Goodbye 2012 - Hello 2013
2012 comes to a close in just a few hours, and a new year starts. 2012 was not an outstanding year for me. In many ways it seems to have passed in a blur of mundane activities. I find myself looking back with some regret, mostly that I wish I had not let a variety of life irritations interfere with the momentum of my writing. I did write some stories that satisfied me in 2012, but I feel like I should have done more. I look at my files of partially completed manuscripts and wince at the possibilities put on pause.
But this is it – I am done beating myself up over not spending more time at the keyboard, of leaving so many worlds and words frozen like ants in amber.
Tonight is a night to celebrate the triumphs, to take them and let them feed a rededication to my craft. I did have some successes this year. I had several short stories published and had one of my favorites turned into a audio podcast over at Nobilis Erotica with the lovely voice of Rose Caraway giving my story “Tourist” life. My erotic superhero short story “Lawman” was chosen to appear in Circlet’s best of print collection Fantastic Erotica. I was honored to have stories in collections edited by Delilah Devlin, Kristine Wright, Rachel Kramer Bussel, D.L. King and Maxim Jakubowski. eXtasy books, Xcite books, Seal Press and Renaissance eBooks published some of my work as well, and I was thrilled to have a couple of my older stories reissued by new publishers.
So 2013 starts with a flurry of successes including the two stories that Maxim Jakubowski selected for his Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11 (available January 1) – “The Boiling Sea” and “Barnacle Bill.” I am delighted that “The Boiling Sea” is the lead story in this year’s collection. Also, two of my quickie shorts will appear in Maxim’s collection due out in the spring.
Other successes conceived in 2012 will be given life in 2013 – another audio version of one of my popular short stories and other works that I am determined to finish up and send out into the world.
In a few hours I will enjoy some champagne, the company of good friends and family, and I will bid farewell to 2012 and welcome 2013, embracing the possibilities and adventures that can only be born through will and a creative heart. I hope your New Year’s Eve is filled with laughter, good company and most of all, I hope it is safe.
All the best for a bright New Year. Life is sexy – live it.
Return to the Dark Century - 2010 - Let Me In
2010 continued our collective journey through the financial crisis, and while our politicians ratcheted up the rhetoric and demonstrated a shortage of leadership, the American people tried to rise out of the muck and remake themselves. It only seems fitting that horror movies also seemed to find meaning in remakes. Breck Eisner took on the George Romero classic The Crazies, Samuel Bayer raided Wes Craven’s closet and remade Nightmare on Elm Street, Joe Johnson cast Benicio Del Toro as The Wolfman, and Steven Monroe remade Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave. Besides being noted for the remakes, 2010 gave us Cropsey, a creepy documentary by two filmmakers exploring the urban legend of their youth, Splice fed our need for a genetics-gone-wrong story, and Paul Bettany played a sexy fallen angel trying to prevent the End of Days in Legion.
But it was the remake of the amazing Swedish horror film Let the Right One In that hands down won our 2010 race for best horror film.
We approached Let Me In skeptically. As mentioned in our 2008 post, Let the Right One In left an indelible mark on our expectations not only for vampire films, but for horror films as a whole. Combine that with our lack of faith that such a rich story could be transplanted without killing the roots, and we feared the worst. Obviously, we were pleasantly surprised by this high profile production from the reborn Hammer studios. Let Me In moved the story from Stockholm, Sweden to Los Alamos, New Mexico, but still did a wonderful job of making the girl vampire Abby, both sympathetic and terrifying. The chemistry between actress Chloë Grace Moretz and actor Kodi Smit-McPhee rivaled that of their Swedish counterparts (Lina Leadnersson and Kåre Hedebrant) and gives this movie an amazing tension. Outcast and bullied Owen befriends Abby at night in a local playground, and eventually he learns her true nature. Let Me In reminds us that vampires are terrifying creatures, predators of the first order, and even though Abby appears as an “adolescent” and is in need of a guardian, she is a monster. The relationship between Owen and Abby has a sexual charge, but it is subtle and sweet, and has more to do with mutual understanding and respect than sex.
Another surprise of Let Me In was Richard Jenkins as Father, Abby’s guardian, and in some ways, her prisoner. His performance does an amazing job of portraying his devotion to Abby, but also his jealousy as Abby and Owen grow closer. His unwavering loyalty is tested and tortured as he tries to provide for his charge, and his inevitable end leaves Abby vulnerable.
Let Me In beat the odds by staying remarkably true to Let the Right One In, and it paid off. This remake won several awards including Best Horror Film and Best Performance by a Younger Actor (Chloë Grace Moretz) from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. There is no doubt this film qualifies as a new classic horror film and redeems the vampire as an object of smart horror.
