Thursday 31 January 2013

Burlesque, erotica and cake!


Just a last reminder that our next show is

SATURDAY 2nd FEBRUARY!

It's the Girls, Girls, Girls Special!

Erotic readings and burlesque performers - together in one fabulous show!  With cake!

8pm at the Tom Thumb Theatre  in sunny Cliftonville. 
Go to our fabulous Wanton Words and Burlesque Bombshells Facebook page where you can find out all the news and gossip about our upcoming shows.


https://www.facebook.com/WantonWordsBurlesqueBombshells

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Location, location!

Today you will find me guesting for the wonderful Kay Jaybee.  I'm over at her blog talking Location, Location!

When I stated to write erotica I had hardly travelled at all.  There are two reasons for this.  First and foremost, I have a travel phobia (especially flying).  Secondly, no-one had given me a compelling reason to tackle my phobia.

I never tackled publisher briefs that requested an exotic location in the story – because I hadn’t been to one, and I do like to have had some experience of what I am writing about.  However, some years ago, when I met my current partner (who loves travelling) I was finally persuaded to take my first tentative steps onto a plane......... 

Sunday 27 January 2013

Kinky Boots: K D Grace

I absolutely adore the cover of K D Grace's new paranormal erotic romance novella, Kinky Boots, so I couldn't wait to showcase it.  And those boots are simply delicious....


After a sizzling encounter in DEMON HEELS, a quirky all-night shoe store, with the store’s hot owner, FINN MASTERS, JILL HART walks away in the most gorgeous boots ever. Her new boots come with an unexpected bonus, a sexy demon named ELEANOR, who’s looking for a good time. All she lacks is a body, and Jill’s will do nicely.
Jill quits her dead-end job and, not knowing what’s come over her stops by the nearest pub intent on doing tequila shots until she falls off the stool. Instead she does FINN MASTERS in the beer garden, unwittingly participating in her first ever threesome. The boots were the bait, the timing was right and Eleanor has new digs. It’s Finn job to prevent Eleanor’s misbehaving. His failure means he’ll have to ride shotgun and do damage control until Eleanor moves out at the next full moon.
With Eleanor in residence, Jill’s bolder, sexier, willing to take risks. But is she a whole new Jill, or is it just demon courage? And how will Finn feel about her when she’s just plain Jill again? Will the maddeningly magical ménage make Jill’s dreams come true, or will it break her heart?



More links will be added here as they become available:

*****

Excerpt:

There was a soft knock on the door and Meinrad entered the room with several hanks of what looked like ordinary rope. He nodded his greeting to Finn, then his gaze came to rest on Jill, and she felt her entire body blush at his inspection. ‘Turn around,’ he said.

She obeyed.

He made some sound low in his throat that could have passed as either approval or not. Then he placed a large hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face him. She noticed he wore the Kinky Boots uniform T-shirt stretched tight across his very broad chest. The shop name was punctuated by the hard pressure of nipples on muscular pecs. The black jeans he wore rode low on his hips. The wave of lust that rushed over her was staggering. How had she not noticed how sexy he was?

Then Finn moved to stand beside him, and she understood. Even though Meinrad was by far the larger man, Finn dominated the room. Finn dominated the space. Finn dominated every second of the last twenty-four hours of her life, as though he had shoved his way in and pushed everything else out. It did things to her, that thought, things that were way beyond lust, things that were a lot more frightening than being possessed by a demon.

He stood gazing down at her from some neutral distance that made her feel very much alone, as though the world and everyone in it had receded, leaving her to await her fate. Eleanor was keeping a low profile. Finn spoke without preamble. ‘Unless something’s hurting you, while Meinrad’s binding you, you’re not to speak. You’re only to move when he moves you. You’re to do exactly as he says. You’re to accept what he does to you in total passivity. Is that clear?’

‘Is he going to fuck me?’ She was embarrassed the minute she said it but it was too late to take it back.

‘If I want him to, yes,’ Finn said.

If Finn wanted him to. Dear God, what was she doing? Suddenly she felt unsteady on her feet. She didn’t know Meinrad. Not like she knew Finn. And yet the thought of the big man hammering her with his enormous cock while she was all trussed up was at least as exciting as it was uncomfortable. The thought that he would do so only at Finn’s bidding excited her even more.

