On Amazon:

Paul Z. Myers, Literate erotica for the discerningly horny reader:

Bending is excellently written — and it’s not the usual one-dimensional porn I’ve encountered on the internet (you know what I mean: the “Tab A goes into Slot B” kind of porn that reads like an Ikea manual, with lube). It’s the kind of porn that explores what people are actually thinking and feeling, and it’s stronger for it.

My only reservation, and it’s not a criticism, is that it’s got a focused theme. This is a book of stories about dom/sub relations and spanking, and it doesn’t match up well with my personal kinks (which I will not discuss, except to note that the word “tentacle” only appears ONCE in the entire book, and then as a metaphor). But if it does align with your interests, expect quality arousal.

Givesgoodemail, Very pleasantly surprising:

Christina write a literate blog, and now I know she also can tell a credible tale that can stiffen or liquify (depending).

VERY MINOR SPOILER:
There was one story that was particularly well-written (and hot). It has an unexpected, abrupt ending, which turns out to work extremely well. I am always impressed by authors who say what they have to say, and then shut up.

It’s nice to fine literate porn. I look forward to more of her work.

On blogs:

j00licious, Shouts & Murmurs, A book review: Bending, by Greta Christina:

I think what I like best about this collection is that while Christina might well have been typing one-handed at times, her characters do not suffer for it. The reader is not made to feel like she or he is just being pulled along for the ride, watching meat puppets boink for the author’s jollies. Christina has managed to give real personhood to each and every character. I can name authors on the New York Times bestseller list who don’t do that. There’s an asshole jock who is realistically an asshole jock, not a caricature. There are men and women wracked with guilt so badly my heart broke for them. The ending of one story, The Rest Stop, made me cheer out loud. There is a story that is, no shit, about a unicorn hooking up with a rainbow. I think it’s brilliant and it’s poignant, and while I didn’t wank to it, I’m sure it’ll make somebody horny (I would love to tell you why and how, but I can’t think of a way to do that without spoiling the story.)

There are themes within this collection, or rather, favored topics of exploration and favored acts. Only once, however, did I think to myself “Spanking again, Greta?” and then she did something totally new with it. Ditto humiliation and consent. I wasn’t always titillated, but I was never, ever bored.

Give Bending a shot. And, whether alone or with others, have good sex.

Read the entire review.

Tom Carlson, Sexy Red-Headed Nuns, Fap fap fap…

This is quality stuff. Greta’s a superb writer in general and she’s no less skilled in the realm of erotica. The stories are a good balance of set-up and pay-off. It’s not just balls-to-the-wall sexual descriptions, but nor does it shy from those. For me, the build up and situation setting is just as important as the sex, so I was very happy. Many stories trail off, leaving the ultimate conclusion to your imagination. If I were going to pick nits, I would have liked them to trail off a little later then many did, though.

I found most of the stories to be blazing hot. A few didn’t really “do it” for me, but that’s to be expected. And I didn’t dislike those few, they just didn’t really hit the spot for me as well as the others did. (The unicorn and rainbow story, for example, was clever and a nice break, but didn’t get me turned on. The Catholic one did. The other religious ones didn’t.)

The final novella is great, going on longer than anticipated, but in a logical way.

If I’m going to make an actual complaint it’s that most of the stories are from a female bottom perspective. I could have done with a few more stories of men being treated roughly.

Read the entire review.

Avicenna, A Million Gods, Sanguine Fallacies:

If you think my attempt at erotic fiction (or should it be Fucktion?) is terrible and that I am only fit to write bodice rippers for Mills & Boone/ Harlequin then I suggest you go see how it’s “Really Done”. Greta Christina’s book on Erotic Fiction is a lot better than mine and is now out!

(For the record: I rather like Avicenna’s attempt at erotic fiction.)

On Twitter:

Jo Alabaster, @joalabaster: @GretaChristina I wish Bending had been ten times longer, it was a sublime read. Please can you suggest where to look for similar erotica?

max f, @maxikf: finished 1st story in bending & dont remember having a more sustained erection. Tmi, perhaps; needed to be said, absolutely

Anne Sauer, @aynsavoy: Highly recommend @GretaChristina’s new kink erotica book, Bending. Read an excerpt here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/04/26/breasts-excerpt/

*****

Thanks, everyone!

