The Thin Line #madness #obsession #passion

By Lisabet Sarai

I have some acquaintance with madness.

In my late teens, I spent three months in a state psychiatric hospital, struggling with anorexia. Though I’d starved myself down to eighty five pounds while still perceiving myself as fat, I didn’t think I was crazy—which just goes to show how truly delusional I was—but my fellow patients sometimes acted that way. I became accustomed to people mumbling to themselves, shrieking in terror at invisible threats, or sitting for hours in one place, rocking back and forth. A few years after I was released, when I saw George Romero’s original “Night of the Living Dead”, I had nightmares for weeks. His mindless, shuffling zombies reminded me too much of my Thorazine-numbed fellow inmates.

Still, I’m in some sense attracted to insanity. In my early years, I devoured tales by Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, two authors known for skirting the edge of madness. One of the books that influenced me most as a teen was Lilith by J.R. Salamanca, the story of a fascinating, creative young woman with acute schizophrenia who gradually draws an innocent hospital attendant into her world of glittering, terrible hallucinations. I fell in love with Lilith right along with Vincent. I couldn’t help myself. Indeed, madness and brilliance are closely linked in both fact and fiction. From Vincent Van Gogh to Sylvia Plath, we can all name crazy geniuses who produced great works of art despite—or perhaps due to—their disordered, tortured minds.

Madness is particularly relevant in erotica. There’s often a thin line between erotic obsession and insanity. Intensely focused desire can distort everything else in a character’s world, eclipsing rationality and silencing conscience. I’ve written a number of stories that explored the difficult distinction between normal lust and insane passion. Unfortunately, such tales rarely end happily. Also, they tend to make readers distinctly uncomfortable.

Consider, for instance, “Renfield’s Lament”, in my paranormal collection Fourth World:

Do I seem mad to you? If so, they are responsible. They've driven me mad with their beauty and indifference.

They don't even bother to hunt anymore. They spend their days in their king-sized coffin, alabaster limbs entwined in a frozen tableau of passion. They devote their nights to surfing the Internet, listening to Bach or Dvořák, or lounging on their deck, the endless grid of the city sparkling below them.

Except, of course, for the nights when they feed.

Occasionally, on rainy days when there's no risk, I muster the courage to lift the polished rosewood lid of their communal casket and peek inside. I'm always startled by the scent that rises from their inert forms, orange blossoms and sun-warmed stone, no hint of dankness or decay. Their exquisite pallor complements the perfection of their naked bodies. They seem like statues modeled from translucent, milky glass.

He slumbers with one palm cupping her pert breast, the other arm wrapped around her waist. Her honey-brown hair fans over his chest, fine as spider silk. She curls her fist around his cock, which is rampant even as they sleep. The bold gesture contrasts with her innocent features. She has the smooth cheeks, pointed chin and plump lips of a teenage cheerleader.

My fingers twitch. The urge to trace the shape of that sweet, ripe mouth is almost irresistible. More times than I can count, I've seen those lips distorted by a fiendish grin and those girlish cheeks smeared with gore. It doesn't matter. She will always be my angel, my inspiration, my heart's desire, my doom. My beloved mistress.

My master is equally magnificent in his own way, with a dancer's subtly muscled arms and legs and a head of glorious ebony curls like some pale gypsy. He has a bookish look, with a high forehead rising above bushy black brows and a sensitive mouth that cries out for kisses.

I've never dared to lean close and take advantage of his immobility, much as I ache to feel the chill of his flesh against my own. If I gave way to temptation, would he know? I'm not certain that their death-like daytime sleep stills their minds the way it freezes their bodies. I doubt he'd punish me, if he discovered my transgression. He knows I'd welcome the mark of his bullwhip or the icy invasion of his knife. No, more likely he'd mock me, or simply ignore me, refusing to acknowledge my existence. I couldn't bear that.

The sight of them, locked together in eternal stasis, holds me captive. Blood pours into my cock, blood I know they'd savor if they'd only take it, until I'm hard as the concrete walls of the basement room where they sleep. My pulse pounds in my temples as my futile erection strains my trousers. I am their creature, their slave, stunned into helpless worship by their unearthly beauty.

I know they need me. That should satisfy me—the knowledge that without me they'd might fry or starve or succumb to some overly zealous reader of horror fiction. Month after month, year after year, I guard them and I procure them their victims. It's my privilege to serve them. That should be enough. But I want more from them, God help me, more than I can ever hope they'll give.

Renfield’s desire is so powerful that he offers himself to a sadist’s blade in order to trick his master and mistress into drinking his blood. Set against his awful need, death means nothing.

My recent story “Underground”, in the recently published ERWA anthology Unearthly Delights, has a somewhat similar theme.

So maybe it’s not totally sane. I’ve always been fascinated by madness.

As for safe, where’s the thrill in safety?

You can’t, however, deny that it’s consensual.

Ducking into a blank alley, one of thousands in this city, I make my way to the metal door near the end. The keypad gives off a faint green luminescence. I tap in the combination and the door swings open; my pulse is already climbing. My boot heels ring hollow as I descend the industrial steel steps, and the thump of the bass rises to meet me. Excitement wells up, flooding my cunt, even before I’ve buzzed the final door and been admitted to this most particular and perverse playground.

The techno soundtrack punches me in the solar plexus. My heart stutters like I've been shocked by a defibrillator. Delicious weakness sweeps over me, a premonition of what’s to come.

A few black clad figures shuffle to the hypnotic beat, clinging to one another as though drowning. Beyond the dance floor, naked bodies are draped over couches, shackled to walls or splayed wide on the bare concrete floor. Familiar scents reach me—pussy, cum and blood.

Some of those who frequent Underground are actual vampires, or so I’ve heard. I believe it. Others just like to play with knives.

Then there's me.

My heroine Elena is intelligent, well-educated, self-aware—and consumed with a craving for a perilous but intoxicating erotic experience no responsible or rational human will give her.

My nameless protagonist in “Fire” (in Rule 34: Weird and Wonderful Fetish Erotica) becomes an arsonist to satisfy his fire fetish, and almost ends up committing murder. He doesn’t think he’s crazy. After all, he plans his fiery escapades down to the smallest detail.

I’ve written a few characters who were literally insane. In Necessary Madness, my hero Kyle has uncontrolled prescient visions which have driven him into psychosis. Meanwhile, my unpublished lesbian story “Countertransference” features an exquisite teen-aged schizophrenic who tantalizes her therapist with her grace and creativity. There are echoes of Lilith in this tale, but the truly crazy character is Doctor Gardner, so obsessed with her patient Alisha that she risks everything to consummate her lust.

