Cecilia Tan's Blog, page 42

Harry Potter at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

No, really. A friend just forwarded me the flyer about it…

Harry Potter Scavenger Hunt

JULY 9−SEPTEMBER 5

Pick up a "Marauder Map" to explore specimens from

wolves to wolfsbane and test your depth of knowledge

about Harry's world.

Free with museum admission.

Hogwarts at the HMNH

JULY 27, 5:00−8:00 PM

Come as a favorite character or creature. Discover how

the fictional potions, wands, and magical creatures have an

origin in the natural world.

Extended hours, 5:00–8:00 pm, with half price admission

Harvard Museum of Natural History

26 Oxford Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

http://hmnh.harvard.edu

I won't be here on July 27th–I'll still be in the UK!

Download the pretty Hogwarts poster: http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/images/stories/documents/harrypotter%20poster_summer.pdf

Black Feathers new cover design poll. Comments wanted.

Cover design poll!

So, I'm going to do an ebook edition of my old collection of erotic short stories that Harper Collins published back in the 90s, BLACK FEATHERS.

The original cover featured a gorgeous naked woman, upside down, and was almost entirely black and white except for the small, tasteful lettering of the subtitle "{erotic dreams}". I really loved this cover. Also, she wrapped around from the front cover onto the back, which of course won't work for ebook, where there is no back or spine.

When Harper did an ebook edition of the book, before they let the print edition go kaput and I got smart and took the rights back, they used the same image, but much larger, put her all on the front, and kept it monochrome.

So what I'd like is to do something in the new ebook edition that might echo the old cover, but might take a few things into account. Among other things… why does it have to be a woman on the cover when men are just as much the erotic focus in the book as women are? The days when a man on a cover automatically meant "gay" are over, and I agree with the arguments of Erotica Cover Watch who say that if women writer erotic material about men for a female audience then a naked chick on the cover can be just plain wrong. However, my work is nowhere near that easy to categorize, many of the stories have queer and bisexual themes, there are both female and male narrators, etc.

In other words, there's no clear thematic or political reason to choose either a male or female image.

So I did two versions. One with a male figure, one with a female figure. And then I did two versions of each of those, one with naturally bright color (red) and one with desaturated color.

So, have a look and give me your thoughts. Images below the cut:

The original HarperCollins cover:

(and no, the original art is not available as far as I know, and I probably couldn't afford it if it was… and no, it's not a photo of me. I used to joke that it was Elizabeth Wurtzel, which if you were in publishing in the late 90s you'll appreciate.)

And here's how they revamped it for ebook purposes, originally, below:

And now here are my four experiments for new cover:

Version 1a — male desaturated, below

Version 1b — male saturated, below

Version 2a — female desaturated, below



(ignore streakiness in her skin tone — I was erasing the watermark from the comp version of the image)

Version 2b — female saturated, below



(ignore streakiness in her skin tone — I was erasing the watermark from the comp version of the image)

My strawberry chocolate chip bread recipe

Those of you who follow me on various social media may have seen me mention over the weekend I was baking strawberry bread. A few asked for the recipe. Ask and ye shall receive!

The base recipe I started with was the Fanny Farmer Cookbook recipe for banana bread, but with a few crucial changes. Like using strawberries instead of bananas. And chocolate chips instead of walnuts. Details below:

First off, I've never ever made the recipe in Fanny Farmer with walnuts. I've never liked walnuts particularly, whereas chocolate chips? Hell yeah. Chocolate and banana go well together.

This was one of the first recipes I made out of the FF cookbook when I was in college. The book was a gift from the brother of my then-boyfriend. It's a mass market paperback, now much falling apart and yellowed, but it's still my preferred recipe for chocolate chip cookies (they come out much better than the recipe on the Nestle package) and of course for banana bread.

Among the things I discovered about putting chocolate chips in, is that if you don't refrigerate the bread, the chips stay soft and melty even after the bread has returned to room temperature for a day or two! (And the loaf never lasts more than two days because it's too delicious to let sit around.)

Now, the idea to make strawberry bread instead of banana bread came about because the strawberry harvest has been huge this year, and so we had a quart of overripe strawberries to use. I wanted to make something with them for our Fourth of July mega-picnic on the Charles River, where we go and stake out a fireworks spot starting at 12 noon, and laze around all day eating and reading and otherwise being at our leisure along the banks of the river while waiting for the other half-million people to show up. (We're on the Cambridge side of the river, so maybe it's only 250,000 people?) This ruled out strawberry pie — too messy to serve and eat, and I didn't have enough strawberries anyway.

The thought of overripe fruit made me think of banana bread, though.

MACERATION. I figured strawberries are similarly fibrous to bananas, but they probably have more water in them. So to start with I quartered the berries (and hulled them/washed/etc), tossed them with a little sugar (about 2 tablespoons?) and let them sit like that in a bowl in the fridge for about 6 hours. This sucks a lot of the water out. Pour off the excess liquid from the bowl after 6 hours or overnight and you will have a nice strawberry syrup there to make cocktails or soda with.

After pouring off the liquid, I mashed the strawberries with a potato masher, just enough that there were no untouched pieces.

Beat two well-beaten eggs into the strawberry mush. Add one teaspoon salt, one teaspoon baking soda, 3/4 cup sugar, and two cups of all-purpose flour. No, I didn't bother to sift it. Mix it all together with a wooden spoon and you should have a pretty pink pasty dough. Add about 3/4 cup of chocolate chips. (You could add nuts also if you like that sort of thing.)

I baked it at 350 degrees, split into two EZ-Foil disposable loaf pans (greased with butter) for 45-50 minutes, but if you put it all into one loaf pan give it more like 55. it's done when a toothpick or skewer comes out clean. The resulting bread will be moist and dark. And yummy.

In recipe style:

Ingredients:

two tablespoons white or brown sugar (for maceration)

3/4 white sugar

2 cups flour

2 eggs

1 quart strawberries

1 tsp. salt

1tsp. baking soda

scant one cup of chocolate chips

optional: chopped nuts

You need to macerate the strawberries ahead of time to pull the water out. Wash, hull, and halve or quarter them, toss with sugar, and let sit in a bowl for a few hours (or overnight). Afterward, pour out the excess liquid (and use it in something else, like strawberry cupcake frosting or a cocktail). Then mash them just enough to get them squished thoroughly, but not all the way down to a puree. You want a mass of fibrous chunks.

Preheat oven to 350 and grease either a large loaf pan or 2 medium (or three small — bread makes a great gift…). Beat two eggs well, add them and the mashed strawberries to a large mixing bowl. Beat them together. Add all the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, baking soda, salt) and mix it all with a wooden spoon or spatula. Once there is no dry flour, add the chocolate chips, mix to distribute them evenly, and then spread the dough into the loaf pan(s). Bake 50-55 minutes at 350 for one large loaf, 45-50 for smaller ones, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

If it turns out you want banana bread after all, it takes three, large, overripe bananas in place of the strawberries.

It's possible this might work without the maceration step, and with just mashing the berries and pouring off what liquid might come from that. Or maybe just adding a wee bit more flour if it seems too wet. I'll probably try that at some point when I decide I want to do this and have forgotten to macerate ahead of time. If anyone runs that experiment, please let me know!

