I don’t remember much of what I did during the Summer of 2012, but it would seem that I spent quite some time writing ten thousands words of a rather salacious story about sex and jazz in midnight London.

Strummed, the new collection from Sweetmeats Press, contains five stories written by five different authors – Amélie Hope, B.Z.R Vukovina, Percy Quirk, Stella Harris, and Harper Eliot – which all contain, in some way or another, a musical theme.

Despite being a prolific reader, I am currently knee deep in my degree, so I haven’t had a chance to read through Strummed in its entirety yet; but I hope to do so, and to provide you with a little write up, as soon as possible.

For the time being, I can tell you about my story:

Set in a somewhat rundown jazz club in the heart of London, And the Midnight Trio tells the story of Violet, a young singer who is already worrying about the passing of time. As she sings she ponders what she will do when the shine of being the new girl wears off, and the suits no longer rush to watch her perform every evening. Her deliciously demanding lover sits at the piano behind her as she sings, but when their set is over, he is quickly forgotten, disappearing between the velvet curtains, and she finds herself in the midst of an elegant seduction with two polished businessmen…

And the Midnight Trio is teasing, and a little gritty, but also far more palatable than my usual stories; hopefully it touches on both the darkness I usually write and the simplicity of a more ordinary life, whilst not being too complex or unsettling for the collection. But you’ll have to be the judge of that.

As an eBook it is available from
Smashwords
Amazon UK
Amazon US

It is set to be published as a paperback on March 15th, and you can pre-order it from
Amazon UK

You can also buy my story, And the Midnight Trio, on its own from
Smashwords

All feedback, reviews, and/or questions about And the Midnight Trio are welcome; you can contact me by email on harper (at) itgirlragdoll dot com.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the collection…

The post Published by Sweetmeats Press: Strummed appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

And really, for those of us who have nurtured our love for Remittance Girl through novellas such as ‘Gaijin’ and ‘The Waiting Room’, and on short stories like ‘Click’ and ‘Pleasure’s Apprentice’ (the first story of hers I ever read), there is no denying that ‘Beautiful Losers’ is a departure. She has written pieces before that may be comparable in tone – the quickly written series ‘The Lepidopterists’ springs to mind – but really ‘Beautiful Losers’ seems to deal with a far less, for lack of a better word, mature set of characters than I usually expect from her. Her heroes and heroines often find themselves in emotional turmoil, but it tends to be over more immediate and more dramatic subjects, such as knife play or rape, whereas in ‘Beautiful Losers’ the reader is presented with a situation which may not be everyday, but is likely to be more familiar – and, perhaps, more desired – within our reality.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. ‘Beautiful Losers’ is the tale of two men – Sebastian and Jean – who bring, or attempt to bring, a single girl, Shira, into their relationship. Written from Shira’s point of view, the reader is taken through a series of emotional and sexual challenges as she delves into this new and somewhat unusual relationship.

In this excerpt, Shira joins Jean and Sebastian for breakfast after leaving Jean’s house, early, the morning after the three have first spent the night together:

It was called the Elbow Room because there was so little of it. Saturday mornings were almost impossible. You had to know someone who worked there to get a seat. Jean did: he was the food critic for the trendiest ‘what’s on’ magazine in town. His devoted readers had no idea who he was, or what he looked like. With Jean as the faceless master of culinary prose, I had made a number of off-colour jokes about the title of his weekly column, ‘Eating Out’.

Jean and Sebastian were perched on the chrome stools at the fifties-style counter with one empty seat between them. I handed my coat to a snippy waitress and made my way over.

‘Hi’ I said, hesitantly.

Jean glowered at me. ‘Sit down. We’re just an eensy-weensy bit upset with you right now. So just sit down.’

I did. Somehow, his bad temper made me feel better. Perhaps things were getting back to normal.

Or perhaps not. Jean snaked his hand into my lap and clasped it under the counter. ‘Why didn’t you wake us up, Shira?’

