Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Memoir Review: Susie Bright: BIG SEX LITTLE DEATH

"Her risks are as great as her gifts." If we didn't know that already, we can read all about it in Susie Bright's brilliant memoir: BIG SEX LITTLE DEATH.

Everyone’s got their own particular curiosity about the life of Susie Bright – the author, troublemaker, sharp-penned and fearless sexpert who did so much to advance the art and understanding of nooky. Having been abroad during the “sex-wars” – which reached out and entangled me wherever I was living from the Middle East to Europe, I was gratified to finally hear, among her many crucial projects in this book, the inside story of the infamously delicious magazine "On Our Backs." Home to pioneering lesbian and other erotica – both visual and written – it became a vibrator to feminist movements everywhere, causing each of us to tremble with delight or shock.

BIG SEX LITTLE DEATH starts and ends with that complicated institution called “family” – Susie’s childhood informs her parenthood. Along the way she acts up and acts out at the intersection of justice and sexual expression. Her risks are as great as her gifts and this memoir is a tool for understanding her prolific writing, her profound principles, and her willingness to speak “dirty” words so persistently that they become the vocabulary of freedom.

Book Review: Alan Bennett writes SMUT

I was in the library request queue for weeks till I finally got my eyes on Alan Bennett’s newish book SMUT. The volume is comprised of two long short stories about sexual secrets and the flexibility of desire.

Alan Bennett is widely considered a pre-eminent British dramatist, best known for his stage plays (History Boys, The Madness of George III, The Wind in the Willows, etc) and his screenplays (Prick up Your Ears, The Madness of King George, etc).

But I fell for him when I read his only novel The Uncommon Reader, an irresistible tale about the democracy and aristocracy of a book-mobile. I just adored that very literary book with its wit and brevity.

SMUT’s two stories are very naughty – both about the underestimation of the capacity of desire, or in other words, about the fluidity of sexual identity. Bennett’s characters may never learn about the self-deception involved with misleading others, but his readers sure do get the message.

There is something about the complex role of work in an older woman’s life in “The Greening of Mrs Donaldson” that makes sense from a writer who is himself the son of a butcher.  Mrs Donaldson works as a practice patient for medical students – a job that combines symptom research with acting. She also develops an unexpected if entertaining connection with her young lodgers.

And Bennett’s own bi-sexuality probably informs the comedy of infidelity that keeps “The Shielding of Mrs Forbes” rollicking along. An arrogant dashing young man marries a woman who is obviously much less attractive than himself in the hopes that the “gratitude factor” will give him more freedoms than he can rightly expect.

Today I’ve ordered the CD audio book of Untold Stories, which Bennett began when diagnosed a half-dozen years ago with a deadly cancer that has since gone into remission. I see without surprise that there are several holds ahead of mine on the library website.

The Traveler Restaurant: Food and Books

Anyone who’s driven on I-84 by Union, Connecticut has seen a tempting sign hovering right off the highway that says “Food and Books.” This week I finally stopped to have a meal. But not only a meal…

Founded in 1970, the restaurant adds to dining two other goals: to encourage people to read and to recycle extra books. When you have a meal – and the food is basic hearty American grub – you get to choose three free books from the shelves lining the dining room.

So why did they start doing a book give-away? In 1983, the owner wanted to thin out his personal collection, so he lugged a couple of boxes to the restaurant and passed them out to his customers. They now handle about 100,000 books (or 50 tons they say) per year. The books come from libraries getting rid of their surplus, from flea markets, and from donations. I picked up books by Anthony Trollope and Anita Brookner as well a short story collection from a writer I don’t know named Joy Williams. My companion got the original scripts from the movies Pulp Fiction and The Matrix.

The waitress called me away from the stacks when my food was served, but no one rushed me afterwards as I continued to browse. There is also a store downstairs called the Book Cellar that features, its leaflet says, all sorts of “reasonably priced” and “unique and hard to find titles.” I didn’t go downstairs, but it certainly looked intriguing.

It is such a winning combination – food and books – one many people experience in their own homes, that it is doubtful that I will ever drive I-84 again without stopping in and have a bite and a browse.

