The Launch Day Cocktail Party!

Today I've joined in with the launch fun for Undone, written by one of my Facebook chums, Kristina Lloyd, and published by Black Lace. She'll be a guest here in a few weeks, as part of her launch blog tour.

Here are links to Kristina's blog tour dates and her facebook page.

Why a cocktail party? Why not? It's already started and lasts all day - here's your invitation

But a party? 

Well, yeah, okay, it's just a bit of fun for a Friday. 

A few of Kristina's Facebook friends agreed to post stories of our own with a kinky cocktail theme. My contribution, which ends this post, is probably saucy rather than kinky, but I hope you enjoy it.

Undone will be released on September 11th, 2014. It’s an erotic thriller which I really enjoyed and it kept me turning the pages to see what happened next. It's a first-person account told in a diary, which allows Kristina to mix conventional story-telling with a little more introspection and inner dialogue. 

I was impressed by her character Lana's account of a newly-developing sub-dom relationship. Not just by her intense and exciting sexual experiences but also the emotional side of it, learning to trust and coping with her all-too-plausible anxieties and insecurities. I was pleased to see Sol make a momentary misjudgement and have to regain her confidence in him. Too many dom characters seem to be just a little too perfect, so this made him seem true-to-life for me. The thriller side of the story isn't the main driver, but it provides a few key stressful points around which their relationship evolves.

I'll post a review on amazon when the book's released. 

Curious? Click here for the amazon.co.uk page, or here for the amazon.com page.

Sex On The Beach

Ian D Smith, copyright 2014

All rights reserved.

Content my not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

They left the crowded, noisy club, happy and giggling. His arm was around her shoulders, hers around his waist.

She spotted a dark archway. Ideal, she thought. “Come on, let’s hide in here and have a kiss.”

It was a narrow unlit alley, linking two busy streets in the seaside resort. They leaned against a wall, kissed and their hands wandered.

“We shouldn’t...” she whispered, stroking his hips. “Not here.” Please, make me. I love it when you take charge.

“Why not?” His hands slid up the back of her skirt and over her bottom.

“Someone might see us.” She pressed herself against his cock. He was hard and ready. I want you in me, right here and now.

“It’s pitch-black here," he said. "No-one else seems to know about this alley. And we could always give them a good show”

She pulled him to her and they kissed deeply. “We shouldn’t,” she whispered. But I want to.

“How about a slow, comfortable screw against the wall?”

She giggled. “This wall? Not sure about comfortable.” He slipped his hands into the waistband of her panties and slid them down, then he unfastened his trousers.

She felt his hard cock press against her soft wetness, the wall coarse and cool against her bare bottom. Oh yes, that’s it. Don't be gentle this time, take me, please. “Fuck going slow, be quick, I just want you. We can get all soppy in bed.”

He slid into her more forcefully and roughly than he had before, and she gasped into his kiss. “Oh, yes.” She hung onto him tightly and pushed her hips forward as he slid in and out of her. He picked her up and held her as they fucked furiously. This is just so good, he's making me come... She was swept along and came just before he did, hard and fast, her knees weak afterwards.

They leaned against each other and panted in the warm night.

“Wow,” he said. “You’re just plain amazing.”

“Not at all bad yourself.” A fast, frantic, fabulous fuck against a wall.

“Fancy another drink or two? Sure we can find a quieter bar.”

“Yeah, I’d love to.”

“Come on, lover.”

“Hang on, where are my panties?”

They scrabbled around in the darkness, giggling. “Here,” he said, holding them out.

“Thanks. I need 'em after what you just did to me.”

A few minutes later, they found a table in a quiet bar.

“What d’you fancy?” he asked.

She looked at him and made an impulsive decision. I just want to have you again, as soon as we can. “Well,” she murmured. “How about sex on the beach?”

He looked puzzled. “I’ll ask, but this isn’t a cocktail bar.”

