Sherlock and Bulldogs for Big Queer “Boy Month”

Available soon from Go Deeper Press

Folks, we’re getting bone-hard for Sherlock and Watson at Boy Month, with cool Yaoi fan art in video, not to mention hot news about Alison Tyler’s Those Boys and Benji Bright’s Boy Stories. Check it.

Also, don’t lose sight of Lana Fox’s (non-erotic) chart-topping self-help book, written by a butch bulldog, Paws Off My Bone: An Assertiveness Guide for Dogs and Their Humans. It steamrollered into the top 10 on Kindle Self-Esteem charts (free), received 3 5-star reviews within the first week of launching, and got some amazing tweet action from the awesome Emerald, and the wonderful August McGlaughlin, among others. (Click on their names to read their amazing sex-positive blogs!). Keep scrolling for more…

@foxlana @amazon I sincerely found it an extraordinary book. 🙂

— Emerald (@Emerald_theGLD) June 14, 2014

@foxlana @amazon It’s such a lovely book! Congrats! 🙂 #PawsOffMyBone

— August McLaughlin (@AugstMcLaughlin) June 13, 2014

Lastly, check out those dogs at BookBoner.com, where we’re sharing the dog rock version of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”, wondering why “How to Poo on a Date” was written for humans and not dogs, and getting sex-positive about poop management. And when we say dig it, we totally mean it in a dog-positive way.

Finally, if you want to solve problems like Hope Solo, who we’re kind of devastated about at the moment, check Angela’s post here.

Find out more at Go Deeper Press!

Good Porn Comes to Those Who Wait – An Interview with Alison Tyler

Click cover to view on Amazon!

Today, we’re thrilled to interview the famed Alison Tyler at the Go Deeper blog. Alison is the author of Dark Secret Love andThe Delicious Torment (both Cleis Press), not to mention dozens of other books—check out her website to find out more. In fact, her novelette, Those Girls, will be FREE next weekend on Amazon (5/9 to 5/11), so don’t miss the promo! We’re also excited about Alison’s Those Boys, which will be the next in the series. We’ll let you know, in due course, when Those Boys will be released, but for now, stay tuned for a hot sneak preview below.

1. We can sense your enjoyment in Those Girls. What did you particularly enjoy while you were writing the novelette? 

I started Those Girls as a tale of vengeance. You’ve heard me say this before, but Vanessa was based on a woman I know—and don’t particularly like. I wanted to create a painful situation for her—but me being me, I wanted that situation to bring her unbelievable pleasure. Vanessa came first. Sandy followed. And I fell in love hard with Sandy.

3. Can you give us a sneaky peek into what Those Boys is about?

Vanessa and Sandy have created a solid, BDSM-filled life. They are about to be joined by Rem, a beautiful boy who is not entirely sure what he wants.

I wondered whether he could sense the sort of life that Vanessa and I shared together. In one corner was her desk, with a laptop, notebooks, pens. And next to the desk was a heavy-duty ring. Sometimes I chained her to her desk—because I loved turning that fabrication you hear so many writers say “I was chained to my desk all weekend”—into a cold, hard reality.

Did he look through the doorway into the kitchen and see the sterling bowl on the floor? Did he have an instant vision of Vanessa, naked, drinking anything I poured for her? Water. Wine. Coffee cooled with pure cream. Could he imagine her with her hair up in a high knot on the top of her head, dipping down to lap from her bowl—her special bowl? Could he pretend for just one second that he might have a bowl at her side?

That thought gave me a hard-on again, and I went to the bathroom to take a piss and get myself under control. It wouldn’t do me any good to be too riled up. I splashed cold water on my face, pat myself dry, took a good long look at my own reflection. No, I’m not a pretty boy like Rem. Not by a long shot. Not like I ever was. I’m hardened. I’m shopworn. I’ve lived the years and have the lines around my eyes that I wear like a testament.

4. Is Sandy’s sexual connection with Rem in Those Boys different to his connection with Vanessa in Those Girls?

Bringing Rem into the picture simply allows me to show Sandy with a man. Sandy’s ability is to see what his lovers want. He has a special trait. A sixth sex sense. He knows what Rem truly desires, and he gives this to him in full:

I pride myself on my ability to read people’s desires. To see something in a person—even a complete stranger—and wrap my fist around that shining need. So where was he? We couldn’t have scratched his itch…. He’d been outside of his comfort zone. That was for sure. But when I’d lubed up his asshole and slid a thumb inside him, when I’d told him that I was going to have Vanessa fuck him with a strap-on—the look he’d given me was one that I understood. I’d found him out. I’d grabbed the gold ring. You don’t walk away from that type of raw honesty.