At one point, I planned to write a novel called Asylum, set in a psychiatric institution. I’ve dropped that idea for now, partly because I realized how similar my notions were to Lilith. The theme, however, continues to fascinate me—the fuzzy edge between sanity and insanity. What’s real? What’s a delusion? What is more important, passion or safety? Ecstasy or order?

I do think I’m pretty sane these days, but when I write some of these stories, I start to wonder. What am I missing?

Conjuring Demons

By Lisabet Sarai

First came the flames. Then, the screams. Each cry was distinct to Kyle’s ears—the men’s hoarse yells, the women’s shrieks, the inarticulate wails from the infants. He couldn’t see them, not yet. Sooty smoke billowed up, hiding the plummeting bodies, making his eyes sting. Orange tongues of fire pierced the black cloud. The cries grew louder as the heat intensified.

He took a big swig of cheap vodka. The bottle was already half empty. His head spun and he knew he couldn’t stand, but the awful screams still rang in his mind.

Please, he thought. No more. I can’t take any more. Let me pass out soon. He drank again, his gut churning as the raw liquid splashed into his empty stomach.

He tried to focus on the present—the rough stone pressing against his back, the chill wind biting through his ragged jacket, the faint smell of urine that filled the passageway under the highway. Useless. The sensations of the real world seemed thin and frail, powerless to overcome the horrible scenes in his head.

Every time, it got worse. It took more alcohol to remove him to that state of blissful oblivion. I’m adapting, just like any drunk. Before long, I’ll need a whole bottle to drown out the visions. Eventually, it will kill me. The thought was a relief.

The spells came more frequently these days, and not just during his waking hours. Nightmares stalked him, full of bloody flesh and torn limbs, searing fire or icy floods. He’d claw his way back to consciousness, howling like an animal, trying to escape. He’d been kicked out of every shelter in the city. He upset the other residents too much.

He could always go back to the hospital. Thorazine didn’t completely smother the visions, but it deadened the emotional impact. He could sit for hours, watching disasters play themselves out on the screen of his mind, and not care.

It worked for a while, but then he always ended up signing himself out again. As painful as consciousness was, it was better than the half-life of being drugged. At least, that was what he told himself, on the good days when his curse was in remission. The staff looked relieved when he left. Even the professionals had trouble dealing with his ‘hallucinations’.

“Hey, gimme a drink, will ya?” A voice cut through the screams echoing in his head. The grizzled man lying next to him on the sidewalk smelt like long-unwashed socks. “Come on, please? Us bums got to stick together.”

Kyle handed him the bottle. His hand shook. “Sure, help yourself.”

The old timer took a deep swallow, then grinned at him. “Thanks, kid.”

The flames flared up, hiding the man’s pock-marked face and gap-toothed smile. A woman’s cry rang out, full of terror. “No, please, no more…” Kyle muttered, closing his eyes. The hungry fire continued to dance behind his eyelids, mocking his attempt at escape. He groped for the bottle. 

 

Aside from the ravening monster I felt inside me when I was anorexic, which I’ve talked about in another post, I’m pretty fortunate. I don’t seem to have any personal demons, at least nothing beyond the normal fears that come with being human. That’s not necessarily true of my characters, though, as illustrated by the excerpt above from my M/M erotic romance Necessary Madness.

In Kyle’s case, his “demon” is an uncontrolled ability to see the future. His raw visions show him only disasters, terrible happenings he cannot prevent. The effects of his paranormal talent are scarcely distinguishable from schizophrenia. He has become a miserable outcast, cynical and suspicious. Even love, the solution to all dilemmas in romance, can hardly save him.

Sometimes my demons are actual supernatural beings. And they can be overwhelmingly seductive. Here, for instance, is a snippet from my story “Fourth World”, recently published in the collection of the same title.

I turn to see Jeremy’s hand wandering up her silk-clad thigh. I’m surprised by his daring. Back at school he was always the shy one in our crowd. I was the one who took the initiative.

His eyes are closed, his lips parted. His trousers rise up from his groin in an imposing peak. Mai cups his bulk and squeezes. Jeremy groans. His hand slips under her skirt.

Jealousy sizzles through me. A red mist clouds my vision. “Never mind,” says Mai, her hand on my thigh, her lips fastening on mine.

Her kiss claims me. I try to take control, to thrust my tongue between her ripe lips, but she playfully forces me back, then plunders my mouth with her own. She tastes sweet but strange, the fruity remnants of her wine not quite hiding a metallic element. My cock surges, painful and eager, trapped in my tight briefs.

Blinded by the fall of her hair around my face, I grope for her breast. Her flesh is firm and elastic under my fingers. Her nipple juts through flimsy barrier of her dress. I circle it with my thumb and she moans into my mouth. I pinch the delightful nub and she bites my lip, hard enough to draw blood. I want to protest, to push her away, but she’s far stronger than I expect. Her kiss becomes more heated, more desperate. My pierced lip throbs. Something’s not right, I think, but then her hand settles on my cock and all thought vanishes.

Her fingers skitter across the distorted fabric of my trousers, testing my hardness. She settles her palm over my swollen bulk, squeezing in time with her sucking kisses. I feel the tightening heaviness that tells me I’m going to come. I take a deep breath, trying to gain some control. Her scent floods my nostrils. The need for release overwhelms me. The first spurt of come pulses halfway up my shaft, but then she removes her hand. The urge subsides, becomes just bearable. Her lips graze my earlobe. “Not yet, darling. Save that for me.”

****

Yes, as you might have guessed, Mai is a vampire—but as Harry and Jeremy discover, she’s the type who likes to play with her food.

The most intriguing demons, though, are the ones inextricably embedded in my characters’ natures. In “Fire”, my protagonist has a fire fetish which compels him to commit arson.

These days, I can't even strike a match without getting hard.

It was better than I could have imagined. Pure joy. After years of borrowing other people's fires, I had my own. There were no sirens, no spectators, no official types keeping an awkward eye on me. Just me and the night and the dancing, piercing flames. I lay down in the scrubby grass with my fly wide open and watched greedily as the blaze devoured the feast I had laid before it.

By the time the building had become a charred pile of debris, I was gorged and sated. I called in sick that morning.

After that, second-hand conflagrations couldn't satisfy me. I have to have my own. I try to space them out, keep at least six to eight weeks between them. It's tough, but I don't want anyone to get suspicious.

