Happy Holidays - and a New Story!

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Review: Naughty or Nice by Jessie Logan

This is a sizzling little collection of stories that straddles the line between romantic erotica and erotic romance. Every tale in the bunch delivers a flame-broiled, mouth-watering feast of sensuality wrapped in cunningly conceived plot, with the overall balance between those two elements tipped faintly toward the heart or head in some cases ... and toward the more southerly organs in others.

Throughout the volume, author Jessie Logan spins up enticing situations, distinctive characters, and huge heapings of contagious lust, then brings things to both kinds of satisfying climax. For me, the most enjoyable three were the title story and two Santa-themed tales, "Just Like Santa," and "Secret Santa." All three had excellent story payoff without sacrificing any libidinous heat.

Two other stories intrigued me for more cerebral reasons. "Home For Christmas" receives most of its drive from a raw appreciation of masculinity that registered with me abstractly but not instinctually. "The Mysteries of Faith," meanwhile, targets the bond between lifelong female friends in a way that I as a man may be under-equipped to respond to. I'd be really interested to know whether these two stories resonate more powerfully with female readers than they did with me.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" struck me as just a bit of good, clean (dirty) fun, perhaps the most straightforward and least ambitious in storytelling terms but very pure in its eroticism as a result.

Overall: if you're looking for some holiday-themed sauciness, check this one out. Logan definitely has the writing chops to deliver.

Naughty or Nice
by Jessie Logan
Genre: Erotic Romance
Age category: Adult
Release Date: November 5, 2016

Satisfy your cravings with these 6 flirty, dirty, and decadently more-ish short Holiday treats.

Naughty or Nice (M/F)
When twelve days of Christmas giving doesn't help Lily gain her co-worker's attention, maybe an outrageously sexy gift will.

Just Like Santa (F/F)
A school teacher finds some scandalous holiday satisfaction with her student's aunt and her willing friends.

Baby, It's Cold Outside (M/F)
Stranded in a blizzard with a younger man, what's a red-blooded woman to do except turn up the heat?

Home For Christmas (M/F)
A poignant reunion between husband and wife with a surprise in store...

The Mysteries of Faith (F/F)
What happens when your best friend marries the man of her dreams, when only days ago she was in your bed?

Secret Santa (M/F)
Sophie's Secret Santa gift has some unexpected and exciting consequences ... the type of delicious consequences that'd see a girl permanently on Santa's naughty list.

You can find Naughty or Nice on Goodreads

You can buy Naughty or Nice here:
- Amazon
- Amazon UK
This book is in Kindle Unlimited

About the Author:
Jessie Logan is the pen name of a USA Today bestselling romance author. She adores writing dirty, flirty stories with a touch of humor and heart. Romance is her way to blow off steam and escape for a little while with a scorching-hot hero.

You can find and contact Jessie here:
- Website
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Goodreads
- Amazon
- Newsletter

Big Flipping Deal Winners!

The Big Flipping Deal Rafflecopter giveaway is now a done deal! Nicole O. is the grand prize winner who scores copies of all four of my books in print, and runners-up Meredith M. and Esperanza G. each receive Big Flipping Deal in paperback. Congratulations to the winners and many thanks to all who entered!

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Today's Star Trek Heroine: Doctor Helen Noel

I know I said no more Trek posts for a while ... but I'm kind of wishing I was on another planet right now. So ...

This morning, I watched "Dagger of the Mind" -- a pretty damn good episode with a pretty terrific female guest star.

The episode opens with the Enterprise orbiting a penal colony (no puns about that, I promise), to which they beam down some supplies and from which they beam up a box sized suspiciously like it was intended to hold an escaping prisoner. With our intrepid transporter-room technician immersed in some sort of technical check that requires his full attention to be focused on the back wall, the lid of the box opens and out pops a sweaty, wild-eyed fellow who proceeds to sneak up on the tech, incapacitate him, and take his uniform. Long story short, it turns out this isn't a prisoner, but an assistant of the psychiatrist who runs the penal colony (still no puns, trust me). Once he's captured, communications with the psychiatrist, Dr. Adams, reveal that the assistant was experimenting with a mental therapy device and drove himself crazy.

Kirk and Dr. McCoy get in a bit of a tiff about whether there's something suspicious going on, with Kirk expressing complete faith in the famous Dr. Adams. But Bones pulls some bureaucratic shenanigans that force Kirk's hand, and the captain concedes that he's got to investigate. He asks McCoy to assign someone from the medical staff to help him, someone with psychiatric experience.

And now we return to the transporter room, where Kirk walks in with Spock and does a double-take upon seeing who it is that Bones has assigned him. "Oh, great," I'm thinking, "here's where it surprises Kirk that his requested psychiatrist is a woman. Gasp! A woman doctor? Thank you, 1966."

But the first words out of Dr. Helen Noel's mouth are, "Doctor Helen Noel, Captain. We've met. Don't you remember the science lab Christmas party?" And it quickly becomes obvious through the dialogue that not only is Kirk aware that women can be doctors, but that his double-take was one of dismay because he somehow embarrassed himself at that Christmas party. Score one for Helen Noel, who looks pleased with herself over the captain's discomfiture.

Once on the planet, Dr. Noel does a bit of sensitive-female-psychiatrist shilly-shallying along the lines of, "Surely, you don't think Dr. Adams could be doing anything troublesome, Captain." But Kirk himself had done the same thing in response to McCoy's suspicions, so she can hardly be blamed.

And then, of course, the shit starts to go down.

And when the shit goes down, the ever-capable Captain Kirk heroically ... gets himself semi-brainwashed and imprisoned. Still, before they take him for the full "neural neutraliser" treatment, he orders Helen into the air-conditioning ducts with a mission to find and disable the force field that keeps the Enterprise from beaming anyone down to help. Despite admittedly having no training in force-field electronics -- which Kirk assures her are absolutely deadly if you make one false move -- Dr. Noel gamely hops into the ducts, follows them to the maintenance area, and gets to work.

Naturally, a guard finds her and pulls her away from the machinery, throwing her to the ground where she appears helpless.

Except that the helplessness is an act, meant to lure the guard in close so that she can kick him with both feet into the power junction, frying both it and him. Then she grabs up his fallen phaser and high-tails it back into the vents with the obvious intention of finding and rescuing Kirk.

