On kink, genre fic, feminism and filth

Oh my! I’ve been interviewed by For Books’ Sake, and they asked the fabbest questions. I love FBS! They describe themselves as “an intelligent but irreverent website” and, because stats show fiction by women doesn’t get the same recognition as that penned by men, their aim is “to give women authors a platform and a voice, and to celebrate and promote their writing.”

Cool, no?

My interview is here and I’ll be back at For Books’ Sake on Thursday talking about my favourite fictional female character. Tune in to find out who she is!

UPDATE: here’s my piece on Antoinette Cosway (aka Bertha Mason unleashed!)

Kristina Lloyd Likes it Extreme

Look! My name is on the front cover of this magazine in the same size font as Angelina Jolie’s name!

I was interviewed for PO, a German adult mag, by the extraordinarily wonderful, Danielle de Santiago. Danielle asked some great, thought-provoking questions, and the result is an interview covering a range of topics including female sexual submission (the pleasures and politics of), my writing, my personal life (I like to think no one ever gets that stuff out of me but oh, he did!) and… I can’t remember what else. I think there may even be some dating tips in there (which broadly goes: Jeez, don’t take advice from me).

I loved answering Danielle’s questions. Danielle’s the only person I know who’s read Asking for Trouble in both English and German, and I’m honoured and flattered that he knew me and my work well enough to craft intelligent, sensitive questions that really grabbed me. That, you see, is how he got hold of my secrets!

If you pop over to Danielle’s blog, you can win a copy of PO by commenting. And if you win, and you speak German, could you tell me what I said? I’m too scared to look back at the original version. Oh, and could you tell me what Danielle said in the intro? And those photo captions? And the pull quotes? And… and…

PO looks like an excellent mag with chunky features on Sexy Action Heroes (yum!), genital piercing (yum!), Angelina Jolie (husband, yum!) and more. If only I could read it…

Here’s a few pics from the interview. Don’t you just love that dark, scary alleyway?

(That is not me in the gas mask.)

A huge Danke schoen to Danielle for doing me in Deutschland!

KLx

It was the best of times…

Ah well. Regular readers of this blog (and that one) will know I don’t go a bundle on cover art featuring headless women. And this month, I have a brace of releases featuring faceless babes …  what? Wanking? Shielding their shame? Teasing the reader to slip past those fingers and into the fiction? (And by implication into her.)

These two images suggest all of the above to me and, aside from my regular grumble about the sexism of erotica books only ever featuring women, I think these covers and what they say about female sexuality are dreadful. However, right now, let’s try and get past that and celebrate what’s inside: me!

Both these Bests are out in the UK round about now. Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 8 (US link) features my story, Boot Camp, first published in Alison Tyler’s F is for Fetish. (You can read an excerpt here on AT’s Trollop Salon.) There’s a whole host of fabulous and familiar names inside: EllaRegina, Nikki Magennis, Alison Tyler, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Kristina Wright, Jeremy Edwards, Donna George Storey, Craig Sorensen and many many more. This Mammoth also has the dubious honour of being the book which started Erotica Cover Watch.

And I’m thrilled that Rachel Kramer Bussel selected my essay The Pleasure of Unpleasure for inclusion in her Best Sex Writing 2009, released last week in the UK (US release here). This is quite a personal piece I wrote on female submission and sexual degradation, first published on the group author blog, Lust Bites (and re-posted here). I wrote:

The notion that female erotica should be softer and more romantic is wildly offensive. Ditto the implication that a women who wants to be dominated by a man must lack her own mind. She doesn’t want it. She’s merely a victim and it’s her damaged, self-loathing psyche talking. Oh, purlease.

People responded to the piece extremely positively on Lust Bites and that did mean an awful lot to me. I’m pleased the article’s now getting to reach a wider audience. I consider myself primarily a fiction writer and, to be honest, I recognise only a handful of names in this collection (the awesome Violet Blue being one of them). A lot of the writers are US journalists and editors so I feel like I’m at an amazing party and now I’m starting to suspect my invite was actually intended for someone else so I’m knocking back the champers, wondering if I’m going to get rumbled.

