S.M. Johnson's Blog, page 8

SM Johnson ~ blog hop ~ International Author's Day July 18

Good morning, darlings. We interrupt this hiatus to bring you International Author's Day. This is the day to honor your book loving self and the writers who write the books you love.

I've written several posts detailing my favorite writers, both past and present, so today I will focus on writers who push hard against the constraints of "mainstream" - because these are my current loves.

But first... the book of 2014 that I am most impatiently waiting for...

Pre-order at Amazon
Oooooh, the anticipation is delicious! It's been far too many years since I have had an adventure with my beloved Lestat. (And a little secret.... I sent Ms. Rice a message complaining [ahem, rude, right?] about Daniel and Armand never being resolved, and she tells me they make an appearance in this book - OMG OMG OMG). Yeah. So. As much as I detest winter, I can hardly wait for October 28th.

Rice was the original "push the envelope" writer for me - and beyond the Vampire Chronicles - because there was The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. Yum. And num. And gnaw and chew. I mean.... (fans self) Beauty was sooooo beyond anything my young mind and hormonal body was ready for, but in a really, really good way.

A great many of my most recent favorite reads these days have been stories of psychological head-fuckery with a twist of eroticism. We're talking Kitty Thomas' Comfort Food and Adrienne Wilder's Complementary Colors, Jack L. Pyke's Don't... and Antidote, and Lynn Kelling's related book (with Don't... characters no less!) Forgive Us. And then there's DJ's Bennett's mystery suspense series, Hamelin's Child, Paying the Piper, and Calling the Tune. Unf. A very different sort of read, and very, very good.

I'm not even sure I should get started on XIX's works, Schadenfreude and The Kingdom of Heaven. He might credit me as his editor, but believe you me, it's only because I could not stand the idea that these books were not available far and wide to everyone. I love them that much. I will poke you and bribe you and pay to send you paperback copies in the mail to get you to read them. They are the prettiest "ouch" books I've ever read.

Okay, so I'll wrap this up with a less dark, but trust me dark enough, shout out to JC Andrijeski for her Allie's War series featuring Allie and Revik, and her Alien Apocalypse series featuring Jet.

Happy sighs all around.

And lest I forget, my most recent release is called Jeremiah Quick, and it's damn dark.

If you love the dark, come on in. It's safe here. Mostly.

If you want to talk about your favorite dark reads on an ongoing basis, come on over to Goodreads and join my DarkSafe group. We're small and friendly and dark and safe.

In the meantime, today and every day... happy reading! I hope you find great books to love, and unforgettable characters to fall in love with.

Amazon.com Widgets



Blog hop courtesy of B00k R3vi3w tours

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SM Johnson ~ New cover for Jeremiah Quick!

Good morning my lovelies, and happy Thursday!
You won't believe what happened. One of my favorite people and fellow author, JC Adnrijeski, designed a new cover for Jeremiah Quick! 
I know, right?
Yay!



Jeremiah Quick - amazon - smashwords

Jeremiah Quick is Other, he's always been Other, and he fascinates Pretty Loberg with his Otherness. He doesn't give a fuck about society, or middle class values, or following the crowd.
To pampered, middle class good-girl Pretty Loberg, Jeremiah is terrifying. And she can't stay away.

She'd been trained since her earliest years to follow the crowd, not stand out, don't embarrass the family. Stick to the status quo and not only will everything be fine, but everyone will like you.

Jeremiah doesn't like her. In fact, sometimes she thinks he hates her.

When he finds her twenty years after high school, Pretty gets into his car, even though she knows Jeremiah will disrupt her marriage and her life.



Behind those sharp blue eyes is a man with a quick brain, a cynical outlook, and a penchant for the subversive. He's kinky, mean, controlling, and more than a little bit broken.
Pretty wants to fix him.

Jeremiah wants to break her, remake her, and talk her into doing something terrible.

Only one of them will leave the dungeon alive.



I love love love love it!
Thank you so much, JC!

(Amazon is a little slower to update than the others, so hang tight a little).
PS - to my lovelies - there's a horizontal scrolling bar of JCs Allie's War series at the bottom of this blog. Please click and go look! JC usually offers book one, Rook, for FREE - and if you haven't fallen into the world of Allie and Revik and humans and seers yet, OMG, I AM SO JEALOUS. I wish... I could forget the whole series so I could start over and fall in love with it for the first time again.

SM Johnson ~ Disengaging from social media ~

I love you, my darlings, and I have so many fun things to blog about, but I have clipped my fingernails short, logged off Facebook, turned off the television, and turned on the music.

I need to get my good habits back and finish Dare in the Dungeon.

Peace out.

I'll be back when the book is done.

In the meantime, as always, have fun and be safe.

MWAH!

SM Johnson ~ Guest Post ~ 10 Rules for Authors of Dark Fic

Welcome to Thursday!

I am busy in Maine, ready to attend the wedding of the man who made my dreams come true, my publisher, Sven Davisson of Rebel Satori Press (round of applause, please) (moment of silence) (bow of worthy respect)...

Adore these boys

And so I've solicited a guest blog, not from a blogger, per se, but from a reader I highly respect, whose thoughts were invaluable to me when she graciously beta read Jeremiah Quick as a favor to me. And honestly, her feedback made my book so much better!

