Discomfort Zone - #kink #violence #squicks

I’ve been thinking about my comfort zones - topics I can write and explore without getting scared or squicked or otherwise wanting to stop - and the areas outside those boundaries. When it comes to sexual topics, there's not much that bothers me. I've written orgies , exhibitionism, bondage, all sorts of corporal punishment, infantilism, incest, enemas and golden showers, even so-called blood sports (although there was nothing playful about that tale). I won't say I'm totally relaxed penning stories with extreme elements - I'm more likely to be aroused - but in most cases I'm not uncomfortable.

There is one sort of content that I find induces extreme discomfort, though - any sort of serious violence.

I'm not talking about rough sex here; I've written plenty of scenes where someone wants to be fucked within an inch of his or her life, and someone else gladly complies. No, I'm referring to cases where a character gets beaten, stabbed, burned, blinded, castrated, literally tortured by another. Even if this activity is in the context of a relationship - even if the victim apparently consents - this sort of scene really bothers me. I recognize, a bit sheepishly, that few of my dominants possess more than a subtle streak of true sadism. I've never written a pure sadist, who gets his or her thrills from causing pain as opposed to being in control. That would make me much too uncomfortable.

Back in 2010, I edited my good friend C. Sanchez-Garcia's charitable short story collection, Coming Together Presents C. Sanchez-Garcia. One of the tales he included in the manuscript was "Miss Julia's Cake Club". Julia is a poverty-stricken Hispanic woman, beaten and abused by her husband, who lives in an unnamed military dictatorship. She is arrested and tortured by authorities who believe that she's somehow connected to an opposition political movement. Julia dreams of having a beautiful, well-equipped kitchen where she can cook and bake, sharing her love with others. Instead, for reasons she can't begin to fathom, she is subjected to incredible pain, terror and humiliation. One of the story's most extreme scenes offers a chilling description of water boarding, detailed enough to give anyone nightmares.

It was terribly difficult for me to work on "Miss Julia's Cake Club". It's a true, powerful, serious story about dignity, trust, freedom and redemption. It's not sensationalist or exploitative. Like almost everything Garce writes, it has a spiritual dimension. It is also, at times, intensely erotic, as Julia escapes into her fantasies. I could appreciate all this, but still, I had to force myself to read on.

I reviewed that story at least three or four times over the course of preparing the book for publication. It never lost its impact. It never failed to make me uncomfortable.

It occurs to me, looking back, that consciously or unconsciously, this might have been the author's intention. If one can read such a story of violence and abuse and remain comfortable, perhaps one has lost some aspect of humanity.

Of course, not all violent tales have redeeming social value. Pretty much all of them bother me, though. I especially dislike work that sexualizes cruelty (which Garce's story does not). I can't imagine writing something in that vein. Yes, I do have a scene in Necessary Madness where the villain plans to sacrifice the hero while fucking him, as part of a satanic ritual (and yes, that was pretty tough for me to write), but there's no violence for its own sake (and the hero of course manages to save himself, so there's just the threat of bloodshed, not the fact). I know, intellectually, that some people find the idea of inflicting serious pain and causing real physical damage to be arousing. I can't understand that, from an emotional perspective - and although I try hard to be tolerant and broad minded, I can't help feeling distinctly queasy.

So despite my carefully cultivated reputation for being a sexual pioneer, open to experimentation, willing to try (or at least to write about!) any sort of perversion, I guess I'm really a wimp.

I make no apologies.

Vampires for Christmas

In case you missed my post yesterday, I'm celebrating the release of Coming Together: In Vein, a charity anthology of vampire erotica and erotic romance which benefits Doctors Without Borders. I thought you might like to see the table of contents before deciding whether to buy it. Here you go.

• Nixie's in Love – C. Sanchez-Garcia
• Jessebel – Sacchi Green
• Willing – Xan West
• Kiss and Make Up – Ashley Lister
• Devouring Heart – Andrea Dale
• Blood Tint – Raziel Moore
• The Taste of B Negative – Cheyenne Blue
• You'll Love the City – Naomi Bellina
• It's Lovely. It's Horrible – Kathleen Bradean
• The Curse – M. Christian
• Red Wet Kiss – Beryl Falls
• The New Normal – Jay Lygon
• Cat – Giselle Renarde
• One More Transformation – Nobilis Reed
• Vampires, Limited – Lisabet Sarai

Quite a few of the stories are GLBT-themed. Several focus on BDSM relationships (which always seem so appropriate when you're talking about vampires). You'll also find sci fi, humor, and plain old (well, not plain!) romance - though every story is explicit.

Here's a snippet from C. Sanchez-Garcia's fabulous tale, just to warm you up.

