Tag Archives: J. J. Poulos

New Book: Superlative Speculative Erotica is here at last!

Our giant twenty-fifth anniversary collection is now available for download! Twenty of our best stories of the last five years.

$9.99 ebook
ISBN 978-1-61390-165-6
$19.99 print
ISBN 978-1-61390-187-8
285 Pages; 94,000 words

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Funded through a Kickstarter campaign run in 2017– the year of Circlet’s 25th anniversary– Superlative Speculative Erotica features stories voted on by the Kickstarter and Patreon supporters and reflects many of the genres published by Circlet Press: a little cyberpunk, a little high fantasy, a touch of horror, some superheroes, a bit of space opera, some paranormal… What unites these stories is their quality. Check this amazing list out:

Bête Noire” by Annabeth Leong from A Beastly Affair
“An Analog Christmas” by Kal Cobalt from Jingle Balls
“From The Shallows, Cold As Death” by Bernie Mojzes from What Lies Beneath
“Double: A Tale of Love and Engineering” by Nobilis Reed from Like A Love Triangle
“The Secret Life of Ramona Lee” by Michael M. Jones from Puxhill by Night
“Deflowered” by Avery Vanderlyle from A Beastly Affair
“Crow Luck” by Dame Bodacious from Like Fortune’s Fool
“Enchanted” by Shanna Germain from Charming
“Stolen Days” by TS Porter from Hard As Stone edited by Julie Cox.
“Bridge Over Shifter’s Chasm” by Raven Kaldera from Extraordinary Deviations
“Questing” by Charles Payseur from Nights of the Round Table
“The Night Air” by Mary Anne Mohanraj from The Stars Change
“The Closing Shift” by JJ Poulos from Coffee: Hot
“Wizard’s Staff” by Julie Cox from Hard As Stone
“Disarmed” by Vinnie Tesla from Silent Shadows Come
“In The Blood” by Kathleen Tudor from Like Fortune’s Fool
“Evidence of Things Unseen” by A.C. Wise from What Lies Beneath
“Season of Fire” by Sasha Payne from Wired Hard 5
“Primè Nocta” by Kierstin Cherry from Like Myth Made Flesh
“I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Circlet Editor” by H.B. Kurtzwilde & Alex Picchetti from Like A Circlet Editor

The anthology, like the cohort of authors and staff of Circlet Press itself, features characters who identify as lesbian, gay, genderqueer, bisexual, trans, and heterosexual. The erotic activities expressed within the stories cover a similar variety, though it’s not an identical match: a gay male author can write a lesbian witch who has sex with a gender-changing demon. What label do you put on that? We call it… superlative speculative erotica.

Here’s a little taste of the very first story: Annabeth Leong’s “Bete Noir:”

For a while, Beauty and I made each other invincible. She relished every beastly part of me, and so I found myself trusting her with anything and everything—even secrets I hid while I was still a lady.

Continue reading New Book: Superlative Speculative Erotica is here at last!

New Book: Like a Spell: Fire: Gay Fantasy Erotica

$2.99 ebook
ISBN: 978-1-61390-164-9
36,345 words
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For the Like a Spell anthology, we asked writers to challenge the traditional tropes and send us something new—original stories of magic users, interesting twists on the typical sorcerers and mages. The response was overwhelming and exciting, and we decided to publish four separate anthologies, using the theme of classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) as the focus for each collection.

For the fire anthology, we’ve focused on stories portraying the love between men. When we thought fire, we thought of the passion and heat of men, the all-encompassing flames of their desires. We thought of the fire gods Ra and Vulcan, Agni and Xiuhtecuhtli. We thought about strength, ferocity, and power.

In “Passage, Performance, Passion,” Avery Vanderlyle explores what would happen if a Changeling wizard recruited an ordinary—but awfully cute—mortal male to participate in a sex ritual. The Changeling, Raavi, just wants to open a portal to find a gift his parents left him, but if he needs to get naked in a cave with a human in order to do so, who is he to argue?

