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Jekyll and Hyde

by | December 21, 2019 | | 11 Comments

When I started in this business, more than twenty years ago, I wrote mostly literary erotica. Despite the sometimes extreme sexual situations in my tales, I tried for a sense of realism. My early novels spent a lot of time setting the scene and conveying atmosphere. They offered fairly complicated plots with a myriad of characters. In penning my short stories, I focused on original premises, character development and conflict. Given all the poetry I’d written before I started publishing prose, I guess it’s not surprising that I was very aware of linguistic choices, rhythm and prosody, connotations and allusions.

These days, I still write literary erotica – some of the time. I like to think that my Asian Adventures series, my speculative fiction (The Last Amanuensis, The Antidote) and my paranormal work (Underground, Fourth World) all offer some measure of “redeeming social value”.

Sometimes, though, I have the urge to write pure smut – stories where people get involved in all sorts of outrageous carnal activities, with only the most minimal motivation or conflict. My stroke stories make no pretense of realism. The male characters are capable of astounding numbers of erections. The multi-orgasmic females never get tired or sore. Nobody uses condoms. Nobody gets pregnant.

I offer only the faintest nod to social convention; it’s not at all unusual to find my characters getting it on with one another within five minutes of meeting. In public, even! Also, the people in my more pornographic works are incredibly open-minded, from a sexual perspective. They’re willing to try anything – partner swaps, multiple partners, same-sex encounters (both MM and FF), sex toys, spanking, dominance, submission, gang bangs, pegging, you name it. (Sometimes all in the same story!) To be honest, after writing inside the rigid box of traditional erotic romance, I love their experimental, gender-bending ways.

So I’ll spend a few weeks or months indulging myself, penning some absolutely filthy story that nobody could call “literary” (though I do try for readability and correct grammar). Then I start to feel embarrassed, even guilty. I’m pulled back to write something more traditional, something I wouldn’t be ashamed to show my real world friends (though most of them don’t know Lisabet Sarai exists).

Before long, though, I have get the itch again, the rampant, ungoverned Mr. Hyde of my imagination taking over, forcing the more refined and craft-conscious Dr. Jekyll into the shadows.

For instance, about a month ago, I decided I wanted to publish a holiday story for my fans, most of whom are romance readers. Cherry Pie and Mistletoe was the result, a sweet, hot, painfully realistic tale about the attraction between two sexagenarians.

No sooner had that book hit the virtual shelves, though, then Mr. Hyde reared his head. I got an idea for a stroke story entitled Santa, Baby!, about a nerdy young guy who’s hired by a dominant older woman to play Santa at a very naughty holiday party.

I hope to finish Santa, Baby! this weekend. (I’d better, because Christmas is next week!) But Mr. Hyde keeps pouring out the smut. The story’s already over 10K. I might not even announce it to my usual readers; they might find it too raw. That actually doesn’t seem to matter; my stroke fiction seems to sell much better than my more literary efforts.

Maybe after the book’s out, Mr. Hyde will fade back into the shadows.

But maybe not.

Meanwhile, this dual identity is a major marketing pain. I mean, what’s my brand? Exquisitely crafted, poetic prose that tugs at your emotions? Or wildly over-the-top fucking and sucking?

I’ve heard that readers like consistency. They want to know what to expect when they pick up a book from one of their favorite authors.

With me, you never know. Will it be Jekyll, or Hyde? I guess what I really need is to find the readers who enjoy both my alter-egos.

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Dirty Words: Body Parts & Body Fluids

by | December 16, 2019 | | 15 Comments

 

For authors who write dirty stories, making the sex scenes ‘sexy’ is surely our ultimate goal. It’s no use having a clever plot that brings together a gorgeous babe and a well-hung stud if the nitty-gritty of their coupling doesn’t arouse the reader. Nobody enjoys an anti-climax.

 

When I submitted a story to Storytime a few months back, one reviewer mentioned that I’d referred to body fluids more than was necessary, and it was their comment that gave me the idea for this post.

 

So, how much of the sticky details do readers want in a dirty story? And how should we refer to the parts and fluids of the body?

 

I don’t know the answer, and suspect there probably isn’t one that satisfies all readers. Some people will be happy with: ‘He slid inside me and held me close until our souls collided in mutual bliss’, while other readers want something along the lines of: ‘I felt his huge cock forcing its way in, stretching me like I’d never been stretched before. Once inside, he fucked me with abandon, shredding my cunt with his onslaught and flooding me with his jism.’

 

 

Authors have their own views on how much detail they give for the ‘ins and outs’, and also have their own preferred terms. For me, both are equally important.

 

As a reader, I like to know the sensations that the characters experience during sex—both physical and emotional. I also like to be told exactly what’s happening at the business end of their coupling, and so that’s what I try and put into the stories I write.

 

Terminology

While romance readers may prefer less explicit prose, I don’t think readers of erotica are offended when they come across words like ‘cock’ and ‘cunt’. They’re my go-to nouns for gentleman- and lady-tackle, though I do slip in the occasional ‘dick’ and ‘prick’ for variety.

 

 

I’m also fond of the word ‘minge’. I’m a British writer, so ‘pussy’ just doesn’t sit right on my tongue (heh), though as a reader I have no problem with it. In the UK, I think the most common slang term for the lady-parts is ‘fanny’, but that doesn’t translate well in the US (imagine my reaction whilst visiting Chicago when an American referred to my wife’s ‘fanny pack’).

 

I find anatomical names like penis and vagina in erotica to be mood killers, so I avoid those.

 

For male ejaculate, I use ‘cum’ or ‘jizz’, and occasionally the Brit-friendly ‘spunk’. Semen’s okay, but I think ‘seed’ and ‘sperm’ are more appropriate if possible fertilisation is the kink. Women have ‘juices’.

 

Every writer has their preferences and, for the most part, I’m happy to follow a story without getting too wound up on their choice of terms unless they’re something ridiculous, like ‘his love truncheon’ or ‘her scented love grotto’.

And I guarantee I’ll never use dialogue like, “Hey, Penelope. How’d you like to ride my purple pony to Pleasure Town?” or “Yo, Errol. Can I take that choo-choo of yours all the way to Orgasm Central?”

