Aubrey Watt's Blog, page 3

Writing Erotica for Charity

This charity bundle will make you feel hot and horny AND warm and fuzzy! All proceeds of this huge 50-story paranormal erotica bundle will be going straight to charity:water, a fantastic charity that is working to bring safe, clean drinking water around the world. Water changes everything.

If you want to buy my new book, please buy it in this bundle. It's the same price – ONLY $2.99 FOR 50 STORIES – for just a few days, so snap it up while you still can at this bargain-basement price! My story in there is my newest release, a gay erotic romcom about a demon (demonromcom?) called His Demonic Punishment:

A mild-mannered demon just trying to do his job assignment meets a very intriguing prisoner–er, client–in the torture chambers. Azmodeus is a professional torturer, but Dan's charm has him beginning to rethink his priorities. Can a shy demon and a confident, bondage-loving sinner ever make it work in the depths of Hell?

***

Excerpt:

"Are you going to punish me, Az?" he said, his voice like soft cream. Azmodeus's lips parted and he quickly grabbed the rope above Dan's head, jerking him upwards so that his arms were taut. He had never been called by a nickname before; it wasn't something you did in hell, and he wondered why it pleased him so much to hear it. The wondering gave way to professionalism as he raised his hand and swatted Dan's ass.

"Oh!" Dan cried, jerking forward with the force of the blow. "Ohh!" Azmodeus raised his hand again and again brought it down, enjoying the way Dan's body shuddered at the impact. After a few more swats, he realized that Dan was enjoying it as well, maybe more, the evidence of that enjoyment becoming ever more apparent through the hard outline of the bulge at his crotch.

It was a large bulge, as bulges go.

Azmodeus felt his mouth go dry as he realized that he was having an arousing effect on the prisoner who in all likelihood had murdered several people, or injured a small herd of kittens, or perhaps eaten one too many rare steaks; who really knew why people got sent down here to be tortured anyway?

Dan's erection was clearly visible now, and he smiled salaciously at Azmodeus as the demon came closer to him, even as sweat beaded on his brow from the heat of the hellfire in the room. The next escalation of punishment was supposed to be spanks on bare skin, but Azmodeus was hesitant. He feared arousal, not the prisoner's but his own, as he drew near the man and smelled his musk.

"Please–" Dan said, but Azmodeus did not want to hear him beg. Not yet.

"Quiet," Azmodeus whispered, and one clawed limb reached up and hooked itself around the waistband of Dan's pants. Dan's eyebrows went up, but he said nothing, lips tight in obedience. His muscles flexed against the rope holding him up as the claw pulled down the fabric and all that was underneath, shifting, then releasing Dan's cock into the fiery air. The black rock background made him look heroic in that pose, his strong arms stretched out above his head, glistening with sweatdrops that reflected the golden light. It was altogether a very appealing effect. Asmodeus's heart beat just a bit faster.

Azmodeus reached back and spanked the man, his hand making a loud smack on the smooth skin of Dan's asscheeks. Dan's mouth opened but he did not let the moan escape his lips. That was good. Azmodeus reached underneath the table and found a gag, which he slipped around Dan's head.

"Just in case," he said softly, tying the gag snugly into place. Dan looked at him beseechingly, or at least Az thought it was beseeching. With his mouth completely covered, it was hard to tell, wasn't it? But there was no mistaking the delighted moan that came from under the gag when Azmodeus spanked him again.

***

What are you waiting for? Get your charity on while getting yourself off!

I Broke $1k! (In My Third Month of Self-Publishing eBooks)

January was my first month jumping into the world of self-publishing, and I made $115. February was $720, which just floored me. I'm so excited that my writing is actually starting to bring in some real money! March was a great month – looking like I'm going to hit $1200 or so – but, more importantly, I managed to achieve a lot of my other goals:

redesigning my website so it looks nicer (still nowhere near perfect, but I'm taking it one step at a time)
publishing at least 1 story every week
doing the free GIMP tutorials for fellow indie authors who want to learn to make their own eBook covers
joining Adam&Eve as an affiliate (referral link here for those interested in joining through me)
breaking the 30 title mark, woo!