Return to the Dark Century- 2009 - Trick r' Treat
So, 2009…
As noted, it’s hard to say anything meaningful about a year so recently passed, but it’s safe to say that not many historians will view 2009 as one of the world’s great years. Wars and rumors of war; the continuing unraveling of national and international economies; earthquakes and hurricanes. Michael Jackson died, but shallow celebrity culture lived on!
In horror films, the year was not as rich as 2008, but then few years are. Torture porn lurched forward on a hundred legs with the dreadful The Human Centipede (First Sequence), which reduced the unspeakable to ironic posturing. Lars von Trier’s Antichrist gave us a front row seat at a personal Gnostic apocalypse that may have done the best job of capturing the world’s mood in this dark year, but ultimately felt unsatisfying as a narrative. Bad sequels (Cabin Fever 2) and stupid re-makes (Friday the 13th and The Haunting) captured the quality of most of the year’s offerings. Zombieland was hugely popular, but we found it un-engaging and painfully self-conscious. Close contenders for favorite of the year included Pontypool (which I inadvertently listed in 2008) and Wake Wood, a scary, low-key tale from Hammer.
But our pick is a brilliant little gem that was released, almost accidentally, in 2009. Trick ‘r Treat, written and directed by Michael Dougherty, is well on its way to becoming a holiday classic! A brilliantly woven web of stories, Trick r’ Treat reminds us that humor and horror can still be effectively combined, if the humor is smart. Trick ‘r Treat was intended for release at Halloween in 2007 but Warner’s nerve apparently failed and the movie teetered on the brink of oblivion before finally finding a DTV release in 2009. In the mean time, it had started to pick up a buzz from a few screenings at festivals and underground digital “distribution” and has gained considerably more of a reputation since its release. Any lover of Halloween should see Trick ‘r Treat.
We like this film not only for its sense of humor and clever structure, but for its playful use of Halloween iconography and numerous, often subtle references to horror comics, films, and folk tales. Sometimes compared to John Carpenter’s original Halloween, Trick ‘r Treat is a far more loving and complete tribute to the weird holiday that, above all else, celebrates the power of imagination.
It was easily our favorite horror film from 2009, even if it should have been released in 2007!
Return to the Dark Century - 2008 - The Burrowers
2008 was an election year, which made the year horrible enough all by itself. The US was dealing with potential economic collapse as well as the ongoing threat of terrorism and adjustment to the idea of a more multilateral future in the world. Maybe all that tension is what made it such a fantastic year for horror films.
Return to the Dark Century
now and Halloween.
Review: Dances of Vice, Horror, & Ecstasy
Dances of Vice, Horror, & Ecstasy
By Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste
Side Real Press
300 copies
Thanks to the wonderful and unique Side Real Press, one of the seminal artifacts of Weimar decadence is back in print after 90 years. I’ve written about Anita Berber here before, but I never expected to see a reprint of her notorious book, Dances of Vice, Horror, & Ecstasy, co-authored with her dancing partner/husband/partner-in-debauchery Sebastian Droste. The original booklet was probably sold at their performances and surviving copies are rare and expensive, if they can be found at all.
Fortunately for anyone with an interest in Ms. Berber, naked dancer and pioneering celebrity bad girl, Side Real has recreated the booklet in a glorious new edition, translated into English by Merrill Cole and including the original photographic and artistic illustrations. Side Real continues to be one of the most interesting small presses, and I am very honored to have been featured in one of their books, Delicate Toxins, a collection of short stories inspired by Hanns Heinz Ewers, notorious author of dark fantasy and horror stories in the decades before World War II. One of Droste’s poems name checks Ewers, so it’s safe to say that Berber and her lover either knew the author or admired his work:
Villiers de l’Isle Adam
Edgar Allan Poe
E. T. A. Hoffman
Hans Heinz Ewers
And 1922
Rooms long left
Tapestries
-Suicide, by Sebastian Droste
The poetry is honestly pretty awful stuff, but it may have been effective when recited over two
near naked bodies writhing in an Expressionist dance against hallucinatory backdrops. Alas, I don’t think there is much surviving film of Berber and certainly none from the performances where this exceedingly dark little book was offered for sale. We are left to interpret exactly what the numbers Cocaine or the Byzantine Whip Dance must have looked like.
My favorite part of this delightful little volume is the section of color sketches at the end, showing concepts for sets and costumes. These drawings, even more than the photos of Anita and her grotesque lover, are windows into a world we will never see, but that we can touch in our own flights of erotic imagination.
"Tourist" Available as Podcast
My erotic time travel short story “Tourist” is now available as an audio podcast on Nobilis Erotica!
