Fabled Fang Girls

She's only evil on the outside...and probably on the inside too.

I coined a phrase for my most recent collection of short stories. I had to. There just wasn't a word befitting the rabid (bloodthirsty even?) female fans of vampires in existence right now. So I made one up. Fang-girl! It's a play on words for "fanboy" which is a description of an obsessive male fan of nerd culture. With all the "Team Edward" nonsense around Twilight, I felt we needed a similar name to reflect our fanaticism. I can just hear my readers now, "But Cassandra, you're a lesbian goddess who has repeatedly pointed out that Robert Pattinson looks like he probably smells really bad" and you're right, I am a lesbian goddess who has said that on many occasions, but just because I'm not into Stephanie Meyer's version of a "vampire" doesn't mean I'm not into vampires. The vampires I'm into don't walk around in the daytime seducing boring high school girls (or play baseball in thunderstorms like doofuses) and they all have breasts--the last part is probably the most important bit.

See what I mean about the breasts part being important?

So in celebration of my newest collection released under the Sapphic Pixie Tales label, I'm going to give you a sneak peak at one of the stories along with the usual rundown from the book jacket. Enjoy!

Fang Girl - noun – a female fan of vampire media who might be a little obsessive in her fandom.

[Derived from modern slang fanboy but always in reference to females. First used by Cassandra Duffy in Fabled Fang Girls]

Cassandra Duffy, an emerging voice in lesbian literature, releases her third short story collection, Fabled Fang Girls in a transparent attempt to satisfy the vampire addiction of her readership. Eight short stories of vampire lust and love revisit characters from Demons of Paradise and introduce new stories of lesbian sex and relationships.

“The Princess of Castle Eclipse” – a beautiful fairytale of doomed love in the tragic tradition of European fables.

“The Witch of Vigil’s Grove” and “Return to Vigil’s Grove” – two pieces of an upcoming novel that offer a chilling introduction to the town of Vigil’s Rest where a vampire haunts the forest, luring young girls to their doom with promises of forbidden love.

“The Last Best Tip” – the critically acclaimed novella finds a new home in this collection. Grifts, swingers, a sassy but irresponsible vampire and her underachieving girlfriend occupy a clever urban fantasy landscape where even eternal children of the night have money problems.

“From Nightshift to Swing Shift” – Vendela and Brooke are back! The vampire fashionista and her Australian girlfriend have hit a lull in their peculiar relationship and turn to a beautiful Persian executive to inject some much-need passion back into the couple’s sex life to keep out the Alaskan cold.

“Lovely Predators” – a brief look at the upcoming Noire style mystery novel of the same name that follows a talented Los Angeles homicide detective as she investigates a series of grisly murders that keep leading her back to the doorstep of her new girlfriend who is keeping a dark secret.

“Undead Housewives of the Other Orange County” – a farcical take on the Real Housewives television shows that interjects vampires and humanity to create a humorous story about what might really take place between bored housewives.

“Chains of Command” – a mixture of Duffy’s remarkable science fiction, paranormal romance, and hardcore erotica. Chains follows a vampire captain of a cutting-edge space warship who must break the will of her new executive officer during a long, deep space raid, but quickly finds the tables turned on her by the fiery and reckless, Commander Crash Langford.

Cassandra Duffy floods this collection with vampires, sex, horror, romance, action, and humor in ways that truly display the depth and range of her remarkable talent. Sapphic Pixie Tales is proud to offer this outstanding collection of vampire fiction from the 21-year-old lesbian author.

 

What surprised Brooke most about her relationship with Vendela wasn’t the length of it as she had a pretty high threshold for relationship bullshit; she was most astonished by how much she actually cared for Vendela. Her former boss and live-in girlfriend of more than a year was obtuse beyond reason and completely inept at expressing even simple things in a clear way, which pretty much precluded her feelings ever being communicated. The amount of guesswork required of Brooke to simply have a concept of the status of their relationship was profound. Still, for reasons she couldn’t articulate or fathom, she adored the peculiar little vampire fashion designer.

“Brooke,” Vendela said, snapping Brooke out of her dazed state. “Do you see anything that might fit Denise for the…what is she going to?”

“Possibly,” Brooke said, answering the first question first, “and she’s going to the Daytime Emmys.”

Brooke had lost all interest in fashion design after their second trip to Barrow Alaska. It wasn’t the mind-bending sex on the colossal bearskin rug that prevented her from wishing to one day be competition for her girlfriend, it was the fact that at her very best, which Vendela managed to draw from her, she was still miles behind what the petite vampire designer could manage with ease. So she shifted from design to fashion stylist; actresses, models, and singers flocked to her clientele, rightly assuming she would have exclusive access to Vendela’s fashion lines.

“Babe,” Vendela said, “you know how I feel about…television award shows.”

The short, clipped, peculiar way of pronouncing things was something that had once irritated Brooke to no end. Once Vendela started calling her ‘babe’, Brooke found she rather liked the way Vendela spoke.

“I know,” Brooke said. “I normally wouldn’t even ask, but I feel so bad for her. She’s on something like her third divorce.” Brooke selected a possible gown, holding it up to herself out of habit. The slinky, off-white cocktail wasn’t dressy enough for even a Daytime Emmy award show and was probably two sizes too small for Brooke’s personal use. “I swear my ass has doubled in size over the past few months,” she grumbled. Her statement, while an exaggeration at double, wasn’t entirely untrue. She’d lost a lot of her surfer physique by spending too much time working and too little time wave riding.

