Quickies

Newsflash!

Black Lace have launched a new line of little books called 'Quickies'. There's six short stories in each, and each book is half the price of a normal paperback. Perfect for filling the little gaps in your day with some quality dirty reading!

Check them out here at Amazon UK, or here if you're Stateside.

(The cover above is from Numero Deux, which contains 'All I Have to Do' by Me.)

xx
Nikki

You Can Leave Your Hat On

I am rebellious by nature. I learn about an anthology collection, and rather than dive into the stated theme, I try my best only to dip in my pinkie toe. Or to barely brush my lips across it. Sometimes this works. Sometimes I flame out.

But Sex & Fashion, I chose myself. And yet, as soon as I began to consider the topic, my mind strayed from dressing up to stripping down. (This is a theme close to my heart, as well. Check out my collection: Naked Erotica.)

Here is my dilemma: I love getting dolled up. My closet brims with dresses and blouses and boots and heels. My underwear drawer is an explosion of color, lace, silks, and satin. I remember what I wore on all sorts of important days and dates. Copper-colored panties on a first date with a movie star. Gold mini dress and white fringed go-go boots when I worked in casting. My “magic dress” — tight and black, with sterling buttons down the front, on many, many occasions. (Tacky now. Sexy then.) I contemplate my clothes the way a costume designer would, choosing my outfits with extreme care.

Oh, Cinderella
They aren’t sluts like you
Beautiful garbage beautiful dresses
—Courtney Love

On my very first date, when I was 12, I wore a turquoise t-shirt, pegged jeans, and my father’s forest green flannel overshirt. My eyeliner matched the tee- and I had on candy-colored lipgloss that tasted as good as it looked.

When I met Brock four years later, I was in jeans and an oversized football jacket covered with rhinestone pins. I’d purchased the jacket at a thrift store in the Haight (Aaardvark’s Odd Ark, to be precise) for $7.00. Completing the outfit, I wore a man’s navy ring on a watch-fob chain around my neck, and a thin blue bowling shirt with the name Dominic embroidered over the pocket. I had on three different silver ID bracelets (Tom, Dick, and Harry) and so much purple eye makeup my dad said I looked like a raccoon.

Just like fashion it's a passion for the with it and hip...
—Smash Mouth

But I’m with a man now who can’t wait to get my clothes off me. The fancier my attire, the quicker his libido rises. Am I off to meet an important editor, dressed to the nines in some spiffy suit? Perfect. He’s going to take me down a notch first, make me all rumpled with a quick, pre-meeting fuck, so that my makeup is smeared and my shirt is wrinkled, and I have the taste of cock on my lips.

A night out with the girls? Wearing my favorite shimmery frock and bright blue fishnet stockings? Lovely. Just let him rip a hole down the side of the hose, so that they ladder further and further throughout the evening, creating that trashy slut look he’s after.

Fashion – Turn to the left
Fashion - Turn to the right
—Bowie

So that’s sex and fashion in our twisted world…. I become fashionable. He wants to have sex.

But Sam’s not the first who fully confounded my sense of style. Kelly, he of the midnight shift at the grocery store. He of the barren cave apartment with no books. He...well, he didn’t have use for me in the slightest when I showed up in my best dress-for-success outfits: crisp white blouses, pencil skirts, high stacked heels. Trying to look older than 18 to impress the writers on the newspaper where I worked. It wasn’t until I came in at a quarter to midnight, in cut-offs and a tight t-shirt, fully drenched in sky blue paint that he took notice.

I needed to be demolished, before he could see me. Really see me.

I'm too sexy for my shirt
Too sexy for my shirt
So sexy it hurts
—Right Said Fred

I had to be slightly mussed around the edges before he wanted to fuck me. If I was clean, he made me dirty. If I started out dirty, he made me filthier still.

