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KD Grace

A Quickie Before Midnight

by | December 30, 2016 | | 2 Comments

K D Grace


As 2016 draws to a close, I’ve been struggling, as I do at the end of every year, to think of the best way to put the old year to rest and see the new one in. While I don’t do New Years resolutions, I do tend to be a little heavy on the end of the year

navel gaze. But how many ways can you say, new beginnings, start over, bigger and better than ever, hope, happiness, reflection, blah, blah, blah? I’m not saying that the New Years navel gaze isn’t important, but I figure you really don’t need me to navel gaze for you when I can safely guess most of you will be doing your own version, as will I. 

Soooo! This year I decided to be silly, filthy and irreverent and write a really bad poem just for you lot. I wish you all a quickie before midnight, because, honestly, I can’t think of a better way to see the old year out and the new year in.

  

A Quickie Before Midnight 

Five minutes before midnight

You whispered in my ear,

We’ve time for one last fuck, 

What do you say, my dear?

We’ll see the old year out in style

And melt the winter ice

Cuz, Gawd, your tits are lovely 

And your bottom is so nice.

I know it’s just a quickie, 

But it would be so hot

To spend the last few minutes

Cock-deep inside your twat, 

So let me give you rug burns

Let me make you squeal, 

Nothing I can think of 

Could offer more appeal

Giving you a quickie 

To the tune of Alde Lang Syne

I have to be quite honest,

Is a fantasy of mine.

We’ll shove and hump the old year

And when it’s gone away,

We’ll greet the New Year coming

So, dear, what do you say?

Wishing you all the very best in 2017!

Good-bye NaNoWriMo 2016! I Knew You Well

by | November 30, 2016 | | 2 Comments

K D Grace

Well, today’s it, folks! The final day of NaNoWriMo 2016, and it’s been a good one. I’ve loved every minute of it. For those of you who just stepped outside your caves for the first time in awhile, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, the object being – you guessed it – writing an entire novel in one month. I’m an enthusiastic  participant every year that I can manage it. It’s a chance take risks, to write something wild and reckless. It’s the opportunity to take on something I’ve always wanted to tackle but have either lacked the time or the courage.  And it’s not just a dabble, it’s a whole glorious month of taking something risqué out of the writing ideas box and trying it on not just to see how it fits, but how it feels to live with it, intensely live with it, for a whole month. And intense is probably the best word I can find to describe the experience. 

Now that I’m looking back warmly at NaNoWriMo 2016 after trying my hand at science fiction for the first time, what I’m about to share with you may be bordering on TMI, but it certainly won’t come as much of a surprise to most writers. Creativity is a real turn-on. When I’m writing, when I’m in the zone and everything is really flowing, the experience is the hottest thing next to sex that I know. It’s the kind of endorphin rush I’ve had when I’m scrambling up a steep fell or when I’m discovering some exotic place for the first time. And yes, at times those most creative moments are like the best foreplay ever. 

Since I started writing romance and erotic romance, my tagline has always been that Freud was right. It really IS all about sex. I believe that more and more the longer I write. Our sexuality infuses every other area of our life, and in no place is it manifest more powerfully than in our creativity. To spend the entire month of November hole up with a new novel, a novel that’s a total stranger when I pen those first words, is intimidating. But it’s also incredibly arousing in a creative sort of way. I think of it as a writer’s version of Nine ½ Weekscrammed into thirty days, with a chance to get to know a total stranger – one I’m in the process of creating — inside out. Yup! Intense.

For me, NaNoWriMo is about taking risks in a safe container. I know it will last only a month. That’s all! And then the rest of the world floods back in. I’ve always thought of November as a particularly short month. To me it always seems even shorter than February. Maybe that’s because it’s the last chance to breathe before the holiday season hits like a battering

ram and there’s no slowing until January. All I know is that if I’m doing NaNoWriMo, I love, love, LOVE November! If I’m not doing NaNoWriMo, I hate, hate HATE November. In the UK, it’s cold, it’s bleak, it’s wet and windy, and the days are short and dark. Even worse, once November blows in at gale force, I know with that sense of cold deep in my bones that summer is over, and even Indian Summer has had its last painful gasps. BUT absolutely none of that matters when November is my container, and I’m writing furiously.

