Sacchi Green: Reaching Out

Pirate Story Excerpt, and Circlet Press Poll

2012-02-16T19:41:00.000-08:00

Why yes, I have an ulterior motive in posting this excerpt from my story in the e0book Like a Treasure Found from Circlet Press. I'm sure you can figure it out.

This is a very long excerpt, but the story itself is a good deal longer. I'm sorry to say that the erotic parts all come later, mostly after battles have been won and a prisoner rescued, but that's the way it goes. I'll add that there are two historical figures in the story--well, three, if you count the one in a newspaper clipping. Madame Lai Cho San, the Dragon Lady of Bias Bay, was an actual "Pirate Queen" during the 1920s and into the 30s. The other historical character is the rescued prisoner, but even at the end of the story I don't reveal her name. I'm sure you can figure it out.

First, the info about the poll, which will determine which stories are chosen for Circlet's 20th anniversary print anthology:

Best of Circlet’s Digital Library Poll

This year marks Circlet Press’s twentieth anniversary of “celebrating the erotic imagination” with the best offerings in erotic science-fiction and fantasy. From the earliest days of chapbooks stapled together and sold by word-of-mouth on convention floors to embracing the cutting-edge ebook technology of today, Circlet has endured thanks to our passionate and discerning readership. In celebration of our anniversary and your continued support, we’re happy to announce our plans to publish the best of Circlet’s digital library in a print anthology this fall. And since we couldn’t have lasted this long without you, we want your input!

The list below contains stories from each of our ebook-only anthologies, short-listed for their excellence by the editors at Circlet Press. Now it’s your turn to honor your favorites. Please vote for up to five stories you would like to see in the printed anthology. Your votes and the consideration of Circlet staff will determine which stories will ultimately appear in this anthology and which are truly the best of the best. The author of the top rated story will receive a prize of $250. Second and third place stories’ authors will each receive a prize of $100. All authors whose stories appear in this anthology will be receiving $50.

Voting on this poll will remain open until March 15th, 2012. We will be announcing the complete list of included stories on April 5th, 2012.

http://www.circlet.com/?p=3777#more-3777

The Pirate from the Sky

Sacchi Green

In Seok-Teng’s dream, a great pale dragon twined through a labyrinth of shifting clouds. Opaline scales shimmered through intervals of sunlight, slipped into invisibility, and then flashed out again in dazzling beauty. Its long, elegant head swung from side to side, tongue flickering like sensuous lightning.

A distant hum arose, a subtle, tantalizing vibration that teased at Seok-Teng’s mind and flesh. A song? A warning? A summons? In all her dreams of dragons, never had she been aware of sound. She strained to hear, to understand. But the hum became steadily louder, swelling to a growl, tearing her from sleep into darkness and sudden, stark awareness. If the roof of the captain’s cabin had been high enough she would have bolted upright.

Still the sound grew. This was no dragon, nor yet thunder, nor storm winds.The sea spoke to Seok-Teng through the ship’s movements, as it had to her forbears for generations beyond counting; tonight it gave no cause for alarm. Japanese patrol boats? When she had taken her crew so far out of the usual shipping channels to avoid such pursuit? No, she had come to know that sound all too well. This one was different—yet not entirely unknown.

The cabin’s entrance showed scarcely lighter than its interior. Now it darkened. Han Duan, the ship’s Number One, squatted to look within.

“An aircraft,” Seok-Teng called, before the other could speak.

Han Duan grunted in agreement. “Not a large one, but low, and coming close. Who would fly so far from any land?”

“It is nothing to do with us.” Seok-Teng wished to resume the dream. She wished also to avoid resuming discussion of why a pirate ship would sail so far from any land, when it was accustomed by tradition to plying the coasts along the South China Sea.

“The Japanese have many planes,” Han Duan said.

“And better uses for them than pursuing us this far. We are very small fish indeed.” That was a tactical error, Seok-Teng realized at once. Evading a Japanese navy angered by the plundering of several small merchant ships off Mindanao had been her stated excuse for sailing so far to the east.

The small islands and atolls of the Mariana and Marshall groups were technically under Japanese control, but surely the eye of Nippon was bent too fiercely on the conquest of China to pay much attention to every far-flung spit of sand. On some of those islets distant relatives from Seok-Teng’s many-branched heritage still lived, and on others there were no permanent habitations at all. Good places for her crew to find or build a refuge while the world at large descended into war and madness—if a refuge was what they truly wanted.

She herself was torn by the desire to take part in the battle, to join forces with China’s defenders as pirates in the past had often done. In her small packet of private belongings was a small photograph, cut from a newspaper, of Soong Mai-ling, the beautiful wife of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and a leader in her own right. Seok-Teng longed to serve her in some fashion, but the way was not clear.The old pirate practices might suffice for the harrying of merchant ships, but the modern military craft of the Japanese were another matter.

Han Duan grunted again and stood, with just enough of a stoop to clear the low roof. The plane was nearly overhead now. Seok-Teng slid a hand under her pillow, ran a finger delicately along the undulating blade of her kris, then gripped its hilt. Both blade and hilt were warm. The dream, then, had been no accident, but a promise—or a warning. Seok-Teng would have spoken to the dagger if her Number One had not been present. Instead, she rolled from her bed into a crouch, pressed her brow to the weapon in mute homage to the ancestors from whom it had come, and, still stooping, emerged onto the deck of the She-Dragon.

Han Duan’s head tilted back as she stared upward. Seok-Teng straightened and stepped to the rail. Along the eastern horizon lay just the faintest hint that day might come, but overhead a low, sullen cloud cover obscured the stars. The airplane, now directly above them, could not be seen, though its roar seemed so tangible that Seok-Teng raised her hand, whether to grasp or fend it off she did not know. She had even forgotten that she held the kris, which now pointed into the sky.

“Would your demon blade lead us now even into the heavens? Let it fly then by itself!” Han Duan raised her voice to be heard over the noise of the plane. Her own scarred face seemed demonic in the light of a single swaying lantern.

The eight crewmembers with their bedrolls on deck, already roused by the turmoil, watched this drama with great interest. More heads emerged from the hatchway, jostling for a view. Some preferred the privacy of the hold for their sleep or other nocturnal pursuits, but they were still alert for any excitement from above.

Seok-Teng allowed her arm to descend very slowly, while the blade pointed ever toward the unseen aircraft moving away into the distance. Her tone was harsh as steel on steel. “Has my kris ever led us to less than a rich prize?”

“Not yet.” Han Duan’s fierce expression relaxed into a wry grin, defusing the conflict. “And if you can manage to fly after this target, then so can I. So can we all. Just as soon as you leap aloft and lead the way.” A few muffled laughs came from the bedrolls. She leaned closer to Seok-Teng and spoke in a lower tone. “But your demon has always led us to women, as well as treasure, to be rescued or taken into the crew. You will find no woman in a ship of the air.”

“Who knows? Many would be even more certain that a pirate ship could not be crewed by women.” Seok-Teng’s hand dropped to her side, but still she gazed into the eastern sky.

“Well, what will come, will come,” Han Duan said. “For now, that craft has passed beyond our reach. Perhaps we will yet come upon her crashed onto a coral reef, laden with gold and gems and a princess worth a great ransom. Enough even to buy our peace with Madame Lai Choi San.”

Seok-Teng frowned. A subtle motion of her head led the other to follow her back into the cramped cabin, where they reclined on woven floor mats. Whatever speculations might entertain the crew, these days the two old shipmates shared the low bed only during the fevered revels that followed each successful—and profitable—raid. Too long an interval since the previous occasion might well have had something to do with the tension that shortened tempers in recent days. Han Duan had many an eager outlet for her energies among the crew, when she chose, but Seok-Teng’s authority as captain of the She-Dragon depended on a degree of aloofness. Beyond that was an unspoken truth between them; only in each other could their deepest needs be met.

“With enough booty our crew, and even you, might purchase old Mountain of Wealth’s pardon,” Seok-Teng said, “but no treasure will ever cause her to let me live. More passed between us than I have told, though you may well guess. Better that our youngsters do not know how fiercely her hatred of me burns. They have seen Japanese soldiers only from a distance; the fury of the Dragon Lady of Bias Bay is far more real to them.”

Han Duan drew a long breath and blew it out slowly. “So it is not only the Japanese we flee. I thought as much, though not that you had fallen from Madame’s favor so far that gold could not pave the way back.”

They sat in silence, both thinking of the woman they had served. Lai Choi San ruled the most powerful pirate fleet in Macao with an iron hand untempered by any velvet glove. Most of her wealth came from “protection” schemes and ransomed captives who, if their families were slow to pay, would return with fingers or ears missing, but her influence extended far beyond the coasts of Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

Smaller fleets and individual ships in which she held a share cruised as far as the coast of Vietnam to the southwest and Luzon in the Philippines to the southeast, sending her tribute and perpetual interest on her investments. One of these had captured the young Seok-Teng in her own small smuggler’s boat on the waters of Vinh Ha Long, Bay of the Descending Dragon, where China gives way toVietnam. The girl had fought so valiantly and viciously, and her beauty had been of so a fierce a nature, that a wise captain had seen in her a value beyond the ordinary and taken her to Macao to offer to Lai Choi San herself. He had even presented her captured kris along with her, knowing well that the spirits with which such blades were imbued could bring luck to their rightful owners and fatal misfortune to others.

Seok-Teng sighed, wishing she had not been reminded of those times. She had, indeed, risen high in Madame’s favor. For two years she had served as one of two amahs, companions and bodyguards to their pirate mistress. There had been rare moments of kindness and much education in the ways of pirating, as well as occasional instruction in service of a more intimate nature. And there had been Han Duan, who had come to the same position by a different route, passing as a man for years on the Macao waterfront until one day she overheard plotting among rival pirates and came before Lai Choi San to warn her.

“Duan, old friend, why did you follow me?”

In the dimness only shapes and movements could be discerned. Han Duan’s bowed head would have hidden her expression in any case. Seok-Teng pushed on.

“Madame would have given you your own ship, with the pick of captured women to sail her. Indeed, this entire crew would have joined you, given the option. Or she would have given you the management of her fan-tan casinos in Macao. I know she offered.”

Lai Choi San had been practical enough to know when her strong-willed amahs had reached the limits of service to a domineering mistress. She had agreed to finance a ship for Seok-Teng, crewed by captured women who had experience on fishing boats, and were in any case too unattractive or combative to be sold to the floating brothels. As long as enough profit came her way, what did it matter whose pillaging had procured it? Besides, it amused her at times to pit the female pirates against men she wished to humiliate. This aspect of their duties had not, however, amused Seok-Teng, and had driven her to range farther and farther until her ship had become independent in all but the payment of more than adequate tribute.

Even that had come to an end. There was no going back to Bias Bay and Macao now, or to any waters under the influence of the Dragon Lady, after the last bitter clash of wills. Seok-Teng would no longer be a party to the sale of captured women into slavery. Far to the east now, beyond the Philippines, the Marianas, and nearly to the Marshall Islands, Seok-Teng had no regrets save that her closest friend might have done better to stay behind.

Han Duan looked up with a grin, and the early rays of dawn through the cabin’s entrance glinted on white teeth. “How could I leave my guns and cannons to your bumbling care? No one alive knows the ways of ships and the sea as you do, but when it comes to any weapon beyond a blade, you might as well be gambling at fan-tan yourself.” Then she sobered, glancing sidelong at the an- cient kris lying on Seok-Teng’s pillow. “Yet I would follow you even without the guns. Yes, even though you steer by dreams sent through a blade. Such a captain might be thought to traffic with demons or djinns.”

“Or to be insane?”

Han Duan shrugged. “Nearly as dangerous.” She looked past Seok-Teng to the cabin door. A sleek young woman had just knelt to set down a tray with the morning meal, tea and bowls of rice flavored with dried cuttlefish. Her long, wet hair was evidence of an early swim.

“Thank you, Amihan,” Han Duan said formally.The girl ducked her head and backed away, smooth cheeks flushed with more than reflected sunrise. A sidelong glance at her captain as she left deepened her rosy glow.

“So you’ve had the pair now?” Seok-Teng was glad of the diversion. “Dalisay was blushing last week, I noticed.”

Han Duan considered it one of her duties to “initiate” any new recruit who was receptive to such things. Not until they had become accustomed to their surroundings, and none more than once, to avoid an appearance of favoritism that would interfere with discipline, but it had become a tradition. Even those who were at first not so inclined often came to indicate an interest, even if only out of curiosity or communal sentiment, and none seemed disappointed when they emerged from her closet-sized cabin in the bow of the hold.

“I do not fault your blade’s taste in women,” Han Duan conceded.

Updated CFS for Wild Girls

2012-02-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

I've updated my Call for Submissions a bit, so I'm re-posting the whole thing. Scroll down to the last bits, and notice especially the offer of more time if needed.

Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories

Editor: Sacchi Green

Publisher: Cleis Press

Preferred Length: 2000-4000 words

Deadline: March 1, 2012

Payment: $50 per story and two copies of the anthology

You put something of yourself into everything you write. You know you do. Now it’s time to take a deep breath, go that extra step, and write an erotic story firmly grounded in truth. Real encounters, real emotions, real sensations, real people, drawn from memory and transformed by your art into real stories as gripping as any fiction.

Some degree of poetic license—or erotic license—is all right. Memories are inevitably filtered through time and experience, and telling a story can sometimes reveal the inner truth of feelings and actions better without a precise list of actions or a verbatim account of conversations. In the heat of the moment—and I do want the very hottest moments—certain parts stand out so vividly in your mind that everything before and after blurs and must be imagined. Combining events into a shorter time span can make the overall effect more intense. Pseudonyms are fine, and even if you use your own name, you must use fictional names for any other characters in order to maintain some degree of privacy.

As always, I’ll be looking for variety in style, tone, setting, characterization, and all the things that make a story distinctive. This time, though, realism is the primary factor. First-time encounters are great, high points in long-term relationships are lovely, one-time outrageous adventures are fine, and BDSM elements are welcome as long as you really know what you’re talking about. True love, mad crush, daring experimentation, any of these can work, and even sex that doesn’t work out as planned is fair territory. Perfection in looks, skills, endurance, or any other erotic attribute is not necessary, and even if you’re lucky enough to have encountered perfection, you’ll have to make me believe in it. In fact, no matter what you write, you’ll have to make me believe in it. These stories must be not only intensely arousing, but intensely convincing as well. Readers need to feel a link to their own lives and a validation of their deepest desires.

All stories must be written in the first person. All writers must be women, which in this case means having identified as women during any stage of their lives. My preferred length is 2000-5000 words. If you have a good story to tell but aren’t sure your skills are up to it yet, give it a try; I’m willing to work with you on technical details. This balance of truth and art can get complicated, so feel free to e-mail me with any questions.

E-mail submissions (.doc or .rtf files only) and queries to: sacchigreen@gmail.com.

Update:

I’m getting mostly first-time encounters so far. That’s fine, and I wouldn’t mind more, but I’d also like stories from more experienced viewpoints. They could be memorable points in relationships (have you ever tried something new while on vacation? On an anniversary? In Paris, or Tahiti, or Provincetown, or wherever?) Or risk-taking adventures, even if the characters are ships that pass in the night.

If you need a bit more time to develop your story at this point, let me know, and we’ll work things out. I’ve left some leeway in the timing of this one, since it’ll need some delicate balance.

Steamy story, humor, and free book drawing!

2012-02-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

This is my big day on the Coming Together: Share the Love blogbash. Come on over to see my contribution to this excellent series of anthologies whose proceeds benefit charities. The middle half of my story "Seafood Cocktail" is posted as an excerpt, and I'm holding a drawing for a copy of any of my Cleis anthologies, so please come and comment. Even if the story squicks you out. But don't worry; I stopped the excerpt just short of any oyster abuse. http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2012/02/sex-humor-and-oysters.html

Win a Kindle Fire, Support Coming Together Charity Anthologies

2012-02-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

A bit off my beaten track, but I do have a story in one of the Coming Together charity erotica anthologies. My "Seafood Cocktail" is in Coming Together: At Last, with a multiracial theme. My POV character is a lesbian, but she does make an exception in the extreme circumstance of being shipwrecked on a desert island during a "survivors"-type reality show. Hot, and humorous as well. I'll be posting a substantial excerpt on the blog, probably including the part with the oysters. Fair warning.

Don't miss a chance to win a Kindle Fire, plus books from some of the bloggers from the Coming Together series. These erotica anthologies are done as fundraisers for charities; Amnesty International gets the proceeds of Coming Together: At Last, the multi-racial book my story is in. Check out this blog site every day this month, leave a comment every time, and be entered in the Kindle drawing. Meanwhile, some of us will be offering free book drawings on the days we blog; I'm on February 8th, and I'll offer a choice of any one of my anthologies.

Coming Together: Share the Love!

http://eroticanthology.blogspot.com/2012/01/share-love.html#.TyhLaWxVkUU.facebook

Naked Reader Book Club Discussion

2012-01-23T19:08:00.000-08:00

I've been moderating the online Naked Reader Book Club discussions for several months, but I haven't posted much about them here because the books they choose, while all excellent (and from Cleis Press,) are for the most part straight erotica. This week, though, Tuesday Jan. 24, we're discussing an anthology no one should miss: Tristan Taormino's Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica. If you haven't read the book, you can find out a great deal about it during the discussion. Here's the blurb I've been posting here and there:

Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, 8-10 pm EST tomorrow evening on the Naked Reader Book Club. Not to be missed. If you identify as transgender, or have friends who do, you'll be glad a book this fine has gone there at last. If you don't know much about the trans folk in our communities, you'll be glad to know them at last. Some of the finest writers I know offer searingly hot stories that range from sweet to sadistic, tender to torrid, kinky to achingly lovely. http://www.edenfantasys.com/sex-forum/clubs/naked-reader-book-club/naked-reader-book-club-29/

Heiresses of Russ 2012: Call for Recommendations

2012-01-12T20:09:00.000-08:00

And now for something (almost) completely different! My speculative fiction alter-ego has a new gig. If you don't have any recommendations yet for this, now's the time to go forth and read!

Heiresses of Russ, the new annual anthology series created in honor of the late writer, academic, and feminist Joanna Russ, is now taking recommendations for the 2012 edition. We’re looking for lesbian-themed speculative fiction first published in 2011.

The 2011 edition, co-edited by Joselle Vanderhooft, is available now, including work by Ellen Kushner, Tanith Lee, Rachel Swirsky, and other outstanding writers. This year Steve Berman of Lethe Press has invited Connie Wilkins to co-edit the 2012 edition with him. Connie also edited Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories for Lethe Press, and has edited seven anthologies under an alternate name in an alternate genre.

We're looking for the best lesbian-themed speculative fiction published in 2011, with a length limit of 2,000-10,000 words. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, interstitital, just plain weird--we'll know it when we see it. We can’t succinctly define superlative writing, either, but we know it when we see it.

Recommendations from readers, authors, and publishers will be welcomed. We don't need the stories themselves just yet, but if we're interested and can't find copies on our own, we'll ask for manuscripts.

Our deadline for recommendations is March 15, 2012. The payment for these reprinted stories will be $25 each and two copies of the anthology. Recommendations and queries can be e-mailed to conniew@sff.net.

Winners in the Lesbian Fiction Forum Book Giveaway!

2011-12-18T21:27:00.000-08:00

Here are the winners in the Lesbian Fiction Forum Book Drawing, out of 43 entries. Everyone who entered was assigned a number in order of their posts, and the winning numbers were picked via the random sequence generator at random.org.

Jeanne Dodge wins Redemption, by Forum member DeJay

Peggy Adams wins Butch Girls Can Fix Anything, by Forum Member Paula Offutt

law-nerd wins Lesbian Cowboys, edited by Forum Member Sacchi Green, including a story by DeJay

Deb wins Lesbian Lust, edited by Sacchi Green, including stories by DeJay and Forum members Fran Walker and Ren Peters

Q_Kelly wins A Ride to Remember, by Sacchi Green

Rainette wins Promises, Promises, by Forum member L-J Baker

Jlnickymaster wins Women of the Bite, edited by Cecilia Tan, including stories by Forum members Fran Walker and Sacchi Green

Timi wins Skulls and Crossbones, edited by Andi Marquette and R.G. Emanuelle, including a story by Forum member Elaine Burnes

We have no contact information for most of you, so you’ll need to e-mail sacchigreen@gmail.com with your mailing addresses. Let us know whether you’d like your book signed by the donor, and please check in once again on the entry site, http://tinyurl.com/7qqr57e, to say “Hi” and let everybody know you’ve claimed your prize.

Thanks to all of you! We should do this again some time!

Free Books for the Festive Season: a Forum Sampler Giveaway

2011-12-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

Winter is book season!

Enter a drawing for copies of books by (or including work by) members of the Lesbian Fiction Forum, a discussion site for readers and writers of lesbian fiction. http://www.lesbianfiction.org/index.php

Here’s what we’re offering:

Redemption, by Forum member DeJay

Butch Girls Can Fix Anything, by Forum member Paula Offutt

Lesbian Cowboys, edited by Forum member Sacchi Green, including a story by DeJay

Lesbian Lust, edited by Sacchi Green, including stories by DeJay and Forum members Fran Walker and Ren Peters

A Ride to Remember, by Sacchi Green

Promises, Promises, by Forum member L-J Baker

Women of the Bite, edited by Cecilia Tan, including a story by Fran Walker

Skulls and Crossbones, edited by Andi Marquette and R.G. Emanuelle, including a story by Forum member Elaine Burnes

Enter by commenting on this announcement at http://tinyurl.com/7qqr57e

Guests are welcome to comment and enter the drawing. You do not have to register or join the forum or provide personal details to post a comment on this topic and enter the drawing.

Eight names will be drawn as winners, and will be contacted in the order drawn to determine who gets which book. No need to express a preference yet.

The deadline for entering is Sunday, December 18, midnight EST.

Sharing a Post-Civil War Transgender Story

2011-12-03T21:11:00.000-08:00

In honor of the passage of the transgender non-discrimination bill in Massachusetts, I’ve been wanting to share this story I wrote (under my alter-ego’s name) for my first anthology, Rode Hard, Put Away Wet. Not a winter holiday story, although there is certainly snow.

A bit of background first: it’s estimated that as many as 400 women served as soldiers in the Civil War in the US, on both sides. Some went to be near husbands or lovers, but many seized the chance to live, however dangerously, as men. Some were exposed when they were wounded, some long afterward when they died after maintaining a masculine identity for the rest of their lives, and some must have gone on to live life on their own terms and never be questioned. This is a story of one who went west and found everything he needed.

Snowfound

Sacchi Green

The lamps of Dutch Flat shone through the swirling snow as we rounded the last curve of the Bear River. Old Ulysses picked up his gait, not needing the lights to know that shelter and feed and the company of his own kind lay close ahead.

As for me, hunched against the cold in my sheepskin coat, hat brim pulled low to keep the snow clear of my eyes, I'd be happy enough for shelter, too, and a good meal. The company of my own kind was a more questionable matter. I had acquaintances in town, some who counted me as friend, but only one who understood the resolve it took for me to put on the face and manner that the rest took for granted.

The early snow lay a foot deep in the open, deeper where it drifted against outcroppings of boulders and scrub pine and juniper. Ulysses was the first to notice something different about the long, white mound at the edge of one such thicket, partly obscured by weighted branches.

I might have missed it altogether, being inwardly focused on reassembling my go-to-town identity. Jack Elliott, miner, trapper, supporter of civic projects and worthy charitable endeavors; a sizable man, good for back-up in a fight, known to crack heads together in the quelling of drunken brawls, and a sharpshooter from his days in the Union Army.

All this was, on the whole, true. A role I could live with. It was the frequent whispers, meant kindly enough, in general, that made my innards shiver. Some newcomer on the porch of the general store or in a saloon would lean close to an old-timer to hear about poor Jack Elliott, wounded so bad at the Battle of Chickamauga that his beard never grew again and his voice had gone up to about the pitch of an adolescent boy's.

Then they'd shift uneasily in their chairs until somebody commented that Jack surely had an eye for the ladies, at least, and would buy a girl a drink and even dance with a good deal of enjoyment, though nobody'd ever seen him go upstairs at the whorehouse. That'd bring a chuckle, and more uneasy shifting, but if I came close enough for hailing there'd be genial enough greetings and invitations to sit in at a poker game.

My ruminations had begun to drift back toward the girls in the dance hall, all curls and red lips and waists laced up tight to make their bosoms swell above their low-cut gowns. Ulysses' sudden halt jolted me. I looked where the horse was looking, and saw a twitch of movement. Just a juniper branch springing loose from its weight of snow, I figured, maybe triggered by some small creature sheltering beneath.

I urged Ulysses onward, but he stopped again when we'd drawn about level with the suspicious mound. My horse was not of a temperament to shy at trifles. Half Morgan, half Clydesdale, he had strength enough to fear little, wit enough to know what needed fearing, and courage enough to face the latter if I asked it of him. From Vermont to the war in the South to the Sierra Mountains he'd carried me, through the hellfire of battle and the solitude of wilderness. It wasn't fear, but more likely curiosity that halted him now, or perhaps his judgment that I ought to take notice of whatever this was.

Another twitch, more shedding of snow, and I saw that he was right. Jet-black hair lay beneath a powdering of white. I dismounted, my Sharps carbine at the ready, and gently prodded a snow-covered shoulder with the toe of my boot. No response.

I knelt, still cautious, and turned the body on its side. The face revealed was pale as ivory, eyes closed, with a knife slash and swelling purple bruise extending from the narrow jaw up over a delicate cheekbone.

A child? A female child? I dropped my carbine and brushed away snow with both hands. She wore a quilted jacket and cotton trousers, much too thin for the weather. I shed one elkhide glove and slipped a hand under the flimsy covering, looking for a heartbeat. The curve of her breast told me that she was, in fact, no child. I looked closer at her face and realized that she must be from the Chinatown section of Dutch Flat, populated by immigrants who had come first for the mining, then for the building of the railroad.

I touched a finger to her exposed throat. Cold. Cold as death. But not dead, not quite, not yet. A tremor of a pulse still stirred the smooth skin.

Dusk was deepening into night, and the swirling snow had intensified. There was no time for any but the most cursory search for other injuries. I lifted her slight form across my shoulder, retrieved my carbine, and contrived to mount one-handed. Ulysses started forward, needing no more direction than my knees and heels provided.

She was so pale, so cold... With only a moment's hesitation I pulled open my coat and hugged her to my chest, closing the sheepskin around her. She stirred a bit, curling instinctively closer to my warm body. Then, eyes still tight-closed, she slipped her arms around me as far as they could reach and nestled her uninjured cheek against my breast.

Some strange force leapt inside me. Beneath my woolen shirt my flesh stirred and swelled under the pressure of her head. Lust, tenderness, perhaps some vestigial instinct for nurturance, warred with fear of discovery.

In spite of sore temptation I had never trusted even the most appealing of whores with my secret. I knew some would have been as glad of my attentions as of my money; other women had been, from time to time, even in the War. I had not been the only female-born to take on a man's role and enlist. Not all of us had been following male sweethearts, either, and some of us had found each other and taken brief comfort amidst the hell of war.

By the time we reached town I had decided that my fears were unfounded. She was still unconscious, and, in any case, might well not even speak or understand English. Once I had taken her to safety, it was unlikely that I would encounter her again. My arms felt strangely reluctant at the thought of releasing her, though, and I began to consider where, after all, she would be safe.

Ulysses had headed out of habit toward the one place where we were always welcome. Doc Warren was the only inhabitant of Dutch Flat, or California, or anywhere west of the Hudson River, who knew my full identity, having nursed me through a fever when I'd first come west. He'd been willing to keep my secret, whether from some sense of medical ethics or an inclination toward solidarity with a fellow soldier. As a military doctor he'd seen as much of the horrors of the war as any rifleman. Maybe more.

We'd become friends, having more in common than not in spite of the twenty years difference in our ages. I often stayed with him when I came to town for supplies. In any case, where better to take an injured girl than to a doctor's house? But the Chinese, I knew, had doctors too, with their own strange medical ways. And someone in Chinatown might well be searching for this girl.

I very nearly turned Ulysses away from his accustomed route and toward the settlement across the tracks, with its Joss house temples, Chinese merchandise stores, gambling halls, restaurants, laundries, apothecaries, brothels, and opium dens. Then I looked down at the ravaged face so close to mine and realized that someone had slashed her, had committed mayhem, quite deliberately. And that either she had been running away, or someone had dumped her outside of town in the bitter cold with night and a snowstorm coming on. I would not deliver her back to that former life without finding out more.

She moved a little in my arms and gripped me harder, though her eyes were still closed. I felt a surge of protectiveness; no more, I told myself, than anyone might feel for some kitten or pup plucked from destruction. But a tingling in my body, a stab of longing where the weight of her hips pressed against me, told me that I lied.

Doc had rooms and an office at the back of the building housing the post office. To my relief, there was a lamp lit in his window. I'd worried that he might be off tending to injuries or delivering babies.

He was slow to answer the thump of my boot against his door. Once inside I could see by the dilated pupils of his eyes that he had been dosing himself with laudanum or some such pharmaceutical. I'd be the last to blame a man for trying to dull recurring dreams of the horrors of war, or the other miseries doctors must witness, but it was still early in the evening, and somebody might have needed him. Somebody did need him.

"What's all this, Jack?" he said, his words only a little slurred. I lay my burden on his sofa and turned to see him shaking the fog from his head. An odd look passed across his face as he focused on the girl, and he hesitated for a long moment, but his hands seemed steady enough when finally he bent over her to explore her injuries.

"I found her about a mile out along the Bear River trail," I said. "Or you might say Ulysses found her. She was covered in snow, lying where she'd either fallen or been dumped." The rough anger in my voice might have been roused entirely by those who had done such a thing, or a little may have been aimed at Doc himself.

He straightened up wearily. "You go get Ulysses settled in while I make us some coffee. Might have a bit of tea around here for the girl, too. A hot drink inside her is the first thing she needs."

I nodded, then wished I hadn't when snow melt dripped from my hat. Fifteen minutes later, back from Ed Sawyer's livery stable two streets away, I left my hat and coat on the stand by the door after shaking off the snow on the doorstep.

Coffee was brewing on the black iron stove, beside a great kettle of steaming water. Doc had spread a blanket over the girl and was kneeling by the sofa applying unguent and bandages to her injured face.

I hauled my gear into Doc's spare room. My shirt was wet from clutching a snow-covered body against it, so I dug a dry one from my pack, and, as was my habit in adjusting to the role of an upstanding male member of the community, I dealt firmly with the most obvious evidence to the contrary by binding my chest tightly with cotton bands.

"Give me a hand here, Jack," Doc said when I emerged. "She's coming around. You sit there and prop her up."

At first glance it looked to me as though she was still out cold, but then I detected a glint behind her long lashes, and felt her gaze track my movement across the room. I edged onto the sofa, raising her shoulders just enough to slide my thighs beneath them. When she didn't seem to object I pulled her higher against me until she was sitting on my lap. Her uninjured cheek lay against my collarbone and her black hair brushed my throat and chin.

It seemed somehow so natural a position, restful and stimulating both at once, that Doc's return with the tea felt almost like an intrusion. But faint spasms of shivering swept her body every few seconds, and I knew he was right about the need to warm her. Not that alternative methods of doing so didn't occupy my mind.

"Drink this," Doc said with firm authority. I noticed that his hand holding the cup wasn't altogether steady. The girl's nostrils twitched as she inhaled the steam suspiciously, and her lips remained stubbornly closed. Even I could detect the scent of some herbal soporific.

"Let me," I said, taking the cup. "Open up, now."

She tilted her head back until she could gaze up into my face. Her dark almond-shaped eyes were intent with some emotion I couldn't decipher, but whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her. She lowered her mouth to the rim of the cup and drank as I tipped it toward her.

