Review”Hot and wet — likewise exceedingly well crafted.” — Kirkus Reviews – July 1, 2000
From the PublisherFrom the editor’s introduction:
“When I was introductory asked to do this anthology, it sounded like outstanding fun — reading (erotic|sexual pleasure|sexually arousing stories with a watery element, selecting the best to construct a book that you could take delight in in the tub, at the beach — while immersed in water yourself. And of course, I expected a veritable flood of stories to consider; water was so evidently a natural subject for erotica. Water is inherent sexy: it may be gentle, warm, delicious. I anticipated the incoming stories with nervous excitement.
I did receive a good deal of wondrous stories — but their nature astonished me. I had expected the collection to be full of light stories, delightful little (erotic|sexual pleasure|sexually arousing tales — cheerful, like a bubbling spring. There are surely more than a few of those in this book. Mary Maxwell’s “I Want” gives us a pool of water in the desert and two lovers who know how to take delight in it; Diane Kepler’s “Hydrodynamica” is a tale of a student who is having a very difficult time studying her liquid dynamics; Kris Hawes gives us a teasing woman and her collaborator (who ought to choose amid basketball and a steamy shower) in “Velvet Glove,” and Thomas Roche’s poor artist’s model writhes delightfully on her couch in “Watercolor.” These stories are rich, heartfelt, often complex, and I’m pleased to be competent to portion them with you; their playfulness is seductive and sexy. But not all the stories are so light-hearted.
There were dark currents in a good deal of of the stories I received. Love and lust, surely — but also pain and betrayal, deaths by drowning. Some of the stories were so painful that they moved me to tears as I read them. Bill Burkett’s “Addiction” tells the story of a man trapped by his own desires, engaged in a struggle to escape them; “Movements,” by Michael Hemmingson, chronicles what may be the end, or new beginning, of a marriage, and the lengths to which a man will go to save it. A few stories pushed even further — Simon Sheppard’s “In Deep” is a story which explores the boundaries of consent, loss of control, and the desire for sexual oblivion; it terrified me even as it fascinated…”
From the Inside FlapImagine a hot tub party where a married couple tests the boundaries of fidelity. A model who finds herself unaccountably aroused as she poses for a watercolor artist. A pool of water on a desert road and two lovers who recognise how to make the most of it. This is Aqua Erotica, a sensuous tasting of desire’s liquid, ecstatic other worlds.
Aqua Erotica is a siren’s song, a book so unforgettably sexy that you will want to take it with you to the bath, the sauna, the night-lit pool.
What’s aweinspiring is that you can.
The first-ever waterproof book for adults. The most seductive collection of firstborn literary erotica ever collected underneath one cover.
Aqua Erotica is a book that rather in a literal sense goes places you never imagined books could go. Featuring today’s boldest (erotic|sexual pleasure|sexually arousing voices:
Francesca Lia Block
Poppy Z. Brite
Louise Erdrich
Carol Queen
Marcy Sheiner
Cecilia Tan
Barry Yourgrau
and numerous others –
A good and wet collection