Dirty Girls flash sale - 27 erotica stories for $1.99!

I just found out last night while randomly scrolling online, as one does, that my Seal Press anthology Dirty Girls is on sale in ebook form for just $1.99 for Kindle, Nook, Google Play and Kobo! I don't know when the sale started or when it will end, though I imagine soon, so I encourage you to check it out. There are 27 very sexy stories inside. I'm so proud of this book, which came out all the way back in 2008 (hence the MySpace reference in the introduction!), and excited for it to reach more readers. Details about it below.



What do women really want? To be sensually seduced or pressed up against the wall for a quickie? To be tantalized by a peep show or the chance to join the mile high club?

Acclaimed erotica writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel knows: They want it all. They want to be worshiped, ordered around, sent blindly into ecstasy, and made hot in front of a mirror. They want strangers bearing ice cubes on a hot day and to be the party favor passed around among guests. They want sex at the office and in the great outdoors and on trains and airplanes. They want sex with the whole United States of America (or, at least, part of it). They want to be wooed, seduced, flirted with, taken. They want to handpick their lovers and make them do their bidding. They want men, women, and sometimes both at the same time.

In Dirty Girls, the country’s best erotic writers explore their sexual psyches. With contributions from Carol Queen, Alison Tyler, Sofia Quintero, Shanna Germain, Lillian Ann Slugocki, Tsaurah Litzky, and many others, this collection will set your heart racing as you savor these intimate, shocking, and passionate female fantasies.

Blurbs:

“Finally⎯a book about what girls REALLY think about. Well, maybe not every one, but the dirty ones…and those are the ones who really count.” — Joanna Angel, CEO, BurningAngel Entertainment

“Dirty Girls is the post-feminist generation’s answer to Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, a collection of erotically charged short stories that reveal that, in the 21st century, good girls are dead and dirty girls are the new black.” — Susannah Breslin, author of You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You?

“A spanking good collection of smart erotica assembled by always exciting ringleader Rachel Kramer Bussel, Dirty Girls begs the question ‘What are those dirty girls thinking?’ and answers with insight not just to how women want it, but why.” — Lisa Beth Kovetz, author of The Tuesday Erotica Club

“This is an outstanding collection of hot women’s stories. That’s hot stories by women and stories by hot women. The table of contents reads like a who’s who in the best erotica writers around, an All Star team who deliver the raunch and punch the reader deserves. Rawr.” — Cecilia Tan, author of Black Feathers and White Flames: Erotic Dreams

Table of Contents

Introduction – Dirty and Sweet Wrapped Up in One

1. Fucking Around by Marie Lyn Bernard
2. Live Tonight by Saskia Walker
3. Just Another Girl on the Train by Catherine Lundoff
4. Beautiful Creature by Kristina Wright
5. In the Name Of… by Isabelle Gray
6. Cheesy Boots by L. Elise Bland
7. Truck Stop Cinderella by Lillian Ann Slugocki
8. The Dream of Life by Tenille Brown
9. The Mile High Club by Kate Dominic
10. Like a Good Girl by Alison Tyler
11. The Garden of Sinn by Darklady
12. Bag and Baggage by Teresa Noelle Roberts
13. Icy Hot by Rachel Kramer Bussel
14. Dreams by Marilyn Jaye Lewis
15. Shocking Expose! Secrets Revealed! by Carol Queen
16. To Dance at the Fair by Donna George Storey
17. The First Deadly Sin by Gwen Masters
18. El Mar de Encanto by Sofia Quintero
19. Flight by Suki Bishop
20. Lily by Tsaurah Litzky
21. Opera Gloves by Maddy Stuart
22. Party Favor by Andrea Dale
23. Carn Euny by Madelynne Ellis
24. A Prayer to Be Made Cocksure by Melissa Gira
25. All About Hearts by Sage Vivant
26. The Next Thing by Gina de Vries
27. Until It’s Gone by Shanna Germain

Introduction: Dirty and Sweet Wrapped Up in One

“I can be dirty and sweet at the same time” reads my self-proclaimed motto on my MySpace page. When I wrote that, I meant that not so deep inside me lurks the soul of a highly perverted, kinky, dirty girl who can get aroused often by a single word whispered in my ear or a solid smack across my ass. Once someone gets me into that zone, I’ll do anything, no matter how depraved, to be with them. I’ll find myself fantasizing about all the wicked things we can do together throughout the day and night, waking from wild dreams with the wish that they were beside me. I’ll see their name in my inbox and get instantly wet. I’ll tell them in public exactly what I want them to do to me, and vice versa. Yes, that’s what I mean by “dirty.”

Yet I don’t think my sexual interests make me any less of a well-rounded, kind-hearted intelligent person. I’m “sweet” in the sense that I care about my friends and family, like sending cards and random gifts, strive to be a good person (also, I run a blog about cupcakes). I’m as likely to kiss a lover’s forehead tenderly and offer to tuck them into bed as I am to throw them down on the floor and strip them naked. For me, the sweet and tender and down-and-dirty go hand in hand; I’m most turned on, and most slutty, when I’m partnered with someone who brings out my sweet side. Once, I visited a boyfriend who was sick with a fever, and did the one thing I could think of to make him feel better: sank down on his bed and took his cock in my mouth. Playing the slutty nurse, horny yet doting, is another aspect to my dirty/sweet motto.

