I sent out my email newsletter in the wee hours this morning, and in this post I’m going to expand on some things I said in it. (Because even 12 hours later, some things already need updating!)

“Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”

These are the literal words in Project 2025, the ultra-conservative blueprint for America that the Trump administration admitted yesterday they have been planning to use all along.

There are so many things I’d rather be writing about right now. There are dozens of fights for our rights we’ll need to have in the coming year, but since I am an erotica writer, I’ll stay in my lane for the moment and concentrate on the Project 2025 Porn Ban. Yes, it’s real. As Newsweek reports, it’s “a key agenda item in Project 2025.”

You might think in the wake of 50 Shades that BDSM is just accepted everywhere, and with the success of Sarah J. Maas’s ACOTAR and fantasy/romantasy books with a lot of “spice” in them, that whether something has sex in it is no big deal now. But this is not the case. It’s already more difficult to sell and publish erotic writing than any other genre, because it’s already against the ToS to promote erotic writing on Facebook or Google Ads. B&N just did a purge of erotic ebooks. Amazon regularly figures out what the hot erotic trend is and then suppresses it in search (as they did with bigfoot erotica, dinosaur porn, stepbrothers, and so on).

With Project 2025, they won’t just shut down sites like PornHub. They want to scrub sex-related content from all American life, which means increased pressure on Amazon and Patreon and Barnes & Noble to sanitize themselves—which they’ve already been doing! These efforts will only intensify.

But if you think wellllll maybe we can live without some smut, remember, for Project 2025 folks, “banning porn” doesn’t just mean going after the explicit “X-rated” material. It also means anything with queer or trans content, because to them, any representation of queerness is obscene.

But those of us who do write explicitly erotic material (as usual) will be the first to go. They’ve said in plain words that people like me belong in jail for what we write. If you don’t agree, and you believe we have the right to write about sex, and the right to read about it as well, now is the time to support your erotica writing friends as best you can, whether that is by buying their books or supporting their crowdfunds, or in reviewing, posting, and talking about their books, or even just posting an encouraging word to them!

Mirrored from Cecilia Tan.

Hello and welcome to another ctan monthly updatet! It’s Pride Month, so today let’s talk about queer science fiction and fantasy.

First some housekeeping: Mailchimp has been driving me nuts, with the newsletter sometimes displaying so tiny on mobile devices it was illegible. I’m trying on a new template today, with new fonts. Please let me know if this one looks better to you (or worse!) than before so I can keep improving it.

Second, my apology this is a bit later than I intended, but I had knee surgery on Wednesday and as you can imagine it’s put a bit of a cramp into my schedule. I’ve discovered I would rather have my knee hurt and my brain work than be “pain free” but feel seasick from narcotics. Apparently opioids are not my friends! Bleah.

And now to my slightly linkbait-y topic: are we in a “Golden Age” of queer and trans SF/F? Yes, yes we are, end of essay.

Just kidding, of course I’m going to explain WHY my answer is yes.

Mirrored from cecilia tan.

Thanks everyone who attended the panel at RT Booklovers in Atlanta on BDSM: What’s Next for BDSM Romance?

If you need the handout, you can grab the PDF from here: RT BDSM HANDOUT. It includes some specific sales numbers from the authors on the panel demonstrating the rise and fall of sales numbers.

I opened the panel by saying when we first started planning the panel it seemed like if we were all seeing sales drops like that, it was legitimate to ask whether the post-50-Shades “BDSM boom” was over. However, since compiling our numbers, I’ve been talking to many authors in other subgenres of romance and erotica, and to publishers as well, all of whom have seen very similar curves in rise/fall even when no BDSM is involved. So, it’s not just us.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

I’ve been exchanging messages with a lot of fans of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles this week. Two different gun incidents happened in Orlando the same weekend, not only the Pulse shooting at a gay nightclub but also singer Christina Grimmie was shot while autographing after a show. Anyone who has read DGC knows that rock star life and coming out as gay and finding safe space to be one’s true self are the major themes that run through the series. So this hit really close to home for a lot of readers, as it did for me, too.

I’m deeply shaken by what happened. As I wrote in my author newsletter earlier this week: as a queer woman of color who spent a lot of time in gay bars in my 20s and just as a human being, I’m still struggling to absorb what happened.

Many of you have probably seen me wearing a T-shirt that says “Music Is My Salvation” on it. I probably wear it to almost every convention! It was a souvenir from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and I’ve worn it so much it’s almost worn through. It’s not an ironic statement for me.

Music is what brings people together in spaces like Pulse, to dance and find community, and to live shows and concerts, to find that ecstatic space of belonging that I think many people find in churches and other spaces of organized religion. Dance clubs and concert halls ARE my church. I worshipped this week at the altar of The Cure, a band that was all-absorbing to me when I was defining my art and my sexuality and my identity as a goth in my late teens and early 20s.

