L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 14

Should You Set New Year’s Writing Resolutions?

Knowing that this blog post would be published just before New Year’s, I thought to myself, I should write a New Year’s themed blog post (just like the Christmas-themed blog post that was published last week just before Christmas). I’ve written about new year’s writing resolutions before, setting four goals at the start of 2016 (that I pretended weren’t goals to relieve a little bit of the pressure on myself) and writing at the end of 2016 about how successful I’d been (about 50/50 – I achieved some of them, failed entirely at others and achieved things during the year that I’d never even thought about when I was setting those goals).

I wasn’t sure I wanted to set goals again. Setting goals and then failing is demoralising. And I always fail at goals, especially ones that have definitive and relatively short deadlines. More often than not, I accomplish them but long after any arbitrary time frames I’ve set. That sums me up really. I’m easygoing. I’m laidback. I’m not ambitious. I’m happy to succeed over years rather than months and pressure to do it sooner doesn’t make it happen. In fact, it makes it less likely to happen.

So then I asked myself, Should I be setting New Year’s writing resolutions? Should I be setting goals at all?

Clearly, I have set and met goals in the past. I wanted to write books. I have. I wanted to publish them. I have. I wanted to earn money from my writing. I have (although I’d like to earn more). I know a lot of people would look at my life and say I could have achieved so much more and sooner if I’d set and stuck to goals with deadlines. But I don’t know if I would be any happier than I am now.

Almost all of my biggest achievements (the ones that are important in my mind) have come from a reasonably spontaneous place. Yes, writing can take a long time but when I published my first two books, I made the decision to publish and did it all within the space of a week or two. When I was shortlisted for the 2016 Text Prize, it was a competition I entered on the spur of the moment simply because I had an unpublished book ready that met the criteria. I like that kind of spontaneity because it means I don’t have a long time to get my hopes up and I don’t have huge investments of time and effort to be regretted if everything doesn’t go the way I’d hoped.

When I really thought about what I wanted to achieve in the coming year, it all came back to balance. I returned to full-time, non-writing work this year out of financial necessity and spent almost four months not writing a single thing while I adjusted to this different routine. I was able to pay my home loan and put food on the table but I was just surviving, not thriving in the way I had done during my previous three years of being a full-time writer. I knew I’d done it in the past, work full-time and write plenty, but for those four months I just couldn’t remember how. Why was it that things that had seemed easy a few years ago now seemed impossible?

Because I’m getting older. I’m getting more tired. I’m only months away from being officially diagnosed with arthritis. (I thought I was putting on weight but actually I was getting swollen from my body attacking itself. Yay!?) My dad’s two best friends died. My cat died. My stepmother needed help writing, designing and printing several batches of marketing flyers. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather (just like I have since my grandmother died). I babysat. I took on freelance editing work. In short, my life was getting in the way of my writing.

So my goal for the next year is balance. I will continue working but I will also continue writing. I will take care of myself so that I can keep doing both. Life will happen and probably keep getting in the way but it’s better than the alternative of life not happening.

And what about you? Should you set New Year’s writing (or life) resolutions? Only you can answer that. If you respond well to a little bit or a lot of pressure, then maybe goals with a deadline will help you achieve what you want. If you don’t respond well to pressure, then specific goals may be counterintuitive. Whatever you decide, it has to be right for you.

For all writers, the best advice has to be to just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing… In the end, you’ll get somewhere. It may not be where you planned or when but sometimes that destination is better than the one you thought you wanted.

Happy new writing year to all the writers out there and happy new reading year to all the readers who support them!

Should You Write a Christmas-themed Book?

Clearly, it’s much easier to make the decision to write a Christmas-themed blog post (a thousand or so words, a fairly small investment of writing time) but should you write an entire Christmas-themed book? Depending on the type of books you write, it could be another small (or at least smaller) investment of writing time (such as with children’s books) or it could be months or years of your life (such as with full-length novels).

As with all writing choices, there are pros and cons. The final decision (and the reasons behind it) for one person will be completely different to the final decision (and the reasons behind it) for another. So this decision needs to be the right decision for you.

Reasons to Do It

You have a story that makes no sense without the Christmas theme

The biggest and best reason to write a Christmas-themed story is that you have a Christmas-themed story rumbling around in your head that you just have to get down on paper, one that makes absolutely no sense if you try to take the Christmas theme out of it. Many of these stories will naturally revolve around families getting together and annoying each other in a way that only families can do. But there will need to be something more than that because everyone, even non-writers, have stories like that rumbling around in their heads from personal experience.

You know exactly when to release and market it

Trying to decide when to release a book can be a marketing nightmare. A lot of people are tempted to simply release it when it’s ready but doing that generally means you haven’t given enough thought to a marketing plan. But with a Christmas-themed book, the timing of the release and marketing is obvious. A late October to mid-November release gives you enough time to build up to your all-out marketing assault and by the time December comes around, the general Christmas buzz that happens every year will feel a little like it’s happening just for you.

It’s not an excuse to slack off though. You still have to think about how your Christmas-themed book is going to stand out from all the other Christmas-themed items and events jockeying for attention at this time of the year.

You can do a new marketing campaign each year at the same time

A Christmas-themed book can be the gift that keeps on giving for a writer because each year at the same time, you can do a new marketing campaign to remind people that even though it’s not a new book, it’s still a perfect read for that time of the year. Many books get forgotten after those heady first months of the initial release but with a Christmas-themed book, you have a legitimate reason to remind people year after year.

Reading a Christmas-themed book every year could become a Christmas tradition

If people enjoy reading the book, it could become one of their Christmas traditions to read it each year at this time of the year. Remaining front and centre in a reader’s mind is always a challenge for writers so if your old books can help that process, you’ll have an advantage for your future books over other authors who have faded into a little bit of obscurity.

Reasons Not to Do It

You could be trying to force it to be a Christmas story when it isn’t really one

There are some stories that can’t be told without a Christmas theme but there are just as many, probably more, that don’t need a Christmas theme at all. It’s important to consider which category your story falls into. Trying to force your story into a Christmas-themed book when it doesn’t need to be isn’t going to do you or your readers any favours. It’s going to be harder to write, harder to market and harder to find an audience for apart from a very specific time of the year.

Christmas stereotypes could make your book just one of millions

There are already an awful lot of Christmas-themed books out there and if yours doesn’t have something that sets it apart, it could simply get lost in the crowd. There are just as many Christmas stereotypes – snow, Santa, family dysfunction, turkey, eggnog, gifts – and while these things are worth celebrating, millions of books have done it all before. Christmas is celebrated in many different ways around the world – in Australia, hot weather and seafood are more common than snow and roast turkey; in Japan, KFC (yes, you read that right, Kentucky Fried Chicken) has emerged as a quirky tradition in recent times and there’s even a special Christmas menu) – so a little research into how others do it could be in order.

People might not want to read a Christmas book at non-Christmas times of the year

Writing a Christmas-themed book may limit its readership at other times of the year. You only have to listen to talk-back radio to hear people annoyed by hot cross buns in bakeries in January or Christmas decorations and paraphernalia when it goes on display too early (in their opinion). So the idea of reading a Christmas-themed book in May might just be too much for their compartmentalised lives and mindsets.

A good book is a good book at any time of the year but convincing readers that a Christmas-themed book can be read at any time other than Christmas is always going to be a challenge.

Releasing a Christmas book at any time other than Christmas doesn’t make sense

Part of what makes releasing a Christmas-themed book at Christmas time great is that the marketing is so much easier. Those who celebrate Christmas or who are in countries that celebrate Christmas expect to see Christmas products and you can leverage that. But trying to push a Christmas message at other times of the year can be like pushing a double-door refrigerator up the side of a hill – damn hard if not downright impossible. Christmas in July is a theme in some southern hemisphere countries (just because they want to take advantage of the snow and give people an experience of a northern hemisphere Christmas) but otherwise there aren’t any other exceptions.