The first few weeks after a session, I have plenty of memories to keep me going. I can close my eyes and recall every detail, the intricate shapes of the flames, the taste of smoke in my lungs, the searing, intimate caress of the heat on my privates.

I remember the sequence in which the barn or the shed or the deserted fishing cabin collapsed. Sometimes the whole structure explodes, or caves in on itself. Other times, one wall will totter and fall gently, leaving the others standing as though buoyed up by the hot gases, until at last they simply melt away, crumbling to glowing ash. It is always fascinating, thrilling, enough to push me over the edge.

Sometimes, I imagine that I'm inside, during those final moments when the fire declares victory. I lie on the my back, feeling the sparks rain down on my naked flesh, struggling to breathe as the fire sucks up all the oxygen. I know that it sounds a bit twisted, but I come the hardest when I think about the fire consuming me, taking me into itself.

Anyway, after a while, the memories aren't enough. I start to dream of fire. I wake up soaked with sweat, with a hard-on that I can work for hours without finding any real relief. I begin to get irritable, less polite, less persuasive. My work begins to suffer.

That's when I know it's time. It takes me a few days to prepare, and then finally, I have what I need.

****

This tale, which appeared in my first short story collection, is now out of print. I should probably republish it.

Sexual desire can be a personal demon, perhaps the hardest of all to fight. Here’s a bit from my tentacle erotica tale, “Fleshpot”, originally published in Coming Together: Arm in Arm in Arm.

Cass was right. It's a disease. She was right to cut the ties, when she found me in the garden shed with sweet Susan the baby sitter, in flagrante. I offer no excuse.

It doesn't feel like a disease, though, when I'm in the throes, my senses drenched in the seashore scent of my latest conquest. It feels like I'm on the edge of a revelation, like this is the fuck I've been seeking all my life, the one that will make everything clear, new, beautiful and real. When I burrow into that mysterious place between her thighs, I'm not just looking for pleasure. I'm seeking some kind of truth, or at least that's how it seems, like this is the time that I'll break through that barrier. I catch tantalizing glimpses of brilliance, just out of reach, shining like the grail in some celibate knight's vision. That's me, on a quest for the ultimate knowledge. Except of course, I'm not celibate.

When the papers came from her lawyer, my transgressions sucked dry by legal language ("extramarital liaisons"), my kids stolen by some judge's whim, I took off. My business— electronics OEM—can always provide an excuse for a trip to Asia. My meetings in Bangkok consumed a day and a half. Since then I've been here in this sleazy coastal resort town two hours from the capital.

I've done it all, in the past two weeks, tried everything. The lithe Thai beauties who twine like snakes around the poles in all the bars and clubs along the walking street. The buxom, pushy Russian girls, with their milky complexions and succulent nipples, ripe to the point of bursting, eager to empty both my cock and my wallet. The lady boys, as slender and graceful as their sisters, even more feminine, in fact, the prick erupting from their hairless, perfumed loins as much a shock to them as to me. I've sampled the exotica on sale here, the dwarfs and the cripples, the grossly obese young woman who nearly smothered me in her lush, unutterably soft flesh. I've been whipped and returned the favor. So far I've managed to resist the fifteen year old boys, but just last night a youth of terrifying beauty who claimed to be nineteen drained me in the men's room of one of the a-go-go places. An acrid mixture of urine and camphor stung my nostrils as I pumped my cum into his agile mouth. And in that transcendent instant, as always, I felt myself on the verge of understanding.

At the moment, I'm taking a break from throbbing music and naked skin of the indoor clubs. I perch on a bar stool at the edge of the pavement, watching the parade of tourists and touts ambling by.

I'm tired. The twins I fucked earlier, in a red-lit, window-less room above one of the bars, exhausted me with their convincing enthusiasm for my body. Nee and Nu were indistinguishable, two toffee-skinned tarts who claimed to be eighteen but might have been anywhere from fourteen to thirty. One sat on my face, the other on my cock. Nee (or was it Nu?) made short work of my hard-on. I exploded into the condom with just a few minutes of massage by her muscular pussy. Nu, though (or maybe Nee?), humored me, letting me lick her bare twat and breathe her low-tide scent for as long as I wanted—until I hardened again, earning laughter and admiration from my two playmates.

"La Luxure dans l'art roman" by Bougnat87 -

Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

Maybe the medieval Christians were right. Lust is a demon, one that can consume you body and soul. In the case of my nameless protagonist in “Fleshpot”, he pays off his demon with his life—but willingly.

When does desire become demonic? A fruitful question indeed, for those of us who write erotica.

The Bargain

By Jean Roberta

"Or perhaps in Slytherin,
You'll make your real friends,
Those cunning folk use any means
To achieve their ends."
- The Sorting Hat (in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone)

“Jeanie, do you know what to do if a snake bites you?”

The grownups in my life asked me this question every time I wanted to leave my grandma’s house in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, when we visited there in the summer. The thought of rattlesnakes in the long grass rattled them. My relatives probably didn’t have a phobia, exactly, but they seemed obsessed.

I never actually saw a rattlesnake in the weedy patches of small-town Oregon. I suspect they stayed away from humans, accurately sensing that they wouldn’t get a warm welcome.

In the spirit of making friends with the monsters in your head or under the bed, I once imagined a conversation with a talking snake:

“Hello, snake.”

“Yesss?”

“Am I in your way?”

“Not now.”

“Are you planning to bite me?”

“Not unless you pissss me off.”

“Oh, good. Thank you. I’ll just leave you alone. Have a nice day.”

That was it. I stayed away from the places where I thought rattlesnakes might hide, and they left me alone. It seems we had a pact.

As far as I know, I’ve never had an irrational fear, called a phobia, but I’ve had several fears that seem entirely rational to me: fear of drowning when out on a lake in a tippy boat, fear of catching fire if too close to a flame or a hot burner on a stove, fear of suffocating when I had pneumonia at age eleven. Fear of being bitten by a spider in a dank basement or stung by a wasp in late summer, or by any other poisonous creature. Fear of an angry man who thinks the world is too full of women who are just asking to be raped and killed.

To calm my fear, I always use the negotiation techniques shown above. Strangely enough, most animals, insects, and even physical elements or processes seem more logical in these discussions than many humans.

“Fire, do you want to burn me?”

“I love to eat, and I love oxygen. Come near me when there’s a breeze, and see what happens.”

“Good warning. I’ll keep my distance, and keep something nearby to smother you.”

“Water, do you want to swallow me?

“Not you in particular, but I’m not fussy. If you can’t breathe in me, it’s not my problem.”

“Okay, I'll always bring an inflatable object.”

