Cate Ellink's Blog, page 73

Phallic Friday - clothing and attraction

I went and saw Man of Steel at the movies last weekend, which had me thinking about clothes and how they make someone more attractive or not.

Superman is played by Henry Cavill in Man of Steel. And Henry Cavill is a man with many different faces and attires, in this movie and in others.

In The Tudors, he's dressed in historical garb - high collars, open shirts, chain mail, generally darker colours.

As Superman, he's a fisherman in one scene and wears a beanie pulled low over his heavily bearded face.

He's a labourer, in trousers and a singlet/shirt, all sweaty.

He's almost naked, sweaty and sometimes dirty.

He's in a simple t-shirt and flannelette shirt over the top.

He's in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, a few buttons open.

He's in his body-hugging Superman outfit and cape.

On the movie premiere tours, he's in a suit, all slick, smart and professional.

There are times when I'm so caught by his attractiveness, I stop to stare. Other times I'd walk right on past and not notice him.

How do clothes do this?

You can have a few moments of bliss like I just did and Google images of Henry Cavill, scroll your way through to see if you think clothes do make a difference!

And then you can look all over again and judge by hair. Then by facial hair. Then maybe angle of the photo... LOL! You can see why this post took me ages to write.

Enjoy... but feel free to share your views (me, I loved the dirty sweaty shots, and the fisherman, and the white shirt. I wasn't so fussed on the Superman outfit).

Wildlife Wednesday - moth

When I was a kid, these were my favourite moths and I called them a Jaffa Moth. I spent hours trying to breed them because I wanted to see a cocoon hatch into a moth (I had visions of the chrysalis bursting open and a half damp moth struggling out before fluttering its wings, nodding to me and flying away). I haven't seen them for years and the other week I saw one. It took me right back to my excited childhood state.

So, let me see if I can be more adult about this and find out something more about these moths.

Wow...here's a page with some great photos. But this Brisbane one could be different to my more southern one.

Okay, so not a lot of information about these guys that I could find. This website seems to have a bit of info, including:

The Caterpillars of the CTENUCHINAE family are mostly covered uniformly in dark hairs. The hairs can cause Urticaria in sensitive people. The Caterpillars typically feed and move about during the daytime.They pupate in a cocoon made of silk with their hairs matted together. The adults are small to medium in size, with wings that are black with translucent orange spots. Their bodies typically have tranverse bands alternating in orange and black, hence their name 'Wasp Moths'. However the coloration does not denote any hazard except that the moths are poisonous if eaten.The adult moths of many species in this subfamily fly during daylight hours. There are 54 named Australian members of this subfamily.

Story Sunday - what's erotic?

I read a review of The Virginity Mission (do you need the cover again, Lily? Here it is.) where the reviewer said she considered it a "normal" story and not erotic.

What is erotic (in the context of erotic romance as a subgenre of books)?

I don't really know! I thought it was explicit sex scenes where you don't use euphemisms but names of body parts, where sex is described fully, and where sex is a vital part of the story line. But maybe I'm wrong.

In my trusty dictionary, erotic is defined as: of or pertaining to sexual love; arousing or satisfying sexual desire.

The Virginity Mission is fairly tame with the sex - but she is a virgin. I don't know about you but I didn't take to sex like a duck to water. It took me a while to get the hang of being wild. There's so much to learn first up.


Maybe in the post-50 Shades world, we've moved the goalposts for erotic and it needs to be kinky sex, which I still call BDSM which is a subgenre of erotic.

In my mind there are a lot of different subgenres in the erotic category - BDSM, fetishes, oral sex, anal sex, menages or more, multiple partners, bestiality, golden showers, scat play - and those are just off the top of my head. 

In a way, I'd like normal sex to be accepted in every novel, but I think people would be too shocked. For that reason, I believe it still needs a label as a warning. Too many of my family/friends struggle to read my sex scenes because they can't handle that I wrote them (or wrote about sex).

I don't know that many people are ready for normal sex to be fully described, let alone for kinky sex to become normalised as erotic!

I think we're still in a world where sex is strange, something behind closed doors, never to be talked about - and I'm talking missionary sex here!

What do you think? How do you define "erotic" in literature?

Phallic Friday - competitive sex

I bet you're wondering what this post is about!

I started writing a story, which has ended up being two different stories. Mid-stride in my first draft a friend said, "You know, all your heroines are kind of wimpy." And when I stopped pouting and looked, they were. So I changed her to be more of a kick-ass heroine...which changed the dynamic of the story which split the story into two.

