Cameron D. James's Blog, page 38

Heart-Wrenching Moments

There’s one TV show that consistently makes me cry.  Me, a grown man in his 30s bawling his eyes out over a TV show.

You might be surprised to learn what that TV show is.  Any guesses?

Futurama.

Yup, that dorky and often-ridiculous animated show by the guy that made The Simpsons.  Futurama consistently brings tears to my eyes — sometimes just enough to make me misty-eyed, and other times with tears rolling down my cheeks.

Futurama has, in my opinion, the perfect balance of ridiculous and deep.  Two thirds of the episodes, roughly, are just plain and simple fun, often verging on the ridiculous.  About a third of the episodes, though, are absolutely stunning character development pieces.  I think it’s because of this disparity between the two episode styles that it brings tears to my eyes.  No other show has made me cry this much.  The next show that makes me cry, and only a few times at that, is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  And, again, it’s for the same reason — most of the series is Star Trek stuff and then there’s the occasional character piece that grabs your heart, rips it up, and stomps on it.

By having most of Futurama as fun fluff, it gives the viewer time to get to know and love and enjoy the characters… and then when a character development episode comes, we suddenly see this character we’ve come to know and love reveal his or her softer side, his or her weaknesses, his or her failings and successes.

The biggest tear-jerker episode for me is “Jurassic Bark.”  The main character, Fry, who’s been frozen and woken up 1000 years in the future, eventually finds the fossil of his dog from 1000 years earlier.  We get a mix of humour and heartbreak as we learn of the bond that formed between Fry and Seymour, and as we move through the episode, we are saddened knowing that this deep and loving bond has to come to an eventual end.  That, in itself, makes for a touching episode.  Fry is saddened, but also heartened knowing that Seymour lived for years after Fry got frozen, knowing that he lived a full and joyful life.  But the last minute or so, oh my God, I’m tearing up thinking about it.  Seymour, unable to find Fry, waits for the rest of his life in the very spot where he first met Fry.  The very last second of the episode is Seymour closing his eyes forever, having waited the rest of his life for Fry.  That’s where I lose it.

Yesterday I watched the “Game of Tones” episode.  I’m working my way through the final season, so this is a more recent episode.  It seems to be loosely based off Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in that there is a ship approaching Earth, transmitting a signal no one can interpret, and destroying every planet in its path.  Fry knows the musical sound of the signal, but can’t quite place it.  They discern he heard it sometime during his very last day in 1999, before getting frozen, so they enter his memories and explore that day.  It’s a fun and somewhat ridiculous episode.  We enter it thinking it’s a typical Futurama episode.  Then we start to see some character work forming… in his memories, Fry can interact with a memory of his mother and for the whole episode he says he needs to say something to her, but doesn’t get the chance.  And, besides, whatever he says to her, he’s saying to a memory of her, in his mind, so he’s essentially saying it to himself, so there’s the acknowledgement that there’s no point to it.  But after solving the crisis, Fry is rewarded by being allowed to enter his mother’s dream… to interact with her, through time, through her dream.  This is the big character moment — what is Fry going to say to his mother?  He was unexpectedly cut off from her, cast 1000 years in the future, to never see or hear from her again.  What will he say?  *spoiler alert, again*  There are no words.  There is nothing to say.  All he wants to do is hug his mom.  The last two seconds of the episode show Fry’s mom waking up with a smile on her face, looking at a photo of Fry.

And that’s when the tears welled up and fell.  The episode premise was a little ludicrous, but the resolution was one of the most moving scenes of the entire series.

You know what show never made me cry?

Touched by an Angel.

Everyone was bawling on that show.  So many people say it makes them cry.  To me, it did nothing.  Know why?  There were new characters in every episode and so we don’t have enough time to fully know them and invest ourselves in them.  Besides, you watch that show knowing you’re going to get some tearful sob-story.  With Futurama, you’re expecting comedy, so when you get a tearful episode, it’s unexpected, it catches you off-guard, and it is far more meaningful than anything Touched by an Angel did.  As well, Touched by an Angel is essentially “forced sadness” — they’re intentionally trying to get you to cry — whereas in Futurama, they’re just exploring character, the tears are a side-effect, not a goal.

