Cleis Press loveliness

It's looking like a kinky year with Cleis Press for me. Best Bondage Erotica 2014 has just come out and I have a few more stories on the way in other anthologies. So I thought I'd share some sweet little covers (and by 'sweet' I mean... well, you know me by now). 

Bear with me while I engage in pure self-indulgence, a 'look at me, look at all these pretty books I'm in' moment. Because most of these are not yet available, but they are pretty books. I have to stay quiet about many of the covers I see on erotica and erotic romance offerings because my comments might not come across well online. (But if you want to see a nicely balanced view, check out Janine Ashbless's blog post about covers). But Cleis covers hit the spot for me. Sometimes they're subtle, sometimes they're brash, but always they look professional, appropriate to the content and, well, hot. 

Best Bondage Erotica 2014

Out now

Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Contains my m/f story Tight-Rope Walker 

Buy now at Amazon/Amazon UK

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Can't Get Enough

Out July 2014

Edited by Tenille Brown

Contains my m/m story Mud and Pain

Pre-order at Amazon/Amazon UK

Blog page

Bound for Trouble

Out July 2014

Edited by Alison Tyler

Contains my m/f story Doing It by the Book

Pre-order at Amazon/Amazon UK














The Big Book of Submission

Out July 2014
Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Contains my stories Training My Dom (m/f) 
and Toasted Marshmallows (mmff?!)
Pre-order at Amazon or Amazon UK
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Blog hop Q&A: Writing goals 2014

I got tagged by the lovely Tabitha Rayne, who got tagged by the fabulous Oleander Plume, who got tagged by the delectable SL Gonzalez for a little blog hop Q&A about this year's writing goals. So thanks guys and here goes:

If you could achieve anything with your writing in 2014, what would it be?

If we’re in daydream, pie-in-the-sky territory, then actually being able to be a writer full-time would be just lovely, but I have too many financial responsibilities to go chasing a dream like that when there are so few writers actually making a living from it with any kind of long-term security. I know there are those who say if you have such a dream, you should go for it and let nothing hold you back – and I do believe that we are all architects of our own lives and futures. I’m in this for the long haul; right now I have competing priorities, but I need to keep practising my craft and building up a body of work.

What are the top three demons you must slay to achieve your goals in 2014?

1. Needing to eat and sleep.
2. Believing that ‘being a writer’ necessarily involves living in a little stone cottage by the sea.
3. Being at the mercy of the muse/my mood/the weather/my surroundings etc, which combine to mean that I don’t always feel most creative when I actually have time to write.

Name three things that inspire you to write.

1. Walking
2. Sex  (Obviously I mean the wondrous richness of human relationships, the search for The One ­- or Two, or Three etc - the union of kindred spirits, the quest for a yang to your yin and vice versa, yada yada yada. I lie. I actually meant kinky sex.)
3. Publication (or, more precisely, the recognition from publishers and editors that my work is good enough for publication.)

What advice do you have for a new writer who is considering writing fiction?

First, just do it. Because there are thousands, possibly millions of people, who say they want to be writers but never sit down and write. Get on with it. Practise your craft. Try things out. Find your voice. Dare to call yourself a writer, right now rather than in some misty dream of the future.

Second, maintain your integrity. A very small handful of people manage to make a fortune from their writing. And when you’re sitting in your mansion in Beverly Hills surrounded by 10ft electrified fences in grounds patrolled by trained killer zombies you may not care how proud you feel of your work’s quality, your hard graft, originality, creative spark, your book’s sexual politics, its contribution to the sum of human understanding. 

Most of us will be somewhere on a line between earning a couple of hundred quid pocket money a year to just about scraping a viable living. So, to me, it’s important that you at least feel you’re doing something worthwhile, something you believe in, something you can honestly say you’ve done your very best at. (For the record: one, I am naively idealistic, and, two, I believe that exploring and perhaps encouraging sexual pleasure is highly worthwhile.)

And I'm gonna tag two of my fellow Best Bondage Erotica 2014 authors Kay Jaybee and Jacqui Brocker! Tag, you're it (*runs away*).

