Retiring the Boots

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IMG_5556It’s a solemn occasion, one that should be handled with great dignity and serious introspection. Just kidding! It’s actually a happy occasion. It’s time to retire not one, but two pairs of walking boots. One pair has walked across England through bogs and bracken, through bolder fields and fast moving streams. The other has lived fast and dangerously mostly with city walking. From London to Rome, from Dubrovnik to Guildford, they’ve made the winter in-town walks a pleasure for my feet while protecting my delicate knees.

 

I’m sure a lot of you are scratching your head right now wondering what the hell I’m talking about, but anyone who is passionate about walking will understand. And really, those of you who know me, those of you who have read my bio and followed my blog know that I measure inspiration in boot soles. There! That’s the key! That’s why I’m writing this post. I’m retiring two pairs of boots – one has been with me for the long hard walks; one has been with me only since October, only since I recovered enough from my knee surgeries to get serious about walking again. To me, that’s really exciting. I’ve literally worn them out in six months, and most of that in town because of the winter mud on the country walks.

 

Since I measure inspiration in boot soles, all I can say it’s been a helluva six months!

 

During that time, those boots have inspired the writing of two novels, with several more still unwritten. They’ve taken me on walks that have cheered me up, walks on which I have vented anger and frustration, walks on which I have lost myself in the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other … over and over and over again, and walks on which every step inspired story, plot, characters and filthy sex.

 

IMG_5559As a lot of you already know, my walking has been enhanced by the addition of a Fitbit to my daily routine, which, at the very least, functions as a reminder to walk ten thousand steps a day if I don’t do anything else, and at the most, challenges me on to walk farther that I’ve ever waked before. By the very act of pushing my walking boundaries, I’ve reached new depths of creativity and new levels of fitness. Why yes! I do love my Fitbit!

 

One of the best side effects of owning a Fitbit is connecting with other walkers. I’ve had some fabulous walks in London this winter with my good friend and Brit Babes Street Team member, Emma Louise Burbidge. They were walks filled with laughter and good conversation and lots of selfies – Emma is the queen of selfies. I look forward to more city walks with Emma and more laughs and selfies.

 

But just because I don’t live close to someone doesn’t mean I can’t walk with them. Maybe the very best thing about my Fitbit is that it has connected me with a world-wide community of people who are fitness minded, but especially love walking. I’ve done Work Week Hustle and Weekend Warrior walking challenges with other enthusiasts all over the world. But one of those lovely walkers has a special place in my heart – a woman I admire and adore in spite of the fact that on more than one Work Week Hustle, she has handed me my arse on a platter, a woman I walk with every week in spite of the fact that she lives in New York City! A lot of you know this lovely, talented lady, the fabulous F. Leonora Solomon, who bolgs as F Dot. When I asked her if she’d write a couple of paragraphs for my Boot Retirement post, she happily agreed, so take it away, F Dot!

 

I love movement, it is a simple but lovely thing. I have never been an athlete, my preferred forms of exercise have been walking and yoga. Very subtle, but both make my body feel fantastic. Before I got my Fitbit, co-workers mused about how many steps I made a day. I easily fell into 10+ K a day…and then I got into a work week hustle with K.D., and watched my steps increase exponentially! K.D. is my hero on many counts because, she is dedicated to whatever she does. When we did NaNoWriMo together, she also helped keep me inspired. It has been the same with our Fitbits.

 

We have been doing the challenge for almost a month–funny how time flies when you are having fun! First of all, we Fidencia's shoes13045640_649412445207825_1992982793_ncheer each other on all day. I want her to go as hard as she can, because then it means that I have to go harder. I got fancy walking shoes–they look like Mary Janes but they are powerful! I take time to stop and smell all of the flowers, even though I envy K.D.’s walks in the countryside. But we luckily will be in each other’s countries in the next few months, and I am excited to walk together…and maybe reach our highest step counts ever…together…

 

Thank you, F Dot! I SO can’t wait to walk with you in the UK and in NYC later this year! Thanks for making what is one of the very best parts of my life even better!

 

And now I can think of no better way to send my tired worn-out Keens and Hedgehogs into happy retirement than with a little naughty excerpt from a walking related story from the fabulous Brit Boys with Toys Book Bundle and my story Toys for Boys.

 

Toys for Boys Excerpt:

“You’re late,” Doc said to Will fucking Charles, who was supposed to meet him at St. Bee’s Head an hour ago.

At Toys for Boys, Will Charles’ moniker was ‘the Alpha Nerd.’ Doc had read some of his reviews and articles but never met him. Since T4B, as they all called it, was an online magazine, he’d never met any of the people who worked there, and he liked that just fine. The best part of free-lancing was no neurotic colleagues and no idiot supervisor looking over his shoulder. Will Charles reviewed computers, smart phones, and games – rubbish like that, while Doc reviewed all the stuff that gave the outdoorsy blokes a hard-on. It was late in the season to be walking the Coast to Coast, but T4B wanted the walk and the boys toys that would accompany Will and Doc on said walk to be a part of their big Christmas issue, which was always driven by shameless consumerism and chock full of the expensive shit to buy for the man who has everything. The article would be atmospheric, they said. It would be fun, they said.

