Review: Young Wife Gets a Sensual Massage by Matt Coolomon

I'm going to start this review by noting that the subject novel is not a proudly feminist book. It's not anti-feminist either, but it is smut, and both of the main characters pretty much have one thing on their minds the whole time. If you find the idea of a sex-obsessed woman wanting to get it on with multiple guys to be inherently objectifying, you'll probably want to stay away from this one. On the other hand, if you like unrepentant smut in which the male and female leads have an equal, mutual, collaborative lust for perversion, I think it can be read without too much worrying over sexual politics. So, with no further ado ...

Jake and Anny are a happily married young couple who find themselves increasingly attracted to an unconventional sex life after randomly picking a vacation activity from their hotel's guide book. The sensual massage Anny gets as a result, while relatively tame, sends both their imaginations along a path of arousal at the idea of Anny being touched and pleasured by a man other than Jake.

While this is very much a book about sex, and we gain almost no insight into the two main characters' back-stories or interests, author Matt Coolomon elevates the novel from its somewhat base concept in two major ways. First, he writes impeccably, in a prose style that's fluid and enjoyable, yet never draws attention to itself . And second -- and more importantly from my perspective -- he takes the time to make both Jake and Anny feel like real people by giving them both sweet, kind-hearted dispositions and a healthy dose of uncertainty over the lifestyle they're fantasizing about. Their personalities remain appealing and sympathetic throughout, even if social mores would insist that Anny is being a slut and Jake a passive wimp. I did occasionally have some unease over the degree to which Anny enthused about receiving extramarital ejaculate ... there's a blurred line as to whether she's genuinely delighted by the process or if she's exaggerating for the sake of increasing her husband's enjoyment of their mutual perversity. Similarly, I felt at times that Jake's behavior seemed more aimed at appealing to the fetish of cuckolding fans than like an entirely natural response. But the relationship between these spouses ultimately won out over these doubts on my part. Each of them has such a great affection for the other, and such a profound interest in making the other happy, that their exploration of this particular kink feels almost appropriate ... and I say "almost" because an element of the fun comes from this being an illicit, taboo undertaking, and that requires the characters and the reader alike to feel some measure of disquietude about it.

In many ways, this is a book that can very much be judged by its cover -- which ordinarily might not be a great compliment. But in this case, the cover really does tell you what you're getting into: it's overtly sexual, and clearly about one single-minded thing ... yet it also evokes a certain purity, beauty, and sweetness along with its prurience.

If the cuckolding genre doesn't fundamentally repel you, and if you like reading stories about nice people, where the conflict is all about the characters struggling with their own desires and not with each other, then I highly recommend this book. Coolomon is a talented writer who knows how to create a slow simmer and then bring it to a frothy, messy boil at just the right moment.

As a closing comment, I'll say that the whole "cuckolding" sub-genre strikes me as a bit weird and difficult to assess from a feminist perspective. I'm of the impression that the audience for these tales is overwhelmingly male, which leads to a sense that the willingness of the female characters is exploitive. Yet, at least in Cooloman's version, the subject matter inherently puts the majority of the power in the woman's hands. So I'm on the fence about the genre, though I can endorse the book for readers who don't stand on the "no way!" side of that fence.

My Overdue Review of She Marches Through Fire by A.M. Manay

I've been waiting for the third November Snow book to arrive ever since I finished the second one. A.M. Manay knows how to bring a novel to its close in a crashing apocalyptic finish, and She Lights Up The Night left me hungry to find out what happened next.

This book landed at an inconvenient moment for me, when I was overworked and under-rested and certainly didn't have time to go back and re-read the first two. As a result, it took me a bit to get the very large cast of characters straight, and I found myself grateful for the author's inclusion of a dramatis personae list at the book's start. I would highly recommend reading all three books in close proximity so that you can fully appreciate the rich array of individual and familial personalities and histories that the story is built around. But if, like me, you don't have the time to bolster a less-than-photographic memory by re-reading, the cast list will serve in a pinch.

Moreover, November Snow's character provides the ultimate impetus and focus for the entire series, and while she spends the first part of this book recuperating from the devastating climax of the previous novel, for most of She Marches Through Fire, November is in top-notch form, perilously navigating a world of supernatural creatures centuries or millennia older than herself with a mixture of keen intelligence, heart, and sheer, stubborn perseverance.

