Alison’s Wonderland has landed…

… and it’s wonderful! This big, beautiful book turned up on my doorstep last week and, oh, we’re having a magical time together. Alison’s Wonderland is one of those books you want to hold and stroke; you want to leave lying about the place because it’s so damn pretty; you want to giftwrap and give copies to your friends. Ebooks are on the up, and that’s great news for erotica, but this is such a gorgeous reminder of the power of print. I swear, this book is practically truffle-centred, and you simply can’t do that with digital.

Alison’s Wonderland, edited by Alison Tyler, contains nearly 400 pages of deliriously dirty fairy tales. Most of the tales are contemporary, featuring the kind of characters and kinks you’d find in a regular erotica anthology. But running underneath the stories is something very special indeed. So far, I’ve adored Nikki Magennis‘s The Red Shoes, (Redux), a witty and beautifully written spin on Cinderella. I’ve loved lingering in the forest, spying on Snow White in Janine Ashbless‘s Gold, On Snow (oh, those deviant dwarves!). Sometimes, half the fun lies in matching the erotica to original fairy tale. I marvelled at the unfolding of Sommer Marsden‘s The Three Billys, knowing the original tale from the off (clue is in the title!) and getting a real kick of satisfaction from seeing how cleverly Sommer played with her goats and her troll – in a local library, of all places! I was quite a way into Shanna Germain’s smart, sexy story, Fool’s Gold, before I realised we were in the land of Rumpelstiltskin (with added bondage, plus gin and tonic). There are so many top authors in this collection (Donna George Storey, Thomas S. Roche, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Heidi Champa, Saskia Walker …) plus several names which are new to me. I have lots of luscious reading ahead.

Alison has a Wonderland blog where you can find out more about the book (and I’ve been so slow at getting my interview sorted but I’m nearly there!). Amazon UK are already out of stock so get ready to grab it when it’s back! (Or try The Book Depository. Or, you know, go to an actual shop!)

My own story, David, is a vampiric riff on Sleeping Beauty, featuring a contemporary busker and a man in the crowd. Here’s the slow, sultry opening:

DAVID

It’s hot today. I have a problem with the heat because I sweat and my sweat is pink. Pink sweat attracts notice, forcing me to flee to another town to preserve my secret. But damn it, I like this place and I want to stay.

When I was mortal over forty years ago, I was a woman who lived for parties, sunshine and attention. I would dance barefoot on beaches on warm summer evenings, and late at night I’d still be there, laughing around a camp fire with my beautiful friends, hippies in beads hoping to save the world through sex, love, peace and hashish. I look at my generation now and wonder if we couldn’t have tried a little harder.

But no matter. They’re not my generation anymore.

My sweat is pink and it’s a problem.

A passerby tosses a coin onto the cloth at my feet. Quite a pile I’m getting today. It’s the sun, you see. It brings people out, makes them loose with their cash. And this loose cash is making me feel loose with my morals.

I stare blankly ahead. I’m coated in white body-paint and wreathed in a toga, my hair coiled high and dyed a bright chemical pink. My arms are held in an elegant curve, chin angled to the left. I am a busker, a living statue, and I’m very good at my job. Crowds gather. They stare and smile. A few will move tentatively closer. “It’s like she isn’t even breathing,” they’ll whisper.

And of course, I’m not. I am dead.

My hairline starts to prickle. If it weren’t for my pink sweat, I’d still adore the sun though I realize that makes me atypical. The heat clings like memories, taking me back to those sticky nights of tangled sheets when my cunt would throb with lust for another. Oh, to be vital again! To be fucking someone for the sake of fuck alone, not fucking them with thoughts of their blood in my throat. Or, best of all, to have someone fucking me, to have them holding me down, fearless, brutal and strong.

Because, to my shame, that’s what I crave: a man to overpower me. Once when I was alive, I asked a boyfriend to act as my kidnapper. “Tie me up and gag me,” I explained. “Use me as your plaything. Take no notice of my screams.” But he said he couldn’t do that because sexual expression through violence contravened his pacifism and he viewed our lovemaking as a cosmic union of souls and in this I was his sister. Sister? If you ask me, that’s far worse than what I was suggesting.

***

This 53 second video clip is of David Beckham sleeping, shot by Sam Taylor-Wood for The National Portrait Gallery. Becks has sod all to do with my story but he’s very beautiful, so any excuse! And I do love this piece of work.

Buy Alison’s Wonderland
Amazon UK :: Amazon US

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!*

Win Sexy Spooky Books!

Creepy, sexy, weirdy-eerie is how I like it and Lust Bites Blog is looking hot right now! Today sees the launch of our glorious Halloween giveaway. To get your hands on this selection of spooky smut, just add a quick comment to the post and cast evil witchy spells to bring yourself evil witchy luck.

Next Thursday sees the UK publication not only of Split but of Lust Bites, the first in a new line of erotic novella volumes from Black Lace. And who wrote the first novella in the first novella volume? Why, I did! You’ll be hearing tales of vampire love and lust from me, Portia Da Costa and Mathilde Madden next week on Lust Bites the Blog when we’ll also be giving away copies of Lust Bites the Book. And everyone will start getting horribly confused.

Also, big thrills for me today! My Split smut slot from last week was highlighted on Fleshbot’s sex blog roundup! I feel quite famous. Many thanks to Always Aroused Girl for liking and linking, and to Alison Tyler for spotting it.