I flew out to St. Louis yesterday to surprise my grandfather, Norman Bussel, who did a reading here at Left Bank Books last night from his memoir My Private War: Liberated Body, Captive Mind: A World War II POW's Journey (Pegasus Books). It details his benig shot down over Berlin when he was 19 (he threw away his dog tags marked with "H" for Hebrew) and was a POW for a year, as well as the PTSD that plagued him after the war.

I'm honored to have played a role in getting his story published, by encouraging him to write it down and also helping him find an agent, but even more so, to have grown closer to him in the last few years, especially around the topic of writing. For many of my peers, we are the last generation who will have significant adult relationships with our grandparents; unless there are huge advancements in technology, I highly doubt I'll be around to hang out with my grandkids (I'm 33 and haven't popped out any kids yet), and that's a sad thing, both for me and for them.

I've never thougth that simply because people are related by blood they will automatically get along; there is a kinship, yes, but that doesn't mean you will have anything more in common. Certainly, I have plenty of family members who I love but don't feel like I truly know (or vice versa). Thankfully, with both of my remaining grandparents, I do have much more than a cursory connection. The fact that my grandfather is a writer I think has bonded us in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

Out of all the members of my family, he along with one of my uncles, has been the most supportive, adn for that I"m incredibly grateful. I know that while the rest of my family is proud of my accomplishments, the fact that my books are called things like Best Sex Writing 2009 and Spanked is something they'd rather other people not know. I cringe when interviewers ask the question, "What do your parents think about your career?" because I'd like to think I'm old enough to be beyond caring about that.

Lately, my grandfather has taken to asking my advice about his book's publicity and signings: What kind of pen should he use to sign books? Should he hire a publicist? What's the advantage of doing a reading at a library? I don't always have the answers, but I feel honored every time he comes to me thinking I do. That is a sign that even though my writings may be of the more racy variety, it doesn't matter; he respects that I know a thing or two about book pubilcity and promotion, and that is more exciting to me than even the lowest of Amazon rankings (which, um, I check way more often than I should).

My grandfather is also a daily reader of my blog, Lusty Lady, and I'd be lying if I said that hasn't changed how I approach it. I don't obsess over what I post, but knowing that he is readnig often gives me pause, not so much about my dating life as revelations that might make him worry about me. While sometimes it amkes me uncomfortable to know that he has that much isnight into my daily comigns and goings, I'm honored that he cares enough to pay that close attention. He's also given me insight into my relationship with my father, and my father's relationship to him.

My other living grandparent, my grandmother (on my mother's side), is also incredibly special to me. We spent a lot of time together when I was growing up and she'd babysit every week. Now, as an adult, I can see how certain traits I've shared with her have skipped over my mom. My grandmother and I are much more into clothes and makeup, and are more than happy to spend a day at the Danbury Mall (well, my grandmother goes almost every day), while I think my mom would max out on mall shopping in about an hour.

I just spent a few days with her and it was fascinating to see her daily rituals; she (inexplicably to me) loves the show Two and a Half Men and even though she's into fine clothes and jewelery, she extols the deliciousness of McDonalds' yogurt parfait (her daily breakfast treat). I always trot out the fact that she saw The Beatles perform and once helped me dye my hair purple as examples of her coolness, but it's much more than that. She's a gossip lifeline in our family, keeping tabs on all of us and duly reporting the latest news to the others via telephone.

Getting the chance to see my grandparents not as my grandparents per se, but as individuals with their own sets of intersets and histories and quirks is something I'm thankful for. I regret that I wasn't able to appreciate them from a less selfish perspective when I was younger but try my best now to be an active part of their lives, via email, phone calls and visits. While I'm fairly close with my parents as well, these relationships are different. There isn't the same frustration I too often have with my parents, the maddening feeling of automatically being a teenager again. They're both 85, so I know I won't have them around forever, but I am learning from to appreciate and learn from the time we do have.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is the editor of 24 anthologies, Dating Drama columnist for TheFrisky.com, and host of In The Flesh Reading Series in New York City.  She spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy.com.  This is her parting post.

In Peggy Orenstein's memoir about her lust to become a parent, Waiting for Daisy, she writes about her marriage to a Japanese-American man and their cultural differences: "I'm a Jew - I consider kvetching my birthright, a way to connect to those I love, to communicate. If I have a hangnail, you're going to hear about it."

When I first read that, I thought, how spoiled. How annoying. And then, like most things that annoy me, I realized that it annoyed me precisely because I do the exact same thing. I am not stoic and humble, strong and silent. My natural urge, when things are going well or they're decidedly not, is to write about it. How else to explain most of my Twitter stream, where I can be vound venting about the evil that is the L train and the MTA, my annoying cold, or some other frustration?

Today, I slept fitfully and woke up woozy, my head heavy and pounding, sick and not yet packed for my trip to St. Louis. I was stressed because my passport, my only official form of photo ID, expired two days ago, and apparently the TSA has tightened its rules about traveling with expired ID (it worked out okay for me, there's a grace period). I've been stressed about the passport for weeks but only in the last few days did I look into what I have to do to replace it. All this even though last year, I wound up traveling to London on an expired passport, and wasn't allowed to return home without getting a 1-year renewal. (See, kvetching already!)

