Showing posts with label comfort zone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comfort zone. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Experiments in Sensuality

By H K Carlton (Guest Blogger)


From our earliest childhood memories we have explored, experimented and experienced. It’s how we learn and grow. I feel this same way about writing. It’s like a whole new world and a new me.

I’m not very adventurous by nature. I am not a go-getter or a goal-setter, but lately I’ve been doing a little experimentation, in my writing at least. I’ve been challenging myself to write in some erotic sub-genres that I’ve never tried before and in some cases haven’t read. Stepping outside of not only my experience, but in some cases, out of my comfort zone as well. This from the girl who started out thinking that historical romance was her genre. I’ve since learned, I don’t have a specific genre and I don’t want to be known for just one. I want to try it all. So, maybe I’m a little more adventurous than I thought. At least when I’m hiding behind H K the author, I am.

This is how Streetlight People came about; challenging myself. Trying something new and different, just like Andi the first female character in my latest release from Total-E-Bound. My first shot at writing ménage (f/m/f) (Andi/Street/Toni). Getting into Andi’s head was a little out of my reach at first. But writing in my favourite POV, first person, I found it easier to put myself in her place and having an open mind, I went were I’d never gone before, so to speak. I found Toni, the second female in the story, much more difficult to portray, because she at least was the one character in the threesome that may have had prior experience with multiple partners. I wanted her to appear worldly, bold and confident. Kind of the take-charge type. And Street, well, I guess he is depicted as the stereotypical guy in this situation.

I was a little apprehensive, to say the least, when it came to submitting this story. I really wasn’t sure if I’d been able to make this tale, not only erotic enough, but also believable.

I guess I pulled it off. But more to the point just as Andi was experimenting and experiencing things for the first time, so was I.  And the more I write, grow and learn the more I discover about me. Perhaps I’m not overly confident sometimes, but as a writer I am beginning to think I can be adventurous.

The next challenge I issued myself was an m/m story, which I’m happy to say has been accepted by EXtasy Publishing. What’s next? I’m not sure yet, but it has been brought to my attention recently that perhaps Streetlight People isn’t quite finished yet. (wink DG)

Thank you for having me back, Lisabet.

Happy Reading My Streetlight Peeps,
~ H K

Streetlight People Blurb:

We all have hidden desires. Sometimes we conceal them, even from ourselves.

Andrea, your average college co-ed, has signed up for some extra courses at the local university, but so far the only thing that has sparked her interest is the sexy guy on campus with the tight-fitting jeans, muscle-hugging T-shirt and ever-present, shabby cowboy boots. From their fiery exchange of awareness, the admiration is not completely one-sided.

After a miserable day at her part-time job and a few drinks, Andi takes a walk, only to find herself in the arms of her campus crush, Street. As the two get to know each other rather robustly against a storefront window, Street’s girlfriend appears and issues a deliciously steamy proposition.

Andrea soon realises she’s about to get a crash course in down-and-dirty street smarts that she won’t soon forget, under the smouldering tutelage of Street and his exotic-looking girlfriend Toni. Apparently, you can score anything on the street these days—even a threesome!

After a frenzied night of satisfying experimentation, Andi sneaks out while her two companions sleep, escaping the particularly awkward morning after. But in the stark light of day, Andi has to admit that her feelings for Street are more than simple infatuation, and Toni isn’t a part of the new equation.

Could Andrea possibly hope that Street might feel the same?

Excerpt:

I could feel myself relaxing by degrees, as though a slow wave of warmth was flooding my body from top to bottom. As I began to unwind, the thought of touching Toni didn’t seem so wrong to me anymore. I actually wanted to. I mean, I still wanted to touch Street more, but I also thought that her and me touching each other might turn him on too.

I didn’t have time to think for long because Street kissed down my neck and chest, finally pausing to take my nipple back into his mouth and circling his tongue around the tight bud. I closed my eyes and savoured the tension growing inside me. I felt his hand encircle my other breast and begin the same slow swirl with his finger. I started to rock my hips against him, needing the added pressure.

The bed dipped with Toni’s weight and I felt her body spoon against my side—and Street’s too, since he was mostly on top of me. I felt her warm breath on my skin and I tensed.

“It’s okay, baby,” Street soothed. “It’s gonna feel so good.”

But I wasn’t scared anymore. I tensed, more in anticipation than fear. And the only thought that kept running through my head was that I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I might not get the chance to enjoy it at all. I was so turned on. I was so hot. My cunt was already on fire and eager, nerve endings rippling with the electricity of what was to come.

They worked in tandem, as if they’d choreographed it - or it was practised? I remembered Street saying that Toni had picked me. Did that mean they did this often? Just picked up some stranger on the street corner and took them home to play with? I didn’t want to think about that right now. I’d think on it later, when there weren’t two different tongues laving my nipples.