Looking for travel tips for the UK & Iceland

For those who haven't been following my tweetstream, I'm gearing up for a trip to England for the Diacon Alley Harry Potter convention in Canterbury at University of Kent. On the way back to the US I'll be spending two nights in Iceland. I'm gathering tips and advice from you all. Specifics below…

The Potter con ends on July 24th and then I have three nights in the UK. I'd really like to go to Wales, where my great-grandmother was from (she was a somewhat noted Welsh opera singer, contralto Tilly Bodycombe Hughes, who starred with Ethel Barrymore in the Broadway production of The Corn Is Green), however, having never been to London, it seems like I ought to concentrate on there. (I also really want to go to York, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that maybe I can attend the IASPR conference there next year…)

So, London. I'm a foodie, very interested in literature and history, art and architecture, and will be on a limited budget. Functionally I'll have two full days in London, and one full day in Reykjavik. I suppose the Tower of London is de riguer, and I've had Lord Soane's Museum recommended to me as well.

I'm prepared to book rooms at hostels if they're reputable. Suggestions welcome!

Should I try to get pounds before I leave? I've got a friend loaning me a phone I can buy a SIM card for.

For those of you going to Diacon Alley, me, GatewayGirl, and Annescriblerian are going to take the train from London to Canterbury on the 20th, the day before the con starts, and stay in the Kipps hostel there together. We booked a room with four bunks and so the fourth is still available. Cost will come to under $35 US. We're going to try to get on the 15:42 train from London's St. Pancras station to Canterbury West.

And am I nut for wanting to change into my robes on the train? (Yes.) If I have time, you bet I will also be stopping by Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross, which is right by the St. Pancras station as well.

My Readercon schedule

My Readercon Schedule is complete! I can't make it there Sunday so the main action is Friday/Saturday. I've got one juicy panel, and also I'll be part of the Circlet Press erotic sf/f reading on Saturday night at 8pm! Yes, that puts us opposite the first part of the Kirk Poland, but I assure you, we will make it worth your while. We will have some goodies to give away, and perhaps even cake…!

[Readercon is a sf/f/spec fic literary convention in Burlington, MA, July 14-17.]

(Full schedule under the cut…)

Friday July 15

6:00 PM Vin. Kaffeeklatsch. Sit down and chat with me with a cup of coffee or tea. Bring questions!

8:00 PM G Traditional Categories Are Melting. Leah Bobet, Michael Dirda, Kit Reed, Delia Sherman (leader), Cecilia Tan, Vinnie Tesla. Henry Jenkins has published a book called Convergence Culture, Gary Wolfe's most recent essay collection is titled Evaporating Genres, and Jim Woodring recently wrote that "we are living in a transitional period where traditional categories are melting, blending together. Boundaries everywhere are being dissolved…. The blurring of the line between the drawn image, the written word, the video and the game is disturbing, but nothing can stop it." Is the melting of categories a new phenomenon? What are the perils and pleasures of blurred lines? Who is threatened, and who benefits?

Saturday July 16

1:00 PM E Autographs. Cecilia Tan, JoSelle Vanderhooft. — I will bring a few copies of The Prince's Boy vol 1 and the Magic U books, as the book dealers are unlikely to have bothered to stock them. (No disrespect meant to the book dealers, but that's been the case for years now. If any book dealer *will* be carrying them–yes, they are available from Ingram–please let me know and I will happily trumpet you as the source and leave my books in the car!)



8:00 PM NH Circlet Press group reading. Cecilia Tan, Vinnie Tesla, Frances Selkirk, Sacchi Green, and others. Circlet Press authors read (salacious) selections from their work.

Bertrice Small at IASPR, interviewed by Sarah Frantz & the audience

One of the fun things at the IASPR conference was that the program closed with an interview with Bertrice Small. (Wikipedia, if you need it) Bertrice Small is one of the grand dames of romance, one of the original eight "Avon Ladies" who began publishing in 1978. She has been published continuously ever since, over 42 novels and still going. She was interviewed by Sarah Frantz, president of IASPR, and also took questions from the audience.

Disclaimer: The following notes are only about half of the remarks made (I just couldn't type that fast), and with the questions, I lost track of noting when the question came from Sarah and when from the audience. Also, the questions are completely paraphrased, whereas I tried to accurately capture what Ms. Small said, though I couldn't get it all.

Sarah started things off by asking her about the publishing history of The Kadin, her first book, which was actually sold in 1973 to Putnam. (The book tells the tale of a Scottish woman of privilege who is kidnapped and sold into the harem of a 16th century Turkish sultan.) She had sold the book and her son had been born. When he was about a month old, she received a letter saying that Putnam would not be publishing the book after all. When she called to find out why, she was told that her editor had a fight with Walter Minton who was head of the house at the time, and that the three books that were still under contract from that editor were canceled. Bertrice Small then insisted to talk to Minton. She got Minton's secretary, who was a "Gibbs girl" (from the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School). Ms. Small was also a Gibbs girl, and the secretary assured her she would make sure that Mr. Minton called her back. ("That's called networking!" Small said with glee.) Minton eventually called her back.

Small: Well, I was then subjected to about ten minutes of him telling me how The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 was going to be a huge hit, and that the critics were wrong, and it was going to be made into a movie and all this. Eventually he wound down and [she asked him what was happening with the book.] He said, 'Mrs. Small, aren't you recently a mother?' I said yes, I have a baby. 'Ms. Small, I suggest you stay home and be a good mommy to your little boy and forget about this writing business.' Well, I told him right then and there I would be writing and be in this business long after he was gone. Last I heard of him he was practicing family law in New Jersey. (Applause.)

(What happened to the manuscript then was it went back to her agent, whom she described as "a wonderful agent but he lacked chutzpah. In those days, the hardcover houses were the thing." So he spent about two and a half years sending the book to hardcover houses who kept turning it down. She kept urging him to send it to Avon, who had published The Flame and the Flower, and he kept saying not yet, not yet. Eventually he did listen and sent it there and they bought it immediately. Of the original eight "Avon Ladies" Small is one of the four who are still alive and publishing. Not only that, Nancy Coffey, the editor who first worked with them there, is still editing. A few years later, Nancy moved to Ballantine books. )

Small: I said "I want to go with you." So we moved to Ballantine. They didn't treat Nancy very well, but they treated me well as I did so many books with them. I wrote the books I wanted to read. In those days the books were just "popular fiction" and now they would call it romance. I didn't think of it as romance at the time. I've published 42 historical novels, but sometimes you want to do something different. I had heard this story of a woman who got divorced by her husband and you know sometimes the woman got nothing. But I heard this one story of a woman who when her husband was divorcing her went to court to say you wouldn't be who you were without me, you wouldn't have been as successful in business if I weren't throwing all these parties for you and raising your children, I'm entitled to half of everything, and half of your pension. And she won. And I thought, oh, I'd like to write a story about an ordinary woman. That was the birth of the Pleasure series. It all takes place in a small town where all the women were into "The Channel" which is a kind of fantasy world where you could program in your wildest fantasy and then push a button on your remote and you're there. Her husband is getting a "Jennifer," a younger woman. Well, she stays in The Channel to avoid her husband (and work out her issues) — she appears to be in a coma, and this manages to ruin the relationship he has with "the Jennifer" whom he attacks when he gets frustrated. He spends the night in jail and dies of a heart attack. But it isn't just a coincidence. The thing is, The Channel is run by Mr. Nicholas who is the devil. You see, this way she didn't just win and get half of everything, she gets it all. A new Channel book is coming out this year that is 5 novellas that run the gamut from hot to sweet to incendiary.

Question from the audience: Are the women punished for dealing with the devil?

Bertrice: Oh, no. The first one ends up working for him! And The Channel network owns a lot of talent agencies and hotels and things like that… No, the women aren't punished. They don't all stay in the Channel.

Question: Did you know that the Hearst offices were picketed by protesters in the 1970s who felt that romance was damaging to women?

