Friday Smut: Divine Torment

by Janine Ashbless


Welcome, gentle readers, to the Friday Smut slot!

On Monday this week we discussed fervent religions. On Wednesday we considered sun, sand and sex in exotic places. Fortuitously, I can continue both themes today with my 2002 novel Divine Torment, which is back in print this month (October 16th in the US). It’s actually the prequel to Burning Bright, so if you’ve read

that, then this is your chance to find out how my two heroes got themselves into such a mess – and why Veraine deals so badly with alcohol, and why Myrna is, er, "differently sane" to everyone else in the world.

If you haven’t read Burning Bright, then please let me introduce you to the original:

Divine Torment is "Like Gladiator, set in a mythical realm," according to the publishers blurb. Yeah: I like that. It’s swords ‘n’ sandals ‘n’ sex, with a big helping of scary religion on top. If you like Spartans you’ll appreciate my Irolian army men – though I wrote this long before "300" came out. Divine Torment is also a heartfelt romance set across a bitter racial divide.

The Plot: In the ancient desert temple-city of Mulhanabin, the Malia Shai awaits her destiny. She is the divine priestess of the terrifying Goddess of the Cruel Earth and millions across the Eternal Empire worship her, believing her to be the goddess Malia incarnate. But Mulhanabin is under threat from the invading Horse-eater horde that approaches across the desert, so the overlords of the Empire send a force of soldiers to occupy the city and hold it against the invaders. The leader of the occupying hosts is the rugged and brooding General Veraine. He and his men are of a different ethnic group to the inhabitants of the sacred city and he has no respect for their ‘primitive’ gods, but against his better judgement he becomes obsessed with the Malia Shai. In turn, though she has been raised to be an empty and completely passionless vessel of divine power, she becomes fascinated with this handsome stranger. Intimate contact between them is forbidden by every law of their two hostile peoples. But she is in the end the only thing he wants – and he will risk everything to have her.

Comment on this post and you’ll be entered into a draw to WIN A COPY of Divine Torment! (Don’t forget to identify yourself somehow in your Comment.) Winner(s) will be announced on Tuesday.

BONUS DRAW: I have a spare copy of the Japanese Version of Divine Torment, so if you can read Japanese – or you know someone who does and would like a smutty present – identify yourself and win!

By the way, the new cover characters look NOTHING like my heroes. Tomorrow I’m posting my Veraine Lookalike picture and he’ll be up all week in the righthand sidebar here on Lust Bites.

Here, then is an excerpt. The scene set-up: Our two protagonists have been circling each other for weeks. Veraine has been the target of a botched assassination attempt and is confined to bed with a shoulder wound, feeling sore and grouchy.

***********************************

He woke suddenly and saw the Malia Shai was sitting on the edge of the bed next to him.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ she said.

She sat so close he might have swept his good arm around her. He could smell the incense on her clothes. His stomach tightened with dismay. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to bring you this salve.’ She showed him a small pot with a wax seal. ‘It’s made from a desert plant; I thought your doctors might not have any.’ She paused. Her hair was wrapped away from sight again, her eyes calm. He might almost have imagined that fire in them as she had knelt over him on the Citadel wall. ‘Next time your wound is dressed, get them to put this on too.’

‘Were there guards on the door?’ he demanded, but he kept his voice low.

‘Yes. Two. They’re protecting you now.’

‘Oh shit.’

'They let me in. They must think I’m an unlikely assassin.’

There was a hint of humour in her voice, but he shook his head, not listening, and told her, ‘Get out of here.’

She put the pot down on the floor. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong? You’re here alone with me in my bedroom. And you walked past two witnesses to get here!’

‘So?’

He hissed in exasperation. ‘Well, I don’t know what it means among your people when a woman goes into a man’s chamber, but to an Irolian that only has one interpretation.’

She blinked. ‘What does it matter what your guards think?’

Somewhere deep inside he was disappointed. He might have been hoping for a blush or a smile or a flash of alarm – anything that acknowledge the possibility of sexual contact between them. It made him brutal. ‘What about the high priest?’ he asked. ‘How long will it take for him to hear? Get out of this room!’

She wasn’t impressed. ‘Don’t be foolish. You’re hurt. And I’m the Malia Shai – I am beyond carnal lusts.’

If he hadn’t been so angry and frustrated he might have shrugged off the unintended slight. Instead he growled, ‘Well, that must be very nice for you, priestess. Congratulations. Unfortunately I’m made of weaker flesh and for my comfort you really should leave.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her breath was sweet; warm and close enough to drive him mad. He fixed her gaze with his own. The last shreds of discretion were falling from him like leaves scorched by the desert sun.

‘Do you really want to know? I’ll explain exactly what I mean, Malia Shai, if you like.’ He kept his voice low, but he spoke with punishing precision. ‘I mean that your presence here now is giving me a most painful hard-on. I mean that I can’t think of you without wanting you, and can’t go a single hour without thinking of you. I look at your lips and I want to see them wrapped around my prick. I want your breasts in my hands and I want your nipples between my teeth. I want to feel you move beneath me as I fuck you from one end of the night to the other. I want to cover you like a stallion covers a mare. I want to hear the noises you make as you come beneath me.’

He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. ‘When you walk toward me I’m obsessed with your mouth and your breasts; when you walk away I’m overwhelmed with wanting your arse. The turn of your head makes me sweat. I want you to sit on my face and drown me. I want to fill every hole you have. I want to fill you so full of my spend that it runs out of you in rivers, and I want to make you scream and weep and beg me never to stop.

‘Does that clear up any misunderstanding between us?’ he concluded bitterly.

She stared, her face as blank as her goddess mask. ‘That’s … nonsense,’ she whispered.

He grabbed her hand and forced his fingers between hers, spreading it. ‘You don’t believe me?’ He laid her small cool palm on the centre of his chest, feeling his heartbeat hammer up into her bones. He was feverish. He dragged her hand slowly down his bare skin, over the hard breastbone, over the burning slab of his belly, through the first flecks of hair beneath his navel. The pain of his wound was throbbing through his veins and every pulse was making his cock jump and thicken. She wasn’t fighting him, but he could feel the tension in her arm. He forced her hand over the top of his belt, through the folds of linen, round the wall of his upraised thigh and finally, firmly, pressed it onto the thick curve of his cock. Hidden as it was under the tatters of his tunic, it was undeniably erect and struggling for freedom. It heaved under her hand.

All the time he stared into her eyes, searching for any response in those brown depths. She stared back with the fathomless unreadable regard of the desert.

‘Believe me now?’

Then he released her, letting his hand rest heavy on hers. She did not pull away. He felt her fingers beneath his on his prick, and he could have cried out for the torment and the pleasure of that touch.

And finally something broke in her gaze and he watched her face twist with emotion. She withdrew her hand and, standing, backed off across his chamber.

He watched her go in despair. He had unburdened himself of the words imprisoned within him, words he knew he should never have spoken. As the door smacked to he was left with an emptiness in his chest and the feeling that he had broken irrevocably something precious.

