The last week of submissions for Cunning Linguists saw an outpouring of some fantastic smut. My co-editors and I are still reading through it. If you submitted, you SHOULD have received a “Thank you, we received it!” kind of response from us. If you didn’t, please query. The only exception is the authors who received extensions and delivered their stories yesterday, September 10 — I still need to send y’all some safe response confirmations.
Labor Day weekend was also my late submissive’s birthday. I marked the date by driving down to the beach where we scattered his ashes–a beautiful place, although the walking trail I took to get there was formidable. Loose, dry mountains of sand: beautiful to look at, difficult to walk on.
I had dinner with his family while I was close by, and then drove home. 350 miles total that day. For the last 70 miles, my dear Corolla was making a very concerning sound whenever I pressed the gas.
Luckily, it turned out to be a muffler issue. I say “luckily” because it wasn’t a life-threatening engine issue, and I got home safely. Also my catalytic converter was *not* stolen although a number of people, when I told them what was happening, said “Oh no, it sounds like your catalytic converter might have been stolen.” It would just have been a rotten moment for human nature if somebody stole from my car during my beautiful grief trip.
It’s fixed now, but it was a very expensive fix.
The Muse works in mysterious ways, because that expensive fix has finally given me the motivation I needed to set up some pre-orders for a few different short story & flash collections I have intended to release for ages:
Also, unrelated to car repair financing–because it’s not a money-making venture–but still something I’ve looked forward to doing: my submissive’s flash fiction is available as a pay-what-you-want collection on Smashwords and in my Gumroad store. All royalties earned will be donated to Trans Lifeline, a charity my sub supported.
All of these are pre-orders for now as I format the interiors, but I’m excited for when they come out!
I’ll do more detailed posts on them as they appear for pre-order elsewhere, like on Amazon.
Car repairs aside, this week’s misadventures mean I also need to buy a new Nook (it’s too old to be viable to repair; but I need one to do my proofreading work). And, despite saying around Wednesday, “I hope everything else holds together, including my own body,” I threw my jaw out of joint eating chips and salsa, but that seems to have repaired itself. I’m sticking to a softer diet for the meantime.
That should be the three instances my mom things says these always come in.
Today is the release day for Coming Soon, which includes my femdom menage story, “Exceptional Service.”
This piece was cooked up after dinner with my partner at a rather nice establishment with a waitress who was attentive enough…but mostly to him. And she did that thing many waitstaff do, giving my credit card back…to him. Presumably because he was “the man”(even though as my bigender girlfriend and I liked to point out to each other, they were just giving the card to a woman either way). But on the drive home I suggested, to keep from getting too irritated, that maybe she was just very into his gorgeous self. A motive I completely understood. Theriac agreed and proposed a way to tip a very attentive waitress who is very into your sub.
Helen, the heroine in “Exceptional Service,” is actually into both members of the couple and attentive enough to return the credit card to the woman whose name is on it. Maybe that’s why, along with her tip, she receives a phone number at the end of their meal, an offer she decides to take them up on…
Coming Soon is available most places books are sold, including
"ERATO is the book you give someone if you want to prove that erotica has artistic merit." A line from Adriana's review that made me blush: https://t.co/8WtKlNJ0MS
I’ll let my Twitter speak for itself as this has been a wild week (mostly vaccinated family members from across the country got to finally meet in person, minor car accident, sporadic internet access, unexpected deadlines). 😀
This morning while my coffee brewed I lit some candles, re-arranged my girlfriend’s urn and picture and pennies on my bookshelf.
Last night I had a dream we were texting each other and he was okay, he’d just withdrawn for a while.
I’m not great about big days. I can’t even be relied upon to celebrate my birthday with any regularity much less death days.
I’ve texted his family. Just a string of hearts.
The last thing I ever said to him that I know he heard (well, read–texting) was that I was “astounded and gratified” to have him in my life. Still true.
