So I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to go home to promote the reissues of three of my books at Book Expo America at the end of May and beginning of June, where I’ll be signing copies of CARRIE’S STORY and SAFE WORD (by me as Molly Weatherfield), and hanging out with Cleis authors and editors. AND, since Samhain Press’s e-book reissue of THE BOOKSELLER’S DAUGHTER will be coming out May 28, I’ll get to meet Samhain editors and authors as well.

Plus there will be… cake? Well, probably. Wine definitely — always happy to meet up for a drink or a cup of tea with friends, family, readers, or any combination of the above.

And there will be readings and a discussion session — mostly as Molly Weatherfield, but Pam will be there as well. Check out the kind of amazing events list at http://pamrosenthal.com/events.php for New York (and Baltimore too) — if you’re anywhere near by, please come say hi.

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

Almost a Gentleman actually hit print first, but The Bookseller’s Daughter was the one I was writing while I was returning to the genre for the first time since reading it in high school. And so I’m thrilled to have it available again, meticulously copy-edited this time (thanks so much, Samhain), with a new, retrospective introduction from me which I hope will interest old readers as well as new ones.

And might the novel even interest Molly Weatherfield readers? Who can say, but if my Francophile BDSM heroine Carrie ever wrote a romance novel, it might be something like The Bookseller’s Daughter, set in cruel ancien régime France with its gorgeous rococo style and the clothing that inspired Roissy fetish garb, sanctioned by the offstage presence of the Marquis de Sade himself. Eighteenth century France was a golden age of erotic writing, and I hope to be talking more about this history and how it inspired me to write. So look for this on my blog and anywhere else online I might turn up in the next while.

And meanwhile, I hope you’ll make your e-reader a home for my brave bookseller Marie-Laure (pronounced like it looks) and my bold erotic writer Joseph. My youngest, sweetest romance heroine and hero (which doesn’t mean, au contraire, they don’t heat up the pages). And my first.

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

Not publishing anything new for a few years can do that to you, I guess, especially at a reading series as good as Writers With Drinks, the amazing literary event that happens second Saturday night of every month at the Make Out Room, in San Francisco’s Mission District. Check out the list of authors who have been reading and are up to read later this spring (and then go read their books, as I’m doing, after hearing the four fantastic writers I, in my Molly Weatherfield guise, was lucky enough to be reading with).

Still, Carrie’s Story and Safe Word were new to much of this audience, and in truth my turn on stage went just fine. I got some laughs (and in the right places), heard some kind words afterwards, generally had a great time, and was even, dare I say, inspired not to give up my particular convoluted writing trajectory.

What’s particularly great about Writers With Drinks is its irreverence, its insistence that literary quality doesn’t have to be so serious. I came away recommitted to my own eccentricities, stirred and gently shaken by mistress of misrule Charlie Jane Anders. And if I sometimes need reminding that in the end we’re all a mixed bag of sexualities and sensibilities, what better way than by laughing my ass off at the wild, brilliant, freeform introductions Charlie dreams up for each author?

Charlie Jane Anders

Mine, of course, was a cocktail of BDSM and romance motifs, campy and outrageous, complete with a shaggy dog Jane Austen vampire story, that oddly, presciently skirted the truth in more ways than one. Since although I haven’t actually written the BDSM Pride and Prejudice of Charlie’s fantasy, the truth of the matter (and of how I spent a chunk of these last unpublished years) is not entirely different, if a little bit stranger.

Because what actually sits on my hard drive is a large piece of a novel called Jane Fairfax’s Dream, which might best be described as “Emma with strong BDSM elements.” (It’s not ready for prime time yet — just ask all the editors who’ve passed on it, or better still, don’t ask them: when I think the rest of it matches up with my account of what really happened at Weymouth, you’ll see it one way or another.) While Charlie’s the Jane as Vamp stories bore a distant but distinct resemblance to Janet Mullany’s smart, funny, touching novels Jane and the Damned and Blood Persuasion.

Thanks, Writers with Drinks, I’ll be a listener with drinks for the next one.

While as for me and my writing: stay tuned. More events scheduled soon.

And yes, there’s also stuff besides BDSM/Emma on my hard drive, that I hope will see the light some day.

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

Most, if not all of the reviews, interviews, and excerpts are all still available (check out the links at on the Official Molly Weatherfield Blog Tour Guide).

And you’ve got until midnight, April 11 to enter a raffle for a free copy at Karen Blue’s web site.

And (what are you waiting for?) until midnight today, April 9 to try your luck for a copy at Romance After Dark.

But meeting new and old readers is cool too, especially at San Francisco’s amazing ongoing series, Writers With Drinks, where Molly Weatherfield will be reading, at the Makeout Room, 3225 22nd. St., in San Francisco’s Mission District this Saturday night, April 13, 7:30.

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

SOME RECENT STOPS (still available for visits) are:

• March 24 – Shanna Germain — an excerpt and a few lovely words (thanks!)

• March 26 – Alison Tyler — a different excerpt, a lovely reminiscence… and (check out this illustration!) the perfect accessory for a Molly Weatherfield reader

• March 27 – Romance After Dark — a review, and an excerpt and contest (just leave a comment to enter the drawing for a free copy of Carrie’s Story)

• March 28 – Romance Junkies said I didn’t have to answer all the interview questions. But I did, because they were all fun.

