Latest Posts

inspiration

The Cat As Muse

by | August 28, 2015 | | 6 Comments

Elizabeth Black
writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, and dark
fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and three
cats. Visit her web site, her Facebook
page, and her Amazon Author Page.

My last few ERWA
posts have been quite serious, so I wanted to keep things light this month.
Writers often talk about their muses, including writers whose works have
inspired them. I’ve long been inspired by Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Joe
Lansdale, Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy Parker, and Oscar Wilde. Writers also talk
about the support they get from their family and friends. Some have a mentor or
two. I’m fortunate enough to have a great deal of support from my husband and
my writer friends, especially on Facebook. I know that plenty of writers are
shunned by their parents, siblings, and spouses who especially don’t take
erotic fiction seriously. They want to support the writers in their midst, but
they wish they wrote “real” books. I can’t count the number of times
I’ve been looked down upon because I erotic fiction and romance. The genres get
a lot of grief they don’t deserve, especially when it comes to romance. Romance
is the most successful genre out there. It deserves more respect.

I consider pets to
be an unusual muse. Our pets are part of our families, and they give us
unconditional love. We feed them and give then a safe place to live and they
repay us by doting on us, curling into our laps, and displaying cute behavior
that turns us into puddles of delighted goo. Cats and writers seem to go
together like, well, cats and writers. Probably the most famous literary cat
lover is Ernest Hemingway, whose polydactyl cats are the stuff of legend. Edgar
Allan Poe had trained the family cat to sleep on his wife Virginia’s chest to
keep her warm since she suffered from tuberculosis. Mark Twain said “Some
people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not
of these.”

Joyce Carol Oates
described the soothing calm she feels from her cat. “I
write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don’t want to get
up. She’s so much more calming than my husband.” Science fiction writer
Philip K. Dick wrote the following of his cat, Willis:  “Willis, my tomcat, strides silently
over the pages of that book, being important as he is, with his long golden
twitching tail. Make them understand, he says to me, that animals are really
that important right now. He says this, and then eats up all the food we had
been warming for our baby. Some cats are far too pushy. The next thing he’ll
want to do is write SF novels. I hope he does. None of them will sell.”

Neil
Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, and William S. Burroughs were owned by cats.  T. S. Elliot loved cats so much he wrote
poems about them that were turned into an award-winning, long-running
musical. 

I have
long been a cat lover, and their antics have inspired me so much I’ve included
some of my own in my fiction. Below is a picture of (from top to bottom)
Beowulf, Domino, and Scully. Domino is the matriarch. She was the first kitten
born to Oreo, whom I will talk about below. Yes, I have a cat named Scully. I
used to have a cat named Mulder but she died several years ago from kidney
failure. I like to tell people she was abducted by aliens.

My cats have
appeared in many of my stories. It’s my way of keeping them with me at all
times and making them immortal. Beowulf appeared in my short story The Party Crasher, which was published
by Scarlet Magazine in the U. K. It was one of my first published stories. One
of Beowulf’s nicknames was Mr. Fuzzyboy. Sadly, he died suddenly in January,
2015. I still miss him. This is Beowulf, showing off.

Here is the scene in
The Party Crasher when Beowulf made
his appearance. It’s Olivia’s birthday, and a man she’d been seeing (Fred) who
does not awaken her passions invited a medium to her surprise birthday party.
Madame Persephone quickly homes in on Jeremy, a friend of Olivia’s Olivia lusts
after. The resulting séance becomes quite comical.

The Party Crasher – Excerpt

Madame Persephone laced her thick
fingers together and looked around the room. She pointed to three guests,
including Fred, and asked them to take a seat at the table. She then asked
Olivia to take the seat next to her. That left one seat open.

She sniffed the air again. She
held out her hands, and her fingers danced on the air. She turned slowly, and
faced the kitchen.

“You, young man,” She
pointed to Jeremy. “I need you here. I have a strong feeling about you,
that you are especially sensitive.”

So Jeremy is “especially
sensitive” and Olivia is as thick as a rock. That made her feel just
wonderful. She doubted anything would happen during this silly séance, but she
couldn’t tell Fred to make the woman leave. Besides, the silliness could be
fun. At least the argument over Sir Paul’s divorce had finally subsided. Olivia
was afraid she was going to have to break it up, it got so heated.

“Sir –” Madame
Persephone pointed to Jeremy. “Please sit next to Olivia.” Fred
looked put out that he was not seated next to Olivia. He was between two of her
coworkers who were unable to stifle their giggling.

Madame Persephone lit the white
candles. She picked up the white sage incense, lit it, blew it out, and waved
the smoke around the table. She muttered some kind of prayer under her breath.

“We are ready,” she
said. “Someone please turn out the lights.”

One of the guests obliged. Olivia
let her eyes adjust to the dim light. Candlelight flickered on the table,
walls, and ceiling. Someone snickered in the quiet.

“All of us must be silent. I
will try to contact the spirits I sense lurking in this house. Everyone around
the table, please hold hands. Don’t break contact during the séance. That’s
very dangerous. You may trap a spirit here who doesn’t want to be here. I can’t
stress that enough.” Madame Persephone said. “Is everyone
ready?”

Olivia saw heads nod around the
table. A ripple flowed up her spine. She was a little excited about this
silliness after all. While she didn’t believe for a second that Madame
Persephone would contact any spirits, deep down she had hoped she would.

“I call to you, oh restless
spirits that may occupy this house. Speak to us,” Madame Persephone said.
She trembled, and lowered her head to her chest. She moaned. It was quite a
good show. The woman knew her stuff.

“Meeeeeeeeoooowwwww!!!!!”
Madame Persephone’s eyes bugged open. “Oh, now, Mr. Fuzzyboy, you behave
yourself.” She looked at Olivia. “My apologies. That was my spirit
guide, Mr. Fuzzyboy, making an ass of himself. He likes to show up at my
séances just to get noisy. He demands a lot of attention, and wants to talk
through me. He probably wants a treat.” Olivia realized that Mr. Fuzzyboy
sounded a lot like Fred, who was just as demanding and wanted treats for his
performances as well.

Madame Persephone closed her
eyes, and continued speaking. “Mr. Fuzzyboy, now is not the time. We can
play later.” She giggled. “Yes, I’ll get your catnip toy when I get
home.”

