To spank or not to spank…

….that is the question! 

It is funny the conversations you can have when you are not expecting them.  A day or so ago the Black Velvet Seductions CEO, Laurie Sanders, were talking on the subject of book covers.  One of her new writers, Nadia Nautalia, is in the process of writing a series of romantic erotic short stories, on the subject of domestic discipline with a western theme.  We talked generally about the subject, apparently cowboys are hot but so are a lot of other types…policemen…business men…  the cover we discussed will be a generic cover for the whole series and I will share it with you as soon as it is drawn 

The conversation progressed and Laurie told me she is looking for high quality domestic discipline, short stories with a STRONG ROMANTIC FOCUS.  I emphasise romance as she publishes erotic romance.  The word count should be 3,500 words and above.  Think in terms of your hero being a powerful man, cowboys, policemen, business men, who spank their wives or girlfriends. Spankings should in the end benefit the relationship in some way.

I mention this as I know there are romance writers that follow me here and it would be a great opportunity for you if you are wanting to get your work out there. If you have a domestic discipline story in you, contact Laurie.

Blogging all over the world

I can almost hear the repetitive chords of the veteran rockers, Status Quo, as I type this.  A double irony as I am not a massive fan of the group or totally comfortable with blogging.  As I have whittled on about, on more than one occasion, I am kind of struck by the thought “why would anyone be interested in my thoughts on any subject?”  Yet I do get some very kind thoughtful e-mails and responses, for which I am truly grateful.  I have been invited to be a guest blogger a number of times this year, most recent of which is today on Starla Kaye’s blog.  It is interesting to blog for someone else and of course the ripples of that blog spiral out and you get all kinds of responses long after the blog has been published.  I am due to embark on a blog book tour, promoting my four stories for Black Velvet Seductions.  As writing is rather a solitary thing it is rather nice to have direct contact with readers, hearing exactly what they think of your work, be it good or not.  Thankfully the response has been good, but I am always aware that my writing might not to be everyone’s taste.  I did read a review on Amazon the other day that read “Richard Savage defines the word erotica.” I was rather chuffed to read that.  The reviewer did make the comment about the depth of characterisation, it is a fair point.  The story was only intended as a short story, a follow up to my contribution in “The Crimson Z” but  all in all I am very proud of the story “Temporally Yours” as a standalone story.

More about the blog book tour nearer the time; as there will be opportunities to win copies of the books

 

The Paranormal and Me

Over on the Black Velvet Seductions blog this Thursday and Friday I will be blogging about my paranormal experiences and the effect they have had on my work, both art and writing.  This is part of my blog on the subject:

The Paranormal and Me

by artist and author Richard Savage

I have always been fascinated by the paranormal and the occult.  To quote William Shakespeare from Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  I am not sure about that, I bet there is a lot of weird stuff that is dreamt up, some of which has fueled my art and writing. 

There have been quite a few things that I have experienced that I have not been able to explain, first of all, spiritualists.  I have seen four spiritualists – mediums, call them what you will.  Let me say first I went into this with a skeptical outlook.  I expected confidence tricksters and charlatans.  The first was a one on one session and it was uncanny, he was an elderly guy, who put me at my ease, it was a conversation in which he told me of things he could not possibly have known.  He mentioned a friend, whom I had lost in a vehicle accident, by name.  He mentioned things that seemed to make a lot of what I felt about my life make sense.  I have always had an affinity with the air and he made the claim that I had a previous incarnation as a First World War flyer.   As I say, it made a kind of sense to me but even so it still had a half-baked quality to it, if you said it out loud.  On the strength of seeing this first guy, a couple of years later I wanted to repeat the experience.  The next two spiritualists were, how can I put this, real con merchants.  It was like a fishing expedition on both occasions.  “I feel a presence in the room…  does anyone here know a John that may or may not have passed to the other side?”  Give me a break…. On both occasions the spiritualists had a go at looking for the gullible and vulnerable in the audience.  Nothing good came from either of those two experiences and furthermore it made me doubt the validity of the first one.  There was a gap between these events and the next one.  In the mean time I changed career paths from an entertainer to that of a pub-restaurant owner.  Events happened there that made me reconsider the nature of spirits and the like…….

