Kristina Wright is the editor of several erotica anthologies. Her fiction has appeared in more than 100 anthologies and she is the author of Seduce Me Tonight (HarperCollins Mischief). She lives in Chesapeake, Va., with her husband and their two young sons. Her military-themed erotica anthology Duty and Desire was just published by Cleis Press.
For the past three holiday seasons, I have found myself under an end-of-year deadline. I've also had two babies, so to say my holidays have been busy would be an understatement. There was a time when I finished holiday shopping by Thanksgiving and spent the last few weeks of the year decorating, cooking, wrapping presents, entertaining and making resolutions for the new year. Oh, and reading the big stack of novels that had accumulated on my bedside table. Those days are behind me, as I now find myself buying gifts in a mid-December panic, wrapping them on Christmas Eve and sending holiday cards sometime in January--or not at all. And my passion for reading gets lost amid the madness.
This year will be different. (Really!) I don't have a deadline to meet and I've simplified my gift giving by buying books for everyone on my list. This time of year is meant for reading. The colder weather and shorter days are best spent by a fire or under a blanket, indulging in a good read. Of course, the reality is we're all running from one party or event to the next, shopping, cooking, traveling, hosting... often there isn't time to enjoy an entire novel.
So I have been indulging my need to read by turning to short stories for my fiction fix. Anthologies hold a bevy of gifts between their pages in the form of dozens stories. When I edit an anthology like my current release, Duty and Desire, I am always conscious of the reader, the one who has a family, a job and a longer to do list than available hours in the day. So I write the stories I love to read and choose anthology themes that indulge the imagination.
And for the busy, multitasking women on my gift list, especially those who may have discovered erotica or erotic romance this year thanks to E.L. James, I know anthologies will open the door into a new world of erotic fantasy. What better way to end the year?