Objectifying, impractical miniskirt uniform or not, this woman kicks ass. Kirk comes up with the plan and has to endure Dr. Adams' mind-control torture machine, but Dr. Noel takes on all the physical danger and does all the heavy lifting, never once faltering or shrinking from her task. Several times, she debates Kirk as an equal, and in every scene reliant on male-female dynamics, she comes out on top rather than succumbing to Kirk's usual Casanova charm.

Oh, hell ... tee-hee! Penal colony!

Dammit.

Big Flipping Deal ... Now Available on Kindle and in Print!

I've had a couple of bumps along the way, but Big Flipping Deal is now live on Amazon! And for those who like their books to have concrete physical reality, print copies can be found on Createspace!

If you need your appetite whetted, here's a little taste ...

Lindsey had the tiramisu, and I had the dark-chocolate-marbled cheesecake, and before she’d made it three bites in, she pointed her fork at her dessert and said, “Damn, we should have had Gus and Wendy order theirs before they left so we could double up. Is your cheesecake as good as this is?”

“You want to try it?” I asked, cutting a bite loose with my fork and holding it her direction. She glanced around, then said, “Sure.”

Parting those glossy red lips, she leaned slightly forward, and I raised the fork, edged it carefully nearer and nearer her mouth until she opened wide and let the bite pass her teeth – her eyes on mine the whole time. Closing, she slid her mouth back off the fork and chewed.

“Mmm,” she said, nodding and creasing her eyebrows. “Mm, yeah, that’s good. I don’t know if it’s as good as mine, but I admit I have a big coffee bias.”

I waited to see if she would offer me a bite in exchange. Instead, she put her cheek in one palm, elbow on the table, regarding me.

“Nick,” she said, “when Sam told me you were straight earlier, I shrugged and said we were just friends, so I didn’t know why it mattered. You know what he told me?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘That’s not how I heard it.’ What do you think he meant by that, Nick?”

With my face rapidly heating up, I decided to just go with the truth. “The other day, he was pestering me to come tonight, and he tried to bait the hook by telling me about all the hot bridesmaids. So I said something about having someone I was already interested in. I thought it might get him to stop bugging me.”

“That’s all?” she asked, cheek still resting on her hand.

“That’s all,” I said. Her lower lip moved in a way I couldn’t quite read. So I went on. “I mean, that’s the only reason I told him. I don’t mean it wasn’t true.”

Rush right over to Amazon to check out the rest!

Big Flipping Deal Cover Reveal!

Here it is! In glorious full color! The cover for my imminently impending new release, Big Flipping Deal!

What's it all about?

When the sweet little old lady down the road dies and leaves Nick half ownership of her house, he really has no idea what he’s getting into. His co-owner, Lindsey, gives every appearance of being Nick’s dream girl ... smart, talented, funny, and drop-dead gorgeous.

But Lindsey has a secret.

And when Nick finds out, his fantasies of dream-girl romance get turned upside-down.

He’s already signed on to remodel the house with Lindsey and flip it for a big profit. They’re going to be in constant, almost daily contact. She’s absolutely perfect in every way but one. Only that one is a doozy.

Will Nick be able to make things work with a woman whose equipment isn’t what he expected?

Will Lindsey open up after a lifetime of misunderstandings and bigotry?

Is this house flip headed for a happy ending ... or a wrecking ball?

Big Flipping Deal is a highly charged erotic romance full of humor, heart, and the opening of minds. The story is intended for adult audiences only.

You can find Big Flipping Deal on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32730933-big- flipping-deal

There's also a Rafflecopter giveaway! Win copies of all of my books! Real, hold-in-your-hands ones!


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And if you're seeing info about this all over the blog-o-sphere, it's thanks to the wonderful and clever Lola at

Free Erotica! Big Flipping Deal Cover Reveal!

Monday is the big cover reveal day for Big Flipping Deal, and to coincide with the event, I've set up a Rafflecopter giveaway!

You could win print editions of all four of my books if you hit the grand prize, or a hard copy of Big Flipping Deal if you're a runner-up!

Check back Monday!

Mudd's Women: One Last Star Trek Review (at least for now!)

I swear I'm not turning this into a Star Trek blog. Just one more Trek entry and I'll get back to other topics, promise.

When last we left our intrepid twenty-first century feminist, Ian Saul Whitcomb, he'd gone through five episodes of the original Star Trek and been dismayed by its paternalism toward women. Dauntingly, he knew the next episode he faced would be "Mudd's Women," a tale of mail-order brides gussied-up by a beauty-inducing drug and taken to a mining colony as goods of commerce. Would the show's woefully dated attitudes make this the most uncomfortable episode yet?

Surprisingly, and to my great relief, no. In fact, the episode stood in stark contrast to its predecessors as the first genuine example of Star Trek as morality play, commenting on the social order of its time and suggesting that things ought to change.

(At this point, I'll give an obligatory spoiler warning, in case you haven't ever in the last fifty years watched this episode ...)

Where previous installments of the series showed the male officers of the Enterprise occasionally comparing notes on the attractiveness of female crew members, the Venus Drug of "Mudd's Women" turns them into gawking idiots, rendered incompetent by their baser instincts. Captain Kirk largely resists -- by taking his awareness of the women's hypnotic effect and making a determined effort to treat them like people and maintain his professionalism. When one of the women, Eve McHuron, complains about the eyes of all the crewmen following her, Kirk apologizes, saying, "They're not usually like that."

So despite the archaic plot device of mail-order marriage (and numerous "ooh-la-la" musical cues as the women slink and sway around), the episode carries a clear anti-ogling message throughout.

More importantly, in the climactic scenes, Eve McHuron chooses certain death over continuing to play the role society has foisted on her. She survives, demonstrating in the process a genuine character and intelligence that sets Kirk up to deliver the episode's crowning message: that there's only one kind of person -- "You either believe in yourself, or you don't."

Finally, six episodes in, I've found the Star Trek that forcefully helped make me the person I am today.

Ahead, warp factor one.

Tonight on Star Trek ...

Yikes!

