Email: rachelkramerbussel at gmail.com



 

Lusty Lady

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Monday, March 04, 2019

My February Forbes book publishing articles

If you're interested in books and/or the business of books and/or my writing, I hope you're follow me at Forbes online, where I'm writing seven articles per month about everything from book deals to book covers to author innovations and more. As you'll see, I've covered everything from drawable book covers to the enduring popularity of books by veterans to how to open an independent bookstore. To follow me, just make a free account at Forbes.com and then click the link above and click the "Follow" button and answer how often you want to receive emails about my new articles. I started in November and have learned so much about publishing as well as Wordpress, and which bookish subjects people want to read about and which they don't.

Screen Shot 2019-03-04 at 6.36.56 AM

I write both more in-depth pieces about subjects like what authors can do when their publisher closes to breaking news, such as the Nora Roberts/Tomi Adeyemi book title story. I have a lot of great topics I'm covering in the next few months, especially more service-oriented pieces that I hope are helpful to aspiring authors, like the literary agent cookbook Q&A below. February was exciting because one of my articles got double the traffic of my previous high traffic piece, and continues to do well and may even hit 100,000 views soon. I get paid a flat fee based on how many articles I write per month, with the possibility of a pageview bonus, so of course I pay attention to my pageviews, but I also pay attention to who's linking to these articles. One of my upcoming pieces profiles a website that I found out about because they linked to me. So check it out, and if you're a publisher, editor or literary agent and have timely book publishing news or details about a growing trend in publishing, feel free to email me about it. I can't guarantee I'll cover it, but I'm always on the lookout for new topics my readers will appreciate.

Here are my Forbes online February 2019 articles in reverse chronological order:

"Katie Couric Memoir 'Unexpected' To Detail Her Struggles With Bulimia And Insecurity"

"Michelle Obama To Discuss Bestselling Memoir 'Becoming' On YouTube 'BookTube' Special In March 2019"

"How To Get Your Cookbook Published, According To A Literary Agent Who Specializes In Them"

"11-Year-Old Boy Lands Book Deal About Crocheting After His Creations Go Viral"

"Comic Book About Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Inspired By Her Quoting Alan Moore, Coming Out In May"

"What To Expect From 2020 Book 'White Feminism' By Former Jezebel Editor Koa Beck"

"Kim Kardashian West To Write Foreword To Memoir By Alice Marie Johnson, Convict Who West Helped Free"

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Thursday, November 15, 2018

Me at Forbes.com on Michelle Obama memoir Becoming, veterans' books and drawable book covers

As I mentioned, I'm now have a regular freelance writing gig at Forbes.com where I cover trends in book publishing. This includes everything from book covers to book titles, author names, bookstores, literary agents, editors, book deals and more. That sounds vague but I promise there's interesting stuff and helpful takeaways. In the veterans' books article, I include what the publisher and literary agent and manager I interviewed want to acquire, and there will be lots more of that coming.

I'm always on the lookout for anything timely, so if you're a bookstore staffer, publisher, editor or literary agent, please reach out to me at rachelkb at gmail dot com with "Forbes" in the subject line. I'm generally not covering individual books or authors unless there's something especially noteworthy about them, like drawable book covers or a famous celebrity major title like Michelle Obama but I'm on the lookout for any and all new releases for common connections or links that might make an interesting article. Here are my first three articles, and you can follow me there to see the latest. I've only ever had regular sex columns in the past, not a regular beat per se, so I'm looking forward to diving into my favorite subject five to seven times per month.

"Why Michelle Obama Memoir Becoming Had High First-Day Bookstore Sales"

"Why War Books By Veterans Will Always Be Popular"

"Meet The Mystery Author Who Wants Readers To Draw On Her Book Covers"

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Saturday, May 19, 2018

Candy Lovers: Sugar Erotica is out now!

After a lot of time and effort and trial and error, I'm thrilled to share the news that my first self-published anthology, Candy Lovers: Sugar Erotica, with 35 very sexy and delicious food erotic adult stories, is now available on Kindle. If you're outside the U.S., use the universal Kindle link. I'd also love, love, love it if you'd add it as want to read on Goodreads (and, of course, rate and review it if you've read it). Fun fact: Amazon reviews are the #1 way to help new readers find out about a book like Candy Lovers, which is competing with the 600,000 to 1,000,000 books published every year in the United States (and that's a 2013 statistic, so I bet the numbers are even higher). I am putting my heart and soul into making this ebook succeed, while also preparing my next two traditionally published releases, which will be out November 19 and January 21, but I'm good at juggling tasks.

Candy Lovers (1)

If you're one of the very small number of people who read my 2008 anthology Sex & Candy, you'll recognize 26 of the stories as reprints. There are nine all new original stories as well, some of which taught me new terms like cuberdons and De La Rosa. The whole reason I put this book out is because that original title was print only and when the original publisher closed, access to the stories closed since there was never an ebook or audiobook. I have several other books in the same dead-end situation that I may look into reviving down the road, if I make a profit with Candy Lovers, which I've spent a little over $2,100 on so far (I'll break down those numbers in a Medium post soon.

Official description:
If you love the sweet taste of sugar melting on your tongue, the allure of chocolate and the exciting feeling of licking a creamy ice cream cone, you'll adore Candy Lovers: Sugar Erotica. These 35 enticing stories of food play delve into the fun of popular desserts used in the most tactile, sensual ways. These men and women pursue their sexual fantasies, opening wide to indulge an offered treat or presenting their bodies to be used for sticky, arousing, totally hot carnal celebrations.

Whether whipping up the perfect confection in the kitchen, feeding a partner a sweet treat direct from your fingertips (or other body parts) or indulging all their senses in a sugar orgy, the characters in these sexy stories are sure to whet your appetite and turn you on. From couples using dessert to add even more intimacy to their relationships to new passions fueled by a shared love of the pleasures of the tongue, Candy Lovers is sure to arouse you. Edited by the award-winning Rachel Kramer Bussel, these are the perfect erotic tales to read whenever you're in the mood…with your favorite candy nearby.
And here's a rave for it (aka, social proof):
"Like a delicious box of gourmet chocolates, Rachel Kramer Bussel's Candy Lovers: Sugar Erotica serves up a broad variety of sticky sweet and sexy goodness! This collection of treat-themed erotica includes refined classics from the likes of Shanna Germain, R. Gay, Salome Wilde, Tenille Brown, and Sacchi Green alongside new goodies from Jules Thorne, Kristina Wright, and more. 'Playfulness is one of the keys to youthfulness,' we read in Tsaurah Litzky's 'Old Fashioned Fudge,' and this anthology contains plenty of it with its sugary theme, plus a few heavier, seductive literary treats—resulting in the perfect sampler of desserts for any candy or erotica connoisseur. The trick will be choosing which sweet bite to take first!
Jade A. Waters, author of A Love Affair, From A to Z
As of now, I only plan to publish on Kindle, with an audiobook to follow later this year. I chose that partly because I get a better royalty rate from Amazon for being exclusive (70% instead of 35%), but even more so because the process was more complicated than I had expected and I wanted to simplify it, lest I give up entirely. So right now I'm simply relieved it's for sale. I still have to investigate getting into better categories than Fiction/Erotica, getting a sales rank, and have to send out copies to my authors. I'm sure there's an infinite number of things I could've done better, but I feel good about this first effort. I'll be posting about the resources I used and my self-published journey at Medium in the next few weeks, so follow me there if you want to learn more about it. I will say a huge thank you to Dayv Caraway of Stupid Fish Productions for the cover design and Jade A. Waters for formatting help. I also highly recommend checking out their ebooks and audiobooks; Stupid Fish has published many, and Jade just published her first, which I'll be posting more about soon. Without them, either there wouldn't be a Candy Lovers ebook, or it would be dreadfully ugly inside and out.

