Following the smash-hit The Secret Loves of Geek Girls comes this brand new anthology featuring comic and prose stories from cartoonists and professional geeks about their most intimate, heartbreaking, and inspiring tales of love, sex and, dating. Including creators of all genders, orientations, and cultural backgrounds.

Title:
Trolling for Lesbos

Blurb:
Sometimes internalized homophobia and misogyny makes those who are scared of who they are, lash out and troll the very people who they want to find community with. A queer, brown, young girl, trying to figure herself out takes out her frustration, her fears, everything that shakes her insides up on web chat with other queer women, trolling them. But one day, someone actually messages her, talks to her and that, that, eases the fear, makes her own up to her cruelty and move closer to accepting who she is.

Excerpt:

Do you want to talk?

I didn’t reply. I sat there and read that sentence like a million times. I got up and snuck a bowl of Captain Crunch  into the computer room and read it again.

I’m 15 and I think I’m gay and I hate everything.

We messaged until my parents sent me to bed and then late into the night after I snuck out of bed once I heard my parents snoring and signed back online. She was only a few years older than me and was living on the West Coast. She told me about how she came out and what her first girlfriends were like. She also listened. For hours. I told her about my Angelina/Salma thing and how I had the most ginormous crush on my substitute biology teacher but not on any of my friends.

And soon, we traded chats for late night phone calls, and then I wasn’t crying anymore while I prayed. I’d hang up with her and lay in my bed, feeling like maybe God was ok with all of this. God gave me this body and all the feelings in it, even the freaky sexy ones, and maybe it was all going to be just fine and I wouldn’t be damned and I’d be ok. Just like she was.

Link to buy:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

Blurb about the Book: “Sound Bites collects vivid, provocative writing about an extraordinarily wide array of popular music. Selections include artist profiles, concert reviews, in-depth analyses of songs, fiction, poetry, and inquiries into the scientific basis of listening. Subjects range from Elvis to Selena, the Beatles to Michael Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald to Jimi Hendrix, and Black Flag to Black Star. Sound Bites authors take up the culture of electronic dance music, the power of musical performance in prison, Millie Jackson’s country roots, and the question of whether Celine Dion’s music is in “good taste.” Whatever your listening preferences, Sound Bites will spur fresh thinking about the power of music to move, enlighten, and challenge us.”

Title:
Salsa y La Naturaleza: How a Willie Colón Song Taught Me About Queerness and Love

Blurb:
Through a song about a man who died of AIDS and the family that left him, a daughter and her father find a language to accept each other, to care for each other the best ways they can, and to be there for each other. From questioning whether or not her father truly loves her to seeing him stand by her when she comes out, this song proved to be an open door for the acceptance and love that was always there.

Excerpt:
No se puede corregir a la naturaleza / you can’t change one’s nature
Simón tú hijo, El Gran Varón / Simón, your son, the Great Man

It’s 1989 and Willie Colón releases “El Gran Varon.” I’m seven years
old. Sitting in the back seat of our white minivan. Small enough to
feel vulnerable to the rapture. Small enough to understand some
words in Spanish. Aware enough to know that there is a difference
between English and Spanish.

Dad only listens to Christian music or Salsa. His favorite is Salsa.
Always too fast, always too many sharp notes on the trumpet.
It didn’t sound like the television to me. But this song, “El Gran
Varon,” pressed stillness into my Pentecostal child- anxiety.

Dad told Grandma he loved me.

Dad told me that if I kept crying, he’d give me something to
cry about.

He’s doing the best he can.

Link to buy:  

• Amazon

• Great Books Store

Blurb: An anthology featuring contributions from writers and artists from the comic book industry like Gail Simone, Greg Pak, Reginald Hudlin, Denys Cowan, Tony Daniel, Ken Lashley, Bill Sienkiewicz, Yanick Paquette, Gabby Rivera, Will Rosado, Jorge Jimenez, Mike Allred, Chris Sotomayor, to Puerto Rican and Latinx celebrities like Rosario Dawson, Ruben Blades, Javier Munoz, Sonia Manzano and over 100 more.

