The Voices of Others: Genders, Sexualities and Beyond

Nikos Kessanlis, The Crowd, 1965 There are some very divergent schools of thought when it comes to the subject of writing in a gender or a sexual orientation other than your own.  Let me paint out the arguments: 1) Don’t do it. Follow the old advice: “write what you know”. 2) Heck, you’re a writer. Continue Reading

Are we Dead Yet?

I’ve been fortunate to have played host on my blog to a very interesting discussion on the rise in popularity of ‘cipher’ characters – protagonists who are blank slates. The most topical one at the moment is Anastasia – the female main character in Fifty Shades of Grey. She is, by no means, the only Continue Reading

Stepping Outside Yourself

A couple of weeks ago, Jean Roberta wrote a marvelous post on what it’s like to sit on the other side of the desk and act as editor. It got me thinking about some specific aspects of how I teach writing in class, and the flaws I see on a fairly frequent basis in the Continue Reading

Why Fifty Shades of Grey Matters

Vanessa Redgrave as the masochistic nun in Ken Russell’s The Devils On the social consumption of sin as spectacle & its exploitation in the marketplace I’ve run across a number of erotica writers who’ve said they haven’t and won’t be reading Fifty Shades of Grey.  In all honestly, this blows my mind. You can try Continue Reading

Finishing What You Started

Last month, fate and a friend gave me an ultimatum: finish my novel, Beautiful Losers, or lose the opportunity to see it published by a prestigious press. As much as I say I don’t care about being published, the confrontation was a reality check. Was I going grab opportunity by the balls and get this Continue Reading

Dishing It Out and Sucking It Up: Critique and Reviews

There is a general perception that our genre is an embattled one, unfairly ostracized and intellectually snubbed for the explicitness of what we write and the sexual arousal that our texts seek to invoke in the reader. But it is not entirely fair to lay the cause for all the derision layered upon the genre Continue Reading

Contemporary Fiction Writing in a Cultural Vacuum

As my novel sits with its publisher, being checked and line-edited, several interesting issues have come up, which have brought home exactly how badly fear of lawsuits have eroded our ability to place our fictions within realistic cultural landscapes. My novel is called Beautiful Losers.  This is the title of a number of novels, including Continue Reading

My Proposal: Draft Version

A couple of people asked to see this and, as long as we are all clear that this is very much a work in progress, this is my proposal. I’m also offering it because I found very few PhD (by practice)  proposals online, so I thought it might be useful for someone else embarking on Continue Reading

Video Project: Hysterical Literature

     

Esquire’s Benjamin Alsup Mourns the Dearth of Good Novels with Sex

“But they did it more often, more graphically, more honestly, and altogether differently from most contemporary writers. It shocks in its candor, in its generalized, post-Pill, irresponsible wackness. Them freaks weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty” Alsup’s article bemoaning the lack of well written, honest and unguarded sex in contemporary novels is interesting.  He Continue Reading