The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2 – New Anthology Release

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, authenticity in writing, BDSM, conscious sexuality, Desire, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, Kinks, multiple orgasms, rope, sexuality, Shibari, The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2

Kink. It’s an interesting word, in terms of its etymology.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, defines it quite thoroughly:

1: a short tight twist or curl caused by a doubling or winding of something upon itself

2a : a mental or physical peculiarity : eccentricity, quirk

b : whim

3: a clever or unusual way of doing something

4: a cramp in some part of the body

5: an imperfection likely to cause difficulties in the operation of something

6: unconventional sexual taste or behavior

 

I’m thrilled and honoured to have my story “Roped In” selected to feature in The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2, published by Cleis Press and edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

The overarching kink explored in this anthology is, as the title suggests, the act of submission. Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel asserts in the Introduction that there are “so many ways to be submissive” and these stories artfully reveal that the spectrum of submissive scenarios, desires, and behaviours are as broad, creative and as varied as human sexuality itself.

The anthology boasts an array of stories that delve not just into the heat and eroticism of the physical sex, but, just as importantly, the psyche, emotions and sensations of the submissive state, and the dynamics of the relationship(s) that make these experiences possible. These more complex layers, in many of the stories I’ve read so far, are executed with startling insight, imagery and intelligence.

To quote from a glowing 4.5 star review for The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2 by blogger Bitches n Prose:

“… some of the things you can expect in the way of kink: BDSM (obviously), bondage, rope, training, power struggles, pet play, spanking, a host of different toys, affairs, pegging, role play, blades, gender play, tickling, different time periods, accents/language, food, and strangers. There’s bound (pun intended) to be something on this list that sets off your fires.”

As I’ve just begun reading the stories in my glossy, newly received author copy, I’ve been reflecting on these various meanings of the word “kink”, and how they can all apply to the concept of sexual kink: in physical, psychological, emotional and cultural terms. For example, there are depictions of the mental state of submissive desire akin to (1) “a short tight twist or curl caused by a … winding of something upon itself” in stories such as Sommer Marsden’s “Lightning Strike” and Anna Sky’s “Imago”; a twist that is only released when the desire is indulged or allowed.

Many stories expound on the emotional and psychological aspects of submission as (2) “a mental or physical peculiarity : eccentricity or quirk”, such as the eroticizing of shame in Jo Henny Wolf’s “Words” and the exhilaration that is felt when it is witnessed and accepted (or punished) by their Dominant partner. These quirks and peculiarities become portals to the submissive’s pleasure. As for “whims”, these are indulged aplenty; by following an erotic whim, many a story is born.

“A clever or unusual way of doing something”(3): If that “something” is sex, foreplay, the art of arousing another … then this definition is well and truly covered by the anthology as a whole.

Many of the characters experience their submissive needs for pain, humiliation, or domination, when unfulfilled, as physical pain, akin to “a cramp in some part of the body.” The story often unfolds around easing that cramp, releasing that tension.

For some people, knowing you have certain “kinks” can make them feel like they have a secret they have to hide, or that they themselves are (5) “an imperfection likely to cause difficulties in the operation of something”. By “something”, read conventional society. Many workplace cultures. Conservative families. Anthologies like The Big Book of Submission create vital, permissive spaces for the exploration of alternative pleasures. And kinks.

As a sexual being, I’ve known I was into restraint for a long time. If I could pinpoint the first moment, it would be when I was 20 and my first serious boyfriend, a blacksmith and blues singer, tied me up in the four-poster iron bed he’d designed and made himself. Two decades my senior, he made very effective use of those four bedposts. The foreplay and the sex was electrifying, and I suppose (however unconsciously) it was then I discovered that a little restraint in the sex-play magnified both the intensity of my orgasms and the number of them.

One could say it was natural progression that I went on to blindfolding my next boyfriend, stripping him and tying him, limbs splayed, to my big kitchen table, before having my way with him. Ahem. Enough self-revelation.

These two experiences are way back in my past, before I’d ever heard of the terms “kinky” or BDSM. I was just exploratory and creative and enjoyed finding ways to enhance sensations or sensory experience – for myself and others. I say this to simply point out that even if you don’t identify as “kinky” or of alternate sexuality, you’re likely to find plenty to enjoy in this anthology.

So maybe my own brand of kink is version (3): “a clever or unusual way of doing something.”

I’ve written before that I don’t really relate to the terms “Dominant” or “submissive”, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t explored and embodied both states, in my life and on the page. Nor does it mean I can’t engage with stories employing this framework.

What I’m enjoying in these stories is that each author is defining what it means to be submissive for themselves, and through their characters. And I think this is one of the strengths of this anthology – all the more apparent because of the intent and vision of the editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel. Assembled together, the stories truly showcase the diversity of submissive experiences. And in reading them, it’s like wandering through a kink club, and being able to magically slip into the skin and sensations of many different bodies /genders in different scenes throughout the various spaces.

More recently, I’ve had a few experiences with the intricate and erotic art of Shibari (erotic rope bondage). I’ve been a rope model, as well as exploring using rope in a sexuality workshop. As a writer, I wanted to explore elements of the practice of Shibari and some of the seemingly indescribable kinesthetic reactions I’ve had to being bound. As my character Yasmin says, it felt “beyond words”: the writer in me wanted to find the words.

Much of the action of “Roped In” takes place in a sexuality workshop. For several years, a lot of my sexual growth and exploration took place in these kinds of workshops, as I was studying to be a Tantric sex practitioner. In fact, some of my peak orgasmic and sexual experiences happened in these groups. I wanted to “demystify” some elements of the sex-positive lifestyle by setting the story in a similar kind of workshop space. These spaces are where I learnt and experienced so much about my sexuality and sexual relating; I hoped to show my characters learning skills they could use to enrich their own relationship.

Below is a little preview to “Roped In” – from the opening:

I thought I knew what rope felt like. Hard, salt-roughed rope that rigged a sail. The chafe of hessian rope against thigh on a make-shift swing. And knots? Practical things. Functional elements that kept your shoes on.

But this; this seductive slither of an embrace, trailing around my neck, snaking over and around both arms, encircling my waist like a possessive lover, this, I am not prepared for.

He hasn’t even tied a knot yet.

You wanted me here. Wanted to experience more (how did you put it?) elaborate possibilities than tying my wrists to the headboard.

 

*  *  *

So, discerning reader, whether your “kinkiness” is something you explore solely on the page, or whether you dip your toes in occasionally to kinky waters, or whether you’re the 24/7 kind of kinkster, you’re sure to find stories that intrigue, arouse, and galvanize you between these pages.

A huge “Congratulations” to all 69 authors! And thanks to publisher Cleis Press and to editor Rachel Kramer Bussel for making this anthology possible.

