Books & Brownies

Kristina Wright knew that would get your attention. Visit the Fairy Tale Lust blog to find out what brownies have to do with it! (Hint: bring your Brownie, or other camera.)

In the summer, in the city!

That's sex in the summer in the city! In this case, the city of New York. Sex in the City: New York is now available, so grab yourself some lovin' spoonfuls of Cara Bruce, Polly Frost, Thom Gautier, Shanna Germain, Michael Hemmingson, D. L. King, Ira Miller, Lisabet Sarai, Thomas S. Roche, Donna George Storey, Tsaurah Litzky, and of course editor Maxim Jakubowski.

And me! Here's an excerpt from "The Same Fifty Taxis":

Millicent’s adorable ass enlivened the lone barstool at my kitchenette counter. I stood proudly at hand, watching her attack the similarly round and cute cappuccino-coconut scoop I’d served up. I ate slowly, for my part, letting small spoonfuls melt on my tongue. Millicent teased me about wandering the Upper East Side with a pint of ice cream, hoping to pick up women.

How and why had I forgotten that I was in love with her? Watching her smile and laugh in my kitchen seemed to make the complexities and ambivalence melt away like the ice cream, to put me in touch once more with uncomplicated lust and straightforward emotions. Again I let impulse guide me.

“You owe me, Millicent. I’ve been back for two years, and you haven’t jumped my sexy bones.”

She gaped, her spoon frozen in action. “You remember I said that?”

“Of course I do.” For a year or two in Pittsburgh, I’d used that memory as a sail.

“I wonder what else you remember.”

I helped myself to the flirty curl at the bottom of her retro hairdo. “I remember that this is your natural hair color—and how delicious it looked on you, even when one had to delve deep to find it.”

Follow that Kindle!

Yes, you can now hop into my story "The Same Fifty Taxis" and go for a ride all around the Big Apple: the great Maxim Jakubowski's latest volume in the Sex in the City series takes us to New York, and the Kindle version has just pulled up at the curb!

As I mentioned when my piece was accepted for this book, writing "The Same Fifty Taxis" felt, in part, like a way of "giving back" to the city of New York. And I must say it was a much more enjoyable way of "giving back" than the traditional experience of paying parking tickets.

Xcite now offers free shipping worldwide

Time to go book shopping?

(And, of course, you never have to pay shipping charges on an e-book.)

Goldilocks and the Five Interview Questions

I'm the interview du jour at the Fairy Tale Lust blog! Come on over to hear me tell host Kristina Wright about Goldilocks comedy, my writing routine, and my reading habits outside the erotica genre.

Thanks, KW!

Midsummer Night's "Spark"

Yes, with so much daylight about, my new e-book story collection, Spark My Moment, has seen the light of day! It's now officially available at the publisher's website in .pdf and EPUB forms (as well as in Kindle via Amazon).

Thank you, e-Xcite!

And here are the contents:

Mom-and-Pop Enterprise | Passive Vocabulary | Full of Ideas | Moment: Architectural Photography | Glimpsing Gretchen | Moment: Exercise Routine | Pathway to Panties | Harry Goes Electro-Violet | Moment: Napkin on My Lap | Vacation Plans | Context | Moment: Grateful as Panties | Being Myself | Event | Moment: Sea Legs | Cordelia’s Significance | Vivian’s Checklist | Moment: One Cameo Kiss | From Tip to Toe | Moment: What Matters | Becky Holds the Floor | Reflections from the Art Museum | Moment: 2009dust | Calling Plan | Why Georgina? | Moment: Self-Starter | In Character | Stumbling into Lorna | Moment: Way | Adrienne’s Ironic Lingerie | It Takes W-2 to Tango | Moment: Warming the Bench | Existential Wendell | Moment: Recessed | Pack the Essentials | Moment: XX | Tapping into Theresa | Karkataka, or How the Crab Got Its Knees

And look what else is now a citizen of Availabilityland!

Now available in Adobe Acrobat, HTML, and EPUB formats from All Romance e-Books!

Now available in Kindle format from Amazon!

Le Blurb:

Spark My Moment brings together a broad assortment of pieces never before available in book form, including new stories written expressly for this collection. Ranging from playful, lascivious romps like “Mom and Pop Enterprise” to thought-provoking erotic art pieces like “Existential Wendell”—with forays into X-rated literary pastiche and steamy flash fiction—these stories are united by the author’s emphasis on joyful sensuality, libidinous urgency, offbeat romanticism, and the pleasures of language and laughter.

Fairy Tales Are Real!

Yes, there's evidence that the Fairy Tale Lust anthology, edited by the magical Kristina Wright and containing my story "Gildi and the Unwieldy, Ineffectual Committee of Bears," is now materializing into availability! I imagine it will be in stock at the publisher's warehouse very soon as well. FTL includes stories by Janine Ashbless, Andrea Dale, Justine Elyot, Shanna Germain, Craig Sorensen, Charlotte Stein, Alana Noël Voth, Saskia Walker, and Allison Wonderland.

Here's a fairy-tale foretaste of "Gildi":

Three college men emerged from a hallway—a bulked-up athletic type in a tank top, shorts, and sandals; a skinny, tattooed guy dressed in black; and an officious looking redhead, all glasses and freckles. Each one was kind of hot, Gildi decided, in his own way—from the jock’s obvious brand of studliness to the hipster’s sinuous quasi-androgyny to the nerd’s round-faced version of “geek cute.”

“Hey,” said Black-Clothing Guy, “Aren’t you Gildi?” He was evidently too cool to put much pizzazz into the question, but a hitch of his eyebrow conveyed that he was impressed.

“Yeah!” said Gildi with relief, extending a hand. “I’ve been waiting for someone to direct me to my room.”

“Your room?” said Freckles & Glasses.

