Liz Everly's Blog, page 121

Like our Facebook Page!

The Lady Smut crew are now on Facebook (well, most of us were already there, but not as Lady Smut). Drop by and give us a like. We’re going to be doing a giveaway there very soon to reward the early adopters!

Taking the Week Off!

After a very busy weekend at the digital Romance Festival, the Lady Smut bloggers are taking the week off. There’s plenty here for you to check out. We’ve posted profiles of Harper Impulse authors and updates on the festival—complete with links. So scroll down and be amazed! Don’t forget to subscribe to Lady Smut! C’mon you know you want to….

Gadget Friendly but Techno Impaired

by Kiersten Hallie Krum Here at Lady Smut, we’ve been covering the virtual Romance Festival all weekend, posting recaps and schedule updates and weighing in on the highlights as we go along. It was a fast and furious weekend to be sure, but for my part it began with a lot of whinging over just how the hell this virtual festival stuff happens.

um…no

I’m a total gadget girl. Love me a good gadget with bells and whistles and things that go “bing!” And yet, I’m not a huge techno-nerd. I don’t have a tablet, only caved into upgrading to a smartphone because of my social media addiction, and up till three days ago, have had the same web-cam free laptop for nine years. Contradiction? Not really. You see, gadgets are real and tangible and three-dimensional while tech is…very much not. Yes, obviously, tablets etc themselves are three-dimensional and tangible, but the worlds to which they provide access require a leap in cognition and that’s where they lose me. Which makes the fact that I”m the IT department at Krum Casa more than a little ironic, though admittedly, it’s basically being the one-eyed king in the land of the blind.

But I’m big on figuring things out and solving the puzzle for myself. Gimme a map and let me discover he journey on my own, which explains why I refuse to get a GPS and let a mechanical voice tell me where to go. Plenty of people on the Interwebs already more than happy to do that.  I learn by doing, not by listening or reading instructions because I’m visual orientated and need to see it to do it. It doesn’t help that I get pretty snarly and dismissive when I don’t get something right off the bat. So you can imagine when faced with the busy list of things happening over the course of two days on multiple platforms from blogs to Twitter to Facebook to Google Hangouts often at the same time and all for a Romance Festival that was based in London with HarperCollins UK, it took only a few lines of information for my id to throw up its hands and wail, “I don’t geddit!” Facebook isn’t a live forum. How can it host a live conversation? What is a Google Hangout (no web cam, remember?)? How do you chat on a static blog post? Ow. My head hurts.

so there!

Needless to say, with more than a little help from my friends, I got it figured out and was able to take in and be a small part of the Romance Festival. All it really took was getting the hell out of my own way. Which is usually the case, isn’t it? We are so often our own worst enemies, masters of self-sabotage who kick and scream at the merest suggestion we might have to move out of our comfort zones.

Yet almost in every case, the end result is not only not as complex or confusing as first appeared, but blessed with tangible rewards and self-satisfaction. I’ve gone wailing and gnashing my teeth into almost every big academic and professional decision of my life (and a few personal ones). Every single time, moving past it took a conscious act of will and one filled with angst (and let’s face it, usually booze.) But I’ve never once regretted getting over my damage in order to move forward and have more than once been blessed to discover something far more fulfilling than I could’ve imagined.

For sure, Romance Festival 14 fulfilled on several levels, a virtual conference for writers and readers chock full of fun and information that didn’t require an extra baggage fee to get all the swag and free books home. An added bonus of being virtual is that most of the chats and posts can be viewed post facto. The video chats have even been archived on youtube, like Cindy Gallop’s fascinating chat “Make Love Not Porn” which was so expertly recapped by our own Alexa Day when she told us why Cindy Gallop Rocks My World.

And be sure to follow Lady Smut and check out all our posts covering the festival activities. We’ll be here all week! No, seriously, you’ll have all week to peruse the Romance Festival posts while we take the week off in true post conference recovery style.

Harper Impulse Author Profile: C. Margery Kempe

Welcome dear readers!

The latest short story collection by CMK.

Madeline here with a re-blog blast from the past.  

C. Margery Kempe has been rocking the anthology world with her naughty stories for some time and she’s been doing well with her MAN CITY series too.  She  posts here at LadySmut every Friday. This was the first little chat I had with her about a year and a half ago.  

Read below to find out more about what inspires her various story ideas.

MADELINE IVA: You are (under other names) known for writing fancy literary stuff. What drew you to the world of smut?

