Blog of the Day Award, and other things

I can't believe its been nearly ten days since I last posted. Obviously, I've been really busy.

The big news for today is that I just heard from Bill Austin that my site has won a Blog of the Day Award (BOTDA)! Very cool and unforseen. I even get to use this button:
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What else? Lets see... My friend S was just visiting--he is an airline steward and has had Friday night to Saturday afternoon layovers this month. On his most recent overnight I took him to the Samurai exhibit at the Asian Art Museum here in town. We ate pho and I showed him photos from the Japan trip in April. It has been a few years since he was there last and he now he really wants to go back.

My companion, M, is working like a fiend on a start-up project. I cleared the dining table of its settings so he could use it as an additional desk -- he's got 4 computers running right now, with MacOS, Linux, Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta. There are lots of routers, wires, and packaging all over the place--its madness. A madness I do my best to cope with while leaving it alone--quite an effort, I assure you.

I'm in talks with a friend, The Sayer of RedWordSaid.com who does his own erotic audio files for women -- we're trying to figure out how to expand awareness of our work and the unique niches we fill. I'm advertising on Google, looking at doing ads on FetLife.com (a captive audience of Kinksters!) and trying to figure out how to re-design my sites with DreamWeaver and make banners with PhotoShop.

M, being an internet guru, has given me some tips and suggestions -- like offering my high-quality erotic vignettes on iTunes for .99 each to get more traffic and sales. So I'll probably set something up with CDBaby, a music distribution company local to my favorite town (Portland, OR) which has been hit hard by the recession. Hopefully, selling short vignettes on iTunes will help drive traffic to the sites where my full-length, high-quality, kinky and creative erotic audio stories are available for sale, like SilkenErotica.com and AudioSensual.com.

I'm podcasting 3x a month on the 5th, 15th and 25th--just put a new episode out today, in fact, and recording and doing the production on audio is actually a rather time-consuming labor of love. Currently, the AudioSensual podcast is averaging about 7,000 downloads a week from 1500 unique IPs. I passed the 100,000 downloads mark at the end of May, in just 14 weeks. That still blows my mind.

I've been writing, too -- submitted stories to 2 anthologies this month, and have two more July 1 deadlines I want to meet, one of them for an anthology featuring erotica based in San Francisco.

I'm also heading out of town tomorrow. I'll spend a week in the Sierra Nevada's up near Mammoth Lakes, writing, fishing, and hanging out with family. I'm hoping to get some excellent photos taken. I get home on the 2nd of July and then on Sunday the 5th I'll be hopping a plane to Vegas -- M decided he wanted to see Bill Maher and so we'll be staying for a few days and catching Chris Angel's show, too.

Hopefully I'll find the time to post something naughty in the next week.

Say what you need to say

I am enjoying my life in San Francisco. I am writing, recording, and enjoying the beautiful weather. I have a fun and interesting companion and we go on adventures together. I am happy. I am doing my best to live life fully, with my heart wide open to everyone I meet.

My companion and I watched the movie The Bucket List earlier today. As the final credits rolled and the song Say What You Mean To Say Played, he said, "Maybe we should make bucket lists."

Have no fear of giving in... Have no fear of giving over...

"Sure," I said.

You better know that in the end... Its better to say too much... Than never to say what you need to say again...

"But I'd rather make lists of things I want to do in the next 2 to 5 years."

Even if your hands are shaking... And your faith is broken... Even as the eyes are closing...

"Why is that?" he asked.

Do it with a heart wide open... Say what you need to say...

"Because I don't want to be one of those people who makes a list of things I want to do before I die and then die before I get around to doing it."

Say what you need to say... Say what you need to say...

I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister.

Say what you need to say... Say what you need to say...

I miss my sister. And some days... some days it feels like I've got to live my life fully enough for two.

Say what you need to say... Say what you need to say...

Miss you, little sis.


AND Thank you so much for the trip to Japan, sweetie. My sister always wanted to go there.


Ah, much better. I said what I needed to say.

Fearing women

It is my assessment that men fear women. They fear women because they do not understand us. Feminine logic escapes them and so they cannot predict us. They fear us because no matter how often they join their bodies with ours, seeking to know and be known -- no matter how often they experience the shuddering release of their essence into our bodies -- they know, even in that moment of ultimate sharing -- of orgasmic bliss-- they know they've never really penetrated the mystery of our otherness. And never will. And for the male of our species, the systematizers, the catalogers, the knowledge-seekers -- what cannot be dismantled, discovered, or known is feared. Sure, there are other emotions mixed in there -- respect, for some, and for others, dread, and a need to conquer or destroy -- but for the most part, consciously or not, most male interaction with the feminine is characterized by fear.

I usually manage to over-ride the feelings of exasperation, irritation, indulgence, and superiority with which most women greet the male fear-response to our impenetrable otherness. Usually. Occasionally, though, I cannot help it.

For all that I am very female, I have a rather masculine mind. I am highly intuitive, but I am also very logical. The combination of the two can be very formidable. I have excellent reasoning / critical thinking skills and am in the top 1 percentile for intelligence. Science, math, economics, programming, trouble-shooting / complex problem-solving -- these come easier to me than to most women. And quite a lot of men. I've been called a polymath by people I respect, though I think of myself as a dilettante. Its not that I'm lacking a polymath's abilities. I'm just lacking the ambition. Winning stopped mattering to me when I realized that other people felt hurt by losing. A rather feminine characteristic.

