I recently had some ignorant git start telling me that smoking was bad for my health. I cut them off from their tirade and explained, if smoking was really bad for my health, there would be a warning on the packets. I didn’t bother listening to what they said after that. I was busy having another cigarette.
I mention this because the cover of Playing With Fire shows a lady smoking. It’s an elegant photograph showing a female model with her lips parted and wisp of smoke spilling bukake-style from her mouth. The secondary title for Playing With Fire is: taboo erotica.
And the collection here does successfully break plenty of taboos. There are stories of threeways, dangerous fetishes and playful, promiscuous taboo-breaking.
I can’t honestly recall the last time I enjoyed a collection so much. The stories in this collection are so hot the pages will leave scorch marks on the readers’ fingers.
If I had to pick favourites from this collection it would be a close run contest.
There is an eloquence to Shanna Germain’s ‘White Heat, White Light’ that gives the story a sultry warmth and an incredible passion. I’ve interviewed Shanna this month and she can tell you more about this story in her own words.
In ‘Fire Woman,’ Sommer Marsden introduces us to Emma who ‘likes fires’ and provides the central focus for an extremely heated encounter. Kristina Wright, ‘Where There’s Smoke’ provides a story with a devilish twist at the end that is the perfect climax to a typically well-crafted narrative. And in ‘Three on a Match,’ the incredible Jeremy Edwards takes us back to school for an education in the hottest of hot storytelling.
However, the writer in me has to sympathise with the raison d’être of Thomas S Roche’s heroine in ‘Hot Off The Press.’ Deidre is a writer who will do anything to maintain an unbroken record of publication and, when I say she will do anything, you have to read Thomas S Roche’s story to find out the extremes that word can incorporate. Suffice to say that Deidre is one of those characters that I understood 100%.
The weather forecast in the UK is promising a hot summer. Clearly the forecasters knew that Playing With Fire was being released because the summer doesn’t come much hotter than this.
Playing With Fire: Taboo Erotica
(Cleis Press, 2009; ISBN 1573443484)
Available at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
© 2009 Ashley Lister. All rights reserved.
