On My Knees is everywhere!

My book of short stories is now wherever you want it to be!

The rather beautiful paperback version is available from the Amazons (snazzy global link here) and the ebook is sold via all the big retailers – so you can purchase for your Kindle, your fancy iPhone, your tablet, your Nook, your cranny and more!

You can also buy in various formats (.mobi, PDF, ePub etc) from Smashwords.

This is a full-length collection, featuring fifteen of my stories published in UK and US anthologies between 2007 and 2014. I’m so pleased I’ve been able to bring these kinky pieces together in a single volume. There were a handful of additional stories I would have liked to include but, since I sold all rights to the publishers at the time, I unfortunately had to leave them out.

For nosy parkers such as myself, I’ve offered an ‘About the Stories’ section where I reveal a few behind-the-scenes details – the inspiration behind the pieces, their route to publication and so on.

I’m toying with the idea of doing a volume of my flash fiction next year but I’ll see how this book fares first!

Out now: my short story collection

On My Knees, my first short story collection, is out now and available worldwide(ish) on Kindle! Truly, I could pop with excitement! I’ve written dozens of stories over the years and this collection brings together the cream of my crop. All fifteen pieces have been previously published in anthologies edited by Alison Tyler, Maxim Jakubowski, Violet Blue and more, meaning a quality read is guaranteed!

Inevitably, the central theme is femsub, Kristina-Lloyd style. So the book is short on dungeons and BDSM protocol, and big on people exploring powerplay their own way or stumbling into situations which darken their desires. And often dished up with a twist of the strange or the surreal.

The collection begins with an introduction and concludes with an ‘About the Stories’ section. I’m an incorrigible nosy parker and I love reading about other writers’ inspirations and processes, so thought it only fair to fess up myself and offer a glimpse behind the scenes.

This is my first foray into self-publishing after almost two decades of being traditionally published. While flying solo is a little scary, earning three time as much in royalties as I would do ordinarily makes it worth overcoming the fear. It also gives me hope. In recent years, the market for erotica has become so narrow thanks to trad publishers’ hunger to replicate the success of Fifty Shades that, like many writers, I’d begun to question where I might fit in and how my work might continue to reach readers. Self-publishing feels like a way to regain some control and creative freedom, to continue writing the kind of fiction I want to write.

I’m hoping to have a paperback version of On My Knees available in the next couple of weeks and I’ll shortly be revealing more about the stories both here and on other authors’ blogs. I’m also reading from the collection at the next Dirty Sexy Words event on Sunday 20th September. Do come along if you can!

In the meantime, please check out the book on Amazon where you can read the entirety of the first story, ‘No Sleep’, a piece about a couple in a kinky NSA relationship; and some of the second story, ‘The Bondage Pig’, a piece about, um, a bondage pig! Links are below, and here’s a list of all the stories:

No Sleep
The Bondage Pig
Boot Camp
On My Knees in Barcelona
Dark Side of the Moon
The Caesar Society
Such a Special Couple
How to Get Sex When You’re Dead
Dry Spell
Black Gold
Fruits of the Forest
Living off Lovers
Cutting Out Hearts
My Ass is Your Ass is My Ass
All My Lovers in One Room

Amazon UK :: Amazon US :: Amazon Ca

As Kinky As You Wanna Be

The release of a certain film (no, I haven’t seen it yet) seems like a good time to mention this recent guide to safe, sane and smart BDSM from author and editor, Shanna Germain.

As Kinky As You Wanna Be serves up a mix of advice, anecdote, interviews, info and fiction. I’m a huge fan of sex guides which champion the imaginative, and don’t simply focus and the nuts and bolts of fucking. Being playful and free in your thinking is the best route to having a great time in the sack (even if it’s just you on your own!).

AKAYWB features stories from a bunch of top writers including Remittance Girl, Janine Ashbless, Kristina Wright, Nikki Magennis and Donna George Storey. I have a piece included, The Wrong Woman, which Shanna describes in her introduction as breaking “all the taboos […] to remind us just how hot a dirty, naughty fantasy can be.”

This story first appeared in Maxim Jakubowski‘s Quick and Dirty Erotica anthology, and centres on non-con, sort of. You can read a sexy excerpt here.

