Tag Archives: writing

News Updates

Lots has been happening in my writing world the past week, and I’m anxious to share it with my friends.

Today I’m being interviewed by Romance Reviews Today where I talk about The Initiation of Ms Holly, The Pet Shop,why writing is my obsession, and lots of other cool stuff. Be sure to check it out.

Make sure to check out the fantastic Oysters and Chocolate site for my red hot story, ‘Seeing Red.’ It’s free!

The much anticipated Xcite anthology, Kinky Girls, which includes my sinful story, ‘Confessions,’ is now available. A must read.

The upcoming Cleis anthology, Obsessed, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel will include my naughty story, ‘Topiary.’ And look at the list of other hot writers who’ll be included.

Obsessed Table of Contents

Silent Treatment Donna George Storey
One Night in Paris Kayla Perrin
Concubine Portia Da Costa
Love & Demotion Logan Belle
Mephisto Waltz Justine Elyot
Then Emerald
It’s Gotta Be Fate Jen Peters
Hooked Ariel Graham
Aftershocks by Bella Andre
Secret Places Adele Haze
Loser Charlotte Stein
Here in Between Kristina Wright
Spellbound by Garnell Wallace
Raven’s Flight Andrea Dale
Raindrops and Rooftops Elizabeth Coldwell
Topiary KD Grace
I Want to Hold Your Hand Rachel Kramer Bussel
Storm Surge Teresa Noelle Roberts
Under Cover Kink Louisa Harte

OTHER NEWS

I’m discussing possibilities for a very hot cover for The Pet Shop with Xcite. The October launch date may seem a long way away, but it’ll be here before we know it.

I’m working on a proposal for yet another novel. More about that as it develops.

More short stories, pointed thoughts and reviews to come, enough to keep you waiting with bated breath.

The Crowded Room

The last week of the year has always fascinated me. It’s not like the rest of the year. It’s almost like there are actually fifty-one weeks in the year, then there is the crowded room at the end, a place not unlike my grandmother’s living room was, all stuffed full of the bits and pieces and memorabilia of eighty-three years of living.

The last week of the year is a mini version of that living room, a mental version, a room that everyone has in their head. No matter how expansive the previous fifty-one weeks have been, this final week is the tiny space into which we crowd everything that has happened. Then we settle in to the one comfy chair in that room that’s not avalanching with memories and emotions and we reflect.

I used to ask my grandmother about the people in this old photo or that. I used to ask where she got this porcelain doll or that china figurine. Every item in her living room had a story. It was a gift from someone, or a souvenier from some marked event in her life, or something someone had made for her or she had made for herself. My grandmother’s living room was a storybook full of tales I only ever experienced through her eyes, stories that were lost in the mist to anyone but her and the few of her older friends who still remained, all with story book rooms of their own.

This time of year, in this last week, we all sit in our mental story book rooms and tell ourselves one last time the stories that have been our life for the past fifty-one weeks. We laugh at our joys, we mourn our losses and we nod our heads in satisfaction at our successes, promising there will be more, even bigger successes next year.

My grandmother lived to be eighty-three. There was a finality about her over-crowded living room. That last week of the year room we all occupy right now has its own finality. After midnight tonight, we can crowd no more into that room. We leave it as it is, papers strewn, boxes open, bed unmade, cup of tea half finished. Mind you, some of us spend our last hours in this room frantically trying to crowd just a little more into it. That’s me, sitting in the recliner madly tapping away at the computer trying to get another chapter written, another short story out before I have to leave this room and lock the door behind me.

It doesn’t matter if we are sitting reflecting on all that fills this room, or if we’re frantically trying to fill it fuller, at midnight tonight, we will all take a deep breath, open the door and walk out into the empty room waiting for us that is 2011. All we’ll take with us is our memories of the room we left and our hopes for how we’ll fill this bright new room that stretches promisingly before us. Some of us make New Years resolutions, some of us just plow in without a plan of action. But one thing is for certain, this time next year, if we live that long, we’ll be sitting in the crowded last-week room again reflecting on how the experiences of 2011 have shaped us, anticipating how we will take the experiences into the next empty room. 

My wish for you is that your reflections in your full room be good ones, satisfying ones, ones that bring growth. And at the stroke of midnight, that you will enter that bright new empty room with hope and joy and anticipation of how wonderfully you’ll fill it up.

