Review of erotic fiction by Aimee Nichols and Liberty St. James

Everybody wants to be a famous writer these days, but nobody wants to read. A shocking number of self-proclaimed authors seem to believe that reading anything other than their own “brilliant” stuff will somehow ruin them, sap them of their Wile-E.-Coyote-Super-Genius-like inspiration, and snuff out their personal eternal flame of autoerotic originality. And what’s the result of this belief? A lot of sloppy, rambling, self-indulgent, same-old-rooky-mistake-infected amateur dreck, often little more than a weak echo of the one or two books these morons actually did bother to read once upon a time. I slog through more of these dilettante scribblings than I care to think about every month in the process of vetting books for review on this site, and I can only say that I have come to understand why so many of my English instructors in high school and college were in such a perpetually sour mood. (Of course, some of them were simply being their normal asshole selves, but most of them, I now see, had a pretty good excuse.) 

And it’s not only would-be authors who don’t want to read; there’s a whole world of self-deluded wannabe singer/song-writers, actors, composers, painters and performance artists, all clamoring for attention; a nation of narcissists, scheming to copyright themselves, dreaming of being discovered without actually having to do any hard work, ultimately transcending themselves as their own brand. (One starry-eyed dreamer who contacted me recently, with but a single self-published title to her credit, is already inviting potential readers to write fanfic—talk about the triumph of self-delusion over reality, not to mention carts before horses!) People seem enthralled by this notion that what they have to say is uniquely interesting or irresistibly compelling, and if they can only find the right forum or platform for their self-expression; if they can only market themselves a bit more aggressively; if they can only snag one more review from the “right” venue, then the world will simply have to recognize their specialness and reward them with fame, adulation, and untold riches. A few wild tales of “overnight success”; a handful of fluke “discoveries”; rumors of so-and-so’s latest fat advance, and the gold rush is on. Never mind that those old media paradigms are now hopelessly obsolete. Self-expression and self-indulgence are becoming one and the same. Professional creative endeavor is doomed. And there’s a reason those riches are “untold”; for the most part, they don’t exist.

Alright, perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic—and please, shoot me if I ever turn into the old guy yelling at the rotten kids to get off his lawn—but the question remains; what does an aspiring author have to do to be heard in this increasingly noisy world of ours? Beyond that; what does a writer need to do in order to be taken seriously?  The simple answer is; to be heard, one must have a voice. A writer’s voice does not necessarily need to be unique, or striking or even particularly original; but, for a start, it must be strong, clear, and well-focused. A writer’s voice is not an innate gift; it is something that must be trained up; cultivated, nurtured, exercised, polished; honed. To train the voice, a writer must do two things with unfailing diligence; write constantly, and read voraciously.  Constant writing is like weight lifting to build up muscle mass; the regular habit of writing builds up the brain and keeps it strong, while reading provides the fuel it needs to flourish.

No one is born a writer; writing is learned, and no writer—no artist—ever steps out into the world fully formed. Working through early influences is part of the artistic growth process. There is nothing wrong or unnatural about being influenced. Rather than resisting influences, a young writer should turn and face them head on (preferably without trying to publish the early results). There is no piece of writing from which one may not learn. So far from stifling one’s originality, good books offer models of what works; bad books—and there are many—show us what not to do. When a writer attains maturity, if not mastery, she will look back on her early influences and understand the difference between the good books and the bad ones, recognizing the lessons learned from both. The fact is, if reading other people’s books had the power to snuff out one’s precious creative spark, there wasn’t much of a spark to begin with.  In truth, the more one reads the less enthralled by any single influence one is likely to be, and the more original one becomes.  But the need to read doesn’t end with the attainment of mastery; it is a lifetime pursuit, and part of the ongoing job. Ultimately, the more broadly one reads, the deeper one thinks, the better one writes, and this process of literary symbiosis is never-ending.

And how to be taken seriously? What I look for when vetting books for review is, first, that strong, clear, fluent voice; confidence, competence, a solid command of language, and an engaging style.  Beyond that, I want well-drawn, well-defined, smart, memorable characters undergoing a process of growth or change; compelling conflict, a story that piques my interest without being overly derivative or gratuitously far-fetched; a narrative that continually moves forward. I want maturity—but not in the euphemistic Triple-X sense of the word—a thoughtful, entertaining exploration of grownup themes. Is this asking too much?

For your consideration then; two recent works of fiction by a pair of authors whose voices may not necessarily be unique or strikingly original, but nonetheless, at their best, pass the test of clarity, fluency and strength with impressively high marks. Liberty St. James is a promising newcomer. Her first effort, Lock Me Up and Set Me Free, is a novella-length BDSM-tinged erotic romance with a memorable central female character and the occasional flash of something approaching brilliance. Aimee Nichols’ recent collection of erotic short stories, The Mercy of Strange Men, offers up some very fine writing with enough passion and insight to compel page-turning.  Both writers shine when describing what is immediate and real and most arousing to them. Beyond sex, for St. James, this is the transporting orgasmic power of music. For Nichols, it is the perpetual flux of urban life; another kind of music; the pulse of the bar scene; the grit and sweat of the crowd. Both titles offer much to enjoy, though neither is recommended wholly without caveat.  

