“Peek Hour” – Featuring with Cosmo UK

Tags

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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Eat Your Greens: Erotic Fiction by Adrea Kore

Tags

Adrea Kore, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, Masturbation, Published Fiction

Folding the laundry on this hot summer afternoon, I’m still thinking about it.

Sitting so innocuously amongst the unpacked groceries on the kitchen table. Nestled between the tomatoes, the fresh lettuce and goat’s cheese… the cucumber.

A magnificent specimen: firm-skinned and solid, with the most impertinent curve to it. It made me think of something else.  I giggled to myself as I put oranges in the fruit bowl.

I glanced at it again. For just a moment, it seemed its firm outline throbbed. Shaking my head, I put the lettuce in the fridge, thinking salad would be perfect for dinner, after such a warm day.

“You’re going to top off a gorgeous salad tonight,  Mr Cucumber,” I said, picking it up and looking it over, noticing the little indentation in the middle of one end, where it had been pulled off the vine. How like a little eye, I thought.

Then, I swear it winked at me.

The tape measure was already out of the drawer and wrapped around its girth before I even had time to question my actions.Seven inches in circumference. I squealed softly.

“Could I?”

It was organic, after all…

“Megan, don’t be ridiculous. Go fold the laundry,” I scolded myself, yanking open the fridge door and tossing it in the crisper.

So here I am, folding underwear, and all I can think about is the beckoning curve of that cucumber. Where it would touch me inside, if I actually did what I was imagining. If I actually did …

***

Washing abandoned. Skirt rumpled around my waist. Blouse and bra jettisoned, and no underwear in sight. The thought of its shape already has me throbbing and moist. I coax my clitoris into arousal gently, while caressing my breasts. Then as I feel myself getting wetter, I slide two fingers down into me. My internal silkiness expands in expectation. I want my little friend to feel perfect; I want to be wet when I devour him.

“Oh … God…” In he slides. Not before winking at me again, like a cheeky green leprechaun. I eat him up by little mouthfuls, allowing myself to adjust to his delicious dimensions. His topography fits my geography, and that wicked curve upwards kisses that place, that place which sends me into sensory whirlpools of delirious intensity, there on the underside of my navel.

Sure now that my movements are making the most of him, I prop my body up on several pillows, opening my legs so I can see myself reflected in the mirror at the foot of the bed.

“You are a wicked –  wanton – mid-afternoon – harlot,” I admonish my reflection, dipping into myself at each word, admiring my flushed cheeks, the gleam in my eyes, and how deftly my sex is gripping my little morsel of pleasure. I guide him in and out, giving him more daringly to that hungry place inside me, building the intensity of sensations until each dive inwards is met with an outward rush of pleasure.

“Mmm – Yum!”  The word is out before I can stop it. Although it’s rather apt in the situation.

“Oh, Mr Cucumber,” I gasp, my head dizzy from several orgasms. I watch the little harlot in the mirror as she removes the cucumber. Slick and glistening with juices, as if glazed in vinaigrette. I imagine he is rather pleased with himself.

I lie back, luxuriating in the post-orgasmic haze, cupping my breasts, gently stroking my torso, thoughts beginning to return to reality.  A stripe of golden afternoon sunlight lies lazily across my body.  Matt would be here in a few hours -what would I cook for dinner?

***

My lover pours the wine, as I serve up the roast chicken. I have opened the balcony doors, as there is finally a light breeze, easing some of the sultriness of the air into something more tolerable.

“What did you get up to this afternoon?’ Matt says.

As I hand the salad bowl to him, I try not to look too significantly at the contents.

Image: Public Domain

“Oh, I kept myself amused,” I say lightly, as I watch him take a generous serve, lettuce and cucumber spilling onto his plate.

“Good to see you’re a man who’s unafraid of your greens. They’re very good for you,” I remark, smiling.

“Well, I figure I’ll need all the energy I can get for later,” he teases, his mouth full. “That’s a great dressing on that salad. Sweet. Tangy.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Glad you like it.”

Under the table, I take my foot out of my sandal, running it up to the inside of his thigh, tantalizing his crotch with the wiggle of my toes. “I made it myself. In fact, you might say it’s a kind of aphrodisiac.”

He holds my gaze for a moment. “Mmmm.  Delicious.”

“Uh-huh”, I say, taking a sip of wine and running my tongue over my lips. “Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

I smile to myself. I wonder if he gets it.

Never mind.

He will later.

© Adrea Kore 2013

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

This is a version of an earlier story of mine, published as Salad Days. It has a naughtier ending, and goes down well at readings.

Salad Days was first published in Little Raven I (2013), then reprinted in  A Story-telling of Ravens (2014).  

 

 

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“Wet Satin Plaything” in Licked – an Anthology of Oral Pleasures

Tags

Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, cunnilingus, erotic fiction, erotica, femme fatales, Kinky Revenge, Licked Anthology, Oral Sex, Publications, reviews, Taboo, Wet Satin Plaything

 My story Wet Satin Plaything was accepted by House of Erotica for their themed anthology Licked  and was released December 2015.

It’s Spring here now in Australia -and I’m in the mood for some spring-cleaning – so  am updating all of my published fiction information this month.

 This was quite a cathartic little beast of a story to write – allowing me to explore some themes I find particularly (and personally) compelling  – those of acute sexual hunger that verges on addiction, complex relationships as places of struggle and transformation, and feminine revenge .

