I’m thinking of that party animal from the Tidy Cat commercial. You know, the cat with the lampshade on his head?

If I’m lucky, you’ve been asking that question about me, wondering if I’ve been partying like a dumb Persian cat. Well, sort of. I just haven’t gotten to the lampshade extreme yet. I’m too busy working for that.

In July, literary agent Lori Perkins emailed me about a new e-publishing venture, Ravenous Romance, and asked whether I had any unpublished novels and short stories. Boy, did I. So we corresponded.

The outcome? I’m now working with her agency, which will guide my works into publication with Ravenous Romance.

Lori and I had touched base awhile back, but nothing came of it at the time. At the time, a fellow author told me, “You probably didn’t have anything she could use.” I guess she was right because Lori didn’t forget me. I’m deeply thankful for that. But I’m also happy that Ravenous Romance appears to be a good fit for me. According to a press release, “Ravenous Romance™ will be a destination site for women, with erotica that celebrates female sexuality, and strong Web 2.0 community-building features.”

Which gets a big pumping-fist Yes! from me.

Ravenous Romance has set an ambitious goal of publishing a short story and a novel every day, starting in December. It seeks “erotic romance stories with strong plots and character development, but with steamy sex scenes and explicit descriptions of sexual encounters. The stories must feature strong, passionate characters and plots that express a broad range of fantasies.”

Which earns more happy dancing from me. (Probably look there like Snoopy from Peanuts, not the Dumb Lampshade Cat.)

Why? Because it feels like the sex-positive school of erotica — the platform that formed my writing perspective — has finally merged with erotic romance in a way that’s meaningful to me.

Feels good to me.

But the reason I’m not lampshade crazy with euphoria? Because I have to part ways with Carnal Desires Publishing to some degree and it’s bittersweet for me. We’ve shared a strong collaborative spirit, one that I value and appreciate. I still intend to keep them on my website as a source of erotic fiction and I’ll still point you to their titles. They’re doing good things at CDP, much of it in the same sex-positive vein I’ve needed as a writer.

I’m busy at work, finishing up my first title for Ravenous Romance, an effort that’ll keep me busy through much of this month, but it’s time to get back to blogging as well. I’ve stories to tell, thoughts to contemplate, and points to make. Time to blog.

Our family has a tradition of naming our various computers after stars and star constellations. Various appellations have included Sirius, Castor and Pollux (matching IBM ThinkPads wouldn’t you know), Pixis, and Betelgeuse. In a variation on the theme, I named my Toshiba Satellite laptop Oshumi after Japan’s first space satellite.

However, the desktop that for the longest time served as our network center was the exception to our enjoyable familial rule. Having too much of a fondness what he saw as a tragic victim of conflicting program directives, my husband deemed him Hal 9000.

And he came to us in 2001. Given the timing, resistance was futile. (Yeah, yeah, I know, Borg is Borgm but I can extend the metaphors only so far.)

Hal more than adequately did his job for us for many years. Then, early this year, he began to lose his ability to generate clean graphics. He also refused to be a good liaison between our printer and Oshumi. The former was likely a matter of a busted graphics card, the latter a lack of babel-fish for Vista. (Hal was Win2000-based.)

We swapped him out for an older emachine we had laying around. It was XP-based and could liaison, but over time we came to realize that the machine was as slow as a snail. If ever a computer could be equated to watching paint dry, it was this one. It’s no Hal 9000. When we boot it up, we wait and wait and wait for it to come around.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband quipped about some modern drama trivia we had encountered recently. “Maybe we should change it’s name,” he jested. I had to agree, even though it broke our stellar tradition.

The computer’s new name? Godot.

My cat Crunchy is a Summer Cat competitor at mediabistro’s blog, Galley Cat, this weekend and you can vote for him! As you can see from the photo, he had the moral support of my dog, Roxie, in coaxing me to continue my editing taken some time ago and I couldn’t ask for a better set of cheerleaders. I can’t tell you the number of times Crunchy and Roxie kept me company while I wrote the novel underway in the photo. Crunchy often curled up beside me or behind me on the back cushion of whatever couch I sat on.

I’m in the final editing pass of this same novel — the second half of which I’m really raking through the coals — and Crunchy still urges me on. Almost every afternoon, he curls up on the floor next to the tote bag where the manuscript rests, reminding me to work. (His napping somehow keeps me from being lazy. Talk about inverse proportions!)

