Happily Ever Anal!

I have a note pinned to my corkboard under the ‘To do’ section saying: HEA promo – 14 Feb!

Um, Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! I’m late.

Happily Ever Anal is the fourth in our series of booty books, and in this year’s anthology our stories have a romantic twist. My contribution, ‘Dr Facility and the Loving Butt Plug’, tells of a woman who’s longing to lose her anal virginity within a committed, loving relationship. So she seeks the advice of the mysterious and slightly monstrous Dr Facility.

My story isn’t trad romance, as you can probably tell! I had heaps of fun playing with the conventions of romantic love and the tropes of romance fiction when I wrote this story.

Here’s the beginning of the piece.

Dr Facility lived on the wrong side of town, tucked away among the warehouses of the old docks. At the entrance to his practice, an engraved silver plaque read: Dr Facility makes dreams come true.

It neglected to say whose dreams.

I pressed the bell. Immediately, the voices came tumbling into my head, a cacophony of lines I’d been rehearsing since embarking on my journey (my emotional, sexual journey, that is, not the one that had brought me there that night). What to choose?

“Dr Facility, I want to lose my anal virginity to a man who’ll truly love me.”

“Good doctor, I’ve heard buttsex used to be meaningful and you might think me old-fashioned but I yearn for those days.”

Or “Please help. I want to get romantically fucked up the ass. Is that even possible in the 21st century?”

When the buzzer sounded, I heaved open the thick, steel door. My hands shook. I’d heard so much about this man, always in whispers and rumors, in bars late at night when tongues grew loose, and in furtive conversations, the sort where a friend tells you about a friend of a friend who could recommend a man down by the docks.

He wasn’t what I was expecting. He was shorter, for one thing, and dramatically handsome — his eyes smoldering, his brow grim and brooding, his starched white coat at variance with the carelessness suggested by his unshaven jaw and unkempt hair. Too caught up in intellectual pursuits to remember daily grooming, no doubt. In the center of a vast room stood his desk, a deeply polished oak number topped in green leather, an Anglepoise lamp casting a pool of light onto the surface. Dr Facility sat behind the desk in the half-shadows.

“Tell me what you want, ” he said as I took my seat opposite him.

I spoke, nervous and halting, and he studied me, turning a pen in one hand. When I’d finished, I awaited his response, my heart thumping, my plea for help hanging awkwardly in the silence. I had to remind myself he was a professional, he’d heard it all before.

Finally, he said, “This is the first time anyone’s come to me with a problem like this.”

I looked down, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, please. I enjoy a challenge. It could even make a credible research paper. Your identity would be protected, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Now if you could raise your skirt and lean over my desk.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard.”

“But …” I struggled for words. “You mean this desk? Here?”

Dr Facility gestured around his dingy, oversized consulting room. A low bookshelf lined with leather-bound texts ran along one wall, next to it a winged armchair and a small table, big enough to hold a book but little else. Opposite, pinned to an empty wall, was an eye chart of letters diminishing in size. Standing forlornly in a far corner, just about visible in the gloom, was a tall, balance-beam weighing scale made of wood and brass. Below a square window whose blinds were drawn, a drinks cabinet offered a multiplicity of liquor bottles, short and fat, tall and slim, their colorful contents reminiscent of an apothecary’s wares.

Once my eyes had adjusted to the dimness, I could see the details of a framed picture hanging several yards away from the eye chart, a black and white photograph of a wild-haired woman in a straitjacket, the image flecked with dirt and scratches. The woman looked to the camera with deranged glee, and yet it also seemed as if she were looking at us, her avaricious eyes fixed on Dr Facility’s desk.

It was hard to say what sort of doctor this man was.

“Do you see any other desks here?” he asked.

