Beware the Ides of March Madness

Being a writer is  hard, right? We all know this. It's not the writing that's difficult - at least not for me. It's all the other shit that goes into it like publishing, marketing, getting repeat readers, all that good stuff.

I'm not good at it. It requires me to be social which ugh.

But I am good at the making of content portion. I just wish y'all could find it on your own. Since you won't...

1. Let's talk about erotica. 

    Do you know how hard it is to market that shit? Everyone reads it but nobody wants to cop to reading it. So they won't join your mailing lists or want to be advertised to. 

It's a pain in the ass I tell you. 

So I took down my erotica books (aside from the collection) and transferred the stories to Ream. You can read them there, at your leisure, just as long as you subscribe. I promise never to send you any mail or look at your names...unless you tell me you want updates.

I'm currently writing a very unhinged mafia paranormal postapocalyptic gay romance there. It's fun. I update weekly. That's in addition to all my other erotica tales which are now on there. Bonus, I will be adding a new every month. Personally I think the subscription fee is a steal. 

Go see for yourself. 

I think this will be a good home for them. 

2. New Podcast Episode

As you can see from the links on the side of this blog, there's a new podcast episode about suicide. You should listen to it if only to see whether you relate or not. I think you will. I surprised myself by doing so. It gets rather philosophical in places so I hope you bear with us. 

3. New Harlequin

I told you about the romance that I'm writing didn't I? The man is Palestinian and I'm a bit worried that Harlequin will reject it on that premise alone. I know we all like to pretend that Palestinians are the villains. We'll see how it goes.

It's nice to be writing something new again. Marcus Devereux has kind of stalled as I try to get over my intimidation of my own writing. 

That girl who wrote the first ten chapters was on a roll. 

She was cooking. 

She ate down.
I don't know if I can match her level of badassery. You're supposed to look back on your writing and cringe (at least according to so-called writers on twitter) but me I look back on my writing and I'm like whoa girl! slow down.

Self belief has never been my problem.

Anyway I got work to do. I have provided you with news, so click on link, click follow, enjoy the content.

Of Pen Names and Erotica

 I'm trying to get in the erotica space and giving myself a new name to see if I sell more books if my name sounds less black.

It's an experiment. 

So I have two books out, under the pen name, Monica Lerato. So far they're not doing better than books under my name. It's only been two months though and advertising books in the erotica space is different. You can't just tell your friends and they probably won't tell you if they read them.

Also the publishing industry is ran by puritans and they don't even want to display your book in their sites if it's erotica. I'm still learning my way about. I'll see how it goes. 

Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I won't tell you to read the books but I'll just leave the widgets here and turn my face away.

Enjoy.

Evolving In Your Craft

"You're just another brick and I'm a sledgehammer"
- Rihanna
It's the way she says it. There is some contempt there, tiredness, warning, matter of factness...It tells me a story; or causes me to superimpose my own story on the words. And in my mind, she's telling some guy (okay +Chris Brown ) who thinks he's the shit that he's actually not. He's just a brick and she's the sledgehammer.
SMASH! BURN!
GirlPower!Rihanna rocks.

Believe it or not, that extract actually does have something to do with evolving in your craft. Rihanna's just happens to be singing rather than writing. The point is, her way of singing has evolved to the point where you can pick up nuances without having them spelt out for you.
As a writer, I'm a great admirer of writers who can do that. I'm not sure I'm one of them yet. I do hope that there is visible evolution in my writing. I can see it in my fanfic on the Winchesters. The way I wrote it when I started out is definitely not how I write now. I'm not sure if it's because of greater understanding about how the Winchesters work or just me getting better. And for the record, writing about characters developed by someone else or even real person fan fiction is a whole different kettle of fish than writing original characters. It's a good way to get one's feet wet though. My first ever story I wrote for public consumption was a real person fanfic featuring +Rihanna and Chris Brown. It was immensely popular on tumblr I must say; even people who didn't like me personally stopped by to read it. And by not like me personally I mean they used to talk about me on other tumblr pages about how they REALLY don't like me but they just visit my page to read my fanfic. It gave me confidence. Let me know that my writing abilities weren't all just in my head.
Maybe.

sidebar; I'm at this hotel near my house and they're straight up playing +Dolly Parton...Like, I don't even know.

