Going to Seattle Erotic Art Festival!

And I'll be wearing this necklace!

This year, for the first time since 2010,  I entered some literary work in the Seattle Erotic Art Festival and recently found out that two erotic poems and one erotic short story made the cut and will be presented at this year's festival [list here]. The poems are Losing Her Composure and Re: Nude Bohemian. The short story is Corner Window Table. By the way, I'd entered five items back in February, the max allowed. Think I made some good choices with this submission? ;-)

What makes this so exciting for me is that I will be in the Seattle area then and so I can attend the festival! I'm not sure, but I think I may also get a chance to read some of my work as part of the festival. I mentioned that I have plenty of experience reading my erotic work, namely at The Erotic Literary Salon in Philadelphia. I'm busy picking out an outfit - I think I have the perfect one - and it will include the necklace above. There's a story behind it. 

And if that were not great enough, my friend Randy Lagana, an artist and photographer whose work has been featured on this blog many times, has some visual work in the festival. It will be a thrill to see his work there. 

I leave for Seattle in just over a week. While I'm out there I'll be meeting with some of the folks that I met through this blog. It's been a life-changer in so many ways. I'll also be spending time with family, and that's the main reason I'm going. SEAF is just a bonus. 

Lots going on and lots to do between now and then, but I need to start posting here more often. 

Pieced together

Pieced Together

             ~ for Anne Marie Marra (June 1953 - March 2009)

You taught me quilting, how to cut the pieces of fabric

just so, the pressing and stitching and pressing, the angles.

Afternoons or mornings spent reveling in colors and patterns

trying to find ones that would be just right for this project,

this comforting lap quilt in memory of a friend who left us,

bereft and full of questions. We found fabrics that seemed

prescient in their design: the brick wall, the timbers, the clocks.

While we worked, we talked, found connections along with 

complimentary shades of green, of pinks, and contrasts, too.

We talked of the complications of the heart, nature's wonders,

how we grieved, and wished for Spring. It was a hard winter. 

Frozen silences punctuated, and I was too shy to push, 

even though my heart told me to. I know better

than to blame myself, but I'll always wonder what if...?

Late winter at the labyrinth, then the fabric store,

after weeks of quiet from you. I couldn't know. 

You'd left the quilt unfinished. One day, sometime later,

the pieces were passed on to me, and I, in my grief,

pieced it together, quilted it, bound it, completed it.

Delivered it to its intended recipient. It was hard to part with.

We'd talked about that. We'd dreamed of collaborations.

I'd thought we were talking of the future. But today, as I type

these words, trying not to let tears fall on my keyboard,

I think of the past five years, and how different they might

have been. Now I know why I cling. And tears can't be typed.

I haven't quilted since, though I'm always piecing things together,

words, stories, logs and mortar. I'm older now than you were then.

And yes, I know despair. It's deep and dark and draws eyes to close.

But, there are trees and birds and rocks and streams that need to be seen. 

Stories we tell

We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Or are we? Our story may look completely different from another's point of view. Our story can vary depending on where we are at when we look at it. A different point in life can lend a new light. Sometimes we forget part of our own story. I think that's one reason we write it down. But the story can change even in the act of writing it. Which one is the REAL story? Is there one, only one? How many stories can one life hold?


This evening I took a walk after dinner. One of the few benefits of Daylight Savings Time is being able to walk in the evening. It was cold though, below freezing, so I didn't walk for very long, less than half an hour. While I walked, I thought of stories. The ones I read. The ones I write. The ones I tell myself about my life. The ones I tell myself about the world, and the people in it, both those close and those distant. All the stories are told as a way to figure out why.

When I was young, very young, I was taught that it was bad to tell stories. Even if they were true. So I kept my stories to myself. But they've always clamored to come out and play, so as I got older I let them out once in awhile. But I make sure they stay in the yard. That's called self-censorship. I'm good at it. Too good. It hobbles my stories. They pace the fence line, wearing the ground bare. You've seen the animals in the zoo? Pacing. Around and around and around. Never quite getting to where they want to go.

There's a mess of stories I want to/need to tell. And I have to let them jump the fence in order to do so. Some of them have been pacing the fence line for a long time, and I'm not sure what they'll do once they're free. Others haven't been caged long at all, and their muscles are not atrophied, and I'm hoping they'll lead the way.

