Marriage

Husband: "What are you thoughts on the death penalty?" Me: "I think everyone should die."

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) April 14, 2014

Tango

"Every Friday night, her husband would go to the gangbang club. She would sit at home. Alone. And bored. It made her angry. Why did he get to go to the gangbang club, and she had to sit at home? Alone. And bored." -- "Gangbang Tango"

Name That Baby

My friend Lydia Netzer has an amazing opportunity: Name the baby in her next novel.

"Sounds cool, right? In keeping with the crowdsourcing theme of the story, Lydia Netzer decided to let readers name Jenna and Billy’s baby. So here’s what’s happening: you suggest a name for the Kickstarted baby, and we’ll select 10 finalist for readers to vote on. If the name you suggest is selected as a finalist, you’ll win copies of Everybody’s Baby and How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky. If the name you suggest is voted the winner, you’ll get the books AND a shiny new 16GB iPad Mini Retina Display with WiFi-only connectivity."

[Book Riot]

Writing

Husband let me borrow his Iraq gear for writing. pic.twitter.com/i7QBYjTAta

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) April 6, 2014

Steal This Book

I read Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist. I guess you could say it's like the poor man's version of Lynda Barry's What It Is. It's not very long, and I think it took me an hour to read it. Although, you don't really read it so much as survey it. Basically, it's some art and some ideas on how to be more creative. It reminded me of a lot of the sort of advice/self-help writing I did when I was blogging for Forbes. Nowadays, that ... genre sort of makes my skin crawl. It seems to be stuff written by people who aren't doing something about why they're not doing it and the product that produces is a thing that pretends to be doing something, even though it really isn't. I didn't really get Kleon's art. I guess it sort of reminded me of another person who does this sort of thing and has been very successful at it. It's like a TED Talk in book form or something. All that said, I like a lot of the ideas in it. The core concept is that nothing is original, so if you're creating something, don't sweat it. I like that because it takes off the heat. I think what I liked best about the book is that it makes the whole creative process seem like no big deal, and that's good to hear because artists takes themselves way too seriously. I think the best part of reading the book isn't really the book at all. It's that if you're reading it, you're thinking about the act of creation, and that's a really important part of creating.

Research

Research. pic.twitter.com/4fTvPvBxGP

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) April 1, 2014

Who Was the First Sex Blogger?

Sex blogger Lilly has an interesting post in which she presents: "A Brief History of Sex Blogging":

"Erosblog, run by Bacchus, started in 2002, is primarily a mash-up of aggregated sexy photos and commentary on sexuality things of all types1. I believe this is the first thing that can be considered a 'sex blog', and he recalls being the first to use that terminology.  Susannah Breslin with her Reverse Cowgirl site came shortly after Bacchus started. ETA: I was off by a few months! Reverse Cowgirl came first, but as Bacchus said, we’re not sure Ms Breslin would consider her site a sex blog. Do you?"

ErosBlog did some digging:

"Susannah Breslin’s blog The Reverse Cowgirl’s Blog (which you might or might not consider a sex blog, though it had a lot of sex-blog-like content, and rocked the subtitle 'in which a writer attempts to justify the enormity of her porn collection') got started a month plus five days before ErosBlog did. That’s why I have always acknowledged that blog as a possible contender for 'the first sex blog' even though nobody called it a sex blog before I first coined the phrase."

As I pointed out on Twitter this morning, I was preceded in sex blogging by Daze Reader, whose first blog post dates back to May 2002. I didn't launch The Reverse Cowgirl until August 2002. I've always seen Daze as the first sex blogger. I don't know that I would've ever created my blog if it weren't for Daze's pioneering sex blogging.

In regards to Lilly's question, would I consider The Reverse Cowgirl blog a sex blog? Yes. At the time, I was a freelance journalist and my primary beat was sex. I created the RCB to share my crazy life working the sex and porn beat, from Porn Valley to the Playboy Mansion, and I was intoxicated by the opportunity that sex blogging afforded me: an uncensored venue where I could write and express whatever I wanted -- without censorship.

Someone should write an oral history of sex blogs. It would be fascinating.

Trigger Warnings

Slate critics Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss FX's Cold War throwback TV show The Americans, whether Amazon is ruining literature, and the matriculation of trigger warnings into the college classroom.

This week's Slate's Culture Gabfest mentions my "stupid" writing on the topic of trigger warnings. [29:08]