Fierce Dolan's Blog: Writing Utopia, One Word at a Time, page 10

Five Things New Authors Should Know

Dear Enchanting Everyone,

I’ve been distant lately. Don’t take it personally. It’s me, not you, I swear. I’ve been working really hard on several new contracts (YAY!!) which hasn’t left me much time to play. That said, the aforementioned projects have given me insight into longevity in a publishing career (across several genres) that I’d like to share. I hold these tidbits in mind for new authors, or those in-the-making, though there may be gems for veterans wordphiles, as well. And so:

With everything you publish there will be backlash.  No matter how straightforward, well-intended, or gently you put your ideas into print, there will be a backlash. Whether it’s a bad review, a thread in which your name is mud, or your friend with a polite yet poignant “WTF?”, your books will get a reaction.  Better yet, that reaction will be unexpected.  Even if you write taboo or really out-of-the-box books, there will be a wave of response that you never, in all of your mind-spinning til 3am trances never saw coming.  Accept the unanticipated. It inspires you.


A bad review will hang its hat on a point you warned the reader about.  In the age of free ebooks, people pay little attention to blurbs, and in some cases, even titles. In fact, covers still sell books more than any other descriptive element. So it doesn’t matter if you fully disclose the zombie-banging Great Auntie whores in the title, or elaborate with poetic brevity about self-fellating  plot jockeys.  Someone somewhere is going to swear s/he had no idea that’s what the book was about and rate it down for being what you said it was. Grit your teeth, laugh, and grab a latte. It. Will. Not. Change. You may as well get some caffeine in that system and get back to writing.


For every literary blemish you attempt to improve in your writing, some other author will profit from it, vastly. You know what I mean. Problem areas in your vocabulary, style, or development that lead you to doggedly commit to eradicating them. Then it happens: Some random indie writer or trad darling churns out page after page resembling your red-cheeked Morning Pages and snatches up a Big 6 contract.  So much of publishing is out of your hands, indie, traditional, or whatever hybrid squeezes between. The main ingredient of a wildly successful book is and will always be luck. Whatever promotion you employ (by which I do mean pay out for), however brilliant you (or your editors) are, as dazzling as your cover may be, as wide a platform as you may have, rampantly successful books always have a wildfire factor–that perfect moment, one sizzling endorsement, prominently placed mention that no one foresaw, yet bumps the book to echelons unimagined. So, stick to those Morning Pages, fit the Night Guard, and do your bestly. You’re better for it.


This is what ‘there’ looks like. We all have a mental image of what being well-published looks like, yet the reality of that visual rarely matches how The Writing Life really is. It’s not a winning lottery ticket. Yes, you will make money from it, maybe really good money, maybe only a bill or two a month. People will come to recognize you alongside your books, platform, or however you put yourself forward. The thing is, if you’re publishing as a career, it becomes a job, just like every other job. Yes, you may enjoy it more than other things you’ve done for pay, but it’s still work and a lot of hours. Don’t undermine your success. Just because it doesn’t mesh with your Utopian ideal of pool bois and enormous advances doesn’t mean you aren’t really doing this.  Which brings me to…


It doesn’t get easier. Whatever your success in publishing, it remains a tough job. However, you become more resilient, efficient, and knowledgeable. You will find a rhythm of submission, publication, creation. Your hoops will shift from that of eluding the slush pile to managing time better and mastering self-discipline. Everything you know will change, as the industry struggles to gain traction for identity and process in a shifting economic and technical climate. Worry less about what you don’t know, and focus on how well you cope with what you must learn. Above all, remember you choose this, every day, and remind yourself why.

Linger in love,
~FD

PS-Stay away from Goodreads.

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A Buck a Book, Win a Nook!!

You’ve got a few days left to enter and win Decadent Publishing’s “A Buck, a Book, Win a Nook” Giveaway!

