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. 

Review: Deep Desires by Charlotte Stein

This is one intense read. You get deep into the character of protagonist Abbie, hearing her thoughts as they arise in all their fucked-up but totally realistic honesty. The entire story takes place within the confines of an apartment block and, although background is skilfully woven in, the sharp focus on such a narrow geographical space ramps up the tension. Stein squeezes every drop of emotion and sensuality out of the two main characters’ developing relationship. It’s got mystery; it’s got violence; it’s got damaged psyches; it’s got witty conversation; it’s got BLT sandwiches; it’s got... after a long and agonising build-up... damn hot sex. Fluently written, with quirky turns of phrase and imagery, and rich in detail, Deep Desires is a gripping tale that had me hooked.

In the grand scheme of erotica, it manages to get into the territory of trust and surrender without any of the accoutrements of kink (unless you count one blindfold and Ivan's 'rape-me' video). It is also thankfully free of romantic stereotypes and clichés. Very dark a lot of the time, but ultimately uplifting as Abbie and Ivan find hope in each other, this is a delight to read.

As an entirely pointless aside, I noticed the cover image had been used in a feature in Woman magazine from October 8th: 'My husband was secretly gay.' It was my gran's copy, all right?!

I bought Deep Desires from Amazon UK. Published by Mischief Books.

Five things that can make erotica tick

Not the obvious things. I mean, sex is pretty much a prerequisite. But I've been thinking about the little things that make me want to read more from any particular author, and the things I try to create in my own work.

1. Characters who are about more than sex
I like characters who have quirky likes or dislikes, eccentric hobbies, unusual areas of expertise. I wanted to know more about the antiques dealer in Janine Ashbless's Named and Shamed because he has that interest, that area of imagery, a unique lexicon. Although it's factual rather than fiction, I love the way Sophie Morgan in Diary of a Submissive loves cake. It makes characters seem real, rather than just being plastic fuck dolls. And if their eccentricities carry over into the sex, all the better. I've just been set an Erotic Tea Cosy challenge on Twitter, having stated in my profile that I am a knitter of tea cosies. My filthy imagination has already come up with several unusual uses for knitting needles.

2. Kink within meaningful relationships
I'm not a fan of chance meetings with strangers in any kind of erotica (I think this may say something about my own lack of experience of one-night-stands!). I think it becomes more acceptable the further away from contemporary normality you get - so historical or fantasy settings can get away with more. But when it comes to BDSM stuff, however escapist the setting, I get very twitchy when someone lets a complete stranger tie them up. I guess it's hard to identify with a stupid character; and letting a complete stranger tie you up is pretty damn stupid. What I do like is the exploration of kink within committed relationships, although this could be the tentative beginnings of what will probably become a meaningful relationship. Not a passer-by in a dark alley.

3. Pure filth
Go on, push the boat out. Really go for it. I don't want to read about the stuff you might get up to with your lover this weekend. I want to read about the stuff you might get up to if you knew the world would end on Monday. Claudia Varrin, in her excellent book The Art of Sensual Female Dominance, talks about four levels of erotic fantasy. The first is stuff you've done, the second stuff you want to try and the third comprises things you might like to do if you were really pushing the boat out. Well, I like to read and write about level four, what Varrin calls bathtub fantasies. These are things you are not likely to try and might not ever want to try in the real world, but you can still get a thrill from imagining them while you're in the bath. In fiction, you can try anything. 

4. Space for my imagination
I tend not to go overboard on physical description unless it's part of a theme for a particular call for submissions. I want any reader to be able to imagine themselves in the action, which isn't going to happen if I make my characters into Barbie dolls and muscle-bound commandos. And what is it with red-headed, green-eyed women? (I once got quite indignant in an English lit lecture in which the prof said that no-one outside of Mills & Boon actually has green eyes. I have green eyes, for fuck's sake. But not red hair.) I have vowed never, ever, ever to write about a heroine with red hair. I have absolutely nothing against women with red hair. I have everything against romantic stereotypes. I like quirky details, like a mole on someone's left ass cheek, but perfection leaves little room for the reader's input.

