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Finding Inspiration

Do you have a special place in nature that provides you with inspiration? I love going to museums and seeing art and artifacts, but there’s just something glorious about being out in nature. I’m a natural pagan. While I can admire great buildings and sigh before a beautiful work of art, I can agree with Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited that a tree or a flower can inspire equal awe: especially trees!

I went to a local lovely spot with my friend Maura on Bank Holiday Monday and we tramped around the wonderful Brigit’s Garden before the crowds got there. The day didn’t look propitious at its start. Rain bucketed down as we drove out of town into Connemara. Fortunately it stopped by the time we got there, and as the day wore on it became just lovely.

They had a special themed event for their spring reopening, the “Sole of the Garden” exhibit, which featured — yes! — shoes as planters.  You can guess someone had the bright idea here of connecting spike heels with the spiny spikes of the cactus.

People used everything: wellies, trainers, boots, dress shoes — even a pair of red clogs. You can see the whole picture album on my Facebook page (it’s public).

Of course the most important thing to me wasn’t the planters but the gardens themselves and even more the trees and rocks, some of which are incredibly old. The tree at the top of the post was probably my favourite. Very old tree, also the vine that wraps around it has kind of taken over and the rocks beneath them offer both an obstacle and a challenge to the roots. Amazing what can be done with patience and time!

The beauty of nature is a big part of the inspiration it gives me; I can just stare at the intricacy of roots or the fantastic shape of a tree in amazement. Flowers, sure — they’re beautiful, but have you looked closely at leaves? The infinite varieties, the individual shapes while maintaing the overall recognised form — fascinating! Of course there’s also the other kinds of inspiration: inadvertent surreal suggestions. It’s a habit of our brains to make connections.

The way we make connections has a lot to do with shape as  our brains recognise the similar patterns. We can see a face in the leaves, a body in trunk and a nest of snakes in the roots of a tree. Where a glacier has shaped a rock, we might even see a sleeping dragon…

Where do you find inspiration in nature?

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New Release: Readerotica 4

Here’s my latest: my story “Tying Up Loose Ends” appears in the new collection, Readerotica 4. The ongoing series seeks to bring excellent erotic fiction at an affordable price by partnering with Vibrator.com. As their ad copy says:

Reading erotic fiction on an electronic reader is a delicious experience because no one can see what you are doing. Unlike a regular book, your eReader does not have a cover to reveal its contents. You can privately and discreetly read anything you like. It is a wonderful and somewhat empowering process. The only challenge is to find great erotica.

The Readerotica series was created to provide quality erotic stories easily. Because we are sponsored by Vibrators.com we can afford to choose the finest stories from hundreds of submissions. The result is a high quality, well-spoken collection of enticing stories at a very reasonable price. Readerotica is even available for free when we are permitted, because we want to be able to offer free erotic stories.

Readerotica 4 – Exciting Situations includes the following stories:

Chapter 1 – The Couchsurfers – Chris Komodo

Chapter 2 – Forever There, Then Gone – Jstar G

Chapter 3 – How I Like My Coffee – Louise Blaydon

Chapter 4 – B&E; &B – Lynn Lake

Chapter 5 – Full Body – Dana Myles

Chapter 6 – Tying Up Loose Ends – C. Margery Kempe

Chapter 7 – Pottery Yarn – J.A. Reynolds

Chapter 8 – Adjoining Rooms –Dee Turner

Chapter 9 – Renovation – Abby Fowke

Chapter 10 – Attention – Stephanie Smith

Buy it at Amazon! Click on the picture:

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Man City Trailer

Oh, you know I couldn’t resist making a trailer after the Man City team went and did me the favour of winning the premiere league championship! So here it is:

Give it a go — I have fun making these trailers most of the time, but this one was a bit fiddly as there were extras to do like the collage of headlines for it. The music seems to fit well — it got me dancing anyway! :-)

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Four Play Giveaway!

For the rest of the weekend, you can get FOUR PLAY for nothing over at Amazon. I know it’s only $.99 anyway, but it seems that people still feel like they’re getting a bargain when it’s free.

A limited time only, so get your copy today (or tomorrow!) and enjoy. As always if you’re of a mind to help out a poor writer, leave a rating, review or just agree with the tags. Merci!

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The Promo Circus

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How much is too much? I saw a link on Twitter to another writer talking about doing “too much” promoting.

I think we can agree on some things in this regard: people who only promote and never interact with potential readers or actual colleagues. Not “too much” as much as the wrong focus.

I know a writer who’s always claimed that “cream rises” — I.e. quality always gets found. I think folks like Austen and Van Gogh would have been happier if their genius had been recognised more while they were alive.

But it does seem at times to be too much — doesn’t it?

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Praise for Text Play

Some flattering words for Text Play over at Long and Short Reviews. My D/s short from Noble Romance has an unusual format, so it was a delight to hear that pleased the reviewer. Read the whole review to hear a bit more, but I was very happy with the conclusion:

The author did a wonderful job of bringing the tale to life. I cheered the couple on and hoped for them to get that happy ever after that they are looking for. Natalia is a strong woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it and Andrei seems like just the man to give it to her. 

