*g* I had earmarked April as being the month that I would put together a submission for Mark Probst’s military YA anthology (deadline for submission = 30th of April.) I thought I had plenty of time to do a plot plan and a 5,000 word sample. What I didn’t remember/realize was that the first two weeks of April was a school holiday, so I would have bored children at home needing to be entertained. And that during the next week my eldest daughter would be at home ill. And that this week my youngest daughter would be at home ill, and I would be feeling grotty myself. This has somewhat bollixed up the timescales, and now I have only two days in which to meet the deadline.

Fortunately I do now have the plot plan finished. And I have 2,389 words of the sample 5,000 done. I’m actually starting to get very fond of it. It has convict transport ships, jail fever, convict rebellion, shipwreck, living on a desert island, being rescued, being accused of sodomy and an eventual happy ending. If only we weren’t all so ill, and the girls would both go back to school and give me a decent amount of time to work on it!

Also, no title. It was going to be ‘Fool for love’ but I abandoned the idea of Garnet pretending to be insane in order to scare off the girls. So that doesn’t fit now. ‘Shipwrecked’? ‘Blessed Isle’? ‘Cabin Fever’? The amazing adventures of Captain Harry Thompson and his paramour Garnet? I hate titles! Maybe ‘Blessed Isle’ for now.

I’m fairly positive that I said that Josh Lanyon (who is the ‘male’ the article refers to – I did give them his name!) was a prominent male writer of m/m romance, not “one of the few males who have found success in the female-dominated field of gay fiction”, but see above about talking nonsense when I’m under pressure to reply to a question with any sort of speed.

My attempts to plug Transgressions and False Colors as books also seem not to have come across but I must say, I’m very relieved he at least didn’t call False Colors ‘a torrid potboiler’!

“Male Lovers, Female Readers” in Columbus’ News and Entertainment Weekly

Today has even had a lot of squee in it, after the large doses of OMG!WTF of the weekend.  I must say I’ve missed my squee!

Causes of joy today:

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/09/review-false-colors-by-alex-beecroft/

“Rarely, oh so rarely, I’ll read a book that is so sublime, so transcendent, I actually come away from it a little melancholy, because it’s over and I can never read it for the first time ever again, because I know I’ll never be able to do justice to it in my review or analysis, and because I know I won’t meet its equal for many a year. But the process of devouring the book, of eking out its layered, textured meaning, of savoring its descriptions, and the emotions–oh, the emotions!–leaves me flying for days and the melancholy only makes it all the sweeter.

This is one of those books.  It ravished me. It scoured my insides. I feel like I’m stuck in it and I don’t ever want to get out.”

Rarely, oh so very rarely, does an author get a review that makes her think that someone has read the book they wanted to write – has seen between the lines to the perfect form that you tried so hard to capture, only to feel as if it eluded you every time.  This is the kind of review that authors dream of!  And I can die happy now I’ve achieved it. 

Also squee for Dr.Sarah’s descriptions of the characters, particularly John as “religious, resourceful, smart, and a natural leader.”  I’m so glad John’s leadership qualities came through.  Much of the book he’s in the position of being the nervous virgin, and I really hoped that wouldn’t make him seem somehow weaker than Alfie, because he so is not.  Backbone of steel, that boy

Thank you so much Sarah!  This is one to frame.  I will hang it by my monitor to remind myself that I can’t be that bad, after all

Bad news

Just as I was rejoicing over such a lovely review, I went to check False Colors’ sales ranking on Amazon.  It had been somewhere in the top #5 of gay romance for the past fortnight, and I’d got addicted to watching it go up and down.

Imagine my shock when it had disappeared altogether.  It turns out that False Colors and Transgressions by Erastes were only the first of a purge of sales ranks from innumerable titles in Amazon’s gay and lesbian list, and their het erotica list.  Most of MLR Press’s titles, many Loose Id titles and Samhain titles… Long term bestsellers like JL Langley’s The Tin Star and My Fair Captain have also lost their sales ranks and are suddenly completely absent from charts they have dominated for years.