Bertrice: People don't understand that not all fiction is literary. I write popular commercial fiction. I do not write literature but I write good books. I don't write women as victims. My grandmother came here as a working woman, and my own mother was contract administrator at NBC, she founded two departments. She worked her way up from the secretarial pool and she was told "you really should be a vice president, but as you know we don't make women vice presidents." Not long after that they started making women vice presidents, of course.

Question: But what about forced seduction?

Bertice: I don't write it. It was popular in the 1970s and into the 80s but not so much now. I'm starting a new book now that takes place in Renaissance Florence, and I'm surprised to find how sheltered women were there! It was as bad as the seraglio in Turkey! My heroine will have a bad first marriage, but he's going to die. I always kill them! But he sends her to a house on the coast and she learns to make decisions on her own. In one of my books, you might start of wimpy, but by 50 pages in, you'll be strong.

Question: It seems like the latest thing is to publishing more erotic books with more heat, with the Kensington erotica titles. But you always did that.

Bertrice: I used to be called "Lust's Leading Lady!" When I had my first grandchild, I said that's got to stop. (laughter) Thing is that me and Thea Devine were the first books in the Brava line and we convinced Walter Zacharias (at Kensington) to publish those.

Question: I heard you were looking for a library to take your papers and library of reference books…?

Bertrice: I've decided on Bowling Green. I want the books to go to my local library, but the papers to Bowling Green.

Question: Because the librarian was here from Bowling Green earlier, but she had to leave.

Bertrice: Oh I wish I'd met her. I should have done it long ago, but the thing is that writers have other lives. My husband survived a heart attack two and a half years ago, but he has dementia. I have to leave him five notes all around the house as to where I went or he won't remember. Then there's my son. (Sighs.) His soon to be ex-wife just… [story ensues about family strife]. I'm so busy I don't have as much time to write as I like, and I don't get to write them the way I like. These days they want manuscript to be 300-400 pages. I used to do 600-800 and they were happy as clams but these days you have to be a good editor yourself. You have to cut out a lot of color and you really learn to use your words.

I'm a businesswoman as well as a writer. While I was writing the O'Malley books I asked Nancy after I turned in two other books, do you think Ballantine would like a sequel? And she said oh yes! So I wrote All the Sweet Tomorrows.

Q: I'm fascinated by The Kadin because it has a real life character, a historical personage.

Bertice: Actually I've written on several real people. Adora was Teodora who married into the Ottoman empire and whose dowry was how the Ottomans got a toe hold in Europe. I'd like to write one about Grace O'Malley. She was rough and tough and not the stuff that most romance women are made of, so I invented her cousin Skye.

Q: They say you can't kill a romance heroine…

Bertrice: No one says "can't" to me! That's one of the benefits about being around so long. Skye does die, but she's not the protagonist of the books in that series anymore by the time she does. Nancy always encouraged us to do what we wanted to. I know today there are lots of rules and regs, but you know today everyone wants to know three easy to rules to fame and fortune. But that's not how it goes. Everybody has rules and regs and I hear younger writers complaining about it. I drive the marketing people insane because they want an outline. I don't write outlines!

Q: So you're a pantser, not a plotter?

Bertrice: I'm an "into the mister." I've always written this way. I wrote a character who was just going to be a minor character and he turned into the hero of the book! What I give the sales department is two to three pages of bullshit, and it's enough for them to go on.

Q: Like you're doing this series in Florence, what do you tell them?

I'll write two to three pages, most of it will be very descriptive of the history of the time, you know? And then a little bit on the story, but just the little scrap I know. I'm trying to make all the women in the story interesting. They always write the cover copy for me, and then when I get it I say "well, it needs a little tweaking." What's funny is that they get some of it right! And I can build on that.

Q: You're also not supposed to write outside of England and such…

Nobody tells me no. I am very very lucky to have started back in '78.

Q: Do you have a favorite location or setting?

No. I go wherever the spirit takes me. I like Florence, I've never been there. If I read one more Regency romance review I'm going to vomit. I've done England. I've done Ireland, I've done Wales, a little of Scotland, I've done the Ottoman empire, Rome, Palmyra. Also a little on American history but I find American history dull. After 1840 I'm not interested. I don't have a feel for American history.

Q: I'm teaching a class on popular romance and I think in chronologies. I figure I'll do the teens, and then Georgette Heyer, and then the 1960s… but which book of yours would you choose?

I would pick either The Kadin or Skye O'Malley.

Q: Why?

Either because The Kadin was my first book, or Skye O'Malley because it was m first book on the Times bestseller list. And my first book out in trade. I can tell you which heroes I like. I like Adam deMarisco. He's probably my favorite of the Skye men. Francis Earl of Bothwell, too. I love Prince Kalik very much, too.

Q: Do you think the reader wants to be the heroine or is she just a placeholder?

I think in my books people often close the book and say "phew, I'm glad I'm not her!" I just want to entertain. I don't want anyone to identify with anyone. People claim that romance gives women unrealistic expectations for life, but reading romance is, as I said, it's entertainment. Is going to the theater or the movies going to give you the wrong idea in life?

I'm tired of people who don't want to teach history because it's not politically correct. We cannot judge books on the politics today. I don't dare write a book set in a harem because of the problems we had since 9-11. Ignorance is running rampant. I worry that my grandchildren will grow up uneducated. But I'm just a 73 year old woman who writes romance! What do I know?

More geeking out about romance from IASPR

If you've been enjoying the tempting tweets from #IASPR, I should point out that the entire conference proceedings will be published in JPRS, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, known familiarly as "Jeepers."

Also, membership in IASPR is a mere $25 per year, so if you really want to be one of Ravenclaws of Romance, click here: http://iaspr.org/membership/

I've been thrilled by the intersection of literary criticism, feminist theory, and gender studies that come together at IASPR. I took copious notes on some of the presentations, while others fascinated me too much to be typing during. I offer here a few of the thought-provoking statements in the papers presented, but this falls far short of the full analysis presented by each.

The very first presentation was one of my favorites of the entire conference, and related very directly to my own work and career. Catherine Roach (U. of Alabama) presented a paper entitled "'I Love You,' He Said: The Money Shot in Romance Fiction as Feminist Porn." The online description of the paper encapsulates the point quite well: "This paper seeks to unpack a key, climactic narrative moment of the popular romance novel's "happily-ever-after" ending, wherein the hero declares his love for his beloved. In this moment, I argue we see romance fiction as (1) a type of feminist fantasy space, (2) woman-centered porn, and (3) porn with a telos, or narrative goal, superseding the novels' actual sex scenes."

The key point that really opened my eyes (because it elucidates exactly the technique I use in the Magic University books, though I had done it unconsciously) is that the sex scenes themselves are foreplay leading up to the emotional climax, which is the declaration of love. I'm taken with Catherine's idea that the "payoff" for female consumers is the declaration of "I love you" and that this moment in the narrative is not only the goal, it is the "proof of authenticity" in the same way the physical "come shot" is in film pornography. (And even more interesting is the thought that even in a romance novel that has no sex scenes at all, as in Christian romance novels, this climax in the declaration of love is what makes romance still the equivalent of "porn" for romance readers.)

The conference opened with a panel (that I spoke on) about how the line between romance and erotica is blurring. I gave a personal definition in which I said functionally for me the difference is that erotica has the goal of producing a physical reaction in the reader, while romance has the goal of producing an emotional reaction, and as far as I'm concerned what works best is work that does both of these things. This is why even in my erotic short stories there is quite often a romantic element and also why I can't imagine writing a romance that doesn't have an erotic element (even if it's sublimated into longing and fantasizing without on-camera sex scenes).

