Sunday, April 30, 2017

Andromache's Prize Is Free Today!



Friends, my publisher, Forbidden Fiction, has made my story, Andromache's Prize, free to read for a limited time. You can find it on their free erotica page, here.

Here's the blurb:

When Briseis had belonged to noble Achilles, she had been better able to bear slavery. Now, though, the heroes had all sailed away home, leaving baser men to strip the carcass of Troy. Briseis had been given into the hands of cruel Calygdus, and nightly she suffered for his every shame and weakness. Until the night that Andromache and the women of Troy fell upon the Greek camp, slaying the men and releasing the women slaves, promising them freedom in the City of Women. Freedom, and love… (M/F, F/F)

This story includes hot, badass women, but be aware that it also contains dark content and descriptions of nonconsensual encounters.

While you're on the site, please consider checking out my short story collection, Liquid Longing. It includes plenty of dark erotica, often queer, and often mythologically based.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Xan West

I want to talk to you today about Xan West (AKA Corey Alexander), an incredible erotica writer and one of the most thoughtful, kind people I know.

Xan's work touched me long before I communicated with Xan directly in any way. It was a representation of BDSM that was incredibly sexy, incredibly edgy, and psychologically astute at the same time. As I involved myself in erotica writing and the kink scene, some writing began to seem less relevant to my experience. There were stories that were hot but that didn't sit right with me anymore because of the ways I am and have been wounded. Xan's work, however, only glowed more brightly with time. Xan's writing fiercely defends sexuality while being absolutely sensitive toward the human beings coming into sexual situations. It gives me hope in so many ways.

You can read me saying similar things in the introduction to Xan's book, Show Yourself to Me—I felt so privileged to be asked to write it.

The point of talking about Xan West today, though, is that this wonderful person is in need of help right now, and I so want to see all the help and good things directed toward Xan.

You can read the details here, but the short version is that Xan is in danger of becoming homeless. There's a campaign on YouCaring, designed to help Xan survive until SSDI kicks in. I'm embedding the widget below, and you can use that to give to Corey directly.



The other thing, though, is that the incredible people at Go Deeper Press (Xan's publisher) are currently giving Xan 100% of the proceeds from Show Yourself to Me. My friends, I honestly want to press this book into the hands of every person I meet. It's that good. It soothes my soul and turns me on, even at times when I think my soul can't be soothed or I can't be turned on. I would tell you to buy it anyway, at any time. But right now would be a particularly great time, because it will help Xan deal with this difficult situation.

I highly recommend you read this brave and moving post by Go Deeper Press co-founder Jacob Louder if you'd like to know more about the book. Then, please consider heading over to the Go Deeper Press website and buying a copy.



Finally, it really helps to spread the word about these efforts. Please share the links to Go Deeper and You Caring, and think of Xan when you are on Twitter or your own blog. You can find Xan/Corey's Twitter stream (which is always full of amazing links and thoughts as well) here.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Best Women's Erotica in Cosmopolitan

Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor of Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 2, got in touch recently to share this picture:



(In case you can't read the print in the picture, it says: "[Reading erotic literature is] a safe way to experiment with your sexuality. If you're curious about BDSM, you can read about it (we like Best Women's Erotica of the Year, by Rachel Kramer Bussel) and see if it turns you on. Then when you add a partner to the mix, it's easier to articulate what you like." This advice comes from the owners of The Ripped Bodice, a bookstore in Los Angeles that specializes in selling romance novels.)

Not only is it exciting to see the book mentioned in Cosmopolitan, this is a wise piece of advice. Both reading and writing erotica have given me space to explore my desires. I think this can be particularly important for those of us socialized female—I learned a lot about doing the opposite while growing up, saying, "No, what do you want," etc, and so learning what my sexual desires are and how to talk about them has taken a lot of time and development.

Best Women's Erotica deserves a shoutout in this respect because Rachel is really great about including a broad variety of stories in the volumes she edits. Her books are a great jumping off place for exploration. (And, while this particular book does include my story, "On Some Maps, But Not on Others," I'm not just saying this...).

If you'd like to check the book out, you can find it here.

Also, if you're in LA, it looks like it would be a good idea to check out The Ripped Bodice. Seems like a cool place!

