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 excited that on Sunday, July 28, from 7-9 pm I'm teaching my Erotica Writing 101 workshop at sex toy store The Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis (3010 Lyndale Ave S)! Attendance is only $10 and we'll be doing lots of writing exercises and going over the ins and outs of erotic writing and getting published. If you know anyone in the Minneapolis area, please let them know. Register here.
I'm moving my erotica teaching online starting this fall (stay tuned here and to my newsletter!). I'm hard at work making it my best class yet. If you have any burning questions about the genre, feel free to drop me a line at mail at rachelkramerbussel.com and I'll do my best to answer in the class. If you want personalized attention for your writing, I also offer erotica and nonfiction sex writing consulting.
I was featured in Season 2 of the Lady Books Podcast, which I am a regular listener of and highly recommend. Check it out for more of my thoughts on erotica writing, editing and the marketplace. It was a fun and interesting trip down memory lane and deep dive into the genre.
Sorry if these are out of order - I'm in Portland, off to the Apple Store to buy a new iPhone. Yes, that's how the last few days have been. It's probably in my apartment but I went to work, went back home to look for it, couldn't find it and almost missed my plane...which was then delayed by 2 hours thanks to JetBlue so I made it. Follow along in real time once I get a new phone on Twitter.
Cupcakes Take the Cake Meetup Saturday, February 20, 2-4 pm Saint Cupcake 407 nw 17th ave @ flanders portland oregon 97209 503-473-8760 Note: Special discount rate just for us. Say you're part of the cupcake meetup and you'll get dots for $1 for dots and full-size cupcakes for $2 each.
Cupcakes Take the Cake Meetup Thursday, February 25, 6-8 pm Trophy Cupcakes (Wallingford Center) 1815 N. 45th Street, Suite 209 Seattle, Washington 206-632-7020 This one even has a Facebook page.
Cupcakes Take the Cake Meetup Sunday, February 28, 3-5 pm Cupcake 3338 University Ave. SE. Minneapolis, MN 55414 612-378-4818
Note: Seattle reading starts at 7, not 7:30. Be there for the Trophy Cupcakes cupcakes with my photo on them!!!
February 21, 6-7 pm
Reading from Best Sex Writing 2010 (Cleis Press) featuring editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and contributors Kerry Cohen, writing as Michelle Perrot, reading from "Anatomy of an Affair," about the affair she plans to have and the difference between married sex and an affair, and Janet Hardy, reading from "The Portal," about cunts and their relationship to sexuality. FREE.
Tsunami Books 2585 Willamette Street, Eugene, OR 97405-3132
Info: 541-345-8986
February 22, 7:30-8:30 pm
Reading from Best Sex Writing 2010 (Cleis Press) featuring editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and contributors Kerry Cohen, writing as Michelle Perrot, reading from "Anatomy of an Affair," about the affair she plans to have and the difference between married sex and an affair, and Janet Hardy, reading from "The Portal," about cunts and their relationship to sexuality. FREE and free cupcakes!
Featuring editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and contributors Kerry Cohen, writing as Michelle Perrot, reading from "Anatomy of an Affair," about the affair she plans to have and the difference between married sex and an affair, and Janet Hardy, reading from "The Portal," about cunts and their relationship to sexuality. FREE.
February 27, 2-4 pm Erotic Writing Workshop Taught by Rachel Kramer Bussel Shag, 108 Roebling (at N. 6th), Williamsburg, Brooklyn Acclaimed erotica author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel (Bottoms Up, Spanked, Peep Show, The Mile High Club) teaches an erotic writing workshop covering characterization, point of view, selling your work and more. Bring pen/paper or laptop for in-class exercises. Includes handouts and free cupcakes. Admission: $20 Info: 347-721-3302 Email: weloveshag@gmail.com URL: http://www.weloveshag.com
March 2, 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Best Sex Writing 2010 book party
Join Best Sex Writing 2010 editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and local contributor Diana Joseph, author of I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, for a reading and book party. The book collects the best sex journalism and essays of the year on topics ranging from teen sexting to penis size to the world's thinnest condoms to voyeurism, swinging, Tijuana bibles, sex work, crazy sex laws and Twilight as "abstinence porn," all centered on the them of sexual outlaws. Co-sponsored by Smitten Kitten; books will be available for sale and sex toys will be raffled off. Music by erotic bluegrass band Courtney McClean and The Dirty Curls; free cupcakes by Cake Eater Bakery.