I won't go much into the plot ... if you're reading this review trying to decide whether to pick up the series, the answer is yes, and you need to immediately go get She Dies At The End. You won't regret it. Meanwhile, if you've read the other two and for some reason are on the fence about getting this one, you also won't regret it. It melds some of the best aspects of the earlier books, providing great payoff for the character arcs of the expansive cast that developed in the second book, but also recapturing some of the tight focus on November's perspective that made the first book so riveting. I had some stumbles at the beginning, reading it while exhausted after too many hours at work, but as the book hit its stride, it did what so many great books do, drawing me into its world so capably that my own would disappear for long stretches and leave me awash in an intensity of thought and emotion.

Finishing it up this evening, I had tears in my eyes. The culmination of the series exquisitely blends pain and hope and determination into a manifesto of true beauty. 

She Marches Through Fire by A.M. Manay!

I'm super-excited to have a new November Snow book to read. The first two kept me zipping through them with fast-paced fun and compelling characters, and author A.M. Manay's inventive twists on supernatural fantasy always leave me curious where things will go next. If you're interested, here's all the info you could want!

Title: She Marches Through Fire (November Snow Book 3)
Series: November Snow
Author: A.M. Manay
Cover design: A.M. Manay
Release Date: March 28, 2017
Genre: Supernatural fantasy

Psychic vampire November Snow must battle grief, injury, and her own family as she fights evil on all sides. She seeks a cure for the poison sapping her strength and a fairy weapon as powerful as it is dangerous to wield. When it is time to save the innocent and gain justice for her maker, will she find the strength to march through the fire?

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER at most booksellers: books2read.com/u/4AgGAN
Trailer link: https://youtu.be/m9gxWk0Q1m8

Excerpt 1:

Hector was coming out of his skin, buzzing with rage.  “Do you honestly expect me to just sit here and let Luka sleep when I could be tearing his throat out?” he demanded.

“That is precisely what I expect you to do,” was Gul’s even-toned reply.

"And shouldn't we be calling the in the feds?  He committed a terrorist act against the human government," Jaime insisted.  "At some point, he has to answer for that.  He could still have co-conspirators out there doing God knows what.  We're harboring a fugitive at the top of the most wanted list.  Until a few days ago, I carried a badge.  I know I don't have any authority here, but this whole scenario makes me seriously uncomfortable."

“November's been poisoned, we suspect with something William got from one of Luka’s people.  We need the antidote.  We may also need Luka's blood.  For now, we need him alive and with us.  And there is no human jail that could hold him,” Gul explained patiently.

“He murdered everyone I ever cared about!” Hector growled.

“And a great many others besides,” Gul acknowledged.  “And I hope, one day, to help you get justice.  But today is not that day. November's life is worth more than vengeance.”  Gul paused before adding, "I intend to make Luka pay dearly for any mercy he gets today, I assure you."

Hector took a deep breath and ran both hands through his shaggy hair.  Pine placed a hand on his love's lower back.  “You're right,” Hector finally sighed.  “But I don't like it.  Just keep him the hell away from me.”  The werewolf then stalked out of the basement, taking out his anger on the stairs and rattling the whole house.
“He’s not going to be the last person you have to talk out of killing him tonight, I suspect, dear husband,” Raina pointed out sleepily.  The eldest vampire in the room, she had just woken, a bit ahead of the others.  She quickly disentangled herself from her still-slumbering siblings.

She gave Gul a peck on the cheek and crossed the room to a large suitcase from which she removed an ancient-looking leather case and a pair of black calfskin gloves.  “Maybe seeing him in this will cheer Hector up.”

Gul shook his head, amused.  “Woman, is there anywhere you don’t haul that along?”

“Well, this time it’s actually useful!” she retorted.  “We don’t want Luka slithering off before we’re done with him, do we?”

Gul nodded, and his wife quickly gloved her hands and locked her brother into a set of antique silver stocks.  She closed them first around his ankles, then reached for his hands and pulled his inert form forward, binding his wrists into the diabolical device.  She searched him for weapons and pulled out his fairy-forged dagger in its leather sheath.  "I remember this thing," she sighed.  "Nasty bit of work."  She hung the sheath on her belt, stood straight, removed the gloves, and looked down next at her sister.

“Savita was in a bad way this morning.  I don’t imagine dusk will find her much better,” she reported to the others.

“Greg is sleeping in the van.  Hopefully he will be able to console her in her grief,” Gul answered.

