Primula Bond
Erotic Romance
NR: Tell us about the Unbreakable
trilogy.
Primula: These three books chart the intense
slow-burn love affair between the dark, aloof, troubled Gustav Levi and the
younger, feistier red-head Serena Folkes. They each have something the other
wants, at first materially (he finances and launches her career in return for
her exclusive female company) and then emotionally (when they start to trust
and love again, with the aid of red-hot sexual attraction). Any similarity to
other erotic romances ends there, because I have woven into the story not only
the artistic details of Serena's photography but also lush descriptions of
cities and locations, and in The Golden Locket the explosive re-appearance of
Gustav's brother Pierre shakes up the relationship just when it looked as if it
was on an even keel. No couple in real life is isolated from the rest of the
world, and the 'unbreakability' of Serena and Gustav's relationship is
constantly tested by the games and threats of various faces from the past.
Primula: I wanted to be a princess when I was a
little girl and despite kissing a lot of frogs I did eventually meet and marry
my Prince Charming. But although true love is an archetypal theme, explored
throughout the history of literature, music, poetry and story-telling, the
course of it never runs smooth, and that's what makes writing about it so
exciting. A kind of literary soap opera. As a writer you can range far and wide
in creating your hero and heroine and the secondary characters. It's often more
fun dreaming up the toxic elements who try to separate them. It's also the
perfect frame work for erotica writers to write about sex, and lots of it,
because sex is ultimately at its most fulfilling and magical when the
protagonists are in love. In the end, readers want to follow the same journey,
whether or not there's a happy ending, because unlike a crime caper or
thriller, nearly everyone can relate the aspects of a love story to some aspect
of their own life.
NR: Mills and Boon rejected your work for being too explicit, so how
much have we moved on in terms of erotic fiction since this time?
Primula: Mills and Boon themselves have moved on leaps
and bounds since that famous rejection slip back in 1994. They have plenty of
steam coming out of their characters' ears now in their raunchier imprints, but
erotica per se takes flight without any inhibition. The 'new adult' genre suits
me because it harks back to the 'old fashioned' idea of romance. There has been
a pulling back from the really hard core, dark content I was being asked to
write for Black Lace until about two years ago which made me so uncomfortable I
was ready to give up writing erotica altogether. Then I was asked by my editor
at Harper Collins to try my hand at an erotic romance, and now have the best of
both worlds, as I'm able to forge a really intense love story with pretty wild
sex scenes woven into it.
NR: You are a legal secretary, have three sons and a husband, so how
do you juggle your writing with everything else in your life?
Primula: I've blogged before (www.primulabond.blogspot.com)
about how difficult it is living with a writer, especially a writer with a
deadline, but although my life is very full (we also take in foreign students)
I am very lucky in that I am now able to work part-time, which enables me to
devote certain solid days of the week to writing. Even so, I have to make a
determined effort to step away from the keyboard when the kids come home from
school and focus on getting the supper on, otherwise they might never get fed.
My husband is great at taking the kids off at weekends if I'm busy, but we make
sure we have plenty of meals out and holidays together, and of course when the
deadline has been met and the latest novel is off with the printers, then we
all relax! Also, my full life, both past and present, has provided endless
material for my writing and I wonder how writers can fill a novel if they don't
also have a full life?
Primula: Gustav is around 40 years old, a driven,
successful entrepreneur in the art world. Serena has unlocked the passion that
has been suppressed after an obsessive, abusive marriage which ended with his
wife Margot, in retaliation for him ending the marriage, seducing and running
off with the beloved younger brother he had brought up from childhood. He has
learned to love and trust again, but now he has to find a way to forgive his
brother Pierre when he reappears in his life, while keeping Margot as far out
of their lives as possible – not realizing that his brother poses a real threat
to his relationship with Serena.
Serena is a spirited red-haired tomboy who
has spent her life fighting the coldness and indifference of her adoptive
parents and after qualifying as a photographer has left Devon to forge her
photographic career in London. She is something of a voyeur, specializing in
photographs taken of people who don't know she's watching. When she and Gustav
come to New York this fascination extends to her participating in various
sexual scenarios while still under Gustav's watchful eye.
Primula: I was brought up in the countryside but all
I've ever craved is city life, and went to live in London as soon as I left
school. We spent a very snowy New Year in New York a couple of years ago and
love the city. I have an American grandfather and wonder if maybe it's my
spiritual home. New York feels a sister city to London and is a great platform
for Serena to enlarge her circle of clients, to people-watch, and continue her
career. The city is a melting pot of slightly cynical, life-embattled
characters within the hard edge of city life. It is also where Gustav's brother
Pierre, and Serena's cousin Polly, have met and become an item.
