Incredible Orgasms
Available at: Amazon.com / Amazon UK

I lost my virginity while watching a horror movie. I won’t go into the details here. It’s sufficient to say that the four of us or was it five? — had been sitting watching Carrie (the original version with Sissy Spacek and John Travolta) when things became more exciting off-screen than onscreen. It was a fun night and, while I’ve not been back to that particular cinema since, I still enjoy watching the movie on DVD and basking in the fond recollections of a fun first time.

All of which has little to do with the books I’ve been reviewing, except for the fact that Marcelle Perks, author of Incredible Orgasms, is one of the sharpest minds writing on the subject of horror movies as well as being an authority on the subjects of sex and sexual pleasure. Marcelle and I regularly exchange emails about new horror movies that have caught our interest and old ones that have scared us witless. But, more importantly for the purposes of this review, she is the author of Incredible Orgasms a new title from Infinite Ideas Ltd which is written to help the reader understand and achieve incredible orgasms.

My wife had previously confided that there were four types of orgasm:

1) The positive orgasm (YES! YES! YES!)

2) The negative orgasm (NO! NO! NO!)

3) The religious orgasm (JESUS CHRIST! GOD! JESUS CHRIST!)

4) And the fake orgasm (ASHLEY! ASHLEY! ASHLEY!)

However, with Incredible Orgasms, Marcelle Perks has taken her study to greater heights than the aforementioned insulting comment. With her frank style of writing, and easy to follow dialogue, Incredible Orgasms is more than a how-to-do-it manual.

Marcelle approaches the subject without embarrassment or reservation and speaks in a language that is even plain enough for a reader like me to understand. Covering advice that is principally directed at females, but can also by extension be applied to males and couples: this book is a have-to-have for anyone who wants to enjoy extra pleasure in their sex life.

The Submission Gallery
Available at: Amazon.com / Amazon UK

And, just to show I don’t only name-drop with the authors of non-fiction titles, I shall now brag about the fact that I recently went to the pub with the charming Nexus novelist Lindsay Gordon.

As it happened I was halfway through reading Lindsay Gordon’s Nexus Classic title: The Submission Gallery and so I got nosey about the book’s conception.

The Submission Gallery is set in a not-too-distant-future and follows the rising career of sculptress/artist Poppy Stanton. Poppy is a typical artist (i.e. she has no money) and has taken advantage of an offer in a magazine to “test-drive” a new range of clothes. The clothes are luxuriant, fantastic and sexy. More than this the new clothes give Poppy the confidence and freedom of expression to be more creative in her sculpting. Her work becomes more erotic and consequently enjoys greater appreciation. Eventually she finds herself enjoying a liberating lifestyle that befits an artist of her calling.

However, machinations are occurring in the background of Poppy’s life. The mysterious benefactor of her clothes has a disturbing interest in art, artists and Poppy. And the reader is made aware early on that Poppy’s success as an artist will end when she becomes a collected work of art.

Lindsay Gordon told me that The Submission Gallery was influenced by reading a lot of HG Wells. However, for those who don’t care for Victorian science fiction, it’s only right to advise that The Submission Gallery is a damn sight more fun than HG Wells. The Submission Gallery is sexually explicit, and contains all the wicked descriptions of delicious eroticism that one usually finds in a Lindsay Gordon title.

What Suki Wants
Available at: Amazon.com / Amazon UK

And, while I’m still dropping names, I shall also admit that I was talking poetry with Cat Scarlett the other day. Cat Scarlett is another Nexus author and her latest title, What Suki Wants, is a tantalising road-trip across the UK. We meet Suki as she works as a waitress and we discover she has already had sufficient “history” to make a stand-alone novel. The story begins in earnest when Suki and her new friend Emily take to the road to help exorcise the memory of Suki’s former lover Magdalen.

Cat Scarlett, (author of The Player, Book of Punishment, The Animal House, and the fantastic College Girls) works the narrative with her usual deft skill. She shows us Suki’s world through the detached gaze of a mesmerising central character.

In essence, Suki is searching for a dead girl — Magdalen. Suki and Magdalen had shared a magnificent love. But that stopped when Magdalen died in her native America. Trying to rekindle the spirit of her lost lover, Suki takes to the road and revisits their old haunts.

As with every Cat Scarlett novel, the sex is beautifully realised, exciting and credible. This story follows the heroine’s journey in both the physical and spiritual sense and leads to a conclusion as satisfying as any elements of the sexual content.

All three are good books and written by fine folk. If you get a chance to enjoy their writing, you might understand why I’m proud to consider each of them as a friend.

© 2006 Ashley Lister. All rights reserved.