It All Started With Me!

Kate Noble is the heroine of our very first erotic romance release ~ The Diary, published at Extasy Books five years ago. She’s been begging us to let her speak, so without further ado, here’s Kate!

I’m so excited for my creators, the married couple who write as Adriana Kraft. I’ve been watching them from my spot on the shelves of their backlist, and have they ever been busy!

First off, a word about how I got started: My creators love art, and they met in Chicago, so it should come as no surprise that their first published novel is set in Chicago, and they gave me the role of curator at a small Northside art gallery. Personally, I’d have preferred Chicago’s famous Art Institute, but no complaints. I’m very happy with the life I lead – now, that is.

They sure gave me quite a ride! When they met me, I’d just turned forty, still single, in fact pretty sour on men, and somewhat burned out from raising my younger half sister, Luci Parker. Luci conspired with my creators to send me on a roller coaster ride – oh, but if I say any more about that, I’ll create a spoiler! So you can read more about my story HERE.

They’ve been very busy in the five years since then! They have a total of twenty-seven books released, plus short stories in five anthologies. I’ve loved watching them grow as writers – all right, I’ll confess, they gave me a little purple prose here and there, but that never stopped me from enjoying the sex scenes they wrote for me J. They put me in some really yummy ménage scenes, plus some hot bi action to help prep me for chasing my man, and those are themes they’ve continued to develop.

Perhaps it’s no surprise they started writing swinging stories not long after I was “born.” They like to be playful and deliver lots of hot erotic scenes, so that’s a pretty natural lifestyle for them to explore in their books. You can check out more about those stories HERE.

Oh, and don’t let me forget – Luci has her own story now, Writing Skin, and I’ve forgiven her, just so you know.

I can’t wait to find out what my creators will come up with next. I hear they’ve been exploring Welsh history and Celtic lore – maybe there’s some time travel in their future, or perhaps in their past? That’s something I’d love to experience!

The Myth of the Potluck by EM Lynley

I had twelve people over for dinner the other night. It's been a few years since I lived in a place large enough to have a dinner party and I was very excited about the opportunity to host our monthly dinner. I used to enjoy entertaining and cooking for guests and had people over often in the past.

Generally, I would come up with an impressive menu and spend the day cooking (or the evening before). It was time-consuming and expensive to provide the kind of dinner I like to share with guests. But everyone was suitably impressed with both my cooking and entertaining skills. I do love to cook, so having people over is a great way to try out new dishes.

But this time, it was going to be easy, and cheap. Our group only does potlucks. Over the several years we've been meeting and eating, most of participants have developed their usual offering. Everyone RSVPs with what they are bringing and we all descend upon the host. Simple. All I have to do is vacuum and put out plates, cutlery, glasses, napkins, etc. Right?

Wrong.

Whoever said potlucks were easy was dead wrong. Instead of preparing three or four dishes for my guests, I had to contend with eight different dishes, each of which required different handling. One person brought frozen pizza (gourmet pizza… not El Cheapo) that we had to bake. Another person needed something heated in the oven, at a different temperature than the pizza. Two others needed the microwave. Someone else had to assemble their salad.

All this had to be done just before serving. I have a tiny kitchen. No room for five people to do five different activities in there. But everyone wanted to help, so we all bumped into each other.

Everyone needed serving utensils. Everyone wanted more glasses. More napkins. More this. More that. And they didn't sit where I expected them to.

The result: yes, it was cheaper, but I felt totally stressed by a dozen different demands just to get the food on the table. When they left they all needed more assistance with foil and bags and borrowing Tupperware to give someone some of the leftovers.

NOTE: photo is not my actual kitchen, but more of my impression of what the kitchen looked like.

What I thought was going to be fun and easy turned out to be anything but. Will I do it again? Probably. I loved spending time with my friends and having them enjoy my home. But I think next time I might just cook for them, then let them do all the dishes.

On the bright side, I made fresh bread for dinner and everyone loved it, and we still have some leftover for Sunday French toast. Yum

EM Lynley, Rainbow Award winner and EPIC finalist, writes gay romance and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rarer Than Rubies, her latest book came out this week from Dreamspinner Press. It's "Indiana Jones meets Romancing the Stone" only gayer. Also available on Kindle from Amazon. Visit her website for Free Reads, news and more. 

Are Self Published Authors Getting Free Pass From Readers?

