Review Tuesday: Shadow Hand by Sacchi Green - #superheroine #goddess #ReviewTuesday

Shadow Hand by Sacchi Green

Ylva Publishing, 2018

Lieutenant Athena Ashton and Sergeant Cleo Brown are comrades-in-arms—and much more. On a desert mission with their squad, Cleo deliberately disables their jeep so the two of them can spend some time together. This turns out to be a near-fatal mistake. A dozen jihadis roar up on motorcycles and the two women take shelter in a shallow cave within a ravine, a poor hiding place at best. They’re seconds away from being caught by their pursuers, from likely rape, torture, and death, when the figurine of an ancient goddess falls from the cave roof, drawing blood from Ash’s hand and bestowing telekinetic abilities in the process. Ash has no idea how she manages it, but she brings down the walls of the wadi on one of the enemy, then hurls the jeep into the air and causes it to explode, scaring off the rest.

The initial chapter of Sacchi Green’s novel Shadow Hand hooked me right away. It’s vivid, compelling and a plausible origin story for Ash’s power. Once Ash and Cleo get back to their base camp, though, they’re faced with the core problem of the book. Given that Ash has the power to move things with her mind, including to tear physical things apart, what should she do with these capabilities? And how will her newly acquired powers affect her relationship with Cleo?

I’m not going to tell you the answers to these questions; finding out is part of the fun of reading Shadow Hand. Let me just assure you that Ash and Cleo take on missions you’re not likely to find in a Marvel comic. In the process they discover that Cleo has some unusual talents of her own, which complement Ash’s abilities. They also encounter an assortment of strong, distinctive women, each of whom is heroic in her own way.

Sacchi Green is a friend and colleague of mine. Despite a long and distinguished career as a short-story author and editor, this is her first novel-length work. I know she found the process of writing Shadow Hand difficult, but overall, I think the book is a success. Cleo and Ash are sympathetic and appealing characters, both individually and together. The premise is far more believable than being bitten by a radioactive spider or  exposed to gamma rays. I liked the way the author suggests that psychic or super-normal talents are more widely distributed than one might expect. The link between emotion and power felt right. The villains are more mundane than in the typical super-hero tale, but no less evil. The message is clear; you don’t have to look very far to find a cause to fight for.

The book has some issues with pacing. Although the plot moves along briskly in the first half of the book, it gets a bit bogged down as Ash, Cleo and their allies prepare for their second, more demanding mission. When the final, climactic battle begins, though, the story once again becomes thrilling and inspiring.

Another minor complaint I have concerns the rather awkward depictions of sex. Most of Sacchi’s work that I’ve read would be categorized as lesbian erotica or erotic romance. In Shadow Hand, she makes it clear that Ash and Cleo are lovers, but describes their erotic encounters in rather vague and purplish prose. Reading these scenes, I had the sense that there was a struggle going on, either between the author and her editor, or else between Sacchi’s own erotic instincts and her sense that the book was not supposed to be sexually explicit. In fact, I think the book would have worked well if she’d pushed it in either direction—either toward more graphic and honest depictions of lesbian sex, or toward a completely PG story.

Aside from this issue, Shadow Hand offers a healthy and satisfying hit of romance. I was completely convinced of Cleo’s and Ash’s commitment to one another, a commitment that eventually expresses itself in telepathic connections.

Shadow Hand has a great comic-style cover, but I’m not sure that it really qualifies as a superheroine story. It’s a bit too grounded in reality. That’s fine with me, though. Regardless of the genre, I seriously enjoyed the book, and would be interested in reading more about Ash’s and Cleo’s adventures.

Review Tuesday Moved to Monday: Best Lesbian Erotica V3 - #lesbian #erotica #anthology #ReviewTuesday

Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year: Volume Three edited by Sacchi Green

Cleis Press, 2018

These days, I don’t read many anthologies. In too many cases, I find that erotic short story collections feature one or two gems, surrounded by unremarkable, predictable tales that slip from my memory the minute I put down my e-reader. Anthology stories tend to have a sameness that, quite frankly, bores me. My own long history in erotica is part of the problem, of course. I’ve consumed so many sexy tales in my twenty year erotica career that I’ve become somewhat jaded. I’m difficult to impress.

