Small but perfectly formed

I thought I'd share some inspiration today. I'm currently writing a story in which Britain's Smallest House features. It's in Conwy in North Wales and is truly tiny, with a floor area of 10ft by 6ft. It's the red house in the picture. Yes, the tiny red house between the stone turret and the white cottages. Below, is the view of the ground floor from the door.




I'm a sucker for little cottages and cabins, and if you share my fascination there's plenty more to ogle at cabinporn.com and tinyhouseblog.com.

Chocolate inspiration

Okay, you might think you've stumbled upon a very different blog all of a sudden, because I'm going to give you a recipe. But this is not Saturday Kitchen and this is not any old recipe and I'm more of a domestic demon than goddess. This is a seriously sexy recipe. It's very, very rich, very indulgent and if you make it for someone they will very soon be begging you for... well, whatever you want them to beg you for. I'm sharing it to inspire some rich and tasty smut for our call for submissions... and to tease my More Smut for Chocoholics co-editor Kev 'Mitnik' Blisse. So get your wooden spoons at the ready...

Cherries, Chocolate and Cream
By Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Serves 4

500g ripe cherries, halved and stoned
25g caster sugar

150g dark chocolate, broken up
30g unsalted butter, cubed
3 large eggs, separated
20g caster sugar

200ml double cream

1 Stick the cherries in a pan with the 25g of sugar and gently heat until they start to release their juices (nudge nudge), then set aside to cool.
2 Melt the chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Leave to cool a little, then stir in the egg yolks.
3 Whisk up the egg whites and sugar into a soft meringue consistency, then gently fold into the chocolate mix so it's fully combined but without knocking out all the air. 
4 Pour the mousse into bowls or wine glasses or ramekins or whatever other fancy receptacle you have in your cupboards and put them in the fridge for an hour or so.
5 Lightly whip the cream (wink wink) until it holds soft peaks (fnarr fnarr). Spoon a dollop onto each mousse and top with a spoonful of cherries and juice.
6 Enjoy and write us a story. We're talking tales of indulgence and wicked delight in consuming and using chocolate in just about any way your imagination can think of. And it's under the Smut banner, which means light-hearted, saucy, sexy fun, maybe with a hint of humour.

Length: 3,000-6,000 words
Deadline: November 25th, 2013
We're open to any pairings/menage and any erotic genre as long as chocolate is a main feature.

All the details are over at the Smutters website http://smutters.co.uk/more-smut-for-chocoholics

The recipe is from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Three Good Things.

Writer's retreat

In lieu of words, I give you my idea of the perfect writer's hut. This one's on the Faroe Islands, picture by Marie Mathilde Fogh. Get more inspiration for your fantasy retreat at cabinporn.com:

Going with the Flow

It could be something as simple as the weather or the inspiration of a beautiful landscape. Maybe it's something to do with hormonal cycles. Perhaps random events or unexpected sources of inspiration that you can't recreate, you just have to be ready for. Is it down to having a routine or to stepping out of normality? I'm talking about inspiration, the Muse, the magic that makes the stories flow at times, and stagnate at others. 

If I could grasp that slippery little fucker in my sweaty palms, I'd shove it in a bottle and cork it tight. Purely for personal use, because it's probably different for everyone. But I'd take a sip when I had time to sit down and write and the words would appear magically. Instead, I find that there are times when I have a whole day free and I get nowhere, which is annoying because I might as well have gone for a walk, weeded the allotment or picked up the knitting project that I haven't touched for months. And there are other times when I have a million and one other things to do but the stories won't let me rest until they get out on screen or on paper. 

There's a tonne of advice out there. Some says you should have a special space set aside for writing, perhaps a ritual you go through before you begin in order to let your brain know it's time. And some says you should get out of your comfort zone, go somewhere unfamiliar to write so that you jolt your brain into some fresh thinking. The trouble is, the people who write this advice aren't me and they aren't you and I have a feeling the Muse works differently for everyone. And the double trouble is that I'm still trying to work it out for myself, to put my finger on the conjunction of circumstances that effortlessly produces images in my brain and translates them into words on a page in a way that makes me think, "Fuck yes, this is hot."