So you have to ready to release at a very specific time of the year. And if you miss it, you’ll have to wait a full year for that time to come around again.

You could be alienating non-Christian audiences

Less than one-third of the world’s population identifies as Christian so writing a Christmas-themed book could alienate non-Christian audiences, who make up a significant portion of the reading world. There are many other religious and cultural celebrations that take place around the same time that Christmas does and there are far fewer books with these themes so it could be worth exploring the alternatives, including Hanukkah (Judaism), Rohatsu also known as Bodhi Day (Buddhism), the Solstice (winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere for Wiccans and Pagans) and Kwanzaa (a celebration of African heritage). There are also Muslim holidays, although because they are celebrated according to lunar calendars, they aren’t at the same time each year but they still happen on a rough yearly basis.

*****

Let’s just add this to the already very long list of things that make writing hard. But the choice is yours. And as long as you’ve considered all the pros and cons, you’ll be in a much better position to make the right one.

Book Review: Genesis (Book 1 of The Rosie Black Chronicles) by Lara Morgan

Welcome to the city of Newperth, a futuristic version of present-day Perth in Australia. The oceans have risen, the gap between the haves (the Centrals) and the have-nots (the Bankers) has widened dramatically and the homeless (the Ferals) are pretty much as they are today, misunderstood and shunned. Rosie Black is a Banker but she goes to a Central school thanks to her aunt Essie’s charity and dreams of being a space pilot just like her aunt.

One day when she’s exploring the ruins of the Old City with her Central friend, Juli, Rosie finds a box with a mysterious logo on it and some mysterious contents in it, including a comkey. When they plug it into the comnet at Juli’s house, it tells them a beacon has been activated and a retrieval team is on the way. Rosie yanks it out of the comnet but it’s too late. The events of the novel have already been triggered.

Rosie knows her aunt can help but she’s in space and not due back until the next day so she has to just wait. She escapes the clutches of Ferals Riley and Pip, who know she has the box, and makes it home in time to escape the clutches of Helios, another set of baddies, but then witnesses her father being attacked and dragged away. And after she finds out Juli and her whole family have died in a mysterious explosion at their home where the comkey was plugged into the comnet. Suddenly, Rosie is the key player in a story that really has nothing to do with her.

That’s how it feels for the whole novel. If Rosie wasn’t there, the reader would have barely noticed her absence. She’s not particularly interesting and her skills aren’t really required. The same story could have played out with her presence at all. Essie, Riley and Pip are the far more interesting characters and yet they exist only on the sidelines.

In fact, the same story has played out without Rosie plenty of times before. The plot is derivative and felt like a lot of other stories I’ve read before mashed together in an effort to make it feel new. It’s a young adult, sci-fi, adventure, romance hybrid and doesn’t do justice to any of those genres.

The romance is clichéd and awfully reminiscent of an eighties Mills & Boon. The sci-fi is so-so. The adventure involves an awful lot of running away. The young adult components are the most successful but struck me as uninventive, unoriginal, sometimes inappropriate and a little bit ho-hum. Despite Rosie being in constant danger, it’s amazing how much time she devotes to thinking about Pip and how much she likes/hates/likes/hates/likes him depending on whether he’s helping or betraying her. And when he has to strip off his shirt to bandage her sprained ankle, it was just a little too contrived.

But, of course, I’m not the demographic of the intended audience. I don’t think it should matter – a good book is a good book regardless – but all of the issues I had with the book will probably be overlooked by a teenage audience who don’t overanalyse these things.

Genesis is the first book in a trilogy and I think it suffers from something that many planned trilogies do – the writer not spending enough time focused on writing just one great book. If a sequel and then a third book to make a trilogy are warranted, it should be decided by the insistence of the readers who loved the first book. But when writers decide from the start that they want to write a three-book series, a lot is held back for the second and third books, usually to the detriment of the first. That sense came through here.

Still, it’s readable. A couple more rewrites, the elimination of a character or two and giving those left some more complex motivations and it could have been great instead of okay. The cover art and design is brilliant, not something I usually comment on, but just too perfect not to mention, stark and beautiful at the same time.

In a few words: best left for teenagers.

3 stars

*First published on Goodreads 2 September 2017

Sex with a Stranger: Chapter Two

Rule #2: No morning afters

Fletcher woke slowly, not because it was morning – although it was – or because the light was peeking through the blinds – and it was, too – but because he was cold. The sheets were still beneath him and he was naked. It took him a moment to remember where he was and why.

“Jane?” he called out but the air was still and he wasn’t sure how he knew but he could tell she was long gone. He should at the very least have had fond memories but instead, like a typical man, he’d lived the dream – a beautiful, anonymous woman offering sex without strings – and all he could think about was seeing her again. He checked the bedside tables and the desk on the other side of the room for a note, a scrap of paper with her phone number on it, but there was nothing.

A knock on the door sounded and his hopes briefly climbed before he realised she wouldn’t need to knock – it was her room.

“Just a moment,” he called out, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and going to the bathroom to fetch a robe. He felt stupid answering the door in it – he felt a little stupid in general, almost a little bit used – but when he finally opened the barrier, there was nobody there. He peeked around the door frame to see a member of the hotel staff retreating discreetly and then looked down to find a tray of food at his feet.

She’d thought of everything. He should have been grateful. Instead, he felt sure he was simply the latest in a long line of men. He didn’t know what else to do except eat the pancakes and drink the orange juice, then the coffee.

His phone rang and ridiculously he snatched it up hoping it would be her. Of course, that was impossible because they hadn’t exchanged numbers.

“Hello?”

“Fletch, where are you?” It was his brother, Mitchell. “I’m knocking and knocking on your front door.”

“I’m not at home, Mitch. I stayed in the city last night.”

“You dog.”

“No,” he protested, “it wasn’t like that.” Except it was. It was precisely like that. It’s just that “Jane” was the one that Mitchell was praising without either of them realising it.

“Have you forgotten we’re supposed to be meeting the parentals for brunch?” His parents loved to do Saturday brunch. They thought it was symbolic of a particular status that they’d managed to climb up to since their retirement. Fletcher thought it was symbolic of their inability to decide whether they wanted breakfast or lunch.

“No, no.” Not forgotten exactly, just overtaken by unexpected events. “I might be a little late but I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay, see you then.”

He took a shower and used the tiny set of bathroom products, then dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing last night and tried to smooth his hair but it wouldn’t cooperate. No matter how he pushed it around, it still looked like a woman’s hands had been twisting in it. Which they had.

He was about to leave when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a piece of purple velvet winking at him from the carpet at the end of the bed. A button from the shirt “Jane” had ripped open when he had protested. He picked it up and then searched out the rest of them, putting them in his pocket along with an unopened condom that must have fallen from her bag. They were the only sign that she’d ever been here, the only proof he hadn’t dreamed the whole thing and even though she seemed happy to walk away, he wasn’t ready to give her up yet.

*****

“Sadie Van Der Zee, where the hell are you?”

Emily Van Der Zee wasn’t normally the sister from hell but she was in full bridezilla mode, even over the house phone, because she was getting married tomorrow.

“I’m at home,” Sadie told her.

“I’m getting married tomorrow!”

“I know.”

“And I’m freaking out!”

“Having second thoughts?”

“Not about getting married. About the flowers. José just called and said the roses haven’t arrived from Ecuador yet. What am I going to do?” José was the florist who had made the mistake of telling Emily that the world’s best roses were grown in South America. She’d then made the mistake of relaying that information to David Mann, her multi-millionaire fiancé for whom no amount of effort or expense was too much for his bride-to-be.

“You might just have to use Australian roses,” Sadie said dryly.

“It’s a disaster!”

Sadie just couldn’t care. She was still on a high from last night, the most magical and unmatchable night of her life. “Mmmm hmmm.”