Deep breaths, caution, awareness, and some useful props – those always seem comforting.

In the long run, of course, nothing will protect me from dying. All living things are eventually defeated by something. So in some sense, the most debilitating phobia seems more rational than the baseless faith that keeps us going, day after day, as we tell ourselves the lie that the world is a safe place.

People with phobias, as distorted as those fears may be, are probably just more in touch with reality than the rest of us. For the meanwhile, I’ll keep telling myself that non-human forces are willing to negotiate.

The Power of Place

By Lisabet Sarai

The roar of an unmuffled motor roused them from their embrace. A narrow boat with a high, sharp prow raced passed them, leaving the barge rocking gently in its wake. ‘A long-tail boat, as they are called,’ said Somtow. ‘A modern adaptation of the traditional dragon boats that plied the river in past centuries.’ He kissed her again, lightly. ‘Personally, I prefer a more leisurely pace.’

Katherine stood up and leaned on the gunwale, taking in the myriad sights of the river. Stretches of verdant jungle alternated with rickety-looking wooden houses, perched on stilts at the river's edge. Women in sarongs squatted on the porches of these shacks, doing laundry or cooking on charcoal braziers. The delicious smell of frying garlic came to her across the water.

She saw the slick heads of children, heard their shrill cries as they splashed each other. A flat-bottomed boat piled high with bananas passed their barge, propelled by a long pole in the hands of an elderly woman in a conical straw hat.

Then she caught sight of tiled roofs and gilded spires through the palm trees. It was a wat, a Buddhist temple, inaccessible except by water. A winding stairway led from the complex of buildings down to the shore. At water level sat a small pavilion, with the typical peaked roof and upturned eaves. Katherine saw a young man draped in orange robes seated there, pensively watching the river flow by. The monk looked up as they passed. Katherine felt an ache in her chest. His beautiful, serious face, lit by the late-morning sun, was too perfect.

Immersed in the scenes on the riverside, Katherine started when she felt Somtow's hands on her hips. She twisted around to look at him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘please, just stay the way you are.’ She obeyed, turning back the river and leaning her elbows on the railing. She felt her skirt being drawn up, until it was around her waist. Next, her knickers were pulled down until they were at her ankles.

From Raw Silk

My stories are about places almost as much as they are about people. In many cases, my settings act almost like additional characters. They establish the story context, generate conflicts and influence the action. Often, the characters only make sense in the place where I've put them.

Kate's odyssey of sexual self-discovery in Raw Silk could not have occurred anywhere else but in Thailand. Only in Bangkok could she have become entangled with a Dom who runs a go-go bar and a minor prince, or been seduced by the free-wheeling sensuality of the Thai culture.

Kathleen's topic for this week is “Writing Where You Know”. I know Thailand fairly well, having lived there for several years and visited frequently after we moved away. Bangkok is in my blood and spills out in many of my stories. I try to capture its contradictions and fascinations, and mirror them in my characters.

Places seduce me. I soak up their essence and then try to recreate them on the page. I was once lucky enough to live in Boston's historic Beacon Hill district for a year. The cobbled streets called to me. I walked them in a daze, drunk with history. I worked to capture this sense of past enduring into the present in Incognito, which has action set in Beacon Hill in both contemporary and Victorian times.

Miranda felt delightfully free as she strolled down Charles Street, enjoying the afternoon. It was only May, but already the trees were in full leaf, dappling the brick side walks with patterns of shadow. Girls passed her in tank tops and shorts, legs and arms bare and already burnished with sun. She felt warm in her long-sleeved pullover and overalls.

She loved this district, with its historic buildings and narrow lanes. Most of the town houses dated from the middle of the previous century. They offered a delightful jumble of architectural detail; wrought-iron balconies, fanlight transoms, stained glass, mullioned windows, Corinthian columns. Many of the brick-fronted buildings were draped with ivy. Some were traversed by aged trunks as thick as her wrist, twining around doors up to the many-chimneyed roofs. The tall windows offered glimpses of chandeliers, Oriental carpets, Siamese cats, and bookshelves that stretched floor to ceiling.

In Beacon Hill, gas lamps lined all the streets, burning day and night. Her own apartment looked out on a private alley, flanked by ivy-hung brick walls and lit by gas lights. Miranda appreciated the irony of her living in an environment that dated from the same period as her research. Perhaps, she sometimes thought playfully, I had a previous life as a Victorian matron.

Most of Beacon Hill was entirely residential, but Charles Street was lined with shops and cafés. There were many vendors of books and antiquities; Miranda loved to rummage through the crowded, chaotic shops, savouring the atmosphere of the past, although she rarely made a purchase.

She entered one of these places now, a dim, comfortable space half below street level. She had to duck her head as she entered. A silvery bell tinkled to announce her arrival.

The proprietor, an energetic, fussy old man with wire spectacles, knew her by sight. “Hello, hello,” he said as he emerged from a back room. “Can I help you find anything today?”

Miranda smiled. “No, thank you. I’m just browsing at the moment.”

“Well, if I can be of any assistance, just let me know.”

Miranda wandered happily through the shop. It was much larger than it first appeared, with several rooms stretching backward into the building. The front room, near the street, was crowded with furniture of obsolete categories, armoires, commodes, carved dressing tables surmounted by triple mirrors. There were other rooms with porcelain, jewellery, cutlery, iron fittings, tarnished brass. Finally, Miranda found herself in the book room.

Books were piled everywhere, in boxes, on shelves, in pillars that reached up from the middle of the floor. Although most were in English, Miranda noticed volumes in French, Russian, and Arabic. The room was veiled in dust, but Miranda did not mind. She loved the rich smell of the leather bindings, the tarnished gold embossing, the fragile texture of the old paper.

-- From Incognito

The shop Miranda visits actually exists, or at least it did back when I lived on Charles Street. Miranda's apartment borrows a lot from the one we rented, with its windows filled with wavy glass and its rickety fire escape overlooking the brick-lined back court. It was easy for me to imagine Beacon Hill in Beatrice's time (the Victorian era). At night I could see her ghost tripping along the cobbles, veiled, on her way to an assignation with a stranger.

Of course, not every place that I've been is exotic. That doesn't stop me from using those locations in my tales. When I was in graduate school I had a boyfriend from Nebraska and spent quite a bit of time there. That flat state stretching across the middle of America has found its way into a number of my stories.

The tractor was acting up again. I was on my knees in the straw, surrounded by greasy parts, when Sally came running into the barn.

"There's a tornado coming, Joe. Heard it just now on the North Platte radio station."

