Book Lovers: Sexy Stories from Under the Covers

by Shawna Kenney (Editor)

Overview

Forget poorly written prose and clichéd love scenes: Book Lovers answers the call for sexy literature with substance. This collection of toe-curling tales written by and for word-worshippers offers well-crafted fiction and creative nonfiction that connects literature to libido. 

From a Vonnegut-inspired tryst to an imaginary ménage à trois with Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, the book encompasses a veritable buffet of literary fantasies.Whether they’re conjuring Junot Díaz between the sheets or dreaming of a modern-day enactment of Wuthering Heights—this time refusing Edgar in favor of lusty, bodice-ripping nights with Heathcliff—the stories in Book Lovers are designed for readers’ brains and bodies. Includes contributions from Izabella St. James, Slash Coleman, Trina Calderón, Cara Bruce, and Stephanie Auteri.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580055291
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/25/2014
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Editor

Shawna Kenney is the author of the Firecracker Alternative Book Award-winning memoir I Was a Teenage Dominatrix, which has enjoyed international translation and a television development deal. She also co-authored Imposters, a book about celebrity impersonators.

Kenney’s work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Rumpus, Bust, Juxtapoz, Alternative Press, The Baltimore Sun, The Florida Review, and on the Ms. blog, among others, and her essays appear in numerous anthologies. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a BA in film from American University.

Kenney lives in Los Angeles and teaches creative writing in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Visit her website at shawnakenney.com.


Story Contributors

Stephanie Auteri is a freelance writer and editor who has overshared in Playgirl, Time Out New York, New York Press, Nerve, Babble, The Frisky, and other publications. These days, she collaborates with sexual health experts on ebooks, blog posts, social media, and more. Learn more at stephauteri.com.

Dani Bauter has been a bibliophile as long as she can remember and now channels her book lust into a position as the marketing and events coordinator at an independent bookstore in Orange County. While not busy reading everything she can get her hands on and inappropriately fantasizing about her favorite authors, she also enjoys photography, yoga, and hanging out near the ocean. She has a weakness for accents, assertiveness, and champagne.

Laila Blake is a translator by trade who recently found a way into the writing business. Her first novel, By the Light of the Moon, was published by Crimson Romance in 2013. Her erotic short stories have been featured in Ladylit Publishing's Anything She Wants and in Go Deeper Press and Cleis Press anthologies.

Valentine Bonnaire has published at ERWA in the galleries and Treasure Chest. “Flowering” appears this year in The Mammoth Book of Quick and Dirty Erotica. Three chapters of “Man in the Moon” appear in From Porn to Poetry 2.

Cara Bruce is the editor of Best Fetish Erotica, Best Bisexual Women’s Erotica, and Viscera. Her erotica has appeared in Best American Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, and many more.

Trina Calderón is a screenwriter and arts journalist who was born and raised in Los Angeles. She is a contributing writer for Juxtapoz Magazine and wrote the groundbreaking art and culture exhibit "PUMP ME UP: D.C. subculture of the 1980s," shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC. She co-wrote the indie feature film Down For Life, which garnered critical success at the Toronto Film Festival and the Los Angeles Latino Independent Film Festival.

Slash Coleman is the author of The Bohemian Love Diaries, a blogger for Psychology Today, and the creator of the award-winning PBS Special "The Neon Man and Me." His recent work was awarded the 2013 Storytelling World Award for Best Action Stories and the 2012 Best Drama Award by United Solo. He lives in New York City and splits his time between performing new material on stage and writing for film and television. Learn more at slashcoleman.com.

Meena Delmar is a former teacher, an avid women's advocate, and a lifelong book lover. She keeps lists of everything she finds erotic, such as canyons, labyrinths, orchids, and mechanical schematics—and she knows well the seduction of the bound word.

Landon Dixon's writing has appeared in magazines like Men, Freshmen, [2], Mandate, Torso, and Honcho. Dixon's stories can be found in various anthologies, including Ultimate Gay Erotica 2005, 2007, and 2008, as well as Best Gay Erotica 2009.

Chelsey Drysdale is an editor residing in Southern California. She retired from teaching high school English at 29, and she writes personal essays “for fun.”

Jeremy Edwards is the author of some one hundred fifty erotic short stories, as well as two erotocomedic novels. His work has been published by Cleis Press, HarperCollins UK, Penguin, Seal Press, and Simon & Schuster, and in four volumes of The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Learn more at jeremyedwardserotica.com.

