Hop Against Homophobia: Down With Hate

Posted on May 17, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

At Storm Moon Press, one of our core values has always been to celebrate and encourage diversity by publishing fiction that spanned the entire QUILTBAG rainbow. When we began almost three years ago, the GLBT independent publishing landscape was—and continues to be—dominated by presses that publish only gay fiction while ignoring lesbian, bisexual, and trans* titles entirely. Even this “Hop Against Homophobia” day, as stated, is purely a gay awareness event, as if there exists no homophobia against lesbian, bisexual, or trans* persons. That seems a bit short-sighted to us here, especially given that much of the bigotry and hatred aimed at these other groups comes from within the gay community itself. (Nothing against the Hop itself, as we understand it was M/M authors who put it together, but if you’re doing something against homophobia, it should be inclusive, not exclusive.)

Recently, a number of blog posts have been circulating which denigrate this event, though not for the reason I gave above. No, the main criticisms seem to be coming from gay males dragging out the old “gay vs. M/M” chestnut. This entire argument stems from the premise that women are somehow “not allowed” to write gay fiction—that what they write must be tagged with a second-class label because it is somehow inferior. And so this event can’t possibly be a good thing because it is run by those icky women who write their icky M/M stories that exploit the “gay experience” (whatever that is) solely motivated by profit.

It’s important to note that women (who are overwhelmingly assumed to be straight regardless of their individual self-identification) are the only group that this criticism is leveled toward. The fact that straight men create gay characters is never slammed as exploitation by these bloggers. There is no “lesbian vs. F/F” argument raging over non-lesbians that write lesbian fiction. There is no attempt in, say, the mystery genre to make a distinction when an author has no law enforcement experience themselves. The egregious claim that “there is only one way to be X, and if you’re not X, then you can’t understand the X experience and shouldn’t be allowed to write about it” seems only to exist when “X” equals “a gay male”, and only when “you” equals “a woman”. It’s an entirely misogynistic, gender-based attack by gay men attempting to control and regulate what women are and are not allowed to write. And it’s time that it stopped.

The irresponsible treatment of bisexual, asexual, trans*, genderqueer, and intersex issues from major players inside the gay and lesbian communities is just as shameful. Bad enough to be treated as liars, freaks, and outsiders by mainstream society, but to have those same hateful remarks directed from those who claim to be allies is deplorable. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Dan “Gay, Straight, or Lying” Savage.) We don’t use the acronym QUILTBAG because it makes a neat word; we use it because we’re supposed to be in this fight together.

But when even many gay men and lesbians don’t acknowledge the existence of bisexuals or asexuals, when cisgendered people denigrate, dismiss, or outright oppose the concerns of trans* individuals, when anyone believes they have the right to decide who is and is not “worthy” of inclusion under the umbrella, then we’re hurting ourselves and our stated goals. Because you can’t honestly fight for “equality for all” while claiming superiority over some.

Homophobia is a worthy cause to fight against, to be sure. But not at the expense of allowing biphobia, transphobia, misogyny, and all other forms of bigotry to run rampant. Because if we can’t even treat each other like equals inside the QUILTBAG, how can we demand and expect that treatment from those outside?

—

As part of the Hop Against Homophobia, Storm Moon Press is offering three prizes to three winners. All you have to do is comment here, and we’ll draw three names on May 20th. We’ll post up a new blog post on May 21st with the winners, as well as send out emails to the winners.

1st Prize: $100 donation to PFLAG, plus an ebook copy of any one title from our catalog

2nd Prize: $50 donation to The Pride Center, a Florida-based GLBT organization, plus an ebook copy of any one title from our catalog

3rd Prize: Winner’s choice of an ebook copy of any one title from our catalog

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs in the blog hop, and to spread the word about International Day Against Homophobia.

Posted in giveaways, r. armstrong | 20 Comments

Gender Neutral Pronouns In Fiction

Posted on April 28, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

There is a push in certain corners of queer fiction writing to shift all pronoun usage to eschew the traditional ‘he’ and ‘she’ and instead use only gender-neutral forms like ‘zie’ and ‘hir’, as though pronoun usage weren’t already confusing enough — particularly when writing same-sex pairings. Our view on this is pretty simple: gender neutral pronouns have their place, but fiction isn’t it.

Gender-neutral pronouns are very well suited for situations in which the gender of a person is not known or as a way to encompass gender without resorting to the clunky ‘he or she’ structure or the controversial (well, among linguists) ‘singular they’. Their purpose is to avoid the current convention of using masculine pronouns as a default, as in ‘I don’t know who the speaker is, but I know he’ll be great’ and ‘Any student who forgets his homework will get detention’. In both cases, the person being referred to could be male or female — or even identify otherwise — but because English requires number agreement, a singular noun must take a singular pronoun, and unlike some languages, we don’t have a gender-neutral form. (‘It’ is not gender-neutral, it’s agendered.)

But in fiction, there is no need to cover over gender ambiguity because we should know what gender the characters are. Even among trans* individuals, the majority prefer to be referred to using either masculine or feminine pronouns. Relegating them to gender-neutral usages is actually a form of erasure in that sense because it denies them the right to identify themselves the way they are most comfortable. So, in general, stick to the traditionally gendered third person pronouns in your stories, chosen based on the preferred identification of the character in question. It’s less confusing, and makes for a convenient, universally understood shorthand to pick out your characters.

Now, that said, there are exceptions. If you are writing a character who identifies as androgynous, genderqueer, or who (as a character trait) simply rejects the concept of binary gender, then it would of course be appropriate for them to insist to be referred to using gender-neutral pronouns, and for you as the author to use them in narrative as well. However, I would strongly caution any author to do this for story purposes only, not as a way to inject a lecture on gender theory into your work. Readers don’t like to be preached at by their fiction.

Ultimately, as with any writer’s tool, gender-neutral pronouns should only be employed when the demands of the story require them. In the majority of cases, though, injecting them into stories without cause only distracts from the narrative and can hinder enjoyment of the work as a whole.

If anyone has any questions or comments–or would like to open up discussion on what was said here–we more than welcome it. We just ask for people to behave as adults and to be respectful of everyone else. :D

Posted in publishing commentary, r. armstrong | 6 Comments

Author’s Corner: K. Piet

Posted on April 27, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

The Forgotten Letters in the Alphabet Soup

Hey there, everyone! My name is K. Piet, and I’m both an author at Storm Moon Press and Marketing Director. Today’s Author’s Corner post is all about the forgotten letters of the proverbial alphabet soup of sexual identity. When I say forgotten, I’m talking about the labels that typically get lumped together into the T of GLBT. If you follow my personal blog, you’ve probably caught me fretting about marketing and labeling issues in the past, and this is another instance of one term–trans*–being far too small an umbrella to cover the spectrum of sexuality. Buckle up, friends! This one will likely be a doozie, but hopefully only in the best of ways! ;)

In the GLBT publishing community at large, there is a vast expanse of readers and authors who range in their tastes for both writing and reading. Makes sense, right? There are as many ways of living and expressing oneself as there are people in the world, so the readers out there are as diverse as they come! The largest—or perhaps simply the most vocal—group is definitely the community surrounding gay erotic romance. Then, of course, you have those who enjoy their lesbian erotic fiction, and a usually much smaller smattering of people who enjoy bisexual fiction. More commonly, though, you get a lot of people who don’t like mixing their sexes/genders in the context of the explicit sex of their books. And, hey, that’s all right. To each their own, as they say. However, when you look around trying to find anything under the label of Trans* Erotic Romance, you’re likely to have a good deal of difficulty.

Now, the T in GLBT is usually used as an umbrella term for everything that has trans- in it (i.e. transgender, transvestite, transsexual, and transitioning). Where you start running into trouble, though, is when stories involve intersexed or genderqueer characters. Calling those trans* wouldn’t really be correct, as they’re outside the usual convention of ‘crossing’ and into an even more gray area of being ‘both or neither’. Before I get everyone too bogged down in semantics to see straight, let’s just leave it at the simple statement that I love to celebrate the diversity of everything that exists outside the gay, lesbian, and bisexual boxes! Trans*, intersex, and genderqueer characters get to cross boundaries, and if there’s one thing I enjoy reading (and, admittedly, writing), it’s characters that challenge where those lines are defined.

For me, part of the fun of these kinds of characters is that you get to experiment in those gray areas of sexuality, the ‘in between’ parts that a lot of romance genres usually take care to avoid. I’ve found that many fans of gay romance don’t want any female bits in their fiction. When you add trans* fiction into the mix, they react well so long as the trans* character has a cock, but the minute it resembles anything they might mistake as female, the more squeamish those people get. Me? I love the complexity of the trans* or genderqueer characters. Intersexed or androgynous thrown into the mix? Hell yeah! I just feel like it’s those pieces of fiction that truly challenge readers to see the full spectrum of sexuality, and I find them so beautiful when they’re well-written and compelling!

At Storm Moon Press, I’m able to fully experiment with characters along the entire spectrum, and writing those from all different walks of life has definitely been liberating. Heck, I’m currently working on a novel called 52 Weeks that stars an androgynous man who starts out simply cross-dressing to get drinks (perfectly innocent, right? XD) and ends up on a journey to truly discover where he lies in the spectrum of gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. I love being part of the core team at a press that prides itself on not restricting which part of the QUILTBAG we’ll represent! There are so many small to medium presses out there that only publish gay fiction or only touch trans* stories that present as M/M. In the end, I feel that doing that just serves to worsen the erasure of the diversity in the romance genre that we’re all, in our own ways, trying to champion.

