Dungeon Crawl!

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the Dungeon Crawl blog hop!

I'm bringing you an excerpt from my story 'The Guerilla's Plaything' in the anthology Snatched, out now from Storm Moon Press, Amazon and Amazon UK.

Our main character Thomas has been kidnapped while on holiday in the Amazon rainforest, but finds that his harsh treatment at the hands of the slightly bonkers Alvaro reminds him a little too vividly of his BDSM relationship with his partner John:

Alvaro told me to lie down on the groundsheet while he brandished a bundle of the jute rope. “Turn over,” he said. I didn’t question or argue. I rolled onto my front and let him pull my wrists to the small of my back where he bound them, securely but carefully so that nothing pressed on the vulnerable insides of my wrists to cut off my circulation. My throat tightened. I could feel every particle of the gritty sand that lay on the groundsheet against my cheek.

Alvaro bound my ankles in the same way, wrapping the rope carefully so it wasn’t overlapping. I realized I had semi-consciously pressed my toes into the ground to raise my lower legs and make it easier for him. Then he tied my wrists and ankles together, pulling my feet up. Not as tight as John would have done it when he wanted me in the strictest of hogties. Just enough to stop me straightening my legs or being able to struggle to my feet.

“You are so predictable,” Alvaro said, kneeling at my side and leaning toward my face. “A bit of rope, and you are panting. I wouldn’t be surprised if your cock starts to dribble a little bit.” He grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head off the ground, stretching my throat out and making my mouth fall open wider. With the other hand, he took hold of my jaw firmly and turned my face toward him. I struggled to swallow. My rigid cock was trapped beneath me, throbbing against the open zipper. Alvaro leaned down, opened his mouth and pressed his lips to mine, flicking his tongue inside. His stubble rasped against the one-day growth on my chin. As he pulled away, I strained to reach his mouth again, but he kept his grasp tight around my jaw.

He whispered close to my face, “I let you into a secret. I am planning on escaping this camp myself tonight. Once a person has joined the Movement, they are never allowed to leave. But I have to get out. I will take you with me.”

This threw me. Was it another cruel trick? “Why would you do that?” I asked.

“Because I like you,” he said. “Your reaction to being kidnapped and bound has amused me greatly. It brings me great joy to see an attractive man who loves to be tied and teased. Your partner is a very lucky man. I want to make sure you get back to him in one piece.”

An InLinkz Link-up

Erotica meets thriller

Ok, ok, I'm here, don't panic. And yes, I'm going to tell you about my story The Guerilla's Plaything in the new collection, Snatched, from Storm Moon Press. 

Here's the blurb for the anthology, which is a collection of three m/m stories of an erotica-meets-thriller flavour (44,500 words total):

Any hunter will tell you part of the satisfaction is in the chase as well as the triumphant capture of their prey. In Snatched, the focus is on the eroticism of the power play between men and their male captors. Sometimes romance ensues, sometimes just a good amount of steamy sex, but in all cases, the effects of one character being in utter control of the man he has captured takes center stage. The appeal is in the erotic dominance and the way the captive would try to escape if he could, whether he truly wants to deep down or not.

And here's a little intro to my story:

Thomas is determined not to let the fights with his boyfriend, John, ruin his vacation in the tropical rain forests of Ecuador. But when he steps off the trail, he steps into danger as he is taken captive by guerrilla freedom fighters. Held against his will, he nonetheless finds himself developing an attraction to the man who both arouses and repels him. And as his captivity weighs on him, Thomas finds that being The Guerrilla's Plaything is not the worst fate he can envision...

Available now from Storm Moon Press, Amazon and Amazon UK.

Coming soon...

I may not be writing much at the moment, but because of the publishing time lag, I do still have things to shout about. Hurrah! Here's a sweet little cover for the forthcoming Storm Moon Press anthology, Snatched, a gay (male) collection of what you might call longer shorts. My story, The Guerilla's Plaything is, in fact, the longest story I've produced, at more than 13,000 words. I shall tell you more soon...

Shakespearotica: Meet Orlando

As promised, I'm back with an excerpt from my new story As We Like It, which is in Shakespearotica: Queering the Bard from Storm Moon Press.

