Micromanaging Imagination

A long time ago, I wrote a short story about a sub who serves as a party decoration for her mistress, one of many posed around the room. Her outfit is a fetish Catholic school girl costume, and she envies the other subs on display who wear more exotic clothes. Even worse, she's been placed in a corner, facing the wall as if being punished, so she feels that she's missing everything. All she can do is listen to the party.

In her imagination, what's going on behind her is powerfully erotic. Every sound evokes a new scene in her mind involving one of the other subs around the room and she hopes that her turn will be next. Then a man stands behind her, out of her field of vision, and talks quietly to her. His hand slips between her thighs. He stimulates her through her white cotton panties while quietly scolding her for being so wet.

Her imagination turns to him. The voice is vaguely familiar, but which one of her mistress's friends is he? One Dom after another, she fantasies over who this man standing behind her might be. She hopes he'll spank her bottom. She wishes he'd pinch her nipples. She's aching to be fucked. The only touch he'll give her is those two fingers rubbing her clit. His rare, quiet commands strike her as the sign of a confident, difficult to please but incredibly sexy, Dom. As her imagination runs wild, she comes. It's only after he pulls down her panties and takes them with him that she realizes who he is - a guy the subs simply call the Panty Thief. No one knows much about him, or even his real name. The subs dismiss him as a loser. Certainly, he's not the physically imposing alpha male decked in leather that she'd submitted to in her fantasies.

Unfortunately, that story seems to have been lost in my many computer moves, so I can't post passages from it.

As with Lisabet, I'm not a visual person. I don't do the pictures thing other writers seem to do. Even if I were to describe a character down to each twist of their DNA helix, people would envision someone else. Besides, I don't want to micromanage my readers that way. I trust their imagination to turn them on. And as for myself - I only warm up to people when I've met them and chatted with them a bit. Smarts and a sense of humor trump physical appearance every time. That, I write in great detail, because that's character. Eye color isn't.

Mind Candy

By Lisabet Sarai

Compared to many writers, I'm not a very visual person, especially when it comes to my characters. I've been inspired by places (for instance, the twelfth century abbey in Thoronet, France, that kindled the idea for my story "Communion"), but rarely by seeing people, either in the flesh or in photos. Romance authors frequently share pictures of sexy guys on their blogs - often celebrities - images of men who power their creativity or serve as models for their heroes. That just doesn't seem to work for me.

My erotic short stories tend to be pretty vague about how characters look. Especially when I'm writing in the first person, I often don't have a mental image of the narrator at all - unless his or her appearance is central to the story's concept, of course. I'll describe the other characters, but again, I'm as likely to focus on the character's voice or the way he moves as on the details of his face and body. In my tales, emotion trumps sensory input most of the time.

When I began writing erotic romance, I realized that this non-visual orientation was a bit of a problem. It's not only the fact that I can't share pix of the hunky guys who stimulate my muse, the way other authors do. In addition, it seems that romance readers want to know what characters look like, in far greater detail than I'm used to providing. I've had to learn how to describe my characters with sufficient precision that my readers can imagine them.

And it's not just readers. Every publisher with whom I work has a "Cover Information Form" that you have to fill out when you sign a contract. Invariably this form will ask you to provide details about the appearance of the main characters. The first few times I had to complete one of these forms, I had a terrible time!

(As an aside, I've discovered that although I may not know exactly what my characters look like, I can definitely reject a photo that's not a good likeness. I was somewhat unhappy with the cover of my novel Serpent's Kiss because the woman does not fit my mental image of Elena at all.)

Anyway, I've recently adopted a strategy of looking for photos of my characters when I begin a new erotic romance work. That way, I have something to guide my descriptions. I can also send the pictures to the cover artist for reference. The first time I tried this was with Necessary Madness. The artist used the photos I supplied, and I was really pleased with the results - not the least because the design was didn't follow the typical model for romance covers.