She rocked back and forth in her
chair, and hummed in a low voice. Glenda, one of Olivia’s coworkers, giggled.
Olivia heard someone kick Glenda under the table.

Madame Persephone bolted upright
in her chair, and stared at Olivia.

“My dear, there is someone
here who wants to speak to you.”

Olivia stared back. “Me?
Who?”

“It’s a man – definitely a
man, but he won’t tell me his name. He’s asking… what, sir?” She jerked in
her seat as if offended. “I most certainly will not ask her that, sir, not in mixed company.”

What on earth could this be about, Olivia wondered.

“How rude! Seriously, sir,
do you take me for a fool?”

“What does he want to ask
me?” Olivia asked.

“I can’t repeat what he
said. It’s… crude.”

“This sounds like fun,”
Jeremy said. Olivia pinched his hand.

“Say it anyway. I’m
curious.” Olivia insisted.

Madame Persephone squirmed in her
seat. “He wants to know if he can stick his finger in your bellybutton and
tickle you.”

Everyone laughed.

Olivia could do nothing but sit
there with her mouth hanging open. A flush rose from her chest and warmed her
face. She thanked God that in the candlelight, no one could see her blushing.

“You are ticklish in your
belly button, Olivia.”

“Shut up, Fred.” Olivia
said. To Madame Persephone, she said: “Please tell him I said ‘no.'”

“That’s what I thought you’d
say.” Madame Persephone was silent for a few seconds. “Sir, if she
won’t let you stick your finger in her belly button, I seriously doubt she
would let you do that.”

I don’t want to know, thought Olivia. Her heart jumped in her chest. She glanced
at Jeremy, who fought off laughter by biting his lower lip. Olivia felt
mortified.

Who the heck is that woman talking to?

Below is a picture of Lucky, our tuxedo cat. He’s about 12 years
old now and still acts like a kitten. He’s the most personable cat I’ve ever
met. He made a brief appearance in my short story The Wandering Cat.

Below is an excerpt
from my short erotic story The Wandering
Cat, which was originally published by eXcessica. It’s out of print now.
Oreo the cat is based on my late cat also named Oreo, who had a penchant for
clawing her way out of the house. She loved to wander around Rockport,
Massachusetts, where I live. She looked like Sylvester from the Loony Tunes cartoons.
The picture is of Oreo with her tongue sticking out, as it often did. I swear
that cat’s tongue was too big for her head. As you can see, Beowulf made an
appearance in this story, too. He got around. So did Lucky, who is also in the
story.

The Wandering Cat – Excerpt

“Oreo! It’s chow time!”

Cat refilled the cat food bowl and the water
bowl. Beowulf and Lucky ran to see their new chow, but Oreo was nowhere to be
seen. That was unlike her.

Worried, Cat turned the house upside down.
She looked behind the bed, in the closets, and under the couch. No cat. There
was only one other place where Oreo could be, and that was sitting on her
window bench.

The large Gothic window was open. No cat sat
on the plush window bench. Cat took a closer look at the window, and saw that
the screen had been clawed. There was a hole in the screen big enough for a cat
to climb through.

Great. Oreo got out again.

Cat put on her sandals and walked outside.
She saw cat paw prints in the damp earth, and followed them through her back
yard. They ended at the fence marking Lance Hendry’s back yard.

Her heart raced. Would Oreo give her an
excuse to say something to Lance other than “Hello, how’s the
weather?” She fantasized about his scrumptious body every night. What
would his arms feel like as they wrapped around her? She wished she could
summon up the courage to say more to him than a few quick words.

Oreo gave her that chance.

She walked into his back yard. Peter
Gabriel’s music played from somewhere inside, making Cat’s heart beat all the
faster. Not only was Lance home, he was another Peter Gabriel fan.

She knocked on the back door. Her fingers
sounded muffled against the hard wood. How could he hear her over the music?
After a minute of knocking on the door, she backed up.

A Gothic window was open on the second floor.
She hoped he was up there. She felt like the rebuttal to Rapunzel. The damsel
stood below the enchanted window, and wished her man would appear in it.

“Lance? Are you there?”

No answer.

“Lance!”

A head with rumpled hair and a broad set of
shoulders leaned out of the window. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Cat took a good
look at his muscular chest and the black hair that covered it. She didn’t know
when she would get a gorgeous sight like that again.

“Hi. What’s up?”

“Have you seen my cat? Oreo? The little
black and white one?”

“The one that always gets out? No,
haven’t seen her.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She was too shy to
ask him any more questions. Muscle up
some courage, girl! Ask him how he’s doing. Something. Anything! Talk to him!

“Would you like some help looking for
her?”

“I’d love it!” Cat was so excited
over getting to spend some time with Lance that her knees knocked. What would
she say to him? For once in her life, she was speechless. Would she be able to
make enough small talk to keep him interested in her?

“Stay put. I’ll be down in a
minute.”

He came outside wearing a button-down
short-sleeved shirt, shorts, and sandals. His shock of black hair looked as if
he hadn’t combed it in several days. That was the new fashion for young men
these days. Cat was ten years Lance’s senior, but she didn’t care. Maybe today
she’s win on two counts – they’d find her cat, and she’d gain a lover.

“What’s your name again?”

“It’s Cat. Short for Catherine.”

“Cat is looking for her cat?”

She laughed. “Yes, she sure is.”

“How long has Oreo been missing?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t come when I
refilled the food bowl, and she clawed through the screen window again. I’m
scared. I hope she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is. She gets out often
enough. Have you looked around outside yet?”

“I’m just starting now. Want to come
with me?” Please say yes! Please say
yes!

“I’d love to. I’ve wanted to get to know
you better anyway.”

Cat’s stomach did The Happy Dance. She felt
light-headed and giddy. Lance wants to
get to know me better! All thanks to Oreo.

Below is an excerpt
from my upcoming family saga/thriller novel Secrets
and Lies, which will be published by Eldritch Press in 2016. Kate Stanwood
is my main character. Her cat Koala is based on a Snowshoe cat that owned me,
also named Koala. Snowshoes are a mix between Siamese and domestic shorthairs.
They have white paws called “boots”,  hence the name. Koala was so smart he was
scary. My husband Bill (at the time we were dating) used to live next door to
me. Sometimes Koala would sometimes get himself locked out of the house at night.
So, he’d go over to Bill’s house. Bill often stayed up late. Koala would meow
loudly until Bill came outside, and the cat would then run to my front door and
meow to be let in.  Bill would let him
in, and all would be well in the world. Koala used to do the exact same thing
to me that he is doing to Kate at stupid o’clock in the morning. The picture is
of Koala on the left and Oreo on the right. They were inseparable.

