Inexplicable Desire - #Chemistry #Erotica #Connection

Several years ago I reviewed M.Christian’s sci-fi erotica story BionicLover. This tale follows the disturbing and intense relationship between a shy, struggling female artist and a butch woman of the streets who, when the story opens, has a magnificently crafted artificial eye. Thinking about the book after I wrote the review, I realized one reason it moved me so deeply: the author never really explains anything. We see the near-irresistible attraction between Pell (the artist) and Arc (the increasingly bionic butch). We watch as Arc replaces one body part after another with prosthetics, as Pell falls ever more deeply under her spell, as Arc vanishes then returns to the arms of the woman who somehow makes her whole–but though the emotions feel genuine and true, we never know why anyone does anything. Unmediated by reasons, we experience the desire, the longing, the loneliness, directly. The tale remains hauntingly ambiguous as well as overwhelmingly erotic.

In contrast, much of the erotic fiction I read focuses considerable attention on explaining the source of the attraction between the protagonists. Sometimes it’s something as superficial as big breasts or washboard abs. In other cases, the characters clearly complement each other, in terms of personality or history or mutual fantasies or kinks. In all too many stories, the erotic connection is pretty much a foregone conclusion, because the author has made the reasons for that connection painfully obvious.

Desire isn’t necessarily like that, though. Attraction often cannot be explained—except by amorphous concepts like “chemistry”, which is no explanation at all.

I remember one of my lovers, from my sex goddess period, when I blossomed from a self-conscious nerd into a flaming nymphomaniac. I met him at a mutual friend’s wedding, and wanted him from the very first instant. This wasn’t due to his physical appearance. He was cute, but no movie star. It certainly wasn’t because of his personality. He turned out to be arrogant as well as somewhat dishonest. None of that mattered. I wanted him. He wanted me. We had sex within four hours of meeting. Over the next few weeks, we shared some wild times, pushing the envelope (as they say), until I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really like him that much.

Call it chemistry if you like, the inexplicable force binding two souls, two bodies, who by rights shouldn’t be together at all. Whatever it is, it cannot be predicted, or explained.

Another wonderful literary example of this phenomenon is Willsin Rowe’s searing novella The Last Three Days. If you’ve ever thought lust was trivial compared to love, read this book. Rowe’s protagonists are in some sense addicted to one another. Insatiable need draws them together again and again. The pleasure of their encounters tempers their mutual antipathy. The emotions become so tangled that neither the characters nor the reader can sort them out—but they feel incredibly real.

There’s a clever little acronym frequently cited in author circles: RUE, which stands for Resist the Urge to Explain. Usually, when someone invokes the RUE principle in a critique, she’s commenting on a back story dump or an excess of description that slows down the pace of the narrative. Meditating on these two exemplary stories, I see that the RUE particularly applies to the erotic attraction between one’s characters. The more surprising, unexpected, complex and inexplicable that is, the more compelling the tale.

Desire cannot be summoned at will, nor can it be reasoned away. Desire simply is. And we erotic authors are but its chroniclers.

An Interview with Willsin Row (#interview #artist #musician #covers)

One of the best things about being an author is the opportunities I get to meet other creative people. During the last year or so, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know the multi-talented Willsin Rowe. I first encountered him through Excessica, where he’s artistic director. He designed the covers for my D&S Duos series, in return for my editing his delightful F/F story Her Majesty. Then, when there was a vacancy at the Oh Get a Grip blog, he stepped into the gap. I’ve gotten to know him a lot better through his posts there. Most recently, he designed the amazing cover for The Gazillionaire and the Virgin.

Anyway, I found myself wondering what makes Willsin tick, from an artistic perspective. So I thought I’d ask. He was kind enough to agree to this interview.

Your creativity takes a wide range of forms: writing and playing music, visual art and fiction. Which came first? Which comes easiest or most naturally for you? If you had to choose one creative outlet that “defines” who you are, would it be Willsin Rowe, musician; Willsin Rowe, artist; or Willsin Rowe, author? Or something else?

Gosh, that’s a toughie. I view myself as an author who makes cover art and plays music, yet it’s the cover art for which I’m best known. I remember in childhood that drawing came first (I won a prize at the age of 5), but by the age of 8 I was already doing various forms of silly writing. Usually my sister and I would put speech captions on the characters in the books we read, but that grew rapidly into writing actual stories.

I do recall identifying the desire to write professionally at the age of 10, and I do believe writing is the art which comes most naturally to me.

