Wednesday 2 July 2014

THOUGHTS ON EROTICA TODAY - PART ONE

EROTICA TODAY – OLD AS THE HILLS, SO WHAT, IF ANYTHING, HAS CHANGED?
BY PRIMULA BOND


The publishing world seems to be in two minds about erotica. On the one hand, the explosion of that trilogy two years ago cannot be ignored. It sent editors rushing to get their star writers to emulate the success of the three books which overnight introduced the phrase 50 Shades into common parlance around kitchen tables and water coolers, not to mention Facebook and Twitter.
On the other hand, those of us who have been writing erotica for 20 years or more are still mostly rebuffed by an industry which sees erotica as smutty at best, second rate at worst.
Much was made when 50 Shades came out that what it revealed about the mainly female readers was even more interesting than the story itself. To put it very simply, it transpired that no matter how successful and high-powered they were, women responded to the escapist, relinquishing theme of strong man educating submissive woman.
Love it or loathe it, what the advent of that trilogy has also achieved with its focus on the emerging relationship of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele (when they are not busy in his Red Room of pain), is the rise of the more accessible genre of adult, or erotic, romance. This has given seasoned writers like Sylvia Day and me, and newer arrivals like Jodi Ellen Malpas, the chance to flex our creative muscles after years of toeing an increasingly restricted line of stereotypes and sex scenes and we are now freer to expand and modernise an age-old theme, let rip with some really intelligent, credible, enjoyable story telling and introduce more complex characters and relationships.
Meanwhile our widening market of eager readers can openly buy and display books with their understated 'grey' cover designs and bury themselves in a compelling love story which is every bit as hot and explicit as before, but can, and should, hold its head up with any other type of popular, well-written literature.
Many historical examples of erotic writing, previously banished, are now resplendent on literary book shelves, to wit the works of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) who chronicled torture and cruelty as well as blasphemy against the Catholic Church, The Story of O (1954) which also deals with sado-masochism, and Anais Nin's Delta of Venus (1940s). These all explore fairly extreme, even brutal, examples of sexuality rather than the wilder shores of love.
The much misunderstood Lady Chatterley (1928) comes closer to the deeper, more involved erotica that appeals to today's 'woman on the Tube' – in other words, the readers I am after. Whilst the Anglo-Saxon language is fruity and was considered shocking for its day, it perfectly expresses the awakening and wonder that occurs between the characters. Describing it as obscenity clouds the central tenet of the book.
I like to open erotica workshops with a discussion on the stark difference, in my view, between pornography (visual, blatant, unimaginative, demeaning) and erotica (written, evocative, inspiring, celebratory), using Lady Chatterley as an example of misconception.
The growing tenderness between Mellors (an articulate ex-Army officer, not a rude mechanical as is so often assumed) and Connie is not the overdone housewife-beds-plumber scenario, if only people would take the trouble to study it more closely. It's far more subtle, a release for both of them from the shackles on his part of a frustrating marriage and his withdrawn personality, and on her part from a loveless marriage and a stifling class system.
This analysis of whether my chosen genre has evolved piqued me when I was asked recently if male and female characters and their motivations had changed with the times. I pondered this question as I wandered round the supermarket one weekend filling my trolley with such mundane items as spuds, sausage rolls, felafel balls (currently an obsession), beer, yoghurt and, ooh go on then, cucumbers and Magnum ice cream.
Yes, we erotica writers see the suggestive everywhere we look, but we still have to eat, entertain and feed our families. And no, we are not paid enough to have lackeys to do it for us. The illusion our readers have of us lounging around all day dressed in leather bondage gear or baby doll nighties tip-tapping on our laptops and requiring a touch of flagellation before stepping out the front door is just that: a carefully constructed illusion. Some of us even masquerade as respectable matrons and pillars of the school gate.
I am an Oxford educated mother of three sons who has juggled legal work, lodgers and family with writing newpaper and magazine features, and although I have a colourful smorgasbord of 'real life' experiences ranging from single motherhood, depression and Catholicism to living abroad, chronic illness and older parenthood to fill many an article, my real passion lies in fiction.
Since I was a little girl scribbling in a grubby exercise book, the emphasis has always been on romance. Sometimes light, sometimes pretty dark. I dreamed of Mr Right, or more often Prince Right, during a mournful teenage listening to 10cc, university struggling with Shakespeare, twenties peppered with break-ups, and then the wonderful challenge of unexpected motherhood. My musings were consistently rejected until I submitted one to Mills and Boon. This time the rejection was at least constructive: my writing was great, but my sex scenes were too explicit.
And so my erotica career was born.
Tune in tomorrow to hear the next instalment!  

