Cate Ellink's Blog, page 76

First Review

I saw the first review for The Virginity Mission this week. It's on GoodReads and it's lovely. And what's even more amazing is that I don't know the person!

I thought reviews waited until the book came out but I guess not. I didn't intend to read any reviews (much too terrifying). I was on GoodReads and looked to see if the hunky cover was there - it was :) - but all these people had it marked "to read" or "added" which was a little terrifying.

Anyway, thank you Jeannie for enjoying my story.

And that will be the last review I look at. A good one is such a boost. I'll stick with that.

Phallic Friday - Humiliation

I've read a couple of books recently with humiliation causing pleasure in them and it's not something that turns me on. I can't get my head around it. Humiliation makes me furious.

I can "get" that as a "slave" humiliation is part of the deal. But what turns a submissive on about that? What part of humiliation turns a dom/me on?

I've been trying to rationalise it, get inside what makes humiliation work. It's a really powerful "tool" and it's important I can understand it. I can't write it if I don't understand what's behind it, what motivates it and what pleasure you get from it.

I've no idea if I've managed to understand. This is my take but I'd love to know what you think.

Humiliation takes you to the lowest point. You're worthless. You're nothing but an object belonging to the humiliator - subject to their whims. You have no way of getting out of this yourself. You're at the bottom and no one is going to help you up. I think at this point you must give up all hope of self. There must be a total loss of you, a loss of your worth and a loss of hopes/dreams/future.

And the power of the humiliation is that you're lifted out of it. Even though you've given up everything, someone cares enough to pick you up from your disgrace/from your abject misery. Someone rebuilds you, puts you back together, cares for you.

Is that the rationale behind it?

I don't think I ever let myself get to the bottom. I think my fury comes from fighting to stop me landing at the bottom. And you know what... I'm not sure I want to reach the bottom. What if no one did pick me up?

Do you have a take on humiliation? Am I close to understanding the power of it?

Wildlife Wednesday

This fish is a Whiting. I extended my backyard and there was supposed to be a heap of fish in a row - but when my blog went crazy and posted about 4 Wildlife Wednesdays on the one Wednesday, it ruined the effect :) Now this poor fish stands alone - but anyway, enough whining for the whiting!

These are my favourite fish and for the dumbest of the dumb reasons. I like their pointy nose, I like that when you catch them they give a decent bite (like they whack into your bait and they're committed) and best of all, I love that you can get them off the line easily and painlessly (not for the fish but for me!!). Whiting never seem to get hooks in dumb places like other fish, and they don't have really awful spines. So you can wrap your hand around them, and jiggle the hook out. All easy, all painless. Love these fish!

Plus, in my family, no one except me liked eating them, which meant they usually got thrown back in the water and didn't end up as dinner.

See, I told you, dumb reasons :)

Sunday Story

The month of May I'm dedicating to The Virginity Mission in the lead up to release... but I reserve the right to change my mind if I get sick of plugging, or looking at the cover!


The Beginning of this Story

I borrowed an event from my life as the setting for this story. When I was young, I went on a scientific expedition to the Daintree Rainforest in North Queensland. I'd been camping all my life with the Girl Guides. I'd done a bit of bushwalking with guides but also with a bushwalking club. I 'd done a few overnight bushwalks. I was studying an environmental biology degree. I was fairly fit. I figured this would be easy.

OMG was I wrong!

It was the hardest, most challenging thing I've ever done. I knew no one when I went - except my Mum made me have a lunch for the Sydney people who were on the trip a couple of weeks before I went; I think she was trying to make sure I'd be safe, but I'm not sure how the lunch worked!

I was chosen to go from an application I submitted. So it was a big deal to me. I'd never flown by myself anywhere, and here I was heading to Cairns. Staying in a youth hostel, then catching a bus to Mossman to meet up with the expedition people. There were 120 people on the trip, plus the expedition staff (leader, quartermaster staff, medical staff) and half a dozen Army guys there for transportation (and disasters).

I was so far out of my depth but too naive to really know! Fortunately, I wasn't the only one like that.

I kept a diary during the trip - which lasted 6 weeks. I was tempted to read the diary while I wrote this story... but I didn't. I wanted to fictionalise the trip and not get fact and fiction all confused. So I wrote the story using what I remembered, and inventing Mac (my heroine) and Jason (my hero) and their romance.

This is me - yonks ago - at the start of the rainforest trip.And last week I grabbed my diary so I could do some blogs with real vs story... and what a shock I got...

Next week I'll show you what I found :)

I've got some photos (nothing as good as the cover though) to show but because they're old, they're stuck into an album on sticky pages (are you old enough to remember those?) and I can't take them out without damaging them. So I cheated and took a photo of the photo in the album - apologies for the glare and the wonkiness.

Phallic Friday - pussy pride

After my penis envy post last week, I came across a post by Remittance Girl about the relationship women have with their vaginas (or non-relationship) and that led me to a Pussy Pride Project site. So I thought I should do something here to show some love for my vagina. A photo was too much information I thought. And I'm not sure I can eloquently write a description of it - although I have been thinking about that, so maybe one day I'll find that courage. Today I decided on a little " poem".

Pulsing, pounding
Underneath all
Slick
Sexy
Yearning for more

Playful touching
Reamed, stretched
Inched inside slowly
Demanding release
Exploring, exposure, explosion.

Wildlife Wednesday

These beetles are EVERYWHERE at the moment. Over the last few weeks they've been here - you see the occasional one at the beach, down the street, in the yard - but this last fortnight, there have been hundreds of them. At the beach was most noticeable where they were constantly landing on me and I was trying to save them from drowning... but there was a high tide mark of dead beetles that looked like a black line of small shells - I wasn't saving many! I don't recall ever seeing so many of them.