Now, I’m a writer, and this is a blog about writing.  So, what does this have to do with writing?

Like everything I interact with, there are lessons I pick up.  The lesson in this one is to pick your moments for the emotional content.  To overdo it is, well, overdoing it.  To do it before you invest in the characters is, well, too early.  To intentionally go into thinking, “Okay, I want the reader to cry here,” will come off as forced and like “Touched by an Angel.”  You need to get the reader to love the character and to go along for the ride and, when the moment is right, you go for the tear-jerker scene.

My goal as a writer is to get the reader to have an emotional reaction.  I’ve succeeded before with certain readers, and my goal is to do that more often to more readers.  I’ve got a real emotional and deep scene in my upcoming book, Silent Hearts, and I hope it gets readers sobbing.  (And while I want the reader to sob there, my intention in writing it wasn’t to make people cry, rather it was to explore the characters I’d created — there is a slight, but important, difference there.)  It’s about halfway through and it’s one of those set-ups where you think you know everything about the characters (and the characters think they have it all figured out), but then it all falls apart.  There’s only one real emotional scene with that heart-wrenching quality — to put in another of that depth would be too much.

Emotional scenes are very difficult to write.  I’ve never come across one (in a book) that was effective for me — I’ve never cried while reading.  I have been stunned beyond belief once or twice, though.  So, out of the thousands of books I’ve read, there are only two or three that have ever elicited any deep emotional reaction.  That’s how hard it is.  The success rate is far far far below 1%.  It takes work and practice, but it is possible.  For me, though, I’m taking my lessons from Futurama — they’re doing it right, so how do I translate that reaction from something visual to something written?  That’s the challenge, and that’s the adventure.

Silent Hearts: Excerpt

Silent Hearts comes out in just two weeks!

To celebrate, here’s an excerpt!

 

“You’re cute when you’re happy.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Thanks, I guess.” He pulled his hands out of the dough and went to wash them.

“What’s this?”

“Hmm?” Jake looked back. Grant picked something up off the floor.

“This fell out of your back pocket.” Grant read from a small piece of paper, “The Brawny Scot.”

Jake’s heart thudded and ice coursed through his veins. He’d gone there as an eff-you to Grant, but hadn’t actually wanted him to know about it. And, truthfully, as the hours passed, he’d grown regretful over going.

“Is that where you were today?” Grant’s voice was low and quiet. There was an intensity in his eyes that Jake had seen only once before—during the previous night and their argument over kisses. Obviously, he knew what The Brawny Scot was.

“So what if I was?” Jake dried his hands with a towel and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms in front of him. He might regret his choices, but he wasn’t going to apologize for them.

“You went to a fucking sauna?”

Jake took a deep breath, deciding which way to go with this. When the heat of anger warmed his cheeks, he had his answer. “Yes, I went. I sucked five dicks and got totally covered in cum.” His words were quick and crisp, though muted so as to not wake anyone.

Grant shook his head. “Do you have no self-respect? No self-love?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“This!” Grant threw the card down on the counter, the oiled-up torso emblazoned across it shone in the kitchen’s light. “Sex with no intimacy, blowjobs with no kissing, sucking anonymous dicks in the dark—it shows you don’t respect yourself, that you just want to be used by some random man as a tool to get off. And this…this random sauna thing is fucking dangerous! Do you know how many diseases run rampant through there?”

Jake breathed in and out, trying to calm the anger threatening to erupt. His face felt warm; he knew his cheeks were beet red. “Not all of us want boyfriends. Some of us just want sex. Hookups are fun, and if you think that only self-haters do them and they’re always destructive, then you’re living in some sort of dream world. Welcome to reality, Grant, people fuck strangers all the time.”

