About the editors:

SEAN MERIWETHER, co-editor of this volume, is also a writer of gritty short fiction. His work has been defined as dark realism. His fiction has been published in Lodestar Quarterly, Out of Control: Erotic Wild Rides and Quickies 3. In addition to writing, he has the pleasure of editing two online magazines, Outsider Ink and Velvet Mafia: Dangerous Queer Fiction. Sean lives in New York with his partner, photographer Jack Slomovits, and their two dogs. If you are interested in reading his work, stalk him online.

GREG WHARTON is the author of Johnny Was & Other Tall Tales. He is the publisher of Suspect Thoughts Press, and an editor for two web magazines, suspect thoughts: a journal of subversive writing and Velvet Mafia. He is also the editor of numerous other anthologies including The Best of the Best Meat Erotica, The Big Book of Erotic Ghost Stories, He-Devil (with Sean Meriwether), I Do/I Don't (with Ian Philips), Law of Desire (with Ian Philips), The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Love Under Foot (with M. Christian), Of the Flesh, and Out of Control. He lives in San Francisco with his brilliant Lammy Award-winning husband Ian, a cat named Chloe, and a lot of books.

About the contributors:

PATRICK ALLEN: Though I currently live in Southern Ontario, in Canada, I spent a very instructive eight years in Los Angeles where I first read and began writing gay erotica. As a lover of mysteries it seemed a natural to try to write a mystery with an erotic slant. Why not? Sleuths like to fuck too, right? The result is the "Ruben's Gamble." I enjoy living in Canada, but have to admit I miss L.A. The place had the ability to inspire a lot of passion, both on and off the page. I am currently working on a non-erotic mystery novel with a pair of gay protagonists.

DAVID-MATTHEW BARNES is the writer and director of the film "Frozen Stars", the author of the popular novel "Ambrosia", three collections of poetry, a selection of short stories and twenty-eight stage plays. David-Matthew and his partner, award-winning producer Nick Anthony Moreno, live just outside of Atlanta where they own a home together. For more information, visit his official website at www.davidmatthewbarnes.com.

STEVE BERMAN thinks that sex is like a good mystery: things suddenly come to a head while undercover. When not thinking up awful puns to include in biographies he is hard at work writing queer speculative fiction stories. His work has been published in Best Gay Erotica 2005 and Best Gay Love Stories 2005 as well in the virtual pages of Strange Horizons, Suspect Thoughts, and Velvet Mafia. His website is steveberman.com.

PATRICK CALIFIA is the author of Hard Men, short stories about gay leathersex, and Mortal Companion, a vampire novel. He lives and works and plays in San Francisco. Well, mostly works. If you'd like to change that, drop him some e-mail at patrickcalifia@aol.com and tell him what your game is.

M. CHRISTIAN is the author of the critically acclaimed and best selling collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine and (upcoming from STARbooks) Filthy. He is the editor of The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, the Best S/M Erotica series, The Mammoth Book of Future Cops and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowski) and over 14 other anthologies. His short fiction has appeared in over 150 books including The Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Transgendered Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, Best Bondage Erotica and...well, you get the idea. He lives in San Francisco and is only some of what that implies.

VINCENT DIAMOND is a writer living near Tampa, Florida whose first novel about a tiger is completed and being marketed to publishers. Work on its sequel is underway in addition to more short stories. Some of Diamond's other erotica pieces have appeared in Alyson Publication's Best Gay Love Stories 2005, and Chance Encounters from Torquere Press. Time away from the keyboard is spent riding horses, admiring big cats, and gardening.

FIONA GLASS lives in a rambling 1890s house in Birmingham (UK) with her husband and a visiting cat called Squeak. She writes short stories (and struggles with the occasional novel) and has just had her first collection of short stories accepted for publication by Torquere Press (www.torquerepress.com). In her spare time she edits the online gay fiction magazine Forbidden Fruit (www.forbiddenfruitzine.com).

TREBOR HEALEY (www.treborhealey.com) is the author of the 2004 Ferro-Grumley award-winning novel, Through It Came Bright Colors (Haworth, 2003). His short fiction has appeared in dozens of anthologies, including M2M, Quickies 3, Best Gay Erotica 2003 and 2004, and Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache, as well as the online journals Lodestar Quarterly, Blithe House Quarterly, Ashe and Velvet Mafia. Trebor lives in Los Angeles where he is working on his second novel.

T. HITMAN is the nom-de-porn of a full-time professional writer who works for a number of national magazines and has several books under his belt, as well as episodes of a popular Paramount TV series. He lives a very happy life with his man of mystery, Bruce, and their two cats in a very safe house somewhere, courtesy of the Witness Protection Program.

CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN is the author of six novels, including Silk, Threshold, Low Red Moon, and Murder of Angels. Her short fiction has been collected in Tales Of Pain And Wonder, From Weird And Distant Shores, and the forthcoming To Charles Fort, With Love. She is a three-time recipient of the International Horror Guild Award, and has also received the Barnes and Noble Maiden Voyage Award. Born in Ireland, she now lives in Atlanta with her partner, Kathryn Pollnac, and her cat, Sophie.

JEFF MANN's work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including Rebel Yell, Rebel Yell 2, Kink, Best S/M Erotica 2, and Best Gay Erotica 2004. He has published a collection of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine (Gival Press); a collection of essays, Edge (Harrington Park Press); and a novella, "Devoured", in the anthology Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire (Kensington Books). He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

MAX REYNOLDS is the pseudonym of an award-winning East Coast journalist who deeply enjoys questing for social justice by writing class-conscious porn. Max divides his time between writing for various national straight and queer publications, teaching writing at a major East Coast university and writing and filming porn. Max's erotic vampire novel Touches of Evil will be published in 2005 by Haworth Press. His stories have appeared in anthologies from Alyson, Haworth, Star Books and Suspect Thoughts Press. He is currently working on a collection of noir porn tales.

THOMAS S. ROCHE's more than 65 published short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Best Gay Erotica 1996, Grave Passions, The Best American Erotica 1996, 1997, and 1999, and The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction, among others. He is a columnist for www.Gothic.Net and for the heavy metal magazine Juggernaut. He has edited or co-edited six anthologies, including three volumes in the Noirotica series of erotic crime anthologies.

SIMON SHEPPARD is the author of In Deep and Other Stories and Kinkorama: Dispatches From the Front Lines of Perversion. His next book, Sex Parties 101, is due in early 2005. He's the coeditor of Rough Stuff and Roughed Up, and his work appears in over 100 anthologies, including The Best American Erotica 2005 and Best Gay Erotica 2005. He's also the author of the columns "Sex Talk" and "Perv," and loiters shamelessly at www.simonsheppard.com.

MICHAEL STAMP's earliest influences were the writings of Gordon Merrick and John Preston, so it's not surprising that the NJ-based author's own erotica, including the S/M tales, has a decidedly romantic bent. Stamp's stories can be found in the anthologies The Best American Erotica 2002, Best Gay Erotica 2001 and 2002, Best S/M Erotica, Friction 6, Casting Couch Confessions, Sex Toy Tales, and Strange Bedfellows, the e-book Y2Kinky, and magazines like Inches and In Touch.

MARK WILDYR Born and raised an Okie, Wildyr now lives in New Mexico, the setting of much of his fiction which explores sexual discovery and intercultural relationships. Over thirty pg jod stories and novellas have appeared in works by Companion Press, Alyson Publications, Arsenal Pulp Press, Haworth, and STARbooks Press. Two of his novels finished among the top twenty-five in Project: QueerLit's recent First Novel Contest.