I'm working now on a M/M science fiction novel. (Well, to be honest, I haven't written anything on it for about four months. But I plan to get back to it soon...) I was able to find photos that did an excellent job capturing my nebulous ideas about my characters, Rafe and Dylan, and making those notions concrete. Facial images, of course, don't say anything about the rest of the body, but that I can imagine the rest of them, given the faces.

Dylan

Rafe

My current work in progress is an exception to all of what I've said above, however. One of the characters was inspired by a real person. I was in a blues bar a few months ago and noticed a man sitting at the next table. I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He was black, fairly light skinned, with a shaved head, handsome aquiline features, and wire-frame glasses. He wore a white business shirt, but with the throat open, the sleeves turned halfway up his forearms and the tails outside his trim jeans. His polished leather shoes looked expensive. The thing that drew my attention, though, was his aura of total concentration. He sat there motionless, one foot on the rung of the bar stool, drinking in the music. His lips pressed together. His hands, decorated with one or two heavy gold rings, lay still on his taut thighs. He didn't move with the music. He wasn't grooving with the rest of us. But I could tell he swallowing up every note.

At the time I thought he'd make a wonderful character. That evening, I imagined him as a vampire, given his beauty and his stillness. In "Wild About That Thing", however, he's turning out to be human, but with a hard edge, an intensity that makes him difficult to resist.

I wish I had a photo of him, though. Over time, my image of him is fading. I only hope I can capture his allure before I lose it completely.

Breath and Time

By Sharazade (Guest Blogger)

There are some branches of yoga philosophy that hold that each person is born with a certain number of breaths. When you have breathed the last pre-determined breath, you die. Therefore, lengthening your breaths, and slowing your rate of breathing, will also lengthen your life.

I’m not sure if I believe that on a literal level—and if I did, it would be a somewhat panic-inducing thought. Every time I jogged a mile and quickened my breathing, I’d be thinking, “Darn it! There goes a month at the end!”

But metaphorically, at least at some level, it does work for me. Some things in our lives are limited, and some certainly seem limited. For writers, two of the biggest are ideas and time.

It’s a question non-writers put to writers: “Where do you get your ideas?” We all know of writers who seemed to have only one book in them—Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind), Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird). Some authors write many books, but seemingly only one story (no, I’m not naming names!). Some authors who seem downright prolific still worry sometimes that they might have dried up or become repetitive.

When you write in one genre, such as erotica, there’s an increased risk. How many different ways are there to have sex? Fortunately, quite a few—but arguably not an infinite number (or at least, not an infinite number of credible ways).

Fortunately, though, sex—good sex—isn’t about acts, it’s about people. And if there aren’t an infinite number of people, there are at least a good many more than I’ve ever met. Even one person is so much more than one, because you’re constantly changing in reaction to circumstances and experiences. People who have been having more or less the same type of sex with the same person for many, many years (and I am one of these) will say it’s a “you can’t step in the same river twice” sort of thing. I don’t think you could have the same sex twice even if you tried.

Nor is language to describe a variety of people doing a variety of things for a variety of reasons limited. I’m not even opposed to using clichés in erotic writing, as I’ve written before, but those who are needn’t worry that English (or any other language) has been all used up. The classic “poor scholar’s test for plagiarism” is to put seven words of the suspected sentence between quotation marks and plop it into google. That’s also a nice testament to your own originality. It’s encouraging to put your own phrases into google and watch them not come up. Just as painters can still paint unique pictures of flowers, and songwriters new odes to love, so can we still put words together in fresh ways.

So that’s the good news. But there’s another way to see the breath metaphor—as time. We don’t know how many hours have been allotted to us, but we do know there’s a limit. There’s a lifetime limit, and shorter, more pressing limits: only so many weeks before a deadline, only so many days before the weekend, only so many hours before bedtime.

