J.L. Peridot's Blog, page 2

Writing through a tough time

Don���t feel bad for not writing as much as you think you should. The years have thrown several spanners into the works of many well-oiled systems ��� some justifiably, some in a terrible way. Suffice to say that if you���re on Planet Earth right now, unless you���re in the 1 percent, you are doing some hard yards.

Though it���s not as physically taxing as, say, raising a barn, writing can be both a psychologically and emotionally demanding task, and for some a physically demanding one as well. So much so that many of us with pre-existing mental and physical health conditions simply won���t have the capacity to deal with writing on top of other responsibilities, obligations, and the accompanying stress and anxiety.

Writing, however, can also be therapeutic. So if you take comfort in smashing a daily word count, more power to you! For the rest of us, a switch to other types of writing may hold the answer ��� expressive writing, streams of consciousness, journals, essays, and anything else that allows those writing muscles to flex without the added strain of creativity.

From Harvard Health: The act of thinking about an experience, as well as expressing emotions, seems to be important. In this way, writing helps people to organize thoughts and give meaning to a traumatic experience.

If writing doesn���t make you feel better, though, don���t fall into the trap of thinking there���s something wrong with you. ���Write everyday��� is good professional advice, but so are ���rest and recover��� and ���spend precious time with the people you love���.

We���re all different; we each have different strengths and needs. Sometimes the only way around is around, other times, it���s through. Put away the pen (or keyboard) if you have to and if you can, and enjoy the peacefully rebellious act of looking after yourself.

First published in Dot Club #23 (October 2020). Updated 2024.

Make it all so easy and enjoyable and frictionless

This is always the secret; this was how these technology fortunes had been made: make it all so easy and enjoyable and frictionless that you never start to ask yourself the big questions about whether this is really how you want to be spending your life.

��� Naomi Alderman, The Future (2023)

There was a lot about this book that tickled me, but this quote was quite the punch. Some objectives are well worth the friction they entail.

Would his wife have done that too?

���Let me tell you about Henry. I could get fired for this, but what the hell.���

Julie was perfectly fine, admiring the rich American Henry Aston from afar. That is, until he asked her out to dinner. But there���s just one problem: CapriLuxe Perth has a strict policy against employees fraternising with the guests.

Sorry, two problems: Henry Aston���s married.

Well, he was sure making matters simple now. The hurdles were clear. We were good to go. It was too convenient, really. You might call it ���fate���; I call it���well, I don���t know what I call it.

But I wanted it, wanted him. Yet still, I hesitated. This wasn���t me. I mean, I flirted, but rarely converted. If a guy showed interest, I tended to let him lead the way.

But it was all arse-backwards this time. Henry opened the door here, but now he was waiting for me to lead us through. What made him so sure that I would? What if I didn���t? He���d be going back empty-handed to his lonely hotel room.

I guess that���s what made him so attractive. That he didn���t seem bothered by it. That he wasn���t pushy. He wasn���t exactly aloof, but he didn���t come with that air of needing this to happen at whatever cost. Was this even about sex for him, or just being open to a good time? His honesty was refreshing, and���

Damn, I was over-thinking it. I grabbed his face and stood on my toes for a kiss.

It wasn���t magic. But it was hot. Soft and inviting, a symphony of texture: my palms on his stubble; his lips on my lips; the wet roughness of his tongue on mine. It drew me in and I fell into him. He took my weight with his body, one hand on the back of my neck, the other travelling down my back and pulling me towards him.

He hardened beneath me. I pressed against him as he pressed me against the railing. Another car careened past down below, but we remained entangled. When he touched me again, I wondered what the skin felt like elsewhere on his body. I saw myself unbuttoning his shirt and pressing my forehead to his chest. I���d lick out lines like a pencil drawing and bite the soft flesh where his shoulder meets his pecs. Would his wife have done that too? The thought was making me prickle all over.

Read the rest in About Henry: A Novella

Is it hot in here or what?

This post is part of a steamy blog hop. Think you can handle it?