I looked her over. Her hair had half-escaped from her barrette and was floating in red-brown wisps around her ears. Her apron was damp; she must have been washing the lunch dishes. She was breathing hard from her run, ample breasts rising and falling under her print dress. I saw worry in her eyes, justifiable worry.

Twisters are no joke. When one comes roaring across the corn fields, all you can do is hide. In '96 we lost a barn and two horses, while we shivered together in the crawl space, holding each other tight and listening to the wind scream. After that, I built a proper cellar. I might not be able to save our property, but our lives were a different story.

I nodded to her, already covering the parts with a tarp and weighting it down. "Open the house windows, lock the door, and meet me in the cellar. I'll just be a few minutes." Without another word she went to follow my instructions.

Already I could feel that weird electricity in the air, that heaviness that makes it hard to draw breath. The horses were restless. I opened their stalls, so that they would have a chance if the building collapsed. They huddled nervously in the corners. Leaving the upper windows open wide to equalize the pressure, I locked the doors and headed for the bulkhead.

The sky was a sickly green. A mass of inky thunderheads sat ominously on the horizon. It was perfectly still, no hint of a breeze stirring the July afternoon, as I swung open the doors and headed down the concrete stairs.

I was mighty proud of the storm cellar. It stood some distance from the house, just east of Sally's kitchen garden. I had heard of folks who survived a twister in their cellar but who were trapped when the house collapsed on top of it. My cellar was spacious, twelve feet by fourteen, with a ceiling high enough to accommodate my six foot frame.

It was well-equipped. It had a little refrigerator (which I kept stocked with beer) that ran off a car battery, a good supply of canned goods and fresh water, a comfortable double mattress and some directors chairs, plenty of battery-powered lights and candles. Not to mention the flogging bench and the bondage frame that I had built in my spare time, and a reasonable assortment of home-crafted floggers, paddles and dildos.

-- From “Twister”, in Rough Caress

I've been fortunate to have travelled more than most people. Foreign locales almost always stir up a story or two. Here's a snippet set in Amsterdam.

"You know me. The coolest of the cool."

But I'm not. In fact I've been obsessed ever since last night, when Jane and I wandered through the red light district, staring at the women who waited behind the glass in their rose-tinted rooms. We wove our way through clumps of nervous, intoxicated men who were all staring, too. I could smell their sweat, underneath the beer and the pot smoke. I could feel their lust. It infected me.

They barely noticed us, two teenagers in jeans, although the tight denim in my crotch was so wet, I half-expected they'd catch my scent and turn to me. They had eyes only for the bodies displayed in the rows of windows lining the canals.

Some of the women were ripe, blond, Slavic-looking, their breasts exploding out of their lace brassieres. Others were slight, deliberately child-like in Gidget-inspired bikinis or brief plaid kilts. There was a Brazilian beauty with golden skin and coffee-colored eyes; a voluptuous African princess with strings of ruby-hued beads dangling in her ebony cleavage; a serious-looking brunette wearing dark-framed glasses who sat, shapely legs crossed, like a secretary waiting to take dictation.

Some of the women posed. Others danced suggestively, or made lewd gestures at their prospective customers. There were masked women in leather, snapping riding crops against their boots. There were women whose pierced nipples and labia showed clearly through their translucent garments.

Men clustered around the dimly-lit windows like moths hovering by a candle. Mostly they'd just look, inflamed by the mere thought of all this available flesh. Sometimes I'd see a hushed conversation through a half open glass door. Such conversations might end with the man turning away, disappointed, rejected, or perhaps simply unwilling to pay the asking price. Other times the door would open wider, just enough to admit the supplicant. Then it would close and the red velvet curtains would be drawn, hiding the rest of the dance.

Those curtained windows drew me. I couldn't stop imagining what might be going on behind them. I knew it was a straight commercial transaction in most cases, a workman-like blowjob, or a quick, bored fuck. Still, I imagined occasional revelations, epiphanies, ecstasies -- meetings of strangers pre-destined to be lovers, brief but unbearably intense conflagrations of lust, lewd and mystical connections that would live in his memory, or hers, long after the curtains were flung open again.

I'm nineteen. I've had enjoyable but ultimately frustrating sex with two boys my age. I know that, practical as I am, I'm a bit of a romantic. Otherwise, I would not have continued to roam the red-lit alleys long after Jane gave up and went back to the hotel in disgust. As the Oude Kerk chimed two AM, I wandered up Molensteeg and down Monnikenstraat like some horny ghost. The crowds had thinned. The curtains were mostly drawn. Some of open windows were empty. Next to them were the signs: KAMERS TE HUUR. Windows for rent.

-- From “Shades of Red”, originally published in Yes, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance.

I've written stories set in London, Prague, Montego Bay, Luang Prabang, and Siem Riep – all of which have been destinations for my real world journeys. Much of what I write is contemporary. Occasionally, though, I'll visit a place where history calls to me. In 2000 my husband and I spent ten amazing days in Provence. We visited the ruined abbey of Thoronet not far from Avignon. Wandering through the vaulted stone chambers, I had a strangely vivid sense of what it would be like to have been a part of that community of devotion, back in the twelfth century.

When my brother’s life was spared by the wasting fever, my father consecrated me to the Church as his thanks for answered prayer. This was seven years ago, just after my first monthly bleeding. I did not mind being sent to the abbey; I was thus saved from the rough and grimy hands of the neighboring lord, to whom my father originally planned to wed me. “The claims of the Lord overrule the poor intentions of men,” he told me when he left me with the sisters at Thoronet. “May your virginity be a gift that forever glorifies God.”

As a girl, I found the simple, orderly life of the convent a comfort. The sisters were strict but never cruel. There was always work to do, but it was the sort of labor that satisfies: tilling the garden, tending the vineyard or the convent’s goats, baking bread. I slept well on my straw pallet, in the dormitory with the other novices.

Seven times daily, we knelt on the cold stone floor of the chapel and prayed. I loved the stark bareness of that sanctuary. The flickering light of the altar candles scarcely reached the shadows of the vaulted roof. The gold-encrusted crucifix on the altar shone as if lit from within. You are the light of the world, Christ had said, and there in the chapel I was suffused with that light.

I especially loved the Compline service, though sometimes it meant a rude awakening and a stumbling through midnight corridors. In the heart of night, the chapel was full of mystery. With the other women, I raised my voice to sing the hymns of praise. The soaring melodies made me ache with joy.