UPDATE: I’m so excited by the news that New York’s Publisher’s Weekly has reviewed the anthology very favourably, and that my story merited a mention, alongside authors Zodian Gray, Angela R. Sargenti, Dr J, Anna Sky and Giselle Renarde. You can read the review below.

The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2 – 69 Kinky Tales

So Many Ways to be Submissive …

(Available in E-Book or Paperback – Click on the Image to go straight to Amazon, or other buy-links below)

 

Nook

Google Play

Audio Book available soon via Audible

Read the Reviews

Chrissi Sepe

Bitches n Prose

Publisher’s Weekly

 

Read More by the Editor

 

 

 

“Peek Hour” – Featuring with Cosmo UK

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, On Writing, Peek Hour, Publications, sexuality, Voyeurism

Sometimes, as writers, we can forget to celebrate our achievements. We might strive for recognition, but when a little of it comes our way, we underplay it, or find it hard to embrace it.

Many erotica writers I know, including myself, take our writiing, our craft  and our subject matter seriously. We work just as hard at it as writers from other genres. We toil into the wee hours over stories, blog posts and reviews. We attend workshops and buy books on writing craft, and agonize over the right words to describe our subject.  We sacrifice parts of our social life in order to carve out a little more writing time. We engage self-awareness around our own sexual landscape, and around where sexuality sits culturally at any given time, sometimes committing to writing and revealing painful parts of our lives or our history.

I’ve been writing and publishing erotica for five years now.  It turns out that it wasn’t just a quick fling with those come-hither, wanton words. I passionately believe in erotica’s role in encouraging those who read it to become more empowered in their own sexual expression.  That writer-reader relationship sits right at the centre of my imperative to keep writing, and is why I value every person who takes a few minutes to comment on my work.

Yet, sometimes, I despair at the comparitively small sector of the potential reading populace that actually find their way to quality, well-crafted erotic fiction. Censorship and complex rules on certain sites around what can be shown on a cover, and what topics are taboo set up further obstacles, and these obstacles sometimes have intricate moral or political nuances. All things the writer of erotica has to negotiate. As if writing about sex wasn’t challenging enough …

So today, I am celebrating the publication of  my short story “Peek Hour” with Cosmopolitan UK Magazine. The lovely editor I’ve been dealing with informed me they have 6.5 million unique users every month. It’s undoubtedly the largest number of potential eyes on my work, and  that is both terrifying and super-exciting. It’s fantastic that magazines with such a large readership, encompassing diverse demographics. are looking at publishing edgier work that isn’t just about millionaires and virgins, and it’s encouraging that they want to support lesser-known authors.

Despite the background anxiety, I took myself out for coffee and cake to celebrate, and my walk definitely had more wiggle in it today. I want to take this moment to remind all you erotica writers out there: celebrate your achievements. You worked hard. You’re brave. And bold. And bad-ass. Even on days you don’t feel that way. You deserve a little decadence.

I wrote “Peek Hour” to explore a subversive little observation that popped into my head one day on the train to work. As women, we learn to deal with being on the receiving end of the male gaze every day; we of course respond to this in a diversity of ways depending on personal factors. Some of it is welcome, some of it is not. And sometimes it just depends on what kind of day we’re having, or who is doing the looking.

How would I explore a story where a woman was doing the looking?

My character, Roxy stood up in my head, and purred, “Buy me a ticket,  let’s get on that train and see what happens.”

So here it is.  A subversively sexy story, exploring voyeurism from a distinctly feminine perspective. For Roxy, a chance erotic encounter might just be the start of a new kind of journey.

Click on the pic (or the title) to read “Peek Hour“.

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The Short Story: First Impressions

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Developmental Editing, editing fiction, Metaphor, On Writing, short story

 “To begin at the beginning.”

Under Milkwood Theatre Poster – Clwyd Theatr Cymrd

With this beckoning sentence, Welsh author and playwright Dylan Thomas opens his renowned and much-performed radio play Under Milkwood.

The narrator speaks here, setting the scene for a sleeping town; one “moonless night” in Spring, “starless and bible-black.” Most famously narrated by the resonant, deep tones of actor Richard Burton, the words bid the listeners to pay attention. Here comes a story. The alliteration and repetition already draws us in. For those of us with Christian backgrounds, the words echo the very first sentence of one of our oldest and most epic of stories: the Bible.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

We teeter on that first sentence with the narrator, waiting to step down into the rolling, seething, ribald psyche of the sleeping townspeople; to creep into their cellars, be voyeurs of their wet dreams and illicit affairs, their silent sorrows and repressed desires.

Begin at the beginning …

Described by Thomas as a “play for voices”, Under Milkwood has been produced many times worldwide for radio and stage. I was cast as narrator for a stage adaptation in my first year of drama school, and the opening lines always stayed with me. The play’s language and imagery is rich, visceral and poetic, alive with alliteration and metaphor, onopatopoeia and intoxicating rhythms. For those interested in language, I’d argue the play-text reads just as well as a short story. Vividly realised through both narration and brilliant dialogue, the characters of Llareggubb Hill leap off the page and into your imagination.

A compelling short story ideally can and should make use of the elements I’ve highlighted in Under Milkwood to achieve the same intensity of resonance in the reader’s imagination: opening, imagery, language, characterization and dialogue.

For this post, it feels appropriate “to begin at the beginning”, to focus on first impressions: title, the first sentence and the opening paragraph.

A brief aside: all of these elements are also important in longer-form fiction. Additionally, I’d underline the importance of the entire first chapter to lay the foundations of the story and capture the reader’s attention. But that’s another post in the making.

In a short story, you’re going to have less time with the reader than with a novel. You need to make every word, sentence, paragraph and scene count. First impressions matter.

I’ll say it again:

First impressions matter.

FIRST SENTENCE: THE ENTRY POINT FOR YOUR READER

First impressions are as important in a story as they are in a job interview or a first date. As a university student, majoring in theatre and taking literature as an elective, I studied Kafka’s polemic short story Metamorphosis. Kafka’s story begins with this intriguing first sentence:

“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

How could a dull story possibly emerge from that opening premise? I had to read on. It may well have been while studying Metamorphosis that I became convinced of the vital role of the opening sentence to set the short story in motion and to coax the reader inside the story-world.

A strong short story nearly always has a riveting first sentence. A sentence that beckons, or yanks you in by the hair.

To begin at the beginning …

How do we, as writers, find the right entry-point for our story? Where is that place in the charged narrative swimming inside our minds that we can clearly signpost as its unique and compelling beginning? As we know, it’s not always, chronologically speaking, the first “beat” of the story. Some narratives are most effective when they move back and forth in space and time.