I’d originally meant the phrase as a throwaway line, but more and more I’m realizing that everyone (or almost everyone) has a dirty and a sweet side. All too often we denigrate the dirty girls⎯the ones who dare to publicly show their naughty sides⎯as incorrigible sluts, rather than realizing just how much exciting it is to tap into our lustiest selves. Once you crack the surface of those who are seemingly prim and proper (the demure suburban housewife, the suited-up banker, the quiet secretary, the curious bookworm, the shy computer nerd), you’ll very likely find that the simplicity of the word “dirty” doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to describe the kinks that lurk within them.

The women writing here don’t apologize for being dirty. They know who and what they want and they go after the objects of their affection in all kinds of different ways. Reading this collection⎯whether from start to finish or skipping around to your favorite authors or the most eye-catching titles⎯will give you a glimpse into what makes women wet, what makes us feel and act dirty, what makes us slick our lips and spread our legs. Maybe, just maybe, their stories attempt to answer Freud’s infamously infuriating query: “What do women want?” To judge by the twenty-seven tales you hold in your hand, they want to be worshiped, they want to be ordered around, they want to be sent spinning into ecstasy and then come crashing back down. They want strangers bearing ice cubes on a hot day, and to be a party favor passed around among guests. They want hot vacation sex, visits to peep shows, and a man who’ll lick stinky cheese off their boots. They want power, and they want to give up power. They want sex at the office and in the great outdoors and on trains and airplanes. They want sex with the whole United States of America (or, at least, part of it). They want to be wooed, seduced, flirted with, taken. They want men, women, and sometimes both at the same time.

Of course, there’s more to what women want out of sex than any one book could possibly capture. What I’ve done with this anthology is highlight some of the best erotic writing I’ve found from authors who show you exactly what makes their hearts beat and their clits stand at attention. What they’re up to is, as Marie Lyn Bernard so aptly puts it, “Fucking Around” (which I briefly considered as a very fitting alternative title to this book). When I first heard Bernard read this story tag-team style at my reading series “In The Flesh,” I was blown away. She captures so much of the drama of sex⎯the high highs, the low lows, the awkwardness and the intensity⎯in a playful yet totally hot way. And when she writes about the Big Apple, it’ll make you want to hop the first plane or train to get here: “New York fucks me. New York fucks me so hard that I cry. My pussy opens like the long throat of a flame-swallower. Her fingers make love to the inside of my bellybutton. I am sweating so much that our bodies glide against each other like fish underwater.” You’ll find yourself drawing a map of your own sexual conquests, marking your territory right along with Bernard.

But for every feisty babe here, there’s another just in the process of discovering what turns her on. “Dirty” can be a state of mind just as much as it can be a description of one’s bedroom antics. Carol Queen’s peepshow virgin protagonist Abby doesn’t quite know what she’s getting into with her new friends Daniel and Lila, but she desperately wants to find out. “Lila’s lips covered hers right away, soft and wet, licking and nibbling in one of the most arousing kisses Abby had ever experienced,” writes Queen. “Dirty” doesn’t always mean depraved, either; these stories aren’t all wham-bam-thank-you-sir (or ma’am) quickies. Many of them evoke the intensity of emotion sex can bring with it, the ways having a lover know you literally inside and out can throw your life completely off balance, as if they can read your soul like a map, using fingers, toys, tongues, and cocks to navigate you until they own your internal compass. The thrill of giving yourself over to someone, of giving up control for that deliciously delirious sensation of pure erotic adrenaline, surfaces throughout this collection.

The women you’ll find here are complex; they’re by turns playful and bashful, horny and haughty. They want to share much more with you than just the details of their latest screw. They want you to know what makes them tick, who haunts their dreams, why they can’t quite forget the man who fucked them senseless, even when they’re with someone new. They like to watch and be watched, to take risks, to live out their long-held fantasies. Some are in loving, committed relationships, ones that allow them room to get their freak on with the person who knows just how to push their every button. Others, like my “Icy Hot” protagonist, don’t even want to know their bedmate’s name: “I forgot about the fact that I didn’t really know him at all. Sometimes, in a city of millions of strangers, you just have to take a chance and let your body make the decisions for you, as I’ve learned over the years. And my body was saying yes, please, more, harder.”

“Dirty” doesn’t preclude poetry, the kind where the words roll off the page, roll from your tongue, so beautifully it’s like they themselves are making love to you. Writers like Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Suki Bishop, and Melissa Gira probe the twisted places women go in search of sex⎯and themselves. In “A Prayer to Be Made Cocksure,” Gira elevates the art of the blowjob to new heights: “I sucked your cock as if it was the last cock. I trusted you to let me keep breathing, to never take that final bit from me, to tell me that getting any air at all was your choice just by reaching your hand down the length of your chest to me, to cradle the back of my neck, to run your fingers across my lips, softly, as you plunged suddenly and held me at the edge.” She takes you right into that moment, where this intimate act is dissected, treasured, hoarded, and missed.

