A letter from editor/author Alison Tyler telling me that Heat Wave: Sizzling Sex Stories is hitting the stores is ample motivation for me to blog about my latest findings in the lit smut arena. But before I get on with it, let me just say that I’m pleased to be part of this anthology. I have fond memories of writing its summery hot sex story, sitting under my deck umbrella last spring. Would that the weather get consistently warm and sunny so I can resume that sweet writing ritual again! (As it is, I’m settling for the futon under the picture window in my library with classic music playing in the day and jazz at night.)
As usual, when soapboxing about various topics, other links tend to accumulate in the background. One I’ve been hanging onto tenaciously is Clean Sheet’s review of Up All Night, a collection of lesbian fiction. The anthology wholly resists giving us mundane, all-too-common girl-on-girl stuff and instead takes us to edgier planes of eroticism where gender play, public sex, and many things sex radical still have life. And it’s this edge in erotic writing that keeps me from despairing under conservative encroachment. Could queer sex save the world? I fucking hope so.
Hey, another resistance to conservative encroachment: Two biographies about George Bataille. I’m particularly interested in the history behind his sadomasochistic works, but if you want to see conservatives go apoplectic, mention French poststructuralism.
You know how I’m always mentioning that small press needs your dollars to stay viable and how I’m always touting it as the saving grounds for non-blockbuster writers? Well, after cheering Stephen Elliott for getting good press from Salon magazine, I look to his weblog only to learn he’ll have to sell 25,000 copies of his book just to see a paycheck. I’m a little fuzzy on whether that’s Happy Baby or his current project, but either way: Ouch. (FWIW, I was in Pennsylvania last weekend, visiting family, and the Toomey anti-Spector ads are in constant television rotation, all part of the movement to “cleanse” the Republican party of so-called moderates. So if you think things are conservative now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. So much for diversity.)
In the if-I-had-the-money-or-the-time category: I’d attend the Pink Ink book expo and Saints and Sinners. Maybe you can, though.
Last, check out this NPR interview with author Paulo Coelho. Best known on these shores for The Alchemist, his newest novel is being flatly received, despite its openly erotic subject matter. Provincialism at work? Probably that, and apathy. However, if you view yourself as more cosmopolitan, there’s plenty of copies over at The Strand bookstore. Mine arrived, signed by the author. Maybe yours will, too.
