I’m always interested to know what places other authors prefer to do their writing. The choices are many and varied. My favourite place to write is my kitchen table.
I work from home (I also do other things apart from writing – bills do need to be paid) and I have a separate office complete with huge desk, a meeting table, internet connection, a view of the West Yorkshire moors, the lot. But I don’t like it in there. It’s just too business-like so I avoid it if I can. I prefer to set my laptop up on the kitchen table, in among the breakfast things, and work there.
To be fair, I have quite a large kitchen, with an even better view of the moors from the window. And of course the kettle is handy which is important to me.
This choice of location is not without its problems though. I need to concentrate when I’m writing. Distractions and interruptions are fatal, and as in most homes our kitchen is at the heart of things. When my husband or daughter are here there seems to be someone constantly tramping past, and given the nature of what I write I have been known to blank the screen from time to time. Not so often these days as when I first started writing – we’re all made of sterner stuff now – but still.
Most days though I have the place to myself. It’s quiet, which is how I like it, and I can make a lot of progress. For me a good day’s writing would be around 4000 words, but I have a notional weekly target of 10,000 words. I usually hit that, but don’t beat myself up if for some reason it doesn’t work out that way. I can always catch up next week.
Given my own love of the kitchen table, it’s no surprise I suppose that this item of furniture features so often in my stories. Pretty much every one of them in fact. Key discussions, or events, or (my personal favourite) sexual adventures, take place at or on the kitchen table. Eva’s first orgasm in The Dark Side, a rather juicy ice pop scene in Sure Mastery, I could go on. I’ve not yet had any action under the table, but I have some ideas how that might go and there’s still time.
In Rich Tapestry though, the first book in my latest trilogy, A Richness of Swallows, the scenes between Summer and Dan take place either in a BDSM club, or at Black Combe, his brother’s home and another of my favourite places. Nathan Darke, Dan’s brother, is pretty laid back about such matters, but the kitchen table at Black Combe is reserved for his own use. Dan and Summer have to make other arrangements. Which they do.
This final (for now) trilogy in the Black Combe set rounds off most of the stories, bringing all the previous characters together and tying up loose threads. That’s not to say there will never be any more stories from Black Combe, I love the place too much to ever really leave it behind.
*****
Blurb for Rich Tapestry:
No act of kindness goes unpunished.
Summer Jones likes things to be tidy. Predictable, well-ordered and meticulous—she likes to be in control. So when she finds herself waiting for a friend in a BDSM club, she is horrified when an attractive Dom offers to show her around. She agrees, but there’s a catch. Her sassy mouth has earned her a punishment at his hands. She has to accept his terms or spend the evening alone. Despite her apprehension, Summer can’t deny her curiosity about this lifestyle and the pleasures it seems to offer.
But will one night with accomplished Dom, Daniel Riche, fulfil her dreams, or will it just prove to her what she always suspected, that anything so intense is best avoided?
Scared, confused, and utterly horrified at her response to Daniel’s touch and his dark brand of pleasure, Summer still finds herself yearning for more. Why, despite her pleas and his obvious appreciation of her body, is he peculiarly reluctant to deliver all she demands from him?
Hurt and confused, Summer is desperate to escape. But can she leave her memories of Daniel behind? Does she really want to?
Like the sound of Rich Tapestry? You can buy it here:
*****
Author Bio for Ashe Barker:
Until 2010, Ashe was a director of a regeneration company before deciding there had to be more to life and leaving to pursue a lifetime goal of self-employment.
Ashe has been an avid reader of women’s fiction for many years—erotic, historical, contemporary, fantasy, romance—you name it, as long as it’s written by women, for women. Now, at last in control of her own time and working from her home in rural West Yorkshire, she has been able to realise her dream of writing erotic romance herself.
She draws on settings and anecdotes from her previous and current experience to lend colour, detail and realism to her plots and characters, but her stories of love, challenge, resilience and compassion are the conjurings of her own imagination. She loves to craft strong, enigmatic men and bright, sassy women to give them a hard time—in every sense of the word.
When she’s not writing, Ashe’s time is divided between her role as resident taxi driver for her teenage daughter, and caring for a menagerie of dogs, cats, rabbits, tortoises and a hamster.
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