Hi,
While I’ve been away touring my zombies across the continents, I’ve invited a few guests over here to keep you entertained. Today, it’s the turn of lovely Justine Elyot, who’s come over to tell us about her latest release, Lecture Notes. (And, wow, don’t you love that cover?)
Over to you, Justine:
Reanimation
Since Tamsin is all about the zombies just now, I thought I’d give my post a title to suit the general theme. And it’s relevant, too, because my latest release is, in fact, a book that has arisen from the dead zone of my documents folder, where it has languished since I finished writing it in 2008.
Lecture Notes was written to amuse the online friends I’d made in the world of fanfiction. When one of them started writing an original story, I felt challenged to do the same – just to see if I could do it. This book wasn’t my first attempt – before that there was an historical novella about pirates. It went down well, so I thought I’d write something longer.
The reaction I got from my friends, and other readers on the archive where I posted it, was enthusiastic far beyond my expectations. I began to think that I might be on to something with this erotica lark. I wrote a short story for publication shortly afterwards and off I went.
Beth and Sinclair wouldn’t stay where they were put, though. As soon as I removed the story from the archive, people asked for it to be reinstated. And since then, I have had dozens of requests to share it again. So, for everyone who enjoyed Beth and Sinclair’s adventures the first time around, I’ve self-published it for Kindle Direct. It’s a nostalgia trip for me, and I hope it amuses a few more people. I’m very fond of it.
Here’s an excerpt:
I am in my usual perch. Back row, extreme left, primed for a quick getaway at the end of the lecture. Of course, the other advantage to this position is that nobody can risk a sideways glance at my notes, or lean over and squint curiously at my doodling from behind. There is a mountain of course texts between me and my only neighbour, and an unobstructed view of the object of my pathetic lusts.
Professor Eliot Sinclair lectures on the Cultural Legacy of the French Revolution today, but he could be delivering his stylish verbiage and polished aphorisms in fluent Klingon for all I am taking in. I am oblivious to all but his measured, long-legged pacing in front of the screen. Every movement is stagey, large, yet tightly controlled. He uses his hands to stunning effect, pointing and tapping with those long pale fingers, or flourishing them in elegant gestures. He always wears light coloured suits, linen in the summer, with open necked white shirts, giving him an expensive, colonial lordly kind of air and his high-maintenance hairstyle, all sandy waves and crests with a sharp little beard betrays vanity. He appears on television a lot as a rent-an-intellectual when Newsnight is a commentator short; heading for media-darling status (or media whoredom, as is sometimes disloyally whispered in the common room).
So far, so sexy. Tall, slender, aquiline-featured, authoritative, intelligent. But what really sets him apart from your average academic heart-throb is The Voice. It is why this lecture theatre is packed to the rafters every time he gives the address instead of half-heartedly half-full as per usual; and why most of the avid listeners are girls (notwithstanding that Humanities, Arts and Languages are female-dominated faculties anyway). We all come to listen to that dark, low, minimum 70% cocoa solids, velvet woman-trap of a voice, loving every trick in its repertoire from the sarcastic sneer to the honeyed hush. It is seduction itself.
Five minutes until the end of the lecture and my notes are sheer mumbo-jumbo.
‘SINCLAIR IS THE SEX’ is written in a banner headline at the top, amidst doodles and loopy squiggles. Below I have scribbled a nonsensical blurt of rabid passion, stream-of-consciousness stylee.
“How would it feel to be pressed against your Professorial chest? Would you be brutal or gentle, or both? In a collision of lips, how long would it be before teeth and tongue intervened, taking my mouth with seigneurial arrogance and mixing my breath with yours? Your voice intones my name in my dreams; it lives inside my head and tortures my nights with hot sweet suggestions, while by day it gives me reading lists and dispassionately criticises my Voltaire essay….” Well, you get the picture. There is much more in this fervid vein, pouring out like inky madness from my brain. I need to get a grip, but not today.
He is wrapping up the lecture; books and pens are being stowed in bags all across the theatre. It is time for my swift getaway. I gather my belongings to my chest and head for the double doors across the steps. But I am not swift enough.
“Miss Newland.”
The book is available now, exclusively from Amazon for 3 months.
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Hi,
TAMSIN'S SUPEROTICA 