Be advised the cover is not safe for work, so you may want to wait until you’re home before ordering it. You’ll want to be able to settle down somewhere comfortable to read it immediately, anyway.
Anyway, my October flew by in a blink – mostly in good ways, as I’ve got a healthy copyediting business going and am finding time here and there to work on my own writing (and now poetry!). But the season continues.
Indeed, speaking of The Season…
The collection of Halloween, paranormal, and horror-themed erotica I released last year is just as sexy and spooky a year later. If you haven’t checked it out, maybe now’s a good time, especially if you’re still in the mood?
My flash piece, “Mine,” appears in Pure Slush Books / Bequem Publishing’s Marriage anthology. The latest in their Lifespan series, Marriagecollects poetry and prose on all aspects of marriage and long-term cohabitation, including what my story tackles – sex and infidelity.
My legs wrapped around him, so passionately it threatened to roll us to the other side of the bed. To his side, with its single thick ergonomic pillow. He pushed down with his hips, returning my passion, but also pinning me in place.
-“Mine”
“Mine” is a prequel of sorts to my story “The Solution” in the Dancing with Myself anthology – which, by the way, may be going out of print soon, though it’s still available on Amazon, iBooks, and Kobo. It’s a sizzling collection of self-love erotica I’d hate for you to miss!
“The one who smelled of vanilla. Whose scent, rising from his skin as he curled around my body in bed, had started all of this.” – The Solution
I’ve also been working on other interlinked stories that take place between “Mine” and “The Solution,” exploring betrayal, freedom, possessiveness, honesty, and desire.
It’s available in Kindle format and as an epub and paperback through Lulu.com. (It’s not available as paperback through Amazon because the retail price would be prohibitive, and as the editor put it in an email, “Jeff Bezos is rich enough.” I won’t argue with that!)
Through July 31st, thousands of books on the indie publishing site Smashwords are anywhere from 25-100% off with coupons automatically applied when you buy them.
Among those thousands of books, you’ll find many of my stories, which range from 25% off to free (including permafree titles and you-set-the-price books like my partner’s collection Kinky, Queer Love), plus some of the New Smut Project’s anthologies. If these are on your to-read list, or if your stack of reading material is growing smaller, now’s a great time to stock up!
Speaking of your to-read/to-buy list, with your Smashwords account, you can add books to your Library with a click, and then check your Library’s “Wishlist” tab to see at a glance what titles are discounted in the current sale.
It’s also possible to give ebooks as gifts through Smashwords! There’s a button below the “Buy” and “Add to Library” buttons for that option, and in your cart you can add the email address of your gift recipient (or your own email address if you want to deliver the book download code to them in the form of a fancily calligraphed letter or something).
It’s maybe a sign of the state of life that I missed making an actual post on the day of Cunning Linguists’ release – mea culpa! May I remind you that these thirty stories of language, literature, and lechery, sex, speech, and storytelling, are now available wherever books and ebooks are sold?
In particular, if you purchase them directly from the New Smut Project store before the end of this month (May 31 is next Tuesday), you can use coupon code CUNNING for 25% off ebooks and LINGUISTS for $1.50 US off paperbacks. (Prices are listed in US but you can pay in other currencies.)
After that, direct sales will still include a coupon code for a discount – one more reason to buy from us, not Amazon – but it won’t be as large again.
You can also get a similar discount – at least for now, though we at NSP can’t control the timing or amount of this one – when you order through Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local bookstores and earn NSP a 10% affiliate commission.
Don’t forget to add it to your shelf on Goodreads and LibraryThing! I spotted a review on GoodReads that mentioned, “Cunning Linguists reminds me of nineteen-eighties erotica” and let me tell you, as someone who just ordered a copy of Michelle Slung’s anthology Slow Handto reread, plus my first omnibus paperback of Yellow Silk, after discovering it through Touching Fire…that hits the spot. I’d describe the erotica of those earlier years as deep and atmospheric, sensually detailed, and thought-provoking without ever being merely cerebral. I love that kind of thing, and if you love it too, I’m thrilled to have something new to put on your bookshelf.
My dear bisexual bard Billy Shakespeare, with a cool earring
That is, apparently, the ship name for William Shakespeare (of Sonnet 20 fame) and Christopher “Kit” Marlowe (of “all they who love not tobacco and boys are fools” fame).
Christopher Marlowe. (He also had a fantastic if somewhat anachronistic depiction by Jamie Campbell Bower in the short-lived TNT series Will)
This is Sonnet 20. “Draft,” meanwhile, plays with references to sonnet 144, in which the poet talks about his “Two loves,” a young man and a woman, betraying him in an angsty bisexual anthem.
