If you’ve never had a chance to read my Carmilla-riffing f/f college research paper story, “Leila” – which you probably haven’t, because it has been out of print for ages – I have good news! You can listen to it at the Nobilis Erotica podcast. It actually went up on the 29th, but I didn’t have a chance to listen to it myself until today, much less write up a linking post.

(Aside: I don’t remember Halloween lasting like three weeks when I was a kid, but apparently it does now. Or at least it does for my three year old. The baby doesn’t really understand candy beyond the occasional M&M and refused to wear his costume [though he likes dressing up in daily life when it’s his own idea], so Halloween for him lasted about fifteen minutes. But his elder brother made up for that just as hard as he could.)

Anyway, I did finally get some downtime kid-free so I could have a listen this morning, and as usual I was very impressed by the quality of the podcast. Nobilis hires excellent readers, and I think Honey Rambler did a great job.

I’m really happy to have “Leila” out again in some form, and I hope you all will enjoy it!

If you’ve ever noticed an author with a strange gap of a couple of years between publication credits and wondered what happened, it is just possible that that might be because they decided to have some kids, and found they couldn’t get anything done until all of those kids were sleeping through the night. I know that quite a few writers actually start writing for the first time while on maternity leave, but I am the opposite of that. So, that’s where I’ve been. I am glad to be back! My kids are wonderful and I’m so happy to have them in my life, but I’m also really, really happy to be able to string together more than a few coherent thoughts at a time again.

While I was away, some cool stuff happened! My story, “A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment,” was collected in Fantastic Erotica: The Best of Circlet Press 2008-2012, along with a bunch of stories I am extremely honored to share space with. The anthology got some good reviews, including a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and a few even mentioned my story in particular.

From the aforementioned Publisher’s Weekly review:

Standout stories include Bernie Mojzes’s “Ink,” a strangely sweet tale of Cthulian tentacle love; Elizabeth Reeve’s hilarious “A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment,” in which the plainest of five sisters inadvertently summons an incubus; and “Ota Discovers Fire,” 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.

Charlie Jane Anders reviewed the anthology at io9, describing it as “dangerous” because of the way the characters in most of the stories are changed and shaped by their experiences:

A lot of the hotness of these stories comes from a sense of characters stepping outside their comfort zone, and facing the possibility of becoming something different — something their original selves might not have recognized or approved of.

In Monique Poirier’s “At the Crossroads,” an angel is forced to go into the worst hole in the city and have sex with a demon… or die. In Elizabeth Reeve’s “A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment,” a Jane Austen-esque heroine summons a supernatural creature, and finds that she’s gotten more than she bargained for. There are stories about space navigators who have to have sex to control their abilities, and men having sex with an automaton that occupies the whole top floor of a building. There are faerie revels, and werewolves, and a hard-to-explain Matrix riff, and vampires, and Snow White/Evil Queen slash. Basically, there’s everything.

Anders goes on to write, “Both speculative fiction and erotic fiction are about stepping outside of yourself, and confronting the strangeness that is both light years away, and close enough to touch. The best encounters are the ones that change you forever, and the best stories of transformation are ones which feel a little bit dangerous.”

I couldn’t agree more.