Aphrodisia Authors :: Blog

This week is Romantic Times week, and I’m going to be doing a flat-out headless chicken run for the whole conference. Not that I mind, especially. That’s kind of how you have to roll at these get-togethers. There’s workshops and parties and presentations and parties and reader events and promotion and parties. Did I mention the parties? There might be one or two, I’ve heard.

One of the big things that I had to prep for was getting some pretty give-away stuff together. I have magnets, and I did some cute excerpt booklets that people can take, but my favorite goodie is the bookmark designed by Croco Designs that shows off the cover of my Novemeber release, Primal Heat. For those who don’t know, Croco designed the Aphrodisia Author website and blog as well as many other lovely author sites, including mine. I always love what she does for me.

Here’s the bookmark. I want to pet it, hug it, squeeze it, and call it George.

Dane, The Lords of Satyr (June!)

I’m late with my post! What else is new? Seems like my blog date creeps up so quickly on me. Are you one of those on-time people, or are you often just a few minutes late for things? Do your friends get mad if you’re late? Or if you’re a punctual person, does it bug you when your friends are late?

Also, I’m at the Readers At Home online event all week at

http://lucymonroeblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/gotta-love-hea-by-elizabeth-amber.html

Just drop a comment to be entered! Lucy has done a wonderful job organizing this event and there are many great prizes. (I can tell Lucy is a punctual person, btw. She was very organized!)

I don’t have my copies of Dane yet, or I’d offer one here. Next month for sure! It releases June first. I’m excited!!!
Excerpt: http://www.elizabethamber.com/excerptDane.html

Everything’s up in the air. Or wait that’s me..and my luggage. We’re all flying, probably when you’re reading this. I’m on a plane to RT (squee!) along with friends/authors Lauren Dane, TJ Michaels, Mark Henry, Richelle Mead… I think even more. Oh yeah, it’s going to be all kinds of fun. Hope we’re not getting into too much trouble

So while this week is bound to be a blast, I’ve had a great month over all. I had another group signing earlier in the month. Spring Fling, which was a group of authors (here’s a few of us below!). You can also see my cover flat in the pic for Need Me which comes out end of June! Squee! And I have a fun little blurb to share with you now!

But if you’re at RT come say hello! I’m an RT virgin so will probably be wandering around with wide eyes. I can’t wait to see everyone and have so much fun!

Nika has trained her body into a deadly weapon—the better to take what she wants from any world, especially the well-protected planet Belton. But the moment she sees Lt. Brendon Marshall, her weapon is turned against her. A man like him could incinerate a woman’s priorities with one look. And since he’s guarding the very object of her desire, it could be so simple to use him and never look back. As long as she can ignore a more intense pleasure than she’s ever known—and a wilder need than she’s ever imagined…

Print version pre-order.
Kindle version pre-order.

If you sit and listen to any group of writers talk, eventually, you’ll hear the familiar question of, “Are you a plotter or a pantser?”

No, this isn’t some secret handshake or a writing outfit, it’s something which was created to bring torment and evil down upon every writer’s head!!! (Okay, got a little carried away there, sorry…) But seriously, plotter, is just what it sounds like – a writer who plots out their book, some meticulously, some loosely. And a pantser is someone who has a vague idea what their book is about, and who the characters are, and just sits down and writes and sees what happens as it goes.

Now, I have tried both of these methods, and thought I’d share my pain and suffering so you would be better able to compare and contrast.

I started out trying to be a plotter. After all, I mistakenly figured all writers were. I mean, how could they write all those intricate twists and turns and then bring back in something that happened on page 4 without careful planning, right? So, when I got an idea for my very first book, I scribbled down scene and plot ideas on a piece of paper and had the entire book planned out before I even tried to write one chapter.

So, what happened? I hated it and considered throwing myself on my sharp pencil and putting and end to my suffering. It just wasn’t any fun for me to plan out everything first, because by the time I started writing, I was sick of the story!

But, I wanted to be a writer, so once I finished the plotting, I sat down and wrote the first three chapters. Granted, they were three of the most horrible chapters known to man, but hey, they were my first three chapters of a book that I was GOING to publish, so I was doing a happy dance.

Fast forward to my first meeting with my critique group. They all read my chapters and besides telling me things like numbers are spelled out, okay is spelled out and not written as “ok,” the hero and the heroine should probably meet in the first three chapters, no head hopping and etc, they weren’t warm and fuzzy with my plot either. Too contrived, too predictable, too cliche. And I have to admit looking back, they were totally and completely right.

