Aphrodisia Authors :: Blog

I’m much later getting this post out than I’d hoped to be, but I’m blaming it on my head cold and its propensity for making me brain-dead. (Translation: I forgot!)

So, my first Aphrodisia release, Behind the Red Door, will be released in June of 2009. And that seems like FOREVER from now and very, very soon, all at the same time. It seems like forever because seven months is a while in the scheme of things, especially if (like me) you’re accustomed to the shorter turnaround on e-books. But when you think of all the things that go into getting a book into print, it’s almost overnight.

I’ve found there are a lot of wonderful milestones on the way to a book. The best, of course, is the first: THE CALL. There’s nothing like that moment when your agent or editor first tells you you’ve SOLD. But really, that’s just the beginning. There’s signing the contract (although I must admit, the reading it part isn’t so much fun), getting the email from your editor accepting the manuscript, and even (believe it or not) going through the copy edits.

But of all the milestones I’ve experienced so far since “the call,” none really compares to the moment I saw this:

This is a page from the Kensington catalog for May-August 2009 and it was my first (and so far only) glimpse of my book’s cover. And, even though it’s black and white and low resolutions, I LOVE it. But not only do I love the beautiful cover they’ve designed for me and the rather flattering introduction (yes, I blush easily!), seeing this has made it all seem so real. The call, the contract, the copy edits–they were all “evidence” that this is really happening–but none of them seems as concrete as an actual page in an actual catalog.

My editor tells me he’s sent hard copies of the cover to me and my agent, so I’m hoping to see this in all its full color glory soon. (I am checking my mailbox these days as obsessively as I used to when I was expecting rejection letters, only without the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.)

The next “milestone” will be galleys–when the publisher sends a mocked-up version of the manuscript after it’s been set by the typeseter–and then…it all goes to the print and gets released a few months later!

Can I just say…WOW!

Since this is my first post, I suppose I ought to begin by introducing myself. I’m Jackie Barbosa, and Kensington will be releasing my single author anthology (currently titled BEHIND THE RED DOOR, but we’ll see if that sticks) in the summer of 2009. I have a few ebooks out with Cobblestone Press and a couple more coming out later this year, but my Aphrodisia release is my first sale to be “big” New York print publisher, and I couldn’t be more thrilled (or daunted, lol) by the opportunity.

So, since my debut is being published in the Aphrodisia line, I probably don’t have to tell you that my book contains numerous explicit sex scenes. I love writing these scenes of intimacy, discovery, and, most especially, vulnerability and consider them an essential element of a good love story, but I do sometimes wonder what readers think about the sex lives of the writers who craft such scenes. How much of what we write do they attribute to experience and how much to fantasy?

Of course, it would be crossing well beyond the boundaries of TMI for me to actually tell you my personal answer to that question. You don’t really want to know about my sex life, and I don’t have any intention of actually telling you. But as I was chatting the other day with my friend and critique partner, Emma Petersen, the subject of a particular sexual variation that I’ve included in more than one story came up, and I had to admit that it’s something I don’t care for in real life.

That led me to ask myself why I enjoy writing about this particular activity (and I do!) when I don’t enjoy doing it? The answer, I think, what draws me to writing about sex (and, honestly, nearly everything else that goes into a story) is the opportunity to experience things I either can’t or won’t do in real life. Whether it’s engaging in a threesome or attending a Regency era ball or committing a murder, what makes writing fun for me is also what makes reading fun: the fantasy that we are living someone else’s life. And when it comes to sex, I find that the less likely I am to experience something myself, the more likely I am to find it thrilling to read or write about.

What about you? Do your tastes in reading/writing fall more toward experience or fantasy? Or is that just TMI?