 

Another aspect of body parts is how much detail you go into when you describe them.

 

A couple of years ago, a guy wrote to me to say how much he’d enjoyed a cuckold story I’d written. I was actually in the middle of writing the sequel at the time, so when I replied to thank him, I offered him the chance to read what I’d written so far. He eagerly accepted and we swapped emails regarding the story until I’d finished it. One thing he suggested was that I had my hotwife mention the different smells and tastes of the bulls she experienced as she pulled back their foreskin. I confess that I didn’t follow his suggestion because I don’t find those details sexy. Where cocks are concerned, my description tends to be minimalist, leaving things to the reader’s imagination. At most, I might refer only to size, where the kink makes it relevant, or make the occasional mention of a curve one way or another. I don’t think I’ve ever specified whether or not there’s a foreskin. Where women are concerned, I tend not to go any more detailed than boob size, nipple shade and pubic hair appearance (or lack of).

 

Coupling

Physical descriptions of their relative positions are important because I like to visualise the scene. I also like to read the sensations of the POV characters, and the physical reactions and expressions of the non-POV characters.

 

As for the emotional side: Who cares?

 

Just kidding. What’s going on inside the characters’ heads is a big part of the sexiness. Much of what I read and write is in the wife-sharing genre, and these stories thrive on the characters’ feelings. Whether a husband is watching his wife with another man, or the hotwife’s experiencing her bull while her husband watches, their thoughts are just as sexy to me as the slippery pink parts.

 

Body Fluids

Returning to the opening question, do we actually need to mention them at all?

 

I suppose the answer is ‘no’: I’ve read some wonderful sex-scenes where the descriptions are super-erotic without any explicit mention of the body fluids produced. Then again, the nature of the kink in the story does create some reader expectations. If you’re writing a story about creampies, or the story involves a cuckold clean-up scene, then a focus on the fluids becomes mandatory.

 

The pace of a scene also dictates how much description you can get away with; while the choreography might be moving too fast to be thorough about including details like taste and texture, the physical appearance and placement of a well-aimed dollop can contribute a lot to a scene.

 

 

Some authors are really good at making the most basic of human instincts and actions sound sexy. Of many examples, one that still sticks in my mind (about a year and a half after I first read it) is a description from Belinda LaPage’s Group Therapy in the second ERWA anthology, Twisted Sheets:

 

‘He snugged his convulsing balls tightly between the woman’s labia, and with a groan and some long, arching heaves, he painted two, three, four coats of high-gloss white on her ceiling.’

 

I think this is fabulous; while neither explicit nor crude, this conjures up the image of him coming inside her in a unique and very sexy way.

 

For me, good erotica involves a detailed description of the sex scene. If the author can express the feelings, sensations and reactions of the characters in a sexy way, it makes the scene work. If they can also describe the physical ‘comings and goings’ in a way that’s implicitly erotic, then it elevates the scene into something much more arousing than a Readers’ Wives confession-type thing.

 

I guess I can’t let the subject of body fluids pass without the mention of condom-use in erotica. There are two sides to the argument: some readers dislike the characters who take unwarranted risks, and others say they read for escapism, not realism.

 

I’ve written stories where the characters use condoms and stories where they don’t. I’ve also used plots where condoms are discussed but then discarded because their use does not fit the kink (such as the taboo of a married hotwife taking a bull bareback). It comes down to the author’s preference for that particular story.

 

However much I argue for author’s personal choices, it does appear that there are some things which readers don’t want to see in any dirty story. When I was doing some research for this post, I looked at a few websites that list elements in ‘bad erotica’. Below is a short list, in no particular order, of things readers don’t like:

  • writers who refer to the phallus entering inside the cervix or the womb or uterus
  • writers who confuse “prostate” and “prostrate”
  • hands, feet and dicks which undermine the characters’ brains and do things all by themselves
  • bad choreography (forgetting critical things like height difference)
  • lengthy flashbacks about exes in the middle of a sex scene
  • terms such as ‘exploding nipples’ and ‘weeping vaginas’
  • the term ‘cock snot’

It’s a relief not to have committed all these writing crimes, though it’s a shame I have to go back to my WIP and remove every single reference made to my MC’s cock snot…

 

 

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RIP – Apostrophe Protection Society

by | December 6, 2019 | | 7 Comments

By Ashley Lister

Today I’m the bearer of sad news. The Apostrophe Protection Society has shut down with the bleak explanation that ‘ignorance has won’.

I was going to use this spot to talk about my new book, available in a little under two weeks, How to Write Short Stories and Get Them Published. It’s a fantastic little book that goes into the mechanics of writing short stories. The book is based on knowledge and experience I’ve accrued from fifteen years of teaching creative writing, and from twenty-five years of being a published author, and from the research I conducted whilst acquiring my PhD in creative writing. If you want to write short fiction, I want you to buy a copy of the book. Here’s a picture of it, if you’re curious.

But, rather than promoting my personal interests, because I know how important punctuation is to clarity of communication, I wanted to spend some time talking about punctuation and the closure of the Apostrophe Protection Society.

Punctuation is an essential aspect of the written word that lends clarity to communication. This is important because, during spoken communication, we can use a variety of prosodic features, such as pausing, increasing or decreasing the speed of our speech, making our voices louder to show anger, or finishing a sentence on a rising intonation to suggest a question. These nuances, which we take for granted with the spoken word, are difficult to replicate in written communication.

Take, for example, the old internet joke about punctuation being the difference between: ‘I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse’, and: ‘I helped my uncle jack off a horse’. Similar amusement is gleaned from the need for a comma in the sentence, ‘Let’s eat Grandma,’ or the oxford comma needed for the newspaper article which described the content of a programme as presenter Peter Ustinov having encounters, ‘with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.’

Punctuation provides the signposts readers need to understand the subtle inflections we take for granted on hearing the spoken word. Apostrophes are a very important aspect of that understanding. For example, if we take the unpunctuated sentence, ‘The boys books’, the reader doesn’t know if the books belong to a single boy or several of them. Admittedly, this is not the sort of world-changing sentence that will make everyone think, ‘We need more punctuation’, but it is the sort of sentence that might cause confusion and drag your reader out of the story you’re writing.