Cursing himself, he loosened his clothing and freed his cock, unable to resist its demands any more than he had been able to hold back the acid torrent of words. His balls were clenched with their burden. The hot skin under his grip felt like satin sliding over the wood-hard length beneath. Two firm strokes and his scrotum was knotting like a fist. Pain stabbed his shoulder. He closed his eyes, picturing the Malia Shai’s full lips, the soft ripe curve of them descending toward his swollen prick, the hint of moisture within, the little pink tip of her tongue preparing to lap at him – and with that the cauldron seething within him boiled over, the contents spouting and frothing like scalded cream over his fingers, his thigh, his twitching belly. He plunged headlong into the agony and the delight with a moan of despair.

*************************************

amazon.co.uk : amazon.com

xxx
Janine

janineashbless.com
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PS: Don't forget - today (Friday) is your last chance to use our fabulous LoveHoney money-off offer. You're never too old for toys! See the link on the right.

The Sensual Traveler: The Exotic Erotic

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

My husband and I just returned from a week-long cruise to Bermuda. The days at sea gave us the rare luxury of time when we had absolutely nothing we had to do and absolutely no set schedule. A queen-size bed, an ocean view, and no reason not to spend the day in the queen-sized bed, watching the hypnotic blue silk of the ocean and immersing ourselves in each other.

Then there was Bermuda itself: a riot of fragrant flowers, warm azure water, colorful old houses, hot sun, scented breezes, and pink sand. At night, you could smell frangipani and salt water, hibiscus and greenery, on the soft air, and tiny tree frogs made a racket with their constant mating calls. Horny little buggers, tree frogs, almost as bad as the younger tourists and the island boys doing their mating dance in the bars at night. Bermuda aroused all my senses in a very erotic way, and my clever husband wasted no time in taking advantage of this. Repeatedly, despite us both being weary from long days of snorkeling.

Since one can’t have sex or snorkel (or have sex while snorkeling, but we wouldn’t do such a thing now, would we?) all the time (pity, that) and since I am an erotica writer, I found myself wool-gathering about why travel is so sexy.

Hot vacation encounters are a staple in erotica, with whole collections devoted to the topic. (Wicked Words: Sex on Holiday and E is for Exotic, among others, feature Lust Biters’ takes on the topic.)

From a writer’s point of view, it’s easy to understand why we revisit this theme: instant conflict potential. From cultural and linguistic misunderstandings to the inevitability—or is it?—of parting, the vacation fling or romance provides built-in ways to make your characters miserable even while they’re having amazingly hot sex. And if your characters are already a couple, removing them from their ordinary lives can shake things up, revealing all sorts of unexpected emotions, desires, and inner turmoil. Besides, exotic settings give you an excuse to waste time trolling around travel web sites and dreaming about your own future vacations under the guise of research. (Oops, was that the outside voice?)

But it’s not only in literature that exotic locations bring on erotic encounters. Most of us who’ve traveled at all could confess to a night of passion (or at least a titillating, much fantasized-about flirtation) with a stranger in a strange land, or to enjoying a familiar lover in a new way under foreign skies.

But why? Let me count the ways…and then ask for your theories and stories.

If you’re on holiday, there’s no reason not to take a mid-day siesta with your sweetie, or to “sleep” in without getting a lick of extra sleep. For some of us old married types, simply having a little relaxed time with the spouse, far away from leaking faucets, hairball-yakking cats, ringing phones, deadlines, etc., will wake up a lazy libido. And for those of us who stoke our libidos constantly due to writing smut for a living…well, things are bound to get interesting when we’re pulled away from the computer and we can finally apply all that sexual energy to real life!

Then there’s the exotic setting—see Bermuda, above. Anything could happen in this new and seductive place. You’re already on a grand adventure, your senses already stirred. Makes that much easier to get turned on, isn’t it? Back in college I met a boy in the walled medieval city of Avignon, on the night of a festival that involved the wild white horses of the Camargue being run through the narrow streets and wine being flung about to drench unsuspecting passersby. In a more mundane setting, I might not have looked at him twice, but in such a wild atmosphere, sparks flew that had very little to do with him and me and a lot to do with the exotic excitement of the night. (The wine, which was flowing liberally into us as well as into the gutters, helped, but those white horses really did me in.)

Sometime just before dawn, when we were all fucked out and the wine was gone, we all bundled back into our clothes and wandered up onto the deck. The air had a nip to it, and the breeze was strong, but it smelled like ocean and, faintly, like herbs. Pale stars still hung in the sky, and at the eastern horizon, the sky was just starting to turn pink. We didn’t snuggle or anything, even though it was cool enough that it would have made sense to huddle together for warmth. We just stood there, holding the rail, letting the sea breeze wash the funk and smoke and stale alcohol off us, not talking, until the sun came up and Corsica came into focus through the fog.

I don’t know about you, but I find hotel rooms, with their clean, bland white sheets and their comfortable anonymity, a spur toward loud, messy, sheet-destroying fun. Even if it’s a random roadside motel halfway to someplace more interesting. Maybe it’s because hotel rooms are all about the bed. Maybe it’s something about “We don’t know these people, so who cares if we make embarrassing levels of noise?” or not having to wash the sheets. (Note: Courteous horny travelers should always leave large tips for housekeeping to make up for any strange stains we leave in our wake.)

The “I don’t know these people” attitude can be taken several steps farther, of course. Travel can take on the air of if it happens in a different country (or state or city), it doesn’t count. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and all that. No guilt, no recriminations, no complications, just play safe, have fun, and come home with spicy stories to share with your girlfriends over drinks.

I helped Claudel open his pants. He was hairy, also uncircumcised—just assume they all are unless I say otherwise, a lot of Frenchmen are—and smelled like Camembert. Stop with the faces, Fiona. I know it doesn’t sound all that appealing now, but think about it. You’re in the bowels of this ferry, rocking back and forth, hearing the Mediterranean slapping against it as you move through the night. You’re young, on your way to someplace you’ve never been, someplace that smacks of bandits and The Count of Monte Cristo. You’re about to fulfil one of your top ten masturbatory fantasies, and someone has just succeeded in ripping your tights and is nudging the head of his big cock against you, trying to push his way inside. At a time like that, the hairiness and aroma just seemed French, and thus exciting.

The erotic possibilities are endless—a vast stock of sultry, seductive strangers (complete with attractive accents) to pick from. Maybe you’ll even try something edgy enough you don’t want to share it with your girlfriends. That hot couple? The leather-clad dyke? That obviously inappropriate biker/older married man/priest/barely legal piece of boy- or girlflesh? Why not—who’ll ever know?

It had always been a fantasy, being at the centre of a gang-bang, men everywhere, one after another using me—or me using them, or us using each other, however you want to look at it—until I was aching all over from orgasms, my jaws hurt from sucking so many cocks, and I was limp as a come-slick rag doll. But it wasn’t like I was about to suggest that fantasy to anyone back in the States. I didn’t want to be known as the gang-bang bitch […]. This was my chance, with a bunch of hot guys I’d never see again. […] And everyone knows that what happens during junior year abroad—and especially what happens on a road trip during junior year abroad—doesn’t count anyway.

