Big Ed's Place

Recently, I enjoyed an invigorating discussion with Remittance Girl on Literary Erotic Fiction (see here and here, as well as Catherine Leary’s post here). This followed several posts the week of October 31 on Oh Get a Grip! I found the discussion refreshing because it helped define what I write and why.

Now “what I write” is actually pretty broad. I write some stories just for the silliness (One-Eyed Dick and many flash stories) and others because I have a quirky idea that I think could be either a turn on or an interesting story (Friday the 13th). Often I follow romance genre conventions (notably Two Minute Penalties) but romance is not what attracts me to a given story.

“What I write” is how sex affects people and how people confront and deal with sex. This is not new ground by any means, but I don’t limit it to simple desire like much of erotica. Yes, there are some great stories of obsession or lust and the consequences thereof. 9 1/2 Weeks comes to mind. Multiple art circuit films cover that ground as well, as does a lot of online erotica. But while it can be great art and entertainment, it’s generally not cerebral enough for me.

That’s why so much of what I write is in first person. I want to be in the character’s head as they deal with the challenges around sex. I want to watch them wrestle with the Big Questions. I want to see them stumble or be rewarded or even be cautious.

Two Minute Penalties is fundamentally about the question, “what do you do if you discover someone you like is kinky?” The Ugly One is about finding self-esteem through sex. Friends and Benefits explicitly asks questions about love vs. friendship vs. sex. Dealing with the Devil is about the challenge of being surrounded by amorality. The Holiday Series explores the nature of friendships where low level sexual play is involved. These won’t be mistaken for high literature anytime soon, but the themes are there and they’re why I write them.

So, at least in intent, I write what Remittance Girl calls Erotic Fiction. I’d like to say it’s literary, but I have yet to read “literary” fiction that didn’t contain norms and standards that I do not follow. This may be as much of a commentary on my skills as a writer as on the pretentiousness of much of literary fiction, but the result is the same–I’m not going to be shelved anywhere outside of Erotica.

Unless I write porn.

Now by porn, I mean stories that aren’t about ideas, but are simply about getting the reader aroused and possibly off. The sex is the point and any ruminations around it are distractions. The kicker is, porn sells, and from some testimonials I’ve received (which means take them with a grain of salt), sells extremely well. As in thousands of sales for a pseudo-incest story.

The dilemma’s therefore an old one. Art, entertainment, or money?

There’s part of me that aspires to art–to creating stories that would qualify as literary in craft even if they were fundamentally erotica. I’ve got a couple of stories about sex that, frankly, aren’t arousing. I haven’t figured out what to do with them as a result. They’re touching and poignant and good, but not erotic. The Eye of the Hurricane is a great example.

There’s also a part of me that just wants to write fun stories that make readers smile. My voyeurism stories like A Mall Tale fit that bill.

And a part of me looks at the money I’m shelling out to get Deep Dish completed and thinks, “man, I might be able to pay for this with a couple of porn stories.” It’s tempting. Truly tempting.

Unfortunately, time is very very scarce. I’m not sure I can do all three and actually succeed in any reasonable number of years. Which means it feels like more of an “or” than I’d really like. “All of the above” would be a much more satisfying answer.

I don’t have the answer. For now, I’m simply stumbling ahead with the immediate tasks and hoping that there will be better answers by the time I’m done with them. We’ll just have to see.

This past week, I lost several evenings dealing with formatting issues for the Friends and Benefits ebook. In doing so, I found a bug in the software that Amazon recommends writers use for creating mobi files. Of course the help forums were not helpful other than to confirm that many others are struggling with the bug and it hasn’t been fixed in many months. The best solution appears to be to switch software packages and deal with the attendant learning curve.

So I only managed a little writing. I completed 113 words to science fiction story, bringing it to 4,166, and 530 words on Honeymoon, bringing it to 3,017. This rate does not get these stories done by Christmas, which is the goal.

It’s frustrating. I feel like I’m moving far too slowly but efforts to speed up aren’t working. By the time the kids are asleep, fatigue has blanketed my brain. My usual lunch hours have been shortened due to both the demands of the day job and the need to not extend my day so that I can get home earlier to help with the baby. The kids come first. I just really wish I hadn’t set writing deadlines this quarter. Of course that means they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to–motivating me to find the time to write. If only it weren’t so slow…

Shortly after a Slate article appeared criticizing Amazon for carrying erotica/porn titles that could get pretty raunchy, Amazon yanked all incest erotica. However, these days one can do a simple search on Amazon and find titles like “My Son’s Slut.” These books are allowed, because the characters having sex aren’t actually related, ya see. They’re stepmoms and stepkids, stepbrothers and stepsisters, and so on. One author in fact confirmed that she was able to get her book reinstated because it didn’t actually involve blood relations having sex.

