I have grown tremendously as an author these last few years.  Every story has been an opportunity to grow, every rejection a lesson (sometimes you own that a story wasn’t ready, or that sometimes a story is solid and just didn’t work for this anthology), every acceptance a special thrill. 

When I was a child, I loved books. I still do.  I’ve always looked at authors as magical beings-they create worlds and populate them, they invent people who I care about as if they were real, and best of all they share those people and worlds with me. 

I regard authors like Anne Bishop, Maureen Johnson, Alison Tyler, Susan Kay, Lillian Jackson Braun, Mercedes Lackey and countless others in the same way other people sit in awe of athletes, musicians, actors and so forth. 

I respect them, but like a sports team, there can be bad seasons.  Mercedes Lackey-every Valdemar book after either the Winds or Storm trilogy depending on my mood has sucked to the point where I’ve had to abandon the series.  Yet her Vanyel trilogy of Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Pride and Magic’s Price remains a pivotal series in my development as a person because Vanyel was the first gay person I’d met and cared about. 

Then there are the amazing seasons. I reread the Jewels series by Anne Bishop regularly because I’ve grown to love those characters so much I want to visit with them regularly.  I reread Gone With the Wind every few years because my opinion of Scarlett and understanding of her actions has changed dramatically as I’ve aged-what I found impressive as a teen looks the poorly thought out impulses of an idiot 16 year old from the lofty age of 34.

I want to do that.  I want to be the kind of author who leaves you wanting to know what happens next, to see more of my worlds, and inspires you to care about my characters.  I truly hope that people feel that way about my stories, especially my new acceptances when the anthologies they’re included in come out.

But the dream has always extended past short stories.  I want to write a book where I’m not one of many, and you buy it because my world intrigues you. 

That is what I’m embarking upon-writing my first full length novel.  I’ve hired Jessica, who is both a personal friend and a professional editor to figuratively crack the whip-giving me deadlines and feedback.  Obviously I hope the book will be published. Even if it isn’t,  I know the experience will be invaluable in the lessons I’ll learn.  With hard work and persistence I believe I will publish novel length stories as well.

I still plan to work on short stories. They provide a break from the world of the novel.  As stories are accepted, they help build my resume.  Writing credentials may help my novels’ odds of getting fished out of the slush pile.

Wish me luck.

When I write a story for submission, I try to get a full first draft together. I’ll let it sit for a day or two. Then I try to edit for my common sins-run on sentences, irrelevant tangents, and working on being more concise. I read my story aloud to look for awkward phrasing, or a missed word (you’d be surprised how you can forget to type the word and or what have you, and when reading it, your brain often adds it in).

Next comes the beta reading and response stage.

source

I am a good writer, but what takes my stories from “okay” to “publishable” is taking advice from beta readers.

Some of my beta readers give me grammatical feedback. However, this has more to do with the fact that I know a few serious grammar nerds than with what beta readers most frequently do.

The majority of beta reader feedback is content specific. Their feedback helps me understand when I’m giving too much set-up (or not enough), what darlings I need to kill (those details in the story that you love, but may be irrelevant to the actual plot), and what improvements I need to make.

I’ll listen to their advice and edit.

I try to get multiple perspectives. Every reader has a different world view and different experiences they bring to the reading experience. Those various perspectives help you get a wider view of your story and the strengths and weaknesses.

The story I’m currently working on takes place at the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum (a former workplace of mine). My beta readers who are also from the Boston area all picked up on the Tea Party references (which were minimal in the first version). It’s a huge part of our social studies curriculum growing up, so they didn’t have a lot of feedback on that. My friend in Seattle was able to figure out the reference because she knew I’d worked there. Otherwise she wouldn’t have picked up on those same references because the Tea Party isn’t emphasized as much outside our part of the US. I realized that I needed to go back and do some edits to be more specific/show my setting in a different way because of her feedback.

I’ll repeat these steps as necessary until I think I have the best version of the story possible.

Do I give my beta readers every single fix they ask for? No, I don’t. At the end of the day, I’m the one with the vision of the story, and I have to listen to my own instincts about the story. Sometimes I disagree with my reader about a character’s personality or motivation, or what have you.

When you submit a story to an editor, you have to send your absolute best work. In my experience with anthologies, you are submitting the story you want published. The editors are not beta readers-they don’t ask you to make a change, or fix something-they accept or reject the story.  I’ve gotten feedback about liking a detail in an acceptance, but I know that when I send in the story, that’s the final draft.

Thanks to my beta readers, I’m far more confident about the quality of the stories I submit.