Lock Me Up and Set Me Free by Liberty St. James

With a surprisingly good story, and an unforgettable female lead, this debut novella from Liberty St. James comes as a thoroughly pleasant surprise. What might have been yet another run-of-the-mill erotic romance with BDSM a la mode transcends ordinary genre fare with its empathy and depth of insight into character. Tam is smart, clear-headed, and strong-willed; submissive but never a pushover, that is, the perfect bottom. Hired to provide musical entertainment at a country estate’s New Year’s gathering, St. James’ bi-sexual heroine accepts an offer to get away from her workaday routine, and act as a slave for a young businessman and his fiancée over the weekend. “Sometimes,” she tells us,

I like to move out of my slap-dash, hand to mouth existence, and play at being pampered. Sitting at the top table in the restaurant of the moment, drinking champagne and flirting. Lying like the Rokeby Venus on some chaise lounge in a flat looking over London, naked except for real pearls or a silk scarf round my waist, while a man sits fully clothed in the chair opposite, watching me touch myself while he smokes. There’s something about that much quiet luxury; something that’s almost melancholy, like being indoors in winter while rain batters the window.”

Granted, we could do with fewer exchanges like this: 

“Keep them wide. No moving. My god, you’re wet. Fuck, you’re beautiful. Ah, you beautiful, beautiful little slut.”

Honestly? If the Victorians had made porno videos, something like this could have been the soundtrack. Can erotic writers PLEASE (!) do something to make their characters’ “naughty talk” more varied, interesting and realistic? Still, while St. James’ scenes of BDSM play seem rather contrived, repetitious and often boring (less would definitely seem like more, here), what keeps us reading are passages like this:

I love music as much—more than—I love sex. I want to drown in it; lose myself in it. Falling into music makes me feel safe, as if someone is holding me up. While I listened, I decided to let myself fall into this weekend the same way and not resist. Total submission. I’ve flirted with it before but never properly given myself to it

At an appropriate point I do a slow strip to You Made Me Love You. The dress, hat, and gloves come off. Underneath I’m in a corset, frilly pants and stockings. I sing I Want to Be Loved By You with brunette sleaze rather than blonde Marilyn Monroe dizziness. Then I get the cello out and play the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite Number 1. You know the one, that famous one; the only cello tune you’ve ever heard on the radio or as the backing to an advert. I play it in my corset and stockings. I play it as if it’s turning me on like no-one I’ve ever known; I play it like I’m fucking the music. I am fucking the music. It does turn me on like no-one I’ve ever known. If I died playing the cello, I’d die happy.

Liberty St. James is a writer with enormous potential, and a newcomer to watch. In spite of its subtle flaws, overdone sex scenes, and a male lead whose demons are just a bit too predictable to be compelling, Lock Me Up and Set Me Free is nonetheless an impressive first effort and recommended to those in search of something new.

 

 

 

 

The Mercy of Strange Men by Aimee Nichols

This collection of well-crafted short stories from Australian author, Aimee Nichols is something of a mixed bag. There is sufficient contrast in mood and voice to keep things interesting, but it’s clear the author was more invested in some fantasies than others. She is at her best when her passions shine through; but has some difficulty disguising her distaste—occasionally approaching contempt—for some of her more conventional scenarios. The most interesting stories take us into steamy urban undergrounds, indie rock dives, kinky sex clubs, and seedy apartment back-bedrooms, as in The Gospel of Sophie, a genuinely first-rate ménage narrative, or the gloriously passionate lesbian encounters of Lipstick and Strap On Sex is So Passé. Nichols conveys considerably less enthusiasm when inhabiting the heads of serendipitous voyeurs (The Window and Down in the Park), and the overly-stylized psychological monodrama of the title story leaves the reader with a bewildering sense of literary déjà vu, bringing nothing new or positively exciting to the standard BDSM scenario. Far more successful is the exceptionally well-thought-out All Eyes On Him, written from the perceptively mature reference of an experienced fem-dom:

This is the story we are used to. Women, and especially attractive young women, are meant to be attracted to power. We’re meant to be the reason why men who make no effort to please anyone but themselves bemoan their lack of ability to get the women they feel they deserve. We’re supposed to accept status and money in exchange for being dominated. Some of us know that’s not the only narrative . . . Topping helps me find equilibrium, brings a dynamic to a relationship that allows me to relax into things. I like to know where I stand with the person I’m fucking or playing with, and I like them to know where I stand, which sexually speaking is over them, and usually holding something used to inflict pain.

The beauty of any short-fiction anthology is that readers may quickly seek out the gems while giving the tailings a pass. With more than a fair proportion of well-refined erotic literary ore; Aimee Nichols’ The Mercy of Strange Men is a vein adventuresome readers will surely want to tap.

 

 

 

 

Review of P.M. White's "Volksie"

At one point, early on in P.M. White’s Volksie, anti-hero Alston, along with his best friend Grumbine, and Volksie, Alston’s soul mate-as-yet-unawares, plunge their stolen VW Beetle into the Mississippi River near the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The little car begins to sink, and for a terrifying moment, Alston fears he’s lost the girl of his dreams, not ten minutes after meeting her. But before the chapter skids up to a brake-squealing, metal-crunching, edge-of-the-precipice to-be-continued , Alston believes he sees Volksie emerging, naked, on the opposite bank. Never mind that the river is nearly a mile wide at this point, and rife with treacherous currents; this girl is magic!  

And so it is with much of this story. Subtitled “A tale of sex, Americana, and cars”, Volksie is P.M. White’s vividly dreamed, cute, seductively satirical, sometimes silly magical homage to the wide, fast-flowing river of the American mythos and the tributary subcultures that feed and renew it. The book is a classic chase epic; a tale of sadistic gangsters pursuing hapless heroes across the wide open deserts of the American southwest; think Vanishing Point with VWs; classic American car culture turned on its head; a gentler, geekier Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry with cybersex, less impressive horsepower, and a much happier ending.  It is a story about survival and revenge, enthusiasm, passion, obsession, and loving what you love no matter what the world may think. 

