Speaking of sexy art....

Jackie Adshead has posted a few more goodies on her erotic art page. Hot!

People! Here is beautiful smut -- and it's free!

You may already know the work of Michael Rosen, as he's been one of erotica's hottest photographers for decades. What distinguishes his work from just about all others, however, is that he prefers to photograph real people. Sometimes these people are involved in real sex acts, other times they seem only inclined to do so. As a result, his work is rich with the gamut of emotions that go with being human.

Today, he announced that he has opted to share his latest work as a downloadable PDF. That's striking in and of itself, but what's even more incredible is that he's offering the PDF at no charge. This is such a wonderful way to familiarize yourself with his remarkable photography!



Here is his announcement:

This is to announce the publication of my fifth photo book, Vanilla Sex: Explicit Fine Art Photographs, available as a PDF for free download.

This PDF is a reprise of a 2005 show at the Center for Sex & Culture in San Francisco. It's my latest and best work. For me, “vanilla” means the spectrum of our community’s sexuality; what we normally do. So, some photographs are of acts generally considered normal and standard (missionary position sex, for example), while others are of acts considered normal and standard only within the radical sex community. The 53 photographs are soft and romantic images of explicit sex that challenge the banality of pornography. And, check out the introduction by the preeminent photography critic, A.D. Coleman.

Think of this as an advertisement for myself and my work. For me, publication has always been about putting my point of view out in the world in the most effective manner. Last century, I chose printed books for sale; so far this century I choose a free PDF.

Support this work. Buy my art prints. Buy my books - Sexual Art, Sexual Magic, Sexual Portraits and Lust & Romance - from Amazon and other online vendors, or from me at my website.

I'm always looking for people to photograph - individuals, couples and groups - for a variety of sexually oriented projects. I pay and/or trade. Tell your friends!

I hope you will avail yourself of this wonderful PDF and enjoy Michael Rosen's images.

Do you see why I love this man?

M. Christian is more than just a prolific writer. More than just the most original voice in the erotica genre. More than just the man I am lucky enough to call my boyfriend.

He loves boobs!

And so do I, dammit. And what's more, I think that more is better. (Which is good because my own are pretty formidable.)

Anyway, M. Christian has started "reprinting" via his blog the columns he's written for various Web sites over the years. They never fail to entertain, and are yet another testament to his quirky worldview and beautifully twisted perspective on everything from tits to fetishes to politics.

You gotta love this guy. But hey, hands off. He's mine.

Writing workshop in San Francisco

My friend (and Custom Erotica Source staff writer) Jen Cross is teaching another series of transformative writing workshops here in San Francisco.

Write Whole: Survivors Write (for women): Monday eves 9/17 - 11/12
Gather with other survivors of sexual trauma to create new art and new beauty out of your experiences, and deepen your sense of wholeness.
Declaring Our Erotic (mixed group): Tuesday eves 9/18 - 11/13
Declaring Our Erotic (for women): Wednesday am 9/19 - 11/14
These workshops provide a space to get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexuality and desire, and become less inhibited in your writing.
(Both “woman” and “survivor” are intended to be self-defined.)


No previous writing experience necessary – open to anyone who writes or has ever wanted to write. In these exercise-initiated and non-judgmental writing workshops, you’ll be encouraged to risk, stretch and celebrate your complex and fully brilliant self. Changing our language can change who we know ourselves to be.
Writing free and deep can be both mentally & physically healing!

Space is limited! Registration for summer sessions is open, and continues until
each workshop is filled. Workshops held in San Francisco. Register here.

Jen Cross is a freelance writer whose work has been
published in numerous anthologies. She's a queer incest survivor, and has
facilitated writing workshops for the past 5 years. She received her MA in
Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College, and facilitates writing
workshops (both erotic and not) using the Amherst Writers & Artists method.

Gentlemen! Do ladies confound and confuse you?

Well, of course they do. You confound and confuse us, as well. That's why we can't stay away from each other, I guess -- we can't resist a good mystery!

My friend and colleague, LiYana Silver, relationship guru and founder of Redefining Monogamy is hosting one of her increasingly famous tele-classes next week called "Ask A Woman." (A couple of months ago, she hosted "Ask A Man" and it was wildly successful, not to mention entertaining.)

Ask A Woman features four magnificent women (they're written books and/or appeared on TV) who are experts on topics from emotions and intimacy to communication and relationship; and from intellect and insatiability to sex and orgasm.

LiYana offers these tele-classes free because that's the kind of warm-hearted soul she is. But you do have to register -- think of it as a party that you have to RSVP to in order to insure that the hostess has enough food for everybody.

Learn more and register, get a sneak peak at the women on the panel, or invite a friend to the Ask-A-Woman Tele-Class.

