Coming Together Presents: Amanda Earl

 

I’ve known Amanda Earl for nearly a decade, having met her (as is the case with so many other fellow authors) through the Erotica Readers & Writers Association. She contributed two stories to Cream, the ERWA anthology I edited in 2006. However, I didn’t fully appreciate Amanda’s artistry, passion and erudition until she joined the Oh Get a Grip group blog in 2013. She only stayed a year before moving on to other creative ventures, but that was long enough for me to recognize her for the remarkable individual she is. I was thrilled when she agreed to work with me in compiling this Coming Together Presents volume.

While editing on this collection, I’ve had the chance to read (and re-read) far more of Amanda’s erotica than I’d done before. In the aftermath, I’m still soaked. Amanda’s stories exhibit great diversity, but all are designed to arouse.

The stories in this book run the gamut from raw and transgressive (“Sir North”, “Daddy Complex”) to wistful and tender (“Typing for Jack”, “Mercy and the Man in the Dark Suit”) to playful (“Cinderella and the Glass Dildo”, “Jesus, Melinda and the Undead”) to desperately dark (“The Vessel”, “Sex with an Old Woman”). In these pages, you’ll find humor and irony, satire and philosophy, and pretty much every shade of pleasure imaginable. Amanda’s fiction explores lust in all its compelling urgency and celebrates the incandescent experience of mutual sexual satisfaction. But don’t look for romance; although her characters may share affection, respect, the thrill of recognizing common or complementary fantasies, she’s not really interested in happily ever after. To quote from her glorious tale, “The Adulteress”:

I'm not going to pine away for the guy after he's gone. Or maybe I will, just a little bit, here in my lonely apartment with the candles burning bright. I might obsess about him just a smidge. Fantasize about fucking him again. Write for hours or days about the encounter or turn to a fresh, blank page. It depends on how good we are together. I suspect my Romanian playwright and I will fuck like gods. Even the way he looks at me turns my knees to jelly, my cunt to cream.

This is literary—and literate—erotica. Be warned, though. Amanda doesn’t mince words. She’s graphic in her descriptions, ferocious in her explication of desire, no matter how wild, dangerous, messy and socially unacceptable its form. This isn’t a book for the faint of heart. I suspect Amanda’s proud of this fact.

Like all books in the Coming Together Presents imprint, this collection benefits a charity selected by the author. Amanda has chosen GMHC (GMHC.org), which provides worldwide AIDS/HIV prevention, care and advocacy throughout the world. Amanda and her husband have participated in the GMHC Walk for Life in Ottawa for a decade. All proceeds from sales of Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl will go toward helping to end the epidemic and improving the quality of life for those living with AIDS/HIV.

So even as you’re squirming in your seat, amazed and aroused by Amanda’s carnal creations, you can know that you’re actually doing a good deed.

Enjoy!

~Lisabet 


 

Excerpt from "The Coriolis Effect" 

F/F Vampire erotica

Lou grabs the collar of my shirt, trying to get at my neck. She licks and sucks my throat. I get goose bumps down the length of my entire body. God! It feels good. I’m so wet.

“You smell delicious,” she says as she rips off my shirt buttons then tears my camisole right off my body. My tits are hard. She sucks at them like she’s starving, wraps her hands around me, then I feel her fingernails scratching my naked back. It’s like she has hands everywhere. Suddenly she’s got my skirt off. Suddenly I’m standing there in nothing but my stockings and high heels. She pushes me down onto the bed, on my hands and knees, then pulls off her pants.

She comes around to me with a harness in her hand and this dildo, which she straps on and then makes me suck. She coats it in the baby oil I keep on my nightstand and then walks behind me. My body is wet, taut and excited.

“Relax, baby. Just relax,” Lou says as she rubs my shoulders, back, buttocks, calves, heels and toes, then puts her hand between my legs.

“Open your legs,” she whispers. She traces the outline of my cunt with her finger.

“Bet you wish Ruth was doing this to you.” She leans her body over mine. One of her fingers strokes the curve of my ass. I moan as I hear the slick wet sound of a finger sliding into my asshole. As I writhe in time to her slowly pumping fingers, I wish she’d speed up. I want to move now, want to be taken. And yeah, she’s right. I wish it was Ruth doing the taking.

The unremitting regularity of her body on mine drives me insane.

“This wouldn’t be enough for Ruth, baby. She needs more,” she says quietly as she pushes the dildo into my ass, inch by excruciating inch.

