writing news

Now Available: The Blossoms of Summer erotic steampunk

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

Mockups of the book cover shown on a tablet and a paperback. Cover is dark with gold lettering reading The Blossoms of Summer, with exotic flowers painted entwined with the letteringAvailable for purchase almost anywhere books are sold, including:

The Blossoms of Summer

by Cecilia Tan

An erotic steampunk adventure novella, told in epistolary fashion, through letters and diary entries.

A botanist travels by airship beyond the known lands of Canton in search of breathtaking beauty and finds himself seduced by his exotic discoveries.

Botanist Robert Meriweather has been tasked by the Continental Occident Company to travel beyond the known lands of Canton to search for the “forbidden flowers,” specimens of such breathtaking beauty that the mere sight has caused men to forsake their homelands. Robert’s orders are to bring these blossoms back to England, where all of society’s rewards—and his betrothed, Livia—await him.

Robert soon finds himself on an unexpectedly erotic adventure, in which he must abandon all his Victorian social moires to succeed in his mission. But he will never abandon Livia and his dream of marrying her as a gentleman of standing!

Paperback: $9.99 ISBN: 978-1-963897-16-6
Ebook: $2.99

 

 

 

writing news

Starting August 1: an erotic steampunk adventure

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

A black and gold promo banner that reads An Erotic Epistolary Tale, starting August 1 on Patreon

So….. I’ve been threatening to start publishing some erotic fiction over on my Patreon for a while now and I’m finally organized enough to get it going.

As a kind of test run before we do anything longer, I’m going to start with an erotic steampunk adventure entitled The Blossoms of Summer, which is an epistolary tale of an airship adventure told through a brave adventuring botanist’s letters and diary entries.

It’ll run every day for six days, starting on August 1.

Here’s the official description that will go on the book, which will launch after the serial runs:

Botanist Robert Meriweather has been tasked by the Continental Occident Company to travel beyond the known lands of Canton to search for the “the Blossoms of Summer,” secret and hidden specimens of such breathtaking beauty that the mere sight has caused men to forsake their homelands. Robert’s orders are to bring these “forbidden flowers” back to England, where all of society’s rewards—and his betrothed, Livia—await him.

Robert soon finds himself on an unexpectedly erotic adventure, in which he must abandon all his Victorian social moires to succeed in his mission. But he will never abandon Livia and his dream of marrying her as a gentleman of standing.

Continue reading →

appearances/Newsletter/writing news/writing talk

Are we in a Golden Age of Queer & Trans SF/F?

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

Hello and welcome to another ctan monthly updatet! It’s Pride Month, so today let’s talk about queer science fiction and fantasy.

First some housekeeping: Mailchimp has been driving me nuts, with the newsletter sometimes displaying so tiny on mobile devices it was illegible. I’m trying on a new template today, with new fonts. Please let me know if this one looks better to you (or worse!) than before so I can keep improving it.

Second, my apology this is a bit later than I intended, but I had knee surgery on Wednesday and as you can imagine it’s put a bit of a cramp into my schedule. I’ve discovered I would rather have my knee hurt and my brain work than be “pain free” but feel seasick from narcotics. Apparently opioids are not my friends! Bleah.

And now to my slightly linkbait-y topic: are we in a “Golden Age” of queer and trans SF/F? Yes, yes we are, end of essay.

Just kidding, of course I’m going to explain WHY my answer is yes.

Continue reading →

Newsletter/recipes/writing news

The Unexpected, the Sublime, and the pastime of looking up.

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

Welcome to my latest monthly newsletter! If you’d prefer to get this directly in your email each month, you can sign up here: http://eepurl.com/TEWfv

or you can join my patreon to get not only posts like this but other writer-y stuff and fiction as well.


Thinky Thoughts: The Unexpected, the Sublime, and the pastime of looking up.

The last thing I expected this month, after just having seen the total solar eclipse in April, was an even more mind-blowing celestial event! But a Coronal Mass Ejection resulted in spectacular auroras at both poles of the Earth, and with little to no warming I decided to abandon other plans and hop in the car late Friday night to chase it.

Continue reading →

general blather/writing news

Going to Great Lengths to Definitely Not See the Sun

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment
The total solar eclipse as seen from Colebrook, New Hampshire, with Venus visible in the sky and the sunset effect through bare trees.

 

In this newsletter

  • Thinky Thoughts: Going to Great Lengths to Definitely Not See The Sun
  • Daron’s Guitar Chronicles new vols 1, 2, and 3 are live!
  • Free read: my oldest story on the Internet
  • Book rec: The Night Eaters
  • RomCon in Ashland, May 18th! Neon Hemlock live on May 22!
  • Photos from ICFA!
  • WIP Report: dragons are eating my brain!
  • A recipe: Scones!
  • One Featured Backlist Book: Wild Licks

 

Thinky Thoughts: Going to Great Lengths to Definitely Not See the Sun

After seeing the total solar eclipse in 2017, and noticing that a 2024 eclipse trip would land on my birthday weekend, we started planning to see it right then. A year ago we booked our hotel, rental car, and flights to Austin, Texas, which would normally have the highest chance of being sunny in early April of anywhere in the country. By contrast, New England typically has the highest chance of being cloudy. So it made sense to plan well in advance to go to Texas.

However, Mother Nature had other ideas.