‘Give her a break. She was suffering from angst.’ Sebastian looked at me, dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin and smirked. ‘Isn’t that right, girl?’ he asked. After wiping his hands meticulously, he put the serviette down, grabbed my face in both hands and kissed me loudly, right next to my ear. ‘I told you I’d respect you in the morning, you luscious slut,’ he whispered, before swiping my cheek with the tip of his tongue.

This was a familiar sort of banter; it meant nothing. I tried to put on my most detached smile, but I know I didn’t manage it.

This may seem like an unusual excerpt for me to choose considering this is a novel situated, quite rightly, in the ‘erotic fiction’ genre, but anyone who has read Remittance Girl’s work before will know that she can write sex, and I do not need to show you just how well she does it. (For anyone who hasn’t read her work before, there is a plethora of stories for you to read here.) So I decided to find a section which displayed Shira’s narrative voice and the interaction between the characters. And really, this is where most of my struggles with the novel lie. The thing is, I have come to love, from Remittance Girl, a darker set of characters than these three, and phrases like “We’re just an eensy-weensy bit upset with you right now” do jar somewhat with my expectations. Furthermore, because Shira is our narrator, these kinds of playfully trivial phrases are littered through the text, not just confined to the dialogue. There is something, again for lack of a better word, immature about the characters and their interaction when I consider the novel within the context of Remittance Girl’s other work. Overall, it simply seems less eloquent.

But here’s why I struggled: although – I think! – the ages of the three protagonists are never made explicit, through their interactions and personalities I quickly drew them in my mind as being in their twenties. (Perhaps other readers will see them differently, but that’s where they sat in my imagination.) Given their youthfulness, the immaturity of the language seems entirely appropriate. We are seeing this situation through Shira’s inexperienced eyes, and for all my pondering over tone, I cannot deny that her voice is exactly as it should be. In fact I would describe this as a character-driven novel, and all three characters are impeccably drawn. I can find no fault, with their attitudes or tone of voice in the context of the story. Furthermore, through the course of the novel Shira, Jean and Sebastian encounter a series of struggles (over Shira’s emotional difficulty with being part of a threesome, and Jean’s hesitancy about anal sex, amongst other things) and as they move through these difficulties, the characters remain intact. What I mean is that whereas in other novels, characters are often thrown from their course and their own personalities by the things that happen to them, here they react and progress exactly as they should, and in precisely the ways we may observe in the real world. Okay, yes, there is something unusual and perhaps even a little wish-fulfillment-esque about Sebastian’s extreme wealth and the freedom that affords them, but this didn’t really bother me as it was incorporated seamlessly into the body of the story.

Nevertheless, and perhaps this is simply a reflection of my own preferences, whilst I was in the midst of the action, I didn’t feel as rapt as I did when I was reading (for example) ‘Gaijin’, because the characters weren’t dealing with a situation as dramatic or difficult as the protagonist in ‘Gaijin’. Every now and then there was a small part of me that wished Shira could just come to terms with the situation and fully give herself to the pleasure of being in a relationship with two men. Equally, there were moments when I felt that Sebastian slipped into the slightly unrealistic; that is not to say he ever dropped his attitude or character, but simply that I found some moments less believable than others.

However, without giving anything away, I do need to take a moment to discuss the end of the novel. Endings can be extraordinarily difficult to write, especially when it comes to novel-length fiction, and it is very rare that the end of a story will change how I feel about the story as a whole. But the ending of ‘Beautiful Losers’ did. The events that close the novel, whilst not wholly unexpected, do change the situation dramatically, and it was the way in which Shira reacted and dealt with this shift that really brought home for me how exquisitely these characters are drawn. For me, the characters found their redemption in this ending by reacting with quiet, but honest emotion. And that really was striking to read.

‘Beautiful Losers’ is an extremely well written novel, and it may be that any reservations I have about the tone of Shira’s voice and her interactions with Jean and Sebastian are wholly subjective, and based on my own preconceptions; but truthfully I doubt this will be a novel that I revisit in the way I have revisited Remittance Girl’s other work. It simply doesn’t speak to me on the level that ‘Gaijin’ or ‘The Waiting Room’ do. However, it would be remiss of me not to point out that I am only comparing ‘Beautiful Losers’ with Remittance Girl’s other work; if I consider it in the wider canon of erotic fiction, it is something of a masterpiece. Remittance Girl is an exceptional writer, and for anyone who can find a deeper affinity with Shira, Jean and Sebastian I would expect this novel to have a far more profound effect.