I enjoyed this author’s style as well and will be looking for more from her in the future.

Always great to get a good review. I think there may well be more to Natalia and Andrei’s story!

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Bad Habits

Recently I developed an exceedingly painful problem with my back. The agony had become so acute that I began to think I might actually have to go to the doctor (shock!). Walking was painful, sitting was painful — everything had become difficult. As I headed off to campus the other day, I felt an extra twinge as I threw my bag on my shoulder and thought, oof, better use the other shoulder.

Predictably, perhaps, the pain began to lessen as the day wore on.

By the end of the day, the pain was nearly gone. Yes, I had made a bad habit of always carrying my (inevitably too heavy) book bag on the same shoulder all the time and that’s what threw off the muscles of my back and hip. Amazing that all that pain came from just one thoughtless habit.

I’ve had repetitive stress injuries before, so I ought to have guessed it. Most of those have come — no surprise here — from writing. I’ve learned how to avoid those bad habits and made my work more ergonomically thoughtful. Nothing like getting aganglion cyst to tell you that you have some bad habits. Fortunately the time I developed those lumps, I was just heading off for a semester in London. My doctor said “wait and see” rather than “let’s do surgery” right away. Oddly enough, when I wasn’t sitting behind a computer working on term papers every day, but wandering around my favourite city and writing longhand, the cysts went away.

Occasionally they flare up again: I put on my wrist braces and remind myself to take more breaks. But for the most part it’s all about developing better habits. The same applies to writing, of course. We get into habits — turns of phrase or plot avenues — that become too stock to be fresh. A good editor will winnow them out — that’s why you must “kill your darlings” as William Faulker said. Be ruthless — anything that’s not pulling its own weight needs to be jettisoned.

And try moving your bag to the other shoulder now and then.

My alter ego Kit Marlowe shares a Six Sentence Sunday post today from her Jazz Age London novella The Big Splash. Drop by and take a look.

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The Allure of Masks

I’m over at the Red Lipstick Journal this week talking about masks. Obviously this piece was much inspired by The Story of O and in turn Pauline Réage’s fascination with Leonor Fini’s masks (thanks to Tiger Loaf for a cornucopia of Fini images). Here’s a little taste:

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” ~ Oscar Wilde
 
The erotic allure of the mask has been recognized for centuries. Think of the Egyptians who worshipped gods with animal heads and tell me those on their knees before the gods never had lustful thoughts as they gazed up at Bastet or Sekhmet. The mask allows anonymity at the orgy, allowing one to be herself—perhaps the self she ever dared show before.
 
One of my favourite examples of an erotic mask comes from the book The Story of O. At the end of the novel O appears at a party clad only in an owl mask and lead by a silver chain. Pauline Réage [real name, Dominique Aury] explained in her essay “A Girl in Love” (which appears as an introduction to some editions of the sequel) that she had fallen in love with artist Lenor Fini’s owl mask and found it the ideal expression for O’s ultimate fantasy. It’s fascinating that the character who had every inhibition stripped away from her physically, found the perfection of her role with the addition of a mask. The owl’s mask rendered O completely free…
Read the rest at Red Lipstick. Now here’s a treat: a video of Fini’s illustrations for The Story of O. Wonderful!
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Lecturing on Romance at the Uni

A colleague invited me to speak on campus at NUIG for Shag Week. Or rather she suggested to the English Society, a student organisation, that they invite me — and they did! I thought this was rather nice. Of course they had to use the Fabio cover for the poster — rather lurid, but apparently effective as we had a pretty good crowd on a Friday night, in fact a crowd that included men as well as women.

I’ve put a copy of my talk in PDF format online. It gives a flavour of the conversation, but not surprisingly I improvised a lot from these bare bones. Themes included how “romance” has gone from meaning “adventures” in the Middle Ages to a very strict — and much maligned — marketing term in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. So I spoke a bit about how the genre developed from the success of Woodiwiss’ The Flame and The Flower and the era of Fabio covers to what it looks like today. I used Harlequin’s own submissions page to show how “formula” (the assumption everyone makes about romance) will not work and the only absolute restriction is the HEA or HFN ending requirement.

I took great pleasure in talking about the Bad Sex Literary Awards. With a little help from Donne and Shakespeare, I tried to explain how the literary impulse toward metaphor seldom worked in describing sex. Why romance writers succeed rests on their ability to use sex as a way to reveal character. I briefly went through the five senses talking about the power in the ones often overlooked.

There were oodles of questions afterward. Some folks wanted recommendations of things to read, others wanted to know more about the writing process — and yes, I was asked about where I get my inspiration! ;-) I was interviewed for the paper; it always makes me nervous as I’ve yet to be quoted accurately ever by any newspaper. Fingers crossed.

I got a nice box of chocolates and gave away a lot of promo postcards (fortunately the ones for Four Play arrived that day). Time to order some more! Afterward we went to the pub, had some pizza and beer, then played some wacky board game. A good night out! Maybe I need to do more of this kind of speaking engagement. Someone’s gotta ‘splain to the kids why romance rocks!

And hey — some good coverage of the launch of Tirgearr Publishing!