So... without further ado, here is my friend, Bluerabella, along with another friend Zosia, offering a few rules for authors of Dark fiction, that grew out of a discussion in the Goodreads group I created and loosely moderate, DarkSafe:




Hi.

Do you know the feeling of reading the blurb of a book and thinking: "Yeah! Yeah! That sounds great! I want to read that! What's left of my pocket allowance, 'cause I need to get that, and read that, asap!"

Do you? Of course you do. You're a reader. Same as me. You know the excitement. You know what you want to read next. You know what you read before. You know what direction you want to turn next. Or if you don't, you recognize it when you see it.

It. The blurb. You read the opening chapters when they're available. You think, "Yeah!" again. And you click the "Buy Now" button. And excitement floods your veins as you see the arrow light up, indicating that it is in fact downloaded and waiting for you to be read.

Aaaaaah. You think. Me time. And you settle back. And read the copyright notice, the warning sticker, the intro note, and you get to the first line of the first chapter and you're ready to dive into a whole new experience. Another's words. Creating a world for you. To lose yourself in. Pure pure bliss.

Or so you think. Because in chapter 3, which was not in the teaser chapters, you notice something. She said what? He did what? But you hold on. Hey. We have an open mind. Give the author a break. It'll pick up. And it doesn't.

You check the blurb again. The title again. Yeah, this is what I got, or thought I would get. Then how, why, she, he.... And you think, "Um excuse me, what's going on here, exactly?"

But dogged determination, if nothing else, will keep you reading. You hate her. He seems to be... A copy of someone else you read about? And then the really weird stuff comes along. You close your - whatever you're reading it on - and think "Ugh!".

Only dear husband looks up with a worried question mark in his eyes. And you find you said that out loud. And furthermore, you can't explain without wanting to rant at him. Him. Who's done you no wrong, ever. And you sigh and smile a weak smile. And you see him thinking, "That time of the month again..."

But it's not. It's the book. The promise it held. That seems to be blown into smithereens at the moment. You sigh. You have a good night's sleep. And you pick it up again. You drag yourself through the pages. How could this have had all those rave reviews? How is this possible? Is this the beta version you have? Nope. It is what it is.

And by the time you've finished, you're ready to kill someone. Yourself most likely. Or at least pull out every hair that ever lived on your head. Because there went your pocket money down the drain, along with the last chapter, the last paragraph, the last words.

The end notes confirm that you have, in fact, finished the book. This is what it is. There's nothing more. You want to scream again. And again and again. But you don't. It would upset dear husband, not to mention the kids, or the person sitting next to you on the train into work.

You need to talk to someone though. And you find your favorite online book buddy. And together you rant and rant and rant. Not just about this book. No. About all the books you ever wanted to rant about before but couldn't, because you hadn't found each other yet. And you do it in a respectful, constructive, fair, civilized tone of voice. That goes without saying, doesn't it? But fully reflective of the crushing of the dream, the disbelief, the frustration, the anger, the sadness, the mourning, until finally, the acceptance comes. It was what it was.

And this is what came out of the rant that I had with my best book buddy on June 14, 2014:


Ten Things Every Author Should Know to Create the Perfect Dark Depraved Novel
- that will get you rich and famous as well as those high ratings you always wanted

1) No series with annoying cliff hangers at the end of the first novel in the series.

2) No series should take longer than 3 novels to tell the actual story. Each novel in a series has to tell a significant and rounded part of the overall story. The parts of the series should be novel length or if they're not they need to be combined into one novel. It is allowed to elaborate, add on, extend the story beyond the basic story line in additional sequels, either by adding characters or sideline stories. These can not conflict, contradict, detract from the original basic story. Each of the sequels has to follow these same guidelines.

3) Do not, ever, break the fourth wall. Do not make a character say to us, the readers, what you, the author, wanted to say. Let your characters speak for themselves. Let your text speak for itself. You, the author, have plenty of space to do your own talking in the blurb, introductory notes and end notes.

4) The blurb should not distort the premise of the story. No false advertising. No lemons where peaches were promised and/or hinted at. Or vice versa.

5) Keep your novel free of high-tech, unbelievable, impossible, coulda-shoulda-woulda-talked-but-didn't plot mechanisms.  Do not try to force our suspension of disbelief so far that it detracts/distracts from anything else.

6) If you're gonna pull a rabbit out of the hat at 80% of the novel, reversing everything the reader has come to understand about the characters/plot/story direction, bloody make sure that the remaining 20% is spectacular enough to compensate for that.

7) Write with the reader in mind. Use descriptive prose and fluid dialogue. Use scene sequencing to achieve desired effect. Have someone beta read and proofread at the very very least, to take out the more stupid things like killing off the grandmother in chapter 3 and having her to babysit in chapter 10 and the sillier there/their spelling errors as well as the typos. Adapt text according to hints and tips.

8) If there's gonna be mean things, describe the mean things so we can see/feel/hear/smell how mean they are. Show, don't tell. Don't keep the nasty business off camera (all the time), don't shove it down our throats either.

