“The Cunt Book”: Steamy Stories From the Vault

Lots of good story news for this week! I’m making an appearance on Marcy Sheiner’s blog today with a reprint of “The Cunt Book.”

“The Cunt Book” is one of the very first erotic stories I wrote and the very first to make a best-of anthology: Best Women’s Erotica 2005. I can still remember how I felt when Marcy, one of contemporary erotica’s founding mothers, emailed me to say she loved the story and wanted to include it in the anthology. I was—and I want to say literally, but that can’t be true—floating on air with a mile-wide smile on my face.

I wrote the story in just a few days, which was rare for me back then. My other favorite story from the early years, “Blinded,” took a year of revisions and hands-on research, not to mention I got lots of rejections (although admittedly many from “literary” venues) before it was finally published. “The Cunt Book” had better luck. I posted it on my online workshop (Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope) and Rachel Callahan of InPosse Review approached me with a publication offer—which, believe me, was an unexpected treat. I submitted it to Clean Sheets, where I’d always dreamed of being published, and the story caught the eye of Bill Noble, another icon of our genre.

And you know, even though it’s an “early” work, I still like the story a lot. I like the layers of it, the lies, the stories within stories, the old-fashioned naughty pictures before the Internet and digital photography made these things commonplace.

So, please stop by Marcy Sheiner’s blog, Dirty Laundry, to check out my story—and do leave a comment over there if you’re so inspired! Oh, and the photo is from Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party--a favorite of mine!