Rachel Kramer Bussel's Blog, page 144

I'm reading Wednesday night from Take Me There

I've mostly retired from doing readings, at least for a while, but I'm very excited to read from Tristan Taormino's anthology Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica , which is a little larger than average volume of stories that I haven't read in full but can say I'm extremely honored to be sharing its pages with the likes of writers like Laura Antoniou and Ivan Coyote and Sinclair Sexmith. I'm going to try to bring cupcakes, but no promises. It's a milestone for me in terms of writing what I have no fucking clue about (being FTM, boxing). Lately I'm trying to write fiction in settings and about topics I'm not personally familiar with because it pushes me as a writer to create more interesting settings and stories. A decade ago, which seems hard to believe, I organized a reading for my very first erotica story, "Monica and Me," in Tristan Taormino's Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 and I still remember my awe that people showed up, people traveled for it, that organizing a reading was this thing I could do, not to mention writing a story.

I was such a newcomer to this whole world that is now part and parcel of my life, to the point that I sometimes forget or get jaded. I really do prefer the ease of being behind my computer than live readings, because I just don't think that's where my skill and certainly not where my comfort lies, but the camaraderie, the sense of community, the ability to connect with people who've collectively listened to sex stories and gotten something out of them? That's why I still do it.

Lately I have to push myself hard to finish every story, to get out the queries, to not want to go work as an admin assistant again, (falsely) assuming anyone would even hire me for that. There is an ease to that kind of monotonous work, in my experience, yet while the lazy side of me longs for that, the rest of me wants to be challenged, to see what's next. And every day brings a blank page and that same challenge. I may blog a lot or read a lot or do all sorts of other things to escape that challenge, but it's always right back there, in front of my face. Right now I'm trying to finish a few stories that seem impossible, and I often abandon stories, even though I know my ideas are good, because I can't make them work the way they do in my head. I don't blog about the non-successes, the thousand or two-thousand or three-thousand words without a home sitting in files on my laptop, waiting for me to wrap them up, because I don't want to project that image of failure. I want to celebrate the sales, the publications, but it's those failures that haunt me.

I'm trying to atone for not at least getting to the point where I send out the work, where I try, and risk failure, rather than not submitting at all. I'm atoning to myself, by staying put, no matter how long it takes, because in the end, getting to that ending, flawed and frustrating and imperfect though it may be, is worth it. Last night on my subway ride home I was thinking to myself, I have no idea what to pitch ___, and getting stressed about it, and then I literally walked into my bedroom, got an idea, and started an essay. That act, even more than whatever response I get, reminded me where I'm supposed to be right now.

Bluestockings, 172 Allen Street, NYC
Wednesday, October 12th @ 7PM – Free
Reading: Tristan Taormino "Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica"
With Laura Antoniou, Rachel Kramer Bussel, and Sinclair Sexsmith
Come celebrate the hump day with some steamy readings from "Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica." Local legendary contributors Laura Antoniou, Rachel Kramer Bussel, and Sinclair Sexsmith read their pieces. Columnist, sex educator, and "Take Me There" editor Tristan Taormino discusses the need for more Trans and Genderqueer erotica. Yes, Bluestockings will supply towels to mop up the sweat.

Speaking of Sinclair Sexsmith, I was looking up the details of this reading and found this column of Sinclair's: "Believe in Gratitude

I am grateful to every book I've ever read, all the writers who struggle to squeeze blood from a stone to get the right word on the page in the right place, making stories and sense of this world.

I am grateful to the Internet. Not just because that is the primary place of my career, but because I have been in touch with so many brilliant people because of the ways we share our lives online. It is the revolution of our times.

And if you're free Tuesday, you should also hit up Bluestockings for Samhita Mukhopadhyay's reading from Outdated, plus Thursday you can catch Justin Vivian Bond reading from the memoir Tango.

Tuesday, October 11th @ 7PM – Free
Reading: Samhita Mukhopadhyay "Outdated"
Status: Single, Married, Divorced, Desperate! Subscriptions to match.com and okCupid might be dragging you down instead of doubling your money. "Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life" shows how women have been coerced into believing their self-worth is tied to their relationship status, while addressing the difficulty of negotiating loving relationships within the borderlands of race, culture, class, and sexuality—and of holding true to your convictions and maintaining a sense of independence while doing it. Mukhopadhyay is the executive editor of Feministing.com.

