Book Review: The Bachelor Machine by M. Christian

Her Tangh-i-ness Does read other things besides Erotica. But since we're on the subject—there's always time for more recreational Smut. Creatives are some of the most highly-sexed beings on the planet; I mean near everything they produce is the result of an orgasm of the Creative Mind.

Take this M. Christian guy, for example. Yeah. Yeah. I started with his short story collection Skin Effect. This guy, he just keeps writing more…more...reasons to moisturize the underthings or try and hide the evidence of stimulation upon the erogenous zone of choice. There's lots of male on female action, female on female, a genuinely happy foursome (two males make out with the females and also each other). For pure male on male, do refer to M.Christian's other short story collection, one being, Dirty Words.

However, for the People of Color in the Reading Audience, be aware this collection does contain Triggers. These are Sistah-shaped ones both golden, black, and brown. I hear ya'll saying just what does she mean? Read and find out. Just remember Her Tangh-i-ness saw that the work went there and got to the end of the book. Just saying. By the way, she kept reading other M. Christian works. Consider what the author has to say about himself: "For me, being a pioneer in this area, I feel like I have to create my own respect, in a way. I'm like a missionary – at first no matter what tribe I visit, I get the hairy eyeball." So it's obviously time to start eyeballing this dude until he creams in his pants or something.

To make it easy for potential readers of this collection, Her Tangh-i-ness will return to the following rating system that came in mighty handy when describing M. Christian's Skin Effect and other works.

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* This means the sexiness might have to grow on you.

WT *Wet* Self-explanatory. No?

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* Requires immediate action after the story climax.

FAPP *Find a Partner Pronto* Try this one at home, Folks.


*Spoiler Alert*

Her Tangh-i-ness greatly appreciates pithy plot summaries. However, for those who must have a virgin reading experience, read no further, and eyeball elsewhere.


*Spoiler Alert End*


STATE

WT *Wet* Fiction. M/F Action. She-Machine meets with man. The idea of exciting the man makes the She-machine cum. And when it's over and done with all the She-machine wants to do is sleep? Ok. Can we point to this story as an example of reverse gender post-coital physiology? Maybe the real reason to read this story can be found in the music of this sentence: "Too quick, maybe, too sudden, probably, but he was hanging way down, his breathing was quick and deep, his legs were columns of meat and tension." What does ya'll think?

HACK WORK

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* Fiction. M/F Action. This is the story where Her Tangh-i-ness counted to a thousand before she turned the page to the next story. Yup. This is the one of the Oh-No-He-Didn't-Go-There! stories. As the dear, departed writing instructor, Blake Snyder of Save the Cat fame once told me, Her Tangh-i-ness Ain't in the Target Audience. Those that are—ya'll know who you is when you read it. A female shares her consciousness with her paying fares and finds herself taking a young Black woman for a session with a riding crop.

WINGED MEMORY

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* Fiction. M/F Action. Dusk, a desperate young man named without prospects sells off painful sexual memories in order to afford the cyber-whore of his wet dreams. Each time he does this. He keeps losing more and more of his essential self until the only thing left is to turn the tables on the memory merchant to whom he dealt all his unrecoverables.

EULOGY

WT *Wet* Fiction. M/F Action. Jeff and Julie, two survivors of a broken triangle comfort one another rather orally. Find more of those musical sentences here. "Our breaths synchronized, and we steamed together like a pair of heavy engines." This is the second of the mouth-whore stories.

BUTTERFLIE$

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* Fiction. M/F Action. Virtual sex for a female character where thee division between self and other and even male and female gets blurred. Can we say—extreme nipple action? The point of this story is to demonstrate the unbelievable roller coaster that only a Total mindf*ck can deliver.

EVERYTHING BUT THE SMELL OF LILIES

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* Fiction. M/F Action. This is the second of the Oh-No-He-Didn't-Go-There! stories. The POV flips from third-person into two first-person streams of consciousness: one is the ambulance driver with an unsavory Kink and the other is the biracial (Black & an unnamed race) hooker whose talent lies in appearing to die so her paying johns can get their f*cks on. You guessed it. The ambulance driver decides upon helping himself to a freebie. The upshot is that Jasmine, the hooker, is the only character still breathing by the story's end.