5. For you, what is so sexy about Sandy?

Sandy is so fucking comfortable with who he is. I love that about him. I would climb into his Levis, slide on his leather jacket, slip on a faded leather cuff in a heartbeat. I’d let my whiskers grow. I’d drag the back of my hand over the hard scruff as I waited for a cup of coffee at the local diner. I’d hear the jingle of coins in my pocket. Sandy is my hero. When I grow up, I want to be him.

6. What else, if anything, would you like to tell us about your writing, Alison?

Stories take time. I’ve been jonesing to write the next installment to Those Girls for awhile. But it took seeing a man in a clothing store for me to realize where the story was headed. I try not to rush myself. Good porn comes to those who wait.

Thanks so much to the fabulous and ridiculously talented Alison! Folks, Those Girls, FREE on Amazon this coming weekend, (5/9 to 5/11). Don’t miss the promo! Also, read another hot excerpt from Those Boys at Alison Tyler’s blog…

Called a “Trollop with a Laptop” by East Bay Express, Alison Tyler is naughty and she knows it. Her sultry short stories have appeared in more than 100 anthologies, including Coupling, edited by Sommer Marsden, and Sex for America, edited by Stephen Elliott. She is the author of more than 25 erotic novels, most recently Dark Secret Love and The Delicious Torment (both from Cleis Press), and the editor of more than 75 explicit anthologies, including Kiss My Ass, Bad Ass, Smart Ass, and Happily Ever Anal. Visit www.alisontyler.blogspot.com 24/7, as she’s a total insomniac.

Sexting with Jake

FIRST by Jacob Louder – available 4/4/14! Click image for excerpt.

Jacob Louder’s literary porn novella, FIRST, launches tomorrow. Jake’s book is a radical porn utopia, and you shouldn’t read it unless you’re comfortable with young folks who are under the “legal age of consent” having powerful and connected sex with one another–sex that helps them to be and discover who they are. (Hats off here to Nabakov, who we pretty much idolize at GDP.) Anyhoo, I asked Jake to send me five texts–or “sexts,” if you will–explaining why he decided to write about kids having sex, in First. Here’s what he sent:

1. I’m continually impressed with kids who can identify who they are as sexual beings at such an early age. Even if they can’t identify who they are just yet, it seems like they’re more open to exploration and less consumed with labels. In First, I romanticized this idea. Everyone does what they want with people who want it, with no thought on the past or present. They all live in the moment. There is no shame. These kids are ideal human beings. If they were real, and if there were more of them–lots, lots more–the world could have the most loving, compassionate future.

2. I think I wrote First for me and for everyone else who came out young-ish in the early 90s. It was a completely different climate, with the HIV/AIDS crisis completely snubbed by the U.S. government, very full “closets” in almost every industry, city, and suburb, and not nearly as much representation in the media as there is today. There was no marriage equality. (I have to note, though, that in almost every way, my generation had it much better than the generations before me. I have to thank the love and fight in every single person, in every single activist, who ensured that my coming out and my young existence as queer wasn’t nearly as fucked up as theirs may have been.) At Nico’s age, I never thought I’d be happy with who I was. I thought that I’d have to figure out how to be heterosexual one way or another. I thought I was the only kid who felt the way I did. I had no role models (until I turned about 17 or so). So, Nico is the boy I wish I had been, living a very different life in a very different climate, and fully recognizing that love can be with anyone, as long as there’s honesty and respect. I’m living a bit vicariously.

3. Kids watch porn. Kids have sex. I’m sorry, Moms and Dads, but they do.

4. I think it was easy to write this young utopia because I see kids as being “romantically unblemished.” This isn’t to say that those of us over the age of 18 can’t live or don’t live like the characters in First. But when I think of wide-eyed openness and trust, I think of young humans, of anyone who hasn’t had their hearts ripped out of their chests, like most of us have, one way or another. It was important for me to have every heart on a sleeve. (Except for the case of Rory and John, but their “relationship” is another slice of life that I find kind of interesting to explore.)

5. I wanted to show young people as smart, grounded, and capable of significant amounts of kindness and intimacy. I wanted to show them as nonjudgmental and open and accepting of everyone and everything, as long as that everyone-and-everything are from places of love. I wanted to show them as better than us.

Thanks a million, Jake. I was so moved by your sexts. And folks, FIRST will be available on Friday 4/4/14. Can’t wait!

Sex-Bomb Writer, Angela Tavares, Interviewed at The Round Up Zine

Angela herself.