I want to dwell on what Lou’s saying but my need to let go and be totally fucked takes over.

She drives the dildo deep into me. Fuck. It feels good. She’s fingering my clit at the same time. I’m wet and hot and swollen. My tits rub against the sweat-soaked sheets as she plunges deep into me.

“Imagine Ruth is sucking at your neck now.” I remember the feel of Ruth’s lips against my cool neck on the rooftop. “You can hear her breathing heavily into your ear,” Lou says as she moves her body slowly and steadily against mine. The dildo pushes into me, triggering a tightness in my cunt.

“Ruth needs you, baby.” We’re moving faster now. “She wants to bite your neck.” I’m so open. Lou’s finger enters my cunt. “She needs your blood.” That’s enough to set me over the edge. My fingers grasp the sheets and I cry out as I come.

All Romance / OmniLit ~ Amazon ~ Smashwords ~ Create Space

About the Author

Amanda Earl is a feisty bitch who leads a lascivious life in Ottawa, Canada with her husband, Charles, and her inamorato, Tom. She is an imaginative wench with her thumbs up the arse of various creative bodies, including but not limited to poetry, fiction, theatre and visual poetry.

 

In 2004 she began writing smut for the sheer joy of writing openly about sex and letting her filthy imagination run wild. Of great assistance in her quest was the Erotica Readers and Writers Association, which has published thirty four of her stories and flash fiction in the Gallery and Archive (Treasure Chest). Under the helm of Adrienne Benedicks, ERWA, which is comprised of beginner and experienced writers, editors and publishers, has been instrumental in Amanda’s development as a smut writer.

Her fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including four times in Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica; Cream, The Best of The Erotica Readers and Writers Association; five Cleis Press anthologies edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel; and gritty urban online and printed ‘zines such as Urban Graffiti, Front&Centre Magazine, the Moose and Pussy, Lies with Occasional Truth, UnlikelyStories, and Postscripts to Darkness.

 

Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca, a hub for Ottawa’s literary community, and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress and its transgressive imprint DevilHouse.

 

Her first trade poetry book, Kiki, inspired by the multi-talented Roaring Twenties Parisian strumpet, Kiki of Montparnasse, comes out in September, 2014.

After having been gravely ill in 2009, Amanda has an extravagant propensity for joy and trouble. For more on her shenanigans, please visit AmandaEarl.com or connect with her on Twitter @KikiFolle.

Sample Some Forbidden Fruit

An Interview with Harper Bliss, part of the Forbidden Fruit Blog Tour! 

 

LAUNCH SPECIAL PRICE ONLY FROM AMAZON: for one week only, 5 – 11 September 2014, purchase Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire for the super-special price of 0.99c.

Lisabet Sarai: Greetings, Harper! I'm delighted to have you back at Beyond Romance, and really pleased to be in the Forbidden Fruit anthology with you. I know you're a prolific writer with many single-author titles to your credit. Why did you decide to submit to this group collection?

Harper Bliss: So happy to be a guest here again, Lisabet. Thank you for having me. Well, I submitted a story to Forbidden Fruit for many reasons. The most important one being that Cheyenne Blue is the editor. Of course, I must also mention that I co-own Ladylit (publisher of Forbidden Fruit) and that being able to work on this anthology with Cheyenne is, truly, one of my dreams come true. Apart from that, I love lesbian erotica anthologies and I firmly believe there should be more of them (Cheyenne and I are working on that!) ;-) All of that being said, I’m chuffed to bits with how the table of contents turned out, and it’s a true honour for me to find my name amongst all these fabulous authors.

LS: On a broader note, what impels you to write lesbian fiction? Is this the only genre you write?

HB: It is the only genre I write. The quick and very simple answer is that I write lesbian erotica and romance because I’m a lesbian and I can’t imagine not seeing my identity reflected in the books I write. I also write lesbian fiction because this is the genre I love more than anything. I’m always so offended when someone asks me my why I don’t include more straight characters in my stories (and believe me, I get this question often!) My standard reply: “Percentage-wise, of all the books in the world, how many of them feature non-LGBT characters? Go read one of those.”

Also, within lesbian fiction, there are many sub-genres. I started out as an erotica writer, but, as time goes by, I find myself gravitating towards romance much more (although I can never help but include a few steamy scenes.) For the past months, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a spy thriller about a really kick-ass (lesbian!) woman. I have the main character all mapped out in my head, and I can definitely see myself write something like that someday. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, in the future, I may write in many genres, but (most of) my characters will always be lesbians.

