The obligatory...

...writer's resolutions post. 

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

What does your average erotica author want for Christmas?

Several tyre-shaped pencil sharpeners, a bottle of sherry and a book of bad taste jokes completed my Christmas shopping yesterday, so I'm feeling rather smug. Of course, if you're looking for a gift for that special someone and they happen to like a bit of smut, then The House of Erotica Winter Warmers Collection, available in paperback or ebook, could be right up their street.

Today, some of my fellow Winter Warmers authors - Victoria Blisse, Annabeth Leong,  Gemma Parkes, Angie Sargenti and Nicole Gestalt - are answering another of my questions: 

What do you want Santa to leave under your tree this year?

Victoria: Owls, I love owls and a cleaner!

Annabeth: As far as naughty gifts, I would love to get a nice butt plug that is comfortable to wear around. The ones I have are good for play, but not so much for walking. Since I started playing with these, I've gotten a bit obsessed, and I think my erotica shows it. I've written tens of thousands of words about butt plugs by now, and "Filled With Christmas Spirit" is part of that body of work.

Gemma: Something to read, something to eat, sexy lingerie and something girlie that smells gorgeous!

Angie: What do you want Santa to leave you under the tree this year?  Something kinky, or at least a Victoria's Secret gift certificate. Wearing the same cute little outfit gets boring after a while.

Nicole: I love surprises! I totally adore getting presents that I would never have asked for myself and of course I have been moderately good this year (I can't every quite get to being a good girl all the time – life would be too boring). So in a dream world Santa would be leaving lots of interesting presents that will keep me occupied well into the new year!

Tilly: Home-brewing equipment.

Next time, we'll be talking about where we'd like to spend our dream Christmas. You can grab a copy of Winter Warmers at Amazon, Amazon UK or All Romance.

My picture is of a lino print from The Bluebird Gallery on Folksy.com. I might treat myself to one of their prints...

Dwarf hotness

I bring you this aside to tell you that I finally got round to watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Being a proper LotR geek, I never expect much from these cinematographic distractions, which can in no way measure up to the force of Tolkien's words combined with my imagination. Then the dwarves appeared. Including this one, Kili, played by Aidan Turner. Now I understand.

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.

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.

Flash Fiction: Under My Heels

The few friends I discuss my writing with occasionally say, 'Why don't you write the next Fifty Shades and make your fortune?' and I have to explain that I don't write like that (so many reasons it's beyond this blog post to explain). But since there is so much excitement over billionaires in swanky offices and so many books in which the heroine seems to literally stumble into the presence of these hunky chunks of Alpha male, I thought I'd give it a go. So, in a mere 500 words, here's my romance between an uber-rich industrialist and a lowly freelance designer:

Under My Heels

I shifted my booted heels on Samuel’s back. He gulped back the groan that built in his throat, beneath the black leather collar I had given him. He had the obedience on his hands and knees of a man who had spent many thousands on the most discreet dominatrixes New York could offer. I was surprised he’d never crossed my path before.

We started off like some kind of corny romance. I fell at his feet. Literally. I’d landed a meeting to discuss freelance opportunities at his firm in my day job as a graphic designer. I stumbled on a loose corner of carpet in front of his desk. Okay, so it wasn’t so much like a corny romance; his swanky offices were sorely in need of a refurb. Anyway, he rushed round to help, dropping to his knees facing me. I got up without his aid, but he stayed there, developing a glazed look as he eyed my shiny, spike-heeled boots. I mostly dress conservatively for my day job, but I can’t give up the footwear.

I knew that glassy look. Here was a man who fantasised about being on his knees at the feet of a cruel and beautiful mistress. Fortunately for him I was both.

‘Enjoying yourself down there, Mr Monton?’ I asked, shifting my toe to beneath his open mouth.

‘Um, I was admiring your boots. Sorry, Ms Anderson. You are Ms Anderson, I presume?’

His uncertainty was amusing. The billionaire founder of Monton Industries, stammering over the pointed black leather of a woman’s shoe.

‘Yes, I am Ms Anderson.’ I offered a hand and encouraged him to rise. ‘And I’m here about the design work.’

I got the contract. And an invitation to dinner. Normally I kept business and pleasure, or should I say business and my other business, separate. But Samuel Monton fascinated me. His need to submit bubbled so close to the surface it took only a woman’s stumble to have him grovelling on his worn, grubby carpet. The right woman, of course. But he could pay for the best so why was his desire unsatisfied?

I ordered the most expensive fillet steak, rare, and a bottle of vintage Barolo. He ate a very restrained Caesar salad and sipped water as though we had already entered into an arrangement of mistress and slave. He seemed to have forgotten his need for utmost secrecy, to keep his deviance out of the newspapers.

‘There’s something about you mistress,’ he said. ‘Something sensual and powerful that I’ve never experienced before.’

He wanted me to give up my other clients and work only for him as his Domme, set up in my own penthouse apartment. I refused. I refused to give up clients who relied on me and who allowed me to express myself in a way I find particularly satisfying. But I also refused his money, his apartment, gifts of clothes and diamonds. That’s how I knew. I was falling in love with this slave.

© Tilly Hunter

Random WIP excerpts

I'm doing my usual thing of working on far too many stories at once and deciding to write for far too many calls for submissions that stop me getting anywhere on the longer works I have on the go. But the end is in sight... until I see some fresh calls that tickle my fancy. 