Although not without its flaw, ‘Beautiful Losers’ is a heart-rending portrait of three people trying to navigate the difficulties of an alternative relationship. And, if I’m honest, I didn’t really want to put it down.

• • • • •

‘Beautiful Losers’ is currently available as an ebook from Amazon UK and Amazon US. If you would like to read more of Remittance Girl’s work, you can do so on her site: remittancegirl dot com.

The post Review: ‘Beautiful Losers’ (Remittance Girl) appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Along with the rebirth of e[lust] comes a new feature: Sex Bytes, a site which offers bloggers a way to share their own work and the work of others more immediately, between the main e[lust] issues.

To give you some idea of how it will work, the Sex Bytes description reads:

Sex Bytes delivers the most interesting and talked about sex stories and posts on the Internet . The Internet is full of great stories, and we help you find, read, and share the very best ones. It’s simple, just click on the “What have you found” button on the right side of the page. Register for an account (if you haven’t already) and share the link. Remember to pick a category, give it some tags and share it on your social network. Don’t forget to vote for the stories that you enjoy!

A few weeks ago Molly asked me to be the editor of Sex Bytes, and I accepted. I will work hard to make this a productive and useful tool, and hopefully it will flourish into a site that everyone can use to share the best stories and posts on the internet.

Needless to say, I am very pleased to be working with Molly and Michael as part of the e[lust] team.

The post Sex Bytes: A New Day, a New Title appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Almost every day I come across a writer who is struggling with writer’s block or irritated because they cannot find a new idea for a story; and almost every day I see someone tell them to “just write”. Despite the fact that we all seem openly accepting of the idea that everyone works in their own way, it appears that the majority of writers agree on this: whether you hate your writing or you can’t find a topic or you simply don’t want to put [fingers] to [keyboard], the answer is to just write something – anything! – and the words will eventually come back to you.

Well, I would like to free the writers who want to be freed from the bonds of this contract. Personally, if I cannot write, and I force myself to write something sub-standard, I come away feeling much worse than I did in the first place. Not only have I spent a good hour or so on a piece of writing I knew I was going to loathe from the outset, but I realise I have plenty of other things I could have achieved in that time.

In fact, sometimes writer’s block is a blessing in disguise. When I am in full flow, eager to write and full of ideas that simply seem to spill onto the page, other parts of my life invariably get neglected. The dishes stack up, or the carpet doesn’t get hoovered, or I don’t complete my course reading. Of course, ideally you find the balance, a place where you can hold onto and evolve ideas without letting your home go to wrack and ruin, but it is harder to do the daily chores when you are buzzing with ideas that want to escape through your fingertips. On the other hand, I’ve come across writers – myself included – who find the rhythm and mundanity of things like doing the washing up, or sweeping the floor, or gardening to be incredibly stimulating for their thoughts. Maybe it takes a few weeks of knitting to fully formulate an article, but eventually it is there, and so much better than it would have been had you strained to force it out. (I will add, however, that taking time off from writing for me does not mean sitting idly by and watching the seasons change. Nothing stimulates nothing. If I want to be at all productive in any areas of my life, I have to keep my mind and body stimulated. Perhaps all it takes is a good book followed by a long walk, but I have to do something. Taking a break from writing does not mean I am on holiday. Ever.)

Don’t get me wrong – if the advice to “just write” works for you, then go for it. If you’re the kind of person who feels that when you stop writing you will never start again, then perhaps getting on with it is the way forward for you – but it does not work for everyone; and it irritates me when I see people preaching, as though this is the one and only way to achieve something, that we all just need to put our heads down and get on with it. For some writers, this simply does not work. Furthermore, if you take a break from writing and it goes on and on, it does not mean you aren’t a writer. It probably means you need to focus on something else for a while. And if you never find your way back to your words, perhaps that is sad; but the chances are that you’ve drifted away because you’ve found a new passion – no less worthy, but simply more present at this time in your life.

