Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 131

Minx Malone Guest Post - Inspiration

Thanks, Victoria, for allowing me to hang out with you today. I wanted to talk about something that is equally relevant for writers and readers alike: inspiration.

I used to be inspired mainly by dreams. I would wake up one day with a great idea or find myself daydreaming at work (bad, I know!) and come up with a new book title that rocked. I never questioned where these ideas came from until recently. I found myself wondering where exactly my subconscious mind was getting these ideas and even mo

Selling Stories to Editors

An interesting question came up on a newsgroup I was reading. Of course all writers write for themselves, to some extent. But what if you discover you have the gift of writing stories a particular editor likes and will buy? How does that affect your output? Do you keep writing that sort of story until the editor will no longer buy it? Or until you get tired? Would you preferentially write the stories you knew would sell?



I've done this, written towards an editor's taste, and it has resulted in sa

Siegfried Sassoon, "The Effect"

The Effect

'The effect of our bombardment was terrific.
One man told me he had never seen so many dead before.'
--War Correspondent.


'He'd never seen so many dead before.'
They sprawled in yellow daylight while he swore
And gasped and lugged his everlasting load
Of bombs along what once had been a road.
'How peaceful are the dead.'
Who put that silly gag in some one’s head?

'He'd never seen so many dead before.'
The lilting words danced up and down his brain,
While corpses

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover Outtake Excerpt

This is an outtake from The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover. It's the beginning of a substantial menage scene which was cut mostly for pacing reasons; it involved the Duchess Camille, Henri, and Lord Maxime. I later auctioned a single, signed printout of the scene to benefit marriage equality in the United States.

This version has been altered to fit your television set, ummm, the age rating on my blog.

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After Camille's bath and meal, one of the blue-garbed manservants escorted her

Andrea Barra Guest Post: Romance, Academia, and Me

Please welcome my guest Andrea Barra, PhD candidate in Sociology.

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Romance, Academia, and Me by Andrea Barra

I would be lying if I said I went into graduate school with any sort of idea of what I wanted to study, let alone what I wanted to write a dissertation about. As fate would have it, however, I hit upon a topic fairly early in the process. (This may seem like a benign statement, but as anyone who has ever pursued a PhD will tell you, it's a huge deal.) I took a class on the Sociology of C

Harper Lee Has a Backlist of One

Whenever I begin to worry too much about goals, and success, and output, and all that, I remind myself: Harper Lee.

Harper Lee wrote a novel.

It was her first novel.

She was past thirty years old when To Kill A Mockingbird was published in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a Library Journal poll.

She began another novel, but never finished it.

She published some essays, but never published any more fiction at all.

Yet I defy anyone to say

Reading and Writing Erotica as a Feminist Act

Recently, I followed a link to a fascinating-sounding blog post on erotica only to find that I had already read the post almost a year ago, and had in fact commented on it. I still stand by my comment, and decided I should post it in my blog.

I'm about to be all high-falutin' about what I affectionately refer to as smut.



I think that demonstrating women's sexuality in erotica, erotic romance, whatever, to a public audience verifies the existence of female sexuality (woman as actor rather than tha

The Desire to Publish

What makes people want to have their fiction published?

I've thought about this often: how some people burn for publication and others don't; how for some, feedback from readers is a requirement, while for others simpy to write is enough; how a (paid) published writer will often get less feedback than the average fanfiction story; how a writer can fall in love with the semicolon.

There's something about the paper, for me. I handle cotton rag paper and feel like it's the biggest luxury in the worl

Jeannie Lin Guest Post: Feminism in the Tang Dynasty

Please welcome my guest Jeannie Lin, Golden Heart finalist for her historical romance novel Butterfly Swords.


My muses -- four extraordinary women of the Tang dynasty. The characters at the top of each panel mean roughly: literacy, beauty, domination, heroism.

Feminism in the Tang Dynasty: The Footbinding Dilemma

I write historical romances set in Tang dynasty China. The period has always fascinated me: court intrigue, sensual silk costumes and dashing swordplay. But readers want historical accura

Doing What Interests You

"If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased."

--Katherine Hepburn

Tune in tomorrow for Jeannie Lin's guest post "Feminism in the Tang Dynasty: The Footbinding Dilemma."[image error]