Ravenous Nights

September 2nd event spotlights sapphic storytellers Nell Stark, Trinity Tam, Xan West, and KT Grant and their wide-ranging works of steamy erotic fiction. Join host Lori Perkins for an enthusiastic evening of arousing fiction, cool drinks, warm camaraderie and door prizes.

The Usual Details:
September 2nd, 8 to 10 pm
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002

212 334-9676
www.happyendinglounge.com

Featuring:

Nell Stark is an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of the Writing Center at a college in the SUNY system. Trinity Tam is a marketing executive in the music industry and an award-winning writer/producer of film and television. They live, write, and parent a rambunctious toddler just a stone’s throw from the historic Stonewall Inn in New York City. For more information about the everafter series, visit www.everafterseries.com.

Xan West is the pseudonym of an NYC BDSM/sex educator. Xan’s story “First Time Since”, won honorable mention for the 2008 National Leather Association’s John Preston Short Fiction Award. Xan’s short fiction appears in Best SM Erotica Volumes 2 & 3, Best Women’s Erotica 2008 & 2009, Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 & 2012, Hurts So Good, Say Please, and Sugar and Spice.

KT Grant is a self-proclaimed eccentric redhead who not only loves to read a wide variety of romances, but also loves writing it. Under her alter-ego, she is a well known book reviewer and blogger who doesn’t shy away from voicing her opinion. A proud native of New Jersey, KT is multi-published and known for writing “out of the box” romances. KT has been quoted in such publications as the Romance Writers of America’s Romance Writers Report and Night Owl Reviews. She has also been mentioned in the Guardian.UK, Publisher’s Weekly’s Beyond the Book and at Bookseller.com. KT is a top ten best-selling PAN (Romance Writers of America Published Authors Network) author at Amazon, as well as being a multiple All Romance Ebooks best seller and a Night Owl Reviews Top Author Pick.

Our August 5th event features Miss Topaz, Lisa Michelle Jones, and author/editor D.L. King, all creative spirits from the NYC BDSM community.  We owe them a big debt of thanks to these women.  When the publishing industry was dreaming of August vacations, they stepped forward and said “sure, I’ll read!”

And we can’t wait to see what they have in store for us!

Miss Topaz is Dean of Nightlife at Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want To Be Girls. She worked for many years as a Legal Assistant for the American Civil Liberties Union, where she was very active in promoting the rights of all minorities: women, people of color, gays and lesbians and the transgendered community. Today, she focuses her attention largely on working and playing with gender illusionists. She was recently in a serious relationship with a cross-dresser for two years, and believes that she, herself, is a drag queen trapped in woman’s body. She is also a cabaret singer and performance artist, and frequently appears as Marlene Dietrich in drag. She was recently interviewed by Annie Sprinkle about her wild and diversified forays into sex, for the magazine Over 50. Her short story, Life is Stanger Than Fiction, won third prize in a TES literary contest and was published its magazine, Prometheus. The story focused on a serendipitous blind date with a cross-dresser.

Lisa Michelle Jones was born in Dallas and raised in a conservative East Texas town from which she escaped as soon as possible. She earned a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where she discovered feminist literature, Anne Sexton, Lucille Clifton, and the short story genre. In addition to writing, she sang with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee choir at Carnegie Hall in a 1996 production of Brahm’s “Ein Deutsches Requiem.” Two months before her 30th birthday, she moved to NYC for the first time and never looked back. Lisa finds pleasure in writing erotica, short fiction, poetry, and essays. Her literary mentors are Sylvia Plath, Vita Sackville-West, Raymond Carver, Carole Maso, Jay McInerney, and Herman Melville. She currently lives in NYC where she enjoys dating, mating, satiating…and rhyming.

Jefferson is the pseudonym of a New York-based writer. His blog One Life, Take Two (ww.onelifetaketwo.com) charts his life as a parent and pervert. As a sex educator, he has taught at Dark Odyssey, Winter Fire, TES, Floating World and other events. He is a storyteller who appears frequently at The Moth and on other stages. He is reputedly the easiest lay in New York.