Let’s give Crunch his day in the sun. (Roxie already had hers outside on the deck this morning — a perfect 69 degrees!) Vote — and vote often — for my loyal companion now through Sunday July 13th.* Tell your pet-loving friends and family, too.

*The winner goes into a final show-down next week with Thursday’s winner.

then you know I’ve been itching since last week and can’t see my doctor until tomorrow afternoon. I’m not sure how it happened, but something triggered a sizable eczema outbreak. (Remember what I said about the need for cotton undies not too long ago at Pursed Lips?)

It started on my hands, just a dot here and there, ala topical dermatitis. At first, I thought I had managed to get a bit too much sun. (Yes, I’m photosensitive too.) But I couldn’t peg when I’d been in the sun enough to trigger a rash. And then it began appearing in places where I hadn’t sunned myself. (No, not where the sun don’t shine. My torso, which hasn’t seen the sun yet this summer.)

Its spreading pattern was different than a photodermatitis rash. The spots on my face were a touch too weepy and elevated. The spots on my right arm grew into distinct patches.

Eczema. Yuck.

I was born with the condition and spent my first year in bandages. I’ve had two huge systemic outbreaks in my life where large patches covered my body and I needed a course of prednisone to overcome it. While this outbreak isn’t yet that extreme, it might become so if I don’t get treatment.

So I wait. I shower enough to keep my skin free of sweat but not so much that my skin dries. I rub cortisone cream on spots when they flare. I try to stay out of the heat and sun. And I faithfully continue to wear cotton clothing, something I’ve habituated thanks to a lifetime of skin problems.

Still, tomorrow can’t come soon enough!

comes from Wordle. Heck, the site’s name feels good. But here it is:

Speaking of words, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been somewhat absent here. We had a death in my husband’s extended family which required some travel. Then last Friday my daughter and I were part of the throng that gathered at Rockefeller Center to see Coldplay. Well, we sort of saw Coldplay. We had a good view of the drummer, occasionally one of the guitarists, and saw the lead singer for part of the last number. But it was fun. We spent the day in NYC, doing bookstores and museums and returned home very tired.

You may have noticed my Twitter disappeared from this site. After much patience, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort, waiting for Twitter to load. It just slowed down this website too much.

Maybe you’ve noticed the additional site links above. Why did I mess up a good,crisp design? Simple: very few people were visiting the inner content of this site. (Look at that Good Reads section for how far I’ll go in providing you with content. I want to give you a reason beyond this blog to stay connected with me — and content is what makes that happen.

Speaking of which, Inequities received a glowing review from colleague Ashley Lister at Erotica Revealed. I’m so pleased when a reader or reviewer looks outside his preferred parameters for a good read and develops an appreciative relationship with a selection. Now, I suspect that, as an erotic fiction reviewer, Ashley is a tad more explorative and adventurous than the average reader, but it’s heartwarming to see that he enjoyed Inequities‘ tale. It’s a risk to write, knowing that you could get panned for the effort. But it’s a bigger risk not to write when its your soul that would wither in the wake of creative denial.

There’s a touch of that urge in my latest Pursed Lips entry. But mostly it’s my take on whither goes erotica. Take a look at it, won’t you?

about my publisher and editor is their openness to writing that fall outside the lines of formula. I don’t have to write she did/he did chapters, alternating between two main characters and little else — and having to stretch it out for 70,000 words. I can write from a single character’s perspective. Or I can tell a story from the perspective of several characters, which I’ll treat you with in my next work, a two-book erotic novel set in a fantasy world.

Carnal Desires Publishing takes a broad view of what constitutes erotic romantic. It doesn’t matter whether a novel features vanilla sex or the kinkiest of the kink, if it has likable characters, is well written, and has a satisfying ending, it counts. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that creative freedom.

So why am I waxing so ebullient yet again? Two reasons. My editor, Alexandra Adams, has been hard at work bringing several new novels on-line at Carnal Desires Publishing. They deserve notice — and Alexandra deserves heaps of praise; I know firsthand how hard she works to make CDP titles clean and tight reads. Head publisher Deron Douglas has expanded the number of formats available for purchase, staying on top of the evolving e-book market and consumers’ needs.

Working with Alexandra and Deron is wonderfully collaborative and I see nothing more beautiful scenery as I walk this rewarding path with them. That’s why I’m exhuberant this morning.

when you’re tired of the standard black casement that covers your laptop, your ebook reader, and all of your tech stuff? I discovered the answer when I complained about the problem to my daughter.

