Coming Soon: A Beastly Affair

Hey friends! I don't think I remembered to tell you that I signed a contract for a story in Jen Blackmore's Beastly Affair, a Beauty and the Beast-themed erotic anthology coming soon from Circlet Press.

I had a really great time writing my story, "Bête Noire." It's set in the Weird West, with a beast who's a former debutante, and a gun-toting, revenge-seeking Beauty.

When I finished the story and looked it over, I saw it had... drifted quite a bit from the fairy tale as told by Disney. That's what you want when writing, of course, because you need to make a story your own. I'm always fascinated by the process, though. To me, each step feels clear and logical, as if I'm just making minor adjustments. Then I hear myself describing the story to someone, and I realize it's radically different, and radical.

Like, why the Weird West? I'm not sure, but it made perfect sense to me at the time. I think I was looking for a time and place in which I thought a curse-giver could be passing through, and I didn't want to do the vague medieval England setting that one falls into so easily.

The key to my version of the story, though, came from research I did into the origins of the fairy tale. One old version of the story holds that the witch curses the Beast in a fit of rage after being sexually denied. It seemed to me like a person who would do that wouldn't only do it once, so I immediately envisioned a wandering sexual harasser, leaving behind a trail of Beast-cursed people. From there, it wasn't hard to imagine Beauty and a Beast teaming up to pursue the curse-giver.

I wanted the story to address the trauma the Beast has gone through. I put into it a lot of the feelings I've had myself in the wake of harassment—in particular, an urge to embrace the idea of ugliness because sometimes I see that as an antidote to vulnerability. I've also often observed that in the wake of trauma, my friends want revenge, and the things I want are much murkier and more complex.

Along with all that psychological and mythological stuff, though, Beauty and the Beast are into blood play, and the scenes I wrote for that are HOT—if I judge by my own reaction to them, anyway. ;)

I'm really looking forward to this book. I love Jen Blackmore's anthologies, both because her concepts are awesome and because she attracts great writers (I'm always honored to be in their company).

If you want to be in her next book, she has a call out right now for Golden Age Erotica (there's a link from here).

And if you want to see what I'm talking about, may I recommend Whispers in Darkness, her excellent anthology of Lovecraftian erotica?

Calls for Submissions: Circlet Press

My friends at Circlet Press have posted two interesting new calls for submissions!

First up is Mollie Wolfe's call for erotic stories about sexual and nonverbal healing, due June 15th. This has the makings of a very powerful anthology, and I'm going to be thinking a lot about what would make a good story for it. Several stories I've read in the past on this theme come to mind as among the most moving erotic stories I've read. I'm thinking specifically about some of the work in Xan West's Show Yourself to Me anthology, and also several stories by Janine Ashbless and Shanna Germain.

On the rollicking good time front, we have Jen Blackmore's call for Golden Age Erotica, which she describes as "erotic Indiana Jones!" Jen Blackmore is a master of coming up with themes that get me excited, then following through with great anthologies. I can't wait to write for this one, and I can't wait to read it. Deadline is July 1st.

Also, don't forget my submission call (not for Circlet), for stories about HSV+ characters for the charity anthology Positively Sexy. You can find more information about that here. The deadline is Monday, May 22nd, but if you're just learning about this now and have a great idea, please don't hesitate to get in touch. We can work something out!