I Challenge You to a Game of Sex #sexuality #confidence #kinky #queer

A post by @GiselleRenarde

I'm asking myself if I've ever been attracted to my opposite, and I honestly don't think I have--not in any big sense. The people I'm attracted to are always similar to me in most ways. Our values and beliefs are the same, we tend to enjoy the same literature, films, music, all that.

I've never been the bookworm making eyes at the biker, nothing that extreme.

But if we're talking about sex, well, that is one area where I suppose I have been drawn to people who weren't exactly my mirror image.

When I was younger, I was strikingly confident with regard to sexuality--seeing as I was a virgin and all...

I remember watching American Beauty when it came out in 1999.  When it turned out that (spoiler alert!) Mena Suvari's ravenously seductive character was also a virgin, it was like looking in a weirdly humiliating mirror.

That was me. That's how I behaved. I found the idea of sexuality very empowering, but I'd never actually HAD sex.

Was I attracted to other people who made raunchy jokes and flaunted their assets? Of course not!  I had friends who were like me, but the people I was attracted to, when I was younger, were really quite bashful. Innuendo embarrassed them... excited them, too, I found out years later... but in the moment all I saw was the bashfulness... and all I felt was the power I wielded over men with my feminine wiles.

I liked being able to intimidate men, and I liked men I could intimidate.

I wanted to be in charge, and I was.

Later on, when I was confident in my sexual skill (because I actually had some), I found myself drawn to people who could expand my horizons. Looking back, I was pretty gosh-darn vanilla, at that point. If you'd asked me, "Are you vanilla?" I would have been like "Of course not! How dare you!" but when I think of all the things I hadn't done... wow, that's a long list.

I ended up with someone who was kinky as hell, and not because she was trying to be--she just exuded that brutal feminine confidence I'd felt so sure I possessed all those years ago. It was the dominating nature of her personality that taught me to submit. And, I tell you, it came as a relief to not be in charge in the bedroom anymore.

The effects spread beyond the bedroom, too.  Spread to my writing. If not for that confident kinkster, Lexi Wood would never have been born. She pushed me to write beyond my boundaries--to write incest erotica like the Adam and Sheree series, and Lexi's ever-growing list of short stories.

Sometimes you need someone who's going to challenge you.  You need it to grow.

Now I see myself as a kinky queer who is quietly confident about sex, but who doesn't have to be in-your-face about sexuality or wield it like a sword.

Maybe the whole "opposites attract" thing has operated with subtlety in my life. At times, I've challenged others to a game of sex. At times, I've been challenged. But the result has been growth, overall, and a better understanding of relationships, myself, and my place in the world.

Offensive Material

Over the past couple years, I had made it a personal project of mine to read through some older gay erotic literature from my local LGBT library. I thought it would be neat to see the evolution of the genre over the decades. Honestly, I thought I’d be reading fairly tame stuff that didn’t even compare to today’s modern smut.

Holy fuck was I wrong.

Hardball by T. Hitman, which remains the hottest book I’ve ever read, had non-stop sex that evolved into piss-play in the latter half of the book. Punk Chicken, which had an anonymous author, features a lead character who shits on guys’ chests after fucking them. And The Leatherman’s Handbook, by Larry Townsend, while technically not a novel, opened my eyes to new areas of the BDSM and leather culture that I didn’t even know existed. I also tried reading a couple other books from that library, but one was so full of shit play that I couldn’t finish it and another had content that just flat-out made me super uncomfortable.

Given the consistency of content from those books, as a few of them were from within the same decade or so, I can only make the assumption that gay erotic literature, in general, had that level of raunch and fetish. It was normal back then.

And then I look at today’s gay erotic literature and the tight bounds put on it by Amazon and other vendors, and I just see vanilla. Even the kinkiest thing on Amazon is still vanilla to what was in those books from a few decades ago.

With erotic literature, perhaps especially gay erotic literature, entering the mainstream market, writers had to tone it down. (In fact, in the backs of some of those books, it sounded like their primary way of making sales was by mail-order catalogue, not by local bookstores.) The general public has deemed erotic literature to be obscene, unless it fits within a vague, but very rigid, box.