‘There’ll be no safe word,’ Finn continued. ‘All you have to do is tell Meinrad to stop. Or if at any time he thinks you’re not fit to continue, he’ll stop, and that’ll be that. Are we clear?’

She nodded. ‘And what about you?’

‘Meinrad’s acting on my behalf.’ Finn held her in a cool gaze. ‘He’ll do as I say, and so will you, unless you choose at any point not to play.’ For a long moment he studied her, as though he might see something, perhaps some flaw, perhaps some weakness, she didn’t know what. He seemed too far away to tell. She held her breath. Waiting.

At last he blinked and stepped back, still holding her gaze. ‘I’ll ask you again, Jill. Are you sure this is what you want?’

She nodded, afraid to speak for fear her heart would jump out of her throat. Then she remembered to breathe again.

Finn said nothing. He took her hands in his and offered them to Meinrad, who took both her wrists in one huge palm and tied them across one another in a simple looped knot from which she could have easily escaped if she’d wanted. Then he led her to the bed and guided her onto it. There, he secured her hands to the headboard with several feet of slack, enough to allow him to work around her and at the same time allow Finn to observe from every angle. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed Finn had pulled a ladder back chair to the side of the bed and sat emotionlessly looking on. A quick glance was all she got before Meinrad settled her into a kneeling position facing the wall with her hands resting on the headboard.

In the beginning, it felt as though she were being decorated with rope; that’s the best way Jill could describe what Meinrad was doing to her. The rope was softer than she expected it to be and not unpleasant against her bare skin. The embarrassment she felt came, flashed hot, then passed as Meinrad looped the rope and efficiently placed knots above her breasts and then below and then tightened and cinched his efforts until the harnessing effect squeezed and pinched and offered up each of her breasts in a tight little nest of rope, like ripe fruit topped by the cherry-hard rise of her nipples. She’d always had sensitive breasts and to have them so handled and bound made her whole chest burn with a need that was replicated in her pussy.

Meinrad worked in complete silence, his hands moving over her body as though she were nothing more than the canvas for what he was creating. His touch was exacting and his rhythm as he worked was hypnotic. Early on she realised that one of his hands was on her at all times. She remembered basic knot training from her childhood days in the Girl Guides. Right over left and under and through. Left over right and under and through. Rope threaded through competent fingers, rope slid over bare skin, coiling, twisting, binding, descending right over left and left over right, pressing a column of knots down the length of her spine before looping around her waist and embracing her belly. Again. And again. Yes, she was his canvas, and what he created took its shape against her flesh, but his art didn’t happen without exacting a price from him, and in her peripheral vision, as he reached around her to secure a knot over her navel, she caught a glimpse of the erection set tight in his black jeans, and she felt the hitch of his breathing not quite hidden in the rhythm of right over left, left over right. As he crossed the ropes around her body, she felt the heat of his breath whisper along her back next to the weaving and twisting and soft swishing of the rope along her spine.

With a tug of the rope every pore of her body responded to the tightening just as he nestled a knot against the pucker of her bottom and her gasp sounded like a rush of wind in the stretching silence. Meinrad gave a little pull and her clit hardened in empathy with the pressure between her buttocks. Then without warning, he slipped an arm around her and turned her over as he pulled two strands of rope up between her legs, up tight against her upper thighs like the elastic of knickers, or a tightly cinched climber’s harness. That done, with a deft movement of his fingers he secured a knot just over her clit, and this time she cried out in the strange mix of discomfort and arousal. The whole gape of her was pressed between the two strands of rope, knotted at fore and aft like a ship, narrow and thick-hulled.

There was barely time to get used to the strange rub and pressure between her legs, or the knot that felt like the tip of a thick finger attempting to breach her bottom, before Meinrad began to bind her thighs to her lower legs and ankles, making the position in which she knelt mandatory. With each knot, with each looping of the rope, he forced her bent legs further apart until she was wide open, yet at the same time held closed by the ropes between her legs. Bound and kneeling on the bed, she tried to breathe deeply, tried to fight back the panic of her own helplessness, something she had never experienced before. She was dangerously close to hyperventilating, and Eleanor seemed to be completely absent from the whole event.