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just that …”

I trailed off helplessly. Dr Facility, at ease in his big, swivel chair, observed me as if waiting for me to expand. He resumed toying with his pen, his spotlit hands flexing and twisting as he slow-twirled his little, ink-filled baton. His shirt cuffs peeked below the sleeves of his white coat, cufflinks glinting in the light. Boldly, I met his gaze, thinking if the madwoman could face her tormentors, then so could I. Immediately, I checked myself, thinking, But I’m not paying him to torment me. I’m here for his help.

My boldness shrank the more I looked at him, fear creeping in as its replacement. I saw fathomless depths in Facility’s eyes and an intensity in his manner, a suggestion he’d seen darkness and had survived. I saw, too, that he wanted more. Here was a man who could carry other people’s burdens without being dragged down. I suspected he rather liked the weight of us in our flawed, fumbling glory. It made him feel superior, not quite human.

I shrugged. “There’s nothing else. I’m nervous, that’s all. I’d rather know what’s in store for me before I … obey.”

“The first step,” said Dr Facility, “is recognizing that surrender to the unknown is crucial to the process of falling in love.”

“I know plenty about falling in love, thanks,” I said crisply. “And no one ever asked me to bend over a table and bare my butt. At least, not until we were going steady.”

Amazon UK :: Amazon US

I don’t know why it took me over three months to tell you about the release of HEA.

Oh, yes I do! I was in the final stages of writing my next novel, Undone, and I’m very much a mono-tasker. Anyway, Undone has since been delivered to my editor at Black Lace, and will be published on September 11th.

I’m very excited by this book but more on that another time.

Right is a pic of the manuscript, printed twice, and made messy with edits.

And now I can remove that HEA note from my ‘To do’ list!

Mammoth Best New Erotica 12

This is my seventh appearance in the annual Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica series from Maxim Jakubowski. Volume 12 is extra special because not only is my name on the front cover – always exciting for my ego – but because this collection contains two of my stories!

My Ass is Your Ass is My Ass is the second story of mine to be selected from our popular annual anal erotica series. And my other featured story is All My Lovers in One Room from Racy Pages’ Stretched.

Maxim is passionate about publishing quality erotica, and his introductions to these volumes are always a delight to read. The stories in Mammoth 12 were published in 2012, the year of Fifty Shades.

Referring to the huge surge in popularity of erotica, Maxim writes, ‘I can only applaud this new-found recognition and hope that it is at least partly sustained after the wave of bad imitations and exploitative material that any new phenomenon generates abates and the quality authors rise to the top without being drowned in the sea of “me too” books that are currently flooding us.‘

Hear, hear!

Mammoth 12 gets its official UK release tomorrow, 7th November. However, right now on Amazon, the paperback is available and, weirdly, is actually cheaper than the pre-order ebook. No, I don’t understand either. But if I were you, I’d act fast and snag a big fat hard copy (and these books are fat!) for £5.56 with free postage. Or, you know, download to your Kindle for the costlier £6.17.

Quick before someone realises there’s a pricing error!

ETA: Apparently, the book is getting a promotional week push, hence the bargain price. Go for it!

Support indie presses: Asses and Geeks

Alison Tyler wrote a neat post today in support of indie publishers, reminding us that authors benefit directly when we choose to spend our book money on the small guys.

Apparently, Smart Ass is currently this month’s topseller at Pretty Things Press. Huzzah! Left is a pic of me reading from my story in Smart Ass at Eroticon in London. (The book in my hands is a print copy of our three ass anthologies from PTP). As far as I know, this is the only picture of my legs on the internet. This is likely to remain the case. Consider it a collector’s item.

But AT’s post struck a particular chord today because just a few days ago, Amazon declined to offer for sale Geek Love, the book born of Shanna Germain’s amazing Kickstarter project, claiming it breached some hazy, arbitrary content guidelines of theirs and they were Mighty Powerful and could do whatever they wanted.

Days later, Amazon relented, but by that point, Shanna was all “Fuck you, Lord Amazon! I’m supporting the small guys who support us!” And so now, Geek Love is available as an ebook via Drive Thru Fiction. Setting up an account takes about 2 seconds and if you’re geeky, you won’t even blink at that.