Our flight TO Texas was cancelled because New England was experiencing a nor’easter with ice pellets being driven by 60 mph wind gusts. Because we were going to be delayed by a day or more, we lost our rental car reservation. AND for the entire week leading up to when we were supposed to leave, we’d been watching the cloud cover predictions and Texas was looking like it might be entirely clouded over along the path of totality.

Well. I took the cancelled flight as a sign. We did not go to Texas.Continue reading →

general blather/Newsletter/writing news

How BDSM is Like Frozen Yogurt

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

So, I’m reorganizing the way I handle my blog(s), email list, Patreon, and social media. I’m going to crosspost a monthly “news and notes” across all platforms. It’ll typically open with what I call “Thinky Thoughts,” followed by the “news” of where I’m going, where I’ve been, what I’m working on, and what’s new to read.

Previously this material was scattered across my various social media and then usual compiled in the newsletter, with sporadic posts at Patreon as well, but now that I’m about to start posting more fiction content to Patreon, it made sense to streamline the rest.

This post is the first full “news and notes” update I’m putting on my main blog at ceciliatan.com (and onto Tumblr and Medium and everywhere else it crossposts like LJ, Dreamwidth, Goodreads, etc!). Wherever you’re reading it, welcome! Come hear my tale of WHY it is that I’m about to start posting more to Patreon, and how the answer relates to the issue of How BDSM is Like Frozen Yogurt.

(If you’ve already read my newsletter or patreon update, this is the same stuff…)

Continue reading →

foodie/recipes

Duck Day 2023: Full Canto

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

If you’ve read my “Duck Day” posts before, you know it’s my rundown of what corwin and I made for Thanksgiving. In 2023 we left for Aruba with my Mom that Saturday, and I thought I would work on the recap post then. But “Aruba” and “work” do not mix, and instead I read two lovely books and lounged about in the shade (and finally began to feel a little bit recovered from having had COVID in September…)

Anyway, now it’s February 2024 and I’m finally posting this so I can close the dozens of tabs still open on my browser since November!Continue reading →

appearances

Ann Bannon / Cecilia Tan Lesbian Pulp Fiction Talk

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

Writer Ann Bannon via Zoom holds up a copy of her book Odd Girl Out during an online discussion

Well, that was fun! My talk with Ann Bannon went swimmingly. We could have easily talked for another hour. Over 200 people had RSVP’d for the event and all throughout, each time one of us said something funny or pointed, we could see the emojis floating up our screens in the back-end of Zoom.

The recording is now live on YouTube for anyone who missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeyaveFkFXQ

Turns out Ann and I have a lot of parallels.

  • We both studied linguistics in college and ended up with linguistics degrees.
  • We both wrote defining works right when we were fresh out of college, her Odd Girl Out, me Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords.
  • We were both writing about sexuality and lifestyle that were taboo at the time, but which later became acceptable to depict in the mainstream (lesbian relationships, kink & BDSM).
  • We both had the experience of our publishers selling our books, successfully, to readers outside of our subcultures.
  • We have both had readers treat our fiction as if it was some kind of how-to manual!
  • We’ve both heard from readers who were validated by seeing themselves in our books, and whose lives were changed because of it.

And I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of! I was particularly struck by the “how to” manual thing. At the time when Odd Girl Out (Bookshop.org | Amazon) was published, there was no way for people to find out what the lifestyle was like. All they knew was what their homophobic teachers, clergy, and parents told them. So Ann’s books really functioned as a window into how things could be…Continue reading →

appearances

Ann Bannon and Cecilia Tan Discuss 20th Century Lesbian Pulp & Erotica

Posted on by ctan / 0 Comment

From Closet to Classic: Ann Bannon and Cecilia Tan Discuss 20th Century Lesbian Pulp & Erotica

Screengrab from the University of Illnois website that describes the event "From Closet to Classic: Ann Bannon and Cecilia Tan Discuss 20th Century Lesbian Pulp & Erotica" an online presentation on January 18, 2024.

I’m very excited and honored to be doing this online talk with Ann Bannon, the legendary author of the Beebo Brinker books, the foundational novels of the lesbian pulp genre in the 20th century. (I’m still getting a kick out of talking about the 20th century like it was a long time ago! If only!) The Rare Book library at the University of Illinois is hosting us on Zoom, so you don’t have to be at UofI to attend!

To get the Zoom link invite, sign up here: https://go.illinois.edu/closet

The official description: 

Please join the Rare Book & Manuscript Library via Zoom for a conversation between two of the most influential writers in lesbian pulp and erotic fiction of the 20th century.

Ann Weldy, better known by her pen name Ann Bannon, is the author of a series of five lesbian pulp novels known as “The Beebo Brinker Chronicles.” Written from 1957 to 1962, the books were bestsellers when they were first released, and have had remarkable longevity, especially for genre fiction. They have been published in five different editions and in several languages and are often taught in women’s studies and LGBT studies courses. The books’ popularity and impact have earned Ann Bannon the title of “Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction,” as well as numerous awards for pioneering gay and lesbian literature. A play based on her books has been produced twice in New York and now all over the country, from Boston to Seattle.

Cecilia Tan is an award-winning writer of science fiction/fantasy, romance, and erotica, and a 2010 inductee to the Saints & Sinners LGBT Writers Hall of Fame. Her books include Bent for Leather, Black Feathers, and the Magic University series, named by Autostraddle a “Trans-Inclusive Fantasy Series for Harry Potter Fans.” Her short stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Absolute Magnitude, Strange Horizons.

Please join us!