Submissions wanted for anthology of erotic horror

SPECTRAL SENSATIONS
Erotic Horror Anthology


Incubi. Succubi. Lascivious demons, lustful gods and goddesses, possession and ghostly sensations that drive you mad. Welcome to the world of “Spectral Sensations” a spine-tingling, panty-soaking collection of the best erotic horror stories. This literary anthology summons the shades of departed maidens and men drained of all life by night visitors, mysterious minions of the bedroom, lust-wracked Victorians trapped in dark asylums and ghosts greedy for flesh-world thrills.

Guidelines
Any time period is acceptable, from ancient mythology to the present, space age and beyond. One caveat: NO vampires or werewolves, unless you break the mold and completely remake these familiar villains in a completely new form. No rhapsodies about blood drinking or changing beneath the full moon. Give us your darkest, grimmest and most terrifying. Give us your most wicked, sexy, sensual, erotic and wild.

Visit Spectral Sensations web page for complete guidelines and submissions info.

Of songs and clockworks

Being a good storyteller is like being a rock star (or pop star, or folk singer, chanteuse, blues wailer or troubador), but instead of playing to ampitheatres and stadiums, making music for the masses, we solicit our audience one by one. "Come with me," we whisper, "follow me into the darkness of this quiet room and I'll sing you a song such as you've never heard."

It's a slow seduction. A good writer must share Lothario's capacity for love and repetition, as body by body, the long tale is told.

I AM THE PEOPLE'S POET

"But why are the kids cwying?"

How could this happen? Rik's entire personality infected my brain. I AM HIM.

Too Much Typing

Between the Twittering I'm supposed to do but avoid, the Facebook posting, which I should avoid but can't stay away from, the neglected blogs, for which I write fantastic entries in my head but have completely forgotten by the time I get to a computer, the administrivia of my meager book marketing efforts and the effort of trying to write a novel, edit said novel plus a monthly magazine, and repunctuate my ordinarily marathon-length sentences, there's little time left over to feel very accomplished about any of it.

Best of Science Blogs

A spectacular Sunday morning discovery: ScienceBlogs! Also discovered Bioephemera, which I haven't fully delved into yet, but am very excited about. What better place to sate my hunger for medical mysteries and oddities, history and museums and other goodies, like "How to Mail Human Blood" and 200 year old wax anatomical models?

Shredded Depp with hobo sauce

Last night I dreamt that Johnny Depp and some girl were in my apartment, a small place propped up on a hill, with several staircases leading up to it. I was trying to convince them both to join me and some visiting family for another dinner and they both weaseled out of it. JD said he'd go if I get him a Mexican soda ("a red one!") so I went to the store, got the soda and brought it back and served it with ice. I told him that I'd just introduce him as my friend, my best friend, since everyone knew he had a wife and kids in France. JD told me how much he liked the vibe of my apartment, that it had "spirits dancing in it." Then he performed a little soft shoe and started speaking in this old-timey minstrel voice that I found inappropriate.

I went out to run some errand. It was night and I ran the empty streets like a ninja, darting over train tracks beside the river and through clouds of steams spewing from street vents, narrating to myself as I went. I saw a homeless guy and wanted to avoid him so ducked into some sort of shipping container. It was full of chopped lettuce, piled up to my waist, and a bunch of huge, empty cardboard boxes. I was going to hide beneath the lettuce or in a box, but I'd wandered into a den of transients. One of them grabbed me and I thought he was going to rape me so we fought, but he only wanted my watch. Then another guy, this one intent on assault, grabbed me, but the first guy, not finished thieving from me, stabbed him in the Adam's apple with a penknife. I fled the lettuce box and ran back to my apartment. JD was wearing the Batman costume from the Christian Bale movies and poised at the top of the stairs on his Batcycle. I hopped on back and we roared down the rickety wooden stairs into the night.

A Technicolor World

Just as before, the gestation of my novel ICE SONG, drags on. Here I am practically filled to bursting, pregnant with anticipation and anxious for birthing. Just like the morning-after-delivery moment when you first wake up and realize there is a stranger living in the house, I anticipate the May 19th will feel vastly different from any day that has come before.

Oprah has "ah-ha moments" but I'l have an "Oz moment." I'll open my eyes that morning to a technicolor world. Literally, I expect the doorbell to ring that glorious Tuesday and a handsome man wearing a top hat and waxed mustache will hand me a massive bouquet of peonies and roses. The sky will be a different color, pink or green perhaps, and birds will flock from fairy forests to alight on my shoulders as I trill my happy song. Or the clouds will crack open and shower me with confetti. Perhaps the morning will take a dark turn: the book will be absent from store shelves, the sky will remain its steadfast and usual blue and the only birds will be scavenging ravens loitering near the garbage cans lined up along the curb. There may be a disturbing quality of surreality about marching into a bookshop and seeing my own words stored in those hallowed halls, a sense of having slipped into a lucid dream where I puppet the fates. (Though in my dream, it would be Black Books I'd wander into, to be abused by Bernard and then consoled by Manny and Fran, who'd pour generous glasses of wine.)

