Devilish Delights

by Madelynne Ellis


I thought we'd have a bit of fun here on Lust Bites today (not that we don't normally have fun). Here's the deal everyone taking part gets to choose seven (not two, or nine, or eleven, or twenty-seven) men with whom they'd like to be locked in the Lust Bites dungeon. That's one for each day of the week folks. (Note: I suppose we can cope with the odd woman or minotaur if you must... Janine.)

Right other rules.

1. The "men" must be fictional characters, whether from books, stage, film, comics, or video games. Please state their name and film/book/other that they appear in and your reason for picking them.

2. Nobody is allowed to choose the same character as somebody else. If you are desperate, you can appeal to do a swap. I suggest you go in there armed with a suitably HUGE bribe.

3. You're not allowed to nominate one of your own creations. Guess I can cross Vaughan (A Gentleman's Wager & Phantasmagoria) off my list now, then. Shame, I'm sure he'd have been great fun.

4. Links to piccies are always appreciated.

5. I don't know... you could always tell us what you're going to do with them.

Okay, down to business. Since it's my post I get to go first. Ohhhh, who shall I have? Will it be someone somebody else wants? How obscure shall I get?

Do you know what... this is hard... There are so-oooooooo many! I think I need a long list before I cut them down to the final six. Here goes, Lucifer (Dawn), Ross Poldark (Poldark novels), Doyle (Merry Gentry books), Phobos (WITCH), Jerry Cornelius (Various Michael Morcock books), Vishous (Black Dagger Brotherhood), Riddick (Pitch Black), Legolas (LOTR books), Fingolfin (The Silmarillion), Gene Hunt (Life on Mars), The Warlock (Warlock), Brian Slade (Velvet Goldmine), Mark Brydon (The State Within), Admiral Bill Adama (Battlestar Galactica), Lucius Malfoy (Harry Potter books), El Mariachi (Desperado), Lord Wraxhall (Lord Wraxhall's Fancy), Benten (Cyber City), Z-man (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls).

Phew! What a lot of men I like. Okay, drum roll, here are my chosen companions in the Lust Bites Dungeon.

1. Jareth the Goblin King (Labyrinth). It doesn't matter how many times I've seen this film, I still sit at the end yelling "take it" when he offers Sarah her dreams. Baby brother vs Goblin King. I know which one wins in my book, and it isn't the baby.



2. Sephiroth (FFVII/Advent Children/Crisis Core) because he's so damn cool he's untrue, I've a burning urge to run my fingers through his hair, and I'm fascinated by the whole one-winged angel thing.



3. Captain Jack Harkness (Dr Who/Torchwood). Hmm, I suspect I may get a few offers for him. I just love his sense of humour, and he's incredibly inventive.





4. Kai the undead assassin (Lexx). Loyal, deadly, and erm... dead. Perhaps, I'd better skip over this one. He delivers some super monologues though, and he can sing!








5. Ian Nottingham (Witchblade). Hmm, another assassin. Haven't seen the TV series, but I love this character in the original comic storyline. Noble, loyal, powerful, ace swordsman and curiously submissive on occasion.










6. Vicomte de Valmont (Les Liaisons Dangereus). I have to say it was a close run fight between him and Lord Wraxhall. They're quite alike really. Two preening peacocks. Style is important in my dungeon.

7. Kerr Avon (Blake's 7). This was another close run one, between Avon and Z-man (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). They're both witty, Avon with his plethora of withering put-downs, and Z-man with his Shakespearean dialogue. Avon won by being slightly more sane. There are enough sword-wielding lunatics in this dungeon of mine already.

Hmm, so those are my choices. I have noticed that I seem to gravitate towards deadly raving lunatics, with vastly superior intellects, but who also happen to be extremely pretty. Not sure what that says about me. As for what I'm going to do with them once I have them in my dungeon... Sit back and watch them fight it out, of course. My mile wide self preservation streak won't actually let me go anywhere near them, although that might be a tad difficult if we're all locked in a dungeon. One to think on...

Now show me your lists.

Madelynne xx

Who Needs Perfection?

By Gwen Masters
Last week I picked up a new novel by an author I had never heard of before. I got to page eighteen before I had to put it down and walk away. It wasn’t that the writing was bad, or that the plot wasn’t any good – it was the lead character. She annoyed the hell out of me.

