Review: Kinky by Justine Elyot

First of all, I just have to say that I want a Dimitri. In fact, I think everyone deserves a Dimitri of their very own. Maybe a pocket-sized version so you can keep him with you at all times. He’s such a sweetie. He’s also the hero of this fabulous tale. A tale which has joined the ranks of books that kept me up past 11pm. And you should know that strange things involving pumpkins happen when I’m still up past 11pm.

It’s a beautifully well-written story of an office worker and a Russian wannabe actor brought together by their clandestine spying on an S&M club. But not as strange and circuitous as that sentence makes it sound. Anyway, Rosie and Dimitri watch a little schoolroom spanking scene and then manage to wangle an invitation to said club. As complete novices, they set about trying out its various rooms and items of equipment while Dimitri considers working as a professional Dom to beat the restaurant kitchen drudgery he’s ended up with.

So Dimitri = Dom. But he’s a million miles from the stereotype. Sure, he can be a little unpredictable and succeeds in embarrassing poor Rosie, but he’s also attentive, caring, funny and sweet. The sort of guy you think you can trust and you actually turn out to be right. And did I mention sweet? The other thing that really struck me about Kinky was that it manages to successfully negotiate that very narrow track of being both hot and humorous. It made me snigger, particularly where Rosie and Dimitri battle the language barrier and in Rosie’s increasingly preposterous bastardisations of another character’s name – Trixietots.

Elyot has managed to write a book about ‘the scene’ that steers an original and compelling path away from leather trousers and leashes. But it’s also a heart-warming romance between Rosie and Dimitri that leaves you genuinely wishing them well. 

Kinky is published by Mischief Books. I bought it at amazon.co.uk, here.

And for the love of gods, someone please tell me how to get rid of the white background from my first paragraph...

Inspiration: Miranda's Tempest

'Widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language.' That's Shakespeare, obviously, from his Wikipedia entry. I wonder what he'd make of the internet. And I wonder what he'd make of all the reinterpretations of his work today, the movie versions, the feminist versions, the queer versions, the postcolonial versions, the erotic versions... I tend to think that he'd be a Tarantino or a Scorsese if he were around today.

When it comes to gender identities and sexual politics, he did a fair bit of subversion of the norms himself. Lots of cross dressing, lots of cheeky banter, lots of people running off to places where the normal rules of society don't apply, like the forest of Arden in As You Like It.

In my retelling of The Tempest, the first of three short stories in my new ebook, out now from House of Erotica, Miranda has secretly learned her father, Prospero's, magic from his books. And Caliban has taught her the more 'feminine' earth magic of his mother, the witch Sycorax. Uniting the two, she intends to escape the island with Caliban, the forbidden lover to whom she loves to submit. Things get a little more interesting when they find a bedraggled Ferdinand in their path, who is immediately dazzled by Miranda's beauty.

It was Ferdinand who really inspired the story, with passages like this: 
       My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.
       My father's loss, the weakness which I feel, 
       The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats,
       To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,
       Might I but through my prison once a day
       Behold this maid.

He seems such a sweetie, and naturally submissive apparently. So I took the opportunity afforded by today's somewhat more liberal attitudes to literature to have him render some services to both Caliban and Miranda.

If you're fond of Shakespeare, my story As You Like It, in the Xcite anthologies Past Pleasures and Cherry Ripe, sees the bard submit to the crop of a woman who wants to act in his plays. 

And if you like subverting the bard yourself, there's currently a call for submissions from Storm Moon Press for an anthology called Shakespearotica: Queering the Bard, deadline 1st April 2013.

You can get your hands on Miranda's Tempest: Three Classic Tales with a Kinky Twist at amazon.co.uk or amazon.com, at Barnes & Noble for your Nook, or at kobo, amongst other places.

Published: Miranda's Tempest

Oh jeepers. It's here. My first book. Okay, so it's an ebook. But still. That's my name. On the cover. (Okay, so it's my pseudonym, but you get the idea.)

Well. 

I'm a little excited. And suddenly a little scared too.