“I think your ass looks…like an apple,” Vendela said, crossing the cavernous clothing vault in a flash to stand behind Brooke. Her hand caressed down the small of Brooke’s back, onto the curvaceous ass in question, and gave it a playful squeeze.

The vampire trick of moving faster than the human eye could follow used to give Brooke the willies. After a year of Vendela doing that exact thing to her, she wondered if she would ever be able to date a human who couldn’t instantly cross a room to give her a compliment and grope combination.

Brooke replaced the dress on the rack and sighed. She was supposed to be shopping for Denise, but the more she looked at the beautiful clothes in Vendela’s line, the more she wished she could shop for herself or dress up the designer. Her overly elfin girlfriend adored the chunky jewelry, oversized sunglasses, and baggy clothes that made her appear even tinier, while Brooke loved seeing her in more fitted, daring attire. Their little tête-à-têtes usually ended up with Vendela wearing whatever she wanted and somehow Brooke ended up in the tight clothes.

“Award season is coming up,” Brooke said. “Care to be seen on the red carpet with me wearing something like this.” Brooke searched the immediate area as quickly as possible, finally deciding on a taupe straight cut gown that could easily be taken in to find Vendela’s lithe frame.

Vendela smirked, knowing the game well, and came back with a black, bow bodice pencil dress. “And you can wear this…or nothing…babe.”

Brooke stared down an entirely unreadable Vendela. She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t frowning, wasn’t breathing, wasn’t doing anything really aside from holding out the black dress that Brooke knew would flaunt every flaw in the figure she wasn’t particularly happy with anymore. The more she stared at Vendela, the more the latent vampiric power of mind control pushed a fine mist over her mind. She knew Vendela wasn’t doing it on purpose—it was just something that happened when she really wanted something. It had actually been what originally brought Brooke to Barrow, what made her pack her strap-on, and what started their whole tryst. Vendela hadn’t consciously exerted her mental control on Brooke those first few months. In fact, as she would explain later, she thought she was the seduced until Brooke had told her about the mental haze surrounding the majority of their feverish lovemaking. If Vendela’s mind was pushing out to cloud Brooke’s thinking, seeing her in that pencil dress was something the little fashionista desperately wanted, but wasn’t socially equipped enough to ask for.

“Deal,” Brooke said, much to Vendela’s surprise. Brooke took the dress from her to give it a closer look. “It’ll have to be let out quite a bit though.”

“No, it won’t…babe,” Vendela said. “It’ll be major, I promise. Trust me, I am an excellent judge of…your figure. I think you might have been Kim Novak in a former life.”

“Kim Novak is still alive,” Brooke said.

“Really? That’s…ba-na-nas.”

“Vendela?” Justin called from the doorway. “There’s a problem with the fit models not quite fitting.”

Vendela rolled her eyes and handed the dress to Brooke. Justin, the assistant that replaced Brooke, was a masterful organizer, a driven personality, an A-list gay in the fashion world, and a stunningly beautiful vampire. Brooke liked everything about him except his personality. There wouldn’t be any chance he would steal Vendela, but he also kept her running at a driven pace leaving little personal time.

Vendela vacated the room to check why what she was calling a size six didn’t fit an industry standard size six model. Justin, perfectly frocked in a vested pinstripe suit, made his way to Brooke to inspect the dress she was holding.

“60’s retro is in ever since all those TV shows decided we should glorify the days of segregation, lung cancer, and alcoholism,” Justin said. “The only positive side is the fashion.” He took the dress from Brooke and gently held it up to her with a far more objective eye than Vendela. “You’ll need to have the top padded. Or you could just get a boob job like everyone else in LA.”

“I’ll consider all the options,” Brooke said. The thing she disliked about Justin was how much of what he said turned out to be double-speak. The comment about a boob job could have been idle conversation, or it could have been something Vendela had said to him and he’d strategically decided to let it slip. Brooke could never tell.

“If you did, you might reignite the old sex life.” Justin hung up the dress. His comments weren’t usually that blunt, and it took Brooke aback a little to hear such candor from the fabulously catty vampire assistant.

“What do you even know?”

“I know she’s not having sex,” Justin said, “and now I know you aren’t either.”

It was true. Combined, their hectic work schedules left little time for intimacy and the time they did spend together had felt a little flat over the past few months. As much as Brooke hated to admit it, she probably needed Justin’s help.

“What do you know about fixing it?” Brooke asked.

“Besides the boob job?” Justin made a dramatic show of looking up while he thought. “You could always swing.”

For some reason Brooke’s mind immediately jumped to a swing-set and only then transitioned to imagining one of those hanging-from-the-ceiling sex swings. Clearly reading her thoughts, Justin intervened before her flawed train of though could evolve further along an incorrect line.

“No, silly, not literally,” Justin said. “I meant going out to another partner and then coming home to be reclaimed by her. You clearly need more sex than she does and it’s a fairly common vampire practice to send our little playthings out to other vampires so we might recapture them. Call it a latent hunter instinct.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Brooke said. Even still, the notion had set a fire in her that she was a little ashamed of, a little intrigued by, yet completely unwilling to verbally admit to.

