2007 was my worst year in terms of writing output, since I began writing in 1999. At one point I began to wonder if I’d simply lost whatever the magic ingredient is that causes the dough of plot and character to rise into bread.

I know it sounds immodest, but writing comes easily to me. At least the first blush of it does. The story mostly comes out in a rush of plot or emotion or character and then I work on it to tune the language, the images, the pace, just trying to get rid of all the stuff that isn't the story and when I've done that I hit it like a freshly cast bell and I listen for any cracks.

Last year I was tired, ill, depressed and way too busy and writing didn't come easily anymore. Time was an issue as usual but that wasn't really the thing. I had lots of stories in the WIP file and I tinkered with many of them, making them better but not getting them done.

It took me a while to realise that the magic ingredient that was missing was my own belief in the story. I didn't have the optimism or joy left over to envision the story as it was going to be. I kept seeing the weaknesses. Or I saw only a polished veneer that I didn't care for. And the more I tinkered, driven only by an urge to get the technical parts right, the less ability I had to generate any belief.

This year I’ve managed to get back to writing. It took two things to get me back in harness: I had to fix up my life - as Springsteen said, you have to learn to live with what you can't rise above - and I read everything I could find.

The first filled in some of the energy pits that were draining me. The second restored my sense of the boundless possibilities of writing.

There are so many wonderful writers out there. Reading them breeds stories in my head. Not plots but a sense of style or a willingness to confront or to throw back my head and laugh.

And I know that all these people sat before their computers alone and wove this stuff from their passion, their skill and their belief in themselves. Writers create by force of will and strength of belief. What could be more human or more magical than that?

Porn is about fast, unsubtle, sating of appetites - once the short strokes are over, porn loses its appeal faster than cum can dry. As someone on ERWA pointed out, erotica is about yearning not sating - erotica creates desires that linger even when arousal fades.

There's a saying in marketing, you sell the sizzle, not the steak. I think erotica is like that. It focuses on the cues that make the mouth water, that make you tingle with anticipation.

If this is true, then you don't actually need the steak. Erotica doesn't need the money shot. Porn without the money shot is a rip-off.

It also seems to me that erotica can use humour to sell the sizzle whereas humour is porn is just a reason to press the fast forward button.

Let me illustrate what I mean with a story: "Moira and the Babysitter". I think this story is both erotic and funny. You can judge for yourself what it's selling and how,

Im interested to know what you think

Moira and the babysitter

reproduce without written permission from mikekimera@yahoo.co.uk

There are things that you know you shouldn’t do but you go ahead and do them anyway. It’s like sitting paralysed at the wheel while you drive into an on-coming truck, it’s scary as hell and you know it’s gonna hurt but GOD do you feel alive while it’s happening.

My on-coming truck was called Lisa and she made me break one of the primary rules of suburbia: never, EVER, kiss the babysitter.

It was a Saturday night I was home early from unsuccessful date, again! Another boyfriend running scared of a woman with a kid. He’d been looking for some action and I’d been looking for… hell I don’t know, maybe just to meet a man who didn’t turn out to be a complete shit whose every move was not determined by a desire to get laid without having to spend too much money to do it.

Do I sound harsh? Yeah? Well walk a mile in my shoes and see if you feel any different.

I got in and shouted to Lisa to let her know I was home. Lisa and I go way back. When she was 10 years old I was often the babysitter for her and her younger sister. She’s great with Sam, my little boy, and she’s always willing to baby-sit at short notice.

Maybe if I’d been less pissed at Jack, hereinafter to be referred to as JackAss, I might have paid attention to how Lisa was dressed and how hyped she seemed.

“Nice dress Mrs D,” she said as I walked into the family room.

“Not Mrs, Ms. Anyway, you should call me Moira, you’re old enough now.”

“Didn’t the date go well?”

“It went the way my dates always go. My maybe-Mr-Right turned out to definitely-Mr-Wrong. All dick and no spine. Shit, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Lisa laughed. “It’s ok, Moira. Like you said, I am old enough now.”

I should have heard the sirens going off and seen the lights flashing at the tone of voice she used but I was too busy extracting my feet from the toe-killing stilettos JackAss liked so much.