FULLY ACCESSORIZED

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* Fiction. F/F Action. Grrrls getting it on. Val and Cox can Do it much better because Val is a sexy cyborg with the serious Enthusiast level of an attachment. And Cox knows her way around clitoral accessories as well. There's a little something for the fisters and the f*ckers out there.

BABY BLUEBELLE

WT *Wet* M/F Action. Gen-Xers in the audience remember Nightrider and the intelligent car KITT? Throw in a car chase and oral sex while driving with a virtual babe and maybe Roger should have tried harder to stay on the right side of the law.

THE NEW MOTOR

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* M/F Action. Inspired Engineer meets with Spurned Woman near Lynn, Lynn that city of Sin. Man's love of gadgetry clashes with a scheming mistress. Didn't Spear remember the old saw about female fury?

GUERNICA

FAPP *Find a Partner Pronto* In a Society where Kink is Capital Offense, Kinky men and women gather together to act out their secret, forbidden desires. By the end of their night and the end of their story reveal the very, realest thrills. This story is a political nightmare for open Kinksters.

HEARTBREAKER

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* F/F Action. What happens with an opponent who takes the struggle to the bedroom? Read on. Kusa the hardened female cop encounters a red-headed vixen called Nine. They fall into bed, Kusa busts Nine afterwards, but Nine lets the reader in on the mega-doublecross pulled off by the eponymous, gender-switching Heartbreaker

SWITCH

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* F/M Action. One could ask the career Submissive what brings her back again and again to the experience of being owned and point to this story as an explanation.

INTERCORE

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* M/F Action. Hmmmn. Public acts of indecency need an electronic eye, a digitsl peephole, to zoom in close and closer. This story holds up the assertion that a dildo is a girl's best friend. The best and most quake-tacular cums are the ones she can give herself.

TECHNOPHILE

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* Cybernetic cock anyone? M/M Action. Young chicken (jailbait) meets with a doctored rooster. The boy birds connect in the only means left to them when the Long Thrust can't get it up. Another mouth-whore celebratory tale.

SKIN-EFFECT

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* Fiction. M/F Action. Pepper the survivor of a "wilding" offers wounded veteran Lionel Guardino a new lease on Life as her jacked-up companion and the shiny, new enforcer of her revenge. Topping from Below.

SIGHT

WT *Wet* Fiction. M/F Action. Aliens, called the Elgin, Cortez, a middle-aged, human artist, and Rosalinda, a young woman combine to complete the artist/aesthete/inspiration circuit.

THE SHOW

WT *Wet* Fiction. M/F Action. Exhibitionists out there ought to know the pinnacle of erotic performance is conducted in the heart of the city that never sleeps. You didn't think they were going to do their porno in Philly didja?

THIN DOG

FAPP *Find a Partner Pronto* Action. Music and sex are always an irresistible combination. But the idea of hearing music along with the sensation of being made love to/loving your favorite rock hero/ine sounds like a recipe for making Woodstock, Lollapalooza, and South by Souwest Music Concert combined sit down.

THE BACHELOR MACHINE

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* M/F Action. An abandoned synthetic woman pays for weekly sex sessions with a human male. In her clinging to the sexual exchange as the prelude to emotional and social intercourse, the nameless android proves herself as human as the lovers who rejected get once she was no longer new.

EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL PAINTED DOLL

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* Fiction. M/F Action. As a creative person, and a figure painter, I can appreciate M. Christian's fondness for combining artistic expression and arousal. And why not set this story also in that land of great opposites: public restraint and private passions: Japan. Makes this reader want to run and find a pretty, geisha-boi and have at him.

HOT DEFINITION

WT *Wet* F/F Action. Neko, another biracial: Asian and Black protagonist hopes to escape the sentient electronic Daemon pursuing her and her female lover. Neko makes it to the end of the story, but the Daemon has made off with the one person most precious to her.