So, I remembered thinking "The Enemy Within" was kind of dumb from the last time I watched it, probably a good 10 years ago or more. It's the one where they glued some fake horns on a Pomeranian to make an alien critter for a transporter accident that splits creatures into good and evil twins. (The transporter also later renders some thermal heating units useless by splitting them in two, which maybe explains why the units are both "thermal" and "heating," although the consequence that neither a good nor an evil thermal heating unit would be functional is beyond my comprehension.)

What I didn't remember was the super-creepy attempted rape of Yeoman Janice Rand by Evil Kirk. Though scene made me pretty darn uncomfortable right from its opening moments, I told myself it could be excused as an entirely logical consequence of the episode's concept, and handled correctly would constitute legitimate drama. And the scene itself did play out in a more or less appropriate fashion -- clearly portraying Evil Kirk's behavior as horrific and very traumatic for Yeoman Rand, though she escapes before Evil Kirk takes things very far.

But then ...

At the end of the episode ...

Mister Spock kids Yeoman Rand about it.

I shit you not.

Now, this too could be viewed as logical within the context of the show, given Spock's detached curiosity about human emotions and his calculated analysis that Kirk's hostile, aggressive side is intrinsically necessary for his success as a commander. But the logic goes out the window after that point, because instead of being hurt or appalled, Yeoman Rand responds to the joke as if it's just another of Spock's ironic "oh, you humans" jibes.

And yet, while my jaw absolutely dropped that anyone would consider that joke okay, I came away from the episode with a sense of the positive.

All too often, I look around at the world and think, Good lord. We're getting nowhere. In fact, if anything, things are getting worse and worse. But the fact of the matter is, fifty years ago, a television show could portray the near rape of a female character as an acceptable springboard for humor -- and still be the most forward-looking thing on TV.

We are getting somewhere. Maybe not as fast as we should maybe not at warp speed, but we're making progress.

Cross your fingers for me, though. The next episode in the sequence is "Mudd's Women," and I see great potential for it to go wildly awry in comparison to my childhood memories of it ...

Where No Man Had Gone Before

Watching the original Star Trek show as a 21st-century feminist provides a very weird experience.

I got the whole series on Blu-Ray a while back, watched a couple of episodes, then got busy doing other things. Eventually, nagged by guilt at abandoning this iconic part of my childhood, I got the discs back out and started up again.

Three episodes in, I find my head regularly shaking in disbelief.

Everybody who knows anything about Star Trek understands its position as a groundbreaking work of diversity. Even amidst the social upheaval of the 1960s, it blew people's minds to see women working alongside men as equals in an environment where individuals of all races mixed freely without comment. This just didn't happen prior to Trek. Lieutenant Uhura famously inspired people like Mae Jemison and Whoopi Goldberg to pursue their dreams as though there were no longer any boundaries. Personally, I'm 100% sure that my feelings about diversity benefited as much or more from watching Star Trek every day after school as from having parents who'd taken part in the civil rights marches.

But when you watch it ... what an amazingly paternalistic and objectifying show!

Now, to give credit where credit is due, Gene Roddenberry and his collaborators did their best in two different pilots to dress the female crew members in the same shirt-and-slacks uniform worn by the men. The miniskirts came in after that as a concession to the fashion sensibilities of the times.

Nonetheless, despite frequent talk about equality, women are a distinct minority aboard the Enterprise and occupy exclusively "soft" or subservient positions -- nurse, communications officer, psychiatrist, personal assistant to the captain. Command and technical positions remain exclusively the province of men. (Roddenberry tried to make the second-in-command female in the original pilot, but even then, the character was criticized by others as being cold and aloof -- something that never would have happened to a human male first officer.)

With despairing frequency, these "equal" Star Fleet officers wilt in the face of danger and must be consoled or comforted by the men. When they leave the room, it becomes fair game for their male crewmates (and commanding officers!) to raise eyebrows and discuss their looks. If Charlie X (brought up by aliens with no understanding of human society) behaves inappropriately toward Yeoman Janice Rand, she can go so far as to tell him he shouldn't do that -- but she has to demur on explaining why he shouldn't, referring Charlie to Captain Kirk rather than schooling the miscreant herself.

Little grade-school Ian may very well have been steered toward feminism at least in part by Charlie X getting lectured on the impropriety of a man slapping a lady's bottom. But grown-up Ian can only blink and mutter at the implication that it's not a woman's role to instruct a male on basic human decency.

Don't get me wrong ... I still love the show, for all its kitsch and melodrama. Its heart is certainly in the right place, and it attempted to make statements in territories where the later shows often played things far too safe. And without its brave explorations, we very likely wouldn't be as far along as we are today.

But yeowtch! You can certainly see, watching it, why sci-fi nerds of a certain age often think of themselves as non-sexist while railing against the ascendancy of female characters like Rey in the new Star Wars.

Their childhood heroes, their template for admirable diversity, just never went there.

Coming Soon ... a Big Flipping Deal Cover Reveal for My Next Book!

Thanks to the delightful and industrious Lola at Lola's Blog Tours, I'm hoping to set the Internet ablaze with the upcoming cover reveal for my impending publication of Big Flipping Deal.

Anyone interested in signing up, please hurry over and click the magic button at:

http://www.lolasblogtours.net/cover-reveal-big-flipping-deal-by-ian-saul-whitcomb/

Thank you, thank you!

Review: Erotic Whispers by M.S. Tarot

To start with, I'll say that this book is worth getting for "The Bag Snatchers" and "A Grim Tribute" all by themselves. The latter horrified me as much as any story I've read in years, and the former showcases author M.S. Tarot's fiendish imagination at its peak.

The six tales herein span the gamut from brutal tales of vengeance to erotic hauntings to tumbling descents into madness and monsters. Tarot stays within the broad category of erotic horror, but won't otherwise sit still or be shut into any one box -- delving now into history for source material and next into fairy tales, juggling cyber-horror with seductive hauntings, sympathetic protagonists and narrators consumed with narcissism.

This is not experimental, avant garde fiction, but the author likes to take chances and defy convention. It didn't always work for me -- one tale featured a shifting narrative framework that jarred my immersion in the story and forced me to repeatedly regain my inertia. When it pays off, though, it pays off phenomenally.

