Another Productive Day in the Hinterlands!

Yesterday was, I mean.

But first!! The Tom Petty website released another song yesterday that will be in the upcoming Wildflowers PT. 2 boxed set. It is called “There Goes Angela” and it was just lovely, gang! An acoustic home demo. I really loved it. I cannot find a link anymore to how you can listen to it (they had it posted yesterday). But it was one of those true Tom Petty awesome acoustic songs where he empowers the woman alone in the world, as he usually did in his songs.

Also, Nick Cave’s website revealed Cave Things today!! A place where you can buy sort of extremely expensive things that Nick Cave has designed or curated in some way. The items are really cool. Some of them are “coming soon,” but the descriptions are already there. Everything is pretty much on the pricey side. For instance, a really nice guitar pick with Warren Ellis’s picture on it, which in US dollars cost about $4, before shipping. So that’s sort of a pricey guitar pick that, you know, if I bought it I would be afraid to use, because I wouldn’t want to damage it, or anything.

Still, the stuff is really cool, but being the somewhat lowly scribe that I am, I cannot afford any of the items I actually really want. But check them out anyway, because if you are not a writer, then you can probably afford everything!!

So. Yesterday.

I spent the entire day working on the re-edits of The Muse Revisited collection and came to the decision that the “new” revised edition will only be one book, and only available in trade paper, POD (Print On Demand).

My decision came about because of the page count.

It turns out Volume 1 has a really small page count, so it doesn’t really make sense to offer it separately in trade paper, even though the page count works fine for an eBook.

Then Volume 2 has a really high page count. And volume 3 has a kind of average page count.

But if I put it all together in one book — all 3 volumes, together — it becomes way too expensive for Print On Demand. So then I thought, what if I pull some of the stories, to ease up on the page count, put it out as one new collection…

…but then I couldn’t offer it as an eBook because it would potentially cannibalize any sales of the tons of eBooks I already have in the marketplace, published by myself and other more traditional publishers who wouldn’t appreciate that at all.

So then I finally came up with the idea to put it out under one cover, but only as POD trade paper.

So I pulled the erotic memoir, the erotic fantasy stories, and the erotic romance stories from the (new) 4th volume. It’s only traditional erotic fiction. But then I’m adding some stories that were not included in volumes 1-3. And now the collection covers 1994-2012, and as of right now, has 25 previously published erotic fiction stories in it.

Plus! I finally found a copy of that publishing history that SomethingDark.eu had published in 2012, and so that will be included in the back of the book, and it lists my publications, honors and awards from 1990 to 2012, and also includes a list of all the reviews I wrote of erotic fiction and nonfiction books for various magazines and websites back in the early 2000’s. But it doesn’t include the erotic art shows I curated in NYC, or any of the multi-media work I produced, which was just a hugely massive amount of work (1997-2006).

But I thought it would make for an interesting book. Again, everything in it is previously published and will really only be for people who prefer books over eBooks.

The title is: The Muse Revisited, Volume 4: The Selected Erotic Fiction of Marilyn Jaye Lewis, 1994-2012. And the cover art is going to be black & white and feature this photo below in some way, that Valerie took of me at Coney Island in 1995, just prior to my 35th birthday.

I don’t know — you can sort of tell by the expression on my face that we probably weren’t up to any good. Holly Lane was there that day, too, because the Mermaid Parade was going on that day. And if you were ever at a Mermaid Parade at Coney Island in the old days — nothing respectable at all was ever going on. And it was a blast.

Okay, so I started a new publishing company, Marilyn’s Room Books, and it will be at marilynsroombooks.com — although nothing is there yet. I don’t know if I’ll just keep it as a vanity press or publish other writers down the road, but here’s the logo, in case you’re interested:

And here, for your reading pleasure, is one story from Volume 4, that does not appear in the other volumes. It is not what I would call “erotic,” necessarily — it’s more about erotic cannibalism. It is microfiction (less than 300 words), and it appeared in Dirty: Dirty: An Illustrated Anthology of Dirty Writing published by Jaded Ibis Press, 2013, and was written expressly for them.

(And with that, I’m gonna leave you, gang!! I gotta get ready for Abstract Absurdity Productions work here today! Thanks for visiting, though. I love you guys. See ya!)

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It was autumn, so we slung her over the split-rails to dry in the crisper breezes, knowing the smoky air would trap the piquant flavor of her and keep it that way all through the winter. Sweet meat where there were once tight curls of flaming red hairs; those lips hairless now, smooth and cool. The throbbing, over. The tender folds salted and the blood drained. In spring, she was succulent to the eye – engorged, even, to the point where she’d driven us mad. We’d warned her: “From here, we can see your thigh!” She’d laughed at us – her mirth like tinkling bells strung through plum blossoms that are caught on the gentle wind of an April rain. We could hardly fault her for it – that blithe laugh. She’d seemed as intoxicated by spring as the dewy hyacinth blossoms, or as the swollen buds of the old roses that had not yet burst with their sultry fragrance of sin. She’d refused to believe us, yet here was her proof: gone now, from the waist up. Splitter-splatter went the shards of bone in blood. “Straighten your skirts,” we’d urged her. “Don’t sit that way – we’re going balmy!” Lewdly was how she sat, legs splayed down in the grass, those flowery dresses with their many underskirts of lace raised too high. Until it was plain that she’d worn nothing under those lacy skirts; that the fleshy folds beneath the tight red curls were swollen and wet with something salty-sweet. In the summer, she was even worse. (“I want to devour you,” I’d whispered once, my fingers plunging up into her while I lost control of my very breath. I licked them then – my fingers – and madly kissed the side of her damp face.)