Roxy Katt's Blog, page 3

Jim Lyon’s Dommes is a zesty and skillfully written collection of erotic stories in the BDSM vein featuring, as the title suggests, Dommes.

The stories are well paced, avoiding the common mistake of so many erotic stories: a sketchy introduction of bland characters followed by too many pages of repetitive fucking.  Instead, Lyon’s characters are well defined (either quickly or slowly, depending on the various paces and lengths of these stories).  Once the action gets going there is no lack of it in salacious detail.

There is a masterful but unpretentious ease about these stories.  What I like about Lyon’s work is that the characters tend to have uncontrived connections to each other. Yes, this is BDSM alright, but there are believable characters involved and often a certain tenderness here.

The collection features a sound mix of different characters and situations, including darker stories, such as “Ebony,” (no pun intended) and sci-fi (“Erin and Giselle”).  The dominant tone of the anthology as a whole could be described as a delightful, urbane decadence.  The tales include flogging, anal sex, futanari sex, sci-fi themes, m/f encounters and f/f sex themes among others.

Many of the stories could be described as having a leisurely narrative pace which provides just the right level of foreplay for the hotter scenes that follow.  But these stories do not follow predictable patterns.  “Yin Yang,” for example, as appropriate for a very short story, is right into the action at the start.

Long and involved or short and sweet.  Highly recommended for the discerning fetishist.

I love noir.  I love noir movies.  And I was pleasantly surprised by M. Christian’s Finger’s Breadth.  Not that I was surprised that it was good, having already read and positively reviewed his Bionic Lover. But I did not think it would be this good.  I was surprised to see a complex noir plot so deftly handled.  Finger’s Breadth has a great many characters and different story lines in it, and it is difficult to write such a novel without putting the reader off.  The risk is that just as one story line gets interesting, another one is picked up and the first line is awkwardly interrupted.

Not so with this book.  M. Christian takes us through a gay San Francisco some time in the not too distant future where gay men are being tricked and attacked in an unusual way I will not discuss for fear of spoilers.

The plot is tense, the characters well drawn, and the suspense is strong.  The text is certainly erotic, but for me the primary interest was in trying to decipher the mystery: what was going on, and who was doing it, and why.  Also, the effects on the gay community add a deeper dimension to the book not usually present in a whodunit.  A terrific read.

If you are familiar with my work, you know I often like to write tales about haughty women who get taken down a peg or two by other women.  This time, my oh-so-full-of-herself protagonist is a gorgeous young futa (or phallogyne, as I prefer to say) who encounters someone she considers not equal to herself.

Logan Thorndyke is a perfectionistic yuppie and a bit of a snob. One morning, she dresses herself very carefully in her super tight jodhpurs to go riding. Her plans go awry, however, when a bizarre and comical accident forces Logan to encounter a sassy and libidinous little maid at the estate where Logan is staying.

Available at Amazon and Smashwords

My latest story is a lesbian/MILF tale about a predatory cougar–a “Mrs. Robinson” type–and a younger woman.

Enjoy rubber catsuits and a little handcuff play?  This may be for you.  There’s a bit of a power struggle going on here, not just a “hi, let’s have sex in cuffs and latex” scenario.  As usual, a lot of the sex here is in the characters, not just the costumes and appearances–which is not to say there’s any lack of you know what.

Available now at Amazon and Smashwords.

Emma Peel from the old television series The Avengers is a perennial favourite amongst leather and catsuit enthusiasts, and people who are just plain kinky.

And personally, I just love powerful women, especially if they turn out to be, well, maybe not quite so powerful in encountering some other woman.

Hence, my latest release, Emma Peeler Gets a Spanking (and More) which is available now at both Amazon and Smashwords.  In this short erotic story, Mrs. Peeler dons a rubber catsuit rather than a leather one in order to investigate a murder with Steen. While inspecting the de Fishbrayne-Barfham estate, Emma encounters an eccentric female photographer who renders her helpless in an unusual way.  Dare I say more?  I don’t want to spoil anything for you.

You don’t have to have read any Ferdinand de Saussure to enjoy this book, though it would help. This book is a fascinating exploration of the Other and of the nature of language. Embassytown is the story of Avice Benner Cho, an “Immerser” who travels the gnarly regions of space outside the universe and all previous universes. But the greatest strangeness encountered is back on her old home planet with the “Hosts,” a people whose relationship to language is profoundly different from our own. For the Hosts, Avice is actually a simile.

Embassytown explores the relationship of language to mind and spirit. But this by no means means the book gets tied down with abstractions. The action is dynamic, and the character development is sound.