In J. C. Williams’s “Here There Be Dragons,” we get a peek into David Maurey’s birthday celebration. David is a bit traditional and easily embarrassed, but that hasn’t stopped Callum from lovingly torturing him in front of all the other dragon handlers. The festivities continue at home, as Callum makes sure David’s birthday is one to remember.

In “The Best Part of the Power,” Ellis Sandry tells the story of two professors who geek out together and end up, well, a little more intimate than two respectable colleagues ought to be. Arin is young and freshly hired on to the faculty for his expertise in cultural thermatology, and Professor Brook is an experienced archaeologist, a member of the old guard. Arin has fantasized about the older professor, but he doesn’t actually think anything will come of it… until it does.

In “The Blood of the Mage,” Rhidian Brenig Jones reimagines the classic orphan-with-magic trope and turns it on its head. Yes, Leonas is an orphan, down on his luck, with no immediate future prospects, and yes, he has magical abilities that he’s been trying to hide. But when he meets Aleris, a startlingly handsome mage who looks much younger than he really is, Leonas learns that becoming a mage is a lot less about sitting in stuffy rooms bent over tomes and a lot more about mastering his body and harnessing his sexual energies for use elsewhere.

Lucien Grey shows us a lonelier side of a mage’s life in “The Prince’s Mage.” Phryne is blind, but he doesn’t need eyesight to see the beauty in Lysander, third in line to the throne and chained in a dungeon since adolescence. Phryne knows how to keep the demon inside Prince Lysander at bay, but when someone places a target on Lysander’s back, it’s the demon itself that Phryne needs to talk to in order to get some answers.

Finally, in “Fervidus,” Welton B. Marsland introduces us to Dunstan, a crotchety old wizard who’s too smart for his own good. When he finds out his apartment is under new management, he thinks nothing of it. But then the new landlord shows up to collect the rent, and Dunstan recognizes Martin Greenman, an “annoying little git” from his army days. Then he hears shocking noises from the landlord’s unit—right above his—and realizes that not only are they sex noises, but, worse, he’s… strangely intrigued by them.

Read on for a hot excerpt from “The Best Part of Power” by Ellis Sandry:

Continue reading New Book: Like a Spell: Fire: Gay Fantasy Erotica

New book! Coffee: Hot

Coffee: Hot$6.99 ebook; $12.95 paperback
ISBN 978-1-61390-143-4 (ebook)
978-1-61390-144-1 (print)

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The ebook edition is also available at: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, AllRomanceEbooks, and the iBookstore and Google Play store.

The print edition is available on CreateSpace and elsewhere.

Coffee-flavored erotica! Taste the bitter roast when a barista brews alone at closing time and is joined by coffee’s physical manifestation. Roll the rich smoothness of steamed milk along your tongue while spies hide from the enemy and pass the time in tense pleasure. In this anthology of speculative erotic fiction featuring coffee shops, COFFEE: HOT, editor Victoria Pond brings together nine authors to explore coffee’s connection with the erotic fantastic.

Alcohol and erotica were frequent bedfellows in the 20th century, but now we’re well into the 21st! Imbibing caffeine causes no hazy field of impaired judgement, and coffee shops are places to stimulate the mind and to socialize with all sorts.

This volume contains stories ranging from Victorian London to a far-flung space station, from the quiet to the action-packed, from two-person sex to tentacles. (Wondering how there can be coffee shop erotica with tentacles? Read “Dark Roast” by Justin Josh to find out.)

Readers love curling up in oversized plush chairs to read in cafes. Authors are drawn to working in coffee shops. But what hides beneath the milk-steamy surface of this glorious addiction? In a world where everyone is over-familiar with the steamer’s whir and the roaster’s aroma, drinkers forget to stroke the glazed porcelain that holds their caffeine and radiates its warmth through their hands and into their hearts.

COFFEE: HOT features work by Django Wexler, Rebecca Croteau, Owen James Franks, Justin Josh, Axa Lee, K.L. Noone, JJ Poulos, Greer Thompson, and Avery Vanderlyle. Their stories take a setting we know so well and transform it into something magical once again.

Hot excerpt, keep reading! Continue reading New book! Coffee: Hot