To Love Like Venus is available at New York Public Library!
Available in ebook on their website and Libby app. Check it out! Maybe with enough demand we can get them a hardcover.
Author Archive
Happy Publication Day to Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos’ debut novel, To Love Like Venus. Dream yourself into a future NYC of whirling roller-discos and sex robots, sunny Greek islands, and a fight for love while the world is on the brink. Trip to Venus included.
Maybe you have literary fiction tendencies? Then: To Love Like Venus is a literary novel in a near-future setting that’s all about love and relationships—and how we cope with the heights and disappointments, whether in partners, ideals or the symbols that become our children.
Book website: https://januspointpress.com/tolovelikevenus/
Thank you for all those preorders! Here’s where to buy the book:
Direct Author Link (biggest author impact, one-stop shopping) https://tinyurl.com/triptovenus
Request at your local bookstore
Booshop.org https://bookshop.org/a/14972/9781958077115
Link to a bunch of online & local retailers https://books2read.com/tolovelikevenus
Direct from Publisher (browse our other books) https://janus-point-press.square.site/
Request from your local library. A bunch did order copies! Requests help libraries know patron demand.
We’re launching with a few early accolades: a “Project We Love” and “Brilliant Book Brought to Life on Kickstarter”; a Kirkus Prize nominee; trending number one in IngramSpark Literary Fiction; and a featured book in Ingram’s Indie Early Buzz for March Releases and Publishers Weekly BookLife Indie Spotlight for February Romance. The book is even featured in some library staff picks. Not bad for a warm-up to publication day. Thank you for being part of this love.
ADULT FICTION / Literary FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Love & Romance
FICTION / Science Fiction / Cyberpunk / ADULT
Think The Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman
Jacket design by Barış Şehri
256 pages, 5.5″ X 8.5″
hardcover with dust jacket ($28) ISBN 978-1-958077-11-5
ebook epub ($9.99) ISBN 978-1-958077-12-2
Publisher: Janus Point Press
So you preordered an indie book.
How actually receiving it sometimes works with online retailers.
The Sudden Not-Available
It’s publication day and you don’t see the book that you preordered in your mailbox! You go online and check, and the status of the book says “not-available” or “back ordered”…
What it usually means
It might just mean that the online retailer didn’t prestock the book (happens to us smaller book and publisher chums, especially if we have “no return” policies with Ingram). So the retailer needs time to actually order it for you, and they want to be sure you still want it.
Confirm your order (again)
Sometimes the online retailer wants to confirm you still want the book. So you have to go through some additional steps. Sometimes they cancel the order! This means you need to reorder it (and they’ll confirm that you were not charged).
Feel good once again
Not only did you secure your order, you made sure an indie author secured a book sale. Happy reading!
Publishers Weekly selected To Love Like Venus to be featured in the BookLife’s Indie Romance. Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos explores the book’s Venusian prompt in this brief author statement.
It’s great to keep getting messages like number one book trending in Literary Fiction and two in Sci-fi Cyberpunk in IngramSpark and today’s news that To Love Like Venus is featured in Ingram’s Indie Early Buzz catalog for March releases!
(speaks in Nova Odyssey):
There is great satisfaction in seeing a scientific paper propose a new astrophysics theory that you in your little armchair mused on because you are yourself, out-of-this-world.
In my literary work, I treat wormholes more as jumps in time than spacetime highways, and I treat the janus point as a serious interest (enough to name my imprint after it with its reminder to Watch out for wormholes).
Read this paper (in an alien language to most of us) or probably, listen to Anton’s digestible break down of the new paper out that describes wormholes more as time mirrors, where the universe is as wormhole, its meeting center where time banged out in two directions: the janus point. (disclaimer: quote actual scientists for an accurate explanation, this is what filters down to sci-fi me)
“A new understanding of Einstein–Rosen bridges” by
Enrique Gaztañaga, K Sravan Kumar* and João Marto
Published 8 January 2026 • © 2026 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/ae3044
Anton Petrov’s video: “Study Suggests We Were Wrong About Einstein’s Wormhole Idea”
https://youtu.be/5-orZ05poqw?si=pIAtGZUuFguz0PKT
If you’re attending BookCon in NYC this April, I have a preorders up at Beventi, the platform that connects book lovers with authors. Preorders for pick up at Javits Indie Alley on Beventi for To Love Like Venus come with customized bookmark sunglasses. Because you’re BookCon fabulous.
You’ll also find a discounted Venusian Bundle that includes the genre-blending, multi-medium universe of themes of love, desire and lines crossed that is: To Love Like Venus, The Museum of Sex chapbook, Venusian Greek Wines chapbook, and a discounted Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back, plus a free character sticker.
Why preorder via Beventi: It gauruntees a signed book is waiting for you at the show, especially for limited runs of special prints like my handmade chapbooks. Plus you get those cool sunglasses. Order by April 12th.
Link to my Beventi Preorder at BookCon page: https://beventi.co/orderform/xj0xau6ztg
There’s no category on there for literary fiction, so my other genres are represented.
To Love Like Venus was kickstarted as a “Project We Love” designation by Kickstarter staff, and listed on Kickstarter’s Bookshop page as a “brilliant book brought to life on Kickstarter”. We are happy to be in such curated company!
Author Ivelisse Rodriguez on To Love Like Venus:
“A radical, sex-positive exploration of the necessity for love with sex. Even in the future, this is the ongoing, pivotal question we must answer for ourselves. To Love Like Venus though, shows us that that question can also obfuscate all the ways we really love.”
— Ivelisse Rodriguez, author of Love War Stories
I was introduced to Dr. Rodriguez’s work at a lovely garden book launch event in uptown Manhattan. I remember the event fondly: the lovely neighborhood people, the friendly publisher, her smile, and to the day–the best book swag I’ve ever received. It was a pen with a heart on top and it was so specific to her book. Wait, I get to read about Puerto Rican girls in love??? Wait, someone understands that love pairs with war??
“Love War Stories
Puerto Rican girls are brought up to want one thing: true love…
Finalist for the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Finalist for the 2018 Foreword Reviews INDIES Award
Best Book/Most Anticipated Book/Recommended Read of 2018: Cosmopolitan.com, The Root, Electric Literature, Bustle, Book Riot, PEN America, PopSugar, The Rumpus, B*tch, Remezcla, mitu, and others.”
Do check out her website
https://ivelisserodriguezauthor.com/
to order her book. I’ll also have a fun raffle at a book launch event for To Love Like Venus with her book (minus the pen).
TLLV cover by Baris Sehri
Asking whether engaging with a digital simulation of a human via a 2D photograph, a hologram, or a personality app decked in the clothing (or no clothing) of your choice, constitutes a healthy reality can be tricky. The answer bends towards no when it removes you from the biological and perhaps spiritual reality of what it means to be human. It separates you from real human contact. It affects women adversely with objectification and a set up for potential violence when men live in these silos and real human women don’t perform to their expectations, aka demands.
Are simulation tools such as pornography, digital boyfriend/girlfriend apps, escort services that provide company or eye-candy… are these simply benign coping tools for a lonely world? Something that should just be viewed as commodified accessories? Extensions of the layers of human sexuality that should be explored without puritan judgement?
The question becomes even more layered when you question the very nature of reality itself, are we a hologram judging the actions of a hologram.
When do boundaries protect us and when do they hurt us?
Consent is key here when it comes to partnerships. How such tastes drip into real human relationships is something to explore, which To Love Like Venus does, in a near-future world where digital love lust is for sale, or is simply life.