T.R. Verten's Blog

“There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.”

-Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Finally! I am thrilled, relieved, nervous, and excited to be able to share this news with all six of you. With the launch of Burning Books Press, it seems my works will have a place to call home. The editorial board recognizes that “literary” and “erotica” can and do belong together; in other words, that smut doesn’t have to be shit. More to the point, they aspire to push the boundaries of genre fiction through quality, not quantity. 

We founded this company in the belief that great genre fiction writing should be both accessible and literary. Longtime readers of serious genre fiction know there has long existed writing of a very high level of quality that has been too esoteric for mainstream paper publishers to invest in,” said Madeleine Morris, Executive Editor and Art Director of Burning Book Press. “Digital books drop the materials cost to almost nothing, and while the media has been focused on how now ‘anyone can be a writer,’ we see the opportunity for established, talented genre writers to reach a wider audience.

My first novella, Confessions of a Rentboy, is once again available for purchase — and with a gorgeous redesigned cover, to boot. I’ve got a second manuscript under review at the moment, but there are some free reads you can check out. Shocker of shockers, those are all safe for work. 

Keeping secrets is kind of my forte. And yet I have news that I wish to share but, well, can’t quite yet. Frustrating? You have no idea.

What I can say is that I’ve had a femdom piece accepted into an anthology for Cleis Press, which is kinda cool. Planned release date is April of next year. I’ve only been electronically published up to this point. I imagine reading the piece in print will be unsettling and queasy making, like hearing your own voice on a recording.

Sadly, all leisure time has been crunched as of late, and the only writing I’ve done has been in back-and-forth smutty emails or on kinkmemes. A couple hundred words and then volley it over to someone else or sit back and wait for keyboard smashes standing in for praise. This story was a challenge, especially considering that het isn’t my go-to for pairings, like, EVER.

The other news I can only allude to in the vaguest possible way. That book with the redesigned cover? Yeah, it looks like it’s going to have a forever home soon. (I feel like I’m writing a dog bio on the PAWS website.) Soon. More details to come, possums.

Been a minute, eh? For anyone who says that my generation is lazy, I’d like to suggest those people accompany me to my four (yes, FOUR) part-time jobs. Shit be hectic, and it cuts waaaaay into a girl’s writing time. But that’s probably okay, since all I’ve managed to squeeze out lately is ponderous drabbles anyways. Since the folding of my publisher, Republica, I’ve retreated back into the safe haven of fandom. (Yeah, right. Good lord but that shit’s exhausting.)

I’m taking this opportunity to link to a piece Remittance Girl wrote about our collaboration on a new cover for the book.* Given that I struggle to crop a damn icon in MS Paint, I’m overjoyed at having a professional do the redesign. And we worked together really well, remotely! Not to mention that the damn thing is so gorgeous that I kinda can’t stop staring at it…

*Hopefully to be re-released within the next couple of months. Yay!

Hi all. As you may or may not know, Republica Press is closing its doors at the end of this month. While I am saddened at the loss of this place I called home for a short while, new things are on the horizon. Right now I'm in the beginning stages of a project to remix public domain works. I'll probably be engrossed in that for a while, as well as finishing up this freakin' nightmare of an experimental book. Info below comes from our Tumblr. Follow us! Join us! Spread the word!

Hi everyone! This is a great little group we've got and I'm excited to see where this takes us. I'm working out logistical issues right now, and may draft a little manifesto of sorts because I like those and no one seems to write them anymore. Why is that?

Here is the structure I propose: every three weeks, a public domain work of writing will be linked and posted here, for you to remix as you see fit. Nothing is off limits except for copyrighted works. Exceptions to this will be works licensed under Creative Commons (searchable here) and creators who have vocally and enthusiastically given their blessing to fanwork. So, a BtVS crossover would be fine; a Game of Thrones one would not.

With an eye to the themes of transformation and rebirth, and a general sense of chronology, these are the works I've picked for the first four challenges. They are all available in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg and also at your local public library. Use whatever version you like.

