Read 21 globe-trotting erotica tales in Best Women's Erotica of the Year Volume 2!
Out in print, ebook and audiobook.
Volume 1 of Best Women's Erotica of the year is in print, ebook and audio!
Read more about Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 1!
22 very sexy stories by and about women, from authors including L. Marie Adeline and Tiffany Reisz!
I'm beyond excited for the release of Come Again: Sex Toy Erotica, out now!
Nipple clamps, remote controlled vibrators, butt plugs, vegetables, ice and so much more
Hungry for More: Romantic Fantasies for Women - just published! With stories by Tiffany Reisz, Greta Christina, D.L. King and more. 21 fantasies, from "Kitchen Slut" to a cougar to Craigslist sex to BDSM to bukkake to watching two men get it on, and more!
I'm a little late getting this posted (I do post all relevant links on Twitter and Facebook), but I wrote a piece for the wonderful DAME (I highly recommend bookmarking the site) about how it feels to be supporting Hillary Clinton but my partner not wanting to tell me who he's voting for for president, which could be Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, a third party candidate, a write in candidate, or nobody. I miss writing essays and have been trying to carve out time to write more of them, but this is a start.
On the career front, I'm mostly a copywriter these days, and I'm proud of learning a new skill/career path at 40, but I don't want to give up "me" writing entirely, though the steady paycheck thing more than makes up for any downsides. It's a daily challenge to figure out what's feasible in terms of managing my time, what's worthwhile financially, what matters to me. I'm catching up on pieces that have fallen by the wayside so I can make room for new ones. I'm also getting ready for what I hope is my biggest, best and most successful book launch ever (December 13th is the big day!). Though my books, thankfully, have long legs and tend to sell even years after their release, that first release month is so vital and I dread messing it up. So that's what I'm up to, and trying to make writing from the heart something I practice more often. I'll be at writing conference BinderCon in New York this weekend, so if you're there, say hello, and if you're interested in this fabulous event for women and gender nonconforming writers, check it out. They also hold an L.A. version in March. I'll be doing something I've never done before, a theme for me of this year: pitching editors in person.
Sometimes, I'm very prolific in a given week, and other times, by happenstance, several of my articles go up in one day. Both of those converged yesterday and, as I was making my way from New Jersey to Savannah, I had 3 new pieces go up. I'm writing a bunch more this week, so stay tuned or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or check out my Contently profile, where I've shared most of my clips. And please always feel free to pitch me article topics at rachelkb at gmail.com if you see something interesting happening.
The first is about the blog That's Not a Vagina for The Daily Dot, which is all about educating readers about the difference between "vagina" and "vulva" and celebrating the vulva.
The next is about new moms and sex, for my DAME sex column. And I highly recommend Emily Flake's book of essays and cartoons, Mama Tried: Dispatches from the Seamy Underbelly of Modern Parenting, which I quote in the column, but you really need to read in its full form to appreciate. I just gave a copy to a friend with a newborn and she laughed out loud.
Lastly, I reviewed Khloé Kardashian’s new book Strong Looks Better Naked, published Tuesday by Regan Arts. Key points: she's great on body image and not counting calories, and the book's ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, was also the ghostwriter for O.J. Simpson for his book If I Did It, which I find fascinating (in case you don't know, Kardashian's father Robert Kardashian represented O.J. Simpson, and Kris Jenner was friends with Nicole Brown Simpson, and the case is mentioned in the book). Fenjves has also ghostwritten for Bernie Mac, Janice Dickinson and others.
I learned a lot about myself, sex work, money, labor and value while writing my latest DAME column, "I Was Offered $3,500 to Have Sex with a Stranger. Thanks to Melissa Petro and Kimberlee Cline for sharing their thoughts for the column. Check it out now, and I welcome suggestions on future topics to cover at rachelcitypaper at gmail.com - you can also read my entire DAME Shameless Sex column archives.