"You make a fine nurse, Jack," Doc said. "Now see if you can get her clothes off."

I looked sharply at him to see whether this was some sort of joke. There was a wry sort of smile on his face, but when he went to the kitchen pump to half-fill a copper hip-bath with buckets of water and then turned the contents of the steaming kettle into it, I understood what he was about.

She let me unfasten her jacket and slide her cotton trousers down her hips, not merely placidly, as the herbs might dictate, but with an appearance of languid pleasure. A little smile curved her lips very briefly, though she winced at the pain this caused her cheek. When she lifted her small round buttocks to let me ease the fabric past them her fragrance was so inviting that I was hard put to resist lowering my face to taste the musky sweetness between her thighs.

Doc Warren kept his back discreetly turned until I had her in the bath. When he turned back he his demeanor was professional enough. I tried to follow his lead, though the slender grace of her body and the smoothness of her honey-hued skin had my pulses pounding. Her breasts above the water were small but beautifully shaped, rounder than I would have expected from such observations as I'd made of the few Chinese women seen on the streets of the town.

Doc shot me a sardonic glance, appreciating, I knew, the irony that my presence bolstered the proprieties in a literal sense, since I had a woman's body, but smashed them to bits in terms of a lustful gaze.

"Is she going to be all right?" I asked gruffly. "No frostbite?" Her feet had been blue-tinged, but were now turning bright pink in the hot water, and her color in general seemed to have improved.

"I'd say you and Ulysses found her just in time," he said. "I think she'd been running away, not dumped, and fell not long before you happened by. The snow was building up fast just then. She'll do fine in that respect."

His tone warned me of some deeper concern. "How about her face?" I asked. "She'll be scarred, I know, but..."

"The face will heal, more or less," he said. "The slash isn't all that deep. But yes, there'll be scarring. She'll never work again in Madame Yee's House of Flowers, or any other."

Well, I couldn't say I was much surprised. "So you know she worked in a brothel?"

"Jack, I know all too much about her, and you'd better know it, too." Doc rubbed his face wearily. "It was a fine thing you did, saving her from freezing to death, but I'm not sure you did her any favor at all."

He reached for a blanket left handy over a nearby chair. "Let's get her dried off and bedded down. She's about asleep as it is. Then we'll talk." As I rolled her in the blanket and then unrolled her into dry quilts on the bed, I saw half-healed lash-stripes across her back and flanks, and wondered angrily how any brothel proprietor could have allowed such damage, if only because it would decrease her value.

When we sat by the stove with cups of hot coffee and a plate of cold ham and biscuits, Doc was silent for a while. I was on the verge of pushing him for an explanation when he said abruptly, "Did anyone see you carrying her through town?"

"Not that I noticed," I said. "Ulysses did all the navigating. If there were folks about they'd have had their hats pulled down against the snow just as I did. And if they did see me, I'd guess I only looked about as bearlike as usual, hunched against the cold and wind with her close inside my greatcoat."

"That's just as well, then," Doc said, "or she'd be lucky to see another dawn. And so would we, if I'm any judge of how you'd react when they came to get her."

"Who'd be after her?" But I knew part of the answer. Someone who had tried to ruin her face. Someone who wasn't going to touch her again, not without going through me first.

Turned out, of course, there was more to it than that. The Tong Wars of San Francisco's Chinatown had spread to the Sierra gold fields. Business owners in thriving towns like Dutch Flat could be coerced into paying "protection" money as readily as those in the city, and a town official might take the opportunity to get his share of what was going in return for turning a blind eye toward illicit activities.

Hong Lian, Red Lotus, had been part of one such arrangement, a "gift" from a Tong chief to the sheriff who had taken a fancy to her at Madame Yee's. Reportedly he'd taken a few other things to her as well, and when it came to spurs she'd rebelled. Doc Warren had spent the day working on the sheriff, trying to repair injuries caused by sharp fingernails and teeth so savage they'd come close to inflicting the kind of wounds rumored to be the cause of my own minor deviations from standard manhood.

"So both the law and the Tong are after her," Doc said. "The Tong has already marked her, as a lesson to others, but they've by no means finished with her. Running may have been her only chance to choose the manner of her death. She might even try to run again."

"Then I'd better watch close to be sure she doesn't," I said curtly.

Mind and body too tired and conflicted for useful thought, I went and lay beside her on the bed, fully clothed. Near morning I woke to find that a blanket had been laid across me, but I was still cold, and burrowed quietly under the rest of the quilts. When sun slanted through the window I found a slim, naked body wrapped in my arms and a knee nudged against the damp crotch of my Levi Strauss canvas trousers.

Doc had left coffee and cornbread in the kitchen, along with a note. "Think hard and fast, Jack. And keep her quiet. We're in deeper than a bull in a heifer."

I blessed him for that "we're" and for his wry humor. I'd brought trouble to his doorstep, and he'd taken it in, both as doctor and as friend.

A tin of tea leaves sat on the table. I did my best to brew a cup, thinking to take it to the invalid, but before I got to the bedroom door she was standing there, wrapped in a quilt, long dark hair tousled about her face and shoulders.

"Jack?" she said experimentally. Her voice was high and sweet.

"Jack," I agreed, nodding.

She put a hand to her own chest. "Hong Lian", she said, or at least it sounded close enough to the way Doc had pronounced the name last night. I didn't think I could get my mouth around it just yet.

"Red Lotus?" I asked, and she nodded back at me.

"Lo-tus," she said, coming forward to take the cup from me. For all that she drank daintily, and was somewhat impeded by her injury, the tea seemed to disappear in a flash. She walked to the kitchen table, set down the cup, and turned back to me, loosing her grip on the quilt a bit so that it fell open to show her nakedness.

Thinking what to do—thinking rationally about anything at all—was about to get harder than ever I'd dreamed. And the voice in need of quieting would turn out to be my own.

Lotus raised the edges of her covering like wings, and came toward me. Her warm scent flooded my senses. She got so close she had to tilt her head back to look into my face. "Jack," she said again, and raised a hand to my cheek, letting go one corner of the quilt. Her stroke on my skin felt like the taste of warm honey. "Mei-lai," she whispered.

I had no time to wonder what the word meant. Her hand descended over my jaw, my throat, across my breasts, making them surge as though they'd burst their bindings. Then she was kneeling before me, both hands on my belt buckle, murmuring more words I couldn't have understood even if blood hadn't been pounding in my head so loud I could scarcely hear.

A few panicked thoughts still pierced through the turmoil. What was she expecting to find? Did she know by now who, or what, I was? Or did she plan to use me as she had the sheriff, in order to escape? The thought of her sharp little teeth in my flesh made me wince even as my wetness flowed.

Then her fingers slid inside the unbuttoned fly of my trousers, and found me, and I barely stifled a yelp. The busy post office was a thin wall away, and the clop of hooves and stamp of boots, slightly muffled by last night's snow, came in from the nearby street. I could hear an indistinct buzz of voices; mine would surely be heard as well if I raised it.

But her fingers moved more insistently, and her little red tongue thrust its way in beside them. Her other hand still worked at my belt buckle. Any minute I would be in a state of helpless glory, hobbled by pleasure and my trousers about my ankles.

With a low growl I lifted her to her feet, and then so high along my body that her soft throat was against my hungry lips. Her laughter vibrated right into my mouth. She wriggled, but not in resistance, as I carried her back to the bed.

My clothes were off before I knew it, and we were rolling naked together. She looked so small and fragile, in spite of her full round breasts and gently curving belly, that I was afraid I might crush her with my bulk. But she seemed infinitely resilient, thrusting her hips upward toward the pressure of my thigh between her legs, arching her neck to grasp one swollen nipple and then another in her hot mouth. When she sucked hard, then harder, with a hint of grazing teeth, I groaned, and bucked until the creaking of the bedstead might have been heard in the street. It took only a few thrusts of the fingers she had worked between us to send such stabs of pleasure coursing through me that my teeth clenched in my own forearm to stifle cries that would have resounded like the roar of an angry grizzly.

In a state of gasping collapse I rolled from her body, and suddenly she was on top of me, all over me, kneeling astride at one moment to streak my belly with her juices, then sitting beside me, leaning to plant little kisses from knees to swampy crotch to breasts and chin and lips.

"Mei-lai," she murmured, again and again. I wondered whether it was some former lover's name, but then all thought fled as she shifted her body upward and straddled my face. I steadied her small round buttocks with hands that encompassed the whole of their curves. My lips worked against her nether ones, and her hips wriggled wildly as I thrust my long tongue up into her streaming heat, until the spasms sweeping her shook my head from side to side in the fierce grip of her thighs. Her rapid cries, though no louder than a mewling kitten's, still pierced me to my core.

We had barely time to recover before Doc Warren returned from his rounds. We were clothed, but the air must have reeked of what we'd been up to, even though we'd managed to heat water and wash up a bit.

"No need to ask," Doc said dryly, "What kind of thinking you've been doing." He went to the cupboard for sticking-plaster to repair the bandage that had loosened a bit from Lotus's cheek. "Whatever you're going to do, you'd better do it fast. Snow's not all that deep from yesterday's storm, but Many Bearclaws over at the livery stable says there's a big one brewing, due by morning."

The old Indian was seldom wrong about the weather. And mention of the stable reminded me that there was no point in my staying hidden, since Ulysses' presence there was advertisement enough that I was in town. The sooner I was seen out and about the less suspicion there'd be, and, in any case, I needed to pick up the provisions I'd come for. As well as a few more.

Doc would be holding office hours in the room next door. "Stay in the bedroom," I ordered Lotus, who pouted a bit and then grimaced at the pain it caused her cheek. Whether she understood the words or not, she clearly understood their meaning when I bound her leg to the bedstead with my belt. She could easily enough get free, but she could also count on my returning for the belt. And for her.

I went off into town, hoping my coat hid the rope holding up my trousers. A stop at the bank with my little sack of gold nuggets and dust came first. Then I lugged my sacks of cornmeal and beans and a bit of salt and sugar from the general store along the wood plank sidewalk, returning greetings from acquaintances ranging from gamblers to church ladies. Once back at the livery stable, I deposited my supplies next to Ulysses' stall. "A couple more parcels will be delivered from the store," I told Ed Sawyer. "I'll be packing up tomorrow morning at first light to get ahead of the worst of the storm." Old Many Bearclaws, tending an injured horse a couple of stalls away, grunted skeptically.

Then, instead of going toward Doc's place, I found myself veering toward Chinatown. I'd been there before, out of curiosity; now I went right for a general merchandise store and picked up a big sack of rice and a few tins of tea. I waited to pay while the old woman at the counter stroked a length of embroidered silk a customer was considering. "Mei-lai, mei-lai," she said, over and over. My skin tingled. "Mei-lai?" I asked, as well as I could manage, when the potential customer had left without purchasing. "What does that mean?" She gave me a shrewd, considering look. "Beau-ti-ful," she said at last.

My parcel, when I departed, contained the silk fabric tucked beneath the rice and tea. Beautiful. Never, even in the days when I'd been young and generally acknowledged to be female in spite of my size and gawkiness, had anyone thought to call me beautiful.

It was still three hours until first light when I fetched Ulysses at the stable and loaded him. The snow was just beginning. Doc helped me add on what was still at his place, largely in silence, having done his duty the night before by trying, without conviction, to deter me.

"How much do you really know about this woman?" he'd asked. "How can you be sure she won't knife you in the back and take off with your horse?"

"I know my horse," I'd said shortly. He hadn't bothered to point out that there could still be a knife in my back before she found out that Ulysses wouldn't cooperate.

When we'd about finished loading, though, he played his trump card. "Know anything about birthing babies?" he asked, with studied casualness.

I thought about Lotus's rounded breasts and curving belly, and understood what he meant. I won't deny that a pang of anxiety struck me, along with a pang of something else made up of both joy and sorrow. I tucked those thoughts away for future reflection. "I've helped deliver foals, and been with my sisters for a few of theirs. I can manage." There was no point worrying about it now, at any rate. The choice was clear.

"Well," Doc said, "if this can all be smoothed over in time, with people moving on and enough money in the right hands, maybe you'll be able to come back. Let folks see Jack Elliott with his woman and child. Stir ’em up a bit." He slapped my flank companionably and grinned.

When we were mounted on Ulysses Lotus was wrapped again inside my coat. I was the one who must have looked to be with child, but there was nobody about yet to see.

Ulysses shifted a bit, getting the feel of the heavy load of passengers and supplies. If need be, once we were safely away and snow covering our tracks, I'd dismount and walk a good deal of the way to my cabin in the distant hills, but I trusted him to get us that far. He'd been the one to get me into this, after all.

Doc walked beside us for a few paces. "You're sure, Jack?" he said one last time.

"I'm sure," I said. "This is what I want. I keep what I find." Lotus tightened her grip on me under the coat. Her voice still whispered through my mind. "Mei-lai," she'd said, and shown how she'd meant it. And I keep what's found me, I thought. With scarcely a signal from reins or heels, Ulysses quickened his pace, and we were on our way home.

Wild Girls, Wild Nights--New call for Submissions

2011-11-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

Here we go again, into new, true territory:

Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories

Editor: Sacchi Green

Publisher: Cleis Press

Preferred Length: 2000-4000 words

Deadline: March 1, 2012

Payment: $50 per story and two copies of the anthology

E-mail submissions (.doc or .rtf files only) and queries to: sacchigreen@gmail.com.

Girl Fever Is Cleared for Takeoff!

2011-09-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

Well, it won't come out until next spring or summer, but the manuscript for Girl Fever: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex for Lesbians has been approved, so I can now share the tables of contents, and I'll even add my non-proofread introduction.

My writers rock! There wont be room in the book for their bios--69 is a whole lotta stories!--but I plan to post their bios here at publication time.

Contents

Introduction Sacchi Green

Look At Me Now, Your Holiness! Cheyenne Blue

Answering the Call Shanna Germain

A Wet Pussy Rachel Kramer Bussel

An Hour Sommer Marsden

Good Morning Emily Moreton

She Writhes Beneath Me Roxy Jones

Oh Captain, My Captain Cha Cha White

At the Hip Anna Watson

Clean Sweep Fran Walker

Taste of My Woman Giselle Renarde

Off and On Allison Wonderland

Clothes Make the Woman D.L. King

Yab Yum Sacchi Green

Love Las Muertas Kirsty Logan

System Jeremy Edwards

Project Runway Sharon Wachsler

I Do Catherine Paulssen

Shane Jessica Lennox

Six Minutes or It’s Free Tigress Healy

In Hot Water Elizabeth Coldwell

Love On A Real Train Michael M. Jones

Second Time Around Sara Lynde

Routine Jessica Lennox

Defenseless Nat Burns

Coasting Anya Levin

Front Door Sex Zoe Egan

Ignition Switch Delilah Devlin

Dressing Down Heather Towne

Signature Jean Roberta

The Airplane Story Victoria Janssen

Backstage Nerves Heather Day

In the Bush Debra Anderson

What Next? MJ Williamz

The Virtues of Being Forward Veronica Wilde

Pierced Maxine Marsh

Final Exam DD Symms

Stiff Peaks Rose William

Birthday Dance M. Marie

Desperate Measures Geneva King

An Explanation Sharon Wachsler

Floating in Space Dena Hankins

Freeway Falling Cal Gimpelevich

The Flight Home Nicole Wolfe

Patience Jennifer Baker

Train Whore Gemma Parkes

In the Closet Emily Moreton

Born to Ride Piper Trace

The Real Thing Anna Watson

Femme’s the Breaks Allison Wonderland

In the Sculpture Garden Cha Cha White

When Life Is Interesting Leigh Wilder

Cowboy Dirty Roxy Jones

Saucy Cheeks Giselle Renarde

Last Minute Catherine Paulssen

Breathless Ariel Graham

Caramel Louise Blaydon

Cats and Dogs Fran Walker

Mina’s Train Ride J. Caladine

Season Finale Lea Meadows

Auto Correct Evan Mora

Lure Nikki Magennis

Little Miss Goody Two Shoes Lucy Felthouse

Submission Letter Tara Young

Stacked Reina Sobin

Snowbound Sacchi Green

Written on Stone Toby Rider

Here and Back Again Shanna Germain

I Wish I Knew You Cheyenne Blue

Heat Lightning Sommer Marsden

Introduction

Sudden sex is what you crave when your need is too great wait. I asked writers for short, hot, intense writing to satisfy this hunger, and they gave me all that and more. These stories are concise yet fully rounded, just right for a mouthful or a handful, and always delivering the Full Monty. Quick to read, best savored in single doses, they pack intriguing characters, stimulating action, and even food for thought, into small packages bursting with sensuality.

The authors sweep you along for sex not only in planes, trains and automobiles, but in roller coasters, carnival rides, elevators, and ferries as well. If a grassy knoll or traditional bed is handy, that’s fine too. You can find sex in zero-G, under water, in a canyon, in a closet, even in the kitchen. Shanna Germain’s “Answering the Call” shows us games EMTs play in an ambulance, while Victoria Janssen’s “The Airplane Story” crams us into the metal-walled bondage of an airliner restroom. Sommer Marsden makes the very best use of “An Hour,” Allison Wonderland gets it “Off and On” in under ten minutes, and Tigress Healey offers “Six Minutes or It’s Free.” But there’s more to it than speed, and the sixty-nine pieces in Girl Fever by skilled writers Cheyenne Blue, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Delilah Devlin, D.L. King, Allison Wonderland, Anna Watson, Jean Roberta, and scores of others offer characters you’d love to fuck, evocative settings, and sizzling stories that can captivate and surprise you, as they did me, all the way to seduction.

Sacchi Green

Amherst, MA

September 1, 2011

Free Book Drawing: L-J Baker’s Promises, Promises

2011-09-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

In the belief that not all lesbian fiction has to fit into the romance genre, I’m expediting a drawing for a copy of a refreshingly different book:
Promises, Promises: A Romp with Plenty of Dykes, a Unicorn, an Ogre, an Oracle, a Quest, a Princess, and True Love with a Happily Ever After by L-J. Baker (Lethe Press)

L-J lives in New Zealand, which often seems to be light-years away when it comes to shipping books, so I’m handling that part. Go over to http://lesbianauthors.wordpress.com/ and post a comment—say anything!—if you’d like to be in the drawing for a free copy of this book.

[I promise that I'll post here pretty soon about my own affairs, including some animadversions on the topic of pirate stories, and teasers from a couple I've done. Meanwhile, who has some ideas about a title for a possible anthology of pirate erotica?]

Guest Blog-What Makes a Story Paranormal?

2011-08-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

Help me out! Go to my guest blog on Delilah Devlin's Girls Who Bite site, and give me your opinion on what defines paranormal romance/erotica. In my quest to get to edit something approaching speculative fiction. I really need to know what the readers think! www.girlswhobite.net

Of course you could always comment here, as well. It gets lonely here.

DADT On My Mind

2011-08-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

No particular excuse for this post, except that the more-or-less demise of Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been on my mind so much that I proposed an anthology of women-in-the-military (lesbian division) erotica to include both historical, contemporary, and near-future scenarios. As it happens, my Do Ask, Do Tell, Do Touch idea didn't fly (probably too much of a niche-within-a-niche in appeal,) but I've written some historical pieces along those lines in the past, and feel the urge to share one. So here goes. "Lipstick on her Collar" first appeared in my anthology of the same name from Pretty Things Press, and was reprinted in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009.

Lipstick on Her Collar

Sacchi Green

The DC-7 burst from clouds over the South China Sea at an angle so steep VC rockets had no chance at a target. My breath caught and my butt clenched. At the last possible instant the plane leveled off, touched down, and came to a jolting stop.

I'd seen the same thing too often to be seriously alarmed. But I wasn't on board. And I wasn't Miss Maureen O'Malley from the Boston Globe, getting her first taste of the adrenaline-mill that was Vietnam in 1969. I wondered whether Miss Maureen's panties were still dry. And how long she'd last at this war correspondent game. If she couldn't handle the heat, the sooner she headed back to the Ladies' pages, the better.

She wasn't hard to spot on the tarmac. Miss Boston's dainty sandals, blue plaid skirt and matching jacket were about what I'd expected. The fine legs beneath the short hem, however, exceeded expectations.

I wasn’t the only one looking her over, but I was a lot more discreet about it than the guys. Any overt attraction to women could have landed me, if not in the brig, at least back Stateside with a dishonorable discharge.

She showed the strain of flying half-way around the world. Sweating in the sudden, brutal heat of Tan Son Nhut airfield, lipstick blurred and tendrils of dark hair curling damply on her cheeks, she seemed absurdly young. I'd have been all encouragement with a nurse or WAC just arriving in-country, but the orders to ride herd on a journalist were really chafing my chops.

"Miss O'Malley," I said firmly, seizing her attention, "I'm Sergeant Hodge, your driver. Let me get that bag." I bent to the heavy suitcase. Yes, very fine legs, and naked. No pantyhose. "C'mon in under cover while they unload the rest of your baggage."

She focused on me hazily. Probably hadn't slept for at least twenty hours. I felt just a smidge of sympathy.

"Oh...thanks...this is all there is.”

Well, that was a point in her favor. "Okay, good, but I still have to pick up a few packages." I was about to offer to show her the rudimentary ladies' room when she blurted, "But...I was expecting a woman driver."

"And I was expecting Maureen O'Hara,” I said, amused. Passing for a teen-aged boy often comes in handy. "Southeast Asia needs more redheads." I shed my helmet and brushed back my russet forelock. My short hair didn't tip her off, but my grin did the trick. She surveyed the rest of me more closely.

"Oh! I'm sorry." Her face flushed from more than the heat. "That's WAC insignia, isn't it. I still have a lot to learn."

No kidding. I silently steered her into the terminal, aiming her toward the restroom, and leaving to retrieve packages I'd promised to pick up. It wouldn't hurt to let her stew in a bit of embarrassment for a while.

Not for long, though. She emerged looking tidy and composed, make-up freshened. As she stepped up into my jeep she caught me admiring the nice rear view, and her deliberate wriggle as she settled into the seat made me wonder with a touch of paranoia just what this reporter had come to 'Nam to cover. A juicy scandal about dyke WACs would put women in the military back decades, just when we were needed most.

Through the dust and traffic I kept my attention on the road, weaving around troop transports and the occasional heavily-laden water buffalo. I could feel her assessing gaze on me.

"Miss O'Malley," I said, when the traffic diminished, "my orders are to take you to WAC headquarters at Long Binh. The captain will sort out what happens next. Apparently you have authorization to bunk in our compound, unless you'd rather check into a hotel in Saigon. Some of those places the French built are as ritzy as anything in Paris."

"I can’t afford a hotel," she said frankly. “It was all I could do to get here. Three papers gave me accreditation, which just means they'll consider printing what I write. None of them are willing to pay my way until I prove myself. Which I will!" Her face looked suddenly less cheer-leader-pretty--and more dangerous.

"I heard you wanted to write about the women serving over here," I said casually.

"Just for starters. I had to use that line to get anywhere. WACs, nurses, Red Cross workers, maybe some orphanage scenes."

"Look, Miss O'Malley," I said sharply, "You won't get far assuming the women here are just 'soft' news for the Sunday Supplement. Or the orphans, either."

She looked startled. "Sorry, I didn't... Well, thanks for reminding me to stay open-minded. I'll need all the help I can get to learn the ropes. But just call me Maureen, won't you? Should I call you Sergeant?"

"Not as long as you're a civilian," I said. "I'm Marjoe to just about everybody." I darted a quick glance at her. "Pleased to meet you, Maureen."

"Nice to meet you, too, Marjoe. And my apologies for not being Maureen O'Hara." Her teasing smile produced an all-too-charming dimple beside her mouth.

I looked her over. "Actually, you remind me more of Miss Connie Francis. That's just fine."

"Wasn't she here last year?"

"She was, and I have the autographed picture to prove it." A little casual conversation wouldn't hurt. "I wasn't a big fan before that. 'Who's Sorry Now' and 'Lipstick on Your Collar' aren't my style--I'm more of a "Born to Be Wild' and 'Light My Fire' kinda girl." I gave her a wide grin. Let her make what she wanted of that. "But Connie Francis sure got my respect. She went places Bob Hope wouldn't, hopping flights in Hueys and Chinooks to give the boys in the boonies a look at what they're fighting for." I wouldn't admit it to anyone, but I'd even sung along at Can Tho when Miss Francis led the crowd in "God Bless America".

Maureen sat up straighter. Her sweat-dampened blouse showed the distinct contours of her nipples. I managed not to stare.

"That's what I want to do! Get to see the real war, meet the guys and tell their true stories. I'm going to get out to the front, after a few weeks behind the lines learning my way around."

We were within the outskirts of the town by then. I jerked the wheel abruptly, pulling off into an alley. Miss See-All-Tell-All would have seen plenty of mortar craters already if she'd been paying any attention.

"You want to learn something?" Anger sharpened my voice. "Get out right here for a minute." Don't let her get to you...keep your cool... But I wasn't listening to myself. She was getting to me. In too many ways.

Maureen stared for few heartbeats, then stepped down onto the dusty ground. I kept my eyes strictly away from her enticing backside this time.

I grabbed a lug wrench from the rear of the jeep. Maureen looked me right in the eye as I approached, holding her ground, hands on her nicely curved hips.

"Behind the lines?" I asked. "Lady, there are no lines. See the chicken wire on the windows of that bus going by?" She nodded, but her gaze didn't leave my face. "That's to deflect grenades." I drew a groove in the dirt with the wrench half-way around her. "The only line in 'Nam is the one you pull around yourself to keep your shit together!"

She seemed to grow taller. I suddenly knew what was meant by that old cliché "flashing eyes". How had I missed noticing how green hers were?

"Sergeant Hodge," she said icily, "if you ever call me 'Lady' again in that tone of voice, I'll have those stripes off your sleeve, and the sleeve off as well!" She looked me up and down with disdain--until a hint of a smile made her dimple flicker. She dropped the briefly-assumed British accent. "And quite possibly the whole shirt."

I closed my gaping mouth, then opened it to take a deep breath. "Wal now, Miss O'Hara," I drawled, regaining some control, "Yuh shore are purty when yer angry!"

"Thank you, Mr. John Wayne," she said primly, and relaxed into a giggle. “Just never forget, I'm no lady, I'm a journalist!"

"Thanks for the warning," I said. Some woman! It was going to be damned hard to think of her only as a reporter, but her mental tape recorder was probably spinning right now.

Back in the jeep, I kept up a running commentary on bombings and mortar attacks by VC infiltrators, usually targeting troop transports and the bars and restaurants favored by American servicemen. Maureen reached into her shoulder bag for a notebook and did, in fact, start jotting down notes.

"Was that during the Tet offensive last January?"

So she had done some homework. Could be more to her than a pretty face, a knock-out body, and a wicked sense of humor.

"It goes on all the time at some level, but yeah, that was the worst of it. I was up north at Nha Trang back then. Never seen anything like it, and hope never to again."

"I hope you won't. Just the same... Don't get me wrong," Maureen said quickly, leaning toward me so that I couldn't help noticing her breasts pressing against her blouse, "but if a major offensive like that did come again, I wouldn't want to miss it."

"No chance it'll miss you." I didn’t bother with trying to squelch her voyeuristic instincts. On some level I understood them perfectly well. "It was bad here, bad everywhere. I was handling the nurse's motor pool, and every vehicle had to double as an ambulance, every driver as a corpsman, with or without medical training. Five straight days--never time to clean up the blood--they were handing out Benzedrine to keep us awake." I stared ahead for a minute or two, remembering. things I'd rather forget. Maureen leaned close, so absorbed that she'd even stopped taking notes.

"Some of the things I saw there," I went on, "still keep me awake. Some of the things I had to do..." My knuckles clenched on the steering wheel, white under their tan. "And that was nothing to what the nurses went through."

A current of empathy flowed from Maureen. A tremor in my voice, a catch in my breath, and she'll reach out to touch me, comfort me, put that half-raised hand on my shoulder…my thigh...

I turned abruptly with a half-smile. "But yeah, if it had to happen, I wouldn't have missed it. And later, when we had our perimeters more or less under control, there were nights when we'd take a case of cold beer up on the roof of some old French villa and watch Puff the Magic Dragon blast away at VC island outposts in Cam Ranh Bay. Or we'd see our choppers hammering the hills with rockets and tracers. Better than any fireworks you ever saw, and we’d cheer for the good guys--until time to go try to put the broken ones back together. Or into body bags."

Maureen straightened and got her pen moving. "Um, 'Puff’?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"C-130 heavy cargo plane fitted out with heavy-duty artillery. Don't know who came up with the name, but it sure works up a storm of fire and smoke."

"Okay. Puff. Good one. I won't ask whether beer was all you had up there on the roof."

"If you can't manage a laugh once in a while, one way or another, you get so brittle you crack," I said. "It's all about survival." Maureen nodded. I had the feeling again that she might reach out and touch me--and I knew for certain that my body's reaction would be far from anything resembling comfort. Disappointment battled with relief as I pulled into the WAC compound.

Our guard dog jumped up into the back as soon as I slowed. "Here's another fine dragon," I told Maureen, and ruffled his ears. "This is Spike."

"I see that this one's armed with heavy-duty teeth," she said, extending a fearless palm to be sniffed. Spike, putty in female hands, leaned his big ugly head on her arm, nudged against her breast, and sighed.

I nearly sighed too. It was no use pretending that she didn't set off a fizz under my fatigues. Good thing the ride was over, and Miss Maureen O'Malley/O'Hara would be somebody else's responsibility. My only hope of resisting temptation was to assign another driver from the motor pool to show her around if we were stuck with her for long.

The few girls off-duty clustered around the jeep, either to get a look at the newcomer or to collect the packages I'd picked up for them. Lila Tunney cradled her shipment from Tokyo with care. "I'd be happy to share some of this make-up with you, Marjoe," she said slyly. "One of these days the captain might start enforcing regulations and make even you wear lipstick."

"Not so long as she needs her wheels kept in running condition." This was no time for Lila's teasing. After brief introductions I herded Maureen toward the admin building, resisting the urge to put a more-than-friendly arm around her.

What was the deal with this sudden, dangerous attraction? Yeah, sure, the stresses of wartime and all that. But I'd managed so far to keep a purely sisterly attitude--well, mostly pure--toward the women I worked with. Was it because Maureen wasn't "family" that my subconscious was allowing lust to break on through?

"Captain Ramsey will be right with you." The unit's cute little secretary surveyed Maureen with open curiosity. "Help yourselves to coffee."

"Thanks, Wilma." I was already at the hot-plate in the corner. "What do you take, Maureen?"

"Black is fine." She accepted a cup. "What was all that about regulations?"

"Just a holdover from the fifties." If Wilma wanted to listen, she might as well get her money's worth. She always got a kick out of bringing out the worst in me. "Now and then the military gets a bee up its butt about women soldiers being models of femininity. In the States some officers get tight-assed about it, but nobody enforces it in war zones."

"Sergeant Hodge!" The one voice that could make me jump sounded right behind me. I spun around so fast that hot coffee sloshed onto my shirt.

"I think it's time to make an exception in your case." Captain Ramsey’s tone had taken on a don't-you-challenge-me edge. "I expect to see you wearing lipstick within the next week. Consider that an order."

Wilma snickered. The captain turned calmly to Maureen, who had just handed me a napkin. "Miss O'Malley, I hope Marjoe has been taking good care of you."

"Oh yes," Maureen replied demurely, watching me dab at the wet splotch on my left breast. "Very helpful."

"I'm glad to hear it. Your Congressman has asked that we give you every possible aid and protection."

"I'd appreciate that," Maureen said sincerely. "Just while I get my bearings."

"This next week could be difficult," Captain Ramsey said. "The Tet holiday is coming around again. Our intelligence indicates stepped-up activity, though not on the scale of last year. While you're here, under our protection, I'm going to have to insist that you go nowhere beyond the base perimeters without Sergeant Hodge. She’ll be your designated driver." She looked at me with an entire lecture condensed into one stern glance.

