Category Archives: Interviews

Dr Dick Talks About Sexuality and Spirituality and His Eye-Opening New Book Part 1

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I’m very excited to have Rev. Richard Wagner with me today for the first in a two part interview. A lot of you out there will know him as Dr Dick from his fabulous website, Sex Advice with an Edge, but this man has more layers than a wedding cake and every one of them is totally fascinating. Welcome, Richard Wagner!

KD: I know you as Dr. Dick, who interviewed me on your fabulous Erotic Mind podcast series. When we did the podcasts, I was scared to death, having never done anything like that before, and you put me at ease and made it so much fun. I love your podcasts, and your website, and I’ve found several of your essays on the Catholic Church and sexuality to be fascinating. But I have to admit, it seems strange for me to think of you as Richard or Reverend Wagner, and I can’t imagine you as Father Wagner. You’ve worn lots of hats in your life, and as I read your book, Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex In The Catholic Church: The Systematic Destruction of an Oblate Priest, I am reminded just how different those hats are. Tell us about the people Richard Wagner is, and tell us how do all of those people you are live comfortably together in the same skin?

DD: Wait, are you telling me I don’t have multiple personality disorder after all?

I’m getting a lot of that same reaction from people who have known me as one or another of my “personalities”.  But the remarkable thing is that I’ve never experienced any disconnect between, Fr. Wagner, Richard Wagner, therapist and Dr Dick.  I suppose that’s a good thing.  Imagine if I had difficulty making room for all these personas in my skin.

The truth of the matter is that I am all these “personalities” and there is virtually no distinction between them.  I suppose they reflect, as you suggest, different hats I’ve worn over the years, but the hats fit on the same head.  Curiously enough, each “personality” compliments and infuses the others.  I honestly couldn’t be Dr Dick if I weren’t also Richard Wagner and Fr. Wagner.

Besides my sometimes biting humor when it comes to human sexuality, as evidenced daily on Dr Dick’s Sex Advice, there is also an abiding sense of reverence for our capacities to express ourselves sexually.  And I am painfully aware of how short a time we all actually have to explore this gift before our life is over.

KD: The events that ultimately led you from being an Oblate priest in the Roman Catholic Church to doing the wonderful, though extremely different work you do now are an astonishing example of the power of a religious institution to crush anything it considers harmful to itself, whether that threat is real or imagined. They are also the events that led ultimately to the publishing of your book. I know this is a bit like asking you to bring me the ocean in a teacup, but could you tell us briefly what happened.

DD: My book tells the story of my dismissal from The Oblates of Mary Immaculate; a Catholic missionary order based in Rome.  My association with the Oblates began at the age of fourteen as seminarian in 1963 and I was ordained an Oblate priest in Oakland, California in 1975.  In 1978, The Oblates formally assigned me to pursue a doctorate degree in clinical sexology at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, a postgraduate school in San Francisco.  For my dissertation, I chose to study the behaviors and attitudes of gay Catholic priests in the active ministry.  The study, titled Gay Catholic Priests: A Study of Cognitive and Affective Dissonance, was completed in 1981. I was awarded my doctorate the same year.  With that I became the first Roman Catholic priest in the world to hold an advanced degree in clinical sexology.  To this day, I remain the only one.

To my great surprise, and then alarm, I became an overnight media sensation, attracting attention throughout the U.S. and even abroad. Instead of focusing on my research and its results, the sole object of interest became my own personal identity as a priest and gay man.  Nothing else mattered, all context was drowned out, all rational discussion quashed, and what had begun as a story about my work was instantly transformed into a full time red-meat scandal.  What followed was a shock that altered my entire life.  Within a matter of months, the Oblate Superior General in Rome contacted my provincial superior in Oakland and demanded my immediate resignation from the Oblates.  Either that, he warned, or dismissal proceedings would be brought against me.

 

KD:  I still find it difficult to know what to say in response to such an experience, other than how pleased I am that out of your ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ something as eye-opening and truly ground-breaking as your book could come. Could you tell us about your book, Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex In The Catholic Church: The Systematic Destruction of an Oblate Priest, What inspired you, ultimately to write down everything that happened to you? I also know that it was a rough journey to actually get it published. What happened?

