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Year: 2012

A Dramatic Pivot Point

by | September 15, 2012 | | 7 Comments

By: Craig Sorensen

“We’re you just going to leave without saying goodbye?”

“I just haven’t had time, it’s been crazy trying to get this cross-country move this together.”

“Yeah, I know, but I gotta bust on you.”

Yes, he did.  He had for over a quarter of a century.  He busted on me about work, busted on me about home, delivered digs with a serious face, but once I got to know him, I learned to read his eyes.  He was a curmudgeon, even when we first met and we were young men.

Truth was, in a way, he remained young, despite his hair, graying and receding as it did over the years.  He was in amazing shape, even on this day when I was loading crap into the POD for the cross-country move, and he rode up on his trusty bicycle.

He complained about things, but he worked his ass off as hard as anyone I knew.  When another member of his team trashed an important disk drive on a Friday and brought the system I supported to its knees, G was in all weekend working to recovering the lost data.  It was not an easy job, and for a time it looked like I’d have to work my ass off to rebuild from scratch.  My stomach was in my throat at the thought.

But he got the job done.  Come Monday, you wouldn’t have known the near catastrophe that befell our system.

He called me once from Colorado during one of his biking trips to check on a problem that had occurred.  He was on vacation, but he wanted to be sure everything was okay, and he’d found a small pocket of cell reception in his cross country ride.  I told him we had it in hand.   “Okay, call me if you need me.  I’ll be checking in.”

He was always there for people.  He was always checking in.  Give you the shirt off his back.  He’d say things like “I don’t give a shit.”  But he always did, when it came down to it.  He had a great sense of humor.  His smiles were usually small and wry, occasionally opening briefly into a wicked apex.  His eyes had a constant gleam in them, even in the worst of times.

I didn’t know a person who knew G that didn’t like him.

Monday, he wrote me an email.  My former employer, his present one, was having a problem with a set of files I used to maintain, and no one could figure it out.  Often, when that happened, they’d turn to G.  “I don’t have a clue,” he wrote.  I explained about the files and what had been done to fix them in the past.

“Thanks,” he wrote back simply.

Tuesday, at lunch, he went to work out.  They say he passed out, and they could not revive him.  Later that afternoon, a second heart attack and G was gone.

Some might say it was ironic that he worked out pretty much every day of his life, and he died so suddenly, working out.  But I know that the only way he would rather have gone would have been on the back of his bike, somewhere between there and here, taking pictures of dead skunks on the road which he would use as wallpaper on his PC at work, or perhaps running into the ice cold ocean in January with a group of crazies, only to emerge with one of those twisted smiles, and have his picture taken with his arm around an attractive young woman he didn’t know know, but just asked if she’d pose with him.

She was grinning too.

It is now 2500 miles between me and where he died, and it was all so sudden.  I could not make it to the service, but I asked a friend to tell me how it went.  “Craig, it was more like a block party than a memorial.  There were people lined up outside on the sidewalk.”

And that was how it should be.

G was a good man, a good friend, a good coworker, and he left this plane far too soon for my taste.

Less than 24 hours before his death, his last word to me in an email:  “Thanks.”

I wish I’d had a chance to thank him.

G was the sort of man a fiction writer wishes they could craft.  The gold-standard of character.  Funny as hell, smart as a whip, determined, vital and vibrant and alive every day he was on this earth, and complaining all the way.  Did I say good man?  No, he was great.

Truly great.

I had started a story about a week before I got word of his passing, and central to the plot was dealing with death.  Perhaps there is some significance to this timing, I’ve found that life and fiction have a way of merging.  But fiction is always fiction, and life is always life.  Finding a center ground is where the magic happens, methinks.  That short story I started has since expanded to be a novella.  I continue to work on it, with love, and with passion.

My contribution to this blog is about pivot points, and there are no greater ones than how life begins, and how it ends.

Well, maybe I’m wrong about that one.  There is this big-assed middle part to tend to, and I suppose that is what makes those beginnings and ends so significant.

That is where character is formed and proofed.

I miss you, G.   Thank you for living, and for inspiring me in so many ways.  Thank you for sharing your bigger-than-life character.

Dishing It Out and Sucking It Up: Critique and Reviews

by | September 13, 2012 | | 14 Comments

There is a general perception that our genre is an embattled one, unfairly ostracized and intellectually snubbed for the explicitness of what we write and the sexual arousal that our texts seek to invoke in the reader.

But it is not entirely fair to lay the cause for all the derision layered upon the genre at that door alone.  Nor is it useful, since you and I are not going to stop writing erotic literature, and the Western world is (GOP convention aside) becoming more and more inured to the shock of sexual explicitness.  We have a generation of teenagers growing to adulthood who’ve been watching porn on the net for years.  I’ve just finished the first season of Spartacus, which has, I’m convinced, set off a new craze for fucking up against walls.

A serious and completely resolvable part of why we’re looked down upon has to do with the quality of writing pervading the genre.  Remember that a huge number of readers meet their first erotica on blogs and listserves and other places where no editorial oversight takes place.  The quality of much of our published work is certainly no worse than a lot of bestselling thrillers, which is neither a boast nor a criticism. But then, the thriller genre doesn’t have the added challenge of overcoming social stigma as well.

One of the best ways we can hope to raise the standard of writing in this genre is by critical engagement with the work. As givers and receivers of clear, fair, constructive criticism.