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Saturday, November 21, 2015

Why the "for couples" in the Dirty Dates subtitle is a suggestion, not a mandate

Look closely, or even not that closely, at the cover of my new BDSM erotica anthology Dirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples and you'll see that the image and subtitle are trying to tell you something. "Couples" is the theme, what with the one kissing in the black and white photo and the "for couples" in the subtitle of the book.

dirtydatesbox

Well, I'm not saying the subtitle is a lie, but I am saying it's not the full story. I get into this more at Lady Smut in my post "Why I believe in sexy stories for everyone", which I encourage you to check out. The week before they made it Dirty Dates week and there's lots of posts there riffing on the theme.

I believe Dirty Dates, like all my anthologies, has something for everyone interested in sexy tales. You don't need to be part of a couple, or kinky, or have ever read erotica before, to find something to appreciate.

Now I will do my duty as an editor with a brand new book out to tell you where you can buy it (and if you buy the ebook by November 30th, I'll send you a free erotica ebook as thanks):

Amazon

Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Nook

Books-a-Million (paperback)

Books-a-Million (ebook)

Powells

IndieBound (find it at your local bookstore)

iBooks

Kobo

Cleis Press

Amazon UK

Kindle UK

Amazon Canada

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Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Want a free copy of Best Bondage Erotica 2015? Join the Thunderclap and help celebrate this hot new book!

Sometimes, life seems to laugh at me. Today was one of those days; not because I skipped errands yesterday and had to do them today in the snow, which actually was quite lovely, and made me grateful to return to the warmth of my office where the heat is blasting away. No, life laughed at me because for weeks I've been meaning to send out an author update on my shipping-from-the-printer-very-soon anthology Best Bondage Erotica 2015 and to start a Thunderclap campaign for it (more on that in a moment).

Today I finally did...and it turned out I was using the wrong cover! Sometimes, despite what we as authors/editors would like, changes happen and we don't find out. So of course I not only sent all the authors an email about the book but I also added the old cover all over social media and only then did I click through to Amazon, which is currently showing the correct cover for the paperback and the old wrong cover for the Kindle. I felt stupid, because one thing I'm trying to do this year is cut back on self-promotional Tweets and other postings in favor of my substantive and hopefully helpful posts. I love Twitter, and have connected with amazing authors and readers there, but I know that there's a fine line between saying something interesting and shilling, and I don't want to cross it from my personal account (I made @bestbondage just for that purpose though).

Long story short, I felt pretty foolish but then remembered that I have this awesome book full of something I don't see as often as I'd like in submissions to my books: femdom! What's also fascinating to me is that there are two home repair bondage stories and two kinky camping stories, plus other fun twists, including using a material for bondage I never would have considered, though I have used it for non-bondage purposes. So without further ado, here's the new final cover of the book. I am a book and editor nerd so I have my copies sent directly from the printer.

I'm hoping they arrive before I escape the winter cold for a few days on the beach but whenever they get here, I will be posting photos, because my favorite days as an anthology editor are when that box arrives and I open it and see the fruit of my labor. One of the great things about editing an annual series is feeling a smidge less guilty about sending out rejection letters because I know I will have another call up (and I will post that the second it's finalized!). Well, I probably still feel just as awful as ever--it's by far the worst part of my job--but it does mean that I at least know I'll be able to start fresh with a new year and new batch of authors.

I save room in every anthology for authors I've never published before, and this year those include Tim Rudolph, longtime Erotica Readers & Writers Association member Daddy X, Robert Black, erotic novelists Nichelle Gregory and Jodie Griffin, LN Bey and Jenne Davis of Clitical. That is the best part of what I do, because I will never forget seeing my name in a book for the first time, and being able to publish these authors, and getting to introduce at least two newcomers to the genre with their first published stories, means the world to me. So feast on this final gorgeous cover, take heed of my error and always make sure your cover is the right one before you post it, and stay tuned for the release! You can check out the Table of Contents and my introduction on Tumblr.

BBE15cover

So back to Thunderclap: how it works is kind of like Kickstarter, but where Kickstarter gathers funds, Thunderclap gathers people. The idea is that 100 people posting about a book release at the same day and time has a lot more impact than those same 100 people each posting on different days. My campaign looks like this:

thunderclap

It's something I'm trying for the first time, it being a new year, a new book and me realizing last year I have to innovate or give up. So here's my special offer. If you join the Thunderclap, which means you allow Thunderclap to post from your Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr account on February 3rd at 11 a.m. EST about the book, I'll send you a free copy later that day. Just join the Thunderclap now, send me your name and mailing address and Facebook or Tumblr URL or Twitter handle (whichever method you chose) to bestbondage2015 at gmail.com with "Thunderclap" in the subject line and then you'll get a signed copy the next week, just in time for Valentine's Day. I'm limiting this to the next 99 people to sign up for the Thunderclap, which I probably don't need to say, but I will. THANK YOU for helping the series succeed. I am so proud of it and how the authors have taught me so much about bondage, and hope you love it as much as I do.

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Thursday, November 13, 2014

Win a copy of new erotic romance anthology The Lady Smut Book of Dark Desires

A sexy new erotic romance anthology, The Lady Smut Book of Dark Desires is out today from Harper Impulse, and can win a copy! Fittingly, authors Liz Everly, Madeline Iva, C. Margery Kempe, Elizabeth Shore all blog at Lady Smut, which you can also find on Facebook.

Here's the hot cover, and you can get the ebook for Kindle, Nook and Kobo.

DarkDesires

What's in the book?
Four paranormal stories of erotic temptation & paranormal thrills!

THE IMMORTAL LONGING OF BRENNA BANG by Liz Everly

When a vampire materializes through her computer, successful vampire-romance romance author Brenna Bang finds herself marked for inescapable passion with a tech savvy bloodsucker.

THE LYING, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE by C. Margery Kempe

Christina tries to figure out how to unlock her grandmother's wardrobe and uncover what happened all those years ago when the goblins came to offer their sensuous erotic fruits.

SEXSOMNIA by Madeline Iva

Jenny needs to unravel the mystery of what she does at night and who she does it with in order to subdue the sexual demon inside her.

DIVINE by Elizabeth Shore

Locked in an abandoned mental asylum, an ambitious filmmaker soon discovers she’s trapped with a Dionysian god. He offers her a glimpse of astounding future artistic success—but it will only come true if she’ll perform an erotic ritual to free him.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Monday, December 09, 2013

20 sexy BDSM stories for you in Best Bondage Erotica 2014

My latest annual bondage collection, Best Bondage Erotica 2014, is almost here, and I'm so thrilled! One thing I love about editing multiple anthologies on the same topic, be it spanking, submission, dominance or bondage, is that I truly get to see the creativity and variety inherent in the topic. You might think after you've published over 60 stories on a kink or fetish or activity it might get old, but the beauty of erotica, and why the genre is thriving and new writers want in on it, is because there's always room for new twists. There may not be any new sex acts under the sun, but there are always new ways to describe them, just as there are new ways of telling any story. So without further ado, 20 teasers from each of the stories in the book, which should be in brick and mortar and virtual stores by the end of the year! Ebook and audiobook links will be forthcoming once those are released; I expect Kindle and Nook editions by February, but am not sure about the Audible version date just yet.

bbe2014cover

Buy Best Bondage Erotica 2014 from:

Amazon

Amazon UK

Bn.com

Books-a-Million

Powell's

IndieBound (find your local independent bookstore)

Cleis Press


All rights reserved; do not repost without authors' permission. Story titles are in bold, and yes, we've got a great foreword by renowned author Laura Antoniou, of The Marketplace series fame.