Photos courtesy of Barry Hock

The Dumbing-Down of AARP Magazine

Hey AARP Magazine, wot happened? I remember when you used to include compelling articles about everyday folks dealing with the issues on all our minds. I remember hearing that you have the largest distribution of any magazine in the world. And I remember how many times I unsuccessfully tried to interest you in my own work about people over 50 and alternative sexualities.

Nothing personal, but it’s been a little while since I actually grabbed the magazine to read it through. Last night I couldn’t fall asleep, didn’t like the book I was trying to read and so I opened your latest issue – the summer one with Harrison Ford on the cover.

Here’s my question: When did you turn into a seniors’ “People” magazine? You’re no longer about older folks – you’re about celebrities. To name a few, we have the boxer/dancer Sugar Ray Leonard on his book, Aretha Franklin’s weight loss, Lynda Carter’s new CD and Jay Leno on his motorcycle. Oh, and four whole pages on H. Ford. Of course a full-page pic of Betty White graces your own ad, but that’s your business. Where’s your feature on the scholar Noam Chomsky (above)? Or the poet Verandah Porche (left with granddaughter)? Or the collage painter Sandy Oppenheimer (below)?

Most articles are short, blurbs really, or they are of the schlockiest journalistic structure: “Four Surgeries to Avoid” and “7 Great Rides.” These are the kinds of pieces (The ABCs of …; How to … in … Easy Steps) that students of journalism are taught to submit as filler for local publications trying to fill its pages. You can afford to pay real writers real money for actual interesting material. (Have your people call my people.)

I credit you with a piece, at last, about the scary impact of AIDS on seniors, although I missed a discussion of the lack of public health safer sex outreach and resources for seniors. Nice to have some hints about “The Art of Complaining” and a declaration that “Tomatoes Rule.” But where are the social justice activists you used to profile? Where are the pieces about older heroes who are trying to help others keep it together in what are for many of us very, very rough times? Where are the hints about how to find alternative housing solutions – new collectives, co-housing, collaborative affordable set-ups for seniors?

Maybe this month’s magazine is just a bum issue and you aren’t just an organization founded for and focused on selling insurance to older people. (And now that I’m mentioning that, please stop sending me letter after letter about life insurance, long-term care insurance and car insurance.) Call back those excellent writers you had and hire some more, especially some seasoned investigative journalists.

I suggest you contain the celebrity drooling to that last birthday page, which this month features Forest Whitaker at 50, Geoffrey Rush at 60, Martha Stewart at 70, Della Reese at 80 and John Glenn at 90. I’m sorry you missed out on my friend Sue O’Sullivan (with flowers) who also turned 70 this year after years of working on women's health (especially around HIV), women's writing and creating community. She’s in the midst of a life of feminism, activism and friendship. You’ve got that massive big platform: do something good with it. Help bring justice to a world increasingly hostile to seniors and all other living things.

My Review of Barbara Beckwith's book on "Word Love"

My review of Barbara Beckwith's essay collection What Was I Thinking? Reflecting on Everyday Racism has today appeared as a guest post on "Word Love," the wonderful book blog of Randy Susan Meyers.

I mention this here in case you don't know about this cool blog (bad), missed my review (badder) or haven't yet read What Was I Thinking? Reflecting on Everyday Racism (baddest)!

 

Book Review: What Was I Thinking? Reflecting on Everyday Racism by Barbara Beckwith

I was watching the World Series with a few guys, who were as into the commercials as the sport. About half-way through the game, one ad came on that included a variety of people of different races. One of the guys laughed, “Oh, look at this ridiculously PC commercial.” Another nodded smug agreement.

It was unusual for me to watch any non-Olympic match, and with a bunch of people of the male persuasion, besides. I was already waaaaay out of my comfort zone, but I couldn’t let it pass.

“How come you didn’t notice that all the previous ads were just white men? You only object when you see Black people on your screen?”

Silence fell. Till the next play. I was disappointed with my effort.

It’s hard to confront racism when it’s coming from people who believe that they’re as committed to social justice as the next person. Intentional racists are easy to shout down or disparage – and I for one have no energy for dealing with the nasty. But friends and acquaintances whose self-image is all about being cool and on the right side of things may not understand that there is a lot of homework to do in order to understand how racism impacts all of us. And even more in order to change things.

