Rachel Kramer Bussel's Blog, page 125

Hi from MOMENTUM

I'm having a wonderful time at MOMENTUM! You can follow what's happening via the hashtag #mcon on Twitter. I've been to panels on sex worker rights, blogging and body image and fat so far. I shot a video for gasm.org with Jamye Waxman, met my fellow November 10th birthday sharer, Best Sex Writing 2012 contributor and Naked at Our Age author Joan Price and lots of others. I also added to my to do list to do a workshop at Self Serve Toys in Albuquerque, who made this Viva La Vibrator sticker.


my awesome boyfriend drove to Virginia; I put my feet up

Erotica 101 from amateur escorts to zombies

My handout for my Erotica 101 workshop at MOMENTUM this Sunday lists various anthology themes, from amateur escorts to zombies! I'm so looking forward to this and hope that lots of attendees (and you!) will submit to the 4 anthologies I'm currently editing (Best Sex Writing 2013, which is for nonfiction only, Best Bondage Erotica 2013, 1,200 word or less orgasm erotica and anal sex erotica). I'm reading now for Best Bondage Erotica 2013 and have already made some fabulous selections, which is why I highly encourage you to get your stories in early (final answers will be given to everyone by June, once I have my manuscript approved by Cleis Press).

My latest book Curvy Girls: Erotica for Women, with foreword by April Flores, is out!

My book Curvy Girls is out now! Ebook and audiobook are forthcoming. More on this soon, including excerpts, but for now...

From the editor of Dirty Girls comes a new anthology of steamy stories for women who don't fit into a size zero—or two, or four—and the men and women who love them.

In this voluptuously erotic collection, editor and best-selling author Rachel Kramer Bussel showcases the sensual side of having "more to love," from the sexiness of big butts and plus-size corsets to the irresistible allure of pregnant bellies. No aspect of full-figured female sexuality is left unexplored, whether heterosexual or same-sex, raunchy or romantic, femme or butch. Bussel also includes seductive stories featuring characters of varying ethnic and racial backgrounds, exploring how different cultures approach size and eroticism. From trysts between long-time partners to one-night stands, from vanilla encounters to kinky romps, Curvy Girls is an all-inclusive celebration of the sensuality of larger women—in all their curvy glory.



Order Curvy Girls from:

Amazon

Kindle (TK)

Bn.com

Nook (TK)

Powell's

Books-a-million

Indiebound (find it at your local independent bookstore)

Foreword: The Volumptuous Life by April Flores
Introduction: Curves and Attitude by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Runner's Calves by Sommer Marsden
Before the Autumn Queen by Angela Caperton
Champagne & Cheesecake by A.M. Hartnett
First Come, First Serve by Lolita Lopez
Small Packages by Tenille Brown
Decadence by Satia Welsh
Excuses by Nina Reyes
Recognition by Salome Wilde and Talon Rihai
Passing the Time by Gwen Masters
First Date by Louise Hooker
At Last by Jessica Lennox
Wenching by Justine Elyot
What Girls Are Made Of by Evan Mora
Appetite by Elizabeth Coldwell
In The Early Morning Light by Kristina Wright
See and Be Seen by Arlette Brand
Big Girls Do Cry by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Marked by Isabelle Gray
Happy Ending by Donna George Storey

7 new erotica short stories

I have a bunch of new erotica short stories out - the first 4 are from new ebook only imprint Mischief Books, which has purchasing links and excerpts and also full-length novels, and the last 3 are from Cleis Press. I'm especially excited about the first anthologies edited by writers you are likely familiar with, Shanna Germain and Sinclair Sexsmith, as well as another collection by D.L. King!


my story "Slapper," about, shockingly, a girl who like to be slapped (to find out where she likes to be slapped, you'll have to buy the ebook) is in Shameful Thrills: Girls who Should Know Better


my professional restaurant eater story (yes, I have a fondness for restaurant settings) "I'll Have What She's Having" is in Exposure: Those who Love to Watch and be Watched


my story "Best Offer," about a woman offered $100 who holds out for more, is in Girl for Hire: The Secret Encounters of Amateur Escorts


my story "Stranded," about a woman who's left stranded at, yes, a restaurant, and has to "pay" for her meal, is in At Your Mercy: Tales of Domination


my kinky art gallery story "The Heart of Chaos" is in Bound by Lust: Romantic Stories of Submission and Sensuality


my story "A Slap in the Face" (about, yes, face slapping, in public, no less) is in Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica edited by Sinclair Sexsmith


my butch masseuse and femme client story "Happy Ending" is in The Harder She Comes: Butch Femme Erotica edited by D.L. King

In the beginning

To tell a story, you are supposed to start at the beginning, and I wish I could, but I'm not really sure what story I want to tell, or where the beginning of it is. I have so many beginnings tucked away in my computer, stories in various stages of completion, one that has reached the end, and only requires, according to my assistant who proofread it for me, me to explain where a certain sex toy came from in the plot, other than my imagination.

