New short story out now

[julesjones]

I haven't seen my contributor's copy yet and I haven't been into a bookshop this week, so I have no direct evidence that the book physically exists, but Amazon UK says it now has stock of the anthology where you'll find my latest short story.

Alex and I saw a call for submissions for an anthology of funny lesbian erotica, and while we don't normally do f/f, we liked the premise of the anthology so much that it sparked an idea. Unfortunately, while the story was held for further consideration, the anthology never came out -- a victim of the publisher having to rearrange its schedule after Hurricane Katrina. So I submitted it to the Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica, and it was accepted. The anthology was released on 30 August, and is available from Amazon UK and other European Amazon sites, if I'm understanding the foreign language pages correctly. It's published by a UK publisher, and at the moment doesn't appear to be available from Amazon US, though doubtless it will turn up there eventually. Here's our blurb for the story:

Love Is Blind
Contemporary erotic romance short story (with Alex Woolgrave), f/f, mild BDSM, 2800 words. It's a hard life being a writer's partner, especially when they want to try out an idea for practicality -- at four in the morning...

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Oh, darn -- you mean the Mammoth Book of Erotica, despite its name, has stories about puny little humans?

I wonder if anyone has tried submitting erotica about mammoths?

[julesjones]

I think Steven Baxter's cornered that market.

I shouldn't even suggest it even in jest, in case my editor's watching -- but I wonder if anyone's done a were-mammoth story yet...

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

Not at the full moon, no, for once the moon is innocent. Neither are planetary alignments or inauspicious dates to blame. Not even an Aztec or Egyptian curse. No, it's older than that, much older, but it is a curse. A curse laid on a man and his descendants, by a shaman who died twenty thousand years ago, a shaman who wasn't human.

When the winter cold creeps below minus thirty-seven degrees Celsius, that's when the words of that ancient Neanderthal shaman come true - "When your blood freezes, and freezes again, you will become what you have taken from us" - and once it gets milder Buck Stevens wakes up in a snowdrift, naked and freezing, without memory of the last few days, and a trail of destruction leading to his resting place...

Hm... Got potential, perhaps, but there's way too many practicalities to try to paper over.

[julesjones]

Go on, you know you want to...

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

Well... perhaps if it's set in eighteenth century North America, in the uncharted wilds of, uh, Colorado perhaps? Trapper country, anyway. And he can perhaps get help from a wise old indian shaman, once he's proven he's worth it. Oh, yes, and the indians still remember the mammoths, and are seeing the return of one as an auspicious sign, and Buck is out to bag it, reckoning that killing this huge beast will make his fortune, and...

Damn you, I just don't have the time! I already have three more or less completely plotted out novels in my head, but I never have the time and energy to hammer them out. It's not ideas that are missing, but the execution of them. I'll focus on the Tale sequel for now - I'm falling behind on my sections as it is.