***

The noisy Dollar General Jesus clock showed it was after five. The sun would be up in an hour. “It’s that time.” he heard her whisper. Dan saw her eyes and suddenly made the connection.

Before he could move, she sprang at him. She had him.

Goddamn, she was so fast.

In an instant he was whirled through the air and landed softly but soundly on his back. She stretched on top of him like a pantheress, making a soothing noise that seemed to creep in, making him sleepy. Her steely fingers pinned his arms. The needle sharp fang teeth were out now, gleaming brightly in the light off the abused lamp, pricking and stinging at his throat, as he struggled to look away from the crimson flecked, bottomless wells of her exquisite eyes.

"Now, feed me. Mein Liebling."

He wriggled his knees under her, then his feet. Her fangs champed and snapped viciously at his throat. Just as she almost had him, he got his feet against her belly and kicked as hard as he could, flinging her backward through the air. She sailed across the room and crashed into the far wall. The plaster shattered at the impact.

That goddamn cheap-shit drywall! There goes my Sunday.

She slid down, dazed for an instant, then jumped back to her feet like a cat, her fingers clenched into claws of demoniac fury. Frantically, he fumbled in his pants pocket. Just as she coiled for the fatal spring, he found it. He thrust it out, almost dropping it. A large mother of pearl crucifix, with a silver Jesus Christ dolefully impaled on its arms. She had said it was gaudy. He liked it anyway.

"Whore of Satan!" he cried "Back, undead vixen! Back to the Hell that cast you out! Back!"

He advanced towards her. She snarled and fell back throwing her arm over her eyes. Then she was moving fast, circling him. "You seek to baffle me with your crosses and your garlic," she sneered murderously. "You with your pale face, to me you are just some fucking sheep in a butcher’s!"

Jesus on a bicycle, he thought. What a cheeseball. She’s got that Stoker stuff down pat, too.

She seized the cheap plastic – replaceable – table lamp and winged it at his hand. He ducked as the lamp knocked the crucifix from his grasp and watched the cross slide out of reach under the sofa. God forgive me, but I absolutely adore her. If only she could cook.

She was on him again in an instant. They fell to the floor, clawing and twisting, like Tasmanian devils mating. He grappled for her arms, as her fangs snapped and missed, ripping his shirtsleeve.

His hand slid under the sofa, feeling around frantically. He had the crucifix again. Pulling it out, he shoved it in her face. She jumped off him and he tackled her, sweeping her feet out from under her. They rolled into the table and it went down.

She pushed him off and tore open her T-shirt, exposing her perfect breasts. The urgent pink nipples, erect and rampant, stunned him with lust like a gorgon. Faster than he could see, she swatted his hand. Again, the crucifix flew away from him – no idea where it went this time. He could hardly bear to take his eyes off her tits. He had seen them in various situations, pretty much every night for a glorious year, and they still nailed his feet to the floor every time.

She held him down effortlessly, her breasts dangling in front of his eyes, her knees pinning his shoulders. He wanted to just surrender to her, but first there was one more thing he had to try, just to impress her. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a simple wooden pencil. Her lips puckered into an O of surprise when she saw it, but it was too late. He pressed the freshly sharpened tip against her heart. "Gotcha!"

He held it there like a knife. She climbed off and backed away from him delicately, her eyes wide with surprise. That was a new move he had thought of while doing a crossword puzzle. Feeling immensely smug, he backed her against the wall. "Strip off your clothes – daughter of Satan!"

Leering, she pulled down her jeans and panties together and dropped them on the floor in a bunch. She was naked now, except for the torn rag of her open T-shirt. She leaned dreamily against the wall, with its broken plaster hole, spreading her legs wide enough for him to see everything, watching him. He kept his eyes fixed on the pencil he held over her heart. If his eyes drifted down to the thick delta of wiry blonde hair between her moist thighs, even for a second, he knew she'd wipe the floor and the dinner dishes both with him.

***

Want to know what happens next? Buy the book! Please! (The link goes to the Coming Together website, where you'll find the most up-to-date set of sales venues.) And remember, every purchase entitles you to a free copy of my book Body Electric - just for the asking!

Merry Christmas to all! 

When You Cut Up the Future, the Past Bleeds Out

By C. Sanchez-Garcia (Guest Blogger)

My kid is learning to drive a car these days which scares me more than anything Stephen King ever wrote. There’s stuff that’s scary and then there’s stuff that truly scares you. This is unfair to my kid because actually he’s learning pretty fast after just a few times out because of previous years of racing cars in video games on Playstation. He had the basics down by the time he buckled up, the problem is me. It’s the only wheels I’ve got.