"Tourist" in Like the Hand of Time
My short story “Tourist” was just published in the Circlet Press anthology Like the Hands of Time. "Tourist" is the tale of a man who travels back in time to fulfill a fantasy and visit his favorite era of history, Germany in the late years of the Weimar Republic, not long before the rise of Adolph Hitler, when a lot of good parties were replaced by one bad one.Germany between the World Wars was a fascinating place, not only for the art, theater, architecture, and film that the culture produced, but because German cities, Berlin in particular, were like experiments in a freedom of sexual expression that was revolutionary in modern times and prefigured the permissive societies that became more common near the end of the century.
The book Voluptuous Panic, the Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, by Mel Gordon, is a wonderful history of the time and place and I drew heavily on Mr. Gordon’s volume for the details of my story. A city of endless delight and hedonistic expression, Berlin was also a dangerous place, even without the street fighting. Like so many world events of the 1920s and 1930s, Germany was a crucible where all the ingredients of the coming century were tested and, unfortunately for the world, instead of liberation, monsters were born and thrived on a diet of hatred and repressive madness.Here’s an excerpt from "Tourist":
Julie danced at the Mandrake. Her name and a grotesque distortion of her image hung in a tattering poster beside the door. She had been dancing there since ‘22, when Papa had turned her out into the street because he could not feed her. Now she had an apartment of her own, which she shared with a shifting cast of roommates down on their luck, other dancers from the club, men who aspired to be pimps but who lacked the moral fiber, and petty black marketers in between deals.She appreciated the relative fortune of her simple walls and furnishings but always Julie told herself, “Someday my luck will change. Someday I will have more.”
The night she met Paul, she began to believe the stories she told herself. Paul strode into the Mandrake like a champion, head level, eyes sharp and determined, his very presence shivering Julie’s soul unlike anyone she’d ever met. He wore his blonde hair short, stiff in a funny way and it smelled good with a hint of something exotic. He looked like money. He wore an expensive suit that he told her later was real silk. He had the most perfect teeth she had ever seen, gleaming white in the stage light when he sat at the front table and watched her.
“Pretty Julie,” he crooned with sincerity. “If you will come with me tonight, I will make you a duchess.” He barely looked at Rutger before giving the wicked clown a handful of gold coins.
“I don’t care if you don’t bring her back,” Rutger chuckled as he winked and smiled at Julie. “Good luck. Have fun.”
Paul walked out with her, his arm around her waist, possessive and endearing in his hold. He took her to the Paradise and Inferno nightclub, and Julie swallowed hard, awed and worried that she was not dressed well enough. A bony doorman dressed as St. Peter looked them over. “We want to go to heaven,” Paul told him. “Only heaven is good enough for my Julie.”
Julie smiled as the doorman’s scorn melted away when Paul gave him a generous fold of marks, and then they were inside the most infamous club in Berlin. A nearly naked Cupid led them to a booth on the left side of the stage, shrouded in shadows but sometimes washed by red light from the spotlights and floodlights that danced across the stage. She tried not to stare at the dancing sparkle of diamonds and satin flash when the stage lighting splashed sometimes over the women in the audience. As Julie looked around the cabaret, she wondered, what did it feel like to wear a ring that cost more than food for a year? A gauzy white curtain bisected the theater. On the other side of it, Julie knew from stories, hell’s patrons sat in equal splendor attended by handsome devils and almost-nude lady demons.
Satan, his muscular chest bare and painted red, paraded on the stage addressing the audience. Julie grinned, wondering if the obvious bulge in the tight black pants he wore was real or a stuffed prosthetic. Regardless, the illusion gave many in the audience reason to twitter approval. “So, Berliners, welcome to Hell,” he said to the half of the audience hidden from Julie by the white curtain, before he turned to Julie and Paul’s side of the room. “Our friends over in Heaven, don’t worry! We delight in showing you,” he chuckled with low, wicked delight, “what it is you’re missing!”
Paul sat beside her in the booth, his light laughter a hymn beyond the other merriment in the club. She glanced at him as they both faced the stage and smiled, delighted by his obvious enjoyment.
The he slid his warm hand under Julie’s skirt and stroked her slit through the black lace of her panties. She remembered her price tag, but she also grew wet under his touch, her heart pounding. The giddy wonder of his forwardness surprised her even as a touch of disappointment dimmed the glow of the evening. He stopped after only a moment and leaned to her, pressing trembling lips to her ear. “Remove your panties, Julie,” he commanded with a whisper that rippled through her soul. She started to stand, to find shadows or a powder room, but he traced his hand down her wrist and locked it in a grip that claimed, took, breathed, and promised. “No,” he corrected her. “Remove them here.”
