Headfuck by Bryn Colvin

TITLE: Headfuck
AUTHOR: Bryn Colvin
PUBLISHER: loveyoudivine
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 14k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $2.75

Spiritual healer Bee gets called to help a woman’s husband who has retreated from the world, and touches a mind that is unlike any she’s ever touched before…

This short story starts out incredibly intriguing, as spiritual healer Bee is asked to come and check out a woman’s husband. The wife is at her wit’s end. After they lost everything, the husband fell apart, becoming practically catatonic. Bee is reluctant to take the case, as she doesn’t like to help people who don’t ask for the help themselves, but she goes anyway, her instincts telling her to go. Touching his mind isn’t like touching anybody else’s, and even though the wife doesn’t pursue her services after that first visit, Bee can’t get him out of her mind.

There’s some great atmospheric touches in Bee’s encounters with this troubled man, but while experiences become quite visceral, they end up raising more questions than they ever answer. It’s an intriguing ride, and I got caught up in trying to discern where exactly it was going to take me. For half the story, there’s no hint of romance, though she does have some erotic moments with this man in her head. It seems to be more a tale of self-discovery, a path I was actually more than fine with. When it finally does shift to the romantic aspects – quite late in the story – I was disappointed. It never felt organic to the rest of the story. Bee’s emotional journey promised to be bigger than that.

She really is the true centerpiece of this short. While the hero does get introduced, he left so little impact on me, I remembered very little about him at the end other than his art. The whole spirituality aspect of her self-exploration does get a little tedious, but she remains a warm, driven, aware woman, fascinating me more than enough to keep me involved.

Because of the veer the story takes, I can’t say that it necessarily works for me as a whole as well as it started out, but I like how the author takes risks. I’m rarely bored by Colvin’s work, and look forward to further exploring more of her worlds.

Readability	7/10 – There’s an ethereal quality that matches the heroine, but it grows old after a while
Hero	4/10 – For a long time, I didn’t even think this would be a romance, that’s how little the hero actually impacted me
Heroine	7/10 – Driven and warm
Entertainment value	6/10 – The romance felt tacked onto the end and spoiled what could have been a good psychological short
World building	7/10 – Some great atmospheric touches, but it always felt like there was something I was missing
TOTAL:	31/50

Angel's Tears by Bryn Colvin

TITLE: Angel’s Tears
AUTHOR: Bryn Colvin
PUBLISHER: loveyoudivine
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 10k)
GENRE: Fantasy erotica
COST: $2.50

Charley Bowman’s life is nothing as he imagined it might be. At thirty-two, he lives with his parents, has no friends, a dead-end job, and has never been in love. Until he spies a marble statue in the cemetery he cuts through twice a day for work. It’s the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. It deserves attention. It deserves care. It deserves love…

This is the second story I’ve read by this author, though the first erotic piece. It won’t be the last. The author has a delicate touch in her writing, as well as a way of creating transcendent characters that completely appeals to me. In this, it’s Charley. Poor, lonely, sad little Charley. There’s nothing special about him. He still lives with his parents. He’s got an awful, mundane job. He doesn’t have friends. It would be so easy to make a character like this pathetic, but under Colvin’s skillful touch, he’s not. At his core is a hopeful heart, something a lot of authors miss when trying to write this kind of character. His spirit carries the story through, from the haunting prose at the beginning where he walks through a cemetery that felt as real as my back yard, to his rush through the rain near the end, where I practically felt the raindrops dribble down the back of my neck.

It’s this identification with the main hero that makes this haunting, melancholy story such a compelling read. The relationship he develops with the angel walks a fine line between creepy and heartwarming. When the story turns erotic, it’s his emotions that give the various scenes their real depth. This is not a romance, not in the genre sense of the word, but the love that permeates every page in this is practically palpable. It’s probably one of the most romantic erotica shorts I’ve read, at turns sweet and torturous, hopeful and agonizing. It’s not perfect. The editing isn’t the tightest I’ve ever seen, with enough silly typos to mar my enjoyment, and it can, at times, be overwritten. Those two factors are likely the reasons the climax didn’t punch me in the gut the way I’m sure it was intended.

Still, I’m coming to admire the fact that this e-publisher is willing to put out erotica that cuts across the norm. This is a piece I will remember, and Charley a hero I’ll ache for, for months to come.