Now, I’ll be honest with you guys and put on my marketing director hat for a second. Despite some presses excluding different kinds of stories (which is totally up to them and within their power), I don’t mean to say that the lack of trans*, genderqueer, and intersex fiction should be blamed solely on the publisher. From working in Storm Moon Press, I’ve seen that even those actively seeking trans*/genderqueer/intersex stories don’t always get adequate submissions to publish a full anthology. Trust me, we’re looking for all sorts of trans* stories, from FtM and MtF in transition to any flavor of genderqueer or trans* BDSM for the 2012 holiday season! As much as we’d love to put out a dozen stories this year with these kinds of characters, we don’t typically get enough submissions to really put the books out there. It’s so depressing! If you take nothing more away from this post, I hope you’ll at least take away that we would love to publish more of these titles, so if you or anyone you know has a trans*, genderqueer, or intersex story, send them our way.

Another problem I’ve encountered in my marketing work for SMP is that for the trans* stories you manage to contract, there are limited outlets for you to promote such books. The places who are open to supporting such outside-the-box fiction are really great to work with, but they are few and far between. An example might be having a story in which one of the main characters is female and her romantic interest is a trans* man, like in the short story Pearl by Kelly Rand, which just went live today from SMP. With a story like that one, you run into a lot of difficulty with promotion because people tend to scramble to put the story into boxes that don’t quite fit right. Because the trans* man identifies as male, some sites will want to lump the story in with heterosexual romance. On the other side of the coin, you have the camp who would classify it as lesbian fiction because the trans* man was born biologically female. This happens both with blogging sites as well as with reviewers (some of whom have forms where you need to check a box for the relationship type but don’t have a box for anything other than gay, lesbian, or het). These are certainly stumbling blocks, but I’m always of a mind that when a book is great, it deserves the chance to get out there and find its target audience!

I’m telling you, the instant I get stories at SMP that are trans* or genderqueer, I get so excited. I can’t wait to get the books out there and promote the great authors who have poured their time and efforts into making exceptional stories. I love stories that push the boundaries of traditional tropes and labels, making readers think. I just hope I’m not the only one!

I suppose it’s pretty obvious that I feel strongly about the less frequently written/published parts of the Alphabet Soup. :) In the end, it’s just because I love strong, compelling fiction, regardless of how the characters identify and express their gender and sexuality. When that fiction challenges me to open my mind and consider society while seeing a relationship unfold, I’m a happy camper. I hope you readers find that I push you a bit with my fiction, that the characters I write—no matter what their identiy and orientation—always have depth and make you think or feel something new or exciting.

K. Piet is the marketing director of Storm Moon Press and the co-author of Other Side of Night: Bastian & Riley and Catalyst. Her work can be found at Storm Moon Press, and she is often found on Twitter and Facebook.

Posted in guest post, k. piet | 2 Comments

Editor’s Thoughts: April L’Orange – The Negative Point

Posted on April 25, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

The Negative Point
by April L’Orange, cross-posted at The Editor’s Pen

There may be a proper literary term for the negative or “black” point. I have no idea what it is. No formal writing or literature class I’ve ever taken has covered it, and it’s a critically important part of a modern story arc that can make your life as a writer much, much easier.

In a nutshell, the negative point is that terrible moment just before the act two break in your book where it seems like all hope is lost. It’s that moment where the bad guys might win, or even do win temporarily. It’s a critical part of maintaining tension in your novel, because without knowing just how bad things can be, the eventual triumph of your characters is less fulfilling.

The key to making your negative point do its job is really challenging your main characters. You can do terrible things to them. You can rub their noses in the fact that they will never, ever achieve their goals. You can kill off other characters they care about.

If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right.

Let me pick on a couple of different movies that many (most?) of us have seen for some examples. In Star Wars, the negative point is when Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi. Star Wars has a classic, epic story arc, so a fight scene ending with a character death is entirely appropriate. In that moment, the dark side of the Force has won, and all our remaining main characters can do is escape with their lives.

On the other hand, in Grosse Pointe Blank (yes, my taste in comedies is somewhat macabre), the negative point is when Our Heroine tells Our Hero that they can never be together. There is no hope of a relationship between them, because he kills people for a living, and he doesn’t understand why that’s wrong. This is the antithesis of the epic story arc’s negative point, and it would never work in a narrative like Star Wars. But for an anti-hero whose biggest challenge is his failure to relate to other human beings in a socially acceptable way, it seems absolutely insurmountable.

ALL HOPE MUST BE LOST. Or at least close enough that a despairing character may justifiably think it’s true.

The absolute worst, least-fulfilling, most lackluster attempt at a negative point I have ever seen is a fallback device in certain romances: having the evil ex show up. The idea is that this is a challenge to the relationship which is the driving force in the romance. The problem is, in a romance, everyone knows the main characters will end up together at the end, and the ex just doesn’t seem like a threat. There isn’t enough conflict in that confrontation for the story to maintain tension and the threat barely challenges the main characters. It leaves nothing for those characters to triumph over.

Don’t be afraid to push your characters. As a rule, unless you’re writing a tragedy, your characters will overcome even the terrible tribulations of the negative point during the climax of the story. But they have to put everything into overcoming that negative point, or your storyline will feel dissatisfying, no matter how well-written the rest of your book is.

Make them work for it. Your readers will thank you.

Posted in april lorange, editing, guest post | Leave a comment

A New Look for Storm Moon Press!

Posted on April 23, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

We’re excited here at Storm Moon Press! This change has been months in the making, but we’re so pleased with the result. Storm Moon Press is two years and five months old, and with our awesome authors and future plans, we thought it was time to give us a facelift. We have an awesome logo we’ve had since our inception, but never used, that K. Piet drew herself, and now it’s an integral part of our layout along with a rainbow stylized moon. We’ve adopted a slogan: Exceptional authors. Exceptional stories. And we’ve streamlined the browsing and buying experience. In short, Storm Moon Press is out of its infancy and here to stay.

Secure Server + New Shopping Cart

One of the biggest developments is that Storm Moon Press has implemented our own shopping cart that is no longer dependent on PayPal. There have been some serious concerns with PayPal, and we decided to offer our customers the option of paying with their credit cards directly. All transactions are secure, and we do not store your payment information.

PayPal

Even though we do offer the ability to pay directly with credit card, we also know some people prefer PayPal, especially international readers. Alongside our payment gateway, we do have a PayPal option. We have no intention of removing PayPal as a payment source, so for those readers who like PayPal, you can still pay through their secure checkout.

Shop By Category

As our catalog grows, we know it can be difficult to find what you’re looking for. You can now shop by category as well as by length!

Reader Rewards

This is one of our most exciting additions. We now offer Reader Rewards. Readers who purchase directly through the Storm Moon Press store can earn points that they can trade for free books! Check out our information page about the Reader Rewards program. Also, the reward points have been retroactively applied. If you’ve bought from us in the past, log into your bookshelf and take a look at what you’ve already accrued!

OutlantaCon

Storm Moon Press will be at OutlantaCon May 4th through May 6th! We will have print inventory, author packets, our free From Storm Moon Press chapter book, a couple giveaways readers can enter, and much more! Drop by the Dealer’s Room at any point and say hi!

Current Anthology Calls

We just want to remind authors about upcoming anthology deadlines. Get those submissions in!

Ending April 30th
Fraternal Devotion (M/M incest)
Carved In Flesh (M/M scars)
Written In Flesh (M/M tattoos)

Ending June 30th
Devil’s Night (M/M demons and devils)
Inked (F/F tattoos)
Transitions Volumes I & II (trans* contemporary call)

So, that’s it! We hope everyone enjoys the new us as much as we do, and we can’t wait for the future ahead of us! :D

Posted in about the site, announcement, s.l. armstrong, the nitty gritty of SMP | 1 Comment

Author’s Corner: Blaine D. Arden

Posted on March 26, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong
Writing for Lines and Anthologies
also known as: ‘You Can’t Escape Inspiration’
or ‘How Blaine’s Brain Works’
by Blaine D. Arden


All it takes is a word, a feeling, or an image. All it takes is the tiniest spark.

What am I talking about? Lines and anthologies, that’s what.

Like many other writers, even though I have no intention of starting a new story, I can’t stop myself from browsing publishers’ sites to see what they’re looking for this season.

Last year I stumbled across Storm Moon Press’ Weight of the Gun anthology call. My first reaction to reading about gun porn was ‘no way in hell’ and ‘not going there’. But, if I didn’t want anything to do with it, I shouldn’t have read it at all. The moment I closed the tab in my browser, my brain had already caught a sliver of inspiration, and I had no choice but to follow it and write the story.

Now, I write mostly fantasy, so I still wasn’t going to take a Luger and shove it where the sun don’t shine, and I wasn’t going to cop out by using a water pistol … err … *pushes thought firmly down* Not going to go there! You hear me?!

See, what I’m trying to tell you? You can’t escape it.

Anyway … moving on.

So, gun porn in a fantasy setting. I was actually going to go there.

It didn’t take long for me to come up with an image of a young prince who desperately wanted to be stunned during sex. There’s only one problem. No one’s allowed anywhere near him using magic because he doesn’t have the ability himself and his parents are somewhat overbearing. And all this from the word gun porn. Well, okay, sparked by the idea that it could be anything as long as it resembled a gun helped a lot.

It got worse, though, for him, I mean. For me, as a writer, it only became more fun. Soon I had a title. I already knew he was a prince, but for some reason I had the words ‘fifth son’ running through my head. So, I gave him four older brothers, by a margin as well, making him truly the baby of them all. Overbearing parents and older brothers. Poor, poor boy.