9) If you're gonna do a meanie, make him a meanie. The perfect monster is not a sniveling pussy, he dominates. He is consistent, even if only in his inconsistencies. He cannot be out of control for extended periods of time. He can be aggressive, must be superior in most ways and although he may have weaknesses, he must be close to infallible. He must have a reason for being the meanie he is, even if it is not known to the reader (yet). We do want to find out about it though, and his reasons, however outrageous they may be, better be good. The perfect monster has a libido that is at least beyond average and he does not rely on (the size of) his dick alone to do his nasty meanie sexy business. He has a varied repertoire of techniques and/or tools. There will be at least some to an amazing amount of pleasure for the object of his attention. Any pain he inflicts, harm he does, cannot be for the sake of maiming, destroying, killing alone.

10)** The woman/girl that attracts the perfect monster's attention, desire, affection, interest is not too stupid to live. She cannot be an unworthy opponent. If the perfect monster kills her off at the end, make sure it happens in a memorable, worthy way.

(c) Copyrighted and written by Bluerabella (bluerabella@gmail.com) & Zosia, in DarkSafe group of the Goodreads forum, on June 14 2014. This text may be spread around freely, provided you do so in its entirety, including this (c) notice. (Don't forget to send us an ARC when you think you've come up with one that qualifies, thank you very much in advance :D)

** SM edit: woman/girl or man/boy (grin)



PS - send her ARC's - really. Bluerabella is am amazingly astute reader and reviewer! ANd, you know, she's my friend and all that, and I'm (SM Johnson) a shitty reviewer, so definitely send ARCs to her, k? Thx.

Thank you so so so much, Blue and Zosia, for permission to use your list as a blog post this week, while I'm on vacation. It means more than you know : )

SM Johnson ~ Review dilemma

So... here's the thing. I read a lot of books. And I've always read a lot of books. I was the kid leaving the library with my backpack bulging and my arms aching from the weight of the books that wouldn't fit inside. Sometimes I had to stop and rest on the walk home.

And once I arrived home, I'd spread all the books out on the floor of my room and sit in the middle of them, consumed with the deliciousness of choosing which one to read first.

I love books.

But here's the other thing: I read a lot less these days than I used to. Sometimes I tell myself this is because I'm so busy. And if I have time to read, then I really should be writing. Or my kindle is too full, and it's so hard to pick which book to read next. The kindle is not nearly as tactile or as visual as an array of books on the floor, and often I can't remember just from the title in a long list of titles what made me purchase a particular book. There might be wonderful stories lingering on the list, and I have no real idea what they are.

But - and here's where I get myself in trouble - the primary reason that I read less, I think, is because there are so many truly crappy books out there, and I get frustrated trying to invest my attention and interest in them. And then I start to think reading is boring, and maybe I don't like to read for entertainment anymore.

And then bam! An awesome book really grabs me, and I wolf it down, hardly able to set my kindle aside for any reason whatsoever. And I remember, Oh, yeah, THIS is the reading experience I'm always looking for. Grab me by the throat and never let me go. Please.

Us Three by Mia Kerick, for instance. Or King Perry by Edmond Manning. Or The Raven Boys by Maggie Steifvater.

These are books that I blog about, tweet about, shout about wherever I can. When I love love love something, I want everyone to share in the experience. It's so much good clean fun to share pretty sparkly things, isn't it?

And then... there are the books that I think are putrid stinking bombs.

Oh dear.

What to do with these?

I have an instinct to share these, as well, if only to warn my beloveds away from them, especially if the bombs are in my own genres of erotica, vampire, and dark fiction. And the instinct goes as far as... me writing a review in my head, well rehearsed and soaked in sarcasm,  vitriol, and vehemence. Arrogance. Entitlement. Mean-spirited snark. Oh, I sound so funny, I tell myself, such amazing wit have I! I will crack up my tens and tens of followers...

And then of course... I rein myself in, because, um, well. Reality.

Reality #1: I am not a mean person, and it doesn't make me feel good to shit on other people and hurt their feelings.

Reality #2: I was a baby writer once. And I thank the gods that self-publishing wasn't an option for me back then or I would have published terrible work, too.

Reality #3: I am a writer. I am a professional. Yes, I maintain the right to review any book that I have paid for - I don't think being a writer myself disqualifies me from writing reviews, despite what others think about this. I've been a consumer of books long before I became a producer of them. I would not write a negative review out of professional jealousy, I truly would not. Unless the book really did suck, then I might (grinz).

My dilemma here is that I just really want to COMPLAIN, and be wholly non-constructive. Am I allowed to do that?

Yeah, probably not. But I'm still going to.

I just read a thing that was a compilation of things, and I'm not going to say anything more specific about the thing than that. But it was a thing I should have loved. I kept thinking... well, the next one has to be better. Um, nope. Well, maybe the next next one?

Sadly, no.

There is some perception that for something to be called Dark Fiction, it has to contain some kind of kidnapping or capture of the main character by some person who is wholly disgusting, and then rape must ensue. Detailed, non-erotic rape, with fetid breath and groping fingers and revolting body odor... and an ending that not only borders on hopeless, but IS hopeless.

I like Dark Fiction that has an element of the psychological, where the antagonist has purposeful control, where the main character falls down a rabbit hole of dark and depraved, and is trying to either climb out of the hole, or reconcile his or her love for the darkness with the person he or she always thought himself to be. I don't mind bittersweet. In fact, I love when  a book makes me cry. But there should still be some element of hope in the ending, some note of character change or growth.

So, okay, back to complaining.

