Tag Archives: meta-blogging
Shameless promotion: my new book
My new book is (nearly) out! If you like you can pre-order it here. And if you’d like a signed copy there’s a link for that too. I know, exciting! I spent Friday in my publishers’ office signing things, and doing interviews, and being a bit overwhelmed about the whole thing.
I suck at publicity, because I get shy and go ‘oh I wouldn’t want to trouble you’, but this post is here to give a bit of info and to say that if you’re a journalist/writer/blogger and you’d like to talk about my book, or interview me or what have you, that would be amazing. Just get in touch.
For those of you who are just bloody lovely and want to buy it when it’s out, please do subscribe to my blog – I’ll send an email out on 10th March when the book launches officially. You can also win one of 10 signed copies if you subscribe – details, Ts and Cs below.
Guest blog: ‘Quite Delightful’, James Deen and me
Today’s guest blog (which includes discussion of rape and sexual assault), was written after something very odd happened. It happened just before Christmas, and thanks to a combination of anxiety and Christmas stress I wasn’t keen to delve too deeply into it at the time. But New Year is a time for Getting On With Stuff, and what better things to be Getting On With than calling out shitty companies who behave badly?
A company called Quite Delightful (who tweet under @QuiteBriefly on Twitter), got into something of a heated debate in December about James Deen. In case you’re not aware, many women have accused Deen of rape or sexual assault, and Deen has denied the allegations. The statements that Quite Delightful made showed what I think is a pretty callous attitude towards people who have been raped or sexually assaulted.
On a personal level, I obviously disagree with QD. On a boring professional level, I’m pretty surprised that this company was happy to alienate a whole bunch of sex writers, customers, and potential customers – not just dismissing them but tweeting in a way that all their followers could see, thus inviting others to come and tell us just how wrong we were. It bothers me because I have seen the company (which publishes an ‘erotic magazine by and for women’) recommended by a number of people I respect in the sex industry, and I figure there are probably quite a few of them who are unaware of the comments @QuiteBriefly made, because they have since deleted their tweets.
So many thanks to @sophable – a customer of theirs, who has kindly offered to explain why this left a very bad impression.
Two things: Good sex writing and really bad lube
Welcome to what I hope will be a New Project for 2016: two things.
I am powered by a combination of inspiration and rage. Inspiration, where I try to be more like people who are better than me, and rage, where I get fired up about things and people and companies that are appallingly shit.
So… on Monday mornings I’m going to try and highlight one thing that’s awesome and one that’s awful, thus kickstarting the week with a combination of inspiration and rage.
Let’s start with the rage:
Most popular guest blogs of 2015
Naturally when I do ‘top X posts’ roundups, those that get to the top of the list in terms of visits will be the dirtier ones, because dirty stories usually get the most search traffic.
Any post I write which contains the phrase ‘butt plugs’, for instance, is going to do pretty well. So what I’ve done is a top 5 (below) of the most popular guest blogs in terms of visits, and a few extras picked by me purely because I love them. That’s not to say I don’t like the dirty ones, of course. It’s just that, as partners have told me before, life cannot all be about butt plugs. (more…)
Not perfect, but done
When I was young, I used to think about all the things I wanted to be when I grew up. Looking to the future, I’d see myself in lots of different roles. Lawyer (the first, and most intense of my Future Dreams), comedian (very brief desires, always stamped out by the fact that I’m not as funny as I think I am), and often writer (that one’s stuck).
It was – and still is – fun to imagine all the cool things I could do and be if I had the skill, and put in the effort.
But something’s changed since I was younger, and that’s that I think far less about what I could be, or what I want to do, and more on what I want to have done. Looking at writing, I am less likely to imagine myself beavering away at a desk with a typewriter (most dreams of writerhood involve those clackety old typewriters, despite the fact that they’re deeply impractical things), and more likely to imagine myself lying face down in a pile of scribbled-on manuscript, exhaling a sigh of relief and exhaustion.
Less likely to consider what I want to do in future, and more keen to think about what I want written on my gravestone.
“She tried her best” might be a good one. Or right now simply: “Knackered.”