Archives: F/M

New story free to read online in Erozine Issue #7

I fully intended to write this post on Friday when the story went live, but I was caught up in a few things…still aiming to finish several projects my COVID bout derailed, and the end-of-year-rush, and also my NaNo novel.

Oh yeah, I kinda did NaNo this year. Only it lasted longer than the month of November and way more than 50,000 words. Turns out the plot bunny bit hard and despite…everything…I managed to get 200,000+ words written from mid-September to today. In fact I have the final scene of the epilogue to finish today or tomorrow, and then of course a lot of editing.

Certainly, that swallowed time I could have spent on other projects — and I do intend to get more responses out on Erato II submissions in the coming weeks — but when it comes down to it, if a year from now, December 2024, you ask me if I’d rather have done a variety of things or if I’d rather have completed the novel, I know what my answer will be.

More importantly for today, though: I have a ~3,000-word story free to read at the Erozine! My story, for this issue’s theme of “Post-Nut Clarity,” is “Aftplay.” A pun, of course.

Two short stories for free online reading

As my first week (er, honestly, nearer to my first 3 days) of government-encouraged isolation comes to an end, my heart is lighted by the latest issue of Cliterature Journal and a piece of mine appearing in The Erotic Review. Both are free to read.

Cliterature’s GOD/DESS issue includes an excerpt from my story “Annunciation,” about gender, Catholicism, queer desire, and growing up in the middle of them. Fittingly, the issue came out just a few days past the Feast of The Annunciation.

We talked about family and gifts, sacraments and liberation theology and martyrs. What scars through resurrected hands and feet mean to survivors. You told me about WATER’s liturgies and discussions for queer women. The label was still new to me then. Once in high school, a boy had sneered to my best friend and I, “What are you, lesbians?” (I haven’t seen him since, unfortunately). You used both words with equal pride.

I told you about Gabriel.

We spoke all the way back to my dorm.

“It was great talking to you.”

“Gosh, yeah.”

And I let you kiss my lips instead of my cheek; I kissed you back; I went up to my room and sinned thoughtlessly, unselfconsciously, but afterwards I lay awake and thought and prayed.

The next Saturday, I invited you to my room for us to finish our project. Which we did, in record time. And then—Two women together in a bedroom.

“You’re so beautiful,” I say, placing your folded socks on my chair without looking away from your hands as they open your shirt. The silver Miraculous Medal gleams at your throat beneath the rainbow bandana. I’ve put my rosary aside. “You’re the most…awesome, amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

You don’t seem to know what to make of that, but after a moment you smile. I lean closer, placing my hands on your knees. Your body’s warmth beats through your jeans.

“Okay,” I say—reassuring myself more than you. Be not afraid. “This is . . . better than okay.”

At the Erotic Review, “Like That“–part of what may one day become a proper romance novel–shows how two former lovers briefly become closer to each other. It’s also more than a little kinky.

While it was going so well, he’d proposed handcuffs. She accepted, enthusiastically. And when he brought over the pair he’d picked up at the porn store off the highway, she’d hopped onto her bed and raised her hands toward the headboard. That was when he realised maybe he hadn’t been clear. Or in her eagerness she had misinterpreted him.

But she was so eager to have them put on her. So he did.

It was fun, although he was slower to get hard than he’d ever been. At first he worried he wouldn’t be able to get into it. But she was, after all, naked — beautifully so — and her excitement became contagious.

The fact was, Leo liked doing what women wanted. But this time, he felt out of place — enjoying it, but in the way he would enjoy accidentally crashing someone else’s party.

Dirty Thirty

I’ve been somewhat absent of late, haven’t I?

Conditions described in my previous personal update prevail. Pervertedly. Passionately.

It feels so natural and so wonderful at once.

While a lady doesn’t tie up and tell–actually, my boytoy/girlfriend wouldn’t mind me bragging, but the real challenge would be wanting to talk and talk and talk about it once I got started; maybe someday–in the writing world (and I AM still writing), I have some updates to share!

