Thanks for getting me over halfway to my goal of 40 Dirty Dates reviews for my 40th birthday!

So, I'm 40. Most days I feel more like 14 or 24, possibly early thirties, but in fact, I'm 40. Turns out, being 40 doesn't automatically mean I'm wiser or more knowledgable. I still fuck up. I still get flustered and confused and panicked and all the other things I did in my twenties and thirties. But for the most part, I like it. I've decided to invest in myself, which means I'll be launching three new websites in the new year, and doing live readings across the country and hopefully teaching webinars and other things.



One of my hopes for my 40th birthday and Dirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples, the book that dubbed on that day, November 10th, is to get to 40 reviews of it on Amazon. So far, the book has 23, and here's a sampling:

"Justine Elyot’s Baby Steps is a story about a new mother who is determined to get her kink back on. Any parent can relate to this story about how relationship dynamics change once a baby comes along. Nik Havert’s The Rabbit Trap is playful and imaginative. Valerie Alexander’s The World in My Pants and D.L. King’s On Location are both super-hot pieces of Femdom."

"What feels unique about "Dirty Dates" is the focus on committed couples exploring kink. That relational background adds a sweet sexiness to many scenes, which I loved. There's also a strong emphasis on consent in these stories - which makes me feel more excited to recommend it to people newer to kink world. For example, there are a lot of sentences like this one, from Emily Bingham's story: "I run one finger along my labia, shocked at how excited I am. I blush as I realize that daydreaming about the events I've agreed to has made such an impression..." Depending on your tastes, the reminders that everything has been "agreed to" can be distracting or quite a turn-on. More than other erotica anthologies I've read, "Dirty Dates" gives a template for how couples can actually explore kink together, which definitely makes it stand out. "

"Slowburn by Morgan Sierra is a femdom story told from the male submissive’s point of view. I don’t think that I’ve read a Femdom story told this way and it was a nice change of pace. It pulled no punches on the muddled and conflicting thoughts that tumbled through his mind while involved in a scene with his mistress.

The World in my Pants by Valerie Alexander gives us another dose of femdom with some juicy public humiliation and dirty alley sex. Of all the stories in the book, this is easily my favorite. All the girls crowding around him in the bathroom and writing on him with their makeup was especially fun to read.

Switch by Mina Murray tells the story of a couple reuniting after he’s been away for work. Blindfolded and handcuffed to the radiator in front of a picture window she comes to the realization that this was her fantasy made real."

So if you've read Dirty Dates or will be soon, whether you bought it on Amazon or not, I'd love if you'd leave a review there (or on Goodreads or Bn.com or anywhere else readers might see it). The review can say anything you want (although on Amazon, it can't have any curses or "dirty" words). It can be one sentence or 100 sentences. If you're stumped, I suggest sharing what your favorite story was and why, or your favorite stories. Or just what the book was like versus what you expected. Thank you for being interested in Dirty Dates in the first place! I was thrilled to have a book come out on my birthday, and while my focus now is on launching Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 1, I'm still keeping an eye on Dirty Dates and happy its reaching readers.

My 40th birthday photo shoot on why my boyfriend and I sleep in separate beds is in the New York Post

I've been 40 for 4 days, and they've been a whirlwind! On Tuesday, my 40th birthday, I woke up very early, around 5 a.m. (I was born at 3:59 a.m., and was a preemie; I was supposed to be born in February 1976), then spent the day celebrating the release of my new erotica anthology Dirty Dates, writing two articles for Salon, teaching my LitReactor class, going to dinner with my boyfriend and a coworker, and having my photo taken for this New York Post article on couples with separate beds. I only have a few photos of my boyfriend and I from our almost four years together, so that was fun and special, all the more so because he's pretty camera and press shy (yes, my opposite!), but did it for me. Thank you to Anna Davies for writing the article and contacting me to be interviewed, and to Alex M for the great photos. This is what a 40-year-old writer with a stuffed animal in her bed looks like!

The article got a lot of buzz, including a mention on In The Papers on NY1, a discussion on Live with Kelly and Michael, another interview with me at Yahoo Health, a Jezebel post and a great exploration at The Frisky on your ideal cohabitation situation. The most amusing part to me is that the original New York Post headline changed during the day to the current one. If my life is boring (which, I admit, parts of it are), I say, the more boring, the better!