Grant squeezed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Jake could tell a lot of the man’s anger had deflated. “That’s not exactly what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying, exactly?”

“Kissing adds passion and energy to sex—even anonymous sex. Your refusal to kiss me the other night would have made the blowjob mechanical. If I want mechanical, I’ll use my fist. The motions are only half of sex—kissing and intimacy, however fleeting, are the other half.”

“You need to grow up and separate sex from love. No one at the sauna wants a kiss, they just want to get off.”

“Well, maybe that’s the sauna culture. I have hookups now and then, but I always kiss—it makes a connection special, even if it’s just for a moment and I don’t know the guy’s name.”

Jake glared at him. As much as he wanted to remain mad at him, he felt his anger shrinking. “Why can’t you accept that I just don’t want to kiss?”

“Because in your case, Jake, I sense that it’s something deeper. It’s not just about not wanting to kiss.”

Jake blinked, bewildered. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Have you ever kissed a man?”

“Of course I have.” A chasm opened up inside of him, an emptiness and yearning.

Grant squinted at him. “I mean really kissed a man…deep, hard, hungry.”

The Job of a Writer

This post also appears today on The Writers Vineyard.

The job of a writer is to write.  It’s in that process of writing that the writer discovers love and joy — love in telling stories and joy in grabbing readers.  I am humbled when a reader tells me that they became emotional while reading my works.  I’ve had reviewers tell me they were close to tears while reading certain scenes in Autumn Fire.

Next month, Silent Hearts, my new book, comes out.  In addition to the regular hot content (as it’s m/m erotic romance), there is also a very strong and very prominent emotional storyline.  I’m nervous as the release day approaches.  I took a bit of a risk in writing the things I wrote.  Will it come off as cheesy?  Or will tears spill like they did with the last release?  Writing the emotional content is easily my most favourite task in writing.  With an earlier draft of a sci-fi novel I wrote years ago, one of my beta readers told me she screamed “NO!” at the death of a character.  If I can get a reaction like that, I’ve done my job right.

The job of a writer is not to be a self-promotion machine.  I do believe some level of self-promotion is necessary.  After all, writers should be excited about their books and should be thrilled to share them with their readers.  I manage a blog and a Twitter account where I interact with readers, and I have Tumblr and Pinterest accounts to share *cough* hot pictures of men.  But I don’t flog my product constantly.  I celebrate my releases.  After all, they are personal success milestones, but they are also something I want to share with the world, stories that I hope will bring those emotional reactions to readers.  But I don’t tweet every five minutes that you should buy my book, I don’t Facebook that three times a day, I don’t go on continual blog tours (though I do them occasionally), I don’t do interview after interview, and I don’t make continual sales pitches through all the various media that I can.  To do that would mean I’m not a writer.  To do that would mean that I’m a PR machine.

So, where am I going with this?  This blog post is loosely based on this very readable and very worthwhile blog post by gay erotic romance writer, Heidi Cullinan.  In her very long and very eloquent post, she discusses how constant promo is the death of writing for her.  This is something that has been on my mind for quite some time and reading Cullinan’s post finally hammered it home for me.  I’ve felt for quite some time that I’m being pulled in too many directions and I need to streamline things a bit.

Part of that was finishing school.  Now that my masters is done (and there’s no way I’m doing a PhD anytime soon).  I suddenly have all this time back, and I feel like I need more.  And so now I’m looking at some of my promo involvements and the extent of my platform and looking to see if there’s anything I want to trim, to take back some time that I can then invest in writing.  Part of this process is measuring the effectiveness of my platform and making adjustments like ending the things that get me no return and trying new strategies.