Coming soon: “The Passion of Her Sleep,” a Poe-inspired F/F romance, in MYSTIQUE, an  anthology of cosmic, uncanny, and macabre erotic romance short stories.
Preorder on the Aurelia Leo website.

And while I’m sharing new releases: can’t believe I missed my sci-fi pegging fic, “Not Quite an Antidote,” in Rose Caraway’s The Sexy Librarian’s Dirty Thirty, Volume 3. Now available in ebook and paperback. From what I recall from my years of working in a library, Dewey Decimal 808.8 includes anthologies, rhetorical analysis, writing advice, etc. The Sexy Librarian also classifies “Not Quite an Antidote” as being about Venom, Boundaries, and Intoxicating Desire. All true, and have I mentioned the pegging?

Love and Love and Love…

Happy belated Valentine’s Day, whoever you spent it with. Including and especially to those who spent it alone, as I did–not the worst of company! And not just because it means there’s no need to share the pile of chocolate assortments I got on discount the 15th of February. ;D

Without digging too much into personal drama, let’s just say I spent Valentine’s Day alone partially by choice, because being alone is better than being in poor company, or company that can’t accept you as you are. And as I’ve had reason to reckon with that, I found some comfort in thinking about my story in Rachel Kramer Bussel’s recently released anthology, Erotic Teasers. 

“I mean, it feels personal. I’m not sure if it is. Which is weird, right? Not that I don’t enjoy your company,” she added. “I like hanging out with guys. But women, too…”

Roland nodded. “Would you like to get a drink?”

“Sure.” Marisol smiled, but five minutes later she was frowning into her beer. “It’s just a guessing game, I guess.” A grimace at the echo. “But how did I get to be twenty-seven without knowing if I’m lesbian or straight?”

“There are other options,” Roland said.

She looked at him across the table. “Yeah. And it’s even more of a guessing game how people will react if you bring that up.”

“Well.” He tipped his glass toward her. “My boyfriend, my girlfriend, and I all fall on the continuum.”

Her eyes widened. Then her mouth did, showing teeth in a grin. “You have both?”

“They have me.” Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the brightness of her smile and what it did to his heart jumping in his chest, but Roland decided to go all in. He pushed back his shirt sleeves and raised his wrists to show her.

As I mentioned in my blog post about my story in Best Lesbian Erotica, this story received a plot point, and some fuel, from certain signs held up at events in my generally pleasant Midwestern town. But it’s not just written out of defiance. I already had the idea of this poly group of two dominants, their submissive boyfriend, and the woman who joins them, and I was already excited about writing it, because it’s the kind of romantic fantasy that warms my heart (and not just my heart, I’ll admit, if we’re going to get personal).

More about the story, including another tease of an excerpt, is available HERE.

Meanwhile, I do have “set up an OKCupid” profile on my to-do list, so maybe a year from now I won’t have chosen to be single… but whatever you may be, so long as you’re being true to yourself, I’m happy for you and those you love in all the ways you love each other. And if you haven’t yet found your truth, I wish you luck. It’s worth finding.

The Seattle Erotic Art Festival is this weekend!

From April 27th-29th, in a year when artistic erotic expression is more important than ever, a curated selection of some of the finest erotic art the world has to offer will grace the floors of the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall.

During regular festival hours, visitors are invited to view the art and daily entertainments, from poetry readings to pantomime to acrobatic displays. The Festival art is intended to engage, titillate, make you think and start converations. There is also the Festival Store, where you can often find prints by the artists featured in the festival as well as other unique items and annual Seattle Erotic Art Festival merchandise. In the evenings, the vibe changes from a gallery to sexy art party. The Late Night Festival is a sexy, fun time with DJs, performers, bartenders at the ready, and a fantastically energetic crowds (Ages: 18+ during gallery hours, 21+ during evening hours).

For those of us who can’t make it to Seattle, photos and news from the event are available on the Festival’s website and Facebook— and the Literary Anthology is available, both online and in the Festival store, if you can make it to Seattle and want to take memories home with you.

