Must Do Better

I've let it slide, I've let it slip, I've let myself go.

This blog is dustier than Miss Havisham's gaff, and I feel I ought to do something about it. Shall I get my cloistered adoptive daughter to snare the unsuspecting heart of a callow youth? Nah. I have a few other ideas for jazzing the place up. Fairylights? Massive Flash plug-ins? Maybe not.

I'm thinking some snippets of writing, perhaps a serialised story of some kind. Some entertainment to repay people the compliment of passing through here. I might also try my hand at the mancandy thing, though I have to warn you my idea of mancandy is probably not the same as yours. In fact, I tend to prefer manbrandy. Man70%cocoasolids. Manfinecubancigar. Even, to my utter shame, manpotnoodle. 'The Slag of All Snacks', as the baffling ad campaign used to say.

Anyway, I'm wittering. I'm a bit excited because On Demand is with a copy editor, which means it didn't get the thumbs down and will, yes, WILL be on the shelves in December.


It really is a sizzler! Not sure about the nutritional value though.

Liaisons

I am in a book - a proper book that is on the shelves of proper booksellers from today in the UK.

That would be crazy enough in its own right, but just LOOK at the other names in this selfsame book:

Janine Ashbless ; ADR Forte ; Primula Bond ; Charlotte Stein ; Alison Tyler ; Kristina Wright ; KD Grace ; Sommer Marsden ; Carrie Williams ; Mae Nixon ; Portia Da Costa

Almost too much awesomeness there to contemplate in one sitting! Plus me.

My story is called Advanced Corsetry and it's damn kinky. This excerpt will give you a flavour:

‘I will need to take additional measurements.’
‘As you wish.’
I stood directly in front of my subject, unwinding the tape measure very quickly so she could hear the light swish of it, such an efficient sound.
‘Your nipples first, I think. Are they quite hard enough?’
I turned to her husband. ‘Perhaps they need to be a little harder,’ he agreed.
The pad of my thumb described a light circle over both tips until her chest began to buck and heave a little. I applied my finishing touch – a firm pinch to each – then wound my tape around the pair, pulling it as hard as I could get away with, looking for a grimace or, better, a sound. I got the grimace; the sound did not come.
‘Small but not too small,’ I noted. ‘There will be a standardised size of clamps for them.’
‘Oh, I’m aware of that.’
‘Now to the matter of the rings. What size of penetrative object were you considering?’
‘Big enough to be noticeable. If you could perhaps measure both holes and then order rings for perhaps half a centimetre larger all round. She will need to be stretched a little.’
‘I understand. Well, shall we start down here? I think, my dear, I will need you to bend over. Could you put your hands on that footstool just there and spread your legs as much as you can. That’s…just the job, dear.’
The whole spread was wide open and willing, from the swollen ruby of her clitoris to the brown bud peeking at me from between her cheeks. I felt like a gourmet at a feast, unsure of which dish to sample first.
I started at the top, or rather, the bottom.
‘Perhaps if you use your fingers? To get an idea of what she can comfortably take?’
I acceded to her husband’s request, snapping on a pair of thin latex gloves, and took a jar of lubricant he had produced from his trouser pocket. I smeared it liberally around the entrance of her pucker, greasing it up and pressing my thumb against the ring. ‘Don’t clench.’
My gloved index finger snaked slowly and surprisingly easily beyond her sphincter. I twisted it around in there for a minute until she began to squirm, then introduced a second finger. She began to whimper a little, so I went for the third, ramming them up as far as I could repeatedly and pressing down on her little red mark with my other hand. ‘Yes,’ I said, now having to work at controlling my own breathing. ‘If I measure the width of these three fingers, that should be sufficient.’
I took off the glove and wound the tape around my fingers, enjoying the residual warmth from the invasion of her most private space. I thought about putting a fresh pair of gloves on for the next part of my measuring mission, but the prospect of all that hot, wet, yielding flesh against mine was too much to resist.
One finger was sucked into the tight, slick cave of her cunt; two were better, scissoring and prodding at the sides, feeling for the bump of her g-spot, finding it and rubbing it. And then, yes, she definitely moaned; her walls quivered, and I added a third finger. I could feel the suction; she was pulling me in and I was tempted to stay, but I realised that this was not on today’s agenda, so I pulled out with a luscious squelch and added the figures to the list.
‘She’s extremely receptive,’ I remarked to her husband.
‘She’s a slut,’ he said, and the smallest of sighs escaped his wife’s lips.