So...my kick-ass heroine (Samantha) is a retired Olympic triathlete, who meets a hunky footy player (Cooper) on a holiday. Attraction flares (or rather ignites in a huge whoosh) and they're going for it. But she's gotta be kick-ass, so the first time she has him pretty much primed ready for sex and walks away. Did I tell you she's a strange girl?!

Her action starts somewhat of a competition, which leads to a conversation like this:



The kiss heats, quickly. In no time Cooper grabs a condom, sheathes himself and probes at my cunt. We’re side by side facing each other. One of my hands on his abdomen, the other encircling his cock. I lift my leg and pause. “We did it this way last night.” I squeeze my hand on his cock, my other hand stroking downwards towards his balls. Cooper looks at me, his eyebrow quirked in question. “Doesn’t it get boring doing it the same way all the time?” “Sam, nothing about you is boring. Are you bored?” I need a brain transplant. I can’t believe I started this conversation, let alone started it poised on the brink of more incredible sex. “Never bored. You just spur me to greater things. I don’t think we should repeat sex. I think we need to challenge each other to new things every time.” My hand cups his sac, weighing and lifting his balls, pulsing slowly against them. Cooper’s head shakes as his lips part in a grin. “And you had to tell me this now?” “I just woke up. My brain’s not functioning.” With a laugh, Cooper grabs both my wrists until my hands release him, then flips me onto my stomach. “Different enough for you?” He scoops my hips up and pulls me towards the edge of the bed. On my knees, head and hands against the bed, I turn my head to watch him, waiting to see what he’ll do. 
 They have 10 days together - do you think there's enough ways to have sex that it's never repeated?

Wildlife Wednesday - pelicans

I'm making the stretch beyond my yard again today.

I've very fond of pelicans. I'm not sure if it's because if their beak (which holds more than it's belly can) or because of the book by Colin Thiele, and movie, Storm Boy. I suspect it's Storm Boy. If you have never seen it, have a look at this clip. It's a beautiful film from my childhood.

I spent many a weekend laying on a wharf trying to feed fish heads to the pelicans while my poor grandfather sweated blood that the pelicans would eat out arms off - or at least hook us and scratch us badly with that hook on their beak. I'm pleased to say we were never eaten or scratched!

I love watching them land on posts. They look like huge cumbersome jumbos and then they shilly and shally and calmly come in for the softest of landings. It never ceases to amaze me.

Taking off from the ground or water, they aren't quite so nifty. They seem to need a good big run up and a fair bit of huge wing flapping.

Here's some breeding info from the Birds in Backyards website.

Breeding depends on environmental conditions, particularly rainfall. Pelicans are colonial breeders with up to 40 000 individuals grouping on islands or secluded shores. Breeding begins with courtship. The female leads potential mates (two to eight or more) around the colony. As the males follow her in these walks, they threaten each other while swinging their open bills from side to side trying to attract the female's attention. The males may also pick up small objects, like sticks or dry fish, which they toss in the air and catch again, repeating the sequence several times.

Both sexes perform "pouch-rippling" in which they clap their bills shut several times a second and the pouch ripples like a flag in a strong breeze. As the courtship parade progresses, the males drop out one by one. Finally, after pursuits on land, water or in the air, only a single male is left. The female leads him to a potential nest site.

During the courtship period, the bill and pouch of the birds change colour dramatically. The forward half of the pouch becomes bright salmon pink, while the skin of the pouch in the throat region turns chrome yellow. Parts of the top and base of the bill change to cobalt blue, and a black diagonal strip appears from the base to the tip. This colour change is of short duration, the intensity usually subsiding by the time incubation starts.

The nest consists of a scrape in the ground prepared by the female. She digs the scrape with her bill and feet, and lines it with any scraps of vegetation or feathers within reach of the nest. Within three days egg-laying begins and eggs are laid two to three days apart. Both parents share incubation and the eggs are incubated on their feet.

The first-hatched chick is substantially larger than its siblings. It receives most of the food and may even attack and kill its nest mates. A newly hatched pelican has a large bill, bulging eyes, and skin that looks like small-grained bubble plastic. The skin around the face is mottled with varying degrees of black and the colour of the eyes varies from white to dark brown. This individual variation helps the parents to recognise their chick from hundreds of others.

The chicks leave their nests to form creches of up to 100 birds. They remain in creches for about two months, by the end of which they have learnt to fly and are fairly independent. Wild birds may live between ten and possibly 25 years or more.

Sunday Story - 50 Bales of Hay

At Christmas time one of my friend's hubby's was given this and promptly said, "tell Cate not to buy it, she can read it next." We swap books all the time this friend and I - that way we read twice as many and don't go broke in the process (although, we're both broke, so maybe that part's not true!)

