Historical Pubes

So, I agreed to write a novella set in nineteenth-century India for Aphrodisia (in THE HAREM, December 2006). Unfortunately, my knowledge was pretty much limited to The Secret Garden and a variety of misty mini-series.

So I glommed history books on India to get an overview (which I have to return actually. I’m gonna have to mail them at this rate.) I ordered and read “The Complete Kama Sutra” (unabridged and no pictures), which not only translated the text but included two commentaries, one from the Medieval era and one modern one.

Let’s just say I needed my brain scrubbing out afterwards. It’s a book basically about how to seduce a woman, and the bit that really bugged me? Well, if all these sweet seductions don’t work, beat the crap out of her and then she’ll be willing.

*shudder*.

So my heroine, trained in the Kama Sutra arts, makes a comment about it because...ew. One of those cases where a little Western culture needs to be injected into a story essentially about a different culture, otherwise my heroine was going to have to teach the hero how to beat the crap out of her.

Not particularly romantic or sexy. Unless it's purely consensual of course. And you have a "safe word".

Huh. I could've made "East Meets West" more kinky. Oh well!

Fortunately, William Dalrymple came out with an excellent book, “White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-century India”. He’s one of those delightful historians where all the really interesting stuff lives in the footnotes. But there’s plenty in the main body as well. Take his reference of the Persian tourist Shushtari’s opinion on the British. While there were some things he liked about them, he was positively horrified that “neither the men or women remove pubic hair”. Ergo, the Mughal class (which came from Persia, modern-day Iran) must have kept that area clear, and had for centuries, because Dalrymple footnotes the same reported horror in Crusader Syria, where a Muslim came across a Frank who “kept his pubic hair ‘as long as his beard’.” (pg 131)

The focus of the story is on James Kirkpatrick, British Resident of Hyderabad and his falling in love with Khair un-Nissa. It’s a fascinating story of changing to fit the environment.

Oh and cool little tidbits like the bit about pubic hair, of course.

Inspiration

Sorry to be late in posting but yesterday was a day where errands took over and today is a day for some day job related panic. Romantique, the erotic art book Lacy mentioned is one of my faves. It includes a naughty blind man’s bluff scene which was the inspiration for my first erotic historical romance, A Gentleman Seduced. It took months to decide exactly how I wanted to use the scene, up until my hero stepped in and took over. It was marvelous fun to write about my well-endowed viscount who has to choose the courtesan he desires entirely by feel.

I also used Romantique as inspiration for my heroine for my September Aphrodisia, Sin, who draws erotic art. Once upon a time, I used to draw and paint quite a lot, and did scandalize part of my high school art class by drawing male nudes. Now, I find it’s a useful skill, as I can do sketches of my heroes for inspiration. It was a lot of fun to go back to that part of my life and remember what it was like to create in a different media. I wrote the beginning just after my second child was born, and I think the nostalgic sense of touching my past through my heroine made writing Sin very special.

Right now I am writing a heroine who gives her virginity to one man, discovers he is a completely heartless cad, and seduces the hero because she wants to bed the right man—a man she will want to remember. Too risky for regular romance, which is what is so great about erotic romance. I have the chance to explore my characters’ sexual mistakes.

In other news, I may be appearing on t.v. in the fall as part of a national test on the English language. Though I’m a writer, my background is in technical fields like product design and engineering, so I’m a bit intimidated! However, it will be fun, and I've never been on t.v. before--though I was interviewed for the upcoming documentary on romance, "Who's Afraid of a Happy Ending". I'll post more news as I get it.

French Dressing

Her outfit was... a long dress with a full skirt, worn over a sturdy whalebone bodice gathered tightly at the waist, and over a stiffly starched linen petticoat. The low-cut neck scarcely concealed the breasts which, raised by the constricting bodice, were only lightly veiled by the network of lace.

This is the costume given to Story of O's eponymous heroine when she enters "the chateau," as it's called -- a regime of erotic submission she accepts as though in a familiar, recurring dream. The language is austere, depersonalized. The narrative voice refers to "the" rather than "her" breasts. And in fact, soon after, one of the "masters" of the chateau tells O that her hands are not her own, and that she has "lost all right to privacy or concealment."

O receives her instructions with the same unquestioning passivity with which she allowed herself to be dressed in her costume. Or at least that's how it's usually -- and to my mind not quite correctly -- described. A better word than "passivity," I think, would be "recognition," and of a very literate, sophisticated order.