This is a link to the article on the closure of the Apostrophe Protection Society. I would disagree with the article’s conclusion that ‘ignorance has won’, even though the current political climate would suggest that ignorance is a way of life for many voters and their party leaders. Personally, I try to keep on top of apostrophe usage and will happily photograph and tweet offending examples, making sure the responsible companies have a chance to see that their errors have been noted.

But, I know, what I’m doing is a small contribution to a very large problem. Fortunately, there are a couple of pages discussing the need for appropriate punctuation in my forthcoming book: How to Write Short Stories and Get Them Published. Perhaps that might help.

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It’s Time To Give Thanks

by | November 28, 2019 | | 3 Comments

It’s Thanksgiving in the United States. This is the time of year Americans gorge on turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. It’s also the time of year we see family we haven’t seen in years or see seldom. While the Thanksgiving/Christmas season can be stressful, I don’t see it that way. What am I thankful for? Plenty!

  1. I don’t have to cook Thanksgiving dinner. My husband is a gourmet cook and he takes on the entire task. He makes the green bean casserole from scratch, including the cream of mushroom soup and crispy shallots that get mixed in with the dish. It’s much better than the Campbell’s version. He brines the turkey overnight and then roasts it Thanksgiving day. I preferred to buy a pumpkin pie so he’d have less work to do. My job is to stay out of his kitchen and keep him company while sitting in a chair nearby. I am eternally grateful that I don’t have to take on the Herculean task of cooking turkey dinner.
  2. eXtasy Books has accepted my gay werewolf paranormal erotic romance for publication. It’s entitled “Full Moon Fever”, and it’s coming out in 2020. My book is about two gay werewolves who work as gaffers (lighting) for a traveling stage show. They are looking for a third partner, and they have their sights set on the lead dancer. They’re also friends with two female scenic painters who give them a run for their money. I’m planning a sequel for this book. One of my werewolves has to deal with a person from his past – his ex. I haven’t thought further on the sequel, but it’s going to be a fun ride.
  3. We don’t have a lot of debt, unlike many people. I was told that the average credit card debt in America is appx. $5,000. I owe about $500 on two cards and I plan to pay it off within two weeks. I always pay the credit cards when the bill comes in so I don’t have to worry about interest. We owe money on a used VW Beetle (love that car), but otherwise we are debt free. We worked hard to get there.
  4. Although we’re up there in years, we are blessed with good health. I have my daily prescriptions to take and so does my husband but it’s manageable.
  5. I am close to my family. My son joined us for Turkey day. I called my dad and sister. We also called my stepson and his wife. They live out of state. We don’t see them often but when we do we have a wonderful time. I’m not sure when we’re venturing down to their homes again, but we do plan to visit in 2020.
  6. We aren’t hurting for money. The bills get paid each month and there’s some left over for fun stuff.
  7. We are owned by three cats. I’m glad the apartment complex allows pets. They got turkey and giblet on Thanksgiving just like us humans.
  8. We live in a New England beach resort. For Christmas, we get to see the tree in town lit up and Santa arrives on a lobster boat. Everyone in town (this is a small town) comes out for the lighting of the tree and we drink hot cocoa. Living here is like living in a Hallmark Christmas movie.

There’s plenty to be thankful for, and I figured it was a good time to remind myself of that fact. I hope Americans reading had a very happy Thanksgiving. Here’s looking to Christmas to continue the festive joy.

———

Elizabeth Black writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, horror, and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and her three cats. Her story “The Beautiful Move in Curves” appears in “Dangerous Curves Ahead”, an anthology of sexy stories about plus-sized women. Look for it at Amazon. Her new paranormal erotic shifter romance novel “Full Moon Fever” will be for sale in 2020.

 

Web site: http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ElizabethABlack

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/elizabethblack

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/b76GWD

 

 

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Closer to the Edge of the Amazon Cliff?

by | November 24, 2019 | | 1 Comment

by Larry Archer

As a writer of erotica, I am painfully aware of the Amazon Cliff and how quickly I find my toes hooked over the edge, like a bird trying to hold onto a branch in a hurricane as nature attempts to blow you away.

The “Amazon Cliff” is widely discussed, and while not an official stated policy of Amazon, there appears to be almost undeniable proof of its existence. The Amazon Cliff is a term writers use to describe how an author’s ranking suddenly drops after the release of a new publication.

Previously, we have thought that the “cliff” was approximately 30-days after a new release, but I believe that has now changed to approximately 15-days (or two weeks), at least in my case. While I’ve tried not to be too anal about sales, I couldn’t help but notice the difference between daily sales, after the release of my latest story, Walk on the Wild Side, when compared to sales before the release.

The daily sales chart below shows how my daily sales increased at the time of release and, about two weeks later, dropped to the “normal” daily sales before the release of the story.

When you release a new story, there is typically a bump in your author’s and story’s rating, which translates into higher sales at Amazon, as the release date prioritizes the results of a search. Keep in mind that I’m looking at my sales data, which may or may not mirror the results of others.

A prospective reader goes to Amazon and searches for new smut to read. The results presented are based upon proprietary algorithms, but one of the components is the length of time since the author’s previous release.

The obvious and often stated takeaway from this is that you need to publish new stories frequently to keep you on the peak of the sales wave. However, for a lot of writers, this is not as easy as you might think.

Porn stories tend to be short because if the story is long enough to get you off, then that’s all you need. For me, this is a non-starter because I can’t seem to be able to type “The End.” When I start a new erotic story, I will only have a vague idea of where the story will go, and my characters take advantage of me to never stop doing the nasty.

When I compare my sales ranking at SmashWords, I see more consistent day to day sales figures. Below is a sales chart for the past 90 days at SmashWords. While there is a sales bump with the release of a new story, the overall sales tend to be a lot more consistent. Plus, if you dig into sales of popular stories, I have stories that have been out for over a year and are still in the upper section of popularity. This tells me that SmashWords places a priority on the popularity of a story and not just when it was released.

I think the bottom line is to publish as often as you can with Amazon to keep you higher in the SEO or search rankings. I use the Book Report web-based tool, https://app.getbookreport.com/, for my sales reporting, which is free if your sales are below a certain level.