What I do know is that there are some stories I slog away at because I think I should write them. Perhaps it's a new sort of writing I want to try, perhaps it's for an editor I've worked with before, perhaps it's a theme I know I should be into. But the words don't come. And I need to recognise when to give up. I have a kind of Taoist, go-with-the-flow approach to life in general and a well-developed sense of the absurdity of taking anything too seriously. Fundamentally, I write because I want to. And while it's not always going to be easy, if writing about kinky sex isn't enjoyable, then something's wrong and it's time to go and walk on the beach instead.

Smut by (and in) the Sea

I read from one of my stories on Saturday evening. Out loud. To actual, real people, right there in the same room as me. And it was fun. People even sniggered in the right places. I’d do it again (something I’ll probably regret saying at some point in the future). It was probably a good job, though, that my story was one of my milder offerings. 

I was at Smut by the Sea in sunny Scarborough, the first event of its kind that I’ve attended and I read from my story in SbtS volume 2. Fortunately, I work in a politically incorrect environment which makes me perfectly happy to utter four-letter words out loud without embarrassment.

A fair few people know that I write smut. Very few know about it in any more detail. A colleague who I asked to do a wee proofread of my mini short story collection, Miranda’s Tempest (blatant plug alert), for me is probably still recovering from the experience. So it was fabulous to be in an environment in which people could talk about their work openly and with pride. It was good to actually meet people I’ve chatted to on Facebook or Twitter. I even eventually won something on the tombola.

And in honour of the theme of the event, and of my story in the anthology, Tabitha Rayne and I did take a dip in the sea, although she looked far more glamorous than me in her itsy bitsy polka dot bikini. I felt more like one of those stoutly built ladies who swim the channel clad in granny cossies and smeared in grease. The lifeguards stood watch, with a somewhat incredulous look on their faces, after telling us it would be freezing. ‘It’s not that cold,’ I said as we emerged from the waves like Bond babes.

‘That’s because you’ve gone numb,’ one replied. And he was right. But it didn’t stop me joining a local group of sea swimmers the next morning. The hardy folk at Sea Swim go out every Saturday and Sunday from May to September for a good long swim. With them, I got a different view of Scarborough and the neighbouring coastline, literally from sea level. They were even literary and artistic – reading poetry and viewing Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus before the dip and penning their own poems or snippets about a Yorkshire Venus afterwards. To be honest, by then my numb hands were shaking a bit too much for legible handwriting. But there’s got to be a smutty story out there about The Venus of Scarborough.

The mock pirate ship that took holidaymakers up and down the bay also made me think of Odysseus’ travels by sea, particularly the brave hero lashed to the mast so he can hear the song of the Sirens without being lured to his death on the rocks. I wrote about his wife Penelope and her 108 annoying suitors in the final story in Miranda’s Tempest (blatant plug alert), but maybe it’s time to turn my attention to her husband...

A big thank you to Victoria and Kev Blisse for all their hard work in organising the event and to all those who helped on the day.

Writing what you know

We’ve all heard this one: ‘Write what you know.’ And, as erotica writers, possibly worried about the assumptions people might make about us based on our subject matter. Just me? No, I didn’t think so. And no matter how many times you repeat the mantra that Agatha Christie wasn’t a serial killer, it's unlikely you'd write about kinky sex if you had no interest in it whatsoever.

But, and it’s a big but (no pun intended), writing what you know doesn’t mean that every story you produce is autobiographical. That would mean there would be no such thing as fiction. And you’d run out of stories pretty quick (speaking for myself; perhaps your life is one big sexual adventure!). 

I think writing what you know is more about the detail than the grand plots. We all have a unique set of experiences and knowledge to draw on and combine in our work. That’s why there’s always room for another decent writer in what might seem like a saturated marketplace. No-one else can write quite like you, or me. I might be able to describe what it’s like to break up heavy soil with a spade because I have an allotment. You might be able to describe something I know nothing about, like reading computer code or the smell of a ferret. I recently read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and was struck by the depth of the description that can only have come from an intimate knowledge of the sea and its wildlife. It doesn’t mean Hemingway ever battled an 18ft marlin like the old man does in the book. But it does mean he used his skills as a writer to bring that to life realistically for someone who doesn't have the same knowledge or experience of the sea.

