KV Taylor

I know, I’ve been a bad blogger again. BUT! I’ve been a very busy little bee getting some awesome stuff in line for The Red Penny Papers. Now we’ve pulled of a full year (and more!) of fiction both short and serial, I’m starting to get a feel for how much we can reasonably do. I will admit that a lot of this is also a money thing, as the RPP has always been about free web fiction — but authors should get paid. Katey Hawthorne doesn’t make a lot, but over the last few months she’s proven that she can at least support RPP in the manner to which it has grown accustomed. And so we forge ahead!

(And yes, I just talked about myself in third person. I think Namor is rubbing off on me. I’ll stop that now.)

What it adds up to is a few new experiments and a few continuations of current experiments. Things we have planned for the near future…

1. Moar, longer-lasting eBooks. Alan Baxter, author of our upcoming winter serial, The Darkest Shade of Grey, has kindly offered to be the first victim  trial of our plan to make our serial novellas into eBooks — and keep them there. This is not something authors will have to agree to in order to be published with us as a serial, but it’s an option I’ve wanted to offer for some time, and I think it’ll be a lot of fun. So after the serial runs, a collected edition will be made available for a small amount of cash, which will go both to the author and to RPP’s cost of producing the edition.

The serial will always remain free in the archives, but we’ve had loads of requests for eBook versions from people who wouldn’t mind dropping a few bucks for a good pulpy read on their Kindle. Should be good fun!

We may also change our contracts to allow for longer-lasting quarterly issues. Currently the eBook versions expire when a new one is published, and until we can afford to pay authors more (in order to keep the right to make their story available in our issues for longer), that will stay the same. But it’s a goal.

2. Plans for a print/ebook anthology. John and I have been talking about doing a Red Penny antho for months and months now, and the time feels right. The plan is that we’ll come up with a new theme annually and invite the authors who’ve been with us between fall-summer of that publishing year to submit stories.

We’re really committed to the writers we work with and love having them back for other issues, so this seems like a great way to celebrate that spirit of… well, good pulpy togetherness. The only difference is that, given the cost of producing such a thing, we can’t afford to give it away. But we think it’ll be worth it.

We’re hoping to have the first one sorted out in time for our second anniversary this fall. More on that later!

3. More staff. We already outsource our eBook creation (thanks, Aaron!), and since John has come on as a slush wrangler, my life has been much simpler. There are some tasks I really want, need, insist on doing myself, but there are just some that I will put off til the end of time. The best way to focus on the stuff I like doing, then, would seem to be to outsource more. We hope to get the staff roster updated shortly.

Because of all this stuff going on, we’re not going to have another open reading period until June 1, 2012. But that will be worth it, too. We’ll be open for serials and shorts at the same time, which we didn’t do last time and made us a little bit sad.

So, um, there’s my maniacal plan for world domination or whatever — and the reason I’ve been a bad blogger. But so much goodness!

Today I’m lucky enough to have Louise Bohmer stop by to discuss porn. Porn and women, even. Which is, of course, something in which I have a great interest and many opinions of my own.

Please enjoy!

Ahem.

Misconceptions About Women and Porn

(Or, Why I Heart Nina Hartley)

by L. Bohmer

Yes, I am a feminist, and, yes, I watch porn.

There tends to be a school of thought among some feminists that states women can never, ever enjoy porn. Porn is exclusively for males, and the women acting in said films are always faking it. Porn always marginalizes and sexualizes the woman in a negative light. Porn is always abusive to the female, and no right-minded woman would willingly act in it. They must be coerced into it or need the money.

With all due respect to those who hold this view, I simply cannot agree with it. For starters, I have a problem with broad stroke approaches to any argument. Rarely in life have I found any accurate black-and-white answers. Life is simply far more complex than that. Secondly, research into today’s porn industry, and the history of pornographic film, will reveal this argument is simply not true. While, yes, the adult film industry is not lily-white, many women within it have gained not only sexual empowerment through the medium, but also creative and financial empowerment.

Nina Hartley is a prime example of this female empowerment. At 52, Nina still acts in and directs pornography. She has also taken on the role of sexual educator, and identifies herself as a sex-positive feminist. Here is a great quote from Nina, and I think it sums up what I’m trying to say perfectly:

“Sex isn’t something men do to you. It isn’t something men get out of you. Sex is something you dive into with gusto and like it every bit as much as he does.”