Assia Fengari is a writer who found the secret of a perfect physical and spiritual relationship and is willing to tell about it.

Adina Giannelli is a writer, teacher, student, and activist living in western Massachusetts. Although unrequited, her love for Junot Díaz is all but limitless.

Michelle Cruz Gonzales just might have been pregnant in graduate school. She writes fiction and memoir and is the author of Pretty Bold for a Mexican Girl: Growing Up Chicana in a Hick Town. Visit her blog at prettyboldblog.wordpress.com.

Amy Halloran lives in upstate New York and her fiction has been published by McSweeney's, Tarpaulin Sky, Gargoyle, Opium, and Alimentum. In 2012, she was a finalist for the NYFA Fellowship in Fiction.

Charlotte Musée Lorenz is a musician and a sometimes visual artist who spends her spare time practicing medicine and the drums.

Laura Roberts is the author of sexy and silly stories, including The Vixen Files: Naughty Notes from a Montreal Sex Columnist, The Montreal Guide to Sex, Ninjas of the 512: A Texas-Sized Satire, and Naked Montreal. The founding editor of Buttontapper Press, she currently lives in southern California with her artist husband and literary kitty in a house strewn with art supplies, books, and catnip.

Izabella St. James is a Playboy Bunny and a former girlfriend of the legendary Hugh Hefner. She is the author of the memoir Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion, the first book ever written by one of Hefner's girlfriends. The book has enjoyed international success, and St. James continues to model and act in Los Angeles—when not tending to her pug menagerie. She received a bachelor's degree from McGill University in Montreal and a Juris Doctor degree from Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California. She is currently writing a sequel to Bunny Tales and a book of dog rescue stories. In her spare time, she is an active volunteer with Pug Nation Rescue of LA.

L. C. Spoering has a degree in English writing from the University of Colorado, and a lesser degree in sarcasm earned from the days of yore on AOL. A storyteller since she started talking, she now spends her days writing, cleaning, cooking, reading, and contemplating the universe through various pop culture lenses.

Laurie Stone is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction and has published stories and memoirs in such publications as Open City, Anderbo, Nanofiction, Joyland, The ThreePenny Review, Creative Nonfiction, and The Los Angeles Review, among many venues. She is currently working on The Love of Strangers: Micro, Flash, and Short Fiction by Laurie Stone.

Trudi Taylor was born in Scotland from a maternal line of Mediterran

Read an Excerpt

Excerpted from "A to Z"

"Aren't you hot?" the woman across from me said finally.

I flinched. Her voice seemed to echo throughout the wing. No one else seemed to notice. I shrugged. "Not really."

"I'm hot.” She hiked her dress up to mid-thigh and fanned her face with the hem. "It's usually forty degrees in here, but today if feels like they've got the heat on."

She was attractive and intriguing, but I didn't want to talk about the heat. I wanted to read about the summer movies. I wanted to be left alone. I raised the magazine up and blocked my face, hoping to discourage any further conversation. I didn't give in to the temptation to peek around the glossy page and see if she was still watching me. I finished reading about Jude Law’s newest flick and moved on to a fascinating tale about secret plastic surgery clinics in Hollywood.

I heard the swish of fabric and was almost disappointed that I'd run her off. I jumped when she pulled the magazine away from my face. "That shit will rot your brain," she said.

She dumped the book she'd been reading in my lap and then crouched by my chair. "A is for Austen," she whispered close to my ear.

I flipped it over. Sense and Sensibility. I shook my head and tried to hand it back to her. "It's not my style."

She pushed it back at me. "Try it, you'll like it."

"I don't have a library card," I blurted.

When she laughed, I shivered. "It's okay, I already checked it out. Just have it back in two weeks."

Then she was gone, her dress billowing out behind her like a blue cloud, her sandals slap-slapping across the floor. I watched her until she walked through the door. Then I remembered to close my mouth.

By the time two weeks had rolled around, I'd gotten through Sense and Sensibility. I still wasn't convinced I was cut out for that literary crap, but I was kind of surprised it wasn't as bad as I'd expected it to be. I dropped the book in the slot in the lobby of the library and headed for my favorite chair.

She was already there, looking resplendent in a sleeveless red sun dress with a gold Batik design scattered across it. She looked up at me from the book she was reading. Another book lay in her lap. "Did you like it?"

I shrugged. "It was all right. I'm not really into that highbrow English stuff."

She arched an eyebrow. "You're going to be a tough nut to crack, I can tell."