Of course, “no complications” doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes your sultry stranger turns out to be more fascinating than you expect, and you linger in Barcelona when you’d planned to move on Segovia, and you try to change your ticket home, but finally you have to leave and you find yourself running up huge phone bills, IM’ing to all hours of the night, and trying to figure out how to bring together two vastly different lives. Here we enter the territory of the erotic romance, with hot sex aplenty and hope for a happy ending. And that possibility may be the most seductive fantasy of all.

So…why do you think travel is sexy? Got any good stories to share?

Excerpts from “The Wildest Thing” by Teresa Noelle Roberts (in Wicked Words: Sex on the Move)

The Wonderful World of Winners

Kristina Lloyd
We've got results of THREE giveaways to announce! Heck, we're so nice.

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Mad Fairy
Goodgirl
Bam Bam
Ann
Marshall Banana
Melissa Heywood
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2. Madeline Moore's Wild Card goes to Jeremy Edwards

3. Rachel Kramer Bussel's Naughty Spanking Stories 2 go to Just Craig

Congratulations winners! Please send names and postal addresses to lustbitesladies [at] yahoo [dot] com. And please tell me which prize you won or I may get confused and Jeremy could end up reading a rabbit.

Thanks to everyone who joined in and made wet men such fun. I'd give you all a platinum Jessica if I could. Don't forget out fabulous discount deal with Love Honey runs until Friday, so if you want to invest in some Wild Bitch handcuffs, a light-up glass dildo, a stash of condoms or a bundle of amazingly hot, sexy books (yes - ours!) then this is the week to do it. Check out the sidebar and place your order before the weekend using the LUSTBITES voucher. And have fun!

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PS Did that last bit sound like a naff advertising slogan or do you think I got away with it?

Dirty White Shoes: How Televangelism Turned Me into a Smut Writer

Anne Tourney


There are still some parts of this country, mostly in its biblically belted waist, where your mother will yank you out of town once you get your white shoes dirty. It doesn't matter what you tell her, if your rosy lips were made to spill the truth. That old rule about wearing white shoes before Labor Day doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. You don’t want to wear those Sunday school shoes, you never wanted to wear those shoes. Anyway, those white shoes will be filthy the moment they touch your slutty feet.

Back in the Reaganite 80’s, when I was a teenager, late August was the sweltering armpit of every Bible Belt summer. Outdoors, the air sizzled with the whir and whine of bugs; indoors, tired air conditioners leaked a cool, thin trickle through the density of heat. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the television, my thighs sticky with juice from the plate of watermelon I held in my lap, I spent way too many hours watching TV as I brooded over the encroaching First Day of School.

Yes, I watched soap operas in those days. And sitcoms. And family dramas. But my secret obsession was The Christian Broadcasting Network, a channel that filtered the news of the world, and the news of the soul, through a lens of Christianity, specifically the 20th-century, neo-conservative, Reaganized version of the faith. I spent hours with my eyes glued to CBN, not for the news broadcasts or the more mainstream talk shows, but for the electrified, revival tent contingent of preachers and singers, saviors and sinners. The soap stars had nothing on Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker of The PTL Club, and the dramas played out on Days of Our Lives or All My Children were yawn-worthy compared to the visions of impending apocalyptic doom (the year 2000 was right around the corner, and the Book of Revelation was getting a workout).

Then there were the dirty rumors that started cropping up in the secular media about Jim Bakker’s financial and sexual excesses, and Jimmy Swaggart’s soft spot for hookers. When the rumors proved to be true, the tearful public confessions that followed were equally lurid, and way more difficult to believe.

I haven’t thought about them in years, those smooth-talking, impeccably coiffed men of God, with their manicured hands and chunky rings, their pricey suits and their bulging real estate portfolios, their tenderly supportive wives and surgically enhanced secretaries. When Tammy Faye Bakker died last month, photos of her before and after cancer brought that world back into my consciousness. The emaciated, sallow woman of July 2007 was a specter of the buxom, unapologetically tacky televangelista who belted out Gospel songs while batting eyelashes that do a tarantula proud.

Though my family didn’t practice an evangelical version of Christianity, my childhood was steeped in a culture shaped by a Fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Even as a teen, I was never able to understand how the Son of God, supposedly the tangible manifestation of an incomprehensibly vast divine love, could be held up as a wrathful homophobic, or how the Gospel could be used as a stick to beat sinners with, by men who did some pretty hefty sinning, themselves. Salvation is at your fingertips, the televangelists declared, redemption is just a few crocodile tears away, and yes, eternal life can be yours—if you’re a clean-cut Christian with a clear complexion and a bright n’ shiny heterosexual lifestyle.

Over time I’ve tried to write my way through those violently mixed messages, not so much to reach an understanding of the spiritual life of the Religious Right, but to reach my own reconciliation of Christianity—the faith I still identify with—and my ever-overactive sexual imagination:

In your dirty white shoes, you stroll out to the edges of town, out past the shoulder of the highway, up toward the hills. It's one of those dream-walks. Your panties are soaked, and the heels of your shoes sink into the earth. Cars edge you onto the dark side of the road, alarming you with lights and horns, but you don't stop walking. You squat down to relieve yourself, and you know that your hot pee is going to yellow those heels the way it used to stain the snow behind your back porch (your brother could write his entire name in urine; it wasn't your fault that your physiology allowed only a dribble).

But it wasn’t just the sleaze, the sensationalism, or the outright lies that fascinated me. Quite the contrary—somewhere, in my timid adolescent soul, fed on a crunchy blend of secular skepticism and Episcopal doctrine—I was drawn to the idea of giving myself to Jesus, with some preacher as my intermediary, holding me underwater, shaping my transformation, helping me come to Christ. I longed for that climactic surrender, and the afterglow of acceptance that would follow.

I’d always known, from the time I was a child, that I was “bad.” Or “dirty.” I wasn’t sure why, but in the televangelists, I found confirmation that yes, human nature was intrinsically sexual, craven, lustful, and downright filthy. I’d always known that to be the case; I just wondered why bad had to be equated with wrong. I wasn’t quite sure what “sodomy” entailed, at the age of sixteen, but I had an uneasy feeling that I might have inadvertently done it, and that I should probably confess to it, just in case. Though I was drawn to the idea of being relieved of my sins through confession, conversion, and salvation, I always suspected that the relationship between sexuality and divinity was far too deep and vast to be reigned in by the moral fences of the Religious Right (did you ever notice that those white picket fences are reinforced by concertina wire?).

You don't feel Jesus glaring down on you when the boy's two fingers make you wriggle and scream, or when he scalds your thighs with his hot milk. But somehow, in your own backwards vision of the way salvation works, you feel Jesus arrive on the scene when your boyfriend hunkers down under the car seat, shoves your panties to one side with his thumb, and lovingly begins to chew your pussy. You hear the church choir singing "Nearer My God to Thee" when your thighs start to tremble, and your hips thrust up the pelvic offering plate of their own accord, and your clit peaks to steeple height.