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Curiosities for the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health

Hey friends! The lovely humans at the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health are having an online auction to raise money for the organization.

There are a bunch of cool things available online—bidding runs until April 30 at 10 am ET. Many of them could be purchased by someone who doesn't live in New England. I wanted, however, to highlight, a few cool things for New England-area folks.

In particular:

Pleasure Pie is offering a Pastie Making or Zine Making workshop!


Melanie Lucash, who is one of the loveliest people you will ever meet, is offering to run a Tea and Empathy workshop!


Ever want to talk to a bunch of smart, kind people about sexual health and pleasure? You could have dinner for two with the entire CSPH staff!


Maybe I'm just fantasizing about cool things I'd like to do myself... There's also lots of art, books, furniture, you name it. You can check out the auction here.

And if you'd like to attend the live event tomorrow (Friday, April 28th from 6-9 pm) in Pawtucket, RI, tickets are on sale here. You can see what will be up for auction here. I will be there! Let me know if you will be, too, and maybe we can say hi in person. :)

This is one of my very favorite nonprofits, and I'd love to see lots of people participate in the auction!

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Free Boot Worship Fiction: Living Leather

I wrote this story recently just for fun, and I thought I'd share with all of you. Looking back over it, it owes a debt to the work of Laura Antoniou and Xan West, both of whom have written extremely hot stories involving boots. I hope you enjoy!

I wasn’t the one fucking Sarah, but it felt like I was. From my spot in the corner on the floor, I watched my master slide the toe of his boot up Sarah’s slit, then pull it away glistening.

Sarah lay in the exact center of my master’s living room, her black hair spread out around her as if it were part of the intricate pattern woven into his rug. Her hands stretched above her head—I’d tied them together and attached them to the coffee table I’d moved out of the way for the occasion. Her breasts were too full to point upward when she lay on her back. They spilled out to either side, as though her torso could not contain their abundance. Her stomach quivered visibly in response to my master’s movements. She’d spread her legs wide at his request, but she was obviously struggling to keep still. Her thigh muscles twitched occasionally, and her toes wriggled.

He returned his boot to her cunt, blocking my view of her exposed wetness. Sarah whimpered, and her right foot pointed sharply.

I sat as I’d been told to, silently, legs folded under me, hands laced together and resting atop my thighs. I was naked, and I could feel my cunt dripping onto my right heel. It was so tempting to shift a few inches so I could get more pressure from that heel where it counted, but that wasn’t in the line with the spirit of what I’d been commanded to do, so I remained still and watched.

My master stood between me and Sarah. His boots shone in the way of highly polished black marble, and that was my work. I’d spent hours on those boots before Sarah came over, bent over his feet while he relaxed. For some of it, he watched me or ran his fingers through my hair as I stroked the leather with tongue and cloth and conditioner. At other times, he leaned back in his chair and scrolled through his smartphone, mostly ignoring me. For parts of it, he rested his other boot on my back, holding me close to the floor.

I still ached—between the shoulderblades, in the forearms, at the root of my tongue. But after this and many other mornings of such attention, those boots felt as much a part of me as my own fingers. With my tears, my labor, my saliva, my love, I’d poured my own life into them, and that energy flowed forth from them now.

Sarah’s legs jerked toward each other, and my master’s boot stopped moving. “Keep them spread, sweetheart,” he coaxed, his tone dangerous. “Don’t hide that pretty cunt of yours. Especially not while I’m playing with it.”

She groaned and walked her heels out wide again. She had gorgeous feet—supple and expressive. Even if I hadn’t known what my master was doing to her, I might have guessed at her ecstatic agony from the lines of her arches. Her feet curled and uncurled in rhythm with his motions.

I wasn’t touching her physically, but my body tingled as if my nervous system connected to the living, breathing leather of his boot. I shivered, knowing in a deep way that her entrance rippled at that moment around his booted toe.

She gave one sweet sigh, and he pulled back. It must have been his signal to switch from giving pleasure to giving pain. The polished boot shifted to rest on her bare thigh. “Are you going to hold still for me?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she moaned.

He applied weight until she sucked in her breath, then switched to the other thigh. I could see a red mark on her flesh where his boot had been, and that belonged to me, too. Pain made her feet flex. Her toes strained toward the ceiling, and her calf muscles went taut. My legs tightened in sympathy.