With no magic, he had no choice but to find a different line of work, and he started painting. He was quite good at it, too. He loved painting soldiers holding their magical guns and hung them in a private room where he could drool over them, could imagine them pointing it at him and … *cough* … Yeah … I think you get the picture.

So, I wrote his story — and gave him a boyfriend, of course — and before I could get second thoughts, sent it to Storm Moon Press, after my critique group had a go at it.

I had a wait a while, since I sent it in well before their deadline.

Their email arrived when I was on holiday in the UK, and their first line made my heart stop. They didn’t think it fit the anthology. It looked like I’d just received my first rejection.

But, wait, there was more. I read on, and I think I managed to give all the swans and geese on the camp site a heart attack after that. What I thought was my first rejection turned into my first acceptance because they wanted it anyway.

As happy as that made me, that’s not the point of this post. My point was that I never set out to write a gun porn story. Boy, was I wrong!

I have to admit, a lot of line or anthology calls don’t do a thing for me. But every once in a while, one word, one sentence, will spark an idea, and a story is born, whether I’m looking for it or not.

You can’t ignore Inspiration, no matter when she might be calling on you.

Blaine is a purple haired, forty-something writer of gay fiction with a love of men, music, mystery, magic, fairies (the pointy eared ones), platform shoes and the colours black, purple and red.

Born and raised in Zutphen, the Netherlands, Blaine spent many hours of her sheltered youth reading, day dreaming, making up stories and acting them out with her barbies.

Though she wrote her first gay fiction as a teenager, Blaine’s true inspiration comes from the wonderful gay romance called ‘Beautiful Thing’—an adaptation of the play by Jonathan Harvey—through which she gained some very dear gay friends and a postponed bout of puberty that caused an introverted and shy Blaine to finally grow into herself.

Supporting Blaine in all matters regarding household, teenagers, cairn terrier Kendra and pursuing her dreams, is her long-suffering husband for over twenty years.

When not writing, reading or at choir practice, Blaine has singing lessons and hopes to be in a band someday.

Blaine can be found here:

http://blainedarden.com

http://twitter.com/BlaineDArden

http://www.facebook.com/BlaineDArden

email:blaine@blainedarden.com

Posted in blaine d. arden, guest post | Leave a comment

Editor’s Thoughts: April L’Orange – Fighting and F#&%ing: All About Action Scenes

Posted on March 25, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

Fighting and F#&%ing: All About Action Scenes
by April L’Orange, cross-posted at The Editor’s Pen

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the sex scenes and fight scenes most writers tell me they hate dealing with are two sides of the same coin. Both are action scenes, and the most common points of first draft (and sometimes final draft) failure are poor visualization, problems balancing narrative elements, and lack of research.

Visualization is exactly what it sounds like: the ability to see the physicality of the scene you’re writing in your head. This is easy for some folks, while it makes others break out in a cold sweat. The important thing to remember is that no matter how much trouble you have, there are always additional tools you can use to help you “choreograph” your scene.

More applicable to fight scenes than sex scenes, drawing will help you with almost any other kind of action scene you can think of. Don’t feel like you have to be Picasso–just grab a piece of paper and sketch the room your characters are in. Circles, squares, and stick figures are great for being able to see where the coffee table sits before one of your characters trips over it. You can use graph paper if the dimensions of the space are critical, but most of the time, you just need a rough idea. I still have sketches relating to stories I wrote fifteen years ago, and I keep them because I never know when I may need to go back to that setting.

Pictures are also your friend. If you’re writing romance on a tall ship and you’ve never been on one, googling pictures of ship’s cabins will both save you having to sketch one out yourself and make sure that what you’re putting into the cabin is realistic. Just be careful that the source you’re using is drawn from fact, not fiction. Any time you use an image from fiction, your research is only as good as the research the creator of that work did.

Visualization applies to sex scenes, too. Don’t take sex scenes for granted just because you have some experience with the subject matter–romance editors tell each other horror stories about 4’11″ women somehow kissing 6’3″ men while attached at the pelvis and characters bending into positions they couldn’t accomplish without breaking their backs. Pull out a tape measure and compare those heights to each other. Buy poseable dolls to reality check a position. Don’t be afraid to look online for examples. A Wikipedia search will show you body parts that aren’t porn and a Google image search will show you an array of images without your ever having to visit a webpage your virus scanner thinks is dangerous.

The biggest problem balancing narrative elements in an action scene is being so focused on the action that you forget some other element. In both sex scenes and fight scenes, the thing most likely to slip is a character’s thoughts and emotions. In a first draft, you’re in a hurry to simply get the gist down on the page, and that’s fine. But when you’ve finished that first draft, go back and reread those action scenes. Do we know what your point of view character is thinking and feeling? For that matter, what can your point of view character tell about the other characters in the scene based on their expressions, body language, or tones of voice?

Next, consider the evidence of the character’s senses. Maybe it’s not realistic for your character to notice the smell of flowers in the air if she’s in the middle of a fight, but she needs to be aware enough of her surroundings that she doesn’t step into a gopher hole or off the edge of a cliff. Be sure to let us continue to see (or sense) important information.

It’s easy to remember your point of view character and the characters she’s interacting with, but sometimes characters who are minor within the scope of the scene are forgotten in an action scene. While you’re doing that reread, make sure none of your characters fell off the page. Even if they aren’t kissing, talking, or fighting, they are still reacting, and we need to be aware of them once in a while, or it feels like the writer simply forgot them.

Lack of Research is one of the trickiest things to tackle in an action scene, because it follows the simple rule that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” Consequently, I have caught research issues in the action scenes in five of the last six manuscripts I’ve edited. If yours happens to have been one of them, I’m not singling you out. But by the same token, don’t assume that yours was the one that came away clean. *g*

With that in mind, here are some places to start:

* People do all kinds of things they would call sex that may not bear any resemblance to your experience of sex. Look it up. To avoid porn, add the word “forums” to whatever search you’re doing–that will get you discussion instead of pictures most of the time. Use reputable sex toy sites to learn about everything from sex acts to anatomy. Try adding the phrase “tips for writers” to whatever search you’re using to get detailed information. A remarkable number of sites have gone up aimed at fanfic writers, to try to keep them from “doing it wrong,” and the information on these sites is often very good.

* Real fighting is not like movie fighting. Boxing is different from back alley, bare knuckles fighting and karate is not tae kwon do. However, looking for information on boxing will tell you some of the basics about how to throw a punch. If you’re picking a fighting style for a character, be sure to pick one that character has access to, but also try to pick one you can find information on. It’s amazing how many different fighting styles you can find video clips of online, from old-school Greco-Roman wrestling to capoeira.

* Not all weapons are created equal. Romance writers will probably laugh at this and science fiction writers may already have thought of it, but believe it or not, a role-playing game manual is not the worst place to start. These types of manuals are sometimes available online and tend to group weapons in useful ways. Some swords are meant to be wielded with one hand, some take two hands, and some can be used either way. Close-quarters weapons may be piercing weapons, slashing weapons, bludgeoning weapons, or some combination of the same–and it changes how you use them. There are a ton of specialized pole arms and they all have different names. Different types of armor are more effective against some types of attack than others.

* Weapons you can use from a distance have their own wrinkles to know about. A web search will generally produce pictures, and it’s important to look up anything you haven’t personally seen. We all know what a knife looks like, but a throwing knife is an entirely different animal. You’ll need to double-check your knowledge of any weapons that take ammunition on a case-by-case basis. Crossbows may load and fire very slowly due to the cranking mechanism. A revolver only hold six shots, but an automatic may hold a different number of shots depending on what size ammunition it takes and who makes it. Automatic and semiautomatic rates of fire produce different results.

* Finally, regardless of subject, don’t be afraid to go onto online forums and ask questions. Sometimes, you can even find people with firsthand knowledge who are willing to read over manuscripts or sections of manuscript and let you know if they see anything wrong. It may seem awkward to charge into a forum and say “Hi, I’m writing a book, and I really need to know this obscure thing that I can’t find a posted answer to,” but that’s exactly what you want to do. Most people are fascinated to meet “a real writer” and delighted to be asked for their opinions, whether the question is how fast you can field strip a M-16 or whether Vaseline makes a good personal lubricant.

Posted in april lorange, editing, guest post | Leave a comment

Guest Post: Cornelia Grey – The Kitsune As A Succubus

Posted on March 21, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about kitsune, fox spirits, and their role as tricksters (The Kitsune as a Trickster). I thought it would be interesting to have a companion piece exploring the darker, lesser known side of fox spirits.

Kitsune are very versatile spirits. While they are mostly known as tricksters, the actual mythology connected with these creatures is a lot more varied and complex. Depending on the myth considered, they can take on very different roles. Here, I’ve tried to sum up the ones I’ve identified during my research while writing The Ronin and the Fox, but there might be more I haven’t come across yet!

* The Servant of the Gods

The myobu, or celestial kitsune, serve Inari, shinto god of rice and fertility (and, incidentally foxes). They are Inari’s messengers, they guard his shrines; they are well-behaved spirits, far from earthly temptations. One of their duties is to, occasionally, defend people from the all other kitsune, the ones who don’t serve Inari (called nogitsune, or wild foxes) when they become troublesome. They are also always depicted as white foxes.