Most people fear criticism. They have a very hard time separating themselves from their work. This is especially true for erotica where much of the subject matter may be partially autobiographical or may hint at the writer’s own sexual tastes.  I don’t have any pat solutions for this. I think only time and acclimatization take away the sting of a rough crit or review.

But I’d like to ask you to think of it another way.  Wholly positive and laudatory crits or reviews of your work will never make you a better writer. They may make you a more confident human being, but that shouldn’t be the business we are in here. We should be in the business of improving our craft and the genre as a whole, not nurturing the egos of our fellow writers.

Critiques and reviews are two different things, and I’d like to make those differences clear. A critique is done upon an unpublished work where changes can be made to the text before publication. A review is a response to an already published work, which will not, usually, be subject to change.

Critiques

Critiques are a cooperative process embarked upon with a view to making the work stronger. The target audience for a critique is primarily the writer, and sometimes other writers who read it and identify mistakes that they also make.  Finally, critiques are a strong learning tool for the critiquer, because you can often see the flaws in the writing of others that you find hard to see in your own.  But the process teaches you how to look for those flaws in your writing later.

Critiques should point out both the weaknesses and strengths in the writing.  They can be as practical as finding spelling, typing and grammar errors, address issues of voice, style, POV, characterization, motivation, plot structure, poetics, believability and realism, and, to some extent, intended meaning.

Subject matter is not the purview of a critique. What I mean by that is, if heavy BDSM generally offends you and you feel that you cannot see past that to read the work with a modicum of objectivity, you have no business critting it.  On the other hand, if you find the subject matter so arousing that you cannot overcome your wholly positive feelings, then, again, you’re probably not the right person to give the piece a strong critique.

In any case, it is always polite to start a crit by owning any factors that might cause your criticism to be overly subjective. “I loved this story and found it so erotic, I’m not sure if I was able to give it the critical eye it deserves,” or “I’m afraid that I’ve always found watersports profoundly disturbing, so what I have to offer might be coloured by that limitation.”

There is no such thing as a wholly objective criticism, but we have a framework of solid aspects of good story structure and good writing practice to help us be as objective as possible.

In giving a crit, you are entering into a partnership with the writer, where the shared goal is to make the work the best it can be. It isn’t a kindness to overlook errors with a view to nurturing a new writer.  It gives them a false sense of security that will, inevitably, be blow apart at a later date, to their dismay and you won’t be there to take part of the pain. It’s not nice to set someone up for an ambush, which is exactly what you’re doing.

Finally, offering solutions to problems in the work can be problematic. For beginners, it can be very helpful because they don’t yet have the craft to figure out how to fix the problem themselves. For more advanced writers, an offer of a solution can sometimes seem like an offer to re-write their work and appropriate their story.  On the other hand, I always like them, and will sometimes ask for them. There are multiple was to solve a problem and the more I know, the wider my options are.

Taking criticism is as much an art as giving it. There are a number of things it is good to keep in your mind: the person giving you the crit is doing you a service that is entirely voluntary and aimed at allowing you to produce a better piece.  Even if you disagree entirely with their critique and implement none of the changes suggested, you need to acknowledge that this person is a reader. Their reaction is a reaction to your text. So if they have ‘misread’, you need to acknowledge that other readers might, too.  Yes, of course, all texts can have multiple readings, but if your critiquer’s reading strays too far from your intended meaning, then there is a problem you need to fix.

Yes, all critiques are subjective, but so is your writing, and so is a reader’s reading. We are in the very business of eliciting subjective reactions in readers, so not all subjectivity makes a criticism invalid.  And positive subjective readings can be – in fact, usually are – far more misleading than negative ones. Positive feedback is wonderful, but it doesn’t actually improve your work. And that’s what you’ve gone into the process to do, isn’t it?

Ultimately, the writer is responsible for their work.  It comes out under their name. So the choice to take and implement any given criticism is yours. It is very hard for another writer not to want to read something the way they would have written it.  It’s just the nature of the beast.  As a receiver of a critique, you need to decide what to keep, what to change, based upon a voice that is true to you.

Reviews

Reviews should not be aimed at the author. The target audience is potential readers of the work, or readers who have already read it and want to compare their reading experience with the review.  Both are equally rich interactions with the work.

There are a lot of shoddy reviews out there, and I’m not particularly skilled at them myself.  But the basic aim of a review is to contextualize the published work for a reader, give them some options for how to approach it, highlight elements that the reader might miss. The point of it is to enrich the reading experience, not to ruin it.

Often good reviews will survey a particular author’s work in the context the author’s entire oeuvre, or they may address it the context of other works within the genre.  Rarely does a review address the novel in its entirety. Once past the short synopsis, reviewers will pick out and discuss the dominant themes in the novel. But I’ve seen amazing reviews that only addressed the writer’s use of poetics, or archetypal characters.  A review of a book doesn’t need to be everything to everyone

Any review that starts with “I hate BDSM and I hated this BDSM novel” is not really a review at all.  Similarly, “I don’t usually read m/m romances and now I know why,” is a sign that the reviewer did not approach the novel with an open mind.  One of the reasons why many of the recent literary reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey are so illegitimate is because they off by stating that they don’t think explicit sex has any place in a novel.

If you’ve never written a review of erotica, I urge you to consider doing it.  The rise in the phenomenon of the user-review and its varied implications is a topic too long for this already huge post.