In fact, the first adult film Nina ever starred in was directed by a female porn star, Juliet Anderson. Since her debut, she’s appeared in over 600 adult films, and now directs and stars in her own line of sex instruction videos. She’s been a strong pro-advocate of the adult entertainment industry for almost thirty years, and she vehemently speaks out against the use of illegal drugs in the adult film business. As well, Ms. Hartley is a registered nurse, and graduated magna cum laude. She was also the first adult film star to cross over into mainstream acting, landing a role in Boogie Nights, and appearing in a Canadian film called Bubbles Galore.

Nina has rebutted antipornography feminists for close to two decades. Instead of telling women what kind of sexuality is ‘right’ for them, Nina takes an educational approach that is open and positive. Her instructional videos take an enthusiastic and all inclusive look at sex. To me, and for me, hers is an ideal that empowers women sexually. It doesn’t inhibit them or tell them sex can only be one way. It encourages exploration, education, and respect for the female.

Today, thanks to direct-to-video proliferation, the Internet, and women like Nina Hartley, the adult film industry doesn’t have nearly as harsh a social stigma as it once did. At the end of the 90s, adult film sales and rentals comprised about one-third of video revenue, and those numbers continue to grow. And as more women watch porn, and more women take on active, powerful roles in the industry, the face of adult entertainment continues to morph.

The key to demystifying the industry is not to demonize it, but rather for women to make it their own, just as Ms. Hartley and many other women have done. For a great summation of the sex-positive feminist, please read this article “Feminist for Porn” by Nina Hartley:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/02/02/feminists-for-porn/

Links to quotes and other articles referenced:

Nina Hartley’s Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Hartley

Nina’s website (NWS!): http://www.nina.com/ninahartleybio.php

Globe and Mail – The thinking woman’s porn star speaks out:

http://www.walnet.org/csis/news/toronto_99/gandm-990424.html

***

L. Bohmer was the pen name under which Louise Bohmer once wrote erotic fiction. Today, she writes erotic fiction under other pen names, Isabel Dyakov being one.

She lives in New Brunswick, Canada, with a tattooed giant and assorted fur children. To learn more about Louise and her alter egos, visit: www.louisebohmer.com

Her erotic romance collection, Passion Plays, will be released February 14. A free teaser ebook will be released January 15, and both will be available on Kindle and Smashwords. To keep up with release news for the collection, bookmark: http://www.louisebohmer.com/site/passion-plays/

Just for the record, Louise was kind enough to ask me to write the intro for that upcoming teaser. And, I mean, check the cover:

Yeeeeeah. You know you want some porn.

(It’s better than porn, though. It’s erotica. Maybe that’d make for a good post, too…)

When I was an undergrad and did that four month study abroad thing in Kathmandu, we had to get up every weekday morning at seven a.m. and meditate. Now, they don’t just tell you to go and meditate — this shit is guided by people who have some kind of training (which sounds a bit wild, but seriously, it fucks with your head). And, in our cases, people who gave you a grade for turning up. We also had weekly meditation courses in which we talked about the method we were using. We did samata, for anyone to whom it matters — which is the usual starting point before you get into the deeper stuff. There are lots of ways to do it, but it’s the kind where you’re supposed to be perpetually mindful and aware, training yourself to be in the moment. There are lots of different practices and ways of doing it, but that’s the basic idea behind them all.

That sounds simple, but anyone who’s ever tried it knows it’s incredibly fucking hard to keep your mind from wandering while at it, and that’s the whole point. You pretty much have to retrain your brain from scratch. It can be unbearably frustrating to sit there at seven a.m., your brain all prepped from recitation of the Heart Sutra, your back straight, your stomach empty, ready to go when they start burning the incense and ring the little bell.

And you start writing a short story in your head instead of sticking to it.

While this explains why Kathmandu was where I got back into writing after a two year hiatus so I could drink my way through my first few years of undergrad, that’s not the point. The point is that I am temperamental and didn’t take well to the constant — like 100 times in a half hour session — failure of having to remind myself to stop daydreaming. I would get annoyed and ragey and be sitting there on my cushion trying to keep my hands from curling into fists. Now, the moments where it worked, where I was truly just aware of myself and my surroundings, were totally worth it. Which is why I never gave up and in to the daydreaming — as much as daydreaming is my favorite activity ever.