Running through the entire collection is a sometimes-subtle, sometimes overt dance with ambiguity. The main thrust of each plot almost always flows clearly and coherently. But little questions of interpretation peek out here and there, because this is an author who wants his readers involved in the storytelling, so that their imaginations have room to explore along with his. One story in particular (I won't say which one) is either a Lovecraftian tale of body horror or a cunning villain's fully real-world psychological manipulation of unwitting victims. The stories often grow more complex the more you think about them, like puzzle boxes with a treasure of terror hidden away at the center once opened.

If you've an evening to spare this Halloween season, you could do much worse than to spend it reading Erotic Shivers.

Review: The Serpent's Kiss by Cyrano Johnson

There's a promise in the summary for this book of "White women being dominated by multiple Black men," and it made me nervous on multiple levels. Domination's very hit-or-miss for me, and something about the capitalization of "White" and "Black" felt vulgar. But a friend had highly recommended the story, so I decided to at least make a stab at it and try to reserve judgment.

By the end of the introduction, that reservation had fled: I knew I'd be finishing the book, and probably in just a couple of sittings.

It didn't take half a page to recognize Cyrano Johnson as a tremendously skilled author -- his use of language is simultaneously accessible and archaic, whimsical and high-minded, breezy and intricately layered. He juggles description, implication, foreshadowing, and tone with an effortless, sometimes coy grace. In the space of the introduction, preface, and first chapter, he presents three distinct narrators, bound together by the diction and mannerly prose of the Victorian setting yet each unique in style and character. Plot hooks and the allure of promised mysteries abound.

Given the intensity of engagement that the book's opening brought on, I kept expecting it to falter or subside into something more pedestrian. It's a work of erotica, so at the very least I figured that the sex scenes would lower things to a blunter, less ambitious level.

But no.

Unlike most erotica, this book is not a story in which sex is simply a natural part of the plot -- it's a story in which the sex is integral to the author's larger purpose. Don't let the word "purpose" scare you off; "The Serpent's Kiss" first and foremost delivers ripping good entertainment. But Johnson is always picking and picking at a deeper meaning, one that couldn't be brought out through any other means than the steamy, sometimes nefarious perversions that enfold Evie Stone as she ventures deeper and deeper into the shadows of Verderosa.

Hugely fun, impeccably crafted, literate without being stuffy, and devilishly, devilishly sensual, "The Serpent's Kiss" delivered on all levels for me, and at the end left me paging back and forth to more fully appreciate the passages that had washed over me in a rush on my initial reading. The book is a delight on the surface and even better as one pierces its underlying strata.

I expect to snatch up whatever Johnson writes next like a hawk.

Michelle Obama in New Hampshire

Although feminism is an inherently political stance, I don't generally consider this blog a place to address politics in a partisan, party-oriented mode.  That said, First Lady Michelle Obama's recent speech in New Hampshire struck me as important and powerful regardless of its connection to a particular political campaign. If you're sympathetic at all to my various feminism-related posts, you should definitely give it a watch. (If you're not sympathetic, you should give it a watch too. It's never too late to open one's mind.)

Obsessed With My Positions In Life ...

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Free and Cheap Books! Just a Few Hours Longer!

Dang it! I'm really late making this announcement here, but to celebrate the release of Contrast, I put Gloria's Daughter in free giveaway mode, and reduced the price of Sexpossessed to just 99 cents!

Hurry on over and pick them up while there's still time!

Contrast Arrives!

Well, it's taken me ages to revise it, format it, and create a cover, but as of tomorrow, Contrast is officially available for Kindle and for purchase in hardcopy form!

I'm pretty proud of this story ... it hung onto the all-time number-one spot on Literotica's best-rated Interracial Romance toplist for a good chunk of last year, and it came within a hair's breadth of winning the Readers Choice Award in its category. Despite being almost entirely sex scenes, it's always gotten raves on the quality of the storytelling, dialogue, and characters.

Check it out if you haven't already read it ... and if you have already read it, please go and leave a review even if you don't buy a copy. I'll be eternally grateful!

My Review of She Dies at the End by A.M. Manay

Kept me up way past my bedtime!

This book is about twice as long as anything I've read in months, yet I still found it an extremely quick read. It's a page-turner that repeatedly kept me up later than I wanted, intending to read "just one more chapter," only to find I had to read the next, and the next, and the next. Author A.M. Manay understands how to put together compelling and original situations that seize the reader tight, balancing mysteries and revelations with a keen precision that maintains a constant sense of wonder and discovery.

Our heroine, November Snow, is a young psychic whose gifts have twisted her already-bleak life into an existence of desperate isolation and nightmare. For eighteen years, she has seen her own death in dreams -- and the lives and deaths of almost everyone around her. Plagued by extrasensory flashes she can't control, she lives as reclusively as possible, to insulate herself from constant visions. But her talent is also her only means of support, and she must put herself through torment every day giving readings from her tent in a traveling carnival.

All of this changes whipcrack fast one evening when the people she has seen burying her a thousand times finally appear at the entrance to her tent. At once, she knows her death is even nearer than she expected -- and yet she also feels a tremendous liberation: she no longer has to wait in dread for the moment that begins her end.

And she is no longer the only figure with supernatural abilities in her life, for the arrival of the strangers plunges her into a hidden world of faeries, vampires, and werewolves she had never before imagined. Forces beyond her understanding want to capture her, to bind and use her power. And the certainty of dying young no longer reins as the greatest thing she has to fear. What's most remarkable about the book is November's ability to continuously surprise us and those around her. A life of pain and darkness and terror has equipped her uniquely to accept the sudden alteration of reality, and has lent her a strength of character and a stubborn, determined core of hope that helps her again and again to bear the unbearable and shake off things that would paralyze most ordinary people.

"She Dies at the End" glows with the vulnerable brightness of its protagonist and sparkles with a cast of vivid, complex characters. It spins a web of ancient enmities and epic clandestine war, builds a shadow world beneath our own, and makes us root for its heroine on every page and through every danger.

Contrast Cover Reveal!

Well, mostly. It's not quite finished, but this is the general idea.

The interior is almost entirely formatted, so I'll probably be ready to order my proof copy from Createspace within the next week, aiming for a release date somewhere near the end of the month.

It's long overdue, considering I finished the last edit nearly a year ago!

Hopefully I'll get Big Flipping Deal and The Inn packaged up a lot quicker than that ...

