Rachel Kramer Bussel's Blog, page 139

Help my books with a very quick click

A very easy way to help my books is to "like" them on Amazon - links are below. If you can take a few minutes (don't need to do them all, the more recent ones are the more important), I'd really appreciate it. And stay tuned for big launch of Best Sex Writing 2012 plus events in (hopefully) NYC, the Bay Area and Seattle, and all the luscious 2012 anthologies! It's the little thumbs up logo at the top (see image below). Also a great way to show support for any author you like! Thank you if you can do it, and I'm just including all the relevant links here cause they also make great holiday gifts or so you can complete your RKB collection. In the works are my first solo short story collection, my first German translation of my books Fast Girls and Please, Sir and lots of other exciting projects.



Irresistible: Erotic Romance for Couples

Best Sex Writing 2012

Best Bondage Erotica 2012

Women in Lust

Obsessed: Erotic Romance for Women

Surrender

Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex

Best Bondage Erotica 2011

Orgasmic

Passion

Smooth

Fast Girls

Please, Ma'am

Please, Sir

Hide and Seek

Best Sex Writing 2010

Peep Show

Bottoms Up

The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories

Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories

Tasting Her: Oral Sex Stories

Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories

Best Sex Writing 2009

Dirty Girls

Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica

Rubber Sex

Yes, Sir

Yes, Ma'am

Best Sex Writing 2008

Crossdressing

He's on Top

She's on Top

Caught Looking

Watch me on TV!

From yesterday's birthday/National Vanilla Cupcake Day appearance on The Gayle King Show. The actual segment was about 4 minutes and a lot of fun!

Birthday photos!

So far being 36 rocks. I had fun on TV, walked for a bit in the sun, admired pretty leaves, bought a very trashy guilty pleasure novel I hope to write about, ate spicy pizza, got some new prescriptions, and met a week-old baby.

At The Gayle King Show, where there were cupcakes galore:





And at Motorino (yum! soppressata picante for lunch!) with my friend Aaron:



Meeting Junior:

Happy moment of 35

A simple, happy moment from 35. More happy moments of the year, now that I'm 36 and can savor them. I know I have to be careful with thinking that my life will magically improve overnight but I really do feel like something in my universe shifted with this added number on my age. Yes, fertility, new age bracket, etc., but I also hope I've learned a lot...and keep learning. Also, I love this dress. It makes me so happy when I put it on. I want to only retain clothes that make me happy (not ecstatic, cause that's asking a lot for a wardrobe, but any clothes that make me feel gross in any way are going). This year was full of big dramas but also small revelations, and I can't wait to see what 36 has in store. Especially right now, I don't know where it will take me, literally and figuratively, and while part of me wishes I knew, I'm trying to just be patient and let it unfold.

Deadline extension: Female submission anthology

Not sure why I got fewer than usual submissions to this book, but I definitely need more stories! I know I say it every single time, but the number of authors who don't conform to the guidelines seems to be increasing and all it does is make more work for me. Please read them and follow them. I actually hate extending deadlines but in this case it's necessary, but earlier stories are, as stated below, very strongly preferred so I can get this book out the door and make it as hot as He's on Top , Please, Sir and Yes, Sir (all great books to look to for the types of stories I enjoy!). Thank you!


Earlier stories strongly preferred. Again, please make sure you conform to the guidelines, including your story title and byline on front page, and make your story stand out in its premise, characterization and type of BDSM play. While the bulk of the stories here will be from the female submissive's POV, I will consider stories from the top's POV as well. Creativity and uniqueness are key; you're encouraged to take the theme and run with it. If you have already submitted, you can expect to hear back as per the guidelines by April 2012. You will receive a story receipt acknowledgment within 72 hours.


Untitled Female Submission anthology (Title TBA)
Editor: Rachel Kramer Bussel
Publisher: Cleis Press (late 2012 or early 2013)
Deadline: November 1, 2011
Payment: $50/story, upon publication

This anthology of erotic stories will explore a wide range of female submission and male domination. Stories can be told from a female sub POV, a male dominant POV, or second or third person, as long as it's a kinky erotic story focused on the topic. What's it like to be a female submissive, whether a full-time slave to a powerful master, or a kinky woman involved in an intense scene? These stories should explore the range of ways women submit to men, whether masters, husbands, boyfriends, play dates, strangers, Internet chatters, etc. Is the storyteller a lifelong bottom, or a new convert to kink, or simply enthralled to a particular man? Does merely offering herself up to any guy get her off, or does something about this particular top excite her? Can be long- or short-term relationships, single encounters, or anything in between, as long as the characters and plot are believable and the story is hot. Characters can be part of the BDSM scene/community or newcomers to the world of kink. I don't want simple snapshots of scenes that don't tell us anything about the characters' motivation. Please see my anthologies He's on Top; Yes, Sir; and Please, Sir for an idea of the stories I prefer. No nonconsensual stories; all characters must be over 18. No scat or incest. No reprints.

