Aphrodisia Authors :: Blog

Watching the Olympics has me awed. These young men and women are among the best athletes in the world. Their work ethics, sacrifices, and confidence leaves me in awe. Each one has a story of putting excelling at their sport above everything else. I don’t know what they’re going to do with their lives once their years of competing are behind them and hope they draw on their can-do attitudes to succeed. What is it like to stand on the winner’s podium and know their committment has been worth it?

And what is it like to wake up two months later?

Comparing writing to athletic excellence might be a stretch, but I’m trying to make a point, to myself if no one else. I’ve been writing literally all my life. Granted, my early attempts are laughable, but although I didn’t know it, I was laying the groundwork for my career. I did well in English and loved journalism (and the sports editor/quarterback had only some to do with it) Restlessness was a way of life. I wanted to reach something; I just didn’t know what it was. I’m still not sure I do but writing manages that restlessness. There’s my creative outlet, my way of celebrating the human spirit, the satisfaction of making my fictional world come out right–unlike the real world. In fiction my characters seriously kick ass. They don’t have dirty windows, a sick husband, aged mother, flat feet, etc.

Is what I’m writing today the best I can do? Have I reached the limit of my incompetence as they say in the corporate world? Have I learned everything I need to learn or, as I suspect, will the curve continue? I start each story with a goal, a mountain top, a prayer that this character and plot and setting will speak to readers. This heroine will leap off the pages. This hero will bare his soul. This plot will break new grounds for me.

But will they? Do they? There’s always that moment (more than one of them) when I’m disappointed in myself. I’m not getting to the top of the mountain. I won’t stand on the winner’s platform. True, I reached the finish line but could I have run faster?

So, for me, being a career writer is a never-ending Olympics. I compete against other writers but mostly I’ll always strive to be better than before.
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

First, up for your drooling pleasure, the cover for my latest Ellora’s Cave release. Lordy but I love brooding heroes and does this ever qualify. Intriguing and spooky eyes. And the rest of him ain’t bad.

Yesterday I was pawing through my bookshelf for one on Crater Lake for something I’m working on. My attention was drawn to how many ‘location’ books I have, The Grand Canyon, Denali Park, The Lava Beds of northern California, redwoods, Sanibel Island of Florida, etc. The pile shouldn’t surprise me because a sense of place is vital to me as a writer. Unless I have a strong visual image of where my people (not characters, people) are, they remain somewhat shadowy to me. In short, my people connect with their surroundings, and those surroundings impact their personalities.

I’ve said it before but I don’t do cities. Have only rarely and briefly lived in the suckers. Their aura is foreign to them whereas I’ve always strongly connected with the wilderness. In my opinion, giving my people personal space both allows and forces them to get in touch with themselves. Away from the distractions of civilization, they connect with their souls.

Anywho, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

In that vein, does setting play a role in the fiction you buy and read?
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

Well duh, obviously I’m grateful for my association with Kensington Aphrodisia and if someone would tell me where the model for Taming a Cougar hangs out, I’d be doubly grateful. How come there ain’t no hunks in my neighborhood? Well there’s one buffed dude but he lives with his parents, has been in and out of mental facilities, and growls more than talks. (poor parents. poor dude)

At the moment I’m insanely grateful for the view out my window. After living in a canyon for many years, I’ll never take the sky and mountains view for granted. No matter what’s going on in the sky, I love watching nature. Nature has always factored predominantly in my world. I welcome sun, wind, rain, snow, the whole package. And don’t get me started on my love affair with the mountains and nearby river.

I’m grateful for my sons and grandchildren. They’ve broadened my scope of what life’s about beyond measure. Even when my sons were teens and I threatened to drop them off at a gypsy camp, their hold on my heart never let up. I’d die for my grandchildren; I’d probably kill for them. Its that basic.

I’m grateful for my parents’ impact on my life, both of them although they touched me in very different ways. My mother was my rock, the planter of my love of reading and from there writing. A teacher, she made books a core part of my and my sister’s childhood. We didn’t have TV (useless in the remote areas we lived in) so when my sister and I couldn’t be outside, we curled up with books. We still share and trade. Mother always encouraged my early attempts at writing (and my poor younger sister had no choice but to applaud the comic books I created with the Lone Ranger’s horse as hero). As for my father who divorced the three of us when I was 5, in ways I’m still discovering, he shaped my view of men. Although I’ve been married forever to the same man, they remain mysterious creatures and much of what I write about revolves around trying to reach their hearts and souls.

Parts of my childhood were rocky, including a period of homelessness. I hope I’ll never take a roof over my head for granted. The size and style of house under that roof doesn’t matter. I don’t see myself as materialistic and am grateful for that as well.