But god, so anger-making. And there’s an urge to berate yourself when you have those days when you can’t get it right, especially for someone with an ugly temper like mine. But the meditation courses prepared us for that eventuality (told you they were useful!). The trick they taught us was to very, very gently cut off any daydreams or trains of thought during meditation with the word: “Thinking”. That’s it. You just remind yourself, “That was a thought, it should stop.” Not, “You fucking idiot, can’t you do anything right?! Stop fucking thinking goddammit! How hard is it to sit here on your ass for a half hour and not be a complete loser?!”

Obviously meditation isn’t just a Buddhist thing or whatever; Buddhists don’t care if you’re Buddhist or not, they’ll still teach you this stuff if you want it. They’re cool that way. But there’s a general emphasis on gentleness in Buddhism that’s extremely appealing. Thing is, you also have to apply it to yourself. And that’s what I remember one instructor in particular saying to us over and over again: “Be gentle with yourself.”

It’s not an easy thing for some. By which I mean me. I frazzled the fuck out of myself several times this year. Partly that’s because when I want things, I can’t be easy unless I’m working toward them. But also it’s because of the stuff I said in that recent Chaos post, about how so much of what happened, particularly in the last half of the year, was so very, very new. And a lot of it was sudden, too. I fucked up a lot of things, I redid a lot of things, I learned several new ways to operate — ways that will take a lot of training and practice to get to the point where they’re natural and non-stressful to me.

Hell, after four months in KTM, I didn’t even hate myself while meditating. If I can do that, I can do anything, I figure. That shit was for real. Ha!

But my resolution is that I’m going to be gentle with myself, this year. This blog doesn’t really reflect the amount of browbeating I do to myself accurately — I try and keep it on the DL until it’s over, then I come here and spit up the fully digested, vaguely more neatly packaged version. But even so, I guess it’s pretty obvious that even when things are in the überawesome zone, I’m kind of a dick to myself. And dude, I just added up all the words I wrote (and didn’t end up deleting — there were lots of those) into novels/novellas this year, and it came to 317,000. I don’t know how it compares to other years, but considering the other crap that went on, fuck it. I’m okay with saying I can be a little nicer, at this point.

So there it is. Let’s see how it holds up.

How ’bout you? Got anything good?

I don’t think writers are social animals.

Earlier today, I was thinking, “God, why am I so worn out?”

It’s a fair question. I’ve done… well, not that much, this week. I kept up with emails — after the weekend, anyhow, which was understandably commandeered for holiday festivities. (An atheist and a Hindu walk into a bar on Christmas Eve…) I’ve even got some work done, stuff I needed to finish, adminny things, promoy things, etc. etc.

And yet, I keep thinking I’m tired. Then I realize: “Oh right. People.”

The holidays are a time to engage with our fellow, um, humans, right? We had most of the weekend to ourselves, but Monday we went out for dinner with our fantastic neighbors (genuinely — they know all the best restaurants and are awesome folks), tonight we’re going to dinner at a friend’s house because his parents are visiting (and are from Chennai, therefore they want to cook for my husband — it’s a thing), and this weekend my parents are coming for our usual New Years Blowout Dinner Event. (tm?)

I’m already like, “I WILL NOT SPEAK TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING FOR TWO WEEKS AFTER NEW YEARS.” Also, I keep thinking, “I will write and write and write and write and HIDE.”

These are all people whose company I enjoy. Like, genuinely, I like them, I look forward to spending time with them. I look forward to doing things that will make them happy — good dinners, nice cigars, bottles of wine, gift exchanges, catching up.

And yet, I know I will be tired after the fact. I know I will want to hide under a rock. This is certain. I understand that some human beings do not get this tired effect. In fact, they seem to be recharged by this whole human interaction thing.

But I want to know, my writer friends: do YOU feel recharged or worn down in such circumstances? I feel as if writers either prefer our own heads, don’t have the energy to go around, or simply don’t give a shit in some cases. (Not mine! I complain about humanity, but I do love a pretty long list of people, I admit.) Is this some horrible stereotype without cause? Or is it one that arises from some sort of reality? Is there some causal relationship here?

The holidays seem like the most obvious time to ask these questions, since we can’t avoid interaction just now. So what do you think?

Coming up next:  a bold new years resolution!

And by bold, I mean I’m actually making one. Dun dun dun!

So, looking back, I’ve pretty much spent the entirety of 2011 thinking, “Right, things will calm down next month.” No, I’m not trying to say I wasted time actually repeating that thought, I just mean that I had this attitude, and then when time slipped away, I was all “OMG however did that happen?!” Which sounds ironic, but no, sincerely, I was confused.

