This post's purpose is to collect my common tags in one place, so readers (and I!) can easily access entries on several subjects.

Portia DaCosta, The Stranger: One of the most charming and hot books I've read in a long, long time. Claudia, the heroine, has been widowed for eight months and is starting to come to life again when she encounters a lovely, fey stranger bathing in the river; later he comes to her for help in a thunderstorm, and a deep connection arises between them.

The first half of the book has the lovely feel of a dreamy fantasy. Of necessity, as reality returns it becomes more conventional, in feel if not in subject. Claudia's return to living is revealed not only through a revived hunger for sex but also by new desires for people whom she never would have thought of before as partners. Though well-written, I didn't enjoy those scenes as much, as I was in it for the Stranger, Paul; I did like that he continued to be woven in and out of those scenes. I liked Claudia and Paul enough that I would love seeing them in another book.

The book was published by Black Lace.

Britsh publication of Spice novels.

Another article, in the Telegraph.

Madelynne Ellis, A Gentleman's Wager: Historical erotica from Black Lace, in which the heroine seeks fulfillment of more than one sort. Some male/male action. The story didn't propel me madly along; it was more something I read in small, yummy bites. I didn't necessarily like the characters, but I did like what she did with them; as I often do when reading erotica, I was studying what she wrote and how she wrote it. It was a nice change from all the erotic romance I've been reading.

There's a sequel, Phantasmagoria, which is on my TBR pile--it looks like it has a Gothic plot, so might have a much different feel. Am looking forward to seeing what she did with it.

Poll #1217213 I would love to read that!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

Given the choice, I would choose to read this novel first:

Kalen Hughes, Lord Sin (Book One: Rakes of London): This book had exquisite sexual tension throughout and scads of vivid, realistic Georgian period detail. I loved the historical detail as much as the sex scenes. Is that kinky?

The heroine, George, is notable for being "one of the guys" and a widow who truly loved her husband, who died young. The hero, Ivo, fought a duel to protect her, years before while she was still married, and at the beginning of the book has just returned from the resulting exile, during which he privately obsessed over George even though he knew it was improper. However, upon his return he learns that she is now a widow, and notorious for only granting men a single night in her bed. Ivo bargains her up to six, one for each year of his exile.

The one thing I didn't care for so much was the vengeful serial killer subplot. I am kind of tired of those in historicals, and this book had ample plot tension without it.

I am looking forward to Hughes' next one, which is on my TBR stack.

Colette Gale, Master: This was interesting; it's an erotic novel based on The Count of Monte Cristo, which mostly fits into the cracks of that novel as fanfiction fits into canon. But also like fanfiction, the novel comments on the novel's characters and time period. Most notably, the female characters are expanded and given more agency, partly through their roles in the life of Monte Cristo, and partly through giving them distinct erotic identities. The focus of the story is taken away from Monte Cristo and his complex revenge, leaving something new in its place.

It's a nifty concept. However, the length and complexity of the orginal Count of Monte Cristo is a hindrance to commentary, I felt; because some events in the original novel had to be compressed and explained to the reader, a great deal of plot impetus was lost. I felt more as if I was reading a collection of commentaries on The Count of Monte Cristo rather than a single novel. I'm not sure how this could have been avoided, or even if it should have been.

My favorite part of Gale's novel was the story of the Nubian slave Ali and the Greek Haydée, daughter of Ali Pasha and now also a slave. Minor characters in the original, Gale gives them their own story. Haydée acts on her erotic desires more than once, until she finally achieves what she wants. Notably, in the original novel Ali is mute, having had his tongue cut out; in Gale's version, his voice is literally returned to him; he explains he has kept silent for years as part of a debt of honor.

A very interesting read.

Jane Lockwood, Forbidden Shores: This is the first erotic romance I've read from Signet, and I really liked it, despite wishing it had been even longer and more complex. It's a historical, set in the Georgian period. The heroine, Clarissa Onslowe, a ruined woman who's been working as a housekeeper, is now being sent to a Caribbean island to serve as governess to the daughter of a planter. The planter is a slaveholder, and she used to write abolitionist pamphlets; her family is both trying to get rid of her and make her unhappy. She decides that once there, she will become a courtesan, which at least has a degree of choice. She's only had sex once, and that was spectacularly unsatisfactory; however, her idea is that there are few educated white women available on the island, and thus she will be a scarce commodity. My theory is that she is looking for some degree of control over her destiny.

On the ship, she meets a lawyer, Allen Pendale, who's the younger son of an earl, traveling to the island to inform his father of his mother's sudden death. He's never been to visit the plantation before, and it's unclear exactly why his siblings choose him; perhaps because he's the youngest, and unattached, as one sister gives birth the day his ship sails. Allen is a lady's man--a cuckolded husband is chasing him as the ship leaves--and Clarissa is attracted to him. Inevitably, she asks him to teach her about sex.

The sex scenes are awesome. They're involving, realistic, and varied as well as fun. The plot, I felt, was weak at points, but I didn't care so much, because it's so rare for me to find erotica that I really enjoy.