“Is it?” Justin said, raising a perfectly manscaped eyebrow.

She knew he could read her mind. He knew that she knew that he could read her mind. The fact that they both pretended this wasn’t the case was out of simple human politeness, which made the socially acceptable white lie seem so hollow.

“Would Vendela even be interested in something like that?” Brooke asked.

“Maybe you missed the execu-bitch vice president of operations she hired,” Justin said. “I think she’s been planning it for months but hasn’t worked up the nerve to mention it to you.”

Brooke had indeed noticed the gorgeous Persian vampire Vendela had hired. Shabnam was elegant, officious, and a little like Vendela in that she was difficult to read. Brooke also wondered if she wasn’t a slightly more stereotypical vampire considering she dressed only in black and wore her eyeliner on the heavy side. Still, she was attractive, and some of her comments directed at Brooke could have been mistaken for flirting when fitted to the bizarre Vendela standards. Brooke began to wonder if peculiar, petite, and vampiric was becoming her type.

“How do I go about setting something like this up?” Brooke said.

“Tell Vendela,” Justin said. “She’ll fill you in on the rest.”

...and that's all you get. Of course, if you've read Demons of Paradise, you'll recognize Brooke and Vendela, but you'll have to buy Fang Girls to find out what happens next!

The Me in My Fiction

Writing isn't as easy as it looks.

I've been to a few writing conferences, taken more than a few creative writing classes, and read several books by fairly famous authors about the writing process (Stephen King's is good until he tells people how to wrap up a book quickly--do as he says, not as he's ever done), and one thing I've noticed is the wide variety of opinions on how much of yourself can go into a character before it stops being fiction and starts being a weird diary. Some authors say no more than 10% of any character can be you, some say zero for pure fiction (Bradbury for example), and other said next to nothing, but then later realized they were lying (King for example), and still other says a piece of them is in every character they ever wrote (Hemmingway). Or there's the idealized versions of self or the pessimistic versions of self people write in. Joseph Conrad told most of his stories through the voice of the man he wished he was: Charles Marlow, while Vonnegut wrote an example of himself, Kilgore Trout, if things hadn't gone well in publishing and had him run around failing at being a writer inside of Vonnegut's wildly popular novels. Stephanie Meyer all but beats us over the head with the fact that she is Bella Swan, but J.K. Rowling intimates the Harry Potter children are more like actual children for her.

Every time I hear a theory on this that I think I like, I inspect my own writing and come to the conclusion that my best material immediately contradicts what I wanted to believe was true of writing. Of course, that's probably just an irritating trait a lot of writers have with enough self-reflection and time to attempt real growth. I don't know what theory I subscribe to when it comes to 0-100% me in a character. I know I haven't gone to 100% and I'd probably be able to find at least a 1% in every character I've written. What I am interested in, after being asked what I thought about this, is why I put as much of myself into the characters that I did.

Top 5 characters I've written with the highest percentages of self:

#1 Gieo aka Stacy - Astral Liaisons / The Gunfighter and The Gear-head (story and novel) - 85-95% me.
The obvious stuff aside, being from Orange County, being socially awkward, being an outcast in high school, and being Korean (I'm part, she's full-blooded) this is the character I feel most like. Her sexual proclivities match mine in that I switch wildly from top to bottom at the drop of a hat or panties and her tastes in sexual acts almost perfectly mirrors my own. What really surprises me is how emotional I get when I write emotionally volatile scenes for Gieo. She's not a Bella Swan though as I don't envy her situation in the novel the way Stephanie clearly wants a 17-year-old vampire boy who sparkles in the sun, but I would put her as the most accurate depiction of myself in my fiction.

#2 - Dr. Holly Berri - "An Archeologist's Dream" in Demons of Paradise - 60-75% me.

I always pictured her as looking like Amy Acker

Even though the fantasy in the story isn't my own, it's actually something very sexy my girlfriend told me happened to her several times in high school short of the ending anyway, the character has a lot of my more eccentric personality traits. Holly is so professional in so many settings with this weird, kinky, spastic side right under the surface just looking for a reason for it to come out so she can do something bizarre. I think Holly actually looks forward to the end of the story when the world finally sees her for the goofy, impetuous person she really is. This mirrors me in real life--I'm far more respectable in person than I ever am online. Tweeples, Facebook friends, and blog followers get to see a side of me that is on a short-leash in real life. No secret mummy dream lovers for me to merge the two worlds though.

#3 - Clover - "Growing a New Garden" in Astral Liaisons - 60% meClover is the literary embodiment of my rebellious side. She is the freedom fighter I wish I had the courage (or capability) to be, but is completely enthralled by her lover (something I know all too well). Sexually, she has the same secret inclination to lose control, even if it means personal danger, with a desire to completely give in to pleasure in all its forms. The pollination room scene is from one of my favorite dreams of all time, but not particularly realistic outside of fiction or sleep. The vulnerability for Clover only comes into play when it comes to Nightshade and the myriad of ways she lets her lover control her sexually and emotionally. This easily manipulated position in a relationship is something I know all too well; I am the heart-on-the-sleeve girl and Clover's weakness is born of my own.

