Pride, Pleasure & What We Can Learn from Porn

This morning I checked out Justine Elyot's blog (take a look, it's really worth it) and was thrilled to see that she mentioned yours truly as "one to watch" for 2011:

"One writer who has impressed me this year with her scope and versatility is Lana Fox.  She looks at the subjects of sex and sexuality in a grown-up, joined-up way, writing commentary as well as beautifully considered erotica.  I will be very interested to see where 2011 takes her."  

Honestly, I'm utterly flattered, especially given I'm such a fan of Justine's own gorgeous stories.  I am ordering her novel The Business of Pleasure as we speak -- one of my New Year treats.  More soon.

I also want to share a video from the Psychology Today blog (via Our Porn, Ourselves).  This one is by Paul Joannides, the author of the Guide to Getting it On.  It's fun, thoughtful and helpful.  Do take a squizz:

There's also a super article by Matthew Castleman up at the Psychology Today blog, How Common is Masturbation, Really?.  Recommended.

Enjoy those highs, folks.

Who's Bedding Who?

I'm all tingly about the wonderful authors I'll be sharing pages with in With This Ring, I Thee Bed, Alison Tyler's forthcoming Harlequin Spice anthology.  The theme, of course, is marriages and weddings, and, to borrow a nifty phrase from Alison herself, here's the guest list:

Now or Forever by Nikki Magennis

Racing to the Altar by Sommer Marsden

Forever Hold Your Peace by I.K Velasco

A Lucky Wedding by Thomas S. Roche

Something Old, Something New by Sophia Valenti

Kiss the Bride by Lana Fox

One Last Time by Saskia Walker

Forsaking All Others by Janine Ashbless

Mother of the Bride by Cheyenne Blue

I Married a Gigolo by Jax Baynard

Strippers and Cigars by N.T. Morley

Something Blue by Shanna Germain

Speak Now by Heidi Champa

Wedding Crasher by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Blushing Bride by Bella Dean

Anniversary Waltz by Portia Da Costa

I Will by Erastes

A Vow for a Vow by P.S. Haven

Seven Year Itch by Kristina Lloyd

Rites of Passage by ADR Forte

Naked Nuptials by Alison Tyler

Love, Honor, and Obey by Rita Winchester

May the Best Man Win by Kate Pearce

Taking Vows by Kristina Wright

The Wedding Stoppers by Michael Hemmingson

You can see why I'm all flushed and proud!  Roll on April when the book will be released.  Until then, fancy a pre-order?  

Top Sexy Geeks

Violet Blue

In Second Bite of the Cherry, the novel I'm currently working on, a geeky character transforms into a hottie.  (If you're curious, you can read excerpts here and here).  Well, we all know geeks have great sexual potential, and what isn't sexy about transformation?

And of course, as Violet Blue reminds us, geeks can be hot in their own right.  In fact Violet is a self-confessed geek and bloody hell, who's hotter?  Do take a look at Violet's Top Ten Sexy Geeks of 2011.  It's a pleasure indeed.

Matinee, from Blue Artichoke Films

Alicia Whitsover as Mariah Carr in Matinee

I've decided to write a review of Matinee by Jennifer Lyon Bell's company Blue Artichoke Films.  I'll post a link to the review once it's written, but I wanted to point you towards this trailer, which is for over 18's only.  You'll see that Blue Artichoke are fusing explicit sex with story to create characters that are both human and relatable -- and when you watch the whole film, this heats up the sex.  Funnily enough, I found Matinee shortly after I'd written a story about on-stage wedding sex, and I think Lyon Bell and her team really capture the transformational qualities I also longed for as a writer.  I'd call Matinee erotica rather than porn because of the attention to story, theme and character development.  That said, I think Blue Artichoke are also challenging our notions of porn and erotic film.

Lyon Bell is becoming a bit of a hero for me.  Someday, I'd love to interview her!  I quoted her a while back here.  Such a wise and creative woman.

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A Survivor's Guide to the Holidays

Be yourself.  Love yourself. 