Best Lesbian Erotica Volume Three turns out to be a welcome exception. Sacchi Green has assembled a dazzling assortment of stories that explore lesbian desire from a wide range of perspectives. Every tale is competently written, and most are arousing, but at least half go way beyond these minimal criteria. To put it colloquially, they knocked my socks off. I’d finish one of these amazing stories, take a deep breath, wait for my heart rate to return to normal–then go back and re-read it.

“Morning Fog” by Scout Rhodes is a case in point. Almost a prose poem, this tale captures a moment in time, celebrating the profound physical and emotional connection between two women with histories and scars.

Here we are, she and I, two old queers who have endured long, curious, circuitous lives that have brought us to this place, this morning, this moment. We’re neither of us gold star anything, having fucked men, women, trans folk, and many, many people between the two of us. We’ve both borne, breastfed, and raised children created the “old-fashioned way,” which makes us pariahs in certain hard-line lesbian circles. We both identified as bisexual in our youth, we’ve both married men in our time, we’ve both been subjected to degradation and abuse at masculine hands, but

now we’re both butch dykes, and we’re both survivors. That’s it— we’re gold star survivors. Isn’t that enough? It sure feels like a lot, after far more than a century of combined years.

Two gold star survivors who found each other in this crazy, neo-fascist cesspool that America has become, and we hold on to each other for dear life while living in the crosshairs.

This story combines tender emotion with raw physicality in a one-two punch that left me dizzy with admiration.

“Where There’s Smoke” by M. Birds, which comes next in the volume, offers a radical contrast in structure and tone. A small-town marijuana vendor finds a new customer, and a new lover, in a crippled city professor who needs the pot for pain relief. June, the dealer, is a practical, no-nonsense woman forced by circumstances to bury her dreams. The social distance between the two women makes their eventual connection all the more intense.

The woman in the woods didn’t shake June’s hand and June noticed the curves of her long fingers, the way they stuck tight together like she was wearing mittens, knuckles round and swollen. “What do you want exactly?”

“I wanted to see . . . ” June paused, chewing her lip. “If there was anything you needed. Kyle said there might be.”

“Kyle from the pharmacy.” Miriam crossed her arms. She glanced back into her cabin, and then out toward the path leading through the woods. “Did you walk here?”

“Yeah. Didn’t take long. I live in the Wander-Inn. I mean, I own it. Or my family does.”

“Is that the one that looks like an Alpine resort? It’s very . . . very, um . . . ”

June laughed and nodded. “Like a time warp, isn’t it? Like someone from the sixties saw one postcard of Switzerland and then dropped acid and thought ‘I should build that.’”

“I was going to say—quaint.”

“Sure you were.”

I’ve rarely read a story by Sommer Marsden that I didn’t love. Her tale “Husher” in this collection is no exception. More light-hearted than the previous stories, the story chronicles the hook-up between a painfully tongue-tied barista and the black-clad hair stylist she’s been crushing on for weeks. Angela, the stylist, seems like the dominant partner in the interaction. But appearances can be deceiving.

One thing that impressed me about this collection is the many varied definitions of “erotic”. In Pascal Scott’s “The Night Shift”, the protagonists – the fifty-something night supervisor of a tour company call center and a lonely woman who mis-dials trying to reach a phone sex line – don’t even meet. Yet this story is just as hot as those that feature much more extended and explicit sex scenes.

An even more extreme example is Xan West’s astonishing piece “Trying Submission”. The point-of-view character is a shy, physically disabled, autistic trans woman of color who somehow summons the courage to ask a trusted acquaintance to top her. For Liliana, every touch is a potential threat, yet she craves the experience of submitting, of being owned and being cherished, of being called “girl” and calling her top “ma’am”. There’s no sex at all in this story, yet I found its emotional depth and honesty beautifully erotic.

Then there’s Raven Sky’s wonderful “Fuck Me Like a Canadian”, which chronicles a steamy affair between a dread-locked Canadian backpacker and an exquisite Moroccan haman attendant.

