Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

This is the cover of Temptations 2, an erotic fiction compilation from Xcite Books. Nice, isn’t it?

It’s one of 3 recently released by that company. They have responded to calls from Erotica Cover Watch to have more men on the covers of erotic fiction books. I think it’s very appealing.

The Guardian reports that major erotica publisher Black Lace will not be publishing any new titles in the coming year.

The 16-year-old Black Lace imprint specialises in erotica for women, by women, and has sold more than 4m books worldwide, but its publisher, Virgin Books – part of the publishing giant Random House – has decided to stop commissioning new titles for both itself and its sister imprint, Nexus, which pitches itself as “the last word in fetish fiction”.

Erotica Cover Watch has a more in-depth look at the decision here. Interestingly, the Girl’s comment was rehashed in the Guardian article without attribution, which is rather rude.

Black Lace is blaming stalled sales and the availability of free erotica on the internet.

Writers Kristina Lloyd and Mathilde Madden (who run Erotica Cover Watch) have written a great opinion piece decrying the decision.

In erotic fiction, you’ll probably find truer expressions of female desire than in the popular memoirs from strippers and sex workers, whose job it is to please men. But we’re also unsurprised. Women’s erotic fiction authors are often regarded as randy Barbara Cartlands writing purple porn for the sex-starved, their prose replete with throbbing manhoods, dungeon dynamics and swoon-inducing bastards: “Mills and Bonk”.

Personally I think it’s a shame that Black Lace should make this decision because it cuts off one of the few major outlets for female erotic expression. I do understand the need to maintain profits – publishing seems to operate on very small margins now – but I’m wondering if the imprint was really losing money or if they just lost interest in maintaining it.

And it once again comes back to the issue of the internet. Since I run an adult site I could be considered responsible for the loss of hard-copy readers.

And yet… it’s not the full story. Yes, you can probably find free erotic fiction online but have you actually read some of that shit? The stuff you see on Literotica is often illiterate, nonsensical, cliched and downright unreadable and a lot of it isn’t written for a female audience (I know this because they seem to want to also submit it to FTG). On top of that, the world of online erotic fiction is primarily focused on short stories and smaller pieces. Curling up in bed and getting involved in a novel isn’t quite so appealing via the internet.

If Black Lace withdraws, it creates a gap. I do think there is a opportunity here. Perhaps it’s time For The Girls became a publishing label?

Bam. Two negative, almost hateful diatribes against female-focused erotic fiction books in as many days.

Instead of being condemned as a cheapjack book slut pandering to male fantasies, you will be profiled in the serious press, with a photograph of you dressed demurely, and women will not be ashamed to be seen reading your book on the Tube. Feminist websites will praise you for “provoking debate in intellectual circles” and claim your book “does not intend to function as porn” (even though it sort of is porn).
- Feminist slant for female erotica writers – The Times Online

and

Roche and others from the new wave of women shock-jocks tell us that baring their fantasies, or recounting their love lives in lurid and exhaustive detail, is uniquely emancipating.

While I would fight tooth and claw for women’s right to sexual freedom, I’m not sure the sisterhood has gained much if it sees that freedom as a chance to brag about sex and conquests in the same kind of tedious and lewd manner that made the new lad so obnoxious back in the Nineties.
Un-erotica? As another female writer publishes an explicit novel is this new feminism or a tawdry betrayal of women? – The Daily Mail

The first piece derides all those nasty women writers for daring to dabble in erotica, because it’s really just porn, you know. And porn’s for men, after all.

The second piece happily indulges in all the usual false consciousness assumptions about how women who explore their sexuality mustn’t really know what they’re doing. That they’ve been duped, somehow, and isn’t it a shame they’ve lost their femininity like that?

The shoes-in-handcuffs idea pays lip service to the concept that exploring your sexuality equals being enslaved or degraded by it.

There’s this ongoing idea that writing about sex is inevitably tawdry, that writing something to induce arousal is a less noble and certainly less literary pursuit, one that should only be done by dirty old men in raincoats.

Facts. It IS feminist to have sex whenever and however you want. That’s a choice that women should be free to make. It’s a feminist act to express your thoughts and feelings about sex. And when a woman challenges the whole Madonna/Whore myth by publicly revealing that she is a voracious sexual being, she does all women a favour.

Now, go and read Girl With A One Track Mind. I’m sure she has a heap more to say on this topic.

I really don’t know why I haven’t blogged about this before… I was actually bursting to tell the news when I first discovered my story had been accepted into Best Women’s Erotica 2009. But then I wasn’t sure if it was a secret, and then I just never got around to it. I thought I’d wait until the publication date.