I feel incredibly relaxed right now.  I have tons of time for writing.  I’m working on a ton of different projects and am able to give ample time to all of them.  My writing life is much more enjoyable right now.  I’m no longer pressured to do twenty hours of things in the five free hours I have.  Now I have about five hours of stuff to do in my twenty hours of free time.  Normally I have about twenty minutes to write this post.  This month, I’ve been at this for about an hour and I’m listening to a great new acoustic covers album I bought off iTunes.  I find the music affecting me as I write.  This musician does covers of other people’s music and puts an indie/acoustic edge on it.  He does what he loves, I have no doubt.  I’ve never heard of him before, so he can’t do all that much promo.  He could make more money if he’d put all of his energy into it, wrote original songs, went on tours, appeared on TV every night… but he doesn’t.  He wants to put a really mellow spin on well-loved music.  He wants to relax and enjoy the music-creation process.  (Oops! The album just ended, I think I’ll buy another of his right now!)

(If I may divert for a moment.  This musician, Boyce Avenue, came to my attention because a friend posted a music video on Facebook.  I listened to it, loved it, and bought the album.  I loved the album and went on iTunes to search for more.  What did I find?  An impressive backlist of albums.  I bought another one and am listening to it now and am sure I’ll be buying more of his backlist soon.  What was Boyce Avenue’s role in any of this?  All the group did was create a music video — everything else was out of their hands.  This is how promoting writing works — you create your product and you do some promo, but the majority of sales will NOT be due to your direct promo efforts.  They will be from random sales or by word-of-mouth.  Word-of-mouth is the strongest seller of any product.)

Writing should be the same.  Writers should be able to relax and enjoy the creative process without all of the extraneous expectations.  The job of a writer is to write, not to endlessly promote.  Success as a writer comes not from promo, but from an impressive backlist.  When a reader finds you and loves you, s/he will work their way through your backlist and share his/her love of your books with his/her friends.  How many times have you bought a book because of author-driven promotion versus how many times you’ve bought a book because a friend said “You have to read this!”?  I thought so.  The largest section of sales is outside the hands of the writer, yet it is something writers constantly stress about.  The love of writing is tainted by this compulsion to be a constant salesman for your books.  For a writer, joy and love of life comes through crafting stories, not through constant promo.  The life of a writer should be enjoyable.

When you’re a writer, especially when you’re a newly-published writer, it can be hard to understand that.  You are the product creator, you shouldn’t be the marketing team, store, and customer service department all in one.  Should you have a little of all of those?  Yes.  If you do a little of them, it shows you believe in your books, that you are excited about them, and that you want people to experience your world.  Should you do all of that all the time?  No.  If you do, when will you write?  When will you have the time or energy to write?  Where is the joy and love of what you do?

Sexy Saturday: Jophrael L Avario

Welcome to another edition of Sexy Saturday!  Today’s sexy guest is fellow Carnal Passions author Jophrael L Avario!

Let’s jump right in with the author bio:

Born in Sydney in 1990, Jophrael Avario discovered a love of reading at a tender age, teethed on the like of Steven King, Victoria Cromwell and Patricia Cornwell. Jophrael started writing erotica at 17, and has 3 books published by Carnal Passions (Blood Lovers, Dust to Dust and Cleaning Up).

And now for the five sexy quickie questions!

1)   What was your first experience with erotica / erotic romance?

Lots and lots of Harry Potter fanfic from the time I was 13. Didn’t take me long to find the saucier stories.

2)   Describe your journey from reading to writing to publication.

Long, hard, and filled with a lot of drafts for my librarian and deputy principal to read. I was first published at 19, so almost all of my books passes through my school teachers’ hands at one time or another.

3)   What scene or book was the biggest challenge to write?

Every book is a struggle, more so as I get older and real life begins to interfere. But the hardest scenes are definitely the end ones – I never know when to end the story and when to keep going.

4)   Do you have any tips or advice for aspiring writers of erotica / erotic romance?

Make sure you get lots of practice so you can make what you’re writing seem real (take that whatever way you want).

5)   Tell us a bit about your latest release.

It’s not my latest release (that’s a M/F time-travel romance), but Blood Lovers is my best-selling book.