C. MARGERY KEMPE: I was always there! I just wrote it for a very select audience  ;-) Then in 2008 an agent I knew said she was starting up an ebook publishing company focused on erotic romance. Hey, you mean I could make money writing these?! So I tried my hand at it. It was easy to write the sex; romance is a lot more challenging. But I’ve become much better at that. It kind of woke the slumbering romantic in me. I credit my fortuitous meeting of my current partner to my alter-ego Ms. Kempe (well, her and Twitter [http://www.asininepoetry.com/works/view/1845] both) because writing about love under the name of C. Margery made me open to the possibility once more.

MADELINE IVA: Erotica or erotic romance?

CMK has moved from fairy tale to contemporary. Check out her latest M/M.

C. MARGERY KEMPE: I’m not bothered — I write both and while I know some people definitely believe that they are completely different things, but I don’t see it that way. They are different kinds of narratives and the sex means something different when you add the element of romance, but the sex is the same — hot!

MADELINE IVA: I have a feeling that you (like myself) are drawn to fairy tales.  Tell us about SPINNING GOLD.  What interested you in taking the beloved Rumplestiltskin story and turning it on its head? Tell us about your other fairy tale inspired erotic romances as well.

C. MARGERY KEMPE: My story SWAN PRINCE from Tirgearr is another fairy tale and I have a few more in me (I wrote a fairy tale novel PELZMANTEL under my own name as well as a collection of stories based on Finnish folk and fairy tales, UNIKIRJA). They’re just endlessly entertaining. We have a deep bond with those stories and they are infinitely elastic. I was on a panel with Graham Joyce talking about them and we both agreed on that: the elasticity. So yeah, I could make Rumpelstiltskin full of twists — a boy masquerading as a girl because his mother didn’t want to lose him to war, falling for a prince who isn’t quite what he seems, either.

MADELINE IVA: You like spanking stories, yes? What can we modern feminist women do to understand our forbidden desires for fantasizing about spanking & sex?

C. MARGERY KEMPE: We can accept and not judge them! Your sexual persona cannot be shaped into something that ‘should be’ — it is what it is. We should not be ashamed or afraid to say what we desire, though clearly we do. Feminism is about EVERYONE being who they really are and treated fairly. For all the scorn heaped upon 50 SHADES, it did a little bit to normalise some kink practises to the wider public. People do like to experiment and there’s now a vogue for spanking and some mild B&D, but a lot of people still see anything but vanilla sex as ‘deviant’. We need to get over our puritan cultural training and just accept that there are all kinds of ways to experience excitement.

Click on photos to buy.

MADELINE IVA: You also seem–interesting author that you are—to be dabbling in stories that involve cross-dressing.  Tell us more about the forbidden appeal of a man in a skirt and pumps.  You’ve done cross-dressing stories that are m/m as well as f/m, too. Did you work them differently, or at heart are they the same kind of story?

C. MARGERY KEMPE: I’ve never really thought about it specifically — I guess I do love masquerade. There’s that wonderful quote from Wilde: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” This is why Halloween is so popular: people get to experiment, don another persona and walk around in it for a while. The story SEX CYMBALS was inspired by a friend’s music video, where he wore a wig and dress and it was really sexy, so I thought up the story at once. But there’s a lot of medieval stories where women have to pretend to be men; romances, but also saints’ lives. There are so many issues to explore. Fortunately there’s a lot more acceptance of gender blurring today, so it’s less about transgression than it is about blending. Playfulness! That’s the key.

Readers, you can find C. Margery Kempe’s stories on our SHOP page, on Amazon or find them HERE. And don’t forget to follow us at Lady Smut to get the best scoop on all our sexy intelligent fun. ; >

 

Cindy Gallop Rocks My World at Romance Festival ’14

Cindy Gallop is my hero. If you’ve been hanging out with me for a while, you’ve heard me talking about her before. Yesterday, I got to listen to her for an hour at the HarperImpulse Romance Festival, at an electrifying Google Hangout. There’s so much to love about Cindy: she opens the conversation by talking about the younger men she dates, she’s on a mission to put porn and sex into perspective for everyone’s benefit, and she is a strong, confident, savvy, successful businesswoman.

I’m going to touch on just a bit of what she covered in the Hangout, but you can see the whole thing right here on YouTube.

