Love, race and family tonight with the brilliant Diane Farr and Ken Tanabe

You really don't want to miss this meeting of two truly brilliant minds and open-hearted, amazing people who are working to make the world a better, less racist place. Ken Tanabe is the found of Loving Day and Diane Farr is the author of Kissing Outside the Lines: A True Story of Love and Race and Happily Ever After, which is about both her love story with her Korean husband and follows stories of various interracial couples as they navigate their families old and new. And yes, this will finally inspire me to finish up my interview with Diane and get it online by hook or by crook. She had so many amazing things to say and I want to share them.



Venue: Barnes and Noble Tribeca
Address Line 1: 97 Warren Street
City: New York
State (if you are in the U.S.A): New York
Country: United States

You may know Diane Farr as an actress on "Rescue Me" and "Numb3rs," or as a host on "Loveline." Her new book, "Kissing Outside the Lines," is her "unapologetic - often hilarious - look at the complexities of interracial/ethnic/religious/what-have-you love." She shares her own story of creating a family with someone from a race and culture different from her own, as well as the stories of other multiracial couples from different corners of the U.S.

Join Loving Day for this entertaining and informative event! Diane Farr will be there in person to discuss "Kissing Outside the Lines." There will also be a Q&A session moderated by Loving Day founder Ken Tanabe.

Diane Farr at Barnes & Noble Tribeca
Wednesday, July 6th at 6:30pm
97 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007

Can’t make it to the event? Your purchases from Barnes & Noble online (and at the store) between July 6-10, 2011 can benefit Loving Day. For online orders, check the box labeled “Check this box if this is a Bookfair Order”. Then, in the field labeled “BOOKFAIR ID NUMBER,” enter 10519932. Your purchases in the store or over the phone will also benefit Loving Day if you provide our Bookfair ID number 10519932.

Loving Day fights racial prejudice through education and builds multicultural community. A growing global network of annual Loving Day Celebrations commemorate the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. For more information about Loving Day, please visit http://www.lovingday.org
Hosted By:
Diane Farr and Loving Day
RSVP:
not required
Link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=212139408821652

Sex After 50: The Naked Truth, new column

My latest column, "Sex After 50: The Naked Truth" quotes Naked at Our Age author Joan Price, who's about to go on a book tour, Sugar in My Bowl editor Erica Jong and more on senior sex. If you like the column, there are buttons at the top of it to spread the word - as always, that's much appreciated!



Joan Price is 67 and wants you to know that sex doesn’t stop at 50—or 60, 70 or 80 and 90!

The author of Better Than I Ever Expected is back with a new book, Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex (Seal Press), inspired by the many readers who wrote to her asking about how to deal with issues ranging from vulvar pain to breakups, illnesses such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, as well as “dating while older,” erectile dysfunction, divorce, grief, even hiring people for sex or erotc touch. The tone of the book is supportive but realistic; Price isn’t telling seniors to expect to have the exact same kinds or frequency of sex, but instead that if you’re adaptable, sex can continue (with yourself and others) for one’s entire lifetime.

Throughout the book, Price and a series of experts such as Charlie Glickman, Lou Paget, Carol Queen, and Candida Royalle offer tips related to specific queries in concise, practical responses. Price is a big sex toy advocate as well. “When I review a sex toy on my blog, I concentrate on what it does well (or is supposed to do well!), and how well it works from a senior perspective. e.g. It shouldn’t hurt arthritic wrists; it should last as long as we need without overheating or turning itself off, and more.”

Read the whole column

Waking up next to her makes a rough week a little better

Trying to snap out of this rough week's mindset so I can appreciate my vacation this weekend and leave the ills of New York and self-sabotage behind. Excited to spend some time away and also to come back and hopefully have both perspective and creativity, two things I've been lacking lately. Waking up next to this fluffy, friendly one has helped, and I get to do it next week too!