You’ll find a range of motivations here, from women looking to spice up a lackluster relationship to single girls on the prowl to kinky couples, daring dommes, and sultry sirens intent on performing on a sexual stage of their own creation. You may read their stories and ask yourself: Would you ever write your name across your lover’s cock? What about pick up a stranger at a rock concert or screw a doctor in a hospital? Get fingered at the opera? Go to a bondage club? These characters do all this and more, always making sure their wanting, lusting, panting, and perversions are met with equal fervor.

Take a hot and steamy trip with these writers as they unlock your deepest desires, or perhaps give you some new ideas to try out next time you shut your eyes and part your legs. From tender to tempting, sweet to sadistic, loving to lascivious, there’s something for every reader who wants to go to bed with images that’ll surely make you blush and just may spark some brand-new, unique fantasies of your very own.

Rachel Kramer Bussel
New York City
July 2007

My hoarding essay "(Mostly) Not Ashamed" in Dancing at the Shame Prom

The anthology Dancing at the Shame Prom: Sharing the Stories That Kept Us Small, edited by Amy Ferris and Holly Dexter (Seal Press) is shipping now from Amazon and includes my essay "(Mostly) Not Ashamed," about hoarding, a follow-up to my Salon hoarding essay. The book will soon be in stores nationwide and I believe will be available as an ebook, but I'm not seeing that listed online right now. I will be reading from my essay on October 11th at 7 p.m. at the JCC in Manhattan at 334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th Street (my name isn't listed on their site, but I am reading). It's $10 for members, $12 for non-members, with wine and cheese. Find out more at theshameprom.com and check out their Tumblr and share your own shame story at dancingattheshameprom.tumblr.com.

Here's the first three paragraphs of my essay, and please do check out the whole book. Aside from my participation, I'm truly eager to read the whole book as soon as I get my hands on it. Actually, I feel that way about all books by Seal Press, and plan to raid their offices tomorrow when I'm there (kidding, sortof).

I make a living writing about things that most people would find too private, personal and uncomfortable to reveal. I left law school for a career writing about sex and dating, in erotic fiction and first-person accounts. I've covered everything from my bukkake fantasies to hooking up with a Top Chef contestant to mommy play. I've posed nude and gotten hate mail. Being open about sex has never felt unnatural, but it took me a very long time to come to terms with the fact that I'm a hoarder, and even longer to share the word with others.

Hoarding, for most people, conjures up gruesome images. Mention it and you're likely to hear about the Collyer Brothers, who died trapped by their own stuff. Hoarding isn't something I take lightly, but I've finally learned that it's not something I can walk around feeling wracked by shame by or chained to my apartment, constantly sorting and cleaning and feeling guilty. Take me or leave me, but you can't take me without my stuff.

As I type this, I'm sitting in my "bed," which is now just a deconstructed mattress on the floor. The frame, which I've been meaning to throw out on the one designated day my Brooklyn apartment allows large items of trash, is tilted sideways against the wall in the middle of the room. Scattered around are hundreds of books and dozens of articles of clothing, along with random items like pillows and padded envelopes, an ironing board that used to support the mattress, an overturned chair, papers from the early 2000's, neatly placed in labeled files with names like "taxes" and "travel," from back when I made an attempt at organization.

My erotica on Kindle and Nook and Audible - updated for May 2012

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For those who are into that sort of thing, here's a handy list/links to my erotica anthologies on Kindle. Below are links to Kindle editions, Nook editions and Audible audiobook editions (where available, more audiobooks are coming soon). Visit my website for links to all my books as well as the anthologies my work has been published in.

I'm updating my website's books page so all the links to Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Nook, Powells, IndieBound, Cleis Press, etc. will be just a click away - that is coming soon. When you click through below you'll see that almost all of these have a free sample chapter (usually the first story) you can download to see if you like it, and most of my Wordpress blogs for the books (not linked below but search for the book on this blog for links, those links will be coming soon) have the full introduction and sometimes a story sample.

And when you use the links below, I do get a small fee from Amazon. I have no preference how you read my books.

This story "Fishnet Queen" is only $9.99 (some cheaper)! A bargain, and instantly delivered.