This is silly on many levels, but I’ll focus on only one aspect in this post. What difference does this fig leaf really make?

How much difference is there, really, between two fictional characters having sex and going “Oh, mom!” “Oh, son!” if there’s a paragraph early in the story explaining how Mom is really Dad’s second wife? The sex scene is the same. The implications are pretty similar, as we’re talking ‘family’ by most definitions. Adoption advocates and advice columnists worldwide argue that a genetic relationship is only a small part of being a parent or a family. One could argue that it’s less taboo, but the whole story exists to play with that taboo, otherwise why even make the characters related by a “step” relationship?

The difference is simply that Amazon has a fig leaf that lets them say they don’t allow books that go too far.

In many ways, this reminded me of a visit to a Northern Virginia strip club a decade and a half ago. The club was like most strip clubs—racy decor, loud music, and plenty of scantily clad attractive women walking around and on stage. Except that, as the dancers took off their tops, they were wearing small band-aids over their nipples

Huh? I can see everything except a square inch of her breasts. She’s dancing just as erotically/seductively/naughty/fill-in-your-adjective as if she was topless. What difference does the bandaid really make? Heck, it’s even smaller than a pastie from the fifties!

Well, it turns out that, at least at that time, the laws of Virginia did not allow topless dancing. And ‘topless’ was defined by having a visible nipple.

I later realized that the club had done a great job of never claiming it was a ‘topless’ strip club. But other than some careful wording of their promotion material and the band-aids, they were a topless strip club. They just needed the fig leaf in order to stay open and, presumably, profitable.

Obviously, other examples abound, all of which tend to drive me nuts.

The problem with fig leafs, is that they’re reductive. They take the entire experience—a book, a dance club, etc.—and reduce it to a single small element, which the fig leaf declares to be the key element. There’s no evaluation of the whole or of the context. It’s thrown away so we can concentrate on the single element covered, or uncovered, by the fig leaf.

This is immature.

It takes some sophistication and adult consideration to evaluate a work of art or other situation in its entirety. One must actually consider the item and look at it from many angles and not simply take the shortcut of scanning for a single element. One must reserve judgment beyond the initial impressions.

This is hard, even for people who are physically adults. Just look at the political debates that rapidly reduce diverging views to “they’re a [insert political party] therefore they must be evil!”

Furthermore, it’s often wrong. Anyone with some sophistication knows how to create an obscene monologue without using a single one of the obscenities banned from radio and television. Is the obscenity in the word, or in the concept contained behind it? The reductive fig leaf focuses in on the wrong element. Just look at Japan, which has created whole industries devoted to arousing images that don’t show pubic hair.

The people buying “Daddy” titles on Amazon want the incest. The writers are structuring them on incest. They’re incest stories with the exception of an occasional use of the prefix “step-”. But we can’t be adults and accept those facts. And I hate what that says about our society as a whole.

This past week, respect for writers came up independently in two places I read regularly online. Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote a post that included a rant about disrepect from editors at major publishing companies. As an established successful writer, she was appalled at the way they were dismissive and fundamentally unprofessional.

Independently, Remittance Girl wrote about Circlet Press’s twitter stream in which they post snark about some of what they find in their slush pile (and Remittance Girl was following on Catherine Leary’s post here). Both of them make good points about how doing so is unprofessional. By posting their snark, Circlet Press is showing a huge amount of disrespect for the fledgling writers that submit to them.

Honestly, both cases hurt secondhand.

Yeah, I know there are crappy writers out there. And I know there are folks who are delusional about their own abilities. I’ve read many such writers. I also know that there’s a tendency to inflate one’s own worth and even blow off the ‘old fogies’ who aren’t in the trenches with you at the moment, even though they may once have been.

Disrespect is easy. My five year old nephew has mastered condescension and my peers had snark down before we got out of elementary school. It doesn’t take much skill to put people down. And it doesn’t take much emotional armor to feel justified in doing so.

But at what cost?

I posted my first erotica story to usenet back in 1991. I got snarky comments. Between 1991 and 2003, I wrote a grand total of three erotica stories–all for private audiences of one. The snark hurt and turned me off of writing anything in any genre.

