Dungeon Crawl: More Smut for Chocoholics

Howdy, Dungeon Crawlers and welcome to my part of this week's offerings, brought to you by RTK Dungeon Crawl.. I'm bringing you an excerpt from the newly released More Smut for Chocoholics, published by House of Erotica. As co-editor with Kev 'Mitnik' Blisse, I claimed the privilege of writing two stories for the collection. This one is a delightful bit of femdom in which a naive young Spaniard stumbles upon a camp of Aztecs who have left their city in order to escape the strict regulations that ban women from consuming the revered cacao. 

September 8th, 1521

I have burnt the pages of this diary that recounted my earlier explorations in the Aztec territory. They are no longer of any consequence. Botany, geology, zoology... what attraction can these subjects hold to me, now that I have known Ixchel? I came here to test my mettle as an explorer, knowing that I would endure arduous treks, hunger, thirst, and great physical challenges. The prospect excited me; I knew that from my hardships would come great advancements in scientific knowledge. Little did I know the real danger, and ecstasy, I would face.

I stumbled right into the midst of their encampment before I realised. I was so thirsty, and the waterfall tumbled over the cliff face behind their clearing. It was all I focused on as I left the trees. But when Ixchel—for I know now the name of my captor, my enchantress—stepped in front of me, I turned and saw that I was surrounded by some dozen or so of the native people of this area.

I tried to utter some words of peace, thinking perhaps that a placatory tone would convince them I was no threat. But after the treachery and violence I had witnessed in their capital city, Tenochtitlan, I could understand their wariness of a Spaniard. How were they to know that I had joined the expedition out of a desire for knowledge and understanding rather than conquest?

Ixchel raised her arm towards me and placed one finger on my lips to silence me, then spoke a few words of command to her companions. Two men stepped to my sides; they removed my backpack and took my arms. The pressure they applied was gentle but firm and I allowed them to lead me, though it meant stumbling backwards over the stony ground, until I felt at my back the trunk of a tree. Another woman now came before me, carrying a length of twisted vine. She took it behind me and wound it about my wrists until I was bound inescapably in place.

You may wonder why I did not try to run, or to fight them off before I became helpless. And my rational explanation would be to call to mind my extreme exhaustion, the hunger and thirst I had endured in the three days since becoming separated from my companions and lost in this great valley. Perhaps I was indeed delirious. But the truth is that already Ixchel’s dark eyes had bewitched me. I felt as if I had no choice but to comply with her wishes. And it gave me the greatest of joy to surrender myself to her, a joy that I felt flare inside me like the heat of one of the Aztecs’ spiced dishes as it passes down one’s throat.

You can buy More Smut for Chocoholics at Amazon, Amazon UK and All Romance.

Keep crawling for more delicious excerpts and kinky musings...

An InLinkz Link-up

Dungeon Crawl - Penelope's Suitors

Publishers like to categorise. Perhaps readers like it too. I mean, 'BDSM' has to be your first requirement. After that, you know where you are if you opt for a bit of femdom or male dom, if you're going for f/m, f/f or m/m. Or maybe you don't because you're like me and you're searching for some indefinable something, some essence of kink that defies categories. I'm awkward like that. Anyway, welcome to this week's Dungeon Crawl, brought to you by Romancing the Kink, and to an excerpt from the third and final story in my little collection, Miranda's Tempest. 

It imagines what life is like for Penelope in the long years of her husband Odysseus' absence, while 108 suitors lord it up in her household, each trying to persuade her that her husband is dead and she should marry him instead. Yes, we're talking Homer. Ancient Greece. And the statue of a goddess that comes to life, and some lesbian menage, and some voyeurism, and some feminisation, and some prostate milking, and some loom bondage. All those things. Don't forget to check out the other authors in this week's crawl, but without further ado, here's a little something to tease:

‘Though I love my maids, I have also missed my husband and welcome his safe return home. He is the only man I will ever share my bed with. For you, I can offer something you may think little better than slavery, but it will allow you to serve me in a far more personal manner than a kitchen boy.’ I am almost ashamed of the way I toyed with this earnest youth as he knelt at my feet. But I think he enjoyed it. His mouth was open and his breath audible. ‘Should you pass the test, I would have you become one of my personal servants. Join my maids in keeping me from loneliness when my husband is absent, which he no doubt will be again. You will have to hide your masculinity: shave your body, wear women’s garments and control your cock. In return, you will get to serve me as my maids do and bring me pleasure. Do you accept?’