***
I don’t have a lot to say right now (though I am doing well overall–settling in to my new home, working, reading, slowly getting out into the world again now that I’ve vaccinated). But I do want to be deliberate about grieving in public. About being “out” as a bereaved person. I choose that word deliberately. Just like some people in my social circle don’t realize how many LGBT+ people they know until I tell them I’m bisexual (and I don’t trust everyone with this information–another parallel), I think many of us do not realize how many we know are carrying grief. I think realizing this can help us be more compassionate, more open to the strangeness and vulnerability of this life. I hope being “out” can help other grievers–and that’s all of you, sooner or later–realize that they’re not alone, not weird, and not doomed. I wouldn’t say grief lessens so much as it changes. Like any part of life. It hurts like hell and it’s a gift, because love is a gift. Thank you for reading.
I texted my sister last night, “Just had a panel of like 25 sexperts agree with my editorial decisions twice. (Two stories from Erato are Good Sex Award finalists.) Feels great!”
And it does.
I’m actually not sure of the number of sexperts involved–the Good Sex Awards has an awe-inspiring list of judges, some of whom I have giddy “Omg did they read and like the story?” feelings for, some of whom I hadn’t known of before. I don’t know if they all read for every category, but I get the impression they each had a lot of reading, because my circle was buzzing with authors excited to submit their stories to the Award.
Full disclosure: I submitted two pieces myself, previously published in anthologies and magazines outside of NSP, neither of which were finalists. But that’s okay. The competition was steep and high-quality!
Enough about me. After all, I can’t take a lot of credit–just enough to feel proud that two stories I (and my co-editors–I can’t take all the credit even for this part!) read and was like “Wow, this is great, I want to publish it and share it with other readers” also produced that “Wow, this is great!” feeling in some other readers.
Frankly, I’m probably just lucky these two authors decided to submit their stories to Erato before some other lucky editor snapped them up.
But putting together Erato had its rough moments, with a staggering personal loss right in the middle of the project that sometimes had me wondering if we’d make it through. Part of what kept me going was the quality and significance of the stories we had to publish. So this moment feels…vindicating? Hopeful? It’s the part of the biofilm where they can stop rolling and freeze on my smiling bright-eyed face cuz we’re on the right high note.
Anyway–
Big congratulations to Jem Zero and D. Fostalove, whose stories “A Study in Circuits and Charcoal” and “Touch” from Erato are finalists for the Good Sex Awards!
“A Study in Circuits and Charcoal” is a finalist for Best Feminist Sex. You can read it here and read Jem Zero’s interview about zir story here on our blog
“Touch” is a finalist for Best Sexy Talk. You can read it here and read D. Fostalove’s interview about his story here on our blog.
Finalist stories are candidates for the Good Sex Award’s Readers’ Choice Award. Voting runs until June 20. You–yes, you, dear reader–can check out all the sexiest stories on The Good Bits website and fill out your ballot here!
At Lascivity, with its delicious tagline “literate kink,” I have a new story up. It’s one that does a few things…different from my usual. A fun experiment.
She’s taken a week of paid time off for this. To stay at home. With him. Doing practically nothing.
Wearing nothing.
It’s the third day, early afternoon. Sunlight through the screen door patterns her legs and stomach. As she studies it, dark blond hair falls in her face. She shoves it back. The strands tickle over her shoulders. It feels good; her head feels so light, relieved from the tug of her professional chignon or even the ponytail she wears when running errands.
She finds herself more powerful naked — not a worker, not a woman, but a human animal. No mincing steps in high heels. No tight waistbands. No ruddy bra imprints on her back and underneath her breasts. Those faded in the first 24 hours. He’d helped to pet them out of her skin.
April is National Poetry Month, so I’m going to pretend that’s the reason I’ve lately been reading and posting a lot of poetry on my Tumblr. Actually it’s a happy coincidence. I’ve rediscovered poetry, as I do every few years, and this spring I’m making more of an effort to share about the books I read. Thus, quotes on my Tumblr.
Poetry can share big ideas in a concentrated space, making it especially quotable. Quick & intense suit my mood right now.
I found poets through a mix of sources, one big one being a search for queer erotic work in my library system–leading to the discovery of writers like Natalie Diaz and Danez Smith. Sharon Olds has been on my to-read pile for years and I was finally inspired to get into the copy of The Gold Cell that I picked up at a library book sale back in 2017 or so. It was worth the wait.