She grinned. “Not to drink, plonker. I’ll have a large dry white wine.” She pulled him down and kissed him. “Let’s go down to the beach afterwards”, she whispered. “Find a quiet spot, out of the way, soft sand. Let’s make love again, but nice and slowly. Let me be on top and I’ll fuck you until you beg for mercy.”

Summer and Endings

Patio furniture in the garden, 9am today...

Today is the only public holiday we get in Britain during the summer, the last Monday in August. We often joke that the weather knows about these too. 

Today is proof in point.

It’s 16ºC, or 61ºF, raining steadily and the police are warning of dangerous driving conditions on the major roads due to spray and standing water. Well, they're actually trying to get people to behave like sensible grown-ups and slow down...

Still, it’s an extra day off work, both my dogs are delighted I'm at home with them and my local commercial radio station is dedicating the day to music from the 1980’s, so things could be a lot worse!

For the first time in years, I’ve got a “summer cold”. No idea who I got it from. No sign of it last Thursday, but Friday it was set to max. Headache, tickly cough and congested sinuses. I’m lucky and generally suffer few illnesses, so feeling off-colour is unfamiliar. And no, it's not "man-flu". I'm not complaining and whining about it, just coughing and blowing my nose a lot!

One part of my brain is shouting “it’s only a respiratory virus”, and it’s only making me feel groggy and grumpy. But another part is muttering about how serious these can be. 

Take flu. 

We worry about it today, particularly the awful 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak, but when influenza first arrived in Britain in the 16^th century, about 20% of those who caught it didn’t get up again afterwards. I know, ‘cos I read about historic diseases for a talk I gave last year.

So, that’s summer. What about the “endings”? I’ve just finished the final chapter of my draft novel, provisionally titled "Walking Out". I’m pleased to have stuck at it to the end, averaging one chapter a week for 26 weeks. It’s been tough going at times, but I enjoyed it. Whenever I needed inspiration, my muse smiled upon me.

The next step is revision, but I’ll put it aside for a month, time for some other projects and to catch up with some reading. And I need to get a cover image organised somehow.

I’m working on a piece for an anthology of stories based loosely around the four traditional elements of fire, air, water and earth. And I’ve got a flash fiction piece almost ready for a shared blog event next weekend, stories named after cocktails.

Over the next month or so, I’ll be hosting “guests” in my blog who have books they’d like to publicise. As blogging is still a pretty new thing for me, I’m looking forward to these and I’ll be interested to see what response the authors involved get. After all, I’ll have a book of my own to publicise soon...

This blogging lark...

I admit it, I’m a total novice at blogging.

I hardly read anyone else’s at the moment. Yes, I know I "should" if I want to be a writer. It's like tweeting, I guess. But with limited free time, it’s hard enough to concentrate on my own writing and reading and commenting on drafts for writing chums.

For one thing, what can I write about? Blogs are often a mixture of chit-chat, samples of completed or “in progress” work, an interview of some sort with another writer, and plugging already published and soon-to-be-published work.

Hang on...

Writing about my own work? Hey, I can do that.

Writing about writing chums and their work? Hey, I can do that too.

Plugging already-published work? Um, okay, well... look, I’ve not had much published yet. But I’m working on it.

Okay, so I've blown all my objections out of the water, well aside from the restricted time, but other folk manage so I guess I can too. Better get on with it.

So, let’s start with something about my writing...

My “day job” career has involved writing lots of stunningly unexciting, highly precise, specialist technical reports, scientific papers and two academic theses.

Then I had this idea about becoming a freelance journalist, writing about factual things which caught my attention. I’ve had a butterfly mind all my life and just love finding out about stuff. I even remember some of it, too. That’s rather fun and I even had a piece published in our local regional daily newspaper. This evolved into a new and fun direction, as I now occasionally give public talks on various subjects, pitched at a general interest level.

