My Latest "Seducing" Title

So here we are - tada! Introducing my latest title in the "Seducing" series - "Seducing the Gardener"!

This title is the fourth in the series, following on from two short stories, "Seducing the Masseur" and "Seducing the Art Student", plus a novel, "Seducing the Neighbor". We're back to short story territory, ladies (and gents, and others). After the four months that it took to create "Neighbor", I was in a hurry to pump out some new titles quickly, so decided to simplify the story.

Indeed, while I was proud of "Seducing the Neighbor", and even submitted it for publication to a real press, and not going through the self-publishing route immediately like I had done before, writing it had been a bit of a creative slog. I think I had been a little over-ambitious in its execution, plus I had initially wanted it to be a short story, anyway. However, it had unexpectedly burgeoned and ballooned into this huge 49,000-word novel-length work.

There were various reasons for this, but mainly, I had chosen a profession that required a significant build-up of realistic storyline. Cathy Dixon and Daniel Colston, the main characters, were a retired model running a modeling agency, and her next-door neighbor, a business studies university student, respectively. I initially believed that this would be a hot, sexy coupling - she an older, beautiful woman of 32 - glamorous, beautiful, and surrounded by amazingly sexy women at work who were horny, and loved girl-on-girl sex sessions; he a gym-honed, athletic, 19-year-old handsome stud, with lots of physical energy and sexual stamina to pound her all night, and last and last in bed. What could go wrong?

Well, quite a bit, actually. I quickly found out that this supposedly simple idea - a sexually frustrated former model seducing her next-door neighbor, was full of unrealistic set-ups. Ultimately, I had to justify why she would choose her next-door neighbor over a thousand other guys she could have chosen, if she used to be a fashion model, and still looks good; why she hadn't noticed him before, if he's been living next door all this time; why, if he's so hot, he chose her over hundreds of hot babes at university more his own age; why, if she has a hundred models who like girl-on-girl sex, Cathy couldn't have just got it on with some of her employees and started a lesbian or bisexual thing, but instead ignored them all and chose Daniel; how, as in all erotica, the sex can develop the two characters so that they end up better at the end than they were at the beginning, if all she's going to do is pop next-door to get pounded; and how to create a happy ending. Hmmm! Decisions, decisions!

So this led to long, expository dialogue, twisting plot turns, and introducing a bad girl character to threaten Cathy's business, forcing Daniel to be the solution. While I was pleased with the end result of the novel, and I regard it as a great story all the same, I was a little alarmed at how the whole thing had got kind of out of control, and five times longer than my usual short stories.

So I hoped that "Seducing the Gardener" would be the antidote to all that - and it was. My hope is that you'll see how when you read it!