Rachel Kramer Bussel's Blog, page 44

Why rope is better than handcuffs for bondage, according to Emily Bingham

Check out "Confessions of a 'rope fiend'" at Philadelphia City Paper to find out all about why memoirist Emily Bingham loves rope bondage so much.



Here's a snippet:

Bingham’s evolved from being the one solely on the receiving end to doing the trussing herself and says now she “enjoys doing the binding as much as I enjoy being bound.” Rope, especially made from hemp or jute, is her favorite tool. Handcuffs just won’t do. Bingham gets practically poetic about her favorite equipment. “There’s a wonderful texture to the natural rope that feels lovely on the skin, especially when the person tied up struggles and the lines of rope creak like the mast of a ship.”

Read the whole column

What does "orgasm equality" really mean?

That's the question I tackled in my latest DAME column, "Is Orgasm Equality As Simple As Tit for Tat?" where I looked at recent statements by Nicki Minaj and Amy Schumer about how women should demand and go after an orgasm, and explored a few reasons why it may not be so simple. Want to read more? Check out my DAME Shameless Sex archives.

Here's a snippet of this one: "n situations like this, it’s as if, rather than demanding orgasms, they are being demanded of us. Or, as author Jenny Block puts it in her forthcoming book O Wow: Discovering Your Ultimate Orgasm, we’ve made orgasm less of a joyful endeavor and more of a power play, a symbol of achievement first and foremost." Read the whole thing here

Princeton and nearby folks, come to my boyfriend's play Bottle Factory this Thursday, Friday and Saturday

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday, July 16, 17 and 18, I'll be in Princeton, New Jersey seeing my boyfriend's debut work as a playwright, Bottle Factory, put on by his company Chimera Productions. You can watch a video about it and get tickets and more info on their IndieGogo page. They are raising money to cover the costs for theater and prop rental so even if you can't make it, if you have any extra cash and want to support a wonderful company bringing great productions to the stage, I encourage you to. Yes, you can also get tickets at the door (8 pm every night at The Arts Council of Princeton, 102 Witherspoon Street), but I encourage you to get your tickets on IndieGogo if you can.



I'm proud of him and also deeply curious because I've only allowed him to tell me the bare bones of the plot. The best way to get tickets is though their IndieGogo campaign, which you can also donate to if you want to support local, live independent theater. I've been to their last three shows (they do one a year) and all have been excellent and deeply moving and thought provoking. I always walk away intrigued, confused, and wanting to discuss and process what I've seen, and lucky me, I get to with someone who's been living and breathing it for months.

So if you're near Princeton or know anyone who is, please let them know! It's an intimate space and from what I've heard, this one will have extra resonance for theater goers, but can be appreciated by anyone.

Why my dad isn't my financial role model

I wrote my first piece for DailyWorth, an essay titled "I Learned How NOT to Handle Money From My Dad." It's a pretty personal piece, but one I felt was important for me to write as part of my journey in figuring out my money. I'm usually not one to read comments, especially when I'm being vulnerable with my writing, but the comments so far over there have been very interesting and prove my theory that when you share from an intimate, personal place, others will too. Here's the beginning:

For my bat mitzvah, my dad gave me a check for a thousand dollars, a gigantic sum for a suburban teen in the ’80s. It was extravagant, and I was appropriately giddy, plotting exactly what I would use it for. Until it bounced.

That’s one of many examples of the ways my father, while offering me unconditional love, failed me as a financial role model.

Read the whole thing

The best gift my boyfriend ever gave me

I got some good news this week about something I'll be writing, which I will share when it's published, but in a nutshell, it's about sex (shocking, I know!). Specifically, sex with my boyfriend, aka the person I plan to spend the rest of my life with. This is by far the longest relationship I've ever been in; last week we celebrated three and a half years together, and it's therefore also the relationship I've written about the most.

Over the years, I've covered whether my having two Hitachi Magic Wand vibrators is bad for our relationship and what I've learned falling for a fat man, as well as multiple pieces in my ebook Sex & Cupcakes: A Juicy Collection of Essays . But it doesn't really get easier to tell the person you love, "By the way, I'm going to be writing about our sex life for a national publication." Or about other aspects of our life. Yet that's what I do, both to make a living, and because it's an intrinsic part of who I am, how I make sense of and process my world, how I figure out what I think and how I share and connect my experiences with others'.