That’s all for this month, and thanks for slogging through to the end. For more on erotica by Larry Archer, follow my blog at: https://LarryArcher.blog or https://LarryArcher.blog/stories for my list of HEA explicit erotica. Follow me on Twitter, @Archer_Larry, or MeWe at https://mewe.com/i/larryarcherauthor

 

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Ephemeral

by | November 21, 2019 | | 4 Comments

Snowy Day

 A black-and-white photo from my high school years

When we moved from the US to Asia, more than a decade ago, I got rid of at least three quarters of my material possessions. One thing I kept, though, were photographs. We shipped two plastic crates of prints and negatives, plus a box of fancy photo albums where I’d pasted the very best of our travel and party photos, selected to showcase our adventures to others.

Photographs possessed a certain importance, a gravitas, as historical markers. They were artifacts to be preserved and cherished. Family photos adorned the walls in my mother’s and grandmother’s homes, not only of people that I knew, but also of people I’d never met. Our family marked important transitions with group portraits. My archives include the originals of at least two expensive studio shots of me and my siblings, one when I was around seven, the other aged twelve. In addition, my first lover was an amateur photographer, who taught me a bit about his craft. Among the boxes we shipped were envelopes of black and white “art” photos I shot in my junior and senior year in high school with my used Kodak single lens reflex – and developed myself.

Photos were precious then.

How things have changed! Now we all carry cameras in our pockets, and capture images of the most prosaic subjects. We flip through the pictures, allocating a few seconds to each – “sharing” them, deleting them, editing and enhancing them, rarely if ever printing them. Photos have become nothing but electronic data, ephemeral. We keep them on our devices, upload them to social media, and sometimes download them to our hard disk. If we don’t back them up regularly (and how many of us do?) they could all vanish with a single computer crash. Life’s history, gone in an instant. Maybe that doesn’t matter, but it’s quite a contrast to the thick-parchment, colorized, pricey studio photos of my childhood.

Books have followed the same trend. In that move halfway around the world, I also kept a selection of my favorite volumes from my youth. In fact, they’re still sitting on my shelves here, in some cases fifty to sixty years after I acquired them. Many are what I’d consider timeless classics: the complete Sherlock Holmes stories; Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass; Edgar Allen Poe; Shakespeare’s plays. I also have very old versions of books that have been important to me personally, including Anne Rice’s vampire books (a 1975 edition of Interview with the Vampire) and The Story of O.

A book was a magical object, back then. Opening the covers, you entered the gates to another world. This was still true when I published my own first novel, twenty years ago. I held the paperback in my hand – the paperback with my name on the cover! – and marveled that I had joined the illustrious ranks of real authors. Like all writers, I even fantasized about my book becoming a best-seller or a classic.

And now? Books are just bits. I have a box full of author copies I can’t get rid of, including four different versions of that first novel, and a hard disk packed with manuscript files. There are multiple different versions of many tales, published and re-published, tweaked, expanded, reworked. The notion of a book as a finished creation, whole and perfect, has disappeared.

I used to suffer from what I called “narrative inertia”. What I meant was that I found it almost impossible to make significant alterations to a book after I’d written “The End”. My work seemed to resist revision. Almost as if it were solid and real.

I’m past that now. I can slice and dice my books to suit the perceived market. They have no special status, and I have no illusions about their pretensions to longevity.

The notion of a timeless classic being published today almost seems laughable. Fifty years from now – nay, even twenty years – hardware and software will have evolved to the point that ebooks from this era may not even be readable.

Of course, according to Eastern spiritual traditions, change is the only constant. Everything is ephemeral, the universe a construct of our minds and emotions. It’s all Maya, the sparkling, ever-mutating illusion that masks the incomprehensible, eternal nature of God.

(Gee, am I really talking about God on the ERWA blog? Well, why not?)

Perhaps it’s a side-effect of growing old, but these days almost everything seems temporary. News. Crises. Fashions. Celebrities. Technologies. Scandals. The rate of change seems to be constantly increasing. I don’t even bother to pay attention to much of what flashes through my life, or across my screen. It’ll be gone before I can even grasp it.

In fact, one of the less ephemeral phenomena in my life happens to be the Erotica Readers & Writers Association. Next January will mark twenty years that I’ve been part of the ERWA community. (ERWA itself has been in existence for twenty three years! Nearly a quarter century!) There are actually a few people on the email lists whom I’ve known that entire time. I’ve been writing the Erotic Lure newsletter since 2004 – fifteen years. That’s a lot of alliteration under the bridge.

Of course, ERWA has changed. We have new blood – young, talented, energetic writers and editors who help keep things interesting. The feelings, though, remain remarkably constant: warmth, respect for others, a spirit of fun, and of course a lively interest in all things erotic.

It’s pretty amazing that a community that exists only in cyberspace could be so resilient and so real. Our communications are just bits – but they matter. I enjoy closer relationships with some of the friends I’ve made here than with people I know in “meat-space”. Watching the world rush by, buffeted by the winds of change, I am truly grateful for ERWA, a “place” that doesn’t even exist, but where I always feel at home.

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Description: Getting It Just Right

by | November 11, 2019 | | 4 Comments

When I sit down to write, I have pictures in my mind. I can see my setting, whether it is an exotic foreign temple, a seedy motel, or a trendy night club. I have some sense of my characters’ physical appearance. I imagine the action as it occurs, playing out like a movie in my mind. Most authors, I believe, have similar mental images.

Part of our task as writers is to communicate all these pictures to our readers. Description is essential in building a fictional world for our readers to inhabit. Description of the setting helps to establish a mood for the story as well as conveying factual information in order to set the scene. Description of a character allows readers to understand who the character is, why he or she reacts in particular ways or evokes desire, hate or fear from other characters. Effective description of action is essential in order to move the story forward along its plot arc.

Some authors might disagree, but I would argue that it’s nearly impossible to write a good story without some description. How much, though, is enough?

A common weakness in the work of novice writers is over-description. A story will begin with four paragraphs of text about the weather, the manor house, or the windswept Scottish moors. A character cannot show up on a page without having some adjectives or adverbs to drag around. A love scene explains in excruciating detail what the hero’s left hand and right hand are doing at each moment.

