The first time I saw D.L. King, the editor of Seductress, I was attending an erotica reading in NYC, where she read from her anthology, “Carnal Machines.” The story she chose to read was both hot and hysterical, and after I managed to get my disbelief that someone had published a book of steampunk erotica and I hadn’t read it yet (The Horror!), my first thought was, “Oh, she likes funny erotica. I have to write a story for her.” Then she mentioned that she was looking for stories for Seductress, and I turned to my partner and said,”Oh my god! I just had the worst/best idea! I want to write a story called ‘Phone Hex’…. You know, ‘there’s an app for that?’” The look of horror I received in response was all the encouragement I needed. Nothing gets my creative juices flowing like a really bad idea.

I wrote a note down in my idea notebook, and then promptly forgot about it until I noticed that the deadline was approaching. Then, I panicked. I really wanted to write a story about a smartphone app that could be used to summon demons, and I wanted it to be funny, but I had no idea what the plot could possibly be about. Then Ruby showed up in my head, introduced herself, and the jokes kept coming… one after another, just like her victims. (Ruby, for those of you who don’t know, is an object oriented programming language. I thought Perl was a bit too obvious.)

Usually, writing erotica is all about the sex. Sometimes, it’s all about the love. This time, however, it was all about the laughter. After all, sex isn’t the only way that you can have a good time in bed…

This post is part of the blog tour for Seductress, an anthology of succubus erotica edited by D.L. King and published by Cleis Press

Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 334-9676
www.happyendinglounge.com

As I told Nobilis, this is one of my favorite stories. I wanted to write erotica about a “real girl” who finds love in a very unexpected place.

I hope you’ll check it out either as the audio podcast or the e-book. I have another story about love and magic coming out next month in the anthology Seductress from Cleis Press. It’s very different, but I can’t wait to share that one with you as well.

If you weren’t there, the Dirty Queer Sex Tour will be stopping in a number of other cities, and I will be joining it again in Boston next Sunday. Come out and see us, and if you want a bookmark – just ask!

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In the Streets Productions and Sugarbutch present
a night of DIRTY QUEER SEX

Featuring readers from the SAY PLEASE: LESBIAN BDSM EROTICA anthology released by Cleis Press in April 2012, and many special guests! Performers include Aporia, Bitches of Destiny, Gigi Frost, Idalia, Elizabeth Thorne, and Anna Watson, hosted by Sinclair Sexsmith, writer of the Sugarbutch Chronicles and editor of Say Please & Best Lesbian Erotica 2012.

8pm
Sunday April 22
The Midway
3496 Washington Street in JP
$5-10 Sliding Scale

Check out the Facebook Page for more details!

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DIRTY QUEER SEX TOUR: Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica NYC Release Party

Bluestockings, Allen Street, Lower East Side
New York City
7pm on Friday, April 13th

Featuring Dusty Horn, DL King, Vie La Guerre, Sassafras Lowrey, Miriam Zoila Pérez, Elizabeth Thorne, and Xan West. Join us for an evening of debaucherous, dirty smut written by and for queers. Take a sexy break from a whirlwind of delicious leather, kink, and sex to additionally stimulate your … brains.

Hosted by Sinclair Sexsmith, writer of the Sugarbutch Chronicles and editor of Say Please & Best Lesbian Erotica 2012

Sinclair Sexsmith runs the award-winning personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at sugarbutch.net. With work published in various anthologies and websites, including Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, she is the guest editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, and her first full-length erotica anthology, Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica, will be published by Cleis Press in April 2012. Mr. Sexsmith writes, teaches, and performs focusing on the subjects of sex, gender, and relationships. More information on her at mrsexsmith.com.

ABOUT THE READERS:

Dusty Horn’s erotica has been published by Cleis in Orgasmic and Best Bondage 2011, her sex culture reportage on CarnalNation.com, and her critical theory of sex work in AORTA magazine. A BDSM professional, queer pornographer, kink educator, social worker, and rocknroll exhibitionist slut, Dusty is (in)famous for her spanking booths.

Editor of Carnal Machines, Spank, The Sweetest Kiss, and Where the Girls Are, D.L. King has contributed short stories to Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Girl Crazy, and Broadly Bound, among others. She’s published two novels and edits the erotica review site Erotica Revealed. Find her at www.dlkingerotica.com.

Vie La Guerre is a femme wordsmith who lives in Chicago with her kittens, Foxy Brown and Zora.

Sassafras Lowrey (www.PoMoFreakshow.com) is an international award–winning storyteller, author, artist, and educator. Sassafras is the editor of the Kicked Out anthology, which brought together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth. Her prose has been included in numerous anthologies and she regularly teaches LGBTQ storytelling workshops at colleges and conferences across the country. Sassafras lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.

