Following on with the theme of voyerism and exhibitionism, here’s a forray into a book about someone who spends a lot of time having sex in front of a camera.

The article below is by M. King

In Devil & the Deep Blue Sea, average—albeit slightly shy and geeky—guy Jacob meets and falls for the stunning, confident Laszlo. There’s only one problem: Laszlo works in adult films and, though he’s honest about it from the very first, Jacob finds the idea, and the reality, of dating a porn star deeply uncomfortable.

He tries to rationalize it; after all, he watches porn, and intellectually he knows there’s a thriving industry behind it, but he still struggles to overcome his prejudices…and his jealousy.

In contrast, Laszlo, both emotionally and sexually, is expansive and uninhibited. He’s a total exhibitionist, in the sense that he unreservedly enjoys both giving and receiving pleasure. Laszlo takes pride in the power his sexuality gives him, but he keeps his working persona, ‘Maxim Winter’, distinct from his personal life.

Though the book is written from Jacob’s point of view, we learn Laszlo is nervous about how revealing his line of work will affect things between them. Most of his past relationships have been ruined by the same pattern of jealousy and recrimination that now threaten his and Jacob’s romance, yet Laszlo refuses to feel a shred of guilt about what he does.

On one level, he treats it as any other career—he promotes himself on the internet, and shares anecdotes and gossip from the sets with Jacob, almost failing to realize that telling his boyfriend about something funny that happened while he was having sex on camera with another man is going to cause tension.

To Laszlo, personal and professional, or emotional and sexual, are totally different things. When Jacob challenges him, he is mocking and sarcastic, angered by hearing the same questions and complaints he has heard so often before.

Abruptly, Laszlo pushed away from the window, voice sharp and raw.

“Because the money’s good, it feels good, and I look fuckin’ awesome doing it! Okay? That what you want to hear?”[…] “Come on, next one.” He threw his hands up in spiteful encouragement. “Quick! Aw, come on. There’s always a next one. ‘Why aren’t I enough?’ How about that?”

For Laszlo, being Maxim Winter is about freedom. Exhibiting his body and sharing his most intimate physical moments with an unseen audience—potentially of several thousand people—is an empowering, liberating thing.

However Jacob, almost by default, finds himself cast as a voyeur, and he doesn’t enjoy it. For him, there is a clear and finite line “between fantasizing about a hot scene, and thinking about the reality of fucking for money in some anonymous hotel room or semi-public studio.”

Early in their relationship, Jacob forces himself to watch one of Maxim Winter’s movies. He’s turned on by what he sees, but at the same time hates the reality of watching Laszlo:

 Jacob couldn’t sit through any of those scenes to their completion. He hated seeing Lasz—Maxim—vulnerable in front of the camera, when his chest flushed and his breathing tautened and his body bucked against someone else’s. Stupid, Jacob told himself, because it was fucking hot and—in any other movie—he’d have loved it. Any other actor. But, knowing him, it just seemed wrong. 

 The problem for Jacob is that his voyeurism is automatically transformed into hypocrisy. He knows that, by being honest with him, Laszlo has nothing to be ashamed of, and no reason to apologize. But, next to his effortless, feral sexuality, Jacob feels inferior, and that enrages him.

As Jacob descends deeper into circuitous, self-absorbed jealousy, he is torn between his growing love for Laszlo, and the loss of control with which that emotion threatens him.

Ultimately, that—the question of how much we truly share ourselves with others, and how we deal with the act of doing so—is the central theme with which Devil & the Deep Blue Sea engages.

And there are no quick, easy answers.

Australian author Barry Lowe is a red hot new addition to loveyoudivine. I thought it would be good to find out more about him, so I pounced on him for a blog interview.

 Bryn: How would you describe your writing style?

 Barry: Horny humorous smut.

 Bryn: That’s some attention grabber! Have you always written that combination, or did you slide into it?

 Barry: I started out as a journalist and got into sex writing in the early 1980s when a local free gay paper, The Sydney Star, asked me to write a column which became Lowe-Life, about the wonderfully diverse sex/love life of me and my lover, Wally. From there I went on to write sex comedies for theatre, an independent romantic film called Violet’s Visit, and later short erotica for print anthologies. I’m back to writing about my sex life again for another gay bar rag in Sydney. So I’ve come full circle.

Bryn: Which form of writing do you enjoy most out of those?

Barry: It’s a real cliché but I love the immediacy of theatre. Sitting in an audience listening to people laugh out loud at what I’ve written or else groaning at the filth they didn’t think anyone would have the guts to put up on a stage. Not that all my plays are like that, any more than all my writing is. I also write film star biographies and McFarland published Atomic Blonde, my book on 1950s blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren two years ago and I have one coming out later this year on Deanna Durbin.

 Bryn: Who’s influenced you most?