Thursday, October 13th @ 7PM – Free
Reading: Justin Vivian Bond "Tango"
Growing up with the knowledge of being different from the other kids is never an easy task to tackle– especially when one minute you're being bullied by the neighbor, and the next minute you're making out. Justin Vivian Bond's new book, "Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels" vividly details Bond's coming of age as a trans kid. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LBGTQ adolescence, homophobia, parenting, and sexuality, while being utterly fabulous and entertaining.

Yom Kippur bad romance atonement

Should we atone for thoughts, even the unexpressed ones, but the ones that are there in our heads, the dark, ugly, awful ones? I'm not sure, but I can't help but think that even if we don't atone for them, we should try to find a way to make peace with them so they are not lurking there, embedded, waiting for the right moment to flourish. I have tried very hard to banish the worst of mine. I've peered as directly as I could into their source, flooded myself with information that might make me a little more empathetic, compassionate, anything.

Honestly, I think if I could create distance, physical and mental, that would help a great deal, but in lieu of that, I'm doing the opposite. The last time I did in such a way it was if not cathartic, powerful, because it proved to me I could do it and not collapse, not fall to pieces. I could actually find something new inside myself and try to let that newness be my guide and the only way I did that was by being as open as I was capable of being, of trying as best I could to wash away every preconceived notion I had, to have zero expectations, even if that meant pretending I was watching myself from afar, from a safer place than the chilly one I found myself in.

I see that even in the simplistic of human interactions I go toward the darkest place, I assume that everyone is against me and then I stubbornly turn against them because it's easier to do that than to simply acknowledge how much I wish they hadn't.

Maybe the distance I need isn't physical or mental, because, frankly, those would be utterly impossible, but perspective. I want to be able to salvage the good memories and let the sinister ones fade a little bit. Both have taught me a tremendous amount about my own vulnerabilities and weaknesses as well as my strengths. Black-and-white thinking, after, I don't know, 35 years of it (we probably don't start thinking that way at one, so it's an approximation), is very hard. Letting go of so many of my misplaced desires and dreams, along with a level of willful gullibility, is important, but not berating myself for it is important too.

I can listen to "Bad Romance" an infinite, ironic number of times and yet if I'm being truthful I can't say it was all bad, or even majority bad. The highs were just as soaringly height as the lows were low, and that massive roller-coaster drop was a high of its own. I just was more prescient than I could've predicted two years ago when I wrote an email in a café a few blocks from where I am now. I knew in my heart then that I was not cut out for the kind of relationship I found myself in, and yet I was utterly selfish, greedy, needy. I wanted to walk into that door because I thought maybe the next time I would like the sensation, perhaps, or that maybe one day I'd walk into it and it would open and behind it would be...I don't know what, but something better than where I was before I stepped onto the doorstep. Yet I overrode instincts, simply because I wanted to. That wanting is a powerful, tricky, sometimes nefarious thing. You can get what you want, and then what?

Yet I don't want to go through life never wanting again. Of course you take huge risks by doing so. Sometimes you take those risks knowing in a place you don't want to acknowledge so you don't, that it will fail. Just because I don't want to be that naïve, dumb, foolish girl I was anymore doesn't mean I was never her. I was, and I don't hate her or even pity her really, I just wish she could've been a little more self-protective, a little smarter. I have to own her in her best and worst moments though, fully, and reckon with her in order to be the best person I can be right now. And I will, until maybe one day I won't have to.

Highly recommended comedy October 7th: "Funny Girls to the Front"

It's also my friend Samhita Mukhopadhyay's Outdated book party in Brooklyn and, of course, Yom Kippur, but if you're in NYC and want to laugh your ass off, $10 is a huge bargain for these funny ladies. And Sara Marcus's Girls to the Front is a book I highly recommend. I'll be atoning in my own way. I've been doing lots of it but have a bunch of apologies to muster up the courage to deliver. Don't think I'm gonna fast this year, but we'll see. My mistakes are often ones I repeat ad nauseam so all I can ask for in the coming year is to make new mistakes. And be ready for anything.

Funny Girls to the Front
Part of New Museum Presents

$10 Members, $12 General Public

Featuring performances by Carolyn Castiglia, Bridget Everett, Erin Markey, Larissa Velez-Jackson, and Becky Yamamoto. Hosted by Adira Amram and the Experience.