Amazon has a reputation and a history of unilaterally deciding something is offensive and removing books, and sometimes an author’s entire catalogue, from their site. Other vendors, when media attention was drawn to the fact that they carry erotic ebooks, have cleaned out their website of “obscene” material. These vendors often act surprised that there is such “offensive” material on their website and decide to make a public showing of cleaning out the filth. But they knew it was there. They might not have known about the specific title or two that tends to spark these news articles, but they knew the quantity of erotica titles on their site and they knew the general themes of much of the ebooks. In order to save face, they have to act surprised when easily-offended people make a stink about the easy access to “porn.”

About a year ago, I embarked on a new writing journey. Knowing what gay erotic literature used to feature rather extreme stuff, and knowing that current day sales of rather vanilla erotica is likely fuelled by the fact that kinkier stuff simply isn’t available, I wondered what needs weren’t being met by the erotica-loving public. Just because several major vendor refuse to sell extreme fetish doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for it.

I set out a plan to bring back the level of kink found in those older books.

The first was to find a vendor that wasn’t so easily offended — which I found in Smashwords and Excitica. Both of them allow stuff that isn’t allowed elsewhere, but still have a few restrictions. I decided I wasn’t going to worry about making it into Smashwords’s distribution channels — all I wanted was to get it up on Smashwords, and didn’t care of iBooks or Kobo or Barnes and Noble decided they didn’t want to carry it because it was offensive to them.

Admittedly, I’m not comfortable writing everything I saw in those old books. However, I took what I was comfortable with and threw in a few other things. I’ve covered piss play, incest, and some BDSM that’s a little more extreme than one generally finds in the BDSM section of Amazon. (All characters are always over 18.) I put the books up and kept watch on sales stats.

Most of my books ended up being picked up by most of Smashwords’s distribution partners. These books would get my account banned on Amazon, but were acceptable on Barnes and Noble and Kobo. iBooks blocked some of my books, but took most of them.

The real mystery, though, was how sales dollars would compare. If this new pen name was going to depend almost exclusively on Smashwords, whereas Cameron D. James is on every major retailer site, would it even be worth my time and effort?

Surprisingly, this new pen name, despite not being on Amazon, the world’s biggest bookstore, immediately outsold everything I’ve written under any other pen name. With only a few titles and very limited distribution, this new pen name is fast becoming my bread and butter.

While I’ve always sort of accepted that one person’s obscene material is another person’s masturbation material, this experiment really hammered it home. I generally don’t talk about this pen name — indeed, I haven’t mentioned in this post what the pen name is — because in the few cases where I’ve talked about it, I see people cringing at the thought. But I’m not writing for those people. I’m writing for the people that are stuck reading poorly-written stuff over on Nifty. I’m writing for the people who want a piss play story by an author that can actually form a sentence. I’m writing for the people who have a secret fetish and are looking for a little masturbatory material.

I’ve always kind of snickered when someone tries to set up a new erotica bookstore website and makes loud statements about how major retailers tell you what is erotic and what is obscene. I used to think that these people were just bitter that they couldn’t play inside the little box that Amazon set out for them. Now, though, I agree with them. As long as it’s within the bounds of the law, no one should be telling a reader what’s obscene and what’s not.



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He is also the publisher and co-founder of Deep Desires Press  a publisher of erotica and high-heat-level erotic romance. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

I'll take three please ...

: )

I have been trying to figure out all week long just what I am going to write about.

I don't really have any kinky obsessions.

Lately though, I have gotten hooked on M/M/F or M/M/M/F romances. There is just something about 2 or 3 hot guys who are willing to share the woman they love, knowing that she loves them both, and feeling no jealousy of each other but definitely of any other man who might look at their woman, and even enjoy each other.

Oh la la!

It's just so hard to find a nice menage that actually ENDS as a menage. So many times it starts out with a good threesome, and then in the last few chapters, they "drift apart" leaving just a woman and a man.

Grrrr! What a load of crap. If you are going to write it as a standard het in the end, then start it out that way and just add in an extra character for spice, letting it be known throughout that they will not all end up together.

I started with Be With Me by Maya Banks. Holy hell! I can't recommend this book enough. : )

Then I moved on to Laid Bare by Lauren Dane. Yeah baby!

I also enjoyed Deanna Lee threesome in her Games Girl Play collection, and Maya Bank's contribution to Four Play.

Anyone got any good suggestions for me? I am definitely obsessed with reading my hot happily ever after menages. : )

Confessions of an Erotica Master

By M. Christian

Okay, “love and lust” ... well, let’s take the last one first.