“Good girl,” my master said, and went back to stroking her pussy with the boot. I knew how soft that leather was, and how it would absorb the warmth of Sarah’s body and feed it back to her, along with the warmth I’d given it and the warmth radiating from my master’s toes.

Sarah’s breath hitched, and I heard the distinct sound of a sob.

“You’ve been such a good girl,” he murmured. From where I sat, it looked like he wasn’t moving at all anymore, but I could imagine the tiny movement of his boot, the toe rocking just within her, as gentle as the lap of water against the sides of a mostly still pond.

“Can you keep being good, even if I untie you?” my master asked.

Sarah gave a tearful sound of assent.

“Come,” he said to me. “Get her free.”

I crawled quickly to loosen Sarah’s bonds. She’d played with us before, and knew we preferred for her not to acknowledge me. I liked the scents, sounds, and sights of sex. I loved being a tool that facilitated it. But I did not want the hole that was fucked to belong to me, and I did not want to be the person applying a fucking directly. My master’s positive attention pleased me, but my favorite moments were when he seemed to forget me, when he trusted his boots to me without acknowledgement or correction, when he treated me as an object that functioned perfectly without any need for intervention.

So I untied Sarah’s hands smoothly, careful to give her a little rope burn in the process because I knew she liked that. And I put the rope away neatly and then returned to my corner as my master gave Sarah permission to ride his boot.

She clung to his leg and dried her tears on the fabric of his jeans. Her position was awkward—back arched, straddling the floor, ass thrust out to give her the angle she needed to rub her clit against his toe. She closed her eyes and began to rock her hips, and she was fucking me now, taking me in, taking pleasure from the leather I had made soft and supple for my master as well as for her.

She grunted rhythmically as she rutted against his boot, looking gorgeous and depraved. And then, like a rare jewel falling from a tightly sealed satchel, a single moan escaped my master’s lips. The sounds from the two of them washed over my whole body, and a deep satisfaction lodged in my lower belly in a way that was no less intense than the orgasm that took Sarah a few minutes later.

My head was dizzy and my thoughts caught up in both of them. The taste of leather still lingered in the corners of my mouth. The sharp, clear scent of Sarah’s cunt spread through the room and washed all else away. Her feet moved frantically as she struggled through the last moments of her orgasm.

Then she went still, body curled around my master’s boots, one foot tucked tightly against the other. For a little while, none of us moved. Pins and needles tingled in my lower legs, but I wouldn’t be first to break the spell. At last, my master nudged Sarah gently with his toe.

“Kiss them,” he said.

Sarah pressed grateful kisses to each of his boots. Then, without being asked, she began to lick, cleaning her juices from the leather. Her movements reminded me of a kitten, quick and tender. I felt strong and indefatigable while licking those boots, but Sarah performed the same action with playfulness and vulnerability.

I looked forward to tasting that mood the next time I touched my own tongue to the leather. I shivered with pride, thinking of all those boots are, were, and could be—for me, for my master, and now for her as well. They were part of all of us, and so I was part of both of them.

My master praised Sarah for her thorough work, and then took a seat in his usual chair. “Use your mouth to take off the boots,” he said. “And then leave them next to the chair.”

Sarah couldn’t do that smoothly, but I enjoyed watching her, sweaty, sated, and a little clumsy. She bit laces and tugged them loose, and my master ran his fingers through her hair as he let her figure out the nuances on her own. Her feet moved in sympathy as she concentrated on his.

At last, the boots were off, and he leaned forward and gathered her naked body into his arms. Without a word to me, he lifted her off the floor and carried her toward the bedroom, but I knew they hadn’t forgotten me, because there the boots waited beside the chair, well-fucked and well-used, well-prepared for all my tender ministrations.

I crawled toward them and bent my head to breathe them in—the scents of Sarah’s cunt, her saliva, my master’s feet. Underneath all that was the animal scent of leather itself, a wildness that sometimes seemed to me to be responsible for the passion that rose up within us. I kissed the boots myself, enjoying how warm they felt against my lips.