5. A sense of shabbiness
Following on from the Barbie doll thing, I don't like worlds in which the women are all size zero (that's a four in English) and the men all have six-packs. Swanky bars, plush offices, slinky evening wear, glitzy nightclubs, obsequious waiters, penthouse apartments, five-star hotels, 4x4s (trans: SUVs) with heated leather seats... these things don't do it for me. This may be a British thing. I like understatement. I like tawdry. I like the irony when you go to tie someone up and the rope snaps. (Or you go to tie a boat up and the rope snaps. This actually happened to me. On the Shannon in Ireland. A bloody big boat.) Some might say that these rich, perfect worlds are the stuff of dreams and people want to imagine living there in their escapist fantasies. But I can't. If I imagined some perfect life, full of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth, something would be sure to go wrong. The champagne would be corked. The 4x4's engine would blow up. I like to see how characters cope when things go wrong.

Review: Named and Shamed by Janine Ashbless

A no-holds-barred descent into the most filthy and degrading sexual acts imaginable, with each fresh round of shame for the heroine soon being trumped by something even more debased. Fantastic!

Tansy’s a freelance investigator of magical creatures in a world in which such beings have returned with a vengeance. And she’s not above shaking her booty to find out what she needs to know. But when she trades one quick fuck with a fairy for his help in retrieving a stolen document, she finds herself under a super-nympho curse that could kill her. With her flatmate cousin, and her fella, in tow she sets out to find the solution.  Along the way she finds herself in the hands of crazed yokels, a witch and her sons and the very king of the Wild Hunt himself. And they all want to stuff her. Repeatedly.

For a tale about shame, this book is utterly shameless. Ashbless has come up with every possible means of reducing the heroine to a set of fuckholes, with a little left over for her companions, Gail and Vince. There is no let-up in the shift from one outrageous sex scene to the next. Every possible configuration of fucking is covered along with many peripherals in the way of bondage, pain and punishment. This is a fantasy tale; don’t expect big emotional interplay between the characters. Do expect to lose yourself in a skilfully written, filthy hot romp with vivid description and a well-constructed crossover world of reality/fantasy.

I’m always impressed when an author can take a classic text and subvert it for the purposes of filth. Ashbless starts off with Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, positing a lost version which is a lot less prudish and cautionary. The tasting of the goblins’ forbidden fruits becomes a parallel to Tansy’s fuck with a fairy; she finds herself unable to eat but desperately wanting more ‘forbidden fruit’. On a wider scale, the novel’s folklore world is thoroughly researched and convincingly drawn, taking up both well-known and more obscure myths and legends and weaving them into a sinister and unpredictable reality.

Having begun the tale with Tansy’s seduction of antiques dealer Edmund – who turns out to be harbouring a libidinous ogress – I expected him to play a part in the story’s development, so I was a little disappointed when this turned out to be a plot device which didn’t involve the character’s return. Similarly, the looming war between the fairy king and the Pendragon is talked up into something significant, but then fades out. I would also have liked to know more about what happened to Gail and Vince after their escape and how they dealt with what happened to them. But these are minor gripes. Named and Shamed was a hugely enjoyable read, refreshingly dirty and compellingly written.

Named and Shamed is published by Sweetmeats Press http://sweetmeatspress.com/erotic_stories/illustrated_erotic_stories_named_shamed.html 

Just for laughs

It's lazy post time. Thought I'd share a few silly things I've stumbled across on the web. I should probably have made a note of who tweeted the links to a couple, so I could add appropriate thanks, but I'm not that organised.

Ever blown the grounsils or made a lobster kettle of yourself? Here are 17 euphemisms for sex from the 1800s: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/140163

Perhaps you fancy a ride on a giggle stick, or would you prefer to pet the poodle? An enormous glossary of, often ridiculous, sexual and scatological euphemisms for your perusal: http://www.uta.fi/FAST/GC/sex-scat.html

Join the campaign to save Brit actor Sean Bean from yet another grisly death: http://rockpapercynic.com/index.php?date=2012-04-13

No matter how often I read these, they get me every time. The funniest iPhone autocorrects:
http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/13603/the-25-funniest-autocorrects-of-dyacs-first-year/

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.