Want To Hear Me (And Gini) Talk About Polyamory? I'm At Geeky Kink Event New England!

Next weekend, I’ll be attending the Geeky Kink Event in Rhode Island – if you’ll recall, they’re the clash of nerd and kink culture that has the TARDIS bondage box, the ball pit, and the Sensory Deprivation Companion Cube, among many other crazy sexy mashups.  I’m so psyched, as friends have told me this is one of the most awesome cons ever.
I’m pleased to say I’ll be leading several workshops, including:
Burninating the Peasants: Fireplay 101
A hands-on demonstration, showing how to set fire to the ones you love. Much discussion of safety. Much more pretty, pretty flames. Will include demonstrations of fire wands, flash cotton, firecupping, and, if things go drastically wrong, fire extinguishers. (Hint: Things will not go drastically wrong.)
Fucking Lots of People Without Fucking Over Your Partner: How To Open Up a Relationship
Interested in polyamory? How about swinging? How about doing all of that without hurt feelings, messy breakups, or crazy exes bashing down your door? Noted kink writer Ferrett Steinmetz and his adorable wife Gini Judd discuss the many ways in which you can start exploring other relationships without blowing your world into flinders.
Jealousy Is Not a Crime: Troubleshooting Broken Polyamory
If you’re dating multiple people, bumps will occur, sure as death and taxes. The question is, how do you figure out what’s wrong… and how do you repair the faults so that you emerge stronger and saner? Kinktastic writer Ferrett Steinmetz and his wife Gini Judd will lead a discussion about how to fight fairly, how to be respectful to all the people in your poly web, and tout the merits of a solid set of dealbreakers.
Wet With Words: How To Make Your Writing Arousing
Whether it’s composing the hottest of sexts or just porning up your fanfic, there is an art to getting an audience aroused with mere words. Let professional author Ferrett Steinmetz – dubbed a “ninja sexter” by his lovers – discuss the techniques involved in taking your erotic writing to the next level.
Author Reading: Nebula-Nominated Author Ferrett Steinmetz Read Brain Porn
Ferrett Steinmetz reads his story “Rooms Formed of Neurons and Sex,” the erotic tale of a telephone sex operator and her love affair with a brain in a jar. A deadly serious, yet entrancing, tale. Please, no touching yourself during the performance.
If you wanna go (or even have me set you aflame with a reasonable level of safety), hotel rooms and tickets are available until the 9th.  If you’re in the area, I’d totally go; this looks like both the hoot and the holler.

Welcome To The Family, Shasta Clarion McJuddmetz!

Yesterday, we wound up with this in our living room:

And forty-five minutes later, we owned her.  This is our dog, Shasta Clarion McJuddmetz:

She’s about a year old, and no, we don’t know what breed she is. Guesses range from pinscher to chihuahua to spitz (for the tail). When asked, current plan is to tell people she’s an Idris Elba – black and compelling.
Truth is, we’d been planning on getting a dog for the past eight months or so, ever since my Mom’s dog Koshi came to live with us during my triple-bypass recovery.  But we didn’t want to buy from a puppy mill, and purebreeds were expensive, and we waffled a dog would really fit into our always-busy lifestyle.
Then one of Gini’s clients, who was moving and had rescued the dog himself from a pair of fuckwit owners who were going to put her to sleep, couldn’t afford to keep this dog either.  And so Gini took her for a walk, and by the time she was done we had a dog.  Of course, I hadn’t met the dog yet, or agreed to dog ownership, but that was easily solved by dumping the dog in our room (“We’re dogsitting for a couple of days, she’s available, see if you like her”) and naturally forty-five minutes we totally owned her.
She’s extremely bright, though; she’s already learned not to get up on the furniture, is about a third of the way to “heel,” and is beginning to respond to her new name.  (Gini has always wanted a dog called “Shasta,” and she arrived on my fifth Clarionniversary, and so though it feels a little weird to rename an existing dog, she cannot tell us what name she thinks of herself as.)  I took her for a walk yesterday and she already knows where we live.
So yeah.  Y’all are in for puppy photos.  I hope you like dogs, bro, because dogs?  Be comin’.