1. Ovid — Metamorphoses Volume I, Volume II

Challenge opens April 6, 2012

2. Apuleius - The Golden Ass

Challenge opens April 27, 2012

3. Brothers Grimm - Fairy Tales

Challenge opens May 18, 2012

4. Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

Challenge opens June 8, 2012

General fandom rules will apply: Don't flame, don't flounce, don't troll, warn for triggers, play nice. There are no restrictions on length, style, or content. No challenge is mandatory. If you want to write an ongoing WIP for Frankenstein and nothing else, go for it! Keep us informed! Update! If you want to write a haiku with original art each week, do that! If you want to write futuristic space-porn, have at!

While I'd love to be more inclusive to our overseas friends, knowing the specifics of copyright laws in one country is complicated enough. If a work is public domain in your country but not in the US, please don't use it out of fairness to the rest of us.

Same goes for other mediums. Personally, I'd argue that art, vids, and fanmixes all fall under fair use, but I think it's safest if we stick to public domain works. Art and images are easier to obtain, under the Creative Commons metasearch engine linked above (uncheck commercial use since we're nonprofit).

As for links and submissions, I've got the submissions page open. You can crosspost your work here or wherever you like, LJ, DW, DA, AO3, your blog, etc. If it's long please use a cut, and tag with ratings, pairings, and warnings. I'll be starting a tag on AO3 under "Project Remix" if you'd like to use that medium. It's epub and download friendly and fully open-source, and I've got a couple invites lying around.

Finally, if anyone is interested in helping me admin this thing, give a shout, yeah?

Do you ever have a long weekend where you don’t log in to any social media at all and you cook and go to an archery clinic and meet your neighbor’s new poofy kitten and then do a bunch of stuff outside and read like two books and feel like the world is awesome? I did that last weekend; it fucking ruled. And then on Monday the #litchat hashtag was all aflutter with shit-talking about fanfic (hereafter referred to as ‘fic’).

I’m glad I missed it, in retrospect, because it led to me getting mighty angry and writing a bunch of tweets into space about the snooty attitude of “real” writers (and I’ll keep that in scare quotes, thank you very much) towards fic.*

Which lead to me mostly talking to empty air for the next hour.

Now, look, I’m not here to argue about royalties or whatever. The creators of  original content should be paid, and paid like the professionals they are. Otherwise we’re all a bunch of fucking amateurs. I support the right of artists  to make a living making art. But how many of the casual writers of fic are professionals? More to the point, do they want to be?

Is it that hard to understand for people who make their living doing a thing — be it cooking, or deep-sea fishing, or competitive archery — that other people might also want to do that thing, as a hobby? Not every person who writes teenage poetry or Harry Potter self insert fic wants to be a professional writer. Yes, “real writer,” it’s fairly obvious that they are playing in the sandbox you built and using the sand you ground down with your own over-caffeinated teeth. No one is denying that. You made nice sand, dude! Be happy! People like your worldbuilding and characters so much they want more of them! Why are you upset?

Oh, it’s the myth of lost sales. Okay, let me clear this up for you really super duper quick. People who are fans – yes, even people who steal your ideas — want you to make a living making your art. They like it. They like you. They want more of it.

I’ll say that again.

Who do you think saw the movie made from it in the theater five times, bought two different box sets for commentary, all your tie-in merchandise, and most importantly, would not fucking shut up about that awesome thing you made? Did they tweet about it, tumbl about it, interest their parents, bore their friends senseless?

Newsflash: these are your fans.

And any marketing type worth an ounce of hair product will tell you that you can’t buy word of mouth. There is no greater proselytizer than the enthusiastic convert. These people will sell the shit out of your art, and they will do it for you, because they feel connected to it. One of the ways they do that is by personalizing it and making it their own.

Do you know what people are doing with your characters? They’re using them as templates to talk to one another, to work through their own lives, their own problems and hang-ups. This is a fucking amazing thing. You have nailed empathy, sociality, maybe even verisimilitude. You have to understand that that character isn’t yours anymore. I know that’s uncomfortable, and super weird, and it’s not easy to relinquish control.

I get that, okay? You came up with that character, and now other people are using them in their own stories, willy-nilly? That can’t be right!