I encourage you to think beyond clichéd scenarios, as well as thinking outside the box when it comes to "power play." I am especially looking for stories where not all of the erotic action is centered around physical sensation. There can also be more than two people in a given story or scene (or even just one if they are following someone's orders), and bisexual scenarios are welcome as long as the bottom/top relationship is a heterosexual one, as fitting the title. My biggest pet peeve with the submissions I've rejected in the past is lack of characterization/jumping into the BDSM scene too quickly. The more variety you can bring to the topic, the better your chances of your story being accepted.

Guidelines: Stories should be unpublished and not submitted elsewhere for publication. Stories should be 1,500 – 4,000 words, double spaced, Times New Roman 12 point font, in a Word document only. If it is truly impossible to send a Word document, please send as both a RTF AND in the body of the email. You MUST include your bio (50 words MAX) and full contact info (mailing address, phone number, real name/pseudonym) when you submit.

Payment will be $50/story and 1 copy of the book upon publication (late 2012 or early 2013). Contributors will retain the rights to their stories. You may submit up to two stories. Please note that the publisher has final approval over the manuscript.

Send your submission as a Word document to femalesubantho@gmail.com


Please make sure to follow ALL directions. I'm getting a lot of single-spaced, non-Word document submissions without bios or mailing addresses. Please also make sure you send your FINAL version of your story, not a first (and then second or third) draft. All of the pertinent information, including a polished version of the story and your bio/contact info should be included in a single email, not multiple ones. Thank you.

If you have any questions, please email femalesubantho@gmail.com



Deadline: November 1, 2011
Expect to hear back from me by April 2012
Payment: $50/story, upon publication (late 2012 or early 2013)


About the editor: Rachel Kramer Bussel (http://www.rachelkramerbussel.com) is the editor of 39 anthologies, including Gotta Have It, Surrender, Best Bondage Erotica 2011, Bottoms Up, Spanked, The Mile High Club, Do Not Disturb, He's on Top, She's on Top, Tasting Him, Tasting Her, Crossdressing, Dirty Girls, and is Best Sex Writing Series Editor. She writes a column for SexIs Magazine, and hosted and curated In The Flesh Reading Series in New York for five years. Her writing has been published in over 100 anthologies, including Susie Bright's X: The Erotic Treasury, Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, and Zane's Purple Panties and the New York Times bestseller Succulent: Chocolate Flava II. She has written for Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, Penthouse, Salon, Time Out New York, Zink and other publications.

2 photos that encapsulate my last day of being 35

Yesterday was hard. Violin Monster made me laugh after I'd literally been crying, and the bottom, a page from the opening of the yoga memoir Poser by Claire Dederer, I found true. I'm excited about being on TV, and grateful for every lesson I learned from being 35. And profoundly, profoundly grateful to finally being 36! Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Hope you get to catch me live on OWN today 10-11 EST on The Gayle King Show !

Win a signed copy of Best Bondage Erotica 2012 at Goodreads!

FYI the book is obviously edited by me (more info at bestbondageerotica.com) but we're having issues with Amazon credited contributors as the editor, so it says contributor Kay Jaybee.

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Giveaway ends November 30, 2011.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Saying goodbye to 35, not a moment too soon

I keep wanting to write these elaborate, or at least, complete posts or essays or thoughts, about so many topics that I wind up not writing anything. Lately my life is in total flux and I blame a lot of it on being 35, but really it's about adjusting to that constant flux, going with the flow, and figuring out how to maximize my happiness. I mean, that sounds easier than it is, but maybe it's not as hard as I sometimes make it.

This year has had some extremely low moments--stolen iPhone, Top Chef date and other pretty appalling dates, getting laid off, lots of failures big and small--but it's also had some wonderful ones, from a great relationship to a host of new writing opportunities. I'm trying to keep the balance in mind, to remember that every day is a chance to start over, whatever my age. I have so many ideas and I often don't sleep at night these days, or sleep at odd hours, trying to get them just right. I still am my father's daughter in so many ways, like yesterday when I totally lost my shit because I couldn't find Commerce Street and thus couldn't go to the free reading at Cherry Lane Theater. Will I try again next week, or just chalk it up to West Village crazy streets and park my ass at a desk and write? Who knows?

