Lizbeth Dusseau is the Co-founder of Pink Flamingo Publications. Currently, she is a primary author & senior editor. Read on for more about Lizbeth, sexual awakening, the beginnings of Pink Flamingo Publications and her thoughts on Erotic Fantasy Fiction...

Welcome...

I welcome you to the Pink Flamingo website, and hope you'll enjoy browsing though our catalog. We’ve been really blessed to have so many great writers penning their fantasies for us. We offer a wide range of erotic content, while acknowledging that sexual fantasy seems to know no bounds. We welcome your comments and questions. We'd love to hear about your sexual joys and kinks, what you'd like to see in print.

Lizbeth

About Lizbeth and How Pink Flamingo Began, The Abridged Version...

Awakening...

Growing up, I never would have believed I would become an erotica writer. I had no confidence in myself, let alone the words that sometimes haltingly appeared on paper when I tried to write. I was a guarded and shy child, often locked in the world of my imagination, surrounded by stories, that as I grew up took strange and obscene twists. I was no more than five when I began to  imagine myself being spanked by a stern, dominant man. The image of a leather belt warming my bottom was so imprinted in my mind, that to this day, that single image still has the power to arouse me. And yet I still have no idea the source of that sigular image.

By the time I was a teenager my fantasies had developed into elaborate tales, involving more sophisticated themes, strong submission, and a variety of fantasy situations, from Old World 'damsels in distress' to fiesty modern females discovering the wild world of their sexual desire. Often inside my mind was a voice of low timbre and dispassionate reasoning, that seemed to drive my curious fantasies. My secret self was initially disturbing, but it seemed to exist to satisfy an urgent need as mysterious as it was grotesque.

As an innocent child of the 1960’s, a horrendous guilt came with my fantasies. Living in a repressed world where sex was whispered about by adults and giggled about by raunchy adolescents, I was certain that my secret life was a sin. This was a reasonable response for a churchgoing young woman with a driving need to feel holy and pure.

Unfortunately, the paradox between my fantasies and my striving for purity was a nagging burden. My response was to crush the fantasies by force of will and such passion that they became highly compartmentalized, reserved for only those times when I couldn’t bear not to indulge. I learned what “obsession” was, even though I didn’t have a name for it then. Outside my unwanted obsession, the rest of my life was dry, dull and unimaginative.

I married fresh out of college... to a war torn man as innocent as I was to the depths of erotic experience. Ken and I embarked on our new life without a clue to the surprising turns our marriage would take because of my bizarre sexual secrets.

For many years we lived with the frigid sexual shut down my paradoxical life created. But with a real need to resolve an impasse that kept us both unfulfilled and without the intimacy we desired, the doors began to creak open a tiny bit at a time. When Ken discovered that the spanking, bondage and S&M sections of Penthouse Variations aroused me more than all the others, he finally had a clue to what turned me on. Shortly afterward, a riding crop appeared one night in the middle of sex … and then The Story Of O, and several other volumes of BDSM lore appeared between the sheets.

A little bit at a time I began to talk about my desires, and to my great surprise and relief, Ken didn’t judge me. I won’t say it didn’t take some time for this awakening to unfold, because it certainly did. Then twenty years ago, the floodgates suddenly seemed to burst open when we began the study of Oriental philosophy. It seemed innocuous at first. But as I began to really look inside myself, I discovered the woman behind all the masks and fear. My sexual fantasies couldn’t help but emerge along with many other things I had suppressed. With the unfolding, my physical coldness began to melt, my sexual desire was vibrantly rekindled, and the long sleeping muse of fantasy began to flower. As my own submissive desires became okay, Ken’s dominant ones began to surface. Finally, what had seemed like an impossible obstacle in our marriage—sex—began to make sense. We began to enjoy, discovering what we really wanted, and that kinky as it was, it was okay. The 'long' version of my awakening story, plus many of the discoveries I've made about sexuality appear in my non-fiction work No Apologies.

Writing Erotica...

