2021 in review
For those of you blinking in startlement at another 12 months come and gone, solidarity. I don’t know if it’ll help any of us make peace with the passage of time, but this roundup of my works published over the past year might at least give you something sexy and warming to read as we adjust to putting 2 instead of 1 at the end of every date field.
Adam, Animal, Leash at Lascivity
He looks up at her, his eyes bright. Something breaking through his composure. But not the strength that lies under it. Not necessarily physical strength — although his hands are anything but weak — more mental, or emotional. Even spiritual. Her handsome, healthy human.
She is his beautiful beast.
And strong too. With a messy wet sound she releases his hand, while her own hands rake down from his shoulders, leaving the tracks of her nails. The second time she does it, as pink marks cross pink marks, he moans.
Read the full story at Lascivity.co.uk
“Exceptional Service” in Coming Soon: Women’s Orgasm Erotica
Worth noting, this is not the only story featuring Tricia and Jacob that I have planned — though the next 3 have waited in outline. Parts were heavily inspired by conversations with my late partner, and knowing he won’t be there to read them has made it difficult to write. I don’t want to say something cliche like “2021 has been a year of healing from the losses of 2020” for various reasons, one of which is that I don’t think grieving is healing. I wasn’t unhealthy, I was bereaved. I still am. But grief does change with time, and I expect in the future, as I carry grief differently, part of carrying it will involve writing more of the hot stories I’d dreamed up with my late partner. Partially as a tribute to them and also as a treat for me. A kinky couple finding more gorgeous kinksters to hook up with is too delightful a concept to leave aside forever.
And after all, I’ve always found grief and hauntings interesting subjects to explore erotically. So at worst I’ll be doing more of what I’ve always done from a different angle (by which I mean, the grief and haunting will be mine, not necessarily coming through in the story — and writing Tricia and Jacob as happy and thriving will be, in its own way, healing. Or whatever the word is that I want which isn’t “healing”.)
Relatedly, one of my publications for 2021 is a collection of my partner’s short erotic stories. Kinky, Queer Love is available as a pay-what-you-want collection on Smashwords and in my Gumroad store. All royalties earned will be donated to Trans Lifeline.
Everyone is a committee, a stir of voices and half-remembered sound bytes. We have our intentions and opinions, but those voices still speak, sometimes drowning out what we know or believe. It doesn’t matter if we give credence to them, if they’re even reasonable; these persistent ghosts linger within us, repeating their slogans like clockwork automata.
I have neither love nor respect for the people I encountered in high school. Being raised male, I spent more than my fair share of time around, for want of a better word, guys. This, I hasten to add, in an era that viewed itself as enlightened – don’t they all? – compared to its predecessors. To be gay would have been no big deal, or so they said. But the idea that someone, some ‘guy’, would enjoy being penetrated by ‘his’ girlfriend. That was just, like, weird, man.
Why do we give these voices such power?
Growing up, the internet was no help. Femdom scenes portrayed pegging as a punishment, something degrading and humiliating.
Degrading. Humiliating.
These words have power.
I tell you this, my love, not to indulge in some kind of pity-party for my own self-consciousness, but to explain. A sheltered, bookish, gender-uncertain young person like myself would log on to the internet, search for something, anything, in the realm of femdom that seemed loving, and enjoyable, and meaningful, and find the most tasteless garbage imaginable.
I knew, back then, that I must really be a submissive, if that wasn’t enough to put me off.
But oh, the voices it left in my head. Look too long at something, and it will imprint itself on your mind like an exposed Polaroid. You can paint over those grim images, those sketches of pain or uncertainty, but it takes time. It takes work.
It takes someone like you, my love.
“Out on the Inside,” in Queer, Kinky Love
Along with his collection, I also put together three of my own –
Tender Things: Stories about Dominant Women
A baker’s dozen of stories featuring everything from frottage to bondage to pegging to teasing to intense roleplay.
Sometimes a compliment is just a compliment. She likes to give them and her boyfriend deserves them. But he looks so good in those jeans. He wore them as a show for her, yes, but not just that. He’d be disappointed if she let him go now.
From “Breakfast Time” in Tender Things
My non-femdom sensual stories, including F/F, M/M, F/M, and several pieces featuring characters of undefined gender (or gender they’re working on defining).
Made slippery, my fingers and my hips swirl counterclockwise. Widdershins. It’s not a sexy word, but it means sex to me. Not when I think of sex but when I do it. Always this motion.
From “For Myself” in If You Were My Lover
The Season: Halloween Erotic Fiction
Six bites of haunting paranormal erotic fiction — all puns intended. Take that “bite” as a warning/recommendation as well as a pun; some more detail on the content in this collection is available in this blog post.
It wasn’t a transformation, nothing so neat and clean-cut.
You know.
“Don’t. D-don’t.”
You know what’s needed. Know what has to happen.
“I don’t know anything,” Eva said.
Your cunt does.
Her thighs spasmed tight at the thought. It was right. Yes, she knew it in her cunt and clit, hungry mouth and thirsty tongue. They felt puffy, swollen. A rush of wetness between her legs quickly dried, as if evaporating in a furnace.
Her nostrils flared, trying to scent something on the night air besides the metallic, heavy saltiness of her sweat.
Something wanted, needed.
Her teeth ground until they locked on each other. A beat sounded in her heart, stomach, cunt, pounding with the knowledge before knowledge that is hunger.
from “Beyond Words” in The Season.
All three of these collections are collected in
which comes out in — checking my calendar and howling about the passage of time — about two weeks!
The ebook is available for presale on Smashwords (with a $1 discount if you sign up for my newsletter).
The paperback proof is being shipped to me as we speak and I. cannot. wait.
My other brag for 2021 is that I came within 5,000 words of winning NaNo WriMo, and 45,000 words written in 30 days is nothing to sneeze at. A few thousand of those words were my fanfiction “These Delights,” which features William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and shotgunning (the smoking-and-almost-kissing thing, not anachronistic weaponry).
It’s fun to write our bisexual bard and dear queer Kit – so much fun, in fact, that another story featuring these two will appear as my contribution to the fourth New Smut Project anthology, Cunning Linguists.
Cunning Linguists will also contain another 29 stories, all somehow tying into the themes of language, literature, and lechery – whether sexy takes on public domain classics, explorations of sexting, heated banter, or moving accounts of what happens when someone says the wrong thing during sex … or exactly the right thing. The anthology is currently up for preorder at Smashwords and Gumroad (where discount code CUNNING gives you 25% off your preorder). It will be on Amazon soon, probably once I finish copyedits. Most of the copyediting plus all the reading and deciding among submissions took place over 2021 — if you’ve ever wanted to put together an anthology, I think you should go for it, it’s an amazing experience. At the same time, take care not to underestimate the time or work involved.
My other piece of New Smut Project news from 2021: two stories in Erato were recognized with the Good Sex Awards, jem zero’s “A Study in Circuits and Charcoal” for Best Feminist Sex and D. Fostalove’s “Touch” for Best Sexy Talk! Both authors will also, I’m pleased to say, be part of Cunning Linguists. On top of copyediting, finalizing the cover, and putting up pre-orders on Amazon, I should also formally announce the Table of Contents. When it comes to deciding the TOC in terms of the order of stories in the book — well, let’s just say I have 30 strips of paper sitting on my office floor and it feels a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
And so, onward into 2022.
0 Comments