As with almost everything in life, we each have our own ways, and the important thing is to find the one that works for you. Whilst the “just write” principle may be a noble one, it is remiss of us to assume it works for everyone. By all means try it; but if it doesn’t work, then it’s simply not for you. And if you’re very lucky, the time given by taking a break from writing is time you can put to equally good use.

The post The ‘Just Write’ Principle appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Name:

Twitter ID: @HarperEliot

Must attend Eroticon 2013 session: Gosh – there are quite a few! but one I’m particularly looking forward to is Polyamory 101 with Lori Smith and Amanda Jones.

Bloggers you’d like to be trapped in a lift with: How big is this lift? Lori Smith, Zoe Margolis, Remittance Girl, and Molly Moore. (Assuming Miss Kiddell would be present over the intercom, seeings as this is her event.)

Erotic writer you’d like to dramatize your life story: Oh! Remittance Girl. Undoubtedly.

Expected bigest fangirl/fanboy moment: I feel blessed that this is a difficult decision to make simply because I have met so many of the wonderful people who will be at Eroticon. But if I can elbow my way to Cindy Gallop I will. I’m also really looking forward to meeting Justin Hancock.

What keeps you awake at nights? My never-ending to do list, impending coursework deadlines, addictive TV shows, and, I’ll be honest, men – although, I hasten to add, almost always in a positive, if distracting, light.

• • • • •

I have actually been meaning to write about Eroticon for a while now but due to those impending coursework deadlines and deliciously distracting men, I’ve had trouble finding the time to do it. Nevertheless, better late than never, and for those of you who aren’t down to attend yet tickets are still available here! So if you want to mingle with some of the finest talent in sex blogging and erotic fiction, Eroticon 2013 awaits you!

Last year Eroticon proved to be so much greater than the sum of its parts. Between excellent seminars and thought-provoking panels I met more people than I can remember (off the top of my head), and came away with not only a long list of new connections, but months worth of writing material. Inspiring and endlessly informative, Ruby Kiddell pulled off something that we were in great need of – and this year is looking to be even better.

I also want to mention that I am organising an evening of erotic readings on the Saturday night. I would be thrilled to see you all there, and I can promise some truly wonderful entertainment set in an atmospheric venue complete with alcoves and alcohol. Watch out for more details coming very soon.

Please do leave me a comment and say hello, and I will see you all in March! – that is, if I can get my coursework done by then, of course.

See who else is coming to Eroticon 2013 in the Meet & Greet link up

The post Eroticon 2013 Meet’n'Greet etc. appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Last year I found that one of the many benefits of studying literature is that as I read and discuss and study, ideas for my own writing organically rise to the surface of my consciousness. Art spawns art. This is has proved to be less true in my second year, but every now and then I’ll come across something that I’d like to try.

When I was in the upper school I spent a month of each of my four years studying the history of literature. By looking at a variety of texts from Gilgamesh to Oedipus Rex to The Tempest to the Lyrical Ballads to Riddley Walker, I was able to gain a rather comprehensive overview of the evolution of literature, and one of the main things I remember from these classes is writing poetry. Whatever era or subject we were studying, we were encouraged to write poetry in a similar style. So I wrote sonnets and villanelles; I wrote in iambic pentameter and trochees; I wrote quatrains and free-verse; and I often enjoyed the freedom of subject juxtaposed with the structure of the form. I also very much liked the way in which I now, in a contemporary setting, I am free to pick and choose from past forms and find one that will fit whatever poem I would like to write.

However, since leaving school, I haven’t written much poetry. There are a few poems on this site, and even one I am quite fond of, but for the most part they’ve been written quickly and without all that much care¹. Poetry is by no means a dying art – there are plenty of poets out there if you care to look for them! – but it is less in the public eye, and has been somewhat usurped by the rise of the novel.

