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Why another book about writing BDSM? Because the world needs your dreams, your thoughts, and your truths. The world needs us to be honest in our writing by painting the full panoply the human experience. All of us are curious about power dynamics, sensation, helplessness, and roleplaying and how they affect our characters’ lives. Writing leather sex gives both the author and the reader a safe place to explore these experiences.

My goal for this book is that you will be able to write kink enthusiastically, with a full, rich emotional life for your characters. Everything I’m about to talk about it to reduce your anxiety or stress so you write with greater joy and clarity. If at any time, if you feel overwhelmed or like these ideas are too much work, take a breath and remember that these ideas are to keep you from writing yourself into a corner or getting stuck.

This is my voice, my weapon of choice.

 

 

Anyone who has ever been told to be told to shut up (everyone) has moments when they are convinced.....

 

Wait. Strike that. Let's not get cutesy with the passive voice here. Let's just say things. 

 

A nasty voice lives in my head and it loves to tell me that I have nothing of worth to say. My throat literally tightens up. My words slog through mud to leave my mouth. 

 

Grace Jones says in the linked video, "This is my voice, my weapon of choice." 

 

Being silenced removes your first, best weapon against those who do not want you to challenge the status quo. The status quo doesn't have to be big things, either, like political reform or climate change. The status quo I am fighting today? Sending emails out to independent bookstores to see if they would like to carry my books. 

 

Seriously. Today I am convinced that I am better served not drawing attention to myself, that no bookstore would want to shelve me in their stock. I'm going to reach into my emotional toolbox and find every thing I can that will help me. I will resist that cruel voice that wants me to play small. 

 

Tell me a time when you resisted your cruel voice.

Mental Heath in a time of pandemic: Part One

Amidst the reality of living in a pandemic, people need to take care of their mental health as well. Dr. Sister (psychology department chair for a small prestigious university) sent me the best advice I have seen.

These ideas are from the University of Illinois-Chicago Office of Applied Psychological Services.

The impact that COVID-19 is having on our health, finances, and daily life is enormous. We are currently experiencing an unprecedented pandemic that requires serious action and has led to a remarkable disruption to global society. Given all of these changes and general uncertainty, it is normal for people to feel anxious and overwhelmed with how to cope with these rapid changes, especially social isolation. Combining research, clinical work, and currently available resources, there are a number of things within our control that can help decrease anxiety and help us stay sane in a time of chaos. In short, I recommend that we stay structured, stay active, stay curious, stay connected, and stay grounded. We will get through this!

Stay Structured

We know from research that maintaining a daily schedule with clear, attainable goals helps people’s mood in general. It can be difficult to maintain the level of productivity that you had previously outside of the home, but you can still do things to help create structure.

-          Designate a work space in your living area. This can be as small as one side of the couch, and as large as a specific room. Make sure you are set up comfortably, and that work is easy to do in that space (e.g., there is an outlet, back support).

-          Maintain a daily calendar/planner with specific activities. Structure is effectively created when we have a specific, measurable, achievable goal for each hour of the “work day.” Part of a typical schedule is lunch and time for breaks, so be sure to schedule those things in to make sure productivity is maintained and there is some normalcy.

-          For those who are not currently working because your industry is not operational, use this time to beef up skills with webinars, polish resumes, or engage in chores that have been pushed to the side. Here is a link to 24 FREE online classes offer by Ivy League universities that can help anyone increase their knowledge & marketability https://www.themuse.com/advice/24-free-online-ivy-league-courses-you-can-sign-up-for-today-regardless-of-your-gpa.

-          Take stock of your accomplishments at the end of each day. Note the progress you’ve made and internalize the goals you have accomplished. No goal is too small to praise! This will also help you transition into relaxation time, which you have earned!

-          Continue to maintain good sleep hygiene. Separating your place of work and place of sleep are key (i.e., don’t do work in your bed). Maintain your typical wake & sleep routines to keep your sleep cycle on target. Try to continue going to bed around the same time and waking up around the same time to keep your typical rhythm. This will also help when you (eventually) transition back to typical work days.

