My Sexy Saturday: Sexy Into You

From "Fruits of Thine"

Available Sept 29

Blurb: Corporate retreats are dull at best, but when Carla is sent on one as a punitive measure, she isn't expecting anything to come of it, except a pink slip.

High in the Ozark mountains, nothing is quite as it seems and reality skews in interesting ways. The conference is too elementary and Carla notices people starting to go missing.

And the wild, incessant piping from the forest keeps her awake nights and stirs deeply buried desires...

She sat on the grass in a golden toga. She knew toga wasn’t quite the word, since only men had worn those, and they were complicated, while her dress was simple. But it was close enough. Her braids were caught back into a bun that looked like an old sculpture.

And the music kept playing as she sat and waited, getting hotter and hotter. Her nipples had poked up, disarranging the golden folds of her dress. She squirmed to relieve the growing tension and wetness between her legs.

And he had stepped into the clearing, tall and handsome, with lots of dark curly hair from his head and beard, down onto his chest and lower, until it turned into shaggy black goat legs with delicate cloven hooves.

Her first thought had been the Devil, but there had been no fear in his presence, only the ever-growing desire. He lifted a pipe of reeds to his lips and smiled at her as he blew across them to make the music. Pan, she had realized then. Pan, the old god of the forest and revelry, who had been the model for the devil as the Church in Rome started frowning on wild places, and things and people.

He joined her on the grass, lying on his belly, his legs out behind him. He looked up at her with longing and need in his eyes as he piped.

Carla reached out and stroked his curly hair. It twined through her fingers. He turned and kissed her wrist. A delicious tingle started at his lips and shot all through her, making her nipples ache and her clit twitch. She wanted more of his kisses. On her wrist, on her lips, on her breasts and between her legs. She wanted that sensual sizzle to envelop her, make her explode over and over again into fabulous orgasms.

“Hello, darling,” he whispered.

Let's talk about Genitalia, not the parts, the words

I am an erotica writer. You know this, otherwise you wouldn't be here. So, you are warned, lots of rude words follow.

A friend of mine is saying "Ladies, love yourselves enough to include yourselves in your sexual fantasies." She doesn't get why I prefer to write men having sex.

Part of it is simple identification with male characters in media.
Growing up, I was Han Solo and Thomas Stubbins, Vad Varo and Legolas, Indiana Jones and Spock.

Part of it is being multiple choice with several male personalities.

But most of it is words.
I'm mildly synesthetic, so words have feels and tastes.

Cock is a nice, ordinary word. It fits together nicely and feels neutral in my mouth and brain. The sounds are mirrored at front and back, and the "ah" sound of the vowel is just right. Dick doesn't work so well, because of the D sound. The PR of prick leads into the short I sound better than the D. Di makes me think of "dip," "dipshit," "Dig" "dim" and other words not conducive to good sex. Penis is too clinical and the sibilant at the end makes it weak. And it puts me in mind of urination "Pee-nis."

And there are no good words for the female genitalia.

Vagina fits together all wrong and feels nasty and slippery in my mouth, as though I'm trying to hold a glass ball on my tongue. It's the "ina" coming after the j sound. Carolina works, because the N flows out of the L. The J is too hard to have anything flow after it. It needs a hard consonant, a D or T.

Vaj is relatively innocuous. It feels complete in my mouth but sounds immature.

Don't get me started on vajayjay. The redundancy makes me want to spit to clear my brain. And the "ay" ending is just wrong in every possible way. It gives me a headache to say it.

Twat works for me the same way cock does. The t sounds are mirrored and the vowel feels right. But the W makes it a silly word. It feels overly British and a little goofy and dated. It's like saying swive instead of fuck.

Pussy. Oh please gods no. The oo sound of the U and the double sibilant combined with the -y ending? It feels really vile in my mouth. It feels incomplete. And sticky. Pussy-cat works because the hard T ending and that short A balance the slithery, sticky S. It feels crude an it takes a specific type of character to use it. Not to mention it carries a connotation of weakness and cowardice.

Cunt is an unpleasant word. The hard C at the front clashes with the T at the end. It's a bitten-off word, a grunted word, with the U and the N in the middle. (sounds a lot like grunt too). It feels thick and harsh in my mouth and in my head. It is the insult of choice for those wanting to degrade a woman, because it not only reduces her to her parts, it sounds awful.