Was my writing in 1991 good? Not really. I’ve grown quite a bit both as a writer and as an observant human.

But in 2003, with the encouragement of some very supportive male friends, my then-girlfriend-now-wife, and an online community, I started again. And look what’s happened. I’m not going to win a Pulitzer anytime soon, but my stories can certainly entertain. Sometimes they even touch people.

None of these stories would exist if the disrepect directed at me in 1991 had been all I’d received.

In my experience, good writing requires reaching into your gut and exposing a little of yourself. It might be your heart, your soul, or your fantasies and fetishes, but it’s out there. An astute reader of my stories could probably put together a sexual psychological profile of me as good as any therapist. Even if I’m just showing my creative side, I’m exposed.

And that needs to be respected. The words may suck. The story may be a disaster. There might be five typos per line. The writer still put themselves out there. They still stepped up and tried.

And that deserves respect. For new and old writers. We advance as individuals when we put ourselves out there. We advance as a culture when we encourage people to keep doing so.

Anything less just hurts us all.

Remittance Girl (RG) wrote a nice piece on the the recent Erotica Authors Conference and the future of the erotica genre here. It’s inspired today’s post.

RG starts her riff on the difference between erotic romance and erotica and porn. While I happen to agree that they’re different markets, I must admit I have some up front issues with labels. I’ve come to believe that, in general, labels do as much or more harm than good. The real world doesn’t put things neatly into categories–we can say, “male and female” but then what about those born with XXY chromosones? Even “alive” and “dead” become fuzzy at the microscopic level, like with viruses, and at points near the end and beginning of life. A story I write is what it is. Adding a label of one kind or another doesn’t change the story itself.

The problem is, labels are extremely useful on the consumer’s end. There’s really not much difference, musically, between pop rock and heavy metal. Same beat, same tempo, and in many cases the lyrics would be indistinguishable on the written page. But by adding the accoutrements of one or the other, it helps the consumer say, “oh, Judas Priest is in the same category as Metallica and I like Metallica, so maybe I’ll like Judas Priest.” When we lack the sophisticated algorithms now coming online for things like Pandora radio, the categories are one of the few tools a consumer has to help them find new stuff they might like.

In fiction, this can be most strongly seen in author loyalty. I like what Dan Simmons writes. I’m therefore very likely to buy his next book, even though he hops genres a lot. I’ll at least look it over in the bookstore instead of picking up an “unknown to me” author next to them.

The interesting challenge with labels, though, is when a category grows. Back in the 20′s, readers had Weird Tales. Horror, fantasy, and science fiction were all rolled into one. As those genres grew in popularity, they split. We’ve then seen refinement of labels within those categories. We have “urban fantasy” and “steampunk” and “hard science fiction” and “space opera.”

In my opinion, erotica is at a similar threshold. In the fifties, Lawrence Block the mystery writer used to keep himself afloat by writing “sex books.” They were all nudge nudge wink wink to the point where they couldn’t quite be classified as pornographic. At the same time, there were a few classics floating around, hard to get of course, that defined ‘erotica’ simply because they were all there were. The Victorian Era novel “Autobiography of a Flea” plotwise isn’t much different than a lot of porn today. It’s about the sex. Anais Nin’s stories are pretty, but to me they’re little more than naughty sexy dreams. I can find hundreds of equivalents online today that would be classified as anything from mainstream fiction to hard core porn.

The genre has grown enough that the overarching label is not sufficient.

The fact that it’s grown should be obvious. Heck, erotica is finally big enough to have a conference. It’s certainly more accessible and widely available in the internet era than before. More small presses are flourishing and more authors are sticking with it instead of just using ‘sex books’ as a stepping stone to a ‘more respectable’ genre.

So we’ve got erotic romance, erotic horror, erotic fantasy, and other hybrids where erotica grafts its explicitness onto another genres conventions. I think that’s good for the genre overall, because there will be some crossover in readers and writers. Even if the crossover is minimal, there’s at least a greater acceptance that explicit fiction is okay.

However, it leaves a gap that is what Remittance Girl is complaining about, in my opinion (I’m putting words and motives in her mouth which I’m sure she’ll jump all over me on, but allow me the presumption for a moment). We don’t have have a “hard erotica” subcategory like “hard science fiction.” As the hybrids have gelled, the middle core doesn’t have its own distinguishing terms. This is important, because otherwise the stuff that’s not erotic romance or erotic horror etc. is just the mush between. Instead of taking the big box of erotica and divvying it up into subcompartments that can appreciate and recognize and respect each other, we’ve got “erotic romance” and “porn” and “all that gunk that no one can sell.”