In other words, I believe that gratitude is all about the people we share our lives with and appreciation of nature.
And books to read and write.
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

Have I mentioned, Kensington rocks. I’ve known this for years, long before I started writing erotica for the Aphrodisia line. In another life I wrote category romance for the publisher and met several of the fab editors including the late and beloved Kate Duffy.

But today’s blog isn’t about the past. Its what Kensington is doing right now in a tough financial climate. Just this week, Nov. 16 to be specific, Publisher’s Weekly ran a piece called Kensington Has a Winning 2009 by Jim Milliot. The whole article is at http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6707070.html_
Here, IMO are the highlights.

1. At the end of their fiscal year K was ahead of budget and sales were up about 7%
2. Although mass market paperback accounts for more than 50% of revenue, trade paperback (that’s Aphrodisia) is the fastest selling segment.
3. K does about 20 trade paperbacks a month (focus on literary commercial fiction) which means the list remains small enough to develop individual marketing plans. This has resulted in attention from independent booksellers and more reviews.
4. Romance and thrillers drove the mass market paperbacks but there’s been improved western sales, particularly William Johnstone’s books. (hmm. I do love a good western)
5. Leading the way to increased sales are different kinds of in-store displays and online promotions, including e-blasts. K sales are up 10% at Borders and overall sell-through was up and returns down.
6. K uses free e-book promotions to help sales of e-books. Granted, e-books are expected to be only 2.5% of revenue in 2010 but this is a still-developing arm of the industry. So far all e-releases have been derived from print titles but that will change when the right project comes along.
7. K’s first film, The Company We Keep based on a book by Mary Monroe is in postproduction and looking for a distributor.
8. And last before your eyes blur, K is in its 35th year and considered the largest independent trade publisher based in NY. Adam Zacharius (grandson of founder Walter Zacharius) “remains bullish on the book market, targeting a 10% incease in sales in fiscal 2010.

And I’m damn proud to be part of this energy.
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

Query letters. Mention those two words to a group of writers and a fair number will break out in a sweat. Those who aren’t hyperventilating lick their lips and change the subject. Countless articles have been written about the care and feeding of queries and has there been an interview of an editor or agent that doesn’t include the question, “What do you look for in a query?” Unfortunately, there’s no uniformity in the responses which means writers, multi-published or not, are left to bang their heads against their keyboards.

I got to thinking about queries after reading my agent Laura Bradford’s posts on Twitter. The other day she twittered that she’d been called incompetent after rejecting a submission. She allowed as how the same thing has happened when she said ‘no thanks’ in response to query letters. She didn’t go into details about why the query didn’t hit her hot buttons but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was because the writer tried to interest her in something outside her area of interest/expertise. Her website details what genres she specializes in so why would someone ask her to take on something such as economic non-fiction.

Something interesting agents are seeing now that the Internet has taken over the world. Multi-submissions of queries. By that I mean the writer shotguns a generic query to as many agents as he/she can get email addresses for. How’s that for making an agent feel special, not. A twist on that is something else agents are twittering about–a suggestion-request-demand that the agent go to a web site to access the material. I’ve yet to come across a single agent willing to do that. Come on, lets get real here. Who doesn’t know not to trust all web sites. Who wants a virus.

Tempted as I am to pontificate about the perfect query (like I have a clue) I’m not going to. Instead, I’ll leave you with what I heard from none less than Tami Hoag at a conference a couple of weeks ago. “Oh,” she said. “I’m spoiled. I just drop my editor an email saying I’m kind of interested in such and such and am thinking of writing a book about it. That sound ok?”

Okay, I paraphrased here but you get the idea. And my guess is since this is Tami Hoag you know what the editor will say.

Then there’s the rest of us.
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

No, not that closet. And fortunately not the one in my house. How did so much ’stuff’ wind up in it?

I’m talking about coming clean here about a fact of Vonna Harper life. Yes I write for Aphrodisia and am damn proud to be part of this wild bunch. By my count, my Sept 28 release Taming the Cougar will be my tenth (wow!) Aphrodisia story

But I’m more than a print erotica writer. Yep, truth is (and many of you might already know that and wonder why I’m making such a big deal of this non secret) I also write erotica for Ellora’s Cave and Loose ID. That’s why I included the above cover for Savage Storm which is being released today at EC. http://www.jasminejade.com/p-7579-savage-storm.aspx

For a long time I believed that blogging here meant being loyal to Kensington and only Kensington, but after discussing things with other Aphrodisia writers and learning that they’re good with whatever I do–after all all writers have to pimp themselves–I decided the time had come to come out of this particular closet.

