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eBook Category: Erotica/Gay-Lesbian Erotica/Romance
eBook Description: Twisted. That's what Torqued Tales is all about. Taking a familiar fairy tale and turning it a few degrees off center, making it something new. And sexy. The authors of Torqued Tales have taken some of our old favorites, such as Sleeping Beauty, the Little Red Riding Hood, and Pinocchio, and given them a romantic, sensual, and homoerotic slant. Sean Michael, BA Tortuga, Julia Talbot; all of your favorite authors are here, with stories that are as irreverent as they are faithful to tales we all know and love. CB Potts has given the Emperor's New Clothes a hilarious retelling, where two tailors of magical cloth give every man in sight a whole new lease on clothing. Kara Larson's The Nature of the Beast takes on Beauty and the Beast, Kiwi style. And Kiernan Kelly looks at Puss in Boots in a whole new light in The Master Cat. By turns rib shaking funny and steamy hot, these fairy tales are not the morality plays we remember from our childhood. This lighthearted fantasy anthology will keep you turning the page, eager to get your Grimm on and see what the best Torquere authors can do with a little tradition, a lot of imagination, and healthy dose of heat.

eBook Publisher: Torquere Press/Top Shelf, Published: http://www.torquerepress.com, 2007
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2007

51 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [383 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [369 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [338 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [1.1 MB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [382 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [332 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [378 KB] , hiebook (KML) [849 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [458 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [315 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [392 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [456 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [515 KB]
Words: 118358
Reading time: 338-473 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1603700587

Long ago and far away, best beloved, there was a kingdom. Technically, of course, it should have been an Emperor-dom, for it was ruled over not by some lowly King--after all, you can get Kings six for a dollar at any decent bazaar these days, and twice that on Sundays--but by an honest to goodness Emperor. And if you don't think that's special, well, all I can say is that you must be new to the land of fairy tales. As such, I bid you welcome and beg you to sit and stay, just for a while.

For anyway, in this Kingdom that should have been an Emperor-dom, there was, in fact, an Emperor. Oh, what a glorious specimen of manhood he was! This is not something that I'm saying simply because I am a lowly teller of tales and the Emperor who ruled this kingdom, which in truth should have been an Emperor-dom (and you'll forgive me, best beloved, if I stop belaboring this point, having now reached the conclusion that it has worked quite hard enough!), has entire legions of soldiers most well equipped with bright shiny implements of destruction. No, I tell you these words because they are the truth, or at least the most reasonable facsimile thereof that you are like to find.

Verily, the Emperor was a beautiful man, tall if you like that sort of thing, short if you did not. With a complexion both pale and dark, eyes of the summer sea and winter sky, he was so handsome that his own mother could not stand it and in fact pitched herself right out the window rather than have to live in the reflected glory of such a beauteous babe.

You would think that the people would love such a man.

You would be wrong.

Now, best beloved, I do not blame you for being most confused. Beauty is the highest virtue, is it not? We prize the pretty above the substantial every time, and will clasp the foul bejeweled serpent to our bosom while giving the loyal yet mangy cur the back of our boot. But perhaps I am preceding myself to the conclusion of this tale, which I have not yet, in truth, begun to tell you.

Beginnings sometimes are longer than the entirety of a piece, 'tis true. This is largely because the honorable and proud tradition of fairy tales developed long before the perhaps less honorable yet doubly proud tradition of editors burst forth upon the land, to scourge us verily with the lash of proper punctuation and awkward clause construction.

But to the point we always must return, and the point to which we are returning, with sorrow in our hearts--for 'tis a sad, sad point--is the state of regard in which the populace held their Emperor.

It was, indeed, a low one.

"Sure," they would say, clucking their tongues in a most worrisome way--for what is more worrisome than the clucking of tongues on all save a chicken?--"He is a babe. But he is a moron."

Could such heresy be true? Could such a babe, as the vulgar tongues would have it, honestly be weak in the brains department? Could such magnificence be less than brilliant? Might he be, in fact, a moron?

The evidence seemed to be with the people, I'm sad to say, and I'm sure that even that menacing fellow in the corner with the particularly sharp and shiny implement of destruction who just happens to be wearing Imperial regalia would agree with me.

Where was the disconnect? What had separated the most beautiful Emperor from the affections of his people?

Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, it was money. The surprise lays only in the level of your cynicism, best beloved. If you were pure of heart, idealism not yet tainted by what the baseborn call reality, you may indeed find yourself shocked by even the supposition that cash flow was enough to destroy affection.

The rest of us know that that's often the way of things.