“That gunk” needs to be marketable on its own. I’m honestly not sure how to do that. As RG points out, erotic romance can borrow the marketing approaches of romance, which has already wrung out what works and what doesn’t. For better or worse, porn has similarly completed that wring out (though the resurgence of amateurs and more artistic European porn gives me hope that we’re not doomed to Southern California sameness, even if it’s that sameness that defines profits). What’s the approach for the yet-to-have-a-good label erotica that’s not either of those?

Unfortunately, I think figuring out how to do that is not something that even a small group of people can force into being. It’s going to take some trial and error and some evolving general consensus. It’s going to require readers, and more importantly buyers, as much or more than writers and publisers. For example, if the stuff that’s left gets called “literary erotica” or “sexual fiction” (my personal choice), it’s got to show that the label attracts buyers. We have to get to the point where they say, “oh, I liked this story by Nobilis Reed, and he calls it XXX, so I’ll look at books by Big Ed Magusson that are also called XXXX.” But, like belling the cat, it’s not obvious how to get there from here.

I think if we can solve that, though, we’ll help writers and artisans in much the way Remittance Girl wants.

It doesn’t take more than a glance at this site to realize I happen to like nudity in the illustrations that accompany my erotica. Yeah, I could keep them R-rated, but if the story’s rated X, why do so? If an illustration is tame, it’s because I thought it best represented the story that accompanies it and didn’t feel the need for gratuitous (illustrated) skin.

Unfortunately, American culture seems to have a fetish about nudity being wrong. I happen to fine Maxim magazine’s content to be puerile, frat-boyish, and to take an attitude toward women that’s beyond sexist and well into the “they’re only good for sex” realm. Playboy, on the other hand, has tried to celebrate the beauty of women since Hefner was behind the camera himself. So which one gets hidden behind wrappers in back corners or banned from PX’s and 7-Elevens across the country?

I could go on (and on and on and on), but the rant isn’t new and the number of examples of American culture’s hypocrisy around nudity are immense. So instead, I’ll focus on the problem du jour–nudity in ebooks. Specifically, what can someone who is self-publishing get away with?

Now obviously any writer or small press who offers their works through their own website is only restricted by the laws governing their particular abode and whatever their credit card processor will tolerate. Since I don’t know the in’s and out’s of being an e-retailer, I’m going to save that topic for a future day.

Similarly, I’d like to note that all e-retailers and e-publishers reserve the right to stop carrying a book for any reason at any time. It’s their store, and they should certainly have that right. However, it’s certainly nice to know ahead of time if they’re actually willing to offer your book. Hence, this post. So without further ado:

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon‘s content guidelines state: “We reserve the right to make judgments about whether or not content is appropriate and to choose not to offer it. We may also terminate your participation in the KDP program if you don’t adhere to these content guidelines.” There’s no surprise here. Under that, they state:

We don’t accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.

The term pornography is not defined by Amazon. So far, they’ve accepted my own books with illustrations that contain nudity. They also sell erotic photography books and a quick search was able to turn up several ebooks with more graphic nudity in them than my own.

Based on information I’ve gleaned elsewhere, I don’t think Amazon truly cares about the adult content unless there’s a complaint. They don’t have human-in-the-loop screening for books that go through Kindle Direct Publishing, so readers are probably the first to see the book. They did yank incest themed books a while back, shortly after an unfavorable article appeared on Slate criticizing them for it, but incest themes are back. Like cops in many urban areas, they got the credit for ‘cleaning things up’ and once the spotlight moved on, things appear to have gone back to the way they were.

Createspace
Createspace is Amazon’s division that handles print-on-demand for paper books. Their Terms and Conditions contain nothing about adult content and only are concerned with whether the stated author/publisher really holds the copyright. Direidi Publishing has released The Ugly One through Createspace with nudity within the book with no issues. As an Amazon company, I imagine they don’t care unless there are complaints.