As a writer, the idea for a story often coincides with the words of the first sentence, appearing in my mind’s eyes like burning neon on my retina. Heart pumping, I race to get it down on paper, because I know it’s my ticket into my own story-cinema. If I lose it, I may lose the story, popcorn and all. Here’s one:

“Last week, she tried to leave him on a Wednesday just before dinner.”
– Wet Satin Plaything (2015)

Just like a love affair, there’s a lot of heat in the imaginations’ first encounter with a new story. Other times, when I don’t get the first line, I draft out the story in chunks – whatever is coming to me. Then as it starts to take shape, I pull out my magnifying glass, and go hunting for that first line. It’s often buried somewhere in the body of the draft.

Some writers may relate to this. If you’re not excited when you read the first line of your story, chances are your readers won’t be either. Keep an open mind, and go hunting. Oftentimes, you’ve written it already – you just have to pull it out of the pile of words, set it on top of the page, and give it a polish.

Time for an eccentric writerly confession: I collect first lines of stories. I have notebooks full of them. For this post, I decided to re-visit some of my most beloved short story writers, and pull out some first-rate first sentences.

Let’s begin with the writer who made me truly want to be a writer, and precipitated my love for word-play and images: Ray Bradbury. If you haven’t read him, and you claim to love short stories, please stop what you are doing and go find some of his stories. Now. Start with The Martian Chronicles if you like science-fiction, or The Illustrated Man if strange tales with dark carnival themes appeal.

My well-read collections of Bradbury short stories

“He came out of the earth, hating.”
Pillar of Fire

“The rocket metal cooled in the meadow winds.”
Dark they Were, and Golden-Eyed

“The city waited twenty thousand years.”
The City

All of these first sentences, short as they are, feature important players in the story, and invoke the particular story-world. A man who should be dead, walks and feels again. A rocket has just landed – “cooled” being a telling verb. Where, we wonder, and who will come out? A city is a protagonist. It exists: has memory, a consciousness and a tenacious patience, and something is finally going to happen.

The first example also establishes one of the driving emotions of the story: hate.

Below are some other first sentences, by authors I have long read and admired:

“My father lost me to the Beast at cards.”
The Tiger’s Bride, Angela Carter (from The Bloody Chamber)

What’s introduced here? A desperate father, a wager gone wrong; betrayal of the deepest kind for a daughter. How beastly is this beast? We know we are not in a naturalistic story, at his mention, and that uncanny elements will be at play. How horrific her loss of choice. What happens next?

“Suddenly – dreadfully – she wakes up.”
The Wind Blows, Katherine Mansfield

The main character erupts into consciousness just as the story does, and something awful has either happened in her dream or is happening around her. These five words, and the clever use of the staccato energy of dashes as punctuation create a suspenseful beginning.

“Lilith was sexually cold, and her husband half-knew it, in spite of her pretenses.”
Lilith, Anias Nin (from Delta of Venus)

Nin creates an intriguing beginning that establishes the theme of pretense, and tension between a husband and wife. She wastes no words in getting to the “obstacle” of sexual frigidity, which the narrative then explores.

“First, mother went away.”
Being Kind to Titina, Patrick White (from The Burnt Ones)

An understated rendering of a life-changing event.  We sense this story will be about loss, and survival from the perspective of a child.

“My lover Picasso is going through her Blue Period.”
The Poetics of Sex, Jeanette Winterson (from The World and Other Places)

Here, Ms Winterson twists and subverts several aspects at once with her wry feminist perspective. Picasso is a woman, not a man. The reference to her “Blue Period” seems at first to be about art – but as we read on, she subverts our expectations with a description from her female lover’s viewpoint of  her behaviour when she’s menstruating, creating a secondary word-play on the meaning of “period”.

A strong first sentence finds a way to lean into the themes of the story, to be simultaneously at the beginning, and also at some other important emotional or thematic elsewhere in the story.

All of these examples show the writer’s agility and ability of story-telling. They know how their story unfolds, and they place the reader at the best vantage point to survey the story’s landscape. Prominent characters are introduced and emotional tones are established.

All of these sentences achieve one other more complex thing: the first sentence houses the seed of the story. The microcosm of the macrocosm.

What do I mean by this? Come back with me to the “vantage point” metaphor. As the writer, we locate our opening sentence at a specific point in space and time. We direct what the reader gets to see, but we also look out over the story landscape, noting the important stand-out features. These features can be themes or crucial plot-points or core emotional evocations of a character’s relationship to themselves, other characters or the world.

We describe where we are, and then we project our vison deeper into the story-world. We use words to link where we are (as character or narrator) to one of those prominent features. Or we lean into the metaphorical wind blowing at us from our story-world, to capture something evocative about our story, carried to us on that breeze. A scent of something, or a seed.

In your opening sentence, situate the reader where you want them at first contact with your story,  then try giving the readers a hint of something enticing to be encountered further into the narrative. What your first sentence introduces can then be elaborated upon in your opening paragraph.

I once did a movement theatre workshop around the theme of story-telling. One of the exercises was to find a first sentence of a favourite book or story, and translate that sentence into a movement piece – with a beginning, a middle and an end. The facilitator believed in the power of first sentences; that they could in some way, convey the entire essence of the story.

As a writer and editor, I’ve become increasingly interested in this idea: a strong first sentence finds a way to lean into the themes of the story, to be simultaneously at the beginning, and also at some other important emotional or thematic elsewhere in the story.

Short story writer Eudora Welty conveys a similar idea here:

“A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject to the mood.”

A large proportion of story drafts that I receive as a developmental editor have not had enough care and attention given to their opening sentence and paragraph. Eighty percent of the time that’s where I begin the work with the author. I’ve read openings of books already on sale on Amazon that have typos and grammatical errors in their first paragraphs. I have read no further, nor have I bought the book. And I would never be inclined to look up that author again.

I’ve nothing against self-publishing as a concept. But, writers, it should never be an excuse for releasing sloppy work onto the market. Use beta-readers, find yourself a skilled editor, or consider developmental editing to hone your work. Ensure it’s copy-edited before you release it. Putting unpolished, un-edited work before the public eye is not going to benefit your reputation as a writer. In fact, it will do the opposite.

From a writer’s perspective, I understand why haphazard, slap-dash story openings happen. We’re in a hurry to get it on the page before the idea fades. We’re impatient to just start the damn thing, and we can’t wait to get into the meaty part of the story. So we bumble and stumble bull-headed through our opening, when this is the part of the story where we most need to take care.

If this is what it takes to get you started, great. But go back and revise your opening once the heat of that first wave of inspiration has subsided. Then sleep on it, and revise again. As you generate more material, be aware that your true beginning could be somewhere in the middle of your draft.

This is one place where developmental editing can really offer something to the writer. I work with the author, giving them permission to slow down, take a breath. I ask questions, give them a framework in which to take a better look at the details of their opening, and I show them what they should be focusing on, or point out details have been sketched too hurriedly and aren’t clear to someone standing outside that writer’s head.

