Three Shades of Grey

Alison Tyler’s latest anthology, 69, features 69 super-short stories, three of which are mine.

These pieces were written a couple of years ago and are loosely linked by a theme of color and non-color (and of hot, hard sex, obviously!). It’s slightly peculiar reading them now when erotica is saturated with grey. I feel very on-trend! And isn’t that richly detailed, vibrant cover so gorgeously unfashionable?

My three stories are Slave Market in Monochrome, Based on a True Story and Good Cop, Bad Cop.

69 is available on Kindle in the UK (soon) and the US (now), and you can check out the amazing line-up of authors on Alison’s blog.

Here’s the opener to Good Cop, Bad Cop.

When Karen failed to get a Barbie doll for her eighth birthday, all the flowers in the family garden died. At the age of fifteen, Andy Edwards dumped her for Marnie Bell and Karen didn’t find out until Gemma Cosgrove passed the message on in double history class. The hummingbirds on the Chinese wallpaper in her parents’ dining room slid to the floor, lifeless.

Nobody put two and two together to make five. Why would they?

Ten years later, exactly 365 days after Karen had split with the man she’d imagined growing old with, she walked into Downtown, the contemporary art gallery where she worked, to discover the color had vanished from all the paintings. The images remained but the canvases were stained with a palette of greys – charcoal, dove, church mouse, pewter – and the blank extremes of soot black and ivory. Karen’s manager, Alicia Dean, was yammering on the phone to the police while their cleaner, a blond, dreadlocked art student called Stuart, was picking through the contents of a rubbish sack. In the newly drab gallery, Stuart’s gloved hands were a flutter of garish pink.

“Man, this is well freaky,” he muttered.

Karen agreed, a sense of dread stealing over her.

Alicia snapped her phone shut. “Rozzers are on their way,” she said with plummy-voiced confidence.

A jolt of lechery charged Karen’s insides. Oh, for shame. She’d spent a year without cock and now even the mention of men in uniform was enough to spark her lust. She was embarrassed but unsurprised. She currently couldn’t get through a single day without wanting to accost eligible young men in the supermarket, on the bus or in the street, and her definition of “eligible” was growing increasingly broad. At night, her dreams were orgiastic romps of flesh, chest hair and muscle, of deep voices, thick fingers, stubbled jaws and hot, salty skin. Oh, and of cock too. Let’s not forget the cock.

Within a couple of minutes, two bobbies on the beat had arrived, a man and woman in high-visibility jackets, him in a traditional tit-shaped helmet. Five minutes later, a patrol car drew up, blue lights flashing, and two cops sauntered in, reassuringly mean in black combats, boots and bulky protective vests. They wore peaked caps with chequered bands, each with a black baton jutting by his hip. Karen grew moist at the sight of those batons.

The morning got really exciting when forensics came along and the gallery was cordoned off to the public. “CRIME SCENE DO NO ENTER” read the yellow tape. Stuart left for college and Alicia began to cry. It fell to the female officer to comfort her and get busy with the kettle and the Kleenex. In the main gallery, crumpled white creatures in head-to-toe plastic swept dust into little pots, swabbed canvases and took measurements, photos and videos. If it hadn’t been for a minor royal due in town that day to open a new conference center, they’d have been ignored. But in a state of heightened security, anything suspicious required prompt investigation. The gallery bleeped and crackled with radio messages; there were mutterings about bioterroism; and a general air of indecisiveness hung about the place, although the latter wasn’t, in itself, unusual.

Eventually, Karen approached the three male cops who were in the long gallery, clustered around a painting entitled, A Study in Blue.

“Color’s this one meant to be, then?” asked Bryn, a freckle-faced man with barely visible eyelashes and pale, ginger brows. A copper copper, thought Karen.

Bryn’s colleagues laughed at his feeble joke.

Karen cleared her throat. “You should take me in for questioning. I know something about this.”

The policemen got suddenly serious. The sexiest of the bunch, Sol, a dark-eyed guy with a hard, straight nose, instinctively rested a hand on his baton and glared, his body tensed for action. Karen’s cunt tingled.

“What is it you want to tell us, eh?” asked the third cop, a barrel-chested man who looked ready to burst out of his protective vest. Karen hadn’t caught his first name and knew only that he was Sergeant Carter.

She chewed her lip, thinking, I want to tell you the colors have vanished because I’m desperately lonely and I’m not getting any cock. Instead, she said, “It’s private. If you don’t want to take me to the station, there’s a room in the basement we could use.”

Amazon UK :: Amazon US

So many pretty covers!

Appropriately enough, we’ve been sitting on this piece of ass news for ages. And we can now reveal that Susie Bright – yes, SUSIE BRIGHT! (seen here smoking a bong on Six Feet Under!) – is making our anal anthologies Audible!

I’m thrilled and astonished by how successful and popular these ebooks have become, and to have someone as awesome as Susie Bright backing our behinds is more than I ever imagined for these stories. Our three book bundle will also be available digitally and as a POD you can fondle. More news on release dates when we get them!