However, before you give your writer-friend five stars and a glowing review because she’s your friend and you love her and she wants to sell her books, please consider the cumulative consequences of doing so. It does not serve our genre, and doesn’t encourage excellence in writing.  There is no such thing as a perfect book, and so there should be no such thing as a perfect review.

Solid critical reviews are a tremendous compliment to the author. Someone has taken the time to truly care about your work and deep-read it. No author should be upset that someone has pointed out the flaws in their book. Every book has flaws. And having a reader know what they are in advance will often lessen the impact of them. “Well, the character of the husband is weak, but I knew that was going to be the case. Read on.”

Our genre desperately needs us to take it more seriously.  We need solid criticism and robust reviews. We need to believe that we are strong enough to take them, and to stop thinking that every negative criticism is going to imperil our existence. It won’t.

But, most of all, we need to believe we are worthy of being treated as equals within the larger literary community.

Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: What’s Erotic?

by | September 10, 2012 | | 3 Comments

It’s
one of the most common questions I get asked – by budding writers via email or in
person during one of my (ahem) Sex Sells: Erotica Writing classes: what makes
an erotic story … erotic?

But
before I answer [insert suspenseful music here] a bit of exposition is in
order: there is a huge difference in
writing for yourself, such as when you are first dipping your … toes
into erotica writing, and when you’ve made the very brave decision to throw
your work out into the professional world.

If
you are writing for yourself then you really don’t need to be thinking about
sex (or the amount of it) at all: you’re writing for your pleasure, or just as
practice.

But
if you do decide to send your work out you really do need to be pay
close attention to where you’re submitting: when a publisher or editor puts out
a call for submissions they are often – or should be – quite clear about the
amount of sexuality they need or want from a writer.  If you’re sending a story, say, to a site, anthology or
whatever it’s always a good idea to scope out the territory, so to speak: read
what the editor has accepted before, take a gander at the site … and so forth.  That, at least, should give you a
ballpark feeling of what (and how much) they are looking for.

But
[insert dramatic drum roll] as far as the right, perfect, ideal, amount of sex
for a story that isn’t just for your own pleasure, or a very specific market, goes
… well, what’s sex?

Far
too often beginning (or even seasoned pros) have the idea that there’s a
required amount of sex, of detail, of activity, that makes a story erotic: they occassionally even have a
percentage guide – or a shopping list of required activities (oral followed by
penetration culminated by mutual orgasm, etc). 

There’s
also the belief that unless a story arouses them – or a publisher, editor,
random reader, whoever – then it isn’t sufficiently erotic … and so needs
more sex.

But
both of these views are, frankly, wrong. 
Erotica can be a remarkably flexible genre: it can be about anything to do with sex, sensuality,
eroticism, whatever … there isn’t a set rule of amount or variety of sex that
has to take place. 

I’ve
sold (as a writer) and bought (as both an anthology editor as well as a book
publisher), work that has a wide range of both quantity as well as assortment
of sex and sensuality – though, once again, unless the project is upfront about
requiring a certain kind, or amount, of sexuality.

And
as for turning anyone on, I always remind people that there is absolutely no
way to know what will turn anyone on – so it’s impossible to judge the amount of sex in a story by anyone’s
(not to be sexist) Peter Meter.  Once again, as a writer I’ve sold, and
as an editor and publisher I’ve bought, many stories that I personally wasn’t
aroused by – and many writers and editors feel the same way.

So
… sex.  What I meant by what’s sex is that sex
can be a lot of things to a lot of people.  The erotic content in a story or book can be page after page
of bumpy-grindy or lyrically sensual where actual penetrative sex (of any kind)
never actually takes place.  Sex
can be fantasy, without any reality. 
It can be sense memory.  It
can be masturbation.  It can be
pleasure from extreme sensation. 
It can even be bittersweet, disturbing, or even sad. 

Sex,
in short, can be anything.  Speaking
as a writer, I love to play with what sex can be about – often trying to really
push the literary envelope. 
Speaking as a publisher, I love it when a book or story crosses my path
that says something – that really plays with the idea of what sex can be in
a new and surprising way.

Erotica,
to wrap it up, can be anything (caveats for specialized markets, of
course).  There is no magic formula
for amount or activity, arousal is no judge of quality or quantity: your erotic
writing playground is as vast as your imagination–

–as
vast as sex itself.  

Standing Room Only for D.L. King

by | September 8, 2012 | | 0 Comments

The Erachat room was packed last night for guest host D.L. King, author and publisher of dozens of erotic short stories and editor of several anthologies.

A huge “THANK YOU” to D.L. King for being a powerhouse guest, Karen, our moderator and Erachat hostess with the mostess, and everyone who showed up to make this one of the most exciting events ever.  I’m still catching my breath.

If you weren’t there, you missed a lively, fast-paced, information-packed discussion on everything from baseball erotica and vampires, who feast on music, to zombies, LGBTQ erotica, word counts, what anthology editors seek, and the best places to submit your paranormal erotica.  It was a whirlwind 90 minutes full to brimming with a breathtaking volume of wit, wisdom and excellent advice.  [Read the chat log at
Erotic Fantasy Chat with D.L. King]

Again, thank you to all who participated in this awesome — and I don’t use that word lightly — event.