Write. Revise. Write. Revise.

Once you have that stellar, kick-ass beginning, revise it again. How tight can you make it? How clear? How intense” Can you eliminate excess words or phrases that are muddying the meaning or the impact?

In short, will it give the reader the most compelling view of your story-world?

The more essential every word you render in your opening sentence and paragraph, the more intense its impact will be upon the reader’s imagination.

The Short Story: from First Sentence to Final Words

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Creativity, Developmental Editing, editing fiction, Fairytales, Greek Mythology, My Bookshelf, On Writing, Published Fiction, quotes, short story, Women Writers

I’ve always been a voracious reader. I learnt to read a little earlier than was usual, and after that it seemed I couldn’t get enough words inside me. As a child and teenager, my reading habits bordered on addictive, and maybe that’s why I loved short stories; as for most children, these came at first in the form of fairytale and myth.

Image Credit: Brooke Shaden

Their brevity and the fact that they were a complete experience in themselves meant I could consume more stories in the amount of stolen time I had to read: under the desk at school while it was officially maths, beneath the bedclothes with a torch long after my parents thought I was asleep, even occasionally (though less successfully) in the shower. Following my mother around the supermarket. Sometimes I’d lose my mother, but never my place.

When it came to short stories, I guess you could say I was greedy.

Writer Ali Smith expresses this idea succinctly, and with a wry twist of logic:

“Short stories consume you faster. They’re connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality.”

We don’t just consume short stories; they consume us. It’s an interesting idea. Even at five years old, I seemed to sense I would only have so long to read in my lifetime, so I’d better get to it.

Myth and fairytale beguiled me as a little girl, and they still beguile me now. I don’t think it was ever the happy endings I craved, but more the sense of magic and the uncanny. Now, I enjoy reflecting on the archetypes in myth and fairytale, that resonate through different centuries and cultures. I like to muse on their themes; themes that swim; primal, invertebrate, deep in our psyches. Love. Belonging. Loss. Yet before I ever knew the words archetype or symbol, I sensed the wicked witch was more than she appeared to be, and that forests were governed by different lore and logic to houses or towns.These are the treasures hidden in fairytales and myths. Upon entering these story-worlds, as a very young reader, I believe I first comprehended the power in words, the pull and expansiveness of story on my imagination.

The world didn’t stop at the end of my street.

As the wonderfully imaginative writer Neil Gaiman observes:

“A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.”

I could visit other times, places, civilizations, and planets. I could be a princess, a witch, Thumbelina – all without leaving my backyard, and return home in time for dinner.

The myth of Persephone, first read when I was five, translated into a short story and included in the Childcraft Encyclopedia volume on stories and fables, has been whispering wisdom and insights to me all my life. What I related to in the story as a child is different to what I related to as a young, sexually adventurous woman in my twenties, and different again to how I relate to her story more than a decade later.

The theme of mother-daughter love drew me in as a child. The tantalizing sexual and psychological symbolism of the Underworld that Persephone is made to spend part of every year in fascinated me as a young woman. The idea that Persephone represents the sexual and psychologically integrated woman from a feminist perspective intrigues me now, and compels me to keep writing about her.

Like a set of Russian dolls, the other parts of me at different ages are still nestled  inside me, and re-visiting stories that have companioned me through my life-journey is one powerful way of accessing these other selves. Changes of perspective in how and what we see in a story, are like sign-posts, or scars, marking the places of our own growth or change.

My well-read collections of Bradbury short stories

As a teenager, I continued to read fairytales, but also developed other tastes – for science fiction, mystery, the macabre and ghostly, the absurd. I devoured the short stories of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, and Roald Dahl. All of these authors approached the short story with their own style and signatures of their era. All of them taught me something about the qualities of short story writing.

Writer Andre Dubus professes that he loves short stories because  “they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.” For certain styles and subjects of short stories, I think he’s right.

We live our lives day by day, and a short story is an apt framework to capture what happens to us or our lover or a neighbour in the commute to work, or late one night, or over a week. Short stories don’t just encapsulate how we live, but the way we recount how we live to others:

“A strange thing happened on the train to work today.”

“So, I met this guy last weekend at my local cafe when I accidentally spilt my take-away coffee over his shoes.”

These kinds of short stories are close relatives to the conversational anecdote. If they are good stories, they will inevitably play with the tension between the everyday and the profound, the trivial and the significant. The teller is not quite the same person they were before the story happened. And they will have that same potential for the reader or the listener.

Short stories don’t just encapsulate how we live, but the way we recount how we live to others.

In this series of posts, I’m going to be exploring the short story up close. I’ll be peering inside, prying the pages apart, savouring sentences upon my metaphorical tongue, and inviting you to do the same. How they differ from longer forms of story, such as novellas and novels, will also be touched upon. Writer Lorrie Moore makes apt comparisons between the short story and the novel:

“A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

I’ll be exploring the writers of short stories who have inspired and informed my own writing, and I’ll be musing on what works and why. To do this, I’ll be calling on three different perspectives I have into the short story: as a life-long reader of them, a published writer of them, and most recently, a developmental editor of short stories by numerous other authors.

Over my four decades of reading life, the number of short stories I’ve read would have to be in the thousands; maybe even the tens of thousands. Two literary theorists whose work I admire greatly were enthusiasts of lists to bookmark various ideas: Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. So, here, I’ll list the authors of short stories that have inspired, intrigued or affected me:

• The brothers Grimm
• Ray Bradbury
• Roald Dahl
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Oscar Wilde
• Franz Kafka
• Anton Chekhov
• Patrick White
• Katherine Mansfield
• Angela Carter
• Jeanette Winterson
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Anais Nin
• Tobsha Learner

Some of these, such as Gilman and Kafka, are there for singular, stand-out stories. Most of the authors listed are there, because I’ve read many of their short stories, often returning to them again and again. Then there are the many anthologies I’ve read; attracted more to a genre or theme than a particular author’s voice. Ghost stories, Australian short stories (we’re pretty good at them as a nation) stories about the ocean, stories by women authors.

Try making a list of your own short fiction inspirations – just for fun, or to see who your influences are.

As a writer of short stories, I won first prize for a short story competition when I was eleven. I wrote a few decent short stories at high school, getting some published in the annual school magazine. Then, a long hiatus from any fiction-writing, where I took to copious journal-writing, poetry and snippets of memoir. I’d often had people say I had a gift for writing, but for a long time, I was too focused on pursuing my passion for theatre.

Since I started taking my writing more seriously just over four years ago, I’ve written twenty-two short stories (if I include flash fiction) and had seventeen publications, with a few other offers that didn’t eventuate. The first story I ever submitted for paid publication got accepted, the next one was also accepted, and currently my acceptance versus rejection rate is about 4:1. I think Ray Bradbury would be proud of me for having the courage to submit as soon as I started writing. I’m not one to let finished stories moulder away in a bottom desk drawer for years.