Now I’d like to think this was a computer glitch, and it will all be restored in a couple of days, but this link from last year about Amazon disappearing its erotica novels in the Kindle store by removing their sales rank makes me wonder whether they’re doing the same thing again, only bigger and to print books.

http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/4/the-kindle-store-blushes-over-smut

And that pisses me off.  In the same world where Dear Author can write about False Colors:

This stunning book is not an erotic romance. It’s a romance between two men, sure, but that doesn’t make it an erotic romance.  It’s not focused on sex, even though it’s all about their sexuality — because the book does NOT shy away from dealing with the fear and shame and hatred of being a sodomite, an “invert” in the eighteenth century.  This book is romance, pure and simple. I don’t think I’m giving anything away to say that John and Alfie don’t even kiss until the end, although there is one incredibly hot sex scene between them. But the emotions are so rich, so bright and hard and painful, even the good ones, that this book can be considered nothing less than the best of romance, heart-wrenching and perfect.

is Amazon choosing to hide my book because it’s a romance about gay men, and that somehow makes it erotica?  Are they censoring it because having two men fall in love with each other somehow makes it automatically shameful and perverse and all about the sex?  I really hope I’m mistaken here.  I thought we’d actually seen some improvement since the 18th Century!

And personal feelings of ‘it’s not erotica!  If I’d wanted to write erotica, I’d have put in more sex’ aside, what’s wrong with erotica anyway?  Not one erotica writer deserves to have their work hidden from potential buyers by an organisation supposedly set up to sell books, with no warning and no explanation.

I so hope I’m getting my knickers in a twist about nothing, and that this is just Amazon instituting some interesting new service, and everything will be back to normal in no time.  But if it isn’t just a glitch, what the hell is going on?

I had been saving up to buy a Kindle, in order to read more of that m/m and f/f fiction of which Amazon currently appears to be ashamed.  This has made me change my mind and decide to buy a Sony and get my books straight from the publishers instead.  And I’ll read my review again to put a smile on my face before bedtime.  Thanks Dr. S!

First of all, I ought to make it clear that this is titled ‘answers for the men’ not because these answers are somehow less true than the answers for the women.  That isn’t the case.  There is just a difference in emphasis, depending on who is asking the question.

Why do women write m/m fiction? Part one – Answers for the women can be found here on the Macaronis blog.  That post was written as an answer to a piece written by a feminist writer who felt that women who write m/m fiction are bowing to the pressures of patriarchal society.  Women should want to write about women, she felt.  Writing about men, and particularly in a format that excludes a woman from the central pairing, is just a case of reinforcing society’s belief that only men are interesting and worthy to be written about.  It’s a kind of gender betrayal.

Obviously, coming at the question from that sort of direction deserves an answer written to take into account the biases and subtext of the question. 

And the subtexts and biases are quite different when a gay man asks the question.  So the two answers are equally true, but slightly differently slanted depending on what really concerns the questioner.

When a gay man asks ‘why do women write m/m fiction’, it’s my impression that the question is often coming from a different place of discomfort:

Exploitation

Isn’t the phenomenon of women writing m/m, because we find the idea of gay sex titillating, just like the phenomenon of straight men watching faux-lesbian porn?

Isn’t it just yet another way for the heteronormative society to oppress gay men?

Isn’t it horrible of women to exploit gay men while also being part of the straight society which denies gay men equal rights?

And isn’t it deeply unfair that m/m fiction written by women is outselling genuine gay fiction, so that straight women have even co-opted the voices of gay men for their own ends, misrepresenting the truth about what it is to be gay?

I wish I could say that this is an unjustified discomfort.  But I don’t think I can.  I think unquestionably some m/m fiction is exactly the same sort of thing as lesbian porn for straight men.

The question becomes complicated however, (because, lets face it anything to do with human beings and why they do things is going to be complicated,) when you realize that not all m/m fiction is the same.  Different authors write for different reasons.  There can be no one size fits all answer.

For example, why did I just post that picture?  Was it because I’m thinking ‘OMG! Hawt, sexy menz and there’s boykissing!  Hey, guys, drop your kecks and give us a show!’

(That, I venture to suggest, would be degrading and exploitative.)

Or was it because as someone who loves romance, the sight of their obvious happiness makes me smile, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t react to that picture in the same way that I would react to this one:

In other words ‘aw! young love!  How beautiful!  I hope they’ll be that happy for the rest of their lives.’