As soft moans reached me from the bedroom, I held the boots close and set to work to make them shine again.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

We're Unspeakably Erotic!

I just got the word from editor D.L. King that her latest anthology, Unspeakably Erotic: 20 Stories of Lesbian Kink, is up for preorder on Amazon!



It includes my story, "Simultaneous." I really went for it with this one—thinking about it now I realized I took a whole bunch of my personal fantasies and worked them into one wild scene. This story includes piercing, fisting, group sex, orgasm denial, and D/s in the form of a dominant masochist. So it's super hot to me.

I'm also proud because I like to write stories that contrast with common expectations. There's a lot of shame flying around about "topping from the bottom." In "Simultaneous," I wrote a story where that's the plan and expectation. The domme is the bottom, and that's the way the characters like it. This sort of thing is personally important to me because I'm definitely a masochist, but sometimes what I really need is to have control of how I'm being hurt.

Knowing D.L. King, I'm sure the rest of these stories will be scorching. You can check out the table of contents below. Can I mention how excited I am to share pages again with Rose P. Lethe? (I still shiver when thinking about her story, "A Professional," which was in the 20th anniversary edition of Best Lesbian Erotica). I also see plenty of other names I know and love: Sonni de Soto, Sacchi Green, Kathleen Tudor, and more. And the thing is, half the fun of these anthologies is getting to know the writers I'm not already familiar with. There never fails to be a story that floors me, written by some talented person I've never heard of before.

Here's the full list of what's to come:

Pygmalion   J. Belle Lamb
CBT   Pascal Scott
The Auction   Tamsin Flowers
Support Service   Sonni de Soto
Blue Plate Special: Your Boot on My Cunt   Avery Cassell
Simultaneous   Annabeth Leong
Private Party   Rose P. Lethe
Training Zoe   Meghan O'Brien
Use Me   Kiki DeLovely
Cuckold   B.D. Swain
The Last Kink   Cecilia Duvalle
In a Pinch   Janelle Reston
Baubles and Beads   Sacchi Green
Appetite   Emily Bingham
Bitch Slap   Sir Manther
Aloha a Trois   Kathleen Tudor
Date Night   Brey Willows
The Last of Marengo   Mary Tintagel
Close Edge   Elinor Zimmerman
Bedtime Story   Robyn Nyx

If lesbian kink erotica is your thing, please consider pushing the preorder button on Amazon—either for the print edition or the kindle edition.

You may or may not be aware, but these sorts of anthologies are becoming less common now than they were in the past, and that's a shame because I personally love them. It really helps for people to show interest up front. I love doing these, and I love them as a reader, and I'd like to see them keep going.

Until next time! <3 <3 <3

Monday, April 24, 2017

Scissoring for Refinery29

Hey, check out this cool thing! An excerpt from my story "Scissoring" was published in Refinery29! "Scissoring" is a first-time lesbian story involving urgent, exploratory sex in a public bathroom.

Editor Extraordinaire Rachel Kramer Bussel has been curating a selection of erotic stories there, and it's a great series to check out if you're looking for new authors, or new types of erotica to explore. Rachel is a master of offering a broad range of high-quality stories.

So, yeah, check out Scissoring, and then stick around to explore.

And if you'd like to read the entire story, it was originally published in Inked, which you can find here.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Hawaii Is A Real Place

I was born in Hawaii, and lived there for the first decade of my life. My father was native Hawaiian, Chinese, and Portuguese and my mother is English. I grew up wrestling with difficult questions about race and identity, exacerbated by my own mixed blood and the feeling that I didn't belong anywhere, especially not after I left the island. As part of that, I feel a complicated mix of pride in Hawaii's history, anguish over the way it was illegally annexed and taken over by the United States government, and awareness that I was born a citizen of the United States and Hawaii is an important part of this nation now. My father served in the army during the Vietnam War, and that experience marked his entire life. In many ways, I'd say it was for the worse, but I also know I could never have buried him without the veterans benefits he had earned.

So this is complicated and important stuff.

I've had some weird racial experiences by virtue of coming from Hawaii. Once in the late 90s, near the Arizona border, I was pulled off a Greyhound bus by the INS, along with a group of Spanish-speaking people I'd been sitting with and talking to. (I think this may have been a case of racial-profiling-by-association, especially because when I'm tan I've often been mistaken for Latina). In the course of being searched and questioned, I presented my U.S. Passport. "Born in Hawaii?" the officer sneered. "When were you naturalized?"