LS: The term “forbidden fruit”, of course, refers to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. In that tale, the apple is forbidden because it imparts knowledge of good and evil. Are there any echoes of this notion in your tale?

HB: My story is not so much about good and evil. It’s more about crossing a line that, perhaps, shouldn’t be crossed (which makes it all the more compelling to cross.) By the way, I’d really like to take this opportunity to thank the amazing Cheyenne Blue for coming up with the awesome theme for this anthology. I wanted to read it long before the call for submissions went out!

LS: Have you ever partaken of “forbidden fruit” yourself? Care to share with my readers?

HB: Gosh, what a devilish question! And a good one, too. I may need to ask the same one to my interviewee on this blog tour. ;-) I’ve racked my brain and my answer is a firm no. As dramatic as my stories are, I’m as straight-laced as they come. My wife may disagree, but, all in all, I’m a really good girl. I do have a very vivid imagination, and I won’t say I’ve never fantasized about plucking a juicy piece of forbidden fruit, but it’s not in my nature to act upon these things.

LS: Please tell us a bit about your story, “Freedom”, and how it fits the anthology theme.

HB: “Freedom” tells the story of Ella, recently dumped by her long-term girlfriend, who runs into her ex-mother-in-law. They both turn into forbidden fruit for each other. I’ve always liked the older/younger woman dynamic (and I’ve written many stories about it), but I wanted to take it a bit further and create more of a taboo atmosphere. These two women used to know each other quite well, so the connection is already there. Then there’s the fact that the very person who brought them together in the first place, this girl—daughter to one and ex to to the other—they both love, will, ultimately, bring them together again in a not so obvious, but inevitable (and quite sexy) way.

Excerpt:

The city sidewalks are crowded, so I walk behind Brooke until the ocean of people clears up and we arrive at one of the posh streets alongside the park.

“The house simply got too big. You’ve no idea of the amount of maintenance a place like that requires, and just for little old me. I was fed up with it.” She gestures at a building a few feet away. “I live there now and I can walk everywhere. It’s fabulous.”

“I bet,” I say, as I follow her inside, past an obsequiously nodding doorman.

Brooke occupies one of the lower floor apartments, but the view of the park is still breathtaking.

“Lovely.” I scan the living room and recognize some pieces of furniture from the old house. I’m surprised Jamie didn’t talk her mother into getting rid of that sofa, considering what we once did in it. Twice, actually…

“Now, for that drink.” Brooke shrugs off her coat and heads to a cabinet in the corner of the living room. “Do you still like a good brandy?”

“Oh yes.” I perk up at the mention of it.

She grabs the bottle and two brandy snifters, and deposits them on the coffee table, gesturing for me to take a seat next to her.

After pouring us both a generous amount, she hands me a glass and clinks the fat belly of her glass to mine. “You look good, Ella, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Thanks.” Immediately, a flush burns on the skin of my cheeks. I wasn’t expecting a compliment. The brandy helps. Now both my throat and my cheeks burn.

“How are you coping with being alone?” She draws her lips into a lopsided grin. “As you well know, I’m an expert at that particular activity.”

I asked Jamie a dozen times, shaking my head in disbelief, why a beautiful, classy woman like her mother would prefer to remain single for so long after her father’s death. “She likes her independence,” Jamie would say. “And why don’t you ask her yourself if you’re so keen to find out?” I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking that question back then, and now Brooke practically brings it up herself.

“It sucks.” My eloquence has let me down a lot since the break-up. “I mean, I’m not very good at it. How do you, um, go about it?”

“Jamie may have been foolish enough to let you go, but you won’t be alone for long, Ella. I’m sure of that.” She brings her lips to the glass and sips. “As for me, I just can’t seem to find anyone to my taste. Let’s just say some of my preferences have changed since Gareth and I got married.” She locks her eyes on mine and drags the tip of her tongue across her teeth.

I drink to recover from the sudden intensity surrounding us, from the change of air. What am I doing here, anyway? I look away and my eyes land on a picture of Jamie, all blond and healthy and beautiful. Brooke’s hair is blond as well, but more golden and quite probably dyed.