Christmas is a hard time for many of us, especially if you're spending it with family members who abused you.  On In Bed with Susie Bright this week, Susie shares a blog post by Grace Davis:  An Adult Child Abuse Survivor's Guide to the Holidays.  If you're nervous about the festive season, give it a go.  It's comforting and wise.  Highly recommended.

Good British Steel (Part Three)

Good British Steel (Part Three) is now featured at the Good Vibrations Magazine.  You can also read part one and part two of the story.

Hope you enjoy the clash of blades!

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The Erotic E-Book Saga: To Ban or Not to Ban?

If you've yet to come across the latest Amazon e-book saga, you can read about it here.  Selena Kitt, the author of the book that was deleted by Amazon because it contained scenes of incest, writes, "I don't condone or support actual incest, just as someone who writes mysteries about serial killers wouldn't condone killing."  Bravo, Selena.  In fact, as soon as I read the news, I checked to see whether Nabakov's Lolita, which, if you don't know, is an erotic masterpiece about a man who molests a young girl, was available on Amazon Kindle, and indeed it is.  Is child molestation worse than an adult brother and sister having consensual sex?  Of course it is.  But it's a story, goddammit, just like Red Dragon is the story of a serial killer and Frankenstein the a story of a violent monster.

I'm afraid Kitt's experience is partly due to the literary double-standard that made the racist opera Madame Butterfly socially desirable for many, and got punk rock banned and sneered at for its "offensive" lyrics.  If publishers are going to make a stand against "immoral sex", they need to be consistent about it -- kicking popular culture while kneeling unquestioningly at a literary shrine, comes across as prejudiced.  Apparently, when Kindle readers had the copies they'd bought deleted/made unavailable by Amazon, their complaints were greeted with rudeness.  What gives Amazon the right to judge our own choices as readers, especially after we've bought the book?  To quote Violet Blue in a letter to Amazon*:

"I think what bothers me the most is the privacy issue for readers -- this is actually HUGE.  Especially with the egregious irresponsibility in their customer service representative department.  Amazon is monitoring, watching and deciding for you what is sexually appropriate for you -- their customers..."

While we're on the subject, I wrote my own incest story after watching the BBC's Midsomer Murders, which, I admit, contain much to enjoy.  In this particular episode the murderers turned out to be an adult brother and sister who were secretly having a wild affair.  The characters were portrayed as completely immoral, with no nuance whatsoever, and I lost my rag because they seemed so damn unreal!  It was as if the writer had thought, "Hmm.  If we're going to have a pair of incestuous characters, they're going to have to be evil through and through.  No motivations.  No complexity.  No nuance.  They'll be totally unrelatable."

I was so shocked at the superficial treatment of what is a most complex subject, that I decided to write my own erotic story.  My brief?  To create a scenario in which a brother and sister fall in erotic love, not simply because they "lapse morally" but for complicated and relatable reasons.  I didn't want the reader to be able to say, "Well, they're obviously damned to hell!"  The result was Sol, which you can read here, in Clean Sheets, or listen to here, at the Good Vibrations Magazine.

We're entitled to our own opinions on the matter of incest, but I'm absolutely against having my moral choices edited for me and double-standards are unacceptable.  I questioned the morality of Lolita at the age of nineteen when I studied the book at uni for a Crime and Fiction course.  And back then, I was far more prissy, too!  I searched myself morally and eventually decided that the story was important and could do a great amount of good:  Only when we're brave enough to relate to sickness can we truly begin to heal it.

Plus, if Amazon want to become the moral guardians of the book world, perhaps they should take a look at the Shakespeare they stock.  There's forced sex, murder, disgrace, violence, swearing, wife-beating, daughter-beating, religious slander...  The list goes on.

I mean, holy cow.
--
*I found this excerpt from Violet's letter here, in Jacqui Cheng's article at ars technica.


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The Language of Solo-Sex

Pic by theAlieness
GisellaGiardino

In my new "Hot Topic" at The Nervous Breakdown, I discuss the language of solo-sex and its impact on our lives:  The Hot Topic, vol.2 - Touching Ourselves: A Word About Masturbation.