Rope and the great British countryside

I can't wait for my author copy of Best Bondage Erotica 2014 to arrive. I've been reading about all the stories on the book's Tumblr site, where authors are talking about their inspiration and sharing their favourite lines from their stories. And every single one sounds hot as caramelised sugar (and I should know, having suffered a popcorn-related injury recently). 

My story is called Tight Rope Walker and it focuses on two things: a karada tie and a walk up a hill. At the time I was planning the story, I happened upon this blog post by Fulani, which is a practical guide to tying a karada and proved to be most useful for research purposes. Most useful indeed. (And I've just realised he follows the word with an exclamation mark in the title, thus: Karada! That's how it always appears in my mind, like Oklahoma! for some reason.) 

Obviously, the anthology is about bondage. But there are just so many avenues you can go down to write a bondage story. Different styles, different purposes, different equipment, different relationships, different levels of experience, different mindsets... The funny thing is that you can't just write a description of ropes and knots and the process of tying. My story takes the idea of this quite elaborate tie, which creates a sort of rope corset, and then takes it out for a walk. 

One of my new year's resolutions as a writer is: Write less, walk more. I find many things - writer's block, backache, general grumpiness, existential angst - can be solved by going for a walk, preferably somewhere with a few trees or rocks or a bit of water. My characters take a walk up the Wrekin, a hill in Shropshire, England, with the karada, hidden under winter layers, being their delicious little secret. 

Best Bondage Erotica 2014, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and published by Cleis Press, is now out in paperback and ebook at Amazon, or for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk.

And for writers, Rachel also has a new submissions call for Best Bondage Erotica 2015.

Out now: Best Bondage Erotica 2014

New year, new release! Best Bondage Erotica 2014, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel, is out now at Amazon.com. For co.uk-ers it's slated for publication in March. 

It's a collection of 21 stories from authors both well-known and new, exploring the theme in a variety of tantalising ways. It's currently available as a real, kissable paperback. And as it’s published by Cleis it has this rather lovely cover.

Here's the blurb:

Rachel Kramer Bussel ties her readers up in knots each year as they anticipate the very best BDSM stories of the year. And, she does not disappoint, defying the odds, and occasionally gravity, with tales of bondage at its best. These whip-smart tales of domination, submission, spanking, and other highly imaginative acts keep readers in a frenzy. Best Bondage Erotica 2014 features 21 hot bondage tales that titillate from the bedroom to the dungeon and beyond. Handpicked by best-selling erotica editor Bussel, these kinky stories show and tell exactly what it means to wield the special power of being in charge of someone else. These characters manipulate rope, handcuffs, leather straps, a St. Andrew's cross, a chair, and, in Raziel Moore's "My Own Device," a special contraption crafted just for bondage, with the ultimate aim of pleasing each partner. Here, bondage takes place behind secret doors, at sex parties, at the office, on a mountain hike, and, of course, at home.

I’ll talk more about karadas and my story, 'Tight Rope Walker' (the mountain hike one), very soon.

There is much more info, including author interviews on the BBE2014 Tumblr page.

Buy at Amazon.com or Cleis, or pre-order at Amazon.co.uk.

The obligatory...

...writer's resolutions post. 

1. Write less, walk more. I will spend less time staring at a screen when the words aren't flowing and more time switching off and going for a walk, or digging the allotment, instead. Because sometimes you have to get away from the screen and the immediate pressure to produce to some self-imposed word count. The creative me needs fresh air and space and greenness around it in order to function properly.
2. Be more selective. I tried lots of new things last year - m/m, menage, even some vanilla (yeah, yeah, I hear you say, but what about the writing?). This year I have some other Big Stuff going on that means I can't spend as much time on my writing as I have been doing. I'm going to be looking for a balance between submitting to antho calls that really float my boat (and pay reasonably) and building up some story collections and/or a novella or two to get out there as a lone author. 
3. Keep learning. I will keep reading smut, both my favourite authors and new ones (so I can copy them, obviously). I will keep reading around issues in sexual politics and thinking about how my stories fit into the bigger picture. I will keep editing my own stories ruthlessly. I may do the odd bit of practical research ;-)