A boy is lost in the world, ostracised for his sexuality. He’s saved from a suicide attempt but a suave, sexy man who whisks him away to his mansion. But the outside world tries to tear them apart, and they fight back – with sexy results.

Ooo!  In my opinion, “sexy results” are always the best results!

If you’d like to find out more about Jophrael and her books, check out her blog here.

And thanks for stopping by Jophrael — it was great to have you here!  :D

Book Review: Star Trek: The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms

Star Trek: The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms

Dayton Ward

Following the resolution of the fertility crisis that nearly caused their extinction, the Andorian people now stand ready to rejoin the United Federation of Planets. The return of one of its founding member worlds is viewed by many as the first hopeful step beyond the uncertainty and tragedy that have overshadowed recent events in the Alpha Quadrant. But as the Federation looks to the future and the special election to name President Bacco’s permanent successor, time is running out to apprehend those responsible for the respected leader’s brutal assassination. Even as elements of the Typhon Pact are implicated for the murder, Admiral William Riker holds key knowledge of the true assassins— a revelation that could threaten the fragile Federation-Cardassian alliance.

Questions and concerns also continue to swell around Bacco’s interim successor, Ishan Anjar, who uses the recent bloodshed to further a belligerent, hawkish political agenda against the Typhon Pact. With the election looming, Riker dispatches his closest friend, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, in a desperate attempt to uncover the truth. But as Picard and the Enterprise crew pursue the few remaining clues, Riker must act on growing suspicions that someone within Ishan’s inner circle has been in league with the assassins from the very beginning . . . .

This is the final entry in the five-book The Fall miniseries.  It was a mostly satisfying conclusion.  I think I use the word “mostly” because I am not a huge fan of Dayton Ward’s writing style.  There is no denying his knowledge and love of Star Trek, but his writing just doesn’t quite catch me.  All that being said, this is easily the strongest book I’ve read by Dayton Ward.  And, he also ended the miniseries very nicely.  I have to admit that when I first saw that he was ending the series, I had low expectations.  I’m thrilled to be proven dead wrong.

The various threads of The Fall have been a bit disparate.  President Bacco was assassinated, the pro tem president seems to be a war monger, and Dr. Bashir not only solved the Andorian fertility crisis, but he ended up in solitary confinement for it (and resigned from Starfleet in the process).  The Fall is one of those special book series that does NOT bring the end back to the beginning — there are some seemingly lasting repercussions here.  Bacco was always a book-only character, so although her loss is gravely felt, it was “okay” to off her.  Dr. Bashir, on the other hand, is a TV character and I was a little surprised to see that he faced such disastrous consequences.  (And I like being surprised by books.)  I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised, in retrospect, since previous Star Trek books have shown that the book team is okay with some carefully planned major changes, such as the destruction of the Deep Space Nine station (which was later replaced with a very different station).

Ward did a solid job of not only tying all of these threads together into a riveting whole, but he also brought in some gripping plot elements of his own.  Throughout The Fall, readers have grown to detest pro tem President Ishan Anjar — and Ward brings Ishan’s past and story to light.  Initially, we learn that Ishan is not who he claims to be.  That piqued my interest.  I certainly hadn’t expected anything like that.  Ward does a great job of keeping up that suspense until the secret is revealed.  It was also a very well-thought-out secret that tied in to the deep mythology of the Star Trek universe.  In other words, the secret added to the overall story.

This book, by necessity, jumps all over the place.  In tying together the many threads and in concluding a series that has involved the Enterprise crew, the Titan crew, and Deep Space Nine, Ward drew in all of these aspects in one way or another and brought a satisfying resolution to the series.

What’s Coming Up!

As you might’ve noticed, I’ve been a bit absent from the blog lately.  Like all part-time writers, non-writing-life had to take over for a bit.

I might have mentioned along the way that I am a university student, working on completing my masters.  I think I handed in my final draft of my final paper yesterday.  *fingers crossed*  I have no fear of failing because I’m confident going into this.  It’s more of a worry that my prof will ask for more revisions to my paper — I’m so out of school mode that the last set of revisions, which should have taken about three hours, stretched out to four torturous days.