Best Bondage Erotica 2014 edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel, published by Cleis Press

Foreword: No Bondage Please, I’m Kinky by Laura Antoniou
Introduction: Cruel to Be Kind, and Vice Versa

Rope Dancer by Kathleen Tudor


“So, do you like all kinds of ropes, or just the kind you can hang from?”

That caught her attention. She looked startled as her eyes snapped back to me. “Pardon?”

“I was just wondering if you like the feel of ropes on your skin when you’re not the one in control.” I suddenly felt like a world-class idiot. She looked me up and down, buying herself time, I thought. I straightened, feeling foolish and wanting to gather my pride around me, but something in her eyes had changed.

“Maybe you should show me what you mean,” she said.

I laughed. “Have a drink. Decide if you even like me first. Are you from around here?”

Behind the Door by Kay Jaybee

Nina, her eyes closed, safe in the knowledge that Laura would be out for at least another forty minutes, pictured the white van driver. His face was grave as Louisa read out her displeasure, tapping her black pen on top of her notebook as if to punctuate every word of her annoyance. He had failed to make her climax the day before, so today his own satisfaction would be hampered by the presence of handcuffs. After swift and unflinching orders, his ginger counterpart did his mistress’s bidding, and snapped a pair of cold metal handcuffs around white-van man’s wrists, yanking his arms roughly behind his back while he knelt, cowering on the dusty wooden floor.

The moment his companion was shackled, the ginger man retook his position in the queue of three before Louisa, as she walked up and down before them. In her silence, the gloom of the unlit room enveloped the dominatrix like warm fog, out of which she shone like an enticing beacon of temptation.

Louisa inclined her head toward the men, as if giving them a signal to begin. They rose together, the tethered man clumsy but still forthcoming, as their mistress lay back on the only item of furniture in the discarded shop, a faded red- velvet chaise lounge, which Nina remembered perching on as she flicked through various books.

My Own Device by Raziel Moore

I pushed her gently forward, so that her upper thighs fit in the wooden channels. Anna had to move her feet just about shoulder width apart on the floor to fit right, her loose skirt easily letting her. That skirt came down to just above her knees, showing me stockinged calves. As she put her weight against the wood, it gave a low creaking sound and rocked a bit.

“That sounds… sturdy,” she said, sarcastically.

I grinned. “I wanted it to make sounds.” I reached to a side of the device and pulled a lever, resulting in a deep, wooden thunking sound. Anna’s expression told me she felt it against her legs. The slight rocking of the shape stopped as it locked.

“Let me guess,” she said, turning her head to give me a crooked smile as she leaned forward over the contoured top of the thing. My eyes followed her body as she settled. The curves I’d sculpted into the wood from memory of body and hands were as good as I could have hoped for. Anna’s belly, chest, shoulders fit as if cradled, and her hands reached forward for the two polished grips.

She knew what she was doing, moving slowly, languidly, seductively for me. And the curve of the thing raised her ass just so…

The Neckcloth by Annabel Joseph

“We have been through this enough times.” He tilted his chin so she could slide her fingers inside his collar. “You should be an expert at neckcloth removal by now.”

She hissed as the end of the pin pricked her finger.

“Let me see,” he said.

She held up the injured digit. He kissed it and slipped the pearl-tipped pin into a pocket. “You’ll live. Proceed.”

She blinked and pouted and went back to her task. From time to time, her knuckles brushed against the fair stubble on his cheeks. He was tall and blond, haughty and handsome. Posey knew that other ladies talked about her husband behind their fans. They whispered that he was sinfully pleasant to look at, a fine figure of a man.

They didn’t know what he was like behind closed doors.

“The longer you take, the more time I have to hone my jealous outrage.”

Anyway Sommer Marsden

I was stuck.

I wiggled my arms and tried not to panic. It wasn’t a big deal. Not really. Mason was just in the next room brushing his teeth. But still, I’d have to admit I was stuck. Take the teasing…

I struggled some more.

I was just starting to sweat when I heard that dark chuckle, felt my skin rise up in a revolt of goose flesh at his warm velvet voice. “Having some trouble there, Robin?”

I glanced up, gave him a fake laugh. “No. It’s fine. I’m just…” He watched as I pushed my arms against the wall. How could I be this solidly stuck in the arms of a jacket? Even worse, how could I be in the position to have to admit it and ask for help?

Eel by Annabeth Leong

An idea sparked in my chest, mingled with desire I’d never admitted before. “You want to get tied up, right? You don’t need Ethan for that.”

She groaned. “No one wants to tie me anymore. They’re all afraid of being embarrassed.”

Alicia spat the last word out, and I gave her a look. “For good reason.”

“Whatever. It’s still true. Nobody wants to play with an eel. At least, not an eel they can’t beat.”

A little warning voice spoke up in the back of my head. I’d decided long ago not to play with Alicia, pretty as she was. I liked being her friend, and I honestly didn’t know how well I’d handle her ego challenges myself.

I told that warning voice to go to hell.

No Strings Attached by James McArthur

I grasp the ends of the rope, nylon weave squeaking against my sweating fingertips. My shoulders ache and the coffee table is hard beneath my spine. My cock is throbbing inside my tight briefs. So many nights’ fantasies are at play in my mind, I almost don’t realize Graham is talking to me.

He grips my chin and makes me meet his gaze, shaking the images from my mind. “Nick, are you with me?” He told me not to speak without permission. Does asking a direct question confer permission? I don’t know. I don’t know the rules. But I want to learn them. I want Graham to teach me them. I stay quiet. “Good boy,” he says. “I want you to keep a tight hold of that rope. It’s only looped around your wrists loosely, but I’ve made it short enough to give you some tension. How do you feel?”

Do I speak? My answer would be too big for my mouth. I feel fuzzy in the head, weak at the knees, short of breath, hot and cold. I don’t even know if Graham appreciates every little subtlety of the situation that’s got me like this. Helpless against my body’s craving. The fact that I’ve got my coveralls rolled right down to my hips and no top on and he’s openly assessing my chest and abs, while he is still fully clothed. The fact that he’s looming over me, his fingers still pressed into my jaw while I lie here completely immobilized. Not by the rope, which is more symbolic than effective, but by my lust and the fact that Graham is promising to make my long-held but unfulfilled fantasies real.

Roping the Cowboy by Teresa Noelle Roberts

“Have you ever tied up a cowboy, ma’am? Because I’m available if you’d like to.”

I turned to the man who’d just propositioned me, ready to snarl at him.

Instead, I smiled.

I live in a city with the unofficial motto “Keep Austin Weird,” so I’m inured to oddity. And since I’m a pretty woman with flame-patterned hair and a fondness for wearing Docs with fishnets and very short skirts, I sometimes get hit on in fairly outrageous ways.