Why is this a problem? Because too much description can interfere with the progress of the story. Consider the following passage, adapted from a very early story of my own called “The Ambassadors to G79-3”.

She emerged first from stasis, a faint humming in her ears, a strange saltiness in her mouth and a sharp tingling in her secret parts remarkably like sexual excitement. Her eyes gradually focused on the luminous neon scope attached to the curved inner surface of her personal stasis chamber. The temporal-spatial coordinates displayed there were reassuringly familiar. The ship was right on course and the stasis mechanisms had functioned perfectly, awakening her a mere six hours from the destination.

She stretched her long limbs luxuriously, enjoying the soft, gentle pressure of the cushioning foam that lined the chamber. Lyrene fumbled a bit with the mechanical release latch, then swung the port wide and stepped clumsily into the cylindrical control room that formed the heart of their ship. Blue, green and gold lights blinked and flashed as the ship’s advanced biocerebral core rapidly calculated alternative landing trajectories and touch-down coordinates. The viewing dome in the middle of the floor glowed golden from the raging fires of the star G-79. Lyrene deftly flicked a switch, executing an 180 degree turn, and the dome revealed an endless field of deep blue spattered with flecks of silver, and a greenish egg shape hanging near the edge.

This is the start of the story. As any experienced writer will tell you, the first few paragraphs of a story or novel are critical. This is where you must “hook” readers, catch their interest, excite their curiosity, make them want to read on so that they can find out what happens next. In this case, though, I am two hundred words into the tale, and nothing has really happened. If I continue in this vein, I’m going to lose my readers’ attention.

Clearly, I need to set the scene. If I don’t manage to communicate the fact that this is a space ship, then the next paragraphs will not make any sense. However, I can streamline the entire opening, simply by cutting some the adjectives and adverbs, restructuring a few sentences, and omitting details that really are not important.

She emerged first from stasis, a humming in her ears, a saltiness in her mouth and a tingling like sexual excitement in her secret parts. The luminous scope inside her stasis chamber showed temporal-spatial coordinates that were reassuringly familiar. The ship was right on course. The stasis mechanisms had functioned perfectly, awakening her six hours before the scheduled landing.

Lyrene stretched her limbs, stiff after months of immobility, then crawled clumsily through the stasis chamber port into the cylindrical control room. Lights blinked and flashed as the ship’s brain calculated landing trajectories and touch-down coordinates. She requested an 180 degree turn. Instead of the fires of the star G-79, the viewing dome now revealed a field of deep blue spattered with flecks of silver, with a greenish egg shape hanging near the edge.

I have cut the passage by more than seventy five words. More importantly, I have focused the reader’s attention on Lyrene and her actions, instead of on what the ship looks like. One technique for doing this is to remove references to intermediate acts unless they are essential for understanding the scene. In the revised version, I dropped any mention of unfastening the latch or opening the port. Notice, however, that I did not remove the adverb “clumsily”. I felt that this was necessary to convey Lyrene’s physical state after the long space trip.

The passage above is hardly a model for great literature. However, it does set the scene better than the previous example, without holding up the story.

Another hazard in the realm of descriptions is over-describing your characters. Of course you want your readers to be able to visualize your hero and heroine. Leave some space, though, for the reader’s imagination. Sketch your character, highlight the critical aspects of their appearance or personality, but then let the reader’s personal preferences fill in the details.

Here’s another example, once again adapted from some of my unpublished work.

Why did she arouse me so strongly? She didn’t look the least bit tarty. Her beige skirt ended a modest distance below her knees. Her white crepe blouse draped her torso, suggesting rather than revealing the roundness underneath. The V of the neckline exposed the hollow of her throat, where I caught the discrete sparkle of some silvery charm. She had arranged her hair, a warm brown threaded with hints of red, into a neat chignon at the base of her neck. She was probably wearing make up, but it was subtle enough that it merely enhanced the overall impression: a beautiful, business-like young woman with a smile I might be willing to die for.

How tall is this woman? What color are her eyes? How old is she? Is she Caucasian or some other ethnicity? Is she slender or voluptuous? What size bra cup does she wear? Forgive me for the last question, but I have read far too many beginner’s stories where the author apparently viewed this this item of information as essential. ;^)

Each of you, reading this paragraph, will have a somewhat different image of the woman being described. I have not provided any of the above details of her appearance, because they are not important to the story. What is important is the narrator’s impression: that she’s “neat”, “business-like”, “discrete”, “subtle”, “modest”. (As it turns out, this character is not at all what she seems, but rather is a sexually ravenous dominant.)

Lawrence Schimmel, the celebrated gay author, has compared writing to creating a radio play. In the days of radio, the entire family would sit around the “wireless”, listening to comedies or dramas. The voices would evoke different pictures for each listener. The playwright’s job was to suggest, to hint, to guide the imagination.

I don’t have space in this article to consider the question of over-description in action, which can also be a problem. However, I would like to leave you with a few suggestions for improving your descriptions.

1. Make each adjective and adverb count. Some writing gurus advise eliminating all adverbs and most adjectives. I think this is just plain silly. However, before you write about a “blue chair”, consider whether the blueness really matters for your story. Be selective.

2. Avoid starting a story with pure description. There’s a risk that you’ll lose your readers’ attention before you get to the action.

3. Keep the focus on the characters and the events of the plot. Interleave description with action.

4. When in doubt, cut. Don’t hold on to descriptive passages just because they paint a beautiful picture.

In writing, despite what some people may say, there are no hard and fast rules. You need to discover what works for you. Personally, I’ve found that applying the suggestions above help me turn overblown, wordy descriptions into more effective passages that support rather than interfere with the action.

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How to Read

by | November 6, 2019 | | 6 Comments

By Ashley Lister

I talk a lot about how to write in this column, but I seldom mention the equally important task of reading.
Here, I’m not going to advise anyone on how to simply read. That’s easy enough. You just point your eyes at the words in a book and follow them consecutively, making meaning from each one and combining them all into a cohesive whole.

What I want to write about today are the techniques for reading aloud. To an audience.

I advocate reading work aloud during the drafting process. It’s a wonderful tool for spotting what works and what doesn’t in a nearly-finished manuscript. Those typos and duplications that the eye skips over when we’re silently reading, grate on the ear like a flat note in an acapella solo.

