Cecilia Tan

What Cecilia Tan writes

She works the seam between erotica and genre fiction, which is why her books turn up on different shelves depending on the shop. The range covers erotic science fiction and fantasy, BDSM romance, paranormal romance and urban fantasy, queer erotica and one paranormal erotic thriller. Her Amazon bio says she writes heterosexual, gay, bisexual and trans characters, and Apple's own genre label for her author page is Erotica.

She also founded Circlet Press, which publishes erotic science fiction and fantasy, and her press kit names Hachette's Forever imprint, HarperCollins, Running Press and Riverdale Avenue Books among the publishers of her own books. Her content-warnings index is a page of its own on her site, book by book.

The books

Slow Surrender, the first of the Struck by Lightning series, is dated 5 March 2013 on Amazon under the Forever imprint, and it is the one title we confirmed as showing "Read for Free" in Kindle Unlimited. Telepaths Don't Need Safewords is the book she says she self-published in 1992; the Kindle edition from Circlet Press is dated 24 November 2009. The short-story collection Black Feathers has an Apple release date of 21 August 2012, and her press kit credits HarperCollins with the original edition.

The newer work is self-published by her own account. Bound by the Blood (15 January 2026) opens The Vanished Chronicles, an urban fantasy BDSM romantic suspense series her Patreon page says she is self-publishing. Bent for Leather: Stories of Queer Desires is dated 11 April 2023, and the paranormal erotic thriller Mind Games has an Apple date of 10 July 2018.

Magic University is her contemporary fantasy series, set at a hidden magical university inside Harvard with adult students. It begins with The Siren and the Sword (Riverdale Avenue Books, 23 October 2014), and there is a complete-series box set dated 16 December 2015 if you would rather buy it in one go.

The free serial, and what it is

Daron's Guitar Chronicles is a slow-burn queer romance between rock musicians in the 1980s, published as a web serial in 13 volumes and free to read in full on its own site, which also has a tip jar and a patrons-only section. The lead, Daron, is eighteen when the serial opens and about twenty-four by the end of it, at a music conservatory in Rhode Island; her own serial pages are where those details come from. Volumes one to three are also posted on Wattpad by her, marked for adult readers, and we name that rather than link it because this site does not link works inside user-content libraries.

Two of her pages give slightly different end dates for the serial's run, so we publish neither. Her series page also says the serial can be read through Kindle Unlimited, but the Amazon page for Volume One did not show the "Read for Free" badge in the view we were served, so treat that as unconfirmed.

How she publishes

Her Patreon page, titled creating passionate fiction, started in 2013 for a web serial and now covers her fiction generally. It is the subscription half of a deliberately mixed model: she says she keeps trying new forms of self-publishing, including serial fiction, crowdfunding and Patreon, alongside the presses. If you want to understand that pattern in general rather than in her case, our pages on subscriptions against paying per story and how to publish erotica set out the trade-offs.

Her where-to-buy page points at Bookshop.org, Apple Books, Amazon, Kobo and Smashwords, and her press kit keeps several versions of her biography for different audiences, which is a practical touch most author sites skip. The newsletter sign-up is a block on her home page.

What her own pages claim

Her press kit names two RT Magazine honours, a Career Achievement in Erotica award dated 2015 and a Pioneer Award. Her Patreon page says she pioneered the genre of erotic science fiction. No bestseller claim appears anywhere we read, and we checked no ranking of our own.

What is not confirmed

Patreon's tiers and prices could not be read, so nothing about what a pledge costs appears here. Kindle Unlimited status is confirmed for one title only. One book is deliberately absent from the list above, because its blurb states no age for its leads and an unstated age is not a verified adult one. Her contact details and family, which the press kit carries, are left out on purpose.

Our other author pages are listed on the authors hub.