purple_pen

I published my first short story in 2007, for a charity anthology in aid of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Since then, I've continued to publish erotic short fiction regularly with a number of American publishers, including Torquere Press and Circlet Press. I've also recently had a story accepted into the 2011 anthology of best speculative lesbian fiction.

I live in Bristol, UK, with my cat, where I work a number of jobs and study towards my PhD. I've also started a queer women's writing group that meets on Sunday afternoons, and will shortly be starting an Intro to Short Story Writing course at Paper Village (www.papervillage.co.uk)

Find me on facebook: www.facebook.com/emilyj.moreton

Or on Goodreads, including some of my recently published stuff: http://www.goodreads.com/emily_moreton

You're also welcome to poke around here, read a few samples of some of my stuff, or even go off and buy something should the mood take you!

This is my first full weekend off in longer than I care to think about, and yesterday my first day off in 12 days. So yesterday essentially translated to sleep, sleep, so much sleep, and curling up on my sofa with the cat, and Avengers on my DVD player.

I want a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie, damn it! not least because the pairing name should be BlackEye, which is kind of perfect for the two of them.

Anyway, I digress. Having spent yesterday doing nothing, I'm somewhat backwardsly spending today running around doing all the things. So far today, I've tidied and vacuumed my flat, put away laundry, done a week's worth of washing up, made a casserole and put it in the oven (smells so good!) and done a load of gardening. Well, as much as you can with a tiny courtyard garden, anyway, and now I have herbs all along the windowsills. Also managed to finally fix the lights onto my bike, which is pretty good timing since the clocks went back today.

I figured all that entitled me to a lunch break, and then I'm off to a craft workshop this afternoon, to make a fabric Christmas garland.

So that's my weekend: not very restful but ultimately still relaxing. What's your favourite thing to do of a weekend?

"Can't you take the meeting?" Rob asked, trailing Cress to the van with the second of six boxes of table centers.

"No problem," Cress said, mock-lightly. "The set-up plan for the ballroom's in the back office, the contact to get into the room is Maureen Fox, and I'm sure you remember the swan fold I've taught you three times in the last six months? I'd be happy to sit here and drink coffee with the happy couple while trying not to make any inappropriate comments about décor."

"And that's why you should take it," Rob said, ignoring everything that had come before. "You're the one with the decorating ideas, you'll think of something perfect and make sure we get their business."

"Or I could do my job at the ballroom while you do yours here, and then you can give me the notes to look over and come up with brilliant ideas afterwards." Cress bumped the van door closed with her hip. "Like always."

"Leather, though," Rob grumbled, not sure why he was even making such a fuss. Last week, the Greens had brought their two year old triplets with them to the initial consultation. A leather-anniversary celebrating couple couldn't be worse than that.

"Suck it up." Cress patted his chest. "Maybe they'll invite you to demonstrate some of the kinkier ideas."

"That helps."

"Remind me again when you last got laid?"

"I picked up that guy at the Tavern last weekend. You might remember being there with Rosa, grading the guys on a scale of one to ten?"

"What else are a couple of lesbians supposed to do in a gay bar?" Cress asked, her raised eyebrow just visible over the double layer of boxes she'd picked up. "He was barely a four, though, you could have done better."

Rob wasn't going to argue with that. A blow job was a blow job, but he'd had better when he was sixteen and fooling around with his next door neighbor. The guy at the Tavern had barely been worth the drink Rob had bought him, let alone the expert hand-job Rob had given him.

"Seriously –" Cress started before Rob shook his head firmly.

"I know you and Rosa are one lesbian cliché from renting a U-Haul, but please, do not start talking about how I need to find a man, have regular sex, and get a dog."

"I wasn't going to," Cress protested. "For one thing, your apartment's too small for you to share it with a dog."

New release: My story, Another Night, has just been released in Circlet's anthology of Shakespeare themed erotica, Like A Midsummer Night. Another Night is based off Twelfth Night, my favourite Shakespeare play, and is about Viola and Orsino, on the night of their wedding anniversary as Viola takes a potion to appear as a man for one night only...