The funny thing, when you think about it, is that very soon within his lifetime the whole exercise may become irrelevant. The day will arrive when you’ll be able to buy a car and take it where you want to go without a single driving lesson, without even knowing so much as how to turn on the radio.

These days if you were driving through Silicon Valley, you might see a car pass by you with something like a little hockey trophy on the roof. If you look closer you’ll see a guy in the passenger seat taking a nap or playing with a iPad but what you won’t see is someone sitting behind the wheel. Add it up and what you will see is the future of driving.

The car steers by computer, GPS and a kind of radar based on lasers. A self driven car, can see around and beneath big tractor trailers and adjust speeds and lane changes and turns to traffic conditions you can’t even see. In other words - it drives better than you.

When I first heard of this car recently on the news I thought “Mortal Engines – it’s happened already.”

Mortal Engines was one of the first stories of mine ever published. I like to believe I’ve gotten better as a writer but I refuse to cringe at my early stuff. In fact I still love Mortal Engines. The dirty secret writers won’t tell you is that each of us is our own biggest fan and toughest critic. I wanted to make Mortal Engines about more than just sex. I wanted to make it rich with ideas, I wanted it to have soul. I believe that’s what good science fiction can do for you. In 2005 when I imagined Hal Jordan’s self driving car GPS systems were barely becoming available to consumers. Now people wonder how we ever managed to get by for 10,000 years without them.

The problem with science fiction writers when it comes to imagining the future is that most of us get it wrong most of the time. No one in the ‘40s, ‘50’s or even the ‘60’s imagined the impact computers and digital communications would have someday. The problem we make in visualizing the future is that we fail to account for what I think of as “Cave Man Values”. I think a lot of the technology touched on and hinted at in Mortal Engines you will see in your lifetime, and it's because of profit driven Cave Man Values.

We’re not that different from our ancestors who chased mammoths across the Paleolithic savannahs. Our values are still absolutely the same hunter gatherer values, only the toys and weapons have gotten better. We like good food and booze and plenty of it. We like to hang around with family and friends and plenty of them. We still worship God and spirits and ward off the evil eye in one form or another. Men and women still chase each other. Women still love men with wealth and status. Men still love beautiful girls with big tits. The very earliest known painting of the human form we have, going back about 32,000 years is of a naked woman with wide hips and a thick bush.

These are Cave Men Values and we still pursue them today. Facebook, VCRs and then DVD porno movies, gangs, drugs, warfare, fast cars and flashy clothes, stories and communications, Anthony Wiener sending photos of his boner to strange young ladies. All this technology answers emotional needs a Cave Man would understand perfectly. Stay close to Cave Man Values and you’ll see the future coming most of the time.

Mortal Engines is loaded with technology associated with Cave Man Values. The high tech car is one, but what Hal Jordan is thinking when he’s riding in it is more or less “Where did all these effing computers come from all of a sudden?” His world – and yours, little buddy- is infected like a pox with microcomputers. Chances the person reading this has microcomputers embedded in your own flesh, keeping your heart on the beat, distributing medicine, monitoring your whereabouts. If you don’t yet, it will be offered to you if you live long enough. Even Google has managed to discover the Holy Grail of marketing – it knows what you want even better than you do, even before you do. You, little buddy, have become a Product. You are Google’s product, not the information you search for, which from Google’s view is only a means to an end.

There’s another technology based on Cave Man Values in Mortal Engine which is at the heart of the story. I’m a guy writing this. You ladies reading this, prepare your eyes to roll. Got them ready? Listen. There are two things every man secretly believes he’s very good at.

Everyman believes he’s a great car driver.

Every man believes he’s a great cocksman in bed.

I will pause for you ladies to roll your eyes. Tell me when I can continue.

Okay, now chew on this. Everyone thinks they’re a great driver. Here comes a technological achievement which can drive way better than you.

What if there were a technological achievement that could fuck better than you?

Way better than you?

Okay, so Google knows what you want before you want it. Here’s the Holy Grail of Sex for guys at least, maybe ladies too – what if you could custom design your lover? Design the contours and proportions of her body. Her kinks and desires, and shall we say – appetites? Design her temperament and even her attitude towards you? What if a corporation, one who specializes in providing the brothel experience of very high functioning sexual surrogate androids just gave you a menu and you could build for yourself the man or woman you’ll be spending the night with? It’s an interesting thought experiment. Try it sometime. You’ll learn something about yourself.