What was it about those evangelical preachers that made me squirm with an uneasy mix of revulsion and teenage lust? I have to admit, I was seduced the easy tenderness of their emotions, their cloyingly mellow voices, their willingness to bare their hearts, whether it was in responding to the testimony of some wayward convert, or in confessing their own sins. With all the intimacy of the bedroom, they confessed and prayed and shared and felt in front of millions. They raised their hands to the sky, they closed their eyes in ecstasy, they moaned, they writhed. The ultimate in evangelical emotionalism occurred during the conversion experience, through the great spiritual release of “being saved." Coming to Jesus . . . really, can that choice of words be a coincidence?

According to the sweaty preacher in the tight polyester slacks, salvation was as simple as having Jesus Christ belly up to the local ice-cream bar and pay for your pineapple sundae before you even know you want it. But would Jesus still buy your sundae if he knew that your best friend gave you a crashing waterfall of an orgasm with the eraser of a Number Two pencil? You tend to suspect Jesus might have had more painful things on his mind than the orgasms of a girl who wouldn't be born for a couple of thousand more years, what with the Philistines berating him and his disciples denying him, and a crucifix bearing down on his shoulders.

I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal church, and in my observant phases, I spent my Sunday mornings in the cool, classically beautiful chapel of Trinity Episcopal. Episcopalian men didn’t cry, not because they weren’t emotionally liberated, but because any emotions experienced in a worship setting were usually too subtle, or were contained by a pressed, three-piece suit. (“Oh! Was that an epiphany I just experienced? Why yes, I do believe it was.”) With our sedate general public confession and our careful progression through the sacraments, we weren’t in any danger of experiencing orgasmic, ecstatic revelations of divine magnitude.

There was a certain sensual tenderness about the televangelists that attracted me, too. Trembling lips, silky waved hair, soft chins and hands . . . something intrinsically feminine about their personae. Yet at any time, they could call on the hard truth of Fundamentalism, the rigid dichotomies between right and wrong, good and evil. Counterbalancing that effeminate tenderness were the harsh, self-righteous wrath, the heat of the apocalypse, the dramatic eschatology of the Book of Revelation. Yet that fire and brimstone often seemed to fizzle down to a cold core of hypocrisy. The men who raged most vehemently against sin, who cried out the most passionately for repentance, seemed to be the most skillful at covering up their own crap.

Years later, when I first started writing erotica, I tried to put those Bible Belt memories behind me. It wasn’t so much that those threats of damnation made me feel guilty, but that they threatened my creative freedom. That televised Bible-thumping belonged to my past; I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, getting my feet (and other parts) wet with sex-positive feminism, and conservative Christian morality wasn’t part of that new identity.

It took a few years of writing, finding a voice, before I was able to plunge into the well of the past, and when I dove in, I brought up a big dipperful of the Gospel. Strangely enough, I didn’t want to write against Christianity. I wanted to rewrite those experiences, giving them new endings, in which spiritual redemption was a matter of self-discovery, not self-denial. In stories like “Sex in the Pre-Apocalypse,” “Dirty White Shoes,” “The Book of Zanah,” and “Come for Me, Dark Man,” I fumbled around trying to articulate the idea that our sexuality—in whatever form it takes, whatever voice it speaks—is the physical manifestation of our divinity, and because of that, sex is good.

The wonderful thing about being a woman, a slut, and a perpetual child with unclean shoes is the way these act repeat themselves; you can hear the echo of those repetitions across acres of time. An anonymous screw remains as filthy and as joyous as ever; the fornicators of the world still constitute a rebel nation. You can wear your white shoes, in utter defiance of fashion, all the way to February, and some lady in the grocery store will still reprimand you for it. You can live like a whore, baring your tits and pussy to a tired world, and bask in the ancient light of damnation.

I wouldn’t say that the explosion of televangelism in the 1980’s turned me into a smut writer, though the prospect of burning naked over an eternal barbecue pit ignited a few fantasies. The sideshow tableaux of Hell and damnation didn’t offer me enough meat to feed any serious rebellion. What those TV preachers gave me, with their honey-coated condemnation of anyone who didn’t fuck members of the opposite sex in the missionary position within the bonds of holy matrimony, was motivation to cling to the fragments of Gospel as I understood it, and to live out that word according to my own twisted interpretation.

And I have to give thanks to Tammy Faye, a woman of God who was never ashamed to live out her vision of cosmetically challenged glamour, for inspiring me to take my fantasies public. Even in my shy, self-conscious adolescence, I felt a kinship with the outrageously overpainted Tammy; she clearly oozed something, but it wasn’t that cloying hypocrisy that seemed to taint so many of her cohorts. It was more like . . . sexuality. Raw, flamboyant, sluttish sexuality. And compassion. And strength. She was strong enough to survive the public scourging that followed the collapse of the Heritage USA empire, strong enough to survive marital infidelity and divorce, even strong enough to survive a makeover, and bounce back with her eyelashes thicker than ever. Though her soul had been saved by Jesus, she retained the design sense of a ho and the generous heart of a sinner:

You can be part of that breed of gloriously misguided sinners who never could match their shoes to the seasons, one of those women who could never touch their lips to a teacup or a cock without leaving a ring of sticky scarlet lipstick. You can be one of us, if you're willing to be yanked out of your comfortable town. Remember, honey--it ain't the shit on your toes that matters, it's the height of your heels.

Thanks, Tammy Faye. I’ll miss you.

* * * *

Fiction excerpts from “Dirty White Shoes,” by Anne Tourney

Coming Attractions

Kristina LloydIt's one of those weekends again. It seems Mat's too wet to do Coming Attractions so I'm stepping in, trying not to look too drenched myself.

Next week, Lust Bites dons a straw boater and goes to church.

Has anyone got the proper schedule? That can't be right. Oh, I see. Cheers. On Monday, Anne Tourney brings us her passion for preachers, giving new meaning to the phrase 'bible basher'. Teresa Noelle Roberts jets in on Wednesday to chat about travel and sex. And on Friday, Janine Ashbless will be offering a few words from The Divine Liturgy - no, strike that. Janine will be here with a filthy, fantastical excerpt from her reissued novel, Divine Torment, the prequel to Burning Bright.

Sounds like heaven, no? And if you want to brush up on your Old Testament and read about the Great Flood - oh, OK. It's me banging on about wet men/win a vibrator again. The giveaway's open till noon prayers on Tuesday (ie. my lunch). Add your name and you could be grinning till kingdom come. And don't forget our marvellous discount deal with Love Honey. Check out the sidebar before Friday's over.

Peace be with you.

The Case for Wet Men

Kristina Lloyd
I love wet men. I think I’m meant to write something smart here but what’s there to say except 'More! There! Oh, please, yes! Don’t stop! There!'

Let me try a few words lest I be accused of gratuitously uploading hot pics.

Water on muscle is so pretty. Droplets sliding down a hard male body are heavenly. (See Exhibit A from the Wet Files.) Skin dappled with beads of moisture makes me want to lick (Exhibit B). I love shorn heads (Exhibit C) but there’s something very suckable about soaked, shiny hair (Exhibit D).

Water splashing off strength makes me go all weak (Exhibit E). Bodies under water make me go all dreamy (Exhibit F).

NB. I’m afraid you can only work out which exhibit is which by clicking on the photos. And when you do that, the image usually gets a lot bigger. I am so sorry to have to put you through this.

