I'm in the December 2009 Penthouse!

I'm not naked, though. At least not physically. But my naughty imagination is laid fully bare in the words of my story "Nasty Little Habit," which first appeared in the soaringly sexy anthology, The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

I really love the illustrations by Charlene Chua (you'll have to buy the magazine to see the other picture--my story starts on page 116!) She does a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of my story while adding an extra element of sensual visual pleasure, so thank you for your wonderful art, Ms. Chua, wherever you are. I've experienced the thrill of having my work illustrated just a few times, and this is the most satisfying yet.

This particular publication is especially sweet for me for a couple of other reasons. I'm in the December issue and my birthday is December 31, so it's like an early birthday present. I've also been a stealth fan of Penthouse from way back, the summer of '76 to be exact. Little did I dream when I studied the pages of the Bicentennial issue so many years ago that my own work would appear in the pages of a magazine that has truly shaped the national sexual imagination.

The December 2009 issue will hold the place of honor in my collection, mostly issues bought on e-bay from 1976, but also the 40th anniversary issue from this summer and another from 2004 in which an erotica-writing friend's hot fantasy appears in an article on threesomes.

I also want to thank Rachel for yet again inspiring me to take some chances in my writing. When I originally responded to the call for plane sex stories, I set a private goal for myself--to write about something that could actually happen to an ordinary person. Some might assume (and in my less confident moments, I belong in that group) this would mean a boring, ordinary story. But Rachel and Penthouse were both willing to give the nod to a quieter, more subtle, if no less satisfying, form of mile-high pleasure. I raise my glass of champagne to you both--and happy flying to all!

Masked Men (and Women)

I've been very busy with non-blogland activities for the past week, but I wanted to post my Halloween picture before the season slipped too far away. And yes, I'm still planning to finish up my report on my summer vacation--before next June at the latest!

Here is Herr Doktor and I pretending we have pseudonyms. Simple as they were, our costumes seem to impress our viewers with an uncanny feeling. Numerous people insisted I had to drop my mask so they could see my real face, while a surprising number got that Herr Doktor was "The Corporation" without being told and confessed his costume was the most frightening thing they'd seen all night.

I myself was pretty creeped out by his deliberately measured gestures and his real eyes peering out at me through the plastic eye holes. The thought flashed into my head--yikes, do I know this person?

Nothing like Halloween to bring out a different side of you.

My younger son made a splash on bustling Mariposa Street with his fancy light saber, rushing from house to house like a Jedi on a mission. To my relief, my older son returned unharmed from trick-or-treating with his high school buddies in the wilder part of town. His costume (Garth from Wayne's World) was appreciated by many, especially merrymakers who may have smoked a bit of weed themselves. He also suffered from some hazing at the door due to his advanced age. One guy studied him for a minute and said, "You have a mustache, you shouldn't be trick-or-treating," leaving his chronologically older friends unchallenged. But at least he gave him candy anyway. Another man told him, "You look like my ex-girlfriend. And that's not a good thing." After that, my son took off the long blond wig and went as a nerd.

One gripe though--Baby Ruth's and Almond Joys were nowhere to be found in the candy piles on my living room floor, while the loathsome Three Musketeers and Milk Ways (both promptly tossed in the trash) were sadly abundant. I mean Snickers are okay, but those frothy, wimpy Three Musketeers? What is the world coming to? Do I have to go buy coconut and nougat candy at a real chocolatier or something?

I hope your Halloween was illuminating and sweet!

Size Queens and Sentence Fondling

Can you believe it's November already? But hey, it's my new favorite month of the year, and I hope that I can even fit in a little writing in the next few weeks of quiet and contemplation before the holidays really hammer us.

Not that I haven't been writing a lot this past week. Actually, I've been writing about writing and you can read all about it in the Erotica Readers and Writers Association's latest exciting edition of their fabulous newsletter, the Erotic Lure.

In my Shameless Self-Promotion column, "Bigger is Better: Bookstores from Indies to Amazon," I talk about why bigger can be better for the struggling small author and give you my tips for getting attention for your book at local bookstores and at the biggest bookselling marketplace of all.