Where style was concerned, the VW Type 1 (Beetle or bug) was a living fossil long before it ceased production in the early 2000s; a charming throwback to the late 1930s, when “streamlining” was all the rage in automotive design. There is a certain female-ness, a Reubenesque voluptuousness to the profile of these cars with their sloping, fat-fendered curves; a look that can be seductive—even erogenous—to those sufficiently receptive. Truck, one of Alston’s shadier acquaintances, even goes so far as to gratify himself with a Beetle in a surprisingly creative—if not crudely obvious—fashion. This is, in its way, a metaphor for enthusiasm taken to extremes; the very essence of what it is to be a nerd.

In fact, I do not believe it would be unfair or in any way unduly dismissive to say that Volksie is the ultimate nerd fantasy. The story would not have had quite the same quirky charm if White’s characters had indulged a more conventionally macho passion for, say, classic Mustangs, Corvettes, or ‘70s-era muscle cars. VW-fandom may be no less unselfconsciously intense; no less unapologetically enthusiastic or—dare one say it?—hardcore; but park a 1966 VW 1300 Beetle with its tiny, rear-mounted, air-cooled four-cylinder engine next to any contemporary American performance car, and one is defied not to smile—or laugh out loud—at the juxtaposition. (Volkswagen’s advertising in the ‘60s was famous for playing up the car’s underdog-ish ordinariness in extremely funny and highly effective ways.) Whether intentional or not, there is a similarly subtle vein of parody running through White’s narrative, the sort of sly referential gestures that film geeks and car buffs (like myself!) absolutely love, as when Volksie convinces Alston to tie her to the roof of another stolen Beetle, for a round of “ship’s mast” a la Zoe Bell riding the hood of a ’70 Dodge Challenger in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof:

Volksie dropped her floral skirt to the asphalt and left it where it lay. She wore no panties beneath it. Alston admired the way the sun played along her long, thin legs as she unbuttoned her blouse. She dropped it to the ground next to her skirt, and stood fully nude on the deserted airport runway. Without saying a word, she climbed onto the hood. The seductive globes of her milky ass thrust toward the hot sun like a carnal offering. Volksie mounted the bug slowly and carefully. Her breasts swayed like firm, fleshy pendulums. Once on the rounded roof, she turned and spread her legs wide, then leaned back on her elbows, waiting to be tied. Her nipples looked hard enough to cut glass.

Alston grabbed her ankles and pulled her forward. Her ass squeaked on the metal roof. With her legs spread across the windshield and pointed toward the front fender, he set to work on the bindings. Within minutes, he had her ankles tied tightly to the metal fender. He popped out the small side windows and looped the rope through it, then bound her wrists. Throughout the process, Volksie lay silently on the roof, her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling with excitement.

Sounds like fun! No character in this story, infused as it is with the kind of magical, dream-like atmosphere, is more magical or enchanting than the title character herself. Volksie is quirky, eccentric, sensual, impulsive, and just the right kind of crazy. We fall in love with her, precisely as Alston does, because she’s the girl who loves the outsider--not necessarily the bad boy--the babe who ought to be out of our league but doesn’t play hard to get; knows what we need before we know it, and never fails to satisfy in the sack; the down to earth demi-goddess who’s easy to talk to, and wants to be with us in spite of our inexperience and insecurity. Wow! Does she have a sister? 

[*] I do have a few nerdish nit-picks about certain details in the text. First, there’s no such thing as a “’65 Super Beetle”. The Super Beetle, with MacPhearson struts and elongated front end, did not appear until 1971. Second; when White talks about a customized VW, built to resemble a stretch limo he writes “opposite facing doors, as well as the standard ones lay open for public viewing.” Surely, if one is writing from the viewpoint of American car enthusiasts, one would know the term “suicide doors”. Finally, in referring to a VW Thing, we get this: “The Thing, which turned out to be a 1944 model, the precursor to the German sales model.” The VW Type 181 “The Thing” was a product of the late 1960s, and not quite the same animal as the Type 82 Kubelwagen, the jeep-like VWs used by the German army during World War II. (Honestly, people; you can look this stuff up!) There are certain “British-isms” lurking in the background of the American setting; the character’s names, for example, don’t ring true;  especially the gangsters, who seem to have stepped out of one of Guy Ritchie’s dark-underbelly-of-London crime dramedies (of which I am a huge fan, by the way).

I don’t think any of these misplaced details represent a fatal flaw, however. Once readers start rolling with the story, which accelerates with a stylish momentum, such minor niceties will hardly matter. Volksie is a fast, fun and refreshingly wild ride, not to be missed. (Oh! And by the way: I WANT a reproduction of the cover done up as a large-size glossy poster! Genuinely beautiful!)


