I love popping commas into titles. “Painted, Lady,” my latest reader-vote erotica has one, as did “and Falling, Fly” my first novel. I like commas in titles because they let me play with the reader by suggesting a tension between two words that otherwise have an obvious relationship. And that – playing with the reader, tension, and relationships – is why all writing– sci-fi, YA, guest blog posts, whatever – is erotic.
No matter how many readers a story has, or how many characters in the orgy scene, reading is one-on-one. When you read, my words are in your mind. You let me show you things like bubblegum-pink baby hippopotami.
Did you see them? Isn’t that extraordinary? We’ve never met, but our minds can connect and imagine the same things. I love that. I love knowing we’re enough alike that, if I do my job well, you will let me affect you. Because that’s what I’m trying to do. I want to make you feel things –sensual, pleasurable things, of course, in erotica, but also moving, frightening, and funny ones. I want to touch you, to change your mood or your mind, to make you laugh or feel afraid for someone I made up.
It’s a little bit manipulative, I’ll admit that, but I think you want me to. Besides, there’s no intimacy without risk. I’m really naked here. And I am in your hands –probably literally, but certainly metaphorically. If I want to connect, if I want to make you feel, I have to show myself, and not just the well-groomed bits I’m prepared for folks to see. Writing is self-revealing in ways I don’t always mean it to be, and readers are smart. Readers notice things I didn’t see. And this is me you’re looking at. This is me inside you.
Was it good for you too?
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Excerpt:
The sales dude at the art supply store looks down the front of my shirt, then into my basket. “Dragon’s Blood Crimson,” he sneers. He knows no artist looks like me — to punk and eager. “You know that’s almost a hundred bucks a tube?”
“Yeah.” I did know that, but James loves this paint. He shows me every time. See how deep the color is, he says. The red of death, not bleeding.
The clerk looks at me, I don’t know if it’s new respect or envy.
“It’s mixed from real cinnabar,” he says. “Toxic as hell. Local guy grinds the pigments himself, and tubes a few for us.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know that. Oh, well. James will be careful, right? “What about brushes?”
“He’ll want one of these.” A brush with a teardrop of bristles drops into my basket. “And one of these.”
“I’ve got another two-eighty to spend,” I say, adding the price of the brushes to the total in my head.
The thing that sucks about being poor is it never stops being what you are.
“Do you model? The art school is always looking for girls, if you need money.” He drops another three brushes in my basket. James says I could try hooking for cash. Paint my face like the girls next door. Short skirt. He says I’ve got the legs. He means it sweet. He says I’m horny enough, but it’s only with him my pussy goes all hot and so slippery I don’t even know if it feels good to fuck me.
“I’m not the kind of girl you paint.”
He looks at me like he’s plotting a run through traffic. “You’d be okay in charcoal. Or quit bleaching your hair. Do your tattoos obscure the contours of your back?
“I don’t know. It’s my back.”
*****
Blurb:
When even the month’s rent spent on new brushes isn’t enough to inspire the painter she loves, Sadie offers her body as bait for his muse.
But modeling is more revealing and more pleasurable, riskier and more erotic than she ever expected. And muses can be monstrous.
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About the Author:
The child of two college professors, I left high school to pursue a career in ballet. Since then, I’ve worked in theater and advertising, earned a Master’s degree and appeared on reality TV, and if you can find a “career path” in that, you have a better eye for pattern than I do.
My debut novel, ‘and Falling, Fly‘ was named one of the top sci-fi/fantasy books of 2010 by Library Journal, Barnes & Noble’s Sci-Fi Blog, and Dear Author. My follow-up, ‘In Dreams Begin‘ was accorded the same honor by Fantasy Literature. ‘The Incrementalists,’ co-written with Steven Brust, was one Publisher’s Weekly Top 10 Sci-Fi/Fantasy titles for Fall 2013, and recently, I’ve started exploring indie publishing with “Offerings,” a serialized sacred erotica.
I write angels and scientists, demons, faeries and revolutionaries, secret societies and sacred sex because I’m interested in the places where myth and modernity tangle. I’m a mother and a rebel, a wife and a romantic. I’m a liberal living in Texas, an existentialist witch, and a sucker for paradox – lucky thing, right?
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2977214.Skyler_White
https://www.facebook.com/SkylerWhiteAuthor
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