D. L. King is a smut writing—and editing—New Yorker who lives somewhere between the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island and the Chrysler Building. The editor of Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica,Spank!, The Sweetest Kiss: Ravishing Vampire Erotica and the Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Where the Girls Are: Urban Lesbian Erotica, D. L. King also publishes and edits Erotica Revealed, the erotica book review site. The author of dozens of short stories, her work can be found in various editions of The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, as well as titles such as Fast Girls, Sex in the City: New York, Please Ma’am, Sweet Love, Girl Crazy, Broadly Bound and Frenzy, among others. She is the author of two novels of female domination and male submission, The Melinoe Project and The Art of Melinoe. Find out more at dlkingerotica.com and dlkingerotica.blogspot.com.

As always, event details:
August 5th, 8 to 10 p.m.
Free. Casual dress.
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
www.happyendinglounge.com

Let’s welcome the Romance Writers Association conference and its attendees to New York City with a Hot Summer Nights reading. After all, it isn’t every day over two thousand Romance authors, aficionados, and experts gather for all things romantic.

And to make the celebration one to remember, we’ll welcome authors Louisa Bacio, Daisy Harris, Gwen Masters, and Kathy Kulig to the mic where they’ll read from their latest works! Watch this space daily as we post their bios, one at a time.

Then join us for the festivities Friday, July 1st. Start your weekend with us!

Event Details:
July 1st, 8 to 10 p.m.
Free. Casual dress.
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 334-9676
www.happyendinglounge.com

Multi-published author Kathy Kulig writes paranormal, contemporary and erotic romance for Ellora’s Cave. Critics have described her writing as “very raw and hot”, “wonderfully unique” and “entertaining and captivating”. Her work has finaled for a number of awards including the EPIC, PRISM and Maggie Awards.
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Besides her career in writing, she’s a cytotechnologist and has worked as a research scientist, medical technologist, dive master and stringer for a newspaper. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband in a 100-year-old Victorian home, which has a garage built from rejected tombstones. Visit her at www.kathykulig.com

Gwen Masters has seen hundreds of her short stories published in print and online, and her erotic novels have been translated into half a dozen languages. When she’s not writing smut, she is diving into research on interesting yet obscure topics, hopping a plane every few weeks, and masquerading as a serious news journalist. She splits her time between a home on the Georgia coast and a little place on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

Birkenstock-wearing glamour girl and mother of two by immaculate conception, Daisy Harris still isn’t sure if she writes erotica. Her paranormal romances start out innocently enough. However, her characters behave like complete sluts. Much to Miss Harris’s dismay, the sex tends to get completely out of hand.

She writes about trampy mermaids, sexy dragons, and snuff-y shark-shifters. Her work also features zombie ingenues, horny gods, and some holiday characters like you’ve never seen them before. And there’s almost always a mad scientist in there somewhere.

If you like science-y subplots, fantastical creatures, and red-hot chemistry, you’ll love Daisy Harris. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook and at www.thedaisyharris.com.

Louisa Bacio started reading A. N. Roquelaure’s Sleeping Beauty series at an impressionable age, and has been hooked on erotic romance ever since. She believes that everyone should have a little love, and a lot of pleasure, in their lives.

Bacio enjoys soaking up the sun in Southern California, and spending time with her family. In her “other” life, Bacio teaches college classes in writing and English, and edits for magazines.

For more thrills, check out Bacio’s erotic paranormal The Vampire, The Witch & The Werewolf: A New Orleans Threesome. This summer, stay tuned for Sex University 2: All-Girls Academy. Her story “Two’s Company” can be found in I Kissed a Girl: A Virgin Lesbian Anthology, and “The Wait” can be read in Rekindled Fire: An Anthology of Reunited Lovers. Drop in for a visit at http://www.louisabacio.com/.

It hardly seems likely that we’re already approaching our July Ravenous Nights event, but it’s only days away. This month we welcome the Romance Writers Association conference and its attendees to New York City with a Hot Summer Nights reading. After all, it isn’t every day over two thousand Romance authors, aficionados, and experts gather for all things romantic.

And to make the celebration one to remember, we’ll welcome authors Louisa Bacio, Daisy Harris, Gwen Masters, and Kathy Kulig to the mic where they’ll read from their latest works! Watch this space daily as we post their bios, one at a time.

Then join us for the festivities Friday, July 1st. Start your weekend with us!

Event Details:
July 1st, 8 to 10 p.m.
Free. Casual dress.
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 334-9676
www.happyendinglounge.com

June started out with a splash as we celebrated summer love with authors Hope Tarr, Isabo Kelly, Rob Byrnes. Author/editor Debra Hyde filled in for host Lori Perkins, away on business, kicking the evening off with… mic problems. But it was nothing the Happy Ending Lounge manager couldn’t handle with a couple of toggles and twists. Debra decided that even if you can’t solve technical problems yourself, it’s still of benefit to have a good-looking friend with a drink in hand at your side.

