Peter Birch Talks Inspiration and Seasonal Sex

I had the pleasure of meeting Peter Birch at Erotica this year. The fellow walker and man of many pseudonyms was dressed like Father Christmas and spreading good cheer, seasonal and otherwise.  I’m delighted that he’s decided to stop by my site on his blog tour promoting the fabulous Pete and Sarah’s Guide to Seasonal Sex. Welcome Peter!

I feel rather good after reading KD’s blog introduction. Now I know I’m not the only person who wanders the English countryside with a glazed expression while thinking out the details of erotic novels. To me, it’s simply the best way to get ideas, create suitably tangled plots, let characters take on some depth, anything really. All ten books of my Truscott Saga (written as Aishling Morgan, just to avoid confusion) have benefited from long walks on Dartmoor, often to the places where the action is set, while whenever my mind jams up a simple walk to the local park is almost guaranteed to clear the cogs. Walking allows me to think in a way that’s impossible when sat in front of a computer.

An exception is when it comes to the juicy details, as I try to draw as much of the actual erotic content of my books from real experience as I possibly can, either my own, or when that’s not practical, that of friends. That applies to all three of my pieces in the winter edition of Pete and Sarah’s Guide. I really do dress up as Santa Claus for fetish parties, and believe me, the effect is magical, while I’ve been giving and receiving spankings since my teens. Even the entirely imaginary erotic indulgences in my story, A Winter Feast, are drawn from reality, although highly polished.

No doubt some will disagree, perhaps arguing that I’m placing limits on my imagination, but I see experience as a tool to be used in my craft when needed and set aside when not needed. Obviously the scenes with the octopus god in Deep Blue never actually happened, but even then the physical sensations come from real, and fairly unusual, experience. That’s been gathered across years, and it was the experience that I put into my pieces for Fetish Times back in the mid-nineties that led to me being invited to try out a novel for Nexus, Virgin’s now sadly defunct erotica imprint.

My other source of inspiration comes from reading. I’ve always loved erotica and devoured the good the bad and the downright awful from an early age, usually with appreciation but also with a critical eye, and that has had an inevitable influence on my own work, but it’s very much in the background. My style, my plotting, my structure and all the other things that go to make a worthwhile erotic novel more than just a string of loosely connected sex scenes all come from mainstream authors, or those working in other genres, and not just the obvious greats. Saki, Wodehouse, Jack Vance, have all allowed me to learn a great deal, to the extent that I would argue that in order to write, you first need to read, and read widely.

So that’s my formula, lots of naughtiness in brightly lit bedrooms and disreputable clubs, mixed with hours spent buried in books and taking long country walks. I recommend it to you.

Blurbs:

Pete and Sarah’s Guide To Seasonal Sex – your one stop shop for everything you want to know about seasonal adult activities. Packed with interviews from internationally renowned performers such as Dita Von Teese and Buck Angel, as well as winter themed erotic stories, and seasonal adult articles!

This is THE guide you need to read, whether you are a girl, a boy, or both! Written by former Forum magazine editor Sarah Berry, and world renowned erotic writer Peter Birch, with editing by erotic author Nicky Raven, this new quarterly seasonal adult guide is sure to enlighten, amaze and entertain you through the dark winter months.

Formatted and digitally published globally by erotica book imprint House Of Erotica

Buy links
Amazon UK
Amazon US
All Romance eBooks
iTunes

Bio:

Peter Birch has been hopelessly addicted to sex his entire life but has made the best of what society at large sees as a problem. During the ‘eighties, while yuppies were sporting their filofaxes and falking into mobile phones the size of bricks, Peter and his girlfriend were experimenting with the joys of threesomes, dogging and spanking. In the caring ‘nineties he and his wife devoted their time to running sadomasochistic cabarets in London’s more specialised clubs. Finally realising that he needed to earn some money, he took to writing erotica, and has been at it ever since, becoming a prolific novelist, mainly under the Aishling Morgan name, writing guides to kinky sex and dabbling in journalism, which is where he met Sarah Berry.

 

8 thoughts on “Peter Birch Talks Inspiration and Seasonal Sex

  1. Walking is a wonderful way to work through plots and what better place to do it than Dartmoor. I wonder how many other lonely souls you pass, marching along, head in the clouds, deep in thought, are doing exactly the same.

    I do something vaguely similar but in the interests of efficient time management, and a fear of being too far away from my laptop should inspiration strike, I’ve taken to going for a run on my treadmill when I have a plot line to work through. Writing is a slothful profession and running on a treadmill is a boring slog but with my head full of plots and characters I can eat up the miles without even realising it.

    1. I think it would be fascinating, Isabella, to hear what different writers do to get past writers block or just to encourage new ideas and get inspired. Though walking and veg gardening are my activities of choice for inspiration and to get past the hard spots. I have been known to resort to ironing under desperate circumstances.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      K D

      1. Ironing!? Now that lies beyond the call of duty! ;o)

        I find just leaving the computer for a while can work wonders. I’ve just wrapped up my latest, but while the last few plot threads just wouldn’t come together at all last night, this morning it all seemed obvious.

        You sound as if you know Dartmoor, Isabella? Nowhere else has provided me with so much inspiration, or so many settings.

        1. It is beyond the call of duty, Peter, and only done in desperation. Love Dartmoor, and find it very inspiring, but my walking heart belongs to the Lake District. However, anywhere will do in a pinch.

          Thanks for the fabulous post, Peter!

        2. Bodmin Moor is more local to me. I like the fact that nothing’s changed in hundreds of years – except perhaps the directions of the sheep tracks and the number of sightings of the beast.

          1. I love Bodmin Moor! I’ve walked there several times. Seen lots of sheep and tracks but never the beast…yet.

  2. My theory on the Beast is that’s it’s a trick of scale and perspective. The moors are so big and so open, with so few objects of a familiar size, that it’s very hard to judge distance and therefore scale. If you study the best known photo of the beast carefully you can see it’s a domestic cat, while it’s easy to mistake a black cow seen in the foggy distance for a gigantic hound, especially if you’ve been reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, or my own Beastly Behaviour for that matter.

    However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few escaped pumas running around!

  3. I don’t have a theory, really, but I love to let my imagination run wild. And in the moors it’s so easy to let your imagination run wild, isn’t it?

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