I've got a brand new story in anthology For the Men edited by Rose Caraway

I have been focusing more on essay and article writing than my own erotic fiction lately due to time constraints so I'm thrilled to have a brand new story out in the world, the male point of view tale "Picturing You Naked" in For The Men And The Women Who Love Them edited by Rose Caraway. It's told in the second person and is about a very sexy speech given in a room full of people but with some erotic double entendres intended for one special person. I love experimenting like that and I was inspired by an article, which I no longer have handy, about how to give a speech. This is one way that might not fly in real life but was perfect, in my opinion, for fiction. Here's the first paragraph: "I'm picturing you naked, every lush curve, those lips that seem glossy and bee-stung even when you have nothing on them, the strip of red hair that matches the locks that drape against your shoulders. I'm picturing the way your ass juts out perfectly, especially when you stand in that way you often do so it reaches toward me, begging me to lay a hand on it. I'm picturing the gold ring emerging from your right nipple, the one that always tempts me to tug or flick or suck on it." It's out now as an ebook (and soon as an audiobook) and you can get it for Kindle, Smashwords and iBooks.



Follow @ForTheMenAntho on Twitter for updates. Hope you enjoy the book! Rose is wonderful to work with so writers, if you see a call for submissions from her out, I highly recommend submitting. She's @RoseCaraway on Twitter and her podcast is The Kiss Me Quick's.

Official blurb:

The Sexy Librarian, Rose Caraway presents an anthology intended for the fellas and the women who have an appetite for bold, adventurous erotic storytelling. Escape into the fantastic, the outlandish, and the literary. Get ready for; a space pirate, a cowgirl, an anxious odd man out, an undercover agent, lonely ghosts, a taxi driver with an unexpected topsy-turvy fare, a burly biker who just wants to be cuddled, a bride-to-be with one last oat to sow, The Devil offers a golden deal, a mysterious hitchhiker, strangers and a spontaneous three-way, and a reluctant hitman. You will find these and many more audacious characters playing out intense encounters.

Featured stories by: Allen Dusk, Jade A. Waters, Terrance Aldon Shaw, Tamsin Flowers, Landon Dixon, Sonnie de Soto, Adrea Kore, D. Lovejoy, Erin Pim, J.T. Seate, Spencer Dryden, Winter Blair, Simon Drax, Lynn Lake, Chase Morgan, Charlie Powell, Josie Jordan, Daily Hollow, Marc Angel, Rachel de Vine, D.L. King, Dorothy Freed, Rachel Kramer Bussel, T.J. Christian, and Emmanuelle de Maupassant.

My story "Espionage" to be published in Best Women's Erotica 2011

One of the assignments I give students when I teach erotic writing workshops is to write about something that really happened, but give it a twist. I like to tell them to take a sexual experience that wasn’t so great and turn it into something that, in fiction, is everything you had hoped it would be. That is the beauty of fiction, or erotica, to me, anyway. Some people prefer completely fictional stories, to get way outside themselves, and at times, I’m like that too. In the aftermath of my breakup I had to write about a gay couple and I lent that story an outrageousness I didn’t feel in my personal life.

So anyway, I took my own advice and wrote a story called “Espionage” that I am beyond honored to have published in the December anthology Best Women’s Erotica 2011 edited by Violet Blue (Cleis Press). I’m proud in part because I know Violet receives hundreds of submissions every year and only chooses the cream of the crop, but I’m also proud because it’s a somewhat dark story. I wrote it in the second person because for me, to have written it in the first person wouldn’t have been cathartic; it would’ve destroyed me. I find it challenging when writing in the first person about something that is at least partly autobiographical to not gloss over details; I was there, I know what I looked like or was thinking, but the reader has no clue. So in order to go outside of myself, which is kindof what I felt like in that situation, I used second person. Through that lens, it was much easier to have compassion on myself, or rather, the me-like character in my story.

