Interview with me at Jewcy.com

I'm interviewed at Jewcy.com, as part of their profiles highlighting the 100 of us who are being honored for this year's The Big Jewcy. The party is next Wednesday, June 15th, at Brooklyn Winery in Williamsburg. Just to clarify - Best Sex Writing 2012, which I'm finishing this month, is going to be my 42nd anthology. I'm a dork and keep track of those things. It sounds like a lot. I guess it is (I almost said it wasn't, and also almost said it gets easier as you go along, which was true until right about now, when things are not easy at all).

Here's a snippet:

Why and when did you decide to become a sex writer?

I don’t think I ever decided to become a “sex writer” and it’s a label I struggle with; I’d much rather just be called a writer. But when I was in law school at NYU back in my early twenties, I was reading a lot of erotica and at one point thought, “I could try that.” And I did, and my fictional story about Monica Lewinsky, “Monica and Me,” was published in a book called Starf*cker. From there I went on to write probably over 100 short stories and then that led to a sex column in The Village Voice, and now one at SexisMagazine.com, and my full-time job as Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations. It’s funny because in college I was deciding between law school and journalism school and part of why I picked law was that I never thought I could make a living from words, and now I do.

Do you have any specific goals you’re trying to accomplish with your writing?

I don’t know if I’ve ever had goals per se. I feel like I fell into doing what I do and sometimes I look around and have to pinch myself that I get to do all the various things I do and make money at them. I want to try to be as rigorously honest with myself and my readers as I can; sometimes the allegiance to the work outweighs an allegiance to anything or anyone else, and that is a tough balancing act. I learn a lot about myself by writing both fiction and nonfiction, but I’m also aware that, especially around sex, I’m never just writing about me. So I try to keep that in mind. My goals are to not let my fears discourage me from even making the attempt at trying new things in my writing.