Oh, and it’s gone by so quickly! Here I’m waving good-bye on the platform with a satisfied smile. I’m a better writer for allowing myself to be so completely seduced by the act of writing a novel in only a month. It might be just thirty days, but what a difference a month makes. 

Oh, and yes, thank you! I did write my science fiction novel – all 95K of Piloting Fury. And yes, it was most definitely good for me.

Demons and Vampires and other Scary Stuff

by | October 30, 2016 | | 2 Comments

K D Grace

‘Tis the season again! Time for scary stuff.

At the moment I’m up to my eyeballs finishing up the final chapters of Blind-sided, the second of my Medusa’s Consortium novels. Almost as scary as the demons and monsters is the fact that I need it finished by the end of this month. GAK! 

The truth is, I’m lost in the writing and enjoying it way more than I could have ever imagined I would have a few years ago. I’m the one who never thought I’d write vampires. In fact, I balked at writing paranormal in general until I realized that paranormal is the perfect place to explore the darker side of the erotic without all the rules and regulations that restrict contemporary erotic fiction. There are several aspects that particularly attract me. 

The first and the most obvious is that no one insists on vampires and shifters and other scary dudes wearing condoms. It’s pretty much a given that there is nothing safe about fucking a vampire or a werewolf, and if the whole idea doesn’t scare the reader as much as it turns her on, then it’s not proper paranormal, is it?

And that brings me to the second reason I love to read and write paranormal — the very close relationship between fear and arousal. The iconic sex scene between the young and beautiful couple in a horror movie is always followed by the ghoul, serial killer or other baddie feasting on the lovers in a horrible way. I suggest that a part of what is so arousing about paranormal sex is the breaking of so many taboos, the attraction to something that the world says should horrify us. And it is horrifying – of course it is, and yet we Just. Can’t. Resist!

The rules of what is forbidden by most publishers don’t apply to paranormal erotica. Some of the most erotic scenes I’ve ever read are of vampire taking blood from or giving blood to their lovers. Blood is the river of life. It contains the magic of who we are as individuals, and yet we don’t have to lose a whole lot if it until we die. That it’s all contained in such a fragile sensitive reservoir as the human body only amplifies its preciousness and its power.

The final fascination for me is that the erotic paranormal is the perfect place to explore dubious consent and loss of

control. When dealing with vampires, demons, witches and magic, is consent ever less than dubious? And is there any other place to explore safely that total loss of self control, that giving oneself over to the forbidden?

The truth is that while we might be happy to dabble in the darker side of our sexuality, on a fundamental level, the very act of sex is frightening. It is the losing of self in the other, the opening to the unknown. It is the allowing ourselves to be more vulnerable than we are in any other act. It is the giving up of control. All of these elements are, by nature, a part of sex — sex that carries at its core both the possibility of conception and of death.

That all we fear and all we desire in sex can be raise to the nth degree when placed in a paranormal setting and examined from the intimately terrifying safety of a book is a vicarious experience that allows us to explore the darker side of our desires, of our humanity. I would suggest that there are few better ways to explore our humanity than taking an erotic journey with the monsters, who are more like us that we can easily admit.

Skipping the Sex

by | September 30, 2016 | | 3 Comments

K D Grace

I recently found myself skipping over a sex scene in a novel I was thoroughly enjoying. It’s not the first time that’s happened. This particular novel was a fast-paced paranormal story that was original and gripping. There was nothing wrong with the sex scene. Like the rest of the novel, it was well-written and pacey. It was just in the wrong place. It stopped the action in it’s tracks until the couple had their romp – which satisfied them a helluva lot more than it satisfied me. I just wanted to know what happened next. I guess you could say I just wasn’t in the mood.

Because the book was really good and action packed, enjoyable in every other way right down to the last word, I found myself thinking about misplaced sex scenes and story-interuptus. I did a mental inventory of the novels I could recall in which I’ve skipped over sex scenes, then I analyzed the reasons why I’d done it. Interestingly enough, I found that it seldom had to do with the fact that the sex scene was poorly written. Though I’ve read plenty of novels in which the writing of sex scenes was less than stellar, those weren’t the scenes I skipped. In those cases, I usually overlooked the flaws and just got on with it. I reckon writing sex well is a learned process and I can forgive awkwardly written sex in a pacey story that keeps me turning the pages. If the pacing is good, then the sex will not be there without a purpose.Sometimes even poorly written sex still contains an element essential to the story being told. 