• March 29 – Sinclair Sexsmith chooses an entirely different excerpt, proving once again that there are many ways into the chateau

• April 1 – “I’m sure,” she began, “that it’s not really necessary to point out that ‘reading you your rights’ is just a little joke we have around here…. Because if you think you have any rights around here, somebody has made a terrible mistake.” In which excerpt, writer, columnist, and anthologizer extraordinaire Rachel Kramer Bussel reminds me that I can write pretty damn uncompromising when I want to.

• April 2 – “Carrie might be the heroine I have always wanted” – Kissin Blue Karen not only offers a thoughtful, enthusiastic reading and appreciation, but a chance at a free copy

• April 3 – Ezrabet’s Enchantments – An excerpt (more of that hardcore episode), a fulsome review (“an S/M novel that stays with you when you turn out the lights” – thanks so much!) and an interview with Molly

• April 4 – “Who doesn’t love an intelligent heroine who knows what she wants and gets it?” At Pagan Spirits, Erin O’Riodan asks me an entirely new and challenging set of questions, posts an excerpt, and comments from her own point of view — somewhat different from mine and well worth checking out.

• April 5 – Lindsay Avalon – An excerpt from the beginning of Carrie and Jonathan’s relationship

• April 6 – Laura Antoniou – An excerpt and a couple of sharp observations from a major author in the BDSM genre: I’m proud she calls me colleague

AND UP TODAY

• April 7 – DL King wraps it up with one of the first passages I played with — over expresso at Oliveto’s in Rockridge, Oakland, when I was just imagining who these people, Carrie and Jonathan, might actually be.

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

And as Molly Weatherfield’s readers often do, they shared their takes on what makes quality erotic fiction and I came away knowing more than when I came in. I’m thinking especially about the young man at the end of the table who said that the pleasure of erotic fetish fiction like my Carrie books is in the consistency and coherence of the imagined scene. When you go to a real-life play event, he said, you feel the clash of individual agendas. Which can be wonderful and energizing — or not — but with a different kind of buzz than the group scenes a Molly Weatherfield kind of writer actualizes, with a kind of smooth, tacit communication and elaboration between participants that’s its own kind of idealized pleasure.

One of the pleasures of the chateau, in my private language. Thanks so much. I’m grateful for the insight.

While as for the moment of fetishism (sort of like Rachel Maddow’s Moments of Geek): I was reading aloud from Carrie’s Story‘s  first chapter, the bit about the presentation event Jonathan takes Carrie to. The presentation contest:

“[Elizabeth...] was wearing a very high collar, which seemed to be made of silver, but which was probably stainless steel mesh, like a good, flexible watchband”

So I was reading this aloud — words I’d first written in maybe 1992; words I’d forgotten I’d even written — when my eye strayed from the print to my wrist, and my own good, flexible stainless steel watchband, that I hadn’t bought until about fifteen years after I’d written this fantasy scene, but knew, when I saw it in the store, that I absolutely had to have.

Which is sort of how we roll, I guess, caught in the crosswind between memory and desire — sometimes for objectification, sometimes simply for objects.

Thanks to the Skagen company for matching my imagination so beautifully.

And do stay tuned as I introduce Carrie to a new generation of readers. And learn a little something about myself along the way.

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

Because the truth is that I even though I take enormous pleasure in reading aloud to people who connect with what I try to do, there’s a way that I’m also shy, or perhaps still and always hyper-conscious of the boundaries between fetish and flesh, fantasy and performance. Fascinated, but after almost two decades of Carrie, here I am again, quivering at the gates of the chateau.

So when Cleis Press set up the Wicked Grounds event and when I said, “Oh, tell me about them.” And when Eva, the lovely young woman who has the perhaps not-so-enviable task of shepherding me through this maze, said something offhand like, “oh, you know, a cafe. Tea and coffee. A meeting space, art, with a boutique and a cage”…

…I have to admit I swallowed hard…

And a cage.

This Sunday, March 24, 4 PM. Wicked Grounds, 289 8th Street, South of Market, San Francisco CA 94103

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

Fun interview. Great questions. Susie was a huge influence during the years when I was figuring out how I might write about my fantasies and also stay true to my intelligence and my politics. And what’s so particularly great, almost twenty years later, is the number of readers who get it, who share the fantasy and the impulse.

Thanks, Susie!

And thanks, readers!

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.

I decided to write it all down and see if it came out as evil. It didn’t. It came out as funny. Carrie is ultimately funny, curious and intellectually brave. And that’s really what I wanted to write.

For the longer version, go to http://themusesantacruz.com/2013/02/19/in-the-post-fifty-shades-world-molly-weatherfields-1990s-bdsm-erotic-classic-carries-story-gets-a-new-look/

Or (even better) come and meet me at Capitola Book Cafe tomorrow night, February 21. More details here: http://www.capitolabookcafe.com/event/author-event-molly-weatherfield-carries-story

©2013 Passions and Provocations. All Rights Reserved.