Judging a Book...

By Lisabet Sarai

Here at the Grip, we're all storytellers. As Ashley pointed out last week, we weave pictures with our words. We lead our readers into new worlds. We make them feel joyous or sorrowful, frightened or aroused. Using the meticulously chosen adjective, the vigorous verb, the shocking metaphor, we construct the edifice of our art. The cover that the publisher slaps on our books has nothing to do with our authorial mission.

Not.

If you don't care whether anyone buys your books, you can afford to ignore your covers. However, readers have told me again and again that the cover of a book has a huge influence on whether they'll consider reading it. This is particularly true in the ebook world where readers are faced with an impossibly large number of choices and where they can't physically pick up a book and browse through it.

Unfortunately as an author you have little control over your covers. It's a crap shoot. Some publishers give you more opportunities to make suggestions than others but ultimately you have to take what they give you. Sometimes the results are magnificent. Other times, you just want to cry.

I considered posting the few covers of mine that I really disliked, but then I realized that would be shooting myself in the foot. So I'll concentrate on my best experiences.

My two favorite covers, for the current editions of Raw Silk and Incognito, were both designed by Anne Cain. I find them extremely sensual. They exactly capture the mood of the books. In addition, the women on the covers match the descriptions of the characters. Kate in Raw Silk is a red-head. Miranda, the heroine of Incognito, has long dark hair. After seeing what Anne did with these covers, I practically begged her to take on my recent website redesign. (I was thrilled with the results!)

I do appreciate a publisher who listens to my suggestions. The original cover for Exposure, which was supposed to be published by Orion Books as part of the Neon series, featured a buxom blonde, even though Stella, the heroine, is repeatedly described as an olive-skinned Mediterranean brunette. Grr!

In contrast, the released cover for the Phaze Books edition is perfect. Not only does it capture Stella's physical attributes, it also has a gritty urban feel and projects a sense of danger and chaos. It's just what I wanted for my Pittsburgh-set erotic thriller. Stella Price is responsible for this cover. She and I spent several days sharing stock photos and discussing possibilities, even though Phaze has a policy that authors are not supposed to bother their cover artists. Hey, Stella contacted me! And I'm delighted that she did--the result of our collaboration is, in Stella's words, "awesome".

I will admit to having a pet peeve in cover art, namely headless male torsos. Especially headless hairless male torsos. (Try saying that three times fast.) I'm really not sure why this motif is so popular in romance circles. Personally, I'd much rather see a man's face than his chest. And I like a bit of body hair. If titillation is the objective, why not show me a nice rear view of the guy's butt and thighs? Much sexier, in my opinion. Nevertheless, the fashion persists. I do like the cover for Truce of Trust quite a bit, even though it features naked chests--I just focus on the woman's figure and try to ignore the men!

One of my favorite cover artists is Alessia Brio. The images that she has concocted for her Coming Together series are uniformly wonderful. I particularly like the covers of Coming Together: Al Fresco (on the theme of outdoor sex) and Coming Together: At Last (interracial erotica). I just got a glimpse of her cover for Coming Together: For Her, a single-author collection of erotica by Lawrence Doyen which I co-edited. A cover like that stands out. I'm sure that it helps sales.

So what do I look for in a cover, when I'm browsing for reading matter? Images that are different, surprising, unexpected. The cover for Cream: The Best of the Erotica Readers & Writers Association has that quality. Images that are sensual, suggestive without being crude, if the genre is erotica or erotic romance. Covers that utilize historical images tend to get my attention, like the cover of Kevin Baker's fascinating epic Dreamland which I read recently.

I think that I'm probably less influenced by a book's cover than many readers. However, I admit that a horrible cover (and there are oh, so many of those) will put me off. I won't embarrass anyone by posting examples, but you know the ones I mean: where the perspective is all wrong, the arms don't fit quite right on the body, there's some weird shadow in the corner that distracts you from the cover's main focus. Ah, the evils that have perpetrated with Photoshop! Fortunately, I haven't had many of those monstrosities attached to my books. And even if I had--well, I wouldn't want to show you, would I?