Alpha Nerd, his left nut, Doc thought. The skinny geek with the expensive looking iPhone could have passed for a twelve-years-old — spotty face, heavy-rimmed glasses and all. Looked like Doc’s dream walk was about to become a britboyswithtoysbabysitting job for some whimpy-arsed kid who would whine every time he didn’t have a Wifi connection for his little games on his little phone. Doc wondered how the hell the bloke could even heft the backpack sitting on the floor beside him, and those brand new, straight-out-of-the-box walking boots guaranteed major blisters. This was supposed to be twelve glorious days alone on the Wainwright Coast to Coast path across England. This was supposed to be total outdoor bliss. He had been looking forward to it for months and then, at the last minute, T4B ruined it all by insisting Will fucking Charles tag along with his expensive little camera phone to record the event. Bromance, they said. Adventure and companionship, they said. Merry fucking Christmas! T4B didn’t pay him nearly enough for this shit.

“We’ve got fourteen and a half miles to walk today, and the rain isn’t going to make it any easier.” He nodded to where his own pack sat by the table in the corner of the Seacote Hotel where he’d slugged back enough coffee to guarantee he’d be caffeine-fueled for at least part of that distance; the rest he’d be off in the bushes pissing.

As he turned to go, the lad just looked at him like he’d spoke Chinese. “Is that the Smart phone you’re supposed to be reviewing?” Doc snapped. “Do you need it to translate for you maybe? Hope it’s smart enough to figure out how we can make up for the lost time you cost us.”

“That’s just an iPhone,” came a voice from behind. “This is the device I’ll be reviewing.” To Doc’s horror, he turned to find himself being videoed by a man who definitely passed as an alpha – an alpha bastard at the moment. The sleek black device he pointed at Doc was labeled urBrain in gold letters. Seriously? Were T4B having a laugh?

Doc gritted his teeth and tried to count to ten, but only made it to three. “Perhaps you’d like to turn off urBrain before I cram it up urArse?”

Undaunted by Doc’s threat, the bloke continued to video as he added, “as for young Nigel here, well I rather think his boss at the Seacote might have something to say about him following us on the Coast to Coast. Nice boots,” he said to the kid.

Just then an American tourist the size of a bus blew in through the door, tipped Nigel and thanked him in a very southern accent. He hefted the backpack with a grunt, and headed out into the rain. “As for this little jewel,” Doc turned his attention back to the real Will fucking Charles, “well if I hadn’t had this lovely piece of kit to guide me on an alternative route, I’d still be sitting in traffic behind the overturned tractor with everyone else heading for St. Bee’s Head this lovely morning. So there, you see. It’s already saved us time. Oh, sorry,” he said, offering his hand. I’m Will.” Before Doc could do more than gop, the man slid an arm around him and guided him seamlessly into a selfie.

“Day one of the Wainwright Coast to Coast, and after a near disaster,” he spoke for the camera, “I’m here with Caradoc Doc Jones, the Welsh Woodsman and outdoorsman extraordinaire, about to head into the rain toward our first stop at Ennerdale Bridge. Say hi, Doc.”

Doc managed a wave and a grimace of a smile at urBrain, and Will continued. “We have 192 miles and twelve days to get from St. Bee’s Head on the Irish Sea all the way across England to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea, with fourteen and a half miles to make today, so best get on with it.”

 

Brit Boys: With Toys Bundle blurb:

From coast to coast and city to country Brit boys enjoy playing with each other and their toys. Not any old toys, though; guitars, rope, plugs and Moleskine journals all prove to be enormous fun. Throw in a shop that’s wall to wall with kinky ideas, a journalist on the lookout for the next big thing, and Dominants who insist on obedience and there’s sure to be something to cater for everyone’s taste.

Whether it’s a quickie or a slow indulgence, Brit boys know how to hit the spot and they aim to please every time. So take a ride, fly high, come enjoy these sexy boys and their toys.

 

Brit Boys: With Toys is an anthology of M/M stories written by British authors, featuring British characters in British locations. If this steamy set of stories has whet your appetite for more don’t miss Brit Boys: On Boys.

 

raymond 018Toys for Boys blurb:

Alpha Nerd, Will Charles teams up with Caridoc ‘Doc’ Jones in a coast to coast walk across England reviewing outdoor gift suggestions for the Christmas edition of Toys for Boys—an online magazine dedicated to the latest gadgets to tickle a man’s fancy. Will is recording their adventures with the latest smart phone technology. Doc is reviewing the latest outdoor gear. The two quickly discover the great outdoors provides even better toys for boys, toys best shared al fresco, toys that, in spite of Will’s great camera work, will never be reviewed in Toys for Boys.