There is a heat to attraction. An energy. You can feel it. It’s undeniable. This is the last place I expected to feel it. Not least of all because it’s illegal here. Is it punishable by death? I strained to remember my online research predeparture. Morocco. Homosexuality. What did Google have to reveal about that? My mind blanked. Because her hands were on my naked flesh, lathering me in a traditional black olive oil soap. Something in her actions was more than indifferent. Something in her eyes, when they happened to catch mine, was not impersonal.

In Till’s culture, women can play, but penetration is forbidden, the prerogative of some future husband. The constraints only make the characters’ interactions more poignant.

I won’t tell you about every story I loved. I want to leave some discoveries for you to make on your own. However, I have to mention the last story in the collection, Anna Watson’s “Sweet of My Heart”. In this richly imagined and romantic tale, set in Depression Era New York, a penniless dance hall girl falls for one of the “Angels” attending the charismatic preacher who runs a network of soup kitchens. The life experience of Mimi La Rouge and Charmed Soul could hardly be more different, but desire draws them together and cannot be denied.

I lean into her and reach out to take up the very end of her braid. I pull off the string she’s tied it with, and slowly begin to separate the strands. When I’m finished, I place both hands on her cheeks and kiss her forehead between the wings of her hair. She blushes and stays very still. I move behind her on the bed, lean against the wall, and draw her close between my legs so her back rests against me. I spoon myself to her, the rough weave of her undershirt delicious on my nipples, the slick of her smooth slip lovely on my cleft. I do know to tread lightly with girls like my Charlie. I do know that. I press close, I rub my body on her. Oh, sweet of my heart the darling! She can’t hide it. She is breathing, sighing, and helping me to rub. She need not turn around, though, my skittish thoroughbred. For this first time, I will carry her and bring her along.

Butches and femmes, fresh young things and veterans of the cultural wars, experienced dykes and dreaming innocents, wealthy sophisticates and women barely getting by, rock stars and ballerinas, professors and truck drivers – you’ll find all these and more in Best Lesbian Erotica Volume Three. Sacchi Green has done a remarkable job weaving these disparate narratives into a satisfying and coherent whole.

There are several series of anthologies entitled “Best”. All too often they disappoint. In the case of this book, the title definitely fits. Overall, these are the best lesbian stories I’ve read in a long time.

Review Tuesday: Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms -- #lesfic #fairytales #romance

Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms: Erotic Lesbian Fairy Tales

Edited by Sacchi Green

Cleis Press, 2017

Fairy tales are not really for kids. They capture the archetypes that define our human experience: the strong, valiant, virtuous hero; the trickster who distracts or tempts him, delighting in chaos for its own sake; the malevolent witch, thriving on a diet of cruelty and succulent children; the sweet, patient heroine imprisoned in the tower, awaiting the happy salvation she deserves; the wise mage, offering guidance and occasionally tipping the scales in favor of the good. Tests and quests await the hero and heroine, who must prove their worthiness for the happily-ever-after that is the sine qua non of (Western) fairy tales. Ultimately evil is vanquished and virtue prospers, reassuring us of the order in the world.

Fairy tales touch us emotionally, partly because of this satisfying resolution, but at least in part because they speak to our simpler, less civilized selves. Often they take us back to our primeval wildness, leaving us to wander in trackless forests populated by beasts and magical beings.

Thus, it is not surprising that many of the old stories have been given erotic interpretations. Sex is a force of nature, as well as a kind of magic. Most erotic fairy tales, however, have maintained the traditional gender distinctions of their sources. The brave, energetic princes are male; the yielding, nurturing princesses are female. The archetypes have become stereotypes.

Sacchi Green’s new anthology Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms offers a welcome exception. The book collects thirteen (I wonder if the magical number was intentional) marvelous stories in which it is women who carry the swords, complete the quests, cast the spells, outwit the villains, and rescue captives from terrible fates.

A few of the contributions, like Michael Jones’s “The Miller’s Daughter” and Emily Byrne’s “Toads, Diamonds and the Occasional Pearl”, are riffs on familiar tales. I particularly enjoyed Brey Willows’s “Penthouse 31”, a retelling of Rapunzel in which the long-haired captive escapes to join a muscular window washer who recognizes her imprisonment. This is the only story in the book that features a contemporary setting; I found the change refreshing.