Our Angela has been interviewed at roundupzine, where her gorgeous piece “Sunday Night” is published. It’s a great interview that includes Angela’s discovery of erotica when she was a bright young thing, the reasons she writes about sex, and much much more. You can read the whole interview here. And here’s a snippet:

RU: I’m  kind of a fan of Dennis Cooper, who edited the anthology “Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground” in which your piece “Fast Ones” appears. How did you get involved in that?

AT: Dennis Cooper is one of my favorite writers and one of my biggest inspirations. He taught me what it means to use daring and brave language, to tell stories that can be uncomfortable. And, of course, for these reasons, I visit his website every day. Very long ago, he invited all his blog readers to submit a short story for an anthology he was putting together—specifically to spotlight some of the writers who participated, if I’m not mistaken—and that’s when I sent “Fast Ones.”

RU: You seem to have a propensity towards erotic fiction given your work with Go Deeper Press, amongst other things. What is it about erotic fiction that interests you, and do you remember the first piece of erotic lit you ever read?

AT: It’s sex that interests me, I think. Erotic fiction, yes—that, too, but I love writing the complexities and vulnerabilities of sex, its emotions and manipulations. Strip your characters bare, and see what they got and what they do with it—for me, this is the most fun. Even before I started Go Deeper Press with Lana Fox and began writing erotica, I always seemed to find a way to have my characters get it on.

First piece of erotic lit was something my mother had hidden in her bookcase near her bed. It focused on an escort service. I only snuck tiny reads from it, but it was hot enough that I managed to sneak back in and find it every time she was out of the house. I allowed myself two paragraphs at a time, and then got out of there.

First piece of erotic lit in a non-shame way: 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. [Read the whole interview at RoundUpZine.)

A Hotter State: An Interview with Laila Blake (Part 2)

You can read the first part of this interview here.

4. Why do you think erotica can be so important for society?

I think that well-written erotica can help women reclaim their sexuality. It can give them the language and the tools to begin creating the sex life and the self-image that they want to have. And maybe, in the long run, that will affect young people, too – both men and women – and in that way actually help society. But I think that is already happening on so many other channels as well, like Laci Green’s YouTube channel, to name just one.

I am still constantly baffled and saddened by the amount of negativity thrown against anything that contains sex – from blogs being deleted, to search engine blocks and whole porn bans instead of a real, honest discussion on how to work against the exploitative and shocking aspects of the industry, and how to give parents, and young people the tools to process what they see online. So I suppose on days when I feel particularly hopeful, I might think that writing erotica can help there. That’s one reason why I decided against using a pen name for my erotica.

I’m happy if I touch people with my writing – that’s enough for now.

5. Can you let us know of any other books/stories that you have in the works at the moment? Any forthcoming publications? And how can we get hold of them?

My next publication is actually, and fittingly, an erotic novella. It’s called Driftwood Deeds, coming out with the Ladylit Publishing imprint A Hotter State. During the writing process, my friend and I called it “consent-and-communication-in-BDSM PSA erotica,” and that made me giggle a lot. It’s simply the story of a young woman and a man exploring a little bit of BDSM together, with a lot of talk and a lot of sex.

In fact, it’s really a complete rewrite of the first time I wrote anything involving BDSM and erotica when I was about 18. It shaped a lot of my ideas about writing erotica and my own self-image, and it felt fitting to reimagine it as my first stand-alone erotica publication.

It will come out in November and will be available as an ebook at all major retailers.

6. Do you have any advice about writing great sex scenes?

I am still trying to figure out what other people like, or what the majority of people like – I have absolutely no clue. But if you’re asking what I like to read – then a great sex scene needs to have just as much voice and individuality as any other scene – maybe more. I like sex scenes full of personality – both the writer’s and the characters’. I want to care about the people I read about, I want to feel them, their issues and aspirations, their dirty secrets and their vast range of emotions, even if the scenes just covers sex. I love it, for example, when erotica is coupled with some other kind of hobby or aspect of their life – I’ve written erotica about larpers and about a woman obsessed with the planet Mars, about photography and yoga. There’s nothing I find less erotic than reading some fantasy played out by bland, doll-like characters. I actually blogged about this at length.

I also have a special fondness for physical attributes often societally impressed on us as flaws.

Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast!

Author, Laila Blake

Thank you, Laila, for your fascinating interview!

You can find Laila Blake at www.lailablake.com, where she lists her publications and blogs about writing and society. She also co-hosts the podcast Lilt.

Her social media haunts are pinterest and goodreads, but she also hangs out on twitter and she has a facebook page. For updates on new publications, there is also her newsletter, which she promises will be very sparing and unspammy.