NEW BEDFELLOWS: SEX & SCIENCE FICTION

The essays that seem to close out M. Christian collections are worth perusing for fertile, fiction-bent minds. Here is a conversation with the great Cecelia Tan and M. Christian waxing from what's wrong with much of the sex in SF to the future of Erotica. Even one disagrees with the suppositions, the essay makes for stimulating reading.


Note: This copy of The Bachelor Machine was an electronic edition provided by the author. Her Tangh-i-ness usually reviews on a for-the-love basis. No lucre has been involved.

Book Review: Skin Effect by M. Christian

Her Tangh-i-ness loves her some Kink. Erotica has always figured in my Must-Read pile.

I'm always re-reading the naughty parts. So this M. Christian offered up something hot and spicy.

Sex ain't just about the act. There's a before and after it...like everything else. But a badass writer can make you consider a pencil with an eraser as a love object or a handy-dandy pervertible. A man can nail the truth about how it feels for a woman and a gay/bi person can hammer out what its's like to live straight. A writers gotta be flexible and fluid. Are you hearing me? Ok. Now you can start salivating or get the tubes of lube ready.

To make it easy for potential readers of this collection, Her Tangh-i-ness will institute the following rating system.

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* This means the sexiness might have to grow on you.

WT *Wet* Self-explanatory. No?

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* Requires immediate action after the story climax.

FAPP *Find a Partner Pronto* Try this one at home, Folks.


*Spoiler Alert*

Her Tangh-i-ness greatly appreciates pithy plot summaries. However, for those who must have a virgin reading experience, read no further, and eyeball elsewhere.

*Spoiler Alert End*


Time and Beyond Beyond – Ernest Hogan : TAMTT Nonfic. This is an essay by a fellow writer who reminds us that sex never left the Space or Tech Ages. Tell it.

[Title Forgotten] TAMTT Fiction. A male Dom mourns the female sub he lost and one wounded woman shares her private pain with another. While the man grieves for what ended, the women begin.

Prêt-à-Porter Another TAMTT Fiction. A woman rediscovers herself with help of her smart fabric's display. Prakuna must have heard the old saw keep the whore in the bedroom.

The Subsequent State WT Fiction. A religious zealot of man sent to destroy a free-loving community decides, after experiencing what the community has to offer, to return to his own to stop the hate. Her Tangh-i-ness heartily approves the premise of woman as goddess. This is the best of the explicit nipple action stories.

Happy Birthday TAMTT Ficton. After shifting genders then only challenge left is discarding of a previous self.

The Bell House Invitation H/OA and FAPP fiction. Take Mindfuck to new level of completeness. The newest member of a cybernetic community has quite the romp with her new bedfellows.

The Potter'S Wheel WT Fiction. An English-speaking woman travels to Japan to meet with another Westerner who has been living as a National Treasure and bring his experience to a wider audience. Pity.The sole missed opportunity lay in that Her Tangh-i-ness felt certain there would have been a scene slathering wet clay all over themselves. Maybe a quickie in front of the kiln? All right. Next time.

Double Toil and Trouble WT Fiction. Women, more often than not, have problems owning their own bodies. With the constant assault on their confidence, small wonder a visit to a Tech Enchantress is in order. Gotta love any character with purple hair.

A Kiss Goodnight WT Fiction. Someone who believes in the great Connectedness finds himself approached by the collective entity in the guise of a female student. Note the return of nipple action.

LMS H/OA and FAPP fiction. Her Tangh-i-ness would like to point out that although the story of the Black man is at the back of the book, she prefers to think the author was simply observing an African tradition of the most senior in importance arrives last. Brother from this planet meets with a Transgender female at a Web Design conference and she plays the skin flute. Twice. Talk about going somewhere.

Afterword: It's Not the End of the World as We Know it–and I Feel Fine TAMTT and FAPP NonFic. Peoples, especially peoples who write Science Fiction, please pay Especial attention to M. Christian's challenge. Excuse us, Her Tangh-i-ness needs to get back to scribbling for the Positive.



Note: This copy of Skin Effect was an electronic edition acquired from an author upon the reviewer's request. Her Tangh-i-ness usually reviews on a for-the-love basis. No lucre has been involved.

