When I was in the eighth grade, I got to be a teaching assistant during one of my class periods. It was a program for the “gifted” kids and I jumped at the chance to be an assistant for my favorite Reading teacher, Mrs. Cox. I had been in her class in sixth grade and she had made a memorable impression on me for a couple of reasons: she was sarcastic as hell (I think I learned my sarcasm from Mrs. Cox) and she loved to read almost as much as I did. Oh, and she used to loan me books. I was pretty much reading adult fiction by fifth grade and somehow managed to miss an awful lot of adolescent and YA fiction as a result, but oh!, the world of adult fiction was wonderful! It was filled with complex plots and interesting characters and settings far beyond my limited imagination… and sex. Mustn’t forget the sex! Adult fiction is filled with sex!
As a teacher’s assistant, I got to do things like straighten the classroom and erase chalk boards and even grade papers. I was in heaven! I never really aspired to be a teacher, but I loved being surrounded by the accouterments of academia-- pens and paper and books, wonderful, wonderful books! One of the conditions of getting to read during my teaching assistant period was that I had to finish all the other stuff Mrs. Cox assigned me first. Honestly, she didn’t give me all that much to do and I spent probably thirty minutes of the hour reading. I got credit for reading! Seriously, is it any wonder that I love school to this day?
One class period, Mrs. Cox took the sixth grade class to the library and left me in the classroom to grade quizzes. She had left a stack of books on the table for me and told me, as always, that whenever I was done grading I could read. I tried, I really tried, to grade the quizzes before going through the books, but my little eighth grade bookworm’s heart just leapt every time I looked at that stack of fat paperback novels. I think I managed to grade a handful of quizzes before I couldn’t take it anymore. I dove into the books and started reading Foxfire by Anya Seton.
I had never read anything like Foxfire before. Set in the Great Depression era of the 1930s, it tells the story of a young woman from New York who marries a half-Apache miner and moves with him out west. I was captivated by Ms. Seton’s descriptions of the Arizona desert and the strange tension she created between her main characters. At the core, it is a romance-- but it is so much more. An adventure, a mystery, a frozen moment in history, Foxfire hooked my thirteen year old imagination. I wanted to be Amanda, I wanted to run away to Arizona with Dart and hunt for treasure.
I had only intended to read a few pages of my wonderful new find-- just enough to quench my reading hunger-- but within minutes I was thoroughly engrossed. Shoulders hunched, long hair falling my face, legs tucked up under me, I wasn’t in Margate Middle School in Florida, I was in Lodestone, Arizona. I had been transported. So much so, I did not hear Mrs. Cox come into the room. She called my name and I jumped, feeling guilty and waiting for her to say something sarcastic (which was far worse than her yelling at me, believe me). She only asked what I was reading, nodded in approval, grabbed the papers she had forgotten and went back to the library. She didn’t tell me to stop reading and get back to grading, but I did. I tucked Foxfire away and graded like a mad girl, straightening everything on her desk for good measure. I felt guilty for shirking my duties and for getting caught reading (though it was hardly the first time I had snuck in some reading time). I tucked Foxfire in my book bag and picked up where I had left off on the bus ride home. I think I read that book three times before I returned it to Mrs. Cox. I was like that when I was a kid-- I’d read a book straight through, go back to page one and start over. I hungered for those words on the page and Ms. Seton’s story had struck a nerve.
It took me until I was an adult to understand why Mrs. Cox hadn’t been annoyed about my reading that day. I was reading! Reading! I worked in a library long enough to know that raising a reader is not an automatic or easy thing. The born-to-read types like myself aren’t all that common. I was getting more of an education in literature, vocabulary, history and storytelling in my furtive reading of Foxfire than I was by putting big red X’s next to misspelled vocabulary words of sixth grades. Mrs. Cox fed my hunger for books and indulged my impatience because she knew the value of my passion.
I have thought about that book often over the years, wondering why that one-- of the thousands I read as a kid-- stuck in my mind. At least part of it was the circumstances-- I felt like I had let down my favorite teacher/mentor. That doesn’t explain why I remember the details of the plot, the characters’ names and quirks nearly thirty years after I read it. That is storytelling skill-- something Ms. Seton had and something writers spend their entire lives learning. There are a couple dozen books or so like that which have stayed with me for decades. I’ve looked up Foxfire on Amazon now and again, but it went out of print. First published in 1951, I read the 1978 reprint. Funny, I didn’t know it was an “old” book until recently-- as a kid I think I believed all the books Mrs. Cox was giving me to read were “new” books-- new stories, new authors. Had she told me (or had I thought to check the publication date) I was reading a book that was written before I was born I probably would have wrinkled my nose and declined.
