BLOG TOUR: Riptide’s “Bump in the Night” Anthology

Hello there, I’m Laylah Hunter and welcome to the Bump in the Night blog tour. Bump in the Night is an erotic horror anthology edited by Rachel Haimowitz and featuring my story “Resurrection Man.”  

The Horror of Yes

In the murky, squelchy part of the Venn diagram where horror and erotica overlap, uncomfortable things thrive. Various flavors of consent-breakdown flourish here; when sex is no longer voluntary but becomes an ordeal to endure, it turns into a horror very quickly. I admit there are several flavors of coercion that I find appealing as long as they stay safely ensconced in the bounds of fiction (and some of my co-contributors to Bump in the Night have nailed, pardon the pun, some of my favorites). But there’s another sort of creepy consent-problem delight lurking in the background of that overlap, one that I never see enough of and always take a nasty, squirmy pleasure in: the horror that comes with a well-placed and entirely sincere Yes.

It’s a trope that I think finds more of a home in “straight” (er, non-erotic) horror: Yes, I will read from this book bound in unidentifiable leather. Yes, I will unseal this tomb with its rusted lock and faded warning sigils. Yes, I will connect the electricity and make this corpse rise from the table. The horrific yes looks at taboos and gleefully embraces their erosion. It’s at its most potent when those taboos touch on death and the quest to master it. This is the mad scientist’s yes, the warlock’s yes. Yes, I want this thing that is unnatural and dangerous. Yes, I want to break the laws of nature.

There are almost always terrible consequences—it’s a horror trope, after all. The unholy forces should not be called on, the dead should not be woken, and the line should not be crossed. But what if, the characters in these stories ask. What if I could make it work this time? What if it’s worth the price? I have to try!

And damn, that misdirected enthusiasm is sexy.

So that’s where I started with “Resurrection Man.” What if this embrace of the taboo became more literal? What if I had a character with fleshly motivations for inhuman ambitions? And there was Josef Leitner, born from that possibility. Josef’s dark arts couldn’t prevent his lover’s death, but he’s determined to use them to reverse it. He’s fixated, convinced he’s on the edge of the most glorious achievement of his life, and desperate to bring Adel back to him before his chance passes for good.

I suppose on one level what makes this story fit an erotic horror collection is the fact that one of the characters in the erotic encounter is, well, dead at the time. But the part that makes it delightfully creepy to me, the part that I took the most awful glee in as I was writing, was the exploration of Josef’s headspace. Adel can’t help being dead. Josef, on the other hand, keeps making deliberate choices. Will he pay whatever price is necessary to reclaim Adel from death? Yes. Will he do whatever it takes to keep his revived lover satisfied? Yes. Will that cost be more than any reasonable man would agree to?

I think you know how I would answer that. 

Contest:

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for a $25 Riptide Publishing gift certificate! Entries close at midnight, EST, on November 2nd, and one grand prize winner will be contacted on November 3rd. Contest is valid worldwide.

Bump in the Night Blurb:

Turn off the lights . . . and turn on your darkest fantasies.

Demon pacts. Ghostly possessions. Monsters lurking in the depths. The things that go bump in the night frighten us, but they also intrigue us. Fascinate us. Even turn us on.

Join us as fan favorites Ally Blue and Kari Gregg bring over-amorous aquatic beasts to life with their mythic twists on the Siren and the monster in the lake.  Erotic horror pros Heidi Belleau, Sam Schooler, and Brien Michaels show us just how sexy scary can be with a pair of demon deals destined to curl your toes and set your heart thrashing. And literary masters Laylah Hunter and Peter Hansen weave haunting worlds where ghosts and dead lovers can touch our hearts (and other, naughtier places too . . .) and teach us lessons from beyond the grave.

By turns exciting, evocative, and exquisitely explicit, the stories in Bump in the Night are sure to scratch your sexy paranormal itch. Explore your wildest fantasies with us in this collection of dark erotic tales.

You can read an excerpt of “Resurrection Man” and purchase Bump in the Night here.

Bio: 

Laylah Hunter is a third-gendered butch queer who writes true stories about imaginary people in worlds that never were. Most of hir work deals with queer characters, erotic themes, and the search for happy endings in unfavorable circumstances. Hir mild-mannered alter ego lives in Seattle, at the mercy of the requisite cats and cultivating the requisite caffeine habit, and dreams of a day when telling stories will pay all the bills. Connect with Laylah online at hir website, on Twitter, or on Goodreads.