Call for Stories - Object Erotica Anthology

Riverdale Avenue Books is looking for already written (and/or previously published) stories featuring sex with an object (but not store-bought sex toys).  These are stories featuring sex or sexual attraction to an unusual object (like a household appliance) or Do-It-Yourself sex toy stories (I know of a guy who used stainless steel chopsticks as sounds and a woman who used marbles as Ben Wa balls). These stories could also include tales of human furniture and/or the desire to become an object close to a loved one's sex organs (like a bicycle seat or Prince Charles infamous desire to be Camilla's tampon.

This will be a Riverdale Avenue Book.  We pay 33% royalties on digital and 8% on print.  Royalties will be split on a pro rata share amongst the authors. There is foreign interest in this topic.

We will publish this book by the end of June ONLINE AND IN PRINT, so the deadline is June 15. My foreign rights and audio rep will be selling rights immediately.

If you also remember or know of any stories that fit under this umbrella, please forward this request to that author.

If this works, RAB might do a second one quickly.

Stories should be between 1200 and 5000 words.  If you have something longer, please email me directly.  We might be able to publish that as a stand alone.

Rainbow Award M/M SoulShares Series to Pub at RAB

Rory combines male hotness and a fabulous sense of the unknown in her SoulShares series. I eagerly await every new release. Talk about being a page turner.” 

Susan Mac Nicol, international best-selling author of Saving Alexander and Worth Keeping

RIVERDALE, NEW YORK, March 26, 2015 -- Riverdale Avenue Books is pleased to announce the acquisition of the award-winning eight book SoulShares series by Rory Ni Coileain.  The first title in the series, Hard as Stone, will be released on Wednesday, May 27, which features the story of a powerful love between a disgraced Fae noble and a mortal lawyer. All eight titles will receive brand new covers.

The SoulShares series begins more than two thousand years ago, when the Fae of the Realm walled themselves off from the human world, in a last-ditch attempt to save the Realm from the unimaginable malevolence of the Marfach. The wisest among the Fae were able to foretell that only Fae in the human world had any chance of destroying the Marfach. So they left one path by which Fae –exiles, misfits, rebels – could make their way to the human world.

At a terrible cost. A Fae passing through the Pattern loses half his soul. That half is reborn, somewhere in human time and human space, in a human. In order to be whole, in order to stand a chance in the final battle against the race’s most ancient enemy, an exiled Fae must find – and mate with – and love – the human who bears the other half of his sundered soul.

The problem? Fae don’t love.

Hard as Stone was a finalist for Best Debut Novel and Best Gay Erotic Romance in the 2012 Rainbow Awards and was also a finalist for Best Erotica, in the 2012 Preditors & Editors Readers Poll.

Gale Force, the second novel in the SoulShares series will be released on June  10^th, followed by Deep Plunge, the third novel in the series on June 24^th, and Fire Storm, the series’ fourth title, on July 8^th.  Blowing Smoke, the first new novel in the series, will launch on July 22^nd.

“It’s so exciting to be partnering with Riverdale Avenue Books to give the SoulShares series the treatment I’ve always wanted to give it, with everything they need to make their world come alive,” said the author. “I like to think of the SoulShares as a gateway drug – urban fantasy for lovers of erotic romance, erotic romance for lovers of urban fantasy.”

The titles are available for review on Netgalley.

Showtimes's Gigolos Cowboys4Angels Team Up with RAB for Erotic Romance

Internationally renowned male escort service Cowboys4Angels has teamed up with innovative hybrid publisher Riverdale Avenue Books to publish The Vegas Virgin by Lissa Trevor, a pseudonym for a USA Today best-selling erotic romance writer.

“Once I saw the Cowboy4Angels website, the men there reminded me of my cover models, except more accessible," said Trevor. "It sparked my creativity.  What if the reader could have their own adventure with the man on the cover of their book? What would you do if the rules didn't apply to you?"

 Riverdale Avenue Books’ Publisher Lori Perkins said “The story is so powerfully sensual – every woman’s Vegas naughty daydream – and yet Trevor manages to bring it all together with an erotic romance twist.”

Garren James, founder and President of Cowboys4angels said “I always imagined these amazing gentleman who love to make women happy as the perfect characters for a series of novels for women.  We hope that this becomes a vehicle for women’s fantasies featuring our fabulous men.”

RAB/Magnus Publishes Simon Sheppard's Jockboys Saga, Literary Smut

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A Tale of Book Ressurection on Easter Sunday

People are often surprised that I always close my office for Good Friday and that I go to church on Easter Sunday.  Just because I am a sex positive feminist doesn't mean that I have has no spirituality.

I am a P.K. (preacher's kid).  The preacher is my mom, who was a feminist minster in the United Church of Christ who was part of that group of feminists that rewrote the Bible without pronouns.  She used to play Yoko Ono's Woman is the Nigger of the World while writing her Biblical term papers (and I will always love Yoko for that song and my mom for making it part of the soundtrack of my life).

So this year, I was excited that we, at Riverdale Avenue Books, were finally going to publish Blessed Assurance, a collection of prayers for the LGBT community. Coming of age in a progressive church family during a time of changing religious mores, I knew this book was sorely needed.  I was proud to be a part of it.

But the book was late again, and we would miss the Lenten season.  The book had been late a number of times, and I was growing disheartened.

I finally talked to the author (as the book had been acquired by another editor) and told her in no uncertain terms that I wanted this book and I wanted it NOW.  She explained that the reason she was so late on the book was that she actually thought it was two books - a prayer book and a workbook - and I said, "OK, then.  Let's do them both."

And she said, "Are you kidding me?"

So, we are now publishing two books - one for the Thanksgiving season and one for Lent next year.

And she said to me, "You are my Easter. This book project was dead to me and you have resurrected it."