The most challenging thing to write, in fan fic or fiction is the 'sex scene'. People take for granted that since everyone (or close enough) does it, then it must be the simplest thing to write.
Right?
Wrong.
Most people write sex scenes where:
1. The foreplay is like interminable. IRL nobody has that kind of time. You're afraid one of your kids will wake up any minute, or you have to get up and go to work or +Empire is coming on any minute now. Ain't nobody got time to 'tease her nipple for hours'. And really, hands up if you want your nipple teased for hours. No seriously. hands up.
2. There is all this explanation of whose limbs go where in a very mechanical way that loses me about three limbs in; I can't keep all that in my head at the same time. In fact a lot of people write very mechanical sex; he inserted his member into her hot leaking mount of venus and thrust hurriedly/leisurely/forcefully/desperately in and out until his vision whited out...if I had a nickel.
Thank you. Very much, for reminding us how sex works.
My sister's friend and I were chatting at my nephew's birthday party and she told me that she doesn't read novels anymore because she's unable to can with all the descriptive passages. An example of one would be the one I read last night where 'Jared' had been asked by 'Sandy' to take her to town and he didn't want to because it was a busy time on the ranch and he had a lot of work. See how I summarised that in one sentence? It was in three. bloody. paragraphs. I call them the 'who cares' sections of the story. Talking to my sister's friend caused me to have an epiphany.
Imagine you don't have to read through that crap.
Just go straight to the next pertinent part of the story.
I do that a lot even if I never realised it before it was verbalised by someone else. Especially with the so-called saucy parts. In my head, as I skim I'm thinking 'sex sex sex sex, uh huh, more sex, the end'.
Diana Gabaldon writes a mean sex scene though. I read through every word. There was this one thing Jamie did to Claire called 'girdling' where he was literally seducing her ass. It was epic. I wrote a whole piece about it on +EzineArticles. It's still one of my most popular articles. I'm grateful that at least one thing the Outlander Series gets right is the sex scenes. Because they've taken my Jamie and made him into this foolish typical male that he absolutely isn't. I had to stop watching. End of rant. Plus they made Claire bitchy. No really, end of rant.

Another writer who has absolutely impressed me, is compo67 on Archive on Our Own. This one sex scene she wrote was written as if they were composing music. I died with admiration, jealousy and envy.
In my own writing, the sex scene I'm really so proud of that I wrote it twice was the dub con at the beginning of Child of Destiny. That was some crazy shit that just wrote itself. My editor said it was too much. I said fuck you very much, it stays as is. It was raw, sometimes painful; but it was honest. And that's what I was going for.
Anyway, I need to get back to my day job. I had another breakthrough on the loo this morning and I'm yet to implement it in the story. Get Child of Destiny here and let me know if I should have listened to my editor.

Porn with Plot

For this month's East African Friday Feature, I have been challenged every Friday, to write 1,000 words of a supernatural story. It can be an ongoing story, or bits and snippets but four times for the four Fridays of October. Now in honour of the release of my baby CHILD OF DESTINY on my birthday October 9th (So Y'all know what I want for a present...buy! buy! buy!) I'm going to do an outtake story that can be read on its own. As a nod to East Africa, I'm going to give the story of the ghost slaves in the wood - how they came to be there, and their hopes and dreams for the future. As a nod to my late father, my protagonist is named Bulitia. He's the slave ghost everyone from BDAH to The Swamp to COD keeps meeting and talking to.

“What did the jitu want with you Bulitia?” the woman whispered to him as they lay facing each other on the bed. He shrugged, not wanting to even think of the mama and her cold hands penetrating his anus like…he cut that thought off fast. Turning to the woman next to him he turned her so her back was on the bed and vaulted his body over her, looking down at her luscious body as his heart beat fast in his chest. He needed to forget.

my vision of Leo/Armand when I started to write

He leaned down and placed his teeth on her left nipple, biting down, hard. The woman hissed with pain and hit him over the head but he ignored her, using one of his strong thighs to make a space between her legs. She got with the program pretty fast after that, widening her legs on her own and allowing himself to lower himself onto her. he grunted, transferring his mouth’s attention to her lips; and bit her lower one before sucking it into his mouth. She moaned softly, arching upward gently, urging him. He took it for the invitation it was and reached between them, fisting his penis in his hands and guiding it none too gently to her waiting, dripping hole.