I rewrote those chapters and struggled through several dozen more rewrites to finish that book. I did sell that book, it came out as Into a Dangerous Mind, which was an RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Small Press Contemporary Paranormal for 2006. It’s currently with my agent so we can resell it. But the moral of that story is, the book did turn out okay.

BUT – I found out the hard way that as I wrote, I would find better ideas and I would end up deviating from the plot, and then I would spend countless hours going back and refiguring out the plot. GRRRRR!!!!

For my second book, I decided that plotting was not for me, so screw plotting. I was now a self-proclaimed pantser. So, I sat down to write what would become Stone Maiden. I wrote and wrote and my plot meandered and curled and twisted and I ended up rewriting and banging my head against the wall to get out of dead ends I’d written myself into. But, on a bright note, I liked this better than plotting! The book did well, and finaled in the Golden Quill contest and was nominated for eCataRomance Reviewer’s choice award. Yet, I knew I hadn’t quite found a solution which worked for me. On one bright note – I found out that you can still make those twisty plots happen and tie in things you did on page 4 because your subconscious is really great about remembering those things and bringing them to the surface when you need them!

By the time I sat down to write Fire Maiden, I was leery of trying either of the methods above. So, I tried my best to combine the two. I brainstormed with my critique group and scribbled down important things I knew I wanted in the book and didn’t want to forget. Then I did some character sketches – birth to present, which really helped me get to know my characters and to write in their voice. Only THEN did I sit down and write. This allowed me enough structure to not totally flounder, since I knew a general direction I wanted to go in, but also allowed me the freedom to use new ideas as they came to me. Woo Hoo! I had found my style.

Is it perfect? Hell, no. I still bang my head against the wall on plenty of occasions, but it’s a good fit for me and taking the best parts of both worlds has helped me finish all my other books to date.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not touting that this is right for you. I’ve tried to show you a little of my painful journey above so you can see that everyone is different. I have a good friend who plots every minute detail – to a point which would drive me insane. But it works for her and she gets books done – that’s what counts. I have another good friend who is a writing machine, and she doesn’t plot at all. She comes up with an idea and some general character ideas and she sits down to write and the story spins out under her fingertips.

None of us are doing it wrong, we are doing it right – for us. Don’t let anyone tell you that X is the gospel of how to write, I don’t care what it is. Everyone is different, their brains work differently, their work styles and comfort levels are different and we all can’t be neatly compartmentalized into the same box. This same logic goes for “writing rules” which I hate. For every writing rule which states, you can NOT do X or you’ll never sell, I’ve seen people break it successfully. Just make sure you know the rule well so you are breaking it on purpose and not accidentally!

Well, there’s my wisdom for the day. I’m off to work on my WIP. If you want something steamy to read to perk up your week, head on out to my newest release – Trio of Seduction, written as Cassie Ryan. You can find it in any of the brick and mortar stores with my steamy cover Just be forewarned, it’s a VERY hot book. So, if you like that – go grab a copy and in October I’ll have a fresh new smokin’-hot series called The Sisters of Darkness Series about Four Succubus in Hell’s Version of Witness Protection.

Cassie

On Tuesday, Simply #5 comes out, Simply Insatiable features Lord Minshom as the hero. I’ve had a number of readers contacting me wondering why I would ever want to write about such an unpleasant man, and how on earth was I going to make him heroic without changing his character entirely? All good questions and I’m sure that for some readers, I’m not going to have done it right at all.

But I really wanted to write about him and my editor was also excited by the story I proposed, so I just got on with it. And, by the end, I wasn’t sure if I’d created a true romance hero, but I knew that I’d come to respect and understand my character so well that I was happy he’d found love again-on his own particular terms. Some people will get him and others won’t, I’m prepared for that and I don’t regret writing the book at all. It’s not an easy book, it is dark and some of the subject matter made me want to cry, but sometimes you just have to go where the character takes you and understand them, even when they don’t understand themselves.

I hope you’ll all enjoy it. Let me know

I’m giving away a copy to one blog reader today!
So comment below about how you feel about villains getting their own books, or not, or anything else I’ve chatted about. I’ll add the winners name to this post next Saturday.

