We’re not done discussing writer/reader relationships, I don’t think, but for today there’s some other stuff to talk about, including something I’m really, really excited about.

First, a couple of links. My pal Mario Acevedo, he of the fun books and incredibly dirty mouth, is doing a contest and chat over at Bitten by Books today, so head on over and enter to win some of his awesome work. And, you know, to taunt him and stuff.

Second, I’m not sure how many of you are aware of This Week’s Amazon Controversy. In a nutshell, this weekend Amazon listed a bunch of very expensive graphic novels at bargain basement prices. The pricing info was picked up by Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool–he’s @BleedingCool on Twitter as well, and you should follow him, especially if you’re the sort of geek who reads comics or has any interest in comics or movies or whatever, or who, oh, dreams about Batman, or who downloaded “Voodoo Child” by the Rogue Traders and plays it in her car and then pretends that she is married to The Master, and then we make the Doctor my sex slave…oh, um, I mean, if you were that sort of geek, which of course I am not. Ha, ha! No, not me! Um. Anyway, Bleeding Cool is a great site.

So Rich picked up the story, and lots of people–including the hubs–flocked to Amazon to order books. (In fact, if you checked the top Amazon sellers on Sunday morning they were all hardcover graphic novels, which was quite cool). Then Amazon started processing some orders, and sending out emails saying that if you ordered more than one copy of a book your duplicate orders were canceled, but they would otherwise honor the price at which you purchased the books. Which is great, right? Except that now they’re just canceling people’s orders altogether, without notifying them, or with a rather short email that basically says, “Yeah, too bad.” So some people got their books at the advertised price, but most are being told Tough Luck. Rich discusses the emails and the reactions of disappointed readers here.

BUT. Here’s the big news, which I really hope you guys will be excited about. I’m sure many of you know who James D. Macdonald is, and how much he’s done for writers everywhere. And, if you haven’t read any of his books you totally need to.

Anyway. Jim periodically looks into self-publishing methods, to help out writers who choose to go that route for whatever reason. A few weeks ago he asked if anyone had anything they wanted made into a book, and, since I’d been planning/attempting for ages to put the Strumpet series together and set it up as a book, I offered it to him. I wrote a new little intro, and he wrote some back-cover copy for me, and there you go.

Long(ish) story short, the Strumpet series is now available on Lulu as a paperback (mmp size) and as an ebook!

So for all of you who’ve asked me to do this, there you go. Have fun!

(Note: Yes, the series is still available on the blog here, and will continue to be. You do not need to buy the ebook or paperback to still access the series; I wrote it as a free blog series and it will remain so. This is just for those of you who wanted it to download all as one document for easy navigation, or so you don’t have to keep visiting my site to read it, or who like having a paperback, or whatever. Also, no, it is not available on Amazon or as a Kindle download; in the interests of keeping costs down we opted not to buy an ISBN, which means it won’t be listed in those places.)

So that’s it for today. We’re rather content-light, but given how Very Serious we were last week, and given how excited I am to finally have the Strumpet series out there in book form (It’s Alf! He’s back. In pog form), and given that I’m up to my knees in a new project…well. We’ll see how it goes the rest of the week.

First, take Mark Henry. Please! Ba-dum-bum. No, seriously, take him. Or rather, take his book. Well, don’t take it, as in steal it, you understand. Take it as in to-the-register. Mark’s awesome, amazing first book in his completely hilarious Amanda Feral series–called HAPPY HOUR OF THE DAMNED–has been re-released in mass market paperback today, and you need to get that bitch on your shelf, foreals. It’s a mass market paperback! What could be better? Only $7, and that perfect mmp size. (I love mass market paperbacks. They’re my faaavorite.)

See, here’s the thing. The Amanda Feral books are so funny and awesome. They’re not strictly urban fantasy. They’re like Christopher Moore mixed with Anna Wintour, if Anna Wintour lived on Soylent Green. (Which, who knows? I’m not saying she does or doesn’t. Hey, it’s not for me to judge, right?) But for some reason, some reason I cannot fathom, the books didn’t quite catch on the way they should have, the way those of us who’ve read them thought they absolutely should. I know most of you who read here know Mark, and how awesome he is. I know most of you probably read my initial review of this book on its trade paperback release, in which I confessed the deep jealousy the book inspired in me because I could never in a million years be that funny and original.