Aside from them both being quite possibly, in the modern sense, queer men, and boundary-breaking playwrights both working in London in the early 1590s, very close in age, is there any reason to believe these two would have chemistry? I sure think so. Not least because I noticed some lines in each of their plays that would sound just delicious swapped between them–
Marlowe remained close to him, too close to meet his eyes. “Your pardon,” he said without a sign of remorse. His hand cupped Will’s cheek, tracing the bone, leaving another stripe of ink. He felt it drying on his skin, sable heat. He pulled back just enough to see it marking Marlowe’s lips, too.
So it had happened, then.
“Why … my pardon?”
“For the sake of your soul. They say it is a sin.” This time he spoke of damnation with something more gentle than delight, but still not regret, not anything close to it.
No more than Will felt. “If my lips have the sin they took … willingly … ” If some in their wills counted bad what he thought good, they only reckoned up their own abuses; he was that he was. As much a sinner as you, he thought, even if he was in no way as accomplished as this consummate blasphemer. “You wrong yourself too much.”
“A trespass sweetly urged.” His laughter sounded surprised. “Will you give me my sin again?”
“If,” Will said, as surprised himself, uncertain on his feet, but finding words, perhaps by the same ink-dark magic that brought him to this, “you give me my soul again.”
A scent of rosewater and cloves grew stronger as the space between them vanished, as the cool air warmed. Marlowe’s hair was soft against the backs of his fingers, the skin at his jaw and throat rough from the time that had passed since he’d last shaven – something Will had not considered about kissing a man. He ran his fingertips back and forth against the rasp, feeling the hum of Marlowe’s breath beneath. It passed across his lips, too, mingling with his, though Will hardly breathed while he kissed as if truly to retrieve his soul. He tasted the ink staining both their mouths, the richer flavor underneath.
-Thus this excerpt from “Draft,” my story in Cunning Linguists. If you, like me, are a grade-A nerrrd you will notice Kit is saying lines from Romeo and Juliet and Will lines from Doctor Faustus. These guys sure ascribed interesting powers to kisses… cunning linguists indeed.
The collection of stories about sex, storytelling, and speech (or silence*) is now available for preorder in paperback and comes out May 18th–less than a month from now!
The 30 authors are sharing excerpts, their favorite sex scenes they’ve ever read, “dirty” words that give them the shivers (usually in a good way — though not always!) and other fun facts on the New Smut Project blog.
You can find Cunning Linguists now at:
Gumroad (use coupon code CUNNING for 25% off ebook preorders and LINGUISTS for $1.50 US off paperback orders)
*Speaking of “silence,” I’ll leave you with this second, even steamier except from “Draft”:
A sound shaped itself in Will’s throat — not speech, only proof, surprising even to him, that he still had a voice.
Kit’s hand fastened at the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the curls of his hair, nails passing lightly over soft, vulnerable skin. “Don’t,” he said, “compose poetry now.”
He was right — even all these spilled words whose ink was staining them were meant, in the end, to be acted.
So he did. He let himself move, guided by instinct — nothing in this felt against nature — and by his partner’s guidance.
The New Smut Project’s 4th anthology contains 30 tales of language, literature, and lechery and comes out May 18. It’s now available for preorder on Gumroad–do check the product descriptions for both the paperback and ebook editions, as they include discount codes to use with your preorder!–and elsewhere.
(I’ll be updating in a few days once the paperback pre-order through IngramSpark becomes widely available!)
Curious about the contents? See our ToC announcement on our blog, and check out the author interviews we’re posting each day this month. So far we’ve had romance books with the hottest sex scenes recommended by D.J. Hodge, opinions from jem zero and Melissa Snowdon sexy word choice–and more to come!
My prose poem about being bisexual and in lust (with people of all genders and with words, particularly boat metaphors), and a bit of kink if you want to read into my cable metaphors, is up at Litro Magazine as their Friday Flash!
You are strung with cables humming in high winds, singing like the veins. You are laid with circuits of nerves in electric wires, sophisticated and swift. You make a sail with your broad back, a canvas of your bending, billowing body.
Hello to the steam of your breath. Thank you, when you guide me home with your hair like smoke. Welcome, when you find your way as I stoke the furnace within you.