 

 

Decadent is showcasing seven authors by putting twelve of their books on sale for $1 until 30 June.  Check them out:

Awaken the Demon by Sheila Stewart

The Naughty Angel by Sheila Stewart

Daughter of Lust by Ann Mayburn

Amber Moon by Ann Mayburn

Night with a Dom by Casea Major

White Wedding by Ursula Sinclair

Something Blue by Ursula Sinclair

The One he Chose by Wendy Burke

Respite by Wendy Burke

Senator, Mine by Kerry Adrienne

ENTER TO WIN HERE:  a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Summer Chillin’ Blog Hop

 

Ah, the foods of the warmer season. I’m thrilled to be part of the Summer Chillin’ Blog Hop. You know I love hanging with my literotica crowd any chance I get, and more than that, I love when there’s food involved!  Eva Lefoy devised this delish hop for erotica authors to share their favorite seasonal recipes. Make sure you check out all of the other stops on the hop, 22-29 June, to see what everyone’s up to, and to find great recipes.

Most of you know, I’m a gluten-free masochist, so for those of you who have to be careful about gluten in your foods, you can safely enjoy my original recipe of Quinoa Salad. I came up with this recipe because I wanted a replacement for tabouleh, and this one is great. It’s a nice versatile salad, that goes well with whatever fresh, raw vegetables you have from the garden. Also a plus, quinoa is super high in protein, and a pretty smart carb!

Quinoa Salad

Ingredients

1 cup quinoa

2 cups broth (your preference, though check the label for gluten)

1 shallot, finely chopped

4 T olive oil

1 T wasabi (brown mustard works well as a replacement)

1 T balsamic vinegar

1 t Worcestershire Sauce (again, check the label)

1 T honey

1/2 bunch chopped Italian parsley (only the leaves)

half a block of feta, crumbled

1/3 c dried, unsulfured cranberries, chopped roughly

1/4 c pine nuts, toasted

S&P to taste

 

Method

Place quinoa and broth in a medium pot.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low.  Cook for 15 minutes, or until softened.

While quinoa cooks, prepare the dressing.  Sauté the shallot in the olive oil until caramelized.  In a large bowl, combine these with the wasabi, balsamic vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce.

Allow the cooked quinoa to cool to warm before adding the other ingredients.  If you’re in a hurry, spread it on a cookie sheet and let it cool for about 15 minutes.

When cooled, combine the quinoa, dressing, parsley, feta, cranberries, and pine nuts.  Add S&P to taste. Work in a bit more olive oil if you prefer your salad more moist.

Variations

You could add roasted butternut squash to this recipe and sub goat cheese for the feta, or go for a totally raw vegetable dish and add diced tomatoes, cucumbers, and kalamata olives. Sometimes I use dried cherries instead of cranberries, for a milder flavor.

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Get Hot for Summer Freebies!!

If you know erotica author and good girl, Shayne McClendon, then you know this is going to be good. on Facebook she’s always either making me laugh or squirm that way, both of which are pretty cool in a “what’s that doing on my Wall” sort of way.

Shayne routinely coordinates these enormous boook giveaways, in which tons of authors list their books for free. This time it’s the Get Hot for Summer Giveaway, featuring–you guessed it–romance and erotica!

So, make sure you stop by her site to click until your mouse hand falls off, getting all kinds of free hot reads for the season.  Among them is Journal of a Lycanthrophile!

 

 

 

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Full Moon Freebie

Heads up, howling peeps–or should I say, “Snouts up?”

Free today only on Amazon, in celebration of the full moon –24 May– “Journal of a Lycanthrophile.”

BDSM Book Reviews gave it 5 paddles:  ”Erotica in the truest sense of the word.”

This is your kink on lunacy:

A dark tale of forbidden love, insatiable lust, and desperate need… Jesse Holloman has a fetish for justice and a kink for werewolves. He only feels alive with werewolf lovers, yet he discovers a terrible secret that’s destroying them, and will possibly ruin him, as well. His passions spiral into a world of pain, shadow desires, and an even more sinister, secretive sort of shapeshifter—the kind that changes without shifting. When the kink most forbidden is the monster that sates, can he overcome his shadow proclivities to intervene, or will he risk the only thing that’s ever been important to him?