Few writers make a living solely off writing. Instead, writing competes with other, often more lucrative pursuits. My “other job” is editing; and if I have an assured $60 - $75 an hour to edit this, versus a potential $50 if I sell a fiction story… and the mortgage is due in X weeks… Most writers, though, are working a 40+ hour a week job, plus commuting time, and have friends, families, sports, hobbies, and other commitments, and around these they must fit their writing. It can seem circular, sometimes—in order to justify more time writing, the writing should pay; but the writing won’t pay until you can spend more time on it.

Even writing interferes with writing. There is the story crafting itself, but then the editing and revising, then the letters to agents and publishers and anthology editors. Once a story or book is sold comes the blogging and social networking and asking for reviews. Sometimes the “writing to support the writing” takes as much time as the writing.

Whenever I come across that yogic saying on each person having only a certain number of breaths for his/her lifetime, I’m reminded of an old episode of the television comedy “Get Smart.” It doesn’t matter how, trust me, but somehow Max and the Chief get locked inside an airtight room-sized bank vault. Somehow they know the room contains only enough oxygen for them to stay alive for an hour. Once this is established, Max begins vigorously exercising: jumping jacks and push-ups and the like. “Max! What are you doing?!” asks the scandalized Chief. “Hey. You use your air how you want to, and I’ll use mine how I want to,” Max replies.

Now, it would be selfish of us to use up other authors’ air, I mean, time (by pestering them with email or phone calls when they’re working, for example), but yes, we do get to choose how to spend our own hours. We can spend them writing, or revising, or thinking, or relaxing, or experiencing things to later write about, or eating & exercising & sleeping to stay healthy as we write. Everyone will choose a different way to spend those hours. The only mistake, I think, would be to lose sight of the fact that our time—our breath—is limited, and that our choice of how to spend it should be deliberate.

Bio: Sharazade is professional writer, editor, and consultant, with more than 15 books published under another name. She divides her time among Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the U.S. Not surprisingly, her stories tend to feature some aspect of travel--modes of transportation or exotic locales. She enjoys stories that are realistic enough that they might have happened and fanciful enough that they might not have. She values communication, adventure, exploration, passion, and love. Her first collection of erotica, Transported: Erotic Travel Tales, was published by Fanny Press. It is available from Amazon.com Smashwords and Barnes and Noble.

Find Shar at her blog on writing and reading at http://sharazade.fannypress.com.

It's a lot like breathing ...

I've been asked many times to describe what it is like to be bisexual. Not the whole, what's it like to be into males and females, and possibly have some wild threesomes. Those queries I tend to ignore, unless I am in full bitch mode, and then you really don't want me to answer. : )

No, what I am talking about are the honest, and serious queries of what it is like to be constantly divided. To have sexual yearning that earns the labeling of fense-sitter, and other less friendly terms.

To them I simply say, it is a lot like breathing.

As Lisabet gave us the concept to go on, she mentioned the metaphor aspect. How breathing has been likened to many things. For me, bisexuality can be likened to breathing.

I may not have chosen it ...

Some days, I might not even like it (I am married after all, and while he does support my sexuality, it is a struggle for me at times) ...

But you know what, it is a simple part of my biology, much like breathing. I can no more stop being bisexual than I can stop breathing. Except for in death ... and then, I have stopped really being anything, so that doesn't count.

Sure, like would be simpler if I wasn't bisexual. Then again, life would be simpler if I didn't need to breath too. Space travel would certainly be a lot easier to achieve, as would swimming. And no worries if the cabin depressurizes during a flight - I wouldn't need the oxygen mask.

Breathing for me is simply a part of being human, of living. We intake air and remove the oxygen from it, and then we exhale air, pushing out all the waste gases. We don't think about it, we don't debate and worry and fret and struggle with ourselves over it. It simply is, as it is. And when we don't like it, and hold our breath, we reach a point where we pass out and our bodies simply take over automatically, and we breath again.

