Out of the closet

I've been away from the blog for a little while. First of all I went into my regular writer's closet and got down to some serious work on Cover Him With Darkness.

Here's the view from the window of the closet, btw. Even in Italy*, it snows.

I did get out for a couple of days - once to Parma (pics at a later date) and once to the Anatomy Museum, which was satisfyingly horrid.

When sword-swallowing goes wrong. No, seriously: that's what this is.

But mostly I stayed in the room and wrote - 15Kish in 5 days, which I think satisfactorily proves that I have a comfortable word limit of 3K a day even without Facebook, dogs, and human contact. I was starting to act a bit weird by the end, I admit (dancing! nude!), which probably means I wasn't getting enough exercise or something...

Anyway, when I got back to the UK I went to Eroticon 2013!

Kristina Lloyd, Harper Elliot, Kay Jaybee, KD Grace.

Under the banner of "Write Sex Right" (and this year's "XES - We Can't Go Backwards" campaign from our charity sponsors), sex writers, sex bloggers and sex workers got together to discuss everything from effective tweeting to dirty poetry. It's become the UK event of the year for my genre and you should all go next year. Yes, all of you.

Write-ups from Remittance Girl and Jennifer Denys and Kay Jaybee

I'm not going to go on (much) about the day, except to say that it was fabulous to meet with fellow writers and I attended some great workshops and ate shedloads of free cake. Highlight session for me was Remittance Girl's talk on "Erotica and Romanticism" - basically a call to arms, to write meaningful and courageous erotica that isn't just commercial pap or throwaway stroke-literature.

"Pints and pints of the stuff!"

Which makes it only appropriate that at the evening reading I did an excerpt all about troll-sex, because what could be more highbrow?  :-)

The "Aural Sex" location - it's the pub from the gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

I was wrecked the next day, I tell you. I'm a real wimp ... But here's to next year!

And if you've made it this far, here's a freeby present - Dirty Thoughts From the Back of the Room is a collection of 10 bite-sized flash fiction pieces written by attendees at Eroticon 2012. It's FREE to download (until 8pm GMT / Midday EST MArch 6th) and it includes my micro-short Picture Perfect.

On Amazon UK
On Amazon US

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 *I get free flights. That's how come Italy.