Charlotte Does Bollywood

By Charlotte Stein (Guest Blogger)

I very rarely do blog posts about normal things, like upcoming releases. Usually I do them about weird things, like future worlds where everyone has three penises (http://geekandkink.com/2011/07/a-sexy-bunch-of-grapes/) or sexy menz what I happen to like (http://themightycharlottestein.blogspot.com/2011/08/mancandy-monday-brandon-routh.html ).

But for this post, I decided I’d like to actually talk about my upcoming release, for once. I mean, I am an erotic romance writer. I do have books that come out! And this book is extra unusual, because a) I was asked if I’d like to write it and b) it’s about a subject that I’ve never tackled before:

Bollywood movies.

It’s not even really a subject. It’s more of a theme that Total-E-Bound are having for an upcoming collection of stories I’m a part of, and for it I decided to go a slightly different way to the other peeps who have also written some orsum stories.

Mainly because when I think of Bollywood movies, I think of lost Princesses and secret Princes, luscious palaces and evol Maharajas and all of that macguffin. And by macguffin, I mean totally orsum stuff. Because nothing floats my boat harder than secret Princesses and evol Maharajas.

Which is why I wrote Guarded. It’s set in a semi-fantasy world of mystical creatures and forbidden love and prophetic scrolls, and I had an absolute blast writing it. There’s nothing quite as fun as creating a fantasy world – unless maybe it’s a fantasy world that also has threesomes in it.

Which my story totally does. Check it out:

When Amina is captured by the Maharaja of Hadad and forced to read his prophetic scrolls, all she can think of is escape. But then Ashan and Orin are assigned to guard her, and they're giving her some thoughts she's sure she shouldn't be having.

They're both big, they're both handsome, and they're both sworn to protect, guard and be by her side at all times - something which proves increasingly difficult as the steamy nights get longer and their desire for each other reaches boiling point. When she next runs, they're right on her tail, and this time they have more for her than bound hands and stern words. They've got their own needs, and they mean to satisfy them...

And yeah, okay, maybe that doesn’t fully give you a taste of the kind of ménage action I’m talking about. Maybe you’re now thinking: huh. There’s barely a flavour of ménage, there. Where’s our guarantee, Charlotte, that these people all totally get it on together?

Well, I’d never leave you hanging:

Orin did as she expected him to—only unpinning one side of her sari so it fell from her shoulder. And when it went a little low—the material sliding down to near unseemly levels—he made her hold it tight.

Ashan’s expression said it all—Gods forbid he should see a breast.

She hadn’t the faintest clue what Orin would do should such a thing happen. If she stripped down now—just pulled off all her clothes and stood before him naked—would he show offence? It seemed as though he might, but then again…

His expression in the stables. There had been fire there, she knew it. And when he slicked his two big hands with the queer concoction Ashan claimed was ointment, he looked harried somehow. Not himself.

Though truthfully, the same could have been said of Ashan. He had no barriers to hide behind or break down, no restraint she could ever see. But his expression had an odd tightness to it, and when Orin held off touching her for a shade too long, she could almost hear the words Ashan wanted to say—Get on with it!

But he refrained and looked on her instead. Big, blue eyes even bigger than usual, the corner of one thumb edging its way towards his mouth as if of its own accord. As though he had imagined something like this happening a thousand times and had even moved events towards it when the chances had come, but now that it was here…

Now that they were going to…

Gods, what were they going to do? She didn’t know, she didn’t know, but when Orin finally and haltingly placed his big hands on her bare shoulder… It was like nothing else in all the known worlds. His skin was cool and hot at the same time and he was shaking, she felt certain of it.

He definitely wasn’t moving, though. When she dared turn to him, he was just staring at his two hands on her shoulder as though they’d sprouted legs and walked their way to her flesh. She tried to recall another moment when he’d touched her so intimately and could only come up with the time she’d passed out with exhaustion over the scrolls, still reading some tiny scrap of an insignificant future.

He had picked her up and carried her and she’d come around just as he had laid her on her bed. His look had been the same one he wore now—of someone who had been caught doing something they ought not to.