DD: The book is in two parts.

Since I wouldn’t resign my priesthood; I contend I did nothing wrong, my community moved to dismiss me.  The first part of my book narrates the dismissal process that lasted for an agonizing thirteen years, until the final decree of separation was issued on May 13, 1994.  What happened to me was unconscionable and I wanted my brother Oblates to know that.  So I wrote my defense as an open letter to them.

It is a lengthy letter reviewing the entire convoluted process leading up to my formal separation, and demanding from my brothers some form of acknowledgment and restitution for the hardships imposed on me.   The letter is a fully documented history based on the years of correspondence between me and the successive Oblate administrations with which I had to deal.

As such, it throws a unique light on the internal workings of the Catholic Church and on the typical methods that church officials employ to suppress compromising truths, to exonerate themselves of wrong-doing, and to punish anyone who dares to draw into the open the institution’s interior secrets.  It shows how the church silences and hustles out of sight anyone who dares to speak out.  It is a sad and disturbing account of corporate malfeasance, canonical corruption, and institutionalized homophobia on a massive scale.

The second part of the book is my complete doctoral dissertation. Soon after the controversy with the Oblates began I learned I was being silenced by Rome.  I realized that if I didn’t get at lest a few copies my dissertation out before the order from the Vatican arrived it would have never seen the light of day. So apart from a small run of photocopies made available in a hurried arrangement in 1981 very few people have ever seen my research.

So this is the first time that my thesis has been made available to the public at large.  It remains the only large-sample study ever conducted of the sexual behaviors and attitudes of Catholic priests in active ministry, and my sample were all gay men by design.  While some may consider the sample of fifty participants to be small, it is in fact quite large given the hiddenness of the target population.  As the narrative portion of my study makes plain, the tools of intimidation and control that church authorities routinely employ to keep gay clergy silent and invisible are extremely effective, even in the case of one as prepared as I was to fight against them.

Wardell Pomeroy, my doctoral supervisor, was astonished not only by the size of my sample but also by the candor, depth, and thoroughness of the participants’ responses.  During all the years that he worked with Alfred Kinsey on the monumental Kinsey Reports—a project that involved literally thousands of participants—only two or three priests were interviewed.  What’s more, the sexual behaviors of these men were not specifically linked to their vocations but were simply folded into the study’s general statistical results.

The only reason I was able to obtain my sample was because I was a gay priest and I had extensive contacts in the informal network of gay clergy that exists throughout the U.S.  My sample’s size and the insights it provides into the behaviors and attitudes of gay clergy are still without rival as a primary source on the subject.

And if you’ve just taken the time to read through all of that, you’ll understand why it was so difficult to find a publisher.  Some publishers wouldn’t touch the manuscript because they feared reprisals from the Catholic Church.  Other publishers thought the subject matter was presented in to scholarly form.

KD: When we skyped before we did The Erotic Mind podcasts, we discovered that we had a lot in common in that our spiritual journeys had led us in directions we never could have imagined. We both felt that our journeys were about healing the split between spirituality and sexuality. Do you feel writing a book documenting the events that led you to where you are now has helped to heal that split? Do you think it may help others?

DD: Yes to both your questions.

As you know, I believe there is a needless and a very artificial separation between sexuality and spirituality in western culture.  When I first came out as a gay priest I was absolutely convinced that I had something unique to add to the conversations we, as a culture and we as a church, were having about both of these fundamental human concerns.  I believed then, as I do now, that no one will ever find sexual and spiritual peace until he/she reunites these two concepts within themselves.  They should never have been rent asunder in the first place.

The publication of my book has helped me do that for myself, and it just might provide a template for others who are trying to reconnect sex and spirituality in their lives.

KD: Dr Dick and I will be discussing that fascinating and all-important link between spirituality and sexuality in more detail next week. Same time, same place. Don’t miss out on Part 2 of my interview with this multi-faceted, fascinating man. In the meantime, here’s where you can find Dr Dick/ Richard Wagner /Fr Wagner and buy his amazing book.

