Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

I’m really late with this announcement but it’s still worth shouting from the rooftops: gorgeous male porn star and Heartthrob of the Year Tyler Knight is writing a regular column for For The Girls!

Tyler has long had ambitions to write and his straight-from-the-heart columns about life inside the porn industry are compulsively readable.

A taster:

We have never met. What happens between us is not chemistry. It is biology. The theme of the scene is this: she is an actress that needs coaching, and I am an acting coach… I try to defend against her advances, but I capitulate. I half ass the script, words dripping off my tongue like molasses.

We interviewed Tyler a couple of months ago and I got chatting to him via email. He really is a true gentleman and we’re so pleased to have him contributing to our online magazine. It’s fascinating to hear the inside story on some of the bizarre things that occur on porn sets; his anecdotes are alternately hilarious and heart-breaking.

Tyler’s latest column goes live today and it’s a corker. And yes, this is where I shamelessly plug the site and say: You’ll find it inside the member’s area of For The Girls!

I really don’t know why I haven’t blogged about this before… I was actually bursting to tell the news when I first discovered my story had been accepted into Best Women’s Erotica 2009. But then I wasn’t sure if it was a secret, and then I just never got around to it. I thought I’d wait until the publication date.

So anyway, my point is, I have a story in Best Women’s Erotica 2009 which is officially released on December 11 (but you can order it from Amazon now). What’s cool about this is it’s the first time I’ve had anything published – I mean in actual, real-life on paper with real ink-type stuff – for about five years. And certainly it’s been a long time between erotic story drinks.

My first break into the world of writing and publishing was a nice little dirty story which appeared in Australian Women’s Forum in 1998. It was about a woman who tested sex toys, a subject that, at that time, I thought was incredibly unusual and titillating*. I still remember finding out that it was going to appear in the magazine and realising that I was going to get real money for it. Euphoric doesn’t begin to describe it.

That first thrill of seeing my name in print turned into a writing hobby that then turned into a part time job. And then it turned into this exciting internet experiment whereby I discovered my writing could actually make me money online.

Fast forward to 2008 and everything that I write is intended for online publication. I have millions of words floating around in cyberspace, the majority of them on this blog and at For The Girls. This earns me a very good living and I’m aware that I’m doing far better now than if I’d become the romance novelist I’d wanted to be as a kid.

At the same time, online publication has no prestige. People don’t call you an “author” unless your name is in print out in the meat world. And part of me hankers for that old-world glory.

So I sat down and deliberately wrote a story for BEW2009, hoping that it would be good enough to appear on paper. And by crikey if I didn’t lose sleep and sweat over that story. I reworked it repeatedly and worried that it was clunky or amateurish or just unsexy. When you self-publish you can lose perspective on what works and what doesn’t and, yes, you can also get a little lazy. Not this story though. It was honed within an inch of its life.

Thankfully, it made the grade and I was once again euphoric.

I must warn you, the story is about anal sex. No, stop clenching that butt, ladies, because anal sex can be very, very hot – when it’s done right. And my story is about doing it right.

Here’s a brief extract:

I’ve heard it said that women will try anal sex twice: once to see what it’s like and a second time to see if it really is that bad. I used to be one of those women.

The first time I ever tried it was in college. I was young and stupid – par for the course. I offered up my ass after much impassioned prompting from my then-boyfriend, Dennis. There was no preparation, no lube, no pleasure at all. What was more awful than the cringing pain and fervent wish for the fucking to be over was the fact that I collapsed into tears afterwards, turning my face to the wall. I remember Dennis worryingly stroking my brow and apologizing fervently, but I couldn’t speak. I’d been a willing participant, eager to try something new, but it was a sordid loss of that particular virginity, one that left me feeling violated and strangely sad.

From then on I was certain that anal was something men wanted but women shouldn’t offer. What was the point, after all? Guys seemed mad for it, if only so they could boast about it to their friends. What sane, pleasure-loving woman would want to stick a cock in her ass?

Stephan changed all that.

Editor Violet Blue has posted about the book and includes her rather fabulous introduction which is well worth a read. I’m grateful to Violet for giving me the opportunity to be “properly published” again. It’s an honour to be included in this collection.

* You can still read the story at For The Girls, by the way. And sex toy testing isn’t nearly as sexy as I’d imagined.

In the wake of For The Girls‘ fourth erotic fiction competition, I feel the need to make a post urging aspiring authors to follow a few simple rules when writing erotic fiction. I feel this because, even though there were plenty of absolutely gorgeous and cleverly written short stories entered, there were also plenty of bombs.

Yes folks, there are people out there who fancy themselves as masters of the dirty story, but they’re not. They’re really not. Aside from the blow-by-blow porny sex descriptions there’s the awful spelling, the bad use of tense, the endless sentences and the dodgy punctuation. Little things, but they’re vitally important.