Miriam Zoila Pérez (www.miriamzperez.com) is a Cuban-American writer, blogger, and reproductive justice activist. She is the founder of RadicalDoula.com and an editor at Feministing.com. Her essays have been included in various anthologies, including Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Pérez lives in Brooklyn.

Elizabeth Thorne began writing erotic stories when she was working in a place known as The Sex Lab. It was an act of desperation since, ironically enough, studying sex kept her too busy to meet anyone larger than a mouse… and unlike Cinderella she doesn’t actually swing that way. These days, Elizabeth spends her time sitting around in her PJs writing popular science during the day and erotic romance at night. She has contributed to more than a dozen anthologies of erotica and erotic romance and is proud to be the author of “The Gingerbread Dungeon,” a collection of pansexual BDSM fairy tales. You can find her online atwithbatedbeth.com.

Xan West is the pseudonym of an NYC BDSM/sex educator. Xan’s “First Time Since” won honorable mention for the 2008 NLA John Preston Short Fiction Award. Xan has appeared in many anthologies, including Best SM Erotica 2 & 3, Best Women’s Erotica 2008 & 2009, and Best Lesbian Erotica 2011.

When Cara came home that Tuesday night, there was a woman kneeling
outside her door.

“Really,” she said, while pulling out her keys, “if the Institute was
going to take this long to fulfill my request, they could have at least
sent me a blonde.”Then she unlocked the door and went inside.
After pouring herself a glass of wine and taking off her shoes, she
went back out into the hallway to see if the woman was still there. She
was.

Cara took a moment to consider her potential new acquisition who
continued to kneel prettily by the side of her woven door mat. The
woman was young,with pale silvery skin and short, sleek purple-black
hair cut into an asymmetrical bob.With her head bowed as it had
been―as far as Cara could tell, the entire time she had been kneeling
there―it fell forward to hide her face. She was wearing the regulation
white tunic and nothing else. Her arms were―like the rest of
her―slender but well muscled, ending in hands with beautiful, long
fingers and carefully manicured nails. She looked functional.

The girl wasn’t exactly what she had wanted, Cara thought, but if
this was what the Institute had available then she would probably do.
“You might as well come in,” she said, and walked back through the
open door.

Sitting down on her favorite couch by the fireplace, Cara watched
the girl’s face as she stepped into the apartment.The girl’s eyes opened
wide as she took in the view before her, and Cara waited for what felt
like minutes before the girl finally dropped her eyes to a pose of respectful
attention.The display was illuminating.

It wasn’t that Cara didn’t understand the attraction of the
place―the walls of glass, the extraordinary vista of the city lights
spread out below them―but the girl’s blatant fascination was… ex-
ceptional. Most of Cara’s friends and colleagues would not be caught
dead showing such a profound level of interest in anything. Seeing the
look on the girl’s face actually made her uncomfortable.The girl might
be her property, to do with as she wished, and yet to see such naked
enthusiasm seemed far too revealing. It was not what Cara had contracted
for.

“Do you cook?” she asked the quiet young woman standing before
her, trying to distract herself from the new-found feeling that not
everything in her well-planned world was exactly as it should be.

“Yes ma’am.Yes I do.”The girl replied, her eyes still downcast towards
the floor.

“Good.You’ll find ingredients in the kitchen.” Cara thought for a
moment about whether she had any specific orders and decided, instead,
to use her uncertainty as a test of the girl’s suitability for service.
“Use your creativity. I’ll instruct you further as to what I expect
from you over dinner.”

With that, Cara left the girl to her own devices and walked the long
hallway to her home office so that she could wrap herself, for a while,
in the comforts of work. – Excerpted from “Personal Benefits” in Kneel to Me

If that isn’t enough to get you excited about the night, there will also be a raffle for goody bags featuring all sorts of exciting prizes – including CD copies of The Gingerbread Dungeon.

I look forward to seeing you there!

EVENT DETAILS:
Friday, February 3, 2012 · 8:00 PM –10:00 PM
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002
(212) 334-9676
Free. Street casual.

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Circlet Press has sold the German rights to Like Crimson Droplets, and the expanded anthology contains my story – “Waiting for Sunset”. It’s a total trip, because I don’t speak German, so mostly I look at my contributors copy of the e-anthology, try to read it out loud, and wonder what exactly my story title translated to. Google says “Wenn die Sonne Untergeht” translates as “When the Sun Goes Down”… can anyone confirm? If so, I like it!

In other news, if you read and review Seducing the Myth at Amazon.com, you can enter to win some free swag. Check out the information here.

While you’re at it, if you wanted to review your copy of Gingerbread Dungeon, I wouldn’t mind in the least….