Straying From the Path: New Tales of Little Red is now available from Drollerie Press! This collection is a re-telling of the story of Little Red Riding Hood in poetry and prose. In these stories, Red is sometimes innocent, sometimes less so; and the wolf is sometimes a monster, and most often human.

I contributed a speculative fiction version of Red Riding Hood, Anthem, that you’ll find in this anthology–which is one of the few stories of mine you’ll read that is NOT erotica. I’ve also posted a free story below that is set in the same universe as Anthem.

Anthem, in a future where quantum computing determines the masters of men, the “Little Red Riding Hood” Wolf is a liar, a killer, and a cannibal. Only a planet fuzzy with time can give her the chance to reclaim what she has lost because only there can she change history.  Read more…

Resurrection Countdown, where Earth is a world managed by an invasive network, and what must be done to free it will burden the conscience of its future. Read the free story…

COPYRIGHT NOTICE. RESURRECTION COUNTDOWN. Copyright © 2008 by Teresa Wymore. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any form without permission, except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

I’ve posted a review of a short work by Bryn Colvin at the Pen Flourish blog. Her story, A Taste of Freedom, is a good rainy afternoon read. Just wish it were longer. Just wish characters like Sophie took walks in my park.

The story is available from loveyoudivine.com, but I got it at Fictionwise. I’m liking the process through the Fictionwise bookshelf  with my iPhone app. Maybe if this new B&N reader is as good as I’m hearing, I can finally move to a full-size screen to read!

Those researchers who like to give themselves high-falootin’ titles like “Evolutionary Psychologist” (neither science nor psychology is truly part of their discipline) are at it again.

Tanya Gold, writing in the Guardian (Why Women Have Sex), gives us a little sarcasm, but too little. I wish she had ripped this book apart like some of the commenters did. To be fair, the book writers “discovered” all kinds of reasons women have sex, and I’m sure they’re all true. What’s ridiculous is the question. What’s ridiculouser is the notion that the reasons all somehow find their beginning in genes.

My objection to this line of research isn’t in the results: they come up with 237 reasons, ranging from sheer lust to pity to security to greed. Obvious. Some idiot gave a grant to have a book published that tells the obvious. Hope it wasn’t tax dollars. No, what bugs me is what always bugs me about EP: their gender bias and culture-blindness. 

Apparently, the reasons men have sex are obvious–no book needed–but no one can figure why women would give up their Friday evenings watching Ghost Whisperer.  The women who do, do it for reasons that relate back to rearing more and better babies. Genetically successful women wear lipstick, heels, and get boob jobs to attract a mate because evolution has somehow programmed men to pop one at seeing these CULTURALLY SPECIFIC and HISTORICALLY TRANSIENT features. All this somehow leads to survival of the fittest. It’s not explained–ever–how survival mechanisms can be extrapolated from cultural activities.

How would EP explain the 16th century with gene theory and no analysis of cultural coercion? For those of you ignorant of the march of time, it was men who used to slap on the Maybelline and pooch their butts up for women to behold. Not only that, in that fashionable time, women were thought to be barely restrainable sex mongers; hence equating women to the devil, seeing them as witches, and denying them any public power.

In other words, men aren’t attracted to women with lipstick because it reminds them of a vagina; successful genes haven’t survived because men’s sensibilities take note of the physically healthiest female body from transient clues. The men who are attracted to women who wear lipstick or who get boob jobs, for example, are more likely interested in women who are of a certain class and attitude and who can therefore be the partner the man desires, in ways far more complex than just a good time, or even a baby-maker. 

A woman’s status as an object in a patriarchal culture rises the more she plays the part culture assigns, and a man’s possession of her reflects his status. 

Where is the discussion of culture in this ridiculous discipline? This is why we need to teach feminism in schools. But, no point in looking like an angry dyke. Just call yourself a scientist and reinforce the patriarchal ideas of what a woman is for and what a man can’t help. 

So, I’m off to watch Ghost Whisperer. You really think I’m going to give up watching that cleavage? That’s reason number 238. They didn’t interview me for the book.

I have more free stories lined up at penflourish.com, but today I’ve posted a review of Like a Queen: An Anthology of Lesbian Fairytales, edited by Cecilia Tan & Rachel Kincaid, published by Circlet Press (2009).

