Yes, I know it’s Saturday, but that loses not only the alliteration but also the link with my name 🙂 Anyway, I thought I’d post one of my earliest stories, just as a sort of celebration of a decade of writing. I like to think I write even better now, but it’s not bad…
It’s also NOT SUITABLE FOR UNDER 18s.
Hurrah, my antho All About The Boy is released today.
Three smokin’ hot m/m erotic stories, with added kink for good measure, as I chatted to JL Merr0w about the other day. And then today, I have been talking to Gillian St. Kevern about writing short stories (she too was kind enough to host me – thank you very much, Gillian!)
Plus, it has its first review, from Boy Meets Boy! Let’s just say, they seemed to appreciate it – and they liked my favourite story, Pretty Little Straight Boy, best 🙂 So clearly, they have very good taste!
You can find a giveaway at all of the above links, so go along and see if you can win yourself a copy of All About The Boy. 🙂
You can buy it at Bella books or at Amazon – but it does appear only to be available on American sites at the moment. Does this mean I can do further squee when it’s available in the UK?
2. I saw the ARCS (the final copies) of All About The Boy at the beginning of the week, and they’re gorgeous. Goodness, my work looks so good in it. I know that sounds silly, but it does. And talking about editors? Sasha Vorun is bloody marvellous, too.
3. Then yesterday I went on a course about marketing, run by Miles Allen. It was really interesting and useful: it doesn’t matter how well I write, I need people to read what I’m writing. And it’s difficult to know how to reach an audience. This helped. (Plus I accidentally sold a book in the car park afterwards to a man who had been somewhere completely different and did not look like the target market for a lesbian historical novel 🙂 He was also, incidentally, an extremely lovely man.)
4. In non-writing news, Splendid Son got a trophy for ‘most improved player’ in his under 10s football club, so I’m very proud of him.
5. Lovely Partner also was part of a fencing group who came second at a tournament last weekend, so I’m proud of him, too.
6. I have written half of my article about women’s role in the Abolitionist movement in Britain (the abolition of slavery). This is for Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, and I know a lot about it because slavery accidentally ended up as a fairly major plot in The Sisterhood. (This is entirely due – and this is a true story – to a random comment my mother made when I was ranting about the book when it was a quarter written. Something she said managed to change the entire course of the book. If you know an author and you make a random suggestion, please be aware that they may end up miles deep in research and cursing your name, even as they write the best book they’ve ever managed!)
The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.
The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.
This has been a truly lovely week, so this should be an absolute breeze today! What’s more, it is mostly a PEOPLE-Y entry, which is singularly improbable from your neighbourhood antisocial writerly type 🙂
Today I’m offering you an excerpt from Loving My Lady, the Regency novella which came out last week. Hope you enjoy it.
I do not think that I knew what love was before that moment. I had loved my father, of course, with the obligation of a righteous daughter; the romantic love the poets write of, though, had never previously touched my life.
She stepped down.
The one and only “she” there would ever be for me. My eyes met hers for a second, and I was first to look away. This was not the elderly lady I remembered from my childhood. Who, then, was she?
“You are most welcome,” I stammered. “Um… Lady Dennyson…”
“Yes?”
“…is expected shortly, I imagine?”
“I beg your pardon?”
She strolled toward me. I would have died for a dress such as the one she wore with so much elegance.
“When do you expect Lady Dennyson?” I asked shyly.
There was a pause, followed by the most beautiful laughter I had ever heard — even though it was at my expense.
“My dear!” she exclaimed. “Cordelia — I may call you that, may I not?”
My voice too unsteady for words at the sound of my name on her lips, I nodded.
“I am Lady Dennyson.”
“But…”
“Surely you did not expect my mother-in-law?” she laughed.
Mother-in-law? Then she was… then my cousin Adam (unknown, therefore unavoidably unmissed) must… must be married — married and dead.
“Lady Dennyson?”
She smiled.
“That is indeed my name.”
Unbidden, unexpectedly, I curtsied — as if I were a maid. Well, perhaps a companion was on such a level.
“My lady.”
One hand pinched my chin, the other slid luxuriously down my arm like velvet.
“You need not call me that. I am Lady Juliet, and you are my Cordelia.”
The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.
The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.
After a few weeks off over Christmas, I’m finally getting my arse back in gear and getting back to writing my Satisfied Saturday Sixes 🙂 So here goes.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a ‘Friday Fiction’ post, but I’m hoping to do them more often when I’m not up to my ears in novel. For today, however, I wanted to point you towards an interview I’ve done with Scope, for their A-Z ‘End The Awkward’ campaign about sex and disability. I come in under ‘N’ – for Not Safe For Work (NSFW) 🙂
N is for NSFW – #EndtheAwkward
Erotic fiction is definitely NSFW but it’s perfect reading material to get you going. And why wouldn’t the ‘Lusty Lady’ use a wheelchair or the ‘Horny Hunk’ be deaf?
N is for NSFW is part of Scope’s A to Z of sex and disability
Writer Penelope Friday talks to us about mixing sex and disability in the pages of her erotic fiction.
I came into writing erotica through fan fiction. Fan fiction (often called ‘fanfic’) is a class of writing in which you take other people’s characters and give them adventures of their own. A large proportion of this is dedicated to writing ‘adult’ fiction – no matter whether the original characters were engaged in sexual activity or not!
penelopefriday 