New Better Sex Blog Location

Looking for details on our 2009 / 2010 Better Sex Erotic Fiction Contest? Move over to our new blog location for more info:

Better Sex Blog

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Sexual Fantasy Poll

Coworker currently leading our sexual fantasy poll (take it on our home page). Guess we will have to create a "Better Sex In The Office" feature soon.

Take the Better Sex Fantasy Poll (located on the right side of our home page)

Last Weekend - Better Sex Summer Sale

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It's Time To Get Over the Common Sex Life

There are many reasons for a couple’s sex to falter, whether it comes from major life events or some more common complaints, there should be a way to get out of the doldrums and into sexual ecstasy. Better Sex has compiled some of the most common complaints for dwindling sex and provides the cure. The 8 Cures for the Common Sex Life gives you some of the most common sexual issues and provides a specific suggestion to help evolve your sex life from just so-so to an orgasmic love fest. Some ailments that Better Sex has found a “cure” for are dull and boring, dry, lacking desire, anti-climatic, singular, limp, lacking foreplay and hurried. And just so you can be sure it has worked for others, along with the suggestion comes a quote from other customers who have had the product “cure” the complications that were once taking place in their sex life. Not only do you get the “cures” to the common sex life but also an extra 10% OFF your order when you add any one of the items on the page to your cart, just type in the code 8Cures at checkout!

How safe is your wet sex?

For three steamy months of the year many of us seek cooler atmospheres to get it on, and most of the time that means pools, showers, oceans, and lakes. At Better Sex we want to hear what difficulties you’ve had with water sex. So check out our Water Sex Poll, add your input, save $5 on your order and check out some tips we've added to help you have best (and less challenging) water sex possible.

Better Sex Jargon Story

Value of Crazy Creative Friends
In a previous life, I got to know the uber-talented and funny writers at Imagineering in San Francisco. Imagineering created a very cool game they named Rorshock. Everyone knows the look at the ink blot and a trained Freudian will see your hidden desires and neurosis. Imagineering put a special spin on this idea. They make their blots multiple choice. How you chooose = the strange and funny diagnosis you receive. I love Rorshock and the creative minds at Imagineering (Visit Imagineering's Store not affiliated with Sinclair).

Play Sex Blots

I worked with Imagineering to create our Better Sex Blots game. Same concept at Rorshock. See the blot, read choices and pick your favorite to receive a "diagnosis". Choices will define you as either a Sex Maniac, Sex God, Sex Machine or a Sex Symbol. As you may expect, I am a sex maniac (but in a good way :).

Free Sex Jargon
Imagineering decided their next product would be funny AND factual. They created a little book called Sex Jargon with real definitions of sexual terms. This little orange book is very funny. Here are just a few examples:

• O Face: Facial expression of someone having an orgasm.
• Introduce the Captain: to penetrate (the vagina) with the penis.
• Inhale The Oyster: slang for oral sex.

This little orange book goes on like this for hundreds of definitions and over eighty pages. Don't buy Sex Jargon from us. Let us give it to you for free. Buy just about anything on BetterSex.com (anything over $24.00 anyway) and we will thank you with 2 FREE GIFTS. Select Sex Jargon from my friends at Imagineering and I guarantee you will have a good laugh. Our theory is if you can't have a good laugh about your sex life you need to lighten up (and watch one of our adult sex education DVD's).

Have a great 4th of July everyone and send your sex blots or sex jargon ideas to Martin (msmith(at)BetterSex(dot)com) :).

Martin

Liberte Buzz in Redbook!

The Natural Contours Liberte was featured in REDBOOK's July 2009 edition. REDBOOK's Sex & Love section acquires all kinds of great information including sex tips, sex & relationship articles and the sex-life road test.

Liberte was touted in their recently released issue as "Our best sex advice ever - Tried & Tested!" We agree and think you will too! Try Liberte today and see if our Gspot sex toy doesn't create as much buzz for you!

CLICK HERE to see our comprehensive product demonstration video.

Better Sex Fall Erotic Fiction Contest - 2009

Better Sex Fall Erotic Fiction Details - Coming Soon
BetterSex.com's annual Erotic Fiction Contest will be held in September. In five previous contests Better Sex supported erotic writers with cash awards now totaling over $15,000. Check here and in our new better sex blog after Labor Day.

Better Sex Erotic Stories Book Our 2008 book has been delayed by problems with our printer (LuLu.com). We've had trouble getting our current book published correctly. Those problems seem resolved. We will know for sure when our replacement order of books arrives (should be any day). Now it is time to create our BetterSex.com Erotic Fiction Stories II book. This new book will combine winners from our summer and fall 2008 contests. We are shooting to publish our new book in concert with our 2009 Better Sex Erotic Fiction contest.