Incredibly daft of me, in retrospect. For one, this is the first year I ever had a novel hit the shelves, virtual or otherwise. Scripped has been an amazing process, and I’m kind of shocked to find that I still love it, after all that time with it… but I do. That’s pretty rad.

I invented Katey Hawthorne, who has officially signed three contracts this calendar year — two of which already dropped. (More on that later!)

KV Taylor signed another one, too. THE ONE. Also, that whole Scripped thing. Jaysus!

In other words, shit just got real. Of course I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. That’s awesome — it’s beyond awesome and into the überawesome zone. Officially. And me, sitting over here for years and years just pecking away — hell, I had no idea what that would entail, from a legwork perspective. What it’d be like to produce, edit, promote, and flog the hell out of my own books. Let alone that many. At once. It was kind of like I’d been paddling around happily and suddenly realized there were sharks under me. Like, lots of ‘em. And they kind of wanted to be my friends, but only if I did things right. Things I had never even known existed.

Shit got real! (Yay for editors who rock!)

I am not pressed for time. I am just trying to learn things all at once, which takes a little more brainpower, is all. Still, if I have a resolution, it’s going to be to stop standing here like a dumbass going, “Oh god, where did the time go…?”

It went into the  überawesome zone. Where happy time always goes.

Two fun things worth checking out that happened at the same time and forced me to finally realize this:

1. New edition of The Red Penny Papers. It is shiny. Very, very shiny. Also, free.

2. New romance novel incoming. Yeah, I know, I didn’t put any release info — actually I didn’t even list the publisher, but there are sensitive timing issues at hand, here. Contract is sent and safe and all.

Oh, also, Sherlock Holmes is worth the money and all, but not as good as the first one. Still, fun.

Yes, it is a thing, and though it’s been a long time since I had any news about it (uh, I wrote a lot of books this year, as it turns out…), I have some now. My epic fantasy-style adventure/coming of age/whatever “The Silver Quarter” is going to be in the March issue of one of my longtime favorite mags: Niteblade. I’m really looking forward to working with the wonderful Rhonda Parrish on it.

“The Silver Quarter” takes place in the same world as a big long epic fantasy novel I have in the first draft stages. I think I wrote it last year, so maybe some of y’all remember me posting WiP Wednesday stuff about it or ranting about drawing maps– it’s called Plaguebringer. My story in Beauty Has Her Way, “The Runner”, takes place there too. They’re both backstories of main characters from Plaguebringer. “The Runner” is about Cami and her escape from her home clan, and a country run by swampy drug lords. (She grows up to be an awesome city planner and civil engineer in Plaguebringer. I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley, either, just for the record.)

“The Silver Quarter” is about Elanzah, a once-upon-a-time city street rat and tavern boy, and his best friend Nieva, a clever-but-clueless country girl being held captive by some, um, unsavory types. It’s how they met at the age of 15. And saved each other.

From what? Well, yeah. The story deals with some pretty intense shit, to be honest. We’re talking a couple of kids who are being used and exploited by every single grown up around them, effectively. But take heart: In Plaguebringer, Elan ends up a badass swordmaster, and Nieva a space-cadet of a brilliant academic. So you know it can’t have ended too badly for them when they were little scrappers, after all.

In other news, I’ve been really quiet lately because:

1. I’ve been finalizing edits on the winter issue of RPP, which is going to be amazing, of course!

and

2. That book I started writing RIGHT after Nano? Yeah, it’s called Reentry Burn, and is 65k right now. Almost done. Trying to finish banging it out today, so it’ll leave me alone for a few. It would’ve been done sooner, but I read a bunch of books about “How to Survive in Prison” and “How to Make it Through Your Parole Without Being Thrown Back In”, and so spent a few days in a downward spiral of despair at how fucked up society is. (Malory the MC = ex-offender. And trying to stay that way.) Good god.

Of course, thinking about Cami, Nieva, and Elanzah, I now want to go back to Plaguebringer and edit it. But that mother is about 180k, and needs to be about 120, and frankly, I think I want a few days of quiet…

But I always say that, don’t I?

It’s true, you know.

I keep telling myself I’ll get a grip soon. I’ll set goals and make them! I can make goals! I’ll say I’ll do things and do them! It’s what grown-ups, what professionals do! Exclamation points!11!1!one!!

And I do that, sometimes. I do it with things I promised other people. These are the things that keep me sane — this is why RPP had to happen from a personal standpoint. Apart from that thing where I just like collecting and arranging pretty things. It contains my chaos. I know I need help with this, and I know that left to my own devices, I will let my own brain eat me. I have done it, and it was not pretty. I’ll spare you that story — the point is that I need editing projects, I need my magazine, I need to answer to someone outside my head.

