Deadline Extended: Coming Together: Positively Sexy

I've extended the deadline for Coming Together: Positively Sexy until October 1st! If you were thinking of writing a story for this, I hope this gives you the time you need.

Here's the full information about the call.

As always, please feel free to get in touch with questions.

Guest Post: First Time Editor

I invited Delilah Night to post here about her upcoming anthology, Coming Together: Under the Mistletoe, which just opened for submissions, and will benefit Project Linus. I love Coming Together projects in general, I'm excited about Delilah's book in particular, and I'm also excited to see a writer taking on the editing mantle for the first time. I asked Delilah to write about what drew her to edit an anthology, and she's responded with a moving personal story, as well as some great insights into both the writing and editing processes.

Without further ado, here she is:

by Delilah Night

Hi Annabeth, thank you for hosting me!

I am editing my first anthology, Coming Together: Under the Mistletoe, this year with a projected publication date of December 1. It’s scary to make the leap from contributor to editor, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while.

Alison Tyler organized Summer Loving, with proceeds going to fellow author Sommer Marsden’s family as they dealt with a medical crisis in 2014. It was the first time I’d heard of a charity erotica anthology. A few months later, I saw my first Coming Together call—Coming Together is a charity press, and each anthology benefits a charity picked by the editor. I am proud to have contributed to four of the Coming Together anthologies—For the Holidays, Among the Stars, Strange Shifters, and Keeping Warm.

I grew up quite poor. We needed welfare to help keep food in our home, and to help clothe me. There were times when teachers paid for me to go on field trips so that I wouldn’t miss out. I sacrificed a lot to go to college and grad school to get a master’s degree in teaching. I thought I had my career planned out when I had my daughter, Turtle (obviously not her real name).

To make a very long story short, Turtle nearly died from a bacterial infection at a week old. Then she had a stroke. It remains the worst thing that has ever happened to me/our family. In the middle of that darkness, our nurse gave us a hand-made hat and blanket from Project Linus. Receiving that gift from a stranger was like a ray of light in the darkest point in our lives.

We are a success story. Thanks to an amazing team of doctors, nurses, early intervention staff, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other specialists, plus a heaping dose of luck, Turtle is now a healthy, happy seven year old.

I want to give back, and I’ve decided that Coming Together is one of the ways to do so. As an erotica author, it is a unique opportunity to give back by writing (and editing).

As a novice editor, my biggest fears are that I will let everyone down—my contributors, Coming Together, and Project Linus. However, I’m lucky to have several close friends who have edited anthologies for various presses to serve as mentors and advisors.

Going into the anthology, my plan is to put together an anthology of the best stories and poetry that come my way. One of my favorite anthologies is Rose Caraway’s The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica. The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica skips from genre to genre with the grand unifying theme of being the best examples of erotica that Rose could put together. I want Under the Mistletoe to emulate that example.

I hope to put together an anthology with the unifying theme of winter. Not every story should be about Christmas—there’s Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve, and random days in December as well. I don’t want every couple to be heterosexual. I don’t want every pairing to be two people. I don’t want every couple to be white. Variety—and above all, quality— is what will grab my attention.

On an organizational level, I’ve set out my calendar of when the deadline is, when replies will happen, and so forth. Ensuring that I stick to that calendar will require discipline. As an author, I’ve worked with great editors and bad editors, and one of the biggest differences is that the best editors are hyper organized and I want to live up to that standard.

But, just as you can’t actually anticipate what having a child is like until you have one, I expect that there will be a number of bumps along the road. My goal is to handle them professionally such that my contributors are never inconvenienced.

I expect that my second anthology will be better than my first and that my fifth will be better than my second, and so forth. But just as I remain proud of my first story, I hope that I will always be proud of this anthology.

That said, any advice you can provide is welcome, Annabeth.

Coming Together: Under the Mistletoe
Submission Call

Deadline is September 1, 2016

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow because we’ll be heating up this sexy December anthology.

I am looking for your best winter stories. Are your characters cuddled up inside while a blizzard rages, or are they snowbirds spending Christmas Day on the beach in the tropics? Who belongs on Santa’s Naughty List? Is your billionaire a Scrooge? Is this the year they come out to their family? Do they have a special someone to kiss when the ball drops?

While the theme is winter, you may also add in your favorite December holiday, but this is not mandatory. I’m looking for compelling stories with compelling characters and a rich plot as well as beautiful poetry.

Guidelines

* Your story should be set between December 1 and December 31 whether explicitly or implicitly.

* All orientations, ethnicities, pairings, and interpretations of “winter” are encouraged.