When you write about sex, I don’t think it means you have to have been promiscuous, or to have done absolutely everything that you write about. Otherwise we could never write from the point of view of someone not our own gender or orientation. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to do your research and get your facts right, but just like researching how to write a murder wouldn’t mean carrying one out, researching sex and kink doesn’t mean you need to be having one-night stands every weekend or own a fully equipped dungeon full of gear.

That’s what your imagination is for; a little knowledge goes a long way in the imagination of a writer. Writing what you know is more about observing the world through a writer's eyes and storing away quirky little things you see and hear for future reference, then applying those unique little details to the fantasy world of your stories to make them really come to life.

Smut guest - Bel Anderson

I have fellow smut writer Bel Anderson with me for a virtual cuppa today, so over to her...

I’m thrilled to have a story, ‘The Beach House,’ in the brand new Smut by the Sea - available at All Romance, Amazon UK and Amazon.com.

The inspiration for the story came from two sources – the location was inspired by a childhood holiday and the male love-interest is pretty much based on my first ever lover. 

When I was about seven years old, my parents, sister and I stayed in a holiday cottage belonging to friends of the family in Lessingham, Norfolk. I don’t have great memories about the cottage itself – my abiding memory is that there were ear-wigs in residence and I used to fall asleep with my fingers in my ears, afraid that they’d crawl in! What I really remember are the dunes – miles and miles of them – and the rolling, grey North Sea. It was windy and wild and it stirred something in my soul. It has been the basis of two other, non-erotic, stories as well, one of which was published in a women’s magazine. I’ve tweaked the cottage and made it a sort of glorified beach hut for the purposes of this story, but the wildness of that part of the coast remains un-tweaked.

And onto the man… he wasn’t a childhood sweetheart but I was only seventeen and, yes, he broke my heart. He was five years older, wore a suit, smelt of aftershave and knew his way around a woman’s body. I consider myself lucky to have had him as my first lover because he taught me to enjoy my body with confidence and treated me like a woman. He had hair the colour of a red-setter’s coat, smiling green-blue eyes and he used to make me laugh. He was also a dreadful snob and had been brought up as though he was one of the aristocracy, which he wasn’t. I was too lowly to even meet his mother. Still, the great thing about memory is that you can be selective – and I have selected everything that was gorgeous and sexy about him for this story.

Here’s a small taste:

I step over the threshold and he reaches past me to flick the light switch, producing an electric-shock-type reaction from me as his arm brushes my shoulder and nothing at all from the bulb in the ceiling.

“Maybe the electricity’s off,” he says, flicking the switch a couple of times for good measure.

It is. The old card-meter is card-less. Bang goes any vision I may have been entertaining of a cosy fire and us writhing naked on the rug in front of it. I remind myself that it was never going to happen anyway; only in my filthy mind. In any case, if there still is a rug, it’ll be full of dust and goodness only knows what else.

“Oh well.” He looks at me, his green eyes clear and so, so beautiful in the half-light of the hallway. I make a snap decision. I reach up to touch his face and then slip my fingers slowly into the luxurious thickness of his hair. I stand up on tiptoe and I pull his head down to mine. He doesn’t resist. His breath, warm and clean, mingles with my own as his lips part and slowly, tentatively, find mine. A small moan of lust escapes me as his hot tongue slides delicately, almost politely, between them. I return the pressure as my chest heaves against his and suddenly he’s devouring me, his hands roaming from my hair to my face, to my throat and back again. I bury my fingers in handfuls of his thick hair, stroke the plane of his cheek, finger the smooth line of his jaw; everything I’ve been longing to touch from the moment I saw him this afternoon. I close my eyes and let all thoughts fall away. I just want to feel.

Bel has previously been published in anthologies by Xcite books, has recently had stories published in Smut Alfresco and  Smut by the Sea Volume 2. She is working on a non-erotic novel and also an anthology of erotic stories.

You can find her blog here: http://belandersonwrites.blogspot.com  and her work here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smut-Sea-Absolute-Erotica-ebook/dp/B00CFP1W5U/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368034428&sr=1-2&keywords=Smut+by+the+Sea

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smut-Alfresco-Absolute-Erotica-ebook/dp/B00BL6RF0K/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368034521&sr=1-1&keywords=Smut+Alfresco

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_3?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Bel%20Anderson&search-alias=books-uk&sort=relevancerank

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Sexy-Paranormal-Erotic-Anthology/dp/1908086505/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363018292&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Sexy-paranormal-stories-ebook/dp/B009YLRHEI/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363018292&sr=1-6

http://www.xcitebooks.com/results.html?keyword=Bel+Anderson

Did someone mention cake?