I had some absolutely stellar days (for me, anyway) where I would sell 40-50 books in one day, and ended the month with an average of 26 books/day even with the fiasco of publishing sites censoring and filtering stories. I also decided to branch out and do cover art services with a super-cheap basic eBook cover option. I only got a few clients from that, but it's definitely something I like to do to give myself a break from other work.

Marketing and Promotion: This month I tweeted my new gay parody of The Hunger Games called The Hung Games and got some new subscribers for my newsletter, which I haven't been doing enough to promote. I did an author interview at Polly J Adams' blog. I've been watching the Novelrank trends for my books, and I'm going to focus my efforts on the kinds of stories that seem to do well (I have a couple of great ideas on the back burner!).

The one goal that I failed was one that I will be working on in the days to come: Consistency.

I wanted to write at least 1k words every day, and I didn't. This will be a priority in the month of April. I'm not making any sales goals – I prefer to set goals that are within my control – but it would be nice to keep the pace up at least. Repeating to myself in the mirror: the best advertising is writing more.

Don’t Read and Write

I’m currently in the middle of a short story series called Indulgence Gay Cruises that, and I’m being completely honest here, I think is absolutely fabulous. It follows the adventures of two best friends on a gay cruise ship, and I’m having a blast writing the characters and their backstory and all of the little emotional pieces that tie the story together. There’s really only one problem: I’m reading while writing, and it’s a goddamn minefield.

Everybody says to write the kind of stuff you love to read, and now I know why. If you read stuff that isn’t at all what you’re writing, you end up writing something that you shouldn’t. I began this series while reading David Sedaris, and I couldn’t stop writing snarky little sidebits that did not fit at all into the romantic tone I wanted for the books. I had to go back through and edit out all of the little Sedaris pieces, picking them out like eggshells in a banana bread batter you’ve already started mixing together. Then I finished Sedaris and moved onto David Foster Wallace.

Have you ever tried to write a gay sex scene while just having read David Foster Wallace? I have. It’s impossible. You start out writing about tight asses and end up trying to use those selfsame tight asses to symbolize the post-ironic photoshopped culture of social media. You begin to use words like selfsame. Your sentences run on and on and become paragraphs, and those paragraphs turn into half-page monstrosities where you talk about anything in the scene except for what you are supposed to be talking about, which is cocks and asses and the former inserting themselves into the latter, and you end up throwing the whole thing out in a fit of rage, because you can’t write the story like Sedaris and the sex like Wallace, it just doesn’t WORK, and then you’re back to square one with a blank page and a cock that hasn’t so much as throbbed yet, let alone inserted itself into an ass. Jesus.

Authors, tell your children: don’t read and write.

Don't Read and Write

I'm currently in the middle of a short story series called Indulgence Gay Cruises that, and I'm being completely honest here, I think is absolutely fabulous. It follows the adventures of two best friends on a gay cruise ship, and I'm having a blast writing the characters and their backstory and all of the little emotional pieces that tie the story together. There's really only one problem: I'm reading while writing, and it's a goddamn minefield.

Everybody says to write the kind of stuff you love to read, and now I know why. If you read stuff that isn't at all what you're writing, you end up writing something that you shouldn't. I began this series while reading David Sedaris, and I couldn't stop writing snarky little sidebits that did not fit at all into the romantic tone I wanted for the books. I had to go back through and edit out all of the little Sedaris pieces, picking them out like eggshells in a banana bread batter you've already started mixing together. Then I finished Sedaris and moved onto David Foster Wallace.

Have you ever tried to write a gay sex scene while just having read David Foster Wallace? I have. It's impossible. You start out writing about tight asses and end up trying to use those selfsame tight asses to symbolize the post-ironic photoshopped culture of social media. You begin to use words like selfsame. Your sentences run on and on and become paragraphs, and those paragraphs turn into half-page monstrosities where you talk about anything in the scene except for what you are supposed to be talking about, which is cocks and asses and the former inserting themselves into the latter, and you end up throwing the whole thing out in a fit of rage, because you can't write the story like Sedaris and the sex like Wallace, it just doesn't WORK, and then you're back to square one with a blank page and a cock that hasn't so much as throbbed yet, let alone inserted itself into an ass. Jesus.

Authors, tell your children: don't read and write.