Narrative Inertia

By Lisabet Sarai

I love tackling Chris Garcia-Sanchez' topics. They invite multiple interpretations. The subject he proposed for this week is “Killing Your Darlings”. I wondered for a while whether he was talking about doing in one's characters, and I was going to write about Exposure, in which the hunkiest guy in the book gets murdered in the first chapter. Then I realized that he probably meant something quite different, the anguish involved in taking the editorial knife to one's own writing, cutting out the passages, the ideas, even the characters that you feel are not working.

I suspect that this is what he intends because we're crit partners and I know something about his writing process. It involves multiple revisions, each one often a radical change from the last. I've also counseled him fairly frequently that his early drafts are too long. But it's often tough for me to suggest what he should excise, because it's all so good.

Anyway, this is my post and so I should be talking about my own editorial anguish. I'll be honest, though. Rarely do I even attempt the type of wholesale revisions that other authors describe. I find that my work has enormous narrative inertia. Once I have a first draft, it's rare and exceptionally difficult for me to make significant structural or thematic changes. I'll tweak, I'll polish—I may eliminate paragraphs or even a scene—I may add sentences or paragraphs to heighten an effect or clarify an ambiguity. But there's no murder in my editing, no more than minor plastic surgery.

Sometimes I worry about this. Do I really believe that my first draft is so close to being “right” that I don't need to slash it apart to make it better? No, not really. If I wanted to work harder, spend more time, submit my stories for multiple crits, I'm sure that they could be significantly improved. But it would be really hard. Once I have a story out on the electronic page, it seems to acquire a concreteness that makes it highly resistant to change. It's not because the story is “my darling”, my words so precious that I can't bear to alter or eliminate them. Rather, it's the fact that, once a story's born, I can't imagine how it could be different. It takes on a life of it's own.

I work as a software engineer. I love writing programs. I always marvel that something that begins as a disembodied idea ultimately becomes an artifact capable of influencing real world phenomena. The air traffic control system, your local ATM, the business behemoth that is Amazon.com—all these things are mostly software, abstract concepts made manifest in the physical realm.

Writing stories, for me, is somewhat similar. First there are the ideas. Then by some miraculous process, the notions kicking around in my mind are transformed into a book that someone can read in bed, a book that may entertain or arouse dozens (or in my dreams, thousands!) of other people. Once the book is written, it is no longer as malleable as the ideas that inspired it

It helps that my second, lightly edited draft, even if far from absolute perfection, is likely to be good enough to get published. I'm not being conceited here. I don't think I'm a wonderful writer, but I'm a fairly competent hack. My ratio of acceptances to rejections is pretty high. (I only wish my royalty statistics were comparable!) I'd rather spend my time working on a new story than polish my current one into a glittering diamond of a tale that will astonish everyone with its brilliance. Especially in the fast-paced world of e-publishing, I feel that I can't afford to spend months editing and revising a single title.

I am learning, though—partly through working with Chris, in fact. I'm trying to force my way through the brittle shell that seems to surround my stories and rework them in fundamental ways, if that seems necessary.

I had an interesting and revealing experience a few months ago, when I was working on Truce of Trust. This 16K story grew out of a shorter tale called “Detente”, which was included in my Fire anthology. “Detente” is told in the first person present, and it ends with a M/M/F ménage. Claire, my editor at Total-E-Bound, liked the overall concept but asked me to change the POV, the tense and the sexual orientation (she was looking for M/F/M submissions), as well as to make the story substantially longer.

I knew that this would be rough, but agreed to give it a try. When I began, I found the process extremely difficult. Gradually, however, I gained confidence. The characters changed. The story changed. The initial premise was the same, but the final result was quite different. I hadn't revised an old story, I realized. I had written a new one.

Like all authors, I have discarded fragments on my hard drive. These chapters and scenes are more orphans than darlings, though. I'll work on something for a while and then lose the spark. If I'm bored, I reason, my readers will be, too. Or else I'll start something and then not have a clue as to how to develop it. Without the ideas to feed them, my stories wither and die. But I don't deliberately kill them.

I'll tell you a secret. Authors like Chris, who agonize over their work, cutting and rearranging, feeling the pain of wielding the editing scalpel, make me feel embarrassed and guilty. Embarrassed because I feel that I somehow should be doing the same, that I'm lazy and insincere and complacent. Guilty because I do manage to get published, even if my sales aren't what I'd like, while many true artists have a far more difficult time.

