No More Crits: I have a form letter
It has taken me years to figure this out, but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that when people send you stories and ask for feedback, most of them just want you to say ‘it kicks ass’. Which, in a way, is good, because a few lines of praise are SO MUCH EASIER to drool […]
How to Approach the Question
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to approaching the subject of happily ever after endings. I have a deep prejudice against any form of literature which prescribes plotlines. As a writer, I’ve been deeply influenced by theoreticians like Eco who view formula driven fiction as a lesser form of literature. As a creative – […]
The Hard Goodbye: When the Artists We Admire Disappoint Us.
Today I’m sad. I’m sad because I read this: Frank Miller’s invective-filled hate piece about the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s a pretty shocking piece of badly reasoned, idiosyncratic garbage. Not because he disagrees with the OWS folks, but because he unloaded a shitload of baseless hyperbole on a movement he clearly doesn’t even understand. […]
The semi-colon: underused and over-abused.
Has it ever struck you how inadequate punctuation can be? Do you find yourself over-using ellipses? Have you ever yearned to use both an exclamation mark and a question mark at the same time? Sometimes, when I write, I just get so frustrated by how punctuation-poor our language is. Commas seem brief. Periods seem so […]
The Uses of Closure. Some thoughts on Happily Ever After.
I have been disdainful of romance and erotic romance, and yet it is undeniable that it brings a huge number of women, and no small number of men, joy. These people are not idiots. They are not intellectual midgets who cannot cope with writing that reflects the harsher realities of the human condition. The sheer […]
Sword Swallower
The throat’s convulsion makes no sound as the vocal chords are cut and the subject’s closed with time’s sutures. The fortune teller has said her sooth til the water’s clouded over stagnant with repetition fallen on deaf ears. There are no scales of justice on the snakeboy’s skin no happy ending in the bearded woman’s […]
Eating Pussy
If I had a dollar for every email I’ve received from men and women concerned that their girlfriends don’t really like being subjected to oral sex, I would be substantially better off. Not exactly rich, but well… it would pay for a shopping spree on Amazon. And you’d think that in these days of rampant […]
Moving, Standing Still
“Don’t ever leave me.” And even as I tucked the last of my things into the suitcase, brutalizing my own molars and smearing away the tears with the heel of my hand, even as I sat on the stubborn thing to get it closed, even as I noticed the overlooked and recently hand-washed pair of […]
What Erotic Fiction is Not
If you’ve come to my site for a quick wank, you’ve come to the wrong place. Let me assure you that for sheer sexual stimulus, nothing works like porn. So get over whatever hesitation you’ve got about it and get your ass over to xhamster. You’re bound to find a clip that will do the […]
Why I’ll never get reviewed by the NY Times
The discussions that have gone on last week on various blogs but especially at Oh Get A Grip are important. These are erotic fiction writers attempting to grapple with the definitions of the genre, of where they situate themselves in the public sphere, of how erotic literature is perceived by the public, the critics and […]