When All Your Opinions are Public

I just finished my first book by an author friend, and I'm in a quandary.

I bought her book partially because she publicly praised one of mine. I thought that since she so obviously had good taste (;^) ), I might find her work enjoyable. I actually don't *buy* erotic romance all that often. Much of what I read comes as review copies or comp copies from authors. However, give the fact that this author apparently did shell out the cash for my book, I wanted to return the favor.

Alas, I was not very impressed her novel. It wasn't a bad book, but overall I found it weak. As appropriate for a romance, my friend lavished her attention on the two protagonists and their relationship. That aspect worked well. The characters were vivid and I especially liked her use of physical actions to convey emotion. (At one point one of the characters punches another in the face!)

However, other aspects of the story seemed to get short shrift. Although set in a fictional future world, the language, technology and belief systems seemed indistinguishable from 21st century America. The plot felt confused and inconsistent. The villain's motivation struck me as implausible and overdone. One of my mentors taught me that villains should not be 100% evil or they lose their interest. This guy was almost a caricature.

I had intended to write a review of this book. But now, I don't think I can, because I really don't want to hurt this author who has been so supportive of my own work. I thought, "Well, I'll just rate it as a 3 on Goodreads." I'm starting to feel that I shouldn't even do that, however. In our modern world, when all our opinions are public, every judgment risks offense or worse. Our opinions have perhaps inappropriate power, because they can do real damage. I don't want to negatively impact her sales. I'm sure that many readers would love this book.

Which begs the question, if we can't share our honest opinions, what are they worth?

I don't have an answer.

Sneak Peek: One Flesh by Annabeth Leong

[Today I'm featuring Annabeth Leong's sexy lesbian romance One Flesh. Enjoy! ~ Lisabet]

Blurb

Leticia and Rosalie are planning their wedding, wanting very much to make their special day one to remember, but Rosalie has something else weighing on her mind, one more thing she wants to make as special and as memorable as the ceremony itself—their wedding night. Rosalie wants to be with Leticia in a way that neither of them had ever been with anyone else. But finding something that would be a first time for both of them turns out to be harder than expected.

As it turns out, there is one thing Leticia has wanted to do but has never trusted anyone enough to allow herself to overcome the fear of it. And it's something that Rosalie has never done either.

The women discuss the idea of fisting as a means of connecting and forming an intimate bond with each other, one that they've never formed with anyone else. They've never loved or trusted anyone else they way the love and trust each other, and they are determined to find a way to make it work.

Excerpt

"I'll call tomorrow to tell the church how many flowers we want to order," Leticia said, sighing and folding her notebook closed. No matter how many neat lists she made with her favorite purple pen, the sheer quantity of wedding-related details was overwhelming. "Can you call the caterer back, Rosalie? I still feel like they sneaked a charge in somewhere, but I can't get a straight answer out of them about it."

Her fiancée smiled indulgently. "Better yet. I'll go in person on my lunch break, and they won't know what hit them."

"Great." Leticia rubbed her temples and closed her eyes. She'd wanted to go to bed early, but another evening of wedding planning had made that completely impossible. She was excited to be marrying her one true love and all, but it was easy to lose track of that when she had fourteen phone calls to make and her mother demanded an e-mailed progress report every single night. "That's got to be enough for now."

Leticia stole a quick glance at Rosalie. She'd changed into a cute pair of pajamas when she got home from work, the childish pattern an odd contrast with her sophisticated coppery makeup. Leticia briefly fantasized about peeling the clothing away, revealing her lover's curves and smooth brown skin. Unfortunately, at that very same moment, she had to stifle a yawn. She was so damn sleepy. They would need to get to bed immediately if she was going to give Rosalie proper attention.

"We can't quit planning yet," Rosalie said. "We haven't discussed the most important thing, and it's coming up soon."

Leticia groaned. She flipped her notebook open again and paged through her color-coded, highlighted lists. "We've talked about everything I had listed for the day, and we even went over things that have deadlines coming up in the next few days. I don't see what we're—"

"The wedding night," Rosalie purred. "We haven't discussed that at all."

There was no mistaking the sparkle in her eyes. Leticia actually blushed, the way she had at Rosalie's makeup counter the first time they met, when the other woman's soft words of praise, roughened by the obvious desire in her voice, had gotten Leticia so hot and flushed it had been impossible to identify the correct shade of foundation for her skin tone. She'd been forced to come back later, not that she'd minded.