I have a secret. Oh, well. I guess it’s not a secret anymore, because I’m about to hit the “publish” button and send the information out to anyone who cares to peek. Yes, after months of hard work, and a bit of back and forth with my publisher, Cleis Press, I have the table of contents for Shhh! Don’t Tell Anyone… Erotic Fantasies about Sexy Occupations.

This idea lingered on my hard drive for nearly seven years. Some books take longer than others. I’m so pleased to share the TOC with you all.

Introduction: The “Want” Ads

Construction Worker: Grimy by Sommer Marsden

Cowboy: Bonanzed by Kate Pearce

Professor: O for Effort by Delilah Night

Chauffeur: Driver’s Seat by Sophia Valenti

Meteorologist: Warm Front by Heidi Champa

Physician: Doctors Orders by Sasha White

Delivery Boy: Just A Little Tenderness by A.M. Hartnett

Pool Girl: California Dreamin’ by Andrea Dale

Book Binder: Rule of Thumb by Laila Blake

Baker: Kneading Lessons by Tilly Hunter

Personal Trainer: Work It Out by Elisa Sharone

Stage Manager:  SM Or How I Met My Girlfriend by Giselle Renarde

IT guy: Talk Nerdy to Me by Crystal Jordan

Porn Star: Current Photo, Please by Devin Phillips

Mechanic: Body Work by Cora Zane

Museum Curator: Under Her Auspices by Jeremy Edwards

Treat Vendor: Ice Cream Boy and Sprinkle Girl by Kathryn O’Halloran

Barber: Close Shave by Alison Tyler

Professor Kumar leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled.  “This is your third class with me.  You’re aware of my no extensions policy.  You’ve been an exemplary student.  So what could keep diligent young woman such as yourself so busy that you skived off on the assignment?”

“The sex,” I confessed, and immediately blushed.

“The sex, Ms. Cohen? You have my attention.  Please, continue.”  His eyes took a slow inventory of my body as if he’d never noticed that I was a woman before.  His gaze lingered at my breasts.  I had skipped a bra today, when it became clear that laundry had also taken a backseat to Paul’s touch.  My nipples hardened, impudently thrusting against the all-too-thin fabric of my t-shirt.  I shifted in my seat, clenching my thighs together under my skirt as my clit swelled.  I felt myself slicken between his unrelenting inspection of my body and my memories of the sex.

“It’s been really intense,” I whispered.  “I’ve never had such powerful orgasms in my life—“

“Let’s see how many times you can come in an hour,” Paul had raised an eyebrow at me in challenge two nights ago.  “In two?  In four?” 

First I’d moaned for more.  Then I’d begged to be fucked.  I hadn’t expected that he’d hold a vibrator to my clit as he did so.  He would let me rest, to allow my system to start to calm.  Then his hands, his mouth, or a toy would find me again.  It was something of a miracle I was capable of walking yesterday, much less finishing a term paper.

“Your excuse for not writing your paper in a timely fashion is that you were busy having too many orgasms?”

Smart Ass, Bad Ass, Kiss My Ass: The Trilogy edited by Alison Tyler is a compilation of three years worth of anal themed erotica repackaged into a single volume.

Alison tells the following story about the inception of the series

When we first decided to compile a collection of stories about anal sex, I was not sure how readers would respond. Five of us got together and decided to write tight, taut, literary, smutty stories that revolved around backdoor banging. What made the endeavor unique is that we were being bold, not coy and quiet, about our theme. There was no beating around this bush, we stood up tall and proud and called our first collection “Kiss My Ass.”

Within a few months, our sales were soaring and we were receiving reviews like this one from Aisling Weaver: “Each one held me on the edge of my seat, breathless and flushed, eager for every word.”

We knew we wanted to tackle a sequel, but spent some time debating the title. We asked ourselves questions: Do we like writing about anal? Fuck yeah. Do we hide our feelings? No fucking way? Why? Because we are bad asses, which is why we ultimately named our second collection “Bad Ass.”

“Bad Ass” won instant five-star reviews, such as the one that called it “Asstacular” and this one: “So good. It surpasses its predecessor. I read it one quick swallow, but at the end of each story I almost didn’t want to keep reading, because each one is its own little gem, even though they all fit so well together.”

What had begun as a one-off endeavor transformed into an “annual anal” series. Our third installment was “Smart Ass,” which readers were anxiously awaiting.

I’m thoroughly enjoying the trilogy. Today I’ll be reviewing the first story in the book, Executive Training by Sophia Valenti.

Sophia’s story is written in the first person, and we never learn the name of her protagonist. For me, this worked exceedingly well as I related, strongly to her. The following is a description of the protagonist, but it could just as easily describe me.

