This feels something like being thoroughly French kissed while wearing vibrating nipple clamps and having someone nibble the nape of your neck…. ~ from ‘A Game of Passion’ by Regina Lynn

My story “A Game of Passion” is included in Tentacle Dreams, an anthology of ten — count ‘em! — tentacle sex stories from indie e-book publisher Republica Press.

Available now in PDF, ePub, and MobiPocket from Republica Press, All Romance eBooks, and BookStrand. (Kindle edition is due out in a few days now available right here.)

His tongue quests further downward, over the rise of my belly, over my mound, delves deeper, finds my clit. There are no words for how he makes me feel now, only sounds as ancient as time, small sounds, long low sounds, breathless sounds that can only be felt, not heard…. from ‘A Game of Passion’ by Regina Lynn

This isn’t exactly a book of hentai, though. As editor Nobilis Reed explains:

The phrase “tentacle sex” evokes a standard trope of Japanese animation, featuring hideous demonic creatures having their way with helpless sailor-suited schoolgirls. The genre is a perfect example of unintended consequences…

In our imaginations, it is safe to ponder the sexual innocent taken by an inhuman horror and driven to the heights of ecstasy, beyond the limits of propriety. The ten stories in this anthology take that theme and run in a dozen different directions.

I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t tease you with a few glimpses into my romantic twaddle. So if you want to read the first 500 words or so, click…

A Game of Passion

This is a bad idea. A really, really bad idea.

But here I am. Dressed casually, as if I just walked out of the house and ended up at this coffee house like any other day. Jeans, boots, a tank with thin straps to show some skin, a scarf with voluminous fringe to cover what I had better not show. Not even to Aaron. Not even in this age of rampant body art could I pass for merely tattooed.

I have my laptop and a stack of books, a latte steaming next to an untouched bagel on a plate, but I’m not fooling anyone. I might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says “Grace Is Waiting for Her Date.” Every time the door opens I lift my head and every time I know immediately that it’s not him. Yet the bats in my stomach launch into another wild ballet, and my nostrils flare as if to catch the faintest scent of … something. I will know it when I taste it. I will know him the instant he arrives. If he ever arrives.

We are soul mates, of course. True lovers. We have been bound, hearts and minds, since our first adventure together in Demesne. We are actually game-famous for being the first alpha testers to bend the clumsy motion-capture suits into amorous positions, the first beta testers to build effective erotic environments despite the limitations of those first “full sensory” helmets.

Yet unlike tens of thousands of other Demesne couples, we have never seen each other in the flesh. Pictures, video now and then, but lucky for me, he has never pressed for more reality – ha – than I have been willing to give. Our avatars have always expressed us best. Especially now that mocap and sensory transference technology have become so good it is almost better than the real thing.

Last week, we made game history again, becoming the first players to open the way to the Island in the western sea. It is not a higher level in the game, just a sideways step into a hidden land, one so elusive that half the game population believes it is a myth. Rumors have it that there are many ports of entry to the Island, but in the three years since its announcement, no one had found a way in.

But they want to. The Island is entirely devoted to sensual pleasures, your every sexual fantasy fulfilled, with no battles to be fought or treasure to be unburied or enemies to outwit. Your health, energy, and karma are instantly topped off and then doubled. Any curse or geas is lifted, any injury healed.

Even now that we have been grilled by all the gamer media (“Demesne’s First Couple ‘Graces’ Sex Island,” “Amazing Grace Opens Pearly Gates”) we have not revealed how we opened the way. I don’t know how much of our reticence is respect for the secrets of Demesne and how much is simply that there are things you can’t say to a 17-year-old blogger.

It’s hard to believe that a corporation as powerful as Demesne’s publisher could get away with something so pornographic. Not that we’re complaining….

Excerpted from Tentacle Dreams (Republica Press, 2010). Excerpt (c) Regina Lynn. Available now in PDF, ePub, and MobiPocket from Republica Press, All Romance eBooks, and BookStrand. Also available on Kindle!

Boyfriend X Misses the Mark

The scary part about taking your sex-tech project to the mainstream is that on the long, hard journey from quirky to safe, you risk wrecking the very thing that made you special.

Then, when the Bowdlerized version doesn’t do well, the backlash affects everyone in the sex-tech space, not just the particular application or product. “See?” say the analysts and the venture capitalists and the advertisers. “That’s why we don’t back sex things.”

Then when there’s a new sex thing they cautiously express interest about, the developers bend over backwards to show how nonthreatening and comfortable it really is.

Ah, the cycle of romantic startups.