Anyway, it's three short stories, totalling around 14,000 words. And they are kinky reworkings of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Grimms' Hansel and Gretel and Homer's The Odyssey. 

Here's the blurb: Miranda loves to submit to her forbidden lover, Caliban, but she wields a power of her own and together she and Caliban turn the bedraggled prince Ferdinand into their plaything. Young lovers Hansel and Gretel are lured to the witch's house, where Hansel finds himself chained and caged ready to be used in the coven's midsummer ritual, but Gretel takes on the witch at her own game. Penelope has survived the long years of her husband Odysseus' travels with the help of her 12 beloved handmaidens, but one of the 108 suitors who vie for her hand in marriage proves his true devotion.

I will probably tell you more about the stories when I've calmed down a bit. But for now, I'll just give you the Amazon links.

For UK peeps, here.
And for .com folks, here.

Writing tips: A link-a-thon

I've read some really thought-provoking and useful tips recently on writing erotica, on writing in general and on getting it published so I thought I'd pull the links together in one place. Some of them are about the writing itself, some about the tweaking and polishing, others touch on what editors might be looking for. Some of it's the obvious stuff but I found some insights and new perspectives that I know I'll be learning from.

Aside from tips for honing the craft of writing itself, the things that come up time and again are to familiarise yourself with the genre, to make sure you read submission guidelines thoroughly and do exactly what they stipulate and to edit and proofread your work to a high standard rather than seeing your first draft as complete. But you knew that. Didn't you?

Take a look over at the How to Write Erotic Fiction blog from Ashley Lister. He has a book of that title coming out soon, but on the blog you can read thoughts from twelve-and-counting authors and editors in a 'five tips' format. You've got the great Alison Tyler talking about the importance of opening and closing lines, and her preference for the word 'said' instead of a lot of giggling, chortling, whispering, moaning and groaning. You have the likes of Sacchi Green, Tenille Brown and Sommer Marsden warning you to make sure your characters' sexual exploits are physically possible and that no extra limbs (ahem) creep in.

Over at the Sex is Social online magazine, I found this post by seasoned anthology editor Rachel Kramer Bussel about the things she's looking for in submissions. She stresses how important it is to make your piece stand out among the hundreds of others by drawing on your unique experiences and knowledge from any area of your life. She also lets us in on the fact that she gets sent far more stories about submissive women than dominant ones and she'd also like more variety in age and race. 

At The Self-Publishing Revolution blog, Selena Kitt gives some down-to-earth advice that cuts through the hype of the erotica 'gold-rush' as she describes it. However many people are jumping on the bandwagon, it still comes down to writing a good story, making it hot and writing what you love rather than what you hope is going to be the next Fifty Shades. 

On the deliciouslydeviant blog, Velvet Tripp has this to say about overdoing such hackneyed plots: 'Boring! Sorry, but I lose interest very quickly if the plot is too obvious.' She gives an example of how you can take the theme of an anthology and make it different, among other good tips. Velvet also links to some pithy general writing tips from Neil Gaiman and Kurt Vonnegut. 

I give my own five quick writing tips here, including my favourite: 'Call a cock a cock.' And here are five things I like in the erotica I read and which I strive for in my writing. 

Now that you've got all that straight, remember that when it comes to the actual craft of writing, all rules are made to be broken. Whatever one writer tells you, another will contradict. But as Neil Gaiman's tips remind us, the most important thing above all is to get your fingers on the keyboard and do it.

If you have your own tips, or have spotted any of interest around the web, feel free to share your links in the comments. And if you fancy a more in-depth read, you've got How to Write Hot Sex, edited by Shoshanna Evers, which I reviewed here, and M Christian's How to Write and Sell Erotica, which I'm currently reading.

Picture above from the Virtual Typewriter Museum.