Personally, I'm a fan of a nice moist carrot cake with a sweet cream cheese topping. Or a good old-fashioned scone with raspberry jam and clotted cream. Always served with tea. So it's a good job I keep going out visiting other lovely writerly folks for virtual baked goods.

I'm at fellow smut writer Jilly Boyd's place talking about Smut by the Sea and seaside inspiration. My mind flits from bondage under the pier to snoozing on a warm, grassy bank via the pervertability of lighthouse-shaped souvenir ornaments.

Read the post here.

Inspiration Calling by Kay Jaybee

I have the lovely Kay Jaybee with me today, so over to you Kay...

Thank you ever so much for inviting me to your great blog today Tilly!

One of the questions that I’m often asked is how, after so long writing erotica, do I keep finding the inspiration for my stories. To be honest, I actually have the opposite problem than you might imagine. I don’t find I run out of inspiration, but have so much my head is continually bursting with ideas I’ll never have time to follow up even if I wrote every day for the rest of my life!

Inspiration is everywhere. It’s in the smell of fresh air, the fall of a leaf, the odd sentence in an overheard conversation, the umbrella accidentally left in the freezer at the supermarket... I saw a hairbrush dropped on a cafe floor a few months ago - the story of why and how that hairbrush came to be there will be written!! Of course, it probably just fell out a handbag - but perhaps it didn’t, perhaps there was another reason...

The story I put together for the anthology Smut Alfresco came about in a similar way. I was travelling, and saw an abandoned mattress out of the window. It looked so sad somehow as it lay unwanted on the edge of a field. I wanted to write its story - after all, if a mattress hasn’t got a tale to tell, then what has!!

Here’s a little snippet for you...

The way the two women sniggered as they spotted me lying on the ground, made me sure they hadn’t expected their walk to produce such a convenient opportunity to fuck.

From the scent of them, I’d say they’d been drinking cocktails. The mildly sickly scent of boozy peach and mango fruit clung to them, suggesting they’d partaken of enough alcohol to be without inhibition, but not enough to be without decision making abilities.

The minute they saw me, cast aside, damaged and unwanted amongst a pile of autumn leaves at the edge of a wood, they knew what they wanted to do, and their giggling became laced with purpose.

            Somehow, during the periods of inaction between eventful episodes of accidental discovery by passersby, I’ve almost blended into the landscape, forming a hinterland of sexual promise between the woods to my right, and a farmer’s field to my left. However, like so many of my opportune visitors, these young ladies didn’t care that a number of my springs were poking out of my sides, or that nights and days of rainfall had given me the musty aroma of the trees that surround me.

            You could see the need for sex burn in the women’s matching green eyes. I’d know that look anywhere. I used to see in the old days when I’d been working as half of a partnership. ‘Mattress and bed!’ What a team we’d formed when we’d resided together in a cheap hotel in town. Couple after couple would visit me and my divan support back then, in a “rent me by the hour” sort of a way. I miss that life. I miss making people happy. I miss fulfilling my purpose properly...’

My advice to anyone finding their inspiration a little lacking is - look around you.

Go on - do it now.

Look at the place where you’re sat, stood, or walking through, right now as you read this blog. I bet you can see a story.

Is there litter on the floor? Can you see an empty coffee cup? Can you smell fresh paint? How hard is the wind blowing? Is the heating turned up too high? Is it freezing, and yet someone has left a scarf on the floor unworn.... I’d love to hear if any of this has inspired you...

Happy writing everyone - and thanks again Tilly for letting me gatecrash your space!

