HELLO EROTICON FOR REAL!!!

Bristol is completely decadent, sadly my flight here was such I am not sure I am going to be able to do more then just attend Eroticon. Yet isn’t that enough?

Tea in my hotel across from the river was zen. I love that I am one of those rare people who is employed to do something they love. My entire life has been devoted in one way or another to writing and editing. Erotica was always a fascination, picking out the good bits from my mother’s novels. And mine, still! I have to pick a good bit of my own work Sunday–I am reading at High Tea, gulp.

I’m anxious and nervous in the best of ways about everything…

NWWTHYWM

Today I am joining Donna George Storey in NWWTHYWM, or NaWriWhaTheYouWaMo. It is a kind of reverse of NaNoWriMo, which I have done several times and won. The last time I did it I lost, it was sad because I had to give up due to my work schedule. I never had a problem with pushing myself until the loss, and believe me pushing yourself to write seven to ten-thousand words a day was a necessary evil. I am not bitter about it though, that is not why I am doing NWWTHYWM. But I do want to write and have it be complete ignorant bliss. To write because I want to. And yet, I found myself editing myself when a story came to me today, thinking to myself it is not related to anything that I am working on professionally. And yet is that not the point of this challenge?

This story arrived unexpectedly, much like I drove past a restaurant today I have wanted to try, saw it and remembered I wanted to go. I saw something that intrigued me creatively and built a scenario like a brick layer. The story stands alone–erotic, glass-covered and full of possibility. It is just something I want to explore, and I am going to explore it and free to do it because of NWWTHYWM. I want to feel free to write for the sheer pleasure of it, and not be invested in a numeric limit or an angle that agrees with something I am working on.

I will write just because I want to, will you join me?

That's What Friends Are For…

Even though I have an insanely busy schedule, I make time for meeting up with friends. There is the data that supports longevity with having a good support network, but friends are good for a lot more too. Especially as a writer I can say I am really appreciative of the contributions of my friends.

My friends especially the non-writing ones see what I do as almost if I have a wand and apply fairy dust everywhere! As a writer of fiction, I can pull a rabbit out of a hat and create a story. It’s a pleasure for me to think of an idea and execute with words. Additionally, no one can resist a smile when they ask me what I edit and write because there is still a stigma about sex in our society. Everyone alludes to it in all artistic mediums, but no one wants to go all the way. I do, as an erotica editor and writer. My friends have been supportive and impressed with what has become of my career and my dedication. Half the time I am looking down at my iPhone, it is for work. One of my friends and I had to take a time out from our phones while out together, yet we still managed to talk shop.

Another friend is a copyeditor of something other than erotica, she is my official beta reader. She told me it was a pleasure not to have to read the word-heavy material that she edits. I feel the same I would much rather edit erotica, than sit with the journals she sits with!

My friend who is a talented photographer, draws and studies art, advised me in her apartment as I was telling her about a career move I was contemplating. She paralleled it to something she had done before, and gave sobering advice about the pipe dream I was entertaining that I had not even considered…

My girlfriend who has been through a lot with me over the years reminded me of dreams I had put on the shelf. Didn’t you say you wanted to do this? Yes, I did, and now I am thinking about something I had forgotten I wanted to do.

And at last but not least, a writer friend told me about a ton of things she was planning, and I followed her advice with my own writing. The result was extreme happiness because it makes my work even more layered than a mille-feuille.

There is nothing magical about me. I think my friends are fairies, all of them beautiful and sprinkling their fairy dust on me…

Holding A Mirror To Myself (Meme)

From the time I saw that Alison Tyler had an affinity for typewriters, I trusted her completely. I saw this meme on her blog, and asked to be part of it because I like to hold a mirror to myself to revisit my purpose sometimes. I’m a writer, but I barely think about why and my process. I started writing as a little girl, the same way birds start building nests–instinctively. I answered the questions first, then wrote the introduction which verifies the writing process I described below.

What am I working on?

I have several anthologies and some full-length novels I am working on for Ravenous Romance, and I am writing a short story for one of the anthologies.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I am pretty much like everyone else, but I am telling the story. No one is reinventing the wheel in any genre, but we all tell the story differently. I am not particularly good about describing myself, but I have been told my storytelling style leaves the reader with an atmosphere of mystery which I like because who would connect that immediately to an erotic piece that is not a thriller? I will go to certain places and take photographs, so that I can remember their details to include in a story. The story I am working on now had a scene relocated from a hotel lobby, to that of a cigar bar that I was in.