I wish she'd take off all her clothes
No Doubt

Throughout the years, only one of my men was truly interested in fashion—consumed with putting on my clothes as opposed to taking them off. Hunter was my editor on the newspaper, my Pygmalion. He changed my entire sense of style, turning me from goth girl to girl Friday. He was why I had those pencil skirts and white blouses, why I wore my hair the way I did, wore my make-up in the style of his choosing. He is featured in "Edit Me,” and there are certain items in my wardrobe that I can’t wear without getting wet from memories of him. Of the way he’d tilt his head and take in my whole look, before making some minor persnickety adjustment. It was as important to him what went on my body as what he ultimately took off.

I want a girl with a short skirt,
And a long, long jacket
—Cake

Sex and fashion, is the theme I pitched.
Sex and fashion, is the topic I chose.
When all along, what I really wanted to talk about was undressing and standing naked, once more, before you.

Baby, take off your dress.
Yes, yes, yes.
—Randy Newman

XXX,
Alison

P.S. Now you…your most delicious outfit. Your most decadent example of how you put it on, or how you took it off. We’re giving away a copy of Naked Erotica to one lucky poser… I mean poster.

P.P.S. When I lived in L.A., I had a shirt that said something like: It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s what you wear, because when it all comes down to it, nobody cares who you are…. I wore that shirt until it fucking distinegrated.

Note: The picture above is "Bis" by Pamela Hanson and is available here.

Sexier Than You Think

Those category romance books are all smouldering glances and unrequited desire but when it comes to the crunch the bedroom door closes, we fade to black or cut to a crackling fire, right?

Wrong!

Rising category romance star Julie Cohen explains just how dirty those innocent looking books can be (and how dirty they *can't* be) and lets us in on where she finds her smuttiest inspiration.
MMx

*

As a young teenager, I learned about sexual relationships from two secret sources: a stack of Penthouse Forum magazines I found in a closet, and from Harlequin and Silhouette novels that I sneak-read in the library. One source was about sex. One was about love. It’s probably not surprising that I grew up to write sexy category romance.

In the kind of romance I write, sexual tension and emotion is more important than sex. Usually, I have to think up characters who lust after each other, but who have very compelling reasons never to have sex with each other, ever.

So I might spend most of the novel building up to a sex scene. For example, in my latest release, Driving Him Wild (Mills & Boon Modern Extra, February 2007), my heroine, Zoe, is irresistably attracted to the hero, Nick, from the moment she meets him being difficult on her doorstep. Nick, however, isn’t attracted to Zoe sexually at first. He likes her, and he particularly likes winding her up, but she’s a tomboy and not his usual type, so the idea of sex with her doesn’t even occur to him until, out of the blue, suddenly he can’t get it out of his head.

What this means is that Zoe picks up on early signals that Nick isn’t interested in her, and therefore she spends most of the book struggling against her attraction, because who needs the humiliation of trying to seduce someone who’s not interested? And then, when he makes his interest very blatantly clear (he’s wearing exercise shorts at the time, and it’s pretty darn blatant, hooray!), she thinks it’s because he feels sorry for her.

In a 216-page book, the first sex scene starts on page 150. And even then their problems aren’t over, because Zoe finds it far too difficult to trust. Every sex scene after that first one is focused on trying to get her to let her defenses down.

On the other hand, maybe I have two characters who lust after each other and have no reason not to sleep together. That’s what happens in my October 2006 release, Married in a Rush. Jo and Bruno are both commitment-phobes, and within half an hour of bumping into each other, total strangers, in the National Gallery in London, they’re having sex with each other in a broom closet (on page 27 of a 216-page novel).

If you begin a romance with your characters getting it on, you have to then come up with reasons why they can’t get it on again for much of the rest of the book. With Jo and Bruno, there is a simple reason--the condom fails, and she gets pregnant. Because they’re having a baby together, but because neither of them wants a committed relationship, they agree they have to try their best not to sleep together again: it will only complicate things.

(The title of the book sort of gives away what happens. I wanted to call it Remarkably Penetrative Sperm, but my editor, alas, said no. Marriages of convenience are a major hook for category book buyers. Sperm, apparently, isn’t.)