Let me start by saying that as a small publisher and long time writer, I believe as a whole they are. Sure, there are good experienced published authors whose work is edited and publish-ready and there's the occasional unpublished prodigy author who's honed their skill to perfection and are as good as most published authors. To them I say welcome to the world of publishing, but let's be real. Isn't indie publishing an opening for those not near or quite good enough, for those not willing to learn their adopted trade, for those who, however long they write, would never have been good enough, and for those out to scam a quick buck?  

Having been published gives an indie, and rightfully so, a measure of accomplishment. Somewhere, sometime, somebody deemed this author's work good enough to do what publishers do, invest in him or her—invest in cover art, editing, proofing, even an ISBN number. And it carries over into their self-published work, though I have seen some who skipped or self-edited and it showed. But let's say for the sake of argument that the published author is the best, the top banana, the top of the tier of self-publishing and the prodigy is next. That leaves a ton books written by inexperienced or untalented authors out there. I have read parts of some of them. (these are the kind of books you don't finish) I liken the experience to someone scratching his or her fingernails on a blackboard. Yuck!

However, that's nothing compared to the scammers. They mostly deal in smut because it doesn't have to be a story. It only needs to be as long as a scene. And in their case it's as short as four pages, poorly written, poorly punctuated, lacking proper grammar and full of headhops. Some of them even steal free erotica from the internet and band it into short anthologies. Many of them write or steal taboo subjects with titles like Daddy does it to me while others blatantly use words like cock, pussy, cunt and fuck in their titles. Yes they sometimes get poor reviews, but they write their own reviews to confuse the issue. Some get weeded out by the host seller, but the stories are so short they can write a new story and publish it every day or two.

Yet the demand for this smut seems as unending as the supply and there's enough decent material around to keep the aficionados coming back for more, even though they occasionally write a review complaining about how they were ripped off.

So am I right? Are readers shaking their heads and cutting self-publishers slack, they wouldn't with publisher's books?

Let me know what you think.

I won't bore you with excerpts of my latest books. Just covers.

WIP

 

When the dry spell ends!!

I've been in a creative slump and for a writer that's probably one of the scariest things that can happen. My muse basically abadoned me as well as my urge to create. For me that's as close to dying as i can get and still have a pulse. For you creative people you know just how horrible that is. For me my writing is a release, a stress reducer, a way to take a break from the fast paced frenzy of life. I need the time out. It's necessary to my basic survival to have that bit of downtime so when I'm not creating everyone around me knows it based on my listless and megabitchy mood. I know a lot of my creative blowout was due to stress. We had and still have a few major family issues going on and times like those to not lead to being creative.
To break the spell I finally sat down and forced myself to write, no matter how dark or ugly the story that poured out. What I got was very dark and nasty and it will never see the public light of day but afterwards I felt so much better. It was like exocising a demon that had been living inside me for almost a year.
Now I'm slowly getting back to creating. I had two new releases come out this month, one a self published lesbian erotic anthology I put together with my lesbian author's group, titled Sapphic Planet, which is also the group name. And the second, my very first ever acceptance from Cleis Press titled, The Harder She Comes. It's an anthology of smoking hot butch/femme lesbian erotica edited by the amazing DL King. I also got word that another story I submitted to Cleis has been accepted and will come out sometime this year in a lesbian erotic sports anthology.
The dry spell has finally ended and I hope I never go that long without writing ever again.

You can find links to the two new books at:
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphic-Planet-ebook/dp/B007B5K9U8/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

It is also available in print.

And the other book can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Harder-She-Comes-ebook/dp/B007BKK55C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1332201835&sr=1-1

Enjoy!
Beth
www.bethwylde.com

My Book Was Censored!

My book "Purr" is an erotic retelling of the fairy tale "Puss In Boots". It has sold reasonably well on AllRomanceEbooks and other distributors. I was surprised until I realized how popular fairy tales are right now, what with "Grimm" and "Once Upon A Time" catching on in popularity on American TV. "Tangled" and "Puss In Boots" were hits in movie theaters. I understand a new version of "Beauty and the Beast" and (possibly) "Red Riding Hood" are coming to American TV in the fall.


So imagine my chagrin when I went to check my ranking for "Purr" at AllRomanceEbooks only to find the book had disappeared! I wondered, WTF?? Must be a glitch at ARe.