Since reading Orenstein's words, though, I've been trying to watch myself, to catch myself in the act of complaining, because I know from being on the receiving end from family, friends and lovers, that it's not useful. I tend to feel sorry for myself when things go awry, to leap to the worst case scenario in my head immediately, and only when I've truly hit rock bottom, try to figure out a way out of my messes. When your world feels like it's falilng apart--your heart's been broken, you've gotten laid off, you're in debt, whatever--complaining seems like it's the equivalent of taking action. It's doing something. It's getting things off your chest.

But really, it's not. It's passive rather than aggressive. Intead of telling my friends that I often want to move just so I won't have to suffer the L train anymore, I should be writing to the MTA and telling them how inept they are at informing their customers of late-night train changes. Instead of feeling like I will forever be under the thumb of Sallie Mae due to a three-year mistake called NYU Law School, I should be looking into ways to invest and save money, rather than prowling bookstores and clothing boutiques on my way home.

I think so many behaviors, like the ones Orenstein is talking about, seem comforting to us when we engage in them, but horrific when others do. They keep us in a suspended state of anger and despair rather than helping us assess the situation, self-made or not, and plan a way out of it. I try to look to the people I know who, while their lives are not always smooth sailing, project both confidence and dynamism, who are all about moving forward rather than staying stuck.

Also, if what Orenstein says is true, I don't want to simply succumb to a stereotype of some neurotic, whiny Jew. At the same time, I think documenting our daily ups and downs is a powerful act, as Orenstein demonstrates. Her multiple miscarriages and spirited quest to become a mother are moving precisely because we know how much work it took for her, the constant uphill battle.

Then again, kvetching has its fans, such as Dr. Barbara Held, author of Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching: A 5-Step Guide to Creative Complaining. I will give her one thing: she made me laugh, especially because I thought her site, Kvetching.com, was a joke!

Maybe kvetching isn't really so bad, as long as it's done in moderation, and to a rotating cast of people, so the main listeners don't get too sick of you. Still, I want to try to nip my kvetching in the bud, even that makes me just a little less Jewish.

Rachel Kramer Bussel, author of Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

Last year, I shot my first (but hopefully not my last!) book trailer for my anthology Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica.

One common question I get is...what's a book trailer?

Well, it's like a movie trailer, but for a book, and in some ways, even more ingenious. Movies have way more buzz around them than books; it's likely that even if you never plan to see, say, Revolutionary Road, you've heard about it, but not so much with books.

So book trailers are a way for authors to spread the word about their books using blogs, YouTube, and other video sharing sites.

I hired a friend of mine who I'd known from her own comedic videos for $500; that was the total budget for our shoot, and quite a bargain in the world of book trailers, I learned.

I had a few friends come over to a friend's place one afternoon, and we proceeded to "act out" a few key scenes from the book.

Once concern I had is that even though my book is full of X-rated stories, I didn't want my trailer to be. I was aiming for light, positive, fun, with a hint of naughtiness. My main goal in making the trailer was to let people who might otherwise never hear of a book like Spanked to know it existed. From there, they could go to the book's blog and read story samples, or just keep watching the trailer.

We did some voiceovers and there was lots of giggling as we tried to come up with a variety of implements that I would get spanked with. In large part, it was an experiment, to see what would happen (I will soon find out if it paid off in sales, though that's not the only reason to make one). The final product was one I was really pleased with. I got to get my personality across, tease the reader with the content of the book, and hopefully make them want to find out more about it. I also like that the one word that came up again and again in reactions to the book was "cute." That's what I was going for. (Sorry, I'm not as smart as the fabulous Molly Crabapple and can't figure out how to atually add the video here, but you can see it on YouTube.)

Reasons to make a book trailer:
1. To spread the word about your book, especially to those who don't tend to buy books
2. To let you introduce yourself to your audience in ways type simply can't
3. To have multimedia work samples on your website 4. Others can easily post it on their sites. 5. Because it's fun!

What happened after we released the trailer was an unexpected bonus. My director uploaded it to four sites: Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, and Blip. Within hours, Flickr had taken it down, and then Vimeo did the same, providing me with very little feedback. They claim they don't allow commercial materials, yet if you look up book trailers on Vimeo, there are plenty there. There is no nudity in my trailer, and no cursing.

The story about Vimeo removing my video got me some bonus press, from Silicon Alley Insider and gossip site Jossip. I managed to meet my goal in totally unexpected ways! It's now been viewed over 80,000 times on YouTube, which I consider a huge success.

Very soon, I plan to shoot new trailers, one in a hotel room for my hotel erotica book Do Not Disturb, and one, if I can find one to rent, on a private plane, for The Mile High Club. Neither will have nudity, but both will hopefully give a hint of what kind of material is in my book.