Readability	8/10 – A lyrical melancholy makes this flow
Hero	9/10 – The soul of this shy, average, Plain Joe permeates every page.
Heroine	5/10 – An object of his focus in more ways than one
Entertainment value	8/10 – The ending didn’t have quite the impact it probably could have, but this haunting story still got to me.
World building	9/10 – The haunting atmosphere of the cemetery does half the work into sucking the reader in.
TOTAL:	39/50

Graphic Intentions by Patricia Oshier Bruening

TITLE: Graphic Intentions
AUTHOR: Patricia Oshier Bruening
PUBLISHER: loveyoudivine
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 20k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $3.50

Scott Delaney has writer’s block on his latest adult graphic novel…or at least, he did until he saw the gorgeous and scarred Derek in his favorite coffee shop. Inspiration hits, but when he discovers the man who has captured his imagination is also gay, all bets are off…

While the blurb on the publisher’s website promises drama and scarred characters, the reality of what the story offers is slightly different. Both men are scarred, yes, physically as well as emotionally. But the facts of their problems and tortured histories are never clearly delineated until it’s too late to care. We get bare bones of what Scott went through earlyish, but Derek’s issues don’t get elaborated on until the end. The end result of that, then, is a pair of lead characters I know little about before they’re swearing undying lust for each other. I have a few details, but nothing that makes me invested in them to care enough about the fact that all of a sudden, they’ve met a man who has them in a state of constant arousal.

And I do mean constant. I haven’t read about this many straining zippers in such a short word span in a long time. Both men obsess over their arousals long before they realize the other one is gay. Oh, there’s another overused phrase. “To his crotch.” As in, blood rushed to his crotch, and sparks shot clear to his crotch, and sending sparks of pleasure straight to his crotch, and sending hot sparks clear to his crotch, and sparks rocketing down his spine to his crotch, and…there’s more. At least three more instances of things shooting to somebody’s crotch. So can you really blame me for being bored to tears by the one thing that tries to hold the story together for the first sixty pages?

The few attempts at drama are silly and contrived. For instance, their amazing first date gets cut short when Derek walks out of the bedroom to find Scott hard at work, and Scott snaps at him that he’s standing in his light. Derek takes it hugely personal and promptly leaves. There is more at the end with their histories, but again, the execution is clumsy, and it’s really a matter of too little too late.

Perhaps my expectations are too high with recent excellent reads, but in the end, this short novella is simply too repetitive and unsophisticated to hold my attention.

Readability	6/10 – So many straining zippers in such a short space had me losing interest very quickly.
Hero	4/10 – Promise of depth gets shortchanged for focus on sexual needs
Hero	4/10 – So much like the other hero that they might as well be interchangeable
Entertainment value	3/10 – Without knowing either man well, and with the leap into “I must have you” almost immediately, I’m left bored more than anything else.
World building	5/10 – Certain aspects strain credibility and the information dumps about the men’s history at the end make this clumsy
TOTAL:	22/50

My Guy by Anastasia Rabiyah

TITLE: My Guy
AUTHOR: Anastasia Rabiyah
PUBLISHER: loveyoudivine
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 11k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotica
COST: $2.75

Life at the Chattel is easy but boring for Anne, until a man with too many scars and even more names chooses her for a Wednesday assignation. He doesn’t want sex. He just wants to hold her. But the darkness in him feels all too familiar, the fire he creates in her belly an ache she welcomes. Forever doesn’t scare her. Neither does he…

I found myself surprised by this short story. I’ve never read anything from this publisher before, and other offerings I’ve seen by this author at other e-pubs seemed less than promising. The prose isn’t anything exemplary, though it’s clean and unassuming. The heroine, too, isn’t any kind of unique archetype. She’s a whore who’s tired of her job, going through the motions and saving for a rainy day that never seems to come. There’s nothing really original with Anne, but at the same time, I found myself liking her.

Then, the hero gets introduced. He goes by a different name each week, all the names of angels. His body is scarred though powerful, and though he might be gorgeous, what sucked me in was his whole melancholy, tortured vibe. He just wants to hold Anne the first night. It’s romance hero 101, but I fell for it, all the same. There was a certain grace to his scenes with Anne, an easy sensuality that swept me up. I wanted him to return to the story, just as much as she did every Wednesday.

This is not a romance, but there’s a satisfaction to the ending anyway. I like that the author didn’t take the easy road out with this, though one particular development in the end made me roll my eyes. Still, it was a brave move to end it the way she did. It encourages me to try some of her other work at some point. If I can fall for a hero in a short story like this, especially a hero that should by all rights have pushed my “oh, please” button, I have to wonder what I might do with something longer.

Readability	8/10 – Simple and unassuming, quite readable
Hero	7/10 – I’ll admit it, I fell for the tortured vibe
Heroine	7/10 – The whore with a heart of gold has been done to death, but she feels surprisingly relatable
Entertainment value	8/10 – I got sucked into the wish fulfillment/fantasy of this
World building	7/10 – The real world is adequate enough, but there are a ton of questions left unsaid about the hero’s existence
TOTAL:	37/50