gazing or predicting which numbers are going to come up in a lottery this weekend. It’s a little bit more nuanced than that.

John Jantsch: Well I’m glad you brought data up because I think that some of the biggest hunches, if you will, actually either didn’t have data to inform them or they kind of said “You know what? The data’s wrong”. Would you agree?

I mean, you have a load of examples in there and it seems to me like in a number of the examples they kind of said “You know what? I see this differently”.

Bernadette Jiwa: Well, let’s think about one example. You know, there’s plenty of common ones. You know, the big ones. You know, the Apple’s, the Uber’s, the Facebook’s, the Google’s. No data for those. You know they just had to go with their guts that they were on to something.

But one of the examples in the book is the woman who invented disposable diapers. She went to the manufacturers and said “Look. This is what’s happening. What we’ve currently got is a solution that’s not working, it’s leaking, it’s giving baby’s nappy rash.” And what they said to her was “We don’t need this product. We don’t want this product. People are buying our product and they’re really happy with it”. Well, there was no alternative so of course they were buying the product.

So we can look at data and skew it, if you like, to our world view.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that’s interesting because there are a lot of industries. The one that I like to pick on all the time is the newspaper industry and how, you know, they were … the classified ads. That was their cash cow. Nobody was going to take that away from them. You look up today and they don’t even exist anymore or maybe are a meer shell because of Craigslist and other things that came around.

So I want … my question is then, do you constantly need to be, kind of, applying this idea to what could happen, you know, regardless of where we are today?

Bernadette Jiwa: Yeah. It’s a couple of things. You’re looking for what’s going on right now. Looking at the patterns that you’re seeing around you and that takes practice. So it’s not just “I’ve seen this today, I think I’m on to something”. It’s “Okay. That’s interesting. I think I’m going to keep looking at that and keep digging there”.

And then also, you know, the thing about entrepreneurship is you have to take a leap by definition into the unknown. You have to do something that you’re not quite certain of. We’ve fallen into this trap, I think, of relying on data. Almost using it as a crutch in all kinds of ways, in our marketing and our innovation to I guess mitigate against having been wrong.

John Jantsch: Well, yeah. I mean, certainly a lot of business leaders lean on the data to not have to actually make that risky decision.

Bernadette Jiwa: And every decision comes with risk. Absolutely every one.

I read something recently and I put this in the book late, which was somebody said when they saw Elon Musk doing something incredible, again, and it succeeding. “Elon Musk’s greatest strength is that he’s fearless” and absolutely not. He’s not fearless. You can’t similarly be invested in something and not care about it in the same breath. It’s not that he’s fearless, it’s just that he’s practiced at taking those leaps that perhaps other people wouldn’t take, and sometimes they work.

John Jantsch: Well so, let’s stay there for a minute because obviously you have a lot of examples of people that did this and it worked. But I would suggest there are probably millions and millions of examples of people that did this and it was a miserable failure.

Bernadette Jiwa: Absolutely. And the same with data driven innovation. You know, making predictions in the election didn’t … in the U.S. election didn’t work out even though we had a lot of data.

There’s a story I didn’t include in the book, which I should’ve done regarding that one. Just a couple of weeks before the election my husband and I were visiting New York. He was at a Behavioral Summit where people like Nate Silver and Nobel Laureate’s and super clever academics were speaking about the election and saying, you know, it was 99% certain that Hillary … they didn’t say 99 but it was, there was a high probability that Hillary was going to win the election. And the day after the event we were taking a walk outside the Rockefeller Center and we met a guy selling hats emblazoned with the names of the candidates and he said to us “You know Trump’s going to win this by a landslide” and we looked at him as though he was crazy and he said “I cannot keep stock of these Trump hats. They’re just selling like hot cakes.” and he was having conversations with people on the street. There was data in those stories and we missed it.

John Jantsch: Can people get better at this? So in other words, can somebody say “Oh okay. I need to use this kind of mindfulness and curiosity and empathy”. I mean, is that something you could teach a business leader and entrepreneur you think?

Bernadette Jiwa: I teach my clients this all the time. I invite them to do this all the time.

One of the case studies in the book, it was one of my clients who was opening a café in London and he went and visited 70 different locations looking for his site. He also sat in cafe’s and observed what people did in cafe’s. It’s very tempting to say “Okay. Our cafe’s going to be about the best coffee and the best food”. And he said, you know, a lot of the time in the kind of café he was thinking about opening what people wants is good wifi and you know, nice reclaimed wooden table.

