‘Nightmares and Visions’ is a compelling collection of short erotic fiction pieces that invite the reader to wander the darker paths of sexuality. For a number of reasons, it is a remarkable collection. Before the rise of digital publishing and the advent of the e-book, many publishers were unwilling to publish collections of this type. The unorthodox length of the pieces – neither short story anthology nor novel – would have been hard to classify and even harder to market. Where would it be shelved in a bookshop? With the introduction of e-books and portable digital reading devices, the publishing industry has been able to broaden their range of literary formats. There is a notable rise in the number of novella-length works being published and collections of flash fiction such as this one turn out to be the perfect length for reading on a morning’s commute in to work.
Another aspect of the relationship between the digital text medium and a collection of this sort is the absence of visible book covers. As late as the 1970s, commuters in Britain were scandalized when fellow travelers settled themselves onto train seats, and pulled out a copy of ‘Lady Chatterly’s Lover’. Readers found themselves judged by the title and/or the cover of the book they read in public spaces. There was public reading and private reading. E-readers, tablets and mobile phones now allow a reader to indulge in the most scandalous literature in public, secure in the knowledge that those around them have no idea what excesses of fictional libidinousness are being consumed by the person in the seat opposite.
The pieces that make up Nightmares and Visions are not only the perfect length for commuter reading; they are unarguably meant to arouse the reader sexually. They do much more than offer the mild frisson of eroticism that any novel with a sex scene might elicit. They are quick and deep plunges into pools of sexual transgression. Raw, explicit and shamelessly penned to take a reader to the very edge of her comfort level, these stories push past the limits of political correctness or the earlier feminist theories on how women should be represented in sexually explicit fiction.
Although written by a male author, the stories in this collection present the POV of a female protagonist. There is an unapologetic appropriation of voice, which not only challenges feminist theory that has worked its way deeply into the fabric of many contemporary erotic works for women, but forms a narrative agreement between the voice, the structure and the prevailing subject theme of male dominant/female submissive sexual power dynamics. It’s not just the fictional characters who play the part of a female submissives but, to some extent, the reader may also find herself in that position.
This collection will and probably should be a controversial one. However, it might be argued that literary eroticism has been governed by cultural, sexual and gender politics for too long. We are not simply political animals. We are also sexual ones. And, as more recent feminists and queer theorists have observed, there is no particular reason why our private sexual fantasies should have to mirror the realities that may lead a kinder, gentler and more humane society. In fact, it may very well be the gulf between them that informs us as to why we continue to repress the one and fail in the other.
Nightmares & Visions by Raziel Moore is available in Kindle, PDF and Ebook formats. At Amazon and at Burning Books Press. And you can find his work over at his group blog Erotic Writer, where he uses the pen-name Monocle.