C. Margery Kempe's Blog: Lady Smut, page 183

Signs of Spring by Gerri Brousseau

Hi All.  I'm so happy.  Why, you ask … because today I saw a robin. Here in the cold hills of Connecticut, these little red breasted birds do not spend their winters, but fly instead to warmer climates and return to us in the spring.  Now, I realize it's only the early days of March and we are probably in for at least one more snow storm, but I have to say my heart jumped with delight upon spying this little bird.  The signs of spring are all around us here as the daffodils are also about 3″ high and will soon be sprouting their bright yellow flowers.  I yearn for the days I know are coming when I can sit out on the deck and write.   Even though we have not had a severe winter this year, the warmer temperatures are coming and with that the urge to get outside and do some gardening.  As some of my readers know, I do enjoy gardening and even though I live in a condo, I have a vegetable garden planted in pots on my deck.  I'm already dreaming of tasting those lush and delicious fresh tomatoes.  I guess I'm suffering from cabin fever and just want to get out in the sunshine.  Maybe if these warmer temperatures stick around I'll wash my car! Oh man … if I do that, it will snow for sure!

Are any of you doing anything special to celebrate the coming of spring? Have you noticed flowers sprouting and robins hopping along on your lawns?

Filed under: romance

The Art of Promotion

First off, I'd like to start off by saying that I am so excited to announce the release of my first novella Irish Dreams. I've included the blurb and cover below. In addition to this, I'm going to start a mini-series over the course of the next few weeks as to how to promote your book as this release has been a learning experience and I've barely been able to keep up.

So your book comes out and it sells and you automatically become a best-selling, well-known author. Wrong! Not that I thought that, but I certainly didn't think about all the ins and outs of promoting a book. There are so many websites out there, so many tools.

Most if not all of the big guys (Amazon.com, B&N, etc.) selling books have author pages for you to put up a bio, photo, blog and list of books. Publishers will have these pages too. In addition to these, there are sites like Goodreads that allow you to interact with readers. These sites also have author pages that allow you to put up information about you and your books. And of course, I can't forget the reviewers like those on ManicReaders who are a huge part of book promotion, not to mention very valuable to the general public in that they keep us up-to-date on the great books out there. Then there are trailers and blogs and of course Facebook. Wow! It never seems to end. But that's it for today. I'll go into the bits and pieces over the next few weeks—it's still somewhat of a learning experience for me as well.

In the mean time, enjoy…

Blurb:

It's one thing to resist an Irish dream, quite another to resist a dreamy Irishman.

After being traded for another woman by her fiance, Maggie decides she's had it with men. Good thing she's far away from him, in Ireland fulfilling her best friend's request to be maid-of-honor. Wicklow and the Emerald Isle are more than she expects—green, lush, and exactly what she needs. What she doesn't need is rescuing by some emerald-eyed charmer.

Newly divorced, Ethan Moore is ready to enjoy bachelorhood. Only one problem—the fiery-haired Maggie Christy. Unlike any woman he's ever met, Maggie draws him close and turns him inside out. The attraction is unexpected and inconvenient, but nobody ever said true love was easy.

WARNING: Exceedingly charming Irishmen and sexually explicit scenes.

 

 

Filed under: Business, Marketing, Toni Kelly

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby by Leia Shaw

There's this little book series, you might have heard of it, called Fifty Shades of Grey, and it's making big waves in the romance world – and beyond. There's a lot of controversy surrounding it. As you might be figuring by now, I'm attracted to controversy.

50 Shades started off as Twilight fan fiction then released as an erotic story that has crossed over to gain readers of all genres. It features a young college student, Anastasia, and her rapid but intense relationship with a young CEO with a traumatic childhood and a fondness for whipping women in his "Red Room of Pain" (i.e. BDSM playroom).

Women who read a lot of BDSM are up in arms because they say 50 Shades has portrayed BDSM as a bad thing a person should heal from instead of an acceptable lifestyle if practiced safely. But if you take a look at the Goodreads reviews you'll see most people love the books.

In fact, it got so much attention that the Today Show did a special on it. Apparently 50 Shades is the newest trend to hit the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Women are talking about the haunted billionaire and his dark fetish.

Opinions abound on this subject. "Experts" weigh in on whether BDSM, specifically sadomasochism, is healthy. Long gone are the days of S&M being considered a mental illness, or so I thought.  In fact, it's been proven there is not a higher rate of trauma among those who practice BDSM than in the general population. Yet the "expert" on the Today show regarded the books as encouraging violence against women. Which is not only extremely ignorant but who on earth would call a man who's never read the books in question an expert on the subject, or on women's sexuality, in the first place? Just because it says Doctor in front of his name and he has his own show doesn't mean he's smart. I think Dr. Phil proved that one.