Cont’d @ Wired

Sex Drive: Tech Helps Soldiers Cope with Invisible Wounds of War

Some war injuries are obvious at first glance, like missing limbs or facial burn scars. Others remain invisible to the casual eye — post-traumatic stress disorder, brain injuries, broken hearts.

Yes, broken hearts. The recent Army Suicide Report revealed that in 2007, 50 percent of suicides among active duty personnel occurred just after their partners broke up with them, and cites “failed intimate relationships” as the most common reason for suicide attempts even after soldiers return home.

The military does not have a fabulous track record for making sex and relationships a priority, other than promoting heterosexual marriage and families as the foundation of stability and an ideal worth defending. Yet how can you simultaneously encourage marriage while ignoring the emotional toll of deployment and combat on a relationship?

Continued @ Wired…

I can think of a number of things I would recommend that all branches of the military do, including sending personnel to sex and relationship workshops that will give people tools to stay connected and nurture relationships during the stresses of service, whether long-distance or living together, with a particular emphasis on issues only military people face. All that touchy-feely stuff that makes Wired nervous probably scares the bejeezus out of the military, but I think ultimately it would have a positive effect not just on the individuals who take advantage of the offer but on the military as a whole.

Motion-Capture Suits Will Spice Up Virtual Sex
No matter how beautiful the sex animations are in your favorite virtual playground, they can’t compete with the movement of your own body.

How soon will we be slipping gracefully into motion-capture suits or using 3-D cameras to capture those uniquely natural moves and engage our entire bodies in online sexual adventures, rather than limping along with keyboard and mouse? Sooner than you might think.

Kevin Alderman, who’s already infamous for the sex animations his company Strokerz Toyz creates for Second Life, is developing a wireless, consumer-level motion-capture suit that’s expected to hit shelves in 2009.

Continued @ Wired…

From the archives

Sex Trumps Game

The Myth of Cybersexual Losers

Stroker Serpentine, Second Life’s Porn Mogul, Speaks (Q&A with Kevin Alderman)

Talk Dirty, Descriptively in Porn for the Blind

Porn preview sites aren’t known for their usability. You’re familiar with the template, I’m sure. The standard design looks like someone spilled a box of dirty photos across a black laminate floor and then vandalized the result with several colors of primary paint. In all caps. With lots of misspellings and exclamation points!!!

It’s bad enough when you can see it. But what if you have a visual impairment? Your screen-reader software would probably spit out a few choice words and crash out of sheer spite.

Porn for the Blind, a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Mass., was established for the sole purpose of making the millions of free porn clips available online accessible to people with visual impairments.

Continued at Wired

Begin PSA
We’re at the end of the second week of the Rape and Incest National Network campaign, to help fund a 24 hour online crisis hotline. Have you donated yet?
End PSA

A few past columns chosen at random:

Hear, Hear for Audio Erotica (October 2005)

Makin’ Woohoo (October 2004)

Lifelong Effects of Cybersex (August 2006)

Next-Gen Sex Gets Its Jollies From Web 2.0
For many people, any type of sex or nudity with sexual intent counts as “porn” if you do it online.

That’s a lesson I learned a few months ago, after writing that porn is scrambling to catch up with Web 2.0, not driving it. Prior to that column, I’d been thinking of “porn” as “the porn industry” — sexual content produced by people with the intention of making money.

Couples recording themselves at home and uploading the video simply to share it with other people for fun don’t qualify as porn, in my view. Neither do the platforms developed to provide those couples with a space to play, even though the technology was obviously produced with the intent of making money. continued @ Wired

On a related note, see Audacia Ray’s blog post at Waking Vixen about another way the porn industry lets us down, and why we’re taking matters into our own hands with the ease of social networking and blog tools:

Seeing straight ahead: the porn industry’s sexuality blinders
Two years ago when I started to ponder directing and producing a porno film, I knew I wanted to make bisexual movies. When I said that word, “bisexual,” to people outside the porn industry, they’d respond with confusion: “Aren’t most porn movies bisexual, what with all the girl-girl action?” In pornoland, girl-girl action is coded as straight, unless of course some of the women have short hair and present as butches, in which case the mainstream industry ignores it. Except for that one time when S.I.R. Video won Best All-Girl Feature with their Hard Love and How to Fuck in High Heels. That was pretty sweet. In pornoland, bisexual means that the dudes touch each other too. And that’s what I wanted my movie to be. In pornoland, bisexual films fall under the rubric of “gay,” they aren’t included in the world of AVN, they are the propriety of GAYVN. Pornoland is trying to teach us something here: you’re either straight or you’re gay. continued @ Waking Vixen

Teachers Should Blog, Tweet and Flirt Online Like the Rest of Us
What would you do if your employer told you not to use MySpace, Match.com and Second Life because those sites are “too dangerous” and “inappropriate” for you?