"But Captain, I'll be too busy...I thought I'd assign..."

"I'm delighted to hear that you've been thinking, Marjoe," she said drily, "but no one else has sharpshooter rating on both 45s and M16s. It's a matter of security."

"Women don't get sharpshooter ratings," I protested. "We're not even technically allowed to carry weapons."

Wilma had kept quiet about as long as she could manage. "Just the same, it's in your 201 file," she said. "From Basic at Fort Benning, but you'll never see a badge for it."

"So that's settled," the captain said with finality. "Wilma will handle any further details. Show our guest around, Marjoe, take her over to the mess hall, and then finish whatever motor pool maintenance is scheduled. Wilma can be my driver for the next week."

She held out her hand to Maureen. "It's been nice meeting you, Miss O'Malley. Don't hesitate to let me know of any problems. I suggest you have Marjoe drive you into Saigon tomorrow for some orientation.""

"A sharpshooter?" Maureen asked with interest when the captain was gone. "How did you pick up that skill?"

Wilma was miming putting on lipstick, pursing her lips and working them together with gusto. I grabbed at Maureen's diversion. "Where I come from, in northern Wisconsin, the better you shoot, the better you eat. It's a family tradition."

"So what brought you all the way to Vietnam?"

I could sense that mental tape recorder flickering behind her green eyes. "Getting as far away from family tradition as possible," I said. "So, Wilma, where do I dump Miss O'Malley's gear?"

In her room, temporarily vacated by a lieutenant on leave, Maureen slumped onto the narrow cot. I retreated to the doorway. "Jet lag hitting hard?" I asked. Her short skirt was hitched so high that I could tell what color panties she wore. Pale pink. "How about you get some rest, and I'll save a sandwich for you."

She yawned, and stretched. Both skirt and undies inched higher. For an instant I could also tell, no surprise, that she was a real brunette. Then she sat up.

"No, they say the best way to reset your internal clock is to eat meals on the local schedule. Just let me change into something that hasn’t been sweated in for twenty-four hours, okay?" In one sudden motion she pulled her blouse off over her head. Her pale pink bra was very nicely filled indeed. She bent to rummage in her suitcase, breasts nearly spilling over, I edged farther away.

"Marjoe?" Her voice was muffled by the knit shirt she was pulling on. "How come I'm not bunking with you? For security?" Her eyes emerged, gleaming with mischief. Her skirt slid down to be replaced very, very slowly by a pair of sleek black slacks. Every wriggle was deliberate. She knew exactly what she was doing to me. What I hadn't figured out was just why she was doing it.

"I sleep with the jeeps. Alone, except for Spike." And he wouldn't be any protection for you. I gave thanks as never before for my lean-to hooch built against the side of the motor pool's Quonset hut. I'd be in desperate need of some alone-time tonight--if I could wait until then. She was building enough tension to have me punching holes through plywood if I couldn't get relief soon.

The WAC division didn't have its own mess hall, so we ate at the 24th Evac hospital with the nurses and the ambulatory patients. I didn't try to prepare Maureen for what she'd see, but after one quick clutch at my arm she handled herself like a real trooper. By the time I left she was circulating among nurses and amputees and men trailing IV trolleys like the best of the Red Cross Donut Dollies (a term I use with the greatest respect).

I looked back once and saw her kneeling beside a wheelchair, listening intently to a kid who could barely speak through his bandages. Her hand rested on his arm. I wondered cynically, or maybe jealously, whether it was compassion or journalistic skill that drove her.

She was still at the hospital at six, pale and strained behind her bright lipstick but managing to smile for the boys. I tracked her down in a ward of patients who couldn't make it to the mess hall. After forcing her to come along for some dinner, I half-carried her back to the barracks. Jet lag and sudden immersion in the realities of war had pretty much knocked her out.

"Get some sleep before you forget how." I eased her onto the cot and tried to get away. She held tight, her arms around my hips.

"Stay with me, Marjoe. Please." Her face was pressed against my crotch. She had to know, by my aroma, by my pulse, how much I wanted to stay.

"I can't." I pulled away. My butt burned where her fingers had dug in. "Maureen, I have a job to do over here. I need to keep my hands clean." Hands that shook with the urge to reach out to her, stroke her dark hair, pull her face hard into the ache between my legs...

"Always?" she asked.

"Except for motor grease and mud. And blood," I added, before I could stop myself. So much for keeping it light.

"You've never touched a woman over here?"

"Who's asking, the reporter?” I said nastily.

Those green eyes really were magnificent in anger. Relenting, I added, "I'm not absolutely sure. There was this head nurse--we both dived into the same bunker one night during a heavy bombing. She asked what I had in my canteen; when I told her it was water, she said, 'Good, mine's whiskey, we can mix and share'. Which we did. I can't remember clearly just how much mixing and sharing went on."

"Right," Maureen said sarcastically. "How much liquor does it take to get you in that state? And where can I buy it?"

"Forget it. The next time I touch a woman, I intend to remember it."

I stepped forward. She inhaled sharply, lips parting, breasts rising. I yanked the army blanket up to cover her. "Get some rest," I said. "You'll need it."

I shut the door behind me carefully. If those plywood walls hadn't been too flimsy to filter out even a whisper, Miss Bright-Eyes-and-Heaving-Bosom would’ve had more than jet lag and in-country shock to exhaust her.

Maureen seemed rested by morning, but I wasn't. Much more of this, and Spike would go looking for a quieter hoochmate. He sniffed my crotch with interest before I lit out for the showers extra early. I was reaching for my towel with dripping hands about the time Maureen stepped naked behind the canvas partition. I caught her checking out my ass. Fair enough. One brief glimpse had left her smooth curves printed indelibly on my memory.

The twenty miles to Saigon had their share of tension. I usually traveled with a Colt 45 tucked inconspicuously down beside the driver's seat, regulations be damned, and this time the captain had wangled an M-16 rifle for me. I didn't ask how. No fire-power would deflect a grenade or a mortar, but you did what you could and wore risk like an extra stripe on your uniform.

As we started out, Maureen said demurely, "My mother taught me never to distract the driver, so I’ll try not to bother you."

"You'll distract me less once we get you outfitted to blend into the background," I told her. The tight black slacks and white tank top definitely stood out. The helmet I'd made her wear looked more jaunty than utilitarian. "Rumor says the North Vietnamese have offered $25,000 for an American woman, a 'round-eye'. I've never heard of anybody collecting, but there’s no point offering one up gift-wrapped."

"Only $25,000?" She preened teasingly, hands running over chest and thighs.

"A journalist might bring in more." I reached out to give one breast a sharp pinch. No point now in letting her get away with much. "Especially one more generously upholstered than the typical Vietnamese girl. At least the NV value us more than the U. S. Army does, with the puny $10,000 life insurance policy we get."

I steered the subject into the universal griping-at-bureaucracy routine. Maureen was good company the rest of the way, asking intelligent questions, paying attention to the answers, and keeping teasing to a minimum.

In Saigon we drove down boulevards lined with elegant French Colonial architecture, crowded with trucks and old Renaults and the pedal-driven rickshaws called cyclos. I pointed out the Caravelle Hotel where most war correspondents hung out.

"Writing 'front-line' dispatches at the bar behind a line of brandy-and-sodas," Maureen said dismissively. "Getting all their news from the Pentagon’s 'five-o-clock follies'. No thanks."

I looked at her with new respect. Maybe she knew this reporter business better than I'd realized.

At the notorious Thieves' Market you could get anything that had ever passed through an American PX, and many items that never would. We got Maureen outfitted in tan and olive drab shirts and pants and the ubiquitous blue jeans.

"Wait a minute, we forgot something," Maureen said urgently over lunch at the California Bar and Grille on the liveliest strip of Dong Khoi Street. She waved toward the honey-skinned working girls replenishing their makeup, preparing for a later influx of horny GIs.

"You want one all to yourself," I asked, "or can we share?"

"Not my type," she shot back. "I'll stick with round-eyes. But shouldn't we pick out some lipstick for you? Captain's orders?" She made kissie-mouths at her compact’s mirror while freshening her glossy lips. "How about my Burgundy Passion?"

I'd been working on forgetting that little incident. But the Captain wouldn't. "Lila offered to share. Just once will get me off the hook."

"Cocky, aren't you," she said, with a look that made me consider some blacker-than-black-market shopping, but we needed to beat the rush hour, Saigon's most dangerous time.

Not that danger couldn't strike any minute. Fifteen miles out we hit a military roadblock. Smoke billowed from around a curve. I detoured onto a longer, narrower riverside track, making sure my guns were accessible.

Maureen kept quiet for a while, but finally blurted out, "Did you ever shoot anyone?"

"Maybe," I said shortly. There was firing in the distance, either from the road ahead or the roughly parallel highway we'd left. The driver of a supply truck going the other way motioned us wildly to go back. I slowed, started to turn--and heard the unmistakable whoosh of a rocket launcher somewhere behind us. An explosion rocked the area where the supply truck, now out of sight, might have been.

"Hang on!" I veered off on a rutted cart track toward the river a hundred yards away. A fringe of trees would hide the jeep, I hoped, but just in case I made Maureen scramble out and lie with me farther along, behind a log where I could brace my M-16. We waited, watching the road.

Maureen pressed against my side, her body shaking just slightly more than mine. "I don't know whether I've ever killed anybody," I said conversationally. "In Nha Trang they overwhelmed our perimeter, looking for medical supplies. It was dark, chaotic, but I think...well, I don't usually miss. And we beat them off."

I was wound tighter than Jim Morrison's guitar strings. Maureen stroked gently up my spine to the nape of my neck and massaged away some of the tightness, but tension of a different kind radiated from her touch, ripples of heat licking all the way down my body. Even my toes twitched inside my heavy boots. I couldn't keep my hips from shifting. Maureen slid her hand down my back to my butt.

"We do what we have to," she said, her breath warm on my ear. Her dark hair tickled my cheek. "You'd be out there leading a platoon if they'd let you." The pressure of her hand increased, her fingers digging in just slightly.

"Maybe," I said, steeling myself not to react visibly, however damp my khaki briefs were getting.

Maureen's fingers dug deeper, then moved between my butt cheeks. "Am I distracting the driver too much?"

"Hell no! Good practice for capture and torture." Danger and lust pumped adrenaline through me, triggering a fight-or-fuck response. If I didn't fire a gun soon, something else was sure going to go off.

Maureen heard the approaching truck a fraction of a second before I did. I lifted my head, tightened my grip on the rifle--and she pulled me back down, cramming her helmet over my hair. "Don’t wave your fucking red flag at them!"

"Thanks." I peered carefully over the log at an ancient flatbed farm truck. The grim-faced young Vietnamese riding on the back didn't look like they’d been laboring in the fields.

We didn't breathe. I could feel Maureen’s heart pounding in time with my own. The truck passed out of sight, and still we lay immobile.

"Will there be more?" Maureen asked at last.

"Maybe. We'd better wait..."

My words were cut off by her mouth covering mine. I’d barely set the guns aside before we were in a rolling clinch, scrabbling to get through each other's clothes.

Maureen won. Her hands were inside my pants, one on my bare butt and the other working hard between my thighs, before I got through her shirt and clinging tank top. With my fingers finally inside her lacy bra, I hung on, pinching her swelling flesh. The feel of her nipples hardening to rigid engorgement intensified my clit’s response to her demanding thrusts.

She worked me hard and fast, our mouths pressed furiously together with only a few moans and grunts escaping, until I had to get enough air for the noises she forced from me. With one wild glance to be sure the road was empty, I let go and shouted up into the quaking leaves of the trees.

By the time I could breathe, Maureen was naked with her shirt spread under her arching hips. I dove right in to her luscious tenderness, feeding her need with tongue and hands until her yells made the leaves quake, too. And then, after a short rest in each other's arms, we started all over again. Frequent checks of the road for traffic only added a spice of danger to our frenzy.

As sunset approached I had to consider what to do next. We'd finally got dressed, and cleaned up at the edge of the muddy river, when we heard cars approaching slowly. Two jeeps. One driven by an MP, one by Wilma.

"Company," I murmured. Maureen barely managed to brace before a furry, joyful Spike rocketed into us.

"Easy, boy!" I grabbed his collar and went to meet the captain.

"You're both all right?" she asked sharply, then saw Maureen emerging from the trees with hair quickly combed and burgundy lipstick freshened. "It's a good thing we brought the pooch. He alerted us that you were in there."

"We took cover for a while, Captain." I looked her straight in the eye. "There were indications of enemy activity ahead and behind." Whatever she might suspect, I could defend my reasons for leaving the road.

"You were right," she said. "But the area is secured for now, so let's get moving."

By the time I retrieved my jeep the MPs had gone and Wilma was chatting up Maureen. Her prattling ceased, and she began whistling a familiar tune. Everyone looked at my rumpled shirt. I'd scrubbed my face in river water, but...

"Marjoe has lipstick on her collar," Wilma said gleefully, in case anybody hadn't recognized the Connie Francis song. "That doesn’t count, though. She's not off the hook yet, is she?"

Maureen stepped right up to the plate. "Of course it doesn't count. But this should." She put her arms around my neck and kissed me hard enough to weaken my knees. "Thank you, Sergeant," she said, pulling away, "for taking such good care of me."

The captain's face was impassive, except for a twitch at the corner of her mouth. She wiped a neatly folded handkerchief across my lips, gazed at the results thoughtfully, and said, simply, "That will do.”

A week later Maureen wangled a ride with a chopper pilot heading toward Pleiku in the highlands. Two months later she sent a clipping of her first published article. Others followed. I kept them deep in my duffle bag, along with several intimate items imbued with her scent, mementos of a few more rushed, intense encounters scraped out of the quagmire of war. I have them still, wrapped in a rumpled, burgundy-stained shirt that will never be washed again.

Guest-Hosting the Naked Reader Book Club

2011-08-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'll be guest-hosting the Naked Reader Book Club discussion next Tuesday, Aug. 9, from 8-10pm, since regular host Kristina Wright is extra-busy with motherhood details like impending childbirth. Whether or not you've read G is for Games (Cleis Press,) come and play games along with the ones Alison Tyler assembled for the book. I'll have input from contributors Cheyenne Blue, Kristina Wright, and Rachel Kramer Bussel, and Alison herself may show up. Now's your chance to express your views of sex/games interfaces in general, and/or particular stories from that book. Think about it: Sex! Games! SexGames! Hot, intense SexGames! You don't need to read the book first, and you don’t need to be naked, but I hope you'll feel the need afterward.

http://www.edenfantasys.com/sex-forum/clubs/naked-reader-book-club/

Don't miss it!

The Lowdown on Editing Anthologies, Part 2

2011-07-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

Now we move on to the what-do-editors-do-besides-reject stories part. Actually, rejecting stories is a major part of it, and possibly the most painful, so we’ll be including that too.

So you’ve managed to get a contract for an anthology from a publisher, or maybe you’ve decided to put an anthology together first and then work on getting it published. The latter used to be a really bad idea, but everything’s changing, so who knows? What I do know is that experienced writers are very unlikely to submit their work to an anthology with no publisher already lined up.

In any case, now you need to get submissions, and for that you need to circulate a call for submissions. If you wrote a knock-out proposal for the publisher, you can usually build on that for your CFS. The challenge is to make it very clear just what kind of story you want to see, and the overall effect you want your book to have, without being so didactically specific that you seem to want them to write to some exact formula. Getting stories that surprise you by being just what you didn’t know you wanted is one of the best rewards of the job. Keep it fairly short, and don’t lecture about “only your best work” or some variation thereof. You won’t discourage the writers you’re aiming at, and you’ll just annoy the good ones. No matter what you say you’ll have to wade through some less-than-stellar material. That’s part of the job. Do include your minimum and maximum desired word count, deadline for submissions, pay rate, contact information, publisher, and projected publication date if possible. If you omit any of these things you’ll get questions about them. Even if you don’t omit them you’ll get questions about them, but not as many.

Once you’ve composed your brilliant CFS (or guidelines, which is pretty much the same thing but implies more emphasis on the exact formatting you want, if you’re picky about that sort of thing) you need to get them out where writers can see them. You may want to send them only to a select group of writers you know, which would mean “invitation only,” but if you want to reach likely writers in general, send your CFS to the market listing web sites that specialize in the appropriate genre. For sf/f those would include www.ralan.com, duotrope, Cindy Ward’s and the Gila Queen’s lists, and others, which will probably pick them up from the first ones anyway. For erotica, http://erotica-readers.com/ERA/AR/Erotica_Authors_Resources.htm is the main place to be seen, and others will spread the word.

Then you wait for the submissions to come in. And you wait. And worry. Bear in mind, though, that any stories that come in right away were probably already written beforehand, and quite possibly already sent out to other places quite a few times. Some of these might turn out to be the perfect fit for your anthology, but the chances of that are considerably better with work written especially for your theme, which takes time. In my experience much of the best work comes in very close to the deadline. So you still worry.

Some editors don’t read any of the submissions until they’re all in. Even so, they should acknowledge their receipt so the writers know they haven’t gone astray. I like to keep up with things more or less as they come in, give or take a week or so, but I still let people know that I’m not making decisions until later. Some editors say they do “rolling” acceptances as things come in, but I’m sure they leave some room for those of us whose creative juices flow best under the pressure of a deadline.

I tend to group things into “Yes,” “Maybe,” and “No” files, but once I know what I have to work with, I may well go into the “No” file to choose work that fills a gap in the range I want, even if it will require some rewriting. Sometimes I’ll choose one story over a similar piece that might by some standards be better written, because it covers more bases than the other one; sometimes the writing will just blow me away and I’ll use it even if it scarcely comes close to what I thought I wanted. It’s all subjective—and then again, it isn’t, because I need to provide the publisher with a book that lives up to my proposal, and I need to give readers who pick up a book with this theme at least some of what they think they want.

I like best to give them more than they thought they wanted, but that can be risky. I go for variety, in tone, setting, characters, ideas, style, whatever, but some editors stick closer to what they know their readers prefer, and that’s not a bad plan, either. Whatever your editorial style is, you’ll get the credit (or blame) for the way the book as a whole turns out, even though we all know that the most important part is getting good stories to work with. Without the writers, we’re nowhere.

Once you’ve decided which stories you’ll use, you really get down to work. Sending out acceptances is fun; sending out rejections is awful. With acceptances, I always say that they’re conditional, pending approval by the publisher. With rejections, when I can, I include a few specific points as to what was good or not so good, but really, it generally boils down to just not fitting into the anthology as a whole, for whatever reason, and if there are hundreds of submissions, it’s better to hurry up and let folks know that they can send their work elsewhere than to take a lot of time on each one.

At this point you need to send out contracts for the chosen writers to sign, with the understanding that the publisher may yet decide against them. You need the contracts now, so that you can guarantee to the publisher that all the stories are available. Usually you e-mail your version and ask the writers to print out two copies, sign them, and send both back to you. The usual practice is to send back one countersigned copy to them with their payment when the book comes out. Some publishers have a form contract they want you to use, and sometimes they leave it to you. Some want you to send them copies of the contracts, and some would rather have you keep them. The exact wording of contracts is a topic I’m not going to deal with here, except to say that you should always read a contract through and be sure you understand it before signing.

Then comes the real editing part. Some stories need next to nothing beyond copyediting for typos; some prompt you to do considerable fact-checking just in case; and some can be improved by several sessions of back-and-forth revisions until writer and editor are both satisfied. Good publishers have good copyeditors, and no matter how careful you are they’ll probably find something you missed, but it’s nice to be told that the manuscripts you turn in are remarkably “clean.” (And sometimes you find things in the galley proofs that all of you missed before. That can be fun.)

When the stories are as good as they can be, it’s time to decide on their order in the book. Strong first and last stories—and middle ones; good variation, unless grouping similar ones fits your purpose better—or whatever feels right to you. Sometimes even a chronological order can apply. If the publisher doesn’t agree with the way you’ve done it, it can be changed. The thing now, as you’re facing your own deadline, is to write an introduction (if that’s customary with your publisher,) get the whole thing formatted as the publisher prefers (if you’ve been told,) and send it off on time.

Then you wait. Maybe not for long, but you never know. If you’re getting an advance, usually half of it will be paid when the manuscript is accepted, and half when the book comes out. When you do know which stories have been approved (and possibly gone to bat for a few, or chosen some yourself to cut because they say the book is too long,) it’s time to let the lucky writers know, and encourage them to publicize the fact on all their social networks. It’s never too early to start promoting.

Promotion these days is at least as important as any other part of the process. More important, in fact, since however good a book is, if it doesn’t sell and isn’t read, it’s wasted. I’m not going to get into that here, first because I’m still struggling with the concept myself, and second because it seems that everyone is struggling with it, and the whole idea of how books are published and distributed and read is in such flux that things could change at any time. Some people have a better grasp on promotion than others, though, so whenever I see an expert blog on that very subject, I certainly pay attention.

If any of you post your own Calls for Submission for anthologies, I’ll pay attention to those, too. Good luck!

The Lowdown on Editing Anthologies, Part 1

2011-07-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

The link I posted last time looks right, but seems to be leading to the wrong website, and even the right website appears to be having problems just now, so I'm posting the whole thing here. I'll be following it up in a few days with Part 2, dealing with what editors actually do once they've got an anthology contracted, while this first part is all about getting to edit an anthology in the first place--and the ups and downs of doing it at all.

Let’s think of this as a memoir, because we all know just how—shall we say, imprecise?—memoirs can be these days. I should also say upfront that my editing has been largely in the erotica genre, with just a bit of speculative fiction, although I have written enough of the latter to be an active member of SFWA.

Some of the best editors in any genres don’t get there by writing fiction themselves, but in my experience having a substantial body of published work is a good way to get a publisher’s attention. Being a competent writer is no guarantee at all of being a good anthology editor, but it has one great benefit; when you’ve had work in enough books or magazines with writers you admire, those writers will have enough confidence in you to send you their work, and without good stories to publish, you’re nowhere. You’re more likely to attract submissions from new writers, too, if they’ve seen your work or at least can google your name and come up with some credentials.

Another plus would be having a really good idea and the specialized expertise to back it up, possibly including non-fiction articles published in that field. An example would be an expert in fire-fighting technology proposing an anthology of future fire-fighting stories. There was a time when the go-to man for sf/f anthologies was Marty Greenberg, legendary for the editors and publishers he put together (Esther Friesner’s Chicks in Chainmail series is one example out of many hundreds.) But Marty died just a week or so ago; I’ve been reading many fond anecdotes about him in the obituaries discussion group on webnews.sff.net. The days when a chat with Marty Greenberg in the bar at an sf convention would lead to a publishing contract within hours are gone forever, and in any case, the publishing world, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, has changed greatly and is still floundering.

Some things haven’t changed so much. The very first consideration in pitching an anthology is to make sure the publisher you’re aiming at actually publishes anthologies, preferably those similar to what you have in mind, although offering something new and different just might work. You also need to decide whether you want to hold out for print, or will consider e-books. Look at the calls for submissions at ralan.com or duotrope (for specfic) or http://erotica-readers.com/ERA/AR/Erotica_Authors_Resources.htm (for erotica) or some similar market listings site, and see which publishers might fit with your ideas. Send a brief query letter (it’s best if you know the name of the publisher or an editor there) with a description of your idea and the reasons you’d be a good editor for it. They may tell you that their anthologies are all done in-house, but you just might hit them at the right time.

Which brings me to the memoir part, and the way I did it, with all the ups and considerable downs.

My first erotica anthology was pitched with a co-editor to a smallish, respected LGBT press. I’d had work published pretty widely by then, including a story in one book from that press and several where the owners themselves had shared the table of contents. My co-editor Rakelle Valencia had a few good publishing credits, and expertise in the theme we were pitching—Lesbian Cowboys (she’s a noted horse breeder and trainer.) It was a fine fit. Generally the press published work that was both literary and off-the-wall, very worthy books that were hard to place but deserved to be read. Something a bit lighter appealed to them just then. They were wonderful to work with, and loved our title: Rode Hard, Put Away Wet: Lesbian Cowboy Erotica. (Later publishers were more concerned with titles that were straightforward and likely to come up on Google and Amazon subject searches.) The book did well by small press standards, was a finalist for a Lambda Award, and did at least its share to support the publishing of more literary books, but soon, as distributors folded without paying and traditional publishing was in chaos, the press had to cut back and finally dwindle away. Our rights to the book, published in 2005 and out of print for several years, were just returned to us a few weeks ago. We never complained, or asked for what we were owed, and we still love those guys and honor what they tried to do.

When the first publisher began to retrench and limit new production, we pitched a lesbian motorcycle book to another publisher, where they happened to be considering trying some erotica. Hard Road, Easy Riding had barely hit the shelves when the company, always chiefly oriented toward academic books, merged with a bigger company and dropped all their fiction (including an alternate history anthology I’d just contracted for with them.) The biker book was eventually reissued by Lethe Press, a growing outfit concentrating mostly on LGBT speculative fiction, and Lethe also brought out my orphaned alternate history book, Time Well Bent (as well as a brand-new collection of my own work, A Ride to Remember. Meanwhile, we continued our rocky journey with another anthology for a very small company that couldn’t handle the shifting tides of distribution. Lipstick on Her Collar became another finalist for the Lambda Award, though, and that publisher recommended me to a somewhat larger, more stable company looking for a free-lance editor who could handle the administrative parts of the job, after having a bad experience with one who couldn’t. They contacted me with their own theme for an anthology, and I’ve done three more for them since, with another in progress. One of those, Lesbian Cowboys, also co-edited with Rakelle, did win the Lambda Award for lesbian erotica in 2010, and another, Lesbian Lust, won the GCLS award this year, but only the first one, Girl Crazy, has been selling well enough to provide much in the way of royalties beyond paying off the advance. The newest one, Lesbian Cops, hasn’t been out long enough to tell how it’s doing. If it were entirely up to bookstores with their consuming interest in how many print copies a writer/editor’s last book sold, I’d be death-spiraling out of the editing business, but e-book versions may keep me going.

From what I’ve heard and read, this kind of win/lose progression is pretty typical, in sf/f as well as erotica. As far as I can tell, so are the royalties and advances. For the first two anthologies, we got no advance but we did get funds to pay the contributors. For the third, we got a $2000 advance (to split) and paid the contributors out of that. My subsequent anthologies have been on the same terms, with royalties set at 7% of cover price, which is a better deal than a percentage of what the publisher takes in after distributors have their cut. Read your contracts closely! (And bear in mind that at that rate 2000 books have to be sold before I’ve earned out the advance.) Companies that are entirely or mainly e-presses have different arrangements, and it’s my impression that they mainly do their anthologies in-house, but it wouldn’t hurt to check them out.

A somewhat recent development in publishing (one that I’ve seen coming for quite a while) is an emphasis on writers/editors who have developed their own fan bases online, and have a celebrity sort of charisma. Name recognition sells books. Networking sells books. This is yet another reason to get your own writing out there. I’m a dinosaur in this respect, lacking in the charisma department, and all about the writing and editing. Even when I blog, which I do on Facebook and at sacchi-green.blogspot.com, it’s all about the writing. But that’s still important, too, and next time I’ll get into the details of what an anthology editor’s job is actually like. It’s not for sissies.

Blogging on Editing

2011-07-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

I have a guest blog up on the Dead Robots Society website, Part 1 of The Lowdown on Editing Anthologies. In this part I meander through getting to be an editor of anthologies, with ups and downs of various sorts. Next time I'll talk about the nitty gritty of the job itself. http://deadrobotssociety.com/

One Final Poke, I Promise

2011-07-08T07:34:00.001-07:00

July 10, 7-9pm, The KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., East Village, NYC; Lesbian Erotica from Cleis Press. Readings from Sacchi Green's anthologies Lesbian Cops, Lesbian Lust, and Girl Crazy, with writers Rachel Kramer Bussel, D.L. King, Evan Mora, R.G. Emanuelle, and Sacchi Green. C'mon, you know you need some hot summer entertainment of a literary persuasion.

Writing Short-short Stories

2011-07-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

I've just posted some thoughts over on Women and Words about writing first sentences, especially for short-short stories: "In the Beginning". Two weeks ago I made a similar post about writing concisely for short-short stories: "When Less Is More". Yes, I'm thinking about my anthology Girl Fever. The deadline for submissions is July 15. My upper limit is 1200 words, but at this point I really need more shorter work, 500-900 words. How low can you go?

http://lesbianauthors.wordpress.com/

Lesbian Lust Is a Winner!

2011-06-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

The Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) just held their yearly convention and award presentations (and, the way I hear it, four days of nonstop fun, frolicking, hijinx, and close dancing the way only literary lesbians can do it.) My news is that my anthology Lesbian Lust won the award for best erotica! (Scroll waaaay back to my entry for November 19, 2010 for more info about the book.) All the credit goes to my fantastic writers--but I get get keep the award. I wish I could throw a celebration party for them all, but they're so far-spread across the globe that I couldn't throw it far enough to reach them.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone would notice if I posted some story excerpts from the antho here. I'll think about it.

It's Time I Bought You a Drink

2011-06-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

Well, isn't it? Unfortunately, drinks can't be e-mailed, but if you can get to my reading in NYC in July, we've got a deal. Just tell me you saw my offer.

Here's the info:

Time: Sunday, July 10, 7pm-9pm

Place:

KGB Bar

85 E 4th St (between Bowery and Second Ave) East Village

(212) 505-3360kgbbar.com

Subway: F to Lower East Side–Second Ave, 6 to Astor Pl

"Bespectacled lit chicks outnumber apparatchiks in this former Ukrainian social club. The dim parlor-style bar nestled in the second floor of a walk-up has Cold War decor, cheap Baltika beer, whiskey on the rocks and free readings—all of which lure New York’s literary underground, including stars like Kathleen Warnock and Ellen Datlow

Title:

Lesbian Erotica from Cleis Press, with Sacchi Green & Friends

Description:

Readings from Cleis Press anthologies Lesbian Cops, Lesbian Lust, and Girl Crazy.

Hosted by editor Sacchi Green, with writers Rachel Kramer Bussel, D.L. King, Evan Mora, and R.G. Emanuelle

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 seven volumes of Best Lesbian Erotica, four of Best Women’s Erotica, and three of Best Lesbian Romance. In recent years she’s taken to wielding the editorial whip, editing or co-editing seven lesbian erotica anthologies, most recently A Ride to Remember (Lethe Press) and Lesbian Cowboys, Girl Crazy, Lesbian Lust, and Lesbian Cops, all from Cleis Press. Lesbian Cowboys, co-edited with Rakelle Valencia, won the Lambda Literary Award in 2010.

She can be found online at sacchi-green.blogspot.com and FaceBook (Sacchi Green)

Rachel Kramer Bussel lives in New York City. She has edited or co-edited over 25 anthologies, including Bottoms Up, Spanked, The Mile High Club, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Tasting Him, Tasting Her, Dirty Girls, Rubber Sex, Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 1 and 2, Sex and Candy, Yes, Sir, Yes, Ma’am, He's on Top, She's on Top, Caught Looking, Hide and Seek, Crossdressing, Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles, First-Timers, Lambda Literary Award finalists Up All Night and Glamour Girls: Femme/Femme Erotica, and Best Sex Writing 2008, 2009 and 2010, for which she is Series Editor.

Some call it erotica and some call it porn. D. L. King calls it a good time. D. L. King is a smut writing-and-editing New Yorker who lives somewhere between the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island and the Chrysler Building. The editor of the Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Where the Girls Are: Urban Lesbian Erotica, The Sweetest Kiss: Ravishing Vampire Erotica, Spank!, Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica and the upcoming Daddy’s Little Girl: Butch/Femme Erotica, she is also a prolific writer of smut. Her short stories can be found in anthologies such as Best Women’s Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Girl Crazy, Fast Girls, Please Ma’am and Sweet Love among many more. She is the publisher and editor of the erotica review site, Erotica Revealed (http://www.eroticarevealed.com.) Find out more about D. L. King at http://dlkingerotica.blogspot.com.