About two years ago, I started working as a developmental editor and have worked with numerous authors across different genres, editing some thirty short stories to date. My first editing project happened somewhat by accident, but was definitely fate in motion. I was asked by friend and writer Emmanuelle de Maupassant to critique one story for her new collection in progress. She liked how I approached it and asked me to work with her on the whole collection. It was a dream first editing project for me. Inspired by Eastern European and Russian superstitions and folklore, Cautionary Tales had macabre and erotic elements, and archetypes and symbols galore.

It’s extremely rewarding to see, through the developmental editing process, a story go from sketchy to stand-out.

Consider this post as an introduction to the series. From my own reading and writing of short stories, but also particularly from what I’ve gleaned through the drafting and editing process with other writers, I’ve compiled a list of seven elements I think are crucial to the writing of a compelling short story, and I’ll explore each element in more detail in a subsequent post.

1 First Impressions: Title, First sentence, First paragraph

2. Finding the Right Words: Imagery, Atmosphere & Metaphor

3. Character: Details, Depth & Dialogue

4. Narrative Gaps:  Sleuthing in the Spaces

5. Developing Themes

6. Paring Back & Revision (What Stays, What Goes)

7. Final Words: Finding your Ending

As an editor, working with other authors, I’ve gained what I’d call a privileged perspective into the potential challenges and blind spots that can be seen to recur over a sample of writers. It’s extremely rewarding to see, through the developmental editing process, a story go from sketchy to stand-out. Every writer has their own strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes these will even vary over different stories from the same author. While one story may have a very strong, engaging opening, another from the same pen might splutter and dither around in the first few paragraphs, or seem to start in the wrong place. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

These posts are intended as much to unravel my own fascination with the short story, to discover what I know about them, as to assist those writing them or wanting to write them. It’s my observation that some writers do need ongoing, considered feedback to help them identify (and strengthen) their weak spots. Other writers will have a gut instinct about what their weaknesses are, and take or leave advice accordingly. I tend to fall into the latter category. Whichever kind of writer you are, I invite you to take what resonates for you, and consider that what doesn’t resonate for you may be helpful for another writer.

Possible approaches to generating material for stories and for writing them are manifold. Any exercises I suggest are based on what has worked for me or other authors I’ve worked with, and occasionally what I’ve picked up or modified from a writing craft book or workshop. Take what you feel might work for you, or try something out of your comfort zone.

I’d also hope these posts will generate some vibrant dialogue, as I know many writers out there who enjoy the short story form, and, like me, would agree with writer Annie Prioux:

“I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.”

Intensity. Brevity. Balance and word play. I love the qualities she singles out, and I’ll be discussing these qualities through the ensuing posts. I hope you’ll join me.

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Feast: Erotic Flash Fiction

Tags

Adrea Kore, cunnilingus, Female Ejaculation, Female Sexuality, Flash Fiction, men who enjoy women, Oral Sex

He is intent on making a feast of me with his mouth. Sometimes, yes, penetration is the dessert and this, the main course.

Crouching in front of me, he pushes my legs apart, then hauls me down the bed towards him, placing his hands under my buttocks, running them deliberately from the cheeks to the underside of my thighs. He leans into my flesh with his weight, causing my legs to tumble back towards my shoulders, and my sex to lift off the bed.

He likes to hold me there, hold my gaze, watch me noticing what his eyes are taking in.

I know he can smell how much I want his mouth on me.

First, he gentles me with his lips, his tongue, finding the soft silky place between my outer lips.

He licks and I sigh. I sigh and I open. I open and his tongue darts inward.

His tongue, curious inside me, and I am immediately wetter. He breathes into me. The warmth makes my womb contract, and release a small draught of liquid desire. An aperitif to prepare my lover’s palate.

He licks and I sigh. I sigh and I open … I know he is hungry and thirsty for me. I know he must drink and devour me. His hunger magics me into nectar and ambrosia.

He breaks me apart like a ripe peach, sucking on my flesh as the juices spurt out of me, drenching his face, dripping down onto the cushion beneath me. His tongue feels out and flicks the delicate ridge of the peach-stone in the centre of me … flicks and licks, sucks and delves. Mouths me, swallows me. And oh, I am fruit for his labours.

The man who loved cunt.

I am nothing now, but currents of pleasure, pleasure breathing in and gushing out, breathing in and gushing out. How can I hold such an ocean inside me? And he is drowning willingly. I will have to rescue him soon, surely. Send out a life-boat.

Oh God. The sheets.

He briefly comes up for air, and registers the sodden sheets beneath me. Panting, he moves my body to a drier part of the bed.

Sometimes, we begin in a bed and end in a wading pool.

And he is diving down again. And I want to taste what he is so hungry for, so I take his fingers within my hands and we enter my sweet honeyed place of earthy delights together.

Breathing in, gushing out.

I pull him up, sucking our fingers together as I look at him, all innocence.  Then his mouth is there too where our fingers are… and we are so voraciously, insatiably, hungry…

That it is time – for dessert.

*

© Adrea Kore 2013 (First published on Forthegirls.com – 2013)

This is one of my earlier pieces of erotic fiction, a piece I sometimes perform live at readings, exploring the playful, juicy, messy delights of sex.

The rights have passed back to me, and as I’m updating my fiction on my blog this month, thought I may as well share it. Enjoy!

Re-Imagining Feminine Desire: A New Face for Myth and Fairytales

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, Desire, Erotic Fairytales, erotic poetry, Fairytale Re-Tellings, Female Sexuality, Feminine Rites of Passage, Greek Mythology, Lustily Ever After, Myth Re-tellings, Persephone, Published Poetry

Fairy tales and myths can still speak powerfully to readers, despite the distance between when they were written and where we are now, as a contemporary audience. According to writer Sanjida O’ Connell, recent research indicates that “fairy tales are ancient, at least one dates back to the Bronze Age, whilst others, such as Beauty and the Beast and Rumplestiltskin, are over 4,000 years old.”

Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.

How is it that a fairytale we loved as a child can still resonate strongly for us as an adult? One reason is that fairy tales and myths are dense with symbols and archetypes, elements which hold a multiplicity of meanings, depending on who is doing the looking, and from what angle. What engages us as a child and what engages us as an adult in the same tale, may be diferent elements. The tale grows with us, in a manner of speaking.

How a story is told depends on who is doing the telling.

A writer, intent on creating more relevant meanings for a contemporary female audience, may find the narrative and archetypal characters of many myths and fairy tales pliable to re-interpretation and re-attribution of meanings. We are not so far removed, it seems, from understanding Rapunzel’s isolation, or  Cinderella’s longing ffor love and social acceptance, but a modern writer might contextualize it differently, emphasise different elements. Sanjida O’Connell expresses this beautifully:

“Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.”

