Cosmic, uncanny, and erotic

Out this month, Mystique is an anthology of gay and lesbian erotic fantasy romance. My piece in it, “The Passion of Her Sleep,” is a Poe-inspired f/f love story, eerie, erotic, and sweet…

The elevator pitch–by which I mean what I’d ramble at you were you trapped in an elevator with me–is “Madeline Usher meets a beautiful, clever, and brilliant lady and lover in a dreamworld that is sort of the Masque of the Red Death, but much, much sexier. Together, can they escape the general grimness of storylines from Edgar Allan Poe?”

MYSTIQUE is currently available on the Aurelia Leo website and on Amazon. A paperback and audiobook version are coming soon!

An excerpt:

Ashtophet approaches, smiling. 

“You always find me,” Madeline says. 

“I’m always searching for you.”

Heat stirs under her skin. “I…” And words cascade from her, like the streams from the fountains feeding the pools. “I tried searching, too, in a way. I’m sorry it took so long. It used to be that I had trouble staying awake. Now I seem to have trouble falling asleep.”

Ashtophet’s beautiful lips form a frown. “That’s unlucky.”

“I’m an unlucky woman.” She looks down. Dampened from brushing the wet paving stones, the hem of her pale gown has become as clear as glass. “Please excuse my complaints. I’m not wholly unlucky. After all, you continue finding me.”

Ashtophet’s laughter is as musical as the fountains, and it brings Madeline’s head up. “Every night, I look forward to the search.”

“It’s how you choose to spend your dreams?”

“True.” She appears a little surprised at the idea, or simply amused. “Wandering this strange place—this beautiful place—witnessing all that happens here, though holding back from joining it myself… It’s been restful for me.” Ashtophet shifts on her feet. “And I’ve found you, another observer.”

“It’s not that I need the rest here,” Madeline admits, “so much as I don’t know how to begin to participate.” 

“And would you…like to?” Now Ashtophet’s gaze falls. Madeline follows it, landing on a tangle of orange and violet-striped flowers with lacy stems and leaves. A gentle breeze makes the petals dance while neither of them speaks.

“Would you?” she finally asks.

“Like you, I’m unsure how to begin.”

A cry carries across the pool—not alarmed but full-throated and exuberant. Waves surge, lifting sheets of water over the tiles. Even on the ground, its puddles appear black, almost bottomless. 

“I don’t know how to swim,” Madeline says.

“I don’t often have the chance to.”

“Shall we step in anyway? They’re wading on this side.” Even as she speaks, Madeline kicks off her slippers. The earth around the flowers is soft and surprisingly warm against her soles.

An easy-to-read Teleny

Did Oscar Wilde write erotica?

Frankly, I find it hard to believe he didn’t.

Did he write Teleny, Or The Reverse of the Medal? At this point, it seems unlikely we’ll ever find a copy of the first draft signed by him. But if you enjoyed Dorian Gray, you’ll probably enjoy the lush prose style of this gay erotic novel. I certainly enjoyed the excerpt I read of it in Pages passed from hand to hand.

It left me wanting more.

So I went searching for the rest. Should be easy, right? Published in 1893, it’s absolutely in the public domain. Yet I couldn’t find any downloadable file of it to put on my eReader (at least none from a site I could trust).

I did find the full text on Wikisource–great if I wanted to read the whole thing online. Or…

Long story short: I cut and pasted the text from Wikisource onto my computer, then formatted it into a PDF file of the sort I’d like to read (with clear page numbers). And if you’re in the mood for a downloadable PDF file of Teleny, here it is for you too:

TELENY

Prefer .mobi or .epub? Those can be downloaded from my Gumroad page here.

After reading more of it, I’m finding myself on board with the theory that this erotic novel was written “round robin” style by Wilde and friends of his–it seems especially plausible because some of the chapters in Teleny quote way more poetry than others.

Yes, poetry. It’s that kind of Victorian gay erotica.

Which should also serve as a CONTENT WARNING: some of the scenes are rather…Victorian (if you’ve ever read a summary of The Pearl, you might get what I’m aiming at?), as is the outlook and style. This book contains, alongside its lush and sensuous delights, some distressing scenes plus topics you probably wouldn’t expect from a modern gay historical novel or romance. These include period-typical misogyny, pressured and/or coerced sex with non-leading characters, heterosexual sex scenes, and death by suicide. The Goodreads reviews also share some specific content warnings.

Paperback edition

There are some versions of Teleny available on Amazon, but the copy I looked at uses em-dashes in place of quotation marks around dialogue. Which, I know that’s a thing, but… So I also uploaded a PDF for print-on-demand publishing, priced as inexpensively as possible. You can find it here and now in my Gumroad store.

UPDATE 2021: Right now some of the Amazon reviews are for a different version, citing typos I know my formatted edition doesn’t have, but I’m not sure how to repair that… Dear reader, if you find typos in my Teleny, can you send me a message so I can correct them? And if you don’t find typos, please consider leaving a review on Amazon to that effect, letting other readers know this edition is good.

Book sale alert: Red Velvet and Absinthe

Book alert: the Red Velvet and Absinthe anthology is currently on sale at 10% of its original price (99 cents instead of $9.99)!