Barbara Beckwith knows this very well. She has collected ten of her frank, honest and well-written essays and named the booklet, What Was I Thinking? Reflecting on Everyday Racism. Although she’s a highly published essayist (in the big, glossy magazines I only dream of publishing in), no mainstream publisher would touch these revelatory pieces of work.

Full disclosure: I first met Barbara Beckwith when she recruited me into the National Writers Union (NWU, part of the UAW). First she slid me right onto the Diversity Committee and the next thing I knew, I was co-chair of the Boston chapter. Years later we are both still activists on the local and national levels of the union. And we are friends.

The first essay describes her own initial introduction to the course she has since helped spread around the country: “White People Challenging Racism.” She started with skepticism and grew into an activism that has never wavered; this collection is an additional way for her to get the word out.

In other essays Beckwith uses her personal history and consciousness to address fellow “white” people – she’s learned to question the construction of race as so many of us question the binary construction of gender. She looks back at her youthful and college diaries and exposes her own dodgy assumptions and stereotypes. She examines racial jokes, concluding that source, context, tone and audience can affect the meaning of jokes and whether they are funny or insulting.

For example, this joke could be taken as an ironic if insightful observation of what racists do to mitigate the entry of non-whites into their families…

“When does a Mexican become Spanish?”
“When he marries your daughter.”

Whereas this one is blatant “bigotry disguised only thinly,” as Beckwith says…

“Who was the best Jewish cook?
“Hitler.”

She talks about two levels of personal activism: taking personal responsibility for looking at and changing one’s own attitudes towards race and difference; then figuring out how to stand up to both offhand racism (unintentional and intentional alike) and institutional racism.

So if you hear the above joke at a dinner party, what should you do? Beckwith looks at it this way:

I can simply state the problem as I see it: “That joke’s not funny – it’s racist” and get ready for the probable counter-charge of political correctness that may follow. I can try joking back: “Know any white guy jokes?” Or I can stay silent, since joke-tellers need laughter to make their jokes “work.”

She recommends none of the above. Instead, she says,

Or I can engage the joke-teller in a serious, preferably one-on-one, discussion of racial stereotypes – right then, or the next day, or the next week. Whatever I say makes less difference, I suspect, than that I say something. Every time. No kidding.

In a country like ours where wealth was built on racially-based slavery and where institutional racism has never been eradicated, most white people enjoy what we used to call in the 60s “white skin privilege.” It is hard for white people to incorporate into their self-portrait any measure of racism – conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional. Beckwith is able to translate that everyday reality into the kinds of concrete examples each of us can understand and relate to.

Beckwith does not shy away from revealing the privilege with which she was raised. In fact, she begins her quest by asking her father about the Black nanny who took care of her as an infant. She reveals her own anti-Semitism, as a college student, when writing to her mother about her first visit to her future husband’s Jewish family. She looks at unconscious reactions she has had on the streets. In short, she employs that kind of starkly honest self-criticism that I used to fancy was practiced in Chinese villages during Community Party meetings after the revolution.

Privileged people often seem to assume that their kind of experience is the only real kind; if their infant fails to get into the pre-school with the highest Harvard end-rate, they are devastated by their own deprivation. Yeah, yeah, they know how the parallel private school system depletes the public schools they support, in their hearts, for everyone else’s kids, but since they can send their kids to Touchie-Feelie Play School, they will.

Too often on Jon Stewart or Saturday Night Live I see cringe-worthy routines that aren’t even slightly amusing lampooning non-white races and minority ethnicities. There is a dominant culture arrogance that says: I can ridicule people of color (or women or queers) because I’m so cool, I’m like part of this community, and what’s the matter with them anyway: don’t they know irony when they see it? Where’s their sense of humor? Too many privileged individuals with good intentions, though, have few people different from themselves deep in their lives (except as employees, perhaps) and in fact, they have no idea what they are talking about.

Beckwith’s piece called “Nosy Questions” tackles those often well-meaning probes that are in fact dripping with stereotyped assumptions. Tacoma? “No, where are you really from?” Or, “What do Asians think of…?” Beckwith’s last chapter , On Being an Ally, describes her own approach to looking at everyday racism.

The penultimate chapter, however, is the key to the activity closest to Beckwith’s writer/reader heart: it is chock full of her brief descriptions of recommended books we can read about race, ethnicity, privilege in general and how to confront these scourges. It is through reading, Beckwith promises, that we can explore lives very different from our own without being intrusive. She titles this essay “Reading to Understand and as a Spur to Anti-racist Action.” It is a wonderful resource – for a person taking their first step towards active anti-racism or for the activist who wants to further expand their world.