To which I replied, "1959, when the territory was made a state." (I was born decades later than this.) I wish I'd said that to be clever or sarcastic, but I was speaking mostly out of utter confusion. I couldn't believe this person didn't know Hawaii was a state, and that I'd been a citizen all my life. But that was an important experience that taught me that not even my U.S. Passport could keep me safe from suspicion and ill treatment, from the sense that I somehow "don't belong here"—even though I've never lived in any other country.

I have sometimes been told, perhaps by people who are taking me for a Chinese immigrant, to "go home" or "go back to my own country." Again, I say, I have nowhere else to go. My home is in this country, and it has been for as long as I've been alive. And I find that brand of xenophobia particularly rich when it comes from the perspective of people who didn't respect the sovereignty of the Hawaiian nation. It makes me want to say, "No, you go home. Give the Hawaiian people back our kingdom. Give us self-determination. Give up the land you plundered."

I imagine, though I do not know for sure, that this bullshit happens to Native Americans from the continental United States, too. I bet they get told to "go home," and I bet they feel that particularly bitter burn in response as well. (And, for the record, that "go home" shit is an awful thing to say to anyone, it represents a piss-poor and cruel attitude, and anyone who says it should be ashamed of themselves, whether the target of the comment is an indigenous person or not. In no way do I mean to imply that it is "okay" to say this to actual immigrants. It is not. What I am highlighting here is that it is racist, cruel, and bitterly ironic to tell indigenous people to "go home.")

So there is some context that might help a person understand how I felt when I read this quote from U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power."

I know I'm not the only one who's talked about how upsetting it is for a quote like this to come out of the U.S. Attorney General's mouth, but I feel it's important for me to say so as well, clearly and explicitly.

This quote brought me back to the incidents I've personally experienced, such as those I've described above. In a historical and political context, the statement is wrong and desperately unfair. (I'm focused here on the disparagement of Hawaii in particular, but I also want to note how wrong Jeff Sessions is about what's "clearly" the president's statutory and Constitutional power.)

For better or worse, Hawaii is an integral part of the union that makes up the United States. Pearl Harbor, anyone? My father, fighting in the Vietnam War wearing this nation's uniform. The heroism of former U.S. Senator Dan Inouye. The birthplace of former president Barack Obama. Patsy T. Mink, the first woman of color elected to Congress. Mazie Hirono, the first Asian-American woman in the U.S. Senate, and this nation's first elected Buddhist. I could go on and on.

What I felt when I first learned about the court ruling that prompted this statement was an intense sense of pride in my home. Hawaii is a diverse place, where people from many cultures must interact and work together, and it makes sense to me that a place like that would have an important message to send the nation as a whole about the harm that is done through bigotry and isolationism. Rather than disparaging the island in the Pacific where I was born, Jeff Sessions ought to be damn grateful that the United States gets to benefit from the perspective and wisdom that comes from that place.

And the sarcastic part of me says that if he thinks an island in the Pacific is so unimportant, he ought to ask himself why the United States government was so unwilling to give it back to its people after the illegal actions that overthrew its government in the first place...

Saturday, April 22, 2017

If You're Not At Porn Camp...

This weekend is Circlet Press's annual #porncamp, East Coast edition. The lighthearted name conceals what an intense and useful event it always is (though it is also hilariously funny, at least some of the time). Circlet's publisher, Cecelia Tan, is one of the smartest people I know, and she knows how to surround herself with similarly talented and intelligent individuals. The outcome of getting these people together is an essential compendium of information on the state of erotica.

Sadly, this year, I wasn't able to attend, though I'll be following #porncamp on Twitter (if you're interested in the business of erotica, I highly recommend you do the same). I'm looking forward to seeing what comes up this weekend.

This occasion also seems like a good time to mention the Circlet Press Patreon page. I'll let Cecelia explain the situation in her own words:


Circlet offers one of the most generous Patreon rewards packages I've seen. For example, for just a $2 pledge, you get 4 backlist books immediately. If you pony up $25 a month, you get access to Circlet's entire digital backlist, so you literally could read All The Books.