Last month, Chicago Review Press reprinted Anya Seton’s Foxfire. I bought my copy last week, anxious to find out if the story has stood the test of time, if my forty-one year old imagination will be as captivated as my thirteen year old imagination. I’m only into the second chapter (I don’t read as fast as I used to, sadly), but I’ve noticed two startling things-- the pace and tension are still there and still as crisp I remember-- and Mrs. Cox is still there, watching me read and nodding knowingly.
Isn’t that a captivating book cover?
I’m delighted to be a stop on the Spanked Virtual Book Tour! Rachel Kramer Bussel’s newest anthology from Cleis Press is packed with twenty delicious spanking stories from some of the naughtiest and most respected minds in erotic fiction.
Rachel has done a smashing job of gathering a tantalizing variety of stories for this themed anthology. Like rich chocolates, each delectable morsel leaves the reader wanting just one more bite. Shanna Germain’s shiveringly good “Perfect Bound,” Alison Tyler’s naughty-but-oh-so-nice “Betty Crocker Gone Bad” and Donna George Storey’s teasing confessional “A Rare Find” are among my favorites in this collection. I was also delighted to discover some new-to-me authors in the lineup, including Rick Roberts’ “Spanking You,” which opens the anthology and sets the tone for a variety of delicious intimacies.
The book tour finishes up tomorrow at DigiRomp. Be sure to check out the other blogs on the tour (below), as well as the Spanked blog, for interviews with the editor and authors. Rachel’s website also features a Spanked book trailer!
Spanked Virtual Book Tour
August
1 – Alison Tyler
2 – The Cherry Red Report
3 – Thomas’s spanking exploits
4 – Zille Defeu’s Fetish Fantasies
5 – The House of Richard Windsor
6 – Funky Brown Chick
7 – Baser Instincts
8 – Life in Motion
9 – All Things Spanking
10 – Viviane’s Sex Carnival
11 – Jamye Waxman
12 - Babeland
13 – NYC Urban Gypsy
14 – Femdom Spanking Blog
15 – Spanking Abby
16 – BadBadGirl
17 - Ellie Lumpesse
18 – Sugarbutch Chronicles
19 – Breathing In and Breathing Out
20 – Essin Em
21 – Pursed Lips
22 – Mixing It Up
23 – Domestic Spanking Blog
24 – Nobilis Erotica
25 – Live Girl Review
26 – All About George
27 – Lolita’s Predictions & Predilections
28 – Sexy Prime
29 – Naughty and Spice
30 – MeiLin Miranda
31 – AlwaysArousedGirl/Jane’sGuideBonus days! September
Last night, despite being exhausted, I stayed up until 1 AM reading Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle. It was recommended to me at least a year ago, but I put off reading it because of the topic—a dysfunctional family. When you come from one, you find reading about someone else’s less than entertaining. Finally, after running across the book on a couple of occasions recently, I decided I needed to read it. I read about a third of it on Friday and finished it last night.
Walls’ family dysfunction is a bit more glamorous than most. Sure, there are the usual hallmarks of a troubled family—alcoholism, poverty and what surely must have been mental illness—but there were also the adventures that took them across the country. Walls writes in a straightforward way without pointing fingers. The book is dedicated to her family, including her parents.
I found myself hating her mother and father. How dare they? I kept asking myself. How dare they risk their children’s lives, health and safety for their own whims? How dare they be so irresponsible with money? But Walls writes of her parents with love and there is forgiveness in her voice. I suppose I can understand that, to a point. She has made a very successful life for herself and surely the strength she gained from surviving a childhood spent in abject poverty living with parents who were unbalanced (though she would likely call them free spirits) is partially responsible for the person she has become. Still, I mourn the loss of her childhood and that of her siblings, who suffered along with her with there was no need to suffer at all. I am not forgiving.
