my book

Kinky Cuties & Their Book-Spurred Adventures

Kate Sloan

As an author, it’s hard not to imagine the people who’ll read your words as you’re writing them. When I was writing 101 Kinky Things Even You Can Do – which is coming out on October 12th and available for preorder now! – I thought a lot about who I hoped would read it.

It’s geared toward vanilla people and total beginners to kink, although I think there’s still plenty in it that more advanced kinksters will find interesting and illuminating, by sheer virtue of the fact that it really does contain one hundred and one different kinks. You’re sure to find something in it that you’ve never tried before, and that’s really thrilling to me!

Here are 3 totally fictional people I imagine would read my book, and the stories of how they found it…

 

Jess stuffs 101 Kinky Things into their backpack as they leave the bookstore, and starts their walk back to their apartment, already rehearsing the speech they plan to bust out when they arrive home.

Hey Kyla? You know that lipstick you wear sometimes? The red one?

Their sneaker soles hit the sidewalk pavement with sharp snapping noises, their pace picking up. Jess is more terrified by the conversation that awaits them than they are by anything they’ve encountered in their sports journalism dayjob; live post-game interviews with towering basketball players are way less intimidating than telling your girlfriend about your secret fetish.

Well, uh, I found this book that talks about how lipstick can be a kink for some people… and I was wondering…

Making quick work of the downhill trek, Jess lets their mind wander to the last time they had sex with Kyla. Her soft mewls and pillowy curves under Jess’s muscled body. Her kisses and caresses becoming steadily more desperate as Jess slammed into her with their blue silicone cock. The way her wavy crimson hair frizzed up from all the sweat. Jess’s clit throbs in their boxer-briefs at the thought.

I thought maybe it would be cool if you gave me a blowjob in lipstick, so I could… see whether it’s really something I’m interested in… maybe?

Jess’s key seems way too loud in their apartment door as they let themself in. Kyla’s sprawled on the couch, munching a salad and watching Top Chef. “Hey, babe!” she calls. “How was work?”

“It was okay,” Jess hedges, and tugs the book from their backpack. “Um, I wanna talk to you about something but I’m kinda embarrassed.” Kyla mutes the TV show and quirks an eyebrow. Ruffling their short dark hair, Jess checks the book’s table of contents and adds, “Can you flip to page 159 and let me know what you think?” Despite all their practicing, they just can’t quite bring themselves to say the words.

Kyla takes the book from Jess, a quizzical look in her eyes, and finds the page in question. As she reads, her eyes don’t widen in fear or narrow in disgust; instead, they light up, delight gradually filling them like the dawn of a new day. When she’s done, she lifts her head to look at Jess, who’s taken a seat beside her on the couch. “Shall I go get my tube of ‘Lucky Red’?” she asks mischievously. Jess bites their lip and nods, already hard and throbbing.

Anna was tired of the pitying looks her friends always gave her when she talked about her divorce over brunch. Couldn’t they see that it was something to be celebrated? Sure, she and Tom had been together for 22 years, but that didn’t mean they were destined to be together forever. In fact, she mused to herself as she walked away from the last settlement signing session at Tom’s lawyers’ office, it had been a long time since she’d felt this happy and free.

Having taken the day off from the art gallery for the occasion, she figured she’d go shopping (with some of Tom’s money, admittedly) and find herself something pretty to celebrate her newly reclaimed singlehood. But the Chanel, Gucci, and YSL shops didn’t light her fire as much as they once had. It was only when she stopped into an upscale bookshop and saw glimmering gold text proclaiming “101 Kinky Things“ that she felt a spark of something like excitement.

As she paged through the text, she couldn’t help but reflect on all the late-night arguments she and Tom had had, probably waking their neighbors with their antics. It was always some version of the same fight: she wanted sexual adventure; Tom didn’t. She wanted to go to the local sex club and try out swinging; Tom didn’t. She wanted to experiment with bondage, sensory deprivation, facesitting; Tom didn’t. She wanted him to appreciate (or even just acknowledge) the pearl-handled flogger she’d brought home from Agent Provocateur; Tom didn’t.