My sex, food, and writing meditation in Cooking Up a Storey continues the discussion of story critiquing and mentoring with "Don’t Fondle My Sentence: Sex with Strangers, Casual Critiques, and Fearlessly Arty Applesauce." You'll learn about my traumatic past and why I'm gun shy about giving critiques, then when the confessing is done, you can stir up a batch of delicious applesauce just the way you like it. It's the season after all!

Enjoy! (And, yep, that frozen peach applesauce was mighty good...)

Halloween at My House

Another quickie today, but I just wanted to share some of the sights and tastes of Halloween at my house this year. Above you see a view of the Halloween Village that magically appears on the shelf of our dining room's built-in china closet sometime around the end of September. It's been a feature of our fall celebration for about seven years.


It grew from a single pumpkin stand (center of this photo, far right in the one above) to this well-populated pirate ship port a few figures and buildings at a time over the years--all on sale at Michael's from 30-50% off, of course. My older son used to arrange the figures, but this year my younger son took the baton, and I'd say he did a great job. The village looks especially spooky and mysterious with the lights off so you can appreciate the glowing moon, the gypsy's crystal ball, the weird green throbbing from the graveyard, and the ghosts dancing in the windows of the houses. Some people ask me if I have a Christmas Village, too, but somehow the austerity of the Halloween Village appeals while the candy cane cuteness of the Christmas version just doesn't tickle my fancy. Kind of the way certain erotic fantasies push buttons while others leave you snowy.


On to the tastes. This year, in preparation for the Festival of Lights at my son's school, I tried out a new gingerbread house recipe using butter rather than shortening. The cookies tasted great--rather like speculoos we ate in Belgium--but the dough was much harder to work with and more fragile, so I think I'll go back to my classic recipe. But since I had a couple of Belgian gingerbread houses lying around, I put my kids to work. Here's my youngest's homemade Halloween house which has been attacked by aliens wielding candy corn missiles. Lots of broken M&M shingles on this poor abode. But a worse fate awaited the house in the background. My older son returned home from school and started eating it before he bothered to decorate it. In no time it resembled the ruined farm houses we saw throughout the Scottish Highlands, the legacy of the enclosure movement when the evil landlords evicted the poor farmers to use the land for sheep. The graffiti on the ruins show the farmers' descendants still remember, and so do I, so the sight of the house sort of depressed me on behalf of all who suffer from economic greed. Then again, maybe I read too much history?

Okay, enough doom and gloom. Last but not least, our costumes! Herr Doktor and I will be heading to a party with my younger son, who has an awesome Jedi costume and a very realistic light saber to light up the night. We'll be a masked couple: a creepy corporate drone in a suit and blank white mask and a Venetian Carnivale goer in a black velvet cape with a lovely silver mask ordered from a real Venetian maskmaker! (I can't help thinking about the countless erotic stories set in Venice--perhaps I'll get lucky with a masked man myself?) My older son is off for some mischief with his friends, having outgrown family entertainment. He'll be Garth from Wayne's World and for some reason, the nerd glasses were really hard to find. Afterward, we're all going to eat cheap, trans-fat laden candy until we swear we can't have any more for about a year. Kit Kat, Snickers, Butterfinger, Baby Ruth... so evil, so yummy, so very Halloween.

But enough about me. What are your Halloween plans?

Flesh, Fetishes, Sex Clubs

I've been busy writing my November ERWA columns, but I wanted to pop in to let you know about an interview I did for Rachel Kramer Bussel's latest anthology, Peep Show: Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists. You'll learn secrets about my inspiration for my story "Clean and Pretty," excerpted in some length at Fleshbot, and some insider tips about Tokyo's forbidden-to-foreigners sex clubs. Plus you'll get to see a nudie picture of me that's even more explicit than this one (hey, isn't it best to start a good meal with an appetizer?)

I'll be writing a more detailed review of this excellent book soon, but I will confess right now Peep Show is one of my favorite set of pages to nestle in (and I've nestled in quite a few). I'm not sure what this says about me. Actually I am sure what this says about me, but I'll bet you'll find these stories of desirous watching and intimate exposure just as seductive and sexy as I do. Which might be why I'm taking my sweet time reading it cover to cover.

Rachel's also made a fantastic book trailer, which features a few lines from my story and a very wet and juicy shower scene.