“Go on,” Ashan whispered, but even he sounded guilty. Guilty and hushed as the pair of them went about spoiling the Maharaja’s prize.

Though really, was it so much of a spoil? No one cared one whit about her maidenhead anymore, and she’d been told by many a wizard woman that she’d never bear a child. She would never marry, never need to go to some man pure. She could read the scrolls whether a virgin or no.

Who better to have it than them?

Or perhaps the better question was—who better to talk into taking her virginity than them? Because she could see by this point that Orin was going to take a lot of talking into it. He still hadn’t moved his hands. They remained on her shoulder, slick and tantalising, a warm, wet promise of what might come.

But they didn’t move, and she knew they had to. She knew what had to happen in order for them to share in pleasures and the like. She’d read the books and seen the cook with the water wench, and when she’d been just a young girl, her grandmother had told her and then he puts his great thing in you and you die.

It all sounded very straightforward and reasonable. Until you did it, and then it was all just embarrassing and strange. Her nipples stiffened beneath the thin material of her sari and she knew they could both see—even though Orin had hardly done anything at all.

Her entire body felt flushed too. All over her neck and her cheeks and then down, down, down to other places that weren’t usually quite so warm. Which felt like a blessing when she really thought about it, because if she’d experienced this warmth before she wasn’t sure what she would have done about it, trapped in a room with two men, one on either side of her bed.

She couldn’t possibly have relieved herself. She couldn’t relieve herself now, even though it seemed almost certain they were going to do sex things anyway. Who here would care if she slipped her hand between her legs the way the ache there was begging her to?

Except for Orin, of course. He would probably care. And when she considered it, Ashan likely would too. He’d already sprouted a great ridge in his always too tight breeches, and it looked as though he wanted to chew that knuckle in his mouth clean off.

Finally, he burst out, “Orin, get on with it. Just soothe her ache, would you?”

Gods, how she wished he meant the other ache. The one that had started to thrum, thrum, thrum like a second heartbeat, right between her legs. But then she saw a wicked look flash across his face and she couldn’t deny it. It thrilled through her to imagine that was what he had meant.

And the thrill burrowed deeper when Ashan’s eyes became soft and heavy-lidded and he murmured encouraging words to his rigid and harshly breathing friend.

“That’s it. Just slide your hand down over her arm. Slowly. Slowly.”

Orin did so—but it wasn’t the smooth, calm stroke she’d expected. Instead, his hand stuttered over her skin, slick and thick with oil but far from sure about it. His eyes were downcast though she could make out the things on which he gazed.

Her arm, as the shimmering liquid coated it and turned her skin to honey. The material at her breast, still clinging there and covering quite ably—but only just. If he were to tug only a little, everything would come down, she knew it.

And longed for it.

That’s ménage-y, right? Hooray! So anyway, if you liked that excerpt, and maybe want to see a little more than that tease I’ve just given you, you can buy Guarded from September 5^th, right here:

http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=1352

Along with a bunch of other fabulous Bollywood themed stories! Double Hooray!

And finally, I just wanted to say a big thank you to Lisabet for having me. And for putting up with my haphazard approach to getting things done and actually replying to emails, because I am a total divot.

Big loves, Lisabet!

Charlotte Stein has been writing for over ten years, and perving on hot dudes for even longer than that. However, it’s only recently that she’s had the courage to pair the two together and pen some critically acclaimed, steamy-hot erotic romances. She lives in Brit-land with her very own hunk of manbeef, and their imaginary dog.

You can find her at www.themightycharlottestein.blogspot.com, usually in the middle of rambling about nonsense, squee-ing over her totally unexpected life as a writer, and generally lusting after seriously sexy men.

Censoring Myself

I have a confession to make. I like rough sex. Well, I like to write about it, anyway. My sex scenes often tend toward the ferocious. Thrusts hard enough that they hurt, fast enough that you can barely catch your breath. Fingernails clawing flesh, even drawing blood. Relentless fucking that overwhelms the character on the receiving end. That's the sort of sex that turns me on, and that's the sort of sex I often write.

This preference is undoubtedly linked to my interest in dominance and submission. I find the notion of a lover "taking" me - taking me over, using me for his own pleasure as well as my own - to be highly erotic.