Primula: When I started writing fiction, I was a
single mother. I submitted all kinds of fiction, literary, romantic to various
publishers, until I submitted three chapters to Mills and Boon. And as
previously discussed they rejected the sex scenes as too explicit. I enjoyed
writing those sex scenes, especially between two impossibly beautiful and
exotic characters, so it was an easy leap to turn that into erotica per se, and
when my first short story was sold my erotica writing career was set. Short
stories are still my favourite genre, because they are so short and sweet, but
developing this new genre of erotic romance throughout a full length novel is a
fantastic way of creating three dimensional characters as well as making them
inhabit their own world.
Primula: I am waiting with baited breath to see how
The Golden Locket, fares with the readers, and am editing Book 3, The Diamond
Ring. I then have an idea for a 'prequel' story involving one of the secondary
characters. I also want to market my indie short stories 'Stabbing the Rain',
currently available on Amazon, and I also want to write a mainstream,
semi-autobiographical commercial novel under my own name.
BLURB of THE GOLDEN LOCKET
Serena and Gustav arrive in New York to
live together and pursue fresh opportunities. Although still passionate about
each other, Serena feels drawn to experiment sexually when she is photographing
various kinky scenarios, and Gustav agrees so long as he is present to protect
her. While Serena's photographic career continues to take off, their
relationship is threatened by the arrival of Gustav's attractive, estranged
younger brother Pierre who seems intent not only on reconnecting with Gustav
but with getting dangerously close to Serena. His intentions become blindingly
clear when Serena finds herself alone with him in Venice – thinking he is
Gustav..
EXCERPT of THE GOLDEN LOCKET
Gustav shakes me, and the chill of sobriety
nags me, because what my lover has produced from under the bed is a big, thick
leather phallus, exaggerated in size but exact in anatomical detail, and curved
slightly like a scimitar. This is a weapon, not a toy. He holds it up in the
air between us like some kind of talisman, turns it so we can see it from every
angle, then brings out a tiny jar of amber liquid.
'What
are you doing?' I croak. I strain against the silver chain. 'That looks like
honey.'
'Lubrication,'
Gustav mutters in a deep, gutteral voice, dipping his fingers into the pot and
running the honey over the leather. 'To anoint my little sinner.'
I
whimper and wriggle as he runs the tip of the now dripping dildo under my nose,
pushes it across my upper lip, between my teeth so that I'm forced to suck it
like a lollipop, then he hitches up my velvet dress and draws the thing slowly
and deliberately up and down my spine, over my bottom, painting me with a
languid trail of amber which is already turning from warm liquid to prickling
stickiness as it dries on my skin.
'Don't
resist, Serena. I saw your eyes watering with desire when those strippers
played with their dildos in the club earlier. So I asked them if I could have
one for my girl to take home. I actually wanted one of the white ones they'd
used, but they said this one was brand new and we could have it as a gift.' He
laughs so boyishly just then that it infects me, too. 'They were all for coming
home with us to demonstrate how best to use it, but I said no, I wanted you to
myself. ButI took their number. For future reference!'
I
giggle helplessly and feel my body going all soft and willingas he bends to his
gentle task and runs the blunt end down between the cheeks of my bottom and
burrows underneath me, pushing open my resisting body, nosing towards the
centre. Those strippers oiled up their phalluses with something good enough to
lick and then buckled on special belts and aimed them at each other,
suggestively at first and then thrusting their pelvises like men, pushing in
and penetrating each other, long and slow.
The
resistance gives way to melting acceptance, and I revel in the fact that this
is Gustav, my lover, who asked those scary strippers if he could have their
dildo to take home and is wielding this thing and invading my most private part
with it. I don't want anyone else to do this to me, not even some domineering
woman I might play with in the future.
'Trust
me. I'm your teacher. Although this is a first for me, I have to admit. We're
experimenting together, remember? So think of this is not as punishment but as
another pleasurable lesson. For both of us.'
I
have managed to push away Pierre's presence at last, but I can't look at Gustav
while this is happening. Now his other hand is lifting me to get a better angle
I suppose. His long warm fingers are wandering over my bottom, following the
path of the dildo, and the combination of sensations is emptying my mind of all
thought, filling my body with a riot of responses. His fingers find another way
in. How dirty can this get?
'I'm here, Serena,' Gustav
grunts, reading my mind as always. 'I'll always be here. You're perfectly safe.
Give in to it. Go on. See how good it can feel.'
Above
my head the sun sinks rapidly over the Hudson River. Around us the city hums
and sings.
REVIEWS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKET:
'This is one book that should be read with
the AC on full blast with a glass of ice water sitting nearby. The series is
proving to be extremely hot and explosive.' Larena's Reviews, Goodreads.
'Bond’s Oxford University roots show, she
has an amazing writing style – precise, clean and mature with a literary edge'.
Nightlyreading.
'This book is very gripping and hard to put
down, you just get lost and captivated in the story and cannot wait till the
next page. My only fault with this Trilogy is having to wait till book 3 is
released.' J Allen, Amazon
BUY LINKS
The Golden Locket paperback is in
Smiths
and Tesco in the UK
and in e-book and paperback at Amazon.co.uk
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others learn about this erotic trilogy!
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