WHAT SUKI WANTS on sale April 5th

ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM 'WHAT SUKI WANTS' on sale in the UK in April, or you can pre-order from Amazon by clicking here.


The heels he had given her were so painfully high, her calves were aching just from standing there.

She walked carefully to the trunk and knelt down beside it, knees soon hurting on the hard floorboards. Peering inside Magdalen’s trunk was like looking at a snapshot of her sex life: jumbled red and silver bolts of silk from the exotic outfits she used to make herself; vibrators, the slim gold ones and the fat plastic ones with clit ticklers; handcuffs; her thigh-high white patent leather boots with zips and slashes up the side; a rubber-covered paddle for punishment; the long dressage whip she had stolen from a riding stable while on holiday in Devon; and feather boas tangled in amongst dresses and tiny skirts in shimmering fabrics and glossy black PVC.

‘These,’ she said at last, lifting out the handcuffs, ‘and this.’

He threw the handcuffs on the bed and took the rubber-covered paddle from her without comment, testing it on the air with a loud whoosh. There was a dildo buried under one of the pink feather boas. Suki stopped, right on the verge of getting to her feet, and reached in to finger the shiny latex shaft.

‘You won’t need that,’ he said. ‘Not this time.’

There was nothing more she wanted from the trunk; she closed the lid and stood up. Turned back to face him, the light from the overhead bulb burning starkly into her eyes. She lowered her head, waiting in silence like a dumb animal.

‘Ready?’

She nodded, still not trusting herself to speak.

He came closer. She could not look him in the face, so looked at his feet instead, planted squarely apart on the dark floorboards. His hairy ankles and calves, strong and well-developed. Her gaze travelled slowly up past his knees to the firm muscular thighs, quite unlike a woman’s. To the penis, erect now, the purplish fruit of its head smooth and swollen. Then he moved, shifting slightly under the light, and the penis moved with him. Swung like a pendulum, heavy and insistent, keeping time with his body.

The paddle exploded across one side of her thigh, a searing white-hot pain that took her by surprise. She staggered a little in the high black plastic heels, looked down at herself in wonder, felt her legs weaken and nearly give way.

‘Again.’

It was her own hoarse voice that had spoken yet his penis jerked, a thick muscle reacting involuntarily to the sound.

He twisted and struck her again, this time on the other thigh, and just below the hem of the black PVC dress a thousand burning ants crawled under her flesh as its impact peaked and began to ebb away.

‘Again, please.’

Danny hesitated, clearly unwilling, then gave her what she needed. But after the next blow of the paddle, he lifted the dress and put his hand directly between her legs. Almost like examining a brood mare, she thought, swaying on her ludicrous heels. She was wet there, more than ready for him. Her eyes hurt in the light and she closed them. She had been ready for years.

LOVE SONG OF THE DOMINATRIX

I'm delighted to tell you that my editor at Nexus has just okayed my proposal for another erotic novel provisionally entitled LOVE SONG OF THE DOMINATRIX. It's a big step away from the sort of work I was doing before - mainly female submissives enjoying life with an assortment of male dominants - because it's about a female dominant and her relationships with both submissive males and females. It's been fun putting the proposal and 10,000 word sample together and I can hardly wait to crack on with the rest of the novel, now that the storyline's been agreed and my contract is on its way!

To give you an idea of what lies in store for you early in 2007, this is how the basic story goes:

'Dinah is a tough-talking bisexual dominatrix. When she meets the beautiful Grace, a hotel receptionist looking for excitement, she decides to convert the girl to a life of lesbian submission. But Grace is forced to take up the whip herself when her ex-boyfriend Aidan finds out about their relationship and becomes obsessed with teaching Mistress Dinah a lesson.'

Now here's a brief excerpt from LOVE SONG OF THE DOMINATRIX, taken from early in the first chapter. The scene takes place in an almost deserted train compartment late at night, where Dinah steps in to rescue Grace from a stranger who has tried to assault her.


Dinah had him off-balance now; fertile territory, just confused enough to be open to suggestion. Her tongue ran wetly along her lipstick and her gaze slipped to his crotch, to the coat pulled so protectively across it. ‘Come on, you showed it to her, you can show it to me.’ Her voice dropped as well, intimate, mocking. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got under there.’

The stranger swore crudely and she laughed, feeling the light buzz of excitement under her skin, almost a ringing in her ears, the rush of adrenalin.

‘What’s the matter? Has it gone soft?’ Her smile was deliberately malicious, calculated to enrage and humiliate him. ‘Don’t worry, that can happen to anyone. We’ll soon get that back.’

