Summit Meetings

by Jean Roberta

Here are some definitions of “flirt,” according to the on-line Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

1) To behave amorously without serious intent, e.g. He flirts with every attractive woman he sees.
2) To come close to reaching or experiencing something, e.g. They were flirting with disaster.

Skimming through the stories in my “Documents” on my home computer, I noticed that clear examples of flirting are hard to find, possibly because I’m well aware of that last definition. Too much of what seems like harmless (i.e. non-sexual) flirting to one person can look like a serious invitation to another. When I was just old enough to date, my father warned me that girls can “get themselves” raped by “leading guys on,” which sounded to me like flirting.

I was tempted to avoid speaking to any man I hadn’t known for years, lest guys read too much into expressions like “How are you?”

The answer might well be, “Horny, as usual. And since you asked, you have to do something about it.”

As a long-term volunteer on the local sexual assault line, I’ve heard too many stories of conversations that quickly led to physical assault by an angry man who told a woman she was “asking for it.”

On the other hand, I’ve written many dialogue scenes that could be described as negotiation, which seems to me to be more serious than flirting, even if the conversation sounds deceptively casual. I actually wish more people would bargain honestly with each other for the kind of relationships they want, even though some personal negotiations could go on for days, like the kind union-management meetings in locked rooms from which spokespeople from both sides emerge looking haggard, and the media reports that “no agreement was reached.”

The following is from my shockingly heterosexual story, “The Trickle-Down Effect” (currently in an erotic anthology with a breast-feeding theme, The Milk Round, from Xcite Press in the UK).



Dee is on maternity leave from her job after having her first baby. She lives with Brian, the baby’s father, who wants to marry her. Despite what her mother taught her, she doesn’t think marriage should be every woman’s goal.

Without disturbing the baby, he managed to hold my chin so that he could kiss me.

“Honey,” he told me, “we need to talk about why you don’t want to get married.”

“We need something to eat,” I answered. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “But we’re also going to talk.” I envied the baby, who had no idea what was going on between her parents, as far as I knew. But then, I thought, even babies are probably more complicated than we think.

I pulled on a bathrobe, and we all went to the kitchen, where I busied myself making toast and scrambled eggs. Brian helped, finding every excuse to touch me. When I needed both hands free, he gently pulled the baby out of my arms.

“Mamas and papas are usually married to each other,” he pointed out.

“Marriages end in divorce,” I responded.

“Not all of them! Fuck, Dee. Anyway, relationships end too, but not ours.”

“Point for me,” I told him. “If a thing isn’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed.”

“Are you afraid of what could happen to us?” His voice sounded unbearably gentle.

I considered his question for a minute. “Yes, honey. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah, okay, I’m scared. I’ll admit it. I know you don’t want to be trapped in the house, and I’m afraid you’ll blame me for throwing a monkey wrench in your career. I’m afraid I’ll come home one day and you’ll be gone with Shannon, and I’ll have to fight you in court just to see either of you again. That would drive me crazy, Dee. I mean really.”

I saw his point, and I felt like holding him and kissing away his fear. I even wanted to sing him a lullaby to convince him that I wasn’t planning to leave him for the sake of one stupid job. Jobs can be replaced.

I offered him toast instead. “Brian, I’m not planning to leave you. I love you.” This was a word we rarely used, since we both agreed that there are better ways of expressing love. Expression,* as I knew, could take different forms. “I don’t think we should make it legal just because we have a child. I don’t want us to fall into a rut. I don’t want you to start taking me for granted.”
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*Earlier, Dee “expressed” her milk by squeezing it out and storing it while the baby was sleeping.
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Eventually, Dee agrees to marry Brian, which she likens to jumping off a cliff with him without knowing whether they will land in refreshing water or a pile of rocks. She warns him that if he doesn’t keep his promises, she will demand everything she can get in the divorce. He accepts her terms.

******

Negotiations in lesbian relationships often take a very different form, or at least they did when same-sex marriage wasn’t legally possible in any country. (Note that Gertrude Stein famously asked Alice B. Toklas to be her “wife” in a metaphorical sense in the early 20th century.) Closeted lesbians have traditionally referred to their Significant Others as “friends,” and the boundaries between actual friendships between women (which might be flirtatious and/or emotionally intimate), hookups, friendships-with-benefits, and the kind of Passionate Love Affairs that drive the plots of operas have always been slippery.



In my story, “Naming It” (in Best Lesbian Erotica 2015, edited by series editor Kathleen Warnock and guest-editor Laura Antoniou, from Cleis Press in the US), Tam is comforting her old friend Deirdre the morning after a messy scene in the local lesbian bar. Deirdre was planning to move in with her girlfriend, a notorious flirt named Paulie Diddle, then discovered Paulie getting too close to a new acquaintance in a cubicle in the women’s washroom.

Tears welled up in Deirdre’s eyes. “Jesus, Tam, do you think I’m a complete fool?”

This was clearly a time for diplomacy, but it was also a good time to seize the moment. Tam gathered Deirdre into her arms and rocked her. “Honey,” she said into the fine, wavy, honey-colored hair that grazed Deirdre’s shoulders. “Paulie’s the fool, not you. She’s the one who lost out.”

To Tam’s delight, Deirdre didn’t slither away, as she usually did. “Thank you,” she said, nestled against Tam’s collarbone. “For not saying you told me so. I know you thought I should go slow, and I didn’t. I wanted a home and a serious relationship, you know? We’re not kids any more.”

While Tam was still gathering her thoughts, Deirdre shifted her position so she could look her old friend in the eyes. “Did you call me honey?”

Tam saw her dark eyes and strong features reflected in the troubled grey pools of Deirdre’s. “I did, and I could call you other things too: sweet thing, baby, angel-face.”