In this scene, Celia and Ross are watching the wrestling when they first see Orlando. If you now the story of As You Like It, you'll know that there is indeed a wrestling scene shortly before Rosalind is banished from the dukedom. Like the original, my Celia and Ros(s)alind will meet Orlando again. The story is told from Celia's point of view.

We sneak beneath the stands to watch the fights from the shadows. The bouts are held outside the palace walls, one of the few places where village dweller and noble can be found together, although even here the nobles stick to their private boxes. The sand is warm, though it has been in the shade under the arena’s seats all day.

The fights are not a sport for ladies. My father is watching above us, but the noble wives will be sipping tea inside the palace. We have a very different view of the action than the men get from their boxes. We lie on our bellies, our eyes level with the bottom of the electrified steel cage that surrounds the fighters. A bout is just finishing. The loser is slumped against the wire, conscious, but too broken and dazed to pull his back away from the electric current. An attendant pushes him off it with his booted foot and hauls him away.

“I give you Charles, Duke Frederick’s undisputed champion.” The umpire lifts the victor’s hand high. “Three brothers he has overthrown already tonight. One, I hear, is unlikely to live to see another day. Who else will dare to meet his challenge?”

Silence.

I’m half afraid Ross will leap to his feet. But though he is stronger and taller than me, he is still slight-figured and only of average height at most for a man. He is a boy next to Charles. I think he likes to watch the wrestlers and dream of having a body like theirs, all hard, glistening muscle. Taking repeated blows and falls and getting back up for more. I try to understand his yearning for a different shell to house his spirit. But it’s hard enough to imagine how he must feel lying on his front with his ribs meeting the sand through a thin layer of flesh where once he had breasts.

A voice breaks the silence. “I will face this Charles.”

The umpire opens the gate to allow the new fighter into the cage, and we see him rise into view opposite us. He is removing his shirt as he climbs the steps into the ring. The crowd murmurs, sizing up his physique. He flings the garment into their midst and steps into full view. Charles is a monster beside him. The image is enhanced by his growling as he tries to frighten his opponent. He is twice the width of the newcomer, a foot taller, older, battle scarred.

“And what is your name, young man?” The umpire asks, emphasizing the “young”.

“Orlando, sir.” He is soft-spoken, yet his voice carries.

Orlando pulls off scuffed boots and drops them outside the gate, and then unbuckles coarse cotton trousers. I thought Ross’s clothes were scruffy, but Orlando’s are so torn and full of holes,  it is barely less modest when they are gone. His plain grey briefs are mean in comparison to Charles’s silver satin shorts, covered in sponsorship logos. Charles laughs and the crowd joins in. Orlando merely waits, unmoved by taunts.

“Best of three falls,” the umpire shouts. “You know the rules: there are no rules.” The crowd knows his lines by heart, but they roar, nonetheless. The umpire leaves the ring, barring and padlocking the gate behind him. His only real task is to count down each fall to see if a combatant can get up in time to fight on or lose the round.

Shakespearotica: Queering the Bard, edited by Salome Wilde, is available from Storm Moon Press, Amazon and Amazon UK.

News round-up

You wait weeks for something good to blog about, then everything comes along at once. It's like the 53C along Derby Road. 

News on the More Smut for Chocoholics front. We've extended our deadline to December 15th. That's so all the folks doing NaNoWriMo will still have time to submit. What better way to wind down from a month of epic writing than with a nice little, light-hearted bit of smut? All the details are at the Smutters website.

In other news, I have a new story out. 'Twenty-four Surprises' is my contribution to the ebook Winter Warmers from House of Erotica. Ten stories with a festive feel. The call asked us to think about the warm glow of a fire, mulled wine, the colour red etc. So obviously I wrote a spanking story. No brainer. It's the tale of a couple's first foray into spanking 'proper' and centres around the treats in the advent calendars they've made for each other. I'll be back to tell you more about that one soon.

Winter Warmers is out now at All Romance, Amazon, Amazon UK and other online retailersl

But I promise you some Shakespearotica titillation in my next post. I might introduce you to the wonderful Orlando. I think I have a crush on my own character. It's because he's a bit scruffy. Like Han Solo.  

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.