Big Ed's Place

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.

This past week, I received a rejection for my science fiction story. Like all rejections, it stung, but part of the business of writing is being able to shrug off such rejections and keep going.

So I did what I’ve found works best in dealing with rejection–I got back on the horse right away.

And I do mean right away. I resubmitted the story to the next publisher the same day I received the rejection.

In doing so, I basically cut past all the wallowing that often accompanies rejection. I’ve learned that rejection doesn’t mean “it’s me” like we all too often want to believe. Often, it’s about the fit or something else entirely. It also put me back in control of what I could control–keeping the story in submission somewhere.

‘Immediately get back on the horse’ was not an easy lesson to learn. The only way I really got there was to be rejected a lot. The first time I looked for a job, right out of school, I mailed 101 resumes before I got an offer. When I was engaged in internet dating, I probably got ignored by 80% of the women I emailed. I had a myriad of first dates that didn’t lead to second dates. At some point, the rejection lost it’s heavy import and was left with just a little residual sting.

And in the process, I started discovering that ‘getting back on the horse’ helped. I wasn’t too conscious of it, though, until my penultimate romantic relationship broke up.

I was madly in love with her, but it had become clear we were a bad match. After three months of struggling, we finally called it quits. I drove to her town and we broke up over dinner.

On the way home, I called one of my former ‘friends with benefits.’ I asked one simple question: “X and I broke up. Is that offer to share your bed still open?”

Wonderful woman that she is, she said yes. We spent the following Saturday night having non-stop sex until we were both too tired to continue.

And with that, the sting of rejection was gone. As far as I’m concerned, it’s definitely a great way to handle rejection.

One of the challenges the arts, be they visual, performing, musical, or literary, regularly face is “how the heck to we pay for it?” Good art requires time to develop talent, time to produce, and time to perform or otherwise get in front of an audience.

Now I don’t know much about the history of art, but I suspect that over most of human history, “paying for it” was done by patrons. The poor were too busy scrambling for survival. The rich, on the other hand, could afford to spend money on aesthetic pleasures. Similarly, ruling bodies such as governments and churches could commission work to glorify their chosen objectives, using the wealth extracted from their citizens.

I also suspect “paying for it” became easier with the rise of the middle class. Instead of one patron paying for the entire cost, it could be spread among multiple individuals. Obviously, this is less true for some art forms, such as sculpture, where it’s hard for multiple individuals to share a single work of art. However, a good theater run spreads the cost of a play among many non-rich individuals. So does a long concert series. A musician can make a living if enough people pay to see them every night and they don’t have to be the same people every night.

It also became easier for those art forms that worked well with commerce. Notably, anything that could be copied and distributed to “the masses” could have the entire “paying for it” cost spread out among the entire audience. If it cost X to make a record album, and it could be sold at Y, then obviously X/Y determined the number of copies that had to be sold. True, there was often a cash flow issue still since the cost had to be paid before the sales were complete. But there was little need for a true patron.

Enter the digital age. It’s become much harder to predict how many copies of a digital art form could sell. Most of this is simply the newness of the process. There are substantial debates on how much ebooks should cost. The only answer seems to be “less than print books.” Well, that leaves a wide range.

We’ve already seen this impact of uncertainty in the recording, movie, and publishing industries. The big industry giants are largely chasing the blockbusters these days and letting the midlist and minor talent wither. I believe the major reason is simple–they can predict the blockbuster payoffs better. Is another James Patterson novel going to sell? Yep. Is this unknown author writing a fantasy young adult series going to sell? That’s a gamble (which they’ve lost more than once).

However, we shouldn’t entirely discount the problems of digital transmission. The artist can’t control what happens with copies of their work or how many copies get made by others. The copies are de facto free.

Which means that the cost for these art forms is more reflective of the cost of sculpture and much of history. The true costs all reside in the first production. How does that get funded?

I can’t help wondering if we’re headed to a realm with more traditional patrons. I’ve recently participated in a Kickstarter campaign (for Nobilis Reed, here) and I may end up going that route for Deep Dish, if I can’t get a publisher interested.

I also wouldn’t be surprised at more ‘garage shop’ operations where artists bootstrap their way into sustainability. It’s a harder, longer road, but it might end up being just as valid.

No answers–just musings.

Jasper Fforde’s sixth Thursday Next novel, One of our Thursdays is Missing, recently came out in hardback. He’s one of the few authors I still buy hardback books for, sight unseen. While his other series are interesting, his forte is really the Thursday Next novels.