I looked down at them. Toni flicked my right nipple with her delicate pink tongue, while Street lapped at the left, his caress not as soft but just as arousing. They made eye contact and seemed to communicate silently, making their tongues do exactly the same tormenting, slow circuit, followed by a rapid flicking rhythm that had me teetering on the edge of a major orgasm. My hips moved of their own accord, twisting and grinding under Street’s hard body.

All of a sudden they stopped licking me and I watched as their heads drew together. Their lips met and I looked on as their tongues began to tangle.

I gasped at being left hanging, needing, wanting. Just as quickly, as if with one mind, they broke apart and licked a path softly, teasingly, down my stomach. My belly clenched and shuddered in response. I fell back onto the pillow and closed my eyes against the violent need snaking through me. One of them paused at my belly button and teased it maddeningly, giving me a preview of what I might expect on my burning clit—if they ever got that far. I just might explode at the thought of it before they’d even travelled that short distance.

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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone


By Maggie Nash (Guest Blogger)

 
Imagine a life without any surprises. Each day runs a similar routine. We don’t feel the need to challenge our beliefs, or take chances.

It’s an interesting part of humanity where many of us don’t like change. Trundling along in life with a familiar routine doing the same things, reading the same books and eating the same foods gives us comfort. On the other hand, change makes us uneasy. We feel unsettled and stressed, even if we are embracing the changes we are making.



It’s amazing in just how many ways we cling to the concept of comfort. Take this for instance - how many of you always use the same cubicle in the bathroom at work? You’d be surprised to hear that a very high percentage of us always use the same one.

Raises hand - second one on the left for me!

How boring is that? So what does it take to move out of that comfort zone?

As a writer I’ve been challenged to make different choices many times, and to be honest, sometimes it’s pretty scary. Take writing sex scenes for instance.

When I first started writing I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. My favourite books to read were romantic suspense, so that’s what I wrote. I wrote this exciting tale of adventure. It was a roller coaster with all the boxes ticked, or so I thought. There was a woman in jeopardy with a hunky hero who charges in to save her from the evil villain. I thought I’d nailed it but I was wrong. What I completely missed in my first drafts was that sexual energy that raises the stakes in the both the growth of the relationship, and tension of the story. One of my crit partners sent my manuscript back to me with one word emblazoned on dozens of pages. MORE!

So how to do that? I needed to move the characters to the next level, and that included shaking them up. I added a scene from a strip club where my heroine witnesses a scene her privileged upbringing would never have shown her. I made her fidget and not know where to look, but still be unable to look away. I raised her heartbeat. I made her sweat. I blasted her out of her comfort zone, and at the end of that scene she wasn’t the same person she had been before it began.

Writing that scene was a big watershed moment for me. It was the prelude to my first sex scene. The heroine wasn’t the only one changed by it. I realised I needed to continue to move up the relationship and they needed to have smoking hot monkey sex.

Holy cr*p.

I’d never written a sex scene before, even though I’d read hundreds of them so this was totally taking me to a different place. I went to Catholic school. Nuns. Church. Confession and guilt. This was naughty!

So in my usual cautious way I planned for it. No one else was at home. I lit several scented candles, poured myself a long glass of chilled wine, and played the epitome of schmaltzy romantic music – yes, you guessed it – Ravel’s Bolero. Then I sat down and wrote it.

Like my heroine, I felt anxious, uncomfortable, my heart rate rose and I started sweating. I too smashed my way out of my comfort zone. And you know what? It felt wonderful and I’ve never looked back.




So at the end of the day it’s not that difficult to move out of your comfort zone. You might not be writing a major sex scene. It could be something as simple as changing your routine and making a different choice. Just do it. The rewards are amazing.

For a chance to win an eBook copy of my erotic action/adventure story THE RELIC tell us what you’ve done lately to take you out of your comfort zone!

About Maggie
I’m Maggie Nash and I write romance novels. Some of them are suspenseful, some are pretty hot, and some of them are a little bit kinky, but what they all have in common is a fun, romantic ending. I started writing more by accident than design when one day I ran out of books to read so I started writing one myself. And, boy, am I glad I did, because writing has become a huge part of my life. I live with my family on the beautiful south coast of New South Wales in Australia. You can find me most days having a cappuccino at the beach!


Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Outside the Comfort Zone

By S. Dora (Guest Blogger)

Let me start by thanking Lisabet for giving me so graciously a chance to be her guest. It’s truly an honour to be here.

Write about what you know. All writers must have heard those words about a thousand times before we even published our first story.

