Hello and welcome to the Circlet Press community on LiveJournal! We've already got a blog over at www.circlet.com, but if all goes right with our technical wizardry... posts that appear there will also appear here. Or something like that. Or maybe we'll just fake it...

Two more Circlet titles have been converted to ebook formats!

FETISH FANTASTIC:
Kindle Store
Fictionwise
PDF
Palm/Ereader

THE VELDERET
Kindle Store
Fictionwise
PDF
Palm/Ereader

They join Best Fantastic Erotica, and Erotic Fantastic, in the ebookshelf.

Coming next: Wired Hard 2 and Wired Hard 3.

Is there an ebook you'd like to see from our backlist? Let us know!

The Circlet website's just been updated with a new interview with Nancy Kilpatrick, aka Amarantha Knight:

http://www.circlet.com/?p=97

To commemorate the occasion, all the Darker Passions books are on sale for 20% off, or get a package deal of all three books for only $42, including shipping.

• Three book set ($42 including shipping)
  
• Dracula (usually $14.95, now $11.96!)
  
• Frankenstein (usually $14.95, now $11.96!)
  
• Jekyll & Hyde (usually $14.95, now $11.96!)
  

And don't forget to bid on our donation to the Live Long and Marry fundraiser! (livelongnmarry:

http://community.livejournal.com/livelongnmarry/149272.html

If you haven't heard about this, fandom is having a fundraiser so hopefully Mr. Sulu won't have his marriage annulled by anti-gay changes to the California constitution.

Circlet is donating a package of autographed books to the auction, The Velderet, Best Fantastic Erotica, and Erotic Fantastic, a $55 retail value. Visit this post to bid: http://community.livejournal.com/livelongnmarry/149272.html

Bidding closes July 15th, which happens to also be when our current submissions reading period ends! Get your stories in please! (New writers guidelines can be found here: http://www.circlet.com/?p=92

Click the banner below for more info on livelongnmarry:

Circlet Press is now open for short story submissions of erotic sf/fantasy for our new series of ebooks!

We are launching a new series of erotic e-books of all original stories. The reading period ends July 15th, 2008. All stories for ebook publication will conform to the same standards of quality and sensuality as in all Circlet’s print books. Ebook only publications pay $25 per story, with an additional $25 for any book that goes into print.

There are copies details about what we want and the specific anthologies we are looking for, if you look here:
http://www.circlet.com/?p=92

Erotic vampires, erotic steampunk, erotic high fantasy, sf/f genderfuck, and more! Have a look and then submit!

We've been keeping very busy over at Circlet.com!

Writer Melanie Fletcher told us about why writing is like String Art:
http://www.circlet.com/?p=83

Writer Elspeth Potter, aka Victoria Janssen, shared with us a lovely two part essay on her secrets of success:
Part one: http://www.circlet.com/?p=85
Part two: http://www.circlet.com/?p=86

We provided a tasty morsel just to whet the appetite, an enticing snippet from The Darker Passions: Frankenstein: http://www.circlet.com/?p=88

Lots of Reviews of Best Fantastic Erotica have begun to appear! The latest roundup includes The Fix: short fiction review, The Garden of Words, and The Triskelion Society, to add to Publishers Weekly, Uniquely Pleasurable, and Adult Video News. The book was also nominated for a Gaylactic Spectrum Award!
Read more: http://www.circlet.com/?p=89

Drop on over to the site and visit us!

It's time for another contest at Circlet.com! This month's contest is looking for the best entries of either microfiction or essay-form that are on the theme "the sex toy I wish existed, but doesn't." What do you dream of? Whether it is magical, technological, psychosexual, or what, craft your idea into either a microfiction or an essay and submit it to us by April 15th!

Word limit is 1000 words. Submit either as text in the body of the message or as an attachment. Be sure to include:
1. Name you would like used on the published piece
2. Your actual name and physical mailing address
3. A brief bio or byline that can run with the piece

Winners will receive a copy of The Erotic Writers Market Guide (a $19.95 value!) and a trophy in the form of a web graphic/banner that can be proudly displayed on blogs and websites!

All submissions should go by email to "circletintern" at Gmail. Deadline April 15th.

Fun and Games!

Today at Circlet Press we have something unique: a crossword puzzle.

This puzzle was created by Dan Recht and appears in the print version of Best Fantastic Erotica. I had put it in the Kindle edition, but realized it would be frustrating as the puzzle can't be worked on the screen nor can it be printed, so it has been left out of the other editions sold at Fictionwise.

Print it from THIS POST and enjoy! The puzzle, of course, has an erotic science fiction theme!

I've also started, purely for fun, a Circlet Press "minicity." Click on the URL to add to the population! That's all you do, just click to help it grow! http://circlet.myminicity.com

Our next contest will begin soon and I've been trying to come up with a theme that would lend itself to both essays and microfiction entries. What do you think about "sex toys we wish existed"? Drop me a line and let me know! Official rules and contest entry dates will be announced next week...

Love Circlet Press?
Just click here to show your appreciation! You'll be counted as an "inhabitant" in the Circlet Press MiniCity! (That's it! Nothing to buy, nothing else to do. Just click, that's all!)

More Formats of Ebooks
We're pleased to announce that our first two titles at Fictionwise.com are now up and running as downloadable ebooks!

Check out Erotic Fantastic and Best Fantastic Erotica, which are available in Palm eReader format, Mobi, PDF, Rocket, Franklin ebook, Sony reader, and a bunch of other popular ebook formats.

