Tilly Hunter's Blog, page 14

Happy Valentine's Day

As Valentine's Day approaches and the world of erotic romance goes into overdrive to sell you sweet tales of happy every afters... I'm wondering what the February 14 version of Bah Humbug would be. This picture comes close. And if you prefer to stick with the Scrooge version, here's some subversive cross-stitch:

DIY Editing Tips

I know how it is. You’re writing your first novel or starting off with some short stories to submit to anthologies. You don’t have the money to pay for an editor or proofreader. So at the same time as doing a very 'soft' launch of my editing/proofreading business over at www.tillyhunter.co.uk, I bring you some tips for doing it yourself.
1. Three-stage editing
Once you've wrestled your first draft into shape, I see the editing process as having three stages. First up comes editing for what...

Inspiration: Miranda's Tempest

'Widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language.' That's Shakespeare, obviously, from his Wikipedia entry. I wonder what he'd make of the internet. And I wonder what he'd make of all the reinterpretations of his work today, the movie versions, the feminist versions, the queer versions, the postcolonial versions, the erotic versions... I tend to think that he'd be a Tarantino or a Scorsese if he were around today.

When it comes to gender identities and sexual politics, he did a...

Published: Miranda's Tempest

Oh jeepers. It's here. My first book. Okay, so it's an ebook. But still. That's my name. On the cover. (Okay, so it's my pseudonym, but you get the idea.)

Well. 

I'm a little excited. And suddenly a little scared too.

Anyway, it's three short stories, totalling around 14,000 words. And they are kinky reworkings of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Grimms' Hansel and Gretel and Homer's The Odyssey. 

Here's the blurb: Miranda loves to submit to her forbidden lover, Caliban, but she wields a powe...

Writing tips: A link-a-thon

I've read some really thought-provoking and useful tips recently on writing erotica, on writing in general and on getting it published so I thought I'd pull the links together in one place. Some of them are about the writing itself, some about the tweaking and polishing, others touch on what editors might be looking for. Some of it's the obvious stuff but I found some insights and new perspectives that I know I'll be learning from.

Aside from tips for honing the craft of writing itself, the th...

Review: Cute Boy Gets Squeezed by D.L. King

A big thank you to Alison Tyler, who's let me take part in the blog tour for her new anthology The Big Book of Bondage. Check out her blog, Trollop with a Laptop, for links to all the other reviews. I'm talking about D.L. King's story, one of 25 in this new offering from Cleis Press. So without further ado:
The real star of this story is not endearingly submissive Cute Boy or his kooky-but-caring play pal Evangeline; it’s a piece of equipment. The vac bed, to be precise – latex sheets out of w...