Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Happy New Year to you, my dear blog readers! I hope you had a lovely year-end holiday. I really enjoyed my "time-out-of-time" to hang out with my family, watch a lot of movies, eat a lot of cookies and celebrate my forty-ninth birthday. In our house, the birthday girl or boy gets to rule big time, and I took full advantage of my privileges to force my family to go to brunch at Ella's in San Francisco where we breakfasted on orange-brandy French toast, fried cornmeal with onions and jalapenos, fluffy pancakes and waffles and a luscious fresh fruit plate. Then I decreed we go to the Museum of Modern Art to see several cool exhibits on wine and style, voyeurism, and Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs. I do love art museums and always feel my consciousness is broadened by appreciating the works of artists in other media. After we got back home from our aesthetic enrichment, I made my famous rum mousse rice pudding as a stand-in for birthday cake. Dinner was deep-dish pizza from a new kid on the block, Little Star Pizza, which makes what I can only describe as an elegant pizza. The corn meal crust was delish, too. Then we broke open the Veuve Clicquot and watched The Godfather with an eye to all the continuity and historical errors as well as fascinating facts I learned from the annotated screenplay. The day was a pleasure from start to finish and even lingered on into sometime after midnight in the first hour of 2011.

The New Year encourages us to look back as well as forward, and one of the sparkling highlights of 2010 for me was my boudoir session with Laura Boyd. Laura blogged about my session yesterday, and I'm planning to give you more on my experience in the month ahead. I don't have any strict New Year's resolutions this year, but I do want to try to be in the moment, keep my mind and heart open, and write what I love in the year ahead. If you have some good resolutions to share, let me know and I might even steal them! Wishing you a New Year of peace, discovery and pleasure!

"Fresh Canvas" in Best Women's Erotica 2011

The end of the year brings many treats, not the least of which is the release of the latest volume in the Best Women's Erotica series, edited by sexpert superstar Violet Blue. This anthology is guaranteed to warm you up on a chilly night--the stories are without exception brilliantly written and fearlessly sexy. I'm honored to have a story included in Best Women's Erotica 2011, and in fact, this story is a particular favorite of mine, definitely in my top five. It's called "Fresh Canvas," and I season my erotic mystery story with a little Japanese kink, references to great European painters to give it class, and lots of libidinous desire. This isn't a story for nice girls or boys, but Best Women's Erotica 2011 will make the perfect holiday gift anyway. (Be sure to tuck it under your sweetie's pillow instead of the tree!)

To whet your appetite while we all wait for the Christmas cookies to come out of the oven, here's an excerpt from "Fresh Canvas." Oh, and the thematically fitting image of the woman swooning in ecstasy was of course taken by the boudoir photographer extraordinaire, Laura Boyd.

From "Fresh Canvas":

Miranda pushed open the guest room door. "Sam?"

"Be right there," he called from the kitchen. She thought she caught the clink of ice in a tumbler. She suspected they all enjoyed a cocktail or two to loosen up beforehand. She, on the other hand, liked to stay sharp so she could drink in every last sensation.

She sat on the bed, the scarf in her lap. Sam walked in purposefully and sat down next to her. Sliding the silk from her hands, he tied it around her eyes with expert skill.

Everything was blank now. The way she liked it.

Sam lingered at her side. She could smell the whisky on his breath.

"Any special requests tonight?" he asked.

"I'm quite satisfied with the usual."

"I noticed." He leaned in closer. "You know, Miranda, you've always been lovely, but since you started coming here for your... treatments... you've positively blossomed."

Miranda stiffened. Not that she didn't love hearing men's compliments, their intimate confessions of desire. It was one of the reasons she was here tonight. But this was too early, too sweet.

"I've learned a few things since college," he continued, resting a warm hand on her shoulder. "Can you stay tonight?"

She swallowed, fighting the urge to shrug him away. Yet deep in her belly her secret muscles contracted almost painfully, hungry for a taste of him and his new tricks.

She hadn't expected the evening to get so sticky this soon.

At that moment the doorbell rang. They both jumped guiltily. Which amused Miranda, because Sam's proposition was doubtless the most respectable interaction she'd have with a man tonight.

"I guess they couldn't wait to see you." Sam pulled his hand away. But he seemed to be waiting for her reply.

"Don't be rude to our guests," she murmured.

The bed creaked in disappointment as he rose. "It's a standing offer," he added and pulled the door closed behind him.

She was alone again, relieved but oddly restless. Yet before long she'd have plenty of company....

The Erotic Feast Begins

Tonight brings us Hanukkah's first candle plus here at the Storey household, we'll open the first door of the Advent calendar (actually we're doing seven Advent calendars this year as I want to use my extensive collection of German beauties before the boys get too jaded).

It's also, of course, the day that the new columns go up at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association and my offering, "Seeds of a Story: Recipes for Creative Erotic Feast from Inspiration to Publication," marks another change of direction in my scribblings as the naughty Martha Stewart. This month is actually a double issue, and I've decided to ease away from my focus on my slowly-progressing second novel and switch to a topic of more universal appeal to writers: the secrets of the creative process. I'll also be cutting back to every other month in the hope that I really will finish the novel in 2011. In fact, let's make my New Year's Resolution official--my goal for the Year of the Rabbit is to complete a readable draft of novel number two. If I don't do this by next December, you are hereby allowed, nay encouraged, to point your fingers at me and laugh, okay?

Anyway, I had quite a fine time musing over the first course of my feast on the care and feeding of story ideas. If you have any tips to share on the topic, please comment. I also talk about how to lay out a tasty, but very easy appetizer spread, which may come in handy for holiday open houses! Oh, and I'll use this post as an excuse to post another of my boudoir pictures taken by the talented Laura Boyd. I'm going to use this as the cover for my first romance novel....

Choose My New Author Photo?

As a 13-year veteran of the writing life, I've long since accepted the fact that half the fun in life is getting there and most of the other half of the fun involves writing about the trip afterward. So, I'm back from New York and my boudoir photo shoot with the very talented Laura Boyd, and now it's time to tell you all about it! Today I'd like to begin by asking for your help.

Like most writers, I have a Web site and a profile picture. I've long felt a bit, well, guilty, in using a photo from my first boudoir session from seventeen years ago. Okay, not that guilty because I never really looked like that photo even when I was thirty-one and besides I'm an erotica writer and my readers surely shouldn't object to a little blurring of reality. However, since my motto is "smart is sexy" and I firmly believe I'm smarter and much sexier now than I was back then, I knew I'd feel much better if I had a current sexy picture to post far and wide. That is one of the many reasons I jumped at the chance to have Laura take my picture.

Of course, as the shoot drew closer, I suffered from the same doubts I did the first time around. Would the camera's eye find any beauty in me, even with Laura's magic and expertise on my side? Is society right that women are over-the-hill and invisible after thirty or thirty-five or forty or whatever the current cut-off is for female desirability? Which might mean, that like a vampire, when Laura snapped my picture, there'd be nothing there?


I have to say, in spite of my pre-shoot jitters, I am so, so pleased with the results. So pleased, in fact, I'm going to become an honest woman and use one of her portraits as my public face from now on. Now comes that favor I wanted to ask of you. Will you help me choose which of these two rather intimate "thanks for the great sex, honey" pics posted here that I should use? Choice A in the black slip and bling or Choice B in my birthday suit? Polls close December 6, so leave a comment or send me an email with your vote!