And just look at this lush line up of Cleis covers:

Out November 2012	Out January 2013	Out NOW!

Morning, Noon and Night includes my cocktail-based story, 5pm Somewhere. Check out the fabulous, round-the-clock TOC here.

The Big Book of Bondage includes my, um, pig-based story, The Bondage Pig. More on the authors involved here.

And Bound By Lust is currently on tour! This Friday (June 22), I’ll be stopping by Kristina Wright’s blog to share a little about my BBL story, No Sleep, while hoping much comedy confusion arises from us sharing a first name. And on the following Friday (June 29), I’ll be ordering in tea and cakes/adult beverages, and playing host to Nikki Magennis.

I hope you’ll be able to join us!

Double Delight

I’ve peaked! Today sees the official UK release of The Mammoth Book of the Best of the Best New Erotica, a collection of stories selected from fifteen volumes of Maxim Jakubowski‘s bestselling series.

This is doubly delightful because a) I’m in it! And b), for the first time in the series we’ve got a guy included on the cover instead of the usual single, white, sexualised female. Awesome, no? Those of you with long memories may recall that Erotica Cover Watch, the blog I co-founded to campaign against sexism in erotica publishing, launched with a criticism of Mammoth’s covers. When we started ECW, we were concerned (and warned) that speaking out might damage our writing careers. So for me, personally, being in this book represents an artistic and political success. I’m thrilled!

It was also nice to find out about the couple-cover after hearing the sad news that Filament, a magazine that has done masses to challenge the notion that women aren’t interested in eyeing up men, are to close after a hugely successful run.

But to go back to a) I’m in it!, Mammoth is a series which, over the years, has featured fiction from Anne Rice, Kathy Acker, Leonard Cohen, Poppy Z Brite, Ramsey Campbell plus numerous well-respected names from the erotica genre. In his introduction to this new volume, Jakubowski recalls his struggle in the early 90s to persuade his publishers to take erotica on board, and makes a strong case for the validity of erotica as a genre with relevance and literary merit.

Sex was and always will be an integral part of the human make-up and I do strongly feel it is essentially dishonest to censor it out of our writings for the sake of propriety or social convenience. [...] Here are thirty wonderful tales of sex, life, hotness, passion, of erotica at its best. If you have not been converted to the sensual and intellectual pleasures of our genre already, this is your chance.

You hear that? This is your chance!

Your choices are: Amazon UK paperback, Amazon UK Kindle and coming soon, Amazon US paperback, Amazon US Kindle.

Best of the Best includes fiction from Marilyn Jaye-Lewis, Poppy Z Brite, Thomas S Roche, Matt Thorne, Carol Queen, Carole Anne Davis, Lucy Taylor, Michael Hemmingson, Lauren Henderson, M. Christian, Mike Kimera, Donna George Storey, Alison Tyler and more. I don’t think I’ve ever been in an anthology where so many of the contributors have wikipedia entries.

Anyways, Happy New Year to you all!

I’d like to wish you Happy New Rear too but, um, eyes right, our ass is currently being corrected! Alison privately confessed she’s always had difficulties with the word ‘annual’ … but anal? Alison Tyler?

Smart Ass

Smart Ass is out! This is the third ebook in the annual anal erotica series from Pretty Things Press and, appropriately, my story is about a threesome (BrE) – or a threeway (AmE)!

I  love writing for this series! My first story for our Ass ebooks was a M/M piece set in Istanbul, Strangers in the Bathhouse. I then went for anal sex with an astronaut and a couple whose marriage was on the (moon)rocks, and wrote Dark Side of the Moon. And this year I have My Ass is Your Ass is My Ass, a full-on, filthy, D/s threeway (MFM).

Here’s the official blurb:

Coral’s a barmaid with two lovers, at least. When her main squeeze, Tony, insists she keep one thing for him, anal or deep-throating, Coral hands him ownership of her ass. But Snowy, her other lover, unhappy at missing out, wants to challenge Tony’s dominance. In the ensuing battle for her butt, Coral figures the issue is best resolved by taking both guys to bed for a hot, hard threeway.

And I’m not even going to begin telling you what inspired this story!

Hurry, hurry! If you buy Smart Ass from Smashwords before the end of Saturday (17 Sept), you’ll get 25% discount. Here’s how:

Go here to purchase the ebook

Before you checkout, enter the coupon code DZ33X

This results in a promotional price of $3.37! Full price is $4.49. If, like me, you are a bewildered Brit, this is approx £2.85 down to £2.10. Brits, to get your piece of promo ass, simply act like a Yank (I believe they chew gum and say ‘Yee-ha! How awfully awesome!’), download from Smashwords, it does the math(s) and you get your goodies in a flash! (No e-reader required, just a computer.). I haven’t got a clue when Sat 17th Sept actually ends, so grab it while you can!