Evan Mora is a recovering corporate banker living in Toronto who’s thrilled to put pen to paper after years of daydreaming in boardrooms. Her works can be found in Best Lesbian Erotica ’09, Best Lesbian Romance ’09 & ’10, Where the Girls Are, The Sweetest Kiss: Ravishing Vampire Erotica, Girl Crush, Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission, Spank!, Lesbian Cops, and Best Bondage Erotica ’11.

R.G. Emanuelle is a writer and editor living in New York City. She co-edited Skulls and Crossbones, an anthology of female pirate stories, and her short stories can be found in Best Lesbian Erotica 2010, Khimairal Ink, Women in Uniform, Read These Lips 4Play, Lesbian Lust, Lesbian Cops, and the online collection Oysters & Chocolate.

Tell your friends--I might even buy them a drink, too.

Pointing Out Variety

2011-05-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should be posting teasers from my collection occasionally, rather than complete stories like the previous one. And possibly I should demonstrate some of the variety, as a fair warning that there is edgy content, here, too. Even that aspect is always, I hope, a vital part of the story I'm telling; even the kink has, well, a point. A sharp one.

So here's the relatively innocuous beginning to my story "The Outside Edge." Things get much more edgy later, for good reasons, and there's a romantic element as well, enough that it was reprinted in Best Lesbian Romance 2010.

The Outside Edge

Suli was fire and wine, gold and scarlet, lighting up the dim passageway where we waited.

I leaned closer to adjust her Spanish tortoiseshell comb. A cascade of dark curls brushed my face, shooting sparks all the way down to my toes, but even a swift, tender kiss on her neck would be too risky. I might not be able to resist pressing hard enough to leave a dramatic visual effect the TV cameras couldn’t miss.

Tenderness wasn’t what she needed right now, and neither was passion. An edgy outlet for nervous energy would be more like it. “Skate a clean program,” I murmured in her ear, “and maybe I’ll let you get dirty tonight.” My arm across her shoulders might have looked locker-room casual, but the look she shot me had nothing to do with team spirit.

“Maybe, Jude? You think maybe you’ll let me?” She tossed her head. Smoldering eyes, made even brighter and larger by theatrical makeup, told me that I’d need to eat my words later before my mouth could move on to anything more appealing.

The other pairs were already warming up. Suli followed Tim into the arena, her short scarlet skirt flipping up oh-so-accidentally to reveal her firm, sweet ass. She wriggled, daring me to give it an encouraging slap, knowing all too well what the rear view of a scantily clad girl does for me.

I followed into the stadium and watched the action from just outside the barrier. As Suli and Tim moved onto the ice, the general uproar intensified. Their groupies had staked a claim near one end, and a small cadre of my own fans were camped out nearby, having figured out over the competition season that something was up between us. Either they’d done some discreet stalking, or relied on the same gaydar that had told them so much about me even before I’d fully understood it myself. Probably both.

Being gay wasn’t, in itself, a career-buster these days. Sure, the rumormongers were eternally speculating about the men in their sequined outfits, but the skating community was united in a compact never to tell, and the media agreed tacitly never to ask. A rumor of girl-on-girl sex would probably do nothing more than inspire some fan fiction in certain blogging communities. That didn’t mean there weren’t still lines you couldn’t cross in public, especially in performance—lines I was determined, with increasing urgency, to cross once and for all.

But I didn’t want to bring Suli down if I fell. That discussion was something we kept avoiding, and whenever I tried to edge toward it she’d distract me in ways I couldn’t resist.

Suli’s the best, I thought now in the stadium, watching her practice faultless jumps with Tim. You’d never guess what she’d been doing last night with me, while the other skaters were preparing for the performance of their lives with more restful rituals. She’d already set records in pairs skating, and next year, at my urging, she was going to go solo. It was a good thing I wouldn’t be competing against her.

I won’t be competing against anybody, I thought, my mind wandering as the warm-up period dragged on.

It had taken me long enough to work it out, focusing on my skating for so many years, but the more I appreciated the female curves inside those scanty, seductive costumes, the less comfortable I was wearing them. Cute girls in skimpy outfits were just fine with me—bodies arched in laybacks, or racing backward, glutes tensed and pumping, filmy fabric fluttering in the breeze like flower petals waving to the hungry bees—but I’d rather see than be one.

I’d have quit mainstream competition if they hadn’t changed the rules to allow long-legged “unitards” instead of dresses. That concession wasn’t enough to make me feel really comfortable, though, and I knew my coach was right that some judges would hold it against me if I didn’t wear a skirt at least once in a while. This year I’d alternated animal-striped unitards with a Scottish outfit just long enough to preserve the mystery of what a Scotsman wears under his kilt, assuming that he isn’t doing much in the way of spins or jumps or spirals. I knew this for certain, having experimented in solitary practice with my own sturdy six inches of silicon pride.

So why not just switch to the Gay Games? Or follow Rudy Galindo and Surya Bonaly to guest appearances on SkateOut’s Cabaret on Ice?

If you have a shot at the Olympics, the Olympics are where you go, that’s why. Or so I’d thought. But I was only in fifth place after the short program—maybe one or two of the judges weren’t that keen on bagpipe music—and a medal was too long a shot now.

I knew, deep down, what the problem was. Johanna, the coach we shared, had urged me to study Suli’s style in hopes that some notion of elegance and grace might sink into my thick head. Suli had generously agreed to try to give me at least a trace of an artistic clue. But the closer we became, the more I’d rebelled against faking a feminine grace and elegance that were so naturally hers, and so unnatural for me.

This would be my last competition, no matter what. Maybe I’d get a pro gig with a major ice show, maybe I wouldn’t. If I did, it would be on my own terms. “As God is my witness, I’ll never be girlie again!” I’d proclaimed melodramatically to Suli last night.

“Works just fine for me,” she’d said, kneeling with serene poise to take my experimental six inches between her glossy, carmined lips and deep into her velvet throat.

Erotic Erotica Review

2011-05-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

This review of A Ride to Remember may be even hotter than the book itself!

http://rainbowreader.blogspot.com/

(Not much of an excuse for a post, I know, but I'll do better soon. Much craziness in real life at the moment.)

Story: To Remember You By

2011-05-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

As promised, I'm posting (temporarily) the lead-off story from my collection. The final story continues the lives of the central characters 35 years later. Anyone commenting on this post gets a chance at a free copy of the book, once I get my hands on the hardcopies.

To Remember You By

"A movie!" she crowed from three thousand miles away. "They're making a movie of our book!"

"Our book" was Healing Their Wings, a bittersweet, often funny novel about American nurses in England during World War II. My grandson's wife had based it on oral histories she'd recorded from several of us who had kept in contact over the past half-century.

I rejoiced with her at the news, but then came a warning she was clearly embarrassed to have to make. "The screenwriters are bound to change some things, though. There's a good chance they'll want it to be quite a bit, well, racier."

"Racier?" I said. "Honey, all you had to do was ask the right questions!" How had she missed the passionate undertones to my story? When I spoke, all too briefly, of Cleo, had she thought the catch in my voice was merely old age taking its toll at last? The young assume that they alone have explored the wilder shores of sex; or, if not, that the flesh must inevitably forget.

I had to admit that I was being unfair to her. Knowing what she did of my long, happy life with Jack, how could she even have guessed the right questions to ask? But it hardly matters now. The time is right. I'm going to share those memories, whether the movie people are ready for the truth or not. Because my flesh has never forgotten--will never forget--Cleo Remington.

In the summer of 1943 the air was sometimes so thick with sex you could have spread it like butter and it would have melted, even on cold English toast.

The intensity of youth, the urgency of wartime, drove us. Nurses, WAC's, young men hurled into the deadly air war against Germany, gathered between one crisis and another in improvised dance halls. Anything from barns to airfield hangars to tents rigged from parachute silk would do. To the syncopated jive of trumpets and clarinets, to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "Accentuate the Positive," we swayed and jitterbugged and twitched our butts defiantly at past and future. To the muted throb of drums and the yearning moan of saxophones, to "As Time Goes By" and "I'll Be Seeing You," our bodies clung and throbbed and yearned together.

I danced with men facing up to mortality, and with brash young kids in denial. Either way, life pounded through their veins and bulged in their trousers and sometimes my body responded with such force I felt as though my own skirt should have bulged with it.

But I wasn't careless. And I wasn't in love. As a nurse, I'd tried to mend too many broken boys, known too many who never made it back at all, to let my mind be clouded by love. Sometimes, though, in dark hallways or tangles of shrubbery or the shadow of a bomber's wings, I would comfort some nice young flier with my body and drive him on until his hot release geysered over my hand. Practical Application of Anatomical Theory, we nurses called it, "PAT" for short. Humor is a frail enough defense against the chaos of war, but you take what you can get.

Superstition was the other universal defense. Mine, I suppose, was a sort of vestal virgin complex, an unexamined belief that opening my flesh to men would destroy my ability to heal theirs.

My very defenses (and repressions) might have opened me to Cleo. Would my senses have snapped so suddenly to attention in peacetime? They say war brings out things you didn't know were in you. But I think back to my first sight of her, the intense gray eyes, the thick, dark hair too short and straight for fashion, the forthright movements of her lean body--and a shiver of delight ripples through me, even now. No matter where or when we met, she would have stirred me.

The uniform sure didn't hurt, dark blue, tailored, with slacks instead of skirt. I couldn't identify the service, but "USA" stood out clearly on each shoulder, so it made sense for her to be at the Red Cross club on Charles Street in London, set up by the United States Ambassador's wife for American servicewomen.

There was a real dance floor, and a good band was playing that night, but Cleo lingered near the entrance as though undecided whether to continue down the wide, curving staircase. I don't know how long I stared at her. When I looked up from puzzling over the silver pin on her breast she was watching me quizzically. My date, a former patient whose half-healed wounds made sitting out most of the dances advisable, gripped my shoulder to get my attention.

"A friend of yours?" he asked. He'd been getting a bit maudlin as they played "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To," and I'd already decided he wasn't going to get the kind of comfort he'd been angling for. I shook off his hand.

"No," I said, "I was just trying to place the uniform. Are those really wings on her tunic?" I felt a thrill of something between envy and admiration. The high, compact breasts under the tunic had caught my attention, too, but that wasn’t something I was ready to admit to myself. I watched her movements with more than casual interest as she descended the stairs and took a table in a dim corner.

"Yeah," he said with some bitterness, "can you believe it? They brought in women for the Air Transport Auxiliary. They get to ferry everything, even the newest Spitfires, from factories or wherever the hell else they happen to be to wherever they're needed."

His tone annoyed me, even though I knew he was anxious about whether he'd ever fly again himself. But then he pushed it too far. "I hear women are ferrying planes back in the States now, too. Thousands of 'em. Next thing you know there won't be any jobs left for men after the war. I ask you, what kind of woman would want to fly warplanes, anyway?" His smoldering glance toward the corner table told me just what kind of woman he had in mind. "Give me a cozy red-headed armful with her feet on the ground any day," he said, with a look of insistent intimacy.

"With her back on the ground, too, I suppose," I snapped, and stood up. "I'm sorry, Frank, I really do wish you the best, but I don't think there's anything more I can do for you. Maybe you should catch the early train back to the base." I evaded his grasp and retreated to the powder room; and, when I came out at last, he had gone.

The corner table, however, was still occupied.

"Cleo Remington," she said, offering a firm handshake. "It's fine by me. Afraid the boy friend will try again?"

So she'd noticed our little drama. "Not boy friend," I said, "just a patient who's had all the nursing he's going to get." I signaled a waitress. "Can I get you a drink to apologize for staring when you came in? I'd never seen wings on a woman before, and...well, to be honest, I had a flash of insane jealousy. I've always wanted to fly, but things just never worked out that way."

"Well," Cleo said, "I can't say I've ever been jealous of a nurse's life, but I'm sure glad you're on the job."

"Tell me what being a pilot is like," I said, "so I can at least fantasize."

So she told me, over a cup of the best (and possibly only) coffee in London, about persuading her rancher father that air surveillance was the best way to keep track of cattle spread out over a large chunk of Montana. When her brother was old enough to take over the flying cowboy duty, she'd moved on to courier service out of Billings, and then to a job as instructor at a Civilian Pilot Training Program in Colorado, where everyone knew that her young male students were potential military pilots, but that Cleo, in spite of all her flight hours, wasn't.

Then came all-out war, and the chance to come to England. Women aviators were being welcomed to ferry aircraft for the decimated RAF. I watched her expressive face and hands and beautifully shaped mouth as she talked of Hurricanes and Spitfires and distant glimpses of German Messerschmidts.

As she talked, I did, in fact, fantasize like crazy. But visions of moonlight over a foaming sea of clouds kept resolving into lamplight on naked skin, and the roar of engines and rush of wind gave way to pounding blood and low, urgent cries. Her shifting expressions fascinated me; her rare, flashing smile was so beautiful I wanted to feel its movement under my own lips.

I didn't know what had come over me. Or, rather, I knew just enough to sense what I wanted, without having the least idea how to tell whether she could possibly want it too. I'd admired women before, but only aesthetically, I'd rationalized, or with mild envy; and, after all, I liked men just fine. But this flush of heightened sensitivity, this feeling of rushing toward some cataclysm that might tear me apart…that I wanted to tear me apart…This was unexplored territory.

"So," Cleo said at last, looking a bit embarrassed, "that's more about me than anybody should have to sit through. What about you? How did you end up here?"

"I'm not sure I can even remember who I was before the war," I said, scarcely knowing who I'd been just half an hour ago. "It seems as though nothing interesting or exciting ever happened to me back then. Not that 'interesting' will be a fair description of life now until I'm at a safe distance from it."

She nodded. We were silent for a while, sharing the unspoken question of whether the world would ever know such a thing as safety again. Then I told her a little about growing up in New Hampshire, and climbing mountains, only to feel that even there the sky wasn't high and wide enough to hold me. "That's when I dreamed about flying."

"Yes!" she said. "I get that feeling here, once in a while, even in the air. Somehow this European sky seems smaller, and the land below is so crowded with cities, sometimes the only way to tell where you are is by the pattern of the railroads. The Iron Compass, we call it. I guess that's one reason I'm transferring back to the States instead of renewing my contract here.

"The main reason, though, is that I've heard women in the WASPs at home are getting to test-pilot huge Flying Fortresses and Marauders. And that's only the beginning. Pretty soon they'll be commissioned in the regular Army Air Force. In Russia women are even flying combat missions; "Night Witches" the Germans call them. If the war goes on long enough..." She stopped short of saying, "If enough of our men are killed I'll get to fight," and I was grateful. "History is being made," she went on, "and I've got to be in on it!"

In her excitement she had stretched out her legs under the table until they brushed against mine. I wanted so badly to rub against the wool of her slacks that I could scarcely pay attention to what she was saying, but I caught one vital point.

"Transferring?" I leaned far forward, and felt, as well as saw, her glance drop to my breasts. The starchy wartime diet in England had added some flesh, but at that moment I didn't care, because all of it was tingling. "When do you go?"

"In two weeks," she said. "I'm taking a week in London to get a look at some of the sights I haven't had time for in the whole eighteen months I've been over here. Then there'll be one more week of ferrying out of Hamble on the south

Two weeks. One, really. "I've got a few days here, too," I said. "Maybe we could see the sights together." I tried to look meaningfully into her eyes, but she stared down at her own hands on the table and then out at the dance floor where a few couples, some of them pairs of girls, were dancing.

"Sure," she said. "That would be fun." Her casual tone seemed a bit forced.

"I don't suppose you'd like to dance, would you?" I asked, with a sort of manic desperation. "Girls do it all the time here when there aren't enough men. Nobody thinks anything of it."

"Somebody sure as hell would," Cleo said bluntly, "if they were doing it right." She met my eyes, and in the hot gray glow of her defiant gaze I learned all I needed to know.

Then she looked away. "Not," she said carefully, "that any of Flight Captain Jackie Cochran's hand-picked, cream-of-American-womanhood pilots would know anything about that."

"Of course not," I agreed. "Or any girl-next-door nurses, either." I could feel a flush rising from my neck to my face, but I plowed ahead. "Some of us might be interested in learning, though."

She looked at me with a quizzical lift to one eyebrow, then pushed back her chair and stood up. Before my heart could do more than lurch into my throat, she said lightly, "How about breakfast here tomorrow, and then we'll see what the big deal is about London."

It turned out we were both staying in the club dormitory upstairs. We went up two flights together; then I opened the door on the third floor landing. Cleo's room was on the fourth floor. I paused, and she said, without too much subtlety, "One step at a time, Kay, one step at a time!" Then she bolted upward, her long legs taking the stairs two, sometimes three, steps at a time.

Night brought, instead of a return to common sense, a series of dreams wilder than anything my imagination or clinical knowledge of anatomy had ever managed before. When I met Cleo for breakfast it was hard to look at her without envisioning her dark, springy hair brushing my thighs, while her mouth... But all my dreams had dissolved in frustration, and I woke up tangled in hot, damp sheets with my hand clamped between my legs.

Cleo didn't look all that rested, either, but for all I knew she was always like that before her second cup of coffee. When food and caffeine began to take effect, I got a map of bus routes from the porter and we planned our day.

London Bridge, Westminster, Harrod's department store; whether I knew how to do it right or not, every moment was a dance of sorts. Cleo got considerable amusement out of my not-so-subtle attempts at seduction. She even egged me on to try on filmy things in Harrod's that I could never afford, or have occasion to wear--what on earth, we speculated, did Harrod's stock when it wasn't wartime?--and let me see how much she enjoyed the view. I didn't think she was just humoring me.

In the afternoon, after lunch at a quaint tearoom, we went to the British Museum and admired the cool marble flesh of nymphs and goddesses. Cleo circled a few statues, observing that the Greeks sure had a fine hand when it came to posteriors; I managed to press oh-so-casually back against her, and she didn't miss the chance to demonstrate her own fine hand, or seem to mind that my posterior was not quite classical.

Then we decided life was too short to waste on Egyptian mummies, and wandered a bit until, in a corner of an upper floor, we found a little gallery where paintings from the Pre-Raphaelite movement and other Victorian artists were displayed. There was no one else there but an elderly woman guard whose stern face softened just a trace at Cleo's smile.

Idealized women gazed out of mythological worlds aglow with color. The grim reality of war retreated under the spell of flowing robes, rippling clouds of hair, impossibly perfect skin.

Cleo stood in the center of the room, slowly rotating. "Sure had a thing for redheads, didn't they," she said. "You'd have fit right in, Kay."

I could only hope she herself had a thing for redheads. Standing there, feeling drab in my khaki uniform, I watched Cleo appreciating the paintings of beautiful women. When she moved closer to the sleeping figure of "Flaming June" by Lord Leighton, I gazed with her at the seductive flesh gleaming through transparent orange draperies and allowed myself, experimentally, to imagine stroking the curve of thigh and hip, the round, tender breasts.

"I don't know how this rates as art," Cleo said, "but oh, my!"

A hot flush rose across my skin, of desire, yes, but even more of fierce jealousy. I wanted to be in that bright, serene world, inside that pampered, carefree body, with smooth arms and hands not roughened by scrubbing with hospital soap. I wanted to be the one seducing Cleo's eyes.

"She could have a million freckles under that gown," I blurted out childishly. "The color would filter them out!"

A tiny grin quirked the corner of Cleo's mouth. As always, I wanted to feel the movement of her lips. "Freckles are just fine," she said, "so long as I get to count them." She turned, and leaned close, and shivers of anticipation rippled through me. "With my tongue," she added, and very gently laid a trail of tiny wet dots across the bridge of my nose. I forgot entirely where we were.

Then she bent her dark head to my throat, and undid my top buttons, and gently cupped my breasts through my tunic as her warm tongue probed down into the valley between. I couldn't bear to stop her, even when I remembered the guard. My breasts felt heavy, my nipples swollen, but not nearly as heavy and swollen as I needed them to be.

Cleo's gray eyes were darker when she raised her head. "Where," she murmured huskily, "is a bomb shelter when you need one?"

But we knew that even now, when Hitler's Russian campaign had distracted the Luftwaffe enough that there hadn't been a really major attack on London in over a year, every bomb shelter had its fiercely protective attendants.

The guard's voice, harsh but muted, startled us. "There's a service lift just down the corridor. It's slow. Though not necessarily slow enough."

She gazed impersonally into space, her weathered face expressionless, until, as we passed, she glanced down at Cleo's silver wings. "Good work," she said curtly. "I drove an ambulance in France in the last war. But for God's sake be careful!"

In the elevator Cleo pressed me against a wood-paneled wall and kissed me so hard it hurt. I slid my fingers through her thick dark hair and held her back just enough for my lips to explore the shape of her lips and my tongue to invite hers to come inside.

By the time we jolted to a stop on the ground floor my crotch felt wetter than my mouth, and even more in need of her probing tongue.

There was no one waiting when the gate slid open. Cleo pulled me along until we found a deserted ladies' room, but once inside, she braced her shoulders against the tiled wall and didn't touch me. "You do realize," she said grimly, "what you're risking."

"Never mind what I'm risking," I said. "One nurse blotting her copy book isn't going to bring everything since Florence Nightingale crashing down. But you..." I remembered Frank's bitter voice asking, "What kind of woman?” Tears stung my eyes, but it had to be said. "You're holding history in your hands, Cleo." I reached out to clasp her fingers. "Right where I want to be."

"Are you sure you know what you want?"

"I may not know exactly what," I admitted, drawing her hands to my hips, "but I sure as hell know I want it!" I reached down and yanked my skirt up as far as I could. Cleo stroked my inner thigh, and I caught my breath; then she slid cool fingers inside my cotton underpants and gently cupped my hot, wet flesh. I moaned and thrust against her touch, and tried to kiss her, and her mouth moved under mine into a wide grin.

"Pretty convincing," she murmured against my lips.

I whimpered as she withdrew her hand, but she just smoothed down my skirt and gave me a pat on my butt. "Not here," she said, and propelled me out the door.

On the long series of bus rides back to Charles Street we tried not to look at each other, but I felt Cleo's dark gaze on me from time to time. I kept my eyes downcast, the better to glance sidelong at her as she alternated between folding her arms across her chest and clenching and unclenching her hands on her blue wool slacks.

Dinner was being served at the Red Cross club, probably the best meal for the price in England. Cleo muttered that she wasn't hungry, not for dinner, anyway, but I had my own motive for insisting. The band would be setting up in half an hour or so, and with the window opened, you could hear the music from my room. Well enough for dancing.

So we ate, although I couldn't say what, and Cleo teased me by running her tongue sensuously around the lip of a coke bottle and into its narrow throat. Her mercurial shifts from intensity to playfulness fascinated me, but the time came when intensity was all I craved.

"I don't suppose you'd like to dance, would you?" I repeated last night's invitation with a barely steady voice. "If I tried my best to do it right?" I stood abruptly and started for the stairs. Behind me Cleo's chair fell over with a clatter as she jumped up to follow me.

I reached my tiny room ahead of her--nursing builds strong legs. I crossed to the window to heave it open, and then the door slammed shut and she was behind me, pressing her crotch against my ass, wrapping her arms around me to undo my buttons and cradle my breasts through my sensible cotton slip. I longed to be wearing sheer flame-colored silk for her.

When she slid her hands under the fabric and over my skin, though, I found I didn't want to be wearing anything at all. "So soft," she whispered, "so tender..." and then, as my nipples jerked taut under her strokes, "and getting so hard..."

A melody drifted from below; "Something To Remember You By." I turned in her arms. "Teach me to dance," I whispered.

We swayed gently together, feet scarcely moving in the cramped space, thighs pressing into each other's heat. Cleo kneaded my ass, while I held her so tightly against my breast that her silver wings dented my flesh.

"Please," I murmured against her cheek, "closer..." I fumbled at the buttons of her tunic. When she tensed, I drew back. "I'm sorry...I don't know the rules..."

"The only rule," Cleo said, after a long pause, "is that you get what you need."

"I need to feel you," I said.

She drew her hands over my hips and up my sides until she held my breasts again; then she stepped back and began to shed her clothes. Mine, with a head start, came off even faster.

The heady musk of arousal rose around us. A clarinet crooned, "I'll Be Seeing You." I cupped my full breasts and raised them so that my nipples could flick against Cleo's high, tightening peaks, over and over. The sensation was exquisite, tantalizing--I gave a little whimper, needing more, and she bent to take me into her mouth.

I thought I would burst with wanting. My swollen nipples felt as big as her demanding tongue. Then she worked her hand between my legs, and spread the juices from my cunt up over my straining clit, and my whimpers turned to full-throated moans.

Cleo raised her head. Her kiss muted my cries as she reached past me to shut the window. "Hope nobody's home next door," she muttered, and suddenly we were dancing horizontally on the narrow bed. I arched my hips, rubbing against her thigh, until her mouth moved down over throat and breasts and belly, slowly, too slowly; I wanted to savor each moment but my need was too desperate. I wriggled, and thrashed, and her head sank at last between my thighs, just as in my dreams. Her mobile lips drove me into a frenzy of pleading, incoherent cries, until, with her tongue thrusting deeply, rhythmically into my cunt, my ache exploded into glorious release.

In the first faint light of morning I woke to feel Cleo's fingers ruffling my tousled hair. "If I were an artist I'd paint you like this," she whispered. "You look like a marmalade cat full of cream."

I stretched, and then gasped as her fingers roused last night's ache into full, throbbing resurgence. "Sure enough," she said with a wicked grin, "plenty of cream. Let's see if I can make you yowl again."

This time I found out what her long, strong fingers could do deep inside me, one at first, then two; by the end of the week I could clutch at her whole, pumping hand.

Sometimes I think I remember every moment of those days; sometimes everything blurs except the feel of Cleo's hands and mouth and body against mine, and the way her eyes would shift suddenly from laughing silver to the dark gray of storm clouds.

We did more sightseeing; the Tower of London, Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral scarred by German bombs. We took boat trips up the Thames to Richmond Park, where we dared to kiss in secluded bits of woodland, and down river where we held hands across the Greenwich Meridian. One night, in anonymous clothes bought at a flea-market barrow, we even managed to get into a club Cleo had heard of where women did dance openly with women. We couldn't risk staying long, but a dark intoxication followed us back to her room, where I entirely suppressed the nurse in me and demanded things of Cleo that left both of us sore, drained, and without regrets.

On our last night in London we went anonymously again into shabby backstreets near the docks. I brought disinfectants, and we chose what seemed the cleanest of a sorry lot of tattoo parlors. There, welcoming the pain of the needle as distraction from deeper pain, we had tiny pairs of wings etched over our left breasts.

We parted with promises to meet one more time before Cleo's last flight. I mortgaged a week of sleep to get my nursing shifts covered, and at Hamble Air Field, by moonlight, she introduced me to the planes she loved.

"This is the last Spitfire I'll ever fly," she said, stroking the sleek fuselage. "Seafire III, Merlin 55 engine, 24,000 foot ceiling, although I won't go up that high just on a hop to Scotland."

From Scotland she'd catch an empty cargo plane back to the States. I had just got my orders to report to Hawaii for assignment somewhere in the South Pacific. War is hell, and so are good-byes.

"Could I look into the cockpit?" I asked, wanting to be able to envision her there, high in the sky.

"Sure. You can even sit in it and play pilot, if you like." She helped me climb onto the wing, with more pressing of my ass than was absolutely necessary, and showed me how to lower myself into the narrow space. Standing on the wing, she leaned in and kissed me, hard at first, then with aching tenderness, then hard again.

"Pull up your skirt," she ordered, and I did it without question. She already knew I wasn't wearing underpants. "Let's see how wet you can get the seat," she said, "So I can breathe you all the way to Scotland." She unbuttoned my shirt and played with my breasts until I begged her to lean in far enough to suck my aching nipples; then, with her lips and tongue and teeth driving me so crazy that my breath came in a storm of desperate gasps, she reached down into my slippery heat and made me arch and buck so hard that the plane's dials and levers were in danger. I needed more than I could get sitting in the cramped cockpit.

We clung together finally in the grass under the sheltering wing. I got my hands into Cleo's trousers, and made her groan, but she wouldn't relax into sobbing release until she had her whole hand at last inside me and I was riding it on pounding waves of pleasure as keen as pain.

I thought, when I could think anything again, that she had fallen asleep, she was so still. Gently, gently I touched my lips to the nearly-healed tattoo above her breast. Tiny wings matching mine. Something to remember her by.

Without opening her eyes she said, in a lost, small voice, "What are we going to do, Kay?"

I knew what she was going to do. "You're going to claim the sky, to make history. And anyway," I said, falling back on dark humor since I had no comfort to offer, "a cozy menage in Paris seems out of the question with the Nazis in control."

Then, because I knew if I touched her again we would both cry, and hate ourselves for it, I stood, put my clothes in as much order as I could, and walked away.

I looked back once, from the edge of the field. Cleo leaned, head bowed, against the plane. Some trick of the moonlight transmuted her dark hair into silver; I had a vision of how breathtaking she would be in thirty or forty years. The pain of knowing I couldn't share those years made me stumble, and nearly fall. But I kept on walking.

And she let me go.

On June 24, 1944, against all justice and reason, the bill to make the Women Airforce Service Pilots officially part of the Army Air Force was defeated in Congress by nineteen votes. In December, the WASP were disbanded. By then, though, after going through hell in the Pacific theater of war, I had met Jack, who truly loved and needed me, whose son was growing below my heart. His kisses tasted of home, and peace, and more unborn children demanding their chance at life.

Thirty-three years later, in 1977, when women were at last being admitted into the Air Force, the WASP were retroactively given military status. It was then, through a reunion group, that I found out what had become of Cleo Remington; she had found a sky that was high and wide enough to hold her fierce spirit, and freedom as a bush pilot in Alaska.

And she was, as I discovered, even more breathtaking at sixty than she'd been at twenty-six.

But that's another chapter of the story.

Pride…and Prejudice

2011-05-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

This is another column I've just written for Women and Words. It's a bit on the political side, but I do eventually get into connections with writing LGBT erotica. As a reward for making your way through this (or even if you don't,) tonight I'll post a considerable excerpt of an erotic story that involves writing about lesbians in an historical context, one of the points I discuss below. (The story just happens to be the lead-off piece in my new collection, A Ride to Remember.)

Onward to the column:

The Pride Match was this past Saturday in Northampton, MA. It was the 30th anniversary of the first such event, with billows of rainbow balloons, marching bands, Dykes on Bikes, little kids on tricycles or in strollers, puppies, politicians, groups from just about every school and civic organization and church in the region, and floats with fine and fancy drag queens. I was really happy to see the drag queens, because in recent years the whole thing had been tending too far toward the sedately wholesome (with the exception, of course of the Raging Grannies, who always liven things up.)

Don’t worry, I’m definitely going to tie all this in with writing. But before I get there, let me indulge in a few ruminations on where we are and where we’re going.

In the first few years of this Pride March (and others all over the country,) many marchers wore paper bags over their heads. Anonymity was a matter of personal safety, or at least of keeping one’s job. There were vicious hecklers, too, and misguided religious objectors. No hecklers show up these days (there’s plenty of security, and those Dykes on Bikes, and local police who are often “family” themselves, as is the Mayor.) There were some wearers of paper bags, though, carrying signs reminding us of former days, and of how much is still to be accomplished to reach true equality. An article in the local paper featured activists who argued that the March has become just a parade, not a protest, and that the party atmosphere obscures the problems that still exist, especially for transgender people. One speaker at the rally afterward told the crowd that we have Amherst/Northampton in western MA, and Cambridge/Boston on the east coast (and I’ll add Provincetown to the list,) but even in mostly-liberal Massachusetts there’s no place transgender people can feel safe to stop in between.