Our songs came, the superior told us, from Mother Hildegard, whose abbey on the Rhine was one of the centers of our Benedictine order and whose visions blessed us all. As I sang, I dreamed of mystic encounters, of being tested in my faith like the virgin saints.

-- From “Communion”, in Fire: Short Stories.


Of course, there are many places I haven't visited (yet!) I've set a few stories in locales where I don't have personal experience. My paranormal romance Serpent's Kiss takes place in a mountainous village in Guatemala. Getaway Girl works hard to capture the atmosphere of a real North Yorkshire village called Kirkby Malzeard. (Ashley Lister helped me a lot with that one!) And one of my favorite recent stories is set on a tea plantation in the Assam hills, in the waning days of the British Empire.

The rain drops are Lakshmi’s tears. That is what Lalida had said—tears of pity wept by Vishnu’s consort at the sad state of mankind. From the sheltered veranda, Priscilla watched sheets of rain sweep relentlessly across the land. The silver curtain alternately hid and revealed the shapes of the green hills rising in the distance.

Priscilla swallowed the last of her biscuit and leaned back in the rattan chair, drawing her shawl around her shoulders. She knew, from the past week’s experience, that the downpour would end in a few hours. The lush wet bushes would sparkle in the sun, as though someone had scattered handfuls of jewels over their leaves. For now, the muted hues of the landscape matched her mood.

“More tea, Madam?” Lalida stole up behind her on bare feet, her orange sari like a streak of fire in the grey morning.

“Not for me, but please bring a fresh pot for Mr. Archer.”

“Yes, Madam.” The maid hurried away, leaving Priscilla alone again with her reveries.

Had it really been only a month ago that they had arrived in India? It seemed like a lifetime. She could barely remember the streets of London, the bustle and the noise, the clatter of hooves on the pavement, the horns and the backfiring engines of the autos vying with the carriages for space. It was so quiet here on the plantation. All she could hear was the hiss of the rain sluicing down.

-- From Monsoon Fever

I've never visited Assam, though I have been to India. But after working for weeks on Priscilla's tale, seeing the world through her eyes, I feel as though I know the place. I see it. I smell it. Research, imagination and analogy help me to bridge the gaps in my experience.

Some authors don't seem to spend much time or effort defining a particular locale for their stories. For me, one of the first questions that I ask myself is “where?” Move the tale from one location to another and it often becomes a totally different story. That is the power of place.

Narrative Inertia

By Lisabet Sarai

I love tackling Chris Garcia-Sanchez' topics. They invite multiple interpretations. The subject he proposed for this week is “Killing Your Darlings”. I wondered for a while whether he was talking about doing in one's characters, and I was going to write about Exposure, in which the hunkiest guy in the book gets murdered in the first chapter. Then I realized that he probably meant something quite different, the anguish involved in taking the editorial knife to one's own writing, cutting out the passages, the ideas, even the characters that you feel are not working.

I suspect that this is what he intends because we're crit partners and I know something about his writing process. It involves multiple revisions, each one often a radical change from the last. I've also counseled him fairly frequently that his early drafts are too long. But it's often tough for me to suggest what he should excise, because it's all so good.

Anyway, this is my post and so I should be talking about my own editorial anguish. I'll be honest, though. Rarely do I even attempt the type of wholesale revisions that other authors describe. I find that my work has enormous narrative inertia. Once I have a first draft, it's rare and exceptionally difficult for me to make significant structural or thematic changes. I'll tweak, I'll polish—I may eliminate paragraphs or even a scene—I may add sentences or paragraphs to heighten an effect or clarify an ambiguity. But there's no murder in my editing, no more than minor plastic surgery.

Sometimes I worry about this. Do I really believe that my first draft is so close to being “right” that I don't need to slash it apart to make it better? No, not really. If I wanted to work harder, spend more time, submit my stories for multiple crits, I'm sure that they could be significantly improved. But it would be really hard. Once I have a story out on the electronic page, it seems to acquire a concreteness that makes it highly resistant to change. It's not because the story is “my darling”, my words so precious that I can't bear to alter or eliminate them. Rather, it's the fact that, once a story's born, I can't imagine how it could be different. It takes on a life of it's own.

I work as a software engineer. I love writing programs. I always marvel that something that begins as a disembodied idea ultimately becomes an artifact capable of influencing real world phenomena. The air traffic control system, your local ATM, the business behemoth that is Amazon.com—all these things are mostly software, abstract concepts made manifest in the physical realm.

Writing stories, for me, is somewhat similar. First there are the ideas. Then by some miraculous process, the notions kicking around in my mind are transformed into a book that someone can read in bed, a book that may entertain or arouse dozens (or in my dreams, thousands!) of other people. Once the book is written, it is no longer as malleable as the ideas that inspired it

It helps that my second, lightly edited draft, even if far from absolute perfection, is likely to be good enough to get published. I'm not being conceited here. I don't think I'm a wonderful writer, but I'm a fairly competent hack. My ratio of acceptances to rejections is pretty high. (I only wish my royalty statistics were comparable!) I'd rather spend my time working on a new story than polish my current one into a glittering diamond of a tale that will astonish everyone with its brilliance. Especially in the fast-paced world of e-publishing, I feel that I can't afford to spend months editing and revising a single title.

I am learning, though—partly through working with Chris, in fact. I'm trying to force my way through the brittle shell that seems to surround my stories and rework them in fundamental ways, if that seems necessary.

I had an interesting and revealing experience a few months ago, when I was working on Truce of Trust. This 16K story grew out of a shorter tale called “Detente”, which was included in my Fire anthology. “Detente” is told in the first person present, and it ends with a M/M/F ménage. Claire, my editor at Total-E-Bound, liked the overall concept but asked me to change the POV, the tense and the sexual orientation (she was looking for M/F/M submissions), as well as to make the story substantially longer.

I knew that this would be rough, but agreed to give it a try. When I began, I found the process extremely difficult. Gradually, however, I gained confidence. The characters changed. The story changed. The initial premise was the same, but the final result was quite different. I hadn't revised an old story, I realized. I had written a new one.

Like all authors, I have discarded fragments on my hard drive. These chapters and scenes are more orphans than darlings, though. I'll work on something for a while and then lose the spark. If I'm bored, I reason, my readers will be, too. Or else I'll start something and then not have a clue as to how to develop it. Without the ideas to feed them, my stories wither and die. But I don't deliberately kill them.

I'll tell you a secret. Authors like Chris, who agonize over their work, cutting and rearranging, feeling the pain of wielding the editing scalpel, make me feel embarrassed and guilty. Embarrassed because I feel that I somehow should be doing the same, that I'm lazy and insincere and complacent. Guilty because I do manage to get published, even if my sales aren't what I'd like, while many true artists have a far more difficult time.