One of the blurbs on my copy says the book describes things well. Given the strangeness of the world Mieville describes, one of the strengths of this book is what it leaves undescribed: just the right balance of presenting the reader with enough material to make his or her own visualizations.

The pacing of the novel is good, though perhaps it does slow a little past the half way point, where the action climaxes, though I would say this is largely a matter of the reader’s taste. This is, on the whole, one of those exciting reads that one is loathe to put down.

And I’m chuffed to be in it!  Cleis Press will be releasing this new book on December 13. You can pre-order the book at Amazon now, however.

BLE2017 is edited by D.L. King, and included is an all-new work of mine called “A Cooking Egg”: a kinky little encounter between two women, one of whom is a leather clad chauffeuse (I am obsessed by chauffeuses lately).  Here is a list of the fine stories and writers in this smashing new book:

“Fuckin’ Nice” by Deb Jannerson

“The Last Time” by Annabeth Leong

“Pledge Night” by Radclyffe

“Mother Tongue” by Camille Duvall

“Peel” by Jones

“Coyote Girl” by Evey Brett

“Revenant” by Vanessa de Sade

“Off Season” by Valerie Alexander

“Taming May” by Megan McFerren

“You Have the Right to Remain Naked” by Samantha Luce

“Spa Day” by Taylor C. Dunne

“Two Women Having Sex” by Elna Holst

“Covert Affairs” by V. Florian

“A Sense of Coming Home” by P. A. Nox

“Crème Brûlée”  by Sacchi Green

“Ink and Canvas” by Geonn Cannon

“Bush Garden” by J. Belle Lamb

“A Cooking Egg” by Roxy Katt

Ralph Greco Jr.’s Oh, Those Darn Dominant MILFS is a hot and finely written collection of MILFy tales all tied up with a spiffy intro—something you don’t see much of in erotica collections.  These tales are a combination of  m/f, m/f/f and f/f.  There are six stories in all.

“The Project,” for example, is a tale of two 67 year old women who have their way with a much younger man in the basement, complete with spanking action.  The characters have depth to them, and Greco does not rely on the easy MILF or cougar cliches.  I enjoyed this refreshing take on the power of older women and the vulnerability of a young man.

“41 is the New 47” is one of the spanking stories here, with a nice suspension of erotic tension.  The art of the spanking story involves so much the skill of portraying the right number and intensity of spanks at the right time, and Greco’s instincts here are very good.

“The Mystery of Maya” is an unusual story of a woman who makes love to a younger man with her skillful feet.  Though I am not into feet at all (though I do love long, sexy boots) I found this story unexpectedly exciting.  The younger man’s helplessness and arousal at being manipulated by what you would think are the least deft parts of the human body are very well portrayed.

But my personal favourite here is “The Denial of Jerri,” involving a certain amount of psychological power playing between a lesbian woman and an apparently non-lesbian younger woman who wants to experiment sexually.

On the whole, I heartily recommend this scintillating book.

Why am I, of all people, doing a review of a book about Popeye cartoons, you ask?

Because this book is largely about sex.

As a child of the 60s and 70s I must have seen repeatedly every Popeye cartoon ever televised. So in a way, Steve R. Bierly’s book about the Popeye cartoons is very familiar to me. But his interpretation is not so familiar, and judging by how much at least two of these cartoons seem to have been very formative in the quirks of my libido, it is interesting that so much of what he points out here never occurred to me.

Stronger than Spinach: the Secret Appeal of the Famous Studios Popeye Cartoons is in effect a series of close readings of numerous Popeye cartoons. These are not the early productions by Fleischer Studios, but the later ones produced by Famous Studios from 1942 to 1957. According to Bierly, many critics see the Fleischer productions as the real Popeye in effect, with the Famous Studios cartoons as later, inferior developments. As far as Bierly is concerned, it is not so simple.

The theme that comes up most often in this book is that Popeye is really something of a dork, and Bluto is the real hunk. Also, the apparent moral clarity (Popeye good, Bluto bad) is not quite as clear as one might think. I had been viewing these cartoons retrospectively for years through my child eyes, and simply assuming the hero/villain status of the characters officially designated as such.

But there is something wrong with Popeye. He is less attractive and less sexy than Bluto. Often, he seems to be not so much Olive’s lover as a friend or a brother. He is possessive without being erotic, and in his own way can be as controlling as Bluto. He is frequently indifferent to Olive, expressing interest only when it seems he is about to lose her to the more attentive rival. It seems that Olive usually finds Bluto the more attractive and exciting male, turning finally back to Popeye only when Bluto’s otherwise successful advances become aggressive to the point of attempted rape.

