T.C. Mill's Blog, page 20

New Release: Adam Tynae’s Reward

I’m happy to announce the publication of the third book in the Lady Crayl series. Squire Crayl’s Captive was a prequel, showing Elise Crayl and Adam before they earned their knighthoods and would up on opposite sides of a war between their kingdoms. Adam Tynae’s Reward takes place after the war is settled–as reconciliation begins.

The fourth and final book is yet to come, and hopefully it won’t take half so long as this piece did. In my defense, I did put together the tables of contents of two anthologies since releasing Squire Crayl’s Captive in February, plus writing Rosewitch (an an impressive amount of Shakespearian fanfiction, if I may say so myself). I understand that you may not be able to forgive me, but at the least you may be comforted knowing Her Seal Upon Him is more than half written and completely outlined. Once it’s released, my next step will be to collect the complete series into an omnibus ebook & paperback.

More info on Adam Tynae’s Reward, including purchase links, is available on its Story Page.

Oh, and the inspiration for the key erotic scene in this piece?  The picture is not at all safe for work, but here it is!

Fifty Shades of Green

When I heard about this “feminist, gardener, literary response to Fifty Shades of Gray,” I got bouncy with excitement. I, too, have longed for a feminist literary response. Well, for feminist and literary smut in general, but 50SOG has certainly not lessened the need.

At the time, I was visiting my sister in California. California in April is a great place to get inspiration for anything related to gardening. I have a thumb of no lush color whatsoever, but with my sister’s encouragement (“Should I write another femdom story?” I asked. “Or maybe expand to something else instead?” “Femdom,” she said. “There’s never enough femdom.”) and the voluptuous inspiration of hundreds of roses in bloom, I wrote “Rosewitch.” It’s a historical fantasy with, yes, lots of roses and not a little femdom. It also gave me the chance to write an in-character critique of the use of aphrodisiacs as a romantic plot element, which I’m sure is much less dry than it sounds when I put it like that.

But you be the judge:

~*~

He protested, “I admire Felicia more than anyone else in the world.”

“Then I fear and despair for the rest of us, if your admiration cannot keep you from ravishing her by trickery.”

Henry only stared. It was as if he had discovered himself speaking in a foreign language—and saying one key word utterly wrong.

“Exactly,” Desidira said. “So tell me, to satisfy my curiosity, why?”

He could not speak. At that, he feared to speak, lest he say one wrong thing too many and seal his doom.

In fact he was overtaken by a positive thrill of terror. A thrill. Cold ice in the pit of his stomach, and beneath that a day-bright maelstrom. He was utterly pinned by Desidira’s chocolate-brown eyes. Her glare made them gleam like living jewels. If only, he found himself thinking, if only Felicia could look at him with such passion—never mind if it was disgust or contempt. Desidira could break him in half and he’d consider it a privilege.

“Surely you could court her,” the witch said, as if oblivious to his thoughts. “In fact, why don’t you? Are you short on time? Is there a clause in a will somewhere? Neither of you is dying, are you?—No, surely you’d have asked something different of me in that case. Wiser. So what do you have against courting?”

To hear her pry at his motives and character, picking ideas loose like petals, gathering only to discard but nonetheless intently focused on his very self, her thoughts as quick-moving and merciless as her gloved and ungloved fingertips—well, in short Henry reacted to it, and Desidira was studying him too closely not to see his reaction. Her mouth widened into an Ah of realization.

~*~

Information on the anthology, including links to where it’s available, will be updated on my Stories Page. 

Darker Edge of Desire

“The Wicked Wife,” a retold Bluebeard tale, is included in Mitzi Szereto’s anthology of erotic Gothic stories. I loved reading Red Velvet and Absinthe, and so I was thrilled to be included in this spiritual sequel collection, which seems to be more delectably twisted still.

Darker Edge of Desire is now available for pre-order–clickthrough to its page for links–and for excerpts, including the opening of “The Wicked Wife,” checkout the anthology’s website here.

Review: The Red Veil by Randy Chandler

I won a copy of this erotica novella, written by an author with a pleasingly clever penname, through a LibraryThing giveaway for which a review was requested.

That penname had me expecting a sort of noir flavor, but instead The Red Veil draws more on Arabian Nights pastiche. In fact, I think it surpasses good taste in doing so–working Gaddafi into erotica seems a highly questionable display of judgment, and the line about getting magic-sexy treasures from a deposed despot would have worked without bringing up a specific tyrant who oppressed and tyrannized real people. With the slightest bit of empathy, that’s both tacky and a buzzkill.

My other problem with the premise, though, was dealt with refreshingly. That premise: magical, red veil designed to make any woman insatiable. Sounds a bit date-rapey. Not to put too fine a point on it. So it was pretty amazing to a) see the female protagonist point that out and b) see her subvert the very magic of the veil for her own purposes (although this loses almost as many points as it gains, because it could have done without the odor of American Woman Exceptionalism, really?). Still, I’m always glad to munch popcorn and watch a man who tries to take sexual advantage of a woman accidentally awaken a dominatrix he’s not set to deal with. Very satisfying to my Id.

It’s also nice to see a dom(-inatrix) who can enjoy a consensually given beating without being considered less dominant for it. Topping for the bottom is sexy sometimes, and shame on whoever decided otherwise. There was also a fun interplay in the contrast between Dakota, the protagonist and dom, and her more pliable friend Alice–although drunk!Alice got annoying (as drunks do), and Dakota could seriously have been characterized a bit more. That’s not a complaint specific to this story so much as a general frustration with short-form erotica. Contrary to popular belief, people having personalities does not get in the way of the porn. In fact, most sexually active adults in real life also have personalities. Sometimes other people choose to have sex with them because of those personalities.

So while there’s some actual and juicy playing with dynamics here (seducer becomes ‘victim,’ a dominatrix tops from the bottom), when it comes down to execution not much else in the sex scenes is that original. There’s one bit with the veil that stuck in my memory, but otherwise, it’s pretty standard sex a lot of other people have written before. And one thing that’s arguably original (Dakota & Alice have a scene together in the women’s washroom) is not particularly sexy.   Fewer cliches and more showing rather than telling would have helped build the atmosphere. It also would be nice if the writer decided to have us be turned on by Dakota & Alice, rather than…scandalized? Shocked? Left snickering? I’m honestly unsure of the motive there, but I have a marginal note that says “these views on F/F are narrow-minded and absurd” so there was my reaction in the moment.

I guess my final ruling is: as a free giveaway, I’m happy with the price I paid, and it was worth the time reading if only by providing food for thought. I actually like getting food for thought in my erotica (maybe the 18th century was the right time, philosophy in the bedroom and all)–but I would have enjoyed more eroticism in this one, too. With a premise that was subverted enough to be fresh, it’s a shame I kept being distracted by the tacky, the tasteless, and the tired cliche.

Goodreads

Amazon

Smashwords

 

Free Fic: “Candles and Ice”

Present for you all!

Originally written 2 years ago today, at the inspiration of my friend Julian Griffith–who suggested I write a scene with Kanovan featuring “Candle wax and ice cubes,”–this vignette was posted for Valentine’s Day 2013 on the old version of my blog. When we migrated to WordPress, I feared it had been lost, but a neat trick (I found a link to it in the depths of my Tumblr) I was able to access and resurrect it!

Although Kanovan and his partner go unnamed here, readers of Sojourn Home–and the newly released, “What He Brought Home”–may be familiar with him. I hope it is as delicious good fun for you to read as it was to write.

Candles and Ice

When she kisses him, his mouth is cold from the ice chips slipped between his parted lips. He tastes like the frozen mountain water, cloudy with minerals, and of his own underlying sweetness and, faintly, a darker mineral tang; of blood. He’s bitten the inside of his cheek at some point, and though she can’t tell whether he did it deliberately or by accident, she knows it pleased him.

She breaks the kiss, though his eagerness suggests he would rather continue it—after all, he shouldn’t be pleased in everything, that would ruin the game. He tries to follow her mouth as it draws away, only to be brought up short. The cords, black silk, nip at the bare skin of his forearms. He strains hard enough for them to ride up to his wrists, revealing red bands in the flesh where they had been. She runs her finger over one. If it’s tender, he doesn’t reveal it with a wince. He’s watching her with bright blue eyes, only the blue has been diminished to a lapis ring around the blackness of enlarged pupils. Oh, winning or not, he’s still pleased.

She slips another chip of ice into his mouth, his soft lips wrapping over her fingers and his tongue lapping at them. His eyes are smiling.

She takes her hand from his lips, traces it over the sharp line of his jaw and down his neck to his bare chest. His pulse jumps beneath her fingers, and muscles shift as he swallows. Then an interruption, a concavity—her fingers run into the dip in his skin, trace the long, curving lines of the scar. Perhaps a letter in a language she can’t read—isn’t meant to. She wonders who drew the scar there, if they’d asked to place it on him or if he begged them to, if it hurt (of course it did) but also what else he’d felt. What he feels now… And then she wonders if she’s trespassing, and though he says nothing to stop her she quickly moves on.

His breath catches as she picks idly at one of the hardened drops of wax. It’s an indigo spot against his pale skin, from the deep blue candles illuminating the room. Taken up almost on impulse—rather as she had been, for that matter. Droplets have hardened on her skirt, too, wax almost invisible against silk of the same shade. But they aren’t nearly as much fun to pick at, she reflects, as he laughs beneath her hands.

There’s an edge to his laughter, almost of nervousness. Not that he’s afraid of her—he meets her eyes now as brazenly as he had earlier this evening, when he made his proposal. Perhaps he’s afraid she’ll stop?

She digs her nail into his flesh, and the laughter is cut off. But he has no reason to fear her stopping.

The wax won’t come off completely, until she replaces her fingernail with the more certain pressure of her teeth. Then wax scrapes away in light flakes on her tongue, tasteless in themselves, but with the salt of his skin mixed in. He holds still beneath her, hardly breathing. She looks up to see his eyes unfocused, heavy-lidded, and his lips just barely parted. Intent on something internal, beyond her, beyond even himself—chasing it, and she only a means to the pursuit.

She sets her teeth to the next drop of wax, a thick petal of it hardened over one nipple. Her teeth and tongue—now forceful, now gentle—send shudders through him. Now she’s the one giving chase, seeking to draw out more of those shivers, hearing his breathing harshen and the creak of the cords pulled against the posts of the headboard.

Her hands go to the clear, silken skin on his lower torso—a little soft around his waist, yielding, but then she finds the muscle beneath, and when her hands trace upwards they play over the bones surrounding his rapidly beating heart. She tastes the heartbeat at the hollow of his throat, and feels his breath shivering under her lips.

“There,” he whispers. She’s found something he likes enough to beg for.

She kisses harder, hard enough to leave a mark there that matches the red on his forearms and wrists. When she draws back—as if for air—she reaches for the candle stub still alight on the bedside table and brings it closer. Its light adds a golden glow to his skin and the backs of her hands. Smoothing back his long hair, she fans the pale brown strands over the pillowcase, a second layer of silk. He turns his head to help her.

“I like your hair,” she says. “How soft it is, and warm…” As if it stored heat gathered from sunlight, from flames, from the thousand flickering candles that illuminated the salon where they’d met, so many hours ago. From the candles burning in this room, for that matter. She coils a strand around her fingers, and he bends his head back at the touch.

“Yes. I also like it when you do that.” Her grip tightens, and her other hand slides around to cup his skull just above the nape of his neck, raising him into another kiss, which he meets hungrily. But it isn’t until she breaks the kiss, shoving him back down, and trails her lips over his chin and down his throat that the shivers begin again, the missed breaths, the coiled tension she can feel where she straddles him.

She reaches for the candle stub and lets a few drops fall onto the bared side of his neck. He watches her do it, his eyes a paler, more vivid blue than the wax, though they are still half-hidden beneath heavy lids. They hold each other’s gaze as the wax hardens, cooling. There’s still ice in the silver bucket—surrounding an untouched bottle of yellow wine—but to go for it she has to rise off of him, and she regrets the loss of contact, of feeling every reaction in the tremors of his flesh. She won’t be away long.

The ice is so cold she loses feeling in her fingertips as she pries a chip loose from where it’s melting into the others. When she lays it against his skin it stops his breath for a moment. She catches the melting drops with her tongue before they spill to his unbuttoned collar. Again, she tastes salt and cool, clear water and mountain stone. She licks up to the angle at the corner of his jaw, beneath his ear, and then she draws her teeth down, their touch light and no more than a promise until she reaches the hardened wax. She bites it off of him, and bites again at the clear skin, drawn taut against the muscle beneath by the way he’s turned his head. And then he’s turned it again, suddenly, landing a nip on her own shoulder.

“You like that?” she asks—startled at how her own voice has deepened, gone husky, almost a purr.

“Don’t you?” His words are whispered over the place he’s bitten, a caress against the gentle sting.

Her shoulders are left almost bare by her gown; she reaches to loosen the ties at the back and pulls the wide collar down further, inviting more of his kisses to her shoulder, clavicle, breast. His mouth is warm now, and the heat sinks inside her, flowing through her veins to pool at the place where her lower body rubs against him. She’d hardly been indifferent to the sensations there before—how each time he shivered beneath her, those tremors also traveled to the space between her thighs, pressing a point of sweetness over the tender nub, running over folds in flesh and the silk lying over it—no, hardly indifferent, but not until now had those sensations turned to urgency.

She presses against him, her own deliberate tremor, feels him sigh between the kisses.

“Should I untie you?” she asks. She meant to stop this motion, teasing to both of them, once she’d made her purpose clear; but it’s harder than she expected. She wants to chase after the sweetness, the sensation born of fire and ice and her thrusting against him and his tongue laving her nipple. He doesn’t stop long enough to answer her, which she takes to mean she shouldn’t.

She drives against him again, and this time he angles his hips to meet her. How he knew to do it she can’t imagine, but it’s the right angle, and pleasure glows like a beacon she can’t see with her ordinary eyes, but she knows it’s there and instinctively she’s after it. Chasing, and he’s chasing with her—his teeth move over her collarbone, and the jarring that happens as she tries to find the right rhythm sends jolts of discomfort, of roughness, when they knock together; then she brings her own mouth back to the place where she’d bitten before and raises another mark, against which her breath begins to come in short, hot pants. As if she’s running. A race. A pursuit.

The finish overtakes her like waves breaking, first the great one, that leaves her lying liquidly pliant on top of him, then the smaller ones, quiet, sweet tremors that happen as much inside as outside her body. He is also pliant, motionless except for deep, ragged breaths that slowly become even. She draws back to see his face. By then, he’s collected himself enough to smile at her, a small and rather self-satisfied smile.

“Now,” he says, “you can untie me, if you’d like.”

She does, with the realization that she wants his arms around her. There are more bruises, some only fading red marks but other deeper, darker, that she tries to avoid touching as she pulls the cords loose. The time for pain is past. The chase—she wonders if he was chasing the same thing she was, or something different, or part of both—is over.

Of publishing news & newsletters

I’m not dead! I’m just dead tired. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, consider I’m juggling a move to a new state (or back to an old one–from Washington, D.C. home to Wisconsin), writing 9 WIPs (some of which are fanfiction, but that doesn’t make it any less a writing work in progress), and editing two anthologies.

Speaking of which–The New Smut Project open submissions period closed June 7th, although several authors have been granted extensions because of personal, technological, health or scheduling reasons. I suppose I’m one of them ; ).  My co-editor Pasi and I have already started reading through received submissions, of which we have just about 100, and hope to announce completed Tables of Contents for both our Characterization and Negotiation anthologies by the end of June.

If you want to be notified when those anthologies become available, and/or when we next open to new round of submissions,  you can join our spam-free mailing lists, and have the updates come to your inbox rather than having to seek out updates yourself (although you can do that, too, at newsmutproject.tumblr.com).

For that matter, I feel I should mention I too have a mailing list, which you can find with other useful links on my contact page.

The last publication notice I sent out was for Squire Crayl’s Captive, book 2 out of 4 in the Lady Crayl series. Book 3, Adam Tynae’s Reward, already has a page under my Stories tab, featuring its droolworthy cover art, and the story itself is receiving a last editorial polish. I hope to have it posted by the end of the month, though it’s competing with a number of other draws on my attention. I think I’ve mentioned editing some anthologies? ;D In any event, the final story, Her Seal Upon Him, is coming along well, and I look forward to releasing an omnibus collection once all pieces are finished.

I do have a new publication in Inkstained Succubus’ new anthology of M/M BDSM, Dominant Tendencies. “What He Brought Home” features the continuing adventures of Kanovan and Mirin, who you may also be familiar with from “Sojourn Home.”

Later this week I’ll be reposting a recovered short story featuring Kanovan on this blog. It had been posted on the old version of my website before its update in September 2013, and I had supposed it lost until I found a link on my Tumblr that lead me ‘though the rabbit hole’ or back in time or whathaveyou. The story, “Candles and Ice,” had originally been written at the encouragement of a friend and fellow writer I met through Tumblr. Writing has always been a solitary pursuit, but for me (perhaps especially when it comes to romance and erotica), it’s also a way to connect with others. Talking about my writing on Tumblr has not only inspired me to produce new projects–from stories to the New Smut Project anthologies–it’s also brought me friends who share my interests, friends who are sometimes also readers, and readers who sometimes become friends.  As I find myself in new/old territory, reuniting with some ‘meatspace’ companions but missing those I left in D.C., the global friendships I’ve formed online among my writing & editing communities have become all the more valuable. Thank you, all.

 

 

Excuses, excuses

This April I was supposed to have released another Lady Crayl story, or at least to have posted a book review. This I have not done. I feel my failure acutely and shall remedy it soon–Adam Tynae’s Reward is being worked on as we speak. I’ve  fallen behind this past month mostly because of working on editing 2 new anthology projects, taking a 2-week vacation to visit my sister in California, and coping with a writing hangover from writing 20,000 words of angsty BDSM-themed Shakespearian fanfiction.

There is more Shakespearian fanfic where that came from, actually, plus more Lady Crayl. And perhaps I will even have some pieces in the New Smut Project anthologies. Speaking of which, if you want some of your work in the NSP anthos–we want it, too! Currently I’m feeling peckish for femdom works, nontraditional pairings, and genre stories (like mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, historical). But anything well-written that fits our goals and themes will be eagerly looked at.

 

Book Review: Smut by the Sea Volume 2

There may be some conflict of interest in my reviewing this, as I am one of the 15 authors in this collection. So I’ll be skipping my own story and talking about the more than half a dozen others, because there have not been enough nearly reviews for Smut by the Sea Vol. 2! My goal is to help anyone who’s interested find out a little more about what it’s like.

So, T.C., what is Smut by the Sea like?

Smutty. Delightfully so.

Our editors’ choice of the word Smut is explained in the introduction–to counter the seedy connotations of the word in favor of a more light-hearted perception. The goal comes through in the tone of the stories: never filthy, but frequently irreverent (even when describing popular, searingly hot fantasies) and earthy.

Actually, I think the tone of this anthology could be captured in a second word: pussy. Perhaps I’m an innocent, I still think of cute little kitties (one story does in fact use the word kitten, which had me giggling) and it’s never exactly going to hit my auditory g-spot. But cuteness is also a predominant mood for many of these pieces, so it’s all good.

Honeymoon Suite by Victoria Blisse

Lucky Rebecca has won a honeymoon trip…only days after her fiance left her. Happily, her friend Samantha convinces her that they should go, just the two of them girls, alone. Hot receptionist Ben now believes they’re a married couple. But he is freed of this confusion when he returns a misplaced eReader to Rebecca. Hmm, maybe I should lose my new eReader somewhere a cute concierge can return it ^_^. The plot kind of trickles off once Ben is in Rebecca’s hotel room–I was a bit disappointed that Samantha didn’t join them, as that made her bubbly personality nothing but part of the setup.

Stuck on the Edge by Tilly Hunter

A very frank, honest depiction of how *awkward* sex can be sometimes, but also how endearing it is between this long-married couple. I laughed out loud at some points. Like when the heroine is reminiscing about an incident in a pool…with security cameras.

And, after that scene on the beach, “cold is now my fetish.”

Things get a bit warmer (I’m punny) once they’re stranded on an island overnight. Their interactions are both cute and steamy, based on the familiarity they’ve built up with each other over a long time. I usually don’t like men topping women in my BDSM dynamics, because it can quickly turn into some tedious cliches, but this was a lovely depiction of bondage–affectionate, offering pleasure on both sides, and afterwards he leaves her tied up while he cooks dinner. I loved it!

Beach View  Rachel Randall 

Like “Stuck on the Edge,” this story begins by underwhelming us–somewhere in the Canary Islands, our heroine breathes diesel fumes.

Jemma is a housing agent helping Ellen find a place…while also managing a serious crush on her. A serious mutual crush, as it turns out, which they consummate in one of the houses. At “Give me the tour” I da’awwed and a-ahhed at once. Who knew Realtor roleplay could be so much fun? This piece also had a lot of what I call “personality porn,” where character’s different traits and quirks juicily impact the scene. I would happily have read a novel-length version.

Arcane Arcade… Giselle Renard

This piece has a touch of magic realism and some very interesting arcade machines. Like “Beach View” and “Stuck on the Edge,” it balances realism with raunch, and doesn’t exactly open romantically as Moira rushes around looking for relief from a washroom emergency. She and her boyfriend Denny, who is a little too enamored of video games, provide some comic relief as well as a genuinely intriguing encounter with a sybian machine.

Shipwrecked by Tamsin Flowers

Shelby survives a shipwreak in New England and is rescued by Josh, a lonely lighthouse keeper. Josh was so sweet I began to get nervous at first (expecting a personality switch–surely nobody could remain that sweet all through?) but no, he’s a bit starved for affection but also a very generous lover–as is Shelby. A really nice piece.

On the Big Wheel by Lucy Felthouse

Another story taking place around an arcade, I remember this one not least because it finally explains how those multi-level coin-pushing games work.

But that’s not really the game Brigit has in mind when she gets on the big wheel with her boyfriend. She has a–personal challenge, you might say. I loved to see her taking charge, and enjoyed this story’s broader approach to sex, plus the element of risk!

Escape by Kate Britton

This one didn’t quite work for me. The setup seems both convoluted and overly convenient: the protagonist escapes to a seaside town in Oregon, the domain of her crush Richard, just as Richard breaks up with his long-time girlfriend, who had received so much painstaking description that I was beginning to wonder if *she* was being set up as our romantic lead. I wouldn’t complain. But Richard’s background as a divorced ex-artist seemed sort of tacked on, and the part where he paints explicit, BDSM-themed paintings of a virtual stranger and exhibits them is only acceptable in the sort of alternate-universe porn logic where she is in fact equally horny for him (although without prior experience in BDSM). Plus, his forcing her to shave at the end was a particular pet peeve of mine that only cemented my distaste for the whole dynamic. If it’s your kind of thing, it’s your kind of thing. It’s not mine.

Charmer by Jillian Boyd

Mirrie and her children are on a vacation booked by her ex, and while at the hotel she finds herself an attractive fellow she wants to “shag until he couldn’t walk anymore” (mmm, I loved that line). Although–maybe I was just in a critical mood when I got to this one–it doesn’t seem to be Mirrie yearning for Charlie so much as her genitals, broadly speaking and somewhat disembodied, do. Wandering body parts aside, though, Charlie is a definite charmer and there’s real chemistry between them.

The Beach House by Bel Anderson

A coming of age story between Cally and her friend Archie. They’re well on their way to becoming something beyond “like brother and sister” until their families have a falling out. The story picks up years later as they reunite to work on the old beach house their families used to meet at each summer. They’re both very sweet and the relationship is easy to root for. I was somewhat distracted by how the sex scene takes place in one pages-long, looong paragraph.

Honeymooning with Max by Cass Peterson

This super playful piece is like the first story, also about a honeymoon that fell through–this time, groom Nigel ran off with his personal trainer, Steve. At least our abandoned bride has “Max”…who doesn’t seem to mind when something better comes along in the form of a handsome Frenchman. I know my summary sounds confusing, but this is a really fun one to read unspoiled.

Vanilla Sands by Delyth Angharad 

Rarely have I felt such pure envy of an author’s name. Aside from that, this was the one science fiction story in the anthology, so of course I enjoyed it vastly. Leo meets Sorcha in a virtual reality. He’s an astronaut, part of a team out to scout strange new worlds, etc, and the virtual reality play is part of what keeps him grounded (in the sense of psychologically healthy, yes I’m punning again, sorry). Sorcha at first seems to be part of the virtual simulation, but she begins to remember things from “before”. A ghost in the machine.

Perhaps oddly to modern eyes, Leo is more okay with having sex with a dead woman than with a simulation (she’s “realer” this way). And she seems just fine with the whole being-dead thing as well. Then again, this is certainly not a bad afterlife: companionship with a personable spaceman in a gorgeous holo-deck generated setting.

Sharing the Captain by T.C. Mill

This is my story, so it wouldn’t be seemly of me to chat it up, I think. But if Age of Sail (specifically Napoleonic era) F/M/M gets your gears whirring (and why wouldn’t it), you wouldn’t want to miss this. And while I’m promoting shamelessly, if you really love Age of Sail F/M/M, you might also want to check out the novel Love Continuance and Increasing by my friend Julian Griffith. We take different approaches–and draw characters from different classes–but it’s all pretty darn great in my not-so-humble opinion.

Cerulean by Erzabet Bishop

Grace has a crush on the neighbor & mermaid artist (that is, an artist of mermaids–not an actual mermaid) Allyse–and in an eerie touch of autobiography, writer’s block on her erotica piece for a beach-themed call.  Luckily Allyse helps her overcome that. In fact, Allyse is a bit irked at being teased for months, leading to a spanking scene among other delights. There’s also a genuinely touching bit at the end where plump and uncertain Grace worries that Allyse will wake up to what a mistake she’s made. As if.

Shrimping Season by Tenille Brown 

Kendra and her husband of 3 years, Gary, run a seafood stand on the Georgia coast. But they disagreed about the future of the place (he was overambitious) and are now sleeping apart. And Kendra’s shrimping alone. When Gary finally comes around, he gets tackled. This story has some commentary on trying to fix a relationship with sex–

“Gary, why didn’t you come to bed last night?” 

Gary looked her right in the eye when he said, “Because you would have confused sex with resolution, and I didn’t want that.”

“Maybe yesterday I confused sex with love.”

–while doing just that. It’s an enjoyable fantasy, for certain.

Speaking of which…

Brazilian Fantasy by Annabeth Leong 

Emma’s trip to Brazil is not turning out the way she’d hoped, until suddenly she meets Julião practicing his capoeiristas on the beach. I’ve  had a similar experience watching an insanely talented martial artist practice his moves  at Cape Coast in Ghana. It was awesome.  Unlike Emma, though, I never to to know the guy, much less crack jokes in the native language (which is English in Ghana, not Portuguese, and maybe I should leave it go at that…).

Julião works at the spa Emma wants to get into, and he promises her a white clay body mask “Because you pronounce my name correctly.” Which is kinda sweet and postcolonially romantic. Or not. It does seem nice that while this story uses a foreign setting as an exotic backdrop, the characters genuinely inhabit the setting. It’s not just a colorfully painted background. And even while balancing that, this is a genuinely fun fantasy, with horseback rides on the beach and everything. The sex is quite possibly the least escapist part, although it is excellent.

Buy links & more can be found at my Story Page for this anthology.

A Look from the Slush Pile

I had my first look at a smutty slush pile this past weekend. It was…interesting. I definitely enjoyed the chance to read other writers’ interpretations of our themes.

However, I admit not all of the experience was positive.

Not all stories were to our taste, which is fine! I do have a pretty specific taste, but I try to be open-minded. The diversity of viewpoints is part of the game when you launch a theme like “character-driven” smut.

Yet it’s not the content of the stories so much as the presentation that we saw the most diversity in. I’ve learned now that there’s no such thing as the “typical” submission, or at least that it shouldn’t be taken for granted.

I admit that on at least one occasion, I was so taken aback by the tone of a cover letter that I broke into raucous laughter.

Anyway, it’s encouraged my co-editor and I to refine our guidelines with a few additional tips. Check them out! They probably apply to many more slush piles than just ours.

And honestly? Don’t take this post as anything but encouraging. If you’re talented and polite, you’re golden. If you’re promising and friendly, you’re golden. If you’re completely off the wall, you’re still not half as off the wall as at least one thing I’ve seen this past weekend.

Oh brave new world, that has such creatures in it.

Call for Submissions–Send Us Your Smut!

I said I had exciting news, and here it is!

My friend Pasi and I, after a bout of griping about poorly written smut (specifically, we’d just come out of a day-long Skype convo about the Bad Sex in Fiction “winners”), decided to do something about it. Between Pasi’s background in fanfiction and fandom culture, and my ties to the small press and self-publishing, we agreed one thing: there area  lot of underappreciated writers who could do much, much better if just given the chance.

Thus, the New Smut Project. Our goal: to bring the best aspects of porny fanfiction and small press work—character-relevant sex, thoughtfulness, wordplay, and passion—in a collection of original erotica for publication.

Pasi is not only a prolific smut writer and our HTML wrangler but also  has a Master’s in psychology, and she wants to see more intelligently-written and deeply-characterized fiction. She wants motive and reaction and building a relationship, no matter if it’s the love of a lifetime or an unforgettable one-night-stand (or mortal enemies hatefucking. Oh, god, why don’t we get more of that in original fiction? Some of my favorite fanfiction is about mortal enemies hatefucking). Whatever they are, we’ll have no more of what she so eloquently refers to as “emotionless fuckbots.”

I’m a sex positive feminist who wants to see more representation of “consent culture” in erotica. In fact, a bit over a year ago, I first balanced the idea of a collection of erotic shorts that each featured a character saying “No.” Because real people sometimes have boundaries in the bedroom! And that doesn’t make their sex lives any less interesting or hot, or so I firmly believe. Now the time has come: I’m looking for the best polished, heartfelt, passionate stories that prove it.

The guidelines for our anthologies—Characterization and “Fifty Shades of Negotiation–are up on The New Smut Project’s website, and are also on Duotrope. Submissions are open until June 1st.

The part of being an editor that I look forward to most–besides ensuring these writers and stories see the light of day–is reading all the fiction we’re going to get. So trust me, your submission* is eagerly awaited.

*I’d say pun intended, but there really is no other word we can use, and after a week of planning we’re almost snickered out. Almost. Heh-heh.