But there are reasons for reading aloud, other than hearing our own mistakes. Reading work to an audience, either at a book launch, a signing or an evening of public story-sharing, can be a satisfying way of experiencing the work of others and sharing your own work in a format that is livelier than dull black words on a still white page.

Prepare. Print off a large-print copy of the text you’re going to read. The font in a novel is great for quietly reading at home. But, when you’re standing before an audience, and apprehension is fraying your nerves, the font in a book can shrink. More importantly, when you’re reading your work to an audience, the audience want to see your face, not your head hidden behind an open book. Printed text in a large font will mean you can keep the paper at a reasonable distance, allowing your audience to see you and allowing you to see the print.

Practice: Read the piece through, aloud, several times. Make sure you’re comfortable and confident with the pronunciation. Make sure you can enunciate any tongue-twisters that appear in the piece you’re going to read. I am aware that most of us will notice if we’ve written a line that says, “Her job? Why she sells seashells on the seashore.” However, there are some phrases such as ‘unique New York’ or ‘the sixth sick Sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick’ which can trip up an unsuspecting tongue.

Practice. Time yourself. Annotate the pages you’re going to read so you know when to breathe, when to pause and when to adopt a different voice (if you’re going to use different voices for your narration).

Relax: If you’re standing in front of an audience, it’s natural to be nervous. However, it’s easy to forget that the audience are wanting you to be successful and they’re willing you to be good. No one wants to sit through a boring reading so they’ll be hoping your story is exciting and well-delivered. You know this yourself from the times you’ve sat in an audience.

The key to relaxation is simple. Breathe. Smile. And be confident.

Breathing should be easy but sometimes, in the focus of the moment, we forget. I once knew a poet whose trousers fell down when he began reading a poem on stage and he didn’t realise until he got to the end and his trousers were around his ankles. This wasn’t done for effect or to be funny – it simply occurred because he was too nervous to notice what was happening around him.

Focusing on your breathing allows you to stop being oblivious to your circumstances.

Smiling is important because it allows your audience to see that you’re a likeable person. We respond to smiles on a human level, empathising with a person who smiles and feeling better disposed to them. And, if we’re reading our work to an audience, surely we want those listeners to feel well disposed towards us?

There are other tips for reading to an audience and, if you’ve got your own personal ones, I’d be interested to see them in the comments box below.

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Oct. 29 is National Cat Day

by | October 28, 2019 | | 6 Comments

Tomorrow, October 29, is National Cat Day. I am owned by three cats, two of whom are blind. The 12 year old Maine Coon is a spirit cat – one that needs lots of love and care. He’s blind with FIV. His name is Mister, like Harry Dresden’s cat. His buddy, 8 year old Breena, has been blind since birth. Then there is Meriwether, the kitten. He bounces off walls and drives the other two cats crazy. We call him Meri or Merricat for short. Literature fans will recognize the name Merricat from Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived In The Castle”.

That brings me to the topic of this month’s post – Famous Cats in Literature.

  1. Crookshanks – Hermione Granger’s magical cat in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban by J, K. Rowling. Cats have long been associated with witches as their familiars. Crookshanks in the movies looks like a Maine Coon.
  2. Cheshire cat – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Louis Carroll. The Cheshire cat said the famous line, “We’re all mad here.”
  3. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. I grew up reading Dr. Seuss. I’ve always liked this cat’s top hat.
  4. Puss in Boots from Jerry Pinkney. My favorite fairy tale. My erotic fantasy “Trouble In Thigh High Boots” is my smutty retelling of this story. You may find it under Kindle on Amazon.
  5. Tom Kitten from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Tom Kitten. Tom Kitten was a very naughty boy! When my son was a child he loved Tom Kitten. I even bought Tom Kitten baby bath products from Crabtree & Evelyn. Sadly, that product line isn’t available anymore.
  6. Church from Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. Cats can be scary, too.
  7. Mog from Mog The Forgetful Cat by Judith Kerr. I discovered Mog in a British commercial for Sainsbury grocery store. These children’s books are very popular in U. K. households.
  8. Koko and Yum Yum from “The Cat Who…” book series by Lilian Jackson Braun. These cats owned reporter Jim Qwilleran. Koko and Yum Yum are two Siamese cats who help Qwilleran solve his cases. The whole concept is adorable.
  9. Mister is Harry Dresden’s cat in “The Dresden Files”.

Cats are wonderful writing muses. They walk across your keyboard and change the names of your files. They want to sit in your lap when you’re trying to write. They want to eat. All. The Time. They want to play as soon as you begin writing that action scene that had been pestering you for hours. They spill your coffee, hopefully not on the computer.

Halloween (aka Samhain) is in three days. Cats, especially black ones, are at the center of this day. Halloween happens to be my favorite holiday. It means decorations, candy, endless horror movies, fall baking, and honoring the dead. The religious aspect of Samhain is similar to our Memorial Day. I always have chocolate on hand for the kids who may stop by the house trick or treating. Although black cats have a reputation for being bad luck (an unfair reputation in my opinion), I have always considered them very lucky. I have been owned by three black cats – Fido, Speedy, and Mulder. Yes, I had another cat named Scully. Mulder and Scully were always together. So fitting. Black cats make wonderful companions.

So, on this National Cat Day, pick up a book that features a cat in some way. Or watch a cat-centered movie like “Bell, Book, and Candle”, which is the perfect romance for this time of year.

———

Elizabeth Black writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, horror, and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and her three cats. Her story “The Beautiful Move in Curves” appears in “Dangerous Curves Ahead”, an anthology of sexy stories about plus-sized women. Look for it at Amazon. Her new paranormal erotic shifter romance novel “Full Moon Fever” will be for sale in 2020.

Web site: http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ElizabethABlack

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/elizabethblack

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/b76GWD

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What’s in My Toolbox

by | October 25, 2019 | , , , , | 8 Comments

For my ERWA blog posting this month, I’m going through the tools I normally use while scribbling out my smut stories. I’ve discovered that there are ways to save money, yet not scrimp on performance or capability.

Philosophy

The traditional way to publish a book involves the use of editors to proof your manuscript, graphics designers to create a cover, and a publishing house to put it all together. In a perfect world, this is the way to go, but unfortunately most of us live in the real world.

