Thursday Turn-on: Poetry

Last week I was out-of-town and didn't get to do a Thursday Turn-on, at least not here on my blog. ;-)

Today I finally got around to doing something I'd meant to for some time; I downloaded my finalist poems from the 2010 Seattle Erotic Art Festival Literary Art Showcase. People had asked for me to post them here, but due to formatting, that just wasn't possible in a regular post. So I downloaded them to Scribd. It took me all of a few minutes. Blush. Better late than never, right?

So, without further ado, here are my poems, I Want to Watch Us, and Memento Vivere.

Let the feasting begin! Eat Me: Seven Stories of Gluttony is out!

Just got word that Eat Me: Seven Stories of Gluttony from MindFuck Fiction is now available as a gorgeous e-book (soon to be on Kindle) for only $3.95.!  I'm so excited because...

ONE OF MY STORIES IS IN IT!!!   Sorry for shouting, but gollygeewhiz, I'm fucking ecstatic! Oh, the name of the story is "Temperance's First Orgy."

Here's a bit from the website:

Don't miss this chance to delight your senses with stories from the delectable crew of Gina Marie, Heidi Champa, Daisy James, Erobintica, Dorla Moorehouse, Connor Wright and Kaysee Renee Robichaud. Within these pages, you'll be invited to feast on the gorgeous prose and sensual actions of characters who howl at the hunger moon, eat fish--and more--on Fridays, gorge on gorgeous men at the train depot, and lick their frosted fingers every chance they get...

 Enjoy the feast!

Monday morning contemplation

Photo by Randy Lagana

This morning I read something that really struck a chord with me. Donna George Storey posted a piece last week called Sex as Performance not Commodity on her blog, Sex, Food, and Writing, that she wrote after reading an essay by Thomas MacCaulay Millar, "Toward a Performance Model of Sex." If you have time, go read Donna's piece right now before reading on.

Towards the end, Donna writes:"...I'd bet that any real woman with a few more years/decades on her would attest that the subjective experience of sex for women only gets richer with experience and a surer sense of one's preferences and power. And the more nuanced our experience of sex, the more we can convey that complexity in our fiction."

Though I've always wanted to be a writer, it's only in the last half-dozen years or so that I've taken myself seriously as a writer (well, most of the time, I'm still overcome by doubt way too often). And it's only in the past couple of years that I've taken to allowing myself to explore sexuality in my writing to the degree I have, and I still have trouble with it. And I'm having trouble writing this post, maybe because I'm still pondering.

It seems that whenever we think we have a thing figured out, something happens to show us we don't. We're always learning. Sometimes those "learning" experiences knock us for a loop. And until we regain our footing, we're not sure what's up and what's down.

As a writer, I bring my experiences to my writing, even if I'm not writing about ME. But when one has self-image issues (umm, duh), that can translate into questioning the value of one's writing. If I'm no good, then my writing can't be any good. It happens to the best of us.

Why do we write? Why do we write about sex? What are we trying to accomplish? Are we just pervs? Is this line of thought going anywhere?

Probably not.

Thursday Turn-on: Wind

It was many years ago, before our first child was even a twinkle. We were visiting my parents. It was California. Winter. A wild, Pacific storm had settled over the San Francisco Bay Area. Rain was tossed at windows, tree limbs shook. Somewhere, one must have cracked, fallen on a power line. The lights went out. The television went dark. The house stopped humming. It was late enough in the evening that everyone just went to bed. I undressed, then in just my bra and cotton bikini underpants, drawn by the howling outside, went to the bedroom window, pulled back the curtain. Outside, everything glistened, ambient light reflecting off clouds. The pine tree in the neighbor's yard thrashed against the sky, sending clouds of needles onto my parent's covered-for-the-winter pool. I was turned on. Wind does that to me. My husband came up behind me and slowly slid his hands from the sides of my waist over my bare belly. I can still remember the exquisiteness of that moment. I can close my eyes, think of it, and feel the rush and the gathering moistness. Even now, as I type this.

Oh! I just remembered this. It's one of the first 45s I ever bought!

Should I let it in?