It’s ironic really: when the novel first appeared (around the beginning of the 18th Century), it was looked down upon as a lowbrow form of literature, not fit to sit on shelves besides poetry, romance and epics. Novels were printed to be read once and thrown away, like we might do with a newspaper. Yet now the BBC covers the Man Booker Prize every year, extensively, and I can’t even call to mind the name of a poetry prize – although, again, there are plenty of them.

But I digress…

The reason, I suppose, that I haven’t written much poetry lately is that usually my creative ideas are narrative ideas. Of course, I could write narrative poetry, but it was never my preferred style. My ideas seemed to lend themselves far better to prose. However, given my lack of narrative inspiration, I thought perhaps now would be a good time to return to looking at poetry. This realisation is, of course, heavily influenced by what I’m currently studying – Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer) – and a lecture I had the other night on Early English Poetics. The guest lecturer himself – whose name I wish I could give you, but for privacy reasons I can’t – writes modern poetry in the style of early English poetry. Whilst there are various different forms, I was particularly interested in the structure used in Caedmon’s Hymn, which I looked at a few weeks ago.

Given the structure of this poem and the difference in language, writing in this form using modern English is no small feat. In Old and Middle English (OE, ME), the stresses in words are not standardised, as they are now. For example: in the word ‘genius’ we naturally put the stress on the first syllable – ‘genius’ – and it would sound strange if we were to put it on the second – ‘genius’ – or the third – ‘genius.’ However, in OE and ME, the stresses are flexible, and can change depending on the context and how they are spoken. Therefore OE and ME lend themselves very well to poetry, and when early English poetry was being written, the language was often changed and manipulated to serve the form itself.

The structure used in Caedmon’s Hymn is thus:

• 4 stresses/emphases per line
• 3 alliterations per line
• A caesura² in every line

In terms of the length of the poem and stanzas, there are no hard and fast rules, and in fact, even the above rules are often subverted; for example, some of the lines in this poem use two or four alliterations.

Interestingly, due to the fact that the earliest poetry comes not from written word but from the oral tradition, in the early manuscripts poetry is often written without line breaks. Therefore, modern scholars have used the alliteration to work out the lines.

Using the style of Caedmon’s Hymn, I decided to write a short stanza and test how the form would work in modern English. (The following was written purely to illustrate the form):

Sing to me o’ muse, bring forth my words
And let the meaning, lilting from this
numb mind, measure the metre.
But bereft of syllables, I’ll count in beats
And watch the stress, as I make the break,
Running without reason, against the rest.

Perhaps the easiest part of early English poetry to recreate is the alliteration:

Sing to me o’ muse, bring forth my words
And let the meaning, lilting from this
numb mind, measure the metre.
But bereft of syllables, I’ll count in beats
And watch the stress, as I make the break,
Running without reason, against the rest.

Although it may pose some challenge when writing with a more intentional subject, and I have done it rather crudely, it is not something alien to us, and is used often in modern poetry.

Of course, writing in modern English it is extremely difficult to have only four stresses per line. However, given the clear form of the poem, we can see where the emphases should perhaps be:

Sing to me o’ muse, bring forth my words
And let the meaning, lilting from this
numb mind, measure the metre.
But bereft of syllables, I’ll count in beats
And watch the stress, as I make the break,
Running without reason, against the rest.

I have also inserted commas to illustrate where the caesura would be, although some editors choose to print early English poetry with a physical break between lines to show the importance of the caesura:

Sing to me o’ muse                bring forth my words
And let the meaning             lilting from this
numb mind                            measure the metre.
But bereft of syllables             I’ll count in beats
And watch the stress             as I make the break,
Running without reason       against the rest.

This has quite a dramatic effect on the way the poem looks on the page, and modern poetry is definitely concerned with its appearance as well as its meaning and its sound, but it perhaps says more about the editor than it does the poet.

You can see how many challenges are posed by this mix of old and new, but I think it has the potential to produce some interesting pieces, and to change the way I, at the very least, approach and feel about my work. And hopefully, over the next few weeks, I will feel inspired to write something slightly more interesting than the above.

1. Except for the “one I am quite fond of”, The Minotaur, which is the product of many careful hours’ work.
2. A break in the middle of a line.