I was tired of being the responsible one who planned out her days with clinical precision, weighing the pros and cons of every move. I didn’t want to think anymore; I simply wanted to feel.

Valenti blends submission, (potential) exhibitionism, spankings and anal into a well-crafted story. The juxtaposition of the character-a well put together executive exterior-and the woman behind the exterior works well to open the story. The paddle that the protagonist “craved and despised” is one of the most accurate descriptions of a submissive’s relationship with a toy that pushes her limits I’ve seen, and the spanking scene had me squirming-in all the right ways.  I also love that her protagonist had a moment of doubt before going through with her first anal experience. Due to the taboo nature of anal, most people with whom I’ve talked to about anal (which, granted, skewed data sample) confessed to either needing a few tries to go through with it, or at least a second thought before going through with it. That doubt creates a nice element of realism and relatability to the story.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the book, and I highly encourage you to go out and pick up The Trilogy.

Today I bring you an interview with the fabulous woman behind “Glitter: Real Stories from Real Women about Sexual Desire,” Mona Darling!

6-What else would you like to share?

Join the Glitter Movement at Glitterhood.com. Share your story and offer support to others. Lets end the era of women tearing other women down and start a new era of women supporting each other unconditionally.

Mona Darling spent close to twenty years as an A-list professional dominatrix before becoming a D-list mommy blogger. After spending many years traveling the world being told that she is fabulous, she now spends her days being told she doesn’t drive fast enough by her three-year-old son.

She writes, sporadically, about food, sex and toddler-related mayhem at DeadCowGirl.com.

My spine has sucked since I was 16 years old and got injured playing tennis my junior year of high school.  I jumped up to hit an overhead shot and when I landed, I fell and hit my tailbone, hard.  I didn’t go to the doctor because of a mixture of youthful invincibility and the reality of being poor and either uninsured or only having crappy welfare insurance.  That summer I got a job bussing tables at a restaurant, which meant I was hauling around super heavy buckets of dirty dishes, which did no favor to my already injured back.  Weeks before senior year began, my back seized up and I finally took it seriously enough to see a doctor, who referred me to a physical therapist.  My physical therapist gave me exercises and a lumbar pillow I was supposed to use any time I was seated.  Not that I wasn’t a giant nerd with no hope in the universe of EVER being a cool senior, but carrying the lumbar pillow around from class to class underlined, bolded and italicized that lack of coolness.

I would diligently do my physical therapy for a few months until I felt “better.”  Then I’d happily drift about my life for a few years, only to have my back start to spasm and seize up again.  Rinse and repeat.

In 2006, weeks before my wedding, I herniated a disc in my spine after I spent a day hauling boxes of books out of my classroom.  I’ve been known to joke that my wedding shouldn’t count because I was high on vicodin and drunk on champagne at the time. Which was the last funny joke I can make about the next few months of my life.

Within eight weeks of our wedding I was confined to bed in our guest room, waiting for my surgery date, high on an absurd number of painkillers and sex was a thing of the past.  I could still get to the bathroom, but only if I used a walker.  I hit one of the lowest points of my life when I had to ask my partner to wipe my ass after defecating.  Admitting that publicly is perhaps one of the few lower points than the actual experience.  Within twelve weeks of our wedding, I had surgery, and while the back pain relief was immediate, we had to wait another six weeks to have sex again.  This is not exactly an ideal honeymoon/start to a marriage.

In the intervening six and half years since that surgery I’ve had two bad episodes with my back, but luckily both were short lived and easily dealt with between a few days on vicodin and some physical therapy.  And, as always, after a time, my dedication to and interest in doing my physical therapy waned and disappeared.

I am not, as a rule, an “exercise” kind of girl.  I don’t like sweating.  I find it boring.  I’ve tried classes, personal trainers, you name it–it’s just not my thing.  For some people, that’s something they can get away with.

I can’t.

Early on in this month, I was doing the very mundane task of putting Ms 1 into her stroller…and tore the disc directly above the one I’d had surgery on in 2006.  I ended up in the hospital for a week.  I was released and felt as though things were getting better with the minor exception of a terrible set of side effects to a medication.  My doctor took me off that medication. Twenty four hours later I was back in the hospital.  A week later I received cortisol injections to try to calm the nerve pain that was rendering my legs close to useless.  I came home Thursday.  I would not say that things are getting better.

This month has been one long frustration of medications that make me too muzzy headed to focus, pain, fear about my ability to parent and partner going forward, separation from my kids, family flying in from the states to help out, and a lot of self pity.  There is some chance that over the next two weeks I am going to have to make a decision about surgery.