You get a second golden opportunity this month to participate in another Erachat event that promises to be equally informative and energizing:  On Saturday, September 15th, at 3:00 p.m., don’t miss your chance to chat with much-published author, Janine Ashbless, who has a reputation for writing erotic fantasy and paranormal stories and novels, and for putting her own twist on fairy tales, mythology and folklore..  To find out more, visit
https://erotica-readers.com/erotica-authors-resources/

See you there.

Rose 😉
ERWA Storytime Editor & Event Manager.

Writing Exercise – Kyrielle

by | September 6, 2012 | | 2 Comments

 By Ashley Lister 

 You suggested we try new positions

You could tell that thought got me perplexed

You ordered some manuals from Amazon

I wonder just what we’ll do next?

The kyrielle is a French form of poetry written in quatrains. Each
quatrain concludes with a repeated line or phrase that works as a refrain for the
poem.

The first book we opened had pictures

It’s title was The Joy of Sex

We followed the instructions on Monday

I wonder just what we’ll do next?

The kyrielle has a meter usually composed of eight syllables per line
but it can be varied. There is no limit to the number of stanzas but three is really
the minimum.

On Tuesday we read marriage manuals

On Wednesday it got more complex

On Thursday and Friday you filmed us

I wonder just what we’ll do next?

The normal structure of the kyrielle is a/a/b/B, c/c/b/B, d/d/b/B. with
B being the repeated line. A varied structure could be a/b/a/B, c/b/c/B,
d/b/d/B. etc. or even a second line that didn’t rhyme.

Now we’ve gone through the whole the Kama
Sutra

We’ve explored every page of that text

But now we must look to the future

I wonder just what we’ll do next?

As always, if you fancy writing a kyrielle and sharing it in
the comments box below, we all look forward here to reading your work.

Ash

Erotic Lure Newsletter: September 2012

by | September 4, 2012 | | 0 Comments

From the Erotica Readers & Writers Association
By Lisabet Sarai
_______

Dear Insatiable Individualists,

I have to beg your pardon for the tardiness of this newsletter. (And no, it’s not just that I like being on my knees…!) No excuses – that’s what my Master always says – but really, there was nothing I could do. First of all, my work life got complicated at a particularly inconvenient time. More important, though, was the fact that I got hung up in the September Galleries. I told myself I didn’t have to read every single one of the fabulous stories, flashers and poems featured this month in order to write the Lure, but I couldn’t help myself. And honestly, the tales this month are so incredible, I’m willing to bet you’ll lose yourself in them the same way I did.

Craig Sorensen is our September featured author. He’s sharing three inspired and sexy stories as well as a fascinating bio. If you don’t know Craig’s writing – well, you should, because he has tremendous talent and insight (and also writes luscious posts for the ERWA blog on the 15th of every month).

Then we have seven full length tales from members of the Storytime list, in every mood from silly to soulful, as well as seven outrageous flashers. How can you resist an offering entitled “Ass Potato”?

That’s not all, though. Check out the supersized collection of bawdy limericks (including a multiple stanza ballad) and our more serious page of erotic poetry, lines that will make you yearn and burn.

I can almost guarantee you’ll be late for work.

Immerse yourself in our erotic visions:
https://erotica-readers.com/story-gallery

You might wonder how the Gallery authors got to be so good. Our Authors Resources section may be part of the reason. This month, Donna George Storey discusses the mysteries of inspiration and reveals her technique for stimulating the flow of ideas – and one of her favorite cookie recipes. In my guise as the Erotogeek, I try to explain how social networks work and how you can utilize the principles of connection-based marketing even if (like me) you just don’t “get” Facebook. You can also peruse our Writers Resources links and archives of past articles for a wealth of information and inspiration.

For more tips from the pros, join our live chats with authors who know the ropes. This month, we’re focusing on fantasy erotica. Ask questions, get suggestions, throw out your ideas for comments – all live! On September 6th, award-winning author and editor D.L. King hosts the chat room, while fantasy expert Janine Ashbless takes the virtual mike on the 15th. Details are on the Author Resources page as well as on the ERWA blog.

ERWA offers more than just advice and support for authors. We have the largest list of erotic publishing opportunities on the web, too. This month’s calls for submissions includes “Geek Love: Full Frontal Nerdity”, an anthology of nerd-themed erotica edited by the incomparable Shanna Germain (with a deadline that’s coming up fast!). We feature two new epublishers, Go Deeper Press and Captive Unicorn Publications. And maybe you’ll want to enter the Uber Erotic Writing Contest, to be judged by the legendary Laura Antoniou.

With all our listings, you have no excuse not to submit.

Learn how to seduce your readers:
https://erotica-readers.com/erotica-authors-resources/

Speaking of readers, let’s hop over to the Books section for a quick look at some of the recent releases we’ve assembled for your reading pleasure. Mitzi Szereto has a new anthology inspired by the popular “Game of Thrones” series. THRONES OF DESIRE features erotic tales full of swords, mist, and fire. Lynne Connolly’s STRIPPED BARE follows the twisted relationship between a young woman and her sexual mentor through a dark and dangerous world of blackmail and passion. HOSTILE TAKEOVER by Joey W. Hill is going on my wish list. I’ve heard her insight into the dynamics of BDSM widely praised, and this title, about a dominant reluctant to take on a committed sub, sounds just like my cup of tea. In the gay erotica section, check out WILD BOYS, a treasury of guys who like to defy the rules, edited by Richard Labonte. And for lesbian erotica, my September pick is DAUGHTERS OF ARTEMIS, an anthology of tales that explore a female werewolf mythos.