You can order What Was I Thinking? Reflecting on Everyday Racism for $8.95 from Crandall, Dostie and Douglass Books www.cddbooks.com, publisher of books on white privilege and anti-racism.

Book Review: Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission

Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission
Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Cleis Press 2010

There are many ways to get a sex education and one of the best is to follow the rich stream of erotica anthologies that Rachel Kramer Bussel puts together.

Her work ranges from erotic collections with such titles as Passion, Naked, Orgasmic and Fast Girls, to volumes, like Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission (which follows Please Ma’am: Stories of Male Submission) that concentrate on a particular fetish or sexual sub-community.

Do people really do it on airplanes? Check out her collection of testimonies to The Mile High Club. Wondering how other people feel about oral sex? Try her Tasting Her or Tasting Him anthologies.

Rachel Kramer Bussel titles her Introduction to Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission “Risk and Reward,” an immediate and clear summary of why woman submissives like what they like. There have been copious articles by feminists (and others) talking about what they get out of kinky sex and deconstructing the world of sexual fantasy, but Bussel has a non-judgmental, informed approach. “It’s about unlocking something within yourself so you can reach beyond your normal limits, exposing your body and soul in order to go somewhere you cannot get to alone.”

With 22 stories by 22 writers, including a final story by the editor herself, the reader can dip into 22 experiences of submission. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s story “Your Hand on My Neck” is an especially exciting example of risk (his hand squeezes her throat) and reward (she loses herself in the pleasure of belonging).

But it is good to start with the beginning of this book, where Shanna Germain’s story “Anticipation” gives us one of the strongest depictions of the role of anticipation in this special world of hanky-panky.  A woman sits at a computer cafe in Europe writing her lover in the States. Having been apart for six months, imagination and anticipation are their only fuels. As he arouses her through the screen, she says, “I have to bite back a quiet sound of want, swallow it down around my steaming coffee and hope that no one heard.” He teases her with his plans for her when they are reunited. “I have to shift and cross my legs, the pulse of my clit beating hard inside my jeans. I’m not one of those women who can come just by rubbing their legs together, sadly. I need a hand on me, ideally his hand, hard and fast, spanking my ass or my clit, bringing me to that heated burn of orgasm.”

“The Negotiation” by Remittance Girl, one of the more literary tales in the collection, takes on another basic aspect of kinky sex, an activity that emphasizes frank discussion and consent.  Two elegantly suited businesspeople are negotiating a merger, but he tells her that her assets are as yet unevaluated. “In the interests of full disclosure” she pushes her chair back from the table so that she is in full view. “Slowly, she uncrossed her legs and parted them until the hem of her short skirt pulled taut against her thighs.” Having examined the assets, he moves the metaphor into kinky gear. “You realize that a merger is not the only option for us? A buyout would suit us just as well… It would provide for a far more reliable corporate governance structure.”

Wherever your sexual curiosity takes you, Rachel Kramer Bussel is sure to have gathered together the best erotic stories on the topic.

Here is her (very) explicit video book trailer for Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission.

Do You Know About June Jordan?

"Jordan . . . is among the bravest of us, the most outraged. She feels for all. She is the universal poet."-Alice Walker

I’m a prose woman. Some poets move me – Verandah Porche, Charles Coe, Suheir Hammad – but usually I know them well enough to understand what they are writing. I didn’t have to know June Jordan (1936-2002) personally, though, to be knocked over by her integrity and the power of her work. It is the anniversary of June Jordan’s birth in 1936, as I was reminded by Campbell Ex, a valuable Facebook friend.

Unflinching in her approach to sexuality, race and justice, Jordan will always be remembered with honor by those involved in the struggle for Palestinian rights for her poem “Moving Towards Home.” It was written in the wake of the 1982 attack on Palestinians in Lebanon and it just happens that I am working on a novel about that same period. Here’s the last stanza:

I was born a Black woman
and now
I am become a Palestinian
against the relentless laughter of evil
there is less and less living room
and where are my loved ones?
It is time to make our way home.