If I were to tell you about writer's block, which some people believe is a real thing and some people think is simply an excuse to not write, I wouldn't know quite where to start either. The block, though, I can describe. In my imagination, it's not a block, exactly, but a box, one I keep moving toward and instead of stepping over, I sit down and open. I open it and unearth its contents and each time, no matter whether the contents have shifted, morphed, or even disappeared for the most part, I take them out and examine them, endlessly fascinated, as if seeing them for the first time. I take them out and let myself get lost in them, immersed in their every facet, overwhelmed by their minutiae, absorbed, engrossed, subsumed by even the most nothing of items. It's kindof a perfect metaphor for my apartment, where those objects are real, and endless. There is always a distraction.

That's what this week was like, pausing over morsels I'd placed in that box, listening to podcasts, reading anything and everything, waiting until I felt like I was ready. Even when a friend told me, "I'm so glad you're writing this," I didn't stop and close the box and say to myself, "Time to move on." I said to myself, "Isn't it great that she's such an awesome friend that she took the time to tell me that?"

I don't know where this post is going any more than I do most of my stories but I do know that today at a coffeeshop, a different one than my usual hangout, I bunkered down and finished a story I'd been working on for months, that was started for one anthology and then was meant for another. It combined the theme of people over 50 and hotel sex and took as its setting a hotel where I was hit on by a pickup artist. In some ways, it was very me, and in some ways, it was new and not me. I don't know where it will wind up, or if I have it in me to finish another one tonight. I just know that I loved that feeling of realizing the end was near, not because I'd hit some word count or rushed through any scenes, but because I figured out how the characters fit together. I managed to work texting into what might be called a humiliation scene; I like when I can add an inanimate object, like a smart phone or glass of champagne, into a story, like I did there.

My own smartphone and I have been apart for four days and I have to say, it's been rather idyllic. I haven't talked to anyone except my boyfriend, his friends, who made us dinner and were much easier to talk to than I'd expected, and my grandmother. I'm a little afraid of returning home and turning on my phone; I much prefer the silence of emails landing in my inbox. Next weekend I will be in Virginia, and then I will be seeing Bruce Springsteen on April 3rd, and then I will be flying to Portland for a new tattoo and meeting my friend's baby and a reading, before heading to Seattle and San Francisco and Santa Cruz and Berkeley, but I'm not ready to think about those cities, full of beginnings and middles and memories. Instead I'm savoring the silence, marred only by the whirring of my laptop and my fingers banging the keys as I try to figure out how to close those last boxes and leap over them into whatever unknown is waiting for me on the other side of them.

Until tonight

I'm working on an essay but it's long and I need to work on it when I get home from Chicago. But this is the crux of it. Plus I'm using a source I never thought I'd use. I promise it's a good one, and so telling. There've been so many excellent articles, opinion pieces and Tweets, I won't be able to include them all in my piece, but follow the story (stories, really). And, yes, follow the PR crowing by Foxconn, which is ridiculous. But if we let those stories be pitted against each other, we all lose.

human is better than robot

I have been pushing myself lately to write the things I don't necessarily want to write, but that haunt me when I don't write them. I was asked by an interviewer about the connections between the various work I do, the fiction and the nonfiction and the editing and though this was two days ago my answer has already become a big hazy in my mind, but I think I said that it is all about exploring aspects of sexuality and getting at the heart of what sex means. And yet, of course it's complicated, like life. I am not even sure where to begin, and maybe, in this time of looking at subjectivity and kinds of truths and retraction, a subject I maybe know a teensy bit about, where I should be going is not to a blog but to a book, a fictional one that will allow me to say what I want in a way that is honest and open yet grants me greater freedom than I would otherwise have. I had a wicked, somewhat sickening deja vu moment yesterday that made me realize that by not writing about those sickening moments, I do myself a disservice, and at the very least, deprive myself of the ability to laugh at the outrageous ironies my life presents sometimes. Truth may indeed be stranger (and harsher) than fiction, but fiction is also a tool I want to use, and in this case, need to use. I know it will help me exorcise those sickening moments, parlay them into entertainment, catharsis, instead of simply telling you how much I hate some girl who I used to be jealous of.

