#musings

A woman with pigtails, a white crop top and knee socks, and a red and black plaid tie and skirt constituting a fetish take on a school uniform sits astride a chair, looking provocatively at the viewer

The new sub liked to think he was a Dom, but he was wrong. I can always tell.

(yeah, yeah, technically it’s not til the equinox, whatever)

I teased “Woman of Steel, Men of…” as the second of three “Dark Polly” tales. I really prefer the romantic side of erotica, but for … reasons … it’s been hard to get there lately. “The Forbidden Archive,” with alien robots gayly banging in the radioactive ruins of Earth a century or so from now*, was too dark for its intended market, so you don’t get to see that one quite yet. (Believe it or not, as much as I’ve published this year, there are several stories still looking for the right home.) But a fourth “Dark Polly” story, “The New Sub,” that whoomped up out of nowhere and took me unawares. Read it at Exceptional Erotica!

*hopelesspunk?

#musings

goodbye, Tom Lehrer

#musings / pollyliticat

Polly loved Tom (1928-2025). First and foremost for his for his deep catalogue of snarky, wordplay-filled, and frequently subversive songs, but jeez, he released that entire catalogue into the public domain! Also, he beat GenAI introducing false citations into papers by decades.

I formerly embraced the word “smut” for my work in no small part thanks to his song of that name. “I do have a cause, though,” he quips in the spoken introduction on That Was the Year that Was. “I’m for it.”

It’s catchy. It made a deep impression on Young Polly.

But romance author Suleikha Snyder has made a deep impression on Current Polly, arguing that the word smut is harmful to both the erotica and romance communities. I’m convinced, largely because I think the term “clean romance” is harmful and hurtful to anyone writing any other sort of romance. “Unclean romance?” No thanks.

(Ditto “wholesome,” but that’s a whole ‘nother thing. If you call your romance “clean” AND “wholesome” Polly knows they’re not safe around you.)

So I am pulling up stakes as a resident of Smutland. Henceforth find me in, uh, Eroticalia, I guess.

end of summer, back to school?

goodbye, Tom Lehrer