Ask-A-Woman
Your Burning Questions Answered By A Panel of Expert Women

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
8:30 - 9:45pm ET (Eastern Time)
5:30 - 6:45pm PT (Pacific Time)

Little acts of love

A writer friend, Jennifer Matlack, is doing an article for Redbook and needs to find married couples (late 20s-45) to include in the piece.

The article is about "the little acts of love" in your marriage; small things couples do for each other that breathe energy, passion, and love into the everyday.

For example, her husband, Jeff, has been known to coax her out of the kitchen and onto the back porch to show her an iridescent blue beetle; take photographs of the vegetables she's harvested from her garden and email the pictures to his mother with a message that reads "Jen's beautiful bounty"; come home from a yard sale and hand her a delicate jewelry box covered in tiny seashells. All of these things are sweet little gestures that remind her why she married him in the first place.

If interested, please email her. (And please feel free to tell friends and family!) She'll need to include quotes from both you and your spouse. Some, not all of the couples, will have their photos published.

Sex clubs in Paris

I love Paris. I love it a lot. I would live there if I could. One of the blogs that I read with any regularity is The Paris Blog, which is penned by assorted Brits and Americans currently living in Paris. Their insights and observations are consistently fascinating to me.

One of the posts there recently was by my favorite blogger, Meg. She writes about her experience at a Paris sex club. (Warning: the post is not designed to turn you on, so if that's what you seek, you might want to try reading something else.)

Shut the *$@% up

Okay, maybe I'm just cranky because of my annihilated hard drive, but I've been noticing something that has really set off my irk meter:

More and more people are putting music on their blogs. And this is not good.

The fact that any sentient being would have to be told this isn't good is unsettling to me. (Kinda like how it's increasingly necessary to tell people to stop yapping on their cell phones on public transportation. Or a library.) Nevertheless, I will list the reasons why having music on your site -- and that includes most especially your MySpace page -- is unbearably annoying.

1. People often Web surf at work. If they land on a page that makes noise, suddenly all their cubicle mates, and possibly their boss, knows they are Web surfing. Likelihood that they will stay on your page? Big honkin' zero.

2. With iTunes being so popular, lots of people have music playing when they are at their computers. If they aren't listening to iTunes, then maybe they've got a CD playing right there in their computer. When they land on a page offering a competing tune, which do you think they will opt to listen to? Personally, I choose my own music about 99 percent of the time.

3. If you insist on having music on your blog, at least give the visitor the option of not having to listen to it.

Seriously. When I visit a page that accosts me with music -- no matter how hip or beautiful -- I hightail it outta there as fast as possible. I know I'm not alone in this reaction. There's enough noise out there, folks. Can't you at least keep your blogs quiet?

I never thought it could happen to me

In 2004, I bought an iPod. I loved it but soon discovered that using it with a PC was an unsatisfying experience. And when my PC got so invested with spyware that it was rendered inoperable in 2005, I thought, "Okay, it's a sign. Time to buy a Mac!"

After the first few days of growing pains, I fell in love with my Mac. I evangelized it, even. It really was simpler than the PC and far less susceptible to pop-ups, spyware, adware, and all those other "wares."

Until two months ago when the power supply failed and had to be replaced. That was annoying, as my Mac was only a little more than two years old.

Last night, my Mac stopped working completely and today it was diagnosed with a failed hard drive. Failed hard drive? That's something that happens to other people! People with old computers! People who buy mongrel brands!

So much for my reality.

No, I don't back up my files like I should. Last time I did it was in May. I write several stories a month, so you do the math. I risk losing about a dozen stories unless my dear friend Marc can extract my data from this so-called failed drive.

And my address book! Noooooooooooooooooooo! Not my address book! Hundreds of addresses, gone forever? It's too disturbing to contemplate.

I've also lost longer stories that I was in the middle of writing. What a profound annoyance all of this is. Imagine how lame I'm going to look when I have to tell a couple of clients that their stories will be delayed because I have to start them over from scratch? Oy, I feel like such a loser.

So, the point of this post is two-fold:
1. Macs are not perfect. They are only slightly less imperfect than PCs. Sure the commercials are cute, and the products looks sexy. But it's still technology, people. It will fail.
2. Back up your data. For the love of God, back up your data.

And if you're waiting for a story from me, my deepest regrets. After Sunday, I should know better if what I've written for you so far can be saved.

An abundance of niceness

Writers, it is sad to say, are not known for helping each other. It's not because we're particularly nasty people but because the competition is stiff, the money is absolutely awful, and the duration of any attention you get for anything you publish is fleeting. We're not generally proud of any of this or our behavior, mind you, but the publishing industry is a dog-eat-dog world, and as Norm from Cheers once commented, "I'm wearing Milk Bone underwear."

It's a rare writer who goes out of her way to promote another. That's why I'm so grateful to Donna George Storey, who recently wrote such a lovely review of Your Erotic Personality. And because no good deed goes unpunished, I would like to extol her virtues here in my blog!

