New Book Launch & Excerpt: Kneel to Me

Kneel to Me
Edited by Lauren P. Burka

ISBN: 978-1-885865-54-0
Word Count: 44,770
List Price: $6.99

Available from:

• Circlet.com (PDF)
• Amazon Kindle Store
• Fictionwise (all formats)
• All Romance eBooks (epub, prc, pdf, HTML)
• Smashwords (mobi, LRF, epub, pdf, HTML)
• Scribd (PDF, epaper, read online)

For the next two weeks the title is on sale at up to 20% off from most partner sites, and right here at Circlet.com, so don’t dawdle, download a copy today.

Circlet Press brings you seven erotic stories of dominance and submission that will return you to the moment when a master, mistress, or slave first stepped out of a story and made you theirs.

The submissives, slaves, and bottoms you will meet here are tough and competent. No passive orifices, they are beautifully-realized individuals with the spark that makes them recognizably human. In “KATT,” the slave is a beautiful android who fights to hold on to the precious scrap of her life after a disaster. The servant in “Lord of Misrule” knows that his relationship with his master requires something other than obedience. The slave in “Raiders from the Stars” learns that much more is at stake than his personal gratification. In “Personal Benefits,” the highly-trained contract slave offers the pleasure of perfect obedience to the powerful woman who owns her.

Nor are their tops the well-endowed ciphers who “train” Cindi. They have needs and aspirations. Pleasure may be an important part of their lives, even the most important part of their lives, but they are also seeking love, acceptance and a future for themselves and their slaves in a hard world. The master in “Raiders from the Stars” knows that the safety that humanity takes for granted is rooted in obedience. In “Romans,” the master forges a new sort of domestic tranquility for his new slaves. The bureaucrat of a repressive government in “Exceptional Acts” discovers that pleasure is the most powerful form of rebellion.

Table of Contents:

• The Lord of Misrule byKannan Feng
• KATT by Smotp
• Romans by Joe Nobel
• Raiders from the Stars by Jay Starre
• Exceptional Acts by Argus Marks
• Personal Benefits by Elizabeth Thorne
• Scenes in a Beijing Hotel by Jason Rubis

Excerpt: Read more

Review of Wired Hard 4

We got a review from Out in Print.

The collection starts off with “When Angles Fall”, by Helen E. H. Madden, a sexy and endearing science fiction story about how one man’s upbringing in a religious “cult” effects how he deals with his dying mother and the future that she leaves him.

One of my favorite stories was Tom Cardamone’s, “Royal Catamite”. It is a wonderful erotic story that pushes the taboo buttons of underage sex and incest, in a way that only Tom can do.

Call for Submissions: Up for Grabs 2

Call for Submissions for Up For Grabs 2: the Third Gender by Circlet Press

Up for Grabs 2: the Third Gender is the working title of the sequel to Up for Grabs, which has received a lot of attention in reviews. While UFG had a focus on changing from one gender to another, I would like to see stories about people in between. Gender is not binary. These stories will explore modern and future expressions of third genders. Some ideas I would like to see examined are:

* Protagonists using mechanical, surgical, magical, or VR to express a gender other than the standard two.
* Coming of age stories
* Stories about protagonists who may not be young and gorgeous, but who have age and experience.
* Stories where third genders are normal, even common.
* Descriptions of new ways to have sex beyond the traditional.

Originals only, no reprints. We purchase first rights for inclusion in the ebook anthology for $25, with the additional rights to a print edition later which would also be paid $25 if a print edition happens. Authors retain the rights to the individual stories; Circlet exercises rights to the anthology as a whole.

Submission Guidelines:

Read more

Review for Wired Hard 4

The Erotica Readers and Writers Association has a nice review of Wired Hard 4.

We now live in an era of ebooks and genetic engineering, instant messaging and cybersex, gender reassignment and gay marriage. The world has matured and many of the fantastic imaginings of Circlet’s authors have become familiar facts. In the second decade of the twenty first century, Circlet is still delivering some of the best speculative erotica available—appropriately in electronic form. Wired Hard 4 is a splendid example.

The eight stories in this collection are remarkably diverse. They are unified, first, by their raw sexual energy, and second, by the intimate mingling of human with other: machine, robot, animal, vampire, or god. Xan West’s lyrical introduction points out that most of these tales deal with transformations. Sex here is more than an avenue of pleasure. It is the gateway to new and different selves.

Important information discovered today

Shih-aan (one of the fictional races in Wishbone) count in base nineteen.

The word for today is pleonasm. I have writers with a bad case of this.

This is good news, right?

Up for Grabs is on a top ten erotic romances list. I think from this article that the original is on Rainbow Reviews, but I haven’t found it there yet. I’ll keep looking.

Update: I’m almost positive that the appearance of Rainbow Reviews on this post has nothing to do with it, and the link above is the source of the article.

New Review of “Up for Grabs”

This review is from Three Dollar Bill Reviews.

My personal favorites from this collection are “Transplant” and “Passage,” each of which explores a world where there is a unique option available to transgendered individuals. Each story delves into the emotional needs of the person to have a body that matches the soul, and the ramifications of making that change on other relationships. In “Transplant,” Katrina has been disowned by her mother while Chad’s mother is the exact opposite. In “Passage,” Maya is concerned about her lover still being attracted to her new body. The physical changes are one thing, but these stories choose to delve into the other changes that are inevitable and as such are extremely engaging and moving.

Small victories

What with the migraines, I often go through days when I get nothing written.  This is depressing.  I’ve adopted a new way of coping, such that if I get one useful thing done in the writing department, I am entitled to squee!

Last year I ran a series of author chats on Circlet Press’s LiveJournal. For the most part they went off well. Authors got to chat, readers got prizes, and Circlet got to look good. I got to be annoyed, but that happens anyway. In this case, though, the annoyance was caused by a few authors whose inability to screw up directions was truely breathtaking. I wish I could share some anecdotes, but I think it might be too likely that the authors responsible will notice and hold it against me.

Today I re-wrote the how to do a chat document with an eye to making the instructures clearer and address the more common confusions. I put much more responsiblity on the author to get me the information, i.e. don’t tell me you already gave me your LJ account name when it was on a piece of paper you gave me at a con. Everything I need goes in one email message so that if it gets screwed up from there, it’s my fault. I also reminded people that they can’t post to the Circlet Community if they haven’t signed up as a member, and I included links explaining lj-cuts. I then talked to Cecilia about improving integration of Circlet’s blog with other social networking sites (messy, but possible if your expectations are low).

Then I mailed a pointer to the new googledoc to the editors group and reminded them that they must send me author names for there to be chats.

I had a squee!

Now I can go lie down.

Up for Grabs gets a nod

Up for Grabs

The genderqueer anthology I edited earlier this year, Up for Grabs, got a mention at gather.com:

“If your reading tastes are a bit quirky, if you’re an open-minded reader, and if you enjoy the premise of “What if?”…then Up For Grabs, edited by Lauren P. Burka (Circlet Press) is just the book for you. In these five delicious tales, gender is up for grabs, and science pushes the boundaries between male and female, natural and unnatural.”

Review of Wired Hard 4

Click to buy me

In other news, today we got a very nice review of Wired Hard 4.

As big a fan of explicit depictions of gay male sex as I am, an anthology of straight-up porn with no other major elements to it would probably not sustain my interest from cover to cover. Did I mention that I read this whole thing in one sitting, from start to finish? I did, and it was because each of these stories are beautifully told and packed with ideas. .