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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.