Small Press Spotlight: Blind Eye Books

Shelving books gives you a great opportunity to see what publisher's mark is on the spine.  I've been noticing more and more books by smaller presses lately so I'll try to spotlight a few of them in the next few months.

Here's an introduction to Blind Eye Books.

Blind Eye Books is an independent press dedicated to publishing science-fiction and fantasy stories with gay and lesbian protagonists.

Our books span a wide variety of styles, settings and themes, but they are always exciting and positive. They are heart-pounding and heart-warming, sensual and sensational. In short, they are stories that we love and are proud to present to the world.

Some of the titles they've published are:

Smoketown by Tenea Johnson

The city of Leiodare is unlike any other in the post-climate change United States. Within its boundaries, birds are outlawed and what was once a crater in Appalachia is now a tropical, glittering metropolis where Anna Armour is waiting. An artist by passion and a factory worker by trade, Anna is a woman of special gifts. She has chosen this beautiful, traumatized city to wait for the woman she’s lost, the one she believes can save her from her troubled past and uncertain future.

When one night Anna creates life out of thin air and desperation, no one is prepared for what comes next – not Lucine, a smooth talking soothsayer with plans for the city; Lucine’s brother Eugenio who has designs of his own; Seife, a star performer in the Leiodaran cosmos; or Rory, a forefather of the city who’s lived through outbreak, heatbreak, and scandal. Told through their interlocking stories, Smoketown delves into the invisible connections that rival magic, and the copst of redemption.

Irregulars by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Astrid Amara, and Ginn Hale

NATO’s Irregulars Affairs Division is a secret organization operating in thousands of cities around the globe. Its agents police relations between the earthly realm and those beyond this world, protecting us from terrible dangers as well as enthralling temptations.

These agents—Irregulars, as they are known to the few who know them at all—are drawn to the work for their own reasons and close cases in their own unique ways.

Agent Henry Falk–an undead tramp brought back for a mission that might finally put him into a grave he can’t climb back out of.

Agent Keith Curry–a former carnivore chef turned vegetarian currently dealing with a goblin problem.

Agent Rake–a tough and ambitious guy with a penchant for easy living and dangerous games.

Agent Silas August–an uncompromising jerk with a dead partner and an assignment babysitting an assassin.

Four adventures from four award-winning authors, all set in one amazing world. Is your security clearance high enough to read on?

Strange Fortune by Josh Lanyon

Valentine Strange, late of his Majesty’s 21st Benhali Lancers, needs money. Happily, the wealthy Holy Orders of Harappu are desperate to retrieve the diadem of the Goddess Purya from an ancient temple deep in the mountainous jungle—an area Strange knows well from his days quelling rebellions. The pay is too good and the job seems too easy for Strange to refuse. But when Master Aleister Grimshaw, a dangerous witch from a traitorous lineage, joins the expedition, Strange begins to suspect that more is at stake than the retrieval of a mere relic.

Grimshaw knows an ancient evil surrounds the diadem— the same evil once hunted him and still haunts his mind. However, experience has taught him to keep his suspicions to himself or risk being denounced as a madman. Again.

Harried by curses, bandits and unnatural creatures, Strange and Grimshaw plunge onward. But when a demonic power wakes and the civilized world descends into revolution, their tenuous friendship is threatened as each man must face the destruction of the life he has known.