New story out tomorrow

A paranormal erotic story of mine, Succubus, goes live tomorrow (Halloween) over at the Lucrezia Magazine website.

I say Halloween but it's more appropriate to think of it as a Samhain story, I think.

Synopsis: A succubus has a one-track mind. Even if the person who summoned her did so by mistake.

Happy Halloween. Or Samhain. If something like this happens to you, let me know!

Free read at Xcite!

I've just noticed my story 'The Incubus Candle' is currently a free read at Xcite Books - OK it's intended to promote the Spirit Lovers collection of 5 paranormal erotic stories for Halloween. But it is a 3000 word story, by me and for free. Not sure how often they switch these over but it will be time-limited.

Teaser: The candle was a large and faithful representation of a phallus. It wasn’t the kind of thing Lauren would normally buy, but it would be a talking point for the girly evening she’d planned. The shop assistant told her to be careful when she lit it. ‘These things work really well,’ she said with a knowing smile. Lauren snorted, thinking the comment was flippant, and rose to the bait. She bought two. And lit them both at the same time. That was when the real fun began…

More than you wanted to know, really...

... about me is now on the Erotica For All website - but if you want you can read the interview with Fulani.

Have fun!

Dominion, last night

Out to my local fetish club, Dominion, last night. The first time in quite a while. It was good to meet up with some old friends, and I watched a pair of local kinksters do a bondage performance. It was essentially Japanese-style ropework, with all the right culturally-specific accoutrements - a kimono, even the special socks with the separate big toe.

OK, so much of what we think of as 'Japanese' bondage isn't particularly 'traditional', dating back to the late 1800s or early 1900s; earlier use of bondage in Japan had often revolved around the capture and interrogation of suspects and could be extraordinarily brutal. Equally, some of it isn't specifically Japanese but evolved, ironically, in response to Western influences (including, I was once told, the influence of publications by John Willie) in the 1940s/1950s, or was possibly even a Western - specifically, American - development on older practices.

But let's put all that aside for the moment. The performance reminded me of how sensuous bondage can be. It's a slow process, ropes being layered and interwoven, and the effect on the 'victim' is almost hypnotic, with sensations building gradually as each new layer of rope is applied, and possibly stimulating also in terms of anticipation of what might happen next. I might add the effect on the audience was much the same...

So the nice thing about it was the timely reminder that bondage is, or can be, a slow, sensuous thing of art and beauty... My thanks to the two performers, who I deliberately haven't named here.

For the especially interested, you can read more on the history of Japanese bondage on Tatu's page, and in Richard Cleaver's commentary on Japanese traditional bondage; there are also more general thoughts on the 'Way of the Rope' (also by Tatu), and a recent cultural commentary by Midori on the CarnalNation website: Shame, Taboo and the Real Japan.

Oh, the pic at the top of this post doesn't come from last night - it's one from a while back, the photography is by Stefan Richardson, and it was an illustration for a how-to I wrote that was published in a now-defunct magazine, Midlands Fetish Scene. You'll see my own ropework, which is featured, is fairly rough and ready unlike that at Dominion last night!

Cartoon characters behind the scenes

Something I found while, oddly enough, looking for information on airports (there's no point explaining how this happened, it's just the way my mind works):

Cartoon characters behind the scenes.

Enjoy!

Bicycle Infrastructure Fetish?

I know it's only October but I've been looking for a 2011 wall calendar for my study. The strangest so far, by far, is the The 2010 Copenhagenize Bicycle Infrastructure Fetish Calendar on Lulu.com.

Now that's what I call a proper fetish... Never mind leather, latex, chains and whips - bicycle infrastructure can be a truly fetishistic experience! Unfortunately they don't seem to have a 2011 version (yet).

Dreaming

I dream vividly most nights and remember a lot of my dreams. I often dream in colour and with sound, dialogue, etc. and they often form the basis for my stories and flash fiction, though mostly in genres such as SF, urban fantasy and horror (which I generally publish under another pseudonym). Dreams are very productive for me, but they're not usually X-rated.

However, here's my dream from last night...

***

It's my first day at a new job, lecturing at a university. I've barely met the other staff but they seem harassed, workloads piled up to an implausible level.