If this sort of thing interests you, I highly recommend checking it out. Not only do you get plenty of cool stuff, you help support a press that does exciting, sexy, essential work. Not only that, Cecilia's mentorship has meant a great deal to myself and many other erotica writers and editors.



I know I would never have edited a book like MakerSex without Circlet, and I'm so proud of what resulted from that project.

So, to summarize, check out #porncamp on Twitter. If you'd like to read some Circlet books (maybe including MakerSex?), this is a great weekend to take a look at the Patreon page as well.

<3 <3 <3

Friday, April 21, 2017

Some Upcoming Calls for Submissions

If you happen to be interested in writing erotica, I thought I'd share a few upcoming calls for submissions from Sexy Little Pages (and its nonfiction sibling Resonance Press). I've enjoyed working with Sexy Little Pages a lot, and really appreciate their kindness and transparency.

And for the record, I've learned to be a bit wary of publishers who only offer royalty payouts after one reaches a certain threshold. There is one publisher I won't name that has managed to never send me a single payment, despite my having written a number of stories for them... SLP does use the royalties and threshold system, but I've received payments several times, so sales are happening.

So here's what they've got right now:

Popping Your Cherry (Resonance Press) - nonfiction, about first times, 1,000-5,000 words, due June 1

Myths, Moons, and Mayhem (Sexy Little Pages) - fiction, m/m/m+, stories that "fit the Halloween spirit" (see call for more details), 4,000-6,000 words, due June 1

Corrupted (Sexy Little Pages) - fiction, any pairing/grouping, fresh and sexy takes on things "that women have been criticized for doing," 2,500-4,000 words, due May 2

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Nostalgia for Lovers Past

Every two weeks, I blog at Oh Get A Grip, along with nine other erotica writers. For the last couple of weeks, we've been writing about nostalgia. My piece went up today!

I wrote about nostalgia for old lovers, and how I've felt it sometimes for what was good, what was bad, and what never really got off the ground. For those of us who love the 90s, I also wrote about a Nine Inch Nails song that meant a lot to me when I was younger. Here's an excerpt:

Another time, the “something I can never have” was an honest relationship with the girl I loved. I’ve written about her here several times before. We slept together, but I didn’t know how to be with her, not for real. She “made this all go away” in the sense that I wanted her with a sort of mind-erasing lust that I didn’t know was possible before her. After the first time we slept together, I wrote in my journal, “I had real sex last night, for the first time.” Then I tore the pages out of the book, ripped them carefully into tiny pieces, and buried them in the trash can under cat litter so they could never be found. With her, that sense of awakening and sense of shame were so deeply tied together that I still feel it now. I still have her picture. I still weep when I look at it. She had a birthmark on the side of her neck, and the studio that took the picture tried to airbrush it away as if it were some sort of blemish, and I fucking hate them for it. She had thick, curly hair that I loved intensely—so much that, recently, on the occasion of running my hands through another woman’s thick, curly hair, I shivered with recognition and longing for a person and a time long gone. I was cruel, sometimes, to the girl I loved, and that was both because I thought I couldn’t have her and a means by which I made it impossible to have what we could have had together.

You can read the whole post here.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Sexy Little Patrons

I've worked with the excellent Sexy Little Pages a lot in the past year. Here's a quick sampling of the books they've put out that include my work:


Ticket to Ride


Love of the Game


Silence Is Golden


Goodbye Moderation: Lust


Inked

I'm very proud to work with them. Not only are the books gorgeously produced and full of sexy, high-quality writing, they're also committed to an inclusive, body-positive view of sexuality that I really believe in.

So I think they're well worth supporting. Of course, buying books is a great first step. Beyond that, though, you could consider becoming a Patron through Patreon. (May I point out that, not only will this help Sexy Little Pages spread the word about their books to a wider audience, it could also get you free copies of current releases, depending on the level of support you choose to offer).

Patreon is a really cool service that allows creative people a little stability in a time of great uncertainty. Please consider showing Sexy Little Pages some love that way. (You can support them for as little as $1 a month, but if you go up to $5 a month, you get access to free new releases...). If you'd like to check it out, the Patreon page is here.