But be honest, what could be more fun than ignoring that rule? And I don’t mean get into a spaceship and visit far away worlds, change into a vampire or werewolf, built a castle and become a medieval knight. These and many more scenarios fall into the safe realm of make-believe. We know we don’t live in the far future or ancient past, and our readers know that too. As long as we do our homework and build our worlds believably, readers will follow us to wherever and whenever we will take them, if only because the human imagination knows very few boundaries.

Make-believe can be much closer to home, and perhaps much more of a challenge than pretending to be a shape shifter or an impoverished Victorian lady. What about we write from the point of view of a different gender than our own? Or a different sexuality? A sexual practice we know we could never enjoy ourselves?

I’m a lesbian, of the Kinsey six, and then some, variation. I’m not (sexually) attracted to men at all. I’m also very much married and if monogamy didn’t exist, I would have invented it. I met my wife when I was eighteen, we’ve been together since I was twenty and it’s now thirty years later, so I at least I know that much about myself and my preferences.

Yet, my first novella written as S. Dora is about Owen, a single man falling in lust with a cute young m/m couple, and Sebastian and Davin are both totally devoted to their relationship and totally in for a threesome. More than that, Owen Bartlett isn’t single because he just happens to be between relationships, or because of some nasty experience that makes him cautious of ever trusting another man again. There is nothing to heal or make better. No, he’s single because that is what he is in his heart of hearts.

And that to me is far more about stepping outside my comfort zone than writing in intimate detail about the male anatomy or to describe what happens between those three men once they’re in a room with a bed. Because being male or female is a gradual process, and even if most of us have bodies that indicate without any doubt whether we’re one or the other, what happens in our brain is far more complicated. Every human need, character trait, talent and peculiarity can be found in both genders, though perhaps not in equal measure. Except for our very specific roles in making babies, nothing is truly and exclusively male or female. It’s even impossible to know with absolute certainty what another member of your own gender feels, even if they share your sexual orientation. It makes an ideal playground for a romance and erotica writer.

But to imagine what it’s like to be single, go to a party, meet a couple and have sex with them, now that is foreign ground to me. It’s not my fantasy, not the chance for adventure I missed. And perhaps that’s exactly the reason why I loved writing Three so much.

Curious about the story of Owen and what happens when he meets Sebastian and Davin? Three will be available at Total E-Bound on November 21, but here’s already a little teaser:

***

Davin’s back was plastered against Sebastian’s front, or perhaps Sebastian’s front was plastered against Davin’s back. Both moved in perfect counterpoint to the music. The slightly taller boy was grinding his crotch against the thinly covered arse of the shorter one, meanwhile covering the shorter boy’s head with butterfly kisses. He raked his teeth over his boyfriend’s earlobe, resulting in a soft, sweet moan from Davin, who had his eyes half-closed and his lips slightly parted. Owen doubted he was even aware of his surroundings.

Sebastian, on the other hand, looked straight at Owen, challenging him in a way that was quite open to more than one interpretation. That look, as much as Davin’s blatantly exposed sexual need, went straight to Owen’s cock, bypassing any and all rational thought.

Sebastian travelled one hand slowly downwards until his long fingers rested against the clearly outlined erection, but kept the other possessively around Davin’s middle. He traced the bulge with his thumb, whispering into the other boy’s ear. Davin blushed and nodded in agreement to the words only he could hear.

Owen felt he was being drawn into an unpredictable situation but couldn’t deny he was totally mesmerised by the perverse beauty of what was happening between the three of them. Sebastian dancing, for lack of a better word, with Davin, and he, Owen Bartlett, the one who couldn’t help but feel left out, because no matter how much Davin and Sebastian seemed to direct their teasing in his direction, they were still one very-much-in-love couple and one single man. Later he would almost certainly take the stimulation for his one-handed activities from imagining all the possible combinations with him in the roles of both spectator and participant, but for now he was sitting and watching, wishing he was somewhere else as well as hoping this would never end.

Suddenly the music stopped and the lights went on. The party was undeniably over, so Owen prepared himself mentally to go to his room and get some sleep. Halfway up the stairs a hand touched his arm. He looked and saw Sebastian Lane. He knew what the boy wanted from him, and what his own answer would be. Two gorgeous young men invited him to be part of whatever was going to happen in that hotel room… Why would he say anything but yes? He didn’t quite believe they actually wanted him to be actively involved. Maybe they got off on being watched, but even that was too good to turn down. He couldn’t deny his utter humanity.

***

You can pre-order Three now from Total-E-Bound

Curious about my other writing? I also publish under the name R.A. Padmos, and in August my novel Ravages came out with Manifold Press. (http://www.manifoldpress.co.uk/2011/08/ravages/)