[*] Subsequent to the posting of this review, the author and publisher took my "nerdish nit-picks" into consideration and have accordingly revised the text, both in the e-book and forthcoming print editions.  It's gratifying to know that my plodding pedantry is good for something! TAS]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review of Jeremy Edwards' "The Pleasure Dial"

So, there are these two writers walking down the street, and they’re headed towards the same intersection. One’s a joke writer—we can tell because he keeps talking to himself and cracking up at his own material. The other one writes erotica; we can tell it’s erotica and not porn because he always types with both hands—you’d be amazed how many pornographers you can catch single-handed. Anyways, these two guys bump into each other at the intersection like a schlemiel and a schlimazel, and their latest manuscripts get all mixed up together. That’s when the joke writer—let’s call him Mr. J—turns to the erotica guy—who we’ll refer to as Mr. E—and says “Hey! You got smut all over my gags!” To which Mr. E replies “No wonder you never shut up! And look at this; you got funny all over my sex!” J picks himself up and says “Your sex was already plenty funny, buddy—I mean, have you actually seen it on a cold day?” E looks around and says, “Never on a first date.” Mr. J says, “Gosh! Since when did you start dating yourself?” Mr. E says “I’d heard it was good for the prostate.” J says, “Now that’s really funny coming from a guy who types with both hands.” Mr. E bends over and starts picking up pages from out of the gutter. “My,” he says, “you’re really ‘on’ today, aren’t you, Mr. J?” “Hardly,” J replies, “everybody knows you’re just a little moron, Mr. E.”  [Insert rim shot here.]

The first thing you should know about Jeremy Edwards is that his jokes are a lot better than mine. The Pleasure Dial is a laugh-out-loud sexy; tickle-me-till-I-pass-out funny, brain-gasm-inducing work of sheer genius, and one of the most scrumptiously entertaining novels—erotic or otherwise—I’ve had the pleasure to read in quite some time; an unforgettable, couldn’t-put-it-down, never-wanted-it-to-end reading experience, the sort of which have become increasingly all too rare nowadays.

The Pleasure Dial transports us to the thriving entertainment world of 1930s America, dominated by radio and the movies, recently reborn, if not always reinvigorated, with sound. The story is a lovingly irreverent homage to that golden age of radio comedy (Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello) and the great screwball romps of the day, without the pesky Hayes Code censorship—think Carole Lombard and William Powell in My Man Godfrey or Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in The Front Page with the same razor-sharp double-entendre-rich repartee and considerably fewer clothes. The veritably Shakespearian ins and out of the plot are summarized by chief protagonist, radio gag-writer Artie Plask, thusly:

“Here’s what I have on my list so far: (1) A radio show in which the star, an irascible and conceited Hollywood legend is doing comedy when he thinks he’s doing drama—and he mustn’t find out. (2) A second radio show, whose star, though a dream of an employer in and of herself, is viewed with suspicion by star #1 because she is an intrafamily rival. (3) A fledgling mannequin manufacturing company that we’ve promised will show a profit shortly, and with whom my personal appearance is so closely identified in the suspicious mind of radio star #1 that I am forced to wear a disguise in his presence—because he mustn’t find out that the mannequin executive who stood up to him is really one of his own writers.”

If you think this sounds like something with the potential to be hilarious, you’d be right. The jokes fly fast and low, sneaking in under the blood-brain barrier before we even get them, and when we finally do, we have to mark our place and take a few minutes to roar till the belly is quite literally aching with pleasure!  The “juicy parts” aren’t bad either, especially considering that Edwards’ special brand of funny is on the sex like white on rice.  Reluctantly, I have to limit myself to only three short examples:

He lowered his ass to the edge of the bed, his hard-on wrestling his thigh for top billing. Your jokes made me laugh today,” she continued. This was his kind of foreplay. “Which one did you like best?” “The one about ignoring.” She tittered at the memory. There’s a customer waiting and I don’t want to ignore him. I don’t want to, but I’d like to. Yes, that would work well in Heffy’s voice. “Thank you. That’s a subtle one.” “I love that word, don’t you? Subtle. It sounds like a softly licking tongue.” Artie knew a song cue when he heard one. He pulled the sheet away from her body and focused his attention on the sex-damp blond fur he’d thereby revealed.

Or this:

Elyse blinked back tears as she backed the car out. “Yesterday my life was perfect; a house full of laughter-conjuring, clitoris-pleasing heroes. Apart from the nuisance of having to keep my clothes on whenever Daddy was around, the place was paradise on earth.”

And this:

The face of Elyse Hefferman being tongued to orgasm by the head-giving head writer had to be the most compelling thing that had ever appeared on this stage, thought Artie. Elyse, one could tell, approached every climax with the control and self-assurance with which a painter approached a blank canvas. The artistic mastery expressed in her face was overlaid with sensory pleasure, burgeoning arousal, and erotic anticipation—hers was the fiery-eyed face of a genius watching her creation come to life exactly as she had envisioned it.

Can’t you see a young, ditzy Carole Lombard as Elyse? For Artie’s fast-talking, even faster-thinking, comedy-writing girlfriend, Mariel Fenton, my imagination cast Rosalind Russell. And then there’s the beautiful, Garbo-esque Lila Lowell, every-man's-fantasy sexpot of the silver screen, who really does want to be alone—in her modest, book-lined bungalow, playing checkers with her lesbian lover. Edwards gives us, if not a cast of thousands, a vast troupe of memorable, wise-cracking supporting characters who can trace their laugh-lines back to Vaudeville and the Catskills; Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, the Marx Brothers, The Great Gildersleeve, Abbott and Costello, and the list could go on and on.   

Jeremy Edwards is that rare writer who is at once a consummate professional and a gifted entertainer. His well-polished prose are unfailingly engaging; his style sometimes cerebral, yet always affably accessible. Charming, sexy and smart, wry and rollicking, intoxicating and, oh yes, funny as hell; The Pleasure Dial is enthusiastically recommended.