"Fishnet Queen"


out June 1st, Suite Encounters: Hotel Sex Stories


Going Down: Oral Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Curvy Girls (Nook edition)


Irresistible: Erotic Romance for Couples (Nook edition)


Best Sex Writing 2012 (Nook edition)


Best Bondage Erotica 2012 (Nook edition)


Women in Lust (Nook edition)


Obsessed: Erotic Romance for Women (Nook edition)


Surrender: Erotic Tales of Female Submission and Pleasure (Nook edition)


Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex (Nook edition)


Best Bondage Erotica 2011 (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Passion: Erotic Romance for Women (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Smooth: Erotic Stories for Women Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Orgasmic: Erotica for Women Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Fast Girls: Erotica for Women Nook edition)


Please, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Male Submission (Nook edition)


Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission (Nook edition)


Best Sex Writing 2010 (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition

Best Sex Writing 2009 (Nook edition)


Peep Show: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists
Audible audiobook edition)


Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition)


The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Bedding Down: A Collection of Winter Erotica (Nook edition)


Tasting Her: Oral Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Rubber Sex

Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women


Yes, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Male Submission (Nook edition)


Yes, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission (Nook edition)

Best Sex Writing 2008


Hide and Seek: Erotic Stories (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Crossdressing: Erotic Stories (Nook edition)


He's on Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition

Kinky size 16 woman wants to get spanked and take orders in BDSM story "Big Girls Do Cry"

The other night at Bluestockings, before we busted out the vulva cupcakes by Kitchentop Catering, inspired by my friend Diana Cage's reading from her wonderful book Mind-Blowing Sex, I read the first three pages of my story "Big Girls Do Cry" from Curvy Girls and wanted to share it with you because it addressed something that Diana talked about, which I'll paraphrase, which is the idea that sex means what we think it means. We imbue each act with power and meaning and importance, and getting into the particulars of why one person does or doesn't get off on something is part of what, in my opinion, drives erotica. I'm fascinated by the assumptions we all make about people based on their outward appearance and what they're really into regarding sex, as well as the contradictions of what we want vs. what we allow ourselves to do when it comes to sex. Also, an update: I have absolutely no idea when or even if a Kindle and Nook version of Curvy Girls is coming out. Yes, this makes me sad, but it's completely out of my control so I'm sticking to the Serenity Prayer and focusing on things I do have control over (stay tuned for a great BOGO promo and more). As soon as it's available in ebook form, I promise to let you know. It's a juicy book, and I encourage you to check it out; it's got pregnancy sex, butches getting it on with each other in public, "Runner's Calves," corsets, lots of exhibitionism, sex work and so much more. And, obviously, kink. So I do encourage you to buy Curvy Girls and enjoy it. And if I ever get a next time, the one thing I wish this book had were some hot dominant women! I didn't see that in the submissions and it was a curious omission, in my opinion. Speaking of submissions, a reminder that I want your stories for my anal sex and orgasm anthologies by June 1st!

And I wrote what's below well before Christian Grey's contract in Fifty Shades of Grey demanding that Ana go to a trainer 4 times a week and eat only from a given list of foods came out, a part of the book that left me cold. It's not that I don't think obeying orders around food can't be written hotly; see the amazing story "Lunch" by Elizabeth Coldwell in my anthology Yes, Sir for an example of that. But that segment of their BDSM contract is the kind of thing I was referring to in the passage below.



From my story "Big Girls Do Cry" which you can read in full in Curvy Girls.

You would not believe the number of men who think that just because I’m a big girl, a voluptuous size 16 who isn’t afraid to show off all my assets, that what I’m put on this earth for is to beat their bottoms silly. I’m sure there are plenty of women who get off on that—because I’ve seen them in action and heard plenty of stories—but having a naked, eager, collared man at my feet just isn’t for me. I’m not offended by it or anything, it just doesn’t turn me on, just like some people prefer rocky road and some prefer vanilla. I like my road to be rocky—as long as someone else is doing the rocking.

I prefer to be the one on the floor, stripped bare, eagerly waiting for whatever the perfect, sexy, handsome, smart, mindfucking, sadistic dom of my dreams wants me to do. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember; the rush of having a lover give me even the merest instruction, kinky or not, from “kiss my hand” to “show me your panties,” is enough to turn me into a puddle of mush. When I get like that, all hot and liquid, my body feels, in a way, weightless. Not literally, of course, and a size zero is not something I aspire to; I mean a more ethereal kind of weightless, like I’m floating and then being brought back down to the earth with a loud, painful, delicious smack on my ass.

Yet for all my desires, it’s only happened twice. Only two men have been able to see exactly how I want to be treated and been capable of delivering it. I get that dominance isn’t for everyone—if it were, my attempts to shimmy into a corset and latex skirt and slash a whip in the air would’ve probably either led me to a devoted husband or a career as a dominatrix by now. But for the most part, I’ve spent my time in the kinky world watching and waiting. I’ve always believed that good things come to those who wait, as facile as that might sound. I’m 24, and I’ve been waiting long enough, observing, staring, lusting after those women lucky enough to get taken over a man’s knee, to be tied up to a cross, to have a gag shoved in their mouth while they thrash around, knowing that they can’t escape until everyone gets what they need.