Kate x

I write erotica. Yeah, well you wouldn’t be blogging for Aphrodisia if you weren’t. Big deal

Okay, the deal is I’m in a confessing mood this morning. Way back when my only connection to the then new world of erotica came from reading ‘those’ books. Well, to be honest, my reaction was a far cry from a shrug and a, “Yeah, so?” Reading erotica turned me on. Hey, I really didn’t expect that. After all, I’ve written romance, suspense, and historicals and none of those genres kicked me. Category romance didn’t get me all hot and bothered, I didn’t go around locking the doors while working on suspense, and I didn’t dress in period costume as I pounded out my historicals.

But reading about in-your-face sex, holy cow! Now you’ve got my attention and interest to say nothing of my blood pressure which is kind of surprising considering I’ve been married to the same man for about a million years.

“This is what I want to try,” I declared before I’d finished reading my first erotica—which happened to have been written by my friend Kate Douglas. “Hmm. Fine,” I yammered at myself. “So go for it.”
How, the practical side of my nature challenged as I fanned my flaming cheeks. How does an old married broad go about penning words I hope my mother never reads?

The light bulb flashed. Research. After all, research got me into and through those seven historicals. Next question: what kind of research? Not the personal kind, thank you very much. Not only didn’t I want to wind up in divorce court, it can be a dangerous world out there. I don’t know the rules. Heck, I don’t even know where the games are played. Besides, I’m pretty sure the good stuff starts after my bedtime.

That’s when I started to let my fingers do the walking, on the Internet. I prowled Amazon. I discovered books about Kama Sutra. (Yes, I live a pretty isolated life) I devoured Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden. I downloaded a fifty-page tutorial about the ways and wherefores of the female climax and wound up highlighting darn near the whole thing. The Kama Sutra books (if you don’t know) are unabashedly illustrated and demonstrate more sexual positions than my body could accomplish back when I was lean and mean. I rejected some for the simple reason I couldn’t describe the necessary gyrations but others, oh my!

But erotica is a lot more than Part A fits in Slot A. Like all other successful fiction, it hinges on emotion. Feelings. The heart. The mind. What’s happening between the ears of my characters became the vital question.

Shortly after I stated writing erotica, I half stumbled and half marched into bondage, BDSM, and capture. Some editor let it out that bondage was a top seller and that got my wheels turning. I confess: my first sexual fantasies were about becoming some pirate’s hostage. (Or was it Tarzan’s captive?) I loved the idea of being tied up and reining as a macho hunk’s prize possession. Why not take those fantasies out of the closet or wherever I’d stashed them and have fun and make money writing about damsels in distress who just happen to be having the sexual adventure of their lives?

Research time once more since I’ve never been a BDSM player, and in the real world, bondage would scare the you know what out of me. Back to the Internet and stumbling into a pile of sites that were so amateurishly produced I couldn’t get past the bad acting, and/or infected my computer. Was I ever going to get honest and open insight into bondage-loving women and the men eager to accommodate them? Where to go to tap into my own libido so I could authentically produce the kind of stories I wanted to?

Kink. Specifically www.Kink.com. Even more specifically www.Hogtied.com and www.SexAndSubmission.com. There are other sites within Kink devoted to one fetish or another, but my pump is primed at those two places. Hogtied is the granddaddy of the whole enterprise (and that’s exactly what this multi-million dollar business is). Sex And Submission banks on a number of fantasy scenarios. At both sites, nubile young women are stripped naked and tied into positions I didn’t know the human body was capable of assuming by master riggers.

I’ll leave it to your imagination what takes place. Suffice to say, at the end of a shoot, both the women and men are happy and satisfied customers. I can’t relate to the more extreme scenes and knowing everyone’s being paid for their performances gets a tad of a bit in the way of the fantasy. But I listen closely to what’s being said, the look in the eye, the body language, the sights and sounds of a climax.

Oh yes, my imagination has taken flight, bolstered by vivid visuals. Just because this old broad walks the straight and narrow doesn’t mean she can’t have her kinks. Or write about those kinks.
Now, where are those handcuffs?

And a question: where, if anywhere, do you go online to prime your pump?

Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

My book Sex Drive (from Aphrodisia) has been chosen by Cosmopolitan as their red-hot read for May! (By the way, that’s the issue labeled on the front, “The Sexy Issue – So much hot stuff!”) How cool – sorry, make that seriously hot – is that?

Why me? People have asked how I managed this. Sheer luck. I had absolutely nothing to do with it, except of course that I wrote the book. As I understand it, publishers send their sexy books to Cosmo and the magazine picks the ones they want to excerpt. My guess is, they liked mile-high sex! Well, who wouldn’t? My heroine and hero, Theresa and Damien, sure had fun joining that club.