 As I analyzed what I’ve read and what I’ve skipped, I found two main situations in which I skip sex scenes entirely because I know it’s a waste of my time. The first situation is when the writer interrupts the action for sex. When I began writing erotic novels, the standard rule of thumb was that there should be a sex scene every two thousand words. Seriously! So I spent a good deal of time scrambling trying to figure how a sex scene could be inserted that would move the story forward and not stall the plot. I didn’t always succeed. Thankfully more literary heads prevailed and now the tale being told determines the where and when of sex, just like it does with all other action in a story. Like any other action a writer uses in fiction, there needs to be a reason for sex. Like all other actions, sex should move the story forward, ratchet up the plot, or reveal something new about the characters.

The second situation in which I skip over sex scenes, and the one that irritates me far more, is when the writer has

substituted sex for action.  I know, I know! I just said sex should be the action that moves the plot. But when it’s not, when it does nothing but fill space where action is sorely needed, then I have a problem with that.  Sadly I see a lot of examples of sex being used to resolve a situation, and while I don’t necessarily believe everything has to be resolved for a story to reach a satisfactory conclusion, I also am not romantic enough to believe that a good romp in the hay will lead to

all problems solved, love everlasting and catapult us all to a HEA with hearts and flowers and fluffy bunnies. In erotica, sex can most definitely be the pay-off the reader is waiting for, but in romance isn’t a substitute for resolution. 

The thing that I love about sex in fiction is that it’s one of the best movers and shapers of story and certainly one of the most powerful driving forces in epic archetypal tales. It often launches the journey from which there is no return, it introduces chaos for which there is no easy solution and it reveals the heart and soul of a character, flaws, neuroses and all. How can you not love that? That it should ever be skipped over is a sad indication of its misuse – even for this jaded writer. I want it to count. I want it to change things, and I most definitely need it to do more than make me squirm in my knickers.

The Story that has to be Written

by | August 30, 2016 | | 2 Comments

by K D Grace

I believe at some point every writer finds herself in the throes of the story that has to be written. I think erotica writers might find themselves there even more often than other writers because we’re often intrigued with the taboo, with the transgressive, with the unthinkable ‘what ifs’ that are a part of the dark unconscious. 

I think it’s a part of the calling of the storyteller — that need to delve a little deeper, that need to see what’s really going on beneath the surface of the fairy tale, the myth, the urban legend. We seldom find sweetness and light hidden deep in the human psyche. Every demon, every monster, every nightmare, every dark fantasy that we won’t even allow ourselves to look at in the light of day is hidden there. I can’t even think about what’s behind that closed door separating acceptable story fodder from the darkness and not shiver.  

I had an experience once, while writing a story of that dark nature, or rather rewriting it, that reminds me of just how powerful that dark place can be. I was alone in the house, my husband was away on business. It was late — long after midnight, and I was in the zone. There had been wine, there had been coffee, lots of coffee, and there had been fabulous uninterrupted writing. I had just rewritten a stimulating chapter that I was very pleased with, and I was all poised to begin the next, when I realized what that next chapter was. It was easily one of the darkest passages I’d ever written, straight from the depths of my less than pristine, less than sane unconscious. It frightened me when I wrote it. There was no way I could face it alone in the middle of the night and sleep afterwards. I downed tools and picked up the romance novel I was reading, a novel full of – you guessed it, sweetness and light. Truth is I needed some hearts and flowers just to lull myself to sleep, safely away from my monsters and the nightmares they bring. It was clean, it was safe, it was happy, and it allowed me to shut the door on the darkness until morning.

My point is that we, as writers, have the ability to bring those places deep in ourselves into the light. If we’re brave, we delve beneath the sweetness and the typical HEA and we meet ourselves in our darkest places. If we’re really brave, we write down what we find there, we shape it into a story because it’s a little easier to deal with that way, to experiment with, to study and to try and understand. And then, if we’re exceptionally fearless, we put it out there for the world to see. To the writer, it’s being naked in the worst sort of way. It’s vulnerability that any non-writer would never understand. But quite often to the reader, it’s a look into the mirror at the parts of herself she may never have been bold enough to examine before. 

