Xmas

My best Christmas present was some fan mail, sent last night, read this morning. That's all any writer wants, people. Praise and adulation.

This reader said she first read my story "Lessons in Submission" in The Mammoth Book of Erotica (new edition) and went on to buy my own books. Thanks, Alexis! You made my day.

The funny thing about that story is that it almost never saw the light of day. I had always thought of it as kind of incomplete. But when the call for submissions came from that editor, Maxim Jakubowski, I dusted the piece off and reread it, and decided it was good enough to send. Little did I know it would be the story that has gotten me the biggest response of all my work.

Second-best present was an iPod, which Lizzard also received. Hey Lizzard, and anyone else in the Bay Area -- let's have a big tunes swap!

Finally, courtesy BoingBoing, the Gingerbread Kama Sutra!