Overall, the pieces that stick out most to me–and thus the ones that get most quoted–are on sex, spirituality, and sadness. Plus the occasional parody; one of the most recent posts in my “poetry” Tumblr tag is on Beowulf retold by Bertie Wooster, for reasons that really do make sense in context.
For reasons that require (I hope) no explanation, I’ve been reading a lot about sex lately. All kinds of things–poetry, feminist criticism, Medium articles of sex tips, and articles about consent and building a consent culture.
Lately I discovered this older but perennial “Top Ten Party Commandments” from…well, not actually from Playboy. The site is a parody. But as “the ultimate guide to a consensual good time,” this list isn’t just a joke.
And when I say perennial, I mean it–rules #2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 could just as easily be guidelines for Cunning Linguists. I mean, actually, they’re in the guidelines. It’s not often I get to be on the same page as (parody) Playboy!
Anyway, by looking up the source of Commandment #7, “Love All Bodies,” I discovered Skidmore College’s student-run erotic lit magazine, BARE.
I’m not sure if the magazine is still running (its Twitter account hasn’t been updated since 2014, its Facebook page since 2019, and its WordPress has ‘Fall 2015’ as a header). But like the ‘Playboy’ Party Commandments, its message is perennial–at least as long as people continue having and/or writing about sex, which I don’t see coming to an end anytime soon.
For instance, there’s so much good stuff on their prompts page–which I also feel might be a sister to the Cunning Linguists guidelines. Just check out these ideas from them:
Write about any sexual feeling you have had – lust, desire, etc… and where in your body you feel like it stems from – avoid clichés – when you feel pleasure of course it radiates from your pelvis, but do you feel an uplifting in your sternum? Does the top of your head tingle?
Have you ever felt angered by someone’s reaction to your sexuality? VENT! Write down your reasoning! This is your chance to make them aware, and help them understand!
Have you ever felt confined by your sexuality? Why? How? Imagine the moment that you break free and what it would be like?
What’s the best sexual experience you ever had? What’s the worst? Develop the context of the situation – characters, emotional background, setting – draw people into the story
Make lists
Write short sentences or very long, allow your sentences to communicate how you’re feeling in the moment you’re writing about.
Write in diary entries
Write a letter to someone else
Make metaphors – writing about sex or sexuality does not have to be described in literal sexual terms – does sex make you think of something else? Use that action or moment to describe sex or your sexuality Ex: a tennis match, a flower blooming (very cliché example)
Write instructions for someone else on how to do something sexual, or how live a certain lifestyle that you have experience with – Ex: ‘How to be a Lesbian at Skidmore, How to have a threesome with your two best friends’
Write “a day in the life of” Ex: “A Day In the Life of a Trans Man”
Write a conversation – via text, email, AIM or real dialogue that conveys something important – let the words speak for themselves
Don’t be afraid to be funny, sex is funny, people respond well to funny
Don’t be afraid of poetry – it doesn’t have to rhyme or be cliché – play with word choice, punctuation, alignment, and spacing. Make sure the words you use count because you will use less of them than you do in prose.
Do you ever see an idea you’ve been acting on for years suddenly put into words and feel ridiculous for not spotting it before? That’s my feeling when I read “VENT!” Yes! So much fruitful writing can stem from venting–from digging into your emotions, exposing them, telling the world, in the words of Kazuo Ishiguro, “This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?”
Or maybe from the opposite of venting–if writing about the best sex you ever had is the opposite of venting? But there can be anger in pleasure, a sense of justice, and there can be joy in a good vent session. (In any event, I’m sticking a pin in a potential anthology call titled The Best Sex of Their Lives).
This isn’t just what I want to write but what I want to read, too. When I feel an energy, and urgency behind the writer’s voice, I lean in toward their story to listen more closely. When a story asks me how it feels, when it tells me something I thought only I had felt, it wins its way into my memory and heart forever.
Avoid clichés. Vent. What’s the best sexual experience you’ve ever had?
This is the way it feels to me. Does it feel this way to you?
I think this post is turning into a sort of found-poetry ars poetica.
