Just Over the Edge

By Lisabet Sarai

Our topic for the next fortnight here at the Grip is “Take Me Away”:

You could argue that most erotica is fantasy, but from paranormal to alternate history to exclusive clubs and mansions for BDSM practitioners, our genre seems to lend itself to fantasy worlds. Do you like your erotica as close to reality as possible, or do you figure that as long as you're giving the reader what they crave, you might as well go all out?

Anyone who's read much of my work will recognize that it is strongly (perhaps too strongly) grounded in the real world. Practically everything I've ever written provides a strong sense of place. Indeed, I suspect that I could list the settings of my tales more accurately than the names of my characters. How many authors set stories in Worcester, Massachusetts, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or Minneapolis, Minnesota, or a motel on the Interstate fifty miles from Kansas City? I've got tales that unfold in Bangkok, Siem Reap, London, Guatemala and Assam, too.

See what I mean?

My characters aren't generally fabulously wealthy, famous or powerful either. I've written computer programmers and cops, doctors and grad students, flight attendants, strippers and bar owners, but not a single rock star or super model.

In each story, I try to evoke environments and situations that feel solid and familiar, or at least plausible. I want to lull my reader into believing in my worlds and the individuals who populate them. That way, when I step over the edge into erotic fantasy, I'll pull them with me. They won't notice (I hope) that we're all at once in an alternate reality where every desire can be fulfilled. I want them to be ready to accept – no, devour – my sexual scenarios even when they're of dubious possibility. Exhibitionist masturbation on a late night subway train. Double penetration on a billiard table. Setting oneself up as whore for a night in a rented window. A public spanking on the stage of a western honky tonk. Sex on the moderator's desk at an academic conference. Things are just so normal - right up until the point that they become fantastic.

I've written a few swingers and BDSM clubs in my time. However, those places do exist – I've even visited a few. Sure, I exaggerate a bit. At the typical swing party, you're just as likely to find creeps and bores as sexy, intuitive Dominants. However, I doubt that those of you who have had similar personal experiences would have serious issues with my portrayals of these environments.

In the few historical stories I have attempted, I work hard to build a sense of time and place, to generate a past as solid and believable as the present. I'm no expert at this; however, the goal, for me, is not much different from when I am writing a contemporary tale. Make it feel real.

Even when I write paranormal fiction, the worlds I create closely mirror the everyday. I prefer to insert only a few preternatural or occult elements in an otherwise mundane setting, and I definitely stipulate limits to my characters' powers. In my novel Necessary Madness, Kyle has prescient visions, but he cannot control them, at least initially, and they've driven him to the border of insanity. In Serpent's Kiss, although Jorge is an incarnation of the god Quetzlcoatl, he is neither invincible nor invulnerable.

Occasionally I wonder whether my propensity for writing relatively realistic erotica stems from a lack of imagination. As a reader, I adore strange, intricate, well-crafted fantasy worlds. I know it takes considerable skill to create one that's detailed and consistent enough to satisfy me. For the most part, I haven't dared to try.

My most recent novel, however, is a serious departure from my more realistic focus. Rajasthani Moon, which will be released in early June, could be politely described as “over the top”. The book began as a sort of experiment. Fed up with the slicing and dicing of erotic romance into a million subgenres, I decided to write a book that combined as many genres as I could manage. Rajasthani Moon is steampunk-paranormal-BDSM-ménage-Bollywood-Rubenesque erotic romance. There are also some kidnap fantasy and F/F elements thrown in to the mix. Here's the blurb:

Neither kink nor curse can stop a woman with a mission.

Cecily Harrowsmith, secret agent extraordinaire, is a woman on a mission. When the remote Indian kingdom of Rajasthan refused to remit its taxes to the Empire, Her Majesty imposed an embargo. Deprived of the energy-rich mineral viridium, essential for modern technology and development, Rajasthan was expected to quickly give in and resume its payments. Yet after three years, the rebellious principality still has not knuckled under. Cecily undertakes the difficult journey to the rugged, arid land of the Rajputs to determine just how it has managed to survive, and if possible to convince the country to return to the Empire's embrace. Instead, she's taken captive by a brigand who turns out to be the ruler's half-brother Pratan and delivered into the hands of the sexy but sadistic Rajah Amir, who expertly mingles torture and delight in his interrogation of the voluptuous interloper.