“Didn’t you get my messages?” Emily asked.

“No.” She wasn’t even sure where her mobile was. She’d turned it off before her encounter last night and hadn’t turned it back on yet. Part of the bliss was not being interrupted by her real life.

She spied her evening bag on the hall table and went to retrieve her mobile from it, switching it back on as she returned to the sofa where she’d been sitting reading the same page of a novel over and over, unable to absorb it. When she’d realised she was smiling stupidly, she had eventually just given up and sat there reliving each moment from last night. She was happy to do that over and over.

“Can you come meet me?” Emily whined. “I need moral support.”

“Sure,” Sadie said as her mobile began chiming with her missed messages. “Text me the address.” What was one more message amongst the dozens she was now belatedly receiving from her sister?

But when she began scrolling through them, they seemed evenly split between her sister and her conquest from last night, forwarded from the online app that protected her privacy. She opened the first one and all it said was, “Where are you?” It was time stamped just before she had arrived at the bar.

The second one said the same thing and the third had a sense of impatience. Which didn’t make sense because going by the time stamps, she’d already escorted him up to the room by that stage.

The fourth message cleared up the confusion. He’d sent a picture of himself in a skin-tight black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, frowning, along with the words, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

Except it wasn’t him. It wasn’t the man she’d spent the night with. There was more than a passing resemblance but the shoulders weren’t as broad, the face wasn’t clean shaven, the clothes weren’t quite the same quality. This was the man she was supposed to pick up.

So who the hell was the man she had sexed up? And why hadn’t he protested? Well, she knew why he hadn’t protested. She had delivered to him – hand wrapped and with no reciprocation expected – the sexual fantasy of every man on the planet who had a pulse.

She tried to regret her mistake but she just couldn’t. “Oops.”

*****

“Mr Smith, your party is waiting for you,” the maître d’ told Fletcher and led the way to a table on the balcony of the restaurant his mother had chosen that overlooked the bay.

“Fletcher, darling,” she said when she saw him. He kissed her cheek and shook his father’s and his brother’s hands, then sat down. “Order something. We’ve already ordered. We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”

“Sorry, I’m having a weird morning. Just coffee,” he said to the waiter, adding for his mother’s sake, “I’ve already eaten.”

“You look… strange,” Mitchell commented and regarded him intently.

“I feel it, too.” His parents looked over at him curiously but he didn’t elaborate. He couldn’t. To Mitchell he said, “I’ll tell you about it later.”

The coffee arrived quickly and gave Fletcher a prop to hold up to his mouth and conceal his lack of equilibrium. But the coffee itself didn’t help his jitters.

“Ms Van Der Zee, is this table suitable?” The maître d’ was seating another party two tables away.

“Yes, it’s perfect,” Ms Van Der Zee replied in a voice that was slightly crazed. Fletcher could empathise – although his voice would never sound like that, it was how he was feeling inside. “Thank you, Ivan.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am. Your green tea will be here shortly. And for mademoiselle?”

“Orange juice. Is it freshly squeezed?” a voice he would never forget asked.

“Of course.” As Fletcher looked over, Ivan executed a little bow and moved away to reveal “Jane” sitting at a table with a woman who was her blonde double.

“Oh my God.” He couldn’t help the words coming out.

“What is it?” His mother was suddenly concerned.

“Um, just someone I wasn’t expecting to see.” Hoping but certainly not expecting. “Would you mind if I went over to say hello?”

“Not at all, dear.”

He stood, feeling awkward, feeling like a teenager again and he hadn’t been a teenager for nearly twenty years. He could hear the two women talking as he approached and it was clear that there was a wedding taking place very shortly. The awful suspicion that he had been a soon-to-be married woman’s last fling suddenly implanted itself in his mind.

She was focused on her companion and didn’t notice him until he was standing right next to her chair with his hands shoved into his pockets. All he could think to say was, “Hello again.”

*****

Sadie looked up at the man casting a shadow over her and when she realised who it was the only thing she could say was, “Oh my God.”

“My thoughts precisely,” he echoed.

“What are you doing here?”

“Brunch with my parents. You?”

“Morning tea with my sister.”

“Hi,” her sister said, holding out her hand. “I’m Emily Van Der Zee.”

“Fletcher Smith,” he returned smoothly and Sadie looked away to hide her face. He’d broken the first rule and she had no doubt her sister was about to blow her cover, too.

“How do you know Sadie?” Emily asked. Cover blown.

“How do I know Sadie Van Der Zee?” he asked rhetorically before deciding to be honest while thankfully leaving out the less salubrious details. “We met last night actually.”

“How nice,” Emily replied and Sadie could see she was gearing up for an in-depth inquisition.

“I wanted to return these,” Fletcher said, removing his hand from his pocket and holding it out. When Sadie held up her own hand, he released the buttons from the shirt she had been wearing last night into her palm. She stood up suddenly.

“Emily, would you excuse us for a moment? I need to speak to Mr Smith alone.”

“Of course.” Her sister was curious but didn’t say anything else as she watched them.

“Back in a moment.” She took Fletcher’s arm by the elbow and began dragging him towards the maître d’s desk. She quickly realised the whole restaurant was open to the view of everyone in it and she didn’t think much about it before pulling him into the ladies’ room. Thankfully, it was empty.

“Mr Smith—”

When she turned to face him, he backed her up against the cold tile of the bathroom wall and kissed her so thoroughly that when he pulled away, she couldn’t remember what she’d been about to say.

He started talking instead. “Sadie—”

“No.” She held up a finger. “No real names.”

“I think we’re past that, don’t you, Sadie Van Der Zee?”

“Fuck!”

“If you insist…” Fletcher gathered her up in his arms again and insinuated himself between her legs while his mouth worked its way from the side of her neck down to the V of her top. She was demurely covered up this morning but he already knew what was underneath there.

“Oh, no…” Even she knew that the tone of her voice contradicted her words.

“Tell me to stop,” he said against her throat.

“You’re breaking all the rules,” she said despairingly but she didn’t tell him to stop. She didn’t really want him to. And she couldn’t really blame him for breaking the rules since he clearly didn’t know what they were.

“What are the rules?” he asked, lifting the hem of her top and feeling the heave of her breast through its lace cup.

“No real names,” she gasped as he bunched her shirt under her chin and sucked on a nipple through the lace.

“Mmmm hmmm,” he acknowledged but he didn’t release the grip of his teeth and tongue.

“No morning afters,” she continued as his hands went to the button and the zip on her jeans.

“Yeah?”

“No second dates.” His fingers were already snaking their way down into her underwear when he finally raised his head.

“Really?” Sadie nodded almost reluctantly. Those were the rules no matter how much she wanted them to be otherwise right at this very moment. “But we’ve already broken all the rules.”

“Only because you didn’t know what they were. You weren’t the guy I was supposed to be meeting. There was a little mix up.”

“So tell me to stop,” Fletcher said again, moving his hand further inside her pants, so far that she could feel the tip of his longest finger poised to enter her moist tunnel even as his thumb pressed down on the top of the bundle of nerves above it.

She tried to say no. She tried to say stop. She tried to pull away. But it all came down to this: she just didn’t want to.

“Fuck it.” She gave in and met his mouth with hers half way even as his fingers continued to work their way inside of her. When her legs started to buckle, he pulled his hand from her pants and pushed her into the cubicle at the end of the row, locking the door behind them. Then he spun her round and yanked her pants down until they were loose around her ankles. Then he pulled something from his pocket and held it out so she could see.

“You forgot this, too.” It was one of the condoms that had spilled out of her bag last night. He ripped the corner off, opened his own fly, rolled the latex onto his cock, which she could already feel pushing against her back, and entered her from behind.

*****

This wasn’t what Fletcher had been planning. He thought maybe he’d ask for an explanation. Or to see her again. But sex had been the last thing on his mind. Okay, maybe not the last thing. But certainly not the first. Except when she’d dragged him into the restrooms, his mind wasn’t controlling his actions, his body was. And her reaction was all the encouragement he needed. There was only so much self-control he could maintain when Sadie didn’t want him to control himself.

“Sadie. Sadie. Sadie.” He said her name each time he thrust inside her and worked his hands underneath the wire of her bra, forcing it up over her breasts and circling his thumbs over her nipples. Meanwhile, she was reaching behind to clutch at his bare thighs, digging her nails into him as she struggled to keep quiet.

Neither of them could help it. They both came quickly. Whether it was the heat of the moment or the thought of getting caught, he didn’t know. Maybe it was just that he couldn’t get enough of her and she couldn’t get enough of him. He leaned against her for a long time, breathing into her hair and just as he was catching his breath, the main door to the restroom opened.

“Your ring is just beautiful, dear.” It was his mother.

“Thank you. David picked it out himself.” And that was Emily. “I’m not sure where Sadie and Fletcher have gotten to but they did look like they had something quite important to discuss.”

Sadie looked over her shoulder and up at him and struggled not to laugh or move or do anything to give away their presence. Fletcher leaned down to kiss her and felt himself getting hard again. He was still inside her and she felt it, too, but she didn’t encourage him. It was one thing to be turned on by the thought of getting caught but it was another thing entirely for your sister and your sexual partner’s mother to find you in flagrante in the bathroom of a posh restaurant.

“Well, I just wanted to touch up my lippie so I’ll leave you to it. It was so lovely to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Emily said and then Sadie and Fletcher were forced to listen to her peeing, then washing her hands, then rifling through her handbag for various types of make-up before she finally left.

When the sound of the main door closing echoed on the tiles, they finally broke apart and adjusted their clothing. He could see Sadie had already moved past her desire and was serious once more.

“When can I see you again?” Fletcher asked.

“You can’t.”

“Sadie—”

“Stop.” It’s what he was asking her to tell him earlier and she finally invoked his own words to shut him down. “I have to go.”

She opened the latch on the door and burst out and, at the same moment, another woman entered the bathroom, meaning Fletcher had to lock the door and stay where he was until it was clear again unless he wanted to be arrested. And he really didn’t.

When he finally made it out, Emily was sitting alone at the table two over from his family and Sadie appeared to be long gone.

Sex with a Stranger: Chapter One

Rule #1: No real names

Sadie Van Der Zee stood outside the bar, inhaling the cold air and steeling herself. She felt this every time. The excitement that verged on anxiety. The butterflies that started in her stomach, then fluttered lower and lower. The sense that she shouldn’t go in and the knowledge that she would anyway. She took a final deep breath, patted the dark brown curls that were normally dead straight and stepped in through the street-facing entrance.

Inside it was dark and crowded. The only lights were on the walls at intervals that meant they didn’t illuminate much. The effect was a muted feeling; long shadows fell from the patrons who were standing and over those who were sitting. It made it hard to distinguish features – one dark-haired man looked a lot like the next. But Sadie found the dark-haired man she was looking for on her first scan.

He was standing at the far end nearest the other entryway to the bar, the one that led into the reception of the adjoining hotel. He looked a little different from his photograph – broader shoulders, clean shaven, better dressed – which surprised her a little. Usually, the reality couldn’t live up to the promise. Even Sadie looked better in her online profile than she did in real life. She felt those butterflies again as she thought about peeling his shirt from his shoulders and seeing if they matched what she was imagining.

She straightened her own shoulders, which made her breasts really stand out, and then walked across the room. Several men turned their heads to look at her and she tried to convince herself that they were trying to catch her eye but even she knew her cleavage was her most impressive feature, meaning their gazes never went higher than her neck.

So it was strange when the man she was here to meet seemed to be the only man not looking at her chest. He was aware of her approaching before she got there but he held her eyes the whole way, not looking down even when she finally came to a stop in front of him. Either he was a gentleman –and she’d never met a gentleman the whole time she’d been doing this – or he was presenting her with a challenge. She liked a challenge.

“Hi.” Sadie smiled as she greeted him and stood just a little too close.

“Hi.” He looked at her in a friendly but uncertain way while he clutched a bottle of what she thought was beer but realised belatedly was cider. When she took it out of his hand and raised it to her mouth, he asked, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Isn’t the whole point of this that you don’t have to?” She swallowed a mouthful, wiped a trace of lipstick from the rim with her thumb and handed the bottle back to him.

“You tell me,” he said, crinkling his forehead.

“Ah, a newbie.” It made sense. The first time she’d done this, she’d had no idea what she was doing, which was part of the attraction. “Well, don’t worry, John. I’ll be gentle.”

Sadie took the bottle again and put it on the bar, trailing her fingers over his open palm until his hand curled up to close over hers. It was cold from holding the drink and she imagined it on the small of her back against her naked skin, making her arch towards him even now.

“John?” he said in confusion as she pulled him away from the bar and towards the hotel foyer. He didn’t resist.

“It’s okay. I know it’s not your real name. Nobody uses real names.”

“Good to know.”

Sadie’s impossibly high heels loudly marked their progression across the marble floor towards the bank of elevators and she kept his hand in hers when they arrived. Behind the reception desk, the clerk who had checked her in ten minutes earlier watched them discreetly, then turned away.

“I’ve met a lot of Johns,” she continued, trying to reassure him, but then heard the way the words sounded and laughed. “That sounds bad.”

“Kind of.” The doors of the closest elevator opened, revealing mirrors on all sides, and Sadie pulled him inside and then against her as the doors closed behind them. His body was warm and he smelled good – not like aftershave but a natural clean scent.

“But kind of good, too, right?” She reached behind him to push the button for the fifth floor, then slowly inched her skirt up until it was resting right at the top of her thighs.

“Kind of too good to be true,” he said, finally looking down at her breasts and then even further to where their hips were touching. Despite his obvious admiration, Sadie felt like maybe he was having second thoughts. After all, this kind of hook up wasn’t for everyone. It was the kind of thing that everyone thought they wanted but the reality was often more confronting than the initial idea.

“We can stop if you want.” She pulled back a fraction and looked up into his face. She didn’t want to stop. He was by far the most attractive man she’d ever met, both through the app and more traditional dating methods, and all she really wanted to do was get to the luxury hotel room she’d booked, rip off his clothes, let him rip off hers and spend a long, hot night in his arms.

“Fuck it,” he said and leaned down to kiss her.

*****

Fletcher Smith had no idea what was happening. Men went their whole lives imagining moments like this and never being lucky enough for it to happen to them. But here was a woman – a beautiful, confident, amazing woman – who didn’t care what his name was, what his bank balance was, what car he drove, who just wanted to take him up to a hotel room and have sex.

He’d noticed her as soon as she walked into the bar. She was the kind of woman that every man would notice, especially dressed the way she was in a low-cut shirt, sheer enough to see the balconette bra through it, black pencil skirt to the knee with the split up one side that emphasised her long, long legs and heels so high they were almost the same height while she was wearing them. She was also the kind of woman who seemed to Fletcher in short supply – brunette, real hair rather than extensions, wearing minimal eye make-up and satisfied with just her own eyelashes, her own breasts, as well as short but manicured nails and smooth but pale skin. There wasn’t even a hint of fake tan, either the patchy orange colour or the awful stench. Instead, she smelled like roses. Red ones.

Here he was kissing her, hard, in a mirrored elevator that surrounded them with infinite copies of themselves like a synchronised kissing competition. And he didn’t even know her name. But if he was John, he guessed that made her Jane.

Her lips tasted like strawberries and the cider she’d taken a sip of, although that could have been him as much as her. He wanted to taste all of her, her neck, the hollow below her throat, her shoulder, the valley between her breasts, her stomach, the back of her knees to see if she was an all over strawberry sensation.