A few years later, the desire to play and write music took over, though, and I pursued that for a couple of decades, only truly coming back to writing about ten years ago. Plenty of day jobs in the meantime, and plenty of casual writing for friends in that time (customized poems, for example… usually bawdy).

In recent years I also added “book trailer maker” and “music video maker” to my skill sets. I no longer make book trailers commercially, as the way I worked was too time-intensive. I wrote the scripts based on information from the author, I wrote and arranged all the music, I sourced most or all of the imagery and very often created frame-by-frame animation through Photoshop. As I was dealing with indie and self-published authors, I simply couldn’t charge what the work was worth, so I wrapped that side of the business up. (Anyone who’s interested can check out my trailers here… remembering, please, that the newest of them is still close to four years old). And my music videos, all for my own band, can be viewed here.

Do you find that there’s cross-pollination between your different expressive modalities, or are they fairly independent?

Oh, absolutely there is. At only a superficial level there are obvious marriages. Words meet graphic arts when I make covers for my own books. Graphic arts meets music when I’ve made CD covers and posters for bands I’m in (or other people’s bands). And of course, words meet music all the time, even if it’s just my terrible and puerile word-switch improvisations while driving my sons on the school run.

Looking deeper than that, though, the most obvious crossover I’ve noticed is that twenty years of song-writing helped me shape my story-writing. The direct link was when I focused on flash fiction in the early years of professional writing. I adore the challenge of taking a huge concept and distilling it to only a few words. I’ve always been good with puns and cryptic crosswords, and both of those lateral-thinking methods help with flash fiction, allowing an author to use words with several meanings in place of a more simplified one. I find that opens the scope of a story’s heart greatly, and that was a skill I honed through music. I daresay that knack for brevity has also informed my longer works (though arguably not my interview answers!)

I’ve been the lucky beneficiary of your fantastic cover art design talent. How did you get started doing covers? Did you teach yourself the nuts and bolts of using graphic design tools, or do you have formal training? What is your process for creating a new cover?

Why, thank ya for the props, ma’am! I had actually discovered a talent for certain kinds of drawing (mostly photographic reproduction style) while in high school. At that point, I hadn’t begun to teach myself music, so art seemed a good overarching field to chase work in. Out of high school, my first job was as a compositor (page layout artist), where I learned the basics of older style printing, such as hot metal work and stereotyping. That was where I first began fiddling with Mac computers, and a few years later I managed to score a job as a desktop publisher.

I’ve never had any formal training in graphic design, but I picked up a lot of information along the way, and I believe I have a natural eye for balance and typography. None of that truly prepared me for the field of book cover art, though. That began when I was first published through Excessica and was given the opportunity to make my own cover art. When the publisher put a call out for any authors who might be able to make covers, I volunteered. After the first half-dozen covers it seemed I had a little flair for the field and I’ve never stopped making them since.

As far as process goes, there’s no one answer. For new authors I tend to use a cover request form, but for folks I’ve already worked with we can often go straight to shorthand, especially when it’s an established series like the Paranormal Dating Agency (by Milly Taiden).

On the technical and production side of things, again there’s not really a single answer. Genre and sub-genre can help set the pace, but there are some elements which are common across nearly all covers (and indeed, photography and other design), such as the rule of thirds. Knowing one’s way around Photoshop (or any of the other workable applications) is essential, though there is an absolute truckload of tricks in there I’ve never encountered. Mostly that’s because I started using Photoshop almost the second it was released in the very early 90s, so had to work around all the stuff it couldn’t do! The techniques I developed for myself have probably been somehow included in updates, but I’ve never gone looking.

I have actually described the nuts-and-bolts process of cover design in the past, with my friend and co-author Katie Salidas. You can find that info here, if you’re interested! – http://www.katiesalidas.com/2012/04/deconstructing-art-of-cover.html

I know about “writer’s block” from personal experience. Is there such a thing as “artist’s block” or “musician’s block”? If so, how do you handle this when it happens?

Artist’s block doesn’t usually take the same form as writer’s block, in my experience, though other folks’ mileage may vary. I hasten to add I rarely seem to encounter writer’s block, but in part that’s because I have other fields I work in (which harks back to the earlier question about cross-pollination). If I happen to be stuck for words I probably won’t even notice because I will have jumped across to work on a cover. But that aside…

The main stumbling blocks I’ve encountered with cover art tend to be two-fold: either I can’t find a stock image to suit, or I get so close to the project I can’t truly see it.

