Best Erotic Romance now available!

Best Erotic Romance, edited by Kristina Wright for Cleis Press, has been released!  I'm excited because I will be able to hold the book in my hands and turn to the page my story, "Till the Storm Breaks," begins on.

It won't be the first time I've been in print, but it will be the first time my erotica has been in print. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to hold a book. The tangible object is as much of the experience for me as the words.

Don't get me wrong, I think online is great. In fact I think it's one of the best things to ever happen during my lifetime. Despite all the CRAP out there on the internet, one cannot deny the wonderfulness of being able to just go and write for all the world to see.  Even if just a miniscule fraction of the world is seeing my blog, and hence my words, there are still folks all over the globe that have. Granted, they're not looking for "me." But I'd like to think that when someone types in one of the search phrases that lands them here, that even though what I've written isn't exactly what they're looking for, they still might spend a few minutes reading and enjoying what I've written.

Granted, I find myself a bit nervous too, now that this print book is out. I've yet to have the experience of having my writing commented on, other than by friends. While I have years of critique groups under my belt, I've never had my work "reviewed." So, yeah, I'm nervous about that.

Also, there's a few folks in my life that I haven't told about my Erobintica exploits (ha!) - namely my sister. Not that I think she'd going to wander into a bookstore on the other side of the country from me and pick up this book and turn to the bios and find her baby sister listed. But it's more that I'm proud of this. I'm proud of my writing. And wow, that was a difficult sentence to type.

This has been a year of transitions for me. As it draws to a close, I'm wondering what next year will bring. I hope I'll be able to point to more publications and more events/activities that I'm doing. I hope that my fears will start to fall away, and I can start to live up to some of the things friends and loved ones have told me about my writing.

Thank you everyone who is reading this!

The lost year

It's turned chilly. The leaves are falling. Weeds are dying back. We may have some snow flurries this weekend. The end of the year will be here far too quickly.

When this year started, I had so many plans. Basically, almost none of them have come to pass. It's been "one of those years." Now it's almost November. Not much time to catch up, even if my life was all leisure and ease. Which it's not. Doesn't help that I beat myself up for procrastinating and not following through and being afraid. What happened to the Erobintica that posted things like this, the post with the most hits over time on my blog? Well, I'm more than just her, and life has left little time for her.

This  hasn't been a completely wasted year. I have had a couple of acceptances, and nice things have been said about the stuff that was rejected. I've not written much at all, though I guess what I have written is good (because of those acceptances and comments). I have lots of ideas. But no focus. At times I want to throw up, throw up my hands, or just throw in the towel.

But I won't give up on this. Not sure why. Or maybe I am. This blog got started partly as my reaction to the giving up of a friend. Quite literally. He gave up. And because that's where this blog comes from, in part, I find I refuse to give up.

So, I'm doing things like taking part in Rachel Kramer Bussel's Women in Lust Blog tour on November 14.

And I'm going to submit to Joan Price's anthology.

As we "de-clutter" [read: MASSIVE] in preparation for putting our house on the market so we can get our asses up to Maine (see picture above - that is what I could be looking at most days), I hope to find plenty of inspiration for writing. And maybe it will have to wait till next year. But I'm not giving up.

Falling in love

with your characters, that is. Has that happened to you? That happened to me with this last story I wrote, and it was a problem of sorts.

I'd struggled with this story from the very beginning. I had an idea, inspired by a trip to an art museum. There is an exhibit of women artists in their permanent collection and some of the works especially moved me. My mother was an artist, albeit a frustrated one (long story not-for-here), and so I've always been drawn to stories (and movies) about artists. One of my characters is an artist.

I started the story, but then was interrupted by about 36 hours when I couldn't work on it at all. When I came back to it, I found that my characters started becoming more than I'd intended. As I wrote, I started to get lost in them. And I found myself falling in love. Which I don't do easily, in real life or on the page. I tend to be a bit cynical and untrusting, as well as quite insecure.

Now, from talking with other writers, having your characters move in their own direction is not all that uncommon. And this wouldn't have been a problem, except I had a deadline to meet, and they just weren't cooperating! So I found myself very disappointed with my story. In fact I almost chucked it yesterday morning as I tried to finish it. Because my characters did not want to be finished.