Leave It All Behind: Advice For Certain Clarion Students

I’d been writing for twenty years when I started writing.
I entered Clarion with two decades’ worth of failure resting on my shoulder; no novels, no professional sales, no fans of my fictional worlds at all.  And twenty years’ of failure is an arthritic, backbreaking load to carry, a thick sheaf of rejection slips so heavy it threatens to crush you. Every critique got filtered through that history, turned into evidence that I should give this “writing” thing up.
Which makes sense.  Twenty years of solid effort at a thing seems enough.  After two decades sans success, it’s time to start on an exit strategy.
Except that Clarion had just blown apart my concept of what it meant to be a writer.  It had highlighted all my bad habits, taught me that I needed to get serious about not just writing but rewriting, showcased that things I thought were strengths were actually weaknesses.  Everything I knew was wrong.
So I had to make everything else I knew wrong.
Five years ago, on my first day back from Clarion, I started writing.  I literally flung aside the past twenty years’ of effort as a bad first draft to rewrite my whole career from scratch.  That may have been one of the wisest decisions I ever made, right up there with “Should I marry Gini?” and “Should I take six weeks’ off from work to attend Clarion?”  Shedding that load of expectation allowed me to work with freedom, to play with things, to take huge risks without worrying about what it all meant.
Which paid off, to some extent.  Do I have a novel published?  No.  But I’ve had a lot of short stories published, and many people are fans of my fiction, and if there is a path to being a Writing Success – which I’m increasingly unconvinced of – I’m farther along that path than I ever was.  (The quote that I’m clasping to heart today is, “I guess that’s why I aim for excellence — not being the best. Excellence is an abundant quality. Being the best depends on hierarchy.”)
So my advice if you’re one of those Clarion students who’s been battering at publication like a moth at the lamp – take today to shrive yourself.  Let it all go.  You know how transformed you are; let that be complete, and shed that caterpillar to become a butterfly.
You’ve done nothing before today.  It’s all new.
Welcome to the world.

The Dumbest Thing I've Said In The Past Decade Was Today

The clerk, as to me I’m checking out of the motel: “Is your wife participating in Pedal to the Point this weekend?”
Me: “Yup. Riding two straight days for charity!”
Clerk: “She’s helping my family out. My sister was just diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.”
Me: “Oh, that’s awesome!”
*pause*
Me: “…I sure hope you know what I meant to say.”
Clerk: “You betcha.”

"Who Would Win In A Fight?": Dammit, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

The most domesticated of pet peeves:
On Twitter, a friend asked, “Who would win in a fight? Fringe, or Torchwood?”  And I immediately gave the wrong answer.
I snap-judged “Fringe” as the winner, but on reflection that’s because I’ve seen four and a half seasons of Fringe, and only a handful of Torchwood episodes.  I was picking a winner on who I liked best.  And I fucking hate it when that happens, because I really don’t know that much about Torchwood and maybe hell, they would kick the shit out of Fringe.
The proper answer is to recuse yourself. To say, “Mu.”  To honestly acknowledge that you’re not educated enough to say.  Because I fucking hate it when people have an online poll of “Who would win in a lambada contest, Doctor Who or [less well-known character]?” and of course Doctor Who wins in a goddamned landslide because nobody knows who this other schmuck is.
But we weren’t asking, “Who do you like better?”  We’re asking “Who is more qualified?”  And if you’re not intimately familiar with the mad dance moves of [less well-known character], then you shouldn’t even click on the goddamned poll.  You’re the reasons this world is a fucking cesspool.  Every time some asshole gets promoted at work because the bosses know him better, or some underqualified person gets hired because the interviewer knew their mother, or some criminal goes scot-free because the cops know him and aw, shucks, he’s not that bad, it’s all because you said Doctor Who could lambada.
Stop choosing based on like.  Make it about qualifications, dammit, or some day we’ll have to have a big fucking dance-off to save the planet and you’ll find out that despite the fact that he had an episode devoted to it, the Doctor really can’t dance.

Have Some Hawaiian Vacation Photos To Obscure All This Begging.

What with my Hawaiian cruise absence and all, the blog’s been a little “Please give these things money” more than I’d like.  I usually try to leaven the donation calls with my usual entertainment, but Hawaii?  Is far away.
Seriously.  Nobody told me the islands were a six-hour time difference from my usual East Coast home zone, and so I’m jetlagged and punchy.  I’ve got at least two entries pending, one a rant on the sending of dick pics, but I know I’m sufficiently loopy that while I could write something, it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining as when I’m back up to full speed.  So rather than, er, blowing a good topic when I’m sleepy, I’m holding until I can unleash the full Ferrett upon y’all.

So as a consolation prize, have some Hawaiian pictures.

My wife, on our nature hike, sniffing a flower. I’d like to say these beautiful eyes are why I fell in love with her, but really it was her words. Still, these eyes don’t hurt.

While I was in Hawaii, I found the most awesome hat store with a really knowledgeable owner (he reblocked my Ecuadorian hat!), and so of course I bought a hat. The truth is, I actually look wretched in most hats; I’m just dedicated enough to try on thirty or forty of ’em until I find one like this.

Leis are surprisingly weighty; there’s a satisfying heft in real florals that you don’t get in the fake plastic leis they sell everywhere. It comes as no surprise to anyone, however, that I wore a lei every day I could. I’m told you’re not supposed to buy them for yourself, as they’re intended to be gifts; this is a shame. I’d look like one selfish fuck in Hawaii if I lived there, as I’d have to wear ’em all the time, along with my hats and pretty pretty princess nails.

We did not stop at this floating bar, but dammit I wanted to.

Yes, I bought an Elvis shirt. Two of them, actually.

This was the view from our cruise ship balcony. Not shown: the dolphins playing along the ship at the bottom. Seriously.

Hawaii actually looks like this. It’s so beautiful I kept thinking, “This must be some crazy illusion,” and then I’d make my Disbelieve roll and it would shimmer and fade to reveal, oh, I don’t know, Pittsburgh.

And, of course, you can’t overlook the true treasures of Hawaii.