Places you can find Dr Dick/ Richard Wagner

Poetry, Smut, and Humour: Interview with Mel Jones

Blog, Interviews

KD: I have the pleasure of interviewing Poetess Extraordinaire, Mel Jones, today. Mel is a woman who not only writes bawdy, funny, sometimes moving and thought-provoking poems, but also performs them live. And the amazing thing about Mel – well, one of many amazing things – is that she discovered this passion later in life.

Mel, how did you come to poetry, and what took you so long to get there?

MEL: I am the youngest of four .There weren’t many roles left to fill. I became the helper. This followed me into adult life and I lived through helping others. Plus I had the usual female disease of discounting anything I did and any talents that I had. I didn’t know that making people laugh was a gift because it came so easily to me and it was the same with poetry. And although I’d written a lot of songs and lyrics for others, I always thought of poetry as something that very highbrow, serious writers did – i.e. not me. I just wrote funny little verses that were a bit embarrassing. I never showed them to anyone outside of work.
Also, I suffered from frequent and long bouts of depression, the kind where you can’t go out to buy milk, and this punctuated my life right up until my late thirties when, by way of a series of fortuitous events, I entered long-term, 3 times a week therapy. That went on for 5 years. It changed my life by changing my attitudes to myself and my potential. I stopped caring so much what other people thought. So really the answer is I was too fucked-up before. Now I’m just fucked-up enough.

KD: I think that probably describes a lot of us writer types. We have to be just fucked-up enough to do what we do.

Though I often read my work out loud to an audience, poetry seems to me to lend itself a lot more to live performance. How did you get involved in performing your poetry, and can you explain how the buzz you must get from performing poetry differs from the buzz of writing it. Is one more powerful than the other as an experience, and if so why?

MEL: I was listening to Radio 4 and they had a poetry slam on – something I’d never heard of. There were people doing comedy poems and I thought – I do that all the time. Everytime someone left work or got married they’d come to me for a funny poem, I just didn’t realise there were places where people wanted to hear this stuff.

I went to Bang Said The Gun at The Roebuck pub on Great Dover Street in Borough one Thursday night, did a poem I wrote when I was 15 and won the slam. The prize was to come back and do a 10 minute set, which went down a storm. I’ve never looked back.
I don’t think I’m the greatest performer – I find it difficult to learn poems and I’m not very physically slick on stage, but I am funny, and making a crowd of strangers laugh is a big fat thrill.

But when I’ve just written something and I know it’s right, there’s a unique pleasure to it, a sense of fulfilment and release. I stay excited for hours and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a funny poem or a serious one. Performing is the icing on the cake but writing takes me over like a drug and finishing, finally finishing a ‘perfect’ poem, is the greatest thrill of all, apart from intense clitoral stimulation, obviously.

Resurrection

We have eternal life
Just not as us, that’s all
That’s the thing
That really pisses us off
We become soil and trees
And worms and flowers and rain
And a thousand million
Trillion other living things
But never us,
Not us, ever again

But we’re only a mix
Of garbled memories
A reinvention
Of what’s gone long before
We were alive back then
And we’ll be alive again
Just not as us, that’s all
It’s nature’s best joke
Alive or dead
We are already ghosts

KD: As a writer, I hopped right into what I think we would both agree is the most important part of this interview; your writing. But since I know you personally I can do that. Since the people out there in Blog-o-land don’t, could you tell us a little bit about Mel Jones – what you think we should know about her?

MEL: Oh God – I reckon there’s at least a dozen people in here. I am an extrovert/introvert. At my best I am kind, generous, funny and reliable. I am also impatient, moody, snippy and quite capable of causing a scene if I don’t like something. I get frustrated easily by machines and bureaucracy and little things can still get me down, but I bounce back much quicker these days. I can be the life and soul of the party but I also need great swathes of time alone.
I sing jazz, cook curry, have 2 cats and 3 vibrators. Is that enough?