Many stories feature new plots and characters, though they offer traditional fairy tale themes and environments. Salome Wilde’s “The Princess’s Princess” is one of my favorites. A spoiled and petulant princess is forced to serve as hostess to the visiting daughter of a neighboring king, and discovers she has a lot to learn from the woman she initially resents. Annabeth Leong’s “The Mark and the Caul” is a delicate, complex exploration of what it means to be different. Sacchi Green spins old myths about trolls into a surprising, original yarn in “Trollwise”. “The Prize of the Willow” by H.N. Janzen portrays the lifelong love between a human woman and a dryad.

Most of the sexual activity in these tales is sensual rather than explicit, in keeping with their dream-like tone. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of heat. Two of the most exquisite examples are A.D.R. Forte’s “The Warrior’s Choice” and Lea Daley’s “The Sorceress of Solisterre”. Both stories do a beautiful job evoking the ache of unconsummated desire, the magnetic attraction between kindred spirits, and the transcendent release when that fated connection finally occurs in the flesh.

Overall, this is a fine anthology, another feather in veteran editor Sacchi Green’s cap. My only complaint is leveled at the publisher. I’ve worked with Cleis myself and I know they strictly limit the story length. In my opinion, this would have been an even stronger collection if there had been more variety in this regard. All the stories are on the short side (probably less than 4000 words). Although the authors do an excellent job spinning fairly complicated plots within these constraints, I would have enjoyed more variation.

If you enjoy lesbian fiction with a lyrical bent, I highly recommend this book.

Rush Hour Comes to The Road Less Traveled - #scifi #lesfic #giveaway

By Sacchi Green

I wonder sometimes whether I switched from science fiction and fantasy to erotica just because the competition looked sparser way back then, making my chances of selling my stories seemed better. Or was it mostly because I really wanted to write about sex? Most of my speculative fiction stories had more or less subtle sexual subtexts.

Discovering back then that I got paid more for the erotica was a factor, too. I’ve never exactly given up on writing sf/f, especially fantasy, but my writing time and focus have been spent almost entirely on erotica, especially lesbian erotica, for the last eighteen years. From that perspective I can say that erotica is no longer the road less traveled, no longer pays more, and in spite of its many talented writers gets even less respect than genres like science fiction and fantasy. Much less.

In the science fiction community there has always been grumbling about readers and critics who insist that sf/f is all rocketships and/or elves, so if they like a book, it must not be sf/f after all, however science fictional its theme may be. With erotica, readers—or rather non-readers of the genre—dismiss anything categorized that way with terms like Plot-What-Plot. I was going to say they use cruder terms, but those seem usually to be assumed to go without saying. If they accidentally read some well-written sexually-driven stories with fully-developed characters and intriguing story arcs, well, those are exceptions, not really what erotica is like.

Okay, I’m ranting here, based on what I’ve seen and read and heard readers say, the kinds of readers who actually buy books. I’m probably overstating the situation. But recently I’ve been wondering whether having my stories and anthologies tagged as erotica is preventing them from being read by people who might actually enjoy them in spite of sex scenes, or who might notice that sexual interactions can be as revealing of character as any other encounters. On the other hand, not including the term “erotica” in their titles would make it even harder for them to attract any attention at all, and I draw the line at calling them “erotic romance,” even though some of the stories could qualify for that description.

This train of thought has been triggered by my anthology that came out last May, Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms; Erotic Lesbian Fairy Tales. I had wanted for years to edit a book with this theme, and finally succeeded in persuading my major publisher that it was good idea. The contributors to the anthology are outstanding writers, with stories equal or superior to what might be found in a high-profile fantasy anthology, with the added advantage (or disadvantage) of including sex as a driving force of the plots. It’s doing pretty well, but I have a feeling that it would get more of the attention it deserves if “Erotic” hadn’t been included in the title.

I had the odd experience lately of being on a committee to reassess the descriptions of categories in an organization’s awards program, and being told that they had a very hard time getting judges for the erotica category. Nobody wanted to read it. That didn’t really surprise me, but I was startled to see that their current description for erotica pretty much went along with the “Plot-What-Plot” line of thought, and my books wouldn’t seem to qualify, although I’ve won an award there four times already. No, this isn’t the biggest award-giving organization, but still notable in lesbian fiction. So maybe my anthologies aren’t erotica after all, but so far I’ve been able to get away with it, and no reviewers, at least, have ever complained about not enough erotic content in them. 

