News

When I first started this blog I was adamant that I would force myself to keep it up to date, and would write regular pieces to slap onto the net to maintain my profile in the world of smut. So much for good intentions; it’s probably three months since I bothered to post anything. This blog has become something like an exercise bike – you start off doing thirty miles a day, but before long it’s in the attic gathering dust with all your other crap.

So, what news is there to report? Obviously it would be inexcusable on my part to fail to mention that our Prime Minister once fucked a pig. It isn’t relative to anything, but it is a topic that I feel should be regularly raised - right up until the day that dirty pig fucker leaves office. And the next time the hypocritical son of a bitch passes legislation outlawing the depiction of sexual practices in British pornography, he should be reminded of his pork poking past, and told in no uncertain terms that anyone who sticks his rod in a hog has no business whatsoever telling other people what they can and can’t do with their genitals.

There’s finally a leftie in charge of the Labour Party, and Wales are smashing it in the World Cup, but what I’m really supposed to be writing about here is the release schedule for my upcoming works, rather than Cameron’s predilection for slamming the ham. I should therefore stop with the pig fucking puns and talk business.

I’ve just approved the final galley for a short story entitled ‘Office Politics’, which is set to release on Nov 6^th, through MuseItHot publishing. It will be a quick read, consumable in roughly the same amount of time as it takes a dignified statesman to slide his erect penis into the waiting mouth of a hog roast. Oops, sorry, I mentioned pig fucking again. I promise I’ll stop it now.

After Office Politics comes out I’ll be concentrating on the build up to the release of my second novel – Leisure – which will hopefully hit the digital shelves before the end of the year. I’m tentatively labelling Leisure as an erotic farce; publishers and retailers love to pigeonhole books into genres, and anything that they aren’t able to neatly compartmentalise gives them sleepless nights. Peeper caused consternation among advertisers because it didn’t fit rigidly into any of their tick boxes, but I’m hoping my next book will be a little more straight forward. I can guarantee that there will be absolutely no pig fucking contained within.

Moving toward next year, I’m hoping to have my fingers in a couple more pies (not pork pies). More news on that score if and when it happens.

Oink oink.

Why Censor Words?

I fell victim to the ultimate form of censorship this week, and it has gotten me so irate that I decided to dispense with my ‘no ranting’ rule and have a bloody good, full on whinge about it. Allow me to explain what happened . . .

I am in the process of creating an internet ‘buzz’ around my forthcoming novel Peeper and am doing the usual rounds of social media bombardment and guest appearances on blogs. One of these blogs is that of fellow writer of erotica Kay Dee Royal, who kindly agreed to interview me and provide a little advertising for my novel. So she sent me a list of questions to answer, and I dutifully filled in the form and sent it back, and Kay told me I would be appearing on her blog on June 8^th and she would send me a link so I could spam the fuck out of all my friends. All good so far.

The problem occurred when her blog went live and I received the link to go view it, and instead of seeing my interview and lovely pictures of my book cover, I saw the following message from my mobile network provider: This content is designated adults only and is blocked.

As you would imagine, I used several words at that moment which would have the internet censors scrambling for cover with their hands over their ears. “Fuck!” I shouted. “Fucking arseholing bollocking ball bags.” I was – I should point out – in the middle of nowhere, and without access to my home broadband was entirely reliant upon my smart phone to conduct my online affairs.

In a nutshell, my mobile network provider EE had censored me from reading back my own words; answers I’d given as part of an interview were being deemed far too rude for my poor little mind to cope with. Thank fuck these cocksniffers are here to protect me from myself, huh?

This opens up a whole new debate as far as I’m concerned. Namely, why are words being censored? I can see the point of censoring hard core porn sites - making sure that people who have no fucking clue about anything can happily hand over a smart phone to their offspring and sleep content at night, secure in the knowledge their little darlings can’t see anything they aren’t supposed to.