Licked contains “seven lip-smackingly sensual stories of all kinds of oral pleasure. Stories of nostalgia for the taste of a lover, long distance relationships, and revenge. Stories taking in both the distant future and pleasures in the past. ”

Edited by Jillian Boyd (Spy Games – Flappers, Jazz and Valentino) Licked is a tribute to the act of oral sex – to the intimacy, trust and the taste of your lover, the scent, the feelings the act invokes in both the giver and receiver. … Licked is a sizzling fictional exploration of some of the many ways oral sex can inspire so much more than just a hot flash of arousal. ”

For a sneak preview of my story, read on …

WET SATIN PLAYTHING

Last week, she tried to leave him on a Wednesday just before dinner.

But then, he’d pinned her to the wall in the hallway. Slowly increasing his weight on her body as one hand stole under her skirt, he’d caressed her satin-covered sex, kissing her deeply, quieting her distress.  He’d sunk to his knees, sucking at her through her underwear. Her fingers running through his rough blonde curls, coaxing his tongue deeper into her, were a tender plea for reconciliation. The cooking casserole had dried in the oven, as they devoured each other instead.

The week before it had been an early Tuesday morning.  He had taken her from behind, half-asleep on her side. No words passed between them, just the surprised gasps of her prolonged orgasms, and the quiet grunt of his eventual release. Then he rose silently, almost stealthily from the bed to leave for work. Lying awake in the chill of dawn, she wasn’t sure at what moment she felt more alone – when he was deep inside of her, or in the silence eddying through the house in the wake of the slammed door.

Sex was now the best kind of conversation they had. And although sometimes she hated herself for it, she always became wet at his first touch with any hint of sexual intent. In two years, he’d never failed to fling her onto a wild carousel of sensation, orgasms whirling through her with a carnivalian ecstasy and ferocity, seduced onto this maddening ride by his cock, his tongue, his seeking-finding fingers.

The month before, she had wanted to leave him on a claustrophobic Friday night. Claustrophobic because they never went out anymore, and she found herself curled in a foetal position in the hallway after trying to start a conversation about his behaviour (she daren’t use the word anger), and the yelling and threats had started and didn’t stop for an hour. His fury fell on her like piercing needles of relentless rain. No matter how small she tried to make herself the tirade hit her all over her body, the needles seeming to edge their way with icy precision through her hunched upper back into her heart.

…

She would leave him. She would. They were never going to go back to how they were in the beginning… She would watch as the kind gleam in his blue eyes steeled over into the grey slate of barely-repressed fury if she demanded too much of him. The electrifying sex remained, but with an undercurrent of desperation for her now.

Her earthen man with hands of bark liked to get her wet before taking off her panties. He liked to suck at her through the sheer fabric, his hot breath melting her into streams of pleasure. The thrill of his mouth being so close, feeling his tongue trying to enter her would send currents of yearning through her body, saturating the fabric with her liquid orgasms. Kneading into her cunt with his lips, he would force her thighs apart with his hands, giving her the occasional wet flick with his tongue, until she was pliant and yielding. Only then, when her wetness had seeped out onto the sheets as irrefutable evidence of her desire for him, only then would he remove her panties.

She would leave him this week. Before the verbal threats of ‘smashing her face in’ via a heated phone call a few mornings ago became a reality. Before the violence seething in his words and in the aggressive way he drove his work truck – tools lurching to and fro in the back just as her stomach lurched – bled into his actual actions towards her. How had she gotten here? She had not been with verbally abusive partners before, and she was enough of a feminist to know that she didn’t deserve to be treated this way. This didn’t stop her from feeling the fear in her belly when he was possessed by one of his rages, from shrinking and becoming this placating, cringing thing she didn’t recognise when he would threaten to leave her. Worst of all, it didn’t stop her from wanting him, wanting him even when he reeked of sweat and soil. It was as if she wanted to be sullied by him.

Her earthen man with hands of bark.

The man who loved cunt, she thought wryly. She suspected he loved her only when his face was between her legs, breathing in the scent of her arousal, his tongue a probing promise of release. Or maybe it was more twisted than even that. Maybe he just loved her cunt. Not her. Sometimes this gave her a strange confidence, a surety that he would not, could not, leave her. He needed the scent of her all over him, like an archaic ritual that meant she belonged to him. She was his territory. But her scent on his skin was also a calling spell, marking him as hers, compelling him to return to her. Who had more power, she wondered. Waiting for him to text, delaying making weekend plans with other friends until she knew when she was seeing him, she knew the answer.

At other times, she was seized by an image of her own cunt, opening wide, labia swelling up and backwards, forcing her legs to fold up on either side of her torso like giant reverse secateurs, engorged lips turning back on herself, devouring the rest of her, a dark hungry mouth. Vagina Dentata, she thought, though somewhat inverse to how Freud had originally conceived of it. Instead of it being about a man’s fear that the vagina would envelop and devour him; that he would be sucked back into the womb from whence he came into the world, this was a fear that her own vagina and its insatiable desire for one man would devour her.

Turning back on herself. She heard her own description echoing in her head. Her sexual need for him was making her turn her back on herself.

Was this what addiction felt like?

She would leave him when he least expected it. The prolonged simmering of her own unexpressed anger was starting to develop a voice. Starting to have ideas. Making her feel like she could do something totally unexpected. And this ‘something’ was the only way she would feel some sense of retribution.

