Scoring; Torquere Writer's Call

Tight ends. Rugby calendars. Rodeo riders in leather chaps. Who says sports aren't sexy? Think of all those hard bodies, working for the win. Whether championship winners or local pick-up game heroes, the Scoring anthology is all about guys who play sports, and guys who score.

We're looking for fully realized romantic stories with happy ending on a sports theme. Story length is 5000 words and up, but stories of extreme length will need to be extraordinary to obtain acceptance. Stories will be collected into a paperback volume, for which the payment is $35.00 plus one print copy of the book. Stories will be contracted individually on an ebook basis, and will receive separate royalties for single copy sales.

Send your submissions to submissions @ torquerepress.com with Scoring Anthology in the subject field. Please see our general submissions guidelines for formatting etc.

Deadline, June 1.

Guest Post: John Tomaino

More about me and my books here: www.johntomaino.com

What are your greatest challenges in your writing career?

Finding (read making) the time to write. This is all about priorities. The story ideas are always there for me, so it's more about the discipline of making time and not succumbing to life's distractions.

Of your published works, do you have a favorite? Why?

It seems that my latest works, in this case: 'Saint Menace: The Patron Saint of Terror', are my favorites as my writing improves with every publication. However, as for a story, I think 'The White Room', my first novella published by Karabeth, will always hold a special place for me. It's a uniquely spooky and unsettling piece about a woman who voluntarily admits herself into a psychiatric institution, but struggles to get out.

What are your biggest pet peeves for other people's grammar? Are there any mistakes that you find yourself making regularly?

Social media grammar - or should I say 'gramma' is just atrocious! But I guess there is no turning back from the slipshod, fast-food approach to communicating on these platforms. For me, I always have to double check that I'm using 'past' and 'passed' correctly. To this day I am still unsure, to be honest! Did I pass?

Do you ever want to go back and edit an older story?

If I re-read a story, I invariably want to change something, but it's usually not the editing as I'm fanatical about tightening things up. I'm sure that painters must wish they could carry around a paint brush and re-visit their old exhibitions and apply that missing dab or stroke, just to finish off the painting... but is it ever really finished?

What's your writing routine?

Sporadic, in short furious bursts, then nothing for ages!

What writers or novels do you consider “must reads”?

I learnt a lot from Stephen King's 'On Writing'. Omit needless words is the key. It sharpens your work. Using less words, but more meaningful and effective ones, is a good lesson to learn. It's just like music: simple with less notes generally works best. Simon and Garfunkel are just guitar and vocals and they are mesmerizing, aren't they? Because less is more and cuts closer to the heart.

Talk to us about your domestic life; favorite recipe, pets, children, your house...

I have a newborn that is a tiny terror at night. Ava leaves me plenty of time to write - or at least think about it!

Tell us three things about you that are interesting.

I write original pop/rock music. See www.myspace.com/jttunes.com 

I still work full time in the justice system.

I am a music producer and develop other artists.

Writer's Call; Steampunk m/m stories

Steamed Up

Edited by Anne Regan

Dreamspinner Press is seeking romantic short stories with steampunk themes.

Possible examples: Ulysses makes mechanical flowers that bloom to try to catch the eye of the quiet, bookish man who lives next door. Shop owner Abe fell in love with inventor Adolph from afar, but what does he have to offer? Nobleman August holds himself above love until he meets commoner Charlie, a man he can’t have. Bart and Coleson want a family and adopt an orphan who has an uncommon talent.

Editor’s Note: Because of the packaged nature of the anthology, all stories need to stand alone. No sequels to or spin-offs of previously published works, please.

Submission Deadline: July 1, 2013

Publication Date: October 2013

Single-book anthology story length: 3,500 - 12,000 words
Manuscripts shorter or longer will be considered but will have to be extraordinary.
Follow general Submission Guidelines for instructions and formatting.

Send all submissions to anneregan@dreamspinnerpress.com. List the anthology title in the subject line of your e-mail. Ex: STEAMED anthology submission

Unexpected Sexual Predilections

So...

My parental ideals were tested. Again.

I have tried very hard to maintain that I would like my daughter to be able to talk to me about sex. That I'd be open minded and understanding. After all, I was sexually active pretty young and my mom's openness with me about it kept me - well, not from doing anything stupid. I did a lot of stupid shit. But it did keep me from having awful consequences from the stupid; I didn't have any unwanted babies, and I never once got an STD.

(Aside; one of my much less sexually active friends expresses complete astonishment that I never got an STD... sex ed has been using scare tactics for so long that many people assume if you have more than 5 partners - yes, I have more than 5, in fact I have quite a few more than 5 - that you will get herpes or gonorrhea or something.)