The perfect protagonist is the one thing that will make me throw a book across the room in a fit of fury. Impossibly perfect bodies, stunning success without working for it, dialogue that I have to look up in a dictionary – these are not the things of real life. I love to lose myself in a fantasy from time to time, but even fantasy goes only so far before common sense takes over.

I admit: I’ve been guilty of writing the perfect protagonist. It was something I did back when I was just dipping my toes into the publishing pool, and my lovely editors forgave me the indiscretion. As time goes on (and as I trade the fairy tale youth for a bit of experience), I tend to write things a more realistically, and I want to read something more realistic, too. I want to read about the woman who might drink too much at the company party, who curses like a sailor when she gets pissed, who walks out of the house with no makeup. I want to read about a real woman, not a Barbie doll!

My all-time favorite flawed heroine is Orleanna Price from Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. She’s the wife of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, a mother to five children, and trying hard to survive as a missionary in the deepest reaches of the Congo in the 1960s. She struggles with her faith, with her marriage, and with motherhood. She struggles to make peace with the village women even while she tries to make peace within herself. She bends until she breaks, and when she does finally fall to pieces, only then do we see what she’s really made of.

One of my favorite characters to write was Kelley, the woman in One Breath at a Time, my upcoming Black Lace novel. Kelley went through a breakup that left her devastated – she was cheated on, lied to, hurt immeasurably. She’s working through the pain of the betrayal and trying to get on with her new life. On her best days, she’s just like you and me. On her worst days, she has moments when one breath at a time seems to be all she can manage. But she keeps on keepin’ on, because you know, that’s what we do.

Dayle A. Dermatis has a unique take on the topic: “Are there perfect heroines? Because if there are, what's the point in writing about them? Where's the internal conflict, and thus the book? Aren't ALL main characters, by necessity, flawed?”

That’s a good point – and that’s why it drives me insane to pick up a best-selling novel whose heroine is a dainty wallflower. Dayle is right: What’s the point? The good stuff comes from the hard knocks, not from easy street.

Nikki Magennis is loving Carmen Martin Gaite’s heroine in Living’s the Strange Thing. Check out the blurb and tell me this woman isn't fantastic:

'Office file clerk Águeda Soler, 35 years old, lost her mother 2 months ago. During her husband's absence she visits her grandfather and, when the old man confuses her with her dead mother, she doesn't contradict him, and submerges herself into a delirium of emotions.'

In Nikki’s words: “It's so subtle you can feel the characters fingertips.”

Portia Da Costa had a great protagonist in mind: “Clarice Starling. She's stubborn, opinionated, and sometimes tactless. She's fighting a constant battle to stop the ghosts of her past muddying her clarity of purpose, but she's intelligent, loyal and intuitive, and she's not afraid to admire the unthinkable.”

Portia has also written a flawed heroine or two in her time. Her favorite? “Maria Lewis from Entertaining Mr Stone. Don't really know why except that it was just so easy to be her for a while. Her flaws are my flaws...which are legion.”

Madeline Moore (sometimes Madeline de Chambrey) says: My favourite heroine I've written was in a short story for the Thunder's Mouth Press anthology Amazons: Sexy Tales of Strong Women (edited by Sage Vivant and M. Christian). She is the main character in the eponymous story, 'The Bearded Lady."

Why is she Madeline’s favorite? “After she has a mastectomy and chemotherapy she loses her hair, which means she loses not only a breast, but worse, her beard! So, whereas once she was 'more than a woman, now that her beard was gone...she was less than the most ordinary woman on earth.'”

Alana Noel Voth has a whole list! "Julia from George Orwell's 1984; Holly Golightly from Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's; Brett Ashley from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises; Laura Brown from The Hours by Michael Cunningham; and Marguerette Duras as herself in The Lover. I love a writer brave enough to allow the rest of us to view her flaws in such a lush, erotic memoir. Seriously, Duras has inspired me beyond words and made me feel brave enough to explore my own flaws in writing."

Deanna Ashford picked a true classic. “It must be Scarlett O'Hara for me. I first read Gone with the Wind when I was about 13 and I enjoyed it so much I read it from start to finish in one weekend. I admire Scarlett's strength and determinationin the face of adversity and he desire to rebuild her beloved Tara. However, I also wanted to slap her most of the time because she was selfish, emotionally stupid and callously used people to achieve her own ends. When she did eventually marry the one man who was right for her, her own foolishness destroyed her one last chance of true happiness.”

