Erotica in the Headlines: Huffington Post Brings us a Look at The Lost Erotica of Spain

An article in this week’s Huffington Post takes us away to the Spain of the 1920’s, previously characterized as a time of melancholy after the fall of the country’s imperialism.

Erotic postcard series,€ A Virtual Wunderkammer: Early Twentieth Century Erotica in Spain,
published by The Huffington Post on Thursday January 21, 2016, Web
accessed Sunday, January 24, 2016, originally from http://sicalipsis.humnet.ucla.edu/items/show/125.

From the looks of it, though, the years between 1898 and 1939—especially the roaring 20’s—weren’t quite as melancholy as previously believed. UCLA Professor Maite Zubiaurre stumbled upon a collection of erotic works, written and pictoral, showing a far more robust and exciting side of sexuality, feminism, and early LGBT awareness in the country, shedding light on a history not only fascinating, but really, really lovely.

The article goes on to describe the societal importance of the pieces Zubiaurre has discovered, but also includes photos from the collection which are absolutely gorgeous. Revelations not just of a more open and celebratory sexuality, but of men as well as women, depictions of homosexual lovers, transgender individuals, and—one of my personal favorites—satirical depictions of the clergy in flagrante delicto.

The collection looks simply amazing. Take a look at the images in the Post article and let me know what you think. Which images speak to you most? What do you think this means for historians of the period and the culture today?

Talking Shop: The Importance of Queer Stories in Paranormal Romance

As of this writing, a quick perusal of Amazon categories shows us this: the Romance category in Books contains a total of 604,105 titles. Of those, 7% make up the Paranormal Romance category. 39% of Romance books are Erotica, and of those, only 2% are Paranormal.

 In order to find out roughly how many LGBTQ Romance and Erotica books feature paranormal plots and characters, we have to piece together numbers from a special filter labeled "Erotic Characters". If you add up all the titles featuring angels, demons and devils, ghosts, shapeshifters, vampires and werewolves, you come up with less than .7% of titles in LGBTQ Romance and Erotica that are paranormal.

Just for comparison, "Billionaire" erotica makes up 1.4%.

In The Headlines: The Popularity of Erotic Fan-Fiction

This week, The Huffington Post featured an in-depth article about the prolific world of erotic fan-fiction.

Talking Shop: Queer Voices in Paranormal Romance

Writers, have you ever wanted to try your hand at queer romance? It's a very passionate subject to me. I feel strongly that the Romance genre as a whole, and especially it's speculative sub-genres like paranormal, fantasy and sci-fi, could do with a good deal more queer voices and stories.

But writing queer romance comes with a hefty research cost, especially if you're not queer yourself. This is not an area in which to charge blindly forward. The LGBTQ spectrum, like any medium for relationships, is a lot more nuanced than pop culture and mainstream media tends to express.

The following are some beginning points to research and writing LGBTQ romance, based on my own research and reading experience. I don't claim this post to be a "cheat sheet" so much as an introduction, for those who either haven't written queer romance before or want a little insight to different areas of it. I can't include all the details I'd like to include about each identity that makes up the queer community. I can, however, offer up what I've learned so far in writing the genre myself.

We've Made it to the Final Round of the Bleeding Heart Book Awards!

We've made it to the final round of the Bleeding Heart Book Awards! Thank you to everyone who has voted for us so far. Let's take it all the way to the top!

Best Paranormal Novel: http://tinyurl.com/pht5doo

Best F/F Romance: http://tinyurl.com/op7wtso

Voting remains open until September 30th.

In The Headlines: LGBTQ and Religion

Anybody who follows me on Twitter or Facebook probably noticed me getting a little angry over the recent news about Kim Davis and her refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses based on her personal faith.

This is a very important issue to me. You see, I’m a Christian. I’m also bisexual, staunchly pro-LGBTQ, and passionate about my spiritual and individual identity. To me, my Christ-based spiritual faith is not about the lives or choices made by anyone else, but my own life, and my own choices. My faith dictates how I will treat others, not how I will judge them. And it saddens me to no end to know there are people out there who hate, fear, and rightfully reject Christians on the whole, because of people like Kim Davis, who think God has given them authority to preach discrimination and exclusion.

I don’t mean to try and convert anyone, mind you. Another of my strongly-held beliefs is that while I identify and relate to a Christ-based philosophy, that which I believe to be God I also believe to be capable of speaking to others in a way more relatable and personal to them. To me, this isn’t about converting anyone to Christianity, or Christians hurting the chance of others becoming Christian. It’s about how my faith is being reflected, and in my opinion, Kim Davis and her supporters are reflecting nothing but ugliness and hate. And this infuriates me.

Also in the headlines this week is a really wonderful article by author Matthew Vines: 5 Bible-Based Responses to Common Arguments Against Marriage Equality.  And these are the sorts of discourse I love to see: discussion of the Biblical teachings which show my faith is, in fact, not all about hate and rejection and overbearing moralism.

I’m not the kind of Christian who advocates literal interpretation of the Bible, anyway, but I find intelligent discussion about its teachings very enlightening. Insofar as the text has been used to advocate against LGBTQ equal rights, how do you feel about these arguments dismantling such interpretation?

And in closing...

Friday Free Read - Erotic Audio Excerpt of Goblin Fires

This Friday's Free Read:

Enjoy a Lavish Taste of Goblin Fires

Like what you hear?

Goblin Fires is coming to e-book shelves on Monday, August 3rd

Pre-order on Champagne Books

Pre-order on Barnes and Noble
Pre-order on Amazon

 

Sample Chapters

Chapter One

Chapter Two 

Chapter Three 

Friday Free Read: Her Dark Rewards

Austria, 1719

Rhiannon Donovan was a tall girl, almost of a height with her mentor, which was saying something. In life, the Viking Sölva had been a towering monster of a woman. Where Sölva was broad and muscular, though, pale as bleached bones, Rhiannon was skinny and slender. The younger vampire had humble breasts, like tender peaches, nearly imperceptible beneath the smooth, snug leather bodice she wore accentuating the lean lines of her frame. Her legs were long and strong, and Sölva was fond of telling her she looked almost boyish, until one noticed her lovely face, her full lips, and the long, thick lashes framing her yellow, leonine eyes. At the moment the left of these was bisected by the ugly thick line of a scar, remnants of a recent fight. The scar would heal in time, as all scars did for any child of the Five Demon nations, but for Rhiannon, the process was slower. It was a reminder of her inherent flaw. She was a bastard demon.

Talking Shop: Bisexuality and Reflections in Romance

I read a blog recently about coming out as bisexual, and it got me thinking. I hadn't realized until recently there's such a controversy about bisexuals and their place in the LGBTQ spectrum. We seem to fall between the cracks when it comes to gay issues, maybe because we can "pass" for straight. There are those who feel bisexuals aren't truly BI-sexual, but straight and "confused", or gay and "pretending".

 

I've been fortunate in that I've never run up against biphobia in my own experience, but it saddens me to see it exists, just as much as any other phobia against the LGBTQ community. And of course, much like the other orientations and gender identifications on the spectrum, bisexuals are greatly under-represented or mis-represented in romantic fiction.