Really fun erotica

I just finished reading Huddle, a new, super-fun, sexy erotic anthology. All five of the stories in it were great, but my favorite is Lucky Mascot, by Tamsin Flowers. It has a refreshing exuberance and style. Several times while I was reading it, I had to laugh out loud, not even out of humor, but because of the sheer delight in its originality and joyful spirit.

I have a couple of new pieces up too, on the Erotica Readers and Writer's Website. The Critics, is a super-short that pretends to be instructions for doing a strip-tease, but is really about writing, especially writers who critique other writers' work.

Flash fiction

A new super-short story of mine, The Wedding Night, is up on the Erotica Readers and Writers Association website. This one's about impotence.

It was inspired by reading responses to the question, Impotency: How do you handle it? Some men told of women's reactions that were insensitive, even hateful. I was shocked.

Why so cruel, ladies? If you're open to it, the times when sex goes 'wrong' can be the best times of all.

Mesmerized

My story "Mesmerized" has been accepted for an anthology called Shameless Behavior: Erotic Stories of Overcoming Shame. It's being published by Go Deeper Press in August. Check out the enticing cover . . .

I've read one anthology from these folks, called As the Bishop Said to the Actress. The stories in it are great--clever, sexy, original.

The problem? I need to send them a headshot and I hate having my picture taken.

At the Pirate's Booty

One of my erotic short stories got published in an anthology called Valentine's Day. It's available from Smashwords.

My story is called "At the Pirate's Booty," and it's about a husband and wife fulfilling each others' fantasies. The book has a lot of great stories in it, all different. Check it out.

This month, the Erotica Readers and Writers Association published a super-short story that I wrote. It's what they call a "flasher," meaning 200 words or less. It's called The Kindness of Strangers. You can find it here.

Kill your darlings

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – wholeheartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. 

-          Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

'Kill your darlings.' The phrase irked me the first time I read it. The relish with which other people repeat it has only annoyed me more.

I guess what he was getting at is that if a writer is particularly proud of a phrase, those words are likely to stick out, draw attention to themselves, and snap the reader out of her immersion in the story. That's likely enough, so it's good advice. But the smug self-satisfaction with which the advice is delivered really gets under my skin.

This morning I woke with a revelation – 'Murder your darlings' is a darling. It's exactly the sort of 'exceptionally fine writing' that should have been deleted before being sent to press. The smugness, the preciousness, the surprising and clever metaphor, are precisely the definition of a darling.

Oh, the delicious irony. The aphorism 'Kill your darlings' is a darling, so by rights Quiller-Couch should have killed it, but he didn't so it's beloved and repeated by thousands who don't recognize that it should have succumbed to its author's knife, gun or poison.

Here's a more in-depth analysis by Stephen Wright, who also despises the phrase.

http://overland.org.au/blogs/cruel-miracles/2012/07/dont-kill-your-darlings/

Look, Ma, no hands!

A certain brand of feminists complains about the defiling male gaze and the damage they believe it does to women. Feminist social psychologists, calling the gaze “objectification,” conduct experiments designed to demonstrate the harm it does. Meanwhile men, from the seven-year-old riding his bicycle (‘Look, Ma, no hands!’), to the old man in his fancy car, are trying to attract the female gaze, often in vain.

The concept of male privilege rests on a foundation of the invisibility of the average male. When women talk about “male power,” what man are they thinking of? Not the men who’ve been forced into the deadly professions: Electrical wire installer, truck driver, farmer, steel worker, roofer, garbage collector, fisher, lumberjack. No, they’re thinking of successful politicians and CEOs. Far more men are at the bottom of the power structure than the top, but these men don’t count. They don’t warrant the female gaze. They can’t be seen.

Here’s blog post by Jeremy Nicholson that makes the case that the Batman shooter was motivated by his inability to win the female gaze. It seems that far more women are attracted to mass murders than to graduate students. Nicholson writes:

"Why then turn from a nerd to a killer? That is, unfortunately, very simple. More women love killers than nerds. Being a killer today is more socially and sexually rewarding than being a "good guy". Countless women write love letters and beg for conjugal visits to death row inmates (see here). Even Holmes himself has already begun collecting adoring female fans on Twitter who think he is 'hot', 'sexy', and 'cute'"

This idea may seem a little extreme, but if you read the comments you’ll get a sense of how many men feel ostracized, rejected, invisible to women.

Ostracism is painful. The lack of human interaction, as in solitary confinement, is one of the most distressing experiences  that a person can undergo. It’s this experience, one of rejection, insignificance, and invisibility, that the male gaze in media often depicts.

• A painting: A nude woman, looking away.
• A scene from a film: A beautiful woman walks toward the camera. The camera’s eye lingers on her. She doesn’t acknowledge it; she withholds her gaze.  The camera follows her longingly as she walks away.

A long time ago, I worked as a girl in a glass booth, in an X-rated movie theater. A man could buy a ticket, $10 for seven minutes. Then I would go into my little closet, and he would go into his, with a big, glass window between us. In person, I’m a pretty introverted and reluctant conversationalist, so I didn’t think I’d be very good at this job. (I was right.) But an older gentleman who worked at the theater gave me some excellent advice. He said, “If you want to make a lot of money at this job, just go in there and tell every man, ‘You have the most beautiful penis I’ve ever seen.’”

That’s it. That’s the elusive female gaze.