You’ve got all these arousing books, and thousands more, at your fingertips. Just follow our affiliate links and shop until you’re satisfied. Okay, so you’re insatiable… Anyway, when you use our links, every penny you spend at Amazon or Barnes & Noble helps support best free erotica site on the web.

Help combat illiteracy; read a dirty book!
https://erotica-readers.com/books/

Inside the Erotic Mind this month, we feature a lively discussion about using strap-ons. I personally love the frankness people bring to our Erotic Mind discussions. You can add your two cents; just click on the Participate link. If you want some expert advice on pegging your partner, slide on over to the Sex Toy Playground, where the knowledgeable folks from Good Vibrations have an excellent article on the topic. (Their bottom line recommendation? Practice!)

The Playground also includes our traditional Sex Toy Scuttlebutt column, a monthly selection of the coolest and hottest erotic implements. I want a bNaughty Wireless Bullet Vibe, complete with a backlit LCD screen on the remote control. I know my Master would love it; he’s such a gadget hound! Now, how can I get him to buy one? Maybe I’ll tell him he can get a hefty discount by using the special codes offered by our affiliates: Good Vibrations, Eden Fantasys, and Adam & Eve.

But I digress.

Check your inhibitions at the door when you enter the erotic mind:
https://erotica-readers.com/inside-the-erotic-mind/

It’s the fact that we use tools that distinguishes us from lower animals:
https://erotica-readers.com/sex-toy-playground/

Over in the Adult Films section, we have lots more erotic goodness (or badness, depending on your perspective). “Cooking with Kayden Cross” sounds like fun. Kayden shows off her real world culinary expertise as she tries everything (sexual) in her power to save her TV cooking show. In “Love in Black and White”, director Lee Roy Myers uses black and white cinematography to highlight the intensity of couples’ explicit encounters, with a stark, moody, sensual feel that suggests the 40’s and 50’s. Then there’s “Allie Haze: I Love Sex”. When I look at the sultry brunette star, I know exactly what she means!

Lights, camera, and plenty of action:
https://erotica-readers.com/adult-movies/

Of course, my monthly tour of the ERWA site is anything but exhaustive. I just try to hit the hightlights, but there’s much, much more for you to explore, if you have the time. And if we really can’t satisfy you (as unlikely as that seems), click over to our portfolio of links, where we can direct you to erotic art and photo sites, story sites, animation sites, porn portals, whatever you’re looking for.

Well, all good (or should I say bad?) things must come to an end, and so I’ll bid you adieu for this month. Next month brings us October and Halloween, my absolute favorite holiday. I’m already dreaming about the naughty costume I’ll wear this year. Maybe I’ll keep it simple and wear nothing but a gray necktie…

Till then, I remain

Insatiably yours,
Lisabet

Visit Lisabet Sarai’s Fantasy Factory
Check out Lisabet’s blog
Join Lisabet’s List

Write, learn, and play on ERWA. Details at:
erotica-readers.local/erwa-email-discussion-list

Inspiration

by | August 30, 2012 | | 10 Comments

I’m very excited to be blogging for ERWA.
Back in the early days when I was just getting started as an erotic author,
ERWA was not only the go-to site for all of the latest calls for submissions,
but it was also a place to go for inspiration and encouragement. Now, here I am
writing what I hope will be inspiring and encouraging.

Today, I want to talk about inspiration,
because like most writers, I think about it all the time, and crave it
constantly. I want to talk about one of my favourite stories from Greek
Mythology, one that made me think more about inspiration than any other, and
that’s the story of Daphne and Apollo. In a nutshell, Apollo, the God of Light,
falls in love with Daphne, a woodland nymph. But Daphne flees his advances, and
when it becomes clear to her that she can’t escape him, she calls upon her
father to help her, and he turns her into a laurel tree to save her from
Apollo’s lust.

Perhaps it’s my naughty nature, but I’ve
always thought to myself, if I were Daphne, I would not only have let Apollo
catch me, I would have pursued him.
After all, he is the god of poetry
and music and art and wisdom and all those wonderful things that we writers
long for. A good fuck for a little wisdom and inspiration – a fair exchange,
I’d say. For some reason, I could never quite get my own private version of
that myth out of my head, nor the idea of that masterful exchange of power,
becoming the lover of the divine in exchange for divine gifts.

That got me to thinking about other lovers
of the gods, lovers who hadn’t been turned into trees before they were ravished
by the divine. Most of them got knocked up, true enough, and since the Greeks
were pretty misogynistic, that was the end of the story for the women-folk. In
short, they were pretty, some god took a fancy to them, knocked them up, and
there ya go! But, the result of their ‘inspiration’ was a child that was more
than human, a child with special powers, a child that was a savior or a hero.
Of course, Psyche didn’t get knocked up. She just married a god, bested her
mother-in-law at her own game and was made a goddess for her troubles.

But it’s when I started thinking beyond the
misogyny of the day to the archetypal message of the story that it hit me.
Daphne is really a tragic character because at the end of the tale, she misses
out on divine inspiration. She becomes rooted in one place, unmoving, never
able to do more than passively endure the changes of the world around her. All
she’s left with is her chastity. But Danae, when seduced by Zeus, gives birth
to Perseus, and Leda, also seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan, gives birth
to Helen of Troy and Pollux.  And the
stories of the children they give birth to are larger than life, exciting
adventures, stories that cause the rise and fall of empires, and all are the
result of divine and human coupling. Granted there was often no choice for the
women, or the men, the gods took a fancy to. Who could really argue with a god?
But the result was no less amazing.

