Crane Hana Books begins.

I’m a writer and artist living in the American Southwest. I’m lucky enough to work in creative industries as diverse as commercial analog and digital art, art instruction, bookbinding, jewelry-making, and film cell retouching for a major theme park company. My artwork is collected by numerous private clients and university special collections, and has been featured in several magazines and coffee table art books.

I’ve always told stories to amuse myself and friends, but I didn’t start writing with intent-to-publish until 1987. The less said about my first three novels, the better. I sold a few short stories, but my art career ate more and more of my time, and I stopped writing original fiction. In 2009, a suspected bout of the H1N1 virus gave me some amazing dreams and a way to finish a fantasy manuscript stalled a decade earlier.

As M. H. Crane, I’m working on several fantasy projects at the moment, among them a story arc about a race of courtesans created to tame the most terrifying creatures in their universe. The first completed novel in the sequence has been pitched as ‘Jacqueline Carey’s KUSHIEL’S DART meets James Cameron’s AVATAR’. One erotica short story set in that universe will be published in Sept. 2012 in the Cleis Press anthology THRONES OF DESIRE.

As M. C. Hana, I write m/m and m/m/f erotic romance space operas in that same universe, but set thousands of years later when human colonists clash with an ancient, arrogant, and deadly race already claiming the galaxy. MORO’S PRICE, the first book in a planned trilogy, is now available from Loose Id, LLC.

The secondary-world cultures I’ve created over 25 years are comfortable with many different forms of sensual and sexual expression. They are, to paraphrase Jack Harkness of TORCHWOOD, ’52nd Century folks’.

I’ve been inspired by the fiction of Tanith Lee, Storm Constantine, Samuel R. Delany, Jo Clayton, Andre Norton, Diane Duane, and Lynn Flewelling, among many other pioneers who brought alternate sexualities to the mainly heterosexual world of science fiction and fantasy. The recent explosion of e-books and the genres of erotic romance and paranormal romance opened up great new possibilities, away from the previous fade-to-black restrictions of mainstream publishers.

Welcome aboard.