Cursed before birth by Amir's jealous mother, Pratan changes to a ravening wolf whenever the moon is full. Cecily uncovers the counter-spell that can reverse the effects of the former queen's hex and tries to trade that information for her freedom. Drawn to the fierce wolf-man and sympathising with his suffering, she volunteers to serve as the sacrifice required by the ritual – offering her body to the beast. In return, the Rajah reveal Rajasthan's amazing secret source of energy. In the face of almost impossible odds, Cecily has accomplished the task entrusted to her by the Empire. But can she really bear to leave the virile half-brothers and their colourful land behind and return to constraints of her life in England?

***

There's nothing at all realistic about Rajasthani Moon. It postulates the existence of fabulously perverse devices such as robotic rope that binds upon command and inexhaustible sources of energy to power airships and sex machines. Cecily is a larger than life character (in every sense) who raves against her captors even as she experiences one climax after another at their hands. It doesn't matter who is around or what is happening – Cecily Harrowsmith is almost guaranteed to be aroused.

I did enough research on Rajasthan to lace the tale with genuine cultural references, but I also concocted some purely-imagined ceremonies and performances, in line with the Bollywood theme. I made up exotic foreign dishes and created a Taj Mahal-like palace by a sacred lake. I even messed with geography, relocating the forbidding Merangahr Fort (which I knew would be my primary setting as soon as I set eyes on a photo) from Jodhpur to the Rajasthani capital city of Jaipur.

Rajasthani Moon is such a departure from my usual realistic style that I worry about readers' reactions. In particular, I'm a bit concerned that some people might object to the aspects of dubious consent that run through the tale. I just hope they realize that the book is not intended to be taken too seriously. In the real world, and in most of my fiction, I insist that all sex, and all BDSM activities, be safe, sane and consensual. However, Cecily's Rajasthan is about as far from the real world as you can get. It has a good deal in common with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars or H. Rider Haggard's Africa, but with considerably more sex.

In writing this novel, I took a step over the edge of plausibility, into the realm of high fantasy. Whether I make it back remains to be seen.

Essays on the Desk and Bones Under the Water

by Jean Roberta
*****************

Do I put off writing by doing other things, or do I write to avoid doing other things? Both.

After all, I won’t get fired if I fail to send in a story submission for an anthology whose deadline whooshed past me while I was grading student essays or even grocery shopping, cooking & cleaning up dog poo. (Realistically, I probably wouldn’t get fired for putting off the grading for a few days, but sometimes the day job has to take priority. And the other stuff doesn’t really need to be explained.)

Last week, I did something that is more-or-less against my Principles. (These are like the barb-wire fences of my childhood in Idaho. I liked testing their stretch to find out if I could get under or over them without getting stuck.)

A gothic story was lurking in the back of my mind, and wouldn’t go away. It began to take shape in mid-March when I was on a bus trip for three hours with my spouse to attend the annual convention of the NDP (New Democratic Party, farthest-left of the mainstream Canadian political parties). A call-for-submissions inspired an image of a river rushing musically over rocks – or something else? I knew there was something down there.

In real life, Spouse & I were going to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, known as the “Bridge City” because the North Saskatchewan River winds through it, with numerous bridges. By the time we got there, I knew the something under the river in my mind was a body that had been there for a generation, undetected.

The atmosphere of this story was so strong that for brief moments, I felt as though I had read it somewhere. Then I remembered that I hadn’t written it yet.

Soon the deadline was breathing down my neck, so I sent the editor an email, asking for a deadline extension. She graciously responded: “Because it’s you” (with winking smiley-face). After that, finishing the story a.s.a.p. became a serious obligation. I couldn’t leave that body under the river for months or years before figuring out how it got there.