Romancing the Chaos

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Dreams imageIMG_0347There are few things a writer can do that will kick-start a story, then pull the reader in and keep them gripped right up to the very end quite as effectively as creating a little chaos. A calm and happy life in the real world might be just the ticket, but in story, there’s one word for it – BORING! A story is all about upsetting the apple cart, breaking the eggs, turning the bull loose in the china cupboard and — heart racing, palms sweating – seeing what happens, while we’re safely ensconced on the other side of the keyboard/Kindle/book. Is there anything quite as yummy as that adrenaline rush at someone else’s expense!

One of the best tools for dropping the character smack-dab into the middle of the chaos – and the reader vicariously – is sex. And the more inconvenient, the more inappropriate, the more confusing, the more SO not what the character was expecting, the more delicious the chaos will be. And let’s not forget just how much chaos NO sex can add to a story. Taking sex off the table has been a key ingredient for causing chaos in story ever since Lysistrata. A little unrequited lust can upset way more than the apple cart. Sex and withholding sex to get that chemistry overload between characters are both perfect recipes for chaos.

The thing about those great big human brains of ours is that they like to make us think we can control all the variables. The thing about the biological housing for those big brains is that it doesn’t always want to be controlled. There’s a reason why the junk is often referred to as the second brain. Oooh! I get goose bumps just thinking about what happens when the big brain gets a hankering and the biological soup starts overheating and sex happens … or doesn’t.

If we look at Western history from the point of view of religion and its effects on culture, there are few things the religious powers that be have made more of an effort to control than sex. And in story, in myth, there are few things that have caused more chaos than a little rough and tumble in the wrong place at the wrong time. Troy lost a war and was destroyed over it, King Author’s realm fell because of it, David had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed because of it.

The resulting chaos that sex unleashes in a story can be nothing more than to create self-doubt in a cock-sure character, which is always a delight to see. Or the resulting chaos can be world-destroying, and anything in between. Sex can cause the kind of chaos that will make the reader laugh, or the kind of chaos that will make the reader say, ‘if only they hadn’t done that.’ However, the one thing sex should never do in a story is leave things the way they were before it happened. Can it be used for bonding? Of course! But the tighter the bond, the more chaos can be caused if that bond is tested or broken.

And because the unconscious part our big brains doesn’t give a damn if our sexual thoughts and fantasies are ‘socially acceptable,’ nor is it discriminating about who we might have those thoughts and fantasies about, the resulting internal chaos can be almost as delicious as the external – maybe even more so. That lovely mix of guilt and desire and self-loathing and arousal and denial and shear over-heated lust. OMG! It’s a total writer’s paradise there for the taking.waterhouse_apollo_and_daphne

I’m sure I’m like most writers in that I analyse what I read for pleasure in terms of what worked and what didn’t, what I would have done if I’d written it, and what I’ve learned from the author’s writing skills that can be used to make my own writing better. I have to say one of the biggies for me is how well the author uses chaos to move the story forward at a good pace; and especially how effectively sex is used to create chaos. I’m sure I pay a lot more attention to how sex is used in a story (or not) because I write erotica, but it’s the resulting chaos that fascinates me and keeps me reading in almost any kind of novel. The world is not a static place, and especially the world of story should not be static. Happy endings are called happy endings because they happen at the end. They follow the chaos and happen when the story is finished. There is no more story, or at least none the reader wants to follow. It’s the chaos that pulls us in and keeps us turning the pages, and when that chaos is directly tied to sex, hold on to your hat!

The Psychology of Dreams 101 Chapter 9

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Psychology of Dreams cover12985576_1537272663241009_8777292825525497968_nWelcome to Part 9 of The Psychology of Dreams, in which things turn darker still, and Leah’s dreams become harder and harder to navigate.

And yes! The fabulously talented Kev Blisse has worked his magic again with a great cover for The Psychology of Dreams! Thanks Kev! you’re the best!

What if you got punished when you didn’t get your dreams right? That’s the dilemma our heroin, Leah, and her psychology of dreams teacher, Al. The Psychology of Dreams 101 is a romp into the sexy unconscious as Leah Kent takes a Psychology of Dreams adult education class, only to discover that the required Dream Journal leads to some seriously kinky night journeys.

No, I didn’t dream it, and I’m seriously hoping I don’t get punished like Leah and Al do if I don’t get it quite right, but The Psychology of Dreams did bubble up from somewhere in my unconscious and I had to share it. Since then,the Muse has been back knocking around in my imagination in some pretty unusual ways, and never taking the path I’d expect, but then dreams are like that, aren’t they? Enjoy episode 8!

 

I have no idea how long this little ditty will be, nor where it will lead, but I’m willing if you are. Please, read and enjoy The Psychology of Dreams 101.

 

If you’ve missed Episode 8, find it here. 

 

WARNING ADULT CONTENT! It occurred to me halfway through writing this episode of The Psychology of Dreams that this little tale might be a bit of a shock for those who just finished reading In The Flesh. While In The Flesh is dark paranormal romance, The Psychology of Dreams is just raunchy, fun erotica, a bit of light relief after Magda and her Consortium. Be warned, light it may be, but filthy it most certainly is. Enjoy!

