Entry Points: Ways into a Story

“A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene I’ve been thinking a lot recently about linearity and the different points of entry into a story. We experience time in a […]

Other Orifices: New Ways In to the Erotic Moment

When you first start writing erotic fiction, most of us come to it with years of imagery built up in our brains. Stories we’ve honed through multiple self-tellings, over and over, with our hands between our thighs. At first you may stall a few times, but then the courage comes and with it words flood […]

#Eroticon2013 – Monday’s hungover recollections of Sunday

For personal reasons that aren’t germane to this post, Sunday’s experience was quite different. All I can say regarding my state of mind is that watching Molly  (@MollysDailyKiss) getting flogged took me within mere milimeters of an orgasm, which is not usual for publicly reserved me. First up was the Anthologies Editors Panel with Maxim […]

#Eroticon2013 – Monday’s hungover recollections of Saturday’s sessions

I didn’t do my usual avalanche of tweeting during the Eroticon London 2013 conference, which goes some way to telling you just how absorbing it was. First and foremost, huge congratulations to Ruby Kiddell (@eroticnotebook) for her masterful organization of the event. It really was superbly done.  Also, a big congrats need to go to […]

The Unvarnished Truth of Current Reader Expectation

Here, publicly, is my response to Joan Defers ‘On “Dark Erotica” post. I posted it here because I’m so fed up to the teeth with the emergent relationship between readers and writers, I just couldn’t keep silent any longer. Please note that my comment was not a refutation of Joan’s post. It was simply a […]

Why I Won’t Crit Stories Privately Anymore

It seemed about time again to write a post on why I don’t agree to give people private critiques of their erotic writing. I’ll make this concise and in point form: 1. I used to. Then I realized that 90% of the requests came from people who wanted praise. Praise doesn’t help you improve your […]

The Beauty and the Beast Trope: Children’s stories for Child-like Minds

I just finished reading Gabriel’s Inferno, by Sylvain Reynard and gave it a rather scathing review on Goodreads. One of the reactions this solicited was the question of why the “Bella and Edward” trope is so popular at present. I’ve given this some thought.  The “Bella and Edward” trope is, essentially, a Beauty and the […]