Why Conversations Matter: Hermeneutic Phenomenology
I’ve been having a wonderful time having conversations with writers about their writing and the uses and effects of the ‘Happily Ever After’ convention. However, in some cases, it has been difficult to persuade people to speak to me via voice with Skype, or explain why a text chat or an email exchange won’t work. […]
Erotic Romance Writers: Your thoughts, please
If you read my blog fairly regularly, you’ll already know I’m working on a research project investigating the function of the HEA/HFN ending in erotic romance, not simply as a form of narrative closure, but examining if and how it plays other roles in how you construct, imagine, character build, etc. If you write erotic […]
Closure in Erotic Fiction
“The Happily Ever After, while often decried as one of the most limiting aspects of a romance novel, provides a secure anchor to the reader and allows a romance author considerable leeway in the sorts of conflict she can present, as long as she doesn’t cross a reader’s personal line in the sand, beyond which […]
Read My Lips on 4-Letter Words
I’m very chuffed to have been invited by Harley Moore to write a monthly column for 4-Letter Words, e-Book Eros‘ lively blogzine on erotic lit and its readers. My column is called ‘Read My Lips‘ and my post this month is on the myth that women aren’t visual, sexually. This month also features a fabulous […]
Graves’ Cool Web, Foucault’s Sexual Discourse and the Erotics of the Unnamed
” …But we have speech, to chill the angry day, And speech, to dull the rose’s cruel scent. We spell away the overhanging night, We spell away the soldiers and the fright. There’s a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear…” The Cool Web, Robert Graves […]
Foucault, Death and the Happily Ever After.
Thinking about the metanarrative possibilities of the Happily Ever After trope, it has occured to me, in re-reading Foucault’s “What is an Author?” that there is a kernel of something here to be explored. In examining the relationship between writing and death, Foucault gives us two examples: the hero in the Greek epic and case […]
Interrogating the Happily Ever After: research approaches
For those of you who are actually reading these posts on my ‘Happily Ever After’ exploration, I thank you for coming along for the ride and I do hope I’m not boring you to tears. One of my sneaky reasons for posting these blog posts is in the hope that I can encourage some of […]
Dentata
My dream teeth shred against my tongue like sodden fingernails I am my father’s daughter and I have his teeth secreted inside me Hard and cold as death these gumless, vicious ivories hidden and forgotten in a drawer that stinks of spilled perfume and moth’s wings. They have followed me abided with me, a swallowed […]
Words Made Flesh
Here is my hand cool word curled around the curvature of your neck. Here my lips soft, moist letters plumped with desire pressing, half parted against your cheek. And here my cunt abstracted, weeping signifier of need, along your upper thigh Lust spelled out with such desperation no differance can squeak through Between my words […]
Introductions and Thank-Yous
This is a post to introduce you to a few erotic fiction writers you may not have read yet. They all very generously talked to me on the subject of non-con in erotica and they are all writers I respect. Please take a look at Gillian Colbert’s site Catherine Leary’s site Kathleen Bradean’s site M. […]