I suppose that officially makes me a solo sex activist.  Lovely. ;)

Good British Steel, Part Two

The second installment of my three-part story, Good British Steel, is featured this week at the Good Vibrations Magazine.  If you've yet to read part one, you can find it here.

While we're at it, what a wonderful photo!  It's of a fight demo at Higgins Armory Museum, MA.  The photographer is Raphael Garcia.  A great moment to catch with the lens.

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Fantasy Hits Reality

I just wanted to share some wonderful news!  My story, Untouchable Tabby, is going to appear in Miranda Forbes's collection Threesome: When One Lover is Not Enough.  This is particularly exciting because Untouchable Tabby is my first threesomes story, and, though I say it myself, I think it's adorable as well as hot.

The book contains work by a wonderful cast of writers, though the news is so fresh I should probably wait a little before announcing who they are.  So until then, many thanks to Miranda and the folks at Xcite.  The collection is due to be released in April 2011.  (And look at the foxy cover!).



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Be a Sex Activist.

Susie Bright (Photo: Salon)

It took me a while to realise that I'm a sex activist.  Of course, I'm not alone.  Go and visit the wonderful Emerald for example, whose great site does the world such a favour, or look up Violet Blue's Tiny Nibbles, which is beautifully pro-sex.  And of course, one of my heroes is Susie Bright, Queen of the sex world.  Speaking of Susie, when I was recently teaching a course on writerly self-esteem, I used the following excerpt as proof of what can happen when we have a mission that's greater than ourselves.  If, rather than saying, "I'm going to get myself published," we say, "I'm devoting myself to making the world a more loving place," we can often transcend low confidence and become part of a bigger, truer success.

Bearing that in mind, here's the wonderful excerpt from Susie Bright's How to Write a Dirty Story, in which Susie explains how and why she began to change America’s attitudes to sex:

I was the "erotica guru" he [Susie’s agent-to-be] was after, but it was only because, up to that point, no one else had given a damn. The few scholars who concerned themselves with erotic writing had been isolated and were not involved in the countercultural publishing scene. Most of the prominent mainstream writers of the day were terrified to have their names sullied by "dirty" writing, so they were of no use at all. For me to be the expert, at that point, simply meant that I was a devoted contrarian… 

How did I achieve goddess status? In my more self-deprecating moments, I've said, "Because no one else wanted to." But in a more celebratory mood, I would say it was because of my most elementary passions -- sex, reading, and writing -- and because my passion for those things became a mission. I was also ambitious at a time when there was a vacuum -- where there should have been bountiful literature. There were a lot of beautiful stars in the writing universe to whom no one was paying any attention. I cultivated that world, and it was a galaxy of future Olympians.

It's relevant to add that a dear friend recently revealed he enjoys my blog.  "You say the things no one else will say," he said, "and yet it's all so wise."  I thanked him, but added that there are loads of people saying these things.  He's just not on their radar, as yet.  For example, Without Susie reaching out in the way she does, I'd never have become so unashamed.

And I am unashamed.  Entirely.  So much so, that when someone recently told me my work was smut (and not in a 'reclaiming the word' sort of way) I simply smiled and told them I didn't see it that way.  I felt no anger.  Just pity.  What a lot of joy, love and humanity that person's missing out on.

See yourself as an activist.  You can't help but feel good.

According to my Myers-Briggs personality type, I'm a natural born activist.  Hurrah.

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Santa Baby, Leave Some Sex Scenes Under the Tree, For Me.

Oh, come on, humour me, it's my favourite Christmas song...

In all seriousness, if you'd like to brighten up the life of a loved-one, what could be better than the gift of a sexy book?  Well, in the spirit of the Sugarplum Fairy, Cleis Press and Viva Editions are running a winter sale with 20% reductions on all their titles.  The sale continues until the end of December.  Perfect for adult stocking-stuffers.

Which reminds me, do throw in a garter belt, won't you?  Erotic gifts work best when accessorized, especially if you shop here. ;)

By the by, Kristina Wright gives a wonderful review of Passion: Erotic Romance for Women at the Erotica Readers & Writers Association.  My story, The Silver Belt, gets a special mention.  Great news!

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