Anyway, enough about school!

Here’s what’s coming up in the coming months on this blog and in the writing world of Cameron D. James!

 

Book Reviews

This year has started with my reading slowing to a snail’s pace.  This is partly because I’m mired in two thick books — Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, which I’ve been reading for months and months and am now about a third through, and A Dance With Dragons by George RR Martin, which I’m also about a third through, though the reading of this is going faster.  I’m also a little over halfway through White Fire by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child — it’s damn good, one of their best.  After I finish White Fire, I’ll probably whip through a bunch of shorter gay romance books — it’ll help up my reading count and diminish my to-read pile.  It would probably also be a good idea to read/review some gay romance books since, you know, I write that stuff, too.  (I’m also about to review a Star Trek book I read recently, if I have time to do it before I head out to work.  If not, it’ll be done tonight!)

 

Silent Hearts

Part of my long blog silence was due to my edits of my second novel, Silent Hearts.  (My last few months were taken up with edits to Silent Hearts, then writing my paper, then edits to Silent Hearts, and then edits on my paper.  Yeesh.)  It had been quite some time since I’d read through the book and with the editing process, I fell in love with the story and the characters all over again.  I’m really excited about this one.  Silent Hearts comes out in March.  Click here to view the cover and blurb.

 

Go Deeper

My hot yoga / hot sex story, Go Deep, that I released last year was intended to be a one-off stand-alone short story.  But I just couldn’t stop thinking about the characters (and the sex).  Yogi twink Simon and hot older daddy-type yoga teacher Brad return in Go Deeper, which should come out in March or April, depending on how fast the editing process goes.  (The editor for this is ruthless, but it means I get a super hot story in the end.)

 

Audiobooks

After some research, consideration, and discussion with fellow authors, I’m going to give audiobooks a try.  I own the audio rights to my short stories (but not my novels), so I will work my way through those.  First up will be Go Deep, then likely Go Deeper, and then Gaymer.  I’ve got a friend with a sexy voice who has volunteered to be my narrator — work on that project begins this coming weekend.

 

Future Stories

I’ve got lots of plans for future short stories and a couple novels.  I think for the foreseeable future, I might focus a bit more on short stories.  For those, I’ve got a sequel to Go Deeper (and the Go Deep / Go Deeper / Untitled Sequel series is now titled “Men in the Hot Room”), and I’ll kick off a new short story series called “The Go-Go Boys of Club 21,” which will be feature dancers in a gay club and the sexy shenanigans they get into.

 

Sexy Saturday

My Sexy Saturday weekly interview series returns this Saturday, February 15!  I’ve got mega gaps in the calendar, so it might be a bit spotty for the next while, but I’ve got a second guest scheduled for the end of March.  (If you’re an author of m/m romance or m/m erotica and you’d like to be a guest, comment below or send an email to camerondjames (at) hotmail (dot) com — and I’m looking for authors of any publishing stream — big house, small house, micro house, self-published… it’s all good to me.)  Click here to check out previous Sexy Saturday posts.

 

Keep an eye on this blog for all the latest news!

Cover Reveal: Silent Hearts

 

No matter how far Jake runs, he can’t escape from love.

Jake gives anonymous blowjobs during his midnight shift at the hostel in the tiny Scottish village of Kyleakin.  When Grant, a stud from Edinburgh, comes to stay for a week, Jake can’t get the sexy Scot out of his mind.  It doesn’t take long for Grant to realize Jake is hiding, running from something, and when he confronts Jake about it, their tentative friendship explodes and living at the hostel becomes tense.  Not long after, Jake’s tenuous relationship with his parents crumbles, leaving him with no family and no home.

