Thank you!

It’s finally 12/31, New Year’s Eve. I have a lot of activities planned for today, most of which include drinking alcohol. There’s a lot of reasons to celebrate (some of which I’ve highlighted in the previous post), but two things I’m very thankful for on this particular day:

1. My incredible, loyal, quirky, forgiving, and compassionate friends, and

2. My readers (ie: you)

So THANK YOU for holding my hand on my journey across the eroticaverse. It means so much. Being an author is very lonely at times, and it certainly helps to have a few people responding to my works.Thank you, thank you, a million gillion times.

I have a lot of exciting plans for this new year. I hope to meet my boyfriend’s family for the first time, take a trip back to the country where my parents were born, visit someplace I’ve never been before, reconnect with lost loved-ones, and learn a new skill. For my erotica career and this blog, I’ve been ruminating on ideas for contests (for prizes!), free giveaways, and as always, more ideas for stories. Keep an eye out for some exciting changes! You can join my mailing list if you like. You might get a sexy surprise in your inbox every now and then if you do!

And once again, thank you! I can never say it enough. May you have a blessed New Year’s Eve, dear reader. See you in 2014!

A recap of my very sexy year

Merry belated-Christmas! I hope you had a very happy December, because I certainly did. To get this post rolling, I’ll share this blog post by Dalia Daudelin with you. She has compiled this month’s sexiest new erotica releases in one easy post. Try scrolling through those steamy covers and see what tickles your fancy.

So, like today’s title suggests, 2013 has been a very sexy year for me. I graduated college. Intelligence=sexy, no? I spent a lot of time in the hot yoga studio, sweatin’ out the toxins and staring at myself in the mirror. I jumped on the crop top bandwagon big time and showed lots of skin.

Oh, and I started publishing erotica. 😉

Sex is one of the best things about being human, and it feels incredible to express it so freely through my writing. It wasn’t always like that for me. I’ve mentioned before that growing up in a Christian household was tough. I also had an experience with an abusive boyfriend who wanted to flatten anything that was sexual about me. That meant no make-up, no shorts during the summer, no talking to other men, even if it was only to say “Excuse me” and even if they were gay.

Now, I have a great boyfriend, an older man who I’ve referred to as “Humphrey” in a previous post. Our relationship turned 1 year old in 2013, and we have had a fabulously SEXY run so far. He understands that I can’t hide my sexuality. In fact, he loves it. He loves that I write erotica, and he even tried writing his very first story this year. Erotica is like our dirty little secret, and being able to share that with each other has taken our relationship to a whole nuffa level.

Writing erotica is more than an expression of sexuality. By wielding the pen (or keyboard), I’ve claimed the power back from that abusive ex. And I want EVERYONE to know that there is nothing shameful or dirty or wrong about sex, whether it is with Bigfoot, with werewolves, with a vibrating shower head, in an orgy, or in front of a camera.

A cup of coffee, a picture in my head

I’ve had a bad writing week. It’s trouble focusing, a little bit of winter-related sadness, and life stress. I’ve opened and closed my Pygmalion-inspired novella multiple times without making progress. I suppose sitting around inside, away from the cold, has finally taken its toll on me. Often, I find myself drifting off into a daydream while staring at a blinking cursor, and there is one daydream in particular…

 

Las Vegas, hands-down, is my favorite city. Maybe because I’m still at that young, party-girl stage. I have tons of fond memories from there. Drinking all night, sleeping for an hour, and hitting the slots. Dinner at world class restaurants. Walking along the strip, beer in hand. Public drinking is illegal, but for some reason is not enforced. I’ve called it “Adult Disneyland” multiple times, because it really is! My favorite memory was from about a year ago. I wore a backless dress that just barely covered my ass and boobies with chains for straps, danced on a stage at Tao with about twenty other drunk girls, sat in the casino to share a bottle of vodka with my friends, and teetered back up to our luxurious suite at the Venetian around seven a.m. I had to get back up three hours later and I was pretty much a zombie, but a breakfast of fresh-made guacamole and tortilla soup brought me back to life. Going through the pictures from the previous night was remarkably like the ending of The Hangover. “Where did we take this?” “Who’s that girl?” “Did I actually drink that?” Oh, the feels. I hope I can go back there in the summer. And dear reader, if you’ve never been to Las Vegas, I hope you can, too!

In the meantime, while I was supposed to be writing the novella, I’ve daydreamed about Vegas so much that I have material for a new story. About a girl. Set in a particular city. (Spoiler: it’s Las Vegas). 

So the manuscript for the Pygmalion-inspired story hasn’t gotten very far beyond the prologue, but I do have notes. Lots and lots of notes! The premise of the story is that a realistic sex doll comes to life and has sexual misadventures while learning how to be human. I don’t know much about the sex doll world (and still don’t!), so I’ve done some rudimentary googling, skimmed a few blogs of interest, and checked out some of the websites that sell them. The film Lars and the Real Girl starring Ryan Gosling has edged sex dolls into the mainstream consciousness somewhat, so I watched that, too. 

What surprised me the most about the film was that Lars’s relationship with his doll was fueled by mental illness. In truth, sex dolls like the one portrayed in the film are anatomically correct and highly customizable, so it could be very appealing to anyone regardless of mental health. Real life owners vary from those who use them just for sex to those who, like Lars, believe the dolls are alive, plus the many shades of in-between. I got a little annoyed because of this because if you think about it, sex dolls are like dildos, and who’s to say that they aren’t as legitimate as an expression of sexuality? Did the filmmakers have to make Lars mentally ill to want a sex doll of his own? 

So…lots to say, but not enough mind-energy to scribe it. The “research” did help me flesh out the characters for my Pygmalion story a little more, so I’m very glad I decided to take things slow with that project!