I’ve been in both places. I’ve read stories through the haze of my own squeamishness, though my own anger and shame only to meet myself on the other side, and I’ve gutted it up with fear and trembling and told the tale that exposes self and mirrors it back to others. There’s no glam of the writing life in that, no swashbuckling, no billionaires, none of the Cinderella make-overs of a sunshine and cupcakes HEA. Instead, here be monsters, and they are not nice monsters. 

But if we can get beyond the need to make it all better, the need to wrap it all up in satin and tie it with a bow, if we can get to the blood and guts of what’s there at the center of the human experience, we might just find that our commonality has as much to do, even more to do, with the guilt and the shame and the hidden desires of the monsters beneath than it does with sweetness and light. We live in denial, and to a certain degree, I don’t believe we have much choice if we want to stay sane. But there are varying degrees of denial, and denying and defying that denial from time to time makes me feel a little more real, a little more human, and sharing it makes me feel a little less alone with my monsters.

What I Reveal

by | July 30, 2016 | | 2 Comments

By K D Grace

I sometimes wonder what to reveal — on social media, I mean. People run the gamut from just the odd photo they took on

holiday, maybe an inspiring or funny quote, to every detail of every meal; every pet peeve, or gripe or maon, and every ache, pain and injury of every family member — complete with graphic piccies from the hospital. Then there are politics and religion – two places I refuse to go, because they seem inappropriate for me to discuss when I’m approaching the world of social media as K D rather than Kathy. I openly admit to scratching my head on occasion and wondering why someone felt something was significant enough share. Then there are definitely times when I get a bit queasy at major TMIs. It feels like we’re living with no boundaries and no secrets, and that we’re all performers and entertainers in the world’s largest, 24/7 reality show.

I’m aware of just how true that is when I find myself thinking, ‘oh, I need to post this on Face Book,’ or ‘that would make a good tweet,’ or ‘I wonder if I should blog about this.’ I freely admit to posting way too many shots of veggies from my garden and the odd injury pic from the gym. Guilty as charged. Then there are times when I’ve been pulled into the world of social media with the end result being so much fun and so much healthy connecting with fascinating people, that I’ll be the first to admit I wouldn’t want to live without it. I’ve made lifelong friends through social media, I’ve learned new stuff, experienced new things. But then there are other times when the introvert in me just doesn’t want to engage. 

While I’ve never kept my real life separate from my writing life, and I’ve never really cared who knows my real name, I chose a pseudonym because I’m a fairly private person, and while KDG and Kathy are the same person in a lot of ways, their lives are not. Kathy has a private life, a life she doesn’t share on social media. Granted the boundaries between the two are permeable, but there are boundaries nonetheless — boundaries I need. I need space that belongs only to me, and I needed that long before I ever became involved in social media. 

There are things about me that even Mr. Grace doesn’t know, just as there are things about him I don’t know. It’s not about keeping secrets so much as it is about “keeping Self.” There’s an inner space that belongs to me and no one else. No one is invited in – ever, simply because it’s mine. I’ve met people with whom that doesn’t seem to be the case, and I wonder how they survive without an inner fortress where they can go and regroup. I’m sure I’m showing my total introvertedness when I say that. Those people probably wonder how I can survive without being more open and more social.

The thing is that writers expose themselves in ways no one else does just by the nature of what we do, and it doesn’t matter if we write the filthiest erotica or the sweetest children’s story. I know that Freud would say “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” but I don’t believe for one minute that a story is ever just a story. There’s too much of the writer in those words, too much Self, even if it’s very well disguised. For me that means that every time I write something new and put it out there for someone to read, I’m opening the trench coat to expose the nakedness beneath. I’m never more vulnerable than when I send my stories out into the world. There are no pictures of wounds or bruises or scabs on Face Book that can compare to the soft, squishy, sometimes icky, parts of my inner workings and how they sometimes display themselves on the written page. The truth is that for a story to be good, there has to be blood on that page, and

sometimes guts and bone and marrow as well.  On my good days as a writer, it’s all there, and I’m so far outside my comfort zone that it terrifies me to even think of sending my words out into the world, even though I know that’s exactly the place where the writing is the most powerful – outside my comfort zone, where the blood and guts are. On the bad days, I’m just too shy, too cowardly, too lazy and just not up to another plastering of my own innards into the work in progress for the world to see. 

