Cover design by Johnny Murdoc

So here’s my little literary swindle: remember the story poll I ran a month or so back? Well, if you want to read the story about getting gang banged by a high school football team (it’s called “Athletic Supporter”) you have to pay for it – it’s included in my just-released ebook, Str8 But Curious.

I know, I’m a dick! But whatever, this is the new reality of things. If you pay the modest (but not too modest, think of it like purchasing a McDonald’s value meal that gives you an orgasm) $4.99 purchase price you will also get a second new story, and this one’s called “My Best Friend’s Boyfriend,” a title that should hopefully speak for itself, but there’s an excerpt below if you’re curious.

Str8 But Curious also includes a nonfiction introduction (which is probably the best thing in the book in my opinion) and a curated collection of my best straight-ish guy stories.

Please note that the book is currently only available on Amazon but in the next day or so I hope to have a pdf version available for those who don’t have one of those newfangled Kindle devices (people like me, in other words). I’ll let you know. In the meantime, read some of “My Best Friend’s Boyfriend” below.

…more

(more…)

Hello there!

Behold the cover for my new e-book, designed by the peerless writer/book cover maker Johnny Murdoc. Str8 But Curious is a compendium of my best “straight-ish guy” stories. Most importantly it contains two brand new stories featuring fuckable (but not quite lovable) straight bait. Plus a nonfiction introduction by yours truly!

I’m still working on it but intend to have it available by August 15th (give or take a day or two probably). It will be available for Amazon Kindle and also as a pdf.

So yeah! Have a great day,

Natty Soltesz

So here it is, summer, and I have nothing to report about the state of Backwoods. It’s in book limbo – everything is completed (though I’m sure it could use some editing), but no action is being taken to get it out in the world.

I anticipated this. My publisher set the summer release date, but I promoted that date more as an article of faith to hopefully get things moving faster. I always assumed I wouldn’t see the release until at least the fall, now I’m thinking it’ll come out by the tail end of 2011, but I haven’t had any contact with the publisher in months so I really have no clue. Hey, it’s an indie press. I’m sure they’re overworked and barely paid.

In any case, here’s another detail from Michael Kirwan’s illustrations. Michael has a pretty fantastic-looking book of his own coming out next month (August) that may feature some of the illustrations he did for Backwoods. Check it out here.

This, a call to conformity from my high school newspaper The Claw, is embarrassing but not totally terrible, and I’m retroactively impressed by my usage of “laffs.” Enjoy?

Wanted to mention this earlier: my writer buddy Johnny Murdoc recently posted the introduction I wrote for his book Blowjob 3, titled “Why Sex?,” in full on his website. Read it here.

This cheered me up today – it’s a review of Blowjob 3 where the reviewer really liked my introduction:

The collection of stories starts out with a delightful introduction by Natty Soltesz and her great quote towards the end sums up the feeling of the stories so well. Introductions can be hit or miss and this one definitely hits all the high notes. Don’t skip it.

I suppose said praise would soften the awkwardness of the reviewer referring to me as a female if I were offended by such things, but as it is I’m totally NOT offended and I’m sort of embracing the idea that my name is weirdly gender neutral, or at least confusing. Cause gender is confusing PERIOD.

In other news, I’m going to make another (!) concerted effort to post more on here.  Truth be told, I’m just fucking busy, working close to sixty hours a week. It sucks nuts and I’m totally over it. But expect a new story posted to this site in the coming week and a special sorry-I’m-a-fuck-up-and-forgot-to-post-last-week Nifty update tomorrow.

Jon Raymond is an Oregon-based writer you should get to know and appreciate. He’s published a novel, which I haven’t read, and a short story collection, Livability, which I highly recommend. He’s most well known from his collaborations with the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, in fact two stories from Livability were made into films directed by Reichardt:  ”Old Joy” and “Wendy and Lucy” (starring Michelle Williams).  Both of them are well worth your time and attention.