Neither O nor her readers need to be told that the costume is a dolled-up version of that of a chambermaid, in cruel, absolutist pre-Revolutionary France. And when she's told that Pierre, "who will chain and unchain you, who will whip you... when the others have no time for you," neither she nor her readers is entirely surprised to find that Pierre is "dressed like the valet in some operetta."

The power relations in the chateau -- levels of hierarchy; iron and leather restraints; ritualized sexual obedience; and the screams and tears that the masters wrest from O and the other women in their long, lowcut dresses -- are rendered with eerie conviction. Oddly, though, what makes it so assured, so quietly confident, is its stagy predictability. This has all happened before, O thinks. And so does the reader. At the very least it's happened in the work of the Marquis de Sade, the aristocrat who lived through the revolution and the terror and who staged his own private versions of them in his over-the-top, bloody, sometimes yucky and sometimes wildly funny writings.

Sade dreamed about the limits of absolute freedom and the beguilements of totalizing system and domination. It's fair to say that he invented the genre of BDSM, though he probably wouldn't recognize it in the cuddlier, domesticated versions we're used to. But it's his genre that O enters, quite as Buffy (and Willow, and we) re-enter the world of teen movie horror for yet the umpteenth time. The real conflict in genre fiction, I believe, is the endless argument between the helpless part of us that wants – that has -- to go there once more, and the wisecracking intellectual part of us that can’t quite believe we’ve been suckered, again and forever seduced by the worn old props and operetta costumes.

It’s that conversation that I listen for in genre – the endless, two-sided chatter, the unashamed, ambivalent questioning that I strain to hear (and knock myself out to write) in romance and erotic fiction.

Writing processes…

Sorry for such a late post today. I got distracted at my day job.

Writing processes are different for every person I know. For me, I have certain books that I read just before I sit down to write, as well a some web sites, and an entire different set of books for when/if I get stuck.

I almost always pick up either The Pearl or The Romance of Lust when I start a new story. The characters and usually a scene is what invades my thoughts first. As I’m drifting off to sleep in that half dream state, they come to me. From there I research, deciding on certain sexual elements that fit my characters. I am truly a panster, but certain things I need to know before I start… Like the fact a character of mine has a kink or that they have a certain fear or quirk.

To come up with certain sexual elements I refer to a great number of sexual position/instruction books, erotic art books of the times, and (here comes the blushing moment) I watch porn.

Yea I did just say that.

There are some really great DVD’s out there for women and being a very visual, sensual person, porn works for me. (but I must caution against any of the cheesy so called historical set ones) :-) If you know of a good one let me know!


Two my favorite research books for sexual inspiration are:
The Guide To Getting It On. This book is amazing! If you have not read it you should! It is filled with excellent information. They interviewed both men and woman asking them all sorts of questions about sex… questions like what it feels like to orgasm and the like. Being a woman, having a guy explain what sex feels like is fantastic for when I am writing in the male POV.

My all time favorite erotic art book isRomantique (This is a book filled with 200 or so Early 19th century lithographs and prints from Hans-Jurgen Dopp's collection. Who if you do a search on google or amazon you will see is well KNOWN in erotica) the images are beautiful… and I have to say… candle sticks were really popular sex toys back then.

Hugs and Kisses,
Lacy.

Pictures from the Past

This image is from an Ackermann's magazine which was published in 1816, slap bang in the middle of my favorite time period, the Regency. Ackermanns was a bit like the Vogue of it's day, containing fashion plates, articles about famous people, furniture, politics and the goings-on of the Royal Family.

I bid regularly on Ebay for these little fashion plates which have usually been separated from the rest of the magazine and kept, probably by women who either wanted to copy the style of the dress themselves or wanted their dressmaker to do it for them. It's a bit like us catalogue shopping or using the internet.

I love the idea of some Regency young lady frowning over the details of a dress, wondering just how the style could be reproduced and in what fabric. It makes me feel close to a generation of women long gone. Women who appreciated fashion as much as I do and possibly wondered why so many of the models pictured were so thin and so beautiful. I also love holding something so precious in my hand. The detail on these engravings is amazing and the colors remain remarkably fresh considering each ten inch picture is almost 200 years old.

This particular picture is a favorite of mine because the lady shown is a widow. But if you take a peek at her perfect little face, she looks ripe for mischief. She inspired me to write my first erotic romance, "Eden's Pleasure" about a young widow who has endured a loveless marriage to an older man and is determined to have some fun before she marries again. Enter, our hero, Major Gervase Harcourt and his identical twin brother, Gideon, who is not averse to helping matters along in his own unique way.