Kay xx

Kay Jaybee wrote the novels Making Him Wait, (Sweetmeats Press, 2012), The Voyeur (Xcite, 2012), The Perfect Submissive (Xcite 2012), as well as the novellas, Digging Deep (Xcite, 2013), A Sticky Situation, (Xcite, 2012), and The Circus, (Sweetmeats Press). She has also written the anthologies The Collector (Austin & Macauley, 2012 & 2008), The Best of Kay Jaybee (Xcite, 2012), Tied to the Kitchen Sink, Equipment, (All Romance, 2012), Yes Ma’am (Xcite e-books, 2011), Quick Kink One and Quick Kink Two (Xcite e-books, 2010). Kay has had over 70 short stories published by Cleis Press (inc. Best of Best Women’s Erotica 2, Best Women’s Erotica 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012; Best Bondage 2012 and 2013, Sweet Love, Smooth, Gotta Have It, Sweet Confessions), Black Lace (Sexy Little Numbers), Mammoth (The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica), Xcite (inc.Ultimate Sin, Boy Fun, Power Play, Threesomes, Finger Music, Tricks For Kicks), Penguin (Oysters and Chocolate; Erotic Stories of Every Flavor), Seal (Oysters and Chocolate; Nice Girls, Naughty Sex),and Sweetmeats Press (Immoral Views)

Details of Kay’s work, past, present and future can be found at www.kayjaybee.me.uk

You can follow Kay on Twitter- kay_jaybee

And on Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/KayJaybeeAuthor

On Goodreads- http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3541958-kay-jaybee

Pinterest- http://pinterest.com/kjberotica/

Kay is also a Brit Babe - http://thebritbabes.blogspot.co.uk/

Out visiting

I'm over at Lucy Felthouse's place today, discussing why the seaside is so sexy over a virtual cup of tea, as we big up the fabulous Smut by the Sea vol 2. 

The British seaside is a special case far removed from the shimmering seas and golden sands of Biarritz or the Caribbean. It is often cold and wet, grey sea blending with grey sky, while the ‘attractions’ tend to be a bit shabby and very tacky. You can’t even eat a bag of chips without aggressive seagulls trying to pinch them.

Read more at Lucy's blog. 

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.

In praise of the notebook

Virtually every advice guide for the novice writer will tell you to keep a notebook with you at all times for that moment when you have a brilliant idea and if you don’t write it down straight away you’ll lose it for ever. Sound enough advice but pretty obvious. I find a notebook useful for far more than that.

I’m the sort of person who fantasises about running off to a little cabin in the woods and living off the land, a la Henry David Thoreau in Walden. I have, in fact, just started to write the story of a couple who build their own eco home – with the design including plenty of kink opportunities, of course. One of the things this means is that I like to know, for psychological reasons rather than out of necessity, that I can work without an electricity supply. So scribbling in a notebook goes beyond practicalities and into my personal idyll of self-sufficiency and isolation. Don’t ask me where the Biros are coming from in this fantasy world; I’m not that authentic.

I use a notebook for everything from those first tentative ideas and notes – a plot fragment, a description of something I’ve seen or heard, a spider diagram leading off a submissions theme – to actually writing the stories out in full. I don’t do that all the time, by any means, but sometimes it feels right. It means you can be discreetly productive anywhere – in an idle moment at work with your notebook propped on your knee under the desk, in the car if you arrive somewhere early, in the middle of a walk when you take a break to sit on a rock and admire a view, in the corner of a pub or cafe, at the bus stop, in a tent. It also gives you a break from staring at a screen all the time, which can be an issue if you have a day job at a desk as well as your writing time. And if you go beyond the notes and planning stage and actually write your stories out by hand, when you come to type them up you find yourself automatically doing the first stage of editing and tightening up the prose.

Although we’re all high-tech these days and you will certainly have to type the stories up at some point, I think there’s something about writing by hand that taps into the psyche in a different way than writing at a keyboard. Your handwriting itself is uniquely yours rather than being a neat, uniform image on a computer screen. If you scribble fast for a while, your hand aches in a different way from the RSI-inducing movement of fingers over a keyboard. I’m sure you can still get RSI from handwriting, but as long as you don’t overdo it the feeling is more like the satisfying ache from digging a vegetable patch compared with the pain of a plastic bag full of potatoes from the supermarket cutting into your palm. And if you do it enough, it will leave a physical mark of your craft; I still have the slight callus on my right middle finger from my pre-laptop student days.

Writing by hand can be more flexible in some ways. You can jump around the page, flick back, scribble notes to yourself in the margin, make spider diagrams of ideas, try things out without them feeling as permanent as if you’ve saved them to a computer file. You can pick up your notebook and be scribbling straight away instead of waiting for your computer to get going, then finding the right file. The biggest drawback for me is having to make sure you can actually read your own scrawl, something that can prove challenging!