We are, surely, all hoping that our society is tending towards a place in which people make no distinction between the m/m lovers and the m/f lovers.  We’re hoping for a society in which love is valued and celebrated no matter the genders of the people involved.

So why should women – whom history has generally shown to adore a good romance – not decide that they want to write or read about m/m romances too?  Many are undoubtedly reacting as you would to that first photo; ‘they’re a lovely young couple, I’m rooting for them and I want to see them happy at the end of the book.’

But, ‘ew’, you might say.  I could cope with that, but there’s so much sex in these books!  They aren’t rejoicing in the happiness of other people, they’re all about masturbation.  Straight women are using our sexuality to get off with.  It’s disgusting!

Well, as a first reaction I’d have to ask why?  Are straight women not allowed to have a sexuality?  I happen to know that gay men fantasize about straight men – I’ve seen the porn – so it’s not as though the recipient of the fantasizing has to be assumed to be willing to return the attraction.  Or is it just that women are supposed to have such tight control over our sexual fantasy life that we can decide not to find something sexy even though by nature we do?  Are we, in short, supposed to stifle our sexuality because it makes men uncomfortable?

Hm.  That sounds like a very old form of oppression.  Men have put women in chastity belts and insane asylums in the past because they were uncomfortable with the fact that we too are sexual beings.  Stifling our writing is likely to be taken as one more attempt along the same lines.

And really, people get off on all kinds of things.  That doesn’t have an awful lot to do with anything.  Surely the question is not ‘what’s going on in their pants’?  But ‘what do they believe in?  What kind of world are they working towards?  What do their books and their other actions in the world say about them?’

You see, I think that the tendency of m/m romance is to make the women who read it think of gay relationships as normal, desirable; relationships to cheer for and fight for and support.  And I think that is the crucial and very important difference between m/m romance and lesbian porn for straight men.

I was just reading Empire magazine yesterday, and I came across a review for a new film called ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers.’

Naturally, being a m/m author and a bit naive to boot, I assumed the title meant that the film was about some lesbians who killed vampires, and that the titillation factor for male viewers would be balanced out by the portrayal of the lesbians as heroic women doing battle with the forces of evil.

I wish!

It turns out the title means ‘straight men who kill lesbian vampires’.  Empire magazine thinks it sounds like just the thing for teens (they say ‘teens’, but I assume they mean ‘male teens’.)  Here is a quote from their interview with one of the stars:

This energy factor has been ratcheted up by the twin poles of sex – “I hold breasts and watch girls get off with each other.  Besides, I’ve always liked protruding incisors,” says Horne – and violence – “I’ve knocked someone’s head off with a frying pan!” says Corden.  “I slice someone’s head down the middle!  I push a naked girl into a shower of holy water and watch her whole body disintegrate!”

Oh, how charming.  Don’t you love the exclamation mark there.  He’s really enthused about getting to kill naked lesbians.

In other words what we have here is a film that exploits lesbians for the pleasure of straight men while simultaneously portraying them as evil monsters who have to
be killed.

That’s an ugly package.  And I for one would never presume to defend a woman who wrote and read m/m fiction for her own jollies, but still opposed gay rights, and believed that being gay was sinful or wrong.

Certainly women’s sex drives are involved in their enjoyment of m/m fiction.  That doesn’t necessarily mean it is exploitative. 

It can be, of course.  If, as in the film, the book is all about satisfying the female reader’s desire for titillation and demonstrates a blatant disinterest or even hostility towards the problems of real gay men, then I would certainly regard it as problematic.  But in my experience of the genre I would say I’ve seen very little of that.

I believe that most m/m fiction is transformative, and the women who read it are having their prejudices removed or at least challenged.  I think that can’t help but be a good thing.

So, that preamble over with, why do women write m/m romance?

There are many possible reasons because each author is different, but here are some answers which are true of many women.

1. Because women like romance, and if m/m relationships are as normal as m/f ones, why not write m/m romance?

2. Because straight women think men are sexy, and two men are doubly sexy.  (IMO this reason is only a problem if it isn’t accompanied by any goodwill towards real gay men.)

3. Because women are fed up of dealing with the stresses and strains of being a woman and would like to try being a man for a while, without having to give up the love of a good man.  (Many women always identify with the male characters in books.  m/m romance allows them to do that, and still to enjoy having a male love interest.) 

4. Because male characters in books always get to do more interesting things than female ones.  Particularly in historical fiction.  You get to be the Captain of a battleship *and* have a gorgeous male love interest. 

5. Because women are fed up of traditional gender roles and would like to try a relationship where dominance/submission/power was not pre-determined by sex.

6. Because some people are born into female bodies but identify more as men.  Reading m/m fiction is being allowed to be, for a moment, more who you really are.

7. Because m/m stories are the only stories you have to tell as an author – because this is your own inalienable writer’s voice and you can do no more than tell the m/m stories or write nothing at all.

8. Because one or more of the author’s characters decided, in that mysterious way characters have, that they were gay, and she couldn’t see any good reason to stop them.

9. Because the author has gay friends who love gay romance and they suggested she should try it.

10. Because the author wants to increase the representation of gay people in fiction and she thought this was the way to do it.

I’m sure there are others that I’ve missed.  Some authors write m/m fiction because it seems to be selling well, for example.  But I don’t think that’s a sufficiently mysterious motivation to need spelling out

LOL!  Just for the moment, False Colors by me is above its namesake, False Colours by Georgette Heyer, and even better (from my POV) it’s above ‘The Fortune of War’ by Patrick O’Brian!  OMG!  I wouldn’t dare breathe in such company!  It’s terrifying, and wonderful

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Review of False Colors

“There are a very few books on my list of “essential reads” for anyone interested in Gay Historical Fiction. The Charioteer, At Swim Two Boys, As Meat Loves Salt and now False Colors.

Yes, it’s that good. If you are interested in the genre at all, or are planning to write the genre in future I hold up False Colors and say “this is how it should be done.””

And I am over the moon and frankly rather relieved to find that she liked it   Hurray!

Boys of Summer is *that* close to the end.  Tony has met Darren’s horrible family and decided not to be scared off.  Darren was supposed to meet Tony’s differently horrible family and be snubbed and humiliated and driven into the final confrontation with the villain.  He was *not* supposed to suddenly decide to take up with a random trucker and leave the country for Budapest!  How did that happen?  The trucker was supposed to be set-dressing.  He doesn’t even have a name!

I’ll have to persuade Darren to come back or I foresee a very sad ending, but when I gave him a tendency to run away from his problems, I didn’t think he’d try and turn it on me!

No writing today because I’ve got both children at home (one ill, one post-tooth-extraction).  But I will be taking part in a Macaronis chat on the Coffee Time Romance list

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/karendevinkaren

a bit later today.  So I can ponder what to do with him properly before tomorrow

Raw first draft excerpt of ‘Boys of Summer’, as written yesterday, complete with note for today:

“Yeah, well we’ll be going now.” Darren flung the tea-towel into the kitchen sink, drew himself up. Brittle iron in his gaze now as he looked at Tony, pleading for something. “Right, Tony? We’ll be going right now.”

“Tony?” the man in the doorway pushed his hair back behind his ears, leaving furrows glistening across the top of his head. He took out the pack of cigarettes that distended his top pocket and lit one. “Ain’t someone gonna introduce us?”

Outside, the morning’s rainfall steamed up from the pavement in spirals. Within, the hall filled up with curliques of smoke, and the cheese and peanut smell of old sweat.

“This is m’Dad,” said Darren darkly, his flexible face dragged down at the corners by sullenness. “And Dad… Tony’s none of your fucking business.”

His father? Tony swallowed. The man had not stepped any further into the house than the doormat. There was no way out of the door, except by going past him, and he had such a presence! Fire in one hand, the gnarled knuckles of the other curled around a bull-dog belt buckle. It was rather horrible when he smiled, and the expression pulled his face into a shape that resembled Darren. Was this what Darren would look like in twenty years time? Terrifying! “Um… Excuse me,” he said. “I… we were… just going.”