She’d snuck into his cabin one night as they slept; five to a cabin – surprisingly luxurious accommodations for slaves. She had stepped over the other men and came to lie next to him, pressing her naked body into his. His heart was still in the hills of Mt. Elgon, with his new wife and their offspring; but his body had needs in the here and now. He had turned to her, pushed her under him, and pounded her into the floor. She’d been back every night since.

It made him angry that they were reduced to this; late night trysts that would never mean anything more than physical relief. At least not to him; he was not getting involved with anyone who would be taken from him on the whim of some not quite human master who had somehow managed to reduce a bunch of people into commodities. It was hard for Bulitia to wrap his head around and he was angry all the time.

He slid into her warm, soft, wet hole and it expanded around him, welcoming him with open arms as he thrust into her. and again. And again. The woman reached up and folded her strong thighs around his waist, pulling him as close as she could. Bulitia let out a breath, hips stuttering with desire as he tried not to come so soon. Her moans were getting louder as she came closer to her own climax. The other men around them lay still; pretending to be asleep. Bulitia caught movement at the corner of his eyes. A hand moving rhythmically up and down as Abednego, his roommate brought himself to his own completion on his right. Bulitia cast his eyes to the left where he could see the shine of eyes in the dark. Someone else was watching them; most likely Jefta. He was a short man, teeth stained brown from tobacco and a freaky little bastard.

Bulitia redoubled his efforts, pounding harder into the woman, giving them a show. He found to his surprise that it turned him on to know that the men were watching him fuck this woman. He withdrew himself from her to the head of his penis and then thrust back in with renewed force. She cried out in shock and arousal, pulling her own legs further toward her shoulders to give him better access. He did it again, grunting with effort and heard someone in the room groan. His mouth was set in a rictus of effort and he let go of the fear and anger; drove them into the woman with every thrust and then released it all in a flood of seemingly endless come. She took it all, begging all the while for more, her muscles clutching and releasing him as her own orgasm took her. he dropped down beside her, turned away and closed his eyes. She could stay if she wanted; just as long as she was gone by morning. There was no guarantee though, that one of the other men would not try to rape her if she did. Bulitia heard the woman gather her clothes and creep out. He closed his eyes and slept.

“Did you enjoy yourself last night Bulitia?”, the monster disguised as a woman asked him the next day as he raked out the stable. He was in nothing but his small clothes. Louisiana was sweltering with summer humidity; Bulitia could barely abide the weather. He was used to the mountain coolness of his home; still. He ruthlessly cut off that thought. To think of home was to stab himself in the soul.

“Beg pardon ma’am?” he asked submissively hoping she would think him slow and leave him to his raking.

She took a step toward him and ran a hand down his sweaty back.

“Your session with Asha last night; was it good?” she asked. Bulitia froze, but only for a moment. He would not show his fear for any reason. But she was watching them? Of course a creature like her probably had many ways of finding things out. But how had she found this? Did she perhaps watch them in her fire or perhaps she was right there in the cabin with them, invisible to human eyes.

But no…Bulitia would have known if she was there. He was sensitive like that to the supernatural. Just as he had felt her coming long before she appeared around the cow pen.

“Are you a man or a mouse?”

His father’s voice reprimanding him in his head shocked him so much he almost stopped working. And then he decided that he would stop; he would stop being so afraid; such a craven that he could not turn and face his fears. He stuck the shovel back in the cow patty and turned to face the monster.

“What do you want with me?” he asked.

New Release: Child of Destiny

My book goes live tomorrow; happy birthday to me.

This is a typical love story. Boy meets Girl. Boy’s girlfriend falls in magic pool, almost drowns and has to be saved by spell done by Girl. Only catch is, Girl has to have experienced passion to perform spell so naturally Boy obliges. And they live happily ever after…or do they? A couple of snags are hit along the way including the fact that Boy’s girlfriend is a borderline sociopath who happens to have all the money Boy could want. Girl on the other hand, does not; furthermore she lives on the fringes of society and practises magic. In other words, she’s weird. Boy is not weird; he is popular and handsome and the star basketball player of the school. Under ‘Most Unlikely Couple on the Planet’ in the yearbook, is a picture of these two – Leo and Mya. Yet; where did the pool come from? How strange that a piece of magic involving this unlikely pairing had to be performed. Is everything as it seems or is there more bubbling under the surface than previously imagined? At the end of the day, the question on everyone’s mind is…’does magic really exist?’ Even more pressing is the question of the potency of that most mysterious and most powerful of all magic…Love.