Publisher/Author Spotlight: Less than Three Press's Megan Derr talks about Love for the Ladies

LOVE FOR THE LADIES

 by Megan Derr

I have always been a romance junkie. Growing up, the books I most often read were my mother's, which was mostly a whole hell of a lot of romance and a lot of horror. As I got older, I started adding my own books to the pile, mostly fantasy.

But it was the romance I always came back too, over and over again. I liked the happy endings better. I liked how they focused on the characters, how they could be about saving the world or just some massive, stupid misunderstanding. I like the variety that romance offers, while at the same time always promising me these two (or more) idiots are going to fall in love in the most difficult, melodramatic way possible.

Eventually I found my way to m/m, where I found a home like so many other readers and writers. But I'm a military brat; I'm not very good at holding still. And instead of stopping at m/m, I kept going, because it's romance I love, and that exists for more than just straight and gay people.

Not everybody enjoys straight romance. Not everyone enjoys gay romance. Not everyone enjoys lesbian romance. But more people might like all of the above if they were willing to give it a fair chance. There is this ugly mentality in the m/m romance community that 'girlie bits' and any sex that is not one cis gay dude fucking another cis day dude shouldn't be present. The romance community at large has always been a place built by and for women, and the m/m community boasts a hell of a lot of women. Those same women that stand up for the rights of gay men and how they should be accepted and love is love… turn around and bash books and authors for including women and het or lesbian sex.

And that's not cool. It's one thing not to like something. It's another to be hateful and misogynistic. To say that women don't belong in a genre heavily populated by women.

Do I think people should read what they dislike? No. I fully support the right of people to read, write, and enjoy slave fic, but I will never like it myself. If someone tried to force it on me, I'd get mad. Beyond dislike, there are countless reasons people might be flat out uncomfortable with reading it.

Do I think more people would like lesbian fiction if they were willing to give it a fair chance? Absolutely. How many people have come to the m/m genre on a challenge or a whim or to follow a favorite author and discovered a whole shiny new world of awesome stories they never knew they loved?

We should be willing to give lesbian fiction the same chance.

If you enjoy lesbian fiction, we've got plenty for you :3 If you're looking for something new, been bored lately with what you're reading, or just feeling adventurous, try one out, you might be surprised. If you want a challenge, here you are.

Eighteen stories made it into the final Damsels in Distress collection, and there's something for everyone. We've got fairytales, the Wild West, World War II, pirates, spies, mercenaries, and much much more.

Geek Out Collection Tour: Sext Based Adventures by Francis Gideon (genderqueer)

Title: On Avatars and Gender Identity

Hi there! I'm Francis Gideon and Smoocher's Voice has been kind enough to host my guest post for my story Sext Based Adventures. This story was released yesterday on Less Than Three Press with their collection called Geek Out!: A Collectionof Trans and Genderqueer Romance. The title is fairly self-explanatory; these are all romances involving trans nerds in some way or another. In my story, Chris is a genderqueer protagonist who spends most of his time online playing World of Warcraft until he meets Jessica, another player who interests him. As the two start up a relationship, Chris must confront the fact that he's been playing as a woman, and now must negotiate who he is as he steps out from behind the screen to meet Jessica in real life.

For my guest post, I want to talk about where this story idea came from. I'm in a film adaptations class right now, and we just had a week on films which are "based on a true story"; I sort of see Sext Based Adventures as one of those narratives. It's true—something like this really happened--but I've taken a lot of liberties, like any good adaptation usually does. What happens between Chris and Jessica didn’t happen to me, but another researcher in games studies at my school. While he was studying the game Second Life in more detail, he interviewed a player who had posed as a woman online and met another woman. I won't give away too many of the details of that “real life” story, but I will say that in my version, with Chris and Jessica, everything ends happily.

I could have told this story without talking about gender identity at all—but I knew I didn’t want to. To me, these characters needed to be trans, because there so much subversive potential for transgender identity in online spaces. In his autobiography, Chaz Bono speaks about his love of video games precisely because he got to choose his avatar. He could be a man in the video game world before he was really aware of what his desire meant in the 'real world.' The avatar, in a lot of ways, always becomes an extension of ourselves. Just think of anytime your character gets injured in a game—you often say "ow!" aloud, as though the pain were tangibly felt. Even when we're doing something like driving a car, we still assume the machine (car) as part of ourselves. When someone hits our car, we don't say, "you hit my car" but instead "you hit me."  This eclipsing of space between cyber bodies, real bodies, and the hybrid identity we form with our avatars I've always found really interesting, and I was so happy to be able to explore that via these characters.

