Black Coffee, Brown Cow!: Book Tour & Giveaway: Glitter by Mona Darling

Glitter

by Mona Darling

Sometimes I just find books that are so interesting and worth sharing and I have to tell you about them. This is one of those books! I'm excited to share this tour with you all, and hope you will take a moment to enter the giveaway for some great prizes and check out this fantastic read that I think you are going to love! Please welcome author, Mona Darling to the farm today!

Welcome to my humble abode, Mona. I'm so glad you could join me today on the farm. You are actually my first live author to visit, which makes it even more exciting :)

How exciting! You know you never forget your first… ;-)

BCBC: I love the topic of your book. What inspired you to write on such a topic?

MD: I asked for submissions after I kept hearing stories from women and they usually mentioned that they felt like they were the only one. The idea to gather and publish them came to me at BlogHer's Pathfinder day.

BCBC: How much research went into this book?

MD: There was not a lot of traditional research. I know women have sexual desire. I know they feel like they have to hide it to prevent themselves from being judged as sluts or prudes, I just needed to get those stories.

BCBC: What drove you to base it on real stories vs. fiction?

MD: Because I want other women to be able to identify with them. That was the important thing. I wanted to make women feel less alone in their desires and true stories are the only way to accomplish that.

BCBC: Tell us about a memorable moment during the writing of Glitter...

MD: I was thinking that Glitter would be a small book, maybe a PDF that people could download off my blog. The moment I read Crippled Girls story about how she balances sexual desire with having a degenerative muscle disease, and saying that she worried every single day about her and her husbands sexual future, I realized that these stories were way too important to keep on my blog. That they need to be shared with the widest possible audience to have the largest possible effect - that effect being, normalizing sexual desire.

BCBC: What was the hardest part of writing the book?

MD: Getting the stories! I wanted to represent everyone! I wanted any women who read it to come away feeling like she identified with at least one of the stories. Women are so individual that it was hard to get it all in, and even now I don't feel like I did. Only CIS women are represented. I would have loved to have a trans woman share her story.

BCBC: Since it's based on actual stories, how long did it actually take to finish Glitter?

MD: Six months. As the project grew larger, I wanted to include more stories and kept pushing out the due date. Realistically, six months to learn to self publish, collect the stories and get them out was actually pretty fast.

BCBC: How did your writing journey begin?

MD: I've always wrote. I guess it because with a small locking diary when I was in the 3rd grade. Man I love me a locking diary. Even to this day.

BCBC: Are you a Plotter or Panster?

MD:Panster. Hands, and pants, down. The more I try to plan anything, a plot, a post, a party, the more is spins off in another direction.

BCBC: Do you see yourself as a writer?

MD: Yes. Definitely. I have always been a writer. I will always be a writer, no matter what my job title is.

BCBC: For those readers that are new to you and your book, what book could Glitter be compared to, or is it a breath of fresh air for all readers?

MD: It's been compared to the Vagina Monologues quite a bit.

BCBC: Can we expect another book soon?

MD: Yes! I just started taking submissions for my next anthology which will be a collection of stories from women (and men hopefully!) who chose sex work. Sex workers rarely make the news unless it's bad, so I would like to publish stories from the amazing women I know who have used sex work as a way to get through college, raise their kids or simply because they found it appealing.

BCBC: Tell us a little bit about Glitter, and what it means to you...

MD: Glitter is more then a book. It’s a movement. I want women to be able to own who they are. I don’t expect them to stand on street corners announcing to the world that they have rape fantasies, but I want them to be able to talk to their partner about it. And more importantly, not feel like they are a failure as a strong women because they have a rape fantasy. I mention rape here, but really, there are so many women who are coming out and talking about all kinds of fantasies and desires and feeling like they are broken and ashamed. I want women to be able to explore their fetishes and desires. I want them to discover their limits, and not have them told to them. I want them to respect that other women have different interests and limits then they do, and that that is ok.

BCBC: What message do you hope readers will take away from the book?

MD: I hope it starts a movement of normalizing and destigmatizing women's sexual desire. I hope they come away identifying with at least one writer. I hope they feel more secure in their desires. I would love to hear that they found the courage to explore something new that they had wanted to try, but were too shy to initiate.

BCBC: If you had to describe Glitter in one sentence, sell us your book...

MD: Real stories of Sexual Desire from Real Women.

BCBC: I want to thank you again for stopping in during your book tour, Mona. I loved delving into your brain a bit and am looking forward to reading the book.

Thank you for having me!! I would also invite women to stop by www.Glitterhood.com to share their own story! Or, if they don't want to share, just come and offer support to those who have!

About The Author:

Mona Darling aka Dead Cow Girl, spent close to twenty years as an A-list professional dominatrix before becoming a D-list mommy blogger. After spending many years traveling the world being told that she is fabulous, she now spends her days being told she doesn’t drive fast enough by her three-year-old son.

Dead Cow Girl was a nickname she received in grade school after a humiliating morning involving a mobile butcher and a school bus. She chose to use that name to reclaim the part of her that spent much of her childhood red-faced with shame, embarrassed for her unique childhood. She also likes it because it is readily available on nearly every social media platform.

She writes, sporadically, about food, sex and toddler-related mayhem at DeadCowGirl.com.

Genre: Women's Studies

Publisher: Darling Propaganda LLC

Release Date: Feb 2013

Amazon | Barnes and Noble

Book Description:

Glitter is about the female sexual experience, which contrary to what the media would have you believe, is not all bubble baths and chick flicks.

Women are constantly judged as slutty, or uptight, but the reality is somewhere in between those two, and sometimes, nowhere near either. We have secret shames and private desires and we all feel we are the only one.

We are good church-going girls with a fondness for the paddle, PTA moms who hire escorts, feminists who like to bottom in the bedroom, slutty virgins, bi-curious married laddies and women with a past. We are gay, straight, and undecided.

We are all over the map, and we are amazing.