Now that she'd figured out what Rosalie was hinting at, Leticia played innocent. For all her lover's passion, her Catholic upbringing had left her with an adorable aversion to using direct language. Leticia loved to watch Rosalie get flustered while trying to explain her naughty desires. She batted her eyelashes and focused on her notes again. "We've reserved our hotel room the night of. We've got our plane tickets to Puerto Rico for the honeymoon a couple days after that. Everything appears to be in order."

"The wedding night," Rosalie said, apparently oblivious to Leticia's teasing. She rolled her hands through the air, one over the other, the gesture an invitation to take the word "night" and run with it. "The whole reason I wanted an afternoon wedding was so we could have plenty of time together. Afterward. In the hotel."

"You mean to take a good, long nap? I'm sure we'll be tired after dealing with all the guests, and coming down from pre-wedding nerves, too." Leticia couldn't resist continuing the act.

"Not a nap. But I am talking about what we might do in bed." Now Rosalie colored, a deep red undertone becoming visible beneath the screen of her makeup.

Leticia composed her face as much as she could manage and shrugged. "Oh, are you talking about sex?" A giggle threatened to slip through at Rosalie's incredulous, exasperated expression. "I don't know. I've read tons of articles about how people get so exhausted from all the things leading up to a wedding that they don't even really want to have sex by the time the day is done. We'll have plenty of time for that later in the honeymoon, won't we?"

"Don't even really want to have sex," Rosalie repeated slowly, as if the phrase was a math problem and she couldn't quite work it out. Her forehead wrinkled in utter puzzlement. A snort burst from Leticia. Realization dawned on Rosalie's face. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the table and tossed it at her. They'd both collapsed in giggles by the time the thin paper floated airily to the floor beside Leticia.

Leticia allowed the force of her laughter to pull her off the chair. She crawled the short space to Rosalie's chair and raised one brown foot to her lips. Leticia did enjoy a little foot worship now and then, but her current mood was far from reverent. Slowly, carefully, she slipped her mouth over Rosalie's polished big toe. She licked until Rosalie's breathing changed, confused between laughter and moaning. Then Leticia lifted off the toe and pressed her mouth to the sole of Rosalie's foot. She inhaled, gripped the ankle tightly, and blew a powerful raspberry.

Rosalie squealed and tried to get away. Leticia smiled but kept up the wet, ticklish vibrations. Rosalie's foot jerked in her hands. Leticia kept hold easily. She had plenty of practice restraining patients, which happened to have fun applications at home.

Rosalie writhed as she laughed. Leticia drew breath for another raspberry, but cut her eyes up as much as she dared. She didn't want to miss the sight of her lover, breasts bouncing under her shirt as her rib cage shook, hips rolling as she struggled to get away, face squeezed tight as if to ward off the unbearable sensation of being tickled. Effectively, this previewed Rosalie's orgasm. Warm arousal spread through Leticia's body as she forced Rosalie to stay in this state, and as she looked forward to seeing the real thing very soon.

Rosalie rained playful blows onto Leticia's head. "Why the hell am I marrying you?" It took forever for her to get the sentence out, as she had to gasp each word between shrieking laughs.

Leticia grinned and tugged at her lower legs. Her lover took the hint and rolled out of the chair to join her on the floor. Leticia wrapped her arms around Rosalie, who felt small and hot and curvy. She slipped one hand down to tickle between her ribs, rewarded by another delicious howl. Rosalie shoved at her chest. "You are evil, I swear."

"I'm sorry," Leticia said softly, managing to sound sincerely regretful. She kissed Rosalie's temples with great tenderness, until her lover relaxed and stopped wriggling. Leticia murmured more soothing words, rubbing Rosalie's back... then licked the side of her face.

Buy Links

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Bio

Annabeth Leong has written erotica of many flavors—dark, romantic, kinky, vanilla, straight, lesbian, bi, and menage. Her lesbian stories have appeared in the Lambda Literary Award-nominated Lesbian Cops, Circlet Press's love-spell anthology Like Hearts Enchanted, Lovecraftian erotica book Whispers In Darkness, and others. When not writing erotica, she is frequently reading it. She has lived in six states in various parts of the United States, and traveled to most of the others. Annabeth believes passionately in freedom of speech, rights for people of all sexual orientations, and the need for compassionate religion. She loves shoes, stockings, cooking, and excellent bass lines.