…

*  * *

“Lie still. Let me look at you…”

She can’t believe she’s done this. Can’t believe he’s lying there naked, silent, so very compliant. She saunters around the bed, viewing him from all angles, ensuring he too can see the undulation of her hips and buttocks in her high heels, the now-bared and beckoning place between her thighs dipping in and out of his view.

Laid out on the bed, she thinks how vulnerable he looks in them. How he is suddenly transformed; the harsh words, so unexpectedly hushed.

Now, he is her plaything.  All the dirty-earthed hard labour of him is softened in supplication.  Softened by the touch of satin and lace.  Her satin and lace.

Stretched across his cheeks, the sheer fabric strains to contain him. They are tighter on him than on her; black to match the leather bindings around his wrists. These two dark interruptions against his skin are almost all she needs to tame him.

Almost.

Hands on hips, she stands at the base of the bed, brazenly contemplating his erection as she moves her own legs further apart into a defiant stance. With satisfaction, she notices how he lifts his head to get a better view of her.

“You know what you are, today? You’re my little satin plaything.” She prowls onto the bed, knees on either side of his legs, as she moves slowly up his torso, to a standing position. “And I am going to do whatever I like with you.” Gazing up at her, he is perfectly silent.

“Take off my shoe, satin plaything.”

Despite the binding, he manages it.

“Good. Now the other one.”  Clumsily, he repeats the two-handed manoeuvre on her right shoe.

As she stands on the bed over his body, she trails a toe along his torso, smiling down at him as she moves herself so her sex is directly above his face.

“Such a clever little plaything.”

She tantalizes him, oscillating her hips as she lowers herself towards his face. He’s twitching and moaning. But he’s making no attempt to regain control.

She likes him like this. Vulnerable. Waiting. Wordless.

One thing is certain. Today, he’s not the one in control.

She lowers her knees on to the bed, her thighs a vice on his torso. Holding  him firmly in place she moves her hand to his mouth, examining her creative handiwork and reaching out to stroke his lips through the sheer fabric; this potently personal totem of her desire.

She leans in to kiss him – a masked kiss, a cloak-and-dagger-kiss.

The perfect gag.  Perfect to keep her plaything quiet.

© Adrea Kore September 2015

*  * *

 

  SO GET LICKED – YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!

 Also available via Amazon

What the Reviews are Saying:

“I would definitely recommend this anthology to anyone who loves erotica and likes to indulge in very naughty short reads.

Licked, liked, and loved it! (I didn’t actually lick it, but had it been a hardback I was reading I might have).”

Coco Bell – Bell, Book and Erotica

“One of my favourite writers of erotic fiction, Adrea Kore, explores the torture of desire, of compulsion and addiction … She writes not only to arouse but to challenge us intellectually and emotionally. Her cleverly embroidered story of revenge is haunting, its prose woven with poetic refrain.

Let go your inhibitions and inhabit your senses. Embrace these tales of salt-sweet delight and, in so doing, discover oral pleasures anew.”

• Emmanuelle de Maupassant 

 

I hope you enjoyed my excerpt – and would love to hear what you thought … 

I’m interviewed by the anthology’s Editor on the intricasies and challenges of writing about oral sex  ….. here

 

 

High Tea Service – Friday Flash #5

Tags

erotica, Flash Fiction, Room Service Fetish

Although there was only one of me, I ordered tea for two.

The atmosphere of this five-star hotel, with its Art Deco gold and marble flourishes, was making me feel extravagant.

I put my finger to the old-fashioned “Buzz for Service” button. A novel feature in these online, uploaded times. One-touch service, before a mouse-click ever existed.

Moments later, the phone rings. Reclining on the panoply of pillows, I pick up the receiver.

“Room Service.”

“Tea for two, please. English Breakfast. And the High Tea cake platter.”

“Yes, Madame.”

If they kept insisting on calling me Madame, I was going to behave like one.

I stretch, enjoying the whisper of my new black silk slip against my skin, the cloud of white hotel robe open over it. Plenty of time before my two o’clock appointment with a publisher. Admiring my freshly pedicured toes, I saunter to the mirror to apply matching lipstick in ruby red.

There’s a brisk knock at the door.

“Hello, Room Service.”

“Come in,” I assent around my lipstick, casting a sideways glance. The door opens, revealing firstly the trolley with silver teapot and a three-tiered cake tray, then a tall young man, his tumble of curly brown hair fighting the neatness of his uniform.

“Tea for Two, Madame,” he announces confidently, looking about for the other occupant.

“Set it by the bed, please.” In the mirror, I admire his broad shoulders as he manouveres the trolley. I feel his eyes on my body, as I finish with my lipstick, then walk towards him, smiling.

“There’s just me. I love tea. But whatever am I going to do with all that cake?”

“Shall I pour, Madame?”

“Yes.” I watch his long, tanned fingers handle the teapot, seating myself on the bed.

“One cup or two?” His brown eyes twinkle, sending sparks across my skin. His gaze caresses my cleavage.

Reflections in a Pixelated Pool

Tags

Adrea Kore, authenticity in writing, erotic fiction, erotic poetry, erotica, Greek Mythology, On Writing, Wet Satin Plaything

A few days ago, Kore Desires turned one.

Before I began this blog, I knew virtually (pardon the pun) nothing about blogging.  I rarely read blogs, had no clue about to set one up myself, or even how to create the avatar needed to allow you to comment on other’s blogs. I had only written two rather epic, rambling guest posts (under my real name), which I may well cringe at if I read them now.

Reaching the first anniversary of my blog caused me to reflect on the challenges of this year, and think about what I might have achieved and learned.

