Sneak Peek: Oysters and Pearls by Mitzi Szereto (#erotica #literature #zombies @MitziSzereto)

[One of my very first published stories appeared in Erotic Travel Tales, edited by Mitzi Szereto. I'm delighted to see help her get the word out about her latest book! ~ Lisabet]

Blurb

Acclaimed author Mitzi Szereto explores the many complexities of desire, love and lust in this rich and varied “best of” collection of erotically charged short stories compiled over the course of her literary career. In these seventeen provocative and often witty offerings, she travels expertly between genres with tales that explore both the light and the dark sides of sexuality. Oysters and Pearls gives the reader a glimpse into worlds that are as ordinary as they are fantastical and mysterious. Like a skilled lover, this sensuous and imaginative compilation will leave you wanting more.

Publication date: Nov. 15, 2016

Available in trade paperback and e-book

Published by Midnight Rain Publishing

Genres: Literary Erotica, Paranormal Romance, Fantasy

Length: 213 pages (print version)

Oysters and Pearls: Collected Stories is available at Amazon and other fine booksellers: 
 

https://www.amazon.com/Oysters-Pearls-Collected-Mitzi-Szereto-ebook/dp/B01M4GNRQR/

Excerpt

From “Bakewell, Revisited”

With the approach of lunchtime, the pub gets busier. I glance up from the muddy depths of my stout and notice a woman standing at the bar while the publican pulls a pint for another customer. Her fingers drum the aged wood—the only indication that she might be impatient for the man to get on with it and serve her. She’s dressed in typical country fare: brown corduroy jeans, beige Fair Isle sweater, earth-caked hiking boots. Probably one of those hale and hearty types on a walking excursion, although I see no evidence of the requisite rucksack and walking sticks. She shrugs her heavy brown coat from her shoulders and whips off her plaid scarf, which—surprise, surprise—has brown woven into it.

Wild waves of chestnut hair. Creamy skin. A rosy blush on the cheek turned toward me. I stop breathing.

It can’t be. It can’t.

But it is.

Drink in hand, she turns around, apparently searching for a suitable place to drop her over-garments and partake of her half pint of what looks to be cider. A ray of sun from the window by my head catches on the contents of her glass, turning it to liquid gold. She spies me at my lone table and her eyes widen. “Um, aren’t you—”

“Yes.”

Without waiting for an invite, she settles into the chair adjacent to mine. The chair with the wooden seat made shiny by generations of pub-crawling bottoms is now being made shiny by hers. The thought causes a fluttering that begins in my abdomen and spreads lower and lower until I have to cross my legs within the confined space to quash it.

“You all right? It’s been so long…” Mundane words, but nevertheless exciting. Her accent still has the north in it—that curious Derbyshire-Yorkshire crosshatching with the dropped thes, and the sommats in place of the somethings. But then, she probably never left here.

I nod. I don’t need to be reminded of how long it has been. The evidence shows in my face. My eyes. Not hers though. She’s still beautiful. Still young. Even after two decades I can taste my desire for her. It’s as strong as it was when we picnicked among the dead of Bakewell. I watch her lips move as she offers me small talk. I feel a dampening as they form the vowels and consonants that make up speech. A trickling in my armpits and groin, followed by a stirring. A pulsing. A staccato beating. “Do you still live here in Derbyshire?” I manage to ask.

“Never left,” she says with a smack of her lips, which have the delicate tincture of Belgian strawberries. “Why leave heaven?”

Heaven. Yes, it might be to some. It never was to me though. Not as long as my desire for her remained frozen on my fingers and tongue. Frozen in my genitals.

Advance Praise for Oysters and Pearls

“The strength of this collection lies in its imaginative grasp of the wide variety of cultures, landscapes and emotional engagement of the reader as well the sexual.” ~ Tobsha Learner, bestselling author of Picture This

“Mitzi Szereto is the dynamo of the erotic world. Writing, teaching, editing; all part of a day in the life of erotica’s most spicy personality.” ~ Maxim Jakubowski, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica

“Lovemaking and the erotic are difficult areas to write about without being twee or self-conscious or embarrassing or just falling flat on your face. Few writers handle such material with the intelligence, joy and humor of Mitzi Szereto.” ~ Sir Arnold Wesker, FRSL, playwright and author

About the Author

Mitzi Szereto (mitziszereto.com) is an author and anthology editor of multi-genre fiction and non-fiction. She has her own blog of humorous essays at Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto’s Weblog (mitziszereto.com/blog), and a web TV channel Mitzi TV (mitziszereto.com/tv), which covers the “quirky “side of London, England. Her books include Phantom: The Immortal (co-authored with Ashley Lister); Rotten Peaches and Normal for Norfolk (The Thelonious T. Bear Chronicles, a cozy mystery/satire series co-authored with celebrity author bear Teddy Tedaloo); The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray; Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts; Love, Lust and Zombies; Thrones of Desire: Erotic Tales of Swords, Mist and Fire and Getting Even: Revenge Stories. Her anthology Erotic Travel Tales 2 was the first anthology of erotica to feature a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She divides her time between the Pacific Northwest and the UK.