When Anna landed on the page titled “Dominance,” her breath caught. A blush crept onto her cheeks and she had to remind herself mentally that the bookish strangers milling around her couldn’t possibly know about the femdom porn she feverishly flipped through late at night. They couldn’t possibly know that her ex-husband’s utter disinterest in submitting to her had been the nail in the coffin of their doomed relationship. No one knew that except Anna’s leatherbound diary and her best friend Janine, truth be told. And maybe the people at PornHub.

Tucking the book under her arm, Anna sidled up to the cash register and handed her new treasure to the clerk. He swept his dark brown curls out of his eyes before scanning the book’s barcode, and Anna looked him up and down like a hungry wolf finally allowed to prowl free. His nametag said Danny. “I’ve heard good things about this one,” he said conversationally, taking her heavy gold credit card from her hands.

“Always good to learn something new,” Anna purred with a smirk, before scribbling her number on Danny’s copy of her receipt. “And to have someone to practice with.” She winked, and then strolled out into the sunshine, a new woman.

It had been 3 weeks since Sadie had been to the dungeon, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the scene she’d seen there.

Her friend Marissa had taken her along. Sadie, a notoriously shy and anxious femme, had been a wallflower at every kinky or queer event she’d ever been to. She couldn’t help it – her body just seized up with panic whenever she stepped into one of those spaces, like every moment was a matter of life and death. Far too often, she’d found herself face-to-face with some hot butch girl or charming trans boy or leather-clad enby and found she could barely get any words out. If she couldn’t even say “Hi, I’m Sadie,” she wasn’t sure how she’d ever manage to actually meet someone and ask for what she wanted in bed.

The dungeon had been different, though, because Sadie had been allowed to just observe. In fact, she’d been encouraged to do so. Marissa, a towering blonde with a staggering amount of confidence, had tugged Sadie to a leather sofa at the side of the room. “Sit here. Watch,” said Marissa, before strutting over to the St. Andrew’s cross and simply waiting. Marissa was the type of beauty who could just show up in a room and people would be drawn to her like flies. It wasn’t long before a boyish lesbian with an emerald fauxhawk strode up and started whispering to Marissa. Sadie couldn’t hear the words, but she could tell from Marissa’s sweet smile and coy body language that there was flirting going on.

What had followed was a knife play scene, something Sadie had never even heard of before, let alone witnessed. The fauxhawked girl had a thing for knives, and Marissa had a thing for adventure, so before too long she was cuffed to the cross, spread-eagle, with the blade of a cold steel knife being slowly and carefully dragged across her skin. It left dainty white marks against the pink of her breasts and belly and arms and thighs. Sadie shivered in her seat. She was so utterly rapt that when a Bettie Page-looking femme sat down beside her and tried to chat her up, all she could manage was, “Sorry, I’m watching my friend’s scene.” She was a useless flirt anyway but she’d be especially useless right then.

Sadie was pondering that fateful knife-play scene, yet again, as she walked uptown to the queer book club Marissa had invited her to. “You like nerds, right?” Marissa had said. “Book clubs are total nerd bait.” Sadie was surprised when she knocked on the door at the address she’d been given and the person who answered was that same Bettie Page lookalike who’d attempted to talk to her at the dungeon.

“I remember you!” the girl practically shouted, immediately so much more gregarious than Sadie had ever been. “Come in! I’m Lulu. Want a beer?”

As a brand-new member, Sadie hadn’t done that week’s reading, but the group was happy to fill her in. A bespectacled androgyne handed her a copy of 101 Kinky Things. “It’s new,” Lulu explained. “There’s a lot of information in there.” The others laughed in agreement.

While everyone chattered happily around her, Sadie started to flip through the book, eventually stopping on a page titled “Fear Play.” A now-familiar shiver went through her as she read the author’s suggestion to “replicate the terror of being held at knifepoint” by showing one’s partner a big, scary knife, blindfolding them, and touching them with a butter knife or credit card instead, letting their fearful mind fill in the rest. She was so absorbed in the words that she barely noticed when Lulu knelt beside her and handed her the aforementioned beer.