“It isn’t just that, unfortunately,” Raina sighed.  “Apparently William did not just murder his own maker.  He also slew mine.  Savita knew and kept his secret, to her now-eternal regret.”

Pine whispered, “Holy shit.  William killed Queen Marisha?”

Gul's eyebrow met his hairline, and he shook his head.  “What a tangled mess.”

“We excel at that in my family,” Raina replied.  “I can’t even manage to hate Savita properly for keeping her mouth shut.  William, on the other hand . . . William is in for a reckoning.”  Her normally cheerful eyes were hard and determined.

“As I told Hector, justice is unfortunately a job for another day,” Gul said gently.  He pulled his wife toward him, and she consented to rest her head briefly against his shoulder.

“Speaking of Hector, I’d better check on him,” Pine said worriedly.

"Could you carry Savita out to the van while you're at it?" Raina asked.  "And shake Greg awake.  She's going to need him when she rises."
Pine placed Savita over his shoulder and bounded up the stairs two at a time.  After the handoff to Greg, he found his boyfriend in the backyard, taking an ax to a tree stump.  Chips flew into the air.  The western sky was all pinks and oranges behind him.

"Hey," Pine called.  He was careful to stay out of ax range.

Hector left the blade embedded in the wood and turned around to face Pine.  "Hey."

Pine crossed the grass and embraced the larger man.  Hector buried his face in Pine's neck before  whispering, "I can't do this.  I can't look at his smirking face and not bash it in."

"Yeah.  I know.  I think we should split up.  You and I can go with Greg and Savita, take her to Eden to recover.  Let Gul and Raina deal with Luka and finding a cure for November.  We'll be more nimble and attract less attention in smaller groups."

"I don't want November to think I abandoned her," Hector replied, his voice stronger as he regained control of his emotions.  "She saved my life."

"She won't think that.  I'm pretty sure she'll understand better than anyone.  She was there, after all.  She saw what Luka did to your people."
Hector took a shuddering deep breath.  "Fair enough."

"Raina has Luka clapped in silver.  Looks like some kind of a medieval torture device.  It's kind of nice to see the tables turned on the smug bastard," Pine offered tentatively.  "You could go throw rocks at him or something.  Knives from the kitchen.  Furniture.  Whatever comes to mind."

"You fairies, always looking on the bright side," Hector said, managing a weak smile.

Excerpt 2:

Luka woke, and his body jerked as he registered the presence of the silver bindings holding him helpless on the floor.  He looked up at his companions: Pine, Hector, Raina, and Gul.

"Oh, dear," he commented bleakly.

"Tide has turned a bit, you worthless bastard," Hector said, unable to resist the urge to needle the man he despised.

"Indeed, it has," Luka admitted.  "The wheel of fortune does turn.  One day at the top, and the next . . .  Well, here we are.  Are you going to torture me, Hector?  Make me beg for death?" he mocked, widening his eyes in fake fear.

"He wouldn't stoop to your level," Pine replied tensely.

Luka looked from Pine to Hector and back again before a grin spread over his face without reaching his eyes.  "My, my.  How deliciously perverse.  Whatever will your Grandma Hazel say?  Did you know she used to keep a werewolf head mounted on the wall of her bedroom?  You have to do some kind of special magic on it so it doesn't turn back into a human one when the creature dies.  I'm not really familiar with the details.  At any rate, it was quite the conversation piece.  Do you suppose she still has it stashed somewhere?  In some ratty storage facility in suburban Nevada or something?  Can you imagine?  That would make a very special episode of Storage Wars, don't you think?"

"Shut up, murderer," Hector said, his hands balling involuntarily into fists.  His knuckles glowed white against his brown skin.

"And speaking of murderers, dear Pine, has Hector told you how old his father was when I so cruelly had him slain?"  A cloud crossed Pine's face.  "He hasn't?  Well, that should make for an interesting tale, indeed, but I don't think you'll much enjoy it.  Might give you bad dreams.  You know, if fairies slept."

"I know how old Carlos was when you murdered his family and stole his childhood," Pine managed to reply, in a voice that shook more than he'd intended.  "You're vile."

"Tell me, Hector, do you mutts still leave your defective children to the elements?  Poor little cripples who'll never turn—  freezing to death in the snow, or burning up with thirst?  Mauled by vermin?  Pecked at by razor-beaked birds before they even expire?"  Luka had dropped his pretense of jocularity, his fangs now peeking out of his snarl.