That being said, it becomes a very delicate dance to balance just how much of myself I’m willing to expose on social media after exposing so much on the pages of my stories. Sometimes I only want to hide a way and do little more than the minimal checking in to see if there’s anything I need to promote or anything I need to know. Other times I want to join in the big social media cocktail party of food and photos of pets and holidays, of links to interesting sites and good conversation. I want to join in for the empathizing and sympathizing and cheering people on and being cheered on. How much I’m willing to reveal is a crap shoot that all depends on how vulnerable I’m feeling and how much I’ve already bled on the page. 

Exposure

by | June 30, 2016 | | 2 Comments

K D Grace

Today I’d like to talk about how exposed we
writers are every time we put pen to paper, or fingers to

keyboard. Once a
writer friend, who doesn’t write erotica or romance, ask if I would read her
work in progress. The woman is a fabulous writer, so for me it was no hardship.
I enjoyed the read so much that I had to remind myself I was supposed to be
‘being critical.’ Later, as we discussed the book, she surprised me by saying
how relieved she was that I had liked the love scenes. She had been concerned,
even paranoid, that perhaps they didn’t work. They did. Beautifully.

That got me thinking about just how
neurotic I am as a writer, about every piece of fiction I write. I’m not so
neurotic now about writing sex and romance, at least not as neurotic as I used
to be. Lots of writers, however, claim they can’t write sex well or they simply
don’t like to write it at all. That’s fair enough. I don’t like to write crime
investigation scenes. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do them well, so I don’t write
crime. But unfortunately this sex and romance -phobia often leads to dismissing
anything romantic or sexy as not worthy to be considered serious writing,
therefore not worth writing and certainly not worth reading.

Writing fiction to share with anyone less
indifferent than the cat is a bit like exposing oneself on High Street. As a
writer, I never feel more vulnerable than when I’m offering up a nice, fat
slice of my inner workings. And that’s exactly what happens when anyone
attempts fiction. No matter how unconscious it may be, it’s all about me, Me
MEEEE! It may not seem like me, I strive to make sure it doesn’t, and yet I’m
still there on every single page. I’m not the story I tell, and I’m not my
characters, but my unconscious is always there at the core, the driving force,
not only, for the tale but for my own creative process as well.

Since I write, knowing it’s all about me, my
neurotic little mind is racing, going wild, wondering just what conclusions
readers will draw as to just HOW it’s all about me? I expect people to be
bright enough to know that I’m not the secret agent, the lawyer, the prima
ballerina, the space ship captain. Yet, why is it that if I write one sex scene
peppered with a bit of romance, I suddenly fear everyone will believe K D
really DOES steal vegetables for lewd purposes, or that K D really IS a member
of some secret sex cult? And is that such a bad thing? People will believe what
they believe, and I would be a very rich author, indeed, if I had a dime for
every time someone has asked me, or my husband, if I actually did all the naughty things in my novels.
I’d be willing to bet no one ever asks that of Thomas Harris. But when the
fiction I write deals with the emotions that revolve around sex and love, I
feel more vulnerable, more exposed, somehow more flawed.

One of my favourite quotes on the topic
comes from a wonderful essay by Wallace Shaw on why he likes to write about
sex. He writes, “If I’m
unexpectedly reminded that my soul and body are capable of being totally swept
up in a pursuit and an activity that pigs, flies, wolves, lions and tigers also
engage in, my normal picture of myself is violently disrupted. In other words,
consciously, I’m aware that I’m a product of evolution, and I’m part of nature.
But my unconscious mind is still partially wandering in the early 19th century
and doesn’t know these things yet.”

Writing sex and
romance is that unexpected reminder that we can be swept away in our animal
passions just like all the rest of the animal kingdom. That implies a loss of
control, an unfitness for civilized society. Banishment from the social group
is an age-old punishment for what is considered improper behaviour in the tribe.
Though we may no longer be sent into the wilderness to fend for ourselves with
only a rusty knife, the archetypal fear of being ostracized still remains and,
along with it, the neurotic idea that surely we must have something to feel
guilty about. I suppose we might

chalk that up to two thousand plus years of
introctrination on original sin.

