Portland, Oregon erotica writing workshop tonight (9/18)!

Tonight the final stop on the West Coast leg of my month of events is at Q Center, 4115 N. Mississippi Avenue in Portland, Oregon from 6 yo 8 p.m.; more details below, but you can register online or at the door using cash or credit card. After that, I'll be heading home to New Jersey followed by events in Portland, Maine, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York and my first online only erotica writing class with LitReactor starting October 16th. A few other events are in the works. Get my calendar information on my website and sign up for my monthly newsletter on the left hand side of my site's main page. I greatly appreciate you telling people in the above cities about my events if tehy might be interested.

Usually I teach at a store or conference or college, where some organization or entity has booked me. Tonight's event comes through meeting Annamarie of Kinky Sexy Geeky at CatalystCon East in March (speaking of which, the next one is March 27-29 in Arlington, Virginia and the call for panel submissions is open!). She was kind enough to help me set up this event, and she runs a series of Portland, Oregon events that I encourage you to check out, such as Talking Kink and Portland Queer Munch.




taken before I got third place in the high scores!

I got my tiger lily tattoo on my right arm at New Rose Tattoo in Portland, Oregon (since I am also going to Portland, Maine next week, I feel I keep having to clarify which one, so may just use PDX as shorthand). I have some wonderful friends in Portland, and have had wonderful readings here, including last week's at She Bop (photo below). Tuesday, while deciding to walk about a mile to Union Station, I discovered that my route would take me by the famed Ground Kontrol arcade. I've wanted to go there for years and am even on their mailing list. I got to play my favorite game, Q*bert, for a little while, and may stop back again today on my way to Q Center. My point is, I have an affinity for Portland, and am very much looking forward to tonight's class.

I've been teaching erotica writing for at least 4 years, possibly a bit longer, and the more I do it, the more I learn about the opportunities available for writers, the many ways to draw inspiration, and the possibilities for connection and creativity. I teach because I don't want to hoard the information I've acquired about the genre, and because I love to see people who may start out tentative or nervous or unsure for various reasons about what knowledge of erotic writing and inspiration they possess being to own their own unique vision and bring it to life on the page. Right up there with someone reading a beloved book I've recommended in life highs is someone telling me my classes inspired them to write. Not publish per se, though that is wonderful and I hope happens as well if someone wants it, but to write. Writing is always there, always accessible, as long as you have a pen and paper. It's been such a wonderful outlet for me, and I hope I can pass that on to others. Erotic writing especially is a way for many people to explore sexuality, their own and/or their characters', in a safe way where they control the action, no matter how outrageous the story. Portland, folks, I hope to see you tonight. As I said, you can register at the door between 5:30 and 6 p.m. sharp with cash or a credit card.

In another town? Hope you can attend one of my upcoming events! Want me to teach erotica writing in your town? Email me at rachelkramerbussel at gmail.com with "Workshop" in the subject line. More information on my workshops is on my website.

September 18, 6-8pm
Erotica 101 writing workshop, Portland, Oregon
Professional erotica author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor of over 50 anthologies such as The Big Book of Orgasms, Flying High and Best Bondage Erotica 2014, will take you through the ins and outs of modern erotic writing, from getting started, finding your voice, and incorporating your surroundings, pop culture, and personal experiences into your stories to crafting a range of characters and settings and submitting your work. The workshop is tailored to help get you published and highlight timely calls for submissions.

In this supportive, welcoming workshop environment, you'll learn how to write vividly about everyday scenarios as well as outlandish fantasies, and make them fit for particular publications in the thriving erotica market. This workshop will address the recent boom in erotica inspired by Fifty Shades of Grey, provide examples of well written erotica, and will include multiple writing exercises. You'll be given a handout listing major markets and further reading suggestions. No previous writing experience required. Please bring laptop or pen and paper. $25/person; register at Brown Paper Tickets.
Q Center, 4115 N. Mississippi Avenue, Portland, Oregon

Snapshots from Portland She Bop reading and see you again at Q Center September 18th

I'm off to the airport to get to Los Angeles but wanted to share two photos from last night's reading at She Bop in Portland, Oregon and let you know there's now a huge stack of signed books and I will go back and sign more next week when I'm in the neighborhood for my September 18 erotica writing workshop at Q Center. Advance tickets are preferred but you can get them at the door as well. Details below. Thank you to everyone who packed She Bop! It was a pleasure and a lot of fun.