I’m inclined to think that that was a slight exaggeration, for rhetorical effect, but it’s close enough to the truth to be food for thought. And I don’t think we have to wait until all possible problems are solved before we celebrate how far we’ve come, and party because we feel like it, and because we can. But we still have far to go, and anyone who pays attention to national news can see that in some ways and in too many places we’re actually losing ground.

Enough with the politics. Onward to our writing, and reading. How do we handle the all-too-real world around us in our fiction? There’s nothing wrong with ignoring the problems some of the time; we all want to read lesbian fiction that shows us participating fully in society, without barriers, and, in fact, many of us do that. Most of the time. We want the world in our fiction to be the world as it should be. But sometimes there are stories that do confront inequalities and injustice and prejudice, and we need those, too. Stories need conflict; often that’s supplied by fighting crime or solving mysteries or battling the elements or even just misunderstandings, but we do have a built-in source of conflict in our current culture, and even if that’s not the focus of our stories, it can add an edge and a sense of risk that intensifies the rest.

In historical fiction this is especially true. If you’re trying to be accurate about an historical period, as opposed to writing fantasy, you can’t pretend that everything is hunky dory and being lesbian or gay doesn’t matter (unless, of course, your story is set in, say, the artistic circles of Paris in the early twentieth century, or possibly Greenwich Village, and even then you had to be either rich or a protégée of the rich to be accepted.) That gives you a source of fictional conflict right there. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about using the misfortunes of those who went before us as grist for the writing mill; on the other hand, those stories need to be told, and not forgotten, along with the protest marchers with bags over their heads.

That was my original intended link between the Pride March and writing--but today I was handed a better one. You’ve probably heard about the Eppie Awards for e-published books; this year’s winners have just been announced, and I’ve been seeing mentions all over Facebook. My friend Catherine Lundoff recently volunteered to be a “category screener” for EPIC (the Eppie awarding organization,) which involves a complicated system of deciding which judges read which books, and sending the books to them. Judges get to have books screened for content that they’d rather not read; that is, they can ask not to be sent certain types of books that might distress or offend them. Catherine posted to the Outer Alliance mail list, “The number one screen for content to determine which judges get what books is the following: ‘Content issues: GLBT content, excessive violence, etc.’” There’s another side to this, which is that we’d probably rather not have our work being judged by anyone who finds GLBT content offensive, but still—grouping GLBT content with excessive violence?

I don’t want to rain on our parade, but…well, food for thought.

Still time for questions on Eden Fantasy

2011-04-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

I have answered 61 f...ing questions over on my Eden Fantasy interview so far. Well, most of them were more about writing than f...ing, and a few were about gardening. There's still time for more until May 2, so go on over and hurl a few at me if you feel like it. Three prizes to be awarded, including a Kiwi Vibrator. Like the fruit, or the bird? Not a clue. http://www.edenfantasys.com/interviews/writer-editor-sacchi-green-042611/

Interview on Edenfantasies.com--Ask Me Anything!

2011-04-25T20:19:00.000-07:00

Starting tomorrow (Tuesday, April 26) an interview with me (pre-written) will be posted for a week or so at http://www.edenfantasys.com/interviews/writer-editor-sacchi-green-042611/. The deal is that people are supposed to ask questions there during the week, and I'm supposed to answer them. No, I don't know why anyone would want to ask me anything, except possibly how I select stories for anthologies. Yes, this is a sex toy site, with some books, but as far as I can tell nobody there is very familiar with lesfic. Yes, they offer prizes to commenters, although I don't know how they decide who or when. If nobody ask any questions, I'm going to be (figuratively) standing up there feeling like an idiot. I'd much rather just look like an idiot in my answers.

Ask me what I think I'm doing writing erotica at my advanced age! Or how I feel about reading smut aloud in public! Or about the state of publishing, or equal rights, or anything else. Go ahead and try to embarrass me--it's better than silence! And extra points for feeding me straight lines so I have somewhere to take off from.

Thanks! I'll owe you!

Girl Fever--Call for Submissions

2011-04-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

No cover image yet for this one--maybe your story will be the one to inspire it!

Call for Submissions

Girl Fever: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex for Lesbians

Edited by Sacchi Green

To be published by Cleis Press in spring of 2012

1200 words maximum

Deadline: July 15, 2011 [Sorry, I had to move the deadline up.]

Payment: $20 per story and one copy of the anthology

I want them short. I want them intense. And I still want fully-formed lesbian characters, evocative settings, and well-crafted prose. I also want variety, so do as much as you can to make your story individual, unique, one that only you could tell.

The encounters can be chance meetings, established couples in a rush, strangers-on-a-train (or elevator, or ski-lift, or whatever,) as long as you provide some justification for the sex and for the hurry. Intriguing settings are a plus, if you can paint them in a few deft strokes. Every word counts. Sexually explicit words are welcome, but if you can get your characters (and, most importantly, your readers) where they want to go by more subtle means, that could be okay too.

I need sixty-nine of these hot, concise, well-written stories, so I’m willing to use more than one per writer. Send as many as you like, and send them early so I can let you know if some of yours don’t work but I’d like to see more. I’m willing to work with writers who have interesting ideas. Excerpts from longer works that can stand by themselves will be considered. Reprints from obscure places will be considered if I don’t get enough new work.

E-mail submissions (.doc or .rtf files) and queries to: sacchigreen@gmail.com

A Ride to Remember

2011-04-19T17:25:00.001-07:00

My first collection of my own work is now out from Lethe Press. A Ride to Remember consists of thirteen lesbian erotica stories, two of them brand new, and several published so long ago in such hard-to-find paces that you're not likely to have come across them. At least four of them are arguably science fiction/fantasy, linking me to my speculative fiction roots. Here's a blurb from Catherine Lundoff, Goldie Award-winning author of Night's Kiss and Crave (which you really should check out if you haven't already.)

"Green’s fiction serves up the sensual and hot in this new collection of some of her favorite erotic stories. Unconventional protagonists, unusual locations and beautifully crafted prose make for an unforgettable read that will stay with you long after you finish the book. Amongst my favorites are the linked stories “To Remember You By” and “Alternate Lives” about the truncated relationship between a woman pilot and a nurse who meet during WWII, then again many years later when their lives have taken different turns. I would love to spend more time with these characters, as well as some of Green’s other pairings. A Ride to Remember has earned a place on my favorites shelf."

http://www.amazon.com/Ride-Remember-Other-Erotic-Tales/dp/1590213203/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1303271048&sr=1-2

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/53480

Book Drawing Winners

2011-04-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

The winners of the Lesbian Cops book drawing are Stevie Carroll and Mixe. Thanks for all the comments!

Bonus Lesbian Cop Story

2011-04-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

As promised, here's a bonus story about a lesbian cop, published long ago and posted more recently on the Royal Academy of Bards, so many of you may have seen it already.

Healing

Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the hemlock branches. An hour ago it had blazed over the water-sculpted granite, and radiant heat still penetrated into places I had thought would never be warm again. My body adjusted to the stone's smooth contours and felt, for a while at least, at peace.

Something moved among the trees on the bank above. I kept my eyes closed, trying to block out everything but the ripple of water and the scent of spruce and balsam. Far below, where the stream leapt downward in the series of falls and slides known as Diana's Baths, there were swarms of vacationers, but they seldom climbed up as far as this gentler sweep of stone and pool. I'd hoped, foolishly, for solitude.

Someone stood there, watching. Move on, damnit, I thought, hating the unfamiliar sense of vulnerability, the suppressed jerk of my hand toward a gun that wasn't there. Maybe the Lieutenant was right. Maybe I really wasn't ready to get back into uniform.

Maybe I was hallucinating being watched.

I sat up abruptly. A hemlock branch twitched, and through its feathery needles a pair of bright eyes met my challenge. A child, I thought, glimpsing tousled russet curls and a face like a mischievous kitten. Then she moved into clearer view, and I got a good look at a body that could have held its own on one of those TV beach shows. So, for that matter, could her bikini.

She looked me over just as frankly. "Hi there," she said throatily. "I think I've got myself lost."

Eye candy or not, I resented the intrusion. "Well, there's upstream, and there's downstream. Take your pick."

"They both sound so good, I can't decide!" Her glance moved deliberately from my face over my body down to the long, semi-healed scar running from mid-thigh up under my cut-off jeans. The scar didn't seem to startle her a bit. I began to suspect a plot.

It's not that unusual for women to come on to me when I'm in uniform, and I've taken advantage of their fantasies a time or two, but I was in civvies, and this was way over the top. She was so blatantly acting out a scene that I was more amused than anything else. Well, maybe not anything else. It had been a long time. A definite tingle was building where it counted most, and my nipples threatened to assert themselves through my gray tank top. I pulled on the sweatshirt I'd been using as a pillow. The New Hampshire State Police logo on the front didn't seem to surprise her, either.

I looked downhill. "Hey, Dunbar," I called to the head poking around a mossy boulder, "who's your little friend?"

"How's it going, Josie?" Jimmy Dunbar emerged from concealment. "I'd've introduced you, but you cruised right on by without so much as a nod for an old friend."

"Sorry," I said. "Been a bit preoccupied lately."

"So I heard. You okay?" He looked toward my injured leg and then met my eyes with genuine concern. Aside from his taste in practical jokes, Jimmy's not a bad sort, and we've been friends since summers in our teens when we cleared trails and packed supplies up to the Appalachian Mountain Club huts.

"Can't complain," I said shortly. "A couple of weeks of enforced R&R and then I'll be back on the job. What are you up to these days?" I should have known better than to come where I'd be recognized. The newspapers had made the hostage case into a big deal.

"He's building sets at the playhouse," the sex kitten chimed in, clearly tired of being ignored by everything but the mosquitoes. In that outfit, she was damned lucky black fly season was over. "We open with 'Oklahoma' tomorrow night. I could get you a ticket if you'd like." She picked her way carefully down the bank, gripping bushes and gnarled, exposed tree roots. Any bits of previously covered anatomy revealed themselves as she bent and stretched. I was willing to bet her breasts owed nothing to silicone.

It might not have been entirely gallantry that prompted me to help her down the last, steepest bit, but when she tried to cling I spun her around and set her on her feet at a safe distance.

"This is Katzi Burns. She plays 'just a girl who can't say no.'" Jimmy sang the last part. Instead of grabbing the line and running with it, as I expected, she shot him a fierce look.

"I should've had the lead! But at least I can have a little fun with this role. I'm so sick of doing 'wholesome' I could puke!"

"That's what you get," Jimmy said unfeelingly, "for starting your career playing Daddy Warbuck's little 'Annie'."

She yowled and took a swipe at him, and, while I figured he deserved a good clawing, my peace-keeper instincts kicked in. "So Katzi," I said, with a hand on her elbow, "what kind of parts would you rather play?" Then it hit me. "Holy shit! 'Annie'? How long ago?"

She turned that feral kitten snarl on me. The flare of anger in her amber eyes attracted me a lot more than the bimbo act. "Long enough! I'm legal! You wanna see my driver's license?"

I grinned and looked her scanty outfit over appreciatively. "You bet, if you've got it on you somewhere."

Her scowl cleared. "You could search me," she teased.

I just patted her cute round butt and turned to Jimmy. "I hope you two have some clothes stashed somewhere. As soon as the sun gets a little lower the mosquitoes will be fierce. I don't much care what they do to your scaly hide, but it would be a shame to let Katzi get sucked dry just before opening night. The bites would be kind of a challenge for the make-up department, too."

"What time is it, anyway?" Katzi asked, with a stricken look.

"Close to five," I told her.

"Oh damn! I'm screwed!" She slid and lurched down the hill toward where they'd left their clothes and towels. Jimmy and I followed, ready to

pick up the pieces if her fashionable sandals skidded on the loose layers of leaves and needles.

"So what the hell is that all about?" I asked Jimmy. "I may be on the injured list, but I can still manage to do my own hunting."

"Hey, little Katzi takes hunting to a whole new level. She's only been hanging out with me because she wants to meet you, and I said I'd heard you were back in the Valley. She clipped your picture out of the paper. Lord only knows what she does with it!"

I swatted him, on general principles, and wondered why I didn't just go back to communing with nature. Then I watched Katzi's sleek legs do a good job of keeping up with our longer ones on the trail out to the road, and reflected that nature's blessings are many and wondrous, and definitely not limited to rocks and trees. Being alone in the mountains had always healed my spirit, but surging hormones might well spur the healing process of the flesh.

At the road, without saying a word, I held open the passenger door on my truck. Katzi scrambled right in. Amazingly, she had the sense to keep quiet during the short drive into North Conway, while I considered my next move. If I was going to make one.

She darted a glance or two at me, almost shyly, then looked off toward Cathedral and White Horse Ledges looming to the west. It occurred to me that her vamp act might require an audience, even if it was only Jimmy. An encouraging thought.

We crossed the Saco River, easing our way through the sun-burned kayakers and rafters reclaiming their cars at the bridge. I let the tension build until we were waiting at the traffic light just before the turnoff into the Mount Washington Valley Playhouse.

"Do they give you any time off for dinner?" I asked casually.

"Just an hour," she said hopefully. "Seven to eight, and then we do the final run-through."

"Want me to bring a picnic?"

Her face lit with genuine pleasure. "That would be great! I can't eat much just before two straight hours of dancing and singing, but if I don't eat anything I'll keel over by the second act."

When she'd disappeared into the theater I considered my options, then drove north to Jackson Village, where the men are golfers, the women are skiers, and every view is above average. "Fine dining" isn't something I think much about, but I have contacts at a four-star inn there. When I was a kid I used to forage wild mushrooms for the chef, who built a good part of his reputation on his creative use of them, especially the golden, earthy chanterelles. My half-French, half-Abenaki grandmother had taught me where to find them along trails and stream banks back when I could barely walk.

My welcome at the inn was so warm as to be embarrassing. They even had one of the damned newspaper clippings posted in the kitchen. I was a few minutes late getting back to the theater, and Katzi was outside, in costume, managing to be outrageously provocative in a demure calico dress for the benefit of the photographer taking publicity shots.

Publicity! I nearly turned the truck around. Then Katzi saw me, and came running, a look of unstaged happiness replacing the vamping she'd been doing for the camera. I got out to open her door.

The photographer followed, of course. I vaguely recognized him from high school. "Hey, Jo Benoit!" he called. "How about a shot with Katzi?"

"Hey, Ted. Sorry, no time." I gave Katzi a brief hug to let her know that being seen with her wasn't the problem. She'd already resumed her knock-em-dead stage smile, but she was perceptive enough to feel the tension in my body.

"That's right," she said. "I'm starving. We'd better get going." She waved to the photographer, who got a shot of the truck anyway as we pulled away.

"I'd planned to drive up the Cathedral Ledge road," I told her. "Great views, but I'm not sure there's time."

"Up there?" She looked uneasily at the domed cliff looming above the valley and the Moat Range rising beyond. "Well...I think I'd rather look at it from down here anyway."

"Does that mean I can't talk you into going rock climbing?" I teased. It was probably just as well that we didn't have much in common. I wasn't looking for a soul mate.

"There isn't much you couldn't talk me into, but that would be a hard sell." Her little grin managed just the right amount of seductive charm. I hadn't noticed before quite how deliciously shaped her mouth was. "They mentioned in the paper that you were a rock climber."

"Can't we just give all that a rest?" I said, maybe a little harshly. If she was going to press for juicy details, it was all over, right now.

"Sure," she said quickly. "But if there's any other way I could dangle from ropes, completely at your mercy...."

"Not and still have time for dinner," I said, relaxing. The usual tell-me-about-yourself-before-I-explore-your-underwear routine seemed refreshingly unnecessary. Although I was, in fact, beginning to feel some real interest in getting to know her.

We parked in the pine woods at the foot of the cliff, where we ate duck salad with mango, asparagus-chanterelle tarts, and French rolls still warm from the oven.

"Wow!" she said, when the food was gone. "That was incredible!" She glanced at me sidelong with a mischievous quirk of her lips. "But I'll bet you hear that from girls all the time." That impish mouth demanded a kiss, which I provided, in full view of the last climbers of the day trudging past to their cars with their cables and hardware.

There'd have been more to see than kissing if I hadn't guaranteed to get her back by eight. It was hard to pull away from the insistent sweetness of her mouth. Her arms around my neck and her breasts pressed against me didn't make it any easier. I peeled her off and started the engine. "Better save some adrenaline for the play," I admonished as I pulled onto the road.

"You'd be amazed how fast I can get recharged," she said hopefully.

"Behave yourself now, and I might let you amaze me later," I told her sternly.

"Yes, Sir!" She subsided against the backrest, letting one hand rest not-quite-accidentally on my thigh, carefully avoiding the dull red scar. When a pleasant tingle spread to the injured flesh it became a throb that under other circumstances might have been pain. She felt me tense.

"Does it still hurt?" She took her hand away. I reached out and pulled it back.

"Once in a while." There was far deeper pain I needed to confront, but at the moment I couldn't imagine any finer medicine than Katzi's exuberant sensuality.

"I could kiss it and make it feel better," she suggested wickedly.

Oh, yeah. Much, much better. "Right, and I could get pulled over by the local guys for erratic driving. Tabloid heaven."

"What made you decide to be a cop, anyway?"

"Well, I got as far as a semester into law school and realized I belonged on the front lines instead of in an office. Plus I couldn't afford any more. I'm still paying off student loans."

"I don't suppose all that many girls fantasize about lawyers, anyway," she teased.

It had never bothered me before to be the subject of fantasy, but this time, oddly enough, it stung. "Look, I'd better warn you that I don't have my uniform with me, and even if I did, it doesn't get used as a prop for a scene." I may not keep my gear as trim as I should, but I have respect for what it represents. "And besides..." something I hadn't realized myself until just then, but had better get out in the open... "there are some kinds of games I'm just not going to feel like playing for a while yet." A stab of pain shot through my leg into my guts. I could see my best uniform pants, sliced open from knee to crotch, soaked with more blood than could ever be washed out.

"That's okay," she said quickly. "It's what's underneath that turns me on." She slid a finger under the edge of my cutoffs, revealing a more dramatic section of my wound. "Oh, Jeez! Did you ever think about getting hurt?"

"You don't let yourself think about it," I said brusquely, and changed the subject. "Look, there's a full moon rising. I'll take you for a moonlight ride when rehearsal's over, if you'd like." We pulled up in front of the playhouse.

"Will you throw in sunrise, too?"

I leaned in for a quick taste. "Can't stop the earth from turning," I said against her soft cheek, and nibbled from her earlobe down to her tender throat. It was just as well that her calico costume had such a high, modest neckline.

When she'd gone I sat there for a minute, hardly noticing the people strolling along the village sidewalk. Then I headed north, up Pinkham Notch, needing to center myself in the mountains.

The peaks loomed dark against a backdrop of moon-gilded clouds; Madison, Adams, Jefferson, and, crowning the range, Mount Washington. I'd never needed more to be up there, on the slopes above treeline, looking down on a world made tranquil by distance. Or, even better, looking down when clouds filled the valleys with a sea of billowing silver and the stars above seem closer and more real than the shrouded earth. Best of all would be to watch the dawn, when the still air is cold, and clear, and nothing exists except stone, and space, and the coming of light over the edge of the world.

My eyes followed the contours of the mountains, my hands almost feeling their harsh ridges and swooping ravines. Then the thought of Katzi's softer curves and sweet valleys beckoned me with increasing urgency. I didn't want solitude, after all, at least not right now. I drove back down the winding highway feeling as though I had wings. Just a quick fling, I warned myself, a little summer diversion with someone who'll head back to New York or wherever soon enough. That's all you want. That's all she wants. Nobody gets hurt.

Katzi smelled of sweat, excitement, and greasepaint, although she'd scrubbed most of that off her face. She was close to exhaustion, too, but tried to hide it. I got out and helped her into the truck, patting her tight jeans where they were molded to her heart-shaped ass. I've never understood how some girls wear them so tight, especially in the crotch--you'd think they'd get sore if they had any pussy lips worth mentioning. I said so as I drove, and Katzi laughed and perked up.

"You wanna check 'em out?"

"A fine idea." I swung into the official "scenic overlook" just north of town. The moon and mountains would have been breathtaking if I hadn't had more intimate scenery on my mind.

Katzi raised her hips while I unzipped her pants and worked them just far enough down to get my hand where it wanted to go. Her pussy lips were full and moist and clinging. "Just fine," I said against her mouth, working my thumb toward her clit. That was just fine, too, and getting finer. "Nice preview."

"God, Jo, don't stop there!" She hauled her shirt up, and then her satin bra; I held my breath, until, at the magic moment when her breasts surged free of confinement, something lurched hot and low inside me . Her nipples were hard, and rosy even in the white moonlight.

"You guarantee you're rechargeable?"

"Yes, dammit!" She wriggled and thrust against my hand.

"You sure?" My other hand stroked across her breasts, flicking one nipple and then the other. "The night is young yet."

"So...ah!...so am I!" she gasped, and stuck her tongue out at me. I wanted to grab that impudent bit of flesh in my teeth, wanted to yank her jeans the rest of the way off and chew every part of her impudent, tender body, but my leg wasn't up to the calisthenics necessary to accomplish all that in the cramped space of the truck cab. I rolled one of her nipples in the angle between my index and middle fingers, and worked her pussy in hard circles, meeting her accelerating thrusts, until the truck rocked and she yelled so loud it would have echoed from the cliffs across the valley if the windows hadn't been closed. Which, of course, meant steamed-up windows to clear before I could drive on.

By the time we reached my cabin Katzi seemed to be asleep, head nestled against my shoulder. It was far up a dirt road along a branch of the Saco River, entirely surrounded by National Forest. There must have been a story behind how my grandmother managed to keep title to the land, but I'd never thought to ask until it was too late. I have a place farther south, too, where I'm stationed, but the cabin has always been the center of my world. I grinned inwardly, thinking that I'd come back here to lick my wounds, but found something much more worth licking.

When the truck stopped, Katzi raised her head. "Just a minute, Kitten," I said , and got out to open the padlock on the chain across the driveway. The building was still hidden in the trees.

"Rowr," she said in a distinctly feline tone when I climbed back in. Sleep was fading from her eyes. "Can't you see my fur sparking?" She ran her fingers through her short curls.

"Does that mean you're recharging?" I asked.

"Stick a finger in my socket and see!"

So, of course, I did, once I'd lit an oil lamp in the cabin so I could see her delectable skin as I tasted it.

And that was only the beginning. Katzi wanted to go places she'd never been, feel places she'd never felt. "I don't need lube!" she said when I grabbed the tube. "Just feel how incredibly wet I am!"

"You're gushing like a river at spring thaw," I agreed, flexing my gloved fist, "but we do it my way this time."

"Yes, Sir!" She spread her legs. I stroked her gently for a moment, and she arched her hips, showing me glimpses of pink as tender and lovely as the lady-slippers that bloom along the river trail in spring. I bent and touched my tongue to her glistening sweetness. But tenderness wasn't what Katzi wanted just then.

"Fuck me hard, Jo, please!" she said. "I want it all!"

"You'll get as much as I want you to have ," I said. "You'll just have to trust me."

Two fingers into her tight, clinging cunt, I knew it was going to be a gradual process, and it was, compounded by her amazing capacity for multiple orgasms. "I'm sorry," she panted, after the first spasms gripped my hand. "But I really...in just a minute...I really do want more!"

"Don't apologize," I murmured against the luscious flesh of her belly. "Take everything you can get." My own cunt was throbbing; I wanted desperately to grind against her thigh, but my wound was threatening to flare into serious pain, and I didn't want any distraction from the joys of fucking Katzi.

Twelve minutes and three orgasms later her moans were fierce and low and my whole fist was moving gently in her depths. Hard pumping could wait for another session. Half an hour later, as she slept in exhaustion, I watched the rise and fall of her breasts for a long time before drifting off with my face pressed against her warmth.

We didn't manage to see sunrise, but the morning light was still fresh and clear when I went down to the river and waded into the deepest part. The cold water tumbling down from the mountains could always sweep away sweat, doubt, confusion. Then I sat in the sun on my favorite high boulder and tried to clear my mind of everything but the intense blue of the sky.

"You look like one of those paintings," Katzi said, coming to stand below me. "You know, the ones with girls sitting on rocks with mountains and waterfalls and stuff."

"Maxfield Parrish?" I asked, without turning.

"That's the guy. You look like what I wish he would have painted, instead of all those cute fluffy girls."

"You'd have fit right in," I said, "but I always wondered how they were supposed to have got up onto those jagged mountains with bare feet." I wriggled my own river sandals, the only clothing I was wearing.

She looked at my feet, then my legs; I steeled myself not to clamp my naked thighs together, and let her look.

"Oh, Jo," she cried, aghast at the full extent of my wound. "Did he cut you that way on purpose?"

I couldn't bottle up the anger, the guilt, forever. "Yeah. Probably. His wife had been going to leave him for a woman, but luckily the papers didn't get hold of that tidbit. We could've charged him with a hate crime, I suppose, from the names he called me, but there wasn't any point. Even if he'd lived."

Her hand was on my thigh, and she could feel me shaking. "You had to do it, Jo, it was self defense, and who knows what else he'd have done to them?"

I remembered the woman's screams, and the child's terrified cries. I remembered climbing the back of the building, finding foot and finger holds on ledges and chinks in the bricks, while my partner watched the front; remembered the shatter of glass as I dove through the window, and the flash of the knife as I wrestled with him. I hadn't been able to climb with my gun drawn, and then it was too late. Most of all I remembered the crumpling of his larynx under my hand.

"There had to be another way," I muttered. "If...maybe if I had been different, gentler, softer somehow, I could've talked him around. That poor little kid had been through enough, without having to see all that."

"But the mother lived, didn't she? My God, Jo, how can you kick yourself? I know it must have been awful, but..." She stood on tiptoe and lay her head against my side, and I bent to hide my face in her soft curls. Then she worked her lips gently downward toward the scar. "Let me, please..."

I began to tremble in a different way. I wasn't sure I could bear to be touched. She looked up at me with such tenderness in her eyes that suddenly I couldn't bear not to be touched, not just by her hands and mouth but by some indefinable flame of life in her that warmed something in me deeper than the flesh.

I leaned back with my arms braced against the rock and let my thighs spread farther apart, let Katzi's mouth move up, and up, toward where I needed it most. She reached her arms around my waist and pressed her lips and tongue against me so softly, gently, that I felt no pain, only a tantalizing stimulation I thought would drive me crazy. I tried to pull her head closer, harder--maybe I was healed enough!-- but she resisted. "Trust me," she murmured, and I had to, even had to let her hear me whimper and moan. She kept on and on, driving me closer and closer to the brink of a great void, like hurtling on skis toward the headwall of Tuckerman's Ravine--and then I plunged over in an avalanche of fierce joy.

Much later in the day I kissed her, told her when I'd pick her up, and watched her hurry into the playhouse. I really was healed enough, I realized, to go back on duty. Why rush it, though? I could still taste her, still feel her body against mine. Her scent still clung to me; I hoped that something of her would always cling to me. I couldn't quite handle wondering about the future, but for now, I was going to savor every moment of the present with the healing force of nature that was Katzi.

Annabeth Leong on "A Prayer Before Bed"

2011-04-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

The final blog tour post today, and it blows me away. Annabeth Leong nails the way erotica can have depth and complexity and reveal its characters in profound ways. I could never have said it as well. Don't miss this one.
http://www.annabethleong@blogspot.com

[Tomorrow I'll post a previously published cop story of mine that wan't in the book.]

RV Raiment on "Chapel Street Blue"

2011-04-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

[For this anthology I expected to get stories inspired by TV cop shows, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to use any, but RV Raiment’s tribute to the women of the classics I recall so vividly really blew me away with its blend of grit and lyricism.]

RV Raiment on "Chapel Street Blue"

This is the first time I’ve had the honour of appearing in one of

Sacchi’s books, and it is a very real pleasure. I find myself

snuggled between the covers with some very interesting and stimulating

writers, and it’s a pretty fine cover too.

So why ‘Lesbian Cops’? And why ‘Chapel Street Blue’?

Sacchi speculates a link with Hill Street Blues and isn’t too far off

the mark. NYPD Blue is in there somewhere, and no doubt other ‘Blue’

named books and series. And NYPD was controversially ‘blue’ in that

other respect too. Naked bodies – or the US TV versions of them –

abounded, and NYPD Blue went so far as to flash, I think, Jimmy Smits’

bottom on one occasion. What a shock it was to discover that not all

American males sleep and have sex in shorts after all.

‘Hill Street Blues’ had Robin, Belcher’s petite, dark girlfriend. Oh

how I lusted those many years ago. And the tall blonde sergeant,

Lucy. Those long, long legs…

Then ‘Homicide, Life on the Street’ and another blonde sergeant, but a

detective, played by Melissa Leo, only seen in uniform on too-rare

ceremonial occasions, and NYPD’s delightful selection of nubile and

delicious officers and detectives.

Nubile and delicious? And I’m talking about cops? Yes, but entirely

without disrespect.

I admire cops. I admire anyone who has the guts to do, day in and day

out, the stuff that most of us would never dare to do. And female

cops demonstrate the equality that has always been fundamental to my

perception of women – they are at the very least as strong, as clever,

as courageous and simply as fine as any man could ever be. Such are

the women I choose to write about.

Even my cop’s lover, former denizen of the underworld, is a creation I

respect and a woman I would respect in real life. Few of us make

truly ‘free’ choices, and the choices of some of those society affects

to despise often require no little courage.

I love the paradox of the woman in uniform – police or military. Dressed in symbols of power and authority which also mark

them out as placing themselves consciously and conscientiously in

danger, the bodies beneath seem almost engineered for just the

opposite. The female body speaks, somehow, in every curve and line,

of qualities of nurturing, gentleness and beauty. It is there at

every age and in every conformation of the female body, yet the female

mind and spirit outweighs it.

Several times while writing this I have been drawn to a conclusion I

have sought, on some level, to avoid, and yet I think I cannot. It

really is as if female courage is somehow more overwhelming, more

inspiring, than that of men, whilst it is that of men which gains the

most attention.

So I love and admire my women in uniform, and I salute them, here, in

the only way I know how.

R V Raiment

Excerpt from one of the grittier bits, and I do mean grittier:

“I hate Chapel Street.” Sally’s voice is sibilant with a darker passion than our own.

“I know.”

“Just routine stuff, of course. Caspar and Weiner were there from Homicide. Izzy Morgenstein and di Matteo called it in.”

“And the vic?”

“Some kid called Kassie. Short for Kassandra, spelled with a K.”

“Black?” “Yeah.” “Kassie who?” “Whitney.”

I try to remember, but the name means nothing to me.

“Dead?” The question is stupid, but we both know it’s a prompt.

“Couldn’t have been deader, poor kid.”

“Got any idea who did it?”

“Warm when they found her. Jism still leaking from her cooch. Caspar’s sure the DNA will be the killer’s.”

“She fucked unprotected?”

“Yeah. And her lipstick was kiss-smeared.” She is having a harder time with this than usual. Dead hookers are commonplace, scarcely making the inside pages anymore. She rolls onto her back. Something that was smouldering low down inside me starts to sputter with flame. So confident, you see. Just lies there. Her arms are folded behind her head, her breasts spread that little extra by gravity, legs comfortably, revealingly parted. What is there is to die for. “Todd was an asshole today.”

“He was?”

“Yeah.”

She’s quiet, thoughtful, just gazing at the ceiling. The fan up there rotates slowly, lazily. From low where I’m lying I can see the length of her curving lashes, the bright highlights from the window on the lenses of her eyes. “I suspect he’s not getting any.” Her lips are tight. Bitter.

“He’s married, isn’t he?”

“Sure. To his college sweetheart.”

“The cheerleader. Of course.”

“Yeah. His fuckbunny.” Her lip curls. I know all that shit makes her mad. “I wish he’d grow up. Over thirty fucking years old and his taste—really—is still for barely-post-pubescent- looking kids in rah-rah skirts and shiny panties.