“I should go,” I say, suddenly overwhelmed by an alien emotion. I can’t identify it as grief or anger—the two main ones I’ve been suffering from of late. It’s more a mixture of apprehension and the rush of being flattered by a member of the Stevens family. I don’t get up, though. I remain firmly planted in my seat.

“Stay.” Brooke reaches for the bottle and refills my glass, which isn’t even empty yet.

*****

The next stop on the Forbidden Fruit blog tour is Harper Bliss (http://harperbliss.com/) who is interviewing Rachel O. Esplanade 

Leave a comment on any post in the Forbidden Fruit blog tour to be entered into a random draw to win one of these great prizes.  Prizes include a paperback copy of Girls Who Score, lesbian sports erotica edited by Ily Goyanes, Best Lesbian Romance 2011 edited by Radclyffe, Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories edited by Sacchi Green, an ebook of Ladylit’s first lesbian anthology Anything She Wants, and a bundle of three mini-anthologies from Ladylit: Sweat, A Christmas to Remember and Bossy.  All of these titles contain some stories written by the fabulous contributors to Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire. You must include an email address in  your comment to be entered into the draw.

Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire is available direct from the publisher, Ladylit (http://www.ladylit.com/books/forbidden-fruit/) or from Amazon, Smashwords, and other good retailers of ebooks.  Check out http://www.ladylit.com/books/forbidden-fruit/ for all purchasing information.

New Life for Bangkok Noir (Sunday Snog #140)

Greetings!

I've found a new publisher for my BDSM erotic thriller Bangkok Noir.  The book will be released by Excessica next Friday, the 12th of September, with a new cover - designed and executed by yours truly!

To celebrate, I've got one of the few snogs in this book. (It is definitely not a romance!)

After you've finished my snog, get yourself over to Victoria's and read the other kisses up on offer today!

I headed toward the bar to get a Coke. My throat was tight and dry. Then I felt a hand on my arm. It was him. His skin was so cool, it made me shiver.

"Can I buy you a drink?" he asked. His voice was kind, and made me think of music. Still, I felt something like terror. He stared at me without blinking. Now it was me who had to look away.

Ajarn was on the other side of the room, watching us. I couldn't refuse.

"Thank you, sir. Just a moment. I go get a Coke, come back right away."

"Let me go with you," he said smoothly. He took my arm and walked me to the bar. After we got our drinks, he guided me to a table in the corner.

"Sit," he ordered. I didn't want to, not really. But what could I do? I clicked my glass against his. "Chok dee," I said. "Good luck to you." 

His smile made me feel like I had eaten a meal of live butterflies. "Same to you. What's your name?"

"My name Nok. What your name?"

"You can call me Sam," he said. "Nok is bird, right?"

I nodded. He brushed my long hair off my shoulders and down my back. Then he took my chin in his hand. He raised my eyes to meet his again. I felt like I was captured. Trapped.

"Very appropriate. You're as delicate and airy as a sparrow." I thought of those caged birds they sell at the temples. You set the birds free to make merit, but they always return to their masters.

Without warning, he kissed me. His lips were as soft as his voice, at least at first. I thought I should stop him, though. I tried to pull away. His right hand held my mouth against his. His left arm wrapped around my waist. I couldn't move.

So I gave up. I let him slide his tongue into my mouth and suck the breath from me. The funny thing was, as soon as I gave in to him, I began to like it.

He smelled like soap and expensive cologne. He tasted like his whiskey. I could feel that he was strong, much stronger than he looked, with his slim body and fancy clothes.

He kissed me harder, biting my lip. I felt like I was melting. He let go of my chin and played with my breasts through the stretchy mesh. My sex was on fire against the hot, sticky leather.

Suddenly, he pinched one of my nipples, digging in his fingernails. His mouth smothered my cry of surprise and pain. After the pain, though, I felt amazing pleasure, shooting up my spine like lightning. 

"You like that, Nok." My English is only so-so, but I could tell he wasn't asking a question. He was telling me. And he was right.

I was terribly embarrassed. I wanted him to do it again.

He bent me backwards. My hair nearly brushed the floor. He put his mouth on the other nipple and sucked. I felt like his mouth was between my legs, sucking me there. It was heaven. I reached up, wanting to stroke him, but he pushed my hands away.

Then, when I was not expecting it, he sank his teeth into my flesh.

Everything went dark for an instant. Then pain exploded in me, brilliant as the sun. I was burning up, but I wanted to burn.