Kindle Bugs
Readers reported some bugs in the Kindle version of "Erotic Fantastic" that was being sold directly through Amazon.com. The links in the table of contents were totally stripped out in conversion. Grrr. I've now re-done them in exactly the same HTML code as "Best Fantastic" (which I think was fine) and re-uploaded it. It will take another 12 to 72 hours for the changes to go live, according to Amazon.

Anyone who got a defective version, Amazon did issue refunds to two customers who complained. Please do let us know if you felt you deserved one and didn't get one! At the very least we could send you a book or give you credit to be used at circlet.com?

Report a Bug
Need to report a bug in the Circlet web site, formatting error in an ebook, or error in a printed book? Please comment to the bug report post!

More ebooks coming the first week of April!

The first two titles for Amazon.com's "Kindle" e-reader by Circlet Press are now available!

Best Fantastic Erotica, our most recent print publication featuring the winners of the first round of the "best fantastic erotica" contest, and Erotic Fantastic: The Best of Circlet Press 1992 - 2002 are both up for download. They are each carrying a price tag of $9.99, but are $7.99 if bought via the Kindle network. (The print editions of both books are $19.99.)

By the end of next week we hope to have ebook versions available of these titles in many other formats, too. Watch www.circlet.com for announcements!

This is our first formal foray into the world of ebooks and we're still learning the tricks of formatting them correctly. Please do let us know if you buy the books if you find problems or corrections that need to be made! (Since it's an ebook, they can be fixed easily for future downloads!)

Some nice tidbits:

Kal Cobalt's essay on our site, "10 Things You Always Wanted To Know About Robot Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)" got a shout out recently from Susie Bright's blog, which prompted a discussion on her site about how Asimov's "laws of robotics" would interact with BDSM.

Kal has followed up with a new essay, "The Laws of Robotics vs. BDSM." Up on the site now, of course.

Meanwhile, I expect by the end of next week to have several Circlet titles available for sale in Amazon Kindle format, and through Fictionwise in many other ebook formats.

Hopefully we'll also have them for sale on our site, as soon as the shopping cart is fixed. (We actually need to upgrade our Wordpress install completely.) The cart actually *works* -- it just looks like it doesn't and it doesn't retain buyer info for future orders the way it should.

We'll test the new install with some special sales and offers, hopefully by next week! We have another story from Nemo to share with you, and some other cool stuff coming down the pipe to the site. So please drop in and visit at www.circlet.com.

Party Tonight! We'll be hosting a Champagne Reception from 10pm to 12 midnight in Room 427 of the Seaport Westin Hotel in Boston, at the Boskone science fiction convention. Copies of the book will be for sale, and the editor and some contributors to the book will be on hand to autograph.

The winners are in from the Future of Valentine's Day contest we ran at Circlet.com and two hot, fresh microfictions await you.

"Terran Export" by Victoria Pond and "Gifts of the High Ones" by Daniel J. Cottle are two very different takes on the holiday, perfectly perverse, and perfectly Circlet. Please take a moment to enjoy these short-shorts on your holiday!

Also!

Another book party! We'll be hosting a champagne reception for the launch of Best Fantastic Erotica at the Boskone convention this Friday (tomorrow, Feb 15th) from 10pm to 12 midnight. Room # to be announced, it will be posted at the convention, which is at the Seaport Westin in Boston. Please come on down, sip some bubbly, and peruse the book and meet some of the contributors!

We've had some nifty essays published recently:

Lauren P. Burka contributed a piece on writers in the sf/f genre who handle sex well: Great Science Fiction with Great Sex Writing

And Jean Roberta provided one entitled In Defense of Breeders, on the lack of some writers in the genre to recognize the reproductive consequences of sex.

We're also running a contest!

Want to win a copy of Best Fantastic Erotica? Submit a 250 to 1000 word microfiction to our Future of Valentine's Day contest! If your piece is chosen for publication at Circlet.com you'll win a copy of the book!

To submit to the contest, please send an email that includes:

• Your Name


• Name You Want Your Piece Published Under


• A brief bio or contributor's note


• A 250 - 1000 word microfiction on the subject of "The Future of Valentine's Day


• The mailing address you'd like your prize sent to!

Send your submission via email to "circletintern" at Gmail.com! Winning entry/entries will be published the week of Valentine's Day! (Of course...)

So, tonight, Friday January 18th, from 9pm - midnight, we will be celebrating the release of Circlet Press' brand new book, BEST FANTASTIC EROTICA (vol. 1)!

Room 209, Cambridge Hyatt Regency Hotel, at the Arisia Science Fiction Convention!

Copies of the book will be for sale, along with Circlet's other lovely smutty sci-fi selection. There will also be food and drink and talking about sex and writing and fantasy and almost surely Harry Potter, because I can't go anywhere these days without talking about Harry Potter...

I will be reading some erotic stories and such at 9pm and then party to follow.

For those who can't be there, you can order the book online from the usual places and from http://www.circlet.com.

I just returned the proofs for Circlet's first major book in two years, Best Fantastic Erotica, to the printer, which means its delivery is imminent! I've set up an ecommerce purchase page for it on circlet.com:

http://velderet.circlet.com/circletblog/?page_id=12&category=2&product_id=32

Order now and barring printer screw ups we should be able to get them to folks in time for Christmas, at least if you're in the US or Canada!

It's 320 pages, includes 18 stories and one novella, AND a Circlet-themed Crossword puzzle! All for $19.95 plus shipping! I'm psyched.

This is a test post! And there will be a quiz tomorrow, so be ready.