Tight
Women in Hard Places by Alicia Night Orchid
Logical-Lust
Publications 2010
I
don't think that it is possible to write erotica without exposing
oneself. To arouse our readers, we authors must write what turns us
on personally. True, we may disguise our personal fantasies. We may
displace our kinks and fetishes, assigning them to characters who are
superficially quite different from us – a different age, a
different socioeconomic stratum, perhaps even a different gender. The
emotional kick, though, reveals all. We are able to draw our readers
into a world of deviance and delight because we, the authors, already
reside there.
Tight
Women in Hard Places is a deeply arousing and profoundly personal set
of erotic stories. Alicia Night Orchid shares her visions, ranging
from the romantic to the perverse, embroidering upon her personal
experiences and desires. Each tale she tells contains a sliver, or
more, of personal truth.
Ms.
Night Orchid's protagonists vary widely, from the inexperienced but
sexually ripe grad student in “The Royal Orleans” to the jaded
forty-something country singer in “I Saw the Light”. “Ray's
Opening” is narrated by a cocky, self-obsessed attorney while
“Third Shift” tells the tale of a divorced, down-and-out waitress
at a diner. Despite the difference in their voices, one gets the
feeling that all these women are aspects of the author. Her
character warns in “The Royal Orleans”, as she is making up
outrageous lies to fascinate a man she's just met, “never forget
that everything that a writer tells you is partly truth and partly
fiction”. In reading this collection, I took this caveat to heart.
Still, the more extreme Ms. Night Orchid's stories became, the better
I felt that I knew her.
Alicia
Night Orchid writes long, tangled tales with endings you do not
expect. She does not write “sex scenes”. Instead, she manages to
infuse passion into every paragraph. One of the best stories in the
collection is “Smoke”, the chronicle of a woman's unusual but
irresistible fetish. Another standout is “Torn in Two”, an erotic
noir fantasy that explores the dangerous, seductive links between sex
and death. “Savage Nights” recreates the dope-drenched aura of
the Sixties, when all the flowers, drugs and sex in the world
couldn't quite drown out the screams of young men dying in 'Nam.
“Voyeur Nation” is the sad, funny tale of a woman's
determination to get her life together, derailed by her horny,
exhibitionistic neighbors. “Fridays Without”, one of my favorite
stories, shows what happens when one gives in to temptation.
I
commented earlier on the twists taken by some of these tales. I
realized upon reflection that only three of these thirteen tales have
unambiguously happy endings. In the rest, after the sweat has dried
and the breathing has returned to normal, we're left to wonder, “what
next?”. The characters are changed by their passion – indeed, if
these stories have any common message, it is that sex can profoundly
alter one's life and self. Much, however, is left unresolved. This
makes the tales more realistic and also more unsettling. There are no
simple answers in Alicia Night Orchid's realms of desire.
Tight
Women in Hard Places deftly evokes the many moods of arousal – from
a stranger's desperate attraction to the joyful rediscovery of one's
long time partner. Overall, it's one of the best single author
collections I have reviewed in a long time. I recommend it highly.
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