KD: That tells me everything I need to know, Mel, I’ve always said you can tell the measure of a woman by the number of cats and the number of vibrators she has!  Here comes the old stand-by for every interview of every writer; what inspires you? How does your best poetry happen?

MEL: Just comes – TV headlines, people talking on the bus, an ad in the paper, or things just pop into my head. I’ll usually get one line and then the rest will come. Sometimes the original idea ends up as an entirely different poem from the one you thought you were aiming for. Writing is a strange process. Sometimes it’s like trying to find the soap in the bath. You know it’s in there somewhere but it’s a slippery sod.

Later　
Later, under London’s stoic Eye
I slip aglisten from your knowing arms
A film star frame, our silhouetted kiss
Against the sleepy wheel’s ravishing blue
　
Then ragged as the river’s pitch and swell
I rattle down the urgent last train steps
To ride in hurtling light and thundering sound
Along the midnight city’s thrilling veins
　
An answering rush beneath new-bruising skin
My raging blood some fresh, miraculous brew
When slick across my neon-haloed mouth
Salt finger tips give up the taste of you

KD: You’ve been doing NaPoWriMo during the month of April, which is national poetry writing month. It sounds quite extreme to me, something that would make every writer of poetry’s pulse speed up a bit. Can you tell us about it and about your experience of it?

MEL: Jo Bell, a very highly successful and respected poet, check her out at http://www.bell-jar.co.uk/, suggested I do it and I saw a lot of other poets I admire were signing up. You write a poem a day and post it on Facebook or your blog or the NaPoWroMo website or whatever.

The idea is to explore the writing process, gain some insight into the discipline of writing to a deadline and to ‘dig deeper’ as a result. All those things happened. I’m not saying everyone was a gem and I’ll certainly be ditching some and honing others but overall, I’m glad I did it because some more serious poetry came out of which I am rather proud. Most of all I am happy I completed it because a lot of people dropped out. One a day for 30 days is pretty hardcore. I’m knackered.

KD: I bet you are! But I’ve had the pleasure of reading some of the poems you wrote during those thirty days, and I’d definitely say it was an effort that paid off very well indeed!
I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing some of your more bawdy, deliciously smutty poems. In that regard, I feel like we truly are kindred spirits. Can you tell us what inspired you, and clearly still inspires you, to write poems about sex?

MEL: We are indeed kin. I am extremely earthy. I love smut, sex, erotica, porn, boundary-pushing and always have although I didn’t always know it. It’s important to me to share that because I spent 40 years attempting/pretending to be ‘normal’, whatever that is. I also enjoy writing about things that have embarrassed me. A lot of women have told me they have been helped by my poems because I ‘tell it like it is’ and make them feel less guilty about thoughts and feelings they may have or better about incidents that have weighed on their minds. The comedy is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. You can say things you wouldn’t get away with in straight prose. I write about fucking, masturbation, porn, being caught short in public, my love of bums, body image, aging, desire and lots more. You think you’re the only one and you never are – except for the one I did about shitting, not by design, during sex. Not had a lot of nodding heads in the audience for that one. Still, it happened to me, and the poem, and the performance of it, makes the incident funny instead of fearful, joyous instead of guilt-ridden.
My inspiration comes from what’s on my mind and most of the time sex in one form or another is on my mind. Expressing my demons rather than keeping them in and letting them fester is also a common starting point. Sometimes I’m just drunk. Go figure.

20th Floor
I’m raw and alone
I’ve rubbed and teased forever
But it’s not enough
Oh to have the balls to open my window wide
Lean right out
Tits swinging
Nipples hard as wood
And make a guttural sound to match this throb
To turn this molten ache into a thrumming
Fleshy growl
That makes the paved soil tremble
The natural earth respond
The alley-cats give tongue
Fluting through the high-rise sprawl
A siren, howling call to my arms
Come, come
Join me in my ancient song
Give this beat some base
Riff on me
Strum me till I break
Bang a stone-age drum
Till there’s no more noise to make
Mine cannot be the only roar
Someone
Anyone
Make me vibrate like those machines
Stashed in my bedroom drawer
Have never done
Come, come
Come to the 20th floor

KD:  I’m sure everyone is as anxious as I am to know where we can find you in cyber-space and, of course, in the real world performing your poetry live.

