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.

Scorpio sex in hot historical romance Star Crossed Seduction by Jenny Brown

I'm debating whether to buy this just-published romance novel, Star Crossed Seduction, in paperback or on my Nook (and also a bit confused as to Barnes & Noble's loyalty program - I believe it doesn't cover Nook purchases, but if it does, then I haven't used it on the 10 or so purchases I've made and cannot for the life of me figure out how to). Anyway, ever since I read Jenny Brown's debut novel Lord Lightning I've been eager to read this. Go Scorpios! I've started a lot of historicals that I wound up putting down but hers made me race through it and almost not want it to end cause I was enjoying it so much, so I hope this one is just as good.



Read an excerpt free at Scribd

Jenny Brown has a great post (originally intended for the Borders Trueromance blog, alas) on her blog about the book, including:

One sentence summary: In this Scorpio-themed book, a war-weary Cavalry officer, who is looking for a night of dalliance, rescues a beautiful pickpocket from arrest, but their casual encounter leads to a no holds barred battle of the sexes that threatens their very lives--unless they can heal their wounded hearts.

Tell us one quirky thing about your hero? Trev is fluent in several of the languages of India and has earned a reputation as being an expert in the interpretation of Sanskrit manuscripts--including the Kama Sutra.



What is your heroine’s occupation: After the death of her lover, the revolutionary, Temperance and two young girls have supported themselves by picking pockets. Their only alternative was to work for the local bawd, Mother Bristwick.

What is your hero’s occupation: Trev, who grew up in a military family, is a cavalry officer recently returned from fighting in India's Third Maratha War. But his real love is the "little jobs" he undertakes from time to time for the scheming head of India's Political and Secret Department.

Go Team Cupcake, and Team Cleis (Press)

Because I got this card in the mail today (I turn 35 on Wednesday - yes, I'm a Scorpio!) from the whipsmart, amazing women of Cleis Press, and because I deal with them on a weekly if not daily basis, and am so honored to have Best Bondage Erotica 2011 coming out for my birthday and so many 2011 and 2012 anthologies in the works, I just wanted to say how proud I am and have been to work with Cleis Press for the last decade. They published my very first story, “Monica and Me,” in Best Lesbian Erotica 2001, edited by Tristan Taormino, just about ten years ago. I will never forget standing in the Chelsea Barnes & Noble with tears in my eyes seeing that beautiful byline.

I edit for them, and I also try my hardest to submit to as many of their anthologies as I can. Those calls challenge and push me as a writer to not be complacent. I have published probably over 100 erotica stories, I don’t know exactly, but the ones that I love, the ones that make my senses come alive, that preoccupy me, are the ones that make me feel the need to go deeper, to tell more than just a sex story. I consider them my publishing family, and this is not at all to knock other publishers I work with, who I’m of course a fan of as well, but to say that they have been there for me and with me and encouraged me and watched me grow as a writer and editor. I have learned a ton and I look forward to many more collaborations as we put out more kinky erotica and erotic romance and short shorts and who knows what else.

I love the way their books look and feel, the covers they get and the ritual of their annual anthologies. I love that I’ve befriended so many wonderful writers and editors through our mutual work with Cleis. I love working for a feminist, independent publisher whose offices are now in the town where I went to college (Berkeley, California). Go Team Cupcake, and Team Cleis, of which I am truly honored to be a part.

Part of why I love working with them is that I believe in the work they do, and have learned so much from their books (and been entertained and aroused), but they are also amazing people. This isn't just me telling you to buy their books, but me thanking the women who put so much time and energy into those books and the vision they had for their press in 1980. I'm so proud to be part of your world and have you be on my team and believe in me and collaborate with me. Anthologies are pure collaboration, between editor and publisher, and editor and authors (and, later, between authors, editors and readers), and that suits me very well. I enjoy the process of creating something from nothing, where not all the pressure is on me. I enjoy creating books where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. I enjoy seeing what happens when we go from a call for submissions to a fleshed-out, varied, sexy book.

To read more about their history, click here. A huge thank you to Frédérique Delacoste, Brenda Knight, Felice Newman, Kat Sanborn and Kara Wuest. You rock!