Book One of The Scattered Dark Series.

Warning: This series thrives on explicit, graphic shifter sex, gay kink, and horror elements, often and usually all at once.

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Wet & Wild Blog Hop

 

Welcome to the Wet and Wild Blog Hop!

Want to hope with me for loads of sexy romance or erotica? Want to check out logs of bloggers who appreciates steamy books? Then check out all of the participants in the Wet and Wild Blog Hop! Loads of us are participating, and we’re giving away a $100 gift card to Victoria Secret to a lucky commenter!

But wait–there’s more! We also have a secondary prize, a digital gift basket, filled with hot little delights to keep you tantalized while you enjoy the summer sun! To kick it up a notch, I’m throwing in an ebook of Traveler Through Darkness to spice up your hopping!

Be sure to include your email address in your comment, and visit the main hop page to enter to win more goodies!

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Ellen Dominick Does Fierce Dolan with Words

Which really means “interviews…”




A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed on Ellen Dominick’s stellar blog. It was a really fun interview, and I enjoyed Ellen’s enthusiasm. I hope you will, as well.

~*~*~*~

\u200BToday we're honored to speak with Feirce Dolan, author of Traveler Through Darkness, Gigolo Seduction, and Journal of a Lycanthrophile.

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Today we’re honored to speak with Feirce Dolan, author of Traveler Through Darkness, Gigolo Seduction,and Journal of a Lycanthrophile.

Fierce Dolan.

Confessions of a Gluten-free Masochist

There’s a big secret you don’t know about me. You know I identify as genderfluid and  homoflexible. You know I write erotica of a fairly insatiable and fetishistic variety. You know I have this whole other life and career. You’d think those are the biggies. I’m more well-rounded than that, though, even in my faults. I have a life. I have a job, and I have a really big problem.

You see, I quit eating gluten years ago, almost 13, to be exact. Gluten–you know–the stuff that keeps your lovely bread risen, is found in practically every processed product on the planet, and can cause bleeding distress through your life if you have an intolerance to it?  That stuff.   I gave it up back in the day when there weren’t baking substitutions, in favor of bleak, harsh omission. There weren’t recipes littering the net, each requiring 40 different flours to achieve the perfect crumb, toothiness, flavor.  No, newcomers have it easy, now. Products galore, tons of culinary gurus selling salvation in a single mix to suit your every baking need.

And yes, I really am clean. There is no such thing as cheating. That’s not the problem. The uglier truth is that I have an addiction, and at least in this arena, I’m a masochist. I can’t stop searching for that perfect gluten-free bread recipe. I want to make it, I need to make it.  In the night I wake craving its haunting aroma, its light yet crusty texture…

Everyone says they have it. Every sister with a bread machine swears her paleo/grain-free/gum-free/free-range/no dairy/eggless bread tastes wonderful, is criminally healthy, has no carbs, and holds up to a chilled goat cheese schmear.

Well, let me tell you, they taste like shit, by which I don’t mean I’m being picky.  See, a lot of people who are gluten-free will say that awful foods taste great because they miss their gluten-filled counterparts so much. They want even an echo of that greatness to sustain.  

I’ve adjusted my expectations, my foodstyle. I’ve seen reality. I know that no gluten-free bread is ever going to have the lift and lightness of a nice sourdough, the crusty softness of a baguette. The reality more closely resembles a hockey puck that you better eat within two days or even the birds will reject it.  I’ve baked a lot of fucking bread, and here’s the thing: none of it is good. It’s passable. It’s OK. It’s a means to a fully enclosed sandwich ends.  Good, though, it is not.