How the Better Sex Erotic Fiction Contest Works
We schedule "publication slots". Usually we have 3 slots per week for a total of 30 to 40 stories. Each week 3 stories (maybe more this year) compete to win the most community votes that week. The story with the most votes wins a cash prize and inclusion in the finals. We typically have 300 stories from almost as many authors, so winning a publication slot is a significant accomlishment. Winning a week is a very significant accomplishment since it gets your story into the finals and into our next book. Win the finals and you will receive a big check and free copies of our book.

Previous Winners Pre-Contest Deadline = Labor Day
Writers who, in previous contests, won a week of community voting will be granted at least one publication slot IF they send their story (ies) by Labor Day. Previous winners are assured at least one publication slot. Send in 3 great stories and previous winners may have all 3 stories awarded publication slots. Send stories to msmith(at)BetterSex(dot)com with "2009 Erotic Fiction" in the subject line. I will confirm receipt within 72 hours. My personal email is martinsellingzoe(at)aol (use this if you don't get a receipt within 72 hours).

New to the Contest Deadline = TBD
We haven't arranged all of our dates for 2009 / 2010 yet, but you may send a story in now and it will go into our open judging pool (stories from writers who've never won before). We are modifying some rules this year, but some remain the same.

• (C) remains with the author.
• Submission grants BetteSex.com the right to publish story once for community voting IF it is selected.
• Each week a number of stories will compete for community votes, story with the most votes wins its week.
• A limited release form will grant limited use to Better Sex. This year, no story without a release form will be judged. Since it is hard to match release to story later please submit release with stories.
• Download 2009 / 2010 Better Sex Erotic Fiction Release Form Here.
• Forms can be signed, scanned and emailed to msmith(at)BetterSex(dot)com OR they can be faxed to 919.732.5393.
• PayPal = we've included information for PayPal on our release form this year. We plan to pay 100% of our cash awards via PayPal, so please be sure you have a PP account and include your payment information on your release.
• Prizes = TBD (we will award cash prizes again, but size of awards is being determined now).
• Other Prizes = Writers who do a great job helping us get the word out about The Better Sex Erotic Fiction Contest on blogs or social networks will be eligible for special cash prizes this year. We need your help to get the word out about great Erotic Fiction and our contest. We will have special blog banners and cash awards for sites that do a great job getting the word out to writers or readers. We are working on these details now. If you would like to be on our list of "Erotic Fiction Supporters" please email Martin (msmith(at)BetterSex(dot)com. Emailing me NEVER signs you up for any list.
• Best way to keep up with what is always a dynamic and changing contest is to check back here, or our Better Sex Blog
  , join our email list or follow BetterSexWeb on Twitter.

Good luck and keep writing.

Martin
msmith(at)bettersex(dot)com

Previous posts that may be of interest: Why I created the Better Sex Fiction Contest

Comments from writers about the Better Sex Erotic Fiction Contest
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Summer of FREE Love Sale

The summer is known for its ability to bring two lovers together under the hot, playful sun. And this summer Better Sex is helping to make your summer love sizzle. The Better Sex Summer of FREE Love Sale began last week providing numerous ways to add some excitement to your romance through this hot season! Over 200 sex toys and DVDs are on sale. It's the biggest summer sale we have ever had. Not only are products on sale but there are free shipping options, contests and all new free toys with any $24 purchase.

Getting free products is great but what about winning an iPod Touch preloaded with some of our favorite Better Sex® sex education titles? Enter your e-mail once a month throughout the summer and you have the chance to win one of the three iPods available and have some of our best products right in the palm of your hand.

To make things even easier for the summer we have contests where all you have to do is follow BetterSexWeb on Twitter and Tweet or join our e-mail list to win great products and enjoy special offers.

Love is in the air this summer and we want to help you make summer as steamy as possible.

Rabbit Sale = Last Day

We had an email snafu last weekend, a case of our left hand slapping right hand. Email declared our Better Sex Couples Sex Toy Sale and ALL Rabbits Sale over a week early. Managing a web site is a lot like what my friend Tony does for a living. Tony is a behind the scenes guy on Broadway. I knew Tony in college where he set me straight about what it really meant to be on the AV squad (meant you were uber-cool not uber-geek as I incorrectly thought). If you go to a Broadway play and lighting is perfect and stages change exactly when and how they are supposed to chances are my friend Tony (or his friends) are running the scene changing technology.

We couldn't have ended our Rabbit and Couples sale until today because the noise you hear, the hammering and stressed voices, is my team staying up the better part of several nights to work on a new play, the play that starts tomorrow. We are calling this play the Summer of FREE Love and it is going to be massively cool.

BUT, not every Rabbit vibrator is on sale tomorrow as they are now. Some of our couples sex toy selections are coming off sale too, so if you've been thinking about something in either of those categories best to get 'er done tonight.

Summer of Free Love starts tomorrow.