Mr. Stokes took a step forward. He was grinning now; smoke stained teeth and gaps black in the ugly twist of smile. “You’re this year’s Max,” he said with slow amusement. “Fuck me! He never did bring them home before. But this is much better.” He indicated a seat with a great sweep of hand, a spraying arc of ash. Wetting his lips with his tongue he put on a false, mock-polite voice. “Do sit down. Perhaps we shall have some tea?”

Unconsciously, at the mention of tea, Tony looked at Mrs. Stokes. She had sunk back into her chair, and her eyes were vacant, her face empty and sunken. Stokes followed his gaze, shrugged. “The old bitch is senile. Needs to be put in a home. That’s what I come about. But now I’m here, I thinks it’s a good idea if you and me has a little chat. Sit down, Mr…?”

He moved into the living room, his reeking aura pushing Tony backwards. The edge of a seat nudged him in the backs of the knees, and Stokes took another step, crowding Tony towards the chair. Behind him, Darren rubbed his wrists one by one as he eyed the door. “I…” said Tony, damp and cigarette smoke making his lungs tighten within him. He coughed for a minute; short, dry wretched little coughs, that took his mind off the fact that Stokes had come even closer, crowding into his space, and as he did so he thought my father wouldn’t take this. My father would be as polished and machine-like as he ever gets. This… oik would break himself like a monkey punching moving cogs, trying to do this to him.

“I…” he coughed again, made a sudden lunge sideways and got the side-table with the Majorcan flamenco-dancer doll on it between himself and Darren’s father. “I don’t think I will.”

“Suit yourself,” Stokes shrugged. His smile took on a new level of self-satisfaction as he rubbed his chin with a scritch of bristles. “You stand then, while I tell you what I wants you to do for me. Firstly, I don’t want no piddling little presents this time. No two thousands here and there. I want my car paid off. I want a house, somewhere nice. No cheap shit, neither. Something decent, that’ll impress the ladies, yeah?”

Darren had not yet closed the door. He stood in it, back braced, as though he pushed it open against a tide of incoming water and breathed in, a soft, slow hiss through gritted teeth. “You remember what I said to you last time, Dad. You try it and I’ll—”

“I’m just telling the gentleman where he stands.” Stokes lowered himself into Tony’s vacated chair, spreading his arms wide across the back of it. “You see, Tony, my Darren has this way with the poofters. Fucking useless he might be but they’re round him like honey, giving him presents. ‘Oh Darren suck my knob an I’ll give you a thousand pounds’. And he- he loves it. He can pick ‘em a mile off, flaming little queer that he is.”

Darren laughed twice; explosive little ‘ha’s that sounded as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. He raised his hand to his forehead, fingers curled, shook his head as if he didn’t want even his own fingers to touch him, and dropped it, hopelessly. Looking away, Tony caught the old lady’s flinch, as if she had started to talk, thought better of it. Afraid? Or ashamed?

He wished now he had sat down after all; easier to absorb this when his legs weren’t trembling under him. They’d stopped at a service station on the way here, got coffee, but had not been able to face food. Now his stomach formed a negative pressure in his belly, and the matching void of his chest ached around emptiness. His head throbbed, and he thought for a moment he might crumple inwards, implode, vanish in a little pop of darkness and wasted dreams. It was still hard to believe such malice could exist outside fiction.

Sidling out from behind the table, he grabbed on to the soiled wood of the living room doorway, Bakelite light-switch nudging his finger-ends. This was worse than the cricket bat to the shoulder – his soul more tender to assault than his body.

Half out into the street now, one scuffed trainer on the doorstep, Darren raised his gaze from the skirting-board, even the red-gold vibrancy of his hair looking dim around a face gone green. Guilt? Tony thought, withering inside.

“See he’s good at picking the types that don’t want their families or their work to know. And I can arrange that, no problem. You get to fuck him, I don’t tell anyone. Call it… a management fee, OK?”

Not the old lady, but the father! Oh God! He’d been thinking it earlier; thinking this very thing, earlier. That it was, that it might be a a plan. Some kind of um, oh God, some kind of escape from poverty and nylon, stale food and disgusting plates. He’d been thinking it – he really had, and now….

Darren licked his lips, the gesture that had always given Tony a little jolt of surprise and joy now reminiscent of Stokes. He straightened up, looked Tony in the eye, just as he had that day at the marina – scared, resolute – and Tony said, “Is that true?”