Barry: I’d love to say Shakespeare, Moliere, Jean-Paul Sartre, Doris Day and all that pretentious bullshit but basically I’m a sponge and soak up an impression here, a feeling there, an emotion somewhere else. I can’t say I’m an original but what I was writing when I started was different to anything else that I knew of. Later I discovered people like William Burroughs and Jean Genet, and then the wonderful world of gay porn. So, I guess the easiest answer to that is everyone and no one, and anyone I’m reading or watching at the moment.

 Bryn: I have to ask, what are you reading and watching at the moment?

 Barry: Anything and everything Josh Lanyon writes, the crime novels of Arnaldur Indriđason, habu’s Death in Key West, Sarah Masters’ Grave Findings, and a travel guide to Iceland. Watching: a delightful English series called Ladies of Letters, the second season of Glee, the new Doctor Who, and the new season of Foyle’s War. And rewatching the films of Doris Day.

Bryn: You’re clearly very ecclectic in your tastes. Does that show through in the fiction writing as well?

Barry: Oh, I have my obsessions but it’s probably true, although it probably is for a lot of writers. My subject matter  ranges from steampunk, science fiction, Victoriana, exotic but real locations (I love travel being stuck here at the arse end of the world in Australia), mystery and detective fiction, and comic fiction while my style ranges from comedy through that icky feeling in the stomach romance through to sleaze. I’m a bower bird writer, I peck at whatever entertains me.

Bryn: What have you got coming out at lyd?

 Barry: Already in the schedule are the short M/M eroticas Carbon Dating [a young guy in lust with his best mate’s dad] followed by Marine Biology [a U.S. Marine gangbang], Let the Games Begin [What goes on at the Glory Hole Games after the main Olympic competition is over], and Stocks and Shared [bondage and revenge in the Wall Street financial sector]. Then there’s a few more in the queue that we haven’t started editing yet. Plus I’m working on, The Major and The Miners, a five-part series set in Sydney during the 1930s involving a doctor and two coal miners, and a cook book series that involves M/M erotica and recipes.

Bryn: Wow! And, where can people find you online?

Barry: Problem is that I’m Downunder and our online hours only coincide early morning when I’m not awake and late night when I’m tapping away at my computer trying to turn out the first eBook short story that earns $10 million. I’m on Facebook. And people can contact me via my website www.barrylowe.net. I’m happy to chat, I can procrastinate with the best of them.

 Barry’s first release at lyd is out now, so do have a look at Carbon Dating.

There’s something about werewolf stories, isn’t there? The danger, the thrill that when the full moon arrives the man changes into the beast. In my series, The Unusual, my werewolf is just that. Unusual, because he can control his change times, becoming a werewolf at will. That’s handy for him, because he’s a killer out to take trophies from his victims and present them to Lee, the man he loves. In his warped way, he thinks the object of his desire will understand why he receives various body parts, left on his property or sent through the post. Obviously, Lee doesn’t understand, and the ‘gifts’ do nothing but make him uneasy and scared. Who wouldn’t be freaked at finding a severed hand in their back yard? Who wouldn’t be scared witless by getting an ear in the post?

In The Unusual, I explored the werewolf’s mind, how his obsession with Lee sent him off on killing sprees, when really, all he had to do was admit how he felt. I enjoyed the aspect of love making people do the oddest things—okay, killing is a little more than odd!—and showing how it affects some of us to the degree that we’re blinded. Parallel to that, Lee is also blinded by one man in his life, though wary of showing his true feelings due to licking his wounds over a broken relationship.

Lee is left wondering who the werewolf is. It could be anyone he knows; after all, he runs a bar. Customers come and go, but which one is fixated on him? As the series unfolds and people Lee is close to are killed, Lee leans more and more on his lover for support. Three key players are in his life…are any of them the wolf?

Due to my penchant for horror or weirdness, I enjoyed writing the werewolf’s point of view the most. He’s not all bad either, and I felt sorry for him, struggling to show his love plus coping with the fact he’s a werewolf. That’s got to be difficult, hasn’t it? Mind you, my werewolf always knew something was different, and when he first changed he felt at peace, despite the pain of morphing. I know he killed innocent people, but…yeah, I understood him, understood why he did so. He also didn’t belong to a pack so was Alpha without Betas to manage, without were-women to oversee. A lonely guy, for the most part, and only Lee makes him feel alive. The question is, if Lee knew who and what the werewolf really was, would he still accept him? Find out in The Unusual!

 Book One: The First Kill – Lee finds a severed hand in his yard. News of the murder rips through the town, and Lee’s friend, Alistair, the local policeman, finds himself embroiled in a startling case.

Book Two: The Reporter – Reporters descend on the town, eager for news, but one reporter gets more than he bargained for… The killer is out for blood, and jealousy spurs him into a frenzy.

