Evil Ginger Cake
I’m a bit busy editing at the moment, so I thought I’d post a recipe instead. To say that this is probably unlike any cake you’ve ever tasted before is as much of a warning as it is a boast. More spicy than sweet, it’s a quintessentially adult dessert. Children are likely to hate it. […]
In Honour of #BipolarAwarenessDay : Revisiting the Grave Cave
One of the things that I think very few of my readers know about me is that I am bipolar. I’ve hesitated to say anything about it because I’ve always feared that if people knew, they would simply discount anything I had to say. So, why have I decided to be public about it? Well, […]
Perfect Abs and Emo Too: Bared To You Reviewed
I decided to read Bared To You because it was sold as a well-written version of Fifty Shades of Grey. And I thought: hey, maybe the optimists were right! Maybe FSOG was a flawed but timely incursion of erotic fiction into mainstream literature. To give credit where credit is due, Sylvia Day is not E.L. […]
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 […]
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 […]