Circlet Press: Welcome to Circlet 2.0

The following Circlet titles are now available in the Amazon Kindle Store:

Like A Sword — one of our brand new “ebook only” books. Five stories of erotic high fantasy with a kinky edge.

Like Crimson Droplets — another ebook exclusive, this one of four erotic vampire stories.

Sexcrime: an anthology of subversive erotica — Some futuristic dystopias and repressive settings where eroticism flourishes in secret.

Like Crimson Droplets is also available for download from Fictionwise in multi-format, and right here on Circlet.com as an eReader document.

Looking to try ebooks but not ready to buy a dedicated device like the Kindle or Sony Reader? Try downloading the free eReader software for your computer, Palm, or iPhone/iPod touch! Get the free software from here: http://www.ereader.com/ereader/software/browse.htm

by J. Blackmore

John Everson is the author of two (soon to be three) novels and dozens of short stories of horror and dark fantasy. He has recently re-released his first novel Covenant as a mass market paperback with Leisure Books. Look for him on the shelves of your local bookstore, or online at www.johneverson.com.

How did you start writing horror and dark fantasy?

Growing up, I read hundreds of science fiction and fantasy novels—I was very much a “golden age of sci-fi” kid, reading and re-reading Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Clifford Simak, Eric Frank Russell, Robert Heinlein, Keith Laumer… But while my reading tastes were “in space” I watched a lot of programs like Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Gallery and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Since I was a voracious reader, I think it was a natural progression that I always wanted to “give back” and produce the same kind of enjoyment for others that I had received from books. My initial short stories had a stronger foot in science fiction backgrounds, but seemed to naturally veer into darker “twist” tales along the lines of those television series stories. I found myself coming up with things more in a Twilight Zone vein than a space opera style, which is what I’d grown up reading. So it wasn’t really a conscious decision to write horror—that was kind of a surprise to me. But those are the stories that popped to mind when I would sit down to create something.

Fictionwise Sale!

Fictionwise is having an “independent publisher” sale, offering all Circlet titles for 25% off right now! (As well as other publishers.) To see all the ebooks currently available at FW from us, click here:
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/CircletPresseBooks.htm

Six titles are currently available, and four more will be available within the next few weeks. Click headline above to see links to the individual titles.

It has not escaped my notice in 16 years editing erotica books that the vast majority of our writers seem to have cats.
As such, I figure it’s high time we did a blog post featuring the cats of our writers.
Please email your photos to “circletintern(at)gmail.com” with at least a sentence or two about your cat(s) […]

by J. Blackmore

Sandy Viktor Nys is a multimedia artist who lives and works in Belgium. He works with photography, digital imaging, and music, and his art has appeared on the covers of Circlet’s anthologies Best Fantastic Erotica and Like Crimson Droplets. You can see some of his work online at http://hybryds.exto.nl.

How did you first get involved in photography and art and/or how did you start creating art with a fantastic/mythological theme?

I’ve got pictures of me when I hardly could walk, four or five years old, with a camera in my hands. My father was a photographer and filmmaker in the sixties. I was raised with this—cameras, the photo studio, the smell of the darkroom—but I only enjoyed taking pictures. Getting older, I had to work in the darkroom, and I hated this.
My interest in myths? My parents traveled around in the world, and so my grandparents raised me. At home my grandfather had tons of books with captivating stories, Greek myths, Oriental fairy tales (with amazing colorful illustrations). I mostly just looked at the pictures in this stuff and started to read when I got older, but my other grandmother also gave me Belgian comic books during our weekly visits: Suske & Wiske, Buck Danny, Lucky Luke, Kuifje, Robbedoes… Actually Belgium is very famous for those comics.

by J. Blackmore

Steampunk is sexy. It just is. Sturdy girls in dirty lace and goggled ruffians and heroes committing indiscriminate acts of daring-do are the stuff of great adventure and epic fantasy. You would think that steampunk erotica would simply be the next logical step. And yet, even though I represent many readers who are hungry for this genre, there’s little out there to be found. We at Circlet are doing our part with the upcoming ebook Like a Wisp of Steam, but it’s still not enough. Maybe the great smut writers out there need some inspiration, so let’s look at all the ways steampunk can get cozy with its erotic side.

