Things Invisible to See -- Older Circlet Anthology Now Available As An Ebook
Things Invisible to See: Lesbian and Gay Tales of Magic Realism
edited by Lawrence Schimel
ISBN: 978-1-61390-072-7
Word Count: 61,000
List Price: $6.99
This Circlet title from 1998, part of the Ultra Violet Library imprint for queer fantasy and science fiction, is now available in digital format for the first time.Top contemporary authors bring us these stories of the realms of spirit that underlie the mundane world. Comic situations, such as a lesbian who wakes up one morning to find that she has a penis or a gay man who finds an angel tangled in his laundry line, alternate with poignant tales of loss and love. These stories are about looking for–or inadvertently finding–something more than life as we know it.
This book contains stories by Lawrence Schimel, Laura Antoniou, Michelle Sagara West, Leslea Newman, Nancy Springer, Martha Soukup, Sarah Schulman, Rand B. Lee, Kerry Bashford, and Brian Thomsen.
No Safewords: A Marketplace Fan Anthology now on sale!
No Safewords: A Marketplace Fan Anthology
edited by Laura Antoniou
$7.99, 62,300 words
ISBN: 978-1-61390-061-1
About the Book:
Ten stories of BDSM, submission, and service set in the secret world of Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace. The Marketplace has fans all over the world, and Antoniou invited them to come play in her fictional sandbox/dungeon. Numbered among those fans happen to be some of the top erotica and alternative sexuality writers in the world, including D.L. King, Sassafras Lowrey, and Elizabeth Schechter.
The full slate of writers contributing to NO SAFEWORDS runs the gamut of award-winning authors to bright-eyed new voices, as creator Laura Antoniou explains in her introduction: “As the saying goes, ‘blessed are those who embellish the tale.’ So here is the Marketplace, as seen through other eyes. There are some stories that show the world exactly as I created it, and some that push my boundaries a tad. There is romance and strife, glee and despair. There is hot sex, of course, but there’s also humor and melodrama. Just the way I like it.
There were some surprises for me! I was delighted to find several female dominant/male submissive stories, especially since my examples of those relationships tend to be supporting, rather than main characters. I was also pleased by the writers who weren’t afraid to go a little dark; a collection of stories all about slaves misbehaving in mildly inconvenient ways and getting fantastically, erotically punished would have been tiresome.
So whether you want a rollicking Victorian flavored tale of adventure and romance or a modern, sexy welcome to a new home for a familiar character, you will find flavors here to tempt or satisfy your tastes. Return for more time travel to a world where the language we so casually use to describe our tastes doesn’t even exist, but where longing for a ritualized order and discipline and a sense of belonging transcends words, and gets expressed in the rich metaphor—and reality—of a garden.
Then swerve away from romance to feel the terror of a slave newly sold to an owner who represents their worst nightmare, whether because of demographics or the enormous challenge of a language barrier.
Here, you can get into the reflection of a trainer’s long career or the grief and anguish of a new owner confronted with an inherited house full of property she didn’t choose. Or, watch how even the jaded, experienced ways of the Marketplace aware people become awkward in that most awkward of adult challenges—a marriage proposal.
Get a glimpse into the rarefied and formal household of an owner/spotter, and then take a detour to the desolate history of a young genderqueer punk fresh from the streets, confronted with the most iconic of Marketplace characters.
All of this—a synthesis of my imagination and theirs, fed by culture, fantasy, fairy tales and fears. All fiction is, in a way, fan fiction. I am sorry it took so long for me to see this and to open myself to the interesting sensations—you might call it edge-play—in giving people access to my favorite victims. But better late than never!”
Full table of contents:
A Thousand Things Before Breakfast by Marie Casey Stevens
The First by D. Alexandria
If You Try Sometime by D. L. King
Her Owner’s Voice by Leigh Ann Hildebrand
Hiding in Plain Sex by Sassafras Lowrey
Delirious Moonlight, 1916: Mr. Sloan’s Boy by Anna Watson
Pearls in the Deep Blue Sea by Jamie Thorsen
Coals for the New Castle by Marie Casey Stevens
Getting Real by S.M. Li
O, Promise Me! by Elizabeth Schechter
Stocking Stuffers and Dyke the Halls: Holiday-themed Gay and Lesbian erotica!