But I digress.

I've read the three book series and I enjoyed it very much. Does it portray BDSM as a dark and unhealthy need? A little. Could that be true for some people? Absolutely. It's all a matter of perspective. Is a glass of wine bad for the majority of the population? No. Is it for an alcoholic? You see what I mean. Something healthy for one person could be unhealthy for another. There are plenty of erotic books that shed a positive light on BDSM, why not write about the other side?

What I find ironic – and irritatingly inconsistent – is how authors go on about censorship regarding taboo subjects most of the population finds horrifying yet I don't know how many times I've heard the words, "EL James shouldn't write….blah, blah,blah (elitist mumbo-jumbo)."  Isn't that that the same as censorship? We silence each other by discrediting work we don't agree with yet claim we're anti-censorship. Seems hypocritical to me.

Back to the Today special. You're all are dying to know what I think about it, right? Right? Too bad. I'm telling you anyway.

Women are talking about sex.  How is that a bad thing? What's a beautiful gift we've been given as a human race has been made shameful, and anything that deviates from what we've been raised to accept as the norm is misunderstood at best. But now they are discussing not only sex, but kinky sex! Fantasies they may have thought crazy or weird are being brought out into the open and discussed freely. And how much do you want to bet that this is affecting them in the bedroom too? I think it's fabulous.

I'm not advocating shouting your top ten favorite positions from the rooftops, but if women in private book clubs are opening up to each other, learning from each other, supporting one another because of this series…well…I tip my hat to EL James.

Link to the new segment

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/46602040#46602040

Filed under: romance

Weekly Paranormal-Scope

While I'm not qualified in any way to read neither stars nor planets, I am intimately linked with the paranormal in the world.   In many ways, so are you.

The week ahead for:

Aries

Demons will pass you by.  This is your lucky week.

Taurus

Hobbits make good friends that will stay the course.

Gemini

Shapeshifers know when it's time not to change.  The things around you will change instead.

Cancer

A brooding vampire is coming around to your point of view.

Leo

A gnome ushers in a burst of Spring cleaning.  Go with it.

Virgo

A mermaid sings your name and changes the current to bring you to a safe shore.

Libra

A vampire thinks you sparkle.

Scorpio

Werewolves have gathered in your honor.  It's time to become a member of the pack.

Sagittarius

A sprite brings you warm breezes and warmer memories of an old friend.

Capricorn

An elf will show you the benefits of dancing in the sunshine.

Aquarius

A dragon is a powerful and devoted friend even if they're a bit noisy sometimes.

Pieces

Leprechauns have left you a path of good luck this week.

–Susan

Susan Hanniford Crowley

http://www.susanhannifordcrowley.com

Filed under: Susan Hanniford Crowley, Weekly Paranormal-Scope

Desire

Writing erotica has a lot more acceptance now than it did in the past, but there are still a lot of hurdles we've yet to lea (PayPal for example).  It might be 'acceptable' but it's often far from admired.  Like its sister genre, romance, it is often dismissed because of its largely female audience and creators, because something that's 'only' for women isn't 'universal' – yeah, right.

It's surprising that even in the mainstream there's still a discomfort linking women and desire.  Libby Brooks, writing in The Guardian about the collection In Bed With… that features big name writers who nonetheless write under pseudonyms, notes:

It's a weary truism that it remains taboo for women to talk publicly about what turns them on. Another of the contributors, Joan Smith, says she has been fielding scandalised callers demanding to know why a feminist such as herself would even countenance writing erotica. For all the jocular gloss, the media's imperative to identify Lette's writers carries an unpleasant undercurrent of the scarlet letter.

Why is women's desire such a powerful thing that it must be hedged around with such careful language and subterfuge?  I suspect a large part of that comes from its mysteriousness.  The physiological questions about female desire remain puzzles to researchers who find it impossible to sort out the overlap between impulses from the body and those from culture.  In a New York Times Magazine piece, Dr. Meredith Chivers, who has spent long years working to understand the workings of female sexuality, continues to find it a perplexing problem:

"So many cultures have quite strict codes governing female sexuality," she said. "If that sexuality is relatively passive, then why so many rules to control it? Why is it so frightening?" There was the implication, in her words, that she might never illuminate her subject because she could not even see it, that the data she and her colleagues collect might be deceptive, might represent only the creations of culture, and that her interpretations might be leading away from underlying truth. There was the intimation that, at its core, women's sexuality might not be passive at all. There was the chance that the long history of fear might have buried the nature of women's lust too deeply to unearth, to view.