It’s tough finding lesbian erotica, even online. I had to click through 4 or 5 pages of m/m at Fictionwise before finding this brand new one. Although I had some objections to particular stories and a few across-the-board complaints (like the surfeit of oafish men), it was an enjoyable read with some sparkling parts.

As with a great deal of lesbian erotica, this anthology leans heavily on S/M contrivances. I like characters who express real power and seduction. I don’t object to S/M on the grounds it is immoral, but on the grounds it is fake and provides no character development. Some of these stories would have been better served without resorting to whips, racks, and chains. That being said, there are a few bright spots–and one truly outstanding second-person story!

Today is my birthday, and to celebrate, I’ve posted my favorite short story. The Green Hour is available at Pen Flourish, the Drollerie Press erotica blog.

The Green Hour has not been previously published. Although the editor for whom I wrote it liked it, she didn’t think the venue’s audience would “get” the literary nature of the piece. This is why I love Drollerie Press, where you’ll find more of my stories in the coming year.

The Green Hour is literary erotica that confounds bad choices with good liquor, and offers a nice helping of Rimbaud on the side. Hence, the interesting video of a traditional “green hour” that I’ve embedded here, with Chopin’s Nocturne no. 8 performed by Lang Lang — for those who like the whole media experience.

While I analyzed business strategies on my laptop, she made a diet of black coffee and Rimbaud, sometimes at my table and sometimes alone. As she read, she sipped from a steaming cup, her moist lips forming words in silence.

I recognized some of the words she mouthed but didn’t know French well enough to recognize the poem. Je regrette les temps de l’antique jeunesse, Des satyres lascifs, des faunes animaux. Watching her so absorbed in a libertine’s fantasies made me wonder what her marriage was like.

She was the only daughter of a philistine who made it rich with thoroughbreds and an actress who left the stage to become the old man’s trophy. She was married to a trust fund baby, a marriage over in all but name. Because she was Catholic, she stayed with a man more interested in screwing his caddy than his wife, despite the successful union of cigarettes and self-abuse that kept her own figure boyish.

Some days, I preferred to watch her from across the coffee shop rather than my table. We smiled and nodded and went about our business. She would glance at me and let me know she saw me. My appreciation, my desire, was nothing I could hide, nothing I wanted to hide.

When she finally shared her portfolio with me, her cryptographic allusions returned. A well-groomed cadet in yellow boots looking through a sheet of rain. She said this was her husband. An orange sun eating away the edges of a prosecutor’s silhouette. This was her mother. A fat priest in a worn cassock gazing at a crumbling brick church. This was her father. Two children in snowsuits waiting on the curb of a busy street. These, she said, were us.

After translating a poem for me one Friday, she invited me into her limousine and introduced me to her “green hour.” With ice water and a sugar cube, she performed the louching of a glass of absinthe, which turned the spirit milky green. A sip of the licorice-laced liquor, banned for nearly a century, infected me with uncanny lucidity.

“The most luminous geniuses used absinthe to liberate their art,” she told me. “Baudelaire, Van Gogh, and, of course, my dear Rimbaud.”

The elixir had helped generations abandon their gritty reality in favor of symbol, imagination, and dreams. It was no less for us. She was a camera seeking scenes. I was a widow at a grave. Like Percival avoiding the healing questions, we talked and read, and our days together were a collage of impersonations.

Come visit us over at Pen Flourish, the erotica imprint of Drollerie Press. Today, the free erotic horror story, Casting Shadows, concludes, and you may find the climax, although satisfying, is not what you expected.

Erotic horror not your cup of tea? How about a draught of literary erotica? The Green Hour is literary erotica that confounds bad choices with good liquor — and offers a nice helping of Rimbaud on the side — next Tuesday at Pen Flourish.

Casting Shadows: A sensual lover and seasoned killer follows her heart, believing the only way she can overcome temptation is to give into it.

I had been seeing Charlotte for three years, after serendipity transformed an opportunistic hunt into a discussion. During that time, I sometimes imagined consuming her in an orgy of lust or attempting to turn her, as if I might hold onto her forever.

Now, as the ocean appeared like a second star field in motion, its blue depths rippling with black waves, it occurred to me that we don’t live in an ocean of time but only in island moments. More than most people, I could fully live each moment, because that was all I really had. I was immortal, but only Charlotte possessed eternity.

