Friday Funny

Not about anything remotely erotic - but I thought it very funny!

Have a nice weekend.

Jen

Wednesday Writing

Another writer was recently asking me about writing ménage as my next story out in a few weeks (Wife for Three) is a ménage a quartre. In this case one heroine with three men who are brothers.

One of the difficult things when writing ménage is to make sure that the personality of each of the heroes is sufficiently different as when I first finished it and read it back to myself I became aware that two of them seemed to merge into each other. Hopefully I have fixed this issue – one is the brooding, silent type, the next is hot headed and cocky, the youngest is the sweetest – a peacemaker, often with a joke (and all of them have different coloured hair!).

Another problem I have come across (and in some ways this harks back to Monday’s post on character names) is when I have read other writers’ stories where at least two of the main characters have similar names – or names starting with the same capital letter and as a reader you can easily get them confused in your mind so my heroes are Adam, Curt and Eric. Hopefully all different enough not to confuse anyone. Similarly, you need to make sure they use different terms of endearment for the heroine. A third issue is if you now have three characters of the same gender like I did you have to read it really carefully (or get a critical reader to do it for you) to make sure that it is clear which ‘he’ you are referring to – or put in the first names of the characters more often.

Of course, when writing erotic romance, a major thing you need to check carefully (and particularly if you have more than two people making love) is to make sure all the arms and legs are in the right place, and you have written the right number of limbs! I know articles on sex say that ‘size doesn’t matter it’s what you do with it’ but in ménage stories size (width or length) can make a great difference in distinguishing one character from another!!

Something I have often found difficult to accept when reading other ménage stories is why don’t they become jealous, won’t the girl prefer one to another and if the guys are straight, just sharing a woman, how come they don’t find it icky if they inadvertently touch each other? It worked that my heroes are all brothers for the jealousy angle and there is a great scene (even if I say so myself!) where one of the brothers jealously watches (from outside) the other two having sex with the heroine in the lounge. And since this was about brothers I made sure to include a comment here and there about them being concerned about the ‘icky’ factor. Hopefully that makes it feel more real.

Wife for Three is due out around 21 June from www.bookstrand.com/jennifer-denys/ – on pre-orders for about 8-10 days before that date. Watch out for the book cover which I will show you in the next week, hopefully.

Jen

Inspirational Mondays - female character names

I talked a few weeks ago about what inspires me to come up with the names of my male characters – now it is the turn of the female characters.

This is particularly apt since I saw a book recently being advertised. The premise of the story sounded interesting but there was no way I was going to read a story where the heroine was called Edna. To me it just sounds like a very, very old lady. Of course, the author of that particular book may think the same about some of my female character names!

And that is the crux of the issue – whatever inspires you to name your characters could put off someone else who knows a person called by that name, or just because they dislike the name for whatever reason, be it old-fashioned to them or other causes.

A couple of names I chose for my female characters were because I would have given my own daughters those names if I had had children (too late for that now!) – namely Rebecca and Katherine. Gina and Lissa are named for friends. Jessie was originally going to be Jennie – but then I decided to keep that for my own pen name!! I have no idea why I came up with Ellie or Brianna. In fact Brianna started out as Kara but some unknown reason but it just didn’t fit the character and she felt more like a Brianna. (In case you are a regular reader of my books and are wondering when I wrote about a ‘Brianna’ she is the heroine in the forthcoming sci-fi Wife for Three.)

Monica, Celia, Erika are all names I don’t particularly like so I gave them to secondary characters, particularly ones I wanted to dislike! Apologies to anyone with those names!!

I do have one foible that causes hysterical laughter in those who know me – and I have had this from childhood. I regard initial letters of first names as having a specific hair colour. I KNOW – peculiar! So therefore when I wanted a dark haired heroine for Friend or Foe I looked at the letter G (other possibilities were J and R amongst others, but I had already had heroines’ names beginning with those letters) and having considered names beginning with G I then thought of the friend who was the basis for Gina – despite being blonde in real life. (That friend knows I think she should be dark haired!!!!!)

An old friend recently told me she described me as ‘quirky’ to someone else. Yup – that’s me!

Jen

Friday funnies

As an airplane is about to crash, a female passenger jumps up frantically and announces, "If I'm going to die, I want to die feeling like a woman."

She removes all her clothing and asks, "Is there someone on this plane who is man enough to make me feel like a woman?"

A man stands up, removes his shirt and says, "Here, iron this!" 

Have a nice weekend.

Jen

Wednesday writing

As promised here is an extract from The Sub Who Switched.

Just to remind you of the story – Ellie has declared she wants a Dominant man but Nick is a gentle soul so he takes lessons in how to be more dominant but all along she pushes and goads him not thinking for one instance that he has it in him.

