Journey of Erotica: A Collection of Short Stories by Ana Alicari

I was in a mood for some hot erotic fiction today. This book has been laying on the top of my slush pile for several months, so I decided this would be just the thing for me to read while I was in this mood.

On the book cover, the author states:

This back cover comment should have been my first clue: there were no pre-publication blurbs. No other authors said anything about the author’s abilities; no publishers touted the contents; no review comments were selectively drawn; no readers raved about the contents.

At least one statement in the first sentence by the author is correct: they are mercifully short. Most of the stories average 2-4 pages in length. For that we can be thankful.

However, these are not stories: they are fuck scenes. There is no plot; there is no character development; there is no conflict. In fact, this book could be used as a primer to teach all that can be wrong in erotic writing…even writing in general.

Since there is no editor listed in the credits for this book, Ms. Alicari must have communicated to Publish America that the book was “good to go.” She should have made use of the services of an editor. Oh, the grammar is fine and the spelling and punctuation are OK, but she made mistakes that mark the writing as that of an amateur.

In “No Longer Denied” and again in “Greek God” she shifts tenses from past to present to future within the first two paragraphs. She uses cliché phrases repeatedly like “he was hot and throbbing” and she “reached for that part of him that defines him as a man so well.” Verbals with –ing endings rather than action verbs abound, as do exclamation marks! A good editor would have seen these holes in the text and suggested re-writes to the author.

However, the greatest flaw in the book, in my opinion, was the over abundance of first person narratives. This provides little variety for the reader. The point of view becomes repetitive. This point of view combined with the insistence of the author to write in the present makes for poor writing. Until a writer is well seasoned and knows her genre intimately, present tense is the most difficult to write in and the one most amateurs insist on. Most writers are better served by writing in past tense. This also helps keep those pesky tense shifts from happening.

Finally, I did not find the book erotic. This is definitely not a woman’s book; a male might like it because the author wastes so little time getting to the fuck scenes and they are over quickly. In all, I am sorely disappointed this book exists to further the notion that “all” erotic writing is poorly done.

As a text for authors it would function as a model for what should not be done. For readers it is a disappointment on many levels. Indeed, this is not a journey into sexuality; it is a journey into maochism.