Support sex-positive fiction by buying GDP’s books from Amazon, B&N, and GoDeeperPress.com.

“To Write What Turns Me On” – An Interview with Laila Blake (Part 1)

Author, Laila Blake

1. Laila, we’re thrilled to have published you in Shameless Behavior: Brazen Stories of Overcoming Shame. Why do you enjoy writing erotic stories?

Most of my day-to-day writing isn’t erotic, in fact, I’ve spent the last few months working on a very tame, contemporary YA manuscript. My other novels usually contain erotic content to some degree, but the pacing of most of them simply doesn’t allow for more than one or two graphic scenes in the entire book. And it wouldn’t be completely true to say that this makes me sad – I like them the way they are, but I do sometimes feel like I’m leaving something out that is important to me and to the characters, but that really isn’t important in the story arc.

Erotic stories are the opposite – for a few thousand words, I don’t have to care about a broader plot. I get to compress two whole lives into usually a single scene centered on a sexual experience, and that is a lot of fun and a great way to unwind from the occassional drudgery of working through novels.

I also find it empowering. As a woman, I grew up in a culture that led to me to believe for most of my adolescence and early adult years that my sexuality was very narrowly defined by the sexual identities of the men I was with. I couldn’t express what I liked, what I fantasized about, I couldn’t even really fathom that I was really allowed to dislike something a guy liked, or like it in a different way.

By writing erotic stories, I get to do just that – I get to write what turns me on, or speculate about stuff that does it for others. I get to play around with concepts and practices, and reclaim my connection to not just my personal sexuality, but to connect with so many wonderful women who read and write erotic stories, too.

2. Who are some of your writing and erotic inspirations?

A few months after my first novel was published, I got a phone call from my ex-boxfriend. This had become a rarity, and I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, until in his rambling way he asked whether our experiences together ended up in the book.

I wanted to say: “Well, buy it and effing read the book it you really want to know!” But instead I blushed, then I laughed and told him to check his ego. That was a lie, though–of course it was. Most of my ideas come from the people around me and the experiences I share with them, however filtered and removed the eventual story will be. My wonderful writing partner Lorrie is one of them, too. I know we both have played around with specifically writing stories to push the other’s buttons.

Just working with some of these wonderful editors inspires me to no end, as well as all these women who have been paving the way for us newer writers with such grace, dignity, and intelligence, women who show that writing erotica does not have to go along with a loss in quality.

3. Can you tell us a little about your story in Shameless Behavior: Brazen Stories of Overcoming Shame?

Of course, I’m happy to! “Doll-faced Demons” is the story of a lesbian couple visiting one of the women’s homophobic parents. Upset by their bigotry, the women trash her old room; they cut open plush toys, jump on the bed and fuck there in utter defiance of the juvenile, innocent image her family is trying to maintain of their daughter.

I tell it from the perspective of the visitor, shocked as she is when confronted in real life by what she has only ever heard about. That was my main inspiration for the piece, actually– that I, as a bisexual woman in the demographic in which I grew up, have never once faced any kind of discrimination for it. But I am still part of a community whose essential struggle I can only sympathize with, aid in, but never truly understand.

The second half of this interview will be published tomorrow!

ABOUT LAILA

You can find Laila Blake at www.lailablake.com, where she lists her publications and blogs about writing and society. She also co-hosts the podcast Lilt.

Her social media haunts are pinterest and goodreads, but she also hangs out on twitter and she has a facebook page. For updates on new publications, there is also her newsletter, which she promises will be very sparing and unspammy.

Support sex-positive fiction by buying GDP’s books from Amazon, B&N, and GoDeeperPress.com.

Come Out, Come Out! If You Can, If You Want

Photo courtesy of http://www.facebook.com/nationalcomingoutday

National Coming Out Day was a hugely personal day of celebration for me many, many years ago. Hell, it was my day! I was 18, newly (but finally) out, and there was this 24-hour period for little queers like me. What could possibly hold me back?

I was lucky. I lived in Massachusetts and went to a pretty fruity school in Boston. Plus, there was a certain slow and rhythmic throb of sociopolitical excitement back in the early Clinton nineties. Really. I came out, and there it all was, just waiting: Act Up and Queer Nation and BAGLY and—fuck—Radical Faeries—everything! It seemed like there was an organization and local meetup group for any interest, whether it was sexual or political. And for my punk rock heart, there was the beginning of riot grrrl. There was the beginning of homocore and Matt Wobensmith’s record label and zine, Outpunk!