When I was little I always begged my mom for a cat. "If you're not going to get me a cat, don't get me anything," I said before I think my 8th or 9th birthday. But I was allergic and we lived in an apartment building where they weren't allowed. I wasn't hearing it. I honestly don't know if I'd be good at taking care of a cat in the long-term, but I don't have to worry about that. In the short time, like tonight and tomorrow morning, I get to cuddle with her, which is perfect, cause talking to people I would probably not be so successful at right now.

It's such a close shot cause she was lying on my chest. So, onward. I am very good at lamenting what I haven't done, but am trying to focus on what I can do in the moment, like write about BEA fatigue. And masturbation. And gay threesomes. The usual mix. I will tell you that the best book I got at BEA (obviously haven't read them all, but I can tell) is Pesi Dinnerstein's forthcoming memoir from Seal Press, A Cluttered Life: Searing for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys. I grabbed it this morning...after frantically looking for my keys.

She nails things in just the first few pages I've read that could be straight out of my head, about the reasons behind hoarding and clutter and filling ourselves up with all the things we fill ourselves up with, women like us. I am trying not to do that, yet that process seeps in, whether it's filling up my hand with to do list items or my bags or my home or my mouth. Unlearning, or avoiding, lifelong bad habits is extremely challenging. They are comforting even when they're clearly dysfunctional, hence I make the same errors when it comes to not finishing, procrastinating, spending, clutter, whatever, over and over again. It's why I'd rather not drink at all than even give myself the option.

I'd rather choose nothing because I don't think I'll ever be fully rid of my all or nothing mindset; that's the rationale behind my short-lived dating hiatus. I couldn't trust myself and my "all" in terms of dating was both literal and full of bad decisions, ones that often, in the moment, felt good. I could talk myself into justifying them just like I do with all the other arenas where I'm careening into negative behaviors. It's not just a daily thing but sometimes an hourly, or by the minute, process of pulling myself out of that darkness. I almost lost it yesterday with such a wave of self-hatred I could barely get myself back for my signing, let alone smile and act happy to sign books. But I did and by the end I actually was kindof happy to have signed all the copies of Gotta Have It that were placed in front of me. I gave out swag and people not only looked excited to read the book, lots were giving it as gifts, and I wrote down the URL for the hotel erotica anthology I'm editing. Thank you to everyone who came to that signing for helping me see that failure isn't such an all or nothing prospect. It's one (or, okay, three or ten) failures, paired with lots of successes. There isn't a scorecard; it's just life, and sometimes I make good decisions and live up to my potential, and sometimes I bomb hard. I know there is a lesson in the bombing; I'm still trying to figure out what that is and find a way to prove to myself that I can meet my goals. I can't try to live up to anyone else's goals for me; that is a road to ruin, but I can make goals for myself and hold myself accountable, and that is what I'm trying to do in this crazy year of 35 that much of the time I just wish were over.

One lesson I learned this week is that having a cat stick her wet little nose all up in my face and show me so much unconditional love was both adorable and really healing. She doesn't care in the least about any of my human flaws and problems and I totally needed that. It was an unexpected bit of catsitting and I'm very grateful for the opportunity.

My review: Big Sex Little Death by Susie Bright

My interview with Susie Bright should be up tomorrow at SexIs Magazine but in the meantime, my review of her new memoir Big Sex Little Death, available at Amazon and wherever books are sold. See susiebright.com for tour dates.



Big Sex Little Death is about some of the things you would expect from a Susie Bright memoir: her time at pioneering lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs, the feminist sex wars, politics and hypocrisy. But it's also about a lot of things you might not expect, things that revealed not just how she got to where she is now and the forces that shaped her, but the rift her parents' divorce caused inside her, and how it shaped her as a parent and person.

