Free Erotic Story Recommendations by Hapax Legomenon
By Hapax Legomenon

I won't make a habit of recommending erotic literature. First, you can look at Golden Clitorides Award-winning stories, recent Rauxa prize winners or the Desdemona Story Contest Winners or the Alt.Sex Hall of fame. Here are a few that stand alone as good stories:

• Number Six is a pseudonym for an erotic writer working along a similar vein to my own fiction project. His project is called Psycho-Sexual Short Stories for the Slightly Disturbed (PSSSFTSD). His tiny stories (in the strangely-named Global Village Library) are frivolous, clever, silly, sly, light-hearted, slighty naughty, and very imaginative. Number six has the ability to take ordinary settings or situations (like a parent/teacher conference! or a visit to a copy shop) and just make them outrageous. Some of the stories have a magnificent terseness (see Threepeat or Yellow Rose). Others are more experimental in nature (see the Thin Gray Line). Despite the naughty/manipulative nature of these stories (see Coming Home ), these stories are the best you're going to find in the erotic flash fiction genre. These stories should be sipped like fine wine...slowly and in very small amounts. They distill the erotic moment to a few sexy details and surprises, with erotic twists and turns reminiscient of O'Henry or Kundera. The amount of fiction (100+ stories) here is prodigious, yet their quality remains constant.
• Selena Jardine writes a variety of erotic stories with nice twists, sensuous moments and a surprising amount of humor. Think of de Maupassant writing scripts for "Sex in the City." Although her acclaimed story Ruthie's Hair fuses emotional scarring with physical desire, many of her other stories are quick, frivolous and highly entertaining (see for example Anything You Want or Make Me and Marital Therapy). While some of the details are out there, the characters and situations are plausible and relate to everyday experiences in an ongoing relationships (getting pregnant, fantasizing about a long lost love, etc).
• Don't forget the Unbuttoned Tales section of this site. It showcases quality woman's erotica that I've found over the years. By various female authors.
• The recent Rauxa prize is an annual $1000 prize for an erotic story published in the previous year. In 2005 the award went to Mike Kimera, a talented Irish writer. His prize-winning story, Writing Naked: Letters to Myself, is interesting and honest, but (in my opinion) not necessarily his best. Still when when your goal is simply to portray sexuality honestly, you sometimes trade titillation for psychological accuracy. (This is not intended as a criticism). With other stories, Kimera is more adventurous: the playfully naughty Happy Anniversary (lust for sister-in-law), Newton's Law of Emotion (adventures in physics), and Friday Night at the Adult Bookstore (running into a friend in a very odd place). Other more "honest" stories include: Last Taboo and the Soft Option. My favorite story, Photographic Memory, like his prize-winning story, weaves past together with present in unsettling ways. Not explicitly erotic, the story nonetheless examines the issue of desire, time and fidelity in a way not necessarily abiding by the strictures of marital fidelity. The story has a great line: "I will make your beauty immortal." Immortal indeed. Many of his stories are collected in his recent book .
• Remittance Girl is a prolific Canadian short story writer now based in Vietnam. She writes in a variety of styles and themes, with a slight emphasis on supernatural fantasy, Asian settings and spanking/sexual submissiveness. I like her smart characters and witty conversational style which borders on satire. Even when the stories have dark erotic themes, reading them can be naughty fun. I've only started reading her vast collection of erotica stories. My favorite so far has been Succession, a Japanese supernatural story (supererotica?) and Spy who Loved his wife (an entertaining story about wife-swapping). Normally, I don't get into erotic novellas (it's hard to sustain the titillation for that long without seeming ridiculous), but her Erotic Series seems entertaining and scandalous enough to keep you reading. (So far, I've enjoyed The Dinner Party (a 9 part series) which has a bondage/submission theme).
• Five Girls by Riain Grey is remarkably evocative prose poem about sexual encounters. The brevity of the story (which is really a series of 5 flash fictions) gives the story an unusual amount of heat. (Take that Number Six!). I don't count myself a fan of flash fiction in general (they are evocative, yes, but hardly capture the sustained nature of the erotic imagination), but Grey has done an excellent job in giving them a thematic (and stylistic) unity. Her web domain seems to be down, but she keeps a Who I Want To Be weblog with occasional updates and links to stories.
• Tangerine Magic by Inna Spice is a lovely tale about a young girl's first encounter with sex and love, as well as her ambivalent feelings towards desire (In an interview, Inna connects it to Stanislavski's "emotional memory," something we also see in her story Love's Arm). In her story Telephone Banking, the female character enjoys phone sex with telemarketers .Here's links to her other stories.
• Making Do by W.S. Cross is a lovely threesome/love triangle tale told with a new angle. She has been working on an erotica novel with a cerebral/academic theme called Beyond You and Me. Individual chapters are available online (see for example Chapter 1.).
• Mary Anne Mohanraj started out in erotic fiction, but over the years has experimented with lots of genres and styles. Her early stuff and earlier stuff broached taboo erotic subjects, including mythology (Diana), prostitution (Girl Behind the Fantasy), lesbianism (Kali) and other things. At the moment, her erotic sensibilities and evocative language are being channeled into more traditional story subjects: her Sri Lankan heritage, intercontinental romances and family sagas.
