Seattle Erotic Art Festival 2007

I am disappointed in the Erotic art Festival this year. We went both Saturday and Sunday, hoping after our visit Saturday, that perhaps Sunday would offer more - more everything, I guess. It didn't.

I mean there were a few exceptionally beautiful and exceptionally erotic pieces in the smallish space, but we walked around the whole place and didn't see much of interest.

One of our very favorite artists did have pieces in the juried and invited show this year, Carolyn Weltman. Her piece Omi, a giclee print on rag paper, for one. She is a hot artist! Check out her stuff at her Art at Large pages, for a real treat


Another artist that we enjoyed this year was an artist we hadn't seen before at the Art Festivals, but wow! Tricia Boyko's Porno Corset, really sexy in an unexpected way. She is apparently a costume designer in Vancouver, BC, and this piece was beautifully executed!

But honestly? We were both rather disappointed in the smaller than last year's offerings, and a few pieces, we wondered how the heck the jury picked 'those'!

Parking and traffic sucked, not all that unusual for Seattle, I suppose, but Saturday was also a huge St. Patrick's Day Parade a few blocks north of the venue, so yuck.

Podcasts and Panties

Ok, I have an admission to make: I am not a geek, not even close! Frankly, learning all these new and geeky things is scaring me worse than my first time under the glowing bulb of the Violet Wand.

I am still working hard on the website, and just published Tawseman's Swicki, (the one down there VVVVVV) and now am learning how to do podcasts and flash pages, along with gif animations. lol, the gif animations for the website will be a bit of fun when they are done.

The podcast sessions are a bit harder to learn, but that is probably because I have to learn scripting and podcast software at the same time, plus I am lining up guests for interviews and a couple of surprises.

Oh, the panties in the title...I was allowed to buy three pair of panties for my book signing tour next month. Usually, Master prefers me to not wear panties, but he thinks for the book signings and other non-lifestyle events, panties might be a good idea. Actually, they look a bit silly, those three little pair of panties in that big underwear drawer.

new swicki search tool! very cool

I have been looking for a great search tool for us and 'I think I've got it, by jove!'

Swicki, silly name, but cool tool.

check out the Dominance and submission swicki at eurekster.com

Fun Stuff

well, it has been a few days since I posted here. part of the reason is that I was flying again (still?) from a great hot violet wand scene with my Master, and partly because Michelle turned me on to some awesome webmaster tools and newsletter development sites.

first, here is what I remember about the scene - IT WAS HOT! lol, yeah, I don't really remember much after the first few minutes but I do remember screaming 'thank you, Master!' about a billion times and I do remember cumming so much that I was dehydrated the next morning. Fortunately, though, Master always thinks ahead and had a big juice bottle of pineapple and cherry juice he had frozen earlier waiting next to my side of the bed...melted just enough to drink and still icy cold.

The new tools and toys Michelle turned me onto are going to help us make A Caged Heart community a great place for kinksters and explorers! One tool is Constant Contact's publication software and email management system. I am so thrilled to find this site!

I will post more later. Right now, I am going to go design our Grand Opening newsletter with special membership discounts and preorder specials for Whispered Dreams, and then, later I will install a chat program to play around with. Oh yeah, I also need to find cool BDSM avatars for chatters and install those too. Dang, I also will need to set up the photo album soon, so that we can publish the pics from our violet wand session.

Back to Reality

Well, back to our reality anyway.

I finally came down from the wonderful subspace I had this past weekend, and two things came to mind: I am thankful my Master is not a neat freak and the second thing, I am thankful for the trust in our lives and the way that trust sets me free to fly and enjoy our life together.

Mini-rant coming on - beware. So, there we are last night, sitting at a restaurant for dinner. It wasn't crowded at all, there seemed to be too many servers, not too few, it was rather early for the dinner crowds...so why did it take 20 minutes even to get our drink orders placed? and, why did it take another 28 minutes to GET our drinks? Well, to be honest, it might have been longer, but Master decided to leave and go elsewhere after the 28 minutes, so I don't know the answers to my questions. shrugs, we won't be going back to Applebee's again.

Now, a full blown rave! WIAN Studios is the best, most awesome, greatest, etc etc etc, lol manufacturer of floggers I have even had the pleasures, intense pleasures to purchase floggers from and enjoy the accurately described sensations from their catalog. Oi! I truly mean awesome. Last night, after we finally had dinner at Red Robin, across the street from Applebee's, we came home and did a few minor chores around the house. Then, Master told me to go to the dungeon and wait for him.

Well, let me tell you -- when he wants to play it doesn't take much coaxing on his part to have me running to the dungeon to strip off and have myself in position, lol. When he came in a few minutes later and put my blindfold on me, I was already er, rather moist. He had decided to play a game Indentify the Implement and wooo hooo I LOVE that game! When I guess correctly, I get two extra strokes of whatever it is, and when I guess incorrectly, I get three extra strokes, so it is a win win for us both!

