Such a Special Couple

I’m thrilled to see my name in lights – or at least, hovering under a naked woman’s right nipple – on the US cover of the latest Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica (ed. Maxim Jakubowski). Mammoth 9 features my story, ‘Such a Special Couple’, a piece recently described by Shanna Germain as ‘darkly spectacular’. (I do like that!)

‘Such a Special Couple’, first appeared in Alison Tyler‘s J is for Jealousy (Amazon US). Here’s the deliciously vicious opening:

Such a Special Couple

Joining us in bed last night was the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. He can’t see her but I can.

I see her everywhere. She’s all over his apartment, usually in bits which is how I prefer her. She’s sweat and blood stains on the mattress, skin cells in the dust, and hairs down the sofa. I look in a mirror and she’s standing behind me, six years of images checking her reflection.

Unfortunately, she’s also with us when we fuck. Sean pounds away, clutching my hair and whispering, “Take it, slut.” I whimper, begging him to stop, and she’s whimpering, too. I can hear her in my head – Ah, ah, no, please!

I wonder if she took it as well as I do, and I want to ask, Who’s best at begging, me or her?

In his apartment is a room I’m not supposed to enter. It’s not exactly locked (well, you have to check, don’t you?) but is half-barricaded by a low bookshelf. Privately, I call it his Bluebeard room. And to be honest, if his ex-girlfriend were in there, I wouldn’t mind as long as she were dead.

*

Mammoth 9 is nearly 500 fat pages long and features a staggering wealth of smutters including Shanna Germain, Remittance Girl, Donna George Storey, Ella Regina, Jeremy Edwards, Alison Tyler, Kristina Wright, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Polly Frost, Mike Kimera, Saskia Walker, Craig Sorensen, Carrie Williams, Elizabeth Coldwell, Thomas S Roche and Marilyn Jaye Lewis. Phew! Currently retailing at a stupidly cheap £4.79 on Amazon UK, Mammoth 9 looks set to hit the shelves in the States in March.

And a smidgen more on the excitement front: I got name checked in this great SFGate article from Violet Blue who recommends you Kink Up Your Kindle!

If you want to kink it up with me, you have four filthy choices, and can select from a steamy m/m story in Kiss My Ass; my controversial bestselling novel, Asking for Trouble; my darkly gothic and twisted Victorian fuckfest, Darker Than Love; or my Arctic vampire novella, ‘The Vampire’s Heart’ in Lust Bites. Oh, and news just in – you have a fifth choice: Mammoth 9 is available on Kindle right now, released in advance of the paperback.

Or you could download the whole lot and see if you can melt your Kindle.

The Blow Hard Tour 2009

“No woman likes giving a blow job for the sake of a blow job. It’s simply a means to an end. Right?”

So said a friend of erotica whirlwind, Sommer Marsden, prompting an open-mouthed Sommer to declare ‘Wrong! Surely?’ Happily, a chorus of cocksuckers agreed and stepped up (or knelt down) to extol the virtues of giving head. A few days later, The Blow Hard Tour was born. It looks like this:

March 31st: Sommer Marsden
April 1st: Alison Tyler
April 2nd: Dakota Rebel
April 3rd: Erobintica
April 4th: Cora Zane
April 5th: Heidi Champa
April 6th: EllaRegina
April 7th: Marina St. Clare
April 8th: Emerald
April 9th: Kristina Wright
April 10th: Isabel Kerr
April 11th: Neve Black

And I’m excited to say I’ll be joining this phalanx of fellatio fans by following up with a slutty little encore. So it looks set to be a fortnight of filth, fiction, jaw ache, jism, prizes and surprises.

Sommer is counting down to blast off right now and if you head (!) over to her blog today, you’ll find a hot MFM excerpt from my vampire short, The Funhouse is Closed Mondays. This story is from the Black Lace anthology, Lust at First Bite, which also features Sommer’s hot, witty and wildly original, There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute. In my Funhouse, Simeon and Suzanne, two snow vampires from my novella, The Vampire’s Heart (in Lust Bites), have upped sticks and are now living on a defunct ghost train in a deserted Coney Island. There they meet Christophe, leader of the pack …

Christophe gave an arrogant laugh. ‘This ain’t a floor show, lady,’ he said, crossing to her. ‘This ain’t a pleasure palace. This ain’t the fucking movies! This is about me. Me! Me and my dick. It ain’t about you or what you want to watch. You don’t count for jack shit. You getting that, missy?’

Christophe unzipped.

Suzanne smiled nervously and licked her lips.

Gimme more!

Vampires, strippers and a thousand tiny stab wounds

Lust at First Bite, the latest anthology from Black Lace, is out now. It features my story, The Funhouse is Closed Mondays, which centres on two characters from my vampire novella, The Vampire’s Heart. In The Vampire’s Heart, Simeon and Suzanne were living in Arctic exile with their other lover, Billy. They’ve since de-camped to New York where they’ve made their home in a derelict ghost train in Coney Island. Here’s an excerpt, set in the funhouse, where they meet Christophe, the leader of NY’s vampire pack.