On the ship, we also meet the Blights, who are clearly going to be villains later on; at least it's clear about Mr. Blight; it takes a bit longer with Mrs. Blight.

( Plot happens. And big spoilers. )

Recommended--I'm curious what others will think.

Kate Douglas' Wolf Tales was not for me. She did some neat things with the idea of werewolves as a separate species, but otherwise I found the story too easy for the characters. I felt this was a deliberate choice, based on other titles from the Aphrodisia line that I've read so far that are similar.

I am beginning to have a theory about different types of erotic novels which are meant to appeal to different tastes or moods of their readers. One type, of which this was one, privileges the sex scenes over other types of scenes, which may be given short shrift. To me, this type of book seems more easily broken apart into a series of scenes meant to be read one at a time, perhaps one each night. Forward motion is less important than dwelling in each scene as it happens. The reader can get to know the characters, and added familiarity with them adds to the enjoyment of each subsequent scene, but there's not plot-fueled rush to find out what happens.

The type more to my taste has a driving plot; it doesn't have to be a complex or elaborate plot, but I do prefer a problem the characters must solve, with the sex scenes advancing them towards that goal. In fact, I prefer that the sex be part of the problem and its solution.

I have to think more on this--it's still a vague shape in my mind.

I had been saving Emma Holly's latest, Fairyville for a while, and decided that a weekend away was the perfect time to start reading it. I loved it!

Emma Holly is my favorite erotica writer, bar none. I like her prose style, I like her characters, and I like the sense of erotic play that comes through her stories. Especially, I love that her characters are all lovable, especially in their imperfections and desires. When I was first drafting the proposal for The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover, I asked if the outline should be like an Emma Holly novel, and since the answer was yes, I immediately went forth and re-read a pile of her Black Lace novels, some of which have since been reprinted in trade format.

Anyway, Fairyville. It's a contemporary setting, a town in Arizona that's known for odd phenomena, many of which are related to its being near a door into Fairy. The female protagonist, Zoe, is a medium, who is constantly besieged by ghosts who want her to pass on messages to their loved ones. She also has a flock of tiny fairies who consider her "their" human. She's been nursing a two-year crush on her office landlord, Magnus Monroe, who only has sex once a month, and with a different woman each month. This is stranger than ever when Magnus reveals his powerful interest in her.

Zoe's high school boyfriend, Alex, moved away from Fairyville and became a private detective, partnering with his college roommate, who has a crush on him while at the same time knowing that Alex has more women than he can count.

You don't have to wait long for events to be set in motion.

( More, and spoilers. )

Will it all work out? Read it and see! I can tell you that I closed the book with a happy smile on my face. A fun, light read.

Sylvia Day, Ask For It: it's nice to see a historical erotic romance set in England's Georgian period; are there more that I've been missing? It seems a perfect fit for erotica, what with the men peacocking around in wigs and gorgeously colored silk, and the women swinging panniers and dotting patches on their faces.

For me, the enjoyment value of this book was all in sex scenes, which were well-written, engaged me in their characterization, and were not repetitive. The spies!plot, I felt, was a bit perfunctory, and several times I was confused about some point or other. In that respect, it was very similar to many other spy romances I've read, whether set in the Georgian or Regency periods.

The hero, Marcus, was fairly typical of his breed: Alpha Male Nobility, often behaving like an ass, but made tolerable to me because of his abject craving for the heroine, which he keeps trying to pretend is a passing fancy that will be swiftly assuaged. The heroine, Elizabeth, is in denial about her lust for him while constantly giving in to it; once she seems resigned to her attraction to Marcus, a dubious spy!plot complication arises as another blocking agent. I had a hard time following their arcs, as the plot was not engaging me, and I skimmed some bits of it.

All that said, I'm still going to read another one of Day's books, to see if I can identify what I liked about the sex scenes aside from the vulnerabilities both characters displayed.

I never wrote up these two Black Lace novels by Anna Clare. I read Flood first, as it has werewolves, and very sexy ones, too; and best of all, it was a historical, set in the Victorian period. I really liked the lyrical, intense writing in this. The only flaw was that it was less a novel than a series of vignettes tied together by the werewolves. It felt unfinished to me, because I wanted more!

I especially liked the variety of sexual activity. Two young men, ostensibly straight, end up having sex when they model for a famous, eccentric sculptor with a disturbingly erotic mistress. The sex ends up being much more meaningful to them than they'd expected. I really wanted to read all of their story, but once they've returned to England, you don't see much of them except from the outside. One of the young men also has an encounter with the sculptor's mistress. The other main couple is a young seamstress and her patron, for whom she makes a gorgeous, elaborate dress that is a character in itself; I think the seamstress falls in lust with the dress before she falls in lust with her patron. That relationship, to me, was more intense and satisfying than the heterosexual one she ended up in, but my feelings might have changed if the story had gone on longer. There just wasn't a chance to get to know her final partner beyond their first encounter.

Highly recommended. I also made note of her successes and possible problems in integrating the paranormal element with the erotica. I really liked her approach because it was less straightforward than most werewolf novels.