This has also been a month where connecting with my partner hasn’t been easy.  Emotionally, yes.  Physically, no.  You can imagine then, how my writing has been going.

As a rule I don’t tend to ramble on about my personal life here, but as I deal with these developments, I think I am going to have a lot to say about sex and disability, so I’m going to go with it and talk about it.

When I was 20, I went did a short term abroad in France.  We were based in the South of France, about an hour north of Marseilles.  The school kept us busy between classes and outings, so there wasn’t much time for unsupervised travel, with one exception.  We had one three day weekend, and while going to Paris (my dream) was beyond my reach both in terms of time and money, I decided to go to Cannes.

Cannes was too expensive for me to stay the night, so I picked a smaller town along the coast to spend the night, Juan-Les-Pins.

It must be said that this trip to France was huge for me.  It marked my first time out of the Northeast of the US, the US itself, and my first time on a plane.

I hadn’t traveled solo previously.  What I had done, was filled my head with the idea of a fling with a sexy Frenchman.  I had done some hanging out in bars during my first few weeks (the drinking age in France is 18), but beyond a conversation or two, had made no progress in this area.  However, this was an opportunity I wouldn’t be able to repeat-I had a hotel room all to myself and no one to answer to.  So my mission that night was to hook up.

It was mid afternoon, so I decided to go for a walk before taking a nap and hitting the bar and dance scene.  I was enjoying the gorgeous architecture and snapping photos (pre-digital camera so I have nothing to show, sorry) when I heard someone call down to me.  I looked up and saw three men on a balcony.

From the vantage point of 14 years and a great deal of travel later, I can tell you that I was ripe for the picking.  It was blindingly obvious that I was a tourist–not only did I have the camera, but I was dressed in shorts, a tank top and sneakers.  No French woman would be caught dead in such boring/casual/rumpled clothes.  American women have a reputation as being easy (which, granted, yes in my case, very true).

They called down to me and invited me up.  I decided that this was my chance to get laid and told my better instincts to go to hell.  I was going to have some fun with a cute French boy.  So I climbed the stairs and entered an apartment where I was alone with three men.

Again, looking back, I’m pretty sure that they were a mix of stoned and drunk.  I was a bit too naive to know what pot smoked like (I’ve grown up a LOT since then), but there was ample alcohol around.  One of the guys began playing a video game and barely seemed to register that I was even there-I sometimes wonder if he knew what the other guys were thinking and just didn’t want to participate, or what.  Of the remaining two guys, one was geeky cute and I was hoping he’d like me in return and the other was over-muscled (past the point of being attractive) and over-tanned.

I spoke some French-enough that I could stumble along, but not so well that I understood much slang or every word spoken to me.  So there wasn’t a lot of talking.

Over muscled blonde guy asked me to go with him to the bedroom.  In the US I would never have been interested, but this was my one shot at a fling, so I needed to bite the bullet.  My fear of going home without having fucked a French guy was greater than my lack of interest, and I followed him.  There was a mattress on the floor with some sheets.  He pulled me down and we kissed.  It wasn’t bad at first.  We made out, and clothes came off.  Then he began pushing me to give him a blowjob.  I tried to say I wanted sex instead.  He pushed my head back toward his crotch.

It was at that moment my brain finally started to kick in.  I was alone in an apartment with three men.  I was alone in a city I’d never been in before.  No one knew where I was.  I didn’t have a cell phone and the internet was still fairly new, so there was no Facebook update or tweets about Juan-les-pins.

I’m not sure why I didn’t just say no and pull on my clothes.  I don’t think I was scared of getting raped, exactly.  I think I decided that a blow job was the path of least resistance to getting out of there.  So I gave him a blow job.  After he came in mouth he got up and went to the bathroom.  Part of me was still phenomenally stupid and I just lay there, trying to figure out what would happen next.

The guy I’d actually considered cute came into the room, and grabbed his crotch raising an eyebrow at me.  I was stupid enough to be shocked at the idea that they might take turns with me.  That shock was the moment I realized that they were going to take turns with me.  That they could rape me without consequence.

I said NO and pulled on my clothes. I ran out the door and down the stairs.  Once out on the street, I heard their laughter as they watched me run away, having resumed their positions on the balcony.

Back in my hotel I realized how phenomenally lucky I was that I didn’t get raped.  I stayed in that night.  The next morning I took the trip to Cannes, determined not to let those assholes ruin my weekend.  Then I took the train home.  I didn’t try to flirt or pick up another guy on that trip.

