Eroticon and my Bondage Pig

Isn’t that a beautiful poster?

The world of erotica is gearing itself up for Eroticon 2013 in London next weekend. I’m running a writing workshop on the Saturday morning. My blurb says:

“Kristina Lloyd explores how to use imagery, setting and take risks with language to enrich your fiction and add layers of meaning. We’ll examine how the pleasure found in words used both within and outside a ‘sex scene’ can enhance the overall eroticism of a piece. There will be short writing exercises aimed at sparking new ways of thinking.”

I’m also reading on the Saturday evening alongside some fabulous writers (see beautiful poster!). There’s a PDF of the 9 – 5pm schedule and tix are still available! There are heaps of sessions I’m keen to attend. I’m also looking forward to catching up with authors I get to see once in a blue moon, meeting new people and just generally hanging out with creative, sex-positive folk.

In other news, I’m this week’s author on the Filthy Friday series from Sh!. I’ve offered up a key excerpt from one of my latest stories, The Bondage Pig, published in Alison Tyler‘s Big Book of Bondage. This story has been getting some great comments. Kiki DeLovely gave the piece a wonderful review (and reckoned mine was the dirtiest story in the anthology), and Sharon Wachsler (who’s giving away two copies of the anthology) described The Bondage Pig as “a masterpiece [...] suspenseful, creepy, dirty, and surprisingly sweet.”

It’s quite an unusual story. Hop on over to the Sh! blog and take a ride on my pig!

Best Erotic Romance 2013

January, clearly, is my month of pig. I have couple of new stories published: Cutting Out Hearts in Best Erotic Romance (ed Kristina Wright), and The Bondage Pig in The Big Book of Bondage (ed Alison Tyler). The latter story features a lot of pig and recently received a seriously fab review from Kiki DeLovely. More on that porcine piece next month. (TBBoB is available for Kindle now but gets its paperback release in the UK on Valentine’s Day; I do think there ought to be more pigs among the hearts and flowers.)

Meanwhile, Cutting Out Hearts tells of Susanna, a married woman who goes home with her local butcher after bumping into him one evening. I’ve only just spotted the pig reference when choosing an excerpt! I swear I’m not obsessed. Here’s the excerpt:

From Cutting Out Hearts

Oh, the lies we tell ourselves.

His kitchen was magnificent, the sort that might feature in one of Ness’s magazines: granite worktops, halogen spotlights, acres of space and a double-drainer sink. A triple row of knives and cleavers glinted on one wall, and at the room’s center was a large pine table with curvy legs, its surface scored with marks. Likes to socialize, I thought. Well, that’s probably good.

He selected a bottle from a wine rack, his hands gripping its neck. I hovered, not knowing what to do. When he took two glasses from an overhead cupboard, I joined him, spreading my fingers over the base of my glass as he opened the wine like a waiter, regular corkscrew and a muscular withdrawal.

The cork gave a dull pop, a starting gun for seduction.

I’m doing this, I thought as Will poured. I’m flirting with intent. Oh, sweet whoever’s up there, strike me down with a pitchfork.

“Chin chin,” he said as we clinked glasses.

I drank, not knowing what to say. I was about to admire his kitchen when he said, “You often look sad. You know that?”

My heart dropped. “Do I? I don’t mean to.”

“You mean to hide it?”

“Guess I didn’t know I looked sad.” I shrugged. “Maybe that’s just how my face is.”

He walked away to put on a CD. Sound system in the kitchen, the heart of his home. I stayed leaning by the granite counter because I hadn’t been invited to sit down. When he returned, he said, “You don’t look sad now.”

I smiled.

“You look terrified.”

I laughed. “I am.”

“Of me?”

I shook my head. I felt as if a pill were stuck in my throat. I swallowed. “Of me. Of … of what I might want.”

He looked at me for a long time, trying to read my face. Then he drew a deep breath and leaned at an angle, elbow on the work surface, making his body softer, his height lower than mine, unthreatening. “Have you ever been tied up?” he asked.

