Updated Favorites

Updating links today, I was happy to find many of my favorite writers still out there, doing what I love. Sadly, I also found a growing trend to private blogs, or "by invitation only" sites. I guess linking to a site for years and reading it all the time isn't enough to gain an invite so, I deleted the links. I mean if I can't read it, and you can't read it, then who the fuck cares?

Vespertine Erotica has disappeared and will be missed. If anyone knows where she's gone off to, please let me know.

A bunch of people have taken breaks and that's cool. You'll still love exploring their homes and can leave wishes like mine for their speedy return.

Waste of Time (No Porn Here)

At lunch on Saturday, my sister-in-law (one of the smartest, most well-read people I know) told me she doesn't read fiction much anymore. "I feel like it's a waste of time." Her husband agreed. He hasn't read a novel in years and has no plans to. She's a professor of law, and he is a software engineer. These are not stupid people. They read articles relating to work, or non-fiction. She has a Kindle. He reads exclusively on the Internet.

A few weeks ago, my neighborhood had a community garage sale. Only two houses in thirty-eight had any books for sale. I sold not even a single fiction book, but the cookbooks went in record time. Consulting the other book seller, I found that he hadn't sold any books either (until I came along and bought four). Even when offered for free at the end of the sale, no one wanted the books.

Our neighborhood book club broke up this Spring, due to a lack of interest.

This bothers me.

Maybe it disturbs me because reading is such an important part of my own life. My house would feel empty without the library full of books. Lazy Saturdays would be sad without a good novel to curl up with. I've learned many things from reading. I've found friends, sympathy, new hobbies and a love of prose that borders on worship. Reading relaxes me and takes me places nothing else does. Even still, I find it more and more difficult to find books that are well written, imaginative, and fresh. I drop in and out of Doubleday Book Club because pretty much everything they sell (all best-sellers, mind you) is the kind of crap that really IS a waste of time to read. I join when they offer five books for 99 cents and free-shipping, spend hours finding the few decent books on offer and then cancel as soon as I can.

I can't imagine not writing fiction (though I also write a fair bit of non-fiction, and get paid much more for it) but lately I've thought of giving up writing erotica for the same reason my sister-in-law has given up reading fiction-the growing feeling it's a waste of time.

What I've learned is that most people who still do read want it quick, easy and familiar. They want fast-food erotica (porn). Readers of erotica have gotten used to porn labeled as erotica and now want it fast and dirty with plots much like in porno films. If the point is to get off, anything else seems like a waste of time. If someone is not cumming or close to it by page two, they move on.

Many editors are like strip-mall builders. They've learned that people want McDonald's, Chili's and TGI Fridays and they give it to them. Publishers don't care about much beside the bottom line (and if they say they do, they're lying) so they continue to urge more of the same on editors and writers and the world at large. Porn is big business, and they want a part of the action. Literary erotica is dying out right along with mom and pop stores and book clubs.

I won't write porn because I don't like it. I don't care how well written it is (and some of it isn't terrible), it's still basic, like a quarter-pounder or your corner Walmart's garden center. It's still about as challenging and thought provoking as a comic book or the latest Danielle Steele best-seller. It's still about inserting part A into part B and cumming as fast as you can.

I once wrote a story that I spent hours on, days even. I worked it over at least twenty times. In the end, I think it is one of the best things to ever come from my pen. But, I knew the publisher interested in my work probably wouldn't take it. It was too good. Seriously. So, I spent about twenty minutes writing something else, something I knew they would like. I didn't even edit it. It was my own little experiment. What happened was exactly what I thought would happen-the publisher loved my tossed off nothing of a story (which was at least funny) but thought the literary piece was way above the head's of their readers. Sad. Sad. Sad. It didn't make me feel any better to hear that every editor involved in the reading group at the publisher thought my other piece (the good one) was one the the best works of erotica they'd ever read. No one would get to read it in one of their books.

By reducing sex to a catalog of parts and an accepted set of behaviors in a format as easy to handle as eating a bag of chips, readers distance themselves from the emotions of sex. This enables people to hide from themselves while feeling daring and worldly. But that's another topic.

So, I'm still writing. I am working on a new novel and one day would like to finish my Oliver series. But, the days of agonizing over characterizations, fresh approaches and every single word of prose in my erotica may be over. It's a waste of time.