“But you like men don’t you?” Lisa said. “I mean you like sleeping with them?”

That got my attention. Especially the ‘them’ part. I wondered what she’d heard and from whom and how much of it was true. I looked at Lisa properly for the first time. She was pretty but tense. Which I guess made her pretty tense. Groan. This stuff happens in my head when I get nervous and I’d suddenly realised that I was nervous. I decided the best thing was to give Lisa as honest an answer as I could.

“Well, let me check my memory,” I said, pretending to think back “Yeah I like it. With the right guy doing the right things.”

“I guess I’ve never found the right guy,” Lisa said.

She sounded sad. I assumed some young shithead had taken her cherry and broken her heart. I hoped she hadn’t gotten pregnant by whomever it was. Nineteen was too young to be a single mother. I know, that was how old I was when “Mr. I’m a quarter-back, you’re a cheerleader, we should do it in the back of my SUV,” unleashed his two million sperm in a race to my womb through a hole in a broken rubber. The lucky winner produced Sam.

I put my arm around her and said, “You ok, Lisa?”

She leant against me and nodded her head. Then she said, “Can I ask you something? Can you like guys and like girls too?”

Woah, I could see where this was going. This is an uptight State. We don’t teach the joys of lesbian love in our High Schools. I was suddenly very aware of my arm around Lisa’s shoulder. If I took it away now, she’d think I was freaked out. I decided to lift her head so I could see her eyes clearly and then just slide my arm off her like it was no big deal.

“What do you mean, like?” I asked.

“You know. Like. Like to watch. Like to be with. Like to touch.”

Jesus. Suddenly I’m back in senior year, smoking dope at the back of the bleachers with Judy Sorrenson. We were practising kissing. Only so we could do it better with boys later you understand. Except it went further than that. We practised biting each other’s nipples and riding each other’s fingers. But Judy said it didn’t count because we were stoned and anyway we didn’t take our clothes off. Damn, I wish we had taken them off. Judy was hot.

“Moria?” Lisa is looking at me anxiously. She thinks I’m avoiding answering her. I am not going to let her think I disapprove.

“Listen Lisa,” I say, “it’s ok to like girls and boys but you have to be real careful who you tell. Do you like girls that way Lisa?”

There. That was smooth. That was professional and caring. This was going well.

“Not girls,” Lisa said. “I like you.”

Then she kissed me. A desperate, needy, snatched kiss, that seemed to anticipate rejection but went ahead anyway.

I just sat there like a piece of stone. I’d been kissed by my nineteen-year-old babysitter. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

Lisa started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said, through her tears. “Please don’t tell Dad. Please. I won’t do it again. I won’t. I promise. I’ll get a boyfriend and everything. It’s just that you look so nice and I‘ve watched you for so long and I wanted to… please don’t tell please.”

That’s when the carwreck started. I should have reassured her and sent her home. What I actually did was kiss her.

Initially I just wanted to stop her crying, you know. I liked Lisa. She was a good kid and she didn’t deserve to be traumatized because the woman she had a crush on freaked out. I meant to show her that everything was ok. A sort of hug, only with the mouth.

The first couple of seconds were on plan. She stopped crying and just let her lips touch mine. She had very soft lips. And she smelled good. And the touch of her long hair against my hand felt comforting.

I think I must have closed my eyes, because I never saw her hands move. She held my head gently and pushed her tongue into my mouth. It wasn’t the “hey babe, feel this? Well wait till you feel Big-Boy inside you, moving the same way” sort of kiss that so many men use. It had a sense of wonder to it. An exploration of something that wasn’t you but that wasn’t entirely alien either. I stopped breathing. My nipples were telling me that I’d at last found a good kisser.

Then she dropped her hands, sat back and looked at me. I must have looked like a guppy, with my mouth hanging open and my eyes almost crossed. For a split second I was worried that she might not have liked it.

Lisa stroked my face and said, “That was just how I had imagined it. Thank you.”

I started to smile but I froze when Lisa started to push off the spaghetti straps to the little dress she was wearing.

“Do you like my breasts?” she said, looking down at them and pushing them up for my approval. She ran a thumb over her right nipple. It looked like the eraser on the end of a HB pencil. “Do you think my nipples are too long?”