Why do I write what I do?

In my experience, love is everything. No matter how people want to resist it and make it seem like it is hokey, once people fall in love it changes everything, becomes everything. So marvelous and intoxicating, like turning around and around the way children do until they get dizzy and lie on the floor to recover. Writing about people losing control in love, I love it. Gotta have that man or woman now syndrome, and the rabbit hole that it takes someone down.

How does my writing process work?

If fiction is supposed to mirror real life (although real life is much more bizarre!), you certainly do not have an outline for how to live. I never do an outline, I think it cheats my characters if I know what is going to happen every step of the way. Usually with me stories end happily, though I like some darkness too. But the cream in the middle is structured from scene to scene. The same way that in an instant I think I am going to do something and end up doing something else, I provide my characters the exact same freedom.

You can read Alison’s meme here, and see the other writers who are doing it as well.

photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Tweaking

Tweaking, not twerking! This blog is new, and I am trying out new things with it so if you see that things are moving about it is just me tinkering with the appearance. The Anaïs Nin quote I have added will likely remain in the same place:

I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.

I got so angry years ago, when a Nin biography came out and a book reviewer claimed that she did not refer enough to the war that was going on in her diary. Really? Whose place is it to define how another person captures their own life? Maybe her diary was an escape from what was going on at the time. Why do we dream? Fantasize? And even during times of war people still have sex, fall in love and make babies. Maybe I am like Anaïs, when I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, I want to transcend my reality. I want to fly…

My Kinky Valentine

HOT SUMMER FLINGS was born on a ridiculously hot summer day after a friend and I got lost in Queens. It was really too hot to continue walking, so we stopped in a retro cafe to have iced coffee. A couple of words and I found myself going over the bridge on the train pitching the idea later that day. I am not really sure how I came up with the idea for MY KINKY VALENTINE, but it was beloved even before the first submission came in.

I am a violent romantic, these days that could be interpreted in a lot of ways. Let me define for myself, I have been a romantic since I was six years old. Idealized ideas of love when I was young, various realizations in my history and I cannot get enough. I am addicted to the stuff…

The stories I got for the anthology were amazing, romantic and kinky. Kink was what I wanted the most, I have done a lot of kinky anthologies with Ravenous Romance. I love what I do and working with talented authors like: Helen More, Daily Hollow, J. T. Seate, Tomio Hall-Black, Jenny Lynne, Lynn Lake, Katherine Michael, Angie Sargenti, Rosalia Zizzo, Nicole Wilder, Del Carmen and Landon Dixon. Even myself this time…I was not doing that at first–writing–but when I got inspired with anthologies like the ones I mentioned, stories came to me. I am not afraid to put on two hats, so it was a pleasure for me to do both. “Let Them Eat Chocolate,” was actually inspired during Eroticon USA this past fall in Atlanta. I started with sensory deprivation as a kink, and then it got messy in a good way!

Since it is Valentine’s Day, I may give away a copy of MY KINKY VALENTINE to a random commenter on this post!

photo courtesy of www.ravenousromance.com

Hello Eroticon 2014!!!

A little over three weeks away from being in Bristol for Eroticon 2014, and I am more than thrilled to be going there! I have been to Eroticon in the UK and the US, and it was awesome. I never would have thought that a career in erotica would have me traveling the world like I have. But it has, and I am just…thrilled!

Raised on a steady diet Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers, my mother told me about these classic romances long before I was allowed to even read them in front of her. It was cherished and treasured bonding between us, and I still cannot stop reading Shanna. Like my mom said, she could open it up at any point, and read it all over again.

I told stories since before I wrote them, and editing comes with the territory. Anais Nin was the vehicle for why I do what I do, and why I love erotica so much as a genre. How many novels did I skim for the good bits when I was a little girl?!

What is your name?

F. Leonora Solomon

What are you most nervous of about Eroticon 2014?

I was not nervous at either Eroticon, and do not expect to be this time either. It’s really nice to meet people who I have only ever seen online, so sometimes I am a wee bit starstruck!

What do you hope to get from Eroticon 2014?

I think what I have enjoyed most about Eroticon is I have gone places I had never been before to meet like-minded people. That is the best thing about a conference like this, everyone is on the same page and I learn so much.

What is your bad erotica writer’s pen name?

J. Q. Orificeicle

C’est tout pour moi, see more Eroticon attendees’ introductions here.