 

 

 

Review of short-story collections by I.J. Miller and Sharazade

Sex and Love by I.J. Miller

Transported: Erotic Travel Tales by Sharazade


“Show, don’t tell!”  What the hell does it mean anyway? The phrase has taken on the musty stench of dogma in the dark satanic mills of English pedagogy; repeated and echoed like a sacred mantra in junior-college lecture halls, extension night classes and continuing-education seminars wherever “creative writing” is supposedly being taught. “Show, don’t tell” we are told again and again, though seldom shown a reason why. In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Browne and King insist that “thanks to the influence of movies and television, readers today have become accustomed to seeing a story as a series of immediate scenes . . .

Narrative summary no longer engages readers the way it once did.   Since engagement is exactly what a fiction writer wants, you’re well-advised to rely heavily on immediate scenes to put your story across. You want to draw your readers into the world you’ve created, make them feel a part of it; make them forget where they are. And you can’t do this effectively if you tell your readers about your world secondhand. You have to take them there . . .” (2^nd edition, 2004, pp 8-9)

I suppose it’s true that once you’ve seen Star Wars Episode IV you can never again abide the pedestrian pacing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, let alone those long drawn-out stretches of silence in the genuinely silent vacuum of space. Still, have readers really turned into such slack-jawed, mush-brained, dull-witted, attention-deficit-suffering rubes over the last several generations? (I realize this may be the wrong question to ask in light of the seismic success of Dan Brown, Dean Koontz, Stephanie Meyer and E.L. James, not to mention ratings for Honey BooBoo or the latest Kardashian-infested “reality” show.)  Sorry, I don’t buy it. It’s bullshit. If we’re going to have a catch-all dictum for effective fiction-writing, it should be “Damn the dogmas! Engage the reader, anyone you can.”

And how does a writer go about engaging his readers? How does she effectively draw them into her world and keep them interested?  Clearly there is more than one way to do this, as demonstrated by two recent collections of well-crafted short erotic fiction from I.J. Miller and Sharazade.  

What I look for in any successful anthology is variation and contrast. Each story should be unique, with different characters speaking in their own distinctive voices, from varying points of view; diverse settings, shifting tempi, new and unfamiliar conflicts and struggles. Without some creative attempt at “mixing it up” a story collection can feel like a concert in which every song is played in the same key at the same tempo; each song may well be lovely in its own right, but eventually, the subconscious gets tired of hearing the same old key in the same ol’ same ol’ time, and goes into sleep mode.  The beauty of any anthology—or well-programmed MP3 player—is  the freedom users are afforded to dip in here and there, casually at any point, picking and choosing stories that look good like desserts at a smorgasbord, leaving whatever may not suit their tastes at the moment. If I have any complaint that may apply equally to Miller’s Sex and Love and Sharazade’s Transported, it is that both suffer from too little variety and too much same-ness of tone and timing.  This is in no way to say that there’s not a lot to like in both collections—both are warmly recommended—potential readers should simply be aware of what they’re getting into.

 Sex and Love

In the twelve short stories featured in Sex and Love, I.J. Miller tells a good deal more than he shows. Nonetheless, there is some very fine, imaginative writing here, and the author always trusts his readers’ intelligence—something increasingly rare and refreshingly welcome. One hears endearing echoes of John Cheever in the way Miller presents his characters’ backstories; the way their rather conventional aspirations are explored, the very ordinariness of their dreams. Cheever’s style may seem dated nowadays, his reliance on secondhand narrative as quaint as his ‘50s suburban-middle-class sensibilities; yet his insights still ring universally, poignantly true, and Miller has learned the older author’s lessons well. The most revealing human truths; the most compelling drama is often discovered within the commonplace; the most seemingly ordinary moments in our lives in which the deepest understanding is born. Throughout Sex and Love, Miller demonstrates a talent for probing psychological complexity, often revealing the pain and poetry of dysfunction in surprisingly entertaining ways.

Highlights of the collection include the first two stories, Lonely Man, a cautionary tale about what happens when we allow ourselves to be led by the “little brain, and Cell, perhaps the best of the lot, an imaginative depiction of a thoroughly modern seduction. Things We Shouldn’t Do takes us into the head of an assistant manager at a Caribbean resort, who accidentally discovers his wife’s dalliance with a co-worker, and finds his life infected with cancer-like doubt. Cyberslut is a fascinating look at identity and self-perception in the surreal world of on-line sex chat; The Bachelor, a Rashamon-like rehash of events that may have happened or might still occur after an encounter in a strip club; Tennis Pro, most Cheever-esque of the stories ends on a touching but deeply gratifying note, as does Husband and Wife an authentic reflection on how marriage changes a couple, with an entertaining, satisfyingly sexy ironic twist at its climax.

There’s much to commend here, even if the language isn’t always as fluently adept or finely finished as we might have wished. At times, it feels as if the same narrator has insinuated himself into each successive story, so there isn’t enough contrast to keep things as interesting as they could have been. Still, on balance, Sex and Love is an admirable achievement, offering abundant rewards to the serious reader.  Sample the stories at random, take your time, and enjoy.

[Note that the longest story in this collection (as well as its weakest link), Single Woman, has also been published separately under the title, Climbing the Stairs.] 

 

Transported

In Transported: Erotic Travel Tales, Sharazade employs a very different method for engaging her readers, namely, by bringing them directly into the stories as characters themselves.  Seven of the nine stories in this collection employ a “shared first-person” point of view, with the author referring to herself as “I” and to the reader as “you”.  This lends a certain immediacy to the proceedings; an added layer of intimacy and excitement that many readers will find compelling in small doses. (The convention does tend to get old after reading a few stories one after another.)  The author’s style is relaxed and informal, in an easy-going vernacular, engagingly explicit but seldom off-puttingly vulgar. Each story revolves around a different destination or mode of travel, lending a nice unified feel to the compilation as a whole.