I’m a very good swimmer. I swim front crawl, head in the water, goggles on. You don’t need to know that but it’s a good excuse for me to offer Exhibit G, Becks emerging from the pool, proof of the wonders of swimming.

One of my earliest boyfriends was a competitive diver. I used to watch him jumping from the high board, turning somersaults, triple pikes, and then slicing into the water, clean as a blade. In my imagination, this happened in graceful slow-motion. I have to force myself to remember that diving is fast and twisty, and that the splash, though it's slight, still comes as a violent little shock. There’s probably some innuendo lurking in that sentence but who cares. Exhibit H is our main concern here.

I love how water makes men part their lips because no one can keep their mouth shut when it’s cool, wet and fresh. You need to breathe. You need to taste. Okay, so women part their lips too, but we see this image of availability plenty, thanks. Men gaping is a rare and special treat. They're asking to be kissed, no? (Exhibits G & I.)

We’ve surely all got our No. 1 wets from film and TV: Keanu in Point Break or Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, shirt clinging to his chest. Daniel Craig emerging from the sea, à la Ursula Andress, scores highly on my wetometer. (Yes, that wetometer.) So let’s examine J, K & L, shall we?

There. I think those three soaked specimens all go to prove my lack of point. Here's another lust-addled observation: a drenched man on his hands and knees is delicious - though I'm not sure why. Maybe there's something appealingly primordial about seeing a creature crawl from the sea. Maybe it's because his wet lips, when he gazes up at me, are just where I want them to be. Maybe I don't know and I should look at some pictures a while and see if I can work it out (Exhibits M, N & O).
Nope, I still don't know the answer. But who cares when it feels so good? I also don't know why getting caught in the rain is so freakin' hot. In an early version of Split, my forthcoming novel, chapter two centered around a bondage scene. Over halfway through writing the book, I realised this was wrong and rewrote several chapters, replacing the bondage scene with a kiss in the rain. Boy, it is one helluva sexy kiss. Rain is delicious. (Exhibit P, eyes right.)

There are many other ways for a man score highly on my wetometer: he could just stand there, water gushing past his bare feet; he could frolic in the ocean waves; or he could plain and simple give another bloke head while sprawled on the shower floor, suds swilling around them.

I should probably stop there before I'm tempted to open the Wet X-rated Files. I don't want to be the one who breaks the blog again.

If you're thinking - Wow, things don't get any wetter than this! - think again. Because look! We're giving away waterproof vibes! Lust Bites has teamed up with the very nice people at Love Honey and they're offering a bunch of fab freebies. Top prize is this silver dream machine, a Jessica Rabbit Platinum Vibrator (RRP £39.99; Love Honey price £29.99). This is a serious piece of kit with ears that buzz and pulse in these totally fucking amazing - I mean, at 7 different settings. (Hey, I like to research, OK?) Also, this Jessica is silver and with Mathilde Madden's Silver Werewolf Trilogy launching in October, you know silver's the colour to be seen in ... um, you.

Love Honey are also giving away TEN runner up prizes of these nifty Waterproof G-Spot Tip Vibrators 7.5" (RRP £16.99; Love Honey price £4.99). You need to be in the UK to be eligible for these but the Jessica can go anywhere in the world. If you want to be in the running for a G-spot vibe, please add 'UK' to your comment. All 11 winners will be announced this Tuesday, 28th. As ever, you don't need to say anything smart to be in the draw. All we need is a name to call out.

We've also got a fantastic discount deal with Love Honey. From now until 31st August, get £5 off when you spend £20 or more. Go here and enter the voucher code LUSTBITES or check out our sidebar link. Love Honey are particularly cool in my book because they'll recycle your poor abused rabbit and give you a new one half price. 'Ecogasms' is the word!

Now please - coo over my dripping men, tell me you want it bad, real bad, and beg to be entered in the giveaway. Good luck!

Got Spanking?

by Alison Tyler


Excuse me if I stumble on my words. Because today's theme tends to leave me speechless. I lower my eyes. I bite my bottom lip. I forget what I'm supposed to do or say. Which makes introducing our guest blogger that much more difficult. So I'll do my best to pull myself together here, and give a hearty welcome to Rachel Kramer Bussel: Spanking Queen.

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I've tried to figure out why so many times, but all I can really tell you is that the mere prospect of being spanked makes me wet. Spanking is such a deliberate act; it doesn't "just happen." You have to figure out whether the person you're with would be into it; then someone has to bend over, get in position, get ready. When I'm about to be spanked, that's one of the hottest moments, knowing my spanker is watching me, staring at my ass, maybe touching it. And when, BOOM!, the blow comes slamming down against my skin, whether from a hand or paddle or belt, I just melt. I go limp, the pain and heat blazing through me and making me want more. More more more. More spanking…followed by sex. Because nothing's a bigger tease, if you ask me, than being spanked and spanked alone.

Pretty much every time I've been spanked, it's made me want to get fucked right afterward. Or during. I know that's not the case for everyone; there are spanking groups and clubs, and some people who simply want to spank and/or be spanked, without the sex. For me, they feed on each other; getting fucked makes me want to get spanked, which makes me want to…Spanking just sends my head spinning, and that's what I love about it. For people who love it as much as I do (and I know there are lots of you!), we just can't get enough, which is why I'm so thrilled that I've now edited two volumes of Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z (and am editing Spanked right now for Cleis, so send me your spanking smut!) What impresses me so much about spanking erotica is that even though perhaps the mechanics of it may look the same, the motivations differ. The feelings differ. The physical sensations differ. The context, environment, tone, implements, all set the tone for a spanking. I write in the intro to Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z, volume 2:

Spanking means countless things in this anthology–love, anger, sublimation, awakening, desire, fulfillment, foreplay, fun, prodding, patience, surrender, exhibitionism, demand, pride, want, lust, punishment, reward, humiliation, power, surprise, daring, learning, lessons, teasing, and goodbye. I'm thrilled by the heady mix of emotions I can feel when I take or deliver a firm spanking, and even more thrilled that these powerful, erotic stirrings, the kind that can bring tears to your eyes, a smile to your lips and a prolonged stirring to your nether parts, are so beautifully, touchingly and wonderfully represented here. These teasing troublemakers, vamps and vixens, horny housewives and husbands, mean bosses, powerful masters and mistresses, sassy spankers and adoring ass worshippers get what's coming to them and much, much more. The wilier and sneakier they are in concocting schemes to get spanked, the worse off (or, really, the better) it is when they actually get their much-needed and well-deserved smacks.

Here's a snippet from my story "Queuing Up" in Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z, volume 2. I hope you like it, and you know where to go if you want more!

That first slap always takes me by surprise, even when I'm expecting it. There is such a vast difference between my ass laid bare, exposed to the air, but relatively intact, and the heat that brews along that most sensitive of parts after he has spanked me; from eager to seething in several brutal, beautiful seconds. Craig holds his hand tight against my skin, maintaining the warmth and the pain, making it last those few precious seconds longer. I'm lying naked across his lap, and beneath his tight jeans, his cock presses up against me, hinting, surging, wanting, but my spankings aren't about his cock, as much as I might want them to be, as hot and wet as they might get me. Sometimes I wonder if they're even about me at all; Craig comes to me with a glint in his eye, a severity of purpose and steely resolve to spank me until I flip over some immutable edge that I am in constant awe at how much our urges are in sync.