I had some difficulty choosing correctly with the canes...it is hard to tell the difference between the 1/4" and the 3/8" canes, but mmmmm, I finally got it right after about 40 strokes each! LOL

I was planning on coming here last night to post a blog, but after our game, Master tucked me tight into bed and I slept through the night all warm and cozy, so ooops sorry, no blog last night.

Monday Madness and the Bad submissive

After a wonderful, exciting weekend, it is back to the real world today. My stomach is a mess, I think from nerves. Today, tonight really, Whispered Dreams will go to the publisher for final pre-press formatting. And, today, my stomach is in a tiny little knot and my head aches and blech.

My editor warned me it would be nervewracking, but what she did not tell me was that it would be worse than giving birth to a 25 lb squalling infant in the back seat of a New York taxicab after 120 days of labor! Okay, I have not really ever given birth to a 25 lb kid, he was only 9 lb 8 oz, he was born in a hospital and labor was long, but only 30 hours or so.

Master is working overtime again tonight, to build up a good sized 'fund' for our kinky adventures the last two weeks of March, but if he isn't too weary when he gets home tonight, I am going to beg a beating. Maybe a nice long good girl flogging, a little (or a lot) cock sucking as a thank you, or hell, whatever Master wants. I just know that he understands how much a great caning or flogging can settle me right down and make me feel extra relaxed and at peace.

So, our photos will be here Thursday from the session Saturday. It will be interesting to see what exactly he got on disk, because honestly, I don't have much memory of most of the photo session, just that I was having a blast and that the morning after, I sported a few cane and crops marks across my ass. Go figure, lol

Erotic Photography at its 'Funnest'

So last night we did our photo shoot. I am still a bit fuzzybrained from all the fun we had, but I thought I should check in and say heya.

We will be posting some of the photos on A Caged Heart website, but we won't even get the disks for another 3 or 4 days, until our photographer finishes tweaking or whatever he has to do.

Nine costume changes (and several more no costume changes) and 3 hours later, Master brought me home stumbling drunk with endorphins. Nice day!

So today, Master is at work, and I am working on my ads for Portland Kinkfest. Everything seems to be moving in slow motion. But, that is okay since my brain is moving in slowmo too, lol.

Whispered Dreams is in the final stages pre-publishing. Poor Michelle! My sweet and excellent editor asked me the other night, "So, have you made any more changes I need to know about?" Of course I had, poor her. She did elicit a promise that I would not make any more changes or rewrites...so, I guess I need to sit on my hands and not break the promise, .

We are getting excited about Kinkfest, but really that is nothing new, we get excited (or at least I get excited) by all the events we attend. We're looking for a new TENS unit, a matched set of floggers (WIAN Studios for sure!) and a few other sensation toys, but really, it is already too hard to get all our favorite toys in the large rolling case we take to events. Oh, well...maybe we just need another large rolling case.

Okey dokey, I am off to try to finish the ads for Kinkfest, and then to work some more on A Caged Heart website. I am loving Coffee Cup software!

Happy Friday!

Master and I have a huge weekend coming up. He scheduled a photo shoot for me and an erotic photo shoot for us. It started out he just wanted a simple photo for my author's bio photo, and then he decided we might as well go the full nine yards and do a whole shoot, since the photographer is an erotic genius.

I am a little bit nervous, but he has assured me that before we get to the erotic shoot, he will give me a good girl flogging and spanking. That will ease the nerves, for sure!

So last night we went shopping for clothes and props. Wow! Lots of fun. I can wear most of the clothes we bought to the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, the book signings, and other generic public events, with just a little bit of vanilla accessorizing, but some of the things ... well some are only for club play. You just can't accessorize a chain maille gstring and bra with enough of anything to be publicly cool, yanno?

So Michelle is hard at work finishing the novel, Whispered Dreams, and between all the other things I have to do, I am writing SKY Ranch Training Academy. I can't believe I am really going to be a published author, but Michelle has been amazing at trying to get me to calm down and not totally freak out.

I am totally excited about the possibility of being on Dan Savage's radio show and in The Stranger. I will be sending the press release the week before SEAF so hopefully, they will publish that and an interview at the same time they publish the SEAF section.

I still have several pieces to write for the non-fiction book, and another round of press releases when that comes out, but honestly, I think it is going very well.

Ok, Master wants to head to lunch at Olive Garden, see you all later. Play Safe!

WooHoo! Seattle Erotic Arts Festival and Stuff

Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, 2007, is being held March 16-18. This is either the 5th or the 6th year and each year it just gets more...more everything. Amazing art in all kinds of media, even performance art, and in many different genre, including my fave BDSM erotica. Go figure, huh?

I have been busy creating art for the Caged Heart Cafe Press Shop. I really like their products and now that they have dark colors as well as the white, I think wow, let's do it!

So, I am writing my blog entry for tomorrow tonight. Why, you ask?

Because my editor and evil taskmaster, Michelle Devon, is going to do the finals on Whispered Dreams with me tomorrow, line by line, word by word. I am pretty sure my brain will be otherwise occupied.

She is creating a fantastic author's website, Accentuate's Writers Networking Site, and I am really excited about it. So much great information and a terrific place for a writer to get support and an edge. It should be up and running soon.