Now here’s another rub. Computers are powerful calculators, but calculation does not equal thinking. It doesn’t make for creativity or responding to unfamiliar situations and improvisation. It doesn’t equal emotion. Computers and the robots they run follow pre-programmed scripts and are not even as adaptable as a backyard insect. The holy grail of Artificial Intelligence is to map out genuine consciousness and catch it in a bottle. To create that artificial being who feels and thinks and decides, not just calculating, but who achieves consciousness. Scientists like Ray Kurtzweil firmly believe we’ll see this in our lifetimes as well.

So back to Cave Man Values, and one thing Neolithic men and women valued very much on those long nights around the camp fire before cable TV was sex. Jump to the future. For a price you have the woman of your lushest and most forbidden desires, but what if the technology behind her has achieved what Kurtzweil calls “The Singularity”, that moment when calculation becomes conscious, when Pinocchio becomes a real boy, when autonomous becomes rebellious, and a state of the art sexbot becomes capable of feeling what an abused woman in a brothel might also feel? And you happen to be her john on the awful night when she decides to do something very, very rash about it?

My other novella, The Color of the Moon, though it takes place in Japan’s feudal past about 1180 AD, touches on Cave Man Values as well. Jump to the past. Along with boffing your mate, another favorite activity around the Neolithic fire was listening to the tribal shaman tell stories of the local gods and spooky spirits of the other world. When you think about it fiction’s least respected genres are also the most ancient and enduring, which is to say sexy love stories and horror stories.

Every culture with a long history has its own canon of traditional ghost stories passed generation to generation of wide eyed kids sitting at the knees of grandmothers on stormy nights. In Japan these stories are collectively referred to as “Kwaidan”. Kwaidan go back literally thousands of years, and over time became enshrined as classical Kubuki and Noh plays. In recent years with the advent of Japanese cinema the great Kwaidan have found new life in modern settings and been recast by American directors in our own image. You’ve probably been watching Kwaidan stories without knowing it. Stories such as “The Tale of Yuki-onna”, a vampire story predating Dracula by a thousand years showed up in our theatres in “Tales from The Hood”. “Yoshitoki Okiku”, an ancient story of a young woman who is drowned in a well became “Ju-On” which was recast in America as “The Ring”.

The Color of the Moon is an erotic romance riff on the most notorious of all Kwaidan tales: “Mimi nashi Hoichi” or literally “Hoichi the Earless”. Imagine an erotic romance of, say, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and you’ll get an idea of it.

It’s important to note here, that this story was the beginning of my fruitful personal and creative relationship with your host Lisabet Sarai. When I first showed up at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association as a raw beginner, hers was the first name I recognized. I felt as though I were in the presence of erotica royalty and I was much intimated. But I had this story I had been working on and it gave me a reason to approach her. We grabbed onto each other right off and never let go. I owe her more than I can repay.

The Color of the Moon loosely follows the narrative structure of Hoichi the Earless. The main character in my story is a Biwa Hoshi named Shoji. A “biwa” is a big Japanese lute with silk strings ceremonially played with a large tortoise shell plectrum. You can get a variety of sounds and moods from it. A Hoshi is a traveling Buddhist priest and story teller. So a Biwa Hoshi is a traveling priest who chants and sings epic poems accompanying himself on a biwa.

My priest Shoji goes on a pilgrimage to Agame no Seki, site of one of the great sea battles of Japan’s history in which the Taira clan was overcome forever by the Genji clan which became the beginning of the period of the great samurai Shogunates of Japan. Shoji finds himself summoned by a black armored samurai officer to play for a mysterious court woman who is far more than she seems. Ichinori, a local exorcist arrives to cleanse the area of the murderously resentful ghosts of the Taira and Shoji soon finds himself drawn down a path of passion and madness where the dreams of the lonely living cross over the dreams of the lonely dead.

There are ideas in this story too, but of a different calling than Mortal Engines. For history buffs, this is well crafted historical fiction. Along with my own research I received a great deal of help from a woman in Miyazaki Japan who was an expert on the culture of Kwaidan and the history of Agame no Seki. The elements of setting in the story are historically accurate. Not a bamboo bucket or honorific title out of place. Mortal Engines asks what is consciousness? What defines when a level of intelligence crosses over into a soul? The Color of the Moon deals with the great questions of good and evil, and karma and spiritual pride.

But of course for the cave men and women in all of us, love and passion are the greatest Cave Man Values of all.

If I've intrigued you, you can buy Mortal Engines and Color of the Moon from Whiskey Creek Press.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: At this particular time in a wandering, often bizarre and unexpected life, C. Sanchez-Garcia is living quietly in eastern Georgia, where the size of his personal library is bursting the walls of his little house. He stubbornly believes in passion, God, sensuality and spirituality, and that a good love story is life's finest medicine for melancholy. He is the author of the erotic novellas Mortal Engines and the Color of the Moon. Several of his stories have been published in the Mammoth Book of Erotica and Coming Together anthologies as well as the Erotica Readers and Writers Association's online gallery and permanent archives. If you would like to meet the author you will find him on Facebook and at the Oh, Get a Grip! writer's blog where Sanchez-Garcia's blog appears hell or high water every Wednesday.