But thank eros for that deadline, because I'd promised Shanna that I would get a story to her, and so my not-wanting-to-let-someone-down forced me to commit myself to submitting SOMETHING. But I wasn't all too happy with this something (see "insecure" above). So I sent the story to Emerald to read over, and she made such a wonderful comment about my characters, that I squeezed past my insecurity to hit send and get my submission in before the deadline.

Afterwards, I sent the story to my husband to read. He's a professional editor, and you'd think I'd want him to have a look before I sent my story, but that would make sense, wouldn't it? No, because of my insecurity (yeah, that again), his comments can send me over the deep end. I have a story that I wrote a few years back and gave him to edit and I've yet to be able to go in and make revisions without feeling like the whole piece is a big pile of crap and shouldn't be inflicted on anyone.

When he gave me some feedback (when I got home from a poetry event I'd gone to in the evening), I found myself feeling very defensive. He'd wanted more, and well, I had too. But my characters weren't having it. He also had some problems with some tense changes and while I was tempted to pull it up on my screen and having him point out "problems," I realized I'd already submitted it and so it was out of my hands for  now. A couple of times during the "conversation" I was on the verge of tears. I get pretty emotionally invested in my writing.

It's not that I want undeserved praise, it's just that sometimes I feel like what people are telling me is "do it differently - do it my way" and even if I think they're right, the stubborn little writer in me gets to feet-stomping. no no no!

But my husband also complimented my characters. And I realized something. The reason I'd fallen in love with them was because they were "real" in the sense that they had that whatever-it-is that makes you love a character. And that the reason I had such a hell of a time finishing the story, was because I didn't want to leave them. Didn't want to say goodbye. But you know what? I don't have to.

It's dawning on me...

February dawn

There is no one direction my writing is taking me, and rather than fight that, I have to allow myself to wander. there is so much in this world that I find fascinating, why should I limit myself? Do I have to have a niche?

I've always loved being out in the open, the sky filtered only through trees. And I've never questioned that love. But when it comes to my writing, I'm constantly putting shackles on myself. Telling myself I can't write something because... well, because... I should be writing something else, I don't know anything about whatever it is I'm thinking of writing about, nobody wants to know about what I think, that my interests are too eclectic and it's better to have some "hook" that people can hang their interest in me on.

But that's all bullshit I tell myself because what it comes down to is I'm afraid someone will question my knowledge, intentions, morals. They'll question ME. Who I am. And to put myself in that position would require that I stand up for my views, for what I believe in.  Because I'm pretty damn sure that my views and beliefs will be very different from those of many people I know. I guess I'll have to grow a pair.

"Certainly you will write things that I won't be comfortable with. That's okay." This is something my husband said to me in response to my questioning him about his views on the direction some of my writing seems to be taking me. I want to say "I'm lucky" but really, what does luck have to do with any of it?

This is all in preface to what this blog post is really about. Yeah, I'm long winded. Those of you who really know me know that, hahaha. 

Back on January 1, I started eating paleo. No grains, beans, legumes, white potatoes. In January I avoided dairy also, but have now added a little back in. Lots of veggies, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds, fruit. I'm doing it for health reasons, because grain and other starchy carbs really do a number on me healthwise, and I want to live a good long time.

So, along with reading several books and lots of blogs about paleo, I signed up for an email newsletter that alerted me to this blog post at Mark's Daily Apple on "8 Health Reasons to Have Sex (As If You Needed Them). The post is pretty SFW, with health info that for the most part I already knew. But it was  nice to see it brought up. All too often, sex is overlooked as a topic for the reason that it's a very loaded topic. What was that old cocktail party advice? No talking about politics, religion, or sex.

What I found interesting were the comments. There was the full range from snarky & sexist to sincerely interested. One of the comments linked to this article at Newsweek about the book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan, Ph.D. (that links to his blog at Psychology Today) and Calcida Jetha', M.D. This reminded me that I'd been interested in this book last year (I'd put it on my Christmas list, but I guess Santa was too embarrassed to bring it), and had been reading Ryan's blog on occasion already. Here's a bit from the website:

"In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, SEX AT DAWN unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do. A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society."

So, I'm going to order it tomorrow, probably read it non-stop when it arrives, and write about my impressions of this supposedly controversial book.  I can't wait! 

Have any of you read it? What did you think?

So, yeah, it's almost midnight and this post is supposed to be a Thursday post! More tomorrrow!