Smashwords

Smashwords allows authors to self-publish and they distribute to several retailers including Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, and Diesel. They also sell books directly. Their terms and conditions include the statement:

• if you publish erotica content, neither the book cover nor the book interior may contain graphic images of nudity (either photographic or illustrated) or persons involved in sex acts, and does not include children or underage minors engaged in sexual acts or situations, witnessing such situations, considering sexual acts, or thinking about sexual acts

This is the term I’ve run afoul of. Smashwords has two steps in publishing. The first is an automated program that creates the formats. The second is their “Premium Catalog” which allows the ebook to be distributed to the other retailers. Humans review all content before it goes into the Premium Catalog and they’ve been rather strict about the no illustrated nudity clause.

That said, the terms and conditions come into play “by submitting your work.” I.e., an author would still be in violation of the terms and conditions if they had Smashwords sell their novel even if it wasn’t put into the Premium Catalog.

Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble lets authors self-publish through their PubIt program. Their terms and conditions include a ‘death penalty’ which states:

Please be aware that the following content is unacceptable and submitting or posting said content in your eBook file, cover image, or product data will result in immediate termination of your account:

Pornography: Hard-core material that depicts graphic or explicit sexual acts.

Email requesting clarification went unanswered. However, a little searching of their site turns up several Nook books that are purely nude photographs. There are a couple that hint at more explicitness, but since there’s no preview function for them, I was unable to determine whether it was just a tease or something that had slipped through the cracks. I haven’t published a book with them yet to determine if they pre-review content or not.

Lulu
Lulu does print on demand publishing and also does distributions of ebooks in the ePub format. For additional fees, they will distribute to the iBookstore, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

For sales within their site, they allow authors to sell via “direct access” which does not list the book in their catalog, or “general access,” which does. For the latter, they do not allow nudity on the cover or in the preview section of the book. No restrictions are stated for “direct access.” Their catalog does include books with nude photographs within the book.

They also have a general statement in their terms and conditions which states:

Does not contain material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, pornographic, harassing, threatening, harmful, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable.

I haven’t worked with Lulu, but I’m guessing that there would be no issues with nudity inside an ebook that’s sold through them via “Direct Access” or done through the “General Access” channel as long as it abided by the guidelines above. It also appears that they will be complaint-driven beyond that.

XinXii
XinXii is an ebook retailer based in Germany. Their English Language site is here. They’re small, but they allow sales by authors directly and they also sell erotica. Their terms and conditions state:

9.3 The user is obligated not to place any contents in the database of the Operator that violate competition laws, copyright or trademark regulations or that are to be considered as obscene, insulting, offensive, pornographic, irritating, racist, xenophobic, extreme right-wing or otherwise reprehensible. There is no right to be included in the database. The Operator expressly reserves the right to delete any files from the platform that violate the provisions in any way, at any time and without comment; this also includes e-books with reseller rights, e-books acquired via reseller licenses, private label content (PLR eBooks), questionable business proposals, advertising without benefit, etc.

In a response to a query from Direidi Publishing, they confirmed that nudity within a book is acceptable. It is not acceptable on the cover.

Kobo
Kobo requires you to email them and sign a publisher’s agreement before they will provide more information on how to get ebooks into their store. Since Smashwords distributes through them, I haven’t taken the extra steps to find out what it would take to do it directly. They sell books with nude photographs inside, so I suspect they would allow nude illustrations

SharewareeBooks.com
This is an Australian ebook retailer that looks like it has a straightforward interface for loading ebooks that have already been formatted. Since I’ve not worked with them, I’m unsure how complicated this would be. I’ve had trouble getting previews to work on the site. Their terms and conditions include the phrase that content should not include “any material that is obscene, offensive, pornographic…” but the terms are not defined. Furthermore, they note that they “may or may not screen content.”

All Romance Books
This site carries erotic romance as well as regular romance. They approve publishers before accepting books from them though do have some ebooks for sale where the author and publisher are the same name, so I assume an individual author could make submittals. I have not found anything in their terms and conditions that discusses illustrations. Their books are made available immediately upon upload, so I suspect that they deal with objectionable content by complaint and/or review by the site owners.

eBookBop
Another Australian site, eBookBop carries illustrated erotica books. They request that interested “publishers and authors” email them about having their books sold through their site. I don’t know what is involved in doing so, but they obviously carry illustrated erotica so would not have any objections to more.

