Review: Smut by the Sea

I found this anthology a fantastically fun seaside romp full of top-notch writing talent.

Its overall feel is one of escapism into a wilder world outside the normal rules and constraints of society. The excellent quality of the writing allows the reader to fully immerse themselves in the settings and stories.

I should make a declaration of interest: I love the sea. I particularly love the British coastline and many of the stories are set in Brit seaside towns. I’ve known that late-night, drunken urge to go for a paddle. In fact, I once did this after going to a beer festival – at dusk with the tide coming in – and lost my comfiest sandals because I left them on the sand. I was busy paddling while darkness fell, turned around and couldn’t see a thing on the beach. For me, it’s the wildness of much of the British coast that tugs on my soul: jagged rocks, crashing waves, the cries of seabirds. But I still enjoy losing all my 2p coins at the amusement arcades. This line in Skin by KD Grace struck a chord: ‘You know the sea. You feel it inside you like I do.’

Although a few of the stories are set in more exotic locations, the theme of the British seaside runs through the book. It is one of slightly faded glory, often tacky, tatty or quaint, but full of opportunities for vivid imagery that speaks to all the senses. There are the smells of fish and chips and sun cream, the noise of the fairgrounds and arcades, the taste of ice cream and salty seawater, the feel of sand between the toes or waves in the face. For British readers, there’s sure to be a touch of nostalgia for childhood holidays.

The stories are full of contrasts that constantly surprise and entertain: hot sun and cool breeze, lovers who are both tender and rough, liaisons that are intense but fleeting. The sea itself provides a wealth of sensations and stirs up deep desires in the psyche. The seaside becomes a place between worlds, a special place of freedom and escape. In many of the stories, it is a place where a woman can set out quite deliberately to get laid with no strings attached in a much more picturesque setting than a nightclub toilet.

This is a real gem among erotica anthologies and I enjoyed escaping into its light-hearted world enormously.

Smut by the Sea, edited by Victoria Blisse and Lucy Felthouse, is available at Amazon. For information on the Smut by the Sea event in Scarborough in June 2013, see http://smutbythesea.co.uk/ 

Picture special

September is bringing a fair few changes here and it's going to take a few weeks before I settle into a new routine. I'm hoping to have more time to write regularly and to launch a proofreading business. I will, of course, have more time to exercise. Honest. Although, at this precise moment, the urge to cook comfort food is also strong. I suspect that frying falafel next to a laptop is not advised.

At the moment I have the beginnings of about 12 stories in my files. This is how I like to write. I guess authors who've been doing it for years probably plan better and get it right first time. But I have an idea and I like to set it down, see where it goes and how hot it really is. I think the important thing in doing this is that I'm not afraid to totally rewrite these first ramblings. I do a fair amount of rewriting at work and am undaunted at the thought of shredding a story to pieces and rebuilding it.

Now, before my falafel burn, I'm taking the cop-out route today and giving you some pretty pictures of totty to inspire your own erotic ramblings.

Here's Simon Neil, the singer from fabulous Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro in a video for their track, The Captain. The poor wee thing finds himself tied up, flogged and caged. Somebody rescue that man. But not just yet.

What about English actor Richard Armitage playing John Porter in the telly series Strike Back. Don't tell them anything, Richard.

Ah, a classic. Harrison Ford as a beat-up looking Indiana Jones. Check out the calm defiance in those eyes.

Two hotties together in a rather unequal stand-off. Joaquin Phoenix and Russell Crowe in Gladiator. But Maximus is the one who somehow maintains his dignity despite being chained to the wall.

Those Supernatural boys do find themselves in perilous situations a lot. Probably explains why I have all the box sets. Here's Dean (Jensen Ackles) bound to a tree. I love the great outdoors.

And here's a man who knows how to handle his big weapon. Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe. Finest bit of rough I could find on the internet.

Review: Past Pleasures anthology

I’ve been working my way through the stories that co-exist with mine in this Xcite Books anthology and thought I’d share my thoughts on a few favourites. It’s not all ripped bodices and heaving bosoms; the stories range from ancient pagan tribes right up to twentieth-century New York.

In Pretty Tied Up by Elizabeth Coldwell a woman escapes small-town life by becoming a glamour model in 1950s America. One day, a famous female photographer suggests Lucille tries a bondage shoot. Normally, I’m apprehensive about any story that involves someone being persuaded to try any BDSM-related activity for the first time and suddenly realising they enjoy it when they had never considered it before. But this story makes it clear that Lucille has been excited by the thought and has just never had the opportunity. Her novice status allows the bondage to be described in sensual detail. I like the unexpected titbits too – like photographer Dusty ‘cursing like a sailor’. Lucille’s back story is woven into the narrative, bringing her character and motives to life. And there’s a great balance between the build-up of sexual tension between the two women and the resulting action.

I found Garver by Landon Dixon to be a refreshing dose of light relief, so to speak. A hired gun agrees to track down stolen coins in this cowboy sex fest – but only after a blow job from the skilled bossman. The language and style are far removed from anything I could write myself, which is partly why I enjoyed the read, particularly marvelling at the range of descriptions of cocks (which just goes to show that rules are made to be broken since I wrote a few weeks ago that you should call a cock a cock rather than coming up with increasingly preposterous names for it). It’s a wonderfully masculine tale in every way, prowess as a gunfighter intimately linked to sexual prowess.