‘Shall I continue?’ Meinrad asked.

*****
K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she, cuz otherwise, what would she write about?

When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening or walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband recently walked the Coast to Coast rout across England. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots.

K D has erotica published with Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, Sweetmeats Press and others.

K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Book two, Riding the Ether, is now available.

K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall.




Wednesday 23 January 2013

Writing for Play

According to my Oxford Dictionary foreplay is “stimulation preceding sexual intercourse.”  I feel that rather understates and undervalues the act, or should I say, art of foreplay.  (Interesting that we often use theatrical words likes “act”, “perform” and “play” when we make reference to sexual activities).
Foreplay can engage all the senses.  We make our bodies beautiful by dressing (or-undressing) to create a sensual feast for the eyes; we use our voices to make gentle pillow talk or give commands; we touch and feel with tongues, fingers and lips.  Exotic scents or our own heady pheromones are often the first signals our brains receive to release the flood of chemicals we need to prepare us for sex and our taste buds can be stimulated by playing food games or just eating each other!

Of course, we are often told that sex is all in the mind and that it is our imaginations that create the experience, so what better way to stimulate that imagination than by reading an erotic story?  Erotica is not only an aide to foreplay, a tool; it can be the foreplay itself.  Is that what erotic writers do?  Is that our job?  I confess that when a satisfied reader tells me she had to reach for her vibrator while she was reading one of my stories, it is a huge compliment.

As a reader and spectator there are times when I need erotica that is hot, horny and fast. Like a quick fuck.  And at others, I desire a long, slow, gradual seduction.  Very slow.  To be teased, imperceptibly at first, keeping me guessing, wondering when and how and if. Taken by the hand and led on a journey that will, I hope, culminate in an exquisite, blissful climax.

Related posts:
http://elizabeth-cage.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/writing-to-tease.html


Monday 21 January 2013

Miss Glory Pearl Guest Post: The Art of the Tease

Following on from my previous post, Writing to TeaseI am more than delighted that internationally celebrated burlesque performer Miss Glory Pearl has written on the subject of tease from the viewpoint of the artiste.  There are definitely parallels between erotic performance and erotic writing, the essence of which is summed up by Glory in her article: "Tease, the promise of more, the promise of everything - later."  Love this!

The Art of the Tease By Miss Glory Pearl

tease verb (teased, teasing) 1 to annoy or irritate someone deliberately or unkindly. 2 to laugh at or make fun of someone playfully or annoyingly. 3 (usually tease someone into something) to persuade them to agree to it, especially by continual coaxing. 4 to arouse someone sexually without satisfying that desire. 5 to comb (wool, flax or hair, etc) to remove tangles and open out the fibres. 6 to raise a nap on (cloth) by scratching or brushing, especially with teasels. 7 to backcomb (hair). noun 1 someone or something that teases. 2 an act of teasing.
ETYMOLOGY: Anglo-Saxon tæsan to card. (courtesy of Chambers Dictionary)

My burlesque workshops always start with the question, ‘What is burlesque?’. I get a lot of random words shouted at me as a result, but almost always, among them is the word ‘tease’. Tease is seen as inherent to burlesque, usually in the sense of ‘arouse someone sexually without satisfying that desire’, sometimes in the sense of ‘to laugh at or make fun of someone playfully or annoyingly’, and almost never in the sense of ‘annoy or irritate someone deliberately or unkindly’. But I tend to define it slightly differently in the context of burlesque - it is about delaying gratification, interacting with your audience - or at the very least acknowledging their presence, and arousing curiosity that is satisfied at the performer’s pleasure. In this sense, tease is a convention of burlesque - the performer signals that a piece of costume will be removed then takes their time about doing so, discarding it only after they have used it to obscure the audience’s view of their body.

Of course, most of the conventions of burlesque are also conventions of striptease, but for many of today’s performers, burlesque has moved away from the overtly sexual striptease, where the viewer is asked to suspend disbelief and view the performance as a disrobing that ultimately leads to sex, and has instead become more playful, a device for engaging the audience, and a trick that leads to, yes, partial nudity, but also to some sort of comedic punchline.