Status Update: January 2024

I���m feeling super energised about 2024 right now. But having learned from years past, I know I need to control my excitement so as not to burn out by April. Here���s what���s in my orbit at present, plus a little past and future.

Project Lacewing

This novelette manuscript is coming along steadily, but a long way from having a title I can live with. That it���s part of an anthology only raises the stakes, because I���ve seen all the other story submissions and they are amazing, and have the kind of clean, catchy titles I still struggle to write.

I���m seriously considering outsourcing the job of coming up with a title. To a human, not an AI. Which might be somewhat hypocritical given there���s a sortof-AI in the story.

Anyway, this draft will be done by the end of the month, and the suggested edits shall come rolling in.

Project Orellia

A new manuscript I���m aiming to start in March. It feels weird starting something completely new when I have so much unfinished WIPs I want to get back to. But an opportunity came up to learn something I���ve been putting off, and I just couldn���t wait any longer.

Proper announcements to come later this year, with Dot Club readers get first dibs on details.

Yet We Sleep, We Dream

When the owner of the specialist SFF bookshop in town told me the news, I almost thought he was pulling a prank. The small batch of Yet We Sleep, We Dream stocked at his store sold out after the first two weeks!

Since then, we���ve replenished the supply of paperbacks. My Midsummer Night���s Dream re-telling is back in stock at Stefen���s Books in the Perth CBD.

We may have something to announce for local readers in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Other notesHeadspace digestives: Why I Write by George Orwell Voices of a Distant Star by Makoto Shinkai & Mizu Sahara Green Cheese by Lisabet Sarai Ness by Robert MacFarlane & Stanley Donwood Exhalation by Ted ChiangWIP board:���Lacewing���, a post-collapse time-travel SF romance. Drafting.���Orellia���, a little project I can���t talk about yet. Scheduled.���Satine���, no longer cancelled, just postponed. On hold.Sunset on a Distant World, SF romance. Under revision.

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

��� George Orwell, Why I Write (1946)

Cheery fellow, this Orwell. But his sentiment resonates with me. Writing is hard, mentally taxing, emotionally raw at times. And yet those of us who write just keep reaching for more.

Since that interview on Seelie Kay���s blog, I���ve wondered if confessing my love���hate relationship with writing will come back to bite me one day. It���s just not the thing you hear from writers talking about their creative process (unless the writer is Anne Lamott).

Anyway, I wanted to share this quote from the author of 1984, because I found it both validating and commiserating. Hope all you writerly folks out there are having a positively wordish start to the year!

Come, delightful mortal, let���s see how good you are

Yet We Sleep, We Dream has been my writerly obsession for the past two years. Now, in the aftermath of launch, I���m only just daring to move forward with my life without those quirky characters living in my head.

I no longer go to bed thinking of obsolete dishwashers on spaceships. Or wake up wondering why Damian treats Helena so badly. Sometimes I still question how sustainable it is to send people into space, but maybe in this fictional Shakespeare-inspired future, someone���s come up a solution for clean, renewable rocket fuel ����

Anyway, this excerpt is from the first serious on-page coupling in the novel. My challenge was to figure out how to weave in erotic tension without being so explicit. Not that there���s anything wrong with explicit, not at all. But Titania and Olek (my reimagined Lysander from the original Midsummer play) dally in that limnial space of waking dreams.

And, at least in my experience, sex in dreams is never what it seems.

He twirls a coloured oil-stick between his fingers, and licks his lips as he traverses her naked body. Eyes fixed on her, he reaches for his woody paper and begins to sketch. And what innocent eyes he has���so pure and trusting, so unaware he sits in the presence of a god-queen.

When he���s done, he beholds his colourful record: an elegant version of her likeness in full, interpreted by his senses and sinews. He smudges her pastelled hair with a red-stained finger. Titania kneels between his legs.

She tips his chin and surprises him with a kiss, giggling into his mouth at the boldness of it. She was supposed to be a hallucination, but now just look at that�����

And look at him. He can���t resist. He���s hard the way men harden to her delicious invitation.

