A very powerful story, HG. For me, whenever a story has scenes of women being punched, the 'erotic factor' evaporates immediately. Generally speaking, these types of stories fall into the crime fiction genre rather than erotica. That said, you've managed to incorporate this powerfully confronting imagery without losing me and I was tantalized as much as I was terrorized by your tale. Well done!
A good collection of dictionaries is a must for any writer. At the bare minimum I'd suggest Roget's Thesaurus as well as a regular dictionary. I also have found that Crossword dictionaries are particularly useful for words not so easily found in regular dictionaries, such as collective nouns, and for lists of things such as Seven Heavenly Virtues and so on. Depending on the stories you like to write, there are also occupation-specific dictionaries, such as medical terms, biology, engineering, etc. You'll find many of these at bargain prices in second hand book shops.
There are also plenty of online dictionaries. Whenever I'm writing I usually have dictionary.com open in the background with Miriam Webster Online a favorite second choice.
There's also a couple of other erotica-specific dictionaries online you might like to bookmark:
The Deviant's Dictionary
The Erotic Thesaurus
Finally, there's a couple of sites dealing with grammar and word usage that are particularly useful:
Elements of Style (William Strunk Jr) is probably the most famous of these and the Bartleby site that hosts it is also a good general reference place.
Writing World had a good collection of essays about writing fiction (the link takes you to a page on punctuating dialog).
The Grammar Wench is also well laid out and easy to read.
Good luck and have fun!![]()