I know what I want—to cry, to scream, to struggle, to surrender, to be “forced” into all manner of degrading scenarios—but I don’t just want it from anyone. That’s why those two brief dalliances were just that; something about what we were doing didn’t feel quite right. The motions were there, sure, but the men seemed to either be taking out some latent anger on me or simply going through the motions. I want a man who means it. I don’t want it from the men in whom lurks an undercurrent of misogyny, who think the scene is a place to let that loose. I don’t want men who’ll try to “order” me to lose weight and think that’s okay because they’re the top and whatever they say goes. I don’t want a man who doesn’t respect every inch of my womanhood, but rather one who wants to top me, torture me, and tie me up because he respects my every curvy pound.

For a long time, I hated this need, and tried to subvert it, going out with vanilla boys who were perfectly sweet, and sweetly perfect, and therein lay the problem. They were too sweet, too soft, and treated me too tenderly, or ones who somehow fetishized my size, turning me into a woman to put on a pedestal and cower under rather than a living, breathing woman. If it weren’t men building me up to an inflated size and importance like in Rene Magritte’s painting The Giantess, they were considering me a cuddly teddy bear of a girl, someone whose cleavage they could nuzzle up to, someone they could stroke and fondle, someone who could mommy them in a sexual way, but never slap and sting. That would offend their principles. I say, fuck principles, fuck propriety. What’s a hot-blooded kinky girl to do with her desire to bend over?

Read the whole story (yes, of course there is spanking!) in Curvy Girls.

Love, race and family tonight with the brilliant Diane Farr and Ken Tanabe

You really don't want to miss this meeting of two truly brilliant minds and open-hearted, amazing people who are working to make the world a better, less racist place. Ken Tanabe is the found of Loving Day and Diane Farr is the author of Kissing Outside the Lines: A True Story of Love and Race and Happily Ever After, which is about both her love story with her Korean husband and follows stories of various interracial couples as they navigate their families old and new. And yes, this will finally inspire me to finish up my interview with Diane and get it online by hook or by crook. She had so many amazing things to say and I want to share them.



Venue: Barnes and Noble Tribeca
Address Line 1: 97 Warren Street
City: New York
State (if you are in the U.S.A): New York
Country: United States

You may know Diane Farr as an actress on "Rescue Me" and "Numb3rs," or as a host on "Loveline." Her new book, "Kissing Outside the Lines," is her "unapologetic - often hilarious - look at the complexities of interracial/ethnic/religious/what-have-you love." She shares her own story of creating a family with someone from a race and culture different from her own, as well as the stories of other multiracial couples from different corners of the U.S.

Join Loving Day for this entertaining and informative event! Diane Farr will be there in person to discuss "Kissing Outside the Lines." There will also be a Q&A session moderated by Loving Day founder Ken Tanabe.

Diane Farr at Barnes & Noble Tribeca
Wednesday, July 6th at 6:30pm
97 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007

Can’t make it to the event? Your purchases from Barnes & Noble online (and at the store) between July 6-10, 2011 can benefit Loving Day. For online orders, check the box labeled “Check this box if this is a Bookfair Order”. Then, in the field labeled “BOOKFAIR ID NUMBER,” enter 10519932. Your purchases in the store or over the phone will also benefit Loving Day if you provide our Bookfair ID number 10519932.

Loving Day fights racial prejudice through education and builds multicultural community. A growing global network of annual Loving Day Celebrations commemorate the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. For more information about Loving Day, please visit http://www.lovingday.org
Hosted By:
Diane Farr and Loving Day
RSVP:
not required
Link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=212139408821652

Sex After 50: The Naked Truth, new column

My latest column, "Sex After 50: The Naked Truth" quotes Naked at Our Age author Joan Price, who's about to go on a book tour, Sugar in My Bowl editor Erica Jong and more on senior sex. If you like the column, there are buttons at the top of it to spread the word - as always, that's much appreciated!



Joan Price is 67 and wants you to know that sex doesn’t stop at 50—or 60, 70 or 80 and 90!

The author of Better Than I Ever Expected is back with a new book, Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex (Seal Press), inspired by the many readers who wrote to her asking about how to deal with issues ranging from vulvar pain to breakups, illnesses such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, as well as “dating while older,” erectile dysfunction, divorce, grief, even hiring people for sex or erotc touch. The tone of the book is supportive but realistic; Price isn’t telling seniors to expect to have the exact same kinds or frequency of sex, but instead that if you’re adaptable, sex can continue (with yourself and others) for one’s entire lifetime.

Throughout the book, Price and a series of experts such as Charlie Glickman, Lou Paget, Carol Queen, and Candida Royalle offer tips related to specific queries in concise, practical responses. Price is a big sex toy advocate as well. “When I review a sex toy on my blog, I concentrate on what it does well (or is supposed to do well!), and how well it works from a senior perspective. e.g. It shouldn’t hurt arthritic wrists; it should last as long as we need without overheating or turning itself off, and more.”

Read the whole column

Waking up next to her makes a rough week a little better

Trying to snap out of this rough week's mindset so I can appreciate my vacation this weekend and leave the ills of New York and self-sabotage behind. Excited to spend some time away and also to come back and hopefully have both perspective and creativity, two things I've been lacking lately. Waking up next to this fluffy, friendly one has helped, and I get to do it next week too!

