Good morning! (The good part is negotiable at this point as I’ve just returned home from the Romantic Times Convention and I’m tired and overwhelmed…)
When Rachel asked me to participate in her blog tour, I said yes right away. I mean, c’mon, I’m supposed to resist a book called with such a pretty cover?
Dirty Girls, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel, is a collection of 27 short pieces by various authors. As with any anthology, not all the stories worked for me — but most of them did. My favorite was Truck Stop Cinderella by Lillian Ann Slugocki. Maybe because Gracie, the heroine, was so far removed from my own life experience that I just had to love her. Maybe it was the cowboy. Or it could have been the super hot sex in the bathroom — the kind of dirty, furtive sex that my rational mind tells me could never really be that hot but the naughty part just knows would be mind-blowing. Or maybe it was the sweet ending to the story that had me smiling. Whatever my reasons, Truck Stop Cinderella was a great read.
I should mention, for those who don’t figure it out — this isn’t a collection of erotic romance. It’s erotica. Not all the stories have a happy ending. They don’t all even feature relationships, or love. And that’s okay with me. I don’t always need the HEA or the pretty shiny bow to wrap up a story. But what I do want in an erotic story is GOOD sex. Not bad or hurtful or unpleasant. I want to read about sex that isn’t just plentiful or exotic or kinky, but sex that the characters actually enjoy and don’t walk away from feeling icky. There were a few stories in Dirty Girls that were darker than I liked (and don’t get me wrong, I do like dark, I like angst — I’m not a fluffy bunny sort of person.) They were well-crafted stories and I could appreciate the author’s intent, but for ME I want my sex-reads to be hot, smoldering and…well…GOOD for the characters.
Overall, though, the collection was a lot of fun to read. With a little bit of everything — D/S, lesbian, hetero, fetishes, “scenarios,” the stories were varied enough to never be boring. All of them were well-written, and all of them had moments to enjoy, even if the overall story wasn’t my flavah.
Dirty Girls is a fine name for the collection because it’s all about owning that term. It’s not derogatory. The stories Rachel chose make the phrase playful and fun and made it work.
My own novel, Dirty, came out awhile ago and I’ve had some comments that the title doesn’t fit because the main character, Elle, ISN’T dirty. The things she does don’t make her dirty. Craving and liking sex doesn’t make a woman dirty. Which…actually…was the point of naming the book Dirty. And now that I’ve said it and written it so many times it’s sort of lost all meaning!
Anyway, if you like short erotic stories that are female-centric, I recommend Dirty Girls. It’s got a nipple on the cover! Which is way more racy than this one:
Learn more about the book at: http://dirtygirlsbook.wordpress.com/
Enjoy!
M
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