Must try harder

If it was a school project I'd be in trouble. Progress is so poor I reckon there'd be a 'see me after school' scribbled in red at the bottom of my work (and perhaps more red on my bottom too).

But the truth is I've not had much time over the last few weeks to do much of my ongoing novel. Significant Other is always at work and the kids have all sorts of time-consuming and important things happening in their lives.

But Project Begsi is there in my mind when I'm coming and going doing other things. Or at least a sense that I'm letting the project down - I must give myself a good talking to.

What I need is to set a me-day aside and really get back into it - to really get immersed in period, story and, hopefully, character. For 'A Week in the Country' it worked well to read as many Victorian novels as I could lay may hands on - both vanilla and not - and to go looking for lots and lots of period erotica. 

I've found it a bit harder to do with the the 1940s. I love the look that found its epitome in the work of Gil Elvgren. His pin-up girls are naughty and nice all at the same time. Or they're unable to not be naughty, however hard they try.

For me, they're the fabulous Forties to a tee. Or is it the fab 1950s? Don't know, but it's fabulous whatever it is.

I can watch period movies too. Vivien Leigh, Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth and the rest. There's plenty of mainstream fiction to read too. But where I can I find the erotica literature of the time? I know there was a war on, but surely somebody was writing naughty novels?

PS Nothing overtly spanko in Elvgren. But when you put his name into Google Image and see rows and rows of his pin-ups there are lots and lots of archly out-thrust bottoms that look to me to be asking for a firm smack.