 

A Reminder: Time got away from me this week, so please do remember that The Psychology of Dreams 101 is a work in progress, which means you are viewing the raw story before it’s polished up. That means in some cases it’s rawer in others. But it also means what you’re getting is as close to what’s coming out of my head as it’s possible to get — or as close as you really want to be anyway. 🙂 Enjoy the work as it unfolds.

 

Chapter 9 Whose Dream is Whose?

“But it was a dream, right?” Leah made no attempt to hide the desperation in her voice. “I mean they might have been in comas, but it was still only a dream.”

For a moment, Al didn’t speak, then he heaved a sigh that sounded like he bore the weight of the world. “Leah, do you have any idea the power dreams have? I mean if I — ”

“What happened,” she cut him off, swallowing back the sudden urge to scream. “Don’t lecture me. This is not your goddamned class. Just tell me what happened.”

“I got Derrick out by convincing him he could do Diana more good if we regrouped and tried to figure this out together. That was a mistake. She wouldn’t let us back in after that.”

“Jesus,” Leah whispered, feeling another wave of vertigo and lying back on the grass until things stopped spinning.

He lay down next to her. “We tried everything we knew – everything, but when it became clear we were helpless, we had to come clean. She was taken to the hospital. We lost our grant. Derrick barely avoided jail. I think he would have preferred to go to jail, actually. Living with the guilt, which was much worse. And the fact that the university let us off easy, covered everything off to protect its own ass didn’t help.” For a moment there was only the tinkling of the stream over the rocks and the whisper of a soft breeze in the fir trees. Leah might have been alone in the place lying there with her eyes clenched shut, wishing she would have never signed up for the damned class. Then Al took a deep breath and continued. “He blamed me for dragging him out of the dream and leaving Diana there. I blamed myself.”

“He shouldn’t have done it to begin with,”

“Hindsight is always better than foresight, isn’t it? Besides, he told me later she’d been hounding him about it for a long time. Diana was fascinated with the work we did. She’d even asked us once about that old wives tale, if a person falls from a high place in the dream world, if they don’t wake up before they hit the bottom, they’ll die. You know what I mean.”

“You think that’s what she was trying to find out?”

“We found out later she was … well she’d suffered from a psychotic break a year before we met her in grad school. She had stopped taking her meds, we found out. No, I think she knew exactly what she was doing, or at least what she was hoping to accomplish. You see, we always took detailed psychological and medical profiles of all of our subjects before we involved them in our work. They were all very carefully screened. But she … well she got to him and, frankly, he would have done anything for her. We both would have. We were both … well we both loved her.” He gave a tight jerk of a shrug. “She chose Derrick. I didn’t know they’d been sleeping together until that night.”

“It must have been a shock.”

He huffed out a jagged breath. “That’s an understatement. I was furious. My first response was to leave them there to be found out and just pretend I knew nothing about it. But it was as much my research as Derrick’s. Derrick was, well Derrick really didn’t need the money. He had an inheritance. I had nothing. I … had nothing.”

“What happened, Al? With Diana, I mean. Did she recover?” Even as she said it she knew the answer to the question with a knot of cold certainty low in her gut.

“She died.” His answer was blunt, unembellished.

In spite of the world spinning harder than ever she forced herself into a sitting position, “Fucking hell, Al, and you took me to this guy to sort out my little dream problem knowing what you knew, and you kept it from me.”

“Leah,” he sat up next to her and, when she tried to stand, but lost her balance, he guided her back down, putting her arm around her and settling her against his shoulder, her with her eyes clenched shut to stop the spinning. When she opened them again at last and took a deep breath, he was studying her. She could feel his intense gaze even in the darkness. “Leah, listen to me. I took you to Derrick because of your dreams, and most especially because of what was written in your dream journal the first time you dreamed about me. He quoted the words from her dream journal almost verbatim. “You look beautiful when you dream. It was a good dream, the kind you don’t want to wake up from. At last, you’re doing it right! You can always tell when you do it right by the way your nipples bead beneath the sheet, by the way your lips turned up at the corners, slightly parted as though waiting to be kissed. Your scent is the scent of dreams well dreamed, luscious and ripe. Well done! Well done!”

f7c97536836dc44ea7a1faaa02ab1a6a“You memorized what was in my dream journal?”

“I didn’t have to. I memorized almost the exact same thing five years ago when Derrick wrote it for Diana, whispered it over and over in her ear until his voice was hoarse, trying to get her to let him back in.”

“What?” Everything in her wanted to run away and even though there was really no place to go, she might have if he hadn’t held her arm in a firm grip. “How the hell can that be?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But when I saw what you’d written, I knew I had to get you to Derrick, if nothing else to find out if he was getting inside your dream somehow, but he swore to me he wasn’t, that he had no idea what was going on. I, well, I would have told you, but I needed to be sure. And if I’d been wrong it wouldn’t have made any difference and you wouldn’t have had to be dragged into this.”

