Through the Hourglass: Lesbian Historical Romance (working title)
Publisher: The Liz McMullen Show Publications
Editors: Sacchi Green and Patty G. Henderson
Deadline: May 31, 2015
Publication: Fall of 2015
Preferred Length: 3000-5000 words
Payment: $30 plus two paperback copies
Rights: The Liz McMullen Show Publications requires the right to publish the original story in the above-mentioned anthology, in print, digital and audible forms, exclusively for one year after publication (exceptions made for “year’s best” anthologies) and non-exclusively thereafter. The author retains copyright.
We have always been here, in every era and every area of society, even though we’ve been all but invisible in recorded history. Now is your chance to use your imagination, research a period of history that intrigues you, and tell us fictional stories about the lesbian women who came before us. From the 1500s to the mid-1900s, from the late Renaissance and Elizabethan times to World Wars I and II, give us characters true to their times, and true to themselves, not modern people inserted into the past. Draw us into a time and place, its customs, inhibitions, aspirations, and patterns of thought and speech, and into the lives of fully developed, complex characters.
Show us intense relationships and emotional bonds. Some degree of erotic tension is acceptable, but this is not a place for outright erotica. Happy endings are welcome if they seem plausible, and so are heart-rending encounters fated to live on only in memory. Diversity of culture will be appreciated. We want variety in scenarios and time periods, so feel free to contact us to see whether we seem to be getting too much from any era or setting, or with any other queries.
Original, unpublished stories only. Multiple submissions are okay, but no simultaneous submissions.
In keeping with our theme of lesbians throughout history, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a charity that assists senior lesbians.
Submit your stories in .doc or .docx to historical.anthology@gmail.com
You can also query me at sacchigreen@gmail.com.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
New Call for Submissions: Lesbian Historical Military Erotica
Thunder of War, Lightning of Desire: Lesbian Historical Military Erotica (Working Title)
Edited by Sacchi Green
Published by Lethe Press
More than six hundred women—most likely many more—passed as men to fight in the American Civil War, and that’s not counting the nurses and spies. In WWI women served as nurses and ambulance drivers, and in Russia Maria Boskareva’s Women’s Battalion of Death was not the only group of female fighters. By WWII women were ferrying fighter planes in the US and the UK, and in Russia the “Night Witches” flew bombers. For the nurses and WACs in the Korean and Vietnam Wars the front lines were everywhere, and the “long-haired army” on the Viet Cong side fought al least as fiercely as any men.
Give me stories about passionate women finding each other amidst the storm of war, coming together for comfort, driven by adrenaline and hormones, hurling their pleasure into the teeth of mortality. From the nurses with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea to those with MASH units in Korea and Vietnam, from female soldiers taking shelter behind stone walls at Chancellorsville to French Resistance operatives trysting behind haystacks in Normandy, from any military conflict anywhere between 1850 and the 1970s, find a period you can be passionate about, research it until you know it more intimately than you remember yesterday, and write characters and a plot and fiery sex that can sweep readers right along with them. Diversity of characters is more than welcome.
I’ll only be taking a few stories from each time period, sometimes even just one, so feel free to tell me what you’re working on so I can tell you whether too many others are doing something similar. Inquiries are advisable, but not mandatory. Historical accuracy counts, and so do originality and intensity and all those elements we need to see in the best erotic fiction. Give me brief encounters or lifetime commitments even when life is in the balance; desperate embraces or dark humor; whatever your characters need to get them through the night, and through the war. Know your history as well as your characters, and write a story as intriguing as it is steamy.
The preferred story length is between 3000 and 6000 words. Payment will be from $50 to $150, depending on length, and two copies of the paperback. The deadline is April 30, 2015. Queries are welcome; contact me at sacchigreen@gmail.com
Edited by Sacchi Green
Published by Lethe Press
More than six hundred women—most likely many more—passed as men to fight in the American Civil War, and that’s not counting the nurses and spies. In WWI women served as nurses and ambulance drivers, and in Russia Maria Boskareva’s Women’s Battalion of Death was not the only group of female fighters. By WWII women were ferrying fighter planes in the US and the UK, and in Russia the “Night Witches” flew bombers. For the nurses and WACs in the Korean and Vietnam Wars the front lines were everywhere, and the “long-haired army” on the Viet Cong side fought al least as fiercely as any men.
Give me stories about passionate women finding each other amidst the storm of war, coming together for comfort, driven by adrenaline and hormones, hurling their pleasure into the teeth of mortality. From the nurses with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea to those with MASH units in Korea and Vietnam, from female soldiers taking shelter behind stone walls at Chancellorsville to French Resistance operatives trysting behind haystacks in Normandy, from any military conflict anywhere between 1850 and the 1970s, find a period you can be passionate about, research it until you know it more intimately than you remember yesterday, and write characters and a plot and fiery sex that can sweep readers right along with them. Diversity of characters is more than welcome.
I’ll only be taking a few stories from each time period, sometimes even just one, so feel free to tell me what you’re working on so I can tell you whether too many others are doing something similar. Inquiries are advisable, but not mandatory. Historical accuracy counts, and so do originality and intensity and all those elements we need to see in the best erotic fiction. Give me brief encounters or lifetime commitments even when life is in the balance; desperate embraces or dark humor; whatever your characters need to get them through the night, and through the war. Know your history as well as your characters, and write a story as intriguing as it is steamy.
The preferred story length is between 3000 and 6000 words. Payment will be from $50 to $150, depending on length, and two copies of the paperback. The deadline is April 30, 2015. Queries are welcome; contact me at sacchigreen@gmail.com
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Darkness Illuminated-- Cover Me with Darkness by Janine Ashbless
Every once in a while I’m inspired to share one of my reviews here, and this is certainly one of those times.
Cover Me with Darkness first had me in its grip when I read the original short story in Mitzi Szereto’s Red Velvet and Absinthe (also from Cleis Press.) The rugged setting in the mountains of Montenegro, the atmosphere of profound darkness illuminated by flashes of desire, ancient mysteries startlingly present in our own time… Yes, I wanted more! And now there is more, with even more, it’s said, to come. I can’t wait.
I review books regularly for the web site www.eroticarevealed.com, where I do my best to assess each book on the basis of how well I think it will appeal to its intended audience, even when I myself am decidedly not that audience. It’s such joy now to be able to review something that pushes so many of my own buttons, both sensual and literary. As a writer and editor, I can be as turned on by beautiful, powerful, evocative writing as by explicit sex scenes, and Janine Ashbless provides all of those, including the sex, in abundance.
Vampires don’t heat my blood. Super-rich executives dominating insipid girls have a downright chilling effect, not from horror but from boredom. But a fallen angel? Not the fluffy do-good type, but an avatar of traditions so old they may predate written history, so universal that Prometheus in the ancient Greek pantheon and Loki in Norse mythology, tortured and imprisoned by their peers, are variations on that same theme. As the heroine Milja tells us, “Loki. Prometheus. Azazel. Amirani in Georgia, as I found out later when I started searching on the Internet. All demiurges involved in the creation and nurture of mankind. All rebels fettered for eternity by a God or gods who would not tolerate insurrection.” Now there’s a story to light my fires.
Here’s the blurb from the back of the book. Am I the only reader who’s put off by stereotypical romance book blurbs with their will-she-or-won’t-she formats? In this case, don’t be put off!
“If You Loved an Angel... How Far Would You Fall with Him?
What happens when the daughter of the village priest falls in love with an archangel banished from heaven? Milja’s heart is struck when she catches a glimpse of the preternaturally beautiful prisoner her father keeps captive beneath his church’s altar. Torn between tradition, loyalty and her growing obsession with the fallen angel, will Milja risk losing her family, and her eternal soul, for the love of this divine being? Janine Ashbless will transport you to a world where good and evil battle for true love.”
The first point I want to make is that the battle is by no means between clear-cut evil and pure good. That’s a great deal of its charm, as is the fact that both the seductive “bad guy” angel and the superficially “good guy” human counterpoint are multi-layered, complex characters with their own mysteries and secrets, some of which (I suspect) the “good guy” may not even know about himself. That’s one of the reasons I look forward to future books in what promises to be a series.
The second point is that while Milja may start out appearing, as she says later, as “a helpless waif-girl, a victim of powers beyond my control,” she grows in the course of the book, in ways both natural and, it’s hinted, supernatural.
My third point is that, while some readers see a comparison with books like Dan Brown’s thrillers, the real comparison I see is that Cover Him with Darkness is much better-written in terms of the flow of its prose and its descriptive power. Once the series is complete it might well make a better movie than Brown’s works. Many scenes are superbly cinematic, even without a cinematic treatment. You don’t need movie special effects to appreciate, for example, the inspired juxtaposition of the true supernatural with the Burning Man festival, that celebration of all that’s “unpredictable and unnerving and new, grotesque or beautiful or both,” where an archangel in a suit is viewed with suspicion, but cheered when he switches in an instant to black leather biker-garb—and pure white wings. And to my literary text-oriented mind, no cinematography could improve on images like, “He was not in a kindly mood. Behind him the starry sky wrinkled into rip-lines like the pinions of mighty wings, but the light that bled in upon us from that other place beyond was a deep red, and it lit the whole scene with a bloody crimson hue. His eyes caught that light and glowed like rubies, and a heat-haze shudder in the air made his form shimmer.”
On further reflection, while it’s true that the book (or books) would (and maybe will) make a great movie if some producer and director could be trusted to do the project justice, don’t wait for that. For one thing, no mainstream movie is likely to dare to do full justice to the erotic aspects, sometimes grimly harsh, sometimes tender, often complex, always ecstatic in their way, and always compellingly arousing. For true sense surround, read the book.
And search out Janine Ashbless’s writing wherever you can find it:
Cover Him with Darkness
Janine’s Bio:
Janine Ashbless is a writer of fantasy erotica and steamy romantic adventure – and that’s “fantasy” in the sense of swords ‘n’ sandals, contemporary paranormal, fairytale, and stories based on mythology and folklore. She likes to write about magic and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human.
Janine has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000, and her novels and single-author collections now run into double figures. She’s also had numerous short stories published by Black Lace, Nexus, Cleis Press, Ravenous Romance, Harlequin Spice, Storm Moon, Xcite, Mischief Books, and Ellora’s Cave among others. She is co-editor of the nerd erotica anthology Geek Love.
Her work has been described as: "hardcore and literate" (Madeline Moore) and "vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love." (Portia Da Costa)
www.janineashbless.blogspot.com
Janine Ashbless Goodreads
Janine Ashbless Facebook
Amazon UK Author Page
Amazon US Author Page
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Women with Handcuffs Audiobook--Want a free copy?
Another free audiobook! I have a bunch of codes now for free copies of my anthology Women with Handcuffs from Cleis Press. This is a re-issue of Lesbian Cops, which was a Lambda Award Finalist, but sank like a stone in terms of sales. Doing better now. The fine writers in this book give the theme hidden depths and a wide variety of interpretations, so even if you don't think the subject would appeal to you, try it for the vivid characters and good writing.
If you want a copy, message me on Facebook or e-mail me at sacchigreen@gmail.com. Reviews would be greatly appreciated, but there's no pressure to do them.
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Handcuffs-Lesbian-Cop-Erotica/dp/B00NNX3GQG/ref=sr_1_1_title_2_audd?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412776680&sr=1-1&keywords=Women+with+Handcuffs
If you want a copy, message me on Facebook or e-mail me at sacchigreen@gmail.com. Reviews would be greatly appreciated, but there's no pressure to do them.
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Handcuffs-Lesbian-Cop-Erotica/dp/B00NNX3GQG/ref=sr_1_1_title_2_audd?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412776680&sr=1-1&keywords=Women+with+Handcuffs
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Snog for Sommer on Smut for Good!
Sommer Marsden is one of my favorite writers of erotica, and I feel honored every time she contributes a story to one of my anthologies. Now I’m posting a snog scene of my own for the Smut for Good campaign to support Sommer and her family in their fierce battle with cancer. To find links to dozens and dozens of steamy snogs, and to find out how to donate if you can, go to http://smutforgood.co.uk
This snippet is from my story “Crème Brulee” in the new anthology All You Can Eat, edited by Andi Marquette and R.G. Emanuelle, a book chock full of tasty (and satisfying!) goodness.
________________________________________
The newcomers seemed to be busy building a fire of driftwood on the beach. I moved my car to the far end of the parking lot. In the glow of the overhead light I leaned over the front seat into the back to get my treasures out of their chilly container. Raf took the opportunity to knead my upturned butt and tease between my thighs, but with a steel-willed effort I got the ramekins safely onto a towel folded on the front seat between us.
“Crème brûlée!” I said triumphantly. “Have you ever had it?”
“Just seen it on restaurant menus a time or two without paying attention. What’s it mean? Bruised cream?”
“That sounds intriguingly kinky, but no. More like broiled cream. The top is covered with raw sugar, melted under a broiler or a propane torch, and then it hardens like glass.” I dug some plastic spoons out of the side pocket on the door where I tend to shove them when I get drive-through coffee. “Dig in,” I said, knowing what would be likely to happen.
Raf’s spoon broke on the mottled golden surface. “You’re the stonecutter in this crew,” she said. “You do it.” I took out my pocketknife, covered it in the plastic wrap that had protected the desserts, and brought it down hard on one sugar-glazed portion. Cracks rayed out, letting glimpses of the inner custard showed through. “That’s yours. Now you break my shell.”
She did it with one hand, while the other pulled my head close for a long, sensuous kiss. Finally, she pulled away. “So did I break through?”
I couldn’t even remember whether we’d done anything as slow and sweet as kissing last year. “Oh, yeah.” I was breathless. “No shell left at all.”
“Looks like some crunchy bits left in the dishes.” She took my spoon and scooped up some of the rich creamy custard along with fragments of sugar glaze. “Mmm. Now I know what you see in this. Such rich, smooth cream inside that stony exterior.” She took another bite, then offered me one. We alternated with the spoon, feeding each other, until the last bites were accidentally-on-purpose smeared across our lips. The licking and kissing that followed got us so revved up that driving all the way back to Wellfleet without relief was out of the question, so I pulled off at the Pilgrim Springs Trail parking lot, mercifully unoccupied.
_______________________________________
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Go Ahead. Taste that Forbidden Fruit! An Interview with Emily L. Byrne
Cheyenne Blue has been one of my very favorite writers of erotica for what seems like forever, contributing stories to nine of the anthologies I’ve edited, and now she’s one of my favorite editors as well. Her brand new anthology Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire is a gem, and the fact that it includes one of my own stories would be beside the point if it weren’t that now I get to participate in the Forbidden Fruit blog tour, and interview another of my favorite writers, editors, and long-time friends, Emily L. Byrne. (Read the interview to find out the name I’ve known her by all these years.)
Check out https://forbiddenfruitbook.wordpress.com for details of this book launch, including a list of all the writers on this tour, as well as the prizes to be won by the luckiest commenters on any of these blogs. Hint: one of these prizes is a paperback copy of my anthology Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories, which has the double honor of including a story by Cheyenne Blue, and winning a Lambda Literary Award.
So onward to the interview!
1. How is taking a pseudonym for your erotica writing working out? I sometimes regret using one myself, but I’ve done it right from the beginning of my erotica career. You’ve already got a fine and substantial body of work in the genre out in the world under your own name.
Emily: It's early days on that but year to date, I've had acceptances for all 4 stories that I've written and submitted as "New Me," which is nice since it suggests that I'm not coasting on what name recognition I possess. Taking on a pseudonym seemed like a good idea for marketing purposes (all my new erotica and erotic romance will go out as Emily L. Byrne, everything else will stay under Catherine Lundoff), as well as for day job sanity. When I first began publishing erotic fiction, it was preGoogle and the likelihood that anyone was going to look me up online was slim to none. That's no longer true and I've had a few potentially awkward moments at work as a result, so I'd like a bit more control over who I encourage to read my work in different genres. What I'm working on now is getting Emily L. Byrne enough name recognition that I can get some traction for the novel that I'm hoping to release under that name in the very near future. Toward that end, I'm submitting short fiction as Emily, doing publisher profiles and hosting guest blogs on my new blog (www.writeremilylbyrne.blogspot.com). Please consider being one of my guests if you've got new F/F work out or coming out soon or have something to say about reading F/F!
2. With all the turmoil and uncertainty in the traditional publishing world these days, have you considered self-publishing or starting a press of your own?
Emily: It's almost like you read my mind. :-) Why, yes. I recently recovered rights to my first several books, then had a book deal for some new novels fall through, so I've decided to explore releasing those works myself. I'm a former bookseller and the idea of running my own press is one that I've been thinking about for a while. I'm currently in the early stages of exploring what I'd need to make that idea viable so I don't have a timeline or an official announcement yet, but I hope to in the next couple of months. I’ll be announcing under both Emily L. Byrne and Catherine Lundoff because I hope to doing some genre-crossing and filling some niches that aren’t very crowded. You can follow me under either name on Twitter and Google+, as Emily on Blogspot (link above), as Catherine on Facebook and as http://catherineldf.dreamwidth.org/on Dreamwidth mirrored on the same name on Livejournal.
3. I know that speculative fiction is important to you, and you’ve had considerable success, as success goes these days, in that genre. I also know that you’ve written specfic that is also erotica. Do you plan to focus more on one genre than the other in the future, or on blending the two? Does it make a difference to you which name you use when your story fits into both genres? (Okay, this really goes under Question 1, but I’m padding this one a bit.)
Emily: Well, the dividing line on names will be erotic content, not sfnal content. I like to read in a bunch of genres so it stands to reason that I'd like to write in them, too. I look forward to writing lots more science fiction, fantasy and horror, with and without erotic content. The novel I'm working on now is erotic romance science fiction, but I'm also working on a sequel to my werewolf novel, "Silver Moon," which has little erotic content and is closer to being paranormal romance. So, a book for each Me, essentially. I've also written a lot of short fiction in a variety of genres and I expect that to continue, And, in my copious free time, I'm looking at a possible nonfiction book project. We'll see what I can pull off out of that assortment.
4. You and I met at a science fiction and fantasy Worldcon in 2000, both doing a signing as contributors for a non-erotic fantasy anthology called Such a Pretty Face: Tales of Power and Abundance, and recognizing each other’s name from a shared table of contents in a volume of Best Lesbian Erotica. Both books could be seen as feminist in their own ways. Fourteen years later, do you see any progress or lack thereof in the status of women’s writing? (In, oh, let’s say twenty-five words or fewer? Trick question, of course. Feel free to link to your own blogs, etc.)
Emily: Urgh. A trick question! That's an emphatic yes, no and maybe. I think that women's writing in a whole bunch of different genres hasn't made the advances that many of us hoped it would 15-20 years back. It's still a struggle to get award and review recognition for women-authored books, outside of a female-dominated genre like Romance. In terms of respect for published work, male writers still write "classics" and "canon" while female writers write "fluff." On the plus side, I think there are more women writing in multiple genres and more women getting published, under their own steam if not by major publishers, so I think that creates more possibilities. What I'd like to see: a lot more diverse female voices seeing their work published and celebrated on a par with similar work by male writers by editors, publishers, readers, reviewers and award committees. And that’s something we can all work toward by voting with our reading and review choices, promoting works we like and supporting other authors.
5. Tell me about your story "The Further Adventures of Miss Scarlet" in "Forbidden Fruit: Stories of Unwise Lesbian Desire ". I already know that it’s terrific.
Emily: Aw, shucks. Thank you! Detective Kendra McClain is hot for Miss Scarlet, a jewel thief who models her nom de guerre on the character from "Clue,” after a seemingly chance meeting at a bar.
“The Further Adventures of Miss Scarlet” - Excerpt
Kendra could almost feel someone’s eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. She didn’t even need to turn around to confirm the feeling, thanks to the mirror over the bar. If it had been any other bar, she would have been more surprised. But Riley’s was a cop bar and it attracted a specific clientele, mostly law enforcement and their families and friends. Plus the occasional groupie.
Whatever this woman was, she wasn’t law enforcement, at least not any kind that Kendra had seen before. Or could imagine. She was beautiful: heart-shaped face, arched thin eyebrows over wide dark eyes, bright red kissable lips. Her red dress set off her curves, accentuating her small, full breasts and curved hips, even sitting down. And what was she looking at? A big African American butch with dreads, a broken nose and shoulders like a linebacker’s. For a minute, Kendra wished with everything she had that she was cuter and bit back a sigh.
But that moment passed; she was cute enough to stare at, so that was as cute as she needed to be. At least for now. She could turn her attention to wishing she was less shy around pretty ladies instead. That wish settled down into her crotch with a dull, aching thud of thwarted desire. It had been way too long, and she was uncertain and out of practice.
The next stop on the Forbidden Fruit blog tour is Axa Lee (http://leighwantsfood.blogspot.com/2014/09/guest-author-laila-blake-and-forbidden.html) who is interviewing Laila Blake.
Leave a comment on any post in the Forbidden Fruit blog tour to be entered into a random draw to win one of these great prizes. Prizes include a paperback copy of Girls Who Score, lesbian sports erotica edited by Ily Goyanes, Best Lesbian Romance 2011 edited by Radclyffe, Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories edited by Sacchi Green, an ebook of Ladylit’s first lesbian anthology Anything She Wants, and a bundle of three mini-anthologies from Ladylit: Sweat, A Christmas to Remember and Bossy. All of these titles contain some stories written by the fabulous contributors to Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire. You must include an email address in your comment to be entered into the draw.
Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire is available direct from the publisher, Ladylit (http://www.ladylit.com/books/forbidden-fruit/) or from Amazon, Smashwords, and other good retailers of ebooks. Check out http://www.ladylit.com/books/forbidden-fruit/ for all purchasing information.
Cheyenne Blue has been one of my very favorite writers of erotica for what seems like forever, contributing stories to nine of the anthologies I’ve edited, and now she’s one of my favorite editors as well. Her brand new anthology Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire is a gem, and the fact that it includes one of my own stories would be beside the point if it weren’t that now I get to participate in the Forbidden Fruit blog tour, and interview another of my favorite writers, editors, and long-time friends, Emily L. Byrne. (Read the interview to find out the name I’ve known her by all these years.)
Check out https://forbiddenfruitbook.wordpress.com for details of this book launch, including a list of all the writers on this tour, as well as the prizes to be won by the luckiest commenters on any of these blogs. Hint: one of these prizes is a paperback copy of my anthology Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories, which has the double honor including a story by Cheyenne Blue, and winning a Lambda Literary Award.
So onward to the interview!
1. How is taking a pseudonym for your erotica writing working out? I sometimes regret using one myself, but I’ve done it right from the beginning of my erotica career. You’ve already got a fine and substantial body of work in the genre out in the world under your own name.
Emily: It's early days on that but year to date, I've had acceptances for all 4 stories that I've written and submitted as "New Me," which is nice since it suggests that I'm not coasting on what name recognition I possess. Taking on a pseudonym seemed like a good idea for marketing purposes (all my new erotica and erotic romance will go out as Emily L. Byrne, everything else will stay under Catherine Lundoff), as well as for day job sanity. When I first began publishing erotic fiction, it was preGoogle and the likelihood that anyone was going to look me up online was slim to none. That's no longer true and I've had a few potentially awkward moments at work as a result, so I'd like a bit more control over who I encourage to read my work in different genres. What I'm working on now is getting Emily L. Byrne enough name recognition that I can get some traction for the novel that I'm hoping to release under that name in the very near future. Toward that end, I'm submitting short fiction as Emily, doing publisher profiles and hosting guest blogs on my new blog (www.writeremilylbyrne.blogspot.com). Please consider being one of my guests if you've got new F/F work out or coming out soon or have something to say about reading F/F!
2. With all the turmoil and uncertainty in the traditional publishing world these days, have you considered self-publishing or starting a press of your own?
Emily: It's almost like you read my mind. :-) Why, yes. I recently recovered rights to my first several books, then had a book deal for some new novels fall through, so I've decided to explore releasing those works myself. I'm a former bookseller and the idea of running my own press is one that I've been thinking about for a while. I'm currently in the early stages of exploring what I'd need to make that idea viable so I don't have a timeline or an official announcement yet, but I hope to in the next couple of months. I’ll be announcing under both Emily L. Byrne and Catherine Lundoff because I hope to doing some genre-crossing and filling some niches that aren’t very crowded. You can follow me under either name on Twitter and Google+, as Emily on Blogspot (link above), as Catherine on Facebook and as http://catherineldf.dreamwidth.org/on Dreamwidth mirrored on the same name on Livejournal.
3. I know that speculative fiction is important to you, and you’ve had considerable success, as success goes these days, in that genre. I also know that you’ve written specfic that is also erotica. Do you plan to focus more on one genre than the other in the future, or on blending the two? Does it make a difference to you which name you use when your story fits into both genres? (Okay, this really goes under Question 1, but I’m padding this one a bit.)
Emily: Well, the dividing line on names will be erotic content, not sfnal content. I like to read in a bunch of genres so it stands to reason that I'd like to write in them, too. I look forward to writing lots more science fiction, fantasy and horror, with and without erotic content. The novel I'm working on now is erotic romance science fiction, but I'm also working on a sequel to my werewolf novel, "Silver Moon," which has little erotic content and is closer to being paranormal romance. So, a book for each Me, essentially. I've also written a lot of short fiction in a variety of genres and I expect that to continue, And, in my copious free time, I'm looking at a possible nonfiction book project. We'll see what I can pull off out of that assortment.
4. You and I met at a science fiction and fantasy Worldcon in 2000, both doing a signing as contributors for a non-erotic fantasy anthology called Such a Pretty Face: Tales of Power and Abundance, and recognizing each other’s name from a shared table of contents in a volume of Best Lesbian Erotica. Both books could be seen as feminist in their own ways. Fourteen years later, do you see any progress or lack thereof in the status of women’s writing? (In, oh, let’s say twenty-five words or fewer? Trick question, of course. Feel free to link to your own blogs, etc.)
Emily: Urgh. A trick question! That's an emphatic yes, no and maybe. I think that women's writing in a whole bunch of different genres hasn't made the advances that many of us hoped it would 15-20 years back. It's still a struggle to get award and review recognition for women-authored books, outside of a female-dominated genre like Romance. In terms of respect for published work, male writers still write "classics" and "canon" while female writers write "fluff." On the plus side, I think there are more women writing in multiple genres and more women getting published, under their own steam if not by major publishers, so I think that creates more possibilities. What I'd like to see: a lot more diverse female voices seeing their work published and celebrated on a par with similar work by male writers by editors, publishers, readers, reviewers and award committees. And that’s something we can all work toward by voting with our reading and review choices, promoting works we like and supporting other authors.
5. Tell me about your story "The Further Adventures of Miss Scarlet" in "Forbidden Fruit: Stories of Unwise Lesbian Desire ". I already know that it’s terrific.
Emily: Aw, shucks. Thank you!
Detective Kendra McClain is hot for Miss Scarlet, a jewel thief who models her nom de guerre on the character from "Clue,” after a seemingly chance meeting at a bar.
“The Further Adventures of Miss Scarlet” - Excerpt
Kendra could almost feel someone’s eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. She didn’t even need to turn around to confirm the feeling, thanks to the mirror over the bar. If it had been any other bar, she would have been more surprised. But Riley’s was a cop bar and it attracted a specific clientele, mostly law enforcement and their families and friends. Plus the occasional groupie.
Whatever this woman was, she wasn’t law enforcement, at least not any kind that Kendra had seen before. Or could imagine. She was beautiful: heart-shaped face, arched thin eyebrows over wide dark eyes, bright red kissable lips. Her red dress set off her curves, accentuating her small, full breasts and curved hips, even sitting down. And what was she looking at? A big African American butch with dreads, a broken nose and shoulders like a linebacker’s. For a minute, Kendra wished with everything she had that she was cuter and bit back a sigh.
But that moment passed; she was cute enough to stare at, so that was as cute as she needed to be. At least for now. She could turn her attention to wishing she was less shy around pretty ladies instead. That wish settled down into her crotch with a dull, aching thud of thwarted desire. It had been way too long, and she was uncertain and out of practice.
The next stop on the Forbidden Fruit blog tour is Axa Lee (http://leighwantsfood.blogspot.com/2014/09/guest-author-laila-blake-and-forbidden.html) who is interviewing Laila Blake.
Leave a comment on any post in the Forbidden Fruit blog tour to be entered into a random draw to win one of these great prizes. Prizes include a paperback copy of Girls Who Score, lesbian sports erotica edited by Ily Goyanes, Best Lesbian Romance 2011 edited by Radclyffe, Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories edited by Sacchi Green, an ebook of Ladylit’s first lesbian anthology Anything She Wants, and a bundle of three mini-anthologies from Ladylit: Sweat, A Christmas to Remember and Bossy. All of these titles contain some stories written by the fabulous contributors to Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire. You must include an email address in your comment to be entered into the draw.
Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire is available direct from the publisher, Ladylit (http://www.ladylit.com/books/forbidden-fruit/) or from Amazon, Smashwords, and other good retailers of ebooks. Check out http://www.ladylit.com/books/forbidden-fruit/ for all purchasing information.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Listen Up! Free Girl Fever Audible book!
Are you listening? Do you want to listen?
I have code numbers for free Audible editions of my anthology Girl Fever: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex for Lesbians, and you can "win" one while they last just by commenting here or e-mailing me (sacchigreen@gmail.com.) No strings, just a hope that If you like it, or even if you don't, you leave a review however brief on Amazon or B&N or Goodreads. If anything could be better than reading Girl Fever, it's listening to Audible narrator Mikael Naramore read it to you. Like short bedtime stories that can make you dream all night, or energy snacks that pack the punch of a banquet.
So do you want one? Comment or e-mail me (sacchigreen@gmail.com) and I'll get back to you with a code number and directions on how to use it.
I have code numbers for free Audible editions of my anthology Girl Fever: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex for Lesbians, and you can "win" one while they last just by commenting here or e-mailing me (sacchigreen@gmail.com.) No strings, just a hope that If you like it, or even if you don't, you leave a review however brief on Amazon or B&N or Goodreads. If anything could be better than reading Girl Fever, it's listening to Audible narrator Mikael Naramore read it to you. Like short bedtime stories that can make you dream all night, or energy snacks that pack the punch of a banquet.
So do you want one? Comment or e-mail me (sacchigreen@gmail.com) and I'll get back to you with a code number and directions on how to use it.
Monday, August 25, 2014
"Beyond Erotica" on "Beyond Romance"
I have the great good fortune to be posting on Lisabet Sarai"s Beyond Romance web site today, where she lets me rant (nothing new for me) about stereotyping erotica as trash, and hold forth about the greater potential for our genre. I call my post "Beyond Erotica," and even provide a link to a free story about lesbian Olympic figure skaters, though folks who read here may have seen it before, since it's here on my site.
http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2014/08/beyond-erotica.html
And there's more! I've been a busy blogger, and today is my turn on Oh Get a Grip. The topic this time is phobias, and I contrive not to reveal any serious ones of my own by including an entire (quite short) story about a fictional character's rather mild phobia regarding insects. Check out my rant and my story "Stag Beetle" here:
http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com/?zx=b8f9a55be298f402
http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2014/08/beyond-erotica.html
And there's more! I've been a busy blogger, and today is my turn on Oh Get a Grip. The topic this time is phobias, and I contrive not to reveal any serious ones of my own by including an entire (quite short) story about a fictional character's rather mild phobia regarding insects. Check out my rant and my story "Stag Beetle" here:
http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com/?zx=b8f9a55be298f402
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
In Praise of Summer Loving: 20 Sultry Stories
Now and then, for a change, I like to talk about books I didn’t edit, books that don’t even include stories by me. Refreshing, right? I should do this more often. Actually, I do monthly reviews on www.eroticarevealed.com, but I don’t get to choose those books. Here, I can review as I please, and just now, as summer is waning, this anthology edited by Alison Tyler is especially appealing.
If I claimed to love the whole concept of summer loving, it would be only half true. Loving any time is great, but my personal preference is getting all heated up when it’s cold outside. The true half is that I enjoyed this book even more than I expected to from the lineup of terrific writers.
The stories are all short, just four or five pages each. I appreciate the special skill it takes to pack intriguing characters, vividly drawn settings, and the hottest of sex into such a short space, and all of these writers manage it with so much intensity that you’re probably better off reading just one, savoring it, and waiting a while before reading another. I say “probably,” because, well, I didn’t manage to wait.
The variety of characters and scenarios is excellent, something that especially appeals to me. I can’t really choose favorites, but here are four that stick in my mind after the first headlong reading. Teresa Noelle Robert’s “Summer Lightning” evokes the orgasmic power of nature with thunderstorm sex on a beach in Maine; Kathleen Delany Adams’s steamy August night in “Splash” resonates with the buzz of cicadas and with lesbian butch-femme sex; Cheyenne Blue’s poignant “Ireland, Arizona, New England” (the only other lesbian story) shows a vacation house swap going wrong but a new relationship going very, very right; and Tamsin Flowers’s “Summer in December” takes place in Antarctica where Christmas comes in midsummer, but a dip in barely-melted icewater could be fatal without the rapid application of shared body heat. This last one satisfies my love of the unexpected as well as my aforementioned lust for hot sex in cold weather.
Oh, and besides all the varied pleasures the book offers, the entire proceeds go to help the family of writer extraordinaire Sommer Marsden in their fierce battle against cancer.
http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Loving-Alison-Tyler/dp/1500606251/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408584385&sr=1-1&keywords=Summer+Loving+Alison+Tyler
If I claimed to love the whole concept of summer loving, it would be only half true. Loving any time is great, but my personal preference is getting all heated up when it’s cold outside. The true half is that I enjoyed this book even more than I expected to from the lineup of terrific writers.
The stories are all short, just four or five pages each. I appreciate the special skill it takes to pack intriguing characters, vividly drawn settings, and the hottest of sex into such a short space, and all of these writers manage it with so much intensity that you’re probably better off reading just one, savoring it, and waiting a while before reading another. I say “probably,” because, well, I didn’t manage to wait.
The variety of characters and scenarios is excellent, something that especially appeals to me. I can’t really choose favorites, but here are four that stick in my mind after the first headlong reading. Teresa Noelle Robert’s “Summer Lightning” evokes the orgasmic power of nature with thunderstorm sex on a beach in Maine; Kathleen Delany Adams’s steamy August night in “Splash” resonates with the buzz of cicadas and with lesbian butch-femme sex; Cheyenne Blue’s poignant “Ireland, Arizona, New England” (the only other lesbian story) shows a vacation house swap going wrong but a new relationship going very, very right; and Tamsin Flowers’s “Summer in December” takes place in Antarctica where Christmas comes in midsummer, but a dip in barely-melted icewater could be fatal without the rapid application of shared body heat. This last one satisfies my love of the unexpected as well as my aforementioned lust for hot sex in cold weather.
Oh, and besides all the varied pleasures the book offers, the entire proceeds go to help the family of writer extraordinaire Sommer Marsden in their fierce battle against cancer.
http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Loving-Alison-Tyler/dp/1500606251/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408584385&sr=1-1&keywords=Summer+Loving+Alison+Tyler
Monday, July 14, 2014
Interview with Dr. Dick, Part 2
I'm on the air again! (So to speak.) The second part of my interview with Dr. Dick is now online. As I recall, I said a great deal about writing and publishing and the community of readers and writers. Some of it may, in fact, be rather silly, so go listen before I hear it myself and realize what I should have said instead. Or shouldn't have said at all.
http://www.sexadvicewithanedge.com/2014/07/14/podcast-425/
http://www.sexadvicewithanedge.com/2014/07/14/podcast-425/
Monday, July 7, 2014
Podcast with Dr. Dick--Want to Hear Me?
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Wild Girls, Wild Nights Wins the Lambda Literary Award!
On June 2, coincidentally my birthday, I sat with friends in the Great Hall of Cooper Union in NYC and heard my anthology Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories announced as the winner of the Lambda Award in the Lesbian Erotica category. Apparently I made it to the stage and thanked my writers and the Lambda committee, because now I have a lovely 5-pound engraved trophy in the shape of a book to add to the one Lesbian Cowboys won four years ago.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lambdaliterary/14153993269/
The brave, skilled writers who shared their personal stories with me should get all the credit, and I’m listing the table of contents here, along with my introduction, which was really my only contribution. If you dig deeply enough back through my blog, you’ll find posts from or about each of them telling more about the backgrounds of their contributions.
Polvo de Hadas Monica E. Moreno
Hot Desert Nights Dawn McKay
The Daddy I Didn’t Know I Needed Angel Propps
The Corruption of the Innocent Pornographer Destiny Moon
Foxy and the Ridiculous Lesbian Orgy Allison Moon
Nurse Joan Cheyenne Blue
Ring of Roses Giselle Renarde
Cockadoodle Doo Dawn Mueller
Threesome H.M. Husley
Delinquents Catherine Paulssen
Risking It All Lynette Mae
Are You My Mommy? Danielle Mignon
Lost Batteries Jasmine Grimstead
Odds Catherine Henreid
Higher Learning Charlotte Dare
Kat’s House Mia Savage
Guise and Dolls Allison Wonderland
Tamago Anna Watson
Auto-Complete M. Marie
Insatiable Travel Itch Evan Mora
Writers put themselves into all their work, whether they realize it or not. Even the wildest imagination comes from deep inside. But for this book, I asked them to take a deep breath, go that extra step, and write hot, explicit stories firmly grounded in their personal experience. Real encounters, real emotions, real people with overwhelming desires, drawing on memory rather than imagination to share their own true stories of lesbian sex.
I had no idea who would take up the challenge. Incorporating your memories and longings and secret kinks into fiction is one thing, but putting your name—or a pseudonym your friends may recognize—on a story that exposes intimate, unrestrained details of your life is something else again. Not to mention details of your lovers’ lives. I asked that pseudonyms be used for all characters other than the authors, to preserve some degree of privacy. Even so, who was going to open themselves so fearlessly and passionately?
But these authors did, and I’ll be forever grateful. Writers have always come through for me, in the course of eight previous anthologies, and they did it again. This time, though, I had the sense that they were also coming through for themselves. The urge to tell their stories was second only to the urgent impulses that drove the action in the first place.
I already knew that truth could be as wild, sensual and searing as any flight of imagination, and these writers went even beyond my hopes. There are stories with spankings, strap-ons, restraints, and desert sand; settings ranging from a London hospital to a Caribbean island to Niagara Falls to Tel Aviv; lifetime commitments, fleeting encounters to savor for a lifetime, first flings, and at least one threesome. Reality doesn’t have to be prosaic. Wet, messy, frenzied, sometimes even awkward, but not boring.
The variety of writers, too, is everything I’d hoped for. Some are well-known and accomplished, telling their tales with skill and artistry that seem to transcend real life, even when they’re true. Some are new to writing, experimenting with preserving their treasured experiences in print, while others have been writing for themselves (and each other) for a long time but never dared share their work openly before.
One previously published writer told me that this story felt so personal to her—more than any of her others—that she'd only submit it to an editor and publisher she knows and trusts. Another, new to me, said that writing about her first encounter with a woman excited her all over again. A third described her piece as the true story of a very special event in her own and her partner’s lives, with only the names changed to protect the innocence of their grown children (who know she writes but also know her well enough not to want to Google her.) I’m always moved, in one sense or another, by the stories people send me, but this time I was touched in a whole new way.
I was also amused by some of the details they shared with me. One said of her story, “All true. I was on Twitter ten minutes later bragging that ‘my girlfriend spanked me so hard I cried real-life tears of ouchiness.’ Lots of people were jealous. LOL.” Another, when I asked what she’d been wearing that gave her partner such easy access, told me that she’d been afraid to admit at the beginning that she’d stripped to a T-shirt and underpants right after work, in case it might make her sound silly and too young, and then she forgot to decide what to say at all. I’m glad she was much less uninhibited about the rest of what happened.
The stories themselves always count most, but in this rare case a sense of the writer behind each story is important, too. I’ve only shared a few of these details, but I’ve come to know enough about most of these authors to be confident as to the basic truth of what they wrote.
The stories can speak for themselves. Some are about first times, each in a distinctive way, from Angel Propps finding the leather daddy she hadn’t known she needed to Jasmine Grimstead having glorious sex under the stars with the free-spirited girl of her dreams. Some are inextricably tied to stressful occupations, like the fleeting episode of forbidden lust in the military by Dawn McKay, and the life-and-death trauma of Lynnete Mae’s police work. Some memories are long-treasured and some newly forged; Catherine Paulssen writes nostalgically of being young in Germany in the summer of 1994, while Allison Moon’s faux fox hunt orgy played out as recently as the latest royal wedding.
Every story deserves special mention, but I’ve gone on long enough. Go ahead and enjoy what these women have bravely and generously offered. With some you’ll feel vivid flashbacks to your own adventures; with others you’ll wish you’d shared theirs; and some will inspire you to make steamy new memories of your own. Reading these stories to someone with just the same urge would be a fine way to start.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lambdaliterary/14153993269/
The brave, skilled writers who shared their personal stories with me should get all the credit, and I’m listing the table of contents here, along with my introduction, which was really my only contribution. If you dig deeply enough back through my blog, you’ll find posts from or about each of them telling more about the backgrounds of their contributions.
Polvo de Hadas Monica E. Moreno
Hot Desert Nights Dawn McKay
The Daddy I Didn’t Know I Needed Angel Propps
The Corruption of the Innocent Pornographer Destiny Moon
Foxy and the Ridiculous Lesbian Orgy Allison Moon
Nurse Joan Cheyenne Blue
Ring of Roses Giselle Renarde
Cockadoodle Doo Dawn Mueller
Threesome H.M. Husley
Delinquents Catherine Paulssen
Risking It All Lynette Mae
Are You My Mommy? Danielle Mignon
Lost Batteries Jasmine Grimstead
Odds Catherine Henreid
Higher Learning Charlotte Dare
Kat’s House Mia Savage
Guise and Dolls Allison Wonderland
Tamago Anna Watson
Auto-Complete M. Marie
Insatiable Travel Itch Evan Mora
Writers put themselves into all their work, whether they realize it or not. Even the wildest imagination comes from deep inside. But for this book, I asked them to take a deep breath, go that extra step, and write hot, explicit stories firmly grounded in their personal experience. Real encounters, real emotions, real people with overwhelming desires, drawing on memory rather than imagination to share their own true stories of lesbian sex.
I had no idea who would take up the challenge. Incorporating your memories and longings and secret kinks into fiction is one thing, but putting your name—or a pseudonym your friends may recognize—on a story that exposes intimate, unrestrained details of your life is something else again. Not to mention details of your lovers’ lives. I asked that pseudonyms be used for all characters other than the authors, to preserve some degree of privacy. Even so, who was going to open themselves so fearlessly and passionately?
But these authors did, and I’ll be forever grateful. Writers have always come through for me, in the course of eight previous anthologies, and they did it again. This time, though, I had the sense that they were also coming through for themselves. The urge to tell their stories was second only to the urgent impulses that drove the action in the first place.
I already knew that truth could be as wild, sensual and searing as any flight of imagination, and these writers went even beyond my hopes. There are stories with spankings, strap-ons, restraints, and desert sand; settings ranging from a London hospital to a Caribbean island to Niagara Falls to Tel Aviv; lifetime commitments, fleeting encounters to savor for a lifetime, first flings, and at least one threesome. Reality doesn’t have to be prosaic. Wet, messy, frenzied, sometimes even awkward, but not boring.
The variety of writers, too, is everything I’d hoped for. Some are well-known and accomplished, telling their tales with skill and artistry that seem to transcend real life, even when they’re true. Some are new to writing, experimenting with preserving their treasured experiences in print, while others have been writing for themselves (and each other) for a long time but never dared share their work openly before.
One previously published writer told me that this story felt so personal to her—more than any of her others—that she'd only submit it to an editor and publisher she knows and trusts. Another, new to me, said that writing about her first encounter with a woman excited her all over again. A third described her piece as the true story of a very special event in her own and her partner’s lives, with only the names changed to protect the innocence of their grown children (who know she writes but also know her well enough not to want to Google her.) I’m always moved, in one sense or another, by the stories people send me, but this time I was touched in a whole new way.
I was also amused by some of the details they shared with me. One said of her story, “All true. I was on Twitter ten minutes later bragging that ‘my girlfriend spanked me so hard I cried real-life tears of ouchiness.’ Lots of people were jealous. LOL.” Another, when I asked what she’d been wearing that gave her partner such easy access, told me that she’d been afraid to admit at the beginning that she’d stripped to a T-shirt and underpants right after work, in case it might make her sound silly and too young, and then she forgot to decide what to say at all. I’m glad she was much less uninhibited about the rest of what happened.
The stories themselves always count most, but in this rare case a sense of the writer behind each story is important, too. I’ve only shared a few of these details, but I’ve come to know enough about most of these authors to be confident as to the basic truth of what they wrote.
The stories can speak for themselves. Some are about first times, each in a distinctive way, from Angel Propps finding the leather daddy she hadn’t known she needed to Jasmine Grimstead having glorious sex under the stars with the free-spirited girl of her dreams. Some are inextricably tied to stressful occupations, like the fleeting episode of forbidden lust in the military by Dawn McKay, and the life-and-death trauma of Lynnete Mae’s police work. Some memories are long-treasured and some newly forged; Catherine Paulssen writes nostalgically of being young in Germany in the summer of 1994, while Allison Moon’s faux fox hunt orgy played out as recently as the latest royal wedding.
Every story deserves special mention, but I’ve gone on long enough. Go ahead and enjoy what these women have bravely and generously offered. With some you’ll feel vivid flashbacks to your own adventures; with others you’ll wish you’d shared theirs; and some will inspire you to make steamy new memories of your own. Reading these stories to someone with just the same urge would be a fine way to start.
Women with Handcuffs--a reviewer gets it.
It's a great feeling when a reviewer really gets what my writers have done, and how unexpectedly deep and complex this book is.
"The stories in this collection feature women who are powerful, yes, but they are also nuanced individuals with subtle needs and desires. They are real people with loves and families and bad-ass careers. Whether the treatment is playful or serious, the sexiness in this anthology comes from the fact that these women feel real. This, in my opinion, is characterization at it’s best."
—Malin James
http://malinjames.com/2014/06/06/outwriters-a-review-women-with-handcuffs/
"The stories in this collection feature women who are powerful, yes, but they are also nuanced individuals with subtle needs and desires. They are real people with loves and families and bad-ass careers. Whether the treatment is playful or serious, the sexiness in this anthology comes from the fact that these women feel real. This, in my opinion, is characterization at it’s best."
—Malin James
http://malinjames.com/2014/06/06/outwriters-a-review-women-with-handcuffs/
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Cleis Press Celebrates Pride Month--Why Do We Write?
Cleis Press celebrates Pride Month, asking us why we write LGBTQ fiction.
Why not? Reading and writing are journeys of discovery, and LGBTQ themes and characters are as vital as any other dimensions of that journey, taking us to places real or imagined, within ourselves or around us, contemporary or historical. And besides, good writing is well worth reading, whatever the theme and whoever the well-drawn characters may be. #OutWriters
http://www.cleispress.com/features/OutWriters
So why do readers of my blog read and/or write LGBTQ fiction? Comment here, and I'll do a drawing at the end of the month, the winner to choose any one of my books that I have on hand.
Why not? Reading and writing are journeys of discovery, and LGBTQ themes and characters are as vital as any other dimensions of that journey, taking us to places real or imagined, within ourselves or around us, contemporary or historical. And besides, good writing is well worth reading, whatever the theme and whoever the well-drawn characters may be. #OutWriters
http://www.cleispress.com/features/OutWriters
So why do readers of my blog read and/or write LGBTQ fiction? Comment here, and I'll do a drawing at the end of the month, the winner to choose any one of my books that I have on hand.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Free Book Drawing on Women and Words
Check out my guest post on Women and Words today for a chance to win a copy of Women with Handcuffs. If you skip right through my post to leave a comment and qualify for the drawing, I won't tell anybody, but there's some useful information in there. And excerpts from stories by Jove Belle and R.G. Emanuelle. Don't miss those.
http://womenwords.org/2014/05/18/women-in-handcuffs-a-tale-of-two-books-by-sacchi-green/
http://womenwords.org/2014/05/18/women-in-handcuffs-a-tale-of-two-books-by-sacchi-green/
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
New Call for Submissions--The Princess's Bride: Lesbian Fairy Tale Erotica
The Princess’s Bride: Lesbian Fairy Tale Erotica
Editor: Sacchi Green
Publisher: Cleis Press
Deadline: July 1, 2014
Payment: $50-$100, depending on length, and 2 copies of the book
Word Count: 3000-6000
Fairy tales, legends, myths, with all those heroes who win the day and, of course, the girl—what’s up with that? Why can’t we have heroines who win each other? Let’s have stories of erotic romance and adventure with women who use their wits and/or weapons and come together in a blaze of passion.
Adaptations of traditional tales can work, but merely changing the gender of a character won’t be enough. Old stories updated to contemporary times would be all right. Original plots with a fairy tale sensibility are fine, and so is diversity of character, ethnicity, culture, and age. Did Scheherazade know a thousand and one more tales she told in the harem but never shared with the Sultan?
Witches and trolls and dragons are okay (make sure you know the difference between European dragons and the oriental breed) and they don’t necessarily need to be villains. Weddings aren’t required, and neither is magic, as long as the writing has a fantasy lilt to it. Royal blood doesn’t much matter, and neither do actual weddings. A few humorous stories would be welcome, and even more so would be deeper explorations of universal themes. The old fairy tales were often many-layered, with a core of darkness.
Above all, there must be an intense relationship between two (or more) women, along with whatever degree and flavor of sex their story demands. Kink is fine, sweet is nice, noble self-restraint flaring into a blaze at last is dandy. Vivid settings and complex characters (even the villains, if possible) are also required. And if your story should hint slyly at a certain film with a tongue-in-cheek treatment of fantasy clichés, well, “As you wish.”
How to submit: Send your document (double-spaced, ½ inch paragraph indents) as an attachment in .doc, .docx, or .rtf. Include your name and contact information in both your email and your document.
Unpublished work preferred, but reprints will be considered (at a somewhat lower rate) so specify any previous publication. Send to sacchigreen@gmail.com. Queries are welcome.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Wild Girls--Lambda Award Finalist!
I know my contributors to Wild Girls, Wild Nights are extraordinary writers, and now the Lambda Literary Award judges know it, too. Our anthology is one of three finalists in the Lesbian Erotica category. All the credit is due to the fine writers, who wrote this time with their hearts as well as their skills; I was just the catalyst. (But I still get to add this to my list of finalists over the years, now seven, and my one winner, Lesbian Cowboys.) This year's winner won't be announced until the ceremony in NYC on June 2, but I know from experience that making the finalist list is the real challenge; there's usually very little to choose between them for the award itself.
Here, you can check out the whole list of finalists in every category:
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/06/26th-annual-lambda-literary-award-finalists-announced/
Here, you can check out the whole list of finalists in every category:
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/06/26th-annual-lambda-literary-award-finalists-announced/
Monday, February 24, 2014
XOXO: Sweet and Sexy Romance—Review and Book Giveaway
This is my day on the blog tour for Kristina Wright’s XOXO: Sweet and Sexy Romance (Cleis Press), an anthology of thirty-eight extra-short stories that pack more erotic punch for their length than you’d think was possible. If you make it all the way to the end of this post you’ll see how to enter a giveaway for a copy, and, I hope, see why you really want to win.
First I get to pontificate on short-short stories in general. Every now and then I see reviewers of anthologies complaining that the stories should have been longer. When that happens with books I’ve edited myself, like Girl Fever: 69 Tales of Sudden Sex for Lesbians, my kneejerk reaction is, “No, these stories are just the length they need to be. You might well want to spend more time with these characters, but this particular chapter of their lives (or even mini-chapter) is so skillfully drawn that you don’t even notice how much intensity is gained with just enough of the just-right words.” Rather like maple sap cooked down into syrup. Or wine distilled into brandy. Or pan-juices reduced into a demiglace. Or…never mind. I’m using too many words here, too many metaphors. Not good in writing short-short stories.
Let’s stick with just one metaphor: dissolved sugar boiled until it makes candy. Candy, specifically those tiny candy hearts with Valentine messages written on them, the ones that inspired Kristina with the theme for this book.
XOXO: Sweet and Sexy Romance offers thirty-eight stories of searing sex and passionate love in just over two hundred pages. This means each story has only about fifteen hundred words, calling for writers who can make every word count. Fortunately Kristina has assembled writers who are more than up to the challenge.
I don’t want to tell too much about individual stories, because they’re worth discovering at just the right pace to savor them, but one factor I look for as an editor myself is a beginning that grabs the reader’s interest right way. I want to share just a few that do that particularly well, even though very good short stories can start out slowly instead and draw the reader in bit by bit, and many of those in this book do that to good effect.
“Midnight” by Emerald hooks you right away with sex and a hint of mystery.
Sometimes he’s inside me. Sometimes my mouth is on his cock. Sometimes his tongue is against my clit or my nipple or whatever square inch of skin he’s found that lights up that fire that’s somehow inside me and outside me and everywhere else all at once.
It’s different each time. But whatever form it’s taking, sex is what we’re doing. The timing is the important thing.
The scene then switches to a fondue restaurant, the tone becomes playful for a while, and you’re along for an irresistible ride.
“Ouch” by Lily K. Cho starts out with a bang, or rather a playful “Thwap!”
“Ouch!” Josh roared. “Dammit, Susie, that hurt!”
He heard Susie giggle, but he didn’t see her anywhere, so he turned back to the mirror and resumed his shaving.
Thwap!
“Susie, stop that!” he yelled, rubbing his rear and twisting to inspect the two pink spots blooming on his ass.”
Another ride you probably can’t resist.
“Night Moves” by Christine d’Abo begins with a nightmare.
No, no, no, no, no!
I couldn’t tell you what the nightmare had been about specifically. Images of too-tall walls and frantic running through black hallways were all that lingered as I blinked madly into the dark of our bedroom. The soft whooshing of the ceiling fan and the gentle rubbing of my husband’s hand against my back did little to slow my pounding heart. My stupid brain wouldn’t shut off.
“You ‘kay, babe?”
We know just what she needs, and by this point we need it too.
And another sleep-related excerpt with a distinctive flavor, from “The War at Home” by Giselle Renarde.
Flipping onto her stomach, Brenda buries her face in the bunched-up pillow. Too soft. How can she possibly get to sleep with her head sinking into the oblivion of a dark-blue pillowcase? Her mouth and nose are buried in feathers. She turns her head to the side, but that hurts her neck, so she flips again, landing with a bounce on her backside.
The sheets that match the pillowcase have wrapped themselves around her calves, and she kicks at them, but they don’t let go. Growling, she kicks harder, but the sheets have her bound like a mermaid—just what Kaz always wanted. Thank god he’s asleep.
Lucky bastard.
Want to bet somebody gets lucky?
“I’m siingin’ in the rain…” But that song was from the wrong Gene Kelly movie, and it wasn’t quite raining, and I was only whistling. My speaking voice gets me by, but singing blows the whole presentation.
Hall glanced down, her face stern in that exaggerated way that makes me tingle in just the right places. I shoved my hands into my pockets, skipped a step or two, and knew she felt as good as I did. Hal’s hardly the type to dance through the Paris streets like Gene Kelly, especially across square cobblestones, but there was a certain lilt to her gait.
Or maybe a swagger.
Of course for the really good parts of all the stories, the buildups, the peaks, the emotional resolutions, you need to read each piece all the way through. Bet you can’t read just one! But, like candy, you’re best off savoring them one by one, every single word.
Onward to the book giveaway part!
Just comment here, or on the Facebook status I posted about this (https://www.facebook.com/sacchi.green), or e-mail me at sacchigreen@gmail.com, and you’ll be entered in my drawing for a copy of XOXO. I’ll choose a winner at random on February 28th, and announce a winner by March 2. Be sure to check back here or on Facebook to make sure I can contact you if you win.
Friday, February 7, 2014
The Delicious Torment, from Alison Tyler, the Mistress of Literary S/M
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,…
You’ve seen Shakespeare’s sonnet number 116. You’ve probably heard it read. In fact, I read aloud it at my brother’s wedding. But it isn’t about weddings, as such, but about two people who match each other’s needs so perfectly that nothing can destroy their love.
Alison Tyler’s The Delicious Torment, the sequel to her Dark, Secret Love, is about two people with such intense, specific, on-the-edge needs that it seems like a miracle that they found each other.
Samantha, the heroine based on Alison Tyler herself, is “ensconced in an S/M relationship that makes everything I’ve done before turn a whiter shade of pale.” Jack is older, a high-powered lawyer, whose need to dominate through “pain and shame and utter humiliation” could only be satisfied by a woman like Samantha, as strong in her way as she is submissive. Pain and humiliation are pleasure to her, even when she dreads them, and they bring her to orgasm even when they bring her to tears. Jack gives her what she needs, and she loves him without reserve, while he needs her love as much as her submission, even though he needs her to prove that love over and over.
There are plenty of S/M books out there now, but nobody does it with as much style and skill as Alison Tyler. Nobody makes it as real, as convincing, as appealing even to people whose tastes have never run that way. And the story here is more than a series of “scenes,” even though the traditional canes and belts and crops and chains play their part. The relationship has its twists and turns and unexpected deviations, especially when it comes to involve a third person. There are adjustments and alterations that might strain a love less strong. Jack’s difficulty in trusting Samantha’s love and the lengths he goes to in testing her could have destroyed the very thing he craved. But no impediment is great enough to tear these true minds (and bodies) apart.
And there’s never a dull moment. Here’s what happens after Sam counters Jack’s suspicious surveillance with tricks of her own, then waits at home for him:
I was on the bed, naked, and I’d cuffed my ankles and tossed the keys to the corner of the room, clicked the cuffs onto my wrists, and hung the chain from the hook on the wall. I was as exposed as I could possibly be. And deeply grateful that it was Jack in the room and not Alex. I didn’t know if I could have handled this reveal twice.
Then, when things are reconciled, at least for the time being, comes this scene:
Jack stroked me all over with his bare hands. Up and down. Not leaving any part of my body untouched. I’m trained as a masseuse, and yet I’m one of those strange creatures who don’t like to be massaged. In fact, if I don’t know someone well, I don’t like to be touched at all. I don’t hug people on greeting. I don’t spontaneously hold hands with my friends. I have a history of being stand- offish in this way.
And yet...
When Jack used his bare hands to stroke from the tops of my shoulders down to my feet, he made me purr like a relaxed panther. My body was humming, electrified. He didn’t tickle me. He didn’t touch me too gently. He used firm strokes, over and over, until I felt as if I were flying.
Only then, after he’d put me into an almost hypnotic trance of pleasure, did he bend close on the bed, press his face near the nape of my neck, and say, “You worried me.”
He’d lulled me, tricked me, created this false sense of
safeness in my surroundings, and now that was replaced by instant awareness. My skin prickled. My muscles tightened.
“On purpose,” Jack continued.
His breath warmed the back of my neck, but I would not turn my head to look at him. I was frightened of what I might see in his cold blue eyes.
“I told you before,” he continued in a menacing whisper. “I told you not to make me worry.”
Oh, I’d been so pleased with my plan. And it had worked exactly how I’d hoped. But should I have confronted Jack in a different way? Spoken to him like an adult rather than playing behind his back? No... He understood this. He understood dirty pool. Christ, he was a lawyer after all. But that didn’t mean I could get away free. Jack had to take back the power. And that meant I would endure the punishment he chose.
I could feel Jack’s body against mine, pressing hard. He was still dressed, which made me feel more naked than ever. He straddled my body from behind, so that I could feel how hard he was, and I knew that I’d turned him on. He was like steel. Even when I’d made him worry, I’d managed to turn him on. We had a powerful connection, a type that rarely exists. You can meet people who will spank you. You can meet people who will tie you up, who will fuck you six ways to Sunday. But this was different.
“A powerful connection, a type that rarely exists.” There you have it. Shakespeare’s “marriage of true minds.” Two people who have the incredible luck of finding each other, in a book readers have the incredible luck of being able to read, with no impediments.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Audible Sex
This must be my Audible week! (Can't you hear me?) My Lambda-finalist Lethe Press collection A Ride to Remember is now available as an Audible book, and I've just heard that my Cleis Press anthology Wild Girls, Wild Nights is available for preorder as an Audible book as well. Noisy (or at least audible) sex is the best kind! http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Girls-Nights-Lesbian-Stories/dp/B00I0F7ELA/ref=tmm_aud_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1391036429&sr=1-1
@Audible_com
@Audible_com
Monday, January 27, 2014
Does "Bullwhip, Bull Rider" Ring Your Chimes?
I don't often remember to mention it, but I post a blog every other Monday on the Oh Get A Grip web site, home to enough erotica writers to fill two week of blogs on predetermined subjects. Today (Monday, Jan. 27) is my day, and the subject is supposed to be "Patience," but I cheated and posted a hefty snippet of a story that will be coming out later this year in She Who Must Be Obeyed, a lesbian femmedom anthology edited by DL King for Lethe Press. My story is "Bullwhip, Bull Rider," so if that strikes your fancy, go on over and check it out.
http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com/?zx=a310aa93030f74e2
http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com/?zx=a310aa93030f74e2