Wait, you write erotica too?

Yes, I do write erotic fantasy along with the non- (or at least less-) erotic sort. In fact, I’ve just started a new serial, Fair Trade, that is an urban fantasy but also distinctly erotic. And no, I see no reason at all to be embarrassed about that. This post is not an apology or an excuse. It is my personal take on the existence of, and frequent dismissal of, erotic literature. First, we need to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. WordNet defines erotica as “creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or…

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Gender-neutral Pronouns

Let’s talk about pronouns. First-person pronouns are pretty straightforward: “I/me” and “we/us”. In English, since we no longer differentiate between second-person singular and second-person plural, using “you” for both, we get into a bit of trouble now and then. There’s a persistent sense that we need to be able to distinguish between the two sometimes for clarity, so we end up with “y’all” or “you guys” or any number of dialectical variants. We’re missing a pronoun that we clearly feel that we need. That’s more of an issue when speaking or addressing others directly, however. When it comes to narrative…

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The Value of Encouragement

I mentioned last time that something interesting happened while I was working on the revisions for Black Wolf. This needs a little backstory, so here we go with a flashback scene. Go back twenty years. I finished the first complete version of Black Wolf (then, the full title was Black Wolf, Demon Wolf – I got tired of typing that). It wasn’t my first novel, but we don’t talk about the first two; this was the first one I had hopes for. A very good friend and mentor, a local mystery author, read it for me and gave me her…

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Who Am I Writing For?

Well, I did it to myself again. No matter how many times it happens, no matter how many times I learn the lesson, it still creeps back up and ambushes me again. Write what you want to write, write what sings to you. Forget what you can complete and present to the world; if it isn’t singing to you right now, this moment, then any work you do on it will be poorer quality and at best not worth it, at worst discouraging enough to interfere when it should be singing later. Don’t ever, ever try to modify the content…

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To My 15-year-old Self

Life and my own wonky brain chemicals caught up with me, and the meds that are supposed to help, well, don’t work as well as they used to. While I’ve felt like writing, I haven’t felt particularly clear or been able to settle even on a single thing to play with or work on. So, I decided to go back and read some of my very oldest work. Now, I save everything. I still ache, knowing over a hundred pages ended up in a dumpster somewhere after my backpack was stolen – it was just an experiment, but it was…

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