On the joys of writing naked - #sensuality #pansexual #polyamory @insistentwinter

By Dierdre Winter (Guest Blogger)

I love my job, but when I come home, I am wound up with adrenaline, my mind tangled with the issues of the day. I need release.

My favorite ritual of the day is undressing in front of the full length mirror in my bedroom. I pull my blouse loose from my pencil skirt, my fingers scrambling over the buttons; with every button I undo, I feel more and more liberated from the rigid confines of my professional life. As I unzip my skirt and let it fall to the floor, a second self emerges. I consider my body, now clad only in black sheer and lace, and I feel a growing sense of peace. I no longer have to be in charge, I am free to whimper and moan, to quiver and shudder, to fall back helpless onto the bed.

I unclasp my bra and throw it to the ground, soothing the harsh red lines marked on my skin. I peel off my stockings and toss my thong into the laundry with my toe. Release is coming, my body can feel it with every fiber of its being.

But, I like to stretch it out, make an evening of it. I love to feel it build in my body like a tidal wave until every piece of my body is involved. I love it when I can feel the pressure in my toes, in my ear lobes and everywhere in between. I love to bring myself just to the edge before pulling away even when my soul cries out hungrily.

I throw a robe loosely over my shoulders, not bothering to tie it up. As I wait for the water to boil for my tea, I can barely resist sliding a hand down my smooth skin to soothe the throbbing want pulsing through my veins. But, I must hold off. I need this energy for writing.

I have always been a writer, but it wasn’t until I found erotica that I found a consistent eagerness to write. I make my fantasies come to life, developing the characters and the situations by translating them from fragmentary images into stories I can imagine happening in real life. Although the physical act of sex is an important part of my writing, I find it becomes more erotic when I can recognize the characters as people who could very well be my co-workers, my neighbors, my fellow shoppers at the grocery store. In other words, I want the sex to flow from the story.

Because my fantasies tend to include open and uninhibited sexuality that transcends traditional gender and societal roles, my stories tend to take on that characteristic as well. Like my fantasies, my writing features pansexual and polyamorous relationships. I enjoy the complexity and the possibility of these relationships.

I am attracted to writing about women who are waiting for something exciting to happen in their lives. In many ways, I can relate. I spend many of my nights waiting, wondering who will step out from the shadows and make my fantasies into reality.

I recently completed my first novel called Lost and Found. It is about Dr. Grace Jones, a professor of Archeology suffering through the icy cold winters that come with working at the University of Minnesota. On top of the bothersome cold, she can no longer deny that her life is lacking the adventure it once had. As she's preparing for another Friday night alone, she gets an email from her mentor, Michael Hill, asking her to meet him in Guatemala where he believes he's found a treasure that will set the world of Archeology on its head. When Grace arrives at the camp, she is welcomed by Nick, Graham, and Susanna who make up the rest of Michael's team. As they chase the find of a lifetime, Grace must face her past, her fears, and her demons. Blazing hot days lead into steamy, sultry nights as the group searches the Guatemalan volcanoes for a long buried Mayan treasure.

Heat was the inspiration that started the whole story. I wanted to tell a story bathed in the unrelenting power of the sun. I wanted my characters to be sweaty and desperate to get out of their clothes. I wanted my main character to come from the cold and thaw out in the heat, shedding her protective clothing as well as her inhibitions. With that central idea in place, the details of the story began to emerge.

I had such fun writing this novel that immediately began on my second, which I hope to publish next year. It is about a woman, Lila, who moves to a small town to be a live-in nurse for an old man. For years, she’s been struggling with the death of her husband and the difficulty of raising her young son alone. Much like Grace, Lila is reborn and renewed by her experiences. She makes connections, sexually and emotionally, with the people she meets there, finding kindred spirits in the most unlikely places.

In all my work, I try to remember that erotica is literature and I spend as much time on the themes, the characters, and the stories as I do on the sex.

About the Author

Dierdre Winter is a first time novelist happily learning and working through all it takes to be a writer. She is also a teacher, a fitness fanatic, a dog owner, and an artist. She lives alone, near enough to Toronto to enjoy the city, but far enough away that she can have a backyard and a little house to herself. She can be found on twitter, and all over the internet @insistentwinter.

Her first novel is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited and can be found at: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Found-Pansexual-Polyamorous-Adventure-ebook/dp/B07XVRTQ2R/

Review Tuesday: Writing Naked by Mike Kimera (#erotica #lust #literature)

Writing Naked by Mike Kimera

Samba Mountain Press, 2005

What is the essence of erotica? There are as many answers as there individuals - readers and writers. Erotica is writing that arouses the reader. Erotica is words to wank to. Erotica celebrates our sexual selves. Erotica is escapist, letting us experience vicariously the fantasies that we can't fulfill in real life. Erotica is political and subversive, writing that challenges the dominant cultural view of sex as something shameful, sinful, and evil. Erotica is personal and psychological, exploring the sexual sources of human conflict, motivation and emotion. Erotica is transformational, leading us to new visions of our sexual selves.