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This week at the Grip, we welcome our new member Ashley Lister. Ashley will be posting on Thursdays, in the slot previously handled by Kim Dare. I'll let Ashley introduce himself. I'm sure that you'll enjoy him.

Three's the Charm

By Lisabet Sarai

Warning: this blog entry is frank and explicit. If you have any illusions about my innocence, do not read any further!

When I sat down to address Kim's topic, "The More, the Merrier", I wondered what perspective I should take. Should I put on my author's hat and talk about writing ménage? Or should I share my personal experiences with multi-partner sex?

I realized that the threesomes and foursomes that I've written are distinctly different from those in which I have participated. My books include quite a number of multi-partner episodes. There are two in Raw Silk (M/M/F/F and M/F/M/M) and three in Incognito (F/M/F, M/F/M, and M/F/M/F). (It's surprising to me to realize that there are not any ménages in Ruby's Rules. Although there's a full chapter BDSM scene featuring three women and one man, the only actual sex in that chapter is M/F.). I've also created several stand-alone ménage erotic romances for Total-E-Bound: "Monsoon Fever", in the anthology Brit Party, which includes an intense M/M/F triad, and my just released Truce of Trust, which is M/F/M.

With the exception of Truce of Trust, almost all my literary ménages involve individuals who are strangers, or at very least are meeting for the first time. This makes the multi-partner activity more extreme and transgressive. Having sex with a stranger breaks taboos. Sexual activity with multiple strangers raises the intensity. Fear and embarrassment can contribute to the heat level in such scenes. The characters may be asking themselves how they can possibly be doing such forbidden things, even as they cannot resist getting involved. Being anonymous frees them to behave in ways they'd never consider in their ordinary lives.

In the real world, in contrast, my most satisfying multi-partner experiences have included people I knew well and cared about: my husband and his or my close friends. I've occasionally gotten involved in group scenes with strangers, at sex clubs or swinger's parties, but I've generally found this disappointing. The reality—or at least my reality—is that I can't get very excited by just bodies, no matter what they are doing. I have to feel an emotional connection with my partner(s). I have to like them and trust them. I have to be comfortable, not feel a need to perform.

My first threesome involved my husband-to-be (I'll call him Ken) and a guy I'll call Phil, who had been Ken's friend for more than a decade. Phil was intelligent, funny, artistic, and attractive in a lanky, nerdy way that greatly appealed to me. Ken and I had discussed the possibility of a sexual interlude with Phil before we showed up at his door for our planned visit. Ken wasn't attracted to Phil himself, but he was sexually adventurous and knew that Phil was, too. The second night we stayed at Phil's apartment, the three of us ended up in bed together. The thrill of being the center of attention for two delicious men was incredible. Even more pleasurable, though, was the sense of connection and comfort the three of us shared. I couldn't believe how relaxed we were together. The next day, we all went to see the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. (That will tell you how long ago this was!) As we strolled down the street, hand in hand in hand with me in the middle, I thought I'd never felt such a high. It wasn't just the excitement. It was pure joy, pride that we had dared to breach the barriers of convention, gratitude to the two men who'd given themselves to me.

I try to capture this same sort of emotion in my written ménages. The better the participants know each other, the easier that is, but group scenes among friends do not have the shock factor of more casual encounters. So it's a balancing act.

In Truce of Trust, I go beyond ménage to the concept of polyamory: a committed, long-term sexual and emotional relationship among three or more individuals. I talked about the delights and perils of polyamory recently at Hitting the Hot Spot. It's not something that I've experienced, but it seems very natural to me.

Leah lives with her husband and her dominant lover, who first introduced her to BDSM. She loves and desires them both, but each of the men feels threatened by and jealous of the other. When she can't stand their sniping any more, she takes off by herself, to try and understand her own heart. Left behind, the two men must find a way to share Leah, or they will lose her forever.

Of course, Truce of Trust is a romance, so it ends happily with all three characters in bed together. Here's a little taste, to whet your appetite.

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The cabin felt crowded with all three of them inside. Greg’s head nearly touched the ceiling. Leah squirmed past them to stand near the bed. She kicked off her shoes. Her eyes locked with theirs as she unbuttoned her blouse and threw it into the corner, then unfastened her bra. She peeled off her jeans and her underwear in one motion. No one breathed.

