Mommy Porn? Or Mommy is a fully-functioning human with a sex drive?

Yesterday at the RT Booklovers Con in Chicago, a CNBC reporter used the term "mommy porn" to describe the erotica that women are reading and enjoying these days. (I can picture the anchors back at the studios with smirks on their faces.)

Huh. What a neat, concise phrase that manages to denigrate an entire gender, box up a book category and dismiss readers all in one blow. I wonder if that was Courtney Reagan's intention when she casually used the phrase while delivering an otherwise very interesting and insightful report on what's happening in the book industry.

The phrase was used again in a Q&A session later, when an audience member spoke about the term, asking a panel of editors, agents and authors about it and what impact it was having on the choices that industry execs are making when buying and repping manuscripts. The discussion that followed was illuminating, to say the least.

When I was a kid, the men/dads I knew kept tittie calendars on their garage walls, and usually had a Playboy or two lying around. But that was okay. In the meantime, moms were back in the kitchen or vacuuming or doing laundry, asexual creatures that they were, just keeping the home fires burning. Hmmm. Perhaps that Leave It To Beaver picture wasn't quite as truthful as some folks would like it to seem. Oh - and today? - let's not forget at all the success of places like Hooters, and the "gentleman's clubs" that are all over the place in cities around the world. Even the arch-terrorist Bin Laden had his porn stash.

The RT Booklovers Con has lots of fun and interesting panels and events. But it clearly, unmistakably shows us one very essential truth: turns out that women are indeed sexual beings. Gasp! Heads up, people in TV land; if women weren't sexual beings, none of us would be here. Oh, wait, I guess there might be some who aren't so interested but that's certainly no reason to slap the rest of us down with a label stating, in essence, if we're interested in books with sex scenes - maybe lots of sex - then we're just porn enthusiasts. There, that neatly shelves any concerns that we might be persons of value, with feelings, thoughts, needs and wants that just might not be addressed by category romance books. Brrr, I can feel the shockwaves through the land. 

Boys and girls: women like romance, women like love. Maybe it's not a stretch to sometimes say we're in love with love. Thus, we're often indulging ourselves in a good (or great) romance that allows us to happily, mentally, experience the wonder and joy of love and yes, the heat and sweaty fervor of a great sexual workout. Why should guys have all the fun? And, oh? We even like stories with non-traditional protagonists. Scratch that; we LOVE those stories. Gay romance is an exploding sub-genre in romance books.

Women are in love with men in love. We want to know and believe that men can fall in love. Yes, we enjoy the sex. Who doesn't? But it's more than that. Yesterday, at another panel, one reader asked why we women are buying and reading edgy, erotic stories of love and sex. The panels members and audience bandied the question, answering with their own opinions. Well, here's mine, which I offered up yesterday as well. Women want to believe that a man can fall in love, can be vulnerable and care enough about someone else to lay it on the line, talk about that love and his feelings. We want to believe that all men are capable of those things. Else, why get up in the morning? Why continue to hope for a better tomorrow if half the world doesn’t really give a red rat's patoot?

The bottom line (since this report generated from CNBC I thought that was appropriate) for me is this. Women don't need to be ashamed of what they like, enjoy or love. First of all, it's nobody else's damned business. Second, as grown-ups, we all get to make choices and it's not really anybody else's place to judge those choices. Now being human, that's exactly what we do. Clearly, we all need to get over that.

Consenting adults can (and should) do what's legal and what they like. Why isn't that enough for everyone?

The explosion of eBooks is being driven by romance. Surprise, surprise. And it's also saving the publishing industries' collective ass. It's changing that industry at the very same time. Publishers, agents, editors - everybody's scrambling to keep up and stay ahead of the curve. Seems an impossible task but each day we see evidence that savvy entrepreneurs are grabbing a share of the market. Consumers are in control, that seems clear. The choices we make are what is governing the choices that publishers are making.  Isn't that the essence of capitalism? Why must it be denigrated by using a sophomoric phrase like "mommy porn?"

Industry experts, reporters, followers, et al, here's a newsflash for you: we really don't care what you think any more. We're in the driver's seat and the industry is all around us, waving its arms, yelling "choose my book, buy over here, I've got what you want."

Seems to me, we're the ones lifting a superior brow, asking who's laughing now? 