“Are you a pervert like me?” Lulu asked with a dark giggle. “Because I love scaring the shit out of pretty girls.”

Sadie gulped, blushed, and managed to get a word out at long last. “Yes.”

Curious? Preorder your copy and let me know what adventures you get up to once you read it! 😉

“I Could Write About Sex Literally Forever”

Kate Sloan
What I looked like on September 23, 2016

Friends, this week has been a ROUGH ONE as far as my chronic pain goes, so I haven’t had much energy to work on blog stuff. In an effort to get some of that energy back, I turned to 750Words.com, a website that lets you write daily “morning pages” (a creativity-generating practice from Julia Cameron’s brilliant book The Artist’s Way). After I wrote my morning pages today, I went back through my archive – I hadn’t been on 750Words in nearly 5 years, gasp! – and found this old entry from September 23, 2016 where I was talking about wanting to write a book.

With my first book available for preorder now and my second book in-progress and due in a few months (!!), it seemed like a particularly good time to publish this little stream-of-consciousness ramble about Big Book Dreams from back in the day. Hope you enjoy – and if you’re a writer, I hope what you take away from this is that the projects you want to work on can, and probably will, materialize someday. ❤️

I just want to be at a writer’s residency and working on a book in the quiet of the woods, surrounded by reading materials, notebooks, pens, my laptop, birds chirping, looseleaf tea brewing just as the ideas brew in my head. I want this to be real. I want this to happen. I want it so badly I can feel it quaking in my bones. The ache to work on a big-scale project has been percolating in me for months but I don’t know quite what shape this desire will eventually take. Ideas have come and gone, but the fire hasn’t stuck around in any of them yet.

I don’t know if I’m actually mature and level-headed and emotionally steady and passionately committed enough to write a book; that is such a deep and lengthy commitment and I’ve never worked on a writing project of that length and scope before. Except, I guess, for my blog. I’ve been doing that for four and a half years (that semi-anniversary comes up in just a few days actually) and I haven’t even remotely run out of juice and enthusiasm for it yet. I started a sex blog because I knew I could write about sex literally forever – all the ways it intersects with the other parts of our lives, all the ways it is informed by all our interactions and experiences and feelings and memories and histories – and that has proven to be very true. I can go and go and go. I have so much motivation to work on this website. It never runs dry. And even if it occasionally does, I always have so many posts queued up that I can coast through the dry spells, still publishing twice a week like I always have. It’s a good feeling, to know I’ve been so consistent, so dependable, such a reliable source of enthusiasm and information for my readers.

I am very lucky and privileged and blessed to make money from this, but I am also thinking I need to get another job soon because I would like to make enough money to be able to move out, or to afford to travel and go on these retreats and things I want to do. I want the money to pour in from many more sources than it currently is, even though it’s already coming from multiple sources of which I’m very proud (my blog’s affiliate commissions, advertisers, Patreon supporters, copywriting/blogging work for other websites, journalism and essays, even occasionally porn and camming and other forms of online sex work).

I feel so determined to make a career of the things I love to do, and it feels within reach, as I was telling my therapist earlier this week. It feels imminently possible and doable because I know that I am talented and my content is good and helpful and I’m constantly told that by the people who devour my work. I have the feeling of supported notoriety that I craved so badly for all those many years I was blogging on LiveJournal and TeenOpenDiary and putting my outfit photos on Flickr and writing about my life on Tumblr and putting music videos on YouTube and wanting desperately to attract people who would understand my weird brain and accept it in all its broadness and quirkiness and positivity. I wanted to find the people who would be most helped, uplifted, and entranced by the kinds of things I wanted to write. I’ve found those people now.