She brings his hand to her breast. In his incredulous gaze, she senses the song of his names: Olek. Oleksandr. Kovy. Ollie. Hey, man. Kiddo. It hums between the beats of his mortal heart, whistles in the blood that courses through him, warming him under her touch. Such modest names for a creature to call itself, especially when he���s not so modestly endowed.

���So real,��� he murmurs, running red-stained thumbs across her taut nipples.

With his willingness, Titania undresses him for closer examination. He is indeed a specimen to adore. She lowers herself onto his lap, piercing herself upon him in the most exquisite way, her own chaos awakening inside her.

���Mm, so are you, it seems.��� She picks up the oil-stick and runs her tongue across it. Then clasping it in his hands, she presses the tip to her chest. ���Come, delightful mortal, let���s see how good you are.���

She raises and lowers herself on him, savouring the slide and stretch of him inside her and the pressure deep within. She undulates her hips, telling him with her sex the story of plasma and rock, tide and lightning, and a cradle of fire in which her world was nurtured.

A man possessed, Olek draws sanguineous marks across her skin while she fucks him. The oil stains pulse and glow and chant their vigour in a primal tongue. He teeters on the brink of chaos, held in stasis and lost to pleasure while slashing at Titania���s body. When at last she lets him climax, he drops the oil-stick and clutches her hips. His desperation is the true work of art.

Read the rest of Yet We Sleep, We Dream

When an alien dust contaminates the starship Athenia, the veil between realms begins to fray. Old gods of a long dead planet resume their own romantic bickering while ancient magic wreaks havoc across the ship. Grudges resurface, friends turn to enemies, unrequited love turns to passion ��� or does it? It's kinda hard to tell with everyone at each other's throats.

Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; but wonder on, till truth make all things plain. Yet We Sleep, We Dream is a romantic space-fantasy inspired by Shakespeare's endearing hot mess, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

This novel is available in ebook and paperback from a bunch of retailers.

Rude can be good�����

This post is part of a steamy blog hop. Find more rude reads�����

Dot Club will now count opens and clicks

The Dot Club newsletter will now be counting opens and clicks by default. Big whoop, I hear you say, since this is considered standard practice for email newsletters. But I���d turned it off in April 2022 and have been on the fence about it since, only turning it on over Aug���Dec of this year to do some email housekeeping.

Which went well, by the way. And from it emerged some first-hand lessons that have me feeling more comfortable about re-adopting a bit of tracking for my newsletter.

Grab a cup of tea and enjoy the full story. Or scroll to the end if you just want a summary.

Why I turned off tracking

I don���t like tracking. I���ve seen it done badly too many times to count, even worked for people who took the view that one should collect as much data as possible about ���the audience���, in case one can ���use it later���.

Now that I���m a bit (a lot) older and willing to go further in questioning conventional wisdom, I���m pretty sure that line of thinking is a recipe for disaster. Even if clever security folks were able to neutralise the threat of data theft, there���s still a non-trivial amount of effort, hard drive space, and energy that most likely goes to waste.

From Wholegrain Digital���s Digital Declutter for Businesses: Digital Marketing:

All the information that we exchange online is data. The further the data travel, the more energy they consume. A study conducted as part of an investigation by Channel 4���s ���Dispatches��� current affairs program found out that a single Instagram post from Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo to his 240 million followers consumes as much energy as ten UK households for one year! Although most of us don���t have the same outreach as Cristiano Ronaldo, all our digital activities have small carbon footprints that add up to the global issue.

Data have become the new gold. However, not everyone knows how to use them properly. Many businesses set up tracking throughout their websites but rarely actually look into the collected data, understand what they mean, and make any necessary changes. So if you collect data on your website but don���t have any use for them, consider switching off that tracking. The fewer data we collect, the less energy we consume.

Anyway, I panicked. I switched to an email provider who would let me turn off tracking AND create a minimalist email to reduce the unnecessary kilobytes I was shooting across the world. Finding one in early 2022 was not a straightforward job. By the way, this is the same panic that drove me to adopt the practice of retiring blog posts.