* All sub-genres and time periods welcome (contemporary, historical, paranormal, sci-fi, steampunk, you name it).

* All heat levels from sweet and romantic to down and dirty—as long as it is plot driven.

* HEA/HFN preferred, but not required.

* Stories up to 7,500 words

* Poetry is welcomed and encouraged

* No underage, no scat, no non-consent, no incest

Coming Together is a charity organization. You retain all rights to your stories, and previously published stories and poetry are welcomed (as long as you hold the rights).

Please use Times New Roman font, size 12, and double spaced with one inch margins. No extra lines between paragraphs. Set indentations to .5 – do not use tabs or spaces to indent. Use .docx, .doc .rtf formats only.

Only submit your final, best version of the story to delilahnight@gmail.com with the subject line “Under the Mistletoe insert your title insert your name”

Do not send multiple versions of the same story. Up to two stories/three poems will be considered from each author. Include your legal name (and pseudonym if applicable and be clear which one is which), mailing address, and up to 250 word bio. Do not paste your story into the body of your message.

You will be notified as to the status of your story by no later than October 1, 2016.

Coming Together is a non-profit organization, and all Coming Together authors and editors have generously donated their talents to various causes. Compensation for inclusion in this work is a PDF contributor copy of the finished product and your name on Santa’s Nice List (or Naughty, if that’s your preference). You retain all rights to your story. All proceeds go to Project Linus, which provides home-made blankets and hats to children in crisis.

Questions? Email me at delilahnight@gmail.com

(My thanks again to Delilah for sharing this with us here. I'm not sure I'm at the stage of editing experience where I have a lot of advice to give. What does stand out to me is that I was surprised at how it felt to select stories. I loved them as a fan. I've had editors say things like that to me when they selected my work, but I didn't realize how it really feels to get to put together a book full of stories you truly believe in and love to read. I hope you enjoy that!

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I'm also currently taking submissions for a Coming Together book. The details are here, and I've written a guest post for Delilah's blog. Watch for it!)

Now Available for Preorder: MakerSex

See that gorgeous picture at the top right? That's the cover for MakerSex: Erotic Stories of Geeks, Hackers, and DIY Projects, my first editing project.

It's available for preorder now, and officially releases on March 15th. There's a paperback edition on the way, too!

When I undertook editing a book I didn't fully realize that this would mean I'd get to put together a book full of stories I want to read. I love every word of this book, and I'm so grateful to the authors for trusting me with their work. I hope you'll check out the book. To help you make up your mind, here's the blurb:

Warning: May void the warranty on a stale sex life.

The punks and rebels of Maker culture have arrived to take sex apart and rewire it into thrilling new forms. They know that skill is sexy. They know the heady power of taking things apart just to see the insides. They know how to get what they want.

Whether building makeshift spacecrafts to fly into unknown astronomical phenomena or staying closer to home and breaking orgasm into programmable parts, these characters tamper when they’re not supposed to, kiss plastic, and involve soldering irons in their foreplay. In the process, they fight corruption, choose who and how to love, and create erotic possibilities both playful and profound.

Featuring stories by Lillian Marguerite, Renata Piper, Moxie Marcus, TS Porter, Eric Del Carlo, and Kelly Rose Pflug-Back.

You can preorder the book here.

Announcing: Coming Together: Positively Sexy

I'm editing another book!

It's going to be called Coming Together: Positively Sexy, and it's an anthology of erotica focused on characters living and loving while STI-positive. All proceeds will benefit the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, a sexuality education and training organization that works to reduce sexual shame, challenge misinformation, and advance the field of sexuality.

For so many reasons, I'm thrilled that this project is happening.

I love the CSPH deeply as an organization—it is not an exaggeration to say it has changed my life and given me much-needed sanctuary.

And I think this is a subject that needs to be explored. I have read so much erotica, and I can't recall ever seeing a character who was STI-positive. (If you have run across this, I am really interested to know where. Leave a comment or email me!)

Once I realized this lack, it became incredibly glaring to me. I got into writing erotica because I wanted to speak about the unspoken. There is so much revealed in people's sex lives. I am fascinated by the vulnerability and exposure. And yet, in the years I've been writing erotica, I've become disheartened by what I tend to hide. By typically presenting a fantasyland in which STIs don't exist, I have missed out on a huge part of what I think it is our calling as erotica writers to explore.

I want and have always wanted to write about sex, in all its strangeness and beauty and difficulty. I enjoy fantasies, and I am also interested in realities. By picking up on unspoken "rules," and shying away from portraying STIs, I have turned away from writing about the world I actually know.