"Enough," Raina declared.  "I need to see to November, and I may need Luka's help.  Savita may need him as well, if Greg will allow it.  Nobody is torturing or killing anybody today."

"What's wrong with November?" Luka asked, the hostility suddenly gone from his voice, replaced by concern bordering on fear.

"I told you, William shot her," Raina said impatiently.

"So, you pull the bullet out, and she heals.  What's the problem?" Luka asked, increasingly agitated.  "Even a baby can take a bullet or three."

Gul and Raina exchanged a look.  "William poisoned the bullet, which shattered in her leg," Gul finally explained.  "Some exceptionally strong werewolf toxin.  I believe you're familiar with it, since he got it from one of yours," he added pointedly.  "It would be quite helpful if you could give us the antidote."

Luka looked stricken.  "I had plenty of it.  In the house.  Before it burned to the ground."

"That is highly unfortunate," came Gul's understated reply.  "For both of you."

Book Review - Lost & Bound by Pandora Spocks

Shasta Pyke (not her real name) has put her Hollywood starlet career in jeopardy with a high-profile scandal. Packed off to a remote wilderness lodge by her agent, she meets Blake Walker, a bush pilot with tragedy in his past and a hunger for a very specific kind of relationship he's never been able to find. What will happen between these two very different people, when events conspire to leave them alone together in the northern Ontario wilderness?

For one thing, Blake will test Shasta's boundaries, looking to see if she really might be the woman he's dreamed of. For another, Shasta will have to decide whether Blake can be trusted -- with her safety, and with her true self, long buried by a lifetime in the spotlight.

Lost & Bound is an erotic romance, so it gets very explicit at times, though the love story holds the spotlight much more than the sex scenes. I thought both were well done; the romance suckered me in more than the naughty bits only because I'm more into romance than dominance and submission. Both the leads shine, with fun, likeable personalities and emotionally meaningful backstories. We're sure they'll end up with each other somehow, but the different lives they come from make it a challenge and a mystery as to how. Pandora Spocks knows how to tease two characters together, building romantic heat and suspense while drawing us deeper and deeper into their lives and their inner worlds. She also knows how to paint a breathtaking picture of the characters' surroundings: gorgeous Canadian lakes and forests and rough-hewn cabins sometimes battered by storms.

I feel obligated to note that one scene crossed my boundaries. [Vague spoilers here:] Although Blake never forces Shasta to do anything, there's an early moment when he takes advantage of a situation in a way I found unfair and manipulative. She turns out to be entirely willing, but readers with strong notions of consent may find Blake out of their good graces until he proves himself as the novel moves along. [End spoilers]

Ultimately, this book brings together a very interesting set of dualities. Blake has a driving need to protect and dominate, yet he is also kind, sensitive, and determined to see Shasta flourish. Shasta is ambitious and strong-willed, yet she also yearns to find a place of safety where she can relinquish control. The play and weave of their personalities makes for great entertainment as they circle and feel one another out, then for sparks and heat as they connect with ever-greater passion.

I had a lot of fun reading this one, and look forward to seeing what else Pandora Spocks has up her sleeves ...

Disclaimers! First, I should acknowledge that I received this book as an Advance Reader's Copy from the author, who's a fellow member of the Alliance of Self-Published Authors. Second, BDSM is not my kink of choice, so I can't say I'm entirely qualified to judge the more erotic aspects of this book. They were certainly well-written enough; I just don't have an informed view on how they play through the eyes of someone who's really into the lifestyle and genre.

Lost & Bound

One of my compatriots at the Alliance of Self-Published Authors has a book coming out at the end of the month!

Pandora Spocks writes erotic romance, and writes it very well! I had the good fortune to receive an Advance Reader's Copy of the book from her, and I zipped through the whole thing (a full-length novel, not a short novel or novella) in a couple of days. Even though BDSM is not really my thing, I found it highly entertaining: brisk plotting, fun characters, and a terrific setting!

I'll do a full review on release day, January 31. Until then, it's available for pre-order ... check it out if BDSM romance floats your boat!

Movie Review! (with some feminist ruminations) Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in "Passengers"

There will be some spoilers in this post, but I'll set off the really big ones with warnings.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to see Passengers, the new sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. We'd both been interested in watching it based on the initial trailers, and despite the spate of negative reviews, we decided to give it a shot. I found it an odd and yet oddly effective movie, and wondered why on Earth it had only a 30% score on RottenTomatoes.com. So I went and scoured some of the capsule reviews and had to ask myself some hard questions.