Inspiration is like that, I think. We can
bargain for it. All of us writers have our techniques, the things that we do,
the rituals that work to get us to the story we need to tell. I walk and grow
vegetables. Some people listen to music, some people cook. I love hearing the
stories of how people get their inspiration, how people open themselves to the
Muse in an effort to get knocked up creatively. But I also love those times
when inspiration broadsides us, comes in a form we least expect and ravishes us
until we’re full and overflowing and we give birth to a story that we didn’t
see coming, a story that has a life all its own far more than we could have given
it if we’d simply sat down and planned it out.

Even leaving the Garden of Eden is a story about
seeking inspiration, about seeking to discover more, about becoming more than
ourselves, and about the price we pay when we’re willing to take that risk – powerful
stuff, all of it. And because the creative force will not be controlled, it
often doesn’t work out the way we planned it. It’s often expansive, explosive
and dangerous. It’s hardly any wonder that Daphne is seen as virtuous, and
chastity is the surface message for the rule of the properly behaved. But the
subversive message, now that’s another matter. The subversive message launched
a thousand ships, killed the sea monster, grabbed divinity and claimed it in
mortal hands, and wow! Writers do that every day, every time we yield to
inspiration, or grab it by the hem of its toga and refuse to let go until it
ravishes us, we re-create that archetypal story all over again.

Live Chat with Janine Ashbless

by | August 28, 2012 | | 0 Comments

EVENT ALERT!
Erotic Fantasy Live Chat with the Pros
Featuring Janine Ashbless

WHEN:  Saturday, September 15th, at 3:00pm EST, (12 noon PST; 8:00pm GMT)
WHERE:  ERWA chats are held on the ShadowWorld chat server, channel, #erachat.
DIRECTIONS: Go to ShadowWorld chat server. On screen you’ll see ‘Connect o ShadowWorld IRC’. In the Nickname box, key in your name. Leave the channels box at #ERAChat, and click ‘Connect’. A chat text box will appear at the bottom of your screen. Those who prefer a modern interface with way-cool functions, follow the directions at ERWA Chat Access.

Janine Ashbless has a reputation for writing erotic fantasy and paranormal stories and novels, and for putting her own twist on fairy tales, mythology and folklore. She is published by Black Lace, Cleis Press, Ellora’s Cave, Samhain Publishing, Mischief Books and Sweetmeats Press. Recent publications include a story in the much anticipated Thrones of Desire: Erotic Tales of Swords, Mist and Fire edited by Mitzi Szereto, with a Foreword by Piers Anthony (Cleis Press, September 2012; ISBN: 157344815X). If you read and/or write within the Fantasy genre Janine is the lady to talk to.
Read about Janine Ashbless at: www.janineashbless.com

Mark your calendars and be there for ERWA’s Live Chat with Janine Ashbless!
Send questions to Adrienne

Magic-Realist Erotica

by | August 27, 2012 | | 3 Comments

by Jean Roberta
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please excuse me if I seem a little distracted. (For one thing, I’m posting this a day late. I hope I’m not intruding.) I’ve spent much of the last few weeks in the 1860s.

Historical fiction fascinates me, especially when it includes more explicit sex than the “serious” literary works of the time generally did. At about the same time I joined the Erotic Readers Association (as it was called) in 1998, I read The Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski. The table of contents (and authors) was like a who’s-who of noteworthy erotic writers of the time, and several of the characters were famous people from the past. Most of the stories seemed to answer questions about history and the game-changers in it that most readers had been afraid to ask (e.g. What did Personage X really do in bed? How Freudian was Freud?).

Like several recent Hollywood movies, historical erotica shows the past more clearly and apparently more accurately than it could have been shown at the time.

Among movies that show a kind of photoshopped version of the past is Goya in Bordeaux, a 1999 biopic about the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828) which uses the same colour palette and chiaroscuro (dramatic contrast between light and shade) that Goya used in his paintings, suggesting that Goya might have made a film like this if the technology had existed in his time. There is also Schindler’s List, a heartbreaking 1993 movie about the Holocaust which was shot in black-and-white to give it the flavour of the 1940s. Although actual films from that era still exist, they don’t look nearly as good.

There seems to be a bottomless appetite for books, films, plays, musicals and even roleplay set in an interesting era in the past which is shown with attractive clarity, and often with some degree of historical accuracy, but without certain disappointing restrictions. (For example, the four-course “medieval feast” which was put on by the local Society for Creative Anachronism several years ago was delicious because all the food was fresh. How likely is it that even royalty in the centuries between 600 and 1600 ate that well?)

Quite a few works of historical fiction with explicit sex scenes have appeared since Maxim Jakubowski’s “mammoth” tome (part of a series of “mammoth” erotic anthologies). British author “James Lear” has written a series of “Mitch Mitchell mysteries” about a crime-solving American medical doctor living in Edinburgh in the 1920s. While investigating murders on the side, as it were, “Mitch” has an amazing number of sexual encounters with other men, even though male-on-male sex was strictly illegal in Britain at the time. These books, published by U.S.-based Cleis Press, have acquired a cult following. Several of these novels seem to be based on older books that are thought of as “classics” (Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson). The allusions to the “classics” are part of the author’s game (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

In 2011, Cleis Press published Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts by Mitzi Szereto, a good-natured romp through Jane Austen’s most popular romance novel. The frequent and varied sex scenes in Szereto’s version actually seem to suit the characters and the plot, and the sex exaggerates the social satire which is present in the original novel. Mitzi Szereto’s version was not the first rewriting of Pride and Prejudice since 2000.