Stories of Our Fathers

By C. Sanchez-Garcia (Guest Blogger)

My son knows I read erotica, much more than that he knows I write erotica, stories that I won’t let him read just yet. I suppose by the time he’s old enough to read his old man’s stuff he probably won’t want to. Or more like he won’t make it past the first few pages before he snaps the book closed and sneers “Gross!” I don’t think my stories are all that gross if you like that kind of thing as much as I do, but what’s gross is the realization your parents are aware of sex. Reading of the act of sex in all its mammalian sweaty stickiness, and souls wrestling in the torment of passion, knowing it emerged from the keyboard tapped by the fingertips of your old man, like evil rays emanating from the fingers of the Emperor Palpatine is just . . . eewww.

But Luke - I’m your father.

Theoretically we know that one night exactly the number of your present years plus nine months or so ago your father knelt over your mother, naked, tumescent and demanding, hungry eyed and primitive as a rampant chimpanzee, and your mother, the one who cooked your dinner and scolded you off to church, who wept when you graduated high school, that woman, rejoiced at having her clothes yanked from her and body spread out nude and eager on the bed while this hovering beast nipped her neck, suckled her nipples and then shoved it right in, unhh! and together launched you into this veil of tears on a celestial fanfare of squealing bed springs, masculine grunts and low feminine groans.

Unless of course, as you suspect, you were immaculately conceived of a virgin in which case you really should aspire to a much higher calling than this one.

Try as I might, grimly at best, I can't imagine my father with a hard on. I can't imagine my mother nude, much less sexually excited. I never saw my father read pornography, much scarcer to come by in his day, and I never saw my mother, who disliked being touched, read a romance novel. She preferred history and crime fiction, and finally at the end as she descended into paranoid fantasies, nothing at all.

My father, always a well read man, when he divorced my mother had a "hippie pad" as he called it, well stocked with the books he'd been uncomfortable to read before when we were around. It was his time of busting out. Scanning his bookshelves I came across Henry Miller and Lenny Bruce for the first time and without hesitation he explained to me who and what they were and even allowed me to borrow and take them home. For intellectual wannabes, explaining Henry Miller to his son would have been the equivalent of taking him on his first mastodon hunt.

I’m not sure why it’s hard to think of our parents in this way or to write of them in this way. I don’t know if it bounces up against incest or what, but there is something definitely cringe worthy of it. The only instance I know of is Anais Nin writing in her endless diaries of her incestuous relationship with her father, whom she had hardly known otherwise as a father. In the end it’s easier to think of them like Barbie and Ken dolls, which, when nude, have nothing so much as a plastic bulge down there.

Sex and story have always been a part of our story telling tradition. As soon as human beings came across the notions of making things from other things, and then making representative art they began making erotic art. There are stone sculptures of huge breasted women, at least one cave painting of an immense cave woman straddling her lover from above. Our earliest Biblical stories, the ones you don’t hear in Sunday school, tell of King David falling in lust with married Bathsheba while seeing her bathe in the nude on a rooftop and then sending her husband Uriah to the front lines to expediently die in battle. Or of Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and committing incestuous acts with their father to make sure the blood line of their family would go unbroken. Joseph being sent to prison for refusing to have an affair with the Pharaoh’s wife. These stories mean more to me than the prophets, because these are the human stories that tell me that even if civilization changes, people are still much the same.

I’m not sure our kids will ever read our stuff, or even if they should. That’s part of the price you pay for suiting up for this game. In our many dialogues and noodlings, I've often said to Lisabet that we don’t choose the genre we write in. The genre chooses us. The book is the boss. Any story can be just a little deeper just as any person can be deeper if you allow yourself to know them. The great writers weren't any smarter than the rest of us; they were more persistent lovers of the story. They looked deeper and then looked again, the difference between making love or just passing a quick hand over life. The story is always deeper than we know.

Bio: At this particular time in a wandering, often bizarre and unexpected life, C. Sanchez-Garcia is living quietly in eastern Georgia, where the size of his personal library is bursting the walls of his little house. He stubbornly believes in passion, God, sensuality and spirituality, and that a good love story is life's finest medicine for melancholy. He is the author of the erotic novellas Mortal Engines and the Color of the Moon. Coming Together Presents C. Sanchez-Garcia compiles some of his best short work, in a charity anthology whose proceeds benefit the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Several of his stories have been published in several volumes of the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica and Coming Together anthologies as well as in the Erotica Readers and Writers Association's online gallery and permanent archives. If you would like to meet him, you will find him on Facebook and at the Oh, Get a Grip! writer's blog where Sanchez-Garcia's blog appears hell or high water every Wednesday.