The point is, the books are awesome. And WE NEED THEM. We need books like this, so sharp and different. Books that cast such a clear and sarcastic light on our world. We need this kind of mean-spirited but good-hearted fun. But we might not get more, if this mmp re-release doesn’t sell well. (Mark explains it here.)

So go and get it. Head for your local bookstore. Or get it online, even. Mark explains here, with links, how you can even get your copy personalized, by him.

Now. I happen to have in my possession cover flats for DEMON POSSESSED and UNHOLY MAGIC, the second Downside book. (No, I don’t have any for UNHOLY GHOSTS.) The UNHOLY MAGIC flats have the book’s blurb on them. I have not released the blurb yet, and didn’t plan to for several months, because…well, because I think it’s more fun that way. BUT. If you buy the mmp of HAPPY HOUR between today and…hmm…let’s say Feb. 16th (which gives you two weeks), and let me know you’ve bought it (either through commenting here or emailing me), I will enter you in a drawing to win both cover flats (which I will sign, if you like). In fact, I may very well pick more than one winner.

Okay? So get to buying!! Amanda feral needs you, and not just for dinner.

Okay. Other books you can put on your list. First is ACCIDENTALLY DEMONIC by Dakota Cassidy, who is awesome and funny and warm and smart and cruel, in the way only a former beauty queen can be. Although you probably don’t need me to tell you that, since everyone knows and loves Dakota and her books.

Last, and certainly not least, is SHADOW BLADE by Seressia Glass. Okay, here’s the thing. I love this book for a number of reasons, mostly just because it’s awesome. I’ve always thought Seressia was a great writer and a very cool girl. And really, that’s why you need to buy the book. I’m only on page 85 so far and had to force myself to put it down in order to write this post.

But there is one other reason as well. The main character, Kira Solomon, is a beautiful, strong, funny, smart African-American woman (as is Seressia herself). I’m not saying buy the book because it has black characters or was written by a black author. But I am saying, I’d love to see more racial and ethnic diversity in the UF world, and publishers will produce what readers buy and support. So show them that we’ll all buy and read and love books with MCs of color; books with those characters on the cover, too. Seriously, this book is so good. Really cool. Go get it.

(Oh, and while you’re at it, should any of you feel the need to pre-order any of MY books, that would of course be fine too. Just in case you thought I might not want you to or anything like that. It’s okay with me, I swear.)

And now, something that I am betting money Mark henry will figure out how to fit into a book. An inventor has created the world’s first talking sex robot. And to me, at least, it looks a little bit like Catherine Tate. Apparently it has a kind of voice-recognition software that is like artificial intelligence, it not only makes orgasmic sounds but vibrates to “simulate” orgasm, and it will “respond” when you speak. My guess is the responses will be things like:

“You’re so smart!”
“You’re so funny!”
“Won’t you please have sex with me now? I’m tired of talking.”
“You’re my hero.”
“Wow, how is it that you’re always right?”
“You’re amazing!”
“Your cock is so big it scares me!”

…but those are just my guesses. Anyway, it’s seven grand, which it seems to me for that price you could pay a hooker to come by a couple of times a week to laugh at your jokes and fake an orgasm, but, again, who am I to judge, right?

And I’m going to stop talking now, because it’s far more important that you all run out to the bookstore or get to online orderin’. Go do that, and remember, I’m giving away signed cover flats!!

The C Word

It’s a perfect word.

It’s evocative. It’s short. Its roots go back over 15,000 years. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Casanova were among its most famous literary champions.

And yet, cunt still gets the short end of the stick. So to speak.

In erotic romance, “cunt” is generally considered the division between sensual and erotic. Do you have forty sex scenes in your 25,000 word story? Do your characters say “fuck” and watch each other masturbate, do they use vibrators and have so much oral sex their jaws lock up? Great. That sounds sensual to me.

But do you have only three sex scenes and use the word “cunt” to describe your heroine’s love canal? Yes? Then you’re writing erotica, my friend.

Why is that? Why is it that one small word has the power to change sexy to erotic, to change arousing to offensive? And is it that offensive, really?

Most women seem to think so. Studies have shown that women find “cunt” to be the single most offensive word in the English language. (Seriously.) It’s forbidden. It’s absolutely taboo.