---

This week at the Grip, we welcome our new member Ashley Lister. Ashley will be posting on Thursdays, in the slot previously handled by Kim Dare. I'll let Ashley introduce himself. I'm sure that you'll enjoy him.

Another World

By Lisabet Sarai

Last week on the Grip we talked about characterization. How can an author give depth and verisimilitude to characters who are very different from the author in their background, personalities, orientations? This week's subject, “Setting the Scene”, nicely parallels that discussion, though I didn't know about Helen's topic when I posted mine.

No story takes place in a vacuum (not even in science fiction...;^)). Every character exists in a spatio-temporal context that influences his or her assumptions, perceptions, and reactions. The books that I enjoy most offer a rich sense of the environment surrounding the characters – place and time, climate and history, sound, smell and taste. In the books I write, I try to create that same kind of dense, three-dimensional world in which my characters can play.

Even when I'm writing a short story, I always have some notion of where the action occurs. I might not mention the setting explicitly, though often I will. Of the twenty stories in my print collection Fire, only two fail to identify their location. Of these, one is a sort of prose poem about a many-year relationship, while the other is set in the future. The settings of the others include northern California (five stories), New York City (three stories), Bangkok (two stories), Pittsburgh, New Orleans, the American Midwest, the Maine coast, Prague, Provence, and Laos.

In many cases, the setting is integral to the plot. In every case, I try to make the environment real enough to draw readers into my characters' world.

Often I will mine my own experience when setting the scene. That's one explanation for the repeated appearance of some locales in my work. The passage below, from Raw Silk, is based on my first trip from the Bangkok airport into the city, many years ago

From under heavy eyelids, she watched the roadside sights fly by. Garish neon signs, in English, Thai and Chinese, lit up the night with the names of multinational corporations. Gleaming, modern buildings two dozen stories high alternated with stunted blocks of grimy concrete, weak fluorescent light visible through their open windows. Every now and again, she would glimpse the peaked, layered roofs and delicate spires of a Buddhist temple, rising incongruously from the middle of a residential or industrial district.

The full moon rendered the scene even more alien. High above the horizon by now, it lent a silvery sheen to the buildings, while creating sharp black shadows between and behind them. Brighter than any man made illumination, it reminded Kate of an old-fashioned flashbulb. Each tableau seemed frozen in meticulous detail, captured by the moon like a surrealistic snapshot.

The car was silent, seeming to float over the road. The slight hiss of the air conditioning soothed her. Kate tried to stay alert, to pay attention to her new surroundings, but drowsiness was irresistible.

Here's another scene from my past that shows up in Exposure. I spent four years doing graduate work in Pittsburgh and enjoying the views in that hilly city.

Jimmy signals for the check. Suddenly he's confident and in control. He gives me one of his crooked smiles. "Feel like a walk? It's still early, and it's a lovely night. We could go up to Schenley Park."

I mentally check the status of my ankle. The throbbing is hardly noticeable. "I'm supposed to stay off my feet," I reply, smiling into his eyes, "but it's very tempting."

"We won't go far. And if your ankle begins to bother you, we'll turn back."

We leave the car at the edge of the park and stroll along the paths to the crest of the hill. We seem to have the place to ourselves. New leaves whisper on the oak branches that arch over our heads. The spring air is like wine. It seems totally natural that we should be holding hands. I feel my heart quicken as we emerge from the trees and see the lights of the city spread out before us.

This place is breathtaking. The broad lawn slopes downward nearly half a mile. When I was a child, I rode my sled down this incline, screaming with excitement as we gathered speed. Past the grove at the foot, we see the lights of Oakland, violet and orange, and further to the west, nestled between the rivers, the glittering towers of downtown.

The night is moonless, so clear that even with the urban brilliance below, the stars are visible. There is some kind of perfection here. I breathe deeply and feel the knot of tension in my chest soften. Peace, for the first time in two days.

Sometimes, though, my tales demand a locale that's unfamiliar. My recent paranormal release, Serpent's Kiss, takes place in a rural village in Guatemala. “Monsoon Fever”, my contribution to the ménage anthology Brit Party, is set in Assam, India, during the aftermath of World War I. I've never visited either of these places. So how can I write about them?

Curiously, the answer seems to be the same as that which I offered in my post last week: analogy and research. For setting the scene, research is often the more critical aspect. I need to understand the geography, the topography, the climate, and the culture of the place where my story is set. On the other hand, it's difficult to achieve realistic sense impressions without a leap of imagination from what I have experienced to what I have not.

Though Guatemala isn't stamped in my passport, I've traveled in other third-world countries. I know a bit about poverty and lack of opportunity, about the gaps between haves and have-nots, about the ridiculous bureaucracy that seems to exist in inverse proportion to a country's level of development. I've lived through monsoons in lands other than India, and so I can imagine watching a deluge on an isolated tea plantation in colonial Assam:

The rain drops are Lakshmi’s tears. That is what Lalida had said—tears of pity wept by Vishnu’s consort at the sad state of mankind. From the sheltered veranda, Priscilla watched sheets of rain sweep relentlessly across the land. The silver curtain alternately hid and revealed the shapes of the green hills rising in the distance.

Priscilla swallowed the last of her biscuit and leaned back in the rattan chair, drawing her shawl around her shoulders. She knew, from the past week’s experience, that the downpour would end in a few hours. The lush wet bushes would sparkle in the sun, as though someone had scattered handfuls of jewels over their leaves. For now, the muted hues of the landscape matched her mood.

The passage above illustrates an important point about settings in fiction. The primary role of the setting is to provide a physical and emotional context for the characters and their stories. The first two paragraphs from "Monsoon Fever", quoted above, do more than set the scene or draw pretty word pictures. The rainy world that Priscilla surveys from her porch mirrors her emotional state. She is perplexed, lonely and frustrated. In this story, the climate also triggers aspects of the plot, creating unexpected situations that cause the characters to change and grow.

In some fiction, the setting itself becomes a narrative force. Consider a horror tale about a haunted house. The evil-infested dwelling is more than just the environment in which the characters exist. It becomes the prime motivator for their actions.

It's easy to fall in love with description for its own sake. This is a pitfall for many authors, including me. I become so involved in building a vivid, believable world, I lose sight of its role in framing, shaping and driving the characters and their behavior. Well-crafted description of the setting, carefully entwined with paragraphs that reveal character and conflict, will enhance a tale, but many a story has floundered under the weight of excess detail about the setting.

