Tooting My Horn--and Sophie Mouette's

One of our favorite* stories, "Behind the Masque" has been accepted for The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Volume 8. (Which is a rather confusing title because it's all reprints, not in fact "new" in the strictest sense. This one originall appeared in Wicked Words: Sex with Strangers.) Being chosen for a best-of always makes my day.

*Saying one story is a favorite sometimes feels as wrong as saying one pet or child is a favorite, but really, how can you go wrong with hot jewel thieves in Las Vegas? It was so much fun to write!

The Lucchese Star. Sixty carats of sapphire, as big as your fist. Makes your mouth water just looking at it. Makes you think of Caribbean seas, the summer you were ten, the eyes of the lover that got away.
Inside my turquoise doeskin gloves, my palms itched. They didn’t sweat, not a drop; I wasn’t nervous. It was all about the anticipation, baby. The lead-up. The foreplay.
George and I made a good team. I wouldn’t go so far to say he was the brawn and I was the brain, but it shook down kind of like that. He had the most amazing hands—steady, delicate. He knew exactly how, when, and where to touch, to coax out the exact response he wanted. No safe, no security system, no alarm could resist his ministrations. Powerless beneath his touch.
Kind of like a woman.

In the good news department, my flash fiction called "Love Song for the Cane" will appear in Alison Tyler's anthology Frenzy, a collection of erotic flash fiction. This is an interesting piece--very internal, quite personal, and quite kinky.

Waiting for it would be easier, I can't help thinking, if you bound me.
I can picture how the anticipation would feel if I were face down,
spread-eagle on the bed, every movement, every nervous/excited wriggle
reminding me there was no escape. If I were bound with hemp rope, ass in the
air, a beautifully wrapped target, my mouth distorted by a gag so I cannot
shout my pain and my pleasure, a blindfold covering my eyes so I would not
know when it was coming. Even if I leaned against the whipping post, my
wrists bound together above my head. Anything other than simply leaning
forward over the chair, nipples brushing the cold leather, ass thrust
backward, knowing I must hold still for each stripe.

Of course, while acceptances were happening, so were a few rejections. Neither my offering nor the Sophie story made Best Women's Erotica 2009, and I'd submitted a couple of solo stories for Mammoth as well. But that's the nature of this crazy business.

And while all the accepting and rejection happens, I'm continuing to plod along on Lions' Pride. I think it's ready to hit the world--now I just need to revamp the synopsis, because my first attempt was way too long and plodding.