But what is forbidden is often what is most erotic, as well.

I never used to write it. I didn’t like to read it. Until I found a few erotic romances that used it, to great effect. My dislike of the word changed to–not indifference, because I don’t feel a word like cunt can ever inspire indifference–but more like approval. The word was forbidden. The word was direct. The word was a little shocking.

In short, the word was pretty hot.

Remember that episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte is trying to woo that painter to her gallery? It’s an old man, and he proudly informs her that he’s been doing a series of paintings of cunts. Charlotte is, of course, stunned by this. He asks her to sit for him, and you can see she’s about to refuse when the old man’s cute-little-old-lady wife enters the studio. She’s holding a tray of lemonade and says sweetly, “I bet you have a beautiful cunt, dear.”

Think about that for a minute. “A beautiful cunt.” Think how you might feel if someone said that to you, in an obviously complimentary and admiring tone. Or a deep, dangerous, sexy one. Maybe if we think of cunt as a strong word, an arousing word, a descriptive word, instead of a nasty one, we can replace it in our vocabulary and our books and hold our heads high. Just hearing the phrase “beautiful cunt” made a difference to me, since we so often associate the word with less pleasant adjectives. But if we think of the word—and the objects—as beautiful…as something that deserves its own special, grown-up word…

That’s what cunt used to be. Chaucer used it in The Canterbury Tales, spelling it “queynte”. According to Charles Panati’s Sexy Origins and Intimate Things, “Chaucer believed the word was derived from ‘quaint’, which meant ‘a many-layered, in-folded mystery’.” Now really, what better way is there to describe a woman’s sexual organs than “a many-layered, in-folded mystery”? Can you think of another description as poetic, as accurate and lovely?

Of course, pre-Chaucer, cunt was a name. There are many families on the rolls in thirteenth-century England named “Cuntles” or “Clawcunte”, or many variations thereof. There were “Gropecunte Street”s or “Cunte Lane”s in medieval England as well. Clearly, the word’s meaning was fixed even over 700 years ago—it first appears in written record in 1066, but seems to have had a different meaning then, although “cunt” is derived from early language, when “kuni” or words like it were used simply to mean “wife” or “woman”.

Which is all very interesting, except it doesn’t mean much to us or help us. Women don’t want to see cunt. There’s an implication that if they do, they’re the type of woman who likes really graphic, nasty sex—the hardcore erotic stuff—instead of the lighter, sweeter, gentle-spanking kind of sex. (Which I think are the best kind of women, but hey.)

What’s a writer to do?

See, the problem is, “cunt” works so well. As I said above, it is evocative. It does give the reader a distinct message: this is going to be pretty graphic. This will be pretty hot. Isn’t choosing words to set a mood part of what we do as writers?

I decided to try using cunt. I wanted to see what t felt like to actually write it, to actually put that forbidden word on paper. Could I still turn people on when I threw a cunt bomb into my work? Could I still write scenes people would enjoy, even if a cunt bobbed up at them from the page?

To my surprise, it worked. And it wasn’t too bad. It was actually pretty sexy. And so exact! We’re always looking for words to describe or identify female body parts. Aren’t you tired of writing about slick folds or swollen entrances? Or channels, or tunnels, or whatever? Isn’t it hard to use “pussy” to describe both the vagina and the vulva (a word I don’t like, btw)?

This is where cunt fits in. I can talk about pussies and cunts as two separate (but obviously closely related) entities, and I can describe a vagina without adjectives but with a word that everyone can visualize. The many-layered, in-folded mystery of a woman.

I don’t use the word much; overuse deadens the impact and feels overdone, just as with any other word. But of late I’ve been abstaining, and I have missed it. All those folds and entrances just can’t compensate for the brevity and clarity of cunt.

I think it’s time we take “cunt” back. It’s time we allow ourselves to think of our sexual selves, our sexual parts, as deserving of an adult word (rather than the kittenish—and kind of childish—“pussy”). As able to see that some words have more than one meaning, and there’s nothing shameful in reclaiming such a rich history? There’s nothing shameful in possessing something as strong and powerful as a cunt, in saying that yes, we have this incredible body part, and it’s capable of amazing things, and we’re going to use a real, strong, mature, and age-old word to refer to it?

Say it loud! I have a cunt and I’m proud.

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