So I cancelled a class. Bad me. But it was just one class.

If/when everything I’ve ever done is weighed by some disapproving angel on the Day of Judgment, this cancelled class will probably earn me a little tick mark in the list. But it probably wouldn’t be enough to open the trapdoor that would plunge me to the Fiery Depths. That would be too gothic.

That whole day, I was in the Zone, the one writers like to live in. I wrote & wrote. (Technically, I typed & typed.) The maximum word count was 6500 words, and I watched as my word count went up and the plot thickened. At 3500, I realized I was more than halfway through, and worried that I might not be able to stay under the wire. Well then, I thought, something might have to be pulled out. Time for that later.

By evening, the story was wrapped up at slightly over 6K. Yes!

I forced myself to put off sending it to the editor as soon as the last period was in place. This is the time when a little procrastination is a very good idea. I knew that what looked brilliant to me in the moment would probably make me groan later on. (Why did I leave that awkward phrase in? And why did I use the same cheesy word twice in one paragraph?)

Spouse asked if I planned to cook supper.

Yes, I said, as soon as my story is really finished. I hoped she would chill out and snack on leftover Easter candy.

I reread the story, made some changes, and fired it off.

Then I was assailed by doubt, much like a gothic heroine being accosted by a sinister figure in a swirling cape. Point of View: the story starts out in third-person omniscient, but morphs into third-person limited when the heroine emerges from childhood into adolescence. I was sure the editor would reject the story for being an incoherent mess.

And then there was the creepiness factor: the call-for-submissions called for “dark erotica.” Was my story both dark enough and sexy enough? I knew it would probably be too dark for Spouse, which seemed like a sign that I was on the right track, but did the editor want the murders to be described in gory detail? Or would that kind of melodrama make my story as over-the-top funny as The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

And besides all this, there is some dubious-age-of-consent sex. None of the characters have a clear age, but they are both young. How worried would the editor be about accepting a story that could possibly be interpreted as child porn? (But then, said my Common Sense, a reader who would read my story thus would probably run screaming from the whole anthology.)

Well, I thought, I just have to consider doing a massive rewrite after the editor rejects the story. I’ll have plenty of time to consider sending it somewhere else.

Obviously I can’t write, I thought, which is really too bad since I am on-schedule to teach a creative writing class in September. What a fraud I am. At least I can do laundry and clean up after our pets, who lack human discernment. Being loved by animals probably doesn’t outweigh cancelling a class.

The day after I sent off my story, the editor sent me an email: “Consider your story shortlisted.” O miracle! O sudden, unexpected resolution of complications!

I think I should spend more time putting off everything else so I can write.

The Gremlin or the Imp of the Perverse

by Amanda Earl

“We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action … It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse…The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies—disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!” Edgar Allen Poe, "the Imp of the Perverse"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kublah Khan was  never finished. Douglas Adams would never have completed the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were it not for his friend, Steve Meretzky. Hunter S. Thompson sent off his articles to newspapers last minute, referring to the fax and telex as "the mojo wire." Both Walter Benjamin and Leonard da Vinci blamed their procrastination on distraction. Today we would likely believe they were suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder.

Because one of my procrastination activities for this article was to Google "famous procrastinating writers," I will admit that the above paragraph contains information from the University of Calgary and an online Phd program site.

I handle my procrastination by doing many things at the same time. I rack up huge lists of things to do so that when I don't want to write, I can input events for the Bywords.ca literary calendar and poems for the magazine;  input links for the AngelHousePress.com list of links; work on a visual poem; reorganize my bookshelves according to publisher or colour; hang out in my favourite café, the Daily Grind & kibbutz with the barista; go online, find a man and bring him home to fuck him with vigour…all the while the blank page sits and stares, laughing and mocking me.