My latest column at women's site DAME asks "Is Smart The New Sexy?" which explores how we assess intelligence in the dating world, whether you need to have attended college to be considered "smart," what sapiosexual means and how it's perceived, with quotes from Kate Sloan, Rose Caraway, Melissa Toler and Jo Weldon and a brief take on my attendance at Bawdy Storytelling in LA (which also happens tomorrow in San Francisco and if you're there you should go!).
Also: I'd love your suggestions for what to cover next for my DAME sex column that relates to women and sex and/or dating. Email me at rachelkb at gmail do com with "DAME" in the subject line.
That's the issue I explore in my new DAME sex column, as well as what women who aren't necessarily "addicted" but feel too reliant on one way of coming can do to switch things up.
Is the subject of my latest DAME sex column. I'd love to hear any other topics related to sex and women you'd like to see me cover (or sex in general). Truly, I would! Email me at rachelcitypaper at gmail dot com with your ideas: could be about dating, relationships, sex practices, fetishes, fantasies, events, etc. I'm open, to be punny for a moment.
Here's a snippet of the new column:
Skye, a writer in her fifties, began her 20-year marriage monogamous. But eight years into her marriage, her husband told Skye that he was interested in exploring his bisexuality, and they decided to open their relationship. He’d stopped seeing other people once they started dating, but she wasn’t surprised or threatened when he brought it up. Skye believes this is because, at the time, he was interested exclusively in seeing men at the time (he’s since gone on to date other women), so Skye was less threatened by the prospect than she would have been if he’d wanted to see another woman, because "clearly, in my case, I could not be a man." But he has suffered more pangs of jealousy over the years than she has, she explained. “In the long run, as long as I’m being treated well by my partners, he’s okay,” she said. “I make it a habit to tell him that no one else could ever be what he is to me.”
That's the question I tackled in my latest DAME column, "Is Orgasm Equality As Simple As Tit for Tat?" where I looked at recent statements by Nicki Minaj and Amy Schumer about how women should demand and go after an orgasm, and explored a few reasons why it may not be so simple. Want to read more? Check out my DAME Shameless Sex archives.
Here's a snippet of this one: "n situations like this, it’s as if, rather than demanding orgasms, they are being demanded of us. Or, as author Jenny Block puts it in her forthcoming book O Wow: Discovering Your Ultimate Orgasm, we’ve made orgasm less of a joyful endeavor and more of a power play, a symbol of achievement first and foremost." Read the whole thing here
My new DAME sex column is up and it's tied to Mother's Day so I focused on mothers who've been shamed about sex and mothers who approach parenting from a sex-positive perspective. Those may seem like two separate topics, but I think they all tie back to how women, and mothers especially, are expected to act a certain way and if they step out of line, watch out, which includes how they parent. I quoted Jillian Lauren (from her new memoir Everything You Ever Wanted as well as Kendra Holliday, Airial Clark, and Crista Anne. See the column archives here.
Not my most imaginative title, but I never said I was good at coming up with them (I'm better with short story titles, like "Secret Service," about an oral sex restaurant). It's certainly not the first time I've written about fatness. I wrote "My Boyfriend's Fat" in my essay collection Sex & Cupcakes and also wrote about that same topic in a YouBeauty essay, along with "Why I'm Hot for Fat Guys" for Nerve. An old column about my own body image issues was reprinted at Jezebel.
So I'm not unfamiliar with what happens when you write about fat people, but I'm still appalled at the go-to reaction, which is basically one giant word used to obscure prejudice: HEALTH. In a public Feminism on Facebook group I'm part of, I shared the DAME link with these words: "My latest column DAME Magazine is on fat women, sexuality and body image." The very first comment left on it was: "Hi Rachel, I hope you included a list of the health risks that come with being overweight xx Including those you could pass on to your children xx"
Needless to say, this caused a lot of responses, accusations of trolling and debates about what exactly is appropriate when talking about fatness. I think it's interesting just how predictable some variation of this argument is, as if fat people, or even "not fat" but "not skinny" people don't have it drummed into their/our heads exactly what the health consequences may or may not be about our body size.