‘You going to suck it for me, are you?”

‘Maybe.’

He was torn between fury and lust now, looking at her properly, maybe even sobering up a little, his gaze on her bare legs under the short camel-coloured skirt. She looked respectable except for the heels, her too-high black metal-tipped heels; in his book, they could only belong to a slut, to a woman up to no good, up to her waist in the mire. Dinah could see what he was thinking - the sweet dirty flash of it like a spark flying off the rails in a tunnel - and her body clenched with excitement again, buzzing, buzzing.

‘Is that how you get your kicks? Sucking off strangers on trains?’

There was a self-righteous contempt in his voice. He had her down, pigeon-holed; clean enough on the outside, but a slut underneath, only too eager to kneel and worship at the shrine of his cock. With her mouth too, by the sound of it.

His eyes gleamed when she didn’t answer and she loved the irony of it, wished she could have more time with him, make a proper session of it. ‘Pull your skirt up then,’ he said, trying his luck. ‘Let’s see your knickers.’

‘I haven’t seen your cock yet,’ Dinah reminded him gently.

After a momentary hesitation, still not quite certain about this new development, the man shrugged and jerked the coat aside to reveal his penis; larger than she had expected, and already stiffening again at the prospect of two women instead of one.

Not bad for a random drunk. Pity he would have to be punished for his insolence. Pity for him, of course, not her.

WHAT SUKI WANTS: a sneak preview

Here, as promised, if a little belated, is the cover for WHAT SUKI WANTS, my latest erotic novel due out this spring. It strikes just the right note with these two scantily-clad girls on the cover, WHAT SUKI WANTS being a tale of lesbianism, promiscuity and intrigue, set very firmly in contemporary Britain.

Suki is a young waitress in a Midlands transport cafe, living in a camper van and haunted by the memory of her girlfriend, the beautiful, promiscuous and thoroughly amoral Magdalen, an artist’s model from the States who died under tragic and mysterious circumstances.

When Suki decides to journey up north on a nostalgic tour of their old haunts, it soon emerges that Magdalen had a secret other life - not to mention a husband! - and Suki finds her feelings for Magdalen, and her own sexuality, beginning to change.


Now here’s a brief excerpt from WHAT SUKI WANTS to whet your appetite ...



It was nearly five o’clock by the time Suki finished work at the cafe and strolled back to the camper, deliberately wetting her shoes in each puddle to see the reflection of the sky shiver. The car park was almost empty because the cafe always closed at four on a Friday afternoon. There was a lorry parked up beside her camper but the blinds had been pulled down in the driver’s cab so she guessed he was probably asleep.

Suki climbed in through the side door, kicked off her flat black work shoes and poured herself a small glass of vodka. It was dark inside the camper with the curtains drawn so she lit a few candles, including the new scented ones she had bought in town, and arranged them in a semi-circle on the table.

She wriggled out of her uniform and slipped into a lime-green dressing gown instead, left behind by Magdalen and made of a cool silky material that brushed deliciously against her skin.

It made her feel nostalgic, wearing something that had belonged to Magdalen. Like the American girl was still part of her life, due home any minute so they could curl up together on the bed and make love. But that was just a fantasy. The pitter-patter of rain on the roof and windows told her it had started to rain again. She glanced up at the roof, wondering if she ought to fetch a saucepan for any drips, but the rain didn’t seem strong enough to be leaking through.

Suki sat down in front of her writing pad, chose a good ink pen from her wooden box and started to write a letter.


My darling Magdalen

I missed you so much today, it was like an aching deep in my bones. But you would have been proud of me. Do you remember how we used to talk about men? How you said I needed to start fucking them, to find out what men were like before deciding whether I preferred women to men? Well, I finally did it! Not fucked a man, exactly, but halfway there. I let him wank over me while I masturbated, right here in the camper. It was really dirty, I haven’t come like that since we were together.

I cheated a bit though. I kept thinking of you while he was doing it. Wishing it was you standing between my legs, that his cock was a strap-on. Like the one you used to push into me. Do you remember? The black latex one with those little spikes that pressed right into my cunt whenever we fucked. His cock was big, but nothing like that dildo.

If you’d been there, I’d have spread my legs for you all afternoon and let them sack me for it. Though we wouldn’t have needed a dildo, would we? You always knew how to make me come just with your tongue and fingers. So clever, so beautiful. I wish we were still together.

I know you said if we ever split, or if anything ever happened to you, I should carry on and forget about you. And I’ve tried hard to forget, I really have. But it’s impossible. You were the best lover I ever had, Magdalen. I think about you every second of every day, your mouth, your tongue, your sweet naked body against mine, the way we used to touch each other in bed.

