ceciliatan

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.

Mirrored from cecilia tan.

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…)

Mirrored from cecilia tan.

Did you all see that the winners of the NLA Writing Awards were released? These annual awards celebrate the best in BDSM-positive writing and publishing, in both fiction and nonfiction categories. As a member of the awards committee I’ve been involved with these awards for several years and this year had a bumper crop of books!

To quote from the press release that came from NLA: International:

National Leather Association: International, a leading organization for activists in the pansexual SM/leather community, announced the winners for excellence in literary works in SM/leather/fetish writing published in 2016. The judges received a great number of nominations this year and judging in most categories was quite difficult with such exemplary pieces of writing.

Winner of the Geoff Mains Non-Fiction Book Award is Peter Tupper and David Stein (ed.) for Our Lives, Our History (Perfectbound Press). Honorable mention in this category goes to David Wade for “Vanilla Breaks” (Xcite Books), Richard Levine for “Jolted Awake” (Alfred Press in cooperation with Lulu Enterprises, Inc.) and to Slavemaster and slave 7 “Beyond Obedience” (Createspace).

In the John Preston Short Fiction category, the winner is D.L. King for “Cupcakes and Steel” from the anthology For The Men and The Women Who Love Them (ed.) Rose Caraway (Stupid Fish Productions). Honorable mention for short story goes to Caraway Carter for “7 With 1 Blow” (Beaten Track Publishing) and Ferrett Steinmetz for “Rooms Formed Of Neurons and Sex” which appears in Uncanny Magazine.

The winner of the Pauline Reage Novel category winner is Angela Hamm for The Gambler’s Lady (Blushing Books). Honorable mention in this category goes to Amelia C. Gromley for Risk Aware (Riptide Publishing), Scott Alexander Hess for Skyscraper (Unzipped Books, an imprint of Lethe Press) and Jade A. Waters for The Assignment (Carina Press)

The winner of the Cynthia Slater Non-fiction Article Award is Erica Mena for “(K)ink #5 – Writing While Deviant” which appeared on January 26, 2016 on TheRumpus.net. Honorable Mention in this category goes to Jack Fritscher for “He Was A Sexual Outlaw: My Love Affair With Robert Mapplethorpe” which appeared March 9, 2016 in The Guardian.

There is no winner of the Samois Anthology Award as there were no submissions this year.

Congratulations to all the winners! Writers, publishers, the NLA starts taking nominations for judging in September and the deadline is typically December 31st annually for books published in the calendar year. Contact [email protected] for more details.

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

The cover of the paperback leaked to Amazon a couple of weeks ago, but I’m psyched to share both the paperback and the super-sexy ebook only cover for HARD RHYTHM, the third book in the Secrets of a Rock Star series!

This time I get to tell Chino the drummer’s story! HARD RHYTHM can be pre-ordered right now at most bookstores and online retailers: IndieBound (local independent bookstores) | Amazon | Publisher website | Walmart (!) | Barnes & Noble | Apple iBooks | Google Play | Kobo

Images under the cut!

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

The panel on fantasy worldbuilding at ICFA was packed, every chair taken, people standing in the back, etc. I ended up sitting on the floor at the foot of the panelists’ table. It was well worth it! What I present here is a partial transcript of the conversation and I emphasize PARTIAL because I can only capture maybe half of what is actually said. I assure you if there are non-sequiturs or nonsense in what follows it is my fault in omission/transcription and not in what was said, which was highly intelligent, coherent, and thought-provoking.

Moderator, A.P. Canavan: Welcome to the annual fantasy panel where we try to get academics and writers in polite conversation with each other. Barring that we try for as much bloodshed as possible! (audience laughter)

The panelists:
Sarah Pinborough (BBC, The Dead House, Dog-Faced Gods)
Steven Erikson (Forge of Darkness),
Kameron Hurley (Gods War, Mirror Empire, etc)
Audrey Taylor (academic, Building Worlds- book on Patricia McKillip)

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

This is exciting! Something new! RT Book Reviews will be hosting me and Tara Sue Me (author of the Submissive series) in a live YouTube chat this Friday, Feb 5th at 12 noon to 1pm (Eastern US time). Her new book THE MASTER is out this week, and of course my TAKING THE LEAD just hit last week!