When I was in Hawaii, one of my editors told me not to be afraid to be voice-y with a piece I was writing. At the time I didn't really think much about it; I wrote the piece and approved edits and soon it will be on newsstands everywhere. But that idea of voice, and modulating our writing voices to fit certain audiences, has stayed with me, perhaps because, whether it benefits my writing or not, I almost always use my voice. Sometimes it upsets or unnerves people, it's too true, too real, too not nice. Sometimes it unnerves me, too, because the truth is ugly, often. It's not so much that I like baring myself at my most depraved, what goes into my body or through my mind, but more that when I don't let those dark experiences out, they eat away at me. They remind me that I am capable of going there, that my instinctive self-destructive mode is the default when I fear the words. I feel like I'm in some cycle, of what, I'm not sure, but it's been an extended one that has not quite faded out. I will be better, then worse, better, then worse. It will only better when I get centered, whole, detached in a way I pretend to be but my dreams, those subconscious consciences, remind me I'm not, yet.

I don't know what the answer is except that it is never and can never be to silence myself. I tried that, I apologized for using my words, which is something I regret. I forgot that I have the right to both my feelings and my words no matter how not nice they are; unless I'm threatening someone, I am entitled to that, and I'm sure that not niceness will wend its way into the piece I want to write. Sometimes I fear that if I don't get it out on the page it actually will incite me to act in ways I would not be proud of, but, I have to remind myself of something I wrote in an email, which is that "human is better than robot." I don't always like my humanity, my imperfections, my flaws, fears, hate, jealousy, self-sabotage, etc. There are long stretches when I have trouble finding anything to like, though thankfully, of late they are shorter and shorter. I worry sometimes that relationships are a crutch, a shorthand, a too-easy, too-temporary way out of that dilemma, a way to reboot myself out of those dark stretches by believing in what someone else thinks of me, and if I learned anything from 2011, it's that I have to rely on myself, first, last, always. That is something I am trying to do, one day at a time, and always, the words help. It's not simply, or even primarily, about controlling the message, but explaining it to myself, understanding it, not prettying it up because it sounds better or I want someone to like me or any other vapid justification for skimping on the self-reflection that what I do now demands.

I would say more, but I don't know where that line is, not a legal one, not even a moral or ethical one, but a safe one, one where I could say all those truths that haunt me and feel at peace. Well, I know that line isn't in this format. But there is a format, and I will find it, because clearly the urge to make sense of it in story form is not going away, and probably never will.

Sex diary: "The Gay Law Clerk Fantasizing About JFK in the White House Pool"

This week's sex diary: "The Gay Law Clerk Fantasizing About JFK in the White House Pool">br>
This week's sex diary, with a nod to Mimi Alford's JFK memoir Once Upon a Secret. I edit these weekly anonymous sex diaries; want to write one? (You don't have to be in NYC). Email sexdiaries at nymag.com and tell me in a few sentences why you'd make a good diarist, and feel free to pass that on. Thanks!

Saying "Isn't that what every woman wants?" is offensive in the extreme

In this case, we're talking about love, but whatever we're talking about, once you veer into the "every ___ person" wants this, you know (or should know) you're in trouble, even if it's something supposedly everyone wants, like, well, love. Talk about the romantic industrial complex, as my friend and fellow SXSW panelist Samhita Mukhopadyay calls it in Outdated. From a PageDaily interview with Lyss Stern, about 50 Shades of Grey trilogy. More from me about this soon, because it incensed me.

MM: Critics say the books are degrading to women because of the story line being based on a sexually dominant man. Is it?

LS: It isn't because they are truly in love. The story isn't as shallow as an older man taking advantage of a young, virginal girl, which is what people tend to assume when they hear about it. There is a real loving, caring, supportive relationship at play, and Ana and Christian enjoy amazing sex to boot. Isn't that what every woman wants?

Sex, Dating and Privacy Online panel today at SXSW!

If you're at SXSW Interactive or know anyone who is, tell them to come to my panel today from 5-6 at the Omni. See you there!