I squirm beneath him, my clit alive with the sensation of pleasure and heat as I wait for more. He raises his hand and brings it down equally as hard on my other cheek, and I smile to myself, even as my pussy clenches fiercely. His spankings are like a magic key that unlocks the secret of my desire, and even when I'm not totally in the mood, when my pussy seems to be on hiatus, when I want him to fuck me but don't really need it, a few smacks from his strong hand and I'm back on the edge, back to being willing to do absolutely anything for him to fuck me. He knows this too, can sense from the way I breathe, the way I squirm and then stay absolutely still, that I am torn between wanting more spankings and wanting his cock filling me all the way up, though that choice is up to him, as always. His hand rains down, smack after concentrated smack, so perfect in their placement that I almost forget that tonight, as we often do, we have an audience, an eager female face soaking up all that we are doing, so new to her and yet, I sense, already unfurling a special signal inside her, a need that now that she's discovered it must be attended to immediately.

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To read more spanking-themed erotica, please check out Rachel's two awesome collections from Pretty Things Press. To buy "Got spanking?" paraphernalia, go here. Plus, one lucky commenter will win a copy of Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z, volume 2!
XXX,
Alison

What If...

Shakespeare wrote that the courageous die only once but cowards suffer a thousand deaths - in their imaginations, of course. Something similar could be said of writers. We might not imagine our own deaths with any great frequency but what about la p'tite morte?

If I’m asked where I get my inspiration from the question makes about as much sense to me as being asked where I get my air. It’s all around me, noticeable only when it’s absent.

For instance:
This morning’s mail brought the usual bills and flyers, plus a deckle-edged cream envelope addressed to me in what looked like real hand-writing. Felix and I have never been to a munch, which is what a kinky brunch is called in Southwestern Ontario. But surely if we received a handwritten invitation he'd be willing to don his tux and I could wear...oh any number of gauzy trifles and...I slit open the envelope to discover an offer for ten percent off a gym membership. WTF? If I want to be stretched, folded and twisted, it won’t be in the interest of exercise, in which in fact I have very little interest.

Yes, the impact of reality can be a shock, but nobody said writing erotica is easy. In this case my error led me to a story idea about a subbie who has a little too much fun at her first munch, due in large part to a misheard (dare I suggest misspoken) directive from her Dom. In a vanilla relationship, this might lead to a big fight, but in the D/s world, it can be downright dangerous.

Last week, while I was walking down Yonge Street, a big raindrop splattered on my forehead. Another hit my instep. I darted into the nearest entranceway just in time to avoid a major soaking. As it happened, the entrance was to my regular pharmacy – chemist, to those on the other side of the pond. But what if it’d been the doorway to a sex shop? What if, while I waited the storm out, someone, a large, distinguished gentleman with slightly sinister but handsome features, (OK, it’s Felix Baron) opened the door and hooked me inside, chiding me for being late? What if he’s planned a kinky fashion show? I find myself in leather boots with six inch heels and a transparent latex dress. Or maybe it’s an auction! Interesting, maybe, but hardly new. Unless it’s a story about the particular challenges a D/s relationship faces in its final days. How do Master and slave end an arrangement that can be more binding than marriage? She finds out her Dom (no longer Felix) is auctioning her off and is torn – on the one hand, it will free her from him which is what she secretly wants but could never arrange by herself. But is she of so little value to him that he’d really sell her to the highest bidder? And what if no one wants her? Hmmm…

Or what if there had been no handy doorway, and I’d got so drenched that my dress turned transparent and clingy, so by the time I got inside the pharmacy the a/c made my nipples hard and I sneeze and a distinguished baritone, no, make it soprano, says, ‘Bless you.’ By now I’m not exactly me, I’m Madeline Moore, author, and I’m not exactly daydreaming, I’m a writer at work. The soprano isn’t exactly the sexy cosmetics gal with the spiky blonde hair, she’s – OK she is the sexy cosmetics gal with the spiky blond hair but now we’re talking story, not idle fantasy. A Cure For the Common Cold? I like it.

Naturally books and pictures are an easy way to turn on the tap. But reruns on TV? A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to catch the CSI Las Vegas episode in which Grissom first meets Lady Heather, the professional Dominatrix. It was the fourth time I’d started to watch that episode. I still have no idea how it ends. Once those two meet, the plot goes one way but my mind has gone in another, entirely different one, and I’m a happy little mental voyeur till long past the closing credits.


Speaking of Lady Heather, in the last episode starring the fearless Domme she made a deal with an evil client that entitled him, for a six figure sum, to choke her to death. That was one story during which I definitely didn’t daydream. It was not only verrrry kinky, without any sex, but gave us a peek into the tightly-wound emotional makeup of Gil Grissom, and, as an added feature, showed the maturity of his relationship with Sara Sidle. ‘Do what you have to do,’ she said when she found out Grissom had spent the night with Lady Heather. Later, he told her, ‘I was being a friend.’ Good stuff, CSI! With prime time TV like this, who needs...but...I digress...

Just about anything can veer off, in my mind, into erotic realms. Any new place I go could be the gateway to some wild sexual adventure. Any piece of mail – any new acquaintance – or just a clear starry sky.

Weather is a particular source of inspiration for me. Snow conjures up dreams of being trapped in a log cabin with a stunning ski instructor or a devious snow bunny, or both. Cold hands on hot parts, in real life or in my imagination, are always a turn on. Hot sunshine evokes Hawaiian beaches, and hula dancers in grass skirts, and muscular bronzed lifeguards, for a start. Hot blood, temperatures rising, sweat… Rain is particularly evocative. It figures prominently in my story Hurting Hugh in editor Mitzi Szereto’s anthology Getting Even: Revenge Stories,coming in October 2007 from Serpent’s Tail Press.

‘Some things are so damn beautiful you have to be happy just to see them. Like Northern Lights. Or a train crossing in the rain, with the bright beam of the engine lighting up the rain like a spotlight, and the red lights of the crossing bars flashing and the blaring whistle of the train competing with the clanging of the crossing bells. It's surreal.’

And later:

‘But it was the rain that really tipped the balance. I knew he probably couldn't tell who was behind the wheel, not with his poor night vision and all that rain streaming down the windshield. Plus, I knew the rain would wash away the gore so I wouldn't have to get my hands dirty hurting Hugh.’ (I love that last line.)

I’ve never, in real life, been ravished at midnight in torrential rain, but in my mind I’ve sucked enough rushing streams of rainwater off naked skin to fill a swimming pool.

When I find myself grocery shopping, after the initial shock wears off, not only are there all those people I don't know to fantasize about, strangers who could be incredibly depraved under their mundane facades, but there’s a ton of femme fruit, like melons and peaches, and all those phallic vegetables like cucumbers and parsnips. This sort of musing led to my first published piece, a little story called Breakfast With Tiffany that was included in a 'confessions of everyday women' type tome so I'll say no more lest the ruse be uncovered.

