Musings

Anthology editing: choices and the mental mixtape

anthology, choice, editing, erotica, fetish, stories, writing 6th September 2018 Musings, New Books

The call having closed for Rule 34 Vol 2, I’ve spent most of this week going through the submitted stories and picking out which ones to include. This is always a fun job, and even more so when it’s an … Continued

A Black Bond and the Possibilities of Iconic Characters

characters, creation, fiction, film, icons, James Bond 24th August 2018 Musings, Other Things

There’s currently speculation (again) about the possibility of Idris Elba getting cast as the new Bond once wossname who is currently doing it hangs up his Martini. (You can tell, can’t you, that Bond films are not terribly my thing.) … Continued

How Much Responsibility Do We Have?

characters, fiction, research, responsibility, safer sex, stories 19th June 2018 Musings

responsibility, content warning, safe sex, safe kink

Back in the early days of mainstream(ish) erotic fiction, when Nexus and Black Lace were thriving, a lot of the books had a little note in the front along the lines of: this is fiction, in real life, don’t forget … Continued

Talking and Writing

author, event, reading slam, workshop, writer 6th June 2018 Musings

There’s a line in one of Stephen King’s novels (it’s either The Regulators or Desperation: those two being odd mirror images of one another is a subject for a future blog post) where one character remembers his ex-wife telling him … Continued

So Do You Judge A Book By Its Cover?

authors, books, bookselling, cover art, erotica, writing 24th April 2018 Musings

One of the perennial pieces of advice given to the self-publishing author is: spend some money on your cover. Don’t have a go with some Photoshop knock-off and FFS don’t do a drawing, scan it in and add the title … Continued

Taking Stock: 20 years of selling naughty books.

books, bookselling, erotica, fetish, kink, markets 6th March 2018 Fairs and Markets, Musings

To be fair, it was initially magazines… I started taking a stall at what was then the Whiplash Market in the mid-90s, selling copies of the magazines I worked for. It was fun, but it was predominantly pocket money: I … Continued

#WorldBookDay and a lifelong love of reading

#WorldBookDay, books, erotica, reading 1st March 2018 Musings, Other Things

Quite a lot of you are probably snowed in today, so you can honour the festival by grabbing a favourite read, or a brand new one, and curling up contentedly in the warm, with the most perfect means of escape … Continued

Flashbacks and Photographs and the Good Old Days

fetish club, kinky, magazines, photography 11th February 2018 Events, Musings

Someone recently expressed an interest in buying some of my vast collection of Forum back issues, so I spent part of an afternoon excavating the back mountain of the office to see what I actually had in there. Of course, … Continued

Challenges and opportunities – writing righteous fiction

anthologies, erotica, fiction, rules, writing 1st February 2018 Musings, writing

It’s OK. No one is forbidding you to write the fiction you want to write. No one’s forbidding other people to write the fiction you want to read, either. Billions of people are writing billions of books, all the time. … Continued