One year on, and I’ve met and connected with many other wonderful writers online, and have found in the sex and erotica blogging world what proved to be both expensive and elusive in the realm of my old-school tendencies ie – seeking knowledge and literary inspiration primarily through books. In this new-to-me realm, I discovered what I had long been hungering for – contemporary thinking and writing on sexuality – both fiction and non-fiction. Intelligent, provocative, diverse, creative and relevant – these writers are also in some way my contemporaries and peers – my stories sit beside theirs in published anthologies. This writing keeps me thinking, engaged, wrestling with ideas. The ongoing conversations between blogs and forums keeps me tuned like a cello, listening for my own chords, my own music. The exchange hurries me to the page at times, and has given me a sense of belonging in a like-minded, yet diverse, community.

Thirty-two posts on and counting, (plus a few guest posts), I’ve learnt quite a bit about this hybrid twenty-first century communication form, the blog.  It’s my observation that the form of a blog lies somewhere in the overlap between a journalistic article, an essay, a journal entry and a good conversation.  Depending on your voice, what you want to say, and who you want to appeal to, one borrows the shape of one or more of these four forms in differing intensities.

At times, blogging strikes me as a strange paradox. It’s like being in a private, quiet room, whispering thoughts to oneself – yet it’s also a room you share publicly, with readers you may know, but many who you don’t. Right now, I write within the illusion of solitude, yet at the back of my mind are the expectant rustlings and sighs of a would-be audience.  A blog is not a journal.  Anyone who claims they are the same has not kept a private journal. The mind’s focus is entirely different.

Sometimes, I feel decadent having a room all of my own here. A room, a kingdom… A domain. (I just bought mine – adreakore.com is coming soon!) I grapple with the narcissistic connotations of a blog, along with the subtle but present pressure to create and maintain a consumable, desirable image. I’m deconstructing this image right now by typing that last sentence, these words right now. But, you see, I will reveal, but only what I choose to. I will also conceal, and you the reader will not know what I conceal. Absences are enigmatic in that way…

The title of this blog came to me because I was thinking about the myth of Narcissus, the beautiful but vain youth who falls for his own reflection in a pond; about how seductive it is to remain gazing at one’s own (self-created) reflection, albeit a pixelated likeness in the greater online pond.

pixel

ˈpɪks(ə)l,-sɛl/

noun

ELECTRONICS

noun: pixel; plural noun: pixels

1. a minute area of illumination on a display screen, one of many from which an image is composed.

   “the camera scans photographs and encodes the image into pixels”

Origin

ENGLISH

1960s: abbreviation of picture element .

This might be a somewhat macabre metaphor for a blog, but I do think it’s apt in its reminder that we be wary not to fall for our own online reflection, lest we waste away and forget our real-life selves, like Narcissus.

“Narcissus” – by Caravaggio

As I’ve written elsewhere, the first two-thirds of this year had been arid creatively. Much of that has been due to the emotional impact of a relationship ending, the ensuing grief and confusion, and then the energy it’s taken to slowly reassemble the pieces of myself. I have been flung against the jagged edges of my own emotional limits. I experienced deep love, then the severing of that love, in what turned out to be an impossible situation.  It didn’t break my heart – it lacerated it, and also shattered parts of my identity. For several months, it was difficult to feel anything except despondency, failure and pain. I have learnt much about the conflicting impulses of my open, curious mind, and my more fragile emotional needs, and that for me, respecting my emotional well-being is paramount. Someday perhaps I’ll have the courage to write openly about it.

Although I couldn’t bare to write fiction, my critical faculties, suspended for a time in limbo with my emotions, flared back to life.  Some days, I think my intellect may have saved me from the seemingly endless spiralling of my darker emotions. I took hold of ideas and in responding to them intellectually, pulled myself out of that limbo. I discovered I still cared about what I thought about sexuality, and our culture’s responses to that. And for that stretch towards vitality again, I particularly want to acknowledge the inquiring minds and intellectual passion of Remittance Girl, Emmanuelle deMaupassant and Malin James. Thankyou. ❤

So, after several painful endings, and my time in a kind of torpor, some things are finally shifting.

Through this dark time, paradoxically I discovered something I love doing which allows me to assist and work with other writers – structural / developmental editing. After so many years interpreting play-texts as a theatre director, I believe I’ve developed a skill for sensing the spine of a story, for assisting the author to bring out its themes and nuances, and for hearing a writer’s voice, and seeing what might be getting in the way of the full expression of that voice. I have my first client for a significant project, a deeply imaginative writer, with whom I’m delighted to be working. I hope to attract more of this kind of work in the future.

And if you’ve read some of my recent posts, you’ll know I recently broke my drought of creative writing with a flood of story – my longest piece yet – Wet Satin Plaything.  I wrote it for a Submission call for House of Erotica, and I’m excited to announce that it’s been accepted. It will appear, along with stories from six other authors in an antholology called Licked – release date to be confirmed soon. (If you’d like a little preview, go to the end of this article).

I’ve also just found out I’ve had several of my erotic poems accepted into Coming Together, the well-known erotica-for-charity anthology. Erotic poetry antholologies are released far less frequently than story antholologies, so consider adding it to your collection. Edited by the prolific Ashley R Lister, proceeds for Coming Together: In Verse will go to domestic animal rescue organization Hope for Paws. I’m very happy that my poems can assist animals in need.

