Out now! Shakespearotica

I've got a new story out in this fabulously wicked collection - Shakespearotica: Queering the Bard, edited by Salome Wilde and published by Storm Moon Press.

The blurb starts like this: 'Frolicking in gender play and sexual diversity, the nine authors collected in this volume offer a dazzling array of queer erotica and romance. Stories range from comic to tragic and from historical to fantastic, taking up textual hints overt and subtle as they engage with the power of lust and love.'

I absolutely love Shakespeare. I reckon if he was around today, he'd be making my kind of movies. So this call for submissions was irresistible. But I did have misgivings. I've written gay stories before, but I was worried I wouldn't be up to writing something gloriously queer. I didn't want to inadvertently write something insensitive, or worse, offensive, because of my own naivety. But thanks to the wonderful work of editor Salome Wilde, who does know what the hell she's talking about, I believe I have avoided any faux pas. 

Shakespeare's plays, particularly his comedies, are of course wonderfully suited to a bit of gender-bending. You've got many a boy playing the role of a girl who dresses up as a boy. I wrote a sci-fi take on As You Like It. Mostly so I could do the wrestling scene as a electrified-cage fight. My tale follows what starts off as a lesbian relationship between Celia and Rosalind at a point where Rosalind, or Ross, has started making the physical transition into a man. And then I throw the fluid sexuality of Orlando into the mix, a character I came to love. He helps Ross to accept himself as he is, and consequently to accept sexual pleasure from his body as it is at that point rather than seeing it as somehow incomplete. The power play and themes of dominance and submission are much more subtle in this story than in many of my more overtly kinky tales (that's a kind of reverse content warning!)

As the story developed, I was thinking of the desert planet Arrakis in Dune, and that 'wretched hive of scum and villainy' Mos Eisley in Star Wars, while Salome thought my Orlando reminiscent of Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and Torchwood. It was far from an easy story to write and I nearly gave up, but it's turned out to be one I'm particularly proud of. Oh, and it's hot, of course.

Shakespearotica: Queering the Bard is currently available from the Storm Moon Press website. I'll add more links as they go live. And I'll bring you an excerpt soon.