It’s so juicy and good and I wake up every day lately excited to crack open my laptop and work on something, whether it’s an article for the Establishment or an essay for Bitch Flicks or a series of erotic vignettes for my blog or a chapter of the book on unrequited love I’ve been slowly drafting and mapping out in Scrivener. I don’t know what the eventual project will be that I pour out into the world and make my legacy with, but I know it will be significant to some folks and that is a good thing to know. I have more to say, more to do. I am working toward something that will satisfy and fulfill me. God, it’s delicious.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Every December, I write about some of the most significant selfies I took throughout the year. Despite the fact that I spent most of 2020 sitting on my couch in my pajamas (anyone else?!), I nonetheless managed to take many photos of special moments with special people. Here are 7 of my faves!

January 13th

This was taken while Bex and I were on a work trip to Burbank, California. We had been provisionally hired to helm a sex magazine which never ended up happening (thanks, COVID) and had to spend a couple days chatting with fellow sex-industry professionals at ANME and learning about the latest innovations in the sex toy field.

They have legal weed over there, so we got a little silly. I snapped this selfie on our way back into our hotel after a smoke break in the parking lot; I had gotten wayyy too high on that legendarily strong California kush, and my childlike glee started to break through the veneer of polished adulthood we’d had to project all day at the tradeshow. Bex, sensing my over-intoxication, helped me plan my next steps, and when we got back to our room, he encouraged me to get into a hot bath and call my partner so they could take care of me over the phone.

I love this picture because it captures so much of what I love most about my friendship with Bex: our ability to make each other howl with laughter. It’s the reason our podcast has remained so fun to do all these years, and it’s one of the things I missed most about my normal, pre-pandemic social life while everything was up in the air this year.

January 17th

It’s still so wild to me that I wrote a book. It’s not coming out until September 2021, but at this point it’s been so long since I actually wrote the thing that sometimes I forget what my daily routine was like during that process. My calendar archives make it very clear, however, that I was surprisingly disciplined and productive for a chronically fatigued person, generally writing 2 short chapters every weekday for about 3 months. I’m proud of myself!

This photo was taken the night of my official book deadline. I’d submitted the completed manuscript a couple days earlier, because I have way too much anxiety to leave things like that to the last minute, but it still felt like a momentous day. My partner and my friends encouraged me to get dressed up and go out for a solo date to celebrate. I put on one of my favorite dresses and a full face of pretty makeup, and walked down to the Fairmont Royal York hotel, which contains the Library Bar, an ornate and auspicious salon filled with good books and excellent cocktails. It’s the same place Matt and I went when I ceremonially signed my book contract and had some celebratory drinks, so it made sense to return there when the book was finished, albeit by myself.

I have a lot of trouble acknowledging and celebrating my own achievements, even big ones. Part of me always believes I didn’t quite earn them, or that something will go disastrously wrong and I’ll embarrass myself somehow if I actually take ownership of what I’ve achieved. But it felt good to sip a dirty martini by myself and write in my journal about how proud I was to have written a whole goddamn book.

February 22nd

Doing shrooms for the first time was one of the oddest things I did all year. I took them (in tea form) in the early afternoon, and what followed was basically a full day of laughing, crying, dancing, marching, hallucinating, joking, and singing. Fortunately my trip-sitter and friend Brent willingly put up with all of it.

I think I took this selfie when Brent had stepped out of the room for a few minutes. His presence had been an anchor to my floaty mind, and I’d gotten mildly panicky every previous time he’d tried to step out, so this time I picked up my phone (even though my phone had been unofficially off-limits to me all day because of the loopy things I might tweet) and texted my partner so I could make it through the duration until Brent got back. But in classic “me” fashion, I also needed to take a selfie.

This picture really captures the childlike giddiness I felt for much of my shrooms trip. While I didn’t necessarily have any of the “epiphanies” many people report from psychedelics, the experience did lead me to reflect on the artifice and malleability of (some aspects of) identity – and truth be told, I like the part of me that’s silly and happy-go-lucky, whether she shows up in an age-play scene or during a shrooms trip. This photo shows a side of me I sometimes ignore or repress, but I’d probably be much happier if I let her out to play more often, like I did on that day.

March 8th

This picture is important to me because it was taken at the last big event I went to before the coronavirus shut everything down.

