Finger Licking Good — (or Does Sex Sell?)

I’m always looking for new ways to market and promote my work, and one of the things I hear more often than any other is that sex sells. Erotic fiction, pornography, even, has, according to some, a guaranteed market that, if approached correctly, could prove highly lucrative.

Now, I’m not entirely convinced… but I’m willing to give it a try!

So, without wishing to suggest that my debut novel If I Never is a romp from beginning to end, I feel it my duty to point out that it does include the odd (in whatever sense you prefer) sex scene. It has strong characters, layers of meaning, violence and love — but, yes, it also has what I would term “an appropriate amount of shagging”.

For those who might doubt this, here is a little taster

“Quickly, I took her in my arms — telling her that there was nothing wrong and that I merely felt a little strange, being in her room for the first time. I kissed her and told her that I loved her, laying her on the bed and removing her knickers. Still fully-clothed, myself, I parted her labia, tasting deeply, inhaling with all my might in a desperate attempt to smell her. My nose pressed against her clitoris, I breathed in again… and again… and again, Tara whimpering softly as I worked at her, my cock painfully hard in the confines of my jeans.”

To your liking? Well, why not check out the first chapter and, if it still proves to be your lightly-honeyed cup of tea, buy If I Never here. (Really good value for money, at the moment — so hurry, hurry, hurry!)

So much for the soft sell, eh?

(Afterthought: do you think including the word “pussy” in the body of this post might help increase hits. Let’s see…)

A sample chapter of If I Never can be read here.

To buy your copy of If I Never, please click here.

© 2010 Gary William Murning

Guess Which Airport.

I’m never very good at working out time differences, but I believe that by now Pope Benedict XVI should have landed in Australia. And guess where his plane lands for refuelling… yup, Darwin airport!

Nice.

Anyway, to the real point of this post. The trip is, in effect, a belated apology/damage limitation exercise concerning sexual abuse committed by Australian Catholic priests, and during his flight, he reeled off the usual, by now well practised spiel to reporters about how the Catholic Church has to prevent, heal and reconcile, and then went on to add:

“It must be clear … that being a real priest is incompatible with this (sexual abuse) because priests are in the service of our Lord.”

Ah, so that’s what makes sexual abuse such a bad thing. It isn’t the horrific effect that it has on the abused individual — it’s because it doesn’t fit a priest’s job description and, one assumes, is an offence to the Lord.

It seems to me that these apologies have very little to do with helping the abused. The healing that concerns him most is not that of the victims but of the Catholic Church itself.

Insult piled upon insult. Atrocity upon atrocity. Nothing ever really changes, however much they might like to pretend that it does.

Take Me Back To Robben Island!

Okay, picture the scene. You’re possibly the world’s most famous former political prisoner. You have lousy taste in shirts. You really can’t dance, though you are quite willing to give it a shot. You’re the former president of South Africa, the first to be elected in fully representative democratic elections — and your 90th birthday is only a couple of weeks away. Life is pretty good. Everything is looking far more positive than it once did.

And then this happens.

Wouldn’t you want them to take you back to that island, lock you up and throw away the key?

I know I would.

You Can’t Say That.

I’ve been thinking about the death of George Carlin for the past few minutes — specifically his Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV routine, which can be seen in my previous post.

In 1972, Carlin was arrested in Milwaukee for disturbing the peace after performing this act and, even though I don’t know a great deal about the man (I only recently discovered him; he wasn’t that well known in my neck of the woods), it seems obvious that even then he could very clearly see the road down which we were travelling — the road to that place where the greatest sin of all is to cause offence.

Personally, I’ve never really been someone to deliberately go out of my way to offend. Except in exceptional circumstances. But increasingly I find myself appalled by the cultural mass-mindset I see around me. Everyone is perpetually afraid, it seems, to offend. Words that were once acceptable now no longer are, everyone is a minority in need of protecting, of cosseting, of being kept happy and free from unnecessary stress. You can’t say that, but you can say this — unless such and such a person is present, then it might be construed to mean something quite different, in which case, say this instead, making sure that you smile at the same time so that it can’t be misinterpreted as unnecessarily sarcastic or ironic. Whether you’re gay, black, Asian, disabled — or just a plain old vanilla Caucasian with everything in working order — you can guarantee that at some time someone will perform a nifty little verbal Riverdance routine in order to avoid causing offence. And, without wishing to offend (!), it is a complete load of fucking bollocks.

Now I’m fairly sure there’s someone out there with an “ah, but” at the ready. And quite rightly so. There is a line that cannot be crossed — a line that isn’t about the choice of words but about intent. Offending people, I will state quite clearly, is not always a bad thing. Quite often, in fact, it’s to be applauded. But this doesn’t mean that by saying this we are sanctioning bigotry and hatred. Quite the opposite, in fact.

You see, any liberties and rights that we might have (and I’d recommend hearing what George has to say about these things!) are for me founded on one basic principle: my right to have and express an opinion. Yes, with this comes responsibility. If I say something unacceptable (for example, something intended to incite racial hatred) then I should be held accountable. But for mere offence? Should I be gagged simply because I make someone feel uncomfortable, or make them question the number of burgers they eat in an average week? I don’t think so.

You see, I can say that. People like George help us see that. I can say that and, more to the point, so can you.

And if they don’t like it… well, fuck ‘em.