The basic plot of Passengers is evident in the marketing: two passengers on a very long space journey accidentally wake up from suspended animation early, and have only each other (and a robot bartender) for company, with the prospect of decades remaining in the trip. Then more malfunctions turn the story into an action-oriented rollercoaster with the whole ship in terrible danger that our protagonists must navigate alone.

What's not shown in the marketing is the story element that drives most of the critical negativity about the film. (Spoiler ahead, but you'll probably see it coming early on anyway.) The two characters, Jim and Aurora, don't wake up at the same time. Jim wakes up first, and after spending a year in complete isolation from other human beings, he deliberately wakes Aurora up out of desperate loneliness, dooming her to share his fate of aging and dying before they have any chance of reaching the ship's destination. A really large proportion of critics took this as a creepy and gross expression of typical male patriarchal dominance. As one of them put it, "Man gets bored, so man ruins woman's life."

I'll get back to that bit later, in the heavy-spoiler part of the post.

The reason I called Passengers "odd" is that it mixes challenging ethical and emotional issues with science-fictional world-building far more ambitious than the typical s.f. film -- and then tops these elements off with enormously contrived plot devices. The movie was in development hell for almost a decade, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that all of the "ship in danger" action elements grew out of studio meddling intended to make the final product more commercially viable.

As a result of this strange hybridization, Passengers offers tons of stuff to provoke thought and contemplation in its audience, while flaking its way through plot conveniences that require you to shut off your brain. For example, the interstellar spaceship is in part based off a Bussard ramjet -- a well-established piece of theoretical technology that allows the ship to fuel itself by scooping up interstellar hydrogen. But nothing in the movie says it's a Bussard ramjet or that it's scooping up hydrogen. I had to do a search and find an interview with the screenwriter to confirm my after-the-movie realization of, "Hey, wait ... was that a Bussard ramjet?" None of the Bussard ramjet details are needed to understand the film or the situation, so the filmmakers chose to include it without drawing attention to it, a mark of respect for the audience's intelligence. And yet in the third act, when things start going haywire on the ship, audience intelligence clearly ranks low in the film's expectations, because plausibility flies out the window in scene after scene.

In other words, Passengers is a mixture of the extremely smart and the Hollywood-dumb. My brain enjoyed the extremely smart parts enough to put up with the Hollywood dumbness, and of course, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt have enough charisma to carry off a dozen dumb popcorn flicks. On top of which, the robot bartender played by Michael Sheen holds his own with the human characters in every scene he's in, while also being obviously a non-sentient piece of AI programming.

So if you're willing to let an exceedingly likeable cast guide you through a richly imagined science-fictional setting and then shrug off some very unimaginative Hollywood action-flick tropes, Passengers may do the trick for you, as it did for me.

Unless ...

(Spoiler-laced feminist analysis ahead)

... you watch the movie the way many of the critics seemed to -- as a reflection of our male-dominated, female subjugating society.

Once I started reading the reviews, I had to bring myself up short and ask, "Was my enjoyment of the film made possible by the fact that, as a man, I have the luxury of tuning out sexism and misogyny the way so much of our society does?" Obviously, no feminist wants to fall into that trap, and I experienced some real self-doubt about my reading of the film. I hadn't seen the male-female power disparity as an issue at all, whereas critic after critic marked it as the largest of the film's numerous flaws.

Did I totally drop the ball as a feminist while watching the movie?

Mulling it over, I leaned toward saying no, I had not.

For one thing, there's no question whatsoever that the film expects us to view Jim's crime as exactly that. He does something horrible and unforgivable, ripping his fellow passenger out of her life and stranding her in the same dire circumstances he's been occupying, except that she at least has one person to interact with whereas he has had no one. And the thing is, Jim knows he's doing the wrong thing. He agonizes over it. He argues with himself, and even begs himself not to go through with it. After he activates Aurora's sleeping tube to revive her, he hides what he's done and lets the automated systems manage her awakening, just as they'd done for him. Then he retreats to his room where he's visibly sick over his own actions. He knows it's inexcusable.

Eventually, of course, Aurora finds out. It takes her a year, and in that time, she and Jim fall in love and create a reasonable facsimile of happiness together, but events conspire against Jim, and she learns the truth.