MEL: Facebook: Mel Jones

I’ve just started a blog for the NaPoWriMo event and I shall begin adding to it soon.
http://www.stuffwotiwrite.blogspot.com/

Mel’s Little Book of Mostly Filthy Verse is due out soon so anyone who FBs me will be the first to know

I’m on Rrrants Radio Live Recording Thursday 12th May at

The OVO Theatre 29a Chequer Street St Albans Herts AL1 3YJ

On at Velvet Tongue SPRING EDITION: A literary soiree dedicated to erotic writing and performance.

16 May • 19:00 – 22:30

Bar Kick (basement)
127 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6JE
London, United Kingdom

I’m featuring Saturday evening 28th May at the Meadowlands Festival

I have a spot at Comedy Slappers on Wednesday 1st June
The Cavendish Arms

128 Hartington Road, Stockwell, SW3 2HJ
London, United Kingdom

And featuring At The Camden Head, 202 Camden High Street on Tuesday 14th June

Have just been invited to take part in Bang Said the Gun Super Slam on Thursday 30th June, for those who have won 2 or more Bang Trophies ( I am proud to say I have 3!)

I am often to be found at Bang Said the Gun, fantastic poetry night every time, at the Roebuck, 50 Great Dover Street Borough on Thursday evenings.

I am of course available for poetry commissions, and have extensive experience in speech/presentation and CV writing.
Words is me thing.

You’re Sexy

I don’t try to keep up with the ladies
As they wax, colour, peel and curl
I don’t bother much with the feminine
Or the guff about being a girl
It seems such a waste of resources
All that suffering’s a terrible pity
Especially when you consider the thought
That, generally, men ain’t that picky
They like to suggest that they’d only
Consider a model or WAG
When actually there’s not a woman alive
That some bloke or other won’t shag
It’s a blatantly sexist assertion
But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong
All that alpha male crap masks the obvious fact
That we’ve had the power all along
They’re desperate to stop women twigging
They’d fuck a frog if it stopped hopping
You don’t have to try to entice a straight guy
You’re sexy just doing the shopping
You’re sexy because you’re a woman
With, or without, teeth or hair
You’re the unconquered peak of the mountain
You’re sexy – because you are there
You’re sexy from every perspective
Each crevice and fold a delight
You’re sexy with scars, you’d be sexy with SARS
Men don’t put up much of a fight
So girls, ditch the worry and torment
Buy some cake and the next dress size up
You could be ninety-three, 30 stone, reek of pee
I guarantee – you’d get a fuck

KD: Thanks, Mel, for stopping in and sharing some of your fabulous, funny, poignant, naughty, glorious poetry with us. Best of luck in writing and in performing the amazing stuff wot you wrote.

Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade talk about all things Oysters and Chocolate

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I’m very excited to have two of my idols from the world of erotica on my blog today. Welcome, Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade of Oysters and Chocolate fame! As a Colorado girl myself – I grew up in North Park — I feel a real sense of camaraderie with the two of you. I adore the Oysters and Chocolate website, and I’m very excited to have you both on my blog.

 KD: The list of writer’s in the Nice Girls Naughty Sex anthology reads like a who’s who in the erotica author’s hall of fame. What inspired the two of you to put together this yummy anthology, other than just having so many fab contributors to O&C, which says a great deal about the website, and the quality of fiction published there?

 Jordan & Samantha:  Ever since we began the Oysters & Chocolate website in 2005 it was a dream of ours to compile an erotic anthology. We actually envisioned a set of four anthologies, each corresponding to the four flavors on our site (Vanilla, Licorice Whips, Oysters, and Dirty Martini). It turns out publishers were more interested in all four flavors put together into one anthology. After compiling our first anthology in 2009 (Oysters & Chocolate: Erotic Stories of Every Flavor, Penguin Group), we were eager to do another one. They are just so much fun! When we got the opportunity to work with Seal Press, we jumped on it. Seal Press is a smaller publisher (smaller than Penguin, anyway) that is women-oriented – which is very cool.

