It’s Thrill Seeker’s week!

I’m Erotic Fiction of the Week at the cool and geeky, Dork Adore, and my release date isn’t until Thursday!

Dork Adore say ‘No-one quite knows how to write female submission like Kristina Lloyd does’.

I’m appropriately thrilled!

And just to add, if you missed me shouting about it yesterday, I’m giving away a whopping SIX signed paperback copies of Thrill Seeker over at Goodreads. Enter by May 31st to be in with a chance of winning a copy.

My publishers say: “A sexy and controversial erotic thriller – Fifty Shades Darker than E L James and Sylvia Day.”

Or as Janine Ashbless said, “Kristina, you’re several paint catalogues darker!” Heh. Don’t be scared. Come on in, the water’s lovely…

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Thirteen things about Thrill Seeker

1. I have three male leads (greedy, I know): Den Jackson, Liam Hamilton and Baxter Logan. It took me months to settle on one particular character’s name while another name practically arrived fully formed. The third character’s name took a bit of bouncing around, a fairly typical part of the naming process for me. These three different routes to the right names relate, in some ways, to the personality and behaviour of my three men. If you read the book, I’m sure you’ll be able to work out which name came fast, which slow, and which was somewhere in the middle.

2. The book is set in Saltbourne, a fictionalised version of Hastings, a faded seaside town about 30 miles from Brighton where I live. I first visited Hastings a few years ago and fell in love with the place.

3. Natalie Lovell, my narrator, is sexually submissive which, if you know my work, will come as no surprise. For years, hampered by shame and guilt about an incident in the past, Natalie has been reluctant to explore her fantasies. Thrill Seeker is the story of what happens when Natalie embarks on a new, more determined path.

4. In the early stages of writing the novel, I didn’t have a publisher and was feeling disheartened about publishing and the erotica scene in general. I was beyond happy when I learned that Black Lace were relaunching amidst all the 50 Shades hysteria – happy enough to sign a two-book deal with them.

5. One scene in the book was pretty much lifted from my life. And no, I ain’t telling you which!

6. Thrill Seeker is 90,000 words long, the biggest book I’ve written. Black Lace used to be strict on word count because, apparently, the paperbacks had to be a standard physical size in order to fit the specifics of their shrink-wrapped packaging. Distribution methods have since changed and so for authors, that means your novel can be the length it needs to be. Hurrah!

7. Baxter Logan, the man who previously betrayed Natalie and broke her heart, is deeply flawed and a few pounds overweight. So sue me. You can read about Baxter here in a sexy, flashback scene from Chapter 3.

8. When I discovered what the current erotica no-nos were for one of the major high street retailers, I rewrote an entire chapter, just in case.

9. I’ve wanted to explore kidnap fantasy for years. It’s a rich fantasy incorporating numerous elements which push my sub buttons: bondage, gags, blindfolds, an edge of violence and threat, powerlessness, the pleasures of torment, fear, and forced submission. Add to that the requirement for a shabby, isolated venue where the hostage is held prisoner, and my imagination, which likes life on the seedy, scary side, is firing on all cylinders. As with a lot of my writing, the challenge for me was to depict consensual engagement in a fantasy of non-consent without removing the key element which makes the fantasy hot. I tread some very fine lines in Thrill Seeker!

10. Facebook friends may recall me going, ‘Oh my word, that’s hot’ (I’m paraphrasing) when a feature on famous writers’ bedrooms was doing the rounds online. A certain something in Ernest Hemingway’s bedroom (right) ended up in Thrill Seeker. When readers ask writers, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ sometimes the answer is ‘Facebook’. Can you guess the object I stole?

11. As my deadline loomed, a holiday to France became a working holiday. For a blissful week, I wrote outdoors on my netbook in the shade in an enormous, sunny garden, had lunch made for me, swam 150-200 lengths late afternoon (small pool!) and relaxed in the evenings. This is the picture-postcard version of the writing life. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I have a fairly intense 9-5 job for four days of the week, and struggle to write in the evenings when my head is cluttered with left-brain crap. I write on Fridays, at weekends, and, as my deadline for Thrill Seeker neared, I’d often get up at 5.30am to do a couple of hours before going to work.