But where that thought takes me, spurred by Catherine's analysis, is that in this way modern romance is much more reflective of the way sex interacts with love for many women now rather than sticking with the previous formulas in which all sex comes AFTER the marriage (which comes after the declaration of love). In my own life and in the lives of many of my peers, the sex comes first. We use sex as a way to test the compatibility of a potential mate, and sexual relations as a gateway to love. (I won't get into issues of physiology, the sexual triggering of oxytocin and its place in bonding, beyond this parenthetical mention.)

The point is that in real life, for some of us, the sex truly is the foreplay to the payoff of the declaration of love. Perhaps this is so obvious as to not merit mention, but it seems notable to me because I rarely find people actually admitting this. No one, of course, wants to appear cold-blooded in a loving relationship, but the theme of the conference is actually Sex, Power, & Money, and much of the analyses this weekend have centered around ways characters in romance novels use status, money, and power as motivators. Both in books and in films, from Pride and Prejudice through Sex in the City, female attractiveness and availability is used to acquire money, power, and status through their men. (In historicals of course the only path to empowerment is via the male.) Nowadays though, at least in the queer- and kink-identified communities I have grown up in, we find sexual compatibility and lasting passion to be of higher value than money.

Which leads me to wonder if I did an analysis of BDSM-based and queer-focused romance if I would find a greater emphasis on the value of the sex (and its place in validating personal identity) than on the more "traditional" romance ideals of true love tied to a diamond ring and landed estate/portfolio? Of course, there are the same-sex romances, for example, which take place in an alternate universe where there is no homophobia, and where everything is entirely the same as possible to a traditional romance except for the one key point that the two main characters are man and man or woman and woman. These would have to be counted separately, I suppose… or I'd have to posit a separate axis on which to divide the genres. Hmmm.

Validation of personal identity for those who are marginalized is perhaps a bigger prize than financial security or the attention and love of a powerful/high status mate. Does that change the rules of romance for queer-identified authors/protagonists/readers? Or does it merely establish the rules more firmly, it's merely that the prize is different?

Well, this started out as a blog post about the conference, but it's quickly morphing into a topic I should probably develop into a paper for JPRS. Jeepers…

Later in the conference, after I wrote the above, Ruth Sternglantz presented on WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, on wildness and taming in lesbian romances. She argues convincingly that medieval romance was often about taming wild women and current romance is usually about taming dangerous men. In lesbian romance, however, there is a third option, which is to celebrate that wildness. The declaration of love is a declaration that the wildness is what is wanted, not change and domestication. There are some lesbian romances that follow the hetero model, but many take this third option that is affirming to lesbian identity. She says, "Lesbian romance offers a third alternative celebrating the wildness, where we are loved FOR their wildness and transgression not in spite of it. Wildness is not the enemy of the happy ever after. "

Ruth was on a panel with Radclyffe and Katherine Lynch PhD (who writes as Nell Spark) where each of them presented on an aspect of lesbian romance. Lynch went all the way back to Spenser's Faerie Queen, through the Well of Loneliness, through Ann Bannon's Beebo Brinker and the lesbian pulps, up to the modern day in her presentation, and Radclyffe topped it off with a terrific presentation on Queering the Alpha, and the differences between the alpha male in old bodice rippers and the alpha butch in more recent lesbian conceptions, especially the alpha paranormal butch. It would appear in both het and queer romance the alpha male, who fell out of favor in the 1990s as politically incorrect, has had a resurgence as vampire, as werewolf, etc… with a magical or biological imperative to be aggressive, territorial, lustful, and protective. Not only does the magic or beast-nature of this character excuse what would merely be character flaws in a human, the paranormal also allows for the heroine now to be able to match the hero with power of her own. Rather than tone down the alpha male here, we have a pumped up and powerful alpha female heroine as well.

Moving on to other topics…

Jonathan A. Allan (U Toronto) presented on the topic of "Too Much and Too Little: On Flirting and Kissing." His polemic was deeper than I can encapsulate here, but the point that stuck with me was this idea of the "romantic paranoid." Romantic paranoia is the state the character gets into when attracted to another character but not yet sure of the other character's feelings, causing constant questioning — was that flirtatious? was that look or that word meant to be flirtatious or is it just imagination/wishful thinking?

This is one of my favorite parts of writing, is the stage where the characters are trying so very hard to understand what might be going on in each other's heads. This is why, of course, my ultimate fantasy is that of "Telepaths Don't Need Safewords," where the guessing eventually not only ends, but is consummated with a merging of thoughts and knowledge of each other.

This idea of mind-reading comes up again in some other papers, as well, including the kind of mind-reading that the READER takes part in, deducing what the characters are thinking, as well as the characters trying to gain intuitive understanding of each other. This is one of my major kinks, of course, and so I greatly enjoyed hearing it teased out as a romance trope and learning once again that one of the things I like best about sf/fantasy is I can take things which are merely metaphorical in other genres and make them real in my own worlds. My mind-readers are literal.

How amusing is it that the word "heteronormative" was uttered when I had not been at the conference even five minutes (by Eric Salinger, one of the JPRS editors), and yet the word "cliche" wasn't spoken until the very end of the Q&A session at the last panel. (Heteronormative, aka "the H-bomb." Hee hee!)

Oh and there is much more, about the war between desire and choice, about the undermining and/or upholding of patriarchal structures by the choices of romance heroines, the correlation between richness (as in money) and desirability in a hero, about how desire for the "other" drives narratives, and much much more, but I have to post now before this gets any longer. I also took notes on Bertrice Small's interview that closed the conference and will try to get those notes live soon, as well! Ms. Small was gracious and wonderful to hear.

Notes from the IASPR conference: Laura Kipnis keynote

I had the pleasure and privilege to speak at the IASPR conference at NYU yesterday. IASPR=International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, or as I dubbed the group on Twitter yesterday, the Ravenclaws of Romance.

Since then, I've been taking notes at various sessions, sometimes able to capture more of what a speaker says than others. I'm going to post some of them here, but with the caveat that I can get down no more than the basic gist of some of these incredibly thoughtful and analytical papers of these scholars.

I'll start with the keynote remarks of Laura Kipnis. I thought her name was familiar to me, and indeed it was, from this 2005 article on Slate about how Deep Throat is a utopian fantasy.

Under the cut, my notes from her talk, "What I Learned from Writing About Love."

What I've Learned from Writing about Love

Laura Kipnis

My interest was the unhappily ever after ending rather than the HEA (happily ever after), my entry into the "love plot" was via a counter-romantic route: adultery and betrayal. I took modern coupledom as my text, gleaning details from couples I knew, pop culture, and my own experience though I never wrote in first person as a confessionalist.

It was the [Bill] Clinton years that got me thinking about marital betrayal. It led to felling two house speakers and possibly a president, resignations of congressman, women, derailed the nomination of a joint chief, etc. Adultery had become a national crisis. My thought was adultery was acting as a trope, with the electorate playing the role of the cheated wife. We'd become a nation of cuckolds waiting patiently at home while they whooped it up behind the doors of power. It had become the national metaphor for the way the political class ignored their vows to the public.

But readers didn't want to focus on the metaphor or the politics, they wanted to read the personal aspects. Many read the books as an endorsement of adultery(!). Because I wrote about the texture and structure of the foundering marriages, "the suburban gulag," I received a lot of gratitude from readers who felt I described their experience. I was also on the receiving end of vituperation from people who had been cheated on or feared being cheated on, and blamed me, misplaced the blame onto me. One letter I got said basically, "I hope you end up old and alone, you asshole." The book wasn't even out yet, so she hadn't read it!

But I continue to get mail today with people asking for advice in marital relations. I had written a book Against Love, a work of social theory, citing Freud, Foucoult, Nietzsche, etc and which I said in specific wasn't an advice book but… I found people were really scraping bottom if they were turning to me as an expert and how to reconcile expectations of coupledom and happiness.

