Coming Together Presents: Robert Buckley

INTRODUCTION

I've known and admired Robert Buckley pretty much since I began publishing erotica—that is, for more than a decade. Bob and I have good deal in common. Like me, he's one of the old-timers at the Erotica Readers & Writers Association. We're both well into our second half-century of life; we remember a world before computers, cell phones and social networks, before AIDS, MTV and designer vaginas. Both of us have spent many years in history-steeped Massachusetts. And I believe, especially after editing these stories, that we share some common views on sex: specifically, that people should be free to do whatever they please with their bodies, regardless of how "perverted" or "sinful" their activities may appear to others, as long as everything is consensual.

When I approached Bob about working on a Coming Together Presents volume, he told me he wanted to focus on "erotica noir." Certainly, the tales in this book are darker than in his first collection A Bite of the Apple, which was subtitled "A Collection of Romantic Erotica." They offer up gangsters and private dicks, cops and other sundry enforcers, pimps and whores, each one more hard-boiled than the next. There's violence, terror and betrayal as well as raw and graphic sex. Still, Bob has poured such heart into these stories that none of them has the unremitting grimness of true noir. In these tales, rough justice usually prevails. The true evil-doers, the ones without souls, receive punishment. The poor sinners who are capable of compassion get at least a chance at redemption.

While most of the stories in this volume are contemporary, Bob has also included two historical pieces and one with a deliciously creepy touch of the paranormal. Practically every tale, even the darkest, includes flashes of humor. Bob has an amazing ear for dialect and can write an Irish bartender, an Italian mobster or a clueless Valley Girl better than anyone else I know. He also knows his history—I learned a lot of period terminology while producing this book!
Editing a volume like this, I end up reading each story at least a half a dozen times. Bob's stories don't lose their impact, even after I've worked on them for weeks. In fact, I keep noticing new gems of phraseology or new insights. That, to me, is the mark of a great author: re-readability. I only hope that you enjoy reading Bob's sexy, skeptical, compassionate tales as much as I enjoyed editing them.

All proceeds from Coming Together Presents: Robert Buckley benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America (msassociation.org). MSAA is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to enriching the quality of life for everyone affected by multiple sclerosis. Since 1970, the organization has provided support and direct services to these individuals, as well as raising public awareness of the needs and challenges of MS-affected people and their families.

If you like this book (and I suspect that you will) I hope that you will support the Coming Together erotic altruism movement by purchasing some of the other volumes of exceptional literary erotica available at eroticanthology.com and encouraging your friends to do likewise. Together, we can make a difference—and get turned on doing it.

~ Lisabet Sarai
22 January 2011