Hello all,

Please welcome Joy Saint James editor of “The Scholarly Slut” blog and let’s talk about “Erotica”!!, not the Madonna kind though…the Joy Saint James kind…

But before you browse through Joy’s blog, please see Q&As below and enjoy!

LaChouett: I absolutely love the name of your blog. How did you come up with “TheScholarly Slut”?

The Scholarly Slut: It started, I think, as my Twitter handle (@ScholarlySlut), something catchy and alliterative. And it captures, I hope, what I’m trying to get at with my blog — mixing eroticism with erudition, to see the day-to-day world through a compelling and provocative lens uniquely my own. Plus, like a lot of girls nowadays, I think it’s important that we “reclaim” the word “slut.”

LaChouett: If you could only pick one, would it be Fashion or Writing?

The Scholarly Slut: That’s a tough one. They’re so related, I think. Words are like clothes, and clothes are like words, don’t you think? We use both words and clothes to express ourselves and shape the way we go through the world — not to mention the way we are seen and judged by others. Like most women today, I want it ALL! — In this case, both the latest fashion and the sharply turned phrase. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

LaChouett : For all of us who read “Trysting on Twitter”, and if you hear from Jake again, what will you tell him? And will you share with us?

The Scholarly Slut: As a matter of fact, I did! I had expected him to be totally furious that I had made our private messages public (never trust a writer; everything to her is “material!”) Instead, he said he liked it and, typical male, he’s picked up his flirtatious messaging where he had left off, just as if nothing had happened and showing me how silly I was to have thought I’d been “dumped.” Here’s a link to that somewhat notorious blog post in case others haven’t seen it:

Twitter Trysting: Lovesick on Valentine’s day

LaChouett: One word to sum you up?

The Scholarly Slut: Layered.

LaChouett: Since you a writer, I imagine you might have a rather large bookshelf. Can you name the book/author who influenced your writing and are you planning on releasing your own novel soon?

LaChouett: Yes, I probably have even more books than I have clothes, and so can never find the exact item I’m looking for! I love, absolutely love, all the truly smart stuff being churned out by so many amazing women writers today, too many to enumerate. But if I had to mention just one book, it would have to be “Ulysses” by James Joyce. The audacious writing and his audacious Molly Bloom are my templates, as it were. Let me mention a second book, too, please: “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, memorializing every girl’s complicated yearnings. The contemporary writer, Rebecca Mead, has even written her own book about this: “My Life in Middlemarch.”

I am, actually, working on my own novel now, which I’m exploring publishing in serial form. The protagonist is a fashion model (of course!) who becomes entangled in her own War on Terror. In the meantime, my nonfiction essays and erotica are being published in various print anthologies, and I’m in talks now with one publisher about collecting them all under one roof, that is one volume called “The Way We Love Now.” , which also happens to be the name of the new Publication I and another woman writer have started on the writing platform Medium.

Thank you Joy,

It has been a real pleasure.

LaChouett

“The Scholarly Slut” will feature on Chouett to the end of the week, feel free to visit!!”