Based on my experience, I recommend hiring someone who knows what they're doing, who's good at troubleshooting, and understands your vision. Set a budget in advance, and if you're working with a tiny budget, make sure you get your money's worth. While some companies charge upwards of $5,000 or more, you can make your own. Poke around on YouTube or sites like Watch the Book or Book Trailers, or just use Google, to see a sample of what's out there. As a reader, it can be fun to watch a book's trailer after you've finished reading, to add to the reading experience. Book trailers should be short, to best capture the reader's attention. Another one I really loved is for my friend Samara O'Shea's Note to Self, about keeping a journal; she got her ex-boyfriend, who she writes about in the book (he found her journal chronicling her affair), to be in it!

You can watch's Samara's trailer here.

Rachel Kramer Bussel, author of Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

Rachel Kramer Bussel, author of Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica, is guest blogging this week as one of Jewcy's Lit Klatsch bloggers. Her book is a collection of stories about spanking and its sexual appeal. 

Before I officially start, a word of warning: some links may not be safe for work viewing.

Hi, I’m Rachel Kramer Bussel, and I write and edit smut. Or porn. Or erotica, whichever you choose. I don’t really care what you call the dirty stories in my books, and tend to think that those who press the porn vs. erotica question are simply looking to obscure the issue. The point of my books is to get people off, and hopefully along the way, make them think a little.

Today I want to share how I went from an NYU Law student to the editor of 24 anthologies ranging from spanking to foot fetishes to exhibitionism to crossdressing. You could say it’s all because of Monica Lewinsky. She was the protagonist of my first published story, called “Monica and Me,” written circa 1999. It was a fantasy about, well, Monica and me, about what would happen if I (or rather, my narrator) met her at a booksigning. I took something true (my crush on her) and turned it into fiction for a book of celebrity sex fantasies called Starf*cker. That was just as I was leaving law school, uncertain about my future (I never graduated from law school). I went on to work at various administrative jobs, and kept on writing in my spare time. I wrote and submitted and erotica story every few months, many of them true, about my budding sexual explorations, and found getting published to be a thrill I fast became addicted to.

In 2004, I got offered a job as Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, where I still work, and later went on to write the Lusty Lady sex column for The Village Voice and other nonfiction; I currently write the Dating Drama column for The Frisky. So dealing with sexual content, whether it's about my life or fictional, has proven pretty easy for me.

Along the way, I started editing erotic anthologies of my own, based on ideas supplied by publishers. Now, I tend to come up with an idea for an anthology, then pitch my main publisher, Cleis Press. Sometimes we bat ideas around for a while, and other times, they go for it right away. Then I put out a call for submissions, and wait for stories to roll into my inbox.

A recent review of my fellatio anthology Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories, asked, “How could a collection of twenty-plus stories with such a narrow theme sustain any level of interest? And wouldn’t a focus on a single, physical sex act – fellatio – tend to move the content away from the psychological and emotional explorations that I view as the essence of erotica toward more superficial presentations reminiscent of bad porn?”

Oh, the possibilities.What’s interesting to me is taking a theme, whether it’s a sexual act or a location (my upcoming books Do Not Disturb and The Mile High Club deal with sex in hotel rooms and on planes) and mixing it up. In other words, not going for the obvious. I like when authors dazzle me with a story that makes me rethink sex, that turns me on, even after having read thousands of stories.

Maybe that means in the airplane book having cybersex via text message. Or exhibitionism via webcam. For my book on crossdressing, I had butches dressing as femmes and men wearing panties.

What I’ve learned in my years of writing and editing smut is that anything can be eroticizedæseriously, anything. Sometimes I teach erotic writing workshops and two of the exercises are: write a story involving a chair, and write a story involving George W. Bush. I don’t assign those because I have a fetish for either, but because seeing where those prompts take people’s erotic imaginations spurs me on.

Later this week, I’ll be sharing some erotic writing tips and some of my favorite non-erotic books from the past year. If you’re interested in writing erotica, I highly recommend checking out the site Erotica Readers & Writers Association. It’s the main resource I use and refer people to, and continually updates its list of calls for submission, as well as maintaining mailing lists and columns of interest to smut writers.

What I love best about erotica is how democratic it is. Everyone has fantasies, whether or not they have or will ever act on them, and those can spur stories spanning the globe and the range of sexual acts. Plus, erotica is booming, even with the economy and state of the publishing industry, so there are numerous opportunities to get published, or to just expand your writing repertoire or write a love note to someone.

Many people get started in erotica writing about their own lives, whether true stories or barely embellished fantasies. But I don't want you to think you have to write about your life to pen arousing erotica. Hardly. There are plenty of brilliant writers out there crafting outrageous, creative, and highly fictional stories that continue to wow me.

If you have questions about erotic writing you’d like to see me answer here, please feel free to drop me a line at rachelkramerbussel@gmail.com with “Jewcy” in the subject line. Later this week I'll take you behind the scenes of my first book trailer shoot (for Spanked) and share my favorite books of 2008.

Rachel Kramer Bussel, author of Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.