First off... let me just say... I'm old. I'm older than 40. And I am just DONE with the adult virgin trope. I don't mind it when it involves a genuinely young male or female - but even then, I want seduction and foreplay and the tension of apprehension. I don't want "I screamed as he crammed his gigantic member into my virgin hole," because... seriously? Ugh.

Second - I don't like disgusting rapists who have beer guts and bad breath and greasy hair and don't shower on a regular basis. Unless the MC is going to kill them in the end, and the story is more about her inner strength and character rather than rape scene after rape scene after rape scene...

I can't stand exclamation points, in general, in a narrative. An exaggerated amount of exclamation points is often my first clue that a writer is a baby writer. Why be subtle when you can use lots of exclamation points? Especially main characters who use them when they are thinking... they come across as bobble-headed college co-eds that are kinda dumb. And usually blonde. With large tits. His fingers pinched my nipples and it felt so good! "Don't stop! That feels great!" I wouldn't even care if my dorm roommate or her mother walked in right about now! He's so hot! And he's so rich! "Keep doing that! After I cum, I'll suck you off!"

See what I mean? Bobble-head.

Let's see... what else do I hate? Oh, I know.

Juices.

I hate the following phrases: my juices were flowing; he made my juices run down my legs; my pussy juices flowed, he really got my juices going,  etc. feel free to create your own. I especially hate this when ALL of these phrases are used in one book, every time a pussy gets wet. I mean, I can over look one juicing, but when I start to feel like your pussy is craving the opportunity to squeeze oranges... just... please. Stop it.

Try for some variety of language, but at the same time, try also to avoid over-using "moist" and "cream" (gods, I know, I'm such a picky bitch).

Another one... I appreciate that there are stories about BBWs (big beautiful women). But a phrase like, "I leaned my 18W bulk against his strong, manly chest," just isn't sexy anywhere, ever. Gods. Your characters don't have to be supermodel thin by any means, but to tell me the character's dress size? Ugh. (This annoys me when the dress size is a 2, btw, so I'm not picking on larger characters, not at all). But for BBW characters, please find another way. She can be sensual, curvy, lush, soft. She can describe herself as "I'll never be a stick," or "I know I'm heavier than the average gym addict, but he makes me feel delicate..." or  "He sighs his content as he melts into my pillowed curves..."  blah blah blah. You know what I mean, right? We get to use language in many beautiful ways, and as a writer, you need to reach for the better ones. And another quick note on character description, including size... you don't need to KEEP telling us what the characters look like. Once we're sucked into the story, we have a general sense of the character, and if you keep hammering at me that the character is "larger than life", that pulls me out of a story that I'm trying to be busy enjoying. Skilled authors (and I'm still working on learning this myself) - describe what a character looks like very briefly, and then most of what we learn about the character herself is internal or as projected by other characters.

I'm really bad at dressing my people. Honestly, I'm so bad at it that half the time you'd think my people were running around nekkid. I'm a tee-shirt, jeans, hoodie sort of gal, so I pretty much want my clothes to be clean, and that's good enough. But for the rest of you - it's great to dress your characters, just remember that you're not writing an LL Bean catalogue. (Is that really the wrong way to spell catalogue? Huh. I have no idea what will make spell check happy here...)

I recently read the most bizarre anthology ever. I liked maybe two of twelve stories, and those two felt like the ones that didn't belong, both in writing quality and story quality. The oddest thing was, this set was a mixture of word-counts, and included prequels to other works, novellas, full-length novels, and short stories. I had no idea what to expect from each story, ever.

I'm not going to write a review. One of my conscious decisions is to only write review for books that I like, and to never review books I feel bitchy about. And I'm lazy about reviewing even books that I adore, so yeah, I'm going to skip the specific snark.

Oh. Baby writers. I do love you. This is just the one instance where indie publishing is not serving you well - ya'all don't even know that your work isn't ready yet, and you can just fling it out to Amazon etc. which damages not only your own reputation, but the reputation of independent authors in general, and makes it harder for everyone to find good books that ARE ready.

There's a thought that a writer isn't ready to publish until they have written a million words. Overall, I think this is true. It takes time and a lot of words to learn to write with finesse, to learn to stay in a single point of view and not hop from one person's head to another, to learn how to not have your dialog feel stilted and formal, to write sex scenes that are more than just mechanics. To show versus to tell.

I'm not perfect. I'm not the best writer in the world, or even the best writer I've ever read. I like my own stories because I write what I can't seem to find anywhere else, and maybe because the stuff that I perhaps neglected to transfer to the page is still sitting there in my head, so for any given scene, I already know well the past and the future. But I also give myself the benefit (arrogance?) of having worked hard and earned some skills - both by writing lots of words myself, and attempting to analyze the techniques of people I consider to be great writers.

I mostly don't enjoy reading the work of baby writers - but even as I say that, I hope these newbies get a chance to improve their craft before negative or hurtful reviews make them believe they aren't good writers. They have every potential to be GREAT writers. They're mostly just new and publishing before they are ready.

Have a safe and happy June, my beloved darlings. I'm leaving Wisconsin and heading to Maine for the rest of the month, where two of my favorite people are getting married (!)

~SM

SM Johnson ~ Pushing Back Dare in the Dungeon

Hello my lovely darlings...

