Outed in the Nicest Way
Some of you know my real name, some of you don’t. Today was a true milestone for me. One of my stories not only won an award, but has been published in a non-erotica anthology, and I appear there under my real name. The Trouble With Parallel Universes is the first anthology published under the […]
Sand Though Our Fingers: The Right of Writing
No other animal writes. It is, from a biological standpoint, a useless act. Ask anyone who writes why they write and they will tell you: they write because they must. It’s a compulsion. Even when it feels difficult – impossible to do – the desire to do it is there, even if we often leave […]
Writing The Erotic Phenomenologically
You know how you’ll go for months, even years, without thinking about something and then you’ll stumble across it three times in a day? Yeah. One of the biggest problems with being a writer is language. Yes, it happens to be the tool we work with, too, but never the less, there is an aspect […]
Reflections on “On A Very Dry Afternoon in Early Summer”
Doing this PhD has taught me to be a lot more reflective about how I write, what my goals are in writing any given story, what theory might inform it, and how I might situate the story in relation to other creative writing in the genre, both in form, and in content. Genre Erotica is […]
Writing Abjection
I got a tweet the other day, from Zander Vyne, asking if I’d seen the rape scene in ‘Irreversible.” I hadn’t, so I watched it. Before you rush out to watch the movie, let me warn you, it is about as disturbing as film ever gets and I am unconvinced of its value. Yes, I […]
Outing, Slut-Shaming and Very High Price of Freedom
To my knowledge, there has never been a time or a culture that hasn’t suffered its share of hypocritical stances. Ours, at the moment, mostly revolves around sex. We use it to sell almost everything, we valorize people who use it as a weapon, we crave it, we demand that others should want what we […]
The Long Hard Look
“…at the core of human being is an exhibitionistic impulse: in order for us to see ourselves we must be seen.” Alessandra Lemma on Lacan* Whether you believe in universal truths or you acknowledge that they are negotiated and constructed within cultures, it matters not. It is useful to entertain their existence. Being an atheist, […]
Abstraction: Desire and Disgust
Jacques Lacan once famously said ‘the Woman does not exist.” Like so many French theorists, it’s a confrontational statement designed to draw a response. It’s important to really read it with care and to know, above all, who is speaking it. Lacan was male. But it’s a fun place to start an argument – there […]
Monster Porn: And the Sublime Attractions of Orientalism
I’d like to introduce you to the critical concept of ‘Orientalism.’ The word stems from a book, with the same title, written in 1978 by Edward Said. It is one of the foundational texts of the Post-Colonial criticism movement. You’re wondering how it relates to Monster Porn – I can tell – but it can […]
Truth in Fiction: Wealth is not an adequate plot device.
Let me offer you a common premise: ingenue meets twenty-something billionaire and, after a stormy romantic voyage, accessorized with luxury brand-name products and services, and pitted with weak-premised misunderstandings, missed opportunities, ecstatically successful sex – even when it’s entirely non-consensual – and totally groundless jealousies, ends in a happily ever after moment. Last week, I […]