My mom and I went for dinner at Insomnia – y’all, I miss their kale salad with grilled chicken so much that my stomach made excited anticipatory noises as I was writing this sentence – and then we walked across the street to the Bloor Cinema, where Drunk Feminist Films was holding a screening of Cats. I had thus far avoided seeing Cats even though everyone was saying it was the most outrageously goodbad movie in decades, but I knew Drunk Feminist Films would be the best possible setting in which to see it, and I was right.

As far as “last major outings before a global pandemic” go, this one was pretty excellent. I was wearing pink sequinned cat ears. I was quite tipsy. I was with my mom, who I love and who makes me laugh a lot. There were whispers about “that coronavirus thing” but I wasn’t all that concerned yet. And I got to scream at the screen, along with hundreds of other raucous feminists, about Judi Dench breaking the fourth wall and Ian McKellen drinking milk from a bowl. I have a few coronavirus-related regrets from this year, but attending that screening of Cats is not one of them.

June 20th

After months of staying at home, the case numbers finally started to decrease to a level where I felt comfortable visiting my family, who had also remained at home except for essential trips to the grocery store or pharmacy. My mom picked up Matt and me and drove us to her house, where we drank martinis in the back yard with my mom and brother, told stories, and joked around.

I know I’m not alone in feeling that this year really emphasized the importance of family and togetherness (to the extent that such things are possible and enjoyable for you – I know not everyone is lucky enough to have a family they like, who likes them back). You can see in my face in this photo that this was no ordinary “sitting around drinking and chatting” kind of night – this was special, even though the tone was casual. I was so glad to finally get to see these people again who had seemed hundreds of miles away even when they were just across the city from me.

September 15th

This photo represents two of the major kinks Matt and I played with together this year: chastity and financial domination. While they were locked up in chastity, we decided it would be fun to do one of our long-distance “phone dates” – wherein we each go to a restaurant or bar in our respective cities and talk on the phone throughout – but for them to foot the bill for the entire evening, because sometimes it turns them on to spoil me.

I put on the set of blue Agent Provocateur lingerie Matt had bought me as an earlier financial domination task, and added (of course) the necklace on which I keep my key to their chastity cage. On top of that, I wore a blue dress and a yellow cardigan, and walked to a restaurant Matt had chosen for me in swanky Yorkville called Sassafraz. (I sat outdoors, away from other guests; me and the staff had masks on whenever possible; there was ample hand sanitizer available; etc. etc.) We chatted on the phone during dinner, and they paid for my whole meal and my Uber ride back home.

I like this photo because I look powerful in it, even though you can’t see my face. Being dominant doesn’t come naturally to me, but this year I’ve enjoyed finding new ways my dominance can manifest, and how those newer routes can help me access different sides of my dominance that feel authentic and restorative. Here’s to more kinky adventures in 2021 (hopefully also in gorgeous lingerie)!

November 14th

A wedding-day selfie was a necessary inclusion in this post, of course!

As I explained on a recent Dildorks episode about weddings, although it’s common for couples to avoid seeing each other before the event so as to preserve the surprise, Matt and I decided not to do it that way for our tiny COVID wedding. It just made more sense for us to both get ready at their apartment and then walk over to the wedding location together.

I had thought this might feel disappointing when we actually did it, but it was totally fine, and even kinda fun. On such a potentially nervewracking day, it was nice to be with the person who alleviates my nerves most skilfully – and also to share in our excitement together.

We took this selfie just before heading out to Madison Square Park to get married. We look happy, calm, and excited to continue our lives together. ❤️

 

In the comments, feel free to tell me about a favorite selfie you took this year, and what made it so special!

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 2 Fears Defeated

Kate Sloan

Every December here, I chronicle 2 major fears I’ve – to some extent – conquered within the past year. (Read previous years’ fears: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.) This year I have one kinky one and one professional one…

Hypnotizing my partner

When my beau and I first met and began discussing their hypnosis kink, I think I told them pretty early on that I had no intention of learning how to hypnotize people. I likely would’ve been more open to the idea if Matt was solely a bottom in this regard, but they’re a top-leaning switch and I’m a bottomy sub, so we were content to cleave to those roles when it came to hypnosis. Matt hypnotized me regularly for a whole year before I ever did it to them.