Go ahead and take a long look at all of these goodies--I won't tell!

Does Sex Sell?

Well, another library book is due soon, so it’s time for yet another book report! This time I’ll talk about Buy-ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom, “one of the world’s most respected marketing gurus.” With his spiked hair and his goofy smile, he doesn’t look much like Don Draper, but the man clearly has done his research. Plus he uses expressions like “at the end of the day” all the time, which reminds me nostalgically of Stanford MBA’s.

I picked up this book because I have a special fascination for the how the mind works. Add in my daily role as chief consumer for my family and my now-dwindling side hobby as a book marketer myself and this was an appealing and potentially relevant topic. Lindstrom is a global branding expert, and since branding is what a writer is supposed to do to herself and her work, I figured I might learn something useful. In that regard, I did. For example, here’s the list he uses to help his clients formulate a marketing plan:

What’s the secret of your product?

What makes it stand out?

Are there any stories or rituals or mysteries consumers associate with it? If not, can you find some?

Can the product somehow break through the two-dimensional barrier of advertising by appealing to senses the company hasn’t yet thought of? Smell, touch, sound?

Is the advertising campaign edgy and funny and risk-taking, or is it as boring and forgettable as every other company’s?

This is not a bad set of questions to ask when you’re wondering how to “sell yourself.” But back to the book report.

Buy-ology was a fast and fairly light read, but I suspect I’ll remember more of this book than most (I find I usually take away one to three main ideas or anecdotes from a book for the long term). Lindstrom’s book is a departure from classic marketing in that it relies on the research of neurologists who scanned subjects' brains while they viewed certain images and TV commercials or listened to jingles. This “neuromarketing” is, according to the author, “the key to unlocking what I call our Buyology: the subconscious thoughts, feelings and desires that drive the purchasing decisions we make each and every day of our lives.” For those who question the ethics of mapping the blood flow to the consumer’s brain either through fMRI’s or a less-invasive bathing cap thingy, Lindstrom argues that we will empower ourselves by better understanding our irrational behavior. I agree. Knowledge is power after all!

Most of the rest of the book discusses specific experiments that shed light on what really engages consumers authentically versus merely attracts attention for the moment. A product needs the former to keep going strong over the years.

Here are a few tidbits that stood out for me:

Consumers preferred Pepsi in a blind tasting due to its sweeter taste, but when informed as to the brand names, they preferred Coke because of their emotional engagement with the brand and its history.

The same parts of the brain light up when we see “strong” brands like iPod, Guinness and Ferrari as do when we see religious symbols like crosses, rosaries, Mother Teresa and the Virgin Mary" (I assume this study was done on Catholics....)

Cigarette warning labels light up the craving part of a smoker’s brain, that is, the warning makes them want to smoke more!

When people see an image of a mini Cooper, the part of our brain that recognizes faces lights up, suggesting we see Minis as cute little people--possibly accounting for the popularity of that car.

The success of product placement depends on the way you use it. Bombarding viewers with 100 different brands yields nothing for the advertising dollar, but incorporating the brand into the narrative, as with Reese’s Pieces in E.T. or Coke in “American Idol,” is well worth the expense.

Engaging senses other than the visual makes for stronger associations, but I love this evidence to support the power of music: when classical music was piped over loudspeakers in the London Underground, robberies dropped by 33% and vandalism by 37%.

Thanks to little buggers in our brains called “mirror neurons,” when we watch someone do something our brains react as if we were actually performing these activities, seeing and doing are one in the same. Reading about it triggers the same areas as doing, too.

Which leads us to sex and erotica, naturally. You read about it, it's as if you’re doing it? Depends on the story for me... but of more interest to business types is the following "surprise." Actually, Lindstrom claims that sex on its own does not sell. In fact, it tends to distract viewers, especially men, from paying attention to the product. He does get a bit confusing here, because he also claims that we decide to purchase something based on how much social status it brings, because social status is linked with “reproductive success” (a.k.a. getting laid a lot). Again, without spelling it out, I think he is arguing that it’s how the sex is used that matters. Which makes sense, but I'm not sure most people I talk to about my erotica writing get that. They all seem to think I should be very, very rich if I'm any good. But I digress.