A writing teacher told me once that the
best stories, the ones with the most power to grip, are those that come from
the place inside us that makes us the most uncomfortable. Nothing any teacher
ever told me has stuck with me so powerfully, nor served me so well. The place
that embarrasses us, that frightens us, the place where we have the least
control, that’s the places where story begins. It’s the place where our
characters come alive, the place where their love and sex and violence and fear
and celebration compel the people to whom we’ve exposed ourselves  — our readers — to keep reading to the end.
And, hopefully, if we’ve exposed just the right bits, those readers will
eagerly come back for more.

The Demon Lover

by | May 30, 2016 | | 1 Comment

K D Grace 

Who doesn’t long for the touch of a stranger, the touch of someone who is too damn sexy to be real while at the same time, too damn terrifying to really let in? I’ve always had fantasies of that sexy someone whose name I never know, the ghost, the demon the preternatural being who’s both terrifying and totally compelling. I know my fantasies are common ones, possibly even archetypal. What woman doesn’t have a secret longing for that deliciously dangerous negative animus?

I think one of the reasons these fantasies are so powerful is that they stem in part from our childhood speculations of what it’ll be like the first time we have a real lover, the first time we really have sex. We fear it and yet we long for it. I remember back in my days of fantasising, back before I’d ever even been kissed, I was as terrified by what I’d heard happens between men and  women as I was intrigued by it, as I was drawn to it. Therefore my lovers always lived in my imagination and, in my fantasies, there was only a certain point to which they could take me before I became too frightened and too uncertain to fantasize about what happened next. In other words my power as an innocent, as a child, was to keep my demon lovers at bay. As long as I was innocent, as long as I was afraid to truly let them in, they I couldn’t really be touched by them. They needed to be invited, just like the vampire in the traditional tales. They needed me to offer myself unconditionally to them. They could tempt me, but they couldn’t hurt me – not really. 

It was only when I truly began to understand the way it is between men and women, it was only when I reached the point of overcoming my fears enough to take the fantasies to the next level that the demon lovers truly took shape on my head, that they began to whisper what deliciously nasty, unspeakable things they would do to me. Of course that came hand in hand with my first masturbation experiences, with my first discoveries of just how overpowering my body could be when I let it have free rein, when I was willing to let go of my inhibitions – at least a little bit.

There are still things I fear to do in the real world that I am happy to invite my demon lover in to do to me or even to allow me to do to him … or her. I can’t help but wonder if that demon lover, that fantasy lover who can take us places we would never go in reality, is the inspiration from which erotica writers write. My most powerful experiences have come with the discovery of what my body is capable of doing when I’m willing to let go. My darkest fantasies, the ones I would never share in the real world, even in my own erotica, are the fantasies dominated by my demon lover, the fantasies of the dark places that aren’t safe to tread. The demon as fantasy lover holds central place in paranormal erotica and paranormal romance. I think – whether that demon is a vampire or a werewolf, whether that demon is a billionaire or an incubus, his power is that the rules don’t apply to him.His power is that he can take us to the darkness at our center and bring us back safely … if he chooses to. And in that place where our fate is truly out of our hands, the erotic and the horrific are separated only by a breath of consent.

Travel and Creativity: That Place in Between

by | April 30, 2016 | | 1 Comment

K D Grace

As I write this, I’m on my annual pilgrimage to Oregon to visit my sister. That will explain why I’d like to talk about the altered state of travel. I want to talk especially about that place in between, that place that’s really neither here nor there, that place in which we’re either anticipating our arrival or reflecting on where we’ve been. Sometimes it’s a place of longing; sometimes it’s a place of dread. This trip has been a mixture of both, with me anticipating some serious Girl Time with my sister, but ending up in the Twilight Zone at Seattle International airport. Because of a landing fluke, eleven international flights landed almost on top of each other. That meant standing cheek to jowl with eleven flights worth of sweaty, under slept, irritable humanity outside the immigration hall for ages waiting for Sea Tac to catch up. Inside the hall, there were endless queues followed by an avalanche of luggage from all eleven flights in the baggage hall. Thankfully my bag was bright magenta or I might have been still searching for it. It was a manic roiling no-man’s land of harried airport employees, cranky children and surly adults. We were nowhere, moving at a snails pace through piles of baggage and more cranky, sweaty bodies. It really was like entering another dimension. After wondering if I’d ever get free, I was spewed out in a queue in front of a desk with one lone ticketing agent to re-ticket everyone who had missed connections. Obviously I’m at my sister’s no worse for the wear and with a tale to tell — even with a story inspired by the experience. The Strange Encounter with Mr. Sands is free on my blog. 