Something rippled through Deirdre’s supple body. “Always joking, that’s you,” she said. “That’s why we could never really be an item, even though you’re my best friend. Sometimes I wish--.”

Deirdre’s phone rang for the sixth time that morning. She glanced at it, saw the name “Paula Diddle” once again, and made a visible effort to ignore the sound.

“Good girl,” said Tam. She tightened her embrace and kissed Deirdre on the lips before she could pull away.

“Ummph,” said Deirdre. Tam held her close and slipped the tip of her tongue between Deirdre’s lips.

Deirdre broke the kiss. “What the fuck, Tam?” she asked. Tam knew how Deirdre sounded when she was really angry, and this question had a different tone. She was curious, even intrigued.

“What do you think, baby?” responded Tam the seducer. “Let’s try it.”

“You’re my friend, Tam,” explained Deirdre as though explaining the incest taboo. “Who will I turn to if you let me down?”
------------------------------------------

In her current state of distress, Deirdre lets herself be seduced, but then tells Tam that this event was a fluke, a lapse from the status quo of their relationship. Deirdre says they should agree to stay apart for a month, but Tam negotiates this period down to one week. They agree to meet in a popular coffee shop for a summit meeting on a particular date.

Over cappuccinos, the friends discuss the terms of their new relationship, which Tam calls a “love that was meant to be.” Deirdre considers it a reckless experiment because if Tam is promoted to the role of Lover, Deirdre will have no emotional backup in the form of a best friend. Nonetheless, she admits that she has loved Tam for years, and she agrees to name the connection between them for what it is.

So now the negotiations in this post have probably gone on for too long, but they have led to hard-won agreements. I love it when that happens.
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WIP – Not! #amwriting #stuck #paranormalromance

By Lisabet Sarai

Can you still call a book a “work in progress” if you haven’t actually worked on it for nearly two years?

I was slightly shocked when I went back, just now, to look at the last edit date for my unfinished paranormal ménage romance The Werewolf and the Vampire. August 7^th, 2016! I’d been intending to publish it for Halloween in 2016, and again in 2017. That didn’t happen, obviously. I have a publication date reserved at Excessica in mid-October this year. Somehow I suspect I won’t make that deadline either.

I began the book full of enthusiasm, fresh from the (relative) success of my genre-busting BDSM romance The Gazillionaire and the Virgin. I thought I’d try taking another set of favorite romance tropes and twisting them almost beyond recognition. I haven’t read Twilight, though I’ve seen at least one of the films (on a trans-Pacific plane flight, out of boredom), but I know the basic outline. So instead of virginal, somewhat helpless Bella, I have snarky, street-smart Manhattanite Bianca, creator of the best-selling vampire fashion magazine in the country. As an alternative to a dark, ancient, mysterious vampire lover, Bianca has Jim — a blond, blue eyed Midwestern college guy turned by a teenaged vamp a few years ago at a frat party. Not that’s he’s without his seductive side, but he breaks almost all of what Garce likes to call “Stoker’s Rules”. Completing the triangle is shifter Zack Kane, a bushy-bearded loner who owns a pet store, whose scent turns Bella into something of an animal herself.

Of course Jim and Zack hate one another. I have plans for that. They’re already ogling each other’s cocks, even as they posture and snarl. Meanwhile, there are villains out to get Bianca, determined to use her for their own devious (and sexual) purposes...

I think you get the picture. I just reread a chapter. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, but I do think it has promise, if I could only move the book forward.

But I’m stuck, at 22,000 words, more or less, for a book that should be 50K minimum. I’ve been abandoned by inspiration. At the same time, I’ve been seduced by other ideas and writing projects. Since I stopped making progress on that WIP, I’ve published an average of one title a month. Not all the material is new. I’ve had books dropped by publishers that I had to re-edit and get back out on the street. At the same time, although I’ve sworn in the past that I’d never be able to write a series, I seem to have started two of them, Asian Adventures and Vegas Babes. The first is multicultural literary erotica. The second is deliciously over-the-top smut.

Maybe I’ve just gotten bored with romance as a genre, even romance that ostensibly breaks the rules.

Knowing me, I’ll probably go back to finish the book eventually. I like things neat and I hate wasting effort—or words already written. I’m not nearly as prolific as many of you. I can’t afford to just throw 22K of a decent story if I can whip it into some kind of shape and sell it it.

Right now, though, The Werewolf and the Vampire sits forlornly on my hard drive, mired in apathy, while I contemplate the next Asian Adventure (Hokkaido Holiday) and the next Vegas Babes smut-fest. And I’m embarrassed to admit that I hardly care.

Bright Spots: Books I Couldn't Put Down ( #amreading #romance )

by Annabeth Leong

I’ve been having a lot of misses in my reading lately, books I’ve really struggled to connect with. For some reason, I’ve been reluctant to put these books down recently, and so one book will take me weeks to get through.

In contrast, though, I’ll give you the shining exceptions to the rule, the books I raced through. These left me wanting more just like them.

Every Day
By David Levithan

I found out about this book because it’s a movie, and I loved the premise I saw in the trailer. A wakes up in a different body every day, and consequently has both an unusual amount of insight into the human condition and more than a fair share of loneliness. The story starts the day A falls in love with a girl named Rhiannon, and chronicles an amazing attempt to pursue that love despite the fact that one of the lovers never knows who they’ll wake up as the next morning.

The book feels deeply queer--A identifies as genderless, and to love A, Rhiannon must confront questions about what it is that she loves about a person. It is a struggle for her to always love A for who A is, to deal with the various bodies that appear as her lover.