Making love to you was never second best
I saw the world thrashing all around your face
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace
I’ll stop the world and melt with you
You’ve seen the difference and
It’s getting better all the time
There’s nothing you and I won’t do
I’ll stop the world and melt with you
The incomparable Alison Tyler is sending me a copy of her new book, the back-to-the-80s erotic novel Melt With You. I love the 80s (and I loved them way before VH-1 ever did) and I love the song by Modern English, so I know I’ll love Alison’s homage to the era. Pop over to Alison’s website-- she’s giving away more goodies over the next 30 days. She really is the cat’s pajamas like that.
Here’s “I Melt With You” by Modern English, courtesy of YouTube (no video, though):
Oh, the good old days of new wave bands! I saw Modern English and The Fixx at a free concert on Fort Lauderdale beach back in the summer of… sheesh, 1983? 1984? Something like that. And I definitely owned my share of mesh and lace…
I love the 80’s. I love Alison Tyler!
I don’t know when it started. As soon as I learned to read, I guess. Once I could decipher those words on the page (or cereal box or billboard or clothing label...), I wanted to duplicate them. I got in trouble for carefully and meticulously copying down the words I read in my picture books. I got in trouble because I wrote my words-- in bold crayon colors-- directly below the words on the page. I learned to write the words on paper, that horrible beige-brown ruled paper they made us write the alphabet on. I got so frustrated writing the alphabet. A B C D… I already knew the alphabet, I wanted to write words, sentences, paragraphs. Stories!
I wanted to be a writer from the moment I realized someone wrote those words in my books. I wanted to tell stories and often made up stories in my head when insomnia would prevent me from falling asleep. Still do, actually. Maybe I’m not an insomniac at all; maybe I just like telling stories to myself. I learned the word “writer” first. Then “author” (which I always confused with the name Arthur), then “novelist.” I think I was in the third grade when I learned the word “journalist” and my teacher suggested that might be something I’d like doing. I majored in journalism my first time around in college after serving as editor for my high school paper. Journalism wasn’t for me, though. I like making up stories, not reporting the news. (Though the line becomes increasingly blurry.)
I wrote my first stories in first grade. A story about a dog who stops two bank robbers, a story about a witch who takes the form of a crow. I’ve reread those stories-- they were pretty good for a seven year old. There were characters and conflict, there was plot. Good stuff. I’ll scan them one of these days and post them for posterity. I wrote for myself, even then. My parents didn’t read to me and had no interest in writing.
The only books in the house were the ones that accumulated-- first in neat rows, then in increasingly towering piles-- in my room. I lived for the Scholastic Book flyer that my teacher passed out each month or so. I had to make the order out in pencil because I would want too many books and my mother would make me take some off. I still ended up with 5-10 books each order (back in the day when paperbacks were $1.75 to $2.50). I literally could not concentrate on the day the books were delivered-- they sat there, teasing me, on a table in the corner. I’d start reading on the school bus on the way home (back when I could read on a moving vehicle without getting motion sick) and finish the stack within days. Then I’d read them all again. And again. I read some of my favorite books ten times.
I wrote stories about my friends. I acted as secretary (and co-president-- I never wanted to be in charge, but I didn’t mind sharing the title) for the neighborhood “clubs” we started, writing down everything that was said and sometimes embellishing it. I wrote one-act plays and short skits for the variety shows we’d put on for each other (and the occasional parent who would wander by). I read voraciously and tried to copy my favorite authors (Arthurs). I dabbled in illustration very briefly, writing a comic strip called “Froggy” that was all about a frog. Not terribly original, but Froggy was based on a real-life classmate and I cracked everyone up with my stories, especially my reading teacher. I don’t think I was ever deliberately cruel or that my storylines were embarrassing to the real-life Froggy (whose name eludes me now), but it’s hard to remember. All I remember is getting to pass around my new comic strip in class each Monday and hearing people laugh. That’s a nice feeling.
I wrote my first book in sixth grade. I don’t remember if it ever had a real title (it’s in the attic in a box, maybe one day I’ll dig it out), but it was about two friends named Abbie and Josie. That may have been the title. It was not-so-loosely based on me and my friend Denise. As I recall, there was a mystery of some sort in there. Denise’s uncle (who was probably in his early 20s at the time, but seemed terribly old) was a real writer of some kind. All I really remember is him talking about how one of his ideas had been stolen and made into a movie. He offered to critique Abbie and Josie for me and told me he’d treat me like an adult and not baby me like my teachers. I think that’s when I first realized that not everyone was going to love what I wrote. I didn’t know the word critique until Denise’s uncle took my fledgling novel effort-- handwritten!-- and marked it up with words and abbreviations. “Awk” was one of his favorites-- it meant awkward. “Cliched” was another one. I learned from him that my writing was awkward and cliched. Ouch.