I was particularly impressed with the second story. Flaws is a masterpiece of sensual-literary craftsmanship (or would that be craftswomanship?) almost perfectly structured, with a pleasing and powerful erotic payoff at its climax. The narrator, traveling by train to a job interview in Chicago, reflects, obsessively about her physical flaws; only to forget them during a torrid encounter in a narrow sleeping compartment. (Flaws employs a conventional first-person point of view.) This story is alone worth the price of a download.

Other highlights include Sales Pitch, in which a twentysomething sales clerk in an airport “travel store” enjoys a steamy encounter with a customer; Just Browsing, relating an anonymous—but all the more arousing—encounter in the art section of a bookstore. As the narrator peruses a book of shunga (classic Japanese erotic prints), a stranger looks over her shoulder, and soon the two of them begin to act out the stories depicted in the prints.  Shore Leave colorfully evokes an early-morning sexual encounter on a beach. Onsen tells the story of a lovers’ weekend at a hot spring hotel (onsen) in Japan; this story is considerably more detailed, and delves more emotional depth than any of the others. (I was happily reminded of a similar episode in Donna George Storey’s Amorous Woman, which is, in itself, quite a recommendation.)

Transported is a quick and easy-to-read collection that may be just the thing to while away a few dull hours on a long layover or sit up with through the night in coach on a train. (Be careful, though; you never know who might be looking over your shoulder!)  Readers in the mood for well-written, simple sexy escapism won’t be disappointed.

Review of "Rye" by Sam Rosenthal

Sam Rosenthal is very much a writer on a mission. Rye is an erotic novel of ideas with unapologetically didactic aspirations, at times as infuriating as it is deeply moving; luminous, disconcerting, playful and richly enlightened. With this, his second novel, Rosenthal has given us interesting issues to explore and extraordinary characters to care about.

 “We identify as genderqueer,” the narrator tells us, “GQ isn’t about who I fuck or my sexual orientation but rather my gender identification. Rye and I each see our genders existing somewhere along the gradation between male and female, somewhere outside the gender binary. Having a boi like Rye as my lover somehow feels right.

. . . Many people want there to be only one or maybe two choices . . . like male and female . . . but that’s a societal construct of the domination culture designed to reduce our options, limit our thoughts. . .

I like the way Rosenthal’s characters relate to one another; the feelings they inspire in each other; the very natural way they banter and play together—at least when they’re not obsessing about process.  It’s true. Smart people want the same thing as everybody else; we just insist on going on ad nauseum about meta-everything while getting it. Subsequently we complain that we are unhappy, other people think we are boring, and life is passing us by. Tracing chains of causality; working back to first principals; it’s the surest way I know of inducing a migraine while putting my party guests to sleep.  And so I was at first taken aback by the characters’ constant retreat into the metacognitive ether; it felt like bad narrative non-fiction or an overly preachy film documentary—the author makes little attempt to disguise his “evangelistic” motives.  But after a while, I relaxed and accepted that this was simply the way these people talk to each other—and what they say can be quite fascinating.  

“I’ve thought a lot about that word ‘queer,’” I say. I’m still getting comfortable with it. It was a slur when I was a kid.”

“But there’s been a change in how people use it.”

“I know, hear me out. My interests are queer in the original eighteen-forties sense of the word. ‘Strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint. Freakish, unusual. I’ve always been attracted to people outside the mainstream. But when you get to the more modern ‘effeminate, unmanly.’ Then I start to bristle. Why do things have to be classified as manly or unmanly? You know there’s this Buddhist monk named Thrugpa, I really love his writing. He says ‘true reality is hidden by the labels we use. Things are, and then our mind tells us about them.’ Right! Can’t things just be? I’m just a guy. . .

This feels good. What does it mean? What does it matter? Why do we need to label things? Why? I was raised to think in classifications. Deliniations, Categories. Divisions.What went where and what wasn’t allowed to go where. Not just about sexuality, but about how to interact with the world. About the traits boys needed to hide and traits we were meant to emphasize. What would the neighbors say? I learned it is correct to be tough and insensitive, and never show you really care. Or cry. Or that you miss your pop. Or that there are things that turn you on that some unspecified ‘they’ say should not. I’m not afraid of getting fucky with men. I’m afraid of how the world will judge me if it finds out I like getting fucky with men . . .  I like being genderqueer. It’s vague. I wish I wasn’t concerned with definitions. No labels. Life would be easier . . .

Rosenthal’s prose is serviceable; not great or exceptional, and might, in spots, have benefitted from a more aggressive (or, at least, a less solicitous) editorial hand. The book is over-long, inflated by too much that is simply beside the point. The author has an annoying habit in narrative passages of remarking unnecessary detail—material that should have hit the cutting room floor on a first or second pass—dallying with banal arcana like a third-rate juvenile diarist. Especially in the novel’s second half, some of the sex scenes have the tired, warmed-over feel of superfluous reprise. The constant exchange of clichéd text messages does very little to advance the story or deepen our understanding of the characters, and becomes increasingly boring as the book wears on. Some artful narrative compression might have helped keep things focused—did we really need to hear about how Rye slept on the train from New York to Washington, and then slept some more on the return trip? Better self-editing could have enhanced word-flow; chopping redundant scenes could have given some portrayals a less artificial feel along with much greater emotional impact.