Anyway, I read it this week. It's hilarious. I hope it's intended to be - I thought it was. There are lots of oblique references to "that sexy book" or "that book everyone's talking about" or "that book available in supermarkets", so I took it as a bit of a send up of 50 Shades of Grey. Oh, and there are lots of references to grey, shades of grey and 50, throughout the stories too.

From her other books, I hadn't realised what a good study Rachael Treasure makes of people. With these short stories and so many of them bunched together, I realised how canny she is at identifying people and traits. Everyone in here is different, vastly different. And I can identify a lot
characters as people I know or have met (no, not the men - the women too!).

One story had me in stitches. It was laugh out loud (even in bed in the middle of the night) funny. Called The Joining, it was the story of an upper-crust type farming widow who owned a good yard dog and had men bringing their bitches to mate with him. This one chap had taken a fancy to her and they get it on in her lounge room but have to move spots because the shagging is a little too active and is threatening her Royal Doulton collection of figurines. And seriously, this woman is not having good sex but she doesn't realise it. She's already checked out the dogs humping, noticed they've knotted and is feeling sorry for her dog now having to wait (they look each other in the eye and share their waiting experience - LOL). Okay, so she moves on...

"...she decided she would aim to move her hips as if competing at Grand Prix Dressage."
"The tilting of her pelvis back and forth as if doing a fine piaffe has an instant effect on Garry..."
"As she lay beneath him, she decided to try a half-pass this way, and then again that way, falling into a perfect pattern and rhythm..."
"Then Marrilyn began to piaffe again with her hips beneath. This, to her excitement, seemed to elicit a strong sensation in her own body and clearly had the desired effect of Garry..."
"...she could soon hear Garry's home-straight heavy breathing in her ear as he galloped home. She joined him on the home-straight too, and as she sailed over a brush fence with a cry, she climaxed ..."

This book is exactly what it says "sexy stories from the farm". It's not overly erotic or descriptive but fun and clever and something I think a lot of people would enjoy. I sure did :)

Phallic Friday - Lust

It's football time of year and I can't go past doing a post on lusting after footy players. All my life I've been attracted to footballers - well, sportsmen because I lusted after a few jockeys in my youth too!! The sad thing is that now I'm getting a bit long in the tooth and I could be some of these boy's mother... but let's just forget that for a moment!

I was born in Sydney, so for me footy is NRL (Rugby League) but I do watch all other forms of football - or sport really, I'm a sport junkie. But for this post, I'm doing Rugby League because it's a long obsession.

My first and most crushing lust was for Peter Sterling who was the Parramatta NRL team's dashing halfback (number 7). He adorned my wall, my diary, my school books, my everything. I went to games to drool over his play, then lined up for my thousandth autograph, my little moment of pure pleasure being near him. I even wrote him a corny little poem...or more than one! His footy card photo came with me to all my high school exams and some of my uni ones too (maybe all, I can't remember that far back!). I hear him now in the commentary team and still have little lustful heart palpitations.

I had a long lag after Sterlo. No one seemed to fit the bill as a smart, clever footballer who I admired their play as much as them, like Sterlo. And then I went to a Grand Final and saw Darren Lockyer play live. I'd seen him on TV and he did nothing...but live. Oh my! He was my new lust star. Why the difference between live and TV? I think because on TV they zoom in on the action, and what attracts me is the back play, the way these brilliant football minds can direct play away from the action. They read ahead of the game, they're effortlessly on the ball, right where they have to be. They call the shots. Oh, they're just incredible to watch. And now, Darren Lockyer is also in the Channel 9 commentary team. Two lusts for one!

Then, another Grand Final and the Melbourne Storm number 7 caught my heart, Cooper Cronk. Oh my. Darren Lockyer wasn't Sterlo but Cooper Cronk takes me back to Sterlo. When he's on the field, I can't watch anyone else - is there anyone else out there? And last year, sitting at the Grand Final I invented a story with Cooper Cronk as my hero.

I've never written with a "real" person as my hero before. It's incredibly distracting! I watched the State of Origin game and all I can think of is my scene - the one I'm writing is sex on a secluded beach and my heroine is so in lust with him!

I've amassed a pile of Cooper Cronk photos so I can look at them to get good descriptions of his facial expressions and body for my scenes (purely research, I tell you!). After Game 1 State of Origin, they shot inside the dressing side and there was my hero, shirt off, arms above his head, muscles bulging in his arms. Drool or what? And then, OMG, he stretched. Lord, I was off the lounge, tongue out, just knowing it could be in my scene when poor Sam is watching Cooper remove his diving wetsuit and she's finally seeing all the muscles his t-shirt promised and his wetsuit hid. Grabbing pen and paper I scribbled while my mind replayed the scene over and over.