By simply being ‘out of place’ in some place other than our own, we enter that space in between, and we can actually dwell there for a little while; my experience at Sea Tac is proof of that. Liminal spaces, the cross roads – even crossroads in the air, and certainly in the airports, are places where magical things happen, and with the advent of transcontinental air travel, that’s never been more true because you can add to it the muzzy-headed restless, spaced-out, anything goes time of jetlag at the beginning and the end of the journey.  

In contrast to my sojourn in Seattle Airport, I was groped once in a bus on the long journey between a remote village on

the Austrian boarder and Zagreb, Croatia. I had spent the weekend celebrating with friends, so I was already under-slept with a head full of cotton wool. I’d been dozing with my head resting against the window when it happened. At the risk of TMI, the motion of a slightly worse for the wear bus, the growl of the engine and the vibrations of the seats always made me horny, so when, from the seat behind me, a hand snaked up along the armrest between the window and my seat, Iwas already enjoying the ride. Still, I should have been horrified, I should have been upset – I did pretend to be … Eventually. But at first, as the anonymous hand not only groped my breast, but began to fondle, I pretended to be asleep, and for a time, to be unaware of the man’s actions — and it was a man. I caught a glimpse of him as he left the bus a few villages before Zagreb. He was literally tall dark and handsome, and for a moment, he turned and looked defiantly back at me as he exited the bus, and I boldly returned that look. 

Oh nothing happened. After awhile, I felt guilty that I should be allowing, and even enjoying, such a thing and shifted in my seat until I was out of his reach. However I can’t count the number of times I’ve revisited that brief encounter and enhanced it and enjoyed it; fantasied about it, even written about it, or how many times I’ve wondered what would have happened if I’d just let things play out to the end.

The thing that always strikes me about that experience, both experiences, actually, is that they happened neither here nor there. They happened in that liminal space where we all are when we travel, when we can expect anything to happen, and we’re much more open to the experiences when they do. The night before I flew, as I lay unable to sleep anticipating the flight ahead, I found myself thinking of those liminal encounters and how they always stick with me long after the event.

The fantasies, the observations, the crazy ideas that happen in my head, the completely altered state of mind, I find myself in during those in-transit times and the post flight times of jet lag are the stuff stories are made of. In fact, some of the scenes and stories that have been the most fun to write involved some sort of travel, involved that liminal space of being neither here nor there, that space in which anything can happen.

In myths and fairy tales, the crossroads are often the place of strong magic, the place where not only the roads diverge, but often whole worlds diverge and we end up … different. That’s true of journeys in general. We may have our holiday and our travel all planed out, but we’re out of our own time, out of our own comfort zone, and that means we’re not completely in control.

he other side of the power of travel is that when we’re in that liminal space, no one knows who we are, we can be anyone we want to be, we can recreate ourselves, and no one will be the wiser. We can tuck our identity away in our suitcase with our toothbrush and our clean underwear. Wherever we are that isn’t home, we become the mysterious, the unknown element in a situation that’s familiar to everyone but us. In the act of so exposing ourselves to the unknown, we’re acted upon even as we change the unknown simply by being there.

The stranger along the way is a powerful archetype, and the story evolves from how we treat that stranger and how he treats us. Even without a grope on a vibrating bus, the act of travel is sexual, it’s penetrating, sometimes impregnating and we can’t help but be a little more open, a little more … easily aroused by the fact that anything can happen in that space in between. As writers, as readers, that’s got to excite us.

Some Things I’ve Learned the Hard Way

by | March 30, 2016 | | 12 Comments

K D Grace

I’ve put off writing this post for a long time because I didn’t want it to sound like sour grapes. I wanted it to be observations of one writer’s journey, and I wanted it to be something positive, something I hope will be helpful to other writers, writers with less experience than I’ve had. I couldn’t write it with a bitter taste in my mouth. I had to wait until I could write it from a place of not feeling hard-done-by, a place of having no regrets, and a place of looking forward to what comes next in my writing journey.