I needed time to think about the purpose of all the information and content we generate and share online; which ���standard practices��� are legitimately standard (and which ones are only standard cos some random internet man said so); and what my actions and decisions as an author and a business owner mean to me.

Why I���m turning it back on

The last few months taught me a few things, namely where my boundaries are, which of my assumptions were too over-the-top, and when it���s safe to step back from the ledge.

I turned tracking on from August to December (and included a note in each issue because this practice strayed from the default), and used the information to figure out if the outcome of my actions were actually aligned to my values.

This housekeeping project revealed 2 things:

First was that I was sending a lot of unnecessary emails, about 500 every month, to subscribers who weren���t actually interested in hearing from me. I suspect most were bots, people���s old email addresses, and freebie tasters who just forgot to unsubscribe.

If a standard email costs the equivalent of 4g of CO2 (about a teaspoon of sugar), then I���ve basically been throwing out 5 Starbucks grande cups of sugar every month for no good reason. Except it���s not sugar, it���s carbon dioxide at a time where environmentalists are telling us to ease up on excess emissions. Sorry, Planet Earth, this was not part of the plan.

The second revelation was that turning on tracking DIDN���T suddenly hook me up to creepy levels of personal information in some dystopian Hunger Games adtech arena. I���ve realised there���s a world of difference between light, purpose-driven tracking and the data surveillance hellscape that oozes over social media and the modern web, and doing one doesn���t oblige us to the other.

All I wanted was enough info to make Dot Club function better, no more, no less. And I got exactly that.

I did a big declutter on Dot Club, wished I had done it sooner, and now feel safer about adopting light, purposeful tracking as standard practice. The plan is to keep a better eye on things and ensure the Club stays tidy.

The journey and the destination

Hey, it means a lot to me that you read this whole post. After deleting my social media accounts in 2022, I did a lot of introspection and research. Anyone who���s followed my newsletter, chatted to me over email or text, or even discussed in person the state of technology and its impact on us, will know I���ve spent a lot of time down a bunch of weird rabbit holes. It feels healthy to be able to share what I've learned.

I realise this Dot Club development makes me that guy who walks into a shoe shop, tries on every pair, then walks out in what I came in with. But I���m okay with that. Needing to understand what I���m doing and why I���m doing is it one of my personal fixations. And I���m grateful for everyone walking that path of discovery alongside me.

So, thank you ����

Oh yeah, about that email provider

By the way, the email provider I switched to was EmailOctopus (referral link, ahoy!). Their free plan offers almost everything their paid plan does, just with smaller limits, unlike just about every other provider at the time I switched.

This meant I could do the darkmode thing for photosensitive readers (hello, ND friends), offer a plain-text equivalent for people who prefer reading lo-fi emails (hello, terminal friends), and road test the entire EmailOctopus product against a variety of circumstances over a long period of time. That���s a genuine test, as far as I���m concerned. And when I was finally in a position to sign up for a paid plan, I had no doubt that I was getting value for my money.

On top of that, I felt good about signing up with them. EmailOctopus is a bootstrapped startup, meaning their funding comes from the company owners instead of outside investors, so their decisions provide value first and foremost to their customers, not to some rich shareholders.

And, so importantly, they care about ethics and sustainability. They actively contribute to ocean cleanup and emission reduction, and invest in carbon removal. I mean, I hope it���s not one big PR greenwashing scam, but I���ve been with them for almost two years now and feel satisfied with my choice.

The tl;dr for anyone who skipped�����Dot Club stopped counting opens and clicks in April 2022 after I freaked out about sustainability and surveillance capitalism.I did not like tracking before, because I had seen people do it badly and carelessly, and was worried that was the only way to go about it.A housekeeping project (involving light, purposeful tracking) revealed I was sending 500 unnecessary emails each month, producing the equivalent of 2kg of CO2 emissions for no good reason.I learned that light tracking can be helpful AND it doesn���t oblige you to do creepy tracking. Not every tech company works that way.Dot Club will now resume counting opens and clicks so I can continue keeping things tidy.

Yet We Sleep, We Dream ��� now at Stefen���s Books, Perth CBD

Paperback copies of Yet We Sleep, We Dream are now in stock at Stefen���s Books in Perth CBD.