To read the rest of the piece visit the BVS blog on Thursday

Patience for writers

All in Good Time by Richard Savage

 

A friend of mine posted on a writer’s forum…

Tami: How do you gain patience? Because waiting for my acceptance is KILLING me.

It made me think and want to respond.  By nature, I am a want it all now kind of guy but I think it kind of goes with the job, I first started submitting work to publishers in the late 1970’s.  Back then it started with you sending in your manuscript and if you was lucky you got an acknowledgement and then the wait…  I waited well over six months for a standard “don’t give up your day job” letter.  I totally understand the frustration, the anticipation is murder. 

I have to tell you my experience as a published author requires no less patience.  Once you have your manuscript approved there are the rounds of edits.  I usually have 5-6 jobs on the go at any one point.  Currently a work of fiction, my fifth story, a non-fiction project and four art projects.  It helps with lack of patience as you can distract yourself in other work.  The non-fiction book has been about a year and a half in the editing process.  It is frustrating, but I am in line and I get my edits, but it promotes patience. 

If it helps I think I can give a little insight into the publisher’s point of view.  I have, for many years, worked with Laurie Sanders, editor and CEO of Black Velvet Seductions.  She usually has at least 5-6 books in production at any one time and an avalanche of 1000+ e-mails every day, together with submissions by snail mail.  The work load is crippling.  I know one of her bugbears is authors pestering for news on their submissions and/or edits.  I know she tries to be fair with the time she spends with each writer.  So, if it does feel like a long time, a publisher’s work load is a large one.  It is always good to peek over the fence and see the other side.

Advent-urous Artists Day 13

A dedication to writing? Or obsessive compulsive disorder?

My doctor told me I have a type one personality, I had no idea what that was, had to look it up. Apparently I have a “go getter”, driven personality. I had never really stopped to think, or even considered it, I just do what I do.

I was chatting to my friend and editor, Laurie Sanders, the other day, and came to the conclusion that to a great extent we are work-o-holics, I suspect most driven people are. I rarely take a day off from writing, painting or drawing. I love what I do and consider myself to be very fortunate. I heard an interview with Stephen King, who said something to the effect that he writes every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day and then later in the interview said that he didn’t want to sound obsessed but he did write on those two days too. It made me smile and I said to Laurie I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Laurie knows I usually take my little laptop with me and that I will sit in cafés, or in the car, dentist’s reception, anywhere in fact, writing or doing my edits. The only thing I have to be careful about is the erotic content if kids are around. If there are just adults, I figure it serves them right for being nosey! I take the laptop on holiday, to the irritation of my long suffering wife, but it is who I am, it is what I do. I don’t think Laurie was too surprised when I told her that I took my PDA, which will do at a push for writing if I am going somewhere where the laptop is just too much, with me when I had a hospital procedure earlier this year. There I was on a hospital gurney, waiting, why not do a bit of writing? It seemed perfectly logical to me. Mind you, I did get some funny looks from hospital staff, others just lay there. It made perfect sense to me to get on with a bit of work rather than dwelling on the procedure. Laurie found it rather amusing, I think.

I love what I do.

Advent-urous Artists Day 11

The Last Dance by Richard Savage

It is funny, you write a story, you promote the story and while you are promoting the story you start writing the next.  Your story, when writing it, means everything to you, it is so deeply personal and yet a couple of years after it is in print and you are working on your fifth story the first story is something of a distant memory. Well, that was how it was for me with the story “The Anniversary”.  It is a story that, for what is basically a romance, deals with some pretty strong emotional subject matter.
When the book was released from Black Velvet Seductions  I received some complimentary reviews. Over the following couple of years I have had a few comments. Then I received this:

Richard, I don’t know if you will see my comments here, but I just had to say that I just read The Anniversary and I bawled liked a baby at the end. I have read several BDSM type stories, but they don’t hold a riding crop to your story here. Great action between Peter and Evelyn, for sure but to be expected in a BDSM story. But then you mixed the subgenre up by adding James, so vanilla he couldn’t tie a decent knot when he tried. That doesn’t matter one iota because his love for Evelyn is just as real and consuming as Peter’s was for her. Evelyn is a great conflicted heroine. When she gets in her car after leaving Peter, well, I lost it just as she did. Who knew that a BDSM story could be hot and touching at the same time. Thanks for a great story.