Secrets and Lies – Excerpt

Meow!!!

Kate snapped awake. She always snapped awake
at the slightest sound. She was lying on her back. Koala stared at her from his
perch on the headboard, which was designed like a bookcase.  She glared at him. He stared back and mewed.

I am
not getting up just to top off your food bowl, she thought. Koala meowed at her again. He
looked at her with that “Get up and feed me now”
expression on his cherubic little Snowshoe face. He stood and stretched. He
looked at all the books stacked in a pile next to him.  The stack teetered precariously over Kate’s
head. She knew what was coming.

She slowly reached for the water bottle
behind her on the bookcase. Koala froze, one paw touching the spine of a thick
hardback that was already threatening to tip over onto her face. She held the
bottle between forefinger and thumb in full view of the cat. He knew what was
coming, too. As if that would stop the little furball.

You
knock that book over on my head, cat, and you’re Vietnamese food in a few
hours. Koala tapped the book. Kate shook the bottle.
The cat’s eyes widened. He jumped off of the headboard and landed between Kate
and Ian, who slept through it all. He always slept through the nighttime
follies. The bed could fall through the floor and he’d sleep through it.

Koala used Ian’s shoulders as a springboard
and vaulted off of the bed. Ian said “Oof!” and rolled onto his back.
The snoring started almost immediately. Kate sighed and pushed him onto his
side. His snoring rivaled the foghorn at the end of the Cove.

She glanced at the clock: 4:51 a.m. She was
wide awake. She hated it when she woke up too early, which had always been a
bad habit of hers. Thank God she didn’t have to go to work, even though it was
a Tuesday. She could sleep through late morning once she became tired again.

She rolled out of bed and walked into the
upstairs kitchen. Koala followed her, mewing at her ankles, until she picked up
his food bowl, shook it, and placed it back onto the floor. That cat hated
eating anything that he knew had another cat’s spit on it, so she shook the
bowl until fresher contents reached the surface. Satisfied, he ate with gusto.
What a pain in the butt, but she’d never give him up for anything.

I don’t know what I
would do if I didn’t have my cats to keep me company and inspire me while I
write. They’re so important to me they’ve become a part of my fiction. Do you
have pets that inspire you to write? Do you cater to your dogs, or are you
owned by cats? Do you have unusual animals around you, like Flannery O’Connor
and her peacocks? I believe animals make some of the best muses, and they don’t
ask for anything in return but attention, food, and a place to sleep (often on
you). They are the ultimate givers of unconditional love. I wouldn’t part with
my cats for anything in the world, and I’ve immortalized them in my fiction.

If you’d like to
read my erotic fiction, feel free to visit my Elizabeth Black Amazon
Author Page. If you’d like to take a look at my darker stuff, visit my E. A. Black Amazon Author Page.

High Anxiety

by | August 21, 2015 | | 6 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

I guess I must be really out of the loop, because it was only this month that I first encountered the term “30 day cliff”. That was in a discussion on the Excessica authors’ forum. Some of my colleagues were lamenting about the difficulty of bringing out releases frequently enough to keep them from “falling off the thirty day cliff”. From context I surmised that people believed you had to get a new book out every month in order to retain readers’ attention.

At first I shrugged off the whole topic. A book a month? Preposterous! And what was so magical about 30 days, anyway? I figured this must be one of those marketing rules that get bandied about the Internet with no real support from the data at all.

When I did a bit of research, however, I discovered that the 30 day limit apparently has its source in Amazon’s all powerful algorithms. The article below, for example, provides quite graphic evidence for this sales precipice.

http://evahudson.com/amazon-30-day-cliff-omg-its-alive/

Just what authors need. Something else to worry about.

Writing well is hard work. Heck, even writing poorly takes time. Then there’s the editing (for those of us who care about that step), cover art, penning the blurb, and formatting for different publishing platforms (if you’re self-publishing or working with a co-op like Excessica). Updating your website and blog. Sending out tweets or posting your news on Facebook. Begging your author friends to feature your newly birthed literary baby on their blogs, Facebook pages or Twitter feeds. Submitting the manuscript to review sites. Arranging blog tours. Running contests to attract readers. Running around like the proverbial decapitated fowl, waving your arms and shouting, “Look, look, I’ve got a new book! Buy my great new book!” until you’re exhausted and hoarse.

Do that every single month? Are you nuts?

Sure, I know some authors who do this, and more. I have one or two colleagues who send me media kits for their latest titles pretty much monthly, for posting on my blog. Some of them are quite well-known—certainly compared to me. Many of them write well, too, although I have noticed that their excerpts all sound similar. I guess if you’ve found a formula that’s successful, it’s crazy not to stick with it.

Doesn’t work for me, though. I have limited time to devote to my writing career, such as it is. Marketing already takes a serious bite out of that allocation. I’d love to have more people buy my books, not just because I’d like to make more money but because I want to share my erotic visions with a wider audience. However, pressure dries up the creative flow, at least for me. If I have to force myself to write, I know I won’t be satisfied with the results.

I’m pretty confident I could turn out a new 30K book every month—especially if I quit my day job—but I’m also certain these books wouldn’t be very original, or surprising, or memorable. Probably I’d write yet another BDSM initiation story, with a self-assured, ironic, slightly distant hero and an intelligent, feisty heroine who’s aroused and appalled at her own desire to surrender. That’s my Ur-story, one I’ve already written dozens of times, one I love but try to escape for the sake of novelty and exploring new territory. That story sells. I know it does. I could change the names, the location, the initial scenario, the sexual actions and the kinky implements, and sell it again and again.

The notion makes me slightly nauseous.

So despite the clamor by my colleagues—in defiance of the current market wisdom—I choose to turn my back on the precipice. I reject the anxiety whipped up by the pundits and claim my right to define for myself what it means to be a successful author. For me, the criteria include quality, diversity, originality and authenticity. Frequency just doesn’t enter into the equation.