Which is fine if the outrageous come-on is also polite. Hell, if the polite outrageous line is being delivered by someone hot, I’m not above considering it. And the guy asking the provocative question was a tall, handsome, dark-haired example of one- hundred- percent- genuine cowboy.

Meeting by L. C. Spoering

“You came all this way to get fucked?”

It was not much of a question at that point. She stood stripped to the panties she’d taken more than a little care to procure—red, lace, bow, the works—and shivered a little in the artificial cool of the air conditioner on full blast. Certainly it seemed as though she’d come there to get fucked.

The hotel was one of the more anonymous places this could happen—the bed covered in a muted flower pattern, the carpet under her feet an inoffensive dusty pink—and there was a certain kind of shame in that. Even the art on the walls seemed fashioned to be as unobtrusive as possible: flowers in a pot, a table in the sun. It was intended to leave the boarders suspended in place, neither here nor there, the semi-opaque curtains on the windows blocking out the view of the street, making it any room in any city, the traffic sounds seemingly miles away, muted by double-paned glass.

Still, she nodded, feeling the hard lump in her throat move up and down as though she’d swallowed a golf ball. Goose bumps ran up each bare arm and leg, and the fine hairs at the small of her back prickled over the ill-conceived tramp stamp she’d gotten there, back in college—a rose, faded this many years later, but marking the area just above the crack of her ass like a sign, a target.

The Snake by Jacqueline Brocker

The act of tying wasn’t, for Sybil, the best part. If she could have put Adam into a machine and he’d appeared at the other end fully bound, exactly to her specifications, she’d have been content. Or a quick, single one-two of clamping his wrists and ankles down or to the bedposts; that she did enjoy, the grip of his straining limbs under hers. The binding, the elaborate act of it—that was for Adam. That was what he loved.

For her, foreplay was listening to him breathe—the gasps, the sharp intakes of breath, a whistling kettle, puppy-pantings—as his mobility grew more restricted. He’d fight at her hands and the rope—not a token gesture, but not a true push-back—and with each of her victories, his face would fall, his lips parting, eyelashes fluttering.

All the time, his cock, which she usually left free, was growing harder, and harder.

Clipped by Lucy Felthouse

“Why, what are you going to do? Clip me to the chair?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He held each end of the row and stretched it out to its full length. “Wow, you were bored, weren’t you, babe? Just as well, too, because I’m definitely going to put this to good use. Hold on to the arms of the chair, please.”

Nancy frowned, then reluctantly did as Gerard said. Immediately he looped the chain around one of her wrists, fiddling and manipulating to create a makeshift handcuff, then did the same with her other arm. So now she was pinned to the chair with sort-of handcuffs, and the handcuffs were connected by a row of paper clips. It looked bizarre; it was bizarre, but somehow, the situation took the arousal inflicted by Gerard’s kiss and multiplied it. The warmth between her legs grew hotter, and as her husband leaned down to capture her lips with his once more, blood rushed to her crotch, and her labia and clit began to swell.

Tart Cherry by Kathleen Delaney-Adams

The rope smelled damp, like earth and dirt, a scent that made her pussy swell. She inhaled deeply, inviting her hunger to enter her holes, to chafe her insides, stoking a burning need that bound her to him. Eyes downcast as she had been ordered, she relied on other senses to guide and arouse her. Her nostrils were full of hemp, the thickness of its odor, and the sweaty scent of him, a whiff of his cologne, and the musk of her own sex wafting up faintly to tease her. Her ears strained to catch a hint of him—his mood, his movements, his breath. She ached to anticipate what he might have desired of her, what might come next, listening intently for a whisper of his own dark longings.

An hour ago, she had wandered the dank rooms of the basement as if bored, pausing now and again briefly if a scene caught her eye, dismissing most. She was hard to impress—she prided herself on it, imagining herself a femme of vast experience, a heavy player among heavy players, and who the hell could top that? No one here tonight, surely.

It was rare to find herself without a play partner, yet tonight she couldn’t quite bring her interest to a peak, preferring to stay on the sidelines of the Dykes at Play party. Truth be told, and you didn’t hear it from her, the last few months had felt like yawners, and she feared her pussy stank of desperation and loneliness. How damn unattractive. She was shaking her head in self-disgust when she turned and found him watching her.

He exuded butch confidence—reeked of it—leaning casually against the wall, hands loose at his sides, salt-and-pepper hair, gray-blue eyes perusing the room, packing bulge beneath his jeans. Yum.

Ring of Fire by Michelle Augello-Page

Lights flickered in the distance, even though I could barely see the house through the thick canopy of trees. I bit my lip, trying to contain my excitement, as my master drove slowly along the narrow gravel road. He had made reservations months ago as a special gift to me, for our anniversary. The trip didn’t take as long as we had expected, and we were early. He parked the car and shut off the ignition, then reached over the gear shaft and pulled the seat belt tight across my chest.

“Open your legs.”

I opened my legs, wide, and my already short dress rose even higher, exposing my shaved pussy. Holding the seat belt with one hand, he smacked my pussy with the other. Each slap released a deep moan from inside me, as waves of pleasure-pain washed over me, revealing my excitement in the moist wetness between my thighs. He felt my arousal with his hand, pressing his palm against my heat, then slid his fingers inside me.

Belted In by Roxanna Cross

The leather of my chastity belt bites into my tender flesh. I squeeze my thighs together at the flood of need that moves through me. My eyes remain glued to the cargo cart rolling out onto the tarmac. They lovingly caress the bright yellow straps and knots holding the luggage in place.

Subconsciously, I tug on my sleeves until they cover my thumbs. I can’t help but wonder if the other travelers see through my power suit. If they notice the puckered, criss-crossed diamond shapes marring my aboriginal golden skin. Would they be appalled by the red welts circling my wrists and ankles?

Strong hands unhinge the yellow mesh and my mouth waters. I squeeze my thighs together. Once again I feel the bite of leather. I know I need to get myself under control before the plane takes off. I close my eyes and go through my breathing exercise.

Pegged by Emily Bingham

“Do you trust me?” I ask, straddling his lap.

He looks at me from the dark pools of his eyes over the rim of his thick glasses, the hint of a shy grin on his lips. Slowly, he nods, almost as if it pains him to admit it. I take his curly head in my hands and lean in to kiss him. The boy is talented with his tongue, his mouth so inviting that at times it’s easy to get lost in. Part of me wants to be greedy,; roll over and let him have his way—, splay me open and worship the folds between my legs as long as he likes.

I resist the urge, wanting tonight to be about him and taking him where he wants to go. It’s his turn to be small and defenseless for an evening. I want to be so kind to him that it becomes cruel. This game of taking control over such a sweet man, a gentle giant who dwarfs me in every way, amuses me each time we play it. Who am I to tell him what to do? His hand is big enough to engulf half my chest;, with just the strength of

one arm he could—and regularly does—toss me aside and take what he wants. We both know he could turn the tables at any time.

Tight-Rope Walker by Tilly Hunter

“It was your idea, remember,” Jake said as we puffed up the hill with all the other Sunday afternoon ramblers.

“I know, but I didn’t quite realize how walking in it would make me feel.”

“Too late to change your mind now. Even if I was inclined to take it off, which I’m not, there’s nowhere secluded to do it.”