Drawing inspiration from two disparate sources—Sara Marcus's book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution and the Barbara Streisand movie Funny Girl (a musical comedy about a Follies star who leaves her husband after he nearly sabotages her entire career)—tonight's program, "Funny Girls to the Front," showcases a line-up of female artists who make music funny on their own terms. These irrepressible entertainers employ original music in provocative and hilarious ways as an integral part of their performance practices, confronting assumptions and redefining the boundaries of their chosen disciplines (comedy, cabaret, performance art, and contemporary dance) in the process.

What Do I Want?

A friend asked in an email "What do you want?" He meant regarding my job search, but that seemingly small question made me realize how big a question it truly is. The last time I was looking for a job was in 2003. I was getting turned down left and right for my schizophrenic resume: type 100 WPM, law school droput, assorted administrative jobs. I had no conception that I could actually get paid real money to write, let alone be offered the chance to edit books or write a column for one of the premiere alt weeklies in the country. I just wanted to be off unemployment. I was going to bingo and drinking lots of cosmos and pretty much frittering my time away, but also inching toward writing more and more short stories, which is how I wound up working at my last job. That job both rescued me from an extremely tedious typist job where I felt my brain atrophying daily and taught me infinite amounts about how to be a rigorous editor.

Yet now, I'm not sure exactly what I want. I applied for a job that would be stunningly perfect for me in every way, but I'm not holding my breath because I haven't heard anything. When putting together my resume, I realized that between freelancing writing, anthology editing, Sex Diary editing, running In The Flesh and cupcake blogging, I have a wider range of skills than I'd thought, and I think the through line is that I am a good connector and know a lot of people and can access them to write, perform, blog. I've been pushing myself this year with my freelancing to write for new venues, which has yielded pieces in The Root, Salon, and xoJane, and have welcomed the steadiness of my biweekly column for SexIs.

I do welcome a break after 7.5 years, and the question of what I want from a job is one I'm not sure of right now. It also feels a bit like it does regarding dating; it's great to know what I want, but I am clueless about going from knowing that to actualizing it. I can't twitch my nose and make a job or a baby or a clean apartment appear. All require time and dedication and focus, and most of the things I do want to do, like write a novel, require a seclusion and focus that I'm not sure I'm capable of, yet owe it to myself to find out. With 5 weeks left of being 35, I'm still hoping to resurrect this year from its worst moments.

When I think about what I want regarding my personal life, it's also a very challenging question. I am finally moving on from one of the most tumultuous, crazy relationships of my life, and for me moving on means weaning myself from obsessing in my head and online. It means recognizing that if I'm going to find someone who cares about me, I have to not focus on the people that don't.

It also comes with its fair share of atoning, because one of the worst elements of that relationship is that it brought out a side of me I wish didn't exist, but pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make it so. It brought out feelings that I wanted to put back somehow but couldn't, that ran so deep I could never seem to unearth them quite enough to truly destroy them. There's this line in Adele's "Someone Like You" where she sings, "I wish nothing but the best for you, too," and that to me is a goal, like my "Open" tattoo, a state of being I hope to someday get to.

I also don't want to be someone so broken from her past that she can't move forward. The last two months have shook me in ways that I needed to be shaken, but also showed me that I need to work on myself so I can be in a strong enough place to resist the lure of people who don't have my best interests at heart, whether by nature or design. It was incredibly painful to be in a state where all I saw, everywhere, was, "She's perfect, she's perfect, she's perfect" and I took that to mean, "You're awful, you're awful, you're awful." She deserves 24/7 attention, you deserve nothing. I couldn't see anything beyond that black and white thinking, and I just focused on the "you get nothing because you deserve nothing" part of the equation. And now I realize maybe I got nothing because that person had nothing to give me. I wasn't useful to them so I was forgotten. Either way, it forced me to focus on the things I can control, which will never been another person. I know and knew that but I let myself forget and fell into this dark hole, to a point where I physically recoiled when I thought about the perfect woman having her perfect life, because it felt so much like, "And this is what you'll never have."