That fear is still with us. We bear a heavy burden from cultural programming.  It affects us in ways we can't always realise or understand.  But taking up the task of writing our desires is a positive step.  The more we take control and own our erotic imaginings, the more that fear and negativity will fall away.

The one thing that is clear from Chivers' work is how important being desired is for women.  Tell us we're loved, but tell us we're sexy, too.  That's a guaranteed turn on. As we explore these notions in our stories, we become more sure of ourselves and better able to articulate our desires, and that's good for everyone.

Filed under: C. Margery Kempe, Characters, contemporary romance, Emotions, erotic romance, inspiration, Kit Marlowe, romance, What inspires you?, Writer's Life

What This Writer Needs by Gerri Brousseau

Recently, Susan Hanniford Crowley wrote about What Authors Need.  These three articles have gotten me thinking.  An author spends most of their time working in solitude.  Author's tend to get drawn into the worlds they create and tend to remain there until their novel is completed.  Authors create characters and spend months on end with them, placing them in near impossible predicaments, and rescuing them from peril.  We come to know our characters, their likes, their dislikes, their quirks, and their dreams.  In short, these characters become our friends.

As an author, I do spend quite a bit of time in the solitude of the fictional world created in my mind.  I did find Susan's tips quite helpful, but I find one additional thing I require in my life as a writer is the company of fellow writers.  Of course, my friends and family look at me sympathetically, asking me how things are going with my book.  They simply don't understand why I would rather stay at home and write than do anything else.  But with my writer friends, it's a different story.  It's great to be around other writers because they get it.  They know what it's like to be struggling with a character or plot problem, and they too struggle with getting their edits done on time.

I also have a mentor, who has become a valued friend.  I know I can trust her to help me hone my craft and keep me pointed in the right direction.  She is always there to give me a pep talk when the doubt monster is getting the best of me, as well as to share in the joy of my successes.

If you are just beginning a writing career, I encourage you to join a writers' group in your area.  Make friends with the people there and learn from them.  Get into their mentor program and let your mentor critique your writing.  Before you know it, you will be progressing in your writing career and well on your way toward publication.  Not only will you have made a bunch of great friends, but you will have a network of support from people who find joy in doing exactly what you do.

Yes, I like having a pleasant room with a view to write in.  I enjoy sitting close to my lovely French doors, watching the day as I sip my coffee and contemplate my story line.  And I agree that chocolate seems to be a must, but what this writers needs is the companionship of my fellow writers.  And wine, yes wine is good too.

What is the one thing you really need to keep you going when you are writing?

Filed under: romance

What A Writer Needs, Part 4 – Adventures

The days of the writers toiling forever alone in a cold attic room have ended for most of us.  Being alone in endless solitude and often isolation is not enough.  To keep the fires of inspiration rolling, we seek adventures, romances, quests, and explorations.  In this age, we are blessed with myriad opportunities that range from extensive traveling to day journaling journeys.  We even have worlds at our finger tips to explore.

Here are a few examples:

1. Vacation–Have your cake and eat it too.  Go on a vacation and find at least three fascinating places or things that can be part of a story.

2. Day Trip–Go to a nearby location you've never been before and then record the details of the place, any particularly fascinating history, or interesting people associated at the place.  You might also meet people you might include in a story.

3. Experience Trip–White water rafting, lace making class, chocolate festival, going to a spa, etc.  are experiences that enliven the senses.   Here you are creating memories that your characters will later embrace as their own.

4. Reference Trip–Visit different libraries and take out books on interlibrary loan.  Visit art shows and museums.  Sometimes a novel can be found in the single viewing of a painting.

5. Virtual World Trip–Use your computer and visit some place you've never been.  Role play a game and make your character like one of your book characters and try them out.  A test drive as it were.

Adventures enliven and awaken parts of us we didn't know existed.  And we bring all of this wonder into the tales we weave.   Enjoy, explore, and let us know how you did.

–Susan

Susan Hanniford Crowley

http://www.susanhannifordcrowley.com

Filed under: Helping Other Writers, romance, Susan Hanniford Crowley, What A Writer Needs

How Many Inches Did You Get Last Night by Gerri Brousseau

Ok, get your minds out of the gutter, I'm talking about snow.  Here in Connecticut, we are experiencing something that has been somewhat rare in this winter that almost wasn't … a snow storm.  The area I live in usually catches the greatest amounts in snow fall, but this storm is not a huge threat.  Of course, compared to last year's snow fall totals, the 2" to 3" blanketing our hills is nothing.