Are adultery and romance fiction similar pieces of social glue?

What can't be said? This matter of "something else" has preoccupied me, having written on porn in Bound and Gagged, I was interested to find that romance had changed quite a lot since my last writing, and that the genres of erotica and romance have converged.

What sort of fantasies are these? An invented erotic world where the fantasies and the realities fit more closely together. Are there anatomical facts about female bodies that culturalists want to ponder while analyzing romance and porn fantasies?

It's practically a verboten subject to write about anatomy when writing about women. Deficient upper body strength, the placement of the clitoris apart from the vagina, pregnancy, PMS, etc… according to sex surveys, the male cannot fathom these things. (He has it all combined in one package.) The percentage of women who don't have orgasms is as high as 58%. Note the paucity of books for men on how to get more sexual pleasure in their relationships and its abundance for women. They have porn instead. Take Deep Throat as an example. The joke of the film is that her clit is even further away from her vagina … in her throat. However fantastically, it's a film devoted to how to get women to have orgasms. The better comparison isn't romance, it's science fiction, a genre that takes a what if wild alternative universe. Porn has an allegorical use, an AU where men and women get sexual pleasure from the exact same things. If women did have orgasms during oral sex the battle between the sexes would fall apart.

Having the sex organs you have isn't an ignorable piece of life.

What we see in porn we see the fantasy of one gendered universe. WHile retaining their female bodies, they would get their pleasure from the same things as men. Romance is the same, in which women want the male character to be more like a woman, vulnerable, emotionally available, and more emotionally mature. THis is yet another fantasy of a one-gender universe. These fantasies pervade real life as well. In the 1980s Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer saw her patients fixating on the idea the men are lacking something. Emotionally closed, not receptive or empathic, they can't connect to the nner feelings. It was the absolutism of these characterizations that drew her, and their repetitions. It's the opposite of the Freudian thing of the boy's discover that women don't have penises. Now they think that men aren't complete and it congeals into the same kind of contempt. When she probed her patients about diaper changing their boy babies. They seemed to have the same problems "everything is on the outside, there's no inside to him" the same complaints as the discomfort descriptions of their anatomy.

It starts to look as if new stereotypes are being invented to replace old stereotypes. It solidifies into an inoperable metaphor. In the same way the male Freudian was afraid to lose his penis, women are afraid of losing their ability to open up.

New bodily metaphors rise up but old metaphors don't fall away. Women remain focused on beocming complete, something needs to be "fixed" (complexion, clothes, personality, anxiety about lack of something)

The Vulnerability Fetish

Freud knew something about the internalization of female anxiety. Penis envy plays out as equity feminism, give us the corner offices even though the work is soul-sapping and life-destroying. If men have it, we should have it, too. Rampant female dissatisfaction with male domesticity hasn't stopped the marriage dynamic.

The desire for reparation is to have something that men could give women what they want if only they were less like MEN, and more like frogs who become princes. 79 million women read romances last year, and romance readers are more likely to be married and living with a partner. If what women most want is what men don't have to give, then the fantasy must go somewhere. If there is such a thing as female psychology, it seems its template must be buried in the pages of popular romance.

[Apologies, I didn't get a good writing of the conclusion here, but thanks very much to Laura for a thought-provoking analysis. The question and answer session afterward was also brilliant but I really couldn't do justice to trying to write it down.]

Another erotic story from Spellbinding (NSFW)

Title: Ignorance is Bliss

Author: (aka

Rating: NC-17

Orientation: Male/male

Characters: Frost/Candlin

Fandom: Magic University

Summary: Frost tells the story of how he got together with Michael Candlin, and discovered how good (and dangerous) sex and love could be.

Feedback/CommentsAlways welcome!

Disclaimer: This piece of Magic University fanfiction comes from the anthology SPELLBINDING: Tales from the Magic University, published by Ravenous Romance. I am the original author. Do not distribute further.

Notes: When book one of the series opens, Timothy Frost and Michael Candlin are already in a relationship. This is the story of how, despite Frost's fears and repressions, they got together.

(story under the cut…)

I was raised by wolves. Never forget that.

Michael and I met in Enchantment class. We were lab partners; is that a cliche? How do most people meet their first boyfriend?

I suppose most people have already met their first boyfriend by the time they are in college. But remember, I was raised by wolves. At first, anyway. I'd actually spent my teen years living with two nice old ladies who were happy to foster a magical foundling, just a few blocks from the campus of Veritas. From no protection at all to overprotected, in other words. Neither state is conducive to dating.

Michael and I were both wide-eyed and quiet as church mice that first semester, though perhaps part of that was no one wanted to upset Professor Cross. She was a brute when it came to practice and homework and grading on a curve. Fail her class and you could forget being an enchanter.

"Put your hand in mine," Michael said in a quiet, quiet voice. We were sitting facing each other, working on an exercise from the syllabus. Around us everyone was paired off and doing the same thing, while Cross stalked up and down, looking for mistakes or lack of focus. He held up a hand, his palm open.

I hesitated for a moment. Physical contact wasn't something I'd had much of in years. It wasn't something I'd ever remembered wanting, and since moving to Cambridge, it had never been forced on me.

This wasn't forced, though. It was an exercise for a class. Michael's eyes were large and round and expectant.

I put my hand in his.

It was all downhill from there.

* * * *

I'll probably never know just how much he knew about me before we met. He was a Scip, that was all I knew about him. I assumed he knew nothing about me. But that was a bad assumption. I was known to many of the faculty, and idle chatter had a way of filtering down. I wished, of course, that all the attention came from my achievements as a student, rather than the rumors—and some facts—about my past, so my goal became to simply be at the top of every class.

Since this was a partner class, that meant Michael and I both would have to be the best.

"We need to come up with a final project that will really show off both our abilities," he said, motivated in his own way to excel. Typical Scip.

We were sitting at a table in the library, books scattered around us and notes covering the page in front of me. "I know. But is conjuration too ambitious?"

He shrugged. "It would make an impression. But it can't just be a like a party trick. It needs to be artistic, and combinatory."

I sighed. "Like, I conjure the seeds, and you make them grow quickly?"

"Hm, that has promise but…if we just do something additive, she'll fail us. We need to do something that multiplies your power and mine. Something that could only be done with us working together at the same time." He bent his head and wrote something.

I put my hand on the table and turned it palm up. "Put your hand in mine?" My voice was remarkably steady, I thought.

He looked up, and the look in his eye said he heard all the unspoken questions I wasn't asking. He gave me a moment to appreciate that, then slid his hand into mine.

His was warm, almost hot. I took a deep breath and felt the power under my skin pulse. He swallowed, feeling it too.

"Whatever you want to do," I whispered. "Whatever you want. I'll try it."

I was speaking of the enchantment project, wasn't I?

* * * *

I kissed him for the first time a week later. A long, agonizing week in which I kept trying to think of how to ask him if we could. Once I had it in my head to try it, I could think of nothing else. I sat so close to him in class that our sleeves touched. We took to studying together in the Scipionis common room, my leg touching his under the table. He noticed the change, but didn't do anything differently. Not wanting to scare me away, perhaps, the same way I was afraid I might scare him.

I wanted so much that I didn't know how to ask for, but once I began to want, I couldn't stop.

He rescued me late one night when we were alone in the common room, the fire burned to embers, and even the graduate tutors had gone to bed. I think the only reason we were still sitting there was because we were both waiting for this.

He knew to ask if it was okay before he touched me. "Can I touch your cheek?" he asked.

"My cheek?"

