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New Erotica Release: “so he won’t fly away” by Tris Lawrence

Happy December everyone! New month brings us a new theme! We’ve got at least three stories coming out in December based on the theme “The Holidays.” We encouraged authors to take a loose definition of what counts as “the holidays,” so expect a range from “literally actually about a December holiday” through “holidays of the author’s own invention” through “a holiday is mentioned but not prominent in the story.”

For our first “holiday” story, we’ve got a time stamp/after-story for Tris Lawrence’s novel Commit to the Kick, about Alaric and Chris and the events that occur during winter break between Christmas and New Years! Note that while this story is technically stand-alone, it’ll make a lot more sense if you’ve read Commit to the Kick!

Title: so he won’t fly away

Author: Tris Lawrence

Series: Welcome to Pine Hills University/Twinned

Genre: Modern with Magic

Rating: Erotica

Trigger Warnings: death of a sibling (implied), miscarriage (mentions of)

Relationships: dom/sub (subtext), established relationship, family, interspecies relationship, m/m, siblings

Character Features: animal transformation (bird), animal transformation (dog), animal transformation (dragon), animal transformation (other), anxiety, bipoc, non-human character

Tags: anal fingering, christmas, college setting, fraught family dynamics, hand job, manhandling, modern with magic, penis in anus sex, politics, pov third person limited, present tense

Blurb:

Alaric has been named heir for his Clan community, but that hasn’t fixed his relationship with his father or resolved the issues that come with having a very human partner in Chris. His first official political Conclave is complicated, his anxiety heightened under the weight of expectations. Maybe Chris can anchor him so he won’t fly away…

Length: 21 pages/7,862 words

Price: 1.99 US

Add some fascination to your Saturday – get your copy now!

Can’t get enough theme stories? Check out the four stories written for our November theme, “eerie fall”: “Widow’s Black” by Nina Waters, “Campfire Stories” by Nicole Kapron, “A Shield For the People” by Puck Malamud, and “The Offered Ones” by A. L. Heard. Or, look for other Duck Prints Press titles in our webstore!

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Want to support the Press and get lots of our stories? Consider backing our Patreon or ko-fi monthly at a level that includes free stories, and read your fill!

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Creator’s Spotlight: August, 2022

Welcome to our second monthly “round up” of fan creations and original creations by people involved with Duck Prints Press! This list is “opt in,” so you bet our creators made a lot of other things, but these are the ones they wanted to share with y’all this month!

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The Meaning of Home (Chapters 32-38) by Tris Lawrence (tryslora) / @tryslora

fiction || original work || poly (one gender: male) || teen & up || no major warnings apply || 26,324 || complete

summary: In the final chapters of The Meaning of Home, Pawel finds his place in this new family of his.

other tags: adult audiences, angst, animal transformation, bisexual character, cat shifter, character has ptsd, established relationship, family, fostering, found family, homosexual character, lawyer, missing persons, mlm, modern, modern with magic, mute character, mystery, New York, off screen death of a parent, only one bed, parenthood, past temporary character death, police officer, polyamorous relationship negotiation, polyamory, pov third person limited, professor, reunion, rodent shifter, siblings, single parent, taekwondo, United States of America, mentions of off-screen transphobia

TUMBLRPILLOWFORT

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love all to match point by Tris Lawrence (tryslora) / @tryslora

fiction || tiger & bunny || m/m || sengoku subaru/thomas taurus || teen & up || no major warnings apply || 10,108 || complete

summary: Subaru was scouted as a doubles player in badminton, and left his home and family to come play for this school. His partner has never played doubles, and is probably the most irritating, disagreeable guy Subaru’s ever met. They are never going to figure out how to make this partnership work, no matter how much Coach Kaburagi and Coach Brooks seem to think it’s going to be perfect.

other tags: Alternate Universe – High School, Alternate Universe – Sports, Background Relationships, Minor Barnaby “Bunny” Brooks Jr./Kaburagi T. Kotetsu, Minor Karina Lyle/Ryan Goldsmith, Other Relationships If You Look Hard Enough, badminton au

AO3

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Go forth and read some things!

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Creator’s Spotlight: July, 2022

Welcome to our newest monthly feature, a monthly “round up” of fan creations and original creations by people involved with Duck Prints Press! This list is “opt in,” so these three works were submitted to us by their two creators. We only opened the list for submissions a few days ago, so July our list is small, but we look forward to featuring a growing diversity of works by people who work with us in the months to come!


and the fierce reluctance of disastrous stars by nottesilhouette / @nottesilhouette

fiction || percy jackson & the olympians || no ships, platonic or familial || teen & up || major character death || 2,488 || ongoing series

summary: That voice, so full of hope and horror, is shouting now, banging and scratching and tearing itself raw against the bars of his compartmentalization. Something is wrong, and it wants Nico to know — to notice.

