Midsummer Updates

I always go into something of a lull in late June and early July. Maybe it’s the heat (although here near the Great Lakes we’ve been much luckier than a lot of people temperature-wise). Maybe it’s the grief-iversary at the end of June. Or my birthday earlier in that month putting me in the cheerier version of a “I deserve to slack off a bit” mood.

The idea of lounging in the air conditioning and reading is just so seductive, you know?

And writing, too! I’ve done a bit of that — when I feel like June was a sunny void, a humid ghost of a month that left no trace, I remind myself I did finish three stories during it.

Plus some of what I’ve been reading are the submissions to Erato II — exciting stuff!

Anyway, here are some quick updates of interest to my fellow readers and writers:

This July, Smashwords is holding its annual Summer/Winter site-wide sale. You’ll find fantastic ebooks discounted 25%, 50%, even 75% or free. This includes a number of my titles.

It also includes the anthologies from the New Smut Project – most are 25% off, but Erato is half-off in honor of our open submissions call for the sequel.

If you don’t have a Smashwords account or would rather buy the book more directly, you can get 50% off the Erato ebook at our Gumroad store by using coupon code “EratoIISubmissions“. Plus remember, with discount code “newsmutprojectfan“ you’ll always get $1.00 off our paperbacks purchased through Gumroad, including Erato.

Do you have a flash fiction, prose poem, short-short story, or <1,500-word excerpt from a longer story you’d like to submit to Erato II? We’re open until August 31st (and can negotiate extensions where necessary – life happens). In the anthology guidelines, I get pretty detailed about the kinds of stories we get excited about, and those we’re more lukewarm about (“sex robots,” longtime readers will recite at this point, even as fans of NSP’s books will fondly remember the stories about robots who have sex – yes, those are different kinds of stories!).

I’ve had a poem published! It’s short and, to no one’s surprise, both sensual and haunting. “Three Years After” appears in Tiny Wren Lit’s first anthology of “tiny poems” (10 lines or shorter), All Poems Are Ghosts.

In somewhat sadder news, I learned this week that SinCyr Publishing is closing its doors. They were a landmark in the erotica press landscape for their creative anthologies (I had a story in a volume of Rule 34) and interest in building a consent culture.

SinCyr’s books are now out of print, though you can get paperback copies secondhand through some online stores. I’ll be looking into ways to reprint the stories I’ve published with them, including “Route 34” from Rule 34, “The Solution” from Dancing With Myself (this one’s actually expanding into a book-length work), and “Silver Bracelets” from the femdom anthology Getting It.

So that’s what my July looks like. Hope yours is going well, readers! Keep cool…except when you can be hot in a fun way.