With at least some parts of myself reclaimed, I have newfound determination for several drafted future projects. And now, when I look at my reflection, maybe, just maybe, it’s becoming clearer …

So … wish me Happy Birthday … and many more to come…

Wanna slip into a little Wet Satin? Right this way, please …

For a sneak preview of one of the poems to be featured in Coming Together in Verse, come with me …

If anyone is interested in my services as a structural / developmental editor, drop me a line here.

And here’s where you can connect with the creative minds of Remittance Girl, Emmanuelle deMaupassant and Malin James. 

Sexual Hauntings: Touching Mystery through Writing Erotica

Tags

Adrea Kore, archetypes, author intent, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Ejaculation, Female Sexuality, Luce Irigaray, multiple orgasms, On Writing, Sexual Mysteries, sexual relating, sexuality, Tantra, women writing sex

Away with my lover last weekend, I experienced something sublimely inexplicable, yet familiar, during foreplay. An explosion of silver sparks danced across the inside of my closed eyelids as we kissed deeply. These sparks are always accompanied by intense pleasure, and a feeling of closeness to my partner. Yet they also feel magical, and remind me of the idea in quantum physics (and in the Moby song “Stars”) that we humans are made of the stuff of stars, that we too can shimmer and gleam.

In a recent post on what makes a piece of fiction erotica, I touched on authorial intent, and I want to delve into this from another perspective here. The issue of intent for the writer is perhaps continuously evolving, shifting as one’s writing evolves. Intent is a drive, a strong motivation to write about certain subjects in certain ways, in the hope of certain outcomes. I believe intent is closely linked in with desire, but also our core values as experiencing, exploring beings.

One of my core beliefs is that we are more than just bodies; we are also energy, soul and spirit. So, when we engage in sex, we aren’t merely bodies grinding against one another. We cannot but share and merge our energy. Tantra is a practice and philosophy that reflects my beliefs, and I’ve been exploring it, both practically and theoretically, for almost two decades now. Tantra is a Sanskrit word that means “weaving” and aptly,  it weaves a spiritual philosophy developed over centuries with sexual and meditative practices. I’m drawn to it it also as a framework that acknowledges, supports and accepts the concept of a multi-orgasmic woman. And men, for that matter. Tantra was a world I felt confidently at home in. I was multi-orgasmic before I was Tantric, but Tantric practices such as breathing and visualization, as well as a more precise anatomical knowledge have definitely given me tools to strengthen my ecstatic experiences.

The shadow sides of our sexual psyches also intrigues me, and I see sex as a way of expressing different aspects of ourselves. Classical Tantra doesn’t encompass this side of our sexuality, but archetypal theories do. We can think of these other aspects of ourselves, like Jung did, as archetypes: the Vixen, the Warlock, the Witch, the Warrior, Venus, Pan. Through sex, we can put aside our everyday selves, and delve into other aspects of the psyche; we can allow them to come out and play.

… writing erotica is my own personal creative liminal zone, the point where sex merges into language, language into sex; two of my enduring fascinations.

Additionally, I take delight in the theatrical elements of sex; creating mood and atmosphere, using elements of costume and role play. Ahh, you mean kink, some of you will say, and yes of course many kink practices borrow from theatre. But kink is a loaded word, and one can play with all of these elements (even being tied up) without identifying as ‘kinky’. I did these things for a long, long time before I knew there were such concepts as kink or BDSM. I am inherently theatrical, creative and sensorily curious. I like to think of creative ways to enhance sensation. So these things drove me to dress up, put blindfolds on my partners, ice their nipples, tie them to tables. And to desire similar things done to me.

About five years ago, I began a Tantra teaching course. I didn’t complete it for lots of reasons, some of them, sadly, traumatic ones. But what I also realised is Tantra doesn’t encompass all of who I am sexually, nor how I want to explore sex. Around that time, I’d also written, performed and had my first erotica piece published. Why did I become an erotica writer, and not a sexuality educator?  Although the desire to run workshops on writing sex and exploring fantasy is definitely a future possibility, I can’t fully answer this question at present. Except to say that I need to be creative, and writing erotica is my own personal creative liminal zone, the point where sex merges into language, language into sex; two of my enduring fascinations.

I am (benevolently) haunted by certain intense, ecstatic, mysterious moments and discoveries on the map of my sexual experiences. More intriguingly,  it is those moments and sensations that seem beyond language, or logical explanation (or both) that haunt me; I am pulled back to the page time and time again, to the challenge of translating these most visceral, sometimes ethereal sensations into words and imagery. I write erotica partially in order to record these elements, but also to revel in the mystery.

In writing this list, I’m not trying to validate these moments as logical, nor am I trying or explain them. I’m simply naming them as a list of experiential “touchstones” that keep me connected to the mystery of sexuality, and keep me writing about sex. In fact, part of their personal portent for me, is that I don’t understand some of the experiences I’ve had intellectually. My body understands them. My senses felt their absolute veracity. It’s a searing contradicition, this knowing and not-knowing, and writing erotic fiction gives me a space to  both engage with and contemplate this paradox. They are  not puzzles I need to solve, rather they are mysteries I want to contemplate. Perhaps that’s also why I didn’t take the sexuality educator path.