[Click the title to read more]

The first of our new ebook-only line of anthologies is now available at Fictionwise! It’s on sale there for 15% off as a new title, this week only.

http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook73179.htm

It’ll be up at the Kindle store and here at Circlet.com within the next few days, also, just in time for the Halloween reading season… I’ll post here again when all the versions have gone live.

by KJ Kabza

He moved his hand beneath my chin, grasping my bridle and forcing my head up. “Are you ready, girl?”

I inhaled, the stable’s scent of old wood and new hay curling into my nose, mingling with the bitter taste of the bit on my tongue. I said nothing. Ponies don’t talk.

He let go and walked around me for a final inspection. His hands ran over my body as he moved, over the white spandex that covered my skin—tightly so over my hands and feet, balling them up and forcing them into hooves. He reached beneath the saddle to my butt plug tail, tousling the sprout of horsehair, then grasping the base and pulling playfully. I gasped but held it in. Good ponies keep in their tails.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Circlet Press is looking for stories to be published in its series of erotic e-books of all original stories. The reading period begins September 15, 2008 and ends October 31st 2008. All stories for ebook publication will conform to the same standards of quality and sensuality as in all Circlet’s print books. Ebook […]

by J. Blackmore

Lynne Jamneck is a talented and versatile author of short stories and nonfiction. She is currently working on her first speculative fiction novel, a project she tentatively calls The Strickland Diaries. You can watch her work at stricklanddiaries.blogspot.com.

How did you start writing erotica and/or how did you start writing sf/fantasy?

Science fiction and fantasy—speculative fiction—has always been my chosen genre, only I never felt experienced or versed enough in the rules of the genre to be able to write it well. I had to hone my skills, develop my craft. I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the best editors in the erotic writing field, and if you’re able to take criticism well, you’ll go far in this business. You will also become a skilled writer. There’s the long, drawn out debate about whether “porn” and “erotica” is the same thing or not, in terms of fiction. For me there’s a difference. A tiny one, but it’s there. Sex can be written either very good—or very bad. Make of that what you will, because you get the good and the bad in both categories.

by J. Blackmore

Catherine Lundoff is the editor of the fantasy and horror anthology Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories (Lethe Press, 2008). She is also the author of two collections of lesbian erotica: Night’s Kiss (Torquere Press, 2005) and the 2008 Goldie Award winner Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing (Lethe Press, 2007) as well as over sixty published stories and articles. Visit her website at www.visi.com/~clundoff

How did you start writing erotica and/or how did you start writing sf/fantasy?

I started writing fiction back in my early thirties, at the instigation of my partner. I’d been a science fiction and fantasy fan for years and had read a fair amount of erotica but had never written any fiction whatsoever. She suggested I try writing a nonfiction book. Once I started that, I decided to try my hand at fiction as well. My first published story was actually a historical romance. I decided to try writing erotica when I read one poorly written story too many and decided that I could do better. Science fiction and fantasy erotica followed from that (in fact, one of my first sales was to one of Circlet’s vampire erotica anthologies), and from there, I started writing non-erotic science fiction and fantasy as well. And it all came out of a conversation in which my partner said, “Honey, why don’t you write a book?”

by J. Blackmore

Katheleen Bradean is the author of dozens of erotic short stories which have appeared in anthologies such as Best Women’s Erotica and the Mammoth Book of New Erotica. Her latest work can be found in Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades, edited by Catherine Lundoff. Check out her blog at kathleenbradean.blogspot.com or visit her on MySpace at myspace.com/kathleen_bradean.

How did you start writing erotica?

I read Fear of Flying. Most people remember that story for the zipless fuck, but the liberating thing to me was when she talked about her period. I knew people had sex. I had no idea people were allowed to talk honestly about their bodies. What an eye-opening moment that was! When I started to write, I couldn’t resist the freedom to show characters into the most revealing moments in their lives. Getting to sex may involve a lot of lying, but once the clothes are stripped away, there’s not much left to hide behind.

by Kierstin Cherry

I came from a very sheltered home where the word “sex” was not even whispered, not even for educational purposes. To make matters worse, I went to Catholic school. As you can imagine, “the birds-and the-bees” was not a plausible topic among the hundred-year-old, ruler-wielding nuns. So, at the tender age of eight, when one of my meaner friends told me you could get pregnant from kissing a boy, I believed her. Good thing I didn’t like boys—it probably saved me millions in therapy bills.

by J. Blackmore

Paula Guran is an editor, writer, and literary agent. She is currently the editor for Juno Books. Visit Juno at www.juno-books.com, or read Paula’s editorial blog at www.juno-books.com/blog

How did you come to be the editor of Juno? Why did you come to the decision to make Juno’s focus fantasy with strong female characters?