For the most part, the book is so wise about different bodies, though I did feel that the chapter in which A wakes up very fat carried less of A’s usual compassion and insight and more of the poison of societal disgust--even as it makes efforts to deal with that poison. It’s become very striking to me that it’s possible in our culture to have compassion for nearly every other human condition, and yet any time fat comes up, the moral judgment seems to come right along with it.

I raced through this book. It’s written beautifully, and also I needed to know what would happen. I’d highly recommend it.

A Hope Divided
By Alyssa Cole

The second entry in Alyssa Cole’s Loyal League series is the story of the romance between a free black herbalist, Marlee, and a white Union spy, Ewan, during the Civil War. I loved the first book in the series, An Extraordinary Union, which was about a black female spy and a white male spy during the same period, and I ordered the second book the moment I finished the first.

So many things stand out. For one thing, Cole’s characters feel so unique. They have distinct quirks--Ewan turned to stoicism while growing up with child abuse, but his strange, clipped manners lead him to connect with Marlee intellectually in a way that she, used to having her scientific mind disrespected, really needs. These two feel so distinct from the characters in the first book, and I have to say that in many romance series, I feel that the characters are reskinned versions of each other from one book to the next.

Then there’s the setting. Cole’s research into the Civil War is deep and incisive. She looks well beyond the stereotypes about belles and brother against brother, bringing forward characters that are far too often neglected in these narratives. Reading A Hope Divided, I had a stunning realization that also embarrassed me a bit. Of course, not everyone in the South was for secession, and of course that would be for all sorts of different reasons (humanitarian, apathetic, patriotism, etc)--how had I never seen that before? The result is a much more satisfying view of the Civil War South, free of the gauzy nostalgia that so often poisons the time. Cole’s books grapple very seriously with racism, cruelty, and the cost of resistance, while also managing to uplift through a convincing portrayal of the power of love.

***

Really, I should quit struggling through the books that I’m getting stuck on and just go read everything these two authors have ever written...

The Frogs of Small Pond

by Jean Roberta

Meet the Frog family, originally from Small Pond. The oldest daughter, Felicia Frog-Toad, writes romance novellas, all set in her home town, and recipe books of local cuisine. Her watercolour paintings of local landmarks have been reproduced as postcards that are popular with tourists. Felicia is married to the Mayor, Samuel Taylor Toad. Everyone she knows considers her a great success.

Felicia's younger brother, Frank Frog, better-known as Freaky, wrote his first novel (a horror story based on a nightmare about a bird of prey) when he was in high school. His parents took him to a youth psychiatrist who encouraged him to stop writing and take up football as a healthy way to get rid of stress. Frank moved to a bigger city to go to university. Since then, he has written fifteen horror novels, ten of which were turned into blockbuster movies. He has fans in Small Pond, but his parents and some of his siblings still worry about him.

A younger sister, Flow Frog, also moved away right after graduating from high school. She writes erotic novels, for which she has won several awards. Other erotic writers admire her, and she gets respectful reviews. Luckily, she has a day job and a supportive partner. No one else in the Frog family ever mentions her, except to wonder why she continues to embarrass them.

Another sister, Frances Frog, is better-known by her by-line, Fact-Checker. She is an international journalist who has been imprisoned in several countries around the world. So far, her political connections have enabled her to get out. She has written five books about the decline of democracy, the global economy, and damage to the natural world. Her book about disappearing species, Are We Next? was on the non-fiction bestseller list for weeks. Her parents and several of her siblings wish she would find a nice guy, get married, and settle down.

The youngest Frog brother, Philip Frog, writes novels that capture the current zeitgeist. His latest mystery, about an apparent lone-wolf psychopath who shoots random strangers in a shopping mall, and is found to be the pawn of an international conspiracy, sold a zillion copies and is being turned into a movie. He lives in a mansion with his socialite wife, niece of the current head of government. Few of Philip's relatives have read his books, but most of them are proud of him. His parents think his wholesome upbringing in Small Pond helped build his character, which led to his success.

Each of these Frogs could be considered successful in a different way, but most of them are no longer on speaking terms with the rest.

As everyone else here has said, success is relative and subjective. And in some cases, you need to seek out a milieu in which your version of success won't get you locked up.

----------------

(Dis)Connection: Vignettes

by Annabeth Leong

"I want to lock you in the closet at my job and just keep you in there," he said as I fucked him.

It was our last time together, and we both knew it. The story doesn't need much detail to be clear. He wanted me in the way that makes a person willing to make grand romantic gestures. I wanted to return that feeling, but didn't. We fucked well, so we were doing that before I left for the airport.

This is the last time I'm going to ride this fantastic cock, I remember thinking. I tried to memorize every good place it touched inside me.

He kept talking, fantasizing out loud about what it would be like to prevent me from leaving him. I get off on that sort of fantasy sometimes, so everything began to feel amazing. We were in perfect accord, connected by a mutual vision of me, helpless, forced to live a life I couldn't make myself want on my own. I came hard.

Then I got up and the disconnection set in. For me, it was just a hot fantasy. It was a thing I could walk away from. For him, it was a sincerely felt wish.

***

I decided to make her my friend, and then I single-mindedly pursued her. "It's like romance," I told my male partner confidently, unperturbed, because at that time in my life I was in denial about the fact that the way I felt about certain women wasn't like romance—it was romance.

One night, I convinced her to come out with me. We walked to the playground in the dark and kicked off our shoes and climbed onto a structure made of metal rope. We clung to it beside each other, our bodies vibrating as the metal hummed in response to the breeze. I was so hungry to know every little thing she was willing to tell me about herself. I could feel myself taking her sentences in deep, pouring love all over them, and reflecting them back to her. We stayed out for hours before I finally drove her home.

Before she left town a few weeks later, she called me over to her apartment and gave me her shoe collection and a bottle of good vanilla. I bought books I thought she would like and mailed them to her new address. I sobbed inconsolably. I still wear her shoes, though they are just slightly too small for me and hurt my feet.