Yes, I knew very early what a condom is and how to use it.



Yes, wrap it up. All the time, wrap it. In fact, the one time I ever used my safeword was when a partner threatened to "go in bareback" when we were playing around with bondage. He attempted to refuse and I kicked him in the jaw. Dumbass.

Anyway...

I was cleaning my daughter's room yesterday.

And found this, under her bed.

Oooooookay.

My daughter is nine. NINE. She hasn't even started menstruating yet.

Well, if she's having sex - already! - then she's at least having safe sex. I ponder the situation for a while. She had several friend over this past weekend; at least two of whom brought bags of stuff over. Two of her little friends have older brothers in the 13 - 15 range.

But the child is off at school and I can't ask her questions. So I think of options. K's brother could be having sex. God knows, half of K's shit ends up in my daughter's room. Heck, we have at least 2 pairs of underwear belonging to M's daughters... I'm not entirely sure WHY R leaves her panties in my daughter's laundry basket, but it's happened before.

Also, most of my friends are now sleeping with EACH OTHER. Yay, my weird matchmaking hobbies, but of the couples I've introduced to each other, one pair is engaged, one are planning to move in together, and the third are happily seeing each other exclusively. Honestly, that's not intentional - I introduce people to someone I think they might be sexually compatible with for the purposes of getting them laid... my sexually wound up friends get me slightly stressed out... lack of sex or repression isn't healthy! It's also often pretty noticeable... anyway, it's never been my plan to have people get together and stay that way for over two and a half years. It's nice though. When my friends date each other, I don't have to put up with bullshit crazy-ass sig-others that I cannot stand. Like Billy - not his real name - who was a one night stand for my friend and he just didn't go home in the morning. He stuck around and infuriated me for months. Why yes, I am a little selfish, you hadn't noticed?

That being said, it was possible that the wrapper belonged to one of those couples; two of which have slept on my sofa.

Anyway, finally the child comes home from school and I ask her about it.

"Oh, that? I found it in the box of Legos dad gave me. What is it?"

After explaining what a condom is and how you use it (again. we've actually discussed this before, but I didn't have one around to use for demonstrations - one of the nicest thing about being monogamous is not needing to use them anymore, and I haven't since that horrible year after the child was born and I was breastfeeding and we didn't want to risk getting pregnant again immediately...) I texted my husband.



Turns out it's your condom. Checked the expiration date. It expired in '99.

She found it in the Legos you gave her from when you were a kid.

Did I store a condom in there? I don't remember that. Must be from high school.

Practice safe bricking.

I'm a Legophiliac. I admit it.

My Stupid Mouth

note these are all ones. I'm stupid, not rich.

As a gamer girl, with the added burden of being an acknowledged erotica writer, I'm quite familiar with the "Tits or get the fuck off" attitude. Girls can't play. Girls can't tank. Wife aggro. "Rape" used to mean "I got my ass kicked by a bunch of pixels."

My new motto is "I don't hate myself enough to listen to GenChat tonight."

And every once in a while I get smacked in the head by someone I like with the "girls are horrible/dumb/bitchy and why why won't they fuck me" line. (Gee, Prince Charming, I fucking wonder!)

So, this weekend, I get into an argument with a friend, because I just can't seem to shut up. If you act like a sexist fucknut around me, I am going to call you out. If you act like a privileged white guy rape apologist, I'm going to call you out, and then drop you off my friends list like you're toxic, because, well, you are.

I come downstairs to get coffee and I rant at my husband, "Why is there no way to actually get through to people? Why is it that I ask someone not to use 'rape' to mean 'something didn't go my way' around me, and I end up in a forty-five minute argument that ends when I ban someone from ever talking to me again? Why do they think they need to justify their thoughtless behavior by becoming worse? Is there some genetic code that prevents people from just saying 'Oh, sorry,' and going on to become a better person? Is it that much of a big deal?"

He didn't really have any answers for me, although he did offer to punch the guy in his stupid mouth.

And while I appreciate that my husband stands up for me, sometimes I really wish it wasn't so fucking necessary. I get better, faster answers from mechanics, teachers, repairmen when I ask my husband to talk to them... nice little girl, hesh yo mouth and go make me a sammich.

Gyah!

So that happened.

(apologies for this 'my best friend is black/I'm not racist' paragraph.)

I have quite a number of friends who are QUILTBAG* including quite a few transgender in various stages of transition / gender corrective surgery.