When I was little I always begged my mom for a cat. "If you're not going to get me a cat, don't get me anything," I said before I think my 8th or 9th birthday. But I was allergic and we lived in an apartment building where they weren't allowed. I wasn't hearing it. I honestly don't know if I'd be good at taking care of a cat in the long-term, but I don't have to worry about that. In the short time, like tonight and tomorrow morning, I get to cuddle with her, which is perfect, cause talking to people I would probably not be so successful at right now.

It's such a close shot cause she was lying on my chest. So, onward. I am very good at lamenting what I haven't done, but am trying to focus on what I can do in the moment, like write about BEA fatigue. And masturbation. And gay threesomes. The usual mix. I will tell you that the best book I got at BEA (obviously haven't read them all, but I can tell) is Pesi Dinnerstein's forthcoming memoir from Seal Press, A Cluttered Life: Searing for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys. I grabbed it this morning...after frantically looking for my keys.

She nails things in just the first few pages I've read that could be straight out of my head, about the reasons behind hoarding and clutter and filling ourselves up with all the things we fill ourselves up with, women like us. I am trying not to do that, yet that process seeps in, whether it's filling up my hand with to do list items or my bags or my home or my mouth. Unlearning, or avoiding, lifelong bad habits is extremely challenging. They are comforting even when they're clearly dysfunctional, hence I make the same errors when it comes to not finishing, procrastinating, spending, clutter, whatever, over and over again. It's why I'd rather not drink at all than even give myself the option.

I'd rather choose nothing because I don't think I'll ever be fully rid of my all or nothing mindset; that's the rationale behind my short-lived dating hiatus. I couldn't trust myself and my "all" in terms of dating was both literal and full of bad decisions, ones that often, in the moment, felt good. I could talk myself into justifying them just like I do with all the other arenas where I'm careening into negative behaviors. It's not just a daily thing but sometimes an hourly, or by the minute, process of pulling myself out of that darkness. I almost lost it yesterday with such a wave of self-hatred I could barely get myself back for my signing, let alone smile and act happy to sign books. But I did and by the end I actually was kindof happy to have signed all the copies of Gotta Have It that were placed in front of me. I gave out swag and people not only looked excited to read the book, lots were giving it as gifts, and I wrote down the URL for the hotel erotica anthology I'm editing. Thank you to everyone who came to that signing for helping me see that failure isn't such an all or nothing prospect. It's one (or, okay, three or ten) failures, paired with lots of successes. There isn't a scorecard; it's just life, and sometimes I make good decisions and live up to my potential, and sometimes I bomb hard. I know there is a lesson in the bombing; I'm still trying to figure out what that is and find a way to prove to myself that I can meet my goals. I can't try to live up to anyone else's goals for me; that is a road to ruin, but I can make goals for myself and hold myself accountable, and that is what I'm trying to do in this crazy year of 35 that much of the time I just wish were over.

One lesson I learned this week is that having a cat stick her wet little nose all up in my face and show me so much unconditional love was both adorable and really healing. She doesn't care in the least about any of my human flaws and problems and I totally needed that. It was an unexpected bit of catsitting and I'm very grateful for the opportunity.

My review: Big Sex Little Death by Susie Bright

My interview with Susie Bright should be up tomorrow at SexIs Magazine but in the meantime, my review of her new memoir Big Sex Little Death, available at Amazon and wherever books are sold. See susiebright.com for tour dates.



Big Sex Little Death is about some of the things you would expect from a Susie Bright memoir: her time at pioneering lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs, the feminist sex wars, politics and hypocrisy. But it's also about a lot of things you might not expect, things that revealed not just how she got to where she is now and the forces that shaped her, but the rift her parents' divorce caused inside her, and how it shaped her as a parent and person.

Bright starts off as a little girl trying to absorb what she can about her family, and to tolerate the wild mood swings her mother has, often with Bright as the object of her derision. It's almost easy to forget that she was ever that little girl when she so boldly takes on the status quo as a high school student with the newspaper The Red Tide. But Bright's vision is set on being part of real socialist organizing, and she drops out of school, argues her way into the IS, raises the money to get there by housecleaning and is even willing to stay after almost being beaten to death and facing extremely dangerous situations. To her the cause stands paramount, yet she is always questioning and observing those around her. There are moments that make one pause and think, "This happened in America?" Even for those of us who aren't under the illusion that the US is perfect, those are hard moments, but Bright manages to write about them, such as the racism at her department store job, with an eye for injustice and a belief that there are ways to change these injustices.

This is especially clear as she maps out the feminist culture at the time she was starting to sell vibrators at Good Vibrations and become part of On Our Backs. The clash between what women were being told they were supposed to be doing in the name of feminism and what women were exploring sexually provided for plenty of drama, and Bright is at perhaps her sharpest here, highlighting both the thrill of being part of something new and visionary as well as the death threats that came with it. During this time, Bright also becomes a mother and there are some very poignant observations about the credit she was given, by random neighbors and others who previously would have dismissed her, and how the process of becoming a parent helped her see that she was not doomed to repeat her mother's mistakes.

