Saturday, September 22, 2018

Kinksters at Play - Kink Connection

My book "Kinksters at Play" from Deep Desires Press is out now. Hear me talk about how kink cannot be contained to single spaces. It’s part of who we are and how we see the world. And, of course, for better or worse, how the world sees us.


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Kinksters call it play for a reason. Come have some fun!

Life can make love hard, especially in the kink community. Follow an eclectic, kinky ensemble, through a series of interwoven stories, as they struggle to put a little more play into their lives.

Especially when the marriage between Kat and Peter Richards starts to fall apart. It’ll take this community of kinksters to bring them back together again. After four years of marriage, Kat and her husband’s relationship seems so…nice. Not bad. Just average, ordinary. Nice. They haven’t played in forever and she desperately misses it. She wonders if they’ve lost their spark and worries her happily ever after came at the cost of her sex life.

Peter will need the help of their friends—from an exhibitionist learning to reconnect with her body and appreciate being looked at again, to an exhausted, off-duty cop having a rough night with an unexpected partner, to a Little struggling to keep her roleplay fantasy fresh against the toll of reality’s ticking clock—to remember that, with trust, communication, and the right partners, play can make life and love so much better.

Friday, September 21, 2018

How We Treat a Touch

"Perhaps some # MeToo’d men and their defenders also believe that their alleged crimes were minor too, if they were crimes at all. At least, they were too minor to warrant anything so severe as an admission of guilt, or an apology, or a proposed commitment to self-betterment — let alone professional or criminal consequences. They’ve pitted their pain from being accused directly against the pain of the women accusing them, and it’s clear whose pain we’re expected to care about more. 'I feel sorry for a lot of these men,' wrote Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times, 'but I don’t think they feel sorry for women, or think about women’s experience much at all.' Put another way, by writer Heather Havrilesky: '[C]ruel men believe they deserve redemption and eventual exaltation simply because they've suffered. Imagine if women believed that. Imagine if a woman's suffering were even a passing concern.' ”
- Shannon Keating "We Prioritize Boys' Suffering At Girls' Expense"


I watched a video this morning with female republicans who support Kavanaugh and all they could talk about was how good his reputation is and how, even if he did do what he's accused of, it's not a big deal.


How "there was maybe a touch. Can we, really? Thirty-six years later and she's still stuck on that?"

How he was just a poor "seventeen-year-old boy with testosterone running high. Tell me what boy hasn't done this in high school."

And how "maybe at that moment, she liked him and he didn't pay attention to her afterward and he went out with other girls and she got bitter."

My god.

Logically, it's not a surprise that there are women who think this way--lord knows, I've met more than my share--but it is always a punch to the gut. The fact that they have so much more sympathy for the men being called to task for their bad behavior than the women who suffered at the hands of it. That the inconvenience of being asked to take some personal responsibility so outweighs the pain and violation of victims.

They don't even really deny that he did this. A little lip service. But mostly they're worried that "someone's going to destroy your life because somewhere, at some party [...] you touched somebody the way you're not supposed to." For god's sake, he's being accused of trying to muffle and drown out her screams as he holds her down and tries to tear off her clothes. What kind of boys went to your high school?

More importantly, exactly what kind of boys are you raising and sending off to high school?

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Have You No Decency, Sir? - The Ugliness of Uncontrollable Male Passion



Mark Judge is such a despicable human being, it's hard to pick out exactly which quote of this piece by Amanda Arnold in The CutKavanaugh’s Alleged Accomplice Once Praised ‘Uncontrollable Male Passion,’ to use to depict that. 

Is it: “There’s also that ambiguous middle ground, where the woman seems interested and indicates, whether verbally or not, that the man needs to prove himself to her [...] And if that man is any kind of man, he’ll allow himself the awesome power, the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion.”

Or: “Oh for the days when president George W. Bush gave his wife Laura a loving but firm pat on the backside in public [...] The man knew who was boss.”

No, I think, as a proud coffee-drinking smut-seller who regularly wears lingerie as everyday outer wear, I'm going to go with: “Women who dress like prostitutes are also sending out signals [...] The signal is not that they should be raped. But if a posture while drinking coffee is indicative of the soul and personality within, than so is marching down the street in your underwear.”

Fuck you. You know what me drinking coffee says about me? I DRINK COFFEE. In the same way, the only thing my clothes say about me, in whatever state of dress I'm in, that you can be sure about, without using your words and asking me like an adult, is THAT I'M WEARING CLOTHES.