In 1989, I wrote my first erotic novel, Alexandra's Awakening (which appears on my catalog). To my surprise, when I sent the manuscript to Red Stripe Books, it sold within a few weeks (almost unheard of—for those of you who have tried to break into the publishing world). The Applicant followed, published by Masquerade Books two years later. Wanting to make writing a career, I began writing spanking short stories, which were sold to several spanking fiction publishers. I continued with my erotic novels, writing everything from my favorite Bdsm fiction, to sexy romance, to fem/fem fiction under the penname Elizabeth Oliver. After publishing seven novels, I realized that I had become an established writer of erotic fiction, but I was also unhappy with the publishing arrangements. I had more to say and needed the right outlet for my ideas.

That was when Ken and I started Pink Flamingo Publications. We began publishing my spanking fiction, for which I had a readymade audience, especially female readers from Romantic Times Magazine (a publication that reviews romance novels). Pink Flamingo grew quickly, with a big jumpstart when I introduced my BSDM writing. Independent of the other publishers, I was able to expand my visions, going into greater depth about the sexual motivations and desires of women, which has always been very important to me in my work.

I write with the belief in mind that understanding sexuality as a basic element of human nature, erotica—in all its many forms—has the capability of opening doors to intimacy between sexual partners, as well as providing a fresh and invigorating outlet for safe sexual expression. My purpose has always been to celebrate without judgment what is real about sexual pleasure. My writing is clearly fiction, occasionally based on personal experience. And yet, over the last few years, I have been surprised to discover that, while many of my first books seemed like outrageous fantasy, those sexual acts and lifestyles I have written about have become ‘real time’ lifestyles for many. I find it encouraging that more and more people feel comfortable enough to bring their fantasies to life.

On Fantasy Fiction...

Fantasy fiction is the fun stuff  of sexual lust, the playground of the mind where we are free to romp without the worry of bad relationships, sexual diseases, or physical safety. We can escape to other worlds, to lifetimes and situations far from our own reality. In fantasy, we fly off in absurd daydreams of sex acts we’d never contemplate in real life. We relish taboo bawdy pleasures and writhe in a little physical ecstasy as these splendid visions arouse our bodies and free our minds.

Fantasy is sexual fun, and it has its place in our sexual world—whether we use it or not to stimulate ourselves—some people do, others don’t. Whether we daydream in complex stories, or just imagine a perfect lover, fantasy is a little world of our own making that can provide pleasure, physical release, and a moment away from the harder realities of the real world. In our sexual fantasies we can dare to NOT be monogamous, politically correct or even safe.
Fantasy can be great sexual fun; but it’s not the stuff of choices. Fantasy is not true Desire (with a capital “D”), and it does not necessarily reflect who we are or what we’ll choose to do. It is not a serious statement of our sexual truth, but simply a collection of random thoughts and fun creations that turn us on.
       No Apologies, © 1998, Lizbeth Dusseau, all rights reserved

The imagination is such a trickster, lays out all these beautiful plans, and where do they go? Get screwed up the minute your lover walks in the door, because he’s not what you imagined him to be, and the sex takes all kinds of twists and adventures you hadn’t planned on. But the beauty of it is—if you drop your expectations—you get to enjoy the moment as it unfolds, with all the surprises, all the crazy, scary elements that make you explode…  Girl In The Mirror ©2002

About Lizbeth & Ken...

I do have another life outside the world of Lizbeth Dusseau, my husband, Ken, much more than the publisher of my novels. We spent many years on the West Coast early in our marriage, and now nearly as many in the Midwest. We love tending our gardens, cooking and eating great food, and spending time diving into kinky pleasures, living the 'lifestyle' in a way that enriches our daily lives. We also enjoy meeting open-minded people who share our kinks and have found many very special friends through this unique career.

In addition to his running the day to day world of Pink Flamingo, Ken writes poetry - some of which appears in my short story collection Extremes—although much of his poetry was written some years ago as a way to heal the combat trauma he endured in Vietnam. If you'd like to read more of our personal story told through my prose and Ken's poetry, you'll enjoy reading When Power Tears The Air and Laughing In The Dark. We have a lot to say about our path of self-discovery, healing, sexuality and building a great relationship. I’m sure that some of our quirky twists will seem strange to some, but we invite you to take a look. No Apologies can be purchased on the website. Please contact me at my Lizbeth email for information on the other titles.