On that note, I made Chris genderqueer in this story for a very particular reason. It's extremely important to have nonbinary representation, because as Cecil Wilde has already stated in their blog post, nonbinary people become invisible very easily. When I look at my story as an author, Chris is a nonbinary or genderqueer protagonist, but I don't actually use that language (nonbinary, genderqueer) or even neutral pronouns in the story. This is not a gap in my knowledge, but a conscious decision. After a lot of thought, I ultimately decided I wouldn't use these terms in this particular story (I've used it in others) because not everyone is going to have access to that language or know how to use it. But their stories still matter and deserve representation. 

In Sext Based Adventures, Chris' sister understands his gender and sexuality through the lens of her science degree; Chris, as he starts to articulate his difference, still defaults to the language of video games and the avatar. It doesn't matter what we have to help us understand who we are, only that we have something. For Chris and many nonbinary people, all we can do is show up, explain ourselves the best we can, and hope it all goes okay. 

To win a free copy of Sext Based Adventures, leave a comment and your email. 

Find more by Francis, including other books, here: https://francisgideon.wordpress.com/

Geek Out Collection Tour: Alden Lily Reedy's Manifest (Trans)

If you Google 'LGBT bible verses', all the results on the first page, whatever their point, are about homosexuality. Half of them use the term 'gay'. The same goes for the second page. It takes until the third for the word 'bisexual' to appear. Part of this seems to be Google thinking that 'lgbt' and 'gay' are synonyms for each other, but I think it also reflects how people tend to think about queer issues as they relate to religion: here, more than usual, the trans people get forgotten.

Now, when using the right search terms, there's no end of argument back and forth about what the Bible says about transsexuality. But while I've read plenty of LGB stories where religious conflicts at least merited a mention, before writing Manifest, I personally had never seen a story where a transgender character struggled with their religious beliefs, Christian or otherwise. In real life, though, it's a problem for many people, even if the end result is often leaving their religion.

In Manifest, the source of much of the anguish of the main character, Chris, is her perceived conflict between her emerging identity as a transgender girl and her dearly-held Christian beliefs. I am not religious myself, but I do know queer people who are. My best friend, for example, is a Catholic and also bisexual. He gave me plenty of advice when I started writing Manifest. I had another friend invite me to an inter-faith discussion on homosexuality and religion that included Christians, Jews, and Hindus.

Trans people usually have enough to worry about without adding religion in to the mix. It varies from person to person, but we worry about our bodies, how other people perceive us, what our futures hold, and all kinds of things. Adding the worry about endangering one's eternal soul or going against the word of God to the mix - that isn't easy.

Chris eventually learns to accept herself without giving up her religion. The journey to that isn't smooth, of course, but she makes it through okay. Along the way she picks up enviable sewing skills, creates some awesome costumes, and even finds love for herself. Maybe the solution she finds isn't the one I would have chosen, but it's the road she - and many others - has picked.

About Manifest:

The very last thing Chris expects when he's forced to take sewing lessons is to enjoy them. Or for sewing to lead him into the world of cosplay, and a friend with whom he begins to cosplay in earnest—and who convinces him to try dressing up as female characters.

He certainly doesn't anticipate the realizations that cosplaying stirs—realizations that could cost Chris not just his best friend, but his family as well.

Manifest can be bought at Less Than Three Press,  and is part of LT3's GeekOut collection

You can find me at

www.aldenlilyreedy.com

I'm also giving away the chance to name a main character in a future story! Leave a comment (and your email) to enter.

Cecil Wilde: They is Awkward, But Important (Blog Tour for Defying Convention) [genderqueer]

They is Awkward, But Important

Defying Convention does something I’ve never come across in a book before, though it’s something I’ve wanted—needed—to see. AJ, one of the main characters, is referred to by they/them pronouns throughout. I’d like to explain why that’s so important to me, both as an author and a reader.

Let me start by telling you a brief story. I was at a party for a friend’s birthday not so long ago, and not knowing every person she knows, I was surrounded by strangers. I’m not the world’s greatest social butterfly, but these were cool people and I know this, because something happened that’s only happened a handful of times before in my life: someone asked me what my pronouns were, and then went on to refer to me by them.

Like AJ in Defying Convention, I am a ‘they’. We experience our genders in similar ways, and again, like AJ, under most circumstances people assume I am a cis woman. It genuinely means the world to me when people have the good sense to ask, because I know that people like me—non-binary people—are practically invisible.