My response on that thread reads: "Reece, I'm pretty sure any fat person has been told more than enough that they are not only going against our restrictive society's beauty standards but also by their health care providers what they need to do to be healthy. I write a sex column so that isn't my job. I was talking about society's expectations of what's sexy and what's not and how these women are reclaiming fatness as part of sex appeal for themselves and the broader culture. Also, see http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/the-healthy-obese-and-their-healthy-fat-cells/?_r=0"
I think that sums up my position, but I encourage you, especially if your first reaction to "fat" is negative, to think about why, exactly, that is. I somewhat hate the title I gave my DAME column not only because it's obvious, but because why should that need to be said? Why can't we recognize that "sexy" comes in as infinite variety as people do? Yet I'm proud of it and glad it's fostering discussions like the one on Facebook, because we need to start thinking more critically when we talk about "fat." And be "we," I of course also mean me. I'm in the process of getting rid of a lot of my clothes that no longer fit due to the weight I've gained since moving to New Jersey, while also trying to live and eat healthier and, if I get the one thing I truly want in this world, trying to get pregnant. It's a lot to ponder when it comes to "fat" and weight and who the hell to look good on a daily basis, when I do venture outside of my home, or even when I just don't want to sit around wearing sweatpants day in and day out. I'm not suggesting it's easy to suddenly switch our thinking from one that tells us "fat is bad" to a more nuanced view that takes in true health and genetics and so many other factors. But in the last three plus years of dating and loving a fat man and seeing how he is often treated by the world at large and in person, I have come to care very much about this topic. And do I also care about his health? Of course! How could I not, especially if I want to have children with him? But I care for his physical health along with his mental and emotional health, and those of other fat people. That's why someone like April Flores inspires me so much, and why I was thrilled she let me interview her and use her photo with my column. She's been "fat" and "thin" and has come to a place of peace and happiness with her body, which is something I wish for everyone. Including me.
It's one thing to write something in the plain old Times New Roman font I use in a Microsoft Word document, and another to see it in bold type on a website I contribute to. My first instinct when I saw "Yes, Fat Women Are Sexy" was to think, Duh. I mean, obvious town, right? But it's still something that needs to be said and reinforced with word and image, and the women I spoke to and quoted, namely April Flores (about her soon to launch site Fat Girl Fantasies), Substantia Jones, Kitty Stryker and Brittany Gibbons, are doing just that. Please check it out, and see the full archive of my DAME columns here. Suggestions for future topics related to women and sex? Email me at rachelkb at gmail dot com with "DAME" in the subject line.
I've been writing a lot, with more on the way. Usually I post them separately, but this week is crunch time so here are 5 very different pieces I published this week:
For my Shameless Sex column at DAME, I interviewed sex educator Ashley Manta about her blog post entitled, "Naming My Rapist After 15 Years." She posted it on Sunday and agreed to speak with me on pretty short notice for it. I'm grateful she was willing to share her story and have been observing the reactions and impact it's already had in a few short days. Please check out both the interview and her original post.
I'm very proud of my latest DAME Shameless Sex column; I went over my usual word count (with permission) because my interviewees had so many fascinating things to say about sex for pleasure vs. sex for procreation. Thank you to everyone who spoke to me for this. I learned a lot! My working title was "When Sex Is For Making Babies" but I like the final one too: "Doing It Like It's Your Job." And yes, I know plenty of non-male/female couples work on having babies, but as I said, this column was already way too long, so I had to limit it somewhere. I've been thinking about this topic ever since I saw the play Giant Box of Porn last summer at Capital Fringe; the reason why is the opening of the column.