But there’s this huuuuuuge fuckin divide between that and Everything Else. So I say I’ll write two books, two books I really want out of my head.

Then a book drops.

Then another.

Then Thanksgiving.

And I’m home now, fat and happy, editing just on schedule, lalalala happy as can be.

And I start talking about comics. I get distracted by superpowers. I think of this short story I told Raven the Editrix I’d do post-Riot Boy, ala the Equilibrium shorts. (Second one will come around early Dec! It’s in edits now — Raven is awesome, it’s true.) And I think, ooooh I know what I want to do there. I pick it up and read over what I have, and the MC just starts flowing through my fingers. I’ve caught the groove.

I have to go to the store. We never have food in the house after a long weekend away. I make myself leave, I put the Manics on my iPhone and run errands listening. I stop for a cigarette I shouldn’t have, because technically I quit smoking six years ago, but there’s something about today that makes me feel utterly stupid. A song comes on. I stop and listen and stand there in the parking lot like a dumbfuck smoking.

And I’m thinking of my short story MC. His name’s Malory, and he’s a complete fuckup, as anyone who’s read Riot Boy will know. Raven loved him, so I promised her the story, since I had this whole idea for him after the fact. I’m thinking of him and the Manics are shouting about him — even if they don’t know it. And I get a nicotine buzz and somehow everything mixes up into a much, much longer story than I meant to tell. And I realize I have to write a whole book.

He’s loud, he’s so fucking loud I can’t stop myself thinking about it while I’m shopping. I lose my grocery list somewhere, I don’t know where, on one of the other errands. I’m throwing shit in the basket and not paying attention much except I know we need beer and I want a Red Bull because now is a bad time to be tired and I really, really am. No idea what else I bought, because he’s so. fucking. loud.

And I get home and put all the shit away and it’s already dark outside. So I sit down and I know it’s too easy to write Malory for me not to write him all fucking night long. Even though I could actually finish the nano book in the next two days and make it — I won’t. Because I just got owned.

Again. Second time in a week.

This is not the behavior of a professional, my friends. Writers can write on call, everyone says so, and everyone would know better than me. I mean, I can. I have, and to order, at that. I just don’t. I have no fucking self control unless I want it, and I don’t want it tonight.

Chaos is too much fun.

I hereby pardon myself for the as-yet-uncommitted crime of doing jack shit for the rest of this week. That’s right, it is that (in)famous American holiday, Thanksgiving. I plan to eat, drink, and watch football unabashedly.

Also, bring shame upon my family.

It’s true. I once had another veggie friend come over for Thanksgiving dinner. She brought Tofurkey and we made it. It was pretty terrible — and I love tofu. As in, sometimes I want a midnight snack and I go dig out some baked tofu in weird flavors, pop it out of the package and onto a plate, and… eat it just like that. Thankfully since I’ve been torturing my family in this manner since I was 15, they’re really good at making sure the sides are edible for me.

My family is very kind. Yes. Mostly because I think they don’t want to hear about my upset stomach all day, but still. I hope your family is as kind, if you’re dealing with Thanksgiving this week. And if not, well, I still hope they’re that kind, even though they’re not bound by random social custom.

I will still be very reachable by email if anyone needs me, but all other forms of communication are pretty much cut off til after the weekend. Much love!

So this contest is now over! There was quite an extensive list of people who helped me out with RTs, blog posts, all manner of excellent things, but the random.org god chose Corinne Duyvis and Orrin Grey. Yay!

I’ve tweeted ‘em, but I’ll send email soon, then we’ll get Mark from Morrigan to hook y’all up with the book of your choice. Thanks to everyone who tweeted during Scripped‘s first few days of life! (Also, thanks to Mark for the help and stuff with the prizes. <3)

But now, of course, I’m being forced back into working. James has waited this long, and will wait no longer. Well, no, actually, it isn’t James I’m having trouble with. He’s a very sweet boy, actually, and far more patient than most of my characters. The one I have trouble with is Aldo, who is also very sweet when it suits him, but has flashes of uncontrollable stabbiness. That’s why one shouldn’t carry characters around with them for — what is this now? I met him in 1993, so…

Hm. I might be getting old.

He bullied me into going back to work last night, and I guess that’s where today is. Hope everyone had a lovely weekend.

Please take a moment to remember.