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Coming Together: Hungry for Love is a collection of zombie-themed erotic fiction edited by the fabulous Sommer Marsden. Sales proceeds benefit the American Diabetes Association.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: Little Deaths (Cora Zane); My Name is Brighton (Alana Noel Voth); Dead in the Water (Lynn Townsend); Head Full of Zombie (Alison Tyler); Zombie Apocalypse: First Responder (Kissa Starling); You Look Better Dead (Jeffrey L. Shipley); Zombie Goddess (Sadey Quinn); Dark Hunger ( Erzabet Bishop); Love Never Dies (t'Sade); Meat (Bobby Diabolus); Annie Morgan (Armand Rosamilia); Queer Zombie Disco (Kirsty Logan); The Tenderest Meat (Elise Hepner); Last Man on Earth (Blacksilk); Zombie Factory (Kiki Howell); Screen Siren (Annabeth Leong); You Make a Dead Man Come ( Sommer Marsden)
It's out. My first short story. It's erotic and horrific and oh so very perfect for this time of year. So many great authors went into the making of this anthology and all the proceeds go to help the American Diabetes Association. As someone who came very close (last April) to being diagnosed and who had to live with the scare, this is a worthy cause and it was a joy to participate in. I hope you will join me in supporting Coming Together and add some scary fun to your November.
In talking about our new book release, I got the chance to visit with fellow author Lynn Townsend.
1. What inspired you to write erotica?
I've been writing for a very long time now. I started my
first poem in first grade, and wrote my first short story in fifth grade.
During college, I took Creative Writing classes... but my first love was
fantasy/horror/sci-fi. And I wrote those instead. However, it seems that in
retrospect, I was always writing love stories, just set in a sci-fi, or
fantasy, or horror setting. And then I was going back, when I was done, and
removing all the sex, most of the romance, and hating it. I had a perfectly
good peacock here, I was ripping all the feathers off it, calling it an eagle
and trying to figure out why the damn thing wouldn't fly.
But I think I really got pointed in the right direction when
a friend of mine was making fun of slash fiction. "Here's what I don't
get... there's this whole subculture of women, writing stories about men having
sex with other men, mainly for other women." And I thought, "There
is? Really? How come I haven't heard about this? Where? Let me see!"
2. Tell us a little about what inspired your story in Hungry
for Love.
I love Zombies. One of my favorite movies, ever ever, is
Shaun of the Dead. I actually have a collection of Zombie themed music; (Zombie
Prostitute by Voltaire, Re: Your Brains, by Jonathon Coulton, The Dead Crawl
from the Earth Alive by Jonah Knight are some good examples). As for the
specific story, I saw a Facebook post that said "Buy a boat! Zombies Can't
Swim."
I did have an interesting adventure while writing it; I've
had a bit of a phobia about guns for a long time. And when I was writing the
scene where Paige is shooting a deader, it just wasn't coming out well. So I
called a friend of mine who likes to go to the shooting range and I had her
take me down and teach me how to fire a gun.
3. Open your story to any page and give us a snapshot of
what is happening.
Paige is staring out at the coastal waters, somewhere in
Virginia. She's wearing long pants and dying from the heat - Virginia is
unpleasant in the late summer, really. Mosquitoes and humidity, even at night.
She's looking through binoculars, keeping an eye out for deaders along the
shore.
4. Your main
character wants to go out to dinner. Set the scene.
Even before the zombie outbreak, Paige never was the type of
girl who wanted to be wined and dined. She's more of a "get Chinese take
out and eat out of the boxes while watching movies on television." She's
been working on a charter fishing boat for the last several years, though, so
she's not big on seafood.
5. What are your favorite types of characters to write
about?
I don't know if I have a particular character type, although
most of my characters tend to have messed up or dysfunctional families. I grew
up in an uncomfortably estranged household and I've never quite managed to
write a convincing loving family.
6. Pepperoni pizza or sushi?
Yes? I love sushi; particularly eel. I have to be careful,
tho. Both my husband and my daughter are allergic to shellfish.
7. Beer, martini or mineral water?
Definitely beer. And good beer, mind you, not that cheap
American crap. Except Sam Adam's, sometimes. My current favorites are Monty Python
Holy GrAle, Abt. 12, and Newcastle Brown. There's a really good German
restaurant down in Portsmouth, the Biergarten and we go there fairly regularly.
They have over 300 beers, and I'm always having fun trying to find something
new to drink.
8. What are your current writing projects?
Oh dear god.
I'm finishing up a holiday piece called Christmas Miracle.
I'm going to miss the deadline for a femme fatal piece - I've had an abundance
of real life getting in the way, but I think I may expand on that idea... In
the background, I have some longer pieces; a vampire steampunk three-some, a
straight-up steampunk romance, a college-age m/m, and a possible piece of
lit-fic. I've always got something going on... usually just too much to ever
get done at one time. I've also got about half a dozen shorts floating around
that haven't been finished yet.
9. What is your favorite kind of erotica? Fantasy, horror,
BDSM...
Honestly, I'm a little odd. I like something that makes me
laugh. Sex is enjoyable. And I don't want to read sex that takes itself too
seriously. It's one of the reasons that I really wanted to work on this antho;
I adore Sommer Marsden. She makes me laugh. So, really, genre doesn't matter. I
tend to steer away from too much pain; I'm a horrible wimp. I will stop sex in
the middle of things because my partner is leaning on my hair.
10. What are some of your hobbies when you are not writing
wonderful
smutterific things to read?
Well, I'm a sci-fi/fantasy geek. I love summer action
movies. I like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Firefly. That kind of stuff.
I'm almost always reading something - usually two or three
somethings, honestly. Right now I'm reading one of the Longmire mysteries,
re-reading a David Eddings novel, and flipping through the stories in Hungry
For Love. Oh, and I'm reading a romance, Your Scandalous Ways.
I like role-playing games - the kind with paper and dice, I
mean. I'm currently playing Star Wars, the Old Republic as my MMO, although up
until recently, I'd been playing Warcraft for... oh... (((eight years)))
I'm also a bit of an audiophile. I have something close to
30,000 mp3s. I go to estate sales and yard sales and thrift stores and buy
boxes of CDs, just to have something new to listen to. I'm particularly fond of
filk and geek music. Jonathon Coulton, Jonah Knight, Mikey Mason, that sort of
thing.
This is my current publications and
http://paidbytheweird.blogspot.com/ that's my blog :D
Thanks so much!
Thanks so much for joining me on the blog today. Happy book release!