#4 - Lizette - "Of Love and Actual Demons" in Demons of Paradise - 50-55% me

Alison Haislip looks like I imagine Lizette

Lizette is actually a lot closer to my scene girl persona Lizzy Dark, which is why she made the list. She's petulant, selfish, and a little psychotic. What gives Lizette her appeal is actually her inexperience in the world and the wonder derived from learning about it. In the story, she's something of a psychopath, which I'm not (I don't think), but with a bizarre twist. Interest in small creature comforts is a huge trait Lizette and I share; I'm just not willing to go to the extents she is to get them.

#5 - Leilani - "Unimportant Important Things" in Astral Liaisons - 45% meI think Leilani more encompasses the feeling of complete awe I have around my girlfriend. Someone tall, beautiful, athletic, brilliant, talented, funny, interesting, organized, compassionate, popular, charismatic, and capable can really make everyone around them feel inept; being in a relationship with someone like that and being gone in love with them can drive a person downright crazy. This was what caught for me in this story. Of course, the resolution to this crazy feeling in the story probably isn't likely to happen in my reality, but the crazy feeling is similar. There's also just the lovely goal in life of being able to find someone to be silly with. the wavelength Leilani and Ivy are on in the story should be the goal of everyone in their love life. There's just something magical about being with someone who gets you.

According to some writers, I've gone well overboard in how much of myself I pour into my stories and according to others, I haven't gone nearly far enough. This was an interesting question about writing, and even though I'm probably not experienced enough to be an expert on the topic, I get the feeling my answer is fairly similar to the one a lot of more experienced writers would give. Frankly, I think it's unavoidable in some measure, but I also don't believe anyone can fully put themselves into a character because the vast majority of people aren't honest enough with themselves to truly put their true essence into a character without revision for the better or worse.

Being honest with you, my lovely readers, I am easy to find in the character listed above.

Shameless Self-Promotion Part 2

This is what we're calling vampires these days?

I'm not here to Twilight bash (okay a little I am). Let's just say I have written English Lit papers for genuine English Lit classes that deconstructed Twilight as blatant Mormon propaganda, and I did get A's on them. There are books out there, sadly written by women, that try very very very hard to keep women in subservient roles, sexualize what would be considered creepy behavior by guys in real life, and cram traditional gender roles down younger generations' throats with shitty writing. The only way out of this vicious cycle of bad "literature" (sorry, I just can't refer to Twilight as that without the quotations marks) reinforcing harmful stereotypes and behaviors is to STOP FUCKING BUYING IT!

Lesbians, honest to goodness rainbow flag wearing, Melissa Ethridge listening, After-Ellen trending, dykes can be found reading heterosexual vampire romance because...I don't know why. Modern, enlightened, feminist women, same thing, reading Twilight and rambling on about how they know it's bad, but it's just so dreamy/delicious/drain bramaging. My initial reaction to this was to say, "There's good stuff out there! You just need to look a little harder." Then I looked a little harder, and I was, for the most part, completely wrong--I hate being wrong, by the way, it really screws with the image I'm trying to create for myself of always being right. Lesbians especially had two choices, bad "lesbian vampire fiction" written by straight men, or hunting down the few, fairly poorly written indie options actually penned by lesbians, but not actually even up to Twilight quality control standards, if you can believe that. That was, until the indie publisher revolution that is ongoing. Sure, you might have to wade through some bad stuff, but suddenly, the market isn't dictated entirely by old, straight, white men at the Big Four (mentioned in the last shameless self-promotion blog).
Being a little ashamed of what was out there, and feeling like I could do better, I went ahead and put my money where my mouth was and wrote a book of paranormal romance. Demons of Paradise, available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, is a collection of eight short stories, my usual amount per collection, all in the paranormal romance genre. I only included one vampire story, but, don't worry, I have a complete collection (of 8 stories again) dedicated entirely to fanged ladies coming out in the not too distant future.

Something I felt was missing in the vast majority of other similar fiction out there, especially the stuff written by straight guys, is the emotional context of sexuality and sexual encounters. Maybe this is just the soft and gushy, pink-n-frilly femme in me, but what's the point of sex if you don't have any emotional context? Twilight may have got this right...sort of...the theory of emotional context was there, but the emotions were shallow, pedantic, unrealistic, and spoken at the level of your average 13-year-old. What Twilight, and a good deal of erotica/romance out there fails to do, is come up with a story worth reading. Take out the romance, take out the sex, take out the weird scene where the vampire "family" plays baseball, and the story is...oh, right, there really isn't one at that point. Stories should be felt, experienced through all five senses (real writers realize things smell and sound like stuff), and follow a plot line FFS! I built my stories, from the ground up, to be stories, and then added sex, romance, and emotional context. Without knowing the basics of creating fiction, writers can really waste your time and money.

The most sexually active organ on the female body is the mind; this is true across nationality, sexual orientation, and age. Tickling the mind works far better than tickling the clit (although you should probably do both just to be safe). In Demons of Paradise, I'm going for my reader's mind, sense of humor, and heart--more or less in that order. I want entertainment value to go hand in hand with wet arousal.

It looks a little like this in my head.

So if writing stories that are actually stories is goal numero uno, and writing stories that appeal to women on the intellectual and emotional level and not just on the arousal level is goal the second, then the third and final goal is to give a bunch of page time to things that don't normally get page time in paranormal romance.

