Wired Hard 4 is out at Circlet.com
One of my editing projects, the latest installment of Circlet’s gay speculative fiction anthologies, Wired Hard 4, is now available. Check out the link for purchasing information. There’s a not safe for work excerpt on Circlet. Here’s another!
Free Smut: Story on Fishnet
Hi all. Or as “all” as my readership gets.
Today I have a free one for you folks. My story Waiting for a Train is available on Fishnet, a wonderful source of free smut on the interwebz.
More Zombie Sex News
According to Google Analytics, posts about zombies and sex are the most popular on my site. Mind you, this isn’t saying much, as the total number of visits is quite small from day to day, so that it’s not possible to say much about my blog traffic that isn’t lost in the margin of error. Even though I am not a big zombie sex fan, I feel a need to report zombie sex news when it comes to my attention. If anyone feels that they can do better justice to the subjects of zombies, sex and erotica, please let me know and I’ll post a link to your blog.
Zombie sex fans will be pleased to know that Dan Savage’s sex advice column Savage Love addresses zombie sex this week.
ERWA Reviews “Up for Grabs.”
The Erotica Readers and Writers Association, one of our favorite destinations on the web, has reviewed our gender-queer anthology Up for Grabs: Exploring the Worlds of Gender.
The reviewer says, “[a]fter reading Up for Grabs, I have one complaint. It’s much too short!” Read the whole review here.
Porn Parody Contest Winner!
You may remember that I proposed a porn parody contest once upon a time. After an agony of indecision, I have chosen a winner–Julie Cox’s story “I Want to Suck Your…” Without further delay, I present the winner for your enjoyment.
The Word Fuck in Dictionaries
There’s a cute article in Slate about sex words in dictionaries. I remember my Latin 201 teacher patiently explaining the complex meanings of “irrumo” to counter the Victorian editors of our Catullus text. They had footnoted it as “bastard.” Compared to the Roman taxonomy of profanity, I’ve always felt that American profanity is pretty weak.
Now That’s Publicity
Recently I was puzzled upon reading an author’s rant about publicity in the era of social networking. She was unhappy because her publisher expects her to maintain a web site but doesn’t pay her to do so. Isn’t publicity the publisher’s job? Well, she might have had a point, but then I read this article about author Joe McGinness, who attempted to bid over $60,000 for a dinner with Sarah Palin before being disqualified on the grounds that she doesn’t like him. Joe McGinness has written books on Nixon and the Alaskan oil trade, and is working on one on Palin. From now on web sites so that fans can look up an author’s other works are totally passé. I’m going to expect my authors to shell out thousands of dollars on dinners with (in)famous people or I won’t take them seriously.
For Filthy-Minded Philologists
If you enjoy words, especially dirty words, check out The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (that’s a hypertext version, but you can get plain text and other formats if you google around).
Pick a rude word. I went with vagina (though in fact I had to search for “a woman’s private parts.”)
Now search for all the synononyms in the dictionary.
I got bumbo, Carvel’s Ring, cauliflower, cock alley, commodity, doodle sack, fruitful vine, madge, money, muff, notch, quim, water-mill.
Now you try it.
If you feel like posting your words, you may wish to do so on the main blog instead of LJ so you don’t duplicate someone else’s search. On the other hand, I don’t get such a big volume of comments that it matters much. But there’s a linkback if you wish.
Author Chat: Lionel Bramble: September 25, 26
Please join us for an author chat with Lionel Bramble. Lionel has committed journalism, publicity, advertising, and ghostwriting, and is responsible for the story “The Pillars of Hercules” in Like a God’s Kiss. The chat will be in the usual place, Circlet Press’s Livejournal community.
So how’s it selling? (or: superpowers for Lauren)
Publishers can’t easily tell you how many copies your book has sold.
I know this now. But I didn’t always know it. I once asked a publisher the same question. Therefore I refuse to think of it as a stupid question, because I don’t ask stupid questions, right? Uhm. Anyway.
If it were a paper book, it would take a year to tell you how many copies sold. This is because publishers allow bookstores to return unsold copies of books in case the bookstore decides to spend the money on something they think will sell better, like copies of a new book purporting to examine the evidence that Elvis is alive.
Even ebooks aren’t that easy to track. You think it would be, since it’s all on computer. But coming up with a number would mean someone who has real work to do would have to sit down and tabulate the results from every distributor involved. Since the answer is probably less than one hundred and might even be less than ten, it’s not really worth the effort. Even people like me who arguably don’t have much real work to do would have to bother someone who does in order to get figures to add up.
I blame Amazon. They don’t tell you their sales numbers, but they do have this really strange sales rank thing. People have tried to explain what their sales rank thing might mean (no one knows, possibly not even Amazon). I think they make it up. However, it does give authors something they can click on over and over, and tempts them to do silly things like have their friends buy copies of the ebook from Amazon all on the same day in an attempt to boost the magic number, even if the actual money made from this tactic is less than if everyone bought the book straight from the publisher for a higher royalty percentage.
I try to be gentle with people who ask for sales information even if I can’t give it.
This brings me to a letter of last night where an author asked me for sales information on not one but two books not published by Circlet.
It might be conceivable that I could know sales numbers from a book published by Circlet, even if I don’t. But I’m not sure why she expected that I might know sales numbers from a book not even by the same publisher. Is it possible she doesn’t know who is publishing her books? I mean, she must have signed a contract at some point. Presumably she read the contract.
In fact, it’s way too silly of her not to know who publishes her books that I will stick with an alternate explanation. I have as of yet undiscovered superpowers to know sales figures from books from other publishers, and she was trying to do me a big favor by making me discover this ability. That must be it.
What a lame superpower.