Therefore I was not surprised to read that British publisher Total E-Bound has launched an erotic imprint, “Clandestine Classics.” Here is the publisher’s description:

“There is no doubting the fact that the classics remain an inspiration to writers, even today, with many complex and thought-provoking storylines. But if we are honest with ourselves haven’t we heard the same reserved tale told time and time again?

Our collection of Clandestine Classics is about to change that. This is a collection of classics as they have never been seen before.

The old fashioned pleasantries and timidity have all been stripped away, quite literally. You didn’t really think that these much loved characters only held hands and pecked cheeks did you? Come with us, as we embark on a breathtaking experience—behind the closed bedroom doors of our favourite, most-beloved British characters. Learn what Sherlock really thought of Watson, what Mr Darcy really wanted to do to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and unveil the sexy escapades of Mr Rochester and Jane Eyre. We’ll show you the scenes that you always wanted to see but were never allowed. Come on, you know you can’t resist…open the pages and delve inside.”

Of course, this imprint is controversial. Some readers are uncomfortable with fanfic (the rewriting of someone else’s work) even when it does not include vivid descriptions of sex or desire. However, I think there is some truth in the line “the scenes that you always wanted to see but were never allowed.” Explicitly sexual novels were written in English in past centuries (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as “Fanny Hill,” was first published in 1749), but these publications were so plagued by legal and social persecution that writers (especially “lady writers”) who wanted to avoid trouble generally avoided describing physical expressions of lust. I think it’s fair to speculate on what certain dead writers would have written if they could have been assured that they would get away with it.

Personally, I would feel uncomfortable writing a sexually-explicit version of an actual novel which is still popular in its original form, but so far, I’ve enjoyed reading such books.

So why have I spent several weeks in the 1860s? Because I’ve had two months away from my classroom job, and therefore I’ve been able to finish writing my raunchy pirate novella, The Flight of the Black Swan, in which a rag-tag crew of gay-male exiles from Her Majesty’s Navy (plus one lesbian and one transman) cross the Atlantic in a stolen sailing ship to intercept a blockade-runner carrying precious tobacco and bales of cotton during the American Civil War. Emily, the heroine, feels at first like a mermaid on the ship, a member of an alien species, but as things turn out, she finds the perfect woman to share her life with—along with the lives of her husband and his lover.

Even though I was inspired by the comic tone of Gilbert & Sullivan’s unbelievable Victorian operettas about sailors and pirates, I’ve tried to keep historical inaccuracies down to a minimum. Google is definitely my friend, and I’ve actually learned more than I needed to about the technology of the 1860s.

Would a journalist of the time have ink-stained fingers? Yes. Commercially-available typewriters were not available until E. Remington & Sons sold the first model in 1873. Could news of the Union victory in 1865 be sent to England by Morse telegraph? Yes, but not right away. The first transatlantic message went through in July 1866. Would the British Navy really be willing to retire a wooden sailing ship in the 1860s? Definitely. The ironclad HMS Warrior of 1861 marked the end of the Age of Sail. Luckily, sex itself (as distinct from culturally-specific words) is fairly timeless, and that includes the same-gender varieties.

My novella is currently in the hands of the publisher. Time will tell whether readers will find its version of realism to be magical enough.
——————–

Engaging the Senses

by | August 21, 2012 | | 7 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

How do you make your stories come alive
for readers? One important factor is your ability to engage their
senses. When you give readers some idea of how your fictional world
smells, sounds, tastes, and feels, their vicarious experience becomes
more vivid and compelling. (I left the sense of vision off the list
above because most authors already describe how things look.) In
erotica and erotic romance, of course, sensory details become even
more critical, because sex is such an intensely physical activity and
because arousal depends so much on non-visual stimuli such as touch
and smell.

Personally, I find it quite difficult
to come up with effective sensory descriptions. All too often, I sit
there at my computer, a scene playing out in my mind, knowing how it
would feel, smell and taste, but finding myself at a loss as to how
to convey those impressions in language.

The fact is, words can never adequately
capture the nuances of sensory perception. Actually, all you can hope
to do is trigger the recollection of sensation on the part of your
reader. Your words must act as cues that evoke a kind of recognition.
Ah, yes, you want your reader to think, I know how my nipples feel
when I’m turned on – like I’ll die if someone doesn’t touch me. I
remember how my husband smells when we’ve been working out in the
yard all day and he hasn’t showered. I can call up the slightly
bitter taste of semen, the salt-and-iron flavor of blood. I know the
crinkly sound a condom packaging opening and the gasp of lube
spurting into a palm. Actually, of course, conscious thought isn’t
what’s going on. Descriptions evoke emotion via recognition or
imagination.

Starting this post (without really
knowing where I was going) led me to consider what strategies we authors have
at our disposal to work this little trick. It seems to me that there
are three basic methods for engaging the senses: adjectives,
metaphors, and mirroring.