12. My advance for Thrill Seeker was the lowest I’ve received in my career to date. Publishing moves in mysterious ways.

13. Published at the end of Thrill Seeker is ‘Forbidden’ by SM Taylor, the winning short story of last year’s Black Lace/You magazine writing competition judged by myself, Sunday Times bestselling author, Portia da Costa, and our editor, Gillian Green. ‘Forbidden’ is prefaced by a two page introduction from me in which I reflect on the competition, erotica, and on Ms Taylor’s wonderful story. In the intro, I write, “When I first read ‘Forbidden’, I got goosebumps.” And truly, I did!

*

Thrill Seeker will be published in three days’ time on Thursday, 9th May, 2013!

I’m giving away 6 signed copies on Goodreads. Deadline: 31st May!

‘A sexy and controversial erotic thriller – Fifty Shades Darker than EL James and Sylvia Day’

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Thrill Seeker: an excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Liam doesn’t usually come when I’m sucking him, but on the night it started he was different. His groans were threaded with a darker note, and my throat was more open than it had ever been with him because I was thinking of someone else.

Outside, thunder edged closer, snarling above the sea. In my mind, I saw this strange, broken town, summer rain slicking its pink and gold domes, the black sky ripped by a storm. ‘Trouble’s coming,’ I might have thought. Except I didn’t. I didn’t see anything coming. Well, apart from Liam.

‘Don’t stop,’ he gasped, voice bordering on panic. I was kneeling on my futon and he grabbed my hair, not too hard because that’s not his style. He drew me onto him. I spluttered, tapped his thigh and he eased back a fraction like a gent. Then he was there again, cock nudging at my throat, and I was trying to match his urgency, wet, firm, fast. His noises, half-pained and incredulous, made desire thump in my cunt. I wanted to tip him over the edge and hear his ecstatic cries but we were going too fast for me.

I clutched his thighs, thinking, if this were Baxter Logan, I’d take him and hold him till I ran out of breath.

Liam’s groans thinned. ‘Don’t stop, don’t…’

Why think about Baxter? Was it the rowdy weather? Or was I always thinking about Baxter? Of course I was. Don’t try and kid yourself it’s any different, Nats. Most days, my memories were a low-frequency hum but on occasion, Baxter Logan returned in all his glory, dominating my thoughts.

Where are you now, you bastard? Do you ever think of me?

My hands on Liam’s hips, I steadied myself, relaxed, then eased my mouth forward, straight down the hatch. I was rewarded with a twisted cry of disbelief, as if the pleasure of being lodged in my throat were too much for him to bear. I stayed deep, relishing the calm intimacy of the act. Thunder rumbled closer. I pulled back then bobbed to and fro, my lips tight, saliva spilling along his length.

‘Oh, don’t st… oh, yes.’

For a brilliant instant, lightning filled the room. In the corner of my eye, the tall mirror propped against the wall cracked with reflected sky. A woman on her knees was sucking a lanky guy standing on a futon. Liam likes to watch; I don’t. I prefer close-ups and the focus on sensation. The sight of my own body distracts me. Still sucking, I gazed up at Liam even though my eyeballs ached. I cupped his balls, fondling their warm, slipping weight.

Liam looked down, mouth slack, face crumpling, his eyes blurred with delirium as if he weren’t quite there. His muscular torso was milk white, his pubes a tangle of dark copper filaments, his thickly-freckled arms covered with sandy hair. I focused my lips on his end, pulling hard then down again. I saw him glance at our reflection. He gripped my hair and began to thrust, using me, fucking my mouth so I was no longer the giver but the recipient.

Baxter Logan liked using my mouth that way.