In The Gift by Clarice Clique, a princess struggles to satisfy her husband’s desire to be dominated. So she buys a slave to do it for her, which I thought was a nice twist to the balance of power. It turns out the slave allowed herself to be captured because she dreamt that her destiny lay in a foreign place. She thoroughly embraces her contradictory position. And she proves a natural, the story outlining in vivid detail how she orders the prince to submit in new ways.

La Contessa’s Game by Slave Nano is another tale of male submission (there seems to be a theme emerging here among the stories I enjoy ;-), this time with a gender-bending slant. What struck me was the luxury and decadence, particularly in descriptions of clothing. It is set largely in a whorehouse in Venice. The countess dresses her servant as a girl, while she dresses as a man, and pretends (s)he is his young wife and in need of subjugation at the hands of a dominatrix prostitute. Even his/her punishment is decadent in its thoroughness and the whole thing climaxes in a glorious threesome. The story is told in the first person by the servant, which stops it sounding purely sadistic!

Past Pleasures is available in paperback or ebook from XciteBooks.

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.’

Review: The Diary of a Submissive

The Diary of a Submissive: A True Story by Sophie Morgan was published in the wake of the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon. It stands up as a fantastic read quite independent of those books, but can also be seen in the context of the furore about apparently normal women going all giddy over a fantasy dom.

Sophie’s book is an incredibly brave, frank, detailed and intimate journal of her development as a sexual submissive. In her case, contrary to the virginal (never even wanked?!) heroine of *that* book, these tendencies are present from childhood in a fascination with captured damsels in distress. I actually wondered where it was all going when the book meandered through Sophie’s childhood, early romances and university life. But taking her story as a whole, this chronological journey is crucial to the balance: that this is a perfectly normal person with a family, a career and a fondness for home baking, who happens to love kinky sex.

By the time Sophie meets James – who has obvious parallels to the hero of *that* book in being rich and gorgeous – I was completely drawn into her story. I cared what happened. I desperately wanted things to work out between them. When, after a weekend in which she suffers/enjoys the deepest humiliations and pain of her life, he fails to return her calls, I was outraged on her behalf. I was also nearly late for work because I didn’t want to stop reading.

If you read purely for the sexy bits (surely not?), you won’t be disappointed. There are plenty of scenes of spanking of various kinds, nipple torture, bondage, humiliation and degradation. I suppose aficionados of intricate bondage might be disappointed; this is much more about the psychological side of submission, although there is the odd set of handcuffs and blindfolds in there too. I won’t be able to look at chopsticks as innocent eating implements again.

A lot of thought has been put into that psychological foundation behind domination and submission and I found Sophie’s discussions of it insightful as she comes to terms with her own nature in a completely unashamed way. She writes in the epilogue: ‘I’ve been thinking more about my nature – submissive and otherwise – than I ever have before and trying to put it into words that are both sexy and truthful.’ And I’d say she has succeeded. 

You can read more from Sophie in Six Reasons Fifty Shades of Grey isn't True to Life, a guest post at Victoria Blisse's blog.

Thoughts: What inspires you?

I write erotica. Often fairly kinky erotica. But, funnily enough, I don't actually spend my whole life shagging. And I often write about things I have never done and don't particularly want to do. That's the beauty of erotica and, indeed, all fiction. It is all made up, the fantasies of the writer's crazy mind. Nobody would have asked Agatha Christie if she'd actually murdered someone. For the reader, enjoyment can be had from being led into a world very different from what their real life is or ever will be.

So where can you find inspiration if you're not actually doing the things you write about? I have a lot of beginnings of stories floating around in my head that have come from experiences far removed from anything to do with sex. I harvested some courgettes from my allotment. They're so obviously phallic it's quite comical. It set me thinking about what a couple who are judging a horticultural contest might do with the exhibits afterwards. That is how a new story is born, this one full of the colourful vocabulary of vegetable varieties. I went swimming in the sea off north Wales. Leaping into the vast ocean is a very sensual experience (mostly the sense of being fecking freezing). I began to think about what might lead a couple to swim to an island or deserted cove and what they might do there. Another story is taking shape.

Inspiration can come from anywhere as long as you get away from the keyboard sometimes and do your thing. For it's your unique take on whatever is 'your thing' that makes your story different from any other writer's. I guess there may be erotica authors out there who spend all their time in bed in the name of research.  But, for me, I need to be out experiencing the wider world and Life with a capital L.

So where do you get your inspiration?

Freebie: Cherry Ripe

Fancy getting your hands on Shakespeare's ass for free? Well here's your chance. My story, As You Like It, which has just been published in the anthology Past Pleasures, is now also available for FREE in Cherry Ripe along with four other little treasures. It's for download to your Kindle (or Kindle app on your PC, which is what I use) at Amazon.

It's the tale of a girl whose greatest ambition is to act - in an era when women aren't allowed on stage. To realise her dream, she seduces the famous playwright Will and teaches him the joys of submission.

Happy reading!