Review: Cute Boy Gets Squeezed by D.L. King

A big thank you to Alison Tyler, who's let me take part in the blog tour for her new anthology The Big Book of Bondage. Check out her blog, Trollop with a Laptop, for links to all the other reviews. I'm talking about D.L. King's story, one of 25 in this new offering from Cleis Press. So without further ado:

The real star of this story is not endearingly submissive Cute Boy or his kooky-but-caring play pal Evangeline; it’s a piece of equipment. The vac bed, to be precise – latex sheets out of which the air is sucked leaving the sub cocooned so tightly they can’t even twitch but with every contour of their body on display. I’d hazard a guess that most bedroom kinksters don’t have one and have probably never encountered one for real (go on, hop over to Google Images, I'll wait). And that’s what makes this story so irresistible. It’s the stuff of fantasy for most, rendered real in tantalising detail. The description of Cute Boy’s experience in the vac bed gains weight from the sparseness of description elsewhere; what the characters look like is largely left to the reader’s imagination.

The story has an easy, conversational style from the first-person viewpoint of Cute Boy. That’s in keeping with the casual nature of the relationship involved. There’s no romance and little emotional interaction here. But set against that is the intensity of Cute Boy’s physical need and his experience with this piece of equipment. Eve is no stereotypical Domme either; she’s more of a facilitator for his pleasure. She sounds more than a little bonkers and for Cute Boy there’s a thrill in the anticipation, the uncertainty, over what she’s going to come up with while knowing that, fundamentally, she’s not dangerous. Although there’s no seduction involved, she does constantly reassure him in her light-hearted way that everything is going to be ‘fun’.

It’s common for BDSM stories to try to untangle the psychology of submission or look for some reason for it in a person’s past experience. But that assumes a narrative viewpoint from outside of the world of kink, a place where justification and rationale might be demanded. Right at the start of the story, King openly dismisses this when Cute Boy begins to explain his kink and trails off with the words ‘yada yada yada’. But the whole story is, in a wonderfully subtle way, an exposition of a physical and psychological need that, in this case, seems to be completely natural. There are several moments when Cute Boy (who also goes by the name Pete!) has reservations – when Eve points out his ‘nice cock’ to her housemate, when there is the suggestion that said housemate is going to take photos of him, when she introduces the butt plug. But his expressions of unease are overwhelmed by his need. And when he sees the vac bed, his deep desire to feel its embrace shuts off the noise in his head and renders him hopelessly, sweetly, compliant. Add in a couple of toys and it leads to an orgasm the likes of which he’s never had before.

Cute Boy Gets Squeezed appears to be a simple, casual tale, but beneath its easy style lies an intensity of experience and a depth of knowledge about the nature of submission and restraint that is anything but.

Review: Red Grow the Roses by Janine Ashbless

Vampires. Everyone knows the rules. We all own at least one Buffy box set. (No? Just me then. And it’s four actually.) The coffins, pointy teeth, superhuman speed and strength, vulnerability to garlic, crosses, holy water. That whole ‘inviting them in’ thing. We know it all until some new author comes along and chucks half the rules away, picking and choosing what suits their vamp world. I hated the invulnerability of the undead in the Twilight series. I can’t have been the only one homing in on the moment Jane of the Volturi makes Edward suffer, the one and only time he appears to be less than smugly invincible. (What, that was just me being sadistic then?)

Janine Ashbless has taken the vampire myth and made it her own. Yes, they sleep in coffins. Sometimes. But she really gets you to smell the freshly dug earth, hear the worms burrowing beneath you. No, they don’t show up in mirrors. Except when they do. But Ashbless portrays one that inhabits mirrors, and other reflective surfaces, a being so old she is ephemeral and barely exists in the material world any more. Yes, sunlight kills them. Unless they’re young in vampire terms. They have an insatiable blood lust. The blood we all know about, the lust less so even if it’s there in thinly veiled manifestation in every portrayal of punctured flesh.

Well, for these vamps, the lust is as unquenchable as the thirst for blood. And for their lucky human blood donors, their bites engender similar feelings of uber horniness. Don’t act surprised – you read my review of Ashbless’s Named and Shamed didn’t you? You knew there’d be sex. Lots of sex. All kinds of sex. Not to mention violence, particularly in the kinky cage fighting scene. I’d recently re-watched Fight Club when I read Red Grow the Roses and it all chimed quite nicely in my psyche’s own personal erotic thriller. (Repeat after me, the first rule of Fight Club...)

