I just got my contributor’s copy in the mail of Best S/M Erotica, Volume 3
edited by M. Christian. The first two volumes were done years ago with the late Black Books, and now Chris has brought the series to Logical Lust, who have done it in ebook and in print (here from Amazon.com
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Erotic writer Shar Azade (a pen name) reviewed the book on her blog recently, and I was amused to see she made the assumption that the book would be full of “abuse.” After all, the dictionary defines sadomasochism as “abuse.” Apparently getting the definition changed in the psychology manuals was good, but we activists will have to work on Merriam-Webster next!
She is pleasantly surprised to find instead a collection of intriguing, psychologically complex, and mentally chewy stories, and talks about several stories in the book including mine.
“I don’t find the goth style attractive, but I do admit to a fascination with that in-your-face/shy dichotomy [that Goths exhibit]. The … OK, what do I call her? protagonist? heroine? female lead? none of those seem fitting. The … girl-that-the-story-is-about in Halloween is just like those kids, or at least as I imagine them. Tan captures that mix of bravado and insecurity, and it’s totally convincing. The girl is aggressive, and scared, and a bit of a jerk, and oddly sweet. It might seem strange to call a story that has more pages of graphic sex than anything else (2 pages of build-up, 12 pages of sex, if you’re counting) “sensitive,” but it is. Sensitive, and really hot.”
That bright light you see is me beaming. GRIN. There’s a special kind of validation that comes from finding out a reader “got it.” That they understood and appreciated what I was doing, even though they weren’t familiar with the genre or the milieu or what have you.
My one pet peeve about the book is that Logical Lust has put on the cover “Best S&M Erotica” instead of “Best S/M Erotica” which is what the previous volumes were titled, and what the book’s meta-data at Amazon says the title is. BDSM or S/M hasn’t been referred to as “S&M” by anyone in the kink communities since the 1970s as far as I can tell. Just using the term invokes a kind of cheesy, 70’s porno feel, which is sure to turn off some readers from the kink community, too. All I can say is the aphorism is true, you can’t judge a book by its cover.