Any other assumption you make says more about you than me. And, if clothing determines whether you treat the person wearing them as a human being worthy of respect and common decency, you lack any sense of respect, common decency, or humanity.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

For God's Sake, Control Yourself! - Fuck "Boys Will Be Boys"

“He could be any man. And here is the deeper venality of the boys-being-boys defense: It normalizes. It erases the specific details of Christine Blasey Ford’s stated recollections with the soggy mop of generalized male entitlement. What red-blooded guy, after all, its logic assumes, hasn’t done, in some way, the kinds of things Ford has described? Who, as a younger version of himself, hasn’t gotten stumble-drunk, pinned down a woman, groped her, tried to undress her, and then, when she resisted, held his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams? (‘It was drunk teenagers playing seven minutes of heaven,’ the Fox News columnist Stephen Miller tweeted, derisively.)”
- Megan Garber – The Atlantic “Brett Kavanaugh and the Revealing Logic of ‘Boys Will Be Boys’”

As an author, your work should tap into the current zeitgeist. It should resonate with what people are feeling and thinking in the moment. That’s always the goal. 

But I hate how relevant my book Open Season feels right now.

I hate that we are talking about the victimization of people like it’s a byproduct of someone else’s growth process. 

“We can’t hold [insert far too many powerful men’s names here] accountable for what they did then. That’s just how men are. They can’t control themselves in the face of the object of their desire. Boys will be boys. Do we really want to destroy a man’s life for one mistake made oh-so-long ago? If we hold these men accountable for the harm they committed, who among us will be safe?” We romanticize and glorify the idea of the persistent man, who goes after what he wants and damn the consequences, even and especially when it comes to sex and romance. As alleged witness to Ford's assault Mark Judge waxes on, saying, “There’s also that ambiguous middle ground, where the woman seems interested and indicates, whether verbally or not, that the man needs to prove himself to her [...] And if that man is any kind of man, he’ll allow himself the awesome power, the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion.”

Never mind the people who were harmed by that man's uncontrollable passion. Don’t look at how their lives were damaged because that man decided he wanted something and damn the consequences. Please, whatever you do, don’t think about how we constantly hold women and people of color accountable for all sorts of things, regardless of age or actual culpability. “Pregnant at sixteen? Well, it’s your fault for being a slut. You were raped? Well, what were you wearing at the time and how many drinks did you have and exactly what were you doing at that party in the first place?”

And look at how they talk about it. Allegedly, Kavanagh cornered Ford, held her down, made sure no one could hear her scream, and assaulted her. But “It was drunk teenagers playing seven minutes of heaven.” Seven minutes of heaven. Some adolescent game that is supposed to be about exploring unspeakable pleasure. Heaven?! 

If Ford’s experience is your definition of heaven, I’m atheist and I think you’re going to hell.

We have to change the way we talk about sex in this country. We have to stop talking about it like it’s this force beyond our control. That just because we want it, that means we have to have it. However we have to get it. Even if it’s at the expense of the people we get it from.

In my book, Open Season, I create this world where aliens exude a pheromone that drives humans’ libidos wild, that makes their passions feel…well, uncontrollable. Just to mentally play out that theory. To see, if it really would—if it really should—justify bad behavior. 

And, at the end of it, I just couldn’t see how having a “boys will be boys” attitude, how leaving victims to shoulder the burden of men's bad behavior, didn’t leave you a worse man.



Open Season is Available Now On
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Kinksters at Play Release Day!

Please check out my novel of interwoven stories from Deep Desires Press all about living and loving as a kinkster.

Kinksters call it play for a reason. Come have some fun!

Life can make love hard, especially in the kink community. Follow an eclectic, kinky ensemble, through a series of interwoven stories, as they struggle to put a little more play into their lives.

Especially when the marriage between Kat and Peter Richards starts to fall apart. It’ll take this community of kinksters to bring them back together again. After four years of marriage, Kat and her husband’s relationship seems so…nice. Not bad. Just average, ordinary. Nice. They haven’t played in forever and she desperately misses it. She wonders if they’ve lost their spark and worries her happily ever after came at the cost of her sex life.

Peter will need the help of their friends—from an exhibitionist learning to reconnect with her body and appreciate being looked at again, to an exhausted, off-duty cop having a rough night with an unexpected partner, to a Little struggling to keep her roleplay fantasy fresh against the toll of reality’s ticking clock—to remember that, with trust, communication, and the right partners, play can make life and love so much better.