So anyway, my point is, I have a story in Best Women’s Erotica 2009 which is officially released on December 11 (but you can order it from Amazon now). What’s cool about this is it’s the first time I’ve had anything published – I mean in actual, real-life on paper with real ink-type stuff – for about five years. And certainly it’s been a long time between erotic story drinks.

My first break into the world of writing and publishing was a nice little dirty story which appeared in Australian Women’s Forum in 1998. It was about a woman who tested sex toys, a subject that, at that time, I thought was incredibly unusual and titillating*. I still remember finding out that it was going to appear in the magazine and realising that I was going to get real money for it. Euphoric doesn’t begin to describe it.

That first thrill of seeing my name in print turned into a writing hobby that then turned into a part time job. And then it turned into this exciting internet experiment whereby I discovered my writing could actually make me money online.

Fast forward to 2008 and everything that I write is intended for online publication. I have millions of words floating around in cyberspace, the majority of them on this blog and at For The Girls. This earns me a very good living and I’m aware that I’m doing far better now than if I’d become the romance novelist I’d wanted to be as a kid.

At the same time, online publication has no prestige. People don’t call you an “author” unless your name is in print out in the meat world. And part of me hankers for that old-world glory.

So I sat down and deliberately wrote a story for BEW2009, hoping that it would be good enough to appear on paper. And by crikey if I didn’t lose sleep and sweat over that story. I reworked it repeatedly and worried that it was clunky or amateurish or just unsexy. When you self-publish you can lose perspective on what works and what doesn’t and, yes, you can also get a little lazy. Not this story though. It was honed within an inch of its life.

Thankfully, it made the grade and I was once again euphoric.

I must warn you, the story is about anal sex. No, stop clenching that butt, ladies, because anal sex can be very, very hot – when it’s done right. And my story is about doing it right.

Here’s a brief extract:

I’ve heard it said that women will try anal sex twice: once to see what it’s like and a second time to see if it really is that bad. I used to be one of those women.

The first time I ever tried it was in college. I was young and stupid – par for the course. I offered up my ass after much impassioned prompting from my then-boyfriend, Dennis. There was no preparation, no lube, no pleasure at all. What was more awful than the cringing pain and fervent wish for the fucking to be over was the fact that I collapsed into tears afterwards, turning my face to the wall. I remember Dennis worryingly stroking my brow and apologizing fervently, but I couldn’t speak. I’d been a willing participant, eager to try something new, but it was a sordid loss of that particular virginity, one that left me feeling violated and strangely sad.

From then on I was certain that anal was something men wanted but women shouldn’t offer. What was the point, after all? Guys seemed mad for it, if only so they could boast about it to their friends. What sane, pleasure-loving woman would want to stick a cock in her ass?

Stephan changed all that.

Editor Violet Blue has posted about the book and includes her rather fabulous introduction which is well worth a read. I’m grateful to Violet for giving me the opportunity to be “properly published” again. It’s an honour to be included in this collection.

* You can still read the story at For The Girls, by the way. And sex toy testing isn’t nearly as sexy as I’d imagined.

Thanks to The Girl for pointing me in the direction of Erotica Cover Watch. This is a new blog that asks the question: why are only women featured on the covers of erotic books?

It’s a very good point and the topic naturally delves into the whole feminist issue of the male gaze and the continued way that straight women are still considered to be non-visual.

It all comes down to official marketing wisdom which says that women on covers sell and men don’t. That’s why women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan don’t feature guys. Indeed, I suspect Playgirl was one of the few magazines to flaunt this official rule and that was probably only because they were marketing themselves to gay men.

The funny thing about this is I remember having this conversation over ten years ago with Helen Vnuk, then editor of Australian Women’s Forum, the Aussie adult mag for women. The editorial staff were busting to put some of the hunky guys on the cover, especially considering they were delightfully naked in the middle. Nope, said marketing, not doable. And I think the bean counters then proceeded to bring out sales figures that showed the covers featuring couples didn’t sell as well as solo women.

It was the last act of defiance for AWF that their final issue did feature a guy – and he was pretty hot too as you can see.

I suspect that women are just trained to see other women on a cover as normal… and of course the continuing justification of the need to make sales turns it into a self-fulfilling prophesy. On top of that there’s homophobia, which dictates that a guy won’t want to be seen reading a book that features a hunky, half naked man, in case people assume he’s gay and – possibly – beat him up. Much safer to go with the girly pinup pic, right?