I played it cool. I sat down across from her and thumbed through the magazines on the table by my chair. I picked up Cosmopolitan. She looked like she was going to blow a gasket. I smirked over the top of the magazine. "I'm tougher than you might think."

It was part challenge, part bravado. I was intimidated by her exotic beauty and her obvious intellect.

She didn't disappoint. She glided from her chair and put both books on the arm of my chair. "B is for Bronte. Two books, two weeks."

There was no way I was going to read two books in two weeks. Before I could tell her that, she was gone. I looked at the books. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I vaguely remembered Wuthering Heights from high school. Actually, I remembered reading the Cliffs Notes.

Somehow, I managed to read both books in two weeks. More amazing, I really liked Jane Eyre. I showed up at the library, puffed up like a peacock, and returned the books. I grinned when I saw her sitting in her usual chair, dressed all in white. White shimmery blouse, white skirt with silver buttons up the front, white sandals showing off her white-tipped French pedicure.

"Well?" she asked, looking up from the book open on her lap.

"I liked Jane. She had balls."

"Like you.” She arched an eyebrow. "And Cathy?"

I wrinkled my nose. "Too whiny."

She nodded. "I'm Zoe, by the way."

I was surprised. I figured she'd go on being the mysterious woman from the library. "Amy," I said.

Table of Contents

The Stories of Book Lovers

"20 Seconds" – A grieving couple re-ignites their sex life with the aid of a Kurt Vonnegut story.

"Ai, Yunior" – An intense-but-fleeting romance blossoms over a couple’s shared affection for Junot Díaz.

"Anaïs" – A ménage à trois with Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, told from the mystery lover’s perspective.

"Ana Maria" – A pregnant, married grad student must control her hormonal longings for her professor over round table discussions of Lolita and Fight Club.

"A to Z" – A women’s lit professor schools her Cosmopolitan-reading lesbian lover in the joys of literature.

"Bibliolatry in Blue" – A therapist administers sexual healing to a true book fetishist, inspired by One Thousand and One Nights.

"Cash for Books" – A kleptomaniac’s hustle peaks in a quick-and-dirty tryst with her favorite handsome young book buyer.

"Come Immigrate With Me" – A sex writer endures awkward intimacy with the wrong guy for the sake of the story.

"Descent" – A sensual take on Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, featuring bondage, deprivation, and delayed gratification.

"Inked" – After signing a young female fan’s arm at a writers’ conference, an aging male author finds himself voyeur to her after-party action.

"A Little Irish Honey" – A James Joyce-style romp where Clementina gets her man.

"The Longest Unzipping of My Life" – A young couple lets loose at a sex party, inspired by erotic and sex-positive literature written by the biggest names in the genre.

"Marco" – Two academics passing in the night consummate their attraction over debates about Whitman, Batailles, and Shakespeare.

"An Ode to Ass-Licking Park" – A modern-day seduction via poetry.

"Open Letters to Famous Writers" – Epistolary personal essays to Oscar Wilde, Henry Rollins, and Leonard Cohen.

"The Philosophy of Hamilton" – Two undergrad co-eds woo one another from philosophy class through the library stacks.

"Shafted" – A hard-bodied gay detective mixes business and pleasure, in the style of James Ellroy-meets-Iceberg Slim.

"Smut" – A touchingly personal essay about 1950s-era teens finding sex education in the form of men’s mags and pulp fiction.

"Text Messages" – A Hemingway-style, dialogue-driven story of two library patrons developing an "extratextual affair," ignited by the word "whom."

"That Sweet Tone" – A songwriter and fiddle player make sweet music together using Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as a sex toy.

"The Thrillhammer Orgasmatron" – A nerdy Portlandian attends a Masturbate-a-Thon at an erotica writer’s house, hoping to try a new sex machine.

"Writing for the Wolf" – Our Little Red Riding Hood-type narrator flips the fairy tale beast on its stomach, taming him with her words night after night, Scheherazade-style.

Editorial Reviews

"Unabashed, playful, and potently erotic, Book Lovers destroys forever the idea that the intellectual and the sensual are two separate and distinct worlds. In these stories, the brain and the body intertwine in a dance that will delight and tantalize anyone who truly understands what it means to fall in love with a book."
—Jillian Lauren, author of the New York Times bestseller Some Girls

"With Book Lovers, the legendary Shawna Kenney has not just assembled a fantastic, compulsively readable story collection, she has created a whole new genre—Author Porn. Book Lovers is a scintillating anthology, and a must-read for lustful literati of every stripe. Pull the blinds, and crawl between the covers."
—Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

From the Publisher