This collection of nineteen vampire stories manages to enchant the reader, despite the glut of vampire fiction on the market. In these stories, the restlessness of modern travelers (mortal or immortal) meets the claustrophobic despair of static characters, like solid ghosts, who are trapped in particular places and old habits. The mortals in these stories are not the only ones who feel an ambivalent desire for the strange and exotic.

Here is Marta, the vampire narrator of Remittance Girl's story, "Midnight at Sheremetyevo:

Ever since I joined the family, the annual journey to Zurich to arrange our legal and financial affairs has fallen to me. I'm the only one left of us who still loves the cold, the only one who yearns for a nice crisp snowy night.

On her way to Zurich, Marta has to spend several hours in an almost-empty Russian airport where she meets a delectable young man who is drawn to her like a moth to a lightbulb. Both of them suffer as a consequence of their mutual attraction; dark romance doesn’t get much better than this.

Thomas S. Roche's story, "Wait Until Dark, Montresor," is also a traveler’s tale. The narrator gives detailed instructions to the reader, who presumably wants to meet a waif-like vampire author who lives in a room over a coffee shop. This route could be traced on a map:

The town of San Esteban is best reached by car on State Route 13, which slips off Interstate 101with subtlety, implying it doesn't wish to be noticed. Watch for the exit south of Ukiah, make your pukey, carsick way through the Coast Range and be sure to stop for an espresso and a home-baked brownie at Space Cowboy's shack just past the Chatelaine Reservoir about half-hour past Bargerville.

This story is as much about an otherwordly road trip in California, the state that has drawn so many of the curious and the hopeful from other places, as it is about star-fucking, or a cult of celebrity.

Other stories about rootless travelers include Maxim Jakubowski's story, "The Communion of Blood and Semen," in which an English writer who travels too much to form long-term attachments meets the female vampire of his dreams in cyberspace:

We'd met in Manhattan. On, of all places, Craigslist, the Internet Sargasso of obscene desire, barter, thievery, fakery and false identities. 

Strangely enough, this romance has a happy ending.

Several of these stories are set in particular cities, all shown at night (of course). Lisabet Sarai, an American living in Thailand, uses local color to good effect in her story, “Fourth World.” When two English-speaking male tourists meet a glamorous Thai woman whose motives aren’t clear to them, one explains the local culture to the other in terms that could apply equally well to the culture of supernatural beings:

An Aussie friend of mine says that Thailand is ‘fourth world’ – a world where laws and logic are indefinitely suspended. Where anything can happen, and usually does. It’s a surprising place.

Madeleine Oh’s “Nightlife” is set in nineteenth-century Paris, where an apparent lady of pleasure picks up a sad man who drinks alone while recording the nightlife of his city in his art. The perceptive reader recognizes him as an actual person who became as immortal in his own way as the lady is in hers.

"Cutter" by Kristina Wright is set in the night world of Las Vegas, which attracts risk-takers. It seems like a logical place for the meeting of a self-destructive young woman and a hungry but compassionate male vampire.

These stories manage to squeeze fresh juice (so to speak) out of the traditional themes of vampire fiction. Probably the most obvious theme is the erotic exchange of vampire and mortal victim as a metaphor for Dominance/submission or sadism/masochism, and the confused desire of the “victim,” which is usually more obvious to the mind-reading vampire than to the self-ignorant mortal.  In “Red by Any Other Name” by Kathleen Bradean, the roles of vampire as Dominant and mortal as submissive are neatly reversed as a professional Domme with human limitations responds to a telephone call from a mysterious male submissive whose taste for blood is expressed in a series of words for red, which are never spoken aloud.

Besides traveler’s tales, stories set in exotic locales and stories about the giving and taking of blood as power exchange, there are stories here in which bloodlust is a metaphor for addictions of various kinds and stories in which vampires function as eyewitness guides to the historical past.

The most powerful story (in this reviewer’s opinion) about bloodlust as addiction is “Once An Addict . . .” by A.D.R. Forte. In this story, a centuries-old female narrator (who is obviously a vampire) forces a modern man whose life is spiralling downhill to kick his habits and return to life and health, despite his resistance. Only when he has come to need her presence as much as he once needed mind-altering substances does she tell him why she chose him. They develop a mutual addiction:

I catch sight of us sometimes in mirrors, once with him behind me, his cock tight in my ass, and his bleeding wrist pressed to my mouth, our eyes glazed with euphoria, with the high.

The symbiotic relationship of vampire and mortal in this story points to a central irony in all the stories here that could be classified as romances with happy endings: even though vampires live parasitically on the essence of human life, several of these vampire characters fiercely preserve the lives of their mortal lovers even when those lovers are suicidal.
In “Blood and Bootleg” by Teresa Noelle Roberts, a debutante of the 1920s tries to distract herself with sex and illegal booze from the pain of losing her beloved twin brother in the Great War of 1914-1918. A handsome German guest appears at her birthday party, and responds to her hatred of “Huns” by letting her know that he has survived other atrocities in other times and places. In effect, he puts her grief in perspective while offering her consolation if she has the courage to accept it.

Singling out individual stories in this collection is hard because each of them is effective in its own way. However, one especially memorable story for me is the one lesbian story in this collection: “Devouring Heart” by Andrea Dale. In this heartbreaking tale, the good intentions of both vampire and mortal can’t make up for the communication gap between them. This relationship makes a valid-enough metaphor for real-life relationships in an incestuous lesbian community, and the story seems true to its literary roots.

The grandmother of such stories seems to be Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, a novella about a young woman who exerts an apparently magical (and harmful) influence on her female friends. It was published in 1872, approximately a generation before Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The one story in The Sweetest Kiss which seems out of place is “Kiss and Make Up” by Lisette Ashton, a kind of dark dirty joke about a vampire seductress who provokes her mate, Dracula, by seducing an innocent new male vampire who is unable to resist her charms or to realize that she has played this game many times before. Vampire humor is not a bad thing, but since it tends to debunk the tradition of vampires as objects of dread and desire, its appearance here undermines the mood that has already been set up.

Where the Girls Are is a smooth and delightful entertainment that is as slick and slippery as a three-card Monte pitch on 42nd St in the heyday of the real Times Square.  This book is an anthology of urban legends created from the authors’ lesbian fantasies (or perhaps memories?) -- both lipstick and butch -- of far-flung cities.  I should point out here that D. L. King, founder and publisher of Erotica Revealed, edited Where the Girls Are.  Much as it pains me to suck up to authority, I am bound to say that it is very ably put together and presents us with an engaging mix of settings and tastes.

While the issue of which city is the more felicitous for Sapphic adventures may remain moot, Where the Girls Are presents us with a seemingly endless array of possibilities from the most romantic to hard-edged BDSM.  Indeed there is something for every taste as long as you don’t want a dick, or at least that you will allow that a fine, fat dildo will do in its stead. 

There is a seamless flow to this book as one story elides nicely – with exotic variations – to the next.  It makes the experience of reading the book rather dreamy in a one-handed sort of way.  I will grant that I have some particular favorites beginning with the very first story, “The Critic,” by Charlotte Dare.  “The Critic” is a truly wonderful example of erotic irony: you may get everything you wished for, but it may not be what you wanted. I am loath to spoil the plot by saying more, but it is worth noting that her style of writing is deliciously bemused and graced with subtle humor.

Top honors here go to Jacqueline Applebee’s “Old London Town” for her ability to create the voice of a real lifelong city dweller who finds fresh eyes for her surroundings by sharing them with a girl from out of town.  San Francisco not surprisingly gets a lot of play in these stories among the best of which is Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “My First Play Party” where she is long and thoroughly spanked and otherwise ravished by a group of playfully stern erotic disciplinarians.

Further spankings and a dose of Gallic humiliation is administered in Andrea Dales’ “Come to my Window,” a sort of coming of age story filled with revelations and humiliations while having one’s bottom pleasantly blistered.  In fact these stories contain an unusually high number of forcibly reddened rear cheeks not to mention anuses spread to the limit by dildos and sundry forms of restraint.  It is a juicy array of possibilities.

The best use of the urban environment must go to Sommer Marsden in “Hot Child in the City.”  She takes full advantage of Baltimore’s soggy, suffocating summer heat to set up a hot encounter between two equally hot denizens of that city’s sweltering streets.  This story is especially pleasing because it is one of the few in the book where the urban environment and climate really do effect the characters’ choices and behavior as indeed they do in real life.  The genuine grit of the narrative contrasts with the lust that allows a measure of escape.  It is a form of self-preservation.

Best of all though is an absolutely steamy and utterly hilarious encounter between a cowgirl from Alberta and a wanna-be horse (girl) from Toronto.  Though they meet in the sophisticate’s home city, it is clearly the country girl who has the upper hand in the outstanding story, “The City Pony” by Roxy Katt.  Not the least of this story’s many virtues is the dialogue.  It is genuinely witty, delightfully absurd and absolutely authentic in the way it captures the curious non-sequiturs of human discourse especially in the jittery throes of sexual arousal.

At times the ‘pony’ seems a bit unsure if she is not actually a cow of some sort.  The cowgirl often has to race to keep up with the innuendo the ‘pony’ is tossing to her as the would-be equine tries to maintain the illusion of a subordinate position.  After all, she is the pony, right?  When at last she is brought to tether, the experience is really a good deal more humiliating and exciting than she had expected. 

Where the Girls Are offers something for everyone including an aging hetero male like myself although the street wisdom is that we compose a large part of the audience for lesbian erotica.  At any rate anyone can have a good time finding out where the girls are, and indeed, what they are up to between the sheets.