At one point in my life, I was like that. I denied my sexuality, I couldn't handle it. (Mostly because of the lack of support from family). I was told my liking other girls was hormones, and that I would grow out of it. Because I craved the support and love of my mother, I tried. Goodness knows, I tried to stop liking girls. But, just like a toddler having a fit, and holding their breath ... I passed out (metaphorically) and my body took over. Seeing attractive women, I would feel my pulse race, my breath quicken. My body grow moist and receptive, just like when I saw an attractive male.

Finally ... I reached a point in time where I accepted that I am bisexual. That it is like breathing, something I have no control over, and really, don't want to.

For me, sex and breath combine in a single word: SUCCUBUS. The legend of Lilith fascinates me. It is mysogynism at its most accomplished. I have been looking for ways to turn this myth upon the kind of men who created it. The Sisters in this story are my attempt at retribution on behalf of wronged women everywhere.

I may have over-reached myself this week. I have barely had time to edit this story. Please forgive any minor errors.

Beware: this is a dark and violent tale. Enjoy.

The Sisters

© Mike Kimera 2011

Bear Creek, Missouri 1884

My name is Jonas Kale. I am fortysix years old. I was married two days ago. By dawn the Sisters will have taken the last of my breath from me and I will be dead. Most of my strength has already been drained away. The face I see in the mirror is that of an old man, hollowed out by life.

I have determined to spend my last hours recording what has happened to me. I know it will be difficult to believe. I ask you to remember that I am a dieing man with nothing to gain from lies and nothing left to lose from the truth. I do not intend to rail against my fate. I am the architect of my own demise. I hope that by exposing the Sisters for what they are I may save some other soul from their clutches

The Sisters are the maggots curled in sleep at the center of our darkest desires. They are all the things our blood calls for and that our conscience cannot accept. They live in our dreams and our heart. They are the succubi of which legend speaks and they steal our lives one willing breath at a time.

I am not a fanciful man and, unitl recently, I was not a particularly evil one. I am a man of business of the kind you might meet in any small town in Missouri. I came west to Bear Creek fifteen years ago to make my fortune. Those first years were hard, lawless and sometimes violent. It is perhaps an indication of my character that I thrived upon the diet of struggle and pain that was fed to me. I built a tidy business selling necessaries to farmers. I worked hard and bargained harder and I did not squander what I earned on liquor or gambling as some many around me did. I was a sober, frugal man and proud of it.

My only vice was the money I spent on whores two or three times a year when I went on business to Sedalia. I had lived my life without the comfort of a woman in my bed. On those trips to Sedelia I allowed myself the luxury of buying the services of women who were skilled and willing and wanted nothing more from me than the coin in my pocket.

My fall toward the clutches of the Sisters began two years ago, when the new railroad arrived and Kale Food and Grain began to make more money than I had ever imagined possible. Iwas left with time on my hands and money in my pocket and like many a man before me, I allowed myself to be pulled into sin.

My visits to Sedalia became a monthly event, yet the increased frequency did nothing to sate my appetites. Instead I plumbed into what seemed to be a bottomless well of lust and desire. I discovered that for enough coin, there was nothing these women would not do to me, to themselves or to each other.

I was aided in my downfall by two whores: Maude and Muriel; substantial women, well into their thirties, who compensated for their expanding flesh and diminshing charms with a lubricious imagination and a complete absence of inhibition. They knew my tastes and propsed to me a form of entertainment for which I developed an insatiable craving. I would hire the youngest, freshest whore available and have Maude and Muriel bind her and use her for their pleasure and mine for a couple of days at a time. I never used the same young whore twice but Maude and Muriel became constants in my life.

By the end of a year, my whole attention was focused on the time I spent in Sedalia. Even when I was back in Bear Creek, my mind was still there. I hugged my experiences to myself, reliving them with the same lust a miser feels when counting his gold pieces. I used my memories like a whetstone, honing the edge of my appetite for the things that Maude and Muriel provided.