So, surprise number 1 was hearing that my book had been chosen. What a total thrill! I was in Cabo San Lucas when I picked up the email from my publisher, and I promptly celebrated by going to the bar and ordering – what else, but … a cosmo. Yum!

Surprise number 2, which wasn’t such a big one because I’d already heard about other authors’ experiences, was how much Cosmo changed my writing. In the end, I can maybe sort of recognize my characters and scene. LOL. But that’s fair, because one of the most important things with any kind of writing is to know your audience. When I’m writing a book, I have 300+ pages to develop character, emotion, and story. Cosmo has a page and a half to provide a sexy excerpt for their target audience.

If you’re interested in how my 7 page scene differs from their 1.5 pages, you can check out the original of my scene on my website at http://www.susanlyons.ca/books/sex_drive_excerpt.php (along with another excerpt from earlier in the book).

For the most part, I understand why Cosmo edited the way they did. But here’s one thing I totally don’t get. In my book, the flight from Sydney, Australia to Vancouver, BC, stops in Honolulu – and hero Damien, a thriller writer who has a reading scheduled in Honolulu, persuades the no longer buttoned-up sociology prof Theresa Fallon to “lay over” with him. In the excerpt, Honolulu has become L.A. Uh, pardon me (and nothing against L.A.), but I think Honolulu’s a way more romantic, sexy venue. After all, Damien and Theresa do have sex on the beach – as in, Waikiki! So, what was the logic for switching Honolulu for L.A.? If you have any theories, I’d love to hear them.

Sex Drive is the first book in my sexy “planes, trains, automobiles, and a cruise ship” Wild Ride to Love series about three sisters who travel home to their baby sister’s wedding. Along the way, they find romances of their own—and learn that the journey to love truly is one wild ride! The second book, Love, Unexpectedly, is out this month from Kensington Brava under my pen name Susan Fox. There’s info on both books (and all my other titles), including book videos, behind-the-scenes notes, discussion guides, recipes, my monthly contest, and other good stuff on my website at http://www.susanlyons.ca. I hope you drop over for a visit.

Sometimes you just need a good laugh. Last night as I was tucking my youngest, Alisha, into bed and she said something silly, we both started cracking up. For several seconds we just sat there laughing. Soon, tears were streaming down our cheeks. Alisha can do that to me though. No matter how crazy or hectic my day, she can always make me laugh. I love a kid with a sense of humor, don’t you?

Our lives get so busy sometimes that we forget to stop and enjoy the silly things. We had an esp. busy weekend here. We were all in the mood to do some serious Spring cleaning. So, the girls and I cleaned out my closet. Ended up taking 7 large trash bags of clothes, shoes, and purses to goodwill. Um, wow. Then we cleaned out my car, which hadn’t been done for like…a year? Okay, so I was a little behind. After that I got on a laundry kick. Ended up washing ALL the clothes, blankets, rugs and even the dog beds. So, we went at it. I still have a few more closets to clean, and the floor to steam clean. But, let’s not get crazy. LOL

To reward ourselves we grabbed the dogs and went to the park. There’s a hill and trails we like to hike. We worked up a good sweat and had a blast. Love this spring weather!

Here’s a few pix:

The first is my youngest, Alisha. We’re just starting the trail up.

This is Kati and our puppy Nutmeg. After coming back down.

And this is the view from the top of the hill.

So, we worked, then we hiked. Afterwards, we all got ice cream, Nutmeg included, and came home and collapsed. I watched Alisha kill people on Call of Duty: Mondern Warfare the rest of the night. It wasn’t long before I was yelling, “watch the guy in the corner, he’s coming at you! Shoot him! Shoot him!” LOL We get really into our games around here.

Anyway, I’m not sure what the girls will have in store for me this weekend, but I hope I’m up for it!

So, anyone else have Spring fever? Surely I’m not the only one!

Some days writing Romance comes easy.  Some days when the words just seem to overflow from my Muse’s Well of Inspiration. These days usually come when the kids are at school or the nights they’re spending over at friends. And inspiration usually favors me after my wonderful hubby and I have had a chance to spend some quality “loving time”.