The greatest thing he's ever given me isn't the Georgia O'Keeffe print of my favorite of her paintings, or the stuffed animal he won me one an epic Jersey Shore boardwalk date, or the other stuffed animal that I sleep with that he surprised me with, or the time he impromptu booked us a staycation at our favorite NYC hotel. It's been rolling with the fact that I write about my life, and by extension, his life. I try to do so with as much respect and honesty and openness as I can, but still, I know that dating me is not the same as dating someone who doesn't expose herself and various intimacies pretty much all the time.

He doesn't just roll with it, but encourages me to write, even when it's about topics that might make him uncomfortable, even though it's almost always about things he would never share publicly in a million years. He is always genuinely happy for me when I hit a career milestone, or even when I sort through all the fear and shame and neuroses in my head, which is sometimes so thick I can barely get a word onto the page and simply share whatever it is that's been circling up there, and get something out into the world.

The longer we are together, the deeper that gift resonates, because even though I don't use his full name in my writing, anyone who knows me at all well knows who he is. Yet anyone who knows me well also hopefully knows how much writing means to me, and that I would not truly be myself with it. I'm sure that doesn't necessarily make it easier to be in my boyfriend's position, and I can't emphasize enough how grateful I am that he has never told me, or even asked me, not to write something. He's never taken up my offer to vet something beforehand and has always trusted me, which is just one of the many things that makes him amazing.

This is a constant process of negotiation, though, on my part, of figuring out a) what's important enough to me to want to write about, b) what's marketable and where and in what form and c) what's mine to discuss and what's not. I don't necessarily have hard and fast answers, but I feel like it's not a coincidence that my freelance writing has soared while in this relationship, because I've had that freedom, and on a day when I am brainstorming what I will write about us in bed, I wanted to acknowledge that.

Want to know more about the ins and outs of writing very personal nonfiction about your sex life, and get my advice on how to do it ethically and profitably? I'll be talking about that and much more at my CatalystCon sex writing workshop on September 11th in Burbank, California. If you won't be at CatalystCon, stay tuned by signing up for my monthly newsletter for an upcoming online version of that class. To those who are also navigating the tricky terrain of being true to yourself in your writing while also respecting others in your life, I wish you much success, internally and externally.

Would you go on 52 dates in a year, on purpose? Meet the woman who is!

In this week's sex column for Philadelphia City Paper, I profiled single Philadelphia lady Melissa Toler about Project 52 Dates, which finds her going on 52 dates in 2015. Her reasons for embarking on the project and what she's learned about men and herself are not what I expected. Want to read more? Check out my column archives, and feel free to email me at rachelcitypaper at gmail dot com with future column topic suggestions.

Sexy airplane reading is yours for just $1.99 this week with my book The Mile High Club

Portable plane sex on my Kindle:



I'm taking two flights today, from Philadelphia to Boston, then Boston to Martha's Vineyard, and I've downloaded my erotica anthology The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories to reread (and yes, I have a few others downloaded and packed). Get it while it's hot - the $1.99 sale runs through this Thursday! Here's where you can buy it on the cheap:

Kindle

Nook

iBooks

Google Play

Want to listen to a free sample? Let Lucy Malone, The Mile High Club audiobook narrator, serenade you. Buy the $1.99 Kindle version and get the audiobook for just $3.99!

The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories is just $1.99 on Kindle!

Happy 4th of July (okay, 3rd) - I just found out that my erotica anthology The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories is just $1.99 on Kindle! I don't know how long the sale will last but probably for a week, so download it now. FYI if you've read Flying High then skip this one as they are the same (it got reissued under a new title), or give it as a gift. I love this book and will be downloading it to reread when I fly on Monday!



Funny but true: I wrote "Urgent Message" right around when wifi on planes was new and only offered by a handful of airlines. Now it's become much more commonplace. I don't think that affects the quality of the story, about a plane passenger sending and receiving dirty emails with a partner who's on land, but it does show you how fast these aspects of technology change.