What a lovely thing to say, I found myself reliving some of the things that produced the emotions I drew on when I first wrote the story.  What surprised me most was how deeply it touched me again.  My current work in progress “The Trainer” is also very emotionally charged and deals with deep relationship issues with in a D/s marriage. Just kind of made me wonder how long the feelings would last for the current story, I guess time will tell.

See what Rob and Maz are up to on their blogs today.

Advent-urous Day 10

Cover of Temporally Yours and The Key by Richard Savage

My teachers were very influential, some more so than others.  There are a couple who were very influential and who have been beacons, not because we talked much about the way to live or make decisions or anything but more because of the kind of people they were.  They modelled bahaviour that I try very hard to emulate.  Good teachers are GREAT!  Bad teachers… not so great although they can sometimes make you angry enough to want to surpass their expectations of you. 

Yes, that was my experience, I wish I could meet up with a couple of English teachers who gave me shit at school!  I would be glad to share my views of the standard of teaching in the 70s with them although I could never be bothered enough to go hunting for them.  It would be great for a story plot though…aggrieved student seeks out old teacher, ties him up, tears up copies of his published books and makes his teacher eat his words….

Check out Maz and Rob’s blogs today!

Advent-urous Artists Day 4

 

I saw an interesting article about erotic audio books on a newsgroup on Amazon.  Audio books are a passion of mine.  I am dyslexic and though I do read, audio books are much more accessible for me.  It is also nice to be able to do other jobs while listening.  What could be better than working in the garden…there you are doing a mindless job and in your headphones is a really mucky book, fantastic!  🙂  It was interesting to read that some Black Lace stories are available.  I spoke to them as publishers back in the 1990s, before I was published, and enquired about audio books then.  The response was “why would anybody want to listen to erotic text?” and they seemed very fixed on that!  So, I wnet to a company in the States caled Passion Press.  They were brilliant, very helpful and friendly.  I bought quite a number of titles including the Herotica series 1 – 5 which are great.  There are erotic audio books out there, Topping from Below, The Story of O, the Beauty trilogy.  Audible seem to have a growing selection of erotica now which is good news.  If you have any audio book recommendations or any comments please do leave a comment, I’d love to hear what you have to say.  🙂

I’m currently looking to get some of my own stories out on audio which would be a very exciting development for me.  Watch this space!  🙂

Happy listening!

Check out what Rob and Maz are blogging about today!

Erotica

My stand at Erotica in the Guild of Erotic Artists gallery

The exhibition “Erotica 2010” at Olympia, London, has come and gone… There is a feeling of exhaustion and relief that, despite the recession, it went so well.  It was a pleasure to meet up with so many old friends and a real pleasure to make some new ones.   I was a little surprised yet delighted to meet again so many of the newsletter subscribers and folk from various social networking sights like Facebook and Fetlife, who came to the show and came along to say hello. 

Another view of my stand at Erotica

There are several dangers in doing these bigger shows not least of which is not making any money, but there are other like transport problems, general logistical problems, suppliers’ not getting things to us on time and more.  Thankfully this year there were no such problems. 

My team were great this year.  We were the best prepared for the show than we ever have been.  The lady that got us so ready was my assistant, Marian, she really pulled out all the stops and the show went as smooth as silk.  She is a very tolerant lady and she puts up with my bouts of Tourettes style outbursts!  There was an incident last year where I had spent time organising the trolley carrying the stock, tables, etc.  My organisation was immaculate, getting most of the kit on the trolley in a single load.  I was triumphant, congratulating myself on my own organisational abilities.  Unfortunately this fully laden trolley would not fit into the elevator… the language reflected my frustration in a vivid stream of Anglo-Saxon!