I’m lucky, I guess, that I don’t have a lot of sexual baggage. My parents had more than their fair share of faults … okay, a LOT more than their fair share of faults … but at least they spared me from the sexual guilt and religious shame a lot of other folks seem to have been saddled with.

Because of that lack of sexual Samsonite, I’ve always been very much in touch with my erotic identity: in short I know what I like and that’s okay with me. In many ways, especially considering the tiny corner of literature I’ve found myself working in, I’m a very simple sexual critter. Sure, I might write about queer bondage, lesbian domination, and all kinds of outrageous and outré fetishes and kinks for the straight folks, but when I turn off my versificator (look it up, it’s from Orwell’s 1984), switch off the lights, and head home, it’s to simple and sweet sexual fun.

Not that I’m dull, you understand. It’s just that compared to my writing life, my nighttime antics might disappoint the two people who read my erotic stories. No whips, no chains, no safe words, no leather, no latex, no appliances, no lingerie (at least not for me), no feathers, no personas, no spikes, no pudding … no kidding.

Sure, I have a few interesting quirks. Part of the reason I think I sympathize so much with queer life is that while I’m comfortably heterosexual, the object of my desire is not exactly common.

In short, I like chubby girls. Not that they’re the only kind of women I like, the only kind of girl who can get me excited, but I do have a preference for a zaftig partner. Okay, that’s not the same as being gay or lesbian but when steaming-with-testosterone-straight-guys happen to walk into my life, and sex comes up, I feel very much like I might as well be gay.

In some ways I wish I did feel shame or guilt about my sexual side, instead of that touch of isolation. Many of my friends with sexual suitcases seem to use it somehow to spice up their erotic antics.

If there’s a darkness to my erotic self, it’s that it didn’t come to life until very late in my life. I lost my virginity to a prostitute (in London of all places) when I was 23 but didn’t have my first true girlfriend until I was almost 28. Luckily I’ve made up for lost time since then. With my ex-wife, I dipped my toes into all kinds of very kinky pools, which gave me some details to add to my smut writing, and also reinforced that while I’ve tried my hand (and other body parts) at cross- dressing, bondage, piercing, polyamory, S/M, BD, D&S, and all kinds of other pervy acronyms, I’m still basically happy with earnest, passionate, heterosexual sex.

So that’s lust. “What about love?” you may ask. Well, here’s where it’s different for me. I love my mother; love my father’s memory; love my brother; I thought I loved my ex-wife; and I absolutely, positively, totally love Jill -- the lady I’ve waited all my life for. I’ve cried for love, ached for love, done stupid things for love – the usual orchestra of emotion that comes when you care deeply, passionately, about someone.

But then there’s the difference, the thing that’s made pretty much all of my life emotionally painful. See, I love a lot of people – friends, lovers, partners, even fellow writers (if you can believe that) -- but there’s someone I can’t seem to love; someone I’ve known for close to 50 years, someone I blame for everything bad that’s ever happened to me, someone I curse with keeping me from success and true happiness, someone I wish would just go away.

His name is Chris. He’s me.

The clinical term is chronic depression but what it means to me is while I have no problem telling a roomful of people, or a blog full of readers, that I like to fool around with BBWs, that I’ve worn frilly pink dresses, gone to sex parties, had my back cut with a scalpel, performed in porn films, and written a lot of very strange erotic stories; that I love my lady, Jill, with all my heart; that I adore my brother, Sam; cherish my mother; and that I’ll go way out of my way to help people who have been kind to me; I’ve never loved myself.

I have meds, I’ve gone to therapy, I’ve talked it over with doctors and even discussed it with religious folks (I’m an atheist) but so far nothing’s worked. No matter how many times I hear it from other people I still don’t feel anything but pain and sadness when I think about myself.

Maybe because there’s no darkness in my sexual side, there
has to be more than a little shade in love, especially in self-love.

But, as I said, so far nothing’s worked – the emphasis is on “so far.” Despite the pain, the leaden weight of low self-worth, I keep trying to get through the depression. I have wonderful people in my life who are there for me, and who hold my hand and whisper the magic words of “It’ll be okay.” I have a few bright lights that shine through the murk of being a struggling writer – which is (sarcasm) the perfect avocation for a depressive.