One of the most essential things for me when I write, is introducing conflict. That's why I like to write historicals because the very rules of society, and the way women were 'expected' to behave cause conflict. Helping these ladies get around the rules is one of the main pleasures of writing historicals. Allowing them to get around the sexual mores of their time is even more interesting!

So, dear readers,or fellow bloggers, which time period do you prefer to write or read your erotic fiction in and why?

The Secret Garden

And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk to see if any one was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come, it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly--slowly.

Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight.

She was standing inside the secret garden.

I re-read this book by Frances Hodgson Burnett from time to time--like many of my favorite books, it's because it doesn't always work that I think I like it so much. The parts of the book that I love are the strange, magical scenes: the scene in India at the beginning where Mary Lennox finds herself abandoned by adults during a cholera epidemic; the wonderful, creepy Gothicky house in Yorkshire to which she's taken and her first meeting with Colin there; and of course her discovery of the secret garden itself.

The other stuff--wholesome Dickon and his family (and I do love the depiction of a working family, by the way), Colin getting better and his reconciliation with his father, and all the stuff about growing things--well, it's what the story is about, isn't it? The garden comes back to life as Mary and Colin heal themselves. (I just read yesterday, by the way, that Frances Hodgson Burnett was a Christian Scientist, which explains a lot of the mind-body stuff.) But I find the "healed" garden is just another pretty, manicured garden. It's disappointing. It's a safe, tamed garden with none of the wildness and mystery of the locked, secret garden.

Look at the potent images Burnett uses--the walled garden and the rose, both symbolic of the Virgin Mary and virginity in Christianity; and the rose, a symbol of eroticism in Kabbalistic and Islamic mythology. And above all, a wilderness of thorns, like the protective hedge that grew around the virginal Sleeping Beauty's castle. A pre-pubescent girl unlocks the secret of the garden, but we learn later that the garden killed Colin's mother--oh, no, she had sex (presumably) so she must die! On the other hand there's an idealized, fertile earth mother figure, Mrs. Sowerby (Dickon's mother), but I can't recall any mention of Dickon's father. All rather icky, isn't it?

I can't help wondering what happens to Mary, Colin, and Dickon when they grow up. I've always felt that Mary and Colin are destined for one of those marriages between cousins that the English upper-classes liked so much (keeps it in the family, don't you know). Dickon--not a chance, although I'm sure we could think of something to keep the three of them together.

Despite its peculiarities, I love this book for its richness of language, the wonderful descriptions of places and animals in particular. Your thoughts?

Pseu-pseu-pseudonym!

I will swear under oath that I am not into Phil Collins, even if I like a couple of his songs. (The other one is “Against All Odds”.) However, I’m like, totally, an Eighties girl which probably explains a lot about me.

(Announcement of winner of signed book covers at foot of message!)

So given the current stream of consciousness at this here Tea Party about pseudonyms, I thought I’d tackle it as well. Grab a cuppa and a Tim Tam and settle back. (Ooh, you girls know how to do a Tim Tam Slam, right?)

I chose Celia May Hart because Celia is so often written to by the (R)romantic poets when they didn’t want to reveal who they worshipped (or slept with). May is my birth month. I so totally didn’t mean to gain a Southern feel to that -- but hey, if it throws people off the scent, so be it! Finally, Hart is my grandmother’s maiden name. She’s the one that was conceived out of wedlock...

So why the pseudonym? It wasn’t just because I switched to writing erotic stories. You know I have been for ages. I didn’t mind who knew what I was writing: not my family (except for Nana) or the folks at church or at work (when I had a day job). Not that I throw it in anybody’s faces, either, you understand. I don’t know what half of them do for a living either. (Well, ok, I do know what my former workmates do, but you know what I mean.)

I readily admit the idea of prisoners finding me as a result of what I wrote squicked me out a wee bit -- but it squicked out the hubby more. He doesn’t share. (That wasn’t TMI, was it?)

I took it because I’d published sweet Regencies with Kensington, and a) my sweet Regency readers might self-implode if this super-hot smut revolted them, and I might never be able to sell them something under my own name again; and b) the book distributors would pick up fewer of my books because the Regencies stopped selling well. (which kinda means selling under my own name again is very unlikely.)

Yep. It came down to marketing and book distribution.

Isn’t that utterly nonromantic?


So that’s my pseudonym story.

---

Ok, so I listed all the folks who asked me questions, in the order they asked, and picked a random number generated by random.org. And the winner is..... Cherie! Email me at celia@celiamayhart.com with your name and address, and I’ll send out your prize post-haste!