What about you? Which of these would you like to write, or read? Do you have your own suggestion for a prompt or guideline? A rule? A party tip?
Maybe leave it in the comments. Or, although I’m not sure if BARE is taking submissions on these topics anymore, the New Smut Project certainly is. Or share it on your own blog, or in a story you submit somewhere else, self-publish. But share it.
The world needs more honest, thoughtful sex talk, and I’m always up for reading it.
It’s almost hard to believe, but the first two NSP anthologies came out six years ago today, on 23 March 2015.
Here’s how they looked back then–although the spines and back covers recently got an update to match the color of the front and to include more information.
If you haven’t had the chance to read them yet, you’re in luck–we’re celebrating with a special coupon code offering. For the next two weeks (from 23 March 2021 to 6 April 2021), you can use the code sexysixth on Heart, Body, Soul and Between the Shores in our Gumroad store for 20% off paperbacks and 45% off ebooks.
Also, our Gumroad store can now ship internationally, making our books available to anyone on planet Earth*.
Curious about what’s inside? Excerpts and author interviews for Between the Shores and Heart, Body, Soul are on the NSP blog. I bet they’ll whet your appetite–here’s a few that still resonate with me after six years:
He turns his head so that his ear is pressed against the door. The mattress shifts, and a drawer is pulled open and shut. What’s she doing? He can hear her inhale sharply, and the mattress squeaks. Is she? Oh. She most definitely is. The drawer on his side of the room sticks, which means she’s gone to the other one. She’s removed something from their extensive collection of toys.
Val felt safe in the arms of her lover, calmed by the clean scent of Iz’s skin. She knew Iz would never push her, and that if she didn’t want to talk about rope again, she didn’t have to.
Still, those old pictures made her miss the easy, kinky joy that used to send her soaring. Rope had made her feel so sexy. Cass used to comment that even the smell of hemp got Val wet. A part of her had been locked away along with the rope. As much as Val cared for Iz, as much as she adored her body, there was a sweaty, needy state that Cass used to produce simply by whispering “hog tie”—and with an uncomfortable lurch in her chest, Val realized she’d never been there with Iz.
If Val could find a way back to her old self, if she could recapture the thrill of rope, she could be that sexy woman again, ready and able to come over and over again. She missed abandoning herself to feelings rather than protecting herself with thoughts. And as that person, she could be the inspiration for Iz’s lust. The heat she’d seen in Iz in response to that video could be directed at her.
At first, it had been a pain in the ass to dance with Tucker. His style was big and emphatic, and their respective training made them clumsy when they had to match their pacing. But with practice, they had found ways to navigate each other’s bodies, and for all of his over-wide shoulders and mile-long limbs, Tucker no longer provided an obstacle at every corner nor a tripping hazard with every step. Brent could maneuver around him, and Tucker himself found his way between Brent’s knees and ankles with a solid, fluid footing. They transferred weight between them with the ease of waves pulling at the shore–with time and practice and, now, trust. After these weeks, finally, the movements came easily.
“You remember your safewords? What’s your color, Katherina?” he asked, knowing—hoping—she wouldn’t say red or yellow. Hoping that she was—as she’d said—ready for this. He cupped her jaw, letting his thumb rest on her racing pulse. He stared into her dark, fear-dilated eyes. He knew that she was scared, that the people playing and watching around them worried her. He frowned as her eyes, wide and bright as gibbous moons, scanned the room warily.
He needed to focus her attention away from her anxiety and onto something else, like the scene they were about to share. He drifted his thumb against her jaw, forcing her chin up to look at him. “Kat, color. Now.”
She focused on him, meeting his gaze. “Green. I’m ready.”
“I was inspired to write “The Best Entanglements” after reading a single line in the call for submissions to this volume requesting stories featuring a character saying “no” to a sex act. Though I’ve written fan fiction in which that happened, I haven’t read any published erotica that examined that “no” and went on from there. In other words, it sounded like an interesting sort of story to write.”
