I've been working on a writing guide to help authors craft good sex scenes, and have just signed a contract with Compass Books to be published later this year!
Sex scenes are one of the hardest things to write well, and so 'Passionate Plots' is full of the tips and tricks I've picked up along the way that I've found helpful. I'd love to hear from other authors on your experiences of writing sex scenes.
 
The present moment, we are often told by those in the know, is all we
have. Yet it generally feels like that’s the one thing I don’t have…I have tried
to capture this elusive present in meditation, in my yoga practice, on shamanic
healing retreats and in chanting circles, only of course to realise that as soon
as you try to hold on to it…poof
it’s gone. I have had to admit to myself that that blissful sense of
timelessness, that here,
now
; free from ruminating over the past or worrying about the future
is more easily accessible to me lying in a bubble bath with a glass of red wine
after the children have finally
gone to bed, that it has ever been on my meditation cushion.

But of
course the whole point of mindfulness is to live
in the present, not capture it like a photograph – which then
becomes a memory. It’s a paradox that left me despairing of ever discovering
this power of the present moment until I discovered the Japanese art of writing
haiku – three line, seventeen syllable poems that perfectly preserve a single
moment without somehow diminishing it, so that when you read them you are again
suspended in that single, elusive moment. I devoured haiku collections with no
real intention of attempting to write them myself until I found words popping
into my head unbidden during – of all times – the rushed morning school
run.

Cathedral spire
Always on the horizon
Like watchtower, or parent


 Ice crushing underfoot
Does not sparkle as bright
As my daughters eyes

I have often been able to lose myself in writing, to feel that
sense of flow that is perhaps what we really mean when we talk about living in
the present – that expansive feeling of part of a creative process where our
notions of beginning and end slip away. Until of course the phone rings or the
doorbell chimes or we remember that pets or kids or spouses (delete as
appropriate) and ourselves need feeding.

Haiku to me sums up that
expansive feeling – whether it describes a sudden flash of inspiration, or a
single moment that might otherwise go unnoticed, a smell, a taste, a look, a
routine part of our day suddenly seen for the gift it is.

Blow out the
candle flame

On the window sill
Yet the fragrance
remains





Rain caresses the streets
Reminds me of your hands
On me this morning


  Haiku is also grounding. When going through difficult times, where the past is
  a burden and the future seems bleak, it can keep you firmly anchored in the
  present, reminding us to take it one step at a time, not just day by day, but
  minute by minute.

I do not believe faith
Moves mountains
But it makes them easier to climb

Life is a
series of these moments. The mundane and the magical, the odd and the ordinary,
the painful and the poetic. I need a spirituality that is practical, relevant
and grounded, and haiku helps me achieve this.

 
Me reading a short extract of 'Wicked Games' at an erotic reading night organised by Xcite Books along with best selling author Suzanne Portnoy. Great fun!