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.