‘Yes my lady. Willingly.’

‘Then it is time to administer the test. The other suitors were told that if they passed once they would undergo this treatment each night until my weaving was finished. As you can see, my cloth is barely begun, but I tire of it already. And there is no longer a need for this trickery. I will not make it a condition for you. But I will repeat the test when it amuses me to. Now remove your robe and stand facing my loom.’

Leontes rose and did as he was bidden, turning his lean back to me and my companions. The loom’s large, upright frame was fixed to the wall with batons to allow room for the bar of the heddle to move, separating the warp threads for me to weave between them. The thicker yarn I had spun to secure each suitor now hung permanently from the frame. I told Leontes to raise his arms and fastened his wrists wide apart above his head. I had him open his legs and stooped to tie his ankles to the lower corners. His torso tautened and his cock rose, parting the warp threads. The horizontal heddle pressed into his upper thighs, raising his rear. He was so much calmer than the others, though his breathing had quickened. His response seemed one of arousal rather than the consternation the others had shown.

‘Are you ready?’ I asked.

‘Yes, my lady,’ he whispered, turning glossy eyes towards me over his shoulder.

I dipped my hand into a bowl of oil and rubbed it between my fingers and over my knuckles. I pressed my fingertips to the top of Leontes’ crack and allowed him a moment to become accustomed to my touch.

An InLinkz Link-up

Lust in Time reviewed

There's a fab five-star review of Lust in Time, edited by Rob Rosen, over at Hearts on Fire Reviews.

Reviewer Aggie says there's "a little bit of something for anyone who enjoys historical gay fiction". 

She picks out the stories she believes were the "standouts of the anthology and are what makes Lust In Time highly recommended and extremely enjoyable". And this is what she says about 27 AD, by yours truly:

I loved this because it was kinky, borderline non-consensual, and very erotic! Lucius, a Roman soldier, is basically f**ked  when he is captured by Finian, the barbarian enemy. And oh, what is poor Lucius going to do? The dude has a submissive streak in him a mile wide. He gives himself over to his captor with almost extreme glee and anticipation, and I loved it! Nothing like hearing a guy say that he “moaned like a wanton whore” as he is being ”pillaged” and “plundered” by his enemy. 

Gosh, did I write that story? Sounds pretty hot. Lucius falls head over heels for his captor and they get it on in sweet romantic style, which in Tilly World involves ropes and swords and mud and a strong, fighting man who loves being brought to his knees. 

I recently received my author copy of the book (thanks Rob!) and had to take a moment to rub its glossy cover against my cheek (no, not that cheek). I'm a convert to ebooks but a real, live book is still a little piece of magic.

Get your hands on Lust in Time at MLR Press, Amazon.com or Amazon UK.

Inspiration: Miranda's Tempest

'Widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language.' That's Shakespeare, obviously, from his Wikipedia entry. I wonder what he'd make of the internet. And I wonder what he'd make of all the reinterpretations of his work today, the movie versions, the feminist versions, the queer versions, the postcolonial versions, the erotic versions... I tend to think that he'd be a Tarantino or a Scorsese if he were around today.

When it comes to gender identities and sexual politics, he did a fair bit of subversion of the norms himself. Lots of cross dressing, lots of cheeky banter, lots of people running off to places where the normal rules of society don't apply, like the forest of Arden in As You Like It.

In my retelling of The Tempest, the first of three short stories in my new ebook, out now from House of Erotica, Miranda has secretly learned her father, Prospero's, magic from his books. And Caliban has taught her the more 'feminine' earth magic of his mother, the witch Sycorax. Uniting the two, she intends to escape the island with Caliban, the forbidden lover to whom she loves to submit. Things get a little more interesting when they find a bedraggled Ferdinand in their path, who is immediately dazzled by Miranda's beauty.