Through the worst of times, no matter how poorly Jake treats him, Grant always shows up to comfort him.  Old anxieties stir with every shared hug, every fleeting kiss, every sensual encounter, and no matter how hard Jake tries to escape from his hurts, the past–and the truth–always seem to find him.

Silent Hearts is my second publication with Carnal Passions (Champagne Books) and will be published in ebook format on March 3, 2014.

I freakin’ LOVE this cover!

Sexy Saturday: W.S. Long

 

Welcome back to Sexy Saturday — today’s guest is W.S. Long!

Let’s jump right into this!

Author Bio:

A military brat, who joined the Air Force, I left the military to become a lawyer and because I realized I wasn’t happy. Now, I’m happily married to the man I fell in love with in 1995. My first long novella, “Love and Murder,” is scheduled for publication in February 2014 by JMS Books.

Quickie Questions:

1) What was your first experience with erotica / erotic romance?

After some writer-friends returned from a Romance Writers’ convention, they suggested I consider writing in this genre. I had written a legal/mystery thriller where the main character has relationship issues with his ex-wife, and his boyfriend. Because of the dynamics of those characters, they thought the male/male romance audience would be more suitable for my long novella. That’s when I started reading contemporary writers who publish in the area. However, if you consider the works of Mary Renault or Edith Hamilton, whose writing featured gay or bisexual characters and mythological story lines, you could say I started reading gay romance before I graduated high school.

2) Describe your journey from reading to writing to publication.

I didn’t take a conventional path to publication. I have friends who have reputable agents in New York, and who write great stories, but I didn’t take their path. My path began when my husband wanted to write about his coming-out experience and how his family dealt with his self-realization so he brought me along to the Celebration Writers Group. Once I attended my first meeting, I got the writing bug. I’d written before, for the high school newspaper, and wrote a book review, which was published in the Florida Bar Journal, but I hadn’t seriously considered writing until that moment. Because of the support of my husband, who encouraged me to write, I wrote a legal/mystery thriller for which, after going through the submissions process, JMS Books offered me a contract to publish.  

3) What scene or book was the biggest challenge to write?

I think every scene is a challenge to write. I am a slow writer. I’m constantly editing, tweaking, questioning if some words should be there, asking myself what I should add or take away so the reader understands what the action is, or what the characters are doing and thinking.  I don’t think there’s any scene that’s easier than the rest, or worse than the rest.

4) Do you have any tips or advice for aspiring writers of erotica / erotic romance?

The best advice I can give is to read in that genre. Sign on to Goodreads and see what other writers are saying about books they’re reading.  Also, join a writing group. They may not want to read the graphic parts (that is, the sexual) but have them read the non-sexual parts. You’ll meet interesting people in these groups, and I’ve made friends because of it. I joined Romance Writers of America recently, and some of its articles are very helpful so I would recommend that as another option. Consider following your favorite authors on social media, or on their blogs, and ask them what they do in writing, especially when they are guest-hosting or guest-blogging. Finally, the other suggestion is to go to writer conventions where you are so you can meet those writers. 

5) Tell us a bit about your latest release.

This long novella, “Love and Murder,” is loosely based on my experience as an assistant public defender when I represented an accused in a second-degree murder case. It’s a complete work of fiction.

Obviously parts of my and my husband’s personality seep in, but we are not even close to the characters portrayed. What some of the characters have gone through is broadly-based on my what friends and family have undergone, though.

To give you an idea what this upcoming publication is about:

Lawyer Jake Chandler is struggling. He’s close to losing his dream to build a money- making law firm because he can’t find paying clients. After coming out, and leaving his wife, for his boyfriend, Noah, Jake suspects Noah cheats on him.

Jake hopes that a new murder case will help with his money woes, but Elena, his ex-wife, is the prosecutor, and she wants nothing more than to beat him in trial, on top of fighting about their daughter.

After Jake is shot while speaking to a former lover, people close to Jake die.

When Jake meets a handsome FBI agent, Xavier, who’s investigating the crimes surrounding him, Jake wonders if Xavier is who he says he is.