The compromise is, of course, to feature a couple, but that rarely happens either. Is it considered too raunchy? Or is it cheaper to only shoot one model?

In any case, I’m glad someone is making a fuss about this. Maybe next year’s Best Women’s Erotica, which is absolutely and utterly aimed at women, should have a guy or a couple on it. Maybe we should ask Violet and Cleis Press what they think.

Romance publishers Mills and Boon are 100 years old this year and they’re about to launch the Spice erotica imprint in the UK, according to The Independent. In the past, M&B books only allowed sex within the confines of a long term relationship. Spice, however, features stories where people “have sex for enjoyment.”

Phew, imagine that?

The article has an interesting timeline of erotic milestones in the Mills and Boon books. Like the first masturbation scene was in 1973 and the first oral sex scene was in 1982.

“There are other places to kiss,” the hero darkly informs the heroine of Antigua Kiss, who promptly surrenders to “waves of ecstasy”.

Wa-hey!

In the wake of For The Girls‘ fourth erotic fiction competition, I feel the need to make a post urging aspiring authors to follow a few simple rules when writing erotic fiction. I feel this because, even though there were plenty of absolutely gorgeous and cleverly written short stories entered, there were also plenty of bombs.

Yes folks, there are people out there who fancy themselves as masters of the dirty story, but they’re not. They’re really not. Aside from the blow-by-blow porny sex descriptions there’s the awful spelling, the bad use of tense, the endless sentences and the dodgy punctuation. Little things, but they’re vitally important.

And when you’re sitting there cross-eyed, ploughing through over 80 stories about sex, you start to get kind of tetchy and you start to make lists in your head, wanting the would-be Anais Nins of the world to know that they could be doing it much, much better.

I even wrote a few things down:

Tip #1: Real women rarely refer to themselves as being “busty.”
Tip #2: Never use the word “retarded” in your stories. Go and watch Idiocracy and you’ll begin to understand.
Tip #3: Titles are good. As are paragraphs.
Tip #4: The rules are there for good reason. No, you are not exempt from them.
Tip #5: If you are writing erotica for women, it’s a good idea to leave out the misogynistic observations.
Tip #6: If your story didn’t do well in last year’s competition, it doesn’t help to submit it verbatim to this year’s comp.

But you know what? I’ve already been here, in 2006. Read my post How To Win An Erotic Fiction Competition. It’s all there. Everything I wanted to say.

Or you might want to read Susie Bright’s excellent book How To Write A Dirty Story.

Alternatively, go and visit the Erotica Readers and Writers Association and check out their many useful articles.

I was also going to direct you to Black Lace’s writers guidelines but the site seems to be down. Google it, maybe they’ll be back up soon.

I don’t claim to be a perfect writer. I’m probably guilty of numerous grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in my blog, and I still have to stop and think about the word “its” every time. But when it comes to something that has to make an impression on a judge or editor… then I get pedantic. And that’s what all aspiring writers need to do.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with my favourite spelling typo of the year. If this doesn’t convince you of the importance of proof reading, nothing will.

“The towel fell to the floor with his prodding and her juicers ran all over his fingers.”

The winners of the For The Girls annual short story competition have been announced. All the winners and judging comments are here.

This year the theme was “transgression” and wow, it certainly inspired people to come up with wild, outrageous and very sexy stories.

The top three stories:

WINNER
Julienne by Sommer Marsden
Judge’s comments: Exhilerating and undeniably hot, Sommer’s intense story of a stale relationship revived at the point of a knife makes for gripping reading. The reader is overcome with a mix of fear and lust as the story unfolds; shock mixes with curiosity and arousal. This is a beautifully written story dealing with complex emotions and it does a sterling job of illustrating the theme of transgression.
Sommer wins $200 plus 1 month membership to For The Girls

RUNNER UP
A Lover In The House Of Spies by Alicia Night Orchid
Judge’s comments: Cue the James Bond music – only 007 was never this dirty. Through a series of flashbacks and vignettes, we discover the twin stories of a mother and her daughter, both searching for fulfilment amid secrecy and lies. Oh, and there’s a lot of the cool secret agent stuff to boot. The story works on numerous levels and leaves the reader with a lingering sense of mystery.
Alicia wins $100 plus 1 month membership to For The Girls

THIRD PRIZE
Surprise Me by Louisa Harte
Judge’s comments: Public sex is always a thrilling idea and a great subject for a story dealing with transgression. Louisa’s writing is a pleasure to read and she shows a deft hand at ramping up the erotic tension.
Louisa wins $50 plus 1 month membership to For The Girls

Beyond the top 13 there were another 8 or so stories that came very close to getting into the shortlist. It really was tough deciding who to leave out and I must admit I didn’t finalise the list until the very last minute because it was so hard to choose the winners.