Like I said, I do have a vampire story with the vampire basically being an undead (redundant?) version of Rachel Zoe. I feel like enough people own the book now that I can let that little secret slip. Aside from setting up a continuation story in my all vampire collection, this story was also to show a different side of vampires that didn't involve sparkling in the daylight and chasing after high school girls.

Mummies, werewolves, ghosts, changelings, witches, angels, and demons round out the rest of the cast. There's a certain level of variety lacking in paranormal romance these days. Witches and werewolves often take supporting roles to vampires in a lot of fiction, but this in no way fully fleshes out the genre. I really felt like this was an opportunity a lot of writers were just skipping over. I love ancient Egyptian stuff, and think mummies can be really sexy, so I introduced one that was the star of her own story without any vampires to muddy up the Nile.

See? Isn't this a sexy alternative to vampires?

I get that vampires are the in right now, I really do, and I have a novel in the works that is almost entirely vampire romance and a collection that is entirely dedicated to our fanged friends, but for Demons of Paradise, I wanted the mosaic of paranormal romance to be on display in stories that were stories first and smut second. Be entertained, be aroused, be made to giggle while you read.

Haunted House on Top

I'm going to link a little fan fiction here. It's a lovely free sample that I can't legally sell because, as fan fiction, these characters aren't mine. I still think it's a fun story from back when I was a slash fan-fic writing fiend!

Haunted House on Top

Cami, who had been having fewer and fewer crazy episodes as of late, felt optimistic about Halloween despite the possible catastrophic mixing of schizophrenia and costumes. It was her first Halloween with her long distance girlfriend, Brianna, who would be driving down from New York for the occasion, as Cami had driven up for most other holidays to that point; being the only vampire in the relationship, it did only seem fitting that Cami be the one to decide on how they celebrated all hallows eve. Her Atrociously Gay Best Friend Forever, a.k.a. AGBFF, Lewis said he knew of a haunted house in old Alexandria that might be fun. He wasn't going until much later, a hot date of his own, as he'd put it, but he'd sent the directions to her along with the password they would need to get in.

Lewis had also been the one to go costume shopping with her. Being a Napoleonic era vampire, with tastes in clothing toward the flamboyant, Lewis knew all of the best costume shops that were period accurate and open after dark. To his great disappointment, Cami had selected a Wonder Woman costume. Putting the costume on at home, alone, on Halloween night, Cami began to see the source of Lewis's many complaints with the plan. She was thin, far too thin for her modest breasts to fill out the top of the one piece costume, and, while her legs did look smashing in the knee-high boots, the star-spangled backside of the costume seemed to have designs on finding its way up her behind. He said she would spend the evening picking patriotic wedgies, but she hadn't quite followed what he meant by it.

"Double-sided tape," Melvin said from her perch on the edge of the bathtub. She was Cami's second demon companion, a squat, round frog, covered in spikes, roughly the size of a basketball with an old woman's voice that didn't sound too dissimilar from Betty White.

"No, I'm Wonder Woman," Cami replied, admiring the way the shiny material clung to her lithe curves. When she turned to examine the back, she had to grasp the blue fabric to pull it away from the center it was inching toward.

"She means for you to tape your costume to your ass, dummy," Barry said from his higher perch on the tank of the toilet. He was her original demon, a product of her psychotic break, looking like the unholy spawn of a Chihuahua and a goat that was then dressed in footy pajamas and dipped in road tar.

Cami took the advice, and tape, from Melvin successfully anchoring the backside of her costume to her own backside. With her golden bracers in place, her lasso on her hip, and headband holding back her shoulder-length black hair, she felt as ready as she could. Without a reflection in the mirror, she couldn't be sure if she looked properly wondrous, but her two demons said she looked like a slutty American flag, which was precisely what she was going for. Cami finished applying her blood-red lipstick when the doorbell rang.

With a quick jog down the stairs, she flung the front door open to find Brianna on the steps dressed in what looked like a highly-impractical leather, armored dress. Brianna, who had been buxom before college, had put on just enough weight in her first year of college to be lusciously curvy in exciting new ways. Her long, thick Latina hair had been straightened to fall around her shoulders, although Cami's attention gravitated toward the copious mounds of tan cleavage pushing out the top of the dress.

"That's such a great...um...what are you?" Cami asked.

"Xena, Warrior Princess." Brianna held up the little metal ring (which was actually plastic) on the side of her belt as if that would make it all clear. "From the TV show?"

"I've been dead and crazy for most of the last hundred years without access to a TV until very recently," Cami said by way of explanation, "but if this is what a warrior princess looks like, I need to start watching."

"The costume fit better in high school."

"I like the way it fits now."

They shared a knowing smile.

The drive, which was only a few blocks from Cami's inherited estate, took a little longer than expected as Cami kept having to restrain herself from crawling across the Range Rover's center console to sit on Brianna's lap. When Brianna finally pointed out that Cami could survive a car accident that would likely kill her human girlfriend, Cami remained on her side of the car, with only her left hand making teasing trips over to stroke Brianna's luscious thighs.

Once parked in front of the haunted house, which looked remarkably like any other house in the row of old colonials in the Tudor style, Cami unclipped her seatbelt and hopped across onto Brianna's lap, straddling her in a fairly athletic maneuver. Cradling Brianna's face between her hands, Cami kissed her, her lips cold and urgent against Brianna's until her mouth opened far enough for Cami's tongue to seek out Brianna's tongue ring. Brianna's hands found their way to Cami's thinly clothed ass, caressing it gently until she heard the crinkle of the tape. Letting Cami slide back a little out of her grasp, Brianna ended up honking the horn with Cami's butt. They both had to break the kiss to giggle.

