Tag Archives: story

WORDS! A Complete Story by F. Leonora Solomon

November 2, 2015Blog, Guest Blogger, Inspirationerotica, F. Leonora Solomon, story, wordsK D Grace

Oooh! I feel all Muse-y today, and in a very delicious way. I am very honoured to have the fabulously talented and naturally naughty F. Leonora Solomon with me today sharing a wonderful story that has its roots in one of those shared writerly conversations that inspires. This one happened this year at Eroticon. It’s SO true, we can’t do it alone, and from hat sharing comes amazing things. And F. Leonora, you can rub me like a genie any time! Thank you SO much for sharing you story with us!

*****

So I think KD Grace is brilliant, I have had the pleasure of meeting her at all three Eroticons that I attended, and she is BRILLIANT. We were walking out of a session at the last con, and I was basically rubbing her like a genie (semi-figuratively), for inspiration because I was feeling stuck. Somehow the idea for this story came about organically, and she invited me to be a guest on her blog. It took me a little bit…but now I have this to share with her—and you…

Writers cannot do it on their own, we need to be inspired. I am grateful that so many of my writer friends inspire me. Thank you KD! xxx

Words
by F. Leonora Solomon

He was not the love of her life by any means. They had only gone out a couple of times—in some cases he just filled the space just so that she would not be alone. After a few drinks—they did not even have dinner—she wanted more than his conversation.

Lying on her side now, the night after, she could still feel the scruff of his stubble all over her body. She liked the chafed feeling of where his mouth had been on her. His mouth was the ultimate turn-on for her. Not so much the feeling of it, but what he said.

You like it rough don’t you, you like it raw right?

The timbre of his voice had moved right along her labia. She pressed her legs together, and then parted them.

You felt that right between your legs, didn’t you? You’re already wet, aren’t you?

Kitt nodded in memory against her pillow, its soft cotton for a moment fooled her into feeling like his stubble. She caressed the divide between her breasts, in her loose-fitting nightgown. Without any effort, her breasts slipped out of it.

She caressed their softness, and her hypersensitivity made her feel more aroused that she should have. She was in bed alone, but thinking about having him in her bed the night before…thinking about what they had done, how he touched her was sexier than having done it with him.

You’re so wet, can you hear how wet you are? You are making so much noise, because you are so wet. You’re a squirter aren’t you?

Kitt had panted so heavily, moving with him at that point. She had wanted to answer him that she had never squirted, but her words were unintelligible.

She did not squirt, but she did come. Not one of her best orgasms, but she did come with him.

Oh next time, I am going to make you squirt. I am going to make you flood this bed…

She now stopped caressing her breasts. Her nightgown was up over her hips, and both of her hands were between her legs.

You like that don’t you, you like that so much you filthy girl. You like it better when I say it, and tell you how filthy you are too. I know you do…

Kitt was tangled in her sheets after, hair in her mouth and her clenched fists damp with her own come. Between her legs tremored with the memory of things that he had said into the nape of her neck the night before.

Untangling herself from her sheets, she went to the bathroom. A stream of pleasure moved through her body, as she sat on the toilet. Kitt’s eyes were damp with post-orgasm tears, but her breathing had slowed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her phone flash. She should not have kept it near her bed, but she knew who it was.

Can I come…over?

She nodded at his words, even before she typed her reply.

Yes you can come over me…

Kitt giggled meaning that typo, knowing he knew it.

You can come over to* me, I meant…

She was sure he would have a lot of words for her…when he came…

everything about F. Leonora Solomon is at:

https://fdotleonora.wordpress.com

Voyeur, Body Thief and Beyond

April 15, 2015Blogstory, the reading experience, writingK D Grace

This post first appeared in the ERWA blog Nov 2012, but with the world of self-publishing wide open and with so many
‘books’ out there of questionable quality, I thought it a good time to revisit just what makes a really good read, and what a really good story will do for the reader.

One of the most intriguing parts of story for me has always been the way in which the reader interacts with it, more specifically the way in which the reader interacts with the characters in a story. I find that interaction especially intriguing in erotica and erotic romance.