Fletcher reached down to grip the back of her bare thighs and they parted, her arms going around his shoulders, her knees hooking around his hips and her ankles linking behind his back. His hands slipped further up her legs to keep her in place and he realised she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

He was hard in an instant and he knew she could feel it. She threw her head back to give herself more leverage, then pushed her pubic bone into him. It was almost too much and he had to grasp her hips and break the contact between them.

She dropped back down to the floor and looked at him mischievously, knowing exactly what she was doing to him.

“We need to slow it down a little or I’m going to do something in an elevator that I’ve never done before,” he told her.

“Would that be so bad?”

“Since I’m still wearing my pants and I didn’t bring a change of clothes, yes.”

“Well, then let’s get you out of them.”

Fletcher was about to respond but the elevator doors opened and when he turned around, a grey-haired couple old enough to be his grandparents were standing there looking at him. He dropped his hands in front of his groin, then smiled and said, “Good evening.”

His husky voice betrayed his embarrassment. Behind him, he felt “Jane” shimmying as she returned her skirt to its intended length while trying to remain unseen until it was. But the mirrors showed everything. And yet she didn’t really seem to care. In fact, if anything, she seemed even more turned on, tucking the fingertips of one hand into the waistband of his pants and letting him lead her out of the way.

The older couple stood aside while he and “Jane” vacated the lift and he could feel them watching disapprovingly as she led him down the corridor, inserted a card into the electronic lock of Room 514 and pulled him inside.

*****

It was one of the nicer hotel rooms Sadie had been in but she didn’t have much time to take it in because the moment the door closed behind them, he pushed her up against a wall. It was cool against her chest and her cheek, a complete contrast to the heat emanating from between her legs.

His mouth was wet against the side of her neck, sucking hard as he wrenched her skirt back up to where it had been before at the top of her thighs, and the sensations rippled down through her shoulders, her breasts, her stomach, into her core and she nearly came at the thought of that mouth following down the length of her body. When his fingers slipped around and down through the strip of coarse hair to stroke the throbbing nub of her clitoris with silky sureness, there was no nearly about it.

She clamped her hand over his to prevent him moving further, moving inside her just yet but she could feel the waves of her orgasm on both sides, through the barrier of his hand and up her own fingertips as well as in the walls of her hollowness.

“I thought we were slowing this down,” Sadie managed to say as her hips bucked against his hand.

“I figured you couldn’t ruin your pants if you weren’t actually wearing any.” His hand was still trying to move lower, closer, inside of her. The only thing being ruined was the possibility of this ever being as good again with any other man. Nobody had ever made her come this quickly, this intensely, this sweetly and painfully at the same time.

“I also thought this was your first time,” she reminded him breathlessly.

“My first time like this. Not my first time with a woman.” He didn’t need to say it. It was perfectly clear from his actions.

Sadie turned within the prison of his arms and his hand against her intimate front became his hand cupping the roundness of her backside. She had thought by facing him, by breaking the contact between his fingers and her secret space, that he would pull back a little but his fingertips settled in the crease between her ass and the top of her thigh and almost as close to her tingling flesh as they had been before.

“Now it’s your turn. What do you like?” She reached up to clasp his face between her hands and look into his eyes. In her experience, if a man had to keep eye contact while answering this question, he wouldn’t ask for anything she wasn’t prepared to do. She was prepared to do plenty but even she had her limits. She wouldn’t do violence and she wouldn’t do anything that was normally confined to a toilet.

“I like you,” he said, trying to lean down to kiss her but she held his face back.

“You don’t need to romance me. It’s like the offer to buy me a drink. The whole point of this is to skip all of that.”

“Maybe I like romance,” he pointed out.

There was a first time for everything, she supposed. But she didn’t really believe him. “You’re not going to tell me?”

He didn’t say anything.

“I guess I’ll just have to surprise you.”

*****

Everything this woman did surprised Fletcher. She took control, leading him to the bed and making him sit on the end. She left the soft lights on. She didn’t seem to worry about the curve of her belly as she leaned over him or the sprinkling of freckles on her arms that other women would see as imperfections. She didn’t seem to care what he thought either.

“Jane” leaned over in front of him, placing a hand on each of his thighs and her generous cleavage right in his face, pushing his legs apart until there was enough room for her to sink to her knees between them. She didn’t look down, just kept staring into his eyes, as she began to unbuckle his belt and slide it out from the loops. His erection, which had subsided a little earlier, began to bulge again. Each brush of her wrists as she worked the leather free from its confines swelled him further and he had no doubt that her fleeting touches were not accidental.

She lifted his right hand and kissed his palm, her tongue swirling over the centre and then down his love line before she wiped her lips hard against his skin. The last of her lipstick left a red smear but her lips were still a dark pink from the pressure. Then she began teasing the buttons of his shirt open with her teeth, first the smaller ones at each wrist and then the larger ones down the front, until she could push aside the fabric to reveal his chest, his defined pectoral muscles, his blush-coloured nipples, the abdominal wall that still had a little softness to it. He sucked his stomach in almost unconsciously until she said, “Don’t do that. You’re perfect.”

And she trailed hot, wet kisses across his waistline to prove she meant it at the same time as she pulled the shirt from his shoulders and let it pool behind him. His shoes, socks and pants disappeared more quickly as though she couldn’t stand the slow pace, the “romance”, any longer.

“Rip open my shirt,” she commanded him, standing up again.

“No,” he responded, “I like this shirt.” Instead, he loosened it from where it was tucked into her skirt and ran his hands up inside it.

“Rip it,” she ordered again, clutching the collar as if she would do it if he didn’t.

“What if I want to see you wearing it again?” he asked.

“Jane” took a step back and tugged viciously at the fabric, sending little velvet buttons flying across the room. She dropped the ruined shirt on the ground behind her, then pushed him down onto the bed and straddled his lap, holding his arms above his head. “I guess you’re going to be disappointed.”

“I highly doubt that,” he returned and he kissed her again. His arms imprisoned over his head became her arms pinned in place over her head as he flipped her over onto the bed.

“This is unbearable,” she complained, moving beneath him, her skirt riding higher and higher, her thighs gripping him. Fletcher flipped her over again, starting at her neck and working his way down with his hands and his mouth until her bra was unclasped, her back was wet with his kisses and her skirt was on the floor with her shirt. When he got to her shoes, she said, “No. Leave them on.” And he was more than happy to obey.

She turned over underneath him and he saw her breasts free from their encasement for the first time. They were full and firm and his hands couldn’t cup them completely. They overflowed his palms and his fingers, her pale flesh peeking through his brown fingers as he kneaded and squeezed, which only made them fuller.

“Jane” pulled him down against her, her nipples hard against his chest, and she kissed him for the first time, initiated it for the first time, her tongue sweet and warm in his mouth. Then she raised a knee up the length of his legs and used the heel of one stiletto to hook into his underwear and drag it down, removing the last barrier between them.

*****

Sadie felt the pressure of his cock at the apex of her legs immediately and almost forgot the most basic rule in the haze of her desire but she managed to fumble for the evening bag she had left on the side table and pull a condom from within it. Several others spilled out and onto the floor but she didn’t care how it looked. She ripped the package open and reached down without having to look to roll it over the head before grabbing his butt and lifting her hips.

He pushed inside her, deeper and deeper, right into the core of her being and she gasped as he filled her completely. He went still but he didn’t pull out even an inch as he said roguishly, “We can stop if you want.”

“Don’t you dare!” she moaned and began to move her hips before he took over and set an ever building rhythm.

“Kiss me,” he demanded and she obeyed, her lips on his, his tongue on hers. Her breath became his and then he returned it to her and she was dizzy from lack of oxygen. “Harder,” he said.