That sounds super interesting!

And if you’d like to learn more about W.S. Long, you can find him on Twitter and on Tumblr!

Thanks for being my guest, W.S.!

Book Review: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope

Ian Doescher

Inspired by one of the greatest creative minds in the English language-and William Shakespeare-here is an officially licensed retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. ’Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearstome Stormtroopers, signifying…pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter—and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations–William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for.

This book was… interesting.  Yeah, that’s the word I’ll go with.

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars is a retelling of Episode 4 as a Shakespearian play.  It was really hit and miss.

I would rate it rather high based solely on the skill of the writing.  To take a movie and rewrite the whole damn thing in iambic pentameter (and make it readable) takes some serious skill.  However, it was really not much more than a creative novelization of a movie.

I did enjoy reading this and I felt I got a better understanding of Star Wars (as there were some things I just didn’t get from watching it), but at the same time I was irritated by some of the Star Wars / Shakespeare mash-up.  Sprinkled throughout the book are soliloquies that take a famous soliloquy from a Shakespeare play and rewritten with Star Wars stuff.  That’s the kind of thing I remember doing in high school for homework — not Star Wars, but we had to take a soliloquy and rewrite to be about something like, I don’t know, homework.  So, yeah, I didn’t enjoy that part so much.

Not being a true Star Wars fan, though, I am confuddled by this whole argument over who shot first, Han or Greedo.  From my understanding, the original film depicted it one way, and a George Lucas tinkering recently switched who shot first in the cantina.  I was at a Timothy Zahn reading a while back and he read from Scoundrels.  He made some reference in his novel to who shot first, and the whole crowd burst out in laughter.  (I though it was a super lame joke and I had to explain it to my partner since he had no clue what it was about.)  The reason I bring this up is because Doescher is deliberately vague as to who shot first — Han actually tells the audience he’ll never tell who shot first.  It’s become almost like an inside joke in the Star Wars fandom, I think.  I don’t really get it.  (Well, I get it, I just don’t get the humour.)

Anyway, tangent aside, this book was… interesting.

Book Review: Hot in Here

Hot in Here

Lori Foster

Three smoldering classics from New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster

UNCOVERED

Firefighter Harris Black is startled to stumble across nude photos of a woman…and handwritten notes about him. Who is this mystery woman? Harris hires a P.I. to trace her, never suspecting he’s already found her….

TAILSPIN

Lumberyard owner Buck Boswell prides himself on his way with women—but his prickly neighbor, Sadie Harte, seems immune to his charms. Is she really as aloof as she acts, or can Buck convince her to take a chance on the guy next door?

AN HONORABLE MAN 

Lieutenant colonel Hamilton Wulf’s career ambitions cost him the one woman he ever wanted—Liv Avery. Now he’s determined to win back her love…even if it means risking his life.

This was the second of the two books I picked up randomly as an exploration into hetero romance… and it was interesting.  (For reference, the first was Taming a Wild Scot by Rowan Keats.)  Hot in Here consists of three novellas that have been previously published.  Each feature a man comfortable with being single who falls for an innocent/virginal woman.  He has to convince her that his love for her is true and not just the stirrings of a one night stand.

Hot in Here was enjoyable, however, reading the three novellas bound as one volume, the formula becomes quite obvious.  The three stories had very similar male leads, though the female leads were slightly different, with very similar love plots, and identical endings.  This is a book for readers who like to know what they’re going to get; there are no real surprises here once you know Foster’s story structure.

All that being said, Foster is able to write in enough differences to make the three stories different enough that they feel unique on the surface.  I realize that Hot in Here is published by Harlequin, which I believe has tight control over the story lines and formulas they publish — so it may be more of the publishers will rather than Fosters that dictates the formulaic plot of these three novellas.  If that is the case, then it is to Foster’s credit that each novella read as a distinct work.

And, well, despite my criticisms of the formulaic plot, I did enjoy reading Hot in Here.  :)