Patricia Lockwood’s Sexts

Just read a lovely little article of Patricia Lockwood’s sexts. She is a poet who has written some really bang-up funny stuff, some of it sexy in a ridiculous sort of way, and she’s very active on twitter. Here are a few of her sexts that made me crack up:

I play Whac-A-Mole and all the moles let me whac them. They rise up to meet me, they desire nothing more than to be whac

Mavis Beacon bursts out of the computer and shows me where to put my fingers

Mavis Beacon urges my fingers to move faster, faster, and ever faster. “80 words a minute or your money back,” she whispers

And here is a poem of hers about the Kindle that she just posted on her blog:

***
Poem for Jonathan Franzen,

Poem Called “Death of the Book”

And they cried for it was called a Kindle,

and they cried for it came to burn books,

and burn all books like a first-growth

………forest. Made by wizards! And full,

they claim, of magic e-ink, that assembles

itself in the dark like crowds. Because

someone’s getting burned on the bonfire

later, and his name is Book, The Book.

Some homeless guy. He’s gross. We hate

him. Stay in your cardboard box, old man!

The Book sleeps in his box and dreams,

and dreams of dirty oral, and is awakened

by big hands lifting him out. The crowd

of e-ink whispers to itself, the crowd of e-ink

huddles together, held in the hand of some-

one larger. And there goes the match,

……………and there goes the newspaper.

To read the first Kindle by the light

………………………of a homeless trashcan

fire – the experience beggars description!

Makes description a beggar wearing finger-

less gloves. He got holes in his pockets and

holes in his socks and the soles of his boots

they open to speak. Every time he reads

a word it slips out of him somewhere. It slips

out and the beggar cries. He just wants to be

able to hold again what happened to Anna

Karenina. Killed by the train of progress,

beggar. Killed by the demon belching smoke.

The arms that would hold her own book

lopped off! And the reader staring down

at the tracks, watching the e-ink assemble

around her, “Oh the youngest technology,

Anna Karenina!” cries the crowd out to her body.

“Oh she is cheap and light and everywhere!”

And all of her penny-elongated, and 99 cents

……………………………………………on the Kindle.
***

I love it!

Patricia Lockwood's Sexts

Just read a lovely little article of Patricia Lockwood's sexts. She is a poet who has written some really bang-up funny stuff, some of it sexy in a ridiculous sort of way, and she's very active on twitter. Here are a few of her sexts that made me crack up:

I play Whac-A-Mole and all the moles let me whac them. They rise up to meet me, they desire nothing more than to be whac

Mavis Beacon bursts out of the computer and shows me where to put my fingers

Mavis Beacon urges my fingers to move faster, faster, and ever faster. "80 words a minute or your money back," she whispers

And here is a poem of hers about the Kindle that she just posted on her blog:

***
Poem for Jonathan Franzen,

Poem Called "Death of the Book"

And they cried for it was called a Kindle,

and they cried for it came to burn books,

and burn all books like a first-growth

………forest. Made by wizards! And full,

they claim, of magic e-ink, that assembles

itself in the dark like crowds. Because

someone's getting burned on the bonfire

later, and his name is Book, The Book.

Some homeless guy. He's gross. We hate

him. Stay in your cardboard box, old man!

The Book sleeps in his box and dreams,

and dreams of dirty oral, and is awakened

by big hands lifting him out. The crowd

of e-ink whispers to itself, the crowd of e-ink

huddles together, held in the hand of some-

one larger. And there goes the match,

……………and there goes the newspaper.

To read the first Kindle by the light

………………………of a homeless trashcan

fire – the experience beggars description!

Makes description a beggar wearing finger-

less gloves. He got holes in his pockets and

holes in his socks and the soles of his boots

they open to speak. Every time he reads

a word it slips out of him somewhere. It slips

out and the beggar cries. He just wants to be

able to hold again what happened to Anna

Karenina. Killed by the train of progress,

beggar. Killed by the demon belching smoke.

The arms that would hold her own book

lopped off! And the reader staring down

at the tracks, watching the e-ink assemble

around her, "Oh the youngest technology,

Anna Karenina!" cries the crowd out to her body.

"Oh she is cheap and light and everywhere!"

And all of her penny-elongated, and 99 cents

……………………………………………on the Kindle.
***

I love it!

Alan Turing: Gay Hero

From the day he was born — 23 June 1912 — Alan Mathison Turing seemed destined to solitude, misunderstanding and persecution…

This month Nature is doing a special collection of articles and essays on Alan Turing, one of my personal heroes.