Cunny is appropriate in historical fic, but feels immature. Too close to "Pat the bunny." Anything with a -Y ending is a word that is hard to take seriously. It's less vicious than cunt, less offensive than pussy. It doesn't have the neutral feel of twat, but mentally it feels soft and a little squishy, not nasty, just odd.



And while my heroine (probably a steampunk one) may prefer to think of her equipment as a red velvet settee, soft and waiting to cradle the visitor, the audience will laugh at that.

So there you have it: why writing lesbians is tough for me. Why I don't like writing het. Why I dislike writing women in sexual situations. It's not a hatred of women. It's a hatred of the words used for women.

Adventures in HTML and Shameless Self-Promotion

My website http://www.brooksandsparrow.com is all updated! Yay!
So now for some Shameless Self Promotion:

Dreamspinner's Steampunk anthology, is up for pre-order. $6.99 for ebook or $17.99 for paperback



Blurb:
Inventors, pilots, tinkers, and soldiers; magical metals to replace an aging heart or a ruined limb; steam-powered fantasy worlds of clockwork nightingales, automatons, dirigibles, and men. The stories in this anthology visit diverse times in the history of modern man, and the men who populate these tales face war and cruelty, masters and autocrats, illness and poverty and greed. Yet the heat of romance outmatches even the steam engines, and time and again, the gears of love rule the day.

Stories included are:

The Clockwork Nightingale's Song by Amy Rae Durreson
Caress by Eli Easton
Swiftsilver by Bell Ellis
The Clockwork Heart by Kim Fielding
The Galatea's Captain by Anka Grace
Screws by R.D. Hero
The Golden Goose Mark Lesney
Spindle and Bell by Augusta Li
Ace of Hearts by Mary Pletsch
Five to One by Angelia Sparrow
Untouchable by Layla M. Wier

Fruits of Thine, a paranormal, will be out from Amber Heat on Sept 29.


Blurb:
Corporate retreats are dull at best, but when Carla is sent on one as a punitive measure, she isn't expecting anything to come of it, except a pink slip.

High in the Ozark mountains, nothing is quite as it seems and reality skews in interesting ways. The conference is too elementary and Carla notices people starting to go missing.

And the wild, incessant piping from the forest keeps her awake nights and stirs deeply buried desires...

 

S&M on TV

I watch Sons of Anarchy, and I'm finally caught up with season 6.

During ep 1, every Chibs/Juice shipper I know (and I know a fair few) wailed.

On reflection, I realized we had just seen a complete S&M scene with no sexual component--barring the off-screen shagging once the aftercare was done.

The scene is negotiated.

Chibs needs this. Juice needs this. Juice knows what is going to happen as soon as the doors are shut. Chibs gives him further mercy by taking off his rings. (And the post on jewelry and emotions is for later, as is the post on Juice as kissable pass-around) When the boys want to really hurt someone, they don't bother.

The scene is consented to.

Juice knows what is going to happen. He gives a little nod and says only, "I love you, brother."
This is his consent. When the first blow lands, he picks himself up for the second. He does not fight back. He is taking this of his own will.

There is aftercare.

The last shot of the boys shows Chibs stitching up a cut by Juice's eyebrow. Since he's the ad hoc medic, when Tara can't be had, this is typical. But it's the gentle little cuff on the uninjured side of Juice's head that shows yes, he does care. he loves this boy, but they had to get through the scene before the affection could happen again.


This was not the non-consentual, kinky three-way snuff scene of "The Wish" episode of Buffy. This was not the goofiness of Exit to Eden. This was straight up, non-sexual S&M as I have seen it practiced. And that is a very uncommon thing in media.

Ah, Sutter, you magnificent bastard. Break my heart again. It feels so good.

A very mixed week

Yesterday started very badly, my dear and faithful readers.

That is my husband's rig. The windshield is missing because the rescue squad had to get him out that way.

He is alive. He is home. He has some spinal compression fractures, but we think he'll be all right.

It has been two very stressful days.

58% of driver deaths are cause by accidents like this.

Then this morning, I awoke to this in my mailbox:

The cover for my September Release

Blurb:

Corporate retreats are dull at best, but when Carla is sent on one as a punitive measure, she isn't expecting anything to come of it, except a pink slip.

High in the Ozark mountains, nothing is quite as it seems and reality skews in interesting ways. The conference is too elementary and Carla notices people starting to go missing.

And the wild, incessant piping from the forest keeps her awake nights and stirs deeply buried desires.