But the censorship of words is – to my mind – the ultimate nonsense. Allow me to explain what I mean. I want you to read the following sentence, and then close your eyes and allow its meaning to sink into your mind:

Barry and Mary went upstairs to make love.

Okay, so what did these words make you see? Maybe you’re a Mary Whitehouse type, and the idea of Barry and Mary having sex leaves you frothing at the mouth and indignantly reaching for your bible. Maybe you are slightly dirty minded, and saw Barry and Mary going at it hell for leather, naked and sweaty. Or maybe you are a total deviant, and saw Barry as a shy bi-curious man finally coming out of his shell and taking the butt-pounding of a lifetime from a seven foot tall Congolese transvestite named Mary.

The point is, any one of these scenarios are entirely possible. Words are nothing but symbols on a page which, when fed through our brain, can be transformed into images by our imaginations. So what is it exactly that needs to be censored – is it the words themselves, or is it our own thought processes? The only place that words can truly be transformed into pornography is in the depths of our own minds.

Censorship of words is censorship of the imagination - of our interpretation of a description, which is as individual to each of us as our fingerprints. How can you stop people from seeing things in their mind’s eye that you may not like? If I were to say the word ‘stiff’ I may be talking about a yardbrush, but you may see a massive, throbbing cock. Should the word ‘stiff’ be removed from the dictionary to protect the terminally fucked up, or would it be easier to simply lobotomise us all at birth so we’re protected from our own imaginations? God forbid we should think about something that a Daily Mail reader may not like.

And of course, the ultimate irony to all this is that while I was staring at the screen of my smart phone in disbelief at the declaration that I was being blocked from accessing a page full of my own words, there were probably myriad teenagers sitting in the back row of their geography lessons, giggling as they used their phones to watch the latest sex tape of some wannabe glamour model getting pounded by a footballer, as they are far smarter with smart technology than the rest of us.

I’m sure my mobile provider would argue it is easy for me to remove this block from my service, but why should I have to go to the trouble? They didn’t presume I was under eighteen when I signed up to their credit agreement and handed over my money, so why are they assuming I’m a child now? Should censorship not be an opt in device for concerned parents, rather than the default setting used to piss off innocent perverts like myself?

For anyone who is interested, here is the link to Kay Dee Royal’s blog:

http://kaydeeroyal.blogspot.co.uk/?zx=1a6f5c4dcbe2bcab

She’s a very nice lady, and you should all stop by for a visit. Hopefully the words you see written on the screen won’t damage your mind and condemn your mortal soul to the flames of hell.

Take a Peep at Peeper

Here I am once again; struggling with the side of the writing business they call marketing and trying to give reasons why you should all buy my book without making myself sound like the world’s biggest tosspot.

For starters, I’ll say that Peeper is dirty; I’m not talking a little suggestive or saucy here, this book is downright filthy. They say that sex sells, and with that in mind I should be onto a winner. Peeper tells the story of a man named Jenks, a small time private investigator who becomes involved with a blackmail plot centered around the seductive and mysterious Veronica, who drags him ever deeper into her seedy world. I won’t go into any detail about the scenarios that ensue, but I think it’s safe to say they are very, very rude.

Have these promises of dirtiness gotten your attention yet? No? Okay, so maybe I can appeal to you on an intellectual level; Peeper is based entirely in North Wales, and if – like myself – you hail from this little corner of the planet and wonder why there is seldom any representation of us Gogs in the media or art world, then this may very well be the book for you. The names of the towns and people are made up, but if you are familiar with this stretch of coastline then you may recognise the places and the characteristics.

If naughtiness and geography aren’t floating your boat, then perhaps I could offer you a little voyeurism? The idea of taking an illicit peep at the secret lives that others keep hidden behind closed doors is one I’m sure, if we’re honest with ourselves, we all enjoy far more than we should. Peeper deals with people who like to look, and with people who like to show.

