Tuesday, June 30, 2015

SFRB Summer Cafe: Supernova Hot!



Hi and welcome. Before we get to the post part. please feel free to check out the rafflecopter and the other other lovely people on the blog hop.

a Rafflecopter giveaway




This is the Inkstained Succubus blog.  Let's enjoy a light summer supper with some Greek Hand Pies. Light, tasty and made with summer produce. (A great way to use up that zucchini!) They can be done as hand pies, conventional pies, as a croissant ringor simply with the filling stuffed in pita shells.


Greek Hand Pies

For The Pie

2 14.1 oz boxes Pillsbury Pie Crusts
1 lb ground beef or turkey
⅓ cup finely diced zucchini
¼ cup chopped black olives
1 teaspoon McCormick Greek Seasoning
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 egg lightly beaten with a splash of water.
¼ cup crumbled feta cheese

Tzatziki Dipping Sauce
1 cup plain Greek Yogurt such as Chobani
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 clove garlic minced
2 tablespoon finely grated cucumber, peeled and seeded

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400.

In a large skillet, brown ground beef stir in garlic and Greek seasoning and salt. Add zucchini and olives and continue cooking until zucchini just starts to soften. Remove from heat.

Roll out each piecrust and cut in half. Spoon a generous amount of filing onto one half of each pie crust half. Top with about a tablespoon of feta cheese. Fold dough over filling and crimp edges with a fork or pinch with your fingers. Place on a baking sheet. Continue with the rest of the pie dough and filling. Brush each pie with egg wash.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove. Serve with Tzatziki sauce.

For the sauce,
Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Makes 8 pies



And for your reading pleasure while you're eating, a selection from Somewhere Out There, our recent SF anthology.



From "A Very Emotional Scene"

The space station named Euripides 9, more commonly referred to as “The Last Stop,” was as far away from Earth as Madeline could get with what little money she’d left home with. It was the last waystation before crossing a mind-numbing chasm of empty space that stood between the cluster of solar systems that humanity had already dominated, and the next cluster of solar systems that humanity was now conquering.

It had taken Madeline close to a month to make it out as far as she had. She sat quietly in her quarters on a transport ship, staring at the walls day after day, with only the hum of the engines and the occasional whoosh of an FTL Push Drive to keep her company when she wasn’t taking in a rare meal. She disembarked at the next waystation and boarded another transport for the next leg of her journey, and she had a new room in which to sit quietly and stare at a new wall.

She expected something to happen at any time. She didn’t know if she would cry, or laugh hysterically, or just snap out of it and come to her senses. Every day when she woke, she wondered if this would be the day that her catatonic daze would end and the reality of it all would explode around her. She would contact her parents and they would send her the funds to return home.

But nothing ever happened. Days and weeks went by, and all she did was stare and wait. Whatever it was she was doomed to eventually feel, it seemed to be less inevitable than she had expected. The emotions never came. Madeline had reached the end of her journey, and the end of her money, and the numbness had never faded.

And so, she was seeing an onion about a job.

“I’m a chef, of sorts,” Harper continued. “I create entertainment for the humans that travel through here, and the Tegalians that crew the station come to feed on the emotions that my entertainment elicits. It’s a very symbiotic relationship that has made me very wealthy and rather well-known in many Tegalian circles.”

“That’s nice,” Madeline said, assuming he was expecting her to say something.

“Did you do any performing on Earth?” Harper asked her.

Madeline shrugged. “Sure.”

“Have you ever performed a sexual act for an audience?” Harper asked.

Madeline blinked. “Pardon?”

“I understand humans are rather private about their sexual practices,” it said. “I’ve found that including sexual activity in my productions generates very strong emotions. It’s a very enticing mixture of excitement and revulsion. It’s quite a spicy flavor. Have you ever had sex on stage before?”

Madeline thought about this for a moment. The numbness in her core kept her from being shocked or repulsed by the question, which left her with only a nagging feeling that there must be something lost in the translation.

“You want me to have sex on stage?” she asked. “In front of a live audience?”

“That is correct,” Harper said.



Monday, June 29, 2015

Congratulations!