It isn't available outside the UK until June 23rd, but I believe The Book Depository offers a discount PLUS free worldwide shipping if you can't wait that long ;).

On the Job

In ye olden days, when I was at school, there were all kinds of innocuous-yet-filthy-sounding euphemisms for sex-related activities. People might be a 'good lay' (or an easy one); they would try to get their 'leg over'; they would 'have it off' with somebody. I hardly ever hear or read these phrases since they were superseded by variations on the ubiquitous 'shag'.

In a funny way, I miss them.

Amazonfail

Twitter ye or Twitter ye not, the likelihood is you will probably have heard of #amazonfail somewhere along the line by now.

While the element that caused the most brouhaha - the random sales de-ranking of GLBT material of all levels of content - has been reversed, and put down to a genuine, if stupid, categorisation error, questions remain.

Is there or isn't there an 'adult material' policy? Several authors were told yes, and there is information going back to August 2008 to back this up. So there is a policy. But what is the policy? Should we not be told? And whatever the policy is, is it applicable only to the UK customer base? Black Lace and other erotica publishers have had their material re-ranked in the US and other territories - but not here. No sex please, we're British? Really?

So I'm scratching my head and waiting for a reply to my email of today from the UK arm of the monop, ahem, company. I hope that publishers are aware of this and voicing their displeasure accordingly.

At least there was some fun to be had amongst the outrage. I did enjoy the SmartBitches Googlebomb, for instance. And cyberactivism is quite exhilarating in its way. It does tend to wreck concentration though.

UPDATE: All Black Lace titles restored to their rightful places at the top of the erotica charts. I can relax and do something productive now, hurrah.

Sweet Lovers Love The Spring

...or so Shakespeare reckoned. I think he must have shared my enthusiasm for Cadburys Mini Eggs. I hope the Easter bunny brings you plenty of oval cocoa-infused things. Or maybe some of this...

What's The Story?

I like the new Black Lace anthology themes for 2010 - they all lend themselves to a variety of interesting scenarios. I'm looking forward to dreaming up some wild and wicked ideas to work on.

Of course, some people don't like erotica. Or, more accurately, haven't read any but just don't like the idea of it. A lovely smut-writing friend was recently made to feel horrible by one such unbeliever who just 'couldn't understand' how she could bring herself to write such 'disgusting erotica'. 'It really grosses me out,' she said, although never having read any of my friend's oeuvre, it's not clear how she reached that conclusion.

Obviously, it is pointless to even reply to remarks like this. But what would be a good response? I would have just asked 'Why?', I think, and then dropped the subject. Each to their own and all that. All the same, it struck me as a rude thing to say - and not the good kind of rude.

Oh, and final note for the day - I loved Seduction. It is a marvellous anthology from cover to cover - to the point that I can't even pick favourites. There are too many good 'uns. The death of the decent anthology is a long, long way off.

Humour Me

I've been having an internal tussle lately over whether I'm putting too much humour into my stuff.

Obviously I'm not against humour in erotica - I don't much like writing that is dour or takes itself excessively seriously. But where is the tipping point at which a little bit of sassy attitude becomes tiresome and detracts from the sexiness? I can't seem to locate it, and I'm fretting a little. I don't want to fall on the wrong side of the divide.

Stylistic concerns aside, I also wonder if I'm being a little dishonest with myself. Am I trying to imply that I am somehow 'above' the earthy preoccupations of my characters? Am I, when it comes right down to it, embarrassed by what I'm writing, trying to laugh it off?

At this stage, it's more than likely. I haven't been doing it long, and I have years of irksome conditioning regarding what 'nice girls' do and don't do to unlearn.

So I want to leave in the humour that is inherent to the characters and situations, but avoid that which tries to interfere with the erotic content. I think it will be a long process. Is there a pill I can take or something?