She shifted and adjusted, reaching up and behind and under, unfastened her garter and slowly squirmed out of the soft cotton panties. Anyone in the club who looked at her would surely know what she was doing, but perhaps the shadows concealed her. She surrendered her underpants to Paul and looked at him, waiting. Paul curled his fingers into the white material, his thumb stroking the prim edge, then at Paul’s commanding nod and curt order, the waiter brought a strong brandy and a bottle of good wine.
On the stage, a thin woman, entirely nude, pale as ivory, danced in smoky light, a study in white and black, milky skin, black-ringed eyes, the whipping mane of her raven hair, and the thick tangle of silken black between her legs. Sinuous, precise, she fought with the smoke and made love to it, a teasing undulation of flesh and dreams.
Paul took Julie’s hand and rested it on his hardening cock. She pressed through the smooth material of his trousers, her fingers expert from many nights in the Mandrake. She brought him to full, impressive erection, just as the dancer on the stage twirled one final time and vanished into the billowing smoke.
Everyone applauded. Julie smelled opium and hashish. The smoke and the brandy turned her mind golden and she relaxed against Paul, opening his trousers and reaching in to touch the bare heat of his cock. She smiled and stroked down its pulsing length with one testing finger.
The silky bead at the tip delighted her, the slippery warmth of it, the affirmation of Paul’s desire. She smeared the bead and relished his quickened breath.
The stage stayed dark for a long moment, then a clown dressed as an angel appeared and began to tell stories and make dirty jokes about politicians and Socialists, Frenchmen and Russians. Paul put his hand over Julie’s, his fingertips almost tickling the back of her hand as she slowly pumped him. “Wait,” he whispered, and she stopped, but didn’t move her hand, allowing her to hold the hard, responsive flesh.
He poured wine for her and she drank. “You are an American?” she asked him casually as she tightened her grip a moment, then relaxed her hand.
“Yes I am,” he answered with a little smile. “Have you ever been in this place before?”
“No. Have you?”
Paul shook his head. “I’ve heard a great deal about it—read books about it.”
“Are you a teacher?” she asked him.
“No. Only a tourist, Julie. Like so many in Berlin.”
Copyright 2012 Angela Caperton. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.
New Toys!
Oh, if it were ONLY that much fun...
My blog software has introduced some nifty new templates and features and I will be playing with them over the next few days. Apologies if the blog looks odd or a link accidentally sends you to www.theabyss.com (hey! just go with it... It's like Las Vagas - what happens there, stays there).
...and though I walk through the valley of the shadow of broken HTML, I will fear no evil (except more broken HTML).
Keep me in your thoughts...
~AC
"Katie" in Underworlds!
Contrast is everything.I just sold another story to Mischief, for their anthology Underworlds. The story is called “Katie” and is set in the late 1800s. It is loosely based on the real-life case of Dr. William Crookes, a renowned British chemist and physicist, who conducted experiments in spiritualism with a pretty young “physical medium” named Florence Cook. Of course, the manifestations in my story are considerably sexier than anything Dr. Crookes recorded in his notebooks!
I enjoy writing stories set in past eras, not only because I love history, especially its darker and weirder corners, but also because such eras provide an opportunity to emphasize the power of sexuality by setting it against a background less sexualized than today’s world. Much of the dramatic appeal I find in erotica comes from the contrast of a story’s sexual content against these more inhibited time frames. I’ve used eras like the 1950s as a backdrop for stories such as “Calendar Girl,” and I drew on the 1840s for my story of Millerite shenanigans, “Rapture,” because those eras make a sharper contrast that allows relatively mild sexuality to appear daring, even forbidden. It’s not an easy thing for an erotica writer to be shocking in the age of Kink.com, but I like the challenge. If I’m successful, I hope I can craft a story that helps the reader adjust their attitude to see things through other eyes.
The general notion of the Victorian era as a completely repressed epoch is not exactly accurate. Although there was certainly a puritanical streak that dominated polite consciousness, there was also a tremendous amount of barely repressed eroticism that broke out in interesting ways. The erotic elements of spiritualism were certainly not emphasized in contemporary accounts, but more than one female medium conducted her séances lightly clad or sometimes entirely nude, ostensibly to prevent fraud. The effect cannot have been lost on the gentlemen sitting around the table. Also, most séances were conducted in the dark and, although all hands were supposed to be on the tipping table, who knows what might have happened beneath it? Add in the intriguing possibilities of ectoplasmic extrusions and wonderful things are possible!Writing a story in a historical period, of course, presents different challenges from a contemporary tale or one set in an entirely fantastic world, like my novel Woman of the Mountain, but the advantages are significant. The internet offers limitless research resources and direct access to period detail and texts that have never been easily available to writers before. I love taking advantage of modern technology to embellish my little windows into the past. When you look into that gas-lit chamber, there’s no telling what naughty things you might see – at the tipping table or under it…
Underworlds will be published by Mischief later this year.