***

There is a sort of love that defeats the constant concern I feel for how others see me. The only thing that matters when I love that way is what that one loved person thinks. And so sometimes I feel safe from almost everything, exhilarated by the freedom.

He talked slowly and hated to be interrupted. I learned to accept five-minute pauses in conversation as he pondered. I didn't know how much of myself I normally hold back until I found myself loving him without reserve. He didn't like smoking, and one day I thought about how if I really loved him, the feeling ought to make me better. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and haven't smoked one since.

One day we were at dinner in the college cafeteria, and we were playing a silly game we had just dredged from the depths of our childhood memories. We made a pact not to break each other's gaze. The goal was to try to trick the other person into making a noise. With an absolutely straight face, he picked up his bowl of hot soup and slowly poured it straight into his lap, and I laughed harder than I ever had in my life.

When he told me eventually that we didn't share Christ in common and couldn't be friends anymore, I stared at him blankly, with a child's innocent lack of comprehension. The world could not be that wrong. It could not.

***

I didn't like her; I liked her best friend. Her best friend was a singer with a big voice who never fixed the pronouns when she sang covers of old blues songs. But this singer kept throwing me at her friend, telling me to ride with that other girl to the party, enticing me to go to that other girl's house, promising that she'd show up there eventually, leaving me waiting for hours.

But I would get bored sometimes and kiss the girl I didn't like. She asked me to pour candle wax on her back, then blow it cool. Ever accommodating, I said I would, and then I got curious and asked her to do it to me, too. One night, we did that together with a guy we knew from a local bar, stripped to our bras, burning each other and kissing and giggling. Later, we walked out into the night. I was so warm inside and outside that I barely felt the need to get dressed to go out to the street. The three of us held hands.

He showed up another day at the bar with roses for each of us, thinking we were great friends, or that we were together, and I ducked my head because I was there waiting for the singer, as usual.

***

I wooed him by writing a poem, but then he went away for the weekend and I fucked someone else, probably because at the time I didn't really know how to say no. So we broke up, and he wrote me a poem, and when I read it I felt shamed and humbled, because I had to admit that his poem was better.

***

When I miss her with the sharpest sting, I am thinking of the moment when we were saying goodbye after the first time we had lunch together. We were standing on the street next to her car, and all I wanted right then was to spend as much time with her as possible. I was afraid of humiliating myself, but I needed her to know, so I asked if we could do this again. Like, soon. Like, tomorrow.

That was stupid, I thought. I was supposed to play it cool—pull out my smartphone and schedule something three weeks in advance. But the truth was, I would have canceled just about anything for another chance to be near her. And I wasn't busy tomorrow.

Her face wide open, she nodded at me with the sort of enthusiasm that adults rarely allow. I knew from her expression that she was with me all the way. We felt exactly the same about the lunch we'd had together.

I'll always hold that moment close, that experience of wanting in profound accord with someone else. Of being told yes in a way that wasn't just about lunch but also meant yes you are perfection and yes I think I maybe love you.

"Yeah," she said. "Let's do it."

This Road Is Forked

by Giselle Renarde

You can start close to your life, but that’s a starting place.
The question is, what’s the journey?

SALMAN RUSHDIE

I spotted that quote on Twitter last night and it seem serendipitous. Lately, I've been thinking/fretting a lot about my writing career. (Have you noticed? I only blog about it every fortnight...)

All my life, I've always felt like I fit in. Even as the quirky queer genderfucked asshole I am, I've always been pretty comfortable anywhere I went. The schools I attended weren't clique-y. People were who they were and they liked what they liked and everyone was friendly. Peer-wise, I've led a pretty charmed life.

When I started my writing career 8+ years ago, I felt at home once again. Erotica authors were all so helpful. Coming from the business world, I expected everyone to care only about their own interests. That wasn't at all what I found. Furthermore, the erotica writers I met online were all... well, people like YOU: sex-positive, queer-friendly, kinky, open-minded, all that good stuff.

As many of you have noticed/commented on, our precious erotic fiction field has lately been conflated with/shoehorned into romance--a genre that doesn't much appeal to me even at its best and, at its worst, I find pretty problematic. Suddenly we erotica people have been tossed into a world that is not our own. Sure there's some cross-over between the two genres--erotica CAN end happily and nothing's stopping our characters from being in love--but erotica and romance are not the same thing.

I've often said that I came to erotica totally naively, and I'll repeat it again this week.  More and more, I'm starting to realize my writing career is a journey of discovery--a lot like life.  When I started writing, I was like a child: I wrote whatever pleased me and took gleeful pride in my work. I never thought about things like formulae or tropes. I never considered that readers might not want social commentary with their fiction. Never in a million years would it have occurred to me that readers would actively avoid a book because of a character's sexuality or gender identity or race.

I miss my naivety. I want it back. There are some things you can never unlearn.

And once you learn them, you have to make a choice: do I keep on truckin, writing the kind of fiction I love and believe in even if it's only read by five fervent fans, or do I whitewash my fiction and dull it down and create something that might sell a few more copies because it mimics what readers want... until they actually read it and realize this Giselle chick is MESSED UP and she obviously can't inhabit the mind of the average cisgender heterosexual female reader?

Phrased that way, the answer seems pretty obvious.

Guys, I feel like I'm in high school again--except it's a high school from American movies, where there are football guys and cheerleader girls and bullies and nerds and A-tables. My high school did not have those things. Honestly, I've never felt this way before. I'm a teenager for the first time in my life. Suddenly I'm at a crossroads and I have this really important decision to make: do I repress the real ME to fit in or do I say FUCK ALL Y'ALL and carve out the path I want to take?