Lemme tell you a secret: I know ‘they’ can be awkward to get your mouth (and even your written grammar) around. Believe me when I say, I’m painfully aware of how easy it is to talk yourself into a corner if you’re not accustomed to planning out your sentences before you speak. I also know that people use they singularly without thinking all the time, but the pressure of doing it consciously makes it difficult. I have misgendered my friends and wanted to cut my own tongue out for it.

That’s why it was so important to me not just to write a book about trans characters, but specifically about the kind of trans character who practically doesn’t exist. Danny is lovely and special and there are parts of him you might not see very often in fiction, but AJ’s presence means that there’s a whole book out there that uses they/them/their pronouns throughout. I hope that makes it a little easier for people to use them in real life, because I know how much it means to so many of my friends and siblings.

I mean, the whole book is mostly about two huge dorks getting a happily-ever-after on their own terms after years of pining for one another at a distance, but the gender stuff is important, too!

Blurb

Danny and AJ have been online friends for years, and secretly in love with each other. When the opportunity to attend a comics convention comes up, they decide to go and share a room. But friendship online does not always translate to friendship offline, and both are anxious about how the meeting will go, and the friendship change, when faced with challenges easily avoided behind the safety of computer screens...

Author Bio

Cecil Wilde resides in Australia, accompanied by a cat who takes up most of the bed, a family of possums in the roof space, and more spiders than they’re entirely comfortable with. They write altogether cuter queer romance than their image as a grumpy cynic might suggest.

You can hang out with them 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/queerlyobscure
Tumblr: http://queerlyobscure.tumblr.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CecilWildeAuthor
Their Website: http://www.cecilwilde.com/

Blog Tour and GiveAway: Love Rampage by Alex Powell (Geek Out Anthology) (t/f)

Hello everyone!

My name is Alex Powell, and I'm bringing you a blog post to promote my story Love Rampage, which is being released with Less Than Three Press. This story is a contemporary urban fantasy story about a trans woman protagonist.

To tell you a little more about this story, I would like to go into Maíra's character, and the setting for this story.

Maíra, as you might imagine, is not an English name. I actually took this name from a girl I met from Brazil, who was working in Vancouver, Canada at the time. The character of Maíra the protagonist is not like the Maíra I met, but I do take names a lot from people I have met in real life.

The story takes place in Vancouver, Canada, which is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. It is not unusual to work with people from many different backgrounds, some of whom are in Vancouver on a visa, and are here as students, or for work. It is a place for global interaction, and many people speak two or more languages. One of the reasons I chose Vancouver as the setting was because of this multicultural setting.

Another reason I chose Vancouver was because of the prominent LGBTQ+ community. There is a vibrant queer community all over Vancouver, focused mainly in the West End. It is entirely possible that both Maíra, and her love interest Carol, were part of the community, and went to queer youth meetings. It is a generally accepting place, and also one of the only cities in Canada that have doctors that diagnose Gender Identity Disorder and can start a person on the road to transitioning.

Vancouver is also a beautiful place, surrounded by the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. North Vancouver, where Maíra lives, is on the slopes that give way to the North Shore Mountains. It is a place of mild temperatures, making it possible for all sorts of flowers, trees, and wildlife to live.

I wanted to give Maíra a beautiful place to live where the main source of her troubles was not worrying about people who might want to hurt her. She is mostly an ordinary teenager, whose main worry is whether or not she can get the attention of her love interest, which is a source of stress for a lot of teenagers, whatever their background and gender.

If you're interested in this short story about love and bravery, you can pick up an ebook copy of Love Rampage with Less Than Three Press, or a copy of Geek Out, which has all eight stories in either ebook or print.

Preorder the individual ebook [here] (http://www.lessthanthreepress.com/books/index.php?main_page=product_bookx_info&cPath=106_130&products_id=826)

Preorder the Geek Out anthology ebook [here] (http://www.lessthanthreepress.com/books/index.php?main_page=product_bookx_info&cPath=106_130&products_id=842)

You can find me here at my website:

alexpowellauthor.com

or on Facebook and Twitter

www.facebook.com/alexpowellauthor

twitter.com/aa_powell

Leave a comment below, including your email address, to take part in Alex Powell's Geek Out giveaway! The prize is a $10 gift code for Less Than Three Press!

Review by Niki: Camellia by Caitlin Ricci and Cari Z. (F/F)

Title: Camellia

Author: Caitlin Ricci and Cari Z.