I know that if 35 is the worst year I ever have, well, that'll be fine by me. If you'd told me 2 months ago I wouldn't be sitting in a cubicle editing smut but would be enjoying sunshine (!!), cupcake wrangling for national TV, jogging (!!) and trying to simply take each moment as they come, I don't think I'd have believed you. It's so easy to get utterly stuck, mentally and physically. I forget sometimes that change is possible, which is one of the most basic things that makes us human. I forget a lot of things and I'm trying to use this time, no matter where I wind up, physically, jobwise, or whatever, to just own myself, my thoughts, my feelings, and use them to be the best person I can be. I spent too much of this last year wanting to impress or please other people, and maybe I needed to hear things like "it would never work out" to know that I can only please myself. I'm about to embark on a year devoted to self-love, in all ways, and I'm already feeling and finding the peace there, the capacity to push myself into foreign territory and even though I have no fucking clue if everything will be okay, and I don't have much faith on that score one way or the other, I know that I will be the one making the decisions, one moment at a time.

I could tell you I'd love it if I never took a sip of alcohol again, if I live up to my promise to myself not to date or have sex in this coming year, but who knows? I have so many dreams and goals and yet I too often fall down on the job of living up to my potential. I'm so fucking scared sometimes of even writing a single sentence, it becomes easier to do anything else than take that leap into the unknown, the place beyond knowledge, the place where I'm just utterly in the moment. I'm laughably bad at that but I know that in my little mental utopia, no, I'm not some yoga-performing mistress of serenity, but my hands don't shake, I don't cry on the subway for no reason, I don't take everything so personally, I don't place such a high commodity on the stuff that literally clutters every space in my life, but rather on clarity and bravery and hope and love. Yesterday I was so eager for some kind of pain to break through the hell of feeling utterly out of control. I have a scheduled pain appointment in the form of a tattoo coming up in 13 days, and I'm very excited to have all that amorphous hope for something I don't know if I'm truly capable, having a heart, permanently etched on me. It's so easy to see this year as one of listening to my heart over my head, and if I'm honestly, sometimes i want to take a knife to my heart and slice it into ribbons, or explode it in some fabulous fashion. It gets me in trouble and lead me down so many false starts this year. I don't wish I could take them back, exactly, I just wish they hadn't lead where they did.

BUT I'm grateful to be right here, in this beautiful weather, in this beautiful city. And yes, I'm excited for my closeup on live TV tomorrow, but that's external, and more than anything I need to work on, starting right now, ignoring external validation for the falsity it is. It's really meaningless, and you don't take it with you when you die, and you really don't even take it with you when you live. I know that for every time someone pays me some fake-sounding-to-my-ears compliment like "you do so much" and I want to punch them (I've discovered this year how much of a not pacifist I am, when it comes at least to those very visceral urges), or says the most boring thing on earth ("you have a lot of bags") that if I let that white noise get to me, if I let it penetrate even a millimeter below the surface, I'm gone, and I've been gone too much of this last year, letting myself erase all those hopes and dreams in favor of anyone else's. That's not how I want to live, and I have to accept that there will be days like yesterday, when I'm lost and confused and frustrated, that that happens, and you move on, and I can choose whether to stay in those rock bottom moments or rise above them. Writing, which is I guess is what I now do for a living, is so inherently full of rejection that I feel like I have to just paint a thicker skin on, maybe in multiple layers, and, again, believe in my own words first, so that when, as happened this year, I don't hear back, I have the courage to probe further.

People keep asking me what I'm doing for my birthday, and my shortest answer is, welcoming 36 with everything in my being. I don't want gifts, I don't want a party, I don't want a celebration. I just want to put this rocky year behind me and make sure I embrace this new one as a better version of me, as the Rainer Maria song goes.

Sex Diary

This week's sex diary (details at the bottom on how to apply to be a diarist): "The Queer San Francisco Woman Having Group Sex in New York"

I loved that I saw the URL first in my "Hitachi Magic Wand" Google Alert!

Sample comment: "Is my vagina supposed to hurt after reading this?"

Win vibrators and Women in Lust in Tuesday's Twitter chat!

Join me tomorrow night from 7-8 pm EST for a Twitter chat in which you can ask me anything! Follow me @raquelita as well as @EdenFantasys and @cleispress to see what we're up to, or just look up the hashtag #womeninlust.





You can win a copy of Women in Lust as well as these vibrators below, which are for sale from EdenFantasys (if you didn't know, EdenFantasys publishes SexIs Magazine, where my biweekly Secrets of a Sex Writer column is published).