Bright starts off as a little girl trying to absorb what she can about her family, and to tolerate the wild mood swings her mother has, often with Bright as the object of her derision. It's almost easy to forget that she was ever that little girl when she so boldly takes on the status quo as a high school student with the newspaper The Red Tide. But Bright's vision is set on being part of real socialist organizing, and she drops out of school, argues her way into the IS, raises the money to get there by housecleaning and is even willing to stay after almost being beaten to death and facing extremely dangerous situations. To her the cause stands paramount, yet she is always questioning and observing those around her. There are moments that make one pause and think, "This happened in America?" Even for those of us who aren't under the illusion that the US is perfect, those are hard moments, but Bright manages to write about them, such as the racism at her department store job, with an eye for injustice and a belief that there are ways to change these injustices.

This is especially clear as she maps out the feminist culture at the time she was starting to sell vibrators at Good Vibrations and become part of On Our Backs. The clash between what women were being told they were supposed to be doing in the name of feminism and what women were exploring sexually provided for plenty of drama, and Bright is at perhaps her sharpest here, highlighting both the thrill of being part of something new and visionary as well as the death threats that came with it. During this time, Bright also becomes a mother and there are some very poignant observations about the credit she was given, by random neighbors and others who previously would have dismissed her, and how the process of becoming a parent helped her see that she was not doomed to repeat her mother's mistakes.

This book is admittedly not an attempt to document an exhaustive history of either The Red Tide, On Our Backs, or Susie Bright's entire life, and the stories she did choose to tell are illuminating. She doesn't lose that youthful spirit of wanting to shake things up that she had at sixteen, even in the face of ostracism from within the ranks of the IS or the lesbian or feminist worlds. She does, however, make choices she needs to to best protect herself and her family. This is a powerful book that will, perhaps, leave you unsettled...in a good way. The writing is so rich, too (she describes Andrea Dworkin as "Like arguing with Freud but being happy he was taking you for a ride.), and Bright is clearly not just rehashing the same old stories. The final chapters, in which she is served with papers, there's a murder and Bright grapples with motherhood, are particularly dramatic, but there is a gracefulness to Bright's words, one that doesn't mute any of the horror of the details she's revealing, but that in fact leaps off the page. It highlights the reality that truth is stranger than fiction and certainly makes the book go out with a bang. A fascinating read whether you're familiar with Bright's book or not, whether you share her political beliefs or not; this is a memoir about finding companionship as well as fierce opposition among the rebels, and figuring out when to stand one's ground and when to find new ground to stand on.

My erotica on Kindle - updated for March 2011

For those who are into that sort of thing, here's a handy list/links to my erotica anthologies on Kindle. Visit my website for links to all my books as well as the anthologies my work has been published in.

I'm updating my website's books page so all the links to Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Nook, Powells, IndieBound, Cleis Press, etc. will be just a click away. I myself don't have a Kindle or e-reader, but I use Kindle for iPhone. When you click through below you'll see that almost all of these have a free sample chapter (usually the first story) you can download to see if you like it, and most of my Wordpress blogs for the books (not linked below but search for the book on this blog for links, those links will be coming soon) have the full introduction and sometimes a story sample.

And when you use the links below, I do get a small fee from Amazon. I have no preference how you read my books.

These are only $9.99 (some cheaper)! A bargain, and instantly delivered.








Passion: Erotic Romance for Women


Smooth: Erotic Stories for Women


Orgasmic: Erotica for Women


Fast Girls: Erotica for Women


Please, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Male Submission


Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission


Best Sex Writing 2010

Best Sex Writing 2009


Peep Show: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists


Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories


The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories


Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories


Bedding Down: A Collection of Winter Erotica


Tasting Her: Oral Sex Stories


Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories


Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica


Rubber Sex

Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women


Yes, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Male Submission


Yes, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission

Best Sex Writing 2008


Hide and Seek: Erotic Stories


Crossdressing: Erotic Stories


He's on Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission


She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission


Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists

How Santa's flying reindeer relate to psychotropic mushrooms and so much more from Spring Warren's memoir Quarter-Acre Farm

I'm so taken with Spring Warren's memoir The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year, just out from Seal Press, with gorgeous illustrations by Jesse "Nemo" Pruet. You can find out more about her gardening experiment on her blog Quarter-Acre Farm.