First, they’re not erotica, and they have no real sex in them. They’re a warped modern silly world that involves how books are created, which is why I feel I can justify reviewing them here. Basically, they’re good, they spend a lot of time musing about the business of writing and the creative process, and they’re fun.

Thursday Next’s universe can charitably be described as an alternate reality where time travel exists, as do the paranormal, dodos, cheese smuggling, Richard the III performances conducted like Rocky Horror, and Croquet being the national sport of England. The craziness is reminiscent of Douglas Adams, but is far more accessible and less strange for the sole purpose of being strange.

Thursday Next, the name of the narrator and lead character, discovers in the first novel, The Eyre Affair, that she can leap into books. There, the characters hide backstage until they are being read, at which point they strut on stage and say their lines. Of course, the ability to move between the fictional world and the real world is of significant interest to some villains and the Goliath Corporation–the multinational of evil that invokes Milo Minderbender and Catch-22. Fortunately, Thursday Next is a war veteran (from The Charge of the Light Brigade), a decent investigator, and a heck of an adventuring heroine.

In the following novels, Thursday Next becomes one of the top agents in Jurisfiction–the book world police. They’re responsible for making sure that the characters follow the stories laid out for them by the authors, as well as keeping elements from one novel from creeping into another. Failure can mean something like “that lighthearted cooking farce” Titus Andronicus turns into something completely different. We also learn how much control authors really have over their characters and storylines, as plot features and scenery details are bargained and traded in The Well of Lost Plots, and actors are trained to become lead characters or consigned to side parts.

The sixth novel, One of our Thursdays in Missing, goes meta. The narrator isn’t the original Thursday Next, but her fictional alter ego, from the book written about Thursday Next. She has to investigate the original’s disappearance, cope with actors in her book who aren’t interested in following their lines, and deal with the possibility of being less read (which leads to the characters’ destruction unless they can find another book).

The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel

is available from The Tattered Cover in paperback. It’s the first book in the series.

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

is also available from Tattered Cover in hardback. It’s the most recent book in the series.

(Why The Tattered Cover? See my post here).

Okay, I stole the title of this post from Avenue Q’s song, “The Internet is for Porn,” which I saw last weekend during its Denver tour stop. In many ways, the song was so hilarious because it’s true. Porn has driven much of the internet for some time.

But that’s well trod ground. Instead, I want to muse about one of the uncomfortable realities of being an erotica writer. If I’m doing my job right, somewhere there’s a guy grabbing his dick as he reads my stories.

It can be a mildly disturbing image. I’m heterosexual and I admit that I kinda like the image of a hot woman reaching for her vibrator when she pulls up my stories (and it has happened), but the world does not consist solely of hot women, even if your definition of hot, like mine, is reasonably broad (yes, GF, you qualify). So the visual of a guy taking care of business in front of his computer screen is not one I particularly want in front of my eyeballs.

But the reality is that most consumers of online porn and erotica are men. Most of my audience is men. I’m not exactly writing lesbian romance stories here. Which brings me back to the reality–if I’m doing my job right, I’m going to inspire some guys to “doubleclick.”

Now, obviously, that’s not my only “job” when I write. Primarily, I intend to entertain. I also like to inspire thought, which at least for me is entertaining. Yes, there are times I want something mindless for my entertainment, but Hollywood and TV do a great job of providing that. So I write what I want to read. There are some stories on this site that barely rise above stroke. There are some that have so little sexual content as to barely qualify as erotica. After all, one of my personal favorites is Eye of the Hurricane, which is neither happy nor erotic.

I repeat. I write what I want to read.

This has meant that I’ve passed up some professional calls for submission because while I’ve got the skill, the topics don’t particularly grab me. I’m going to read the story myself a dozen times before the main audience sees it so I’d better like it.

It also means, for an erotic scene, it has to have appeal to me. Now I’m not going to be doing any doubleclicking to my own story–any residual arousal gets squashed when I’m fumbling for a way to avoid writing ‘thrust’ for the third time in a single paragraph. But it has to get my pulse up. If it doesn’t, then I’m not doing it well.

And that’s the dirty little secret of erotica, particularly of the internet variety. The writer isn’t supposed to admit, “I wrote this because I found it hot.” The reader isn’t supposed to admit, “I found this so hot that I did something about it.”

One of the things that makes Avenue Q so much fun (and that’ll have to be a separate post) is that it dares to say what we don’t normally openly admit. The internet is for porn, and that’s ultimately kinda cool.