Summoning the Muse

by | July 21, 2015 | | 7 Comments

 

Hesiod et la Muse by Gustave Moreau (1891)

By Lisabet Sarai

When I was younger, I was bound to Erato, the muse of erotic poetry —and occasionally Polyhymnia, who governs sacred verse. Producing poetry was as natural as breathing. Any powerful emotion could trigger the urge to set pen to paper and capture the moment, but most of my poems dealt with love and sex.

I didn’t think about them. I would simply sit down, and they happened. Here’s an example, from 1979:

Lemming
Is is tides, stars?
This wordless urge
timed to the night,
cyclic surge
like circadian clocks?
Ages old,
pure and irrational—
whiskers twitch,
eyes widen,
skin quivers,
shadow caress
materialized
out of telephone wires
and strange desires
crystallize
over two thousand miles.
Volatile,
visceral,
ancient, amoral,
crazy chemicals
burning and blind,
making me wild.
My mind
protests.
The wires whisper
“mine”
“no choice”
and reasons whither,
helpless, limp
as I hurl myself
from the Santa Cruz cliffs.

In general, these poems didn’t follow any rules. They had no formal structure, though they chime with alliteration and internal rhyme. They were pure expressions of the need, lust, confusion and joy that swirled inside me.

After I married, the flood of poems mostly dried up. I think this was largely due to a deficit of erotic angst. I was fulfilled, happy, busy with real world adventures. I had neither the leisure nor the motivation for poetic introspection.

In the last few years, though, I’ve started creating new poems, in response to Ashley Lister’s monthly writing exercise on this blog. In case you’re not aware of this feature, on the 6th of each month, Ash explains and gives examples of a different poetic form, then challenges readers to produce their own instances. Curious to see if I still had Erato’s attention, I’ve tried my hand.

Here’s a piece from 2013, a form called a quatern.

The Line

The line between delight and pain
you’re teaching me to tread. Again
your leather licks along my spine,
your fingers in my hair entwine,

your blades their bloody trails incise;
the line between delight and pain
grows blurry as you kiss my eyes
and dive for pearls between my thighs,

splayed and shackled. Now your cane
paints ruddy stripes across my flesh,
the line between delight and pain:
ecstatic, luminous, insane.

With blood and tears, with spunk and sweat
you baptize me. Appalled and wet
I teeter on the edge again,
the line between delight and pain.

Very different, indeed, though I’m still dealing with the same themes. The experience of writing these new poems is radically different as well. This verse doesn’t well up naturally. It must be coaxed, massaged, manipulated. Craft dominates inspiration. And yet, the final results still surprise me with their ability to evoke emotion.

A similar transition has occurred in my prose. I’ve written in the past about losing my innocence as I gained experience as an author. Like many first erotic novels, my Raw Silk represented an outpouring of very personal fantasies. My characters’ passions closely mirrored my own. Blissfully unaware of genre constraints, I let my imagination flow uncensored onto the page. I wrote to arouse myself, first and foremost, not for an audience. Yet that novel remains my most popular, largely, I believe, because of its authenticity.

Certainly it’s not the writing that’s responsible for its five star reviews. I cringe a bit when I reread the book, noticing the excess adverbs, the overly long sentences, the repetition and the stilted dialogue. Nevertheless, readers respond (I believe) to the erotic energy in the tale, the confessional tone and the realistic emotions (realistic because they were my own).

Over the years (sixteen now!), my work has become less naive, more conscious, and more polished. Though it’s abundantly clear that most readers couldn’t care less about style and craft, I get personal satisfaction knowing that my recent books are far better written than my early ones. I’m still wistful, though, remembering the days when I wrote without thinking about markets, reader expectations and word count—when I wrote whatever turned me on, regardless of how raw or transgressive or over-the-top it might be. These days it’s nearly impossible for me muster that electric thrill that propelled me through 80K+ words in six months.

Perhaps in compensation for lost spontaneity, however, I’ve gained a measure of control. At this point in my career, I can decide when I start how I want a story to unfold, and much of the time, the results will closely match my intentions. I’m not waiting for the muse to tap me on the shoulder. Lately, I find I can often summon her at will. I can place my order with her—a story of roughly N words, with such-and-such a tone, aimed at a specific theme, with a desired level of sexual intensity—then let her take over.

Some of my favorite stories in recent years—“Fleshpot”, “The First Stone”, and “The Last Amanuensis” in particular come to mind—so perfectly fit the images I had for them before I began that it feels like magic. They are exactly the stories I wanted to write. And despite my comments above about writing being a more conscious and deliberate process now, I’m really not sure how that happened. Of course, that’s the nature of expertise; you internalize the skills until they are more or less automatic. You set yourself a goal, then let your inner knowledge move you in that direction.

With poetry or prose, I am no longer the mad, magic-inspired oracle I used to be. Perhaps, though, I am more of an artist.

Now I’m facing a fascinating dilemma. I’ve agreed to edit and expand Raw Silk for re-release. At last I’ll be able to fix all the awkwardness in the prose, all the overwriting. But in the process of editing, will I lose the spark? I’m not the same person I was when I wrote the novel. For better or worse, I’ve changed. Can I preserve the heat and authenticity, especially in the new chapters?

I’ll summon the muse to work with me. I expect to need all the help I can get.

Dry Canyon Observations & Inspiration

by | May 30, 2015 | | 1 Comment

By K D Grace

I’m just back from two weeks in Oregon with my sister. I always come back a bit more clearheaded and focused and with more than a few ideas for new story possibilities. Oh it’s not so much that I’m with my sister. In a lot of ways, we’d drive each other crazy under different circumstances. She’s an extrovert who can’t get enough people and activity in her life. I, on the other hand, like my doses of people small and far between and am very keen on solitary activities. But for two weeks, we balance each other out, and we totally revel in each other’s company. We take long walks, we talk and laugh into the wee hours, we have our annual Pride and Prejudice marathon while veging out on her TV room floor with popcorn and chocolate and any other decadent food or drink we can manage during that indulgent six hours. We bounce ideas off each other and just generally pick up where we left off.

I think I come back to England more clearheaded, more inspired because I’ve had a break from the routine, because for a little while I’m living completely outside my own context. Personally, I think it’s easy for writers to get so tunnel-visioned, so focused on our writing and promoting routines that we forget that walking outside our little world is the best foreplay for the writing orgasm. To be disconnected completely from the things we cling most tightly to, not only forces us to view things differently, but also opens us to inspiration in the viewing. With that in mind, here are a few things that inspired me during those two weeks, things that may very well end up in stories and novels yet to come, some of which have already have ended up on my blog.

