Sex, Art and Aromatherapy for free (until 9 June)

Xcite tell me Sex, Art, and Aromatherapy will be free on iTunes Bookstore between 27th May – 9th June.

It’s a short story – one of my gentler pieces of erotica, and about 6000 words – about a woman who’s already experienced in BDSM and fetish, but she falls into conversation with an older man in an art gallery, who also seems experienced in that world. He tells her stories about how, in his youth, BDSM was simply one part of a wider and more spiritual quest. She sets off on a journey with him to discover some enlightenment.

Quick sample:

The label says the picture is called ‘Untitled No. 41 (1989)’, by Joshua Cesario.

Ruby consults her mobile phone. The display should tell her the time, but it’s blank. The battery’s died.

A few other people are in the gallery. One is an older man, sitting on the leatherette bench in the middle of the space. He’s looking at the same picture.

‘Excuse me,’ she whispers. ‘What’s the time?’

He looks at his watch, casually. ‘A couple of minutes after three. Are you in a hurry?’

She’s not. Though she was planning on buying some shoes and chocolate on the way home.

‘You’ve been looking at the picture for a while,’ the man observes. ‘Do you know much about it?’

‘Why? Are you the artist?’

He chuckles. ‘Much as I’d like to, I don’t paint. I’m an aromatherapist.’ Figures: for the first time, Ruby notices a faint scent of rosewater in the air. ‘But I did know him, for a time. I first met him at a party. This was maybe twenty years ago.’

‘Oh?’ Ruby’s interested, but not yet hooked.

‘You’ve no doubt worked out that despite being abstract, the picture’s about sex. Specifically, about sex and bondage. It was… How shall I put this? It was that kind of party. Fetishistic. Orgiastic.’

Ruby does a mental doubletake, remembering that this fifty-something man with greying hair must have been young once. The kind of things she’s done, while fresh and interesting to her when she experienced them, have been done before…

‘I remember he’d tied up a young lady – she was a lady actually, though I don’t recall her exact title – and there was a certain amount of sex involved along with the painting. But that’s another story. This painting, I remember him explaining the details in a drunken conversation. It was a memorial to a particular woman he’d been having an affair with, to their idea of love.’

Of course the large canvas was about sex. Otherwise, why the pile of clothes in one corner and the shoes at the end of what, presumably, is a naked body? And what picture isn’t about sex, anyway, in some coded form? But the story coded into this picture suddenly captures her imagination and she wants to know more.

This link to iTunes should take you to the US iTunes store directly. If you need another store, just search for author ‘Fulani’ and title ‘Sex, Art and Aromatherapy’.

Depending on which store you’re viewing you’ll either see the cover image at the head of this post or the one on the ‘Our Publications’ page (also see left) – when it first went onto iTunes they weren’t keen on covers depicting bondage.

So have fun. For free, until 9th June.

Filthy Money

Filthy Money cover (link to Smashwords)

Please read responsibly!

I’ve just self-pubbed this collection of eight stories, which I’ve described as quasi-erotica: Filthy Money, and other stories of sex in the gutter. And I’ve put it up at the bargain bin price of 99 cents.

Why ‘quasi-erotica’? As I said in the blurb, these are stories of desperate sex, sexual perversity and moral degeneracy from the margins of contemporary society – they’re mostly set in the kind of social situation where people are living in bad neighbourhoods, or in squats, or on the streets. The kind of situation where no one has any money but drug and alcohol use are common and life is chaotic.

It’s not, of course, an accurate representation of that life. The collection is BDSM themed, for a start. And many of the more unsavoury aspects of that life – self-harm, self-destructive behaviour, people who collect debts with machetes and so on – have been toned down. A lot.

I haven’t included a snippet as a come-on. You can see the first 20% for free on Smashwords anyway.

I’ve had these stories in my head for a while, maybe for a couple of years. And I’ve self-published them for two reasons.

Firstly, it was a form of exorcism. It worked, more or less. But secondly, since it’s unlikely to be a massive best-seller anyway, I’ve treated it as an easy introduction to self-publishing on Smashwords. At the moment it’s only on Smashwords (and thus ultimately its associates like Diesel, Ebooks-Eros and B&N). I haven’t decided if I want to put it anywhere else, like Amazon, yet. That’s a decision I’ll make a month or two.

Self-publishing it was a learning curve, but now I’ve climbed it I might try it again in the future with other stuff that’s a little less strange and dark.

Have fun. If it actually sells I’ll be gratified. But if you like it it’ll only encourage me – even if you only like it in a ‘That’s as entertaining as looking at a car wreck’ kind of a way.

Free Voodoo Fetish!

From 8 to 12 May 2013, my Voodoo Fetish novella is free on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

I won’t bore you with the plot summary or blurb, because you can find those things on Amazon anyway.

I’ll just point out that it’s an erotic novella with paranormal and BDSM themes. Along the way you’ll find sex, bondage, whips, post-structuralist philosophy, vodou, paranormal sex, fluid dynamics equations, three-way and four-way sex, the 1832 Public Cemeteries Act, fetishism, gas masks, sex in a cemetery, syncretism, demonic possession, medical and musical equipment being destroyed by a malevolent spirit, a bass guitar, a goat’s head, and an anvwar mo. And references to certain things you can find on YouTube. And sex and bondage and bdsm.

I hope you enjoy it. If you could also review, rate or tag it on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever that would be kind. And if you like it – I have others; Ridden, obviously, which is the first book of the trilogy, but you’ll find other paranormal/supernatural erotica over on the ‘our publications’ page of this blog.

Velvet also has paranormal erotica published, including the much-praised and well-reviewed A Woman Possessed – an entertaining story of spiritual possession, pagan ritual and bdsm.

The Intelligent Dress

A quick note about the dangers of writing erotica that has a near-future science-fiction element: things can come true more quickly that you expect.

Corporate Slave Cover

In my novel Corporate Slave (you can buy it on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and in a bunch of other places listed on the ‘Our Published Work‘ page) one part of the plot revolves around an ‘intelligent dress’, which has a number of functions. These include internet connectivity and the ability to carry out surveillance of other nearby electronic equipment, the ability to functino as body armour and the ability to change colour depending on the mood of the wearer. In circumstances of sexual arousal the dress may become transparent.

When I wrote the book I knew that prototype jackets with built-in cellphones existed. I knew that some forms of plastic were and are under development that can shock impacts by stiffening. And I knew that some other materials exist that change colour if given a particular type of electrical charge. These are all separate developments that I bundled together into one item.

Bear with me here. The BBC has just published an article about road technology (which you can read here). The key detail of the article is that the technology now exists to embed self-illuminating road signs in the surface of roads, and it’s being tested at the moment in the Netherlands. But there’s a comment in the article about something else: the technology has been developed by the artist Daan Roosegaarde, famous for interactive projects, and a manager at the Dutch civil engineering firm, Hans Goris. And

Mr Roosegaarde’s past efforts have included a dance floor with built-in disco lights powered by dancers’ foot movements, and a dress that becomes see-through when the wearer is aroused.

You can read more about the Intimacy 2.0 dress on Roosegarde’s own website, including pictures and video – and there’s a longer journalistic piece on YouTube that explains the leather and e-foil dress moves from opaque to transparent as the wearer’s heart-rate increases.

And for men? Well, that could be even more interesting. Roosegarde says ‘We’re working on a suit that becomes transparent when you lie’.