Hardback copies of Geek Love will be available via the same retailer at some future point. I have a story in Geek Love. The anthology received a great review on Erotica Revealed this week.

If you’re anything like me, you can’t afford to buy all your books from indie publishers and booksellers. And as an author, I benefit from Amazon’s huge reach, and also from publishers with money to spend on marketing. But I mix up my book purchases from the big guns with purchases from the smaller presses and outlets. After all, interesting stuff happens on the margins!

So please, think big by thinking small! Get geeky, get assy, get indie when you can!

Twin peaks!

Three years’ of assplay stories now in a single volume (paperback and ebook) and on Audible, thanks to Susie Bright	My sixth appearance in the annual Mammoth erotica series, this time with my short story from Bad Ass

Happy New Year all! See that widget in my sidebar showing the latest release of books I’m in? I can’t keep up with it!

December was a busy month, meaning I neglected to shout about the above two releases, both featuring bottoms! Three years of anal erotica shorts, edited by Alison Tyler, are now available for your listening pleasure via Audible (UK and US). You can read a little about the series here.

In a happy coincidence, one of my stories from our trilogy was selected by Maxim Jakubowski for inclusion in the 11th volume of the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica (Amazon UK and US). Mammoth has only just been released in the States this month so perhaps I’m not that behind on my behinds after all.

My story in Mammoth is from Bad Ass and tells how my moon-widow narrator reconnects with her lunar-loving husband when their marriage starts to falter. It features bondage and anal and is called, inevitably, Dark Side of the Moon.

Want to read the opening and my thoughts on the piece?

“When Jackson came back from the moon, he was a little changed.”

More on my appearance in Kristina Wright‘s newly released Best Erotic Romance 2013 later in the month along with details about my story in the soon-to-be released Big Book of Bondage from Alison Tyler.

Isn’t it great when the new year starts with a bang? Long may it continue. Wishing you all a sexy, happy 2013!

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ETA: The ever-brilliant Ms Naughty has posted her annual Porn for Women Retrospective. It’s a super piece which includes, among many things, a great overview of the response to 50 Shades and the news, via PhD research, that we are now seeing more naked men in RomComs (post includes empirical evidence aka pics of hot dudes in the buff)!

Take the ass challenge!

Check out this super review of Smart Ass in which Harper Bliss challenges you to read the free sample (UKers go here) featuring the first few pages of my story and then not buy the ebook!

Harper writes:

The first story in this mini-anthology ‘My Ass is Your Ass is My Ass’ by Kristina Lloyd had me from the get-go. Not just because it was kinky (and I mean really very dirty), but mostly (seriously) because of the stellar writing.

I can’t even remember where the sample ended (I tried to because I wanted to use it to illustrate my point in this blog post), because all I wanted to do was continue reading. I didn’t care how much I had to pay for it ($4.49 on Amazon, I learned later), I just wanted to have it on my Kindle and finish reading it. Kristina, you’ve got yourself a new fan. Read more

Thank you Harper! We’re currently working on the fourth book in our annual anal erotica series while Susie Bright is working on making the first three books available on audible.com.

On Facebook last week I was involved in an exciting race against the clock as I scrambled to download a clip from a UK TV show before its availability expired. The clip featured a fun bit of identity confusion between the actor, Jeremy Edwards, and our very own erotic fic author, Jeremy Edwards. You can read a great write up of the drama, in which I get to ride a black stallion and am referred to as ‘Joan d’Arc on amphetamine’, on Billierosie’s blog.

The clip is on YouTube but seems as if it’s now only viewable outside of the UK so eyes left for the screen grab if you’re this side of the pond.

And this morning I learned four short stories of mine will appear in Maxim Jakubowki’s ‘Mammoth Book of Erotic Quickies’, out in 2013. Four! Go me!

This post was brought to you by a woman dithering over writing the final chapter in her novel.