Here's the Table of Contents:

Introduction: Flying High

34B by Bill Kte’pi
Instrument Flight Rules by Zach Lindley
A Brief Respite by Desiree
Get On, Get Off by Jeremy Edwards
The Scream Queen by Sommer Marsden
Wild Child by Matt Conklin
Bermuda Triangle by Vanessa Vaughn
Top Banana by Craig J. Sorensen
Nasty Little Habit by Donna George Storey
Urgent Message by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Obedient by Teresa Noelle Roberts
Aisle Seat by Stan Kent
Game in the Sky by Elizabeth Coldwell
When Your Girlfriend Wears a Very Short Skirt by Thomas S. Roche
Planes, Trains and Banana-Seat Bicycles by Alison Tyler
Flights of Fancy by Geneva King
The Girl Most Likely by Kristina Wright
Bert and Betty by Ryan Field
Wing Walker by Cheyenne Blue

What erotica writers thought about the #AskELJames Twitter Q&A

I decided to ask erotica writers what they thought about yesterday's #AskELJames Twitter chat. Their varied takes are up at The Frisky. Thanks to writers Rose Caraway, Abigail Ekue, Tamsin Flowers, Shanna Germain, Tasha L. Harrison, A.M. Hartnett, Oleander Plume and Remittance Girl for sharing their thoughts!



Yes, I do have a copy of Grey, but don't think I'll be formally reviewing it, though I will be writing about BDSM and submission in real life soon. Stay tuned!

The kind of book reviews that truly matter to me as an anthology editor

Firstly, I want to say that anyone who so much as picks up any of my books, whether you read the whole thing or not, let alone review it, get my automatic thanks. Out of the millions, possibly billions, of books out there, for someone to pick up my indie press erotica, whether in print, ebook or audiobook form, means so much to me. This is what I've been doing ever since I couldn't hack law school, and what I love about anthologies is that they are a group effort, organized by me as the editor. Without writers trusting me with their work, I'd just have a bunch of my own short stories, and I'm less interested in that than a work that is the sum of its parts.

That being said, when you put out a book, you have to be open to all sorts of opinions. Some people will hate your book, some people will love it. Some will mention aspects you never even considered, because you can't try to cater to every single potential reader and still turn in your book on time, or come out of the process wanting to do it again. With Come Again: Sex Toy Erotica , I knew one of the main things I wanted to do with my 65,000 allotted words was include as many different "sex toys" as I could. I put that in quotes because some of the objects in the book would fall under the traditional definition of sex toys, and others wouldn't. That was quote deliberate.


via Bex Talks Sex

So I really loved that sex blogger Bex Talks Sex just reviewed Come Again and wrote, in part:

In fact, I was able to forget that the book was even focused on sex toys because of how flawlessly they were integrated into the narrative in most cases. It didn’t feel like the author was simply checking off activities on a list, the toys just felt like a part of the way the characters had sex, and that saved the whole anthology from feeling formulaic and repetitive.

This means so much to me because the first and foremost things I want my books to do is arouse readers, to tell good stories, to say something new and exciting. I am so proud of the authors for stepping up their game and doing that, at least, to my mind, so it's refreshing when readers key in on that aspect too.

One of the toughest parts of being an anthology editor, after the very toughest, which is having to send rejection letters, which, as I always say, is probably the aspect that will eventually make me quit, is that I don't know how my books are doing sales-wise for at least six months after their publication, due to the way my royalty statements arrive. So it's hard to know if anyone cares about my books, or if they have fallen into the book forest and no one has seen or cared about them. When I get signs before that time that people not only have picked them up, but do care, enough to critique them and share what they did and didn't like, it makes me feel like I've done my job well. So thank you, and to everyone who's reviewed the book. I plan to share more about it soon, specifically the many queer stories in the book, which I hope are being read by a diverse audience (I love surprising readers who may not be expecting it with elements that may be new to them, whether it's a thigh harness, such as in "Gift" by Dena Hankins, or a trans character, such as in Zee Giovanni's "Lost and Pounded"). But reviews like this let me know people are reading, and that people care about the choices I make as an editor.