Watch For My Story in Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories
I’m delighted to announce that a story of mine, “Tease for Two”, will be appearing in the upcoming Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories
“Blue Cock” to appear in Violet Blue’s Girls On Top
My story, “Blue Cock”, will be appearing in an anthology titled Girls On Top: Explicit Erotica For Women and edited by Violet Blue. It’s due out March 2009.
The story features a strap-on (hence the title). More details soon!
The Yes, Sir and Yes, Ma’am covers
A while ago I wrote in this space about my admiration of Bitchy Jones. She addressed a lot of the low-level feelings I had about not really fitting in with kinkland, including the sexism of mainstream femdom and the “if it’s me dominating you, why am I the one who feels like a sex object?” sadnesses I experienced the first and only time I dipped my toes into the dominant end of the pervert-pool.
So, when she wrote a post titled ‘Prepare to be Enraged’ about the sister volume to Yes, Sir, I knew I would need to respond.
Let me tell you the saddest thing. No, actually the saddest thing is the appalling sexism. These books are about straight people. The stories are about het couples. Have you ever seen anything more: hey women? You like sex? – Well guess what, you can FUCK OFF. Oh, unless you want to stand around looking purty, you can do that, but you need to know, YOU COME SECOND IF AT ALL, BITCH (and I don’t mean that in a hot way.)
I have to admit that I’m very sympathetic to her point. In such gender-complementary hetero volumes, why do (slim, white, conventionally-attractive) women appear on both covers? I can only assume it’s because that’s what the marketers think will be the most eye-catching on a shelf. Given the preponderance of bare male chests on the covers of romance novels and female-oriented erotica sites like Ellora’s Cave, I have to wonder about their market research. Also, we all know that female sexuality isn’t about looking pretty and, with specific exceptions, being kinky isn’t about having a closetful of shiny outfits.
At the same time, I own some shiny outfits myself. Sometimes I wear them. The times that I’ve worn them and the times I’ve felt objectified or ashamed or put second have not overlapped. In fact, my biggest sexual humiliations (and not the hot kind) occurred when I was wearing very ordinary clothes.
Bitchy does concede that the cover isn’t necessarily reflective of the quality of the content. It’s worth pointing out that Cleis Press is explicitly a feminist publisher and Rachel Kramer Bussel is active in feminist concerns. Bussel also responded intelligently a few months ago to a similar criticism of Dirty Girls.
In the end I’m of two minds. As much as feminism and sexual expression are bound up in each other, they can frequently be difficult to reconcile. I frequently find myself making excuses for one side or the other and often wind up thinking to myself that it’s best not to dive too deep.
On one hand, yes, sex is for women too! We can/should be pursuing our own desires and having sex on our own terms.
On the other hand — wanting to have sex with men frequently means seeking male approval in some form. And isn’t that what we’re trying to get away from?
Being simultaneously sexual and a serious person with serious concerns is still a luxury largely reserved for men, who will often sneer at a woman wearing a revealing Halloween costume (not to be taken seriously) even if they know she reads Kierkegaard in her spare time, and even though there are men at the party dressed like Sexy Cop.
I wish erotica publishers would put more hot men on covers of erotica volumes, especially the ones intended for hetero female audiences. But is sneering at the woman on the Yes, Ma’am cover, regardless of the content of the book, anything like the Serious Man at the Halloween party sneering at Sexy Nurse?
I can’t figure it out. Best not to dive too deep.
Blog for Yes, Sir
Yes, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission is on the brink of release (my story: “Reclaiming the Sofa” is included). Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel has a blog dedicated to the anthology where you can read excerpts from the stories, order postcards, and watch naughty spanking videos.
Here’s another YouTube spanking link. This one is calculated to appeal to my silent-movie-loving sensibilities:
(Not entirely silent — though the dialogue is on title cards, you can still enjoy the smacks and whimpers)
I Love Bitchy Jones So Much
I love sex and I love kink. But sometimes I come across things that don’t sit quite right, in ways I can’t put my finger on. There are moments when I feel like “your kink is OK” doesn’t quite capture the nuances of sexuality, or when something bothers me about how the world of kink seems irrevocably tied to the world of consumer products. Costumes, equipment, jargon, seals doing tricks. And yes, plain old sexism.