"Like this." He reached up and brushed his fingers, then his warm palm, up my cheek. "Okay?"

I nodded.

Then he pulled me slowly closer. "Will you kiss me, Frost?"

My answer was to devour him. One touch of my mouth to his and I knew I would never get enough of him, but I was going to try. Lips, and tongue, and teeth.

I was raised by wolves, remember.

* * * *

We didn't have what I'd call sex until a month later. When do you start counting it as sex, anyway? I have my own reasons for questioning that, I know.

I count it from when orgasm gets involved. He made me come with his hand, in the men's room in the library. It was difficult to let go. But I knew once I did, I found another thing I wouldn't be able to get enough of.

Apparently, so did Michael.

* * * *

"Could we study in your room?" Michael asked one evening, when we were studying together before the library closed. We weren't even working on the project that night, but it wasn't lost on me that we were pretty much inseparable.

I looked up at him. "My room?"

"Something tells me if we want to be alone, you're better at getting rid of your roommate than I am."

I licked my lips. "And do you want to be alone with me, Michael?"

"Yes, very much," he said, and I heard everything he wanted in those words. Oh, Circe. He looked like a deer in the headlights, yet he was the one asking. Somehow that made it all okay. I never hesitated after that first day I put my hand in his. When he asked for something, I gave it to him, and invariably discovered I liked it.

I took him in the back way so he wouldn't have to walk across the common room to reach the stairs. Then I told Persy to make himself scarce. We didn't even make a pretense of getting our books out of our bags. I laid him back on the bed and unbuttoned his sweater, nibbling at his neck.

"Please, Timothy," he said, asking without asking. I bared his cock and my own and rubbed them together. It was one of the best things I think I've ever felt. Not just the sensation of it, but the knowledge of what I was doing, and how much pleasure could be had from it.

"Want you," he said. "Want this." His fingers brushed up my length and made me shiver.

I know better than some people, though, how much pain can be had from it, too. I'd tried to forget. Circe knows I'd tried. So I had to be sure. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't." His hands pushed my shirts off over my head, my sweater turning inside out inside the undershirt. He stroked my chest. "I can feel you hesitating. If it's too much…"

"It's not too much," I tried to assure him, but I couldn't explain what was wrong with me. Not and still keep my secrets locked up so deep inside me before I came to Veritas. I pretend that was all a bad dream I used to have. I pretend it's a nightmare I used to have over and over, so bad it messed me up, but not nearly as bad as if it had really happened.

"You don't have to tell me why you're so scared," he said. "You don't have to tell me anything. But I'll tell you everything, Frost."

"Timothy," I corrected him. "What's to tell?"

"I can be anyone you want," he said then, quickly. "When I…when I have sex, I can create a whole dream world around my partner."

He couldn't have known that was the wrong thing to say, but he felt my blood run cold.

"Timothy?"

"No dreams," I insisted. "If we're going to do this, I need to know it's the real you under me. I need to know it's Michael Candlin who wants my cock so bad, he dared set foot in Gladius House."

He pulled at me then, pulling me into a kiss, but I didn't let him kiss me as long as he wanted. I trailed my mouth down his neck again, got him out of his sweater and shirt finally, and sucked on his flat nipples, making his chubby cock bounce against my stomach.

I licked it, just to see what it would taste like, but I couldn't bring myself to suck on it. Instead, I pushed his legs apart and licked his ass instead.

My jaw and tongue got tired of that pretty fast, so I rolled him onto his stomach and that was easier. I used my tongue and my fingers, making sure he was good and ready. How do you tell if someone is really ready? Maybe there's no surefire way to tell, but when Michael broke down and begged, I figured he was.

My cock was such a different color from his buttocks, ruddy against the pale, almost bluish tinge of his skin.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Are you asking just to torment me now, or are you really just making sure?" he asked in return.

"I don't know," I said. "It just seemed like the thing to do."

"For fuck's sake, Timothy," he swore. "Just get it in, and all the questions will go away."

"They will?"

"Yes! Including that one!"

I had no idea what he was talking about, and nearly stopped to ask more, but my own cock was throbbing with hunger, his hole was twitching impatiently, and I decided there was no more waiting. I jammed myself into him before I could put it off any longer.

Oh. Now I knew what he meant. Inside him, it was like I was inside him. I could see through his eyes, and feel his skin—and, oh.

I think I whimpered. Or maybe that was him.

Here inside his head, we could talk, but there were no more questions, because there was no questioning the meaning of a word when we spoke in meanings more than in words anyway. I could see time spooled out before me from the moment I had first taken his hand to now, and how he had hoped for this moment all that time.

I had always thought of orgasm as the thing people craved. To know that what he'd wanted most was this intimacy, this being taken and filled—well, it made my cock throb harder.

It made me want to fuck him. To move back and forth inside him and let him feel every inch of my cock, to pry him open and claim him and leave my mark, and my seed, on him and in him. Which was good because that was exactly what he wanted. It wasn't my thought or his thought. It was ours.

He came when I did, and after our bodies weren't joined anymore, the psychic connection would fade, too, I thought. But while we lay there in each other's arms, I found I could still "hear" him. Feel him. Whatever.

I used words, in my own head. I never had any idea sex could be like that.

He couldn't stop himself from thinking, it's very different for the receptive partner.

How much do you know?

He could sense the abuse in my past, like a stink that clung to my skin. He didn't know the details and didn't want to know unless I wanted to tell him. I didn't.

His mind was open to me, though. Anything I wanted to see or know, was all laid bare and open for me as clearly as his legs spread for my cock. He didn't want me to be afraid of anything, and thought seeing the depths of his soul was the best way to boost my trust.

He was right.

I fucked him three times that night, each time going deeper into his mind, and each time our shared orgasm was more intense than the previous. Poor Persy, my long-suffering roommate, ended up sleeping on a couch in the common room. I didn't even realize the whole night had passed.

Dawn was breaking, though, as we lay together, my cock soft but still inside him as we played the game by mutual agreement to see how long we could stay joined.

How long have you had this ability relating to sex? I asked him.

I've always had some telepathy, but I didn't discover this kind until I started having sex, he told me.

Do you get it from your mother's side or your father's side?

I don't know, he admitted. My mother had me after a May Day ritual in Greece. She never knew who my father was, nor cared. She used to joke he was a satyr. For all I know, it wasn't a joke.

I never knew my parents, I thought before I could stop myself.

He was quiet then, meditating on one thing, which was simply how happy he was to be in my arms. That was the real start of Michael and me, and we were happy right until the end.

The bitter end. He had the perfect way to tame a wild beast like me, but in the end it was dog-eat-dog.

Which just goes to show I was wrong to trust. And wrong to lust. I won't be wrong again.

-end-

(Look for another Frost-centric story later today from Rian Darcy, aka Nishizono!)

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An erotic short story for your pleasure…

Yes, I wrote fanfic in my own universe!

Title: Lakeside Encounter

Author: (aka )

Rating: NC-17

Orientation: Male/male

Characters: Kyle/OC

Fandom: Magic University

Summary: After his sophomore year, Kyle travels alone for a while. On the shore off Lake Michigan he has a surprising encounter.

Feedback/CommentsAlways welcome!

Disclaimer: This piece of Magic University fanfiction comes from the anthology SPELLBINDING: Tales from the Magic University, published by Ravenous Romance. I am the original author. Do not distribute further.

Kyle hadn't expected to meet magical people here.

When he'd decided to go backpacking for the summer, he'd decided to leave behind all the talk of prophecies and go somewhere the Tower was far from visible. He'd always wanted to go to New Orleans, but there was a sizable magical community there, and the whole point was to get away.