If you’re a teacher in Ohio, you’d better think twice before you answer, because it’s not a hypothetical question. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the state’s teacher’s unions recommend that teachers not post profiles on social networking or online dating sites because it could lead to the appearance of improper relationships with students.

What’s next? Police officers prohibited from posting hook-up invitations on craigslist lest it appear they are hooking on the side? Firefighters advised not to enter a members-only adult community, in case some old biddy sees an episode of Primetime Live and accuses them of cyberperversions?

Continued…

And here is the rest of it — a blog exclusive. LOL

The problem is we were all so busy this week, we didn’t have time to reshape the second page of the column — to carve away the repetitive bits and strengthen the additional point I wanted to make. But I bring it to you here, naked and raw, unedited, because I really do want to address the bit about our culture wanting teachers and other “pillars of the community” to lie to youth about sex and relationships.

Last time I wrote about Ohio teachers losing their jobs over their online activities (“Sex and Nudity Aren’t Good Reasons to Fire Someone,” 04/17/07), I made the radical suggestion that we embrace the idea that sex is a good and wonderful component of life, and that sexual expression is part of that. I also noted that as technology opens doors to greater sexual expression, we are seizing the opportunities by the millions. Internet sexual exploration is not (just) the pastime of a small group of odd pioneers out there on the fringes.

It seems to me that the internet has provided teachers with safe, semi-anonymous place for them to express the desires and feelings they’ve always had, because they’re people, but were not encouraged or allowed to express, because they’re role models and we don’t want teenagers acting with the same sexual freedom as adults until they are adults.

Yet if teachers are expected to pretend to be celibate, or to conform to a rigid standard about sex and relationships that our technological and social evolution have made obsolete, they’re no longer serving as good role models. Instead they are lying to young people about their futures as lovers, partners and parents.

Keeping educators away from social networking also perpetuates the message that adults who meet a “higher standard” are adults who don’t have sex.

We need to live in the same world that young people do, and that means helping teachers and students develop skills that will serve them in the future. We cannot expect teachers to communicate with teenagers if we attempt to increase the digital divide between the generations rather than bridge it.

A teacher who has the life experience to make smart decisions and the online communication skills to demonstrate that in a blog without preaching, who has strong social networking skills and who exhibits good judgment about what to make public and what to reserve for a private community — that’s a real role model for the next generation. If that teacher also meets her partner online, or maintains a healthy long-distance relationship through the internet, or plays in Second Life on the weekends, that does no harm to the young people in her charge.

And that’s the teacher young people will respect and turn to for help and support. That’s the adult who will open students’ eyes to other ways of online interaction beyond bragging about exploits they may or may not have actually done but that they think makes them sound cool.

Besides, if teachers really are the cream of the American crop, held up as role models and meeting the highest possible standards for ethical, rational and responsible behavior, we should not deprive all the other internet citizens of their company.

Let the teacher romances begin.

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Court Does Right by Social Sex Sites
Just three business days after my last column explained the futility of subjecting adult social-networking websites to the same record-keeping requirements as porn productions, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a slip opinion agreeing with me.

No, I don’t feel smug, why do you ask?

Also, I wrote the cover story for this month’s AVNOnline, about what the adult industry needs to be thinking about as 3D virtual space becomes a reality.

AVN Online NSFW

AVN has the most annoying, obnoxious online format of any publication I’ve ever seen. Even if it loaded instantly, which it doesn’t, who thought we’d want to “read a magazine” online like we do iin print?

Anyway.

If you want to read the piece, follow the link above and then enter “70″ in the page number field in the toolbar at the top. On the other hand, if you’ve read Sex Drive for a while, I probably didn’t say anything you don’t already know. (But there’s a hot picture of Kevin Alderman in the sidebar, where you can see he looks exactly like his avatar Stroker Serptentine.)

You might be more interested in my colleague Tom Johansmeyer’s piece about the military police confiscating dildos in Iraq, which starts on page 80. About the article, he says “The army’s ban on porn is widely known. But, my story covers a unique angle. Two women had sex toys confiscated in the course of an improper search. They almost lost their jobs. But, military legal advisors explained to the Command Sergeant Major that dildos are not porn…. It is important that the taxpaying public understand where are money is going. We may not be able to find WMDs, but at least we’re keeping Iraq safe from orgasm.”