The sexual encounters in my M/M fiction, particularly, trend in this direction. My men are of course sometimes tender with one another, but at other times they're raging hulks of testosterone. This matches what I've seen in much of the gay erotica I've read - not erotic romance, but stories composed by gay men about their own sexuality. Men seem to enjoy more - shall we say, "forceful" - sex, even when they're with a lover as opposed to a casual contact.

So yesterday I was working on my M/M science fiction novel, Quarantine, and found myself writing one of those rough scenes I enjoy so much. Suddenly I froze. Was this too much? Was I going to turn off my target readers? Most readers of M/M erotic romance are women. Was my writing going to be too "raw" for them? Should I tone things down?

The thought pretty much halted any progress I'd been making. The scene in question involves virtual sex, basically futuristic porn. It's pretty brief, but necessary for the plot and for revealing character. I wondered whether I should ditch it anyway and find some other approach.

I started to worry about scenes between my two protagonists as well. Should I make them more gentle with one another? Was their hard loving going to lose me readers?

Then I realized then that I was censoring myself - and I know from experience that's generally not a good idea. If I were to scale back the intensity and ferocity of my sex scenes, I'd be faking it. Readers can tell when the emotion in a scene is genuine and when it's not. And long experience has taught me that scenes I find personally arousing are the ones that grab my readers, too.

Ultimately, I decided to leave the scene in. We'll see what the intended publisher thinks. If they want me to remove it, though, I just might submit the book elsewhere.

I'm curious about how my fellow authors feel about this issue. Do you censor yourself in order to get published? Do you think I should?

Sunday Snog: A Kiss from Ruby's Rules

It's Sunday again, time for Sunday Snogging over at the blog of my friend Victoria Blisse. I had so much fun last week I decided to post another snog for your delectation today! This one is from my outrageous BDSM erotic romance Ruby's Rules, available from Eternal Press.

“Tell me what you want,” I purr. “I’m feeling generous tonight, and just might grant your request.”

He leans toward me in answer, and grasps my chin. Strange electricity flows from his touch. My breasts ache. My cunt is on fire.

“I want you to take me home with you,” he says with a cryptic smile. And then he kisses me.

I am not sentimental. I am not romantic, susceptible, easily mastered. But I swear, I could drown in this kiss.

His lips are smooth and full, his tongue demanding. He tastes of peppermint, and behind that, an aromatic trace of pipe tobacco. I smell his cologne, something clean, woodsy, Scandinavian.

I do not want to give in, and yet I do. I return his kiss, open my mouth wide to his probing. He senses my partial surrender, and presses his advantage. He has slipped his hand inside my vest, now, and is pinching my nipple hard.

I love it. I am awash with lust. I am dying for him to take me. My sex is liquid, spilling over. My scent rises in the velvet-draped space. I know that I cannot hide my desire, but still I try.

“You seem most enthusiastic,” I say, my voice surprisingly steady. “But why should I allow you into my personal space?”

“Because you want to,” he says, deftly extricating my breast from its leather casing and planting a kiss on its tip. “And because you think that you will have more control on your home territory. As an interloper, I will necessarily be at a disadvantage.”

He is right. Many women would feel vulnerable, bringing a stranger into their home, but I am more confident on my own turf than in some unfamiliar locale. I am astonished at his perspicacity. Who is this man? He appears so ordinary and yet there is both physical attraction, and psychological intrigue.

Let the Sex Games Begin!

By Amy Valenti (Guest Blogger)

I’ll come straight out with it. I’ve been writing about sex since I first found out what sex was. Before that, I wrote about kissing. For some reason, my mind has lived in the gutter since I can remember, and I never seem to be able to pull it out of there for long! Needless to say, these days I need to think creatively to avoid just repeating the same sex scene over and over again.

It almost feels like too early in the day to be talking about my upcoming release, Battle of Thrills. It’s due out on September 26^th, and will be followed by Dominance and Deception on October 10^th. I don’t even have pre-order links yet – but I figured I’d throw out a few sexy titbits now. Smutty goodness brightens up everyone’s day, right?