What's a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a book like this?

Please welcome guest author Dev Bentham. Here she's talking about her new book Learning From Isaac, perfectly timed for the Passover season. 

It's Passover, the time of year when Jews all over the world are reminded to welcome the stranger to our holiday table. What exactly that means in terms of social and family politics is grist for the Seder dinner discussion.  

In my new novella, Learning from Isaac, Professor Nathan Kohn has a tradition of inviting Jewish students to his mother's house for Passover. It's a bit awkward when he invites Isaac Wolf, a student he with whom he has incredible chemistry. They have a lot in common, including a shared heritage and a passion for the environment, but there are troubling differences, like the almost 20-year age spread and the fact that Nathan's a staid professor, while Isaac's a student who's been raising his tuition in the back room of a downtown club; as he describes it, "sucking dick for dollars." 

Their Seder dinner is made even more uncomfortable by the arrival of Tzvi, a visiting Israeli professor who seems to know Isaac from the club. 

The central Passover story is the classic freedom-from-bondage tale of Moses and Pharaoh that we know from Sunday School or Charlton Heston or Dreamworks. At Nathan's Seder dinner the talk turns to money and freedom. One character asks if money frees or enslaves us. Here's an excerpt of the discussion that follows: 

Isaac spoke softly into the silence that followed. “Maybe the answer to your question is that both are true. If we’re desperate for money, it’s enslaving because of what we become willing to do to get what we need. Having enough money makes us free to choose our way in the world.” 

Tzvi shifted beside me. His grin as he faced Isaac was cruel. “True, but financial circumstances needn’t make us prostitute ourselves.” 

Isaac held his gaze. “We’re all prostitutes in one way or another. Some are simply more straightforward than others.” 

What do you think? Does money make us free? Or is it another way we're bound? Does the end justify the means? Given skyrocketing tuition costs, is Isaac smart or naïve to think that when he's through he'll still have a place at the table? 

Leave a comment today for a chance to win a copy of Learning from Isaac. 

Dev Bentham is the author of Moving in Rhythm and Learning from Isaac. You can find her at www.devbentham.com, follow her on Twitter or email her. 

Are you up for some hot Easter Egg love?

I've got a flashfic up today at Chicks & Dicks. Come on over - the coffee is on and the eggs are cooking. (Um, well, really, the eggs are dyed and waiting to be discovered.)

Here's a taste of my little story (again with the food metaphor!)...

If You Want To Make An Omelette, You've Got To Break Some Eggs

With my thanks to Thorny, who had a marvelous idea.

They'd just gotten the delivery finished in time. It was the Friday of Easter weekend, when a lot of companies closed down. In fact, the large corporate offices of Midwest Industries had been emptying out even as Tristan's delivery guys were unloading the chairman's new, custom-made desk.

Tristan stood ten feet from that desk, running his gaze over the satin finish. The Honduras Mahogany wood piece was oversized and more than filled the space along the windows of the head honcho's office. The late afternoon sunlight dappled the surface, and he frowned as he spotted a smudge near the edge. Was that a scratch? "Shit."

Moving quickly, he reached across it and rubbed an elbow along the mark. His soft cotton button-down thankfully removed what turned out to be a bit of finishing oil. Tristan blew out a sigh of relief. "Always going overboard." He mumbled the words as he cleaned up the excess. Tristan did have a tendency to overdo it when he was completing a special piece. "Not that that's a bad thing," he consoled himself.

"Stay right there. Don't move a muscle."

To read more, visit Chicks & Dicks now.

I'll be at RT Booklovers Con next week - will you be there?

Next week, from Wednesday, April 11th through Sunday, April 15th, I'll be attending the RT Booklovers Convention at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago. It promises to be a hugely-attended gathering of authors and readers alike.

The amount of celebrity authors there is stunning but I'm more interested in the readers that are going to be there. I hope to meet some of you - so please! drop me a line if you're attending.

Chicago is a magnificent city. The con itself will be at the Hyatt at O'Hare but you can jump on the El at the airport or at the first stop outside O'Hare and be downtown in 38 minutes.

I'll be there representing myself as an author AND as a member of Rainbow Romance Writers. We'll have a number of our members there and I hope we'll have our readers there, too!