Hail Mary, mother of Jesus! Have I what? The room whirled, streaks of halogen whizzing past blurred granite, flying knives, swooping saucepans, and a pine table on its hind legs, dancing pirouettes among the shifting white lights. My knee bones did a runner and between my thighs, I melted like butter on a skillet.

“I …” I began.

Did I accidentally drink all his wine? Was this me? Why was I shaking?

“I … no.” I pictured a joint of ham trussed up with string, its pig-pale skin bulging against the bonds. “No, no.”

He smiled kindly. “I would never do anything you didn’t want me to.”

Never? Never forever?

I shook my head, fighting a rising panic.

Will stood, walked into the adjoining room then out through a door leading deeper into the house. Was he going to his bedroom? Was he expecting me to follow? Well, I wouldn’t. I didn’t think my legs would carry me anyway. Besides, wanting a wrong thing was bad enough; acting on the want could have no justification. Oh, but I thought of many excuses while Will was gone: I don’t love my husband and I doubt he loves me; what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, like the tree he doesn’t see; how can I know if the grass is greener if I don’t even try the other side?

Will returned, grinning, loops of rope in one hand, jacket off, tie loosened. “Just in case,” he said, and he tossed the coils at my feet. They landed with a clatter.

He stood inches in front of me. The world froze and so did my heart. He must do this all the time, I thought. An expert, and me the lamb to his slaughter. I could see the faint prick of his nipples through his white cotton shirt. Then everything started thundering as his face moved toward mine, or perhaps mine to his. His features grew large then his lips on mine were warm, moist and mobile.

For the first few seconds, I was tense and self-conscious. My mouth wouldn’t yield. I’d forgotten how to kiss. Then instinct took over and I was gone, slipping toward delirium, heat flaring in my face. I closed my eyes and behind my lids, a blue sun blazed in a pitch black night, receding and surging. Between my thighs I grew hotter and wetter, plump tissue parting with treacherous ease. I embraced him, needing the support of his bulk and wanting his weight pressed against me. Running my hands over the slab of his back, I plucked his shirt from his waistband, my fingers seeming to move of their own accord. His body was warm and clammy, muscles shifting below thick skin as he raised his arms to thrust his fingers into my hair. Wisps of hair on his shoulder blades brushed my fingertips. He held my head still, clamped, so I couldn’t escape his kiss. Not that I wanted to. His hands were good there. I fancied if he let go of me, I might dissolve into a puddle of lust.

When he pulled away, he had a new look of seriousness to him, eyes and mouth sagging, lips gleaming.

“Oh god, I shouldn’t,” I whispered.

Ignoring me, he dropped to his knees, hands sliding down my legs.

“I shouldn’t,” I said again, even quieter now.

Slowly, his broad hands rose higher, back up my legs to bunch my skirt around my hips. He kissed the skin on my thighs, making my breath flutter faster, then his mouth was on my underwear, lace shielding my pubis like an ornate gate of silk. No trespassers, please. But inside the fabric I was swollen to fatness, fluids seeping to reveal my need and welcome him in. He traced a single finger over my damp patch, making my groin pulse so insistently I thought my heart had lost its moorings and plummeted to a new place. He nudged into my briefs and I felt him, his flesh on mine, touching me where only my husband was supposed to touch. He skimmed my lips, tickling fronds of hair and when he split me open, I groaned deeply and so did he.

I couldn’t remember when I’d last been so wet.

Amazon UK: Amazon US: Cleis Press

Morning, Noon and Night blog tour: 5pm Somewhere

“Five pm Somewhere is everything I love about erotica. It’s smart, it’s clever, it’s original, it shows the imperfections and the people behind the tab A into slot B, and it’s hot.”

So said Cheyenne Blue of my story in Alison Tyler‘s latest anthology, Morning, Noon and Night.