I'm not sure my husband quite understands this research phase of my story writing. I know he doesn't have any understanding of my lust for footballers - and my lust is not just for looks and bodies, it's brains too. And just quietly, most people tell me I have no taste in men :)

Wildlife Wednesday - Pied Currawong

We have Pied Currawongs come visit and do their warble, which is different to the magpie warble but don't ask me to do it!

This one was having a bath in a little concrete dish that's been put into our front lawn under a tap - it came with the house but I keep it full of water.

I love watching the birds have their bath but I've not caught them on my camera yet. They're pretty skittish when bathing! And they always seem to bathe with a lookout - another bird who calls if there's danger, like me lifting my camera!

You can tell the Pied Currawong from other big black birds (like crows, raven, choughs, magpies) because they have a yellow eye and that white bottom (under the tail, where body and tail meet is always white) while the rest of them is black.

They eat a variety of foods including berries, lizards, insects and caterpillars. Their nest is a bowl of sticks, lined with grasses and other soft material. The material is gathered by both sexes, but the female builds the nest, which is placed in a high tree fork, up to 20 m above the ground. The female incubates the eggs, and the male feeds her. The male also supplies food to the female for the first week after the chicks hatch and she feeds the chicks. I sure hope he feeds her better than my hubby would me!

Pied Currawongs live all over Eastern Australia. So I doubt you would have seen one, Lily Malone :)

Sunday Story

I'm not fond of series - you know, those stories that don't finish with one book but compel you to buy a few more. I understand they're a great way to gather and keep readers, plus they give authors a framework to further develop characters and a world. But there are few series that keep my attention because I always feel that one or more of the books let me down.

I read a blog post the other day where someone had been invested in a series for 23 years and was lamenting the end. 23 years?!? Gosh, I can't imagine following a series for so long.

And then I looked at my bookcase. Ed McBain wrote the 87th precinct police novels for over fifty years and I have at least 30 books here. Oops! But although these were series, you could read a book to have a story told and wrapped up. The series allowed the same characters to be in each story and the readers watched the characters grow (and although their kids aged, they never really did). And I didn't read them in order, I just enjoyed them and bought them when I saw them (often at second hand bookshops for the old ones).

So, much to my shame, I do have series addictions. I just didn't think I did!

Are you a fan of series?

Phallic Friday - Spanking

My dictionary defines "spank" as "to strike (a person, usu. a child) with the open hand, a slipper, etc., esp. on the buttocks, as in punishment."

I don't remember being spanked much as a child, and certainly never with a slipper! I do remember running away from a few spankings though.

As an adult, spankings don't take me back to childhood. They don't fill me with shame, or seem like a punishment. Spanking is pure pleasure - when done right.

For me, spanking is a pleasure-pain thing, as well as one of those things that has a huge build up. It's the will he/won't he? When will he hit? How hard? Where?

So to get pleasure-pain and the anticipation, spanking needs some kind of introduction. Sure it can be short, but there has to be something there first to have me experiencing pleasure (so the spank can do the pain switch) and anticipating the slap.

A good example is in the lead up to sex. Say you're fooling around, kissing and touching, maybe rumbling around a bit. You make a slip, say you jab him in the ribs as you rumble, he stills. "You'll pay for that," he says in mock-seriousness. And you know, you know, he means he's going to spank you. Your body tenses in anticipation, your thighs slick, the breath lodges somewhere mid-chest. You can hardly concentrate because you're waiting, waiting for his hand to move, fly through the air and crack against your buttocks. You're waiting for the burning sting, the flare of heat, and then the shafts of pure blissful pleasure.

Although, having said that, a slap out of nowhere, during intense pleasure can often send me over the edge.

Say he's gone down on you. You're writhing on the bed, so close to orgasm as his lips kiss, his tongue flicks and his mouth sucks. But you're just not there. He doesn't keep the pressure anywhere long enough to let you come. You're frustrated, soaked in pleasure, drowning in lust, and then the bastard stops. You're so close and there's nothing but cool air hitting your soaked cunt. Before you can scream your frustration, the air stirs and his open hand slaps against your clit and nether lips. You swear as you levitate. Your clit spasms, intense pain, heat burns through your entire groin area. Then he strikes again. SLAP! This time your clit clenches tight, screaming, before the most incredible release blooms. It's like you've burst open, flooded. Everything fills with pleasure. Every cell laughs with release. His tongue flicks against your clit and suckles until another orgasm floods you, filling you with intense pleasure.

And that, to me, is the joy of spanking.

Do you enjoy spanking? Or does it give you bad childhood memories?