I love the way Ashbless chucks in obscure bits of folklore and mythology; things you think you knew somewhere at the back of your mind in a Jungian collective unconscious kind of way but could never have put into words. Ashbless puts those things into words, beautifully shaped words that are delightfully evocative. But what I’d really like to know is how on earth she knows about the giant pike I used to be scared of when kayaking as a teenager?

She’s a damn fine writer with the sort of style that flows along easily, making you perhaps forget how much skill it takes to produce. Red Grow the Roses is often discomfiting. The vamps treat humans as playthings to be used and discarded. They bicker amongst themselves and the book culminates in all-out nastiness between London’s six undead. But it’s also a book that draws you in and consumes you with the need to keep reading. You’ve been warned.

I bought Red Grow the Roses at Amazon.co.uk, where, at the time of posting this, it was still at the ridiculous price of 20p. Yes, 20p. 

Thoughts: On Reviewing

I've been reading a lot of erotica lately. Lucky me! Some of it I review on here. Some of it I don't. I thought I should explain why.

I feel that it's important to have an idea of what's going on in the erotica genre so I know where my own work fits in. What I know for certain is that I'm never going to write the kind of material that becomes a phenomenon. You know the sort - like *that book* and its sequels which was such big news last year and will be again when it gets made into a film. There are others like it, all alpha males, billionaires, high society, slick city living and big business. I can't write that stuff and I don't want to. It's just not me. I prefer flawed people, slightly farcical situations, unexpected power relations, make-do-and-mend mentality, simple living and the great outdoors. 

I don't review books that I can't be mostly positive about. I will give my opinion of the odd shortcoming in a story I've enjoyed, but I'm not going to write a review slating someone's work just because it's not to my taste or is full of unfortunate errors. I may be a journalist in my other life, but here I'm blogging as a fiction author and I don't see the need to unnecessarily piss anyone in the industry off. And I don't think readers of my blog want that kind of thing either. So my reviews are really personal recommendations. I add edited versions to Amazon because I think it's important to support fellow authors, although I would never accept payment in return for a positive review.

I read the other stuff because I think it's important to be aware of it. And I may be muttering to myself about what a load of twaddle it is and rolling my eyes in exasperation at the cliches and stereotypes but I'm not going to share my scathing remarks, much as I'm tempted to bitch, on occasion.

On the subject of unfortunate errors, I'll be launching my own proofreading and editing business in earnest soon, having tinkered about with it for a while. That's why there's a new link on the menu up there, but the website still needs a tweak and a polish that is proving to be infuriatingly exasperating to a non-techie.

Of course, when I'm reading I always look like the woman pictured in the painting above by Howard Chandler Christy as long as you swap real paper and ink for an ereader.

Review: The Museum of Deviant Desires by Fulani

Fluently written, intelligent and super kinky.

The Museum of Deviant Desires was a real pleasure to read. Fulani knows his stuff, whether that’s 1950s pulp magazines or the right choice of whip. And he doesn’t keep you waiting for the kinky stuff only for you to find it’s some fluffy handcuffs and a blindfold. It’s full-on throughout with a well-stocked dungeon-full of BDSM hardware as well as some more sensual, psychological D/s scenarios. There’s a fantastically twisted imagination behind it too, with the scenes and references delightfully fresh and free of stereotypes but offering plenty of fodder for the perverse of mind.

I looked up some of the stranger references, out of curiosity, but even when they weren’t familiar to me, Fulani has a knack with description and imagery that brings them alive. There’s a densely packed richness to the stories.  And he uses big words. Complicated words like chthonic. The stories were often about the act of writing itself, so they are self-referencing, explicit about their existence as works of erotica as well as a set of imaginary places and events in the author or reader’s mind. These particular stories run on two tracks at once, which adds an extra layer for reflection and a way into discussion of the psychology of desire, while somehow managing not to detract from the reader’s absorption into the worlds they create.