The idea for the story started with an itch I had to write a piece involving cocktails, simply because I like cocktails. I like the decadence, glamour and sense of occasion surrounding these small, elaborate drinks. Setting the story in a cocktail bar was too obvious so I went for the opposite of cosmopolitan chic and put my characters in an isolated chintzy cottage. I then cruelly took away their alcohol and prevented them from leaving the house, forcing them (and me) to get creative.

Cheyenne summarises 5pm Somewhere as “about a couple who celebrate their wedding anniversaries by recreating the cocktails they drank on their first date: whisky sour for him, dirty martini for her. Only problem is that Brynn forgot the gin. And they’re snowed in miles from the nearest grog shop. Kristina’s character gets pissy. She sulks, she takes a bath, and that’s when Brynn shows his creative side.”

Here’s an excerpt:

I felt myself thawing out in the bath, physically and emotionally. I recalled how, weeks after our first cocktail, when we were excitable and loved-up, Brynn had written me a wonderfully romantic email name-checking cities that had been in the 5pm time zone when we’d sat down for cocktails: Helsinki, Kiev, Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, Cape Town. But, he declared, the only place he’d wanted to be was with me in a bar in Bromley.

Would he say the same thing now? Given my grouchiness, I could hardly blame him if he’d prefer Beirut. I was a romantic and a control freak, that was my problem. I got fixated on an ideal version of events and when life didn’t go as planned, I felt cheated. On the plus side, Brynn’s more laidback approach counterbalanced my rigidity. Our differences made us a great team – and a terrible one.

I soaked for a while, mulling things over. Brynn didn’t appear. I wondered if he’d fallen asleep in front of the fire like an old man. Well, if he has, I told myself, that’s fine. Go with the flow. I was about to step out of the bath when I heard his footsteps on the stairs.

“You ready?” he called. Enthusiasm twinkled in his voice.

I was weak with heat from the water but curiosity perked me up. “For what?”

Brynn strode into the bathroom and took a large towel from where it was warming on a rail. “It’s cocktail hour,” he declared. “And I’m about to make the world’s first alcohol-free dirty martini, no glasses required.” He gave a small bow, bath towel draped waiter-style over his arm. “Mr Mixologist at your service. Now if you wouldn’t mind stepping out of the water.”

Laughing, I did as instructed. Brynn quickly wrapped me in the towel and a tight embrace, rubbing vigorously at my arms and back. “Dry,” he said. “Because a dirty martini needs dry vermouth.”

I couldn’t remember the last time someone had dried me. The cotton on my skin, thick, brisk and absorbent, was both invigorating and comforting. Brynn took care to towel me all over, making me laugh hard when he knelt at my feet to dry my toes individually.

“It tickles,” I gasped, thinking how different it is when someone does something to you that you’d ordinarily do yourself.

He dried my legs, making me feel tall and strong as his hands rose higher, the towel lightly scouring my skin. I soon stopped laughing. When he rubbed at the folds between my thighs, my groin pulsed softly, similar to the tickle mechanism sparked by another’s touch. He stood, reaching behind me to dry the split of my buttocks. He rose higher, shifting the towel to find dry patches as he glided into the crease beneath each breast, nudged into my armpits and wiped the curve behind my ears.

“Dry?” he asked.

“Very,” I replied then added, smiling, “Well, not quite.”

Brynn smiled too, catching my drift as he tucked the towel around me. “The ice is outside,” he said, “and I reckon we’ve had enough of that today. Pre-chilled glasses. That’s what we made earlier. Too much ice dilutes the gin. Not good.”

He edged me back against the aqua green wall, lips teasing mine with fleeting kisses. Pressing me lightly in place, he leaned away to tug his jumper over his head. His dark hair went wonky with static and he returned to kissing me, his facing taking on that loose, serious look it does when he’s aroused. He kissed a track towards my ear.

“You’re all clean and pure,” he said. “And I’m dirty, unwashed.”

