Skye Warren's Blog, page 21

Announcing the Hot Summer Nights Erotica Bloghop

Are you an author of erotica? A blogger of smutty subjects? This bloghop is for you!

What the heck is a blog hop?

A blog hop is when a group of bloggers post on the same topic and offer a giveaway (usually books). I've had good traffic results when I've participated in the past, but those hops weren't targeted for my genre.

This hop is specifically for erotica and kinky books – the naughtier the better! It may end up smaller than other hops but every visitor will be our kind of reader.

Give me the details, baby:

Your post should be up BY June 19th, midnight, and accept entries THROUGH midnight June 24th.
You can write about anything related to erotica + kinky + summer and you should include a giveaway (can be a book, gift card, etc)
I'm not so hip to the rafflecopter business, but readers should be able to enter with only a comment (no signing up, following, etc)

Grand Prize!

In addition to the giveaway at each blog, one commenter from the tour will win a $100 gift card to the online sex merchandise shop, Eden Fantasys. I wanted to do something different from the Kindle that other blog hops do. I think our core readers mostly have them already! This is another way we can attract the right people.

PLUS, I'd like to offer an erotica goody basket made up of books from participating authors. Donation to this (digital) basket is not mandatory, but I am thinking this is a good place to promote your backlist!

Books currently included in the basket:

  

I want to play! What do I do?

Sign up in the link list below with your name (or blog name) and URL
Add the Bloghop image to your blog sidebar with this:

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Send me an email with the title of the book you're donating to the group bundle grand prize (not required)
Invite erotica/kinky authors and bloggers you know. The more participation, the better for us AND the readers.

Thanks for joining! If you have any questions, please email me at skye@skyewarren.com.

Why read dark erotica?

This is a question I struggle with, both as an author and reader of dark erotica. It's not exactly fun, the way a light erotic romp would be. Sometimes it can be downright disturbing.

One thing I can say is that I do enjoy a happy ending. By this I mean the hero and heroine must end up together. So maybe that is part of it: I want to know that suffering can end well. I don't think that's the sum of it, though. It's also to explore the dark recesses of my mind. What is going on in there and how do I feel about it? Or maybe I am a masochist through and through. Even in my fiction, I want it to hurt

Recently I received a great review for Trust in Me from Erica at Wicked Reads. In it, she talks about why she likes to read dark erotica:

For me dark erotica holds a very small niche in the erotica genre. When written well it is extremely psychological and fulfills certain needs for the reader. I liken it to a cutter using a razor blade to have a visual release of the pain that is held within their soul.

I love her explanation! It's disturbing (as it should be, probably) but really resonates with me.

What do you think? What drives you to read dark stories?

Six Sunday #10

Welcome to my serialized short, Escape. If you've missed the story up until now, go ahead and catch up at the compilation page here. Escape is set in the same world as my recent release, Trust in Me.

The whole thing had been a massive risk. Not only could they have found her, but they might have left the cell door locked. She'd have preferred to starve than go with them.

 

Tiffany huddled in the wall for hours after the last ringing footsteps had faded, sure that they would realize their mistake and come back for her. Or maybe they'd jump out at her from the walls once she emerged, laughing at the futility of her hope.

 

The halls were empty.

Thanks for playing! Be sure to visit the other sixers here.

Interview with Mia and Cover Reveal

AN INTERVIEW WITH MIA

I'm on Jennifer Lowery's blog today for a character interview with Mia from Trust in Me. Jennifer and I have been writing buddies for a while, and she was one of the beta readers for Trust in Me.

The interview is set after the end of the book, but no spoilers, so I think you will find it interesting whether you have read it or not. I'll be honest – I got a little emotional writing that one. I am quite fond of that girl. See what Mia has to say >

COVER REVEAL FOR LEASHED

Leashed is an M/M dystopian novella, written for the GoodReads M/M Group's Love is Always Write Event.

Drake is a hardened soldier whose mission is to interrogate a captive using whatever means necessary. Neither fighting nor mouthing off will get Sebastian free, but as he learns more about the man underneath the uniform, he wonders if he really wants to be.

The story is slated to run mid-May through July exclusively to the group, after which it will be available in an anthology through the group or via my website. Subscribe to my blog to get notified when it's out.

 

Six Sunday #9

It's official! Welcome to the serialized short story, Escape. If you need to catch up, you can read the first two parts here and here.

She'd mouthed off the night before and landed in the infirmary. Then she pretended to be fine, almost killing herself in the process, just so they'd release her back into her cell. She counted on the confusion about her actual location and the bustle of the transit.

Shockingly, it worked. They opened her door and glanced inside, and then moved on, leaving the door open.

She felt bad about the muffled cries of the other women, but she couldn't help them, not when she could barely help herself.

Stay tuned to Six Sunday for more of Escape, but if you want more, now, check out Trust in Me, which is set in the same world.

Thanks and be sure to visit the other sixers!

What is dubious consent?

I saw a tweet the other day that said dubious consent is a misnomer. If the consent is dubious, she said, then it's not consent. The implication being that it's rape.

There is outright, straightforward consent, where both the man and the woman absolutely, positively want sex and say so out loud, and never question it throughout or after the act. Then there is outright, straightforward rape, where either one or the other does not want sex, and says so, and fights back, and reports it after as rape. Both of these cases are as clear as day, but there is a whole lot of gray area in between.

For example, what if a woman consents to sex but changes her mind? What if she consents to sex but the man is too rough? What if she never verbalizes the word "no" or fights back, but she is thinking them the entire time? To be honest, most people consider these rape, and I would agree tend with them (though specifics matter too).