I always had a "don't tell anyone" secret idea about writing fiction, but wasn’t convinced I could write even vaguely-decent dialogue. But when I tried, other people said it wasn’t too bad at it. And not all of them were pandering my delicate ego, either.

One of the commonly-given pieces of advice to anyone wanting to write fiction is to write the sort of story they would like to read.

I might be asked to return my membership card from the “real men club,” but I’ll admit I enjoy reading romantic escapist fiction for relaxation. In my life, romance is (hopefully) associated with the odd moment of sexual intimacy, so stories which include that in the development of the relationship seem natural to me. But a lot of the popular “chick lit” stories are thinner on the nitty-gritty than I’d like to read.

I decided I wanted to write erotica, which I think of as a story which includes sex in some way, shape or form. But I want to write an engaging story in which the characters have a plausible relationship, not just write sex scenes with enough story to set them in a context of some sort. There’s plenty of that around already, so no need for me to add my own efforts.

So, like a lot of wanna-be writers, I just sat down at my laptop with a vague idea for a story and started writing a romantic erotica novel. I still think about returning to that idea and seeing what I can do with it, so maybe one day... Eventually, I twigged that I needed some idea of what I was doing, so looked around on the internet for helpful advice and examples of erotica.

When I discovered the Erotica Readers and Writers Association, I thought it looked like the sort of group I wanted to work with. So I asked if I could play and jumped into the deep end.

I found myself in what is effectively a relaxed and friendly workshop where we can experiment, read, enjoy and discuss each other’s work, and get constructive feedback on what others enjoyed or found didn’t work in my efforts.

The feedback has always been supportive and encouraging, which suits me as I just have to learn everything the hard way. At first, it was about the basics, like tenses, points of view and fixing my rather dull, passive style. In time, it was more about the detail, like developing engaging characters and tension in the story, things which you hope will keep the reader interested enough to keep on reading.

Being British, I do insist on writing in modern-day UK English, which has prompted some entertaining discussions about the differences between the UK and US flavours of our common tongue.

A regular activity in the group is that every Sunday is dedicated to flash fiction and poetry. Their flash fiction is limited to a maximum of 200 words. Ideally with characters and tension or drama which raises and answers a question in the reader’s mind. These are rather fun to write and they present a real challenge in writing snappily and economically. 

A lot of mine are just fun one-off ideas, letting me try things out. But a few have been a seed for something rather more substantial.

I’ve written quite a few with three distinct sets of characters, who are now all niggling at me to let them go and play on a broader canvas. 

One of these sets of characters has developed into my almost-complete-draft first novel, an erotic romance which probably best fits the supernatural category. I’ll write more about that next time, but as an introduction of sorts to the characters, here’s one of the first stories I wrote about them, just under 200 words.

How Dare She

Copyright © 2013, Ian D Smith. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

My neighbour Janet waved as I jogged past, Mags loping along easily beside me.

“Mark, where’s the lovely Maggie?”

“Family away-day,” I panted. “Dog-sitting for her parents.”

Mags looked intently at Janet.

“Beautiful animal. What breed is it?”

“European Grey Wolf. She’s completely tame.”

Janet looked at me in a direct way. “You should’ve said. Dave went off at the crack of dawn. Fishing all day. Want to come round, maybe for lunch?”

“Really appreciate the thought,” I said, “but pretty busy today, setting exams.”

Mags looked up at me and whined.

“I think she wants her breakfast,” said Janet.

“Probably right. See you later, Janet.”

As I took off my running shoes, Mags blurred and became my girlfriend Maggie.

“Bloody tart, coming on to you so blatantly,” she hissed, hands on hips.

“Told you I’ve been fending her off since I moved in.”

“How dare she? I’ll bite her fucking tits off.”

I pulled Maggie onto my lap. “Behave yourself, my sexy were-girlfriend. No eating the neighbours.”

She giggled. “Randy bugger, you’re hard already.”

“We’ve just jogged together for twenty minutes. The whole time, all I could think of was that you were stark bloody naked.”