It was Ferdinand who really inspired the story, with passages like this: 
       My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.
       My father's loss, the weakness which I feel, 
       The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats,
       To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,
       Might I but through my prison once a day
       Behold this maid.

He seems such a sweetie, and naturally submissive apparently. So I took the opportunity afforded by today's somewhat more liberal attitudes to literature to have him render some services to both Caliban and Miranda.

If you're fond of Shakespeare, my story As You Like It, in the Xcite anthologies Past Pleasures and Cherry Ripe, sees the bard submit to the crop of a woman who wants to act in his plays. 

And if you like subverting the bard yourself, there's currently a call for submissions from Storm Moon Press for an anthology called Shakespearotica: Queering the Bard, deadline 1st April 2013.

You can get your hands on Miranda's Tempest: Three Classic Tales with a Kinky Twist at amazon.co.uk or amazon.com, at Barnes & Noble for your Nook, or at kobo, amongst other places.

Thoughts: A bit of rough

I read something that got me thinking about romantic heroes the other day. It's probably a good job I can't remember where I read it. But it suggested that the chiselled, strong, successful Alpha male is universally loved by female readers of erotic fiction. It definitely used the word 'universally', which first made me think, 'What about lesbians?' and secondly made me think, 'What about me?' Because I like my romantic heroes to be quirky, flawed, rough around the edges, sometimes unsure of themselves like the rest of us. I wondered whether I am truly perverse in the widest sense of the term. I don't equate money or status with success, for example. I find perfection dull. I find glistening, muscular, hairless torsos objects of bizarre fascination rather than desire.

And there's a major subgenre of romantic fiction dedicated to the admiration of 'a bit of rough'. I was thinking about this as I re-read DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover a while back. First published in Italy in 1928, it wasn't openly available in the UK until 1960 because of its graphic descriptions of sex and use of words like 'cunt'. But its dangerous subversion of class boundaries was probably equally to blame. Compared with the wonderful erotica we have around now, it's pretty tame stuff. But what it does share with a big chunk of today's sex fiction is the fascination of a well-bred woman fucking a bit of rough. It's just that in contemporary terms it's a professional career woman perhaps seeking excitement with the pool boy, a squaddie or the scruffily gorgeous rogue from the travelling fair.

And no, this whole post wasn't entirely an excuse for a picture of Sean Bean, seen here playing Mellors in the 1993 BBC adaptation. No, it really wasn't.

Research: Spinning a Yarn

In the course of planning a short story about Penelope, the wife of Odysseus in the ancient Greek epic, I've found myself needing to research spinning and weaving to know how to use words such as spindle, whorl and distaff, and to explore the erotic potential of the upright loom. It happens to be a large, upright wooden frame from which the warp threads are suspended with weights, allowing the weaver to pass the weft threads through to make the cloth. All useful stuff to a warped mind. Especially when Penelope has 12 loyal maids and 108 boisterous suitors who all want to convince her that her husband is dead and she should marry one of them instead. Endless possibilities. 

Anyway, I found the following passage at the Fiberville USA website and found it amusing enough to want to share (yes, I really do find yarn sexy):

 WARNING!!! Spinning reduces stress and promotes well being. It can also be habit forming and lead to obsessive behaviors such as, but not restricted to: caressing and hoarding all fibers; dying them with food colors and things from your garden or whatever you have laying about; spinning the fluffy bits of the weeds in your fields, the cotton wad in your vitamin bottles and even the lint from your dryer! Proceed with extreme caution!

In Homer's tale, Penelope spends twenty years waiting for her husband. He's away fighting at Troy for ten and takes another ten to make his way home to Ithaca, whilst falling prey to various perils including being forced into being the lover of the witch-goddess Circe and the nymph Calypso. Doesn't sound so bad. I think it's time Penelope had some fun.

Incidentally, if anyone knows how to avoid getting the white background on text pasted against this blog template, do tell!