Available Now On 
Your Choice of These Digital Stores 
Listen to an Excerpt

Kinksters at Play - Leather-Wearing Alter Egos

My book Kinksters at Play from Deep Desires Press comes out September 18th. Too many BDSM stories focus so much on the kink that they forget that these relationships are...well, relationships. That, beneath the leather and latex, kinky people are people. 


Available Now On 
Your Choice of These Digital Stores
Listen to an Excerpt

Kinksters call it play for a reason. Come have some fun!

Life can make love hard, especially in the kink community. Follow an eclectic, kinky ensemble, through a series of interwoven stories, as they struggle to put a little more play into their lives.

Especially when the marriage between Kat and Peter Richards starts to fall apart. It’ll take this community of kinksters to bring them back together again. After four years of marriage, Kat and her husband’s relationship seems so…nice. Not bad. Just average, ordinary. Nice. They haven’t played in forever and she desperately misses it. She wonders if they’ve lost their spark and worries her happily ever after came at the cost of her sex life.

Peter will need the help of their friends—from an exhibitionist learning to reconnect with her body and appreciate being looked at again, to an exhausted, off-duty cop having a rough night with an unexpected partner, to a Little struggling to keep her roleplay fantasy fresh against the toll of reality’s ticking clock—to remember that, with trust, communication, and the right partners, play can make life and love so much better.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Open Season – Romance in the Margins

My story Open Season from Less Than Three Press comes out September 12th. Hear me talk about how my characters' narrative journey isn't about solving the massively complex problem of marginalization, so much as it is about dealing with the reality of it. Of finding ways to build lives and find joy in spite of that. 



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Grab Open Season for 15% off while you can! This title will be the special preorder price of $2.54 until 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on September 11, 2018.

Sometimes it really sucks being female. Especially for Juli, an alien woman going through a mating cycle that causes all genetically compatible persons to be irresistibly attracted to her—whether she or they want it. Even walking down the street is a hazard, never mind the challenges to her relationships and job.

It's not easy for her partners, Kyle and Dona, either, from how Juli's cycle affects the way they view their own desire, as well as hers, to how they all must adapt—because if there's anything worth fighting for, it's each other, and the comfort they find in being together.

Pairing: Sci-fi – Lesbian/Pansexual/Poly
Word Count: 21,000
Content: Open Season contains explicit content, depictions of non-consensual sexual behavior, and racial and sexual harassment. This story explores and highlights the differences between dubious consent and active, enthusiastic consent.

Friday, September 7, 2018

Open Season – Beautiful Inside & Out

My story Open Season from Less Than Three Press comes out September 12th. Please enjoy this excerpt and let me know what you think!



Available Now On
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Listen to an Excerpt

Sometimes it really sucks being female. Especially for Juli, an alien woman going through a mating cycle that causes all genetically compatible persons to be irresistibly attracted to her—whether she or they want it. Even walking down the street is a hazard, never mind the challenges to her relationships and job.

It's not easy for her partners, Kyle and Dona, either, from how Juli's cycle affects the way they view their own desire, as well as hers, to how they all must adapt—because if there's anything worth fighting for, it's each other, and the comfort they find in being together.

Pairing: Sci-fi – Lesbian/Pansexual/Poly
Word Count: 21,000
Content: Open Season contains explicit content, depictions of non-consensual sexual behavior, and racial and sexual harassment. This story explores and highlights the differences between dubious consent and active, enthusiastic consent.

Open Season – So Why Sci-Fi?

My story Open Season from Less Than Three Press comes out September 12th. Sci-fi and fantasy genres may have unreal elements in there, but authors and creators often use that suspension of disbelief to make a statement on the state of the real world that their readers live in.



Available Now On
Your Choice of Digital Stores
Listen to an Excerpt

Sometimes it really sucks being female. Especially for Juli, an alien woman going through a mating cycle that causes all genetically compatible persons to be irresistibly attracted to her—whether she or they want it. Even walking down the street is a hazard, never mind the challenges to her relationships and job.

It's not easy for her partners, Kyle and Dona, either, from how Juli's cycle affects the way they view their own desire, as well as hers, to how they all must adapt—because if there's anything worth fighting for, it's each other, and the comfort they find in being together.

Pairing: Sci-fi – Lesbian/Pansexual/Poly
Word Count: 21,000
Content: Open Season contains explicit content, depictions of non-consensual sexual behavior, and racial and sexual harassment. This story explores and highlights the differences between dubious consent and active, enthusiastic consent.