He had time to hear his words twice – the shape of them in his mouth, and then the sound, independent, reaching his ear a moment later. In that second they transformed from innocent enquiry to betrayal. He thought of Saint Malo and the taste of ice-cream under blazing sunshine. The memory of it was sweet on his tongue, his eyes dazzled with the sea under the bows of the Lady Jane, his hair blown back, spray wetting his face like tears.

And then Darren’s punch smacked him in the nose. He reeled back, clutching his face, coughing. He hadn’t even seen it coming! All of a sudden his legs were trembling, a hot lava of pain spreading out from the centre of his face. His nose throbbed with a deep, panicky sort of pain, telling him how fragile it was. Blood pooled in the hollow of his hands as he gingerly touched the bone, sure it was broken. He’d played rugby, yes, at school, but no one had ever hit him in the face before and the sense of violation, vulnerability—the sense of an uncrossable boundary shattered made his chest shake despite himself, his eyes fill with tears.

He blinked them back, fumbled for his handkerchief and stanched the blood. Raised his head to find the front door flapping in a grit-laden wind. The sound of an engine, retreating down the road dwindled like his pride. “Darren…? Darren!”

You got something solid to stand on, yeah? Darren’s words from last night echoed in his painful head in reproof. Like having a board under your feet. You own it now and you can’t be outed, you can’t be blackmailed, you can’t be fucking shoved around.

Were those the words of a man who wa
s in cahoots with his awful family to fleece his customers? No. The throbbing in Tony’s face joined with his pulse until he felt his whole body was a wound. No, of course they weren’t. He shouldn’t have entertained the thought. Darren was no more responsible for his family than Tony was for his. God, what have I done?

He walked out into the middle of the narrow street, ran down to the turn off where the estate met the grubby 1960s shopping precinct. No van in sight, but as he was passing the hairdresser’s peeling pink frontage the phone in his pocket burst into Ode to Joy and he snatched it up like a lifeline.

(remember Tony has to put the note in Darren’s jacket pocket!)

Who has been the biggest influence upon your work?

I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, but until the past two years, I’ve kind of cyclical. I’ll write, then I won’t. So I would say that if we’re just talking about this current cycle, which I feel is really my strongest and final cycle (I doubt I will ever stop now as I have in the past because I seem to have found my niche)… I would say that Katie MacAlister and Julia Quinn have influenced me the most because I identify so well with the way they mix humor into their stories. And Katie also because that’s where the genus for The Bar Story came from. Writing at The Bar is what put me on the path that I’m on now. The friends I’ve made there are priceless to me, in particular Jen, Laurie, and Mary. They too have been an influence on my work.

What upcoming project of your own are you most excited about?

I should really be the most excited about Shifting Winds since I just signed a contract for it. However, I think Silver Lining which has been subbed to Midnight Showcase is the story I’m most excited about. This story was born from a song I heard by Lady Antebellum and a fantasy I had of my ex. It’s an intensely personal story for me.

While doing research have you ever done anything really exciting or
strange?

Not really. Although, I did have to email a friend in Scotland who is into BDSM to ask him about floggers and whips when I was writing The Whip & the Chair, the 3^rd story of my trilogy for the Pink Chair Diaries. And strangely enough, it’s not Whip that my friend likes the best. He likes The Wiz & the Chair better as evidenced by the comment he left on it. All the cemetery stuff in Shifting Winds I know because I work in that industry.

Who is your favorite fictional character created by someone other than yourself?

If I don’t count the characters at The Bar (an online paranormal/urban fantasy where I write) and I choose only from published works… Colin Bridgerton in Romancing Mr Bridgerton by Julia Quinn or Julian St. Claire in Riding the Rail by Julia Devlin. If I did count The Bar it hands would hands down be Alaric Kohl who was created by and written by my friend Jennifer Morgan. In fact, Alaric totally wins out over the other two.

Who is your own favorite character?

Right now my own favorite character is Alexa Harte, a vampire in my WIP entitled Never Been Bit. Alexa lost her bloodmate and because of it, she shouldn’t be alive. She doesn’t know how or why she survived the loss of her bloodmate and she’s pretty heartsore, but she’s feisty and amusing even though underneath she’s ripped to shreds.