No, it wasn't.


It turned out my publisher's entire catalogue had been removed by ARe. The same thing happened at Bookstrand, another location where "Purr" was being sold. The publisher's catalogue was gone.


Paypal has made a co-ordinated attack on all major ebook vendors who use Paypal. Erotic books are targeted, especially books with taboo or extreme subject matter such as incest, pseudo-incest, bestiality, rape, and pedophilia. There were rumors that Visa pressured Paypal into censoring erotic books but it turns out Visa had nothing to do with it. Credit card companies are banks and they don't have a moral bone in their bodies. This is Paypal, pure and simple.


At first some indie publishers published books with such subject matter, especially incest stories, twincest, and pseudo-incest (step siblings, stepdaugher-stepdad, cousins, etc.). This was a minority of the  erotic books out there but they had their own following. When all the vendors including Amazon and Barnes and Noble allowed indie authors to publish with them, many more of these kinds of books were published. Whilst there were some good self-published stories in the mix, most were untalented, untrained, rough, and poorly edited. There were titles about doing it with Daddy or identical twins getting involved in a threesome. These were short stories intended to shock and they took off like gangbusters. They turned into an infestation. Apparently Amazon  had unsuccessfully tried to get some control over that kind of content but it wasn't successful.


So Paypal started censoring fiction. The problem with censorship is that it's a slippery slope. Who gets to decide what is obscene? What kind of content will be targeted next? I've heard rumors that BDSM stories are next on the slag heap. What constitutes consensual sex v. non-consensual? Who gets to decide?


So, in the midst of all this turmoil, erotica and erotic romance writers have seen their fiction censored.  I am one of those writers. This includes fiction that does not fall under those taboo categories. Besides, if Paypal is going to target books with such content, when will it censor "Lolita", "The Story Of O", or even the Bible? I seriously doubt those books will be affected.


Below are pertinent links about Visa and Forbes (reporting that Visa had nothing to do with this) and a petition to sign to protest the censorship.

Here are the links:

Forbes

Visa’s letter to Banned Writers.

Change.org petition

Although my book "Purr" has been censored on ARe and Bookstrand, you may purchase it at Amazon Kindle. Here's information for you if you wish to read my banned book.

Purr: A Puss In Boots Twisted Tale

Blurb:

Muca was a kitty with a little something extra. Not your ordinary Puss In Boots, she shifted into human form to entice all she met. She aspired for her master to become the richest and most respected man in the land, but her job was cut out for her. He was but a lowly cobbler whom she tried to pass off as the Marquis of Carabas in order to convince the local farmers to trust her against a cruel ogre who tormented them. Would the farmers believe her, and would they find her charms as alluring as she found theirs?

Just a little funny for Daylight Savings Time

Sometime during the night, I've lost an hour, lost my brain, and I'm still trying to figure out where I put my purse.  Yes, I know that isn't a real unique situation for me (scatterbrained? Me?), but instead of a long, rambling post while I try to find myself. I thought I'd share a funny from a friend that made me giggle. It reminded me that no matter how weird your day goes, sometimes you just have to laugh.

Enjoy!

~Cassidy
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Cassidy McKay 

Website: http://www.cassidymckay.com  Blog: http://sexfunandromance.wordpress.com/ 

Protect and Serve: Shifting Forces - What's a girl to do when two sexy shifters both claim mating rights? - Changeling Press

Foxy: Grin and Bear It - Being wanted by the law has never been so much fun! Changeling Press

Protect and Serve: Shifting Focus - Sophia's lioness wants a new toy, and battle-hardened agent Monroe is harder to resist than catnip! Changeling Press, Mar 23, 2012

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Two aliens landed in the Arizona desert near a gas station that was closed for the night. They approached one of the gas pumps and the younger alien addressed it saying, 'Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace. Take us to your leader.'

The gas pump, of course, didn't respond.

The younger alien became angry at the lack of response.

The older alien said, 'I'd calm down if I were you.'

The younger alien ignored the warning and repeated his greeting. Again, there was no response.

Annoyed by what he perceived to be the pump's haughty attitude, he drew his ray gun and said impatiently, 'Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace. Do not ignore us this way! Take us to your leader or I will fire!'

The older alien again warned his comrade saying, 'You probably don't want to do that! I really don't think you should make him mad.'