Bitchy Jones articulates what I wish I could.
In my own sex life I lean towards the submissive end of the spectrum, but she makes female dominance sound incredibly sexy. And most hetero women need reminders now and then that enjoying sex and being sexy are not one and the same.
Pseudonyms, Personas, and Secrets Getting Out
As most writers do, I have a day job. As most people do, I have a day job that is not aligned with my passions. “Make money during the day, pursue your interests at night” was my mother’s advice, and I’ve always followed it. This means that opera, erotica, painting, and feminist reading are strictly night-time pursuits.
I work in a male-dominated field, and my company is especially testosterone-heavy. On every project, in every meeting, at every business lunch, I am the only woman at the table. The disadvantages of this position are well-documented in feminist literature, but it has its advantages too. The main advantage is that everyone knows and remembers who I am.
For obvious reasons, I haven’t told my colleagues at work much about my writing. I told some of them that I write as a hobby, but if they asked for specifics about the subject matter I would always demur. Maddy Stuart is not my real name, mostly in the interest of keeping my google results clean.
My secret has never been airtight, however. Before I started working with my current employer, my boyfriend Peter (not his real name, of course) was working at a different company with the man who is now my boss. When my first stories were published, Peter was so proud of me that he told many of his friends about my writing, including the people I would later be working with (although there was no way of knowing that at the time). So right from the beginning, there was someone else at the conference table who knew about my two names.
Gossip gets around, even among people who consider themselves the height of professionalism and discretion. I am certainly no exception to this; I know exactly how it goes. Two people, colleagues and friends, are chatting after a drink or two when one says to the other, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but…”
Several months ago my boss told someone who told someone else. Tonight that someone else, an important person at the company, said these two words to me: lesbian erotica, and then asked me to confirm what he’d been told. I told him the truth, but didn’t give him my pen name.
In How To Write a Dirty Story, Susie Bright writes that in her experience, rather than being outed by someone malicious or inquisitive, erotica writers tend to out themselves. And I did out myself, in tidbits. I was so proud of my writing that it was difficult not to tell people about it, and I told many friends who could have related it back to my colleagues. I read in public at In The Flesh, and I kept copies of my work in the apartment I shared with two co-workers. In retrospect, someone willing to do a little digging would have been able to discover my secret quite easily. So I shouldn’t be surprised that someone dug and discovered, as comforting as it is to blame my boyfriend and my boss, who told.
One of my internet heroes is career advice blogger Penelope Trunk. I find her writing both inspiring and sensible and when I read her columns, I apply her advice in my head to both my “real” technology career and my largely hypothetical writing career. Discovering the sexually explicit fiction she wrote under the pen name Adrienne Eisen only made me love her more. But in her vast blog archives I could never find a satisfactory answer to the question of where to put my “other personality” while on the job. She writes that one should bring one’s authentic self to the workplace and abandon anonymity, but admits that she has used many pseudonyms herself, and tells how her employer balked at having her fiction associated with her name. And the works of Adrienne Eisen give plenty of ammunition to Penelope Trunk’s detractors — every time I see someone on the internet vilify her as an air-headed slut or porn-peddler, I shiver and think that could be me.
Then there’s the issue of Maddy Stuart, who is herself a very dim representation of “the real me”. Sexuality for me is grandiose and profound and full of beauty and shadow and drama. Sex, the way it exists in my head, lives in opera and silent movies and humming city streets and hungry, heavy-lidded looks. And of course real life, with its messes and drabness, seldom measures up to the fantasy. My real-life experiences of sex are mostly ordinary rather than adventurous, and I’ve found it difficult to fill in a person around the name Maddy Stuart because I sense that as I exist, I do not fit the mold of what an erotica author should be. So my fiction is full of mysterious fantasy women who appear and disappear, and I struggle to find a tone for my blog that both reflects my interests and conceals the fact that I’m an impostor, unfit for this circle of beautiful perverts.