For those who don't know Alan Turing, he was one of the pioneers of computer science and artificial intelligence as well as a brilliant scientist and mathematician. A genius at codebreaking and cryptography, he was the man who figured out how to crack the German's Enigma machine during World War II, a breakthrough that many say ended the war two years early. Churchill himself said that "it was thanks to Ultra [breaking the codes] that we won the war."

Did Turing get a medal for his work to end World War II? National recognition as a hero? No. In one of the most tragic occurrences in all of scientific history, Alan Turing was prosecuted for the crime of being gay ("gross indecency" due to homosexual acts, in the terms of 1952). Rather than renounce his sexuality or go to prison, Turing allowed himself to be chemically castrated, a disgusting act of torture against a man who had done everything he could for his country.

It was two years after his prosecution and chemical castration that Alan Turing was found dead at age 41. He had committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

It makes me weep with anger to think of Alan Turing, one of the most selfless and brilliant men in science, persecuted and killed by ignorant and hateful people simply for being gay. With the recent repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell, it seems that it has taken us a hundred years to be able to accept gay war heroes for who they truly are.

Turing's legacy will live on, and I encourage everyone to go and peruse the articles written in Nature (some of the articles are behind a paywall):

The Man Behind the Machine gives an overview of Turing's contributions to computer science

Ghost in the Machine is a fictional story about artificial consciousness.

I am currently writing a novella about artificial intelligence that deals with the romance between an artificially created human and the doctor who helps him find emotion. I've been stuck on finding a name for the android, but I think I've got it now–Alan.

The Virtue of Erotica

There have been some ruffled feathers over the recent changes at Bookstrand and All Romance eBooks. I was very sorry to have to leave Bookstrand, and I hope that All Romance eventually ends up with a workable solution to the problem without having to ban all indie authors. There are many virtues to erotica in all of its forms, and I hate to see authors tearing each other apart over a difference of genre. It's as though Stephenie Meyer started bashing Stephen King for writing stuff that was too scary. Come on people, we can all get along!

So rather than focus on all the negative stuff going on, I'd like to look at some of the virtues of erotica as I see them:

1. Erotica makes my sex life better.

This is probably the biggest benefit that I've noticed when I talk with other people who read erotica. After reading an erotica story, I am hot and bothered like nobody's business; getting overheated is possibly the only occupational hazard erotica writers face. Stories that thrill and titillate us have the added benefit of getting us ready to jump into bed with our partners at any time of the day. Erotica is the best kind of mental foreplay.

2. Erotica helps me communicate.

I'm sometimes shy when it comes to communication in the bedroom, especially when I want to try something new. When I first wanted my partner to tie me up to the bed, I was too nervous to talk about it out loud. Instead, I found it much easier to just send him a story with that kind of kink in it, and let him get the picture! Erotica stories also give me new ideas to experiment with in the bedroom. Reading has never been so much fun!

3. Erotica thrives on imagination.

As a writer, I love coming up with novel ideas to put into my stories. My favorite stories are those which make me think in a new way or feel something differently. Since reading and writing erotica, I've found myself becoming more creative and imaginative, which is great for me and for you.

Even though I write mostly erotic romance, I do think that all forms of erotica are worthwhile, and I would urge anyone who doesn't like one form or the other to simply ignore it, and as publishers get better at separating genres we will all benefit. All writers who put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) are trying to express themselves through something, whether it is a story, a character, or simply a feeling. Censoring any form of expression is rarely effective and never deserved. I would not think to impose my personal ethical code onto anyone else's creative expression, no matter how repugnant I might find it.

I want to leave you all with a quote from one of my favorite authors ever, Vladimir Nabokov, whose classic and controversial novel Lolita was once called "pornographic trash" by a publisher:

"There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction…For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm."

Curiosity. Tenderness. Kindness. Ecstasy. I'll keep working on those. Especially that last one.

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

One of the first stories I ever read online was a mix of science fiction, thriller, and erotica. It had philosophy and computers and sex with zombies, Death Contracts and puzzles and ethical dilemmas about artificial intelligence. It was absolutely titillating in all the right ways and some of the wrong ones.