Stocking Stuffers
edited by David Laurents
$5.99, 40,900 words
ISBN 978-1-61390-067-3
Dyke the Halls
edited by Linda Alvarez
$5.99, 36,000 words
ISBN 978-1-61390-068-0
Ten years after their original publication, these two Circlet classics are finally available in digital form–just in time for the holidays!
Who can resist a smorgasbord of delicious holiday treats? Stocking Stuffers is the first ever anthology of gay erotic Christmas stories, filled with hot stories sure to heat up the coldest of winter nights. Meanwhile, Dyke the Halls is full of sexy stories for women both naughty and nice–much better than any mistletoe.
Stocking Stuffers contains stories by Tom Caffrey, M. Christian, Jameson Currier, Lars Eighner, Christopher Marconni, Felice Picano, Matthew Rettenmund, Leigh Rutledge, Lawrence Schimel, and Simon Sheppard. Dyke the Halls contains stories by Susan St. Aubin, Kate Dominic, Lori Selke, Sage Vivant, Andrea Dale, Anya Levin, M. Christian, Shari J. Berman, Karin Kallmaker, Clio Knight, and Zonna.
Both books are on sale for $4.99 until January 1st, 2013!
Like a Coming Wave: Oceanic Erotica
Like a Coming Wave: Oceanic Erotica
edited by Andrea Trask
$5.99, 41,500 words
ISBN 978-1-61390-041-3
The ocean is a vast playground of creatures real and imagined, rife with power and depth. In LIKE A COMING WAVE eight of fantasy’s best writers explore the erotic potential in the world of water. Mermaids and -men, selkies, Greek Gods, and even kraken cavort in these pages, featuring stories from Nisi Shawl, Julie Cox, Marie Carlson, Pepper Espinoza, and more, representing various sexualities and styles.
Table of Contents
Breathing by Julie Cox
Extremiad by Nisi Shawl
Helios and Ceto by Pepper Espinoza
To the Sea,To the Sea by Marie Carlson
Wet Medium by Beryl Falls
A Requiem for Poseidon by S. C. Mitchell
Silk Skin by Elias A. St. James
How Much Water, How Much Air by M.E. Comstock
What Happens at the Tavern Stays at the Tavern
What Happens at the Tavern Stays at the Tavern: Epic Fantasy Quest Erotica
edited by J. Levine
$5.99, 46,000 words
ISBN 978-1-61390-066-6
About the Book:
Since Tolkien’s time, many authors have taken readers along on elaborate treks through fantastic worlds. In What Happens at the Tavern Stays at the Tavern, we asked writers to tackle the pauses and interstices in a fantasy quest. What kinds of steamy adventures happen behind the scenes, when our heroes and heroines are trekking along their journey?
The word “fantasy” evokes many different responses in people, but the epic fantasy quest is the heart of the genre. Heroes and heroines set off to defeat evil. Haven’t you ever wondered what happens behind the scenes, during the downtime the authors gloss over? “What Happens at the Tavern Stays at the Tavern” gives us the peek behind the curtains we’ve all been waiting for (some of us since the “teaser” excerpt in the Harvard Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings”…).
In “Encounter at the Lonely Dragon,” Elinor Gray stays true to the title of the anthology, telling the tale of a would-be quester who has an unexpected run-in with a former lover in the secluded loft of a tavern’s stable. “Orin’s Strand” by Vivien Jackson weaves a story of a seer in love who can’t resist the temptation to use her powers―and her body―to bind her lover to her. Kierstin Cherry’s “Paget and the Princess” follows Paget, a Knight of the Guard, sworn to protect her princess―and her princess’s chastity―who nonetheless can’t resist the princess’s warm bosom and soft lips.