I'm not going to pretend it still doesn't feel like that a little, even though I don't even aspire to her way of life, but I am starting to see that any pain was pain I walked straight into, like walking into a door, and not a clear glass one where maybe you mistake it for air, but a solid, heavy one I willingly flung myself against, thinking maybe, by some fluke, it wouldn't hurt. I'm still here, and as challenging as that was, I have no regrets. Wishes and wistfulness, but not regrets, not for following my heart in its highs and its lows. I think one huge thing 35 has taught me is to never apologize for my emotions, or for sharing them. I can learn from them and not let them control me, but to let myself feel bad for having them is a way to doom myself right from the start.

Instead of asking myself what do I want, I let myself go back to that place I've been trying to move on from, where the tiniest scraps of attention, even negative attention, felt good to me. I forgot somewhere along the way that I not only have to be self-reliant but I have to believe in myself before anyone else will, whether when I apply for jobs or look for dates. It is and will be a long road in that regard, but it's one I think self-employment, for now, will help me with, because every day I have to figure out what I will accomplish and what will make me able to live with myself at night. So many times in the last who knows how many years I've self-sabotaged to a degree that makes it shocking that I even have my name on any bylines. I've looked for ways to fail and talked myself out of every big opportunity that has come my way. Maybe that was my perverse way of forcing myself to seek out my own opportunities and believe both in my ideas and do the painstaking work of seeing them through.

So what do I want? I want to get to a space where I can say, "I wish nothing but the best for you" to everyone I meet and genuinely mean it, myself included. Along with that I want to acknowledge to myself what, essentially, Gretchen Rubin says in The Happiness Project: that "best" is subjective, and so is success. That what might look amazing to one person might feel like nothing to another. That I don't have to instantly compare myself to everyone I see and assume automatically they have a better life than me, are smarter, cooler, whatever. Life isn't about pitting us against one another, or shouldn't be. I have to set goals and then ignore every single other voice, well-intentioned or not, that might get in the way of them. Not ignore everyone altogether, but know that those are my bottom lines.

I'm pretty sure that whatever comes next in both my personal and professional life will again not be the result of some master plan, but fate or the universe or luck, or a combination of all of these. Not because I can't plan, though it's not my strong suit, but because everything I've achieved until now has come about in large part due to those elements. I don't want to get so fixated on "what I want" that I can't be open to things/people/experiences I never thought I'd want but that turn out to be exactly right.

New column: "I Hate Dating, I Like Relationships"

In some ways, the title is self-explanatory, but in others, it's a contradiction. Read the column to find out what I'm talking about!



"Dating" sounds like a dirty word to me, and not in a good way. I love traditionally dirty words in the right context, but dating? Not so much.

Lest that make me sound totally bitchy and antisocial, let me clarify: there is something about both the concept of dating, as well as the reality of awkward conversations, especially during first dates, that often zaps the fun out of it for me. All the things I like about meeting a new person or having a crush, about geeking out over what I'm going to wear and how it's going to go, seem to get lost in the concept of "dating." It sounds more like a dreary, awful job than something I should want to do.

Read the whole thing

New beginnings

I'm officially in job search/supplement my income mode until I find a new full time job, so posting may be light, or possibly heavy. Who knows? I haven't yet figured out my new schedule, only that I know I need to write heavily every day and get as much running in as I can, both to maximize my monthly gym fee and for the feeling I get when I sweat like that, when my muscles are sore and my heart is pounding and I know for absolute sure I've accomplished something.

One easy way you can help me out is by visiting Cupcakes Take the Cake every day and passing on the link. We have daily cupcake content, events, contests and more. I'm hoping to use this time to learn more about boosting cupcake blog traffic, as well as working on some longer fiction ideas, organizing my home and generally assessing where I've been and where I'm going. I also have lots of book promo plans in the works; starting November 1 will be a month-long virtual book tour for Women in Lust



I know some of you probably didn't even know I had a full-time job because I don't think it's appropriate personal blog content, but aside from an unemployed stint back in 2003, I've worked full time since I left law school in 1999 and have no idea how I'd afford to live in New York City otherwise, but perhaps I'm about to find out. I learned so much at that job and am grateful that this law school dropout managed to worm her way into a full-time editorial job that has made me a much better writer, editor, proofreader, copyeditor and simply someone with a more critical eye all around. I found that I actually enjoy finding typos; it's an odd thrill, perhaps, but a thrill. I also learned it's much easier to edit other people's work than my own; when I proofread my short stories, I get bored because I already know what they say, or think I do.