Speaking of websites, A Caged Heart will be ready by March 1, with forums, columns, guest columnists, personals, short stories and poetry and an interactive chat about the same time. Sharpen your pencils, people, because we have some great ideas for short story contests with prizes AND the winners will be in an anthology that Caged Heart pays for publishing! We want to see serious entries, not serious as in boring, lol, serious as in 'take the time to proofread your own work before submitting it and winners will get monetary prizes, as well as two copies of the completed book. Pretty cool, huh?

We will post the contest information on its own page on the website, and people leave comments, but we haven't got everything ironed out yet, so stay tuned.

Allrighty, I am off to chat with my friend, Cathy about a column she is doing for us, and try to talk her into being my right hand woman. Keep your fingers crossed, she is cool!

Author, submissive, and more

It has been a strange week, for sure. Michelle Devon, my editor with Accentuate Services, is nearly finished with Whispered Dreams final edits and to keep me 'busy' (and keep my stress level down) gave me fodder for projects I haven't even considered before.

So now, on my TO DO list, are things including postcards, business cards, mini posters, several author's bios, order forms, web sites, lifestyle gifts and fun things like my almost famous purple dyed clothespins and flogger keychains for 'package deals', press releases, ... let's just say my TO DO list is far longer than my DONE list, lol

The coolest thing is - I am excited about all the work I have to do! Somehow, it makes everything more 'real'.

Sneaker is planning on taking vacation during the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, March 16-18! YAY! Master will accompany me each day of the festival, so that I can distribute flyers and postcards for both my books and our website, A Caged Heart. We are planning out a huge promotional event for both and the SEAF event is a great venue.

We will also be looking for another piece of erotic art for our collection at SEAF, and that is always a treat. So far, two bedrooms, our hallway and our livingroom are loaded with erotic art and I never get tired of the pieces we have, but this time, we will be looking for a larger piece, approximately 3 feet x 7 feet, an oil painting or acrylic and several smaller pieces to compliment our gallery.

Oh yeah, life is good!

More later, Play Safe!

Olivia

The Caged Heart - More Ideas for Info Pages

In a chat room this morning, several submissives were upset by a man claiming to be THEMASTERofu. Ok, first of all, "it is ONLINE" folks! If you don't like someone or the way they speak to you, for crying out loud, put them on ignore or as a last resort, hit that EXIT key in the upper corner of the chat window. Geesh.

But, for many 'new' or inexperienced submissives, even online exploration can be scary, and people like THEMASTERofu either freak them out or have them running for the hills. Don't even get me started on the capping of pronouns, please. Too late...I once had a conversation online with a 'gentleman' who insisted that when referring to himself, the word ME or MINE or MY be in all caps. Hogwash.

One of the fun, interactive sections will be HOW NOT TO ACT ONLINE, partially a humorous look at online wankers, dorks and 'Diminants', inspired by my submissive friend's and my personal experiences online with people named such ridiculous things as MasterLordDomoftheUniverse, GreatestSlutTrainerEver, and the usual Mistress of This and Master of That....but part of this section is very serious, as well.

How to ensure your personal safety and the safety of your friends and family by being an intelligent, thinking adult. The importance of truth and honesty - heck, why would you want someone who only wants you for the image you have projected if that isn't really who you are? For that matter, could you really trust your safety, perhaps even your life, to someone who claims experience with a singletail but who really had to look the word singletail up in the dictionary when you mentioned it? Please say no.

So, The Caged Heart will have pages and chat about what constitutes online reality. I am headed back to work on the site, if any of you want to suggest ideas for stuff to include, please feel free to let us know. The site is all about community! Sharing and exploring this amazing, fun lifestyle safely.

Becoming a Web Site Designer

Many of my chat room and club friends have mentioned (read: complained) about the lack of real life non-fantasy info and chat about BDSM and D/s lifestyles. I mean, really! How many submissives truly glide on their knees across the 'cold and hard stone floor' of the 'dark and damp dungeon' on their knees before spreading their 'creamy thighs' in supplication to every 'Dominant' present? Puhlease.

So Sneaker (aka my Master) and I decided to build a website and chatroom for alternative lifestyles where the focus is on living an alternative lifestyle as authentically, as honestly, as possible. The Caged Heart.

We will have a ton of information and questions and answers. We are building a personals classified section. There is a Medical and Safety column, a regular column on the silliness that some take as gospel online, and much more.


Laughing - and to do all this, I am having to learn so much I never thought would interest me. From basic HTML to graphic design and marketing, even learning how to blog. What a trip!

Hello New Friends and Old, er, uhm...Friends I have known longer

So a new blog for me, and an exciting time in my life as well! My first erotic romance novel, Whispered Dreams, is in the final throes of editing and formatting for the publisher's printer. Am I nervous? Some. But, more than nervous, I am excited.

Michelle, my editor and 'guidance counselor' has been working hard to finish both Whispered Dreams and my nonfiction, BDSM from The Bottom Up, edits. Along with her other editing and writing clients, she is one busy lady, and still finds the time to kick me in the pants to start a blog. Go figure. :)