There are hard lessons I’ve learned through my years as a novelist that I was told early on, back before I had anything published, back when I had stars in my eyes of making the NYT Best Seller list, of making that bank breaking publishing deal. Every published writer that I ever met in person, heard speak, or saw at a conference, tried to say to the whole audience of starry-eyed newbies — some gently; some not so much — that if you don’t do it for the love of writing, for the love of story, then best quit now. Writing novels is not the way to get rich quick, and it’s most definitely not for the faint of heart. 

I can only speak from my own experience, but I’d be willing to bet that every one of us went away from those author encounters as sure as we were of our own name that we would be the exception to the rule, that we would be the one to sign the big book deal. 

There’s no gentle way to say it, so usually I just don’t say it at all. I didn’t believe it, and I doubt any other novice writer in the history of writing ever believes it either. I would never discourage anyone. I would never want anyone to miss out on the passion, the ritual, the incredible connection I feel to the written word, to story, BUT there are a few hard lessons I’ve learned that I’d like to share, and before I do, I would like to add a disclaimer. 

DISCLAIMER: Write! Don’t ever stop writing! Do it for love! Do it for passion! Do it for sheer unadulterated pleasure! Do it for the agony and the pain and the journey! BUT try to do the impossible and write from a place of no expectations beyond that of the journey. The journey is SO worth it! I wouldn’t have missed out on any of it! 

Hard Lesson One: Publishing is a business. The industry does not, cannot, love me no matter how fabulous my writing is, no matter what a really great person I may be. It moves with the business trends, it moves with the money. Why should I expect it to be otherwise? It’s never anything personal, and yet we writers tend to view it that way because … well I don’t know about you lot, but I’m certainly a special snowflake. 

Hard Lesson Two: Get a F*cking Life! This lesson nearly killed me. I work for myself; that means I have no set hours; I have no agenda. I have no children, so no one is making demands on my time, and my husband travels a lot. I believed that the more time I spent writing, promoting, doing what all good novelists in the age of social media are supposed to do, the more the industry would realize what a special snowflake I really am and the more it would love me and THEN I’d get the big deal. 

Health wrecked, seriously OD-ing on sour grapes, and finding myself on the disappointing side of the 50SoG phenomenon with a gazillion other writers, I remembered all the things I USED to do before I began obsessively chasing the elusive big deal that was always out there just beyond my reach. I went back to the gym, I started walking again. I spent more time doing things totally unrelated to writing. I found that the less obsessive I became, the better my writing got and the more I was able to open my fist and let go of that white-knuckled effort to control. The more I began to enjoy my writing again, the less it mattered that the publishing industry didn’t love me.

Life is short, and writing is a long journey. If I’m in it for the long haul, then I need a life, a real life. I need real experiences, experiences that inspire, that tease, that ache and hurt and innervate. I have to find the place at the center because that’s really the place from which I write anyway. And the surprising truth is that sometimes I’m closest to the most powerful writing when I’m farthest away from my keyboard.

Hard Lesson Three: Learn to Let Go. The hard truth is that, to a large degree, that elusive publishing deal, ANY publishing deal depends on luck — a name-dropping at the right time, catching the eye of the right editor or agent, someone who loves what you wrote. Sadly, it isn’t about being so brilliant that the world recognizes my total genius. It’s less about quality and more about circumstances – what’s selling in the market at the time. If my work fits in with the trends, I might get lucky. 


Having said all of that, hope springs eternal. Letting go just a little bit means I’m able to see things more clearly and the Muse is able to beat it into my thick skull that it’s time to be adventurous again, it’s time to play with words again. It’s

been a terrifying delight this past year to write stories that have been in my heart for a long time, but I’ve not had time, nor courage, to write – terrifying in that I don’t know if I can sell them, delightful in that I feel like I’ve come home after being gone a long time. Oh it’s not a total change. I’m still writing erotica, still loving it, but I’m doing it from a much more relaxed place.

Today I spent three glorious hours “walking a novel.” It’s all plotted and in my head now. I’ll start the actual writing in a couple of days, when my decks are clear. I can’t wait!  I have no idea what will happen next, but what I do know is that the hard lessons are worth learning as quickly as possible because what’s beyond them is WAAAY too exciting to miss out on. 

Hot Chilli Erotica

Hot Chilli Erotica

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