Surveillance and Selfies
We have a wired world that exhorts us to reveal ourselves. Of course, this didn’t start with the web. It was brewing since we said goodbye to our Victorian reserve. Early celebrity magazines like “Tattler” and “Hello” both served and punished those who featured in them; congratulating the rich and famous on their weddings, and […]
Knotted
I dream him in knotted clumps, caught in the tangle of puzzled occurrences. Wedged between the pages of books on how to just get through this one next moment. He has taken the one page I need in the phrasebook of a foreign tongue. He comes to me as a man in a hurry, a […]
Pork Satay With Peanut Dipping Sauce
This is another one of those posts that should probably go on another site, but in the interests of not being one-dimensional, here’s my recipe and guide for Pork Satay with Peanut Dipping Sauce. You can download it in PDF, ePub or Mobi (Kindle) format. Right-click to save to your desktop. PDF version ePub version […]
Extremist Sites and Rape Porn: Fear and Disgust and our Mindless Reactions
Mr Cameron is targeting websites which show videos and images of rape – whether they claim they are ‘simulated’ or not. The prime minister has previously attacked websites which show the material, saying: ‘These images normalise sexual violence against women – and they are quite simply poisonous to the young people who see them.’ (“Rape […]
Make Better: Critical Writing Friends and Process
I am very fortunate to have two excellent supervisors for my PhD. My primary supervisor oversees my theoretical and critical work, my secondary supervisor acts in the spirit of a critical friend. She reads the work I’m producing for the creative part of the PhD, and gives me very good, very deep critiques. I thought […]
Say it ain’t so: when reality doesn’t accord with our beliefs
I’ve spent a lot of this week collecting references for some papers I’d like to write. One attempts to challenge the very pervasive belief that being aroused by fiction sexually, emotionally, sentimentally or fearfully is somehow fundamentally negative – that it impairs our judgement completely and renders us quivering idiots (no, that’s not quite how […]
Pleasure’s Apprentice
Above the venerable silver shop in the Burlington Arcade, he taught her the uses of pleasure. Not the nervous-handed, spring-loaded fumblings of teenaged lust, or the ego-abraded outcomes of young love. Mr. Pierce offered Rebecca schooling in something quite different. After quitting an English degree halfway through the first semester, alienated by the prospect of […]
Stone, Memory and Want
There is a specific jouissance to being denied what you need. An ecstasy to it that comes to define you. It describes you as a potential, as a flawed thing, undeserving of the thing you want – for now, incomplete – for now. The horror of having desire satisfied never has to be faced. That’s […]
Silken Tofu with Ginger Syrup
Yes, this has nothing to do with erotic fiction. But you know, I do other stuff too. I wrote up this recipe for a friend. It’s downloadable in PDF or Kindle version. Silken Tofu with Ginger Syrup PDF document Epub document Kindle document
Sound and Fury
That first three months had been months of silence. Not a lack of noise. The noise was ceaseless. Voices in a language she didn’t know, with its astonishing range of tonality. The dips and rises and cutting off of breath that indicated, not emotion, but meaning itself. Then there were the mechanical sounds. It was […]