In “The Place Where Heroes Are Made” by Sarah Ellis, we find ourselves in another tavern, this one run by a family that beds those heroes marked by the gods as doomed so that they don’t go childless into unknown lands. “Crystalline Sorcery” by Julie Cox explores the sexual identity of Heid, a female warrior who longs to be able to penetrate as a man, and her elven companion, a priestess who insists that the divide between male and female is not so inflexible as Heid thinks. Finally, “Flings and Arrows” by Andrea Trask lets us in on the journey of Alleria, a woman who is the key to fulfilling a prophecy―but when a mysterious man kidnaps her and reaches between her legs to confirm that she’s a virgin, all may be lost.
In her latest anthology, editor Jennifer Levine invites you to escape into a world of fantasy, one where you get magic, warriors, fantasy worlds, and sex.
Like a Breath of Flame: Erotic Tales of Dragons
Like a Breath of Flame: Erotic Tales of Dragons
edited by Cosmin Alexander and Cecilia Tan
$6.99 ebook, 46,200 words
ISBN 978-1-61390-065-9
Circlet Press digital titles are also available at the Amazon Kindle Store, B&N.com, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple’s iBookstore, and many independent booksellers via Google ebooks, as well as specialty ebookstores like All Romance eBooks, and Weightless Ebooks, to name just a few! (Please let us know if your favorite source for digital books does not carry this title and you want them to.)
<strong>About the Book:</strong>
Dragons are present across almost all human culture: from the classic fire-breathing and princess-coveting dragons of Western Europe to the wise and noble dragons of East Asia to the great monstrous lizards of Greek mythology to the feathered serpents of South America. But what of the sexual side of the dragon? What of sensuality at the border between earth and sky, what of the myths of kings and emperors being literally descended from dragons, what of dragons who take on human shape to learn mankind’s ways? Humans and dragons have existed side by side since nearly the beginning of time—surely their desires must have crossed at some point.
Like a Breath of Flame: Erotic Tales of Dragons contains nine short stories that explore the theme of scaled sensuality from a variety of different perspectives. In this anthology are stories of lonely mountain dragons with exotic tastes, dragons with the power to slip into their lover’s dreams, shapechanger dragons, unusual interpretations of the term “dragon rider,” dragon-as-devil and dragon-as-god… and, yes, no less than two versions of the virgin-sacrificed-to-dragon story, each with their own unique twist on the tale. These stories of serpentine sexuality are certain to delight the senses.
This anthology includes stories by KJ Kabza, Julian Oliver-Fenn, Dean Scarborough, Kannang Feng, Steven Schwartz, Dominic Santi, David Hubbard, Kimber Camacho, and Nobilis Reed.
Click here for a hot excerpt!
Scheharazade's Facade: Fantastical Tales of Gender-Bending, Crossdressing, and Transformation
Scheherazade’s Facade
edited by Michael M. Jones
$14.95 paperback, 208 pages, ISBN 978-1-61390-058-1
$9.99 ebook, 116,000 words ISBN 978-1-61390-059-8
Circlet Press digital titles are also available at the Amazon Kindle Store, B&N.com, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple’s iBookstore, and many independent booksellers via Google ebooks, as well as specialty ebookstores like All Romance eBooks, and Weightless Ebooks, to name just a few! (Please let us know if your favorite source for digital books does not carry this title and you want them to.)
About the Book:
“For starters, honey, I don’t believe in Hell–that’s just some old man’s way of telling me reasons why I can’t be me. Like “biology is destiny” means I have to be a boy.”
– “Lady Marmalade’s Special Place in Hell” by David Sklar
There have always been stories of those willing to blur or transcend the traditional gender roles. Some do it out of necessity, others are merely embracing their true selves. Sometimes it’s for fun, other times survival. Every culture has their gender benders, their cross-dressers, their rule breakers. From Bugs Bunny to Mulan, Alanna of Trebond to Klinger, our folk heroes and cultural icons push boundaries and challenge expectations.
In Scheherazade’s Façade, twelve of today’s most intriguing authors spin tales of magic, mystery, self-discovery and adventure, each with a twist. In these pages you’ll find shape-shifting dragons, triumphant drag queens, tragic selkies, lost princes and would-be warriors. You’ll find star-crossed lovers and mysterious travelers, cross-dressers and gender bending heroes of all sorts.