We kissed hesitantly, and she trembled until our awkward touches evolved into an intoxicated harmony of appetites. Her lips clenched mine, and her warm breaths caressed my cheek. I pressed my lips to hers and then spread her mouth to taste her moisture. She slowly dropped to the ground and I followed, until we lay together in the sand some distance from the ocean.  

The fresh scents of her shampoo and perfume couldn’t hide the smell of sweat made sweet by her day in the sun. I kissed the exquisite taste from her cheek and chin and worked my way down.

Cooing my name, she tipped her head back and her breath caught beneath my gentle bites. Saliva spilled from my lips when I realized I had her carotid. My fangs descended and my thoughts scattered. My senses scattered, too, so I was unsure what was most real: the hollow in my stomach, the longing between my legs, or the constriction that made it difficult to breathe. Releasing her throat, I struggled with love so intimately bruising, my chest ached.

I wanted to possess her, to make her love me and no one else. Mine was the love of death–love that accrues, dominates, and controls. The love of life heals and liberates, seeks meaning and connection. This was the love Charlotte possessed, or maybe it possessed her. As I let go of dying circumstances, a new mystery absorbed the world, making my touches about pleasing more than pleasure, but the clarity I cherished was gone from her gaze. That keen-eyed awareness was behind a wall of arousal, which strangely disappointed me.

Come visit us over at Pen Flourish, the erotica imprint of Drollerie Press. Today you’ll find Part 2 of my free erotic horror story, Casting Shadows. 

A sensual lover and seasoned killer follows her heart, believing the only way she can overcome temptation is to give into it.

As often happened, I had not found the opportunity to steal clothing upon reforming, and she looked me over, confused by my nakedness. My mystical presence was already having an effect, or she would have been shouting for her comrades. Instead, she answered my question, and after I discovered her name, I asked, “How many men have you killed, Maria?”

“Too many to count, and you will be next if you’re an enemy of the people.”

I recognized her lack of political instincts, and with a clear understanding of slogans, my hand swept the space between us. “This air is your air, Maria.”

“I don’t own it.”

“It’s here for you. No one can keep from you what you need.”

“They do all the time.”

Becoming a killer affects people in various ways. Some people develop a stress disorder. Others adapt to it as a mere function they later leave behind. Some become addicted to the visceral sensuality of it, while others attach themselves to the power. And then there are those who, like Maria, lose all meaning–a suicide of the soul if not the body.

She frowned but didn’t struggle as I removed the rifle from her grip and guided her into a thicket near a lagoon. I had looked into many young eyes in my life, and hers, though tired and much older than her years, were quite forgettable. Everything about her was forgettable—her short hair tucked into her beret, her nervous gaze, and her naïve expectations. She was another meal among centuries of meals, only I find I still haven’t forgotten Maria. 

She had emptied herself of the feeling of pain for the mere feeling in her hands and thought that made her strong. She hated being a victim so much that she put a rifle on her shoulder to make victims of others. Reflecting on Maria’s choices, I began to wonder at the contradiction between my passion for life and my dispassion for particular lives.

Preparing to feed, I realized I could simply walk away, or disentangle her will from mine and allow her to fight. I found I had options, but no choice. After all, I was one of those visceral, sensual killers, addicted to the taste of pulsing flesh, and the only I way I knew to overcome temptation was to give into it.

Pen Flourish, the erotic imprint of Drollerie Press, has a blog that’s just springing to life. As we grow, you’ll find excerpts, free reads, and discussion, and we hope our little corner of decadence will become a thriving community for smart and diverse expression. To celebrate the approaching season–my favorite, I’ve posted a free story of erotic horror. The blog is for mature audiences, so you’ll have to register to read Casting Shadows.

This story was originally published a few years ago by a now-defunct press. I’ve revised and posted it in three parts, the first available today and the other two over the next two weeks. This story of lust and violence is not for the squeamish. Primarily a lesbian love story, it is also a story about an anarchy of desire that expresses itself in ghastly ways.

She took my hand, kissed my palm, and left the scent of patchouli behind. After I stood, she kissed my mouth earnestly, her lips full, her breath arriving in slow waves. She drew me closer, one hand holding my lower back and the other behind my shoulder. Her small hands were made strong with passion, and I arched against her to feel her flesh, to be more fully a part of this upheaval of life.