This is just a quick update post to let you know that I'm pushing my release of Dare in the Dungeon to August. Most of may and these first couple of weeks into June have been just lost, due to having a new puppy (or maybe just due to laziness?) and I have not worked at the pace I've come to expect of myself (meh, sometimes you just need to relax, you know?) And how can you resist that puppy face? I sure can't. We have this crazy thing in common - apparently we both LOVE NAPS - so I keep losing the middle of the day because the minute I sit down on the chair and get cozy with a blanket, Quinn is all, "Yay! Naptime! Yay! My favorite thing!" I might say something back like, "I thought sticks were your favorite thing?" And her response looks a lot like, "Stick! Where? I don't see no stick. But nap! Yay! Naptime is my favorite thing!" So you see, I've been getting coerced into taking A LOT of naps. Yeah, pretty much all of them. So if you've been missing your naps, I will guiltily admit that I might have stolen them.

But I digress. Dare in the Dungeon is going to be late due my wholly non-productive spring. Oh, yeah, and the part where I'm going to be away for pretty much the rest of June. That slows production even more. Meanwhile, they're only puppies once, and for such a short time, too....

xoxo darlings.

SM Johnson ~ Fighting censorship of erotic works

Summer cup because grass! Dandelions!Good morning, darlings.
I think I was going to post about sweet puppies or cute kittens, or letting wild snakes go back into the wild... or the fact that I am having a carpenter ant problem that has me ready to burn the house down, but I went a little crazy leaving a comment on the One Handed Writers blog, so I decided to copy it to over here. And expand on it, because, why not?
Yeah, lazy. Heh.
The topic was Amazon's ever-increasing intrusiveness to filter/block/ban erotic work, and you can read the post I was responding to HERE.
Honestly, I'm okay with adult filters. I don't want my kid running into titles like Daddy's Little Fuck Toy or Having Sex With My Brother while browsing Amazon. And I think it's too much for authors to expect inflammatory titles and covers to be accepted by the mainstream.
 I write erotica and Dark myself, but the sensationalized tasteless titles are a serious turn-off (to me). Not that I'm going to "report" them, but that kind of title tells me I won't like the book or the writing style anyway, so personally, such blatant non-creative titles don't generate a buy from me, and they SHOULD be filtered.
I read the darkest and most depraved stories I can find. And when I can't find what I want to read, I write it myself. Jeremiah Quick, for instance, and my M/M BDSM Dungeon series. I love words, and I love stories, and I love for my eyes to widen with shock while I'm reading. But I also require what I read to be written well, and if an author sensationalizes covers and titles with intent to shock and titillate, it's almost guaranteed that I won't care for the story. But that's just me. There are plenty of people who eat "penthouse letter" style porn like popcorn at a movie theater, and that's great. It's great for the readers looking for it, and it's great for the authors making some dollars writing it.
And if these books are hidden behind filters, well... the people looking to BUY them will figure out how to find what they want. I wish Amazon would just give us a blatant, in your face adult filter the way Smashwords does - it's there at the top of the screen, an option to "filter adult content" - ding, ding, ding - easy!
But.
I DO think the purpose of KDP and Amazon and other retail outlets offering vehicles for self-publishing was designed, very specifically, as a ploy for said retailers to get a share of the porn market. And when I say "porn market" I mean DOLLARS. They want a cut of the money readers are willing to spend buying your books. That's the whole point of a retailer.
I mean, seriously, do you think Amazon DIDN'T know that tons of self-published titles would be porn? Erotica and pornography has historically been the number one thing people use the internet FOR.
And on the other hand, Amazon, as a capitalist for-profit entity, doesn't want to alienate the people shopping for mainstream best-sellers, either. So god forbid search results are so raunchy and tasteless they drive these people to visit brick and mortar bookstores instead of buying from Amazon. That would be a terrible loss of sales for Amazon.
The problem with Amazon is they have automated keyword monkeys that unpublish books based on particular keywords. One of mine got knocked out for the phrase "Traction is like non-consensual bondage, and Jeff calls red."
The solution was to write to Amazon and request human review. Not only did they put my M/M BDSM book back on sale, they CALLED ME ON THE PHONE to apologize, and when they didn't catch me the first time, they called me again later that day.
Book one of the series, Above the Dungeon, btw, has been lingering as a top book in category fiction, and I've made a few hundred dollars from sales of books 2 and 3:#21 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Erotica > LGBT >  Gay
Believe me, Amazon WANTS the dollars generated by sales of your erotic writing. There will always be a work-around, and if that work-around is clean packaging... well, consider kids and conservative Christians wandering around Amazon aren't much different than kids and conservative Christians wandering around Walmart.
Some products, by their very design, aren't appropriate for all ages. It's not so hard to figure out, is it?
Some writers use titillating keywords in their titles to drive sales - to me, this is a marketing tactic, and is usually a red flag that the writer has wrapped a poor quality product (IMO) in shocking packaging, and I already have the opinion that the narrative is going to be amateur, filled with exclamation points, and isn't going to arouse me any more than industry standard visual porn does. (shrug). 