Walks in a dry canyon

My sister lives in the high desert of Oregon, and there’s a dry canyon cut by ancient volcanoes that literally

divides the town she lives in right down the middle. A long time ago it was used as the town dump. Now it’s been cleaned up and serves as a walking path, which includes a couple of playgrounds for the kids, along with a doggie playground, and a series of nature trails that spread out over the wider stretches of the canyon floor. The place is well used and well cared for by the town’s population of 26,000 who live along either side of the 3 ½ mile rim. For convenience, the canyon was recently spanned by a bridge that was built to blend in beautifully with the colour and the geology of the canyon, the design so well thought out that even the noise of the traffic is negligible from the canyon floor.

Nature alive and dead

I’ve seen deer in the canyon, along with rock chucks, ground squirrels, birds of all kinds. This year I saw nesting scrub jays, even a nest of crows in the cliffs exercising their wings as they prepared to fledge. My sister says that on occasion there have been mountain lion sightings in the canyon and there’ll be warning signs posted when that happens. Though I didn’t get lucky enough to see one, there were the odd occasions when I felt as though I was being followed, when my skin prickled, and I turned slowly to find nothing there, but a quiver of the sagebrush behind me … no doubt caused by the breeze. That being the case, it’s not surprising that I should return to my sister’s house with visions of mountain lion shape shifters showing themselves in the desert moonlight beneath the bridge. Nor is it surprising that the idea should find its way into my blog.

And then there are the dead things one encounters in the canyon. I’m not sure why they matter to me, but they

do. On one of our walks, my sister, knowing the strange twists and turns of my mind, pointed out the well-desiccated carcass of a dead skunk off to one side of the trail. Her mind has it’s own strange twists and turns. It stunk to high heaven last fall, she told me.

It didn’t smell so bad by the time I stood over the dusty heap of flattened skin and bones taking pictures. I would have missed it completely if she hadn’t pointed it out.

She watched as I photographed the delicate skull and teeth, visible above the sun bleached remains of the pelt. You don’t get to look at wild things up close and personal when they’re alive, so dead things deserved to be honoured and observed, at least I think they do. In truth there’s something beautiful, something magical in the way nature takes back her own. The teeth and the delicate bones of the skull caught the desert sun, and the shape and structure held its own fascination, though I was relieved it no longer smelled. I don’t know why it mattered. I don’t know why a dead skunk can somehow inspire, and yet it does. Even now, after I’m home and back into my routine, it still matters for some strange reason.  And anyway, inspiration sometimes is a delayed reaction, isn’t it?

Detritus of Past Lives

The canyon used to be the city dump back when the hearty settlers moved in from the more ‘hospitable’ parts of the west to practice dry land farming and cattle ranching. It was a hard life, though you wouldn’t know that now as

you drive through the modern town of Redmond, with it’s slight touristy, slightly Western feel, or walk along the canyon and see the runners and mothers pushing prams and people walking dogs. But there are still a few places along the cliffs where mangled, rusted remains of cars and farming equipment and tangles of baling wire are scattered in decaying heaps, now blending in so well with the shades of kaki and burnt umber of the canyon that they’re hardly noticeable except to someone who only ever gets there once a year, someone who wonders what stories are hidden in the twisted metal heaps aging in the glare of the desert sunshine.

Detritus of Present Lives

The cliff tops above the canyon are lined with prosperous housing developments, trailer parks and building sites. My sister and I walked a path behind a trailer park and then out through a new, well-landscaped housing development to get down into the canyon. The stretch behind the trailer park will, no doubt, someday be built upon as well, but for now it fascinated me in that it contains what was left behind of the houses, or perhaps trailers that were there before. I know that children from the trailer park play in the mounds of dirt along the irrigation ditch that runs through the wasteland behind. I noticed one high mound with a shovel standing upright in the earth, and I wondered, in the way storytellers do, who was buried beneath that mound of dirt and what tale were buried there with them?

Where my sister and I crossed back into the trailer park to head on to her house, there was a deserted pickup truck filled with what looked like the contents of an apartment quickly evacuated. My sister told me the truck has been sitting there abandoned for months. The police ticketed it, but the ticket blew away, and still the truck sits there. She told me this while I rapidly snapped photos of said truck and my mind raced back to the mound of dirt and the shovel. We both noticed the badly battered rodeo dummy buried beneath a weathered cane rocking chair and a broken computer desk. She says there were actually lacy women’s panties hastily dropped behind the vehicle early on, and we speculated as to whether that was a part of the story of the truck or possibly just teenagers trying to find a bit

of privacy for a feel-up behind. Either way, it got tucked away into my mental file cabinet for further perusing as necessary.

After that dusty walk, we decided to reward ourselves with an ice cream cone from Dairy Queen, and while we partook, I shared with her the story I could see forming in my imagination – sexy shape shifters, writer turned investigators, foul play, sexy encounters in a dry canyon. She listened and nodded and occasionally threw in an idea of her own between licks to her ice cream cone.

Now, back home in my own space, walking the places that are familiar to me, the places inspire me, preparing a post that I hope will inspire others, I find myself thinking of what I’ve brought back from those two weeks and how those experiences allow me to slip back into my own life and my own routine with a view slightly altered, with a sense of purpose a bit more focused and hopefully with my senses and my imagination a little sharper from the experience.

Reading for Pleasure

by | May 30, 2014 | | 3 Comments

By K D Grace

It’s so easy for a novelist to get caught
up in the work and the PR and the marketing that goes along with the writing.
Sometimes it feels like weeks can pass before I raise my head and take a look
around. It never all gets done and I wouldn’t want it to. There are books on my
internal ‘to-be-written’ calendar that may not get written until 2050. There’s
so much more than I ever have time to put on the page, and then there’s
promoting and pimping what’s already out there. Days come and go. Seasons
change, and sometimes I hardly notice.

But every once in a while, I look up from
the laptop, raise my arms above my head and give a good stretch and there it
is, an epiphany. I had such an epiphany just before Christmas. It shouldn’t
have been a surprise because it’s something I’ve always known, something that
I’d just pushed aside because there was no time, something that was too
important NOT to make time for.

