Transgender Tales - Lauren P. Burka

I am beginning my October theme, LGBTQ Tales, with a very special guest post. Very special because Lauren P. Burka has been one of my very favourite authors since I first began to read Erotica, and certainly a great inspiration after I started writing it (see further down in the post!). She's here today to talk about two books from the ever-geeky Circlet Press that she has edited, Up for Grabs, volume 1 and 2. These are collections of gender-queer short Sci-fi stories that really, really push the boundaries of imagination way out there.


 I'll let her do the talking!

"Commonly heard at a Circlet party:

“I really liked Up for Grabs.” There is a pause. “I don’t understand why you included ‘The Ontological Engine.’ It was really hot, though.” Even the author, puzzled, asked me why I felt the story belonged in the book.
Of course I included the story because it was hot. If you’re mining the slush pile, you treasure those stories like fat gold nuggets.
But that wasn’t the only reason.
I bought the story from Vinnie Tesla because it was hot, humorous, and included genital configurations beyond the standard two. His story’s transformations rival those of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. How could I not publish this story?
Likewise, what grabbed me hardest about Zachary Jernigan’s story was not the bi-gendered character. It was the man who existed inside of a woman’s mind.
I learned a lot from editing Up for Grabs. I found more places to post the call for submissions for Up for Grabs 2. The authors came through with gold. The book attracted a couple of “trunk” stories that hadn’t fitted in anywhere else and permitted me to introduce Thomas Roche’s “Isle of the Dead” to a new generation of readers.
If Up for Grabs 2 has a flaw, it lies in my choices on pronouns. Looking back seven years later, I feel embarrassed that I talked all the authors into using “it” for third genders. I thought that this would avoid confusing my readers. In retrospect, I wasn’t giving my readers enough credit. Anyone who didn’t like the book would not be mollified by pronoun sanitation. Anyone who did like the book would enjoy a bit of confusion. I promise I won’t do it again.
Up for grabs 2 has girls who are boys who like boys to be girls. And it has stories like M. Svairini’s “Mouth.” Here is the story behind that story.
I told the author that I was not interested in stories longer than 8,000 words. In my experience, stories that long collapse from their own weight. When I read “Mouth,” though, I could almost see the missing pieces. This story needed more space to stretch and unfold. I wrote back immediately to tell the author that I would buy this story if all the parts that had been snipped away could be mended and made whole.
These books are gardens of delicious fruit where nothing is forbidden.

Lauren P. Burka
Cambridge, MA
September 2017"

" Delicious, delirious, delightful! I couldn't put down this collection of five thought provoking, totally fresh and completely hot stories of gender turned on its ear (or some other body part)."

 

 An anthology of erotic stories where gender is up for grabs. Thousands of people spend time on the Internet identified with a gender other than the one they were born with, for erotic gratification or to stretch their imaginations. But what if you got a tax break for changing your gender? What if you could choose to be no gender at all until you went on a date? Five stories.

Erotic science fiction and fantasy has been Circlet Press's specialty since 1992. UP FOR GRABS is one of the many ebooks, print books, and web reads we offer. 

with 
Vinnie Tesla, Ellen Tevault, David Levine, Anya Levin, and Zachary Jernigan

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"This is a wonderful collection. Lauren P. Burka has pulled together stories that take sexual imagination way beyond familiar limits, to other-dimension realities that grab and compel."

 

As editor Lauren P. Burka says in her introduction, "All erotica is the story of sex breaking free from biological need to become the co-conspirator of pleasure." Never is that more apparent than in the sharp-eyed, sharp-minded stories she has selected for Up For Grabs 2, the second volume of gender exploratory erotica she has brought together by asking the question "What happens to sex if we let go of every assumption we have about gender and start from scratch?"

Have you ever dreamed of being so close to the people you loved that you could share your identities, your emotions, and your pleasures? M. Christian has written a story just for you. Do you crave the touch of intersex flesh so much that you will set aside everything you believed about your own sexuality? Raven Kaldera has got you covered. What would the future be like if we had an option beyond male or female, where "it" is not an insult? Elizabeth Thorne takes us on a tour. In a harsh future where the meaning seems drained from life, will gender still matter? Ask Zachary Jernigan. What would happen if our sexualities were defined not by our gender but by specific body parts? Find out what sex is like for a "mouth" in M. Svairini's story of the same name. 

includes 
 The Bell House Invitation by M. Christian - Lover of the Whore of Babylon by Raven Kaldera -The Verb for Change is Sex by Zachary Jernigan -The Sex of Therapy by Elizabeth Thorne - The Isle of the Dead by Thomas S. Roche - They Don’t Make ‘em Like They Used To by Laura Antoniou -Wer-What by Esmeralda Greene - Mouth by M. Svairini

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READ AN EXCERPT AT CIRCLET PRESS 

About Lauren
Lauren Burka writes stories about people from different worlds and how they have different relationships.  And sex.  Don’t forget the sex.  In her free time she collects single-tail whips and pursues doomed affairs with Oxford commas.

Lauren was the editor for these two books, but if you would like to explore her own magnificent writing check out this collection of three short stories (some of my favourite erotic writings ever) and this beautiful fantasy novel.

 

Discover much much more geeky Erotica at Circlet Press