* The Kitsune as an Animal

This is the interpretation that puts kitsune closer to actual, everyday foxes (the word ‘kitsune’, after all, doesn’t mean ‘fox spirit’, but simply ‘fox’: because every fox in nature could potentially become a spirit). These foxes live in abandoned houses, often sitting on the roof rafters, and steal food from nearby homes to survive. In fact, foxes are often expert thieves and take particular pleasure in stealing family treasures.

Sometimes, these foxes become almost domesticated. If someone treats them with kindness, they will strive to return the favour: they’ll bring food stolen from the neighbours, for example, and bringing good fortune to the house. In fact, when a Japanese family was especially blessed by fate, someone jealous might spread the rumor that it was because they owned foxes. Such a rumor could completely ruin a family’s reputation; no one would want to marry the daughter of a family carrying this stigma and, on a few occasions, local daimyos ordered the executions of families accused of fox-owning.

* The Kitsune as a Succubus/Vampire

This is the darkest side of fox spirits. Sometimes, they take the form of a hauntingly beautiful woman and appear at night to seduce unsuspecting men. There is a warning, often repeated in the mythology—and that I used in the story, too—that every beautiful woman met after dark could be a fox, and men should be wary. This is not a trick, a prank: kitsune have a very specific reason to do this. They absorb the life energy of humans, and they do this mainly through sex, although a few sources also mention bloodsucking.

Kitsune are so seductive that it’s impossible for men to resist their charms, and the myths say that sex with a kitsune is often too pleasurable for men to bear. Many times, men are consumed by their passion for the kitsune and end up dead, completely drained. Sometimes, though, kitsune don’t kill their victim, but build a relationship instead. One legend evem tells of a kitsune who married her human lover and bore his children. However, when the true nature of a fox is revealed—even in human form they have fox traits, like a fox-shaped shadow or a tail hidden under the kimono—the spirit runs away, never to return. This is expected, after all: kitsune are light, transitory creatures, and it is useless to chase after them once they disappear.

Humans are not the only source that foxes use to feed themselves. They eat normal food and are especially fond of rice, adzuki beans, and fried tofu. They also feed on various forms of energy like knowledge, words, and music. Their vampiric nature also drains the territory where they happen to be. A fox spirit is an alteration of the natural order of things and drought, blight, and crops dying out for no reason are all signs that a kitsune is living nearby.

So, how did I decide to handle all these different aspects in my story? Honestly, the original myth is so rich with variations that it was like standing in front of an overloaded buffet and trying to select a reasonable amount of food. The temptation to just cram in as much as possible was nearly overwhelming, but I knew that it would make me sick and clog the story! So, I decided to keep the trickster aspect, because it’s the most recognizable kitsune attribute and offers interesting comic relief possibilities, but I focused the story on the succubus/vampiric aspect. It fascinates me because it’s much darker and less known, not to mention the very erotic possibilities that a succubus-like character offers.

I did, obviously, tweak quite a few things in order for the various aspects to fit together seamlessly, like puzzle pieces. Succubi-kitsune are always female in the mythology, while male foxes are often friendly drinking buddies for other men. I thought I’d take the succubus attribute and apply it to a man, making him into an incubus of sort (an incubus is the male counterpart of a succubus). Also, I decided to take a slightly different approach on the issue of energy. Kitsune own a white round jewel, similar to a pearl, glowing with kitsune-bi, fox fire (called a star ball). They carry this jewel in their mouth or between their tails, and it represents the fox’s soul: should the kitsune be separated from this jewel for too long, it would die. I decided to make this jewel into the catalyst of the kitsune’s energy and use it as the keystone of the story. There is no ‘official’ correlation between the jewel, the kitsune’s vampirism, and the number of tails the fox possesses: these matters are all addressed separately in the mythology. I decided to connect them together, building a chain of cause-effect domino reactions that would drive the story forward.

I didn’t include the thieving aspect, even though it’s very interesting. While I didn’t have the chance to explore it in this story, I believe that Katsura used to be a skilled thief and was quite infamous for it a couple of centuries before the events of the novella. But something happened that caused him to quit, so he’s a little rusty now, but who’s to say we won’t get the chance to see him in action in a sequel? ;)

Cornelia Grey is the author of Apples and Regret and Wasted Time and The Ronin and the Fox. She can be found on Twitter @corneliagrey.

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Release Day!

Posted on March 9, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

Today is release day for Blaine D. Arden’s awesome fantasy novella, The Fifth Son!


Llyskel is the fifth son of a King, but, unlike his brothers, he doesn’t have a career in politics or the military to look forward to. In a world where everyone possesses magic to some degree or other, Llyskel is powerless, unable to perform even the smallest magic-based tasks. All his life, he’s been under constant guard for his own protection from the magical world around him, much to his annoyance. The only time Llyskel feels free is when he paints, where the only spells he needs are the ones he weaves with brush and paint, capturing moments of beauty and giving them immortality on canvas.

Llyskel harbors a secret wish, though, a dark desire that haunts his nights. Only Ariv, a captain in the King’s army, seems to sense the truth of Llyskel’s needs. The pull he feels to Llyskel is unavoidable, and the passion between them undeniable.

But Ariv isn’t the only one interested in Llyskel. The Queen of a neighboring country expresses her interest in the boy’s talents, but her true intent goes far beyond a love of art. And what she asks may be too high a price for any of them.

This is available in all popular ebook formats for $2.99!

Also, there was a mispricing for this novella. When it released at midnight, it was released for $4.99. This was incorrect. The $4.99 is for the upcoming illustrated version of the novella. Everyone who bought directly from us at the $4.99 price point will receive the illustrated version when it becomes available, as well as have access to the unillustrated version until then. :) If you bought it through a third-party, please send a screen cap of your receipt showing the $4.99 purchase price to editor@stormmoonpress.com and when the illustrated version becomes available, we’ll directly email you your format of choice.

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Author’s Corner: Cornelia Grey

Posted on February 24, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong
Writing In A Second Language
by Cornelia Grey

The editing stage – for many writers, it feels harder than actually writing the bloody book. While I am no exception, I find essential for one specific reason: I’m not a native English speaker.

As some of you might already know, I’m Italian, and I moved to London about four years ago to attend university. That’s when I started writing in English, and I have to admit my first attempts were rather disastrous. It wasn’t so much because of mistakes, but rather because of how my Italian language infiltrated my use of English. I remember, when I handed in an essay about aesthetic theory, that my tutor told me that it read like ‘one of those French philosophy books where no one actually understands what’s being said’: the sentences were long an convoluted, the tone extremely formal with lots of big complex words. Italian, French and Spanish already tend to have long sentences, and while the latin-derived words of the English language come easy to native speakers of these languages, they sound obscure and far-fetched to everyone else. In addition, we are taught that, for academic writing, we should be as formal as possible: which, in those languages, means to make sentences even more convoluted and with super-fancy vocabulary. That writing style was completely normal for me: it was unintelligible for a native English speaker.

This problem translates to fiction writing, too. My sentences are forever lengthy; while they might not be grammatically wrong, they have unconventional structures, which sound odd to native English speakers. Also, I tend to use lots of latin-derived words, because they’re very similar to common Italian words: it was only after annoying many a reader that I realized that they sound like pompous purple prose in English. For example, concupiscence = concupiscienza; perspicacious = perspicace; malediction = maledizione. The almost synonyms lust, smart, and curse don’t come naturally to me, and before someone pointed it out, I never even suspected that my choice of words might be unusual.

These Italianisms aren’t my only challenge. I harbour a burning hatred towards prepositions, that I never seem to get right; I tend to mix up idiomatic expressions, or to try and translate Italian ones and end up with stuff that doesn’t really make sense. But most of all, I have issues with the little details that are conventions rather than actual rules – the ones that aren’t technically wrong, but sound wrong anyway. And the thing is, I can’t see these mistakes: I need someone to point them out for me. I can’t tell if I sound Italian, or if I’m making someone sound like they’re from Dublin rather than from Manchester or Alabama. These are all nuances of the language that can only be picked up living immersed in it. I know them perfectly in Italian: but while I’ve been living abroad for a few years, I’m definitely still struggling with them in English.

Which is why I know I need good editors. I’d like to make a comparison with a situation I often noticed in class. I just completed a degree in Creative Writing, and I noticed that a number of my fellow students took issue whenever they shared something in class and the tutor critiqued them. Some pitched a fit about how the tutor was evil and mean and cruel; others ranted about how the tutors were presumptuous arses, because you can’t say that something is wrong in a creative piece, and that’s what they wanted to write so how can anyone say that it’s wrong; some complained that the tutors should just point out what works in the pieces, never the negative, in order not to discourage the frail spirit of creation fluttering in the students’ timid souls.

I never really understood this attitude. We were all paying handsomely to attend these classes and be taught something; why would we want to do it if we were so hellbent on rejecting any critique, since we are perfect already? I believe I have the same approach to editing. I like learning, I like being taught: I’ve always liked school. Now, the English language is a subject I’ve been studying for a long time, but I still have a lot to learn. Even in university, no tutor ever took the time to go through a piece of writing with a fine-toothed comb, pointing out every mistake in the use of language; they didn’t have the time. Which is why I see editors like my new, shiny teachers, with a whole new wealth of things to teach.

The crucial point about editing is, I believe, that authors need to be able to trust their editors. I used to believe that anyone who was an English native speaker could explain the secrets of the language to me; after carefully considering how most Italians suck at their language, and a very disappointing performance from my English classmates at a very basic editing module we had in the second year, I realized that that’s not necessarily true: so I became very selective about who I seek writing advice from. There’s only two of my classmates whom I ask for advice regarding plotlines or sentences; that’s because they’re the two people whose writing I admire, two people that I think have something to teach me, two people that, I really believe, know what they’re talking about.