Peace,

Martin
msmith(at)BetterSex(dot)com

What do housewives know about sex? A lot more than you do, apparently

What is it about Housewives that so many people find sexually appealing? Is it the idea that they're these pent-up balls of sexual deviance just waiting to release themselves from their closed-in prisons of mediocrity?

Creative Loafing thinks that the very act of being a housewife makes this sought-after demographic particularly good at sex.

The obvious advantage of not having to go to work is the ability to watch TV for many, many more hours than your breadwinning counterpart. But, there are other advantages.

Ever slept with a housewife and wondered why she’s better in bed than your working wife? It’s because housewives know how sex works–because they are home watching Good Morning America segments like “How Sex Works.”

The segment features an interview with an evolutionary biologist, who answers questions like “have you ever wondered exactly what attracted you to your partner?” and “why do you act the way you do around the opposite sex?”

Dealing with mismatched fetishes

In an ideal world, the person you fall in love with will have the exact same sexual turn-ons as you, but in reality compatibility outside the bedroom does not always translate to compatibility in the bedroom. Perhaps you are really into anal but your husband isn't, or perhaps you enjoy role playing but he just can't get into it without feeling absolutely ridiculous.

Or what happens if your girlfriend figures out that she's basically a masochist? She enjoys the pain caused by nipple clamps and wants you to be rough with her, but since you're not a sadist you don't know how?. Seattle Weekly has the answer.

Wolf understands your discomfort with inflicting pain. "All their lives guys have been taught to not hit girls. But some women want to be manhandled!" She suggests that you "remember that there is a difference between hurt and harm." When you give your girlfriend what she's asking for—even if it looks uncomfortable to you—you're making her happy. Just be sure you don't cross the line and harm her while you're hurting her. Capisce?...

...Wolf advises you to start slowly. Because spankings are already part of your play, she suggests you "up the ante by using a paddle, [but] make sure you know where is safe to hit." Wolf continues, "Increase the swats incrementally. Watch your partner, read the body language, and listen to how they breathe and what they say."

Is prostate cancer sexually transferable?

Little known fact: Many think women, because they don't have prostates, are immune from the threat of prostate cancer, but in fact females do have a prostate gland, located in the same area as the G-Spot, called Skene's glands. Doctors think these glands actually start out as prostate glands during pregnancy and as gender develops, they shrink in females while growing in males.

But the question is, does this make a female vulnerable to prostate cancer? And could a male partner with prostate cancer transfer those cancerous cells -- allowing them possibly to latch on to the Skene's glands -- through his semen? The Wall Street Journal attempts to answer this question.

In very rare cases, Skene's glands have become cancerous -- and the tumors cells give off prostate-specific antigen (PSA), just as male prostate cancer does. An article in the International Journal of Gynecological Pathology in 2004 reported the case of an 88-year-old woman who had a three-centimeter mass and an elevated PSA. She received external-beam radiation and was free of cancer a year later. The article noted it was the sixth case of such prostate-type cancers apparently originating in the Skene's glands.

Secondly, a study in 1998 demonstrated that prostate-cancer cells can be found in semen, although not with enough specificity to serve as a diagnostic test.

Still, that doesn't mean that prostate-cancer cells carried in semen could spread cancer to another person. "One person's cancer cells cannot be transmitted to another. Their immune system will kill them," Mark Scholz, the PCRI's executive director, wrote in an email.

The massage oil dilemma: Scented or unscented

While perusing through massage oils, it's not difficult to become quickly overwhelmed by the sheer mass of choices. They range in thickness, scent, targeted area of application, and temperature. Is it all a matter of personal taste, or is there a science to choosing what's best for you?

A columnist at the Herald Tribune takes the scientific approach:

There's an ongoing debate about whether massage with aromas is superior to standard massage, but some evidence suggests that you may get more short-term benefits from a massage with scents. The scent with the most data supporting it: lemon. In addition to getting a massage with a product that includes lemon oil, try using the scent in these ways:

Spray lemon scent on a pillow a couple of hours before bed.

Take a foot bath with lemons in it. Some studies suggest this helps promote relaxation.

Add lemon oil to your bath water.

Rub your body with lemon oil to promote sleep and soothe skin burns.

While there's less research on these, they might be worth a try:

Tea tree oil for topical infection in areas such as the feet or armpits.

Rosemary, which can help improve mental alertness and function by reducing the effect of stress, so you can focus.

Peppermint and lavender. While we suspect these help improve focus or reduce stress, we're still waiting for good scientific studies to find out. But if you like the way they smell, keep them around.

Scientific studies support effectiveness of premature ejaculation spray

Over at the Better Sex store we have spray that treats premature ejaculation by utilizing "a lidocaine based, pre-measured spray that reduces the sensitivity of the penis allowing more climax control."