I last saw them in concert in 1989, more than half my life ago, but I saw them this week at the Agganis Arena in Boston. The show was amazing, transcendent, wonderful, and I couldn’t help but think that after David Bowie and Prince have both been taken from us this year, Robert Smith is the one left carrying the torch of “it’s okay to be weird.” That’s my religion, that’s what I preach: “It’s okay to be weird.”

That’s why so many of my protagonists are rock musicians and artists and nonconformists who can’t quite fit into a 9-to-5 world. Everyone has a right to be queer, in whatever way you are queer, whether in sexuality or in being not-like everyone else. You might be the same in some ways and different in others.

I learned in Bible camp (yes, I went to Bible camp) that our goal shouldn’t just be to go to heaven when we die, it should be to create heaven on Earth. My heaven would be one where everyone could be themselves freely without fear of being killed.

In particular it hurts that we are attacked for who we love or how we love. People sometimes ask me if I could be doing something “better” with my life. Right now I think writing stories about love and spreading a message that love is important and all kinds of love are valid is about the most important thing I can do.

But a lot of us are feeling helpless, powerless, angry, and empty since the attack. I know because you’ve been writing and texting and messaging me saying so. So I thought maybe I would propose a bit of collective action on the part of DGC fans and my readers at large: a donation drive.

Here’s how it’s going to work. You make an online donation to one of these three tax-deductible charities:

• Equality Florida
• The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence
• Rock The Vote

Equality Florida is a 501(c)(4) non-profit LGBT advocacy organization and this link goes to their specific fund for the victims, survivors, & families of those in the Pulse shooting. They’re trying to raise $7 million to pay for funerals, counseling, and much more. They’re at close to $6 million right now.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was begun by Sarah Brady after her husband Jim, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, was shot during an assassination attempt on Reagan. Jim was paralyzed for life. It took three more presidencies before the “Brady Bill” to limit handgun sales was passed and the Brady Campaign to this day still works to change gun laws in the United States. Their current fundraising campaign, simply called “#ENOUGH” is taking donations at this link. They are a 501(c)(3).

Rock the Vote is a 501(c)(3) non-partisan non-profit whose goal is simple: get more young people to vote. They provide information on how to register to vote, run voter reg drives, and other great programs to increase voter participation because they know that the more people vote the stronger our democracy is and the better it reflects the actual country. You can give at this link.

After you make your donation of any amount, even just $5, email a copy of your receipt/confirmation (either a screencap or a PDF or your paypal confirmation) to daron.moondog @ gmail along with your mailing address, and I’ll email you back the bonus Daron’s Guitar Chronicles story I’m about to write. (Haven’t written it yet, but I will! All I know right now is it’s going to be from Ziggy’s point of view.) If your donation is $25 or more I’ll also send you some additional DGC stickers/tattoos (send me your mailing address). If your donation is $50 or more I’ll send you one of the remaining DGC red notebooks that I will have extra after the Kickstarter rewards are fulfilled. While Supplies Last of course!

Please help me do something good in this world and I think we’ll all feel less helpless. You are all heroes in your own lives already when you fight for inclusion, equality, and tolerance among your family, friends, and social circles. Please join me if you’re financially able in this step toward bettering the larger world, too.

This campaign will run through July and in the first week of August I’ll report the total amount raised, sound good? Thank you.

-Cecilia

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

One of the panels I attended yesterday at RT Booklovers was a packed house on the subject of self-publishing ebook platforms. “Power of the Platforms” was moderated by K.A. Linde and featured three (possibly four?) New York Times bestselling authors: Jamie McGuire, Laurelin Page, Alessandra Torre, and CD Reiss.

They had a lot of tips and information to impart for any author or small publisher – and for each other, often pausing to take notes on each other’s remarks.

The first topic of conversation, and the one that went on the longest and came back up the most times, was about the most disruptive recent change in the digital marketplace: Kindle Unlimited, aka KU.

For those unfamiliar with KU, it’s a “Netflix” type model where readers pay Amazon a fee for unlimited access to books in the KU program. To be in the program, a book has to be ONLY available via KU for 90 days before it can be sold anywhere else, and the author is paid a small fee determined by pageviews which doesn’t come close to what they would have been paid if all those reads were actual sales. Every publisher I’ve talked to doing romance or erotica, including my own imprint Circlet Press, Riverdale Avenue Books, Samhain Publishing, and even the LGBT publishers Riptide and Bold Strokes Books saw revenue from Amazon drop suddenly when the KU program came online.

Here’s what the panelists had to say:
(Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can but I only get about 60-70% of what people say and I occasionally get mixed up on which person was speaking, but I’ve tried to capture the discussion as accurately as possible.)