I’m often ill at ease with stories of people indulging in bondage with strangers, especially when they happen to be women whom the author, in his or her wisdom, decides to imbue with feelings of low self-esteem, or anxiety, or nauseating naivety. Some of Fulani’s tales do involve women submitting to all kinds of risky shenanigans with strangers. But somehow, in this particular suspension of my disbelief, it feels acceptable. I think it’s the absence of fear on the submissive characters’ behalf and the utter reasonable nice-guy-ness of the dominants. No one’s having to be persuaded, in that terribly overdone way, to do anything they’re not comfortable with, thank goodness. (Although comfortable may be a poor choice of word here!) This is not so much kinky reading for the titillation of the mostly vanilla; it’s more like a fabulously perverse version of romance in a world in which kink is the normative framework of experience.

Dare I say it, in this age of speed reading, instant gratification and the eBook?... I liked the fact that some of the pieces were really short flash fiction. I kept thinking ‘just one more story’ and before I knew it I’d finished the lot and it was way past my bedtime.

Oh, and there’s a sense of humour too. Particularly in ‘$2.99’, the tale of an author’s revenge on a pirate downloader – the only story which involves someone who could actually be termed a ‘victim’, but hey, anyone who downloads pirate copies of books deserves it.

Addicted to Rope

The ‘bondage with strangers’ issue is back, big time, in this novella by Fulani. And in this case there is an element of it being new to the heroine and her having to be persuaded. But she persuades herself with very little effort on the part of our friendly neighbourhood Dom, Leo. And Leo seems like such a nice, genuine guy. I suppose the successful serial killers are probably the ones who manage to convincingly pull off the nice-guy act too. Oh well, I guess I must have double standards in my reading depending on the quality of the writing and the fickle nature of my whim. I finished Addicted to Rope in one sitting and immediately downloaded more of Fulani’s books. Legally. 

I bought The Museum of Deviant Desires and Addicted to Rope at Amazon.co.uk.

Inspiration: Woods and wells

My short story, Pleasing the Nymph of Woodwell, is now live at Oysters and Chocolate.

Tom and Maria have packed off the kids to their grandparents so they can have a dirty weekend away, without any little ones wandering in and wanting to know why mummy's all tied up. But will their sexy exploits please the ancient spirit of Woodwell Cottage's magical spring?

One reader comments: 'That was probably THE most erotic outdoor story I have ever read! I hated to leave them! I hope there's more to this... or I'll have to come up with my own ending. My wife may be in for a real treat!'

I certainly hope she is.

I thought I'd share a couple of things that inspired it. One being this cottage owned by the Landmark Trust in Shropshire. It's actually called St Winifred's Well. The Landmark Trust takes historic buildings of character that are in danger of falling into disrepair and restores and preserves them as holiday cottages.

I've stayed at their properties before, notably a very remote converted chapel in North Wales, but not this one... yet.

In the course of my research, I also came across this wonderful little site, Wooden Dildos. Lovingly carved by craftsmen from Scottish hardwoods and sealed with an ultra-smooth waterproof finish - so no, you won't get a splinter! Sounds so much nicer than some kind of plastic affair made in a factory.

The top image is Water Angel by Stephen Perry, prints available at ObsessionArt.com.

Research: Spinning a Yarn

In the course of planning a short story about Penelope, the wife of Odysseus in the ancient Greek epic, I've found myself needing to research spinning and weaving to know how to use words such as spindle, whorl and distaff, and to explore the erotic potential of the upright loom. It happens to be a large, upright wooden frame from which the warp threads are suspended with weights, allowing the weaver to pass the weft threads through to make the cloth. All useful stuff to a warped mind. Especially when Penelope has 12 loyal maids and 108 boisterous suitors who all want to convince her that her husband is dead and she should marry one of them instead. Endless possibilities. 

Anyway, I found the following passage at the Fiberville USA website and found it amusing enough to want to share (yes, I really do find yarn sexy):

 WARNING!!! Spinning reduces stress and promotes well being. It can also be habit forming and lead to obsessive behaviors such as, but not restricted to: caressing and hoarding all fibers; dying them with food colors and things from your garden or whatever you have laying about; spinning the fluffy bits of the weeds in your fields, the cotton wad in your vitamin bottles and even the lint from your dryer! Proceed with extreme caution!