Of course, there were plenty of entries by writers who really need to think about another hobby. Sometimes it amazes me that some people will enter a short story competition when they don’t seem to have any grasp of spelling, grammar or paragraphs. I think some people assume that stories about sex don’t have to be terribly readable. Thankfully the number of porny, blow-by-blow sex descriptions were few and far between this year.

In any case, there it is, done and dusted. I’m so proud that For The Girls has been running this competition for the last four years, encouraging top quality writers to create sizzling erotic fiction just for women.

For The Girls will be publishing one story from the winning entries each week until the beginning of November.

Today’s depressing censorship/thought crime news is that a woman has been sentenced to five years of probation for writing sex stories. Yes folks, for writing fiction.

I’ve already posted about this case. It’s difficult to speak out in defense of the author because the stories depicted child abuse, violence and rape – that’s why the government went after Karen Fletcher and her site Red Rose Stories. But this case sets a frightening precendent: you can be prosecuted for what you write.

An Australian man had his home raided and was prosecuted in May for reading these kinds of stories.

If anyone thinks that these sorts of stories are some kind of modern abberation, think again. Instead, check the library and the shelves of your average English lecturer at university. Fact is, stories about child rape are disturbingly common in erotic fiction.

For this month’s feature article at For The Girls I created a “top 11″ list of the best-known works of dirty writing; what could be known as the erotic canon. I hadn’t read most of them so I did a bit of preliminary reading for research. I was amazed to discover just how many of these hallowed literary works could be considered obscene according to the law post-Red Rose.

Sure, it’s easy to spot Lolita. Nabokov’s celebrated novel is about pedophilia and contains explicit sex scenes featuring a 12 year old girl. And the Marquis De Sade’s works are an endless litany of depravity and abuse (and have long been hailed as literary classics).

But did you know that Delta of Venus by Anais Nin opens with a rather shocking tale of incest and underage rape? Nin is often held up as the ultimate female-friendly author of erotica, so I was simply stunned to open the book and read those first few pages (check out the Amazon excerpt if you want to read it).

The Story of the Eye and Fanny Hill also offer explicit stories of underage sex.

How is it that we can go after one writer and yet exalt the works of others? And in the end, how can we justify prosecuting individuals when they’re guilty of merely writing (or reading) words on a piece of paper.

And now I’m some kind of pervert, apparently, because I’ve read what now amounts to literary child porn. Even if it is by Anais Nin. Send the thought police, please. I need to be saved from myself.

Just a quick reminder – as of today there are only 2 weeks left before the close of the For The Girls erotic fiction competition.

The theme this year is “transgression.” Stories should be 2000 words max and written for a female audience. Entries close July 31.

Details of the competition can be found here.

Last week I reviewed the new erotica for women book Dirty Girls for For The Girls. In a previous post I expressed concern at the cliquey comments on the back, but I’m pleased to say that the inside is fabulous. Don’t judge a book by its cover!

The collection is chock full of naughty sexual adventures starring women who aren’t afraid to enjoy themselves. These are dirty girls indeed, greedy as they are for pleasureable, unusual or challenging experiences. You’ll find lesbianism, threesomes, bondage, power play, voyeurism and public sex within these pages, and a whole lot more.

Some of the stories are confronting and evoke strong emotion. Others make you want to curl up with a throbbing vibrator and just get down to business.

Dirty Girls sets out to create a hip and edgy vibe, one that is divorced from idea that women’s erotica is all about “soft-focus” romantic sex. I’m not going to go into the legitimacy of whether women’s porn really fits that mould or not. What is important here is that this book offers female readers a nice swathe of erotic variety and adds to the growing collection of quality women’s erotic fiction on the market today.

I liked it a lot. Get it from Amazon.

Writers! Please! This is a call for more submissions to For The Girls – both to our regular erotic fiction and Wicked Ways sections and also our erotic story contest.

I realise that it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere and that you guys are probably more interesting in BBQs and swimming and not doing a damned thing, but please, please, can you spare a few thousand words of steamy, arousing, well-written filthy dirty story for me?

Yes, there’s cash in it for you, and glory, and the satisfaction of knowing you’ve turned on thousands of eager female readers!