When you perform burlesque for a living, it’s not uncommon for people to say things such as ‘your partner must be a lucky man’, as if the theatrical parody of female sexuality portrayed on stage must inevitably translate to the bedroom. It doesn’t. Frankly, I’d feel completely ridiculous prancing about in front of a lover the way I do on stage. The intimacy of the bedroom and the public stage are about as far away from each other as it is possible to be. But undressing on stage and undressing in the boudoir do share some things. Most obvious, I’d say, is the awareness of the onlooker’s gaze (and resulting tendency to pull our stomachs in and stand up straight), which creates a self-consciousness in our actions. That self-consciousness centers one in the present and causes us to act mindfully, presenting an aesthetic rendition of what we do every night before we hop into bed.

Secondly, being on stage requires passion - you have to believe in what you are doing up there, otherwise the audience won’t believe in what you are doing up there. Performing in front of a live audience is an exchange - the audience give you their attention and their applause, and you give them glamour, fun and entertainment. As a performer, I work hard to give the audience their money’s worth, to impress them, entertain them, make them laugh and marvel at what unfolds on stage. And while the bedroom may not be such an explicit exchange, where money has been paid, the desire to please and be pleased is an essential part of seduction. Tease, the promise of more, the promise of everything - later, builds pleasure, increases gratification when it comes and is an essential part of sex, whether it be as deliberate as slowly undressing for your partner, or as accidental as not being able to find a cab home from the intimate restaurant table. And to tease someone, you need to connect with them, to reach out and say ‘do you want this?’, and when the answer comes back as ‘yes’, to reply, ‘not yet’. Thus, the essence of good performance and good sex can be distilled into two words immortalised by E.M. Forster; ‘only connect’. Everything else is distraction.

Related links:
https://www.facebook.com/WantonWordsBurlesqueBombshells
http://elizabeth-cage.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/writing-to-tease.html


NEXT SHOW IS SATURDAY 2nd FEBRUARY!

Erotic readings and burlesque performers - together in one fabulous show!  With cake!




Saturday 19 January 2013

Writing to tease

Doing live readings of my erotica as part of the successful show Wanton Words and Burlesque Bombshells got me thinking about the whole concept of tease.  Years ago, I had a striptease lesson with the wonderful Rebecca Drury of Seven Veils Productions, and I realised that although a good performer makes it all look effortless it is actually really difficult.  Doing everything slowly (when we are used to living in such a fast culture where instant results are now the norm) and peeling each item off carefully and deliberately, revealing a hint of flesh here, a tiny glimpse of stocking there, keeping the audience wondering what will happen next…..hard work!  It was all about the tease, the actual process.  The journey.  Not the end result.  A seduction in which the performer controls every second.   Extended foreplay.

A writer of erotica has to master a similar skill in many ways.  Setting the scene, handling the build-up and the pace of the action, so that the reader is literally gagging to make it to the end, to reach that climax.  Teasing the reader simply by using the most effective choice of words; psychological (and when read out loud) verbal foreplay.

I think the reason so many women enjoy those American detective shows in which a male and female cop/forensic expert/etc are paired unwillingly to work on a case and spar verbally and flirt constantly for weeks on end is because it is like extended foreplay.  The “will they, won’t they?” is far sexier than the moment they do actually get it together.  Maybe it’s our primal instincts that find the chase element in seduction and foreplay so exciting.   

I’ll come back to some of these ideas in a future post.  In the meantime, when I write the next story I will have in mind Rebecca’s words; “It’s all about the tease.”

Thursday 17 January 2013

Kay Jaybee: Sexy Stories - Learning from Nin

In my series of guest posts called Sexy Stories: fiction that turns me on, I'm thrilled that today's guest is Kay Jaybee, who talks about Learning from Nin.......

There is something about a work of erotica that engenders a curiosity that isn’t found in all genres of fiction. That curiousness comes down to one question- how much sex is in this book, and how far does that sex go?

For most, that first dip into a recognisably erotic book will always be accompanied by that little nerved bunch of anticipation in the pit of the stomach, as the eyes and fingers stray over passages of written sexual fantasy. For many, as it was for me at the tender age of 15 when I snuck my parent’s copy of Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus (1979) off the bookshelf, it is the first time they’ve seen words they were almost too embarrassed to even think, written down.