Some day, I hope, I’ll be able to put out a hand and have it taken by that person I feel is to blame for everything bad that’s ever happened to me, the person I'm convinced that no one can ever love, the one nobody respects, that one nobody wants. Some day, I hope, I’ll be able to say that I love Chris -- that I love myself.

Some day.

Wish me luck.

---

M.Christian is an acknowledged master of erotica with more than 300 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many, many other anthologies, magazines, and Web sites. He is the editor of 20 anthologies including the Best S/M Erotica series, The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, and others. He is the author of the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, Licks & Promises, and Filthy; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Brushes, and Painted Doll.

www.mchristian.com
www.meinekleinefabrik.blogspot.com
www.frequentlyfelt.blogspot.com

Lust is not enough

By Kim Dare.

I know an erotic romance writer should probably be jumping up and down shouting about how great lust is and how important it is and all that. I write about sex so lust should be right there at the top of my list of wonders of the world. Right?

Actually, no. I don't really think of lust on it's own as a particularly interesting thing to read or write about. Lust might be hot blooded, but I find it's also emotionally cold.

Maybe I should make myself clear here. Physical desire, sex, kink, whatever else, I'm all in favour of that. What I don't like the idea or the reality of is lust in isolation from everything else - lust without any emotion behind it.

Lust on it's own is all about getting what you want. It's about getting yourself off or getting your own way. Pure lust on it's own doesn't really allow for consideration for the other person's pleasure. It doesn't allow for anything other than physical gratification. To put it bluntly, lust on it's own is no different to a dog humping a post man's leg. The dogs happy - what does he care about the poor post man?

If a submissive goes into a scene thinking only of their own lust, it's not going to go well. And if a dominant goes into the scene with that attitude, then it's probably going to go to hell pretty quickly.

Submission in it's best, and I think in it's more satisfying, form is about giving not taking. It's about giving up control, giving pleasure without any thought to your own, giving your trust to another person, giving up privileges that are generally taken for granted. It's all about giving... well, at it's deepest level, I'd say submission is about giving yourself body and soul to another human being - not through fear or weakness but through free choice.

And the best dominants give us much as they take. They give control, security, safety, certainty, structure, discipline. They give praise as well as punishment. They give pleasure as well as pain. And, yes, I'd say that when it goes right - a dominant gives as much of themselves to a submissive as the submissive gives to them.

So, lust on it's own is not enough to keep me interested as a reader or a writer.

I'm not saying there has to be forever-love attached to every sex scene, but there has to be something more than just an inclination to get off. There has to be emotion attached to it. The person has to care about their lover, it has to be about both people's pleasure.

And I don't mean that in the simple form of everyone has to get at least one orgasm each. Sometimes the submissive in a sex scene doesn't have permission to come and I'm fine with that - but it should be because the dominant has made an informed decision not because he simply can't be bothered.

I write erotic romance and so the characters who have sex in my books are either in love or on their way to it. I like that. I like that they have an emotional as well as a physical investment in their sex lives. I like adding love to lust.

I think everyone a private little list of story types that tick their boxes. Experienced lover coupled with a virgin. Older women with younger men. Threesomes Werewolves... To pick some random examples. I have quite a long list of things like that.

One of the things I like is to take a couple who are already in a physical relationship - who are already in lust and who care about their lover at least a little bit. And I like to watch them fall in love.

That's partly because in spite of my kinks, I'm just a bit soppy like that. And it's partly because it doesn't matter if your dominant or submissive - if you kink that way you'll probably have a good instinct for where the control lies - and the introduction of an emotion no one can control is sure to set events spinning in all sorts of interesting directions.

You First is a book like that. The sex is good from the start. Maybe a bit too good for Luke! Lol.

The best way to explain what I mean is probably to just give you the blurb:

All Luke had to do was come after Justin. How difficult could that possibly be?

There was only one thing that stopped sex with Justin being completely perfect for Luke. The timing. That wasn’t so perfect. In fact, the timing really sucked – and not in the fun, fellatio related way.

Justin was five years younger than Luke and relatively inexperienced. Luke had enjoyed more lovers than he could count or remember—he knew he was good at sex. There was no good reason why Justin should outlast him every time they hooked up.

All Luke had to do was come second, set his mind at ease, and everything would be perfect between them. Hell, if he could do that, he might even consider the serious relationship idea Justin seemed so taken with.

How difficult could that possibly be?

So, is it just sexual pride that's got Luke worried, or could it be that he can sense that there is some deeper emotion lurking between them - one that could make everything so much more complicated than lust ever could?