We were FINALLY taking a little bit of
holiday – going to Rome, which is one of my favourite places on the planet. I
was in between books, having just turned in my latest manuscript, and was as
caught up on PR as I was ever likely to be, so I did something bold and
decadent. I downloaded J R Ward’s Dark
Lover, and read a novel strictly and totally for my own indulgent pleasure.
I wasn’t looking for deeper meaning. I wasn’t aiming to see what’s going on in
my genre. I wasn’t trying to learn a new skill or do research. I absolutely, 100%
was looking to be entertained.

Frankly, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to
focus, since I was still on the come-down from the manuscript I’d just sent
off. Wow! Was I wrong! Starving woman … banquet … You get the picture. When I
wasn’t wandering around Rome and the environs, drinking in the scenery, the
history and the ambiance, I was reading. I read Late into the night; I read
early in the morning, I read over breakfast and in the underground. Whenever I
wasn’t playing tourist, I was reading –three novels. I was in heaven!  I’m not a fast reader, and okay these weren’t
tomes by any means, but for me, it was epic! And it was a powerful reminder of
why I read for pleasure, and how much I’d lost by not reading for pleasure.

Time! That’s always my biggest complaint. The
bane of my existence is that THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH!!! Who the hell has time to
read for pleasure? That was the question I’d been asking myself for the past
few years as I worked at becoming a published novelist, as I worked at pimping
what I’d written. It’s a complaint I hear often from other writers. It’s a
complaint I hear from lots of people, actually.

Amazingly, what I discovered in that
exquisite week in Rome is that I can’t afford not to take time to

read for my
own pleasure. I seldom actually get an escape from what I do. What I do is never
done, and I love that about being a writer. BUT that means I have to force the
issue when it comes to feeding my creative self, when it comes to just resting.
There’s very seldom a moment when I’m not thinking in one way or another about
my work. Writing dominates my life in ways that are, no doubt, beyond neurotic.
Reading for pleasure is the great escape – even if it’s just a little while
before I go to sleep, or while I’m on the bus or while I’m eating my lunch.
It’s that little bit of time when I’m outside the worlds I’m creating and in
someone else’s story – strictly for the fun of it.

The Escape is always followed by the
return. I go back to my own work more relaxed and more focused because the
break I’ve had is a total break. The return is followed by the analysis. That
takes place in the shower or while I’m cooking dinner or doing laundry.  The analysis is not hard work; it’s just
reflecting on what makes the novel I’m reading work for me, or not. Were the
characters endearing? Were they irritating? Did the plot move me? Can I predict
what will happen next? Beyond the kind of analysis all writers do when they
read something someone else has written is the idea that I’ve derived pleasure from
what I’ve read. I’ve engaged in someone else’s story and immersed myself in it.
That’s always a prompt for me, a little push to make me consider my own stories
and my use of craft to immerse readers in the tale I have to tell. Immersion in
my own story is, for me, a given. It’s what I’m most obsessed with. It’s what I
have to do to make the story work, to make it a total immersion experience for
my readers as well.

Yes, there’s a lot going on at a lot of
levels, and reading could very easily become an exercise in improving my own
work. No doubt it’s always that on some level, but the truth of it, plain and
simple, is that reading gives me immense pleasure, and I’m very glad that it’s
once again an integral part of my writing life

Gone Researchin'

by | May 23, 2014 | | 4 Comments

So, as this post goes live I’m actually out of the country. In Paris, France, one of my very favourite places on earth… so far 😉

I’ve gone researchin’. For some reason, ever since my very first visit to Paris back in 2010, I found it beautiful, fascinating, interesting and inspirational. Since then, it’s spawned several stories which have been set there, all very different and all so much fun to write. And yet, I’m not done! One of those tales has been begging for a long time to be extended into a novel, but my hands were tied due to a shitty publisher, who shall remain nameless. Since then, I’m glad to say the publisher is no more (yeah, seriously, they were that bad), so I have the rights to that short story and the characters back, and I can work on the novel. I’m really looking forward to it because I love the story, the plot and the fact that my crazy little brain actually figured out this could be turned into a series. It’s been languishing for too long, and I’m hoping that another research trip to Paris will inspire me all over again and I’ll be bubbling over with ideas, new settings and enthusiasm for the project 🙂

Happy Reading!

Lucy x

*****

Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and
erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over 100
publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include several
editions of Best Bondage Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica 2013 and Best Erotic
Romance 2014. Another string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and
co-edited a number of anthologies, and also edits for a small publishing house.
She owns Erotica For All, is book
editor for Cliterati, and is one eighth
of The Brit Babes. Find out more
at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk.
Join her on Facebook
and Twitter, and subscribe to her
newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9

A Community of Spirit

by | July 21, 2013 | | 19 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

I discovered the Erotica Readers &
Writers Association in the year 2000. Google was barely a gleam in
the eyes of venture capitalists. Social networking meant going to the
local singles bar. The word “blog” had not yet been coined. I was
living in rural New England and accessing the Internet via a 36
kilobaud dial-up line.

I wasn’t looking for a critique forum.
Although I enjoyed reading erotica, I wasn’t seeking a source for
sexy stories or reviews of the same. No, I was searching in clueless
newbie fashion for ways to get the word out about my first novel, Raw
Silk, which Black Lace had published a few months earlier.
Somehow I happened on a page of erotica-related links on the ERWA
website (which at that point had been around for about four years,
and was known as the “Erotica Readers Association”). So I
emailed the webmistress and asked if she’d be willing to include a
link to my brand new venture, www.lisabetsarai.com.

Adrienne sent me a kind reply in which
she explained that ERWA wasn’t really about advertising. However,
they did have email lists for authors and others interested in sexy
stories, including a list for discussing craft (Writers), a list for
sharing stories and critiques (Storytime) and a list for chitchat,
often about sexual topics (Parlor). Isolated in my remote, somewhat
conservative town of 1500 people, half a world away from my British
publisher, I eagerly accepted her invitation to join all three lists.