He was right. It had been my idea to climb the 1,335 feet of Wrekin, one of the most popular family strolls in England’s West Midlands while wearing a karada, a rope body harness. And there was indeed nowhere secluded where Jake could take it off me. We’d come out of the trees half a mile back and now the terrain was just bare stones and scrubby grass.

Jake had practiced the various harness possibilities several times since getting into the more intricate shibari bondage. But never before had I strode out for miles uphill while wearing it under my clothes, and I’d had no idea of how it would feel. No idea of the tantalizing but unsatisfying friction against my clit, the rawness as it rubbed the tender membranes of my pussy and ass, the difficulty taking the deep inhalations I needed against the rope around my chest and belly. It was deep discomfort of the kind I liked best.

An Appreciation for Beautiful Things by Giselle Renarde

She held out her finger and pressed it against his lips. “Hurts like hell.”

He kissed it better, then kissed her lips. “You obviously can’t be trusted to keep your body in check.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dell untied the thick ribbon that held the bedroom curtains open. “It means that you need a little help.”

The black satin looked like a million bucks against Genevieve’s pinkish skin. He wrapped it around her wrists, securing her hands above her head. There. Now she couldn’t swat at the brush while he whacked her. She looked good facedown on the white duvet with a long black ribbon tied around her wrists.

“That’s better,” he said, rubbing his erection across her hands. He leaned over and kissed her hair while her fingers struggled to grasp his dick. “Now back to work.”

Mind Fuck by Kissa Starling

Quinton stands at the foot of the bed, gazing. She wears nothing, as instructed. Plumped- up pillows prop her arms on each side. More padding lifts her calves and feet, thighs parted, displaying her luscious center. Her chestnut hair cascades behind her head, curling on the ends close to her shoulder.

He steps over to her, opening his fingers wide above her wrists. Two small pieces of packing tape and a ball gag liea in his hand. He touches his warm lips to hers, mimicking the insertion of the gag. Cool air passes where their lips part. The gag sits beneath her chin as a reminder.

“I hereby secure you, Cari;, my fingers weave bindings across your forearm.” He bends to kiss the inside of her wrist; his tongue trails to the crook in her elbow. “Your wrists and arms are immobile. The tape secures you to the bed.” His fingers pause at her breasts. The tiny amount of adhesive bonds to her delicate skin.

“Your pink rosy nipples will be scarlet red when I finish with them.” His palms push her large breasts together until the nipples touch. He covers them with his mouth, raking down with his front teeth over the peaks. She gasps beneath him. Her shoulders press into the sheets and her pelvis tilts. Her breathing quickens. His tongue lathers thin marks left behind. Cari shakes her chest and whimpers when the bindings limit her reach.

Wearing Purple by Elizabeth Coldwell

Standing with his back to the whipping post, naked but for a length of ribbon tied in a neat bow around his semi-erect penis and his wrists tethered behind him with the bright purple pashmina, he couldn’t help but reflect that his wife certainly knew how to bear a grudge.

She must have been planning her revenge from the moment he pressed the hastily bought, even more hastily wrapped present into her hands on his return from his business trip to Belgium. For Ramona, Belgium meant one thing, and that was chocolate. Her only weakness, a box of it was never far from her plump, creamy fingers, ready for her to dip into. While she often grumbled about the extra pounds that had gathered on her hips and thighs as the years passed, he loved the look and feel of her abundant flesh, the weight of her body on his as they fucked.

When he told her he’d bring her back something she’d love, she’d dropped heavy hints about a master chocolatier she’d seen interviewed in one of the Sunday supplements. His exquisite handmade pralines, it was claimed, were those by which all others would be measured and found wanting. Nothing less would do for her, so how he ever thought she’d be satisfied with a pashmina instead, he still didn’t know. His excuses that his business meeting had overrun and he hadn’t had time to hunt for the chocolate shop had been greeted with cold-faced silence.

“I’ll make it up to you, darling,” he’d promised.

“Oh, I know you will,” had been her reply. She’d all but thrown the length of fine cashmere material at him. “I mean, purple, of all colors. In all the years we’ve been married, when have you ever seen me wearing purple?”

Dual Mastery by Rachel Kramer Bussel

In some ways, my two submissive, sexy sluts are a study in contrasts. Tanya is short and curvy, with natural red hair and freckles, while Wendy is almost as tall as I am (six feet), pale with jet-black hair. Next to them I tend to look rather middle of the road, but I don’t mind; it just attracts more curiosity and attention once people realize that both women belong to me. I like to make people wonder what it is I’ve done to garner such female devotion; those who truly want to know are welcome to find out.

I’ve told them they’re allowed to dress in jeans and sneakers when we travel, but they both have enough fashionista and exhibitionist in them to want to dress to the nines while in the air. “After all, if you’re gonna go, don’t you want to look fabulous while doing it?” Tanya once joked, masking what I knew was a true fear of death by plane crash. That’s another thing I love about her: she is relentlessly optimistic, and forces that optimism to override her fears, something she’s applied to our BDSM play as well as all areas of her life. She teaches me just as much as I’ve taught her, and now that Wendy is a part of our lives, I see Tanya teaching Wendy what it truly means to submit, while I oversee their erotic education.

I’ve learned so much about women from living with two of them, seeing how they are different and how they are alike, how they behave similarly when surrendering to me, and differently. Yes, Wendy is our slave, but she’s as much a part of our family as anyone else; both Tanya and I would take a bullet for her. Her slave status is not a trapping; rather, it’s a way of life, a way of relating that makes life richer for all of us. They are both extremely eager to please, to provide, to obey, but each does so in slightly different ways. I know exactly how hard each of them can be pushed, what kinds of spankings they can take, how much they like to struggle, what naughty words push them to the edge of orgasm. It’s this ongoing process of learning, of plotting what will thrill each of them, that makes being their master a joy and, at times, a challenge, one I willingly take on, with pride.

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Thursday, May 02, 2013

Romance writers know how to do swag, or you know you've made it when your cover is on a hotel key card

I'm at my first RT Booklovers Convention and having at great time. Off to my own panel on erotic romance anthologies, thanks to moderator Kristina Wright, but wanted to share what I think is the est book swag ever: hotel key cards featuring One Sweet Ride by Jaci Burton!

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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Want to read: Anne of Hollywood by Carol Wolper

A new Carol Wolper novel is a reason to celebrate! I'm looking forward to reading Anne of Hollywood soon. A little birdie is getting me a signed copy. Stay tuned for my review!



Description:
Skirts may be shorter now, and messages sent by iPhone, but passion, intrigue, and a lust for power don’t change. National bestselling author Carol Wolper spins a mesmerizing tale of a twenty-first-century Anne Boleyn.

Wily, intelligent, and seductive, with a dark beauty that stands out among the curvy California beach blondes, Anne attracts the attention of Henry Tudor, the handsome corporate mogul who reigns in Hollywood. Every starlet, socialite, and shark wants a piece of Henry, but he only wants Anne. The question is: can she keep him?