My father recommended a different book to me today that gives advice very unlike Penelope Trunk’s. It is called What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business, and its advice is as follows: Don’t discuss your personal life at work, don’t try to be nice, and don’t ever show vulnerability, because others are waiting for you to fail. And though I find the picture he paints to be bleak, I can appreciate what he means when he tells his readers to always keep others’ secrets.
Moving out of New York
Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be getting on a plane with all my worldly possessions and heading back north to Toronto. I’m moving because of personal circumstances that I won’t be getting into here, but I believe the move is the best thing for me. It’s not saying goodbye to beautiful NYC, however — I anticipate being back in town for business trips and the like, and hope to be able to make the Dirty Girls launch party in March.
With that in mind, here are two lists: 10 things I will miss about New York, and 10 things I will not miss.
10 Things I Will Not Miss About New York
1. Canal Street
2. Getting pawed in clubs
3. People who say “isn’t this city just so fucking amazing?”
4. People who say “this city is dead, it’s over“.
5. The unbearable crowds in all the good bars and restaurants
6. The terrible (terrible!) hot dogs from street vendors
7. $10 drinks
8. The three flights of stairs to my apartment
9. Being made to feel like a criminal at customs, even though I’m here legally
10. One dollar bills
and now that I’ve torn you down, New York, I’ll build you back up:
10 Things I Will Miss About New York
1. The food
2. The food
3. Cheap cab rides
4. The unexpected beauty, everywhere
5. Trader Joe’s
6. The Metropolitan Opera
7. In The Flesh reading series
8. The excitement
9. The subway system
10. My friends
My Story “Reclaiming the Sofa” to Appear in Anthology
“Reclaiming the Sofa” will be appearing in an anthology titled Yes, Sir: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance
Here’s the full table of contents:
The Art of Darkness by Alison Tyler
Dear Professor Pervert by Donna George Storey
A Necessary Connection by Debra Hyde
The Editor by Amanda Earl
Ribbons by Kathleen O’Halleran
The Day I Came in Public by D.L. King
Lunch by Liz Coldwell
When Penny Met Harry by Stan Kent
The Power of No by Teresa Noelle Roberts
In The Corner by Sommer Marsden
Stuck at Work and Late for a Date by Chelsea Summers
Running Wild by Shanna Germain
Pink is the Enemy by Jocelyn Bringas
Sitting on Ice Cream by Lisette Ashton
Under His Hand, I Blossom by Nikki Magennis
Make Me by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Body Electric by Lisabet Sarai
Reclaiming the Sofa by Maddy Stuart
How Bad Do You Want It? by Gwen Masters
“Opera Gloves” to appear in Dirty Girls: Erotica For Women
My story “Opera Gloves”, which was originally to appear in the canceled Alyson Books anthology Second Skin, will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women
“Opera Gloves” is about a lesbian sexual encounter in a box at the Wiener Staatsoper, and features a pair of very long, very shiny black PVC gloves.
How To Blog
With yesterday’s post being more personal and emotional than most on this blog, I’ve been trying to sort out what exactly I’m doing with this parcel of internet space.
The most obvious reason to have a blog, as an author, is to simply own the space, make sure you’re the first google result, and give people something to look at if they want to see what you’ve done and what you’re up to. That’s how I’ve been using the blog this last while, keeping it for announcements and updates and not including a lot of content not directly related to my writing.
The most interesting blogs, however, have another component, whether it be provocative personal confessions or sheer enthusiasm for its niche. Those are the kind I most enjoy reading, and when I think to myself, “I would like to have a blog” it’s something more like that, something that someone might find exciting to page through.
For some reason, writing on the internet is much more intimidating to me than writing for print publications. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps it’s because the potential response is so much more immediate and unfettered - someone can write a vicious comment or email within minutes of any posting, and things said about your writing can be dug up so easily, even years after the fact. Perhaps it’s just that I have been obsessed with the internet for far too much of my young life, and have assigned it some sort of mythic importance. Regardless of the reason, it would be a good thing to tame my anxieties surrounding having my words on the internet.
So, maddystuart.com is what it is, technical issues and sporadic posts and all. I don’t imagine there’s a lot of interest in what I thought about the COC Ring Cycle, although my reference to photoshopped pictures of muscled baritones still gets hits. We’ll see what this blog becomes.