Not that I need the money (and it's a good job), but I just entered a short story competition on Lush. There is a limit of 3,000 words - which, after many edits and artistic sacrifices, I met exactly - and a theme of 'Some like it hot'. I set my story where the temperature change between day and night is the greatest - Mercury - and called it (rather cleverly, I thought) 'Mercury Rising', a reference to the old thermometers which were filled with that surprisingly runny metal.
The opening paragraph appears below. Please be aware that the story is erotic in nature, and contains scenes that may well set your body alight.
Love ya,
Alexandra :) xxx
Mercury Rising (intro)
Mercury once resembled our Moon, atmosphere-free and heavily cratered. Now, a thickening orange fog shields it from the dazzling daytime sun and insulates it during the freezing night. The peelers create immense plumes of dust behind them, which, over the seven Earth years of their operation, have completely changed the planet's appearance. Mercury's gravity is so insignificant, it will take centuries for the dust to settle. Meanwhile, the searing solar wind is stripping particles away, casting them into space to form a tail, in much the same way as a comet has a tail. After what we have done to Earth, I should be accustomed to such systematic destruction, but no: I found myself constantly shocked by it. Earth is, after all, our planet; ours to fuck up as we please. Mercury, on the other hand, is not. God only knows what we are doing there. It is an unnatural, obscene desecration on a cosmic scale.
Read the conclusion of this torrid tale plus - extremely generously, I feel - nine further stories in 'Measuring up', my latest collection of concise erotica, available now exclusively on Amazon.
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