The head of department finds me and asks me to go with him to his office. It's a windowless room in the basement, not an obvious choice for someone who's supposed to be in charge. 'I like your style,' he says. 'You're not like the others, you say what you think and let your emotions out.'

What? I've always been told I'm quite private about my emotions.

There's a couch in his office, reminiscent of the one you'd see in the museum in Freud's apartment in Vienna. (There's a picture of it on Wikipedia's page on Freud – but I didn't find this until late this morning. I visited the Freud museum in the 1970s.)

Lying on the couch is a young guy, young enough to be a student.

'Even as head of department,' he explains, 'I have to keep freelance work going. This young man is here for therapy for his depression.' (I have, incidentally, known lecturers who keep second occupations going, ranging from guitarist in a rock band to keeping a smallholding to selling used car tyres – though the latter wasn't, needless to say, in the UK!)

'So what am I doing here?'

'I'd like you to help me with his treatment. We're going to play a trust game.'

I know about trust games from training courses and suchlike. The classic one is standing in the middle of a circle, allowing yourself to topple in different directions while those around you take your weight and push you from one person in the circle to the other.

So who am I supposed to be trusting? The guy in 'therapy' or the head of department?

The game is this: we stand face to face, embracing each other, and move our feet backwards until each of us supporting the weight of the other.

I'm aware at this point that a woman has entered the room. She's in her twenties, casually dressed in jeans and T-shirt, very short cropped hair, the kind that used to be called a lesbian buzz-cut.

'What happens now,' the head of department explains, 'is part of her therapy. I find it's more efficient to have clients help each other in this way.'

What the woman does is this. She kneels down between me and the guy, in the triangular space between our bodies, and I feel her unzip my flies, massage my balls, pull out my cock and take it into her mouth.

Is she doing the same with the other guy? I don't know; his stance is rock-solid and he appears lost in his own headspace, though my hips are flexing back and forth and the sensation I'm experiencing is exquisite.

The thought crosses my mind that the head of department may be standing to one side with a camera. Is blackmail how he keeps his staff in line? But no, he appears to be absolutely serious, focused on this somewhat deviant version of therapy.

The woman is enthusiastic in working her lips and tongue around me, pushing my cock to the back of her throat. I'm still supporting the weight of the other guy, he's still relying on me and I stay locked in position with him.

What kind of 'therapy' is this for the women? Is she learning to accept, trust, take the cum from an anonymous cock? And what's with the lesbian buzz-cut?

I have no answers, just go with the pleasure of the moment.

***

Offer of interpretations, anyone?

Too clever by half?

I've been musing over my latest royalty/sales figures.

What interests me is that the best selling stories are consistently the ones with lesbian BDSM themes, and the harder-edged ones that involve a significant amount of string-em-up-and-flog-em - and go light on some of the more real-life issues of consent, limits, negotiation and so on.

What also interests me is that given who I'm publishing with, I'd assume my purchasing public is primarily female.

I'm not complaining about this in any way, shape or form. I have many lesbian and bi friends and I'm more than capable of writing stuff they enjoy. And I'm ready, able and willing to write nasty and cruel sex scenes.

I do, though, suspect I've been guilty of making an unwarranted assumption that writing primarily for a female audience implies holding back on the levels of implied coercion and the amount of pain inflicted on my characters.

I suspect since the Black Lace books started coming out well over a decade ago, a lot of women have become used to erotica that isn't just strong in a sexual way, but heavy-handed with the whips and floggers and multiple partners and domination/submission as well. Maybe those fantasies were always there, given that forced sex is reported in academic, psychological/psychoanalytic papers to be a common fantasy theme among women.

After all, even mainstream literature now has scenes of multiple partners, sexual slavery and repeated anal intercourse (yes, I'm reading Pynchon's Against the Day at the moment, and Gravity's Rainbow has several bondage scenes, not to mention a bit of coprophilia).

I've been striving in some of what I've written to explore a few of my more experimental literary aspirations... and I'm not going to stop doing that, but the sales figures are a useful reminder that I should remember the basics and make sure there's lots of good, vicious sex in there.