So, because I am a warm, loving, non-competitive woman, some men underestimate me. They fear me for what I consider the wrong reasons. And this peeves me. And not just me. It peeves quite a few of my peers, women who are feared because they are female but also unrespected because they are female. Because we know that women are capable of terrible things. It just so happens that we rarely tap into the place where that capacity lies dormant because it takes special circumstances to awaken it. For millennia women have made the terrible choice of life or death -- history is full of stories about children exposed to the elements for coming at the wrong time, for example. We've gone to war and when we fight, there are no rules and there is no mercy -- just blood and gore (Go Boudicca). We've pitted man against man, country against country. We've brought down empires as matters of personal vendettas, to right wrongs perpetuated against ourselves, or more often, against those we love.

But men think that women's history of needing to manipulate them to achieve our ends still stands today. They seem to think we cannot fight our own battles and thus they disregard us as martial threats. They forget that we can do battle on the field of the intellect, and that this new Information Age is a great equalizer -- superior physical strength does not matter here. We, too, can fight wars with keystrokes.

Something happened recently in which someone I care for was wrongly accused of something, to the point that evidence was manifactured, and that falsified proof used as a reason to act against him -- and incidentally me. It is nothing illegal, merely a matter of inter-personal politics (ie grudge), but I am enraged nonetheless. The one who accused him has spread fear and paranoia that he will exact revenge.

The irony is that they fear the wrong person. What lies dormant in this woman is awakened when those I care for are threatened. I have the skillset and connections to make Cooper's life in his little world hell should I wish it. If he is not careful, I just might choose to live my life in such a way that when my feet hit the floor in the morning, both he and Satan shudder and say 'Oh shit....she's awake!'

I am woman. Fear me, oh man. Fear me now while I'm still rumbling. Because you do not want to hear me roar.

Exciting news!

As of today there have been 95,000 downloads of AudioSensual podcast episodes since February 2009!

I just got the news that Jane's Guide reviewed my AudioSensual Podcast.
Vamp's write-up was fairly spare--god knows they review a LOT of stuff--but the jist of it is this:

Jane says Silkenvoice's AudioSensual Podcast is quality and original.


Also, SexToys Buzz::Erotic Buzz loves Silkenvoice's Audio Erotica.


Two good reviews in the past couple of months! I'm very pleased

My iTunes ratings are going up, too, so if you listen through iTunes, do please take the time to stop by the iTunes AudioSensual Podcast page and give me a rating and/or review. Thanks!

(cross-posted from my AudioSensual Podcast page)

Homecoming

Home was dark and lonely with my lover out of the country, and so I delayed going home for as long as I could. My friends were great, very pleased in fact to have me to themselves for an evening, but around midnight I thanked them for a wonderful time and left.

The drive home was a bit stressful. Fog had rolled in, covering Silicon Valley in a quilted blanket. As I drove down the winding road into the valley from the mountains around Los Gatos, deer materialized in the fog, grazing on lawns and watching me pass with curious dark eyes. I got turned around once in the dark and the fog and when I finally found the ramp for I-280 I heaved a sigh of relief. Shoulders I didn't know were tense suddenly relaxed.

An hour later, I reached San Francisco. I pulled into the garage and as soon as I did, I had thoughts of my cold bed. Tempurpedic it may be, with silky-smooth 1000 threadcount sheets, but the night was cool and there was no one to warm myself against. I felt a bit of melancholy, but chased it off with the mantra "Tomorrow. Tomorrow he'll be home."

I love the darkness. I've always found it friendly and embracing, and I have excellent night vision, so I didn't bother with lights. I walked straight up to my room and started stripping down. I was bent over, untangling my panties from around my feet, when hands seized my hips. I knew it was a man by the erection he ground against my ass.

Fear froze my throat. I couldn't breathe, couldn't talk. I wanted to pull away, but self-defense training kicked in. I leaned backwards, throwing my weight against him. He fell into the door, taking me with him. I dove my hands between my thighs, aiming for his balls, determined to emasculate my uninvited guest. Or at least stun him long enough to get away.

His "Ow! Kay that hurt!" saved his ambition to one day be a father. I knew that voice.

"You should know better than to sneak up on me you stupid idiot!" I hissed at him as I helped him move to my bed. The way he was rubbing his back it looked like he'd taken the doorknob in his kidney.

"I wasn't sneaking up on you. I told you I'd be here around One," he grumbled.

"I thought you meant 1pm not 1am!"

I helped him lay down on my bed, then crawled in next to him.

"I'm sorry baby," I said, and kissed him.

"I'm sure you are," he said with a grin in his voice. "Who knows when I'll be able to have sex?"

I ran my hand down his chest and put my head on his heart.

"I don't mind if you just lay there," I said suggestively, letting my hand slide farther down until I was cradling the warmth of him.

"Well I do!" He said, and pushed my hand away. "My back hurts!"

"How about I kiss it and make it better?"

"How about we go to sleep and try this again later?" he responded grumpily.

I threw my leg over his and kissed his chest.

"I'm glad you're home," I said, and gave him a big squeeze.

"I can tell. Some homecoming!"