The Rules

Read along work in progress

I didn’t think I had a novel in me. I’m now 40,000 words in, but I still may have been right! It’s certainly a lot more words to conjure up than a screenplay. But a workshop during Folkestone Book Festival inspired me to have a go. And I’m sharing the journey with you.

Writing Blythe’s original adventures in short story format, and then sharing in the short film The Folkestone Ladies’ Erotic Fiction Club, was the gateway to getting used to putting sexually explicit content out there in the universe. And finding nobody I knew was really that bothered. That they either chose not to read but engage with my work in other ways. Or they embrace it and our friendships have moved to a different level - more comfortable, more supportive, more honest.

But as the readership and audience for Blythe’s adventures grows, I now start thinking about the lives of strangers. I’ve written previously about the majority of my readers here on Substack being men. And you are all very welcome - your thoughts inform my work and inspire new stories, and I enjoy reading the impact my stories have on you. And better to be reading and sharing my work than hanging about in the universe of misogynistic porn.

Writing for strangers is more freeing than writing for friends. To blur the lines of what is experience and what is fantasy. But to write a novel? Blythe’s short stories were very much close to home - set where I lived at the time of my dating adventures, little snapshots of interactions that may or may not have happened. A novel requires a bigger reach, a longer arc, and greater character depth. How would I ever get started?

Just 45 minutes of a workshop was the amount of time required to plant the seed for a novel.

The workshop was hosted by author Leone Ross as part of the Folkestone Book Festival. It was called “Writing Sex and Desire” and as always with Folkestone, it was well supported by the ladies of the town, most of them much older than me, all writing smut on the side, or woven into other genres. A few gentlemen too. It started with a freewrite with a few prompts - starting with the main character, then choosing the spark - the person they have the opportunity to have sex with - where they will meet, and how they will touch.

And the final prompt was the gamechanger for me. The Afterglow. The Impact. Because in Blythe’s short stories, this goes unseen, it always ends on the sex. So here was new territory. Here was the difficult terrain of emotions and thoughts and consequences to our actions. Herein lies the fuel for the novel.

From that workshop has emerged a novel called The Rules. I am writing it somewhat unconventionally - only a couple of days of prep and research and then straight into 5,000 words a week. No reviewing, no editing, just driving the characters forward and seeing what happens in the moment, with them, me as surprised as them.

As a result, there are lots of inconsistencies in this first draft. Threads established and not picked up again. Thoughts not fully followed through. Themes I hadn’t realised are themes. But I have stayed true to my purpose - that stories which rewild us, stories which foreground Mother Nature, stories which encourage pro-environmental thought and behaviour - can be entertaining whether that be because they are erotic, or funny, or thrilling, or potentially, as I keep finding week after week, a hybrid of all of those things.

So I am inviting paid subscribers to join me on this unique journey - the writing of my first novel. Support me, encourage me, guide me as I share the next section every two weeks. What’s working? What do you need more of? What’s exciting, intriguing, challenging? Is it making you think? Is it turning you on?

The opening pages are right here, come join me in the wild and see where we go together.