I will adore you forever, my darling Magdalen. You know I’m not clever at finding the right words, like you always could, but I know how good we were together. Come back to me, I can’t bear life without you.

Love Suki



I may well post up more - and hotter - excerpts from WHAT SUKI WANTS as the publication date approaches, so don’t forget to keep checking back. WHAT SUKI WANTS is on sale from early April in the UK, and May in the States, published by Virgin Books. See links for the Virgin Books website. British buyers, you can click here to buy an advance copy of WHAT SUKI WANTS from Amazon UK. Alternatively, Amazon USA can be reached here.

Indecent Proposal

You'll be glad to hear, I'm sure, that I've finally finished putting together that proposal for Nexus and posted it off today to my editor at Virgin Books.

This new novel is provisionally entitled LOVE SONG OF THE DOMINATRIX - though that may change if it doesn't sound as good by the time it goes to print - and, as the title suggests, it's the story of a dominatrix who falls in love. Naturally, the love song of a dominatrix is harsh and fierce; more like the love song of an amazon, I suspect, than that of your average woman.

I am waiting to hear back from my editor, but hopefully he will approve the story more or less in its current form. Fingers, toes and other interesting parts of my anatomy crossed. I'll let you know.

Cat x

back to work at last ...

I've finally got back to work, knuckled down to it, on my latest erotic novel. Since I write 'other things', it's not all been lolling about in bed since my last one was finished, but I have been waiting until my brain was firing on all erotic cylinders before I decided to put finger to keyboard!

Seriously though, I'm just writing the first few chapters and a proposal for my publisher at Virgin Books, to make sure he approves the storyline and characters, and once he's tipped me the wink, I'll start in on the book in earnest.

Since I've been doing a lot of lesbian erotica in recent months, I've decided to stay with that theme for this latest novel ... only with a twist! This will be the story of a lesbian dominatrix. A love story, no less. But not the mushy sentimental sort. Just as you'd expect from a dominatrix, this woman breaks the rules and her lovers too.

Cat x

Lesbian Erotica

I heard today that a US anthology of erotica in which one of my naughtier stories is due to appear will not now be launched until 2007. Disappointing news, since I had been expecting it - and my fee! - to arrive later this spring. But better late than never, I guess. It's a good story too, a lesbian story - a topic I've been increasingly dealing with in my work - with some strong feisty characters: sort of a female Philip Marlowe crossed with ... I don't know, Indiana Jones (i.e. in the last crusade rather than in the temple of doom)?

I'm not sure her character came across as quite that compelling in the end, but it's a fine piece of self-propaganda and a readable story. I look forward to that anthology.

Cx

Happy New Year 2006!

A Happy New Year to anyone browsing this blog - which I admittedly don't post to often enough. Sorry! But hey, some good news for any erotica fans out there, especially those who may have enjoyed my work in the past ... I'm just starting to write a new erotic novel, though I can't say much about the plot or characters at this stage as it's too early for secrets like that to be spilled.

I've had a few more stories accepted by anthologies in the States over the past few months, so I'm looking forward to those cheques - and to seeing the stories in print, naturellement - while I scrape away at the surface of this new novel. I say 'scrape away' at it because Michelangelo believed that his statues were 'inside' the marble and that when he worked the stone, he was releasing the statue underneath, or uncovering it, rather than actually chiselling his statues from a formless lump of marble.

I do think that all the best stories are ones that get teased out of the writer, that are already 'inside' them and just waiting to get written. So I'm in no hurry with this new book, just writing it as the spirit moves me.

Many kisses and good wishes to go with them, for 2006.

Cat xxx

Just got the new cover for WHAT SUKI WANTS

WHAT SUKI WANTS is finished - in fact, it's at proof stage already - and I've been playing with a new idea for an erotic novel but I'm not quite sure how to progress with it. I think one of the problems is that I feel as though I broke new ground with WHAT SUKI WANTS and can't go back to the sort of erotica I was writing before. Yet to go much further forward might mean leaving the genre altogether. A thorny problem.

Well, let me tell you a little bit more about WHAT SUKI WANTS instead, because at least I'm on solid ground there.

I got the cover art recently for WHAT SUKI WANTS. It's a great shot of a slim scantily-clad blonde in white lace hipster knickers and bodice-style bra kneeling in front of another girl in lurid pink panties, which are half pulled down, the inference being that the blonde is about to taste the other girl's ... well, you get the idea! I'll get it scanned in soon and show you a sneak preview. Anyway, it's a provocative cover, with the photography attributed to Shackled Maidens.


