NEW RELEASE: ON THE EDGE A Collection of Gay Erotic Romance from Rick R. Reed!

I'm proud to announce the release of my collection, On the Edge from Amber Allure (the LGBT imprint of Amber Quill Press). This book is especially for you if you're one of those people who just doesn't cotton to the idea of an e-book and prefers the look, smell, and experience of a real print book. On the Edge collects eight of my stories that were previously only available in electronic format before. Check out the descriptions of each story below (titles are hyperlinked so you can go to their original publisher page, where you can read excerpts, see reviews, and a more detailed synopsis).

Get your copy of On the Edge from Amazon here.

Synopsis
In Rick R. Reed’s haunting, mesmerizing, suspenseful, and romantic world, his gay male characters live on the edge, often literally as well as figuratively. In this new collection, you’ll take a wild ride with some of literature’s most unforgettable characters. Along the way, you’ll be moved—to tears, to laughter, to uneasiness, and sometimes, to arousal. As Bette Davis once said, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Previously available only in electronic format, these eight stories of Gay Erotica and Romance have now been combined for a paperback edition! Included are the tales...

Superstar 
A story about promises made, promises broken, and dreams unfulfilled. Yet ultimately, it’s about realizing that love can come along when one least expects it—and in the unlikeliest of places.

Through The Closet Door 
A tale that brings to painful life the consequences of coming out of the closet when you’re married. Gregory’s mask is slipping, pulled down by the allure of a handsome neighbor and the demands of a desire that only gets louder the more he tries to quiet it.

Riding The El At Midnight 
When the gorgeous and twisted Mark boards a northbound el train, he is looking for love in all the wrong places. Finding Julio aboard that same train, Mark thinks, is the answer to his dreams. But are his dreams nightmares?

Fugue 
Slip into the dungeon playroom of a master and his boy. But in the boy’s mind, a dream state takes him places the master could not imagine...places where the established order turns upside down.

Incubus 
Two men, one predator, and a violent crime equal a journey into hellish nightmare territory. This tale merges horror with a tragic love story and the result is...chilling.

Man-Amorphosis 
I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find my penis had transformed itself into a vagina... Thus begins the story of a very unusual day...

No Place Like Home 
Trannies and Psychos and Bears...oh my! Burl discovers—in a hilariously bizarre quest—that there really is no place like home.

Pottery Peter 
One long hot summer. Three gorgeous men. And a burning triangle set down in the middle of a factory filled with sweaty men with bulging biceps.

Dipping My Toes into the Electronic Pool

By Rick Reed

Ebooks are a bit of a new phenomenon for me. I haven't quite been won over to reading them yet, but I have dabbled in writing them. See, with eBooks I have a little more freedom than with print books, which need to be approximately 60,000 to 70,000 words to make a print run feasible. Ebooks, being electronic, don't have that limitation. Writing an eBook allows me the freedom to bring to the world those stories that may be a little long for a print antho or magazine, but too short to be printed as a book you hold in your hands.

Case in point: my new release from Amber Allure (the GLBT division of Amber Quill Press). It's called FUGUE and it weighs in at a breathless 11,000 words, which means you can read it in one sitting quite easily, provided you don't get distracted. If books were subject to the movie's rating system, it would probably be given an NC-17 or maybe even a triple XXX. It covers bondage, torture, dungeons, whips, chains, hot wax, masks, and a whole lot more. You know, your standard wholesome Disney-type fare.

But is it art?

I like to think that even though the whole story is about sex, it's about a lot more. It's about the places people go in their minds to endure physical pain. It's about why some people are willing to become submissive to the point of letting themselves experience hurt and immobility...and what rewards such an experience can hold.

But mostly, it's about love between two men, and the not always sharply defined lines between master and slave.

I hope you'll give it a read. You can order it here.

To give you a little taste, here's a short excerpt:

...Shackles embrace my ankles, keeping me anchored to the cool, damp floor. This sense of immobility ratchets up the tension and anticipation, and these feelings war within me, causing tingles throughout my body in much the same way as the restraints holding me in place do. I ache for something to happen, yet know I am powerless to bring anything about. Patience is a virtue I have learned, honed in its tutelage now for several years.

Ever since I met my master. That man of mine. The one I love. The seer and deliverer of pain, of pleasure, of love…and discipline.

Waiting. Anticipation pulses like a drug, pounding and surging through my body, binding me more thoroughly than these cuffs, chains and shackles. The air against my naked body is especially cool, its dampness almost like a second presence, like an icy caress. Part of the chill comes from the fact that I am bereft of hair; earlier, he shaved me clean, right down to the hair that sprouts between the cheeks of my ass. He has clamped my nipples, and the bite of the steel hurts and, at the same time, keeps me in a constant state of arousal. My balls hurt as well; he has pulled them low with metal cuffs that twist around the top of the sac, gripping and tugging….a constant, dull ache.

This is true love.

Yet all this dull sensation of pain is but a prelude to the full symphony of hurt that's on its way. I keep my eyes shut tightly; a lazy smile moves across my lips, disappears.

Waiting. Anticipating. Almost overriding the pedestrian ache of my constraints is the roaring of my blood in my ears, the pounding of my heart, the quickening of my breath, all of these racing with each little noise I hear. My mouth is dry with want, with need. I almost ache to shout out into the murky light: "Hurry! Hurry! I almost can't bear you making me wait like this. The anticipation is too much. It's torture even I don't want. Hurry!"

But I don't dare. I keep my own counsel and stay mute. A good slave knows his place, knows when to groan, when to scream, when to whimper, and when to sigh. And now, in this waiting, is not the time.

Behind me, my master busies himself, arranging lashes on a table: cat o' nine tails, bullwhip, riding crop, and even a wooden paddle with holes drilled in its smooth oak surface that transports me back to junior high school. I remember being in seventh grade detention, the paddle whistling through the air, singing through those holes as the gym teacher, Mr. Wright, brought it down hard on my adolescent ass, not knowing that the pain he was delivering was also filling me with the most delicious pleasure, or that my dick was hard and dripping in my jeans. Had he known, would he have continued?

Would it have been a kind of pleasure for him, too? Thinking about such a prospect makes my dick hard even now.

My master comes up to stand behind me, firm touch of his hand on my chest, then moving away. His hands are warm and strong. I am his.

I smell the leather: deep, musky, manscent.

Leather aroma deepens as he pulls my head back and I close my eyes. Leather fills my senses until it's all that exists. My master slides the hood over my face, obliterating this dusky space where we will be together, making me his and his alone.

Darkness...

Order Fugue here.

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Check out my most recent releases on Amazon:
Dead End Street: http://tinyurl.com/5mztwy
Orientation: http://tinyurl.com/5ntwyu
High Risk: http://tinyurl.com/39dror
Deadly Vision: http://tinyurl.com/3eygd4
In the Blood: http://tinyurl.com/5zwc8w
IM: http://tinyurl.com/32rsy4

Find me at:
http://www.rickrreed.com