 We are super pleased to have well established writers like Donna George Storey and Rachel Kramer Bussel in the anthology mixed in with some new voices like Venerato Petronius and Julian Augustus Finisterre. We selected each of the 20 stories (out of hundreds of submissions) based on their “turn-on factor” and literary merit, as well as how well they flowed with the compilation as a whole. It’s not surprising that a lot of these stories come from talented and well-liked writers. Those writers are the best at what they do!

 KD:  O&C is a site designed for women, and as the market for women’s erotica grows, I wonder, what are the differences that you find most striking between what turns women on and what turns men on – based on your experiences at O&C.

 Jordan & Samantha:  Our original vision was to design a site that was “for women, by women,” because when we got into the industry in 2005 there was a serious lack of erotic/pornographic material geared towards the ladies out there. However, the industry has changed and a lot of people are entering the market with the same idea. At the same time, we noticed that we have a huge number of men who visit our site regularly, and we get some really good work from male writers. So our vision evolved from being exclusively women-centric to providing the best literary erotica we can get our dirty little paws on. Good sex is good sex and readers love to read. It turns out men and women are more similar than we think.

 KD:  What has been your most exciting moment in the history of O&C, if you had to choose just one? Okay, you can choose two if it’s a tough decision.J

 Jordan & Samantha:  It was definitely the day that we signed on with our amazing literary agent Emmanuelle Morgen. When we realized that she was really interested in helping us make our dreams of editing, writing, and publishing books come true. We were on a phone conference with her, and while our voices were playing it calm, cool and collected, we were both beaming ear to ear and giving quiet high fives to each other. When we hung up the phone we both fell to the floor screaming and laughing. Then we hurried to the bar and got drunk on cava. 

 KD:  Having edited several books for O&C and published countless tantalizing works of erotic fiction and poetry on O&C, are there any trends you see developing in women’s erotica since the founding of O&C? Any major changes?

 Jordan & Samantha:  There is a lot more erotica out there now than there was ever before. We’ve seen the industry grow from a closeted, secret society to a more mainstream business. It’s exciting to watch it grow like this, and it’s thrilling to know that we are some of the pioneers that are working hard to give erotica the respect it deserves. There’s still a stigma that erotica is just “sex stories” and not literary, but we feel that is one of the things that is slowly changing. After all, good erotica should be given the same esteem that any other form of genre fiction receives, whether that’s mystery or sci-fi. We’re working our little butts off to bring sexy, literary masterpieces to the light of day. We’d like all erotica writers to be able to talk about their work at any old dinner party with pride and without blushing.

 Along the same lines, we’ve watched the quality of erotica improve. When we began, we saw a lot more submissions with cliché situations and plots – similar to what one might read in the Penthouse Forum (not that the Forum doesn’t serve it’s own titillating purpose, but we were looking for well developed, incredibly sexy short stories, not confessional, scripted letters that start out, “I never thought this would ever happen to me, but…”). Now we see work that has such unique voice, great characterization, real creativity – and of course, amazingly hot sex.

 KD:  With so much quality erotica now available on the internet, and with more women writing and reading erotica of every flavor, do you think that it has narrowed the gap between what women find arousing and what men find arousing? Do you think the time will come when our gender will have nothing to do with what turns us on?

 Jordan & Samantha: We’ve been delighted to discover that anyone who loves to read and loves to have sex is into the smart smut, whatever his or her gender. But yes, we’ve noticed that as both men and women read and write more, they give themselves permission to have more varied fantasies. It’s a natural progression that as they imagine different scenarios and experiences, their imaginations take them to more common sexual ground. For example, a woman may grow up thinking she should only be turned on by vanilla, straight sex – like what she might expect to experience in her marital bed. But when she starts reading a variety of erotica, she may realize that (gasp!) she is authentically aroused by the thought of penetrating a man with a strap-on (a traditionally male sexual act). Would she have ever known this had she not read erotica? She would probably have had an inkling of her true inner desires, but erotica is a safe and creative way to explore new sexual ideas and territories. It’s a way that both men and women can discover and enjoy their real sexual interests with no gender-identities attached. And yes, hopefully the time will come when we are no longer taught that what is sexy is linked to our gender, so that we can authentically just experience what turn us on.