Seconds later, Liam came, his body jerking, his hands scattering touches on my shoulders. I drank every drop of him and cupped his buttocks, holding him close as his shudders faded. I listened to his post-bliss moans, keeping him in my mouth until he grew twitchy. He withdrew – ah, ah – laughing at his sensitivity, then dropped to the mattress, slender limbs collapsing like a house of cards.

‘Oh man.’ He rolled backwards, flinging out an arm. ‘Sheesh. You got a world exclusive!’

I laughed and fell alongside him, nestling in the crook of his arm. His fingers strummed my back.

‘I never come like that,’ he said. ‘Fuck. Awesome. I can’t feel my knees. What are you on?’

‘Form,’ I said, proud of my achievement.

‘I’ll say. Oh, fuck. Seriously, Nats…’

He mussed my hair, lazily affectionate. We weren’t done, not by a long shot. We’d have a breather then he’d make me come or squirt or both. Then we’d fuck again, maybe come again. We’d put on a CD, have another drink, roll a joint, chat, fuck, and on we’d go until we were sated.

‘Man, oh man,’ said Liam, more to himself than to me. I reached across his body for my tumbler of red on the floor by the bed. Tumblers, never stemmed glasses for sex, especially on a futon. Puffs of colour from the fairy lights around my mirror glowed in the wine and shone in the depths of the dark, hardwood floor. As I moved, my stomach squeaked against Liam’s, both of us wet with sweat. I kissed his shoulder. It’s a good relationship. We’re friends and we fuck, and neither of us wants anything more than that. Or at least, not from each other.

We lay in silence as our breathing returned to normal. Thunder grumbled then cracked. A car alarm started pulsing in the street on the far side of the house. Rain hit the bedroom window in squally bursts. After several hot, oppressive days, the cooler air was a relief.

‘Can’t move,’ murmured Liam. ‘I think you’ve broken me.’

I laughed. ‘Do you need to move?’

Before he could answer, a huge crash punctured our mellow mood. I jumped, confused. Not thunder, not coming from the sky like the rest of the racket. A crash in the house from two floors below, kitchen by the sounds of it. Crockery? Glass? A lot of something smashed to smithereens. The window?

I scrambled off the bed, pulled a silk slip over my head then hurtled down the stairs two at a time. I heard Liam call, ‘Nats? What is it?’

I didn’t answer. My mind hopped through possibilities: a tree in the garden had been brought down, smashing the kitchen window. Or, I was being burgled. All I could think was, ‘Cat, laptop, cat, laptop.’ Desperate to protect these two most precious things, I didn’t give a thought for my safety. One glass of wine and suddenly I’m a hero.

Would Rory be scared? Would she scarper, never to be seen again? Would they steal my laptop? All my photos, emails, documents, software? My clammy hand squeaked on the wooden banister. Oh God, some of those photos. For years, I’d been meaning to password protect the dodgy stuff. I needed to back up my files too. And leave instructions for my hard drive to be wiped in the event of my untimely demise. I wasn’t ready to be murdered, wasn’t ready to be burgled. I needed to get organised first. Just give me a couple of days then do your worst.

Instead of my life, jpegs of Baxter flashed before my eyes. So many beautiful, filthy images – his thighs, his cock, his chest, his arms, his cock by my mouth, his cock in my cunt – but rarely any pictures of his face. I should have known, shouldn’t I? ‘Not my face, hen. You know how shy I am.’ This from a man who didn’t have a shy bone in his body.

Mine is a tall, skinny townhouse built in the slope of Old Saltbourne. People say I’m lucky to own such a lovely house but if they knew the down payment came from money left to me by my father, they might not be so envious. I hoped I wasn’t about to add a second early death to the family tree. I rounded the first flight of stairs and hurried across the living room where our discarded clothes were dotted like stepping stones. Rory was curled on Liam’s jeans, a black and white ball of fluff raising her head in mild concern. She rarely moves except for food. I scuttled past her and braced myself against the lumpy stone wall as I turned onto the stairs leading to the lower floor.

