responsible bloke looking
after a very drunk female
friend, all detached self-deprecating concern. I liked that, in a
strange way. I liked the gentleness of his hands too, and the way he
took his time. I liked the way he had to keep reminding himself to look
away from my breasts as he slid the shirt off my shoulders and undid
the webbing belt cinched at my waist. I liked the line of his lips and
the fall of his hair against his cheek and the glint of the rings in
the red-gold of his eyebrow. I wanted so much to touch him. But I
didn’t dare, not after the mess I’d made of things
last time.Out of nowhere, tears welled up in my eyes. Christ; I am drunk, I thought in amazement.
The bathroom was starting to fill with steam.
Softly he let the trousers slip down from my hips and pool on my feet. There I was standing against the doorframe, naked but for my wine-red knickers, yet it was the desire in my expression that was the most shamelessly naked thing about me. His fingertips brushed my hip and he caught his breath. As he lifted his eyes to mine I saw my longing mirrored there, its edge as keen and cruel as my own.
‘Avril.’ The word was inaudible; I saw only the movement of his lips.
Oh God - I was on the verge of begging, and I mustn’t do that. ‘I dream about you,’ I told him, and something flickered in the depths of his eyes.
‘Do you?’
‘Do dreams matter?’
‘They can do. Depends what you dream.’
‘I dream we’re in the wood. It’s always the wood. Why’s that?’
The Plot:Two rival modern-day sorcerers, fighting it out for the woman they desire and the power to change the world. The woman who has to choose between them. Ancient magics and savage creatures boiling out into the humdrum landscape of everyday life. Love and lust and terror. And trees.
Avril Shearing is an arborist and landscape gardener. When she's employed by Michael Deverick to reclaim the overgrown garden and woodland on the Devonshire estate that he's just bought, it looks like dream job for her. She loves working outdoors and she loves the woods. The only problem is that she finds Michael far too attractive for comfort, because she has a strict rule about not getting involved with people she works for. The manipulative, ruthless Michael doesn't really inspire trust either ... and it seems he doesn't want to take No for an answer.
To add to the confusion, there is something very strange about the wood on the Kester Estate. At night the creatures of the wood - part animal, part myth, part nightmare - creep out from under the trees to prowl the estate. And Michael is unable to set foot over the boundary wall but he desperately wants Avril to go in. He won't tell her what he's looking for but its very important to him. It's very important to the band of environmental activists camped out among the trees too. Their leader Ash tells her that Michael is a centuries-old magician seeking a source of ancient and untold power that will cause immense damage to the world. Ash, who is a magus too, will do anything to stop him whatever the cost ... even if that means he has to rely on Avril's aid. She's drawn to the green activist, but he pushes her away when she tries to seduce him. Furious, she turns to Michael only to discover what a dangerous man he really is. From then on she is torn between the two rival magi. Both men want her loyalty and her love, but she doesn't know which of them to trust or what it is they are fighting for.
When she finally makes her choice of sides, it turns into a furious chase as she flees across country from an angry and vengeful sorcerer. And in the end Avril is forced to make one last choice: one that will change the world forever.
Origins:The picture in my head that started all this off was of Ash holding Avril against him on the London underground train - and the bit in the clanky lift afterwards.
Wildwood is my first contemporary erotic novel, and it's slightly autobiographical in that it draws upon my work experience. In the 1990s I went back as a mature student to agricultural college and completed a 3-year diploma in amenity forestry. So all the stuff about chainsaws, tree-climbing, and woodlands in general comes from what I learned there. Like Avril I loved the practical stuff - only for her it's the thing she wants to do most in the world for the whole of her life, while for me that wasn't it and writing was.
All the supernatural stuff comes from my longstanding interest in British folklore and a slight academic interest in the Western Tradition of ritual magic. I've been involved in nature conservation work for years too, and have in my time had a fairly extended go at organised paganism (well, as organised as paganism gets - which isn't very) and shamanic practice, but although sympathetic to the spiritual and aesthetic appeal I've always been hampered by the fact I can't actually bring myself to believe in the objective reality of gods or magic. In real life I describe myself as a pagan atheist.