“He started cracking wise this morning. Making jokes. And the thing is, there are jokes and jokes, you know?”

“Yes.” It’s amazing what some cops will laugh at, but that’s because there are times when it’s only the ability to laugh at something that keeps them going, that enables them to cope. A lot of folks don’t understand that.

It was as if she’d read my thoughts. “Just plain mean, his jokes were, this morning. Just plain mean. You should have seen Izzy’s face. He’s got kids, you know. Two girls, both about Kassie’s age.

“Todd really wound him up. Wound me up, too, the bastard. If he goes on like this, I’m going to have to try to switch to another partner.”

“It’s as bad as that?”

“Yeah. It’s as bad as that. I’d say you should’ve heard him, but I’m really awfully glad you didn’t. Bastard. And it’s something I’ve noticed about him before. He hates hookers. With a passion.”

“Probably his mother was one.” Sally laughs. It’s a nicer sound. “Fucking hypocrite.”

“What?”

“Todd. Puts the squeeze on working girls any time he can. He likes to say, of sex, that he never has to pay for it. Fact is, that’s only ’cuz he’s good at squeezing freebies out of frightened youngsters.”

I can see the change in her expression. There are things going on in her head that she hasn’t given voice to. There’s a passion that doesn’t easily lend itself to words. Any moment and her eyes will moisten.

I love that in her. She is so very, very strong, so very, very confident. So very powerful. She speaks and others obey, her orders short and sharp as a whiplash, and there’s scarcely a man in the precinct she couldn’t knock down with a single punch. Still, though, injustice can move her to tears. And maybe the best part of that is that it means I get to baby her, to be part of making her feel better.

Her ankles move apart for me so that I can lie the length of her, my face level with her breasts. Her beautiful face above me.

Lynn Mixon Maps the Writing of Healing Hands

2011-04-13T20:25:00.000-07:00

The semi-penultimate day of the blog tour! Lynn Mixon describes the process of building the story of a U.S. Marshall and a card sharp under the Witness Protection program.
lynnmixon.com

Teresa Noelle Roberts on Respecting the "Dress Uniform"

2011-04-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

[In today's blog Teresa Noelle Roberts talks about her story, in which you discover (when you read the whole thing) how to have your kink and eat it too, while still respecting the uniform.]

Teresa Noelle Roberts here, and I’m thrilled to have a story in Lesbian Cops. It’s always a pleasure to work with Sacchi, and it’s doubly a pleasure to find my own work snuggling up to the brave and incredibly hot women in uniform (and friends) depicted by my fellow contributors. But I almost didn’t come up with a story for this anthology.

Usually when Sacchi wants me to submit something to her, I jump. (Yes, that’s supposed to sound both silly and suggestive. If you expect me to play this all vanilla and prim, you’ve got me confused with some other author.) I hesitated a bit over Lesbian Cops¸ though, because the first few stories that came to mind involved uniform fetishes. For one, I figured a lot of people would take that approach and unless I had a really clever twist, it would be hard to stand out. For another, I don’t find police uniforms sexy.

I’m married to someone in law enforcement. It would certainly be handy if I were kinky for uniforms. But my beloved is a humane officer, like the “animal cops” from that Animal Planet series. His uniforms are utilitarian and rather ugly—but at least they’re highly washable. That’s key in his line of work. Every time I do laundry, I do an entire load of uniforms that smell like dog and worse—unless he’s come home bloody and/or skunked, in which case he’s kind enough to deal with the mess himself.

Can you say “not sexy”?

I started a piece involving a cop and a dog trainer, the cop’s profession being only a tiny piece of the story, then discovered that my frequent co-author Dayle Dermatis/Andrea Dale was working on a story in which a dog played a key role. Quite a different story than what I’d had in mind, as it turns out, but since I knew there was already one dog-related piece in progress for Lesbian Cops, one that I was (correctly) confident would be wonderful, I decided to table the slightly kinky dog trainer. (I’m sure she’ll be back, though perhaps not with a lesbian cop as her partner in mischief.)

But that left me without a story idea and I was starting to get frantic.

When I was tearing my hair out, I remembered a firefighter friend telling me how a would-be girlfriend got pouty because my friend wouldn’t wear her dress uniform to a fetish event and couldn’t understand that it was, from my friend’s point of view, both a risky career move and fetishizing something she took seriously.

I don’t think that real-life relationship got too far.

But what if I gave that story a happy ending? I could incorporate my friend’s seriousness, my own feelings about uniforms being work clothes, conflict, tenderness, and good old-fashioned ingenuity, all mixed together as facets of a healthy, growing relationship. And I could weave in plenty of kinky while I was at it, because it’s just not a Teresa Noelle Roberts story if no one gets spanked or tied up.

But no dogs. Because dogs and kink don’t mix (and if they do in your world, please keep it to yourself. Like I said, I’m married to a humane officer and I’m pretty sure that would be illegal.)

And thus “Dress Uniform” was born.

Here’s a taste—slightly suggestive, but also showing something of the characters:

“Are you kidding? I can’t wear my uniform to the Fetish Fair!” I smiled as I said it, though, because Lisette was wheedling like a kid who wanted candy, and it was pretty damn adorable. Lisette looks like an anime girl, all big eyes, big smile and big breasts, and she was using all three of those attributes to good effect. Usually when she makes her eyes wide, smiles eagerly and poses so I can’t help but look at her cleavage, I’ll give in to just about anything she wants, especially if she’s also wearing a short schoolgirl skirt or cat ears at the time.

This time I couldn’t afford to give in. “I’d get in serious trouble if the Chief found out. Besides, they’ll have officers doing security detail. I don’t want any confusion, especially if God forbid there actually is a problem.” Not that I expected problems. The kink community may lead edgy sex lives, but we tend to be well-behaved in public, if only to avoid anyone asking if dressing your lover up in a pony harness violates some obscure local ordinance. Whenever you get a few thousand people together, though, there’s a potential for weirdness. Especially at a downtown convention center, where someone who thinks they’re on a mission from God to get rid of pervs could pay their $20 and walk right in to cause trouble.

“How about your dress uniform? No one would get confused then.”

I winced.

I’d just met Lisette the last time I had to haul out the dress uniform. I hadn’t known the officer who’d been killed. He’d been from a different precinct and we’d never run into each other on a detail or a Police Benevolent Association benefit. But that doesn’t matter when one of your own buys it. You go to the funeral in your dress uniform and you’re part of a strong wall of blue for the poor bastard’s family and you hope you don’t have to put on that uniform again for a long, long time—and that no one ever has to put it on for you until you die of old age.

Joe Morrissey had died less than four months ago. It was way too soon to put that uniform on for anything less than the president coming to our town and needing a police escort. Certainly not to gratify the whim of a lover. A uniform that still had a mass card in the pocket from a fellow officer’s funeral wasn’t sexy.

I didn’t say a word, but I’m not as tough as I like to pretend I am, because my eyes got misty at the memory. Within a second, Lisette dropped her cutesy face and was holding me. “Sorry, Barb. I wasn’t thinking. That was a bad idea.”

Elizabeth Coldwell's Lesbian Cops Blog, with Angie!

2011-04-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

Don't miss todays Lesbian Cops blog from Elizabeth Coldwell. Steamy goodness on the dominant side of policewomen, with extra bonus Angie Dickinson pic!

elizabethcoldwell.wordpress.com

J.N. Gallagher on "Officer Birch"

2011-04-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Why is erotica so dirty? No, wait – that’s not exactly what I’m trying to ask. Of course erotica is going to be dirty. Reading or writing erotica means reading or writing about sex, and sex is always dirty or, at the very least, messy. Messy encounters, messy clothes crumpled on the floor, messy emotions. Even when it's trying to be, sex is rarely clean and pure.

Maybe what I'm really trying to ask is – why do we treat erotica like it’s dirty? Why do we keep it hidden? Hidden on back-of-the-store shelves, hidden in our drawers, hidden on our e-readers? Graphic novelist Alan Moore has wondered why there are, comparatively, so few books about sex when there are infinite books about aliens and wizards and hard-boiled detectives and talking animals. Most human beings have sex at some point in their lives, so why do we read and write so much about the unreal when the real is staring us in the face and saying, “Write about me. Write about what you love, what you lust for, what you burn for in the pit of your stomach and the valves pumping in your heart.”

Maybe that's just my Catholic upbringing. Maybe you didn't have to fear getting caught thumbing through erotica anthologies in your local bookstore. Maybe you didn't have to hide your collection of On Our Backs magazines for fear of your parents or your partner finding them and asking, “Wait, you like this?” If so, I envy you. If you buy a copy of Lesbian Cops: Erotic Investigations and read my story, “Officer Birch,” then maybe you’re someone who will keep the book on your bookshelf, unashamed of what you enjoy reading.

Or, if you’re more like me, I invite you to join me in taking a small step. Leave a review on Amazon.com. Talk about it with an online pal or someone you trust in your real life. At least let the world know I like this. For some of us, this is a hard thing to do. But, it’s time – for this writer especially – to stand up and be proud of who we are and what we like reading and writing about. I hope you enjoy the story. Yes, it’s about sex, but it’s also about love and shame and fear and a bunch of other stuff, too. This story is a part of me and my life, and I want the world to know that.

Excerpt from “Officer Birch”

“Why does she bully you?” you said. “From what I’ve gathered, she doesn't act violently toward anyone else.”

“I don't know,” I said. “Does there have to be a reason? Sometimes people here just get singled out, and we have to deal with it.”

You were silent until I lifted my head and looked at you. Did you know that I fell in love with you right then, Officer Birch? Could you tell?

It might have been your uniform, immaculate and wrinkle-free. It might have been the necktie and cap, which no cops in town wore until you showed up and made them look like slobs.

It might have been your face. You looked so young, almost my age. Let's be honest—you weren’t pretty. You weren’t cute, either, not like the few girls I had managed to fool around with. They had long hair, beautiful breasts, curves to their figures. You had sharp angles, small breasts, a strong jaw. I didn't know if you had hair on your head. I couldn't see any peeking out from under your cap.

I had seen butch women before. Our Midwestern county was closeted back then but not totally straight. The difference was that none of them were anything like you. So handsome, so powerful in your uniform, even while sitting down and doing nothing. Masculine in every way yet nothing like a man. I got moist right there, and I didn't even know I was attracted to butches.

You rambled on about handling bullies. I wasn't listening; I was thinking. What would it be like to kiss your lips? What was underneath your cap? How would you teach me about hardcore dyke sex shit?

Blog Tour: Evan Mora, "A Cop's Wife"

2011-04-08T21:02:00.001-07:00

About A Cop’s Wife…

When I first saw Sacchi’s call for Lesbian Cops, my mind filled with a hundred hot and dirty imaginings. When I sat down to begin writing, I was certain what would emerge would be kinky and sexy. I mean hey – who hasn’t had a fantasy about a smokin’ hot woman in uniform? But when I tried to assemble all the parts in my head, it just wouldn’t come together. There was another voice in there, telling me very pointedly that I had another story to write.

Sometimes the things that we write are fiction through and through. Sometimes there’s something – a mannerism of a lover, a turn of phrase, a kernel of truth – around which we craft fiction. And sometimes, entire stories are based on our experiences. I’m not married to a cop, but my story A Cop’s Wife is probably the most personal story I’ve ever written.

Two things were at work for me, and they blended their way into a fiction that nevertheless feels very real to me. Once upon a time, I had a long relationship with a firefighter, and I have endless respect and admiration for all emergency responders – police, firefighters and EMTs – and for the partners and spouses that support them at home. I drew on my own history to craft my character Amie, and to describe how she feels about being married to a cop:

There is an understanding that, on any given day, the likelihood that bad things could happen to your spouse is much greater than if they were say, an accountant, or a school teacher. You imagine what it would feel like to get the phone call, or the knock on the door, that tells you that they’ve been injured, or worse, that they’ve been killed.

People say I don’t know how you do it, but the fact of the matter is, that despite this understanding, the fear remains mostly abstract because by and large, nothing does happen. And at the end of the day, you trust in the training and the instincts and the support that enable these men and women to do their jobs and protect the public.

Much more fresh in my mind though, was the subject material of the story: how do you deal with someone threatening your life? My partner (a very different kind of hero) spends much of her time helping people who suffered terrible abuse as children. Sometimes these people grow up to be very damaged adults, with a lot of misguided rage. And sometimes, though rarely, it winds up directed at her. We found ourselves in a situation similar to the one in my story in the spring of last year. How do you deal with that? What do you do when someone says I will kill you, with every bit of conviction they have? Let me tell you, it’s the stuff of nightmares.

And then I wondered, how would a cop, someone trained to deal with all manner of violent situations, handle something like that? How could they –how does anyone – fight something as intangible as words?

…[E]ven like this, held tight in the circle of her arms in the privacy of our bedroom, he was there. He was everywhere. His taint was like a mist curling in through a crack in the window, seeping under the doorframe, spilling through the keyhole. It was insidious, filling the inside the room until I felt like I couldn’t breathe again, until I felt like I was suffocating in fear and anger and despair.

Patrice was vibrating, struggling with emotions of her own. I knew I should say something about how everything would be o.k., and about how I knew she would catch this filthy coward, but the words couldn’t make it past the lump in my throat. I was determined not to cry – she didn’t need that from me right now, but when she said, “I put a copy of my will in the lock box…” the tears fell of their own volition, and she rocked me in the dark, and nothing more was said.

Fortunately for me, and the characters in my story, things work out in the end. And the relief when it’s over? Indescribable.

After all these weeks of vacillating between belief and disbelief; strength and weakness; between calm assurances and horrible despair, I needed her – the indisputable, solid proof that she was real, beneath my hands, against my flesh – more than I needed air to breathe.

Sacchi has put together a tremendously diverse collection of stories which manages to capture both the fiery-hot fantasy that women in uniform can inspire, and the sometimes more serious reality of a cop’s life. It’s a great read, and I’m honored to be in the company of such fine authors. If you haven’t read it yet – pick it up already! You won’t be disappointed.

Blog Tour: Kenzie Mathews, "Raven Brings the Light"

2011-04-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

When I talk about variety in Lesbian Cops, I really mean it. Today's perspective is from Kenzie Mathews, taking you to the Alaska she knows in ways outsiders seldom glimpse.

Blog for “Raven Brings the Light” by Kenzie Mathews

My inspiration for “Raven” comes from 1. I’m Alaskan, and 2. I was very upset by the girl’s murder represented in my story. You can Google her story: Alaska, the girl in the box murder. In the real story, no axes or machetes were thrown. I borrowed THAT part from my misspent youth (and I won’t tell that story now ‘cos I’d like to use that little bit of personal history for something else.) Of all my stories, this one tends to deal with darker themes. I let the love and the lust in it keep it light, but I can’t help thinking of crime stories/cop stories as being something that works in darker places.

I think the case really bothers me ‘cos I could identify with her. I grew up in rural Alaska, and despite the wonderful Disney versions of Alaskan kids with dog-sleds sharing hot chocolate over bonfires, a lot of the kids here run into trouble. It’s cold, it’s dark, and hitch-hiking for miles to drink, smoke, take drugs and hang with your friends might be your only social outing. We all have done stupid things and trusted the wring people. I love Alaska, but the kids here have it rough. There’s a strict conformity that aids in social survival but also stirs up rebellion. Sadly enough, a lot of the teens drinking and drugging with their friends out in the dark cold are escaping something worse waiting at home.

I created the characters Thomasane and Chris with Alaskan personality and temperament in mind. Alaskans tend to merge vulnerability with toughness. We’re survivors here but we all need each other to make it through. Thomasane represents for me a typical mixed race Alaskan. She’s both proud and ashamed of her mixed heritage. She carries both fierce tradition and cultural shame and pain. Because of wide-spread alcohol and drug abuse, some villages work really hard to remain dry. For many years, the the only businesses we had open for 24 hours were bars, liquor stores, and video shops. Every Spring the news gives the increasing number of homeless Alaskans, mostly Native, who died in the winter.

Chris is Thomasane’s perfect foil, and she’s not going anywhere. I wanted the love and heat to be obvious between them. This story comes from a longer version that I hope to eventually make into a novel. I did take some liberty with the small town being accepting of a lesbian cop and her lover, though. Alaska can be judgmental and conservative, but it’s my story and I wanted an accepting environment.

All the Raven stories are true Raven stories. They are perfectly gruesome and gleefully funny. Alaskans tend to crack jokes like that. Alaska, it’s big enough to hide all the bodies. How do you tell the difference between a tourist and an Alaskan? Tourist only has one dog in his car.

Here’s a brief taste of the story:

The only thing Alaska promises for sure is a beautiful death.

Thomasane and her partner Brady were the first Troopers on scene. And I know that not because Thomasane is some super trooper, even though she is….it’s just that it’s all small town out here. We’re such a small collection of communities, we only have four pairs of Troopers. But the territory they cover is vast.

So, now when Thomasane said instead, “Chris, did I ever tell you about Raven and the Hunters?” I said no even though I’m pretty sure I told her that story first.

I put down my graded papers, pushing the dogs off the couch to make room for her. They settled on the floor, one on each side of me. My Chow Shepherd mix, Raulie, sat on my left. Ginger, the Labrador Rottweiler mix, laid down next to my right side.

Thomasane unbuckled her gun belt and hung it on the coat rack next to the front door. She covered it with her brown Alaska State Trooper jacket. I patted the couch beside me and gave her my best and campiest come hither look; I’m terrible at flirting but I cover my inadequacies with self-mocking over-exaggeration. Thomasane said once when we were first dating that clowns were holy. That’s funny to me because I think clowns are terrifying. What are they really thinking behind the makeup and costumes?

Either way, Thomasane thinks I’m funny. I guess it all works out in the end. In Thomasane’s family, no one ever dared to laugh or smile, much less talk. Even now, when her family calls, I know who it is based on the silence and breathing at the other end of the phone. Thomasane’s half Russian, a quarter Norwegian, and a quarter Native. She’s tall, dark and muscular, her blue-black shoulder length hair always pulled back tight in a pony-tail, her black eyes unreadable.

In my family, all we did was laugh, even when the joke hurt. It stopped us from killing each other or committing suicide. I’m all Irish: short with curves, and pale, with embarrassingly uncontrollable reddish brown hair.

Thomasane lay down next to me, her feet up on the couch and her head in my lap. I stroked her face, my hands cupping her chin and throat, feeling the tightness there loosen, feeling her swallow slowly, counting the slowing pulse in her neck.

Thomasane said:

“Raven was eating on the beach and a hunter came up to him. ‘I’m hungry,’ said the hunter. ‘Do you know where the good meat is?’

“Raven peered at him, thinking. Finally, Raven said, ‘See that island across the ocean? See that cave? All the hunters say it’s good hunting there.’

“So the hunter made a kayak out of his spears and parka. He was cold but he was hungry more. Then, the hunter took his kayak out into the ocean to row to the island. Raven flew above him, still chewing his meal. The hunter climbed out of his kayak and walked to the cave entrance.

“He peered into the darkness of the cave and asked Raven, ‘Where is the meat, Raven?’ Raven knocked the heavy stones down from the top of the cave onto the hunter’s head, killing the hunter instantly.

“ ‘You’re the meat, Stupid,’ Raven said, eating the hunter’s face. ‘I just don’t know why they fall for that every time.’”

“Oh, honey,” I said to Thomasane, kissing her soft mouth, my hand still cupping her chin.

My mouth lingered over hers and softly, she kissed me back, her tongue stroking, licking at my mouth. My other hand slid into her uniform and underneath her bra until it cupped her breast, her nipple hardening in my palm. I pulled and rolled her nipple between my knuckles, not quite cruel but close enough.

Lesbian Cops Blog Tour

2011-03-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Does the thought of lesbian cops turn you on, or leave you cold? Whichever way you lean, these stories offer some surprises, and now the writers are offering extra insights on their work in a blog tour beginning on April 1. Check us out. All comments on any of these blog entries will be entered in a drawing for one of two copies of the book.
Here’s the schedule, with links:

March 31 Sacchi Green Interview
www.deadrobotssociety.com

April 1 JL Merrow
jl-merrow.livejournal.com/

April 2 Jove Belle

www.jovebelle.wordpress.com

April 3 Delilah Devlin

www.delilahdevlin.com/blog

April 4 R. G. Emanuelle

www.rgemanuelle.com

April 5 Andrea Dale

cyvarwydd.blogspot.com

April 6 Kenzie Matthews

sacchi-green.blogspot.com

April 7 Ily Goyanes

thesideshow.info

April 8 Cheyenne Blue

www.cheyenneblue.com

April 9 Evan Mora

sacchi-green.blogspot.com/

April 10 J.N. Gallagher

sacchi-green.blogspot.com/

April 11 Liz Coldwell

elizabethcoldwell.wordpress.com

April 12 Teresa Noelle Roberts

sacchi-green.blogspot.com/

April 13 Lynn Mixon

www.lynnmixon.com/

April 14 RV Raiment

sacchi-green.blogspot.com/

April 15 Annabeth Leong

annabethleong.blogspot.com

Besides commenting on the content of the blogs, feel free to comment (or e-mail me--sacchigreen@gmail.com) at the end of the tour with your own thoughts about what you wish we'd included in the book. Hot fantasies, wild imaginings, gritty realism--if you want to share it, now's the time. All such comments will be in the running for a third copy of the book.

Women in Historical Fiction

2011-03-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

Another of my columns for Women and Words, but with more emphasis on erotica just for you.

Women in Historical Fiction

According to a survey on the Smart Bitches website, 81% of romance readers read historical romance. The rest of the results are interesting, as well. Yes, I noticed that erotic romance comes in at the bottom of the list, with only 45% going near it (or admitting to it, at least.)

The historical appeal fascinates me. I love historical fiction. I don’t know how the preferences of lesbian readers stack up against those of romance readers in general, but my general impression is that historical romance (or let’s just say historical fiction) isn’t heavily represented in lesfic as a whole. I do know of some but I’d be glad to hear your recommendations.

One difference, I think, between straight historical romance and the lesbian version, is that in ours, the women get to be the strong characters. No swooning in the arms of an alpha male. (Yes, I know there are some strong female characters in straight historicals, but I’m speaking in general terms here.)

This brings me to a subject I’ve long wanted to rant about. There seems to be a belief on the part of women who write m/m historical romance that there’s no point in writing about women in history because women never got to do anything adventurous. They were never strong. They weren’t worth writing about. I actually saw this stated by an author for whom I have great respect, and echoed with complete agreement in numerous comments from other female writers of m/m historical romance.

What! I’m not going to list famous women in history—we’re talking about fiction here, after all, although I do admit to writing short fiction that included Queen Elizabeth I addressing the troops before the battle with the Spanish Armada. But there have always been strong women, strong sometimes in the same ways as men, and often in much more complex and vital ways. In some sense the very fact that our patriarchal culture has at best ignored and at worst suppressed their history makes them even more interesting to write about.

What do you think? Should publishers be giving us more lesbian historical fiction?

Last year I wrote a guest column for the Oh Get a Grip blog . It was titled “Strong Women Ride You Harder”, on the subject of strong women in erotica, not specifically about historical fiction, but I do think it fits this discussion.

“Strong Women Ride You Harder”

I write about strong women. In pairs. Or trios, or more, although I have to admit that keeping track of too many same-gendered parts is a challenge when you only have one flavor of pronoun to tag them with.

I represent a certain viewpoint. I write lesbian erotica, and have edited six-going-on-seven anthologies full of that flavor of lip-smacking goodness. So, when considering the question of why strong women are good characters for erotica, my kneejerk response is, “Why the hell not? Doesn’t everybody get turned on by strong characters?” My second is, well, “Yum,” but I’ll try to resist getting distracted.

A case could be made that all strong female characters can be considered both dangerous and wicked, since they upset a patriarchal status quo that should be as outdated as Victorian fainting couches and tight corsets. Oh, wait. Those corsets have become the iconic uniforms for dominatrices, and are far from outdated. Victorian gentlemen, whose ideal wives were required to role-play as fragile flowers, subverted their own dominant paradigm by getting their rocks off being paddled by strong women. The erotic appeal of the transgressive is at least as strong now as it was then, but we may not have quite as many restrictions to transgress against these days, and not so much of the strict-governess-and-caning-at-school tradition, so we borrow the most fun and colorful bits from the past. As long as women get their fair chance to be on top, I’m fine with that.

Most of the characters in my books are fine with that, too. I try for variety, and always include some stories with BDSM/power exchange tropes, sometimes including classic dom-wear. But there’s more to the appeal of strong women than corporal punishment. In lesbian fiction the characters are upsetting the cultural norms just by being who they are, and that takes strength. When who they are means taking on roles that have traditionally been seen as hyper-masculine, they need to be hyper-strong, in body, mind, and strength of will. That’s sexy.

Cowboys, for instance. Without getting too personal, I happen to know that an anthology with a lesbian cowboy theme (“cowboy” is a job description, not a gender, and the women doing it don’t necessarily need to be called cowgirls) won a Lambda Literary Award last year over strong competition, so the writers must have been doing something right. Lesbian bikers and lesbian cops are more themes that draw on the appeal of strong women forging the lives they want without regard to gender expectations. The same could be said of women who are CEOs or astronauts or doctors or any of a long, long list of occupations once limited to men.

Strong, sexy women appear in a great deal of lesbian (and straight) erotica that isn’t so overtly themed, of course. On a tangential note, whatever you may think of Xena’s carefree approach to history and myth, that show cleared the way for later kick-ass heroines, from Buffy to Sarah Conner to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)”

Erotica Readings: My Characters Made Me Do It

2011-03-02T15:03:00.000-08:00

Lesbian Cops will be out in less than a month, and I'll be posting details about a blog tour here soon. I'll also have details about a contest for a free book, and an additional prize.

For now, I'm sharing another column I posted recently on Women and Words. This one is about doing erotica readings.

Most folks get nervous about reading their work in public, especially the first time, but when it comes to reading erotica out loud there’s a whole extra world of panic. Writing erotica is a very private, very personal process, at least if you’re doing it well, and if we thought then about speaking those words in front of an audience, we might not have the courage to write them down at all.

A chance to read in public, though, isn’t something to be turned down lightly. Besides the potential promotional value and the socialization with other writers and readers, it can feel like a validation of yourself as a “real” writer.

Another way to think of it is as a validation of your characters. You gave them life on the page; now you channel their voices with your own. There was a time long ago when all stories were transmitted orally, and there’s something about the spoken word, with its intonations and modulations and changes in pace, that adds another dimension to the written word.

But…erotica? Those kinds of words? Yes, but I’ll let you in on a secret. You can give a good erotica reading without actually speaking those words unless you want to. If you’re reading from a novel, you won’t have time for the whole thing, and if you’re reading short stories with a group from an anthology, you’ll be lucky if you can fit in more than half of your own piece. If there’s some humor in it, include that; your audience may well find it easier to share a laugh than to show a reaction to steamy bits. When it does come to steamy bits, it’s okay to set the scene, raise the tension, tease them with foreplay, and then leave them wanting more. Once you’ve got a few readings under your belt (so to speak) you may find yourself itching to take the audience all the way over the edge with you, and that’s even better.

But…audience? Reading in front of other people? Look at it this way. The women coming to an erotica reading are not going to be judgmental about erotica, or about you. They’ve come to support their friends who are reading, to have a good time among women of similar tastes and inclinations, and to celebrate the very existence of events like this. They’re glad of the chance and happy that you’re there. But if the thought of an audience still makes you nervous—well, in this particular case I’d better not give you the traditional advice about imagining that they’re all pantsless, or even naked, although if that works for you, go for it! One thing you could try is focusing on a single person, someone you know, or, if you notice a few people reacting especially well, laughing in the right places, nodding at things they identify with, reward them with eye contact from time to time. A reading is a group event, and the more participation, the better. (A brief anecdote here. I once read with a group from Best Lesbian Erotica in New York when they’d brought in a sign language interpreter. When it got to the sex scenes, her signs necessarily got very graphic indeed. Everybody, including the readers, gave her all their attention. It was a strange experience, but definitely a bonding one for everyone concerned.)

I hope you potential audience members got that part about reacting to the readers. Reward those who are putting themselves and their characters on the line up there by letting them know when you enjoy something. And writers who are considering doing readings can learn a lot, and get some confidence, by attending other people’s readings first. You can take note of their successes and mistakes (which nobody minds,) and find out what the audience side feels like. You’ll understand then why some listeners show reactions, and some just look down or close their eyes, preferring a private, possibly more intense, experience. There’s nothing wrong with that, either.

Just in case all the readers you hear are old hands at it and don’t make any mistakes, here are a few pointers to make sure you don’t make the obvious ones, either. Print out your story in a slightly larger font than usual if you have any doubts about how good the lighting will be where you’re reading. Practice reading out loud, marking places where you’ll need to take a breath because the next passage is so long. Underline words that give you trouble because they’re hard to pronounce, or have alternate acceptable pronunciations, or are words you really don’t want to say so you hesitate and that makes it worse. Figure out where your problems might be, deal with them, and mark up the paper with reminders. Just the process of doing this will probably fix things in your mind, but you’ll feel more confident if you’ve got it in hardcopy. The point is not to let your text surprise you, except by how good it really is.

A question now for audience members at readings; what do you hope to get out of attending? Do you feel cheated if we don’t always read the most explicit parts of our stories? (If you feel cheated when we don’t look like our characters, I don’t want to know about it.) Wouldn’t you like to be up there doing readings yourselves? If you write, and give life to heartfelt, engrossing characters, one of these days your characters just might make you do it.

Posting on Women and Words about Writing Sex Scenes

2011-02-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

I've been invited to post regularly on the wonderful Women and Words blog, and I've just hit the "publish" button on my first holding-forth. Whee! I don't intend to overemphasize erotica, but this time my theme is "Sex Scenes Without Fear" (You can read it without fear--nothing X-rated. Yet. ) 

Here's what I posted:

Sex Scenes without Fear

Hi readers and writers, I’m Sacchi Green, and I’ve been invited to play in this literary sandbox with you. In the future I promise not to concentrate too heavily on the erotica side of the force, even though that’s where I do most of my writing and editing, with six-going-on-seven anthologies in print. The most recent ones are from Cleis Press; Girl Crazy, Lesbian Coming Out Erotica (2009), Lesbian Cowboys (2009, winner of a Lambda Literary Award), Lesbian Lust (2010), and Lesbian Cops (April of 2011). I can be found online on FaceBook (Sacchi Green), Live Journal (http://sacchig.livejournal.com/), Lesbian Fiction Forum (Sacchi, http://www.lesbianfiction.org/) and http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com .
As I said, I won’t talk all that much about erotica, but this first time I’ll start out playing here with the toys I’m most accustomed to. (Hi there, those of you with dirty minds! Glad to see you! But I won’t be talking about that sort of toy here.)
So here’s just a bit of a chapter I contributed to Fran Walker’s Lavender Ink: Writing and Selling Lesbian Fiction from Bedazzled Ink (Chapter 10), titled, obviously, “Sex Scenes”.

What is it about sex scenes in books? Our culture’s conflicted attitudes toward sex are not only reflected, but magnified, in our reactions to the very idea of writing or reading about sex. No other section of a book, except, possibly, the ending, inspires so much flipping through the pages. Some readers avidly find the “good parts” and devour them first, while others make sure they know which pages to avoid. And it’s equally true that some writers can’t wait to get working on the erotic bits, while others, pressured to include them by editors or by their own assessments of the market, avoid writing them until everything else has been done and they can’t procrastinate any longer.
I won’t try to tell you, as a writer, that whatever method you use is wrong. If you can make it work, that’s great. But I will tell you what kind of reader you should write for: one who opens herself to your characters, gets drawn into their lives and emotions, and follows wherever the story leads because it’s so compelling that she can’t bear to miss a word. Not even words she might usually avoid.