Readers who want to explore this world should naturally check their inhibitions at the door, along with any inflexibly prejudiced notions of what is and isn’t sexy. (Personally, I try to keep an open mind, especially when reviewing; I don’t judge anybody for their particular kinks, even if I am viscerally repulsed by some types of ritual humiliation, certain portrayals of group rape play, and pretty much anything involving Golden Showers or scat.)  Of course, we all bring our own personal set of hard and soft limits to any story we peruse; one’s earth-rending turn-on may well be another’s gorge-rising gross-out; the question is; do we allow our hang-ups to get in the way of an otherwise interesting and valuable learning experience? The irony is that many of those who would most benefit from the ideas presented in Rye will probably never read it, or stop reading at the first foray beyond their narrow comfort zones. More’s the pity.

While Rye certainly has its flaws—what book doesn’t?—it is a work of unique vision; the product of a serious passion; one of those unusual efforts that genuinely transcends the sum of its parts. Well worth a download.

 

 

 

 

Review of Short Stories by E.B. Jones and Kathryn O’Halloran

For me, personally, one of the great rewards of running a serious review site for erotica is the opportunity to “discover” and introduce talented new writers to the wider community. I’m proud to have given early notice to such exceptional voices as Elizabeta Brooke, Yasmine Jones, and V. Moore. And now, it seems, I can add yet another name to this distinguished list; E.B. Jones. Her short stories, The Composition Book and  24 Frames per Second show enormous promise, and are well worth the curious reader’s time.

Kathryn O’Halloran may be better known to readers, especially in her native Australia, but for those who have yet to find any of this gaudily gifted writer’s jewel-like erotic short stories, consider the reviews below an emphatic wake-up call. O’Halloran’s collection, appropriately enough entitled Desire, along with her superbly executed short story, Photos, are marvels of the genre.  

Enjoy! TAS

 

E.B. Jones: The Composition Book and 24 Frames per Second

“Wise” is not a term one often associates with erotic fiction. The word itself has become something of a crutch in highbrow blurb writing (“wonderful, witty and wise . . .” “as wise as it is nebulous”); a platitude of first resort for easily dazzled interns and bubble-headed network-radio-affiliate reviewers with delusions of far-reaching influence.  I suspect Marilynne “Housekeeping” Robinson could make a handsome side income by demanding an escalator clause in her next contract; say, an extra thousand bucks or two for every time some calf-eyed sycophant uses “the w word” to fête yet another of those tediously plotless, interminably rambling, puritanically pretentious, potentially-Pulitzer-Prize-winning  exercises in literary water torture.  

Wisdom where sex is concerned may well have its place, but not, we generally think, in stories designed to pique prurient interest, or entertain by way of erotic evocation. The prospect seems deadly dull—a mood-killer if there ever was one. And yet, if wisdom is that critical mass of insight gained through acute observation, no word is more appropriately applied to the finest works of erotica, a genre, which, at its literate best, delves the human condition—the secrets of our inner lives—with an astute intimacy that most “respectable” literary authors could only envy.  Robinson, who seems to have assumed the mantle of “professional wise woman” of late, might well learn a thing or two about the honest portrayal of common everyday life, human passion, and elegant sentence structure from E.B. Jones, a promising new author of erotic literary fiction.

 “Night is when I allow myself to become someone else . . .” the narrator of Jones’ The Composition Book tells us:

My dreams take me to dark places. I never know where I’ll end up when I close my eyes. I have dreams so lucid that I feel compelled to write them down in a secret journal. Who else vividly remembers their dreams? Mine haunt me during the day. I sometimes ask myself if maybe I’m actually living outside my own body during these nighttime intervals. I feel guilt over the fantasies that I have. I know my husband is sleeping upstairs, exhausted from hauling plywood and pounding nails with his crew. And yet my thoughts sometimes betray him in a way that I could never share. A subtle wedge between us. He would understand that. With each excursion of my mind I drive it deeper.

Note the short, graceful, telegraphic sentences, each on its own a mere thread. And yet, skillfully woven together, these small segments collectively form a supple matrix of expression, drawing us inexorably into the author’s imagination, practically unawares. The structure is deceptively simple, and yet, the needs of story are supplied; character, conflict (albeit internal here); some obstacle to be overcome in the pursuit of a desire. It all works—and quite beautifully at that.

Where The Composition Book is about escape from workaday life through unbidden sexual fantasy; 24 Frames per Second  drops us into an arid landscape of grueling realism. The story is at once wistful, deeply introspective, and grittily nostalgic. The narrator recalls a dusty road trip through the American southwest, an unconsummated relationship, and a present life, depressingly incomplete in retrospect. The story has a decidedly  Hemmingway-esque feel to it; the language is spare but abundantly evocative, its artful economy reminding us that in literature as well as in life, the essence of cool lies in few words, expressing much while saying little.

Exquisitely written, acutely observed, thoughtful, and, yes, wise; “great things” don’t always have to be “big things”, as these two, lovely little stories so aptly prove. With them, E.B. Jones establishes herself as one of the brightest newcomers to the indie literotica scene, and gives us hope for still more great things to come.

 

Kathryn O’Halloran: Desire  (short story collection) and Photos: An Erotic Short Story

The first impression one gets on entry into the erotic word-scape of Kathryn O’Halloran’s Desire, is of the sheer rhythmic vibrancy of her prose, the frenetic onomatopoeic energy informing structure even as it drives language. We feel it in the title story, as we spy on strangers making love in time to the incessant motion of a train; the herky-jerky momentum of acceleration and sex; the braking wheels squealing as lovers stifle their cries, metal against metal, a crackling burst of ozone, and the electric sparks of orgasm. The narrator’s memories of the recent past are visited, briefly, like the stops along the railroad line. In another tale, O’Halloran employs the manic motion of a rollercoaster at an amusement park to underscore the emotional struggles of her characters; translating the clack and whine of flanged wheels and groaning track into the roaring, full-throated cadences of erotic release.