In Homer's tale, Penelope spends twenty years waiting for her husband. He's away fighting at Troy for ten and takes another ten to make his way home to Ithaca, whilst falling prey to various perils including being forced into being the lover of the witch-goddess Circe and the nymph Calypso. Doesn't sound so bad. I think it's time Penelope had some fun.

Incidentally, if anyone knows how to avoid getting the white background on text pasted against this blog template, do tell!

Published: Miss Pemberton's Drawers

I have a story in this fabulous new anthology from Xcite Books and am so excited about appearing alongside the likes of Lucy Felthouse and Zara Stoneley. It's a collection of six erotic stories covering a range of themes and is currently available for the Kindle at Amazon.

In my story, Ideal Homes, Amy’s looking for a house to buy after moving to a new town for work. The fact her estate agent is hot is an added bonus. But after one drunken fumble with the gorgeous Michael, she can’t work out how to tell him she prefers her men tied to the bed and eager to please. Fortunately for her, the ideal opportunity arises when he takes her to see a house and she finds two sets of handcuffs in place in the master bedroom. And it turns out Michael is more than happy to play the submissive. The pair find themselves in a sticky situation with the unexpected arrival of the property owner – but he has a proposal of his own for Michael.

Alongside that tale, you'll find Miss Pemberton's Drawers by Lucy Felthouse, Dinner Break by Ariel Graham, Suitable Punishment by Abigail Thornton, Elevator Pitch by Zara Stoneley and A Night Off by Jenna Bright.

Very short story: Cosy

Drum roll please... I present Cosy, my flash fiction response to the Erotic Tea Cosy Challenge. It stems from Twitter, where, amongst other dazzling insights into my true nature, I trumpet myself as a Knitter of tea cosies. 'I'm looking forward to seeing how erotica and tea cosies go together,' wrote The Dirty Romantic. See what you've started @youmakemeneed. The picture, incidentally, is from the only tea cosy pattern I've actually got round to knitting, although I haven't even sewn up my version yet.

So put the kettle on, here's my attempt to make chunky handknits into a real winter warmer. Oh, those sharp steel needles...

She’s knitting again tonight. Each time I feel the shift of weight as she swaps needles from hand to hand for a new row I hope she might say, ‘I’ll just finish this one and then take you to bed.’ It’s her bare heels I feel, pressing hard into my back where she is using me as a footstool. Soon my shoulders will start to ache and I will have to fight the urge to collapse onto her handmade rag rug.

She’s been so busy since she launched her new design. The fetish tea cosy. A stripy pot warmer in cashmere merino blend, with appliquéd patches in Daisy Chains® floral cottons to make a cute face pattern: two eyes, button nose and a quirky embroidered smile. Suitable for all medium-sized teapots. That’s the cosy part. The fetish part? Well, it fits snugly over the head, a multi-coloured hood with appliquéd eye covers to prevent the submissive peeping out between the stitches. Quite endearing on a female; completely humiliating on a man like me.

Click, clack. She’s stuck to steel needles for this one. Size 6. That’s British sizing; I learnt early in our relationship not to get US and UK numbers mixed up. It caused a major disaster in my first attempt at socks; I had to rip it all out and start again under her guidance. Tonight, her fancy new double-pointed bamboo needles were free for her to use on me. Size 9. That’s just 3.75mm wide. Two clamp my cock, placed just beneath the glans and fastened tight with elastic bands on each end. Two more lock my balls into place, holding them firm away from my crotch. The sharp ends are starting to dig into my thighs. My cock is semi-hard. If it gets bigger, I’m going to really feel that top pair. At least she hasn’t done my tongue today. She tried it once, stretching the cosy over the ends of the needles to keep them in place through the rows. But she didn’t like the damp mess my saliva made when I couldn’t swallow. That wool’s gentle handwash only.

Fibres tickle my face. I’m sure there’s one, just one, fine wisp of cashmere, sticking up my left nostril. I twitch my nose to try to shift it. And fail. But really, this yarn is deliciously soft, like a caress on the cheek. It reminds me of the first time I met Diane. I had finally braved the Wednesday Woollies meet at the arts centre in town. I fancied learning to knit. Maybe even crochet. But I had agonised over going for weeks. My cock would be the problem. How to control my cock when I longed to bury my face in those big balls of super chunky pure wool Aran, with their maddening mix of smooth and scratchy.