And if you’re in the South East of England this weekend, why not check out Dirty Sexy Words, an erotica reading evening in Croydon this Sunday? Last week, Time Out magazine listed the event in its feature on The 20 Sexiest Things to do in London. They also included a photo of me (below) from one of the times I read there which was nice of them! This was two days before the release of Undone, and the first time I’d read from the book in public. It’s less than six months ago but it seems like an age.

Hope to see some of you there on Sunday!

Erotic Romance and Domination 2

I’m delighted to have not one but two stories in Maxim Jakubowski’s recently released anthology, The Mammoth Book of Erotic Romance and Domination.

Last week I gave you the opening of How to Get Sex When You’re Dead. This week, I’m posting the opening to my second story, Seven Stripes of Colour.

Seven is a story about kinksters who meet via online dating; kinksters who are old enough to have some serious baggage. This is one of those stories that made me moist-eyed as I was writing it. It’s rare that short stories do that to me. Novels, yes. Shorts, not so much.

Seven Stripes of Colour

Under a pale apricot sky, city buses looped in front of the railway station, their slow headlights weaving patterns in the dusk. Louise strode from cab to pub, her heart beating a little too fast. She loved doing this, meeting men in places where no one belonged, in stations, airports and motorway cafes. She imagined her grey, digitalised self on CCTV monitors as she made her way to another date.

The anonymity of these places appealed to the pessimist in her. She expected, at best, a short-lived affair. At worst, the two of them would part in relief after a sour coffee or non-descript wine. Then he and she would merge with the travellers around them, en route to elsewhere, confused and anxious, caught in the limbo of to-ing and fro-ing. Warp and weft. Yes and no.

Jason was different to the others, that much was obvious at once. His kindness and warmth were evident in his greeting: a broad grin and a kiss on the cheek. All too often, the dominants she met after ‘meeting’ online were, if young, guarded and cocky or, if older, charmingly chivalric.

“I’ll get this,” he said when she’d selected her wine at the bar.

“OK, I’ll get the next round,” she replied, indicating that already she liked him enough to stay and wasn’t expecting him to foot the bill. Establishing the importance of equality was, she felt, crucial if powerplay negotiations were to be fair and mutual.

Fifteen minutes into their conversation she wondered what the catch was. Married? Impotent? Deranged? Three hours later she knew, but by then it was too late.

“How’s your hotel?” he asked, quickly filling a silence.

“Five minutes away.”

He laughed but didn’t take the bait. Well, it was still early in the game so fair enough. The photographs he’d emailed didn’t do him justice. You wouldn’t call him handsome but he was definitely striking. His face had a skew-whiff, battered quality and his dark eyes glittered, really glittered. They held the mad energy of a man whose zest for life has resulted in him seeing too much. He wore faded jeans, trainers, T-shirt and a suit jacket which he hung over the back of his chair. His shoulders were wide, his arms muscular and darkly-haired. Rogue strands of silver glinted in his short brown curls and flecked his neat sideburns.

As they talked, buses crawled beyond the long, low window behind him. Occasionally, headlights swept into the dark wooden bar, bathing the two of them in a shuddering glow or framing him in momentary halos.

“I haven’t done this for over four years,” he said after Louise returned from buying the next round. Wine for her, beer for him.

Uh-oh, she thought. Here’s where it all goes pear-shaped. He’s going to tell me he’s just split up with someone and I’ve got a rebound on my hands. Or his ailing mother’s about to die, or he’s fresh out of jail.

“So how am I doing?” he added.

She laughed. “You’re doing great. Nine out of ten. Clearly a natural.”

“Damn, I dropped a point. How come?”

“Hey, no one gets ten. Ten would be perfection and a perfect person would automatically lose a point for being perfect, ergo insufferable.”

Jason nodded thoughtfully then smiled. “Well, I got top marks. Go me!”

After a pause, she asked, “So tell me, what’s the story? Why’ve you been away from the joys of dating?” Nervous, she ran her thumb and fingers up and down the stem of her wine glass, desisting when she recalled a claim the gesture was indicative of a subconscious gesture to jerk a guy off. So much wishful thinking in pop psychology.

“Ah, this and that,” he said. “Got out of the habit. Found myself continually disappointed. I was in a straight, you know, a vanilla relationship for around 18 months but…” He trailed off with a shrug. “It’s not for me. I tried but the older I get, the more I… Anyway, that ended over a year ago. And since then, before then too, I’ve been trying… No, wondering how to realise my desires without, how shall I phrase it?” He inclined his head at a philosophical angle. “Without causing harm.”