My biggest mistake was that I did things I would NEVER have done in the US.  I didn’t stop and think about what was safe.  I was stupid, and I was lucky that things didn’t turn out so much worse than they did.  Fourteen years later, many of the things I did at 20 have faded into memory, but that memory is still sharp.  I’m horrified by my poor choices that day.  Yes, the guys were assholes.  But I’m the one who chose to put myself into that situation.  And while they might have been assholes, I’m deeply grateful that they weren’t inclined to take my presence for blanket consent.

You might wonder why I’d tell my daughters about this story.  I don’t want them to be afraid of sex.  I do want them to know the difference between being adventurous and being stupid.  Hopefully they’ll never be as stupid as I was that day.

I’m so proud to be associated with this book.  If you are/were a fan of The Vagina Monologues, you will love Glitter.  It’s a compilation of true stories about sex and sexuality.  There are women from all walks of life.  The stories include overcoming sexual abuse, still being a virgin, hiring a call girl, coming out and so many others.

Mona asked us to check out the pdf to ensure that our stories didn’t have any typos and the next thing I knew I’d read every story in the collection.

My essay is called Invisible Bisexual…here’s a short excerpt

Even though by that point I had gay friends and had divorced myself of the prejudices of my upbringing, I just couldn’t wrap my head around my own sexuality.  Had I been attracted solely to women, I could have understood that.  Wanting both men and women made me feel guilty.  Why couldn’t I just pick?

This is the heart of one of the most harmful and common tropes of bisexuality-that we are greedy, slutty fence sitters who are unwilling to limit ourselves to partners of one sex.  I should know how harmful it is—it’s the argument with which I berated myself.

Admitting that I sought counseling from my college’s therapists is somewhat embarrassing.  But I needed to talk to someone, to say things aloud that I’d kept quiet for a long time, and they provided a safe environment.  Within a few months of that make out session, I came out to someone for the first time.  My friends accepted me.  My mom decided it was a phase I’d soon be over, just as I’d gotten over my goth phase, and rolled her eyes.

I have not and will not receive any payment for this book–all proceeds are going to be donated to support women’s reproductive health.

At the moment it’s only available in the US

• Amazon US-paperback only.  Mona tells me Kindle is coming, but there are formatting issues at the moment.
• Create Space

Alison Tyler has done it again–a compilation of short, sexy stories that will keep you hot on those cold winter nights (or, in my case, further steam up a tropical night).

Sudden Sex is out as of this week (Amazon, B&N, Book Depository if you’re outside the US-free shipping worldwide) and it contains 69 sort stories of 1500 words or less.  I can tell you from experience that it is no easy feat to write a story that is hot AND has plot in so few words.  Here are 69 examples of how it can and should be done.

When Alison asked for people to participate in a blog tour by reviewing one of the stories, I was eager to do so.

Perusing the titles of the stories, one jumped out at me–Sugar Upsets My Vagina by Kristina Lloyd.  With such a great title, I knew I HAD to read that story.

Sugar Upsets My Vagina appealed to me on a number of levels.  This story leaves the sugar on the table, and reaches instead for spice.  Lloyd knows which details to include to complete the picture without losing focus; the fanned tail of a flogger as it punishes a submissive, heels ringing on a London street, a hung up coat.  Forget drawn out foreplay and romantic sex–it’s not wanted here–the protagonist wants a hard, satisfying fuck.  Kristina rewards her, and us, with just that.

I’m proud to have backed What Makes a Baby via kickstarter when I was pregnant with my younger daughter.

I’m even more excited to share that it is available for pre-order from Amazon and BookDepository!.

I think this is the perfect book to start an honest discussion with your child about where they came from.

• It uses non gender specific language (some bodies have eggs, some bodies do not)
• It doesn’t assume that the bio parent is the person actually parenting the child (never uses the terms mommy/daddy)
• It mentions that sometimes the new thing made by a sperm and an egg doesn’t grow (which is important to me as the mom of a baby lost via miscarriage)
• It notes that all babies grown differently (which is a way to open a discussion about children with special needs)
• It notes that babies can be born via the vagina or through a special cut (Older daughter was a vaginal birth, her sister was a C-section)
• It asks “who was happy you were born?” rather than telling you that mommy and daddy or some sort of stereotype was what awaited the child.

In doing so, it legitimizes every child.  Adopted, born of IVF, being raised by a parent and a step parent, the child of a single parent, and so forth.

I think this is a great book for kids 2-8.  Obviously as they age, they’ll want to know more, but this is the only book I like that’s out there for the youngest kids.  Please support Cory and Fiona and pre-order your copy for your child or a child in your life!