Readers Emily Bingham, Stella Harris, me (Rachel Kramer Bussel), Laurel Isaac and the appropriately baseball-attired Tiffany Reisz (her jersey says "Reisz" on the back and she read from her baseball erotica story "Bringing the Heat" Hungry for More)

Before the reading I wandered around and found a macaroni and cheese restaurant, which I of course had to try (the veggie had spinach and broccoli and was awesome, especially with hot sauce) and then in walked sex geeks Queeraschino Cherry and The Redhead Bedhead, who reviews sex toy stores and runs the newly launched Portland Academy of Sex Education. I was wishing I had company and like magic, there they were!



September 18, 6-8pm
Erotica 101 writing workshop, Portland, Oregon
Professional erotica author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor of over 50 anthologies such as The Big Book of Orgasms, Flying High and Best Bondage Erotica 2014, will take you through the ins and outs of modern erotic writing, from getting started, finding your voice, and incorporating your surroundings, pop culture, and personal experiences into your stories to crafting a range of characters and settings and submitting your work. The workshop is tailored to help get you published and highlight timely calls for submissions.

In this supportive, welcoming workshop environment, you'll learn how to write vividly about everyday scenarios as well as outlandish fantasies, and make them fit for particular publications in the thriving erotica market. This workshop will address the recent boom in erotica inspired by Fifty Shades of Grey, provide examples of well written erotica, and will include multiple writing exercises. You'll be given a handout listing major markets and further reading suggestions. No previous writing experience required. Please bring laptop or pen and paper. $25/person; register at Brown Paper Tickets.
Q Center, 4115 N. Mississippi Avenue, Portland, Oregon

I love traveling but hate leaving the comforts of home

I have a love/hate relationship with traveling. Well, that may be too harsh. I love traveling, and do it frequently, so much so that I've become an ardent devotee of JetBlue's Badges program, which has allowed me to rack up lots of frequently flyer miles and visit more places (I highly recommend it; you get points for simply using social media, flying, using partner sites, etc.). While I don't love waiting on TSA lines, that process has gotten easier because I get to bypass most of the line using JetBlue's Even More Speed option, which is well worth the $10. This trip there were a few legs I couldn't use JetBlue, like Portland to Seattle, but those are cheap and quick flights.

This month I'm doing something new for me; from September 5-October 1, I'm taking 11 flights, as part of my multi-city book tour, which will take me to, in order, Seattle, Portland (OR), Los Angeles for two writing workshops I'm teaching and two panels at CatalystCon, San Francisco, back to Portland, Oregon, then after a few days at home, Portland, Maine, then back home, then Chicago, Milwaukee, then home again. It's a lot of travel, even for me, and I admit it's a little daunting, both in terms of the demands on the body of hopping on so many flights, making sure I get to my flights (thankfully, most are at reasonable hours, with only one or two at a very early hour).

But more than that, especially since moving to my house in April, I've realized just how much I'm a creature of habit. My boyfriend just asked me what kind of eggs I want, and I said what I say almost every time he asks: "Fried." He makes amazing fried eggs, and even though he also makes good scrambled eggs and omelets and other breakfasts, that's what I like and I choose it consistently. I use the same coffee mug, even though I have prettier and bigger ones.



So when I travel, my routine is disrupted. The irony is that I travel in part specifically to break up my routine, to see new things, meet new people, eat at places like Sweet Iron Waffles in Seattle, walk and navigate public transportation, and simply do things I can't do in Red Bank, New Jersey. When I'm home for a month or two, I get that itch to go somewhere. But about a week into a trip, I get very homesick. I miss my boyfriend, even though we email and talk while I'm away; it's just not the same as all our little rituals.

It's a conundrum, trying to balance both those desires, for travel adventures and the very basic daily sameness I crave. I usually travel about once a month, and that satisfies my wanderlust. Last weekend I visited cousins in Vermont, which is a true respite because they live in what to me is a very rural area. We get to eat tons of fresh food they grow, and I got to learn about games like Animal Jam and Subway Surf and go to the fair, where I ate frickles (fried pickles, which now seem to be on every menu I encounter), rode bumper cars and played bingo. But this month will be a challenge, because it's travel for both business and pleasure. I'll be teaching 7 writing workshops, doing 3 readings, and doing my first talk at a library. I'm responsible for making sure each of those events has as big a crowd as I can conjure, and making sure people leave happy they attended. I'm confident but also nervous about my ability to see those through.

