Call for stories for the First Annual SantaCon Anthology

 

Everyone knows about SantaCon, the annual celebration, in which people dressed in Santa Claus costumes or as other Christmas characters, parade in hundreds of cities around the world every December.  The most famous SantaCon is the one held in New York City, where up to 200,000 people dressed as Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, Elves and Reindeers take over Manhattan.

 

In addition to a glorious day of absurd celebration through the streets of major cities, SantaCon also raises funds for charity. It brings together people who would never have met otherwise, has saved lives, made marriages (and probably caused a few divorces too).

 

Riverdale Avenue Books has partnered with SantaCon to put together an anthology of the most creative stories that could conceivably take place during or around SantaCon – romances, mysteries, horror (Krampus anyone?), even science fiction, time travel, literary fiction, you name it.  The SantaCon setting is a tinderbox for creative inspiration.  Light that match!

 

We will be publishing the anthology, in hardcover, trade paperback and ebooks the day after Thanksgiving, and it will available in book stores and online wherever books are sold.

 

We are looking for short stories of 2,000 to 5,000 words in all genres and categories.  Authors will be paid a $10 fee, and receive a copy of each edition of the book.

 

Other revenue derived from the sale of the book will be provided to SantaCon, which will donate proceeds to the charity of their choice.

 

If you would like to send us your stories, please send them to submissions@riverdaleavebooks.com, lori@riverdaleavebooks.com or david@riverdaleavebooks with the subject “SantaCon 2024.” After which, we will send you confirmation that we received your submission. If you do not receive a confirmation from either of those three emails, you may follow up with an email requesting confirmation.

 

Submissions will be open from now until August  15^st. After August 30^h, we will begin sending out acceptance or rejection emails for your submitted short stories. Please, do not follow up on whether your story has been accepted.

 

Riverdale Avenue Books is an award winning, innovative hybrid publisher at the leading edge of the changes in the publishing industry.  We publish e-books and print books under 15 imprints: Afraid, a horror imprint; The Binge Watchers Guides examining TV and film; Circlet, the latest incarnation of the classic sci-fi and fantasy erotica imprint; Desire, an erotica/erotic romance imprint; Magnus, the award-winning nonfiction imprint of LGBTQ titles; Magnus Lit, our LGBTQ fiction imprint; Pop featuring pop culture titles; Quest, a science fiction fantasy line; Truth, an erotic memoir line; Dagger, a mystery thriller imprint; Sports and Gaming featuring sports and gaming titles; Verve featuring lifestyle titles; Hera, featuring both the true and fictional lives and loves of women aged 35 and up and 120 Days, a reprint imprint for LGB classics. Started in 2012 by industry veteran Lori Perkins, visit us at www.RiverdaleAveBooks.com.

 

                A much-needed book that only becomes more necessary by the day, Wilchins' BAD INK presents an unflinching, clear-eyed analysis of the Times’ role in reversing the course of trans rights."

— Herron Walker, W Magazine

 

 “I can’t stop reading this book! BAD INK is the clearest, most coherent dissection of the Times’ decision to trade journalistic integrity for clicks at the expense of trans kids. Every mainstream reporter should read this book.” 

— Kate Sosin, The 19th News

 

             “The Times' crusade against transgender youth will go down as one of the journalism scandals of our age. But we don't have to wait for history's verdict—thanks to the timely, essential work of Riki Wilchins’s BAD INK.”  

             —  Evan Urquhart, Assigned Media

 

Bad Ink by award-winning trans author/activist Riki Wilchins is being published by Riverdale Avenue Books. Bad Ink is the definitive inside story of how and why the newspaper of record suddenly became the nation’s leading voice for attacking transgender kids.

 

Wilchins documents out how—beginning in 2015 just as A. G. Sulzberger was taking the reins of Publisher—the Times shifted from its historic support for transgender rights to suddenly embark on what Popula’s Tom Scocca called “a plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade” that consumed nearly 70,000 words in dozens of articles—many splashed across its front pages.

 

The Times relentlessly attacked trans teens’ right to transition, to medical care, to sports participation—even the idea they actually were trans. But as Bad Ink shows, all this wasn’t based on new studies or fresh reporting, but on pseudoscience and disinformation manufactured by Christian nationalist hate groups just as they and their MAGA allies in state legislatures were introducing over 1,000 bills criminalizing nearly every aspect of trans kids’ lives. 

 

Bad Ink makes the case that this was all apparently part of Sulzberger’s plan to remake the liberal rag for the digital age by appealing to a fast-growing right-wing readership.

 

And unfortunately, it worked.