Words can barely express how freaking stoked I am about this. First, to have a physical book on a physical shelf alongside other speculative fiction authors right here in my city. Second, that my favourite bookshop is where I get to celebrate this longtime life goal ���

Stefen and I totally posed for this picture, but my mind-blown grin is for real ���� Stay tuned for a possible event in in the city in 2024!

Here���s the details, for if you���re in the area and fancy a stickybeak:

Stefen���s Books
Shop 2, 431 Murray Street
Perth, WA 6000
Australia

Stefen���s Books websiteStefen���s Books on FacebookStefen���s Books on Instagram

Visiting DarkSide DownUnder for Magic Thursday: Working With a Sensitivity Reader

This week, I���m visiting DarkSide DownUnder to share my experiences of working with a sensitivity reader. Yes, I know today is Friday -- I���m a day late posting about this �����������������

If you���ve followed my blog for awhile, you���ll have basically read what���s in the article, as it���s an enhanced edition of a previous post, but for everyone else, here's the link:

Magic Thursday: Working With a Sensitivity Reader with JL Peridot

Note: This article is mainly aimed at indie fiction writers in Australia, especially those who���ve already dipped a toe into the self-publishing water and decided to go deeper down the craft rabbit hole.

DarkSide DownUnder is a gathering of fiction writers from Australia and New Zealand who write speculative fiction with romantic elements. They range from multi-published NY Times best-selling authors to absolute beginner indies who are yet to publish their first creative work. Though affiliated with Romance Writers of Australia, DSDU is an informal and independently run group.

Erotica is about the experience of desire

���In my view, erotica is not about sex per se. It is about the experience of desire.��� ��� An Interview with Lisabet Sarai, author of steampunk erotica trilogy The Toymakers Guild.

JL PERIDOT: A prudish era. Steampunk sex toys. Lisabet, I think you may have outdone yourself with this series. Why did you chose Victorian England as the time and place for these kinky books?

LISABET SARAI: I���ve had an affinity for things Victorian for as long as I can remember. My siblings used to tease me about how excited I���d get when we passed a Victorian house. I wore ankle-length skirts, high-necked, frilly blouses and lace-up boots long before they were fashionable.

It may be that I was influenced by all the nineteenth century fiction I read when I was young: Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, and so on. (Certainly I was affected by the Victorian erotica I read later!) Sometimes I wonder if I had a previous life as a Victorian; my mental images of the time can be surprisingly vivid and the cadence of the period language seems to come naturally.

Anyway, I���ve been writing stories with Victorian settings for a while. My second novel, Incognito, originally published in 2002, has an elaborate sub-plot that unfolds in Victorian Boston. I have a steampunk story (Green Cheese) set in Thailand and another (Her Own Devices) that takes place in Hong Kong, while my novel Rajasthani Moon is steampunk Indian style. For a long time, however, I avoided writing a steampunk tale set in England itself because I was worried that my ignorance of the setting would be too obvious.

The premise for the Guild required, however, that it be located in England. So I bit the bullet and decided to give it a try.

JL: Your heroine Gillian is a strong, intelligent woman, and I understand you���re a bit of a nerd too! Tell us more about this, and what Gillian means to you. What will readers love most about her?

LISABET: I���m more of an engineer than a scientist, both by training and disposition. Although I was originally interested in molecular biology and astrophysics, I ended up as a software architect and developer. After many decades, I am still amazed by the fact that software begins as nothing but ideas. These ideas are translated into symbols, abstract representations of relationships and processes.

Yet ultimately, software has real impact, does real work, controls both physical and social phenomenon. This seems to me a kind of magic ��� akin to miracles of Genesis, materializing the world out of the Word. Of course, fiction has some of that same magical quality. We authors start with thoughts, pictures in our heads, and use them to form stories that can affect our readers intellectually and emotionally.