The month of March came roaring in like a lion, and according to the old saying, will go out like a lamb. I think March is a pivotal month as it hosts the spring equinox.  For me, a lot is going on in March.  On March 17th we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, when Irish eyes smile with pride and the world is wearin' the green.  I can almost taste the corned beef now!

March 21st brings the first day of spring, at last.  But more than that, it is my son's 30th birthday.  He's going to be getting quite a present too because on March 20th we will find out if he and his lovely wife will be having a son, or a daughter.  I'm so excited about being a grandmother that I can hardly contain myself.  Now, I'm normally a patient person, but suddenly nine months seems like an eternity!

With this blessed event about to happen in our lives, I'm giving some thought to writing children's books.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to read stories you actually wrote to your grand babies?  So, as I sit here on the first of March, looking out my French doors and watching the inches accumulate; a few things come to mind.  Have any of you ever transitioned from writing adult novels to writing children's books?  Will I be grandmother to a grandson or granddaughter? And lastly, how many inches did you get last night?

Filed under: romance

Chain Reaction

I have had my Nook since Barnes and Nobles first came out with the eReaders. I love my Nook. I love its portability and the fact that I can store tons of books on it. I love the fact it is lightweight and easy to read in all sorts of light. And I love the fact I can purchase and download a book on such an easy to read device at two o' clock in the morning (clever money-making ploy!). The only thing my reader can't top when it comes to reading is the fact that it takes me a second or less to open the pages of a paperback, but even technology has its limitations (for now).

Seeing as eReaders have become so popular, it shouldn't surprise me to see the prices of certain ebooks higher than their paperback counterparts. And yet that is what I saw when I went to Costco the other day. Browsing around, I found a book I thought was interesting. It was on sale for $5.99 but seeing as it was a bit bulky, I decided to look it up online. Imagine my surprise when I found it listed for $8.99. Nothing longer, nothing better, just the same old story.

It's simple economics really, supply and demand. As the demand for paperback (or hardback) books goes down, stores are being placed in a position to mark down their prices or be stuck with an oversupply. And yet there is something strange about paying less for something that logically seems to cost more to make.

This industry will continue to evolve and change, powered by a force of readers who will continue demanding from the industry itself: better books, more affordable books, more accessible material, etc. As readers and writers, it is important to realize how we drive the reactions within the industry. Will ebooks' prices rise, driving demand back to paperbooks? I highly doubt it but I can imagine many readers wouldn't be happy with the above example. What about you all? What changes do you notice or forsee in the industry? What about our reactions?

Enjoy this food for thought and happy writing this week!

Filed under: Business, Toni Kelly, Writer's Life, Writing Topics

Respect – it's more than just a great song by Leia Shaw

I'm so excited to use this post title because I actually lip synched to Aretha's RESPECT in a hypnotist show a couple years ago. Yes, I was one of the idiots that volunteered to be hypnotized in a comedy show. And no, it's not like it is on TV. I didn't bark like a dog when the phone rang for weeks following the show. At least I don't think so. My husband would tell me, right? Right?

Anyway, now that we got the subject of my poor judgment and possible impulsive personality out of the way, my post is actually about respect for one another as readers, writers and more importantly, as human beings.

I've been watching you (another great song) and I don't like what I see. No, not you personally. Or you. But maybe you (points to person in the cardigan).

Women are vicious. Sorry to be sexist, but it's true. We're passive aggressive, oversensitive, and can be downright cruel and vengeful.

But we need to fight against our DNA – or upbringing or reality TV or whatever it is that made us this way and stop torturing each other!

Recently I've been victim of such petty wars. And I'm not just talking about readers bashing authors. Readers do it to each other too – if they strongly disagree about a book. Authors do it to each other out of jealousy.

I love a good debate as much as the next person. Okay, maybe a little more (my husband is giving me the old eyebrow raise right now). But just because someone doesn't share your views, does not mean they are a horrible person that deserves to be punished. And you are not their executioner.

So lay off!

There is no excuse or wrong-doing big enough to hurtanother human being. A little sabotage or revenge might not seem like a big deal to you – or maybe you're feeling hurt and angry and need to lash out – but I promise you it won't make you feel any better. An eye for an eye gets you nowhere. Practice patience with one another. Be compassionate to authors who work so hard to put their work in front of the judgmental eyes of society.

In the words of the great Aretha, all I'm asking is for a little respect.

Just a little bit

P.S. Okay, who has that song stuck in their head now? And who wants to shoot me for it?

Filed under: romance