In the case of my fairy tale anthology (which does not, as it happens, include any traditional fairies) I suppose I just want, undeservedly, to have it both ways, fantasy and erotica. I was a fan of speculative fiction as a teenager, and always thought that someday I’d be writing in that field. That “someday” came relatively late in life, on a relatively low level, but at the time there was a burgeoning of markets for sf/f short stories, with new small presses and magazines springing up, and I managed to get a fairly respectable amount of my work published. But there were more and more aspiring writers, too, in those days when the use of computers and word programs was becoming widespread.

Yes, I wrote my first few manuscripts on a lowly typewriter, and had to submit them by land mail, along with stamped self-addressed envelopes if I wanted them returned, or stamped self-addressed postcards if I just wanted notices of acceptance or rejection. All of this uphill in six feet of snow, or so it seemed. On an increasingly crowded road. (Oh, wait, then the snow would be packed down. Bad metaphor. Never mind.)

But then I discovered erotica. I didn’t intend to abandon sf/f, just to dabble in this other genre that didn’t seem as crowded, and did seem to have room for a writer who’d already learned the principles of writing actual stories instead of slapdash vignettes. I came across a call for submissions for a newish series called Best Lesbian Erotica, thought I’d give it a try, and had an actual phone call from the editor accepting my story and saying how “different” it was from anything else she’d seen. I’d been right about sf/f being good training for erotica. I might try more of this type of thing!

In fact, erotica seduced me. Seventeen years later I found myself editing the 20^th anniversary edition of Best Lesbian Erotica, after editing fifteen different anthologies, only two of them sf/f. Now my second BLE (now titled Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2) has just come out, and I’m reading submissions for a third. The world of publishing has changed cataclysmically, though, and for various reasons the erotica field has been flooded with so many books and stories of varying length, quality, cover images (generally lurid) and prices (generally cheap) that what I’d consider the really good ones have hard time getting seen. Writing erotica is now far from being a road less traveled, making it harder for any individual work to get anywhere. Then, of course, there’s the whole pirating situation, but I won’t get into that quagmire here.

Instead, let’s get back to my beloved erotic fairy tale book. Instead of excerpts from the stories, I’ll share my introduction, as a more compact way to give you an overall impression. At least I hope so.

Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms: Introduction

How often have you tried to envision “he” as “she” when you’re reading fairy tales? Those flights of imagination can sweep you up into worlds of magic and sensual delights—or would, if only so many heroes winning the day (and, of course, the girl) didn’t get in the way. Do you long for heroines who win each other?

I do, so in this anthology I wanted erotic romance and wild adventure with women who use their wits and/or weapons and come together in a blaze of passion. These wonderful writers gave me all I hoped for, and even more. Some adapted traditional tales, and some updated old stories to contemporary times, not merely changing the gender of a character but making the female aspect essential. Some created original plots with a fairy tale sensibility, while some wrote with merely a subtle aura of fantasy. Their heroines are witches, princesses, brave, resourceful women of all walks of life, and even a troll and a dryad. There are curses and spells, battles and intrigue, elements of magic and explorations of universal themes, and, yes, sex, sensuality and true love, all bound skillfully together into complex and many-layered stories.

Royalty or a miller’s daughter, a woman warrior passing as a man, a sorceress in flowing robes, even a window inspector dangling in harness on a high-rise building—who better to rescue a long-haired captive in a tower?—all of them are made so real that you long to touch them, and be touched. The relationships are intense, sometimes quick to ignite, sometimes all the hotter for restraint that flares at last into a fierce blaze.

In all my years of editing anthologies, I’ve never read so many submissions that were beautifully written and just what I’d asked for. And I’ve never had so much trouble choosing which to use to fill the finite space in this book. I can only hope that readers will get as much pleasure from these stories as I did, and that Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms turns out to be, to quote a certain beloved film with a unique take on fantasy traditions, exactly, “As you wish.”