Savage Storm excites the hell out of me. I love that the EC artist nailed the mixed race element of this fantasy set on a mythical island in the aftermath of the mother of all storms. But what really turned my crank while writing it is the background story, and if you’re still with me, lean back for a moment ’cause I’m going to fill in the blanks. Years ago when I was writing mainstream Native American historicals as my alter ego, I decided to do one about the Seminoles of Florida. Research revealed that a number of escaped slaves slipped into the Everglades and lived with the Seminoles. Thus the premise for the NA historical AND the ‘why’ behind Savage Storm. My heroine is a mixed race slave willing to risk her life for freedom, the hero her equal in courage. Gives me the shivers just thinking about that pair.

That’s it for today because I need to do some revisions for another erotica novella I’m working on, this one for Loose ID. As my parting shot, I’d like to ask a question.
1. What percentate of print vs ebooks do you buy?
love you all,
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com
p.s. I’m now Twittering. Join me?

Warning, this isn't going to be one of those light and fluffy blogs. I won't be pimping any books (except, maybe, in a backhanded way). Instead, I want to praddle on about something I've been wrestling with for awhile.

Anyone who has gone to my website or read any of my books knows I do a lot of bondage and capture stories. My epublishers Ellora's Press and Loose-Id have a BDSM category and that's where my stories hang out but so far I haven't done what I consider true BDSM. My mind flat out rebels at the notion of writing about the pain element that's part of the 'scene'. I admit I read some pretty dark BDSM stories (Not available at any of my three publishers) but writing that is another story--and not my story, at least so far.

Apologies to those who embrace BDSM and understand that there can be a connection between pain and sexual arousal, but that's not something I want my characters doing to each other. I suppose I could create a hero who uses his expertise as a dom to give his submissive the ultimate in sexual pleasure via pain, but up until now, that character hasn't come knocking and I don't foresee that coming. I have no trouble creating heroes from aggressive or predatory cultures (just finishing one right now) but in the context of those stories, he always realizes that his captive/prisoner/etc is a thinking and feeling human being, something he didn't realize at the beginning. My heroes don't start out thinking they'd like nothing more than take a whip to their helpless victim. Most times, their culture has raised them to be a warrior and a fighter. To them, outsiders are the enemy--until a woman with courage, spirit, an a to-die-for body changes their mind.

What I'm interested in finding out is readers' comfort levels. Are you good with the BDSM lifestyle, at least in your reading, or is capture/bondage more to your liking and do you understand the difference, at least the way I've tried to explain it.
Thanks, Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

Taming The Cougar isn’t hitting the stands until the end of Sept but I so love the cover that the devil made me plaster it here. So there.

Hmm. Now what does Vonna mean when she brings up the word LENGTH? Ha, I bet I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong, at least this time.
The deal is, I’ve been thinking about the various length stories I write, asking myself whether I have a favorite and why I’m content to bounce between shorties of no more than 5 thousand words and books such as Taming The Cougar that run around 80,000 words. I’ve only done a couple of the really short eroticas and don’t see any more on the immediate horizon but remember them as equal parts fun and challenge. The fun part is a given: I can write the rough draft in a couple of days. The challenge comes in handling a plot under those tight constraints. Sad to say there has to be more than 5 thousand words of sex. Readers and writers alike need to know something about these two (or more) people and what brought them together. Where are they in their lives, how did they get there, and what’s going to happen to them in the morning?
80,000 words of course makes those concerns non issues in that there’s plenty of time to explore characterization and craft a hopefully intriguing plot. I love working with a large landscape which can include throwing in fascinating minor characters, some world building if I’m so inclined, plot twists and turns. For me the most exciting part is giving my characters room to grow and change. It’s the whole ‘come to realize’ thing. Not much time to sit back and look at oneself on the way to maturity in a shortie. In a book my characters can screw up, admit the error of their ways, and receive their just rewards, if you get my drift.
At the same time, a novel can be a scary process. Can I pull off this tangled mess of a plot or even come up with enough of one? Do I care about my characters enough to hang with them for the long run and even more important, can I make my readers give a damn? Given my short term memory issues can I remember why I started the darned thing and why I thought I could pull it off?

Fortunately I’m in a position to mix things up, both with Aphrodisia and the two epublishers I work with. I’ve of course written a fair sized pile of books for Aphrodisia and have contributed to a number of anthologies. (For specifics, if you’re curious enough, all that’s on my web site ’cause otherwise Id never be able to keep it straight) The Aphrodisia anthology contributions run around 25 thousand words and are always part of a themed collection such as cowboys. (I’ve done three of those)
These days I write slightly shorter stories for both Ellora’s Cave and Loose-ID including one freebie at EC. Most of them dance the capture/BDSM dance but occasionally something totally different grabs my muse which as much as length differences keeps me excited about what I’m doing.

A question as I head off to buy a newly minted 10 year old girl a pair of shoes for her birthday, do you have a length you prefer to read or are you inclined to mix it up?
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

COMING JUNE 30.