Donna and I first met a couple of years ago, when we both publicly read from our stories in the travel erotica anthology, Foreign Affairs. I was impressed with the story she read about Japan -- it was clear that she wrote from experience with that country and its customs. (Her story was sexy as well as informed, which for me only heightened the erotic experience.) I invited her to contribute to the three anthologies M. Christian and I were editing at the time, and as a result, she wrote an excellent story for Garden of the Perverse: Fairy Tales for Twisted Adults.

Then we both sold our first novels to the same publisher, a crazy division of Orion Books called Neon. I say crazy because these folks have some serious organizational problems -- I've been waiting for my novel, Giving the Bride Away, to come out since I turned in the manuscript back in August of 2005! Donna has been waiting almost as long, and finally, at the end of this month, her book, An Amorous Woman, will see the light of day! True to crazy Orion form, however, it isn't available in the United States yet (but they promise that it will be). So do keep your eyes open for it or order it through Amazon UK.

Donna is not only a terrific writer, but also a fine person and a good friend. You can bet I'll be reading her novel when it comes out.

Need a bumper sticker for 2007?

Personally, I don't like to plaster sentiments of any kind on my clothing or my car, but these bumper stickers are just funny enough to possibly change my mind:

1. Bush: End of an Error
2. That's OK, I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway
3. Let's Fix Democracy in this Country First
4. If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran
5. Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.
6. If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President
7. Of Course It Hurts: You're Getting Screwed by an Elephant
8. Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?
9. George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight
10. Impeachment: It's Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore
11. America : One Nation, Under Surveillance
12. They Call Him "W" So He Can Spell It
13. Whose G-d Do You Kill For?
14. Jail to the Chief
15. No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq ?
16. Bush: G-d's Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap
17. Bad President! No Banana.
18. We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language
19. We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them
20. Is It Vietnam Yet?
21. Bush Doesn't Care About White People, Either
22. Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Handbasket?
23. You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.
24. Dubya, Your Dad Shoulda Pulled Out, Too
25. When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46
26. The Bush Legacy: Leave No Child a Dime
27. Pray For Impeachment
28. The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century
29. What Part of "Bush Lied" Don't You Understand?
31. 2004: Embarrassed 2005: Horrified 2006: Terrified
32. Bush Never Exhaled
33. At Least Nixon Resigned

What's at the center of your world?

An artist friend of mine recently shared this drawing with me. He created it to honor a woman he loves dearly but who is with a man who treats her badly. I was so touched by his words, I wanted to share them with you:

Here's a woman. I based her on a shy, lovely friend -- let's call her Josephine -- here where I live, who has nearly black hair and striking green eyes. Josephine, now in her forties like so many of us, has some silver streaks in her hair, which she hates and I love. She has what she calls "rather floppy" breasts, which she hates and I love. She has a bit of a belly, which she hates and I love. She has thick, extra-long (she calls it "freakishly long") pubic hair, which she hates and I love. I've never seen her labia, but I hope they are long, thick, and lush, which she hates and I love! She has a large lush bottom, which I love! She has large, luscious thighs, which I love! The very things Josephine dislikes most about her body are the very things I love about her body. I love them all. Maybe because they are hers...

So, out of love and admiration, I imagined her here, courageously showing us the place she's most ashamed of. Where she was molested. Where, when she was younger, her lovers longed to come and stay. Where her children were born. Where her unloving partner hates to go. Where she touches herself in secret.

It's easy to look at naked bodies and objectify them. Society teaches us how to do that. It's harder to see what that body has experienced or how it seeks to tell us what it feels or wants or needs. But isn't it awesome beyond words how easily we can see a body in a whole new way when we remember that every body has a soul attached to it?

I can't help but wish Josephine could know that this painting exists or that the artist feels such a beautiful combination of love, appreciation, and desire for her.

(And here is the painting that inspired my friend's drawing: "The Center of the World" by Gustav Courbet.)

New quiz!

iVillage has published a unique version of the erotic personality quiz. It's geared to women and it highlights a select number of erotic personality types. So why should you take it? Cuz it's freakin' fun, that's why!

Should you find the results less than accurate, feel free to take the genderless mother quiz for a thorough diagnostic on your horniness triggers.

FOX ATTACKS BLOGGERS

It's not new that Fox News offers everything *but* news. They skew information, create a climate of fear, misrepresent facts to support their own conservative agenda, and worst of all, debase journalistic integrity beyond recognition.

Maybe you've heard about the war between the loud and ignorant Bill O'Reilly and the wonderful Daily Kos blog. If not, read about it here to fully acquaint yourself with the horrifying humanoid who knows absolutely no boundaries when it comes to truth or fairness.