Our own BR Sanders has been nominated for a Gaylactic Spectrum award, for excellence in gay SF Fantasy and Horror.

  http://www.spectrumawards.org/20142015.htm

Her Resistance is one of many novels nominated, and is keeping company with such names as Dennis Upkins, Tanya Huff, Seanan McGuire and Dusk Peterson.


Congratulations!

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Fantasy and its children

There seems to be some confusion among authors about the various sorts of fantasy.

The Inkstained Succubus page  says we accept
+ Fantasy (High, Low, Urban, and Dark)

We had a contemporary piece submitted with the note it was Urban Fantasy/Low Fantasy.
There was one element in the story that does not actually exist, and it was written in a way that is utterly realistic, meaning it could exist. The author thought this one element made it fantasy. So, we're clarifying the list for authors and future authors.

Urban Fantasy:

In Urban Fantasy, the city plays an important role, almost to being a character in and of itself.


Think of Harry Dresden. He belongs in Chicago.  He even has a miniature of the city he uses for spell work.

Or Anita Blake, who could be from nowhere other than St. Louis.  When she goes to Branson, it is clear the author has been there and knows the area.

Think of Gotham City, the mise en scene it lends to the movies,with Wayne Manor, Arkham Asylum, all of it.

Lovecraft would not be nearly as effective set in Indianapolis or Los Angeles ("Cast A Deadly Spell" aside). He requires the ancient inhabited places and decay of long-established settlements.

In our own offerings, The Beast Within definitely qualifies. Memphis and the area around it are part of the story.


Low Fantasy:

This is when the everyday world interacts with the supernatural. It is different from Urban Fantasy as the city does not play an important part.

 "Supernatural," with its different location every week, or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Charmed" are all Low Fantasy. Practical Magic has enough literary pretensions to be Magical Realism.

Magical Realism is Low Fantasy for people who don't like escapist literature or fantasy. Beloved, A Hundred Years of Solitude and "If You were a Dinosaur, My Love" are all magical realism.

Paranormal Romance is a subset of Low Fantasy. It involves the uncanny interacting with the mundane world and someone getting busy with a Creature of the Night.


In our offerings, "Misfit Prophets beneath a Bankrupt Sky" and Fated Bonds are Low Fantasy.

Many of the stories in Into Dark Waters and Riding the Nightmare are Low Fantasy as well. (Especially the Gay Christmas Werewolf series in Nightmare)








High Fantasy:

This is fantasy set in a completely different world or a high and far off time. Lord of the Rings is the seminal example. Piers Anthony's Xanth. Terry Prachett's DiscWorld. C.S. Lewis' Narnia.
The key features are low tech level (pre-gunpowder, usually), the existence of magic and possibly non-human creatures.

Heroic Fantasy is s subset of High Fantasy. This is dismissively called Sword and Sorcery. Robert E. Howard's Conan.  Michael Moorcock's Elric. Barbara Hambly's Reluctant Wizard trilogy (Sunwolf and StarHawk)

We have only a little High Fantasy on offer, B.R. Sanders has put in the World Building and done a tremendous job with Resistance and "Matters of Scale".


Dark Fantasy:

This is fantastical horror. It is often from the monster's point of view, such as Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire series or Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Comte St. Germaine vampire series. Stephen King's Dark Tower series, with its melding of fantasy and horror is a brilliant example.
It's tough to pull off without slipping into outright horror. But CeeCee Sanchez does it in "Skin and Bones," giving us an even more horrific Hansel and Gretel tale. Elizabeth Donald walks the fine line in Dreadmire (which earned the nickname "the float trip to Hell.") skirting outright horror while maintaining the fantasy setting.



Monday, June 22, 2015

News and more news

It's been a busy bit recently.

We're just back from Hypericon in Nashville. This was a lovely little convention and Somewhere Out There had an amazing debut.

And we came home to the news that our own HC Playa had gotten married!  We wish her and her husband all the best





It's going to be a quiet July and I will keep our Mad Scientist chained to the editing block.