Assuming that our story sells for $2.99 or $3.99 and we have a 70% margin, then your profit from a $3 book is $2, and a $4 book is $3. I’m using rounded figures here and know this isn’t strictly correct.

For a cover, let’s assume a price of $50 to $200 per cover. In terms of sales this translates to 25 sales at $50/cover or 70-100 sales at $200/cover. The painful truth that most of us quickly learn, your sales on an erotic story will be slim. Then you have to ask yourself, how long will it take until my new story is in the black or when you stop bleeding money?

Until you become rich and famous or have a spouse who doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the credit card bill, the average beginning smut writer can’t afford the luxury of hiring outside help.

Getting your foot in the door can be a pricy first step unless you are willing to do the grunt work yourself. Designing a cover is not that hard if you are reasonably competent, and using inexpensive or free tools can get you started. Certainly a professional graphics designer or copy editor can do a better job, but I don’t think you should drive yourself into the poor house doing it.

Make sure that you join our group of talented people who write erotica. They can offer a lot of advice to both new and seasoned writers. Erotica Readers and Writers Association (ERWA) has been around for many years and should be high on your list of blogs to follow. https://erotica-readers.com/blog/

Hardware

I’ve always been a PC person and generally considered those who had drunk the Kool-Aid to be under the influence of Steve Jobs, even from the grave, but not any longer. Like many, I’ve been seduced and taken a bite out of the forbidden Apple. Like Adam and Eve, who just ran around naked in the woods and screwed all the time until they succumbed to the forbidden fruit. They took a bite of the Apple and found themselves outside the fence.

In 2012, when I first started writing porn, I realized that I needed a laptop that I could take to the bathroom when I had one of those urges. I have purchased three Ultrabooks or thin, light PC laptops for the successful executive on the go. Every time I bought one, I quickly realized that they were not very good. Buyer’s remorse quickly set in as I discovered their shortcomings.

The problems I discovered centered around a couple of necessary features for me. Touchpads under Windows sucked, and many people are plagued with “ghost” touches. The touchpad would do things by itself and drove me crazy. This is a common problem, and many users complain about it.

I finally figured out how to stop the problem, but by this time, I had moved on to my MacBook Air. Others have suggested that I use a mouse to eliminate the issues, but then you have to lug the mouse around and deal with it.

The other problem is battery life and performance with Windows laptops. If you don’t get a good CPU like an i7 processor, performance sucks. Battery life is always measured in a few hours. Manufacturers boast 8-10 hours of run time, but they typically lie. When you can only get maybe 3-4 hours, you’re as bad as someone with an iPhone. You walk around with the charger cord in your hand, looking for an outlet.

Foxy uses an iPhone 8S with 256 Gig of ram and constantly has it plugged in and complains about battery life. For a thousand-dollar phone, I’d expect more, but that’s what she wanted and who am I to complain. I’ve learned to just hand over my credit card and close my eyes. What I don’t know won’t hurt me.

My love affair with Apple started in 2012 with my purchase of a 2012 MacBook Air, which only has an i5 processor, but you’d think there was an i7 under the hood. As a touch typist, the MBA’s keyboard is the best I’ve ever seen. My mistakes dropped like a rock, and once I got used to the differences between the PC and Mac operating systems, I’ve never looked back, mostly.

In 2015, I upgraded to a new model MBA with 8 Gb of ram and gave my old Mac to Wifey. It works well with her iPhone and saves me a lot of time dealing with Mac to PC problems. My new Mac was just like the old one except for twice the memory. To be honest, I’ve never noticed any problems with the previous Mac’s 4 Gig of memory, but I’m a sucker for new stuff, especially if it’s shiny.

I’ve got money in my bank account for my writing and have been thinking about upgrading, but the new style keyboard scares me. My 2015 Mac is doing well, and I’ve been thinking about swapping out the 256 Gb hard disk for a 1-Tb disk, which is pretty reasonable. Not that I need it, but it would be something new.

One other neat thing about the MBA is that it boots instantly when you raise the lid and doesn’t drain the battery like a Windows laptop does. Fast Start is turned on by default, and that means when you power off, you don’t really power off but enter a hybrid state that allows the computer to boot faster. The downside is that the laptop is constantly using power and will rarely go more than two days without exhausting the battery. My Mac will go for several weeks at least by just closing the lid, with minimal battery loss.

But I have found that there are reasonable alternatives for those who like the Windows operating system. A couple of years back, they took away my work Toshiba laptop and gave me an iPad, which works for 95% of my needs when I’m away from my desktop PC.

A few months ago, I was running a test and needed a PC for the field. Our IT department loaned me a Lenovo business laptop, and I promptly fell in love. It has an older style keyboard that is a joy to type on. It reminds me of my old Dell keyboard, except this one doesn’t clack when you type on it.

The Lenovo is not as skinny and light as a modern Windows ultrabook but is not bad. It probably weighs a pound or so more than my MacBook Air but still not objectionable. Looking through refurbished laptops on Amazon, I discovered that I could buy a 4 year old Lenovo T450s for $315 used and rebuilt with Windows 10 Pro installed.

I’d never bought a used laptop before but liked the one at work so much, I sprung for the unit. It has an i7 processor, 250 Gb solid-state hard disc, and 4 Gb of ram. The unit is probably 4 or 5 years old but looks perfect. Naturally, both of the batteries had degraded to about 75% of new, and I ordered replacement batteries for the unit. While I had the back off, I added 16 Gb of ram to bring the unit up to 20 Gb of ram.

Now I have about $450 invested in the unit with new batteries and lots of ram. I consider this a better alternative than spending almost $2 grand on a high-end laptop. Plus, this thing has huge batteries and will run all day without requiring a charge.

I prefer my MacBook Air as it is lighter and has a phenomenal battery life. The Mac operating system is a form of Unix (Linux) and is more efficient than a Windows computer. On top of that, when you open the lid, the sign-in window shows up instantly. Even if you let it sleep overnight, the boot time is maybe 10-15 seconds, which blows my Windows 10 Pro laptop completely away. Unfortunately, some of the engineering software I use is only available on a Windows machine, so I flip back and forth as needed.