Kate Pearce chimed in, “Ooh I was going to suggest Scarlet O'Hara too for exactly the same reasons! My other fav is Anita Blake, the heroine of Laurell K Hamilton's series. She starts off as a prudish, narrow minded Catholic and ends up...how many men does she have in her bed now? I haven't counted for a while.”

Doesn’t that just make you want to ply Miss Anita with enough alcohol to make her spill the details?

Finally, Olivia Knight has her favorites, too. “I'm such an A.S. Byatt whore. Frederica, from the quartet - The Virgin In The Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and A Whistling Woman. She's opinionated, ambitious, and unrelentingly clever - she never lets up into the sweet womanliness which is so often touted as a much higher virtue. I like heroines who aren't always nice, because nice holds women back left, right and centre.”

Olivia sums it up perfectly: "Anyone who doesn't explicitly and routinely match all their clothes and wear dainty little designer shoes has my vote!”

So forget the surgery-enhanced knockouts, the brilliant rocket scientists, the impossibly perfect lasses who never chip a nail. Who are your favorite flawed heroines?

Beyond the Comfort Zones: Writing Across Boundaries

by the two halves of Sophie Mouette

We confess: We’re kind of Call for Submission Whores. New anthology guidelines go up on Erotica Readers and Writers and our dirty minds immediately start trying to come up with scenarios. From sexy cowboys to men in uniform (and the men who love them) to music to fun with latex and rubber, we’re game to try just about anything. (In writing, that is. Our personal lives are…personal.)

But once in a while, an anthology theme throws us, and it’s not for the reasons you might think. Okay, the latex and rubber anthology was challenging. Teresa used to date someone with a parts-per-million allergy to rubber, so when she thinks rubber, she didn’t think “sexy,” she thought “Where’s the nearest emergency room?” Still, after much exercise of the empathic imagination, she came up with something.

That anthology theme wasn’t Dayle’s personal cup of tea, either. So she wrote it from the perspective of a wife discovering her husband’s fetish and deciding to give him a birthday he’ll never forget. A rubber bathing cap wasn’t her idea of a sexy toy, but she loves her husband and is willing to try, and she gets incredibly turned on sharing in her husband’s reactions. In the end, Dayle feels, sex is better when there’s a connection between the participants, and a story is sexier when there are characters you care about.

(Sadly, that anthology was cancelled—so if anyone’s looking for a couple of hot and sexy stories about rubber, give us a call!)

Anyway, the anthologies that throw us have been anthologies that asked for different ethnicities as major characters. We’re both about as middle-class whitebread Americans as they come. (Different areas of Europe, perhaps, and Dayle is one-quarter Mediterranean—but white girls who have to look back a few generations before they can find family members who trotted across the pond.)

We feel pretty confident putting ourselves into the head of someone whose sexual kinks aren’t ours. The mechanics may be different, but sensations and emotions draw more from the characters than from whatever acrobatics or props are involved. But in a world where race is such a hot-button issue, where white authors and artists are routinely called to task for playing off racial stereotypes if they don’t do their homework or “cultural appropriation” if they seem too fascinated by a culture other than their own, how much does one dare to get into the inner sexual and emotional life of someone from a very different background? Not to mention just describing them in a way that’s not clichéd or, worse, offensively stereotypical?

In “Special Delivery,” Teresa’s story in Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica, she got around that problem by making her own discomfort a plot element. The point-of-view character’s a white lesbian who’s attracted to the sari-clad hostess at her favorite Indian restaurant, but knows that part of her fascination is the lure of the exotic:

“I felt like I was being Weirdo Stalker Chick, and in a way that would make my more politically savvy friends scold me. I knew damn well that the source of my crush was at least as much the exotic-to-me packaging—the pretty saris, the bindi, the delicate gold nose ring that connected to her earring with a fine chain—as the woman herself.”

This being fiction, our heroines find a way to get past their surfaces differences and hook up, but Teresa felt far more comfortable dealing with the familiar issue of white liberal guilt trips than dealing with her Indian lesbian more directly.

Dayle went a similar route for her story in the same anthology, in that she also chose to make her narrator white. But rather than touch on any personal uneasiness, she wrote about two women who’d been together for a while, who loved each other and found each other beautiful in a way that transcended their ethnic differences. Her main character loved her partner for herself, not for any specific exoticness. The conflict they have to overcome is one that could happen in any partnership: the strain that going back to school can put on both members in a relationship.