But at the end of the day, Amazon doesn't care about quality or content - Amazon wants their cut of your sales. So if you're running into "censorship" and "filtering" problems - I suggest writing to Amazon through their KDP Help screen. Give them the ASIN # of your blocked/banned work, and tell them why it should not be blocked, banned, or filtered. But if you sound like you want to fill children's heads with visions of anal sex and fucking daddy... perhaps you might reconsider what your book looks like on the outside. 
I'm just sayin'.
Another piece of this, for me, is how baffled I am by marketing and promotion in general. So far the best generator of Amazon sales, for me, was putting book one of a series for free. (This required writing to Amazon via their KDP Help screen, as well).
There is some school of thought that a books title should contain elements of its description, including genre, so that keywords searches pop it up in front of potential customer's eyes faster. I dunno. Above the Dungeon: A M/M BDSM Erotica Novel feels a bit cumbersome to me. Let's try another... Jeremiah Quick: A Dark And Moving Tale Of Boy Meets Girl, Leaves Girl, And Finds Girl Later. 
Yeah, cumbersome. I think I'll stick to my original premise that readers are smart and they know exactly how to find the books they want to read. 
Remember the card catalog?
Good luck, darlings, keeping your books for sale and finding wonderful dark and erotic stories to read. And have a fun and safe weekend!

SM Johnson ~ Mental Health Month ~ 5 things

empty coffee cups are sad
Okay,  I read a lot of blogs, so I've become aware that May is "Mental Health Month." What's kind of fascinating, though, is that in these blogs that are making me aware of Mental Health Month, I'm reading a lot of stuff about mental illness. Which, frankly,  is not exactly the same thing as mental health.

So... what's up with that?

Not that talking about mental illness or is a bad thing, or that being aware of mental illness is a bad thing, or trying to de-stigmatize mental illness is a bad thing. No, all of these are good things. But the reality is, probably a lot of the people in your life have no idea what's up with serious chronic mental illness. They see the news reports of school shooting, they read the stories about the woman who gave birth to seven infants and killed six of them (the first having been stillborn) and kept their little infant corpses boxed up in the garage. They've heard about people so mired in postpartum depression that they kill all of their children... men who keep women locked in their homes or the shed in their back yard for decades...  a lot of bad, bad stuff happens in the world, we hear the reports about the mental illnesses behind those bad things.

Some of that reporting may even be true.

But how much exposure to actual mental illness do your office-mates have on a regular basis? How many have friends or family members who talk to clocks, write long, elaborate math equations all over the walls of their apartment, are convinced the people on television are speaking directly to them, are so disorganized that if they tried to cook something, they'd probably get distracted and burn the whole building down? How many people do you know who have been arrested at the big box store because they were really paranoid about this, that, or some other thing, to the point that they called 911 to report a store employee, and refused to leave the premises until the police arrested someone, and then that someone turned out to be them, for disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct, or what have you.....

This is the face of mental illness.

When that person ranting and raving at the big box store gets arrested, he doesn't go to jail, he comes to the acute care psychiatric unit, which is a little like jail, in that the doors are locked and people can't just up and leave when they want to.

And this is where I work.

I found this at http://epicmeow.com/stephen-king-ment...

So. I am very, very, very aware of mental illness.

I have no answers except that, currently, there are no answers. Nationwide, I believe mental health systems are broken. There are not enough inpatient beds for those that need them. There are not enough outpatient services to keep people with severe chronic mental illnesses out of hospitals. Community-based living, while outwardly eschewing "quality of life" (versus institutionalization at state hospitals) - just doesn't seem to be a viable option for many people who live with mental disorders. I'm talking people who are violent to the point of being a constant danger to other residents and staff, people who flee their group home situations and then are disorganized, confused, and sometimes dangerous to the general public... there are just people who don't fit into community based living.

And some of these people sit in the hospital for months waiting for a new placement, while their counties scramble to find dollars so they can offer a high enough stipend for this person's monthly care to make accepting this resident seem attractive. Your tax dollars at work, America. Yay.

(sigh).

This isn't even where I was going with this topic. I've hijacked myself.

I guess what I want to say is... 99% of the people I meet at work will never be headlines on Fox News, or the Huffington Post, or even legitimate media outlets.

They are confused, demented, schizophrenic... they are off their medications, they are on drugs, they are struggling to continue to exist on this Earth while fitting in nowhere, while being accepted nowhere. They are often the people society wishes it could forget. They are people who need a safe place to be, for a short time, or for a longer time.

And they are artists, and visionaries, and the guy with the IQ of 168. They are inventors, and song writers, and poets, and piano players. They are, for the most part, people who will WOW you. All of this, while having a serious mental illness.

You think you're strong?

These people are strong. These people are admirable.


from Pinterest

I am honored to be just one of a group of incredibly skilled staff members who take care of people with kindness, compassion and respect. We meet people at their worst, at the lowest functioning times of their lives, at their saddest moments, when they are falling apart, when they've driven every single person in their support network away with their erratic behavior. When they're been humiliated, have lost all hope, and just want to end it all. We meet them when they are outraged that the whole world is against them, when they are terrified that everyone else is out to get them, when they haven't eaten in two weeks because the water's been poisoned, or the food is rotten, or they just plain out forgot that bodies need fuel.

We all need love and care and a safe place sometimes.  Some of us are just lucky enough that we'll find that safe place, that love, among our support network.