Some of them will be sex stories–erotica–because hey, it's me writing. But there's a lot more to me, much of it kind of heavy, and those stories need to be let out too. My head's kinda full. What's going to be interesting is that some of the stories are about heavy and about sex. Those may be the first out of the cage.

How many stories can one hold back and not go crazy?

Deadlines!

Been beating my head against a brick wall deadline, trying to get back into the erotica-writing groove. Actually surprised at how many words I've been able to bang out. But of course I'm still in the this-isn't-any-good frame of mind. But I'm trying to be hardheaded about it and do it anyway. Just sending the submission is my goal, not being accepted.

Then, while looking up something unrelated (sorta), I found out that today is the deadline to enter literary works for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival.

I'm gonna try because a few years ago..http://erobintica.blogspot.com/2010/04/seaf.html.

Gonna need lots of coffee today/tonight. Back to turn off wifi again.

Five years come and gone

This picture was taken in late afternoon today. A beautiful, winter sky. There's much that I've been pondering lately. Yeah, I ponder a lot. Ha! If you've ever read this blog - back in the day - for long, you know I ponder. And muse. And get all thinky. It's what I do, how I write.

I've had this blog for more than five years now. I started it in December of 2008, as I was gathering the courage to send off a piece of erotica for a submission call. I'd written the story almost twenty years earlier, but had recently edited it a bit. That piece was "Wet As Spring", and it was accepted and published in Coming Together: Al Fresco, an ebook. My first print publication (of erotica, my poetry's been published in many places) was my story "Till the Storm Breaks" in Best Erotic Romance. That was in 2011, three years after I started my blog. I've now had eight (8) stories published. That doesn't seem like much to me. I'm not very prolific, especially these days.

This evening I've been thinking about the friends I made through blogging. Many of them are now real-life friends, people I've shared meals with, read erotica in public with, have come to care about. Some that I've met live too far away to get together with, but I'm sure if one or the other is in the same area in the future, we will make every effort to meet up. Some I have yet to meet, and I look forward to the day I will. There is a special ... joy and ease when you meet other folks that get joy out of writing erotica (and yeah, there's more than one kind of joy, hahaha). Because we write out what amounts to our sexual fantasies (in some form or another), put them on the page (paper or digital) for others to read, there always seemed to be a sort of freedom in our conversations, no matter the topic.

Yeah, I miss those days when we'd hang out on our blogs and be able to write long, thoughtful posts, or short funny one, or anything along the continuum, and have thoughtful or fun - or both! - conversations in the comments. And yeah, I realize it was just one chapter, and the page must be turned. Still, I keep this place, my little bit of cyberspace, and post once in a while. I still get a fair number of hits, and I'm pleased to see a bit more wide-ranging reading going on, not just my blow job or BDSM posts (the 50 shades effect).

I want to write more here. But I don't know what to write about. And yeah, this is old, tired ground. But we do tend to travel the same paths. I'm getting the itch to write some erotica again. It's been awhile since I've written any. I feel out-of-practice. Wish me luck.

Five years ago, on Tuesday, January 27, 2009, I wrote not one, but three blog posts! This is one of them: http://erobintica.blogspot.com/2009/01/beneath-surface.html. The picture I'm talking about in that post is now gone, a casualty of changing blog themes. I could never figure out how to place it back where I had it with the new template. But here it is. I'm still looking below the surface.

Contemplating the end of a hiatus

Has Santa Woody been reading? 

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've blogged. Sorta took a hiatus from erotica this year. Not written much. Didn't submit much. Did have a number of pieces get published though. Got my fingers crossed for a couple more. I should start writing again. I think I'm ready.

And I realize that I took down all the links in my sidebar. Guess I'll have to add them back and see what happens. In the meantime, links can be found on my Erotica page above.

Hard to believe that I used to post here so often. While I don't think I'll be as prolific as I used to be here, I am going to try and post more often. With stuff that is interesting. I hope.

In an attempt to save my blog from just disappearing...

I've removed all the sidebar information that could at all be construed as an ad for an "adult site" - even though I've never made A PENNY from this blog ever. I don't have the time or the heart to try and move this blog from blogger. 

This holds years of my writing. And yeah, it's probably archived somewhere. But still...

http://www.zdnet.com/googles-blogger-to-delete-all-adult-blogs-with-ads-in-three-days-7000017451/