If you are on a tight budget and you need a computer, take a look at refurbished units. I’ve have been pleased with my used computer, and if you grab something with an i7 processor, it will be plenty fast even if it’s a few years old. Make sure you get a solid-state hard disk.

Less expensive laptops are available, such as a Chrome unit, but often have limitations and are slower than a more top of the line unit. By purchasing a used business-grade laptop, I get a unit that is durable and provides power and capability at a reasonable cost.

Word Processing Software

I use Microsoft Word for word processing, but it can be expensive. Now the new Microsoft Office 365 is just a rental that costs you about $120 per year. Renting software pisses, me off and I refuse to upgrade as I want to own the software. Depending on which computer I’m using, I run Office 2016 or 2019, but there are cheaper alternatives.

LibreOffice is a good free alternative that is available for both PCs and Macs. It’s virtually identical to Word, that is except for the Free part! LibreOffice comes with an office suite like Microsoft Office. https://www.libreoffice.org/

I’m also experimenting with Scrivener, which a lot of people like. You can buy it for either PC or Mac for about $50 each. They are beta testing the new Windows version, and you can download the beta version for free until they come out with the final release. If you are running Windows, it’s a good way to grab a word processor for free and will only cost you about $50 sometime in the future, if you like it. https://www.literatureandlatte.com/

Scrivener is kind of cool in that each chapter can be a separate document and allows the writer to deal with a story in parts, yet the software bundles everything together to output. You can also export to Word format to publish. It will publish to electronic book formats, but I’ve haven’t been that adventuresome yet.

Scrivener is a total solution to publishing by giving a writer the ability to build a completed manuscript from the parts, such as cover, front matter, body, and back matter. Plus, it can be set up to publish to different formats with a compiler option.

I’m writing the follow up to House Party, called cleverly House Party 2, using Scrivener, which has been an interesting challenge. There are enough differences to make the program different from Word, and I’m still not sure if I’ll like it going forward but am a glutton for punishment.

Graphics Processing

Having some good graphics tools are a requirement for the Indie writer, in my opinion. While an author can outsource the creation of the cover to a graphics artist, that cost can be difficult to make up with sales.

To replace PhotoShop try GIMP, which is very close to PhotoShop except being free. Download a copy at https://www.gimp.org/

To design your covers, give InkScape a try. InkScape is similar to CorelDraw but free and not hundreds of dollars. https://inkscape.org/

Another good one is Canva, an online cover designer. It’s somewhat limited as you have to pick a template and change it to your story’s details, but it’s free. https://www.canva.com/create/book-covers/

For resizing images, you can’t beat IrfanView, https://www.irfanview.com

To convert document files to ePub, MOBI, or PDF, grab a copy of Calibre. https://calibre-ebook.com/

All the software mentioned above is free and can be downloaded from the Internet. Certainly, commercial software will likely have a few more bells and whistles, but for the struggling artist they can fit your needs. I use mostly open-source (free) software except for a couple, but I pay the bills, and Foxy doesn’t have to bother her pretty little head about where our money goes!

Addendum 2019-10-26 – Mom always told me that if I kept on playing with myself, I’d go blind. I’ve always said, I’d just do it until I needed glasses! I now think it’s affected my brain as I missed a couple of things that are not really associated with writing smut but I consider necessary.

NAS Drive – If you have a network at home, which most of us with cable do, you should invest in a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device with RAID. A NAS drive is similar to the USB portable drives people use to backup or store important files such as pictures and videos from your wife’s first gangbang. A NAS drive will have an RJ-45 network jack that looks like an oversized telephone jack (you remember those don’t you?).

Plugging it into your router or a switch if you have a wired network, will allow backups from any device connected to your home wifi or network. The trick is to get a NAS drive with RAID 0. RAID means that the storage device has two physical hard disks inside that are the same size. With RAID, saving a file to the NAS drive means that the unit automatically writes a copy to the second hard disk. The non-techy explanation is there are two copies to every file, stored on different hard disks. So unless the unit is destroyed with a hammer, it’s virtually impossible to lose files if the hard disk crashes. Always remember, it’s not if a hard disk will fail, it’s when the hard disk is going to fail.

If a hard disk fails on the NAS drive, just unplug the bad hard disk and plug in a new disk of the same size or bigger. The NAS drive will automatically format and use the new hard disk by copying all the files from the original drive to it. This takes a few days as it’s done in the background but the drive will continue to work normally.

NAS drives are not cheap but what’s your data worth? I have a Qnap T-420 which holds 4 hard disks. I’ve currently got 2 – 2Tb and 2 – 4Tb drives in it. Using RAID the capacity of the unit is half the installed storage, so in my case, I have a 2 Tb file system for my writing and personal records and a 4Tb drive for scanned images and video. I also store my pictures from my DSLR and our cell phones there.

FastCopy – I use the FastCopy shareware software to backup my files from my desktop and laptop computers. FastCopy is supposed to be the fastest copy utility around and it only copies files that have changed or are new. It skips the existing files so you can just tell FastCopy to copy from folder to folder, which just takes a few clicks. I write batch files and put them on my desktop to backup my computers. The site to download from is partially in Japanese but with a little head-scratching you can figure out how to download an English version. https://fastcopy.jp/en/

Crystal Disk Info – This handy little utility will read the status of your attached hard disks and tell you if any are having problems. When you run it, it will scan all of the connected disk drives and display the health status of each. If you start seeing warning messages, immediately buy a replacement drive and copy the files to the new drive. Typically, you never get warnings when your hard disk is having problems as it will retry to read a bad sector until it manages to get the data. But then one day, it cannot and you are typically history at that point. By watching the Power On hours and if the status changes from good, then you’re okay. A rule of thumb that I use is to replace an external USB hard disk at around 12,000 run hours or an internal at 18,000 – 20,000 hours even if you don’t see problems. These days an 8-Tb USB drive is about $150 so it’s not that expensive to swap them out. A good 4-Tb internal drive is about $85 also. https://crystalmark.info/en/

Sorry, I didn’t think about those at the time I was writing my monthly blog issue but feel that these are also important.

That’s it for this month, and follow me for more ramblings from the dirty mind of Larry Archer. My personal blog is https://LarryArcher.blog.

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