Smut by the Sea: Inspiration

Inspiration’s a funny thing. Stop by on Friday May 3^rd and you can read master storyteller Kay Jaybee’s thoughts on the matter. I’ve been thinking of the roundabout ways in which I pieced together my story, Stuck on the Edge, for Smut by the Sea Vol 2.

The story is set on Bardsey Island, where a happily married couple escape for their first holiday alone without the kids for several years. They have one last paddle in the bay near their little stone cottage before they’re due to get the boat back to the mainland and drive home. But it turns into a little more than a paddle – and then they discover that their journey home isn’t going to go quite so smoothly after all.

You’ll often hear the writing advice to ‘write what you know’. When it comes to erotica, I don’t believe that this means you have to be particularly promiscuous or have done every sexual act you write about. Horror writers don’t go around chopping people up with chainsaws, after all. If you had to write only what you’d personally experienced there would no fiction, only autobiography. This isn’t an excuse for not doing some research and getting your facts right – because you can bet some of your readers will have done the things you write about (unless we’re talking tentacles, which I gather is a big thing in fantasy land) – but the point of being a writer is that your imagination can extrapolate a lot of story from a little information.

I think writing what you know is more in the little details that bring the story alive. So what do I know about my story? Well, I almost went to Bardsey Island once. Yes, almost. It was as a reporter to write a travel feature. But the weather was too bad over several days for us to actually get there because although the island is not far from the end of the Llyn peninsula in North Wales, the waters are pretty treacherous. So I’d done some research and had an idea of what the island was like although I’ve had to use my imagination and stretch the truth a little in places. And I knew it was possible to get stranded there for longer than you might have planned.

What else? Well, I’ve swum in the Irish Sea and I’ve paddled in mountain lakes and when I describe the ‘bone-crushing chill in your ankles that makes you wince’, I bloody well know what I’m talking about. And I have a fondness for rustic pottery, which the couple’s cottage is full of. So when my female character whispers her reply to a milk jug, I’m picturing a jug I have that’s in shades of brown and cream with a vaguely Celtic kind of swirl scraped into the glaze.

Gareth stood behind me and put his fingers to the flimsy bit of fabric at my hips. He drew my knickers slowly down. I lifted my legs in a detached sort of way as I gazed at the view, as if I was barely aware of what he was doing. Although when he reached a hand under my ass to push his fingers up the slit of my pussy, I may have moved my legs further apart. Ever so slightly. I was wet already, and not with seawater any more. With his words and his tongue and my imagination. He found my clit and rubbed it gently, making me stick my ass up higher and whimper. A whimper that said “harder”, but which he ignored whether he understood or not. The clouds were racing across the sky and I saw a cormorant fighting into the wind.

“I’d better check the water,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Okay,” I whispered to the milk jug.

You can get your hands on Smut by the Sea Vol 2 at All Romance, Amazon UK and Amazon.com. And if you're free on June 22nd, why not come to the seaside in Scarborough for the Smut by the Sea launch. Entry for readings and talks during the day is free, and you can grab a ticket for the evening's entertainment along with all the info at the website.