Your first responsibility is to give this reader what she needs. Being true to your characters is just as essential, but you’ve seduced the reader into some degree of identification with your POV character, so it amounts to the same thing. And what she needs, besides an emotional bond that intensifies into a physical one, is a scene that flows naturally from what comes before and advances the characterization and story arc at least as much as any other element of the work.
Sex scenes serve many purposes beyond satisfying an editor who believes that they sell books. Erotic interchanges can be as revelatory of character as any other basic human activity, and more so than most, since they deal with heightened emotions and senses and, in some cases, heavily weighted baggage from past experience. If you’ve already developed your characters fully, aspects of their personalities and histories can be emphasized in sex scenes, but you may also find that these scenes provide ways to slip in details not revealed in calmer moments. Shyness or confidence, impulsiveness or self-control, tenderness, vulnerability, repression, unapologetic sensuality; these are only a few of the traits that can surface in the heat of a sexual encounter. The characters may even surprise themselves with their own reactions.
The sex scene can also serve less complex purposes. Sometimes your characters (and the reader) just need to have a really good time, whether as a counterpoint to the stresses of whatever else is happening in your story or as a pacing device to vary the mood from scene to scene. And eventually you have to deliver the implicitly promised payoff to all the emotional and erotic tension you’ve been building.
You have been building erotic tension, haven’t you? It’s a huge mistake to think of a sex scene as a single obligatory lump of action inserted into your story with no relevance to the rest, sticking out like a sore thumb. (Yes, that’s an unforgivable cliché. Yes, I could think of several metaphors more in keeping with our topic, but I’ll leave those as an exercise for the reader.)

[About 2000 words clipped for length, and to spare those who’d rather read sex scenes than see them analyzed.]

That’s really all I can tell you in general terms about writing sex scenes, and I suspect you knew it all already, on one level or another. Create characters, setting, plot, and sensory details that draw the reader into the story, and when a sex scene is the natural next step, focus on feelings. Do it just as you would in any other part of the story, but even more so, because there is something very special about sex scenes.

Undercover with Lesbian Cops

2011-01-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

It’s got to be a good sign when reading your galley proof gets you tingly all over again at what terrific work your writers have done. Lesbian Cops will be available in April, but I can’t wait that long to give you some hints of what’s in it, so I’m sharing my introduction below.

Stay tuned, too, for a chance to not only win a copy, but to share your own deepest thoughts and fantasies on the subject of lesbian cops. I know I’ve missed some great ones, in spite of the wide range in the book. I’m still pondering the details of this caper, so for now, you’ll have to make do with my intro.

Lesbian Cops
What is it about lesbian cops that pushes all the right buttons (and some of the deliciously transgressive wrong ones)? It’s not just the uniform, with handcuffs and weapons, or the confidence, authority and sense of danger. The intrinsic appeal of women taking on roles that have traditionally been seen as hypermasculine is part of it, of course. To hold their own they need to be hyper-strong, in body, mind and strength of will. That’s intensely sexy, for me, at least, and if you’ve read this far I suspect it is for you, too.

But there’s something more as well, an irresistible force that these writers have channeled into fiercely erotic stories of policewomen in or out of uniform, on patrol or undercover, in charge or in need of healing, on the case or under the sheets.
The action can be gut-level tough, as in Jove Belle’s “Hollis,” where anti-terrorism boot camp surges over the edge into BDSM; or heart-wrenching, as in Evan Mora’s “A Cop’s Wife,” when death threats give a keen edge to the need for life-affirming sex; or quirky as well as steamy when Teresa Noelle Roberts’s cop finds a way to maintain respect for her own “Dress Uniform” while indulging her anime-girl lover’s cos-play kink.
The settings vary as well, affecting the mood and feel of each piece. Delilah Devlin’s cops play their “Only Game in Town” in a southern city that’s small without being entirely small-minded. Kenzie Mathews’s Alaskan village is a natural place for the mythic “Raven Brings the Light.” JL Merrow heats up a British town during one “Blazing June,” and Cheyenne Blue goes down under to an Australian rain forest for “How Does Your Garden Grow.”
J. N. Gallagher’s “Officer Birch” inspires undying passion in a midwestern high school; Lynn Mixon’s witness protection marshal finds (and gives) a “Healing Hand” in an unidentified (of course) mountain location; Andrea Dale’s “Charity and Splendor” merge in a nice family neighborhood; and Elizabeth Coldwell’s handcuffed stripper in “Torn Off a Strip” meets her match on a suburban porch. And in my own story, a state-trooper-turned-bodyguard just keeps “Riding the Rails” from Vermont to D.C., with special attention to the roomy handicapped restroom.
Urban scenes range from R. G. Emanuelle’s sweet and spicy “Cop At My Door” and Ily Goyanes’s “Undercover” hooker who’s in way over her head in Miami, to RV Raiment’s gritty (and lyrical) “Chapel Street Blue” and Annabeth Leong’s searing, stirring and ultimately redeeming “A Prayer Before Bed.”
The characters, of course, are the real heart and strength of any story. I’m not easily impressed, but these writers did the trick; they walked the fine line between fantasy and believability, without ever slipping into caricature, and gave us fully rounded people, explicit, uncompromising eroticism and their own sizzling visions of the complexity and depth, the strength and vulnerability, and above all the commanding, overwhelming sex appeal of lesbian cops.
They’ve definitely made me resolve to support my local policewomen.

Instead of Tea and Cookies

2011-01-07T19:40:00.000-08:00

My alter-ego is taking over for a while. I (we?) will be in Boston next weekend, January 14-17, at the Arisa science fiction and fantasy convention. I’ll be doing a reading and a panel on Queer SF&F, and hosting a tea-and-cookies reception for Lethe Press.

I don’t suppose many of you will be there, so I thought I’d share part of the story I’ll be reading from. (Sorry I can't share the tea and cookies here.) It’s not exactly erotica, but by the end, after some serious twists and turns, it has just enough sex (amped up a trifle from its first appearance in my own anthology Time well Bent) to have been reprinted in Best Fantasy Erotica from Circlet Press. It also has just little enough sex to be reprinted in the upcoming Best Lesbian Fiction from Bedazzled Ink. Possibly, if anyone is interested, I may post the rest of the story at some point.

The Heart of the Storm
Connie Wilkins

The night sky arched away into infinity. The stars in their distant, unfathomable intensity seemed more real to Rowan than the earth three thousand feet below. She swayed in the harness, heart pounding, lungs beginning to pump again now that the parachute had safely deployed. Elation coursed through mind and body like freedom, like power, like—like sex. Not that sex was anything but a faint memory these days.

Time, along with gravity, seemed to loosen its hold, and for a long moment she could imagine that the world she drifted toward was not the war-torn one she’d left.

Concentrate! Look down, check the terrain, anticipate your landing! Rowan wrenched her thoughts back to reality, but it was too dark below to make out many features on the ground. In the east, clouds edged with silver by the hidden moon towered in sublime indifference to the affairs of men.

She twisted slowly toward the southwest. There, along the Breton coast, dull flashes illuminated a smoky mist. Same old world, same war. The Allied bombers were making a run at the battleships and U-boats in St-Nazaire's harbor, a frequent enough assault that the Germans might not suspect a diversion. Rowan wasn't the only agent being dropped over Brittany tonight. She breathed an uncharacteristc prayer for safe passage of the plane and soft landings for those who had jumped farther north.

Worry about your own landing! The breeze was freshening into a light wind. The terrain below blinked into visibility as the moon emerged from behind the clouds, illuminating Rowan's dangling form as well as the mushroom billow of the parachute.
Landmarks began to match the map in her head. Two streams converging at a certain angle; the spire of a distant, isolated church; a deserted road. The wind was taking her to the east, too fast! But better east than west, where the great marsh of Le Briere spread across 99,000 acres between the Vilaine estuary to the north and the mouth of the Loire to the south.

There should be a signal fire somewhere in the angle between the streams. No sign of it yet. She tugged on the lines, warping the shape of the 'chute, altering direction just slightly. Yes, there, a spark…gone…there again, a steady glow, not bright, but enough. They would have been watching and listening for the drop plane, and feeding the native peat into the fire in anticipation of her landing.

Or anticipation, at least, of someone's landing. They had not been informed that the explosives expert being sent from London was a woman.

Nature might not have suited Rowan for the roles of wife, mother, nurturer; but fate, she thought, had prepared her for a mission at least as vital. With a university degree in chemistry and post-graduate training as a pharmacist, she was well qualified to teach the resistance fighters of the Maquis how to make explosives with materials available at any apothecary. And, while she had been born in Cornwall, not France, her Breton grandmother had sent her to a convent school in Quimper in the vain hope of teaching her a proper level of feminine docility. Certainly she knew more about Brittany and the Bretons than someone from Paris or Marseilles.

It had not been easy to persuade the British SOE and de Gaulle's Comite National Francaise to let her volunteer for the Free French. Obtaining additional training in demolitions had been even harder, but there had been no one better suited. She had worked tirelessly, persistant when necessary, steeling herself to feign docility when there was no other course, avoiding the least hint of scandal. The desires of the flesh had been reined in, painfully, by the fierce grip of her determination. What if she were a woman? All the better to deceive the Germans. If the men of the Maquis didn't like it—and, from her year at school in Brittany, she was sure they wouldn't—it was too late now.

Oh hell! Too late? Time and gravity reclaimed her suddenly, brutally. The ground hurtled upward. A gust of wind—the flash of upturned faces, and then pale mounds of haystacks looming beyond the circle of the fire' s glow—Rowan drew up her legs, curled into a ball, and tried to propel herself toward the nearest stack by force of will.

The world, abruptly, was a maelstrom of choking dust and prickling straw. Her left ankle twisted beneath her. No time for pain! Reflexes from training kicked in. She freed her knife and slashed at the 'chute's lines. No point now in hauling at the mass of fabric to conceal it in the hay. If German voices approached, rather than Breton, there was nothing to be done but stand and face them. If I can stand at all!

At first there were no voices, only feet running through the stubble of the field. A flaring torch stopped a few feet away, its circle of light overlapping her. Rowan stood—yes, she could stand, just barely, painfully—and pulled the leather helmet from her head, brushing back a dark forelock as it fell across her brow. She could feel the eyes behind the light surveying her.

"Those London fools have sent us a woman!" The male voice was brusque with annoyance, but the words were unmistakably Breton.

So much for chopping my hair short! I knew I couldn't deceive them for long, but—not even for a moment? Relief overrode Rowan's irritation. She took a step away from the hay, staggered, and only just kept from falling.

"Hold up the torch, Joachim." This voice was authoritative, musical, and unmistakable female. Rowan, startled, staggered again, and would have fallen if not for the quick support of a pair of strong, slender arms. The scent of a woman teased her nostrils. Long strands of flame-gold hair—or did they merely reflect the torchlight?—brushed against her face, their silken stroke sending shivers of delight throughout her body. She felt dizzy.

Am I hallucinating? Have I hit my head and don't remember it? Other arms moved her back to sit on the hay, and she felt a man's woolen shirt rough against her cheek. A low voice rumbled from his body into hers.

"Your ways won't work on a woman, Sylvie!"

The Brieron dialect would have been impenetrable to Rowan if Sister Amalie at the convent school had not been a native of the marshland. The language they had spoken together had had far less to do with words, though, than with touch, and Rowan had taught as much as she'd learned, which explained why she'd been made to leave after only one year. She doubted that Sister had ever taken her final vows.

"Oh, yes, my ways will work on this one." Sylvie's laugh was low and amused. "And if they did not, what of it? You are too suspicious of strangers, Joachim. There is no need to bind by charms those already bound by a common enemy."

Rowan looked up into eyes the deep brown of peat water, flecked with amber in the torchlight. She had understood enough to brace herself to be on guard. Breton folklore had been denounced at the convent school as mere peasant superstition, and Rowan had paid very little attention to such stories; still, hadn't there had been something about blonde fee women whose unearthly beauty ensnared mortal men? Only fairy tales, of course. But what strange folk had she landed among? If they themselves believed in charms, how was she to teach them the science of explosives?

There was nothing unearthly about the face laughing down at her, framed by bright waves of hair escaping from a loosely tied kerchief. Rowan's heart, or something not far from it, lurched at the sight of freckles sprinkled across a snub nose and a merry, curving mouth meant for joy. A queenly or angelic sort of beauty Rowan could have easily withstood, but this... A tingle spread across her skin, then worked its way deeper, piercing layers of repression, stirring up barely-banked embers.

"Are you hurt?" Sylvie asked, in perfect cosmopolitan French, and then repeated the question in English. "Your ankle?" She knelt, throwing back the dark cloak covering her white skirt and simple smock, then ran her hands down Rowan's calf. Even through heavy leather flight trousers her touch burned like brandy, searing Rowan's leg all the way up to her crotch.

Sylvie gripped the injured ankle lightly, then released it. "Is this painful?"

"Only when you stop," Rowan thought dazedly, and then realized that she had spoken aloud, and in the Brieron dialect. Hadn't Sister Amalie used those very words once, when they were... Well. Now, like a randy dolt, she’d revealed what might have been a useful secret, along with something else that she knew already was no secret to this woman.

"Ah," Sylvie said, quirking an eyebrow. "Such pleasant surprises can be found in the oddest circumstances! But perhaps we shall keep some of this to ourselves." She made the merest gesture toward Joachim and a younger man who were busy hauling in the parachute. There would doubtless be some black-market dealer who would pay well for the silk fabric, with no questions asked.

"Of course, as you wish," Rowan answered in formal French, and then spoiled the effect by yelping as Sylvie's grip on her ankle tightened sharply, then eased. Rowan stepped reflexively backward. The ankle bore her weight now without the least complaint. Ripples of heat ran up her calf and pooled between her thighs, then dissipated as the imprint of Sylvie's fingers faded. Rowan very nearly whimpered with the sense of loss.

Recap of the Year in Writing

2011-01-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

Not so much actual writing accomplished--a good part of the list below consists of reprints or stories written in the past and waiting until now for their true homes--but I'm feeling lucky.

My WWII history-meets-legend story “The Heart of the Storm” appeared in Best Fantasy Erotica from Circlet Press, reprinted from my 2009 anthology Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative History, and was also chosen for Best Lesbian Fiction 2010, coming from Bedazzled Ink in 2011.

“The Good Soldier”, another WWII more-or-less historical piece, appeared in Spank!, edited by D.L. King for Logical Lust.

“The Gift”, set in Afghanistan during the ongoing war, just made it into 2010 in Best Lesbian Romance 2011

“The Windskimmer”, a lesbian fantasy with no erotic elements at all, was accepted for Hellebore and Rue, edited by Catherine Lundoff and Joselle Vanderhooft and coming very soon from Drollerie Press.

“Freeing the Demon” was accepted for Dream Lovers, edited by Kristina Wright for Cleis Press, coming out next fall.

In the editing department, the anthology Lesbian Cops: Erotic Investigations was turned in to Cleis Press and will be coming out in April of this year.

And my personal favorite, although it’s very hard to choose, is the Lambda Literary Award Rakelle Valencia and I won in 2010 for our anthology Lesbian Cowboys, edited for Cleis Press in 2009.

I won't have much to say next New Year's Day unless I buckle down and get some fresh writing done.

'Tis the Season for Free Books

2010-12-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

You’ve all been signing up for the 12 Days of Christmas free book drawing on Women and Words, haven’t you? Well, my books come up for grabs there tomorrow, Dec. 21, and I’m adding a supplemental offer on my blog. Anyone who posts a comment here between today and midnight on Friday, Dec. 24, will be entered for a drawing to receive your choice of any one of my Cleis Press books, including the upcoming Lesbian Cops, although you’ll have to wait until April for that one.

Ping me! Maybe you'll be the only one, and thus a sure winner!

A sweet cookie of a story for Christmas

2010-12-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

This one first appeared in Dyke the Halls from Circlet Press. A little morsel of not-quite-fantasy to warm the season.

Reindeer Games

Sacchi Green

The ringing of the phone merged with Kristin's high-pitched cries as Nick pounded into her. Kris couldn't form words, couldn't find enough breath to beg, "Don't stop don't stop don't STOP!" But Nick didn't stop, kept driving huge spikes of pleasure through her, until all sensation merged into one searing, electric jolt of power.
Gradually, Nick's strokes slowed. Kris could feel her lover's deep, shuddering gasps through her own hard breathing and thumping heart. But a man's voice rumbled suddenly at the edge of hearing...what the hell? Oh, the answering machine!
"Sorry, Nick, it's a bitch out there, and getting worse, three inches an hour the weather guys say. We gotta have another plow driver. Get your ass on down here, okay?"
Kris wriggled until she could get her arms around the ass in question and held tight, but she knew it was no use. "I have to go, Babe," Nick muttered into her hair. "I fought like hell to get Christmas Eve; Joe wouldn't call without a real emergency. But damnit, ten years of working holidays so family guys could take the time off..." It was as close as she was going to get, Kris knew, to saying "We're family now." It was close enough.
"I guess his timing might've been worse. Just barely." Kris still couldn't bring herself to let go. "Maybe I could come with you?"
Nick's mouth twitched in amusement at the proffered straight line. Kris always wished she could feel that subtle movement of the lips under the tip of her tongue, but if she got that close, of course, other things happened.
"Didn't your mother ever warn you about distracting the driver?" Nick rolled free and stood up, hauled the blankets up under Kris's chin, stroked the muffled body with a lingering touch from throat to crotch, then headed for the bathroom. No time, Kris knew, for a shower together. But the door was left open and she got to indulge her own private fetish for watching Nick wash herself and her gear at the sink. Those strong, adept hands slicking soap between those powerful thighs...
"It's not fair!" Kris wailed. "Why do the roads have to be cleared tonight? Why doesn't everybody just stay home?"
"I'm with you," Nick said fervently. "Or if they have to get someplace let'm all drive reindeer!" She passed close to the bed, and Kris managed to get an arm free of the blankets in time to cop a feel of firm ass. Then Nick was pulling on her clothes, hesitating briefly as though considering a good-bye kiss, then turning abruptly away. "Keep it warm for me, okay?" she called back over her shoulder just before she plunged out into the whirling snow.
Well, it was still pretty damned warm, Kris thought, wriggling her hips, but how could she loll around in bed while her lover was out in the storm making the world safe for travelers? Stupid fucking travelers!
Suddenly a memory from her childhood, of listening for sleigh bells and reindeer hooves on Christmas Eve, drifted through her mind. And something else, something she'd read, about antlers. Yes! Female reindeer had antlers, just like the males! In winter, in fact, only the females had them, so Santa's whole team must be girls. She remembered now how that factoid had tickled her fancy, several years before she'd realized how much women with a touch of the masculine tickled her libido.
Kris rolled out of bed, wrapped herself in a flannel shirt subtly imbued with Nick's scent, and perched at her drawing table. Thoughts flowed through her fingers, until a line drawing of a prancing reindeer took shape on a scrap of poster board. "Blitzen," she murmured, thinking of the electric tension Nick could build in her until it crackled like lightning. She shifted on her stool, remembering, as always when she sat there, the first time she had sketched Nick's portrait.

They had met at the cafe where Kris was waitressing, working her way toward a fine arts degree at the University. The moment she saw Nick come in, sweaty and tired from driving the town's road-paving truck, she knew what she wanted. Nick was interested, too, she could tell, coming back daily and letting her gaze linger on Kris like a subtle touch whenever she didn't seem to be watching, but it had taken weeks to get beyond casual conversation. Finally, in desperation, Kris had approached Nick with her hands deliberately filled with trays of dishes. Payment for the coffee and apple pie lay ready on the table.
"Thanks," Kris said, jerking her head toward the bills, "but my hands are full. Could you just tuck it into my belt?" Nick's gaze didn't leave hers as strong, gentle fingers slid the money firmly into the waistband of her skirt. "Farther in, please," Kris managed to say, her throat tight.
"You sure it won't fall all the way through?" Nick asked, a bit gruffly.
"I don't think so," Kris said. The dishes on the trays began to clatter as her arms quivered. "Feels like it'll just slide right on down into my underpants."
Nick stood abruptly and grabbed a tray from her. "Put those damned things down!" she said. "What are you doing tonight?"
"Drawing," Kris said. "For my senior thesis portfolio. Could you model for me? Please?"
She hadn't actually got around to the drawing part, though, until early next morning. The narrow band of sunlight curving gently over Nick's breast and slanting across her jaw onto her sleeping face made the most beautiful line Kristin had ever imagined.

Now, six months later, Kris cut carefully around the silhouetted reindeer she had drawn. Something about the set of its proud head reminded her of the way Nick moved, the way her head was poised over the strong column of her throat—and the way her groans vibrated through Kristen's mouth right through to her bones when she nuzzled and bit at the tender hollow of that throat.
The scissors were poised at the curve of the cardboard neck. Snip—snip—a bite-sized chunk fell away; and at that moment Kris knew what she was going to do to while Nick was gone. Faintly, too, at the back her mind, a plan began to take shape for what she was going to do when Nick came back.
The urge to bake Christmas cookies had struck suddenly a week ago, while she was hungry and vulnerable in the supermarket. She'd felt vaguely guilty as she bought the supplies; was she being too childishly influenced by memories of her grandmother's farmhouse kitchen, too perilously close to an attack of feminine domesticity? Once home she had shoved the frozen dough behind cartons of ice cream in the freezer, and hidden the tubes of jewel-toned icing gel among her art supplies.
But Christmas was Christmas, after all. Nick had even brought home a small tree, and Kris had decorated it with intricate paper-cuttings of snowflakes and suns and moons and peace signs. They had hung their stockings, too, or at least their colorful slipper-socks knit by Afghani refugees. Why had she thought cookies would be too—too Donna Reed? The hell with worrying about stereotypes.
While the dough thawed, Kris sketched another reindeer, slightly modified to fit onto the dough in an almost interlocking pattern so that there would be only a few scraps left over. Then, realizing that it would be nearly morning by the time Nick came home, she decided to do her meager stocking-stuffing now.
They had promised each other to buy only small, token gifts, and Kris really hadn't had much choice anyway. A round red pomegranate like a hard, pouting breast sank into the toe of the stocking. Then came three bars of the dark, dark chocolate Nick liked. Last, peering over the rim, came two figures Kris hoped would be amusing rather than just silly; a Rosie the Riveter action figure, complete with riveting-action rivet gun, and a Barbie doll surgically altered into anatomical correctness.
Kris was proud of her sculptural dexterity. She might build a whole installation around the theme if she got a show of her work presented at a gallery. The electric wood-burning tool had etched a vagina into the crotch just the way she wanted it, with little folds of melted plastic along the edges like generous pussy lips. For the asshole, she'd gone in cleanly, with just a hint of puckering around the rim.
Maybe she should produce more, deck them with tattoos and kinky costumes and sell them on E-bay. But this one was personal, blonde hair in a single braid down her back like Kris's own, a tiny silver ring piercing the left of two breasts whose tips had been teased with a hot needle into pointed nipples.
Kris had been uneasy at first because Barbie was bigger than Rosie, but, as she thought about it now, the idea began to grow on her. She took Rosie out and touched her coveralled crotch with a tentative fingertip. Maybe...but maybe not just yet.
The cookie dough was malleable enough by then to roll out with a floured wine bottle. Kris considered making some more exotic shapes, but decided to stick to the reindeer motif, tracing carefully around her cardboard outline with a sharp knife. When the dozen-plus-one golden shapes were baked and cooled she decorated them with elaborate lines and swirls of icing gel, green and red and blue, drawing harnesses and reins and fancy trappings until they looked more like merry-go-round mounts than working sleigh-pullers. One, though, she left unadorned except for a nose glowing ruby red.
The snow still fell, and the wind howled. Kris gathered candles and filled jugs with water in case the electricity went out. She started a small fire in the fireplace and lay in front of it, wrapped in Nick's shirt, watching the flames leap and twine and lick hungrily at each other.
She must have dozed, because next thing she knew there was nothing left of the fire but glowing vermilion embers. She quickly added kindling and logs, wondering what had waked her. In a moment, though, she heard the stamping of boots on the doorstep, and knew. By the time the door had opened and closed she was there, unzipping Nick's parka, pulling gloves from stiff hands, frantically pulling up sweater and t-shirt so that her own naked breasts could press against Nick's chilly skin.
"Whoa, Babe, don't knock me over!" Nick's arms went around her, but Kris could feel the exhaustion in her body. She eased away and helped Nick shrug all the way out of the parka.
"Just sit down," Kris said, leading Nick to the couch, "and I'll take off your boots. And then I'll show you what I baked for Santa."
"Umm, smells so good," Nick murmured, burrowing her nose into Kris's hair where the scent of cookies still clung. Then she flopped back onto the cushions with a sigh. Kris knelt, unlaced the heavy boots still splotched with snow, and pulled them off, playing it straight all the way. She had different games in mind tonight.
"My pants are wet and cold, too," Nick said plaintively. Kris obligingly went for her belt and got the pants all the way off, but kept her movements businesslike.
"Poor baby, I can tell you're all worn out," she said. "Just enough energy for a bedtime snack."
"Oh, yeah!" Nick said, watching the flannel shirt fall open as Kris stood up, revealing her still-warm, still-naked body. But Kris turned away toward the kitchen.
When she came back she carried a plate of cookies and a mug of milk. "Wow," Nick said, "these are too gorgeous to eat!"
"It's ephemeral art," Kris said. "It's not supposed to last. First you assimilate it with your eyes, and then with your mouth."
"Well, when you put it that way..." Nick's gaze didn't leave Kris's body as she took a cookie, licked at the icing, then bit into it. "Damn, that's good!" She bit again, then once more, and it was gone. She gulped down the milk and then glanced toward the plate on the end table. "How come Rudolph doesn't get all the fancy trimmings?"
"Rudolph is naked," Kris said, "Because I'm Rudolph tonight." She extended a finger to the blob of red icing on the cookie's nose, then smeared the gel onto the tip of her own. "See? And I think I'm growing antlers." She really felt as though something was swelling upward from her head, a weight she could feel all the way down to her crotch, where something else was swelling, too.
"Antlers?" Nick considered her thoughtfully. "I do believe you're right. Nice rack." She kept her gaze fixed resolutely high above the considerable charms of Kris's torso.
A new sort of tension was building between them. Kris knew where she wanted it to lead, but first, the icing tingling on her nose was too much fun to pass up.
"Hold absolutely still," she ordered, dropping to her knees with no hint of submission. She pushed up Nick's shirt and, head bobbing, drew a line of red dots from between her breasts down over her belly to the band of her boxer shorts. Nick inhaled sharply as Kris tugged the shorts downward.
"Keep still," Kris said sternly, "or I won't lick it off!"
"I'm trying, " Nick said tensely, and Kris wondered just how far she dared push it.
She wiped her nose on a flannel sleeve, shrugged the shirt all the way off, and licked on the dotted line all the way down to where Nick couldn't possibly keep still. She could feel her invisible antlers brushing Nick's face, chest, belly, as her head went lower and lower. She could feel something else that wasn't really there, too. If only...
She wriggled her tongue teasingly through Nick's dark thatch, pausing just short of where her mouth really wanted to go. Where, judging by arched hips and fingers tangled in Kris's hair urging her closer, Nick really, really wanted her to go.
One quick lap across Nick's straining clit, though, and then she pulled back. "C'mon, Babe," Nick groaned, her grip tightening, but Kris jerked free. She flexed her fingers, drew a deep breath, and swatted Nick's muscular thigh.
"Roll over, Blitzen!" she ordered. "I'm gonna guide your sleigh tonight!"
Nick stared up at her. Kris held her breath. Then, with that unmistakable twitch of amusement at the corner of her mouth, Nick said, "You'll need a harness, then, won't you?" and rolled over.
Now Kris stared, not just at the magnificent curve of Nick's ass but at the package her lover's long arm drew from under the couch. "Merry Christmas," Nick mumbled into the cushions. Kris took the package, tore it open, and felt her invisible antlers swell. "It was supposed to go into your stocking," Nick added.
"Don't worry," Kris said, strapping and adjusting as she'd watched Nick do so often through the open bathroom door. All the fixin's were there, too, so she lubed up, even though a preliminary probe of Nick's juicy cunt indicated that she didn't need all that much. "I know exactly what it's supposed to go into!"
And in it went, and out, and in again, to the rhythm of Kris's muttered, ""On Comet, on Cupid, on Donder and Blitzen!" until she had to save her breath for other sounds. Amazing how intense it felt, as though heavy antlers added force to her thrusts, and the pressure against her clit sent surge after surge of throbbing demand all the way from her cunt into the hot, clinging depths of her mount. She had no doubt at all that she was driving Nick high into the sky. Or that only the chilly wind through her antlers kept her body from vaporizing like a shooting star when Nick's massive shudder of fulfillment spread through her own body and shook loose a howl as much of triumph as of joy.
Never mind that reindeer didn't howl, Kris thought hazily, through their subsiding storm of deep gasps. Next time, or some time, she'd be a wolf. An alpha bitch.
Christmas morning was dawning in a glory of rose-flushed sky reflected on new-fallen snow when Kris stirred from Nick's inert, exhausted body. She stood to work herself out of her harness and glanced toward the bathroom, but she wasn't ready yet to wash away anything, especially the slick gleam of Nick's juices on her brand-new, very own cock.
She brought a blanket from the bedroom and spread it over Nick, glad, as she'd been many times before, that they'd found such a super-long couch at a yard sale. Then, as she wriggled gently under the cover and against Nick's body, she set her new gift, her joy and pride, on the end table. The little clink as buckles and milk mug and cookie plate collided didn't really sound quite like sleigh bells.
But it was close enough.

In Praise of Erotica: Sometimes She Lets Me

2010-11-28T20:28:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed (casting a sideways glance at the inspirational book covers in the margin) that I write and edit erotica. Lesbian erotica, almost exclusively, although there have been some very rare exceptions; sometimes a story just has to go where it has to go. Right now, though, prompted by the anthology Sometimes She Lets Me: The Best Butch/Femme Erotica (edited by Tristan Taormino for Cleis Press,) I’m pondering on erotica in general, and lesbian erotica in particular. This isn’t meant to be a review of the book—I haven’t read the whole thing, just the pieces that originally appeared in volumes of Best Lesbian Erotica where I had stories, as well—but I’ll get around to the connection downstream a bit.

It’s probably a good thing that I hadn’t ever seen the old “PWP” (Plot What Plot?) tag applied to erotica before my writing drifted in that direction. Well, no, I’d just have taken it as a challenge, and I’m sure that many other writers I’ve come to admire had that same attitude. There are writers working under the wide scarlet umbrella of erotica as creative and skilled and outright brilliant as you’ll find in any other genre, and I’m proud to know many of them. (Hang on—briefly distracted by the concept of sex under an umbrella in a downpour. Later, muse, later!)

Erotica, smut, porn; all very subjective terms, and I’m not hung up on classifications. Some folks just don’t like to read scenes that cross a certain line in their own minds, and that’s fine. I draw lines myself when it comes to the darker shades of horror fiction, although extraordinary writing will lure me farther than I ever thought I’d go. But I’m on a crusade to combat the assumption that erotica is never worth reading because it’s always badly written. Sometimes, of course, it is badly written, but so is much of every genre, and even then, one reader’s dreck may be another’s rousing good romp.

It’s also true, of course, that one reader’s brilliant and moving writing may be another reader’s boring or pretentious drivel, but this is my blog, so let’s just go with my personal taste for now, and a bit of rambling.

Many, many (exponentially many) years ago, in Literary Criticism (LitCrit) class during my senior year in college, one assignment was to list three personal “touchstones” of literature, works or writers or passages that exemplified for us the height of excellence in writing. I have to admit that I don’t even remember what I chose. (I remember more clearly the “hoax” list that my friends and I turned in under a made-up name. We ferreted out truly awful examples from otherwise fine writers; it turns out, for instance, that Thoreau was no hand at poetry, however hard he tried, and James Joyce cranked out some painfully pedestrian prose before he let loose with his own unique “voice”.)

