All winter long I avoided head colds…
then, the very week it was going to be in the 70s and 80s for the first time? Bam! Head cold — major head cold. I spent four grueling days on the couch, cough drops and tissues my only company, and although I felt better over the weekend, I still needed two naps a day to felt alive.
I won’t complain because a week ago Saturday, I spent my afternoon with the wonderful women of my local chapter of the Romance Writers Association. I can’t tell you how refreshing a time I had. Years ago, when I was just starting to break into erotic short fiction, I went to a couple of writers conferences, and I can’t tell you how out of place I felt. Erotica was just too underground an entity for either literary fiction or quasi-genre circles. I can’t tell you how good it felt to tell other writers I wrote erotic fiction in completely comfort. Thank you CORW members!
But I should also thank all you readers out there. Whether you’ve been with me from the start or have found me through the cross-over, genre bending worlds of erotic romance, I owe a lot of my dogged persistence to you.
Now that my persistence is getting back to normal, I’ll be blogging more. Keep an eye out, won’t you?
A little bit of fun…
and a little bit of work. It’s been a busy and, at times, trying week. And it looks like I won’t be able to blog in earnest until tomorrow, Thursday. For levity’s sake (and as much to entertain myself), I’ve gone all a twitter, adding a twitter box to both this page and Pursed Lips. Obviously, I need to tweak this site’s template and getting the blog text to wrap around the twitter box. But, for now, enjoy this little app — it’s small talk of a new kind!
(If RSS is easier for you, here’s the feed.)
A Delicious Naughty (NSFW)…
When I travel, I always try to visit local independent and/or used bookstores. Last month, I did (of course!) the obligatory tourist visit to Powells Books in Portland, Oregon. What an amazing place – book heaven!
Its erotica section was impressive. Two or three bookcases stocked full of recent releases and a smattering of older, used books from the explosive publishing that came with the sexual revolution of the late 60s and early 70s towered over me, commanding my time and attention. I’m pretty selective these days in choosing books to flesh out my own library (over a thousand volumes these days) and settled on Samuel Delany’s highly transgressive novel, Hogg, and Bruno Phillips’ The Main Point: The Life and Work of a Porno Film Maker, doubting that I’d see that book again anytime soon.
But selectivity didn’t keep me from further shopping. I’ve learned that one way independent bookstores distinguish themselves is through their “peripherals” — stationery, journals, postcards, book-related gifts, swag – and Powells was no exception. Except that its selection was exceptional. And I stumbled over several gems, one of which was a manga-inspired journal.
When it first caught my eye, I thought it’d make a great gift for my daughter. Until I saw its characters were entwined in a major hot and heavy hookup. Whoa! Fanning myself, I checked out who produced the dang thing because I hadn’t seen the likes of it before. Near the barcode were the words “JC de Castelbajac (atomic maison) and POPTERIE. A little web-searching revealed it was a collaboration between a European fashion designer and a French stationery company.
So that’s whythe characters were dressed in (and undressing from) busy attire reminiscent of Toile de Jouy which, ironically, means fabric of joy!
Despite Google translations, the dialog remains cryptic to me – a blend of colloquialisms and vague non sequiturs? Only two word balloons were easy to contextualize.
What really got me was this one, hot panel. Oh yeah, the deal was sealed. I was gonna buy this journal and no one could stop me. No way, no how.
That the last panel left me dangling made me panting all the more – man, retail therapy at its best!
A Necessary Cross-Post
Perhaps you’ve heard. Amazon is strong-arming small publishing who employ POD technology to use their POD program if they want to sell print editions on Amazon. It reminds me of a certain type of “businessman” who used to tell neighborhood restaurants exactly who would pick up their trash and supply their linen service.
Publishers Weekly supplied a response from Ingrams, Amazon main POD competitor, and I have to say, John Ingram certainly has my respect. Not only is he tempered in his response, but his company thought to actively recruit small publishers to the POD model by providing a program that provided meaningful and bottom-line worthy benefits.
I’m not about to tell you whether or not to buy from Amazon, but I’ve provided additional on-line bookstores that carry Inequities — Barnes and Noble, Borders, Powell’s. You can decide how you feel about this matter and how you want to address it.
And as an FYI, let me point you to this Teleread entry. It’s a solid summary and quite elucidating.