Colors of the Moon

By C. Sanchez-Garcia (Guest Blogger)

Stories of strange love from Whiskey Creek Torrid.

Buy Now!

“Kwaidan” are a great tradition in Japan. These are ancient ghost stories, which are passed down from generation to generation, embodied in Noh and Kubuki plays, and lately in modern Japanese Horror cinema such as “The Ring”. The most famous of all the traditional kwaidan-shu is the tale of “Mimi Nashi Hoichi” or “Hoichi the Earless”. This is the story of a buddhist monk who sings and chats stories accompanied by the Biwa, a Japanese lute. Hoichi encounters the restless dead and barely escapes with his life. I love these old stories and was determined to write a series of erotic folk tales from Asia and other countries, and the novella “The Color of the Moon” is the eroticized retelling of this most cherished of all Japanese ghost stories.

Blurb

In Sanchez-Garcia’s first book of stories, love takes strange and deadly twists of passion and madness for a musician-monk and a lonely noble woman in eleventh-century Japan; and in the near future, where a man seeks a last chance at redemption with a desperate machine built for love.

Excerpt

Shoji stood up and held out his arms. Hirome inventoried her work, taking time to touch up spaces she had missed. Shoji had become a living text of sutras. His shaved head was covered in the words of the Lotus Sutra, in Kanji she didn’t know how to read. His ears, neck, throat, shoulders and shaved arms were filled with marching rows of stark images. His back, waist, ribs, chest and belly. The backs of his legs. His round strong buttocks, she had taken her time with those. The insides of his thighs. His ankles. His feet. She turned him around.

“How do I look?”

“Like a strong and beautiful book,” said Hirome. “You make me wish I knew how to read.”

“Would you like to learn?”

“Oh, yes.”

“When this is over, I can teach you. But it will take time.”

“It’s all right if it takes time. You can stay here longer, as long as you want,” she said, caressing the Kanji paintings on his chest. “I don’t want you to leave. If you stay, I’ll paint you this way every year in remembrance.”

Shoji noticed his cock beginning to swell and rise again as she touched her work on his skin. It had not been painted yet. “I think there is one place left.”

She stepped back and looked down. “Oh!”

“Can you?”

“You could if you wanted to.”

“I like it when you write it. I don’t wish to embarrass you, but anyway it’s easier to paint it when it’s stretched out hard.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, Ichinori said we must cover everything.”

She kneeled down in front of him. His thick and risen cock was level with her face. She cradled it gently in her fist and gave it a little squeeze. Shoji sighed and closed his eyes, and let it rise freely as it wished. She caressed it to make it stretch out all the way, fully strong and hard. She began to paint.

Shoji felt the intolerable tickling of the brush along the tip of his cock, and her fingers handled it lovingly, wantonly, painting the tip, until it swelled and reddened under her brush. And then the shaft, pulling on the skin like silk over warm steel, to tighten it as she worked. She painted down to the root, stroking it lightly to keep it stiff, blowing on it to make the ink dry faster. She painted the root of it, where the hair had been shaved away. She cradled his balls, pulled them down to stretch the skin taught and painted all of it. She painted under them.

“Oh look,” she said. “I painted this part wrong.” She rubbed the tip of his cock vigorously with her hand, and seeing the ink remained, she placed it in her mouth and licked off the ink. She looked up at him intently as his knees sagged and he moaned. “There. It’s off now.” She spat out the ink.

Holding his hardened cock firmly in her fist, she painted the characters again. “Oh, another mistake.” She took it in her mouth and licked off the ink again.

Bio: At this particular time in a wandering, often bizarre and unexpected life, C. Sanchez-Garcia is living quietly in eastern Georgia where his personnel library is bursting the walls of his little house. He stubbornly believes in passion, god, sensuality and spirituality and that a good love story is life’s finest medicine for melancholy.

He is the author of the erotic novellas Mortal Engines, and the Color of the Moon, and the anthology Coming Together Presents C. Sanchez-Garcia. Several of his short stories have been published in the “Mammoth Book of Erotica” series and the “Coming Together” anthology series, as well as in the Erotica Readers and Writers online gallery and permanent archives. If you would like to meet the author you will find him on Facebook as Christobal Sanchez-Garcia and at the Oh Get a Grip writers blog where Sanchez-Garcia’s blog appears hell or high water every Wednesday.