I canceled my subscription to Parlor in
a matter of days, after being swamped with posts about returning
versus not returning your supermarket cart to the designated areas.
(What was sexy about that?) However, Storytime provide new thrills. I
read more, and more varied, erotic stories in the first month or two
on Storytime than in my whole previous existence – and found some
of them both wildly imaginative and truly arousing. Furthermore, I
was able to apply my excessive education to the useful task of
writing crits and providing comments to some of the authors –
though I read many more stories that I could critique. Participating
in Storytime turned out to be a highly intimate experience, as
writers tended to share pieces that revealed their own desires and
fantasies.

Storytime inspired me. I wrote and
posted my first flashers (only 100 words back then), painfully
cutting out words to get below the limit. Targeting a short story
contest announced on ERA, I wrote my first erotic short story, “Glass
House” and received both warm praise (what we authors all live for)
and useful suggestions for improvement. A few of my stories were
selected for the Gallery. I began to read and respond to the calls
for submissions on the Author Resources page. I wrote the first three
chapters of my second novel, Incognito, and sent a proposal to
Black Lace, only to have it roundly rejected (with the comment that
Miranda wasn’t the sort “kick-ass heroine” they preferred). I
might have given up writing at that point if it had not been for the
support of folks on the Writers list. Instead, I girded my loins and
started looking for a new publisher.

Over time, I became more and more
involved with ERA (which added “Writers” to become ERWA at some
point, as the management recognized how important authors were to its
well-being). I wrote reviews for the Smutter’s Lounge, plus an
occasional article for Authors Resources. In 2004 (God, has it
really been that long?), Adrienne convinced me to take on the role of
writing the monthly Erotic Lure newsletter. In 2006 I edited and
arranged the publication of Cream: The Best of The Erotica Readersand Writers Association, which
is still (in my humble opinion) one of the most satisfying and
diverse erotic anthologies around (and which incidentally includes a
great forward by Adrienne, covering the early history of ERWA). Last
year I produced a year-long series of articles (“Naughty Bits”)
covering various technology topics relevant to authors. Controlling
and bossy as I am (yes, I know that’s kind of odd for a submissive),
I also agreed to serve as ERWA blog coordinator. 

 

Looking
back now, after thirteen years, I’m astonished at how much this place
means to me. I’ve come to know individuals here whom I’d place in the
circle of my dearest friends – even though in some cases, we’ve
never met in person. When I have had the chance for face-to-face time
with folks I first encountered at ERWA, it often feels as though
we’ve known one another forever. In the real world, there are very
few people to whom I can reveal my identity as an author of erotica.
At ERWA I’m free to be myself.

For
me, ERWA is a community of spirit. Someone who just learned about the
place might think that the biggest draw was the ability to speak and
write frankly about sexual matters, in an environment where such
topics are welcome rather than taboo. Sure, that’s a great feature,
but today there are many adult-oriented on-line communities. ERWA is
special because of its literary focus. The people who end up on the
Writers list, at least, are passionate about reading and writing –
and not just in the erotica genre. They care deeply about words. They
recognize that storytelling is a definitively human activity. And
many have a profound understanding of both the mystery and the craft
involved in spinning an effective tale.

We
tend to whine about how hard it is to succeed as an author these
days. In fact, I’ve watched many of my colleagues here move from
amateurs to professionals with dozens of books to their credit. Pick
up any recently published erotica anthology and you’ll see familiar
names from the Gallery and Writers. Search Amazon and our members
come up as editors of award-winning collections. Several members have
even gone on to establish their own independent publishing ventures.
As far as I know E.L. James has never been a member of ERWA, but
considering the difficulties involved in getting anyone to take
erotica seriously, I’d say we’re doing pretty well.

And of
course, ERWA has been instrumental in my own career, such as it is.
I’m an old-timer now, but when I first joined, I knew nothing about
publishing or marketing. I barely knew that the genre of erotica
existed, and I’d never read an erotic romance. I had lots of arousing
fantasies, but my dialogue was wooden and my convoluted sentence
structure like something from the nineteenth century. Now I have a
back list that’s pages long – I’ve stopped counting since it’s hard
to know exactly what criteria to apply, but certainly nobody could claim I was a one-book wonder.

I
suspect that without ERWA, I’d never have gotten this far. Without
the support (moral and immoral) of my fellow authors, I might not
have wanted to.

If
you’ve been around this community for anywhere near as long as I
have, I think you know what I am talking about. If you’re new – if
you’ve been trying to get your erotic visions out of your head and
into a manuscript, if you feel ostracized because of your fascination
with things sexual, if you’ve always loved to read and write but
haven’t dared to think about publication – all I can say is welcome.
You probably belong here.

The Importance of Getting Out and About

by | March 23, 2013 | | 5 Comments

By Lucy Felthouse

As someone that works from home, and spends much of my time in front of a computer, I thought I’d write an article on the importance of getting out and about. It’s easy, particularly when you have lots to do, to just keep pounding away at that keyboard, barely looking up until it’s time for lunch or dinner. I know, I’ve done it myself many times, though admittedly I do also spend quite a lot of time looking out of the window, especially when I’m thinking, or if there’s anything going on, which is rare.

But it’s also important to get out and about. Don’t worry, this isn’t a lecture on health or anything, it’s more of a piece about how staring at the same four walls isn’t overly good for the imagination. I take my dog for a walk every day (granted, the walks are shorter when the weather is horrible), and I don’t work weekends. During those times, I do my best to go and see something a little different, have some fun. Because it’s those experiences that fire the imagination, even when you’re not expecting it. Even if you don’t get any inspiration while you’re walking or visiting a place, you may clear your brain of the dull stuff and give yourself time to think about your next story. As putting one foot in front of the other doesn’t take an awful lot of brain power, you can think about your characters, your storyline, your setting. Or, if you’re busy chatting to someone or doing something exciting, you can rest assured that whatever you’re doing may later spark a story idea.

I can attest to all of the above. Staring at the screen, or the four walls doesn’t really help when I’m seriously stuck with someone. However, walking the dog gives me time to think up new ideas, or to work out how I’m going to start a story that’s been floating around in my head for a while. This time is invaluable.

When it comes to visiting interesting places, be it cities, stately homes, ruins or stone circles, I just live for the moment, take lots of photos, and if something comes to me later about that place that I can write about, then that’s just a bonus. I’ve written about tons of places after the fact, including London, Paris, The Peak District, various stately homes, and so on. It’s great fun, but it does give me awful wanderlust!

