Spicy fiction is good for you, apparently

So here are some links that are good for your health!

Author

Cecilia Tan
August 29, 2025

August 29, 2025

Welcome to the latest WANTON WEEKLY! Somehow our circulation jumped by 20% this week, so welcome especially to new readers!

It’s true: reading erotica (or listening to it) is proven by science to improve intimacy because of how fiction stimulates and evokes feelings of empathy. Various studies come across my desk on this topic (like this one, which isn’t behind an academic paywall).

BUT! if you try to google for “is erotica good for you"?” or “studies show erotica is healthy” the results you’ll get are the opposite. You’ll get a slew of pseudoscience screeds about how harmful p*rn is, placed by anti-porn crusaders like Focus on the Family. Booooooooooooooo.

We’re glad you’re here, and we’re glad you’re writing sexy, spicy words, and stimulating the biggest, most important organ: the brain.

This week we have a two new entries from Kaya Skovdatter in which, unusually, everyone lives, Cori Catchthorne’s sci-fi Europa University returns from their intermission, and over in Lauren P. Burka’s serial, well… enemas anyone?

If you enjoy this newsletter, please share it with a friend!

Writers, remember to submit your new content links here each week: https://forms.gle/Eu2PfvfbcmimDJnj8

Readers, got a recommendation of some spicy fiction for your fellow readers of the Wanton Weekly? Please email us at [email protected] with a link and why you recommend it, and we might feature reader recs in a future newsletter!

FICTION

A young nun and a princess in a fantasy setting. “Princess Yseldra calls me sweet things. She whispers vile ones. When the king and queen passed, her treatment toward me changed.”

Nyah may run Marrowmont's Harrow House coven, but her heart just isn't in it anymore; she left it on the dance floor with the head of the Bell and Candle Book Club when the covens clashed. She’s been trying to advocate for the rival circles to work together ever since. Something the Mother that Harrow House coven worships -- powerful, possessive, and punitive -- has no interest in allowing.

  • “A Vixen Loose in Venice (Hulderotica #17)” by Kaya Skovdatter. Standalone/Short

    Paywalled. Lesbian, romance, erotica: WLW; FF; Everybody lives; Catch me if you can; A deliciously deceitful game; A very horngry (not-quite-ex-) deity

    Link: https://www.huldrahouse.com/shop/p/a-vixen-loose-in-venice

Eresh is never one to turn down a fancy costume ball. Especially one in Venice. And not when she's been hired to steal one of the host's most treasured illegally-acquired relics. A challenge made all the more fun when the Carabinieri turn out to be in attendance too, expecting Eresh's nom de guerre, the Fox, to try and take it. A welcome diversion, as it gives her a chance to catch up with her favourite detective sparring partner — and former lover — Sienna. And with the drinks flowing and the masks in place, when they collide who's to say what sparks may fly?

“As a healer,” Styrax told him, “I’ve been taught to deliver a purging, when required, in a manner to minimize discomfort and injury to a patient’s dignity. Which is to say, the opposite of what I’m going to do to you.”

Also don’t forget that the first three very spicy chapters of Lauren’s “Fraternity Alpha” (BDSM, genderbent, erotica) are free to read on Theo.

More than once Barrow told me the key to power was being indifferent to pain.

Something clicked for me: that was why magical circle workings were necessary, and why they were so parallel to BDSM: the person who was the focus of the ceremony, who was taking the flogging or whose blood was being used, could withstand so much more if they were supported and challenged and led through the experience by someone they could place their trust in.

Thanks for reading. Stay wanton! Any suggestions, email us at  [email protected].