BDSM Bedtime Stories and Domestic Discipline/Shark Week on the Horizon

I’m excited to be participating in the goodreads BDSM group’s BDSM Bedtime Stories this season as a narrator. If you missed their first season and are part of the group, you can check it out here. It’s a cool project where BDSM authors submit steamy excerpts from their work, which are then audio recorded. My narratorial debut is the pre-season opener for Season 2, an excerpt from Truth by the awesome Sherri Hayes, which went up a few days ago. It’s available here. I’m having lots of fun being part of this project, except that it’s hard sometimes to find quiet places to record.

My mom’s house? Definitely no.

“‘And then his lips brushed her nipple, and she felt a—‘”

“Honey? Do you want these pants, or should I give them to Goodwill?”

“MOM! Not now! I’m trying to record a BDSM bedtime story!”

“Oops. Sorry. Did you just say nipple?”

My apartment in Chile was rough too, because there was a random marching band that would start up every night down the street. I’d finally get all the roommates quiet, the TV would be off, everyone would be settling down for the night…I’d creep into my room, hook up the microphone, start recording, and suddenly the whole neighborhood would sound like halftime at a high school football game.

But now that I’m settled in this nice, quiet farmhouse, it should get easier. As long as I don’t record while people are practicing at the firing range over the hill (at lease I think that's what's going on). Or while the crows are fighting.

There’s more news I’m excited to share as well. ONE WEEK FROM TODAY, Domestic Discipline Week kicks off on my blog with a visit from Cara Bristol. I rarely do events here, because I don’t know how to plan and I don’t know how to promote, but I’m giving this a try. Six fabulous DD and D/s authors plus one real life DD couple have agreed to come on the blog for interviews and guest posts, and together we’re going to get to the bottom *snort* of what makes DD so intriguing, fun, misunderstood, off-putting, sexy, strange, and whatever other words anyone might use to describe it. There will be games, pictures, and giveaways. Please stop by. And tell your friends!

I’ve scheduled DD Week to coincide with Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, because I’m a huge shark fan. I continue to devote myself to Shark Week each year, even as it becomes increasingly less educational and more about graphic reenactments of people getting bitten in half, with program titles like Terror in the Shallows and Stripped of Flesh and My Thirty Seconds Halfway Inside a Great White’s Stomach. I still believe in you, Shark Week. I still believe.

So my guests for DD Week have all been asked to say a few words about sharks as well. They’re all super sweet for putting up with me.

So remember, this time next week—Spanking. Sharks. Prizes.

It’s DD/Shark Week, August 4-10^th. 

I Learn Ninja Flogging, Hometown Pride, and Jewish Dancing

I just got back from a two-week road trip through Ohio and the DC area, to visit friends and be in a wedding. It was actually one of the best trips I’ve taken, which is saying something, because I take a lot of trips. I have some kind of locational ADD that means if I stay in one place for more than a month, strange things start happening. Cats go missing. The rivers swell though the moon is in a quarter phase. My mother receives an inordinate number of phone calls from me complaining that I haven’t “been anywhere in a while” and asking, “Can you take the dog?”

Here were some highlights:

1. My hometown, looking sexier than ever because I don’t have to live there anymore. I’ve never been one of those writers who focuses on setting. I don't spend much time describing scenery, and I can’t describe buildings to save my life. See the building descriptions in the stuff Lisa Henry and I cowrite? I make her do those. I know some writers who write about where they're from and can make setting feel like a character, but if I made my hometown into a character, it would be the character you keep hoping will get killed off. But I sort of fell in love with my hometown this trip. Mostly because I only had to stay there three days. I could definitely see the ways it subtly features in my writing--and not just in that 95% of my characters are from Podunk, Midwest. I visited the combination haunted house/skating rink where I used to work, which now has a hobbit-themed section and a 3D theater. Also I rode a bicycle around my old high school, parked it in a police car spot, and yelled through the window of the main office that most of the notes I turned in during high school excusing my absences were forged. No one was there, but it felt good to get that off my chest.

2. I went to a really fun D/s party in southern Ohio, where I learned Florentine flogging. I felt like a total ninja. See this video? That was basically me, except I was a lot slower and said things to the poor guy whose top had ordered him to serve as my guinea pig like, “ARE YOU SURE I’M NOT HITTING YOUR SPINE?” Also my floggers were not on fire.

But they should have been.

Kidding, they absolutely should not have been. I would have burned down an entire neighborhood in seconds.

3. The wedding. Apparently the world has seen fit to keep it a secret from me that Jewish weddings are the most fun thing ever. Oh, the dancing! The singing! The smashing of various types of dinnerware with aggressive looking tools! The fact that people talk to you like you’re an old friend even though they have no idea who you are. I did not drop my corner of the chuppah during the ceremony, though there were a couple of close calls. A few days before the wedding, I decided I needed a small gift for the bride. I was standing in a TJ Maxx when I spotted a collapsible no-slip over-the-sink colander—the gift Alex gives Jayk for his shower in The Brat-tastic Jayk Parker because they’re just so damn handy. It was the only one left, so I figured it was a sign, and I bought it. Life imitating art and all that. Everyone deserves to be able to strain their pasta efficiently.

4. The Library of Congress. I’d never been. I have no words for it. Just…wow. The Library of Freaking Congress.

My favorite wall of the Great Hall was the one that said this:

TONGUES IN TREES, BOOKS IN THE RUNNING BROOKS, SERMONS IN STONES,AND GOOD IN EVERYTHING
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act ii, Scene 1

Being a horrible blogger--but look, a free story

I wish I had an excuse for how bad I've been about blogging lately. And maybe I do: I've been writing a whole lot. I came back from Chile and moved into a gorgeous farmhouse that needs a sitter for a few months. It's so quiet and the hawks cast shadows on the mountains and it has central vacuuming, and sometimes I wonder if it's all a dream. Then I smell my dog, who got skunked two days ago, and I know it's all very, very real.

So yes, writing. Lisa Henry and I are at it again with a tale of frat house love. I'm revising a book I've been struggling with for a year and a half now that doesn't seem to want to get any better--just longer. Yes, yes, if I keep writing new words, perhaps that will make the words that are already there good...

If only writing worked that way.

I'm also departing from my contemporary comfort zone and working on a Victorian-ish thing, which is great fun. I consider my recent purchases from corset-story.com's Biggest Sale Ever and the subsequent photos of me in a Victorian wig, various corsets, and frilly knickers "research."

So that's what's going on here. I'm also getting ready for my second go at being a bridesmaid. This time I promise I will not oil paint seven dollar Walmart flats to match my dress and then track green paint all over the reception hall. I am, however, in charge of holding the pole of a chuppah, and I see so much potential for this to go wrong.

My LHNB story "The Brat Whisperer" is now available at the mmromance website with free PDF, mobi, or epub downloads, and here's a little write up from Rainbow Book Reviews.

I think that's enough topic jumping for one night.