Her parents came from the Caribbean. She tells us in one article, "I am the daughter of peasants who begged and borrowed their way to these United States. They wanted an escape from no-shoes-no-drinkable-water poverty." She also wrote novels, plays and journalism. Wikipedia says that she “is still widely regarded as one of the most significant and prolific Black, bisexual writers of the twentieth century.”

I have seen her perform live and it was an amazing, energizing evening. She had a way of putting things – here are a few knockout comments:

“Lately... Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie. In our history, the state has failed to respond to the weak. You could be white, male, Presbyterian and heterosexual besides, but if you get fired or if you get sick tomorrow, you might as well be Black, for all the state will want to hear from you.”

“Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn’t that what freedom implies?


 “If any of us hopes to survive, s/he must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.”

And one of my favorites….

“The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.”

The Return of Desire by Gina Ogden

The Return of Desire is the second of three books that Dr. Gina Ogden – sex therapist, author and (disclosure) my admired colleague – bases on her large survey of what women (and some men) really feel about sex. Following the highly respected The Heart and Soul of Sex, this time she fearlessly confronts head-on the profit-driven medicalization of women’s sexuality, employing her unique holistic, positive approach to better understand the rich complexity of desire and sex.

Where do the frequently discussed claims of widespread women’s sexual dysfunction come from? Many are based on the accepted performance model of sex research, which quantifies sexual function. Since acts of penetration and numbers of orgasm are fairly easy to count and compare, the arc from desire/arousal/orgasm/resolution has long been used to measure sexual function and dysfunction.

This quantitative approach is increasingly prominent. As Dr. Eleanor Roffman, psychologist and Lesley University professor, told me, “The push today, stimulated by managed care and pharmaceutical corporations, is towards evidence-based research – and only that which is measurable by their instruments.”

Feminism in the early 70s reclaimed the clitoris, challenged the myth of the vaginal orgasm and encouraged women to find their own routes to satisfaction. (So we all bought Magic Wand vibrators.) In reaction, the forces that make their living off sexual problems tried to keep control of the field. Ogden explains that in 1999 the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article declaring that “a whopping 43 percent of all American women just aren’t interested in sex – this based mainly on questions about how often 1,749 of them had intercourse.” This one act – some women may not like it, some men may be unable to perform, some couples may both be women – is a starkly insufficient standard by which to judge sexual health or thrills.

In contrast, from the 3,810 completed surveys she received, Ogden gained a nuanced and enlightening picture – one that reveals women’s sexuality to be far more complex than the arithmetic of penile/vaginal penetration, one that embraces their physical, mental, emotional and, of particular interest to Ogden, spiritual lives.

Despite what women actually say about their own sexuality, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual identifies “desire disorder” by “criteria for sexual dysfunction [that] are all physical, and they all relate specifically to problems with intercourse,” Ogden writes. This despite decades of consistent research showing that “three-quarters of women are not actually satisfied by intercourse.” It’s the clit, stupid. And some lovin’.

Viagra et al has been a major contributor to the profits of the pharmaceuticals and now the push is on to “solve” the “problems” of women, especially older women. First they have to identify some problems and setting up narrow criteria with little relationship to what women really like is certainly one way. Already they offer us what Ogden calls “the so-called horny pills, creams and patches.” Moreover, she reports, the same pharmaceuticals that market products for doctors to prescribe to pep up “sexless marriages” are the ones that fund most research into hormones and sexuality.

The quantity of material Ogden gained through the huge response to her survey is unprecedented and she is making excellent use of it. She calls The Return of Desire “A guide to rediscovering your sexual passion.” Examining the impact of monogamy, affairs, childbirth and merging with your partner over time is just the beginning. There are other aspects of the kind of self-knowledge on which Ogden believes one builds sexual self-confidence, including an examination of “Living Curly in a Straight Culture: When Desire Meets Sexual Orientation.”

Finally, Ogden’s last chapter looks at “What Women Want,” in the context of the belief that desire doesn’t always bubble up spontaneously, but often requires “conscious preparation.” Based on her decades of therapeutic experience and nearly 4,000 completed surveys that reflect real women’s voices, Gina Ogden’s The Return of Desire offers valuable, compassionate and joyous direction for women rediscovering or reinventing their sexual passion.

P.S. The book's cover features the sexiest fruit photo ever. Your daily apple will never taste the same.

