Tag Archives: writing

I'm Going Hopping

My friends Lise Horton and Del Carmen were doing this blog hop, and I decided to hop along! It never hurts for me to remember why I do this:

1) What am I working on?

I am working on a variety of things including editing several projects for Ravenous Romance, posting to this blog and trying to write some short stories. I have been very inspired to write since attending Eroticon 2014, editing is a lovely thing and I love it but creating is something I love as well.

2) How does my work differ from others in its genre?

One thing I learned when I was taking writing courses was that no one is going to break the mold. All the stories have been told, the only difference is that I am telling it. I like erotic romance, I like stories where people love like their life depends on it. Love that is inconvenient and dominates the people who fall in it. I like the dark side of things not always BDSM, but the darkness that is revealed when people love that hard. When they are exposed and vulnerable…I love exploring the madness on the other side of that.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I wanted to be an actress at one point, a psychologist at another. I had more of a inclination to be creative, but acting was too much exposure for me. Writing allows me to take the risks I might have taken with acting, but instead I research it and probably go deeper with words on a screen. I was always told I was a good storyteller, and it seems like I let people talk me into believing it. I have always been driven to tell the stories people do not see or they may not want to see.

4) How does my writing process work?

This morning I got inspired by a name of a restaurant. It reminded me of an old actress, and I wanted to name my character that. Since I write nothing but love stories, it was how is she going to fall in love? Then I remembered I was already working on a story, and I know that character is going to fall apart in love. I do not really need to do anything but write the story. Sometimes I create a character who does something I am not familiar with, and I have to research to make it real. The same way that I will explore something that a character in a novel does like the time I was in a Tibetan restaurant and had tea with butter and sugar like I read about in Nicholas Christopher’s Veronica, that is the same way I will explore something just to get an idea of what it is like so I can make it ring true. I learned early on to write about what I know, some of my stories are very far from what I know, but I have stepped into the shoes of my character’s in some way so that I can tell it. Writers are really only mediums as I see it.

photo courtesy of www.feltmusic.it

What Makes You Stop?, Part II

I had not planned on writing a sequel to yesterday’s post, but the irony of this situation made me have to…

Just as I was about to lift the handle to the gate to my place, I saw that the red window was still not lit across the street. However someone in another house across from me had a poster of Mohammad Ali. I found that striking, because I could not see the whole thing, but I did see that it looked like a scene from a match that he won. I assumed it was in a bedroom, and wondered if it was there for inspiration? For the aesthetic?

I thought about what windows reveal, what they say about the person behind them. I thought about the desire to have things around you that create an atmosphere. I usually keep my windows closed, blinds drawn, no Edward Hopper voyeurism into my place. Things I have hung up inside for my aesthetic and inspiration include a map of Paris, various pictures of butterflies, postcards from friends including one of Sophia Loren staring at Jayne Mansfield’s breasts, and an old calendar with an old pulp cover that is subtly erotic. And books. Everywhere. I am used to it all, but I love it all around me just the same.

Tonight for a change, I was able to remember that I saw this poster across the street, and wanted to write about the irony. Oh irony!

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Renee Rose is the Boss Lady

Renee Rose and I are both tired from Eroticon 2014 which was held in Bristol, but Renee has had four releases in the past four weeks! Her latest is The Bossman, from Riverdale Books the brainchild of Lori Perkins. When we decided we would do this interview which was something I used to do in a previous blog life, we just looked at each and knew what we wanted. Renee crackles with energy, and this is not surprising since she revealed to me she is a healer in her professional life. There is a tremendous calm about her, but there is no doubt that she is quite a dynamo in everything she does.

“I am a little manic, there is no other explanation!” Renee jokes. Voted America’s Next Top Erotica Writer during Eroticon USA, her impressive two-year career displays her stamina and deep passion for what she does. The first day of Eroticon in Bristol, Renee distributed wooden paddles with her brand on it that shows off her dancer’s legs. She is this amazing combination of hard, business and soft, intuitive woman. Being around her, her warmth and sincerity is infectious. I feel so comfortable with her even though we have only met a few times. She is completely authentic, writes hot erotica and is totally the master of her universe. Scroll below for Renee on Renee…

I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I used to ski, but decided it wasn’t worth a knee injury that could end my dance career.

I was taught that genre fiction was bad, so after abandoning Sweet Valley High at age 14, had not read any romance other than Jane Austen. Got my degree in English.

During a plane ride I needed a book, and a friend gave me a romance novel and I really liked it. It was a feel good book–a hot guy, a hot woman get together!

Spent a year devouring romance and decided I would write one, but would edit out spanking because it was not PC.

I wrote a book in six days, it was pubbed two weeks later and had an Amazon ranking of 3000. The stars aligned to tell me I was on the right track.

I am a mom, modern dance teacher–had my own dance company for ten years. I am a PTA president, and a healer. I do body work for people to move out of pain. With some people I use energy work in addition to the Feldenkrais Method, with others, I just use energy as an intuitive guide.

As a child I was the usual overachiever. My parents put me in dance because I had a lot of energy to burn.

Had to have surgery before I got pregnant with my daughter. I could not survive because I could not dance.

I was a born a spanko, spanking (my) dolls. In a way (spanking) goes with the overachiever thing. I was always the good girl, I was never spanked. I was the pleaser, I would do my homework, be on time. The psyche of a spanker is the need to please, the desire to be right, to please someone.

I am always a bottom.

(There is) a slight difference in BDSM v. spanking. (With spanking) the shame and humiliation is part of the turn-on. The truly being naughty, paying for punishment.

If you asked me for a natural healing alternative, I could probably have five suggestions, maybe ten.

I was never the type to chase my kids, my kids chased me (they were) like mom is going let’s go!

photo courtesy of http://www.reneeroseromance.com

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…