Arousal and Intellect: My Model Reader
A long time ago, I read a book by Umberto Eco called The Limits of Interpretation. But there is a shorter essay on his site that deals with some of the same issues called “The Author and his Interpreters” online. Eco, like many of his generation and those immediately preceding it, had given a lot […]
Literature vs Genre: Le Guin’s Hypothesis
I seldom just write a post to point to a blog post, but this is one of those times. Ursula K. Le Guin has haunted my bookshelf all my life. For one thing, she holds kick-ass opinions on writing sex in fiction. But today, she’s blogged about the Literature / Genre divide: Of course every […]
Girth vs Length: The Novella
In a recent discussion, @AislingWeaver recently brought up the issue of length when it comes to publishing. Not too long ago, Taylor Antrim wrote a very good article on the novella. And just last month, Joe Fassler wrote an article on the novella’s recent resurgence for the Atlantic. There’s a notable literary gulf between the […]
The Quitter
I sat on the cabin’s rickety porch, looked out at the rain coming down in sheets, and jonesed for a cigarette. Two days into my self-imposed detox exile, I was pretty confident that my third attempt to quit smoking was going to end in failure. Both previous attempts to quit had been played out in […]
On Fanfic: Do it Baby, One more time
I just had a really compelling conversation on twitter about fanfic. It all started when I found this tumblr post by the lovely Cecilia Ryan. For some reason, this part of the post enraged me: ladylovesgrimm: I do NOT like fanfic. Leave the story writing to the professionals on the shows. As someone who writes […]
The Art of Perversion & The Perversion of Art
A number of people have remarked on the fact that, although I write stories set in a lot of different places, there are more stories set in Japan or containing Japanese themes than on any other single culture. There are certainly a lot of stories set in Spain, where I grew up, and in London, […]
Suspense and the Happy Ending
If you’re an Erotic Romance reader, I would really like to talk to you. I’m interested in your experience of happy endings in erotic romance and how, even though you know that the story will end with the lovers getting together, you feel a level of suspense during your reading of the story. If you […]
What’s In A Name?
It has been a long time since I have considered my pen name. I started using it back in 1999 on a newsy sort of blog to keep in touch with family and friends when I moved to Southeast Asia. It started as a joke – a reference to a character in George Orwell’s ‘Burma […]
MR James – One of My Favourite Short Story Writers
Montague Rhodes James (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936), was a Medieval Scholar and provost at Cambridge. In his spare time, he wrote ghost stories. Although his prose wasn’t terribly poetic, I always thought his sense of place and character was. He was also just a wonderful structural story plotter. All his ghost stories tend […]
Disillusion: A Step-by-Step Guide to a Cure
I have removed this post. I got the sense people thought it was aimed at someone else, but it was me making fun of myself, actually. In any case, it had the unintended result of hurting someone’s feelings. So it goes. My apologies.