Book Three: The Talisman – The body count mounts up, as does the pressure on Lee. He extinguishes the urge to up sticks and move on, hoping the killer will be caught so life can return to some semblance of normality.

Book Four: The Obsession – Lee’s love for Nathan grows. The Unusual strikes again, and Alistair is finding it increasingly difficult to cope.

Book Five: The Capture – Alistair and Lee go out for a meal, and on their way home find themselves on the scrubland—with a frightening guest who just won’t go away…

Pick up your cope of The First Kill here!

The Marked One is a new m/m series from Sarah Masters. It’s contemporary paranormal and will be coming out in fortnightly instalments.

Coming out of an abusive relationship, Jerry clearly thinks of himself as a bit of a loser. His self esteem is in tatters and he has no awareness of his own strength, courage or potential. Chance meetings with a hot and mysterious guy called Zeb start him off down a new path. Zeb isn’t like normal folk. But then, neither is Jerry, he just doesn’t know it yet.

This is a sexy, fast paced tale that takes you from the normal world into different realms and magical possibilities. There’s intrigue, betrayal, murder, and shape shifting along the way. It’s a story I’ve really enjoyed. (One of the perks of working at lyd is that I get to read things before they are generally available, sometimes.)

The instalments are: In His Arms,  Secrets Revealed, Promises Kept, Another Realm, and Fate Unwinds. They will be coming out fortnightly, and it’s well worth picking them up in order and following the tale through to its nail biting conclusion.

This is Sarah Master’s second series with lyd – the first, The Masters series is available in its entirety from the website – The Devil’s Spawn, Le Frai De Demon, Devil’s Return, Devil’s Torment,  and Devil’s Revelation. This series is historical m/m, which is a fascinating sub genre, I think. The tensions between what people did, what they were supposed to do, what they would admit to and so forth are fascinating.

Sarah Masters’ standalone m/m tale Vampiric Desire is at lyd too, and there’s several more short stories in the offing in the next few months.

Jaime came to lyd as part of the Immortal Fire project. She contributed two very lovely stories – Windblown, and Black Roses to the collection. Since then she’s also released the erotic, seasonal story Muse’s Vacation.

Bryn: Jaime, you write m/m, pretty much exclusively. What made you decide to focus on this?

Jaime: When I first started writing, I naively set out to write a novel. (never did finish it). It had various familial relationships in it, a Prince, his cousin and best friend, and his sister, and their various love interests. In the beginning, the Prince’s love interest was a spy, who at first was mysterious enough to avoid being very gender specific. As the story progressed, it was revealed to me that he was a guy, and really, that relationship, rocky though it was, always rang the most true to me of the others on the story.

that was pre-Internet…

When I found Live journal, and the plethora of m/m slash and fan fiction, I found my home and my calling. It didn’t take long, less than a year, for me to branch away from fan fiction to writing about my own characters and their stories. They all, or mostly, seemed to be male. I suspect I have a strong affinity for the male mindset in some ways. I do find men easier to write than women, and I enjoy exploring relationships that explore power dynamics when those dynamics start out from equal, man to man, or, occasionally, woman to woman, and change because of influences other than gender.

Bryn: I find m/m relationships a lot more comfortable for power aggressive exchange. I know ‘Muse’s Vacation’ explores dominance and submission. Is that a theme we’re likely to see more of then?

Jaime: I would venture to say, yes, there will be more of that. While my men don’t tend to be very aggressive, in general, they do take on decidedly dominant or submissive roles lately. I tend to write blind, a pantser, some people call it. This lets stories and characters evolve very organically, and right now, the evolution of my writing seems to be leaning toward D/s relationships. I follow these trends in my writing, rather than lead them, taking things where the spirit moves me to go. that all sounds very esoteric and all, but really, it just means the characters write themselves and I listen. Right now, this dynamic intrigues me, and I’m willing to keep exploring it.

Bryn: Have you ever been really surprised by the direction a story has gone in?

Jaime: Usually, the surprise comes when I’m stuck, I get worked up and frustrated, and the surprise is how simple the solution turns out to be. I will say, though, that in the first novel I wrote, which I recently went back to re haul there was a great surprise in that one of the characters, who I blithely killed off near the end, turned out to be the love interest of the main character. I only figured this out after I decided he had to die, though. Now I’m troubled as to what to do. I could substitute in a red shirt for the death, and leave happy alone. Or I could reflect that in real life, sometimes, perfect couples are torn apart too soon. They are guards, and there is a war. Stands to reason…

In another story, the mc had sex with the wrong man. Out of spite. Not spite for his boyfriend, but spite for the man he fucked. Not pretty, but then broken characters rarely are. Fixing him is proving to be a challenge.

Come to think on it, a nice surprise would be fantastic… lol!