“Real writers” — you have made a character leap from your mind into the collective fucking consciousness.** Take a second to think about that before you knock fic writers. ***

*This is not a legal analysis, so spare me the fair use brouhaha, please.

** Cf. Durkheim, “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.” I’d even venture to suggest a reading of fic as a Derridean supplement (“…if supplementarity is a necessarily indefinite process, writing is the supplement par excellence since it proposes itself as the supplement of the supplement, sign of a sign, taking the place of a speech already significant…”) but it’s late and who wants to do deconstruction at two a.m., really?

*** The ethics here may be questionable, of course, and I am completely opposed to the idea of mobilizing a fandom for personal and transparent monetary gain, a la Twific.

Do you ever have a long weekend where you don't log in to any social media at all and you cook and go to an archery clinic and meet your neighbor's new poofy kitten and then do a bunch of stuff outside and read like two books and feel like the world is awesome? I did that last weekend; it fucking ruled. And then on Monday the #litchat hashtag was all aflutter with shit-talking about fanfic (hereafter referred to as 'fic').

I'm glad I missed it, in retrospect, because it led to me getting mighty angry and writing a bunch of tweets into space about the snooty attitude of "real" writers (and I'll keep that in scare quotes, thank you very much) towards fic.*

Which lead to me mostly talking to empty air for the next hour.

Now, look, I'm not here to argue about royalties or whatever. The creators of  original content should be paid, and paid like the professionals they are. Otherwise we're all a bunch of fucking amateurs. I support the right of artists  to make a living making art. But how many of the casual writers of fic are professionals? More to the point, do they want to be?

Is it that hard to understand for people who make their living doing a thing — be it cooking, or deep-sea fishing, or competitive archery — that other people might also want to do that thing, as a hobby? Not every person who writes teenage poetry or Harry Potter self insert fic wants to be a professional writer. Yes, "real writer," it's fairly obvious that they are playing in the sandbox you built and using the sand you ground down with your own over-caffeinated teeth. No one is denying that. You made nice sand, dude! Be happy! People like your worldbuilding and characters so much they want more of them! Why are you upset?

Oh, it's the myth of lost sales. Okay, let me clear this up for you really super duper quick. People who are fans – yes, even people who steal your ideas — want you to make a living making your art. They like it. They like you. They want more of it.

I'll say that again.

Who do you think saw the movie made from it in the theater five times, bought two different box sets for commentary, all your tie-in merchandise, and most importantly, would not fucking shut up about that awesome thing you made? Did they tweet about it, tumbl about it, interest their parents, bore their friends senseless?

Newsflash: these are your fans.

And any marketing type worth an ounce of hair product will tell you that you can't buy word of mouth. There is no greater proselytizer than the enthusiastic convert. These people will sell the shit out of your art, and they will do it for you, because they feel connected to it. One of the ways they do that is by personalizing it and making it their own.

Do you know what people are doing with your characters? They're using them as templates to talk to one another, to work through their own lives, their own problems and hang-ups. This is a fucking amazing thing. You have nailed empathy, sociality, maybe even verisimilitude. You have to understand that that character isn't yours anymore. I know that's uncomfortable, and super weird, and it's not easy to relinquish control.

I get that, okay? You came up with that character, and now other people are using them in their own stories, willy-nilly? That can't be right!

"Real writers" — you have made a character leap from your mind into the collective fucking consciousness.** Take a second to think about that before you knock fic writers. ***

*This is not a legal analysis, so spare me the fair use brouhaha, please.

** Cf. Durkheim, "The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness." I'd even venture to suggest a reading of fic as a Derridean supplement ("…if supplementarity is a necessarily indefinite process, writing is the supplement par excellence since it proposes itself as the supplement of the supplement, sign of a sign, taking the place of a speech already significant…") but it's late and who wants to do deconstruction at two a.m., really?

*** The ethics here may be questionable, of course, and I am completely opposed to the idea of mobilizing a fandom for personal and transparent monetary gain, a la Twific.