1. Make Love, Not Porn. Cindy developed MLNP upon discovering that her younger partners were drawing their techniques from porn in the absence of other information about sex. MLNP is a video-sharing platform through which participants can upload videos of themselves having real-world sex with their partners, and stream videos posted by others. Even porn stars are into it. Porn stars have real world sex, too, after all, and it isn’t anything like the sex they have at work. (Which makes sense, right?) Cindy recalls the TED talk she gave on MLNP: “I am to this day the only TED speaker ever to utter the words ‘come on my face.’” It took her talk viral, and her project, MLNP, reaped the benefits.

2. Erotic fiction. Sexting is evidence of the written word’s power to excite and arouse in a world that’s often driven by the visual. Cindy sees an opportunity for those of us working in erotic fiction — we can tap an individual reader’s creative vision in a way that porn can’t. She also sees a future in erotica for men. So many men are interested in romance and its erotic components in that context, but society’s prevented them from exploring it. Men don’t want to be locked into an artificial gender construct any more than we women do, Cindy says. Erotic fiction also socializes sex and sexual issues. Fifty Shades of Grey made huge strides in this area; because “everyone” was reading it, everyone was talking about the subject matter.

“Women challenge the status quo because we are never it. That’s uncomfortable for men, but from that discomfort comes greatness.” — Cindy Gallop

3. Women in business. Fear of what others think is paralyzing to businesspeople in general and businesswomen in particular. If we continue to bow to that fear, we “will never own the future,” Cindy says. It’s keeping us from self-promoting — nice girls don’t brag. It’s keeping us from stepping into the spotlight — I’m no expert, I only know 99.9 percent of the subject matter. It’s keeping us from participating in the public forum — I have to be here in the office/at home in case someone needs me. Yes, men are in the majority in the business world, Cindy says, but we are still in our own way, and we have to stop that, for ourselves and for the girls who are watching us work.

4. Porn in perspective (or, your kids have probably already seen it). We would be better served to have even more sex and sexual content in YA books, Cindy says, because kids are being exposed to hard-core porn online at a pretty early age. Like at 8. Or maybe even 6. So many of the issues we have about sex in general can be resolved by opening up, says Cindy. Kids’ exposure to porn is no different. The new ‘sex talk’ means saying that not everyone does do the things you’re seeing out there. Parents need more resources to really have this dialogue, and YA literature can supply those resources. at, but some people really enjoy it. Some people really like the sorts of things you’re seeing, but others really don’t. Everyone’s different.

There’s still lots of Romance Festival left. Keep it here for all the hot updates and highlights … you know, if you’re not at the Festival yourself. Which you should be.

Harper Impulse Author Profile: Erica Hayes

LADY SMUT: Erica, if you were a drink, what kind of drink would you be? And why?

ERICA HAYES: A whisky sour, maybe. Something impulsive and irritating that burns your throat if you don’t show enough respect.

LADY SMUT: Who do you read who makes you laugh or cry? Or both?

ERICA HAYES: Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams make me laugh. I’m not much for reading tear-jerkers… but poorly disguised fanfic and awful waif/billionaire stories with badly-written BDSM make me howl like a thwarted toddler. Do those count?

LADY SMUT: This is stolen from the HarperImpulse author bio form—but please tell us about your worse date ever.  Don’t spare us the gruesome details.

ERICA HAYES: I’m gonna have to play the boring card on this one. I’ve never been on a really excruciating date. A few embarrassing, won’t-a-chasm-please-open-and-swallow-me occasions, back in my misspent youth. Advice: never try to hide anything from the mother of the guy you’re illicitly crushing on. She can see right through you. Trust me. And she’ll call you on it, in public, right in front of said illicit crush’s current girlfriend. Ouch. Still, I got him in the end :)

LADY SMUT: What brought you to Harper Impulse – what was happening when you “got the call” that they wanted your book?

ERICA HAYES: I think I was working on my laptop in front of the TV when I got an email from Charlotte at HI, saying she loved the book and wanted to publish it and would I please arrange a time to call and discuss. Which was awesome. Probably resulting in the most incoherent author-editor phone call ever.

LADY SMUT: Where do you dig deepest in your writing – what’s the theme in your book that you feel the most passionate about?

ERICA HAYES: Psst, wanna know a secret? {whispers} All my books are about the same thing. Yeah, even my big juicy paranormal romances. Some people call this your ‘core story’. For me, it’s probably more like a delicate mix of stubbornness and imagination failure, but my recurring theme is ‘the darkness within’.

Or maybe ‘everyone wears a mask’. Which is especially applicable with my HI book, Scorched, because it’s about masked crime-fighting superheroes. Guess I’m just getting more obvious in my old age!