"Do you have tape on your ass?" Brianna asked.

"It's intentional and necessary, I assure," Cami replied.

"Is there tape anywhere else I should know about?"

Cami feigned a pondering pose and shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of, but I'm beginning to think I should have used some on my chest as well." She shifted a little, re-adjusting the front of the Wonder Woman costume to make sure it concealed her breasts.

With the moment ruined by double-sided tape crinkles and ass-on-horn honking, they decided to head up to the house, linking arms as they walked up the front steps of the house, which was clearly labeled haunted house by the large banner above the door, but had none of the campy trappings they were expecting. Nobody waited to take their tickets, no costumed thrill seekers milled around the front, and, aside from the porch light, the entire house seemed to be dark.

"This doesn't look right," Brianna said. "Are you sure we have the right address?"

"It was your GPS that brought us here, you tell me?" Cami held back from knocking on the door when she realized Brianna had taken several steps back. "Don't worry; you have an immortal creature of the night with some sort of golden rope thing here to protect you." Cami held out the lasso to show Brianna how on top of the situation she was.

"That's a lasso."

"What does it do?" Cami asked.

"Supposedly makes people tell the truth."

Cami inspected the lasso, which looked like ordinary rope spray-painted gold. Exotic things could come in ordinary looking packages, she supposed. Taking Brianna by the hand, she knocked on the door with a resounding echo following as if she'd banged on an entirely empty drum. A small, wooden slat in the door slid open.

"Password?" a disembodied voice on the other side of the door asked.

"Carbuncle," Cami and Brianna said in unison.

The door opened on an empty hallway. They both took a few tentative steps into the house, far enough to look around behind the opened door, expecting to find their greeter hiding, but the space was as empty as the rest of the tastefully appointed house from what they could tell. Before they could even give each other a concerned glance, the door slammed behind them.

"Is this vampire stuff?" Brianna asked, clinging to Cami's side.

"It might be," Cami said. "I'm not really aware of what all stuff we can do."

Loud, thrumming, dance music beckoned them away from the dimly lit entryway deeper into the darkness of the house, down a hall draped with black sheets hanging on the wall, into a crowded dance club replete with flashing strobes, bass-driven beats, and close to a hundred shadowy figures dancing to the rave music. The normalcy of the scene set them both at ease, and Brianna practically dragged Cami into the throng to dance. Pushing deep into the crush of bodies, they found a spot open enough to dance so long as they did so nearly in each other's shoes. Cami removed the lasso from her belt and slung it around Brianna's waist, holding her close as they writhed against each other in time with the music.

The scent of lemon poppy-seed muffins rose to Cami's nose when she nuzzled in closer to Brianna. It was the scent of her blood, her desire, the part of Cami's predatory, vampire attraction that drew her to Brianna in the first place. With Brianna's ample breasts brushing up against hers with every shift and move to the music, Cami felt an undeniable lust rising not just between her legs, but in her fangs as well.

"Do you have to tell me the truth now?" Cami whispered into Brianna's ear, nuzzling ever closer into her thick, brown hair.

"Whatever you want to ask," Brianna replied breathlessly.

"Do you want me to bite you, right here, right now?" Cami whispered even closer to Brianna's neck, letting her slowly extending fangs brush against the soft skin just below Brianna's ear.

"Yes, and I don't care who sees," Brianna practically purred in response.

Cami cradled the back of Brianna's head and let her teeth sink in slowly, thrilling at the immediate splash of hot blood across her tongue. Brianna stiffened for a split second before curling into Cami's embrace. She wrapped one arm around her vampire lover's shoulder for stability, but let the other roam up and down Cami's side for a moment, moving past the playful petting stage to cup one of her breasts, caressing the firm mound eagerly through the top of her Wonder Woman costume.

With her bloodlust satiated, at least, in part, and her more provincial lust building from Brianna's caresses, Cami broke away from the bite, gasping, although she didn't actually need to draw breath, immediately looking for a place they might go for some much-needed privacy. Instead, what she found was that they were embracing on an entirely empty dance floor. The strobe lights shut off, the music faded, and the room, which they once had thought a vibrant rave scene, actually appeared to be a Victorian sitting room dimly lit with a smattering of oil lamps and candles.

"Um..." Cami said, feeling a little stupid for not thinking of something better to say.

Brianna opened her eyes and jumped, twisting in Cami's arms, not to escape, but to perhaps burrow in closer. "What the fuck?"

Cami could kick herself for not thinking to say what Brianna had just said—it so perfectly described the situation.

"We should probably go back out the way we came." Cami turned in a slow circle to try to remember which way they'd come in, but found the room didn't actually seem to have any doors or windows, just larger paintings where one might reasonably assume a door or window should go. "That's odd. I could have sworn we came in through a door."

"What the fuck?"

"You said that already."

"I thought it bore repeating."

Cami slipped from Brianna's reluctant grasp, leaving her, for the moment, to stand in the middle of the room, while Cami made her way to one of the paintings of a doorway to give it closer inspection. "I could have sworn we came in through here," Cami said.