Here's how it works: I take everyday life and put it through a mental process I call The Eroticizer. This mini-distillery vapourizes the mundane, exhaling it in a misty cloud while isolating the sex-essence into a liquid pool of gold at the bottom of a Pyrex beaker. I mix this extract with other essential elements, like description and characterization and verisimilitude, and the result is released into the world like a new perfume, eau de erotica, or Essence of Madeline. My erotic fiction.

It has been said that to the pure, all things are pure. Likewise, to the prurient, all things are prurient.

Comment on today's blog and win a copy of Wild Card, by Madeline Moore.

Coming Attractions

Mathilde Madden
Remember when I used to have half an idea what the coming weeks posts were about rather than just making cheap innuendo. Yeah, me neither.

So here's my vague grasp on what's happening next week. First on Monday Madeline Moore is going to explain how she puts things through an eroticiser ('cept she'll Z spell it 'cause she's from over there), on Wednesday Alison Tyler is talking about spanking and on Friday Kristina Lloyd is parading some wet men. She's (understandably) giving away sex toys too.

Now, I know what you're gonna say: Mat, that sounds like every damn week on Lust Bites.

Well yeah. But is that such a bad thing?

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Breaking News: Mina Murray wins four Jeremy Edwards's. And here's a second call for Petricke who won second prize in Kristina Lloyd's Love on Dark Side/Man Tits comp. Email lustbitesladies {at} yahoo {dot} com to arrange your booty calls.

Spouse-Sharing, Knicker-Wetting, Flying Fucks, and Other Scenes of Amorous Tenderness

by Jeremy Edwards"How do I love you?" a composite character from my stories could hypothetically (and rhetorically) ask another composite character.

I love you letting me talk obsessively about your ass, though the subject bores you: "That's why it's my job, and not yours, to appreciate this ass we speak of." [Any Day of the Week at Oysters and Chocolate & Sex and Satisfaction]

I love you inviting me to masturbate with you, despite the fact that we can never be a couple: "Oh, but it is a compliment . . . . You obviously have no idea how much I love masturbating alone in my bedroom." [If We Were at Clean Sheets]

I love you dressing up as your three best friends, one after the other, because you know I fantasize about fucking each of them: “Last I knew, this was a monogamous relationship.” I looked around from left to right, as though expecting extraneous women to emerge from the pantry or laundry chute. [Any Friend of Hers at The Erotic Woman]

I love you deliberately, sensuously pissing your panties for me: Ah, to hold her hand across the table and watch her features relax as she gave in to her wetness. [Slightly Ajar in F is for Fetish]

Am I a "romantic"? I think I am – though Hallmark hasn't approached me just yet in re. of their Valentine's Day line. (Hmph. I thought "To my lover/Golly gee/It turns me on/To watch you pee" was rather inspired. But I guess "golly gee" is a bit outdated.)

During college, I was in a brief, ambiguous relationship with a woman who was sort of breaking up with her boyfriend – or maybe not so much. (You get the idea, probably a lot faster than I did.) One evening, I showed a lack of interest in something she said along the lines of long-stemmed roses. "Don't you have a romantic bone in your body?" she asked. Leaving aside the question of which bone, when properly stimulated, might be the romantic one, I protested that my university punk-rock ethos was romantic – by which I basically meant idealistic, with extra hormones. She seemed impressed by this (but, then again, the boyfriend was out of town).

Now I'm going to step back even further and, since you insist, tell you the details of my first wet dream. It simulated a chaste encounter with a sexy high school teacher, who was based loosely on a real-life sexy Latin teacher. (Yes, I had the good fortune to learn early on that the world was replete with counterexamples to debunk every unjust stereotype. As an adult, I would be cavorting with librarians long before it became fashionable.) In the dream, the teacher was giving us a tour of "ROMA ANTIQVA". (She wasn't shouting, she was merely conforming to ancient Roman typography.) Just before debuting my virginal seed, I noted that the above phrase sounded sort of like "romantic-a" – decades before Ellora's Cave had their own wet dream and trademarked the term. Other writers may boast of their masturbatory proclivities for wordplay, but I may be the only one who doesn't mean it metaphorically.

And if only I'd thought to mention this piece of personal history when my bones were accused of being 100% unromantic: "It just so happens you're looking at a guy who's had wet dreams over the word 'romantic.'"

I continue to invoke a broad personal definition of what's romantic. As a reader and writer, I find there's a special kind of erotic electricity to be enjoyed in romantic synergy that crystallizes around the mundane, the absurd, the incongruous, the funny, the awkward, the silly, the strangely compulsive, or (last but not least) the ass-in-your-face raunchy.

My enthusiasm for the offbeat romantic doesn't mean that I think modern or even postmodern life has rendered rose-giving and other traditionally "romantic" experiences obsolete (except, perhaps, those that depend on modes of transportation that are no longer extant; it really is hard these days to make love, in either the archaic or contemporary sense of the term, atop a penny-farthing bicycle, and don't think I haven't tried). Nor do I assume that the offbeat romantic is a modern invention. I don't know my Sappho or my Catullus, and it's been a long time since I dipped into your Flaubert or the neighbor's Stendhal . . . but, surely, the entire history of good literature must be full of unique, unpredictable, and surprising romantic images.

However, I'm not here to speculate about the classics; I'm here to excerpt some hot contemporary erotica. So let's all open our textbooks to a scene from Stan Kent's My Finest Hour, one that makes my toes curl with joy. At this point, the narrator has been watching his wife fuck another guy for page after luxurious page:

They're on the shower floor. He's eating Lizzie. With their splayed bodies blocking the drain the water builds up in the shower, but they don't mind. They're like some primeval amphibious creatures writhing in a stream, struggling for the land so they can multiply or die. He has his hands on Lizzie's hips, and he's working her on his face, and she's pressing down on his back with her legs and they're squirming around. Lizzie wedges herself in the corner and sits up facing me. This is the first real eye contact we've enjoyed since she began fucking the sharply-dressed man, and she smiles and blows me a kiss.

Sigh.

Our Kristina Lloyd's Nothing But This is a bizarre, mysterious, enchanted tale of refined sensuality and transcendent eroticism – and, dare I suggest it, of love. My favorite moment in the story is one in which the romantic connection between the characters reveals itself through mutual knowledge and understanding, cutting through the haze of unreality and disorientation that KL has masterfully created:

"Hey, brother," calls Uncle, addressing Tom, "does she like it in her ass? Huh? A big prick in her tiny little asshole?"

Tom's too zonked to reply immediately. He just sprawls there, half-dead, before his head rolls sideways, eyes still closed. When he finally speaks, it sounds as if it's costing him an enormous effort. "Probably," he croaks.

Like Kent, KL evokes an erotically convincing emotional connection between lovers at the very moment that one of them is physically rather connected to someone else.

Anyone for Alison Tyler? As if I need to ask! Other People's Panties, for instance, is a showroom showpiece of kinky romanticism. The structure of the brief story is such that to excerpt it might risk spoiling it – so I'll just link and insist that you scroll down and read it. Now.

