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.

Teaser time

Here's a little taste of my story in The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance. Vicky has been out on a date, but all she can think about is her flatmate and his boyfriend, who are spending a rare quiet night in together at her place. She ends the date early and rushes home, hoping to catch them cuddling on the sofa... or maybe even listen in to them in the bedroom. But what she finds is much more than that and has been inspired by something the guys found lurking on her laptop after she failed to shut it down properly...

I hear the TV straight away as I unlock the door. At least, I think it’s the TV when I first hear voices through speakers. “Hi guys, I’m home.” They’re still on the sofa, but all my fantasies have not adequately prepared me for what I see. Not when it’s right there, right in front of me on my antique burgundy leather couch. They’re both buck naked. But that’s a minor consideration. Will is lying across Jake’s lap face down, his ass raised on the top of Jake’s thighs.

They freeze as I come into the room, but they don’t jump up and start making excuses, which is probably because Will is in no fit state to jump anywhere. Not with his wrists and ankles bound with two of my silk scarves. My laptop is open on the coffee table, the film I watched earlier playing quietly in the background. Not the TV. That’s blank, reflecting Jake and Will’s positions back to me even as I try to do the decent thing and look away. Will’s got a knotted tea towel tied in his mouth and a little voice at the back of my mind says, “He’d better not be drooling on my antique burgundy leather couch.”

“Fuck. Vicky. We weren’t expecting you home so early.”

You can buy from Amazon.com, Amazon UK, All Romance and Smashwords.