Are you sold yet? Will you be purchasing a copy of my book on June 30^th? I could lie and claim that any profit made from sales will go to a good cause, like rescuing blind donkeys from evil paedophiles or something, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is purely a capitalistic venture; buy and sell; supply and demand.

Go on, buy it. You know you want to.

:)

Where's My Pants?

 

I awake with a start at four o'clock in the morning and instantly know that something is wrong. Is there a fire? Is an axe murderer watching me from the shadows, preparing to pounce? It’s only when I stick my hand below the duvet for a quick readjustment of the old balls that I realise what is going on: My pants are missing. I'm pretty sure I was wearing them when I crawled drunkenly to bed last night, so where the hell have they gone?

I’m naked from the waist down. Have I become another unfortunate victim of pant thievery? It’s a phenomenon that is rife right now – I read about it on the internet. People are waking up to discover their pants have been harvested, and in the majority of cases it’s too late to do anything about it. By the time they’ve come to their senses their pants are half way around the globe, and some Chinese billionaire is strutting down the street in them, showing them off to his rich friends.

God damn it. Where the hell are my pants?

Four in the morning is no hour to be awake - too late to be considered early and too early to be considered late. It's kind of like a no man's land, sandwiched between the night and the dawn; the revellers have quietened and the milkmen’s alarms have yet to go off. It's certainly not the ideal time to be crashing around a narrowboat, hung over and pantless, turning the place upside down in search of missing underwear. I check every nook and cranny, but there's no sign of them. It's becoming increasingly clear my pants have been abducted. 

I could call the police, but frankly I think they'd laugh me out of town. They’re too busy busting motorists for doing thirty-five in a thirty limit to go after the real criminals. So I do what I always do in times of crisis - I improvise an opera about the situation. It's a coping strategy I learned back in 'Nam. 

People think it's hard to be an opera singer and you need years of intense training, but that's an urban myth. All you need to do is sing as loud as fuck in Italian. It doesn't even have to be real Italian - so long as it sounds Italian then you’re in business. 

I leap onto the fore deck and burst into song; a lament for my pants. I have included here a rough translation, but as I was singing in a language I don’t speak, it may not be a hundred percent accurate. 

Where's my pants?

I've only had them on two days,

I could get another week out of them yet. 

They're a pretty decent pair,

No holes and the elastic still works. 

Where's my pants?

I think they're blue, or maybe grey. 

They're definitely not the stripy ones,

As I only wear those on special occasions. 

Where's my pants?

If one of those ducks has nicked them,

I'll kill the fucker.

As I'm mid way through the overture, the lady from two boats down appears and starts shouting something - I don't catch her exact words as my opera is far too loud. She's clearly hugely impressed, not only by the passion of my aria, but also by the sight of my dangling penis, which in the chilly night air has shrunken to roughly the size of an acorn. 

"Bravo," she screams as she clouts me across the earhole with a length of four by two. I tumble backwards into the canal and begin a new song, this time about the coldness of the still, black water. 

Dawn finally breaks, and the manager arrives to insist I leave the marina right now or else he’ll have me arrested. But his harsh words cannot dampen my good mood; I found my pants - they were screwed up in the leg hole of my trousers the whole time. 

Prozac Dreams #1

The dreams I've been having while taking Prozac have ranged from weird to full on disturbing, but last night's effort was so entertaining I've decided to start writing up the more interesting ones as short stories. Welcome inside my fucked up imagination . . . 

Prozac Dreams #1

Some old school friends and I on are a yacht; we’re sailing across an azure ocean, the sun beating down on us. We come to a tropical island paradise – all golden sand and palm trees – and decide to drop anchor. This looks like a cool place to hang out.

It’s not long before our presence attracts attention. A bunch of people start coming aboard our boat, wanting to join the party. There are lots of women, all of them beautiful and glamorous, scantily clad in teeny tiny bikinis. Unfortunately for me they are all accompanied by possessive boyfriends - bearded men in polo neck jumpers who chatter away in French. Our yacht rapidly fills. No one speaks a word of English. I dash back and forth between our guests, offering them cups of coffee and ogling the women, hoping they won’t notice me peeping at their incredible bodies out the corner of my eye.

