New review!

I've just received notice of a review of 'The Diligence de Lyon' on Joyfully Reviewed - and I'm thrilled. The reviewer really likes my lead character - which somehow makes the hard graft of writing worthwhile.

Currently, I'm working on a historical novel which has just got to the 50,000 word stage and needs another 100k - so no erotica for the time being. But I have promised myself to do a little more work on the painting idea that I mentioned - and I'm learning how to grind pigments, a bit of 'practical work', and not the kind that most people would think is relevant to the work of an erotic romance writer!

Body painting

I'm currently working on ideas about 17th century women painters - Artemisia Gentileschi, Sophonisba Anguissola, Judith Leyster. Painting wasn't supposed to be women's work - though many women probably knew how to grind pigments and mix paints for the man of the house - but these women took the brush up themselves, and created some very interesting paintings.

Their paintings are particularly interesting because they sometimes subvert what we're expecting to see. Anguissola paints herself - an act of triumphant self-assertion for a woman - and almost literally paints her teacher out of the picture. Gentileschi paints scenes of rape and violence that may derive from her own experiences - Susanna and the Elders, Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes. Judith Leyster shows women quiet in their own space at home, rather than in the tavern scenes that were so popular at the time.

But what interests me particularly about painting is its erotic potential. First of all, painting a portrait is immensely erotic in potential - to get to know someone so intimately, to look at them that hard, is an incredibly intimate experience.

Then of course you have the idea of actually painting someone else's body. Several interesting things here; the soft, wet smoothness of the paint and the tickle of the brush - directly physical feelings. The ability to change the look of the body - to wear a tiger face or a skull face, to change the colour of the skin, to accentuate and emphasise certain aspects, or to create a design that masks the body completely...

I'm remembering some of the 'happenings' of the 1960s in which artists took their naked bodies and used them to smear paint on their canvas... these weren't, as far as I know, erotic performances, but the idea is intensely sensual. And there's also something about imprinting your body on to reality - a way of preserving a moment, but also of honouring the body, something Western culture is not usually much good at.

So I think you can take it as read that when I get round to actually writing the novella, the paint will get all over the place - not just on the canvas!

Good news!

I've just heard from Logical Lust - an acceptance! They're going to be e-publishing my Pilgrim for Love in 2010. Which leaves my second erotic novella still in the submission process, after one rejection... and means I've got a contract to look through (ugh, hate the legal work) and a marketing plan to write.

Pilgrim for Love is a medieval story about youth and age, innocence and experience - and the way we so often get everything completely wrong about each other.

And it took relatively little research, as the setting is one that I know - the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela - and the few questions I had, re-enactor friends were able to answer.

I was very tempted to put in one deliberate mistake though! Just to see if my readers are attentive...

Sensory experience and the act of yielding

One of the best pieces I can remember that relies on pure sensory experience is the opening of a story by Ursula Le Guin (The Masters) which describes some weird masonic style ritual.

The difficulty of standing completely still. Flame burning the man's cheek as he falls, a fiery torch in his hand.

It's a masterpiece. Nowhere more than in the utter uncertainty, the sheer peril of the moment as the blindfolded man stands, and wonders what is happening.

Now in fact, I don't think it's that far from a good BDSM story. It's all about that moment where you know that you have given up control; that what happens next is not up to you, but it will transform you in some way. It's what is not described that matters - the context, the ritual, the controlling will; all we can see is the darkness inside the blindfold, all we can sense is the emptiness outside, the yawning gulf that may or may not be there. And then we have to trust utterly, and take that step forward.

Good BDSM writing takes that moment of trust, that moment of fear, and yokes the two tightly together.

And I suspect that even if this isn't your particular kink (it isn't really mine; black leather is for the motorbike, not the boudoir, in my book), there's a little bit about that moment of trust in all good sex - trusting a lover to do something you haven't done quite that way before, to hold you just a bit too hard, to pull your hair or hold your hands down just once... or simply that moment before you fall into bed for the first time....

Working on the next one

Being a writer is about writing. And keeping on writing. And keeping on...

So I have my second erotic novel submitted (it's been rejected by one publisher and is now with another), and am working on the third, at the same time as working on a historic 'straight' novel (by which you'll gather I don't mean heterosexual. It's got ancient Greeks in it, anyway).

It's a bit different for me as I'm writing in first person for the first time. Alys has already had five husbands - some good, some bad - and is looking for number six. Her father wants to run her life - but she has other ideas, and abetted by her friendly and tolerant priest Father Peter, she decided a pilgrimage to Santiago would do her good.

On the way, she finds a number of rather lovely men... and a sweet young squire for whom she develops a certain affection. But no husband... as yet.

What I love about Alys is that she's very, very smart. She notices little things like the quality of the stitching on a man's clothes. She notices everything going on. But she can't help bragging about it a bit. Getting adjusted to her voice took me a while and I'm still not always sure I've got it.

And she does have the most marvellously generous spirit. Her maternal feelings for the young squire are a case in point - though he can show her a thing or two. (He's imported some spices from the East which can make even the most dreadful cooking edible... what did you think I meant?)

So she's coming along nicely. 10,000 words nicely to be precise, so she's about a quarter of the way to Santiago, and enjoying herself all the way.

Ah, but is she authentically medieval? you might ask.