But then there are those other days. Days when the everyday acts involved with living get in the way of feeling romantically inspired. And on these days, even when I find a quiet hour or so to write, it can be difficult to switch gears from the mindset of Mommy/Homemaker over to Erotic Romance Author.  The days when the most amorous thing I hear all day is my husband’s sexy voice as he lays down the ultimatum,  “If you kids don’t stop fighting right now I swear to god I will turn off the Spongebob and you will sit there and listen while I tell you every explicit detail about  the night you were conceived!”

There have been some days when I’m on a real writing streak but then Reality decides to throw a monkey wrench into my creative juices.  Sometimes it is so pronounced that I can tell my writing is being unintentionally and insidiously influenced by genre styles not ordinarily associated with Romance:

...Oh, the luscious places we’ll go, the erotic heights we will see, when I undress you and you undress me!

…so you do not like green condom on Ma’am, but its all our pharmacy sells, Stud-I-Am

Other times, I have found myself in the midst of a steamy, yummy passage when suddenly the scene take a dive toward an unforeseen situation:

His lean, tanned biceps glistened with sweat as his strong hands touched her small box. With a flick of a finger he stroked her waiting bulb. It was smooth to his touch, ready for ignition only his virile ministrations could provide. As he mounted the chair and reached for the portal he noticed an impression skimming the small surface. The intense expression that came over his face sent a shudder of apprehension up her spine.

“Oh, hell this is a 40 Watt. This fixture takes a damned 75!”

And then there’s the frustrating times I simply can’t get the Hannah Montana or Rug Rats themes out of my head. I typically walk away from the computer when this happens; turn on the radio and listen to the local Metal station until the nausea subsides and my brain has been Exorcized.

But in the end, its all good. I adore my family and wouldn’t trade my life for anything (nope, not even a NY Times Bestseller!). I am also happy to report that this week I have managed to get in a couple of thousand words in on a new novel! So, to share my happiness I want to give away a book. If you are a resident of the continental USA and leave a comment here you will be in the running for a giveaway choice from amongst my Kensington published books. The winning commenter will be chosen by random by the end of the day (11:00 PM EST).  I regret I can’t extend the chance to blog readers from other countries, but my budget is pretty tight right now.

~Anya

www.anyahoward.com

While I’m so not a geek, or gadget-happy, the moment I saw my first iPad ad early this year, I HAD to have one! Bought mine direct from the Apple store online (no waiting in lines, thanks!) the first day they went up for order, and got free shipping, and received it on THE DAY they first came out. Way too cutting-edge and totally out of character for me.
And my iPad is totally cool!
I’ve never owned a laptop because I didn’t want to lug another “suitcase” on trips, so this little 7×9” gizmo fits inside my other carry-on. My case arrives tomorrow. I also opted for the full keyboard with a dock, which holds the screen at a better angle for writing and gives you a real keyboard (and the dock’s a charger). The onscreen keyboard is probably no challenge for those of you who’ve been texting and iPhoning, but hunt-and-peck has been my limit on it and frankly, I’m afraid it’ll slip off my lap if that’s where I’m entering emails, etc.
A COOL surprise for writers: while you can’t get a Word app for an iPad, you can buy Pages for $10 and I discovered, quite by happenstance, that when you email yourself a Word doc attachment, it opens just fine, but you then get the option to translate it into Pages and all your formatting returns! And the onscreen tutorial for Pages is hands-on and very easy to follow. So when I take this toy on my cruise, end of this month, I can have any docs I might need for working on my current proposals awaiting my in my email box. NOT that I intend to spend a lot of time working when we’re going to the Panama Canal! But on a 15-day cruise with 7 of those days at sea, you can bet I’ll be VERY familiar with what this iPad can do by the time I get back!
I hope to do some blogging from the ship!
I might buy my first e-book! The iBook app is free, and I’ve got it loaded. I’ve synced my iTunes playlists, and loaded my photos on, and got my mail accounts set up and working. I will admit that I learned a LOT by having my Mac man come over to help me with it yesterday: he’d played with his iPad for about 10 hours already, so he has the tapping and sliding and scrolling and all the other on-surface “moves” down, and he knows a lot of tips and tricks because that’s his side business as a Mac consultant. Way more fun to learn by watching and doing than by wading through the looooong user guide.

So did YOU get an iPad? Chime in here about what you like or found disappointing! Or if you have iPad envy and want to ask questions, do that, too! It’s always fun to share this stuff with friends and other writer-types. You can probably tell, again, that I am SO not a geek, so I’m betting I’ll pick up lots of good stuff from anyone who cares to comment!