A submissions editor's perspective

Hello! I am Kathryn Lively and I am an editor for Phaze Books - I have also worked as an editor for Echelon Press, Whiskey Creek Press, and for other publishers. I have been asked by the good people at Oh, Get a Grip! to blog a bit on this week's topic of cliches. Since part of my duties at Phaze involve monitoring incoming submissions (and we are looking for titles for summer and fall, BTW), this seemed like the perfect opportunity to cover the pros and pitfalls of stories that dance across these lines.

When we think of cliches specifically in romance and erotic stories, what comes most often to mind are specific characterizations and circumstances that we may believe have been done to death. We all know about the "Too Stupid To Live" heroine (even hero, in some cases) who either is too dim to see how poorly she is treated - or perhaps she chooses to turn a blind eye to her lover's unbelievable imperfections for the sake of moving the plot forward. As an editor, it is challenging to evaluate some submissions where the cliches are apparent, particularly when the editor has a good idea of how well certain stories sell.

For example, let's say an editor reads for a house where four of the top ten best-selling books for the year featured a similar plot device. It could be anything - a certain kind of meet-cute, a widow getting a second chance at love only to discover her first husband didn't die, or a main character humiliated to the point where she moves home and reconnects with an old flame. You study this house because it's your goal to place a book there, so you read these books. As a writer, you're concerned about falling into cliche traps, so you may wonder if you are risking a rejection by offering this house a work set outside this "comfort zone."

I can't speak for all editors, but I do admit that sometimes as I read I look for two things: a quality story and sales potential. Publishing is a business, and if the books don't sell there is no business. Does this mean I'm not willing to take chances? I don't think so - in the five years I have acquired works I've thrown the dice more than once. I've scored a few naturals, and hit a few snake eyes, but I don't regret the choices made. A writer should not feel as though he/she should submit a cliche that sells as opposed to something unique.

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Kathryn Lively is an award-winning writer and editor, and executive editor of Phaze Books. She is an EPIC Award nominee and has edited EPIC Award nominated titles for Phaze Books, Whiskey Creek Press, and FrancisIsidore ePress. She also maintains a pen name, L.K. Ellwood, for other mysteries.

Kathryn's latest book is Dead Barchetta, available through most online retailers.

http://www.kathrynlively.com/
http://www.deadbarchetta.com/
http://www.facebook.com/livelywriter

The Humor of Sex, or the Gospel According to Rose Nylund

This week's guest blogger for Oh, Get a Grip! is Kathryn Lively, publisher of Phaze Books. Kathryn is here to share with us her wisdom on humor and sex:

The scene replays occasionally in my mind. It comes unbidden, usually when I sit down with the intent to write a serious love scene. In a time before I understood the term cougar to mean something other than a sleek jungle cat, Blanche Devereaux nibbled on cheesecake and waxed nostalgic over her magical first…night…ever under moonlit magnolias with Bobby.

Or was it Billy?

Or Ben?

The name isn't important-even Blanche shrugged off the details of her faulty memory-but the point was that sex could be magical, and in some views funny. Not to be outdone, Rose Nylund related her own tale of innocence lost and capped it with the rhetorical question, "Didn't you think at the time…that was a funny thing to do?" That being putting Tab A into Slot B.

I should insert an aside here: if you are absolutely certain you are never going to have sex again, feel free to read the rest of this post. If not, the risk you take is your own. I'll accept no complaints of how I'm responsible for your mid-coitus snickering.

It's wise not to think too hard about Rose's question, because if you place yourself outside the act, strip away any trappings of high production value porn flick, you just might see that sex is a funny thing to do. It involves our funniest-looking parts, causes parts we wish didn't look so funny to move in funny ways and, if done too quickly or with too much force, it can result in funny noises and cause the mind to wander and think of unsexy things, like what is that fwapping sound and gads, what my ass must look like in this position.

We make funny faces during sex, it can't be helped. Remember that song "Turning Japanese"? You really think so? Apparently it's a term used to describe how a person's face screws up and winces during orgasm. Indeed, in my memory I can see the faces of former partners and how they looked hovering overhead, lips pursed and eyebrows arched. They turned Japanese, Laotian, Armenian…looking as though they should be sucking on Tums instead of…well, you know.

As we write about sex, we tend to bestow funny names on our private parts, because saying, "he put his penis into her vagina" is just too clinical, and is hardly indicative of the vast vocabularies we possess and wish to use so our English degrees don't completely go to waste. Why say vagina when pussy, kitty, quim, muff, channel, box, mound of Venus, weeping lotus, cradle of love, pink palace, nether lips, vertical smile, treasure cove, love-slick core, and font of womanly nectar relays the image with more clarity?

In our quest to breathe more life into this fantasy, a clitoris becomes a love button, and the penis a fleshy, throbbing rod. And, people don't simply orgasm in romance novels. A woman rides the wave of ecstasy until it crests, whereupon she crashes headfirst into the foamy shore and unleashes all pent-up frustration in the form of a glass-shattering howl. Her lover doesn't merely ejaculate, but grunts his release, pumping his sticky seed in or on her (depends on who you're reading), the image not unlike that of a fireman hosing down a burning office building. Thanks to the amazing ability authors display in ending chapters, there's no mess to clean up afterward.

Don't you think this is a funny thing to do? How long till we get to do it again? Hopefully for me, very soon. First, though, I need to prepare my petition to EPIC to add a Humor category to the EPPIE Awards. Got a nice sexy piece waiting for it.

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By day, Kathryn Lively is an editor and publisher. By night, Leigh Ellwood is an author. Visit both halves of the whole at www.KathrynLively.com and www.LeighEllwood.com. If you meet her on the street, it is advised not to make direct eye contact.