To me, the power of story is that it’s many faceted and it’s never static. And, no matter how old the story is, it’s never finished as long as there’s someone new to read it and to bring their experience into it. Like most writers of fiction, I’m forever trying to analyse how a powerful story is internalised, and why what moves one reader deeply, what can be a life-changing experience for one may be nothing more exciting than window-shopping for another.

In my own experience as a reader, there are two extremes. I can approach a story as a voyeur, on the outside looking in from a safe distance, or I can be a body thief at the other end of the spectrum and replace the main character in the story with myself.

One extreme allows the reader to watch without engaging and the other allows the reader to create sort of a sing-along-Sound of Music- ish experience for themselves. As a reader, I’ve done both and had decent experiences of novels doing both. As a writer, however, I don’t wish to create a story that allows my reader to be a voyeur or a body thief.

As a writer I want to create a story that’s a full-on, in-the-body, stay-present experience from beginning to end. I want
characters that readers can identify with and are drawn to but don’t necessarily want to be. I want a plot that feels more like abseiling with a questionable rope than watching the world go by from the window of a car. I want to create that tight-rope walk in the middle. I want to create that place in story where the imagination of the reader is fully engaged with the story the writer created. That place is the place where the story is a different experience for each reader. That’s the place where the story is a living thing that matters more than the words of which it’s made up. It matters more because the reader has connected with it, engaged with it, been changed by it, and the story continues to affect them long after they’ve finished reading it. In that place, the story and the reader are in relationship. Neither can embody the other, neither can watch from a distance. The end result may be a HEA, the end result may be disturbing and unsettling, but at the end of a really good read, the journey to get there is at least as important as the end result, and the result is on-going beyond the final words.

Erotica and erotic romance are by their nature a visceral experience. Though I think that’s probably true of any good story. I don’t think good erotica can be watched from a distance any more than it can be the tale of the body thief. While either will get you there, there’s no guarantee that the journey will be a quality one. And I want a quality journey. I want to come to the end of a good read wishing I hadn’t gotten there so quickly, wishing I’d had the will power to slow down and savour the experience just a little longer. I want to come to the end wondering just what layers, what subtleties, what nuances I missed because I got caught up in the runaway train ride and couldn’t quite take it all in.

A good read is the gift that keeps on giving. Long after I’ve finished the story, the experience lingers, and little tidbits that I raced through during the read bubble up from my unconscious to surprise me, intrigue me, make me think about the story on still other levels, from still other angles. When I can’t get it out of my head, when I find myself, long after I’ve come to the end, thinking about the journey, thinking about the characters, thinking about the plot twists and turns, then I know the story has gotten inside me and burrowed deep. There was no pane of glass in between; there was no body for me to inhabit because all bodies were fully occupied by characters with their own minds and their own agendas. The experience extends itself to something that stays with me long after the read is finished and makes me try all the harder to create that multi-layered experience in my own writing.

Passions, Journeys, and Home

March 29, 2015Blog, Inspirationdreams, psychology, story, writingK D Grace

I had another ‘Old Crush Returns’ dream last night. Granted I was on cold meds and dreams get weird when I’m drugged up, but nonetheless this dream fit right in with my standard three types of recurring dreams. It only came to me recently that I could divide those recurring dreams into three categories and that they all fit very nicely. For as long as I can remember I’ve had three types of dreams over and over again. They were never identical, but the themes were exactly the same, and I always wake up knowing when I’ve had one.

I have the ‘Old Crush/ lover Returns’ dreams, I have the ‘stuck at the airport trying to board a plane I can’t find’ dreams. Those two types are frustrating, sometimes stressful and embarrassing, but the third kind can be really terrifying. The third kind are, ‘The House’ dreams. I’ll get back to that later.

Now that I’m able to walk again after the surgery, I have more time to think about things, and this discovery of my three recurring dreams has really given me pause to reflect. It hit me the other day when I was walking to the local shops for a pint of milk that these three types of dreams are my efforts to resolve issues in the three major areas of my life; my passion, my life journey, and my own internal home, the space inside my head where KD, Grace, and Kathy all live. I realized as I bought my milk along with four bananas and a raspberry Danish, that these three categories of dreams seem pretty archetypal.

