The V-Word

Rachel Kramer Bussel is the expert’s expert on erotica or all tyrpes. Listen as she talks about the process of sexual fiction writing and the pleasure of editing the sexual fantasies of hundreds of writers over a decade of editing over 25 anthologies of some of the best sexual writing in the country. Rachel speaks with an honest voice about the joy and satisfaction of exploring the mystery of...

“Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.” -Thich Nhat Hanh

Living in the present moment is a relief. The world makes sense just as it is, there is no trying to fashion it to fit your ideas of what it should look like or how things will turn out. There is...

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

After reading the New York times style section cover storyabout the urgency shared by millions to get onto the Oprah show and the industry building around it, I thought to myself, “As much as I would love to chat with Oprah, I don’t want to be on that waiting list.” I also thought about the...

“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” -Mahatma Gandhi

I am working to change my belief system. Instead of believing that I must create all the situations and events that will make my new book project successful, I want to believe that I my real work is about being available to the opportunities as they find me. In truth it...

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” ~Edward Everett Hale

I spent the evening at home making love products. It reminded me of another era in the company history that is all but forgotten now. There were a couple of small product lines that I never grew enough to contract out, so the pleasure...

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” – T. S. Eliot

I sometimes wonder if the reason I have for so long embraced the motto, you never fail until you quit is because I am so unskilled at endings. I feel like the tire that is stuck spinning in a muddy rut when it is time to move on. I have the will and the engine...

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”  ~Victor Borge

I forgot that I’m supposed to be having fun; I even forgot that I wanted to have fun. My anxiety levels matched to the first few pages of the daily news. Life was all seriousness and problem solving and I had forgotten how much fun there was to be had. It is easy to get blindsided by the day’s business, the details of caring...

“What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.”  -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Last night as I was preparing for my talk today, my nerves started to get the best of me and I couldn’t articulate. I would start and then stammer, start over again and lose my thread, stop and start until I lost hope for the trying. I am proud and happy to report that my next choice...

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” -T.S. Eliot

Tomorrow I am going to speak to hundreds of people at once… I have been waiting for an opportunity like this for years it seems, and now that it is upon me I can’t quite get the story straight, except when I am reading it from the note cards. I can’t quite make the leaps and transitions that happened as...