The post Subverting Early English Poetics appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Sex sells. There are no two ways about it. It’s why Bond girls adorn the opening credits in, at most, skintight catsuits. It’s why Sophie Dahl caused such a stir posing for YSL (above). It’s (at least in part) why The Sun is Britain’s biggest selling paper. It’s why this blog – at it’s highpoint – got 32 comments per piece, and my other blogs are lucky to get 100 views in total. Per month! I have hugely benefitted from this simple human truth. In fact, when I was starting out as an erotic fiction writer a good friend suggested I take part in HNT to boost my readership – and it worked like a charm.

But my consciousness of this fact has changed. Where at eighteen I was keen to take advantage of eroticism as a selling point, feeling that taking control of my sexuality empowered me, and that I was somehow more evolved than my peers, it is now obscuring my intentions.

Within the fact that sex sells there is also another problem, which I would like to touch upon briefly. When it comes to Bond girls, and Sophie Dahl, and The Sun, and, well, me, there is a painful imbalance. It would seem that our only recognised sex symbol is female. Whilst I can appreciate the beauty of the YSL advert – as a photographer and as a designer – and may have found it intriguing as the naïve 10-year-old I was when it appeared on a billboard near my house, being a (mostly) straight female it is not actually a sex symbol that appeals to me. This is an extremely important point, and as I make the move into publishing my work, I will certainly be fighting for covers that don’t perpetuate this imbalance. But for now I will leave it to others to expose and discuss: Zoe Margolis expounded upon this with her talk Under Cover: Erotica and Sexism at The Lost Lectures (which you can watch in full – and I highly recommend that you do – by clicking the link).

But I digress.

It is widely accepted that mainstream publishers, and film production companies, etc. look down upon erotic art. Every day I read about erotic artists struggling against these attitudes, but rarely do I see a discussion that talks about why this is. Elsewhere in the world this may have much to do with religion and the stronghold it has on so many nations, but in the UK that is far less true. Whilst many people living in the UK are religious, it is not so pervasive that we won’t elect an atheist Prime Minister, or that we swarm to church every Sunday. It’s different here. Perhaps our prejudices are still based in a religious background, spanning thousands of years, but I believe a large part of the reason we reject sexuality from the mainstream now is that there is an idea that an aroused mind is a less cognitive mind. And to a certain extent, I agree.

When we seek to indulge our arousal, we are rarely looking for something that will stimulate us intellectually. In fact, I can speak to this from personal experience: I’ve been known to visit Literotica (which holds possibly the worst sex writing available) because it is easy to find the subject I want there, and when I’m aroused I don’t care as much about the quality of the writing. When we have sex and when we masturbate very few of us – I believe – are using this time to consider the financial crisis, or the state of the music industry. And why should we? Part of what makes sex so wonderful is the fact that it allows us to escape from the humdrum of our daily lives. The fact that this state of arousal is looked down upon by so many is utterly unfair. It is a large and important part of human experience, which ought to be explored with open minds.

But what happens when we do actually want to deal with sex critically? More often than not it is sold as titillation, taking us right back to where we started: setting up reader/viewer expectations to no more than material for sexual arousal, and if arousal makes it hard to think objectively, then that puts erotica amongst the most difficult arts to view critically. This then becomes a whole other issue, seeping into the huge problem we have with the vast amount of poorly written erotica and badly made pornography. People rarely complain about something that makes them come. (Additionally, even when sex is discussed by the media in cases of rape or abduction it is often done with a tone of sick fascination, playing to a similar type of arousal, which really displays the worst in human nature.)

It is an argument I have with myself at this time every year. With less than 30 days until National Novel Writing Month I am story plotting and character building and part of the NaNoWriMo form asks you to choose a genre for your novel. For the past three years I have used NaNoWriMo to write fiction that involves a lot of eroticism and for this reason I have felt compelled to put my novels into the Erotic Fiction category. However, the public perception that erotica is written to arouse makes this genre seem rather exclusive, and when I am writing novel-length fiction, eroticism is not the only thing I want to explore. Given that my plans for this year’s NaNoWriMo appear to be in a similar vein, the debate continues.