My June 2007 release, All Work And No Play... is similar in that the characters have sex with each other right away , and I had to think up a compelling reason why they couldn’t have sex again until near the end of the book. In that case, it’s because of a mistaken identity: she thinks he’s a stranger, when in fact he’s her best online buddy, the one she can’t afford to lose if (when) their relationship goes wrong.

So I spend a lot of my sexy novels stopping my characters from having sex with each other, which is pretty fun for me. (Less fun for them.) When they do finally get busy, I have to concentrate on character arc and emotional intensity as much as on the sex. Because while the reader wants to read a good steamy scene, she also wants to be taken on an emotional journey and fall in love along with the characters.

There’s also the tricky bit about writing explicit sex scenes that aren’t too explicit. Personally, I like to call a penis a penis, and I don’t have much truck with buttered muffins and throbbing flagstaffs (unless it’s for humour). But there are some words I can’t use, because they’d be offensive to the reader. When I wrote an erotic novel with my best friend recently, it was incredibly liberating to be able to use four-letter words, and to have my characters shout them out, repeatedly.

As long as my language is fairly clean, I can describe what I want to, though because the focus is on romance rather than sex, I try to make it more sexy than sexual, and any kink has to relate directly to the character arc and emotion. There can’t be anything that will distract the reader; the fantasy is about two people who are wildly attracted and in love with each other, not the sexual act in itself. Definitely no gimp masks or enormous dildoes or horny Alsatians. I save those for my private life.

One of my editors removed a reference to (male) pubic hair once, but I’ve included it since without any problem, which is good, because romance heroes don’t tend to wax. Another editor took out a description of the hero disposing of a used condom, and I sort of agree with that because it is gross, but hey, it’s an important part of real-life sex, and, to me, an indication that he’s not a slob.

On balance, I’m glad I read the Penthouse Forums as well as the category romance--just as I have fun these days writing romantic sex scenes, and erotic ones. They’re two different views of fantasy. And we can never have enough of that.

Julie
Amazon UK links
Driving Him Wild, Married in a Rush, All Work and No Play

*

And Julie has two treats for viewers. The first is the chance to nip over to her blog and win a copy of Driving Him Wild. The second is a very worthwhile new recruit for the Mathilde Madden Foundation for the Preservation of Dangerously Naked Men. Of course, we're talking about passion and fashion this week. And if you are Guy Pearce, what could be more fashionable than the "Oops, all my clothes have accidentally fallen off" look.

Coming Attractions

by Mathilde Madden

Welcome to Lust Bites, where fashion is passion and passion is the fashion... or something.

That might have worked better in my head.

But, no matter, passion and fashion collide this week starting on Monday when the wonderfully funny and sexy Julie Cohen will be here to explain why category romance is more passion packed than you think. Could erotica fans be missing out of some really dirty fiction that is nestling between pink covers?

On Wednesday it's time for another chat with Alison Tyler. Now, practically a Lust Bites institution. After enticing us with tales of Sex and Movies and Sex and Music Alison will be here to talk about Sex and Fashion. So make a note to be there – and dress to impress.

The themes of passion and fashion climax on Friday when we enter the deviant mind of Madelynne Ellis. Madelynne takes over the monthly smut slot with an extract from her delicious novel Dark Designs – winner of the Scarlet award for best male/male sex scene – which features a Gothic wedding, yaoi overtones and one of her trademark boys you love to hate. Don't miss it.

Finally huge congratulations to Teresa/tetewa winner of Erastes' Standish competition. Please drop a line to erastesdotcom (at) googlemail (dot) com including who you would like the book signed to and a note of where to send it.

Until next week I remain your most passionate, fashionate servant
Tilly aka Mathilde Madden

When Two Heads Are Better Than One (and We’re Not Talking About Those Heads!)

by Sophie Mouette (aka Dayle & Teresa)
















Dayle

Teresa and I (aka the joint writing team of Sophie Mouette) are at the tail end of a week-long writers’ retreat on the Oregon Coast, where we’ve written more than half of our current novel-length project. What better time to ramble on about our experiences with collaboration?