My Review of Out: Five Erotic Stories of Gay Self-Discovery

Phenomenal Storytelling

I was offered the opportunity to review this before its official release, and let me tell you, I jumped on it. It's not that I'm a particular a fan of gay male erotica ... like most guys of my generation, I was unfairly socialized to be creeped out by homosexuality. And while I'm enlightened enough now that I'd definitely do 1993 Jason Scott Lee if he came looking for me in a time machine, my boat is generally not floated by depictions of gay sex.

But Patient Lee has such a masterful grasp of character and such finesse at writing human sensuality that I knew I would enjoy a collection of her stories, gay or straight, and that the subject matter of this one would probably deal yet another blow to the idiotic but stubborn uneasiness I've been saddled with by my youth in the 20th century South with respect to thoughts of gay sex.

I'm glad to say I was correct on all counts.

First and foremost, the stories in this book are about people, not about gay guys. Sure, all the people happen to turn out to either be gay or have an affinity for gay sex, but the point is to carry us on a series of human journeys into self-discovery, to take us places most of us have never been - and yet, places most of us will find familiar and compelling and identifiable at the same time.

(Mild spoilers in this paragraph) Each of these stories features some element of tremendous discomfort - a teenage boy wrestling with the demons of having watched his mother killed by his father; a divorced parent tempted into gay experimentation in circumstances we know will lead to public exposure; a man forced to admit to his girlfriend that he's had a lifelong secret desire to have sex with another man; a pair of fishermen falling in love on a crab boat where the close quarters might get them beaten to a pulp, fired, or maybe thrown overboard if they're found out; and a mentally impaired young man bullied into invading a gay couple's home for the purpose of committing a hate crime.

By immersing us deeply and sympathetically into these situations, Lee gives even the straight, sheltered hetero reader some sense of the fear or shame or self-loathing that might come with a life spent hiding one's sexuality from the world, or even from one's self. And yet in each case, there's a suffusion of hope and potential happiness undergirding the inner and external conflicts that task the characters. Story after story, Lee nurtures and tends to that potential until it blooms into full beauty - sometimes through passionate encounters, but sometimes through the simple sense of liberty or understanding that she gifts upon her protagonists and readers alike.

Finishing up the last of the volume today, I found myself emotionally overwhelmed, blinking back tears, and very much in awe of this author's brilliance.

As for the sex, Lee shows an unending capacity to produce heartfelt word-sculptures of such pure allure and arousal that at one point, I even found myself attracted to my number-one "no way, never" sex act and thinking, "Well ... maybe ..." (Not sure I care to name it here, but if you want a hint, it involves no genitalia.)

If you have any appreciation of gay male erotica, you should snap this book up immediately. On the other hand, if the genre makes you uncomfortable, you should still snap it up.

One way or another, it will speak to you.

Well, Fuck.

A number of readers have commented to me that my serial Contrast is a surprisingly good story, considering that it's mostly a lot of fucking. I'm always flattered by this sentiment, because I'm proud of the story and think I did a pretty creative job crafting an interesting tale almost exclusively out of sex scenes.

At the same time, though, I find the degree and frequency of this surprise to be a poor reflection on society.

We've been deceived by our culture into believing that sex is an animal activity, not a fundamentally human one. It's a relic of our baser natures, we're taught, and demeans us if we undertake it purely for its own sake. As a result, even people who are pro-sex tend to focus on its gratification aspects, not its connective ones. So most fuck stories are about the physiological rather than the psychological benefits of sex. It's a real measure of how damaged we all are by sex-negative socialization.

Can you imagine someone expressing surprise about finding deep emotional content in a story with one of the following setups?

Two people meet while jogging in the park where several paths join. They smile at each other and run side-by-side for a while because their speeds are pretty much the same. They each get greater enjoyment out of the experience than from running alone, and on a whim, agree to meet up and jog regularly without talking.

Or: Two people end up sitting at adjacent tables in a restaurant. Each of them finds this restaurant a cozy comfort spot, and the chef's skills always result in a unique dining experience. After noticing each other in the restaurant regularly, one of them approaches the other after a meal and says, "I'm not trying to pick you up or anything, but I just had to gush to someone about how fantastic the salmon was tonight." They agree to start dining together with discission limited to the food and ambiance of the restaurant.

Or: Two people are stranded on a desert island together. One is deaf and mute, and the other doesn't understand sign language or English, so their initial communications are obviously very restricted. But it's cold at night, and so they always sleep huddled together for warmth and comfort.

Nobody would expect those stories to be shallow or crass based on the descriptions, even though they're built around activities that, like sex, animals are just as capable of as humans. Written well, one of those stories might even win awards in the mainstream fiction world or get made into a blockbuster movie. But even if Contrast were written ten times as well as it is, it would never win a literary award and could never be made into an acclaimed Hollywood film. 50 Shades of Grey attained notoriety, but I don't know of anyone who respects it artistically, and it's a lot less sex-focused than Contrast.

Hopefully things will change someday.

Maybe I can push them along by writing more stories like Contrast. If not ... well, I do enjoy writing stories about people fucking. I guess I'll console myself with that.

Review: The Brodsky Affair by Ken Fry

Art and Action!

It took a little while for this book to get me firmly in its corner. I'm not a huge fan of exposition, and there's a moderate amount of that in the first few chapters, setting up the situation and the characters. It was all interesting information; I was just impatient for the story to get going. The old-school grammarian in me also spotted a few dangling modifiers, but I don't think most people pay the least mind to that these days.

As the plot started rolling, though, I quickly became absorbed, and then found myself really gripped by the page-turning intensity that author Ken Fry conjured from his multi-character setup and a series of deftly inserted historical flashbacks that gave weight and meaning to the modern-day heist/caper/thriller storyline. Fry may dangle the occasional modifier, but he knows how to gut-punch when the story calls for it, and this book has plenty of visceral passages to raise the reader's pulse and keep the adrenaline flowing.