He slid a hand into my towel, cupping my waist, his thumb skimming below my breasts. My skin tingled and his unshaven jaw scratched my neck. I reached for his swollen groin, understanding that our lovemaking was somehow to be a dirty martini made flesh.

As I slipped into the softness of lust and Brynn stepped out of his jeans, I ran through the ingredients: chilled glasses, gin, dry vermouth, olives, brine, and someone to stir not shake it. Well, this certainly was high-concept sex. I hadn’t a clue how Brynn was going to pull it off.

He moved toward me again, his cock rising thick and hard. I nodded at his groin. “That your swizzle stick?”

*

Morning, Noon and Night is published by Cleis and is out now in the US and UK. The final story in the anthology, Tyler’s 3am Last Call is worth the cover price alone. See my review here.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the blog tour, and cheers, everybody! It’s a little early in the day right now but as we know, it’s always 5 o’ clock somewhere.

Photo Alan Levine

Morning, Noon and Night

I have three short stories out this month (I think!) and first up is an anthology of round-the-clock hotness from Alison Tyler, a woman who surely never sleeps.

Morning, Noon and Night is shipping now in the US and imminently in the UK.

Next week, Alison’s kicking off a blog tour so I’ll tell you more about my story, 5pm Somewhere, later in the month. Cheyenne Blue recently gave the piece a lovely review.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already, check out my review of Alison’s beautiful gangbang story, 3am Last Call.

When I get my contributor copies, I fear I’ll be going round, waggling the book in people’s faces and insisting they read the final story.

THE GRAND TOUR!

11/13 Alison Tyler
11/14 Sasha White
11/15 Vida Bailey
11/16 Cheyenne Blue
11/17 Donna George Storey
11/18 Aisling Weaver
11/19 Teresa Noelle Roberts
11/20 Cora Zane
11/21 Angell Brooks
11/22 Justine Elyot
11/23 Kristina Lloyd
11/24 Preston Avery
11/25 Ashley Lister
11/26 Victoria Janssen
11/27 Always Each Other
11/28 Tamsin Flowers hosts Jeremy Edwards
11/29 Tenille Brown
11/30 Kat Watson
12/1 Alison Tyler
12/2 Sommer Marsden

Kicking Ass!

I’m here to boast! I hope you don’t mind.

Asking for Trouble, my bestselling title, got a fabulous, intelligent review from Vanessa Wu. I want to quote the entire piece but I’m picking this part:

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of [KL's] language. What she is doing is very difficult. For she doesn’t just focus on the physical. She manages to dig out and express the emotional roots of desire. I recommend this book to every writer. Kristina can be lyrical at times but she is never self-indulgent. And when she needs to be crude she is definitively crude.

Smart Ass, our brand new anthology of anal erotica, has also received a couple of great reviews on Amazon US. My story, My Ass Is Your Ass Is My Ass, wins some wonderfully high praise with our first reviewer describing it as ‘a pretty, dreamy surprise’ and ‘a love song to anal sex’ while our second says:

The stories mix in poetry and pornography, most notably the first story by Kristina Lloyd whose ability to go from something raunchy and graphic as the opening scene to something as poetic as “On the inside, I’m floating in a space nebula, and star clusters of silver are pulsing bright and dark” is just amazing. Breathtaking, even.

I’m thrilled with these reviews because they strike at what I’m trying to do in most of my writing: harmonise the base and filthy with a sort of imaginative lyricism. I want to get inside the sex, capture that evanescent magic, without shying away from the raw physicality of fucking, come and sweat.

No reviews yet for Bound by Lust, Shanna Germain’s debut anthology from Cleis Press, because it’s not out until April 2012. However, I’m delighted to say I have a story, No Sleep, in this collection. Check out the fab line up on Shanna’s blog.

If you fancy reviewing Smart Ass, drop me a line (comment or PM me via the form at the top of this blog) and we’ll send you a PDF, pronto. You’d make five authors supremely happy!

OK, boast over. Thanks for listening!