I love this book now that it's finished (see below!) and would be delighted to carry on the story someday, because it ends on a cliff-hanger where everything - but everything - has hit the fan. I've got a very good idea where Avril and Michael and Ash are going to end up, and it's going to be a dark and difficult road for everyone. One day, perhaps...
Michael Deverick:A multi-millionaire stock-market trader and investment banker, Michael is rich, handsome, vain, very clever and he likes to manipulate people. Out of the two men that Avril is torn between, he is definitely the Dark Side. He also represents the City and the Man-made - yet paradoxically he indulges his animal appetites without stinting or conscience.
He's at least 200 years old and has been an arms manufacturer, an infantry captain during WW1, a member of parliament for a rotten borough in the 1830s and a member of the Golden Dawn magical society - "He fell out with Crowley, but then who didn't?"
For Michael, magic is about accruing personal power that will put him beyond the limitations of all laws - both man-made and physical. He wants a world which does not present him with boundaries. He very literally believes that through magic humans can be gods - not just one god but all of them.
I've never been particularly drawn to bad boys because my pesky morality keeps getting in the way. I found the key to writing Michael is to recognise that what he does is not harmless: what he is tempting her into is the belief that he (and she) are better than everyone else and have the right to do as they wish to anyone. Avril is repeatedly told that he has killed people in the past, though this is so beyond her personal experience that she doesn't really believe it. Then to keep their affair discreet he causes a man to have a stroke, leaving him permanently brain-damaged. Finally he pulls a gun on her and threatens her life. And he absolutely does intend to murder Ash.
Whether he would have killed Avril is another question. There are good sides to Michael too. From the beginning he sees value in Avril, not just because she is sexually attractive (after all he can have all the sex he wants, given his wealth) but because of her will and her determination not to conform to the easy paths of life. He sees himself as her mentor, drawing out the best in her and liberating her true self (Avril describes it as Corruption). He has a healthy sense of irony and humour. And he does, slowly and reluctantly, start to fall in love with Avril. When he finds her with Ash he is genuinely hurt.
Ash:A dreadlocked ginger neo-hippy, Ash is serious, unselfish, thoughtful, driven by the best intentions and deeply in love with Avril. Out of the two men, Ash is the Light Side. He also represents Countryside and the Natural - yet paradoxically he struggles to keep his passions under a tight rein.
Ash was born in the Victorian era and was the son of a parson. This pervades everything he does: despite his tattoos and long hair and grubby clothes he is middle-class, ruled by a sense of social responsibility and guilt. He clashed with Michael during the battle of Ypres, when they were both in the trenches and Michael shot him in the back. Why? Well if I ever write a sequel it will all be revealed.
Magic for Ash (who is not as adept as Michael) is about connection to the green world. He is steeped in a love of nature and sees magic as a spiritual path. He's not interested in personal power, except in that it allows him to thwart Michael, who he's known for over a century and hates with a passion.
If Michael is offering Avril edgy, scary identity-destroying sex then Ash offers sex as part of a positive bond between two people - reflected by the fact he won't kiss her until the moment comes that he believes he can trust her. Ash's reluctance to get close to Avril is based around his understandable belief that she is acting as Michael's stooge and is going to betray him. (He's not entirely wrong either ... though not entirely right.) He fights constantly against his natural desire and attraction to her, head against heart. Heart wins, because for Ash love really matters.
But Ash has his bad sides too. Exhausted by his self-imposed mission, he lives in a state of paranoia and creeping bitterness. Desperate, he makes a morally inexcusable decision to use love magic on Avril without her knowing it. He's rather lacking in a sense of humour since his focus is on saving the world. And he's a misanthrope and a bit of a snob. He's going to save the human race because that's the right thing to do, not because he has any regard for them or because they deserve it. In general he rather despises and dislikes the mass of people and prefers to live with trees and animals. He has, as Avril points out, an awful lot more in common with Michael than he is happy to recognise. That's the peril of magic.
Ash's faults are pretty much my own, I'm afraid. And I don't have any excuses!
The BouquetOkay, so after Avril gets back from her eventful "first date" with Michael Deverick, she feels a loose paving slab beneath her feet at her front door, and when she looks down she sees that a bouquet of flowers has been left there.