Welcome to a privileged world where hidden motives abound, everyone has something to sell, and safe havens don’t exist. With her older sister Mary, a pathetic example of a royal has-been, Anne schemes to win her beloved Henry in the only way that gives a promise of forever—marriage. Success will mean contending with backstabbing “friends,” Henry’s furious ex-wife, and the machinations of her own ambitious family, and staying married to a man who has more options than most and less guilt than is good for either of them will take all her skill. Anne will do anything to hold on to the man—and the lifestyle—she adores, however, even if sticking your neck out in Hollywood means risking far worse than a broken heart. With Henry’s closest confidante scheming against her, and another beautiful contender waiting in the wings, Anne is fighting for her life. Can she muster the charm and wit to pull off her very own Hollywood ending?

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Sunday, January 08, 2012

Want to read this novel based on artist Tamara de Lempicka: The Last Nude by Ellis Avery

I'm a fan of the work of artist Tamara de Lempicka, so of course I'm interested in the new novel The Last Nude by Ellis Avery. Looking forward to reading it soon.



Official description (side note: I learn about one new thing in HTML each year, and last year it was how to do a block quote, hence this post's formatting):

Paris, 1927. In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.

Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished-and coveted-works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.

Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Ellis Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, this is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.


An interview with Ellis Avery at the very, very cool site Sheepish Fashionista, if you're into fashion and beauty products and all sorts of interesting intersections between those and literature. To wit, Avery was asked "Who is the best-dressed character you’ve created? How did you come up with and dress them? What does the way you dress them say about them to you?" and she answered, in part:

At the beginning of the novel, which takes place in 1927 Paris, Tamara is the artist and Rafaela is the muse. Over the course of the book, however, Rafaela discovers that she’s an artist too, albeit in the trivialized and demoted art of fashion. Rafaela begins this novel, which is very much a story about coming into one’s own, in a dress that she made by copying a pattern from Chanel, but by the end she has created a new dress from scratch, one that works a zipper into its design: this is an idea Rafaela comes up with on her own, long before she ever encounters a dress with a zipper by Schiaparelli or anyone else. Rafaela’s initial, Chanel-inspired dress is a form-fitting little number made of dazzling teal-blue raw silk, while the zipper dress that ends the book is an A-line piece made of slate-colored gabardine with darker gray piping. Rafaela’s zipper dress is designed to draw as much attention to its own construction as it does to its wearer: this is a novel about learning to depend on one’s art rather than one’s body.


A Yahoo! News interview of Avery (in which she also reveals she had to cute 120 pages!):

Q: You've said you were inspired by the paintings. How did you develop the story and the characters?

A: "I saw her work at the Royal Academy in London in 2004 and came away weak in the knees -- this is so gorgeous -- and the caption said that the young woman in the painting was the 'Beautiful Rafaela' from 1927, that she had met this girl on a walk in the Bois de Bologne and she became her model, and her lover. Their relationship resulted in six paintings, and it seems to have been a brief relationship. Then when I looked at her catalog, the very last painting she was working on when she died was indeed that copy of 'Beautiful Rafaela.' So 53 years later, this girl was still on her mind, which was thrilling to me.

"I got a book of her paintings and cut them out and spread them on the desk. All the paintings from 1925 to 1929, and looked at them for days. I read biographies of de Lempicka by her daughter, by others. I read a lot about her era. But a lot of the work was just looking at the paintings and at the people that she represented, and just trying to enter that world."


Author Emma Donoghue interviews Avery at Amazon:


Donoghue: At what points did you find you had to change a fact in order to make a better fiction?

Avery: First, if Tamara’s apartment and the train station had been on the same side of the Seine, there would have been no need for Rafaela to cross the river on a crucial occasion toward the end of the book. For that reason, although the biographical Tamara--whom I got to know through the excellent work of Laura Claridge--lived in what was at the time the newish-money Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris, my fictional Tamara lives in the old-money Seventh.

Second, when I finished my first novel, set in 1880s Japan, I promised myself that my next book would be about English speakers. Of course, next thing you know, I’m fired up to write about a Polish painter who grew up speaking French. Partly because the biographical Tamara never specified the biographical Rafaela’s nationality or origins, and largely for my own sake, to avoid writing another book full of translated dialogue, I have taken the liberty of imagining an English-speaking Rafaela.

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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Get your free Women in Lust postcard right here!

Yay! Women in Lust: Erotic Stories (click to read my introduction and the table of contents), my 40th anthology, will be in my hands in mid-October, and at your local bookstore soon afterward. I'll let you know when it's for sale online and in ebook formats, but for now: postcards are in! Want one? (US only) Email me at womeninlust at gmail.com with "Postcard" in the subject line and your name and mailing address in the body. (FYI, I'm not trying to discriminate against non-US addresses, but since I pay for the postcard design and postcards and mailing, that's all I can afford.)



What else? Well, you can read excerpts from the stories at the Women in Lust blog!

Order Women in Lust from:

Amazon

Kindle edition (ebook) TK

Barnes & Noble

Nook (ebook) TK

Powells

IndieBound (search for your local indie bookstore)

Cleis Press

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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Pretty pearl handcuffs on cover of Bound by Lust edited by Shanna Germain

This hot 2012 anthology, Bound By Lust: Romantic Stories of Submission and Sensuality, will include my hot wax exhibitionism story "The Heart of Chaos," set in an art gallery, inspired in a weird diffuse way by the documentary My Kid Could Paint That.

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Wednesday, September 07, 2011

I heart this book cover

Will be reading it this weekend! Via the super fabulous The Contemps, where I've gotten so many wonderful YA recommendations. I dream of someday having a book featured there (just gotta, um, write it). Yes, at the erotica writers conference in Las Vegas, I'll be reading YA and Pretty by Jillian Lauren.

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Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Want to read: Agorafabulous! by Sara Benincasa

I saw Sara Benincasa's solo show Agorafabulous! and am a big fan of her work, video and writing and performing, and am excited to read this memoir, out in January from William Morrow, available for pre-order on Amazon. I think this book is going to be pretty big - I'm not sure if there've been other agoraphobia memoirs, but not only is Sarah everywhere, she's funny and she managed, in the show, at least, to make a very grave illness humorous and then kindof punch you in the gut with how severe it was. It's a little hard to reconcile who she is today (from what I know of her) and the person she describes in the show, and I think that discrepancy will make the book even more powerful. Also, I love the cover!



Via Harper Collins

She is “utterly hilarious” (NewYorkTimes.com) and “delightfully loopy” (ChicagoTribune.com). But comedian and radio host Sara Benincasa’s life hasn’t always been a funny joyride. Since childhood, she strugged with panic disorder, becoming by age twenty-one a ”full-on obsessive, cowering, trembling agoraphobe.” Terrified to leave her own apartment, she stacked empty cans and jars against the wall of her tiny studio apartment. Her fear eventually extended to everything but her bed. Afraid of even the sink, she began using cereal bowls as toilets. And always there was the siren song of the knives in the kitchen drawer, luring her to give herself over to emptiness.

As she neared the edge, friends and family, therapy and drugs intervened to help Sara build a new world from the ashes of her former life. Today, the acclaimed artist tours the world—a life inconceivable to the frightened, stick-thin young woman crouching in the dark whom she once was.

Agorafabulous! is her funny, unpretentious recollections of being a prisoner of fear and how she struggled to overcome her demons. Earthy and relatable, unabashedly incorrect and unsentimental, she will “break your heart in one sentence and leave you hunched over with laughter in the next” (Sam Apple, author of American Parent).

