Sexy shifters and cybernetic love triangles
I am really excited that my story “Dwayne’s Baby Daddy” has been accepted into the Anthology Blerd 2: Couple’s Therapy. It is the story of a love triangle involving three African-American werewolves.
Mariah is in an open marriage with Jamal, even though she herself has no interest in having another partner. Jamal has a relationship with Dwayne, which predates his marriage to Mariah. The three have been making things work for the last three years by keeping some separation in their lives. Mariah knows about Dwayne, but has never met him.
Jamal and Mariah have been trying to conceive, to no avail. Things become complicated when Dwayne, a transman who was not even trying, becomes pregnant. That’s why Jamal and Mariah are in couples therapy.
I would like to personally thank Penelope Flynn , Valjeanne Jeffers, Quinton Veal , Nicole Smith and Cinsearae Santiago-Reiniger for helping me to embrace writing paranormal romance and erotica. Some of my queerest writing is in the Paranormal Romance genre. I am really grateful that they have been so encouraging about me writing queer characters in the genre. These are all black editors and publishers, and you should support them.
Now, what I’m saying is that I have paranormal romances in all of these people’s anthologies. Although, “Asi’s Horror and Delight” in Slay: Tales of the Vampire Noir leans more towards the horror genre, and could be called a horror romance. As you probably know by now, mocha Memoirs publishing is also putting out my paranormal romance Happiness and Other Diseases. “Asi’s Horror and Delight” is a story about a witch who tries to swindle a god by having her vampire companion (a kind of vampiric werebird) to seduce him.
The We-Ness Trilogy, a three-story arc that appears in Valjeanne and Quinton’s Scierogenous 2, involves a love triangle between a sentient cybernetic implant, his host, and her fuckboi friends with benefits. I am very proud of the character development and the world-building in that story.
“Sweetness” is a short story in Cinesearse’s anthology, Beasts and Babes. It’s the disturbing tale of a werepig, set in a post-apocalyptic world where werepigs, when not in human form, can be legally hunted for food. In the story, he tries to seduce his captor, a seasoned hunter, and convinced her that he would be better as a companion than sold to the slaughterhouse. It’s pretty twisted.
“Dwayne’s Baby Daddy,” the story that just got accepted into Penelope’s Blerdrotica 2: Couples Therapy, is actually a relatively wholesome tale. Well, wholesome if you feel like polyamory is valid. It stays firmly in the paranormal romance genre, in fact, I would say that it is romance leaning, and it doesn’t get dark, but keeps it sweet and sexy. Like the We-Ness Trilogy, it is classified as erotica because it has a healthy number of sex scenes in it.
Sumiko Saulson 