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One-man shows, author talks, literary salons

I) New Tack: Collaborating with other writer/performers

1) New England Indie Authors Collective (NEIAC) -- Getting some gigs!
Four writer friends and I started The New England Indie Authors Collective (NEIAC.org), hoping that an impressive-sounding name would help us get more author talks and sell more books. It seems to be working.

- Gigs: Since October, we've given or scheduled seven gigs and been paid up to $500 -- split four ways -- for a gig. Gigs range from "Salons" to publishing lectures.

A lecture and performance we did for a temple in Newburyport, MA, June 28.


- Merchandising: We're offering a NEIAC Four-Pack -- a book from each of us for a discounted price ($50, including shipping). At the temple gig, we sold three Four-Packs.

2) Separate from NEAIC, I teamed with a fringe festival friend, Emil Guillermo, a performer and former NPR host, and started "Emil and Randy's Fringe Festival." We've created a Facebook page and we're doing our first Zoom/Facebook Live gig July 15. (see below)

3) I've also done a few solo performances of my new PG-rated show, "Tales of a Reluctant World Traveler."

4) I've moth-balled my old show "The Chronic Single's Handbook." I was performing it out of my apartment for Airbnb visitors -- canceled due to Covid. (I perform some of the less-racy pieces of the show as part of various NEIAC events.

II) Upcoming Shows on Zoom or Facebook Live
- Most are free -- please come or help me spread the word!

July 9: He Said, He Said story-telling with NEIAC member Judah Leblang. "Things we miss right now: Love, Sex, and Travel." Free. Details

July 15: "Rough Around the Edges," works in progress: raunchy potentially-offensive material Emil Guillermo and I will be testing out, including: A visit to a cruise ship toilet, one day at a fetish conference, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvard jokes, edgy racial humor (Emil is a man of color so he can get away with this) and more. Free
 
July 29: "Tales of a Reluctant World Traveler," my one-man show, a free Zoom event for the Newton Public Library.
 
July 30: "How to Publish Your Book," a NEIAC event, sponsored by the Tewksbury Public Library. Free
 
 Aug 1-9, Great Salt Lake Fringe festival, three virtual performances of Tales of a Reluctant World Traveler, exact dates and times TBD. There may be a charge for tickets.
 
Fall:
- Medford Public Library, two events with NEIAC. Details TBD.

III) Books
 - Old novel "God Bless Cambodia" sales picking up a little from Zoom events.

- New novel with working title "The Squid and the Spaceman" plugging along. I  finished a second draft that I sent out to beta readers. I plan to rewrite one more time and finish by Spring 2021. Current publisher has first right of refusal. If they don't want it, I'll start the agent-pitching process again.

IV) A Bit of Inspiration for All Perspiring Writers and Performers

Susan Boyle's big break on Britain's Got Talent. She goes on stage: homely and awkward, crowd and judges snickering, until she opens her mouth and let's it rip.
On Youtube

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"One Day at the Fetish Conference" (A scene from novel in progress)
 
For what I figured to be a loose, laid-back event, the fetish conference is pretty uptight. At check-in, we’re handed a square of paper with four red, thumb-sized peel-and-stickies. These go over the camera lenses on our phones. Privacy. A hand-out of don’ts includes: public nudity, sex in the bathrooms, touching without permission, and misuse of personal pronouns. I skim sections on service animals, bodily fluids, and something called "chux."

"They're absorbent, disposable pads – they keep your goo off people and things," Jackie says.

The conference is in Rhode Island, the Nevada of New England, a state where prostitution was legal from 1980 to 2009. Inside the conference center, the event resembles any of the computer expos I attended as a writer for Personal Computer Computing Week and features booths and products, seminars and lectures, cliques and loners, and of course cosplayers: Witches, wenches, warlocks, guys in leather kilts, women wearing chain-link neck ties.

Jackie is wearing a spandex cat suit with a long tail, an outfit I’ve never seen before. “From a previous life,” she says. I leave it at that.

She’s dressed me in a dark suit, white button-down, repp tie, and tasseled loafers. "You're my owner," she says.

We stop at a booth for a surgeon specializing in body modification: cropping ears like an attack dog, splitting tongues like a snake, restoring foreskins, removing nipples, tattooing eyeballs. Jackie picks up a brochure for anal stretching. "Might make you less uptight," she says.

I let the comment pass.

We skip a table for The Sex Workers Union of New England and stop at a paraphernalia booth. I scrutinize a piercing play kit with twenty-gauge needles and a photo of what could be a spiny anteater or a scrotum stuck with 300 pins. Jackie fondles a "Pegging the Sissy Kit."

Jackie fingers a device called a Violet Wand, the first thing she wasn't familiar with.
"It's for electricity play," says a booth guy about my age. He’s wearing a hat with a propeller on it. "Delivers a sexy shock," he says.

He talks about coils and output ranges, glass electrodes and branding electrodes, mylar floggers and ball-chain whips, remote controls and the Internet of Things.

Jackie and I look at each other and share eye rolls.

"Newbies, huh?" He moves on to a couple with sharpened teeth painted black.
Jackie and I grab a conference program off his table and review the afternoon lectures.
 
Non-Monogamy: Moresomes and gangbangs, elephant walks and double penetration, polyamory triangles, polyamory quads, polyamory pods. “Swingers have sex, polys have conversations.”
Oy vey,” I say.
 
Fluid Play: Sphincters and scat, fisting and lactating, mucous and urine, bukkake and blumpkins. There’s no mention of Purell or hazmat suits.
 
Breath Play: Choking and throttling, strangling and self-hanging, smothering with a pillow, smothering with a bag, making friends with your dry cleaner, smothering your dry cleaner, your friend the carotid artery. Jackie takes my hands and wraps them around her throat and makes faux gagging noises.


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