Juno came about in an odd way. Basically Prime/Wildside was looking for a type of imprint they thought would be successfully distributed through Diamond. The idea was “paranormal romance is hot,” but the guys didn’t really know what it was…

(Click title above to read whole interview!)

Wired Hard 2 is now available as an ebook!

Fictionwise has the title on sale for 15% off this week only:
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook71303.htm?cache

It’ll be live on the Amazon Kindle store in a few days.

Wired Hard 2 brings us a homoerotic collection of futuristic stories. Fighter pilots, high tech detectives, interstellar diplomats, prison convicts, espionage agents, and even angels–all men who love men–populate these tales. Dark and gritty like the hottest works of John Preston and Mason Powell, the stories in WIRED HARD 2 go deep into the psyche of male-male eroticism. Includes stories by: Gary Bowen, M. Christian, Whitt Pond, Eric Del Carlo, Karl-Rene Moore, Steven Schwartz, Mason Powell, Steve Eller, Tom Dickson, Ralph Greco.

by J. Blackmore

Midori is an artist and educator as well as a writer. She published her first collection of science fiction erotica, Master Han’s Daughter with Circlet Press in 2006, and is also well-known for her non-fiction work, such as The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage. You can find her online at PlanetMidori.com. (This interview was conducted via IM and uses that medium’s writing conventions.)

How did you start writing erotica and/or how did you start writing sf/fantasy?

I usually write non-fiction. I’ve told plenty of erotic stories to my lovers—as well as non-erotic stories to friends—simply to entertain them. I had not written any until a few years ago… (click title above to read full interview)

by J. Blackmore

Ann Vremont has published her fantasy, science fiction, and cyberpunk erotica with Kindle, Ellora’s Cave, Changeling Press, and Samhain Publishing. She is also a talented visual artist, specializing in computer generated 3D images. Visit her online at www.annvremont.com

How did you start writing erotica and/or how did you start writing sf/fantasy?

When I first started identifying as a “writer” (rather than as someone who’d written a short story here, a poem there, etc.), erotica was already present in my stories, undoubtedly fueled by one of my primary reading staples at the time, splatterpunk…

Painted Doll: An Erotist’s Tale

by M. Christian

Chapter Two

On the banister going up, winding down the paired columns at the top, in both architectural details marching in a tightly twisting single file, preceding tails barely touching the tips of a following hissing tongue. Round and round, up and up, one lizard behind the other. Under her fingers, sliding smoothly along the silken lacquer, scales, dagger teeth, and clawed toes, were almost too precisely carved, too excellent. Their realism a soft whisper of perhaps, maybe, could-be movement.

Claire didn’t like the walk up those carpeted stairs, with their own parade of tiny reptiles woven into the border in careful golden thread, because of that banister. Didn’t like putting her hand on the smooth pillars on the upper landing, either; that long dead Malay, Indonesian, or Chinese wood carver’s art too haunting, ghostly shivers up her arm.

by J.Blackmore

M.Christian has been called “one of the greatest living writers of erotica” (mostly by himself) and a “hack who shouldn’t quit his day job” (by everyone else). The author of more than three hundred short stories, he’s appeared in pretty much every “Best Erotic” anthology there is, from Best American Erotica, to Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many others. He is the editor of twenty anthologies including Confessions, Amazons, and Garden of the Perverse (with Sage Vivant) and The Mammoth Book of Future Cops and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi). His stories have been published in five collections: Dirty Words (gay erotica), Speaking Parts (lesbian erotica), The Bachelor Machine (SF erotica), Filthy (more gay erotica) and-–coming soon–Licks & Promises (the straight stuff). He is also the author of five novels: Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Brushes, and Painted Doll. His site is www.mchristian.com.

How did you start writing erotica and/or how did you start writing sf/fantasy…? (Click title above to see full interview.)

by Gloria Y.

I have been a reader of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series for several years now, and now one of her newer series has especially caught my eye. Writing as Kinley MacGregor, she has delved into Arthurian legends, putting her own spin on the myth through her Lord of Avalon series. Sword of Darkness, the first tale in the series, combines dark magic, romance, and modern day humor in a world of old lore and fantasy.