The end of the world didn’t change much at first.

The Seattle Erotic Art Festival Literary Art Anthology 2018 includes my novella, The Summer After–the story of a self-described nearsighted, awkward, introvert, bisexual spinster and the nameless man who takes shelter with her at a rural house, with a thriving garden and a lot of reading material, after the end of the world.

For the past months I had been hiding. As if all the disasters would resolve themselves while I wasn’t looking. The cities rebuilt, the climate stabilized, the utilities and the law restored and better than ever. Now I’d begun preparing for the hard times to last. The time of tribulation was upon us. Tribulation, a word my parents taught me. I was almost an ungrateful enough daughter to hope they were experiencing this one to the fullest. There hadn’t been any word of a Rapture.

In between the plants and pages, there’s also some pretty intense sexual tension.

For so long my sex life had been very self-contained. Some would say nonexistent. For it to suddenly blow open—to explode open, to burst and cataract through not only my life but his and sweep us both away, ending up who knows where—it was too scary a thought to face alone.

“Look,” I said—probably out of the blue, at least from his perspective. But he took out his earbud, and I took out mine. “We don’t have to…do anything. The expectation that just because we’re a man and a woman together, alone, and we get along pretty well, so obviously we have to enjoy sex with each other… It’s pretty, well, heteronormative actually.”

Not that I wouldn’t enjoy sex with him. And—my filters had improved enough that I didn’t say these parts aloud—I’d enjoy it just as much if he were a woman.

…He faced me straight-on now. “But do you want to?”

It’s also about revelations, though not the Book of, necessarily. About what keeps mattering and what parts of the past get left in the past; about the choices people make and security and vulnerability and creativity when the story isn’t quite over.

You can read more about The Summer After and the SEA Literary Art Anthology here.

Dancing With Myself Release: “The Solution”

Today is the release date for Dancing With Myself, an anthology of self-love erotica. What a beautiful phrase–“self-love.” In all it senses. Interestingly, one might argue that the protagonist of my piece in this anthology, “The Solution,” doesn’t have a lot of reason to love herself.

“The Solution” is a story that’s been on my mind for a while. Even with this, it’s still not fully purged; I suspect it’s one of those beasties that might turn into a novel one day. I starting writing it when I was reflecting on how several of my favorite erotic novels–everything from Megan Hart’s Tear You Apart to  Kate Chopin’s The Awakening–center around adultery.

What’s up with that?

I’ve got theories: not the lies, but the secrecy certainly touches on something in me, and I’ve always been personally a bit skeptical of monogamy. It’s definitely something more fun to read and write about than to do, but there is that fascination that always surrounds people behaving badly.

I wondered if Dom had ever worried about me, all the nights I’d been out late. Maybe he’d been glad to have his space, just as I was glad to have mine on those evenings he claimed to have meetings or buddies waiting for him at some bar. Once I figured out where he’d really been going, I claimed more than space. I took pleasure, I took control. That was what it felt like at the time, at least.

The story centers, then, around that headspace–the thrill of doing what you know is wrong, but feeling justified in it anyway. A place where selfishness isn’t quite the same as self-love. But it’s as much about the other people involved in these brief-lived affairs, some of them one or two-night infidelities:

Dirty, he’d called me when I showed him how to get me off. I’d grabbed his hand and guided it to where mine now was, riding his fingers and rutting against his palm. His wrist had twisted in my grip and he’d panted about my perversity. I’m not sure which part he found so perverse. When I’d gone further, grasping his cock to control how it slid inside me, he’d been able to say nothing at all. Had that been worth violating my marriage vows for? That, and Heather, and Claire and Matt, and Joshua’s lips wrapping around my nipples as his fingers cupped and kneaded my ass, and Scott’s grin as he followed me down the dim corridor…

It’s a story about memory, and having it all at once, and having none of it, and learning how to love yourself once again. After all, you’re the one person you have no choice but to be faithful to.

Dancing With Myself is available on Amazon and Smashwords. More updates will be added to “The Solution’s” story page as they come.