FTG regular writers guidelines.

FTG 4th Erotic Story Competition. Theme: Transgression.

It’s June again and that means that it’s For The Girls‘ birthday!

Way back in the mists of time – June 2003 – my friend Jane and I launched our little-porn-site-that-could. We gathered together all our favourite dirty pics and movies, and I collected a whole bunch of my articles and columns, and off we went. We started small, and our first billing company – Globill – collapsed within a month, but we picked ourselves up and started again. And we kept at it.

And now, five years later, For The Girls is still going strong, chock-a-block with five years worth of collected pics and movies and writing. And we’re still making women horny and happy which was always the plan.

Along the way I’ve championed the cause of women’s porn and had numerous discussions and arguments and yelling matches with various people about the topic. And I’m still rather frustrated that a lot of people within the industry don’t really understand that women like porn. For every webmaster or filmmaker who might acknowledge a female audience, there’s another 50 “playas” (ugh) who have no idea.

But perhaps that’s a good thing.

In the last five years I’ve seen the online porn industry go through something of a consolidation. Big companies are moving in and pushing a lot of the little guys out. For The Girls is still an independent website run by two women beavering away on their respective PCs. I like to think that means we’re more in touch with our surfers – straight women like ourselves who want to see porn that reflects women’s sexual experience and fantasies.

ANYWAY
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of For The Girls we’re launching another erotic fiction competition. It’s become a tradition now and I couldn’t bear to not do it again this year.

So the theme this year is “transgression” which I think will inspire all sorts of juicy stories. I’m really hoping that the blow-by-blow descriptions are kept to a minimum this year and instead I get to read saucy, scintillating stories with a lot of atmosphere, buildup, tension and release. Or something like that.

All the details are on this page.

It seems that the canon of women’s literary erotica is growing, and that’s a good thing.

The latest book release is Dirty Girls, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussell. I received my review copy the other day but I haven’t had much of a chance to read it. The few stories I have read have been amazing, so I think it’s worth checking out. Here’s the official blurb off the back:

What do women really want? To be sensually seduced or pressed up against the wall for a quickie? To be tantalized by a peep show or the chance to join the mile high club?

Acclaimed erotica writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel knows: They want it all. They want to be worshiped, ordered around, sent blindly into ecstasy, and made hot in front of a mirror. They want strangers bearing ice cubes on a hot day and to be the party favor passed around among guests. They want sex at the office and in the great outdoors and on trains and airplanes. They want sex with the whole United States of America (or, at least, part of it). They want to be wooed, seduced, flirted with, taken. They want to handpick their lovers and make them do their bidding. They want men, women, and sometimes both at the same time.

I have to say, there are two recommendation quotes on the back that I found offputting. One is from Joanna Angel, who says: “Finally, a book about what girls REALLY think about. Well, maybe not every girl, but the dirty ones… and those are the ones who really count.”

Another quote is by Susannah Breslin who says: “…a collection of erotically charged short stories that affirms that dirty girls are the new black.”

These quotes irked me. I realise they’re all about appealing to those who think that erotica for women somehow always means flowers and romance, but is there any need to start imposing an “us and them” rhetoric onto it? It’s like there’s this dichotomy of sluts versus housewives, or something like that. Rachel Kramer Bussell herself says that women can be both “dirty and sweet wrapped up in one” and I really like the inclusive “we want it ALL” idea of the book, so why use those two divisive, dirtier-than-thou quotes?

Yes, it’s a niggling complaint but it has created a slight bias for me before I’ve read the book. I’ll see how it plays out in the next week or so.

Amazon has gone a little beserk and printed a large chunk of Susie Bright’s introduction to Best American Erotica 2008 on their site. Not that I’m complaining, of course, because it makes for great reading. A snippet:

Nowadays, I don’t think there’re mainstream novelists who haven’t been asked what role sexuality plays in their fiction — or why they’re pussyfooting around, if they continue to avoid it. It’s the stuff of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners.

It’s not so much that erotica has made a narrow genre successful — although that’s true too — it’s that writers now don’t hold back “the sex part” anymore when they write about…anything. The omission was always unnatural and deceptive, and now the lie is laid bare. Sexless stories about human relationships are dishonest. How did anyone write about love, life, or death and manage to avoid it so neatly? It was a hoax, and thankfully behind us.

This volume is a “best of” the best ofs, a collection charting Susie Bright’s 15 year tenure as editor of the Best American Erotica series.

If you’re up for some intelligent reading that will turn you on, you might want to have a look.