“Uh-huh,” she said, addressing herself to what she presumed was an ally in Black-Clothing Guy. “I’m supposed to stay here tonight.”

“That can’t be right,” said Athlete. “Maybe you’re here next Saturday, the 27th?”

Gildi couldn’t help rolling her eyes, but she spoke calmly. “The Student Association arranged it, because I’m performing at your Spring Fling. I think you’re supposed to look in the guest log—assuming you can locate it.”

Freckles & Glasses shook his head. “Nah, the log won’t do any good if it was arranged through the S.A.”

“Do we still have a VIP spreadsheet on the upstairs computer?” asked Black Clothing.

“The spreadsheet wouldn’t reflect an S.A. booking, either,” said Athlete. “They only use that for visiting lecturers—things the faculty liaison sets up.”

“Besides,” said Freckles, “that computer is in the shop.”

“Maybe I should just get a hotel room,” said Gildi. She was beginning to lose patience. Irritation quivered through her above the waist, while her libido continued to pulse below.

More Summer Fun from Xcite

Check out this promotion!

Limited offer - hurry while stocks last!

Enjoy three fabulous, full length paperbacks containing a total of 60 varied, sexy stories and get a FREE Lovehoney Magic Mini Rabbit Vibrator worth £9.99

FREE P&P mainland UK only.

The three books included in this special offer are:

Satisfy Me @ £7.99

Seriously Sexy 1 @ £7.99

Sex & Satisfaction 2 @ £7.99

Plus a FREE Lovehoney Magic Mini Rabbit Vibrator worth £9.99

I happen to have stories in all three of those collections! Sex & Satisfaction 2 includes "Moistened by Mercer":

“You’re a dirty old man, Mercer.”

“Check,” I said. “Isn’t everyone?”

“No,” she reasoned crisply. “I, for example, am not a man.”

Looking over her scrumptious anatomy, I acknowledged to myself that she had an excellent point. “And not dirty?” I asked—teasing, because I was pretty damn sure she was even dirtier than I was.

“I didn’t say that.”

Satisfy Me includes "Any Friend of Hers":

“Do you ever sort of want to fuck my friends?”

It was a strange question to hear on a Saturday morning. Consequently, it was a struggle for me to swallow rather than eject the mouthful of coffee that Dahlia’s query had overtaken.

“Huh?” I laughed. “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.

Seriously Sexy 1 includes "Impressionism":

She had to know. She could not work at this desk all day, in the middle of a busy city, and not be aware of when her panties were or were not visible to the casual observer. This really mattered to me. Because, if it were an accident, it would not be polite to let my gaze linger there, or return there between paintings. If, however, it was intentional—as I supposed—then I owed it to both of us to make the most of it.

Sexy Summer Snapshots

Xcite Books has found a way to make summer vacation even sexier! Here's their new promotion:

Here's a fun way to win a whole year's worth of Xcite Books worth £100 in our Where in the World Competition

All you need to do is send us a photo to comps@xcitebooks.com of you reading an Xcite book anywhere in the world. Make sure you pack a book or two when you are off on your holidays or think up a quirky shot to do at home

We will put the best on the site and award a winner every month throughout the summer.

Rules:

Images must be clean and decent. It must be obvious that it is an Xcite Book so please make sure the cover is clearly displayed.

Please include info of where the photo was taken.

By entering the competition participants agree that their images can be used by Xcite Books.

One prize will be allocated in June, July, and August.

Any size is acceptable - ideally as a jpeg format.

The prize is for £100 worth of Xcite books or eBooks - there is no cash equivalent.

Breaking Up the Word Monopolies

I'm appearing today at Lisabet Sarai's Beyond Romance blog, with a piece about my (unpatented) process for attacking repetitive wording in my story drafts!

As most of you probably know, Lisabet is an eminent and superbly gifted erotica and erotic-romance writer, critic, and essayist. I'm very honored to be her guest.

So bring any unwanted, repeated words you have lying around, and I'll see you there!

Scarlet

So, the bad news on the publishing front this week is that Scarlet magazine will be ceasing publication.

I feel very sad about this, not only because I've been a frequent erotica contributor and not only because I know the in-house staff who will be most severely affected... but, in the larger scheme of things, because Scarlet represented something all too rare in the world of mass-appeal "women's magazines": a policy of celebrating women's-pleasure-focused sex positivity and women's self-esteem, instead of trading on insecurities and on man-pleasing as the be-all and end-all.

Very sorry to see you go, Scarlet. Thanks for all you did.

The Wool Exchange

That's just one of the places in the United Kingdom where Rock My Socks Off has recently joined the in-shop inventory! Yes, the roster of Waterstone's shops stocking RMSO has grown dramatically since the last time I obsessively checked it. Now people can exchange all their unwanted wool for MY erotic novel!!

I'm also in Harrods (or at least the distribution centre)! And the Butter Market! In various cities and towns, I'm in two locations. (Good old Edinburgh now has me in three branches!) They're reading me in Reading (assuming sell-through) and taking me into the Bath. I'm in Northampton and Southampton and darling Darlington. The page reads like a gazetteer—or a concordance to all those 1920s–1950s UK comic novels I've read.

Out of Print

The new blog-a-zine Out of Print describes itself as follows:

Out of print is a new media celebration of old-fashioned counter culture. It is an interactive blog and forum for anyone who is interested in politics, conflict and contradiction, untold stories, under-represented individuals and groups, challenging culture and critical thinking.

As part of the inaugural issue on the theme of equality, they've reprinted a piece I wrote in 2007 as a guest blogger at the late lamented Lust Bites. In it I articulated my understanding of why, speaking as a male erotica writer, it does not feel unreasonable to me to be excluded from certain "by women only" erotica projects.

Thanks for the reprintin' love, OOP!