She stretched out on the old-fashioned quilt, propped up on her elbows. The men’s eyes were wide, as though they’d never seen her naked before. Leah laughed. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

There was a mad scramble as her lovers struggled to remove their clothing. Daniel finished first. He threw himself onto the bed, landing with a bounce next to her. “Leah. Can I kiss you?”

She took him in her arms. “Hon, you can do anything you want!” His mouth fastened on hers, his mustache tickling her under the nose. Desire swept through her like a hurricane. She opened to his probing tongue. His palm settled on her breast, his thumb making gentle circles around the nipple. Sensation spiraled down to her pussy. Her clit tingled and throbbed, aching for its own massage. She spread her thighs in invitation.

A weight settled on her opposite side and then she felt the touch she craved, circling the taut nub at the apex of her sex. She knew the hand of her master. A new flood of moisture welled up and overflowed. He flicked her clit back and forth, driving her crazy. Meanwhile, other fingers sank deep into her. She twisted and bucked, grinding herself the hand working inside her folds. Sharp pleasure radiated from her clit; smoother, fuller sensations gathered in her depths, as her muscles clenched against the invading digits.

Wetness now, a hot mouth suckling one swollen nipple—Daniel?—and then the scream of the other, captured in an iron grip and twisted almost beyond endurance. Greg. Gentle fingers stroking along the slippery length of her sex, tickling and teasing, then a blunt digit plunged with delicious force into her rear passage. Daniel released her from his kiss and Greg claimed her mouth, sucking fiercely at her tongue as though he would swallow her whole.

She hovered on the edge of climax, suspended between them, gentleness and fury. Innumerable fingers stroked, pinched, probed her most private places. She writhed helplessly, trusting them to lead her where she needed to go.

Her hands were above her head, clenching at the coverlet. Now someone grasped her wrist and brought her hand down to an endless length of hard flesh, rooted in silky curls. Daniel’s body arched like a cat at her touch. He rubbed his cock against her hand, steel sheathed in satin. She wrapped her fingers around him, squeezing while stroking the underside, the way he liked. A shudder ran through him. Reflexively, his fingers pushed deeper into her pussy.

“Suck me, slut,” Greg whispered in her ear. She turned to find him kneeling next to her, his erection bobbing in her face. Eager for his taste, she swallowed as much of his length as she could. The bulb grazed the back of her throat. She lapped hungrily at the rigid column filling her mouth. “That’s good,” he groaned. “Now suck.”

She pursed her lips and worked her tongue, building up the suction until he groaned anew. She pumped at Daniel’s cock in the same rhythm. It was strange—the two cocks somehow seemed to belong to one man. As she brought them closer, she could feel their excitement, climbing in tandem. She sensed them both losing control.

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What do you think? Strangers to remove the sense of responsibility? Or dear ones who are less outrageous, but more familiar? How would you like your ménage?

Happily, Ever?

by Lisabet Sarai

Gloriana DeMarco is used to getting what she wants. The outrageously beautiful daughter of a U.S. Senator, she lives in a Beverly Hills mansion, drives a red Porsche, and dances her nights away at the hottest, most exclusive clubs in town. The fact that she also happens to be a vampire makes her even more persuasive.

Hank Storm is a rowdy punk who uses his fists and his wits to survive on the mean streets of South LA. He's also a lycan, the sworn enemy of the blood drinkers who control the city.

When Hank's battered Harley rams into Gloriana's 911 Carrera, sparks fly as well as glass. The mutual attraction is incandescent and irresistible. But Hank and Glori are literally from different worlds. Will they manage bridge the huge gulf between them, the differences in wealth, class, and monster-species, to find true love?

Of course they will, silly. It's a romance.

A happy ending is the sine qua non of the romance genre. Readers crave the satisfaction that comes from seeing the protagonists overcome all obstacles in order to end up, mutually devoted and sexually fulfilled, in each other's arms. Personally, I get that. Readers identify with the characters (at least if the author has done his or her job). Of course readers want characters to be happy by the end of the tale, to enjoy the vicarious experience. Hey, I like a happy ending as much as the next reader.