I do remember, vividly, the first time I read Alison L. Smith’s “Sometimes She Lets Me,” the story that provides the title for the recent anthology, and was originally published in Best Lesbian Erotica 2001. It was a revelation for me. I hadn’t known so much could be said, so simply and yet profoundly, in scarcely more than a page and a half. Tiny details built a clear setting and mood; there were just enough physical and emotional notes to strike physical and emotional chords in the reader; and the characters were subtly drawn, utterly real—and deeply erotic.

That story is one of my touchstones. So is Toni Amato’s “Grande Jete,” representing a very different style of writing, intense and at times lushly surreal. S. Bear Bergman is another writer in this anthology whose prose always impresses me, and so is Skian McGuire, in this case using a keenly humorous voice to augment the down-and-dirty fun. I’m rather sad that none of the writers I’ve mentioned are still writing erotica, as far as I know, but I understand the need to move on, and as an editor I’m happy to see new writers coming along and turning their own skills and creatively dirty minds to erotica.

Writers treasure kind words from readers. I won’t forget the woman who told me, after a reading in New York, that she often read my stories to her lover at bedtime. But I’m at least as thrilled by the beginning writer who said, after a reading in Boston, “I never knew you could do all that with erotica!”

I don’t aspire to be anyone’s touchstone, but it’s good to know that you’ve touched someone’s mind. As well as other regions.

(Yes, I know that sometimes we want erotica that bypasses thought and races along to pure feeling. That takes skill, too, and somewhere along the line I’ll be blogging about things like that. Stay tuned.)

Catching Up: Lesbian Lust

2010-11-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

Lesbian Lust (Cleis Press) is my most recently published anthology, but that doesn't mean I'm all caught up. In April 2011 Lesbian Cops: Erotic Investigations (Cleis Press) will be coming along, and I'll be giving you some tasty tidbits when the time is right, but for now you'll have to make do with the mesmerizing cover image, and with the TOC and introduction for Lesbian Lust, below:

Contents
The Girl with the Bettie Page Bangs Sommer Marsden
Reunion at St. Mary’s Catherine Lundoff
A Midwinter Night’s Dream Fran Walker
Swollen Rachel Kramer Bussel
Camshaft Cutie Crystal Barela
August Crazies Miel Rose
Lovers’ Moon Ren Peters
The Office Grind R. G. Emanuelle
Not Afraid to Get Her Hands Dirty Teresa Noelle Roberts
Never Too Old DeJay
Lost and Found Andrea Dale
Canvas Kenzie Mayer
The Angel Connection C. B. Potts
A Story about Sarah Cheyenne Blue
The Weekend Delilah Devlin
Love and Devotion Jove Belle
Are You Gonna Be My Girl? Jade Melisande
Danger Sacchi Green

Introduction

Lust: it’s the engine that drives us wild on the way to getting us off, and lesbian lust is the heart, soul, and red-hot core of this anthology. Within this shared journey each of these eighteen writers takes us for a vividly different ride on the way to intense, fulfilling lesbian sex. In some of the stories, we claim our right to lightning-strike, no-strings, purely physical sex; in some, the emotional complexity and depth stir us as profoundly as the physicality; in some, erotic fantasies are played out in ways that tease the mind as well as the body; and a few defy any description or classification except that of superheated originality.
For me, the pleasure of reading and selecting these stories has been close to lust itself. Familiar, well-known voices whose very names bring on a tingle have outdone themselves, and newer writers with unexpected styles and perspectives have given me an erotic jolt of lust at first sight. There are stories here that push a wide range of buttons in just the way I like them pushed, along with innovative work that comes close to nudging even my own boundaries to the limit. Variety is also the spice of lust.
Within all that variety, there are some groups of stories with similar themes, but different presentations: sex and cars, for example. Fran Walker’s “A Midwinter Night’s Dream” is both surreal and gritty; Crystal Barela’s “Camshaft Cutie” is desert hot and humorous, and C. B. Potts’s “The Angel Connection” takes age and power differentials and turns them upside down in an all-girl repair shop. Taking the car motif in another direction, Ren Peters involves two longtime lovers in a threesome with a classic Porsche Boxster under a “Lovers’ Moon.”
Established couples are also at the center of DeJay’s “Never Too Old,” blending humor with true intimacy in a Provincetown sex toy store setting, and Cheyenne Blue’s “A Story about Sarah,” an atmospheric, poetic account of interracial lovers in the Australian Outback. In a very different vein, the partner of Catherine Lundoff’s protagonist in “Reunion at St. Mary’s” arranges to fulfill her schoolgirl fantasy with the former members of the girls’ hockey team. Other couples who know each other well but are still working out the nature of their relationships—with the help of plenty of sex—appear in Delilah Devlin’s “The Weekend” and Jade Melisande’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl.” In my own contribution, “Danger,” another couple’s chance encounter at a turning point in history brings back traumatic memories of their first meeting in the chaos of war.
Youth and maturity strike sparks in Sommer Marsden’s smooth and sassy “The Girl with the Betty Page Bangs” and Jove Bell’s “Love and Devotion,” with its Southern-noir atmosphere. The lush tropical settings of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Swollen” and Andrea Dale’s “Lost and Found” enhance the sensuality of their encounters, while Teresa Noelle Roberts’s “Not Afraid to Get Her hands Dirty” is no less sexy for being literally down-to-earth, and R. G. Emanuelle’s “The Office Grind” shows more action going on under the desk than above it.
Two of the most gripping stories push the edge in very different ways. In “August Crazies,” Miel Rose shows the BDSM world of power exchange with scorching detail, while illuminating the underlying complexities and vulnerabilities with tenderness and no less heat. Kenzie Mayer’s “Canvas” paints a darker picture, where sexual drive blends with artistic obsession until they become indistinguishable.
I’m asked sometimes to name favorite stories from the books I edit, but isn’t that like choosing between chocolate and champagne or apples and pomegranates? Lust comes in many flavors, all of them intense. In these eighteen stories you’ll find sweet sex, bittersweet sex, salty and sweaty sex, creamy-smooth sex and sex with crunch to it. Go ahead, take a bite and then another and another; I hope you’ll savor them all as much as I do.

Catching Up: Lesbian Cowboys

2010-11-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

Here we go again, with the Table of Contents and introduction to Lesbian Cowboys (Cleis Press). Rakelle Valencia and I co-edited this one, and finally won a Lambda Literary Award for it, after two previous anthologies--Rode Hard, Put Away Wet (Suspect Thoughts Press) and Lipstick on Her Collar (Pretty Things Press) were Finalists. I know my introductions must seem biased, and why not? Still, recognition from the folks at Lambda is a good indication that my writers are every bit as good as I think they are.

Contents
Freedom Rides Radclyffe
Queens Up Andrea--Dale
Fucking With the Farrier Rakelle Valencia
Man Enough Cecilia Tan
The Hired Hand Delilah Devlin
Nightmare Jean Roberta
Fancy Pants Roxy Katt
Two Fronts Craig J. Sorensen
When the Rodeo Comes to Town Jove Belle
Girl Cowboy Charlotte Dare
An Immodest Woman Elazarus Wills
Cully’s Run Cheyenne Blue
Bareback DeJay
The Adventures of a Lesbian Cowboy Teresa Wymore
Pulling Sacchi Green

Introduction

"Cowboy" is a calling, a vocation, not a gender, and some of the toughest cowboys aren't boys at all. The life is rough and gritty, as much down to earth as tall in the saddle. The lesbian cowboys in these stories work hard, play hard, and love hard, in the Old West, New West, or anywhere in the world. Above all, they ride hard, whether on a horse or a woman.
“Cowboy" is also a legend, an attitude, and a state of mind. These women do the work and walk the walk. They know what they want and take it, and give back as good as they get. For all their similarities, each is a distinct individual, with stories that vary from profoundly moving to gripping to as edgy as shiny spurs. The settings cover a wide range, as well, from Australia to New England to the Great Plains and the Rockies, and from the wildest days of the west through two World Wars to right now.
In contemporary stories, Radclyffe and Jove Belle give us very different views of riders who hold their own in the limelight of the rodeo, and then hold a woman close to ease their aches and loneliness and tension. Jean Roberta and Elazarus Wills follow loners running away from themselves until older and wiser lovers set them back on track. Cheyenne Blue shows the conflict between traditional cattle ranching and the new environmentalism in Australia, when sparks fly between opponents. Rakelle Valencia and Sacchi Green portray very different equine specialists, one a farrier and one a pulling horse competitor, driven to the edge by extreme desires. Roxy Katt injects humor into roleplaying, while DeJay brings heat and tenderness to a tale of longtime lovers. Delilah Devlin’s “Hired Hand” is every inch a woman, and more than a match for any man.
Some of the action is set in historical periods when the only way for some women to be themselves was to pass as men. Andrea’s Dale’s poker player has to do it long enough to win that all-important pot; Teresa Wymore’s Pinkerton detective takes on the lifelong role with gusto; and Cecilia Tan’s young ranch hand survives an initiation in an old-west bordello to prove that she’s “Man Enough”. In a later era, during World War II, Craig J. Sorenson’s young rebel proves her ability to run the ranch as well or better than any man when her brothers are lost in battle, while Charlotte Dare’s drifter keeps searching for somewhere to live out an identity that matters more even than love.
Ride along with us on these fifteen erotic adventures of lust, dust and leather, ropes and saddles, with lesbian cowboys vivid enough to be real and sexy enough to fantasize about. If you work up a sweat, and we sure hope you do, come right on down to the bunkhouse and join us. There’s plenty of steam in the shower, and the loving is hot anywhere you look.

Catching Up: Girl Crazy

2010-11-18T19:36:00.000-08:00

My first few posts will be paying catch-up, giving each of my most recent anthologies a little attention. The Table of Contents and my Introduction for Girl Crazy: Coming Out Erotica (Cleis Press) are waiting below this cut.

Contents

Spitting Seeds Sommer Marsden
Becoming Wild Kyle Lukoff
Road Trip Kirsten Monroe
Dinner at Crompton’s Scarlett French
Sabra Lux Zakari
Period Panties Anna Watson
Tasting Chantal D. L. King
Opening Night Charlotte Dare
Getting It Jean Roberta
The Oldest Virgin Shain Everett
I Am Not Into Women Jacqueline Applebee
Muddy Waters Kristina Wright
Wine-Dark Kisses Catherine Lundoff
Femme into Me Maggie Cee
The Outside Edge Sacchi Green
I’ve Been Around the Block, Three Times, Maybe Four Danielle de Santiago
Wellington Nights Fran Walker
Girls and Their Cars Renée Strider
Flannel and Fleece Cheyenne Blue

About the Authors
About the Editor

Introduction

Girl Crazy! You know that feeling, whether you’ve come out to yourself, to your community or to the world. You know the surge of excitement flooding body and soul, the rush of pleasure and pain too intense to be denied, the certainty, at last, of who you are and who you want. From self-discovery to the first thrill of girl-on-girl erotic play, from the tender growth of lasting love to explorations of the fiercer shores of sex, these nineteen writers know the feeling, too, and share their no-holds-barred tales of the highs and lows and kinky twists of first times and coming out.
College kids acting out for Girls Gone Wild get even wilder once the cameraman has gone. A lonely businesswoman discovers how far her young chauffeur can drive her. Butch buddies find secret desires racing out of control. A summer job constructing wilderness trails sparks trailblazing into very different territory. Girls who thought they knew it all discover ways of getting down and dirty beyond their wildest dreams. These and a wide range of other intimate stories, some drawn from real-life experience, take you where you know you want to be—among girls who love girls who are girl crazy.

Sugar on Snow

2009-01-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

This is a story I tried to post over a year ago when I wanted to start this blog, but at the time I couldn't even get it pasted in from my old computer. The title was still hanging around, though, and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it, so here's the story at last.

This story was originally published in Sex and Candy, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel for Pretty Things Press, and reprinted in Best Lesbian Romance 2009, edited by Radclyffe for Cleis Press.

Sugar on Snow

Sacchi Green

Powdery snowflakes swirled thick and fast, clinging to our jackets, clustering on woolly hats, even tipping Lea's long eyelashes like a storm of confectioner's sugar. "You're in for it now!" I called back to her. "It's too late to get away, even if your car would miraculously start." I slowed my pace to let her come up beside me, skis swishing rhythmically along the cross-country trail.

"You saw me pocket that distributor rotor, didn't you, Kit." Her face, or what I could see of it through the snow, glowed pink with cold air and exertion. The glint of mischief in her hazel eyes melted away the twenty-five years since we'd been college roommates. It seemed impossible that the smooth hair concealed by a bright knit hat was silver now, and short, instead of the long fall of pale gold I remembered.

"Oh yeah, I didn't miss that little maneuver," I said. "And then I checked your car while everybody else was indoors packing. Why should I blow the whistle on you if you wanted to stay here with me badly enough to fake an excuse?"

The other two old friends from college had left our mini-reunion two days ahead of schedule, when the morning news had upgraded the weather forecast from light snow to a potential blizzard. They had families and work to consider. My own new assignment with the National Forest Service was right here, in the New England of my birth, after years of moving from region to region. The few relationships I'd managed had been deliberately temporary. Lea was taking a long break from burnout as head nurse in a big city hospital, and her second marriage had dissolved several years ago. Neither of us needed to be anyplace else any time soon.

We coasted down the incline to my cabin beside the ice-edged river. Her car and my pickup truck were already coated with a thick layer of white as frothy as meringue on a lemon pie.

"I was pretty sure you knew," Lea said, coming to a stop and releasing the bindings on her skis. "But since you didn't say anything right away, I hoped it meant you didn't mind. Thanks for keeping it to yourself. I acted on impulse and then felt silly for not just saying right out that I wanted to stay."

"You were silly. What could make more sense than riding out the storm here, where electricity is only one option? We have enough firewood and food to last until plowed roads or spring, whichever comes first." I managed to maintain a light tone, no matter how intensely I needed to know what Lea was up to. Once upon a time we'd been close enough to nearly read each other's minds, but that was very long ago. When she had finally understood how much beyond youthful experimentation I wanted of her, and I had realized how much I couldn't have, our friendship had survived, but on a carefully superficial level. Over the last decade our communications had dwindled into annual notes on Christmas cards.

"What's sense got to do with it?" Lea flashed a grin, but it faded quickly. "It's not just a matter of shelter from the storm, either. Or...well, in a way, maybe it is, but..."

She paused so long that I picked up my skis and started up the steps. Lea followed into the screened porch. "Well, I'm glad you're here," I said, keeping a firm lid on the hopes and speculations roiling inside. Lea had been under a lot of stress; I wasn't sure she knew herself what she wanted. "We can do some catching up."

She shook her head. Soft snow slumped from her hat across her face, like frosting sliding down a cake still hot from the oven. I reached reflexively to wipe it away, barely stifling the urge to lick it from her cheeks, and just then she raised her own hand. When I started to pull back her fingers wrapped around my thumb and held tight.

"Not catching up," she said. "Starting over." She let go and gestured toward the white expanse outside. "Doesn't the snow make you think of new beginnings, pristine, untrodden paths, unmarked pages?"

A gust of wind hit us with needles of that pristine snow blowing right through the screens. The flakes were smaller now, edgier, coming down even harder.

"It makes me think of stoking the fire," I said, shaking the snow from my hat and jacket and then opening the door. "And getting in where it's warm. C'mon." She was going to have to be more explicit than that before I could lower my guard against disappointment. But once inside, kneeling to fit logs carefully into the woodstove in the living room, I looked over my shoulder long enough to say, "Lea, you know you made your mark on my pages long ago. Indelibly."

"I do know it, Kit." She was already mixing leftovers from last night's communal feast into some sort of stew. "You don't know how many times I've wondered, over the last few years...and wanted to reach out... But we seemed to have traveled so far apart."

She stood beside me, stirring the pot on the woodstove, apparently getting into the spirit of rustic living even before it was necessary. The past three days she'd been cooking and eating with such enthusiasm that one friend had commented, teasing, that her taste buds must have only just recovered from the long-ago trauma of college meals. She seemed to be making up for lost time. It did appear to be an irony of nature that Lea, so fixated on food, was still as elegantly lithe as a cougar, while I, who could hike all day on a handful or two of trail mix, looked more like a silver-tipped grizzly.

I stood up stiffly, brushing wood chips from my hands onto my pants legs. The hell with playing it cool when the heat building inside me mirrored the flames licking at the wood in the stove. "We don't seem to be all that far apart now," I said, just beginning to reach for Lea when she turned right into the circle of my arms. My cheek brushed her smooth hair as she burrowed her face into my shoulder, and for a moment I thought she might be crying, but when she raised her head her lips were curved into a little smile so delectable that I had to taste it, and then, of course, a mere taste wasn't enough.

The kiss was so sweet and searing that we couldn't bear to break it even when the lights went out. Power lines somewhere had gone down under the snow-laden weight of falling branches. The glow through the glass front of the stove was enough for us. The sound and smell of boiling stew beginning to splatter over and scorch did the trick, though. We pulled apart, and I grabbed a holder and moved the pot to the brick hearth.

"I suppose we should eat some," Lea said, somewhat breathlessly. "To keep our strength up."

"Definitely," I agreed, lighting a couple of candles from the chimney mantle to place on the folding table pulled close to the stove. Then, while Lea ladled stew into bowls and sliced some bread, I opened out the futon couch. I'd been sleeping on it for a few days, leaving the bedrooms to my guests, but tonight I didn't think I'd even need the excuse of staying close to the fire's warmth to keep from sleeping there alone.

"This is so great," Lea said after about half her meal had been devoured. I'd just dunked my bread a few times and nibbled at it. "So...so..." she waved her spoon as though it might scoop the words she wanted from the air.

"Cozy?" I suggested. "Romantic?"

"Yes, those, but...so right, too," she said. "I can't tell you how grateful I am to the storm for chasing the others away."

I shoved back my chair and gave up any pretense of eating. "Lea," I said, "I only invited them to get you to come. So you wouldn't worry."

"Worry about what?" Candlelight flickered across her smile and danced in her eyes. She knew perfectly well what I meant.

"About this." I stood, lifted the whole table aside, and pulled her up from her chair. She raised her face for a kiss, but I resisted, unbuttoning her shirt and spreading it open. "And this." I pressed my lips into the hollow of her throat, savoring its tenderness, getting hungrier and hungrier for more. She shrugged the shirt right off while my hands pushed her sports bra up out of the way so I could cup her small breasts.

"Wait a minute..." Lea pulled the bra off over her head, and while her arms were raised I caught one taut nipple after the other in my mouth. She gasped, and then tried to keep me from drawing away, gripping my short hair to force me closer. I pulled her hands free and stretched them far apart.

"I need to look at you. It's been so long..."

"And I'm so much older," she said wryly, but didn't flinch from my gaze. There was no need. The set of her head, the curve of cheek and throat and shoulder and peaked breast, had been my standard of desire ever since they had been imprinted on my memory. If I noticed any changes--the very slightest filling out and softening, perhaps, of her breasts?--they just enhanced her appeal.

"And so much more enticing," I said, letting her arms drop so that I could stroke her from shoulder blades downward until my hands slid inside the waistband of her jeans and pressed into the curves of her buttocks. "In the firelight your skin has such a delicious glow, like an apricot glaze." I eased back just a little and bent again to taste her breasts. "Yes, a definite flavor of apricots, but nectarine-sized apricots, sweet and complex." I sucked gently on an eager nipple.

"Ah...Kit...you're making me so hungry...but what I want are soft, ripe mangoes." Lea's quick fingers tugged my shirttails from my pants and got right under to my skin, working upward until she had a firm grip on my flesh. Each lick and suck I gave her was echoed by sharp tweaks that sent tongues of flame streaking through my body. Too soon, of course, sensation overrode both concentration and balance, and we toppled onto the futon in a tangle of limbs and frantically-shed clothing.

The wind outside howled down from the mountains through the river valley, making great branches thrash and rattling the damper in the chimney. We scarcely noticed. With my cheek pressed against Lea's breast, I could feel the pounding of her heart and hear the ragged sounds forming in her chest even before they left her throat. I moved my hand insistently, stroking, squeezing, then probing into her slick, hot depths, keeping in time at first with the arching and thrusting of her hips and then increasing my tempo. She kept pace, voice rising, breath coming faster and harder, until, with a rough cascade of cries, she clenched her muscles around my fingers in a spasm hard enough to hold them motionless.

I held her close against me until her breathing finally slowed. Even the wind had dwindled almost to silence, and the whisper of falling snow against the windows was as gentle as the stroke of my fingers along her hair.

Lea's soft voice drew me upward through layers of sleep.

"I've been watching you dream," she said. The fire had burned down to bright cherry coals, its light bronzing the silver helmet of her hair.

"Am I dreaming now?" I murmured, still drifting.

She lay propped on one elbow, blankets sliding down her shoulder. The scent of her warm body flooded my senses with memory. Much better than dreaming. I reached out to pull her close, but the goose bumps on her arm reminded me of what the fire's sunset glow signaled. I pulled the blankets higher over her shoulders and slipped out from under them myself.

"Time for more wood," I said unnecessarily.

"I was about to do it myself," she said. "I didn't want to wake you. But I'm not quite sure of the etiquette of fiddling with someone else's fire."

"Don't worry. Anything goes in a blizzard." My flesh tingled under her interested gaze as I stooped to the woodpile and knelt before the glass-fronted stove.

When the flames leapt higher I went to pull the curtains aside and pressed my face against the window. "Over a foot and rising," I reported, not that I could see all that much through whirling snow so thick it might have been a cave wall hollowed out by the heat of our bodies.

"Maybe we'll have to tunnel out," she said. "When I was a kid we used to dig dens and forts under the snow banks."

Her warmth welcomed me back under the blankets. "I've waited out storms in snow caves a time or two in the mountains," I said, "but this is a whole lot nicer."

"It had better be." She snuggled deliciously closer. "You've got me. And the fire. And plenty to eat."

"Are you sure? I'd better check." My hand parted her thighs to stroke and probe until my fingers were slippery with her responsive wetness. By the time I raised them to my mouth for a taste she was working her own fingers into me with serious intent.

"Mm, yes," she said, sampling the glistening results. "Done just the way I like it," and suddenly she was burrowing under the blankets in a sudden assault on my eager cunt and clit, licking and sucking in a frenzy quickly matched by the bucking of my hips. I had no chance to savor the delicious sensations, to let the tension build; my response came fast, hard, and out of control, leaving me quivering blissfully and totally wrung out.

As Lea untangled the blankets and pulled them back over us she said, with the satisfaction of a job well done, "Well, if there were any pristine, unmarked bits of these sheets left before this, there certainly aren't now." And she snuggled up against me with a sigh of satisfaction.

The next thing I knew, the white light of a snowy morning was seeping through the curtains. Lea lay sleeping soundly. A tremor stirred her eyelids; I wondered what she saw behind them, and how their tender skin might feel beneath my lips.

Her face was pale, but a faint flush lit the strong, lovely arch of her cheekbones. Her mouth, slightly swollen, was a deeper pink, tempting me to put out my tongue to taste myself there. I resisted, not wanting to wake her yet.

Without interrupting the even pattern of her breathing I edged out of the blankets and dressed in the back hallway. Then I filled old water jugs with sunflower and thistle seeds for the birds, and stepped outside.

At least two feet of snow lay on the flat, more in drifts, but it was coming down only lightly now. As I forged my way to the bird feeders, eager jays and chickadees were already making forays from the shrubbery. Back at the porch I grabbed a shovel and cleared a path to my pickup truck, moving the snow in layers. The road hadn't been plowed yet, which was all right with me; what could be finer than being snow-bound with Lea? I contemplated the absurd mushroom of snow on the roof of the truck and decided to preserve it for a while as a natural work of art.

I went back to the house with a childlike urge to show Lea the birds, the snow, the slashes of blue sky emerging between the clouds; to share every smallest pleasure. Just savor the moment, I ordered myself. Don't complicate things. I shook my head, brushed as much snow as I could from my sweater and jeans, and concentrated on the joys of the present.

As soon as the warm inside air hit me, I knew Lea wasn't still curled up waiting under the covers. Regret was muted by my stomach's response to the smell of breakfast cooking.

"I hope you like French toast," she said, flipping the slices in a big frying pan on the wood stove. A pan of maple syrup was heating near the edge. "Not only have I had my way with your fire, I've ravaged your kitchen."

"Feel free to ravage anything you like," I said, admiring her outfit, which consisted entirely of wool socks and one of my old flannel shirts, strategically unbuttoned.

"Which would you prefer, ravishment or eating?" She held me at arm's length with the spatula, then tugged at my belt just enough to let a little of the snow clinging to my sweater descend into where I was warmest. I yelped, but managed to stay on topic. "Hey, I can go either way," I gasped. Which, of course, she must have known by then.

"I think I'd better keep my strength up." She flipped food onto plates, carried them to the table, and dug right in. My stomach growled. I leaned over to kiss her, licking syrup from the sticky corners of her mouth.

Laughter interspersed with kisses set the mood for the rest of the day. Something about being snowbound sets the inner kid free, however deeply the decades may have drifted.

After we'd eaten breakfast and hauled in buckets and kettles of snow to melt for water, we worked together on shoveling the driveway. A few snowball volleys were exchanged, a few frosty fingers warmed in moist tender places, making them all the warmer and moister for the cool touch.

Then, when we'd cleared all the way to the still-unplowed road and worked up a fine sweat, Lea climbed up onto the back of the truck and surveyed the enclosed expanse of virgin white. "Snow angel time," she announced.

"There isn't room to spread your arms," I pointed out, but she just grinned and started unzipping her jacket.

"Okay, snow demon, then, if you're going to be picky." Off came jacket, shirt, bra; I watched in awe as she dropped even her trousers and flopped forward into the soft snow, arms curved upward and hands curling out from the top of her head like little crescent horns.

"Terrific!" I said, applauding. "How long do you want to stay there? Incidentally, I hear the plow coming."

"Help!" she spluttered through a mouthful of snow.

I managed to get her up without damaging too much of the very interesting impression she'd made in the snow; even her cold-puckered nipples had left clear dents. Then I half-dragged, half-carried her into the house and dumped her on the futon just as the plow approached. While she struggled to kick off her boots and pants and pull up the blankets, I grabbed the pan of thickened maple syrup still hot on the edge of the stove.

Sugar on snow is a classic tradition in northern New England. I knew just what newly-imprinted snow I could use as a mold.

When I came back inside with my sweet creations, Lea rolled around in helpless laughter once she realized what I'd done.

"You can have one of these if you want it." I held out the plate. "Haven't you sometimes kinda wished you could suck on your own tit?" I bent to lick one sweet, vaguely breast-shaped treat.

She eyed the rubbery forms beginning to lose definition in the warm air. "That wouldn't be my first choice. But if I'm not going to get a better offer, I'll fend for myself." She tossed off the blankets and arched her body upwards. Before I could get rid of the plate and follow my impulse to lay a trail of sticky kisses from her tender belly to her cunt, she had pulled up her pants and rolled off the bed.

"Wait a minute," I pleaded. "You can have anything you want!"

"What I want now is lunch," she said, rooting around on my pantry shelves and choosing a few cans. "Don't interrupt while I'm in domestic mode.."

My major hunger was situated well south of my stomach, but I cleaned off the syrup with snow-water as well as I could and kept out of her way. She was still shirtless; I enjoyed the scenery, the brisk grace of arms and hands, the subtle movements of naked breasts.

The savory aroma of her concoction reminded me that I'd used a lot of energy shoveling. Food might not be all that bad an idea. I consumed my share of a soup somewhere between chili and minestrone, and then asked, hopefully, "Apricots for dessert?"

Lea glanced down at herself. A faint flush spread across her skin as her nipples hardened into exquisitely tempting tongue-candy, but she pushed away from the table and grabbed a shirt. ""That," she said, "might be better by firelight. And anyway, there's still snow to clear, where the plow shoved it into the driveway." She scooped up her boots and shirt and headed toward the door, slipping her hand briefly but effectively between my thighs as she passed. "Plenty of time to build up tension."

So she was planning to stay at least another night. My tension hit levels even shoveling couldn't release.

The plow had left a huge bank of snow across the driveway. We cleared away most of it, leaving a narrow strip along the road by mutual consent to signify that we were still "snowed in." Then there were other paths to be cleared, to the woodpile and tool shed, and looming mounds to be raked from the eaves of the house. Finally, after consulting with my knees and deciding that a little more wouldn't make much difference, I strapped on snowshoes and went along the ski trail for a mile or so to check for fallen trees--and to give Lea a chance to rest.

When I came back through the dusk lights were visible down the river valley. My nearest neighbors, at least, had their electricity back, and my house must have it too. I figured Lea would be cooking in the kitchen now, free to use the modest amenities of modern life it offered, but she was still tending to a kettle on the woodstove. The cabin was lit only by the fire and an oil lamp I always kept handy on the mantle. I could see that the electric wall clock was running and had been re-set, so Lea must be deliberately prolonging our adventure.

The soft light made the room seem all the warmer, more intimate, although Lea's presence cast the warmest glow. Something spicy was cooking, and there was still a lingering scent of maple syrup. Or--wasn't that the syrup pan heating again on the edge of the stove?

"What are we having?" I asked, trying to warm my frosty hands by the fire before daring to touch Lea.

"You'll see, when it's ready," she said, "but first you'll have to earn it by providing an appetizer."

"I'm all for that!" I leaned close to kiss her, and she responded with enthusiasm, but broke off too soon.

"That's fine, but not all I had in mind. You'll have to forage for it." She handed me the jacket I'd just hung on a peg by the door. "Bring me a basin of the whitest, most pristine snow."

I grinned, snatched another kiss, and got right to it. Her general plan was clear, although she'd certainly aroused my curiosity as to just how it was going to take shape.

Lea stood for a moment, long-handled pan in hand, surveying the smooth white surface I'd provided. "Y'know," she said thoughtfully, "some folks say the only thing men can do that women can't is write their names in the snow standing up. Although you certainly wouldn't want to eat that yellowed snow afterward." With deft, swift movements she poured a thin stream of hot syrup in curving lines onto the snow. The heart shape was only slightly lopsided, and the names "Kit" and "Lea" within were clearly distinguishable to an eye eager to see them.

"It's too beautiful to lift out and eat," I said in awe.

"You're right," Lea agreed. "And that wasn't my original plan, anyway. How about taking it out on the porch and letting it freeze? And then you can bring me some fresh snow."

I returned in minutes, warmed by a tingle of anticipation--and stopped in further awe. Lea waited, entirely naked, with the lamp dimmed and the firelight caressing her body.

“You didn't think you were going to get off without some very chilly personal contact, did you, Kit?" she said, trying to sound severe. "Put your hand in it. No, not there! In the snow!"

So I did, without flinching, and held it there, fingers spread, until Lea pulled me away. Silently, steadily, she poured a thick stream of amber syrup into the mold I had left.

"Now," she said, "you may warm your hand anywhere you'd like--aagh!" Her voice rose at least an octave as I took her up on the offer. She tightened her warm thighs around my fist, even while she reached into the basin of snow to lift out the congealed shape there and raise it to her lips.

"So sweet..." She tasted each distinct finger before drawing it all over chin and throat and breasts, and lower. I sucked at her irresistible lips until she urged my mouth down the sticky trail, all the way to the truest, warmest sweetness, eager to flow.

Dessert came first that night, and the next night, too, complete with the savoring of apricots. Lea had to leave eventually, to tend to the other aspects of her life, but in a month, when the maple sap was rising, she was back to sample a new crop of syrup.

Soon summer will be on us, with wild strawberries ripening in clearings along the trails, followed by raspberries and then blackberries. I'm sure we'll think of some way to incorporate the tangy intensity of their flavor with our own; but nothing will ever warm me more than sugar on snow.