I've got the Queen of Dark Erotica, Kitty Thomas,
in The Hot Seat today!
About Kitty Thomas:
Kitty Thomas writes dark literary erotica. This work is fiction and meant for an adult audience. The author does not endorse or condone any of the behavior carried out by characters in her stories.
In case you aren't familiar with
Kitty Thomas' work and haven't already read her latest release, Mafia Captive, you can check out my review here.
You should also check out my review of Big Sky here.
Now let's learn something new about Kitty Thomas!
How did you come up with your pen
name? Does it have special meaning to you or do you just like the sound?
Kitty -
Ooooh
nobody has ever asked me this one before, and I've always wanted someone to
haha. M's actual name is Tom. (Which people who hear me talk about
"Tom" on my other pen name have probably figured out by now, unless
they just think I have two men, which makes me sound more exciting than I am.)
Kitty Thomas = "Tom's pet".
Haydee - I LOVE
that!!!
What's your favorite food? Does it go
with orange juice?
Kitty - Always!
My favorite food changes depending on my mood but my favorite food with orange
juice is egg rolls. Don't make that face! It's delicious.
Haydee - I
am thoroughly traumatized now. I will never look at egg rolls the same way
again. That's even worse than ketchup cookies. (In case you are curious
about ketchup cookies, you can proceed here to get your fill of ketchup trauma.)
What inspired you to write dark
erotica?
Kitty -
I read
Story of O about 5 times before I stopped hating it and being angry at it. But
I kept coming back to it. And I wanted to write something that made people all
kinds of uncomfortable like that haha. But the thing that bugged me about Story
of O is that all this stuff happens to her, but we never really fully
understand WHY she just goes along with it. What is happening in her head? What
are her feelings? It's just... this happens and then this happens and she's
just going along with it and WHY is she just going along with it? Is she trying
to prove her love for Rene? Is she a doormat? Is she kinky? Does she know what
kinky is? I mean... what is her deal?
What was the last thing you wrote or
read that made you cringe?
Kitty - Well, I
was working on print formatting for Mafia Captive and somehow after going
through the book a billion times I didn't notice that I did this:
"Faith fought to keep control of
herself" <---- beginning of one scene.
"Leo fought to keep control of himself"
<---- beginning of next scene.
SERIOUSLY!??!! That's going to irritate me for the
rest of time. One of my readers suggested I should just let people believe this
was some kind of brilliant poetic thing where you mirror/repeat. Um no, it was
fail! FAIL!
What are your favorite authors/books
to read?
Kitty - That
really depends. I read way more nonfiction than fiction. I need to read more
fiction to be honest.
Haydee - That is
such a non answer! LOL!
Kitty -
What do you do when you're not
writing?
Kitty - Housework.
Cook. Spend time with M or friends. Watch Doctor Who (I had to start watching
Doctor Who so I could understand Facebook. Half of Facebook now is Doctor Who.)
Go to museums or the aquarium. I like to watch captive fish! Shop. Go to the
spa. You know... normal people stuff.
If you could have one superpower,
what would it be and why?
Kitty - No
question, teleportation. It's the best of all super powers. If you are poor and
hungry, you can just steal food then teleport out. If you are homeless,
teleport to homes of rich people on vacation. If you get caught, teleport out
of jail. (This totally makes it sound like I would use my superpower to do
crime, but only for survival purposes!) Teleport to Paris for shopping and
Japan for lunch. If you have a medical emergency, teleport to the
hospital.
I've thought about this a lot.
Haydee - OMG, now
I think that everyone will want teleportation as a superpower too! But to use for
good and not evil. Of course.
What inspired you
to write Mafia Captive?
Kitty - It was
just a lot of what if questions. Mainly it started around the idea of someone
who is faced with the need to dispose of a witness to his crime. Maybe he can
give her to someone else who might want her instead of just killing her. Then
the mafia scenario and everything else sprang up around that. What inspires
books tends to be really non-exciting things, lol. But it's a string of what if
questions that as they get answered develop into something less boring LOL.
How would you say Mafia Captive is
different from your other books?