Of course, you can’t choose your editors, so I’m always a bit apprehensive whenever I start working with a new one. I don’t have concerns about their capability, of course – I’m worried that I’m going to find someone who won’t be ruthless with me, maybe out of fear of upsetting me, maybe thinking I’ll pitch a fit if too many edits are suggested. These days, I’m working with Storm Moon Press on the edits for my upcoming novella, The Ronin and The Fox – when I opened the document and saw all those red comment balloons, I was ecstatic. Such thorough editing is a goldmine for me.

Propositions, sentence structures, expressions that sound too modern, or too Italian, or just don’t sound quite right in English – the editor caught them all and took the time to explain in detail the conventions I obviously wasn’t aware of. That’s the easy part of editing: I blindly trust everything she said, so I accept the change, ponder on the correction, file it away for future perusal, and carry on. And then there’s the part that actually requires me to make changes myself: development edits.

From what I’ve heard, I suspect that the writing community is quite divided on the topic – some approve of dev edits, and some don’t. Personally, I love them. Of course, while I don’t feel ashamed about my English mistakes – I know those are unavoidable – this is the part I spend cringing and facepalming because I just can’t believe I missed that plot hole, or made a scene so awkward, or wrote a particular detail without properly researching and got it horribly wrong. But damn, it’s better for me to cringe now in the privacy of my Word document rather than have the mistakes brought up for everyone to see in a review!

This is also the reason why, when I’m working on a story, I talk a lot about it with my trusted friends – somebody who’s not so immersed in the story, someone outside my head, views things with a greater clarity and can usually pinpoint mistakes or weak spots a lot better than me. I also believe that I take these edits so positively because I’m used to having my writing hacked to pieces by the teachers – I’m used to considering myself a student, and I feel that my writing is in constant evolution, a neverending learning process, and that I can’t advance on my own. Or maybe I can: but I can advance in longer leaps if I have a teacher – or an editor – to poke me.

Cornelia Grey is the author of Apples and Regret and Wasted Time and The Ronin and the Fox. She can be found on Twitter @corneliagrey.

Posted in cornelia grey, guest post | 2 Comments

The Basic Ins and Outs of Book Promotion

Posted on February 17, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

Promotion can be a very daunting task, and there have been endless posts by very knowledgeable people detailing all the different ways you can promote your books. Today, I want to just touch on a couple basics on how you can work with your publisher to promote your books. Writing the book may be half the battle, but the other half is getting it into readers’ hands (or onto their e-readers). ;)

Make Friends With Your Social Media

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or Goodreads, you have to be willing to put yourself out there. It can be scary at first, but make the accounts and start updating people on the status of your writing even before your book is finished. Share tiny excerpts of what you’re working on or catchy one-liners that will catch your Twitter followers’ attention. Post up milestones of your writing process (half-way point, 25,000 words in, etc). Post up when you sign a contract. Also be sure to friend others in the industry, be it readers, reviewers, other writers, or even publishers you’re thinking of submitting to. You have to be present to be noticed, after all.

Ask Your Publisher About Reviewers

If you get into a publishing situation, ask your publisher if they send your completed manuscripts to reviewers for review. Most publishers have relationships with reviewers so they can send their stories automatically to reviewers when they become available. If your publisher doesn’t provide this service, then you need to search for reviewers in your genre. Nearly all of them will have a page detailing their submission requirements (each site is different, so read them and make sure you follow directions!), and it never hurts to contact the reviewers if you have questions. Nine out of ten will contact you back to at least let you know if they review your kind of material. Also, if you find a reviewer you’d like to submit your book to, save the information and send it to your publisher. In the case of SMP, we always take author suggestions and send to the reviewers they recommend. It’s one way we expand our reviewer list, so keep an eye out and tell us if you find a great place we may not have heard about yet!

Maintain A Personal Blog Online

I know. This one isn’t easy. I’ve been struggling with this one myself, as blogging is definitely not my forte, but always make the effort to maintain a blog about your writing and your life. Readers want to know a little about you and be kept informed when you have announcements to make. Much like social media, your blog is a way to get the word out about your books. Blog posts don’t have to be horrendously long—in fact, I’d even recommend keeping it 1,000 words or less—so don’t get bogged down too much in details. Just try to spark discussions whenever possible and interact with your readers and other authors. It’s all about building contacts.

Make Appearances At Events

While online presence is essential, events such as conventions and writing conferences can be great opportunities to spread the word about your work and meet other professionals in the industry. You can contact conventions, give them your writing credentials, and try to set things up so you sit on panels relevant to your work and your genre. You can even just attend casually and meet reviewers, readers, and representatives of publishing companies. You can learn a lot about a publisher when you’re able to sit down with them and talk a spell. This is why SMP is so active in trying to appear at several conventions in 2012. We want to connect with authors like you, get to know you, and hear about your manuscripts!

Play Nice With The Other Kids

While this will be a whole separate post eventually, it’s worth saying that in all these promotional methods, you have to keep in mind that, as a writer, you are placed under the societal microscope. People are watching you, so always put your best foot forward and do your utmost to stay professional. If you get a bad review, rant in private (we all do at one point or another ^_-), and check yourself before posting anything up to your social media that might be retaliatory. You’re free to disagree with people, of course, but always keep it civil. If things get to the point where you or the other party is ranting, there’s nothing wrong with either taking it to personal e-mail (out of the public eye) or just walking away agreeing to disagree before things get ugly. The basic principle of winning more friends with sugar than with vinegar applies. In all your interactions as an author, just remember to play nice. It’ll definitely pay off in the long run!

K. Piet is the marketing director of Storm Moon Press and the co-author of Other Side of Night: Bastian & Riley and Catalyst. She can be found at http://www.kpiet.net/ and on Twitter @k_piet.

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Storm Moon Press at Rainbow Book Fair

Posted on February 15, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

Storm Moon Press will be at the Rainbow Book Fair in New York City on March 24th from 11am until 5pm! K. Piet will be representing the press, so be sure to stop by our table and chat her up.

We’ll be bringing with us some lovely bound author packets for authors who stop by, but we’re really there for the readers. Storm Moon Press has a “From Storm Moon Press” book available for free that has the first chapter of selected works from the press. This is a 6×9, perfect bound book that any reader is free to stop by a pick up to get a taste for the quality and themes Storm Moon Press offers.

In addition to that, we’ll have the following print books available in limited quantities:
Catalyst by S.L. Armstrong & K. Piet
Counterpunch by Aleksandr Voinov
Crescendo by Rachel Haimowitz
Daughters of Artemis Anthology
The Keeper (signed by both authors) by S.L. Armstrong & K. Piet
Other Side of Night: Bastian & Riley by S.L. Armstrong & K. Piet
Power In The Blood by Angelia Sparrow
Rachmaninoff by S.L. Armstrong & K. Piet
The Ronin and the Fox by Cornelia Grey
Wild Passions Anthology
Weight of a Gun Anthology
Where He Belongs by Rachel Haimowitz

We will also have a selection of posters for $9.99 a piece as well as free swag to go with those free first chapter books. The first chapter books are limited, so first come, first served. If we run out of inventories, readers can still pay for their product and K. Piet will send us notice that very night and we’ll ship books off ASAP.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Editor’s Thoughts: April L’Orange – When Punctuation Isn’t Just Punctuation

Posted on February 14, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong
When Punctuation Isn’t Just Punctuation
by April L’Orange, cross-posted at The Editor’s Pen

I’m not going to talk about punctuation today. S.L. Armstrong did an excellent post on punctuation and grammar just a few weeks ago. Instead, I want to tell you why you should care.

Most of us learned punctuation and grammar in elementary school and haven’t thought about them much since. When I hear from a writer about punctuation at all, it’s usually because she’s just washed her hands of it. Whatever the complaint—and there are definitely some valid complaints—the end result is the same:

It doesn’t matter if my spelling and grammar aren’t perfect. My editor will fix that before the book goes to press.

From an economic standpoint, this makes a superficial sort of sense. After all, if you’re trying to crank out three or four books a year, looking up grammar and punctuation rules may seem like time that could be better spent writing. It’s certainly tempting to assume that Somebody Else is getting paid to do grammar and punctuation.

For better or for worse, it’s not that simple.

Most writers have had a manuscript come back to them with so many corrections in the text that they aren’t sure they can find their original words. On a good day, it’s disheartening, and on a bad day, it’s terrifying. The piece of the writer doesn’t see is that it’s also limiting. If your editor is putting that much time into mechanics, her developmental editing almost certainly suffers.

Developmental editing is that thing that can help your book go from “okay” to “wow!” Developmental editing helps sell books. You want your editor to be able to do that piece of her job as well as possible, and it becomes hard for her to keep track of story elements and flow when sometimes she has to read a sentence three or four times just to figure out what you were trying to say.

Additionally, not all editors are created equal. If you’re working with Storm Moon Press, you’re lucky to have a publishing house that cares a lot about the details. As an editor, I’ve had to quietly refuse to review books written by acquaintances because the copyediting was so bad I’d never be able to give it more than three stars, no matter how good the story was. You can’t always trust that your copy editor or proofreader knew her stuff. You need to be able to do a reality check.