Once again, I recently found myself in a conversation about what it takes for writing to be elevated to literature, or Art.

On Art, I can’t help but recall my old Shakespeare professor who said that poetry was “a shortcut to the heart and soul.” I’ve since realized that definition rightly applies to Art with the capital A. We make Art when we connect with someone else.

And by that definition, Art is forced to be individualistically defined. There are people who don’t get Shakespeare, just as there are people who don’t get Opera. It doesn’t connect, so it’s not Art to them, even if the hoity-toity or academic set says it is.

Part of the reason I like that definition is that, for me, the most incredible written story ever was not Shakespeare or some other classic. It wasn’t even an award winning story of its time. It’s “Creative Constructions, Inc.” by Kent Patterson, published in Analog in 1991.

Kent died in 1995, which is truly unfortunate, because I never got a chance to let him know how powerful that story was for me. I’ve re-read it a few times a year for nearly two decades now. Objectively, by the standards of the Science Fiction community, it’s not much, and by the standards of the literary world, it’s just a trifling entertainment.

But fuck ‘em. It’s Art to me. And that’s enough.

If we work hard as writers, we might be able to make a few bucks or even make a living. Maybe we’ll even be lucky and be remembered and studied in a couple of decades. Or maybe we’ll connect with someone in a way that what we thought was a piece of simple entertainment turned out to rock their world.

Sorry to be so dramatic, but that’s my response to the pretentiousness about what’s Art and what is not.

But one of the arguments about Art is that it’s “what lasts.” Maybe a lot of 19th century literature isn’t all that good writing, but it’s still around. The lesser works, or less popular works have faded away. I could live with that definition somewhat, if not for the economic contributors that often matter as much. Did a given story last because it was “great” or because it was the pet project of someone with money, who could afford to keep it in print?

This question is not purely hypothetical, given the magic of the web. I mentioned my appreciation of Kent’s story to someone who knew someone and soon I found myself talking to the literary executor of Kent’s estate. This other author had inherited the responsibility of managing all of Kent’s works, both those published and unpublished. He managed to get a few other stories sold, but then time and the nature of the business pushed the effort to the backburner.

And now the magic of the web kicks in again. With self-publishing through Amazon and Smashwords and other venues, all those old works don’t have to disappear when the last copies of 1990′s science fiction magazines crumble. The literary executor is working to bring them out, and I am thrilled. It may not be soon, and it may be derailed by bumps not currently foreseeable, but there may be a day soon where I can point to something and say, “That is Art.”

And by the longevity definition, I might be right. If the story lives on, in part because it connected with me so personally, who is to say it won’t be studied in some literature course in 200 years?

So maybe what’s Art can be what’s personal and what lasts. And debates otherwise… well, what’s the point?

The other day, a family friend was over and remarked on a grammatical problem she regularly had in her writing. Now she’s a professional freelance non-fiction writer, but she said the problem was in dialogue, particularly in one story. Of course, my ears perked up, but I found I really couldn’t ask, “Really? Are you writing fiction too?” And the reason was simple–if I displayed too much interest in the craft of writing, I might have to explain why.

Similarly, a few months ago, a coworker and I were complaining about the day job. I said that, if I could, I’d retire and write full time. Oops. She wanted to know what I’d written. Since I didn’t know her well enough to give her a straight answer, I danced around it.

Both cases felt like I was stuck in an erotica closet. I couldn’t openly admit that I write erotica to people I didn’t quite know well enough to trust that their reaction would be positive. So I bit my tongue, pretended I knew nothing, and moved on.

This ‘closet’ is actually one of my biggest incentives to write some non-erotica stories, like those that get mentioned in my queue. I can always admit that I write then, without necessarily admitting the breadth of genres I write in. I can discuss the craft and business of writing with folks I do only happen to know casually. I have less to keep segregated between identities.

But even then, that’s just a beard. Yes, my other writing will be “legit,” but right now my heart is here–in sexual fiction. It’s far more fascinating than the standard stories that dominate most other genres.

Furthermore, I fail to see how erotica really deserves to be in a closet. Yes, 90% of it is crap, but having read some amateur science fiction recently, I think that applies to other genres. Good writing is good writing. That should be the way to keep score–not the subject matter.

But that’s an ideal, and not the world we live in. So until then, I’ll keep my mouth shut in those situations where I can’t quite be sure it’s safe to come out of the closet.