Passions

My passion is my writing. It’s the heart of me. Everyone who knows me knows this. But I would never say that I have an easy relationship with that passion. I’ve had dreams most of my life about an ex-lover or, more often, an ex-crush, someone who I really obsessed over and battled emotionally with at some point in my life. In my dreams that person returns to either ignore me, harass me or seduce me away from my commitments and my life. The emotions are high. I battle with trying to understand why I’m being rejected, or why I’m being treated poorly. I battle even more with the crushes and exes who show up to ‘take me away’ from all this, and I realize I no longer want to go with them. For some reason they just never seem to intrigue me as much as they used to. Passion is never what I expect. It’s often illusive, and always volatile. And yes, there are times when I discover that what I thought I wanted just doesn’t get me there anymore. Yup! That sums up my relationship with my writing in a nutshell.

Journeys

My journey dreams almost always take place in an airport, which makes perfect sense because I’ve been in more than my share. I’m quite familiar with delayed and cancelled flights, with having the gate changed at the last minute, with sitting on the runway in a time warp, with lost luggage and achingly long flights. I know the drill. The airport is never a destination. It’s the place in between. It’s the cross roads, no-man’s-land, the place you endure to get to where you want to be. The destination, the journey, the expectations, those are always foremost in my mind when I travel, but the airport can really fu*k that journey up.

It’s about the journey. It’s about the struggle to make that journey. Everyone’s on a journey from birth to death, and no one gets a smooth ride. Some parts of the ride are rougher than others, and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t do change well. The waiting is hard, the making connections is stressful, and the journey often takes a far different route than I ever anticipated. Until recently I’ve not been aware of these three divisions in my recurring dreams, but I wonder now if I have the journey dreams more often when it’s time to move on, when it’s time to find another place to be, but I’m afraid to make the move. I wish I’d kept track. In my dreams, I’ve waited in more airports than I have in real life, and that’s a bunch.

The Home

The third category of recurring dream, as I said, is by far the scariest, and that’s the House dream. Those dreams take two forms. The first is not so much scary as it is frustrating. In them I’m looking for my dream home, and every time I think I’ve found it, there’s some serious flaw that I can’t quite overcome – a swamp in the back garden – or even worse a swamp in the gigantic bathtub, the discovery that the house is the sight of a murder or some other tragedy, the discovery of a treasure trove of items that belonged to the people who lived there before, a house that’s been left like the owners have simply walked away.

The second type of dream I like to call the forbidden room dream. Those terrify me every time, and I often wake up crying out, drenched in sweat and struggling to breathe. Those dreams always involve me having lived in a big, usually very old house, for a long time, but within that house, there is one room I never go into. No one goes into it because it’s locked and off limits, and yet every second I’m in the house, I’m aware that the room and what’s inside it. The thing is, I’m never really sure why I fear that room so much. Is there a ghost? An evil spirit? A long dead body? Is there a demon, a crazy person? I never know. And when I do go into the room, which of course I always must, I am so frightened I can’t breathe, and yet I never actually see what’s frightening me.

OK, before you run away thinking I’m a total nutcase, just let me say that I’ve done enough dream analysis to know that the house is me, whether I’m looking for my dream house or whether I am terrified of some room that’s a part of me. The house is always me and all my dreams unrealised, all my issues, resolved and unresolved. Everyone has ‘rooms’ they’d rather not revisit. And though those rooms are places of terror in the dream world, they’re often places of true treasure when I’m willing to confront them in the waking world.

In Story

Now, where is all this leading? Well as I thought about the connections of these recurring dreams, it hit me that these are all life themes. These are major archetypes in everyone’s life, which means, for a writer, they become major themes for every story.

The passion, the journey, the home – all archetypes, all major building blocks in the Lego of K D’s ‘Create-Your-Own-
Story’ pack. The passion can be a lover, an adventure, a personal challenge answered, revenge for a wrong done, the search for the Undiscovered Country. The journey is what it takes to realize that passion, whether it’s through the Amazon Rain Forest or down to the corner market, whether it’s a novel written or a aria sung. And the home is everything that our characters are, all they fear, all they hope to become. It’s their neuroses, their flaws, and their joys and their hopes. Put those three together and the story possibilities are endless.