In the TV show Californication, novelist Hank Moody does what so many writers are famous for: he resorts to booze, drugs and women to put off writing. Writers are notorious procrastinators. I would like to fool myself and you, dear readers, into believing that I am not a procrastinator, but the truth is, I am procrastinating right now. I have two three short stories on the go and a novel I need to research, not to mention a poetry manuscript or two that require editing. Instead I'm writing to you at the tail end of March when this blog entry isn't even due until April 11.

What is it about putting pen to paper or putting fingers to keyboard that is so damn intimidating?

Some blame the fear of success, which always makes me smirk. Yeah, I'm petrified of having my work picked up by some major publishing house, going on tour, making money, being pressured to write another book…oh. wait. Damn. I am afraid of success.

Others the fear of failure. Anne Lamott, writer of the fabulous writing guide and autobiography "Bird by Bird," puts it this way: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.  It will keep you insane your whole life.” as quoted here. [Google is the procrastinator's best friend.]

I must say I spent many years not writing, curled up in the fetal position because I was afraid of trying, thanks to the belief that anything I wrote had to be perfect. As a poet, I thought I had to write pristine lines and when I wasn't able to, I procrastinated. I had a fear of failure. But I like to believe I'm over that fear. I like to…oh hell, I am still afraid of failure. I am broken. I write shitty pieces of crap. This blog entry is a shitty piece of crap. Delete. Go away. Start over. [It's the day before this blog post is due; I'm editing it now!]

That's the little voice inside me that causes my procrastination. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have a scapegoat: the little voice. It is my own imp of the perverse.  I also call it my gremlin. You remember that scene from Twilght Zone? William Shatner, the passenger on the plane happens to look out his window during a storm to see a gremlin perched on the wing. The creature proceeds to bite out chunks of the plane, all the while with a malevolent little smirk on its face, happy to be engaged in a pursuit of destruction. 

[Procrastination Activity (for those playing along at home: Google "Twilight Zone gremlin on the wing." find this Wiki entry. Look up Twilight Zone, the Movie, look up aviatophobia. Think about the interesting names there are for different kinds of fear. What can you use for a poem? Think about Erica Jong's book Fear of Flying. Imagine writing a short story in homage to the book. Something about the Zipless fuck...& so it goes]

My gremlin is a negative little shit disturber who takes pleasure in seeing me suffer. In order to stop me from writing, it will remind me of my juvenilia, a poetry collection in which fruit figured prominently. It will take me back to a reading where I read a repetitive long poem for half an hour and so bored people that several members of the audience  walked out. It will force me to reread the first erotic story I wrote. Never ever reread your early works, my fellow writers. This act of revisiting early writing will dry your creative juices as effectively as drought in the Dust Bowl.

I spend a lot of energy and time drowning out that voice. And when I manage to get something done, such as this blog entry, another little voice inside me tells the gremlin to go fuck himself. 

I'll leave you with this final portrait of procrastination and failure by the Canadian poet Jon Paul Fiorentino, from his "TheTheory of the Loser Class" (Coach House Books, 2006), which is all about failure.

MEMORY CARD

This poem finds you convincing the screensaver to make

countless appearances; you monitor your calls, save your

dreams on a memory card. Pine for scripts that call for your

flair for the Latinate rewrite, your talent for heart-wrenching

pratfalls. You're missing the application. // And you can't

quite explain it--you don't notice the rain anymore; you walk

for hours between old Wolsely houses and invoke the names

of retired NDP MLAS, a movement toward great abstractions.

// You want none of it; it's all yours. You feel hemmed in; show

it well with the precious few linguistic tricks you still remember.

Remember: there is always another shift, always another song

until the last one. // There are always fewer suitable days, more

people, more opportunities, fewer chances. Turn off the

soundtrack. It's digital. There is no desire left in you. For slip-

page, to break your neck on the shag carpet again and again.

And this poem finds you. Stored in an antique memory card.

Looking for the cheat codes.

[Poem reproduced with the permission of the poet.]

[ps- a writer from the Guardian, doubtless procrastinating some important task, has made a YouTube playlist of procrastination songs. enjoy whilst you put off whatever you have to do today.]