This launch title for Circlet’s new Gressive Press imprint features all-new fantasy and urban fantasy from Tanith Lee, Sarah Rees Brennan, Tiffany Trent, Aliette de Bodard, Alma Alexander, David Sklar, Melissa Mead, C.S. MacCath, Paolo Chikiamco, Sunny Moraine, Lyn C.A. Gardner, and Shanna Germain.
Call for Submissions: The Flesh Made Word -- Erotic Tales About Writing
Call for Submissions: The Flesh Made Word: Erotic Tales About Writing
Edited by Bernie Mojzes
Deadline: March 1, 2013
In the age of communication – where words are cheap, easy, and disposable – it’s easy to forget the sheer physicality of the written word. The inscription, through will and intention, through the press and flow of pen and ink expressing what’s hidden within ourselves upon a surface that is transformed through the process: what is more intimate than that?
The Flesh Made Word is an erotic anthology about the act of writing, and of being written upon. Old typewriters, the tattooist’s pen, the press of fountain-pen nib to flesh. The sensuality of the words themselves, both the sound and the shape of them. The clack of typewriter keys and the shuffle-clank of the printing press. The intersection of the expression of the idea and the physicality of the body. The transformation or transcendence of the flesh through written language.
I am looking for strong, edgy stories that don’t exist merely as an excuse for a great sex scene. Send me stories that take me to surprising places, and stories that don’t flinch.
While this anthology is expected to be primarily comprised of Science Fiction & Fantasy, it is open to (almost) all genres, including Mystery, Adventure, Western, Mainstream and the ever-popular-though-always-misunderstood Slipstream.
More details:
Length: Up to 8000 words.
Response Time: 1 month. Please query if you do not receive an acknowledgement within 3 days.
How to submit: Send your stories in .doc or .rtf format to fmw-subs@kappamaki.com. Please don’t send in .docx format, and please use a reasonable font and follow something that looks reasonably like Standard Manuscript Format.
About the editor: Bernie Mojzes is a writer of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, with occasional deviations into mainstream fiction. His stories appeared in as divergent markets as Daily Science Fiction and Circlet Press’s Whispers in Darkness. He also co-edits the Journal of Unlikely Entomology. That’s probably a good place to look to get a feel for his editorial aesthetic.
Only email submissions are accepted. Submissions sent to other addresses/other editors at Circlet Press will not be considered. Standard manuscript formatting rules apply even though sending as an attachment (MS Word .doc or .rtf preferred). Please note that this means your name, address, and email contact must appear on the manuscript itself and not simply in your email message. (If you’re not sure what a standard short story submission format should look like, Google is your friend.)
No simultaneous submissions (that is, don’t also send your story elsewhere at the same time, and don’t send it to multiple Circlet editors, either), and no multiple submissions – wait to hear back on the first story before sending a second.
All stories must include explicit sexuality and erotic focus. Romantic content is welcome, but in a short story remember to keep the details on the action and its effects on the main character’s internal point of view. We favor a strong, singular narrative voice (no ‘head hopping’ or swapping between different character’s points of view within a scene). For more details on our editorial preferences, see the general submission guidelines on circlet.com. We highly recommend reading the guidelines, especially the “do not send” list, to increase your chances of sending us something we’ll love. Try to avoid cliches. Fresh and direct language is preferred to overly euphemistic. Sex-positive, please, no rape/nonconsensuality/necrophilia or other purposefully gross topics. We do not publish horror.
Originals only, no reprints. We purchase first rights for inclusion in the ebook anthology for $0.01/word up to $25, with the additional rights to a print edition later for an additional payment of the same amount if a print edition happens. Authors retain the rights to the individual stories; Circlet exercises rights to the anthology as a whole.
Ebook edition of Cecilia Tan's "Royal Treatment" now avaliable
Royal Treatment
by Cecilia Tan
$3.99
35,000 words
ISBN 978-1-61390-063-5
Circlet Press digital titles are also available at the Amazon Kindle Store, B&N.com, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple’s iBookstore, and many independent booksellers via Google ebooks, as well as specialty ebookstores like All Romance eBooks, and Weightless Ebooks, to name just a few! (Please let us know if your favorite source for digital books does not carry this title and you want them to.)