Want to leave a question for us to answer? Post it over at RT Book Reviews here: http://www.rtbookreviews.com/blog/87694/live-chat-cecilia-tan-and-tara-sue-me-friday-february-5-noon

Here’s the chat video stream window, embedded:

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

I was up all night last night when I discovered David Bowie had died. My entire Twitter feed turned into a wake until dawn. 100% of the tweets, except for the promoted tweets about the movie The Martian (eerie coincidence) having won a Golden Globe award. Spiders from Mars indeed.

I’ve talked about Bowie a lot, and written about him a little. Most recently the essay I had in QUEERS DESTROY SCIENCE FICTION I talk about how as a misfit 11-year-old I found a role model in Bowie not only for daring to declare himself bisexual, but in the embrace of science fiction analogies to define himself “Other.” He created a persona that was a space alien. Later he created other personas…some of which were space aliens pretending to, or learning to be, humans. Just knowing he existed was a spark of encouragement that growing up a sci-loving nerd with gender conformity issues was going to turn out OKAY.

At the time I didn’t grasp that his true role as my guardian angel had a third component, that of creative person and artist itself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

All righty folks! I’m gearing up for the big finale of Magic University at last. THE POET AND THE PROPHECY goes live on September 15th and can already be pre-ordered at Amazon and Smashwords, with other ebook sellers coming online this week.

The big cover reveal was Friday at Tor.com and they published the image with my essay on What #FanworksTaughtMe and all the fandom connections in the series, from the inspiration for writing it, to my beta readers, to the fans who wrote Magic U. fanfic themselves, to the cover artist who has done such incredible covers for me! (Check out her store: Art by Fox) Head over to Tor.com to read the essay and see the cover in beautiful full size: http://www.tor.com/2015/08/28/digging-into-fandom-cover-reveal-for-the-poet-and-the-prophecy/

Bloggers, if you want to get involved in launch events, Rock Star PR is handling the blog tour and everything. Signups are here: http://rockstarlit.com/content/the-poet-and-the-prophecy-magic-university-book-four/

On launch day I’ll be hosting a Facebook party from 4-5pm and 11-midnight, with other new adult college-setting authors in the hours in between: https://www.facebook.com/events/1647147665517621/

And I’ll likely do a livechat on my Youtube Channel, exact time TBD!

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

Last night we went seeking the wonders of the world. And we found them.

I had read on Twitter early in the evening that a “geomagnetic storm” was going on and that there would likely be amazing auroras to be seen, but corwin and I both had to work until 9pm and I didn’t even think of going hunting for it. But after we’d finished dinner, around 11 o’clock at night, I saw a photo on Twitter taken from the bay in Salem, Massachusetts that looked spectacular. Sure it was a long exposure photo, but Salem does not exactly have dark sky conditions and is very far south of where one normally thinks of seeing auroras.

I showed it to corwin.

“Want to go?” he asked.

“I’ll put on pants,” I replied.

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Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

Just got this press release from NLA! Congrats to all these talented writers! Winners will be announced on May 1st!

SEMI-FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR 2015 NLA-I WRITING AWARDS

(Columbus, OH) — National Leather Association – International (NLA-I), a leading organization for activists in the pansexual SM/leather/fetish community, announced today the semi-finalists for its annual writing awards. Named after activists and writers Geoff Mains, John Preston, Pauline Reage, Cynthia Slater, and the groundbreaking organization Samois, they are awarded annually to recognize excellence in writing and publishing about Leather, SM, bondage and fetishes.

The semi-finalists for the Cynthia Slater Non-fiction Article Award are:

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.