I didn’t stop writing, but Abbie and Josie went into a drawer, then a closet, then a box, never to see the light of day again. I fell in love with Stephen King shortly after that and wrote many horror stories over a ten year period. (Jay still remembers one in particular that I wrote shortly after we got married about a woman who kills her husband and turns him into hamburger. I’m pretty sure that’s the last real horror story I ever wrote.) In 1982, I wrote a ghost story for a Halloween contest sponsored by the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. I was one of three winners. I was fifteen, the prize was $50 and it was the first money I had ever received for my writing. I was hooked.
I compiled a bunch of slam books. Anyone remember those? I always came up with the best, most personal questions. I never answered them, of course. I was just the author. I co-wrote a book of trivia in ninth grade with my friend Joanna. We were always coming up with these little snippets of trivia ("Minnesota is known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but it actually has 11,007"-- I still remember that one) and we would add them to our graffiti-style notebook. Before the internet, Google and Wikipedia, there was Joanna and me, trying to collect all the useless knowledge in the world under one spiral-bound cover. We got bored with it after a year, but I still have our efforts in a box.
In high school, I wrote all kinds of things. I wrote a terribly long satiric fable called Queen Kristina. It was a hoot and my audience was a couple of friends. My best friend Nancy (aka Princess Nancy) egged me on, encouraging me to write more and more about Queen Kristina’s exploits (there may have been sex involved, come to think of it). I wonder if Queen Kristina is in the attic somewhere, as well? Probably.
I also wrote poetry-- lots and lots of poetry. Mostly rhyming and mostly bad. I went through the required teenage angst and wrote about it incessantly. I know that notebook (a red three-ring binder) is in a box in the attic. There’s one poem in particular that I actually memorized. It’s not dark and teenagey, it’s actually a kids’ poem called “The Unicorn.” I think I still remember most of it:
There once was a mischievous unicorn
who loved to eat the grass,
But he could not read, this unicorn
and was caught one day, alas!
By a man who hated unicorns
and made a sign that said:
“Please don’t eat the grass”
That the unicorn should have read.
But the unicorn, he could not read,
and was carried off to jail
And the next day, with a piece of rope,
he was hung by his tail.
If the unicorn had learned to read
He would’ve known what the sign had said
But because of his illiteracy
This unicorn is dead.
You can see why I’m not a poet, In retrospect, I guess it was kind of a dark poem. A dark, cautionary poem about the importance of learning to read. What else would a writer write? Don’t ask me why I still remember it after twenty-five or so years. It just stuck.
For years, I have been carting around boxes of stuff I’ve written-- first hand-written, then typed (on a typewriter!), then word processed, then computer written. I have pencil-written stories, stories written in ink and poetry written in calligraphy. I have all-capitalized stories because my shift key on my typewriter stopped working and stories typed with a worn out ribbon that are nearly impossible to read. I have dot-matrix printed stories on computer paper (with the holes on the edge that had to be ripped off). I have floppy disks that won’t work on any computer in my house. It’s not all fiction, of course. I have a dozen or so journals filled with the drama in the life of a young Kristina. I have back-and-forth notes between my friends and me, detailing a day (or so) in our lives. I likely still have a few letters that I wrote and never delivered-- love letters, letters to people who had hurt me. Letters that I needed to write but never intended to send. I have outlines of books I was going to write “some day” and ideas for stories and the endless term papers of high school that I’ve kept. I have written millions and millions of words, most that were never seen by anyone but myself.
I have always wanted to be a writer. I never wanted to be anything else. Well, that’s not entirely true. I wanted to be “a writer and.” A writer and a veterinarian. A writer and an actress. A writer and a photographer. A writer and a news broadcaster. A writer and a book store owner. But always, always “a writer.” Always.
And still.
Life. Love. Writing. Friendship.
Sex. Books. Movies. Travel. Politics. Feminism. Academia. Insomnia. Rants. Raves. Chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Some names have been changed, some stories have been embellished. Thanks for stopping by and beware of the dog. Read more...
