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The Story Behind “On Selkie Beach”
Samantha MacLeod
This past spring my kids had a week off from school. In most of the US, this would have been considered spring break. But in Maine, on the very north-eastern tip of the United States, it’s more like “mud season break.” It was a dreary, rainy stretch with temperatures hovering just above freezing.
So we watched a lot of movies.
One of the favorites from mud season break was the Irish animated film Song of the Sea, which is a beautiful fairy tale drawing on all sorts of traditional Irish folklore, including selkies, the magical beings that can transform from seals to humans and back again. Sometime during the sixth or seventh viewing of the movie, I started reading up on selkie mythology.
Selkies appear in Irish, Scottish, and Icelandic folklore. They are shape-shifters who can switch between human form and seal form, and they can be either male or female; the females usually end up as captives to their husbands, who hide their seal skins so they can’t return to the ocean. Male selkies, on the other hand, are described as quite handsome with great seductive powers.
Naturally, handsome and seductive caught my imagination. I started wondering what a male selkie would be like today, and what sort of a woman would catch his attentions.
The result of all our mud season movie viewing is that my children are now obsessed with Irish folklore, and my short story On Selkie Beach, featured in the Sinful Pleasures anthology, tells the story of a modern male selkie and his seductive powers…
Excerpt from On Selkie Beach:
I took his hand and stepped down. Muir pulled me to his chest, crushing us together. I gasped and his lips were on mine, fierce and hungry, tasting like the wild, smoky scotch we’d shared. My body responded before my mind could register what was happening, my mouth opening for him, my arms wrapping around his broad shoulders. He kissed me for a long time, our tongues embracing, dancing. When he let me go, my heartbeat thundered through my body and every nerve was on edge.
“Bridget,” he rasped, his voice thick.
My body trembled, hungry for his touch. Desperate for another kiss.
“Follow me,” he said, turning toward the vast darkness of the ocean.
I followed.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I did.
BOOK REVIEW
There is something for everyone in this is a wonderful collection of varied erotic stories covering male/female, male/male, female/female and male/trans couples.
There is a deliciously forbidden encounter between a married man and a married woman who are neglected by their busy spouses at a conference in The Pier at Night.
In The Dream Feeder two female lovers take a sexy dreamy odyssey.
Two students find a kinky way to break out of a relationship rut in On The Line.
In The Black Orchid, a hitman has a steamy encounter in a greenhouse while on the hunt for a killer. He'll be lucky to get out alive, though.
A day at the beach gives a woman ideas on how to add some excitement to her relationship in Fireworks.
In the Man in The Mask, a straight-laced husband gets a kinky birthday present from his husband.
In Taking It, a submissive employee finds that falling in love with her new boss/Master might not be a good idea.
On Selkie Beach, an American tourist visits a Scottish Island and has a sexy encounter with a legend come to life.
Discover poetry in erotic motion and memories in Lazy Sunday.
A young man takes a blue-haired seductress home and gets more than he bargained for in Miss Blue Hair.
A neglected wife takes sexy matters into her hands and finally gets her man in The Butterfly Waltz.
My absolutely favourite has to be The Pier At Night. It has the shortest sexual encounter but it sizzled with the illicit and with so much yearning that my heart raced throughout. It's a story I will happily read again and again.
Every story in this anthology deserves to be here and I enjoyed them all. Happy to recommend to lovers of erotica.
There is a deliciously forbidden encounter between a married man and a married woman who are neglected by their busy spouses at a conference in The Pier at Night.
In The Dream Feeder two female lovers take a sexy dreamy odyssey.
Two students find a kinky way to break out of a relationship rut in On The Line.
In The Black Orchid, a hitman has a steamy encounter in a greenhouse while on the hunt for a killer. He'll be lucky to get out alive, though.
A day at the beach gives a woman ideas on how to add some excitement to her relationship in Fireworks.
In the Man in The Mask, a straight-laced husband gets a kinky birthday present from his husband.
In Taking It, a submissive employee finds that falling in love with her new boss/Master might not be a good idea.
On Selkie Beach, an American tourist visits a Scottish Island and has a sexy encounter with a legend come to life.
Discover poetry in erotic motion and memories in Lazy Sunday.
A young man takes a blue-haired seductress home and gets more than he bargained for in Miss Blue Hair.
A neglected wife takes sexy matters into her hands and finally gets her man in The Butterfly Waltz.
My absolutely favourite has to be The Pier At Night. It has the shortest sexual encounter but it sizzled with the illicit and with so much yearning that my heart raced throughout. It's a story I will happily read again and again.
Every story in this anthology deserves to be here and I enjoyed them all. Happy to recommend to lovers of erotica.
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Reviewed by
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Disclaimer: I volunteered to review this book
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Blurb
Sinful Press welcomes you to lose yourself in Sinful Pleasures.
Join us as we weave our way from mainstream erotic romance to surreal sex-filled dreamscapes and everything in between, created by some of the best new and established voices in the erotica genre.
Janine Ashbless, Ella Scandal, Sonni de Soto, Jo Henny Wolf, Lily Harlem, Lady Divine, Gail Williams, Samantha MacLeod, Tony Fyler, Ellie Barker, Lisa McCarthy
Buy links
Support your small publisher and buy the paperback direct
Samantha’s work has been described as, “breathtakingly lyrical stories that breathe new and unexpected life into the old gods and the mortals who cross their paths.”
Born and raised in Colorado, Samantha MacLeod has lived in every time zone in the US, and London. She has a bachelor’s degree from Colby College and an M.A. from the University of Chicago; yes, the U. of C. really is where fun comes to die.
Samantha lives with her husband and two small children in the woods of southern Maine. When she’s not shoveling snow or writing steamy sex scenes, Samantha can be found teaching college composition and philosophy to undergraduates who have no idea she leads a double life as an erotica author.
Samantha MacLeod’s Social Media Links:
Samantha’s Blog: https://sammacleod.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writersamanthamacleod/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WriterSamMac
Great review, Kay. Anthologies can be tricky sometimes. So it's great that you liked all the stories.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. They were all great stories.
DeleteKay