A thud on the floorboards made them turn and there was Christophe on the far side of the room, knees bent as if he’d just jumped from a height. Grinning, he swaggered towards them, looking oddly like a thuggish black Cossack, bare chested with fur-lined boots below calf-length combats. His hair was close-cropped, a shadow of wool over a menacingly strong head, and a neat goatee framed his plump lips. His skin was the colour of stale chocolate, muscular slabs of brown tinged with a bloodless beige-grey bloom, and tattooed inky flames licked up one big brawny arm. Whorls of dark hair clustered around his pecs and his stomach was a washboard. Around his neck he wore, like a symbol of defiance, a large silver cross.

Simeon’s cock was rigid.

‘Nice to see you, friends,’ said Christophe and he clasped Simeon’s hand, giving it a single shake. Around them, the light was low and purplish, and a stormy lilac glow shone on Christophe’s body.

Before Simeon could reply, Christophe grabbed hold of his hair and plunged a fat, insistent tongue into his mouth. He kissed deeply, his thick lips pulsing, his beard scouring, and all the while, he kept Simeon’s hair bunched, making his scalp prickle as if with a thousand tiny stab wounds.

When they broke away, Christophe smirking and Simeon stunned, Suzanne was gawping. ‘Oh god,’ she said weakly. ‘I love watching men fuck. Keep going, please.’

Watching men fuck seems to have been a theme with me this year. Ah, what a life! The Lion Tamer’s Scars, my story in the recently released Ultimate Burlesque, includes some hot m/m seen through the eyes of Roxy Roxoff, a jaded female stripper working in Psycho Daddy’s Circus of Sin. Ultimate Burlesque is raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support, and last week I did a reading at my local Waterstones along with the founder of the Burlesque Against Breast Cancer campaign, Emily Dubberley, and anthology author, Carmel Lockyer (aka Kay Sexton who’s blogged about the event here). It was a great night, and apparently the book is doing fantastically, chart-toppingly well. Left to right in the pic is Kay, Emily and yours truly, clutching a cup of wine.

For more hot excerpts from Lust at First Bite, check out today’s post on Lust Bites. And don’t forget to take a moment to admire the cover of the book which not only features a sexy guy, but also matches my burlesque socks! It would be wonderful to see more sexy guys on the covers of erotica (as opposed to on erotic romance) but erotica, sadly, is still stuck in its sexist past, publishing thousands of books which act as if men are its only consumers. And the wildly offensive result is covers like this. If you think this is bang out of order, please add your voice to our campaign on Erotica Cover Watch. And thank you!

Vampires Part II

Wet man! Wet man! At last, the Gods have heard me!

Here’s the wonderfully sexy new cover for Lust at First Bite, the forthcoming collection of vampire shorts from Black Lace (UK November; US Jan 09). It’s particularly thrilling to see today because I’ve just been ranting chez Jeremy Edwards about all those erotica covers featuring half-naked women. Really, it’s time erotica publishers woke up to the fact that women read smut too and there’s this thing called ‘gender equality’ some of us are into (not to mention porning over men, which *cough* some of us are into as well).

Anyway, vampires! This collection includes my story, The Funhouse is Closed Mondays. It’s a spin-off from my snow-vampire novella, The Vampire’s Heart, and features two of the characters, Simeon and Suzanne, now living in a derelict ghost train on Coney Island. It’s the first short story anthology for a while from BL and looks to be a goody.

And, just to offset the jolly happy news on the cover-art front, here’s the new German translation of Asking for Trouble, one of the ugliest, most objectifying and misogynistic cover images I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve made the pic super-duper tiny because I don’t want to cause eye-bleed in anyone. But yes, they really do seem to have erased the woman’s head with a badly photoshopped hood, all the better to highlight her tits. If you want to see the image in its full horror, go here. And if anyone can translate Gib’s Mir, I’d be most grateful. I think it’s one of those tricksy idiomatic ones and I’m told, worryingly, it means something like ‘sock it’. *Weeps!*

Green-eyed Monsters

‘Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.’
- Erica Jong

Ouch!

The next four letters – I, J, K, L – in Alison Tyler‘s adorable alphasmut series are now available. I’m in J is for Jealousy (US here) with ‘Such a Special Couple’, a story about a woman who finds pictures of her boyfriend’s ex in his forbidden ‘Bluebeard room’. She’s not happy.

My contributor’s copies arrived today and I’m thrilled to see I’m there with fellow filthsters Nikki Magennis, Shanna Germain, Sommer Marsden and Jeremy Edwards. Today, Alison’s featuring J is for Jealousy on her blog so head that way for more.

Billy, the main vampire in my novella, The Vampire’s Heart, is quite literally a green-eyed monster: ‘His eyes were as hauntingly green as the aurora borealis that sometimes lit the northern skies.’ Check out this fabulous review from Tumperkin who writes about my ‘startling and lovely prose. [Lloyd] is such a visual writer. You see and feel every detail.’ Ah, that makes me happy.

And if you’re in the UK and want to spend money on some smut, now’s your chance. There are bargains galore on Amazon. Get the chart-topping Asking for Trouble for only £3.59! Darker Than Love and Lust Bites for just £3.99! And since you’ve saved yourself so much money, why not treat yourself to Split which is a snip at £5.99! And hell, while you’re there you may as well add Jealousy for £6.39. Hurry while stocks last!

I think I’ll stop there before I start sounding cheap.