This anthology of Gothic erotic fiction is quite possibly the best book of erotica I’ve ever read. I’m not in it, but you might say it’s in me. Every piece is lush and dazzling, with a diversity of orientations, kinks, and dynamics between couples. Some stories lean more toward romance, some toward horror, some toward pure smut. There are classics like vampires and werewolves (reimagined in interesting new ways) and some stranger encounters with enchanted–or haunted–paintings, a hangman, and a dom who might be the Green Fairy herself.

The Complete Lady Crayl: A Femdom Book Giveaway

Just one week from today (Sept 15, 2017), I have two stories coming out in SinCyr Publishing’s first anthology, Getting It. It’s 13 stories of dominant women of all kinds and their submissives.

Some of the range in this anthology is clear just from the pieces I have in it–one is a sweet story about a young woman and her boyfriend enjoying their first pair of handcuffs. The other is about a more experienced couple exploring their rape fantasies (SinCyr’s mission statement, though, is ““Shifting rape culture one sexy story at a time” so rest assured that it’s all consensual–I find the trust exercise involved especially sexy, to be honest.)

You can read a little more about my stories, “Silver Bracelets” and “Fantasies,” HERE.

But speaking of femdom–and when, honestly, am I ever not?–my short story collection Lady Crayl is up for giveaway on Goodreads from today through October 8.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Lady Crayl

by T.C. Mill

Giveaway ends October 08, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Lady Crayl is a historical fantasy about a Dominant lady, Elise Crayl, and her loving knight, Adam Tynae. The four stories show glimpses of their lives as they’re separated and find their way together.

When Elise Caryl and her forces successfully take command of an enemy castle, she recognizes the defending commander: Adam Tynae, the knight she loved and lost long ago. Determined that nothing will come between them anymore, she seeks to prove it to the man she owns heart, body and soul-using whatever tools come to hand, from riding crops to knives to lengths of ribbon. Happily, Elise and Adam have a few more marks to make, and a few more bonds to writhe in. After Adam surrenders, Lady Crayl will reward him with a far more pleasant manner of submission.

Content: These four short stories about a Dominant lady and her loving knight make up 28,000 words of tender romance and chivalry along with scorching erotic content, including knives, sensation play, and bondage. Adult readers only.

Sounds like something you’d like? Check out the Lady Crayl Giveaway here and enter before October 8!

July Updates: Newsletters and Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale

My latest newsletter, including a new story publication with Coming Together, is now out through MailChimp. You can view it here.

Personally, I love newsletters because I’m not good at keeping up with author’s blogs. It’s much easier for them to reach out to me with their news and publications. In the future, I hope to send out a newsletter semi-irregularly but at least biannually (that is, every six months…not the current biannual schedule, whoops). And to include more coupon codes and other subscriber perks :D.

Speaking of coupon codes, it’s Smashwords’s Summer/Winter sale, and using their special coupons in the month of July can save you anywhere from 50-100% off of select titles.

I’ve included most of my own stories in the sale. Clicking the individual book’s page will give you the details on which coupon to apply.

If you’ve been waiting for a chance to stock up on ebooks inexpensively, it’s here!

Both NSP anthologies are participating in Smashwords’s July Summer/Winter sale, too, if you’d like to use a 75% coupon!

Book Review: Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale

I cried happy tears while reading this story.

That fact might prove embarrassing, since

a) I am not the type of person who would be expected to weep sappily over romance novels, not least because

b) I am a sadist. Literally, a dominant sexual sadist.

But here I am, all salt-watery with a tissue in hand, because

c) the heroine of this novel is a dominant sexual sadist–and also a youthful ingenue who finds herself in way over her head when she’s revealed as the last scion of a medieval Italian noble house, and joins forces with a beautiful assassin who overcomes his tragic past to devote himself to her and her cause.

I was once a somewhat ingenuous young heroine, though Ancestry.com hasn’t revealed quite such revelations in my family history. If I’d discovered this book sooner, I wonder what it would have done for me. Probably sparked a lot of light bulbs–though I may have taken it in stride. A voracious reader of everything from romance novels to Westerns to science fiction to historical mysteries, I was just starting to think of stories as something that could apply to my own life. Only once I did did I realize how few romance novels captured the experiences I find most romantic.

And then Shadowheart gives me this:

He held her look. With a slow move, like a lazy caress, he touched his fingertips to his shoulder, to the place where she had bitten him. Instantly she felt a spring of hot sensation, a violent dream of her power to mark and wound him as he arched under her hands. He smiled at her, a mere hint in the greenish light of the storm.

Elayne looked down, snatching a quick breath, as if the atmosphere had closed upon her.  …She had never in her life before wanted to hurt any creature. It was not anger, though anger was a part of it. But it was more than that, more–it was all twined and twisted with the way he looked beneath his lashes and smiled as if he knew.

Shadowheart, pp 159-160

Even before he gets very far in his redemption arc, Alegretto’s already enchanting me with his submissive seduction, or seductive submission, or whatever this is–it just made me curl my fingers over my mouth and tear up. I didn’t even realize such active, teasing submission was a thing I could want in my relationships, fictional or otherwise. And Elayne’s reaction is described so beautifully, with complexity and sympathy. I never thought I’d see a woman’s sadistic desires written in lyrical, opulent romance-novel prose without having to write it myself.

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