The Rules

So, what can I say? Battle of Thrills revolves around a sexual game between friends and co-workers who have yet to become lovers – a game with only one rule. Tease. Tempt. Tremble… but don’t touch.

No touching, but everything else is fair game. Descriptive conversations, longing looks, even getting naked – it’s all allowed, and over one desire-filled week, Jared and Elle try to push each other past the limits of their self-control…

Types of Sex Game

So what exactly makes us drawn to sex games? We have literal games – Spin the Bottle, strip poker… how about naked Twister? Then we have dominance and submission, which can be right up the other end of the scale, as a 24/7 lifestyle choice.

Spin the Bottle is a game of chance. D/s is a game of control. What, then, is the Battle of Thrills in the title of my own little creation?

Obviously, it’s a battle of wills – hence the play on words in the title. Willpower and anticipation are the two main ingredients in the game, and let’s throw in a little imagination, too. The trick to the Battle of Thrills is to make the other person give in to their desire before you do.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Elle moved over to the mats set aside for post-workout stretches, and Jared wandered over after a few minutes, gazing down at her without bothering to hide his appraisal. “Enjoy your workout?”

She made a show of checking him out from head to toe before replying. “Yup. Not as much as I would have if you’d lost your shirt at some point, though.”

She finished her last floor stretch and got to her feet. When her eyes met Jared’s again, she was shocked at the desire she saw there. It was as if he couldn’t hide how much he wanted her, and electricity quivered down her spine as his hands balled into fists, his body tensing with the effort of keeping himself still.

Elle took a step closer, so he could feel her breath on his neck as she whispered, “All that post-workout adrenaline and nowhere to channel it, Jared?”

He closed his eyes for a second, as if gathering enough willpower to resist her, before stepping away. “When this is over, Elle…” he growled, and headed in the direction of the locker rooms.

Swallowing down a plea for him to forget the game, she followed him down the deserted corridor connecting the gym to the showers, answering with all the nonchalance she could muster. “You’re gonna what? Fuck me good and hard?”

He didn’t slow down until he reached the doorway, but then he turned to face her, pulling off his shirt. Pausing for a couple of seconds to allow her to get an eyeful of his firm chest and abs, he told her, “Something like that.”

Before she could compose herself enough to respond, he was gone.

The Reward

So, why not just dispense with the games and just get it on, already?

Everyone knows good things come to those who wait… and while you wait, there are so many different possible outcomes a creative mind can dream up. Not to mention encounters to be savoured and remembered in private, provocative outfits to be worn, new visual and aural torments to devise…

And then, finally, after hours or days of deliciously frustrated anticipation, the release is all the sweeter when it comes. If you’re the winner, you have the added bonus of the victory, but if not, who cares? You’ll have just had the sex of your life!

Aftermath

I don’t know if anyone has actually played this game, or if it has a name. It’s just something I dreamed up one day, and I naturally had to write about it. Let me know if you’ve heard of it before – I’ll be interested to hear about it. :)

You can find Jared’s character profile – and a further excerpt from Battle of Thrills – on my blog: http://amyvalenti.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/introducing-jared-lancaster/ I’m also on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AmyValenti and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmyValentiErotica

Look out for Battle of Thrills at the end of next month!

Big thanks to Lisabet for giving me a guest spot. :)

***

Bio

Amy Valenti is a tarnished tease, and her mind has lived in the gutter since the day she realised what sex was. She hails from England, which she doesn’t find quite as exotic and sexy as the average US citizen seems to, but if people want to compliment her on her accent, that’s all fine with her! Her muses are many, fickle and very demanding.

She has a degree in creative writing, currently works in internet marketing and moonlights as a proofreader/copy editor. In her free time, she reads, writes and plays videogames. On the rare occasions she doesn’t have a laptop on her knee, she loves to curl up with friends and pets – and chocolate – for TV show and movie marathons.

Word Girl

I was talking to an author friend recently, and he mentioned that almost all his inspirations came in visual form. "Image is how I write," he told me. "I begin with a compelling image and try to explain it to myself. It’s the seed from which a story sprouts."

I gather this is the case for quite a few writers. Certainly, I read lots of blogs discussing how authors use movie or television stars as the models for their characters. Several of my favorite authors have commented commented that they tend to base her heroes on their latest "crush".