March 6, 2-4 pm Erotic Writing Workshop Taught by Rachel Kramer Bussel Shag, 108 Roebling (at N. 6th), Williamsburg, Brooklyn Acclaimed erotica author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel (Bottoms Up, Spanked, Peep Show, The Mile High Club) teaches an erotic writing workshop covering characterization, point of view, selling your work and more. Bring pen/paper or laptop for in-class exercises. Includes handouts and free cupcakes. Admission: $20 Info: 347-721-3302 Email: weloveshag@gmail.com URL: http://www.weloveshag.com
Me with I'm Sorry You Feel That Way author Diana Joseph at The Smitten Kitten
I fear this post may get sappy, but so be it. [Interjecting from having finished it, I can safely say, nothing to worry about there - I will gush over Diana more later, I promise!]
Diana Joseph brings that out in me. She'd told me she might be coming to my workshop, but I wasn't sure, and she wasn't there at first, but when she walked in, I was thrilled but also nervous. One of my favorite writers is taking my writing class? The one upshot of an insanely stressful and exhausting weekend was I didn't have much stress left for the class, and I think it went well, despite forgetting the handouts I'd had in my luggage that never made it onto a plane on Friday night.
Anyway, afterward, I told her how much I loved her book, I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog, on Sunday after my Erotica 101 class, and how excited I am she's reading at In The Flesh in September (and is going to be in Best Sex Writing 2010, but that is its own nightmare right now, so we'll just glide over that), and it was this mutual admiration society. I felt like we could talk for hours on end. I meant it when I said her book changed how I see nonfiction writing, the possibilities for it. Whether I’m up to the task of dissecting those around me, let alone myself, the way she does, I don’t know. I want to because I have so much to say, so much that would be either good comic fodder (cue…looking all the hell over for my keys, burning a pair of underwear in the new vacuum I bought, wanting to cry but laughing instead at the absurdity that is my life) for a novel, or something else. It’s all hatching, waiting, while I lie in “bed” (aka, my overcluttered couch) and think about how this might make a good piece of writing. How someone somewhere might identify with, rather than just pity, me in the state of affairs I’m in. But all too often I don’t.
It’s late, I’m tired, I’m this, I’m that. Mostly, I’m scared. I think the fear winds up trumping everything. I’m so so used to failing that sometimes they just wash right over me. Missed a flight? Oh yeah, used to that. Bounced checks? Used to it. I hate being used to it. I hate expecting myself to fail, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet of course I must like it on some level, to find comfort in it, to find comfort in not writing over writing. I think I'm also scared to talk about what's really in my head, the things I fixate on that I don't totally understand, that I long to figure out on paper like some protracted math problem, adding, subtracting, multiplying until my thoughts piece themselves together into something neat and tidy. Instead, I try to puzzle out what I imagine people want to hear, some approximation of what other people are doing, what other people are selling, rather.
Diana Joseph recently wrote on her blog a brilliant take on the perils of writing (do be sure to read the whole thing, it's worth it):
For me, the worst part of writing, the ugliest part, happens when I'm starting something new. I don't like writing the first draft. The sitting down, the sitting still, the hard work of ignoring that mean voice in my head that says hey, you, this is stupid, this doesn't make any sense, this has already been said by people a lot smarter, funnier, prettier, and more interesting and profound than you could ever double dog dare to be, and besides, the bathroom is filthy, the laundry has piled up, there's a funky smell rising out of the drain in the kitchen sink and there's pacing to do! You haven't paced enough today! Get up and pace, and while you're at it, check the batteries in the smoke detector.