Call me a snob. Call me behind the times. Whatever label you want to put on me, I’ll never get reality TV. The appeal of peeking into the lives of Real Housewives is beyond me, and much to my mother’s disappointment, I don’t share her fascination with Survivor. Heck, I don’t even watch game shows. I do dig Deadliest Catch, Dirtiest Jobs, and Ice Road Truckers, but I consider them actuality, not reality.

So where am I going with this? I confess. I’m addicted to Clean House although I’m getting bored with the formula of each show. I watch, I believe, because I subscribe to the “If it ain’t nailed down, throw it away,” school of housekeeping so am constantly boggled by images of floors and furniture piled high with ’stuff’. Having too much stuff (and we’re talking about my personal definition of too much) makes me crazy. I can’t see through the clutter, and I certainly can’t lose myself in writing when the stuff starts creeping in. Its much the same feeling I get when those blasted stink ants crawl up the water pipes and swarm over the space under the kitchen sink. KILL!! I mentally scream. Kill!!!!!

Hmm. Maybe that’s what my mindset is when I spirit things out of the house and desposit those things at Goodwill before my dh can stop me. I’m destroying what I have no use for.

And the strange thing is, I feel the same way about my writerly books. I have a small bookshelf that I periodically weed of whatever I haven’t opened for a year or so. I’m talking mostly about research books because I never hold onto the fiction I read for pleasure. That goes to the foster home where my mother lives so the books get passed around to the various residents. And no, I don’t place any erotica in their lined hands because I don’t want to be accussed of corrupting my mother’s generation. That said, the woman who runs the facility has become a fan. What a kick!

Depending on what I’m writing, I’ll have books, magazine articles, Internet printouts, etc for research. At present, I’m working on a story set in Denali Park, Alaska so have a reference guide on the state, another book written by a park ranger who both climbed Denali and assisted in a number of rescues. I have a stack of pages from various Insternet sites on everything from grizzly behavior to various lodges to the ranger staffed medical tent high on the mountain. This stuff is on my desk, on the shelf next to the desk, on the floor, in a desk drawer and I’m perfectly fine with all that. I feel rich, complete, secure because I have everything I believe I need at hand.

But once I’ve finished this proposal, everything will be scooped up and placed in another, out of the way drawer. And when I’m confident that I’ll have no further need for the material, out it goes. I might keep the two books for awhile but that’s all. I’ll feel uncluttered, my space and mind clear and clean and ready to be filled up with what I’ll need for my next project.

Question. Can you relate? Do you need an uncluttered environment? Or does security call for collections, memories, and “I might need this”?
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com

I’m not including the cover for my upcoming Loose-ID release simply because I want everyone to rush over there the first of June and buy Storm Howl (although it wouldn’t break my heart if you did). I chose to display what I think is a rocking cover because I recently discussed with other Aphrodisia authors how much we should promote ourselves on this blog. Obviously, we’re focused on reaching readers of Aphrodisia erotica, but for many of us (me included) our erotica worlds reach beyond Aphrodisia.

Case in point, I cut my erotica teeth at Ellora’s Cave. At the time I jumped in, EC was just about the only act in town and I was intrigued by what none other than our own Kate Douglas told me about her experience there. I’m not sure how many stories I’ve written for EC, maybe close to twenty. I also wrote one book for Samhain, and as the Storm Howl cover shows, I’m on Loose-ID’s payroll as well

The reasons for spreading myself around are pretty simple. I love to write. I want to pay my bills with my writing. (See, told you, there wasn’t much to the explanation) I consider myself extremely fortunate that Kensington (parent company for Aphrodisia) continues to want my stories. Kensington allows me the thrill of walking into a bookstore and seeing my name on those eyecatching covers. Kensington is New York and as such one of the mainstays of traditional print publishing. The machinery that makes print publishing possible is complex and in the main, slow-moving. From submission of a book until I see it in the stores is around a year.

In contrast, electronic stories from such as EC and Loose-ID can have a much shorter turn-around. In addition, because there’s no ‘hard’ product, there’s no need for those publishers to consider printing, shipping, etc costs. They are open to a wide variety of story lengths. Because upfront costs to those publishers are much less, they can experiment with subjects that print publishers might be reluctant to take a chance on. Take a look at EC, Loose-ID, etc and you’ll see that subject matter is all over the board and limitless. This means that if a writer gets a wild hair of an idea that truly pushes a lot of envelopes, she can submit it to an e-publisher and they’re more likely to give it a shot.

So while I write a limited number of stories for Aphrodisia, the sky’s the limit with e-publishing (as long as the quality is there). I can keep as busy as time and creativity allows and hopefully pay more bills. I love this new world of publishing!!!!!
Vonna
www.VonnaHarper.com