"Your sense of direction is shit," Barry said from the location Cami was almost entirely certain she'd left Brianna.

She whirled around to find the foot-tall rat dog/goat/road tar demon standing in Brianna's spot and the Latina Warrior Princess nowhere in sight. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"Fuck if I know," Barry threw up two exasperated claw hands. "It's not like I teleported here on purpose. You're not frightened, are you?"

"Of course not," Cami said dismissively. "I'm a badass, undead bitch."

"You're also the moron who just lost your girlfriend."

"That too."

"There's good news though," Barry said with a little hop.

"Which is...?"

"There's a door behind you now."

Cami turned to find the painting of a door had indeed materialized into an actual door. When she turned to thank Barry, she found the spot completely empty. When she turned back to the door, she nearly jumped out of her skin coming face to face with an upside down, dangling rat dog/goat/road tar demon who had secured himself to the top of the door's molding by his spiked tail.

"Scared you!" Barry chortled.

"Did not." Cami brushed passed him into the hallway putting a sternness to her step that might hide how much he'd startled her. The hallway looked to go on for miles with no end in sight. The more she walked, the further it stretched, until she turned to head back to the room and found it too had been replaced with just more hallway. The same handful of pictures on the walls, the same antique wall-hugging tables, and the same oil lamps repeated again and again for as long as she could see in either direction.

"Barry? Brianna?" Cami called down the hallway. When no answer came, she tried, "Carbuncle?"

When no answer came, she decided to inspect one of the paintings, which, in her slightly muddled logic, might have been what caused Barry to appear in the first place. The three pictures next to the table were portraits of three fairly ugly, moderately obese, and unhappy looking women, who, by the set of their eyes, dimple in their chin, and slope of their nose, were likely sisters.

"Oh my God, I'm so happy to see you." Brianna immediately pressed into Cami's back, wrapping her hands around her waist, and nearly knocking Cami face-first into the wall.

"The pictures do work!" Cami exclaimed.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said shyly, "I'm happy to see you too."

Cami reached her hands down to place them over Brianna's around her waist, but her girlfriend move them away first, taking Cami's hands and positioning them with palms flat against the wall. Before Cami could protest, she felt Brianna's hot breath along her bare shoulders and neck, followed closely by pillowy lips. Cami murmured a half-hearted protest, but didn't move for fear it might be heeded. Brianna's hands made their way up Cami's sides, across to her stomach, and cupped both her breasts with firm, eager fingers. She ventured a glance over her shoulder, Brianna's lips came away to meet hers in a soft kiss, sweet enough to distract Cami from the hands slowly pulling down the front of her costume to liberate her perky, alabaster breasts. When Brianna's fingers pinched lightly over her nipples, dragging them to stiff attention, Cami broke the kiss to let out a little "eep" of pleasure. A little more teasing, and some meaningful pressing of Brianna's heaving breasts into her back, drew the apparently desired result from Cami of arching her back; Brianna's hands immediately moved from her breasts, to intertwine fingers through the hair at the back of Cami's head, pulling back every so slight to hold her firmly in the arched pose.

The question of tops and bottoms flashed through Cami's mind. To that point, there really hadn't been a whole lot of either taking charge, which had left their sex-life a little vanilla in places Cami might have hoped for kink and a little less defined than she had come to know from previous lovers. If she were to be honest, and it was kind of hard not to be with her head pulled back by her hair, she really wanted to be topped; this desire, against her wishes, poured out from her mouth in a long, wet, "yessssss."

Brianna, standing directly behind her now, apparently took the utterance for complete submission to the act. Cami could feel Brianna's thumb running flat along her back, caressing the space between her cheeks until the silky material of her costume pressed ever so slightly between them, with her hand making its way down to the thin material barely covering Cami's now fully interested soft lips. Brianna's soft fingers caressed her through the costume with her thumb held back to make slow passes along the same line it had been traveling in the crevice of Cami's behind. Each stroke brought Cami's already taut body to more acute arousal until Brianna could apparently feel the hard little bead she'd been searching for.

When her fingers played across it, even through the material, Cami groaned in the unabashed way only true pleasure could conjure. Brianna pushed her forward against the wall, letting Cami rest her forehead on the scant space between the portraits of the three sisters. She could feel the paintings watch them, their eyes straining to the center to look down Cami's back to what was being done to her, and she didn't care; moreover, part of her wanted to give the stuffy old women in the pictures a show, so she leaned into it, or, more precisely, leaned back into Brianna's hand.

Slowly at first, Brianna put her hand into a riding motion with Cami moving her hips in time, the hand in her hair acting as the reins. The desire for a gallop rose in her until she was eagerly pushing herself against the familiar hand, struggling against the rider's pull on her hair, and bucking herself toward the hot, tingly finish line. Brianna responded with control, slowing her pace, to create a teasing longing that drove Cami to squirm. The delicious agony of being drawn back from the brink of climax didn't go without a few pained whimpers from Cami, which seemed to thrill her lover even more. Cami could hear Brianna breathing heavier, feel the warmth of her body flooding across the short distance between them, and smell the overpowering scent of lemon poppy-seed muffins with an undeniable undertone of Brianna's own growing wetness.