Wednesday 25 June 2014

WRITERS WILL DO ANYTHING TO PROCRASTINATE ; ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF A WRITER

A crazy day yesterday. Started with email going down, having to rush to school, do reading club, cancel coffee with my darling friend Lou to get the email sorted, wrestle with someone at BT to give me back my f***ing password, check issue to do with work sorted out, find number 3 son's lost saxophone, take it back to school, come home to find two polite strangers on my doorstep asking if they could possibly take a picture of the house, as they grew up here when the house was brand new in the 60's, asking them in, showing off our splendid extension, hearing great anecdotes about the old days, getting quite teary, agreeing the house has a lovely vibe and amazingly after 50 years has only had 3 families living here, wave goodbye, do a chapter of my 'serious' novel, chop onions for loussaka/masagna, Tweet to some 50 Shades sites in an effort to suggest something rivetting to read (my Unbreakable Trilogy, natch) while they are waiting for the movie to come out, including a  French site where it is called 50 Nuances (lovely French word) who I chat to in French (yeah, get me!), doorbell rings, 6 enormous schoolboys come with Number 2 son to watch football along with dazed looking man to read the electricity and gas meters, let them in (the boys that is), switch my huge TV over from Wimbledon to World Cup, shut teenagers firmly in the playroom, order the meter man through the tradesmen's entrance, add mince (to the frying pan, not the meter man), try not to overhear disgusting conversation coming from playroom, open tin of Italian chopped tomatoes, glance at Nadal winning next round at Wimbledon on tiny kitchen telly, doorbell rings again, my boss arrives wondering if we are having a family row because there's so much noise coming from the house, explain that it is the teenagers roaring at their mobile phones, note that she is looking fragrant and gorgeous while I am in old maxi dress and 'keep calm and carry on cooking' apron and no lipstick, collapse with her on the patio for five minutes, drink lemonade but long for chardonnay, say goodbye, grate loads of cheese with one egg and crème fraiche to make my version of béchamel, lodger and student return home and dump bags of washing in what number 2 son used to call the 'nativity room'... and on it goes. Total writing time: 1 hour.

Saturday 18 January 2014

Blog Promo Tour post

This is my part of a blog tour that Jenny Kane at http://www.jennykane.co.uk asked me to take part in, so here are some questions and my answers. Would be fascinating to see what answers other writers give to the same question! And check out my erotica workshop anyone who is going to Eroticon in Bristol 8/9th March 2014!
1)     What are you working on?

I am just halfway through the revisions on The Diamond Ring, the third book in my Unbreakable Trilogy. Having traced the love story of Serena Folkes and Gustav Levi through their meeting in London, their personal/professional contract, their slow burn commitment to each other as they move to New York, and then the threat to their relationship posed by faces from the past, this final book has been a challenge to keep up the tension while trying to wind everything down to a dramatic ending which will satisfy readers while making them miss the hero and heroine.

2)     How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My writing has been described as 'elegant', 'lush' and 'literary' and since being asked to write this Unbreakable Trilogy I have striven to keep it upmarket and classy. I have been writing erotica for 20 years and have therefore had plenty of time to hone my skill. I also write critiques for aspiring writers, which although pretty brutal at times, also makes me look at my own work with a more critical eye. Even so, when 50 Shades erupted on the world, it made me even more determined to write something that was more than just a 'naughty story with some whipping' and would really stand out from the crowd. I try to imbue my work with an accessible yet intellectual voice, and capture my readers with proper story telling while keeping it sexy and real. Because I love crime and psychological dramas, I have also given my Unbreakable Trilogy a thriller edge to keep readers on their toes.

3)     Why do I write what I do?

I fell into erotica by accident 20 years ago, having tried (and failed) to write for Mills and Boon. My natural bent is towards love stories, but my first short story to be accepted by a magazine was an erotic one about a lonely spinster receiving a man in a cage as a birthday present, and so my erotica career was born! Gradually the erotica I was writing for Black Lace through the years became more about sex, and edging towards pornography, than it was about love. In fact, two years ago I was on the point of giving up writing erotic altogether because I was being paid peanuts and I wasn't happy with the harder core stuff I was required to produce, but then I was asked by my editor at Harper Collins to try my hand at an erotic romance after the success of 50 Shades. This new erotic romance genre has opened up more range in subject, characterisation and expression, and has afforded the chance to return to good old fashioned romance, so I can now focus on writing the kind of love story (with impossibly beautiful protagonists and improbably frequent and climactic sex) that I would like to live in my own life. Having said that, I don't want to write within the parameters of erotic romance forever. I want to write a more commercial womens' novel next, under my own name, and indeed have written half of it already. Also, my sons are nagging me to try my hand at a far more difficult genre- children's fantasy!

4)     How does your writing process work?