It was in Sedalia that I encountered the Sisters for the first time. I had only a glimse of them but it was enough to make it clear to me that my actions in Sedalia were going to cost me more than coin. I awoke that morning with a beam of sunlight falling across my face. Motionless beneath me lay the bound, bruised, and bloody form of the small-breasted, narrow-hipped young whore who was our current plaything. Maude and Muriel sprawled across the bed, limbs tangled and mouths slack. The morning sunlight did not flatter them and for a moment they revolted me.

As I made to get out of the bed to find the po, the young girl woke. She discovered she was still bound and struggled most prettily to release herself. Then her gaze fell upon me and I saw fear fill her eyes. My flesh instantly hardened in response. I shifted towards her, her straining flesh calling to mine, and would have taken her with the cruel vigor of the morning, except that I caught sight of myself in the mirror that was postioned to reflect our frolics. What I saw there killed my desire.

My shape in the mirror was that of a ravenous demon, bent over its prey. I did not wish to see myself this way but that is not what deterred me from entering the girl. Behind my reflection, I saw two shadowy female forms watching me with night-dark eyes. I snapped my head around, snarling, but found nothing but air. I stared into the mirror once more and found that the forms had started to solidify and were not just female but comely. They smiled at me the way a wolf smiles at a lamb. I fled from the room, dressing as I went, filled with dread that the shapes would step from the mirror fully formed and hungry. I swore never to return to Sedalia.

I kept my word to stay in Bear Creak but it no longer felt like home; solitude had turned into loneliness and celibacy had turned into enforced abstinence. I was pleased when I hit upon what I thought was the perfect solution to my problem, I would take myself a wife. The Sisters must have been smiling at my foolishness that day. It was, in the end, the decision that sealed my fate.

I chose Faith Harper to be my bride. I had watched her grow from a long limbed girl into a blossoming woman whom I found deeply arousing. Faith had just reached marriageable age, she was strong enough to work, healthy enough to bear children and shy enough to be bidable. I was not the only man to express an interest in her, but I was the only one to whom her father owed money and so a deal was struck in which Faith was given up to my avarice by her father's weakness

We were married two days ago. On the wedding night I was in a state of high arousal, fueled the thought of Faith's fair flesh and fanned into flames by months of unaccustomed abstinence. As soon as we were alone in the bedroom, I fell upon her like a starving man at a banquet. Her maidenhead added something new to the experience but did not long delay me. Too much time had passed since I had sampled the delights a young body has to offer. My mouth and hands could not settle upon a single place but wanted to sample everything at once. I ploughed Faith long and deep and still it was not enough. I had been at her for an hour before I was still enough to notice her tears.

I wish I could say that I was struck down with remorse, that I fell at her feet and asked for her forgiveness, that I held her and comforted her and taught her to be my lover, but I did not.

Faith would neither speak to me nor look at me. When I forced her face towards mine her brown eyes were wide as saucers and there seemed to be no one at all behind them.

A dark wave of anger rose up in me and I brought it crashing down upon my bride, spreading her wide and pounding against her until my seed flowed hot and deep.

Only when the last of my anger had seeped out of me did I let myself see what I had done. My anger blossomed as bruises on Faith's skin, my rage was written in ribbons of her blood and my lust seeped out upon the crimson-stained sheet between her thighs.

I rocked back upon my heels, trying to take in the enormity of my actions. A man may of course chastise his wife, but I had treated my new bride like a whore on her wedding night, leaving her torn, bleeding and broken. If I were discovered I would become a periah. That of course was not the worst. The worst was that I had enjoyed it. That I had needed it. That I knew that I would do it again. I had become a monster.

I cast back my head, opened my throat and howled.

No sound came. A hand, delicated but strong was across my mouth. An arm slid across my belly, pulling me backwards until I was leaning against the cool softness of a naked woman. I struggled to turn my head but was prevented by a second naked woman, sleek and glorious, who appeared before me out of a dark mist. She grabbed me by the hair and turned my head towards Faith.