“I see,” she said, not really seeing at all.

“If I’d been right, then you would have had to know the whole story at some point, though I was hoping it wouldn’t be like this. “

“So why do you think he’s doing this, Dr. Clyde, I mean. Why do you think he’d want to manipulate our dreams? If everything you say is true, then he’s not just some pervert getting his jollies from other people’s sexy dreams.” She was a little surprised at just how calm she felt. The urge to run away had dwindled and she felt removed from it all somehow, rather than totally dropped in the middle of someone’s worst nightmare to be used as their pawn for reasons she was totally unsure of, but hey, life was like that sometimes, wasn’t it, and Al had a hard-on. He’d gone to stroking her thigh with tight circular motions inching his way higher, ever inward as he stroked and, for the past couple of minutes, she’d been unconsciously easing her thighs apart to encourage him. She was as slippery as he was hard, she realized. How the hell could that be when he had just dropped such a bomb? She forced her attention back to his words.

“You look like her, Diana, I mean. Oh it’s not a startling resemblance, not like twins or anything, but something in your mannerisms, your coloring, the way you carry yourself, and dreams, well dreams see detail in a different way. I’m not sure Derrick even noticed the resemblance, but then he wasn’t the one in your dreams, was he?” He broke off and caught his breath, which she realized was coming in desperate little gasps. “You wanna fuck, Leah? Because I’m desperate here, and you doing that only makes matters worse.” He nodded to her chest.

She was surprised to find that she was fondling her breasts. She didn’t remember when she started, but with the discovery, she realized that her whole body tingled with desperate arousal, the same desperate arousal she’d felt when they’d gone to Dr. Clyde’s office in the dream. “Yes, I do wanna fuck, actually.” It did enter her mind as he undid her jeans and slid them down over her hips, as she returned the favor that there was absolutely nothing arousing the situation in which they found themselves, and yet she was horny as hell. He shoved up her blouse and nibbled on her nipples in turn. She’d not taken the time for a bra since he’d been distressed and anxious to get away from her house as though Dr. Clyde might be listening from the water pipes or something. Perhaps he was, for all she knew, but as Al shoved her jeans and panties off onto the grass, she didn’t care. As Al fingered her open and kneed her legs a part to make room for himself, she didn’t even care that he wasn’t using a condom.

It was the insistent ping, ping, ping of the alarm on her cell phone getting louder and louder that brought her back to herself with a little yelp and a jerk that nearly unseated her from the booth at Eddie’s diner. The alarm on her phone was drawing the disapproving stares of the lovers and the waitress, who stood over their table with her hands on her hips.

“I’m sorry! Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Leah gasped.

As she fumbled in her bag for the offending device, Al jerked convulsively into wakefulness from his side of the booth and catapulted to a standing position beside the table with a none-to-subtle, “What the fu …” Color rose to his cheeks as he took in his surroundings and settled back into the booth just as Leah shut off the alarm, still apologizing to the waitress and her fellow diners.

“Is everything all right?” The waitress studied them over the rim of her tortoise shell glasses and nodded down to their breakfasts, which were still steaming. “For a second there, I thought you were dead.” She offered a little laugh that was just this side of being really nervous.

“Fine, everything’s fine,” Leah managed. “I’m so sorry. Studying for exams, you know? Pulled too many late nights with too much caffeine.”

The waitress forced a smile that said she didn’t believe that for one minute, but this was Eddie’s Diner. She probably had actually seen stranger things, though not likely tonight she hadn’t.

They both watched as she returned to the counter, then Leah leaned across her waffles and hissed at Al, “you said we weren’t dreaming. You said this was real.”

“This is real,” he picked up a piece of bacon with his fingers and nibbled at it suspiciously.

“Then what the hell happened?”

“I don’t know.” He shoved the rest of the meat in his mouth and spoke around it. “At some point we were pulled back into your dream.”

“It couldn’t have been my dream. I’ve never been to that campground. My parents never took me camping.”

“Do you really think that matters at this point?” He said, shoveling in a huge bite of eggs. Then he nodded to her plate. “Eat, Leah. Whatever the hell’s going on, visiting the dream world unexpectedly like we just did takes a lot of energy.” And he was right. She was starving.

For a moment, the feeding frenzy took priority and, as they ate, Leah noticed that her head was beginning to clear. “The alarm. It pulled us back, didn’t it? I set it for yesterday. I had a Skype session with a client in another time zone. For me it was the middle of the night. I guess I forgot to delete it.” She reached for her phone to delete the alarm.

“No wait, don’t delete it. Set another one for a half an hour. In fact set it to go off every half hour.” He pulled his phone out. “I’ll do the same, only at the fifteen minute mark of yours. That way even if we are pulled back into the dream, we’ll have a built-in safety every fifteen minutes. As you can see,” he nodded down to their half-empty plates, “we weren’t in the dream but a few minutes and yet it felt much longer. Time runs differently in the dream world.”