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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Hell House comes alive in YA novel Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker



This book is so so good. I think the trick to writing a YA novel like this is you can't come across like you have all the answers (okay, any novel, really). You can't make fun of your characters. You can condescend to them. You have to live them, you have to make the reader empathize with them even if they don't know what they're talking about. I didn't grow up in a tiny town with nothing to do and had no idea what Hell House was until a few years ago when Julie Klausner acted in the play (make of that what you will, you don't learn a lot about these things in Teaneck or Berkeley). But Lacey wanting to play "Abortion Girl?" I'm so with her. I like Lacey Anne Byer as a character a lot. The first paragraph I quote below, if we take it away from the context of Hell House, well, what teenager hasn't wanted the spotlight? What adult for that matter, whether on a small scale or a big one?

Melissa Walker nails a lot of things, and one of them is teen alienation, even for good girls. It's gripping and I'm only sad I don't have more time to devour this ASAP. Here's the review in the New York Times, which they wisely gave to Carlene Bauer, author of Not That Kind of Girl, who could bring her evangelical upbringing into it.

See also: USA Today, "Young adult novels explore religion:"


The novel was inspired by an article Walker did for ELLEgirl magazine on Hell Houses, haunted houses often run by fundamentalist Christian churches. Their emphasis: people who don't accept Jesus as their savior are condemned to hell.


Also, the heart in the apple on the cover? Genius. Read it!

From Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker:


Last year I watched Julia Millhouse play a pregnant teenager. When the lights went up in the nursery, where they staged her scene, she said her lines with so much emotion that people in the audience started to cry. I'd see them come through the lobby after the show and hear them talking about her performance. I want that spotlight. I want to be able to affect people that way too.

I've grown up with Hell House all my life, but Dean's cousins in the next county over think it's something weird that religious nuts do. It's not. It's a way to show people the right path. My dad always plays the devil--he thinks it's funny to be the children's pastor and the Antichrist. And Pastor Frist's Jesus bathes Hell in white light at the very end, leading the audience into Heaven (also known as the church library, all done up in white sheets and cotton clouds), where they get decision cars. Most people fill out the cards and agree to at least explore a Christian life. It's a magical weekend and an incredible outreach, especially for young people who don't have a path to Christ like I've grown up with. Mom always reminds me how lucky I am to have that.

I'm sitting with Starla Joy and her sister, Tessa, who's finger-coming her wavy brown hair as we wait to hear about this year's production. Tessa played and EMT last year in the drunk driving scene, and she got to say, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kerner, your daughter is dead." Everyone thinks she'll get a big part this year since she's pretty much the senior girl with the most rank here. Even in church--especially in church--there's a social hierarchy.

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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Want to read: With a Little Luck by Caprice Crane

Caprice Crane, when she's not writing screenplays or for TV, writes fun, lighthearted romantic novels (not romances, but I'd call them romantic). I started this book and then put it down for some crazy reason and now will have to ransack my apartment to find it or get another copy.



Her latest is With a Little Luck. Official description:

Los Angeles radio DJ Beryl “Berry” Lambert, whose name means luck, doesn’t much believe in it—although, thanks to her dear old gambling dad, she’s a bit superstitious, certain that everything happens for a reason. She keeps a four-leaf clover in her wallet, never takes off her horseshoe necklace, and won’t tempt fate by walking under a ladder or opening an umbrella indoors. Ever.

When it comes to love, though, she could use a little luck. Two disastrous relationships back-to-back can mean only one thing to a woman who knows that everything good or bad happens in threes: A third Mr. Wrong is imminent. But fellow DJ Ryan Riley goes against the odds. Their on-air battle of the sexes is a hit for the station and sparks some serious heat after hours. Ryan is funny and sexy, and he thinks Berry’s quirkiness is cute. Is their romance doomed by the numbers—or is a girl who leaves nothing to chance finally ready to gamble?


And she's on tour with it:

Wednesday, July 27 - UES New York

07:00 PM
Caprice will be reading from and signing her new book "With a Little Luck" at
Barnes & Noble
150 E. 86th St.
New York, NY 10028
Wednesday, August 03 - The Grove, LA

07:00 PM
Caprice will be reading from and signing her new book "With a Little Luck" at
Barnes & Noble
189 The Grove Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Thursday, August 04 - Books Inc. in the Marina - San Francisco

07:00 PM
Caprice will be reading from and signing her new book "With a Little Luck" at
Books Inc. in the Marina
2251 Chestnut St.
San Francisco, CA 94123
Friday, August 19 - The Book Cellar - Chicago

07:00 PM
Caprice will be reading from and signing her new book "With a Little Luck" at
The Book Cellar
4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625

Caprice is also stunningly gorgeous. Here's a photo I found on her website taken by Adam Bouska of the NOH8 Campaign.



I have to juggle something around but am hoping to go to her reading on Wednesday!

How can you not love a woman who passively aggressively blogs red carpet photos of a movie she wrote that got rewritten?

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Monday, June 27, 2011

Want to read: Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

I found this book while looking up Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge, which I'll be blogging about soon. I bought that yesterday at Comics Dungeon in Seattle (Wallingford). I'd met the author and was interested in the book and am super impressed with it; it's definitely going to be a gift for my cousin who is getting bat mitzvahed this summer. I'm the type who can be sucked in by a book cover, and this one did it for me:



Official description:

Anya could really use a friend. But her new BFF isn’t kidding about the “Forever” part . . .

Of all the things Anya expected to find at the bottom of an old well, a new friend was not one of them. Especially not a new friend who’s been dead for a century.

Falling down a well is bad enough, but Anya’s normal life might actually be worse. She’s embarrassed by her family, self-conscious about her body, and she’s pretty much given up on fitting in at school. A new friend—even a ghost—is just what she needs.

Or so she thinks.

Spooky, sardonic, and secretly sincere,
Anya’s Ghost is a wonderfully entertaining debut from author/artist Vera Brosgol.

Book trailer:



So anyway, I know very little about it but Anya's Ghost looks great (thank you, Amazon, for your customer recommendation pages). Click here to check out a 17-page preview. Here's a little bit from author Vera Brosgol's blog, but do check out that blog post for a more in-depth look at her artistic process:

Anya’s Ghost is my first book. Consequently everything I did was a bit trial and error. Maybe wasn’t the most efficient way to get the job done, but it worked for me.

I didn’t work from a script. When I write the art and the dialogue come at the same time and one suggests the other; it’s really hard for me just to come up with dialogue onto a blank computer page. I try to show more than tell with my comics and that seems to work best starting with thumbnails rather than attempting to get it across in a script. I did work up an outline for the entire story and plotted it out very carefully, but I let each scene form itself in thumbnails with the dialogue being written as I drew. I’ll run you through a process of some sample pages from writing to drawing to final color.


Check her out @verabee on Twitter and in person:

San Diego Comic Con
July 22nd-24th

Portland Wordstock Festival
October 6-9

New York Comic-Con
October 13-16

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Want to read: Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter

Uncommon Criminals is the second in a new Ally Carter series and it's wonderful! I both want to read it and am already reading it, almost done. It's a fast-paced read about teenage thieves; in the last book, they were stealing back stolen Holocaust art. This one involves a 97-carat emerald and all sorts of security measures, plus family and romance, but mainly heists. Click here for Ally Carter's book tour dates and visit Heist Society on Facebook to read an excerpt from Uncommon Criminals (it opens with Kat in Moscow stealing from the KGB!).

I read it while getting a pedicure:



I recommend all of Ally Carter's YA novels, both her Gallagher Girls series and this series!