One thing I love about the book is that I have no intention of ever growing anything; I just don't see how I could in Brooklyn and even if I lived in somewhere less urban, I barely cook as it is. That's where I want to start (especially with Isa Chandra Moskowitz's new vegan cookbook Appetite for Reduction). But I'm enjoying Quarter-Acre Farm for the same reason I enjoy any memoir: it's teaching me something. And is whipsmart and funny too. Warren has a sense of humor and isn't trying to sell anyone else, necessarily, on doing what she did. She's sharing the ups, downs and odds and ends of growing her own food for a year, and how her family, friends, neighbors and animals (geese!) reacted.



Here's a little bit of trivia for you from Quarter-Acre Farm. If you want some great recipes and an entertaining look at how one woman went about setting up a home garden in Davis, California, I highly recommend it.

For instance, psychotropic mushrooms are said to be the source of the myth of Santa's flying reindeer. Lapland reindeer apparently love Amanita muscaria mushroom, which are not only hallucinogenic but they also supposedly stimulate the animal's muscular system. This made small efforts on the part of the reindeer produce surprising results--enormous reindeer leaps. These leaps then led to stories of flying reindeer, which were eventually assimilated into the folklore of St. Nicholas.

I mean, come on, how can you not love that? Followed by a recipe for mushroom soup! Her writing style is sometimes humorous, but mostly I'd say lively. It's engaging and makes you want to garden if it would provide so much sense of discovery about the world around us and what we eat (and some sobering thoughts on pesticides).

Also, not about gardening, but I'd never heard of cranberry beans before I started reading this book, and there they were in the Brunch Beans stew at my local standby, Saltie, making them my new favorite dish there. Highly recommended! I totally ate the bread first, though next time I'd recommend saving one or two pieces to sop up the stew. So hearty and perfect for a rainy day.

Jennifer Lauck on revising memoir and who owns your story

I'm busy packing so all the blog posts and articles and stories in my head I've been meaning to write, well, I hope they will get written soon. In the meantime, Found author Jennifer Lauck has a fascinating post up at SheWrites about changing her memoir very late in the game because someone in it had objected to how they were portrayed. Her response was to remove them entirely from the manuscript. I'm fascinated by the memoir process, how composite characters work, how the path to shaping a particular truth gets changed by market forces, morality, editorial concerns. I'm the kind of person who is a gullible reader, who gets so sucked into the story I often forget that it is not just a story, but a single version of a story. One side. I've been trying to think about that, but not to the point where it stymies me, when I write, about things as innocuous as sleeping patterns, as well as about missed calls and endings of relationships. I said the other day that if you focus entirely on what someone else might think of what you write, it'd be almost impossible to write anything. Yet there are always so many versions of the truth, shadings, ways of padding it or stripping it down.

Rather, I removed this person, in total, from the pages of my book.

This is one of the hardest (and most interesting) aspects of writing memoir. The people in our lives, who are inevitably going to end up in the lines, will have a different view of the experiences we write about. Depending how evolved people are, they will react strongly or not at all. Some will care. Others will not. Most often, if a person is positively portrayed in a book, they are delighted. If they are complex on the page, the reaction is usually very strong and quite negative.

Still, no one has the right to rewrite a memoirist’s book. Memoir defined is a story about the writer's experience and what she does with her experience in order to grow, even evolve as a human being. A memoir is the point of view of the writer because it is about her life and her perception of an experience. That is what a reader expects from a memoir and that is what a good memoir produces. To allow another, relatively minor character, in your memoir to alter your truth for the sake of their continued friendship or even love is no friendship and no love. That is not relationship. That is occupation.