As they set the alarms, the lovers paid and made their exit, and there was no one else in the diner. It was too early for the breakfast crowd and too late for the bar crowd. Oh, there might still be the odd rendezvous or someone working really strange hours, even a student or two, but not at the moment, so Al took advantage of the quiet. “Excuse me,” he said to the waitress, as she filled their cups, “but I want to apologize for what just happened and ask,” he shifted nervously and glanced down at his plate, “well could you tell me, did we do anything really embarrassing?”

“Well you didn’t drool or snore if that’s what you mean. It’s just that for a minute there, I couldn’t wake you up. Scared me really. I thought maybe you were on something. Thought I’d have to call the cops, but I’ve seen you both in here before, so then I start thinking that something sinister is going on.” She offered an embarrassed shrug. “You wouldn’t believe some of the strange things that go on at Eddie’s on the graveyard shift,” she gave them a dramatic roll of her eyes, “but then the alarm went off and you both woke up, so I figure no harm no foul as long as you pay the bill and tip the waitress for her efforts.” She offered them a broad smile.

Al dug in his pocket. “Here, I’ll just take care of that now and give you a little peace of mind.” He handed her a wad of bills.

She glanced down at the money and smiled back at him. “Hon, you can sleep in my booth any time.” Then she left as two retired men came through the door and settled at the counter.

For another moment, they shoveled in the food and Leah was just reaching for her last sausage link when it hit her. “Al, you said that the message in my dream journal is the same message that Dr. Clyde used to try and get through to Diana.”

america-artist-art-paintings-prints-note-cards-by-howard-chandler-christy-nude-women-reading-approximate-original-size-18x16“That’s right, why?”

“Well, what about your message? What exactly did it say?”

He took a slow sip of his coffee and wiped his hands on his napkin, delay tactics, she thought, but at last he spoke. “You have to be punished. It’s the only way you’ll get any relief. Until you take what’s coming to you, there’s no real satisfaction, and no walking away. Stay in the dream.” It’s been recurring since Diana’s death, but then it all but stopped until I met you.”

The room felt suddenly ice cold and gooseflesh climbed Leah’s spine on little barbed feet. “Al, why would you get that message? That message sounds like it’s intended for Dr. Clyde. From Diana.”

The Tutor Has a Cover! And a Pear Teaser

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thetutor_800I’ve been barely able to contain myself this past two weeks, just bursting to tell you the good news, and now at last I can. Not only can I tell you that my steamy contemporary romance novel, The Tutor, has been snapped up by the Totally Entwined imprint of Totally Bound, but I can now reveal the gorgeous cover which sizzles with the creative genius of Emmy Ellis. I’ll be filling you in on preorder dates and release dates and other details as time draws nearer, but today I just wanted to give you a peek at my gorgeous cover and tease you a bit with a blurb and a small excerpt.

The Tutor has a very special place in my heart because it had its beginnings last October at Smut Manchester during Kay Jaybee’s wonderfully wicked “trip to the supermarket” workshop on inspiration. We were all given an item from the supermarket shelf and told we’d been called over the loudspeaker to go to the stockroom. From that we were to write the beginnings of a story about what we’d find in the stockroom and what we’d do with our item in said stockroom. I still remember the smug little smirk on Ms. Jaybee’s face when she handed me the slip of paper that read A tin of pears in heavy syrup.  I never imagined in my wildest dreams that before the weekend was out, I’d have the seeds for a novel that just had to be written. In fact, it needed to be written so badly that I signed up for NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month in November and wrote the whole 95K in one month!  Here’s just a taste of the end result. Enjoy!

Stay tuned for updates as they happen.

The Tutor Blurb:

Struggling writer, Kelly Blake has a secret life as a sex tutor. Celebrated sculptor and recluse, Alexander ‘Lex’ Valentine’s, can’t stand to be touched. When he seeks out Kelly’s advice incognito, the results are too hot to handle. When Kelly terminates their sessions due to her unprofessional behavior, Lex takes a huge risk, revealing his identity to her at a gala exhibition, his first ever public appearance. When Kelly helps the severely haphephobic Lex escape the grope of reporters and paparazzi, rumors fly that the two are engaged, rumors encouraged by well-meaning friends and colleagues. The press feeding frenzy forces Kelly into hiding at Lex’s mansion where he convinces her to be his private tutor. They discover quickly that touch is not essential for sizzling, pulse-pounding intimacy. But intimacy must survive the secrets uncovered as their sessions become more and more personal.

The Tutor Excerpt:

“Was this your idea or Dillon’s? Kelly asked, hoping to relax him.

“It was mine, after Andy told Dillon and he told me. I thought it was something that I …” The muscles along Lex’s jaw looked as though they were made out of iron, and a fine blush crawled up his neck tinting his ears bright pink. “I’ve never touched a woman … in that way.” He forced a laugh. “Obviously. I’ve …” the blush deepened and he avoided her gaze. “I’ve put lube on some of the sculptures – you know — down there, but I … well it isn’t the same.”