She’d welcomed me in. Took time off her own project to teach me the basics of knit and purl, rib and garter. And then she did it. I almost burst with the effort of remaining polite and decent. She held out a ball of a new blend she’d found: mohair and silk. Hand-dyed in aubergine. Oh God, that mohair. Torture on the nose. Exquisite torture. She understood even then. Teased me with it, letting me nuzzle as my cock twitched, then snatching it away and tapping me on the fingers with her needles like a naughty schoolboy. I wanted to bury my face in her baby pink Angora-clad bosom.

She invited me to her place for private tuition. We’ve never looked back. I’ve moved in and now I support her as she gets her fledgling business off the ground following redundancy. And at night, she indulges my desperate passion for yarn. Once she used an entire ball of fingering weight acrylic to tie me up. And that’s harsh stuff. She’d had it at the bottom of her stash for years, bought before she learnt the difference between those cheap yarns from the market and the softest, finest wools a sheep has to offer. Goats even. Alpaca. That acrylic cut into me, absolutely unyielding, the squeaky texture enough to set your teeth on edge.

My face is getting hot beneath its hood. Cosy. That’s the delight of the knitted fetish mask. That intense feeling of warmth and constriction without any restriction to breathing. My forehead is growing damp. The yarn is tickling in at least a dozen spots now. Involuntarily, my tongue flicks out to taste the stitches and is rewarded with a tiny strand, stuck there until she allows me to move. Like a pube picked up during cunnilingus. I wish she’d shift her heels to new positions. But no, she digs them in a little more as she starts a new row.

‘I’ll just do one more darling. Then I’ll take you upstairs.’ God I love this woman. 

Thoughts: The long and the short of it.

I’ve been polishing off a fair few short stories since I had my first couple of acceptances from Xcite Books a few months ago. They’re fun to write. I was going to say quick, but with all the rereading and rewriting I do they actually take quite a while. What they provide is the chance to play around, try different perspectives, quirky scenarios. I’m never short (forgive the pun) of ideas for shorts. And finishing them brings fairly quick gratification.

But I also have a longer work in progress, begun a couple of years ago and lying stagnant in my ‘stuff to work on’ file. I’m starting to think I should set aside a regular slot or two in my week for making progress on this. In terms of pure wordage, I have 15,000. I’m aiming for about 80,000. This is going to take a lot more stamina than a few short stories.

I had started to think at the back of my mind that the whole thing was a bit silly. I guess many writers will empathise with this. You leave a work for a while and your inner critic starts to tell you it’s terrible. Then you reread it with the benefit of a bit of distance and perspective and think, wow, this is hot stuff. 

So now I have to research life on board an eighteenth-century ship. How many people would it take to crew various sizes of vessel? What is the correct terminology for all those masts, sails, bits of rope? How long would journeys to various exotic destinations take from Europe? What would the crew eat and drink? It’s surprising how many facts I seem to know already from some unknown source, but I don’t think I can blag the rest by just reading Hornblower and watching Johnny Depp. That's Ioan Gruffudd above as Hornblower in the telly series, by the way.

Story time: The joy of text

Here's a bit of quickie fun for you. Highbrow literature it ain't, but I'm on my holidays and have a tent pole to fix with duct tape before the next monsoon hits Wales. The bit about the online date recounting the plot of a zombie horror movie is, unfortunately for me, actually autobiographical. Enjoy x

I was playing a surreptitious game of space invaders under the desk on my mobile. I’d finished reading a very dull report about cost savings half an hour ago, but certainly wasn’t going to admit it. No-one thanked you in this office for being efficient; they just piled on more work. The phone buzzed and I missed a bonus shot. I clicked ‘read’.

‘Hey baby, I can’t stand thinking about you stuck in that office chair. When I want you tied to a chair here, where I’m the boss. Love Danny, xxx’

I was somewhat surprised, but hit reply and thought for a moment: ‘Interesting idea. Tell me more.’