I know that everyone is different and works in different ways, but if you do find yourself stuck, then I can highly recommend getting out somewhere. Go and walk in the countryside, explore a town or city with no particular aim in mind or visit a tourist attraction. You’ll be surprised at what it can spark in your creativity. Even if it doesn’t, though, at least you had fun. And fun is a valuable commodity in itself.

Happy Writing!
Lucy x

And Now For Something Completely Different…

by | December 28, 2012 | | 4 Comments

This blog post is by Elizabeth Black, who writes erotic fiction and dark fiction. Friend her on Facebook and visit her web site at http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com/.

—–

It’s Christmastime,
and the man knocking at your door is wearing warm, red clothes. He carries a
walking stick. His long, white beard reaches his belt. He may even have horns.
When you answer the door, you see a pulkka, which is a type of toboggan pulled by
reindeer that can’t fly. The man turns to you and asks “Onko täällä kilttejä lapsia?” (Are
there (any) well-behaved children here?) You should invite him inside since he
came all the way from the Korvantunturi mountains. He’s had a long trip.

No, that man is not Santa Claus. He is a Joulupukki, or “Yule
Buck”, which is a pagan tradition found in Finland. I learned this after
watching the Finnish movie “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale”. It’s
kind of a combination of the story of Santa and his elves and “The
Thing”. Very bizarre but good. According to the Internet Movie Database,
this movie is about the following: “On
Christmas Eve in Finland, Santa Claus is unearthed in an archaeological dig.
Soon after, children start disappearing, leading a boy and his father to
capture Santa and, with the help of fellow hunters, they look to sell him back
to the corporation that sponsored the dig. And then there’s Santa’s elves, who
are determined to free their leader…”

Intriguing, isn’t it? This isn’t your usual Christmas
story. I like unusual folklore and it influences my erotic fiction. I
specialize in erotic fairy tales. Most people look to Hans Christian Anderson
and Grimm for their fairy tale inspirations. I’ve done the same with my two
tales “Climbing Her Tower” (erotic Rapunzel) and “Trouble In
Thigh High Boots” (erotic Puss In Boots). I’m about to publish an erotic
version of “The Little Mermaid” but this one won’t resemble the
sanitized Disney version at all. Great pain stabs into the mermaid’s legs and
feet with every step she takes, like in the fairy tale. She also does not win
the prince in the end, as in the fairy tale. Looking to the dark origins of
such stories make the erotic tales much more exciting.

Even more interesting are stories based on unusual
legends. Two of my earlier erotic short stories were based on Japanese
folklore. In the first one, entitled “Mud Licker”, rather than rely
on the usual (and somewhat tired) vampires, werewolves, and zombies, I created
an erotic creature based on the Japanese akaname. This creature lives in
bathrooms and cleans them with its two foot long tongue. Imagine what else it
can do with that tongue, and you have a cracking erotic story. My other story
entitled “Fountain Of Youth” is based on a Japanese shapeshifting
tale about a … you guessed it … fountain of youth. The lesson of that story
is to be careful what you wish for. Both stories are available at Amazon. The
first appears in the “Like A Myth” anthology published by Circlet
Press. The second is a stand-alone short story published by Romance Divine.

My point is that writers need to look outside the box
when they are considering inspirations for their fiction. European folklore
tends to be the most common inspiration. Look outside Europe to Africa and
Native American folklore as well as Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and
other Asian influences for some very unusual folklore. Hence my interest in Finnish
folklore during the Christmas season and Japanese lore. If you wish to write an
erotic vampire story, rather than the usual blood-sucker who dresses like a
head waiter, why not test-run the Indonesian jenglot? Aren’t familiar with it?
Look it up. And get excited over the possibilities.

When you broaden your gaze outside your normal comfort
zone, all sorts of riches await you. Yes, you are treading in unfamiliar
territory, but isn’t that the point of writing? You test your resolve and
stretch your writing muscles. If you want to stand out in the crowd, you have
to do something different. Standing out in the crowd is very important since
these days there is a glut of writers creating erotic fiction. It’s easy to get
lost in that sea of books. Here’s a great New Year’s resolution: Give your
readers the treat of something they’ve never seen before. Not only will you
expand your vision, you will gain some new fans. And new fans are always
wonderful.

About Elizabeth Black

Elizabeth Black
writes erotica, erotic romance, speculative fiction, fantasy, and horror. She
also enjoys writing erotic retellings of classic fairy tales. Born and bred in
Baltimore, she grew up under the influence of Edgar Allan Poe. Her erotic
fiction has been published by Xcite Books (U. K.), Circlet Press, Ravenous
Romance, Scarlet Magazine (U. K.), and other publishers. Her horror fiction has
appeared in “Kizuna: Fiction For Japan”, “Stupefying Stories”,
and “Mirages: Tales From Authors Of The Macabre”. An accomplished
essayist, she was the sex columnist for the pop culture e-zine nuts4chic (also
U. K.) until it folded in 2008. Her articles about sex, erotica, and
relationships have appeared in Good Vibrations Magazine, Alternet,
CarnalNation, the Ms. Magazine Blog, Sexis Magazine, On The Issues, Sexy Mama
Magazine, and Circlet blog. She also writes sex toys reviews for several sex
toys companies.

In addition to
writing, she has also worked as a gaffer (lighting), scenic artist, and make-up
artist (including prosthetics) for movies, television, stage, and concerts. She
worked as a gaffer for “Die Hard With A Vengeance” and “12
Monkeys”. She did make-up, including prosthetics, for “Homicide: Life
On The Street”. She is especially proud of the gunshot wound to the head
she had created with makeup for that particular episode. She also worked as a
prosthetic makeup artist specializing in cyanotic blue, bruises, and buckets of
blood for a test of Maryland’s fire departments at the Baltimore/Washington
International Airport plane crash simulation test. Yes, her jobs are fun.
 😉

She lives in
Lovecraft country on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and four
cats. The ocean calls her every day, and she always listens. She has yet to run
into Cthulhu.

Visit her web
site at http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com/

Her Facebook
page is https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack

Follow her at
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ElizabethABlack

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.

Hot Chilli Erotica

Hot Chilli Erotica

Categories

Babysitting the Baumgartners - The Movie
From Adam & Eve - Based on the Book by New York Times Bestselling Authors Selena Kitt

Categories

Archives

Pin It on Pinterest