And when you’re sitting there cross-eyed, ploughing through over 80 stories about sex, you start to get kind of tetchy and you start to make lists in your head, wanting the would-be Anais Nins of the world to know that they could be doing it much, much better.

I even wrote a few things down:

Tip #1: Real women rarely refer to themselves as being “busty.”
Tip #2: Never use the word “retarded” in your stories. Go and watch Idiocracy and you’ll begin to understand.
Tip #3: Titles are good. As are paragraphs.
Tip #4: The rules are there for good reason. No, you are not exempt from them.
Tip #5: If you are writing erotica for women, it’s a good idea to leave out the misogynistic observations.
Tip #6: If your story didn’t do well in last year’s competition, it doesn’t help to submit it verbatim to this year’s comp.

But you know what? I’ve already been here, in 2006. Read my post How To Win An Erotic Fiction Competition. It’s all there. Everything I wanted to say.

Or you might want to read Susie Bright’s excellent book How To Write A Dirty Story.

Alternatively, go and visit the Erotica Readers and Writers Association and check out their many useful articles.

I was also going to direct you to Black Lace’s writers guidelines but the site seems to be down. Google it, maybe they’ll be back up soon.

I don’t claim to be a perfect writer. I’m probably guilty of numerous grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in my blog, and I still have to stop and think about the word “its” every time. But when it comes to something that has to make an impression on a judge or editor… then I get pedantic. And that’s what all aspiring writers need to do.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with my favourite spelling typo of the year. If this doesn’t convince you of the importance of proof reading, nothing will.

“The towel fell to the floor with his prodding and her juicers ran all over his fingers.”

The winners of the For The Girls annual short story competition have been announced. All the winners and judging comments are here.

This year the theme was “transgression” and wow, it certainly inspired people to come up with wild, outrageous and very sexy stories.

The top three stories:

WINNER
Julienne by Sommer Marsden
Judge’s comments: Exhilerating and undeniably hot, Sommer’s intense story of a stale relationship revived at the point of a knife makes for gripping reading. The reader is overcome with a mix of fear and lust as the story unfolds; shock mixes with curiosity and arousal. This is a beautifully written story dealing with complex emotions and it does a sterling job of illustrating the theme of transgression.
Sommer wins $200 plus 1 month membership to For The Girls

RUNNER UP
A Lover In The House Of Spies by Alicia Night Orchid
Judge’s comments: Cue the James Bond music – only 007 was never this dirty. Through a series of flashbacks and vignettes, we discover the twin stories of a mother and her daughter, both searching for fulfilment amid secrecy and lies. Oh, and there’s a lot of the cool secret agent stuff to boot. The story works on numerous levels and leaves the reader with a lingering sense of mystery.
Alicia wins $100 plus 1 month membership to For The Girls

THIRD PRIZE
Surprise Me by Louisa Harte
Judge’s comments: Public sex is always a thrilling idea and a great subject for a story dealing with transgression. Louisa’s writing is a pleasure to read and she shows a deft hand at ramping up the erotic tension.
Louisa wins $50 plus 1 month membership to For The Girls

Beyond the top 13 there were another 8 or so stories that came very close to getting into the shortlist. It really was tough deciding who to leave out and I must admit I didn’t finalise the list until the very last minute because it was so hard to choose the winners.

Of course, there were plenty of entries by writers who really need to think about another hobby. Sometimes it amazes me that some people will enter a short story competition when they don’t seem to have any grasp of spelling, grammar or paragraphs. I think some people assume that stories about sex don’t have to be terribly readable. Thankfully the number of porny, blow-by-blow sex descriptions were few and far between this year.

In any case, there it is, done and dusted. I’m so proud that For The Girls has been running this competition for the last four years, encouraging top quality writers to create sizzling erotic fiction just for women.

For The Girls will be publishing one story from the winning entries each week until the beginning of November.

Writers! Please! This is a call for more submissions to For The Girls – both to our regular erotic fiction and Wicked Ways sections and also our erotic story contest.

I realise that it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere and that you guys are probably more interesting in BBQs and swimming and not doing a damned thing, but please, please, can you spare a few thousand words of steamy, arousing, well-written filthy dirty story for me?

Yes, there’s cash in it for you, and glory, and the satisfaction of knowing you’ve turned on thousands of eager female readers!

FTG regular writers guidelines.

FTG 4th Erotic Story Competition. Theme: Transgression.

In 1946 George Orwell wrote an essay called Why I Write in which he mused about the motivations of writers.

The cool thing is, they apply just as much to everyday blogging as they do to writing novels.

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money .

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

4. Political purpose – using the word “political” in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

(Source.)

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was about 9 or 10, and while I make my living from writing, I still haven’t managed to write a novel, which has always been my grand plan. And I’m gonna do it… soon… I promise.

But still, I recognise my own motivations in Orwell’s list; it strikes a chord, I think. I found some inspiration in these words today, so I thought I’d share.