I glanced up. The managing director was on the phone in his little glass booth, waving his hands about, making some very important point about our firm’s latest stationery range. Everyone else looked busy, apart from Sue next to me, who I knew was planning a romantic dinner for her new fella.

My phone buzzed again. ‘I want to sit you down on a massive dildo suctioned to a hard wooden chair and bind you to it, arms, legs, hips, tits so you can’t move an inch.’

My abdomen fluttered, from waist to clitoris. I could feel my cunt tingling. My heart hammered. I bit my lip and pressed reply: ‘You’re making me wet. What will you do to me when you’ve got me tied and helpless?’

As the ‘sending’ symbol revolved on screen I realised Sue was talking to me. ‘Do you want a cuppa?’ She waggled her mug. ‘I’m going to the kitchen. You with me? What are you daydreaming about?’

‘Oh nothing, you know,’ I stuttered. ‘Just trying to decide which nail varnish to put on for my date at the weekend.’ I handed her my cup and she marched off. I had a date with a guy from a matchmaking website. Another one. I hoped he was a bit more interesting than the last one, who had spent the night telling me the entire plot of a zombie horror movie he’d just seen.

My phone buzzed: ‘I’ll stick my cock deep in your mouth and make you suck until I come. Then I’ll make you swallow it.’

Sue thumped down a cup of tea on my desk. ‘Did that text say “cock”?’ she asked. ‘Who the hell are you getting messages like that from? I thought your last date was a disaster.’

‘Oh, it’s another guy,’ I said, airily. ‘One I met a while ago but we haven’t been able to find another date we’re both free yet.’ I hoped the lie didn’t show; I’m not very good at deception. And I didn’t want any more questions to distract me from what I was imagining. Fortunately Sue was no prude and didn’t seem surprised at me receiving texts containing the word ‘cock’. I gulped my tea quickly and headed to the toilets with my bag.

I locked a cubicle door and sat on the edge of the loo lid. I rooted around in my bag for my finger vibe and slid it on. I yanked my skirt up, pulled my knickers to one side and started to rub my clitoris with the vibrator. I took my phone in the other hand and typed a reply: ‘You’ve got me really turned on. I’m rubbing my wet pussy.’

‘You dirty girl,’ came the reply. ‘I shall have to punish you for masturbating.’

The slim vibe buzzed against my clit and I could feel my slippery pussy throbbing and swelling. Images ran through my head of a chair, and ropes, and a big, hard cock. I imagined the dildo in my cunt, the cock in my mouth. My orgasm began as a pulse in my abdomen and rippled out through my body. My free hand flung out wildly, the phone held in my fist clattering as I pushed against the wall of the cubicle.

As I enjoyed the warmth flushing through me, I typed into the phone: ‘I’ve just had a fantastic orgasm.’

I jumped as my phone rang. I hesitated for a second, suddenly worried. Then I hit the green button. He started to speak: ‘Oh god Louise, are you coming round here yet? I can’t wait much longer.’ He sounded quite young, with a northern accent.

He was waiting for a reply. ‘Erm, Danny, I’m afraid it’s not Louise. My name’s Sally.’

‘What?’ I waited while the truth sank in and he went on, sounding distressed: ‘Oh fuck. I’m so sorry. Oh god, those things I said. I’m not...’

I cut him off. ‘It’s ok Danny. I’ve led you on a bit too. And I have just had the most fantastic orgasm dreaming of all the things you described. I’m curious about why you’ve got my number though.’

He was still panicky: ‘My girlfriend changed her phone. She told me the new number. I must have written it down wrong. I’m so sorry, are you sure you’re ok?’

‘I’m fine,’ I told him. ‘Better than fine, Danny. You’ve really brightened up my afternoon at work. Louise is a lucky woman.’

‘Ha,’ he laughed. ‘I’m the lucky one. Louise is amazing. Anyway, I’d better let you go, Sally.’

‘I suppose so,’ I sighed. ‘But if Louise fancies a threesome, you’ve got my number.’