Or as surrealist Elizabeth Lenk described this sense of timelessness in myth and fairytale, “the walls between time periods are extremely close to one another.” I like this idea; that as women writers, we might put our ear to a metaphorical wall and hear the story of Bluebeard’s wife or Persephone as if it is going on in the next room, as if it is close to us. Hearing only fragments, we create different interpretations, that speak to contemporary readers.

Although I adored and devoured fairy tales as a child, it’s hard not to look at them now through feminist eyes. When I read myths and fairytales now, I feel as if I am searching for clues, traces of the older, oral versions between the lines. The versions that women told to each other, mother to daughter, around the hearth. Writer Cate Fricke reminds us that “as rife with violence as they are, fairy tales are in fact women’s stories, and always have been.”

As O’Connell asserts, though the tales “may begin in such a cosy way, make no mistake – fairy stories are dark tales of misogyny, social climbing, child abuse and infanticide.” Many traditional myths and fairy tales tend to ascribe very traditional, polarized roles to women. They are often either the “good” woman:

• wife
• mother
• virgin
• daughter

Or the bad, trouble-making woman:

•  outcast / beggar
•  nagging wife (harridan)
•  witch
• temptress.

Additionally, the play and power of female sexuality is often submerged or sidelined, hidden behind the desires and needs of male characters in patriarchal worlds. One of my favourite collections of re-imagined fairy tales is Angela Carter’s  The Bloody Chamber, in part because she found ways to make the themes of  female sexuality more explicit and central to the narrative than in the originals, and wrote them in a way that questioned the roles of women in patriarchal societies and the limited choices they had, often creating new paths of action and possiblility for her female characters.

Another significant difference in these modern re-tellings is they are often narrated in first-person – the central female character is not mute or passive; she has her own voice, tells her own story, rather than it being recounted by an impersonal, authoritative narrator.

From an introductory essay to a volume of science-fiction and fantasy stories written by women (She’s Fantastical, Sybylla Press 1995), writer Ursula Le Guin observes:

“In the last thirty years or so, as women have taken to writing as women, not as honorary or artificial men, it’s become clear that they see a rather different world, and describe it by rather different means. The most startling difference is that men aren’t at the centre of it …”

Women Writing The Erotic | Emmanuelle de Maupassant

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Adrea Kore, Emmanuelle De Maupassant, Erotic Authors, Inspiration, On Writing, women writing sex

My dear friend and talented writing colleague, Emmanuelle de Maupassant, embarked upon a massive project earlier this year – a qualitative and quantitative survey of 130 authors writing and publishing within the erotic fiction genre.

Her data became the basis for a fascinating, in-depth series of articles detailing erotic fiction’s many facets, and providing insight into the collective minds behind the genre. The article series spotlights a broad range of topics: from authorial intents and motivations to public perceptions and the function of pseudonyms; literary inspirations, censorship, issues of craft and the current state of publishing and marketing erotica.

Some articles also looked at the genre from a gendered perspective; what it is to write as a man or woman within erotic fiction, and mapped possible differences of perspective and experience. You can read about the male perspective here.

Image Courtesy of Emmanuelle de Maupassant

I feel honoured to have been part of this survey, along with a number of my writing friends, colleagues, and personal inspirations within the genre. The collection of articles provide an insightful “panoramic view”. Where is the genre right now, in 2016, several years into its boom, and five years on from the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey? Regardless of one’s opinion of this book, it has certainly bought more visibility to the genre, and agruably, more publishing opportunities. Where does erotica appear to be heading?

 

In the incisive words of Remittance Girl:

“As we look to what comes next, our only true desire can be to write freely and honestly, to write what refuses to lie quietly, to write what thrills us, emotionally, intellectually and viscerally.”

I see writing erotica as a woman to be a political act, as well as a creative one, and was particularly inspired and intrigued by Emmanuelle’s three-part series on “Women Writing the Erotic”. With Emmanuelle’s kind permission, I’m re-blogging Part One here, as it delves into so many pertinent aspects, and represents an intelligent, thoughtful “round-table” of ideas and observations from many of my favourite female authors. I only wish we could all have sat down to dinner together, and had this conversation!

Links to Part Two and Three are at the bottom of the original article, and further down you’ll fnd links to all the other fascinating articles that are part of this series.

It’s over to Emmanuelle now … Read on!

In this series (within the 130 authors survey), I’ll be sharing women’s views on exploring sexuality through fiction. Which themes tug to be unravelled and explored? What motivates us, challenges u…

Source: Women Writing The Erotic | Emmanuelle de Maupassant

Under My Cape: Erotic Fiction Excerpt

Tags

Adrea Kore, BDSM, Bondage, Fairytale Subversions, Female Sexuality, Forced Exposure, Role Play, Sensory Play

Of course I knew that defiance would have consequences.

It’s why I agreed to come to this underground bar, why I’m dressed in this little red cape. Why I acquiesced to your gift – a red choker. To match red fishnet stockings.

Tied up in teasingly flimsy bows, long red satin ribbons against black chiffon are all that hold together my performance of l’ingenue tonight. Ribbons that fall indolently between the curves of my breasts. Where the buttons of a good girl’s blouse would be done up neatly to conceal her cleavage, I am exposed, tumbling up and out of the too-tight red bra.

Red signifies danger. Tonight I do not want to be a good girl. Costumes can transform as well as disguise.

Cinched underneath the bra, drawing in my waist, a black satin under-corset is a-flutter with red butterflies. The discipline of steel boning turns my torso into the stem of a chalice. You have only to tip me to sip from me.

In these seductive flourishes of ribbon, I am a gift to be torn open. As I teeter in high heels through the club, they could ensnare me on anything. Or anyone.

Catch me if you can …

I feel many eyes glide over me, as I search for you. In this twisted basement-bar version of a fairytale gone wild, a Cheshire Cat with a flogger over his shoulder is watching me with interest, while a Snow White has her skirts up, being spanked across a Wicked Witches’ knee.

Then I sight you. Turned away from me, your tail seems to sense me first. As I approach, it dips, then rises, pointing in my direction.Tight leather pants gleam in contrast with its feral aura. You’re wearing an elegantly crafted brown leather mask, with angled eye slits, a suggestion of pointed canine ears, and a cruel snout.

My big bad Wolf.

Under that mask, do I really know who you are?

“Who’s there in the shadows?” said Red Riding Hood.

You haven’t noticed me yet. And I want your attention. All over me.

I decide to cross a boundary.

I pull your tail.

Red Riding Hood enters the wood.