So he went west, and somewhere not quite to Chicago got sidetracked, and he ended up at a campground adjacent to a state park on Lake Michigan. By then he had a solo pop-up tent he could carry easily in his pack, and although he'd forsaken Esoteric Arts as his major, he knew enough sexual magic to be able to keep warm all night long no matter how chilly the night air was, so long as he was somewhere private enough to touch himself. Hence, the tent.

But other than that, and the occasional application of his knack for saying the right thing to bring opportunities his way, he didn't do magic. He did write in his journal, scraps of poems and sights and thoughts, philosophies and words and sometimes rhymes that caught his ear. He hitchhiked from place to place and began to realize just how large the country was, and just how rare magical people were.

But there he was, sitting on a sand dune and watching the sun set over the lake with his journal on his lap, when he felt the flare of magic nearby. Below him, closer to the waterline, was a group of people gathering around a campfire. Someone had just lit it with magic, he was sure of it.

There were five of them—two women, three men—and they were laughing easily amongst themselves, pulling the fallen trunk of a tree closer to the fire to sit on, and passing around a bottle.

Quite suddenly Kyle felt a pang of loneliness. Much of this summer he'd been alone and hadn't minded it, but the feeling swept him up without warning, and he shivered.

He was on his feet and making his way down to the little group before he quite knew what he was doing. He breathed slowly and evenly as he went, mustering the unspoken words in the cage of his teeth, getting ready to say whatever it would take for them to accept him.

He didn't have to say anything, apparently. They saw him coming and whispered a little to each other, and had just burst into laughter as he stepped into the light of the fire.

"You see?" one of the women said, the one with dark hair spilling over her shoulders. "It doesn't work, Jeremy!"

"It works perfectly!" a stocky man with glasses and a short blond beard said. "He's got the Sight, is all. Isn't that obvious? But seriously, Travis, you couldn't have wished for a woman?" He went and held out his hand to Kyle. "Welcome, stranger. I'm Jeremy."

They were in their mid- to late twenties, Kyle guessed. The other woman, a blonde, was holding hands with one of the guys and looking up at him curiously. Kyle shook Jeremy's hand, and for no rational reason he could discern, lied. "My name's… Frost. Benjamin Frost."

"Oooh. Any relation to the poet?"

"Not directly," Kyle said. "There are a lot of Frosts in New England."

"New England. Veritas, then?"

"Er, yeah, just finished my second year." No reason to lie about everything. "Didn't expect to run into…anyone…out here?"

Jeremy beckoned him to come sit and the blond woman, who introduced herself as Gretchen, passed him the green unlabeled bottle. Kyle shook her hand and took a swig, and discovered the liquid inside to be much sweeter than wine. Maybe a dessert wine? And it tasted of roses, too. He wondered if perhaps there was more than just alcohol in it, recalling Randall's many concoctions.

Gretchen's partner was Kenneth; the dark-haired woman was Bea, or maybe just B. Travis broke out a bag of marshmallows. Kyle took another swig from the bottle as it came around again and this time asked what it was.

"Mead," Gretchen said. "Travis makes it himself. This might be your best yet, Travis."

"Thanks." Travis had short dark hair, an athlete's slouch, and a day or two's growth of beard. "Okay, so, Ben—can I call you Ben?"

It took Kyle a moment to realize he was being addressed. "Oh, sure."

"I gotta ask how things are going at my old stomping grounds. We all heard about the quake and stuff…" He took a swallow from the bottle, his eyes on Kyle as he waited for an answer.

"Oh, yeah, everyone was in a tizzy for a while, but it's all back to normal now, pretty much. They had some arcane explanations about what had gone wrong to knock things off-kilter in the first place."

"All Bell's fault, eh?" Travis went on.

"When were you last there?" Kyle asked. "Bell had some kind of magical…indigestion or something. But he was a symptom, not a cause, I think."

"Circe's left tit," Jeremy said. "Was it really seven years ago we left school? I hardly know anyone there now. I mean, besides Madeleine."

"Madeleine Finch?" Kyle asked. "She's still House Master at Camella House. Were you a Cam?"

"I was," Jeremy said. "Travis here was a Glad."

Gretchen pulled a marshmallow out of the bag and speared it. "We were all Cams, except for Travis."

Travis just shrugged. Kyle wondered about that. Were he and Travis alike somehow, Glads who had all Cams for friends? "I'm in Gladius House myself."

That provoked laughter from the group, and some kidding about Travis conjuring up someone of his own kind. The bottle had gone around a few more times, and Kyle had burned himself slightly on a hot but delicious marshmallow, when Travis asked, "So what can you do?"

Kyle looked up. "What?"

B tittered. "You sure you're a Glad?"

Travis's eyes glittered across the fire. "Everyone's got a party trick or two. B, show him yours."

"Tsk, it's not that good."

"Sure it is. Come on."

"I need a piece of pap—oh, all right." She took the piece of paper that Gretchen was waving at her and held it flat in her palm. The paper folded itself into the shape of a bird. "There. But Travis can do it one better…" She tossed it to him.

He held it up and suddenly it fluttered like a butterfly, rising up into the air, then flying toward Kyle, battling the updraft of the campfire, abruptly banking back and diving into the flames. "Travis!" Gretchen admonished.

Kenneth snapped his fingers as the paper burned and a shower of sparks flew up.

"It must have been you I sensed," Kyle said, "lighting the fire."

Kenneth nodded, then kissed his girlfriend on the cheek. "It's all right, Gretch. She can make another one."

Gretchen still threw Travis a look and took another marshmallow from the bag.

Travis looked back at Kyle again. "Well? What's yours?"

Kyle shrugged. "Not much of a conjurer, really. Applied enchantment hasn't really been my strength."

"But you must be able to do something," Travis said, taking another swig.

I know what you're doing, Kyle thought. It's a Glad thing. The Cams wouldn't give a damn about it, but for you to accept me I have to prove myself somehow, right? It's a test.

But maybe it was a test to see if he could gain acceptance without playing Travis's game. "I bet I can pull the Ace of Swords out of any Tarot deck you hand me," he said, half joking.

Jeremy snorted. "What about Master Zoltan? Does he still do that magic show in Harvard Square?"

"Yeah, sometimes," Kyle answered.

"Card tricks aren't that hard even for mundanes," Travis said.

"Oh, leave the kid alone." B poked Travis in the shoulder. "He's out here all by himself."

Travis just shrugged as if asking, why? What's wrong with him?

"What's your major?" Jeremy asked, innocently enough, but here Kyle had just said he wasn't related to Robert Frost, and that was as good as having admitted he wasn't a poet, so he couldn't really say poetry here, could he? He wasn't used to lying and this was why he didn't do it often.

Well, something close to the truth was probably safest, then. "Esoteric arts," he said with a little smile.

Travis barked a short, skeptical laugh. "Nice. But B here's taken." He edged closer to her.

Kyle just shook his head while grinning. "I didn't mean it as a pickup line."

"I don't believe you. No one goes into Esoterics anymore. Are you still a virgin? Going to lose it for your senior thesis?"

Kyle took another swallow from the bottle. "Nah, not a virgin. Don't believe me?" There wasn't really any way around playing the game now. Kyle didn't even have to touch himself to draw energy, his cock filling with blood as he did. B rubbed the back of her neck as if the hairs there were rising. Kyle pointed his index finger at Travis like a pretend pistol, then "shot" him by dropping his thumb.

"Circe's tit!" Travis stood up, stumbling backwards, as if a hand had just tried to grab him by the balls. What he'd felt, of course, was his cock coming to attention so quickly his contracting ball sack practically felt like a hand squeezing him. "Oh fuck." He bent over like someone having a stomach cramp, but it wasn't his stomach he was grabbing. The others were all laughing now, Jeremy slapping Kyle on the shoulder. "You pigfucking son of Circe, that hurts!"