Thoughts: The long and the short of it.

I’ve been polishing off a fair few short stories since I had my first couple of acceptances from Xcite Books a few months ago. They’re fun to write. I was going to say quick, but with all the rereading and rewriting I do they actually take quite a while. What they provide is the chance to play around, try different perspectives, quirky scenarios. I’m never short (forgive the pun) of ideas for shorts. And finishing them brings fairly quick gratification.

But I also have a longer work in progress, begun a couple of years ago and lying stagnant in my ‘stuff to work on’ file. I’m starting to think I should set aside a regular slot or two in my week for making progress on this. In terms of pure wordage, I have 15,000. I’m aiming for about 80,000. This is going to take a lot more stamina than a few short stories.

I had started to think at the back of my mind that the whole thing was a bit silly. I guess many writers will empathise with this. You leave a work for a while and your inner critic starts to tell you it’s terrible. Then you reread it with the benefit of a bit of distance and perspective and think, wow, this is hot stuff. 

So now I have to research life on board an eighteenth-century ship. How many people would it take to crew various sizes of vessel? What is the correct terminology for all those masts, sails, bits of rope? How long would journeys to various exotic destinations take from Europe? What would the crew eat and drink? It’s surprising how many facts I seem to know already from some unknown source, but I don’t think I can blag the rest by just reading Hornblower and watching Johnny Depp. That's Ioan Gruffudd above as Hornblower in the telly series, by the way.

Review: Past Pleasures anthology

I’ve been working my way through the stories that co-exist with mine in this Xcite Books anthology and thought I’d share my thoughts on a few favourites. It’s not all ripped bodices and heaving bosoms; the stories range from ancient pagan tribes right up to twentieth-century New York.

In Pretty Tied Up by Elizabeth Coldwell a woman escapes small-town life by becoming a glamour model in 1950s America. One day, a famous female photographer suggests Lucille tries a bondage shoot. Normally, I’m apprehensive about any story that involves someone being persuaded to try any BDSM-related activity for the first time and suddenly realising they enjoy it when they had never considered it before. But this story makes it clear that Lucille has been excited by the thought and has just never had the opportunity. Her novice status allows the bondage to be described in sensual detail. I like the unexpected titbits too – like photographer Dusty ‘cursing like a sailor’. Lucille’s back story is woven into the narrative, bringing her character and motives to life. And there’s a great balance between the build-up of sexual tension between the two women and the resulting action.

I found Garver by Landon Dixon to be a refreshing dose of light relief, so to speak. A hired gun agrees to track down stolen coins in this cowboy sex fest – but only after a blow job from the skilled bossman. The language and style are far removed from anything I could write myself, which is partly why I enjoyed the read, particularly marvelling at the range of descriptions of cocks (which just goes to show that rules are made to be broken since I wrote a few weeks ago that you should call a cock a cock rather than coming up with increasingly preposterous names for it). It’s a wonderfully masculine tale in every way, prowess as a gunfighter intimately linked to sexual prowess.

In The Gift by Clarice Clique, a princess struggles to satisfy her husband’s desire to be dominated. So she buys a slave to do it for her, which I thought was a nice twist to the balance of power. It turns out the slave allowed herself to be captured because she dreamt that her destiny lay in a foreign place. She thoroughly embraces her contradictory position. And she proves a natural, the story outlining in vivid detail how she orders the prince to submit in new ways.

La Contessa’s Game by Slave Nano is another tale of male submission (there seems to be a theme emerging here among the stories I enjoy ;-), this time with a gender-bending slant. What struck me was the luxury and decadence, particularly in descriptions of clothing. It is set largely in a whorehouse in Venice. The countess dresses her servant as a girl, while she dresses as a man, and pretends (s)he is his young wife and in need of subjugation at the hands of a dominatrix prostitute. Even his/her punishment is decadent in its thoroughness and the whole thing climaxes in a glorious threesome. The story is told in the first person by the servant, which stops it sounding purely sadistic!

Past Pleasures is available in paperback or ebook from XciteBooks.