Book Review: Danny by Steven Harper McClary Piziks

Her Tangh-i-ness has identified yet another juicy book for all those fellow Bisexual-approving, Mythophilic, Science Fantasy, Ancient History addicts out there.

YA Librarians please take note: other than the use of standard Anglo-Saxon-derived cuss words, this work is devoid of Any reason to hesitate to include it on bookshelves. For prurient content, look elsewhere.

And I talking about this book called Danny.

I read it. Really.

*Spoiler Alert*

Her Tangh-i-ness greatly appreciates pithy plot summaries. However, for those who must have a virgin reading experience, read no further, and eyeball elsewhere.

*Spoiler Alert End*


Ok. Onto the good stuff. So Readers meet Danny Marina a sixteen-year-old who discovers...gasp...he likes boys just as much as he likes girls and guess what? He doesn't have to give up either of them! Hows that for starters?

What do you do when you run away from one creepy situation with the son of the guy that your mother's sleeping with? Where do you go if you think you can make it on your own? Who said someplace warm?

All right, Genius.

So what if you're in the Sunshine state and you meet a girl who has no problem bedding you at the same time along with the other boy you ran away with? Hmnnn. Hmmmn.

What do you do if you were once immortal and the most recent "plaything" of that infamous Olympian Seducer, Zeus, that guy with the thunderbolts? Would you stick around and take being trapped in a divine equivalent to a suburban gated community? Do you really want to keep getting poked occasionally and pour ambrosia on command?

Her Tangh-i-ness thinks not.

Let's keep reading shall we? How do three hairs and a mug become power objects? Why was an Egyptian God seen shaking hands with Zeus? And most important of all, why did the island of Thera undergo that eruption that spread ash to the corners of the known ancient world? Think you can stand up to a mother who puts you at-risk, a pistol, and a category 4 hurricane?

See? Aren't you itching to find out?

PS. At the end of Danny, there is a teaser for another Steven Harper book called Nightmare. Always did wonder what would happen to Aboriginal people in Space. I found the teaser quite compelling.



Note: This copy of Danny was an electronic edition acquired from an author upon the reviewer's request. Her Tangh-i-ness usually reviews on a for-the-love basis. No lucre has been involved.

Book Review: Capriole

Book Review: Capriole
Evey Brett
© 2012
Loose ID LLC

What happens when an Austrian, bisexual demon-keeper meets a bisexual Spaniard recovering from a demon attack? Make no mistake. This is an erotic, dark fantasy for grownups who adore Male/Male Romance and pretty horses. Be aware, several nonconsensual encounters populate the pages. For those who like their tops blond and their dark-haired bottoms equally sensitive, Capriole hits the sweet spot. The author sets the two lovers upon plot cliff and starts tossing complications at them. Her Tangh-i-ness had no questions regarding would the lovers get together. Her preoccupation pretty much revolved about exactly when it would happen and how would they stay together given all the obstacles?

The novel opens with a death and a telegram and establishes the young Spaniard as one of the main protagonists. Felipe Camarena has been using a false name Ramon Esquivel. The first few scenes set up his challenge: how to stay sane after having multiple horrific experiences and doubting the very existence of the incubus pursuing him? Imagine being ravished by a shape-shifting, sexually ravenous being whose touch felt like being scalded?

About twelve pages into Capriole, the first sex scene occurs between a female cambion (a half-demon) and her warden the above-mentioned, bi demon-keeper Lukas von Rainer. Her Tangh-i-ness appreciated observing a female aggressor with a male object of her desire. Lukas is trapped in a twisted relationship fueled by his need to help the cambion who continues to leech off him sexually, psychically, and emotionally. By the time, Felipe enters the picture, Lukas decides Felipe’s plight gives him the impetus to pursue what Lukas has wanted all along: a balanced relationship with an equal who gives as well as takes. Can you blame him?

Her Tangh-i-ness has some quibbles with Capriole. The POV wobbles a bit. It’s not always clear whose head the reader is supposed to stay in. The horses don’t appear until halfway through the book. Yeah, Her Tangh-i-ness admits it. She’s been into Lipizzans since her reading Marguerite Henry days. However, there’s a whole other sequel to Capriole called Levade that will hopefully indulge her horse fetish.