LADY SMUT: Your book mentions masked crime fighters and also that the heroine has her memory taken away from her. I just watched Tom Cruise in Oblivion and love that movie Momento — both movies about people who loose their memory.  But I was left wondering: How much of our personality do you think goes away if someone took your memory.  Like, would I still be an angry person if I no longer remembered anyone I was angry with? What’s your take on this?

ERICA HAYES: Ooh, that’s a good one :) Well, yeah, I think that long-term memories play a big part in making us who we are. We react to situations based on what’s happened to us in the past.

But I don’t think we need to actively remember that formative experience in order to be shaped by it. So yeah, if some nasty supervillain wiped your memory of who you were angry with, I think you’d still be angry :) but it’d probably be more destructive, because you wouldn’t understand why.

That’d be what would happen if I was writing the story, anyway :)

LADY SMUT: Thanks, Erica for joining us today.

Readers, you can find Erica’s books HERE  or click on the pictures to go to Amazon. And don’t forget to follow us here at Lady Smut for all your Sunday romance reading.

Breakfast w/ Lady Smut: 10 am Romance Festival Report

Hey Lovelies! Today we’re talking:

Highlights from the Romance Festival on Saturday & commentary
An update on what’s coming next in the schedule today
Where you can find it online

For a full schedule of today’s events (with American times) look HERE. YESTERDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS:

Q&A with Bella Andre and Barbara Freethy.
Tips from Ami Greko, book marketing strategist at Goodreads
Cindy Gallop speaks about her project MAKE LOVE NOT PORN
Q&A with agent Carol Blake

HERE’S WHAT WE THOUGHT:   What’s it like attending an online romance festival?

MADELINE IVA: This is seriously excellent stuff! My feet aren’t tired, but otherwise it’s exactly like going to a romance conference.  Liz, didn’t you say you wanted to be in two places at once sometimes?

LIZ EVERLY: Another cup of coffee, please!

I’m gearing up for another fun day at the Romance Festival and need all the energy I can get! Yesterday was frantic!

I enjoyed yesterday—but it was bit like going to a regular conference in that my frustration was that there were so manyy good events going on at the same time that I always felt like I was missing something. Never fear—with this digital conference there’s an online record and links and so on. This makes me feel a lot better. I missed the Freethy-Andre discussion yesterday and was able to go back and view it. GASP! What an outstanding session! What a doll Sam Missingham  is, as well. She asked great questions.

How well is it being run? 

MADELINE IVA: Very well, considering how swiftly it all came together.

LIZ EVERLY: I thought it was run very well. It’s a brave new world and there’s something to be said for Harper Impulse jumping right in and making themselves and other experts so available to writer and readers alike.

MADELINE IVA: At times, I’d be listening to the google hangout while taking part in a twitter chat at the same time…no wonder I’m a little tired today.

LIZ EVERLY: I popped back and forth between Facebook and Twitter. And it was no trouble at all. Sometimes those FB events can get kind of clunky, but so far, it’s worked out very well.

MADELINE IVA: I also thought that Sam Missingham did a smashing job of sending out witty tweets before the fest.

LIZ EVERLY: I know, right? What doesn’t she do? I mean she seems to be a master of all!

Any changes you’d suggest?

MADELINE IVA: Unfortunately, their WordPress site has crashed, but these things happen.  I also found my eyes were crossing after a long day of using a schedule with the British time and I think I even was late for some things because I got the time wrong.

LIZ EVERLY: Yeah, the time thing was difficult for me to figure out. something “off” for me throughout the day.

What rocked your world? 

MADELINE IVA: Belle Andre and Barbara Freethy were fab.  Talking about how they conceptualize their rights and are very stingy about letting them go was really interesting.  Also, those women work non-stop it seems.  I walked away wondering how can you find balance as a successful self-published author?

LIZ EVERLY: And where do you find the original start-up money? I mean NOW they have the money to put into their careers, but what about when they first started?

MADELINE IVA: You’re right.  They said “for only a few thousand” they could get their books out into the world.  My credit card is cringing at the thought.  Cindy Gallop was a breath of fresh air — I think our blogger Alexa Day will give us a recap of what Cindy had to say at noon. Ami Greko’s tips for using Goodreads as an author was simply gold.

LIZ EVERLY: I don’t think she liked my question about why they don’t allow digital book giveaways. (Shrugs shoulders.) She said they don’t want to send people to another site in order to get a book.

