Newsletter/writing news/writing talk

Let’s Talk About Fear (and erotica)

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Thinky Thoughts: Let’s Talk About Fear

Welcome to the spookiest month of the year! I figure this is a great time for some thinky thoughts about fear—specifically how crucial fear is in erotic fiction. For me, at least.

I was a fraidy cat as a child. I was one of those kids who would see Godzilla on television and then not be able to get to sleep for weeks, because I was convinced that Godzilla was definitely coming out of the sea that very night to step on our house. Or that space aliens were coming to kidnap me. Or whatever other horrible thing I could imagine.

What was extra-confusing to my parents is that things other kids were afraid of—like talking to adults, or jumping into the deep end of swimming pool, or snakes—didn’t bother me at all. My mom talked to the school psychologist about it and was told that “gifted” kids with vivid imaginations were prone to such terrors.

Tell her it’s just her imagination, they said. That went okay, I guess, when the reason I couldn’t sleep was my fear of “giant germs that could come through walls.” (No idea where I got that idea from…Star Trek, maybe? Or Space 1999?)

The “just your imagination” strategy failed, though, when …

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writing news

Now Available: The Blossoms of Summer erotic steampunk

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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

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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.

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appearances/Newsletter/writing news/writing talk

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

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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.

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Newsletter/recipes/writing news

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

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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.

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general blather/writing news

Going to Great Lengths to Definitely Not See the Sun

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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

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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…)

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foodie/recipes

Duck Day 2023: Full Canto

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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

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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 →