Why Does Katie Need a Mask?
I was taken to a Lesbian Club the first time when I was 19 and felt embarrassed seeing female nudity and females kissing in public. I have no idea why. I had seen naked girls at school a million times, and even been kissed by one or two.
I was taken to a Lesbian Club the first time when I was 19 and felt embarrassed seeing female nudity and females kissing in public. I have no idea why. I had seen naked girls at school a million times, and even been kissed by one or two.
A few days later, I passed a
costume shop in Soho, descended the staircase and saw a mask on the wall which
fit to my face as if it had been made for me. The second time I went to the
club, I wore the mask and felt more at ease. I was me, perhaps more me, but
hidden.
That was ten years ago. I was
discovering myself then. I suppose I still am, and borrowed these emotions for
an early scene in Katie in Love. Katie and Tom meet on New Years Eve. She takes
him home – it's just too sad to sleep alone on this night of nights. After they
kiss and pull at each other's clothes, Katie slips into her bedroom and slips
into a mask.
It
adds an erotic frisson to the scene and allows Katie and Tom to get to know
those aspects of each other – more
psychological than physical – that normally take forever. Katie in Love is a
romance with its setbacks and surprises, but love affairs in fiction need the
willingness to experiment that we find in the big wide world, making erotic
romance what I would simply call contemporary romance.
A girl
in a mask is alluring, even when dressed. Why is she in a mask? What is she
hiding? A mask is sexy and it is the potential for sex that draws out the
tension. A couple climbing the stairs, dropping their clothes as they go, holds
our attention far more than that same couple banging away on the bedsheets. It
is flirtation, the scent of sex, the promise of sex, that grips the reader.
Describing
a sex scene requires restraint and nuance – he lifts her shirt over
her head and reaches for the clasp at the back of her bra. She smiles because
he can’t find it. Their eyes meet and he looks down as she unhooks the clasp
between the cups and her breasts are revealed. Now they kiss and her busy
fingers start pulling the shirt from his pants.
Words
in a sex scene detract. If there is a need for dialogue, almost anything a
writer can think of will have been thought of before and will be cliché:
I’ve wanted you so long; I never knew it would be like this; Wow, you’re
amazing! Sex is cool. If characters have to speak, what they say has to be
cool. Better still, don't tell the reader how they feel. Show it through
action.
BLURB
Katie
Boyd has nothing in common with Tom Bridge, the volunteer doctor she meets at a
party – except in bed she finds a passion to match her own. Tom is intense,
puzzling, a man who cares about others and compels Katie to question her own
life drifting through the hip clubs and London party scene.
When
Tom returns to his post in a Sri Lanka orphanage, Katie isn’t sure if their
passion was lit by its brevity, or if love, unexpected and not entirely wanted,
has edged its way into her life. Should she go back to being who she always
was? Or follow Tom into the unknown?
Katie in Love is a compelling
erotic-romance that will grip readers as they follow Katie’s journey to an
ending they may have expected – but not in the way they expected it.
Brilliantly
written and coolly self-aware, Chloe Thurlow was described by KM Dylan on
Amazon as “…the Anaïs Nin of our times.” With Katie in Love – her sixth
novel – Thurlow reveals a writer at the height of her powers.
BUY LINKS
AUTHOR BIO
Chloe Thurlow lives in London, suffers insomnia, writes at night,
likes Spanish cava and falls over when she drinks too much. The author of five
earlier novels she pretentiously calls the Girl Quintet (girl is in all the
titles) – Girl Trade has been translated into two other languages and a production
company has generously suggested she gives them a FREE film option.
Website: http://www.chloethurlow.com/
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