Oy… It’s Wednesday Already?

By Daddy X

Aw, fuckety-fuck—Wasn’t I supposed to write something about procrastination?

But what a couple of weeks it’s been! I really wanted to get on this as soon as the topic was announced. Alas, that didn’t quite fall into place, not like I wanted. But then there were good reasons for it. Unfortunate though, how it played.

Next day turned out to be when I’m scheduled to work at the antiques mall where I rent a space to sell old stuff.  They say it’s good for me to get out of the house at least once a week, and the long-suffering Momma X gets to wash my writing pajamas (a nice sky-blue vintage flannel print with multicolored hot air balloons) and my lucky woolen sock cap. I tie my hair back when planning to go outdoors, so I can wear a different hat on those days.

Well, I guess we come in contact with a lot of people at the shop (shaking hands, explaining that the ancient Greek and Roman coins are indeed real, getting queries about a sophisticated African sculpture like: ‘What kind of wood is that?’) because-- You guessed it-- I felt this little tickle in my throat that night, and, sure enough, I spent the next few days under the blankets sweating out a real bastard of a head cold. Headache, muscle aches, fever, lot’s o’ tissues … woozy … you name the classic symptom (sounds like a ‘Vic’s Vaporub’ commercial) and I had it. Didn’t get out of bed much.

Fresh out of the fever-state, and I find it to be Sunday, Flasher day on ERWA. As many of you know, it takes all morning to critique others and respond to whatever critiques I received on my stuff. Then Momma tells me it’s Easter that day and we gotta go into the city to my sister’s ‘House of Bedlam’ for the afternoon and have dinner with her, her hubby and my two teenage nephews who, it turns out, were actually raised by wolves. Right there in San Francisco. Maybe no fistfights will break out this year (or competitive belching or passing out) so, no opportunity for a blogpost that day. But we are still a week and a half away from the deadline. No sweat … You’d think, huh?

Well, I wake up Monday morning with a toothache, so we cancel the gym class but Momma and I are lucky to have a great dentist who can fit me in that afternoon (which I’d planned to devote to writing the post). He tells me that there’s nothing wrong with my tooth, but that the pain was actually a sinus infection and that he would be happy to give me the antibiotics to fix it-- a new Z-pack 5-day program: 2 pills the first day then one a day for four more. The pain started to subside immediately, but I wound up weirdly compromised by the light-headed (and not in a good way) feeling I always get when taking any kind of antibiotic. Tuesday night my right arm went numb.

Considering that I had an AVM stroke about ten years ago and a triple bypass in 2010 (not to mention the liver transplant in 2004) we didn’t want to take any chances, so even though it was the right arm, Momma and I spent that night at the emergency room. Everything turned out cool enough though, and come to think, I may have smoked a really excellent bud after dinner that night and maybe had some kind of sensory hallucination? I didn’t tell them that at the emergency, although I do have a prescription and a state card.

Speaking of weed, it’s once again soil preparation time in Norcal for the medical marijuana patch in our backyard. What a time-consuming process. For one thing it means working in a yard or two of rich topsoil that I had delivered, but they just drop it in the driveway and I have to wheelbarrow it all in back. Lots of loads. Growing season waits for no one, I guess. Then it turns out I have to trim a bunch from last year’s harvest, on account of we’re getting low on manicured stuff. I always have been a fast trimmer and can still manage about 2-2 1/2 ounces an hour (depending how big and tight the buds are) but can’t sit as long as I used to. We older growers don’t have it so easy after all, do we? Everything takes so long to do when you’re pushing seventy.

Time marches on.