These are what I'm working on at the mo. The first two are set to be those longer works I keep harping on about. The four after that are all short stories with summer deadlines:

1. This one's a contemporary story exploring what it means to be a male Dom:

She goes up to her bedroom and reaches under the bed for her toys, which she keeps in an old wicker picnic hamper. It makes it look like she’s going to pull out some cucumber sandwiches and a slice of Victoria sponge. What she actually takes out are two lengths of 8mm white cotton rope. 

2. And this one's a story of a couple who build their own house with lots of kinky opportunities in the design. Told by the male sub:

“I’ve been wondering what possessed me to grow these new-fangled round courgettes,” she says, showing me one that looks to me to be the size of a tennis ball, although my mind is probably exaggerating as it runs through the possible things she could do with it. I swallow and put down my hammer. I’ve already had trouble concentrating while I imagined what its handle would feel like inside me. We like to improvise.

3. And here's one in which a couple are separated for several months while he's on secondment so they start having webcam sex. She's just told him to gag himself:

He puts the black ball between his teeth and fiddles with the fastening. I see him cinch it so tight that the straps cut into the corners of his mouth. I’ve grown to love gagging him myself. I think it’s the moment when he opens his mouth and lets me slide it in. It’s another way of penetrating him, filling him all up... But seeing him do it to himself. That’s new. That’s something I’ll be doing again when he gets home too. 

4. And here's a fem sub to even things up a bit, although she's on her own in a 'special' kind of spa in this bit ahead of a date that evening:

My breath seems loud. Perhaps because it’s the only thing I can hear. No rainforest sounds CD, thank God. I’m starting to feel warm and my skin is tingling as my sweat activates the mud minerals. It is a spa treatment, after all. Just one that provides a little extra. If I survive today without dying of embarrassment, I might sign up for one of their shibari experience days. Sounds like something you’d get coupons in the paper for – try paragliding, try scuba diving, try rope suspension…

5. Here's one about sharing fantasies:

That night. It was a few weeks ago. Cabernet sauvignon had been on buy-one-get-one-free, so of course we drank both bottles. Then we started talking dirty. “Go on, there must be some fantasy you haven’t let on about,” I dared him. His turned out to be the relatively mundane one of wanting to watch me with another woman. My confession put a bit of a dampener on the evening. He sobered up pretty quick when I said, “I’d really love to fuck your ass with a strap-on.”

6. And here's a historic m/m one - a Victorian lord and his gardener. The 'fgfgfg' denotes some research still to be done (yellow rose variety around in the 19th century anyone?) And of course, in Tilly World, it's not going to be the gardener who ends up on his knees later...

He comes out onto the front steps to see them off. The parasites that have fed from his table and slept in his feather beds for nigh on a month. I don’t understand how he can be so polite to them all, rigorously observing all social niceties. I know he’s seen me here, kneeling in the rose bed weeding; he made one slight glance to where I’m working beneath the yellow fgfgfg before he turned back to his guests, smiling and shaking hands, lifting the ladies’ gloved fingers to his lips.

A year of stories

I'm coming up to a year of committed writing effort. At times I've taken on too much and had half a dozen or more deadlines looming for calls for short story submissions. And I still haven't got very far on writing a longer work. But I've learnt a few things along the way. Bear with me while I give you the stats.

Since last spring, I have written 32 stories. I've just gone through and totted up the word counts: 111,300.

The shortest is a 500-word piece, Vermilion Number Six, published by the For the Girls website. The longest is a 13,500-word story that I sent in for a submissions call at Storm Moon Press in February. Fingers crossed. 

I have five stories out in multi-author anthologies and a collection of three of my own in Miranda's Tempest. I have eight stories round and about on the web.

I have six stories out for submission that I'm waiting to hear about and five in the hinterland between an anthology editor's acceptance and the final say-so from the publisher.

I'm currently writing one short story and have another couple of antho calls I'd like to go for. 

I have started three novellas, which are in a state ranging from a first chapter done to 15,000 words that need completely rehashing.

I've had three stories rejected, two of which were repurposed in some way for another anthology. I sent one submission email that never arrived and one publisher suddenly cancelled their short story calls.

What have I learnt?

• When you submit one story, you get on with the next. Waiting for acceptance or rejection will do your head in.
• If you don't get an acknowledgement of your submission, check it got there.
• If you're going to be a writer, it's going to take over your life at times.
• Having stories accepted is a wonderful thing. Seeing the resulting book is even better.
• Having stories rejected is not the end of the world. You can often use the ideas again and all writing is good practice.
• The more you write, the better you get. And the faster.
• Short stories are great fun, a great place to try things out, practise your craft and get quick gratification. But I could have written four or five novellas or one long novel in the time it's taken me to write 32 short stories.
• It's good to try new things. I've discovered I love writing m/m stories and I can write stories that are quite sweet and contain no rope. Who'd have thought it?
• I have no willpower to overcome internet distraction and I would dearly love a nicer shed than the worm-eaten one at my allotment where I could write without wi-fi and preferably with a little woodburner crackling away.

So what are you pissing about here for when you should be writing?

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.

Happy Valentine's Day

As Valentine's Day approaches and the world of erotic romance goes into overdrive to sell you sweet tales of happy every afters... I'm wondering what the February 14 version of Bah Humbug would be. This picture comes close. And if you prefer to stick with the Scrooge version, here's some subversive cross-stitch: