What I've been listening to...

It’s another round of “What I’ve been reading” and, like last time, I haven’t been reading much lately other than stuff I’m publishing.

So, I’m again going to take this in a different direction!

It’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to get into podcasts.

I’m sure some of you reading this don’t listen to podcasts and you’re thinking “That’s not embarrassing”. The difference with me, though, is that I’ve been a regular co-host / panelist of a podcast for a year and a half, but it’s only about six months ago that I listened to my first podcast. Since then, I’ve pretty much exploded into podcasts.

Under my real name, Craig, I’ve been a regular on the Write Right podcast since the start of the second season. (It was a 2018 goal of mine to “come out” about my writing, so it’s only now that I’m starting to link my real name to my author name.)

Under the name Cameron D. James, I now host two podcasts by myself:

Deep Desires Podcast — this is tied to my publishing company, Deep Desires Press, and we feature an author guest every month to chat about their book and their process of writing. We have a lot of fun and I feel like we keep the conversation interesting for both readers and writers who might be listening.

Sex For Money — this is a new podcast of mine that focusses on the business side of writing, publishing, and selling romantic and erotic fiction. There are a number of podcasts out there that talk about the business of writing, publishing, and selling, but things are almost always different for those in romantic and erotic genres. Because of what we write, special rules and limitations are often put on us. I’m only a few episodes in and I feel it’s gotten off to a bit of a rocky start — episode one (about changes at Facebook) I was unexpectedly nervous and rushed through it, and episode two (about Goodreads) I felt I wandered too much. For episode three, to be released this week, I interview an author to talk about motivation when it comes to writing and building a career. Next month I’m going to talk about strategies for making money in this genre.

But this post isn’t all self-promotion!

The theme of this fortnight is “What I’ve been reading” — so here is “What podcasts I’ve been listening to”:

Writing Excuses: This weekly show features a 15-minute discussion on writing by big name authors (or at least one big name author and some lesser-known authors). It took me a long time to even try this because the big name author is Brandon Sanderson, so I expected it to be focussed on epic fantasy and strongly favour traditional publishing. It’s not that at all. They totally respect all genres and have a romance author as a co-host and they have a healthy respect for self-publishing. I highly recommend this one.

Sell More Books Show: This weekly podcast explores the news in publishing and self-publishing. There are a few podcasts that explore news in the industry, but I find these co-hosts — Jim and Bryan — to be better than most other “news” hosts. They really break down the business of self-publishing and look at it objectively. (Whereas I find a lot of other book news shows carry heavy biases — you either agree with them or not. With Jim and Bryan, they try to look at it from all angles, so even if you don’t agree with their conclusion, your point of view was likely given discussion time.) It’s from listening to this one that I decided to start the Sex For Money podcast — while Jim and Brian give excellent analyses and advice, sometimes what they say doesn’t apply to erotic authors.

Smart Author with Mark Coker: Hosted by the founder of Smashwords, this is a very indie-focussed podcast that starts at the basics — how do you self-publish? — and then moves onto marketing. I find the information a little bit basic, but definitely worth listening to.

The Secret Life of Canada: I felt this one started off a bit rocky (it’s pretty new), but has very quickly grown in their professionalism and their approach. This podcast explores the history of Canada — but topics that don’t generally make it into school classes — and covers tough topics. There was one episode, though, that was erotica-focussed, exploring the history and context of Governor General Literary Award winning erotic novel Bear by Marian Engel — a book about a woman who enters a sexual relationship with a bear. (Like, the animal, not a fat hairy gay man.)

Canadaland Commons: This is a political magazine show, for lack of a better term. They explore issues in depth about politics in Canada. I find it can be a bit hit or miss, but when they do a good episode, they really do a fantastic job. One of their recent episodes covers what it means to be a person of colour in Canada — and exposed some really shocking things about Canada, like the fact that our last segregated school closed in the 80s.

Lore: This is a beautifully produced podcast that explores history and folklore — and how they intersect and overlap. The stories are captivating and the production quality (which includes haunting piano music) is entrancing. This is perhaps my favourite podcast.

I also listen to a few others, but these are the big ones that I look forward to the most when they pop up in my podcast app.

Hopefully I’ll actually be reading books again when this topic returns!



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Autumn Fire. He is publisher at and co-founder of Deep Desires Press, member of the Indie Erotica Collective, and hosts two podcasts, Deep Desires Podcast and Sex For Money. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

Being Known

As Sacchi wrote on Monday, I hung out with her and Jeremy Edwards over the weekend, and, inspired by the current topic at The Grip, we spent some time recording a conversation about friendship. Jeremy heroically provided the equipment and processed the audio from that, and I'll share a few snippets here.

I want to make this post worthwhile even for those who aren't set up to listen to audio, so I'm going to riff on some of things that came up, then embed the clips (and link to where they're hosted).

Do You Know Me?

I tend to assume that people don't remember me. Unless I am certain it isn't necessary, I usually remind people of my name and where we've met when I encounter them in person. In cover letters, I'll usually tag previous interactions (such as, "You've published my work in four of your books") up to, perhaps, a ridiculous point. After all, if the editor has published my stories in four of their books, I would hope my name would at least ring a bell...

Similarly, I don't assume readers know who I am, though at this point there are a pretty large number of places where they could have encountered me.

There's a downside to this assumption, though. What seems like prudence to me can lead to impostor syndrome or a tendency to miss out on opportunities to interact with the larger community. If I had a dollar for every time I've wondered if I'm "allowed to" interact with someone on Twitter, I'd have at least a month's rent.

And to become friends with people, I have to allow it. My behavior can lean formal in a way that I think holds people at arm's length. I want to relax that at least a little.

I brought up this point in the conversation with Jeremy and Sacchi, and we discussed becoming friends with others in the erotica business.



Direct Link

Do You Really Know Me If You Don't Know I'm Annabeth?

I keep my ego shelf in the living room, which is the first room a person walks into when entering my apartment. I've questioned the wisdom of this many times, because it's been awkward once in a while. For example, my priest came over once and was sitting not three feet from my vast collection of smutty books. I will probably forever wonder if he noticed or not.

There's a reason I put the books there, though. In a small way, it's an effort to avoid feeling ashamed of something that's a huge part of my life. I would like to believe that anyone who's close enough to come into my apartment is close enough to see the books. When I do get asked about them, I answer honestly, and this only gets weird some of the time.

The thing is, if you don't know that I write erotica, then you're missing a big part of my life. For me, the question of letting real life friends know what I'm up to as Annabeth is still active and difficult.

Jeremy, Sacchi and I talked about our experiences in this respect.



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Do You Really Know Me If You Know That I'm Annabeth?

I try very hard to be real in conversations in person or over e-mail—in private conversation, really. I try to tell the truth on this blog, as well. On The Grip, I've discussed some really difficult issues that I don't usually talk about, and I have the same ideals for my Annabeth Leong blog.

For me, that's come as the result of becoming bolder and braver. I have seen so many exhortations to never discuss politics on social media sites (you don't want to alienate your customers...). Here's the thing I've finally realized. If you don't like my politics, you won't like my writing. I craft my writing to be inclusive of people of all genders, races, orientations, etc. Accurately representing the world is one of my deepest passions as a writer. I also believe in questioning stereotypes wherever I can—and for me that's good both as politics and as strong characterization and plotting. I've had places where I've fallen short, of course, but I've been trying to make my voice stronger lately.

That said, the way I'm Annabeth in public does still conceal some things. I don't generally post about what discourages me, what business practices I think are nonsense, and so on. This touches a bit on what Giselle brought up, in my mind anyway. I need a little privacy to myself. I am as present as possible in all my writing—whether that's stories, blog posts, or brief things on Twitter. It's not the whole picture, though.

That's where writer friends come in. I've been making an effort lately to have at least a few friends who know what I, as Annabeth, am struggling with. And I think it makes all the difference in the world.

Jeremy, Sacchi, and I talked about discouragements as a writer, particularly about moving on from erotica.



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There are five more snippets than the ones I included with this post.

If you're interested in the entire conversation, I've got it all posted here, along with descriptions of what we cover in each section. If anyone has trouble getting the clips, shoot me an e-mail and I'll happily send them to you that way.

And thanks again to Jeremy and Sacchi for a lovely conversation.