“Ditto,” she replied and their bodies crashed against each other like waves until they were floating at the highest point on the same current and then together sank down beneath the water. This was pleasure in its purest form and as his weight collapsed on top of her and drove the air from her lungs, the explosions between Sadie’s legs kept going for longer than she thought she could stand it. And just when she thought she might pass out, the intensity transformed into a long, slow warmth she would remember for the rest of her life.

He rolled off her and then rolled her back on top of him, settling her on his chest and his chin on the top of her head. “Perfect.”

“Mmmm,” Sadie agreed. Words were beyond her at the moment. Sounds from the back of her throat were the only thing she could manage right now.

After a while, their breathing slowed into a matching pattern and then his slowed even further, which she knew meant he was on the verge of falling asleep. Normally, had he been anyone else, she would have shaken him awake and started all over again. Those condoms in her purse weren’t just for show. But for the first time in her life, she was satisfied after the first time. Gloriously, happily satisfied. He was right. It had been perfect.

It wasn’t like Sadie to sneak out but the very fact that it had been perfect meant she knew the only thing left was to screw it up. When she was sure he was asleep, she slowly slipped down the length of his beautiful body. It wasn’t a body sculpted in the gym like many of the men she met this way. Instead, he looked like someone who spent weekdays in an office and weekends renovating a house to make up for it.

She peeled the used condom from his generous appendage, still partially swollen, and went to the bathroom to dispose of it. But instead of dressing and leaving, she ran a washer under the warm tap and spent several minutes wiping his skin clean and taking her time to explore him while he was completely vulnerable.

When she realised she wanted to stay and watch him sleep, warning bells started going off in her head. Remember the rules, she lectured herself. Still, after pulling on her skirt and bra, then slipping her feet into her heels and her arms into her shirt before tying it in front underneath her breasts, she leaned over, cupped a cheek with her hand and kissed his lips.

Another first, she realised as she collected her bag and looked back at his sleeping form. The first time she’d ever felt regret that she would never see her latest lover again.

Practice Novels: Not Just for the Start of a Writer’s Career

In my late teens and early twenties, I wrote three novels that I like to refer to as my practice novels. At the time that I was writing them, I didn’t realise that I was just practising. It was only after they were complete that I knew they weren’t good enough, they weren’t the genre I wanted to pursue and they were unlikely to ever see the light of day.

I published the sex scene from the last of them, Liberty’s Secret, in 2015 in conjunction with a blog post on writing sex scenes, mostly to demonstrate that I’m not very good at writing sex scenes. It was full of euphemisms, the highs and lows of waves and crashing, and an overblown sense of emotion. Certainly, it was completely devoid of accurate names for genitalia. (That’s one of the big no-no’s of the romance genre I was attempting to write in.) And I published the entire book chapter by chapter on this blog earlier in 2017, just because… well, why not? I hate wasting writing.

I thought that was the end of my practice novels. But when I sat down to watch the movie of Fifty Shades of Grey, despite its flaws, I realised these genres and sex scenes more generally aren’t going anywhere. They are popular. And if done well, they can be important components of plot and character development. So I could continue avoiding them in my writing or I could try to get better.

Yes, more than twenty-five years after beginning my writing career and after publishing three books, I decided to write another practice novel. I had no intention of attempting to publish it for profit, just to improve on this writing area.

There were a few conditions I set for myself:

*It had to be about sex. (Duh, obviously if I’m practising at getting better writing sex scenes, that was a given.)

*It had to have a sex scene in every chapter. (Go hard or go home, right? No pun intended. But there’s no point writing a practice novel to get better at sex scenes if there are only one or two in the entire book.)

*It had to have a plot. A good plot. (If it doesn’t have a good plot, then that’s not sex, it’s just porn. I don’t want to write and I have no interest in being good at writing porn. I’m sure a few people make an okay living writing porn but I don’t want to be one of them.)

*It didn’t have to be kinky sex. (One step at a time. I just wanted to write about regular people with healthy sex lives. There would be no stepsister-stepbrother relationships, no ménages a trois, no S&M, no dominants, no submissives, no tampon scenes, none of the various scenarios I found – and was slightly traumatised by – when I did a little research about what authors in this genre write.)

*It had to have a hook. (Whilst I didn’t want to write about all those sex scenarios that seem so popular these days, it still needed to be more than just a basic sexual relationship.)

So I started writing. It sounds funny to admit it now but the thing I spent the most time on was naming the two main characters. Fletcher Smith and Sadie Van Der Zee. (Yes, a man and a woman. I’m straight and I thought it would be easier on me not to have to try to imagine sex I have no experience with. I encourage everyone to write outside their comfort zones but I still think there is merit in a natural progression from the things you know towards the things you don’t. Like I said, one step at a time.) Fletcher sounded like the name of a middle class man with muscles who worked in an office during the week and on the construction site of the house he was renovating on the weekends. And I made his last name Smith because of the connotations of couples checking into hotels for some hot sex using the “Mr & Mrs Smith” monikers.

Sadie also sounded middle class but Van Der Zee upped her exotic quotient. It also means “by the sea” and I liked the idea of her using “Lady by the Sea” as her cover name when arranging her anonymous hook-ups. Yes, that was the hook. She liked anonymous sex. And Fletcher just happened to be the lucky soul she mistook for her latest conquest.

I wrote over 11,000 words and despite the fact that I love Fletcher and Sadie as characters, in the end I got sick of writing about sex. I think I improved my abilities to write sex scenes but I also realised that part of the reason I hadn’t pursued these kind of plot points in most of my other writing is that I don’t especially enjoy it. At first it was fun and exciting but eventually it was just tedious. I want variety in my writing, for my sake as much as for the sake of my readers.

Still, I’m pleased I had a go. Now if I need or want to add a sex scene to what I am writing, I won’t be so intimidated by the prospect of it. It won’t necessarily be the best sex scene ever written but maybe I’ll be able to do enough to avoid a nomination for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award bestowed by the British Literary Review.

If you feel like you need to practise something or you just want to have a go at something you haven’t written much of in the past, here are a few tips:

*You don’t have to be a beginning writer to reap the benefits of practising. It should be the goal of every writer to continue getting better, not just stagnating, and this is one way of potentially making it happen.

*You don’t have to just practise very specific or obscure things like sex scenes. It’s probably a good idea for all writers to practise the big three: plot development, character development and developing writing styles, too. Sure, you can practise on your actual novel or a related side project (think Four by Veronica Roth – originally released as prequel short stories to the Divergent trilogy) but sometimes it helps to practise on something entirely unrelated.

*You don’t have to write an entire novel. Aim for a short story instead to help maintain your sanity, avoid boredom and not get completely distracted from your real writing.

*If your practice writing turns out really well, don’t be afraid to pursue it even if it isn’t your normal genre or your normal style. It could be the beginning of a brave new writing world for you.

*****

Look out for the first two chapters of Sex with a Stranger on my blog next week. I actually wrote three-and-a-bit chapters but I feel like the first two were the strongest, probably because they happened before I started to get bored. I guess it’s up to you to decide whether I achieved what I set out to do. Perhaps a comparison with the sex scene from Liberty’s Secret might help. But be kind: I’m still practising.

Book Review: The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly

You have to give Michael Connelly credit – I don’t think he’s ever written a bad book. And for someone who’s written so many, that’s a genuinely impressive record. But the problem with many of his most recent efforts is that they’re like comfy old slippers – they’re reliable and familiar but there’s nothing surprising or challenging about them and sometimes what you really want is to slip into a beautiful pair of stilettoes just to experience something different.

The Wrong Side of Goodbye is more like two smaller novels than one big one. Connelly himself acknowledges this, referring to it in draft form as “an unwieldy block of a manuscript”. Despite the help of his editors, it still feels a lot like that. I kept wondering how the stories were eventually going to intersect but they never did. And when I read the acknowledgements at the end with the reference to the unwieldy manuscript, I realised it was something Connelly himself had struggled with while writing the book.