As for Gillian Smith, I have an essay somewhere about how she is and is not like me. Certainly she���s far more self-assured than I was at nineteen. I was shy, socially awkward and dogged by anxiety, whereas Gillian suffers from none of these weaknesses. She strides into the Guild without any self-doubt, ready to take on all challenges. The other apprentices (initially all male) are astonished by both her technical skills and her sexual audacity.

Actually, I guess that���s what I love most about Gillian: her openness to erotic experience. She thrives in the lascivious environment of Randerley Hall. As the series progresses, however, she grows and changes, learning to distinguish the quick thrill of a lusty interlude from the deeper pleasures of erotic commitment. Importantly, she comes to value both.

Certainly I think many readers will find Gillian surprising and refreshing. I���ll admit that some might think her a bit shocking!

JL: Where did the research for this trilogy take you? (I guess what I���m really asking is whether some of the sex toys actually existed!)

LISABET: My relative ignorance of British geography was one of the main forces propelling my research, coupled with questions about late nineteenth century transport. How long would it take to get from Tavistock to London by train? By horse and buggy? What was the schedule for steamer crossings between Dover and Calais? How bad was London traffic?

I also had to be careful to avoid anachronisms when referencing scientific discoveries. For instance, the Master Toymaker has invented a security device that depends on the photosensitive properties of selenium. I needed to make sure these properties had in fact been discovered by 1888. At another point, I wanted to suggest that aluminium might be a part of an invention; it took some research to determine whether the metal was available during that period. (It was, but it was very expensive.)

In fact, the second half of the nineteenth century saw an amazing flowering of science and technology, not just as theory but also applied to everyday innovations. Progress was the watchword of the times. I recommend the book The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. He describes the extensive practical, social and political changes that flowed from the invention of the telegraph. As we can see today, technology can have many unexpected and far-reaching consequences.

That being said, I admit to playing quite fast and loose with many of the inventions I describe. I was striving for plausibility, balancing that against the reader���s surprise and delight. Many of Gillian���s engineering feats probably would have been impossible in her time ��� some might still be! ��� but I hope I still managed to make readers believe in them.

I also plead guilty to some in-jokes that will only be appreciated by my fellow nerds, particular with regard to artificial intelligence.

JL: What do you feel has been your biggest challenge in writing erotica?

LISABET: My first novel (as is the case with many authors) flowed from a desire to capture something of my own erotic experience and to extrapolate from that reality to explore my fantasies. Raw Silk is not nearly as well-crafted as my more recent books. It rehashes tired clich��s (e.g. the alpha male) that I didn���t even know existed at the time I wrote it. Nevertheless, it remains popular at least partially because readers sense its authenticity. Though fictional, it captures the profound emotions associated with a woman���s initiation into dominance and submission.

As time went on, my work became less autobiographical, but it has always been personal. I write stories that interest me, that arouse me and that satisfy me. I���ve been thrilled to discover that I can evoke similar responses in at least a few readers.

The first decade of my publishing ���career��� was the golden age for erotica. There were many publishing venues, including a lot of anthologies. Editors and publishers were looking for fresh ideas and premises, surprising or transgressive actions, and high quality writing. It was easy to find stories to read that would make you wonder, gasp and shiver. It was easy to sell that kind of stories.

The next decade saw the rise of indie publishing and the dominance of erotic romance. It became difficult to sell a story that did not have a focal relationship or a happy ending. Genres and tropes started to become straight jackets.

These days, I think that erotica as I knew it is pretty much dead. Romance has become ossified into genre boxes. In the realm of erotica, authors churn out one book after another, plainly labeled with the kinks or tropes, with titles like ���Pregnant for the Grumpy Billionaire Daddy-Dom���, ���Hot Wife Hot S3x���, and ���First Time Surrender���. (These are actual titles from the most recent issue of a newsletter to which I subscribe.) There���s no suspense or variety. Apparently readers want to know exactly what they���re paying for.

I strongly suspect that despite being very explicit, many of these books do not offer much eroticism either. In my view, erotica is not about sex per se. It is about the experience of desire.

JL: Readers unfamiliar with your work will be stoked to discover your expansive publishing history. Any recommendations on which titles would suit different readers wanting to get to know your style and work?

