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.
The only book party there will likely be for this book. Join us! More information about the book, like the introduction, can be found here.
I'll be reading Kirk Read's most excellent essay "It's a Shame About Ray." Yes, Lemonheads fans should come too.
March 2, 5:30-7:30 Best Sex Writing 2010 book party Join Best Sex Writing 2010 editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and local contributor Diana Joseph, author of the memoir 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 in mint cookies and cream, white chocolate butterscotch and Elvis (peanut butter/banana/bacon). Bedlam Theatre, 1501 S. 6th St., Minneapolis 612-341-1038
Big thanks to local paper Vita.mn for this writeup:
The first, and so far, only, book party for Best Sex Writing 2010. IF I can swing it I will do something similar in SF and NYC, but if not, at this point I so beyond don't care. I have other books to get ready for, but for now, we have a nice little 4-city tour (Eugene, Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis) cooked up. This one will be the most fun and I get to hang with my cupcake friends...if I make my flight. Obviously my big goal this year is to make ALL my flights.
March 2, 5:30-7:30 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. Bedlam Theatre, 1501 S. 6th St., Minneapolis http://www.bedlamtheatre.org/
BDSM and Playing With Race," by Mollena Williams is as titillating in its violation of taboos as it is informative in its portrayal of the BDSM community...Another standout is Betty Dodson's "Sexual Outlaw," about her post-menopausal discovery of a lesbian S/M support group: it's both a powerful refutation of the notion that women over 50 aren't sexy, and a sexy exploration of the idea that fucking is all about power.
Introduction: My Favorite Sexual Outlaws by Rachel Kramer Bussel (read it here)
The Girl Who Only Sometimes Said No Diana Joseph Secrets of the Phallus: Why is the Penis Shaped Like That? Jesse Bering The Vagina Dialogues Johanna Gohmann Sex Laws That Can Really Screw You Ellen Friedrichs What Really Turns Men On John DeVore It’s a Shame About Ray by Kirk Read Race Play Mollena Williams Remembering Pubic Hair Paul Krassner Sexual Outlaw Betty Dodson Go Thin or Bust: How Berkeley’s Mayer Laboratories won the battle of the thin condoms Rachel Swan ‘Sex Surrogates’ put personal touch on therapy Brian Alexander What’s The Matter With Teen Sexting? Judith Levine The Anatomy of An Affair Michelle Perrot The Portal Janet Hardy Bite Me! (Or Don’t) Christine Seifert Hot. Digital. Sexual. Underground. David Black Loving Lesbians by William Georgiades Lust and Lechery in Eight Pages: The Story of the Tijuana Bibles Chris Hall The Trouble With Safe Sex Seth Michael Donsky Piece of Ass Monica Shores The Future of Sex Ed Violet Blue A Cunning Linguist John Thursday SWL(actating) F Seeks Sex With No Strings Attached Rachel Sarah Toward a Performance Model of Sex Thomas Macaulay Millar The Client Voyeur debauchette
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!
The Big Book of Submission: 69 Kinky Tales
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