Steven Coy (ed)

Reviewed by Jason Makansi

Class assignment: write something erotic or sexy. 1000 word limit. At first, after reading this collection, I thought I knew how a prostitute must feel like at the end of the week, or the professor in the pornography department grading papers for this assignment. It's hard to conclude that this collection is anything but a vanity press like vehicle for publishing credits since nothing else really ties the stories together, no information is provided on the authors, and for the life of me I could not make any connection between the collection's title and the stories. 

At least in a collection from one author, you are enriched with fragments of insight into the author's mind. What are fifty (surely, 69 would have been a more interesting total) erotica pieces randomly thrown together? I'm not much of a proofreader, so when I catch a few nits, like I did here, I figure there are probably more than there should be. 

Despite the lack of an editorial raison d'etre, there are standouts here. The succubus of Seventh Street, Vincent Louis Carrella, offers great advice on what to do with a belt if you find yourself dominant in a bondage situation and the chick who wrote the personal ad lied through her sagging breasts. If it could get out of this collection and in front of more eyeballs, Lobster Dinner, by Debbie Ann Ice, could at long last move the culture past the hilarious lobster scene in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. 

For those of you who long for the heyday of Penthouse and similar pubs, Venus Mound, by Douglas Campbell, will take you back to the days of painting the ceiling in your adolescent bedroom. Sarah, by Davina Owombre, is a true piece of dangerous flirtatiousness, over reading to the kids, no less, and no, the parents are not doing the reading! And if you don't care for the seven taboo words in your stories, much less in their titles, too bad; Fuck She Was, by J.A. Tyler, reads with the mechanical efficiency of machine gun fire. I could have cared less what the story was about. It just picks you up and carries you along.

It's too much to expect readers to slog through collections like this. Soon, perhaps for some of you even now, we'll have these delivered to us daily on our Kindles, Blackberries, PCs, Palm devices, and iPhones (If I left one out, please don't sic the PR department on me). Digesting them with time and space between each one would be preferable, perhaps even to a sex partner, for the best of the bunch.

Publisher: Better Non Sequitur

Publication Date: 2008

Paperback/Hardback? Paperback

First collection?: N/A

Editor: Steven Coy is a San Diego writer, and editor for Better Non Sequitur (print) and Pequin (web).

Authors: Brendan Connell, Aryan Kaganof, Steve Finbow, Jónas Knútsson, Lyttleton, Aaron Burch, David Gianatasio, Jimmy Chen, John Roberts, David E. Oprava, Lannice L. Montague, Paul Kavanagh, Vanessa Gebbie, Casey Anderson, Chelsea Martin, Davina Owombre, Elizabeth Ellen, Michael Fowler, D.M. Schwartz, E.P. Chiew, Mary McCluskey, Tom Sheehan, Randall Brown, Marie Shield, Sara Crowley, Melissa Lee, Mary Lynn Reed, Bonnie ZoBell, Tria Andrews, Donna D. Vitucci, Terri Brown-Davidson, Debbie Ann Eis, Garrett Socol, Zachary Vora, Douglas Campbell, Grant Perry, Leslie Jamison, Harold Jaffe, Kevin O'Cuinn, Blake Butler, Erich Mulhall, J. A. Tyler, Errid Farland, Justin Taylor, Kevin Sampsell, Vincent Louis Carrella, Savannah Schroll Guz, Douglas Lee, Lee Klein, Steven Coy.

Buy this book (used or new) from:

The Publisher's Website: Better Non Sequitur

AbeBooks 

Amazon

Powell's 

And...don't forget your local booksellers and independent book shops! Visit  IndieBound.org to find an independent bookstore near you in the US

If you liked this book you might also like....

Susie Bright (ed) "The Best of Best American Erotica"

What other reviewers thought:

Good Reads