Now I don’t go around checking out other women’s breasts or anything. I mean Lisa’s looked nice but they wouldn’t normally have turned me on. It was just that she was so close to me and I could still taste her in my mouth and it probably didn’t help that I hadn’t been laid properly in almost a month, Mr JackAss and I not having gotten past the blow-job stage. I couldn't look away from her nipple.

“Lisa,” I said, “we shouldn’t…”

She lifted my hand and placed it on her breast. I was only aware of two things, the heat of her skin against me and the little anticipatory spasm between my legs.

I stood up.

“Lisa, this has to stop. We are not lovers. I’m too old for you. And besides, your dad would kill me.”

Well that was better. Apart from the last sentence, I’d sounded like a sensible, caring adult. And we weren’t touching any more. I began to think I’d find a way out of this that didn’t involve pleading insanity.

Lisa got off the sofa and knelt in front of me. She rested her head against my belly just above my pubis and wrapped her arms around my legs. Short of hitting her, I was trapped.

She kissed my belly. “Oh God, I wish my belly was flatter,” I thought. Then she looked up at me and said. “You’re not too old. You’re only six years older than me. I know you don’t love me yet, but I want you to be my first. I’ve wanted that for a long time.”

She looked cute kneeling in front of me like that, her dress almost around her waist, her hair falling down her back, and a wide, hopeful smile on her face. Part of me was saying, “Go with it. Do the kid and yourself a favor.” The part of me that I LIKED was saying “Did you here the ‘don’t love me YET’ statement? This is way out of control. DO SOMETHING.”

And I would have listened. Really I would. If Lisa hadn’t slid her hands under my skirt and rolled my panties down. Damn, I should have worn pantyhose. A Victoria’s Secret thong is just way too easy to remove.

I reached down to stop her. I was going to push her away. This was wrong. I wasn’t going to play. I was very firm on that. Then her tongue touched me and my hands just rested on her head. I don’t remember parting my legs but suddenly there was room down there for her to lick in all the right places. “Why the hell can’t men ever learn to do it like that?” I thought.

I was twisting Lisa’s hair now and leaning my head back and… the phone rang.

I felt like I’d been released from some kind of fairytale spell. I stepped away from Lisa and picked up the phone. She was playfully crawling towards me. I didn’t know what I’d do when she got there.

“Is that you Moira?” a voice said as soon as I picked up. It was Lisa’s mother.

“Hi Mrs. Flannigan,” I said desperately pulling up my panties and straightening my clothes. Lisa scrambled to her feet and started to tuck herself back into her dress. She looked anxiously at the door as if it was about to be forced open by the sex police. I knew how she felt.

“I thought I saw your car.” Mrs Flannigan said, “Terrible thing to be home so early on a Saturday night. I’m sorry to bother you, but if you’ve finished with Lisa, I could use her at home to help me hang these new curtains.”

“Sure thing, Mrs Flannigan, I’ll send her right over.”

There was silence after I put the phone down.

“That was your mother,” I said.

OK, so I state the obvious when I’m under stress. I had no idea what to do next.

Lisa laughed. “Guess we almost got busted,” she said. Then she kissed me quickly on the lips and said, “That was great. I knew it would be. I better go before Mom starts asking questions.”

“What happened to Miss Vulnerable Teenage Lesbian Virgin?” I thought. One minute it’s all intimacy and passion, next minute it’s like we’re discussing cheating on a term paper.

I was in a mess. My libido was shouting, “Hey, who switched the power off? I’m not done yet?” My nice side was going “Phew that was close, let’s pretend nothing ever happened here tonight.” But mostly I was thinking, “She can’t just up and leave!”

Some of all that must have shown on my face because, Lisa slowed down and gave me a real affectionate look. She put her hand on my forearm and said, “That was special. Thank you. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone what we did.”

What WE did? I didn’t do anything. Yeah right. And that was exactly the problem.

When she got to the door she hesitated and said, “Mom will be out on Wednesday. I could come over. Call me. Bye Moira.”

Wednesday night. Four whole days away.

Ever thought about doing something you shouldn’t and known you were going to end up doing it anyway?