And one of my friends was talking about being MtF and dealing with women who give unsolicited fashion advice, expecting her to be even more feminine than the standards they hold themselves to. Don't wear stripes, don't wear those shoes, why are you walking around without a purse, girl?

I said that I didn't think unsolicited advice was reserved entirely for trans; I've gotten unasked for advice on fashion, my weight, my hair, my hobbies, the men and women I sleep with, being a mom, not being a mom. If there's a subject out there, chances are good I've gotten some unsolicited opinions about how I'm doing it all wrong. Women are, unfortunately, prone to this sort of nitpickery/rung climbing/pecking order/mommy-drive-by behavior. Hell, I've done it myself. And then I opened my mouth and fell in.

"Welcome to the club."

And I got called out for it. My friend is a woman, she's been in the club for years and she's got her jacket already. I was being condescending and it was uncalled for.

I didn't mean it that way - I'm the sort of asshole who says "Welcome to Virginia" to people who complain about the heat around here, to my husband and my best friend who've been living here for decades. I'm not actually welcoming them anywhere, or including them in some exclusive club. I'm saying "yeah, it sucks. it always has. it probably always will."

I almost typed all that up on my friend's page and then I took a deep breath. Defending my thoughtless words. Getting somewhat angry.

Deep breath.

Wait.

Was I not being the sort of privileged asshat that I was just complaining about not three hours ago?

"Thank you for calling me out. I was being an ass without realizing it. I know it's not your job to handhold me though the conversation and assumptions of what's okay with me might not be what's okay with you. I apologize. It wasn't my intention to be an ass, but it happened and I was wrong. I want to learn to be a better person than I am now. Thank you for being understanding as well. The only way for me to get better, check my privilege as it is, is to be open to learning what I do or say that can be taken wrong. I don't think anyone can ever get everything right, but you do the best you can, leaving a criticism as being what it is, the opportunity to learn, share and understand."

It's not possible to never say something stupid without crawling into a hole, or surrounding yourself only with people who are exactly like you, who come from the same point of privilege. And I'm not telling you what I did because I'm trying to earn some sort of  LGBT cookie (see also feminist cookie). I was an ass.

And sometimes, I need to be reminded of it.

Which is exactly how being an ass, being sorry, and obtaining forgiveness should work.


*QUILTBAG is an acronym. It stands for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Allied/Asexual, Gay/Genderqueer. It is meant to be a more inclusive term than GLBT/LGBT and to be more pronounceable (and memorable) than some of the other variations or extensions on the GLBT/LGBT abbreviation.

Guest Post, T.M. Scott

T.M Scott loves writing. With passion, drive and a taste for the unusual, she enjoys reading and writing new and different things. Doing her best to always think out of the box, her writing usually starts off as an insane scheme of some sort before she works out the finer aspects and turns it into something great! Her heroines and heroes are never the typical 'beautiful' people, meaning they all have some sort of quirk or oddity about them that makes them unique and refreshing characters everyone can relate to.

Her first novel is Symphoni and her work has been featured in the horror anthology, The Withering Darkness. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her daughter Ariyanna


When did you find out that you wanted to be a writer? What inspired you to put pen to paper?

I started writing about 5 years ago when I got tired of reading about weak female characters. I read a lot about females constantly in need of rescuing and I decided to write something different! That’s how the Idea of Symphoni came along.

Do you ever want to go back and edit an older story? 

There’s a story I once wrote for an online forum titled “Twilight: According To The Criminally Insane” that I would love to go back and rewrite. I enjoyed writing it and with some polishing and tweaking I believe people would enjoy it as well.

Tell me about your first publication. Who was it with? How did you feel when you got that acceptance?

Symphoni is my first publication and it’s with Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly (CHBB) publishing. I had convinced myself that it wouldn’t be accepted as I sent it out, preparing myself for letdown so I was absolutely shocked when I received an wonderfully worded acceptance letter! I sent the book out to three different publishers and CHBB was the one to respond the fastest, the other two accepted as well but I was happy with CHBB by that time.

How much of your life and the people you know end up in your work?

Most of my characters, mannerisms and physical appearances, are based on family members or generally attractive people. Personal experiences don’t appear too much aside from very small things. A lot of my favorite foods make appearances though. I LOVE pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream so that shows up in everything.

What projects are you currently working on? Are you willing to share a small excerpt from a work in progress?

At this moment I'm working on an urban fantasy novel titled Dragon’s Revenge. It’s about a dragon princess on a quest to avenge her family.

“Why don’t you visit the pub with the other warriors?” Kaida contemplated this for a moment before replying, almost certain that the real reason wasn’t something she should be discussing with a five year old who couldn’t possibly know what happened in the pub. 