It really is quite amazing just how sexual what came to be seen as children’s cartoons really were. One example of the Popeye cartoon eroticism is “Royal Four Flusher,” where a Patrician version of Bluto is smoking a cigarette in a holder. When he sees Olive Oyl, not only does his body spring erect and his eyes goggle, but the cigarette springs upwards as well. Likewise, the sword of the Sheik in “A Sheik in Wolf’s Clothing” is strategically placed when said male gets a glimpse of the heroine.

Bierly also sees Olive as pretty hot. At first I thought, this was both charming and a little weird (but who am I, of all people, to say what’s weird? And come to think of it, I can’t be the only person in the world who thinks Parker from PRODUCING PARKER is quite attractive.) Steve Bierly here is a protestant minister unrestrained enough to admit an erotic appreciation of a cartoon character– and a character, at that, generally seen as emblematic of feminine plainness–or so I had assumed. It had occurred to me (and many others I am sure) that Popeye and Bluto could almost be seen as closeted gay men in a deep seated state of denial, constantly fighting over the same woman to prove to themselves and the world their straight male credentials.

But with regard to Olive as an erotic character, Bierly is on to something. I think that the erotic is in the eye of the beholder, but upon looking at Olive again after reading this book, I think he has a point. Cartoon eroticism is not necessarily less erotic simply because it is not “real.” There is certainly something I did not notice as a child, for example, in “A Wolf in Sheik’s Clothing” when Olive reaches down her shirt, down her jods, and into her tall boots for a wad of bills to buy some kisses.

Another example: take a look at “Mess Production,” where Olive goes into a Rosie the Riveter mode in a factory, I had to admit to a certain frisson as the masculinely clad Olive pops open her compact to powder her face and pucker her lips just before her shift. There’s a certain blend of butch and femme here which is most interesting, though there are other reasons that particular episode disturbed me as a child and either helped to cause (or at least to highlight) certain unusual aspects of my own sexuality.

But back to the Popeye/Bluto nexus. Steve Bierly makes a very strong case that Bluto is, in fact, the natural erotic partner for Olive, what with his body builder physique, for example, compared to Popeye’s well, cartoonish proportions.The problem is that Bluto carries it too far. Time and again he has Popeye hopelessly outclassed in the romance department, only to ruin it all by trying to force himself on the heroine. It seems that Popeye has one big advantage over Bluto, and that is that the former is not a rapist.

I would have liked to have seen more cultural analysis and more pictures, and more specific reference to other Popeye related analyses. Also, the structure of the book is a little repetitive, wherein each chapter is a close reading of a particular cartoon, followed by a longer chapter near the end which is a number of shorter readings of numerous cartoons.

I would have liked Bierly to explore a little more the kinkiness of the cartoons, the slapstick-bondage-humiliation angle, which are what affected me as a child.

But the attraction of the book is the passion of the devoted afficionado. This is worth more than the distanced-to-the-point-of-coldness approach that some more intellectual writers might have taken, though I would have preferred added to Bierly’s own approach a little more of the scholarly, in the sense of telling us a little more about what others have written on these issues, and how their approach differs from his own. A Lacanian view, anyone? A Marxist approach? What about a queer studies approach?

On the whole, highly recommended.

One of the hallmarks of good erotica is that it’s an enjoyable read whether or not the particular kinks of it are the same as those of the reader. Valerie Brundage’s EROTIC DAYDREAMS certainly meets that criteria here. The ménage a trois stories in the collection, for example: though not usually excited by ménage tales, I kept wanting to know what was going to happen psychologically and erotically with each character as the stories proceeded. This was true for all the stories. There tends to be a human interest in each tale that makes them hotter and which is lacking in a lot of erotica.

Valerie Brundage also employs skillful and economical use of language. “Four on the Floor,” for example, starts right in the middle of some hot public sex and humiliation action. You have not only the hot sex right away, but the complex psychological interaction of the characters involved. There is a lot of subtlety here about just who, exactly, is in control.

One of the hardest things to do in writing erotica is to avoid cliché. Well, these stories avoid them, every single time. And the narrative voices here are strong and interesting.

Not infrequently there is a sense of something odd going on the reader needs to think about more. This is particularly true of “The Private Retirement of Miss Pamela Boyshorts,” for example, which is my personal favourite in the collection—my fave because of the amazing way in which the protagonist is described and what she means: the whole idea of the erotic popcult icon and erotic public display.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this book.