Her heart pumped harder. She found him simultaneously exciting and terrifying. She started to work the stem of her glass again, this time not stopping when she realised what she was doing.

“Should I be worried?” she asked. “I mean, if we decide we want to play together, would I be in danger? Because if so, I’m probably going to pass. Sorry.” She took a large sip of wine as if to support her decisive words.

Jason shook his head. “I’m ninety-nine per cent certain you’d be safe with me.”

He reached across the table, allowing his fingertips to drift over her hand. She returned the gesture, their contact tentative and fumbling like that of long-standing, melancholy lovers. The beam of headlights from outside crept across their table, casting glossy patches on the wood and rippling over their knuckles. When she looked up, his eyes were downcast, his curls briefly backlit. In that instant, she was irrationally afraid; not of him but for the two of them together. She felt as if they’d been caught in the arc of a searchlight and had nowhere left to run.

“And the missing one per cent?” she asked as the bar’s shadows settled around them again.

His smile was strained. Behind him, the buses kept huffing and purring, their passengers silhouetted in halogen-white windows. She thought of Blanch DuBois at the start of her journey trilling, “Why, they told me to take a streetcar named Desire!”

At length, he gave her a stern, serious look. “You,” he said, “are fucking beautiful. And you’re driving my cock insane. What’s our safeword?”

The confident delivery of his sudden, dirty seduction was more than enough to arouse her. She loved knowing this new man was sitting opposite her in a pub, his cock secretly swelling as they talked. Adrenaline made her fingers tremble, and a beat throbbed between her thighs. For a moment, the world burned, the lights outside gleaming in tones of white-gold, dark amber and bright cherry-red. She experienced the slippage, the shift of the mundane into a spectrum of yellow-hued, fiery magic, the start of a rainbow. She recalled the schoolgirl mnemonic for remembering the order of colours in the spectrum. Richard of York gave battle in vain. Red orange yellow, and so on.

“Red,” she replied, amusing herself by thinking, A bus called Lust.

“We should drink up.”

She grinned and touched her glass against his. “We should.”

*

Amazon UK paperback :: Amazon UK Kindle

Amazon US paperback :: Amazon US Kindle

Erotic Romance and Domination

The Mammoth Book of Erotic Romance and Domination, released a couple of months ago and edited by Maxim Jakubowski, features two, brand new stories of mine, both of which involve sex and death, but in very different ways.

This super-hot anthology offers original fic from a host of new and well-established writers, including bestselling Eighty-Days author, Vina Jackson, and KD Grace, Justine Elyot, Remittance Girl and more!

My two stories are How to Get Sex When You’re Dead and Seven Stripes of Colour. Below is the opening of How to.

I’ll aim to post an excerpt from Seven Stripes soonish.

How to Get Sex When You’re Dead

I never considered myself a voyeur but there’s not much else to do when you’re dead. We hang out at cloud-level, shooting the breeze and watching what’s going on down below. I wish I could talk to Gabe. He might sleep better if he knew I hadn’t cashed in my chips and there was still some residue hanging around, or “soul” if you want to be romantic. Then again, if Gabe knew how frustrating it was to be incorporeal and horny, he’d be desperately sad for me, so it’s probably best I keep schtum.

Oh, but I have heaps to tell him, like: Dying really hurts! But trust me, Gabe, the pain’s gone in a flash. Your pain-memory gets wiped and nothing lingers. Losing your body is the weirdest sensation. Oh Gabe, I hope you get to keep yours till you’re old and grey. Look after it, won’t you? Mine’s gone for good and like I say, the transition’s so weird. One moment I’m being ripped apart from the inside, my mouth filling with blood, the next I’m totally spaced out, seeping into the ether and rising on a high no drugs could match.

As I slipped away, I gazed down at the Honda, upright but crushed, and at the mess I’d made of my face. Behind the shattered glass, I was as still as a mannequin, looking so peaceful despite the violence done to my body. Bizarrely, at the moment of impact I had a flashback of standing before the bathroom mirror that morning, choosing a lipstick I didn’t often wear. I’d tipped the tube to check the shade: Fast Ride. Later, I wondered if I’d chosen the lipstick thanks to my sassy mood or if reading the name had subliminally affected me, causing me to keep my foot on the pedal as I rounded the bend. This might sound shallow but, either way, I’m pleased I went toes up with a plum-dark pout.