On December 19th of last year, however, we did our first trance scene with me topping. I don’t remember in much detail what we did, what induction I used, or anything else. I just remember that earlier that day, I’d been staring at Matt’s nose (which I love and think is soooo handsome) and thinking that slowly stroking it up and down would be a good way to put someone into trance. I was right.

A large part of my aversion to hypno-topping came from the misconception that you have to say the exact right words in the exact right order to make it happen. I felt I hadn’t “studied up” enough and lacked the passionate interest that would drive me to learn. But a year of being regularly hypnotized by a skilful person had taught me that the process is looser and more improvisational than I’d thought. I knew some basic inductions and techniques (at least in theory) from reading Mind Play and I knew my partner had some experience going into trance, which tends to make it easier for someone to get back there again. So I set aside my apprehensions and gave my partner this beautiful gift that they had been giving me for a year.

In the time since then, I’ve tranced Matt tons more times, usually while domming them (they are my 24/7 dom but we do occasionally switch). It’s a lovely new avenue of intimacy for us, and I look forward to seeing what other kink-related fears I can conquer in 2020.

Writing a book

Okay, as of this moment, the book is only about 85% done. BUT. Even that much is an accomplishment worth celebrating!

For a long time, I thought I would never write a book… and then I thought I would write and self-publish one… and then I thought I wanted to go the traditional publishing route but would never find a publisher or an agent who would have any interest in the sort of book I wanted to write. But this year I got a book deal, from a publisher who sought me out specifically, which I just never thought would happen. Life is a wild ride!

I feel like, every day for the past few months, I’ve begun every writing session thinking, “I can’t do this. I will never finish this. This is going to be awful. I CAN’T DO THIS.” But my partner and friends and family have been around to remind me of my abilities and my drive and what I’m doing it all for, and that has helped enormously. It’s largely because of those people that I’ve managed to get this far in the process – and when I finish the book, in time for the deadline next month, I’ll have my social supports to thank for that, too.

Our culture is full of inspirational messages in Hallmark cards and Hollywood blockbusters that amount to “You can do anything you set your mind to!” and, while there are many factors that complicate that sentiment (like privilege or the lack thereof), it feels truer to me now than it did a year ago. I can’t wait to finish this book draft and hand it in, if just to prove to myself that I could and I can.

What fears did you face in 2019?

Announcing… My Book Deal!!!

Kate Sloan
Signing my book contract at the Library Bar. Photo by my sweetheart Matt.

Yes, friends, I have good news: after many months of preparation and negotiation, I have signed a book deal with Laurence King Publishing! One of my long-time dreams as a writer is finally going to come true. Here’s a brief FAQ:

Q. What’s the book called?

A. The working title at the moment is 101 Kinky Things Even You Can Do.

Q. What’s it about?

A. It’s an accessible, consent-focused, safety-forward introduction to kink and BDSM for vanilla people and/or beginners. It covers 101 different kinky activities, from aftercare to wrestling. Each chapter explains the kink in question, theorizes about why people find it hot, and offers concrete suggestions for incorporating it into your sex life, both solo and partnered.

Q. When will it be out?

A. March 2021, so I’m told! Yes, that is a long time from now. Wow. I will have lots more details for you (where to get it, etc.) as the launch date approaches.

Q. How much of it have you written?

A. Currently a little over half. It’s due in January, so I’m making good time!

Q. How did you get the book deal?

A. Read on, my friend – here’s that timeline of events!

December 4th, 2015: I go to a local sex shop to interview one of the owners for a story I’m writing about the sex toy industry. At the end of our exhaustive, hour-long interview, he says, “I think this topic could be a book, and I think you’re the person to write it.” My face immediately morphs into the human embodiment of the thinking emoji 🤔 as I say out loud, “Hmmmm!” I take the streetcar home thinking about whether I’ll ever write a book, whether I even want to, and what it would be about.