In other news, this seems to be my year of finishing off old stories that languished half-complete on my hard-drive. So far, I think I'm at three. The first, about a woman who keeps running into a hot bar-tender at weddings, was accepted to the UK Meet anthology (just went to the meet this weekend, so much fun!). I started it way back in 2009, for an anthology to raise funds for Lambda Legal, and honestly, I think I got bored, but when the Meet call went out, I got back into it, skimming through my files for ideas.

The other two are also things I started for anthology calls and stalled out on. One is a magical threesome, which started as an epic tale, and became, well, a magical threesome. Also, one of the men became a woman, the warrior in a trio of warrior, guide and sorcerer. I'm pretty sure that one stalled because it felt too epic to hit the deadline - shorter version was much easier :)

The final one was originally a story for a ghosts anthology, stalled out; started again for a dead lovers anthology and stalled out; and finally became an urban fantasy for a Halloween call. Also possibly an idea for a longer story about the secondary character.

Ironically, the story I've just had accepted is brand new, and sparked off by something I find hot, which is people fucking on the couch. It's coming out with Dreamspinner's advent calendar in December, so if you like stories about ex-military guys who live together with chinchillas and without heat... well, this may be the only story that's for you!

Someone please tell me this weather is going to break soon. Lie, if you have to - I'm British, I'm used to the weather being nothing like we all expected it to be.

Seriously, though, the air pressure is making me crazy, I'd love a good thunder storm. I love storms anyway, but they're especially great on late summer evenings, rolling around and making everything seem a bit like the end of the world is coming.

Of course, the one story I wrote that did include a thunder storm, it was the end of the world, so maybe I should stop wishing for one?

I should definitely get back to the story I am working on though, about a ninja who gets hired to hunt down pigeons. It's based on a true story, from when my dad worked for a small town council. They wanted to get rid of some of the town's many pigeons (have them shot) but there was public outcry. Instead, they hired some guys with air rifles to shoot them in the dead of night, bag up the bodies and take them away.

Imagine stumbling onto that heading home from the pub in the early hours!

Now, if I could just work in something about the troupe of jugglers who take in a stray puppy...

Stuck in his flat while he works on his next book, Max's only break is watering the plants on his roof, at least until he catches the eye of an attractive stranger on a train, which is stopped on the line passing his flat. Flirting's not that easy when all you've got is hand gestures, but that's not going to stop Max from fantasizing. Of course, no fantasy can last forever, and as Max is about to discover, making sure reality lives up to the fantasy isn't as easy as it sounds.

( Read a short extract )

Buy it here

Major Alex Sheppard has plans for his evening that absolutely do not include anything work-related, but when his CO tags him to play driver for a visiting brigadier general, it's not like he can say no. Of course, it helps that General Hendrickson is hot as sin in his dress uniform—and that working a room full of movers and shakers in the name of army funding isn't all he excels at.

Available on 11th April right here

I'm working on something with a 10k minimum word count, which has proved to be more of a struggle than anticipated since about 5k.

What's weird is, when I was at 7k, the gap to 10 seemed impossible. Even at 7.5. But now I just hit 8k, and suddenly 10 seems only words away, not far at all. Is it psychological? Something about even numbers (though personally, I've always thought even number ages sounded younger than odd ones - a little depressing, since I'm turning 29 in three weeks!)

Whatever it is, I feel like I'm on a roll, and want to just keep going. Sadly, it's twenty to eleven at night, and I have to get up for work tomorrow. But maybe just twenty more minutes...

MSF seems to be a theme this year for charity publishing, and a totally worthwhile one at that. House of D Have put together an anthology of what the title says: twelve tales of healing, and included One Thousand Cranes in it.

One Thousand Cranes is the story of Aya, a skater who's partner on ice has just died, and how she recovers from her loss with the help of 1000 paper cranes and 2 very good friends.

Buy Twelve Tales of Healing now

Finally catching up on recent publications - and trying to shake the sense that I've forgotten one - with Burn The Brightest, which has been out for a while.

Summary:
Edith, a young lecturer at the University of Maryland, has a long-standing rule that she never gets involved with any active duty military personnel, whether as a friend or as a lover. But when her best friend, Tara, talks her into attending a beach barbeque with Tara's boyfriend's navy unit, Edith meets Jo, who'll cause her to consider what she really wants, and face the consequences of letting herself have it.

Buy it now in print or ebook form: Cast The Cards Anthology