WHAT SUKI WANTS
Suki is 21 years old and drifting; a waitress in a Midlands transport cafe, she lives alone in a motorhome and likes to sleep with women. Haunted by the memory of her dead girlfriend, a bisexual American called Magdalen with depraved SM tastes, she gives up waitressing and takes to the road again, heading north to Holy Island in Northumberland where they first met. Whilst in the wilds of that rugged countryside, Suki is drawn back into the seductive decadence of her old life, meeting an old flame of Magdalen's who likes to paint his girlfriends in the nude - preferably chained up - and soon begins to experience what she's been secretly missing for years.

WHAT SUKI WANTS will be published in April 2006. If you can't wait until then to get your hands on Cat Scarlett, you can find me quite easily on the UK amazon site or the US amazon site. Just type in Cat Scarlett and hit Search.

tune in, turn on

Working on an idea for a new novel this weekend, I've been listening to these tracks, in random order:

I Didn't Mean To Turn You On -- Robert Palmer
Strange Fruit -- Billie Holiday
Lay Lady Lay -- Bob Dylan
Black Coffee -- kd lang
Night Nurse -- Simply Red
Hounds of Winter -- Sting
Animal Nitrate -- Suede
Hotel California -- The Eagles
Roxanne -- George Michael version
Cool -- Gwen Stefani
Geisha Boys & Temple Girls -- Heaven 17
Nobody does it better -- Carly Simon
Pale Shelter -- Tears for Fears
Golden Brown -- The Stranglers

what suki wants

Nearly finished my latest novel, entitled What Suki Wants. It’s now down to the last few pages when you really don’t want to leave the characters and everything’s moving too rapidly for comfort. But like all good things, my story does have to end. After many erotic adventures and hard choices, Suki has finally discovered what it is she wants and is making sure she gets it. Repeatedly.

Luckily, the next novel is already here at the forefront of my mind, with new characters asking to be explored, new intriguing possibilities beginning to take shape. Onward and inward ...

scarlet vice

I haven't posted on this blog for a few days because I've been writing steadily in an attempt not to miss my delivery deadline at the end of the month. A forlorn hope, alas. I'm going to overshoot by at least a week. But it's a good novel and better not hurried. All the same, my free time is getting tighter and tighter as the days pass. I'm looking forward to posting this one off and staying in bed for a few days.



I see one of my favourite erotica writers, Aishling Morgan, had a new novel out in August called Scarlet Vice. I look forward to reading it when I've finally typed THE END on my own book.

I'm rather flattered that he wanted my name on the cover ...

under the whip

I'm under the whip these days, fast approaching the deadline for my latest novel. Things are becoming a little tense here. You always think it's going to work out okay, that even if you miss your word quota some days, you can catch up later when you're flying. But I haven't been flying for some days now, and I only have two weeks left. This weekend, then. That's when I'm going to get to grips with these last few chapters and really blow the dust off the keys. I tend to work better at weekends than during the week, for various reasons, even though I'm now a full-time writer. Perhaps I'm more relaxed at weekends and the words come easier to my mind.

One of the problems with the last stages of a novel is that you never want to finish it. Your practical brain wants to finish it, of course, and move on to your next novel, to the next fascinating character who's been creeping into your head for the past few months, trying to distract you from the task in hand. But there's also a part of you that fears completion, that doesn't want to type THE END and package it all off. Too late then for any changes of heart, for any last minute adjustments to the story or the text itself. It's finished and it has to stand alone from now on. At least until the copy-editor spots a glaring error - like the sexy brunette in chapter 3 who is suddenly a blonde in chapter 7!

So the last stage of a novel can be pretty fraught, not just because you have to prise your fingers off the baby you've nursed from page one to the end, but also because a writer needs to comb through the text as closely as possible to spot typos and grammatical mistakes and continuity errors. Luckily, thanks to a father who was a copy-editor, I rarely make spelling mistakes. But that doesn't make me immune to some of the other embarrassing errors that need to be corrected before a novel arrives on the editor's desk, spanking clean and ready to read.

When you begin a novel, you have an end in sight. And it's a tangible end, something you can point to, talk about, quantify in real terms. Most writers know from page one, deep down in their gut, what this novel is going to be like, who the characters are, how the book will feel for the reader. But of course that's what you're aiming at. It's not necessarily what you achieve. By the time you reach the last few chapters, you begin to have a fairly shrewd idea whether or not you have realised your initial vision for the book.

With my own last page on the horizon, I'll keep you posted on that ...