And if you want to see what a fine, upstanding gem Mr. O'Reilly is in his personal life (so that you know his television persona is not just a little something he dons for the cameras), check out this post: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/30/161937/795

If you don't think this idiot is not only reaching people but also affecting their judgment, let me tell you about an experience I had with my own parents recently. They watch Fox News -- almost exclusively. Because of Fox's relentless attacks on "bloggers," my mother asked me, with visible fear in her voice, how to find blogs on the Internet. She wanted to know how pervasive they were and whether, if she visited one, something would be "recorded" on her computer and somehow put her under suspicion. I explained that a blog was a form of expression, and that it was the content of the blog rather than the format that determined its "flavor." I asked her whether she wanted to find some blogs of her favorite celebrities or even political figures. "Oh no!" she instantly said. "I don't need to see that stuff."

Thanks, Bill O'Reilly, for spreading hate and fear so effectively.

Hillary Clinton's breasts

I am not a Hillary Clinton fan, but this episode riled me up anyway.

I just took action with Ms. magazine protesting the Washington Post's recent article analyzing Senator Hillary Clinton's cleavage. Like her or not, Senator Clinton is a member of the Senate and quite possibly the next president of the United States. Instead of writing about her strategy to end the war in Iraq or her plans to reform the health care system in this country, the Post devoted a feature story to analyzing her breasts.

Join me in expressing your outrage to the Washington Post!

Accurate sex information for parents

Check out 4Parents.gov -- you will find completely biased and inaccurate information on abortion (not to mention a healthy dose of abstinence as the best form of birth control, rather than teaching kids how to have responsible sex -- because let's face it, they are *going* to have sex so shouldn't they be given information rather than fear?)

4Parents.gov is part of the United States' mission to keep both parents and children in the dark ages sexually. Here is what the site claims its mission to be: "4Parents.gov is part of a national public education campaign to provide parents with the information, tools and skills they need to help their teens make healthy choices, including waiting until marriage to have sex."

NARAL Pro-Choice America has a letter you can send to demand factual and objective information.

I urge you to sign the letter. Tell the government you want American children educated not misled about sex and abortion.

My "Office" personality

Slightly behind yet another trend, I recently have become totally smitten with the TV show, "The Office." So, when I saw this quiz that would tell me what character I was most like, I just had to take it! (Despite my book, which is based on a quiz, I really don't spend all my time taking or thinking about quizzes -- honest!) Turns out I'm Pam, which isn't surprising, considering the huge crush I have on Jim!

I'd post the results, but they don't fit correctly on this page, so here are the highlights:

Pam Beesly 60%

Jim Halpert 58%

Toby Flenderson 53%

A bad week for Republican sex

I'd like to take a non-partisan view toward sex but wow -- these guys really don't make it easy. What a week it was for unbridled hypocrisy!

1. On July 9, the "D.C. Madam" released her little black book of clients, and in a preemptive move designed to ward off the wave of public derision and marital strife, Senator David Vitter (R-La.) confessed to having availed himself of the madam's services. He's since disappeared, probably because his wife was once quoted as "being more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hilary Clinton" on such matters. I can only wonder whether Vitter escaped before she reached for her knife.

Vitter was a typical Southern Republican, espousing the sanctity of marriage while getting his kicks from the professionals. In 2005, Vitter attacked "the Hollywood left" for "redefining the most basic institution in human history." Uh huh.

2. Republican Strategist John ("Jack") M. Burkman's name was also in the revealing black book. (You may recall that Burkman picked up some teenage girls last year -- and was dumb enough to give them his business card -- and offered to pay them for sex. He likes really big tits, by the way.) Burkman is a real doll: following on the comments of Ann Coulter's vile hate rants on the widows of 9/11, he declared that “within hours of those [World Trade Center] towers going down,” the wives of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “were ready to make money and exploit this tragedy!” Once a sleazeball asshole, always a sleazeball asshole, I guess.

3. Florida State Representative (and Co-chair of Senator John McCain's Florida campaign) Bob Allen got into a sticky little mess this week, too, but at least his name wasn't in the D.C. Madam's book. Instead, he was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a local park after offering to perform a sex act on an undercover officer in exchange for $20. The Orlando Sentinel story says Allen was arrested for "offering to perform a sex act," but TV reports out of Florida say Allen was to have the sex act performed on him. Either way, I think we all agree that Florida is clearly the place to get a blowjob, as they can be had for the bargain price of $20!

Thanks, you horny Republicans, for making such asses of yourselves. But fear not, your supporters will not be thwarted. They're all praying for you and saying crap like, "If God has found it in His heart to forgive you, so can I."

optician

The most compelling case for eyeglasses ever made...

King Bush

The eloquence of Keith Olbermann does the heinous crimes of both Scooter Libby and George W. Bush justice. Crooks and Liars offers a video that will re-inspire the righteous indignation we all should feel over what our president did this week.