Category: Out in the World

As Seen On Geek And Sundry!

Last night the wonderful ladies of the Vaginal Fantasy book club revealed that their official book pick for September is CTHULHUROTICA.

(And then our editor, Carrie, freaked out a little bit, but she’s okay now.)

This means that Felicia Day, Veronica Belmont, Bonnie Burton and Kiala Kazebee will be reading our book this month, and discussing it with their viewers and fans on September 25 at 8pm Pacific time via a live chat.

If you’re new to Cthulhurotica, and found us through VF, welcome! This anthology of short stories is published by Dagan Books, a small press founded by the book’s editor, Carrie Cuinn. The book is meant to show that women, people of color, and people of different sexualities have a place in HP Lovecraft’s Mythos universe – even if Lovecraft himself didn’t think so. You can buy our book here, and follow us on Twitter or on Facebook. We have interviews with the authors too.

We’re also planning a second book in the series, which (like this one) will contain all original stories and art. That’s being put together by Carrie Cuinn and Filipino-American author and editor Don Pizarro (who’s story, “The C-Word” appears in the first book).

Thank you for stopping by, and we hope you enjoy our book!

New Interview with Innsmouth Free Press

Our editor, Carrie Cuinn, was interviewed by IFP over at their site:

IFP: In your introduction to this book, you say, “Readers expecting a collection of monster sex stories might, after all, be disappointed.” What do you mean?

CC: I think it’s fair to say that there are people who find tentacle porn arousing. As I learned when I started reading submissions for this anthology, there are also people who want to see humans being sexually abused by each and every one of the monsters in the Mythos universe. Because of the title, I still get informed that my book is “clearly” about “something disgusting” by people who haven’t read it yet. I wanted to say at the very beginning that this isn’t the kind of book we put together. There are only a few stories that actually show monsters in a sexual way. It simply isn’t the focus of the collection.

The writers whose work I chose for Cthulhurotica wanted to use the Cthulhu Mythos to explore the very human feelings of fear, desire, need, anger, domination, or jealousy…In this way, they’re carrying on the work started by H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote weird tales about space and monsters, in order to talk about the human condition. While these stories are undoubtedly sexual, and in most cases extremely erotic, at their core, each is about what it means to be a person living in Lovecraft’s world.

Read the rest at Innsmouth Free Press now!

Now available on Goodreads!

The .epub of Cthulhurotica is now available for sale on Goodreads. You can preview the first 50% of the book there, for FREE! (The site uses its own reader, so you don’t need to own a specific device or even download a program in order to read our book).

Goodreads.com
Click here to read the e-book on Goodreads

 

You can also add Cthulhurotica to your Goodreads library (and rate/review it) HERE

Now Available! Cthulhurotica in Print, EPUB and Kindle

Today’s the day! With our official launch on Amazon.com, Cthulhurotica is currently available 3 ways:

 

344 page, 5″ x 8″ paperback. $16.99 US, plus shipping

ISBN-10 0983137307 (ISBN-13 9780983137306)

 

KINDLE edition, $6.99

ASIN: B004GKMID2

 

.EPUB (for Nook, iBooks, and many more!) Instant download, and only $6.99!

ISBN-10 0-9831373-1-5 (ISBN-13 978-0-9831373-1-3)

(Please note: When opening the .epub on a Nook, you need to place it in the “My Documents” section, and not in the “My Library” section.)

Were you at the Innsmouth Cthulhurotica launch party? IFP was there …

Innsmouth Free Press, your source for news for the Innsmouth / Arkham area, was on hand for the Cthulhurotica launch party* on Halloween night, and had this to say about the event:

 

“Innsmouth, MA – The Pickman Art Galley was lit up last night in an eerie, green glow to herald the arrival ofCthulhurotica, the debut title from independent publisher Dagan Books. In attendance were several cast members of Heir of Dracula, but the most surprising – and photographed – guest was millionaire and head of Cerulean Skies, Alex Visser, who popped by to get an autographed copy of Cthulhurotica.

“It’s a unique concept,” Visser said, as he posed next to two “brides” of Cthulhu, who were dressed in what could be described as very creative mermaid costumes.The glistening scales running down the back of them looked absolutely realistic.

Cthulhurotica combines the work of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft with the sensual. Aside from the fiction offerings, it provides the reader with a look at original art and non-fiction essays inspired by Lovecraft’s Mythos.

Lovecraft is a well-known name around Innsmouth: he used it as the location of one his stories. “Oh, I think we’ve all read some Lovecraft story at one point or another, but this seems quite different. It’s fun! I mean, it seems like there were a lot of suppressed desires in Lovecraft’s tales,” said Pickman art gallery curator Victoria Carr.