Likely it will be just another day, except that I'll sport a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin and the little light I carry inside will burn hotter and more brightly than it did before.

My Baby, My Book

Publishing a book is like having a baby. There is a lengthy gestation period, with the author growing increasingly uncomfortable and impatient as the due date nears. Egos, like pregnant body parts, swell and deflate. Well-meaning relatives, friends and acquaintances constantly inquire about the book's health and status, eagerly snapping up any snippets of information about its development. Is it here yet? they ask. Shouldn't it be here by now? When do I get to see it?

Even strangers bestow blessings and felicitations upon new writers. "It's my first," I proudly beam. It is a marvel. Publishing a book is a feat of careful nurturing. Rather than a fleshy baby, the book is a creative baby, full of promise, set free into the world.

Following this line of thinking, a book release party is like a baby shower. And I imagine that the delivery of author copies is as momentous as a visit from the stork.

As my own due date nears, worries assail me. How will I keep my little novel safe? How will I guard against the wolves, keep it alive long enough to get legs and take off on its own adventure? Will I be a failure as a writer/parent? Will the pressure drive me to drink and ruin? Will I slander my novel for failing to meet my expectations?

I launch my book, hoping that it is well received. That the other kids like it. That it makes friends who love it for its inner beauty, and not the hot girl on the cover. Love it, be kind! Don't hurt its feelings!

Perhaps the best and only difference that matters is that I will never have to pay for my novel's therapy sessions or let it and its kids move in with me after a particularly disastrous series of lay-offs.

A Return to Vinyl

I miss playing records.
Somehow, through my many moves across the country and back, my record collection was lost or dispersed. I suspect some of the lesser favorites were sold/bartered during desperate times, but I know that the core of the collection were keepers. I miss them, as one misses a childhood friend.

There's a delicacy about vinyl that digital and CDs lack. CDs were touted as unbreakable when first unveiled, an improvement over soft-sided, easily scratched records. And digital music is ghostly -- there are no jackets, inserts, cover arts, sleeves or cases to contend with or to linger over when learning lyrics, reading credits or admiring artwork.

I have specific memories of purchasing record albums, can replicate the feel of their cardboard covers in my hands. I love the care required when handling them, because music should be treasured. I miss browsing through records, those square paper bags, the epithets uttered when a careless hand accidentally sent the needle skidding across grooves.

Today I miss my Joan Sutherland Christmas album.
Even with it's warped imperfections. They only measured how much play the album received, how appreciated it was. Digital shows no wear, no love. Today I want exit from the robotic age. Records, red wine and late nights are a fertile ground for deep thoughts, grief, quiet contemplation. Tonight is one of those nights.

One can dream...

Is it possible to clean out a pumpkin, fill it with cake batter and bake it?

Cake Pie conundrum

An absolutely original idea! Salvation in a can!

Cake pie! Cake pie! Why has not one thought of it before?
A pie made of cake. A cake-filled pie.

Layer Cake-Pie
Fill an unbaked pie shell with cake batter, bake cake-pie and bake top layer of cake in a separate cake tin. When both cool, top cake-pie with fruit (PIE) filling, add second layer of cake and frost exposed cake with meringue or icing.

Close, but no cigar.

Why, Jebus, why?

Are there only two good Spandau Ballet songs, and True doesn't even lend itself to a dance routine. But Gold, ah, that's the stuff. Where is my smoking jacket?




Nothing writerly to report, although I must invent a dictation machine that hooks directly into the brain. Very easy to write via the mind, but the road become block when diverted by mouth. It's a direct brain-to-hands highway. If I could record my thoughts and upload them directly into my PC, I would not have to sacrifice my posture and my wrists to the vicious keyboard overlord.

Too many censors in place to allow words to flow out the mouth. Confoundit.

Take That, Motherf...

Today I was accused of being too uptight to play Frisbee.
Just to demonstrate my fun and freewheeling attitude, I withheld my correction and refrained from telling him that I prefer to be called "tightly wound."

Thinking of things writerly, I realized that not all of us are insane in the membrane, as I'd previously supposed. In fact, even in a gathering of other writers, I always seem to be the one wearing the "Bonkers" t-shirt. Rehearsing yet another late-night talk show interview/chat, I told fantasy David Letterman/self that writers are a "particularly self-excoriating lot" but later realized it to be untrue. Many are quite sane and genuinely nice and disappointingly well-balanced. Now I can't get the phrase "self-excoriating" out of my head.