I'm very calm and looking forward to being ruthless about sorting through my possessions, getting rid of things I don't need, reading books that have been awaiting me, like Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, and spending good chunks of time with my MacBook Pro and friends new and old. Plus when I travel, like to Portland, Maine, my birthday trip to myself I'm still going to take, I can tack on a few extra days. And I'm definitely taking a break from readings, but have one coming up next week, October 12 at NYC indie booksore Bluestockings, for the HOT HOT HOT book Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica (review from me when I'm done, but it's amazing) and ones November 3rd and 17th and Chat Lounge in December. Details TK, but I infinitely prefer being behind my computer than in front of a mic. I'll leave that to the professionals for the most part.

I may be slower to respond to non-urgent emails as I focus on and figure out what's vital, and what's not. This new year seems like the perfect opportunity for that. I almost wrote "apologies in advance," but as I atone and ponder my mistakes of the past year, I know that I have much bigger apologies to make and don't want to tarnish them by tossing the word around. I'm simply taking care of myself and doing what I need to do to get to wherever I need to go next. I trust that anyone who cares about me understands that, and anyone who doesn't isn't worth caring about. If that sounds harsh, I don't intend it to, but at the same time, purging my people-pleasing urges is one of my goals for myself for this end of 35 and into being 36. It's a toxic way of acting/thinking because for plenty of people literally nothing you do will please them, and if you fall into the trap of trying, you automatically fail.

A snapshot of my visit to the beach this weekend:



I also learned s'mores come in gigantic size:

My latest article: "The Bold Single Bride Who Married Herself"

I don't think I posted this here - my latest piece for The Frisky is "The Bold Single Bride Who Married Herself" about my friend Desiree. Totally inspiring! Be sure to read it and click through to read her entire vows to herself. I'm taking a cue from her.

What would you do if you wound up single on what was to be one of the most special days of your life—your wedding day? My friend Desiree did something remarkable and revolutionary: instead of hiding away, she marched boldly into a proud new future, and in the process became an inspiration to me and, hopefully, some of you as well.

On a recent Sunday, when I would have been attending her wedding to a man, I stood on Bow Bridge in Central Park and witnessed Desiree get married—to herself. A circle of her friends surrounded her while her cousin officiated, reciting vows she had written for herself, which included the lines, "I will make my happiness a priority and forgive myself when I'm not perfect. I will trust myself and stand within the power of my own strength. I will love myself forever more, through good and bad, thick and thin, and for exactly who I am today. I promise I will never, ever, ever, settle for less than what my heart and soul desire."

Read the whole thing

Apple, labor, technology, consumer responsibility and The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

Now through October 15th, there's a contest to win tickets to The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at The Public Theater...and a $250 Apple gift certificate. The show is largely about the working conditions at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where numerous electronics are made, including Apple products, the company that's the focus of the show. I questioned @PublicTheaterNY on the (il)logic of that on Twitter:







I still think it's an odd choice, especially after one sees the show. Yet they are right; technology is part of most of our worlds, certainly anyone reading this. I had my iPhone on my trip to Vermont and one of my little cousins said, "You're on that thing a lot. It's like your friend." She was totally right. I don't know what I'd do without my iPhone or my laptop, how I'd work or communicate with people. I wasn't suggesting that nobody buy any Apple products, just that the juxtaposition struck me as off message.

From The Newcastle Herald :

Daisey reserves particular disdain for the Apple fanboys who accuse him of singling out Apple when the rest of the technology industry is just as guilty, and of ignoring the fact that the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories is lower than the reported official average in China.

"These Apple fanboys have the most amazing moral and ethical equivalency that I've seen," said Daisey.

"All they would have to do is raise the blinders just a little bit and see with human eyes and they could be an enormous force for actually getting real change to happen. So when they choose instead to remain children playing with toys it's infantilism of the highest order."

He said the official suicide rate figures released by the Chinese government cannot be relied upon and that if there was a spate of suicides at a Western factory - as occurred at Foxconn recently - there would be a mammoth public outcry.

"It's an unbelievably pathetic defence to say my company's responsible for atrocities but so are other companies," he said, adding Apple should lead the industry into a more ethical approach.