Okay, so... for actual Mental Health Month, I'm going to list five or however many ideas that I believe contribute to being mentally healthy.

from Pinterest
(in no particular order)

1. Eliminate toxic people from your life. If you dread having lunch with that person, talking to them on the phone, or giving up a single minute of your free time to hang out with them - then STOP doing it. Just be "busy" - or, even better, piss them off in such a way that they never want to talk to you, ever again, like say, push them down a flight of stairs. (Yes, this would be passive-aggressive, and no, not at all healthy. It was a joke. Really. A funny joke. So laugh.) (Have you heard/seen that little ditty on Facebook? The one that says "Some people are like Slinkys, not good for much, but still fun to push down the stairs" ?) Okay. Moving on.

2. Do the thing you love most, as much as you can. If you must have a day job, get one that allows you to arrange your schedule around your passion. This is so important, I can't even tell you. If you're dying forty hours a week in a cubicle, get OUT. Climb out of debt and simplify your life so you can afford to work less. Or suck it up and do what you need to do to get the training/experience so you can do what you love. Whatever it is. If it's kids, find kid-related work. If it's nature find nature-related work. If it's art, find a way to make time for it. You will be happier. Trust me. (As a writer, I love writing more than anything. I say "no" to almost anything that demands my free time. I go out with friends infrequently. I stay home as much as possible doing what I love to do. I stay up late sometimes and I get up early sometimes. I write on the computer. I write in a notebook. I daydream a lot. A really lot.)

3. Remember that we are here for a short time. Don't ruminate too much on the past or spend your "now" looking forward to what might be in the future. You have this moment, today, and that's all you know. Which is why #1 and #2 are so important. We always assume we'll have tomorrow, but there are no promises.

4. Refer sort of to #3. If it's a beautiful day and you're torn between housework and the beach, choose the beach. Every. Time.

5. Puppies. Puppies make life busier, but damn, they're really, really cute - and maybe you remember what puppies smell like, but I sure didn't, and they smell AMAZING. Like life. Like love. (They also chew up absolutely EVERYTHING and pee EVERYWHERE, so you have to sort of be prepared for that nonsense. It gets better.




Peace out darlings. Happy Mental Health month. (does that sounds as weird to you as it does to me?)

Ps - if you're viewing the blog from an iPhone, sometimes the pictures are upside down. I have no idea why this is. Maybe the phone just wants to see you do the head-tilt thing.

SM Johnson ~ All the news

Forgive me, darlings, for I have been remiss. It’s been two weeks since my last post. I think. Maybe three?

Ah well. Consider it a moment of silence in honor of Jazz.

A couple of big exciting things going on around here lately, one of which was that the first book of my dungeon series, Above the Dungeon, went free on Smashwords, and then Amazon. It got lots of downloads from Amazon, enough that it was NUMBER ONE in the categtory of free-literature and fiction-erotica-gay for SEVERAL DAYS! This is astonishing. And wonderful. And made me very, very happy. I took pictures of the computer screen and everything.

In one week, there were over 1200 downloads of Above the Dungeon, and 100 pay sales of Out of the Dungeon and Three in the Dungeon.

This is just… wow.
And by that, I mean… wow!

Thank you, readers. I am honored. And tickled beyond belief.

I am loving this, particularly as my books aren’t for everyone, as they are not necessarily happy-go-lucky or happily-ever-after books. (They do tend to end with happy for now, though, or at the very least, hope for a happy future. I mean, it’s not like I kill anyone. Usually).

I like to think that my books are MORE than the average. Meatier. Grittier. Kind of Dark, perhaps too much so for the general m/m audience (which, as far as I can tell, is mostly straight females, lol).

I’m working on the 4th book of the Dungeon series now, Dare in the Dungeon. So far it’s a lot of Dare and Zach and Thomas. And a fair good amount of Vanessa and Lena and Alexander.

I figure I can just about piss everyone off with this one. We have m/m/m ménage, and then f/m/f ménage, and there will probably be a visit with Roman and Jeff at some point, and Jason, which makes for another m/m/m ménage. I guess I like groups of three these days. And then if Dare and Zach actually do go visit Roman and Jeff, there’s some potential for m/m/m + m/m + f. Hot damn and syrup for my pancakes (my new favorite phrase), that’s damn near a village.

Well. Sometimes it takes a village.




Next really cool thing…






My friend and author of Allie’s War “my favorite series of my whole life” JC Andrijeski, is putting her Allie’s War series out in little bite-sized episodes. This is such a brilliant idea that I can’t even stand it. And her new covers are fancy like agates, and I think I might have to create a widget to show them off and class up this place a little bit. (Grin). So watch for that. And you guys really should read Allie’s War – I can’t imagine you wouldn’t like something that I love so much.



And NEXT really cool thing... my other favorite writer, 19, released this beautiful story that I'm not even going to try to explain. It's lovely. It's beautiful. And it hurts in the best possible way. Don't miss it! I want to say that everyone has to has to HAS TO read this, but on the other hand, I'm not sure I want to be responsible for that much havoc.









Last but certainly not least….New puppy!

Her name is Quinn. And OMG, the CUTE! I mean, this is one of the most perfectly beautiful puppies I have ever seen, and so far she seems incredibly sweet-natured as well. Win.

Don’t believe me?

Look!