Sunday Snog #104: Cat Toy

Greetings! Today's snog is special, for several reasons. Every comment you leave on today's snog counts as an entry in Victoria Blisse's fabulous Blissemas 2013 blog hop. You could win an ereader of your choice (Kindle or Nook), or a $100 bookstore gift certificate. Follow the link above for all the details, as well as links to all the other bloggers who are participating.

You'll find more Blissemas Kissmas snogs at this week's Sunday snog page. They're all chances for you to enter and win as well.

Also, this snog comes from my latest chapter in the Cat Toy serial. Things are heating up - I think I'm actually going to finish this thing in the next few months!

This Sunday also coincides with my December newsletter. I have special holiday gifts for both authors and readers. Check the newsletter for details.

Anyway, enough blabbing. On to the snog!

****

“We'll have to cut them off.”  We huddled together naked on the floor, backs against the couch, each pondering the implications of Tom's theory. His arm draped protectively around my shoulder. Despondent, feeling lost and utterly powerless, I slumped against his solid chest. His quiet, determined voice broke into my funk of despair and sent a chill shuddering through me.

“Cut them – oh, Tom! How can we? I can barely keep myself from blurting out your secret when I'm in her presence.” 

“Her magical aura doesn't affect me to nearly the same extent.”  His smile was grim. “I know her too well.”

“But you already told me that as your maker, she has special power over you. How can you get close enough to slice off the rings - “ I swallowed my disgust at the bloody notion - “without her reclaiming you as her familiar?” 

“I don't know.”  He bent to bury his face in my hair, breathing deeply. “Ah, Shaina. You smell like a tropical forest. Green and bursting with life.”  His gentle fingers nudged my chin, raising my eyes to his. “How I wish – but that's an empty dream.” 

I cradled his face in my hands, then drew his lips to mine. This kiss had none of the feverish need of our earlier wild coupling. Instead, shimmering energy flowed from his mouth to mine, a surge of power that shattered my dark mood and, against all reason, kindled hope. I drank deep from him, then beamed back my renewed sense of possibility. We dream for a reason, Gram used to say. As I melted into my lover's embrace, I believed her.

He stroked my back, feathering his fingertips down my spine. As always, his touch awakened my senses. My nipples tightened into plump peaks, aching for stimulation. Below, new arousal drenched and soothed my recently ravaged pussy, which felt empty and hungry. Desire twisted through me, bordering on pain.

I shifted onto my knees to straddle his outstretched legs, crushing my breasts against his firm pecs and trapping his hardening cock between us. My juices trickled into his wiry pubic curls, until they were as soaked as my own. Meanwhile I probed his mouth, my tongue brazen and demanding. I'd always been a bit reserved sexually, worried about seeming too forward or slutty. With Tom, I became shameless. I knew, in the depths of my being, he'd match me kiss for kiss, thrust for thrust, giving me everything I craved – and more.

This time, though, he resisted me. My whimper of disappointment earned me a last quick brush of his lips, but then he disentangled himself from my arms and rose to a standing position in one fluid, graceful movement.

“It's so easy to get lost in you, my beauty. But we must think – come up with some kind of plan.”  Hands clasped at the small of his back, he paced back and forth in front of me alike a caged lion.

With a sigh, I flipped back into a sitting position. Watching the muscles flex under his gleaming chocolate-tinted skin, I thought I'd die if I couldn't touch him. But I knew he was right. 

****

Want to read the rest? Just go to http://www.lisabetsarai.com/cattoy9.html. Or head for the free reading index page to read the story from the beginning.

Lisabet's December News

New and Upcoming Releases
 
Happy holidays to all my readers!

Since my last newsletter, I've had three releases. First of all, Her Secret Ingredient is now available as a single author title. You can also get the tale as part of the What's Her Secret boxed set, and now, in print as well! I won't take up your time by repeating the blurb, which I've been sharing pretty much everywhere. You can find all the details here and here.


In addition, the Tied to the Billionaire anthology has come out in print. This juicy book is the perfect gift for all your romantically-inclined friends - or at least the kinky ones. After all, who wouldn't want a dominant billionaire for Christmas?