The grim truth about writers

Beaten horses

Discovery: Few obsessions vastly overmilked. Have squeezed the last drop of literary juice from a growing list of topics and realize now that I will have to forcibly cultivate new obsessions. Did not realize the scope of my interests was so paltry as to exhaust their possibility in such a short time.

Here is a list of topics I have not covered in any great detail (so expect to hear more about them in coming works):

fish fingers (lady fingers, completely exhausted)
anal fisting (the depths of this subject are yet unplumbed)
anal fissures
cowboys
race car driving
city planning
politics
the Peloponnesian war
Romans
beards (facial hair, not straight spouses)
Pokemon
palm trees
robots
Eastern European saboteurs
Michael Jackson
Boy Scouting
sausage

Well, it's evident where this last train of thought is heading. Into a tunnel.

All of the above topics sound excruciatingly dull, except robots, perhaps I could do something fun with that.

Absolutely forbidden, not to be revisited, topics:
cherries, apples/apple blossoms, strawberries
vaginal fisting
mentions of whiskey
Victorians
gloves
Julie Andrews/Mary Poppins
Mary Tyler Moore/Laura Petrie
corsets
foot binding
castles
mermaids
opioids
chickens
plastic/Saran wrap
talk of pies
cannibalism (utterly exhausted)
butchery
women as meat
hard pimpin'
quarters
razors, needles, knives, blades, acid, swords, syringes, picks, icicles, knives, etcetera
armpit-licking (even in real life, how often can you get away with it?)
internal schisms
tattooing
murderers
wigs
freckles
breast/pudding comparisons
skin/cookie dough/butter/peach (skin as food-OK to talk about pork rinds)

Stricken from the list of single-use words:
chunder
pogrom

Forbidden Fruit

I read this recently and it delayed my getting up and out of bed, so charmed by it was I. Ruminating on it throughout the day, I too lusted for goblin fruit. Read the excerpt below.

The Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti (1865)

Lizzie met her at the gate
Full of wise upbraidings:
"Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens;
Should not loiter in the glen
In the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Plucked from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the moonlight
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew gray;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
You should not loiter so."
"Nay hush," said Laura.
"Nay hush, my sister:
I ate and ate my fill,
Yet my mouth waters still;
To-morrow night I will
Buy more," and kissed her.
"Have done with sorrow;
I'll bring you plums to-morrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
What melons, icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed:
Odorous indeed must be the mead
Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink,
With lilies at the brink,
And sugar-sweet their sap."

A lovely Victorian cautionary tale, beware the dangers of goblin men. But then it takes an unintentional detour, leaving one to wonder if the "sisters" here were cohabitants in a Boston marriage. Probably not, though it does add an extra layer of salacious fun to the reading.

She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."

Gender-benders

man sandals= mandals

man purse= murse

girly cigars= shegars

male wench= mench

girl on girl action= ma'amwich

Cooking with Candy: Fig Newton Cream Pie

So easy and so delicious!

2 cups milk
1 packet of instant banana or vanilla pudding
1 pre-baked pie shell
1 squirt can of whipped cream
10-15 Fig Newtons (or other flavor)

Mix pudding according to package directions. Let set in fridge while you chop Newtons and layer the bottom of the pie shell. Pour the pudding on top, decorate with whip cream squirts and Newtons. Chill for 4 hours. Serve!

Lazy version.
Buy a pie, cut into slices and dish onto plates. Insert chopped Newtons between the layers and decorate the top. Pretend you made it from scratch. No one will know!

Parable of the Sheep Herder

Expectation is the virgin maiden. Expertise is the wily and perhaps thrifty pimp/madam/desert warlord, what have you. The cherry is up on the block. The prize won by a shifty sheep herder, who, in the manner of a good fairy tale, is in disguise. We'll give him bad teeth, a cloak made of various sewn-together skins, a hump, a gouty toe etc. The maiden is taken to squalid hut to perform dreary domestic duties which spoil her soft hands. She lives in fear of the cherry-pitting but remains untouched. She is humbled by her kindly, yet repulsive, sheepherder. He does not press his advantage. She grows to love him (a pitying pathetic love, but still, one takes what one must) and offers herself to him. He throws off his shambles and cloak, scrubs away the grime and straightens up, revealing himself to be a handsome prince/desert warlord/wealthy sheepherder. Now he expects his due, freely given. But the maiden, her innocence spoiled by hard living and a lack of physical affection, rejects him. She has developed a fetish for gnarly old fellers with bad teeth, humps and gouty toes. The story will end badly, for one of them must always remain in disguise for the other to be happy.

I think this is true of writing. The writer is disguised from herself and her readers. She disguises her truth behind a veil of words, she deceives with allusion and linguistic trickery. Neither reader nor writer will ever stand naked, metaphorically, and be correctly seen by the other.