[Sondra writes as someone who doesn't read erotica]
I think Tavia did as good a job as anyone could in treading the
fine line between sexually explicit and smut for smut's sake.
Even in those stories which contain *passages* I considered to be
erotica, they didn't *dominate* the story.
Anyway, there's some damn good writing in ttba.
The stories I enjoyed most were "Courage?" by Nickey
Barnard, "Humility: I'm Not Worth Dying For" by
Belatrix Carter, "Before the Fall" by Airan Wilkinson,
"Ash Wednesday" by Firerose and "Fetch" by
Hafren. I also liked the following a great deal: "The Last
Days of Roj Blake" by Una McCormack, "Awake and Find
No" by Ika, "Benediction" by Morrigan,
"Purple Haze" by Executrix, "Privilege" by
Susan Cutter, "The Sleep of the Dead" by Hades. I'm not
sure about "Unfinished Business" by Nova, Great plot,
but it would have been *so* much more believable *without* the
sexual relationships--any of them.
I did very much appreciate the high Blake quotient in the zine,
and I did also very much appreciate the high-quality copy
editing, because having just finished navigating those editorial
waters myself for my own zine, I have a first-hand understanding
of all the labor that task entails.
19 March 2001