Bryn: I like dark and realistic, and the uncertainty as to what sort of an ending is likely. Do you have a clear sense of what your characters look like before you start?

Jaime: You’ll like the project I’m working on next for LYD, then. Dark, gritty, set in an alternate universe from our own, a very broken character, and uncertain love are all features of this next story. If the sun shines at the end, it will be through a crack in the overcast, I think. But it will shine. I require it to shine down on them, however uncertain it is to last.

Goodness. No. In some cases, I never get a really clear picture of what they look like. In one story on my website, Long Road Home (http://www.jaime-samms.net/), the characters don’t even have names. I don’t know what their names are, don’t really know what they look like. I just know they are meant to be together, however long it took them to get there.

Bryn: Ooh, this I very much like the sound of! Anywhere else online people can follow you?

Jaime: My Live Journal: http://dontkickmycane.livejournal.com/ has promo for fellow authors, book reviews, and sometimes, a personal rant or two. I also blog: http://jaimesamms.blogspot.com/?zx=767433e8e8796b26 though intermittently…

I’m a reviewer for Dark Diva Reviews, where we review romance nad erotica, and I tend to focus on gay romance, and at Kuriousity, where I review Yoai light novels.

http://ddrreviews.blogspot.com/

http://www.kuri-ousity.com/about/

I do love to spout my opinion about the books I read, which I read a lot of. I can’t get enough of the written word.

Bryn: Me too! I’m a total blog junky. Thanks for chatting Jaime.

If you were going to live forever, what form would you want to take? The eternal night of a vampire? The ability to heal from anything so that old age and death are never likely to catch you? Worlds do not live forever, so would you choose the ability to travel in space, or time?

 Eternity is a very long prospect. The bodies we have were not designed with it in mind. How much would we have to change? What would we give up, along with our frailty, to become immortal? What would it cost in terms of soul and self? It’s hard to know, or to imagine.

Could you bear to face centuries, millennia alone? Could you love those who remained mortal, doomed to watch them age and die? Perhaps the ability to bring others into your immortal state would be a good power to wish for. But what if they do not like it? What if, having all eternity to love, that passion decays into hatred? There are many dangers. The heart of an immortal is more vulnerable than a human’s. So much time in which to acquire bruises, and wounds. So many more years in which to experience betrayal, failure, disappointment.

How could an immortal being dare to love anyone?

How could he bear the solitude of an eternity alone?

With all the time in the world, the need for love becomes more desperate, more urgent than ever.

 Immortal Fire: Available now from amazon

The Gypsy & The Witch comes out today, so I thought I’d post a few words. It’s the third installment of M King’s Traveller’s Tales series (the other two being The Green Man and The Golden Horse) and there are more to come. Each story stands alone, they’re connected by theme, not characters or plot. M King takes her inspiration from folklore and Romany tales, creating beautiful dak fairytales of an m/m persuasion.

I’m a huge fan of these stories – I’ve had so much fun editing them. The writing is gorgeous, the stories engaging, the characters so easy to fall in love with. These are stories at the romantic and sensual end of the erotic spectrum.

The Gyspy & The Witch is one of the darker stories in the set. It’s quite creepy, with defnite horror elements. If adult fairy tales are your thing, I can’t recomend this enough. It’s on the front page at www.loveyoudivine.com

While fiction writing is the thing I love to do most, I’ve spent a lot of this last year editing (mostly, but not exclusively) for the His and His Kisses line. It’s been the most fascinating process and has given me opportunity to get to know other LYD authors, and their work, a lot better.

I’ve edited before, and in other places. It can be a horrible job, wading through seas of typos, or dealing with stories you don’t much like. Not here. I can honestly say I’ve not had anything to edit that I didn’t love, and frequently have found myself with embarassingly little work to do. I really enjoy getting to see stories before anyone else does. This week I’ve had the pleasure of reading an awesome bdsm thing by Alex Morgan.

I’m going to make a point of blogging more often  (probably every Tuesday, maybe Fridays as well when the new releases come out) and talking about what’s in the pipeline as well as new releases and my own stuff. It may be a bit random, but hopefully interesting.

My next thing out is high fantasy, m/f with sex magic and much strangeness… more about that one nearer the time. Sarah Morton has done me a lovely cover, and I’m very much looking forward to unleashing this novella on the world!

Just a little teaser on the next short story I’m working on:

Leash of Faith

Brian is the new, energetic and popular pastor of a church in southern Louisiana.  His elderly parishioners dote on him as if he were one of their grandchildren.  What’s the problem?  He’s gay and so far into the closet that the skeletons are complaining of over-crowding.  And he has a slave boy whom he has to keep secret.  That’s not so easy in a small town where everyone knows everybody else.  And the parishioners are used to their pastors having an open door policy!    How can the Master Pastor maintain his lifestyle in a such a close-knit community and not get run out of town?

Alex Morgan