Tilly Hunter's Blog, page 12

A year of stories

I'm coming up to a year of committed writing effort. At times I've taken on too much and had half a dozen or more deadlines looming for calls for short story submissions. And I still haven't got very far on writing a longer work. But I've learnt a few things along the way. Bear with me while I give you the stats.


Since last spring, I have written 32 stories. I've just gone through and totted up the word counts: 111,300.

The shortest is a 500-word piece, Vermilion Number Six, published by the Fo...

Smut by the Sea: Inspiration

Inspiration’s a funny thing. Stop by on Friday May 3rd and you can read master storyteller Kay Jaybee’s thoughts on the matter. I’ve been thinking of the roundabout ways in which I pieced together my story, Stuck on the Edge, for Smut by the Sea Vol 2.

The story is set on Bardsey Island, where a happily married couple escape for their first holiday alone without the kids for several years. They have one last paddle in the bay near their little stone cottage before they’re due to get the boat b...

Out now: Smut by the Sea vol 2

Ooh, I've got a new story out, Stuck on the Edge in Smut by the Sea volume 2.

Here's the blurb for the book:

Light-hearted, sexy fun by the sea is the theme of this erotic anthology, edited by Victoria Blisse and Lucy Felthouse.

From the sun-soaked beaches of Brazil to the altogether cooler coastal towns of England, Smut by the Sea Volume 2 has it all. Whatever your interpretation of naughty seaside fun, there’s something nestling between the covers for you. Amusement arcades, beach houses, merm...

Lust in Time reviewed

There's a fab five-star review of Lust in Time, edited by Rob Rosen, over at Hearts on Fire Reviews.Reviewer Aggie says there's "a little bit of something for anyone who enjoys historical gay fiction". She picks out the stories she believes were the "standouts of the anthology and are what makes Lust In Time highly recommended and extremely enjoyable". And this is what she says about 27 AD, by yours truly:I loved this because it was kinky, borderline non-consensual, and ve...

A writing experiment

Just after publishing my last post, about writing discreetly in a notebook, preferably whilst hiding in a cabin in the woods, I read a snippet in the arts section of my union mag The Journalist about the book Dragon Lords by Silvia Hartmann and her project The Naked Writer. 

Hartmann went in completely the opposite direction and wrote her novel live online using Google Drive so people could see her writing and editing in real time. As she was writing, people were commenting in a separate...

In praise of the notebook

Virtually every advice guide for the novice writer will tell you to keep a notebook with you at all times for that moment when you have a brilliant idea and if you don’t write it down straight away you’ll lose it for ever. Sound enough advice but pretty obvious. I find a notebook useful for far more than that.
I’m the sort of person who fantasises about running off to a little cabin in the woods and living off the land, a la Henry David Thoreau in Walden. I have, in fact, just started to write...

Review: Vanilla with Extra Nuts by Victoria Blisse

What’s better than having one hot man attentive to your, ahem, needs? Having two, of course. That’s the upshot of this fun and fabulous story of one woman, her fella and her fella’s fella. The title itself had me hooked for its jokiness, which is perfect for the feelgood tone of the book. 
Although Megan and Adam have their problems – namely the fact that she didn’t realise he was bi, let alone in a casual relationship with another guy – there is little serious angst going on. The charact...

Waiting for the muse to strike

I just read a post by Elizabeth Black at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. It's titled: 'Don't wait for your muse to strike; you'll wait for ever.' It's a topic I'd already been pondering after a period when I managed to get thousands of words done despite being run off my feet with other work and family commitments. 

Elizabeth points out that you can't wait for inspiration
to strike, or you'll never write anything. She advises setting yourself goals, treating writing like a vo...

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, all an author had to do was start a story at the beginning and keep writing until they reached the end. And sometimes that is still the way to do it, especially if you happen to be producing an eroticised version of a traditional fairytale. However, some bright spark started spouting Latin and going on about stories starting in the middle of the action: ‘in media res’. It was, in fact, some Roman dude called Horace talking about Homer’s The Iliad in the first century BC. Tha...

Who's telling this damn story?

I've been thinking about the decisions every writer makes for every story about narrative voice and tenses. Sometimes you have a brilliant idea for an opening scene. You rush to the laptop to get it down in all its glory. Then you kind of peter out and all you've got is a mood piece. And you realise that in your rush to start writing, you made a number of unconscious decisions about who’s telling the story and in what tense. Often, what’s needed to get the story flowing again, is to real...