Oh my, I'm late...

...For a very important date. The announcement of my Sunday Snog winner, in fact. I went off on a weekend away in deepest, darkest northern England and forgot that this would stop me picking my winner. Even my mobile signal was patchy, although the view of the Milky Way at night was pretty damn clear. 

I know you're all dying to know what highly scientific method I used to pick a winner. Well, I wrote all the names in biro on the flesh of a willing sex slave before beating him to see which one looked the reddest. Oh, no, I just made that up. I wrote all the names on little bits of paper, fed them into a willing sex slave's mouth, then waited to see which one was still legible when he spat them out. Oh, no, that was just a dream. I got someone to wank over the bits of paper and decided which got the directest hit... Ah, no again. I put the bits of paper in my teapot, shook them up a bit and pulled one out whilst looking in the opposite direction and humming a little fanfare sort of noise. Yes, that would be it. I'm  not sure where the fanfare came from. But I can never think of teapots again without thinking about Slave Nano's reading at this year's Smut by the Sea event. He read this excerpt out to us, shared here on Giselle Renarde's blog, the unabridged, uncensored and highly amusing version. 

Anyway, fanfare please... The winner is Anonymous. Ha, that's disappointed you all, hasn't it? But thank you to Anonymous, who said 'I've been wanting to read this anthology!' for your comment. Your wish is about to come true via the modern wonder of email. Hope you enjoy it. 

Incidentally, the 100th Sunday Snog event has raised £234.72 for Medecins San Frontieres, smashing the £100 target to smithereens. (Now there's a word.) A big thank you to Victoria Blisse for organising it all.

100th Sunday Snog!

Well, this may be my first Sunday snog, but it’s Victoria Blisse’s 100^th. Lucky her. And to celebrate, she’s raising some money for charity and organising a bumper giveaway. She’s already raised more than a hundred quid for Medecins Sans Frontieres and she’s rounded up dozens of authors to give away some freebies on their blogs.

I’m going to give away an ebook copy of Smut by the Sea Volume 2. Comment on this post for your chance to win. I’ll use some highly scientific method to pick a winner if I actually get more than one commenter! You’ve got until midnight on September 27^th to enter. And if you’d like to go off and have a chance of winning dozens more prizes, then all the authors taking part are listed on Victoria’s Blisse Kiss page.

This snog is taken from my story in Smut by the Sea Vol 2, Stuck on the Edge. Gareth and Claire's last paddle in the sea before they’re meant to be going home from their little island hideaway is getting a little out of hand:

Gareth swam up beside me, the arms of his t-shirt wrapping round his biceps. I put my feet down, feeling soft sand between my toes instead of shingle out this deep, and let him get his arms around me. You’d think I might have been getting used to the temperature by now, but in fact I felt like my lips might be turning blue. He kissed them. And somehow his lips were still warm. As mine melted against his, it felt like the rest of my body was a marble statue. Only my lips were real, flesh and blood, pulsing with heat. His tongue was hot too. He darted it out and I opened my mouth to let him in. My throat felt tight and deep within my frozen belly a little spark went pop.

I may have moaned a little. He drew back and said, “You did once tell me you fancied sex in the sea. And somehow we’ve never got round to it.”

“Are you kidding me? Sex? Here? Now?” My voice rose in pitch until I was sure it was audible only to bats. I was shaking and my mind was already wondering how long it would take for Gareth to run to the warden’s cabin, for the warden to radio for help, for a helicopter to arrive, winch me up and transport me to the nearest hospital to be treated for hypothermia. And frostbite. And crazy, irrational lust. My nipples were already rock hard because of the cold, but now they were tingling too. Because of the lust.

Get to Know Bella Buxom...

Author Jo-Anne Kenrick has been sharing some snippets from Coming Together with Curves over at her blog. She was kind enough to say this about my story, Six Lengths of Red Hemp, “There's no getting away from how deeply engaging this story is; every knot, every wrap... we feel it all thanks to Ms Hunter's rich descriptions.”

But whilst bigging up everyone else’s stories, she skipped over her own. So I’m going to redress this and tell you all about Bella Buxom, Just Squeeze Me.

The leading lady in this story is talented, sexy, confident and vivacious. And a bit of a bitch. Charlie is smitten with Bella Buxom, the sassy star of a burlesque show, and fantasises about her as he goes back home to his lonely flat. Her stage world of glitz and glamour contrasts sharply with his mundane life at home and work. But one day, their paths meet. She teases him, belittles him, lies to him and uses him. And when they end up in bed, she’s just as bossy and demanding. He knows he should refuse to be treated that way, but he just can’t help himself. She’s irresistible. As her ex says, “She’ll drive any man to madness.”