“The pears won’t be either,” she said, her heart suddenly aching at the physical isolation this man endured on a daily basis, and it wasn’t just her heart that ached, she felt his lack deep in her core. It had been easier with Andy. She had been almost flippant with him. She was sorry for that now. She spread one of the towels on the Queen Anne chair across from him and settled herself onto it so they were facing each other. “The texture will be different and with the pear there’ll be less give.” She dipped her fingers in the bowl and rubbed the heavy juice between her index finger and her thumb. “If you touch a woman, she’ll be much warmer.” She gave him a conspiratorial smile. “You’ll be amazed at how warm and how soft she’ll be down there when she’s ready to be touched. With Andy, this,” she nodded down to the pears, “was improvisation, this was the best I could do under the circumstances, but a woman, well a woman feels like nothing you’ve ever touched before.”

He was no longer avoiding her gaze. His eyes were locked on her, and he was struggling to keep them on her face, she knew that; she understood the urge for him to drop his eyes to the place of which she spoke, the place with which she was so intimate, the place that couldn’t help but respond to the topic, to the situation, to the strange intimacy they had shared almost since the moment they’d met. “You can look, if you want,” she opened her legs so that he could see the place in between clothed in black denim, completely disguised and yet so very obvious. “And I’ll look at you too,” she nodded down to his own jeans straining to contain him already. “It’s what men and woman are naturally inclined to do when there’s a sexual attraction.”

With her heart hammering in her throat, she took one of the pear halves into the cupped palm of her left hand, then she brought it down between her spread thighs, feeling the juice of it run over her fingers and drip onto the towel as she spread her legs a little farther and held her pam to mimic the position of her vulva. “Touch it like a woman would touch it, and you’ll always get it right.” She drug her index and middle finger up from the bottom of the pear to the center and felt her own body respond in empathy. “The pear has no folds, no secret valleys, no swollen flesh to be teased open, so you’ll have to use your imagination with that.”

Lex gave a little moan soft and deep in his chest as he shifted to make himself more comfortable. “I know the anatomy,” he said. “I’ve watched porn and I’ve studied drawings. I know how it looks like it might feel. I know the response it elicits.” His tongue flicked nervously over his upper lip. “Of course that’s just acting, isn’t it?”

“Porn is about fantasy, about voyeurism, and it doesn’t matter if it’s real if it gets you off. But when it is real,” she spread her index and middle finger up the sides of the pear’s central opening, “if you’re good, if your sensitive, you’ll feel the spasms of your lover’s orgasm, even see them if you’re using your tongue; and you can feel them gripping at your cock when your inside her. If you’re paying attention.

“The clitoris,” she laughed softly, “Well with Andy I used a Ticktack, but he’s a chemistry major. He likes charts and graphs and periodic tables. You’re an artist, you live in your imagination, so you don’t need a Ticktack. Some women like the thumb stroking and circling while the other fingers work inside. Some women like to use their fingers.” She demonstrated on the pear, and Lex groaned. “It’s always best to ask and be sure.”

“What do you like?” His words were a labored rasp against the back of his throat, and Kelly found herself stunned by the question, and way more aroused than she wanted to be. He shouldn’t have asked. She should have answered. But she did.

“I like it this way.” She shifted her hips and opened a little further so he could see her thrust and scissor, circle and probe technique, and her body responded with the tight grip and release of muscle memory.

“Jesus,” he whispered moving forward on the sofa and leaning closer for a better look. “And when someone uses their tongue?”

She caught her breath in a giddy laugh. “Afraid I can’t tell you what I do since, sadly I’m not that flexible.”

“But you can tell me what you like.” His voice had gone rough.

“I like the flat of the tongue to part me and then probe me, circle my clit and then kiss and suck.” She closed her eyes, finding it difficult to meet his gaze when she spoke about something so intimate, so secret. Come to think of it, she’d never had a man actually ask her how she liked it. The few who had given a rat’s ass about her pleasure had been happy enough to let her order them about, but never quite got the hang of it.

It was the loud schussing sound that caused her to open her eyes. Lex had moved the coffee table out of the way paying no attention to the slosh of pear juice all over the towel V had spread. His eyes were locked on Kelly as he fished out his own pear half and fell to his knees in front of her. When she realized what the man was about to do she dropped the pear she’d been holding with a little gasp of surprise and scooted as far back in the chair as she could. He knelt low, holding the pear in the cup of his hand, as she had, placing it against the edge of the chair between her legs! She gave a little yelp and scrambled back in the chair still further, spreading her thighs over the rise of the chair arms to keep from touching him. He moved forward, the back of his hand so close to her crotch that she could feel the heat of it, and he lowered himself still further until his hair nearly brushed the insides of her thighs. Then, still looking up at her from his position on the floor, he began at the bottom of the open pear half and ran his tongue flat and undulating all the way up, flicking in just slightly in a little circle at the top end before he closed his lips around the apex and she could hear the slurp and suck of the sweet syrup.

