As a new erotic fiction writer I wanted to start this blog to share ideas outside of my erotic romances. Believe me, I have a lot of interesting and often useless things cluttering up my brain. So, I thought why not share with my friends?
I also wanted to have a forum to share with other new authors, some of the struggles and pitfalls I have found when just starting out. After reading voraciously for 20 some odd years, every kind of romance and erotic fiction I could get my hands on, I thought to myself...I can do this. So I put thoughts into words and came up with my first novel; Captain My Captain.
Thinking it would never get published I sent it out to 5 publishers of erotic fiction on a whim. I received exactly that many rejections. One editor stated "our readers want to have the story unfold, not be told to them." What???? I'm still not really sure what that means but I did a little research on the web. I think she was referring to the use of Point Of View.
Now that I understood what she meant, I did take expository and creative writing in college arterial, I looked back at my novel with this literary tool in mind. There were two main characters a hero and a heroine. I thought,
why wouldn't I want to know what they were both thinking? I am the narrator after all,
why can't I share their thoughts and feelings. There were some other sub-characters that were important to the plot and for future books in the series and if their scene was important I clued the reader in on their thoughts as well but I limited it to these characters. So I assume I had written in 3rd person POV with multiple POVs. However, I didn't give voice to everyone Tom, Dick or Harry in the book like the waiter in the restaurant, the cop on the street or the cat at the door. Please, am I that stupid?
Evidently, some of these editors thought I was. But I was stubborn and refused to re-write the whole 80,000 words in 1st person or 3rd person with only one character POV. I did along the way pick up some other ideas for related articles such as the
http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/mistakes.shtml and
http://www.netplaces.com/writing-a-romance-novel/mastering-and-choosing-the-right-point-of-view/multiple-povs.htm. The editing was the biggest of my problems. I considered self-publishing but there were so many questions surrounding that option. Do I pay a professional proofreader? What if I spend all this money and no one buys the darn book? Do I share with friends the guilty pleasures of my dirty little mind and let them read it for me? It is erotica after all.
Finally, I found a home at Blushing Books Publishing. The editor loved my first attempt and although she told me it needed "heavy editing" and that I should watch out for the overuse of the F-bomb, they warmly embraced me while reminding me it was erotic fiction, not War and Peace. Thanks for keeping me well grounded Victoria.
Anyway, so now that I have a home I continue to learn and hopefully grow as an author with each subsequent book. I also get to let me mind escape into the characters I have created and hope there is an audience for them out there somewhere. Thankfully, there is. In the e-reader era, many women and quite a few men have embraced erotica in the privacy of their kindle or nook. In the e-book world they don't have to worry about someone asking what they are reading or tear off the embarrassing covers in order to read in peace on the train. Once again, there is that guilty pleasure rearing its erotic head.
So, thank you to my new fans for all the positive feedback. Thank you for those wonderful readers at Blushing Books Publishers who embrace this genre and give me reviews and a larger scale than you can find on Amazon. I love these women who are like me, whether they seek an escape into the pages of a steamy romantic story, a titillating spanking tale, or a fringe BDSM romance. Keep on reading!
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