These days, lots of online publishers are pulling questionable material from their shelves, and Roger Williams covers just about all of the taboo topics in The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, from incest to rape, to, well, sex with zombies. That said, it's a hell of a ride and a fun story to boot. The science fiction is just science-y enough and the characters are vividly drawn, with a strong female protagonist and some interesting relationships along the way.

One caveat: I hate the last chapter, and I'm not alone. For me, it was as though the writer didn't trust me to imagine the right ending, kind of like the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. If you have the fortitude, I highly recommend stopping at Chapter 7 and pretending Chapter 8 doesn't exist. Unless you liked the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. In that case, what is wrong with you?

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is free online, and I highly encourage you to read it and donate to the author's tip jar:

http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/

Here's how it opens:

***

Her name was Caroline Frances Hubert, and she had three claims to fame.

In the first place she was the thirty-seventh oldest living human being. Caroline herself was unimpressed by this fact. To her way of thinking it was the result of an accident, nothing more. In any case she had been the thirty-seventh oldest human being for a long, long time, and it got to seem more of a bore than an accomplishment after a while.

In the second place she had once been infected with rabies. Caroline was rather proud of this distinction, though it had also been a long time ago. There was a certain class of people who were quite impressed with Caroline's bout with rabies, not so much because she survived it but because she hadn't. It had taken Prime Intellect fifty-six hours to realize it couldn't repair the damage to her nervous system, to backtrack, and to put her together again like Humpty Dumpty. For fifty-six hours, she had not existed. She had been dead. And she was the only one of the trillions of souls in Cyberspace who had ever been dead, even for a little while.

In the third place, and most important to Caroline because it represented a real accomplishment rather than an accident or a one-shot stab of cleverness, she was undisputed Queen of the Death Jockeys. She would always be the thirty-seventh oldest person, and after her rabies experiment Prime Intellect had shut the door on further explorations of that nature. But the Death Jockeys constantly rated and ranked themselves by inventiveness and daring and many other factors. It was an ongoing competition, and if Caroline didn't keep working at it she'd be lost in an always-growing crowd of contenders. Caroline wouldn't admit that her high ranking was important to her, but it was all she had and she threw herself at it with an energy that was fierce and sometimes startling.

***

A Girl Who Reads

I just came across an absolutely fantastic spoken word poem by Mark Grist. It's funny, touching, and lord oh lord, does his British accent make me swoon. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWwXJT4LA5A

Here's the text of the poem if you can't listen right now, but let me tell you, hearing it is worth it:

A Girl Who Reads

"So, what do you go for in a girl?" he crows, lifting the lager to his lips.

He gestures where his mate sits, then downs his glass.

"He prefers tits.

I prefer arse.

What do you go for in a girl?"

Well, um, I feel quite uncomfortable, the air left the room a  long time ago,

All eyes are on me.

"If you must know, I like a girl who … reads.

Yeah, reads.

I'm not trying to call you a chauvinist,

Because I know that you're not alone in this,

But I'd like a girl who reads.

Who needs the written words

and who uses the added vocabulary

she gleans from novels and poetry

to hold lively conversation

in a range of social situations.

I like a girl who reads,

whose heart bleeds at the words of Graham Greene … or even Heat magazine.

Who ties back her hair when she's reading Jane Eyre

and who goes cover to cover with each Waterstones 3 for 2 offer.

But I want a girl who won't stop there,

I want a girl who reads,

who feeds her addiction for fiction

with unusual poems and plays that she hunts out in crooked bookshops

for days and days and days.

She'll sit addicted at breakfast,

soaking up the back of the cornflakes box

and the info she gets from what she reads makes her a total fox.

Because she's interesting and she's uniqu

and her theories make me go weak

at the knees.

I want a girl who reads.

A girl whose eyes will analyse the menu over dinner,

who'll use what she learns to kick my arse in arguments so she always ends the winner but she'd still be sweet

and she'd still be flirty cos she loves the classics

and they're pretty dirty

and that means late at night she'll always have me in a stupor,

as we re-enact the raunchy bits from the works of Jilly Cooper.

See, some guys prefer arses,

some prefer tits,

and I am not saying that I don't like those bits.

But what's more important, what supercedes

is a girl with passion, wit and dreams.

So I like a girl who reads."

- Mark Grist