Never mind. I think I just answered my own question.

To Market, to Market

The first time I remember trying to write for a particular market, I was living in England with my parents and younger sisters for a year. (Many topics ago, I wrote a post here about how I missed a chance to apply for a writing job for the London Daily Telegraph during that time. Sigh.)

I was 22, and hoping to start a writing career. After all, I had won a major student writing award in my last year of high school, so it seemed I wasn’t completely lacking in talent.

I read magazines, hoping to break into that market. Several of them were aimed at women, and they were full of articles on cooking, fashion, home decorating, plus some fiction about “love” (courtship, marriage and childraising). I thought I knew what was expected. I wrote a story to send to a particular journal. (I can’t remember the title of my story or of the magazine, and that’s probably just as well.)

My story was written in first-person, and it featured a doormat devoted wife who is willing to do anything to save her marriage. She discovers that her husband is cheating, so she decides to work really hard to win him back. She doesn’t want to lose her Man, no matter what. She loves him desperately! By the end of the story, there is no evidence that the husband has given up the other woman, but the narrator is hopeful.

I sent this piece off. Several weeks later, I got a personal reply. The editor thought that since I came from Canada, I might try sending my stories to magazines there. She also said that her readers might find the narrator’s attitude disturbing and offensive. Editor said she would consider taking another look at the story if I revised it.

I tried, but since the crisis in the marriage (the husband’s cheating) seemed essential to the plot, I left it in. I also thought the editor would not accept a heroine who slams the door and starts a new life as a divorcee, so I had her stay, after struggling with her feelings and her options. The story was rejected again. It has never been published.

Like the hapless wife in my story, I struggled with my feelings and my options. Should I keep trying to gain some acceptance from a publishing industry that seemed completely oblivious to me? Was I a fool or a masochist? On the other hand, if I decided never to send another story to another editor, would I be acting like a bratty child?

Back in Canada, I got a few poems published in feminist poetry magazines, and eventually got a few stories published in locally-published anthologies. These stories were based on my own experience, and they undoubtedly had more of an authentic vibe than my story about the wife who wants to stay married forever, no matter what. My own marriage lasted less than three years.

Eventually, I read some sexually-explicit stories. I had already discovered that, strangely enough, editors generally seemed to prefer my writing when it was at least loosely based on something I knew than on my understanding of what would “sell.” However, I thought that “erotica” had to have a high ratio of sex scenes to plot.

A certain editor (who was/is known for being blunt) wrote on one of my printed stories: “Enough sex, already.” I thought about this, and realized that after I had thrown the characters together once, and given them umpteen orgasms apiece, the intelligent reader could assume that a pattern had been set. There was no need to beat it to death.

Like others here, I find calls-for-submissions inspiring. Could I write a story about X or Y that includes explicit sex? I’ve been surprised at how often the call acts as fertilizer, and the seed of a story sends out some tentative shoots, usually when the deadline is staring me in the face. I’ve learned that even when the story is based on a theme proposed by an editor, it won’t work unless it comes from somewhere deeper inside me than a perception that submissive wives or alpha males or vampires or billionaires are selling well this year.

None of us can really ignore the zeitgeist, so I’m sure I am influenced by what I read. I rarely have time to read just for pleasure, but I am often asked to review erotica, and I like doing that, so I usually have a TBR pile to tackle in my spare time between stacks of student assignments to grade.

The presence of standard tropes and clichés in erotica and erotic romance makes the exceptions stand out, and those are the books that continue to haunt me after I’ve read the last page.

So I continue to try to find a place among exceptional writers of erotica, the ones who can transform the clichés and pour unexpected amounts of raw feeling – and even social commentary and philosophical depth -- into plots that can be filed in recognizable categories (“paranormal erotic romance,” “urban fantasy”).

As a student of literature, I’ve noticed that the most successful (or most studied) authors of the past were usually stranger in their time than they seem to later generations, because they started trends instead of following them. Quite a few of them had their submissions rejected over and over before they found visionary publishers who were willing to take the risk. Even those authors were not completely original. They must have been influenced by the culture they lived in because it was part of the air they breathed.

So I continue to try to develop stories that originate in memories or dreams into something that an editor might accept. I’ve often been lucky on the second try. I sometimes ask myself whether I have sold out, but then the question is: sold what? My first erotic stories were written in response to calls-for-submissions. It seems that the market and I have worked out a compromise.

Against Fate

by Jean Roberta

Ancient Greek tragedy has fascinated me since I was in elementary school, and I’ve often wondered if its basic premises are true for all times and places. The audience can see that the central characters are doomed, but they don’t see the writing on the wall (or hear the wailing chorus – strange, that) until it’s too late for them to undo whatever act of hubris set the plot in motion. The ultimate hubris (an almost untranslatable word meaning arrogance and self-trickery) is to think you can outwit the gods, or fate, or the Way Things Are. Yet this delusion keeps the characters going until they crash to the ground, get walled up in a cave, or get stabbed or strangled by an angry relative. (The Big Three tragedians--Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles—showed the world how dysfunctional a family could be. No matter how much dysfunction is attributed to “modern life,” these guys still cast a long shadow over modern literature.)

Believing that you’re going to wake up, day after day, in good health and with good things waiting for you, is hubris. But if you didn’t have it, you probably wouldn’t want to wake up at all. The hubris sets up a contrast with the tragic ending. Without that contrast, there would be no plot, and no point.

So if a hope of happiness, or an unjustified sense that one is entitled to be happy, is an essential element in any story, a Happy For Now ending seems reasonable to me. It's not the ending of a life, just the ending of an episode.