And then, of course, the kicker:
You suck you suck you'll never write anything good because you suckity suck.
There’s a line in my second-favorite essay of hers in her memoir, the first one about her son, the one that brought tears to my eyes because it was free of all the folksy “being a mom is the best thing in the entire world” sentiment you get in a lot of parenting writing. Or rather, the love she feels for her son didn’t have to be beaten into the reader’s head. I don’t have the book in front of me because I lent it to someone but she’s talking about the three statements she always comes back to regarding her son, and one is, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” That’s how I felt this weekend, to/for myself, to Minneapolis, to my friends. There is no excuse for a 15-hour trip. There is no excuse for all my constant failures, the way they seem to race themselves to see which can be the biggest, which can win some imagined race to the very, very rock bottom. Of course, it could be worse, but as I felt the scrape of some object against the back of my thigh, the burn of it as I scrambled all over Saturday, dust sticking to me in the heat, defeat finally taking hold in my key search quest, I couldn’t see it, couldn’t figure out what was next, what new way I could self-destruct.
I have a few things I’m proud of, things that are in the works, things that are making me feel like I am not regressing, but they are so few, so minor, next to the great failures, they are hard to see. I want to claw my way out of them, somehow, some way, because I don’t know what will happen if I don’t. But meeting Diana gave me so much hope, that one can create something greater than ourselves out of words, but not just words, the raw material of our lives in all their messiness, their imperfections.
Not only are the staff of The Smitten Kitten SO nice, plus they stock awesome sex toys, but they also make artwork for the people speaking there! Awesome. See their blog for more details and to register, call them at 612.721.6088 to RSVP. August 2, 7-9 pm, $15.
I will have details on pricing/registration soon, but for now, if you're in Minneapolis or know someone who is, please mark your calendars for August 2nd, 7 pm. I'm heading back to Minneapolis to visit friends, eat cupcakes, go to the Fringe Festival, and teach Erotica 101 that Sunday night at one of my favorite sex toy stores, Smitten Kitten. I'm pretty sure there will be cupcakes involved too, in fact, I'll make sure of it!
Me with two of my closest friends, Twanna and Nichelle. The three of us are going to Martha's Vineyard over Labor Day weekend. Me, to visit my grandmother (who grew up there) and they to have fun. I can only imagine the troubleadventures we will have!
I'm in Minneapolis this weekend, visiting friends, seeing Fringe Festival shows (tonight I have many options, so if you have a great suggestion, let me know!), eating cupcakes, and doing a booksigning and reading (today at 5:30: Amazon Bookstore, tomorrow, reading and open mic 7-8:30 at Smitten Kitten)
I'm staying with friends in this really cool apartment building in the Elliot Park neighborhood:
I went for lunch with my super-awesome publicist Buzzy Porter for Bedding Down, my December Avon Red novella anthology of winter erotica, and this is the dessert we had (I forget exactly what it was called but it was delicious!):
And now, the food that has captured my taste buds and won't let go - the shawafel from Chickpea, which just opened on Houston Street on the Lower East Side (after being on 3rd Avenue off St. Marks). Twanna can tell you; I devoured it in about two minutes!
This is the shawafel from Chickpea, which just opened on Houston (near the Sunshine theater) after being on Third Avenue off St. Marks. They are the felafel restaurant that had a reader contest to name them. Anyway, they make a felafel and shwarma combo sandwich called the shawafel that is so amazing. There's also hummus and salad and (if you want) hot sauce in it. Omg! They also have flavored felafel which I had never seen before (3 flavors of felafel, 3 flavors of shwarma). I chose spinach and broccoli felafel and was not disappointed. The felafel is baked, not fried, too.
It was so good I went back the next night and had another! And I also cannot recommend enough the side of roasted eggplant- I could eat a giant bowl of it! It's mushy and tasty and yummy. Getting hungry now just thinking about it.
The Big Book of Submission: 69 Kinky Tales
Flying High: Sexy Stories from the Mile High Club