Now, finally, for a day at the gym. Momma and I have found that we do best if I go twice a week and she goes three, leaving an afternoon for myself on the day she’s gone, when I get some quiet, quality writing time (in my nice clean PJ’s). Those days that we do go together tend to work out great for our sex lives as well, considering our personal preferences regarding bodily environments in general. But maybe I can explain all that better in a poem:

RECIPROCITY

Mr. Sprat and his wife

have ahold of their life

hardly ever making a scene

She’s happy with fat

he wants it all lean

He likes her funky 

she likes him clean

He showers before,

she does it after

licking each other

with peals of laughter

Then I get tired and go for a nap. No writing on gym days. Sigh…

So again it’s time for a shift at the antique mall. No cold this time, but it is another four hours where I’ll be on my sore feet and need an early quit. Then it’s Sunday Flashers once more, but the next few days look pretty good.

It’s Monday! Another day at the gym and I have to get to that class where I’m the only dude. Wheee! I do have to watch myself, though. They threw some old guy out (a friend of mine. He’s this old European Socialist cat about 80) just last year for saying something untoward to a much younger woman (a girl, really). They now have people watching out for that kind of behavior so I have to mind my P’s and Q’s and try NOT to stare, or blurt out something of a faux pas. But then afterwards I get to bed Momma again and take out all that frustration on her.

And now, you’re telling me that I’ve lost count and it’s Wednesday already? So sorry for failing so badly on my second blogpost.

It’s just like the schoolteachers used to say to my Mom and Pop on ‘Parent/Teachers Open House’. Something to the effect of: “Nice to meet you, Mr. & Mrs. X …You know that little Daddy would get better grades … if he’d only finish his homework on time.”

Some things never change.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. (Douglas Adams)

Since Lisabet and Giselle and Charlotte have covered writing-related procrastination so well, and Garceus has covered sexual procrastination with such panache that I won’t even consider going there, I’d been hoping to take an entirely different tack, but of course I’ve procrastinated so long that I have no choice but to confess my own severe case of writing procrastinitis.

You might think that writing short stories rather than novels would make things a lot easier. Who can’t whip off 2000-5000 words in a couple of days at the most? Unless, of course, the particular themes require research into history, or geography, or psychology, or witchcraft, or forensics…well, you can get the picture without the thousand words it may or may not be worth. Still, even if I already know enough about the characters and their situation and their sexual idiosyncracies, and can’t imagine that I’ll need more than a few days to get 2000-3000 words about them down on (virtual) paper, my imagination plays its old tricks. Deadline day (after maybe two or three days of severe embargo of Facebook and similar sloughs of dawdling) finds my characters 2500 words into their adventure, but nowhere near its end. Sometimes I can forge on through in the nick of time (hoping an editor on the west coast doesn’t mind that my e-mailed submission is sent at 12:15 am on the east coast, which is only 9:15 pm in California.) Sometimes, though, I can’t even come close, and the next deadline I hope to make for a different anthology is coming up so soon that I have to leave my characters in a state of erotica interrupta until another likely market comes along.

If I’ve actually committed to something, I do get it done, but I’m pretty commitment-shy. I’ve never been late turning in an anthology I’ve edited; on the other hand, I’ve never turned one in early, either. I don’t generally ask for story extensions, but if editors freely offer them, I jump at the chance and do come through. The plus side, if there is one, is that as an editor I’m sympathetic when writers need extensions from me, and I try to figure extra time into the publishing equation for just that.

I recently turned in a story one day early, to an editor I’ve worked with before, for an anthology I’d really like to be in. I managed this because the piece was a sequel to something I’d published a few years ago, and the characters’ continuing story had been brewing at the back of my mind for a long time. I’d even written a thousand or so words quite a while ago, setting up the general scene. But in the course of development, it became clear that this story and the one preceding it really wanted to be combined and expanded into a novel, or a novella at the very least, and I’m not at all sure that the one I just submitted can stand by itself.

Hmm. A novella. Maybe a novel. With my procrastinative tendencies? Not likely.

Book Vegetables

I probably said this the last time I talked about procrastination. In fact, I probably say it constantly. But I'm going to say it again cos it's so annoying me at the moment: I don't procrastinate by cleaning the house instead of writing my book. I procrastinate in the craziest way possible.