I didn’t think this at the time, oh no! I wasn’t pleased about anything. My main thought before bliss engulfed me, was: Shit, shit, shit! Why so fast, Emily?

I begged to have those last few seconds back, promising whoever was up there I’d get it right this time. But no fucker was listening. You don’t get it back. Life’s not a rehearsal, as they say.

I also want to tell Gabe I’m sorry about that night in Antigua when I said things I shouldn’t after my seventh caipirinha. Plus, I have — I have? I had? Grammar’s so hard when you’re a ghost — I had a secret bank account with £18, 000 in. The statements go to my sister’s but I’d like Gabe and the kids to have the money. That was my running-away fund. I had no plans to run away, I swear, but my mother used to say every woman should have a running-away fund. Oh, and there’s another thing. I’d like to apologize to my mum for dying before her. That’s not the correct order of events, I know. I fucked up. Fast Ride.

But I can’t do any of this. I’m voiceless and I’m bodiless. I can see them but they can’t see me. I’m not omniscient but it’s close. I can see everyone I ever knew, and by Christ, but there’s a lot of you, too many to keep up with. I follow those who meant the most to me, or (and this is my guilty pleasure) those who are pure entertainment. It’s like Twitter but for dead people. No one follows me.

And that’s the awful part because I’m following a guy I dated in my twenties, Ash Akbari. I doubt he remembers me but I never forgot him. Hey, Ash! I was the annoying brunette who liked to make a drama out of a crisis out of nothing much at all. I was a tad screwy back then, and I’m sorry. Then again, you weren’t exactly Mr Sane, were you? Oh, but wow, haven’t you grown? If I had the ability to be moist, I’d be soaked and swollen, my body opening in readiness for your cock. However, as things stand, I have desire and it swirls most intensely somewhere below my seat of consciousness. Damned if I can relieve the itch though. I have no hands, see?

Oh, let me tell you about Ash. (I’m sorry, Gabe! I love you madly but I don’t think this counts as cheating, and I’m sure you’d understand.) Ash was stunning. He was Anglo-Iranian, and had inky, collar length curls he would tuck behind his ears. His cheekbones hung on a perfect slant, and his intense, Persian eyes were teal-green ringed with black. He looked as if he could read minds with those eyes. Maybe he could. I used to imagine he was someone who could get under my skin. But I was young. I didn’t want him under my skin. Or rather I did, but didn’t want to admit that. I was trying to be cool and invulnerable. Besides, if I’d let him under my skin, he most likely would have stayed awhile and tried to destroy me. Ash liked to cause suffering; that was part of the attraction. I was needy and attention-seeking. I liked to suffer. I liked to blame. I liked to fight.

He ran me a bath. We’d been arguing and fucking all afternoon at his place and in the evening, I said I fancied a soak. The water was too hot. I dipped my toe in and yelped. I reached for the cold tap but he stopped me by grabbing hold of my hair. His fist was by the nape of my neck and he tilted my head back. His voice was by my ear. “I don’t care if it’s too fucking hot,” he said. His words were so close I might have been making them up myself, hearing voices inside my head. “Get in.”

I was knocked by a rush of arousal so acute my legs nearly buckled. The threatening tone in his voice, not to mention the nastiness of his order, got me right where it shouldn’t. My lust confused the hell out of me. I didn’t like that I liked it, and I don’t think Ash liked that he liked it either.

“You serious?” I said.

He released me. “Nah, just messing.” He ran the cold tap then waggled his fingers in the water. “It’s fine now.”

I was disappointed. I’d wanted him to respond to my reticence by continuing with his bossiness. I’d wanted him to force me to take pain for his pleasure. Maybe not a hot bath but you know, a sexy thing. We had another row later that night, something and nothing. I do know it was my fault though. I pushed it, baiting him to get angry because I wanted to be subjected to his aggression again. I was an emotional masochist, re-routing an unexplored taste for pain into a more acceptable outlet, that of being a pain-in-the-butt girlfriend. But as I say, Ash wasn’t comfortable with his dark side either. We were young, too scared of revealing ourselves in case we got rejected.

But hey, not anymore! I’m dead, I’m twisted and I’m horny! What have I got to lose?

*

Amazon UK paperback :: Amazon UK Kindle

Amazon US paperback :: Amazon US Kindle