This wasn’t a story I’d ever say I “wanted” to write, but one that clawed at me, that I needed to write to put that experience behind me. The event the fictional story commemorates is the culmination of a relationship and that shows. What I love about that process is that through writing it, I worked through a lot of things. All those emotions that are maybe “too mean” or that make me feel uncomfortable, I could throw into the guise of fiction and turn them into a blender until I barely know what’s true and what’s not, and furthermore, that doesn’t matter. There is no such thing as “truth,” anyway, not really, not when it comes to emotions and relationships. There are experiences and feelings but I would never presume to say my take on any one relationship is “true” or not. Anyone involved could write or create art out of any human interaction and that, to me, is the biggest, most telling lesson of all. I sometimes get so mired in “my version” that I forget that a whole other world exists outside, in this case, the pain of it. I could be angry at myself for indulging my worst emotions, for letting myself get caught up in something I never should have, or I could just make peace with it.

I’m proud that it works as a story, as something that, in those several thousands words, takes my tale of being an “Anaïs Nin emissary” and makes it into something that others can appreciate and enjoy. The “you” in the story is no longer me, if it ever was. It’s “you,” some fictional girl. I can’t share more right now, but I will leave you with this teaser from the first paragraph that I hope will make you rush right out and order it (or put it on your wishlist):

“You tuck your new pink and black coat, the one purchased earlier in the day just for this special evening, around your body, pull it tight like it’s cold out, except you’re indoors and the fire is roaring. You are cold, but it’s the kind of cold that can’t be heated by rubbing two sticks together or turning up the thermostat, the kind of cold that can only be vanquished once your heart catches up. Your heart is cautiously icy, watching and waiting; it isn’t safe to let it melt just yet.”

I think I’ll read it at the very last In The Flesh on December 16th. You can read it in Best Women’s Erotica 2011, out in early December, available now for pre-order.

What I read at Dirty Words night

I noticed in Dirty Words that there were entries for "Dirty Sanchez" and "Dirty Talk" but not "Dirty" itself. So I wrote something, very on the fly, two hours beforehand. "Did you really write it two hours before?" my friend Flora asked me. "You always say that." But I really did. I was in a kindof dark headspace and writing about it helped, and I'm glad I did. I forget sometimes to journal, to write, to capture things as they occur, before they utterly change on me.

And I got utterly seduced by the second person. I've used it so sparingly in the past, and think that's its proper place. I never really studied much in the way of proper English, but I realized that I write in second person when I want to write something very personal, but also distance myself from it. It's not "I," not "me," but "you" even though "you" is really me. I think why it works is because by saying "You," even though the listener/reader knows the writer is often using "you" as a substitute for "I," it draws them in. It could be talking about any "you" out there in that crowd.

It's seductive, an instant come-on, whereas "I," which I use so much, by comparison sounds haughty, audacious, bragging. "I" can only be about the author, whereas "you" takes on a universality that is broad enough to invite everyone in. In so many ways, it's more confessional. I'm fascinated by it. The other piece I wrote was called "Memories" and it was one of two breakup erotica stories I wrote back in 2004 that I'm glad I did, but still killed me to write.

I felt stronger after I wrote this, and I actually walked into Happy Ending with one idea of how my night would go, and the night, and the people in it, surprised me, in a very good way. I don't know if that has anything to do with the writing, but I'm glad I got the words out. I think I sounded more confident than I usually do when reading and I credit the second person for it. And because this is the internet, you even get links. Read at In The Flesh Reading Series, September 18, 2008.

"Dirty"
by Rachel Kramer Bussel

You look up a piece you wrote in 2003 about being “dirty,” one that now makes you cringe the same way those artifacts of childhood creativity your mom has saved does. It feels juvenile, the words a weak version of who you are or maybe who you were. But still, they are there, on the Internet, forever, and they say things like:

I want to be nervous, a little bit scared, uncertain. I want my clit and my pussy to be scared too, to try and anticipate what will happen next and be thrown off guard by a slap or a pinch or a pull. I want the pain of a hand falling full force against my ass, making it burn and seethe, and knowing that there's more waiting for me. I need that fear, that edge, to hover over. I need my lover to act differently with me than they do on the street, to treat me rougher or meaner or more fiercely, anything that distinguishes our sex from our average conversation.