Adjectives, of course, exist to
describe. The trouble is, the most obvious adjectives are frequently
overused. Again and again, I find myself describing skin as “smooth”,
voices as “low”,”rich” and “melodious”,
the scent of arousal as “musky”, the taste of muscular
flesh as “salty”. Bring out the thesaurus, I can hear you
say, and I do. However, it’s not necessarily a better solution to use
some other term that is less frequent in the language (and thus more
difficult to understand) or perhaps not exactly right for the
sensation I’m trying to convey.

Let’s try “smooth”, as an
example. When I dig out my trusty Roget, I find three inches of
entries in the index under “smooth”. I guess
“smooth-textured” is the closest to my meaning when I’m
writing (for example) about the feel of a man’s erect organ in one’s
hand or mouth. I flip to entry 287.9 (287 as a whole is “smoothness”)
and find the following:

sleek, slick, glossy, shiny,
gleaming; silky, silken, satiny, velvety; polished, burnished,
furbished; buffed, rubbed, finished; varnished, lacquered,
shellacked, glazed; glassy.

Aside from silky, silken, satiny,
and velvety, which
are metaphoric, which of the above adjectives would be a better
description for my hero’s penis than “smooth”? It might be
“slick”, but only if I’ve already dispensed the lube (or I
have a ménage
going on). “Sleek” seems to me to have a different meaning,
and also to be a strange description for part of a man (though you
might talk about sleek hair). “Gleaming”, “shiny”
and so on refer to the sense of sight, not touch. I would imagine
that my hypothetical penis would be “rubbed”,
but not in the sense mean here! I rather like the notion of a
“laquered” penis, but that would have to be a sex toy, not
the real thing!

So in fact, my
hackneyed adjective “smooth” may be the best choice, at
least among the options here. Sigh. (I’d be interested in hearing
other suggestions.)

Metaphors work by
explicitly stating or implying a comparison between the sensation
being described and some other well-known or prototypical sensory
experience. (Actually, an explicit comparison is called a simile, but
the effect is the same.) “Silky”, “satiny” and
“velvety” are all metaphorical when used to describe skin.
They refer to three different textures, associated with different
types of fabric. I’ve used all three of them – a lot. In general, I
rely on metaphor for the bulk of my sensory descriptions. Excitement
is likened to electricity or fire. Pleasure is described as melting
or boiling, compared to slow-pouring honey or breath-stealing race
cars.

Metaphors offer a
far wider variety of options for sensory description. First, one can
draw on the full range of natural and artificial phenomena as
potential sources of metaphor. Second, we already understand and
describe our experiences in metaphorical terms. We talk about
“burning” pain, a “heavy” heart, “biting”
sarcasm or a “bitter” argument. Strictly speaking, these
are all metaphors.

But metaphor can be overdone, too. I
know, because this is one of my weaknesses. Over-reliance on metaphor
to describe physical sensations can end up distancing the reader from
your character, rather than bringing her closer. This is particularly
true if the metaphor is “strained” (a metaphor in itself) –
if basis of the implied comparison is not immediately obvious or
possibly inappropriate. Overuse of metaphor can also make writing
sound overly precious and “literary”.

Mirroring is the third alternative for
engaging the senses. Don’t go looking up this strategy in your
writing text books; I just came up with this name, though I’m sure
many of you use this technique, consciously or unconsciously. What do
I mean by mirroring? Instead of describing the sensations themselves,
you describe the character’s thoughts and/or reactions to those
sensations.

Here’s a short excerpt from my BDSM erotic romance novella The Understudy. It uses all three techniques, but
relies quite heavily on mirroring. I’ve highlighted in red the
sentences where I’m using the character’s reactions or thoughts to
imply sensation.

****

Geoffrey positioned himself between
my splayed thighs. “Remember, Sarah,” he said. “Be still.”
Then he rammed his cock all the way into my cunt in one fierce
stroke.

The force
drove the breath from my lungs. The fullness made me suck the air
back in. If I hadn’t been so wet, he would have torn me apart, but
as it was my flesh parted for him as though sliced open.

My pussy
clenched reflexively around his invading bulk, but otherwise I
managed to avoid moving. His eyes, locked with mine, told me he
approved. His hardness pressed against my engorged clit. A
climax loomed, then faded away as he kept me there, motionless,
pinned to the bed.

He pulled mostly out. My hungry
cunt fluttered, empty for an instant. He drove back into me, harder
than before. I strained against the bars,
struggling not to jerk and writhe as his cock plunged in and
out of my cunt like a pile-driver.

God, it felt good! His roughness
somehow heightened the pleasure. I was his, to
use and abuse. His fuck toy, just as he had said. At that moment, that was
all I wanted to be.

****

I
am not holding my own writing up as a model here. I’m merely trying
to illustrate what I mean by “mirroring”. There’s very little direct
description of sensation in this passage but I hope that it evokes
the intensity of this experience for my heroine.

I
don’t know if this analysis is any help. It’s still agony to come up
with vivid, original sensory descriptions. I remember recently, for
instance, I was trying to describe the smell of freshly brewed
coffee. How would you convey that unique sensation? You recognize it
in an instant, but what are the characteristics of the smell?

Warm.
Rich. Dark. Earthy. Sweet? Stimulating. Mouth-watering (that’s
mirroring, really). Complex. Chocolatey (a metaphor). Roasted (but
can you really smell that)?

I’m
getting nowhere here. Maybe you’d like to give it a try. Maybe you’ll
be more successful that I am. And I’d love to know what techniques
you use to engage your readers’ senses!

Hot Chilli Erotica

Hot Chilli Erotica

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