The cover of "Spanked" with stories by Richard Savage, Starla Kaye and Cara Bristol

I want to finish this on a high note, the new book “Spanked!” sold well at the show.  🙂  I still find it a little odd to be asked to sign a book but it is lovely to be asked to do it.  🙂

In the Driving Seat

A week ago I had the opportunity to promote the launch of my fourth story, In the Driving Seat. 

My view of writing in the beginning was writers sat on their own hammering words into a word-processor for the best part of a year.   You finish it with a flourish.  Publishers beat a path to your door and you sit back waiting for the royalty cheque to land on the door mat.   In my somewhat limited experience the reality is really not like that at all.  Squeezing in writing time is a challenge.  Once the story is finished, there are the edits and revisions.  Then there is a cosy period where you wait for the formatting and, in my case, sort out the cover art, as I am the graphic designer for Black Velvet Seductions.  Once all that is out of the way the real works starts, promoting, newsletters and generally getting the word out there about the new book.  A lot of writers seem to resent the promo element, which I find surprising, as you spend all that time writing and the reality is that promo equals sales.  I would love to hear from other authors about their experiences, views and their ideas on the subject of promotion.

Back to the launch of the domestic discipline anthology, Spanked!   I joined Starla Kaye and Cara Bristol, my fellow co-authors.  It was a pleasure working on this new book, although as authors we tend to work on our own pieces separately.  This is my second story in a BVS anthology.  I think one of the strengths of an anthology is that it’s a great way to read the work of writers you may have not read before. 

I started with Black Velvet Seductions as a cover artist, it was while attending a meeting discussing plot lines for a new book with a group of BVS writers.  I was along as a cover illustrator but the supernatural nature of the book grabbed me and I asked Laurie Sanders if I could submit a story line for consideration.  Thankfully Laurie saw some merit in it and The Anniversary, an erotic supernatural romance, was my contribution to The Crimson Z.  The next two stories, Temporally Yours and The Key, were published together, both romances, but Temporally Yours explores domination and submission within a loving relationship.   The new story in the anthology Spanked! is called In the Driving Seat.  It was only ever intended to be a very short two thousand word promo but these things have a habit of growing.  The story is about a lady with a shoe obsession and her husband who has tired of indulging her.  I really enjoyed exploring the subject of domestic discipline and I truly hope you will enjoy the read.

Before I give you a short sample of the story I wanted to give you a chance to win a copy of Spanked! I have a brief question:

“What Would You Do For A Copy Of Spanked!?

Email me with your answers and a copy of Spanked! could soon be on it’s way to you!

A little taste of my story…..

Spanked! Cover art by Richard Savage

Excerpt:

She didn’t want to leave and there was no way she could go back to the shop and return the shoes. She had run out of options. Her heart sank. The spanking was inevitable.

“God please Alan, let’s not do this.” A tone of pleading entered her voice. Her mind was an emotional briar patch, a tangle of mixed emotions. “Can’t we just make up? I promise not to do this again.”

Alan smirked, slowly shaking his head, “I remember you saying that last time. Oh yes, and the time before.” He folded his arms across his chest.

“It will be different this time, I promise.”

 “Barbara, we have been here before.” Alan looked at her, his gaze met hers, pinning her, making her feel like a moth trapped in the glare of a bright light. “I am not doing this to be a horrible bastard.” His fingertips stroked her cheek. “I love you. I really do want you to be happy. I just want you to be content with what we have.”

She turned her head to the side, “And you think spanking me will make me content?” she asked, not understanding how a spanking would make her happy.

“Frankly, yes I do. You lack discipline and respect.”

Click here for a further free sample of the story!

A Gentle Reminder by Richard Savage

I have a monthly newsletter and each month I give away 3 prints to subscribers.  It is free to sign up and it keeps you up to date with both my art and writing projects.