LISABET: If readers want to explore my books, I recommend they go to https://www.lisabetsarai.com/books.html

You can pick from a wide range of categories, then see the books that fall into those categories. The problem is that most of my work does not neatly slot into a single genre. Plus some of my work is deeply romantic; some is pure smut-for-fun.

To get an idea of the extremes to which I���ll go, readers might like to check out my mash-up novel Rajasthani Moon. I wrote this for a publisher who had a long list of sub-genres from which to choose. I deliberately tried to incorporate as many items from that list as I could: steampunk, shifter, menage, BDSM, BBW, Bollywood, spies, multicultural... let me see, have I forgotten anything?

JL: Out of everything you���ve ever written, do you have a favourite?

LISABET: That���s a really hard question. If I had to choose a single book, I think it would be my BDSM erotic romance The Gazillionaire and the Virgin (first edition 2016).

In that novel, I revisited (emotionally) the relationship whose intensity fueled my first book. By the time I wrote The Gazillionaire, I could look back with a bit clearer perspective and capture the dynamics of that relationship in a more nuanced and realistic way.

Note that this book is even less obviously autobiographical than Raw Silk. But the characters were ultimately inspired by me and my former master.

JL: For fellow writers out there, what���s your process? How do you stay so inspired and motivated with your writing?

LISABET: Process? What process? ;^)

I���m inspired, I guess, because I love being Lisabet Sarai. It���s a side of me that I don���t get to express in my daily life. I value my connections to readers and to other authors (including you, J.L.). I revel in the freedom to make my imagined tales into realities that can affect others. I stubbornly reject the tyranny of the market (easy to do when your writing is an avocation rather than your livelihood) and continue to create stories that shred tropes or turn them upside down.

These days, I���m working a very demanding job, and I don���t have much time to live as Lisabet. But I savor every minute.

The Toymakers Guild by Lisabet Sarai

At Randerley Hall, lust is a lubricant to creativity. Nothing is impossible. Nothing is forbidden.

Defying the repressive morality of the Victorian era, the Toymakers Guild uses advanced technology to fabricate bespoke sexual devices for the discrete pleasure of select clients. Its members are not only brilliant engineers but also sexual renegades seeking freedom from the prudish society that surrounds them.

Nineteen-year-old prodigy Gillian Smith arrives at Randerley to apply for an apprenticeship in the Guild. With her technical abilities and her lascivious temperament, she is eminently suited to join the Master Toymaker���s close-knit band of uninhibited erotic artisans. Gillian flourishes among the Toymakers, designing and implementing ever-more-outrageous carnal contraptions. Each voluptuous commission she completes, each sensual adventure she enjoys, binds her more tightly to the Guild and to the perverse, tortured genius who is its founder.

If you like brilliant, wanton women and kinky steam punk sex toys, dive into the alternate universe of the The Toymakers Guild.

Buy the boxed set on Amazon (free on KU)
Buy The Pornographer's Apprentice (Book 1) (DRM-free on Smashwords)
Buy The Journeyman's Trial (Book 2) (DRM-free on Smashwords)
Buy The Master's Mark (Book 3) (DRM-free on Smashwords)

Genre: Erotica, Steampunk, Historical Fiction
Length: 821 pages (256,000 words)
Publication Date: 27 August 2023
Publisher: Lisabet Sarai

About the author

Lisabet Sarai became addicted to words at an early age. She began reading when she was four. She wrote her first story at five years old and her first poem at seven. Since then, she has written plays, tutorials, scholarly articles, marketing brochures, software specifications, self-help books, press releases, a five-hundred page dissertation, and lots of erotica and erotic romance ��� over one hundred titles, and counting, in nearly every sub-genre���paranormal, scifi, m��nage, BDSM, GLBT, and more. Regardless of the genre, every one of her stories illustrates her motto: Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

You���ll find information and excerpts from all Lisabet���s books on her website, along with more than fifty free stories and lots more. At her blog Beyond Romance, she shares her philosophy and her news and hosts lots of other great authors. She���s also on Goodreads, BookBub and Twitter. Join her VIP email list.