I was almost moved to tears.

I don't get the chance to save a book very often.   Sure, I can sign up a book that means a lot to someone, or I can save a poorly written book from bad reviews with my super-powered editing, but breathing new life into a dead project - this was a first.

And during Holy Week!

She was my Easter too!

RAB Publishes The Provocateur's Payback, An International Erotic Thriller

Riverdale Avenue Books’ Publishes The Provocateur’s Payback, an Acclaimed International LGBT thriller

“A fantastic portrait of decadence filled with wit.” — Vanity Fair (Spanish edition)

RIVERDALE, NEW YORK, March 27, 2015  -- Riverdale Avenue Books is pleased to announce the publication of The Provocateur’s Payback by Paco Munoz-Botas under the its LGBT Magnus imprint.  Previously published in Spain, the international thriller received rave reviews in Europe.

The Provocateur’s Payback, an erotic thriller of international intrigue, introduces a trio of memorable characters: Curro, disillusioned playboy who’s left the club scene behind in search of a new life purpose after losing his beloved dog; Dima, handsome martial arts champion who’s fled from goons in the Russian Mafia; and Eugenia, elegant super-model with stunning green eyes whom the witless gossips of Madrid society have long pegged as Curro’s ideal consort.

The action opens on a warm spring afternoon, as Curro’s driving his convertible sports car, heading back to Madrid from a country house weekend. His world is turned upside down when he hears a desperate plea: “Hurry, please! Quickly! Get going, they want to kill me.” Before Curro can protest, Dima’s flopped in to the passenger seat. Abandoning caution, Curro agreeably floors the gas with the mysterious stranger next to him.

The action speeds along from Curro’s apartment, where Dima finds safe haven to recover from the stab wounds he suffered that fateful night; to Madrid’s Royal Opera House, where Russian thugs stalk Dima; to a posh Madrid night spot where Dima meets Eugenia, and an instant attraction sparks between them. Curro, with his keen sense of sexual chemistry, detects a special link between them, even as he hopes that Dima might save a spark for him.

Praise for The Provocateur’s Payback

 “The most delirious gay thriller in the history of [the] Spanish novel.”—Eñe Literary Magazine

“One of the season’s literary surprises.”—Shangay Magazine  

“A fascinating story filled with humor, violence, and eroticism.”—El Cultural Magazine

About the Author

Paco Muñoz-Botas is a Spanish writer born in Madrid in 1956. He studied journalism, enjoys international travel, collecting art and resides in Madrid and Málaga, Spain. This is his first novel.

Just Pubbed Award-Winning Debut Short Story Collection Blue Talk and Love by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Riverdale Avenue Books Publishes Award-Winning Debut Short

Story Collection

 Blue Talk and Love

by

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

“Blue Talk and Love’s voice, despite material that seems frankly

contemporary, is paradoxically lyrical, nearly Faulknerian."  --Rick Moody, judge for the American Short Fiction Short Story Contest

Riverdale, NY – March 20, 2015 – Innovative hybrid publisher Riverdale Avenue Books announces the publication of the award-wining short story collection Blue Talk and Love by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan in its Magnus imprint. The collection has already received praise from Rick Moody, Cheryl Clarke, Samuel R. Delany, Darryl Pinckney, LaShonda Katrice Barnett and Jewelle Gomez.

Blue Talk and Love tells the stories of girls and women of color navigating the moods and mazes of urban daily life. Set in various enclaves of New York City — including the middle-class Hamilton Heights section of Harlem, the black queer social world of the West Village, the Spanish-speaking borderland between Harlem and Washington Heights, and historic Tin Pan Alley — the collection uses magic realism, historical fiction, satire and more to highlight young black women's inner lives.

The storylines range widely: a big-bodied teenage girl from Harlem discovers her sexuality in the midst of racial tensions at her Upper East Side school; four young women from Newark, New Jersey, are charged with assaulting the man who threatens to rape them; a pair of conjoined black female twins born into slavery, make their fame as stage performers in the Big City.  In each story, the characters push past what is expected of them, learning to celebrate their voices and their lives. 

Praise for Blue Talk and Love

“Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is a sharp social observer as well as a bold experimentalist. She has an arresting ear and a courageous heart. Her language races with her intelligence and humanity.”

---Darryl Pinckney, author of High Cotton and Out There: Mavericks of Black Fiction   

"Sullivan’s prose shocks, intrigues, and transports us through fourteen artful and unique stories.  And so do her rich and inimitable characters, most of them young black women struggling in a world they did not make but one they must confront, tear down, and remake.  Black girls matter and Sullivan shows us just how much."

-- Cheryl Clarke, author of Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women and Living as a Lesbian

"Mecca Jamilah Sullivan's debut collection of fiction dazzles with images, language and heart.  She slips inside her characters and renders their inner lives with painterly precision so with each story we enter a complete world drawn with brilliant color and raw emotion.  Yet it is the mystery of life itself which she evokes so strongly and that holds us fast."                                    

-- Jewelle Gomez, author The Gilda Stories

"In a prose as rich and sumptuous as brocade, these stories hit with the

the force of primal myths. They can be tender, they can be funny, and

they can shock. This is a book that grabs you low on the spinal

column and rattles your teeth together. Sullivan is a powerful and impressive

writer."

    --Samuel R. Delany, author of Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders 

“Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s debut story collection is a remarkable work best described as elegiac blues… Blue Talk and Love stuns with subtle imagery, powerful linguistic energy, and chiseled, innovative control.”
 –LaShonda Katrice Barnett, author of Jam on the Vine

About the Author

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, she received the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, and the Center for Fiction in New York City. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Best New Writing, American Fiction, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Feminist Studies, and elsewhere, and she is Associate Editor for Arts & Culture at The Feminist Wire.