 As an incredibly shy introverted teenager, with few friends, and a frighteningly candy floss style hair-do, I found an escape in the words of Nin that I had never expected to find, and that I didn’t fully understand until I was a great deal older. Not that I didn’t comprehend what I was reading- of course I did. I was shy, but far from naive. But I was in my thirty’s before I saw how important her writing was, and how the way it moved people wasn’t just nice in a solo pleasure kind of a way, but also empowering.

Her words came wrapped in emotion. There was an undercurrent of mental connections between her characters; and it was those personal echoes of inter-connecting cerebral desire that came back to me many years later when I began to pen erotica for myself. 
Transported: Erotic Travel Tales
In this day and age I am delighted to report that, for most readers at least, the storyline has become as important as the levels of kink to be found within its plot, and although there are notable exceptions, erotica is better written now that it has been for a very long time.

Since writing my first story, I’ve read a great deal of erotica- some purely for pleasure, and some for the purposes of review. Novels, short stories, novellas, and flash fiction collections, have all come my way. I have to confess though; I am a tough audience, especially now I know just how difficult it is to get out there into book world. A story that is badly edited, or doesn’t grab me in the first three paragraphs, is never going to cut it.

Of all the erotica works I’ve read however, one stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That book would be Transported: Erotic Travel Tales by Sharazade. Everything about it hits the spot for me. A short story collection which manages to relate to the reader on so many levels you just want it all to be true, and have trouble believing that it’s fiction. Romantic (but not in any way sopping or cloying), kinky, and imaginative- it’s perfect.
The jewel in this anthologies crown is a story called Flaws- and I defy any female to read it and not 100% relate to what’s written there. I won’t say what the story involves- I don’t want to spoil it. I will just say I can’t recommend it enough.

Every time I read anything, I learn more- sometimes what could be done to improve my own work- sometimes what to avoid like the plague! I do wonder however, what my work would be like now if I’d never crept into my parents study in my formative adolescent years and peeped into a copy of Delta of Venus – Ms Nin- I owe you one!

Many thanks for inviting me over today Elizabeth!

About Kay
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 60 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


Monday 14 January 2013

Bargaining

"Almost all of our relationships begin, and most of them continue, as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods".

W H Auden

A thought-provoking statement.  Do you agree?

Saturday 12 January 2013

Flash Fiction Friday Fantasies

My 780 word story Fantasies is over at Morgen Bailey's Flash Fiction Friday (number 69, of course!). Do check it out and comment. 
Surprisingly, this story was originally published in Chat magazine.

http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/flash-fiction-friday-069-fantasies-by-elizabeth-cage/

Friday 11 January 2013

Wanton Words has a new Facebook Page!

Do check out the fabulous Wanton Words and Burlesque Bombshells Facebook page where you can find out all the news and gossip about our upcoming shows.

https://www.facebook.com/WantonWordsBurlesqueBombshells

Next show is Saturday 2nd February - the girlie special!




Thursday 10 January 2013

Re-invention and Erotica Writing with Chantel C

Today you'll find me over with the lovely Chantel C at the brilliant One Honest Writer doing a guest post on how watching a man pissing against the wall started my erotic writing career (don't ask!). 

Check out my revelations here:
http://chantelc.com/2013/01/09/guest-post-by-elizabeth-cage/

The post is called Re-invention and Erotica Writing.  



Wednesday 9 January 2013

Janine Ashbless: Sexy Stories - Fiction That Turns Me On

Today at Kissing Velvet Towers, I'm delighted that the wonderful Janine Ashbless is taking the reins with her guest post for Sexy Stories: fiction that turns me on, in which she explores Something Dirty.... 


It’s actually really hard for me to read other people’s erotica without my inner writer taking over – analyzing the vocabulary, noting whether the editor has enforced a Safe Sex policy, making notes about details of the action. I am a hard reader to please – you have to do something special to get me out of my analytical headspace.  
Luscious: Stories of Anal Eroticism
When asked to write about a Story That Turned Me On, I went to an anthology I bought years back – Luscious edited by Alison Tyler and recently re-issued by Cleis Press with a lovely new cover. 
It’s a strong anthology full of well-written stories all themed around anal sex, which has been one of my favorite erotic topics for a few years now (I do love anal in real life, but the fact is, you don’t need to have ever tried a sexual practice to enjoy reading about it).