Nico doesn’t care. His bones have calcified this quiet numbness, and his body saps strength from the hellscape of Tartarus, and his heart glitters red like a pomegranate’s shell. He survives.

At this rate, the voice will not.

other tags: cw: implied PTSD, canon non-compliant, cw: depression

AO3


and mix his immortality with death by nottesilhouette / @nottesilhouette

fiction || percy jackson & the olympians || no ships, platonic or familial || teen & up || major character death || 639 || ongoing series

summary: Luke is a brother turned enemy to the people he called family, whom he raised and praised till the heavens came crashing down to crush his heart.

Iapetus is a titan turned ally to the people he called nemeses, whom he despised and demised till hell rose up and held its hand out to hold.

In Tartarus, any kind of kindred spirit is more alive than the death that swallows their hope whole.

other tags: cw: depression, cw: implied PTSD, cw: implied history of abuse

AO3


The Meaning of Home by Tris Lawrence (tryslora) / @tryslora

fiction || original work || poly (one gender: male) || teen & up || no major warnings apply || work in progress

summary: Chapters 28-31 of the serialized novel “The Meaning of Home.” In which Pawel manages to send his son’s mother off to disappear (again), and gets in far deeper with Leo and Colt than he expected. A story of magic, second chances, and avoiding looking at the relationships in front of you by investigating every possible mystery that presents itself. All while dealing with a lot of kids.

other tags: Magic, Shapeshifters, Polyamory Negotiations, Single Parent, Foster Kids, Mystery

TUMBLRPILLOWFORT


Go forth and read some things!

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Business Update

It occurs to me that I haven’t spoken much on our business Tumblr about certain things going on in the background of running this Press. Usually, on Sundays, we try to post an informational post about writing, a prompt list, or some other significant content, but that’s been noticeably absent the last few weeks, and here’s why.

Hi, I’m unforth/Claire/Nina Waters, any pronouns (I don’t care if people default to she/her, which most do), and I own this Press. I’m 39, enby, aroace, mother of two, and queer platonic married to ramblingandpie. And I’ve had problems with my back on and off for almost 15 years. In the last 4 years that’s very much been more “on” than “off,” and in the last year it’s been continually “on.” Over the summer, it lingered at a constant 2-or-so on a ten scale where 9 is “giving birth without painkillers,” which I have done. Twice. Over the early fall, it was bad enough that I started getting help lifting and moving things. In November, it went into precipitous decline, and I started to get alarmed.

Early December, my doctor said “give it six weeks, see if it goes away on it’s own.” Spoilers, it didn’t. I saw a specialist, finally, on December 30th, and they immediately sent me for an MRI (I’d been trying to get my PCP to send me for an MRI for 4 goddamn years). A week and a half ago I saw the specialist again, and we reviewed the MRI results, and basically, one of my discs is bulging and pinching my spinal cord (less basically, the disc between my L4 and L5 vertebrae is herniated and causing spinal stenosis and radiating sciatic pain down my right leg). At this point, even on massive amounts of painkillers and anti-inflammatory meds, I can’t drive and can hardly walk right now – I get about 5 minutes on my feet before the pain is too excruciating and I have to sit and rest for 5 to 10 minutes before I can do more – and I also can’t sit at my desktop computer at all. And, the meds make me tired and dizzy. The specialist said I should see a surgeon, and while she hedged her bets and suggested there was a chance I wouldn’t surgery, she also considered the case urgent enough that she tried to flag the surgeon down in the hallway and have him see me immediately, and spent the rest of the appointment discussing surgery like it was a foregone conclusion. But I couldn’t make an appointment with the surgeon, because his secretary was out with Covid…and by the time she got back on Monday, the surgeon had also caught Covid, and is out for two weeks, as is another of the 4 total surgeons that the Spine Clinic at the local hospital employs.

I’m seeing one of the ones who DOESN’T have Covid on Wednesday, and again, while there’s a chance I don’t need major back surgery, it’s a very small chance. Based on our research and knowledge and what the pain specialist said (my wife has medical expertise too), we think the only real question on Wednesday will be how soon they’re able to schedule it, considering how bad Omicron is spreading here. The MRI indicates that right now I’m literally continually, potentially, a moment a way from catastrophic nerve damage. Like, if something twinges wrong, I could end up incontinent for the rest of my life, or with permanent leg weakness, or even theoretically paralysis, and I have a list of circumstances under which I’m supposed to go to the ER immediately and have the surgery with the on-call surgeon (who will be one of those same two who don’t have Covid, I feel bad for them they must be SO overworked right now, what a mess). It’d be a huge surprise if I don’t have surgery within the next week or two – we’ve been planning as if it’s a foregone conclusion, and I have a go-bag ready for the ER, because it really is that serious – and once I do, recovery is about 6 weeks of bed rest, followed by months of PT and the slower healing that just takes time.

All that said, post-op success rates on this surgery (I believe it’s a laminectomy?) are very high – if I follow all the medical instructions, I should heal back to 100%, unless I’ve already got nerve damage (which is unfortunately possible but. What can ya do?). Even then, surgery should heal the pain, and I’ll just have leg weakness.

