Tuesday Review: Blue Woman Stories Volume 1 by Cheyenne Blue

Blue Woman Stories Volume 1

By Cheyenne Blue

LadyLit Publishing 2014

Some authors write stories. Others weave spells.

Cheyenne Blue belongs to the latter contingent.

Blue Woman Stories Volume 1 gathers five of Ms. Blue’s previously published lesbian tales into a brief but breathtaking package. Each is a jewel, sparkling with the many facets of passion. Two of the stories (“What If?” and “Car Bomb”) examine complexities in established lesbian relationships. Two (“How Does Your Garden Grow?” and “Cully’s Run”) involve erotic encounters between strangers predisposed to distrust one another. The final story, possibly my favorite in the anthology, is entitled “A Tangle of Vines”. In this tale, two straight women, old friends, succumb to the sensual bounty of a lush summer in rural France:

My senses burgeoned, a combination of wine and moonlight, loam under my feet and the fresh smell of new growth, the distant tang of salt sea air. Marianne turned her head, and I saw her lips, softly parted, before she came closer, kissing me softly, on the side of my mouth then, when I didn’t resist, on the lips.

We had never done this before, she and I, never shared experimental explorations as younger women. I had gone straight to male lovers, and she, I assumed, had done the same. But over the years, the boundaries defined by gender, by sexuality, and acceptability had blurred to a faint line, and her kiss wasn’t shocking or unwelcome. It just was.

Cheyenne Blue turns the environment into a mirror that reflects her characters and their emotions. As Nell sulks in her car in “Car Bomb”, waiting for her very tardy lover Alex, rain drenches the dark world outside. Everything is chilled, dank and sodden, the women’s history of passion quenched and forgotten. “Cully’s Run” evokes Australia’s High Plains, crisp, dry, wild and fragile – a simple world ruled by the elements. The clash between the cattlewoman and the city dweller who challenges her partakes of the same wildness. Although I’ve never been to Australia, Ms. Blue managed to drop me smack in the middle of the back country in “How Does Your Garden Grow?” where wiry, independent Eve tempts a susceptible police woman into a welcome fall. I could see the rampant vegetation, hear the lorikeets, taste the raspberries.

Each of the stories in this collection stands alone. Together they’re testimony to Cheyenne Blue’s formidable talent. Blue Woman Stories demonstrates the potential of erotica to do more than merely generate arousal. These tales engage mind, heart and intellect, as well as the senses. When one of them ends, you find yourself startled and blinking, full of wonder, emerging from enchantment.