• The alternative sexualities in Fantasy and SF booklet (also produced by Mary Anne Mohanraj) contains an interesting list of fiction titles with erotic themes, along with helpful annotations and commentary. Most of these titles are print books with a mild emphasis towards gay/bi, but still an excellent reference guide.
• Everyone Gets Lucky Once by LushUs
• True Porn Store Stories by Ali Davis is not really an erotic story, but a diary by a young actress about working at a porn store. Interestingly, the actress later went on to perform several of the stories here on Ira Glass's "This American Life". These stories are not supposed to be arousing, but they are some of the funniest things I've read.
• Golden Touch by Vickie Morgan, a story with mythological overtones
• That Obscure Desire by Jeffrey Eugenides. Literary coming of age.
• Desdemona's Fishtank is a free writer's forum where members can read & critique other people's stories or submit their own stories for review. They have quite a community thing going on there, and many notable erotica writers hang out there.
• Also, I happily recommend Mammoth Book of Erotica edited by Maxim Jakubowski which is a remarkable collection of high quality erotic stories (available at Amazon for less than $5!). Jakubowski edits several series of erotic fiction, and quite frankly, these volumes are pretty representative of the best in erotic fiction. The volume I have linked to is particularly remarkable. Why? It contains a series of short stories by Marco Vassi, "Carcass of Dreams" (also found in his book Erotic Comedies ) which is quite simply the most brooding and profound piece of writing I've ever seen. Eventually I plan to write a critical essay about these stories.
• The weekly Clean Sheets provides a great forum for a lot of new erotica writers even though the quality fluctuates.
• My Rose by Simple Man, a Lautremontesque rumination
• Erotic fiction portals: The Erotic Woman has a substantial collection of poetry and erotic fiction. Lush Stories uses the community rating system of a site like Digg to vote up or down certain stories by genre. It's brand new, and an experiment well worth watching. The Erotic Writers and Readers' Association has a vast amount of fiction in its archives; I just haven't figured out where to start! Playfulbent offers a series of collaborative erotic stories--a fascinating experiment worth watching. Eye of Venus is a catalog of individual bloggers who are open about their sexuality on their blogs. Mainly fiction, these entries have explicit pictures and a lot of first person blogging.
• If you want to browse, try Kristen's list of free erotica sites by individual authors, random collections of erotic stories or just a random ASSTR writer (warning: gigantic page!) until you find something palatable. Although ASSTR has lots of good writing, you'll notice that the overwhelming majority of stories fixate on one fetish or taboo. Many stories use story codes and for those wanting a specific type of story, that can help.
• Many "stroke stories" or "fetish stories" seem to revel in their own degradation. Exploring such fantasies can offer illicit thrills, even if the situations are implausible or the transgressions too awful or dirty to discuss in polite company. It's important not to forget that fantasies have a dangerous side, that the sexual imagination is not just the sanitized stuff you see in Sex in the City or the softcore flick (don't get me wrong; I like the occasional Sex in the City!). One reads partially for self-discovery; one asks, "Why do I find X or Y arousing?" and "why does my libido enjoy fantasies about one night stands or degradation or victimization when in real life I would find it so revolting?" Take for example Nujbaf's stories about female promiscuity and cuckoldry . They are not pleasant stories, and characters rarely experience emotional fulfillment (with one or two exceptions). Yet Nujbaf's stories describe how desire binds us to situations that inflict emotional damage. In real life one usually breaks free from situations of psychological self-destruction. But in fiction, one can linger on arousing situation without turning into actual accomplices or victims. Nujbaf's stories, like other stroke stories, focus on how a situation or context causes people to lose normal inhibitions (and in a sense, all erotica seems dedicated to envisioning such carnal contexts--see for example Justin Hall's actual description of a proto-sensory sexual event).
• Despite using a pseudonym, I am a little ashamed to admit sometimes to enjoying stories dealing with taboos, wild promiscuities and rather shocking age differences. This shame comes with the territory. If I had to list all the stories I'd read about lecherous college teachers or high school cheerleaders or teen shoplifters caught in the act or foreign exchange students or first time lesbians at summer camp or underage prom parties or sorority initiations or adventurous babysitters or daughters kidnapped while on vacation in a foreign country or sexual conquests in cyberspace, the result would truly be astounding. No aspect of growing up or coming of age remains untouched by the erotic writer's inspiration, leaving the adult reader to almost view his or her youth as a series of missed opportunities. No TV show or female celebrity will escape the quill of an erotic writer's pen (not even Seinfeld!). Quentin Tarrentino once remarked that he knew his films had finally become an official part of pop culture when they were parodied in porn videos. These stories aim first and foremost to lodge permanently in memory. After reading enough erotic stories, a person is inclined to hold nothing sacred, to have a jaded nostalgia about the time when events or situations were devoid of erotic subtexts .