So I think a lot of the time we fall in love with our own idea and we sort of run with it without thinking deeply and caring about the people who are going to adopt it and use it and who it’s going to become meaningful to.

John Jantsch: Yeah that’s interesting. I think in some of those instances where they do a great job with that, the coffee being good is almost just like a bonus.

So do you think that there are … you mentioned some of the qualities that come into play here. Do you think there are people that are just naturally better at those qualities? I mean there definitely are people that are more curious than other people.

Bernadette Jiwa: Hmm.

John Jantsch: What I’m trying to get you say is women are better at this. That’s what I’m trying to get you to say.

Bernadette Jiwa: Are you trying to say that?

John Jantsch: I’m wondering it.

Bernadette Jiwa: You know, people have tried to go down that rabbit hole. I don’t think there’s an excuse for men to use that as a cop out.

The people that we’ve been talking about, the Elon Musk’s of the world, some people would say he’s not empathetic. He’s a genius, but at some point he has to be thinking about the kind of man who wants to … or person, should I say, who wants to buy a Tesla, especially when they were developing the high end sports cars. Who’s the person who’s going to buy this car with their budget? What would they want? How do they want to feel when they get in the car? Other wise they don’t obsess in the way that they do about those tiny details.

I have intentionally included a lot of examples in the book of female entrepreneurs because I think we don’t do enough of that. People are tired of the age old examples of Uber and Apple and Airbnb and Warby Parker, of course I’ve told stories about them in my previous books and they’re fantastic companies, too.

I think there’s also room to tell stories about smaller ideas and you don’t have to be a billion dollar unicorn or aspire to do that to come up with a break through idea or a successful idea.

John Jantsch: You even reference a model for acquiring maybe the skills to do this. The Dreyfus Skill Acquisition model.

Bernadette Jiwa: Yeah.

John Jantsch: So tell us how … ’cause I do know that some people need something academic like that.

Bernadette Jiwa: Yeah. The thing about the Dreyfus Model, the reason I put that in there was just to show people that their last two levels where we get to mastery in any skill he quite neatly put intuition in there as one of the attributes … in one of the things that are a part of that.

So, if people want to google the model it’s freely available. They can have a look at it on there and just see how Dreyfus has laid it out. It’s interesting, it was interesting to me though to see in an academic model that intuition came into play.

And the other thing, probably, to mention is that intuition’s gotten a really bad rap lately because of the great research of behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman because what he and his colleague have pointed out is that intuition can be flawed when it comes to making decisions. And on the flip side of that, someone like Kahneman cannot do the work that he does without starting somewhere and he begins with a hunch.

And what was lovely when I was doing my research for this book, was I found so many quotes from scientists. From Einstein to Steven Hawking about making intuitive leaps and having to trust your intuition and how intuition was more powerful than other things or how it had influenced their work. So even scientists, whose job it is to find proofs, start with a hunch.

John Jantsch: Okay. Thanks for listening to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. If you like this one, you might also like my other podcast, The Consulting Spark where I interview independent marketing consultants and agency owners. We talk about how they built their business and the struggles they face and what they love about being in this business. So you can check it out and ducttapemarketingconsultant.com.

I read a quote, I’m going to get it wrong and I’m going to attribute it to Jeff Bezos which may be wrong as well, but I think it applies here.

They were talking about this idea of coming up with innovation and constantly coming up with ways to optimize what you do and essentially said that the key ingredient was that you had to actually care about the people you were doing it for. And I think that that really applies to this idea of … especially when you’re thinking about somebody meeting an unmet need. I guess in some cases, they just they go and they try to find something and they can’t find it and it’s like “wait, there’s an unmet need here” but a lot of times they’re innovating … people are innovating things out of thin air because they’ve discovered an unmet need that, you know, requires them to sort of care deeply about the people they’re trying to serve and I think that a lot of ways that might be the essence of what you’re talking about.

Bernadette Jiwa: Well, Jeff Bezos famously keeps an empty chair at his meetings and says to his team “That’s the chair for the customer”.

John Jantsch: Oh yeah, right.

Bernadette Jiwa: He puts empathy front and center in everything that he does and when you think about the decisions that he’s made, they point to that. They point to understanding what it is people are struggling with and what’s, you know, what those unmet needs are and filling those gaps.

John Jantsch: Yeah. You do have to get, like, inside their home and inside their closets. You know, that kind of stuff to really get level of empathy I think almost.

