Bleah - fed up with winter.
Feb. 14th, 2013 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elingregoryOkay, it can stop now. Bored with damp and cold and dark. I want some sun! Like this:
That's Carriacou in the Leeward Islands, scene of some of the action in On a Lee Shore. I'm jealous of the people I write about.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day - a day that is uncelebrated in my house apart from in one important respect. Himself grumbles if I don't get him a card and a present so I do. But to celebrate the SPIRIT of the day I joined in with the Love Bites Blog Hop. The brief was to write an alternative post about Valentine's Day in 250 words, so I went right back to basics.
Rome, about 50 AD
Valens winced as the slimy hide wrapped around his loins. It has lost the heat of its recently deceased previous owner but now smelled even worse.
Sextus, a pace or two to his right, gave a disgusted grunt, and Valens bit his lips together to stifle a snigger. Lupercalia was a serious religious ceremony. It was an honour to be chosen to have ones manly parts swathed with newly harvested goat skin, hairy side out, and to run through the streets of Rome whacking women with more strips of skin to increase their fertility.
There was little difference in hairiness between the goatskin and Sextus’s belly. It was a nice belly – rounded with good feeding, but with solid muscle beneath – and Valens wouldn’t have minded getting to know it, and the rest better. Sadly, they were so close in rank that it was better not to ask.
Warm wet touched his face – the traditional anointing with blood on brow and cheeks and breast. After which he and Sextus were supposed to laugh uproariously. A drip tickled its way down his chest, skirting a nipple, then on down. Sextus was watching it as the high priest made the invocation.
“Don’t forget,” Sextus muttered as they prepared to run. ”Lucilla and Proserpina will be at the corner by the temple of Isis. I promised them both a good thwack.”
Valens sighed. Lupercalia – murdered goats, blood, laughter, whipping women . Surely there was an easier way to celebrate spring?
See that was a little bit of M/M without any sex in it! Anyone else interested in making some kind of group on Goodreads or Facebook, or both, to promote books that have adult males in relationships, but that shouldn't really be classed as erotica? I've read plenty of mainstream novels - sci-fi, spies, historicals - that had one or two quite explicit sex scenes between the hero and some token female yet they weren't placed on the naughty shelf. Whaddaya think?
That's Carriacou in the Leeward Islands, scene of some of the action in On a Lee Shore. I'm jealous of the people I write about.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day - a day that is uncelebrated in my house apart from in one important respect. Himself grumbles if I don't get him a card and a present so I do. But to celebrate the SPIRIT of the day I joined in with the Love Bites Blog Hop. The brief was to write an alternative post about Valentine's Day in 250 words, so I went right back to basics.
Rome, about 50 AD
Valens winced as the slimy hide wrapped around his loins. It has lost the heat of its recently deceased previous owner but now smelled even worse.
Sextus, a pace or two to his right, gave a disgusted grunt, and Valens bit his lips together to stifle a snigger. Lupercalia was a serious religious ceremony. It was an honour to be chosen to have ones manly parts swathed with newly harvested goat skin, hairy side out, and to run through the streets of Rome whacking women with more strips of skin to increase their fertility.
There was little difference in hairiness between the goatskin and Sextus’s belly. It was a nice belly – rounded with good feeding, but with solid muscle beneath – and Valens wouldn’t have minded getting to know it, and the rest better. Sadly, they were so close in rank that it was better not to ask.
Warm wet touched his face – the traditional anointing with blood on brow and cheeks and breast. After which he and Sextus were supposed to laugh uproariously. A drip tickled its way down his chest, skirting a nipple, then on down. Sextus was watching it as the high priest made the invocation.
“Don’t forget,” Sextus muttered as they prepared to run. ”Lucilla and Proserpina will be at the corner by the temple of Isis. I promised them both a good thwack.”
Valens sighed. Lupercalia – murdered goats, blood, laughter, whipping women . Surely there was an easier way to celebrate spring?
See that was a little bit of M/M without any sex in it! Anyone else interested in making some kind of group on Goodreads or Facebook, or both, to promote books that have adult males in relationships, but that shouldn't really be classed as erotica? I've read plenty of mainstream novels - sci-fi, spies, historicals - that had one or two quite explicit sex scenes between the hero and some token female yet they weren't placed on the naughty shelf. Whaddaya think?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 11:15 am (UTC)I'd join a group like that even without the beach. I write (sometimes) smutty romance not erotica.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 11:57 am (UTC)The best way for a couple to get over social customs is to take them out of that society. :) I'm giving it some thought.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 09:15 pm (UTC)FYI, I'm Lillian Francis, btw.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 09:53 pm (UTC)I'm baffled by this whole business. My pirate novel has 450 odd pages and a 2 page sex scene that fades to black because I got bored writing it and my publisher still tried to market it as M/M erotica! What the heck is that about?
I just need to have a very hard think about the most useful way to set the group up to benefit both authors and readers, and to accommodate all the variations from no romance to one red hot page.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 11:02 pm (UTC)Yep, I average two sex scenes per novel, often not very explicit, so I wouldn't class myself as erotica either. And my Lashings of Sauce story had no sex at all.
PM me if you need to chuck ideas around :D
no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 03:33 am (UTC)(just my 2 cents)
Tame
no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 02:03 pm (UTC)I wish people would understand that I can love and support gay erotic fiction without wanting my books misclassified. It's not about being against sex or explicit scenes, it's about getting the right books to the right readers.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 02:55 pm (UTC)Any ideas?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 03:07 pm (UTC)