The dreams are never comfortable, never easy, and that’s one more reason why they’re so valuable for story. The places of powerful fiction are the places that frighten us, the places that make us uncomfortable, the obstacles in our path, the delays in the journey or the unexpected detours. Story is made up of the rough patches, and the rooms inside us that we’d choose not to visit if we could keep from it. There’s no ignoring those uncomfortable parts of us, no making them go away. But bring the ‘dreams’ into the waking world and transform them into story, and let the fun begin!

Remember! Week Two of the INTERVIEWING WADE Blog Tour and Giveaway begins tomorrow!

Mar 30 Books and Banter http://locglin.blogspot.com/

Mar 31 Case Sharidan http://casesheridan.wordpress.com/

Apr 1 Lisabet Sarai http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com

Ap 2 Gale Stanley http://galestanley.blogspot.com/

Ap 3 Illustrious Illusions http://www.illustriousillusions.com/

If you’ve missed Week One of the Blog Tour, you can still check it out!

Mar 23 L. C. Wilkinson http://lcwilkinson.com/

Mar 24 Jan Graham http://jangraham.blogspot.com/

Mar 25 Lynelle Clark http://lynelleclarkaspiredwriter.blogspot.com/

Mar 26 Nice Ladies, Naughty Books http://niceladiesnaughtybooks.com/

Mar 27 Love Bites & Silk Ties http://www.lovebitessilkties.co.uk/

INTERVIEWING WADE is An Executive Decision novel (Click Here for Book One | Book Two | Book Three)

The Executive Decisions Trilogy may be over, but the story continues. Intrepid reporter, Carla Flannery, wants to interview Wade Crittenden, the secretive creative genius behind Pneuma Inc. But when, against all odds, Wade actually agrees to the interview, Carla suspects ulterior motives.

Carla has made a lot of enemies in her work and when Wade discovers she’s being stalked, he agrees to the interview to keep her close and safe. As the situation turns deadly, lives and hearts are on the line, and the interview reveals far more about both than either ever expected.

Interviewing Wad is available from:

Voyeur or Body Thief

November 19, 2014Blog, Inspirationarchives, reading, story, writingK D Grace

(From the Archives)
One of the most intriguing parts of story for me has always been the way in which the reader interacts with it, more specifically the way in which the reader interacts with the characters in a story. I find that interaction especially intriguing in erotica and erotic romance.

As a writer I want to create a story that’s a full-on, in-the-body, stay-present experience from beginning to end. I want characters that readers can identify with and are drawn to but don’t necessarily want to be. I want a plot that feels more like abseiling with a questionable rope than watching the world go by from the window of a car. I want to create that tight-rope walk in the middle. I want to create that place in story where the imagination of the reader is fully engaged with the story the writer created. That place is the place where the story is a different experience for each reader. That’s the place where the story is a living thing that matters more than the words of which it’s made up. It matters more because the reader has connected with it, engaged with it, been changed by it. In that place, the story and the reader are in relationship. Neither can embody the other, neither can watch from a distance. The end result may be a HEA, the end result may be disturbing and unsettling, but at the end of a really good read, the journey to get there is at least as important as the end result.

Erotica and erotic romance are by their nature a visceral experience. Though I think that’s probably true of any good story. I don’t think good
erotica can be watched from a distance any more than it can be the tale of the body thief. While either will get you there, there’s no guarantee that the journey will be a quality one. And I want a quality journey. I want to come to the end wishing I hadn’t gotten there so quickly, wishing I’d had the will power to slow down and savour the experience just a little longer. I want to come to the end wondering just what layers, what subtleties, what nuances I missed because I got caught up in the runaway train ride and couldn’t quite take it all in.