And definitely look at the picture Sprite took, with this whole amazing beam of light thing going on. A part of me wants to think this is Jazzy, passing the torch. “All right, Quinn, I watched over and protected her for her first 10.5 years, and now it’s your turn. Make me proud.”And here’s Quinn, head a little cocked, going, “Umm. Okay. Watch over and protect. Got it.”Little Quinn has big paw prints to fill, but since  she’s boxer mixed with a St. Bernard, we’re pretty sure she’ll have paws big enough for the task.

SM Johnson - Holy Buckets Batman! And syrup. For pancakes.

My M/M erotica novel, Above the Dungeon, is currently hanging out in the NUMBER 1 slot in category kindle free fiction.

Category being something like, free-kindle-ebooks-fiction and literature-GLBT-GAY... yanno, a very specific and probably small category. But My. Book. #1.

Hot damn and syrup for my pancakes, right?

OKay, so here's the deal. I had a short story called My Fifteen Minutes that was free all the time on Amazon and everywhere else, and it got a lot of downloads, in the ballpark of 500 - 1000 per month, but it didn't get any reviews.

So my guess was people were not getting around to reading it, or it didn't excite them enough to generate either positive or negative reviews. I brought it to my in-person writer's group, and had them give me some honest and in-your-face feedback (because that's what they DO and they are marvelous at it) and the result was that I decided the story is just not all that great. Mostly just that it's fairly amateurish both in plot and craft, in relation to how my skill as a writer has grown in the past few years.

Ideally, I will rewrite it one day, when there aren't 8983758473 other projects on my plate that I'm excited about, but that time isn't now, and ultimately I decided that this particular story is not at all representative of what I write - either style or subject matter. Which led me to unpublish it.

The problem, then, is that I really LIKE having a book on Amazon/Smashwords et al. that is free all the time. I think giving people a chance to experience my story-telling style for free is important, and, of course, I hope it will lead to sales of other books.

I mean, we all have those authors who wow us with almost every book, right? They become automatic buys, comfort food, time spent with good friends, the sort of book you can hardly wait to sit down and devour. Yeah. I wanna be that for a handful of people (or more, I wouldn't complain).

So... I decided I needed a new gateway drug book, and it kind of makes sense for Above the Dungeon to be that book. It is well-representative of the kind of characters I create, the kind of problems they have, and the sort of not-quite-happily-ever-after endings I seem to wrap books up with (hint - more often things close with a messy little knot rather than a nice neat and pretty bow). I dropped the price to .99 on Amazon and to 0.00 on Smashwords, then wrote to Amazon requesting it be 0.00 on a permanent basis.

Amazon declined, saying, "We don't do that."

Huh. All right. I went to the book's product page and "reported a lower price" - using the Smashwords link as proof of a lower price.

And then I happily trotted off to work for a couple of nights and slept a couple of days and somewhere in the middle of that Amazon dropped the price of Above the Dungeon to 0.00.

And this is where I came in yesterday. I checked my sales, saw that almost 500 copies had been downloaded, so went to the books page to see stats and - there it was. #1 in one of Amazon's sub-sub-sub-sub categories.






*happy dance*

Honestly, it doesn't get better than this.

Well, okay, it could be slightly better than this, as in it could be a PAY FOR book that hits the #1 slot of a sub-sub-sub-sub category and I could then experience these miracle payments of thousands of dollars a month from Amazon that have been rumored to exist for some authors for the past couple of years, but whatever. I'm pretty darn happy anyway.

Ya'll should go download and read Above the Dungeon, Then I'll work my crack magic and have you coming back for more, more, more. In the midnight hour. Or the morning. Either is fine with me. Just do it.

Have a great weekend, darlings. Be safe out there. Do NOT text and drive. (did you know even texting while sitting at a stoplight is illegal in many states including MN? I just found this out.) It can wait unit you get there. Or at least until you pull over and put the car in 'park.' Really. It can. Remember back in the day when we (gasp) drove around in our cars all the time and we didn't even have phones? And if you, say, needed to call someone, you had to go to the 7-11, and go inside and get QUARTERS, then go back outside and stick the quarters into the phone box? And - you could only call numbers you'd memorized or written down in your address book or had on a slip of paper in your wallet....

I know - damn, we really lived dangerously back then.

(Yeah, don't feel bad, I'm laughing at myself too because I'm as iPhone dependent as anyone).

K. That's all. Peace out.

[Missing IMAGE - phone at the 7-11]

PS - to see the phone at the 7-11, click here. Really. You should click and look. It'll be quick, I promise. And it's only fair, really, since I tried to just steal the picture and put it here, but apparently it's protected and copy-righted and I am not allowed to do that, technically, without asking for and getting permission, which I bet if I asked the person who took this wonderful picture, he would be happy to give me permission, but I am ready NOW to click the "publish post" button, and I am too impatient considering it's ALREADY Thursday and I'm late in writing this post.

So go, click. It'll make you feel good. And if you're like.... I dunno, 40 or older, it'll give you that warm squishy nostalgic feeling. Like back when you first had your driver's license and a car and freedom from those people you lived with who seemed like they spent 24 hours a day doing nothing but figure out exactly how they could control your life and make sure you weren't having any fun.....

(Texting and driving IS NOT fun, however. It is stupid. Don't be stupid.)

Oh! And PPS - Jeremiah Quick sales are absolutely miserable. So you could go get yourself a copy of that one, too, and tell your friends, I mean, just like, out of pity love for me or something.