But my problem runs deeper: I do not write erotic fiction to arouse and it does not arouse me to write erotic fiction. For me, writing erotica is a way of exploring sexuality through my chosen media – literature. I long ago embraced the fact that my writing arouses people. I am not unhappy with the fact that people enjoy my work as something to get off to. However, nothing pleases me more than a response to my work that is reasoned and intellectual and opens up a discussion. It is through those conversations that I feel we learn the most about sexuality. In fact, I would go so far as to say that often I write pieces that push people’s boundaries in the hope that they will be too much for my readers’ arousal and force them to consider it critically rather than sexually.

In the extreme, the fact that sex sells not only pervades my work as an erotic author, but also me as a human being. Via email, in comments, on twitter, I am bombarded with sexual innuendo and come-ons as though the fact that I write about sex makes me available and eager to take part in others’ sex lives. Of course, I am the only one who can control the way I present myself, and I am the only one who can take action against the way I am perceived – and I won’t deny that I do on occasion provoke those reactions. But even when I don’t do it directly I am still subject to these kinds of responses and so I think it bears mentioning.

There is nothing wrong in creating with the intention to arouse. In fact, with more and more marriages ending due to a lack of sexual fulfillment I feel we now, more than ever, need porn and erotica that opens people up sexually. On the other hand, this trend makes it very difficult to engage critically with the erotic arts and for me, at least, this is a real problem. The one thing that everyone seems to be able to agree on when it comes to Fifty Shades of Grey (and, actually Twilight as well) is that the cover (above, right) is brilliant. It is not at all explicit, but if you know anything about the book – and everyone now does – it is still appropriately erotic. Whilst we cannot dictate what will arouse people and what will not, covers and promotion and advertising do play a huge part in setting up consumer expectations, and so perhaps this is the first step in creating a sub-category of erotic fiction which deals with its subject critically, rather than using it to arouse. Because I cannot be the only one who feels this way.

The post Erotic Fiction Without Sexual Arousal: Attempting the Impossible appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

With the US Presidential election in the offing, the political side of being female and, in fact, being human, is, I hope, weighing heavily on our minds. For those of us in the UK it is easy to sit idly by, our fingers crossed, hoping for a Democratic result on the other side of the pond. Meanwhile, we aren’t identifying, let alone dealing with, the problems we are facing.

When I consider the problems we face both as erotic artists/sex bloggers and as human beings, they are rarely limited to location. The state of ignorance about sex, about money, about politics, about climate change, whatever the issue of the day is, has become astronomical, and we appear to be quite content settling into this far from perfect world.

As I mentioned before, I know these issues seem far too large for us to handle when we have our own day-to-day lives to navigate. I can barely find time to visit my little brother and sister and see them grow up; how am I supposed to tackle the Republican manifesto?

But the more articles I read, and the more I hear about the frankly horrifying state of the world, the more I come back to one innate issue: education. I’ll admit that I don’t know as much about education in other countries as I perhaps should, but I know how bad it is in the UK, and I’ve heard/read dissatisfied accounts from the US as well.

According to a study done by researchers at Sheffield University and presented by the Guardian in 2010 “22% of 16- to 19-year-olds are functionally innumerate” and “17% […] functionally illiterate”. Those numbers alone are staggering and should stand as proof that our education system is in shambles. The government’s answer to this problem is to introduce more and more standardised testing, as though proving that 11-year-olds can’t write is a way of solving the problem and not just highlighting it. Pupils are now spending an inordinate amount of time learning how to take tests and exams, rather than being given the tools to develop into independent, thoughtful adults. Furthermore, the vast majority of people I meet would describe their school experience as “okay” at best, and many people from my parents’ generation seem to have decided that lower education is something to be endured.

I was very fortunate to have been given an education I felt enthusiastic about. I went to schools that inspired and – yes – educated me. I was sad to leave school, and I am now so proud to look around me and see how successful and intelligent my fellow classmates have become. But not everyone is afforded the opportunities that I had, and I find that deeply saddening.