Mining the Story: Research in the Lake District

March 7, 2011Blog, Work in Progresserotica, K D Grace, Keswick, Lake District, Lakeland Heatwave Body Temperature and Rising, novel, sex, stone circle, story, walking, writing, Xcite booksK D Grace

I’ve done enough walking in the Lake District to appreciate a glorious day when we get one, and we hadn’t been walking ten minutes on the steep ascent to the stretch of the Newlands Horseshoe between Maiden Moor and High Spy before we were stripping off layers – in March. We were definitely in for a glorious day!

My husband and I have walked the entire Newlands Horseshoe as well as bits and pieces of it with friends. This time my sister was visiting from the States, so this was her introduction to the Lakes. It was being caught out in the mist and heavy rain on the ridge between Maiden Moor and High Spy that inspired the opening chapters of Lakeland Heatwave: Body Temperature and Rising. So on this glorious March day, I was all about research. I’d done my map work, I’d read my Wainwright. In my mind’s eye I knew exactly the place I had in mind for Marie and Anderson to escape the inclement weather and get to know each other a little better. But I had to see for myself. I had to know that the rout I’d chosen would give my lovely couple all the challenges they need, plus a safe and dry hideaway.

I’ve experienced that frisson of fear at being caught out on this ridge when anyone with half a brain would have stayed inside. Though it was hard to imagine that kind of weather when we arrived at the top of High Spy with its enormous cairn and ate our lunch while enjoying the heart stopping views and exquisite beauty of the Newlands Valley.

Once lunch was done and all the remnants stowed, it was time for research. Instead of heading up Dale Head and on around the horseshoe, we descended through the Rigghead Quarries along Tongue Gill, as Marie and Anderson would have done to get out of the weather. I chose the Rigghead descent because I knew there would be caverns and quarries for our couple to find shelter in, but even my imagination hadn’t prepared me for the steepness nor the roughness of the descent.

The Rigghead Quarries were slate mines and the leavings litter an already very steep descent. As I worked my way down with the help of two walking poles, good grippy boots, fabulous weather and dry slate shifting beneath my feet, I can only imagine what that descent would be like for my hero and heroine, when the rock is rain slicked, the wind is up and the mist is down. Even in the inclemently warm sun, I had to shiver at the thought.

As well as my sister, Nancy, we did the walk with two of our very dear walking companions from the Lake District, Brian and Vron Spencer, who know the place better than most people know the inside of their own homes. Brian volunteers for Keswick Mountain Rescue and knew exactly what I was looking for. The cavern about half way down gaped wide into the side of the fell and the opening was littered with leavings and slick boulders. Water dripped heavily from up above. I ducked inside and carefully made my way into the main room, which disappeared beyond the light of my headlamp down a steep bend to the left. Once past the entrance though, the main room was dry and large and with a little effort could have been comfortable enough to wait out a bad storm. It wasn’t at all difficult to imagine Marie and Anderson snuggled together amid the slate leavings. Oh yes! This was the place!

We probably spent another hour poking in and out of other less threatening, smaller hidey-holes before we continued picking our way very carefully down the steep, make-shift stone steps the miners would have trod every day in all kinds of weather. Halfway down, Brian directed us to a place where the stream flowed fast over the rocks for some to the best, coldest water I’ve ever tasted. We followed the path on into the Borrowdale Valley alongside Castle Crag along the river and on back to the car park with my head spinning at all the possibilities.

I was pleased that the drama of the walk matched the opening of the novel exactly as I hoped. I spent the rest of my time taking in the feel of the local atmosphere. I had a couple pints at the Twa Dogs Pub. I watched the sunset on the Fells above Derwent Water. I felt the hair raise along my neck at the eerie atmosphere of Castlerigg Stone Circle nestled for the past four and a half thousand years on its grassy plateau amid the fells. The Lake District always inspires me, and this trip was no exception. Such hands-on (or in this case feet-on) research is something I could very easily get used to, and as one who often walks the stories I write, it seemed appropriate to walk the research too.

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Remember! Week Two of the INTERVIEWING WADE Blog Tour and Giveaway begins tomorrow!

If you’ve missed Week One of the Blog Tour, you can still check it out!

Interviewing Wad is available from:

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