MEDUSA'S TOUCH will be out in May!

Several years ago, I had a near miss with signing a three book contract deal with a largish romance publisher that went boom shortly thereafter in exciting and unpleasant ways. It was a "near miss" because I had a lawyer with publishing expertise review their contract and was counseled not to sign it as it was. The publisher wouldn't negotiate, I wouldn't sign, and that, as they say, was that. This was a crushing disappointment for me for a few months, at least until said publisher imploded horribly and a lot of other people's books were caught up in the resulting disaster. In the meantime, I drafted a novel from one of my three proposals. Then I rewrote it and sent it out for feedback and edits, then rewrote it again. Then more edits and more rewrites.

The short version is that I'm nearly done, the cover artist is working on artwork for it and I have a release date of late May, 2018 from Queen of Swords Press. The original plan was to release this book later on in the year, but I have a chance to get it into a book bundle in June so we moved it up.

So what is Medusa's Touch about? It's a far future science fiction lesbian romantic adventure with some erotic scenes. Or it's a space opera with some queer women and Pilot-Captain TiCara X273 is a lot of things: a medusa pilot who can pilot a ship that plugs directly into her brain, a former fighter pilot from the Corps Wars that wracked the galaxy, a former street kid from one of the outlying settlements, an ex-sex slave to the Ears, who serve as corporate spies and assassins to the highest bidder. The woman she's falling for, Sherin Khan, is a corporate rep, a former singer in the spacer bars and a woman with some big secrets. They're on a mission to take Ser Vahn, an aging corporate CEO to the asteroid Electra 12 for medical treatments, but there are a bunch of folks who don't want them to make it. Also, there's some hot sex. Have I mentioned that part? :-)
Stay tuned for more updates and the cover reveal!

News!

Sacch Green's erotic lesbian fairy tales anthology Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms, which includes my story "Toads, Diamonds and the Occasional Pearl," is a Lambda Award finalist!  Fingers crossed that it's a win in May!

In other news, I have a provisional acceptance for  Best Lesbian Erotica 2019, pending publisher approval. This is for my brand new story, "Rainbow's End," which has something of a sweet romance vibe. Kind of. :-)

Speaking of romances, the massive overhaul of my erotic sf romantic space opera, Medusa's Touch, continues apace! I'm making sons good progress and will hopefully get it overhauled and edited in time for a late May release. Other stuff in progress too - stay tuned for updates.

Win a copy of DESIRE and other fun lesfic titles!

My collection Desire is part of a book giveaway package out on Instafreebie this week. Check it out and claim a fun new read!

Where to find my work

I haven't done an update to this in quite a while so I figured it was due.

Starting with my single author collections, we have these two, both from Queen of Swords Press.

Knife's Edge is 12 stories about spanking, surrender, restraints and some of the fun a few inventive gals can cook up with each other.  What else? There are pirates and aliens and cowgirls and the hottest meter maid you’ll ever run across. Add in a vampire or two and the hottest fantasies you ever entertained about the girl’s field hockey team and you’re in for one wild ride. Includes new as well as previously uncollected stories.

Available at:
Amazon (U.S., U.K, etc.)
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
iBooks
Kobo
Bella Distribution

Desire includes stories about Elvis impersonators, art-fueled lust, forbidden longings, hot women, unexpected love, rekindled flames, magic, all these and more populate the pages of Desire. Meet thieves and goddesses, activists and actors, ex-spies and tourists in this spicy collection of 11 tales of sensual lesbian erotica by author Emily L. Byrne.

Amazon (available in U.S., U.K, etc.)
Smashwords
iBooks
Kobo
Barnes & Noble
Bella Distribution




Individual Short Stories, working backward in chronological order:

•  "Phone, Sex, Chocolate" in Candy Lovers: Sugar Erotica edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. RKB Enterprises, forthcoming.
• "The Diary" in Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year, Vol. 2 edited by Sacchi Green. Cleis Press, 2017. 
• "She Who Waits" in Blood in the Rain 3: Nineteen Stories of Vampire Erotica edited by Cecilia Duvalle and Mary Trepanier. Cwtch Press, 2017.
• "Toads, Diamonds and the Occasional Pearl" in Witches, Princesses and Women at Arms edited by Sacchi Green. Cleis Press, 2017.
• "The Further Adventures of Miss Scarlet" in Best Lesbian Erotica: 20th Anniversary Edition edited by Sacchi Green. Cleis Press, 2016.
• "Planet 10" on the Nobilis Erotica Podcast, 2016.
• "The Old Spies Club" in Spy Games edited by Jillian Boyd. House of Erotica, 2015.
• "Repossession" in First: Sensual Stories of New Beginnings edited by Cheyenne Blue. Ladylit Publishing, 2015. 
• "Summer Stock" in Summer Love: Lesbian Holiday Romance edited by Harper Bliss and Caroline Manchoula. Ladylit Publishing, 2015.
• "Wage Slave" in Bossier: More Productive Tales of Lesbian Lust edited by Harper Bliss. Ladylit Publishing, 2015.
• "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid" in The Mammoth Book of Uniform Erotica edited by Barbara Cardy. Running Press, 2015. 
• "The Further Adventures of Miss Scarlet" in Forbidden Fruit: Stories of Unwise Lesbian Desire edited by Cheyenne Blue. Ladylit Publishing, 2014.