Set in racially diverse southern California, our novel Cat Scratch Fever couldn’t have an all-white cast and be even remotely believable. Surprisingly, though, the toughest character to get “right” was our bad boy Lance, who, although white, might as well have come from another world. Trying to make a barely legal, hip-hop-loving reformed gangster sound believable was an exercise in writing about a foreign culture, far more so than the well-educated professionals, José the zoo vet (Hispanic) and Melissa the animal handler with a degree from Stanford (Asian). (Now, we love the character we created, but we’re pretty sure a real nineteen-year-old hood would laugh his fool ass off at our attempts at slang. Someone’s probably laughing right now at our use of the word “hood.” But at least we’re pretty sure we haven’t outright offended anybody.) Which probably goes to show that writing across any major divide in experience—age, class, race, sexual preference—can be a challenge.

Can a white woman truly pull off writing about a black woman? About a man, no matter what race? An upper class person about a poverty-stricken one? Where does the line get drawn between an honest attempt and a descent into un-PC cliché?

Or are emotions and passions universal, even when the particulars of experience differ?

Sexy v Beautiful

‘Just standing around looking beautiful is so boring…’
- Michelle Pfeiffer

Ah, Michelle. I feel your pain.

Actually, I don’t, because like most of the world, I don’t have a ticket to the Beautiful Club. They can be bought, of course, at huge expense and if you’re willing to spend a lot of time – a lot of time – primping and waxing and grooming and pouting. Air brush and botox and stand the right way and try not to smile too hard, and you might be allowed in to worship at the altar of Supermodel.

Like most young girls, I wanted to grow up and be beautiful. (Brush your hair a hundred times. Wash your face in the morning dew. Work on that blank expression.) Unfortunately I’ve failed so far - to either grow up or be beautiful.

Yet there was a moment, a few years ago, when I was looking in the mirror and despairing at my flaw-ridden reflection, and a light bulb went on.

I may never be beautiful, but fuck, I could be sexy. Sexy like Marilyn or Peaches or Debbie Harry or Macy Gray or Eartha Kitt or Patti Smith. (Feel free to add your own version of sexy to the list here).

Sexy is so much more various than beautiful. More powerful.

‘Hips, tits, lips, power.’
– Big Bad Baby Pigsqueal, by Silverfish

While the beautiful people are standing carefully on the red carpet, one hip arranged at the right angle and chin down, trying not to smile too hard, the sexy woman is out mud-wrestling in a ripped dress, screwing her hair up and not giving a flying fuck. A sexy woman has a sense of humour. A sexy woman doesn’t worry about her manicure when she’s raking her nails down a man’s back.



Really, all Beauty is fit for is preserving behind glass. It’s dazzling, sure, and we shrink before it. ‘It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness’ (– that’s Leo Tolstoy, and I’m not going to argue with him.)
But show me a beautiful character that has any hint of a pulse, and I’ll eat my eyelash curlers. There’s something cold about beauty, at least, beauty as we’re led to believe – cold perfection, symmetrical features, flawless skin. Aiming for size zero.


Yes, a woman knows she is beautiful when her dress size tells her she has ceased to exist. That’s the point. Beauty is a chimera. We’re being sold the Emperor’s New Clothes, because really there is no such thing as beautiful.

‘Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford’
– Cindy Crawford

But, now, let’s have a look at sexy. You can smell sexy. It’s about how you move, the certain quality of your smile, an attitude that knows all about the body and its mysterious, pulsing, sweating, heart-racing, blood-pounding ways. It has body hair and breasts and balls and fluids. (Yes, I realise I’ve just created a monster. Bear with me).

The point is, Sexy is about revealing our real self, gloriously flawed. It’s not about struggling to erase all the signs that show one is human in the pursuit of a mathematically perfect ideal.

Only one person decides if you're sexy or not - that's you. It’s about heat, and the suggestion of softness. How your flesh would feel cupped in the palm of a hand. It’s about feeling skin against skin and tasting the mouth of your lover and feeling that beat start inside you that turns your knees weak and makes you hungry and knowing that your body is meant for more than just decoration.
It’s about dancing like no-one is watching, the taste of chocolate ice cream, how your body jiggles when you move. Most of all, of course, it’s about fucking.

No one can stay beautiful and make love. I mean, have you ever seen yourself in the act? Face screwed up and sweating and mouth hanging open and hanging upside down off the edge of the bed is not a flattering pose.

Most of all, being sexy is about being a real, live, fuckable human being.