“Look at what you have done, Jonas and understand what you are.”

Her voice was like an icicle pushing into my brain. I saw not just my broken Faith but all the young whores I had used, all the damage that I had done, all the pain that I had caused and then all of it coursed into me like lava flowing through my veins. I arched my back and struggled with all my might but I could not free myself.

The woman in front of me watched with a soft smile on her face. She traced her finger down my chest and my agony ceased.

“I am Meridiana. My sister, Naamah holds you in her tender caress. We are the succubi you have summoned.”

“I did not sum...”

Meridiana place her finger on my lips and I found I could no longer speak.

“Do you need to be reminded of how you summoned us, Jonas?”

I shook my head, fearing a return to agony.

“Prepare him, sister,” Meridiana said, “while I see what may be done for our sister, Faith.”

I gave no thought to how I was to be prepared or what I was being prepared for. My mind snagged on the title Meridiana had given to Faith.

“Is Faith also a sucubbus?” I asked, filled with fear.

“All women are our sisters, Jonas,” Naamah said, her voice as soft as velvet. She clamped one hand around my throat, keeping my gaze on Faith, and stroked her other hand down my belly.

“If all women were sucubbi...” she said, wrapping her long fingers around my soft sex and making it immediately erect. “...men like you would be extinct.”

Meridiana was running her hands over every inch of Faith's body, caressing her softly. Faith did not wake but she murmured wordless happiness like a babe in its crib. I found the sight deeply arousing.

“Even now he lusts, sister,” Naamah said, working her fingers slowly along my shaft.

“It is all he has left.” Meridiana replied. “he has rubbed himself against his desire for so long that he has worn away everything else he might have been.”

She stalked across the bed towards me on her hands and knees with all the ferocity of a puma and still my arousal did not slacken. Meridiana mounted me as casually as I might climb into a saddle. Her sex held mine like a fist. I was filled with dread yet I could not help but sigh with pleasure.

“Faith bleeds inside,” she said, pressing harder at the point of our union. “She will die and the spark of life you have just planted in her will also be snuffed out.”

Naamah snarled and raked her nails down my back, rending my flesh.

I cried, not from the pain, not from regret for Faith but for what I knew must be the consequence; I would be hanged for this.

Meridiana licked away my tears and said, “Yes, Jonas. You are going to die.” She kissed me softly on the cheek. “We can make your death useful and pleasurable.”

Her sex pulsed around mine and pure joy shot up my spine.

“Give us your life's breath, Jonas tonight and tomorrow night and we will use it to heal Faith. Do you agree to our bargain, Jonas.”

I am still not certain whether I agreed to save Faith or to redeem myself or simply to experience more of the joy the Sisters had to offer. Nevertheless, I gave my consent.

As soon as I agreed, Meridiana began to transform. Her mouth widened, her tongue lengthened and huge flesh covered wings sprang from her shoulders. Her sister moved backwards, lowering me onto the bed.

Meridiana rode me fiercely, It was a joy beyond all measure. At the point of climax, Meridiana rose off me, clamping her mouth over mine, and forced her long tongue into my throat. As my seed sprayed impotently across my belly, Meridiana began to suck the breath from my lungs.There was pain, excruitating, endless pain, as if I were being seperated from my limbs slowly on a wrack.

Then it stopped.

I had time to turn my head and see Meridiana lie over Faith, kiss her gently and expell my breath into her lungs, before Naamah mounted me.

By the magic of the Sisters I was already painfully hard again. Naamah was slower than her sister, using her obscene wings to control her rise and fall on me, keeping an even rhythm that held me constantly on the edge of release. With each rise she pushed one of her talons into my skin. With each fall she sliced a shallow channel into my chest. The pain was exquisite. When I reached the point of climax, Naamah dismounted and clamped her mouth over mine. While she sucked out my breath, she worked my sex with her hand, once more spraying my belly but this time rubbing my seed into the shallow cuts she had made.