So while no editor expects a manuscript come into her hands mechanically perfect, do your homework as much as possible. Look up grammar rules—there are some great resources online. Ask your editor punctuation questions when she’s changed something in your manuscript and you don’t understand the underlying rule. Do everything you can to improve the mechanics in your writing, so that your editor can focus on her job, so that you’ll know if your editor isn’t doing her job, and so your publication dates are less likely to be pushed out because your manuscript was more work than anyone expected.

In the end, you’ll be happier if you do.

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‘Alternative Lifestyles’ Explained

Posted on February 13, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

No, this isn’t the post that will make you understand and empathize with every lifestyle out there. Sorry! My hope, however, is that it will clear up any confusion you might have about Storm Moon Press’ scope within the publishing community and our niche. We usually say that SMP is ‘a micro-publisher specializing in GLBT and alternative lifestyles genre fiction with an emphasis on erotica and erotic romance’. We’re dedicated to publishing quality fiction that showcases either GLBT or alternative lifestyles. If you’ve been confused about what the difference between the two is, then read on!

GLBT and alternative lifestyles are definitely not synonymous. By GLBT, we’re talking about all the people who identify within the QUILTBAG acronym (Queer/Questioning, Undefined, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Asexual, and Gay). We use GLBT simply because it is easily identifiable by the general public. For all of these people, their identities as GLBT are a state of being. On the other side we have the term ‘alternative lifestyles’, by which we mean exactly that: lifestyles that are alternatives to the cultural norm. Unlike the sexual identities, the alternative lifestyles are ultimately choices, ways we decide we want to live out our existence. Not all GLBT people live alternative lifestyles, and the same is true the other way around.

When we refer to Storm Moon Press actively seeking submissions involving alternative lifestyles, some examples of what we mean are BDSM, polyamory, different kinds of sexual fetishism, or, on within the BDSM spectrum, total power exchange (TPE) relationships. These are aspects of people’s lifestyles that they bring into their relationships and are typically off the beaten path when it comes to fiction. Just because they aren’t considered the societal norm, however, doesn’t mean they should lack positive representation in fiction! At Storm Moon Press, we’re always looking for stories that show these lifestyles in positive lights. Sure, you can explore the darker sides, the ways these lifestyles can clash with someone experiencing them for the first time or even people struggling with them after partaking in them for a long time.

Tell us those stories that delve into the psychology of submitting every aspect of your life in a negotiated total power exchange, or maybe the other side of the coin where you have another’s life completely in your hands to control. Tell us the stories of established couples finding love and completion with a third person, or even having open relationships that become ‘V’s or ‘N’s or even more complicated (a la My Boyfriend’s Girlfriend (Isn’t Me)). Have characters that love nothing more than dressing one another up in leather or latex? Perhaps someone with a full-blown knife fetish or foot fetish? Send it our way for a read!

What it comes down to is that Storm Moon Press likes to be inclusive of alternative lifestyle fiction, especially where it intersects the GLBT community. If you check out our Open Lines and Anthology Calls, you’ll see a lot of diversity, and that’s what we’re all about. We’re not a one-note press and we want to publish all shades from that spectrum, so don’t be afraid to submit something left of the middle! And if you have any questions about content we may or may not be looking for, feel free to Contact Us about it!

K. Piet is the marketing director of Storm Moon Press and the co-author of Other Side of Night: Bastian & Riley and Catalyst. She can be found at http://www.kpiet.net/ and on Twitter @k_piet.

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-ing Verbs and How (Not) to Use Them

Posted on February 10, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

Verbs ending in “-ing”, also called the present participle, are part of a class of verb forms called “verbals”. Verbals are derived from verbs, but cannot themselves be used as a verb on their own. The present participle has three main uses that I will detail below, along with some tips to help avoid the more common misuses of each form.

1. As an auxiliary verb.

By this, I mean using the present participle in conjunction with a form of “to be”:

Jimmy was walking down the street. Mary was eating an ice cream cone. She was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.

In these instances, the verb tense is said to be in the “progressive aspect”. According to Wikipedia, the progressive aspect “express[es] incomplete action in progress at a specific time”. In other words, this is the verb tense to use when you want to indicate the action is being interrupted. However, it is often the case that writers use this tense incorrectly when the simple past tense would suffice. If the action is not being interrupted, there is no need for the participle form.

INCORRECT: Jimmy was thinking what a nice day it was today. There is no other action here, so this feels like an incomplete thought.
CORRECT: Jimmy thought it was a nice day today.
BETTER: What a nice day, Jimmy thought.

INCORRECT: He was walking down the street, thinking to himself. Thinking doesn’t interrupt the walking, so there’s no need for the participle.
CORRECT: He walked down the street, thinking to himself.

CORRECT: He was walking down the street when Bob ran over to him. Bob’s approach interrupts the action of walking, so the participle form is correct.

2. As a noun or noun phrase.

More properly called a “gerund” when used in this manner, the present participle can also act as a noun:

Belching is a filthy habit. I hate waiting. Loving you is easy ’cause you’re beautiful.

Gerunds are like the bisexuals of the grammar world. They can be modified by adjectives just like nouns, but they can also be modified by adverbs just like verbs.

Deep breathing can help reduce stress. Breathing deeply can help reduce stress.

Be aware, though, that when modifying a gerund with a pronoun, the pronoun should be possessive.

INCORRECT: Him snoring kept me up all night.
CORRECT: His snoring kept me up all night.

INCORRECT: I was up all night listening to him snoring.
CORRECT: I was up all night listening to his snoring.

Note that in the second example, the “incorrect” version is becoming more common in casual usage, but the use of the possessive is still the more correct form.

3. As an adjective or adjective phrase.

Participles can also be used to modify nouns and pronouns:

Rising gas prices are a concern. My father has a receding hairline. There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun.

As with the gerund form, this use of the participle can also be modified by adverbs or take a direct object, turning it into an adjective phrase.

Holding the sword firmly, Peter approached the wolf. Sally turned on the light, startling the two people on the bed.

There are two things to be careful of when using adverbial participle phrases, though. The first is called the “dangling participle”. This happens when the noun to which the phrase refers is missing from or misplaced in the sentence. This can lead to some unfortunate implications.

INCORRECT: Fleeing the scene, the policeman took off after the robber. Implies it was the policeman who fled the scene, not the robber.
CORRECT: Fleeing the scene, the robber was pursued by the policeman.
BETTER: The policeman took off after the fleeing robber.

INCORRECT: Drifting lazily to the ground, Mary watched the falling leaves. Implies that Mary is the one drifting to the ground, not the leaves.
CORRECT: Mary watched the falling leaves drifting lazily to the ground.

The other thing to watch out for is the problem of simultaneous actions. Using a participle phrase in this manner implies that the action is going on during the events of the rest of the sentence. This is not always what is intended, so it’s something to be careful of.

INCORRECT: Running down the street, he hid in an alley.
CORRECT: After running down the street, he hid in an alley. In this case “running down the street” becomes a gerund that is the object of the preposition “after”.
BETTER: He ran down the street and hid in an alley.

4. One Final Tip

Be aware of the frequency with which you use participles. As with any other grammatical device, more is not always better. Try to vary your sentence construction so that you avoid doing things like this:

Lying back against the grass, watching the setting sun, and wondering if he’d ever find The One, Johnny was wishing on the Evening Star when a bloodcurdling scream broke the silence, startling him from his musings and setting him on a path he could never have imagined.

Yeah… don’t do that.

R. Armstrong is the webmaster and an editor for Storm Moon Press. He can be found on Twitter @slutbamwalla.

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Anthology Deadline Reminder!

Posted on February 8, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

This is just a reminder of the upcoming anthology deadlines. We have quite a few, so get those submissions in soon! We’re always happy to work with established and new authors. Don’t be shy!

If We Shadows – M/M elves and fairies – February 29th
Flux – Sci-Fi/Fantasy intersexed – February 29th
In Plain Sight – Bisexual assassins/spies – February 29th
Tentacles – M/M tentacle sex – March 25th
Strapped – F/F with strap-ons – March 31st
Picking Up the Pieces – Bisexual post-apocalyptic – March 31st
Fraternal Devotion – M/M incest – April 27th
Carved In Flesh – M/M scars – April 27th
Written In Flesh – M/M tattoos – April 27th

Check out our anthologies submissions page for all the submission and contract info. We’re excited to see what authors can come up with for us!

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Salting the Earth: “Like It or Not: Breaking and Bending Consent in Erotic Fiction”

Posted on February 6, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

How does consent apply to fictional sex?
For rape in real life, only one standard should matter: the lack of consent of the victim. Not the context. Not the level of physical harm. Not whether or not the victim fights back or to what degree. Not the intent of the aggressor. Despite attempts by some misguided people to define things like “gray rape” (ugh), there is, by moral necessity, a clear line. No consent? Rape. No possibility of consent? Rape.

In fiction, the situation is vastly different. The first step is to state the obvious: consent violation or consent play is acted out between fictional characters. Fictional characters have lines of consent that are constructed artificially, woven together before they’re broken in the dynamic interplay between writer, text and audience. Context matters. Who is the writer writing it for? Who might the writer sympathize with? Who do they want the audience to sympathize with? What level of insight are readers given into the characters’ level of consent

Audience and genre become crucial, too. Is the story meant as a quasi-memoir to share with other people who have gone through similar experiences? A sexual fantasy explicitly disconnected from real-life reenactment? Is it meant primarily for women to read, or for a general audience, or for men, and what’s the primary intended sexuality of the audience? Does the writer frame the story by saying how they mean it to be read and dictating what kinds of people should read the story? And if they do, will readers feel any obligation whatsoever to follow those instructions?