With the first issue, it can be incredibly frustrating. Sometimes you can find the perfect pose, but the model is wrong (hair colour, skin colour, height, weight or just overall look). Sometimes it’s the opposite. Hardest of all images to find, though, is a genuine curvy/BBW model posing romantically with a man (or just posing in any fashion which is not either comical or insulting). With the wonderful growth in BBW/Curvy fiction out there, I would have hoped more photographers and models would have jumped on board, but so far it’s still incredibly slim pickings. I (and many other authors) get asked quite often why the women on our BBW books are slender. My friend Erika Masten had the perfect response, though (not sure I’ll get this verbatim): “Please stop asking the authors, and start asking the photographers”.

With the second issue (being too close to the project)… well, that’s a commonality throughout all creative fields, I believe. I’m using it as a metaphor but it also feels literal. Sometimes a cover refuses to coalesce because it’s as if I’m standing right up against it, and no matter how much I bend my neck, I just can’t see the rest of it. Most people who write, paint, draw, design clothing, or do any other creative world have almost certainly endured that same feeling. The only answer then, of course, is to walk away from it for a short while. Again, either metaphorically or physically (or both).

Musically… well, music has become a much smaller part of my life these days. I don’t recall a time of having musician’s block, onlyhaving writer’s block at times while writing lyrics!

My own writing is very much separate from my everyday life. Indeed, Lisabet Sarai is practically a different person from my real world persona. What about you? Do the people around you know about and approve of your writing? Actually, given that you do covers for erotic fiction, I might ask the same about your art. Do you show your stuff to your family and friends?

All of Willsin is me, but only some of me is Willsin. There’s not a thing I say or write or post publicly which the real me wouldn’t do, say or post. There is, however, plenty the real me says, does and would post which Willsin wouldn’t, if that makes sense. Willsin is a distillation of the real me. He’s human flash fiction! Yet I’ve been him since 2006, so I’m comfortable inhabiting his skin when the need arises.

Not too many people in my real life know what I do (my parents and sister know but it’s not really a part of their lives in any way). Some know I make book covers, though I doubt they realise how many of them are dirty smut books. Fewer still know I write, fewer again know WHAT I write.

But I’m a diverse bloke, and I also write under the pen name Abi Aiken, a fact which I only revealed recently. And I write some non-erotic material under yet another name – a name which is much more widely know by real-world folks. So some folks know some stuff, and very few know all the stuff!

It’s not that I’m too worried about people knowing I write erotic romance… it’s more the potential ramifications on my wife (she’s a primary school teacher) and even my kids (youngest is 12, and if his mates knew, I’m sure he’d cop some teasing).

What’s your dream, from an artistic or creative perspective? If you could devote as much time as you wanted to making music, art or stories, what would you do?

