meet cute book club

Meet Cute will be meeting on Tuesday, January 14th, at 7 pm. We will be reading Someplace Generous: An Inclusive Romance Anthology edited by Elaina Ellis and Amber Flame.

About the book:

Featuring stories by award-winning poets like Richard Siken, Rachel McKibbens, and Brionne Janae; acclaimed fiction writers like Temim Fruchter, Corinne Manning, and Max Delsohn; and popular thinkers like Jessica P. Pryde, Someplace Generous presents voices largely new to the genre of romance, each bringing a fresh take on what it means to tell a love story.

This first book from Generous Press, a new imprint committed to changing the face of romance genre-fiction, is a collection of twenty-two never-before-published stories about joy, passion, and generous consent.

In these pages, desire is centered and explored through queer, trans, Black, AAPI, Latinx, Jewish, disabled, and neurodivergent lenses, and the ages of authors and characters span generations.

The brilliant authors herein have spun lush, poetic tales featuring characters and perspectives historically excluded from romance narratives. Through a variety of styles, lengths, and subgenres—ranging from flash-fiction to short stories, speculative to satire to romcom—there is something here for every kind of reader.

Two Modern Orthodox Jewish women cross a magical threshold on the holiday of Shavuot. A Chinese American grandmother in a nursing home plays matchmaker, just in time for the Lunar New Year. A nonbinary sexworker with psychic abilities helps an older woman connect with her long-lost lover. Two disabled young adults find new levels of intimacy as they work to overcome shame. An enslaved couple jumps the broom and can see the future, which is freedom.

The lovers in Someplace Generous—whether they are sapphic vampires or undercover super-heroes, teenagers, or middle-aged mamas—choose each other, and along the way, they choose themselves, too.

Featuring twenty-two stories by twenty-two authors, Someplace Generous presents voices largely new to the genre of romance-fiction, each bringing a fresh take on what it means to tell a love story.

Meet Cute will be meeting on Tuesday February 11th at 7 pm; we will be reading Ruby and the V-Day Vanpires by Vera Valentine and J. L. Logosz.

About the book:

From the critically-acclaimed authors of Back for Seconds: A Reverse Harem Feast and Regifted: Ganged by the Ghosts of Christmas comes a brand new reverse harem tale of holiday hedonism, and this time, love (and lust) are on the line. They’re magical monster-hunting vampires living in a van, she’s a fed-up middle-aged divorcee attempting to geocache her Valentine’s Day into oblivion. Perfect. Now the question is: can Quintain, Fletcher, and Marcus convince Ruby that the best way to resurrect her love life is with a few guys that are also back from the dead?

Ruby and the V-Day Vanpires is a stimulating short story about the importance of cleaning up public parks, practicing safe archery, and that age—and getting absolutely RAILED in the back of a van by three bi vampires—is only a state of mind.

This tale is written for adults, and intended for 18+ audiences only. It involves explicit group activity, unprotected “interactions” with said undead suitors and their—ahem—nocturnal emissions, slight kidnapping, the ol’ fangy kiss to access liquid vampire chow, being impaled (the fun way, with 2 peens in 1 V), being impaled (the NOT fun way—like, with an arrow), sex pollen/poison (aka have to do the deed to survive), as well as brief mentions of Homeowners' Associations (HOAs), and geocaching.