On a road trip across America, Liz Martin’s car breaks down in the middle of nowhere South Dakota, and the ride a Good Samaritan lorry driver offers her is not exactly the one she expected. Don’t miss my story, ACCIDENTAL HITCHHIKER, now available in Xcite eBooks anthology, Cocktales, Between The Sheets
‘They’re in the refrigerator,’ I reply.
‘Are you hungry?’
I mumble something incoherent from behind the monitor.
I pour plain hot water from the mocha maker because I forgot to put in the coffee. Never mind. I slap a teabag in the cup of hot water and go back to the computer.
Spiders have taken residence in a number of nooks and crannies. They know the odds that dusting will happen in the near future are slim, and the safety of their homes is pretty much guaranteed.
My list of unanswered emails is growing longer every day and I haven’t done a blog post in two and a half weeks. So what’s the problem?
Tunnel Vision. Yep, it’s that time again. Everyone who knows me knows it happens periodically. I go underground. It’s like I’ve temporarily left the planet, and for all practical purposes, I have. I’ve got tunnel vision, and whenever that happens, I’m sucked mercilessly into another dimension, the dimension of the story. The thing about the dimension of the story is that it’s a whole lot easier for me to go there than it is for me to come back. Fortunately for the recyclables, though not for the spiders, short stories involve fairly brief stints in the land of Tunnel Vision. Five thousand words and I’m back home in time for a reality check.
But, I’m in the world of the novel now, and whenever I go there, it’s hard to say when I’ll get back home again. Add to that the fact that the novel is full of love, sex, intrigue, and people I’d like to be, and I’m very likely to linger as long as possible. In fact, I bet if you could go someplace similar right now, you would, wouldn’t you?
Come on, be honest! Everyone who’s ever read a good book gets the chance to follow the writer into that great world of Tunnel Vision. We all go there willingly and happily while the spiders take up residence and the recycling accumulates. We’re disappointed when it’s not quite the world we’d hoped for. We’re equally disappointed when it’s more than we could have imagined. When that happens, we don’t want to leave. We want to stay with those characters we’ve grown so fond of and take up residence in that place that now feels like home. We’ve grown used to the excitement, the adventure, the sex, the love, the intrigue, and we’ve especially grown used to the opportunity to, for a little while, be someone else.
The land of Tunnel Vision is also the land of multiple personalities. In my novel, I get to be ALL of the characters. They all whisper in my ear and tell me their sordid secrets and their darkest fantasies. Then I, like an evil gossip columnist, splash their inner workings all over the written page for the world to see. Bwa ha ha ha ha! I get to do that because I’m the most powerful person in their world. In fact, in their world, I’m god. K D giveth and K D taketh away!
So, I’ve come back from the world of Tunnel Vision just long enough to grab a sandwich, write a blog post and ignore the spiders. Consider this a postcard from the world of The Mount and Rita Holly’s initiation. It’s my way of saying ‘having a great time, wish you were here.’ I promise a detailed account this fall in the form of my novel, The Initiation of Ms Holly. But in the meantime, you’ll just have to settle for a blog post.
Sex SF has included Best Women’s Erotica 2010 on its ten sexy books of 2009 list.
The hoovering gets done, and I manage a shower and slap on some make-up. It’s a lovely lunch with good conversation and good friends. It’s great catching up and reminiscing. But as we talk about recipes and walking in Snowdonia, in the back of my mind I consider how loose granny panties would have to fit before one could tie the crotch in a knot.
I serve up pudding wondering how cotton knickers taste dripped in caramel sauce, or how one would feel if one received a pair under the Christmas tree, all wrapped up in gold paper, with a sexy note from a lover. Over coffee, I think about what a spanking might feel like through white cotton knickers, and as we say good-bye at the door, the story begins to form in my head.
Now the house is quiet, and I sit at the computer with a cup of tea, sucking on white chocolate willies – a gift from a friend, who somehow just intuited I would be the type to enjoy rude chocolate. I know I’m surrounded by lots of things that aren’t sexy, but as I think about granny knickers and the spark of a story I wonder just how many things, everyday things that I have yet to contemplate are sexy, or at least could be with a little imagination and enough rude chocolate.
I once sat through a reading of four fairly well-known romance writers, who had great stage presence, read beautifully from their new best sellers, and answered the audience’s questions with the level of expertise one would expect from people who make their living as writers. That is until they were asked about writing sex.
There was a frisson of embarrassment across the stage and a lot of shifting and shuffling and throat clearing as all four made excuses for why they were uncomfortable writing sex and therefore didn’t do it if they could avoid it. Then the question was dismissed with all the gravity a question about the proper shade of lippy might have been.
I wanted to shout, ‘This is sex! It’s the biggie! It’s what romance leads to! It’s what made us all! Beyond the shouting, sex is the powerful leveler of persons that strips us of our facades and brings us down to the deepest part of ourselves, and occasionally the best part. It exposes our animal nature with all its crudeness and all its charm. Sex is one of the best ways for a reader to get to know a character. With that in mind, I can’t imagine why all writers aren’t dying to write their next sex scene.
I appreciate a good sex scene in a novel – any novel – because sex in fiction, no matter how dangerous, is always safe sex. I enjoy writing erotica because it allows me, and my reader, to experience sex vicariously, safely, in ways we would never experience it in the real world. In some cases it’s only to see what the appeal of being there is. In other cases it’s the fulfillment of fantasy on the written page done safely without leaving the comfort of the recliner. For me, as writer and reader, there’s also the added excitement of sharing fantasies with total strangers.
I’m told I don’t look like the type of woman who would write erotica, but the more I write, the more I wonder why the type of woman who writes erotica shouldn’t be Everywoman. We all have fantasies, and I can speak first hand as to how hot it is to write those fantasies down – in detail. No one needs to read them but ourselves. Hey, it’s a cheap sex toy – a piece of paper and a pen – a hot pink one, maybe??? It’s safe sex at its best. The world of the written page has always allowed us to walk in other dimensions, other realities, other times, and to see the world through the eyes of other people. Why shouldn’t sex be included in those other realities?
Coming home from the States on a night flight a couple of weeks ago, unable to sleep, I found myself watching the film, The Ugly Truth, with Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigle. Butler’s character is trying to help Heigle’s character develop a relationship with a hot doctor. He asks her how often she masturbates. Horrified, she says she doesn’t do that sort of thing, to which he replies, ‘If you don’t want to make love to yourself, what makes you think anyone else will want to?’
According to Wallace Shawn, “Sex really is a nation of its own. Those whose allegiance is given to sex at a certain moment withdraw their loyalty temporarily from other powers. It’s a symbol of the possibility that we might all defect for one reason or another from the obedient columns in which we march.”
I’ll admit it; I’m a defector to that nation of sex. It’s a large nation with lots of room, and I’m inviting everyone I know to defect and enjoy.
You can read Wallace Shawn’s great essay about writing sex here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jun/20/wallace-shawn-writing-about-sex