• Story of O by Pauline Reage is considered a classic erotica text of submission and devotion. It is also lovely (and sad) writing. As much as I enjoy the novel as a work of fiction, its dreamlike setting and subdued narrative make the story more sexy but less relevant to real life. The above link is to a text link which could go offline any day. Check this this waybackmachine link if it does.
• The stories on thefirsttime.com are not particularly literary (I doubt they are destined to appear in the annals of great erotic literature), but I like the idea behind it. Submit a true erotic story, and then you receive membership to access the site. Often it seems that people just plaguarize stories from other sites to get membership, but quite a lot of them have the feel of authenticity. Reading a site like this makes it clear how some erotic writers have a compulsion to write about every single sexual escapade in their life (real and imaginary). Their purpose is simply to capture on paper (or a web page ) the fantasies before they fade away. In contrast, my approach here is to write with more reflection. For every interesting erotic notion there are probably 99 (or 99,000) other notions, more prosaic, less interesting, less entertaining to read. Here you only see the most interesting or literary or thoughtful. However, occasionally it is fun to read the random story by the random ordinary Joe Schmoe (or Johanna Shmoe).
• Although ASSTR is probably the biggest, there are a lot of free erotic story sites on the web (causing one to wonder why would actually pay for erotic stories at all!). I'm also partial to a review site, Jane's Guide that does one page reviews of free and pay adult sites.
• Erotic blogging seems to be a relatively new phenomenon, and Erosblog seems to be the most literary. Bacchus and Aphrodite reads a combination of stuff about sex (fiction, essays, how-to's, male/female psychology), and it is always refreshing to see what's new. Significantly, Erosblog keeps a pretty hefty blogroll of other sexy writers, including Violet Blue's tinynibbles (She maintains an admittedly indiscriminate list of eroticblogs on del.icio.us). Among other things, Ms. Blue writes/edits for adult film publications. The relatively highbrow Fleshbot covers sex and pop culture, commenting more on the visual arts, sexual gadgets and porn world. This blog always seems to be the first to sniff out celebrity scandals, Internet novelties and and trends in sexual mores. Nowadays many erotic writers are using weblogs as public confessionals for their sexcapades, both real and imagined. The thrill of these weblogs come from the fact they exist in real time and have a whiff of reality to them. (It is not surprising that Maxim Jakubowski has come out with a new anthology of sex diaries ). Many of these weblogs have public comment sections, making it possible to engage with the person behind the weblog.
• Audio erotic stories-- what a concept! We are used to reading our erotic fiction in silence, and yet, as audio fiction and podcasts become more popular, we may end up hearing erotic stories instead of reading them. There's not a lot of audio erotic fiction on the net (and definitely not for free), but the best place to start is mp3s of Mary Anne Mohanraj reading her own erotic fiction (be sure to give her a tip!). A group of readers/peformers led by Ace McLeod are producing Stories on Mp3s from the ASSTR collection. They are recording classics by Dulcinea , Frank Downey and Nick Scipio . The recordings are high quality and consist of male/female voices, so they are delights to hear. What I've heard (so far) is not sexually explicit, but really, some kinds of erotic writing just don't translate well into spoken form, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Will report back. Many mainstream novels are sexually explicit though one wouldn't think of them as being erotic fiction. Recently I heard the sensuous Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber and sexually deviant Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian in midday traffic. These books on tape (available for sale at amazon) are every bit as explicit as other stuff, although one wouldn't normally think it based on reviews. Unfortunately, both audio books are not free, but Bernardo's House (mp3) by sci fi writer Jim Kelley is a free download, read by the author himself. If anyone can recommend free audio erotic stories, please drop me a line. I just started listening to SonicErotica, a free collection of audio stories read by women with sexy voices. Actually, these are not so much stories in the conventional sense, but first person fantasy accounts of sexual experiences. I've only started listening, but what I've heard so far is well-done.
• Recently I've been doing a literary study of Marco Vassi, and I hope to publish on this website a critical introduction to his literary works. He's a giant in the erotica field, and unfortunately he seems totally overlooked in this Internet era. At the moment a single story exists on the Internet by Marco Vassi, titled The Conscientious Cukold (it's more of a stroke story than a literary one) . So far, must reads by Vassi include Other Hand Clapping (meditation + acting + jealousy + marital fidelity), In Touch (radical somewhat satirical story of a psychotherapist who uses sex and orgies to cure people's psychological problems), Sensual Mirror (love triangles and sensuality), Mind Blower (virtual worlds, psychology experiments and violation of taboos), Gentle Degenerates (promiscuity), and Erotic Comedies (surreal erotic stories) .
• I'm not usually a fan of webrings, but the Authors of Literary Erotica webring (run by the people at Mind Caviar erotica ezine) contains links to about 150 high quality literary erotica sites. I only found these links recently, so I haven't had time to explore, but there's a lot of excellent stuff here (which I'll probably be mentioning on this page in the future).
• Does one of the Internet addresses here not work? You can let me know. Also, the waybackmachineusually lets you find stories that have been removed or taken offline.

Updated September, 2007.