Speaking of print, Rajastani Moon in now available in paperback, too. Did you see Thistedown's rave review of the book at Long and Short Reviews? She said so many complimentary things about the book that I can't decide which to quote! Click on the link above to read what she has to say.
 
Other News

I know I missed a month, but I've made up for it with a new and very intense chapter of my CatToy shifter serial.

I have a kiss from the chapter for you, as my regular Sunday snog. And you can win prizes if you comment, as part of Victoria Blisse's Blissemas celebration!

Meanwhile, as a gift to my author and reader friends, I have two full PDFs that you can download. Just visit holidaygifts.html to download either Naughty Bits: The Erotogeek's Guide for Technologically Challenged Authors - more than 80 pages of explanations and advice for those of you who are mystified by technology - or Kiss Before Midnight, a collection of four holiday themed romantic shorts.

Hey, why not download them both?

I'll be sending out information about this month's exclusive VIP drawing on Tuesday. Only people on my list are eligible to enter!

If you're not on my email list but would like to be, just send an email to contest [at] lisabetsarai [dot] com with the subject line "Add Me", from the email you want added. You can also add your name from the holiday gifts page above.

And speaking of free books - if you sign up for Totally Bound's newsletter, you will automatically receive a voucher for a free TB book. Talk about easy! Just click here to subscribe.
 
Lisabet's Pick of the Month

My pick of the month for December is Coffee Time Romance's Steampunk site. If you love corsets and clockwork, brass and leather, this is the place to be. CTR's Revelry release parties are great fun - I had one myself - and there are lots of chances to meet fantastic authors and win great prizes.

Friday the 13th

It's supposed to be a day of ill-fortune, but my Friday the 13th has turned out to be full of unexpected blessings.

First of all, I learned that my short story "Twister" had been accepted by editor Nicole Gestalt for the charity anthology Coming Together: Through the Storm. This anthology will benefit the victims of the recent devastating hurricane in the Philippines. The book should be available in a few weeks. Don't worry, I'll let you know!

Then I added two new readers to my private email list (with their permission, of course). Two might not seem like a lot, but I'm grateful for everyone who's willing to share my news with them.

Then I heard from Chrissy Szarek that my post was live at her blog:

http://caszarekwriter.blogspot.com/2013/12/friday-feature-welcomes-lisbet-sarai-on.html

Check it out! I'm giving way free books!

Finally, I didn't even know until I saw the release announcement that the full set of What's Her Secret stories has been released in print! With a great cover, too!

 

If you're one of those dinosaurs like me, who really likes the feel of a physical book in your hand, get your copy today!

Yup, it's been a good day. And tomorrow starts the weekend. I've got great stuff planned. See you tomorrow!

Bribing Readers?

I've been working on some special holiday treats for my readers over the past few days - free books, contests, and more. For instance, I've got a giveaway on Friday, when I'll be a guest at Chrissy Szarek's blog. I'm hoping to be able to get my newsletter done by Saturday, with a brand new installment of Cat Toy plus a page of seasonal goodies. And it's high time I did another contest for my private email list. I promised them one every month, but last month it just slipped between the cracks.

As I contemplate all this, I start to wonder - am I trying to bribe my readers? These days, it's hard to get anyone to visit your blog unless you're offering some sort of reward. I have to admit that except for authors who are personal friends, I don't usually host blog tours unless the author has a decent prize.(That doesn't count for my regular guests. They're not required to do a giveaway. But I do encourage them to offer something, because it does result in more page views and more comments.)

When I scan the digests I get from my lists - The Romance Studio, Lovers of Romance and so on - I realize that everyone is giving stuff away. $50 gift certificates. $100 gift certificates. Kindles and Nooks! Jeez! How can I compete? I don't want to spend more than I make in royalties trying to lure people to my blogs, but some months, I actually come close. Are readers really that mercenary, anyway? Will the authors with the deepest pockets be the ones who draw the most eyeballs?

So - if you happen to take the time to read this, even though I'm not giving away a thing today - I'd love you to leave a comment. How much of a difference do prizes and giveaways make to you? And if you are influenced, what sort of prizes are most likely to make you leave a comment?

Thanks for reading - those of you who aren't off entering other authors' contests!

Nope, Writing Queer Porn Ain’t What It Used To Be. And It Never Was.