All of which is to say…since early November I’ve been dealing with some pretty damn major health problems. Especially challenging has been my inability to sit at my computer, because that’s where I do most of my writing and all of my graphic work and editing.

I know I’m over-sharing personal things here, and I’m sorry about that – I’ve tried to hold off on sharing it at all, this has been going on for almost 10 weeks, but I think we’ve reached the point where the health issues are major enough, and the impact it has on the business is visible enough, that it’s better for me to simply disclose. I’m not looking for pity; I’m trying to make clear why the business is behind on certain things we’d said are imminent.

Our goal is to have this impact the business as little as possible, but since I’m our only full time employee, and our primary coordinator for major projects, there’s simply a lot we can’t do when my work time is greatly reduced by health issues. The good news is, once it became clear how serious this was, I used basically the business’s entire rainy day fund to buy a nice laptop, so I’m now able to work from the couch (which is about the only place I can sit comfortably). That’s how I’m typing this update – the laptop arrived on Wednesday and I’ve spent the days since getting it set up to do all the things I usually do from desktop, which means I can move forward on some of the things we had to delay.

Specific implications of all the above, as applied to our current projects:

1. The And Seek (Not) to Alter Me Kickstarter is temporarily delayed. We’ll make an announcement (and finally do the cover reveal!!) once we can plan a specific timeline for launch – hopefully, we’ll know that in about a week, after I’ve spoken to the surgeon. In terms of our actual preparedness for launch…I’m behind on my share of the editing, but all the stories have had at least one editing run, and about half are ready for immediate publication. The art is also all ready. We have all the merchandise art ready, and some are in the printing templates. The Kickstarter copy is complete written and edited and has been approved by KS (like, from that standpoint, we could literally launch right now), but only 4 out of the 6 graphics we need are completed; I’m hoping to finish the rest imminently, so that as soon as my health allows and I know I’ll be recovered enough to manage the KS fulfillment (which involves a LOT of box lifting, which is impossible for me right now) we can hit the “launch” button.

2. There are no delays in review of applications for He Bears the Cape of Stars and She Wears the Midnight Crown. We’ve already finished reviewing the applications from “returner” applicants (people who have written with us before on one of our two anthologies or have done a Patreon story with us) and have a preliminary list of accepted authors (no one will be notified until we’re done reviewing all applications). Our team doing the review (myself, A. L. Heard/jhoom, Alessa, P. J. Claremore/Foop, K. B. Vimes, and Lacey Hays/Owlish) are about halfway done with the mlm applications and a quarter through the wlw – I personally am a reader for every applications and I’m finished with the mlm and will be starting the wlw ones today. All of which is to say, we’re making good progress and do not anticipate a delay – we still expect to notify all applicants of their acceptances or rejections by January 31st.

3. The two novels I’m supposed to edit – one by A. L. Heard, the other by Tris Lawrence – I’ve been unable to make progress on, so these are currently delayed, and the authors are in the loop and know.

4. We’re a little behind on Patreon backer rewards, specifically the Patron-exclusive stories. However, we’re working on catching up, and we anticipate that (hopefully) by the end of February, we’ll have published all the backlog and caught up. Other Patreon rewards have not been impacted.

5. There’s a few other things that were in the works when this all started but that we hadn’t publicly announced yet…those are, as would expect, on hold. (As a teaser for anyone dedicated enough to have read this far…this includes our first erotica title and an erotica imprint to go with it, with it’s own logo and sub-website on our main page, and our plans for our fifth anthology, and a call for manuscript submissions, and more!)

As we see it…these are uncertain times for everyone even without “extra” things happen, and something like this health issue couldn’t have been predicted. However, nothing has changed in terms of our commitment to Duck Prints Press and all we set out to do. We truly appreciate your patience and understanding as we, and I especially, get through this. We’re striving to catch up and get back to “normal,” and we can’t wait to share with you all the amazing things that we’ve been working on. And Seek (Not) to Alter Me is a.may.zing, y’all, and the submissions pitches for the two new anthologies are blowing our socks off. Seriously, we’re so excited.

Stay tuned – there’s so, so, SO much more to come!

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Hermit Prints on Preparing “Commit to the Kick” for Print Publication

Hermit Prints, who does typesetting commissions and who is working with Duck Prints Press on our planned print projects, has shared a fascinating post about what was involved in preparing for the print run of Commit to the Kick by Tris Lawrence.

Commit to the Kick Front Cover
Commit to the Kick Front Cover

You can read all about it here!

or you can

Get Your Own Copy of the Commit to the Kick e-book now!

(sadly, no print copies are available at this time – but we’re planning to Kickstart the sequel early next year, and print copies of the first book will also be available at that time, so keep your eyes peeled, and make sure to follow us here or on social media to be sure you hear the latest!)