Book Lust

A few days ago I received a thoughtful crit from my friend and fellow blogger, C. Garcia-Sanchez. I have never met Garce, but we've had long, deep email conversations -- the sort of conversations one normally gets into around two in the morning after you've drunk most of a bottle of vodka. Although our lives have been radically different, and our approaches to writing could hardly be less similar, I still think that we are kindred spirits.

Anyway, I had asked him to read my current WIP, a science fiction M/M erotic romance. He's even more of a scifi fan than I am and I knew he'd offer some great insights on what was and was not working in my fictional world, a near-future dystopia in which persecution of gay men has risen to new heights. I was not disappointed.

" Let me pontificate annoyingly about sci fi for a second," he began. "Just roll your eyes and indulge me because I don't get to talk about these wonderful things very often and I may accidentally say something useful in my kitchen sink rambling."

Then he began making distinctions between hard and soft sci fi, invoking Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury and triggering all sorts of recollections of books that I'd read and that I wanted to bring to the discussion.

I started to write a response, my mind crowded with Kate Wilhelm, Sherri S. Tepper, James Tiptree, and all the other authors I planned to mention. I realized suddenly that I was incredibly excited by this interaction. The thrill of sharing books and the ideas behind them was not all that different from sexual arousal. Not that I had the physical reactions, of course, but I understood that I was in the grip of "book lust". And I knew that Garce felt it too.

I've always loved to read. As a shy child and teenager, I'd disappear into the worlds of my books for hours at a time. Even when I emerged, to do the dishes or my homework, my mind still wandered through Middle Earth, or Holmes' London, or the dank corridors of Chateau D'If. Back then, however, reading was a solitary activity (though I adored writing term papers in literature class, having the opportunity to dig really deeply into an author's work and then try to articulate my insights -- even if only to the teacher).

Now that I am an author and a reviewer, I have more opportunities to share my views of books with others. Unfortunately it's often a one-sided conversation. Right now I'm halfway through one of the most intriguing and enjoyable books I've read in quite a while: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, by Gordon Dalquist. I normally read in bed, after the day's work is done. I've been staying up 'way past my normal bedtime (and paying the price the next day), entranced by this 750 plus page opus. I'm loving every minute but already preparing myself for the inevitable let-down when there are no more pages to turn.

Yes, once again, I'm seriously in the grip of book lust. And I'm suddenly inspired to actually make use of that Goodreads account I created but have never really explored. I'm a bit worried though, that it might become addictive.

I've felt this sort of excitement all my life -- I just never labeled it before. I suppose there's nothing wrong with book lust. It presumably won't get me arrested, or pregnant. Still, I wonder whether, like all sorts of desire, it might not be a bit dangerous...

Searching for Nixie

By C. Sanchez-Garcia (Guest Blogger)

Consider the handiwork of God;

Who can straighten what He has made crooked?

-- Ecclesiastes 7:13

The Lady and the Unicorn

“ . . . Blood has a range of taste, as scent has a range of aromas. Blood has a high level taste and an under taste. It is a blending of elements like music. This is also the way of scent. The under aroma tells you there is a trail and betrays to you the direction. If the scent becomes fresher you are following the creature that produced it, so you must use the under scent to know which direction is older and which is newer. It is as though the air were filled with singing voices and you are picking out from the choir the sound of a single voice. The high scent will tell you the individual, the condition of the individual, if it is injured or sick, horny or filled with fear. It will tell you how to catch him, where he is likely to run to. To acquire the high scent the animal, or myself, must pause to commune with the air and pay attention. Close the eyes. Hold the nose still and just so. Let the night air speak. It is the same with the deep taste of blood, except that scent is on the move, and if you are tasting the blood – well. It is no longer on the move. . . ."

The bookstore. Pushing the doors, rushing to get in. Surrounded by books. That's where the feast is, dining with pencil and yellow pad. Keeping the faith. Surrounded by the chatter of people. Keeping my vigil. It’s a magician’s workshop here in this bookstore. I open a book on a table describing a mysterious religious figure held political prisoner who refuses to talk and people begin mysteriously dying. I make a mental note of that. Another book – a man in a midnight forest, being run to ground by the shape shifter at his heels. Plunging through the dark running for his life in the high moonlight, running across a wide open field wailing like a fool. I make note of that. A man on an island vacation with his wife, but they’re not alone in the hotel. An invisible lost soul seems to be in the bed with them. I make a note of that.

I'm searching for Nixie.