I Love Paris

Lately, I've been rummaging around my collection of writing ideas and unfinished work. Sometimes, it's very clear why I never completed a particular piece, why I abandoned those words in favor of others. But, sometimes, I come across things I don't even remember writing, things that seem like they should have gone somewhere other than cold storage. Like this one.

I Love Paris

What was I doing?

This was insane, heading down an alley in Paris with a man I didn't know like he was a trusted lover, his hand riding my ass like he owned it, like he wasn’t just some French fuck I’d picked up in a bar two minutes ago.

My week had been weird all around; I’d been traveling with my best friend, Lila, and my boyfriend, Scott, who bailed on me after a fight in Barcelona that started over the best train to take to London and ended with them confessing to a drunken fuck the night before. They are probably back in Portland now, two days early, fucking each other just like before we left, even though they denied it. Lying mother-fuckers.

I’d ended up at Harry's Bar because Scott had wanted to see it; the idea that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway had frequented the place in the '20s and '30s apparently had given wannabe writer Scott a hard-on.

Tonight, the last night of my trip, I’d gone to spite him, feeling powerfully and happily alone. The bar was all right I guess, more knock-off French than “Casablanca”, but it was dark and the drinks were reasonable in a city where most tourist places were a total rip-off. After several glasses of house red and a few chanteuse songs I was sad and drunk as I wove a somewhat wobbly path toward the door.

Getting laid had been the last thing on my mind.

I’d spotted him leaning against the bar. He was dark, handsome, and unmistakably French, wearing a pissed off expression. He came complete with hooded eyes and hawk-like features that managed to be sharp and sensual all at the same time. He’d smiled and I had moved to him as if he was magnetized.

The woman sitting on the stool closest to him glared at me when I pushed past her and held out my hand to him. He took it immediately, threw some bills on the bar, and pushed open the door for me. A blast of night air gusted through Harry’s smoke.

He seemed as eager as I, his long finger finding the crease in my ass, sliding into it, pressing the silken fabric of my skirt against the shocked, bare pucker of my asshole, urging me along. I was glad I had left my panties at the hotel.

His boots and my heels were loud, disharmonious, the noise bouncing off sepia colored buildings. Even the alley behind 5 Rue Daunou was elegant—cobblestones, wrought iron stairs, potted trees, creeping vines and flowers.

He pushed me into a stairwell. It was dark, but through an archway I saw a courtyard, a silent fountain standing sentry, but we didn’t go there. He smiled the smile he’d flashed in the bar, the one that had made me follow him out the door, the one that was dangerously sexy, snarly, and confident. He tugged me under the iron stairs into a darker space, thrusting his hands between my thighs and pushing my dress up. He explored my ass and cunt, not missing a thing. This man knew his way around a woman’s body.

I sucked in a breath, my hands curling into the wall, my body bowing to lift higher for his exploring hands, my knees spreading. I groaned as he sunk long, crafty fingers into me.

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

I was so wet, so slippery; he knew I liked everything he was doing.

I reached for his cock, and he growled when it sprang into my hand. I jacked him off in the darkness, my trembling fingers scraping against his spread fly and the rough thatch of his pubic hair.

“Someone’s coming!” I whispered, squeezing my legs together, trapping and stopping his hand, my eyes wide as he rested his forehead on mine, his fingers curled inside me still.

We watch as a drunken couple fumble their way through the doorway and up the stairs above us. She flashes us long legs and a hairy cunt as they pass.

I close my eyes so they don’t see the luminous, hungry shine of them in the darkness, and I sink my teeth into the fine cloth of his suited, very broad shoulder, to quiet a whimper caused by the scent of him—cigars and Paris—the feel of him; hot mouth on my earlobe, swivels of palm over clit until I burn.

My hand itches to wrap again around his hard length, uncut and thick, but he beats me to it, hiking my leg up and spreading me wide, prick in hand.

To Be Continued...Maybe...

zandervyne.com is Back, Baby!

I vanquished the enemy, and my domain is back in action. All linking should work again. Now, to get my traffic back.

Website Issues

Someone stole my www.zandervyne.com address. I'm fighting it out, but hope to be back soon. Those using the Blogspot address can access the site, and hopefully, everyone else will redirect or bear with me until I solve the problem.