And if you’ve said nice things about Bending on Twitter, blogs, or elsewhere in the public eye, and I haven’t cited them, let me know! I’ll put it in next week’s round-up. If you’ve read the book and liked it, an Amazon review would be awesome. And once again, you can buy the book at Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

*****

The pain starts to be too much. Her moans shade up into shrieks and screams, and her tormentor gestures to one of his henchmen and has her gagged. Normally he likes to hear her scream; but the point of this particular exercise is that it’s about his enjoyment of her breasts, and not about her pleasure or pain. So he has a gag forced into her mouth: so as not to be distracted by the sounds she’s making, or by what she might be feeling, or by who she, you know, is.

This has the effect, not only of concentrating his attention onto her breasts, but of concentrating her own. Without the ability to vent, both her pleasure and her pain are amplified. Instead of being let out into the afternoon air, the noises she would be making seem to be channeled down through her throat, and down into her chest, and out into her nipples. Where they are trapped.

He is trying to reduce her: to strip away everything about her that is not a sexual object, everything that is not the sexual body part he’s currently getting off on. It’s working. In much of her day to day life, she has long, tortured conversations with herself about the nature of identity, and who and what she is. Is she her thoughts? Is she her feelings? Is she her memories? Is she her actions? But at the moment, she has no such doubts. At the moment, she is none of these things. She is her breasts. That is all.

*****

If this intrigues you, check out the rest of the book! Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

*****

Their arrangement is, in theory, completely consensual. Safewords, and limits, and all the usual stuff.

What she’s not telling him is that, the moment he orders her in for a punishment, all of that stuff disappears. The moment he tells her that she must be punished — no, even before that, the moment he gets the gleam in his eye that prophecies a punishment — her submission takes over her mind, and her safeword and limits and understanding that she has consented to this are obliterated. What she’s not telling him is that, for her, the game of sadistic master and frightened obedient slavegirl is real, and is becoming more real with each passing week.

In their arrangement, he always initiates the punishments, and she never refuses. It’s an arrangement she’d asked for, early on. It’s an arrangement he agreed to, with fascination and eagerness, but with more than a bit of trepidation. It’s an arrangement he thinks is a potential minefield. So he agreed to it only on condition that she absolutely promise to safeword if she needs to, that she promise to tell him immediately if he’s being too hard or too cruel.

She promised.

She lied.

For her, the moment her punishment begins, all of her ability to say “No” vanishes.

And that is exactly as she wants it.

*****

If this intrigues you, check out the rest of the book! Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

*****

Here’s what it is this week. A girl, a college student, is being spanked by her college professor. She’s young, nineteen or twenty, young enough to be in college, but old enough to have some sexual knowledge. He’s older, of course, probably in his forties, dressed casually but with dignity, a trim beard with a hint of gray. She is dressed, not in the schoolgirl outfit of porn cliché, but in regular modern clothing that merely implies the schoolgirl look: a short skirt with a flare, a simple blouse, white panties. The white panties are important. She is bent over his lap with her skirt pulled up and her panties pulled down, and he is spanking her with his hand.

Here’s how they got there. I think of the girl as the instigator of the scenario. I think of her sitting in this man’s class: admiring him, becoming excited by his ideas and his authority and his ease with his body. I think of her feeling flustered in his presence: not stupid, but young, and acutely self-conscious of her youth and her limitations. And I imagine these feelings coalescing into the simple image in her mind, the lap and the bare bottom and the hand coming down again and again. I think of her, not coolly deciding to act on her thoughts, but doing it impulsively, not even entirely consciously; just coming to him after classes for help and advice, putting herself in his path, waiting to see what happens next.

Now. I imagine her going to his house after a test, a test on which she had done fine but could have done better. She goes to his house, dressed only somewhat on purpose in the short skirt and simple blouse and white panties. She goes to his house, apparently upset about her less-than-ideal test score, telling him that she clearly needs more help. She works herself into an agitation, a frustration about her academic performance that even she half-believes. At the same time, she’s deliberately, or semi-deliberately, being provocative, displaying her body, putting herself in poses both seductive and submissive. She talks about how lazy she is, how little self-discipline she has, how she needs external discipline to succeed — and she drops something on the floor and turns away from him to pick it up. She says she can’t achieve her best unless she fears being punished, says a B+ grade isn’t enough punishment to drive her to excel — and she bends over his desk to examine a knick-knack on the far side. She uses the word “punishment” again and again, and she keeps finding ways and reasons to turn away from him and bend over.

*****

If this intrigues you, check out the rest of the book! Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!