Smart Ass is also available at All Romance and on Kindle UK and Kindle US. (And you can get the Kindle app for PC for free: free Kindle UK and free Kindle US)

The latter (Amazon US) has flummoxed me because I wanted to add my story, My Ass is Your Ass is My Ass, to my listmania list of main publications. But it seems Amazon US regards  ’ass’ in listmanias as ‘inappropriate language’, even though it’s cool to have ‘ass’ in a title for sale (not to mention that ‘ass’ is totally appropriate for an anal-sex anthology!). So anyways, I had to rewrite my title as ‘My As* is Your A*s is My *ss’! Scroll down to see my as(s)terisks! Interestingly, I tried a BrE version of the title – My Arse is Your Arse is My Arse - and Amazon US accepts that. But that ain’t what my story’s called! These days, I generally go for ‘ass’ to make my smut more accessible/acceptable to a US audience (and don’t even get me started on the trouble I have with knickers, pants, suspenders and so on) but maybe ‘arse’ would slip past the ass-censors! Crazy.

Anyway, here’s the opening to my story:

My Ass is Your Ass is My Ass

So, there he is with his cock in my ass, and I’m biting the pillow, making all sorts of groans. At least, that’s how it looks on the outside. Not that anyone’s watching. We’re in my bedroom and very alone together, the way you are when someone’s fucking your ass. Very alone together.

So that’s the outside view: kinda porny and inadequate. On the inside, I’m floating in a space nebula, and star clusters of silver are pulsing bright and dark. I’m about to go supernova when Tony makes a breathless demand. “You’ve got to save one thing for me,” he says. “Your ass or your throat.”

He could be speaking a foreign language. Slow colorbursts spread across my mind like intergalactic ink stains: electric blue and peacock green with halos of neon pink and gold. My ass is so stretched and full of his big, beautiful dick.
“What is it, huh?” he says. “I’m giving you a choice here. You gotta make up your mind. Anal or deep-throating?”

I wail and whimper. The question’s too difficult. It’s like he asked me to explain string theory.

“Come on,” he urges. “I know you fuck other guys. No need to be shy. I know you’re a slut but you’re my slut, see?” His fingers grip below my hips. “So you got to put up a ‘reserved’ sign on one part of your body. ‘Only for Tony.’ What’s it to be? Ass or throat?”

I want to work through the question employing all my faculties of reason. I want to write a list of pros and cons and give due consideration to the implications of this decision, both for my myself, for my relationship with Tony and with the others. But I can’t. So I reach into deep space and pluck a word from a distant constellation, a single syllable burning bright and white.

“Ass. My ass.”

Tony groans and holds himself deep. “Good girl,” he murmurs. Whenever he says that, I go loose with lust. “What am I doing right now?” he asks.

My words are tangled up with stars. “Fucking me.”

“Where’s my cock?”

“In my ass.”

“Whose ass?” He slides away and in again, slow and controlled. “Whose ass is it really?”

I’m spiraling toward a whirlpool of blackness and I fight the pull, knowing gravity wants to steal my words.

“It’s your ass,” I say. “My ass is your ass.”

“That’s right,” he breathes.

“Is my ass,” I gasp. When I come, I fall through nights of liquid velvet, lights prickling as ageless galaxies die across the dark skies of my mind.

***

That was five months ago. I’ve been with half a dozen other guys since then and I’ve kept my word. Well, more or less …

You can read a whole lot more on Smashwords because mine’s the first story in the collection and the first 20% of the book is free to read!

Smart Ass also includes super-sexy buttfuck fic from Sommer Marsden, Thomas S. Roche, Alison Tyler and Sophia Valenti.

Something for the weekend? With 25% off?

Ah, go on! Treat yourself!

Man Candy Monday

I do like a man with a strong pair of hands and a hefty wristwatch.

I have a piece of flash fic, Sexy Time, about this very topic set to go live at Forthegirls.com this Thursday (Aug 25th). For the Girls is brought to you by the awesome Ms Naughty and features lots of gorgeous men, articles, reviews, sexy stories and dirty movies. It’s the biggest porn site for straight women and, needless to say, I’m a fan!

Thanks for the pic go to Jo, a woman with excellent taste in wrist action.

More filthy fun: the third in our series of annual, anal-erotica ebooks (I love saying that) will be coming your way very soon. This year, Thomas Roche will be joining Sommer Marsden, Alison Tyler, Sophia Valenti and me to bring you Smart Ass. Check out Alison’s intriguing teaser from her story, Plucked (what a title!). I don’t know anything about the other stories yet but I can’t wait to get to the proof-reading stage. One of the rules of proof reading is read the piece in its entirety before you start fixing typos. If you start off looking for typos without that crucial, hands-off read-through, chances are you’ll get distracted by the content. I reckon the content in Smart Ass is going to be very distracting – and that initial, hands-off reading could prove a challenge …

I’ll tell you more about my story closer to the time. All I can say for now is, this piece of ass was a joy to write and I’m so pleased with how it turned out.