When I began writing stories about lesbian life, the Happy For Now ending seemed like the perfect compromise between grim realism and the unconvincing Happy Ever After ending of a traditional romance. A formula ending that promises happiness until death seems to me like a sign on the front door of the newlyweds’ house that says: “Don’t ask. You don’t really want to know what happened after the honeymoon.”

When I began dating women, of course I hoped this lifestyle would be better than the place I came from, where men could erupt into rage at any time for no logical reason, and where a fair deal was hard to find.

Like many other newcomers in sexually-defined communities, I was taken aback by the conflict, rivalry and dishonesty in it. In short, I found that people have human flaws however they define themselves. The raw truth seemed to be that: 1) everyone is essentially alone, and hooking up with another person, for a night or for 50 years, doesn’t change that, and 2) long-term proximity doesn’t necessarily enable two individuals to understand each other.

There are also specific disadvantages to living in the social margins. If you’re fishing for a date in a relatively small pond, you have fewer choices than you would in the ocean of the social mainstream. And if you’re a woman supporting a child alone, your date is not likely to have a better income than yours, or a great interest in co-parenting.

But I was not resigned to giving up hope.

While thinking about my next lesbian erotic story, I read about a sub-genre of erotic fiction (and a sexual sub-community) called “splosh.” It’s about the thrill of wallowing in messy substances, or pouring them on your sweetie. Splosh! Here’s a pie in the face. Splosh! Here’s a spray of cold water to wash it off you. Sploshing seemed like a perfect metaphor for the messiness of life.

In my story, “Ariadne’s Thread,” Ariadne is a young woman living in the modern world, but she is a doomed character from Greek tragedy. Instead of being accompanied by a chorus chanting “Woe!” she is rescued by two friends who are determined to change her luck, her outlook and her mood. I was determined to give Ariadne a “Happy For Now” ending, dammit.
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"Let me in, girlfriend."

The sound of Zoe's voice assaulted Ariadne's ears where she sat in the funk of her misery. Dirty dishes covered her tables and counters, pungent clothing littered her floor. Her curtains were closed, leaving the apartment in perpetual gloom. "Go away."

"Come on, baby. I know you're not feeling good, but there is life after a breakup, you know? We've all gone through it. You need company." Silence. "Ari, come on. I don't want to stand here talking to you through the door. Do you want all your neighbors to hear this?"

A dark, swollen eye appeared at the peephole, then the thin wooden door was yanked open. Ariadne Megalopolous blocked the entrance, taking up space out of proportion to her girlish, fine-boned, high-breasted body. The smell of her sweat and her contempt for the world confronted the brisk assertiveness of her friend Zoe, who stepped back before she could stop herself.

Ariadne sneered like a damned soul, her white face framed in greasy black hair. She held onto the doorframe, slouching in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans so old and dirty that they held the shape of her ass and thighs even when she wasn't in them. Her presence was so intense that Zoe felt it in her clit.

Ariadne filled the silence. "What are you, Zoe, human Prozac? If you think you know how I'm supposed to feel, then fuck you."

For an instant, Zoe heard her say, "Fuck me." What a pleasure that would be.

“Okay, you wanta be a good Samaritan, you can come in and wash my – Jesus.” Ariadne had stepped far enough into the hallway to see Carter lurking a few feet away from Zoe.

Suzanne Carter, who preferred to be known by her last name, was wiry and wily. As an employee of Child Protection Services, she took bewildered, mistreated children away from their violent or distraught parents after warning the adults of the legal consequences of their behavior. Carter dreamed of being a secret agent for the federal government.

Carter grabbed Ariadne by the arm before she could slam the door on her two friends.
Zoe tried to soothe her with words. “Ari! We’re concerned about you. We just want to—“

“Help me get her inside,” grunted Carter.

Zoe worked for the Department of Social Services, like Carter, but in a milder role. She specialized in job-readiness counseling.

Ariadne saw through the good-cop/bad-cop act. “Fuckin’ Christ!” She made no effort to control her volume. “You two dykes are a fuckin’ joke! What is this, a scene for World’s Worst Videos?” She wasted so much energy expressing herself verbally that Carter had no trouble forcing her back into her apartment. This didn’t prevent Carter from glaring at Zoe for awkwardly trailing behind and closing the door quietly instead of helping to restrain the prisoner.

Carter’s pale, spiky hair seemed to bristle more than usual. It was naturally blonde, and Carter tried to compensate for the baby-chick color by keeping it short and artificially stiff. Zoe suspected her of using starch.

“What the hell do you want?” Ariadne was still hostile, but quieter.

Carter loosened her grip, and slid a hand up to Ariadne’s chin. “Why didn’t you answer your phone for a week, Ari? Don’t you think anyone cares what happens to you?”

Ariadne backed away. She seemed to be wondering whether anyone in the world could actually worry about her. “You didn’t have to spaz out. You knew Denny dumped me so she could be with whatsername. Everyone knows everything in this community. There’s no flippin mystery here, okay? That’s why the fuck I didn’t answer my phone.”

Ariadne still gave off a dull-red glow, but Zoe could feel her exhaustion. Zoe offered traditional advice. “You can forget her, Ari. Denny didn’t deserve you. You’ll find someone better.”

Ariadne fended off a hug by pushing Zoe’s hands away. She looked like a cornered animal. “You can go to hell, both of you.”

“Hey!” Carter objected.

Ariadne wasn’t finished. “Damn social workers get all your lines out of a book. I’m not gonna find someone better. You know that damn well.”

Something in the air chilled Zoe to the bone. It was the presence of death, lured in by the despair that lingered in the smell of stale food and body odor.

Zoe had watched the luck drain out of Ariadne’s life, one event at a time, for the past seven years. She had had to drop out of university due to lack of funds and lack of credit. She had found a good job at an advertising agency, but a volatile male boss had first groped her and then ridiculed her ideas until she quit. Her mother had died and her father had moved his girlfriend into the house a few days after the funeral.