Now, that's nothing compared to Chris Guillebeau, who's doing a massive book tour for his latest, The Happiness of Pursuit, which I want to read, but for a self-employed writer on a shoestring self-funded budget, it's a lot. That's why I'm trying to spread the word as wide and far as I can, because I don't want to let down the stores and conferences and community centers hosting me, and I also believe this is a very ripe time for newcomers to break into the erotica market and want to help make that happen, while also making it something I can continue to do well into the future. I'm itching to put out a new call for submissions and hope to as soon as the last obligations I have are fulfilled, but I also am spreading my wings as I wrap up my very first all-written-by-me book, an ebook for Thought Catalog Books (more about that once there's an official cover and release date, but it will be this fall!), and get ready for things I've never done before.

After this latest round of events, I'll be slowing down on travel, and probably cutting way back in 2015. I hope to have enough money to take a fun vacation, the kind where I do little more than lie around a sunny beach. I tried to take one earlier this year and it didn't quite happen, and if it doesn't this year, that's okay too. I've traveled a lot, and I really do love my house. It feels like a home, partly because it's so cozy, and partly because we've added our own touches to it and made it somewhere I adore coming back to. I didn't realize how much I craved that, but when you work from home, it matters even more. In Brooklyn, when I "worked from home," I really worked from a coffeeshop. I still love a good coffeeshop, and can get quality work done in them. But when I'm home now, I really do work here, with occasional forays to the library or a cafe for a change of scenery. So this week I'll be finishing up some writing deadlines, preparing for and promoting my events, packing and getting mentally prepared to head off on more trips in a short time period than I've ever taken before. So that's what I'm thinking about before Friday's flight to Seattle. Hope to see many of you on the road (if you know anyone near any of the cities I'll be visiting--again, Seattle, Portland (Oregon), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (Maine), Chicago and Milwaukee--I'd love it if you'd spread the word), and if you can't make it, I'm also gearing up for October's online erotica writing class with LitReactor and my October 24th erotica writing workshop in New York City

Snapshots from Vermont at the Champlain Valley Fair:


I went on this Ferrish wheeland was nervous at first, but wound up loving it




winning 3 rounds of bingo made me very happy! I miss playing bingo and want to find one near me.

Cock and balls doughnut at Voodoo Doughnut

I loved the Voodoo Doughnut in Eugene, Oregon - no line, unlike the Portland version, and you can sit inside or out, and there's pinball. And, of course, amazing donuts, like this:



Also cute:



And these are the ones I tried - whoa! I shared the bottom banana/peanut butter/chocolate one with two strangers. I ate enough of it to feel a little ill...it was amazing. Doughy and coffee-cake-cinnamon-swirl-like inside, with chocolate and peanut butter and chocolate chips on top and banana inside. Totally worth it.



See more of my Voodoo Doughnut photos here.

And Eugene was gorgeous:

Portland, I heart you

Portland has been nonstop - stayed at Hyatt Place, because I was antsy about coming to a residential neighborhood at 1 am sans phone, and had a lovely time. For $85 I got a giant room with couch and bed and there was a pool - obviously if I forgot my phone I didn't think to bring a bathing suit, but anyway, then I took the light rail to the Apple Store, got a new phone that is so fancy I barely know what to do with it, went to Saint Cupcake for a meetup, hung out with my friend Douglas who showed me some of the many food carts in Portland and we caught up.


Hello Kitty greeted me in the mall (I am a Jersey Girl at heart so of course my first stop was in a mall to get a new phone)

Then my friend Irena picked me up - I spent almost all of the summer of 1999 hanging out with her and her then-girlfriend having the time of our lives. Now she lives in a house that reminds me of a friend's in Silverlake, completely with cute little dog and guest room and we go to catch up and hang out with her wife and talk baby names, good (and bad) tattoos, cupcakes and life. And eat at Mio Sushi, where I was introduced to sushi pizza! Yum.



Tonight our pro-affair, pro-cunt sexual outlaw Best Sex Writing 2010 mini book tour with me, Kerry Cohen (Loose Girl) and Janet Hardy (The Ethical Slut) hits Tsunami Books in Eugene from 7-8, Monday night we're at Powell's on Burnside at 7:30 in Portland and Elliott Bay in Seattle at 7 on Tuesday (the latter 2 with free cupcakes). You don't want to miss it, I promise. I'll be talking about the book and what I think it means to be a "sexual outlaw."


Loose Girl author Kerry Cohen ("Anatomy of an Affair")


The Ethical Slut co-author Janet Hardy ("The Portal")