A new direction to explore: Caroline's Rocking Horse cover reveal

This post records a landmark in my career, such as it is, as Emily Tilton, BDSM erotica and spanking romance author. I want to get it right, so I need to start with a little bit of explanation.

When, last March, I decided I wanted to see if anyone else out there were interested in the written elaborations of my spanking and BDSM fantasies I had been drafting off and on for many years, I decided on self-publishing the EXPLORATIONS series because I didn't think I had any stories that might interest a publisher. But as I became part of the endlessly wonderful community of erotica authors, and of the very special sub-community of spanking fiction authors, I began to see that some of my fellow authors were doing great work within the genre lines of spanking romance and BDSM romance. I also started to realize that my own EXPLORATIONS, while containing things that lie well outside those lines, were nevertheless in their own way not really very distant from the genres practiced by the writers I was coming to admire.

Then three wonderful colleagues, each in her own way, made it clear to me that I could write things that the presses wanted, and that to do so would not only widen my visibility, but also let me communicate to engaged readers some of the more abstract things (what I think BDSM means, for example) I've been trying to work out in EXPLORATIONS. Those colleagues are (in order of my conversations about this topic with them) Anastasia Vitsky, Thianna D, and Renee Rose, and I am endlessly grateful to them for their advice over the last few months as I tested the waters of what I can't help but think of as "real books."

The first book I wrote won't appear for a few months yet. It's part of the hush-hush Corbin's Bend project, and I love it, and will keep teasing it until it appears. It's called Sarah's Tutorial.

The second book I wrote is coming out Wednesday, and you see its amazing cover here courtesy of the marvelous folks at Blushing Books. I'm incredibly proud to be publishing my first "real book" with them, because way back ten years ago, when the first thought of trying to publish my erotica crossed my mind, I remember looking at the BB site and thinking "Maybe someday."

It's called Caroline's Rocking Horse, and it's about an English Professor who finally gets to live out her ageplay fantasies. There's probably no better snippet to start with than the very beginning:

My new rocking-horse was very beautiful. It was stained a lovely chestnut brown, and its mane seemed perhaps to be made from real horse-hair. Looking at it, gratitude to George for indulging me so very thoroughly swelled inside my chest. 

My new rocking-horse looked very sturdy, and it had adjustable stirrups that a grown wife like me could use to find the best possible position in which to ride. 

Finding the best possible position was going to be essential, because of the part of the new rocking-horse that made the little girl inside me blush crimson as I looked at it: the leather phallus that stuck up from its back like a naughty sentinel, slightly bent as if to beckon me towards it. 

"Daddy?" I said. 

"Yes, sweetheart?" my husband asked. 

"Do I have to ride my rocking-horse right now?" 

"Yes, sweetheart, you do. Daddy wants to see you on it."

Here's the blurb! Buy the book at Amazon!

Caroline Dawkins is a professor of English who has never confessed her age-play and spanking fantasies to her husband, George Lane, a corporate attorney. After George comes home one night and finds Caroline pleasuring herself, over the course of an extraordinary month Caroline and George utterly transform their erotic life together in the pattern of those taboo fantasies. 

From the lovely, degrading preparation and inspection of Caroline's charms, to the dark erotic practices she never thought she would get to try, George and Caroline taste the forbidden delights of age-play and connect emotionally as they never imagined they could.

I suppose the final thing to say, beyond reiterating my gratitude to my new friends who already seem like such old ones, and to Bethany and Jim Burke of BB, is that I consider these "real books" still to be explorations, and so also, I guess, EXPLORATIONS. Although the characters in them have no explicit relationship to Emily Tilton Smith, I'll tell you a secret: They're all me.

(Please vote for the best spanking books of the year, over at the wonderful Spanking Romance Reviews! Note that I wouldn't object if you voted for The First Notebook in the historical category!)