A series of alcoholic girlfriends had wrecked or taken all of Ariadne’s most treasured belongings, including her car, her good-luck stone and her grandmother’s earrings. She had given notice on her apartment after accepting Denny’s invitation to move in with her, then Denny had changed her mind after a one-night bar hookup with someone else.

Like her namesake in Greek mythology, Ariadne seemed to be lost in a maze with a monster at its center, and no one had given her a thread to guide her back to the open air.

“Just leave me alone,” she said. The dark eyes in her puffy face said something else.

“We can’t do that,” Carter told her, unconsciously imitating the coolly-dangerous voice of a cop in a crime show on prime-time. “A stupid little thing like you can’t be trusted alone.” Carter seized her by both arms from behind as though she were planning to handcuff her. Ariadne’s T-shirt was pulled against her small, perky breasts and her hips bucked provokingly.

Zoe was appalled at Carter and herself.

Carter looked at her like a conspirator. She kept speaking to Ariadne. “Besides, if you can’t find anyone better than Denny, you’d be lucky if we do you a favor. Everyone knows everything in our community, honey, and we’ve heard all about you. We know what a greedy little pig you are, and you have nothing to lose.”

Ariadne looked at Zoe in disbelief. “Oh please. You’re not going to try cheering me up by fucking me.” It was more of a question than a statement.

The heat of evil joy spread through Zoe. “She said please,” she told Carter. “We both heard her.”
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And thus begins a three-way orgy in which Zoe and Carter make Ariadne dirtier in every sense so they will then have a reason to wash her clean. Ariadne reaches catharsis (another ancient Greek concept) and Zoe, the witness, is moved. Here is the conclusion:
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Carter looked more shaken than Zoe had ever seen her. The two conspirators formed a pungent sandwich with Ariadne as the filling, and they kept her balanced between them.

The three women swayed together, slipping against each other. Zoe wondered if they had fucked open a new crack in the universe, a way out of no way. She felt as if they had all fought a monster, and it made her love the other two like crazy.

Zoe knew there was plenty of time for them to clean up the mess and continue their game, or vice versa. She could hardly wait to offer her own ecstasy, an explosion out of her skin, to whatever gods might be watching.
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This story is in my e-collection, Each Has a Point, by publisher Love Your Divine/Alterotica, which will be closing soon because the owner has health problems that no one should have to cope with. But there it is: life (and more specifically, the U.S. health care system) often sucks.

I know that happiness and success are both against the odds. But sometimes I manage to give my characters a little satisfaction as a consolation prize. Sometimes defying the gods just feels too good to resist.

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The Fantasy of Romance

by Giselle Renarde

Here's something you should never admit when you work in this industry: I'm not a romantic.

But that's my truth.  I soured on romance early in life because I never felt represented in Disney-esque storylines.  I'm queer and I'm weird.  I was never a princess and I never wanted a prince.  Romance as a genre did not speak to me.

Apart from being queer and not identifying with heteromance (which struck me as prescriptive and ridiculous in terms of what's considered acceptable and appropriate behaviour in establishing a relationship), I also found the idea of the happy-ever-after a little... well, unrealistic.  Fantastic, in other words.

Romance is a fantasy.

A couple months ago, there was a hashtag on Twitter that had something to do with romance readers' guilty confessions.  I noticed a lot of readers tweeting that they didn't care how a story resolved itself so long as the lovers lived happily ever after.  They didn't care if the romance was realistic.  They just wanted to feel warm and fuzzy at the end.

Of course, not everybody following the conversation agreed.  Some readers want the plot to resonate, or at least to... you know, make sense.  For myself, I'd rather watch everything fall apart.  That's reality.  I'd rather see real, deep troubles between people--troubles that aren't easily or ever fixed.

But the fantasy of romance must have wriggled its way into my writing brain. I happened to be writing a fluffy bit of erotica, at the time, called "Seducing the Sexy Celebrity Chef."  I intended it as a hardcore romp--a woman's sexual fantasy of getting it on with a domineering TV chef.

But as I wrote my Chef story, its intention began to morph.  I was trying to write a story that was all about sex, and suddenly it was infusing itself with romance.  Suddenly, my famous chef wanted even more than my star-struck woman.

I tried editing out all that fantastic romance, even as I wrote it.  For some reason, I couldn't stop myself.  Romance overpowered me.  When I handed the manuscript over to my girlfriend, who is also my contract editor, I asked her, "Is this too far from reality?"  I really hoped she'd tell me it was.  I hoped she'd advise me to change the story and remove some of that gushy, far-from-life romance.

But she didn't.  She liked it.

What is it that's so satisfying about the fantasy of romance?  Even as I reread that story and told myself, "This would never happen--not in a million years!" I couldn't change it.  Maybe even the most jaded among us maintain the fantasy of an easy love, an easy romance, an easy life.

That's not reality.  Maybe that's why we (yes, even the cynics and the pessimists) need a fictional shot of happy every once in a while.

Hugs,
Giselle

popularity contest

Well, a lot of the ground has already been covered, but here’s my take on the topic of the week. There are a lot of people who like erotic romance. That’s a two word deal, or as on of my publishers calls it (this is a trademarked term, folks…) romantica. Without the romance, it’s just erotica, or literature with the sole purpose of sexual titillation. That’s not a bad thing, not in my opinion, but it is different. Just like romance without the erotic component is a different type of book. There are markets for each of the three. Magazines seem to be the primary outlet for erotica, and mainstream romance novels continue to make up a huge segment of the fiction market, but there has only recently been an open acknowledgement of the combination—erotic romance—where emotion and sex form equally important components of the story.