I'm not like this at all. With one exception, I've never started a story with a clear visualization of the hero in mind. By the time I'm well into a book, I do have mental pictures of my characters and the setting, but for me, the words come first.

Several of my favorite stories had their germ in the words of a title. I'd been writing rather "heavy", emotionally intense erotica, and I thought to myself, "I really need to write something lighter, something sexy and a bit frothy, just for fun. A real crowd pleaser." In a flash, I had the title, and then the basic premise, of my short story Crowd Pleaser, which you can find in the free reading section of my website.

The Antidote started the same way. In this case I'd been writing a lot of romance, and I had the urge to create a story to counter-balance the monogamous, happily-ever-after work I'd been producing. I wanted to write a really filthy tale about sex for the sake of sex - an antidote to too much love. All at once, I knew the story I would write, about a world in which the government has biologically suppressed sexual desire and in which underground sex clubs dispense the drug to undo those effects.

Yes, I'm definitely a word girl. Hey, two of my books feature Scrabble games! My upcoming release Hot Spell got its start as a title. The plot and characters flowed from the name.

The only story I've penned that was inspired by an image is Wild About That Thing, due out from Total-E-Bound in September. I was in a blues club one night when my attention was snagged by a member of the audience. He was a slender but muscular black man with a shaved head and gold-wire-framed glasses. His handsome face was compelling by itself, but what really grabbed me was his attitude of total focus on the music. I really couldn't help but stare at him. And of course he didn't notice at all. Every bit of his attention was trained on the stage. I tried to memorize his features, knowing that I wanted him as a character in some future work.

The man who fascinated me that night formed the model for Remy in my tale, which just happens to be set in a blues bar. That thrilling experience was the exception, though. Normally, it's words that fire my imagination, not pictures. I guess that makes me weird. But I'm used to that.

Not About Romance...

By Jay Lygon (Guest Blogger)

I'm not romantic. At least, not in the hearts and flowers way. Practical is my style. If you need a car repair, I'm not going to bring you a box of chocolates. That doesn’t mean I don't care. It's just that shiny stuff doesn't interest me. I don't consider myself to be an erotic romance writer, but that doesn’t mean I don't write about love.

In Green Mountain Boys, the night before they head off separate ways - one to the Marines, the other to college - childhood friends realize that they're really childhood sweethearts. Neither one has dared to admit it, but in their last hours together, one finally risks a kiss. It's a bit melancholy as they, and you, realize that they'd missed out on a lot by keeping their secrets, but they have hope for the future, and besides, they had everything together except sex until that point. Sure, it's humpy horny teenage boys in the woods, but that's about as romantic as I get.

Or is it? Left Unsaid won the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival's short story contest several years ago, but this is the first time it's been published. It's about love, but not exactly happy love. I was driving home from work one day when police helicopters appeared overhead. Traffic of course came to a halt as people watched them circle. I flipped around news until I found out that there had been a bank robbery and a cop had been shot. The suspects then fled onto the freeway. (During rush hour? Idiots.) The news repeated constantly but never gave us any more information. As I got more frustrated by the slow crawl behind the traffic break, I had a flash of inspiration. If I were a cop's lover, and I knew the shooting happened where he patrolled, and all I could get was lousy news updates that told me nothing, how frantic would I be? And then after getting so worked up, what if I wasn't able to talk to him about the hell I'd been through? I poured it out over the page, and I'm very proud of it. I can't read that story in public. I get all choked up still. It isn't a happily ever after story, but it's about deeply loving someone, so I think it's romantic.

For my Chaos Magic series (Chaos Magic, Love Runes, and Personal Demons, available from Torquere Press), I jumped into the deep end of abusive relationships. Readers actually apologized for not liking Hector sometimes. What about his worst qualities was supposed to be likeable? They should have been angry with him. That's what I hoped for. For the first two books, I concentrated on getting Sam to a place where he was confident enough in himself that he could finally stand up and say, "No more." Strangely enough, it's Hector who gets him there. But in the last book, it's Hector who finally has to change. It's not an easy read, but I think that it's more honest about the way relationships work than a black and white "he's the villain, so he's always one hundred percent bad" depiction.