When Cami had calmed just enough to feel an iota of control over herself again, Brianna's fingers pushed aside the bottom of Cami's costume to the soft, eager pussy below. With Brianna's fore and middle finger on opposite sides of Cami's clit, like a little cigarette, any move Cami made back and forth stroked her closer and closer to the climax she'd already been denied once. On her second attempt, moving her hips in the most pleasing rhythm she could find, Brianna seemed more eager than her for things to build toward a sticky, satisfying conclusion. She tugged lightly on Cami's hair, giving her a meaningful bump of her hips against Cami's behind, until they settled into an every-growing rocking motion, pushing closer and closer to the edge.

Cami couldn't tell if she threw her head back or if Brianna pulled it, but she found herself arched at the point of climax to let out a long, loud scream of primal pleasure, her green eyes opened to narrow slits, just enough to spot lewd smiles spreading across the lips of the three sisters in the paintings. When her head fell forward in the slow tremors of aftershock orgasms, as she'd come to call them, she felt the full warmth of Brianna's body press up against her back and the hot, eager breath of her lover cascading across her shoulder and neck, setting a few strands of her black hair to flutter.

To their right, Cami heard a door panel slide open, and someone ask for a password. "Carbuncle," a voice on the other side of the door said, and the front door flew open on them with Lewis and half-a-dozen other costumed vampires standing on the porch looking in.

Cami pulled up the front of her costume, not before accidentally giving a brief flash of white breasts to the crowd while Brianna pulled the bottom of Cami's costume back into place although there was little doubt, from the obvious wet spot and wrinkles, what had been going on.

"We can come back in an hour," Lewis said, "if you two still need more time."

Cami gave Brianna a worried look. Her girlfriend flushed red from exertion simply blushed and shrugged. "We were just leaving," Cami said. She ventured a glance over her shoulder on the way out to the portraits of the three sisters; one of them winked to her.

Kink Imitating Fiction

I am an unabashedly kinky person. Being born and raised Buddhist, I have absolutely NONE of the hangups that most people seem to pick up with a traditional Christian upbringing, especially in Orange County. This complete lack of fear of an almighty monitoring my bedroom antics has allowed me more than a little wiggle room in what I can and will do. A loving, understanding, and fairly kinky in her own right, partner has made this so much easier to explore. So imagine my surprise when I found out my own imagination and wandering fiction writing could spawn new kinks to explore.

The question wasn't really sex advice, more of a passing interest from a Twitter follower, who asked me if my writing ever influenced my sex life. Being a romance/erotica author, I had to admit there was a fair amount of crossover between the two worlds. She asked me for the kinkiest example and I went straight to my first full-length novel based on a story in my second collection. In it, the character who is more than a little like myself is collared and leashed in a post-apocalyptic steam-punk world by a woman who is more than a little like my girlfriend. Obviously, this has made a few appearances in our during and since writing the book (which should be out this summer by the way). Not to bore you with the details, but obviously it followed the fiction fairly closely with her holding the leash and me wearing the collar. This innocuous question kind of got me thinking about where the idea even came from and why, for the vast majority of the crossover from fiction to reality, the trend tended to be me writing it, and then us doing it, rather than vice versa.

One of the primary functions of erotica, romance, and pornography in general seems to be, on some very rudimentary level, sex education/sex inspiration, so it would stand to reason that most kinky and/or new sex acts would go this direction. But in this case, I'm the literary pornographer so all of it is already somewhere in my twisted mind. The only real answer I could come up with was that the fiction allowed me to test the waters with Nikki, since she reads everything long before it's published, and then I gauge whether or not she's into doing it by her reaction--99% of the time she is.



My overall point, getting to it very slowly, is the positive external influence erotica and porn in general can have on a relationship. I don't seem to have the hangups common to my gender, most lesbians, or American women in general when it comes to admitting outside sources into my sexual relationship. I don't honestly know why most people think it is a closed system in the first place. The collar and leash thing wasn't something I invented--the mere existence of the pictures I've been scattering throughout the blog prove this--so I must have picked it up from somewhere and that somewhere was definitely an outside source. I hate to say this, but ladies, we tend to be our own worst enemy on this, and we're almost always the ones rejecting the concept of outside help (if you're a lesbian reading this then it is 100%). Somehow we get it in our heads that our special, perfect, pure-as-the-driven-fucking-snow relationship will somehow be tainted by the evils of pornography, erotica, or any outside source; as though our sexual flowers can grow inside air-tight containers thrown in the freezer. When things in the bedroom invariably stagnate, it's suddenly a big mystery why nothing new is happening and both people are getting bored of the same-old/same-old.

Think of it this way. You might be a master chair-maker building chairs to end all chairs, but you wouldn't know the first thing about building a boat unless you read a book on it, watched a how-to video, or took a class. Same tools, same building materials, similar skill set, completely different concept/act. Inviting porn and erotica into your relationship and bedroom doesn't ruin a relationship, it makes it stronger. I don't know where I picked up the leash and collar thing, but Nikki and I both have agreed we don't care where it came from, we're just glad it came. Honestly, I probably saw it in some picture on a random latex website (yes, I'm into that too) and the lovely, perverted part of my brain thought, "Yes, I'd very much so like to do that" and it didn't show up again until I was writing the book.

Drop the hangups, lose the preconception of your relationship being a closed environment that can sustain itself, and go get yourself some erotica or porn to find something new you haven't done, but would very much like to try. Or go grab a leash and collar if you've been digging the pictures on this blog and thank me later.