My Wicked New Toy

Take a little of this and a little of that.
Pour it in a bottle.
Shake vigorously.
Out pops a brand new toy.
I’d be dangerous with a 3D printer.

This is Rob, my digital robot. He’s supposed to help out around my cyber office: take notes, record appointments, send email. He’s not very good at any of that yet.

He tries to help. The results are more in line with a rerun of I Dream of Jeannie–green text is me and blue is Rob:

His sass is starting to grow on me. Rob is for real, but very beta. He lives in one of my cyber worlds. You don’t need to visit there to talk to him, though. I set up a little link that will pipe plain text between Rob and anyone who wants to chat with him. Click here to bring up a little chat screen.

Expect a story to grow out of this experiment.

~Nara

To find out more about Nara, her experiments, her books, or her worlds visit NaraMalone.com

Pen to Page: #erotic #newyear #naramalone

Source: desiderioardente.tumblr.com via Nara on Pinterest

~

You dip into me
scrawl love notes
in scented ink
across white linen

Unwritten senses
gather at my margins
Your pen transcribes
translating each
quiver, lick, thrust
to oh’s and a-h-h-h’s

Midnight poet
composing dawn’s song
a love letter we write together
on the first page of the New Year

~Nara Malone

This post is also a contribution to Friday Flash 55. Click through to see what others wrote or to join the fun yourself

A Quicky Holiday Tale (Naughty Flash FIction)

With a wink of his eye
and a flick of his wrist
Santa’s helper unfurled
a very long naughty list.

She’d made the naughty list?
Willful woman that she was, that wasn’t a surprise.
But there was something vaguely familiar
about his twinkling blue eyes.

While he laid out switches
in a row a long the hearth.
She tried to quell twitches
in unmentionable body parts.

With a crook of his finger
and a nod of his head
he had her assume the position
that filled her with kinky dread.

Without another word
He got right to work
whipping up  a rosy bottom
that made her squirm and jerk.

“Sir,” she pleaded, “I was naughty, it’s true, but,
babe…er…Mr. Helper I promise to be good.
I’ll do things to please you.
You never imagined I could.”

He pretended to consider,
Brow furrowed, lips pursed.
But their game stirred diverse needs
compelling him to drop the switch with a curse

He stripped off his red suit
and  soothed her with kisses as he turned out the light…
“Happy Holidays, dear readers. May the new year bring you all
many fun kinky nights.”

~Nara

Favorite Erotic Niche: Bondage? Capture Romance? Cyber? Threesomes?

We all have our favorite subgenres, those books we buy  because that topic grabs us every time. For me, even my favorite niches have niches.

Bondage

Bondage intrigues me. What is about being tied up? I like to understand the motivations driving characters, so I did some research. While I was looking at the BDSM version of bondage and the Japanese art of shibari, a new idea took shape in my imagination, and even before it was fully formed, I stumbled upon rope artists who were mixing the art of shibari with the art of flower arranging. Other bondage artists go beyond using the traditional ropes and chains for  bondage.  Immediately the possibilities gathered in my mind, like bees around a blossom just opening. Imagining the textures, the sensations, scents, scene possibilities carried me through the novel I finished for NaNoWriMo. I experimented with the various ways a creative hero could use elements of bondage to make love the heroine even when they are apart. I still need to do some revising before I can submit to an editor.

Capture

Capture romance has been around since Hades swiped Persephone. Typically the story involves the hero capturing the heroine and working hard to win her heart so that she wouldn’t want to leave him. But there’s a sub genre, a hunt and capture version that I love. In those stories the hero is usually pursuing the heroine and she continues to evade capture, though they get really close, often intimately close, but she always manages to evade capture. As the story goes forward he grows to admire and respect her skill at evasion and she respects him for the challenge he represents. She can’t resist that playing-with-fire excitement that comes from letting him get close and then still managing to get away. Of course, he’ll get her in the end. But the key in hunter stories is the thrill of the chase, male against female, and the end where love and wicked hot sex conquers all.

I used the hunter-prey story line for my cyber romance,  Snatch Me. Cyber romance…another sexy subgenre. time.

Ellora’s Cave just released Snatch Me in a print anthology along with two other great cyber romances Phantom Touch from Cindy Jacks and Want to go Private by M. A. Ellis. Winter storm season is just ahead and you should have a copy of this threesome to keep you warm in case the power goes out.

Threesomes…menage…another erotic  niche. So what’s you favorite genre? Subgenre? Niche within a subgenre?

Just A Little Byte  from Ellora’s Cave

NaNoWriMo Tip: Simple Way to Double Daily Word Count

I’m running a little behind schedule on my Nano word count. How far Behind? According to the calculator I’ll finish my novel on December 28th. So when I bumped into an article by Rachel Aaron, How I Went From Writing 2000 W0rds a Day to 10,000 Words a Day, I was interested.  According to  Aaron, making one simple change immediately doubled her word count. Doubling my daily word count is just about what I need to win Nano.

So I’ve decided to do a simple experiment: I will try Aaron’s simple change for the next two weeks and let you know how it went in a post here at the blog on Thanksgiving Day. If you’re madly trying to finish a novel this month, you can join my experiment. The more people participating, the better the results.