MADELINE IVA: Which…makes no sense at all…In the end I thought it was fascinating to observe people distill their info down to twitter bites.  They made it look easy–but I’m sure it was a challenge!  Meanwhile, this has got to be the most environmentally friendly conference on the planet right now. ;>

LIZ EVERLY: And I LOVE the fact that I don’t have to pack or deal with trains or airplanes to go to this conference.

MADELINE IVA: It’s very efficient.

WHAT’S GOING ON RIGHT NOW:

10am

Twitter: Sheila O’Flanagan in conversation with Anna James from We Love This Book. 
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Facebook: Historical romance discussion – chat with some of your favourite historical romance authors. 
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

11am

Twitter: YA chat and giveaway – CJ Abedi, Lydia Syson and Cathy Hopkins 
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Facebook: Marie Force in coversation
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

Facebook: Steampunk with Emma Holloway
Visit Emma’s event to take part in the discussion

11:30am

Twitter: Romance in YA – Liz deJager and Laure Eve in conversation. 
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Facebook: New adult: Why has it become so popular – discussion and cover reveals from J Lynn and Jay Crownover
. Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

Stick with us at LadySmut today for author profiles and to find out more about what’s going on at Romance Festival.  :) 

Harper Impulse Author Profile: Jane Lark

Hello Romance readers! Looking for a schedule of today’s Romance Fest events with American times? Look HERE.

Today we have HarperImpulse author Jane Lark with us to tell you about her and some of her books. Let’s get the ball rolling: Here’s the blurb for Jane Lark’s latest book, JUST YOU:

Don’t judge a person until you really know them…

The morning after the New Year’s Eve before… Waking up to a new year with a killer hangover and hazy memories of a seriously hot hook-up the night before leaves Portia in an awkward situation… Did I, or didn’t I? The only way she’s going to find out is by standing up to the guy in question.

With no regrets, Justin is willing to play the gentleman and save Portia her embarrassment.

Only then he gets a text saying, come over… and he’s not gonna lie – this is friends with a lot of benefits! But no matter how good the sex is, there’s one thing Justin’s not down with: being this shallow rich girl’s secret…

LADY SMUT:  Jane, if you were a drink, what kind of drink would you be? And why?

Author, Jane Lark

JANE LARK: Mmmm, that’s a really hard one… Ok let me work backwards and and think of the essential bits making up my personality and then I’ll see what drink fits…

Determination! That is one of the absolute essences that makes me up, and I have needed a lot of it to get my books published and ignore all those years of rejection letters. I also need a lot of it to cope with my disability Ankylosing Spondylitis.

Ummm… Silliness… As my 20 year old daughter will tell you, I can do really inappropriate things for a grown a woman, but then I am still only sixteen at heart, I’ve never grown up on the inside-  and the reason why I looooove writing my New Adults I can be that young person on paper…

A thirst for getting beneath things and understanding them, whether that’s history or just people, but it is that that sources the inspiration for my books. I did a psychology test once, in which I was considered really odd because I wasn’t driven by money or stuff, or most of the things people normally are, the thing I want to achieved in life is to make other people’s lives better – is that weird… The psychologists implied there were not man people like that. I think it maybe why I like writing nice sexy hero’s in my New Adults,and gritty historical romances that are going to make you think a bit more….

So what sort of drink would all those be….? Off to check out some cocktail recipes… What does Determination, Silliness, Inquisitiveness and a desire to make things better equal in a drink?  I’ll be this :D A Ginger Fizz It sounds like the taste is gonna have a bit of a punch so that’s the determination… Silliness, well that’s the spicy, hot ginger, and inquisitiveness because it is gonna tingle on your tongue… Desire to make a difference – it’s still healthy it has Cranberries!

LADY SMUT: Who do you read who makes you laugh or cry? Or both?

JANE LARK: I’m not into books that make me laugh, I don’t know why, I like a book I can really get my teeth into, where the characters have a real depth. I know that very good comedy writers can achieve that any way, but I lean more to the books that make me cry… Really emotional powerful stuff.

I read ONE DAY and cried for three days, and went and told every one, you have to read this!! Also Louise Douglas’s THE LOVE OF MY LIFE is the sort of intense tragic story I like. Warning – my next historical out in July and my next New Adult out in August are both going to be tearjerkers because it is what I like writing too.

LADY SMUT: This is stolen from the HarperImpulse author bio form—but please tell us about your worse date ever.  Don’t spare us the gruesome details.