It's a delicate balance. It's not uncommon for me to encounter tales in both the erotica and romance genres that don't provide enough background for me to guess where they take place. I tend to find such stories flat and two-dimensional, even when the characters are engaging. On the other hand, I've also slogged through page after page of descriptive text, trying futilely to discover the relationship between this verbiage and the characters' lives.

Practice and vigilant editing are both required in order to avoid these two extremes. Still, I wonder whether some authors could even tell me where their stories were set, if I asked them. As for me,I find myself considering the question of setting very early in the creative process. Where are these characters from? Where do they meet? How does their physical world influence who they are and what they think? Until I can answer these questions, my story goes nowhere. (I find it interesting that I have much clearer notions of where my characters are located than what they look like.)

Authors differ, I think, in their attention to setting the scene. I'm sure that my relatively rich travel experiences have made me particularly attuned to issues of place. I'm waiting eagerly to hear what the other Grip members have to say on this topic.

Happily, Ever?

by Lisabet Sarai

Gloriana DeMarco is used to getting what she wants. The outrageously beautiful daughter of a U.S. Senator, she lives in a Beverly Hills mansion, drives a red Porsche, and dances her nights away at the hottest, most exclusive clubs in town. The fact that she also happens to be a vampire makes her even more persuasive.

Hank Storm is a rowdy punk who uses his fists and his wits to survive on the mean streets of South LA. He's also a lycan, the sworn enemy of the blood drinkers who control the city.

When Hank's battered Harley rams into Gloriana's 911 Carrera, sparks fly as well as glass. The mutual attraction is incandescent and irresistible. But Hank and Glori are literally from different worlds. Will they manage bridge the huge gulf between them, the differences in wealth, class, and monster-species, to find true love?

Of course they will, silly. It's a romance.

A happy ending is the sine qua non of the romance genre. Readers crave the satisfaction that comes from seeing the protagonists overcome all obstacles in order to end up, mutually devoted and sexually fulfilled, in each other's arms. Personally, I get that. Readers identify with the characters (at least if the author has done his or her job). Of course readers want characters to be happy by the end of the tale, to enjoy the vicarious experience. Hey, I like a happy ending as much as the next reader.

For an author, though, the ultimate romance commandment, “Thou shalt have a happy ending”, poses some problems. A story is propelled by conflict. Conflict generates suspense, that is, pleasurable uncertainty as to how and whether the conflict will be resolved. Suspense draws the reader further into the narrative. The reader continues in order to discover what will happen next. A “real page turner”, such as we all aspire to write, keeps the reader involved by keeping her off-balance, constantly creating new tension that can only be relieved by reading further.

When an author is constrained to provide a happy ending, generating suspense becomes more difficult. There's no uncertainty about how the story will conclude. The author must find another way to keep the reader turning pages. Authors vary in how successful they are in meeting this challenge. My main complaint about much of the romance that I read is that it is distressingly predictable.

One solution is to create a conflict so intense that the reader will really have a hard time guessing how it could be resolved. Here's the blurb from my upcoming MFM ménage release, Truce of Trust, due out from Total-E-Bound on May 19th:

Some women might think Leah’s existence heavenly. She shares her home with two sexy men who both adore her. Ten years married to lusty, artistic Daniel, she still enjoys the discipline and release offered by Greg. But her lovers’ jealousy and possessiveness have made Leah’s life a hell. Unable to bear the continuous conflict, she flees to an idyllic seaside resort to ponder her future. Gradually she realises that she cannot live without either of her lovers. If the two men can’t settle their differences, though, then how can she bear to live with them?

Obviously, somehow, the differences will be settled, because this is a romance, a ménage romance, and the ultimate commandment must be obeyed. In writing this blurb, though, I hoped to produce at least mild curiosity as to just how these two alpha males vying to possess the female of the species will manage to find an accommodation.

Another solution is to focus the suspense not on the relationship but on another aspect of the plot. In Raw Silk, Kate explores her sexuality with three different lovers. The questions I pose for my readers are, first, will she choose one man or continue her hedonistic experimentation with all three? Second, if she does choose one of them, who will it be?

I originally conceived of Raw Silk as erotica rather than romance. (When I wrote it, 'way back in 1999, explicit romance was not as accepted or as popular as it is today.) The book fictionalizes my own awakening to BDSM and channels my fantasies about a serious, committed BDSM relationship. Of course it has a happy ending (as long as you consider being bound in public by your Master, wearing labia clips and a butt plug, to be happy...). Fantasies always do. I hope, though, that it is not too predictable. In any case, the book is now being marketed as romance. But then, so is Portia da Costa's Black Lace classic Gemini Heat, which first inspired me to try publishing my erotic writings.

The erotica genre is less strict about requiring HEAs. Of the twenty stories in Fire, my single-author erotic short story collection, eleven have happy endings, five are ambiguous and four are definitely unhappy. Even for the stories I've classified as happy, the endings tend to be more equivocal than in romance. In “Twentieth Century”, the heroine loses her lover but experiences a sexual and artistic awakening. In “Perception”, the hero disappears after making love to the heroine and she's not sure whether she'll ever see him again. The “ambiguous” category includes one story (“Higher Power”) in which the heroine ends up with a broken neck and another (“Communion”) where she's burned at the stake as a witch. Not your average romance scenarios!

Even in the world of erotica, I see some tendency for editors to prefer happy stories over darker ones. One of my absolute favorite stories, “Trespass”, has been rejected for at least four anthologies, mostly because it ends with the death of both protagonists. On the other hand, I think that it's intensely romantic, a story of forbidden love that crosses societal boundaries.

I'm not going to turn this post into another diatribe railing against the constraints of genre. If you want to write romance, you adapt. You try keep the reader wondering just how your characters are going to get out of their predicament and get together. One of the most skillful examples of maintaining suspense in romance that I've encountered is Erastes' M/M historical romance Standish. As I was reading, I was acutely aware of the genre. I knew that the book had to have a happy ending. Yet the author kept me on edge until the last chapter; it really did seem that her characters were doomed to separation.

Bravo. I only hope that I can do as well. I've tried to pull off a similar trick in my upcoming novella Serpent's Kiss (coming from Total-E-Bound on May 4th). At one point it appears that heroine, Elena, has lost her love forever, sacrificed for a greater good. I won't say any more for fear of giving things away. But at that juncture, I want my readers to be shocked, desperate, to ask themselves, Is it possible that this might not end happily after all?

If I can manage that, then it will be a very happy ending for me!