‘Liam!’ I called, letting the world and its mad axemen know I wasn’t alone. At the top of the stairs, I felt fresh air blasting inwards, cooling my shins. Halfway down, I saw curtains at the kitchen window flapping softly, gingham dancing and twisting. I stalled, suddenly rational. Someone might be there, waiting for me. Foolish to come charging down like this, a small, slightly drunk woman, unarmed, half-dressed.

I took the steps slowly, a pulse throbbing in my neck. How would Liam shape up if I were attacked? He certainly had the muscle and knuckle to land someone a hefty blow. Plus, out in the woods, he killed rabbits with his bare hands and never went anywhere without a penknife. He might be able to save me, assuming he wasn’t too stoned and blowjobbed to stand.

I took another step down. Penknife? What good’s a penknife against a burglar, a rapist, a homicidal maniac?

Until then, I’d always felt safe in my own home, the biggest threat to my peace an over-active imagination, easily roused by Saltbourne’s history of smugglers, secret tunnels and fishermen lost at sea. Real danger didn’t seem part of my life except, sometimes, when I walked through New Town late at night, the pedestrianised streets, garish red brick, modern murals and glass-fronted shops of Castlegate Plaza conspiring to create an unease rooted in the hollowness of urban planning. Old Town, with its picturesque alleys, worn steps, salmon pink domes, and haphazard streets overlooked by cliff-top castle ruins, was a world apart.

My fingers inched over the wall’s rough stone as I descended to the kitchen. I heard nothing, saw no shadows shifting. I crept down the final few steps then switched on the light. Scanning the room, I tried to make sense of the mess. Shards of glass sparkled on the drainer of the sink. The windows were intact. No one was here. One window was open, its drooping metal handle scraping against the outside wall, hinges banging in the clattering rain. The damp gingham curtains fluttered in the breeze, ditsy flags of surrender. A vase. My glass vase on the windowsill had smashed. A wine glass too by the looks of it. The back door was ajar. My heart was thumping, my throat parched.

Liam’s feet banged on first flight of stairs. ‘I’m coming, you OK?’

On the kitchen table, as if waiting to be filed, was a sheet of A4 paper in a clear, plastic poly pocket. It wasn’t mine. I snatched it up. Across the page, in glued lettering cut from newspapers, were the words: CLOSER THAN YOU KNOW.

My hands shook. My legs seemed to vanish from under me. Coldness slid down my face while sweat pinched under my arms. I was dizzy, weak, yet somehow, I was still upright.

I remembered why Baxter Logan had been on my mind. Because I could see I was chasing sex and danger, taking stupid risks to try and heal the past.

I glanced at the back door, fearing the man would burst back in. Or was he in the spare room, behind the closed door? I swung around. No, not in there. Dirty, wet footprints reached the table and no further.

I tried to moisten my lips but my tongue had no power. ‘Nats?’ Liam was at the top of the kitchen stairs. I tugged open the cutlery drawer, stuffed the note inside, and slammed it shut. I didn’t want to worry him, and anyway, he wouldn’t understand.

‘What happened?’ Liam was at the foot of the stairs, looking as if he’d just run half a marathon. He was naked, no pocket for a penknife.

I took four wobbly steps to the back door and opened it fully. Rain sluiced down, a hard, glittery fall against the backdrop of dark shrubbery and overhanging trees. Light from the house glinted on plant pots, wet stone and on my cast iron chairs, huddled around the barbecue. Cool droplets tickled my toes and night air curled around my ankles.

‘I think someone’s in the garden,’ I said.

*

Published 9th May, 2013, paperback and ebook

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Sudden sucks* and fainting goats

*because FB is blocking my post!

Alison Tyler’s Sudden Sex blog tour continues apace! (And if you click the pic, you get to see who’s doing who.)

I have three pices of flash fic in this anthology of quickies, and have received three reviews which made several parts of me glow. Sugar Upsets My Vagina has, says Giselle Renarde, “a dream-like quality” while Delilah Night observes that “the protagonist wants a hard, satisfying fuck … Kristina rewards her, and us, with just that.”