'Rubbish,' replied the cocky, young alien. He aimed his weapon at the pump and opened fire. There was huge explosion. A massive fireball roared towards them and blew the younger alien off his feet and deposited him a burnt, smoking mess about 200 yards away in a cactus patch.

Half an hour passed. When he finally regained consciousness, he refocused his three eyes, straightened his bent antenna, and looked dazedly at the older, wiser alien who was standing over him shaking his big,green head.

'What a ferocious creature!' exclaimed the young, fried alien. 'He damn near killed me! How did you know he was so dangerous?'

The older alien leaned over, placed a friendly feeler on his crispy friend and replied, 'If there's one thing I've learned during my intergalactic travels, you don't want to mess with a guy who can loop his penis over his shoulder twice and then stick it in his ear.

Coming Out To Who?

This topic was recently discussed over at Kissa's Karma Korner. Romance, and erotic romance especially, is seen as a taboo topic by many. Who knows the reason why, but many seem to think that there is something wrong with consenting adults expressing their feelings in whatever way they choose. I, of course, do not agree. It does bring up the question of who and when you should tell that you write erotic romance.

The very first erotic romance I wrote, in hopes of publication, was Angel's Wish which is still selling over at Renaissance Ebooks. The first draft of that story was seen by me and my husband. That was it; end of story. He supported my wish to write and didn't care about the genre or pairing of characters at all. As I grew to love writing more and more and found myself with a few published stories under my belt I found a writing partner. Her name was Nyna and she was bisexual. I mention that only because she wrote mainly lesbian romance and I, being her crit partner, found that I loved the genre. Oh, my that woman could write! Hot doesn't describe her words.

At this point I still hadn't shared news of my writing with family or friends. (I did 'come out' to my son who simply shook his head and walked away from me) To my surprise and wonder Zane bought one of my stories, Geisha Girl. Her Honey Flava anthology included pairings where one was Asian. My story was/is the only lesbian story included in the anthology and it came out in print- hardback! The excitement when I got those books in the mail overwhelmed me- I told my mother. She immediately wanted to read my story. I put her off for a few weeks and then she threatened to go buy it at Walmart! Ha, ha. I gave her a signed copy and bit my nails until she called. She liked the story and didn't judge at all. (She's not a romance reader so that was a huge compliment) I've since shared all of my sweet romance stories with her. She knows about the erotic ones but chooses not to read them. I'm okay with that. Her support means the world to me. I've since told one brother, who only wanted to know how much money I make.

For me this 'coming out' journey is a process. One day everyone I pass on the street will get a Kissa Starling bookmark and business card. I'll take pictures at book signings and sing to the world that I'm an erotic romance author and I love it. It may take a while, but I'll get there in my own sweet time.

I'd love to hear some of your 'coming out' stories. I'm not alone am I?

Censorship

The Tie That Binds coming soon from http://www.romancedivine.com/. An erotic, contemporary, romantic western. 


Today I’m blogging about censorship. PayPal has a new stance when it comes to the contents of an e-book. The credit card companies have become indignant about e-books’ containing what they call porn and want the said material removed. As you know, some publishers use Paypal services to pay their authors royalties. Since the credit card companies are working closely with Paypal, they are calling the shots in what material an e-book can contain.

Several publishers are asking their authors’ to check their blurbs and excerpts in case they contain any objectionable words. The idea behind this is if the publishers are randomly checked, there won’t be any banned words in either a blurb, or excerpt. If an author finds any of these words, they report to the publisher and the publisher places asterisks in their place.

I’m wondering after all these years why the credit card companies are pressuring Paypal to screen publishers about their contents placed up for sale.

We all know the written language in the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment states Freedom of Speech to all individuals. Our forefathers established the First Amendment so that you and I could express our views without having someone judge us. Now, it seems that First Amendment Right could disappear.

If anyone interested in buying a book should take a look at the ratings first and decide if it is for them. Most books contain ratings of Adult, PG, R and Mainstream. This tells the person purchasing the book that the contents might not be right for them.

I feel this is an injustice to not only the publisher, but writer, as well. When did different organizations such as Paypal and credit card companies become so narrow-minded in its views? How will this affect sales of e-books? Do you have an opinion on what is happening at PayPal?

http://www.mary-suzanne.blogspot.com/
http://www.webspawner.com/users/Romancewriter/index.html