Bernadette Jiwa: And some of the people, let’s think about one of the examples, which is, hair razor … shaving, subscription shaving brand. Those guys realized how hard it was to get good razor. How much you were paying for it? Similarly with Dollar Shave Club “How much are we paying for this product and it doesn’t work? It really sucks. What’s going on here?”. They were using that product every day, they were talking to their friends about razor burn and all of the things that you don’t have to be a woman to know about. These guys could be empathetic and curious and imaginative and intuitive.

John Jantsch: So other than what you already referenced, this idea that sometimes intuition gets a bad rap. Clearly that reputation maybe holds people back from embracing this idea. Is there anything else that holds people back from fully embracing this idea of hunches and intuition? Particularly in the entrepreneurial setting.

Bernadette Jiwa: Fear. Fear of uncertainty. Fear of being wrong. You know we’ve been conditioned for a long time not to want to say “I don’t know”. When we were kids, when we were three years old, we were quite happy to admit we didn’t know things. We asked questions all the time, which is also part of being a successful entrepreneur is asking questions. Now it’s really not a good thing to, as you grow older, to say “I don’t know” because knowledge is currency.

If you get all the right answers on the test, you go to the best college, have the best chance at the best job and the best life and you win. So therefore when you’re a leader, when you get to the point when you’re a leader in an organization, or when the buck stops with you, it’s very difficult to say “You know, I’m not sure about this. I don’t know if it’s the right answer but let’s give it a shot”.

John Jantsch: Yeah and that’s … that is interesting because I’m sure a lot of leaders suffer from the belief at least that well “I’m supposed to have all the answers so I can’t go down to the front line and start asking the people that probably do have the answers what they think”.

Bernadette Jiwa: I listened to an interview with Ron Johnson yesterday, as you know he was the guy who helped Steve Jobs conceive the Apple Stores. And he was telling this story again, I’ve heard it before, about they were deep into designing the Apple Stores and he just said to Steve “You know, I think we’ve got it wrong. We’re designing around products instead of experiences, instead of what people want to do in these stores” and he said Steve went off and went away and they went into a restaurant … sorry went into a meeting that afternoon and Steve said “Ron says we’ve got this wrong and he’s right”. To have the courage to go up to Steve and say “you know I’m not sure, but I think we’ve got this wrong” he wasn’t sure, he wasn’t certain, but to have the courage is a mark of a leader.

John Jantsch: Absolutely. So, you have exercises in the book. You want to share a couple? Like if somebody’s thinking “Okay, give me a sense of what I would have to work on if I were going to do this”. You want to share an exercise or two? Give my listeners an assignment.

Bernadette Jiwa:  So one of the biggest, the first assignment is to put your phone away some of the time. If you’re at an airport, waiting for a flight, you look around you in the lounge and there is not one single person who’s not on a device and it’s tempting to try and optimize our lives 100% of the time and actually what we’re doing there is stopping ourselves from being creative and innovative. So, that’s their first assignment.

The second assignment is to ask these questions when you’re looking around you or in your own business. These questions don’t even apply to new innovations, they can just be what’s current in your business. So, what’s happening that shouldn’t be? And what’s not happening that should be? So, if you think about any innovation from Uber to the iPhone to the GoPro camera to Tesla Cars and anything you can think of, they all started with that premise. You know, what’s not happening that should be, or what’s happening that shouldn’t be?

So those are the three things. Put your phone away. Ask those two questions. And practice.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Thank you so much for that Bernadette. Speaking with Bernadette Jiwa, author of “Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into The Next Big Thing”.

So do you get to the states very often these days Bernadette?

Bernadette Jiwa: I’m just back from the states.

John Jantsch: Oh yeah.

Bernadette Jiwa: Yeah, just back from the states. Had a really great trip. I get to the states a lot and what’s lovely for me is I’ve got, as you do, an international audience. You’ve got people listening in Australia and I’ve got people, a lot of people, in the states and in the UK and all over the world. That’s the fabulous thing about the digital world we live in.

John Jantsch: Yes it is. Well, I typically end this show every week, for those of you that listen and say, hope to see you out there on the road. But I haven’t made it to Australia yet so I’ll have to do that.

Bernadette Jiwa: I know. Lots of people are trying to get you here. You know, even Seth Godin’s been here. You’ve got to come, John. And he hates flying!

John Jantsch: I’ll do it. Thanks again Bernadette and good luck on the book.

Bernadette Jiwa: It was great to talk to you. Bye.

John Jantsch: Okay, thanks for listening to this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Wonder if you could do me a favor. Could you leave me an honest review on iTunes? Your ratings and reviews really help and I promise, I read each and every one. Thanks.

from Duct Tape Marketing https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/transcript-hunch-next-big-thing/