Isabo Kelly treated us to a reading from her SF romance, Siren Singing, which featured a clever game of animated chess where conquered chess pieces had to endure whatever sexual act their conquerers want. You know, if we had chess boards like those Isabo created, we’d all be playing chess! And just as luscious, the protagonists, newlyweds thrown together to seal a politic alliance, stand on the verge on acknowledging their simmering, mutual desire. Isabo practically had the audience fanning itself.

Gay romance and Lambda-award winning author Rob Byrnes took the podium next, a special treat for Debra because she and Rob had “met” well over a decade ago via an on-line erotic writers group on Compuserve. The group came to a logical end when affordable broadband came along, but Rob and Debra made sure their on-line paths crossed through the years, redoubling that effort with the advent of social media.

But they never met face-to-face until Ravenous Nights. Talk about a celebration! And, in a surprising parallel, Rob and Isabo also knew each other via a Compuserve romance writers group! Small world!

Rob read an excerpt from his novel, The Night We Met, in which his protagonist, Andrew, finally got into the pants of the reluctant object of his affection, Frank. Why reluctant? Because Franks’s not only the son of a mob boss, but expected to marry the daughter of a rival mob boss. And that’s before Frank begins to question his gender AND the FBI gets involved.

Need we say that Rob writes crazy-wild romances?

Culminating the evening, Hope Tarr graced us with an excerpt from her current work-in-progress, a contemporary menage novel that’s breezy and smart. Hope teased us with a clever, captivating passage in which her protagonist, at cross-roads in life, discovers that a fling of her — a married fling — has told his wife about her.

And the wife wants to meet her.

And the couple wants to….

Well, it *is* a menage novel.

Hope runs Lady Jane’s Salon, the first and only reading series dedicated to romance fiction. It usually meets the first Monday of every month, but with the Romance Writers Conference coming to town at month’s end, Lady Jane’s will happen June 27th. If you’re an RWA member and plan to be in town, be sure to put Lady Jane’s on your calendar.

And we’ll return at the end of the RWA conference on July 1st so make us your after-hours party, too! We’ll be here, steamy fiction in hand!

I don’t know what it is about the approach of summer, but it always makes me reminisce about loves past, particularly summer loves. And that’s what this month’s Ravenous Nights will celebrate. Come hear authors Isabo Kelly, Rob Byrnes, and Hope Tarr read tales of summer love, some quite earthy and others, well, otherworldly! And if the weather continues on the hot side of comfortable, be sure grab a cold drink with us – although we can’t guarantee that hot fiction won’t cancel out the affects of a cooling drink, especially with these writers on tap:

Award winning author Hope Tarr has written fifteen historical and contemporary romance novels, one novella (in an anthology with Betina Krahn and Jacquie d’Alessandro), and numerous articles on women’s health and relationships, fashion and fitness, relocation and travel. Hope is a Co-Founder of Lady Jane’s Salon, New York City’s first–and so far only–monthly reading series for romance fiction. The Salon was featured in THE NEW YORK POST and TIME OUT NEW YORK. She is also the Co-creator of Beer Gardens NYC. The first app for beer gardens anywhere in the U.S., Beer Gardens NYC has appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES (twice), GOTHAMIST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, AM NEW YORK, and NEW YORK MAGAZINE. You can find Hope at the following web sites: HopeTarr.com, WriterNYC.com, LadyJaneSalon.com and BeerGardensNYC.com as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

Isabo Kelly is the award winning author of numerous science fiction, fantasy and paranormal romance novels, short stories and novellas. After finishing her Ph.D. in Zoology in Ireland, she buckled down to concentrate on writing. Isabo currently lives in New York City with her brilliant Irish husband, her son and her mad dog. To learn more about Isabo’s books, visit her at www.isabokelly.com.

Rob Byrnes is the author of four novels, including the Lambda Literary Award winning romance When the Stars Come Out (2009) and Lammy mystery finalist Straight Lies (2009), as well as several short stories. His next novel — Holy Rollers — will be published in late 2011. He lives in West New York, NJ.

Join us, won’t you, and remember your own summer love!