Other guests agreed. Enthusiastic teaching assistant Molly Kelly said, with a wink, “Cthulhu can’t spend all that time dreaming, can he? Something else most be going on”.

Guests sipped crimson martinis, called “ritual offerings”, and munched on sushi and crackers shaped like little people. A gigantic squid-cake, complete with a marzipan “victim” in its grasp, completed the ensemble.

Outside the gallery – with his trusty sign reading “Flee the Abominations” next to him – was local resident Caleb McHenry.

“Well, someone has to intervene. This has gone on far enough. There’s cultists running around town and now this? Cthulhurotica? The name itself makes me shiver!”

The staff of Dagan Books, sadly, could not attend, but deeply wish that we could have been there.

 

*of course, this was a fictional party in a fictional art gallery celebrating the book’s connection to the fictional town of Innsmouth, MA, but wouldn’t you have been there if you could?

Cody says … a note about Cthulhurotica from Cody Goodfellow

The lovely Cody Goodfellow, a contributor to Cthulhurotica and author of many a dark tale, had this wonderfully wacky thing to say about the book:

Cthulhu…rotica?

“If  Lovecraft didn’t have vast and crippling fears of sexual intercourse, his stories wouldn’t be half as powerful or as memorable as they are.

To bring an overtly erotic element into a cosmic horror story without swerving into full-tilt silliness takes more than just big huevos. It takes the kind of non-Euclidean genital density ordinary humans aren’t even equipped to perceive, except by the warp of its gravity well. If you ever meet any of the transhuman pornographers who donated their skeevy seed to this book, don’t look under their skirts, no matter how often they offer.

For Dagan Books‘ inaugural release, editor Carrie Cuinn has embarked upon a catastrophically foolish plan to gather a singularity of testiculovarian fortitude into one flimsy cup anthology. My contribution, “Infernal Attractors,” proceeds from the assumption that Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond wasn’t sleazy enough. It appears alongside new monster-sexcapades from Jennifer Brozek, Ahimsa Kerp and twenty-three otherworldly pseudopod-fondlers.

The circular debate about the sexual subtext in the Cthulhu Mythos probably won’t get put to bed by this book, but I think it will generate some worthwhile controversy, especially if they shoot “I Heart Tentacles” thongs out of a T-shirt cannon at conventions.
Cthulhurotica goes on sale December 15th. Bring extra deodorant.”

Coday’s post can be found here: http://perilouspress.com/blog/2010/10/27/cthulhu-rotica/

 

Live! Nude! Tentacles?

Or, what happened when Nathan Crowder read his Cthulhurotica story, “The Fishwives of Sean Brolly”, in public this past weekend. In his own words:

There I was, slated to read something at Foolscap 12, my favorite little literary convention here in Seattle region (specifically in Redmond). I had a 9:00 time-slot, and a raft of impending publications to choose from. What to use to win over a room full of strangers, a few friends, and a few regional spec fic luminaries? Why, how about “The Fishwives of Sean Brolly?”

First off, I warned the audience. “This is the darkest thing I’ve ever written. It’s disturbing. It’s Cthulhu erotica and while there are no tentacles, I feel it only safe to warn you.”

A few people left. Those people are still my friends. Many more stayed. To the best of my knowledge, I made enemies of none of them. Though I was aware of some nervous shifting as I read and a few genuine gasps of something that translated to “That’s not right!”

This was my first experience reading erotica out loud to a room full of people. It was really my first strong erotica story. After a host of grotesqueries and the words “hard on, manhood,” and “erection,” through the course of the narrative, my penis-euphemism meter redlined. I found myself self-editing a brief paragraph towards the climax (no pun intended) when I spied the word “cock.” All things considered, that was really the least of the offences being perpetrated by my story, and I have no idea why I suddenly got coy. But it happened, and I kept going, straight up to the grisly, horrifying, and deeply satisfying (pun VERY intended) end.

I talked to a few of the audience the next day, almost as much to make sure that we were still on speaking terms as to say “Thanks for sticking around for the reading.” That regional luminary I mentioned (but not by name, because I’m coy here as well)? She sat across from me while I read, and I was worried about her reaction. Turns out she enjoyed how the language was used beautifully, to describe something so ultimately horrible and horrifying. And another was still squidged out by the story the next day to the extent that discussing a particular bit provoked a flinch reaction.

All things considered, I couldn’t have hoped for a better debut of my story from Cthulhurotica.

-Nate