Types of Potential Fictional Consent Violations
Sex work – There’s a wide spectrum of consent possibilities in depictions of sex work. Some sex workers may enjoy particular jobs and enthusiastically consent to them. Many more enjoy it about as much as a sandwich artist at a sub shop enjoys making a sandwich… but they still consent to it. Others in the most desperate of circumstances have limited (or no, in the case of modern sexual slavery and human trafficking) ability to consent. A lot of erotic narratives of sex work cluster around consent issues in the middle of the spectrum–dubious consent–that we’ll discuss later.

Rough sex – This encompasses any kind of sex with fighting and struggling. Consent is played with, but only up to a limit. The struggling is not about whether or not there will be sex, but about what kind of sex. That is, one of the partners is not trying to escape, and they’ve made some kind of agreement, explicit or not, to struggle against each other and accept the outcome. The fighting lacks real stakes of consent, and everybody has a good time, no matter who ends up on top or how many bruises they have the next day.

Rape fantasy roleplaying – In these narratives, consent is played with, but it’s not a real issue in the story, because the partners have already given each other consent to play certain roles. They both have power over when and where the play will stop. The play-victim can sink into pleasurable passivity with no fear. The play-aggressor can exert control in a pleasurable way without worrying that they’re harming their partner. For the reader, this is a fantasy within a fantasy, and therefore two steps removed from real-life consent issues. It’s safe for the reader as well as the characters. This can be a good thing or a bad thing; sometimes readers crave portrayals that aren’t so clean, that have a greater level of verisimilitude to real-life lack of consent.

Dub-con – Dubious consent. This is a much more difficult category to define. It’s more of a catch-all for certain tropes, and different writers and readers will draw the line between dub-con and non-con at very different places. Dubious consent does not necessarily mean that a given fictional situation would not be rape in the real world.

One possible standard is that dub-con covers sex for any other situation than “You’re hot, I want to have sex with you.” Or perhaps one or more partners is in some kind of condition that limits their ability to consent. Transactional sex could fall into this category. One partner needs to have sex, for financial, political, or supernatural reasons. The other partner may or may not know about this need. Maybe one person is about to lose their home and live on the streets if they don’t have the sex. Or maybe there is no victim/aggressor dynamic at all, and both characters are under some magic spell that if they don’t have sex, they’ll die (AKA “fuck or die”). Or strange entities outside of a human moral framework coerce the partners into have sex (AKA “aliens made them do it” or “sex pollen”–favorites of our home fandom, Torchwood).

Dub-con can apply to other types of consent play in which consent is obscured or made problematic. For a rape fantasy roleplay, what if the writer starts the first page in the middle of the roleplay? The reader might not know it’s a roleplay. Maybe that’s only established at the end, or it’s established inconclusively. Maybe it’s a rough sex scene that goes bad halfway through, or a BDSM scene done wrong, on accident or on purpose.

Dubious consent is common across many genres. Many books with paranormal elements are stuffed full of dubious consent. Vampires first hypnotize then pleasurably penetrate their prey. Werewolves go into heat. Fairies glamor mortals into sex. Characters who feel a supernatural attraction or compulsion to have sex are all over urban fantasy, horror, and paranormal romance.

Our own story for the anthology, “Salting the Earth”, starts off in dub-con territory, although it might not end there. Ronan, our main character, is a vulnerable young man who makes a very bad decision for the very best of reasons. He’s forced into a situation where he has to trade his body to gain back someone dear to him. The sidhe seem to grant him that choice–they’re the Irish true-to-folklore fairies, so they’re wingless and rather terrifying–but at the center of the story is the question of whether he ever really had a choice at all.

Non-con – There is no agreed upon single definition, but non-con generally portrays lack of consent meant to titillate. Consent explicitly isn’t given. There may even be a struggle or an openly said “no”. Non-con is usually written for the reader to identify with the victim, who often (but not always) comes to enjoy the experience even though they initially didn’t want it. The victim is usually shown as enjoying the sex despite–or because of–the lack of consent.

The most common examples of non-con, although they’re usually not labeled as such, are so-called “bodice rippers”. They used to be a hugely popular form of mainstream romance, but their popularity has diminished in recent decades. This oft-maligned genre arose out of the sexual politics of the day–and to some extent, our day–that simultaneously demanded heroines have sex as a part of the romantic plot, but also couldn’t show them seeking sex for fear of having them appear “promiscuous”: thus the heroine who is raped by the hero, learning halfway through that sex with him was what she wanted and needed all along.

In modern M/M, these issues with female sex and desire are different. Female desire is either a moot point within the story, or perhaps coded and decoded into male-bodied form. Non-con can serve other purposes, some of which may overlap with the bodice rippers. For example, Non-con allows the writer and reader to explore the most extreme of sexual power dynamics in a way that is physically safe.

People write and read these narratives for a variety of reasons, and it’s impossible to establish either purity or impurity of intention from the outside; many people don’t know exactly why they like it themselves. Non-con isn’t safe for everyone: the potential for psychological harm exists, just as it does with any narrative, sexual or non-sexual, involving extreme emotions. But the basic principle is that non-con hits primal extremes of emotion–desire, terror–while preserving some measure of safety for the reader.

Slavery – In BDSM, this can, like rape fantasy, still mean “safe, sane, consensual”, where consent is clearly and freely given with boundaries negotiated by both parties before the “scene”. Even in more time-intense scenarios, in which the master has control over certain aspects of the slave’s non-sexual life, if there’s still clear consent negotiation, it’s neither dub-con nor non-con. At any time, the slave can decide they don’t want to keep playing the role.

Outside of that scenario, this goes straight into non-con or rape fiction, because real slaves, unlike sex workers, cannot give consent because they do not have the power to withhold consent. The master might believe it’s consensual, and the slave can even make themselves believe it’s consensual as a defense mechanism, but it would still be rape in real life due to the lack of ability to withhold consent. Most people understand this even on a subconscious level… hence the controversy over the incontrovertible DNA evidence that Thomas Jefferson repeatedly raped his slaves. Slave fiction set in fantasy worlds where slavery exists, or that use popular historical settings like ancient Rome, sometimes choose to explore these ethical issues. It depends on the degree of verisimilitude to real-life slavery (historical or modern) that these stories want to establish.

Rape fiction – Another genre which can be difficult to define. At first, it seems clear: rape fiction portrays rape in a manner intended to disturb and frighten. Rape here is sometimes used for cheap shock value, or it can honestly and unflinchingly explore the experience of rape and its aftermath. Examples of rape in fiction are numerous and varied, with “rape revenge” being a common plot element across many genres.

It can also be pornographic, intentionally or not. For example, stories can be written from the POV of the rapist or a voyeur, and the source of titillation in this case isn’t about the extreme power dynamics and loss of control as with the non-con examples above, but instead about asserting power through the debasement or “punishment” of someone else. It’s hard to draw an exact line, because other forms of fiction will also depict the POV of the rapist or draw on elements of humiliation to create realism or intensify emotion, and sometimes well-meaning portrayals of rape meant to disturb or frighten can take on an exploitative sexual layer.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the current most popular example of rape fiction. The protagonist’s rape is absolutely central to the narrative. In the movie, audiences are first asked to identify with her as a victim, when she’s violently raped by her parole officer. She then turns the tables and in a later scene, rapes him; at this point, audiences are asked to identify with her as a rapist. However, critics of book and film argue that both portrayals are exploitative, regardless of who is being sympathized with or why, because how the act is portrayed is just as important as intent. By focusing on, say, the victim’s sexual attributes, a scene ostensibly meant to disgust can also titillate; sometimes this juxtaposition is accidental or unconscious, but sometimes it can be entirely intentional, a callous decision by the-powers-that-be to include sex in a way that doesn’t up the movie’s rating. An explicit consensual sex scene could lead to an NC-17, after all. Nothing about this is cut-and-dried, largely because the influence of rape in our society is so far-reaching even before introducing elements of author and audience.

How realistically should erotica portray consent?
We’ve used mainstream sources as examples to show that erotica and our type of m/m erotic romance really aren’t more “edgy”. In fact, they’re often simply more honest about the fictional connection between sexuality, consent and power.

Erotic fiction shouldn’t be held to higher ethical standards than mainstream fiction. But it shouldn’t necessarily be held to lower standards, either. With this in mind, one important ethical consideration in writing erotica involving consent is… does it support stereotypes that contribute to the oppression and pain of real-life people who are most vulnerable to rape? We’ve listed some misogynist stereotypes above since, as women, that’s the area in which we have the most personal experience, but there are stereotypes specific to vulnerable men, straight or not (“prisoners deserve rape”), and others specific to LGBTQ people such as “corrective rape”. And there are rape stereotypes along many other axes such as race and disability.

Some argue that erotica has no social responsibility whatsoever, and fantasy should always be free from judgment. Others, that erotica should always be written with an eye to encouraging healthy real-life sexual practices. Most withhold that “always” and fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Where does dub-con fit? And non-con, and other stories that stretch the boundaries of consent? That depends largely on the writer… and the reader.

When we wrote “Salting the Earth” for the Like it or Not anthology, we created a story that’s very much in the middle, and in more than one way. It takes place between two worlds: the magical, extramoral realm of the sidhe mound and the realistic one of modern Ireland. And these two worlds won’t stay neatly apart. Grim events in the real world are called forth within the mound, stripped from their human ethical context and transformed into stage plays for the sake of inhuman aesthetic pleasure. Conversely, events within the mound have lasting real-world impact: unlike the legends of fairy gold, they don’t fade away by daylight.