Older works were written as Catherine Lundoff and can be found listed at http://www.catherinelundoff.net

Lovely, thoughtful review of DESIRE

Terence Aldon Shaw of the review blog Erotica for the Big Brain, says of my collection, Desire:

Hard to say what’s more fun: discovering a fantastic new (to me) writer, or telling everyone who’ll listen about this fantastic writer they simply must read. Author Emily L. Byrne puts me in this happy conundrum with Desire, her recent collection of eleven finely-wrought f/f erotic romance tales.

Byrne offers readers a dizzying diversity of setting, vibrantly evocative, sharply-focused, and practically always unforgettable. From the tourist-choked thoroughfares of Viva Las Vegas (with its hot-to-trot Elvis drag kings) to the revolutionary Nicaragua of A Night in Estelí, the churches and art galleries of Florence in A Room with a View, and the wintry cityscape of Minneapolis in the hauntingly surreal Cherrybridge and Spoon. Nearly as dazzling and varied as her settings, Byrne seems to traverse disparate genres with the breezy nonchalance of a master, whether it be sci-fi (Diplomacy), sword and sorcery (Heart’s Thief), espionage (The Old Spies Club), realist mainstream (Summer Stock), or contemporary romance with a bit of magic thrown in for good measure (The Goddess Within)...see the rest of the review on the blog! It's marvelous!

 

Guest blog post by editor Jillian Boyd and excerpt from DANCING WITH MYSELF: STORIES OF SELF-LOVE EROTICA

I am nothing if not hyper-specific when it comes to the themes of my anthologies. When I’m conceptualising a pitch for an anthology, I often have a very clear idea of not just how I interpret the theme but also the kind of stories I want to see between those pages. The tone I’d like, the flow of the stories... it’s all in my mind when I send off that call for submissions to be approved. 

This... wasn’t how Dancing with Myself blossomed into being. Like, at all. Dancing with Myself is my first anthology as an editor for Sexy Little Pages, but it wasn’t the first idea that was brainstormed between publisher Anna Sky and I. I was in the process of drafting a call for a completely different anthology. The only problem was the fact that I couldn’t make it work in my head. I wrote about seven different versions of that call before binning it. 

And then I had a thought. Specifically, I thought of a title.

Yep, the concept for this whole anthology came together via a title and my own disappointment at a lack of anthologies about solo sex. I just wanted stories celebrating masturbation in all its forms. I wanted a diversity of characters, a variety of situations and catalysts, but most of all, I wanted it to be fun. The end result covers a range of sexualities, genders, desires and abilities, and it celebrates the noble art of self-pleasure in a plethora of ways. I am so very proud of this anthology, its contributors and the fact that the whole thing came together from the title of a Billy Idol track.

Blurb + buy links

Nine sizzling, sexy stories of self-love and self-discovery, edited by (and with a story from) Jillian Boyd, featuring Dena Hankins, T.C. Mill, Jordan Monroe, Leandra Vane, LN Bey, Jones, Hollis Queens and Rachel Woe.

In this sensually spellbinding collection, nine authors explore just a couple of the ways one can get themselves off – stories that don’t just hone in on the how, but explore the why, and the “oh... oh my” Dancing with Myself delves into the heads and between the sheets of a long-distance submissive and her dominant, a cam girl reminiscing, an artist entranced with her unusual subjects and many more.

Amazon (UK)

 Amazon (US)

Barnes &Noble

Kobo

24Symbols

Smashwords

Angus &Robertson (AUS)

Excerpt from “Obey” by Dena Hankins

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When Ella had asked if she ever did any submissive work, Maddie had answered honestly. No. The next question crossed the line of professionalism and Maddie felt no compunction about refusing to reveal whether she’d bottomed in her personal life. Her private sex life benefited in ways from her professional one, and vice versa, but she didn’t blur the lines and describing her few, playful forays into restraint and spanking would erase them.

Sex work was a sacred vocation for Maddie. Her small list of clients, most with physical impairments, provided a modest living and a wide and deep avenue for the expansion of her sexual energy. She’d grown so much since she started doing this type of body service after years as a physical therapist. Boundaries—and being invited to cross them, the power of setting or releasing them—made more sense to her than they used to. The textures and smells and the powerful reality of desire-slicked bodies fruited under her control. Her terms, her choices, put at the discretion of another’s desires.

All that sounded somewhat like soft-sided versions of dominance and submission to her. Imagining how this session would go, she’d thought that Ella would order her around and that she’d find ways of bringing sexiness to Ella’s orders. This wasn’t that. Somehow, it kept getting away from her.

Welcome to 2018!

I just finished a new story, which I'll be sending out soon, post editing. I hear that an exciting new review of my collection, Desire, will be out soon. And I'm eyeing my science fiction erotic romance novel and starting to feel inspired to get going on edits. What are you lovely people up to?