Kitty -
It's not
as dirty. There really aren't any "OMG wtf" sex things. Like there
are no lactation fetishes. There's no 'puppygate' (That's an inside joke. And
if you've read King's Pleasure you probably get it.) There is no boot licking
or fisting. (These are all things that happen in other Kitty books.) I mean...
there's nothing in there that is really THAT terribly kinky. And the amount of
sex in the book is not nearly as much as some of my other books. Because Faith
is not kinky at all. And she's so terrified that in order to take her to any of
those places that I could go in other books with a heroine who was at least
baseline kinky somewhere in her brain, would make Leo into a total monster. The
book is dark, but it's dark in other ways, not in "specific sex acts"
or "amount of sex acts."
Was it harder or
easier to write? Why?
Kitty - This one
gave me fits. Mainly though I think it was more because it was so much longer
than what I'm used to writing. I'm always worried that I'm not as competent at
longer work. And I was also juggling the mob family stuff in the book, so there
was so much "more" going on. So many times my books are character
studies almost with a narrow focus on two people. Captor and captive, usually.
This time there were so many other people on the scene who were not in any way
involved with anything sexual in the book.
Do you read negative reviews? How do
you deal with them?
ONLY
during release week. Well, I don't read them unless I'm in the right frame of
mind. I just accept that it's a reader opinion and EVERY BOOK ever written,
even the classics, even my most very favorite books on the whole planet... have
negative reviews. Not everything connects with everybody and it's not meant to
because all people are different. I look at it as an issue of
compatibility. I hate when I don't connect with a reader, particularly a fan
who loves my other books, but I understand it's part of the job. And my job
isn't to please everybody. My job is to tell the story in the most true way I
know how.
What can we expect to see from you
next? When?
Well, I'm already 69% done with Blood Mate
(tentative title). Or the rough draft of it anyway. (Or that's where I am at
the time of answering these questions.) I was working on it while doing other
parts of Mafia Captive. So in a few months that should be available hopefully.
It's a vampire book, but it's different than The Last Girl (another vamp title
I did.) Totally different mythology. I can't really give any details yet
because I'm super superstitious about talking about work too early in my
process.
Faith Jacobson was in the wrong place at the wrong time. After witnessing a mob hit, she’s only moments from death when Angelo Raspallo decides to give his brother an unlikely gift.
Leo has avoided involvement with the family business, but it doesn't make him a saint. He’s troubled and ashamed by his darker sexual desires, one of which is to own a slave. But when his brother throws Faith at his feet, repainting the scenario to make Leo the hero rescuing her from certain death, his moral fortitude will be tested. If Faith were kinky, it would be easy to live out his fantasy, but she’s not—not even a little bit. Even the mildest spanking sparks terror in her that Leo can’t bear.
The gift soon becomes a burden as he fights with himself over how to handle the addition to his home. He could release her, but his brother doesn't do loose ends. The only thing keeping her out of the bottom of the harbor is Leo’s mercy. She’s like a beautiful piece of art he keeps in a glass case but can never touch. Is possessing her enough?
Author’s Note: Mafia Captive has more of a love theme than many other Kitty titles, though the work is still quite psychologically dark. Readers may also notice a “new adult” flavor as Faith is just out of college and trying to find her place in the world when she is thrust into Leo’s life and home.
Excerpt:
Faith huddled in a dumpster surrounded by garbage, her breath coming in quiet, desperate gasps. Heavy boots thudded nearby. Please keep moving. Please please keep moving. Her face was wet from silent tears gliding down her cheeks. I should never have gone this way. She’d almost stayed home, snuggled in bed with her cat, a sappy movie, and a bowl of popcorn. But it was too pathetic for a Friday night—especially so close to Christmas when she was all alone. The general holiday malaise and depression had already started to set in, and it was only the first week of December. Grudgingly she’d gotten dressed and met some girlfriends at a club. But the others had wanted to party later than she had.
Excerpt:
Faith huddled in a dumpster surrounded by garbage, her breath coming in quiet, desperate gasps. Heavy boots thudded nearby. Please keep moving. Please please keep moving. Her face was wet from silent tears gliding down her cheeks. I should never have gone this way. She’d almost stayed home, snuggled in bed with her cat, a sappy movie, and a bowl of popcorn. But it was too pathetic for a Friday night—especially so close to Christmas when she was all alone. The general holiday malaise and depression had already started to set in, and it was only the first week of December. Grudgingly she’d gotten dressed and met some girlfriends at a club. But the others had wanted to party later than she had.
It only was
a few blocks to a subway station. She’d comforted herself with knowledge of the
pepper spray tucked away in her purse—the pepper spray her pursuer now had
possession of.
Faith
closed her eyes, trying to shut out the sound of the shot, the image of the
body falling, her stupid gasp that had turned sharp eyes on her.
She hadn’t
had the presence of mind to retrieve the mace before he’d grabbed her purse.
But with the way the wind was blowing tonight, it would have just as likely
blown into her eyes as his. And then where would she be? Another corpse.
The
footsteps stopped. His breath sounded as if it were blowing right in her ear.
His cologne put him in the cramped, dark space with her, drowning out the scent
of rotting food and alcohol. He was a professional, not some random street
tough. Poor, desperate people didn’t bother with cologne. And if they did, it
wouldn’t have been such an expensive brand.
She bit
back a scream until it rattled around and echoed so loud in her mind she feared
he’d hear it. There was a snick of a lighter and then cigarette smoke filled
the air.
It was as
if he were trying to smoke her out, as if he knew she couldn’t stand the
stench. He took drag after drag as she watched the faint light through the
cracks of her metal cage. He was toying with her.
She heard
the pull of a zipper, and for one sick moment thought it was his pants, but the
sound that followed was the snap of a wallet being opened. Her wallet.
“Faith
Jacobson. 580 Flatbush Avenue. Brooklyn.” His voice was relaxed, casual,
because murder was casual to him.
She didn’t
want to stereotype, but a nicely dressed Italian man in Brooklyn standing over
a dead body required no leaps of logic. This guy had mob written all over him.
Letting go of the purse had been necessary to save herself, but now he knew who
she was and where she lived. For a moment she continued to pretend he didn’t
know she was in the dumpster. She tried to think about where she could go, how
she could stay safe from someone who would no doubt relentlessly pursue the
only witness to his crime.
“Pretty.
Brunette, though. Too bad.” He must be looking at her driver’s license photo.
She’d dyed her hair right before that was taken. Now it was back to her natural
red. She didn’t know what he meant about her hair color, why it should matter
one way or the other.
He let out
a heavy sigh. “All right, come on out. If you make me come get you, I might
have to play with you first.”
That was
it. She’d held it together as long as she could, been quiet as long as she
could manage. Now the sobs were at full volume. “Please, let me go.”
“Sorry, I
can’t do that. You’ve got too much information in that pretty head.”
“I don’t
know anything. I don’t know who you are. I don’t care. I won’t get involved. I
swear to God. Walk away. Please. Whatever happened back there, it’s not my
business. I don’t care about it.” All Faith wanted was to be safe in her bed at
home with her cat.
The silence
stretched on like he was considering it.
“Sorry.
Your number’s up tonight, baby.”
Although
he’d made vague reference to torturing her first if she inconvenienced him, she
couldn’t make any part of her body move. Everything had shut down. How could a
person step outside their hiding place, knowing a bullet was waiting on the
other side?
She was
frozen between a rotting burger and a bag of empty beer bottles. Faith squeezed
her eyes shut and willed herself to be in her cozy apartment.
The lid of
the dumpster flew back and she screamed for a savior she knew wasn’t coming.
The Italian
aimed the gun at her. “Shut up. You want to be responsible for someone else’s
death, too? I can shoot witnesses all night.”
No one
would reach her before he pulled the trigger. “Please don’t hurt me. I swear I
don’t care what happened back there. I just want to go home.”
“Fuck it. I
shoot you in the dumpster, and I don’t have clean up. Works for me.” He took a
step to the side, lining up his shot as light from the opposite wall hit her in
the face. Instead of pulling the trigger, he just stared. “If you want to live,
get out here right now.”
“I thought
you said …”
“What I
said was to get your pretty ass out of the dumpster before I change my mind.”
He might
torture her. Might rape her. There was no way this could end well. Wouldn’t it
be better to stay where she was and die quickly? The logic of the situation
didn’t matter. She couldn’t help holding onto the thin hope that she might
survive the night if she complied with his demands. In spite of the warnings
shouting through her brain, she hoisted herself over the piles of trash and
clumsily climbed out of the dumpster.
She had to
grip the brick wall to hold herself upright.
“Stand over
there in the light.”
Faith
wasn’t sure how she’d managed to run in three-inch heels, because now she could
barely walk in them, wobbling as she did, a few feet to the left to obey his
order.
“Please …”
“If you say
please once more I’m clipping you.”
She shut
her mouth.
“Tell me
baby… does the rug match the drapes?”
Out of the
million horrible things he could have said, “does the rug match the drapes”
wasn’t in the top thousand. “I’m sorry, w-what?”
“Are you
deaf, honey? It’s a simple enough question. Are you a natural redhead?”
“Y-yes.”
“Show me.”
She turned
to run again, but he was too fast. He pressed her against the wall and pulled
her panties down while he shoved her skirt up and awkwardly aimed her body into
the light. She thrashed and fought him. She expected he’d throw her down and
violate her, but after he found proof of what she’d said, he covered her back
up.
“You may be
the luckiest dumb slut in the world.” His arm went around her throat, pressing,
pushing her consciousness down a dark well until the world shrank to a tiny
pinpoint of light, then blinked out of existence.
***
Faith
didn’t expect to wake up. She especially didn’t expect to wake up unclothed in
a bathtub of water, with her pursuer, now captor, sitting on the closed toilet
lid, staring down at her. She struggled to cover herself.
“You don’t
gotta worry about me. You’re not my type.” He motioned to some soap in a dish
on the rim of the tub. “Clean yourself up. If you smell like a sewer, even Leo
won’t have mercy on you.” He flipped open a cheap prepaid cell phone. “Pray
this goes in your favor.”
His eyes
didn’t waver from Faith as he dialed. The call connected, and his features
softened, breaking out into a smile that made him almost attractive. If he
hadn’t been trying to kill her, that is.
“Leo!” he
said.
Faith took
the soap from the dish, too scared not to do whatever he asked. She tried to
ignore her nudity, focusing instead on the man’s conversation.
“… yeah,
it’s been awhile. I’ve been busy. Listen, I have something here you might be
interested in—think of it as an early Christmas present. Remember what you told
me last time I was out there? That thing you’d have if it weren’t for your
moral code?… I’m not suggesting that… Stop and listen for a goddamn minute,
Leo. I had to fire one of my crew tonight. I wasn’t as careful as I should have
been, but I’ve got someone out there doing cleanup now. There was a witness.
She’s your type. Redhead. Slender. Big green eyes and full lips. I don’t know
what it is with you and Irish bitches, but she’s perfect for you. You can have
what you wanted. All you have to do is come collect her.”
There was a
long pause where Faith heard indiscernible shouting on the other side of the
phone.
“Calm the
fuck down. Look, what you do with her once you get her is up to you. But if you
don’t take her, she’s dead. If you let her go, you know I’ll find her, and once
again, she’s dead. Her life is in your hands, and once you see her, I know
you’ll take her. I’m doing you a favor, giving you what you want, and saving
her life. I’m a regular saint. I could have shot the slut… yeah, I’m at the
house… Yeah, well don’t pretend your hands are clean. You may not be in the
family business, but you know where the money came from. Don’t forget that…
Honest business my ass… You couldn’t have started that business without your
family. Now get down here.”
Awful
images flashed through her mind, even worse than the scene of the murder she’d
witnessed or the recent threat of death. He was going to prostitute her out.
What then? Would she be passed around until she was used up and then left in a
gutter? Faith wrapped her arms more tightly around her body. Despite his
personal lack of interest, she’d never felt so sexually exposed.
He closed
the phone, his gaze raking over her, assessing her like a horse he might sell.
“You’re a lot more trouble than you’re worth. My brother is an ungrateful ass.”
The
bathroom door opened and another attractive man in a slick suit walked in.
Faith rushed to cover herself.
“The fuck?”
the man said, spotting her in the tub.
“Relax,
baby. She’s for Leo.”
“Oh.”
He chuckled.
“Did you think I’d switched teams?” He turned hard eyes back on Faith. “Get
out. You’re as clean as you’re getting.”
He held out
a robe and she stepped into it, trying to figure a way out of this mess.
If this guy Leo
saved her, it wouldn’t make her safe.
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