“Oh! Lex! Ah!” And then she went non-verbal, holding her breath, tightening muscles deep inside her body, the only muscles she dared to move if she were to keep from touching him. She raised both arms and fisted her hands in a suicide grip around the back of the chair to keep from curling them in his hair. Her thighs trembled from her efforts to keep her legs on the chair arms and not throw them over his shoulders for leverage. She didn’t move. She didn’t breath as he licked and nuzzled and suckled until pear juice ran down his chin and onto his tee-shirt, until his face was damp and sticky, until his forehead was sheened with perspiration, and still he held her gaze as though they were locked together in each other’s orbit neither able to move without the other’s consent.

“Oh God, I’m gonna come.” She barely managed a warning when his own convulsion brought him dangerously near her body. He had stopped breathing, she was sure of it. She practically climbed the back of the chair to keep from touching him as he lost control. Then with a tremendous gasp of oxygen, he straightened, let the pear fall from his hand onto the Aubusson carpet and looked up at her.

“I’m going to pass out.” And he did.

 

 

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Brave New World or More of the Same?

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Another one bites the dust… Writers of erotica and erotic romance are not surprised these days when another indie books_xl_4571699publisher shuts the doors or when another erotica imprint stops taking submissions … Indefinitely. We’ve all watched all the hype and the glitz from 50SoG with bated breath to see what it’s effect on erotica would be. We’ve watched the rise of the eReader, which allowed for the ‘secret read.’ It was great! You could read the filthiest stories, the raunchiest bodice rippers – even on a crowded train and no one would know. We’ve watched the rise and legitimization of self-publishing – at first hopefully as publishers began to sit up and take notice of the really good stuff that had been overlooked by the agents- the gatekeepers, and then watched with despair and disgust as it quickly became clear that anyone – whether they could write or not – could self publish and the market became hopelessly glutted with tosh that was not only unpublishable, but unreadable. The prices of eBooks dropped right along with the quality and … Another one bites the dust. Not only were indies dropping like flies, but authors, really good authors, were giving up hope and tossing in the towel.

 

Like moat writers, occasionally I gave into the urge to shake my fiat at the heavens and wonder if there was any good news out there to be had. Well, there is … Hopeful news, at least. I say that touching wood, just in case.

 

I’ve been perusing the Annual Guide to Literary Agents of late trying to get representation for a couple of novels in genres other than erotica, using the kick up the arse that the erotica market free fall has caused to work on some other projects, projects I’ve been wanting to tackle for ages, but never had time. I haven’t looked at an Annual Guide to Literary Agents since way before The Initiation of Ms Holly was published, and what I found was a pleasant surprise.

 

101119-e-readers-hmed2p.grid-10x2It seems agents have also had a kick up the arse along with publishing in general. Unlike the xxx I looked at in he pre-Holly days, the listing of what genres for which agents would accept submissions, what they were specifically looking for even, was liberally peppered with erotica – not just erotic romance but m/m, lesbian and LGBT. There was NOT an agent in the directory of hundreds of listed agencies that would have accepted erotica submissions back in the day. I can’t say that we owe their new openness to erotica submissions to Shades of Grey or to Crossfire. What I can say is that publishers, major publishers are still trying to find the next 50SoG, are still name-dropping 50SoG in their adverts to sell novels. Maestra, by L.S. Hilton, is a good example. I’m reading it now, and from what I’ve read so far, it’s a book as different from Grey as apples are from alligators, and yet the name of “that book” is being dropped as a marketing ploy. Hell, the name of that book was dropped for Holly and several million other books with fingers and toes of authors and publishers all crossed. Never mind the wildly divergent opinions of the book, that level of success in anything merits a big search for the next and generates a lot of name-dropping.

 

What does all of this mean to erotica writers who have despaired of life as the market plummeted and everybody and their dog and hamster tried a hand at self-pubbing? What does it mean to erotica readers who are sick of looking through all the tosh for something readable? I haven’t a damned clue, but I do know it feels hopeful, like there might actually be a light at the end of the tunnel. I’d like to believe it’s because erotica might be, just maybe, beginning to take the place of respect it deserves along side the rest of literary world at last. But I also think the rude awakening of the past couple of years is a harsh reminder that publishing is a business, and no more or no less noble than any other business, meaning it will always go where the money goes. We writers who believe there is something nearly sacred in our craft (that would be me for sure) would save ourselves a lot of grief to remember that.

 

I’ll have new work coming out soon, after taking a bit of time to play with stories and write some things I’ve wanted to dreamstime_xl_15490930write for ages. If anything, the bad situation has forced me to be brave, forced me to ask myself just why I write and what I expect to get from it. I imagine I’m in good company there, and I won’t deny I’ve had my share of bitterness and despair, but here I am older and hopefully wiser and ready to fight another day. What I have rediscovered in the interim is the pleasure of writing a story for the pure joy of it, just because I can. I’m a writer. It’ my passion and while the market and the publishing industry may be cyclical, may be in flux, who I am and what I do is not. While I believe I am always evolving to become a better writer, the fact that I am a writer is a constant and that was a good thing to rediscover as the publishing industry turns yet again.