Sacchi Green

_______________

Note: I don’t know how long it will last, or who decides these things, but right now there’s a temporary sale on the ebook version of this anthology, so on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., you can get it for $1.99.

Also, I’ll give away an ebook copy in Mobi, Epub, or PDF to a name drawn at random from the comments on this post.

Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms on Amazon

Sacchi Green (sacchi-green.blogspot.com, www.facebook.com/sacchi.green) is a Lambda Award–winning writer and editor of erotica and other stimulating genres. Her stories have appeared in scores of publications, including eight volumes of Best Lesbian Erotica, four of Best Women’s Erotica, and four of Best Lesbian Romance. In recent years she’s taken to wielding the editorial whip, editing fourteen lesbian erotica anthologies, most recently Wild Girls, Wild Nights, Me and My Boi, Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year 20^th Anniversary Edition, Witches, Princesses and Women at Arm, and Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2, most of them from Cleis Press. Sacchi lives in the Five College area of western Massachusetts and makes occasional forays into the real world, usually for readings in places like NYC. She also posts on alternate Mondays on Oh Get a Grip, a group website for ten erotica writers with plenty to say. http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com

Call for Submissions - Best Lesbian Erotica Volume 2 (#cfs #lgbtq #erotica @CleisPress)

 
Greetings! I know that many of my followers are authors, so I wanted to share this call for submissions from my friend and blog-mate Sacchi Green.

Deadline is coming up fast, though!

* * *

Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2

(Best Lesbian Erotica 2018)

Editor: Sacchi Green

Publisher: Cleis Press

Deadline: March 20, 2017 (earlier encouraged)

Payment: $100 and 1 copy of the book within 90 days of publication

Rights: non-exclusive right to publish the story in this anthology in print, ebook and audiobook form. Authors will retain copyright to their stories.

Is there a story inside you burning to be written? Now’s the time to let it out. Or is there one you published during 2015-2016 that you think is the best thing you’ve ever written? I’ll consider just a few reprints. Up to two submissions per author are allowed, preferred length between 2000-4000 words. No simultaneous submissions.

I want a variety of themes, voices, and tone. A diversity of ages, ethnicities, cultures, and physical attributes and abilities is welcome. The central figures must be lesbian, believable, fully developed characters. Give me vividly drawn settings, and plots or story arcs that grip the reader and don’t let go. Originality is especially valued; write the story that only you can write. And, of course, I want intense sex scenes that flow naturally from the story as a whole. All flavors of sensuality are welcome, from vanilla to BDSM to edgy frontiers that surprise and startle the reader. A few stories with a speculative fiction bent, science fiction or fantasy, might fit in.

Send your submission to sacchigreen [at] gmail [dot] com as an attachment in .doc, docx. or .rtf format, double spaced, Times New Roman black font. The story title, your legal name, pseudonym (if applicable), previous publication information for the story (if applicable), and mailing and email addresses, should be included on the first page. 

 

Queries are welcome.

Review Tuesday: Wild Girls, Wild Nights edited by Sacchi Green

Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories

Edited by Sacchi Green

Cleis Press, 2013

How does one evaluate a collection subtitled “True Lesbian Sex Stories”?

Originality counts as one of my top criteria when reviewing fiction. A startling premise, a setting or a conflict I haven't encountered in the past, will immediately predispose me toward enjoying a story. Can this be applied to real life tales, though? To a large extent, we don't choose our experiences, although authors will clearly exercise discretion in selecting the events to recount. Still, given the fantasy-oriented nature of much erotica, the more creative and unusual premises often tend to be the most implausible.

How about the arousal generated by the stories? This is a highly personal criterion, depending as it does on one's own sexual proclivities. A couple of tales in this collection definitely pushed my buttons, especially “The Insatiable Travel Itch”, by Evan Mora, which brilliantly exposes the narrator's frustrated fantasies, and “Delinquents”, by Catherine Paulssen, a gorgeously sensual first-time tale. Given my usual tastes, one might have expected me to mention some of the kinkier offerings, such as Mia Savage's “Kat's House”, Danielle Mignon's “Are You My Mommy?” or Cheyenne Blue's “Nurse Joan”. However, I have no experience with and relatively few fantasies about F/F dominance and submission, so these titles had less of a visceral effect on me than I would have guessed.