There was also less fun stuff: watching your friends wait for the results of HIV tests, which took about two weeks or so to come in; getting off the train to get away from the guys who yelled at you and your girlfriend from the end of the train car about how they “want to watch,” and how us girls just need a good dick in our cunts—let them show us; and listening to another friend retell the story of how he and his boyfriend were attacked late on a Saturday night, how the attackers called them “AIDS faggots,” “You fucking queers,” while they kicked and threw elbows and fists to their heads, and how the boyfriend was in the ICU, and how the boyfriend never left that ward.

I think it’s better now. I really, really want it to be better now. In a good handful of U.S. states and a growing number of countries, we are allowed to wed. I can get my partner healthcare, and her immigration process, presumably, will have less loopholes and walls to scale. And, picture this: I can hold her hand in a shopping mall in the suburbs, and the worst we get is a quick look—or a long one, in the most extreme of cases. There is no more yelling. There is no more fear.

But there is still plenty of fear in Russia and Nigeria—in too many other countries in this world. There are queer kids worldwide who are bullied so badly that it just seems easier for them to end their lives, and so they do. A month, sometimes a week, doesn’t pass when I don’t read a news story about a trans person who has been murdered after being outed as trans.

Coming out is a very special thing. It’s easy and complicated, embracing and scary, life-saving or life-threatening. Today’s our day to remember our own stories and histories. Today’s our day to lend a hand, give a hug, spread strong words of love and support, because we’re here and we are.

Go Deeper Press would love to hear your coming-out story. Leave one in the Comments section!

Hey! On this great National Coming Out Day, why not support an LGBTQ organization that does good every day? Here are some queer rights groups that get the GDP Thumbs Up! All Out, National Center for Transgender Equality, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, GLSEN, and Waltham House.

Celebratory price this weekend only!

ALSO, our National Coming Out Day celebratory sale is on! If you’d like to buy our erotic anthology Shameless Behavior: Brazen Stories of Overcoming Shame for $4 (usually it’s $5.50) enter SHAMELESS at checkout. Special offer for THIS WEEKEND ONLY! (When you support indie erotica, we glow and glow and glow… *blows kiss*)

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Thanks for supporting Go Deeper Press. If you’d like to browse our erotic, sex-positive e-books for brain and brawn, you can find our website here.

 

Darren Young Comes Out on Camera

Pic nabbed with thanks from prowrestling.it

We love it when well-known folks come out, so when WWE superstar Darren Young did just that in an interview with TMZ, in a totally spontaneous way, GDP got out its hanky and dabbed an emotional tear.  The interview is well-worth a watch, and the interviewer totally embraced the moment. Wonderful.

Of course, there are many ways of coming out, and this is just one of them.  For many, I’m sure, there are different phases to “coming out.” For myself, I came out as gay long before I slept with a woman, and that, in itself, was a powerful experience of coming out to myself, of coming out to my body, my soul.

In fact, when I was first enjoying Huddle: Sex with Sporty Queers (Vol 1: Boys Varsity), I was touched to see this in Angela’s introduction:

“Queer” is most definitely the right word to describe the characters in this collection. This is not a gay male anthology—at least that’s not the way it reads to me. In fact, there are few, if any, instances where any of them announce their sexuality. In Huddle, there is fluidity and discovery.There is resistance and denial, and there is dominance and extremely willing submission. There are no admissions, declarations, or late-night confessions. These are stories about boys and men who love and lust. No labels required.

Do these characters come out to themselves in this anthology? Do they need to come out at all? Do you think some of them are first-timers in terms of M/M sex? We’d love to hear your opinions when you’ve read the collection, which, by the way, you can buy here for just 99 cents, or on Amazon or B&N.

And congratulations to Darren Young! Yes, oh yes, oh yes.

Why We Need to Offer Asylum to LGBTQ Russians Right NOW

This photo was snaffled from Prospect.org, with thanks. Credit: AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis

Right now, we at GDP are thinking about Nazi Germany. We’re remembering what we know about Hitler and his atrocities. We’re sending love to a country in which people are being harmed, killed, taken away from their parents / children, all because of how they — or their loved ones — love, have sex, feel, identify, contribute to society, touch, embrace, imagine, dream, and send light to the world.

As so many of us already know, this isn’t a fight for sexual freedom alone.  It is a fight about how we love and feel, a fight about what is true to us. Whether or not you are — or know — someone who identifies as LGBTQ, you are being threatened here — we are all being threatened.

Love is being threatened.

Please read this excellent article by Nancy Goldstein.  Goldstein also gives suggestions for how we can help to fight the fight to let people love and express community as themselves.

Find out more about Go Deeper Press at GoDeeperPress.com