“Because I promised a certain little girl some sweets and princesses always keep their promises.” Ari smiled brightly at her, nodding and letting the subject drop. 

“What did you do to Aiden, Ari?” The little girl paused but the prospect of heading to the sweets shop seemed to win out and she kept walking. 

“I hit him in the neck.” Kaida held back a laugh. 

“Why? Because he took Yaya?” The girl held her doll closer and nodded. 

“He grabbed her from my hand and held her over my head so I hit him.” Kaida nodded as they continued to walk, stopping outside the doors of the sweet shop to wait for the others. She smoothed down Ari’s black locks still nodding. 

“You shouldn’t hit him. I know you were angry but you should never hit others unless it absolutely necessary.” 

“But it was!” A small smile spread across her face. 

“No. You should always try to resolve issues without violence.” The sound of feet running along the sidewalk made Kaida look up to find Aiden and his five brothers running towards them. 

“But princess. What if that doesn’t work?” She laughed. 

“Kick him in the shin and run like heck.” The little one giggled but didn’t say anything as the boys came up. It was odd looking at the Tanner boys in a row. They looked so much alike it was sort of like seeing what Aiden would look like as he got older, each of the 5 brothers two years older that the last. All standing there with curly blonde hair and blue eyes, leaning to the right with an eyebrow raised. 

“Hello Princess.” Aaron, the eldest boy said as he looked her over. He was only 14 years old but already had his eyes on older women, Kaida to be exact. 

“Hello Aaron. Came to get some sweets too?” He grinned at her and she rolled her eyes, knowing where his teen mind went. 

“You know, Princess, I start training with you guys next week. I’ve been practicing on my own.” He stood straight and curled his arms under in an attempt to show of nonexistent muscle.

“Soon enough I’ll be able to hang with the big boys!” She smirked. 

“I’m sure, Aaron. But for now-” 

“OUCH!” Kaida wheeled around to find Aiden jumping around on one leg while rubbing his leg. 

With a sigh, Kaida looked at Ari who merely smiled and said “Absolutely necessary!”

What's your writing routine?

Typically, once I take my daughter to preschool I come home, clean a bit and do writing sprints until I go pick her up. It lets me meet my daily goal of 2-3k in about an hour or two.

Is there a character or story that's stuck in your head and won't leave, from either your work or someone else's?

Yes actually. From my current WIP Dragon’s Revenge. There are two children named Aiden and Ari… I’m DYING to write a story about them when they grow up. Also, There’s a character from another WIP, The Lost Angels, named Ena O’Dochraigh. Her story is very interesting because she was a child serial killer turned werewolf (and more later). She plays a big part in TLA but I really want a chance to write about her past.

What writers or novels do you consider “must reads”?

It depends really. If you’re into steampunk, then pick up anything by Gail Carriger. If you’re into YA weirdness, anything by Dia Reeves. YA Zombies? Lia Habel and Susan Dennard are amazing. Nicole Peeler’s Jane True series is another must read! Dystopians or post apocalyptics? Burning Bridges by Nadege Richards, The Hunger Games, and The Passage by Justin Cronin.

Writer Calls, Bisexual Glam Rock

Glam Rock : Storm Moon Press

Submission Deadline: May 30, 2013
Expected Release: September 27, 2013
Genres: Contemporary
Pairings: Bisexual
HEA or HFN Ending Required? Yes

Glam rock was arguably the most visually outrageous and flamboyant embodiment of rock and pop fusion in history. From the latter half of the sixties to the early seventies, individuals were unafraid to paint bright designs on their faces, strive for sexual androgyny, and enhance their performances with unapologetic theatrics.

In our Glam Rock anthology, we’re looking for short stories that depict at least one character who is a glam rock star, be it the lead singer or part of the band. They can be male or female, but we’re looking for the gender ambiguity, androgyny, and bisexuality aspects that were so indicative of this period in rock and pop. Bring on the costumes, the bright colors, and the droves of glitter-bedecked fans! We want to see your main characters lighting up the stage and weaving a tangled web in their personal lives.

If set in the historical period, we won’t dissuade writers from capitalizing on the unprotected sex, drugs, and glamor that defined the times. We are not looking for RPF (real person fiction), so no pulling real rock stars from history. Feel free to take inspiration from the real thing, but this is your chance to get original and knock our platforms off! Make your rock stars the epitome of the glam rock era: Beautiful, tragic, and all things in excess.

Authors can download our author packet and read it over for detailed information about submitting and being accepted by Storm Moon Press.