Personally, I can't think of anything more romantic than what happens in the AT story you just read. And yet, I'm told, Hallmark still hasn't made an offer on this one.
In Christopher Hart's Drift, two jaded characters are whisked away from a glitteringly sordid reality by an impossible, inexplicable, externalized romantic force that is literally beyond their control:

Her feet too were dangling free in the air, and kicked lightly against mine. We were six inches off the grass, a foot, two feet and rising. We were also drifting dangerously towards the house.

"Um . . . " she said, cautious, English. "Is this . . . ?"

I was cool about it. "Gravity seems to have failed us." I didn't feel cool about it all. This was supposed to be a hollow seduction, nothing more.

Perhaps this externalization is an example of an antiromantic's romanticism that is quintessentially postmodern. Whatever it is, I find the description of the cynical couple's absurd ascent into a magical mingling to be – well – truly uplifting.

Now I look forward to hearing about your favorite offbeat romantic moments. And shameless plugs are encouraged!

***Kristina says: Add a comment and you could win this sexy little quartet of books featuring Jeremy's work and some of his hot picks: A is for Amour, F is for Fetish and Caught Looking, all from Alison and Cleis Press, plus Quickies 3 from Black Lace which includes my enchanted tale of – ahem – my story, Nothing But This, reprinted from Sex and Shopping.

An Interview with Jolie du Pré

by Dayle A. Dermatis
Jolie du Pré is a multipublished author of literary erotica, as well as the editor of the recent Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica and founder of GLBT Promo, a promotional group for GLBT erotica and erotic romance. We’re thrilled to have her with us today!

How did you get started writing erotica?

My husband was the culprit. First I wrote young adult fiction, well enough to win a contest sponsored by a Canadian newspaper. But I didn't enjoy reading young adult novels. My husband could sense that YA fiction, coupled with my interest in writing, were not a good match. He was the one who suggested erotica, and I have never looked back.

As a bisexual woman, what was factored into your decision to focus on f/f erotica? Would you consider writing f/m erotica, and if not, is that a decision based on personal preference, branding, political issues…?

Good questions! I started writing erotica about six years ago. I wrote everything from M/F to M/M to F/F. Yet even though I'm a bisexual woman, F/F captured my heart. Women have always been important to me and I've had a number of female lovers in my open and honest marriage. But making money in F/F can be harder than trying to do it with M/F or M/M. I've decided, after careful consideration, that I need to return to a bit of M/F in order to increase what I earn. For me that means that sometimes my characters will be bisexual rather than lesbian.

Every writer has a unique voice. But is there such a thing as a “bisexual” versus “lesbian” versus “straight person stretching her writing copes” sensibility in lesbian fiction?

This is an interesting question. Last May I sat on an erotica panel at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. I like to look at women, and I made a statement that if you are a straight woman who does not like to look at women, please don't write lesbian erotica. What I mean is, you need to have a genuine interest in women in order to pull it off. If you are a straight woman, or even a bisexual woman, who prefers men, you may not be able to hide your preference when writing lesbian erotica.

We had a discussion previously here on Lust Bites about f/f stories not getting the same attention as m/m stories in the world of erotic romance today. Do you think that’s true? Any comments?

Yes, it's true. The majority of people who read erotic romance are heterosexual women. These women are interested in M/F and M/M, not F/F. That's why, from now on, my erotic romance e-books will include M/F sex along with F/F. Those who write M/F and M/M erotic romance e-books are pulling in the most money. I'm ready for some of that money. However, the stories I write for literary erotic print anthologies will continue to be F/F. I've never had a problem there.

The big news in your life right now is that you your new anthology, Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica, came out recently. Tell us about the experience of being an editor, especially compared to being a prolific writer.

The theme of Iridescence, lesbian stories about women of color (Asian, Latina, Indian, African American and more), was born out of my frustration with the lack of characters of color in erotica. I consider Iridescence to be more than just an erotica collection. It's a unique contribution which made my experience as editor very special. Reading the submissions and choosing the stories was a joy. Plus, I enjoyed having the opportunity to treat authors the way that I like to be treated, because as an author I am disgusted with the behavior of some of the editors and publishers out there. It's not that I enjoy editing more than writing, because they both give me pleasure in different ways.

Trying to write a really good erotic story with fresh descriptions and valid plot is harder than most people think. Got any tips?

Fresh descriptions and a valid plot require an open and interesting mind. One of the best ways to get that is to read a variety of literature. That would be my first tip. My second tip is to respect your style, and what makes it unique, and work at strengthening that style. I can't become a better writer if I'm busy trying to write like someone else.

You’re primarily a writer of short stories, although when I poked around the web about you, I saw that you’re working on novels as well. Do you find one medium easier or harder? Any other notable differences you’ve discovered?

Actually, I've started one novel. A novel is difficult for me to write because in order to write a novel you have to be able to plot. If you've only written short stories, it can get tough. My novel is on hold because I keep leaving it for other writing projects, but I'll finish it eventually.

And just for fun: Coffee or tea? Cats or dogs? Werewolves or vampires? Mac or PC?

Coffee! My husband and I are serious coffee drinkers. We prefer to buy the coffee beans and grind them ourselves for our cups. Cats! They're low maintenance. Vampires! I've never been intrigued by werewolves. Mac! I'm a PC user, but if I could afford a good Mac, I'd probably use one.

Here’s an delicious taste of Jolie’s writing, from her story “Monisha” in Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica

Sitting on my sofa I look out the window and watch the snow flakes fall from a white sky. It’s cold outside, yet thanks to my landlord my place stays at one temperature - hot. Sweat beads on my chest as I open a window in search of relief.

It will be Christmas soon. My family stopped speaking to me ever since I came out, so I don’t have a lot of presents to buy. I want to go outside into the cold air, get a latte and read the paper, listen to corny holiday tunes, and get the hell out of my apartment.

I walk into a coffee shop. A jazzy instrumental comes out of the speakers to the tune of Silent Night. She’s behind the counter. Tawny skin and a face full of freckles. Brown dredlocks. Large breasts. Big hips.

She turns around and bends over to get some cups. I stare at her full behind and I imagine us naked: she on her stomach, my dark chocolate hands on her caramel ass.

“Happy Holidays,” she says. She’s standing up now, facing me and smiling.

“Happy Holidays. What’s your name?” Flirting has become my hobby ever since I went on unemployment.

“Monisha. Yours?”

“Gladys.”

“Do you come in here much, because I’ve never seen you before?”

“No, but I will now.”

She blushes. I’ve taken a lot more chances these days, hitting on pretty girls who work behind counters whether they’re straight or not. If I bomb, I just get what I need and leave.

But when Monisha hands me my latte she looks me in the eyes.

I grab a paper and sit down. Every so often I stop reading and look at her face.

She catches my gaze and smiles. I smile too.

"I'll be back tomorrow," I say to her as I leave.

END

Everyone is welcome to attend a reading of Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica at Bluestockings
172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington
New York, NY
212 - 777- 6028
Saturday, August 25, 2007
7:00 p.m.
Jolie du Pré, Tawanna Sullivan, Shanel Odum, Sofia Quintero, Rachel Kramer Bussel