In fact I’d rank “Wendy and Lucy” easily in one of my top-ten movie-going experiences. The tone of it is singular, pitched low but humming with emotional intensity. When the credits came up I had the curious experience of being glued to my seat, wracked with emotion, all but sobbing, while one row ahead of me old ladies bitched and complained about how terrible it was, how nothing happened. The film, about a young woman in dire economic straights, almost acts as a moral litmus test: how much are we supposed to care about one another?

Now, Raymond and Reichardt’s third collaboration, “Meek’s Cutoff,” is in limited release. It’s going to take forever for it to get to Pittsburgh but I’m patient.

Also, Raymond wrote the script for Todd Haynes’ mini-series adaptation of “Mildred Pierce,” which is currently showing on HBO, to which I don’t subscribe, so I’m coveting that experience too.

Repost from old blog, 7/2/2009
This essay is five years old and was published in a now-defunct local magazine, Deek. I came across it the other day and realized it has its moments. I still don’t smoke.

I never started writing erotica for the money.  Pursuing any type of writing for the money would be, amongst many other attributes, hilarious.  I started writing erotica because it was what I was meant to do, and I started publishing it on Nifty (and eventually on this website) because I felt it was good, and that people might like it.  Then and now, that has been my chief motivation for writing erotica:  because I like it and hope others will like it too.

However, the market for erotica was once robust compared to the market for other fiction, and I came right on the tail end of a golden age.  When I was selling stories to Men and Freshmen I was making an astounding – but, at the time, pretty standard – $300 a story.  What’s more is that magazines were contacting me – me! – to write other things for them, and offering me money to do so.

I almost cried writing that last paragraph.  Those checks were a godsend.  Now – NEWS FLASH! – the writing/publishing industry is in the toilet.  About the only game left in town are the anthologies (like Best Gay Erotica) and let’s just say that while I appreciate the money they offer per story, it don’t even add up to a week’s worth of groceries.

I work a full-time job.  It’s a good job and I’m incredibly grateful for it.  The schedule is flexible, which gives me free time to work on my writing and my website.  The trade off for this flexibility is the fact that I don’t get paid a whole lot.

It’s never been easy for me to ask for money.  But it’s becoming clearer to me that if an artist (or even a porno writer) feels that their work is worth something, they need to ascribe a monetary value to it and encourage their audience to do the same.  That doesn’t mean I expect every reader of this site to donate something – I read and watch and listen to plenty of free things.  Nor do I knock writers who want to give their work away – I think finding and developing an audience is paramount.  But money is pretty necessary, too.

Consider this:  my web hosting costs come out to about six bucks a month. The yearly fee for my domain is around twenty bucks.  That’s small potatoes, but if you donated six bucks you’d be keeping my site alive for a month. For twenty you’d be sustaining it for a year. Either way you’d be supporting my writing (habit/disorder) in a tangible way.  That’s pretty cool, right?

Think about it and get back to me!

Repost from old blog, 1/18/2008. Thought of it because of this business.
So I’m doing my regular Google ego-surfing and the first link that comes up is a new review posted to Amazon’s listing for Best Gay Romance 2008. With glee I scroll down to see what the reviewer had to say about my story, and I see this:

In “A Not-So-Straight Duet,” Natty Soltesz contributes two different stories of young men who deviate from their preconceived ideas about themselves. In the first story, two college students partner together for a business arrangement and discover they share a common desire. In the second story, the light of the day brings an intense revelation between two young men. Five Stars.

Five Stars! Wow! I’m proud and I start scanning the other blurbs (she wrote something about each story in the collection) to see how I measure up to the rest. The next story I check got five stars. And the next one?…five stars.
Every fucking story got five stars.

It’s the thought that counts.

Update for 2010: the reviewer ditched the stars at some point since I initially wrote this.

My job sent me to L.A. for three days this week for a conference.  I stayed at a hostel in Venice Beach and I could see the ocean from my window.  Plus there were all these young international men getting shit-faced and walking around in their underwear.

more…

(more…)