While Naamah caressed Faith and breathed my life into her, Meridiana, squatted on my chest, wings extended, the talons on her feat anchored in my skin.

“Do not leave this room, Jonas. Do not touch Faith. We will return tomorrow at dusk, to finish giving your sorry life to Faith.”

As the sun rose the Sisters vanished. I fell into an exhausted sleep, not rising until the afternoon.

Faith was still not conscious but her skin was flush with health. I on the other hand had grown old and weary. I set about writing my last will and testament, leaving all that I have to Faith and her child. Then I commenced this document.

It will be dusk soon and the Sisters shall return. Already my flesh craves them and my flesh has always proved stronger than my spirit.

I swear on my eternal life that the above statement is true

Jonas Kale

Little Breaths

I breathe words
I scribble on receipts.
When I’m standing in a grocery line
Listening how the old man wheezes
Listening how they talk
“Oh now ain’t that fine.”
“bust me some ass, so help me Jesus.
"Look how the way she walk"

I breathe words
When I’m walking down the street
Beating my drum I come
And write them on my feet

I breathe words
When I feel the bite of love
With words we lock the door with words until I come
I breathe words when you think I’m listening to you
I scribble on the sheets.

I breathe words in the Laundromat
Scribbling between rinsing and the dryer
Page to page and bone to fire.

read write bleed
lose love need
Fall crash burn
Rise laugh learn

I shouldn’t be the one to tell you
I know I’m not the best to tell you
I know I don’t
No, I don’t
No, I don’t
know
But I just have to tell you
But I just can’t help but tell you

Precisely how it feels.



C. Sanchez-Garcia

Hearts Are Boring

For the first time since I began posting on this blog, I'm kind of stumped. I don't really use breathing a lot, in my work - not as a kink, at least. None of my characters have ever indulged in breathplay, though that's mainly because I'm a tiny bit afraid of things that skirt really close to that "someone could die" edge. I mean, I think breathplay can be done fantastically well and that could die edge can be wonderful, but me? I'm afraid of spiders, for God's sake.

I'm afraid of things that magically look like spiders, such as old bits of lint, some string that came off the end of my trousers, a half-crushed jellybean, a shadow that changes a bit when I look at it funny, the edge of the curtain, the edge of something that isn't the curtain but isn't a spider either, and so on and so forth.

Therefore, I think you can see why I might be a bit nervous about depicting something that is scarier than a spider.

Although saying that - I have written about other scary things. Like dying on a spaceship because the characters are running out of oxygen. Which when I think about it, has rather a lot to do with breathing, even if no sex occurs while they're dying.

So maybe that's it. Maybe I just don't want to pair sex with something that's more associated with perishing on a spaceship in my head. When I think of breathing, when I think of people drawing in air and holding it in or letting it out in a rush, I think of very alive things.

I think about using breathing to show how someone's feeling. If they're panting, they've either run up a big hill, encountered a half-squashed piece of curtain lint, or they're in the middle of the very thing I love to write about the most.

That's right. They've just done a marathon up Mount Everest!

But no, I jest. No, I like breathing best when it's described in the middle of loads of lovely bonking, because it's one of those indicators, one of those little ways of really getting across to the reader just how amazing an experience is. All those harsh grating ones and little high sharp ones and rapid, panting ones...they only say one thing.

That someone is so turned on they've forgotten about the spiders.

And then there's other good stuff, too - the stuff that comes later. Like having a character lay their head on someone's chest, and listen to them breathe. I mean, a heartbeat's all right. It's all well and good. But at the end of the day it's just lub-lub, lub-lub. Breathing is like listening to the ocean, and it's all full of these little crackling particles that tells you exactly: this person is alive. They're alive underneath you like something ancient and brilliant and unending, and for one moment you can really believe they're never going away.

And I guess that's what breathing is to me. That feeling of never going away.