By Simon Sheppard (Guest Blogger)

OK, nobody likes an aging smut writer kvetching about how wonderful things used to be. But hey, I feel like I’ve earned the right.

See, I started writing porn back in what I quaintly regard as The Golden Age of Gay Erotica, after John Preston and Aaron Travis had blazed the path, but before anybody with a smartphone could instantly upload his most arcane fantasies.

Yes, children, it was an era when hard-copy magazines like Drummer paid (albeit somewhat sporadically) for naughty stories, when somewhat-loony publisher Richard Kasak churned out volume after volume of mass-market paperbacks ranging from an anthology of religiously oriented fuck stories to a book of porn based on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It was the age of “literotica,” of The New Queer Lit, of actual publishers publishing actual porn books that were sold in bookstores…remember bookstores?

Beyond the economics of it all, though, was the emergence of a plethora of new ways of writing about sex. What had been stuffed deep underground was dragging itself out of the storytelling sewer and emerging into the light. Anthology series like Flesh and the Word and High Risk proved that lust could be literate. Richard Labonté, editor of the best-selling Best Gay Erotica series, went out on a forestful of limbs, including in his annual choices both wild-eyed formal experiments and anything-goes content. Susie Bright’s annual round-up of The Best American Erotica—published by Simon and Schuster, fer Chrissakes—included Real Authors such as Nicholson Baker, Jane Smiley, and Anne Rice. Goodbye cheesy little under-the-counter paperbacks like Truckstop Twosome, hello Dennis Cooper!

And I, for my part, fancied myself a cultural worker, a member of some lascivious little Bloomsbury Group of buggers. Right there in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, while we queers were fighting, and fighting hard, for our rights, my cocksucking compatriots and I dared to write it out loud: Fuck it. Gay sex is good! Not just erections, but insurrections.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, I was asked to edit a historical anthology of gay porn. While researching what became Homosex: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica, I discovered the sometimes-surprising ways in which homoporn mirrored the gay zeitgeist. Ah, the great forward march of dirty books! They served as the secret roadmap of male-male lust.

And then a couple of things happened. First, in significant ways, the porn-publishing industry collapsed, largely because of the rise of the Internet and the cratering of the economy. (And often both combined: most all the early websites that paid for content have either stopped paying or ceased to be.) Sure, thanks to the democratization of communications, anybody can now be an author overnight. But where there once upon a time had been editors who actually edited erotica, publicists who made sure it sold, and publishers who paid advances for stories about dick, now there’s the Great Googled Gay Glut. But unless you’ve written Fifty Shades of You Know What, it’s well nigh impossible to actually carve a career out of writing about cock.

And, even more crucially, gay life has changed, and changed fast.

Now, I’m not all that gung-ho for assimilation. It seems to me that some of the most interesting art is made at the borders of what’s acceptable. But homosexuality has morphed from The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name into “that cute gay couple down the street with a Labradoodle, matching Subarus, and the baby they brought back from China.” Butt-fucking has gone from “Who dares?” to “Who cares?” Hey, it’s hard to be truly transgressive when anyone can sit in Starbuck’s with their MacBook and download oodles of scat-porn pictures…for free.

Young gay men no longer get their notions of queer life from contraband paperbacks they bought from disreputable dealers in skeevy parts of town. Now all they have to do is turn on the TV. HIV is no longer a death sentence. And gay guys can get married for life. And all that is good. Great, in fact.

Only it’s made writing gay erotica feel less urgent, less necessary. Superfluous, even. And maybe less fun. I feel like I’ve gone from being a cutting-edge cultural worker to hanging on as the last blacksmith in town.

Certainly it’s less rewarding in many ways for me to be “An Author.” I confess: I write to be read, and not just in the bloated blogosphere. And, hey, if I’m a professional, if my writing has any value at all, selling a story should at least pay enough to buy an extra-large pizza and a pitcher of beer. But these days it’s not uncommon to see calls for submission that offer a magnificent twenty-five bucks for first rights. If that.

Best American Erotica is long gone, and many of the anthologies that are put out are of the Village People variety: a book about hunky hardhats, a book about cute frat boys, more books about cute frat boys. Oh, and vampires. Lots and lots of gay vampires. The truly booming readership for queer porn, I’ve heard tell, is straight woman who want to read romantic tales of explicit gay sex, like bodice-rippers with bum-fucking. Gay guys, meanwhile, are happy to look at dirty pictures on tumblr. I know I am.