The topic of slut shaming is far vaster and more insidious than I realized before reading two new books on the topic, I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet by Leora Tanenbaum, and SLUT: A Play and Guidebook for Combating Sexism and Sexual Violence, and I examined what I consider the most troubling aspect of this for my latest column at DAME. There was a lot I didn't have room for, but I hope this helps foster conversation and especially encourage all of you who have teenagers in your lives to check out StopSlut and the play SLUT. I saw it last year and was very moved; it's a powerful piece of art that brought this issue home from the voices of teenage girls.
As you may have noticed, I write a lot about sex, and will be doing so quite often this year. For my Philadelphia City Paper sex column, I opine on a new topic every week in print and online. Those have ranged from how to talk dirty, the state of British porn censorship, the joy of blow jobs and the now internationally famous depression fighting OrgasmQuest. I'm DAME every other Wednesday, covering topics (so far) such as female bisexuality and cunnilingus. Not that DAME is a website geared towards women so topics I'm writing about there will have that focus, but Philadelphia City Paper and other venues can be relevant to anyone (and hopefully my DAME columns are also relevant to people who aren't women). I'd love to cover some more Philadelphia-specific topics but also want to continue to explore stories like OrgasmQuest that resonate on a much wider level (that has now been covered on major sites like Jezebel and Refinery29 as well as Dr. Drew's HLN show and media in the UK).
For the next little while I'm also writing for Salon, with lots of timely news stories, such as should erotica include condoms and other safe sex practices. How do I find story ideas? Reading, seeking, scouring online and offline. Often my topics are pegged to news stories or new books, but sometimes come from someone posting something on Facebook that intrigues me, or someone else emailing me and saying "this would make a good story."
So I am turning to you; I've got lots of column and article topics in the works, but I'm only one person with one brain and one set of eyeballs, so I can't be everywhere at once or be aware of every fetish or sex story around. The kinds that I especially want to cover are ones like OrgasmQuest, or one running tonight at Salon, that are about social justice issues, feminism, and improving people's sex lives, though really I'm open to just about anything. In the 15 years I've been writing about sex, in fiction and nonfiction, the biggest thing I've learned is that I always have more to learn. So if you have a story idea, whether stemming from your life, something you've read or seen, or just something you've been thinking about or want to know more about, feel free to drop me a line at rachelkb at gmail.com with "Pitch" in the subject line. The more information you can give me the better. Sure, the subject could just say "hair pulling," and that is actually something I want to write about, but the more detail the better so I can figure out the best angle and venue for it.
Last but not least, THANK YOU for reading! I'm as aware as anyone that any of these opportunities could vanish tomorrow, so I want to take advantage of them while the iron is hot. I'm incredibly honored that these editors have put their faith in me and hope to to my best to give their readers thought-provoking stories.
Those are the topics of my sex columns this week: I wrote about naked women and men and Caitlin Stasey's new site Herself.com for Philadelphia City Paper and about attitudes around cunnilingus now that it's having its pop culture moment for DAME. As always, I'm open to new column topic suggestions at rachelkb at gmail.com and if you like the columns, please click "like" at the top and/or otherwise pass it on. It helps enormously to show my editors that people want to read me on sex.
I will go out on a limb and say that unless I discover some giant sex scandal, my OrgasmQuest column will be the most popular one at City Paper for the rest of my tenure, which I think is awesome, but I also want the others to be read too, because who knows how long this ride will last? Especially because this week I was told that my column is online only because space was limited and it was either the crossword puzzle or the sex column on the chopping block. Trust me, I'd have made the same decision, because I love puzzles, but it was a little reminder to me that none of this is permanent, so thank you so much for reading, and please do pitch me! I want to feature more people, topics and sex acts/fetishes/interests that are under the radar and deserve attention, especially if there's an element, as with the OrgasmQuest, that will help other people.