Susie Bright -ens Boston

Finally, I’ve had Susie Bright in the flesh – over a table in the deli. “Had” as in sharing a pastrami sandwich (mine) and a chalah bread pudding (hers). While this was the first time I met her in person, I’ve known Susie Bright since the mid-1990s when she published a story of mine in the series she was editing for Penthouse. She has long been recognized as a generous colleague to writers – providing opportunities for marginalized writers to get onto the page and making sure we banked a dime or two in the process.

Well, that was then and now the possibilities for making a living as a writer are tanking faster than my short-term memory. I remember the shock in the writers’ community when so many of our bread-and-butter technical writing jobs were off-shored. I remember the hope we felt with the arrival of a digital world hungry for huge bytes of content. Now we recognize that the craving for quantity trumps any interest in quality. Most non-corporate websites pay zilch for content, although some are making good money out of ads, sales and subscriptions. As Susie pointed out, book reading is down and, “There’s no livelihood for writers online yet.”

Susie Bright was in Boston as part of her farewell tour. With the publication of the 2008 “The Best of the Best of American Erotica,” she ends her 15-year-stretch as editor of this incomparable series. On tour, she is going out with a bang by inviting the whole gang – anyone who ever published in any of the anthologies – to join her as she appears in their area. She dished tidbits about those writers, the creative process and even the impact of politics on the types of stories sent to her over the years. “Every time a Bush makes a war in Iraq,” she said, “I get an avalanche of stories about submissive men.”

The end of the series is a reflection of what’s happening in the book world. Susie’s un-missable take on the state of publishing is one of the best posts on her smashing, pioneering blog (since 2004). In it, she explains why she finished the American Erotica series.

In her standing-room only talk at Brookline Booksmith, one of the few remaining area independent bookstores, Susie talked about the profound changes in the industry. “When I look at my old book tour itineraries, more than 9 out of 10 of these bookstores are closed.” No longer do “mom and pop” bookstores and their local readers set the literary agenda: the intense conglomeration of publishing has left that decision in the hands of those few corporations who are ravenously gobbling up the small houses. Just as the Internet gobbles up copy.

Here’s a personal example. Recently I had a piece called “Dramatic Voices of Dissent: Celebrities Film Zinn’s ‘The People Speak’” published on Alternet.org. It’s about a wonderful TV project based on the original "Voices of a Peoples History of the United States” - by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. I was paid nothing for the piece, which involved lengthy interviews and some research as well as attending two tapings. A friend wrote the day it was published to say he had seen the piece, but on a different progressive website. I checked it out. It had been lifted wholesale and reprinted. No email to ask my permission; no negotiation about compensation.

But it wasn’t just that website. I googled the name of my piece and there were several listings by that evening. The next day there were three pages of Google results and now, less than a week later, it turns up on more pages than I am willing to scroll through. Sometimes they just give the link (that’s nice), but too often they serve the whole enchilada. Sometimes my name appears, and sometimes it is attributed to the person who had appropriated and posted it! These are right-on portals and blogs – surely they’ve heard of intellectual property rights? Surely they’ve heard of the film writers’ strike for compensation for digital reproductions? Be happy, everyone says. You’re getting great exposure. My reply? Send the check to my home. I’m trying to be a writer, here.

What’s Susie Bright’s answer to the question: How are professional writers staying afloat?

“All our ‘old’ forms of supporting ourselves have shriveled. There's a minuscule spot, on the head of a pin, to make a decent living in books and freelance writing today, using traditional formulas. Far more prevalent are authors who write, write, write, for little or nothing, for the Internet and the publishers who embrace terms that make quality writing, editing, and mentoring— all but impossible. The McDonald-ization of book publishing has given us a bellyache that just won't quit… The art of writing is holed up in a corner right now.”

Is it getting any better, Susie?
“Amateurism, Plagiarism, and Bullshitting-Your-Way-Through-It-All has not peaked yet."

Susie Bright, though, isn’t giving up. She has been taming technology since uploading her website in 1997 and she’s exploring ways to make it work for her as a writer. She’s pampering herself too. Her divine low-cut, form-fitting dress that evening was something she had just whipped up at the Sewing Boot Camp she had attended before the tour and I found her talent and her curves a lovely compensation for all the bad news.