The Brodsky Affair centers on Jack Manton, an English art expert down on his luck because the art publication he worked for went under, leaving him exceptionally qualified in a field with few opportunities. Manton isn't a quitter, though -- in fact, his ability to pursue loose ends of research borders on obsessive, and when he gets wind of a couple of potentially undervalued paintings about to be auctioned in Perth, Australia, he begins a globe-hopping quest in pursuit of the art of Mikhail Brodsky, an obscure Russian painter who died in the Holocaust. Unfortunately for Manton, a Russian mobster also has his sights set on Brodsky's work, as the painter's reputation is on the rise thanks to one of those art-world trends that can make fortunes for those with proper insight and timing.

What Manton expects to be a money-making venture to salvage his ailing finances quickly embroils him in a web of crime and murder, as the agents of oligarch Josef Berezin are following some of the same leads as Jack -- but intend on nabbing the paintings through means other than a few harmless auction bids. By the time Jack and his girlfriend, Tamsin Greene, realize how far over their heads they've gotten, bad timing and the brutal methods of Berezin's chief operative have made them suspects in multiple murders, with Interpol on their heels on top of the assassin.

Elevating The Brodsky Affair above its high-octane set of mysteries, chases, and murders is Fry's ability to bring the world of high art and especially the paintings of Mikhail Brodsky to life. Brodsky appears as a character by way of occasional flashbacks, but the deeper we get into the novel, the more his presence is felt in the central action, as Manton and Greene trace his few surviving relatives across Russia and Europe, encountering more of his personal history and suffering, as well as more of his paintings, which Fry imbues with a vivid, bright-hued reality that makes one wish they were real and on display in some museum for viewing. Through quick and keen descriptions Fry convinces us of Brodsky's genius, his eye for color, his choice of theme, his role as a witness to history. He makes us understand why some might find these paintings worth a fortune -- and others might find them worth killing for.

The novel goes a bit over the top at times, straining credulity the way a Hollywood action movie might. And I didn't much care for the epilogue. But the unique quirks and foibles of its characters, the adeptness with which Fry builds and maintains a breakneck pace, and the sense of art transcending time and history all serve to keep the book fresh and compelling.

Review: Fair Trade by Jolie Mason

Fast-paced interstellar love and peril, bright and full of verve

I've always had a soft spot for merchant-trader science fiction. Maybe it goes back to a childhood of reading Andre Norton or teenage years playing the old Traveller s.f. RPG. My point is, the summary blurb for this novella had me on its side from pretty much the first sentence, and the story itself did the same.

Fair Trade tells the story of a lonely guild trader by the name of Jexa Maru. Capable, independent, and hardened by a harsh life among the stars, Jexa owns her own ship, a sidearm to face down anyone who might try to take it from her, and not much else. Her weeks, months, and years are spent alone aboard the Misha Anton, earning just enough on the trade routes to keep herself fed and the ship in decent repair. The seedy ports of the Pisces Nebula hold little allure for her beyond their opportunities for cargo, and she never stays planetside for long.

Nor should she, given the lawlessness of the Pisces worlds, where the Calypso slaving syndicate plies its trade with impunity.

Try as she might to keep her head down and avoid the Calypso, however, Jexa instead finds herself yanked straight into the pirates' cross-hairs when an escaped slave stows away in her cargo hold -- a slave who for some reason is more valuable to the syndicate than the fragile treaties that maintain balance within the Pisces Nebula. Along with Calypso's enmity, Joss Bandalau brings aboard the Misha Anton a presence and companionship that Jexa has never known -- and a dark mystery of what befell him at the slavers' hands before he made his escape.

Author Jolie Mason populates her universe with compelling, strongly drawn characters and moves them through a corner of the galaxy rife with brutal color and stark with the emptiness of space. It's a given that Jexa and Joss will fall for each other, but it's less certain how their individual lives of isolation and suffering will fit together -- or how they can escape the hell-bent pursuit of Joss's former owners.

I enjoyed Fair Trade start-to-finish. I'm a sucker for a good romance, an underdog story, and a tale of far wandering among perilous stars. This book delivers on all those points. That's not to say that it's perfect -- it doesn't maintain the plucky ingenuity of its protagonists uniformly throughout, slipping occasionally into conveniences of plot that I'd rather have seen tightened up. There are also some typical self-publishing lapses of editing. But the book's spirit of adventure and central heart of human connection never flag. It's a breezy, fun, quick read with flashes of brilliance, thoughtful undercurrents in its depths, and a setting that's larger than any single story -- a place I wouldn't mind coming back to for future reading.

Review! An Amazon's Equal by Fionna Guillaume

A beautiful story told with passion and finesse

Everything that we call Myth, people once believed as truth. They had to – because the world around them so outstripped their ability to comprehend it, only gods and magic could explain. In An Amazon’s Equal, Fionna Guillaume returns to the mythic storytelling tradition and uses her own kind of magic to get at truths we all sometimes sense, but often fail to believe in or live to their deserved extent.

The book tells the story of Pyrena, a young Amazon making her journey into womanhood along a path tradition has laid out for her – and then traveling further still. Though she fully accepts the ways and wisdom of the society that’s raised her, Pyrena just ever-so-slightly does not fit. The Euphemindra, as the Amazons call themselves, live in isolation from the world of men, defended by their own strength at arms and the blessing of the goddess they worship. In their deeply forested land, they have built a civilization that borders on utopia, its idyllic peace disturbed only when men of the outer world make the mistake of attempting invasion and conquest, forcing them to do battle – from which they never shy nor falter. But the ways of war come a hint less naturally to Pyrena than to her sister warriors, and she lives and matures with the most tenuous sense of something missing.

When a foolhardy Greek campaign against the Euphemindra ends in a thorough rout, new captives arrive at the Men’s Tent in the great Amazonian city. Pyrena captures one of these herself: Astrastos, a young man who embodies much of the fallacy and foolishness of his patriarchal homeland – but who, like Pyrena, has always walked just a hint out of step with his people and their expectations.

Like both Pyrena and Astrastos, this novel begins with an unassuming conformity to expectations: a coming-of-age story, a love story, a pitting of the feminine soul against masculine ambition. But also like its heroine and hero, from the very start it carries a hint of something more – something that grows and blooms under the skillful touch of its author page by page until it goes far beyond romantic tropes and retold legends. Almost without the reader noticing, a rich and magnetic cast of supporting characters ease their way into the story, painted with a few quick strokes as they first appear, then brushed with contour and texture and perspective in each subsequent return. The social order of the Euphemindra reveals itself with ever-deepening complexity and inventiveness. Themes of love and family and fidelity and honor coalesce, swell, and break loose in moments of emotional thunder. The expected happens – and then the unexpected follows straight upon its heels.

