$2.20 buys you sex writing tips from me, Susie Bright, Stephen Elliott and Rachel Resnick

If you missed me, Susie Bright, Rachel Resnick and Stephen Elliott talking sex writing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (or just want to relive it), there's audio available for $2.20 on Amazon (I did not know we were being taped). It was such a blur because of the whole LA ride thing (I'm going back next month for the West Hollywood Book Fair but am gonna station myself early in WeHo somehow) and running around being interviewed for the radio that I dashed in and must've looked like a madwoman but I think it was a fascinating panel and was honored to be asked, and also impressed with the free event, which had a food section, outdoor stuff for kids, and was my first chance to meet the wonderful Jillian Lauren.

I'm not here

I'm not really here, at least, until Blogger gets an iPhone app. Find me all over the internet but especially (though maybe not this week before I head to LA for the LA Times Festival of Books) at my oversharey probably overdone Tumblr. I'll be back with the Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission book trailer (with music by Partyline!) very soon. In absolute deadline hell so blogging takes a backsheat, as well it should.

LA Times Festival of Books tickets go on sale today. My panel, Hot Off The Press: Writing About Sex is this Sunday, April 25, 3 pm, moderated by Rachel Resnick featuring me, Susie Bright, Stephen Elliott and Granta editor (!! have you seen their vagina purse sex issue cover?) John Freeman. Looking forward to it; Saturday is also the book fair and...the Grilled Cheese Invitational! If I get on my flight and make it through the week...you never know with a girl like me.

In the meantime, a great review of Peep Show: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists.



From the review:

Peep Show is a scorching hot read. Usually in anthologies or story collections, there is one or two bad reads, but that is not the case for Peep Show.

I enjoyed most stories in this collection but some of my favorites were:

Showtime by Susan St. Aubin
Clean and Pretty by Donna George Storey
Busted by Kissa Starling
Indecent by Lolita Lopez
People in Glass Hotels by Jennifer Peters
I've Only Got Eyes for You by Rachel Kramer Bussell
Audience Participation by Elizabeth Coldwell

This is a great book if you love to watch, want to watch, fantasy about being watched or want to be watched. Peep Show takes readers into both sides of the story, people who love to watch and people who love to be seen. Rachel Kramer Bussel did an excellent job selecting stories that not only complimented each other, but also showed off the hot and sultry exhibitionist and voyeuristic worlds. Peep Show is a book that will get you hot and bothered. It is an irresistibly, naughty read that entertains.

Jeff Sheng's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" gay military personnel photography project

"Jess, Bend, Oregon, 2009" by Jeff Sheng

Another fascinating Los Angeles Times story yesterday was about photographer Jeff Sheng's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" project. (click that link if you'd like to participate in the project)

But in the case of L.A. photographer Jeff Sheng's latest project, capturing his subjects' faces would almost certainly put their careers in jeopardy. That's because Sheng has set about to photograph U.S. military service personnel who are gay but closeted in their work lives. Titled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the ongoing project consists of a series of stark, sometimes sad, portraits of U.S. soldiers who are forced to hide a part of who they are.

"I want to give an invisible community some visibility, but at the same time, to keep them invisible," said Sheng on the phone from Vancouver, where he is working on another project.

"There's already a lot of journalistic work on gay people in the military who have been discharged. My project is more about people who are still serving."

To conceal the identities of current military personnel, the photographer has used lighting and shadow effects to mask part or all of their faces. Sometimes, the subject will conceal his or her face with a hand, as in the photo above, titled "Jess, Bend, Oregon, 2009." (The names and towns of the titles are fictional for the protection of identity.)

Harlequin cover art exhibit takes Vegas

The Los Angeles Times had a great piece on the Harlequin cover art exhibit that I dumbly missed while it was in New York. Now it's in Vegas. We even learn Fabio's last name! (Lanzoni)

Inside a small room is a chronology of representations of desire.

The earliest covers draw from film noir and are rife with -- in hindsight -- unintentional comedy.

"Virgin With Butterflies" (1949) shows a brunet in thigh-high stockings encircled by five male heads sprouting butterfly wings. "Men Cast a Net for Her," the cover promises.

A decade later, women apparently dreamed of romance amid danger. In 1959's "The Yellow Snake" -- one of Semmelhack's favorite covers -- a gun-wielding, professorial man and a blond woman in pearls gasp at (as the placard helpfully explains) an "overtly phallic snake."

As women gained financial and political power, the coverboys were portrayed more as playthings than saviors. By the '70s, they were waiting to whisk away their ladies in helicopters and Austin Healeys. By the '80s (the era of Harlequin's signature bodice-ripping romances), they were groveling before corseted damsels.
And it's curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, author of Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe cover below.