In fact, whilst we can look at those aforementioned statistics and comment on the disgrace that is our education system, the ability to read, write and deal with numbers are the most basic skills. We should not be settling for a system that considers literacy and numeracy the benchmark of a good education. Those should be a given; we should not even have to discuss those issues. In this country the majority of children are in formal education for a minimum of twelve years. In twelve years I would hope that they are taught more than just how to do maths and how to read and write. They should be learning how to use their hands, how things are made; they should be studying philosophers and religions – not for indoctrination, but in order to orientate them in a world where these topics are the basis of society. They should be building houses and working with the earth and talking about the political and economical and social and religious and ecological world we live in today.

Without all of that and more, how can we expect anyone to fight for causes they don’t really know about, let alone know how to deal with? And of course, to link this back to the sexual discourse this site claims to deal in, how can we expect the next generation to understand and explore and accept sexuality in all its forms and variations? How can anyone take an interest in new things if they have never been enthused or given the opportunity to explore anything beyond what the best way to take an exam is?

If we want to the next generation to grow up as free-thinking individuals who are accepting of kinks and homosexuality and polyamory, then we need fight for an education system that will provide children with the tools and the knowledge they need, to first place themselves in the world, and then change it.

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Where the Creative Networking Nights provide a wonderful opportunity to make friends and exchange business cards, due to the social atmosphere it can be hard to get into serious discussion about art and about the industry we are working within. On Saturday (25th August), in a more conversation-friendly setting, the seven of us – a mixture of photographers, artists, writers, and even a fine woodworker – were able to talk, in depth, about a range of different subjects including marketing strategies, adult content warnings and the difference between erotica and pornography. Coming away, with a page of notes and some interesting connections, I felt both inspired and more aware of what it means to work in the erotic industry.

The post EM-CA Mixed Media Meet in review appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Having read Fifty Shades of Grey, Remittance Girl concluded that the D/s aspect of writing, perhaps comes through not so much in the acts portrayed, as in the language used to describe them. I came to a similar conclusion when I reviewed the book. Based on this theory, RG set a challenge: write the same piece of erotic fiction twice, the first time as a vanilla scene, and the second time as a D/s scene. Challenge accepted.

Vanilla
They stumbled out of the bar, beer bubbles still tickling their nostrils, giggling into each other’s slung arms as they made their way down the glistening street. The air was brisk, nipping at her exposed shoulders, but she didn’t notice, through her alcohol-warm haze. One hand on her hip, he led her back to his flat and helped her over the threshold, still giggling.

Ten minutes later they were towel dried and a little subdued on the sofa. She let him kiss her brow and her jawline, and he reached into her top to run the tips of his fingers over her hardening nipple.

“I’d like to fuck you” He murmured, kissing her neck, trailing his tongue behind her ear.

She smiled, biting her lip, and nodded carefully.

Pressing together, she grew wet against him and he pulled her up, peeling the clothes off her body and holding her in his firm hands. As his lips traced patterns along her neck and across her shoulders, she was bent over the back of the sofa, hands exploring the convex of her arse. Breathless with need, he parted her thighs and pressed the heated head of his cock against her soaked sex.

• • • • •

Kinked
They stumbled out of the bar, beer bubbles still tickling their nostrils, giggling into each other’s slung arms as they made their way down the glistening street. The air was brisk, nipping at her exposed shoulders, but she didn’t notice, through her alcohol-warm haze. One hand on her hip, he steered her back to his flat and guided her over the threshold, still giggling.

Ten minutes later they were towel dried and a little subdued on the sofa. He kissed her brow and her jawline, and reached into her top to tease her hardening nipple between the tips of his deft fingers.

“I’m going to fuck you,” He said, biting her neck, trailing his pointed tongue behind her ear.

She shivered, catching her lip between her teeth, and nodded understanding.

Pulling her against him, he felt her grow wet and sat her up on her knees, ripping the clothes from her body and holding her in his firm hands. As his nails traced patterns along her neck and across her shoulders, he bent her over the back of the sofa, fingers pressing into the soft flesh of her arse. Growling with need, he parted her thighs and forced the heated head of his cock against her dripping cunt.

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