Triskaidekaphilia 3: Transformed
Nothing is quite so deliciously freeing as caving to your instincts. For centuries, shapeshifters have personified our impulse to bow to our animalistic nature. From lycans to skin-walkers and everything in between, shapeshifters give us a chance to connect with our inner-selves and celebrate our intriguing differences, our passions, and ultimately our humanity through their necessity of striking a balance between their human selves and supernatural selves.
About the Editor: Charlie Watson is a freelance editor ready to make her mark on the Edmonton writing community. Through her work with various writing and editing groups around YEG who deal exclusively with first time authors, Charlie is devoted to ensuring that fledgling authors have a wonderful experience publishing for the first time.
About the Series: Triskaidekaphilia is the love of the number thirteen. It’s also the name of our anthology series which explores the more shadowy corners of romance and erotica. There will be 13 volumes in total, each of which will be released on a Friday the 13th.
Clint Collin’s story is “Stranger in Town”
A young woman in Appalachia, eager to discover the world, meets a charming Frenchman during the annual Kentucky Cryptid Festival in her small town. When she’s invited to a gathering in the haunted woods down in the hollows, her life will never be the same.
You can learn more about Transformed, here.
Excerpt:
It wasn’t just interesting men who came her way. Last fall the attractive TV reporter from Chicago came to investigate the disappearance of an Illinois couple who went camping and never came back. Daddy always said only damn fools spent the night in the woods surrounding the town.
The reporter had been Asian with long hair blacker than the inside of a mine. The first night she came to town she’d called down and asked for some extra towels.
“Could you bring them yourself? I know it’s the end of your shift. I have something for you.”
When Julep knocked, the woman told her to come in. Using her card, Julep stepped inside and saw the room was lit with candles. The woman was sitting cross-legged and naked on the bed.
“Would you allow me the privilege of tasting you?” she asked.
Guest Post: The Challenge of Writing Erotica By Clint Collins
One of the more interesting aspects of writing erotica is the knowledge you are trying—hopefully successfully—to elicit physical reactions from the reader. That you are fully intent on quickening the pulse and summoning other physiological responses through mere words on the page. You hope the reader is living those moments in the story as intensely as possible, so much so your words become caresses along a cheek, a kiss on the neck, a hand at the small of the back.
Writers, depending on the genre, try to intrigue, mystify, puzzle, and even horrify to keep the pages turning. It is the erotica writer who turns down the mental bedsheets and says, “I want you to feel this.” Much the same as a chef might say “Taste this,” or the musician urging you to “Hear this.”
Erotica writers may also want their readers to be entertained by clever plot twists and fascinating characters, but it is all but fancy dress that must soon be shed. The erotica writer wants that pounding heart, the bitten lip, the caught breath. Is not the awaited payoff in all those western romances when the lonely cowboy at long last beds the headstrong city girl? That’s the passage that will get read again, not when she’s shopping for shoes. It’s when he tells her to leave them on.
The erotica writer’s challenge is through the magic of words alone to bring that heart rate up, to make the seduction on the page come alive in the veins. It is also why I think writing good erotica is one of the most difficult literary feats. Lazy erotica is like a lazy lover, not leaving much of an impact. Neither one is returning to your bed.
One of the best college teachers I ever had said a bold and remarkable thing the first day of class. It was in “Philosophy of Education”—back when I thought I should be a teacher—and he stood right in front of us and said, “The classroom is like the bedroom. Once you become predictable you are dead.”
The same with writing erotica. If the reader knows what’s coming next it lessens the thrill of discovery. Raise that heart rate by being unpredictable with your characters. What could be the most exciting thing he or she does next? What would surprise you? What unexpected twist would rev your motor?
The fun of playing what if with your characters in erotica is you can try out various scenarios in your head—or even do a quick draft—until that right situation makes it all fit perfectly together, like your couple (or threesome) eventually will. Like a doctor, keep searching until you find a pulse and you know there’s some life in the story. A great part of the perverse delight of being a writer of erotica is the quest for those situations and finding just the right lines to bring forth those gasps, smiles, and deep breaths.
Erotica writers certainly march to the beat of a different drum, but it is the dance of life, and they write of the joy of living, of those moments in which you undeniably know you are alive. Everyone, being human and a sexual being, has a great erotic tale to tell. Do a most unexpected thing and surprise us. Hearts are waiting to race.
About the Author
Clint Collins has been an editor and writer for both the U.S. government and private industry. Having lived at various times in the Middle East, Europe, and Central America, Clint now resides in a midwestern state where ghosts wait patiently in abandoned farmhouses and mysterious rituals occur deep in late-summer cornfields.
Nice article, Clint! I learned a lot about writing erotica. Also, I loved your story in Transformed. You did such a great job showing the passion of Julep’s soul, her quiet resignation that life would never change, and the wonderful burst of joy and freedom at the end. Well done! ~Gretchen
[…] Tuesday, July 17: Clint Collins (Stranger in Town) discusses the challenge of writing erotics on Chapter Break. […]