This book is admittedly not an attempt to document an exhaustive history of either The Red Tide, On Our Backs, or Susie Bright's entire life, and the stories she did choose to tell are illuminating. She doesn't lose that youthful spirit of wanting to shake things up that she had at sixteen, even in the face of ostracism from within the ranks of the IS or the lesbian or feminist worlds. She does, however, make choices she needs to to best protect herself and her family. This is a powerful book that will, perhaps, leave you unsettled...in a good way. The writing is so rich, too (she describes Andrea Dworkin as "Like arguing with Freud but being happy he was taking you for a ride.), and Bright is clearly not just rehashing the same old stories. The final chapters, in which she is served with papers, there's a murder and Bright grapples with motherhood, are particularly dramatic, but there is a gracefulness to Bright's words, one that doesn't mute any of the horror of the details she's revealing, but that in fact leaps off the page. It highlights the reality that truth is stranger than fiction and certainly makes the book go out with a bang. A fascinating read whether you're familiar with Bright's book or not, whether you share her political beliefs or not; this is a memoir about finding companionship as well as fierce opposition among the rebels, and figuring out when to stand one's ground and when to find new ground to stand on.

How Santa's flying reindeer relate to psychotropic mushrooms and so much more from Spring Warren's memoir Quarter-Acre Farm

I'm so taken with Spring Warren's memoir The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year, just out from Seal Press, with gorgeous illustrations by Jesse "Nemo" Pruet. You can find out more about her gardening experiment on her blog Quarter-Acre Farm.

One thing I love about the book is that I have no intention of ever growing anything; I just don't see how I could in Brooklyn and even if I lived in somewhere less urban, I barely cook as it is. That's where I want to start (especially with Isa Chandra Moskowitz's new vegan cookbook Appetite for Reduction). But I'm enjoying Quarter-Acre Farm for the same reason I enjoy any memoir: it's teaching me something. And is whipsmart and funny too. Warren has a sense of humor and isn't trying to sell anyone else, necessarily, on doing what she did. She's sharing the ups, downs and odds and ends of growing her own food for a year, and how her family, friends, neighbors and animals (geese!) reacted.



Here's a little bit of trivia for you from Quarter-Acre Farm. If you want some great recipes and an entertaining look at how one woman went about setting up a home garden in Davis, California, I highly recommend it.

For instance, psychotropic mushrooms are said to be the source of the myth of Santa's flying reindeer. Lapland reindeer apparently love Amanita muscaria mushroom, which are not only hallucinogenic but they also supposedly stimulate the animal's muscular system. This made small efforts on the part of the reindeer produce surprising results--enormous reindeer leaps. These leaps then led to stories of flying reindeer, which were eventually assimilated into the folklore of St. Nicholas.

I mean, come on, how can you not love that? Followed by a recipe for mushroom soup! Her writing style is sometimes humorous, but mostly I'd say lively. It's engaging and makes you want to garden if it would provide so much sense of discovery about the world around us and what we eat (and some sobering thoughts on pesticides).

Also, not about gardening, but I'd never heard of cranberry beans before I started reading this book, and there they were in the Brunch Beans stew at my local standby, Saltie, making them my new favorite dish there. Highly recommended! I totally ate the bread first, though next time I'd recommend saving one or two pieces to sop up the stew. So hearty and perfect for a rainy day.

Jennifer Lauck on revising memoir and who owns your story

I'm busy packing so all the blog posts and articles and stories in my head I've been meaning to write, well, I hope they will get written soon. In the meantime, Found author Jennifer Lauck has a fascinating post up at SheWrites about changing her memoir very late in the game because someone in it had objected to how they were portrayed. Her response was to remove them entirely from the manuscript. I'm fascinated by the memoir process, how composite characters work, how the path to shaping a particular truth gets changed by market forces, morality, editorial concerns. I'm the kind of person who is a gullible reader, who gets so sucked into the story I often forget that it is not just a story, but a single version of a story. One side. I've been trying to think about that, but not to the point where it stymies me, when I write, about things as innocuous as sleeping patterns, as well as about missed calls and endings of relationships. I said the other day that if you focus entirely on what someone else might think of what you write, it'd be almost impossible to write anything. Yet there are always so many versions of the truth, shadings, ways of padding it or stripping it down.

Rather, I removed this person, in total, from the pages of my book.

This is one of the hardest (and most interesting) aspects of writing memoir. The people in our lives, who are inevitably going to end up in the lines, will have a different view of the experiences we write about. Depending how evolved people are, they will react strongly or not at all. Some will care. Others will not. Most often, if a person is positively portrayed in a book, they are delighted. If they are complex on the page, the reaction is usually very strong and quite negative.

Still, no one has the right to rewrite a memoirist’s book. Memoir defined is a story about the writer's experience and what she does with her experience in order to grow, even evolve as a human being. A memoir is the point of view of the writer because it is about her life and her perception of an experience. That is what a reader expects from a memoir and that is what a good memoir produces. To allow another, relatively minor character, in your memoir to alter your truth for the sake of their continued friendship or even love is no friendship and no love. That is not relationship. That is occupation.