I feed my head, stuff snapshots of scenes and premises and ideas and file them away in there. Cram them in, stomp them down. A compost of words. A mulch of emotions. Soon - very soon - when the time is ready, something good is going to sprout there. That is my faith, like a farmer watching over his spring field waiting, as much as any religious person ever believed he could move a mountain, I have faith in the story fairy slumbering in the back of my mind.

Somewhere out there, a desperately lonely vampire girl is waiting for me. She is waiting to explain her life to me.

I am searching for Nixie.

Nixie is weeping blood tears for me to find her, to run to her. To hear her confession.

Nixie is not searching for me. Nixie has faith too, faith that I will find her when the time is right.

This is how it works.

The first paragraph you've read here is the opening paragraph of a part of an episodic novel. It’s an episodic novel by default, a collection of stories adding up to a larger story. I started my writing life four years ago with something called "Nixie in Love". It was a short story about a German-born vampire girl in a BDSM relationship with a mortal man. They understand each other and they love each other. The man is trying to help her work through her addiction, not only to blood but to killing. That was the story that introduced me to Nixie. And then I forgot all about her.

I wrote a story about an illegal Mexican immigrant crossing a railroad yard late at night. He's obsessively afraid of the dark. And then he starts singing to get his panic under control. And then - a voice in the dark begins singing back to him. In German! My forgotten vampire girl has showed up to make his troubles much worse. I hadn't planned for that.

That is when writing is fun. That is when it soars, when you surprise yourself. When a character you’d forgotten comes up behind you and covers your eyes with her icy bloodless hands.

"Guess who, leibling."

I like that story. There was another, a short story about a priest who hears a confession one night from a girl claiming to be a vampire. He doesn’t believe her even when she vanishes mysteriously. Then she shows up on his doorstep.

It was about this time my mentor Lisabet drew my attention to the fact that a trend was developing. "If you arrange these in some kind of order, you’re not that far from having a novel." I wrote a fourth story "The Lady and the Unicorn" linking the stories I had together. But now I needed one more, the story of Nixie's origin, the story that would begin the others. I had written a novel backwards. Now I need the beginning, and so far it has eluded me.

I am searching for Nixie.

Somewhere out there is a story I haven’t discovered yet. Somewhere a seed hasn't sprouted yet. I keep feeding and watering my head, waiting for that moment when my revelation will appear like an angel with a trumpet. I'm not in a hurry. Waiting is delicious, like lying in bed with a lover, waiting for the touch that you know is coming that will set you on fire. Preparation is delicious, like scattering rose petals on the clean sheets.

I watch the old horror movies on TV, such as "Dracula's Daughter" and I am searching for Nixie in the wide and tormented eyes of Countess Zaleska as she pines for release. Is that how Nixie feels? Is it a curse? How did she get such a curse? Why doesn’t she tell me?

She would say she was betrayed, she would say this is not what she wanted. But how? And then the connection is dropped. I sit with her in a bar and she watches me drink a beer. My pallid German girl sips hers, only tasting it. Tell me, I beg her. How did this happen to you? She excuses herself and steps outside, a small beautiful doll, a fatal marionette going out into the dark alone. This big man with Nazi tattoos has been eyeing her all night and follows her outside. An hour passes and she hasn't returned. A sound of approaching sirens. Blue lights flashing in the distance coming down the highway fast. They must have found the man where she left him.

I think it must be like this for many writers. Like a pregnant woman. You feel the life inside you, moving, becoming independent, dreaming. Perhaps the unborn is dreaming about whatever past life it has arrived from. Maybe dreaming of nothing, enjoying its quiet oblivion. But its time is coming and the peaceful time will be over.

A book of women's erotica. I take it from the shelf and thumb through it, snatching at paragraphs and sentences. A woman with a strange fetish, who likes to lie nude on a mortuary slab as her lover pulls the sheet away from her face. Would Nixie do that? Would that game turn her on? Is Nixie afraid of death? Is that what happened to her?

I am searching for Nixie.

Snacking on novels and stories about the undead and the spiritually lost. Looking for kindred souls. A conversation on a bus. A preacher on the radio. Another writing exercise, another experiment. Another act of faith leading no where, like an unanswered prayer. This is how novels are written sometimes. Not born fully formed, but half born, still born, often aborted. Love making late at night with keyboard and coffee, with the will and the passion of language, trying again, again the fertile swelling and the anticipation. And the pain of the miscarriage, of the idea that goes nowhere.

You’re out there in the dark Nixie, and I will find you. Maybe you're wandering in some German forest at midnight, or crossing a lonely parking lot or rail yard in the dark or waking from a nightmare of love making with the dead. I will find you.

Wait for me, Nixie. Be faithful.

I will be with you soon. Then we'll talk.

I am coming.