My sister was visiting last week and she said she'd Googled copulating bugs (!!) to find out what they were (it didn't work for me) - they're Soldier Beetles. And that's what a lot of them are doing - the bug piggy-back - but no photos of that, sorry!

Here's some info from CSIRO -
It is still something of a mystery why the Plague soldier beetle (Chauliognathus lugubris), a native species found in temperate southeastern Australia, occasionally builds up to massive numbers. Its grubs live in the soil, feeding on other small creatures. The adult beetles don’t seem to eat the plants they settle on, although the sheer weight of a mass of them may break weaker twigs. What they are more interested in is sucking nectar from flowering trees, and copulating.

Our researchers have recently found the genes that give the chemical (they exude a white viscous fluid from their glands that repels any predators thinking of getting too close) its anti-microbial and anti-cancer properties, and were able to replicate the synthesis in the lab. This may one day lead to the development of new anti-biotic and anti-cancer related products.

It seems like the south-east of Australia has had perfect conditions for the Soldier beetle this year. I hope they've done a lot of copulating to keep the beetles going. Antibiotic and anti-cancer products from them could have us saving them all from drowning in the ocean.

Pre-order up already

I have the best writing friends. They notice things even before I think to look!

The Virginity Mission has the pre-order up already on Amazon and iTunes - and it's not even May!

So if you're into pre-ordering, you can do that now (but don't do my trick and double up!)

I think this is an excuse for the cover again... isn't it? Lily Malone would say yes, so here it is, in large size :)

Sunday Story

I've been in a reading binge and read some cracker books, so I thought I'd share them.



Rough Diamond is funny - but it might require a quirky selective Aussie humour judging by some Goodreads reviews :) It's a kind of crime novel with a goofy heroine who gets caught up in something way above her head, and capabilities. I laughed lots but it's also poignant and serious is places too. I thoroughly enjoyed it.




Allegiance Sworn is the 3rd novel for Kylie Griffin's Light Blade series and I think each book is stronger. This story is more action-packed than the last two, and the characters take a lot of effort to trust one another. The secondary characters are fabulous but the hero and heroine stole my heart.







Rachel Bailey's No Stranger To Scandal has become my favourite Rachel Bailey book but I'm not sure why (don't you hate that?!). I think it's because they should never have gotten together (another forbidden love) but the attraction was too strong to fight - but it wasn't just attraction, Lucy and Hayden matched on so many levels.









Bronwyn Stuart's Regency stories are not about the Ton but the "fallen" side of the Regency society (like the bastards, girls who've had a rough life behind closed doors) and I love them. Behind The Courtesan is brilliant. It's gritty and harsh. The main characters, Blake and Sophie, have been through so much, it's going to take a hell of a lot to bring them together - and it does! I couldn't put this down. It's fantastic.

I saw that this story had some horrid reviews... but I don't think they're justified. If you're looking for a pretty Regency story, this isn't it. If you like meaty books, try it.



Another historical is Isolde Martyn's Mistress to the Crown. This is beautiful. My hubby read and enjoyed it too when he was book-less on holidays - and I think it's the first historical he's ever read.




And yet another historical, Sophia James' The Dissolute Duke is the end of a series for her and my favourite of the series. This is Lucy Wellingham's story. Lucy is the youngest child with 3 older brothers. She's wild for a Regency society daughter, and this story is so perfect for wild Lucy - it doesn't tame her but curbs her perfectly with the wildest man she could end up with!





And that's my read-a-thon over. Now I better get back to writing!

Phallic Friday - penis envy

A fun post for today - well I hope you find it fun!

This past week I've had the pleasure of the company of my family - my dad, a sister and her 2 kids - Mr 5 and Ms 1.5. I was Mr 5's chosen bath helper and the other night we were in the bathroom and I was trying to get him out of the bath and dry - not an easy feat some nights. Somehow we had a conversation that went something like this -

Mr 5 - I have a penis.
Me - Yes, I know. You're a boy.
Mr 5 - I have a sac too with my testicles.
Me - Yes. Boys have that too.
Mr 5 - You don't have them.
Me - No, I don't.
Mr 5 - They're not much fun to have.
Me - Well, I think they'd be great. You get to pee wherever and whenever you want to.

Conversation got distracted and I can't remember what happened - which seemed the theme for the week.

Next day, Mr 5, Dad and I go out fishing in Dad's tinny (small boat). After a time Mr 5 has to pee. So Dad holds the bucket for Mr 5 to aim at (a cut off milk container, no huge bucket here - the bait was sacrificed for the peeing). I couldn't help myself but point out that for 40 years I had been hanging on to my pee in the fishing boat, while all the boys who fished with us, could just pee into a container while I had to avert my eyes and grinding my teeth with jealousy. Dad laughed. He could hardly remember such occasions but I could rattle them off the top off my head.

Mr 5 realised that having a penis wasn't so bad.

Aunty Cate realised she still had penis envy!

ANZAC Day

I'm not a morning person but one day of the year I get up without too much grumbling and head on to the Dawn Service for ANZAC Day. I've been doing this since I was about 12 or so. As I kid I took my dog with me (for protection) and I'd stand quietly in the shadows and pay my respects. It was something I felt very strongly about. My grandfather served in WWII in the Army and his brother served in the Air Force. My Great Uncle had no children and I have inherited his war service medals, which I consider a great honour. I tuck the small band of ribbon into my pocket and think of them both during the service.

And my first book has an Army sergeant as the hero. I wonder if there's something in that?

It's a nice excuse for another look at the cover
:)

Happy ANZAC Day.