Welcome to day 27 of the Taboo Tens celebration and I just have to say I'm sad to see it end.
This month has been full of great blog posts and lots of wonderful comments from you the readers and the authors have showed their generosity by giving away some great books.
Today's guest isn't the final one of the month but she might be the biggest. She's an Epic award winner, one of gay fiction's brightest stars, Sloan Parker.
Her Loose ID treasures Breathe and More are two of the most heralded books in the genre and you'd think with all her success she might be a bit big headed.
Well if she is, it doesn't show when you talk with her through email and online. She's one of the sweetest people I know, virtually! *grins*
Please give her your undivided attention and make sure you comment so you can win one of her two best sellers.
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A Picture’s Worth a Thousand (or 8200) Words
Thanks so much, Michael, for letting me stop by and celebrate with you today.
I’ve been in revising-mode for several months now, working on two novels I drafted back to back, and I was elated to recently have the opportunity to write something new. It was a short story based on a photo prompt and a letter from a reader in the Goodreads M/M Romance group for their Hot July Days event. I’ve always loved using photos and everyday observations to help inspire my writing, to give my descriptions one or two specific details that help (I hope!) put the reader into the scene, but this was the first time I’d based an entire story on one image.
Here’s the picture that inspired my short story. All 8200 words of it.
And the letter that went with it stated…” A night at a gorgeous beach where the moon shined the ocean…the bear men cuddled, celebrating their anniversary. Please tell us their story of a truly best anniversary they could have on a beach.”
It was inspiring, to say the least. This was the fastest I’d ever written and revised anything so far.
It got me thinking about how one image can inspire something unique for each person who looks at it. If thirty people had written a short story based on the picture I’d selected, I’m sure we would have all seen something different in it and created thirty very different stories, even with the verbal prompt that went with the photo.
In my story, “Swept Away,” these guys have been together for fifteen years and are celebrating their anniversary in a very different way than they normally do. It features an erotic love scene as they recapture exactly what they feel for each other and why they are still together. It also has a truly romantic ending (at least I think so), which I would say is typical of my work. I couldn’t look at this photo and not see the love between these two guys, the satisfaction they each have in just being together, and I wanted to celebrate that.
Here’s an excerpt from “Swept Away,” coming soon to Goodreads and www.sloanparker.com.
I had every intention of dunking him under the water, but I gave up on that idea. I couldn’t bring myself to end his laughter. Better to cut off my own embarrassing sounds. I let go of him, dove under the surface, and basked in the cool water that surrounded my heated flesh from head to toe. The stickiness of the past twelve hours washed away, and every concern and worry went with it.
Maybe I had been under too long. His large hands grabbed my arms and yanked me up. “Come here.” He brought his lips to mine. The stubble on his face was wet, and the water dripped to my chest as we pressed closer together.
He grabbed the back of my head and parted his lips. So many times we’d done this, a caress of tongues, the intensity building, our cocks growing harder as our bodies surged together, as we shifted our hips and found the rhythm that drove us both to the edge. But we’d never done anything outside. We’d fucked year after year in front of forty guys, but not once had he given me a simple kiss on the lips outside of our place or a gay bar. Never outdoors where someone might see. Never standing naked in the ocean.
And just for fun, I thought I’d also share my initial photo inspirations for the main characters in my m/m/m erotic romance MORE. My guys didn’t turn out exactly like these photos, but I had a great time writing from these images.
Richard Marshall
And Matthew Stewart
I enjoyed writing from that photo prompt for “Swept Away” so much that I’m thinking of doing a reader-prompted story again next year. Maybe feature it as a contest on my blog.
Any other writers also like using photos to kick-start your writing? Any readers like the idea of giving an author an image to write from?
Thanks again for letting me share, Michael. Congratulations on the celebration!
You can reach Sloan at:
Website: http://www.sloanparker.com/
Website: http://www.sloanparker.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sloan.parker
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sloanparker
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Thanks Sloan for that great post.
As the readers know, I have many photos that inspire me to write something. In fact, as I put up your blog today, I had two more cross my mind this morning.
Oh boy!
What hot photos. Too bad I can't share them! ;)
Anyways, readers make sure you comment and you can win one of two of Sloan's best sellers. Breathe, which is the cover above or More.
To read blurbs, please visit her Goodreads page.
Hope you enjoyed!
Join us tomorrow as my good friend and little sis Catriana Sommers returns with a guest post celebrating her newest release, Destined.
Until then...