The party is in full swing. I’m having a great time. But then I notice a huge, black bank of roiling thunderclouds heading straight toward us. “There’s a storm coming,” I yell. The boat rapidly empties as our guests flee, and I jump down onto the sand to undo the moorings. We have to make sail and get away before we become engulfed by the tempest. I scramble back up onto the deck and see there are four dead men tied to the boom.

“Those damn Frenchies are trying to set us up,” shouts one of my friends. The four men appear to have been beaten to death – their faces are battered and bruised beyond recognition. Searching for some kind of identification we go through their pockets, and find they are stuffed full of German gold.

“If we dump the bodies, we can keep the Deutschmarks,” I venture. “As long as no one sees us, we’ll be in the clear.” That’s when we are plunged into shadow, and I look up and see there’s a vast Russian naval vessel coming past, and what must be a hundred pasty faced Russian soldiers in grey uniforms are leaning over the side, staring at me. I try to put myself between the dead bodies and the soldiers. I hold my arms out, attempting to block their view. “There’s nothing to see here,” I cheerfully shout.

The soldiers cock their machine guns and take aim at me. And that’s when I wake up.

Blowing my own trumpet

According to those who know far more about the writing game than I do, the modern author’s workload should consist of four parts writing and one part promotion. One day of every week should be spent attempting to convince people to buy my books, be that by using social media, a blog such as this one, cunningly placed advertisements or whatever. In what is a saturated marketplace, I need to draw attention to my output in an effort to get the general populace to transfer their hard earned from their own bank accounts to mine.

It’s a somewhat daunting proposition. I’m finding it hard enough even admitting out loud that I’m a writer, as it sounds so entirely pretentious. In the world I inhabit we’re supposed to work for our living, not go around pretending to be some la-de-da artisan. Such behaviour is reserved for idealistic teenagers who aren’t yet old or experienced enough to have had their dreams kicked out of them. By my age I’m suppose to know better.

So here I am looking forward to the release of two novels this year, yet still a little reluctant to tell anyone about it as it sounds so much like boasting. I told a few close friends, but for the most part I’ve insisted on this new adventure being kept strictly as some kind of guilty secret. I guess that has to end if I’m to make any kind of serious go of this; getting published is only the first part - selling books is the difficult bit. It’s time to start blowing my own trumpet.

My first novel is entitled Leisure, although due to a technical screw up it may well end up being my second novel. Its submission coincided with the publishers getting a new email system and so the manuscript lay unseen at the bottom of some digital abyss for six months. It is about the staff of a decrepit and forgotten leisure centre, who have long since given up on providing any kind of customer service and instead run amok in the endless corridors, entertaining themselves and living out their perverse ideals, sheltered entirely from any form of consequence. Leisure is an erotic farce, a ridiculous, nonsensical adventure set outside of society’s rules. It is due for release this autumn.

My second – or first – novel is called Peeper; it marked my first attempt to write something a little more serious and not hide behind sarcasm and stupidity, and instead try to create believable characters that the reader may actually care about. It is the story of a small town private investigator getting involved in a case that drags him way out of his depth into a seedy and dangerous relationship with a woman named Veronica. I’m hugely proud of it, and I can’t wait for people to meet Veronica, as she really is something else. While I was writing the book I got almost as obsessed with her as the main protagonist in the story does, and one night I actually dreamt I met her. That was odd.

Leisure is scheduled to be released this autumn through MuseitHot;

https://museithotpublishing.com/index.php/our-authors/69-our-authors/authors-s/389-sj-smith

Peeper is also scheduled to be released this autumn through Sinful Press, and you can read some very kind words about the book on the homepage of their website;

http://sinfulpress.co.uk/

So there you have it; I am a writer, and these are my books. Please buy my wares, that I may earn my living. I promise not to spend it all on drugs.