Because after that, we are BUSY

Where We'll be Anchored, for your stalking convenience:

Aug 15
Memphis Gaming Expo
Landers Center
Southaven MS

Aug 29 
River City Comic Expo
Statehouse Convention Center
Little Rock AR

Sept 4-6
Mephit Fur Meet
Whispering Woods Convention Center
Olive Branch MS

Sept 11-13
Imaginarium
Crowne Plasa Hotel
Louisville KY

Oct 3-5
ContraFlow 
New Orleans Airport Hilton
Kenner LA

Oct 15-18
Festival of Souls
Meeman Shelby State Forest
Memphis TN

Nov 6-8
ConTraception
Hilton Garden Inn
Independence MO

Come out and say hello. Buy a book. If you are one of our authors in those areas, contact the convention about being a guest.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Birthday on Deck


It's HC Playa's birthday here and we're excited.


For those who don't know this lovely, here's a bit about her:
HC Playa is a writer, a mad scientist in training (translation: full–time graduate student), a mother of three, and an animal wrangler. Although, some days she wonders if maybe she's the one being wrangled.


Playa is the author of Fated Bonds, in which a cop falls hard for the werewolf she rescues.


Buy Link




To celebrate, we're giving away one copy of the Fated Bonds ebook to a randomly selected comment!
Leave a birthday wish for the author.
Tell us whether you have the book and what you liked about it.
Tell us what conventions you attend.

The crew will be at Hypericon in Nashville this weekend.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Cover reveals

The covers for the two new kink anthologies are now able to be shown


Master Mine is a male-dom BDSM anth and Mistress Mine is the female-dom one.

Submissions for Master Mine are closed. Mistress Mine is open until August 15



My Sexy Saturday: Our Sexy Galaxy

Intro:

 In these stories, many of them take place on other worlds, in a spaceship or right here on Earth with a sexy alien. Again, we leave the particulars up to you since you do it so, so well. Remember, our sexiness can happen anywhere, anytime, day or night. People fall in love in many different ways. It could be on a date, at a school dance, on a hike on Alpha Centauri, with the boy or girl from the next planet, just anywhere two or sometimes more people or beings are drawn together because of that feeling called love.

From Somewhere Out There


Buy Linkhttp://www.inkstainedsuccubus.com/#!product/prd1/3495205211/somewhere-out-there

Your Seven Sexy Paragraphs
From "Captain H" by Doreen Perrine

“Why did she have to land us in such a cosmopolitan place?” he grumbled. “With all the undiscovered planets out there.”

“Umm, she’s sitting right there at twelve o’clock,” Eve muttered into a mug of frothy amber liquid. While the drink resembled beer in look and smell, it had the otherworldly taste of a sweet elixir. “Your bitching about the captain better not land me in the brig.”

“Oh, please.” Gan sniffed the oozy green concoction of his drink. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you eyeing the captain, well, like eye candy. Face it, Don Juanita, Captain H is way out of your league.”

Eve, who knew Gan was right, resorted to sarcasm in her defense. “You should know from out of your league.”

“Meaning?” Gan pursed his lips making them look like a blue wire wriggling across his face.

Eve snickered, and then took a draught of the tasty liquid, which bubbled down her throat with a pleasant tingle. “Everyone knows how you check out the first mate’s aft like he passed your inspection.” She narrowed her eyes at Gan, plunked her empty glass on the bar, and signaled the barkeep for another.

“Really?” An embarrassed look crossed Gan’s boyish face. “Is it that obvious?”


The Other Sexy People





Friday, June 5, 2015

Newsletter Membership drive and other promo

We're going to be conducting a newsletter membership drive later in the month.


What would you consider a decent sign-up premium?
A free short-story?
A 20% off coupon?
Suggestions?

Yes, this comes by email.
We do not give or sell your email address to anyone.
We do not spam your email. I try to hold it to one a month and make it fun and informative.

There will be coupons and special promotions for newsletter subscribers.

In fact, at 100 subscribers, I'm giving away a free e-book of choice to both the person who signed up and the person who referred them (if any)


We have a couple of stand alone pieces that aren't selling too well.
I'd like to give them a boost in Mid June by running a 99c sale on Amazon. $1 for a good horror story, some sexy lesbian cyberpunk or some rollicking SF adventure. Let's get these three to the best seller lists so people can see them.

Monday, June 1, 2015

Two Week Warning

Have Quest, Will Travel closes on June 15!

This is old-school sword and sorcery, might vs magic, your brawny protagonist against a wicked spell-slinger.

5000-15,000 words.

Happy ending required.