The PayPal drama of the last few weeks feels particularly ironic now that an erotica novel is topping the best-seller charts on Amazon and the Times. I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey, and I have no intention of doing so, because it's not my kind of book.

And while I find the mainstream media hoopla surrounding it to be patronizing at best — OMG! Women read smut! Is this okay? Should we be regulating it? Is it okay to want to be consensually dominated sexually? Moms like to have orgasms, too? – I couldn't be happier to see a book of this nature getting widespread attention. Add to that the fact that it's repurposed Twific, bringing fandom, erotica, and writing by women into the mainstream, well, maybe we can stop shaming the ladies for their reading preferences now, universe?

Much of the discourse hinges on definitions – is it smut? erotica? romance? I've read what feels like eight million reactions that consist of a litany of definitions and then an attempt to fit Fifty Shades therein. (Pardon me while I fall asleep on my own arm from boredom.)

I write porn.

I make art.

I don't see these two things as remotely contradictory. 

On the one hand, of course I don't write solely to turn people on. But as a smutmonger, I am rarely more pleased than when I get a comment to the effect of yo this was smokin' hot and totally prompted me to masturbate/fuck my partner/take a cold shower/drive off the road/have smutty daydreams. That is seriously fucking awesome. It is almost as much of an ego-boost as any comment about style, structure, or characterization. I'm proud to make you feel things, in your heart or your pants.

Whatever you call it, effective sex writing reaches through the screen and causes an effect in the reader. This can be physical, physiological, psychological, or any combination thereof. In an age when women's role to regulate own their own bodies is under attack from LITERALLY EVERY QUARTER, the right to control your own desire is a powerful tool.

I get that romance is a genre with deep and specific circumscriptions. From plots to cover art to word choice, both writer and reader know what the terms are from the outset. And that's all to the good.

But the world of false demarcations isn't helping anyone, even on the fringes of genre. The argument seems to go that it is socially acceptable for women to be aroused by non-vanilla sex within the confines of a monogamous heterosexual relationship (the romance model) and literally everything else is suspect. Smut? Ewwww. Erotica? Gasp! Never! Porn? Not on your life.

Look, readers know what they like, and what turns them on. If Fifty Shades tells us anything it's that there's a huge market for sexual material aimed at and written by women. There's no need for shaming language, and absolutely no reason why smut and romance can't get along. I'd love to see this type of content go the way of fanfic, where markup language and tags function as a general guide for the reader, without worrying so much about genre demarcations. You pick what you like based on your comfort level, and then hopefully have a killer orgasm to show for it.

For various reasons — PayPal paramount but not singular among them — my press, Republica, will no longer be operational after the end of this month. This is a loss to the world of independent publishing full stop, whether or not you're an erotica reader. I am deeply grateful to Emma and Aaron for giving me the opportunity they did.

Two years ago I was enrolled full-time in a doctoral program. Miserable, sick, and borderline suicidal, I took a leave of absence to try and gain some perspective on life. Academia has many things to recommend it to the thoughtful, secular, child-free woman, but work-life balance and joy of spirit are certainly not its strengths.

I discovered fandom. I started to write. I wrote a lot, especially in The Social Network fandom, in addition to some weird experimental work of my own. Through postings on AO3 and LiveJournal, I met Catherine Leary, one half of the now-defunct Freaky Fountain Press, who liked my work well enough to consider it fit for publication. She put me in touch with Republica, who were also very kind. A weird, highly explicit novella that I wrote made it out into the world. It was a proud moment for me, albeit not one I want to tell my mom or former cohort about.

A few people bought this little book. Many more did not. It was too obscene to be softcore erotica; it had both same and opposite sex encounters in it, scaring off M/M aficionados; the writing was too coarse and off-putting; the lack of a happy ending doomed it in romance circles. The same could be said for much of my fandom writing: I have a whole folder of hateful anonmeme comments that I read when I feel particularly self-flagellating, because I have issues.

I do not fit. My writing does not have a place, and after the end of this month, it will no longer have a home.

