The Black Orchid
I’m mourning the death of my last surviving Aloe polyphylla seedling. It must have been eaten by slugs while I was away. The pot is as empty as if there never was a baby aloe in there at all, and I’m frustrated. What used to be my green thumb is now a charcoal black stump, and I’ve laid more plants to rest than I managed to keep alive. In that regard, I’m very different from Poppy Baines, character in my story “The Black Orchid” which is featured in the Sinful Press anthology “Sinful Pleasures”.
Okay, not just in that regard. Continue Reading
Goat Musk Sperm
Wait, that’s not what you talk about with your mom?
It’s been a few days since I returned home from my little vacation with even more need to recuperate. I brought home a bunch of new story idea and a bladder infection (yay). Now I’m planted firmly atop a heated cherry pit cushion (that’s the German way – hot water bottle or cherry pits. My father in law suggested schnapps). Continue Reading
Take It Where You Find It
Today, I’m thrilled to host Gail Williams, fellow author of the Sinful Pleasures Anthology (it’s out now, go grab your copy!!!). She writes about her inspiration for “Taking It” and shares a steamy excerpt with us!
Take It Where You Find It
By Gail Williams
Take inspiration where you find it, that is. There is inspiration everywhere, and sometimes it comes in the form of an open submission from a publisher. And sometimes it’s a left of field inspiration too, and for me that’s what a call for Sinful Press was.
See, erotica isn’t something I usually write. When I started writing for publication, I was a big reader of Mills & Boon and so I wrote a lot about romance. But those novels kept being rejected because – and this is an actual quote from a Mills and Boon rejection letter – they said I gave the books “too much plot.” Immediately after that, I tried removing the plot and just writing the sex. It seemed logical at the time. Had no luck there either. To be fair I think that was because I was being too ‘romantic’ about it, and I was probably too young, not experienced enough to pop my porn writing cherry at that point. Continue Reading
Shaping Worlds
Lana Fox posted about what erotica should be during dark times, and as I have a lot of feelings about this topic (and also because they were so incredibly kind as to include my response on Twitter in their post), I’m trying to put something into words that I’ve been carrying around for a long time now. Sometimes (all the times, honestly), 140 characters on Twitter are just not enough. (Especially not when I don’t have access to my computer and have to operate Twitter on my phone.) Continue Reading
The O Story
Apparently it’s the time of personal stories for me. This one needs some content warnings, so here’s your heads up: This essay contains mentions of suicide and drug use as well as graphic descriptions of sex. And there’s a little bit of blood.
Writing erotica is, for me, an exercise in self-exploration. It’s finding the things that push my buttons and examining them. Isabel Allende wrote that “For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.” In my experience, that’s absolutely true. Sex, for me, happens mostly in my mind. My imagination is what fuels my engine. I’m not sure yet if that’s part of my problem or part of the solution. Continue Reading
Roadhouse Blues by Malin James
This is a reaction to reading Roadhouse Blues by Malin James, not a review, and as such, it’s messy and as much about myself as it is about the book.
I was not prepared. Continue Reading
The safety of fiction
My foray into writing taboo erotica.
Last week, I started an experiment: I want to see if I can make enough money through writing erotica to sustain our current situation as it is without making drastic changes (like getting a day job. The horror).
I’ve started publishing my stories a year and some months ago, but I’m not exactly raking in the cash. There has been an upswing, yes, and I start seeing things move into a positive direction, but I’m still leagues away from the pair of shoes I gave myself as a first tiny goal (which I then had to replace with new glasses, because boy, my eyesight is the worst).
Writing is my passion, the love of my life, and if I could do it for free, I would. But fact is, if I want to keep writing like I do – more or less full-time – then I have to earn some money with it, otherwise this is not a sustainable life. Continue Reading
Reading preferences – or prejudices?
My husband — I call him ogre, lovingly — doesn’t read books written by women. He made an exception for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Harry Potter, and the first Twilight book. Continue Reading
Oh, such delicious shame!
About Erotic Humiliation and Princess Kali’s “Enough to make you blush”
I have written about shame in the context of writing and reading romance before. But shame is not only something I had to overcome about my writing, it’s also a huge theme inside my writing. Erotica offers a safe space to explore erotic humiliation.
Shame and guilt as tools for social and moral control aren’t new. Back in the day, clerics created so called penitentials, detailing what constitutes a sin and how one should repent for it. Those penitentials dealt extensively with sex, outlining what was okay and what wasn’t. Basically everything but missionary intercourse between consensually married people put you in the sinner camp. Sex on certain days or during daylight hours could land you there as well.
Continue Reading
Cupcakes and Bees
This will be a bit of a all-over-the-place kinda post. There will be some legal talk about beekeeping, sinful baking, and some book review quickies.
First, I switched projects once again. As I got stuck writing Durwin’s story, I decided to work on something else instead. So now I’m working on a fun romp of a first draft I finished quite a while ago. Editing! Fun! Wow, I really love me some commas. And those over-complicated, never-ending, convoluted sentences! The draft is a mess, and after going through it a first time, I was ready to give up and move on. On the other hand, I had tons of fun rereading it. Which means:
