Review Tuesday: Mind Games by Cecilia Tan - #pnr #BDSM #ReviewTuesday

Mind Games by Cecilia Tan

Second edition, Self-published, 2018

Even as a child, Wren had unusual abilities. Sometimes she could sense the future. Sometimes she seemed to hear people’s thoughts. Sometimes her intuition told her things she couldn’t possibly know. Despite her talents, though, she didn’t foresee the tragic death of her parents—a lapse her younger sister Abby has never forgiven.

As an adult, Wren lives a deliberately quiet and solitary life, with her gay neighbor Lawrence as her only real friend. Her attempts to find romance and sexual satisfaction have failed miserably. She has closed herself off, body and mind, afraid of where her psychic powers might lead her. When Abby disappears, though, Wren is forced to act. She enlists the services of private investigator Derek Chapman, who discovers Abby may be associated with a shadowy sex club which has turned up in his research about another missing woman.

Wren and Derek try to keep their relationship professional, but neither can ignore the strong attraction that draws them together. In fact, when they are aroused, they can read each other’s minds. Even as the couple tentatively explores their sexual and emotional connection, Wren is plagued by mysterious erotic dreams involving a seductive, invisible man, and stalked by a shy but persistent stranger from work. Wren senses that the man who has invaded her dreams is connected with the sex club, but when she visits there during the day to ask about Abby, she doesn’t expect to be kidnapped, bound and ravished by multiple people.

Mind Games is a hot paranormal erotic romance with BDSM overtones. Wren is a strong and believable character, psychically precocious and sexually inexperienced, treading water in her life so she can avoid the depths of pain and uncertainty that lie below the surface. Derek is somewhat less compelling, a bit too good to be true with his sensitivity, his consideration and his big cock. The author tried to provide him with some tragic back story, but for some reason I wasn’t convinced by his fears and insecurities. As for Evan, the dream stalker, he’s revealed so late in the tale that there’s no time to really understand or appreciate him. I would have liked to know more about him and his psychically-marked crew, and especially, how Wren fit into their society.

Cecilia Tan has a gift for writing complex, intense, deeply arousing sex scenes, a gift definitely on display in Mind Games. She understands how imagination, emotion and trust ultimately determine the level of eroticism in an experience. When you can read your lover’s thoughts, when you know almost before he does what he craves—and vice versa—of course sex is going to be mind-blowing. I loved the sex in this novel, especially the gradual progression as Derek prepares the essentially virginal Wren, over multiple sessions, for his ultimate penetration. There might be nothing as hot as delayed gratification.

Nevertheless, again and again, I felt that the author was holding back. She toys with BDSM symbols and themes, but never lets herself really explore the power exchange dynamic hidden in this tale. I know this isn’t because of her own personal reticence; nobody writes more convincing and visceral BDSM than Cecilia Tan. I have to assume she wasn’t sure how romance readers would react if she set her imagination free.

The ebook I read includes a several page preview from Ms. Tan’s upcoming book Initiates of the Blood. This graceful, intense, stunningly erotic flogging scene offered a sharp contrast to Mind Games. Of course, Mind Games is a relatively early book for this author, possibly even her first romance after focusing mostly on speculative erotica. Her more recent romances in the Secrets of a Rock Star series show much greater confidence in mingling happily-ever-after with BDSM. I guess even stellar authors like Cecilia Tan improve over time.

In any case, Mind Games is well worth the read, an intelligent, arousing story that will please most fans of paranormal erotic romance.

Review Tuesday: Hard Rhythm by @CeciliaTan (#review #rockstar #kink)

Hard Rhythm by Cecilia Tan

Forever – Hachette Group, 2017

Madison Rofel knows her way around a dungeon. A kink club hostess and a sex toy blogger, she’s red-haired and voluptuous, quick-witted and sharp-tongued, ready to top or bottom as the occasion requires. Certainly she’s never been the type to fall at a man’s feet. She’s curious about Chino Garcia, the heavily-inked drummer for rock band The Rough, but she finds his cocky self-confidence annoying. So when he saunters into The Governor’s Club and challenges her to an endurance contest involving a studded leather paddle, she jumps at the chance to put him in his place.

Chino’s had his eye on Madison for a while. His band mates Axel and Mal are coupled with the club’s owners, Ricki and Gwen Hamilton, but Chino’s always been a bit of a loner. His easy smile hides the pain of his difficult past. Being with Madison, though, somehow makes him feel comfortable and in control.

Hard Rhythm is the third volume in Cecilia Tan’s Secrets of a Rock Stars series. As soon as the novel was released, I badgered the publisher for a review copy, because I enjoyed the first two books so much.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of erotic fiction involving power exchange. I know of few authors who can capture the complex dynamics of a D/s relationship with the skill of Cecilia Tan. She writes with subtlety and insight, revealing important truths about BDSM. Each kinky relationship is as different as the individuals involved. Honest communication is the key to making BDSM work. And when it does work, there’s nothing hotter—or more profound.

The novel kicks off with an intensely arousing scene between Madison and Chino, and doesn’t let up. Vibrators and sex videos, play parties at secluded bungalows, bondage, spankings, blindfolds and mind games—if you’re looking for erotic excitement, you will not be disappointed by Hard Rhythm. At the same time, this book is a convincing and satisfying romance. All the sexual experimentation flows from the protagonists’ efforts to know one another. They’re drawn to one another but despite their undeniable chemistry, each has trouble being truly open.

The conflicts keeping Madison and Chino apart aren’t as dramatic as the obstacles faced by Gwen and Mal in the previous book (Wild Licks). The emotional highs and lows are not as extreme. The kink is gentler, too. Chino’s a Dom, but not a dedicated sadist, and Maddie’s not your typical slave. I loved watching them discover the unique shape of their personal D/s connection. The message comes through loud and clear. Nobody can tell you what it means to be kinky. You have to find that out by yourself, with the right partner—someone you can trust.

One complaint sometimes leveled at BDSM by the uninitiated is that it’s nothing more than thinly disguised abuse. Hard Rhythm confronts this belief head on by showing readers what a real abusive relationship looks like—a stark contrast to Chino’s and Maddie’s loving, consensual kink.

There are lots of reasons to read this book: for arousal, for the romance, to appreciate Ms. Tan’s adeptness with words and images. But there’s also a powerful message here. Readers whose main acquaintance with BDSM is through FSOG will find Hard Rhythm something of an education.

Review Tuesday: White Flames by Cecilia Tan (#erotica #fantasy #lgbtq)

White Flames: Erotic Dreams by Cecilia Tan

Running Press, 2008

ISBN 978-0-78672-080-4

Hallelujah! That was my cry after reading the first two stories in Cecilia Tan's single-author collection WHITE FLAMES. Needless to say, my husband, reading in bed next to me, was a bit startled. When I explained, though, he understood completely.

With review commitments to several venues, regular crits for colleagues, plus a personal predeliction for erotica, I probably read a dozen erotic short stories a month. Most of these stories are adequate: reasonably well-written, moderately engaging, mildly arousing. Rarely do I encounter stories that I consider exceptional, stories that excite me in a literary rather than a physical sense.

What does it take for me to be excited by a story? Each case varies, but I look for an original premise, a unique voice, unconventional characters, and most of all, a treatment of sex more as an emotional or spiritual adventure than as a conjunction of body parts.

I'm delighted to report that, by my definition, many of the tales in Cecilia Tan's collection are exceptional.

Ms. Tan has a reputation for "speculative erotica", erotic fantasy and science fiction. It's easy to be original, one might argue, when one can build one's own worlds and write one's own rules. Yet almost half of the stories in WHITE DREAMS are contemporary erotica, with barely a whiff of fantasy.

Among my favorites is "Just Tell Me the Rules". A woman who is saving her virginity for marriage sends her housemate/fiance off on a business trip, only to have his best friend arrive at her door, a challenge to what she thought she wanted. Another delight is "Always", a down-to-earth tale of a loving threesome that begins with a scene all too familiar from my days in New England:

A raw spring day in Somerville, me in galoshes and a pair of my father's old painting pant with a snow shovel, cursing and trying to life a cinderblock-sized (and -weighted) chunk of wet packed snow off the walkway of our three-decker.

Vivid and concrete one moment, Ms. Tan can wax tender and raunchy the next:

Morgan's hands travel up my thighs like they come out of a dream. It never occurs to me to stop her. Sex with Morgan is as easy and natural as saying yes to a bite of chocolate from the proffered bar of a friend. Before her fingers even reach the elastic edge of my panties I am already shifting my hips, already breathing deeper, already thinking about the way her fingers will touch and tease me, how one slim finger will slide deep into me when I am wet, how good it feels to play with her hair on my belly, how much I want her. With Morgan, I always come.

Then there's "Baseball Fever", Ms. Tan's hilarious and highly explicit fantasy about a Yankee rookie for whom she has the hots: "This guy's got destiny. He fits right in with multi-ethic New York, too - half-black, half-white, cannily polite with the media but cocky as hell when he gets on the field." I'm not much of a sports fan, but when Tan brought Tiger Woods into the final scene of the fantasy, "just to make sure it's not 100% percent heterosexual", I laughed until my stomach hurt.

At first glance, one might dismiss "Halloween" as an instance of the overworked "girl meets dominant man of her dreams in a bar" genre. Tan brings new life to the old scenario, partly due to the kick-ass attitude of the world-weary Goth narrator. "The Hard Sell" is a tale of a modern woman longing to escape from the labels and slogans that society applies to everything and everyone around her - including the man who drives her into a frenzy.

Although WHITE FLAMES includes some excellent realistic pieces, I must admit that myth and magic lie at its heart. The middle hundred pages of the book are devoted to fantasy, starting with a stunningly erotic retelling of "The Little Mermaid" then flowering into more original tales. In "Bodies of Water", a team of archeologists discover an ancient ship on the floor of the Mediterranean. The discovery transforms them, both literally and figuratively. "Dragon's Daughter" is a fascinating tale of a Chinese-American girl who learns that she's an immortal who can travel through time and space to anywhere Chinese culture dominates.

This is the ignominy of the American educational system: that to speak the tongue of my ancestors I had to fight to be enrolled in a special college class and trudge to it every morning at 8:00. I didn't think I knew the words to explain what I was doing there, anyway... I had no words yet for worry or conflict or secret or dream.

Three amazing stories featuring the same characters - Stormclaw and The Lady in Black - conclude this section. Like so many characters in the today's wildly popular "paranormal" genre, Stormclaw and the Lady are "elementals" - creatures of wind and fire and earth. They are not just people with special powers, however. They are truly inhuman, incomprehensible to and uncomprehending of the mortals among whom they move. They are drawn to human passion, yet do not understand it.

These stories are lyrical and intense, strange and haunting.

He flies. He flies over clouds as dark as his hair, his eyes, his mood, as he thinks about her. Stormclaw is the dragon of the wind, coiling his power like a cyclone, soaring over night sky, moving eastward like a front of incipient weather. He sees without eyes, senses without skin, when he is the wind, considers without thought, and loves without a heart.

Stormclaw haunts seedy bars, taunting the men who drink there, trying to remember what it is that he seeks.

Stormclaw feels the first strike of the leather cat-o-nine cross his back like the first bite into a sour summer fruit, a rich and intense pleasure. He draws breath waiting for the next blow to fall, and as he exhales he feels Ravenhair's breath on his shoulder--they are like one animal, tensing and then letting go, and then gathering themselves again. Breathe in, tense for the strike, then let go as the pain rains down around you.

One of the delightful aspects of this collection is its inclusiveness. These stories embrace all orientations, without self-consciousness or politicizing. WHITE FLAMES offers FF, MM, FMF, and FFF tales, not to mention sexually-aware mermaids and robots. In Ms. Tan's worlds, desire is a universal force, not confined to any particular gender or even species.

The book ends with three science fiction tales, of which the best is "The Spark". What if the magical energy that seems to animate the gods and goddesses of rock and roll was a real, measurable force, that could be stoked, and shared -- and lost?

WHITE FLAMES includes a few stories that are hohum, but Ms. Tan hits the target far more often than she falls short. If you enjoy literary erotica that will make you wonder as often as it makes you sweat, I highly recommend this volume.

Review Tuesday: Like a Thorn (#bdsm #fairytale #anthology @CircletPress)

 

Like a Thorn: BDSM Fairy Tales

Edited by Cecilia Tan and Sarah Desautels

Circlet Press, 2009 

The term "fairy tale ending" has come to signify a happily-ever-after resolution in which the protagonists' dreams are fulfilled. The original versions of classic fairy tales, however, did not necessarily offer such perfect conclusions. Today's kids have grown up with Disney-fied interpretations of Cinderella, Snow White, the Little Mermaid, and Hansel and Gretel, light and airy, where even the villains sing. The stories offered by the Brothers Grimm, on the other hand, were, in fact, frequently--grim. Blood, pain, terror, curses, and above all, ambiguity, characterized these tales, which derived from the ancestral memories of villagers in the gloomy forests of old Europe. The prince might succeed in his quest, but something was always lost on the journey. The heroine might not waken from her hundred year sleep.

In Like a Thorn, editors Cecilia Tan and Sarah Desautels try to tap into the darkness at the heart of many fairy tales. In these stories, the "darkness" results from the more or less perverse desires of the characters. I'm not entirely happy with the equation between BDSM and darkness, but the five authors represented in this book all succeed in integrating a storyline of dominance and submission into the plot of familiar fairy stories. Sometimes the result is a clever romp, an old classic with a naughty twist. In a few cases, the stories cut deeper, exposing desires as twisted as the thorn bushes that overran the walls of Sleeping Beauty's castle.

The most exquisite and disturbing tale in the collection is Shanna Germain's "Skin Deep", a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In this version, Belle is as gorgeous as required but is also a cruel sadist who delights in torturing the gentle, refined Beast. Despite himself, the Beast hungers for her torments, although she repeatedly taunts him, threatening to leave him to the nice young girl who will eventually fall into his clutches and turn him into a pretty, bland, boring Prince.

They say I went willingly, and that part is true. It wasn’t for the rose, or even for the beast though―after all, I hadn’t met him yet. Would I have gone if I’d known what awaited me? Oh yes. Oh yes.

But I went for the stem, the thorns. Strong as a lash, sharp as claws. I bent the long stem of it over and over in my hands, closed my palms on their curved points until they pierced my flesh.

Oh, yes, I went willingly. Wantingly. Wantonly. A thorn in each hand.

Another clouded and moving story is "The Last Mistress of the Chatelaine", a BDSM version of Bluebeard by Kieran Wyn Dewhurst. A plain village maiden is sent to wed a rich nobleman, his seventh wife in as many years. Sophie is not much to look at, but she is clever and bold, by her own admission. She falls in love with her gruff, mostly absent husband and manages to resist the temptation to open the forbidden door that has been the downfall of her predecessors. Then she gives her lord the punishment he craves and allows him to expiate his guilt.

It is a strange thing to look down upon a wretch, a murderer, a drunkard, a heretic, and feel sympathy... yet I do. I do not understand what has taken place here, only that it is certainly not of God’s doing; but to be prevented from confession, from taking Communion, from grace itself does not seem holy to me either.

So vulnerable now, my proud Lord, on his knees in horseshit and straw. I am keenly aware of his need for atonement, and also of my own dark delight at his suffering, both for it and for want of it.

I kneel to face him, pushing the acrid bowl to the side, and place my hands over his.

“Husband. Look at me.”

He lifts his heavy head. I do not see a monster. I see a once-strong man burdened by his own sins, as are all humans. How cruel to make him carry them, unlightened, through his lifetime! His eyes plead with me, wet and aching, for release. My fingers tighten over his; I am filled with resolve, compassion, power... and something less noble.

I will give him what he needs. I will take what I want.

The other three stories in the anthology offer somewhat lighter fare. The brightest is "The Princess and the Peony" by Mercy Loomis. Ms Loomis gives us a princess in thrall to her dominant ladies maid, who has hatched a plot to marry her to a gay prince. In "Cinder Feet", by Mari Ness, Cinderella is the devoted slave of her ravishing step-mother, who allows her to dance at the ball but calls her home by midnight. Cinderella rebels and marries the prince who comes to woo her, only to regret the decision for the rest of her days. Sunny Moraine's "That Wicked Witchcraft" turns Hansel and Gretel into Han and Greta, teen-aged drifters who are caught stealing the witch's stereo. Circe the witch lures them into some pervy sexual adventures, and invites them to stay with her in her house in the woods. Greta , though tempted, declines--but her relationship to the formerly uncomplicated Hans has changed forever.

The stories in this collection more or less fulfill the promise of the introduction. They are original, well-crafted, and varied. All are laced with at least a bit of darkness. My biggest criticism of this collection is that it is too short. This is the second Circlet mini-anthology that I've read, and I gather that the publisher has released a number of others in the same format, with just five or six tales, under one hundred pages. Perhaps shorter works sell better in the e-publishing domain. I don't mind reading a novella at that length. However, I prefer anthologies that offer a wider range of authors, topics and tones. Like a Thorn succeeds in its objectives, but it was over far too quickly. If Circlet can assemble five stories of this quality on this fascinating theme, I suspect that they could have managed ten, fifteen or twenty just as easily. That would have left me far more satisfied.

 

Review Tuesday: Wild Licks by Cecilia Tan (#bdsm #erotica #rockstar @CeciliaTan )

Wild Licks by Cecilia Tan

Forever (Hachette), 2016

Everyone knows that rock star Mal Kenneally never has sex with the same woman twice. Adoring fans of his band The Rough assume this is just part of his brooding, dangerous image, but the true reasons lie far deeper. A confirmed sadist who delights in inflicting pain, Mal is afraid he’ll cause serious damage—physical and psychological—if he allows any woman to get close. Disastrous past relationships have taught him to keep sex superficial and to dismiss his partners after a single encounter, before his insatiable Need takes over.

Gwen Hamilton dreams of becoming an actress. With her wealth and media connections, she could buy her way into show business, but she wants to succeed based on her own talent. Disguised and using an assumed name, she auditions for the part of a punk-inspired wild child, only to be dismissed before the director even listens to her read. On the rebound, she mingles with the groupies at a concert by The Rough and is chosen as Mal’s girl for the evening. She stays in character as Mal takes her, uses her, and gives her the sort of painful pleasure she’d almost given up on ever feeling again.

Mal finds he can’t forget the cheeky but profoundly submissive groupie he calls Excrutia, who sports a “Love Pain” tattoo on the inside of her thigh. As Mal tries to locate her, his publicist insists that the rock star shepherd the beautiful, cultured Gwen to various events, making a foursome with band front man Axel Hawke and his lover, Gwen’s sister Ricki. Gwen’s a good girl, an innocent, or so Mal believes. In her presence, he tries to remain distant and act the part of the gentleman escort, but he’s nearly as fascinated by Gwen as by the mysterious red-headed fan girl.

Eventually, of course, Gwen’s masquerade becomes apparent. By that time, Mal and Gwen have become entangled emotionally and sexually. Mal’s instincts are to leave, to protect the woman he loves from his inner darkness. Gwen, however, is determined to keep him if she possibly can.

I absolutely loved this novel—even more than Taking the Lead, the first book in this series, which I reviewed very favorably earlier this year. It’s intelligent, lively, subtle, deeply romantic and unabashedly kinky. Mal’s an extreme character, but Ms. Tan makes his doubts and his demons mostly plausible. Meanwhile, Gwen is simultaneously an outrageous pain slut and a practical, confident young woman who’s not afraid to fight for what she wants. She demolishes the stereotype of the doormat sub, illustrating that courage, self-love and self-respect lie at the core of true surrender.

Wild Licks is marketed as erotic romance, and it fits all the qualifications of the genre. Still, I’d label it as romantic erotica—not because it’s chock full of deliciously varied, lusciously detailed sex scenes (although it is), but because of its themes. At its heart, Wild Licks revolves around Gwen and Mal coming to terms with their sexual identities. Mal, in particular, struggles to accept his kinky desires. He has difficulty believing that any relationship that satisfies his sadistic urges could possibly be healthy and enduring. Gwen is more pragmatic. She recognizes that she needs what Mal provides. Despite having less experience with kink than Mal, she sees far more clearly that they cannot pretend to be vanilla. The exchanges of power and pain in which they indulge nurture and sustain them both.

Erotica concerns itself with the experience of desire and the way it changes us. Over the course of this novel, Mal and Gwen evolve toward greater understanding of their sexual selves, as well as toward the deeper love and commitment expected of a romance.

Readers who just want a hot story with a HEA about a sexy rock star and his girl will be thoroughly satisfied by Wild Licks. Those who care to look deeper will discover a thoughtful exploration of how kink shapes and challenges those of us who are wired that way.

(Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.)

Review Tuesday Moved to Thursday: Taking the Lead by Cecilia Tan #review #bdsm

Taking the Lead by Cecilia Tan

Forever, 2016

Heiress Ricki Hamilton has it all, or so it would appear: designer gowns, Ivy League degrees, a house-sized wing of her own in the family mansion, a chauffered limo, dozens of staff at her beck and call. She’s as renowned for her icy self-possession as for her intelligence and beauty. But it’s all a mask. Ricki is juggling all sorts of issues. There’s the secret BDSM club in the mansion basement, which her recently deceased grandfather requires she maintain—the global media company she owns but, according to the will, isn’t yet allowed to run—her grandfather’s lecherous, power-hungry second-in-command, who wants to control both her and the corporation—her irresponsible, alcoholic father—the lingering pain of her mother’s death two decades earlier under mysterious, possibly kinky circumstances. Ricki responds to all this pressure by keeping a tight rein on her feelings and shunning publicity.

Then she’s kidnapped by rock star Axel Hawke.

It’s a media stunt, not a real kidnapping, at the Grammy Awards show where Axel’s band The Rough performs their hit “Kidnap My Heart”. Ricki isn’t even supposed to be the victim. When Axel catches sight of her, though, he can’t resist his sudden urge to change the script. Something about the lovely, untouchable heiress speaks to his dominant side. Going purely on instinct, he coaxes Ricki to pleasurable surrender that astonishes them both. The connection between them is too strong, too real to ignore, or so Axel would like to believe. However, despite the way he has touched her—both physically and emotionally—Ricki believes she can’t afford to have the impulsive, media-hungry rock idol in her already-too-complicated life.

This is, of course, a classic romance scenario. No one will be surprised to discover that Axel eventually wins over the reluctant heiress, as well as opening her to her latent submissive urges. It’s so much fun, though, to be taken along for the ride.

Axel is a fabulous hero. The world sees him as a sex god, but in fact he’s a surprisingly humble and down-to-earth guy, who, refreshingly, acts his age (mid twenties). He takes his music seriously; it’s a fundamental part of who he is. Fame is new to him, though he’s having fun with the perqs. He’s astonished when his group wins a Grammy.

After many enjoyable but fleeting encounters with fans, his enduring need for Ricki both surprises and thrills him. As a Dom, he’s delicious, both challenging and cherishing Ricki. I loved the fact that he doesn’t always know what he’s doing, just following his intuitions.

I know BDSM takes people to a lot of places in their heads. There’s no guarantee it’ll go where you want it to, though. It’s like jamming with other musicians. You know basically how the song goes but you get ideas while you’re playing, and you try them out, and if you like how it sounds then you and the people you’re playing with can chase after it. Sometimes the chase takes you down a rabbit hole and sometimes it takes you right back where you started.

This is one of the best comments on how kink works that I’ve ever read.

Ricki’s a bit harder to believe in. I suppose this is partly because I haven’t met many twenty-four year old millionaires. Still, given that she’s a child of the digital age, her fear of the media struck me as somewhat implausible. After the transcendent, cleansing experience of her early encounters with Axel, would a woman in her position really push him away so resolutely? I wouldn’t!

Of course, the plot of a romance requires obstacles. In Ricki’s case, there are so many that it’s difficult to keep track of them—though mostly they reside in Ricki’s mind.

These are quibbles, though. What set this book apart, for me, are the love/sex/kink scenes. Ms. Tan’s descriptions of Axel’s and Ricki’s encounters are more than just incredibly arousing. They’re full of insight, emotional nuances, truths to which I can vouch from personal experience. Ms. Tan understands how power exchange works and she brings that knowledge to the page. She also manages to communicate how dominance and submission can offer not just incandescent pleasure but soul-deep healing. Ricki requires the surrender Axel coaxes from her, to balance the warring factions in her personality and claim the strength to manage her complicated life.

I might not have fully believed in Ricki’s character, but I had no doubts about her connection with Axel. Love, lust and imagination align to provide both characters exactly what they need.

I’ve read, and loved, many of Cecilia Tan’s works in the past, mostly in the speculative fiction, LGBTQ and fantasy genres. Taking the Lead proves that Ms. Tan is equally adept at writing erotic romance.

Metaphor, Reality and Fantasy

By Cecilia Tan (Guest Blogger)

When I first read The Lord of the Rings, in grade school, one of the things that stuck with me was the bit about Frodo's wound. One of the Ringwraiths stabs Frodo in the shoulder early in the story, and because of the cursed nature of the wound, it is said to never truly heal. At the time I only thought of it in literal terms, and was struck by Tolkien's confident use of magic and curses as something his characters had to deal with permanently.

It wasn't until later, after re-reading the series as an adult, as well as some books about Tolkien's life, that I began to see the metaphors in it. Tolkien wrote without a particular political agenda, but the themes of the horrors of war, the loss of farmland to industry, and other issues that parallel his life's experiences are clear enough. And so it struck me that Frodo's wound is something of a unique literary prestidigitation only possible in fantasy. Normally one takes something from real life and makes a metaphor in a story for it. In this case, Tolkien took a metaphorical concept, that of the "wound that could not be healed"--spoken of as the way soldiers who came back from World War I were "scarred for life" psychologically and never able to be happy again--and made it a literal thing in his fantasy book. Frodo bears an actual wound in silence for the rest of his life, and to this day that is still the powerful image that stays with me from the book(s).

So of course I want to emulate the techniques of the masters in my own books. I'm currently in the middle of writing a paranormal fantasy romance series called Magic University. The concept is a bit like Harry Potter for grown-ups. Our main character follows the same literary tradition as Harry, Cinderella, and many others, who discover their magical heritage after being oppressed. This time, it's a college freshman who stumbles on the magical university hidden inside Harvard known as Veritas.

I've got a rather ripe metaphor for the plucking right there. After all, here I have a young person embarking on a grand journey of learning, and also entering adult life for the first time, and so about to learn life's lessons about love, friendship, women, dating, et cetera. But I've made some of it quite literal as the new world that opens up before Kyle's eyes is an actual magical world he hadn't known about before.

And it goes further. As he learns about the various fields of magical study (alchemy, soothsaying, conjuration, and so on) he finds himself drawn to the Esoteric Arts, which is the polite term for erotic magic. So I don't just have him figuring out how sex, love, and attraction works. I have him learning what erotic power really means in his world, and where sex and love intersect.

Ultimately, being a fantasy series, Magic University tells the tale of a quest. But although the series has its share of magic rings and swords, here we move back from the land of the literal to the land of the metaphor. Because Kyle is not on a literal quest--at least not as far as he knows. Here is where we shift from fantasy to the world of romance. Kyle isn't trying to reach a distant mountain or capture a magic flag. But he definitely is on a search for something that is often described in the real world as "magical," namely, true love.

BIO: Cecilia Tan has been writing professionally since she was a teenager, which she definitely isn't, anymore. She is the author of several romances for Ravenous Romance, including her "Harry Potter for adults" the Magic University series and Mind Games, as well as the BDSM sci-fi adventure Royal Treatment just released from Torquere Press. Her literary erotica has been published nearly everywhere. She loves tea, baseball, cats, and books, and more of her thoughts on these and other subjects can be found at her blog: http://blog.ceciliatan.com/.

Buy link: http://www.ravenousromance.com/fantastica/magic-university-the-tower-and-the-tears.php?flypage=0