Yaoi's target audience, readership, and creators are almost exclusively women; the genre focuses on effeminate, pretty men — often so androgynous as to seem genderless. Here in the West, non-illustrated yaoi stories are getting very popular, to date exclusively among online readers. This all-original collection of six yaoi novellas written by Western women will be the first in the print marketplace here in the U.S.; only hentai (illustrated books) are currently available. The contributors include: Nix Winter — a rising star in yaoi ebooks and also one of the most sought after illustrators for yaoi ebook cover art; Bianca James — whose lesbian erotic fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and her first novel Star of Persia was a finalist in the Project: Queerlit Contest, 2004; Stevie Burns lives and writes in Germany where she is publisher of Vora Books and editor-in-chief of the monthly erotic literary e-zine VoracityBeat.com; Claire Thompson — top-selling BDSM romantica writer on the Web. Catherine Lundoff has short stories and novellas in 37 collections; and Marilyn Jaye Lewis who has been writing and editing erotic fiction for the last 17 years.
