Dirty Dates is here early!

Working on a book can be a long and lonely process. Even an anthology. Yes, it's social in the sense that I get to work with lots of other authors, but I'm doing that work via email, at home, alone. Even though I've been through the process over 50 times, my anthologies still feel like words on a screen or a page until I hold the book in my hands. So now that my latest, Dirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples is officially in stock on Amazon (in paperback; the ebook release date is November 16th), it's both a relief and the start of the exciting part: sharing my book.



This one is special, because while it's for sale early, its official publication date is on my 40th birthday, November 10th. I'll be spending the day sharing lots of other people's posts about the book and simply celebrating a new stage of my life and this latest book, one I'm very proud of.



You can read an excerpt from the opening story, "The Corset" by Dorothy Freed, at Kinkly. Hope you like it!

Here's what else is in the book and where else you can buy it:

Table of contents and introduction:

Introduction: Kinky Is as Kinky Does (read it on Tumblr by clicking the intro title)
The Corset Dorothy Freed
The Swap Jade A. Waters
Slow Burn Morgan Sierra
The World in My Pants Valerie Alexander
Lying Down Kathleen Delaney-Adams
The Rabbit Trap Nik Havert
Closing Time Elise Hepner
A Thousand Miles Apart Tilly Hunter
Switch Mina Murray
The Birds and the Bees Giselle Renarde
Potluck Alva Rose
Magic Words Emily Bingham
Polka-Dot Dress Erzabet Bishop
Baby Steps Justine Elyot
On Location D. L. King
Well Lit Sara Taylor Woods
A Soundproof Room with a View Leigh Edward Gray
Recipe for Punishment Jacqueline Brocker
Cry to Me Skylar Kade
Needles Kathleen Tudor
Admitting It Is the First Step Rachel Kramer Bussel

Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Nook

Books-a-Million (paperback)

Books-a-Million (ebook)

Powells

IndieBound (find it at your local bookstore)

Cleis Press

Amazon UK

Kindle UK

Happy editor news: my college paper The Daily Californian wrote about my reading

Because I'm determined to make The Big Book of Orgasms not only my best book but my bestselling book, I Google it every day. For whatever beyond me technical reason, that process yields finds that my Google alerts don't. Maybe it's crazy, but today I discovered a happy surprise: my college newspaper The Daily Californian wrote about my recent San Francisco reading at Good Vibrations, complete with illustration:

The stories are well written and surprising. They are personal and political, and each one pushes taboo and reminds us that sex is much stranger and more varied than we think. I lose track of the pronouns, and I stop assuming I can guess what someone will read by how they look.

That made my day! I was also interviewed by contributor Victoria Blisse and at Madison Kink, a site all about kink in Madison, Wisconsin. From Madison Kink:

Do you use any past experiences in your stories?

My first few stories were largely autobiographical. Now I still use elements from my life in my fiction, but it’s less direct, more subtle or disguised. I might take something that happened to me and twist it around or put it into the experience of a very different character. I love the real-life moments that beg to be written about, the ones that seem to find my by chance. I like burying the secrets in the stories like little erotic Easter eggs.

So yes, I'm a crazy narcissistic Googler, but that also means I'm finding hidden gems about my favorite book and that makes it worth it. Authors and editors, I recommend both Google news alerts on your titles and a bit of searching to find what falls through the search engine cracks.