I do it by writing other books. I've always done it that way. And I'm still doing it, even though I now recognise what a sneaky fooker my brain is being. I've caught my brain in the act, red-handed, but apparently my brain is pushing for a harsher sentence. It wants to be sentenced to life in brain prison, for its crimes against me.

And currently, that shit is driving me crazy. I have a deadline on May 15th. I want to hit certain wordcounts by certain times. But what is my brain forcing me to do instead? Have random crushes on Kevin Durand! Be unable to think about anything else! Not want to write anything but stories about his hunktastical glory!

Ugh my brain is a child. Or is it my vagina that's behaving like a child, in this scenario? I don't know but either way: my body is conspiring against me. And all because I found writing scene X almost unbearably hard and couldn't get it right and have momentarily forgotten how to try. It's maddening, because I've always been good at trying before.

It's why I had such an easy time at university. I didn't worry about deadlines. I'm a hard worker and I like limits and I'm able to push myself. But somehow all of that shit flies out the window when I'm midway through a book and bumping against a roadblock.

Suddenly its times for seventeen books about some random dude who caught my eye.

*sigh*

It's time to impose some rules. I have to get out the kiddie leash and rope my brain in, before it rampages again. No Kevin Durand dessert for you brain, until you've given me two chapters of vegetables.

AND I MEAN IT, THIS TIME.

Authors Are So Neurotic

by Giselle Renarde

Let's get all deep and psychological, k?

I've got two novels sitting at the back of my hard drive.  I wrote them.  It took aaaaaages.  Now all I need is to edit the hell out of them before sending them out to publishers.  Every so often I open one of the files, thinking, "This is it.  I'm going at this thing, hardcore!"  I read one chapter, make some changes... and then I shut it down.

I like these books.  I mean, I REALLY like them.  It's not like I'm putting off editing because I think it's going to be difficult and time-consuming (though, realistically, it probably will be).

So, why am I procrastinating?

Because, once I'm finised with the edits, I'll have to decide what to do with these manuscripts.

Do I send them to publishers I've worked with before?  Makes sense. The possibility of getting a contract is higher at houses where I've already established roots.  But maybe I should take a chance by sending them somewhere new.  Is new better?  The grass is always greener at that other publishing house.  Oh, if I get in there, just image the distribution, the sales!  Imagine finally being able to pay the rent AND eat more than oatmeal for every meal!

Except, it never works out that way.

I've been here before.  I've sent my work to that perfect publisher, been accepted, and felt thrilled because this is it!  This is the book that'll hit the big-time!

And then... it doesn't.  We authors have such high hopes, but they never seem to pan out.  I've heard from writers contracted by the big publishing houses that they've never earned out their advances.  Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better.

Regardless of publisher, once a book is up for sale you've got to market the hell out of it.  Still, if nobody's interested, they're not going to buy.  And if you've worked your ass off on a manuscript and nobody buys it, how do you feel?  That's right--like a failure.

Take The Red Satin Collection as an example.  My trans lesbian Christmas erotic romance won the 2012 Rainbow Award for Best Transgender Romance/Erotic Romance, but... I won't even tell you how few copies sell.  It's too embarrassing.

So, do I feel proud that my book won an award, or ashamed because nobody buys it?  I'll give you one guess.

Or what if a book sells really well, but the whole world hates it?

I've been there, too.

My book Stacy's Dad has got it Going On was an Amazon bestseller.  It hit the ground running.  And then the reader reviews came in: "OMG so boring! Worst book ever!"  That might even be a direct quote.  I tried to put it out of my head.  Professional reviews were highly complimentary, but readers hated it.  (Seems odd to distinguist between readers and reviewers, since the readers are posting reviews and reviewers are obviously reading the books.)

And once that title became plagued by 1-star reviews, that was it.  Sales dried up.  The end.

It's no wonder I'm procrastinating when it comes to getting these two lying-in-wait novels on the market.  In my mind, they're either going to sell and be hated, or be loved and barely earn me enough to buy oatmeal.  Those are the only options.

And they wonder why authors are so neurotic?

--
Giselle Renarde  
Canada just got hotter!

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