the league of reluctant adults

In my ongoing effort to save you from studio horror movies cobbled together from the compressed shit of Hollywood burnouts, I bring you alternatives to OUIJA! #insteadofouija OUIJA has hit DVD/VOD and there's nothing we can do about that but don our gas masks, hunker down and pray for dawn. A horrifying prospect, but at least we can be entertained while waiting for the fallout to subside. Here's a few fantastic 2014 horror movie releases to make you feel like the world is still worth living... OCULUS seems to be a secret to this day. Despite some great buzz and a truly inventive style of storytelling, bouncing back and forth in time so fast the audience is left in a constant state of unease. The story wraps itself around a rapidly deteriorating family relationship brought to the brink of insanity by the presence of a haunted mirror. And that's where things get weird. The acting is pretty above average and the horror set pieces are jarring. OCULUS wasn't my fav...

I'm still in celebration mode over the release of BEACH BLANKET BLOODBATH, so I'll be at Bitten by Books today, chatting like a crazy person. Head on over there! Unless you hate FREE STUFF. There'll be videos, readings and a chance to win gift cards and a copy of PARTS and WRECK ! Click here to get in on the fun! Entry -Form

February? Already! Seems like just yesterday it was January. It's the month of love in all its forms. Romantic. Steamy. Tawdy (a favorite here at the League). The drama of courtship, and even better, wasted courtship, what with the broken promises, the lies, the treachery, the cheatin' which leads to the heartache of Scorned Lovers. Which we in Denver celebrate with a Scorned Lovers Art Show , this year's theme: Battered Hearts, Raunchy Mischief, Sweet Revenge . Last year, the Art Salon hosted the King of Filth , our own Mark Henry , for a scandalous erotic reading from Patience, by Lisa Valdez . Don't the frilly girly cover fool you. This is weapons-grade smut. We loved it! This year, we've got more shenanigans planned. Another erotic reading. A Romantic shooting gallery. Vintage peepshow. Breakup letters read by My Teenage Angst. Take out your sexual frustrations on the Scorned Lovers pi ñ ata. If you're in the Denver area, check us out. Feb 11 at the Art S...

So, it's been a while since we've heard from our good friend Amanda Feral, but that's changing in 2012. It seems that some opportunities might have presented themselves, both on the erotica front penned by the wicked zombie, herself, and stories featuring Amanda, Wendy and Gil. There's nothing set in stone, but the stage is set for some horribly irreverent mayhem. Until then, why don't you check out Amanda's first erotic effort, the suitably Christmas-y, STOCKING FULL OF COAL? It's funny, naughty as f**k, and above all, weird ( check out what Nicole Peeler had to say about the story, here ). Synopsis: Justine Crenshaw is accident-prone. On purpose. It’s the bruises…she can’t live without them, without the pleasure and pain that closely bind her sexuality to her secret obsession. She chooses men who accept her fetish, who seek it out for their own dark designs, even if they don’t understand it. She accepts that. Justine doesn’t need them for anything but a li...

First of all, congratulations to Leaguer Jeanne Stein for the release of the Anna Strong #7 book, Crossroads . I've known Jeanne for years a long time, and I've seen her persevere in the frustrating and tortuous path to get published. She came close to giving up, and even when she strapped herself back to the yoke, it still took a while before anything positive happened. Jeanne exemplified the supreme toughness it takes to make it was a writer. If you're a young American male, the standard for toughness is a Navy SEAL. But if you think it's tough to be a SEAL, then try being a published writer, specifically a novelist. It's hard to compare success rates, since the weeding-out process for SEALs and writers starts early. So I'm guessing for SEALs, maybe 10% of the wannabes actually get to wear the coveted Trident insignia. 10%! That's gravy compared to being a novelist. Literary agents get hundreds of queries a week. Maybe they respond...

Dr. Nicole Peeler stormed into Seattle last week for a wedding and touristing and so we checked out some local color and ate way too much AND treated a well attended Ravenna Third Place Books crowd to mucho dirtiness (yes, there may have been a public erotic reading). Sunday I took the Doctor on a tour of infamous Tacoma landmarks including the Bull's Eye gun shop home of the weaponry used in the DC Sniper attacks, our lovely Hilltop area and Bob's Java Jive, a huge coffee pot which is actually a bar. We used to hang out there on Friday nights to watch the owner's "presumably autistic" son play piano. Or maybe I'm just remembering it all through Pabst Blue Ribbon brain. On Tuesday, we did Marination Mobile, which is the most amazing food truck in the country (Hawaiian/Korean/Mexican fusion). Spam sliders and spicy pork tacos were consumed with finger sucking abandon. Then it was off for some knuckle riding! On the Fremont Troll! That's Nicole's friend ...

Okay. So I'd pay money to see this... Hmm? Hmm? Seriously?

I’ve heard loads of people talking about the recent upsurge in the popularity of urban fantasy, especially UF based on vampires. Obviously, series such as Twilight have had a huge impact on the perception that fantasy, especially urban fantasy, and especially urban fantasy with vampires, is on the rise. From a quick search of the internet (and I mean very quick), I haven’t been able to find statistical proof for this assertion. However, at a cultural studies conference I just attended, the sheer number of panels on both Buffy and Twilight attests to the fact that the people who consider themselves experts on American culture assume that vampires are Big Business, not just in terms of best seller lists and box office numbers, but also in terms of cultural capital. Our culture, these multitudinous panels imply, is invested in images of the vampire and of the supernatural, in general. I’ve also heard a lot of reasons for this upsurge in interest. One I hear quite often is that, in...

It's the 2nd of January. Already. The holidays have come, gone and left their droppings all over the League clubhouse. There's cleaning to do, grocery shopping, exercise, a trip to the post office. Plus we've got the new book club set to go (HEART OF STONE, pick it up and read, bitches). It's all too much. Aaaaaaah! Writing is my day job and it's still hard to find the time. So how do you juggle all of life's demands and still put together a story worth reading? No...seriously...how? I could tell you that it's all about the time management, prioritizing, lists, PROSEC (or Prozac, for that matter). But really, it's boils down to focus and enjoying the process. You know those moments where you get into your own story, laughing along with the characters or at them, feeling the tension as a particularly suspensful scene unfolds? Those are moments to remember, to celebrate. They sustain us. They are our runner's high. So--I know--that doesn't...