 KD:  Plans in the works for another anthology?

 Jordan and Samantha:  Heck ya! We have several ideas percolating for our next anthologies. We hope that this is just the beginning. Putting together anthologies is an addictive and rewarding experience.

 KD:  What do the two of you do for fun when you’re not O&C-ing?

 Jordan – as you well know Colorado is rich with the beauty of nature. I love to get out hiking in the summer and snowboarding in the winter. I grew up running barefoot in the woods with my red hair atangle, so being in the forest as an adult is still the place where I find my happiness. I also love eating at fancy restaurants with my two bestest friends, going on hot and sexy dates, or just chillin’, with my amazing boyfriend, snuggling and running with my two big dogs, and traveling the world with my awesome daughter. She and I just returned from a two week adventure in Israel. Holy moly!

 Samantha – life is a crazy mess right now, so I’m finding fun in new places. I’m trying to learn how to cook, whether I’m successful or not is another question, but I’m loving making a mess of the kitchen, chopping away at vegetables with my new chef’s knife while pots overflow and things burn in the oven. I used to be in bed by 9, but now I’m enjoying spending time outside at night, gazing at the stars. And of course, there’s my favorite stand-by, cuddling up with a good book and a bottle of red wine (the good book is sometimes replaced with watching a whole slew of United States of Tara or Big Love episodes right in a row).

 KD:  How do you see O&C evolving in the future?

 Jordan & Samantha:  O&C constantly delights and surprises us with how she grows and stretches beyond our wildest dreams. We have ideas for a complete website redesign in the nearish future, which will reflect our new vision of literary erotica (vs. female-centric erotica). We also intend to put out a lot more books. Jordan is interested in getting back into the writing side of things and is working on an erotic novel as well as submitting several erotic short stories for publication. Samantha is thinking it might be time to begin an “In the Flesh” series (started by Rachel Kramer Bussel in NYC) right here in Denver. There’s always a new adventure waiting for us at O&C and we’re excited to see where it takes us next.

 Thanks Kd!

 Thank YOU, Jordan and Samantha! It’s been a real treat for me to get to know both of you a little better!  Best of luck with all the fab O/C-ness yet to come!

You can buy your copy of Nice Girls Naughty Sex here: http://www.amazon.com/Nice-Girls-Naughty-Sex-Erotic/dp/1580053432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300836324&sr=8-1

More on Sexuality, Spirituality and Creativity with Dr Dick

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Be sure to catch Part two of Dr Dick’s interview with me on his fabulous series, The Erotic Mind. Dr Dick tells me that the first half of our our interview was a big hit, and tons of people downloaded to hear us talk about the creative process and healing the rift between sexuality and spirituality. If you missed it, tune in, catch up, and find out why so many people are having a listen.

Dr Dick is a Clinical Sexologist in private practice in Seattle. He has been a practitioner of Sex Therapy and Relationship Counseling for 30 years. He believes in affirming the fundamental goodness of sexuality in human life, both as a personal need and as an interpersonal bond. Plus he’s an all-around great bloke!

Talking Sexuality, Spirituality and Creativity with Dr. Dick

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I’m very excited to be Dr. Dick’s guest for the next two weeks on his fabulous podcast series The Erotic Mind. I recently discovered The Erotic Mind series, and I’m definitely hooked! Dr Dick and I talk about sex and religion and the creative process and lots of other exciting topics.

Dr Dick is a Clinical Sexologist in private practice in Seattle. He has been a practitioner of Sex Therapy and Relationship Counseling for 30 years. He believes in affirming the fundamental goodness of sexuality in human life, both as a personal need and as an interpersonal bond. Plus he’s an all-around great bloke!

Part 2 of Dr Dick’s interview with me will be 8th November. Put it on your calendar.

Don’t miss Dr. Dick’s other two on-going interview series, Sex Edge-U-cation, and Sex Wisdom.