It gets more ambiguous. What if a woman feels pressure that she will be physically harmed if she does not comply? Probably that's rape, but what if the man never really, directly threatens her? What if he does not even realize that's her fear? Does it make sense to label him a rapist because he's too stupid to realize it and she did not verbalize her refusal?

Or, if instead of fear of physical harm, what if she is concerned about financial harm? Maybe her kid is sick and she needs the money or maybe she just wants a new Prada bag. And what about blackmail, like to expose someone's past or dirty pics or whatever, does it count as rape? What if a woman chooses to have sex with her husband every night, though she doesn't enjoy it, so that her kids will have a roof over her head. It may not be rape, but it definitely counts as dubious consent.

To me this is the biggest grey area of all: misunderstanding. Words of consent or force are not often spoken. So much is nonverbal or built into other words through innuendo. Even the most nicest guy, who would never dream of raping a woman, rarely demands the words "Yes, I want to have sex with you" before going in. No, he relies on cues, which means there is room for error. The tragedy of these scenarios is that the woman may feel violated and suffer shame, and yet the man is not a rapist.

In the prologue to "Yes Means Yes", Margaret Cho has an essay that is very compelling, but her story is that she was in man's apartment. In the middle of the night, he came and had sex with her. I don't want to put words into her mouth, but it seems like it felt like rape to her. As a reader, I got that feeling. And yet, she didn't say no. How is that different from so many other non-rape sexual encounters, where the woman was a totally willing participant?

One difference is that she didn't want it. And yet, desire can't really be used as a litmus test for rape. There are women who've experienced orgasms during rape, that doesn't make it any less so. And conversely, a woman who has no physical desire may consent, and it's not rape. One does not imply the other, either way.

The thing I've found, in discussing these issues, is that every woman falls at a slightly different point, making it virtually impossible to make blanket statements. Now, back to the woman who made the comment about dubious consent = rape, that might be true for her. I'm doubtful she considered all the situations that fall into dubious consent, but maybe she did. Perhaps she looks at every single scenario I've described here, and some I haven't, and feels that anything other than verbal, explicit, 100% consent is rape. That may be true for her.

Verbal consent is a rare thing to give. Who starts off sex with a Q&A session? BDSM does formalize this process, which is ironic since its players are sometimes accused of being rapists. But who among the vanilla folks checks in about consent and limits between the after-dinner coffee and hitting the sheets?

Truth is, dubious consent is more common than not.

Six Sunday #8

Hello there! This is a continuation of the story Escape, which started here. I am contemplating six-sundaying the entire story start to finish (as it's a short one), but we'll see how far I get. Has this been done before? I do like to try new things.

And yes, I used "six-sunday" as a verb. Call me a pioneer! Somebody, anybody? Okay, here we go:

Safety had become a foreign concept exactly four weeks and three days ago. The cab she'd taken from the airport in Cabo had driven her, not to her hotel, but to a warehouse. From that moment, her life had been over, but the pain never stopped.

After the four agonizing months of training, her captors were moving her and the other women. For two weeks she'd scraped and dug into the crumbly rock behind the metal toilet. It would never lead outside, but the hole was big enough for her to crawl into, and that's what she'd done as the men swept through the cells.

Thanks and be sure to visit the other sixers!

Six Sunday #7

Hello, sixers! This is a snippet from a short story I'm working on called Escape. It's set in the same world as Trust in Me, kind of like a teaser story but with its own little cast and HEA of sorts. Here's the start:

She would not cower.

Tiffany crawled over the damp concrete, ignoring the thick moldy grime beneath her hands and knees. Ignoring the way her torn skin and cramped muscles screamed at her to stop. None of it mattered when her life was at stake.

She would not break.

Even though her plan had worked, she was far from safe.

Thanks and be sure to visit the other sixers here!

On being submissive

If you like a man (or two) to blindfold you or tie you up so that that they can worship your body for hours with their hands and mouth, that does not mean you are a submissive. You are what's known as a woman. Seriously, there are plenty of vanilla women who would line up for that treatment.

If you like your partner to be strong and caring and protective, but never intrude upon your independence, then that does not make you a submissive. It just means you're a human.

In my reading circles, BDSM has been the "in" trend for a LONG time. However, I realize it's only now gaining some mainstream recognition. But some of the depictions really make me sigh. Actually it's not even 50 Shades that I'm referring to, but others.

I don't care if you're vanilla or kinky. Own it.

But if you try to tell me that being submissive means having a man give you everything you want and nothing you don't want, I'm going to roll my eyes. Even in a fantasy, like BDSM romance, that is a step too far.

On writing wicked

I'm at Eden Connor's blog talking about why I write such dirty, wicked things:

I have always seen the world in shades of consent. When the teenage boy leans in for a kiss, does the girl give explicit consent first? Probably not, so he learns early on to search for clues. Or maybe he learns just to go for it, and deal with the consequences after.

It doesn't stop there. Even when we're older, the entire dating ritual is an elegant-awkward dance toward mating. The first date, the third? Wait until they're married, and then what – is consent implicit?

For me, the issue of consent has never been confined to erotica. It's in all fiction, everywhere, because that's the crux of conflict. In fact, I can write in couched terms, pretty it up, and sell it as anything I want. Science fiction, horror, general fiction. It's only if I want to be direct does it come up, because then I'm writing about sex, which by default of our genre structure makes it erotica, and that's what's under fire.

Come by and say hello.