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Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia
Rode Hard, Put Away Wet:
A Conversation with Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia
Sacchi Green: Here's our first anthology, all ready to take readers for a wild ride. Can you believe it? Do you remember how we got partnered up way back at the start of the trail? As I recall, our first meeting was in a Portuguese bakery in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, just before we did a reading from Best Lesbian Erotica during the Lambda Literary Conference. That's about as far from traditional cowboy country as you can get and still be on the same continent.
Rakelle Valencia: Cowboyin' is my way of "being" but I like to write smut too.
I'd already seen you and some of the other smut writers when you did readings in Boston, and I figured I'd check you out at closer quarters. I was getting the itch by then to edit a cowboy erotica anthology.
Rakelle Valencia: Cowboys don't just ride...
SG: Your track record has sure picked up the pace since then. You'll be passing me any day now, if you haven't already, with the advantages of youth and those long, long coltish legs. Hmmm. Ahem. Where was I? Oh, right. Well, I'd just got to the point where I had a hankering to crack the editorial whip myself, so I was happy to sign on. I'm no cowboy, though, more of a dirt farmer. I did, long ago, read everything Zane Grey ever wrote, and I used to trade English homework for riding privileges on a friend's retired racehorse, but that's as close as I come. I'm still kinda surprised that you brought the project to me.
RV: No worries about passing you by!
The "Bullrider" story you read in P'town, about the lesbian cowboy in Amsterdam, was cool. I figured you could handle the theme. But the main thing was that I had a feeling you were more into the writing than the sex party scene. I've never had a problem getting laid, so I don't need the scene, but I did need somebody who knows a fair bit about writing erotica so steamy I once laminated some of the pages and took them into the ranch's open-air hot tub on a cold night. I think I sent them to you when I was done with them.
Rakelle Valencia, Chuck Fellows, and Sacchi Green
SG: That laminating episode sure warmed me. As for being more into the writing--well, um, thanks. I think. You might have changed your mind if you'd accepted the invitation to the party we threw after the P'town reading, but, on the whole, you were right, and I'll take it as a compliment.
We have turned out to make a good team, I think, and your vision of what a lesbian cowboy erotica book should be fit pretty much exactly with mine. I guess what we were really looking for were the kind of stories we wanted to read, and trusting that other women would want to read them too.
RV: Sure they do! Think of it: women support about 80% of the equine-related industries. I've been everywhere; it's women. Yah, yah, the cowboy has traditionally been male. And I know some out-of-this-world men. But the industry is inundated with women today. These women know their horses, they know their equipment, they know the life, or at least they dream realistically about a life like that. So they know the fakes. I wanted to give them something that's so real, that they're lost into it.
SG: How do you think we did? Enough smell and feel of leather and taste of grit for you? I have to admit that some of the things these writers thought of to do with rope and horse tack had never occurred to me.
RV: Well, you won't get me to admit that they came up with anything I might not have thought of once or twice. Then again, I won't say they didn't. When I wear a T-shirt that says, "So much rope...any ideas?" it's not because I don't have plenty of notions of my own. I will say, though, that some of these writers go places I've never seen written about in stories before, and they do a fine job of it.
Amie M. Evans and Rakelle Valencia
SG: Don't they? And sometimes they take us places we didn't know we wanted to go until we got there. We realized early on that "realistic" is a relative term. In erotica, sometimes you need to ratchet up everyday reality a few notches, and that's just what they do.
So now we get to do readings of our own anthology, with as many of our writers as we can rope in. Are you braced for the burden of being mobbed by groupies? You already have a hefty following. The manager of my local alternative bookstore keeps asking when you'll be back. I get my share of couples telling me that they've read everything I've written, but you're the designated chick magnet on this team. Not that our writers can't do more than their share in that regard, too.
RV: I've been dubbed "a dyke's wet dream" before, but I've already been through the groupie deal when I was doing clinics on horse language and behavior. I'm tired of teaching young dogs new tricks. I'm tired of being the leader. What's wrong with expecting the damn dogs to know something and use their own imagination?
SG: Oh, I think you can count on erotica readers when it comes to imagination, but it sounds like you're thinking of another book entirely. Something like Doggie Style: Lesbian Pet Lovers' Erotica. I hope that's not what you want to do now! We've already got two other anthologies set to come out next year, and now I've begun to ponder on more cowboy-themed stories. While we've covered a wide range, I think there may be some hot spots we've missed. Nobody wrote about the Pony Express, for instance. Or spurs, or branding, or...oh, wait…Val's story covered branding. Speaking of being covered, though, I'm kind of wishing somebody would focus more on cowboy gear. Like, say, those cheek-chiller chaps. Mmm, I might have a go at writing that one myself, if I could get just the right inspiration.
RV: I suppose that means you want me to model them again? Just for you this time, okay?
Sacchi Green spends her time in western Massachusetts and the mountains of New Hampshire, with occasional forays into the real world. Her work has been published in five volumes of Best Lesbian Erotica, four volumes of Best Women’s Erotica, Best Transgender Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 3, Penthouse, On Our Backs, and a knee-high stack of other anthologies with inspirational covers.
Rakelle Valencia has jumped into the smut-writing business with both booted feet. Besides co-editing this anthology, she has stories published and upcoming in On Our Backs, Best Lesbian Erotica 2004 and 2005, Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica 2, Naughty Spanking Stories A-Z, Hot Lesbian Erotica, Ultimate Lesbian Erotica, Best Lesbian Love Stories, and a fine assortment of other publications to stack on the shelf beside her articles on Natural Horsemanship.
Email Sacchi Green.
Email Rakelle Valencia.
Read more about Rode Hard, Put Away Wet.
Read "The Other Side of the Rockies" by Cheyenne Blue HERE.
Read "Rope ’Em and Brand ’Em" by Val Murphy HERE.
"Rode Hard, Put Away Wet:
A Conversation with Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia"
© 2005 Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia for Suspect Thoughts Press
The work featured in this journal is under copyright protection
by the individual authors and artists and may not be duplicated
or reprinted without their permission.
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