Needed

By A.J. Llewellyn

One of my closest friends Alex got the chance of a lifetime very early last year. One of his business clients and golfing buddies offered Alex his home on the Caribbean island of Anguilla for five days as a thank you for a huge deal.

I was so mad I couldn't go. Alex, bless him, took full advantage of the offer and took his dad and his closest male friends for a few days of drinking, rest, drinking, rest, drinking...well, you get the idea. It's not that I didn't want a knees-up, I just couldn't manage the trip at the time. I was so upset I couldn't even stand calling Alex to ask how it went.
I saw him recently and finally manned-up and asked how it went.

I hadn't seen him for a while and I was surprised by the sour expression on his face. Anguilla is a place I am pining to visit...but I digress.
His lip curled.

"You are so lucky you missed it," he whined.

He told me the wildest and funniest story of being caught in a hurricane in St. Martin. They hid in a hotel bathroom there for days as a storm ripped the islands apart. It's not that the storm and damage were funny.

I loved the idea of all these macho guys huddled in a bathtub!
He gave me a lot of detail and gave me his blessings to use it. And I did!
This gave me the basis of my book Needed, which published at http://www.extasybooks.com/ at midnight.

Purchase Link: http://tinyurl.com/y6rllpa
It's the sequel to Wanted, my best-selling book about Honolulu forensic accountant Mingo McCloud. I am thrilled Wanted sold so well and I had a blast writing Needed. As an extra thank you to people who buy my book, I am giving away a free copy of Hula, a short store I penned for the Emerald Envisage anthology in which Mingo first appeared.
I am loving this new M/M erotic mystery series.
In this story, Mingo must rescue his missing lover, Francois...and has some fun and pretty hot sex into the bargain. Using a real life adventure in this story gave it added texture I think. But my point is this. Do we writers all use real stuff in our stories? I'm betting more of us do than we care to admit.
Of course, my pal Alex didn't have sex with the men in his tub...that stuff only happens in my books.

I think...

Aloha oe,

A.J.

Making Yourself Hot

By A.J. Llewellyn

So I was at an Oscar party like almost everybody else in L.A. on Sunday and one of the people present asked me about writing sex scenes for my books.
"Do you ever turn yourself on with your scenes?" he asked.
Hell yeah! I mean, if I didn't...if my scenes don't get me at least er...happy, how can I expect my readers to get worked up over them?
I think long and hard about each sex scene I write. Sometimes they're brief and hot, sometimes they're long and romantic. I am mindful of the fact that I have two groups of readers. Those who read and re-read every sex scene and remember every detail - and those who skip over them for the story. I guess it's a good sign that there's something for them to read when they're skipping over the sex, right?
But I digress.
Anyway, sometimes these scenes come naturally. They're no effort at all. I had a whole sex scene from page one in Diura that I swear just came into my mind like a movie. Sometimes I have to work on it...especially when it's part of a series and I think - hey, have I written one like this before? But after 60 books published, you do run out of original ideas considering each one has several sex scenes.
I look to a variety of sources for inspiration when I am feeling stumped.Beyond gay porn which is a sparkling novelty always guaranteed to ignite some creativity, I like to read. Right now, Nick Capra's blogs are providing a lot of grist for the mill.
He's not only one of the hottest porn stars out there but frankly the best of the porn star bloggers.I love his Confessions of a Recovering Hooker posts. I think he needs to write books and I've been encouraging him to do so.
He is a tremendous, important new voice in the world of gay erotic writing.
Porn star Erik Rhodes blog once inspired a scene for my Waikiki Vampire book Ma Ma Loa. The way Erik feels about his porn star career seemed perfect for my fictional gay vampire, Tem.
Steve Cruz's tales of traveling with a portable douche bag seemed perfect for my male escort Mio in the upcoming The Book and the Rose.
I recently renewed my Men at Play subscription and I've been enjoying those hot little trysts.Of course with two more books pending for me with gay porn director John Bruno, my thoughts are straying toward creating, not being inspired by such scenes since what I'll be writing in the Massive Studio series will be filmed.
I think the thing about writing love scenes and sex scenes is to make them as imaginative as possible while keeping them plausible. I have been accused of having an aversion to beds since most of my characters use them as little as possible, but hey, ya gotta keep it interesting. On the page and off.
What about other authors and readers?
How do you feel about this subject?

Aloha oe,

A.J.

The Colors of Death

By A.J. Llewellyn

Many authors depict death in their works and since I am an erotic fiction author I think long and hard before killing off ANY character. I have done it a few times now, the first with Kimo, my hot Hawaiian Kahuna killing off his ex-wife by returning her own death-curse to her in My Hawaiian Song of Love and secondly, well, I've offed a few bad guys - always bad guys in my Waikiki Vampire books and my Blood Eclipse books with D.J. Manly.

I never linger over the killings, I don't glory in death. But it's a subject that interests me, especially since witnessing the passing of a friend this week.

He had been diagnosed with Stage-4 colon cancer and his sister, one of my dearest friends flew him to Los Angeles to be with her once he was given three months to live.

It's been anguishing to see his rapid decline, especially in view of the fact that this is the same disease that killed my mother.

My friend was in Hospice in the final weeks of his life. The staff were wonderful and very loving They kept him heavily medicated so that he was comfortable, but when I went to see him, he'd stopped eating and drinking and refused to lie in his bed.

He was sitting in an armchair and smelled terrible. I won't go into details but he wasn't taking trips to the bathroom...

"If I lie down, it will mean death," he said.

He began to hallucinate after 72 hours of no sleep and the heavy drugs to control the pain of the disease eating away at him.

His sister called me, frantic, saying he appeared to be talking to himself. "He's waving to somebody," she said.

"The angels have come for him," I said. "Maybe he sees your mother."

My friend became hysterical and I went to the Hospice and her brother, looking absolutely skeletal, but strangely at peace, lay perfectly still, only his hand rising from the bed. He was so out of it at this point that the staff were able to put him to bed and monitor him.

"I see colors, such beautiful colors," he said and I nodded. My mother had told me the same thing. Only she fought to stay on this planet because she had three small children.

My friend's brother never fought until the very end. He feared death until it claimed him at 5.03 PM when he saw his mother and grandfather waiting for him.

"I'm going home," he said.

I have thought about his passing since it occurred two days ago. I don't know if I can convey the horror and heartbreak, and yet the mysticism of what he saw in his final hours.

I wonder if I will be ever able to put this scene in a book. Do writers really think about the emptional weight of their death scenes? I know I've resisted overt and gratuitous dispatches and I feel now that it's unlikely I will write one again in a lets-get-this-over with way.

Death, when witnessed is a profoundly upsetting experience. I've yet to read a single book that pinpoints the sheer horror.

Nothing in life prepares us for the moment. Nothing anyone writes can do that. I don't wish this experience on anyone. I do know though that this encounter with the colors of the benevolence of 'the other side' has convinced me more than ever that only love is real because it is so much stronger than death.

Aloha oe,

A.J.