If you like to ogle wooden cabins - and who doesn't - then check out these photo blogs: cabinporn.com and tinyhouseblog.com. This image is of a hikers' hut in Kungsleden, Sweden, from cabinporn.com.

Waiting for the muse to strike

I just read a post by Elizabeth Black at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. It's titled: 'Don't wait for your muse to strike; you'll wait for ever.' It's a topic I'd already been pondering after a period when I managed to get thousands of words done despite being run off my feet with other work and family commitments. 

Elizabeth points out that you can't wait for inspiration

to strike, or you'll never write anything. She advises setting yourself goals, treating writing like a vocation, establishing a routine and creating a support network of people who take your writing seriously.

I've read other advice about the importance of routines and of having a workspace conducive to creativity. I find setting up a routine hard when no day in my life is the same due to strange working hours, family duties and having to make the most of good weather to get down to the allotment. (Stop laughing. I mean generally. I know we haven't had any good weather of late.)

But Elizabeth is quite right. You can't wait around for ideal conditions and expect that they will suddenly make you uber creative where before there was nothing. I remember when I first started journalism training, a fellow student mentioned that they were waiting for inspiration and our tutor took great delight in laughing at her expense. (Humiliation being one of the main methods of training journalists.) Deadlines don't wait for inspiration, and even though your work as a fiction writer might not involve news editors swearing at you at 8am, you still have to get the words on the page.

I got thousands of words written in January when I had a weekend away. I wasn't actually meant to be alone; my partner and I having suffered a minor blip. But the fact that I went alone turned it into a kind of writer's retreat. It was a snowy weekend, which meant I didn't want to drive anywhere once I'd arrived. The cottage was a fourteenth-century building in the countryside with a wood burner (and not much other heating). It was ideal for writing. I'd get up, write for a while until I got hungry, cook breakfast then head out for a walk, during which time I'd mull over ideas (as well as imagining that the animal prints in the snow looked just like I'd imagine a panther's prints to look). Then I'd get back and write some more, with a beer, until I got hungry again. After that I'd spend several hours coaxing the woodburner to stay alight so I didn't freeze to death and get eaten by the resident mouse.

I probably wrote a similar number of words earlier this week. I've had a big editing job to do. I've volunteered to do extra shifts at work. I have the usual family stuff. I've booked to run a five-mile race on Sunday which I really needed to train for. I decided, in my wisdom, to write stories for about six calls for submissions with April 1st deadlines. Which is apt, because I must be a fool.

The point is, that I had a sudden burst of creativity in which I managed to write in a notebook on my knee at work, I mulled stories in my head as I commuted, I typed up late at night when I should have been asleep, I wrote in the twenty minutes I had between the school run and gym class, I wrote in bed, at the dining table and on the couch. I'd probably been storing up inspiration from a million and one little observations and experiences and suddenly there was room for no more.

What's my message here? You can't wait for these periods of creativity. If you're going to be a writer you have to write regardless of whether conditions are ideal. But if you're going to be a writer, you'd better be ready for the muse to strike when conditions are far from ideal as well as in those times when you find yourself alone in an isolated cottage. And yes, that is the cottage pictured above. It's in Shropshire, England, it sleeps two and you can book it at the Landmark Trust. 

I'm Out Visiting

I'm over at the fabulous Lucy Felthouse's place today, talking about why maps are so sexy that I wrote my story for Smut Alfresco all about them:

My story, The Explorer Challenge, is all about the British Ordnance Survey map, which may not sound a particularly likely subject for erotica. But I'm a map geek and proud of it. In fact, I've just ventured into my loft to count the maps in my collection and I have 62...

Click here to read more...

Alfresco Liaisons by Lucy Felthouse

I'm welcoming Lucy Felthouse to my blog today to give you her thoughts on why the great outdoors can be so sexy...

Firstly, I want to extend many thanks to Tilly for letting me loose on her blog today to promote Smut Alfresco. Thank you!

