Ghostly Desire by Keziah Hill from Forbidden Publishing.

Ghostly Desire by Keziah Hill is novel that was dried out in the sun until it was sixteen pages. If you read it, you will understand why it has a raisin quality. Thea and Judith met when they were both fifteen at Thea’s Uncle Osbert’s mansion by the sea in Tasmania. Years later when Uncle Osbert dies, Thea inherits the mansion. Judith had been the daughter of the housekeeper, so of course she has strong ties to the house. Opposites personalities clash together in this story until a sexy showdown almost too neatly ties up the entire tale. Ghostly Desire suffers from its lack of length, and what could have been a great novel makes for a unsatisfying short story. I would give this story a very low C-.

I really had thought about giving this one a D, but Hill has a fun voice in her writing and a little bits of realism that you never really see in romancelandia. The back story to Judith and Thea’s first meeting is a smoke-filled affair as Thea and her brother were toking it to keep from being bored to death. That made me laugh out loud because I still remember family vacations where us kids would go on “hikes” and smoke our way up the mountain. Anyway, back to the review. The editing was fine; no errors jumped out at me. I could tell that this would have been a very fun novel, and the sex was hot (though the sexy talk was lame but I always think the sexy talk is lame unless the author carefully set the mood) so I put it between C and D. The potential and the energetic prose bumped up the score.

Now, why would I have wanted to give this a D? Hill had a great chance to build up the character of the house and the setting to give a little dimension to Judith. Judith really loves the house, readers like having setting, so build up the description on the house and it gives insight into Judith and a nice setting. I know that at sixteen pages that it is hard to set the scene, but it would have given the story more texture. Though, I always want more description and texture, so your opinion may vary. thing that wasn’t well explained was why Thea and Judith would have stayed in each other’s memories. I could understand if Hill had explained it as Thea and Judith being friends or both mooning over each other or something, but they had known each other (and didn’t talk to the other much) for a week. And, the chemistry was lacking. I didn’t feel the passion which I believe that Hill could have been able to build if she had a full novel to do so. And the conclusion? Abrupt, abrupt, abrupt: it was like Wil E. Coyote running into one of the Roadrunner’s painted tunnels.

This story felt like that the missed opportunities overcrowded the actual story. Hill has a good voice, but I think that she ought to stick to longer stories. Get this story at Forbidden Publications (for $2 actually).

Locked and Loaded: An Erotic Lesbian Romance Anthology (Review)

Locked and Loaded edited by SA Clements is a pretty damn good anthology. All in all, I would give it a B. The theme of this anthology is the women who sleep with a gun under their pillow and never go out of the house without a knife strapped to their thighs. The stories are organized in chronological order starting with a sexy pirate captain and ending with a engineer making love in space. I think a round of applause is in order for Clements in finding such a diverse group of stories that have some thing for everyone.

I will start with the fabulous! “No Business” by Parhelion is my favorite story. In a dark, gilded 1930s Hollywood, Vera is a kick-ass ‘gal Friday’ getting the scoop for her wealthy boss’s (Margot Blake) gossip column. While you’re reading the story you can totally tell the amount of research that went into it. The only complaint is that the love scenes seemed tacked on, but I haven’t read such a well-written tacked on scene in a while. Two stories are tied for second place in my heart - “Free” by Tracey Shellito and “Kiss of Steel” by Crystal Barela. “Free” is set in the Netherlands, and the setting is used so well. The story couldn’t be told in another setting. The writing is taut, and I love that there is an interracial couple. Warning, the ending does sort of dance the line of being too sentimental. “Kiss of Steel” is a darker tale. The girls in this story are harder than steel with an edge that could cut diamonds. Jane and McClane are ruthless killers and there is no sugar coating of the fact. The sex is rougher, and the fighting more brutal. I felt like the ending was a little too pat.

Some highlights from the middle of the pack are “Guarding Kate” by Samantha Boswell. I ended that story with one sappy smile. “Bustles and Doeskin” by BA Tortuga has one fantastic character in Eleanor. She cracked me up.

“Inexorable” by Jodi Payne and “Coming Home” by Jennifer Joyce are at the bottom of the pack. “Coming Home” was sort of boring for me and I felt in term of writing that it might have been the weakest. Though I think that might be one of those things were I am alone on. “Inexorable” by Jodi Payne was one that I just didn’t like at all. She seemed like a Mary Sue with the attitude of bratty teenager not the highly trained, empath that the author kept telling the reader she was. Jo was similarly grating. From the beginning the characters just kept me from enjoying the story.

I really did like this anthology. I hope that SA Clements edits another anthology. She picked a good bunch of stories. Everyone can buy this anthology at Torquere Press.