A while back, I started working on a novel. It's not the first one, but the other had been set aside because I just wasn't in a place where I wanted to work on it. When I started this latest one, I went whole hog for awhile and even shared the first few chapters with various people (and got positive feedback). Then I set this one aside too. Not consciously, but in avoidance of the emotions that I knew it would make me experience in the writing. Basically I locked it out of my room. Bad novel! Get out!

So I went back to working on short stories and my beloved poetry. But now that novel is scratching at the door. And I'm afraid to let it in. Especially right now. There's a lot going on in my life, some of it not too pleasant. I don't have time to write a novel.

What am I afraid of? I'm afraid I might use it to avoid life. Real life. I'm afraid that it will seem, to me at least, that I'm abandoning my other writing (though truth be told, I've not been working on that all that diligently either). That I'll no longer write short stories just as some I've already written are about to be published. That I won't work on poetry just as I'm started to find my voice and confidence in it.

But that novel is whining, making whimpering noises, "Come on, write me, you know you want to, look at my cute belly, don't you want to rub it? Go ahead, scratch behind my ears."

This morning my husband forwarded a press release he received (one that has no bearing on his work, which he always finds funny) about a woman who in her mid-forties wrote her first novel, sold it, and went on to become a bestselling novelist. It had always been her dream to write a novel (same here). And she is living her dream. And encourages others to do the same, and that's basically what her novels are about. She herself calls them "beach reads." (Note: I'm not listing her name here because I'm not sure she'd want to be linked on the internet to erotica. If you're really interested and want to know who, just email me, my addy's in my profile.)

I need all the encouragement I can get right now.

He sent it to me after listening to me being self-pitying and saying that maybe I should give all this up (my dream of being a "real" full-time writer) and go work in a grocery store scanning stuff that other people can afford to buy.

Yeah, I'm having "one of those days/weeks/months/years." But, I can hear it panting under the door. "Please."

Do I let it in and risk being taken in by its puppy eyes? The way it licks my hand and curls up at my feet?

Hell, I'm a cat person, not a dog person. Why do I think of this novel-writing thing as a puppy?

Thursday Turn-on

The other day, Danielle commented  "hm..i d like to read about the things that inspire you.."the every day" erotik moments that slip in your head and grow into stories..."

So that gave me an idea. The Thursday Turn-on. Though I only have a few minutes left to get this done on a Thursday, I wanted to start today. On Thursdays, I'll post about some turn-on of mine. Something that gets my juices, creative and/or otherwise, flowing.

This morning I was reading the comics in our local newspaper. And this Zits comic just kinda turned me to mush as I ate my breakfast.

I like kissing. A lot. There's just something about lips, on other lips, on skin, on whatever. And give me a good movie kiss, and you might just have me squirming in my seat. 

And yeah, kissing figures in my stories. Maybe tomorrow I'll have time to find some snippets and I'll post them. In the meantime...

So, what do you want to read about?

Lately I've been having trouble coming up with ideas of what to write about here.

I'm behind in some of the stuff that I would write about here, like reviews and stuff, though I will get to those, I PROMISE! If you could only see my room, you'd understand.

So, I was thinking of just writing about different topics, let myself think out loud. I do like getting into a subject, researching a bit, thinking about it, and then just writing. But what about? 

That's where you dear readers (as many or as few as you may be) come in. What would you like me to expound upon? Preferably the subject will have some erotic component. So send in your cards and letters (okay, okay, leave a comment) and GIVE ME SOME IDEAS!

NOTE: COMMENTS ARE NOT SHOWING UP FOR SOME REASON.

But I'm getting them in email notifications. My problem is I am not inspired these days.

You were expecting fireworks?

This post is not about July 4th which is today's date.
It's not about fireworks, though that's a picture of a sparkler bomb my husband made a few years ago and we will set off some "fountains" in our backyard, including a sparkler bomb (though we don't try to blow anything up with them).
I'm not sure what it's about. It's been one hell of a week/month/year/decade/lifetime.
Not sure what I'm going to do today. As soon as I post this I'll go take a walk, even though it's getting pretty hot out. Then I don't  know what. Some laundry, since I can only do one load a day (we have septic issues, that's part of the month hell). There's no party planned. No cookouts with friends. It'll be just like any other day around here, except for the backyard pyrotechnics.
That doesn't make me happy. But it is what it is.
Happy 4th.