Like dying stars, my anxieties dimmed as her tongue traced a line toward my ear. Her breathing grew quick and shallow, her excitement fanning my own, until a sudden lucid fear seized me. I didn’t want her to know only this moment of pleasure. I wanted her to know me.

When I drew away, she suggested we go somewhere more comfortable. She took my hand and led me from the building.

As she drove, she mentioned a hotel, explaining about her husband and then asking about my house. I told her to leave the highway, take the gravel road, turn up the hill. We parked on a promontory that overlooked a farm. The low horizon offered up a brilliant panorama of stars untainted by city lights. A new moon sat like a hole in the sky.

After leaving the car, crickets serenaded me and warm air carried the expansive scent of life. I stepped through prairie grass and heard the rustle of creatures at my feet. Without moonlight, the stars left the landscape a muddle of silhouettes, and I looked back through them to feel her dismay as she watched from the car. 

She wouldn’t be persuaded, but the thought of surrendering nature for a stuffy room was too much, even for a dream. I wanted to make love to her near a tree where wildflowers perfumed the air and we could smell the earth, but she told me all the reasons a hill at midnight was dangerous.

I understood. She had entertained the darkness, but she didn’t trust the night.

As a long-time fan and author of serious erotic fiction, I’m ecstatic to be associated with Drollerie Press!

Lesbian Cowboys, an anthology of erotic lesbian stories, is now available. I’m not one to recommend Amazon usually, but you can buy it there a little cheaper than at Cleis Press.

I had a lot of fun writing my story, a pulp fiction salute (“The Adventures of a Lesbian Cowboy”),  for this anthology.  In fact, I have plans to make a series of short stories with this character: a cross-dressing lesbian Pinkerton detective who always catches her man…and her woman.

And I’m in good company in this volume, with the likes of accomplished veteran erotica authors Cecilia Tan, Radclyffe, and Sacchi Green.

I have an excerpt you might enjoy here: the randy tale of a lesbian cross-dressing pinkerton detective in 1894 rawlins.

Q: What is a Cartel?

A: Group of people who hold dominant power in a marketplace of products or services and take actions to limit competition to protect their business.

Can’t wait for this DVD “The Cartel.” Many sites have reviewed it, giving their opinions. Tells me nothing. I need to see it for myself and examine the supporting documents, many of which you can find listed in the movie website’s FAQ.

I’ve already read everything I can find. Looks to be pretty damning. Not that claims of corruption and general incompetence are new to U.S. education.

It’s not the teachers, mind you. It’s the socialist system defended by liberal ideologues blind to their own self-interest. Corruption always follows on fatter government. (Just wait and see what happens over the next decade in Washington as the bloat sets in from our recent economic “rescue” of various industries.)

The filmmaker of The Cartel appears to be an advocate of school choice and particularly lauds charter schools. I didn’t find mention of homeschool, which is suprising, given the arguments made from statistics.

American education has no checks-and-balances, no accountability.

Except for homeschoolers. We make education account for itself by saying we can do a better job. Then we do it. And we even save the school system money when we do.

Let’s Be Upfront About This

What supports that claim is a paper Homeschooling in Nevada: The Budgetary Impact going around the homeschool blogosphere right now (published in 2005). It’s not exactly an analysis done by an unbiased source. The researchers have previous issues with public education: Clements is a homeschool advocate, Wenders has projects critical of public education and the need for performance-based measures, and the Education Consumers Foundation, a consumer advocacy organization, has this to say:

Public education’s status as a regulated monopoly also serves to enhance the prominence of certain educational perspectives and to insulate them from the demands of parents, the public, and their elected representatives. Thus despite vast research and development efforts undertaken over decades, certain theoretical and institutional constraints effectively impose boundaries on the educational research that is undertaken and published. (http://www.education-consumers.org/research.htm)

And the The Nevada Policy Research Institute calls itself an “independent research and educational organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for all residents of the Silver State through sound free-market solutions to state and local policy questions.” How telling are the keywords “free-market solutions” to you about the Institute’s political bent?

Nevertheless, despite any bias of the paper’s producers, the facts speak for themselves. You’ll be amazed at not just the amount of money homeschoolers have saved Nevada, but how much the taxpayers sacrifice for a broken system and in how many areas homeschoolers surpass their public school counterparts.

I would like to see similar research in Iowa and every other state.