The slab is loose because Ash has lifted it to conceal a small package (i.e. Avril's used knickers, and I'll leave you guess what he's done with them because I wasn't allowed to write that bit!). He's working some morally dodgy threshold magic on her, which comes out later in the book.
The bouquet is actually composed of plants that have meaning in the so-called "Language of Flowers" - which isn't a magical system but there's no reason why Ash can't use it that way. I didn't expect any reader in a billion years to translate the message Ash has sent, but it mattered enough to me to get it right. The interpretation is as follows:
- Rhododendron = "danger!"
- Geraniums = "mistrust"
- Asters = "regrets"
- Loosestrife = "peace, please"
- Tickseed = "love at first sight"
- Periwinkle = "first love"
- Bindweed = "I'm sorry"
- Bracken = "I'm fascinated by you"
- Blackthorn = "there are obstacles to be overcome"
- Bramble = "remorse"
Editorial Changes:Oh God... Getting Wildwood to a publishable state was, er, not easy: at one point I thought my days with Black Lace had come to an end. Even now I wince thinking about it all.
Commissioned on the strength of 3 chapters and a very rough outline, Wildwood was originally scheduled for release in April 2008. I turned in what I thought was the completed manuscript in good time. Then I got an e-mail from the editor titled "Practically Bestiality" and after that it went rapidly downhill.
Okay, so there were a number of areas considered problematical:
- The opening of the book was too slow. I needed to rewrite the start so that it started with a) some action, b) sex, c) something that would introduce the supernatural elements and d) the main characters and e) make it clear what was going to be at stake. And as hard as that sounds my editor was absolutely right - which is where the whole Prologue comes from. It vastly improved the book and I'm so glad he demanded that.
- There was too much magic semen. The scene early on where Avril, hiding up a tree, spies on Ash going skyclad, originally had him indulging in a little solo action. I did think that spying on men wanking was a staple of women's erotica but no, this scene had to go: too tacky. The scene where Ash gets Avril into the magically-warded wood by covering her all over with his, um, kisses - well, originally he used a handful of his jiz. That had to go: too gross (not the actual semen, because in the published version he does squeeze one off almost against his wishes and that was acceptable: what was unacceptable was the version where she agrees to it in advance). Ironically I happen to have a slight but distinct aversion to saliva (Cum is fine, drool makes me shudder), so for the whole scene where he licks her from top to toe I just had to grit my teeth and type.
- Bull Peter. Oh god, I think I nearly gave my poor editor a heart attack. This book is what drove him to famously shout "It's got to have a human head!" at a literary party. Bull Peter was originally written as looking like a full-on Minotaur. Now I happen to think minotaurs are (potentially) sexy, in an over-the-top fantasy way. They have big brawny human bodies after all. However the consensus at Black Lace was that I would be seen by readers and booksellers as urging people to go out and shag cows. Now I don't happen to find cows sexy so I really don't see the connection - a minotaur is a non-existent fantasy humanoid after all. Plus years ago in Cruel Enchantment I wrote a dragon-sex story and that hadn't got any editorial staff sacked. But apparently minotaurs would. Anyway, I rewrote Bull Peter to have a human head with horns and cow-ears.
- Ash wasn't getting enough screen-time, as it were, and wasn't sexy enough. Another good call by the editor: so close was I to the characters that I thought it was obvious that Ash was attractive enough to be a potential rival to Michael. As an outsider, the editor did not read it that way. So we had a bit of a tussle over the first Avril/Ash fight scene and I managed to keep it at no full penetrative sex until the pivotal moment Ash believes he can trust her, but I did write two dirty but non-penetrative sex scenes for him and gave him more chat. And once again, the book was the better for it.
I do believe the published version is a big improvement over my first manuscript. But so little confidence did Black Lace have in my ability to rewrite that Wildwood was dropped out of the production schedule in favour of a book by another author that hadn't actually been written yet. Hey - they're a business and at that time the editor wasn't nearly so aware of my capabilities as he is now. But that was a serious kick up the ego for me.
In fact, the rewrites only took me 3 weeks.
But by that time, the August 2008 slot was the earliest available. And it still stings. But I told myself that one day, somehow, I had to get a proper minotaur story published ...