Blast from the Past: 50 Shades of Grey.

A post from August 5, 2012:

Here we go again; the denegration of women's reading

To be clear; I have not read 50 Shades of Grey yet. I have been too busy getting Dracula Unleashed (Book Three of the Blood Wings series) into some kind of order. But naturally, I have an opinion about the nasty, denigrating comments about books that women like to read.

I have touched on these themes before in my Defense of Twilight posts, (here, here, here, here, here), but they bear repeating.

In no particular order, I want to point out the following things.

1. Women are not stupid.  
 Some critics think that the people who read 50 Shades are going to jump right in and start doing unsafe sexual practices, such as untutored BDSM. There are millions and millions of people tying each other up and spanking like crazy without having been to a single workshop at a leather conference and somehow they survive. Guess what. We do know how to do research.

2. Women are able to separate fantasy from reality.  
 Teenagers who watched the Batman series in the late 1960s did not try climbing up buildings crouched over with a single rope.

3. Women are not illiterate.
50 Shades is considered to be horribly written, with cliches and redundant phrasing. Here's a little rebuttal from Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, pg. 129:

Women always write in the vernacular....

In the vernacular, it is...hard to be "classic", to be smooth, to be perfect. The Sacred Canon of Literature quite often pretends that some works can be not only atemporal and universal (that is, outside of history, a religious claim) but without flaw and without perceptible limitations. It's hard, in the vernacular, to pretend this, to paper over the cracks. It's also hard to read the vernacular as Holy Writ...

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art.

4. Women's sexual fantasies and arousal are important.
Portnoy's Complaint is considered Great Literature. Susie Bright gets assassination attempts. Say no more.



5. Ultimately, it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS what a woman reads.
Adult men can read comic books, war novels, spy novels - anything they want, really. Because it is none of our business what they read. Same for women.


Will I read 50 Shades of Grey? After I meet my deadline, for sure. I'm sure parts of it will annoy me and others will get my motor runnin'.

Just like any other novel.

Here we go again; the denegration of women's reading

To be clear; I have not read 50 Shades of Grey yet. I have been too busy getting Dracula Unleashed (Book Three of the Blood Wings series) into some kind of order. But naturally, I have an opinion about the nasty, denigrating comments about books that women like to read.

I have touched on these themes before in my Defense of Twilight posts, (here, here, here, here, here), but they bear repeating.

In no particular order, I want to point out the following things.

1. Women are not stupid.  
 Some critics think that the people who read 50 Shades are going to jump right in and start doing unsafe sexual practices, such as untutored BDSM. There are millions and millions of people tying each other up and spanking like crazy without having been to a single workshop at a leather conference and somehow they survive. Guess what. We do know how to do research.

2. Women are able to separate fantasy from reality.  
 Teenagers who watched the Batman series in the late 1960s did not try climbing up buildings crouched over with a single rope.

3. Women are not illiterate.
50 Shades is considered to be horribly written, with cliches and redundant phrasing. Here's a little rebuttal from Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, pg. 129:

Women always write in the vernacular....

In the vernacular, it is...hard to be "classic", to be smooth, to be perfect. The Sacred Canon of Literature quite often pretends that some works can be not only atemporal and universal (that is, outside of history, a religious claim) but without flaw and without perceptible limitations. It's hard, in the vernacular, to pretend this, to paper over the cracks. It's also hard to read the vernacular as Holy Writ...

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art.

4. Women's sexual fantasies and arousal are important.
Portnoy's Complaint is considered Great Literature. Susie Bright gets told to shut up. Say no more.

5. Ultimately, it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS what a woman reads.
Adult men can read comic books, war novels, spy novels - anything they want, really. Because it is none of our business what they read. Same for women.

Will I read 50 Shades of Grey? After I meet my deadline, for sure. I'm sure parts of it will annoy me and others will get my motor runnin'.

Just like any other novel.