I love the way that Bella is a complex character, sometimes nice, sometimes nasty, sometimes confident, sometimes vulnerable. She’s not some stereotypical woman hiding her secret pain beneath a bubbly exterior. She shows that women, fat or skinny, cannot be pigeonholed into convenient little categories. And she’s damn hot.

Here's what happens when they first meet outside the club:

"You lost?" She appears shaken, eyes wide behind a thin veil of curls fallen free from her hairdo, watchful.

Crap, I scared her. Better put her mind at ease, let her know I'm no Jack the Ripper ASAP. I wave and say, "Hi, Bella, you probably get this all the time but—

"Yes, I do. So save yourself the rejection, pet, and leave me alone, there's a good boy." She flicks her hand at me, shooing me away. The simple  gesture stings, serves as a slap across my face.

"A man has to try." I get it, I'm just some dude who gawks at her on a daily basis. I didn't expect her to fall in love with me. Nah, that was more hope than expectation. I shrug, the ache in me thrice as bad as it usually is post-Bella. Back to Red Shoe Diaries and my stir-fry.

"Wait, I know you." She peers over her shoulder then back to me. "You always sit up front, have a look of a puppy dog wanting a treat. You're adorable when you pant. Puppy, wanna take me for a drink?"

I want to cling to her offering of a sliver of hope, but remind myself she's a tease artist. I grit my teeth to stop a love confessional from spilling and force myself to say, "No, forget it, I can see you don't wanna be bothered."

"Oh, puppy, don't be grumpy."

Coming Together with Curves is available at All Romance, Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and other outlets. Proceeds benefit the charity, Parkinsons UK.

Top picture is burlesque performer Lady Monster.

On Curves

‘More than half of women hate the sight of their naked bodies.’ ‘The secrets of losing belly fat.’ ‘Sex moves that burn 400 calories.’ ‘By age 6, girls start to express concerns about their own weight or shape.’ ‘Only four per cent of women globally consider themselves beautiful.’ ‘By adolescence, studies show that young people are receiving an estimated 5,260 “attractiveness messages” per year from television commercials.’

These are just a few snippets of the headlines, adverts and news articles I found within minutes on the web about women’s bodies and how they feel about them. I actually live in a cosy little cocoon in which I see a lot less of this than most people; I long ago stopped reading the women’s magazines that are really just a marketing vehicle to get you to buy stuff, I don’t watch telly (I mean it, I can play a DVD but have no TV services) and I don’t do a lot of recreational shopping. I'm also wary of taking information from magazine surveys and beauty company research at face value. But there's no escaping the fact that there is enormous pressure on women to look a certain way. And mostly that way is thin.

Now, I don’t have the time to produce an academic treatise on all of this. But I do write smutty stories. And when I saw the call for submissions to Coming Together: With Curves, I thought I could do a little tiny something to help redress the balance. To present a character who is both curvy and confident. Because there’s one thing I know for sure - that self-consciousness about your flabby bits does not make for enjoyment of sex. It’s unusual for me to even describe a character’s physical appearance in any great depth; I usually leave that up to the reader. But given the prevalence of Photoshopped images of size zero models, I think there’s a need to show that women – and men – come in all shapes and sizes. And that their size does not define them, their appearance does not tell you who they are, the number on their clothing labels does not make them good or bad or healthy or lazy or ugly or sexy or kind or mean or... you get the message. 

If you’re interested, I read a blog post recently by Hanne Blank entitled Real Women, in which she points out that ‘Real women do not look like just one thing.’

All the buy links for Coming Together with Curves are here and profits go to the charity Parkinsons UK. 

Out now - Coming Together: With Curves

More exciting book release news. Coming Together: With Curves is out now and contains my story, Six Lengths of Red Hemp. And the fabulous thing is that by buying this book you're helping charity. So by reading smut you'll be doing your good turn for the day.

The anthology, edited by Lucy Felthouse and Victoria Blisse, is a collection of eleven stories featuring 'bold, brazen babes with dangerous curves'. All proceeds are going to Parkinsons UK.

As well as stories by Lucy and Victoria, you've got Lily Harlem, JoAnne Kenrick, Elizabeth Lapthorne, Bella Blake, Sommer Marsden, Giselle Renarde and Lexie Bay.

In my tale, Lousia's fella treats her to an erotic photoshoot for her birthday and the story moves between the photographer's Japanese-style garden and what happens in Louisa and Dan's bedroom when they view the resulting artworks. It starts like this:

Louisa turned the pages with awe. The photographs were some of the most beautiful erotic art she had ever seen. The scarlet red dye of hemp ropes contrasted startlingly with the lush green of leaves and mosses in the Japanese garden where they had been taken. Dampened skin brought out every contour of the model’s body. Her body.

Coming Together: With Curves is available as an ebook at Smashwords, Amazon UK and Amazon.com. Paperback at CreateSpace.