As Ellie stood, naked, in the middle of her lounge, her hands behind her back, one hand gripping the wrist of the other, legs apart, and her pussy being inspected by Nick, she ruminated. Had she really said she wanted to be Nick’s slave? Did she really want to be a sex slave? She admitted to herself that she didn’t particularly, that she had blurted it out to get rid of him, but now she had to go through with it. The question was what would happen afterward?

Her thoughts shattered as Nick rubbed his fingers over her clit, and she sucked in a gasp. Turning her head to look him in the eye, she wondered what he was going to do next.

He raised a brow. “Are you staring at me, slave?”

Nearly laughing at his attempt at a stern voice, she dropped her eyes and, biting her lip to avoid an inappropriate chuckle, responded, “No.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” As he walked away from her, she resisted the urge to move, or at least turn to see what he was doing. A moment later Nick returned, but she was startled when he wrapped something around her neck.

“Wha—” She raised her hands and felt a collar, which he was finishing buckling. She did look at him then inquiringly to ascertain his intentions.

“Ellie, Ellie. You are my slave, remember. And slaves wear collars don’t they?”

“Um, yes. Sure.” Her words didn’t match her movements, though, as she continued to tug on the collar. Both Rebecca and Kat wore necklaces which were their versions of a collar, and Ellie had envied them at the time. But now she was wearing one, it felt odd.

“And with a collar goes a leash,” he said, holding up the said item which she hadn’t seen before.

“You have to be kidding!” Ellie stepped away from him as she said this.

Tilting his head to the side but not following her, he responded, “Arguing with your Dom will only bring you a punishment. Is that what you are after, Ellie?”

“I–er–I–No. Sorry, Nick.”

He sighed. “Is that how you address your Master?”

This time she was stunned into silence. She was not calling him Master. No way. She’d only do that for the person who was her...her Dom. The person who collared her…Could that really be Nick?

Enjoy!

Jen

Inspirational Mondays

First bit of news is that Submissive Training has been flying up the list of Siren bestsellers for Amazon kindle books. A week ago I had noticed it was just into the top 100. By Sunday it had reached 32!!! (Although I think it has started to go down again).

* * * * *

You may wonder what I am working on now I have finished both the ‘Friends & Acquaintances’ series and the ‘Doms & Acquaintances’ series. I have a new series starting in the second half of June and it is a sci-fi series this time, based on the planet of ‘Duoterra’. (This isn't the book cover but a great

picture I found on the internet).

Why sci-fi I hear you ask when my other stories have been contemporary. Well, that’s because I decided to start with contemporary stories to build up my writing skills before attempting any kind of ‘world building’, but my passion as a reader has always been sci-fi and my inspirations are Anne McCaffrey, Marion Zimmer Bradley and David Feintuch, all sadly missed. I am not including fantasy (including paranormal) authors in this list as I regard that as a separate genre even though sci-fi and fantasy are frequently grouped together – but I do enjoy fantasy and that will be the topic of another post.

As for Duoterra – it is set in the future on a planet which has been colonised some sixty years earlier so it was fun to think about how people on that planet cope with things like making clothes, what meat do they eat and so on. It is called Wife for Three and, as the title suggests, this is my first ménage!

Watch this space......

Jen

Blog Hop: the winners

Many, many thanks to everyone who has taken part either reading the blog discussions or leaving a message. There have been some great comments.

The winners of the blog hop are as follows:

Day 1: Places to ‘boink’ – Tianna for her huge long list. I am specifically intrigued by the idea of doing it in front of an audience (not me personally! But including such a scene in a future book).

Day 2: Use of sex toys – Lynn for the fact that she mentions the important thing when writing about sex toys – doing research.

Day 3: Erotic movie scenes – Gracie because she reminded me of a love scene from the film The Terminator I also think is incredibly erotic.

Day 4: Erotic photos – Vanessa for making a valuable comment that many people have erotic photos done for wedding presents but when she married 30+ years ago it would have been regarded as porn. How times are changing.

Day 5: Humour in erotic romance – Pat for telling us about her M/M superhero comedy which has a man in spandex falling in love with someone who turns into a dinosaur! My sort of humour, definitely.

Day 6: BDSM in erotic romance – Tatum for posting nearly every day(!) and in particular for reminding me that it is up to the publisher of erotic romances as to whether they think your story is suitable for their market.

I have yet to decide on the overall winner for the week to go to a UK reader. The prize being a goodie bag offered by Sh! Women’s Sex Emporium shops in London as I am still trying to work out which of the readers was from the UK! Read my blog next week to find out.

All good wishes and thanks once again for taking part.

Jen

Email me on Jennifer.denys@yahoo.com with your chosen book from the six books I have out at the moment – see www.bookstrand.com/jennifer-denys and I will send you a copy (let me know which format).