Fionna Guillaume renders all of this in a clean and forthright style that is lyrical when it needs to be and visceral when it must. The eroticism of her love scenes can simmer or flare, washing the reader in whatever level of heat is called for, but never obscuring the emotional crux of the storytelling.

By the end, she convinces us that the epic and the mythic are in truth matters of human spirit, there to be tapped and made use of if we can recognize them and choose a path that is right.

Review! Sea of Temptation by Suzie Jay

I've been reviewing books for an indie author group lately, and I realized I should be sharing them here, too. So without further ado, here's my review of Suzie Jay's Sea of Temptation!

Boatloads of Fun!

I found this book to be silly, and if you automatically assume that to be a criticism, then you may not like it as much as I did. It's silly in a joyous way -- with a whimsical and carefree spirit that says, "I don't care if you find this unbelievable. We're here to have fun, aren't we? Let's not pretend that believable and fun go hand-in-hand."

Sea of Temptation follows Reid Lancaster onto a cruise he would rather avoid, where he bumps into Scarlet Barrett, the ship's doctor, whom he would also like to avoid, and who would just as soon avoid him. Reid and Scarlet share a history together, and it's a history that did not end well. Although the reader will likely find them both to be sympathetic and attractive people, they loathe one another. Why? That mystery serves as one of the novel's most immediate hooks, and its answer is parceled out in careful hints and revelations as the plot advances.

Joining Reid on the cruise is his irrepressible sister, Pip, whose mission is to get Reid over an entrenched depression caused by the death of their mother. Where Reid is sympathetic but morose, Pip is a sheer delight -- full of verve and good humor, yet also dead serious about helping her brother. Meanwhile, Team Scarlet includes Dr. Barrett's friend Jane, the ship's nurse and an amicable busybody intent on finding out what's up between Scarlet and Reid once the tension between them bursts into the open.

I read Sea of Temptation in one sitting, staying up late despite being on a business trip that already had me short on sleep. It's a quick read, wonderfully good-hearted and sweet, and I'm giving it five stars because the main incentive I would have for docking it a star would be embarrassment at the notion of giving such a silly book five stars. Honestly, the way the world looks around us right now, I can't consider that a good enough reason.

Done!

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Chapter 13 Explodes Into Publication!

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What I'm Up To

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Argh! The Pressure!!!

Chapter 10 of The Inn has now been up long enough to garner a fair number of comments ... and they've sent me into a complete guilt-spiral!

"Can't wait for the next chapter!"

"I wouldn't mind if this series went on forever!"

The problem is, my original outline calls for Chapter 11 to be the finale. So I'm reading these comments and thinking, Oh, shit. They clearly do not feel like this story is building up to an imminent conclusion! I'm going to get crucified if I end it next chapter!

I'd been patting myself on the back for several weeks about coming up with an ending that would bring the romantic plot and the storyline plot to a simultaneous peak, and now it's clear my clever resolution will seriously disappoint the readers.

What to do?

First, I decided I'd better figure out whether the readers would be right in their disappointment. Literotica readers pretty much always want every decent serial to go on eternally, whereas I'm a pretty solid believer in beginning-middle-end storytelling.

But when I put myself in their shoes, I decided they had a point. The plot took a major turn at the end of Chapter 9, and if that plot twist made the book wrap-up after just two additional chapters, what the hell was the point of all the plot building in Chapters 1-8? It would feel like turning the corner and running into a brick wall.

So.

What to do about it?

I sat and thought and sat and thought.

How could I take the position the characters occupied at the end of Chapter 10 and make it lead to not one but several additional escalations of the story? They had to be real escalations too, not just drawing the story out for the sake of making it longer.

The answer turned out to be, "Don't make things quite so easy on the characters just because the end of the story is in sight."

Once I figured that out, I realized that I'd skipped right past the possibility of the Chapter-9 plot twist throwing additional challenges in Simon and Leyna's path, rather than just opening up solutions. And not only would those challenges force them to be more inventive in resolving the threat of Necromanata, they'd also provide a natural intermediary step between Simon and Leyna's relationship at the end of Chapter 10 and where that relationship ends up at the end of the book.

Success!

The book is now plotted out to run through Chapter 14, which will probably bring it up close to 100,000 words ... a pretty respectable length for an erotic fantasy novel!

In closing, though, I must warn my readers ... just because begging for more worked this time doesn't mean it will work every time! If it did, I'd end up writing one long continuation of a single series until I'm in my dotage.

Thanks, though. The Inn is going to be much better for my forced reconsideration of these last few chapters!

Thank you, one and all!

Big Flipping Deal Chapter 7 won the Literotica Reader's Choice Award for Best Transsexuals & Crossdressers story!

I really appreciate everyone who took the time to vote, both for BFD and for Contrast Chapter 4, which came in second in the Interracial category.

It's nice to know people like my stories, and very nice to have my writing recognized as worthwhile.

Thank you very much!

Chapter 8 of The Inn is now live on Literotica.com!

And there's still time to vote for Contrast and Big Flipping Deal in the Readers Choice Awards:

Literotica Readers Choice Awards

Best Interracial Story (Contrast Ch. 04)

Best Transsexuals & Crossdressers Story (Big Flipping Deal Ch. 07)

Voting closes early morning Sunday May 1, so if you haven't voted yet please hurry!

Sex & Sorcery 2!

As promised, here's the Amazon link to Sex & Sorcery 2! And the cover! (Which is also a link to the publisher's page for the book.)

 

I've read the first four stories so far, and enjoyed them all. One was a little sillier than the others, but it had hot lesbians in it, so I'm willing to make allowances. I'm especially happy to see that these are actual storytelling stories, not just excuses to write sex scenes in a fantasy setting. (Not that sex scenes are lacking here, though!)

My story, "A Harem of Harpies," features one of my favorite old D&D characters, Chortle Bonegrinder, a jackal-headed barbarian I invented because I didn't feel like my play group really had a good handle on what "Chaotic Neutral" meant. I had a blast writing about Chortle again (last time I did so was about 5 years ago), and now I'm thinking I might need to write more Chortle stories once I finish up The Inn. And publish Contrast. And Big Flipping Deal. And the mainstream fantasy novel I finished the first draft on back in December.

