LesFic Eclectic

By Robyn Nyx

Always wanted to know what happens when a group of authors meet at a lesfic conference and their creative juices start flowing? Find out with this eclectic collection of short stories from new and established authors alike. We're sure you'll be delighted by the fresh voices we've discovered for your reading pleasure, and no doubt you'll be keen to get your hands on new material from some of your favourite authors.
From contemporary romance to magical realism, from erotica to a touch of science fiction, from platonic threesomes to polyamorous comets, there's something in here for almost all tastes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robyn Nyx
• Release date: Sep 26, 2019

Robyn Nyx

Robyn Nyx is an avid shutterbug and lover of all things fast and physical. Her writing often reflects both of those passions. She writes lesbian fiction when she isn’t busy being the chief executive of a UK charity. She lives with her soul mate and fellow scribe. They have no kids or kittens, which allows them to travel to exotic places at the drop of a hat for “research.” Robyn and her partner also run a community interest company helping marginalised groups to write, and get their stories heard. She works hard to find writing time, when she’s not being distracted by blue skies and motorbike rides.

Book preview

Introduction

When I visited Lesbos for the first time, I fell in love with the Eressos valley and the surrounding mountains that turned lavender, peach, and gold at sunset. The three kilometres of unspoilt beach and the villages with tree lined squares and red-roofed houses reeled me in. Everywhere I looked I saw nature in all its beauty. I was smitten.

Before I left, I put down a deposit on a small tumbledown house with an acre and a half of tatty olive trees, which tells you that either I have an impulsive nature or I know the real deal when I see it. Many delightful holidays followed restoring the house and working on the olive grove, until a few years ago, when a change of career allowed me to move to my Greek island full time.

Life often leads us down unexplored paths, and I follow gleefully. Sort of semi-retired, sort of busy, sort of stupid, I was ready for a new adventure…and the universe plopped one straight into my lap. The universe and I enjoy this dance.

I’m prone to wander down to my favourite taverna for lunch most afternoons to see who’s around for a chat or maybe a game of backgammon. I was hanging at the Flamingo Beach Bar with Anita, the owner, when she told me a place further along the strip had its lease for sale.

Why tell me? I asked. I’m not looking for a bar.

She shrugged. I just thought it’d be nice to have another gay place on this side of the river.

Her casual words wormed into my head. I mulled her idea over for a few weeks. I talked to friends, consulted my accountant, and checked my bank balance. Everyone said it would be unwise, a gamble, a maddening adventure. I listened gravely, ignored them all, then signed a five-year lease and found myself the owner of a Greek taverna. All the time that pesky universe was whispering in my other ear.

That was a couple of years ago. The Compass Bar has lurched through teething pains and holiday fevers. We’ve been up and down, left, right, and centre. It’s been a ride, but now at three years in, I feel I’ve got the hang of it and can loosen my white knuckled grip just a little.

Bar staff come and bar staff go, ‘tis the nature of the beast. I’m lucky to have a few stalwarts who rock up on the island every May to help prep for the summer. Aliz floats in from Athens. She’s a tall, sultry, thirty-something, impossibly lovely, and could fill the bar to overflow with lovesick suitors. I’m perfectly happy with this. Moogi, a twenty-six-year-old ball of limitless energy, bounces over from Sydney. She is of Aussie-Italian descent so can stay in the E.U. as long as she wants, which is all summer, thankfully, and she spends it working at my bar. Esmine, the bar baby, is nineteen and another beautiful Greek. They are a handsome race. She’s a local lass, an Eressian, and is at university in Thessaloniki studying Computational Science. She comes home for the holidays to see her family and work the summer season before heading back in the autumn. Esmine has been with Compass Bar since the start, which was the year she started uni.

In the kitchen, I have Dorian, a Dutch friend and one helluva cook. She produces good, no nonsense food for the holidaymakers. Dorian is stoic, thoughtful, and quiet, though that may be because of the joint she always has on the go.

The rest of my staff are itinerant. They are friends, or friends of friends, looking for a working holiday on a Greek island. Aliz, Moogi, Esmine, and Dorian are my mainstays. My A team. I’m the floater. I can do bar, the floor, or KP for Dorian. I’m also the boss, so anything that goes wrong lands on my lap.

Compass Bar is now in the third year out of a five-year lease. I’m not sure if I’ll extend. It’s a short season and a lot of bloody hard work. It’s also a lot of fun, friendship, and good times. And memories are made at times like those. So much so that when I read back on my journals—I’m a chronic journaler, though can miss out the odd day if distracted or absolutely nothing happens—I decided to share a typical year. It’s not a full year. It’s not particularly brilliant writing. It’s my journal, and that means life as it happens in this beautiful, wonderful place.

25th July

Morning spent at the accountants collecting the work licenses for the late summer staff I’ve hired. August is a mad month, and we always need more people, and the September International Women’s Festival means I can give up to six weeks extra work.

I arrive at the bar before lunchtime to find Moogi has created an appalling concoction from the dregs of any bottle with less than two millimetres of alcohol in it.

I’ve invented a cocktail, she says. It’s called Scorpion’s Kiss.

Is this to save them going out and looking for a scorpion? I ask.

This latest notion to be a mixologist is obsessing her, though I suspect it’s more about her competitive nature and wanting to upstage Thea, the cocktail maker at the Karma Bar.

Go on.

She offers me a shot glass containing a liquid the colour and consistency of a UTI sample.

Take a sip.

I’m loath to touch the glass, never mind take a sip. No. I’m adamant. You drink it. You made it.

Aliz drifts over, scenting an imminent debacle. Moogi gets shifty. She has this awkward sideways shuffle that’s her big tell. If we were playing poker she’d have salsa’d over to the next table, she’s so agitated.

Haven’t you tried it? I ask, suspecting the answer is no, and I’m the lab rat.

I was saving it for you.

There’s a pout to her voice, and her face creases to join in. Dorian wanders in from the kitchen. She’s finished chopping the onions for the pizzas and wants to see what’s going on.

After you. I push the shot glass back to her and cross my arms. My boss face is firmly in place. It has to be, before she poisons the customers and I’m sued off the face of the earth. On cue, with the timing of an amateur dramatical society, Ouzo Sue comes through the door. Ouzo Sue is a frequent visitor

Freebie! Moogi waves the shot at her.

Ooh. What is it?

Sue beelines for us.

It’s new, Moogi tells her. We’re trying out samples.

Before I can issue a health warning, Sue, not one to be shy around a shot glass, luckily has the survival instinct to sip this one cautiously. We wait with bated breath. Sue’s face scrunches. She sticks out a creosote-coloured tongue and hands back the half full glass.

It’s a bit…urph. She burps. Oops. Sorry.

She apologises profusely, which I think is the wrong way around. We should be on bended knee before her.

Sue heads back to the terrace and calls over her shoulder, Can I have a Margherita with extra cheese?

As Dorian starts for the kitchen to fulfil the lunch order, I surmise Sue’s burp is all the customer feedback we’ll get and possibly, all we’ll need.

Forget it, I tell Moogi. She looks crestfallen and a little guilty. Aliz raises a perfectly winged eyebrow. What? I ask, alarm filling me.

I made a pitcher, she replies glumly. The big pitcher.

The big pitcher is about a gallon of whatever’s in it, and I don’t believe for one moment it was all scrag-ends from the unloved liqueur bottles. And even if it was, we always pour the scrag-ends into the newly opened bottles. It’s called thrift, and I’m good at it, and Moogi’s pitcher of sewage water is as far from thrift as is possible.

I point a finger at her. You’ve wasted good drink. You’d better sell every drop of that pitcher, or it’s coming out of your wages. Understood? It’s an empty threat, but I have to push back once in a while if only to curb my staff’s enthusiasm.

Aliz gives Moogi an impossibly classic told-you-so look and goes back behind the bar. Moogi’s face darkens into her petulant no-one-understands-or-appreciates-me look. And I leave with my best you-better-make-this-good look. In the kitchen, enjoying her degree of separation, Dorian whistles