Elizabeth Black
writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, horror,
and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son,
and her three cats. Visit her web site, her Facebook
page, and her Amazon Author Page. 

Her new m/m erotic medical thriller Roughing
It is out! This book is a sexy cross between The X Files, The Andromeda
Strain, and Outbreak. Read her short erotic story Babes in Begging For It, published by
Cleis Press. You will also find her new novel No
Restraint at Amazon. Enjoy a good, sexy read today.

Next month
(February) is Women In Horror Month. I thought I’d write something a little
different for January in preparation for this fun time since my first love is
horror. I’ve written erotic horror, and I though I’d tell my readers about how
enjoyable and sexy it can be.

Erotic horror is a
small niche in a big field. I’ve noticed that most romance and erotic fiction
readers don’t like horror in their smut. Most horror readers don’t like smut in
their terror. However, there is a small group of people who do like it, and I
suspect that group is larger than I assume.

I wasn’t allowed to
read horror when I was a kid although I did manage to get my hands on my
paternal grandmother’s Alfred Hitchcock
Presents horror anthologies. They scared the piss out of me. I loved every
second of it. My maternal grandmother was hooked on The Twilight Zone and Dark
Shadows. When my sister and I would stay over night at her place, we’d
watch both shows. They gave me nightmares but I couldn’t get enough of them. I
loved being scared. My mother, on the other hand, was not pleased at all. She
repeatedly told my grandmother to knock it off but the woman never listened. So
I enjoyed some scary shit when I was a kid. I was affected by horror movies
before horror books.

There are some very
sexy horror movies out there. Four of them are The Hunger, Innocent Blood, the Nosferatu
that stars Klaus Kinski as the vampire, and The
Vampire Lovers, a movie version of the very erotic tale Carmilla by J. Sheridan Lefanu. That one
has lesbian undertones. It was my first exposure to anything remotely lesbian,
not including Theo in 1963’s The Haunting.
Theo’s lesbianism was so understated in the movie to my 10 year old mind I
didn’t make the connection until I was in my late teens. It also helped when I
read the book to catch on to that.

Anthropologist Dr.
Helen Fisher has written that scary movies encourage intimacy between partners.
So if it’s movie night with your sweetie, rent a scary movie rather than a
romance, chick flick, or action movie. Fear releases dopamine, the same brain
chemical that is released when you are infatuated with someone. So fear (like
watching a scary movie together) can bring a couple closer together. All you
need to do is choose the right movie. I recommend a horror comedy if you aren’t
into horror movies that much. Movies like Shaun
of the Dead, Zombieland, and Dead/Alive
may just be the ticket. The jump scares in some movies make you jump into your
partner’s arms. What a great excuse to get close! When I first started dating
my husband, I told him if he couldn’t make it through Dead/Alive, we weren’t meant to be together. He loved it! That
movie was made by Peter Jackson long before he directed the Lord Of The Rings movies. Dead/Alive is rather notorious and it
has a very bent sense of humor. And gore. Lots of comic-book-like gore. Fun
movie!

Some erotic horror
stories include the aforementioned Carmilla,
which is one of my favorites. It’s a vampire story with lesbian undertones. I’ve
written some erotic horror including Asphodel
which is available on my horror web site as well as Maneater
which is available on my romance web site. Before you read Asphodel, read Edgar Allan Poe’s horror story Berenice. My story is inspired by that one. Both of my stories are
free reads.

Back in the 1970s
and 1980s Playboy published an occult erotica series. Other books you may want
to look into if you wish to try out erotic horror are Poppy Z. Brite’s Love In Vein series (vampire erotica) and Anne Rice’s Lestat books (very erotic vampires). You may have noticed a theme
here. Vampires and eroticism mix very well. There are many reasons for this –
the intimacy of the embrace inherent in the act of drinking blood. The Svengali
effect of a vampire on the victim’s psyche. Vampires as romantic creatures came
about with Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula
and continued with Lestat, Christopher Lee as Dracula, and even Twilight.
Beforehand, they were undead ghouls the like of Nosferatu starring Max Shreck from the silent movie era. Even that
movie has been romanticized with Kinski in the vampire’s role.

Looking for some
good erotic  horror? Here are some more
suggestions:

Cthuluerotica by Carrie Cuinn (cosmic H. P. Lovecraft
horror with some smut thrown in)

Hot
Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror by Jeff Gelb

Dark
Seductions: Tales of Erotic Horror by John Scognamiglio and Alice Alfonsi

Mistress
of the Dark by
Séphera Giròn

Dark Fuses’s new
erotic horror stories. Erotikós.

So cuddle with your
partner and read some of these fine books. Take a walk on the dark side of
erotic horror for February – Women In Horror Month.