Here’s all you have to do:

When you sit down to write, before you open the laptop,   list the all the things you know about the scene. Just jot some quick notes that include elements you need to get covered and details of the action. If you’re an intricate plotter this may not help you. I can write pages of intricate plot details, but when I finish that I’ve lost my enthusiasm for writing the book. I’ve learned to use a modified pantster style of sketching out basic turning points and complications in a couple of pages, leaving the story to reveal itself as I write. But it’s hard and slow going trying to mentally track all the plot elements while telling the story.  I think this switch to prewrite plotting could be a reasonable solution.  I’m including links here for the simple little scene and sequel guidelines I’ll be using for my prewrite.

Scene Sheet

Scene Sequel Sheet (For those not familiar with that term, this is where character decides on a new course of action after climax of the scene)

I put these worksheets together from notes I made from classes with Louise Boggess and the writings of Dwight Swain and Robert Olen Butler. You don’t have to fill in every detail listed on the sheet. Think of the elements as prompts to get your imagination going. You could make your own worksheets with prompts that work for your story. When I gave this a trial run this morning it did help me mentally make the switch from staring at the blank screen to seeing the elements of the story take shape like a movie playing in my mind. Once that shift happened, I was able to slip right into typing the scene. The picture above is a look at the worksheet I filled in before this morning’s write. Using colored pens makes the process more fun.
According to the Nano dashboard, 861 is my average daily word count. I haven’t added today’s word count to the site, so that is the baseline before the experiment began. I’ve done two scenes today and written a total of 2,833 words. That’s great! But the real test of a technique is how well it works over a longer length of time and how well it works for a diverse group of writers. So, give it a try and drop  by in two weeks for my experiment results, then leave me a comment to let me know how it went for you.

Feeding Your Creative Mind for Better Productivity

I have discovered the secret to creative focus and productivity and it wasn’t a pill. It wasn’t even magic. It just feels like magic.

Look at the little green boxes across the top of the graphic above. An empty box is a day when no writing occurred. An x inside the box indicates that I wrote 750 words or more. A slash indicates that I wrote but did not meet the 750 word minimum. So September’s output wasn’t great.

I don’t have a graph for August because my concentration was so bad I couldn’t read three pages of a book without getting distracted, let alone write three. I don’t know why my ability to concentrate has been so terrible lately. Maybe the wet summer produced extra mold. Maybe it’s the crop dusters. Maybe I was just burnt out or perhaps Facebook and Twitter fried my brain cells. But all was not as hopeless as it seemed. I found a cure for my distraction.

Look at my output for October.

Starting around the last day of September something clicked and I have been on a roll ever since. I’m writing every day and the word count going up. I’ve already written more words in October than I did in all of September. I’m actually doing more than what shows in the graph, but I haven’t figured out a wy to track progress on revisions yet– this is just the output on the rough draft I have been working on.

What accounted for the change? I gave up Wheat and Dairy. I may be the only person who goes on a diet because they can’t concentrate, but darned if it didn’t work. I gave up dairy September fifth and felt terrible for the first three days. On the fourth day I felt as if a fog had lifted from my brain. I felt so good that I quit wheat the following day to see what would happen. No withdrawal issues, but after a few days I noticed a sharp drop in my appetite and that has continued.

I guess it takes a little time for body and brain to adapt. I know there was a week straight where I could barely sit still I had so much energy. And about the end of September something clicked and I have a level of focus I thought I’d never be able to acquire without medical intervention. I had heard that some people with attention problems respond really well to a GFCF diet. I must be one of them. I can happily give up pizza and ice cream forever it means the concentration wars are over.

So that’s my secret. Your results may vary. Has anyone else noticed a simple dietary change had a positive impact on their productivity?

BTW, these stats are from 750 words.com. If you ever wanted a ton of statistics about your writing, sign up for their free account and spend some writing time there each day. You might be surprised what you learn about your creative process.

The Wild Ponies of Assateague Island

The internet ate my blog post today. Really.  I guess I’ll have to entertain you with pictures of my weekend.

I’m just back from four days roughing it in the wilds of Assateague Island.  Above is the first picture I took on the first morning there. I woke to find a mare and foal grazing just outside the tent.

These are wild ponies. The park rangers say to think of them as bears with hooves instead of claws. You don’t want to do anything to frighten them. They kick, bite, and charge. They can open a cooler and will come into a tent if you have food in there. I didn’t have food in my tent, but I did have a tube of toothpaste in my pack that had me a little nervous. I hear bears are fond of toothpaste. Fortunately ponies aren’t.

The first day I biked over in Chincoteague National Park, toured the wetlands in the morning, leaving my bike to hike the various trails.

The beaches were lovely and not crowded.

By the end of the first day a storm was moving in and 20 mph winds were hard on our tents.

We stuck out the storm and the next day kayaked the wetlands in search of pony herds.

On our final morning, an entire band of ponies surrounded our camp, a little going away party of sorts.

If you ever get the chance to visit Assateague, jump on it. There is nothing like going to sleep to the sound of surf and the high whinny of the wild ponies calling to each other in the dark and then waking up to the same. I came back re-energized and inspired to work on my WIP, Make Me Wet. Keep an eye out for it.