Just as most people don’t watch porn videos for the cinematic values or great acting, so most readers of erotica, I‘ll bet, don’t give a fuck about literary furbelows or incisive insights into sexuality; they want to get off. They want stories that are “hot,” which means hot to them. Soi-disant “literotica” has just plain failed to establish a large enough readership. I once asked Ian Philips, whose extravagantly smart book See Dick Deconstruct had won the Lambda Literary Award for erotica, how many copies it had sold. He said, as I recall, four hundred, a sad average of eight in each of the United States (assuming a few copies hadn’t made their way to foreign climes).

And anyway, thanks to blogging, Facebook, and Twitter, simply everybody’s an author. Everybody. To quote the quotable Suzy Bright: “The cult of amateurism has swamped the writing room. Its spoils pass for mainstream entertainment.”

It’s hardly any wonder that many of the best authors of that first wave of quality queer erotica have long since moved on. “Aaron Travis” now writes best-selling detective stories under his real name, Steven Saylor. Michael Thomas Ford once wrote dirty tales. Now he writes beach books and stories for young adults. Thomas Roche has moved on to science fiction. And me? Still writing smut.

Sure, it’s possible that I’m just projecting my own career discontents onto the world at large. It’s more than likely that oodles of great new gay erotica is out there, most of it written by people I’ve never heard of. In fact, self-publishing pretty much ensures that.

But as for me, I never wanted to be my own publisher, or my own publicist. I just wanted to write excellent smut. I can still set out too do that, of course, while being as weird as I want to be: I just sold an SM story based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And I do keep writing books. Sure, my first novel, The Dirty Boys Club, went nowhere, killed at least in part by the fugly cover the publisher chose. Sure, Jockboys, my e-book-only suite of short stories, has probably sold in the high two figures. Still, I was flattered when an e-publisher, Jean Marie Stein, asked me to put together a best-of collection. Despite the feeling that it marked the end of a trajectory, like a lifetime achievement Oscar, I have to immodestly admit that I think Man on Man: The Best of Simon Sheppard, is pretty damn good. Not that anybody is buying it.

And so it goes. I’m just a cranky old fag, sitting on the verandah , shouting, “You kids get off my porn!”

But there is—beyond market forces and queer history and the ego grat of knowing someone somewhere thinks your writing’s pretty good—something else. To quote a story of mine about an interviewer tangling with an aging gay pornographer (not really me, I swear):

****

“Narrative coherence,” said the Witch of Capri. “They all want fucking narrative coherence.”

Quilty scribbled furiously. He would have brought a laptop to take note, but he’d been warned beforehand that computers were banned within the sacred precincts of the Witch’s clifftop home. Not even a voice recorder passed muster. Perhaps it was some kind of obscure test, the Labors of Hercules for interviewers. Or maybe it was just the sadism of an old queen.

“And if there’s one thing, my son, that life teaches one, it’s that narrative coherence—hell, coherence of any sort—the fretful workings of a mind struggling to superimpose order on this squalid mess we call life.”

That was a nice turn of phrase: “squalid mess.” Quilty struggled to get it all down.

“So you would say that you didn’t abandon erotic writing, that it abandoned you?”

“A neat formulation, but no. I simply realized that I could write porn till the crack of doom, and I’d still never succeed in getting it right.”

****

Yes, stroke stories may indeed have some wider cultural significance, may provide a sticky path to liberation. (Though just provoking someone to jack off is a not-inconsiderable achievement.) But, if I’m honest with myself, I have to confess that the major reason I still, at least now and then, pen a tale about penises is that I do in fact want to get it right, to not only celebrate male lust, but to get the truth of it down on the page.

Sure, that sounds pretentious, but I’m stuck with it.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing to be stuck with, after all.

About Simon

Simon Sheppard is the author of nine books about sex, most recently Man on Man: The Best of Simon Sheppard; Jockboys; Sodomy!; and The Dirty Boys’ Club. He also is editor of Homosex: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica, which won the Lambda Literary Award, and over 300 of his stories have been published in books, magazines, and online. San Francisco Magazine once dubbed him “our erotica king,” and he still lives in the City, gentrification be damned, with his husband William. He hangs out at www.simonsheppard.com.