Perhaps it does not matter if anyone reads my scribbles. When I began reclaiming a voice that academia had stripped me of, the only thing that mattered was how good it felt. Tackling taboo subjects was never really the point. Being able to explore the stuff I cared about in a way that didn't require footnotes or IRB approval was.

Republica gave me a place to do this. They didn't care about happy endings or romance. In that I was lucky. I write what is dark in the human psyche; it doesn't necessarily need knifeplay to spill metaphoric blood. Sex is only the vehicle to derive insight into characters. It's never been endgame.

If you were to ask me, then as now, I would say that I don't even really write about sex. I write about power, the dynamics and drives of individuals, which inflect in different ways — in sex, in love, in friendship. Like, I just wrote a gangbang that owed more to Hegel than anything. Probably this is why I am painfully niche and will continue to be so. Thematically, I care about capitalism, growth, the realization of personal limitations and the value of finding one's place in the world. Also, blow jobs.

Thank you to Republica for giving me a home these last nine months. You will be sorely missed.

My book is available until the end of this month. After that, who knows.

A new awesome, Kickstarter-funded bookstore opened in my neighborhood a few months ago. On Friday, they'll be hosting an event for local writers who hang out on Tumblr, and since that group includes me, I wanted to show up. After reading about the work done by warehouse wage slaves, the more I can live locally and spend my money that way, I will.

I wondered whether I should go as an 'aspiring writer' (which sounds both dickish and pathetic, as this super funny post points out) or come clean about who I am and what I write. The other day I called it 'experimental fiction with a queer erotic bent,' and I think that about sums it up. I'm proud of what I write, of the way I write: graphic, honest, poetical.

But be that as it may,  I know it's not to everyone's taste. I am not trying to make a living by eking out words. Perhaps then I would write differently: mass-market, then, or genre-driven. I might be less concerned with PayPal's recent actions against the smut-writing community.

Within these circles, I have heard a panoply of voices; ranging from ew, icky to doesn't affect me to the one which mirrors my own: fuck you, PayPal, you can suck a bag of limp fucking dicks. On this issue there is no counterargument that I can countenance. If you "yes, BUT" about corporate censorship even one time, there is no telling where it will stop, and when it will cease.

Corporations, the reasoning seems to go, are allowed to do what they wish. If they see fit to change their terms of service, indeed they can do so. Unlike a civic organization, they owe the public nothing. The problem is that there are no alternatives — once a monopoly like PayPal is established, it becomes so scarily ingrained in our everyday lives that we can no longer say no. There are no independent alternatives to credit cards, for instance. More to the point, I've heard oh it's fine Amazon is still there, as if this solved the problem.

Stop. Think about what it means for independent authors to be beholden to a single corporate monolith. Go on, I can wait.

The internet has solved the problem of distribution almost entirely. Kudos for that. But if there are not safeguards in place, if this RADICAL DEMOCRATIC SPACE becomes nothing more than place to pin thinspo pictures and insipid inspirational quotes, then we're all fucked.

Don't for one moment think these issues — the tampdown on torrenting, the massive crackdowns against Occupy movements worldwide, the harvesting of data through social applications, and the moralizing actions of fiscal entities — aren't instantiations of a larger trend. A global citzenry stands on the verge of a massive threshold of awakening consciousness and the powers that be are scared shitless.

Yet the issue from the beginning is still there. Unlike, say, ACTA or SOPA or a cool Kickstarter campaign, I don't feel comfortable talking about this issue using my real identity. I might blog or tweet about it using a pseudonym, like  the one I write fiction (or fanfiction) under, but I have zero intention to publicize it on the same Facebook page that my fundamentalist in-laws post sonogram pictures on. How, then, to fight this fight?

Here's a couple of places to get you started.

Hi y'all. The plan today was to edit this WIP in between a morning brunch (which, as Ms. Holt kindly pointed out, is not brunch but fucking BREAKFAST) and afternoon yoga. However, having spent the last hour plus trying to find an independent coffee shop which is not too cool for me, I've decided not to bother editing and to write about James Deen instead.

Last night ABC's Nightline aired a piece on the porn actor James Deen. The territory was familiar to anyone who'd read Amanda Hess' awesome profile of him in Good, or the 100 Interviews piece — some might even say a pretty much verbatim copy of those two.