Kyle laughed too when he saw Travis was grinning as he swore. He limped back to the campfire, the boner in his shorts quite obvious.

Gretchen snickered appreciatively. "That's some party trick."

"Awww," B said to Travis with a wicked smile. "Want me to kiss it better?"

Travis grimaced, then looked around. "Um, you guys mind if we…?"

He and B went off into the darkness, showered by a chorus of good wishes. Kyle stayed and talked with the others for an hour or so, then all the honeywine and the late hour started to make him yawn. Camping had made dawn his usual waking time, quite the opposite from his schedule at school. This far north the sun set late and rose early, making for a short night. He said his goodbyes before the other two had returned, thinking he would probably never see these people again, unless maybe they came to campus for a reunion or something.

* * * *

He was deeply asleep, the night warm enough that no spells were needed, when something jostled him awake. It took him a few moments to rouse enough for him to realize it was someone climbing into his tent, which was only big enough for two if the two were pressed against each other.

"Frost," came Travis's voice. Hearing that name chilled Kyle and he cursed himself for using it as an alias. "You gotta help me."

"Mph. What?"

"It won't go down." Kyle felt his hand in Travis's and wasn't surprised when it was guided to a hot, bare boner.

Kyle stroked it in the dark, still trying to rid his mind of the cobwebs, but maybe he'd drunk more than he thought. It didn't feel bad to be holding onto a man's cock—a thick one, curved somewhat to the left—but Kyle couldn't quite connect why. "Shouldn't still be hard. Just from me zapping you."

"Maybe you don't know your own strength," Travis volleyed back.

No, that wasn't right. If B had made him come, he would go soft like normal. Oh. But maybe B hadn't made him come. Or maybe he'd got hard again, and had some problem like Frost's where he couldn't come. Kyle was seeking answers as he stroked, his thumb crossing through a large drop of pre-come. He brought it to his mouth without thinking. Whether it was the connection brought on by fluid to fluid or just Kyle's common sense waking up, he didn't know, but what he did know was that Travis was there because he wanted sex.

"Why me?" Kyle asked.

"Because it's your fault I'm like this. Don't they teach taking responsibility for your actions at that school anymore?"

There were a thousand reasons to say no. Travis wasn't a student, cleared by medical for Esoterics as free of disease. And Kyle wasn't attracted to him. He wasn't attracted to men in general, with a few notable exceptions. But a hand job didn't seem like too much to ask. Kyle owed him for the mead, maybe. "I can get you off just like this," he said. "I can add extra fireworks if you want."

"What do you mean, extra fireworks?"

"I mean, blow your mind with some energy transfer when you come," Kyle said.

"Oh. I was hoping you meant something more. Can I suck you?"

Wait, what? "Why don't you tell me what you want?"

"I thought you esoteric cats did just about everything, don't you? You don't know how long it's been since I fucked a guy." Now Travis's hand had found Kyle's cock and he made lip-smacking noises. "You feel nice. Big. You have lube? If you do, man, they say getting fucked by one of you is enough to turn a guy gay."

Kyle groaned as Travis's hand—warm and rough and the only other person's touch he'd had since saying goodbye to Marjory over a month ago—brought him to full hardness. He barely registered the sound of gathering thunder. "Sounds to me…like you're already gay," he said.

"You think it's easy out in the mundane world? Circe, you have no idea how good you have it in school. None." Travis shifted position and sucked on one of Kyle's nipples, then lifted his head to continue speaking. "My friends and I, we're all trying to make it in the mundane world. And it's fucking hard. It's why we have these little reunions. At school though, man, yeah, you can fuck anything that moves, can't you? But once you go out there, if you like cock, you're…God, it's hard."

He had to be a foundling or raised as mundane, Kyle thought. He used a mix of magical and mundane swears for one thing, and it didn't seem like those raised magical could hang onto such a level of internalized homophobia. Or denial. Or whatever it was this guy had. "I don't…actually like cock," Kyle said.

"Coulda fooled me," Travis answered. "Look, don't take this the wrong way, but all I'm looking for is to get off."

"But you want to suck me."

"If you want. I mean…give me a break, will you? I don't get many chances like this."

"All right." Kyle could pretty much feel the pulse of the truth in the guy's penis. It wasn't a technique like Moonlight Rose or anything; he just knew. And he knew then just what to do to give the guy something beyond a simple hand job with a little Esoteric zap in it.

Kyle rolled Travis onto his back, pushing his own shorts down until their bare groins met. "Can't fuck," Kyle said, as he dragged his cock up the length of Travis's. "Not safe. For either of us. But this. Probably okay."

"Ohhhhh fuuuuuck." Travis tried to hump upward but Kyle moved with him, trapping his arms under Kyle's palms and teasing them both with lighter and lighter brushes of cock on cock. Rational thought ceased and Kyle felt as if he were a sculptor or a painter, and his cock had to touch the canvas just so on each pass in order for a work of art to emerge. Eventually it reached the point where what the piece wanted was a firmer stroke, and he found it easy to get extra pre-come to flow, lubricating the way, so that hard flesh could slide against hard flesh, hot and slick.

He was tempted to throw caution to the wind, to hitch Travis's knees up and penetrate him, to fuck him and spill inside him and leave some kind of mark on him—but no. Not a good idea for either of them. In fact, probably none of this was a good idea, but it was too late to turn back now.

Thunder rumbled above and Kyle was suddenly awake, alive with the storm that was his. Travis shuddered under him, feeling the energy in Kyle's skin almost like a live current. Kyle was awake now and remembering he couldn't just call up this much energy and not direct it somewhere. The ground. He had to be the true lightning rod then, and just ground it.

"You'd better come first," he said, eager to feel the hot spill all over his own cock. "I'll hold back until you do. When I come, close your eyes."

When Travis came, he bellowed, and when Kyle came, he screamed. The bolt lit up Kyle's eyelids but he didn't need his eyes open to "see" Travis had ignored or forgotten the advice and stared wide-eyed and wide-mouthed at Kyle as the lightning came down around them.

Then, as always, the noise and effort and light were done with, and they were lying in the dark, panting.

"Had enough?" Kyle said.

"Uh huh." Travis sounded a little scared, a little awed, and very spent.

Kyle unzipped the tent flap and didn't even have to urge Travis to leave. He beat a hasty retreat, most of the mess still smeared on his stomach. He went barefoot across the sand, his clothes clutched in his hands.

Kyle zipped the tent closed again. He didn't actually need it open to be able to "see" the water, the waves, the moon rising, the shreds of clouds dissipating. He was completely connected to the shoreline here, to the shifting dune under him. Travis felt like nothing more than a mosquito skimming the surface of the water, while Kyle could feel all the way to the bottom.

Sleep didn't return that night, but when the sun rose, he felt rested. The others were gone. Even the spot where the campfire had been was gone, but Kyle assumed that must have been part of the charm they had used to hide themselves from anyone without the Sight.

He felt sorry for Travis, but not conflicted. Travis wasn't someone he could help.

Maybe next time he would meet someone he could.

If you enjoyed this story from Magic University, you might also like the book it came from, Spellbinding: Tales from the Magic University. Don't miss /Francie's story from yesterday, about what Kyle and Alex got up to the previous summer. And tomorrow look for one from Sarah Ellis tomorrow! With more great stories to come!

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Meanwhile, I can't help but notice that book one of the MagicU series, THE SIREN AND THE SWORD, is on special for just 99 cents at both Amazon and B&N. So if you've been meaning to start the series, this is a good time!