So much to do!

Anyway, I'd be delighted for you to pick up S&S2, which I can't imagine you'll regret if you like sword and sorcery tales and erotica. It's 100,000+ words and only $2.99 -- more than worth it just for the four I've read so far.

New Serial! New Short Story! Awards!!!

I've been a less-than-zealous blogger lately ... but not because I've been entirely slacking! After finishing up the first draft of Big Flipping Deal last summer, I went back to a mainstream fantasy novel I'd put on hold and wrapped up the first draft near the end of the year. Since then, I've been writing away on a new erotic fantasy series on Literotica: The Inn.

But in the midst of The Inn, an editor contacted me and suggested I submit a story to Uruk Press' erotic fantasy anthology series, Sex & Sorcery. I promptly fired up my short-story brain and did what I think is a pretty bang-up job on a tale called, "A Harem of Harpies," which made the cut and will appear in Sex & Sorcery 2, due out any day now. I'll post a link to the book's Amazon page as soon as it's available.

Finally, I have been horribly remiss in begging for votes! Both Big Flipping Deal and Contrast were nominated for Readers Choice Awards on Literotica.com. Big Flipping Deal is currently in front of the competition by a hair, but after a strong start, Contrast has fallen way behind. Please, please, please, vote at the links below! I will be eternally grateful.

Literotica Readers Choice Awards

Best Interracial Story (Contrast Ch. 04)

Best Transsexuals & Crossdressers Story (Big Flipping Deal Ch. 07)

Voting closes early morning Sunday May 1, so don't delay!

How to Fix the Internet

So here's a pretty depressing article about the disproportionate targeting of women by comment trolls.

I've scratched my head for ages trying to figure out how you can retain freedom of speech and anonymity on the web without all of us having to suffer the bullshit antics of playground bullies who never got past a middle-school maturity level in their psychological development. Thankfully, this article gave me a great idea.

In order to post anywhere, you've generally got to agree to the site's terms of service, right? So all we need to do is get public sites to include the following in those terms: the user also agrees that if any authorized moderator or filtering system should determine the comment to be hate speech or harassment, the comment will be either deleted or translated by our "Play Nice" software into a form that expresses more appropriate content.

Then all troll comments can be run through an AI translating system that makes them say nice things instead of shitty ones.

For example, a comment reading, "Ian Saul Whitcomb is a piece-of-shite whore who should fuck off and die!" would be translated into "Ian Saul Whitcomb is a piece-of-relief genius who should be lavished with affection and live forever!"

It wouldn't necessarily end up being difficult to see that a comment thread had a lot of trolls attempting to hijack it, but they wouldn't actually be able to spread their poison, and the rest of us wouldn't be exposed to their abuse.

Okay, troll-fighters! Somebody with web programming skills get right on this.

No Argument Here

This guy's a smart blogger I like. Occasionally, his pet theories miss the mark, but usually, like this one, they're pretty good.

A good portion of guys need to get their acts together. I'd like to think it's a minority, but some days I'm not so sure.

That's not to say you ladies out there are perfect! But when it comes to being unmarriagably awful, the guys probably do take the lead by a fair margin.

Sorry, guys. Chin up, though. Odds are, if you're reading this blog, you're one of the okay ones.

Who Are You?

So I've been to see the new Star Wars film ... several times ... and I'm sure I know the question that's on everybody's minds: What does Ian Saul Whitcomb the "sensible feminist" think about Rey?

Apparently, there's enough internet grumbling going around about Rey being a "Mary Sue" that I've read about it in two different articles. (For those who've never heard, the term is used to denote a character who exists only as wish-fulfillment on the part of the author, being so super-competent that everyone loves and marvels over herim, despite hiser lack of any real personality or complexity.) Though I myself have only seen one person actually call Rey a Mary Sue, he was a pretty big ass about it, and that's enough to make me think it's a real phenomenon and not just some activist caterwauling or girls crying wolf.

I could make a lot of arguments about the substantiality of Rey's character being far too great to fit with the definition of a Mary Sue. I could point out plenty of personal failings on Rey's part that show her to be much more flawed and nuanced than an actual Mary Sue. But instead, I'm going to fall back on my inner male swine to provide the best evidence possible against these frankly infantile criticisms.

Longtime readers will know that despite being a feminist and an opponent of ogling, I very regularly recognize the sexual attractiveness of women who enter or pass through my perceptual sphere. It's just something my brain does, and I refuse to feel guilty about it or try to train myself out of it. I'm a pretty sex-obsessed guy, and I think as long as I treat people properly and don't let anyone catch me with my tongue hanging out, that's as valid a part of my human sexuality as being attracted to men would be if I were gay, or feeling trapped in a male body would be if I were transsexual.

My point is this: I was three viewings into The Force Awakens before one particular scene made me notice the attractive quality of Rey's leg and bottom. That's three viewings spent watching the central character of a pretty long movie without once recognizing her substantial sexual allure. It's not that the filmmakers hid her figure in concealing outfits or avoided camera angles that would flatter her attributes. The moment of leg-and-bottom that broke through into my consciousness actually shows that stretch of flank fairly prominently. No, the reason I took three viewings to notice is that I was so invested in her as a character, from the first moment she came onscreen, that even my normally rampaging libido couldn't break through my fascination with who she was as a person.

I grasped instantly that I wanted to get to know her. And without giving her a single line to speak, the filmmakers spent at least five minutes letting me do that. By my count, we follow Rey through a minimum of eight scene changes before she says a word. And despite this entirely visual introduction, despite the fact that she's an extremely pretty young woman with a very nice figure, the things we learn about her kept me so entranced that her femaleness informed my perception of her no more than the fact that she has brown hair.

The trailer for this film prominently featured a woman's voice asking Rey, "Who are you?" And though that line was apparently cut from the final edit of the movie, Rey begins answering it from the moment we first see her -- answering it so richly and magnetically that my mind had room only for her answer, and nothing else.

So, no, dipweeds, Rey is not a Mary Sue. Brush up your literary and cinematic analysis tools before you go spouting this kind of foolishness in the future.