You’ve almost forgotten what the good kind of Dirty is like, the kind where you do the walk of shame, or the subway ride of shame, and shop at Kmart before work. The kind where you push everything else in your head aside to whisper fantasies into your cell phone, letting the heat wash over you. The kind where sex becomes central, a daily part of your being, like breathing, not a burden or a worry or a stress, not just a word in your book title or MySpace slogan devoid of meaning. That part makes you feel the wrong kind of Dirty, the slimy kind where you almost can’t look at yourself in the mirror, wondering if you’re living the wrong life instead of being shacked up somewhere with babies and calm.

You forget what Dirty really feels like, or you remember in stolen moments, flirtations and forbidden fantasies. You debate wearing a dress, or lingerie, or nothing at all for a calendar, wonder if you’ll feel about posing nude as you do about HBO showing you masturbating forever, an endless reminder of memory of wantonness. Part of you wants to be captured like that, and part of you wants to hide, save it for someone special. As much as you know that “dirty” is always subjective, that sex and judgment and what’s proper and what’s not are all in the eyes of the beholder, the words that flow from your fingers you’re pretty sure are universally “dirty.” Your work starts to take a dark turn, full of rape fantasies and bukkake and dual blowjobs and crying during spankings. They say things like:

I pin her arms down and can feel her thrashing beneath me. “Don’t,” she says, letting out a whimper as she tries to undo my hold on her. I go slower even though I want to shove my way into her cunt, hurt her with my cock. I go slow so we can both savor the feel of me taking this from her. “No,” she says again, this time more quietly, and I chance lifting one hand to hold it over her mouth. I had no idea how hot that could be, to have a girl who’s struggling with her desire, who’s wet as can be but is trying to protest. It may be an illusion but it’s one I’m buying.

You wonder if you haven’t chosen the wrong profession, wonder if sex is not the topic you should cover by day, then obsess over at night. You get confused when people want your opinion about it, yet you are drawn to it over and over. The gap between that person, that persona, or some mix of the two, the girl from 2003 with all those yearnings, and the girl in 2008 whose yearnings are of a far more maternal nature, grows bigger.

Yet the words keep coming, even as Dirty itself becomes mundane. You have a dream/fantasy, or fantasy/dream, you’re not really sure which. There’s a girl—you don’t know exactly what she looks like, but she’s pretty, and her very presence turns you on. She’s kissing your lover, right there in front of you, soft, and then less soft. You’re part of it but you’re not, there to look and observe and maybe dictate, but not to join. You don’t tell anyone, until now, even though you think about writing him a letter on the pale green lined notepad you bought, the one that came from Staples in a pack with pink and blue, the one you thought would make you organized. You see the letter in your head, your handwriting, but that’s where it remains, because you can’t see afterwards. You don’t know what would happen after it would be received, don’t know how it would be taken, don’t know if it would brand you the wrong kind of dirty, the kind that makes you more of a freaky than fuckable.

Suddenly you start to rethink everything you thought you knew about being dirty. Is wanting sex dirty? Is desiring other people dirty? You don’t think using your vibrator is dirty, but still, you don’t do that as often as you used to. Even lying next to each other, you start to feel something well up from inside, and you’re torn between pushing it back and letting it take over. The words, much simpler ones than those you type into a screen, sit there, moved from your core up through your lungs, then your throat, until they are on the tip of your tongue, but you don’t. Or you can’t. You curl up under the covers and think about it, and try not to cry, try not to want.

You feel like you don’t know very much at all, but you do know this: That Dirty should not feel like this, sinful, scary, silent. Dirty should not be a code word for wanting but not having, for craving that never seems to end. Dirty, the good kind, should make you love your body more, love that it comes first, not last. You hope there is a time when Dirty will come back to you, mellow out, make its peace. Until then, it’s a word, a feeling, lurking around your edges, more work than play.