KA Linde: Let’s just get this right out in the open. Kindle Unlimited. Do any of you do KU exclusively? (Some authors have pulled all their books from elsewhere and only do KU.)

Jamie: I don’t. I say open as many doors as you can. I see narrowing the platforms as narrowing the audience. This is the time when promiscuity is a good thing! Do everybody! (audience laughter)

Alessandra: KU is really tempting to a lot of authors and everybody is flocking in that direction, but everything changes and you are cutting out a lot of readers if you just stick to one platform. And there are a lot of opportunities on the small platforms who are more willing to work with you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

I know, I know, I just released a BDSM rock star romance last week (TAKING THE LEAD), but I’m already getting ready for the summer release of book two in that same series, and here’s a post collecting a bunch of my visual references to my hero, heroine, and other elements in the book, which I’ll also try to tack up on Pinterest.

In book one (TAKING THE LEAD) we met Axel Hawke, the lead singer of bad boy rockers THE ROUGH. Now meet Mal Kenneally, the guitarist.

Here’s the description Gwen gives of seeing him:
On the side of the stage closest to me was the guitar player, Mal. We’d met once or twice in passing at industry functions. My impression of him from those occasions was that he never smiled and rarely spoke, looming in the background like a judgmental gargoyle. But on stage he was animated, explosive, leaping into the air with his guitar and then landing, flinging his long, dark hair forward and then flipping it back with a head toss. He still didn’t smile, but he matched Axel’s energy with a feral grimace as he sang, and then he sauntered out onto the long runway into the audience, playing a solo and practically humping the guitar as he went.
Pure sex. One-hundred percent pure sex that walked on two legs and played the guitar. When that song was over he tore his shirt off and flung it into the audience. His arms and chest looked like something from a fitness craze informercial: you too can have these abs! These biceps!

Some dark, long-haired rockers & actors to contemplate:

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

Many of you know me as a writer of BDSM-themed fiction. In fact my very first published story was called “Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords.” To encourage readers to join my newsletter email list, I’m giving away a copy of the ebook EDGE PLAYS, which collects all the stories/novellas set in the same universe as that short story except for those on sale elsewhere.

So if you’ve read any of the books of Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords, The Velderet, or Royal Treatment, this collection has three new tales for you, and if you haven’t read them, it gives you some sample chapters to try out!

To join the newsletter, visit my website at http://blog.ceciliatan.com just try to navigate away from the site again and a subscription box should pop up. Put in the info it asks for and then it should provide you with special download links for PDF, epub, or Mobi format ebooks.

If for any reason it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, you can always email me at ctan.writer @ gmail.com and once I verify you’re on the list I can email the files to you, as well.

Offer good until December 1st only!

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

Right now my nerves are on fire, I’m jittery as hell, and yet I’m also so exhausted I can barely move. I might be about to cry, or scream, or maybe pass out. Why do I feel this way?

It might be that I gave in to my intense chocolate craving today and had far too much of it than is healthy (plus lots of tea), so perhaps this is caffeine overload.

It might be that my erratic hormone cycles are about to coalesce into something.

Or maybe it’s merely that I’m deep in the guts of the rewrite for TAKING THE LEAD, my next romance novel for Hachette/Grand Central/Forever…

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

I’m sitting here in bed on the last night of RT Booklovers, with my knee up on pillows with an ice pack. Ouch. You see, at Heather Graham’s Vampire Ball, they had a charity fundraiser for a pediatric AIDS organization, where for five bucks you could dance with the cover model of your choice. So I danced with the delectable DeLonn Donovan, which was lovely. But then the next time I tried to stand up, my left knee was so swollen I could barely limp back to my room.

Great thanks to Sarah Frantz Lyons and L.A. Witt (aka Lauren Gallagher) who retrieved me a bag of ice. I did myself a mischief, it would seem!

I figure to recap the convention I should note a couple of things. Like how about my awards speeches? That’s a good thing to blog!

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

It has been a fabulous, busy first 24 hours at RT. I arrived last night too late to pick up my badge, but that was all right. Once I retrieved my box of giveaways and unpacked, I headed to the bar where I had nonstop fantastic conversations with smart women from about 8pm to well past midnight. Sarah Frantz and Rachel Haimowitz from Riptide Publishing, book bloggers like Jo from Wicked Lil Pixie Reviews, Stephanie from Book-A-Holic Anon, and Lynda “Fish with Sticks” (a knitting enthusiast as well as book lover), authors Jessica Freehly and L.A. Witt, and more.

Today after a lovely breakfast of berry-filled crepes with chocolate, courtesy of RT at the welcome session, I took in the presentation by Wattpad. The session was led by Wattpad staffer Ashleigh Gardner and bestselling author Anna Todd (whose One Direction fanfic grew into a huge international sensation on Wattpad and was bought by Simon & Schuster and now will be a movie from Paramount).

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.