Speed Reading

Hello, erotica lovers! I'm very pleased to be participating in the August 2010 virtual book tour for Fast Girls: Erotica for Women, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

No, I'm not a woman (of any pace), but this book is so emphatically for me as well. It's composed of sizzling, thought-provoking erotic stories by women whose glorious literary virtuosity makes me tingle—intellectually, emotionally, physically.

And the title resonates, because the book features the work of favorite authors who grabbed me the very first time I encountered them—fast.

Story after story, Fast Girls brings us the fierce but delicate pleasures of desire, adventure, urgency, epiphany, and orgasm. In Jacqueline Applebee's "Five-Minute Porn Star," the tenderness and three-dimensional humanity of real people playing with stilted porn conventions is as moving as it is hot. Saskia Walker's joyous "Communal" celebrates the feverish lust of vicarious passion and the places beyond, with the sensuousness that always speaks so captivatingly in Walker's voice.

"Waiting for Beethoven" is a banquet for those of us who love to be seduced by the exquisite interplay between art, sex, and emotion. In this piece, Susie Hara has created a self-contained world as perfect as a sonata. "Flash!" by Andrea Dale takes us to a sweltering level of arousal, as a professional voyeur gets her turn in front of the camera. This tale, like all these tales, reminds us that the psychological factor is supreme.

Donna George Storey, for instance, knows that. Ever brilliant at turning a complex situation on its head, she elicits magic from cynicism in "Waxing Eloquent." And since it's magic words we want from our erotica, I will now utter some more: Tenille Brown. Rachel Kramer Bussel. Elizabeth Coldwell. D. L. King. Charlotte Stein. Kristina Wright. Read the table of contents—fast—and let yourself go. You're in good hands. So many pairs of good hands.

You'll find the full schedule for the Fast Girls book tour at the Fast Girls blog.