To Love Like Venus Launched on Kickstarter today. Here’s our press release.
Author Archive
Stephanie is an author at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival, and here’s your opportunity to come see me in conversation of love! Convo on her own works will orbit Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back and works that center the heart and desire, with Heartcore in mind. A great way to also launch To Love Like Venus!
“To the Heart of It | WED, SEP 17, 7:00 PM | Bohemian National Hall
We’re thrilled to welcome Czech author Štěpánka Jislová to New York as part of her U.S. tour for the English-language launch of her acclaimed graphic novel Heartcore (Graphic Mundi, 2025).
In conversation with American writer Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Jislová explores the tangled realities of intimacy, gender, and identity through the lens of comics autobiography. What shapes our ideas of love—biology, childhood, culture, or something entirely beyond our control?
Moderated by scholar Tahneer Oksman, this Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event marks the New York debut of Heartcore, originally published in Czech as Srdcovka and winner of multiple Muriel Awards. Raw, intimate, and unflinching, Jislová’s most ambitious work to date traces the messy intersections of love, loneliness, gender expectations, and desire.”
Please do register for free https://www.eventbrite.com/e/to-the-heart-of-it-book-launch-tickets-1520605123859
καλό μήνα! Happy new month, and also a happy name day on Sept 1st for Aphrodite, aka Venus.
Yesterday I did a cover reveal on the prelaunch page of my upcoming project on Kickstarter: To Love Like Venus, a literary novel in a near-future cyberpunk setting that’s all about love, relationships and how we cope with its heights and disappointments, whether partner, ideals or the symbols that become our children.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theninagalaxy/to-love-like-venus
Above is a look at the beautiful cover by Baris Sehri.
It was a pleasure working with Baris. It was the first cover I had designed for a novel, a new journey from the fabulous sequential artists I’ve worked with, as you can see in Event Horizon (and how I love covers since that book had 3). Baris’ design method had me deeply revisiting the major themes of the novel, and in the process clarifying how I would present this to an audience. This is not always an easy task for a writer; we get lost in the details of our stories, we obsess. Getting a cover designer to bring a painted metaphor of the book—and if not that, then a hits-the-mark nudge for a reader to pick it up, ain’t easy. Baris worked with my impressions of what this book was about, I stepped away, I got something unexpected and hitting a home run. So much so, I went back into the novel to strengthen certain aspects that his cover design revealed in it by forcing me to dig deep. It’s a great example of the harmony of true collaboration. Thank you Baris. Check out the other works he’s done at https://www.sehribookdesign.com/ When I saw his website, I already saw my book cover.
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If you’re a scroller: consider clicking on notify-me-on-launch on the Kickstarter page. It’s a cost-free gesture. The beauty of Kickstarters is making the art, but it’s also an opportunity for you to make sure publishing is filled with quality stories told by the rainbow of human beings living on this planet. Crowdfunding is my favorite way to do it. On the backer end, you get discounts and goodies not available in regular pre-orders.
Got the “summer is ending” blues?
Don’t despair. Summer never ends on Venus.
Here we go again. Uploading the preorder Kickstarter campaign tomorrow, prelaunch link will go live just a few weeks before Sept 15th. Which we guess is soon.
This is a bookmark (literally). Cover art (and trailer) is coming early September. Stay tuned.
A novel this time.
Literary Fiction>>Women’s Fiction>> Romance Science Fiction>> Soft Cyberpunk
Music Credit: from Microsoft Clipchamp: “It’s Like, a Dystopian, Cyberpunk Vigilante on a Motorcycle”
Video our own
Extra, extra. Event Horizon reached the May 2025 Books Received section of Locus Magazine, the magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field.
Walking around. Inhabiting Pablo Neruda and Menis Koumandareas
Enjoy the live read Stephanie did on Instagram as she becomes anew in southern Crete during Persephone’s season of Spring.
She read excerpts of their work, and then an excerpt from Event Horizon, the story “Event Horizon”, based on an unpublished novel, To Love Like Venus. “I read to the rocks and seagulls. I read to the Libyan Sea. Enjoy this echo.”
Find Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back at:
Januspointpress.com/EventHorizon
#authorread #Greece #crete #south #eventhorizon #womensfiction #scifi #literaryfiction
https://youtu.be/XbZ0nWwmNvg?si=eYkOzRcsKaV2ECsR
Event Horizon got its Human Authored stamp from the Authors Guild, because all stories are written by a human.
And all art was commissioned or are reprints by human artists.
Welcome the new organic sticker for books (no longer just for eggs).
Watch staff at the University of Texas unpack their Event Horizon box.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DGJcruPuSyD/