BitchBuzz: Women's Dangerous Desires

Just a tad bit too late to make it into the column, two news stories today: HarperCollins has a new erotica imprint, Mischief, and the Wall Street Journal has another gasping-for-the-shock-of-it story about what women read on their Kindles (oooh, scandal!). All this frothing shows the ultimate futility of the attempts to stuff women back into the genie-bottle of the past. Annoying that these old geezers keep trying, but we will triumph in the end. After all, women have more endurance. And multi-tasking!

Women's Dangerous Desires

By K.A. Laity

We may have accustomed ourselves to the bizarre hysterics of the Republican war on women in the States, but there's a more subtle campaign against women's desire. I guess it's a way of getting to the root of the problem. Apparently snapping some kind of chastity belt on the vagina just isn't enough. These busybodies would love to shackle women's minds as well.

It can be very subtle and often masquerades as "positive" coverage. The Independent Magazine had a story this past Sunday on a number of erotic romance writers, women of various ages and backgrounds. The male author approaches the writers as if they were some kind of lost species. The idea that he must ask, "Do women write porn?" flabbergasts. The shock angle is they are "shy introverted woman [sic] with a love of reading and writing." Like most writers of every genre, I suppose.

The editorial side plays up the sensationalism: "Kinky Books" the interior title screams. The first pull quote, "I write in secret, using words I would never, ever say," makes Kay Jaybee sound very different than her other words like, "Sadly, many people can't separate the art from the subject matter," rightly noting that people seldom assume crime writers to be murderers. Predictably perhaps, although the authors write mostly erotic romance, the cover blurb has it, "WOMEN WHO WRITE PORN." Porn triggers a more sensational reaction, of course...

Read the rest at BBHQ.

BitchBuzz and Over the Edge

I'm fighting off a cold that seemed to ride my coattails from London but if I'm feeling not too bad, I plan to head off to Over the Edge's reading tonight at the library (where I am now mayor :-) and perhaps try out a new piece at the open mic if there's room. A rather silly piece, but one I'm already fond of and having run it by a couple of people, I'd love to hear how it goes over with a crowd.

My column nearly didn't happen this week: I tried a couple of different things and nothing jelled (maybe it was coming down with this cold -- can't remember the last time I was sick!). So I emailed my editor to admit defeat and voilá! She had something for me to write up. Looks like a fun event:

Put the Kink in Your Ink at Eroticon 2012

By K. A. Laity

One of the undeniable effects of the ebook revolution is the explosion of erotica and erotic romance particularly for female readers. Freed from the dead giveaway of the saucy cover, women now fill up their Kindles and mobile devices with a glorious variety of fun smut and sexy takes. It's about time someone got some of the practitioners of this writing genre together.

Eroticon 2012 will be the UK’s first sex bloggers and erotica writers conference and will take place on March 3rd next year. Over 100 sex bloggers and erotica writers will meet in Bristol for a unique conference.  Eroticon is the UK’s first conference aimed exclusively at sex bloggers and erotica writers and has a schedule crammed full of great sessions and speakers.

The conference is the brainchild of erotic author Ruby Kiddell, who says:

"The idea for Eroticon came about having attended the Cybermummy conference where I was sponsored through my erotic writing site.  There were other sex bloggers there and I knew that we held back in discussing the content of our blogs in such a general atmosphere and so I conceived Eroticon, a blogging conference exclusively for those writing about sex online..."

Read the rest over at BBHQ!

Publishing News & Connecticut Bound

Over at Night and Day, The Spectator's Arts blog, I have an introduction to erotic fiction that will give you some  steamy reading for this rainy day. Simon always gives me such interesting assignments; I find it amusing that the newspaper is so conservative and its Arts blog so liberal. Of necessity, this is only a taste of the genre. As I write in the preamble,

A beginner’s guide to erotic fiction cannot help but be incomplete. One cannot do justice to such a broad body of literature, so I have selected a bouquet of offerings that will provide novices with a sampling of the breadth of the field, from which they can explore further...

I've neglected to mention also having a story accepted for publication, "The Wyandotte Haunting" which includes...

ghostly chickens?

Could it be true? Yes, perhaps. That's a couple of Wyandottes in the photo, whom I snapped at the Altamont Fair last year, or was it the year before? There's a little nod to one of my inspirations, Ramsey Campbell. More info as it becomes available: a collection from Pill Hill Press (home of my zombie Western "High Plains Lazarus" too). The essay on Gilliam's Tideland has finally settled into place (ay yi yi, there's a story), but the main thing I'm hastily working on at present is The Triumph of the Carpet Beetle, my non-fiction collection. More as that gets closer to release (soon, soon -- we all know how pleased I am with tedious and painstaking tasks 9_9).

I'm off to Connecticut today, lunch with M. Marko, dinner with Sue Crowley, then evening at Elena's (assuming they get safely home from their travels). In the morning Elena's cartooning class, then a visit with the QoE before returning to Elena's. I wanted to be sure to have a chance to see everyone before I headed off to England. Life is a bit of a whirlwind lately (only lately?!). So little time, so much to do!