Vapour dissipates into the atmosphere, not before it curls our hair and glistens on our skin. Hot enough to scald…
Cables gone salty with ocean breeze, with sweat, hold sails taut against the bodies of air that push into them. Seemingly so thin, so strained, but holding. Knots grow tighter as they dry. Perhaps it’s dangerous. Perhaps we shouldn’t let them ever get dry. Let’s not.
The title comes from French slang for bisexual, “à voile et à vapeu,” or “to work by steam or by sail.” I first discovered that charming phrase when I read Carole Maso’s Aureole, a sort of collection of erotic prose poetry (perhaps? It’s a real genre-buster. The subtitle is “An Erotic Sequence” if that clarifies). I was inspired to try my own hand at the craft Maso makes look so effortless…so breathlessly effortless.
It was not effortless, but it left me a bit breathless and steamed up, for what it’s worth.
I’m thrilled to at last share the list of authors and stories I’ve been editing for the New Smut Project’s fourth anthology, Cunning Linguists.
Language. Literature. Lechery.
Thirty authors, including Rachel Kramer Bussel, Sonni de Soto, Kristan X, and Good Sex Award honorees D. Fostalove and jem zero, share clever, sensual stories of the many ways we communicate about and around our desires. From erotic epistolary tales to queer retellings of classics, this collection bursts with memorable and hot new reading material.
One Tongue – A.C. Quill
Dido Burns – Taylor Verdon
Blue Rising – Max Turner
Head to Toe – Camille Devine
I Ought to Be Thy Adam – Seb Palumbus
Barako – Rachel Woe
Draft – T.C. Mill
Astronautical Intimacy – Tiana Talaria
Sky-High at Aquarius – jem zero
The Meaning of Anything – Kristan X
Muse – Sprocket J. Rydyr
On the Line – Sonni de Soto
Noi Leggiavamo Per Diletto – Alex Freeman
We’re Not Tentacle Porn – Koji A. Dae
Spark to the Tinder – Cathy Bryant
Written – Ollie Fox
Frontiers – Moxie Marcus
Cave Suckers – Elizabeth A. Allen
Under the Table – Rachel Kramer Bussel
Planet Rolling Over – Peach Berman
Moonlight and Madness – A. Zimmerman
First Time – Alex Yan
Inkmanship – Melissa Snowdon
Welcome to EvolWorld – Louise Kane
Spell Ling B – D. Fostalove
Unsexed, Sexy – Danny McLaren
The Feeling’s Mutual – D.J. Hodge
The Training of the Tongue – Evadare Volney
More Than Words – Lillian James
Phantom Centre – T.J. Cooke
Heated banter simmers until the sexual tension boils over. An academic aches with curiosity about the mysterious woman behind the letters she translates–and the mysterious woman working alongside her. Lovers seek a common language after the fall of Babel. Without a physical body, a spaceship’s AI makes love to her captain with words. A domme and her sub negotiate kink titles that reflect all they are to each other. After saving his nonbinary partner, Victor Frankenstein celebrates both erotically and electrically.
Diverse characters find pleasure in body writing, music, virtual realities, fanfiction, first-time phone sex, the queer truth behind local folklore, and reading aloud despite a boyfriend’s best attempts at distraction. Stories ranging from the lighthearted to the bittersweet explore what happens when someone finds just the right thing to say in bed—or says the wrong one—or speaks eloquently without using any words at all.
Preorder links:
Gumroad (use coupon code CUNNING for 25% off preorders)
(Update: Gumroad, our platform for direct sales, is phasing out the pre-order option. The ebook version just squeaked in while it was still supported. A paperback order page is up, but with the caveat it’s not an ‘official’ pre-order in the system. This means, unlike when you order the ebook, for paperback your card will be charged when you place the order rather than on the release date in May. I’m also looking into options for more official pre-orders, though Gumroad is still one of the best I’ve seen for coupon codes — and both paperback and ebook pre-orders on Gumroad include a coupon code in their product descriptions, so be sure to take advantage of those!)
So it probably won’t take long to spot what I needed to change first after opening the Soft, Sharp, and Tender proof. Before even opening it, actually.
But! It’s now available (with updated spine text) and looking pretty good if I say so myself.
I’m so excited in part because this short story collection omnibus is officially my longest paperback ever. Not to slight my chapbook or novella-length stories like A Spell of Passion or Fear, By the Green Road, and The Complete Lady Crayl, but this is over 200 pages of collected femdom, F/F, and other delights. Including some of my Shakespeare fanfiction.
It’s now available on Amazon and (at a bit of a discount, plus with options to get it signed and dedicated) Gumroad.
