A Sexy Sixth Anniversary

It’s almost hard to believe, but the first two NSP anthologies came out six years ago today, on 23 March 2015.

If you haven’t had the chance to read them yet, you’re in luck–we’re celebrating with a special coupon code offering. For the next two weeks (from 23 March 2021 to 6 April 2021), you can use the code sexysixth on Heart, Body, Soul and Between the Shores in our Gumroad store for 20% off paperbacks and 45% off ebooks. 

Also, our Gumroad store can now ship internationally, making our books available to anyone on planet Earth*. 

Curious about what’s inside? Excerpts and author interviews for Between the Shores and Heart, Body, Soul are on the NSP blog. I bet they’ll whet your appetite–here’s a few that still resonate with me after six years:

He turns his head so that his ear is pressed against the door. The mattress shifts, and a drawer is pulled open and shut. What’s she doing? He can hear her inhale sharply, and the mattress squeaks. Is she? Oh. She most definitely is. The drawer on his side of the room sticks, which means she’s gone to the other one. She’s removed something from their extensive collection of toys.

-From “Close Pairs” by Andrew Metallo in Heart, Body, Soul

Val felt safe in the arms of her lover, calmed by the clean scent of Iz’s skin. She knew Iz would never push her, and that if she didn’t want to talk about rope again, she didn’t have to.

Still, those old pictures made her miss the easy, kinky joy that used to send her soaring. Rope had made her feel so sexy. Cass used to comment that even the smell of hemp got Val wet. A part of her had been locked away along with the rope. As much as Val cared for Iz, as much as she adored her body, there was a sweaty, needy state that Cass used to produce simply by whispering “hog tie”—and with an uncomfortable lurch in her chest, Val realized she’d never been there with Iz.

If Val could find a way back to her old self, if she could recapture the thrill of rope, she could be that sexy woman again, ready and able to come over and over again. She missed abandoning herself to feelings rather than protecting herself with thoughts. And as that person, she could be the inspiration for Iz’s lust. The heat she’d seen in Iz in response to that video could be directed at her.

-From “Return to Rope” by Annabeth Leong in Between the Shores

At first, it had been a pain in the ass to dance with Tucker. His style was big and emphatic, and their respective training made them clumsy when they had to match their pacing. But with practice, they had found ways to navigate each other’s bodies, and for all of his over-wide shoulders and mile-long limbs, Tucker no longer provided an obstacle at every corner nor a tripping hazard with every step. Brent could maneuver around him, and Tucker himself found his way between Brent’s knees and ankles with a solid, fluid footing. They transferred weight between them with the ease of waves pulling at the shore–with time and practice and, now, trust. After these weeks, finally, the movements came easily.

–From “The Dressing Room” by Guinevere Chase in Heart, Body, Soul

“You remember your safewords? What’s your color, Katherina?” he asked, knowing—hoping—she wouldn’t say red or yellow. Hoping that she was—as she’d said—ready for this. He cupped her jaw, letting his thumb rest on her racing pulse. He stared into her dark, fear-dilated eyes. He knew that she was scared, that the people playing and watching around them worried her. He frowned as her eyes, wide and bright as gibbous moons, scanned the room warily.

He needed to focus her attention away from her anxiety and onto something else, like the scene they were about to share. He drifted his thumb against her jaw, forcing her chin up to look at him. “Kat, color. Now.”

She focused on him, meeting his gaze. “Green. I’m ready.”

-From “Donovan’s Door” by Sonni de Soto in Between the Shores

“I was inspired to write “The Best Entanglements” after reading a single line in the call for submissions to this volume requesting stories featuring a character saying “no” to a sex act. Though I’ve written fan fiction in which that happened, I haven’t read any published erotica that examined that “no” and went on from there. In other words, it sounded like an interesting sort of story to write.”

–Emma Grant, author of “The Best Entanglements” in Between the Shores

“I wanted to disprove the notion that you can’t laugh and come at the same time. Please tell me if I succeeded!”

–Nancy Weber, author of “Little Dan” in Between the Shores

“Cora thinks of herself as the ultimate Nice Girl: she’s academically successful, pretty, loves floral print and has never had sex outside of a relationship. But that doesn’t exactly mesh with the fact that she desperately wants to sleep with the campus “player” after her dependable but obnoxious boyfriend dumps her. She judges everyone in her life because she has internalized both the virgin/whore dichotomy and the less damaging but similar nice guy/player binary. Cora sees the people in her life, including herself, as these classic archetypes, and she unlearns them as she gets to know Devon. Wanting to have casual sex doesn’t mean she isn’t a good person—it just means she’s human…”

–Ella Dawson, author of “Very Impulsive/Very Angry” in Heart, Body, Soul

Virginia Dare and Madimia Dee were both real people, but I gave them very different fates.

–Evadare Volney, author of “Tempestuous” in Heart, Body, Soul

*Along with aliens, dimension-jumpers, and astronauts who can provide an earthbound address to ship to. I don’t want to leave anybody out.

And submissions are now open for NSP’s fourth anthology, Cunning Linguists: Language, Literature, and Lechery. If that sounds like your thing, please do consider sending something in! Or if it’s your thing to read but not to write so much, you can join the NSP newsletter to be emailed when the anthology becomes available. No need to worry about spam–we’ll never share or sell your information, and updates are only sent out a few times a year.