Earthing Eros: The Makings of Erotica (II)

Tags

Adrea Kore, erotic fiction, erotic language, erotica, Female Sexuality, non-consensual sexual fantasies, On Writing, reading as pleasure, sapio-sexual, women writing sex, writing sex scenes

The Erotics of Intent

Erotica, with its more complex focus on sexuality, clearly offers more scope for interpretation and response in the individual reader. Speaking for a moment as a reader of erotica, I come primarily to the erotic text to be aroused, and to be shown something I resonate with about sexuality, desire and relating. As a voracious life-long lover of literature, I also seek out erotica that is, as importantly, well-crafted storytelling.  Erotica that fulfils these aspects for me as a reader is erotica I will most likely return to, reflect upon, purchase a hard copy to put on my bookshelf (as an unapologetic bibliophile), and recommend to others.

Additionally, as a sapio-sexual, I have a relentless curiosity about the broader spectrum of sexual desire and its manifestations. So even if a story doesn’t get me wet, but shows me a narrative of sexuality that challenges my thoughts about sex, reveals something new to me, affects me strongly in some way, and is also a story well-told –  I’m satisfied – though perhaps on a slightly less visceral level.

I believe an audience comes to any art form wanting to be shown the known in the unknown, or the unknown in the known. Even if this desire is in the subconscious, even if the audience is only partially aware of this desire, it is present. Erotica as a fiction genre plays constantly on this tension between the known and the unknown, between concealing and revealing.

As writers of erotica, I think the most fundamental intent we can all agree on is that we are exploring sexuality either to arouse and engage ourselves, our readers, or ideally both.

To engage and arouse.

As intents, they can be mutually compatible or exclusive. This is what I meant in the last post when I said that in erotica, characters don’t always have to enjoy sex. From the writerly perspective, we are freed from those limiting constraints placed upon romance. We can sketch the sexual scene in chiaroscuro; in all its permutations of light and dark. Yes. I did just avoid the word “shades”. We can sketch a scene to explore disparity in sexual desire, or depression, or need without affection.

In its strategies of arousal, as I mentioned in terms of focus, erotica employs a complexity of language that is specialised in terms of both its precision and its poetic elements. Descriptions of sexual encounters must rest (however heavily or lightly) on a framework of anatomically precise geography; it must provide that most basic of maps of what is going where for the reader, in order for them to orient themselves. The bare “mechanics”, as Anais Nin calls them, must be present in order for the reader to be receptive to the more abstract levels of sexual experience; to convey emotion, sensation, transcendent states. And through the history of human self-expression, when attempting to express abstract concepts such as spirituality or love, writers have turned to poetry. Think Tennyson, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Rumi.

Erotica asks complex questions about consent, personal limits and relationships. And it doesn’t just ask these questions of the characters. It asks them of the reader, also.

I don’t mean that every time there’s a sex scene, prose writers should suddenly break into lyrical verse form. I do mean that prose is more than capable of embodying poetic elements, however.

Shifting language into the poetic realm allows us to convey more effectively that which is “beyond language”; the sublime, the transcendent, the profane. Sex can be all of these things.  It’s why I think “poetic” elements such as rhythm, alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia are so powerful in writing about sex; they circumvent the cerebral, they grunt and slither their way into our limbic brains, our cunts and cocks. Sex is rhythmic, percussive, slippery, so when language describing sex embodies this, it has the power to arouse and put the reader “inside the skin” of the protagonists.

“Keeping my motions to the rhythm of a hypnotic pendulum, I take one hand and guide his bound wrists to caress my breasts, while my other hand clasps the front of his throat. I want to make him ache for each breath.

I hook my fingers into the leather binding his wrists, allowing me traction to lean back, the shift of balance weighting down through my spine, deep into my sex. A feline strength surges through me, as I tighten my grasp on these three offerings of surrender – wrists, cock, throat. Harnessing the totality of his hardness inside me. Breathing the masculine force of him up through my centre as I contract around him. Drawing him inwards, upwards, until his supple wand is bruising the petals of that sweet carnal flower blooming  inside my womb; its tendrils seeming to generate downwards from the underside of my navel, its centre steeped in waiting nectar.”

~ Wet Satin Plaything (WIP) – Adrea Kore 2013

It’s not the only effective way of writing sex, but it’s the one I resonate with most, as both a reader and a writer, when poetic elements of language are employed with care. Referring back to the forum for erotica authors I’m part of, I’m going to quote Remittance Girl in a discussion on a related topic: ” language, like cunts, gets slippery and unmanageable”. I’d add, that it’s the kind of ‘slippery’ certain readers want to engage with , and harnessing the poetics of erotic language as traction allows us to slide into that realm; to find the unknown in the known.

So, in engaging the reader, erotica seeks to arouse. But it may also confront. Provoke. And subvert. Even without arousal, these intents are valuable and powerful.

Erotica writes into those areas of the human sexual psyche and behaviour that some other genres gloss over or shy away from. Erotica reveals the links between our inner psychological desires, motivations and our sexual actions. It can also bring into the light the contradictions between our inner sexual desires and our outward behaviour. What do we settle for? What do we secretly long for, and to attain that, what lengths would we go to?

“My unspoken fantasy. Hidden in the crevices of my unconscious. But somehow, you have found me out.

Follow me like a stranger.

Find me when I least expect you to.

Fuck me with the hard-edged flint of your desire.

Fear and desire. Desire and fear. Mysteriously entwined threads that weave this heightened electricity through my body. My orgasms, white-hot flashes of neon luminescence. Splitting through the dark unknown of alleyway shadows.”

~ from Hand of A Stranger – Adrea Kore 2013

(published on forthegirls.com 2013) 

Erotica asks complex questions about consent, personal limits and relationships. And it doesn’t just ask these questions of the characters. It asks them of the reader, also.