If you had any skepticism as to the effectiveness of the spray, look no further than this article in Science Daily:

Researchers presented data on the spray's efficacy during a presentation of their randomized, Phase 3, double-blind, placebo-controlled study at the 104th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA).

One current treatment for premature ejaculation consists of topical creams with desensitizing agents which dull the penile skin and delay ejaculation. Although effective, these creams require use of a condom and/or washing the cream away before intercourse and they may reduce sexual pleasure. Researchers have shown that a new topical spray, consisting of an aerosol formulation of lidocaine and prilocaine, is effective and easy to use. It selectively desensitizes penile skin, affecting only the non-keratinized skin (the inner lining of the foreskin and the surface of the glans), without adversely affecting the sensation of ejaculation.

The myths of anal sex

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One male's impotence drug is a woman's clitoral stimulance

Plenty of medical research has gone into treating male impotence (also, plenty of email (i.e. spam) marketing), but it turns out women may be soon benefiting from this as well. A recent study shows that male impotence medication, when given to females, sometimes helps treat their sexual dysfunction:

The main drugs used to treat male impotence appear to also benefit around 40 percent of women who report sexual dysfunction, suggesting that the medical community should perhaps take a second look at their potential as a viable treatment for women. In a study into the effect of the PDE5 drugs Viagra, Levitra and Cialis on the pudendal arteries that supply the penis, vagina and clitoris with blood, Medical College of Georgia (MCG) researchers showed the drugs relax the arteries in both male and female rats.

Of course there are many ways to stimulate the female's sexual organ, for instance, with Pleasure Clitoral Stimulating Gel

Meghan McCain says GOP needs to lighten up about sex

While she isn't exactly saying that Republicans should run out and buy oral sex mints, Meghan McCain, in her Daily Beast column, addresses the archaic and often harmful rhetoric of the GOP on sex.

This is something I know about firsthand. During my father’s 2000 presidential campaign, a reporter asked how he would feel if I became pregnant and wanted an abortion. He answered that it would be my choice, sending shockwaves throughout the party (because for the GOP there is only one answer, and obviously Senator McCain’s daughter shouldn’t be engaging in sex ever). I’d like to thank that reporter for single-handedly putting me through years of trying to reconcile the fact that when it comes to politics, no matter what you do or who you are, everything is fair game.

But seriously, here was a father, delicately navigating a question about his teenage daughter and being true to the kind of father he had always been, and the Republican Party was outraged. It didn’t matter that my parents raised me to know that, regardless of the mistakes I might make, they would allow me the dignity and courage to make my own choices. That’s the kind of trust my parents have always placed in their children—yet the GOP still needed to get involved and have a say in what I did with my body.

McCain reveals that the first time she ever heard about oral sex was in reference to Bill Clinton, and argues that the party needs to begin discussing better options about birth control and steer away from the Bristol Palinesque fantasy that is abstinence-only education.

If we can’t discuss birth control in addition to abstinence, and in a nonjudgmental way, kids will continue to make bad choices for lack of having access to informed, safe options. Not everyone shares the same beliefs, and more importantly, people don’t always react the same way to their circumstances. Which is why it is so important to encourage honest, open communication about the realities of sex within the party at large, and more specifically, between parents and their children.

Ready. Set. Masturbate!

Almost a decade-long tradition, the Masturbate-A-Thon took place in San Fransisco last week and during it some new records were set. The event was founded nine years ago to honor surgeon general Jocelyn Elders, who famously suggested that teens should be taught to masturbate and was promptly fired for it. So how did the results of the competition come out?

This year’s winners packed some serious heat. A new US record was set by Mr. Flint Greasewood. His swimmers went the distance, shooting a whopping five feet. Two world records were set, as well. The Lusty Lady Theater beat the Women’s Tag Team, and Mr. Masanobu Sato broke his own masturbation world record at nine hours and 58 minutes. I know we don’t want a no minute man, but 10 hours?

Of course, if you're going to try to set records in your own home, might we suggest some products that will help you along. Although with toys like the Super Head Honcho Masturbator, it may be hard to last 10 hours, much less 10 minutes, before reaching climax.

The steampunk vibrator

While nobody can match the design and eloquence of Better Sex vibrators (I mean, try to beat the Butterfly Kiss Gspot Vibrator), science fiction geeks will likely experience a nerdgasm over the news that someone has created a steam-powered sex toy.

you're probably asking, does it really work? the answer is you betcha. its been proven to work (and vibrate) off of compressed air, I'm seeking a more powerful boiler than my pressure cooker so I can actually run it off of steam so please let me know if you know of one.

this is prototype so its got some quirks, the engine isn't quite as optimised as I would like (it takes way more pressure than it should to get it working) and the offset weight I need to machine some more.

Something tells me that you'd buy this one for the aesthetics, not for actual sexual pleasure. For that department, stick with these