JANE LARK: Oh my gosh…. Ok… Being incredibly honest, do you know I don’t think I ever dated… One of the things a lot of people say abut I Found You, my first New Adult, is that Jason and Rachel meet on a bridge and he takes her home, “That’s so unrealistic, he wouldn’t have done that.” “She wouldn’t have gone…” Umm.

I think I grew up in a different type of world, I would have done that, and so would the people I went around with. I didn’t formally ‘date’ I just used to meet people and start talking and then it would develop…. That kind of comes from my inquisitiveness, when I was 20-23 I used to hang out in pubs on my own a lot, and just used to talk to anyone… I think I’m weird, maybe. So I don’t have a worst date, because if I started talking to someone and thought your boring, or odd, I’d have just walked off – as in, said I was off to the restroom. LOL.

I did have one odd guy approach me in that period of my life though (actually more than one odd guy, but this is just one story). He worked in the area and stayed in the pub I used to go in every night of the week. I hated being at home on my own so on week days I would go down there, buy one drink and sit at the bar doing the crossword in the paper (rock ‘n roll as I was) and talking to the barman and anyone who came in. This guy was in his forties, he never sat at the bar, and rarely joined in the conversation. At weekends though the pub would be full, and instead of sitting at the bar, I’d developed a network of friends, through just starting conversations. Whoever came out that I liked, we’d then go off on a bar crawl, and all sleep round someones house (JUST sleep LOL).

Anyway this one weekend – this 40 something guy – came and sat next to me, and started telling me he was desperately in love with me and wanted to marry me LOL. He followed us around all the pubs and wouldn’t go away. Telling me he was rich and promising me all sorts of stuff, including a diamond engagement ring. Remember although I had sat in the same pub as him night after night for a few months, this was the first time he had really even spoken to me. He stuck out like a sore thumb because he was so much older. “I have a really nice amazing dower house, where we’d live, its ancient and full of character!” I told him to get lost bluntly several times, really had nothing going for him… but then LOL a week later he invited his WIFE down for the weekend Ha! Ha!… He kept looking at me when she was there like he wanted me to be jealous… Really NOT mate… That was a long time ago…

But I did meet my husband who I’ve been with for over 25 years on a Thursday night, while I sat at that bar. He’d just called in for a one off drink and it was the first time I’d met him. We ended up talking until 3am ;) I met him six more times after that and then he moved in with me. I was very rash when I was younger.. But hey, when you meet the right one, I think you know…

LADY SMUT: What brought you to Harper Impulse – what was happening when you “got the call” that they wanted your book?

JANE LARK: I had a long journey to publication, it took me fifteen years of rejections to finally get a yes. But it didn’t initially come from Harper Impulse, my first book was published by a small American independent publisher, Sapphire Star Publishing. ‘Illicit Love’ came out in May 2013.

A dream come finally true, and the next three books were planned on the back of this all due to be out in 2013. But two weeks after publication, my dream took another kick. Sapphire Star Publishing decided not to publish anymore books. As ‘Illicit Love’ was the first in the series, they offered me my rights back, and so I was out looking again. I booked to attend the Romance Novelists Association Summer conference solely to have a chance to pitch to publishers, and it was at this point that Harper Impulse had just begun. I didn’t even offer them my historical stories, just the New Adult, that the author AL Jackson had encouraged me to write through Sapphire Star, she thought my voice would suit New Adult. Thank you, AL!

The editor Charlotte Ledger really loved the first chapter and wanted more, but recommended I make some adjustments to the Full MS. Then I discovered that Harper Impulse were re-releasing some other writers books, so I also offered them the historical romances Charlotte emailed me back within hours, without reading a submission, saying “Yes, to everything!” I said, don’t you want to read one first. She then told me she’d already bought ‘Illicit Love’ and read it, when she’d heard the reviews for it :D

The re-named ‘Illicit Love of a Courtesan’ was published in October 2013 and from there my publishing relationship with Harper Impulse began! ‘The Passionate Love of a Rake’ came out in November and the first New Adult, ‘I Found You’ in December… three more books have come out this year and there are another three to come too ;) It all feels like fate now. Especially as they are doing so well.

LADY SMUT: After an unexpected hook up, Justin in your book JUST YOU is not willing to be Portia’s ‘dirty little secret’.  It sounds like this is where race meets up with the ‘friends with benefits’ concept and there’s a lot of tension around it.  Is the situation as much about class as it is about race?

JANE LARK: To be absolutely honest it’s about lack of class and race issues. In my day job, I’m a specialist in the personnel management area, and for the last six years I’ve worked in diversity. Everyone has differences. I am disabled so I know what it’s like to have people misjudge my body language, and treat me as incapable.