Writing quality, then? No problem here. With one or two exceptions, the offerings in Wild Girls, Wild Nights are as well-crafted as I'd expect from an award-winning editor like Sacchi Green. Vivid descriptions, believable characters, variety in subject and voice: if this were a fiction anthology, I'd have no reservations about giving this book a definite thumbs up.

But therein lies the rub. For the most part, these tales read not like true confessions, but like fiction. They have initial hooks, plot arcs, conflict and resolution. Real world experience is messy, confusing, and usually inconclusive. Ambiguity reigns. There's no ending, happily-ever-after or other. These tales, however, are mostly polished, self-aware, self-contained nuggets with a point and a punch-line.

Of course, this isn't all that surprising. Most erotic authors mine their own sexual adventures in creating their fiction. One gets into the habit of focusing on some details and glossing over others, ramping up the heat and playing down discomfort or insecurity, twisting the outcomes in directions that makes them more satisfying for readers. I've certainly done this myself, in dozens of stories.

Then there's the fact that perceptual experience is notoriously difficult to recall accurately. It's generally not possible to give an accurate account of past events without “filling in the blanks”, whether consciously or not. When the experience in question occurred decades ago (as is obviously the case for some of these authors), the imagination-to-fact ratio increases dramatically.

When I recall my first Sapphic experience now (after more than thirty years), I remember only a few salient details. If I were to recount this for a book, I'd have to recreate – or invent – almost all the context. And then there would be the temptation to change the outcome – the fact that this woman, a dear friend, and I have never talked about that one night again. That doesn't make a good ending, after all.

So I don't fault the authors in this book for producing stories that feel like – stories. However, that makes me admire the few authors whose accounts really did feel more like “being there”.

“Higher Learning” by Charlotte Dare fell into that category. I liked this account because of the unconventional relationship between an older woman returning to college and a much younger student who is nevertheless old enough to know what she wants – and what she's doing. The uncertainties of the older narrator come through clearly and ring true. Every woman, after a certain age, wonders how she could possibly be viewed as desirable. Most of all, I appreciated the fact that the story ends with a question mark. The two women pursue separate career paths in different states. Neither wants to end the relationship, but will it survive the stress of geographic separation? Ms. Dare leaves us to wonder.

Another stand-out for me was Catherine Henreid's “Odds”. This story, set in Tel Aviv, has enough disasters in it that I can't help believe it. The quirky and unpredictable encounter between the narrator and her bisexual housemate, who is in some sense a total mystery, was both intriguing and arousing.

I've already mentioned “Delinquents”, about two girlfriends who experiment with lesbian sex while their parents are away. I strongly identified with the narrator's concerns about how this would alter the relationship – naturally, given my personal experience.

Finally, I have no doubts about the truth of Dawn McKay's “Hot Summer Nights”, in which the author, a military medic in what is likely Iraq, shares a single night of healing passion with an off-limits officer. The sense of risk, of desperation, of sorrow, that permeates this story make it one of the most intense in the volume.

“I'll see you around,” she said.

“Yeah.” I knew I wouldn't. So did she.

…

She left as quietly as she had come, slipping from my tent in the middle of a sandstorm.

I have to reserve special mention for Allison Moon's “Foxy and the Ridiculous Lesbian Orgy”. In terms of the activities it describes, this tale is by far the wildest in the book, and certainly one of the funniest. The events in the tale undoubtedly took place – because the author staged them in order to have some content for a live girl-on-girl storytelling event.

I had no story to tell, but the flyers had gone out, and time was short. I had no choice. For the sake of science – nay for the sake of art, I had to take matters into my own hands. I had to throw a Ridiculous Lesbian Orgy.

Now, I know what you're thinking. If you construct the context for a story, are you actually experiencing the story, or are just experiencing yourself experiencing the story, thus negating the veracity of the experience? If it's really happening but in an artificial context, does it count as “true”? I'm a writer, these are the things I think about.

I'm an author, and I think about these things too. Wild Girls, Wild Nights is a bit of an epistemological puzzle, all the way around. However, if your main interest is simply in reading some hot, believable, girl-on-girl tales, you won't be disappointed.