February 7th, 2018: I get a PR email from an editor promoting a sex-related book she worked on. Her email signature says she’s also a literary agent. I take a chance and mention casually that I’ve wanted to write a sex book for a while. She replies, “If you ever do write that book, please feel free to reach out to me about it, as I definitely am seeking clients in the sex and sexuality realm.”

March 28th of this year: I get an email through my contact form from a commissioning editor for Laurence King, a publishing house in London, England. “I’ve been thinking we should consider a fresh approach to sex in book form and I wondered if you would be interested in talking about it,” she writes. “Please contact me if that sounds interesting.” I stare at my inbox in awed disbelief.

April 2nd: I “hop on a call” with the editor to toss around some potential book ideas. The two pitches I’ve prepared for her, it turns out, are more conceptual, cerebral, and wordy than is really appropriate – Laurence King publishes beautifully-designed books, often on art or photography or design, loaded with illustrations and diagrams, not usually densely-packed paragraphs of storytelling. So I think on my feet, and pitch this: “101 Unusual Kinks & Fetishes.” I explain that I’ve always been fascinated by the most eccentric sexual interests, from balloon fetishism to sneezing fetishism to knife play, and that I’d love to highlight those for a curious audience. The editor gets audibly excited about this idea and asks me to put together a proposal.

April 7th: I send over my proposal, including sample sections on topics like collars, hypnosis, and masochism.

April 18th: My editor gets back to me and says that after discussing my proposal with her team, she now thinks there would be more of a market for a book on kinks anyone might reasonably get involved in, rather than being focused on hyper-specific fetish subcultures. The working title “101 Kinky Things Even You Can Do” is suggested.

May 4th: After multiple thoughtful and helpful conversations with kink-savvy friends, I submit a reworked version of my proposal, this time including only kinks that the average vanilla-identifying beginner might be curious about actually trying in their own sex life.

May 24th: My editor emails to say that she just pitched my book at an “Ideas Meeting,” and while she was nervous about how people would react to the topic, “it was a resounding success.” She tells me she needs some time to calculate the costs of the book and such, before the company can make me an offer.

June 1st: I email that literary agent from long ago to tell her about my current book situation and to ask if she’ll represent me.

June 7th: The agent calls me and we chat about what agents actually do and how she and her agency can support me through this process.

July 12th: My editor tells me that she recently overheard someone at the company saying the funniest sentence ever devised (according to me, anyway), “Kink is the new houseplant.” This doesn’t make sense unless you know that Laurence King had a very successful book about houseplants. 🤷🏻‍♀️

July 22nd: I sign my agency agreement with the Carol Mann Agency. I officially have an agent, yay!

August 13th: I receive my official offer from Laurence King – a proposed advance and royalty rates, the size of the book and quantity of first print, the word count and deadline. I forward it to my agent and we put together lists of follow-up questions and points to negotiate.

October 17th: Amidst weeks upon weeks of back-and-forth negotiations between my agent and publisher, I’m getting increasingly anxious – I haven’t started writing yet, thinking I can’t or shouldn’t until the contract is signed, but my deadline isn’t budging nonetheless. My agent writes to me, “There’s no reason you can’t start working now. We are nearly there, so if you have the bandwidth, you don’t have to wait until the ink is dry to commence!” I open Scrivener, set up my word count goals and due date, and start. It’s nervewracking but so so good.

November 16th: At long last after months of negotiations, I sign the final contract, over good cocktails and oysters at the Library Bar. We toast to my book and the hard work that got me here.

November 27th: My agent gives me the go-ahead to announce the book, and I publish this blog post!

On a personal note, I want to say thank you to each and every one of my readers. Y’all are the reason I got noticed by a publisher and an agent to begin with, and you’ve also given me the space and feedback that has enabled me to develop my writing voice and niche(s) over the ~7.5 years I’ve been writing this blog. Your encouragement has kept me going at tough times, and I think about you every time I write anything. I really look forward to hearing what you think of the book when it comes out!