And her reaction, to me, defies any suggestion that the film is saying it's okay for men to treat women however they like. Aurora instantly hates Jim. She screams at him and flees his presence whenever he tries to explain himself or beg for forgiveness. At one point, she enters his room at night and beats the crap out of him -- not just punching him in the face, but jumping onto the bed with him and repeatedly kicking him before finally grabbing up a heavy object and preparing to bash his brains out with it.

Jennifer Lawrence gives a fantastic performance in these scenes. No person with a heart could watch her in such absolute agony and say, "Well, but really, what Jim did wasn't that bad." Jim himself knows it's that bad. He doesn't fight back or try to stop her when she comes in to whale on him. He doesn't even defend himself when she's about to crack his skull open. Instead, he surrenders and just waits for her to kill him.

Of course, she can't do it (although I wonder if there was an early, dark version of the screenplay that ended right there, with her beating his head open) -- but her inability to murder him the way he has murdered her does not lead to reconciliation. She remains utterly estranged from him, so much so that it's clear she will never get over what he's done.

But Hollywood being Hollywood, they couldn't do the artistic thing and end the movie with Aurora killing Jim or with the two of them growing old and dying on the ship without ever speaking to each other again. Instead, it turns out that the accident that woke Jim up also led to an accelerating cascade of malfunctions, and if the two of them don't find a way to fix things, the ship will blow up and all 5,000 people will die.

So, conveniently, Jim didn't actually murder Aurora by waking her up, but saved her life by doing so, because the events of the third act show that he could never have gotten the ship fixed without her help. Even more conveniently, the process of fixing the ship opens up some emergency facilities Jim didn't know about, including a way for one of them (but only one) to return to suspended animation.

These contrivances are worthy of eye-rolling, but because Lawrence and Pratt have such terrific chemistry, and because we get to see Jim really, really suffer for his crime, I didn't begrudge the movie its fakey happy ending. No amount of suffering could excuse what he'd done, but I could buy Aurora forgiving him, because their romance was genuine, and he not only deliberately sacrifices himself to save the ship, but offers to put her in suspended animation again as soon as he realizes he can, even though her forgiveness means he could keep the option secret from her so that he wouldn't have to be alone.

Still.

After mulling all this over, might I nonetheless be going too easy on the film? Should I instead have been incensed that Aurora forgives Jim? Is this really just a horribly sexist, patriarchal movie that deserves the critical and moral lambasting it's received?

Here's why I think the answer is "no."

I had viewed the film as a story about two people. I had viewed Jim's crime as a crime born out of human loneliness, not male entitlement. And as a story about two people, it worked fine.

Which made me ask myself, what if the gender roles had been reversed? Would the movie still have been blasted as sexist, if it featured a female mechanic with great physical aptitude waking up a male writer and proceeding through the same events? Well, yes, it would have been criticized, because people would have said, "It's just a statement that women are incomplete without men." But I think the criticism would have been much more muted -- somewhere between annoyance and anger, but not at the level of outrage provoked by the Lawrence/Pratt version of the film.

And then I asked myself, what if both the characters had been female?

And I think the answer to that question is that the same people attacking the male-female version of the film would have hailed the female-female version as bold and forward-looking, and would have swallowed the implausible third act to a far greater degree and forgiven the female Jim (let's say "Jem") much more easily.

The exact same screenplay, with the exact same character motivations, the exact same dialogue, and the exact same interpersonal dynamic, would have been touted as a social triumph instead of reviled as a piece of neanderthalic misogyny.

Which means that it's not Jim that people are judging as unforgivable. It's not the story that's an offense against women and against human decency. It's the society in which we live.

So unhealthy is our patriarchal culture that many progressives and feminists are unable to view a story about a man and a woman as simply being a story about two people. The projection of our world's gender roles onto the story overwhelms the substance of the story itself -- even though there's nothing in the movie to suggest that Aurora and Jim live in a society with the patriarchal flaws of ours.

I really wish they'd made that version of the film with two women. Not because the love scenes would then have been hot lesbian action (well, maybe a little because of that, since I'm not entirely free of male piggishness), but because the story is a good story, and I wish it could have been viewed as a story instead of as a statement on gender inequity.

Even better would have been a version of the story where Aurora doesn't fully forgive Jem, but agrees to let the mechanic wake her up for a week or two a year so that Jem doesn't go crazy from loneliness.

Damn, why am I not the one in charge of Hollywood?

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!


a Rafflecopter giveaway
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.)