When I am ill, I am physically incapable at times, but not mentally incapable. The diversity agenda is going to run through a lot of my New Adult books, I like challenging myself in these, as well as throwing things at my readers to challenge them (don’t expect simple fun reads, I will take you on a journey).

Justin judges Portia because of the way she speaks and her families wealth, and makes a metal judgement from her tone of voice prior to them hooking up that she’s an uncaring, self-centered, stuck-up bitch. Both characters were in the previous book, and that is the way the reader probably saw Portia in that, because it was Jason’s view too.

But then Justin get’s to know her, and… realizes he got her wrong… The race issue, like the mental health issue I covered in I Found You, is more to say, it doesn’t make a difference, everyone is different in someway. Jason looked beyond Rachel’s mental health issue and Portia doesn’t even see Justin’s skin colour, he is just Justin… Although her family are less open minded… You will have to read ‘Just You’ to find out why he thinks she wants to keep him a secret ;)

In the first New Adult book I Found You, okay this is a

*SPOILER*

so don’t read on if you don’t want tom know but Rachel has bipolar. She was a challenge to write and there are negative reviews on it, largely from people who haven’t read to the end, because you as a reader will not connect with her… You don’t think like her, because she has bipolar disorder.

That makes her thought process confusing at times, and her judgements way off. But I’m writing from inside the character’s mind, so I’ve tried to write her as someone with bipolar would think. I want to give my readers an insight into mental health and challenge you to try to understand.

People who get to the end and learn she has bipolar usually really like it. :D But the best review I got was from someone with bipolar, who didn’t know what they were reading until they started it – they got her right from the start! and they gave it five stars! I was thrilled with that, because it meant I had the character right and all my research had paid off… Now you see my making a difference thing coming out in my writing… ;)

LADY SMUT: Thanks Jane!

JANE LARK: Thanks so much!

Readers — Look to buy Jane’s books HERE, or click on the pictures to go to Amazon.  

You can also find Jane lurking at these places:

Website http://www.janelark.co.uk/index.html

Blog http://janelark.wordpress.com/

Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/janelark/

YouTube http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyyizODvae3rziAqGE0V8QQ

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/Janelarkauthor

Twitter https://twitter.com/JaneLark

And she offered you some links just in case you wanted to check out more about her New Adult work: Blog http://tipsreviewsandlittletruths.wordpress.com/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JaneLark.NABooks

Twitter https://twitter.com/JaneLnabooks

Don’t forget to follow us at LadySmut.com for all your romance fun. 

Romance Fest Schedule W/ AMERICAN TIMES!!!

ROMANCE FESTIVAL LINE UP WITH AMERICAN TIMES! (EST)

Trying to translate 2pm into 9am? I know, it was driving us crazy too. So here you go, East Coast folk — the romance festival line up for Sunday with east coast times…(And even if you don’t live on the east coast, maybe it’s still easier to subtract one or two or three hours than it is six or seven or eight.)

9am

Twitter: Jill Mansell and Mhairi McFarlane in conversation on Twitter
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Facebook: Romantic places with Kerry Fisher
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

10am

Twitter: Sheila O’Flanagan in conversation with Anna James from We Love This Book
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Facebook: Historical romance discussion – chat with some of your favourite historical romance authors
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

11am

Twitter: YA chat and giveaway – CJ Abedi, Lydia Syson and Cathy Hopkins 
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Facebook: Marie Force in coversation
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

Facebook: Steampunk with Emma Holloway
Visit Emma’s event to take part in the discussion

11:30am

Twitter: Romance in YA – Liz deJager and Laure Eve in conversation
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Facebook: New adult: Why has it become so popular – discussion and cover reveals from J Lynn and Jay Crownover
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

12pm

Google hangout with Mhairi McFarlane, Alexandra Brown and Katy Regan
Visit the Google plus page and hit play at 5pm!

Facebook: The men of romance – meet Kev from I Heart Chick Lit plus chat to male authors writing in the genre
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

12:30pm

Facebook: Erotica hour – Emma Sayle of Killing Kittens chats with erotica authors Primula Bond and Nicola Jane
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

1pm

Twitter: Lucy Lord and Belinda Jones chat summer flings
Follow along and ask questions using #Romance14

Google Hangout: Sarah Morgan and Miranda Dickinson in coversation
Visit the Google plus page and hit play at 6pm!