You’ve wheeled around, and in an instant, you’ve picked me up by the arms, growling, and pushed me against the bar.You use one arm and your body weight to grapple both of my wrists into a firm-hold in the small of my back.

“Tsk,tsk,” you whisper. You smile, lips smeared a carnal red. Your other hand, very slowly and deliberately, begins to undo the first of the red satin ribbons.

“That was very insolent, Little Miss Red.”

Watching me watching you, loosening the second of the ties, pulling the ribbons through your thumb and forefinger, resting your eyes on what is revealed.

“Don’t you know a wolfs’ pride is in his tail,” you say as you caress the swell of my breasts, parting the chiffon blouse even further. I am suddenly aware of the pulse in my neck, beating hot under my skin. As if you too can hear it, you stroke your fingers there, and up the side of my neck.

“I think I shall have to teach you to show more respect.”

You wind my ribbons around your fingers, draw me to you, so I can just glimpse the blue of your eyes through the wolf-mask. Then, you pull me towards you off the edge of the bar, spinning me around gently and guiding me backwards until I am suddenly against a wooden structure.

Taking my hand, you bring it up to touch the ornate red-and-gold choker.

“Remember, this means you are mine for the evening,” you whisper. I nod, breathing deep into my diaphragm,  enjoying the delicious contrast between the hard wood along my spine, and the fleshy heat of your leather-clad hips and groin against my sex. Your kiss is tender, intensifying into demand as you lift my right arm and stretch it out. The weight of your torso holds me in place as you capture both wrists in the grip of leather and steel. It’s impossible not to feel vulnerable. And then your thigh slides between mine, pushing my legs apart.

The lights have dimmed down into a lurid red; the room, strangely transformed.

Bodies in various states of undress, contorted in clusters of two, three or four, form strange hieroglyphics around me. Speaking a language of pleasure I do not yet understand. Others stand watching, as if transfixed. An imperious Red Queen is whipping a pudgy, bald Humpty-Dumpty, his ass as bare as his head. Bathed in red, I feel like I have been swallowed whole, trapped in the entrails of a wild beast.

Smiling, you produce a mask with no eye slits. Place it across my eyes.

The room disappears.

The woods are dark in places, darker than Red Riding Hood could have imagined.

Here at my neck, hot breath, a devouring bite.

There, a rough caress that sheds chiffon and ribbons onto the floor. Lighter strokes along the curves of my cleavage, enlivening the soft shy skin. Then, deliberately, I feel your hand encircle each breast, lifting them out of the bra, exposing their fullness above my corset. I feel you step away. Just when I most want you close. Cool air hardens my nipples as I strain to sense you.

Delicious ribbons of anticipation ripple through my body. Red ribbons of desire…

Unseeing, but oh so very seen. Exposed to this roomful of strangers in ways over which I have no control. Deprived of vision, my sensitivity to smell, sound and touch are amplified. I sense you circling me, disorienting me with where and how you will next touch my body. Like a wolf playing with his prey. Your teeth deliver a trail of sucks and canine nips up my inner arm from wrist to armpit. I twitch with each bite. A soft menacing snarl, first at one ear as you claw into the back of my hair, then at the other as you run your hand up the inside of my thigh. The sheer lace of my panties, moist between my legs at the closeness of your touch.

Then, nothing for a long moment. Nothing but the gnawing ache of erotic anticipation.

“I’ll keep you safe, Little Miss Red,” you whisper, your breath suddenly hot upon my ear, your paws in my hair. “But not too safe.”

Red Riding Hood knew the woods were a wild and untamed place. But she entered them, all the same.

Image : Jessica Tremp

 

*   *   *

© Adrea Kore 2014 (Not to be reproduced or reprinted, in part or in whole, without permission of the author)

Boundaries. Thresholds. Abandoning the familiar, stepping into the strange. These are places that fascinate me to explore, both on and off the page. These places are potent with tension and contradiction. Fear and desire. The known and the unknown.

Exploring our sexuality inevitably flings us up against our boundaries, teetering on that heady edge between resistance and surrender. One step backwards, and we are back into the familiar. One step forward and we enter the unknown, opening ourselves up to new feelings and sensations. Threshold experiences contain great potential for growth and transformation. But we have to make that choice: to step forward or back. We may have preparations to make before we can take that step forward; we may need to seek out trustworthy companions to journey with us.

I’m re-working an older story here, in preparation for its inclusion in my upcoming collection of erotic stories. In Under My Cape, I’m weaving elements of the fairytale of Red Riding Hood into a contemporary erotica story set in a kink club, but I’m also subverting those themes. I wanted to explore how the lure of danger and the unawakened elements of Red Riding Hood’s sexuality are represented by  both the forest and the wolf. Red Riding Hood does not enter the woods in complete innocence of its dangers. She enters it, desiring the transformative experiences she senses it conceals within its shadows. She seeks out the shadows, because she knows that there she will better be able to encounter her own darker desires. Only there can she come to know the wolf.

Examining the tropes and themes of the original fairytale, led me to wonder why she would wear such a bright and eye-catching coloured cape to journey safely throught the forest. But you’ll have to read the whole story to see how I interpret that …

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Chords of Desire (Erotic Fiction Excerpt)

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Adrea Kore, Cello, Creative Process, Desire, erotic dreams, erotic fiction, Female Sexuality, Fiction Excerpt, Inspiration, short story, women writing sex, Writing Process

Lights up.

There are two bodies, up here on stage.

One is of cool flesh, lavender-scented. Sleek, dark hair, parted perfectly in the centre, is pulled back into a chignon, revealing the white arc of throat, the shadow formed by the sweep of her jawline as she bends her head in concentration. Black silk accentuates the pale sheen of her skin, her dress cut wide against the shoulders to reveal her collarbones, and the stretch of her swan-like throat. Slender hips cradle a spine which draws itself, erect as a candle-flame, towards the ceiling. She has arms of alabaster, impossibly long, arms of a conjuress.  Her eyes are closed, her nostrils open. She breathes music into her, as if it were all she needed to exist. All senses are focused on this other body, gripped between her thighs; this body of violent swells and curves so different to her own.

I am smooth and gleaming, the light from the chandelier creating honeyed ripples on the surface of my flesh, flesh of maple.  I am shaped to hold secrets. I am hollow, yet fecund.  Bodies such as mine are made for the fervent embrace.  Flesh such as mine will not erode easily, even from the rituals of the most devout of lovers. 

My senses are so exquisitely honed that a flutter of fingers at my throat forges fire in my womb. I feel the strength of the thighs which clasp my hips, the tender determination of her hands upon my spine.

I cannot but yield up my music.

Is this how I was born into consciousness, the bow keening across my strings, animating them with music? My cords, through which I sing and speak, and feel. She calls me Seraphine, her burning one, her angel. No matter where we are in the world, I feel as if I am always here; caught in light, cradled in her arms, pivoting on a single point of pain like a ballerina, poised between grace and chaos.