From Amber Quill's Amber Heat imprint.

My Sexy Saturday Blog Hop: Your Sexy Attitude

From Tiocfaidh Ar La, my new re-release.  SO VERY NOT WORK SAFE!

After enduring a brutal assault, IRA explosive expert Seosamh O'Brien, fled his war-torn homeland for America. Now Joe Colson, he wears his scarred face like armor and keeps out the whole world, protecting the meager little life he's carved out for himself as an illegal immigrant in the Boston slums. But a night programmer with a face like an an angel and an elfin grin full of mischief gets past the armor and scars, and into the softer places of Joe's heart, before he quite realizes what is happening.

Sexy Attitude, Take One

Joe raised one eyebrow at him. "No worries. Turn yourself over now."

Ryan rolled right over. He looked over his shoulder and smiled more. "Condoms are in the end table. Lube, too. Hope you're not allergic."

Joe could do nothing but stare at the perfect ass before him, tight and round, graced with a hot-pink lip print tattooed on the upper curve of the right cheek.

"Oh, boy..." Joe paused in looking for the end table and ran a worshipful hand over the sweetly rounded globes before him. He needed to kiss them, or bite them. He definitely needed to fuck that gorgeous ass, watch it part before his cock and take him all in.

"You like it?" Ryan wiggled his ass pertly, and Joe could not resist swatting it. He liked the light pink hand-print that showed next to the tattoo.

He bent in and kissed the tattoo, matching his lips to the print as closely as he could.

"That's the general idea. Because if you're going to fuck me, you might want to kiss me first."

Re-release Day!

The anthology Carved in Flesh hasn't done too badly.  And today, our story, "Tiocfaidh Ar La" gets a stand-alone release. (As always the cover is the buy link)

Blurb: 

After enduring a brutal assault, IRA explosive expert Seosamh O'Brien, fled his war-torn homeland for America. Now Joe Colson, he wears his scarred face like armor and keeps out the whole world, protecting the meager little life he's carved out for himself as an illegal immigrant in the Boston slums. But a night programmer with a face like an an angel and an elfin grin full of mischief gets past the armor and scars, and into the softer places of Joe's heart, before he quite realizes what is happening.

$1.99 from Storm Moon Press.

Excerpt:

Ryan cleaned up the plates, rinsing them in the sink before putting them back in the bag. "Yeah, I gotta go. Bad section of code tonight. I swear, sometimes I think they let chimpanzees code it and then hire me to make it work."

As Ryan passed Joe's chair, Joe reached up and caught him by the arm. "Ain't a date without a good-night kiss." He tugged a little, and Ryan bent right down. He kissed the kid and found out that Ryan did know how to kiss. When his tongue touched the boy's lips, Ryan opened up and let him right in. Joe tasted him, all warm pudding and soft mouth. Somehow, as they kissed, Ryan ended up straddling his lap, kissing back, his tongue in Joe's mouth, his arms around Joe's neck.

They parted and stared at each other for a second, and then Ryan plunged right back in for another kiss. Better than the first, that one left Joe hard and ready. Ryan ground against his erection, and Joe gasped into the kiss.

"Oh no!" Ryan moaned. "I'm gonna have to loop the surveillance now." He gave Joe a small peck and tucked his card into the breast-pocket of the uniform shirt. "Call me when you get off."

Joe chuckled at that, and Ryan realized what he'd said. He turned bright red and face-palmed.

"I'll call," Joe said. He watched as Ryan fled for the safety of his office and the chimpanzee code. Once the boy was gone, he laughed for the first time in years. Ryan was cute and sexy and wanted him. He put the bag of dishes away, set his hat on his head, and went off on his rounds to finish the shift.

The inside scoop:

What happens when this:

 falls for this :

When the latter has a taste for older men and the tat that says "Bob Dylan" is a pair of lips...

And you can listen to my playlist, what I listened to while writing it, here:

Release Day

Well, Friday was release day, but I spent it at Mephit FurMeet.

Storm Moon Press's Turning the Tables Anthology is finally out.

The cover is the buy link.

My story is a sequel to Hard Reboot, set in the Cyber'verse.

Zara's husband David, one of the twin heads of a premier biotech company, may not quite be what he seems. His violent history, long suppressed with a neural implant, is re-emerging in strange ways, and he—or his twin brother—may be Double Dealing with their identities. It will take cleverness, courage, and the services of a world class hacker to untangle the web of deception around the brothers Gemini.