If I had to choose only one field, then I would choose writing, simply because (at least for the first few drafts), it’s mine alone. Every word is there because I wanted it so. The buzz which comes from composing a sentence which truly works is a thing of beauty. That’s the thrill which keeps a person writing, I think. I’m a pretty ordinary singer, but there are times, few and far between, when I’ll hit a note and hold it and it just soars. It’s like the golfer who duffs 98% of his shots. It’s that 2% which connect sweetly that keeps him or her playing. I find the same thing with writing, but when it’s my baby (final draft before editing), the ratio is inverse. 98% sweet shots, 2% duffed. It might suck to every other person on the planet, but at that point, it’s as close to me as is possible.

~~~

Thanks so much for taking the time to satisfy my curiosity, Willsin! If you want to learn more about Willsin, check out his blog and/or his posts at the Grip. And don’t miss his recent stunning release, The Last Ten Days, which I reviewed here in January.

Review Tuesday: The Last Three Days by Willsin Rowe

The Last Three Days by Willsin Rowe

Self-published, 2015

Millions of romance novels celebrate the transcendent power of love. Love heals wounds, inspires heroism, overcomes evil. We’ve been taught to believe that finding one’s soul mate leads to both sensual bliss and enduring satisfaction.

Very few books acknowledge the fact that lust can be equally powerful, that it can transform lives, reveal truths, and trigger epiphanies as profound as those produced by love.

Willson Rowe’s novella The Last Three Days is one of those precious books.

The Last Three Days chronicles the intense sexual relationship between Opal, a cynical young woman frustrated by the way her unfashionably heavy body has stunted her opportunities for success, and Luther, a well-heeled lawyer stuck in a loveless marriage to a celebrity sex symbol. Opal and Luther aren’t in love; in fact they don’t like each other all that much. However, they’re irresistibly attracted to one another, from their very first meeting at the seedy bar where Opal serves drinks. Their connection is visceral, chemical, irrational and amoral. It encompasses all their senses, but especially taste and smell. When they’re together, they sink to an animal level where nothing exists except the body of the other. When they’re apart, craving drives them back together.

It’s easy to dismiss this sort of lust as superficial or trivial. Willson Rowe shows how complex and nuanced physical desire can become. Though it probably springs from some sort of physiological or neurological compatibility, a meshing of pheromones or a complementarity in pleasure receptors, it soon acquires cognitive and emotional dimensions. If that were not the case, the mutual need would vanish as soon as the couple separated. Instead, memory and fantasy take over where chemistry leaves off, perpetuating, and in Opal’s and Luther’s case, deepening their mutual dependence.

He swore he could still taste her. Still smell her juices on his lips.

Three days later, a dozen guilt-driven showers, and she was still all over him. Luther pressed back against the cubicle door, searching for strength. His hands were birds of prey, tearing open his pants,

eviscerating them, curling sharp talons around his cock. He felt her touch on him as he stroked himself. He leaned his hand on the wall above the toilet, all thought of hygiene displaced by the wordless blaze of lust within him.

In no time he was there again, with the heat and the sound and the feel of her mouth around him. How she’d salved her hunger; slaked her thirst. The reverence of her greed.

The Last Three Days has the most complex timeline of any book I’ve read since The Time Traveler’s Wife. Mr. Rowe carries it off brilliantly. The book begins three days in the past, with Opal entering a hotel room, knowing Luther awaits her. It jumps back to the point three months earlier when Opal and Luther first met. The chapter alternate, one temporal stream chronicling the development of their relationship, the other advancing through the last three days of the title—three days during which the two character plan to kick their addiction to each other’s flesh. The streams gradually converge toward the present and the ironic climax of the tale. Not only is this structure elegant, but it also mirrors the jerky, episodic nature of Opal’s and Luther’s encounters—the furtive blow jobs in lavatories and the few hours they steal from their separate lives to meet in anonymous hotel rooms.

Mr. Rowe’s language is full of raw energy and a lush attention to the senses. He is particularly skilled at conveying the sensuality of Opal’s abundant flesh.

The bed creaks as she moves and he glances over. Her knees are

kissing, her pussy almost invisible. His fingers vibrate as he pictures himself gripping her thighs, pushing them up and out. Filling her armpits with her knees, and her pussy with his tongue. The divinity of her ass taunts him. She takes a deep breath, her round belly swells, forces her hips back. For an instant he spies the dark little crater between her cheeks. His fingers, his tongue, his cock, all shiver with recognition.

...

He turns away again, locking onto the full-bodied and ravenous

concoction of femininity asleep on the bed. All flesh, fluid and

scent. He finds the kink in her nose, the tiny scar on her chin. He

follows the outline of her body with his eyes, hovering at the erotic

puddles of flesh where her breasts and belly rest on the mattress.

He grinds his teeth and scowls. The way she tempts him without

effort—without consciousness—should be illegal.

Opal constantly taunts Luther about how pathetic he is, fucking a fat girl, but the lawyer worships every bit of her. She has a grace she doesn’t even recognize, that tears him apart.

The feeling is mutual, however. Like him, she can never get enough.

He stood, naked, and she sat on her feet before him, lustful and reverent. She rose to her knees, took a handful of his hard cock and

rubbed her face against him.

“Mmm... you again,” she said, and slid her tongue up the hot rippled belly. She filled her mouth with him, let his heat glide through her body. Coiling his fingers into her hair he pulled, driving himself all the way home. She gagged on his length and he hissed the way guys do.

Opal pulled on his arms, dragging him back to the couch. She ran the round length of her body up over his shaft until they were face to face, hip to hip, cock to cunt. It just kept happening.

She was in free-fall as she glided herself down over his thick cock. For a second she closed her eyes and just sat in his lap, her body still and sober but her nerves squirming like eels. She rode the sweet burn inside and put her hands behind her head, wordlessly giving her breasts over to him. He rolled them, pounded them like bread dough, tasted their every pore and molecule as she stroked him with her hips.

With a cruel bite of her nipple he sent her mind flying through the roof of her skull.

“Bastard. Gonna. Come. Again.” If only he’d... “Fuck!” If just that one time he’d spoil it. Maybe she could walk away from him.

The erotic tension builds to an unbearable level as Opal and Luther struggle to spend three days and nights together without succumbing to their lust. The story’s ending—I hesitate to call it a resolution—is wonderfully ambiguous.

I have nothing against love and happily ever afters. However, I celebrate when I discover a book that moves off the well-worn track of romance to explore other avenues of desire.

The Last Three Days is that sort of book.