Cocktail oral erotica with no actual sex story "Blow Me" in Nice Girls, Naughty Sex

One of the assignments I give out and discuss when I teach erotica is about writing an erotica story where no actual sex takes place (and I don't mean no "intercourse" but no actual genital sexual contact between the characters). It's a tough thing to pull off and definitely not what I'd want to see from most erotica submissions but sometimes it works. My story "Blow Me" was inspired by a cocktail and is now published in the Seal Press anthology Nice Girls, Naughty Sex: 20 Erotic Tales, edited by Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade of the website Oysters and Chocolate (if you're looking for places to submit your erotica, check them out). I haven't seen the book yet but hopefully I will soon (kindof skeeves me out that someone "reviewed" it on Amazon saying they hadn't read it yet but were excited about it - call me crazy, but that doesn't seem like the purpose of Amazon reviews).

It's a story with alternating points of view, which I rarely do. If you like the story and want more oral sex erotica, do of course check out my IPPY-winning anthologies Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories and Tasting Her: Oral Sex Stories

A Technicality, by Sommer Marsden

Behind Bars, by Sarannah DeWylde

Siestas and Spanish Leather Boots, by Rosalia Zizzo

Name Your Price, by A.M. Hartnett

Looking for Wintergreen, by Trish DeVene

At a Standstill, by Heidi Champa

A Welcome Threat, by Venerato Petronius

Dirty Cop Doesn’t Mean What It Used To, by Emily Croy

Blow Me, by Rachel Kramer Bussell

For His Pleasure, by Sienna Conroy

Good Doggy, by Janine Ashbless

Evelyn, by Julian Augustus Finisterre

Corset, by Kay Jaybee

A Lesson for Claire, by Claire Gravier

Serving Miss Paden, by Talia Kelley

Phoenix, by Valerie Lewis

An Open Letter, by Aimee Herman

Dragon Lady, by Kristina Wright

Daylight Savings Time, by Jeremy Edwards

Honeymoon Suite, by Donna George Storey

Next on my reading list: Cami Ostman's marathon memoir Second Wind

I like working with publishers, such as Harlequin, Cleis Press and Seal Press, to name three, that publish books I like to read. They all do, and while I don't have time to read everything they publish, I try to keep up and have discovered some amazing authors that way. While Seal always has lots of titles I'm interested in (I'm basically the target audience for Pretty Neat, you know?), what I love about discovering books the most is just that: the discovery. The act of hearing about a book in some fashion, usually through a friend, review, via social media or, in this case, via the publisher, and thinking, Wow, that sounds amazing. Also in this case, thinking, And that is the perfect gift for my marathon-running stepfather.

So I haven't read it yet, but I look forward to the memoir Second Wind: One Woman's Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents. Her official site is 7marathons7continents.com and you can also keep track of her goal to run a marathon in each of the 50 United States by 2017!

Publisher's description:

Second Wind is the story of an unlikely athlete and an unlikely heroine: Cami Ostman, a woman edging toward midlife who decides to take on a challenge that stretches her way outside of her comfort zone. That challenge presents itself when an old friend suggests she go for a run to distract her from the grief of her recent divorce. Excited by the clarity of mind and breathing space running offers her, she keeps it up—albeit slowly. Soon the old friend, Bill, now a romantic interest, invites her to Prague to run a marathon. Little does either of them know that this race will be the first of many international marathons, and that it will ignite a quest to run seven marathons on seven continents.

Up hills and through flash floods, more often alone than with company, Cami forges a path through some of the most exotic places in the world—and into some of the most enlightened, and darkest, places in the psyche. Insightful and uplifting, Second Wind carries the reader along for the ride as Cami runs her way out of compliance with the patriarchal rules about “being a woman” that long held her captive and into authenticity and self-love. Her adventures—and the personal revelations that accompany them—will inspire readers to take chances, find truth in their lives, and learn to listen to the voice inside them that’s been there all along.



I liked the book trailer because she said some things like "You need to find your own authentic pace in life" that transcend running, even though her book is about running. Of course it's about more than that (okay, maybe not "of course," but as an avid memoir reader, there is almost always something more going on that the surface topic).

Congratulations to me (and Violet Blue and Jessica Valenti): IPPY Winners!

We all won Gold IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards!



Violet Blue's anthology Sweet Life: Fantasies for Couples (watch the sexy book trailer here) and my Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories both tied or the GOLD IPPY Award for Erotica for 2010! Woo-hoo!





Best Sex Writing 2010 took the Gold IPPY Award for Sexuality/Relationships.



And Jessica Valenti won for The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women (Seal Press) for Women's Issues.



Synchronicity: Best Sex Writing 2010 includes both Violet Blue's "The Future of Sex Ed" and an excerpt from Jessica Valenti's and Jaclyn Friedman's Seal Press anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.