What are you enjoying reading at the moment?

I’ve been riveted by two of the series written by Jennifer Leeland. The Command series takes place on the planet Asberek. The other series is a BDSM lifestyle series set in Northern California. I’ve read the two books in each series and they just left me panting for more. The third book in the Command series will be out soon and Jen’s hard at work on the third book in the other series. She’s a great writer, and a great friend. At the moment, she’s the only author I’ve been re-reading too!

Do you do anything to summon up inspiration – write to music, have a special writing hat etc?

I don’t like to have distractions. I hate it when my kid plops onto my bed and turns my TV up full blast with House or Ghost Hunters on. Sometimes I have to shut the doors to keep the kittehs out because they’re rowdy too. I sometimes play music if I think it will help the mood, but otherwise, there’s nothing really. I just need to have the characters in mind and the keyboard in front of me.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I work a lot. I’m IT so sometimes I get calls on the weekend or in the evening. I read a lot. I talk on Twitter on the Yahoo loops and YIM to friends. I play an online horse racing sim game and I moderate the message board there for the game creator. Other than that, I spend my time reading the blogs in my feed reader and commenting on them. The blogging community I belong to is the greatest group of people. I’ve met some of them in person, and I adore them.

What works in progress have you got on the go at the moment?

I have Alexa’s story which is one of the Twisted Tales of the Darkworld. I also have an urban fantasy called Dream State about mutants who are the only ones who can see the monsters who have been invading the world. Then there’s A Heart to Match which is a contemporary cougar romance about a model who falls in love with a romance author because of her blog and vice versa. I’m also about half finished with Hot Water, the sequel to Shifting Winds. It’s about the siblings of the couple in Shifting Winds. And finally, I have a ménage story called The Hedonist Club about a woman who buys a software company and falls in love with it’s former owner, who has just retired (at a young age) and bought a swinger’s club. The last thing I’ve got going are two plots that I’ve barely starting the writing for. One, is the third book of the Twisted Tales of the Darkworld – What You Wish For, and the other is the sequel to Hot Water. And finally, I have Regency romance that has 75K words and an ending I won’t write because I don’t like what I’ve plotted. After a year, I’ve gone back to the drawing board on the ending for this. I don’t want to waste 75K words.

Tell us about the books you have out:

I haven’t been pubbed yet, but I recently received my first contract for a novella called Shifting Winds which is about a vampire who wants a one night stand and picks up a dragon who is a home and hearth kinda guy looking for his mate. It was picked up by Pink Petal Books and will be out in the spring of 2009. I’m currently working on the sequel to this book, which I hope to sub to PPB as well. In addition, I have 3 other manuscripts subbed. Runaway Train is a short, erotic story about a female vampire named Dante who meets a werewolf named Roman on a train. It’s pretty much nothing but sex. Silver Lining is about a woman in her early 40’s who tries once last time to find someone to love. What she actually finds is a past love that she never forgot. The Pixie Prince is a Twisted Tale of the Darkworld. Each of the twisted tales in my world is based on a fairy tale, folklore, legend, or nursery rhyme. This story is a twisted version of the Princess & the Pea staring Max Fever an underwear model who becomes the Pixie Prince.

If your book became a big Hollywood film, who would you cast to play your characters?

For Shifting Winds, I see actor Victor Webster as Declan and maybe someone like Anne Hathaway as Elysia. I often visualize my characters as someone. Model Travis Fimmel is Max Fever the Pixie Prince and model Katie Green is Alexa Harte. I see model Anderson Dornelles as Olivier Wilde. Actress Rachel McAdams is Dante DeAmbrose and model Rafael Lazzini is Roman Wulf.

Have you ever won any writing awards? If so, what?

I recently won third place in a Halloween Flash Fiction contest sponsored by the Seven Wicked Writers. The five finalists were judged by the publisher of eXtasy books who then actually invited all five of us to submit to her a finished project based on the flash fiction. I’ve also won some writing contests on writer websites and message boards.

Do you think you have specific themes you continue to return to? If so what are they?