Put stickers on it, she told me disbelievingly. (Evidently, it’s the most obvious answer in the world.) So I did. The laptop — purchased at a bargain; a un-black lid was not an option — is still a work in progress, but I can share with you the decor I applied to the cover of my Sony Reader.

I love lucky cats so that’s a given whenever I apply a sticker solution to life’s problems, but what else could I enjoy? That’s when I discovered Newbury Comics’ rock posters and fell in love with the art. So that colorful print of trees? A Yo La Tengo poster. (Love the band. That cartoonish, tokidoki-ish art on their site is sticker-worthy.)

The rock posters also led me to Tara McPherson’s art. I had encountered bits and pieces of her art now and again, but it had been little more than spot motifs in the messy landscape of my visually busy world. So it was wonderful to more fully explore her work and, as a long-time SF fan of sorts, I fell in love with her outer space themes. And the eyeball balloons? Well, that seems to be a definitive McPherson mark.

Funny, isn’t it, where your love of books leads you? It’s always an adventure.

We were showered in maple seeds like you wouldn’t believe this May — and some trees still have seeds clinging to them. The seed pods, what we call whirlygigs, showered us all month in quantities we’ve never seen before.

We’ve lived here for twenty-five years and have never seen anything like it. My neighbor used his leaf blower to clear his driveway. Our deck had a solid layer covering it and I was saved from sweeping only because we’ve had good, strong breezes almost every day. My husband claims trees that never before put out seeds did so, and that all the producers were triple-ladened this years.

I’m tempted to declare that the trees in our aging neighborhood had perhaps matured in peek numbers. When these homes were new, its middle class owners couldn’t afford the less messy male trees. But everyone wanted to landscape, to make their mark on these, their plots of land, their proof of having arrived, and so many female trees were bought and planted. But I’m not sure I can make the claim. The difference between this year’s and last year’s seed crop is just too extreme.

We had our final proof, however, when my husband tackled a gutter cleaning ahead of predicted storms over the weekend. What you see here is what came from our gutters. Maple seeds. Gallons of them.

So, maple trees, what gives?

Unlike most Americans, I went to visit relatives over the holiday weekend. Man, I’ve never seen the roads so free of traffic! The highlight of my visit (besides sharing family time)? Sitting on a cool porch, reading. I so want a porch of my own before I’m too aged to enjoy it.

Before I left, Naked City blogger Audacia Ray interviewed me for her Four Questions blog segment. we covered a number of topics in short time, some of which sprain from a discussion we shared at Tristan, Michael’s and Patricia’s book party.

I’m keenly interested in the generational differences and discoveries when it comes to human (and personal) sexuality and not just because I’m an older, long-time blogger watching a younger generation of colleagues taking the stage. I’m also interested in it because of my own kids, now in their late teens/ early twenties. If you’d like to read of a recent exchange with my grown kids, read on over at my sexuality blog.

If not, imagine a blissful me on my porch, reading, a thought that’s visiting me often, post-holiday.

when I don’t write often enough. I start having vivid dreams. Several a night, and they keep me from sound sleep. It’s as if my mind must create and if I fail to produce enough fiction, it will do it for me. It’s so weird.

It shows how ingrained the creative process is in me. When I was younger, I was very immersed in classical music studies but left conservatory after my freshman year in college because it too limited my world. (I was, I suppose, the ideal liberal arts student — interested in everything.) But for years afterwards, I would sometimes dream compositions — full symphonies or symphonic poems — and I would always awake startled and disbelieving.

I’ve come to accept this element of my subconscious mind, but it still continues to fascinate me. I am in awe of it.

But, you might well be asking, what’s with me that I’m not writing more? Well, three things: I’m focused on promoting Inequities, which takes time away from writing. I’m taking time from drafting new work to recharge the batteries. And, probably the only frustrating reason, both family and friends have been interfering with my time during the last two weeks. (Their demands are necessary and not all at out of bounds, just bunched up more than usual.)

I can stave off the exaggerated dreams — by editing. So I’ll return to editing my next novel, an erotic fantasy likely to see print as a two parter. It’ll help. But sooner or later, I’ll have to take up my third novel and continue its tale. And for no other reason than to quell my mind and spirit.

Weirdness. It’s why I love being a writer!