What Her-Tangh-i-ness also valued about Capriole was a convincing exploration of the confusion between psychic awareness with the symptoms of mental illness. Most people won’t admit to having conversations with horses nevermind hearing from demons. The psychic storms Felipe and Lukas weather close the gap between “real-world” trauma and the physical, mental, and social manifestations of that trauma. It is their very “woundedness” that makes Felipe and Lukas compelling characters worthy of resolution. Only a read-through of Capriole will prove if their outcomes satisfied.

Note: This copy of Capriole was an electronic edition acquired from an author upon the reviewer's request. Her Tangh-i-ness usually reviews on a for-the-love basis. No lucre has been involved.

EBook Review: Like Twin Stars: Bisexual Erotic Stories

'Lo Peoples,

Like Twin Stars: Bisexual Erotic Stories
Edited by Cecelia Tan and Kelly Clark
Circlet Press, Inc
©2009

Disclosure: I received a free review PDF courtesy from the editor upon my own request.

Okay folks, get your bibs on. There's some literary treats ahead.

Some Anthologies deserve an extended metaphor. Allow me to regale you with such a gustatory conceit. Taste is a pretty basic matter for all of us, like that infamous three letter word.
Ya'll know it... s-e-x.

And not just vanilla sex, Peoples.

Bi-Sex.

Spicy, sweet, and titillating just like her Tangh-i-ness likes it.

Some anthologies provoke the equivalent of indigestion. Others get devoured and still others are savored. Like Twin Stars: Bisexual Erotic Stories belongs in the latter category. As a writer m'self, I appreciate well-crafted words. I relish the strong flavor of sex without offending the senses or the mind that digests the entire confection.

I don't envy the editors' task of sifting through many tales to find the three that were intended to give the reader a consummate experience. It's like going to the candy store and having to choose between a bag of gummi bears with their chewy, gelatin delicacy, or a bag of peppermint candies that heat up the inside of one's mouth a bit before the sugar rush fades, and lastly a bag of M&Ms® with their fleeting crunch and central chocolate. Yumminess abounds any way one decides to go.

I'll start, in reverse order, with the digestif: The Travesties by Giselle Renarde.

Next, on the palate, is Neil Hudson's Incubus, Succubus.

And the apértif would be The Dancer's War by N.K. Jemisin.

Enter Nurse Clinician Sebastian Savant and the object of his passion—an intersexed person—Cam/ille.
Throw in a mini-history of an invented slang terminology, a predatory researcher, cisgender bias, and the lover who vanished and gorge.

After feasting upon The Travesties, I want to start chanting the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup jingle.
Mentally review the jingle with me now. Something about twos and tastes in a single mouthful right? Got the picture of what that story holds for consenting adults?

Moving right along....

Ready for a slow boil that results in a saccharine implosion?

The nameless, first-person, male narrator of Incubus, Succubus feels set apart from his world. This is a sexual coming-of-age story with a twist. I should have recognized the hint of otherworldly from the first sampling, but I didn't. The rustic, folktale milleu enchanted me right out of guessing the outcome of narrator's quest for erotic awakening, but I'm certain other readers will manage to fight off candy-induced stupors.

I've already waxed rapturously about N.K. Jemisin and her hot men in a previous novel review. I felt honor-bound to begin with the succulent tales from Renarde and Hudson because of it. Last-mentioned The Dancer's War is never least in my book. Remember this is the story that opens the anthology. Meet two more toothsome delights, in the persons of the bantam Elan of the Weavers-of-the-Cloud and the strapping Ansheara of the Ketuyae. Our two virile goodies engage in a battle of wills that begins on a dance ground and ends with both men in a compromising position for the titillation of assembled women. Her Tangh-i-ness was left fiending for more...more...more.

All compliments to the chefs go to the three writers, naturally. I finished well satisfied. With the editors I'll leave a simple request: a companion volume featuring three, bisexual female protagonists and their sexcapades.

Peace,

Her Tangh-i-ness