Racheline Maltese's Blog, page 45

Sneak Peek Sunday: When the no you get is from yourself

Another Sunday, another week of Sneak Peek Sunday, a romance writer blog hop. Follow the link back to see what other authors are working on this week (please note that participating authors write in all genres and at all heat levels)

If you follow either of us on Twitter, you may have seen us whining about doing some pretty major rewrites on a story. “Universal Adjunct Hell,” the story in question, was going to be a story about anticipation. Our protagonists — Carl, a young adjunct professor at a state college, and Phil, an older non-traditional student, would acknowledge the mutual attraction but not explicitly break any rules. Instead, they’d spend the last two months of the semester thoroughly enjoying the unresolved part of their sexual tension.

We wrote a first draft, but it wasn’t quite singing for us so we let it sit while we focused on getting other projects out the door. When we came back to it, though, it still wasn’t working.

Writing is a rejection-based business and, sometimes, the no you get is from yourself. So we decided to throw out the story and start again. We’re keeping the characters and the world and even the central conflict, but we’re starting the story much later and we’re scrapping the anticipation angle entirely. After that, all we had to do was turn up the volume on the stakes, and we had something that worked much harder for us.

Of course, I say “all we had to do,” like it’s easy. It’s not, though this isn’t the hardest story problem we’ve ever had to solve. (Ask us, after Doves is out, about The Dinner Scene. That took us weeks.) But the first story ended up being pretty good research, and figuring out what didn’t work with “Adjunct I” led us to what “Adjunct II” needed to be.

So for your comparison pleasure, we present the first three paragraphs of each piece:

Adjunct I:

Carl has his eye more on the clock than the people with whom he’s supposed to be networking. He just wants to go back to his office and his endless pile of work, assuming his officemates are quiet or absent enough to make that even possible.

But then he sees Phil weaving his way through the crowd, and realizes he’s most definitely heading for him. Carl wishes he could pretend not to have seen him and go back to chatting inanely with distracted, overworked faculty and hopeful undergrads who would make fantastic grad students if the school actually had enough money to fund their research. Because while a conversation with Phil would definitely make tonight more pleasant, it’s not going to necessarily make it easier.

“Professor,” Phil says with a flirtatious smile when he gets to Carl. “I was hoping I’d run into you.”

Adjunct II:

“We really, really should not be doing this.” Carl says as Phil wraps a hand around both of their dicks.

“Are you actually concerned or is this like your dirty talk thing?” Phil gasps as he starts working them together.

Carl throws his head back and laughs, which just invites Phil to suck bruises into his neck.

 

 

Adventures in branding: Mc before Ma, except after….

One of the most common questions Erin and I get about co-writing involves our egos. Or, more bluntly, how do we keep from killing each other.

Despite, I think, both of us being very ego-driven and easily-bruised people (even if we hide it well), the fact is the work we do together doesn’t exist without both of us, so what’s to get weird about?

That said, one key issue early on became the order of our names. Erin felt mine should go first. I don’t even remember why she thought that, just that I thought she was insane. Mine is difficult to pronounce (Ra-shell-lean), making it a branding obstacle. Additionally, I already had some degree of internet public image and we needed to establish her identity. Finally, alphabetical order demanded she be first.

Yes, by first or last name.

Erin’s college education took place in Canada. The bulk of my primary and secondary education was largely British in word choice, tradition, and character, which means that for us a Mc name precedes a Mal name, because the Mc includes an implied a that places McRae before Maltese.

Do you have a headache yet? Just wait.

So, I then ran around and did our branding. This website, our Facebook page, our joint email (erin.and.racheline@gmail.com). We submitted our books that way, and no one ever mentioned it.

Until we were doing the very final look at proofs for “Lake Effect” and noticed my name was first.

When we wrote to inquire, we found out what we should have asked our publisher about way at the beginning (take this as a pro-tip, other writing teams), which is that they use ALA style, which does not account for the implied a in Mc prefixes, which therefore places Maltese before McRae.  Which means, yes, a small change is coming to the Starling cover.

No worries, because rules are rules, and we really don’t care whose name goes first.

But my dad was in advertising, and branding is very important.  So I was like “Okay, so when I get home, I’ll switch the website banner and….”

But then Erin pointed out the email address and the Facebook thing, and the reality that other publishers may not order names the same way, and that no matter how hard I try the branding is never going to be that consistent, and I just need to take a deep breath and let it go.

So that’s the deal.  Sometimes Erin will be first, and sometimes I will be first, and it will never have anything to do with anything other than various alphabetization preferences and tendencies of the powers that be in relation to any particular project.

The real lesson here is that you will always wind up in email threads about things weirder and more detailed than you possibly could have imagined when getting words ready for the world.

Playlist: Lake Effect

Earlier I wrote about growing up in Rochester, where “Lake Effect” is set. Today, I’m bringing you the music of the story and of Rochester, as I know it.

Most of it falls somewhere in the Irish folk/pop/rock spectrum. Most of the older songs I’ve been listening to since I was a kid. All of it is the music I had on in the car when I was a teenager and had on loop while we wrote the story. There’s still nothing that can take me back to the years I was in high school and home on break from college, angry I was still in Rochester but too in love with the landscape to be unhappy in a way that ever made sense to anyone else.

Some of it’s happy. A lot of it’s not. All of it is the musical landscape of Kyle and Daniel and the world they come home to, to get married.

Summer reading from Hachette and friends of Avian30

As Erin and I network more with the larger romance writing community both on- and off-line, you’re going to see more content here over the coming months about other people’s work.

Mostly this content will focus on novels about and writers working in the QUILTBAG spectrum, but not always. A good book is a good book. And the community is the community.

One of the big community issues right now is the Amazon vs. Hachette situation. I have very strong, specific, and, frankly, pretty boring feelings about the whole thing. Whatever your strong, specific, and, frankly, also pretty boring feelings about the whole thing, one thing is clear — this really sucks for Hachette authors.

As such, Erin and I wanted to highlight work from several Hachette authors below who represent a broad spectrum of romance and women’s fiction. These authors are people I know through the Internet and Romance Writers of America.

If you are a Hachette author of romance not featured here, feel free to post about your book in the comments. If the situation drags on longer, we may do another post on Hachette romance and women’s fiction books in the future and will put out a call for submissions at that time.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a summer read, please consider:

First up is Slow Surrender by Cecilia Tan, a long-time luminary in QUILTBAG and kinky literature.

He pushes her sexual boundaries . . .

From the moment waitress Karina meets him in a New York bar, she knows James is different. Daring. Dominating. Though he hides his true identity from her, the mysterious, wealthy businessman anticipates her every desire and fulfills her secret fantasies. Awakened by his touch, Karina discovers a wild side she hadn’t known existed and nothing is off limits.

She aches for more . . .

What begins as an erotic game soon escalates to a power play that blurs the line between pleasure and pain. Even as she capitulates to James’s sensual demands, Karina craves more. She wants his heart, his soul. She wants his love . . . and she’ll break all the rules to get it.

You can order Slow Surrender in ebook or paperback from Barnes & Noble and other retailers. Also, keep an eye out, because a sequel, Slow Satisfaction, is coming soon.

Next up is Lisa Verge Higgins’s Random Acts of Kindness, a novel about women’s lives and women’s friendships.

With the remnants of her past rattling in the trunk of her Chevy, Jenna Elliott abandons her Seattle home determined to start life anew. Her journey compels her to the door of two friends: Claire, an ex-Buddhist nun and cancer survivor, eager to escape her overbearing family for what may be her last chance to fulfill a dream; and Nicole, a professional Life Coach who can’t even control her own teenage son. But what starts out as an impulsive road trip soon becomes an inexorable journey to their past, as the women grapple with who they were, who they are, and the strange twists that have now set them on the road to their hometown of Pine Lake. There, Jenna discovers that her random act of kindness has rippled out into the world like a stone dropped into a deep pond, coming back to rock her life—and those of her friends—in ways they never expected.

You can purchase Random Acts of Kindness in paperback, e-book, and audiobook from Barnes & Noble and other retailers.

Finally for today, we have Sofia Tate’s Breathless for Him. We don’t want to play favorites, everyone I know lists this as one of their favorite covers lately.

For fans of New York Times bestselling authors Samantha Young, Sylvia Day, and E. L. James comes the stunning, erotically charged story about a woman who’s not looking for love and the tempting billionaire who left her breathless . . .

As a gifted opera singer, Allegra Orsini’s only obsession is music-until she meets him. A strikingly handsome and powerful man with a life splashed across the tabloids, Davison Cabot Berkeley isn’t what she expected. He’s unlike the other wealthy patrons who dine at Le Bistro. Davison sees more than just a coat-check girl working her way through grad school. And from the moment he looks at her, those deep green eyes ignite a fire inside Allegra she’s never felt before. 

She craves Davison’s touch-his possession-endlessly. Even though every fiber of her being is telling her to stay away, that it’s best for both of them, she can’t. As his passion consumes her, Allegra can no longer deny Davison’s hold on her. He’ll never let her go. But as much as she wants him, Allegra can’t surrender to his love-not until she faces a painful secret from her past that could destroy them both . . .

Breathless for Him won’t be out until July 1 (also note, it’s the first book in a two-book series), but you can pre-order it today in e-book and print from Barnes & Noble.

Move over, report card: My romance novel cover is on my parents’ fridge

And today we bring you the latest installment of Your Mom! Which we may have to expand to Your Parents! or Your Other Blood or Chosen Family Members Who Bring You Both Embarassment and Joy! because my father is hilarious, very sweet, and won’t stop emailing us both about the demons.

But yesterday I got an email from dad, not about the demons (“No but what’s up with the tails?” “DAD. DAD, WE WRITE ROMANCE NOVELS. DAD IT’S DEMON PORN. DAD, DON’T MAKE ME TALK ABOUT THIS WITH YOU.”)

Yup, that’s my parents’ fridge. And yup, those are our covers for “Lake Effect” (which comes out on the 18th from Torquere!) and Starling. Racheline’s piece from Salon is up there, too!

So that’s epically awesome. And when I asked Racheline if there was anything she wanted to add to this post, she emailed me back: “Well, there’s a dirty joke about finger painting in there if you want to go for it.”

So I’ll leave you with that thought. That, and a note that, no matter how old you are, you’re never too old to have a glow of little-kid pride that your work is up on the fridge.

Even when it’s a fingerpainting.

Romance @ Random: Penny Dreadful Episode 5 Recap

This week’s recap is up!

Vanessa writes a letter telling Mina everything Mina already knows. Lesbian subtext is sacrificed because they may be half-sisters. The devil impersonates Sir Malcolm. Then there is demon sex.

Spider level: 0.

Meanwhile, some news on these recaps: There will be another Penny Dreadful recap next week, but after that I’m being switched over to Romance @ Random’s True Blood beat!

But don’t worry, I’ll still be writing up a big article on Penny Dreadful for my LettersFromTitan blog, talking about how Victor is the giver of life and Vanessa is the maker of death and how together they are probably the embodiments of these Ancient Egyptian deities who are working on bringing about the apocalypse. You know, as you do.

Do the Thing! – Examine your shame

By the time you read this, I’ll have an essay up on Salon. This both feels like a very big deal, and not. When I told a friend last night over dinner, she was excited for me, but also like, “I thought you and Erin sold a script.”

It made me smile. “Next week,” I said. Selling books is apparently now old hat around here. ;)

It’s nice, though, when your friends raise the bar for you. Especially after years of wandering in a wildnerness where my friends supported me, but didn’t necessarily believe in me in that way.

Which is fair.

I come from a family of big talkers and big dreamers. My dad was in advertising and has self-published his own writing. Everything has always been about the big plan that is going to change everything.

While most of us have plans like that, the reality is that few of those plans work out. My dad’s certainly haven’t. And if we are the sort of people who talk about those plans as part of our process, we have to live with the consequences of that talk. Because if we’re publicly verbal to keep ourselves going, we become the boys who cried wolf regarding possibility. And sometimes that leads to shame.

But in the pursuit of getting the thing done sometimes you have to just tell shame — or at least certain types of shame — to fuck right off.

That Salon piece, is, in part, about something I did a long time ago that I feel shame over. It was weird and creepy. It was criminal. And it scared people, who I can’t even apologize to because any interaction with me would probably be not something they’d be into, which is totally their prerogative. Also, let’s face it, an apology would be about me and my desire for absolution and unlikely to repair any harm done to them.

Now, when I had the idea to write the essay about it, I pitched it to four outlets. The first sent me a perfectly polite rejection letter. Which I then stared at and went through a spiral over where I was embarrassed for thinking I could write for such an outlet, ashamed that I had wasted someone’s time, and felt this overwhelming sense of the whole thing being noted on my hypothetical permanent record: INAPPROPRIATE PROFESSIONAL AUDACITY was rubber stamped across the file in my head.

I felt ill and hoped no one else responded. How could I have thought my story mattered? But six hours later, Salon wrote and expressed interest and wanted to see the piece for possible purchase. I took a deep breath, wrote the thing, and had a sale the next morning.

So to recap:

The shame about what I did in high school? Justified and probably useful in helping me learn not to do things like that.

But my shame about pitching an essay somewhere that didn’t feel it was a good fit? Totally not useful. That type of shame is the shame that makes us procrastinate, not put our work out there, and judge ourselves — and others — as bad people simply for ambition.

You want to Do the thing? Then you need to look at your shame, why you have it, whether it’s useful or justified, and how you need to confront it to move towards a better place.

Got the useless type of shame you need to let go of? You know what to do in the comments.

Sneak Peek: Lake Effect (Something a little different!)

Another Sunday, another week of Sneak Peek Sunday, a romance writer blog hop. Follow the link back to see what other authors are working on this week (please note that participating authors write in all genres and at all heat levels).

We know we’ve already posted a Sneak Peek from “Lake Effect” a couple of weeks ago, but this week we want to try something a little different. Our first short story comes out June 18th from Torquere Press, and while we’re ramping up to the release we want to talk a little about our process and try a new angle on this Sneak Peek thing.

Both Racheline and I have collaborative projects going with multiple people, and we know that every cowriting team has its own system and magic. And because of our particular structure — I’m based in DC, Racheline is in NYC, and on a good month we get to spend a grand two or three days total in the same physical space — we rapidly developed a System for writing and editing online.

Our collaborative tool of choice is Google Docs, and while we’re writing we leave each other notes, either in the text itself or as comments in the margins. Sometimes these notes are “pronouns are hard, help.” Sometimes it’s “rampant abuse of the past pluperfect, fix.” Sometimes it’s “Wait. Where did Plot Element X go??”

So here are six more paragraphs from “Lake Effect,” from the morning before Kyle and Daniel’s wedding. Daniel just wants to go wake his fiancee up in peace; Daniel’s mother wants him to shave (A note for the sake of Torquere that this is from the unedited version; all errors are our own):

“I’ve had a beard for years,” Daniel protests, whiplashed by the abrupt subject change.

“But it’s your wedding,” his mother says.

“And I’d like to look like myself for it. Plus, he likes it,” Daniel says, hoping he doesn’t sound too dirty about it as he hears Kyle’s footsteps coming downstairs.

His mother sighs, but at least lets the matter drop. Daniel gets up to get more coffee. Clearly today is going to require it and he wants to intercept Kyle for a proper good-morning greeting out of his mother’s eyesight, but Kyle bounces in with a tense smile and stands on his tiptoes for a quick kiss.

Kyle’s grown a little taller and a little broader than he was when they first got together and Pat had threatened to beat the shit out of Daniel for dating his jailbait baby brother, but only relatively. Kyle is tiny and not likely to ever get less tiny. Daniel loves it, even if their relative size differential makes people assume all sorts of things about their physical and emotional dynamic that are entirely not true

“Only twenty-four hours left,” Kyle whispers when he settles back onto his heels again. It’s not, Daniel knows, an I can’t wait to marry you. It’s an I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here again.

And our subsequent thread, over choice of profanity in that last sentence:

Racheline: Hell or fuck?

Erin: Probably fuck. For some reason I feel worry we’re over-fucking on this one. Which is a silly worry, because there’s about a fuck every square foot of everything else we write.

Which is true! So the fuck stayed.

And another thread, this time with some backstory that hadn’t made it in to the story yet and that we didn’t even know yet:

Racheline: Hey, who proposed. Because I feel like if it was Kyle, and no one knows that and it speaks to the relationship dynamic people don’t get.

Erin: It was totally Kyle. And that may be worth Daniel mentioning here for the O.o moment.

Yesterday, on an unrelated project, one of our notes was “No, no Popsicles until they’re hooking up.” We love writing process stories, and all of our stories themselves are processes unto themselves. When we’re lucky — which is most of the time — the process of creating the piece is as entertaining to us as the final piece.

So your mom wants to know if you’re into bondage the way you used to be really into elves

Both of my parents read this blog. (My dad follows me on Twitter, and I’m pretty sure he links my mom to anything he finds suitably amusing. Hi Dad!). Which is generally really cool, like when my mom got a massive kick out of the Alex heroine interview. And while no one really blinks at the LGBT romance thing, we did manage to shock my mom with the Conference Sneak Peek a couple of weeks back.

Later that day I got an email from her, very lovingly phrased, and asking, basically, why on earth I was into bondage. I used to be really into elves and dragons when I was a kid. Was this like that?

Well, I’m still into elves and dragons, but after I fell through the floor with the kind of embarrassment that can only come from being asked that question by your mom, I wrote her back. After all, she just wants to know what I’m into, because she likes me and likes to know what I’m up to. So I explained briefly that, first of all, BDSM isn’t just about bondage and isn’t really about sex. It is about — and here lies the appeal for me — structure and communication.

There’s a risk element to a lot of what goes down in the BDSM scene that means, if you’re going to play safe, you’re going to spend A LOT of time talking to your partner about what you want, and what you don’t want. And that expands outwards from stuff involving scary-looking whips to every part of the relationship. It’s a lifestyle that demands being really honest and open about your feelings. It’s also a lifestyle where there is absolutely no shame for wanting, or not wanting anything.

I talked about how writing and being ambitious, especially when you’re a woman, can be incredibly isolating and frustrating. I told her how easy it can be to feel confused about what I’m “supposed” to do in my work-life balance, and how guilty I feel when there aren’t enough hours in the day to make everyone I have responsibilities to, including myself, satisfied and happy.

However, the BDSM subculture tells me desire is good, asking for what you want is necessary, and negotiating (almost) anything is possible. Reading and writing about BDSM on the page has made it easier for me to say “Tell me what you want” and “I want X” in real life, and that’s done a concrete good for me.”

It also, frankly, made answering my mom’s question easier. No matter what the structure of your life looks like, communication can be hard and navigating different desires in relationships, friendships, and the workplace can be incredibly challenging. Negotiating those challenges is also very much the sort of story we like to tell here at Avian30, whether it’s about a couple at a leather conference or an accidental triad navigating the burdens of both public life and forgotten history (you haven’t met that story yet, but we hope you will soon).

What I didn’t think to tell my mom at the time, and maybe I should have, is that it’s too easy to bargain for your life, which is something rarely done from a place of power, or pleasure.  Negotiating, on the other hand, is something very different indeed.

Giveaway winners revealed!

Erin and I are pleased to announce that the free copy of “Lake Effect” that was a giveaway associated with the TRS Staying Home Party will be going to Tumblr/Twitter user @istytehcrawk when the story comes out on June 18th.

Meanwhile, later today, we’ll be making a $25 donation to Lambda Legal, a $12.50 donation to the Campaign for Southern Equality and a $12.50 donation to If You’re Buying in the name of Beth, who was the winning commenter on the post we did for the Blog Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

Winners have been notified and have given us permission to share these details.

Also, stay tuned, because we have another giveaway coming later this month!