6th Circuit Court of Appeals Rules 2257 Unconstitutional
CINCINNATI – The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled today in the case of Connection Distributing Co. et. al. v. Keisler that the federal 2257 record-keeping statute is unconstitutional and overbroad.

“This is huge, huge news for the entire industry,” attorney J. Michael Murray told AVN. “It means that the statute has been declared unconstitutional in its entirety, at least in the 6th Circuit. This is the result we’ve all been aiming for; it’s a monumental victory. We’ve been fighting this battle for twelve long years, and this is the third time I argued the case on the 6th Circuit. Finally, we got a court to agree with us.”

A sister company to Cleveland-based video distributor GVA-TWN, the now-defunct Connection published approximately a dozen swinger’s magazines with personal ads containing sexually explicit photographs.

[snip]

“For the first time time in at least a dozen years, we have judges that are digging deep to look at the fundamentals of section 2257,” Lee noted. “And as we have always thought, when they do so, they will find them wanting. When the analysis gets down to the level that these judges assess 2257 on, we’re beyond the particulars of swingers magazines vs. videos vs. internet – this is a very fundamental level, and it’s holding that the statute is flawed in the way it imposes burdens on everybody that has anything to do with this type of expression.”

Although the ruling applies only in the 6th Circuit (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee), Lee feels the case sets an important and gratifying precedent in the battle against 2257.

“The government says that its interest behind 2257 is in combating child porn,” Lee explained. “The problem is that virtually all of what 2257 applies to is not child porn. Each of the [three judges'] opinions today holds that 2257 is not narrowly tailored to an interest in suppressing child porn, because it applies to so much that is not child porn. This has been one of the fundamental objections to section 2257 all along.”

Someone at Wired not only has a sense of humor around headlines, they know one of my favorite southern fried rock songs … LOL

Chaste Home, Alabama, Where You Can’t Buy a Dildo

Oh, Alabama. What has been done to thee?

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to have anything to do with the infamous Williams v. Alabama case, which has been wending its way through the court system for nine years. In that case, adult retailer Sherri Williams challenged the constitutionality of a state law banning the sale and distribution of any device intended for the purpose of stimulating the human genitals. This week a federal judge is expected to lift the injunction that has prevented the law from being enforced since 1998.

The law was originally intended to shut down certain adult establishments, like strip clubs, so that children wouldn’t have to walk past them on the way to malt shops and sock hops. The sex-toy thing got thrown in so minors wouldn’t be exposed to adult retail shops either, and that’s the part that got national attention. No one outside the local community cares if a strip club gets shut down; start telling women they can’t buy vibrators, and the angry murmurs begin.

Continued…

Don’t Dismiss Online Relationships as Fantasy
Last month, three unrelated stories challenged the idea that internet relationships are just fantasy and therefore less important, less powerful and less real than offline relationships.

They aren’t.

First, I read the Wired magazine piece about Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two in New York state. Montgomery invented two alternate identities and got both of them involved online with the 17-year-old girl persona of Mary, a forty-something married woman in West Virginia, whom he met at the games site, Pogo.com. He then became so jealous that she was also seeing his co-worker online, that he shot the guy dead in the parking lot after work.

In real life. Where you can’t just get a snack, go pee and log back in.

Continued at Wired.com

Online Therapy: Like a Diary That Writes Back
Earlier this year, I became so mired in personal crisis I couldn’t see any way out. I struggled against depression and desperation and barely managed to produce columns, much less keep up with my day job or my book.

My distress peaked one night and I found myself frantically searching the web for some kind of drop-in crisis counseling chat. I wasn’t suicidal, so I didn’t want to call a suicide hotline and tie up a volunteer who could be helping someone on the verge of ultimate despair. Yet I felt I would implode if I didn’t immediately talk to someone neutral and anonymous.

You know how you can be ensnared by inertia? I’m not sure why I didn’t call a counselor during regular business hours; it wasn’t as if the trouble happened only that one night, without warning. Yet there I was, staring at Samaritans, a U.K. site, wondering if they would talk to me if I used Skype and pretended I was in England — and still not clicking the number.

Continued…

About as naked as it gets.

Master’s Student Demonstrates Thesis Project in Her Underwear
I’ve noticed a wonderful trend happening at universities these past few years: projects that integrate sex and technology in innovative ways to improve human health and well-being.

Students interested in how technology and sexuality fit together — who take technology’s role in sexual development for granted — are naturally drawn to fields like interactive telecommunications, human-computer interaction and affective computing. It’s a multidisciplinary movement that inspires collaboration among engineers, artists, psychologists and sociologists — and in these studies, sex comes first. Tech is merely a catalyst.

Continued…

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