Mike Kimera has stopped writing and publishing under that name. In the days when I knew him, though, he used to wonder in his blog postings whether what he wrote should be called "erotica". Based on the sampling of stories in his stunning collection, Writing Naked, I don't think there is any doubt. Mike writes graphic, honest, revealing, and sometimes painful tales about believable and mostly sympathetic humans in the grip of sexual desire. Writing Naked is bold and arousing. At the same time, it delves deeper and exposes more of the psychological realities of sex than most erotic writing.

The slim volume hangs between the poles of two multi-part stories: "Writing Naked: Letters to Myself" (the highly deserving winner of the 2005 Rauxa Prize for erotic writing) and "American Holidays". The former is the intricate self-dissection of an acknowledged porn addict and sexual adventurer. The latter follows a set of interlinked characters through a set of emotional and sexual crises that coincide, as crises so often do, with holidays: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and so on. Each is a tour de force of erotic writing. Reading about blindfolded Peter being used by his dominant wife and her much-desired best friend is an incredible turn-on. However, there's more here than that. The characters feel extraordinarily real. They are ordinary people except perhaps for being more sexually voracious than average. They are confused and guilty and consistently, overwhelmed by lust.

If there's one theme that unites the stories in Writing Naked, it is the concept that intense sexual desire is somehow foreign, inscrutable, uncontrollable, and irresistible once it is given free reign. Kimera's characters do things they know they will regret later, burning as they do in the superheated furnace of lust. In the brief but totally arresting "Happy Hour", a character muses:

"I wonder how many other women have sweated and moaned their way to slick release upon the tightly woven beauty of this rug? In the beginning I thought it a magic carpet, carrying me to

new heights; I rode it while Gerald rode me. Now I realise that both Gerald and I have been abducted by some poltergeist of lust. We are now so high we can find no way to reach the ground."

And then later:

"This thing we have, whatever it is, is not friendship, or love. It doesn't make us stronger or better. It consumes us. We are burning in each other's arms.

"I hope that when the fire goes out we will not be hollow."

It's not that Kimera's creatures don't know love. They do. When they are lucky, as in the opening story, "I Want to Watch You Do It", the romantic short "Kneading", or the slyly seductive BDSM tale, "Other Bonds Than Leather", their emotional attachment coincides with the object of their lust. All too often, though, their hearts and their genitalia are headed in totally different directions.

"I felt like an alcoholic who everyone thinks is sober; the fact that he isn't drinking doesn't mean he's sober, it just means that he's managed not to be drunk today. Every day that I refused to listen to the wilder side of my nature was a victory, but I didn't expect to keep on winning forever."

("Happy Anniversary")

It may sound as though Kimera's stories are dark, and many of them are. I couldn't read the two hundred pages of this book in a single session; the emotional impact was just too overwhelming. However, there are gems of raunchy humor in this collection, most notably the tongue-in-cheek "Friday Night at the Adult Bookstore", the delicious fantasy tale "Go Large", and the truly inspired "Mating Calls":

"I made the mistake of phoning Kyle, my most recent ex, to ask him if I was a noisy fuck. Cue one fucked up conversation.

"'Babe,' he said (I hate being called babe and he knows it), 'when we fucked, I only knew you were awake because you made no noise. As soon as you fell asleep, you'd start snoring.'

"'Oh, yeah?' I replied (okay, so I'm not always calm on the phone). 'Well, the only reason I knew I was awake when we fucked was because sex was always fun in my dreams.'"

("Mating Calls")

There are also a few stories of sweet redemption through the flesh. "Newton's Laws of Emotion" traces the emotional tectonics that bring a woman scientist to the point of introducing her artist husband and her physicist lover. "Eve's Freedom" is a simple tale about the healing power of love, even when unrequited. And the lyrical "Tiger Tiger" reaffirms that even when we don't will or comprehend it, there may be something transcendental about sexual union.

There's a trend in erotic writing these days toward the edgy and extreme: violent, shocking, completely transgressive. You might wonder if Mike Kimera's stories fall into this category. In fact, they do not. Mike's characters often behave badly. They fuck roughly, deceive freely, break taboos left and right. However, they never lose their humanity. Somehow there's always a spark of empathy—even for the ugly millionaire who gets his kicks by paying women to be degraded in "Fucking Money".

Mike pretends to distance himself from his characters, to survey their actions and unflinchingly report their foibles. His bio notes that he took a degree in psychology "out of sheer self-indulgence". He likes to assume the pose of the analytical observer, the chronicler of lust. It's just a pose, though. He cares about his characters far too much to be a clinician.

If you're looking for light entertainment, no thought or emotion required, then skip this book. On the other hand, if you're ready to experience desire in all its complexity and intensity, don't miss it.