J.M. Snyder's Shorts

It’s a backlist title of mine, but I wanted to pimp Shorts today for two reasons. One, it’s really the book that jump-started my career, in many ways. And two, it’s now available as a wireless download from Amazon’s Kindle Store.

In 2005, I was stuck two-thirds of the way through my then WIP, Stepping Up to the Plate. I refused to begin a new novel with one languishing unfinished (I thought if I started something new, I’d never get back to the first book), so I began to write short stories. Several of them appeared online at Ruthie’s Club, an online erotica zine.

By the summer of 2006, I realized it had been a while since I last published something. At this stage of the game, I was self-publishing two books a year, with the exception of the dry spell I suffered during 2005. I figured I better get my AIG and get another book out, but all I had on hand were short stories.

Well, so be it. I’d release a collection of short stories, then. I had 11 I had published through Ruthie’s, and quickly wrote another three to round out the book.

Around this time, an editor contacted me about possibly working with her newly formed publishing house, Aspen Mountain Press. I don’t remember if I was already working on Shorts at the time or not, but I was too sold on the idea of self-publishing the collection that I ended up submitting a different book to them.

But Shorts still helped me get my name out there. This was the first book I submitted to online review sites, which earned me a few new readers. And it also put me in touch with editor Richard Labonte, to whom I sent a review copy, and who promptly asked me to submit something for his Country Boys anthology. Since then, I’ve had stories appear in two of his anthologies, with another two stories coming out in anthologies to be released this year.

So in all, Shorts really provided a much-needed boost to my still budding career. The collection contains 14 erotic short stories, 11 of which were first published online at Ruthie’s Club. Two of them have been published in other anthologies (”Best Friends” in My First Time Volume 5 and, coming later this year, “Hooking Up” in Boys in Heat). One of the stories was re-released in e-book format as part of my ongoing Working Man series (”Easily Addicted”).

The stories run the gamut from contemporary to sci-fi, fetish to pulp … there’s something for everyone in Shorts.

Buy Shorts at Lulu (PDF or HTML) or at Amazon (Kindle).

The excerpt below is from one of my favorite stories in the collection. “Escape” was written for Ruthie’s Club’s science fiction issue. Trace is an intergalactic prisoner whose ship crash-lands on a planet inhabited by a type of clone or replicate called Delta-23. Davin, one of the replicates, has abandoned his fellow replicates to seek out the escaped prisoner alone because he’s never seen anyone who looked different from himself.

This is their meeting …

NOTE: contains sexually explicit scenes of a homoerotic nature.

“Escape”

When heated lips covered his, Trace opened his eyes, panicked, before he realized he was being kissed, not suffocated or silenced. An insistent tongue licked the corner of his mouth, seeking entry. How long had it been since he’d been kissed so gently, so tenderly? Years. Before his stint in prison, at least.

The chin above him was hairless and strong and masculine, and Trace gave in to the sensation, closing his eyes again as he let the tongue in. It flicked over his teeth, the inside of his cheeks, his own tongue, before it licked away over his lips and chin. Small kisses soft along his jaw, wet lips closing over his earlobe, a man’s breath in his ear.

Trace brought one hand up from his crotch to feel the close-cropped hair of his visitor, and his fingers found the small tagged piercing high up in one ear that was the mark of a replicate. Opening his eyes again, he leaned back as the man kissed his neck, trying to see more. Slim body beneath a silver and blue jumpsuit, one hand by Trace’s head steadying him above with the other buried in a pocket, ending at an obscene bulge at the crotch. Not an Alpha-10 -- too thin. Into the ear close to his mouth, Trace breathed, “Psi-45? Are you …”

“Delta-23,” the other whispered between kisses. His lips left hot, damp trails along Trace’s collarbone. “The name’s Davin. You’re the first natural-born I’ve ever seen.”

With a laugh, Trace teased, “That explains the special treatment.”

“You’re gorgeous,” Davin sighed.

Trace laughed again because he knew that wasn’t true, but he wasn’t about to argue. Between his legs, his fingers massaged his balls. His hard dick was beginning to ache.

“I'm Trace,” he murmured -- might as well know each other before they went much farther.

Davin’s reply was to swirl his tongue around one of Trace’s nipples, which made Trace’s cock stand up on its own. Davin moved a little further, kissing down to Trace’s navel so the top of his head was just inches from Trace’s erection. With both hands, Trace found the zipper on the jumpsuit above him and tugged it back. Davin’s undershirt billowed down and Trace slipped his hands beneath it, feeling his way over smooth muscles. He’d been with a replicate before, but not a Delta. When his fingers found hard nipples and pinched them, the mouth on his stomach gasped with delight.

Davin moved lower, using both hands now to hold himself above Trace. He nuzzled the kinked hair at Trace’s crotch, then kissed up his hard length. Pulling down Davin’s zipper as far as it would go, Trace rubbed the sheathed package above him, underwear already damp enough to outline the tip of Davin’s dick. Trace raised himself up on his elbows to press his face against the sex-scented briefs, then nipped at the cock above him. Between Trace’s legs, Davin took him into his mouth. He tongued the swollen tip of Trace’s cock before licking down to the end of the shaft and up again. He went down a second time and Trace rose up to meet him, easing further in. One of Davin’s hands cupped Trace’s ass, the fingers fumbling between his cheeks enough to weaken Trace’s knees.

Hungry with lust, Trace reached up and pulled down Davin’s underwear, exposing a thick dick that unfurled before him and heavy balls that he tongued and kissed. Starting at the base of Davin’s cock, Trace kneaded the length with his lips. When he worked his way to the tip, he licked and toyed with the supple knob, trying to take it into his mouth without repositioning himself. He couldn’t quite get it -- he nudged it with his nose and caught it in his lips, but it was slick with his own saliva and slipped free to hang above him, tantalizing and dripping with pre-cum.

Trace licked at the salty drops as he thrust into the hot, willing mouth around his own erection. Davin’s rhythm increased, pulling Trace towards orgasm, one hand now squeezing the hard cock as he sucked the bulbous head. Trace’s release was mere strokes away. He raised up on his elbows again, took Davin’s soft balls into his mouth, rolled them around on his tongue as he came in short, quick bursts that jerked through him like lightning. Sated, Trace pushed the replicate to the ground, straddled him, and took the elusive cock into his mouth fully until Davin bucked beneath him in release.

Buy Shorts at Lulu (PDF or HTML) or at Amazon (Kindle).