I remember being diagnosed with HPV when I was in my early 20s and plunging into a morass of shame and confusion. I honestly didn't really know what HPV was or meant—and it felt like I couldn't get the information I needed, no matter how many questions I asked or how many things I looked up. I had such a poor understanding of STIs that I truly believed for a while that being diagnosed with it meant I would have to be celibate for the rest of my life. It is only in the past few years that I have become able to talk about parts of my history like this in a matter-of-fact way, informed by medically accurate information, not overshadowed by crushing shame and a sense of dirtiness.

I got pretty spotty education about STIs in the first place—and I recognize I was lucky to have avoided the abstinence-only approach that passes for "education" in many American schools. I remember most vividly the scare tactics that were used in my health class—the giant pictures of warts and lesions that made them look like dangerous space anomalies. I remember being told to use condoms, but not being told anything about what one might do if one ended up getting an STI or wanting to sleep with someone who had one.

I have cried with shame while disclosing my sexual history with a new partner. I have cringed at the sight of the capital letters HPV highlighted in pink on a form at the doctor's office.

When I was younger (before my HPV diagnosis), I had partners ask (while trying to convince me not to use a condom), "You're a clean girl, aren't you?" As if that was due diligence for STI prevention. As if there was any way to answer that question well or honestly. As if I hadn't already asked to use a condom.

There are also stories that aren't mine to tell, about people I've known who have lived with shame and judgement when I don't think they should have to.

The point of all this is that I'm a person who has lived and loved after an STI diagnosis, and I know plenty of other people who have, too. And I've never seen myself represented in the genre I have worked in since 2008. I have never represented myself in my own genre.

I say that knowing that HPV is common, an STI that is sometimes dismissed as something "everybody" has. What does it say that I've felt so much shame and hesitation about something so common? What does it say that I've never felt safe writing about it?

I came up with the idea for this book late last year, in the midst of some feelings of burnout. For several years, I had been writing as hard and fast as I could, pouring my soul into my stories and also constantly producing them. There were things going on in the erotica industry that were messing with my livelihood and breaking my heart. I found that a lot of my work seemed to be too weird or too queer or too dark or too something. Untouched had come out, and I never anticipated how naked and exposed that book would make me feel.

When I began writing, I believed I had things to say that were important, things that only I could say. Increasingly, though, I found myself abandoning stories, questioning whether they mattered at all.

I took a step back and began to ask myself if I had anything still to say, if I thought I still could do things in this field that needed to be done. After a period of soul searching, the idea for this book came to me. I couldn't convince myself that the world cared about or needed a lot of things I could choose to work on—this, though, was different. I believe that Coming Together: Positively Sexy could make a real difference to its readers, to its writers, and to me, as editor.

Any time my will as an artist has flagged, the answer has always been to go harder, go deeper, expose more. That is all that feels true to me, the only thing I have in the end.

I need and want this book to exist. But I can't make it happen on my own. I need more perspectives than the one I've got. I need a lot of different stories. Maybe what I need is your voice.

You can find the full call for submissions here.

If you have any questions, please email me at positivelybook@outlook.com.

(Also, many thanks to Melanie at the CSPH, who helped me come up with the name for this book!)

MakerSex cover and TOC

I am so pleased to announce that MakerSex: Erotic Stories of Hackers, Geeks, and DIY Projects will be out in March! (Exact date TBA). This was my first editing project for Circlet Press, and I'm so excited to share it with you.

Here is the (absolutely gorgeous!) cover:

And the table of contents:

Introduction by Annabeth Leong

The Not So Wholesome Origins of Cuddle-Bot by Lillian Marguerite

Making Love by Renata Piper

Shiny New Toy by Moxie Marcus

The Junkyard by TS Porter

Lightning Then, and Motion by Eric Del Carlo

The Forge by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

Look for more news about this soon! :) If you use tumblr, you can watch for much more news about the book here. If you're interested in reviewing the book on Amazon or Goodreads, please drop me a line at annabeth dot circlet at outlook dot com.

Forget About That Happy Ending

I blogged at Eros and Thanatos about getting permission to write without a happy ending:

I felt a sort of moral obligation — in my own mind, I had permission to write about dark things as long as they worked out okay in the end (and another editing story is about how Lon Sarver gave me permission to write about even more dark things than I originally allowed myself). In the ending as it stands now, you could argue that things are okay, at least for certain people, but the characters haven't all been "good." Maybe they weren't even trying to be.

Read the rest here.

Incidentally, the story I'm talking about in the post is "The Three Wives of Bluebeard," which will be out soon from Forbidden Fiction.