The first plotline involves Bosch being engaged by Whitney Vance, a dying and elderly billionaire, to track down any heirs he might have but not know about. Bosch is sworn to secrecy, given a cover story and sent on his way with a fat cheque and a cast of curious billionaire employees who are left wondering what his mission is.

The second story involves Bosch working as a reserve officer for the San Fernando Police Department. He doesn’t get paid but he gets a badge, access and the ability to work as much as he wants as long as he meets his minimum hours. He spends most of his time on cold cases and in particular the Screen Cutter rapist. Along with the full-time paid detective Bella Lourdes, he goes about his business rubbing people the wrong way as he always his. But he gets results.

It’s the search for the Vance heir that is the most interesting – in fact it could have been a great book without the Screen Cutter rapist plot and with a board of greedy executives hoping no heir exists, there’s plenty of possibilities of “whodunit” when Vance dies suspiciously – but it’s constantly interrupted as Bosch goes off to do his reserve policing. It’s why the book has a choppy feel instead of a smooth narrative.

Mickey Haller makes another cameo appearance and Bosch’s relationship with him is unusual. You get the feeling that if they weren’t half-brothers they wouldn’t be able to stand each other’s company. They are both uniquely standoffish and prone to exploring the less ethical side of law enforcement. I guess it must be genetic.

I gave the last two Michael Connelly books I reviewed 3 stars and this is another 3-star effort. I’d really like him to up his game on his next book. He doesn’t have to – he could comfortably write 3-star books for the rest of his career and very few people would complain. But it would be great to be excited by his stories once more instead of just placated. I want to be as thrilled as I was when the Bosch TV series started. It was familiar, yes, but it was fantastic, too. It should be the goal of any writer well into a lengthy series.

Still Connelly is always at the top of my to-read list and I suspect he will be for a long time yet.

3 stars

*First published on Goodreads 6 July 2017

How to Psych Yourself into Writing a Book

After I wrote close to one hundred blog posts in 2015 about developing ideas, characters and plots, writing, editing, publishing, marketing and reading, I realised I had written enough to fill a book. And when I collated them all together, I realised it flowed nicely enough to seem like I’d done it on purpose. I’d written a book without even trying to write a book. That’s how Project December: A Book About Writing was born.

After I published Project December, I continued writing blog posts in the same vein but, of course, this time I knew I was heading towards writing a sequel. Why wouldn’t I? It had been so easy last time. I even wrote a blog post called, “How to write a book without even trying.”

The problem was that because I knew I was heading towards another book, it wasn’t going to be the same process. I wasn’t going to be able to write a book without even trying. Because I was trying to write a book.

I set a deadline for myself but as it approached, I knew for various reasons that I was never going to make it. Life, work and other pieces of writing were getting in the way.

Instead of giving up, I told myself that the deadline wasn’t important. I was the only person who knew it and I was the only person who would know it was going to pass by unmet. The important thing was that I eventually finished writing the book, regardless of whenever that time came.

So I just kept writing. I wrote when I had something to say. I wrote when I felt like it. I wrote when I had nothing else scheduled. And before I knew it, in less than two months, the first draft was finished. It only took one month more for the text to be finalised. How, I asked myself, did that happen? How, when I was so sure it would never happen in that time frame?

As I wrote in the introduction to Project January: A Sequel About Writing, the follow up to Project December, I’d psyched myself into writing a book. Normally, we psych ourselves out of doing things but by simply removing the deadline that had been putting so much pressure on me and making me doubt myself, I removed the psychological barrier that was holding me back. And although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, there was still a little voice in the back of my mind urging me on. My conscious said it couldn’t be done so my subconscious was determined to prove me wrong. (It’s complex being me but that’s another story.)

I think that you have to be a very specific type of person to be able to psych yourself into writing a book. The kind who won’t take no for an answer. The kind who doesn’t like to be wrong. The kind who does everything they can to make sure they’re more often than not right. The kind who still wants to have a go even when what they’re trying seems impossible. The kind who won’t listen to reason, even when the person they’re reasoning with is themselves.

After all, if you tell yourself it can’t be done (whatever “it” is) and a logical assessment of the facts supports that argument so you stop trying to do it, then that’s more like psyching yourself out of it. You have to be the kind of person who will respond to a little reverse psychology.

Step 1

Develop your idea and set a reasonable deadline. Six months is reasonable for a full-time writer and a year is reasonable for someone with other commitments. Then start writing.

Step 2

Tell yourself you’re not good enough. It might – at that moment – be true. The only way to fix it is to practise. So you might as well practise on your book. And the best way to practise is to just keep writing.

Step 3

Tell yourself you’ll never make your deadline. After a few months, you will probably genuinely feel this way. But keep writing anyway. Missing a deadline is not the end of the world. Giving up because you think you might miss your deadline will, however, probably be the end of your very short writing career.

Step 4

Tell yourself you don’t have enough writing time – it’s probably true because it’s the one thing that all writers never have enough of. But squeeze in a half hour of writing here and a half hour a writing there anyway. Even if you only write for a half an hour every day, even if you only write 250 words a session, that’s 1,750 words a week and 91,000 words a year, equivalent to a whole book.

Step 5

Just keep writing. (You might be noticing a theme…)

Yes, it turns out that it’s not that complicated. You just have to keep writing. Even when you doubt yourself. Even when you doubt your choices. Even when it feels like life is conspiring to prevent you from ever finishing. The secret formula to psyching yourself into writing a book is really just to write. A little bit of reverse psychology might help you but, in the end, it’s all about the hard work of actually sitting down and making the effort.

Unfortunately (or maybe it’s fortunate – it all depends on your perspective), writing is one of those things that there aren’t any shortcuts to achieving. Supposedly, someone somewhere is working on a software program so that robots can write all our content in the future (I saw this being crowdfunded on Indiegogo, although it didn’t seem to be doing too well for some reason) but we’re not anywhere close yet. And since none of those monkeys from the infinite monkey theory have yet given us the complete works of Shakespeare, let alone a decent novel, it will remain the domain of hardworking humans. Best of luck.

Mistaken Identity: When Something You’ve Written Shares Its Title with an Infinitely More Famous Work

Hard to believe but this is my 400th post! Where did all that effort come from? A little bit here and a little bit there. Thanks for reading!

*****

In 2004, I wrote a category romance novel (Harlequin, Mills & Boon, whatever you call them in your region) called Liberty’s Secret. It was the story of a woman named Liberty Freeman who had successfully reinvigorated a serious magazine from low circulation to being the talk of the industry. Now she was asked by the publisher to do the same thing for a publishing company he had just bought with the help of a financial whiz named Quinn O’Connell. Cue pounding hearts, stolen kisses and Liberty’s insistence that she wasn’t interested despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. And her secret was the reason why.

Liberty’s Secret was the last romance book I wrote. By the time I finished writing it, I knew I didn’t want to continue writing romance or be known as a romance writer. So I shelved it. I put it aside, choosing not to publish it, and I have barely thought about it since.

When I started writing Single White Female Writer, I was constantly trying to figure out ways to repurpose all of the many, many things I have written. So when I wrote a blog post about writing sex scenes for fiction and admitted that this wasn’t a strength of mine, I also posted the sex scene I had written for Liberty’s Secret to prove it was true.

Since I posted it, the sex scene from Liberty’s Secret has averaged one view per month. Like I said, it’s not great. And because it’s just that one scene, completely out of context from the rest of the missing novel, that makes sense to me. Also, because it was an example of something I didn’t think I did that well, I didn’t mind that much.

So imagine my surprise when WordPress notified me of the following: “Your stats are booming! Single White Female Writer is getting lots of traffic.” And when I checked to find out why, it was all because of the sex scene from Liberty’s Secret. In one month, my average views from that post had increased significantly. And in just one week, the average views had increased 4,100%!