A Hearty Salute to Uniform Behaviour

 

Uniform Behaviour: Steamy Stories about Men and Women in Uniform may be Lucy Felthouse’s first attempt at editing an anthology, but wow, I hope it’s not her last! From the first scorching paragraphs of Fireman’s Lift to the last smoldering encounter with a drill sergeant who knows how to handle a recruit with a smart mouth, Uniform Behaviour doesn’t disappoint.

 This anthology is a regular treasure trove of sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes romantic, but always sexy stories for those of us who are turned on by men and women in uniform, and aren’t we all? There are very dirty cleaning ladies and waiters who serve up a lot more than bubbly. There are priests and policemen. There are pilots of starships and security guards. There are cruise ship stewards and palace guards and a whole lot more. 

 Lucy has chosen beautifully crafted, imaginative stories by some of erotica’s best writers – some are veterans, some are new, but all know their way around a hot tale. Uniform Behaviour has a whole wardrobe full of delicious uniforms to choose from along with the sexy characters who know just how to wear them, and take them off.

In addition to the fact tha Uniform Behaviour is a guaranteed steamy experience for the reader, Lucy Felthouse has put together this fabulous anthology with an added bonus, a portions of the proceeds from Uniform Behaviour go to support the UK charity, Help for Heroes,  which helps those wounded in current conflict. If ever there was a anthology that pushes all the right buttons, Uniform Behaviour does. A must read!

Good Things, Now and To Come

As I write this, I’m celebrating good things, and I hope you are too. I’m letting those good things sink in and take root and get me all excited about the good things yet to come. I expect lots in 2011, and I hope you do too.

Among the good things I’m celebrating is my new website. Welcome! I’m very excited about expanding my ability to communicate with all of my lovely online friends and share my news and ruminations. I’ll do my best to keep the navel-gazing to a minimum and the cool stuff to a maximum. And amongst the cool stuff, I hope to hear a lot more from you.

At the top of the cool stuff list right now is that I’ve just finished the draft of my second novel, The Pet Shop. It started out fun and hot and sexy and has gotten more so right down to the last 48 hours of pressing onward to see if Stella will end up in charge of the Pet Shop. To see if she ends up with Tino or Vincent, or can have them both. The Pet Shop will to be published by Xcite Books in October 2011 on the UK and January 2012 in the US and Canada.

My predictions for the New Year: is that I will keep my laptop overworked and smoking with lots more lusty stories. I will walk lots of miles and see lots of gorgeous scenery. I will plant way more vegetable garden than I have space for. And at least once or twice I’ll end up with tunnel vision, caught in the web of my own story.

My wish for you in the New Year is that you’ll celebrate every day. Celebrate sex and romance and love and all things joyful and life affirming. Celebrate yourself cuz you’re really cool and deserve to be celebrated.

You Don’t ACT Like Someone Who Writes Erotica

Closely linked to the discussion of what erotica writers look like is the discussion of what erotica writers act like. Most of us don’t mind so much when people say we don’t look like erotica writers. What really bothers us is when people just assumed that we have DONE all the things we write about.

No one assumes Thomas Harris is a cannibalistic serial killer. No one assumes Anne Rice drinks blood and sleeps in a coffin. No one assumes Tom Clancy spent time being a terrorist. And yet, there are those who assume erotica writers have done everything we write about. For people who make that assumption, I have just one question; what part of the concept of FICTION don’t they get?

Fiction writers don’t have to experience what they write in order to write about it. In fact, that’s why it’s fiction. IT DIDN’T HAPPEN! At least not anywhere outside the fertile mind of the writer. Erotic fiction is no different.

Fiction allows the reader and the writer to experience safely situations and worlds that in reality would not be safe or even possible. In a world where safe sex has become a battle cry, even its own form of bondage, this is especially true with erotica. The erotica writer allows the reader to participate safely in a world that can be both very wonderful and very dangerous. It is no more necessary for erotica writers to have an orgy so they can write about one than it was for Thomas Harris to kill and eat a few folk before he could create Hannibal Lector.

Imagining an erotica writer who must experience firsthand her orgy, bondage, or sex in a bus before she writes about it adds another layer to the psycho-sexual fantasy. The fantasy may be very sexy indeed. But in reality, IT’S FICTION!