And for Deep Throat, Deep Love, Graydancer gave me a review so frickin’ smart and sexy I wanted to lie back afterwards, smoke a cigarette, and bat his hand away because I was too sensitive. “Disgustingly clever and graceful,” he says, and yup, I want that on a T-shirt.

I reviewed Maria See’s deft, taboo-busting short, One Sleep, a few weeks ago, and below are my thoughts on Gina Marie‘s beautiful and subtly powerful piece, Seasonal Affected Disorder. Heck, I love this piece so bad!

You know you’re in the hands of a writer to trust when her opening line drops you into a scene you can feel: “The air smells clean and sharp like minerals, tastes like new snow eaten from a mitten.”

If a writer can describe air with such evocative precision, I want to be there when her characters are trying to claw each other’s skin off.

Seasonal Affected Disorder is ostensibly about a couple who pull off from the road to fuck in The Great Outdoors. But the narrative action takes second billing to the dizzying depictions of sex, desire, and the narrator’s connectedness to the landscape. The surroundings are so much more than a backdrop. The physical and imaginative pleasures of sex are reflected and reinforced by vivid descriptions of both the natural world’s presence and its more nebulous aspects: the historic, the folkloric, the intimations of danger. “Everything makes me horny” says the narrator, and her life-affirming responsiveness to her surroundings repeats throughout the piece in so many gorgeous, original ways.

Gina Marie’s exhilarating prose conveys a sensual engagement with the landscape that steers clear of sentiment, delicacy or cloying lyricism. This is a writer who understands you can write about sex without focusing on body parts and still stay gritty; that the borders of the self fracture in bliss; that desire leads to delirium, disorder and collapse. I loved how Marie demonstrated the surprises and illogicality of the erotic, particularly in the breathless exchange of dirty talk when he calls her “an excitable little fainting goat”.

“The word goat – fuck!” says our narrator.

And those folkloric undertones I mentioned surface in a sudden single line – “Then he chops me up and makes a stew out of me right there against that tree” – before sinking back to become an intangible part of the forest atmosphere.

Seasonal Affected Disorder is a perfect balance of controlled, careful writing and of erotic chaos; of understatement and of excess in all the right places. Truly, it’s one of the finest pieces of erotic flash I’ve read! I feel I could wax lyrical about horny fainting goats, sex stew and joyful lust for quite some time. But I’ll spare you! Just go read Gina Marie’s piece, and faint with me.

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Cleis Press

Thrill Seeker: a seaside excerpt

I’m over at Justine Elyot’s blog today discussing the influence of the seaside on my writing as part of her fascinating Briterotica series.

Below is a seasidey excerpt from my forthcoming Black Lace novel, Thrill Seeker (published 9th May in the UK and on Kindle generally). This is the first excerpt I’ve revealed to the internet, so please be gentle!

Taken from Chapter Three, the scene is a flashback in which my narrator, Natalie, recalls having sex on the beach at night with Baxter Logan, the man who later betrays her.

This is our first significant introduction to Baxter Logan, and oh, how I adore him! He turned out to be one of the characters I’ve most enjoyed writing in my career to date.

Thrill Seeker is set in Saltbourne, a fictional seaside town, and tells the story of Natalie Lovell who gets into all sorts of trouble when she shares a kidnap fantasy with a stranger she meets online. But of course, it’s more complicated than that, and Baxter Logan is part of her baggage.

CHAPTER THREE

The derelict fishing quarter on the east beach at Saltbourne used to be my favourite place for late night, al fresco sex.

Once, Baxter and I fucked in the scoop of a broken boat, its wooden sides yellow and ravaged like an old banana. No, that’s not right. Baxter fucked me. He always fucked me. Sex wasn’t something we did together. He would act as if he were inflicting it on me and I’d let him because that’s how we rolled.