She makes love to me each night on stage, each performance a fresh seduction.  Together, we weave sound and silence into incantations which bewitch and benumb those who listen.

Those who come to sit in the dark and watch are nearly always men, no matter if we play in the theatres of Paris, New York or Cairo.  It is when the lights are directed away from them, when lulled into the roles of mere observers, that the truth of their lives is revealed in their faces, all yearnings and disillusions.  Men with hungering eyes and lonely mouths.  Men with laden wallets and leaden hearts.  There, in the embrace of the illuminating dark, they become my performance.

I am of wood, yet something of me is woman.

 

I love my mistress. But she has a heart made of wood. She does not respond to the caresses of love. It is only music that makes her soft, Bach that brings fire to her cheeks, Schumann that coaxes a languorous curve from her lips. Only for Brahms does her body quiver, her sex yielding to the vibrations of the notes through my body, becoming moist with desire. But for what? Strangely, it is I who long for the touch of a man, I who am fashioned from the finest of maple wood.

Perhaps, one night, whilst playing me in a frenzy of passion, she transferred her heart to me.

There are stories woven into the sinews of my strings. My mistress slices her bow along them like a scalpel.

But there are stories and there are secrets. The secrets I keep deep in the hollow of my body. These she shall not have.

I love my mistress. But equally, I love desire itself, the sensual energy that dances between two beings.  And if I cannot be completely fulfilled myself, then to invoke desire in others is what I will do.

 

* 

‘A dream, like trying to remember, breaks open words for other, hidden meanings.’

Rosmarie Waldrop

This is a curated excerpt of a story that was seeded in my psyche sixteen years ago, when I had an incredibly erotic dream. I was a cello, being played to an audience of only men, in tuxedoes. I could feel the music pouring out of me as if they were physical sensations, my whole body was full of this incredible cello music, and I woke up in the middle of some intense krias (a Tantric word, describing the movement or release of orgasmic energy through the body). I had woken up my boyfriend with my sounds and writhing, and I could still hear the music in my head, as I described the dream to him. The telling of the dream had an erotic effect on him too, and we umm … didn’t sleep for quite a while.

Over the next few days, I wrote about three pages of what the dream had evoked for me. It was the beginning of my first erotica story, and the words felt as if they were pouring out like streams of melody – but I couldn’t tie together the passages. Flash forward sixteen years, with several attempts in-between. I finally finshed it recently. Interestingly, I used almost all of the original material, but found my way into the “narrative gaps” to write a more fully-formed story.

Around the writing of a story, are often other stories.

Plots are something I used to struggle with, as a younger writer. That, I believe, is what hindered me from shaping the “scenes”, moments and characters I so strongly envisaged into stories. So, I am developing my “narrative muscle” with each story I work on – and complete.

To develop a strong sense of resilience and healthy writer-ego, I believe the completion of one’s creative ideas is crucial. Half-finished ideas have a terrible tendency to haunt you.

The defintion of a chord is:

Three or more notes that combine harmoniously.

And Chords of Desire is actually told from the perspectives of three characters: three characters that sound their own unique note on the exploration of desire, three characters bound together by its power. This excerpt is just after a short prelude that begins the story, and is from the cello Seraphine’s perspective. That initial dream, the surreal fact that I was the cello, and could think and feel, always meant she was going to be a sentient character. She could be said to embody feminne desire. Inevitably, this story weaves elements of magical realism into its narrative.

I’m still searching for a home for this story – if any editor or publisher reading it feels it might resonate with their publication, or indeed if any writer knows a place that its style would be at home in, please do feel free to comment or write me here. The full version is around 4000 words. Paid publication leads only, please.

As always, this writer very much appreciates reades who take a moment to let to me know their thoughts on how the story has connected with them.

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Night-Sea Journey: Prose-Poem / Flash Fiction

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Adrea Kore, Female Ejaculation, Female Sexuality, Flash Fiction, Mermaids, Prose-Poetry, Wicked Wednesday

Water Serpents II – Gustav Klimt

Inside, I am oceanic-eternal. Like a medieval map of the world, my reality spills over the edges of the known. My contours and deeps are uncharted; it is uncertain where I begin or end.

Here there be Mermaids …

I will sing to you, lover, sing of my mysterious sea-secrets. The endless undulations of me; pleasure filling me, chalice-like, with briny wine for you to sip from. Let my hair caress your hips, your mouth, like filaments of pale seaweed. Let it wrap about you, binding you to me.

Come, set sail upon me. Be my explorer, my cartographer. The stars are in alignment, love. Together, we are the journey.

Part me, as Moses parted the Red Sea, a miracle act, here, too. Your questing flesh, an expanding promise, riding high on my inner tides. I sigh out with pleasure in wet waves of release; contract, back, with the moon’s powerful pull.  Ebbing. Flowing.

Je suis la mer …

Sail me, in your boat of longing, as a brave sailor will. Sometimes, I am the calm of a tranquil harbour, lapping gently at your prow. Other times, I am surging waves, impossible depths, the suck and broil of hungry currents crashing against your sides, salt-sprays high over your star-seeking mast.

And here there be dragons …

I can shipwreck you, lover, leave you gasping for breath, disoriented and drenched on the coastline of my belly.

Touch me, leave your wet finger-prints as memories in the sands of my shores.  Dipping, spiralling, diving deep, you plunder me, asunder me.

Your fingers are learning me. Your fingers learn fast. Your fingers are listening inside me.

Secrets, whisper-dripped desires that fall from the walls of my underwater cave. Filling up the whorls on your finger-tips with the drawn-out pleasure of me.

Ebbing. Flowing.

You carry my secrets on your hands into the world. I imagine you touching your fingers to your lips when you crave the scent of mystery amidst the everyday.

Sail me to the land beneath the evening star; believe not the myth that it is always just out of reach. Drop your anchor down,

 down,

 down.

Perhaps you will not reach the bottom, but float suspended in me forever…

My contours and depths are uncharted. It is uncertain where I begin or end.

I am oceanic-eternal. A mermaid dwells in my briny sea-cave, and she will sing her siren song, whether I wish her to or not.

 

Men have drowned in me.

But you, you have lived to tell your tale. Tales of your night sea-journeyings.

When the stars are in alignment, lover, will you come sail me again?

 

© Adrea Kore, 2016

 

Myths about mermaids fascinate me; their link to feminine sexuality and the unconscious. My piece is part micro-fiction (flash), part prose-poem. I think I’ll be recording this one soon.

I’m delighted to find creative synchronicity this week has led me to Marie Rebelle’s wonderful “Mermaid” theme this week for Wicked Wednesday. Thanks, Leonora for giving me the nudge. Click the button to discover more mermaid explorations …