And that’s why when I’m writing, I look for the things that are ‘wrong’ about a character. All the ugliness that makes a character (or a person) unique and fascinating and memorable, also makes them real enough to fall in love with.

‘Give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow’s feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.’
- George Bernard Shaw, to Mrs Patrick Campbell.

I say keep your Beauty. Give me ugly, give me crooked teeth and a soft belly and funny feet and a squint, and I shall show you sexy.



How about you?

Casting GOTHIC BLUE and CONTINUUM... or something like that

Eek! Agh! I’m supposed to write something about GOTHIC BLUE and CONTINUUM today and I don’t really have the first idea what to say. I’m rubbish at promo and I don’t know how to write articles, so all that leaves is just yattering on about stuff, the way I do on my own blog…

Right, GOTHIC BLUE then…

Would you believe that this was supposed to be a vampire erotic novel? I was all set to have a brooding, handsome vampire living at Sedgewick Priory, but when I proposed this to the editor at the time she said, ‘ooh no, vampires are old hat in erotica… Anne Rice has done it all already…’ or words to that effect. Now, lovers of sexy vamp novels today are probably thinking ‘What!?!’ It doesn’t seem possible, given the truly world conquering popularity of vampire erotica nowadays, that a decade or so ago, the subgenre could have been deemed such a no-no. Anyway, I had a bit of a rethink and came up with a new paranormalness [paranormality?] for my hero Count André Von Kastel and made him a sort of semi benevolent sorcerer by default. He’s had the mockers put on him by an evil sorceress and he’s cursed to languish alone in near immortality, pining for his true love, who's trapped as an incorporeal spirit in a blue crystal bottle. There's a way out of this dilemma for both him and his beloved, involving a bit of sex magic, but he's just waiting for the right 'participant' to come along. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds pretty bonkers, but it did seem like a good idea at the time! J

It wasn’t difficult to ‘cast’ as Count André. I already had a perfect ‘template’ guy in mind, and I built the character around him. And who better to make into a pale, spooky, semi supernatural being living in mournful seclusion than a tanned and healthy world class super sportsman? Yep, I’d been watching Wimbledon not long before I started writing GB, so Count André is modelled on a young, long haired André Agassi… LOL

As it’s ten years since I wrote GOTHIC BLUE, a lot of brain cells have flowed under the bridge since then, so I can’t remember much about some of the other characters in it. The heroine is Belinda Seward [a slight Dracula type homage, obviously, with the book showing its vampire roots] and she has a steady boyfriend and travelling companion called Jonathan [another Drac ref]. I don’t think I had a template guy in mind for Jonathan, but looking back at him across the years, I seem to see a young, fresh Tom Hanks, much as he looked in movies like 'Splash' or 'Big'. Jonathan is a straightforward, uncomplicated sort of chap, passionately in love with Belinda, but a bit befuddled by all the hokey erotic goings on at the Priory.

Reading the above [if you’ve not fallen asleep by now] you’ll have gathered that I always tend to use my current ‘lust object’ of choice to create the heroes in my books. I see it as a fine and harmless way to have a wild sexy fling with an otherwise completely unattainable guy such as a pop star, a film or movie actor or a sportsman When I came to write CONTINUUM, I had a passionate ‘thing’ for Kevin Bacon – stemming from films like 'He Said, She Said', 'Flatliners' and 'Tremors' [oh, those long lean legs in those tight blue jeans!] So one of the principal men in CONTINUUM is a geeky but quirkily handsome boy next door/sex maniac called Kevin Steel. Heroine Joanna has a spiky and sometimes combative relationship with naughty Kevin, but he’s always there when she needs him, for sex or otherwise.

But Kevin isn’t the only template bloke in CONTINUUM. Around the time I wrote the book, I’d also been avidly watching reruns of Twin Peaks, so some of the men from that rather peculiar series got supporting roles. Agent Dale Cooper himself aka Kyle Maclachlan is Halloran, Joanna’s stern but sexy boss, and the role of Denis Davidson, the sly and provocative human resources supremo at her firm is ‘played’ by Mr David Duchovny in an off beat and titillating pre Fox Mulder guise. Denis has a delicious habit of becoming ‘Denise’ now and again, so I drew on the image of David looking rather fetching in high heels, lipstick, a glossy wig and a power suit when he appeared as a cross dressing DEA agent in the second series of TP.