What the heck was going on?

I knew there had to be more to it than the sudden popularity of a sex scene I had posted two years ago and had written over a decade previously. And, of course, there was. In 2016, a film also called Liberty’s Secret had been released. It’s the story of Liberty Smith, an all-American daughter of a family values preacher who is selected as the running mate of a conservative in an attempt to save his floundering presidential campaign. But when she falls in love with a woman, all hell breaks loose on cable news. (I haven’t actually seen the film; I got all of that from imdb.com. Apparently, it’s a girl-meets-girl musical in the vein of La La Land and it was partly funded by an IndieGoGo campaign.)

Since I haven’t seen it, I can only guess that there’s some kind of sex scene in it because there seems to be an awful lot of people Googling “sex scene in Liberty’s Secret”. The only problem is that when you put that in your search engine, the top result is my completely unrelated blog post. And from what I understand about search engine results, the more people who click on my blog post – even though it’s not what they were looking for – the longer my blog post will remain the top result when that phrase is searched.

A similar thing happened to my debut novel, Enemies Closer. I chose the title in 2005 when I first started writing the book (it was almost the very first thing I came up with) and when I published it in 2012, I didn’t find anything else with the same name. But in 2013, the Jean-Claude Van Damme film called Enemies Closer was released. And in 2015, Ava Parker released her second book, also called Enemies Closer. Of course, the Van Damme film comes up first in search results on Amazon for works called Enemies Closer. My book comes up second and Ava’s comes up third.

So why am I telling you all this? Mostly as a lead in to advice about considering carefully what you decide to call your book or film or any other piece of fiction in case someone else has already used the same title. In my case, I chose the titles Liberty’s Secret and Enemies Closer well before they were used again by the films and in the case of Liberty’s Secret, the filmmakers chose to use it at least a couple of years before anyone knew it was the title of an old novel I had written. When I published the initial post, I didn’t even bother trying to find out if someone else was using it as well because I was using it for educational purposes, not commercial ones. Even when I decided to post my old romance novel in full on my blog, I didn’t think it was worthwhile spending a lot of time coming up with a different title. After all, I was pretty sure I’d come up with it first and besides, I was really only posting it to fill a gap in my blog schedule.

But if you’re planning to publish a novel and you haven’t researched the possibility that there are already creative works out there with the same title, then you could really be doing yourself a disservice. While titles can’t be copyrighted and you are legally able to call your book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone if you want to, you’re probably going to struggle to compete against JK Rowling’s well-established novel and you’re probably going to confuse a huge number of people.

When I was preparing to release Project December: A Book About Writing, I did my due diligence to discover if there was already anything with the same title. There was. One was identical and the other was close enough that I needed to consider it. The identically titled creative work was an album by Endy Chow. I didn’t and still don’t have a clue who Endy Chow is but I figured the fact that his Project December was music and my Project December was writing was enough of a difference not to worry too much about it.

The other work was a book called The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Confront Life’s Greatest Mystery by Sara Davidson. While the use of the title in Sara’s book had a similar meaning to mine – The December Project is about preparing for the end of your life while, of course, Project December is about preparing for the end of your book – the subject matter of both is completely different. Again I felt that there were enough differences to be able to get away with it. But discovering Sara’s book did inspire me to add the subtitle, A Book About Writing, to clarify exactly what the book was about.

The key with choosing your book’s title, as with so many other things in writing and indeed in life, is to make the choice with a full understanding of what it means. If there’s something out there with the same or a similar title, if you know it and if you’re still determined to continue using it when you release your book, that’s entirely up to you. But doing it fully informed with your eyes open will make your writing life a lot easier than discovering it afterwards when it’s too late to do anything about it.

Why I Sometimes Don’t Want to Tell People I’m a Writer

Imagine this scenario:

“Hi, I’m Rachel.”

“Hi, Rachel. I’m John. What do you do?”

“I’m a receptionist.”

“So you just sit around talking on the phone all day?”

“It’s a bit more involved than that.”

“Where do you work?”

“At a small family company.”

“Oh. That’s a shame. Any chance you might be able to move on to a big corporate?”

“I’m happy where I am.”

“Are you a good receptionist?”

“I haven’t been asked to do it differently so I guess I am.”

“How many calls do you take a day?”

“Um, well, I’m not sure…”

“How much do you earn?”

“That’s not really any of your business.”

“But how will I know for sure if you’re a good receptionist?”

“Call the main switch and I’ll make sure I transfer you to the right person.”

“But that won’t tell me if others think you’re a good receptionist.”

“I like what I do. I don’t really care if others think I’m a good receptionist. And I really don’t care what you think.”

“That’s a pretty poor attitude for a receptionist to have.”

“Stop talking to me.”

Okay, so it seems like John is a special kind of asshat. But imagine now an almost identical conversation with just a couple of small changes:

“Hi, I’m Rachel.”

“Hi, Rachel. I’m John. What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

“So you just sit around surfing the internet all day?”

“Sometimes. It’s called research. But it’s a bit more involved than that.”

“Where are you published?”

“Through a small independent company.”

“Oh. That’s a shame. Any chance you might be able to move on to a big publisher?”

“I’m happy where I am.”

“Are you a good writer?”

“I haven’t been asked to do it differently so I guess I am.”

“How many books have you sold?”

“Um, well, I’m not sure…”

“How much in royalties have you earned?”

“That’s not really any of your business.”

“But how will I know for sure if you’re a good writer?”

“Read one of my books or articles and you can make up your own mind.”

“But that won’t tell me if others think you’re a good writer.”

“I like what I do. I don’t really care if others think I’m a good writer. And I really don’t care what you think.”

“That’s a pretty poor attitude for a writer to have.”

“I’m sorry you think so. If you do end up buying one of my books, I’ll be happy to sign it for you. Nice to meet you, John.”

In the second scenario, John is still an asshat. The difference is that Rachel the receptionist can tell him to take a hike while Rachel the writer has to be nice to her potential reading public no matter how horrible they are. And, of course, Rachel the receptionist would never be questioned about her career choice in this way. Rachel the writer deals with this line of questioning from almost everyone who discovers she’s a writer.

I know I have. And that’s why I sometimes don’t want to tell people I’m a writer. I’ve had a few other jobs (receptionist, admin assistant, editor, bid manager) but I’ve never been asked to justify my career choice more since I decided to become a full-time writer.

“It’s not stable,” people protest. “Neither is acting,” I reply.

“It doesn’t pay well unless you’re at the top,” they point out. “Neither does working at McDonald’s,” I say.

“It’s isolating,” they continue. “Hardly. I have to interact with more people than ever.”

“Eventually, you’ll need to get a real job,” they snark. “Writing is a real job. Content development is a multi-billion dollar industry in Australia alone,” I respond.

“It’s a huge amount of work for little reward,” they say. “Being able to do what you love is the reward!” (I’ve listened to plenty of people talk about how much they hate what they do for a living. Apparently, the fact that I’m passionate about what I do is so much worse.)

I’ve come to realise it’s just easier not to tell everyone what I do. I also justify it by telling myself that the majority of my readers are people I’ve never met in real life, so it’s not like I’m doing myself out of a sale. And anyone who has more than a passing interest can easily Google my name to discover exactly what I’m doing (when you have a blog that gets posted to twice a week or more and multiple books available for sale, it’s pretty obvious).

If anyone wants to talk to me about writing without judging me for choosing it as a career, then that would be great. After all, if there’s anything I love almost as much as writing, it’s helping newcomers to begin their own writing journeys and helping emerging or established writers to get better. (What self-respecting writer who is also a trained editor would feel any other way?)

For everyone else, you can just keep your opinions to yourself. All I know is this: on my death bed, I’m not going to resent a single second of my writing career. Are you going to be able to say the same about the jobs you did just to pay the bills? I highly doubt it.