The roller coaster has landed

To say that I'm pinching myself would be putting it way, way too mildly. Tears have been hovering and last night I really was not doing too well over being in limbo, but today made it all okay. I am so, so excited. I will have more details soon, but for now I can say that I am going to be a published author. Like, a real author. Of not just one but two erotica novels! This is bigger than I could have ever dreamed, and I am so excited to start digging into something longer and really getting to know my heroines. Plus, just, wow. Awe does not even begin to describe it. My name will finally be in Publishers Marketplace! Thirteen books later, and it's finally real. It finally feels like I did the right thing leaving NYU in 1999. Finally. it still feels prety surreal, like the fact that I'm gonna have the same editor as authors I've read and interviewed. That people I idolize call themselves "my fan." I realized as I sent the announcement out as ewll as a "thank you" how blessed I am. It's not just the money, though I am with Liz Phair ("it's nice to be liked/but it's better by far to get paid") at the moment.

I mean blessed to have so many smart, awesome, talented friends. Blessed to have people looking out for me, who are just as happy for me as I am. Who love me and care about me and just are happy for me, plain and simple. As I am for them. You better believe I am busting out the diet coke and celebrating. Maybe some champagne soon too. For now, I'm just soaking in the heady rush of it all. It's totally new territory for me but makes me believe that anything's possible. I've been kicking my own ass with all kinds of crazy hours and deadlines, waking up in a panic that I haven't done this or that, obsessing and procrastinating and then once I sit down and let myself get immersed, it's okay. I'm learning, especially about my own limits. Learning that the high highs are often followed by really low lows where I literally want to curl up on the subway floor, like last night. Sometimes I think I'm good at the big picture but the details, like accessing my Metrocard, not so much. I need to figure out a system that I will actually stick to, a way to gain some control over the chaos, so the little snags that are a part of life do not send me sinking so fast. I will probably always be an extremely all or nothing person, I've come to accept that, but I want to try to inject a touch more reason into my thinking. I can turn any positive into a negative, and it really takes mere seconds, but when I really think about it, I know that I'll get there. One day, step, breath at a time.

The best part, honestly, is that it's over. While of course it's extremely exciting and flattering and trippy and surreal, it's also a bit scary to feel like my future's in someone else's hands. Maybe that's my way of looking at it, but it's hard to not feel overly scrutinized, to have someone sizing up my potential, and even though I'm beyond thrilled that they've found it worthy, it's still an odd feeling. It means I can't just go hide under a rock if I hit a bump in the road, it means that people are counting on me and believe in me, it means that I have more to write than just a short story. It means creating whole worlds, which is exciting and I already have lots of ideas I want to incorporate, especially after reading See Jane Write. My novels aren't chick lit per se, but they are not totally the opposite of chick lit either. Actually, I don't really know what they will turn out to be, and it still feels weird to have someone say "your book" and mean something other than an anthology. I'm also the kind of person who, once I do something, it doesn't feel that special. I remember the freaking out going on when I started writing my Voice column. For probably the first six months it was like, "What? Me? I'm doing this?" It was and is still weird for me to think of it as normal. Sometimes if I really ponder the enormity of these things I freak out and can't work. I have to pretend it's no big deal, it's a few people reading, not thousands or tens of thousands. I have to go utterly in my own head.

That's why I continue to live for interviewing people. Obsessing over them is fun, it's easy, it's entering their world and emerging with all kinds of curiosity. But I actually hate it when that curiosity is turned onto me. I retreat and clam up. "I'm not the captain/I am just another fan," goes "The End of You" by Sleater-Kinney. Exactly. I'm pretty much a professional fan. I love being a fan where I get to express my fandom in a way that's not so much fawning as connecting, interacting. I am a passionate, loyal, perhaps obsessive fan, but the friendships I've made with people whose art has turned my world inside out mean so much to me. Where would I be without the music of Mary Lou Lord? I mean, I can't imagine. I try to keep that in mind when the world feels like it's collapsing. So even though I know that may have sounded like a bit of a downer, I'm beyond excited. I guess part of me doesn't believe it's real, like they got the wrong girl and meant to give the book deal to someone else, even though I know that's not the case at all. But there's another part of me, kindof the opposite of that voice, that is already wondering what my name will look like on the cover, already wondering if my books will be sold in airports, in the Hudson News in the basement of my building, be out there where everyone can see them, not tucked away on some sparse shelf under "anthologies."

This is the big time, and I am ready to take it on, at least, I think I am. But I'm getting surer every day. I remember when we went to Big Quiz Thing and I wrote my name into the masthead of Variations. Part of me wanted to doubt it, but part of me kindof knew, or at least, hoped. It felt like hubris, but it was either that or berating myself, and I do plenty of that. It's that same feeling, an inkling deep down, sometimes very, very deep down, that I'm ready, that I deserve it, that I will do everything I need to do to make it happen in the biggest, best way I can. And I have a list of names, way more than i wouuld have expected I needed to thank, my own little pre-acknowledgements, of people who are friends and peers, who do, literally, inspire me all the damn time in their brilliance and passion and commitment. I have a damn creative, talented, wonderful set of friends and seeing them succeed really spurs me on to succeed. It's kindof like we're all in it together, and that makes me feel more okay about the tough times. I think it's really easy to pooh-pooh other people's doubts and fears, but it helps to know everyone goes through it. Hearing Wendy Spero tell me how hard writing was for her, when I thought her book was so brilliant I'm literally pressing it into friends' hands, gives me hope. I know we're all insecure in some way and money doesn't instantly conquer that. Neither does fame or opportunity or, well, anything really. It has to come from within, maybe from, as Anne Lamott says, "Shitty First Drafts," or just from the constant day in, day out, not high, not low, but very average work that is life.

I also finally turned in my Second Skin anthology, the last of the Fetish Chest books I'm co-editing. (Authors, I will be in touch, have to wait to get final approval on all stories).

And I got word back that all my luscious, very kinky, sexy stories for She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission, which is coming out in February from Cleis Press, made it into the final anthology, so here's the table of contents, though really, the cover's going to sell oodles of copies and is going to make me so freaking horny every time I see it I will have to not keep a copy on my desk.

She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission
Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Introduction: The Perfect Power Trip

Suit and Tie by Donna George Storey
By a Firm Hand by Debra Hyde
The Mistress Meets Her Match by Kristina Wright
Waiting for Me by MinaRose
The Inner Vixen by Saskia Walker
Victoria's Hand by Lisette Ashton
Mark of Ownership by Teresa Noelle Roberts
Pinch by Tara Alton
His Just Rewards by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Why Can't I Be You? By Alison Tyler
Room 2201 by N.T. Morley
Working Late by Andrea Dale
Ottoman Empress by Noelle Keely
City Lights by Kathleen Bradean
Feeder by Adelaide Clark
Penelope the Punisher by Stan Kent
Shades of Red by Lisabet Sarai
The Queening Chair by Kate Dominic