Now, even though I'm not cool enough for artsy coffee shops, I'm probably slighty more hip and in the know than the Nightline demographic: seniors, parents, really, anyone who still views network news as their main source of information. I spend enough time on the curious corners of the internet — especially on Tumblr — to know that teenage girls are rabidly sexual. The tags on a picture of any object of teen affection would make your head spin.

Nightline warns that there are approximately 370 million porn sites on the internet. This in and of itself, perhaps, is not cause for concern, but the idea that one skinny Jewish boy might appeal to women, and young women in particular, is enough to set off a moral panic. The piece attempts to portray him as a sexual predator who is luring the under-18 set to his blog with the promise of casual sex, as the Salon.com analysis points out:

That's right, pornographers are "targeting" your little girls with the help of young porn hunks like Deen and luring them into watching Internet smut! YouPorn must be advertising on Justin Bieber message boards now, I guess? At one point, Vega grills Deen about his teenage fans: "Are you encouraging them in any way to watch your films or read your blog?" It's not like teenage girls would ever happen across this X-rated material because they want to watch porn — there must be some cute "boy next door" tricking them into it.

I mean, look, I'm of an age where we didn't have the internet growing up. We had smutty magazines, and dog-eared pages of novels that we passed around, and zines, and fantasies. I was thirteen when I read the word 'cunt' for the first time (in Silence of the Lambs), and the word had a shocking short of power that it no longer holds. Kids who have grown up on the internet know that word, in addition to a range of sexual practices that go far beyond the vanilla.

Spend some time in a kinkmeme or a fandom community and it becomes hard to sustain this fantasy that girls aren't into sex. You'll find fourteen year-olds a plenty who are into D/s, rimming, fisting, tentacle porn, comeplay, multiple partners, bondage, you name it. The power of the word 'cunt' is likewise sapped by the fact that with a few clicks of a mouse not only can you see the aforementioned in all its hairless glory, but see it being penetrated by a variety of objects and penises.

Young women's exposure to sex predates the internet — hell, we live in a world where Toddlers and Tiaras is on television, and girls are sexualized from a disturbingly young age — and to pretend that tech-savvy youth don't know how to get around age limits or parental controls is completely fucking ludicrous. Curiosity will find a way, as Deen himself says:

"If there was a 15-year-old girl, an underage girl, an underage guy, an underage person that is viewing a scene that I'm in or any sort of porn, chances are they're doing that because either they're curious. They're horny, whatever it is. They're sexual enough that it is something that they desire, that they crave, that they want, and it's not necessarily a bad thing," he said. "I would like to think that I'm opening up their sexual experience, and being able to, they'll be able to take their boyfriends and say, 'hey, I saw this in a porno, I want to try this.'"

Do I wish that we had better sex education for adolescents? Obviously. Are the standards of porn what girls should try to enact in the bedroom? Well, yes and no. I myself love Deen's porn, and while I don't get off to it, I think it's generally pretty awesome. Why? Because while from the waist down, everything he's doing is for the camera (i.e. the viewer), from the waist up, by God he is fucking that girl. He's talking to her, often so quietly that the sound doesn't transmit, he's looking her in the eye, he's giving her pleasure. The reason young women like to watch Deen is that he's getting his partner off, and he is super into doing so, in a variety of scenarios.

My supposition here is that the fear of Deen goes deeper than mainstream media's utterly predictable gender bias — the unspoken assumption that those other 370 million porn sites are for men and teen boys, and that of course, that's okay. Because they're supposed to be rabidly sexual, whereas women are objects, disposable, detachable parts that can be flashed, ranked, rated, and forgotten.

But a women who has agency, who is learning to articulate her own desires, who watches porn of a guy who is on record as saying "I love to eat girls out" and "Watching girls have orgasms is rad" — and who might insist on these same things in her own sexual life rather than unreciprocated oral and unfufilling vaginal penetration…well, no wonder people are frightened.

Why can't all porn premises be this ridiculously transparent?