those sticky spots between the covers

I'm trying to get accustomed to shameless self-promotion. I'm not particularly good at it, being not so much a humble person as one who tends to diminish her accomplishments in the face of a superstitious fear that if I so much as utter their names they'll flicker and fall like the fickle blue flame of the Will-o'-the-wisp.

So please pardon my clumsy attempts to self-promote. (P.T. Barnum I'll never be. I was really a rather wretched stripper, for example. I made money more sheerly on my occasional forays into ridiculous beauty than from an innate ability to wrangle men into my fold. One friend, upon hearing of my ecdysiastic shoddiness, remarked that I did it for the art, which was sadly often the case.) However painful I find this horn tooting, I did just get business cards made, and they are cute.

Ok, so here's what's happening with me in the wonderful world of tangible media. First, my third article for Penthouse has been rewritten and accepted for publication in February. Soon, uncles across the country can thrill to my personal essay on cocksucking, and when their adolescent nephews discover the issue buried under their uncles' tube socks, they can too. I'm also pitching my fourth article to them for the March issue.

Second, I also received word from the legendary Susie Bright that she accepted my story "cold ass ice" for publication in her upcoming anthology of erotica, X, An Erotic Treasury, being published in December of 2008 by Chronicle books. A day later, I also received notice from the hardest working woman in publishing, Rachel Kramer Bussel, that my story "Stuck at Work and Late for a Date" had received final acceptance in her March 2008 anthology, Yes, Sir!, published by Cleis books.

Finally, I met my potential agent. He's very nice and supergeeky, and in complete opposition to what I was expecting, he was quite comfortingly rumpled and dressed in what looked like hipster Salvation Army wear (baby blue, argyle, v-neck). I'm feeling quite sanguine about him. Although I'm not yet signing with him, and although I can't yet announce the project, he is negotiating a book deal for me. It's not my first book, in that it's not my idea, but it is a first book, and that is pretty freaking exciting.

Anyway, just thought I'd share and now I'm going to cross my fingers, hop counter-clockwise in a circle and touch the nearest wood object in the fervent hopes that this is not all a dream.

Comments

[dido]

personally, i always touch my forehead when in need for solid wood. that's by way of saying: congratulations. i'll hear another led zeppelin song in lieu of a toast (moby dick. absolutely no pun intended).

[Bad Kitty]

You go, girl.

[badinfluencegirl]

i've been awol because the ramones, who i love, kept crashing my browser. they have scrolled far enough down the page now that i can hit stop in time and still read.

anyway i was very interested in your thoughts about strip nation and it's emergence into the national psyche and the simplistic girl inside me suggests that any society based on puritanism would have to go this way...

but then i think about my own sex blog that started entirely for me and has changed my life in so many amazing ways and i wonder what the deeper story is.

i also find it funny that you can see what so many of my colleagues can't... frozen pelvises and hunched shoulders and what a long neck should be for, methinks it's too bad just a little that you don't still teach movement. that eye is much more rare than you think... course, so is your writing talent.

as for today's post, i have the hardest time selling my skills and i have something that i sell by the hour, i'm not sure i could bear to sell words, they're so dear and so difficult.

but then you are in fact a GOOD writer :)

you go miss chelsea!

[S.P.]

Go get 'em, kiddo.... you're brilliant, as is your creative output...

[Rachel Kramer Bussel]

You can get a sneak preview of the crazy-hot cover for Yes, Sir at http://yessirbook.wordpress.com - more to come closer to the pub date. Thrilled to have you in the book, Chelsea, and congratulations on all these successes, I'm sure there'll be many more soon.

[bryce]

congratulations

[Edgy Mama]

O frabjous day!