I’m a cougar, so I tend to lean toward cougar themes. I also have a tendency to go for stories where someone has lost their mate or lost a lot in their life, characters with a despair so great it’s almost ingrained, who find love and have their life renewed by it. The only other theme I can think of that I tend to favor is the one of lost love that’s found again.

What one thing are you the most proud of in your life?

My teenage daughter Nikki. Recently, she got a job as an internet DJ (Stikki Nikki at Outlaw Radion on fubar.com) and it’s been really awesome watching her blossom and learn responsibility.

Do you characterize by observation or introspection?

Both. It’s different for each character. Some are better described by their own thoughts. A character like Maris in Silver Lining is a creature of introspection. She holds her cards, her heart, her soul, close to her chest and doesn’t reveal things to others. The only way a reader gets to know her is through her own thoughts. A character like Declan Antaeus in Shifting Winds is deep, but he’s basically WYSIWYG. He’s outgoing and charming, intelligent and deeply committed to his family, an honor bound man who isn’t afraid to show his emotions. A character like that is often better described by the other characters.

Who is your favorite author and what is your favorite genre to read?

My favorite author changes all the time. Currently, I have to read ANYTHING by Jennifer McKenzie/Jennifer Leeland. I love Jen’s writing. Of course, when she’s writing on my blog that I’m brilliant, I love that the most. Just kidding. Hee hee. I think I really love her characters from Asberek. They are people you can identify with. She really gets under their skin and shows the reader who they are. I love a writer who can do that. My favorite genre is paranormal romance. Anything with vamps usually. I love those biters!

Have you seen those ‘author’s cave’ photos that show the office/study/corner of the table where famous writers work?

What does yours look like? OMG. I don’t know if I could show it. I have a totally messy desk. It’s an old IKEA desk and the white paint is dirty and scuffed. I have soda cans, water bottles, and candy wrappers and coffee mugs as well as bills and little giraffes on it. Actually, there are a few photos of my desk on my Flickr account because the cats like to sleep on it and we’re always taking photos of them. I built my computer myself. I have a 19” LCD monitor that I love and a leather chair and a cool little foot rest. I’m comfy mostly but it’s a pigsty. LOL

Do you enjoy TV and movies? If so, what are your favorite shows/films? Do you find they inspire your writing?

I don’t watch much TV and I never go to the movies. I do watch CSI and I do a recap for a friend’s TV blog at snackiepoo.com/teevee. I also watch In Plain Sight. Other than that, I watch nothing but sports: horse racing on TVG and auto racing on SpeedChannel or ESPN. Sometimes I will see something that inspires me, but usually it’s people who inspire me, or something I’ve read.

Now, use this space to tell us more about yourself.

I’ve been on the internet since 1995. I’ve had winterheart.com about that long. I’m kind of a domain idiot. I have a bunch of them. Here’s a list of them:

Winterheart.com – My personal website under my longtime nickname Winterheart (long time as in 20+ years). Most of my friends call me Winter and have for more than 20 years.

Sunlightsucks.com – My personal blog where Winter bitches about life and posts hotties.

Lexvalentine.com – My official author website. You’ll find all the info about my writing and WIPs and trailers here. Also, I have a writer’s blog here. I post excerpts and talk about the craft of writing and all the attendant stuffs.

Rottnroll.com – This is my DH’s domain. Mostly it’s a showcase of the websites we’ve built over the years, and has info in case an author wants us to create a cover or a trailer for them.

Winterheart.com/thebar – This is the home of the The Bar story. The Bar is an online paranormal/urban fantasy serial story written by about 10 people from around the world, male and female alike. (The males are all hotties.) Anyone wishing to read the Bar or become a writer there can email me at winter at winterheart dot com.

Sociallydead.com – This is my daughter Nikki’s (aka Motley) blog.

Davestiara.com – We built this to post photos and stories about the tiara that belongs to Dave2 of blogography.com.

Greatplainsresidency.com – A site I built for a group of people from the horse racing game I play.

You can also find me on the web in these social networking places:

MySpace.com/cemeterywinter

Facebook – winterheart

Yahoo Instant Messenger – knacwinterheart

Twitter – lexvalentine, winterheart

Brightkite – Winter

Flickr – Cemetery Winter

YouTube – lexvalentineauthor