 

Review copies at www.NetGalley.com  Reviewers/academics free copies by emailing TransTeensMatter@gmail.com

Magnus Imprint Publishes College Jocks and Frat House Bros

After his self-published collection of gay erotic short stories Frat Boys and Dorm Rooms made Amazon’s audio bestseller list, Matthew Cooper has teamed up with award-winning LGBTQ Imprint Magnus Lit to release his second collection of hot tales of university life, College Jocks and Frat House Bros: Gay Erotic Stories from University Life.

Cooper explained how glad he is to be releasing this new collection into the world. “As we conclude our celebration of another Pride Month, I think about what it means to be gay in the world today. We continue our fight for our political and social rights, safety, and acceptance. And here I am in my tiny apartment in Wilton Manors, Florida, a hub of gay culture and society, writing steamy, sex-fueled stories. And that's what my stories are meant to be. A celebration. A celebration of gay sexuality. Unapologetically erotic. Proudly sexual. Enjoy.”

 

College. A time to figure out who you really are. Get out of your parents’ house and experience the world on your own. A time to try new things, experiment, and have the time of your life. Sure, there are the books and the classes and all those late nights studying in your dorm room. But the true college experience is about growing, learning, and discovering yourself—and what your body can do.

 

The young men in these stories are eager, willing, horny, and ready for anything. From frat parties, community showers, dorm rooms, come back to the best four years of your life and read stories of hook-ups, new love, sexual awakening, and erotic connections.

 

Who was it for you? The student athlete, the quiet nerd, the partying frat boy? They’re all here in College Jocks and Frat House Bros. And you’re invited to the all-night rager. Meet Josh, who has a parking lot run-in with a hot sexy stranger. Peek in on Issac, the dorm roommate who doesn’t lock the door and doesn’t mind if you watch. Bump into your R.A. just when you need a place to crash. There are frat parties to attend, community showers to cruise, and cramped dorm rooms to hunker down in. Just make sure the door is locked – unless you don’t mind being caught.

 

The book is available as an ebook, audiobook, trade paperback and hardcover wherever books are sold.

Riverdale Avenue Books Publishes a Novel and Memoir for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

New York, NY: (October 1, 2023) Award-winning publisher Riverdale Avenue Books has released Perennial: A Garden Romance, a romance novel, and Tornado, A Breast Cancer Log, memoir in journal form, for Breast Cancer Awareness month, which occurs every October.

The author of both titles, acclaimed author Mary Anne Mohanraj wrote Tornado, her day-by-day detailed journal as a blog during her three- year journey through breast cancer diagnosis, surgery, chemo, radiation and reconstructive surgery.  It is a bold, honest look at this experience that one in eight women living today go through.

 

Mohanraj also used her breast cancer journey to create a beautiful novel of romance and rebirth with a main character who has undergone this experience in Perennial.

 

Said Publisher Lori Perkins, who is a breast cancer survivor herself, “Perennial is the kind of book I really needed to read when I was undergoing treatment. It lifted both my spirits and my soul.”

 

About the Author

Mary Anne Mohanraj is the author of Bodies in Motion and The Stars Change, founder of Strange Horizons and director of The Speculative Literature Foundation. Previous anthologies she's edited include The Best of Strange Horizons, vol. 1, Aqua Erotica, and WisCon Chronicles, vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances, which was recently long-listed for the BSFA Awards. Mohanraj is Clinical Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her research and writing interests include Sri Lanka and its civil war, transnationalism and diaspora, domesticity and parenting, chronic illness, science fiction, and sexuality.

Riki Wilchins Blasts Evangelical Onslaught Against Transgender Kids in New Book

 

When Texas Came  

 

for Our Kids

 

How Evangelical Extremists Launched a War on  Transgender Teens

 

 

If we went back to 2020, we would be shocked at lives of transgender children—they change their names and birth certificates, played school sports, and got puberty blockers and hormones freely in all 50 states.

 

But in just three years it would all disappear. By the end of 2023, over 1,000 bills would be introduced more than half of state legislatures that sought to criminalize nearly every facet of their lives.

 

 What happened?

 

‘When Texas Came for Our Kids’ is the first and the definitive account of how white Christian nationalists— enraged from a string of devasting Supreme Court defeats—pivoted from gay people to transgender youth and made them the new face of the culture war.

 

And it all began in Texas, which enacted the first effective ban on gender-affirming care by redefining it as felony child abuse, instantly criminalizing hundreds of loving families overnight and sending many fleeing across its borders in panic.

 

‘When Texas Came for Our Kids’ is packed with scores of on-the-ground interviews and never-before-told detail collected over years of research.

 

Also available is the companion book—"When Loving Your Kid Is a Crime: Parents of Transgender Youth Speak Out.” Nine first-person accounts by families who fled Texas and other red states because they feared their queer child would be taken from them and placed into state foster care.