Cocktail oral erotica with no actual sex story "Blow Me" in Nice Girls, Naughty Sex

One of the assignments I give out and discuss when I teach erotica is about writing an erotica story where no actual sex takes place (and I don't mean no "intercourse" but no actual genital sexual contact between the characters). It's a tough thing to pull off and definitely not what I'd want to see from most erotica submissions but sometimes it works. My story "Blow Me" was inspired by a cocktail and is now published in the Seal Press anthology Nice Girls, Naughty Sex: 20 Erotic Tales, edited by Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade of the website Oysters and Chocolate (if you're looking for places to submit your erotica, check them out). I haven't seen the book yet but hopefully I will soon (kindof skeeves me out that someone "reviewed" it on Amazon saying they hadn't read it yet but were excited about it - call me crazy, but that doesn't seem like the purpose of Amazon reviews).

It's a story with alternating points of view, which I rarely do. If you like the story and want more oral sex erotica, do of course check out my IPPY-winning anthologies Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories and Tasting Her: Oral Sex Stories

A Technicality, by Sommer Marsden

Behind Bars, by Sarannah DeWylde

Siestas and Spanish Leather Boots, by Rosalia Zizzo

Name Your Price, by A.M. Hartnett

Looking for Wintergreen, by Trish DeVene

At a Standstill, by Heidi Champa

A Welcome Threat, by Venerato Petronius

Dirty Cop Doesn’t Mean What It Used To, by Emily Croy

Blow Me, by Rachel Kramer Bussell

For His Pleasure, by Sienna Conroy

Good Doggy, by Janine Ashbless

Evelyn, by Julian Augustus Finisterre

Corset, by Kay Jaybee

A Lesson for Claire, by Claire Gravier

Serving Miss Paden, by Talia Kelley

Phoenix, by Valerie Lewis

An Open Letter, by Aimee Herman

Dragon Lady, by Kristina Wright

Daylight Savings Time, by Jeremy Edwards

Honeymoon Suite, by Donna George Storey

Next on my reading list: Cami Ostman's marathon memoir Second Wind

I like working with publishers, such as Harlequin, Cleis Press and Seal Press, to name three, that publish books I like to read. They all do, and while I don't have time to read everything they publish, I try to keep up and have discovered some amazing authors that way. While Seal always has lots of titles I'm interested in (I'm basically the target audience for Pretty Neat, you know?), what I love about discovering books the most is just that: the discovery. The act of hearing about a book in some fashion, usually through a friend, review, via social media or, in this case, via the publisher, and thinking, Wow, that sounds amazing. Also in this case, thinking, And that is the perfect gift for my marathon-running stepfather.

So I haven't read it yet, but I look forward to the memoir Second Wind: One Woman's Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents. Her official site is 7marathons7continents.com and you can also keep track of her goal to run a marathon in each of the 50 United States by 2017!

Publisher's description:

Second Wind is the story of an unlikely athlete and an unlikely heroine: Cami Ostman, a woman edging toward midlife who decides to take on a challenge that stretches her way outside of her comfort zone. That challenge presents itself when an old friend suggests she go for a run to distract her from the grief of her recent divorce. Excited by the clarity of mind and breathing space running offers her, she keeps it up—albeit slowly. Soon the old friend, Bill, now a romantic interest, invites her to Prague to run a marathon. Little does either of them know that this race will be the first of many international marathons, and that it will ignite a quest to run seven marathons on seven continents.

Up hills and through flash floods, more often alone than with company, Cami forges a path through some of the most exotic places in the world—and into some of the most enlightened, and darkest, places in the psyche. Insightful and uplifting, Second Wind carries the reader along for the ride as Cami runs her way out of compliance with the patriarchal rules about “being a woman” that long held her captive and into authenticity and self-love. Her adventures—and the personal revelations that accompany them—will inspire readers to take chances, find truth in their lives, and learn to listen to the voice inside them that’s been there all along.



I liked the book trailer because she said some things like "You need to find your own authentic pace in life" that transcend running, even though her book is about running. Of course it's about more than that (okay, maybe not "of course," but as an avid memoir reader, there is almost always something more going on that the surface topic).