Vixenwriter

My husband subscribes to Men’s Health Magazine. Quite frequently they have funny content that I rip out to send to someone or to refer to later (oh and I pull out the ads a lot to put in my hero material folder but that’s another post). There’s something so fascinating with reading how men view women.

So here is one of my favorites from this month - Five Things You Should Never Say To A Woman:

Thing One: RELAX

Oh how I hate this word! I must say up front that my husband knows better than to ever utter it to me but I’ve noticed over my life that when men say it to us, it’s always when they’re trying to get us past something unpleasant. “Relax, it’s just a phone number in my back pocket, it’s meaningless!” “Relax, she’s just a friend!” or this one, just for Megan, “relax, you’ll like it in a minute.”

Thing Two: I Love You (during a fight)

I have a theory about this. In my opinion, men who use this are easily distracted themselves and so they figure we are too. But we’re only easily distracted by pretty shoes and bags and certainly not during a fight.

Thing Three: It’s Up to You (otherwise known as whatever you want to do/eat/wear is fine with me)

I wouldn’t be asking you if I wanted you to to just throw it back on me. You know what “it’s up to you” says to me? I’m too lazy to decide so you do it and I’ll get to complain later about it because I take no responsibility for it. We hate that.

Thing Four: You Knew I Was This Way When You Married Me (started going out with me, etc)

Oh, why should I have to be responsible for my repeated bad behavior when I was a total tool when you met met? Eye roll. Yeah, I knew you left beard hairs in the sink, but I love you anyway. Doesn’t mean I don’t want you to knock it off.

Thing Five: Nothing

Don’t do this. There’s nothing more annoying than a man who stands there silent during a fight. When you don’t talk to us, refuse to give us feedback at all, it feels totally disrespectful.

I told folks at my loop that I’d be doing random contests drawing names from people who commented here and over there.

The first winner of my bloggy type contest, drawn randomly is: Jane (ozbear)

Jane, you’ve won a pretty little purse atomizer for whatever perfume or essential oil you’d like and it comes in a black velvet pouch. Email me your mailing address and I’ll get it on the way to you! Laurendane @ laurendane . com (no spaces)

Congratulations and I’ll be doing another contest soon!

Writing sex often brings you under the fire of everyone. Like this tight assed person/s who complained to Ebay to have EC books removed. But also, sometimes people I considered allies before have been upset with me for writing sex and romance. I’ve been accused of selling out for writing romance and I’ve been accused of ruining romance for writing sex into it.

Here’s the thing - I write what I write. I don’t have some grand plan (although I wish I did! How cool would it be to have some sort of evil plan hatched? I wish I had time to hatch evil plans but I have to fold laundry instead. Perhaps instead of plotting books in my head, I should plot evil plans. I have to work on the hand rubbing and maniacal laughter). I just have these people in my head and they demand to be written about and they all like to have sex.

Moreover, I am at a loss to understand how writing women who enjoy sex and own their sexuality is bad from any perspective. Sexually empowered women are strong women. Our sexuality is just another part of our personalities but for so long, women have been taught and expected to hold that back, to pretend that we don’t think about sex as often as men. Okay, so we don’t, who can? Men think about sex every three seconds. I don’t even think about chocolate every three seconds. But the point is, owning your sexuality is exciting and freeing and important.

The way I see it, what I write is important and empowering not because it’s earth shattering and of nobel prize winning weight, but because it takes the personal and makes it political (ooh, I still have those chops!). It’s subversive to a certain extent to write as normal, something which has been treated as abnormal. Women aren’t supposed to like sex for any reason other than to please their partners. Women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex for sex sake! Those women are the other, culturally, those women who enjoy sex and treat it like a delicious part of their lives that they are worthy of have been labeled “slut” or “whore.” And it’s a supreme act of self loathing on the part of women to bandy about those terms as casually as we do.

So, despite those who label what I write porn and those on the other side who sneer at any romance in their erotica I have to shrug and tell you quite kindly, to mind your own business and worry about what you do and say instead of being so all fired obsessed with what everyone else does and says.

New Look. New Title. YAY!

So I finally got a template to work. I like this one a lot. I’ve been meaning to change the title of this blog for some time now to join it with my newsletter so now I can.

More later, there’s Pokemon action going on in the other room that I need to keep an eye on.

I absolutely hate it when I’m not good at something. It drives me insane. Keeps me awake at night. I’ve accepted that I won’t ever be a math whiz but this took me over thirty years.

“Lauren, what the hell are you talking about?” you all ask.

Blogger templates! GRRRR! Okay, so I can handle the ones that blogger has, I can jig with them and put up a new background and change the size of the fonts, etc. But I wanted to put up an outside template, a pretty one that I hadn’t seen three hundred times. I found several and I have spent more time than I have trying to get them to work.

I enlisted the help of a friend who is marvelous at such things and she couldn’t get one of them to work because there appeared to be missing code. Okay, so instead of bugging her again, I’ve tried two other templates and each has had problems in different areas.

I WILL NOT LET THIS BEAT ME!! I swear on all that is holy that I will get this to work.

Yep, that’s what I said. Several EC books sold through the Ebay store were removed and the authors told they were banned due to being “misclassified according to their mature audience guidelines”

I don’t know what EC is doing about it. I’ve asked on the author loop where I know several editors are subscribed. They need to be active on this and I suspect they will be given that one of the books pulled was Jaid Black’s. The absolutely wonderful Tawny Taylor’s, Private Games was also pulled from sale. However, should you all want to strike a blow for freedom of expression AND buy a good book, you can still order it in paper via email at orders@ellorascave.com.

The ebay store is still up. My book is still there but IMO, they have to push this hard and immediately. In the first place, erotica is sold at ebay not in the adult section but in the literature section. In the second place, if they’ll suspend sales and refuse to let some books be listed at EC’s store based on customer complaints, this leaves us all open to having our books pulled and we know how active the right is on those kinds of things. Lastly, the listing says the book is rated “erotic” and if you don’t know that a book with three naked people embracing on the cover rated erotic sold from Ellora’s Cave is going to have sex in it, you’re the one who should be banned from using a credit card for heaven’s sake.

Man did it rain here last night! The kids were soaked to the skin when they got home but still had a great time as only kids can, LOL.

I spent yesterday hanging out with my two partners in crime: Anya Bast and Megan Hart at our Maverick Author loop and we had a great time. The excerpts flew hot and heavy and I was reminded what amazing authors both Anya and Megan are.

After everyone got cleaned up, dry and dressed for bed, I snuggled in myself and picked up the glorious television crack pipe that is Laguna Beach. Oh, do I love this show. I snicker more in that half an hour than I do the whole day. It’s gloriously shallow and hilarious without meaning to be, which makes it even better. Perhaps I’ll include snarky recaps of LB to this blog, just for fun.