What do you think? Can you tell if two men are destined to fall in love, even before they're aware of it themselves?

Here's an excerpt right from the start of the story. Lust isn't enough for me, but is it enough for Luke?

Love or Lust? Let me know what you think.

Luke Anderson was not going to come first.

He repeated the mantra over and over inside his head as he held his hands out to be bound. Justin Collins deftly buckled the soft leather around his wrists. Tugging on the chain between the cuffs, he positioned Luke on his hands and knees in the middle of the bed.

Justin attached the cuffs to a little hook screwed into the headboard for that precise purpose. He pulled at the chain, testing how securely it would hold Luke in place. The metal links clinked together. Luke took a deep breath. All his best sexual experiences occurred to that theme song. The sound went straight to his cock.

Luke was still not going to come first. He was Luke Anderson, newest and highest flying barrister in the best chambers in London. He could bloody well do anything he set his mind to.

Justin’s hand applied pressure—a steady pressure to the back of his neck. Luke lowered himself onto his elbows. The pressure didn’t ease. Luke turned his palms up and rested his head in his hands. Head down and arse up, Luke closed his eyes. He told himself for the thousandth time it must be possible.

Just because he hadn’t outlasted Justin yet, didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. He just needed to focus. He was twenty-three years old—five years older than his lover. He’d topped and bottomed more partners than he could count or remember in both genders. False modesty and jokes aside, Luke was well aware he knew tricks even most really expensive professionals hadn’t mastered.

He shifted his knees further apart on the mattress as Justin moved into position, kneeling on the bed behind him. He had to outlast Justin just once, just so he knew he could do it. Just for pride’s sake, because Luke knew his lack of self restraint was the only thing that kept sex with Justin from being perfect.

Justin’s fingers slipped briefly inside him, checking he was slick, relaxed and ready to play. Luke bit his lip and held back a moan as Justin crooked his fingers and found his prostate.

He could do this. Practicing a little bit of restraint wouldn’t kill him.

The rustle of the packet when Justin slipped on a condom was his only warning. Justin slid into him in one smooth movement. Luke gasped. For a perfect moment, Justin stilled inside him, stretching him and filling him completely. He began rocking his hips, building up the movement in tiny increments. Only when Luke whimpered his frustration did Justin begin to thrust into him in earnest.

In what felt like moments, lethal frustration was a growing possibility. Each stroke pressed against Luke’s prostate in a rhythm calculated to throw him over the edge at any moment.

He tried to remember he didn’t want to fall into pleasure—why he didn’t want to jump over the ledge with his arms spread wide in enthusiastic abandon. All he could think about was just how glorious it would feel when he came with Justin still buried balls deep inside him.

But still, in the back of his mind the mantra continued. Luke was not going to come first.

Desperately trying to concentrate on anything other than Justin’s erection pounding into him, Luke scrambled for any other details and senses to focus on.

The cotton sheet underneath him was pale blue. At this angle, with his nose barely an inch from the surface, Luke saw it was actually two shades of thread blended together. He couldn’t bring himself to care. His prostate sang inside him, coaxing him to join in with it in harmony, groaning his pleasure at every inch of delicious friction.

The scent of their arousal filled the room, mingling with Justin’s aftershave. Justin always smelt fantastic. Another perfect thing to add to all the other perfect things Luke had noticed over the months they’d been hooking up for sex. He always smelt like old sandalwood and well worn leather. Luke loved pressing close against Justin’s body and taking deep breaths of his scent when they danced together. He loved sliding his fingers up into Justin’s hair and pulling him close, to wrap Justin’s scent around him.

Luke threaded his fingers through his own hair. He pulled at the thick blond strands, hoping the pain might kill off some tiny bit of his arousal. The tug increased with each connection of Justin’s hips against his arse. It did nothing to help his increasingly frantic desire not to come.

Justin’s rhythm increased another notch. Cradling Luke’s pelvis in his strong grip, he held him steady and absorbed part of the impact from each thrust. Luke rocked back with every motion. As he focused on the pressure of each fingertip against his skin, Justin’s right hand left his hip.

He reached underneath Luke and started to jack him off with an expert touch. Luke pulled at the cuffs around his wrists. He couldn’t reach down and push Justin’s hand away. He had no choice but to accept the touch or say his safe word.

Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you Dare?