Others
Finally, while Google’s ebooks store and Apple’s iBookstore sells books, I haven’t seen how an individual author can self-publish through them. Smashwords distributes to Diesel, but again, an author can’t self-publish directly there. Ebooks.com will not work with authors directly and requires email from a publisher to set up a relationship. They also seem to be light on erotica and have no illustrated erotica. Similarly, Books-a-Million’s sites states they only works with publishers but their actual page for doing so provides little guidelines on how to form that relationship. Since they don’t carry an erotica category in their fiction, I’m a bit suspicious whether it’d be valuable to try to get into their site.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge Direidi Publishing for assistance in assembling this list. I’ll update it as I receive or find additional information. Suggestions for other retailers are also invited–please feel free to comment below.

This past weekend, I had lunch with my son in the food court. While we ate, I noticed some video screens. Diners could use their cell phones to text what music videos they wanted to see them. Since my son decided to dawdle through his chicken fingers and I saw no need to rush him, I watched a lot of videos.

Honestly, I couldn’t name a single artist, song, or video I saw in that hour. None were memorable to be more than a blur. Which means, from an advertising point of view, they failed. None stood out enough for me to want to walk down the corridor and even look at, much buy the music by that artist.

Now the list of videos one could select from did include some names I recognized, but other than the fact that their promotion machines had made them famous, I couldn’t exactly say what had made them stand out in the first place. Is Katy Perry a true artist, or just someone who’s first song about kissing a girl drew enough notoriety to vault her into the spotlight? Is she getting the equivalent of the Matthew effect where, now famous, she gets to be even more famous?

We’ve got a long tail going in the art forms today, particularly with the online world. I’m not sure it’s clear to anyone how the head of the tail is selected short of millions in promotion that hope to earn it back. This summer’s superhero films show that can be chancy. Besides, most artists don’t have millions for promotion, so that’s just a gamble by someone else.

It leaves the question–how does one stand out?

It’s pretty clear that copying makes money. There are tons of paranormal romance novels out these days. Wandering our local Borders (still there, not gone), they had shelves and shelves in the YA section. Apparently Stephanie Meyers really is providing enough pull to carry other authors along. Or at least their publishers think so. Similarly, I saw a band on television recently that I said, “they look like The Blackeyed Peas.” Yep, a near clone, except that Fergie is far sexier than this band’s female singer. But that band was caught in the pull and obviously making enough noise to get on TV.

One can stand out by being outrageous. Unfortunately, that’s easy to top by the next artist (ever heard the Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues by Tod Snider?). In erotica, we’ve already gone that far.

Aside–there’s a call for submissions out for bestiality stories. My first thought was, “I could do that. I could write something with high quality. It’d be a challenge to make it work, but it could be fun.” But after mulling it over, I decided I had better uses of my time. The main reason why? There’s not much behind bestiality other than the “ooh! Look, they’re having sex with an animal!” Once that taboo shock or titillation is over, there’s not much to say. The only plot line I could come up with that I liked was where the bestiality was ‘hitting bottom’ for an addictive character, and that would be rather anti-erotic.

After that… I don’t know. I’d like to believe that quality rises to the top, but I’m not naive enough to believe it. I don’t have any specific answers.

I just do know that an hour of singers emoting and pouring their hearts out in front of gorgeous landscapes did nothing for me. And I hope my writing never ends up the equivalent.

This past week, I sold my science fiction story that was written under another name. I was surprised and a bit giddy. It took a few days to get the editing complete and now I’m just waiting for publication. I succeeded! Yeah!

But of course it didn’t take long for other thoughts to kick in. The primary one was, “do I really have time to develop a second online presence under an independent name to the same level as Big Ed?” The short answer is ‘no.’ However, if I want to write and publish more than erotica, I need to have a site and some social networking beyond this name.

Isn’t the traditional reward for work well done just more work? I had to let out a deep sigh when I realized that.

However, that was one of the interesting benefits of this sale. The editor was quite good–one of the top three I’ve ever had. She correctly pointed out my tendency to overuse certain words. Like “sigh.”

Yep. Guilty as charged. I’ll work on improving that.

Another thought that kicked in was that perhaps I should write more science fiction. It pays better than erotica and it’s something I can easily show my more conservative colleagues and family members. Of course writing more would require more time too.

A word besides “sigh” should go here.

Because, of course, I have no intention of cutting back on my erotica writing. That’s where the juice is for me, all too often. If writing’s a slog, I won’t do it. If the ideas are bouncing around in my head and the sentences demanding to be put down–well, then it’s enjoyable and worth the stress of not enough time. Those ideas are still 90% erotica stories, so that’s what I intend to primarily write.

