Here's your pre-discussion reading assignment, so you can start chewing on the topic.


Molly Weatherfield is a pen name for Pam Rosenthal, who's written four erotic historical romance novels, the latest of which, The Edge of Impropriety, won Romance Writers of America's RITA award for best historical romance of 2009. As Pam (and sometimes as Molly), she's written occasional reviews and essays, in Salon.com and more obscure venues. A former computer programmer, she's always been interested in alternative worlds -- erotic, fictional, cybernetic: as mollyw she's currently exploring the adults-only environments in the online universe known as SecondLife.com while living her first life with her husband in San Francisco. You can find out more about her at link

Molly shares this with us:

On How I Came to Be an Erotic Writer in the First Place: It was all about being in the right place at the right time. Being lucky enough, in the early 1980s, to be a part-owner (with my husband and a few others) of the wonderful leftie Modern Times Bookstore on Valencia Street in San Francisco, right down the block from the legendary Good Vibrations, when brilliant feminists like Susie Bright, Carol Queen, Amber Hollibaugh, and Gayle Rubin were exploring alternatives to the prissy, PC, faux-egalitarian sexuality our movement was threatening to consign us to. The synergy between a particularly open-minded leftism and a daring, creative feminism was a rare and beautiful thing, easy to take for granted now, or perhaps (in these harsher times) all too easy to forget ever existed. Anyway, it allowed me some quality time with my hitherto bottled-up erotic imagination -- from my fervid, quaking-in-my-Keds reading of the Marquis de Sade in high school to my discovery of Story of O a few years later.

Sadly I don't think that I will be able to make it to this meeting either. Sunday night/Monday morning, my husband had to rush me to the ER with chest pains and difficulty breathing. It was not a heart attack. It is something called pericarditis. Basically, the muscle tissue thingy around my heart was damaged or infected in some way causing it to become inflamed (swollen) and that's what caused the pain and the difficulty breathing.

Pericarditis can vary from mild to fatal. Fortunately, mine seems to be fairly mild, and although I'm still in a bit of pain and can't breathe as easily as I should, they think that it will probably go away on its own in a few weeks.

It is possible that fluid will build up in my pericardium, and it will have to be drained. Or my pericardium could get tighter and tighter making it harder and harder for my heart to beat and they would have to surgically remove my pericardium. But neither of those possibilities are very likely according to the ER docs.

Anyway, because of that and my usual sleep schedule issues, I probably won't be awake for the meeting. Hopefully, I will be able to make the next one.

I will check back in soon, Sorry I have been absent recently.

Five...Four...Three... Two...One!

Welcome to the Naked Readers Book Club as we tackle Molly Weatherfields's erotic BDSM novel Safe Word.

Is anybody here yet? Have you done your homework, or at least read my advance bits above?

Heylo!

Surprisingly, I'm still awake. Though I don't know how coherent I will be.

Hi, Roses and Ivy! (Quite a nice bouquet.)

Thanks Liz and Sacchi! I haven't read Safe Word or it's prequel, but I did read the paragraphs above about the author. Sounds like she's had a very interesting life.

I expect some folks are catching up with the introductory parts above. I don't mind; it gives me a chance to check out the Publishers Weekly review of Kristina's almost-out Steamlust, with a mention of my story.

Hi, sorry I'm late!

Hi guys - I'm popping in and still at football practice. Not sure how well this is going to work

I had such fun re-reading Safe Word over the weekend!

Well, I get that Carrie left (?) Jonathan voluntarily, but do we know if she has enjoyed her year in Greece?

I'm here for the first time. I had to come! I Love love LOVE both Carrie's Story and Safe Word and have read them several times. I even wrote to Pam begging for another story. Hint nudge.