That night with Baxter was our first time at the beach. The moon was low and large, silvering the sea, and the tide was high. Waves crashed on the shore, shingle clattering in the drag. You could make out the whirrs and squeals of the funfair near the west beach, a jangle of music seeping into the dark, the rides’ gaudy lights spinning, flashing and swooping by the disused pier. In contrast, the east beach around us was apocalyptically still, a halted world of rusting winches, mouldering shacks, abandoned lobster pots, rotting rope and scattered, dead boats. The old net houses, tall, gaunt sheds with steep roofs and tar-black, weatherboarded walls, loomed over the wreckage like a creepy, elongated town in a fairy tale.

The broken boat was resting on a slant. Baxter had me face-forward over the plank of a narrow seat, his fist wound in my hair. He made my spine dip, my arse lifting towards to him, and my neck ached. I gripped the edge of the boat, struggling to keep my cries down as he fucked me like a man possessed.

‘See what you make me do,’ he accused, his Dunfermline accent rolling through gritted teeth. ‘Fucking you in this nasty place, like a whore. A greedy little whore. Why d’you do it, hen? Why d’you make me fuck you like this, eh?’

The boat creaked and I feared it might break, its wood too brittle and splintered to take us. Baxter slammed relentlessly, his cock thumping at my core. He released my hair and hooked me around the waist, holding me steady as he powered on, his breath fast, his grunts spittle-moist and urgent. He was a hefty man with crude hands, his broad chest tangled with dark hair, his thighs as big as a warrior’s. He was a few pounds overweight but proportionate so the extra layer merely added to his bulk and strength. Besides, I like a man with padding.

To look at him, sturdy in a suit, hair rumpled, jaw unshaven, his tie permanently askew, you wouldn’t believe he could move with such grace and ease; wouldn’t believe how his pelvis could undulate when he lingered over a slow, cruel fuck; wouldn’t believe how fast he could move in the sack. But then to look at him, you’d never guess he was as broken as the boats around us, a big, angry, soft-hearted Scot with a weakness for women and whisky.

I loved him for a year and now I wish I’d never met him.

That night on the beach is etched in my memory as one of our high points, later to became a low because it was laced with betrayal. At the time, drunk on romance, I’d seen the desolate beauty of the fishing quarter as an environmental echo of Baxter. He was all around me, his masculinity echoing in the remnants of this coastal industry, in the coils of thick rope, the heavy chains and dark, dangerous secrets of the sea.

‘C’mere, you wee bitch,’ he urged, snatching himself from me. ‘Suck my dick. Come on, jump to it.’

He maneuvered me into place, dragging me by my hair. I complained, resisting him because it was too dark to see and the boat was grotty. I wanted to know where I was putting my hands, what I was kneeling on. Was it clean, safe? Would we break the boat and end up in a heap of matchwood? But Baxter didn’t care about niceties and he knew, at heart, neither did I.

I stumbled towards him on all fours. I was wearing cute, blue, hold-up stockings with a daisy detail on the ankle. Not so cute now. Baxter’s thighs were bound with a confusion of clothing and his cock was hard enough to cut diamonds. For a brief moment, moonlight glossed his tip, adding a pearly pink sheen to the flushed violet marbling. The veins on his shaft were thick like those ropes, flowing with blue mysteries like the sea. He gripped himself, holding steady as he aimed for my mouth, pulling me on to him.

Had anyone been watching they might have wondered if I were consenting to this. But I was, very much so. Baxter’s bossiness turned me on like nothing else. I saw his cock as him condensed, full of rage but exposed and vulnerable too. At that moment, I couldn’t differentiate between wanting the man and wanting the cock. I wanted him and it to overwhelm me. Then I could disappear into him, like disappearing into the vastness of the black, boundless night. That’s what I craved: the oblivion of dissolution, the intoxicating peace I found in the white heat, white light of lust, sweat and surrender.

*

My publishers say: “A sexy and controversial erotic thriller – Fifty Shades Darker than E L James and Sylvia Day.”

The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery!)

Amazon UK :: Amazon US :: Amazon CA

Waterstones

Compare UK prices

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