Mixed Signals is a contemporary, and much more heterosexual than Flood, though it also has considerable variation.

( Spoilers. )

Overall, I liked Mixed Signals less than Flood, despite the intriguing plot elements, because I prefer my erotica to be more fantastical and fun. Though beautifully written, it was a little too real.

Sarah McCarty's Caine's Reckoning is my favorite of the three or four Harlequin Spice books I've read so far. A major reason is that it's a Western, therefore genre and historical, both of which I like more than contemporary settings. Also, it's a good story.

( Cut for length, some spoilers but not huge ones. )

The first of the recent trade paperback erotica novels I read, back a few months ago, was Joey Hill's The Vampire Queen's Servant, but since I promptly lent the book out, I didn't do a writeup. The quick version is that this was a good book, but it was not for me.

( Lots of comments, some spoilers. )

I've decided I need to read some of the new novel-length erotica that's out, so I've begun acquiring some. (Recommendations welcome!) My comments may be aimed more at craft issues that I'd like to remember for myself than a regular review.

First up was P.F. Kozak, Passion. It's a contemporary, set in England, and on the slim side (especially in comparison with the 100K words that seem to be the other half of the trade erotica market). The main character, named Passion and called Pash, is shy but wants a lover. She has fantasies about a forceful highwayman of perhaps the 18th century, which has her decide she wants to learn to ride horses. A friend of hers has a boyfriend who owns a stable. She goes there, and Ivan, a gorgeous friend of the boyfriend (Ivan is also a poetry professor, on leave for the summer), becomes her riding teacher. There is instant attraction on both sides.

I didn't finish the book, so I can't comment in detail, but at the beginning I wasn't seeing much tie between the highwaymen fantasies and the real man, whether in the form of tension or similarity. This might have happened later in the book.

It's first person, which I like, but in this case the first person is Passion, then Ivan, and back and forth. The voices are sufficiently different--Ivan uses more slang than Passion, for one thing--but this is what eventually had me put the book down: the alternating scenes were often the same scene, done twice, with only the pov change and slight differences in dialogue. To me, this made the story's progress unbearably slow. For some, this will be a feature rather than a bug. For me, I felt as if the available story had been stretched to fit a set length. The characters didn't have enough problems for me to perservere and see how they solved them.

So from this book I have learned I prefer to have more emotional conflict in my erotica, and I prefer it to be upfront.

I am finding these poll results very interesting. People who answered "threesome," would you mind trying to distill some of the things you like about them? For example, is the appeal "I like sex scenes, and more people means more sex in the scene"? or "I like the sense of discovery in a first-time threesome" or "I like the idea of a woman getting a very close view of hot guy-on-guy action and getting to join in" or "a threesome is even more intimate than a pair" or what?

Situations you like to read about and preference in threesomes.

"The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

...

Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, "It feels right to me," acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a handmaiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.

...

In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial."


The entire essay can be found in Sister Outsider and online, at least most of it, here.

The [Haworth] webpage went up for Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures, edited by Lynne Jamneck. [edited to add: the anthology was eventually published by Lethe Press.]

"Featured in Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures are:
-Marianne de Pierres, who takes you into a half-dream world of bliss
-Nicola Griffith and her moving exploration of art, genius, sex, trust, and how love can throw them all into chaos
-Gwyneth Jones's intimate look at what freedom means—and what it takes
-Kristyn Dunnion, whose protagonists’ calls for liberation mean the monkey wrenching of a nightmarish capitalist system
-Lyda Morehouse and her eye-opening world where prostitution is beyond legal—it’s sacred
-Kiera Dellacroix's probe into the very genes of humanity for what evolution may grant to a select few and the unexpected consequences of such gifts
-Melissa Scott and her time-bending story of love lost and love found
-Carolyn Ives Gilman's delicate examination of the tenuous balance struck by freedom and love
-Elspeth Potter, whose mecha-clad soldiers battle and explore more than just forbidden alliances
and even more!"

My goodness. They remembered to mention me, after all those other people?

Also, I have an essay on writing erotica at the Circlet Press website, called Making It Good. It's compiled from posts I made in my LJ a while back.

Worship
c. Elspeth Potter 2004


At your monthly doctor visit, the nurse uses a special tool to cut your wedding ring from your grotesquely swollen finger. "Only one snip," she says, as if that makes it better. "A jeweler can fix it again, good as new."

The mutilation will still be there in your mind's eye, a severing of a sacred bond. You will never wear the ring again: you can never get it onto your finger after this, even at night when the swelling is down a little.

Your husband picks you up out front. He's been getting a haircut while you listened to the rheumatologist. You can smell the fresh barbershop smell of the talcum on his collar, see little flecks of dark hair on the back of his neck, muscular and strong. He can lift you in and out of the bathtub when your knees or hips, or sometimes both, are too stiff.

He opens the door of the car for you, and helps you fasten the shoulder belt and fumble on your sunglasses. "Any new prescriptions?" he asks, as he pulls out into traffic.

( Continue. )