This is why I am drawn to writing in the erotic genre. It’s why I feel proud of my craft. Sexuality is such a vital part of the map of the human psyche. Sexuality reveals so much of ourselves.

So next time the subject of erotica comes up, and someone glibly refers to “that book” as if it’s the beginning and the end of erotica, declaiming its awful prose and thereby somehow dismissing an entire literary genre through sheer ignorance, I hope that you, the discerning reader of this article, can offer something more intelligent in the defence of erotica as a literary tradition, a genre and an art form. I hope you might cite this article or some examples of well-crafted, intelligent, provocative erotica stories.

 Poetic elements such as rhythm, alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia are so powerful in writing about sex; they circumvent the cerebral, they grunt and slither their way into our limbic brains, our cunts and cocks. Sex is rhythmic, percussive, slippery, so when language describing sex embodies this …

Any culture of ideas is only changed in increments. You and I can both be a part of that.

 

“The sensual is not delivered superficially for its titillation; it is delved into for what it reveals about the human condition.”

~ Nigel Krauth

 

Earthing Eros : the Makings of Erotica

Tags

Anais Nin, Delta of Venus, Desire, Eros, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, Peek Hour, sexuality, Taboo, Tobsha Learner, Transgression

I sometimes get asked by readers and acquaintances new to the erotica genre what makes a piece of fiction “erotica”?  What distinguishes it from other fiction genres? And recently, some other erotica writers and I have been mulling over the question in a forum. Considering the diversity of erotica out there, the answer appears difficult to define.

A story can contain sex as an element, and yet not be erotica.

A story can be erotica, and yet not have an obvious sex scene in it.

“What?” I hear you ask. “Well, how do you know if it’s erotica?”

It is my observation from both reading and writing erotica that there are three primary elements present in a piece of fiction that place it within the genre of erotica: framing, focus and intent.

 Framing – The Erotic Gaze

In erotica, sex is the lens through which the character, events and themes of the story are framed. Effective erotica does not negate crafted story-telling – author Tobsha Learner in The Zipless Read reminds us that “like all good writing this does involve setting up the attraction, the obstacles, the psychology … of the characters”. This lens is then kept tightly focused on what occurs or is revealed through the characters’ sexual desires, thoughts, feelings and actions.  These elements are the vital components of the story, not merely floral embellishments; they are central to the plot, themes and character development. Remove the sexual elements, and the story collapses in on itself, disintegrates like the average short-term sexual-romantic relationship. Remove the sex or sexual elements, and there simply won’t be a story.

In non-erotica fiction genres such as mystery or historical drama, if there are sexual elements, they are not core to the central theme of the story. Sexual elements may illustrate an aspect of the development of a relationship, or the end of one, and be part of a sub-plot. But the main spine of the story is not the sex. Character growth and plot development might be mapped through depicting a descent into madness, or the recounting of a road trip, or the unravelling of a mystery.

So, what about romance? Doesn’t this genre have sex as a central element to the story? Along with emotional and psychological imperatives, yes, undoubtedly it does. But here, we move onto the element of focus, and see that the focus on sex in erotica differs in ways both subtle and substantial to romance.

Focus – Eros Up-Close

I spent half a semester at Uni studying the romance novel in a subject on popular culture, and I’ve retained very little of it. Except as an opportunity for feminist analysis, romance novels bored me,  and my discovery of interesting writing about sex such as Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus was a couple of years away. But I do recall that Mills and Boons novels are written to certain plot formulas – the desirable Mr Aloof must be introduced by page 7, the first obstacle to their union must occur by page 43 – that sort of thing. The formulaic approach alarmed my inner creative writer, and also disturbed me, because I believe fundamentally in the individuality of the reader and what the reader brings to the text. This is not an academic analysis of the romance novel. But I will draw some comparisons; how the focus on sex  achieves differing functions in the two genres.

Erotica, in comparison to romance, is generally far more explicit about the sexual acts and aspects. The remnants of ejaculate drying across the belly are as worthy of focus as the delirious intensity of mutual orgasm. Where romance revels in painting in pleasing sunset hues and sweeping brushstrokes the gloss of ‘perfect’ sex with perfect or almost-perfect people, the “erotic gaze” permits both this, but also the grainy close-ups, the incomplete orgasm, the portrayal of scars and flaws of the body and psyche as sexy.

Tobsha’s article observes that readers want to be “in the skin” of the protagonists, feeling “the aching frustration and longing and then the blissful release of orgasm, both in the emotional, physical and sometimes spiritual sense.” This kind of interiority begets a particular focus to the writing, a focus on the sensory and emotional realms. A focus on relating to the world and to the lover through the detail and delight of all of the senses. Language gets textural, sensual and becomes finely attuned to the smells of different skins, the sounds of arousal and orgasm. As Nin passionately declares about erotic writing in the preface to Delta, “how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.”

Language gets textural, sensual and becomes finely attuned to the smells of different skins, the sounds of arousal and orgasm.

Erotica delves into the ambiguous, the taboo, the grotesque. Romance does not. It is comfortable with portraying these things alongside the sensual, the ecstatic, the celebratory elements of sex. Delta of Venus contains stories that explore bestiality, incestuous desires, paedophilia, and non-consensual sex, as well as more socially conventional themes of mutual seduction, virgins deflowered, and sexual awakenings.

Erotica can have a sense of humour about the messiness and awkwardness of sex, whereas romance takes itself very seriously.