Publisher: Less than Three Press

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Hearts and 4.5 out of 5 Strong Finish Kisses

Blurb:

Danny doesn't expect much to come from the interview she has lined up through her modelling agency, who told her only that it involved tea and a kink convention. She thinks it won't be much more than wearing some strange outfit, sitting around, and getting easy money that she desperately needs.

What she gets instead is Lucy, a formidable woman in riding boots and a corset, who makes Danny want to please her without saying a word. By the end of the interview, Danny is convinced that her new job isn't going to be anywhere near as easy as she first believed. Can Danny make the woman determined to keep her at the end of her riding crop let her into her heart as well as her bed?

Review:  Niki-O’s Down Low on Camellia by Caitlin Ricci and Cari Z.

This little book came out of a slow start to wow me. Yeah. Jaw still dropped. I thought at first… well, meh. Slow pacing, kept feeling like I was being tossed out of the characters pov to an almost narratoresque telling of the story. And then, somewhere around page… 20? 30? I’m not sure exactly, because what happened was so gradual I almost didn’t catch on...then I started to realize I couldn’t tell where one author’s voice started and the other’s left off. I started to feel the emotions of the characters dancing along my own skin. And I was hooked.

Like the fine teas sold in one main character’s posh tea shop, the story requires time to steep. Take that time, I urge you, because once the delicate flavors of this story sink in…magic happens. You will begin to fall in love with the characters.  Begin to hold your breath when they do, and yearn for the same things they yearn for…and that? Is fine writing indeed.

Camellia is a beautiful, delicate story that unfolds with the same languid, graceful pacing of a Japanese tea ceremony…and like the ancient art of the ceremony, will engage every one of your senses by the time it concludes. The memory will linger as well, with surprising, subtle strength. And lest you think this story is a snoozefest, I’d best mention the sex was hot enough to leave me wishing for a fan. No fooling.

Ooooh, just go get this story. Now. Now. Seriously, now. Because the whole thing is one sweet surprise after another. A very slow start, yes, but eventually the slow start makes perfect sense and you’ll realize that any other pace would have rung false.

Also? *fanning self* Let me say again, Holy Hot Sex Scene, Batgirl!! Oh la la!

Caitlin Ricci and Cari Z. pull off a scorcher of intimacy… and they do it with everyone still clothed? I mean, wtf? How do you write something that can get folks hot and bothered when your characters don't even take off their clothes? I guess you just have to have oodles of natural brilliance and a soupcon of well applied craft. Yep, that must be the answer. Add to that the long, slow build of attraction these two authors create and by the time the characters engage in the mildest of caresses, trust me, you’ll be panting for it right along with them. So, yeah, 4.5/5 Strong Finish Kisses are more than well deserved.

Buy Links:

Less than Three Press

Amazon

All Romance Books

Barnes and Noble

Review by Niki: Your Happy End by E.E. Ottoman

Title: Your Happy End

Author: E.E. Ottoman

Publisher: Less Than Three Press

Rating: 5 out of 5 Smooches & 5 out of 5 candy-sweet kisses

Blurb:

By day Jun is co-owner of a comic book shop. By night, he provides the high tech gear used by superhero team Ghost Hawk and The Spider. Cooper is the computer genius and information specialist behind the vigilante known as The Shadow Avenger. Attraction and a love of graphic novels make for a good start, but if they want to last Jun and Cooper will have to overcome secrets, danger, Cooper's past and Jun's firm belief that people in the superhero business don't get happy endings.

Niki-O’s Down low on “Your Happy End” by E.E. Ottoman

Review: 

Don’t let the less than stellar cover fool you…This delightful little confection of a story has all the sweet, hot, well written and well edited goodness readers can expect to find regularly in offerings from Less Than Three Press. Plus it has the added bonus of author E.E. Ottoman’s shooting straight from the hip style of writing. And before I get into the main body of this review, let me just say that this book needs to be in your library. Hell, it needs to be on your favorites list, because it’s got all the right moves at all the right moments. Probably the only quibble you’ll have is that the story is as sweet and fleeting as mouthful of cotton-candy. But don’t worry…like candy eaten on a sunny summer day while walking hand in hand with your first love, the memory of how the words in this story move you will both stand the test of time and give you just as much of a sweet, warm rush the thirtieth time you read them as they did the first.

*excuse me while I pause for a happy sigh*

Ottoman’s prose feels laid-back, inviting us as readers to take a stroll down to the local pizza joint with the “everyman” protagonists of Your Happy End. You’ll be loving Jun and Cooper within moments of meeting these two perfectly imperfect youngsters. It was refreshing to find a story treating the important issue of gender identity and the impact it can have on everyday life in a simple, no-frills, no hype manner. Jun and Cooper flawlessly illustrate two of the many permutations that gender identity and sexuality can combine into as well as throwing a spotlight on the importance every sidekick who ever supported any super hero holds.