The particular short story I return to is called Something Dirty by Erica Dumas. It’s quite simple in terms of plot – a female bartender in an upmarket bar hooks up with a client she fancies, he takes her for a ride on his motorbike, parks up in the middle of nowhere and they have sex over the seat of his bike – yes, awkward and uncomfortable, but very hot. It has a happy ending in that it definitely suggests that this may lead to an ongoing relationship. It’s well-written, particularly in conveying the narrator’s overwhelming but nervous desire, which I totally empathise with (I never can suspend disbelief for sex-with-a-stranger stories where the woman isn’t scared that this is a colossal and potentially dangerous mistake).

“The yuppies left, I introduced myself and felt a shiver go through me as I felt his firm handshake; imagined that firm grasp spinning me around and shoving me against the bar, pulling down my stretch jeans and entering me in the filthiest way a knight in shining armor could. His name was Trey. I wanted Trey to fuck me in the ass.”
Which he does, eventually. Hurrah!

Anyway, why this story in particular, out of this book? It’s not just the fact that for me it hits an authentic and believable note in conveying female horniness. Or the thoroughly satisfying sex scene. It’s the description of scary goateed biker Trey.

“He wasn’t your classic Hell’s Angel, which in any event would have scared me off and prevented me from making a come-on. He was a computer-programmer, probably, or an advertising executive, maybe even a doctor. On Monday he would put on a pin-striped suit or a white coat or a Holy Grail T-shirt and fit right in with the rest of his yuppie pals at work, making enough money that he just had to spend it on a Harley … If I’d worked in a real biker bar, he would have been one of the clean ones. But here at Amistoso’s, he was dirty. Filthy.”

It’s like the author is leaning out of the book, pointing a finger at me and laughing. I just have to laugh along, blushing. Because she’s hit the nail on the head for me, if not for anyone else: I like a bloke who looks rough and wild but is actually really smart and well-educated under that. I’m sorry … it’s just the way I am. It’s not cool, but I never claimed to be cool.

But isn’t that the way that erotica works best – a story finds a way of getting under your skin and revealing the embarrassing little secrets that turn you on but that you don’t want to admit to? This is a story that does that for me. And I’m very pleased it does.

You can buy Erica Dumas’ collection Something Dirty on Kindle.


Janine Ashbless is a multi-published author of erotica and - occasionally - erotic romance.  So far she’s written nine books, published by Black Lace, Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, Mischief and Sweetmeats. She’s also the co-editor of the upcoming Geek Love anthology.

She's always used elements of fantasy, mythology and folklore in her writing, with forays into horror. Janine loves goatee beards, ancient ruins, minotaurs, trees, mummies, having her cake and eating it, and holidaying in countries with really bad public sewerage. She s a roleplaying geek and can still sometimes be found running round in the woods hitting other geeks with a rubber sword. It is unlikely she will grow up anytime soon. Janine lives in England with her husband and two rescued greyhounds, and is trying hard to overcome her addiction to semicolons.



Sunday 6 January 2013

Pornography and lighting

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."

I love this quote from feminist Gloria Leonard (born August 28, 1940), an American former pornographic actress who later became the publisher of High Society magazine. As well as directing several porn films, she performed her only anal scene in her movie "All About Gloria Leonard".

Fascinating!  (I love wikipedia!)

I don't normally enter the pornography versus erotica debate, but at a recent writers lunch, the discussion came up.  The elderly gentleman sitting beside me reflected that the difference might lie in the choice of words  and how they were arranged (the writer's equivalent of lighting, perhaps?).  He thought that purely gynaecological language used to simply describe a mere sequence of events, like a manual, and without any characterisation of the protagonists would be his definition of pornographic (without making any value judgement).  I found this an interesting comment and it got me thinking.  Should erotica be defined in relation to the way the words are employed or merely on whether or not what we read turns us on - regardless of its literary merits? 

What do you think?

Saturday 5 January 2013

Crimson Kisses Special Offer - now 96p for limited period

To herald in 2013 the price of Crimson Kisses, my short story and poetry collection,  has been reduced to a mere 96p.  This special offer stands until 31 March 2013!  