Yet, there’s more than mere quasi-poetic gimmickry to this writing. Reading through the five wonderful short stories in this collection reveals a multi-faceted talent; from the structural tour de force of the title story, to the delicate, jewel-like impressionism of I Always Cry in the Rain:

From the bar he can watch her on the balcony. She perched against a table, the lights of the city rooftops behind her. She dresses like a wayward fifties bridesmaid—in red with a froth of petticoats swirling around her legs, a crimson rose punctuating her hair.

Outside the heat is like syrup, thick and heavy. He’ll stay indoors.

Inside is white and clean and crisp. Inside, everything floats on the surface.

He tries to ignore her, but she buzzes like an exotic insect at the edge of his vision. She is never totally still. He doesn’t need to be close to her to know: her teeth are stained with red wine, her fingernails tap to a tuneless song in her head; and she makes proclamations, swathing and caustic, and when she’s challenged her eyes gleam like a chastised child’s.  She turns through people.

Marvelous! Desire is not to be missed.

 

 

Somewhat lighter fare, Photos: An Erotic Short Story is a bit of a romp, set in a contemporary office. A young cubicle drone is delighted to find a strange trail of photographic “bread crumbs”, pieces of an intriguingly sexy puzzle.

It was a picture of a foot. Justin had never thought about feet before. They were just there at the end of your legs. This foot, though—the voluptuous arch cried out for a tongue around its fleshy curve, for a tongue working its way to that perfect cleavage between the big toe and its neighbor, slipping into that forbidden slit.

Again, O’Halloran’s instinctive command of rhythm shines through in a brilliantly fecund outpouring of words:

Suddenly her kisses become more urgent. She presses into him, fucking his mouth with her tongue. The fuzz of her woolen jumper sweeps against his skin, making his hair stand on edge. She overwhelms him, citrus-scented, whispering, taunting, velvet fingered, tickling, stroking, unbuttoning, peeling him bare, tingling, tongue flicking, warm bodied, cold handed, mint breathed, hard lipped, hot mouthed, musky, caressing, teasing, crushing, red-hot-flashes woman.

Here is writing that feels like a force of nature. O’Halloran is one of the best young erotic writers to come along in quite some time. She is a writer to watch, and, most certainly, a writer to read! 

Review of Donna George Storey's "Amorous Woman"

Reading Donna George Storey’s Amorous Woman is sheer unalloyed delight.  Intelligent, and yet highly accessible, the style is relaxed but never flip, the language fluent and flowing. Taking the form of an erotic memoir cum novel of education, part travelogue, part romance, this is a thoughtful reflection on the subtle beauty and sublime intricacy of one of the most fascinating cultures on earth.

“Japan was a perfect place for a cowardly Western rebel,” Storey’s narrator, Lydia, tells us, “You could break a dozen rules of etiquette in a day and get that bad-boy frisson without anyone really giving a damn, because the Japanese were expecting you to get it wrong anyway.” 

And Storey knows what she’s writing about, having spent some years living and working in Japan.  Now, she has given her readers a decidedly magnificent piece of fiction in which the authenticity of experience shines through, lifting Amorous Woman far above so many of those blandly “colorful” international romance stories with their cookie-cutter characters going through the same universal motions against some sketchily researched, vaguely imagined “exotic” background.

And so I told him how living in Japan will give him a leisure no mere tourist has to know the rhythms of the place, a land of tiny poems. In autumn he’d see the persimmons glowing like huge, orange jewels on their bare branches, then winter’s dusting of snow on blue tile roofs. He’d learn why the old erotic pictures are called ‘spring prints’—because in that season the air is as soft as a lover’s whisper—and he’d sigh at the perfect coolness of iced barley tea slipping down his throat on a wilting summer afternoon. As the years passed, he would become part of it. The neighbors would stop staring and start to nod a greeting, and one day the tiny old lady in the gray kimono at the snack stand would wrap up his regular order of red-beaned-rice-balls before a word was spoken, and she’d flash him that first gold-toothed smile, and he’d be happy all day. It’s like someone’s given you a whole other life, I told him, an extra life to live for a while.

In this case, blonde, blue-eyed gaijin, Lydia is the exotic element of the story. Not exactly an innocent abroad, and certainly not an innocent broad; intellectually curious, sexually voracious, always craving new experience, she comes to Japan as an instructor of English conversation, her clientele mostly business and professional men. There is a certain irony in being employed to teach the niceties of Western etiquette in a society so richly—some might say severely—steeped in ritual; layer upon layer of prescribed complexity, which few outsiders ever manage to penetrate. And, especially where sex is concerned, the American faces a bewildering set of seemingly contradictory taboos and proscriptions that make the simple black-and-white dualism of the West seem positively laid-back.  Through Lydia, we explore this “floating world”, a kind of erotic parallel universe, “the neon-lit world of dreams and desire”.  

If I have any complaints, it may be that Amorous Woman is somewhat over-long. There is, perhaps, too much time spent on Lydia’s erotic coming-of-age at home in the States, which is not wholly essential as backstory. This is a common pitfall of memoir form, in which there is often a nagging personal temptation to include “everything”.  But for all that is intriguing and inspired here, everything is not equally interesting, and the pacing might well have benefitted from a few strategic cuts. Still, this is in no way to denigrate what is in its totality a superb literary-erotic achievement.  

Originally published in 2007, and only recently released in e-book form, Amorous Woman is enthusiastically recommended in either format.