Tilly asked me to write a post about why people are drawn to alfresco liaisons. Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, but based on early sales of the anthology, I’d say it’s a very popular topic. In my opinion, I think there are several reasons that sex outdoors excites people:

• There’s always a risk of getting caught – you’ll always have one eye out to make sure no one is coming, if you know what I mean ;)
• It’s exciting
• It’s out of your bed, out of your house, totally away from everything that is day-to-day about your life, making it totally different from your “usual” sexual encounters
• It’s often utterly spontaneous
• It makes you think, because you’re not just lying down on a bed or a sofa in the privacy of your own home and going for it – you have to think of a way to get together that is both physically comfortable (well, ish!), sexually satisfying, and, depending on how likely you are to get caught, how easy it will be to get your clothes back on!
• I’m sure there are many more – please leave me comments if there’s something I’ve missed!

I know I’m biased, but I think Smut Alfresco is fantastic. It was amazing to see what the writers came up with in answer to the call for submissions. Some wonderful displays of imagination have been shown here, and I adore the amount of variety nestling between the covers – you won’t find two stories the same. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as Victoria and I enjoyed putting it together (and penning our own stories!).

Happy Reading!

Lucy x

*****

Sex in the great outdoors is the theme of this erotic anthology, edited by Victoria Blisse and Lucy Felthouse.

From the dramatic gritstone escarpments of Derbyshire’s Peak District, to a quiet caravan site in deepest Wales, Smut Alfresco has it all. Whatever your interpretation of frisky outdoor fun, there’s something nestling between the covers for you.

Sexy woodsmen, daring couples, rock stars, cougars, map enthusiasts, mattresses, ex-lovers, tour guides, hunky sheriffs and nature reserve rangers all appear in this hot collection of stories from erotica’s finest authors.

Includes stories from: Violet Fields, Demelza Hart, Victoria Blisse, Jacqueline Brocker, Wendi Zwaduk, K T Red, Tilly Hunter, Bel Anderson, Lucy Felthouse, Kay Jaybee, Tenille Brown, Cass Peterson, Jenny Lyn and Nicole Gestalt.

More info, excerpt and buy links: http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk/published-works/smut-alfresco/

*****

Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over seventy publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include Best Bondage Erotica 2012 and 2013, and Best Women's Erotica 2013. Another string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and co-edited a number of anthologies. She owns Erotica For All, and is book editor for Cliterati. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9

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.

Research: Mud and yeast

The list of anthologies I want to submit stories to is growing again, mostly thanks to Alison Tyler's Trollop with a Laptop blog and the Erotic Readers and Writers Association calls for submissions page.

In the course of research, and I won't be revealing which call this is for, I've been viewing pictures of fit, muscular guys running, crawling, swinging and floundering through fields of mud, pools of ice, walls of flame and dangly bits of electrified wire. It's a hard life being a writer, I tell you. The pictures are from Tough Mudder, obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces for the kind of people who've got bored of Ironman triathlons.

They hand out beer instead of water at the end, which is an extremely tenuous link to the next topic of research, sourdough bread. It's all about men who can bake. All that kneading must lead to strong hands and well-honed forearms. And those big ovens make it oh-so-hot.

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.

Thoughts: A bit of rough

I read something that got me thinking about romantic heroes the other day. It's probably a good job I can't remember where I read it. But it suggested that the chiselled, strong, successful Alpha male is universally loved by female readers of erotic fiction. It definitely used the word 'universally', which first made me think, 'What about lesbians?' and secondly made me think, 'What about me?' Because I like my romantic heroes to be quirky, flawed, rough around the edges, sometimes unsure of themselves like the rest of us. I wondered whether I am truly perverse in the widest sense of the term. I don't equate money or status with success, for example. I find perfection dull. I find glistening, muscular, hairless torsos objects of bizarre fascination rather than desire.

And there's a major subgenre of romantic fiction dedicated to the admiration of 'a bit of rough'. I was thinking about this as I re-read DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover a while back. First published in Italy in 1928, it wasn't openly available in the UK until 1960 because of its graphic descriptions of sex and use of words like 'cunt'. But its dangerous subversion of class boundaries was probably equally to blame. Compared with the wonderful erotica we have around now, it's pretty tame stuff. But what it does share with a big chunk of today's sex fiction is the fascination of a well-bred woman fucking a bit of rough. It's just that in contemporary terms it's a professional career woman perhaps seeking excitement with the pool boy, a squaddie or the scruffily gorgeous rogue from the travelling fair.

And no, this whole post wasn't entirely an excuse for a picture of Sean Bean, seen here playing Mellors in the 1993 BBC adaptation. No, it really wasn't.

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!