My big November=1 online class, 2 live events, 1 book release and 1 birthday

My November is going to be a busy one, but the good kind of busy, because these are all events and projects I'm excited about--even turning 40! Since these are the last live events I'll probably be doing for a while (though there may be some January events, stay tuned!) I wanted to make sure you knew about them. And if you know anyone who might like to take my LitReactor class (registration ends tomorrow, aka, Monday, November 2) or attend my reading in Savannah Friday or my erotica writing workshop Sunday in Washington, DC, please pass this on to them! Thank you.

November 3-December 3 (Registration closes November 2nd)
My online only Between the Sheets class starts at LitReactor.com!


You'll get weekly lectures, assignments and critiques along with over a dozen exclusive Q&As with erotica publishers and editors on what they're looking for now as well as hear from authors such as Victoria Blisse, Feminista Jones, Sommer Marsden, Tiffany Reisz, Elizabeth SaFleur, Sinclair Sexsmith, Cecilia Tan, Rebekah Weatherspoon and more on how they broke into the genre and why they chose the publishing path they did (self-publishing, traditional publishing, or a mix of the two). You can be anonymous and participate on your schedule (you log in when you have time and comment as much or as little as you'd like). Plus you'll get invited to my secret Facebook group for erotica class alumni to continue the conversations. You retain access to all classroom materials, including lectures, assignments, message boards, etc. indefinitely. Questions? Email me at rachelkb at gmail.com with "LitReactor" in the subject line.

November 6, 7-9 pm
Free reading at Back in the Day Bakery, Savannah, Georgia
Rachel Kramer Bussel is coming to town and just in time for the November Art March she will be reading from one of her many erotica anthologies. Back In The Day Bakery will be selling cupcakes and frosting shots. Facebook event page - RSVP requested but not required. Back In The Day Bakery, 2403 Bull Street, Savannah, Georgia 31401

November 8, 7-9 pm
Erotica 101 writing workshop, Lotus Blooms, Washington, DC

I'm honored to be part of the new Lotus Blooms' grand opening weekend in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC! Register by November 7th for $25 at Eventbrite; same day registration is $30.

Rachel Kramer Bussel, professional erotica author and editor of over 50 erotica anthologies, such as Come Again: Sex Toy Erotica, The Big Book of Orgasms, Best Bondage Erotica 2015 and more, will take you through the ins and outs of modern erotic writing. With the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey, now is a great time to put your own sexy stories onto paper. Learn how to get started, find your voice, and write against type. You'll discover how to incorporate everyday scenarios as well as outlandish fantasies into your writing, and make them fit for particular magazines and anthologies. She'll also talk about submitting your work and keeping up with the thriving erotica market (including anthologies, ebooks, magazines and websites). Whether you're writing to that special someone, penning longtime fantasies, or want to earn cash for your dirty words, this workshop is for you. Please bring paper or writing implements or a laptop to use for in class writing exercises. A bibliography with erotica resources will be provided.
Lotus Blooms, 2408 18th St NW, Washington, DC, 20009, 202-836-4474, info at lotusblooms.com

November 10
Happy 40th birthday to me and happy book release to Dirty Dates
I turn 40 (yes, I can hardly believe it myself, but it's very real) and my anthology Dirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples gets its official release day! It's actually already for sale on Amazon. Read the book and want to wish me a happy birthday/help launch the book into the world? Put me one step closer to reaching my goal of 40 Amazon reviews by my 40th birthday by sharing your thoughts about the book here. Thank you! And even more thanks if you leave it a review on Goodreads.

5 books being publishing on my birthday, November 10th

Happy November! It's my birthday month (shoutout to my fellow Scorpios!), and while I'm excited to celebrate turning 40, I'm also excited that my Tuesday birthday means lots of great books are publishing that day (including one of mine) that I'm looking forward to reading. I actually have an advance copy of November 9 that I'm saving to read on my train ride from Washington, DC to New York on November 9th, because how could I resist?

Cool coincidence: I started this post on Thursday, and in the mail that day arrived Yes of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. Sign that I'm on lots of publishers' mailing list? Perhaps, but I like to think of it as a very cool Scorpio book lover's coincidence. See below for 5 that I'm excited about - and know that Dirty Dates is already in stock on Amazon 9 days early, so you can have it in your hands ASAP (unless you read it in ebook form, in which case it'll be out November 16th). Full disclosure: all links here go to Amazon, where I get a small commission from each sale, but I encourage you to buy books at your favorite bookstore or use your local library, because libraries are awesome.

What are you excited to read this month?

1. November 9 by Colleen Hoover

Beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover returns with an unforgettable love story between a writer and his unexpected muse.

Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, the day before her scheduled cross-country move. Their untimely attraction leads them to spend Fallon’s last day in L.A. together, and her eventful life becomes the creative inspiration Ben has always sought for his novel. Over time and amidst the various relationships and tribulations of their own separate lives, they continue to meet on the same date every year. Until one day Fallon becomes unsure if Ben has been telling her the truth or fabricating a perfect reality for the sake of the ultimate plot twist.

Can Ben’s relationship with Fallon—and simultaneously his novel—be considered a love story if it ends in heartbreak?

2. For the Record by Charlotte Huang

Chelsea thought she knew what being a rock star was like . . . until she became one. After losing a TV talent show, she slid back into small-town anonymity. But one phone call changed everything

Now she’s the lead singer of the band Melbourne, performing in sold-out clubs every night and living on a bus with three gorgeous and talented guys. The bummer is that the band barely tolerates her. And when teen hearthrob Lucas Rivers take an interest in her, Chelsea is suddenly famous, bringing Melbourne to the next level—not that they’re happy about that. Her feelings for Beckett, Melbourne’s bassist, are making life even more complicated.

Chelsea only has the summer tour to make the band—and their fans—love her. If she doesn’t, she’ll be back in Michigan for senior year, dying a slow death. The paparazzi, the haters, the grueling schedule . . . Chelsea believed she could handle it. But what if she can’t?

3. Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes

She’s the creator and producer of some of the most groundbreaking and audacious shows on television today: Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder. Her iconic characters—Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, Olivia Pope, Annalise Keating—live boldly and speak their minds. So who would suspect that Shonda Rhimes, the mega talent who owns Thursday night television (#TGIT), is an introvert? That she hired a publicist so she could avoid public appearances? That she hugged walls at splashy parties and suffered panic attacks before media interviews so severe she remembered nothing afterward?

Before her Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes was an expert at declining invitations others would leap to accept. With three children at home and three hit television shows on TV, it was easy to say that she was simply too busy. But in truth, she was also afraid. Afraid of cocktail party faux pas like chucking a chicken bone across a room; petrified of live television appearances where Shonda Rhimes could trip and fall and bleed out right there in front of a live studio audience; terrified of the difficult conversations that came so easily to her characters on-screen. In the before, Shonda’s introvert life revolved around burying herself in work, snuggling her children, and comforting herself with food.

And then, on Thanksgiving 2013, Shonda’s sister muttered something that was both a wake up and a call to arms: You never say yes to anything.

The comment sat like a grenade, until it detonated. Then Shonda, the youngest of six children from a supremely competitive family, knew she had to embrace the challenge: for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.

This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood creating imaginary friends to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her (like Cristina Yang, whose ultimate goal wasn’t marriage, and Cyrus Beene, who is a Republican and gay). And it chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and giving the Dartmouth Commencement speech; when she learned to say yes to her health, yes to play and she stepped out of the shadows and into the sun; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.

This wildly candid and compulsively readable book reveals how the mega talented Shonda Rhimes, an unexpected introvert, achieved badassery worthy of a Shondaland character. And how you can, too.

4. Woman with a Blue Pencil by Gordon McAlpine

What becomes of a character cut from a writer’s working manuscript?

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American academic, has been thrust into the role of amateur P.I., investigating his wife’s murder, which has been largely ignored by the LAPD. Grief stricken by her loss, disoriented by his ill-prepared change of occupation, the worst is yet to come, Sam discovers that, inexplicably, he has become not only unrecognizable to his former acquaintances but that all signs of his existence (including even the murder he’s investigating) have been erased. Unaware that he is a discarded, fictional creation, he resumes his investigation in a world now characterized not only by his own sense of isolation but by wartime fear.

Meantime, Sam’s story is interspersed with chapters from a pulp spy novel that features an L.A.-based Korean P.I. with jingoistic and anti-Japanese, post December 7th attitudes – the revised, politically and commercially viable character for whom Sumida has been excised.

Behind it all is the ambitious, 20-year-old Nisei author who has made the changes, despite the relocation of himself and his family to a Japanese internment camp. And, looming above, is his book editor in New York, who serves as both muse and manipulator to the young author—the woman with the blue pencil, a new kind of femme fatale.

5. Dirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel (yes, that's me!)

What happens when date night involves a blindfold, a corset, handcuffs or a spanking? The couples in Dirty Dates combine kink and romance in this collection of erotic stories that will give you plenty of ideas for your next sexy outing. From “Magic Words” to a “Recipe for Punishment,” these doms and dommes know just how to make their partner bow to their commands. In return, these lucky subs say yes to all sorts of naughty adventures, from play parties to bondage to risqué roleplay and beyond. However they do it, they make getting dirty much more fun than dinner and a movie.