NOTE: And thanks Craig for letting me know about that posting flub - Blogger was being weird last night and wasn't letting me save my post as I typed, so I typed the whole thing again before posting it finally. Apparently it was saved. It was very weird. So if you read the post during my night, there were duplicated paragraphs. Gone now! :)

Monday morning contemplation

Photo by Randy Lagana

This morning I read something that really struck a chord with me. Donna George Storey posted a piece last week called Sex as Performance not Commodity on her blog, Sex, Food, and Writing, that she wrote after reading an essay by Thomas MacCaulay Millar, "Toward a Performance Model of Sex." If you have time, go read Donna's piece right now before reading on.

Towards the end, Donna writes:"...I'd bet that any real woman with a few more years/decades on her would attest that the subjective experience of sex for women only gets richer with experience and a surer sense of one's preferences and power. And the more nuanced our experience of sex, the more we can convey that complexity in our fiction."

Though I've always wanted to be a writer, it's only in the last half-dozen years or so that I've taken myself seriously as a writer (well, most of the time, I'm still overcome by doubt way too often). And it's only in the past couple of years that I've taken to allowing myself to explore sexuality in my writing to the degree I have, and I still have trouble with it. And I'm having trouble writing this post, maybe because I'm still pondering.

It seems that whenever we think we have a thing figured out, something happens to show us we don't. We're always learning. Sometimes those "learning" experiences knock us for a loop. And until we regain our footing, we're not sure what's up and what's down.

As a writer, I bring my experiences to my writing, even if I'm not writing about ME. But when one has self-image issues (umm, duh), that can translate into questioning the value of one's writing. If I'm no good, then my writing can't be any good. It happens to the best of us.

Why do we write? Why do we write about sex? What are we trying to accomplish? Are we just pervs? Is this line of thought going anywhere?

Probably not.

Should I let it in?

A while back, I started working on a novel. It's not the first one, but the other had been set aside because I just wasn't in a place where I wanted to work on it. When I started this latest one, I went whole hog for awhile and even shared the first few chapters with various people (and got positive feedback). Then I set this one aside too. Not consciously, but in avoidance of the emotions that I knew it would make me experience in the writing. Basically I locked it out of my room. Bad novel! Get out!

So I went back to working on short stories and my beloved poetry. But now that novel is scratching at the door. And I'm afraid to let it in. Especially right now. There's a lot going on in my life, some of it not too pleasant. I don't have time to write a novel.

What am I afraid of? I'm afraid I might use it to avoid life. Real life. I'm afraid that it will seem, to me at least, that I'm abandoning my other writing (though truth be told, I've not been working on that all that diligently either). That I'll no longer write short stories just as some I've already written are about to be published. That I won't work on poetry just as I'm started to find my voice and confidence in it.

But that novel is whining, making whimpering noises, "Come on, write me, you know you want to, look at my cute belly, don't you want to rub it? Go ahead, scratch behind my ears."

This morning my husband forwarded a press release he received (one that has no bearing on his work, which he always finds funny) about a woman who in her mid-forties wrote her first novel, sold it, and went on to become a bestselling novelist. It had always been her dream to write a novel (same here). And she is living her dream. And encourages others to do the same, and that's basically what her novels are about. She herself calls them "beach reads." (Note: I'm not listing her name here because I'm not sure she'd want to be linked on the internet to erotica. If you're really interested and want to know who, just email me, my addy's in my profile.)

I need all the encouragement I can get right now.

He sent it to me after listening to me being self-pitying and saying that maybe I should give all this up (my dream of being a "real" full-time writer) and go work in a grocery store scanning stuff that other people can afford to buy.

Yeah, I'm having "one of those days/weeks/months/years." But, I can hear it panting under the door. "Please."

Do I let it in and risk being taken in by its puppy eyes? The way it licks my hand and curls up at my feet?

Hell, I'm a cat person, not a dog person. Why do I think of this novel-writing thing as a puppy?

Revealing, reveling, returning

Words are filling my head, and I am wanting to sequester myself in order to allow them the time to be released, but life currently has other ideas. I've written half a dozen new poems in the past week, and there are stories simmering and even the first inklings of a novel. At least this weekend is filled with writing group meetings, so the pressure can be let off a little. Otherwise I think I might burst. Yesterday I was at The Cloisters in NYC, a place I've never been before (why I don't know), with a dear friend, and it was an experience that is producing poems at a furious rate. Some may end up here, I don't know.

The image above has nothing to do with The Cloisters, but the whole idea of seclusion is embodied by this image.