A kinky tale of paranormal lesbian romance, intense and dark in tone, (as are the poems that follow, which chart an obsessive BDSM relationship) Crimson Kisses has been described by highly acclaimed writer D.L King, author of The Melinoe Project as “A beautiful story.” 



Buy from Amazon UK and Amazon US, plus all other Amazon territories. 

                       


Related post:
http://elizabeth-cage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-birth-of-velvet-kiss-press.html

Wednesday 2 January 2013

Miss Glory Pearl: Sexy Stories - Fiction that Turns Me On

In my first post for 2013, I am truly delighted that my friend and colleague Miss Glory Pearl has, as promised, written a guest post for my series Sexy Stories: fiction that turns me on.

Sit back and enjoy the eloquent words of Miss Glory Pearl. 

Like many teenagers, my introduction to sex in novels came courtesy of Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper. The latter I liked especially as most of her books also included horses, my great passion at the time, along with a generous sprinkling of explicit sex scenes. A trip to my local WH Smith during my Saturday job lunch hour revealed a discreet bottom shelf filled with Black Lace novels but their proximity to the Mills & Boon was rather off-putting - that and the stodgy prose that even my sixteen-year-old self could not stomach.

It was a number of years before I could truly say I discovered erotic fiction, that is fiction whose predominant purpose is to arouse, and it came in a surprising place. Whilst studying for my Master’s degree in Eighteenth-Century English Literature, I began a module on the ‘cult of sensibility’ as it has become known. This was a period in the late Eighteenth Century when feeling became very fashionable; displaying one’s sensitivity and crying, sighing and emoting at the drop of a hat allowed one to demonstrate one’s superiority over one’s fellow man in times when upward mobility and prosperity made it ever more difficult to tell who really was noble. The reading list included works by Sterne, Fielding and a chap called John Cleland. His novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, proved to be the most memorable on the list. Commonly known by the name of its heroine, Fanny Hill, Cleland’s tale is a true bildungsroman, following young Fanny’s progress from leaving her country home following the death of her parents to her eventual ‘coming of age’ and marriage.

Fanny travels to London to find work and like many pretty young girls straight off the stage coach, she is picked up by a bawd and offered a roof and employment. The bawd’s kindliness is, of course, false, as she is luring Fanny into a life of prostitution, intending to profit greatly from the sale of the young girl’s virginity.

Cleland’s tale is a common one for the time, drawing on Defoe’s Roxanne and Moll Flanders and on Hogarth’s very famous narrative engravings series, The Harlot’s Progress. Where it differs, however, is that Fanny, on the whole, enjoys everything she gets up to, which is described in explicit detail. She falls in love with a young nobleman, Charles, who rescues her from the brothel before her virginity is taken. They elope and make love and he then disappears, leaving poor Fanny with no choice but to make her living the only way a girl can.

Her range of sexual encounters is truly staggering, from rich man’s mistress to high-class hooker, to street girl, Fanny does it all and comes hard throughout. Not only is it a cracking novel with a plucky heroine, it’s also extremely rude. What most struck me when I first read it was the the way the sex itself was described. Pleasure really matters, and mutual pleasure more so. In all Fanny’s sexual encounters, the exchange of pleasure is key - holding back one’s own pleasure to bring your partner with you in turn heightens your pleasure and so you both benefit. The range of sexual practices described is dizzying as Fanny’s work brings her into contact with masochists, libertines and generously endowed servant boys. At the end of it all, she is re-united with her Charles, tells him of her adventures, he forgives her and they marry, an ending that is about as far from the lonely, pox-ridden premature death most prostitutes were reported to suffer as is possible.

This pre-Victorian sexual morality, where female pleasure is acknowledged, valued and seen as necessary to a ‘successful’ sexual encounter was a joy to read and deepened my love for this period in history. That Fanny overcomes every challenge life throws at her and has a lot of fun on the way is also refreshing. The novel is written in the first person and Cleland makes Fanny’s voice convincing and creates a very likeable character. Despite her amiability however, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is one of the most notorious novels ever written, being banned and the subject of prosecution more times than any other work of prose fiction. It is also widely considered to be the first erotic novel written and is most definitely my favourite. If you haven’t read it, do so; it will warm your heart as much as your loins.



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