Produced and featuring stories written by Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, this anthology teams up his original character LA BORINQUENA with some of the most iconic comic book heroes of all time from DC: Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, Aquaman, The Flash and many others. Original stories also take us to the past to explore the beautiful history of PUERTO RICO as well as tales that envision a stronger and rebuilt island.

100% of the proceeds from this anthology will go to the continued work to help over 3 million Americans living in Puerto Rico, providing solar-powered lamps, food, clothing and so much more.

These short stories remind us all that the true power of being a hero is inside each of us. When we come together as a united people, we will never be defeated!

Link To Buy:

• Amazon

• Target

Blurb: At once a love letter to the Rose City and a dream of escape, the first-person narratives of Portland Queer reveal the contradictions and commonalities of life in one of the world’s great queer meccas. A waiter falls in love with a straight guy from the café next door. A young dyke discovers gay karaoke at the Silverado. A pregnant man prepares for new life transitions. An ambitious teenager finds her tribe at St. Mary’s Academy. A closet-case is confronted by his wife. And a video-game addict takes a chance on love.

Title:
Juliet Takes a Breath

Blurb:
Juliet Takes a Breath, Gabby’s debut novel, originated from the short story submitted to this anthology. If you enjoyed the snippet in Portland Queer or just want to dive into Juliet’s story, check out Juliet Takes a Breath.

Link to Buy:

• Amazon

Blurb for book: Planned Parenthood, and the millions of people they help each year, need every bit of help they can get. Mine! is a comics anthology with the proceeds going to Planned Parenthood. With stories about trailblazing women, civil rights leaders, a person’s first time going to a PP clinic, debunking myths about sex, STI screenings, HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, fantastical stories with superheroes, Greek mythology, and a future both with and without Planned Parenthood.

Title:
Stained Glass Sex Talks

Blurb:
Getting the education around sex can be one of the most difficult things to actually have access to, especially when you are a young woman questioning her sexuality. Stained Glass Sex Talks partnered with images, details three moments where those with the power to educate fail to actually talk about sex and intimacy all while imbuing sex, especially queer sex, and bodies with an unnatural sense of shame and guilt.

Excerpt:
The internet was supposed to have all the answers. It was the information superhighway for fuck’s sake! But like, that internet, the one from the 90s, it wasn’t ready for me. I wanted to know if I could get herpes from having a clitoris on my tongue. Or from sitting in a hot tub with lesbians. Also, was there anywhere in the Bronx to meet other maybe-lesbians or would I have to sneak down into the city? Could the internet tell me where my g-spot was?

Link To Buy:

• Amazon

Blurb: Gabby Rivera (America) and Gaby Epstein (Shadows) combine on a story about Ripley missing watching telenovelas with her Abuela, so to help her feel better, the other Roanokes help her act out the series finale she missed.

Title:
Las Estrellas Del Campo

Link To Buy:

• Boom Studios!

Blurb: All hail the day of the burst. The day in which, Caguay, the spawn of two of the most powerful beings, the heir to to the celestial throne, was born. Caguay emerged from their cocoon, a beautiful blend of genders, a majestic creation, and was betrayed by their people who had succumbed to their fear of the unknown, of what they couldn’t understand. Devastation, chaos, led by their own father, was unleashed, as the Tainex@s tried to end Caguay’s existence. Their mother, ever powerful, ever loving, swooped in and saved them, allowing them to be born again in their mother’s homeland. Here Caguay, with all their non-conforming majesty, survived and lived, free of the prejudice of the  Tainex@s.

Excerpt:
The greatest Tainexa ever to be conceived, born of the most powerful couple, born of the very first Tainexas to exist: Freca and Diaján.

In dreams, Caguay was everything. As a Tainex@ warrior being, Caguay’s physical properties were great. Imagine a gargoyle. Imagine a shinigami. Merge the horrific and the supreme. Take sculpted marble, turn it into shoulders. Add nylon and metal, mold them into wings. Rip off human fingernails, replace with ivory talons…Caguay was the magnificence of possibility, a deviation in conformity, the splendid and sublime manifestation of all that has always been.

Title:
Survival of Caguay

Link to Buy:

• Mag Cloud