Anyway, there’s some fascinating and thought-provoking pieces in the book which has its very own blog. Interestingly, in the book’s intro RKB says of last year’s Best Sex that many people said ‘they’d expected something far juicier from the racy cover. If you’re looking for the latest jerk off material, please check Cleis Press website.’ And I completely agree: these covers do a huge disservice to the content and misrepresent what the books are about. It’s a real shame and I do wish Cleis would stop defaulting at semi-nekkid babes for their non-LGBT books. (And that link takes you to what I consider to be the finest piece of non-fiction I ever wrote in the world of blog!)

Incidentally, the arse on last year’s Best Sex belongs to Georgina Baillie, granddaughter of ‘national treasure’, Andrew Sachs – which will mean something to UK readers but probably sod all to those in the US – and, trust me, you guys are best off out of it.

In other news, I wrote and subbed five short stories in January. Five! Five! Me! I think that’s a personal best and – yay! – three have already got the thumbs up. A great start to 2009!

Another wonderful review of Split!

I got another wonderful review of Split!

Kristina Lloyd writes incredible sex scenes. Her prose is beautiful – even when the scene being described is positively grimy – and she uses novel, original language. [...] This book is clever, beautiful, dreamy and gritty.

I’m so happy! Check out Tumperkin‘s review over at Dionne Galace’s rather smart and witty site. I think it’s a very considered and insightful response to Split, and I’m always especially grateful when people perceive my work as romantic, despite the fact that it doesn’t tick many of the genre-romance boxes. Jeremy Edward‘s once wrote a very brilliant article on offbeat romance for Lust Bites. And he cited my filth which is obviously marvellous.

Asking for Trouble – not exactly trad romance – was November’s featured book on Love Honey’s newly-launched Erotic Book Club – and I do feel it got a bit of a roasting.

‘That girl needs to see a therapist big time.’

‘A story that is well-written and hot early on quickly turned into one that you just wanted to finish so you could see the ending before you showered.’

‘Prepare yourself for domination and submission, group sex, an attempted rape and a scenario which I struggled to read as in my view it is the ultimate in humiliation.’

‘I think ultimately the book serves as a potent illustration of why in the majority, fantasy should stay exactly that, and never actually see the light of day.’

Get thee to a nunnery, Lloyd!

The comments were positive in many ways – well-written, couldn’t put it down, really horny etc etc – and I got lots of pretty stars. However, as usual, what bothers me is the oft-held view that certain types of kinky sex must be centred around histories of abuse, lack of self-worth, mental health issues and all that jazz. And that Beth, my central character, did all that dirty-dirty submissive sex stuff because she was too stubborn to back down, or because she was hoping for his commitment and love, or because she was deluded, or because she was doing it to please him. No! It’s just a hot thing to do! She liked it! She had no ulterior motive.

And, gosh, I don’t know how I could have made it any more obvious in the book that Beth really likes the sex. And that she is very in tune with her somewhat dark sexuality and is determined to explore it, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Oh, and it’s frustrating that many of the kinks and themes I explore seem perfectly acceptable in erotica based on trad romance with a naive heroine and a Sir Dystic D’Arcy. But create a sexually enlightened and self aware female character and people start saying ‘disturbing’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘how could she possibly want that?’

Maybe this is inevitable when you’re a woman writing erotic fiction because it’s so heavily marketed at the Romance readership. Feathers are bound to get ruffled if you try and do something different. I wrote Asking for Trouble in 1998. Progress is so-oooo slow.

Anyway, I’m going to hibernate for a while – unless I get another review to crow about. I have a Top Secret project to work on. Ssshhh!

Merry Christmas everybody! And US readers: look out for the release of both Split and The Vampire’s Heart (in Lust Bites) on January 1st. Yes, my smut will be bringing in the new year!

As I write this tonight, Split is at number 16 in Amazon UK’s Bestselling Erotica Chart and Asking For Trouble is at number 11. Hurrah!