Blogging has been light because with Blizzard Juno I got a bunch of new assignments which has been wonderful but made me a busier freelancer than I've ever been. So a deluge of sex articles are coming from me as I count down for the release of Best Bondage Erotica 2015, which you can follow @bestbondage on Twitter and read a free excerpt from the crazy hot nude bondage story "The Centerpiece" by Erin Spillane here. You would hardly think that a week ago I was in Curaçao for a much-needed vacation, where it looked like this:
Being away, and being able to afford to be away for a few days, felt amazing, but it's actually a little more complicated than that, and when this crazy deadline week is over, I will write about that awkwardness and the pressures and guilt of full-time freelancing for me in more depth. The funny thing is that I'm even happier, in my own way, this week in snowy New Jersey than I was on an 85-degree beach, just in a different way. I will be writing more soon about how I balance my life and time (and how I don't!), because there are some importantconversationsabout money and writing going on, but will just end here saying that its' 6:12 a.m. and I'm already raring to go and wrapping up some pieces so I can get started on the new ones, and all I am is grateful. Last January I had no idea how I would continue to make a living. Now, at least at this very moment, I have enough work so I know that, much as I love putting my little erotica books out into the world and want them to do well, I'm not relying on them to succeed. I can feel the world cracking open for me, and all I am trying to do is be open and grateful and ready for whatever comes next. Another cool thing this week? I was quoted in The New York Times about This., a new social networking site where you can share one link per day. Right now it's invite only and I gave away all my invites, but you can sign up to be notified when they'll have more (you can also sign up with them to be added when they open it up). The place I update the most, probably because it's best suited to my ADD nature, is Twitter. I'm @raquelita.
I'm gearing up to teach my nonfiction sex writing class (along with my erotica workshop) at CatalystCon March 27th in Arlington, Virginia, and also planning an online extended version of that class, along with writing sex columns for Philadelphia City Paper and DAME, so I've been thinking a lot about sex columns, sharing, getting personal and getting your words out there.
To date I've written sex columns for The Village Voice, Penthouse, The Frisky, and the current two, and I've found that having the ongoing platform of a column is very different from sporadic articles and essays. In those, I also apply these principles, but one of the main differences is, when I know I'm filing every week or every other week, I'm constantly paying attention to what's happening in the world of sex and looking for a way in to these topics, ideally a way that hasn't been done a million times already. I've been reading a lot of Penelope Trunk's blog, which I highly recommend, except for the fact that every time I visit I want to feast on so many of her career advice posts and the things she links to that a "short" visit to her site often leads to hours of reading. The way she styles her blog posts inspired me to write this one.
I agonized and procrastinated and almost scrapped this spanking column, because it felt self-indulgent. Yes, I love spanking, so what else is new? But funnily enough, even though it felt like that to me, this column has been one of the best performing ones at City Paper and even got reprinted in Metro. Why? My hunch is that because I wrote exactly what I thought. I wasn't trying to look at all sides of an issue because it's not really an "issue," but a practice or interest or kink or fetish. It's okay, desired even, to be personal, which is why the title is (emphasis added) "A good spanking really turns me on."
This week I wrote about nipple play, which is something I enjoy both from a giving and receiving perspective, but wanted to go more in depth about. When I saw Jerome Stuart Nichols' post about it, I knew I'd found someone who could answer my questions. I did the same thing with my bisexuality column at DAME. Yes, I'm a bisexual woman, but I didn't think I'd offer much in this case with my experiences alone, so I sought out women with varying perspectives on their bisexuality/queerness.
I introduced myself to Philadelphia City Paper readers by asking "Are you a slut?" because I think slut shaming has become so rampant and insidious that stamping it out is at the root of true sexual freedom. By that I mean both the way we slut shame other people and the way, sometimes more subtly, we slut-shame ourselves, or allow slut shaming to run rampant. That's political and personal and something that applies to people of all genders and sexual orientations, albeit often in different ways.