About the Book:
In this novella-length prequel to Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords, Cecilia Tan weaves another BDSM science fiction tale. Arshan is a young noble on a world where dominance and submission are a way of life. In his travels he has taken full advantage of the carnal pleasures on offer, sowing wild oats across several planets and learning the joys of bondage and discipline from both sides of the whip in preparation for someday becoming a full-time master. He is summoned home, though, to join a group of candidates being convened so that the crown princess may choose a consort and a slave.
Arshan is not destined for slavery, not even at the feet of the future queen, and finds himself trapped in a world of castle intrigue and sexual competition for dominance. He is fresh meat, and everyone wants a piece of him. Can he find a way to survive without surrendering, to submit without being collared for life?
Warnings/Enticements: BDSM, bisexuality, power games, dubious consent, erotic jeopardy, knife play, D/s, explicit sex.
About the Author:
Cecilia Tan is “simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature,” according to Susie Bright. Tan is the author of many books, including the ground-breaking erotic short story collections Black Feathers (HarperCollins), White Flames(Running Press), and Edge Plays(Circlet Press), and the erotica romances Mind Games, The Prince’s Boy, The Hot Streak, and the Magic University series. Forthcoming she has a three-book BDSM erotic romance series from Grand Central Publishing entitled Slow Surrender.
Her short stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Nerve, Best American Erotica, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and tons of other places. She was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers in 2010, was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Leather Association in 2001, and won the inaugural Rose & Bay Awards for crowdfunded fiction in 2010 for Daron’s Guitar Chronicles. The Prince’s Boy won honorable mention in both the NLA Writing Awards and the Rainbow Awards. She lives in the Boston area with her lifelong partner corwin and three cats.
Ota Discovers Fire Standalone
Ota Discovers Fire
by Vinnie Tesla
$2.99
14,200 words
ISBN 978-1-61390-064-2
Circlet Press digital titles are also available at the Amazon Kindle Store, B&N.com, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple’s iBookstore, and many independent booksellers via Google ebooks, as well as specialty ebookstores like All Romance eBooks, and Weightless Ebooks, to name just a few! (Please let us know if your favorite source for digital books does not carry this title and you want them to.)
About the Book:
The winner of Circlet Press’s 2012 “Fantastic Erotica” award, “Ota Discovers Fire” is a cliché-busting fantasy tale of magic, kinky sex, and witty dialogue.
The story follows Ota, a novice fire magician with no wilderness survival skills, who is traveling through the forest to reach his relatives in Ivy City. His journey is enlivened when he comes across a girl who claims to be able to turn herself into a wolf, and when she agrees to guide and protect him… for a price. As with all of Vinnie Tesla’s Circlet publications, “Ota Discovers Fire” is at once funny and sexy, a masterful display of worldbuilding, and defies standard fantasy tropes.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Circlet Press, readers were given the opportunity to vote for their favorite story from among all the stories published by Circlet from 2008 to the present. “Ota Discovers Fire”–originally published in Circlet Press’s travel-themed anthology, Like a Long Road Home–beat out hundreds of other stories to claim the title of top story. (The top 19 stories have been compiled in a print anthology, Fantastic Erotica, also recently released by Circlet Press.) “Ota Discovers Fire” is available here as a stand-alone ebook, with bonus glossary.
“… A traveler’s tale that blends anthropological satire with a compelling setting and delightfully hot human-werewolf sex scenes that flow seamlessly from the plot.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review of Fantastic Erotica)
About the Author:
Vinnie Tesla is the author of The Erotofluidic Age, a tongue-in-cheek pornographic steampunk ebook, published by Circlet Press. He has a bunch of short stories and a badly neglected blog at vinnietesla.com. His current project is a crime novel set in the world of “Ota Discovers Fire.” He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his spousalbeast and has never owned a car, a house, or a tie-dyed article of clothing.