Apparently we need to be able to relate to the advertisement. Studies he cites show that women prefer a wholesome, pretty, more or less “ordinary” woman in an ad to a sexy vixen or gorgeous celebrity. (Makes sense to me, though he didn’t talk about men in this case or makeup ads.) The desire for authenticity is a strong factor in consumers, which suggests why reality TV shows and erotic memoirs are so popular. While we all like a little fantasy escape, “real” sex is somehow more compelling. At least it is for me. It’s all the more thrilling when I feel I’m getting a glimpse into an intimate scene that “really” happened—though we all know that any mediation adds fictionality. But that’s yet another discussion.

I found it interesting that a 2001 survey by Market Facts showed that 53% of people were (said they were?) more likely to buy a product if it showed images of “love” than if it showed images that alluded to sex (only 26%). Again, I’d like a little more definition of what he means by “sex,” but if it’s just body parts colliding, then I can surely understand why some relational context would be more appealing and easier to identify with. Naturally, I’m invested in this because I like to read and write about “real” sex within relationships, so hey, I liked what I read in Buy-ology, too.

Well, I’ve gone on long enough, but again I find myself wishing I could invite you all over for an in-the-flesh erotica writers’ book club. What is your sense of how you respond to advertising? Do you believe sex sells or maybe it's the erotic--sex married to the mind and emotions--that sells instead? Has Martin Lindstrom given you ideas on how to “brand” yourself in terms of hawking your books or your personal (not like in the Story of O--ouch!) So, have a glass of Cotes du Rhone and some baguette with a dab of fromage d'Affinois and weigh in with your opinions on biology and buyology!

A Spanking Good Time on Sunday

I had a great weekend starting with three stunning soccer victories by the teams of my two athletic sons (how did that happen from a gym-loathing mom?) and ending with a highly pleasurable reading at Good Vibrations in Berkeley on Sunday evening in honor of the publication of Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories.

This is the first time I "officially" read at my local feminist adult-toy-and-bookstore, so it was a sort of a benchmark in my erotica writing life. I did participate in an open-mike sharing circle when I first started writing erotica maybe eleven years ago during which I read from my first erotic story, "The Blindfold," but it was cool to think about how far I'd come since. Good Vibrations is such a cheerfully buzzing place, and the hospitality was first-rate, including complimentary red wine and dark chocolate truffles, both very good for the circulation and bringing a blush to the cheeks. There was a decent crowd of listeners as well, and they even had to bring out more chairs!


The anthology's editor, spanking maven Rachel Kramer Bussel, opened the event with an introduction to the book and the spanking genre, while seated on an ottoman that would have been the perfect furniture for bending over and baring the buttocks. But the evening was about the power of words not paddles, of course.


I took the podium next with an excerpt from my story "A Thousand Words." You can get a sampling of the story here and a Youtube video will be available soon! I really enjoyed bringing my story to life. There was a lot of dialogue, so my high school reader's theater training came in handy. When the guy in the story talks look left. When the woman talks, look right. Straight ahead for the narrator and deliver the punchlines without looking at the text. I was also fresh from my younger son's school storytelling festival where I got to watch professionals perform, so I tried to channel their positive energy as I spoke, even if the content was rather different.


The next reader was the elegant Zille Defeu who did a very entertaining reenactment of her story called..."Reenactment." In another life, I'd devote all my weekends to historical reenactment, and the witty adventures of the fair lady and her "knight" in shining armor piqued my imagination in all sorts of ways.

Rachel concluded the event with a buffet of tidbits from the book including titillating background information on her story "The Spanking Machine" and a peek into the benefits of art gallery opening nights in Jerry Arthur's intellectually (among other things) stimulating "Ass Worship," which could certainly be seen as the theme of the book: Art meets palm meets buttocks.

Afterwards the three authors chatted a bit about the writing life and historical costumes, then Herr Doktor and I browsed the books, toys and videos. I've always loved Good Vibrations' sense of humor. Too bad the sign above can't be posted for some story collections as well, because we'd all benefit from the preview whether we're inclined to more or less of that damned literary content. It gives a new twist to the title of the Nanowrimo founder's book, No Plot, No Problem!

Anyway, it was a great evening, and thanks to all of you who were there in spirit, warming your buns with us....