1:30pm

Facebook: Q&A with Samantha Young
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

2pm

Google Hangout with Linsey Kelk
Tune in here at 7pm!

Facebook: Witching hour – Paranormal romance discussion
Visit the Romance Festival Facebook page to take part in the discussion

Facebook: Q&A with Susan Mallery
Take part on Susan’s Facebook page

Romance Festival Live! Agent Q&A With Carole Blake

by Kiersten Hallie Krum Lady Smut is here to guide you through Romance Festival ’14 the first online romance festival. Drop by Lady Smut every hour to find HarperImpulse author Q&As as well as:

What just happened at the romance festival & what we thought about it
What’s coming next
Where you can find it online

WHAT JUST HAPPENED:

6 PM  UK/1PM EST U.S.—Tips on working with a literary agent Twitter Q&A with Carole Blake of Blake Friedmann. Mention @caroleagent and use #Romance14 to ask your questions.

Literary agent Carole Blake handled a swift-paced Q&A with tasty tips on working with an agent from how to query to how to manage your relationship. And it is a relationship, she says. In fact, she has several clients whom she has represented longer than most marriages. It’s all about teamwork, which is the essential ingredient of the author/agent relationship. Agents, Ms. Blake says, don’t only sell an author’s work to a publisher. They also give long-term career advice on manuscripts, genres, finance, tactics, promotion, pretty much anything their authors need. Writers must know what they want out of their career so they can be sure they’re with the right agent—that they have the best fit. Agents can almost always steer an author well and manage any problems they may have with their editor or publisher or the publicity department. “Publishing is a communication business. Good communication between author and client is absolutely vital…author-agent-editor-reader [is a] vital foursome. Forget any part: disaster.” Agents are the authors’ advocates. A successful agent/author relationship is one that is like a friendship, where “personalities must mesh.

People who like each other. Being able to laugh. A good author/agent relationship can last for decades. Publishing is a communication business. Good communication between author and client is absolutely vital…author-agent-editor-reader [is a] vital foursome. Forget any part: disaster.

Ms. Blake recommends writers approach an agent when a full manuscript is completed and preferably when they know what they’re going to write next. One of the most common mistakes she sees is writers who don’t do enough research before submitting. “So much information is on our website, as with all agencies. No excuse.” Beware of high-traffic submission times too, like just before the Christmas holidays or the height of the summer holiday season. Apparently, getting a break from everyday life spurs the creative muse.

In addition to writing well, Ms. Blake believes that, in order to succeed in today’s publishing climate, writers must have a professional outlook, be good at multi-tasking, and remain calm in the face of problems. A manuscript goes through as much editing as she and the writer think it needs to get it submission ready. Sometimes this means many drafts. Agents say they want original stories, yet it feels as though we keep seeing the same things on the shelves. “It’s about the voice,” Ms. Blake says. “The way they tell the story and manage the characters.” However she advises, as have many other agents I’ve heard speak, that writers should not chase trends. “No point following trends. By the time they’re obvious, it’s two years after that manuscript was written. Chasing trends is reactionary. Prefer my clients to be original—start trends!”

When it comes to submissions, Ms. Blake believes the first chapter is the most important, “because I know so many authors hate writing synopses.” True ‘dat! She’s also looking for a calm, sensible letter without too many grand claims for the manuscript. She advises writers to make sure they have a clear-cut method of release in the contract before signing with an agent. That is a must. Also, “Agents must never charge an author for anything—money always flows from the agent to the author!” An important reminder as many “slush” agents are identifiable by their insistence for the author to pay initial costs. She works with several clients to make their back list available as e-books. Her recommendation is that authors only self-publish after careful thought and consideration as to how the can and should handle the marketing. After good writing, this is the most important component to self-publishing success, which I think is a key point as the self-published true success stories I’ve been privileged to hear turn on the marketing investment made by the author. “There are so many more routes to market,” Ms. Blake says. For instance it’s, “Easier to reach readers through social media. Exciting! But equally scary too. So much is demanded now in addition to…er…writing.”

Finally, Ms. Blake concluded with these final words of advice:

“Don’t give up. Polish your writing skills while submitting. Get a writing buddy who will critique honestly. Talk to authors who have agents. Go to author events. Read dedications. Research agency websites. Edit. Re-edit. Read it aloud. Put manuscript away for some weeks – edit again. Waiting time is work time.”

Want to know more about Romance Festival and get your own schedule of events? You can register for free HERE.   Or stick with LadySmut today and tomorrow to find out what’s going on.