Well, that’s all I can really think of to say about GOTHIC BLUE and CONTINUUM for the moment. It's not much, I know, but I did warn you. The best way to find out more about the books is to read them. I hope you'll find them fun and entertaining... ;)

If you want to try before you buy, you’ll find an excerpt of GOTHIC BLUE here, and excerpts of CONTINUUM here and here.

You can now buy the newly reprinted and gorgeously rejacketed CONTINUUM from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

GOTHIC BLUE has an equally spiffing new cover and it’s currently available from Amazon.co.uk. It’ll be available from Amazon.com on 3rd April.

Thank you for your kind attention...

Love

WendyPortia aka Portia Da Costa
First Lady of Black Lace [© Tilly and who am I to argue?]

Falling in Love Again...

Obsession, n.[L. obsessio]
2. The state of being besieged; - used specifically of a person beset by a spirit from without.


Back in the Olden Days it was easy writing for Black Lace …
Then we knew we were writing about sex. Hard-edged, transgressive, no-holds-barred, call-a-cunt-a-cunt sex that would get women hot and wet and breathless. Romance was irrelevant: this was Black Lace, not Mills & Boon. Our male characters could be handsome or ugly, attractive or repulsive, kind or cruel, comforting or provoking or downright frightening, just so long as they were, within that situation, finger-lickin’ hot. Hell, they didn’t even have to be human, or alive – In Cruel Enchantment I wrote sex with a dragon and with the walking dead (I wouldn’t get away with those nowadays, believe me).


So keen was I to avoid being seen to write about Love, as opposed to Sex, that even in situations where it was completely appropriate I wouldn’t mention it. It’s obvious to readers of Divine Torment that the two main characters are wildly in love, but I never once use the L-Word.


Everything changes … Nowadays romance is In and characters should live happily-ever-after together … eventually. I am actually very happy with the new paradigm (at least when I’m writing longer pieces of fiction) - partly because any character, male or female, who can shag their way through 80,000 words without ever becoming emotionally involved is one that I’m likely to find a bit repellent. Partly because there just isn’t anything more erotic than the experience of falling head over heels, obsessively, truly-madly-deeply in love. But it does result in some challenges for the writer...


First, you’ve got to make your male characters actually worthy of more than a one-night-stand. Not always easy: a pretty face and a big cock just aren’t enough.


And then there’s the emotional involvement… After all, I’m (mostly) writing about how a female character falls for a male. There’s the authorly obligation to write sincerely, and to feel what the character is feeling. Which means, since I’m currently working on two novellas plus a novel with rival male heroes, that at the moment I have to be hopelessly in love with four different fictional blokes: a werebear, a ginger eco-warrior, a Crowleyan chaos magician and a king of ancient Sumer… The hormonal overload can be painful at times. I catch myself watching eagerly in crowded areas for someone who doesn’t actually exist to turn up and meet me. And poor Mr Ashbless has to put up with me moping tragically around the house with a haunted look in my eyes and waking up at 3am for furtive liaisons with my computer.


Sometimes you just want to flee to the Arctic to get away from it all.


So, ’fess up, you writers – or is it just me?
Will anyone admit to Faking It instead – writing a hero they secretly found risible or boring?
Readers; it’s easy to fall for a fictional character you can see on screen, but do you ever get a real crush on a man who only exists in writing?

I’d love to know…


xxx
Janine Ashbless
http://www.janineashbless.com/
http://www.janineashbless.blogspot.com/
Janine Ashbless on Amazon.co.uk

Character Creation Wednesday

A major part of every erotica writer's job is lounging around in their jammies, dreaming up sexy men and women who want to get it on.

Okay, so it sounds like a lot more fun and a lot less work than it actually is. But coming up with characters is definitely one of my favorite parts of writing erotica. I'll admit I’m a bit of a thief when it comes to my characters. I’ve been known to steal—I’m sorry, borrow—personality traits and physical attributes from friends, family, loved ones, enemies, passing strangers and photographs in magazines.

Lately, my characters have shown up with my bike mechanic’s gorgeous grease-stained fingers, a stranger’s tattooed feet, the pouty lips of Sark (a character from the TV show, Alias), a laugh I overheard in a coffee shop, and my man’s habit of talking to himself in Italian while he cooks. All sexy in their own way, and all the little details that can make a character really come alive on the page.

So: Where do your characters come from? How do you create them and put them on the page? Do you “borrow” from real-life people? The rich and famous? Books and movies? Or from the depths of your imagination?