In the e-book market, particularly, erotic romance has found a foothold. I think there are a number of reasons for this. Anonymity of purchase is certainly one. There’s no bookseller looking down his or her pointy nose and shaking a finger. No PTA president seeing you walk out the door with “smut.” Speed of purchase is another. There’s also the fact that on-line stores can simply stock more variety of titles, so there’s sure to be something to everyone’s taste.

Yes, in the electronic market, erotic romance far outsells sensual romance. But I don’t think that’s universally true. In paperback, I think you’ll find that erotic romance, while still a growing segment of the market, is still the minority. Face it—the system was already there for mainstream romance, so the buyers haven’t felt any real pressure (other than cost) to switch. But since e-books really pioneered the erotic romance subgenre, that’s where the sales tend to soar.

Like my colleagues here, I write both, as Regina put it, hot and hotter. When I started, it was what I’d consider steamy mainstream. Dragon in the System, with Cerridwen Press is an example of that. But when the time came for the sequel, Djinni and the Geek, my editor was honest. If I heated it up just a bit more, so it could be released as an Ellora's Cave title, I’d sell many, many more copies. So I did, and yes, I did. Lots more copies. So rather than write more at the lower heat level, yes, I’ve chosen to go hotter. Am I trading my soul for money? One commenter, an author I greatly respect, asked us to consider why we write as well as what we write, and to consider how our choices reflect on others who have chosen other paths.

So I did. And you know what? I don’t think my choices reflect on any other authors in any way at all. I choose to write, and read, what I enjoy. I encourage everyone to do the same. There is room in the world for a wide variety of tastes, and I applaud that. But for me? What I enjoy, includes a pretty wide range. Right now, I’m working at pretty much the far end of it, as opposed to the middle, where I started. Do I write for myself? I guess. I’d write whether anyone was buying it or not. But yes, I’m attempting to someday make a living at this, so I will continue to attempt to write to the market. I do not, however, write anything that morally offends me, or that I am ashamed to put my name on. Since I use my real name, I think that’s critical to note.

And when asked if I try out everything I write about (sexually speaking), I have this to reply. “When my husband grows wings and a tail, we’ll talk about it.”

the numbers game

Ménage, threesomes, foursomes, group sex—polygamy. Different words with similar meanings. Men have admitted for years that having two or more women at once is one of their ultimate fantasies. I read a LOT of it during my college years in Robert Heinlein’s later works, including Time Enough for Love, Cat Who Walked through Walls, and To Sail beyond the Sunset. Whole cultures and religions have been built around polygyny (one man, many women) after all. And you know sometimes those sultans, or sheiks, or whatever, weren’t only doing one concubine at a time.

So now we’re starting to see an open interest in polyandry—one woman, multiple men. Is this new? Not really. I remember being faintly horrified by Paint your Wagon, as a kid. It started on Broadway in 1951. The movie with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin came out in 1969—an apt year, no?

Face it folks, in the last 50 years, women have come a long way in understanding and expressing their own sexuality. The fantasy of having multiple partners do things to your body that require more than one mouth, two hands, and one set of sex organs is pretty powerful, no matter which washroom you use.

We’ve seen this week that ménage á trois is properly defined as a situation where the multiple partners are all committed and emotionally attached to one another in a living arrangement. In other words—polygamy. Does polygamy, or true ménage work in real life? I’d have to say that like any lifestyle choice it works for some and not others. There are certainly going to be issues. First of all there are social ramifications. No hospital in the world is going to acknowledge two fathers in the birthing room (okay, maybe a few, but not most). Same for schools. Legal issues like health coverage and mortgages can get awkward. It may work, but I’m bloody damn certain it isn’t easy. Also I’d imagine it’s very hard to maintain a relationship where all three bonds remain equal, and where two of the partnership don’t eventually edge the third out. I know I’m too insecure to share my partner, not even with another man. I need to know that in our relationship, he’s all about me, just as I’m all about him.

But the fantasy—yeah, that’s powerful. Just like vampire romance is powerful because those characters truly get their happy-ever-after. And one thing my dear cohorts on this blog have forgotten to mention, is that right now, ménage romances sell. Sometimes folks, the bottom line is, really, the bottom line. I looked at sales figures one month when all the bills were overdue and weighed my options. McDonalds or ménage? Guess what won?

Now with that said, once I told myself to do it, I had a blast. It’s silly and fun and again, it’s fantasy. The characters are two elves (m/f) and a demon (the other m). And I enjoyed every minute of writing their story. (Three for All, Ellora’s Cave, October 2008) It is an m-m-f story, which means, I’m told, that the guys get into each other as well as the girl. I find this a lot more believable on an emotional level. If three people are rolling around in the bed, eventually, penis is going to rub against penis. It’s a pretty thin membrane between the two holes, folks. It just doesn’t work for me, logically, if the guys aren’t at least a little turned on by each other. The exceptions to this I’ve seen in fantasy, include Anny’s Honeysuckle, where the two brothers are sort of two halves of the same being. I can suspend disbelief if you give me a reason. I just have less problems accepting it the other way. As Regina said, sometimes paranormal elements make the whole thing work better. In my elf and demon cultures, there’s no prejudice against same gender attraction or groups.

So, yes, I wrote a story because the market is there. Does that make me a hack? If so, that’s fine with me. I think the story will stand on its own merit. It's a true romance, just with three protagonists. I enjoyed writing it, and I like the characters as well as their HEA. Does that make me depraved? Snort. I have the most conservative lifestyle of anyone I know. I’ve been happily married for almost 23 years to the only man I’ve ever been with. No real desire to broaden my personal experience. But in my stories? Ah there, the sky is the limit.

Seriously…sex in flight…gotta write that sometime. Got a gargoyle/half dragon story coming up…could work there…