I have way more questions than answers about sex and dating, and in this case, kept getting what I felt were mixed signals. Is it a date? Is it not a date? Where's the line between friends and something more? I think this goes along with curiosity. When you make your questions public, you admit you don't have all the answers, but you also invite people to help you with your conundrums and share their own questions or just commiserate. You make it a conversation, rather than a proclamation.
FYI, I think if we'd called this column "I Want To Be Your Blowjob Queen" it would have done better. But anyway, when I see something I vehemently disagree with, I don't want to let it go, especially because with sex, so many of us approach the acts and topics without truly seeing our biases. Of course we don't get pleasure from using our mouths might seem obvious, until you start to unpack it.
I wrote "Spanking Jessica Cutler" when her story was a hot topic. Same for "USC's Topless Professor". Strike while the news is hot, but add your own twist, either by doing original reporting or exploring a new angle.
When I wrote about going on a date with Betty Dodson's boyfriend Eric and how pee factored into it, I got some shocked emails. I was shocked myself. To me one of the biggest things I've learned about sex from writing about it for so long is that I always have the capacity to surprise myself. Life does, sex does, and being open to those new frontiers and to my feelings about them is what makes personal writing, well, personal. It's not about shocking for the sake of shocking or chasing those surprises, but being open to them and recognizing them.
In this case, I mean literally, but I think the more emotionally naked you can get in your writing, the deeper the ideas will penetrate, if you will. People respect bravery in writing (and other kinds of art), and can tell when you are giving something of yourself that's challenging. In August 2005, I wrote: "Putting the real me out there requires setting aside every body image woe and believing, wholeheartedly, that I'm worth photographing, worth having my curvy, imperfect, rounded body captured forever on film." That's still true, and something I've certainly been contemplating this week while on a beach wearing a bathing suit that fit me better 20 pounds ago.
I am not a sexpert, and while there are some topics I do feel comfortable expounding upon in terms of advice giving, most I don't. But I do love picking people's brains about their expertise, and in that way I can offer tips on, in this case, talking dirty, while also sharing my own personal perspective.
When I first read about Crista Anne's OrgasmQuest, I had an immediate feeling it was an important story. Why? Because while it's a very personal journey for her, depression and mental health issues as they interact with our sexuality is something extremely common, possibly universal. "Mental health" is something I think almost everyone has a story about, whether of their own or a family member, friend, loved one, etc. It's a perfect example of the personal being so bigger than just one person, which is I think why this story has gone viral and opened up so much discussion. I want to write more columns that explore how sex intersects with other parts of our lives and can be deeply transformative.
I don't know if you can get away with curses in mainstream print mags, but in alt weeklies and online you can, and when used judiciously and accurately, it can add a little fun to a title and topic.
Want more writing tips and to find out about my upcoming classes? Sign up for my monthly newsletter below or on my website! Want to read more of my nonfiction? Check out my ebook Sex & Cupcakes: A Juicy Collection of Essays.
Please note: DAME is a women's site so I focused on women's experiences, and yes, there is a lot more to bisexuality than I could fit in one column. The good news? I'll be there every other Wednesday and have some great topics coming up, so if you have a suggestion for me for the column, which will be focused on women and sex pretty broadly, email me at rachelkb at gmail.com with "DAME" in the subject line. Also, I quoted some awesome women, so thank you Dorianne Emmerton, Amy Andre and Allison Moon.
I open the column with some lines from Desiree Akhavan's excellent new indie film Appropriate Behavior with a bisexual protagonist (Akhavan wrote, directed and stars in it!), which I encourage you to watch now on iTunes. It had some hilarious lines and just an interesting story line. It was zany but had a heart and dealt with a bisexual woman's drama without being sensationalistic. Here's a great clip of Akhavan interviewed by Janet Mock on her new show So POPular. Here's the trailer:
The Big Book of Submission: 69 Kinky Tales
Flying High: Sexy Stories from the Mile High Club