And more writing is what I really want to do. Success breeds the desire for more success. I’m a bit more eager, now, even with all the potential frustrations and stresses that come with wanting something even more. And that’s part of the bitter undertone. I’ve done well, but it’s already not enough.

Sigh.

Oh, wait, “deep exhale of breath signifying emotional release.”

Yeah, that doesn’t work, does it?

Sigh.

This past Mother’s Day, I did something new and a little daring. I gave my mother one of my published stories.

Nope, not an erotica one. The fantasy story that was published this past month under another name than the one that entertains you here.

She loved it. Read it on the spot. My father was impressed. He wants to share it with family friends. That’s great.

It’s also a bit terrifying. Ya see, it means I’m going to get to dissemble quite a bit in the near future. Just take a moment and think of the upcoming questions.

“Are you writing anything else?”
“How many stories have you published?”
“How much time do you spend writing?”
“You seem pretty knowledgeable about writing and publishing, how did you gain this experience?
“How long have you been writing?”

There will certainly be dozens more that I haven’t yet anticipated and I get the pleasure of not entirely being honest in my answers to them, or getting to pick who I confide this identity to. There are some folks who I have zero intention of ever telling them this identity, so in at least some cases, the less than forthright answers are required.

Which sucks. But is also the nature of the genre.

On the plus side, I can at least admit I write. As long as I’ve got a mainstream Work In Progress going, I have an excuse to be on the laptop or talking about writing. It beards me well. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing how that affects my ability to openly identify myself as a writer.

At the same time, having two separate identities creates a lot more work. Eventually, I’ll need or want two websites, two twitterfeeds, and all those things I do now duplicated. That takes time, which is currently my most precious resource. I can’t just “add a tab” to my menu bar for pen name number two, like non-erotica authors can.

Again, the problem of writing in the genre.

It’s enough to make me seriously consider putting more energy into my non-erotica writing except for one major problem. I write the stories that call to me. Those stories are listed in my queue. The queue jumpers are pretty consistently erotica stories of one form or another.

So in some ways, my writing identity is really erotica, with all else being the “alternative.” That’s not something I can explain to Mom. But hopefully she’ll remain pleased nonetheless.

Is it May already? Where the heck did April go? Perhaps the only thing scarier is how I know May will zip by just as quickly. It always does–May and December are the two most stressful months of the year for me, due to the added events of the Calendar. December’s obvious. May has Mother’s Day, a bunch of birthdays, and the need to get out and do yard work now that the snow has stopped (I live in CO–it’s not necessarily done snowing by May, but is often enough to plant). This year it has other stresses related to my day job and our upcoming baby.

But April wasn’t a complete blur. I remember writing in there somewhere.

So what was the result? Where’s the queue these days?

Waiting to hear from Publishers:
Deep Dish
Science Fiction Story
Take it to the Bank
Unbelievable (finished in April, 3315 words, 867 new words in April)

About to be released on Smashwords and Amazon:
A Smile on my Face (and three other stories)

Waiting to hear from editors:
Broken (3973 words, 1709 new words in April)
Science Fiction story (871 words, new in April)

In work:
Unmasked (7216 words, 1685 new in April)
Sights on the Night Shift (979 words, new in April)

For the last week, I added 731 words on Unmasked and 209 words to Sights on the Night Shift, which last week had no title. Not a bad week.

Waiting in the wings:
The Coulter News Network (Summer Camp Story)
Giving Thanks (9th Holiday Series Story)
Devil in the Details (Devil sequel)
Boys of Summer (3rd Compassionate Courtesan novel)
Historical Novel (under different nom de plume)
Holiday in St. Martin (Holiday Series bonus story)
Christening (Summer Camp Story)

There are some other potential queue jumpers, but they’ve slid to the back burner for now. My front plate is pretty full.

In particular, sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that four stories are about to hit the ebook stores. I’ll do updates to this site and announcements when that happens, but it’s part of why I’ve been “in the books” this month. Despite 3 of them being done by Direidi Publishing, it’s been a fair amount of work to get them up. This is no fault of Direidi’s–we’ve had trouble with the illustrations being deemed acceptable on Smashwords. Needless to say, there’s no longer any nudity in those illustrations. Amazon doesn’t care, though, so the full illustrations can be found there. As much as Amazon’s annoyed me for how they treated me when I was an affiliate, their ruthless greed is certainly good for not censoring my work.

So I guess I have been busy (6113 words for the month), which is why the time has flown.