Fear, love, shame, erotic arousal… all of these emotions blaze brightly as they burn across both worlds. And to some degree, all erotic stories involving consent aim to work this way: to bring readers close to the fire without getting burned.

Links for further reading:

Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane are the authors of The Saturnalia Effect and will appear in the upcoming anthology Like It Or Not. You can find Heidi at http://heidi-below-zero.blogspot.com. You can find Violetta at http://violettavane.blogspot.com.

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New Releases!

Posted on February 3, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

There have been two new releases here at Storm Moon Press!

Oren Stolt understands the natural order better than most people. Vampires prey on humans and Undying keep the vampires’ numbers in check.

Until now.

Now, across the United States, vampire numbers are exploding, thanks to a new church. The Tabernacle of the Firstfruits preaches a Risen Lord and invites believers to follow Him in death and resurrection… quite literally.

In Memphis, the church is about to host its first conference, with an eye to converting the whole world to the vampiric gospel.

And all that stands between humanity and eternal night is Oren, his kids, and a thin line of insane immortals.

Power In The Blood is available as an ebook ($5.99) and in print ($9.99).

Sasha is the first female to be granted leadership of her own pack in the House of Wood, a kingdom of shapeshifting Elves. It was a decision her king and regent hadn’t made lightly, and the future of all the female Alphas in the House seems to now rest upon her shoulders. The transition is hardly smooth, however, and Sasha winds up at odds with Aneira, her chosen mate. Failure to maintain control of her pack would mean demotion and shame, not to mention ruining her chance to prove to the rest of the Elves that women are just as capable leaders when given the opportunity.

In a House of such long-standing inequality, Sasha now has to weigh her own needs against those of her pack and, more importantly, those of Aneira. When a solution finally presents itself, Sasha knows she should jump at it, but doing what she must could drive Aneira away forever.

Grab this short story in digital format for $1.49!

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What Is Editing?

Posted on February 1, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

What I’m going to say here is completely from the position of an editor/publisher. :) It’s mainly because I see a lot of authors talking about edits and what they do with them.

My first topic is when an author says edits are merely a suggestion. I have no idea when this began, but editing? Not suggestions. They should never be suggestions. An editor looks at your work and applies their knowledge of storytelling, pacing, characterization, and grammar. The author themselves cannot objectively do this themselves. This is why no author is beyond editing. An author cannot see the mistakes in their work. Many times, it’s because—in the author’s head—everything is laid out. They know every little thing about that story, and so their mind fills in the blanks. You need that outside source to say, “Why did John do this?” or “You introduced this plot point in chapter two, but you never resolved it.” or “The ending peters out; it’s weak, and it needs to be fixed.”

Now, does an author have to accept all editing comments? No. There have been many times I’ve gone back and forth in emails with authors about their works. I’ve explained—in detail—why I am asking for this change or that change, and the author has the option of just making the change or sending back an email for further discussion. If an author can justify to me the existing text without any changes, then I accept their choice and move on.

An editor always has to ask themselves as they insert a change, “Am I marking this because it needs work, or is it because I would have written it differently?” It’s a fine line between correcting and strengthening a story and rewriting it due to personal taste and preferences.

The second issue is grammar. It seems a lot of authors think they can just throw grammar out the window and call it artistic license. You can’t. When someone reads something that is grammatically incorrect—even if they don’t know why—they tend to notice. On a number of my posts about grammar, I’ve had readers tell me, “Wow, I knew when I read something like that it was wrong, but I could never put my finger on it.” Things like syntax and punctuation placement and pronoun usage, they all are part of the whole, and while some readers can ignore many errors, a lot can’t. Editing comments are becoming more and more frequent in reader discussions and reviews, and so choosing a publisher who consistently produces flawed work (and I can think of at least half a dozen offhand) is handicapping yourself from the start.

Editing for grammar is a chance for an author to learn the rules of grammar, as many don’t truly know the whys and hows of the words they use. Pay close attention to those edits. Ask questions (I have one author who asks questions of every grammatical change I make, and I encourage it as it’s how they can learn), and if an editor can’t answer why, then it may be time to change publishers as well as reject that particular editing choice.

The third, and final, main topic for me is developmental editing. What is it? Development editing looks deeper than simple grammar and punctuation errors and focuses on the core story structure. Is it strong? Is it engaging? Does the pacing lag at any point? Are there plot holes you can drive a bus through? These are the kinds of things a developmental edit is going to point out. It’s not rewriting so much as taking the author’s foundation and shoring it up. Sometimes it’s a small change: “in Chapter 1, his eyes are blue, but in Chapter 5, they’re brown”. Sometimes it’s a more dramatic change: “the villain says his motivations are X, but he doesn’t act consistently with that in mind”. And sometimes, it can be a major restructuring of a section: “the tension in the last third of the book just isn’t there; we need to rework the pacing and events to amp it back up”.

The biggest misconception about developmental editing is that it’s the publisher’s way of “telling me how to write my book” or “telling the story they want instead of the story I want”. And in a small way, that’s not completely wrong. There are certainly cases in which manuscripts take the reader in a strange direction and the editor works with the author to pull it back. And yes, sometimes that means trying to steer the author in a direction other than their original intention. Some authors choose to view this as an intrusion into their style and voice, while others see it for what it is: the publisher’s intent to make the author’s book as successful as possible.

The publisher and editor are not the author’s enemy, determined to tear their work to shreds and sprinkle it like confetti over the author’s shattered dream. Their goals are ostensibly the same as the author’s goals: create a quality work of fiction, distribute it to the masses, and (hopefully) make lots of money. So it’s strange to see some authors be so venomous toward their editors and actually impede themselves and their success. Sure, your vision and your publisher’s may not always align, and sure, you may disagree this or that change actually brings you closer to the ultimate goal (that being the ‘lots of money’), but that’s when you work with the editor and not against them, until you shape the final work into the absolute best thing it can be.

Yes, in the end it’s your book, but it’s also the publisher’s book—they’ve invested no small amount in its production. The editor is there to bring it into line with the publisher’s style guide and ensure there are no gaping—or even small—plot holes. As harsh as it sound, even the final draft an author sends off to a publisher is not perfect or ready to publish. It will always need work, and if you’re asking people to pay for that book, then you and your publisher owe it to those readers to give them the best book possible. Tight, well paced, strong characters, engaging plot, and with as few grammatical errors as possible. Authors need to stop seeing editors as their enemies and view them as the allies they are. :)

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Author’s Corner: Lydia Nyx

Posted on January 27, 2012 by S.L. Armstrong

Storm Moon Press is hoping to spotlight some of our authors in our monthly newsletter and on the blog. This month, we have Lydia Nyx!

The Ambiguously Happy Ending: Sometimes Life Gets In The Way

My story, In the Pines, was included in Storm Moon’s anthology Weight of a Gun. It almost wasn’t, from what I’m told, because of the ending. Without spoiling too much, I’ll say it wasn’t the happiest of endings, though I’d argue the way it ended not only suited the story but was a happy ending of sorts, given the circumstances the main character was in. I’ve read several reviews of the anthology in which the reviewer said my story was the most disturbing of the lot and ‘stuck with them’ after they read it. I was invited here to talk about why I gave it the ending I did and what I think of happy endings in general.

I’ve written a mish-mash of horror, romance, and erotica for a long time. I know that sounds like a strange combination, but I enjoy putting it together. Most of my work, no matter how romantic, has a darker side. That’s why I like Storm Moon Press and plan to submit to more of their anthologies this year; they aren’t afraid to take a chance on the kind of stuff I write.

Sometimes character development, especially when you’re working with twisted themes, dictates you can’t give your brain children a traditional happy ending. But, maybe you can give them an ending that’s satisfactory, and in a roundabout way, what they were trying to get at. I did this for Tyler Maxwell in my story. Tyler is a down-and-out injured cop who tries to escape to Alaska to lick his wounds. He quickly finds out, of course, that he can’t run from himself. Then he becomes tangled up in a sinister mess that makes him feel better about himself and simultaneously drives him crazy. In the end, he gets his man, just not in the way a traditional romance reader might hope for. I didn’t think giving Tyler that sort of happy ending would ring true. And while it may bother readers… that’s sort of what I was going for.

That’s not to say I don’t ever write light, happy stuff that ends well–because I do! But someone is always struggling in my work, because struggle is a part of the human condition. People don’t always make the right decisions and have to live with the consequences of their actions. I like writing about those people because they’re interesting. Tyler makes a lot of bad decisions in my story and also let his libido overcome his brain. In the end he suffers for it, though again, not entirely. He gets something he wants because he pays the price for it. I consider that a happy enough ending, especially given the tone of the story.

I know people would tell me if I don’t want to write happy endings, then I shouldn’t write romance. However, I think there’s a niche out there for everything, and publishers like Storm Moon Press–and their awesome readers–have a place for me. I’ll keep cranking out the darkness if you keep reading it, and I promise not to hurt anybody too badly. Or if I do, I’ll make sure they get a satisfactory, if not happy, ending.

Lydia Nyx is from Cleveland, Ohio. She writes everything from contemporary to historical, as well as paranormal, horror, and urban fantasy, and she prefers all her fiction with a male/male twist. She currently resides in a little apartment with her teenage son and a crazy cat and spends countless hours of the day entertaining the dirty fantasies in her head. As a ‘day job’ she works as a waitress, which gives her lots of free time to slack off and plot stories. Writing since the age of 13, she has always wanted to be an author, and hopefully one day writing will be her only ‘day job.’

You can find Lydia at her website and her blog.

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