Erotica can explore the eccentricities of human sexuality. In Tobsha Learner’s The Man Who Loved Sound, audiologist Quin falls in love with women via the tones and timbres of their voices. In Peek Hour I turn the misogynist tables and create a female voyeur character with an unrelenting case of penephilia (love of and enthusiasm for the penis). Romance sits within the narrow spectrum of normalcy – it is homogenised and pasteurised desire. It is also by and large heterosexual and monocentric, whereas erotica permits the exploration of alternative sexualities such as polyamory, kink, gay, queer and open relationships.

In this genre named after him, Eros can possess both god-like attributes and the frailties of humanity. Sometimes he misfires his arrows. Sometimes he refrains from flying, and takes the train.

Sex as a focus in erotica can be simply for its own sake. It can explore excessive, subversive, dangerous and addictive sexual behaviour without rancour. It can, but does not have to situate sex as a bonding activity, unlike romance. The characters that have sex do not have to live happily ever after. They do not even have to enjoy sex, depending on the intention of the writer.

Which brings me to the final aspect of erotic writing – that of intent. But, as it’s my intent to have your company for a little longer … that will be a whole other blog post.

Coming soon …

 FOR WRITING TIPS & INSPIRATIONAL TWEETS  

‘Dance for Me’ – Erotic Fiction by Adrea Kore via ERWA

Tags

Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Dance for Me, Dominance / submission, erotic dancing, erotic fiction, erotica, ERWA, Exhibitionism, Female Sexuality, Seduction, sexual fantasies, short story, Voyeurism

So this is what he meant by a challenge of submission.

I’m standing in this cage. In the centre of a fetish club dance floor. In a leopard-skin corselet. It could look like I planned this, but I didn’t. …

“Dance for me.”

 

Thrilled to have my short story “Dance for Me” selected to feature in ERWA’s Gallery of erotica for the first quarter of 2015  (January – March).

I really enjoyed writing an erotica story around the act of dancing for someone, as I’ve loved dancing ever since I was very young. There’s a real challenge in translating such a deeply physical act into words and imagery.

Dancing can be such an art of erotic and sexual expression – for oneself but also for others. Some of this story is autobiographical; some of it is fiction, and the thrill of writing stories sometimes is the fascinating way the creative mind functions. In the flow of the writing itself, fact and fiction become fused in surprising ways – even to the author. I find myself writing huge chunks, then stopping and looking back in surprise at how effortlessly my brain has woven elements of both together. Occasionally, choices are conscious (to preserve anonymity of real-life people I might turn into characters, for example), but it’s amazing how much the creative brain simply ‘takes care of’ in the act of writing. I don’t know how many other writers experience this – but it certainly makes me wonder how many of Anails Nin’s erotic scenarios were a least based on things she actually experienced. (if so – what an incredibly erotic life she led!)

So – to read my story – unlock the cage and step inside with me …

(UPDATE: ERWA rotates its showcase of of fiction seasonally i.e. every 3 months, so this story is no longer availabe there to read – however I’ve updated the link in the picture to take you to an excerpt. The complete story is going to be part of an erotica collection I’m currently writing around the themes of exhibitionism & voyeurism – watch out for it!)

‘Under My Cape’ – Erotic Fiction by Adrea Kore via ERWA

Tags

Adrea Kore, BDSM, cunnilingus, erotic fiction, erotica, ERWA, Female Orgasm, Female Sexuality, men who enjoy women, MFM, multiple orgasms, restraint, Under My Cape, Voyeurism

Let me introduce you to one of the most creative, diverse and downright stimulating online erotica sites around – welcome to ERWA. Short for Erotica Readers and Writer’s Association, this hothouse of erotica authors and erotica appreciators has been going since 1996. They’re more than a little bit discerning there, which is perhaps why they call their erotica site a ‘Gallery’. Also, the stories enjoy a ‘season’ of publication, then are taken down and replaced by new works. Much like the cycle of exhibiitons in an art Gallery.

The Association also offers an online forum of story submission and critique amongst an amazingly talented and supportive group of writers; many writing in other genres as well, and from all levels of experience. This is where the stories are selected from for the ‘Gallery” by guest editors on the site.

I first stumbled across this site two years ago, just as i was starting to generate more erotic material, but had little idea what to do with it. So I submitted my first piece for critique, and that very same month the piece was selected for the Gallery, much to my surprise. I’ve found the camaraderie, humour, expertise, encouragement and dialogue there to be – well – invaluable. And addictive. ERWA has assisted me in developing my skills as a story-teller and a critiquer, and given me faith that my work was of a publishable standard right from my first splashes in the deep end of the erotica genre. Additionally, I’ve had the privilege to read some incredible stories, dialogue with other authors, and see work as it progressed through different stages, and this can really help one’s own writing.

I’m thrilled to have two stories and a poem in the first Gallery for 2015. I’ll be sharing the links here for you to read. The first is a wicked little piece called Under My Cape.

Please note this piece has explicit sexual content which may offend some readers. There are themes of BDSM, enforced exposure, restraint, public sex, and more. So don’t say I didn’t warn you… If however, you’re curious to read more – please click on the picture below to see what’s under my cape … 

Image : Jessica Tremp

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

Enjoy my story? Take a moment to let me know – it really does make my day when someone takes the time to comment. You can do it below or send me a private email here.

Wishing everyone out there in the big wide Blogosphere a magical, luscious & creative start to 2015. May it be filled with fresh energy and fresh ideas …