I have two ways of working. One is to be given a brief, as I was with the Unbreakable Trilogy, and to work very closely with editors to shape my submission into what they want and what they think will sell. The other is to start with the kernel of my own idea that may come from a random comment or thought or news item or story or something from my own life (a pretty dramatic one, to date!) and then run with it as freely as I can. I hope to be able to do this with a spin-off idea I have as a kind of prequel to The Silver Chain. Once the idea has been tamed into a submission, it is then up to the editors to commission it, and then I treat the writing as more of an academic exercise, with notes and deadlines. But once the book is underway it becomes all consuming for the three months or so it take so write, so I am a slightly distracted, often pre-occupied wife and mother to live with. I have to plan my week very carefully to juggle the creative process with work and family, and my best writing is done when I am totally alone, in a totally empty house, in my own special corner. When a deadline is tight, I have to send everyone out at weekends to get it finished.

EXCERPT of THE GOLDEN LOCKET



Gustav shakes me, and the chill of sobriety nags me, because what my lover has produced from under the bed is a big, thick leather phallus, exaggerated in size but exact in anatomical detail, and curved slightly like a scimitar. This is a weapon, not a toy. He holds it up in the air between us like some kind of talisman, turns it so we can see it from every angle, then brings out a tiny jar of amber liquid.
'What are you doing?' I croak. I strain against the silver chain. 'That looks like honey.'
'Lubrication,' Gustav mutters in a deep, gutteral voice, dipping his fingers into the pot and running the honey over the leather. 'To anoint my little sinner.'
I whimper and wriggle as he runs the tip of the now dripping dildo under my nose, pushes it across my upper lip, between my teeth so that I'm forced to suck it like a lollipop, then he hitches up my velvet dress and draws the thing slowly and deliberately up and down my spine, over my bottom, painting me with a languid trail of amber which is already turning from warm liquid to prickling stickiness as it dries on my skin.
'Don't resist, Serena. I saw your eyes watering with desire when those strippers played with their dildos in the club earlier. So I asked them if I could have one for my girl to take home. I actually wanted one of the white ones they'd used, but they said this one was brand new and we could have it as a gift.' He laughs so boyishly just then that it infects me, too. 'They were all for coming home with us to demonstrate how best to use it, but I said no, I wanted you to myself. ButI took their number. For future reference!'
I giggle helplessly and feel my body going all soft and willingas he bends to his gentle task and runs the blunt end down between the cheeks of my bottom and burrows underneath me, pushing open my resisting body, nosing towards the centre. Those strippers oiled up their phalluses with something good enough to lick and then buckled on special belts and aimed them at each other, suggestively at first and then thrusting their pelvises like men, pushing in and penetrating each other, long and slow.
The resistance gives way to melting acceptance, and I revel in the fact that this is Gustav, my lover, who asked those scary strippers if he could have their dildo to take home and is wielding this thing and invading my most private part with it. I don't want anyone else to do this to me, not even some domineering woman I might play with in the future.
'Trust me. I'm your teacher. Although this is a first for me, I have to admit. We're experimenting together, remember? So think of this is not as punishment but as another pleasurable lesson. For both of us.'
I have managed to push away Pierre's presence at last, but I can't look at Gustav while this is happening. Now his other hand is lifting me to get a better angle I suppose. His long warm fingers are wandering over my bottom, following the path of the dildo, and the combination of sensations is emptying my mind of all thought, filling my body with a riot of responses. His fingers find another way in. How dirty can this get?
'I'm here, Serena,' Gustav grunts, reading my mind as always. 'I'll always be here. You're perfectly safe. Give in to it. Go on. See how good it can feel.'
Above my head the sun sinks rapidly over the Hudson River. Around us the city hums and sings.

REVIEWS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKET
'This is one book that should be read with the AC on full blast with a glass of ice water sitting nearby. The series is proving to be extremely hot and explosive.' Larena's Reviews, Goodreads.

'Bond’s Oxford University roots show, she has an amazing writing style – precise, clean and mature with a literary edge'.Nightlyreading.

'This book is very gripping and hard to put down, you just get lost and captivated in the story and cannot wait till the next page. My only fault with this Trilogy is having to wait till book 3 is released.' J Allen, Amazon
BUYING LINKS
The Golden Locket paperback is in Tesco in the UK and in ebook and paperback on amazon.co.uk

NEXT WEEK!  KD Grace!

K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she is, otherwise, what would she write about? 

When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening. When she’s not gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots. She also enjoys martial arts, reading, watching the birds and anything that gets her outdoors.

K D has erotica published with SourceBooks, Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, Sweetmeats Press and others.

K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, The 
Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her 

Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available. She was nominated for ETO’s Best Erotic Author 2013. 

K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity

Crisis, The Exhibition are all available.
K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available. She was nominated for ETO’s Best Erotic Author 2013.
K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, The Exhibition are all available.
Find K D Here: