New Book and a Giveaway!

I have good news, everyone!

Firstly, I have not, as previously assumed, fallen entirely off the face of the planet.  And I've even been writing a little bit.

In fact, I have a small bit of fun microfiction out in Circlet Press's new book: The Circlet Treasure Chest. The story is called Femme Fatale and it is quite likely the shortest thing I've ever written but I do like the way it turned out.

Even better, you can win it!  Free!  As well as 25 other ebooks!  All in one single contest!

Circlet is a deightful press that specializes in erotic speculative fiction and has published some phenomenal talent. And all the queer, squee!

Enter here and try them out at no risk to you!

Smutting and the Brain

Hello there, all my smutty, literate friends!

I've been gone a long while, I know.  And I'd like to take a minute to explain a) why, and b) why I hope very much to be back, though maybe not exactly as before.

For several years now, I've been experiencing perplexing symptoms that my excellent team of medical professionals have yet to stick a diagnosis on to. What I can tell you, though, is that on top of it making it so that I catch everything that's going around, typically twice, and it lasts much longer than for everyone else, it also has some significant cognitive symptoms.  Some days I cannot remember simple words.  Some days I can't muster the strength of will to get out of bed.  And many days, I feel like I'm in one of those PSAs for "How to tell if one of your loved ones has Alzheimer's."

Truth be told, I haven't written a single word creatively for almost three years now.  I have had anthology publications since, but not for things I've written in that time period.

I'm terrified, my friends. I'm so scared that along with my facility for immediately thinking of the right  word or turn of phrase, I've lost my ability to tell stories at all. So please, bear with me.  I will be back. I need to be back. But I can't guarantee that what I write now will be the same quality as what I once wrote was. I know that Terry Pratchett continues to keep at it, despite actually *having* Alzheimer's , but I am no Terry Pratchett.

All I can promise it that I will try. Try and write.  Try and update you on what I've had released since my last update, and a review I promised that is several months late.

And there is something that I'm excited about! Laura Antoniou, author of the Marketplace series, has opened up her setting for another anthology of fan fiction due this weekend, November 15th. As some of you may know, I had a pile of fun rolepalying in her talker-based roleplaying game set in the universe, and her call has been the temptation I've needed to try again. I am not sure that what I finish will be submittable let along quality enough to get accepted to the anthology, but it's got me trying again. And that is very good, indeed.

So wish me luck, or wish me well, or just stay tuned to see this little place on the internet come to life again.

Mad is back. To some extent, at least.

EBook Review: The Pleasure Dial by Jeremy Edwards

Jeremy Edwards has, in two novels and countless shorter pieces, managed to earn himself a spot as a master of erotocomedic fiction.  The light, carefree but deeply affectionate way in which his characters interact with each other has become his trademark, and I'm hooked on it.

See, here's the thing:  Jeremy can write sex.  Delectable, naughty, and unbelievably arousing sex. He does it often. The Pleasure Dial is full of it. Despite how lust-inspiring his sex scenes are, though, I found myself rushing through (but never skipping, heavens no!) the sex scenes to find out what wacky, hilarious, delightful thing his characters were going to do next.

He writes clever, intelligent, highly sexual characters who are turned on by other clever and intelligent characters.  There is this one lovely scene in which the protagonists go to visit a friend's home and have a hard time manoeuvring because of all the overstuffed bookshelves that line every wall. Most gratifyingly, good old Artie gets as turned on by seeing this as I do reading the description!

This is shorter than most of my reviews, and partly that's because I don't want to ruin a single thing for you, just go out and get a copy for yourself!

5/5 sexy cloche hats (and an extra feather for luck.)

Adventures in (Kinky) Nerdliness

Confession time: In case you don't already know this about me, I am a GIANT nerd. I've played just about every tabletop roleplaying game there ever was. I had, and still have an enormous bucket of dice with a ridiculous variety of numbers of sides. So, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of the proliferation of the internet, was online role playing games. I don't mean things like World of Warcraft (though that *is* fun!) I mean the much earlier iterations of text-based roleplaying, interactive storytelling, in which I control one character, you control another, and we can take turns writing the action or dialogue in "real time" over the internet. In the end, you don't have anything publishable, but you sure did have a lot of fun!
Over the years, I've tried out several of these groups, in several different mediums. Some of them were sweet and cute and innocent (Final Fantasy II, anyone?) Some of them were plain awful (yes, I'm embarrassed to say that I played with Gor, though I didn't make many friends by calling it playing!) A few, though, were pretty damned fun. The one I think I had the most fun playing in was on an old, now defunct telnet talker server called Iron Rose, and the world in which the game was set was something called "The Marketplace." When I stumbled on this rpg, the only thing I knew about this world was what I read in the 2-page quickie guide: a contemporary world in which a consensual slave market exists a la Exit to Eden, minus the cheezy resort. Apparently, there were based on a set of books (there are currently 5 of them) written by some woman I'd never heard of called Laura Antoniou. One kind of neat thing that set this game apart was that the author of the books not only fully endorsed the game, but she would apparently even pop in occasionally to play along!

Loving the kinky, and loving the roleplay, I ordered the first three books in the set, so that I could get the background skinny on the setting. Of course, I wasn't about to wait until they arrived to dive right in. Patience and I are not on speaking terms. I'm sort of glad that I waited actually. See, I figured that since I knew nothing about the world, I figured I would make a character that didn't know about the Marketplace either, someone who could potentially be "spotted" as a potential slave. And that way, I got to sort of discover some of the secrets of the world along with her (for the three weeks it took my books to clear customs, at least!)
The game had been running for about a year when I found it, and it remained running for about a year afterward. I kept that one character and created a nice stock of NPC-style toons that I could pop out whenever the server was quiet to interact with the folks hopping on. The folks who played there were smart, and sexy, and damn good storytellers, and I had a ball, for as long as it lasted. The Marketplace was a perfect sandbox for kinky people who like to read or write to play with their imaginations and push boundaries.

Why am I sharing this admittedly embarrassing bit of my personal nerditude? Simple. Laura's opening up her sandbox again! Not for a game this time, but for a book. She's got an open call for submissions right now for stories set in the Marketplace series of books. ---> Calls for Submissions Heck you can even stuck some of her characters in them if you like (insert high-pitched fangirl squee iffn you like!) She's got a few other calls out, too, so be sure to check them out. She hasn't edited any anthologies in forever and who knows if she'll keep it up if she doesn't get good responses!
Now I need to figure out what I want to write. Fun, fun!

Micro Fiction Monday: Crumbs

After every fifth bite you take, I want you to find a way to drop some food on the floor. Anything will do, even a crumb or a single pea.

It seemed like such a small, simple, silly thing when you said it. Yes, we were in public, but I've been out to eat with a remote-controlled vibrating egg up my ass. I've been out with a full-on karada under my clothes, I'm no stranger to naughty little secrets. This? This is just nothing, right? I mean, it's like you said: just a bit of fun, reliving that that sneaky, misbehaving thrill you had feeding your dog what you didn't like off your plate when you were a kid.

Bite number four.

You're starting at me from across the table with that nakedly hungry look in your eyes. Do you know how much this is making me squirm? My cheeks are burning, they must be a brilliant red.

Bite number five.

I pick up my napkin to wipe the sweat from my palms. How am I going to pull this off? I wonder if you actually knew how hard this was going to be, if you knew how frustrating it would be to me to have to be a bad restaurant patron in order to be a very good boy. There's a grain of rice, there, on the very edge of my plate facing me. Maybe, if I brush against it just like that when reaching for my next bite...

Back to bite one again.

Having to count each bite isn't helping. Keeps me constantly aware of what you expect me to do. Counting each forkful, ticking off the seconds before I throw my food on the ground again like a child.

Two.

I'm already trying to figure out how I'm going to engineer “accidentally” dropping the next morsel, nudging some crumbs from my roll to the edge of the bread plate for easy access.

Three.

My shaking hands make the silverware patter against the plate when I cut my next bite of chicken. I manage a smile your way, and I think I see approval in your expression. I definitely see lust, enough to encourage me to keep going.

Four.

I make sure the errant breadcrumbs land on my napkin, so that...

Five.

...I can let them drop to the carpet when I put my napkin on my lap. Thank goodness for the double benefit of covering the evidence of how turned on I am.

My heart is racing, I take a few deep, long breaths to try and calm myself down enough to continue. How many more groups of five bites, do you think, until the meal is finished? I lose count, focusing only on the litany of one, two, three, four five, drop. Over and over.

I'm getting bolder. This time, I drop a nice, big slice of red pepper. The woman across from me sees me do it, and gives me a look like you'd give a bad puppy who'd just peed inside. You see it, too, though, and her sourpuss face can't compete with the look you get when you're about to burst into laughter out of pure joy. I'm okay, I can do this. If I don't spontaneously combust first. Why is it so hot in here?

Another couple of grains of rice.

A tiny sliver of chicken.

A little glob of butter. Crap. That one really was an accident.

And finally there it is: one last bite and my plate is clean. All that's left to drop is a tiny curl of onion, easily knocked off the fork when I bring it to my mouth. Done.

I offer to go pay, please please let me. I need to get home, now. To be at your mercy, to let you quench this insane fire you've kindled in me. At your nod, I go first up to the counter where they keep the debit machine. You stop to tie your shoe before you join me. I hope I'm the only one who notices that it wasn't actually untied to begin with. When you get back up, there's a swagger in your step that wasn't there before.

The cheque is paid.

Take me home now, Sir, please?

The Good, the Bad, and the Indigo?

Indigo Skye Ink and Art

An interview with yours truly has just gone up at Indigo Skye's lovely digs, Indigo Skye Ink and Art. It's a great site, by a lovely author (You can check out one of her stories in Uniform Behaviour--if you don't have a copy yet, why not? You should definitely click on the link to the right and get one. Yup!)

 Interested in learning more about me? Of course you are!  You can check out the delightfully smutty Indigo and her interview of me here.

Enjoy!

Butches Don't Wear Pink (and other fallacies)

A few of you might remember that a couple of months ago, I mentioned a truly fabulous new project by Sinclair Sexsmith. That something, which had been unnamed at that point, but is now called ButchLab, has posted its Symposium's call for submissions #2: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions . As with the previous call, I feel compelled to participate.

Butch Women Don't Wear Pink (and other fallacies)

We, as human animals, feel compelled to categorize ourselves. It gives us a sense of community (I'm an X, just like those people over there are.) It gives us a sense of solidarity, and of comfort, to belong to a group. The problem is that as soon as we create criteria which allow us to belong to a group, we create assumptions about that group.

A person can self-define as butch for many reasons, but somewhere in there is the feeling that on this grand spectrum of gender continuity, they find they fit best toward the masculine side of centre. There it is: Masculine, of or pertaining to men. Walk down a supermarket aisle and you'll see cover after cover of women's magazines screaming “All Men LOVE X...If you want to keep your man, don't do X, Y, or Z...etc.”

Society and media tells us day in and day out that if you belong to a group, then you must have all the characteristics associated with that group. Yes, we say, that's racist, or sexist, or ableist...but ya know, it's also true. But, see, here's the deal. It's not. There is NOTHING in any commonly held idea about a particular racial, gender, or ability group that is absolutely true for all members. That's why they call it discrimination, and not scientific categorization. And even the people who agree that sexism, or racism is bad seem to make a glaring exception for categories with which people must choose to self-identify. Well, if they think that all this stuff is true about themselves, then why can't I think it?

The reason you can't think that is simple: you don't know what they're thinking about themselves. My experience with masculinity is different than yours, and therefore the part of my identity that I think of as “masculine” will not completely match yours. Period. For example, when I was growing up, it was my father who did the cooking in the house. All the cooking. To this day, I consider cooking a masculine trait, despite the fact that I'm clearly in the minority for thinking so. This is both a large and rather trivial example, but it will do to stand in for the thousands and thousands of small idiosyncrasies in each of our conceptions of what constitutes “masculine” and “feminine.”

It's actually a fairly simple thing to avoid, too, though it takes a conscious effort. DON'T ASSUME. It's just that easy. Just because K is butch doesn't mean that she will bristle or bite your head off if you open the car door for her. The fact that she doesn't like acts of chivalry directed toward her means that she might just bristle or bite your head off if you open the car door for her. G loves pink. Doesn't mean she isn't butch. That hot pink cowboy shirt she had on yesterday was WAY masculine, and super hawt, too! The only cure to making assumptions about people is not admit to yourself that you don't know what they like ,what they don't like, or how they'll act in a specific situation based on any group that they belong to.(Heck, how else do you explain the existence of log cabin republicans?) You only know these things about them once you get to know them personally, as people, and not as gender identities.

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You can read my thoughts on the prompt for Symposium #1 here
And that's not all! Many, many other fabulous responses to the same prompt can be found here!