Ottoman takes us into the nerve wracking world of superhero support in a way that easily lends itself to seeing the same qualities Jun and Cooper embody in the supporters behind every professional athlete, famous musician, star of stage or screen… as well as every small scale superhero like the high school teacher in an impoverished neighborhood who even though saddled with “incorrigible” students managed to touch their lives with a love for words or math or even just a newfound love for themselves as humans with a right to walk proudly though their lives.

The real kicker is that Ottoman manages to do this while writing about kinda nerdy tech guys with a mutual love for comic books, and makes it seem like a walk in the park. Like other great writers and poets who have come before, Ottoman writes so clearly about these two fictional men they transcend their individuality, becoming every person who ever stood in the role of support staff for any hero super or small.

Bravo, E.E. Ottoman. You’ve earned a place on my personal shelf of truly great writers. I think I’ll put you next to my other favorites whose writing is so clear and specific his love poem for one woman becomes a love poem for everyone who has ever loved.

What? Oh, of course. Introductions first. Octavio Paz, please meet E.E. Ottoman. I think the two of you will be pleased to be in close proximity. You have a great deal in common.

BUY LINKS:

Less Than Three Press

Amazon

All Romance Ebooks

Barnes and Noble

Review By Niki: Unheard Destruction by Zach Sweets

Title: Unheard Destruction

Author: Zach Sweets

Publisher: Less Than Three Press

Rating: 4.5/5 smushy, teary-eyed, sci-fi fan-girl hearts (or Smooches… those work too!)

Blurb:

 Rusty and Hal step out of their house to a world destroyed. Before they can make sense of what has happened, they are abducted—by aliens.

Help arrives in the unexpected form of Assim, an alien who can speak directly to Rusty's mind, but getting them out of one mess is only the first step in resolving a much greater one—and it is a problem that only humans can solve, leaving Rusty and Hal no choice but to learn fast and fight hard if they ever want to see home again.

Review:

I’ll be honest and start by saying I begged Cam for this book. Not only do I love sci-fi and post-apocalyptic fare, but there was an m/m love story here as well? Oh yeah, I beat down her little cyber-door begging for this one. I was expecting to like the book. I was expecting decent editing (because, come on, it’s Less Than Three Press. On their worst days, the editing is still decent.) I was not expecting to fall head over heels in love with the characters within the first five pages. I was not expecting to find myself comparing the work to some of Issac Asimov’s work in a manner favorable to both. I was absolutely not expecting to be taken on a stunning, nearly soundless tour of an eerie post apocalypse Earth and then into space. I was not expecting to feel as though my own hearing were torn away, to have my anxiety level creep higher and higher as my heroes fought their way through a bewildering array of strange new tasks with the aid of questionable creatures who are neither clearly friend or foe.

The pieces that made this particular novel such an enjoyable read for me were the early establishment of the deeply rooted love the two main characters have for one another and the clear depiction of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the main characters deafness—they are attuned to the visual in a way that would be uncommon for a hearing person, but is par for the course in the deaf world, yet if something is not in their line of sight their chances of becoming aware before being exposed to whatever it is are slim. Those two things are woven into every fiber of this story in a way that lifts it to a very high pinnacle indeed.

There are flaws. There’s a lot of sex—hot sex, mind you—that sometimes pushes the story forward and sometimes doesn’t. I like good sex in a book, as long as it doesn’t slow the story down, or leave me puzzled as to why the characters would take time out to play “beast with two backs” right at that particular moment. When it crosses the line and pulls my attention from the story I tend to get a bit irked. However, I was not so bothered by Hal and Rusty’s tendency to screw whenever they got the chance—whether it moved the story forward or not—that it stopped me from finishing the story. I wanted to know exactly what happened to them. I desperately what to read the next book in the series. I still can’t stop comparing it to early Asimov. And I can’t help wondering, and thinking it extremely likely that one day Zach Sweets will be as well-known and revered for his contributions to the genre as Asimov is today.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves good sci-fi, as well as to anyone who wants a peek at how surviving in hostile environments is vastly different for a deaf person… and I especially recommend the book to anyone who loves a good love story. 

**Thank You to Zach Sweets for providing us with a copy of his book in return for an honest review**

Buy Links:

Less Than Three Press

Amazon

All Romance Ebooks

Barnes and Noble