Every once in a while I get out of my cave for a little fun and entertainment, and Wednesday last was one of those times. The delectable Rubyyy Jones was able to secure tickets for the Erotic Meet folks to see a performance of the critically acclaimed show, Burlexe. I love burlesque! I love the costumes, I love the women, I love the glitz, I love the music and I love the delicious, saucy bawdiness of it all. I especially love that burlesque is very much a woman’s world. Women make the rules. Women run the show.
Burlexe is unique in that it isn’t just an amazing burlesque show, but it’s also a series of short vignettes between the performances in which women tell their stories of how they got into burlesque. The stories are diverse, and in some cases very surprising. They range from the story of a banker by day, burlesque performer by night who gets outed, to a young widowed mother who needs to support her children, to a woman with bi-polar disorder who discovers burlesque balances her. The performances were bawdy funny glitzy burlesque at its best, and the monologues were gritty, moving and often disturbing. If you’ve not seen this fabulous performance yet, then get thee to the Shadow Lounge in Soho and do so!
Filthy Mouths and Evil Tongues
Friday night brought another trip into London for my first reading with the talented, amazing and sexy women of Filthy Mouths and Evil Tongues. I don’t mind telling you I was a little bit nervous sharing the floor at Sh! Hoxton with the likes of Elizabeth N. Spire, Molly Moor, Lady Grinning Soul, Mia Lee, Annie Player, Sarah Berry, The Dragon King’s Daughter and the incomparable Mel Jones. Oh, the evening was so naughty! The place was heaving, fizz was flowing, many choccie cupcakes were eaten. As always, the Sh! Ladiez were fantastic, and the shopping was as yummy and filthy as the performances.
Novellas
Next month I’ll have my first ever novella released. In fact I’ll have two novellas released almost at the same time. I’d never written a novella before, and I was intrigued and excited to try my hand at writing something in the 20-40 thousand word range. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the paciness the shorter length provided, and yet the space to explore characters and plot more thoroughly than I would have been able to in a short story. Novellas are a happy medium, indeed, and a lovely change. I hope I have the opportunity to do it again. In the meantime, I’m getting very excited as the release dates draw near.
I’m very proud to be included in the debut volume of Xcite Books ground-breaking new collection of books called The Secret Library. Each volume has a gorgeous, very discrete, velvet cover. Inside each cover are three very naughty novellas. I’m very honoured to have my very nasty road-trip story, Migrations, included in The Secret Library volume called Traded Innocence. Also included is Toni Sands’s title story, Traded Innocence and Elizabeth Coldwell’s story, Cooking Up Trouble. Deliciously sexy stories in gorgeous, discrete covers written by some of the hottest erotica writers in the field are bound to be a big hit. I’ll be talking more about The Secret Library, Traded Innocence and Migrations very soon.
I’m also very pleased to have my novella, Surrogates, included in Harper Collins’s brand new eBook line of erotica, Mischief. And very aptly named now that the cat is out of the bag, and the list of writers creating Mischief are among the nastiest and the best in the business. I’m very pleased to be in such filthy company. As for my novella, Surrogates, well it’s a garden porn ménage at its nastiest, and just in time for spring.
My Other Babies
With Body Temperature and Rising being my first paranormal erotic novel, in many ways it feels like The Pet Shop and Body Temperature and Rising are contemporaries in my writing timeline. While Body Temperature and Rising keeps getting great reviews and is the main topic of my guest posts on other sites at the moment, The Pet Shop continues to get fab reviews and grow in popularity alongside Body Temperature and Rising. Of course I’m very glad to see this, as I love all my babies and the release time was short between The Pet Shop and Body Temperature and Rising.
In writing news, I’ve finished the first draft of the second Lakeland Heatwave novel, Riding the Ether, and have begun book three, Elemental Fire, which is stalled at the moment due to a much-needed catch-up on PR and admin. I hope to return to my efforts next week. As the two novels are set only a few months apart in the timeline, I have decided to write them pretty much as though they were one continuous narrative, which will give me a good sense of continuity with the two and also, maybe even more important, keep me from feeling too much empty nest syndrome in between the finishing of one and the beginning of the next.
That’s the week in a nutshell. And a busy week it’s been. Here’s wishing you all a fabulous Spring Forward!