Home girl

I'm typing this at my desk as I listen to the rain outside, and I'm so grateful to be in my warm, cozy home. My home has shifted a lot in the last few years, after moving in 2013, 2014 and 2015, and I'm sure I'll be finding a new home soon enough. But why I've truly embraced domesticity, and why, I believe, it's embraced me back and helped my personal and professional lives succeed where before they hadn't, is that I've been willing to give back to my home.

When I was in the worst of my hoarding days, I refused to take even the tiniest steps to take care of my home. Cut to today where every day I vacuum my kitchen and wash and put away dishes and clean the stove. Where I rush to take out the recycling the moment a piece of paper or aluminum can is ready to go. Yesterday, I vacuumed the carpet in my room and then was inspired to do some of the common areas too.

I'm not suddenly some super neat person, but I've come to not just appreciate but deeply need all the ways we've set up this home. It's not just mine, it's ours, and that joint pride makes me want even more to make it my own. I have a print of my favorite Georgia O'Keeffe painting on my wall. The truth is, since it's to my right, not facing me, I don't actually pause and savor its beauty and message as often as I should. Sort of like the "open" tattoo on my back that I sometimes take for granted. I love having a gigantic bedroom/office with all my books displayed, easily within reach. I love having my own bathroom and a walk in closet that still feels like such a luxury sometimes I simply sit on the floor in it and read, because I've never had a closet where I was able to do that. I have even come to embrace suburbia.

No, it doesn't have the rush of New York, where on Monday night, Natalie Merchant, Ringo Starr and Pharrell were all speaking (and I'm sure there were plenty of other celebrities doing interesting things as well). But what my life in suburbia may lack in glamour and culture, it more than makes up for in peacefulness. I'd venture to say that when I lived in New York, I didn't want that peacefulness, or at least, not enough to make it a priority. I wanted the thrill of rushing from here to there, of nonstop events, of feeling so "busy" all the time. Now, I actually am working on looking at my 2016 events and business plans so that I can both do the work I want to do, make enough to not worry about my bills, and also have enough time for me and the other important things in life. I moved to New Jersey because I was ready for a different way of life, and every time I leave and return, I'm all the more aware of how ready that life was for me as well.

I could tell you right now about the things I've published recently, about nutscaping and erectile dysfunction and crowdfunded vibrators, and if you are interested in those topics, I do encourage you to read those. But I'm more focused on what's next; I usually am. I'm getting ready for a big month: November brings the start of a new LitReactor class that I'm gearing up for with new interviews and information for my students, my new book Dirty Dates, events in Savannah and Washington, DC, and turning 40, which is sneaking up on me so fast, I feel like I barely have time to say goodbye to my chaotic, often ridiculous, tumultuous and all-over-the-map thirties.

I fly to Savannah on Wednesday, and I return home on Tuesday, my birthday. In the meantime, I'm focusing on appreciating what's right in front of me, and knowing that I can have that sense of quiet and calm and beauty wherever I live, if I put the effort into it.

My 40th birthday book Dirty Dates just got its first review!

My new anthology Dirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples has an official publication date of November 10th, aka my birthday, but I just found out it will be shipping from the printer to stores (and me!) this week, so if you pre-order it, you're likely to get it a little earlier than 11/10.



I'll be posting more about it but wanted to share its first review on Goodreads, in which Dena Hankins, whose novels include Blue Water Dreams and Heart of the Liliko'i, highlights her favorite of these BDSM erotica stores. She also posted the review on her website. Here's a snippet from her review:

One of my favorite experiences reading erotica is grokking the heat of something that doesn’t turn me on at all. "Magic Words" by Emily Bingham lets me feel Daddy/girl play from the point of view of someone it works for, deep and real enough that I really think I get it…even if I’m not about to go looking for it myself.

"Baby Steps" by Justine Elyot got me too. I’m not a parent, but I’ve been through enough life changes during my nearly twenty-year relationship that I recognize this moment. The stakes are high, and I love how this shows the very real way we bring ourselves into the sex we have. This one is a favorite more for the story than the kink and/or sex, though.

"On Location" by D. L. King is fun and flirty, with an absolutely fabulous glimpse into the lives of lovers who don’t share a home. I very much enjoy erotica depicting warm, non-traditional relationships. And the set-up is hot!

"Recipe for Punishment" by Jacqueline Brocker is a-fucking-dorable. The punishment is brutal and glorious, a quick and effective mid-scene check-in is heartwarming, the achievement is his to own, and the love fills them both.