 

Review copies of both available at www.NetGalley.com or by contacting TransTeensMatter@gmail.com

 

---

 

Riki Wilchins is the author of a 10 books on queer theory and transgender politics, including

Read My Lips:  Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender

Gender Queer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary 

Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Prime

Burn the Binary:  Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer & Nonbinary

TRANS/Gressive:  How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, & the Media

 

Riverdale Avenue Books

Lori Perkins, Publisher  www.riverdaleavebooks.com  

 

Lambda-Award Winning Erotic Romance Author Ryan Field Has Passed Away

I received an email from the husband of one of my favorite writers last night informing me that my author had passed away that morning.

It shook me.

I knew Ryan Field was sick. He told me in August that he wouldn’t be able to work on any new projects for the immediate future because he had started chemo, but I hoped he would push through and rally after treatment (as I did with my own breast cancer) and because I didn’t even want to consider a world without Ryan Field.

I started working with Ryan in 2007 when we spoke on the phone and he told me he used to love het rom coms, but always switched the sexes in his mind. We both agreed that we loved An Officer and a Gentleman and he quickly dashed off An Officer and His Gentleman for Ravenous Romance, where I was then the Editorial Director. It not only charmed me but many of our readers, and he went on to re-tell many of the rom coms of popular culture from a gay point of view — When Harry Met Sal, Gay Pride and Prejudice, Pretty Man, etc. One of my favorite titles that he wrote for me was Valley of the Dudes, his retelling of the Jacqueline Susann classic Valley of the Dolls.

He brought so much creativity and joy to the romances he wrote for us. I was always eager to see what he came up with.

The last original title we worked on together was The Wizard of Pride, a gay retelling of The Wizard of Oz, and it is classic Ryan Field.

I will miss him so much, although he must have written close to 100 books over the past 25 years when he was making his living as a writer. I haven’t read them all, so I know where to go when I need a friend.

But I will miss him every day.

Don’t ever think that an editor doesn’t truly adore her authors. He was really a part of my editorial family.

We’re going to try to work on putting together some sort of award/grant/memorial/prize in Ryan’s name, so please look here for that announcement. And if you want to help, or have ideas, please feel free to reach out to me, lori@riverdaleavebooks.com.

What It Means When We Say October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I’ve known October was Breast Cancer Awareness month for much of my adult life, being very familiar with the pink ribbon and some of the fund-raising events.

Even though I had read that breast cancer detection was up in the past few decades, and that women were getting breast cancer more often at a younger age (under 40), I somehow thought I would be immune. I thought that if I did get cancer, it would be a result of my young adult smoking or some genetic pre-disposition from my dad’s side of the family where we’d managed to get lung, colon and pancreatic cancers.

 

I went to get my annual mammogram a few months late after we were let out of lockdown (15 months instead of 12) and was shocked when the technician said, “you need to schedule a biopsy as soon as you leave this office.” I had breast cancer. 

 

That’s when I learned that one out of eight American women get breast cancer.

 

And when I started telling friends and family that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer, I found that I knew a lot of women who had had breast cancer--my next door neighbor, my publicist, my journal-writing teacher, my fellow authors (especially my romance-writing colleagues).  I also met two men who had had breast cancer (carriers of the BRCA gene). I was shocked, because it was everywhere, and I never saw it.

 

So this October, I want you to really see ME, so you can see how pervasive this illness is, and yet how fortunate we are to live in a time when breast cancer is “the good cancer,” and so many of us cancer survivors can be cured and/or treated.

 

I guarantee you that someone you know is going through a breast cancer scare, or being treated for breast cancer, or is taking care of someone with breast cancer right now.

There are many ways to translate breast cancer awareness into support.

 

Of course, you can donate money, especially to the various Hope Kits that sent out by the National Breast Cancer Foundation (https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-cancer-support/hope-kit/).  They really make a difference when you feel so alone.

 

Once I was better (after surgery, chemo and radiation), I donated my time to start a journaling through cancer writing workshop at Mt. Sinai, where I had been treated.  It is my way of giving back.

 

I also published two breast cancer books at Riverdale Avenue Books.  Perennial is a sweet breast cancer romance, which I would have LOVED as a gift when I was undergoing chemo and convinced no one would ever love me again.

 

The same author, Mary Anne Mohanraj, kept meticulous, detailed, heartfelt notes of her own battle with cancer, chemo, radiation and reconstruction which we published as Tornado. This is an honest guide of what lies ahead for the breast cancer patient. You can get digital copies of both of these books 50% off with the code PINK on the riverdsleavebooks.com website.

 

If you know someone going through this can, give a little extra love and good vibrations.  It means the world.