Two answers to that I think. First, does it really matter? (Heresy I know to some.) This is a merry romp, it's not intended to be completely realistic. Actually, it's quite realistic because I've put in enough hours as a medieval re-enactor, not to mention on Chaucer*, Gower and Lydgate, to get quite a lot of it right.

But secondly, I'm quite sure that many women in the Middle Ages did break out of the narrow constraints their society put on them. Margery Kempe for instance decided to become a celibate and dress in white, told her husband in no uncertain terms he wasn't having any more of that, and went off to visit Rome and Jerusalem. Other women no doubt welcomed the onset of menopause as a great opportunity for consequence-free sex - possibly not with their husbands.

We usually only hear about this from the mouths of men, of course, usually telling us just how wicked these women were. Sometimes from legislators or judges.

'Reclaiming' Alys has been fun. And continues to be fun. I wish I had her healthy, robust approach to life!




* Those of you who know your Chaucer may recognise Alys.
"Why should men elles in their bookes set,
That man shall yield unto his wife her debt?
Now wherewith should he make his payement,
If he us'd not his silly instrument?"

My first erotic novel is out! It's been a long time in the coming (so to speak) - I first heard the shaggy dog story that was the kernel for the plot twenty years ago, from my dearly beloved tutor at Cambridge, a man with a dirty mind and a keen eye for style. I hope I've inherited both. He'd be thrilled to know that the whole final scene revolves around the desperate search for a manuscript - he was never happier than when he'd found some marginal annotation that other scholars had missed, or when he'd found, in tiny neat letters on the flyleaf of an old text, the signature of a poet.

Anyway, here's the link to The Diligence de Lyon. It's been fun writing it.

And I really liked what the chaps at Liquid Silver came up with for the cover. Superb!

The place of humour in erotic fiction

I don't write what I'd call comic erotic fiction (though in a sense, since we have a happy ending, all my erotic fictions are comedies). But there is a definite place for humour, I think.

For instance: where does horseplay turn into something else? You might be tumbling around with your best friend, pushing and shoving - and you suddenly realise you've got turned on. That could be uncomfortable - but it could also be a marvellously funny episode if it enlightens feelings you've had for each other but never articulated.

I've just written a wrestling match that turns into something else - and I hope it is funny.

Sometimes, humour is a way of fencing - little sabre thrusts of witticisms intended to keep your social opponent on their guard. It can be a way of deflecting attention you don't feel happy with - or even keeping your own feelings under control. Shakespeare's comic heroines are particularly good at verbal fencing - Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew for instance gives every bit as good as she gets, deflating Petruchio with her wicked puns - wordplay as swordplay.

That kind of humour can give an otherwise unmemorable character a real zest and animation - like putting sparkle on a Christmas card.

Then I also like to hide 'easter eggs' for my readers. For those of you who don't play computer games, an easter egg is a little bonus - a hidden level, an image or message - that you have to be quite smart to access. You can play the game without ever knowing it's there.

So I occasionally put in a little historical reference, or name one of my characters after a fictional character from another book (I'm hoping to have a minor Jane Austen character show up some time in a Regency novel), or borrow a couple of lines from a poem of the period. You don't have to get the joke to enjoy the novel - but if you do happen to know, it adds a little spice.

Why I write what I do

I don't like being asked what I do.

"What do you do, Anna?"

"I'm a writer."

"Oh. What do you write?"

I usually say "Whatever pays." Last week it was an e-book on stock trading, a couple of articles on Istanbul, and three chapters of a book based on the life of Emma Hamilton. Come out with that little lot and I can see I'm losing my audience...

And also, I write erotica.

That gives many people the wrong idea. An awful lot of men seem to think that writing erotica means I'm 'available'. (Judging by the average attractiveness of the men who think this, they also seem to believe that erotica writers are blind ...)

So, why do I write erotica?

Well, as above; it pays. That's one reason.

Secondly, I find it an interesting arena in which to play slightly naughtily with different concepts. For instance, a voyage through the senses, each one taken separately. Or the idea that through acting, we're able to access different parts of ourselves. I like to be naughty and introduce historical characters in cameo roles (I'm just researching Daniel Solander, a Swedish botanist who worked in London in the late eighteenth century). For me, this 'naughtiness' as a writer is profoundly satisfying.

If you like this kind of writer's naughtiness, by the way, may I recommend Kingsley Amis's 'The Alteration' - a marvellous work of alternate history that is artful, arch, and thoroughly entertaining?

I write historical erotica and it's an interesting challenge to immerse myself in the life of a period, whether that's eighteenth century Europe, the Camino de Santiago in Chaucer's time, or Ottoman Istanbul. (By the way, one of the most challenging aspects is getting the clothes right; did eighteenth century ladies wear knickers? Do men's shirts unbutton down the front or did they have to be taken off over the head? Just how do you get a man out of his braies? It does help if you know some re-enactors.)

I enjoy writing strong female characters. It's actually highly enjoyable to lead your heroine along a path of sexual self-discovery. There's certainly more than a little feminism in what I write.

Erotica has less pressure than 'literary' fiction. I don't have the mind-freezingly oppressive thought that I'm not matching up to Shakespeare, Milton, John Updike, Jane Austen. They didn't write erotica. I do also write other genres, but I enjoy erotica because it's an open field - I can be inventive in my plotting or narrative structure, I can enjoy a little escapade.

And lastly... I was relieved to find that the late lamented John Updike found writing sex scenes something of a turn-on. It's not just me, then!