*off to Vegas*

 

Selling like hot cakes

I couldn’t help myself, I just had to write another werewolf story. But I got a little bored with writing about female humans and male werewolves. I wanted to put a gay man in front of a werewolf instead. I also went for a monster werewolf this time around, rather than the romanticized werewolf our erotica readers are familiar with today. It was an experiment. I wanted to see if I could execute something that was unusual for me. To my pleasant surprise, Kneeling before the Wolf has been this week’s top seller.

I’ve mentioned that my billionaire mmf story was an unexpected bestseller for me (and still is, even though Kneeling before the Wolf has pulled ahead this week). I thought it was because it intersected gay and billionaire, which are two popular sub-genres. But my lesbian stories have been selling very well, which is not known to be a popular category. So what gives? After giving it some thought this week, I have come to the conclusion that the answer may have been simpler than I realized. I remember writing Billionaire’s Boy Toy and really enjoying it. Same goes for my lesbian stories, and Kneeling. I love lesbians; I love gay men.

Trying to be successful as a self-publishing author is very hard. There is a lot of strategy involved. I’ve read a lot of blog posts about choosing tags carefully, following the Top 100 lists, and so-on, trying to see how to get my stories into the hands of my readers. I have 23 titles out now, and I’ve tried all those little tricks. But the sales of my just-for-fun stories always float to the top, regardless of promotion and whatever else. So maybe gay billionaires and gay werewolves are a gold mine, who knows? It certainly helps if you actually enjoy writing about it, too. The enjoyment shows in your words, and you are passing that enjoyment to your readers.

And of course, yet another new release. A while back when I was a bicurious high schooler, I wrote stories about best friends getting down and dirty at sleepovers. I’ve pulled this one out of the vault and polished it off, made it a little more dirty, and of course, made it clear that the besties involved are 18 years old. This is my baby, One Last Night.

This took me way back. I remember how fun sleepovers used to be. I’ve never had lesbian sex with any of my friends, of course, but it’s a fun fantasy to think about.

I’ve been a bad girl

Pseudo incest is one of my favorite kinks to write about, but unfortunately it is also one of the hardest sub-genres of erotica to get approved on e-retailers’ sites. It’s a shame, because it also happens to be popular. There are legions of readers who enjoy PI erotica, so the demand is there. It’s the retailers’ loss, really, because barring this type of work from being published alienates a lot of their consumers. Outside of royalties, though, PI erotica addresses the darker side of sexuality. We all know that there is more to sex than penis-in-vagina. There’s sex that happens in the mind, as well. PI stories specifically call out to the parts of the imagination we don’t dare address, drawing out fear, excitement, shame, and curiosity. If we don’t write about it, how do we know these emotions are possible in a sexual context? What “they” fail to realize is that there is no threat in fantasies. I’ve written about PI relationships, but do I want to seek such a lifestyle for myself? No. It’s a mere flexing of the mind, and nothing more, and the same goes for readers. 

Most pseudo incest stories feature non-blood relatives having sex. Step-siblings or step-parents are standard. Lately, even stories between consenting adults have been pulled from digital shelves, making it harder for erotica writers to satisfy their diverse readers. To combat this, I’ve been trying to come up with new ways to write erotic stories with a PI flavor. Technically not pseudo-incest, but very, very close. My first attempt was my story about an 18 year old actress and her TV daddy, Hot Set. Just a few days ago, I published another one: The Big Blow Off, about a young woman struggling with the fact that her father is dating a girl close to her own age. In this story, she has sex with her own boyfriend while watching her father have sex with his girlfriend. The “keeping it all in the family” theme is there, but they’re not having sex with each other. 

While we’re on the subject of devious things, I’m very excited about another story I published earlier this week, Lesbian’s Plaything. A nice Christian girl is kidnapped and tied up by lesbians, and as the title suggests, they use her for their own sexual gains. I was raised in a Christian environment growing up. One of the hardest parts of my adolescence was trying to come to terms with my sexuality. Yes, sex is natural and beautiful and fun, but years of being told the opposite made me feel conflicted. I felt ashamed for thinking about sex, for being curious about my body, and the worst part was that I had absolutely nobody to talk to about it. I used this as inspiration for my main character, Esther. Christians are nice people who do a lot of good in the world, but Esther is a caricature of what most people hate about them: close-minded, prudish, and self-righteous. I felt almost guilty writing about her being devoured by two lesbians at the same time, but like I suggested before, even the darkest thoughts deserve to be explored. 

What’s on deck: I’m working on my first longer-length story. All of my stories are between 3K and 7K words. Short stories, in essence. I want to shoot for ~20K (novella length) with my new idea. We will see how it goes! It is loosely based on the Pygmalion myth, about a life-sized sex doll who comes to life. 

Thanks for reading! For those of you who are interested in the sex doll story, you can read the prologue below. 

More new releases, stripper admissions, and an excerpt

Eroticist extraordinaire Scarlet Cox posted this blog entry for this week’s new releases, and you can find me on there! 

I hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I gained about two pounds overnight. I hope I can lose it by amateur night at our local strip club, which has inadvertently become a tradition between myself and my friends every December (don’t ask). 

So what’s on deck…

It’s been ages (or so it seems), but I’m finally putting the finishing touches on my newest Equinox story. There’s werewolf sex, of course, but also a little surprise threesome. Who is the third party? Could it be Marcus Streich, Kathy’s spurned ex-fiance? Or perhaps his mother, Natalie, the mysterious High Matriarch of Kathy’s coven? Or maybe somebody completely new, somebody who is more animal than man…

You will have to wait for the release to find out! But in the mean time, here is a little taste of the RECKONING