Boas, rings, books and cupcakes at Shag, yummy guacamole outside Knitting Factory

Last night I stopped by Williamsburg, Brooklyn sex and art store Shag to drop off more copies of my books - THANK YOU, Brooklyn, for buying my books! I love getting those checks every month telling me that my neighbors are reading my smut. Buy local! Also, I can't stop into Shag and not get immediate lust for jewelry and other beautiful things. It was a hard week, so I bought myself a ring (see below). And Leah Foster's cupcake art (made of cupcakes) is hanging there. Woo-hoo! Then I stumbled upon Gorilla Guac outside Knitting Factory and bought my dinner of chips and guacamole for $5. Brooklyn happiness.

For extra happiness, please visit Cupcakes Take the Cake, where I just blogged shark cupcake pops and pretty flowers. I would totally take shark cupcakes or cake pops to my family next weekend on Martha's Vineyard. Well, more cake pops than cupcakes cause I plan to take SeaStreak and the water can be rough. All my next 3 trips are family-related (Vineyard, Oregon, Vermont), then in September I go to Vegas for the Erotic Authors Association Conference. Excited, but urgently need a silent weekend away that I won't be getting for a while. Maybe for my birthday. Seems quite fitting. First, though, I have to earn it. Making strides toward that and setting weight, home, finance and book goals. I would love to look on back on this year as the year I changed so many of my self-destructive ways. You can get so good at those ways that they seem to a twisted mind like mine like the only way, and there's always another way. Always.

Video game lovers: come to Brooklyn for Son of Pong by John DeVore

Can I just say that I love my neighborhood? Because I do. I love that there is so much right outside my door. Like a 24-hour bagel shop (Bagelsmith, I recommend the everything wheat, and the lox) and The Brick Theater, where tonight I'm going to see my friend John DeVore in his one man show "Son of Pong."



You can read more about in his post listing top 5 reasons to attend:

1. I tell a story about video games! My dad was a video game junkie. He would sit in his underwear in front of our TV in the basement, and play for hours. His addiction started with Pong and continued until his death. I hated video games because as a kid, I saw no reward in meaningless toil. If you told me then that I’d grow up to be like him, I would have barfed.

“Son of Pong” is a story about growing up. A story about why people play video games. A story about how the grins of the father shall be visited upon the son. I’ll even tell you how it starts: I’m a grown man dying in an emergency room and the cellphone game “Angry Birds” saves my life.

Get your tickets here. It's also part of video game festival Gameplay, through July 31st, if you didn't read John's post.

Brooklyn lunch recommendation: lentil salad at Saltie

I tend to develop favorites at restaurants I frequent, and once I do, it's tough to steer me away from my cravings. For a while, having sampled most of the small, excellent menu at Saltie, the sandwich and dessert shop in Williamsburg, I was going there for the Clean Slate ($9), their open-faced hummus/yogurt/beet sandwich on homemade naan bread. But the other day I decided to give their lentil salad ($7) a try and I'm so glad I did. It's topped with a mound of goat cheese and is indeed salty, and as a salt lover, I can't get enough, and the lentils are very tiny and delicate and there's a lot of them, and it also has little crunchy bits. I like that you never know exactly what you're going to get at Saltie, because the exact display and ingredients may be slightly altered at any time.

This is my lentil salad from today (on top) and Thursday (when it had little pieces of squash in it, yum!):





I also tried their coffee cake ($4), which was harder than I expected on top, but also wondrous. The cake part was moist and light, and the top was crumbly and sweet and buttery; bring a friend and share it is my recommendation.

Saturday night! Williamsburg! Storytelling! $5! Tough Love Boulevard...

I'm so tired today from staying up til 4 trying to write procrastinating that I left my refillable mug at Starbucks. Full of coffee. That was sad. I will be more perky and awake on Saturday night when I tell a story of tough love. Which story of tough love I am trying to figure out...the one about the socialist? the one about the person I keep freaking dreaming about (literally, in my dreams, at night, once even with him and Sarah Palin)? the one about...?

Sign up at the mailing list here for a discount. If you get to Williamsburg before 6 I highly, highly recommend stopping by Saltie. I ate their Clean Slate sandwich on Saturday and Sunday. A photo is below, but each time it's a little different - Saturday the beets were in mini rectangles, Sunday they were shredded. It's homemade naan bread, hummus, yogurt and assorted crunchy bits. I also shared a chocolate meringue and seriously. So. Good.


Facebook invite

Official site


Clean Slate at Saltie

Why I Got The Word "Open" Tattooed On My Back

It's been a whirlwind week between my tattoo, running all over heat-waved LA and taking a 9-hour redeye flight home (we had to stop in Salt Lake City to refuel). I'm writing again for Lemondrop, with two very exciting interviews lined up, but this latest piece is about why I got my new tattoo. It's by Joy Rumore at Twelve 28 Tattoo, recommended to me by Audacia Ray, which, needless to say, I recommend.



I'd always thought that I wasn't a tattoo person. There wasn't a single image I felt I had to have on my body. But when my friend Sheela and a bunch of other cool ladies I know made plans to get tattoos while we were all in Chicago, I decided I wanted in on the action.

I still couldn't come up with an image that worked for me, until I realized that I'm not a visual person so much as a word person. As a writer, words are what matter most to me; I stay up late at night reading, not watching TV. I remember quotes and song lyrics more than I remember movie scenes.

Once I decided I wanted a word, the one that came to mind was "open." I tend to be extremely pessimistic, and when something goes wrong in my life, instead of trying to fix it or make it better, I assume there's something wrong with me and that's why the problem is occurring.

Read the full essay here. And if you like it, please repost, comment and/or Digg it (on my tech to do list is figuring out how to get an exact Digg link - working on it!).

Seth Kushner CulturePOP photo comic sneak peek

I posed for lots of photos for Seth Kushner on Sunday (click to see one other one). There are some cool twists in the works, so stay tuned. This was shot inside Cupcakeland in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Will post more in November or December when I know more, but I was very inspired talking about my writing, where I get ideas and erotica and editing anthologies.