"Apple has long prided itself on being a leader, it speaks constantly about being a leader in the field, they're very proud of that and they take huge advantage of it in their PR. Well, this is what comes with being a leader ... suck it up and start acting like one."

I'll be posting more about my reaction to seeing the show in January, and why I'm seeing it again, and if you're in New York, I strongly encourage you to see it (use the code iFriend for $50 tickets). It runs from October 11th to November 14th. The vividness of the imagery about the working conditions, lack of union organizing and underage labor is hard to ignore after you've seen the show.

But the idea of awareness makes me wonder what we, as consumers, are meant to do about this issue, aside from thinking about it. Thinking about it is important, but part of my impetus to see the show again is to figure out what to do with that information. It's not The Public Theater's or anyone else's job to tell me what to do with that; I have to figure that out. I've brought it up with people who were considering buying iPads, wondering about the delays.

I will say I have been thinking about it ever since I saw the show, especially when I wound up buying a new laptop at the Apple Store in Emeryville the next day. It was an uncomfortable feeling, like I was directly supporting those kind of working conditions. At the same time, I know that so many of the products I wear, use, consume, are likely made in awful conditions. Sara Bongiorni wrote a memoir, A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy , I haven't read yet, but that's about precisely this:



I don't know the answers, or any answer. I don't think ignorance is an answer, but what to do with that knowledge is a tougher question.

See also:

Today's New York Times interview about the show

"Why Apple is Nervous About Foxconn," Bloomberg Businessweek

From "Fire Breaks Out at Foxconn Plant," PCmag.com, about a different Chinese Foxconn factory:

The fire was first spotted by a microblogger at Chinese Internet portal Sina.com and picked up by Sina's news service. Coincidentally the day before, Chinese officials ordered police to engage more in "public security microblogging" but only through government-monitored channels.

In the last 12 months, Foxconn's reputation has taken a nosedive thanks to reports of explosions, worker suicides, and alleged slave-like working conditions. In May it briefly shut down operations after a deadly explosion in Chengdu, prompting Foxconn and its partners to pledge to make a number of reforms at the manufacturer's facilities. A recent report from watchdog group Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), however, found that most employees are working long hours for little pay, battling exposure to dust and harmful chemicals, and undergoing "military style" training sessions.

And Foxconn suicides has its own Wikipedia entry, separate from Foxconn. From 2009, about the suicide of Sun Dan-yong: "Fell from apartment building[18][20] after losing an iPhone prototype in his possession.[21] Prior to death, he was beaten and his residence searched by Foxconn employees.[21]"

Joel Johnson wrote a cover story for Wired about visiting Foxconn and summarized it with a response I've seen a lot of: it's not as bad as other jobs in China.

That 17 people have committed suicide at Foxconn is a tragedy. But in fact, the suicide rate at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant remains below national averages for both rural and urban China, a bleak but unassailable fact that does much to exonerate the conditions at Foxconn and absolutely nothing to bring those 17 people back.

But the work itself isn't inhumane—unless you consider a repetitive, exhausting, and alienating workplace over which you have no influence or authority to be inhumane. And that would pretty much describe every single manufacturing or burger-flipping job ever.

For me, though, the key point in that article was this one, which I think says infinitely more about what Foxconn thinks of their workers than any other detail in that piece, bolding mine:

Although the company disputes some cases, evidence gathered from news reports and other sources indicates that 17 Foxconn workers have killed themselves in the past half decade. What had seemed to be a series of isolated incidents was becoming an appalling trend. When one jumper left a note explaining that he committed suicide to provide for his family, the program of remuneration for the families of jumpers was canceled.

So, no, I have no answers. I do think awareness is important, but as I type this on the laptop I bought in Emeryville in January, I don't know that my awareness is moot if I'm not trying to be part of the solution.

SlutWalk NYC

From today's SlutWalk NYC. I'm writing about this one, the Las Vegas SlutWalk and the phenomenon for The Frisky, including the best sign I saw. One that's too racy (aka, nipples!) for Lusty Lady (I know, what? But this blog feeds to Amazon and I can't afford to get on their bad side). Stay tuned. Follow the SlutWalk NYC site, linked above, and @SlutWalkNYC on Twitter, for ongoing events, including their October 13th meeting.

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