Yay! A double honor - Best Lesbian Erotica 2009

My very first erotica story, "Monica and Me," was published in two anthologies - Shar Rednour's Starf*cker and Tristan Taormino's Best Lesbian Erotica 2001, guest edited by Patrick Califia. I still love those books with a passion.

But now, while I still write erotica, I think I'm more known as an erotica editor. Both have their rewards (and challenges). I'm not sure the average person realizes that editing an anthology is not just about selecting twentysomething hot stories. That's the fun part. The not fun parts are, well, many, namely rejecting other stories, reformatting, proofreading, proofreading again, sending out and receiving contracts, paying twentysomething people, sending their addresses to my publisher, and now, for me, setting up blogs for each book. I also make sure to submit my authors' work to various "Best Of" anthologies, because I believe in them and it's an honor when that happens.

So this year, like with Best American Erotica 2006, I get to be "in" Best Lesbian Erotica 2009 twice - as the author of "Hard to Get," which was originally published in Zane's Purple Panties anthologies, and as the editor of Chelsea G. Summers's (of Pretty Dumb Things fame) story "Stuck at Work and Late for a Date" which I published in Yes, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission. I'm especially thrilled because this is Tristan's last year editing the Best Lesbian Erotica series. She's turning it over to the very capable, multi-BLE-published author and Drunken! Careening! Writers! Reading Series host Kathleen Warnock (click here for the Best Lesbian Erotica 2010 writer's guidelines). It's things like this (in addition to royalty checks) that make the minutiae of editing anthologies worth it. The reading the stories part is great fun, a lot of the rest of it, not to so much, but sometimes, the blogs really take off (yes, the Spanked blog now officially gets more traffic than this boring old one).



Best Lesbian Erotica 2009
edited by Tristan Taormino, guest editor Joan Larkin

The Virgin of G Jean Casse
The Diner on the Corner Zaedryn Meade
Operation Butch Ambush Tawanna Sullivan
Bait and Switch Nairne Holtz
Park Sex Jessica Swafford
Spike Jodi Payne
Punk Love Victoria Gimpelevich
Lipstick on Her Collar Sacchi Green
Dream Date Radclyffe
On Snow-White Wings Shanna Germain
Tough Enough to Wear a Dress Teresa Noelle Roberts
A Night at the Opera Evan Mora
Please (Act III) Linda Suzuki
Hard to Get Rachel Kramer Bussel
Waiting Dylynn DeSaint
The Placement of Modifiers Jean Roberta
Velvet by Lisabet Sarai
Stuck at Work and Late for a Date Chelsea G. Summers
Bandanna Kiss by Moxzi Lantana
Flipping the Script D. Alexandria
The Breaking Point Lucinda L. Flanary
The Christmas Gift Thea Leticia
Blade, Ink, Steel Sharon Wachsler
Beneath the Carpet is the Floor Anna Watson