One caveat: There are as many ways to collaborate as there are collaborators. For example, I know at least two sets of writers who work such that one half of the team writes the rough draft and the other half fleshes out the details. That’s not how we do it, so we can’t really talk about that style of process. Everyone’s different, and every collaborative team is different.

Our method is to brainstorm our stories and novels together, tossing thoughts back and forth and building on idea and concepts until something really clicks. Then we decide who’s writing one scene or chapter, and we trade back and forth. Sometimes we can each be working on sections at the same time, but more often than not, we’re building on what the last person just wrote.

Teresa

Dayle forgot to mention that our brainstorming process involves wine. Sometimes a lot of wine. We don’t necessarily endorse this for everyone, but it works for us, although sometimes it makes it hard to decipher our notes in the morning. But anyway…on to more details of how we collaborate.

For longer projects, we each have areas or characters or subplots we’re more or less in charge of. For instance, in Cat Scratch Fever, I filled in a lot of the details of how the zoo actually worked, since I’d done fundraising for an aquarium. (I swear neither the office sex nor the criminal board member was based on real life, but the sheer level of insanity…that’s 100% real.) Dayle filled in a lot of the setting since she often visits the big cat sanctuary that inspired the one in the book.

In our current work-in-progress, which involves a personal chef working for a wacky starlet, she’s in charge of pop culture details and I’m handling the food, echoing what we’re interested in. (This also gives me a great excuse to buy more cookbooks and cooking magazines as “research”.) We’ve been passing chapters back and forth full of brackets along the lines of [Dayle: celebrity name?] and [Teresa: foodie stuff here].

And sometimes things divide out in really strange ways. For instance, I’ve written every sex scene so far in this book and she’s written every scene of the plot thread involving the heroine’s dog. We haven’t figured this out yet, since I like dogs better than she does and we’re equally fond of writing sex scenes.

Dayle

I didn’t forget to mention the wine; I just wanted to leave something for you to write about….

One of the biggest pluses of collaboration (other than the fact that you each have to write only half a story or book) is the ability to bounce ideas off each other. The final product is stronger and richer that way.

But there are downsides, too. We tried to avoid a good chunk of them by having a signed contract with each other. We’ve been friends for almost 20 years, but we still felt that was crucial—hopefully if we do have any disagreements, the contract will help protect our friendship. It covers issues such as “if one person stops writing partway through the book, do they get a percentage of the advance” and “how does future money get divided if one of us dies.”

There’s also scheduling and timing. We live on opposite ends of the US, so we don’t get to meet up very often. We also both have lives away from Sophie: solo writing projects, not to mention husbands, houses, friends, etc. If I’m off on one of my motorcycle jaunts, she has to wait until I return to get the next chunk of a project from me.

We’ve been lucky in that we usually agree on things, but occasionally we hit a sticking point where we each have to argue our point. Thankfully our friendship has held up through these! We try very hard to keep the love and respect at the forefront.

We also (I think) have healthy egos—not too overblown, but not too wimpy. Teresa can edit my words and make them stronger, and I can do the same for hers. If you’re too wedded to your prose, collaboration probably isn’t for you.

Teresa

We’ve been collaborating long-distance since Sophie Mouette was born. When we first started writing together, Dayle was actually living in Wales, which made even scheduling a phone call interesting. At least now it’s only a three-hour time difference. Thank goodness for email.

This week has been heavenly in terms of our creative process. Instead of being on opposite sides of the country, we’ve been on opposite sides of a big table. When one of us reached a sticking point, the other was there for bouncing ideas around. We’d read bits out loud to each other, riffing off each other’s words in a way we can’t do when we’re apart. If something one of us wrote didn’t work, we could talk it through on the spot. We not only made tremendous progress on our current book (the end’s in sight!), we also started plotting two sequels and helped each other brainstorm our next solo projects. The synergy, the sense of a shared brain, has been simply amazing.

In fact, this whole week has been about synergy and sharing a brain. About writers sparking off writers. Our retreat wasn’t just the two of it; it was a whole beach house full of writers determined to get away from the distractions of home and write up a storm. We had private or semi-private rooms, but a lot of us ended up working in the common area, earbuds in, burning up our keyboards.