Everyone has flaws. Hector and Sam's problem is that they keep making excuses for each other because they're deeply in love. Eventually, that isn't enough, and facing it tears them apart (at first). I'm not saying that people should stay in abusive relationships. Part of me wanted to have Sam move on and never look back. But I also believe that someone who is strongly motivated to change their ways can. It's better to try to fix your issues than move on to another relationship and make the same mistakes, right? And if therapy never works, why hold out that false hope to someone who really wants to become a better person? Of course I was torn over it. Personally, if someone treated me the way Hector treated Sam, I would have ended it. But I'm not Sam. And I realize that when it comes to love, there aren't always easy answers.

For my Bonded series (Bonded I & II, and The Quality of Mercy and Twice Blest, also from Torquere) I went a much lighter route. Brandr is a thousand-year old vampire who has lived alone too long. When newly turned vampire go-go boy Kyle crashes into his life, everything goes to hell. Brandr wants to be a solitary grump but he can't resist Kyle's infectious energy. Every time Brandr turns around, another vampire boy has moved into his house and he loses a little more control over his careful solitary life. The entire series is silly and sweet and does dreadful things to vampire dignity. At its core, it's about the irresistible lure of love.

I've talked a lot about love and not much about sex. These are erotic stories, so there's lots of sex. In Bonded, most scenes are m/m/m romps. In Chaos Magic, the BDSM scenes are intense and graphic. Sex and love don't have to occur together, but the emotional impact is greater when it does. I have nothing against a hot fling. Not at all. But while I keep insisting that I'm not about romance, my stories always seem to be about love. Maybe I'm a closeted romantic after all.

BIO: Award winning erotic author Jay Lygon is in denial about romance, but that never stopped him from writing about it. Find his stories in Blood Sacraments (Bold Strokes Books), Wings (Coming soon from Bold Strokes), Toy Box: Public Places, and the Bonded stories at Torquere. His novels Chaos Magic, Love Runes, and Personal Demons (Torquere Press) have been praised as, “Magical realism, unlike any other BDSM novel ever written.”

Jay's web site: www.JayLygonWrites.com.

Blood Sacraments Buy Link

Wings Buy Link

Jay's page at Torquere Press

Can This Story Be Saved?

For the past two years, I've served as a judge in a romance writing contest. I just sent my evaluated entries back to the coordinator, and breathed a sigh of relief. I have to admit that I find the judging process somewhat painful.

I volunteer because I believe that in the community of writers, we need to help each other. It's an example of what I call "Writer's Karma". What goes around comes around. I've received a huge amount of advice and help from other authors. It's only right that I pass it along, sharing my experience as an author and editor

Sometimes I wish I hadn't raised my hand, though, because, to be blunt, some of the entries are really pretty bad. Meanwhile, it's my job to rate various aspects of the story and then tell the aspiring writer why she received a 1 or 2 out of a possible 5 in some categories. I know how she feels about her story - the same way I feel about my own work. I'm sure that it's her pride and joy. How can I gently break the news that her characters are shallow and inconsistent? That her constant head hopping leaves the reader hopelessly confused? That she doesn't seem to know how to punctuate dialogue or construct a grammatical sentence?

Judging is anonymous. Nevertheless, I'm very aware of how I would feel if someone gave me similar criticisms. I really hate making people unhappy.

So what can I do? For each story with serious problems, I ask myself, "Can this story be saved?". Is there a nugget of brilliance in the tale that can be polished, developed, and used as the foundation for a publishable book? If so, I make sure to highlight the positive aspects of the story, amidst the negative comments.

In fact, most of the entries I judged had intriguing premises. Despite their weaknesses, I would have read on if I had the full book rather than the first two or three chapters. Most problems related more to craft than to conception. And craft can be learned.

So in fact, the answer for most of the entries was "Yes". It might require nearly a complete rewrite, but in most cases, even the worst entries could eventually be turned into a book worth of publication.

I try to communicate that sentiment in my summary comments. And I hope that the contest entrants will not be too discouraged by the low grades I give them. Rather, I want them to be inspired to work on their book and perfect it.