Official description:

Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous, and that is . . . the emerald is cursed. Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all, she has her best friend — the gorgeous Hale — and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses and realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time. Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Want to read: Break the Skin by Lee Martin

I have this book and plan to read it soon. I was very impressed by Lee Martin's interview at Amazon and other postings I've read on his blog about writing, aside from regarding this specific book, like this post on whether writing can be taught:

Can we teach someone how to write? That question comes up quite often within the community of folks who do exactly that for their livelihood, and I’m always a little puzzled when the answer is sometimes no.

Of course, we can teach someone how to write. We do it each year in our workshops, our literature seminars, our thesis directing, our informal conversations in this place or that, and in writing of our own. We teach technique, we teach the habits of the process and the work ethic that they require. I happen to believe that we can also teach students how to adjust their vision so that they more readily note the contradictions and complexities of the world around them. I believe we can encourage them to think in terms of opposites so they see the plurality of any one character or situation. We do it by talking about published work that does exactly that and by pointing out what a writer has done to make the vision of that story, poem, essay, novel more deeply felt and more multi-layered with different levels of emotion and intellect, often contradictory in nature.


So yes, this tattooed lady, who is just about done with the excellent tattoo mystery I don't want to end, Ink Flamingos, is looking forward to reading Break The Skin.

From the interview with Lee Martin at Amazon by Dani Shapiro that so intrigued me:

Shapiro: Miss Baby works as a tattoo artist, a profession which I imagine you didn’t know much about at the outset. Did you know you were going to write about a tattoo artist when you were first beginning the book? How did you go about your research? (Any tattoos?) Why did it seem important that Miss Baby be in this line of work?

Martin: Well now, what makes you think that I didn’t at some point work as a tattoo artist? In between the years when I cooked crystal meth, robbed banks, and worked as a hit man, maybe I was pounding ink. (Nah, that sentence was just a feeble attempt to establish my street cred.) After all, as one review of the novel says, I’m “crackling with dark deeds and bad intentions...” I love that line! I want it to be part of my introduction at future readings and events: “Here he is, crackling with dark deeds and bad intentions, Lee Martin.” Ha! I told my students that and they laughed so hard you could see how far from the truth of me such a description actually is...or is it? Hmmm...I’ll never tell, nor will I reveal my tattoos, not even the ones that glow in the dark.

My research involved a conversation here, a visit there, some things read, some things watched--just the usual methods of immersing oneself in an unfamiliar world. I’m always fascinated with the details and the lingo of someone else’s job, and as soon as Miss Baby stepped onto the corner of Fry and Oak Street in Denton, Texas, I knew she had to be coming from a tattoo parlor. Don’t ask me how I knew that. I just did. I like to think that my subconscious mind had already started to sense the rich possibilities with metaphor in this practice of drilling into the skin and leaving something to live in scar tissue.




Here's the book's official description, via Lee Martin's website:

Laney—a skinny, awkward teenager alone in the world--thinks she's found a kindred spirit in thirty-five-year old Delilah. "When I was with her," Laney says, "I felt closest to being the person I was meant to be...We could have been sisters, big and little, which some people thought we were." Then the police come to ask Laney questions and she finds herself reconstructing a story of suspense, deceit, and revenge, but also "a story of love, no matter how roughed up and ugly and stained." A story that will haunt her forever.

Seven hundred miles away, in Texas, Miss Baby has the hardened heart of a woman who has been used by men in every possible way, yet she is desperate for true love. When she meets a stranger, a man who claims he can't remember his real name or his past but who seems gentle and trusting, Miss Baby thinks she may have finally found someone to love, someone who will protect her from the abusive men who fill her past.

But Miss Baby and Laney are connected by a terrible crime and bit by bit, the complex web of deceptions and seemingly small misjudgments they've each helped to create starts to unravel. Action, speculation, and contradiction play off one another as the story is told through their first-person voices, which keep you nervously guessing all the way to the shocking, tragic climax. BREAK THE SKIN is a novel about "wanting to matter to someone, wanting it so badly that you did things you never could have imagined, and you swore they were right, all for the sake of love."

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Check out the amazing lineup for Take Me There: Trans and Queer Erotica edited by Tristan Taormino

Editor Tristan Taormino posted the author lineup for her fall anthology Take Take Me There: Trans and Queer Erotica, and wrote:

In mainstream media, the erotic identities, sex lives, and fantasies of transgender and genderqueer people are often oversimplified, sensationalized, or invisible. Take Me There is an erotica collection unlike any other that celebrates the pleasure, heat, and diversity of transgender and genderqueer sexualities. The power of seeing and being seen is a central theme in the anthology; it’s not simply about passing or not passing (an idea often explored with transgender characters), but about being acknowledged and desired in a sexual context.

The book takes you from San Francisco to Israel, from heartache to lust, from stranger sex to a 10 year anniversary, from ballet shoes to butt plug bondage tables, from fumbling teenagers to leatherclad bears, from MTF and FTM—and in between and beyond.


This year and last I've hit a lot of stumbling blocks with my writing, and for a long time erotica was absolved from those blocks, but lately, that's not the case. I've had lots of books I wanted to submit to and just didn't get to finish my stories and that makes me disappointed. However, this story I'm very excited about and think it pushed me into new territory. I have another gay male erotica story coming out this fall, "Stripped," about, yes, a crossdressing stripper, but that one has some humor (and a little edge, since it's set at a frat party, and indeed is in the book Frat Boys). My point is, though, that "Punching Bag" isn't humorous; it's intense, and, I hope, powerful, the kind of story I want to keep writing, because to me BDSM is intense and powerful, no matter the gender of the people involved. I'll post another excerpt closer to the pub date, but for now, please do consider pre-ordering it. I'm linking to Amazon but you can pre-order it from any bookstore.

Here are the first two paragraphs of my story "Punching Bag:"

Kyle still wasn’t sure, two years in, if he liked punching or being punched better, on or off the ring. All he knew was that boxing made him feel alive, lit up, excited, manly…and had even when he was a woman. He’d started lurking around the gym when he’d been Kim, binding his breasts, mostly using the inert punching bags. He was afraid of hitting another woman, but he wouldn’t be afraid of hitting the block of muscle in a man’s chest. He didn’t even need anyone else, at first, to get that special high, one he’d never gotten from running or swimming or tennis.

There’s an energy to a boxing ring that he had never experienced in any other sport, not even wrestling. This was pure, raw aggression, tempered only by the rules of the game and sometimes not even that. It made grown men and women drop all pretense and simply get down to the business at hand, and he liked the way it sliced away every false veneer society put on his shoulders until it was just his mind and his fists, working in concert.



I’m proud and honored to be part of this book, not just because it features a who’s who of queer erotica, but because I feel like I tried something new for me and pushed myself with my trans male gay erotic boxing story “Punching Bag” and am very pleased with the result. This is one I will devour the minute I get my contributor copies! More on it closer to the pub date. Tristan published my very first erotica story, “Monica and Me” (as did Shar Rednour), and I will always remember and treasure that.

Tristan also wrote on Facebook that if this does well, there’s the possibility of turning it into a series, so please remember that when you are buying holiday gifts or looking for your next erotic book purchase. If you know you’ll want to read it, pre-ordering this book (or any book) helps get its numbers up and means wherever you pre-order it from knows there’s a fan base and is more likely to stock more of it!

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