Screwdriver!

**** EDITED**** Link to the rest of the party now works!

Fancy a drink? Those of you who read this blog for the feminist rantings might want to run off elsewhere for the day – or not. You might want to sit down, grab a stiff one and join the fun.

Today I’m piling on on the Kinky Cocktail Party which has been organised by Kristina Lloyd to launch the blog tour for her new novel, Undone, which centres on a cocktail bar. Checking out both the book and the rest of the antics going on all over the Web on the theme today is strongly recommended.

So I picked Screwdriver as a cocktail, even though I’m more of a pint-of-cider type, because I fancied talking about science, research and technology in erotic fiction.

I am an absolute bollock when it comes to mechanical, practical stuff. I had trouble changing lightbulbs until I started living alone in my late 20s and got deservedly mocked for trying to make visitors do it for me. However, this didn’t stop me having various goes at writing sci fi stories in my teens, and even having one published in the late, lamented Erotic Stories some time in the 90s. You don’t have to understand the precise working procedures of the internal combustion engine to have your heroine jump into a car and drive over to the house of the person she fancies fucking the arse off tonight. You do, maybe, need to know the order in which one switches off the handbrake, looks in the mirror, tunes the radio and puts the car into fifth gear, or whatever if you are going to mention these details because getting them wrong will make you look a bit of a dipstick. But given that the majority of readers not only know how to drive cars but do the basic list of actions involved in starting a car and driving it away so frequently that they hardly think about them, it’s actually a bit strange to itemise every stage of the process when writing a story that’s predominantly about sex and other human interactions.

With sci fi, or steampunk, or fantasy, you’re making it all up anyway, but it helps to think it through and make your making-up comply with your story’s internal logic. A story-universe full of horny goblins and Merrie England naughty peasants is not going to have its conflict resolved convincingly by someone Googling the problem. If there’s a bit of your hard science and hardcore BDSM tale of interplanetary buggery where someone needs to fix the landing pods, you might need to involve some sort of Alien Beans instead of Magic Woo Beans for this to work.

Either way, you can’t get by without a little research. Be aware of the classic tropes (and the relevant laws of time, motion, gravity, energy etc) whether your subject matter is spooks or spaceships. Writing about vampires, for example, means deciding in advance whether or not they have an issue with garlic and religious iconography and, quite probably, acknowledging the choice you made somewhere within the story given that, like driving a car, most of your readers will have some sort of idea of how to get rid of all those pesky biters.

I’m currently working on a steampunk story which features an orgasm-powered train. I did my research, or some of it anyway, at a steam museum. No, I didn’t offer to demonstrate my theory.

Anthologies: Something for Everyone

That’s a line I use when I’m in one of my favourite positions – standing behind a table decked with books and facing a horde of eager money-waving punters (not three tramps and a stray dog who’ve come in to get warm, oh no not at all). I’ve heard it said that, in general, publishers don’t much like anthologies of short stories by different authors, and that readers don’t like them either. Either this is as much of a crock as most received wisdom, or it’s just another case of erotic fiction in general being an exception to most of the rest of the rules.

Because, as a veteran flogger of mucky books (damn near 20 years at the London Fetish Fair, quite a bit of time spent at the Birmingham Bizarre Bazaar and Bristol’s SWAMP kink market not to mention about a dozen Eroticas) I have always found it easier to coax buyers into shelling out for an anthology than a novel.

This may be partly down to erotica as a genre being low profile – few people could name more than one* erotica author unless they are already enthusiasts – and individual titles not, on the whole, being promoted via billboards or TV advertising in the way that even midlist crime/chicklit/sci-fi books usually are. The potential buyer, particularly if s/he has not read much erotic fiction, may not be so keen to gamble that one novel out of a tempting array of titles is The One That Will Get Me Off when, for the same price or maybe even less, a collection of works by different authors has far better odds of containing at least one story or scene that speaks directly to the reader’s personal arousal triggers.

Anyway, all that said, I’ve actually got stories in three different newly-hatched collections, so I can hustle and bamboozle you all into shopping with even more choice.

First, for those of you who like a bit of femdom, Nexus have finally released Hell In High Heels 2, a seriously filthy selection of stories featuring dominant women. The story I sent in to that collection involves a mature and rather aristocratic domina of the old school, her maid and some creative and potentially risky fun and games with bramble cables. Those of you who read Black Heart might find you recognise a couple of the characters, as well…

You can grab that for your e-reader only...

Still in femdom corner but a bit more subtle and sensuous and all that, is the story I have in Smut By The Sea 3. The heroine is looking back on the first summer she spent away from home and the things she learned about her own inclinations. And if you think you remember her from a few previous efforts of mine, well, you might just be right about that. The Smut anthologies are generally light-hearted fun rather than mind-altering intensity and more at the erotic romance end of the scale than the hardcore one, but good summer reading all the same.

You can download that or buy an actual book

But if you want something completely different, check out Valves and Vixens, a book of steampunk erotica. I remember getting all unnecessary over myself when I read the requirements for this one, as it meant I finally had a chance to write about one of my favourite mad sci-fi-type theories: orgone accumulation. Do what? Well, it’s a theory originally put about by one Wilhelm Reich to the effect that intense emotions make the human brain emit energy particles which can be harvested. Sort of. There’s no evidence that this is anything other than complete bollocks, but as a starting point for a story? Get in!

Again, up to you whether you want it as a download or a paperback

So whether you’re looking to load up the Kindle before hitting the beach or prefer a paper copy on the grounds that physical books are more forgiving if dropped off a pedalo or covered in sangria, hope this helps you pick your summer reading.