We’d help each other brainstorm through sticky spots, urge someone out for walks on the beach when she obviously needed fresh air and a fresh perspective, cheered as we each hit important milestones. We were all working in different genres (erotica to inspirational—how’s that for range?) but we all shared a common goal of getting tons of writing done, and we helped each other reach that goal. And all of us have been buzzing about how wonderful it’s been to be with people who “get it.”

I guess that’s one advantage Dayle and I have. We don’t often get the wonderful experience of being together and being surrounded by other creative people, all busily working away, but we are at least sharing the process, sharing both the highs and lows of writing.

Writing is inherently a lonely job. Face it, we spend a lot of time by ourselves, in our heads, staring at a little screen and talking to imaginary people. But when we’re “being Sophie,” at least we’re both talking to the same imaginary people.

Dayle

There’s also one other thing we had to negotiate, which is unique to writing erotica, and that’s language. What slang and euphemisms for body parts and sexual acts did we like and dislike? Thankfully we both abhorred the same ones! We were lucky: I think there’s only one word she doesn’t like that I could go either way on.

Teresa
This isn’t to say that one of us won’t question a particular term in a particular context. Once in a while, for example, I might use a word that, to Dayle’s ear, doesn’t fit the mood, or she might have a character say something I’m not convinced the character would say. Sometimes we hear the suggestion and say, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”; sometimes after a little discussion we’ll decide that the original wording is fine. That’s all part of the fine art of collaboration!

Dayle

Collaboration has its pros and cons, and its up to every individual writer to decide whether it will work for him or her—and then there’s the challenge of finding someone with whom you click.

But when it works, it works really well. If you’ve read Cat Scratch Fever, we’d love to hear your comments about what you thought about book in terms of this little chat about collaboration. Could you tell that Sophie has two brains…?

(Cat Scratch Fever by Sophie Mouette was a 2006 Black Lace release and received a four-star review from Romantic Times.)

300

By Janine Ashbless

“Then the gods did say unto Janine Ashbless, Mortal often hast thou questioned the reason for thy existence, and now we shall give thee the answer. Rejoice, for there shall be a movie made in the very image of a Frank Miller graphic novel.

And Janine Ashbless did say, Oh cool. I shall watch it.

Then the gods did say, And that movie shall be called 300, for it shall be about the heroic Spartan stand against the mighty Persian army at Thermopylae. And lo, there will be much bloody swordplay.

And Janine Ashbless did say, Oh, Yeah!!

Then the gods did say, And King Leonidas shall be played by Gerard Butler – whom we shall afflict with an horrid beard, for fear that otherwise thou might drop dead on the spot for pleasure. As it is thou shalt have to be peeled off thy cinema seat and thy limp body carried from thence by two strong men*.

But Janine Ashbless said nothing, for the blood had run from her brain and she was no longer capable of human speech.

All these things came to pass and Lo: it was very good.”

300 : It’s violent. It’s stylised. It reeks of testosterone. It has 300 buff men wearing nothing but leather codpieces. It has GB and Dave Wenham and more sculpted abs than a gay gym. Finally - proof that this is a benevolent universe after all.

xxx
Janine ‘Practically Snuff’ Ashbless

* It takes two men because they both have crap knees, not because I’m lardy. Honest.

All the best, Donna!

From all of us here at Lustbites who've worked with the lovely Donna Condon at Virgin Books, this is a heartfelt thank you and a sorry-to-see-you-go message...

You've been a wonderful help for all of us, making sure the birth of all our books was as painless as possible. A lovely, friendly editorial assistant that we all have appreciated enormously. We know that you'll be sadly missed, and a hard act to follow.

(We'd like to thank you too for sorting out all our competition prizes - without you lustbites wouldn't be so shiny and full of promise! )

We'd like to wish you all the best of luck for the future, and here's a hand-picked bunch of flowers from Kristina Lloyd's garden.

...entire cast of Lustbites join in singing 'For she's a jolly good fellow...'

Love from all of us xxx

PS - Good luck in the Edinburgh marathon!