Which really, is the way bread is supposed to be. The bread Laura Ingalls ate most likely resembled the crumbly dense texture of its gluten-free brethren. Likewise, what we call wheat now is a super-amped hibrid designed to have higher gluten content for mass production and longer shelf stability. Chances are, most of us haven’t had real wheat bread since the early 1980s.

How spoiled we’ve become, we will rot our guts on a product that tastes better.

No lie, I make the best GF (cos that’s how we on the inside really say it) yellow and dark chocolate cakes you can imagine. You really wouldn’t know they are gluten-free. I make great cornbread and muffins, pie crusts, pastries, shortbread, cookies…

Yet with all things under the realm of bread baking I keep drinking the Kool-aid.

Pinterest isn’t fucking helping. Ben Silbermann is the genius behind this ‘create your own OCD hobby magazine’  dubbed “content sharing service.” Does he understand the pain he causes in my life every time a tantalizing snapshot of brioche leaning against a mug of warm hot chocolate lures me off the nobreadbaking wagon? Does he fully honor the pain inflicted by a toasted, buttery hamburger bun? You know not, because there they are, every day in my feed

So there you go. I have the same issues with gluten-free bread baking that other people do with pr0n. You know how some people look at pr0n and it skews their vision of reality? They think all bodies should be as sleek, curvy, firm, lusty. They think all sex should be an orgiastic free-for-all. I see images of gluten-free bread and think, “Mine’s that big. I can bang that out.”

My shame confesses that I never do, despite that my resilience endures.

Here’s your challenge: End my misery. Share your best gluten-free bread recipes.  No really, your best.  I will love you forever and post food pr0n to my Pinterest feed in your honor.

And yes, as a matter-of-fact, I am working on the world’s first gluten-free erotic romance.

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Caliente Blog Hop – What gets You HOT?

The Four Seduced Muses are turning up summer’s heat with a blog hop for all things CALIENTE! So let me have it–what gets you hot? What’s the thing that always leaves you biting your lips? Has that always been your jones, or did it evolve with experience and exposure?

I ask because I stumbled upon a particular affinity for amateur pr0n a bit back, a predilection I never expected. I’m not one for posing in any form of art, definitely not in erotica of any nature. I prefer risky, raw nature, in all its unpretentious glory. Yet the crudeness of amateur erotic art never caught my attention. It was too flawed, to stubbly, too coarse, too common. Maybe it was all that 1970s paneling, with dirty socks and a microwave in the background. I’m not sure what changed, though I can say that Tumblr has definitely played a role. So many semi-professional photographers use it as a portfolio to the world, people whose idea of sex, sensuality, and erotica would never sell in mainstream outlets, whose eye for emotion evokes the heart as much as the crotch. I love it.

This more controlled gallery of erotica lures me into some of the most provocative, beautiful erotic are I’ve ever seen–utterly unposed, often quirky and not attractive in a conventional sense, sometimes not even sexual. Just… fucking… hot. Find a few of my more presentable faves on Pinterest, on my Yes board, and Betwixt and Between.

So there ya go. Regular every day people doing what comes natural… wearing a neon blue strap-on, ruby rosebud, and a Ralph Lauren waistcoat…

What does it for you?

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Two Glorious Days in One!

Did you know that today begins Masturbation Month!?  O yeah. In 1995, sex toy shop Good Vibrations based in San Francisco declared May to be “Masturbation Month“. And guess what else? It’s also Gigolo Seduction‘s first birthday!!! My darling hit the virtual stands one year ago today!!  As if those weren’t enough, today is also Beltane, or what’s known in contemporary paganism as ‘the sex holiday.’ What a winning combo, right? Permission to celebrate a national pastime, ancient fertility rites, and erotica!  Better yet–celebrate all of the above with erotica!

What books get you off? Is it the sex, the sensuality, some combination of the two? Tell me the book that just does it for you every time, and I’ll send a random commenter an ebook of Gigolo Seduction.

And I’ll get suggestions for building up my lascivious library!

Happy jackin’ and jillin’, lovelies!

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