For an author, though, the ultimate romance commandment, “Thou shalt have a happy ending”, poses some problems. A story is propelled by conflict. Conflict generates suspense, that is, pleasurable uncertainty as to how and whether the conflict will be resolved. Suspense draws the reader further into the narrative. The reader continues in order to discover what will happen next. A “real page turner”, such as we all aspire to write, keeps the reader involved by keeping her off-balance, constantly creating new tension that can only be relieved by reading further.

When an author is constrained to provide a happy ending, generating suspense becomes more difficult. There's no uncertainty about how the story will conclude. The author must find another way to keep the reader turning pages. Authors vary in how successful they are in meeting this challenge. My main complaint about much of the romance that I read is that it is distressingly predictable.

One solution is to create a conflict so intense that the reader will really have a hard time guessing how it could be resolved. Here's the blurb from my upcoming MFM ménage release, Truce of Trust, due out from Total-E-Bound on May 19th:

Some women might think Leah’s existence heavenly. She shares her home with two sexy men who both adore her. Ten years married to lusty, artistic Daniel, she still enjoys the discipline and release offered by Greg. But her lovers’ jealousy and possessiveness have made Leah’s life a hell. Unable to bear the continuous conflict, she flees to an idyllic seaside resort to ponder her future. Gradually she realises that she cannot live without either of her lovers. If the two men can’t settle their differences, though, then how can she bear to live with them?

Obviously, somehow, the differences will be settled, because this is a romance, a ménage romance, and the ultimate commandment must be obeyed. In writing this blurb, though, I hoped to produce at least mild curiosity as to just how these two alpha males vying to possess the female of the species will manage to find an accommodation.

Another solution is to focus the suspense not on the relationship but on another aspect of the plot. In Raw Silk, Kate explores her sexuality with three different lovers. The questions I pose for my readers are, first, will she choose one man or continue her hedonistic experimentation with all three? Second, if she does choose one of them, who will it be?

I originally conceived of Raw Silk as erotica rather than romance. (When I wrote it, 'way back in 1999, explicit romance was not as accepted or as popular as it is today.) The book fictionalizes my own awakening to BDSM and channels my fantasies about a serious, committed BDSM relationship. Of course it has a happy ending (as long as you consider being bound in public by your Master, wearing labia clips and a butt plug, to be happy...). Fantasies always do. I hope, though, that it is not too predictable. In any case, the book is now being marketed as romance. But then, so is Portia da Costa's Black Lace classic Gemini Heat, which first inspired me to try publishing my erotic writings.

The erotica genre is less strict about requiring HEAs. Of the twenty stories in Fire, my single-author erotic short story collection, eleven have happy endings, five are ambiguous and four are definitely unhappy. Even for the stories I've classified as happy, the endings tend to be more equivocal than in romance. In “Twentieth Century”, the heroine loses her lover but experiences a sexual and artistic awakening. In “Perception”, the hero disappears after making love to the heroine and she's not sure whether she'll ever see him again. The “ambiguous” category includes one story (“Higher Power”) in which the heroine ends up with a broken neck and another (“Communion”) where she's burned at the stake as a witch. Not your average romance scenarios!

Even in the world of erotica, I see some tendency for editors to prefer happy stories over darker ones. One of my absolute favorite stories, “Trespass”, has been rejected for at least four anthologies, mostly because it ends with the death of both protagonists. On the other hand, I think that it's intensely romantic, a story of forbidden love that crosses societal boundaries.

I'm not going to turn this post into another diatribe railing against the constraints of genre. If you want to write romance, you adapt. You try keep the reader wondering just how your characters are going to get out of their predicament and get together. One of the most skillful examples of maintaining suspense in romance that I've encountered is Erastes' M/M historical romance Standish. As I was reading, I was acutely aware of the genre. I knew that the book had to have a happy ending. Yet the author kept me on edge until the last chapter; it really did seem that her characters were doomed to separation.

Bravo. I only hope that I can do as well. I've tried to pull off a similar trick in my upcoming novella Serpent's Kiss (coming from Total-E-Bound on May 4th). At one point it appears that heroine, Elena, has lost her love forever, sacrificed for a greater good. I won't say any more for fear of giving things away. But at that juncture, I want my readers to be shocked, desperate, to ask themselves, Is it possible that this might not end happily after all?

If I can manage that, then it will be a very happy ending for me!