My weekend in photos, plus killing the old me to make room for the new me

Friday night I went to the Funny Girls on Film Festival in SoHo - I hope there's another because I only got there Friday night but all of it looked amazing. Jessica Delfino gave out vagina cookies and showed several music videos, including "I Wanna Be Famous," below, and a super sexy new song that will make you want to eat Italian food, or at the very least, eat Italian ladies. Or both!




East Village graffiti - more than any other neighborhood, this is probably where I hang out the most, and get my nails done (and some heavenly mini massages)



I discovered that a mere quick walk away is the East River Ferry and the Brooklyn Flea, and took the ferry with my cousins, including a super happy water-loving one-year-old, to DUMBO and a water park and then to Governor's Island, where I snapped this cannon.

Have a lot of things percolating that I hope to share soon. Oh and my summer anthology Obsessed: Erotic Romance for Women (party August 25th!!!) is here (here, meaning in my hands) and those who signed up to review it on Amazon, your books are already in the mail, they'll be in stores soon. Want good karma and a free super-sexy book in October (again, before they're in stores)? Sign up to be a Women in Lust Amazon reviewer now. I'll send books as soon as I get them in early October, you promise to review by November 30th. I think of that as my birthday book because I will be 36 on November 10. Email womeninlustantho at gmail.com with "Amazon" in the subject line and your name and US mailing address in the body. We won't be able to respond to every email but books will go out in October, and remember, if you get one, you MUST review it by November 30 or bad karma will be yours forever. I'm about to start copyediting this one and am reminded about how adventurous, gutsy, sexy and powerful these characters are. They are women who go after exactly what they want, and not just in bed. Plus this cover - so hot it's on the Cleis Press catalog cover too! Matching the font to her lipstick=brilliant.



I feel that birthday looming every day and I am finally ready to get back on track with all the goals I want to achieve by then! Not blog appropriate because sortof like books, as I'm learning, the minute you spill the beans is the minute you lose control. Plus most of them are just about daily behaviors I need to change/improve and searching for ways to live a better, healthier, happier, more productive life. I am inclined toward...the opposite, and it's gotten me into lots of pickles, and while I love pickles, especially spicy ones, at 35 I'm feeling too old to live with those same behaviors and baggage constantly dragging me down.

I am ready for something new, and dreaming big, and if I fail it's because I tried and failed, not because I gave up because I despise myself. I'm over that. This month/year are constant reminders of all the Big Fails I've racked up, but also a chance, every day, to create and atone and accept that past and move on, because I do have so many things I want to achieve. No point talking about them because if I've learned anything the last two years, it's that if you want to do something, you do, and if you don't, you don't. For me that is all too true.

I tell myself lies all the time about how I will spend my time, and the proof is in how I actually do spend my time. I got off track while everyone around me sailed ahead and I see now where I misplaced my priorities, let the wrong emotions take over, let all my doubts overtake me until I thought, "Failure is inevitable." And it was, because of that thought. Vicious but totally sensible cycle. [Note: For those who look around and say, "But you have so many books out, what failures?" I can only say trust me, lots and lots of big, costly failures. This is the one I feel most awful about because it was the biggest mainstream acknowledgment I've ever had, and a book about sex that will be read by umpteen more eyeballs than my books ever will. I can't go back in time, but I can make sure I never turn down a magnificent opportunity again due to fear, self-doubt, worry about what other people will think, etc.] But that doesn't mean I can't start over and make new successes, redeem myself, not in anyone else's eyes, because I have nothing in me to care about what anyone else thinks of me at the expense of what I think of myself. That was my fatal flaw, and only in hindsight do I see that so clearly.

So, onward...I also tried to find a weekend I could escape NYC and didn't come up with much, between two family trips, various meetings and shows (like All New People and The Talls at Second Stage Theatre), and trying to get my home in order, which make the decluttering process sound a lot easier than it is. Being here for most of the summer is good, perhaps, because my usual style is to run away from my problems. This summer is about facing them, every single day. Baby steps. Tiny tiny tiny baby steps, but baby steps nonetheless.

I can tell you that one of the things I'm hoping to debut in the next few weeks is e-book versions of some of my favorite of my many erotic short stories. They will be $1.99 or less and I will even appear on at least one of the covers (okay, my leg). Obviously other things are priorities right now but this is something I've been wanting to try. I haven't had much luck in the e-book department in the past or in anthologies I've been part of but this seems like an easy and relatively cheap experiment. Will blog when they're ready. Umpteen thanks to my assistant Inara de Luna, without whom that project would be totally dead in the water.