“Cora thinks of herself as the ultimate Nice Girl: she’s academically successful, pretty, loves floral print and has never had sex outside of a relationship. But that doesn’t exactly mesh with the fact that she desperately wants to sleep with the campus “player” after her dependable but obnoxious boyfriend dumps her. She judges everyone in her life because she has internalized both the virgin/whore dichotomy and the less damaging but similar nice guy/player binary. Cora sees the people in her life, including herself, as these classic archetypes, and she unlearns them as she gets to know Devon. Wanting to have casual sex doesn’t mean she isn’t a good person—it just means she’s human…”
*Along with aliens, dimension-jumpers, and astronauts who can provide an earthbound address to ship to. I don’t want to leave anybody out.
And submissions are now open for NSP’s fourth anthology, Cunning Linguists: Language, Literature, and Lechery. If that sounds like your thing, please do consider sending something in! Or if it’s your thing to read but not to write so much, you can join the NSP newsletter to be emailed when the anthology becomes available. No need to worry about spam–we’ll never share or sell your information, and updates are only sent out a few times a year.
Cunning Linguists will collect 20 to 30 pieces of diverse, feminist, body-positive erotica exploring the seductive potential of:
Literature—
Reading a sexy story to yourself, or to a lover. Writing a sexy story for yourself, or for a lover, or for a friend. Reading a story that wasn’t intended to be sexy but, well, it turns out you’ve got a new kink.
The narratives we construct about our sex and love lives, or have constructed for us, or deconstruct. The patterns we and our cultures make and break.
Sexy thoughts we have about other people’s stories and characters—yes, send us your fanfiction! For legal reasons, please stick to works in the public domain.
Literary structures: write an epistolary story collecting the steamy letters a 19th century abolitionist sent to his boyfriend. Take it into the 21st century with sexts. Or the 23rd century with a hologram.
Write a story entirely in dialogue. Write a sex scene that also works as slam poetry. Write a story that travels back in time with each scene—paraphrasing Sam Goldwyn (well, allegedly), open with an orgasm and then work us up to a climax.
Language—
Make love to and with your favorite words. Or take a new look at your less favorite. Which is sexier—dirty talk or sonnets? Quote Shakespeare in sexts. Make pillow talk about all the dirty words in Shakespeare. Convince us moist is actually a turn-on. Is it a dick or a cock? Is her sex better than her pussy or vice versa? And is cunt an insult or a term of worship?
Write with and about the words that send a shiver down the spine, that make a heart skip beats or knees go weak.
Write about the feeling of finally finding the right word to describe your sexuality.
What about wordplay? What’s the sexist literary device—parallelism? Zeugma? Alliteration? Even a good pun gets us laughing, and laughter can be sexy. Or dare we say, puns can make us moan as well as groan.
What about wordlessness—pleasure that sends lovers beyond words? The use of nonverbal communication?
And what about the unspeakable? Reveal what someone has never been able to talk about. What’s more naked than the truth?–Maybe the right lie?
Keep in mind that, alongside this anthology’s focus on words, the most erotic stories are sensual—texture, taste, and scent play a role in addition to sights and sounds. We don’t have as many words for smell as we do for vision, but what can we do with the words we have? Perhaps you can coin new words. Plus there’s synesthesia, and a sixth sense, or seventh sense… For many, isn’t reading itself a form of synesthesia, transforming sight into sound? And how do telepaths talk dirty?
Length and Payment:
$30 for flash fiction up to 1,000 words
$100 for short stories from 2,500—6,000 words
(Wordcount requirements aren’t firm if you’re within rounding distance. Or query first.)
Contributors will also receive a free ebook copy of the anthology and a discount on paperback copies.
Submission deadline: September 1, 2021. Final decisions will be made by November 2021.
Release planned for Spring 2022.
Genre, pairing:
Just about any, and any. Contemporary, historical, speculative fiction, romance, mystery, literary character study, prose poem—really, the only genre we don’t accept is erotic horror because it’s led to too many submissions that don’t fit the rest of our guidelines or our mission. Paranormal takes on creatures like ghosts and vampires, as well as stories with a bittersweet tinge (we do want the “sweet” along with the bitter—we love stories that show a sense of compassion) will be considered!
No limits on the gender or number of participants, so long as they are 18+ and express their affirmative consent.