Priorities

The whole purpose of my starting this blog was supposed to be a way of me pedaling my smutty books to the marketplace. I must not, I told myself, get sidetracked by ranting tangentially about politics or Welsh rugby, and should concentrate entirely on the side of this being a writer malarkey that I entirely suck at - the self promotion and marketing aspects which are so vital for success. So far I have failed entirely in these aspirations, which is why I am now sitting here dashing off a piece about priorities, in a bid to remind myself of where I ought to be going.

I’ve managed to keep rugby out of it so far, which is something of an achievement I suppose. I must bear in mind that I contribute my share of vitriol on that particular subject matter to a different blog entirely, and judging by some of the colourful hate mail we receive, that webpage is doing the job it was created for rather well. As for that other thing I was not supposed to be talking about – politics – I’ve sadly succumbed to temptation and vented my spleen, earning myself a black mark and a must try harder. Fortunately I think I’ve now found a way of curing myself of this annoying habit of bending people’s ears with my unwanted opinions - I’ve stopped watching the news.

Life is hard enough these days without having a billion extra worries beamed into your head on a daily basis. I turned on the TV the other morning and discovered that a dog had died after being poisoned, and that was the point at which I decided I’d had a gutful; I don’t need to know about dog murderers, or some bunch of maniacs kicking the shit out of each other on the other side of the world. None of it has any bearing on my life, whatsoever. The more you stop and think about it, the more you realise that all the television does is control you; it tells you about all the things you should be scared of, and then it parades a bunch of stuff in front of you that you can’t afford to buy. Don’t go outside, it is saying. There are muggers and terrorists lurking around every corner wanting to blow you up and kill your dog. Stay here instead, and listen to me while I tell you about new mobile phones and fancy clothes and sleek sports cars. Feast your eyes on how the rich and famous live, and wallow in your misery as you compare your own cruddy existence to how wonderful everything could be if only life were fair. Now go get a payday loan and buy yourself some PRODUCTS.

Fuck it all. The idea of dropping out of society and refusing to play by the rules any more has never been so appealing. I’m not a consumer, I’m a human being.

Last year my wife and I bought a narrowboat. We booked time off work and had a fortnight to move it from its old mooring in Yorkshire down to Cheshire so it would be close to our home. This hundred and fifty mile journey took a couple of hours in the car, but when you’re travelling by canal, zig-zagging back and forth across the countryside at two MPH, everything takes a whole lot longer, and in the end it took us the full two weeks to complete our voyage. During this time we didn’t have a working TV, as the boat’s batteries were too old and worn out to power anything more than the 12v lights, and so we lived in a cocoon, entirely free of knowledge of what was going on in the outside world. I have to say – it was bliss.

Your priorities change in such circumstances. I was no longer worried about whether or not the actions of some group of fundamentalist loonies might impact on my life; I was more concerned with finding a place to empty the chemical toilet. Our needs became simple; food, drink, warmth; find a place to buy coal for the fire, or a supermarket to stock up on groceries. Take things one day at a time.

And when we returned to civilisation and turned on the television, we found out nothing had changed. The world hadn’t ended, the country hadn’t been invaded, the economy hadn’t collapsed. None of those dire circumstances they constantly warn us are just around the corner had transpired. Life went on regardless.

So what was I supposed to be talking about? Ah yes, priorities.

The priority of this blog from now on will centre on the function it was created for. I am a writer and I have just signed the contract for a novel to be published, meaning I have two books coming out this year.

No more bullshit. No more ranting about crap I have no control over and has no meaning to my life. No more news; no more results of studies that mildly contradict the results of yesterday’s study which said we’re definitely all going to die of cancer if we don’t eat three tonnes of fruit every day.

No more distractions. From here on in it’s smut all the way.