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Why another book about writing BDSM? Because the world needs your dreams, your thoughts, and your truths. The world needs us to be honest in our writing by painting the full panoply the human experience. All of us are curious about power dynamics, sensation, helplessness, and roleplaying and how they affect our characters’ lives. Writing leather sex gives both the author and the reader a safe place to explore these experiences.

My goal for this book is that you will be able to write kink enthusiastically, with a full, rich emotional life for your characters. Everything I’m about to talk about it to reduce your anxiety or stress so you write with greater joy and clarity. If at any time, if you feel overwhelmed or like these ideas are too much work, take a breath and remember that these ideas are to keep you from writing yourself into a corner or getting stuck.

I got nothing.

Today, I am dealing with one of the realities of the writing life - I have no idea what to say. Usually, I grab a piece of paper and hand write it out in a bizarre stream of consciousness rant. For example:

"Holy cow, I have no idea what to do day, I'm a big mess, my brain is empty, I gotta do something but I haven't a clue what, at least I've showered - Go me! What do I talk about? I want something emotionally truthful, something that encourage the people to follow their dreams of a better world. Something to combat despair and hopelessness."

While I'm casting about, I want to hear what YOU need. What makes you feel like you can smash the patriarchy? What kinds of books do you read when you need comfort and courage? How can I help you gather your energy to live your favorite life?

Let me know! We can't create a more just world all alone.
 

Have you met Bec McMaster?

 Let me introduce you to one of my favorite authors, the brilliant Bec McMaster. I met Bec at the Romance Writers of America conference in San Diego, then she graciously allowed me to hang with her at the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Melbourne in 2019. I'm nuts for her books...and I think you should be too.

Want to know a little bit about Bec? Here is my interview with her.

 

1.     Tell me a little about your writing - what are your favorite themes, what keeps you coming back to the page?

Hey Linda. I write epic fantasy romances with a dark and sexy twist, and I’m addicted to anti-heroes and villains-turned-heroes. I love trying to work out what makes such a hero tick, and anything with a marriage-of-convenience, enemies-to-lovers, villain-turned-hero trope is like catnip for me. Combined? Utter perfection. They’re the stories that pour out of me. 

2. Who are your writing influences? 

Ooh, interesting. I think a lot of my writing was influenced during my teen years when all I read was fantasy. I adored the strong female characters in Robin Hobb’s and Melanie Rawn’s books, but there was often something missing in the majority of fantasy that I read…. I binge read Katharine Kerr’s Deverry series for any glimpses of Rhodry and Jill, and I am still desperate to know about the ending of Melanie Rawn’s Ruins of Ambrai series for more Sarra/Collan moments. I cried buckets over the lack of HEA’s in fantasy (and basically rewrote the endings in my head). But it was probably me finding Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels series that really influenced me. 

Daemon Sadi, Lucivar Yaslana and Saetan Sa’Diablo? The sex appeal was off the charts, and combined with strong female characters like Surreal, I was in bliss. This. This was what I wanted more of. Unfortunately, paranormal romance and fantasy romance was still a ways off, so I had to start creating my own, but Anne Bishop was a massive formative influence. 

3. You just released Thief of Dreams (loved it!) in the Court of Dreams series.  What was the seed of inspiration for this amazing, creative series?

I’d been asked to write a novella for an anthology back in 2019, and I was watching The Bachelor, running ideas through my head, when some of the bachelorettes were playing games with each other. And I was thinking: Wouldn’t it be interesting if one of the bachelorettes was killing off the competition? I laughed under my breath, and then this fully fleshed idea dropped into my head. A fae prince. A bride summons. Competing fae princesses all desperate for his hand. Someone killing off her rivals. And my heroine, using the opportunity to sneak into his court to steal a powerful relic.
 
The cream on the cake? Zemira doesn’t WANT to capture Keir’s attention. So of course, he wants the one girl he can’t have. It was one of the most enjoyable stories I’ve ever written. 

4. What is the hardest part of creating? 

I read something just recently about how your brain always wants to go flirt with the shiny, new idea beckoning just out of distance, when no, you actually need to finish THIS book. Jennifer Probst likened writing a book to being in a marriage—it was a fun affair when it was a new idea, but now you actually have to put in the work, go through the nitty gritty, maybe work through the not-so-fun stuff…. And this really hit me, because I think all writers suffer a little bit from this. So for me, the hardest part is definitely forcing myself to focus on one WIP, and not go off cheating with one or three others. 

I tend to use it as a reward now. If I hit my daily word goal, then I can go delve into that shiny, new idea. 

5. What is the best advice you have ever received? 

This is life advice from my mum: If you hit a brick wall in your life, then you need to figure out a way to go through it, around it, over it, under it, but don’t let it stop you when you really want something. 

6. And what is the best compliment you have received? 

I had a woman email me to say that her mother was dying of stage four cancer, and while she was in the palliative ward, she read one of my books out loud to her mother. It was a way to escape what she was going through, a way to bond with her mother, to bring some moments of happiness (that HEA) into both their lives. That really hit me, because this is why I write fantasy romance. I want to provide an escape for my readers. I want to deliver that HEA at the end, so it puts a smile on their faces. 

4. Tell me some of your current projects- Your works in progress, ideas, or any crazy, off the wall things.

I’m currently working on book three of my Dark Court Rising series. It’s a fae twist on the Hades/Persephone myth, in which my heroine is bartered away by her mother to an enemy prince for three months as part of a peace treaty. Her mother wants her to kill him, but the more Vi sees of Thiago, the more she can’t help falling for him…. And of course, there is a lot more to the story that she doesn’t realize….

 

How to be more diverse in your writing.

We live in a big world full of lots of different kinds of people - over seven and a half billion as of May 2018. Writing a novel (or short story, or anything, really), requires the author to focus on a much smaller population.

It's super easy for writers in the United States to default to having an all white cast. So how do we overcome this habit?

By taking a look at the world's statistics! I consider using these numbers as a good set of training wheels to help you until you write diverse characters in a more natural, intuitive fashion.

I always start with my geography - where does my story take place? For example, if you set your work in the United States, the racial population estimates for 2018 are:

• 60.7% Caucasian alone
• 13% Black alone
• 18% Hispanic alone
• 5.8% Asian Alone
• 2.7% Biracial
• 1.5% Indigenous, including Hawaiian, Native American, and Pacific Islander

 When you are writing a story, take a glance at these numbers and go, "Oh, yeah. Let's not forget the rest of the population!" It's okay if it feels a little weird at first. I know that I'm not very good at things in the beginning. It'll become more relaxed quite quickly.

Is your book going to take place in an international setting? Take a look at the world population.

Chart shamelessly stolen from Science Chat Forum

If you don't write people from Asia (Chinese and subcontinental Indian, especially) wandering your setting, you are really missing a huge portion of the population. For example, when I traveled to Istanbul, I stuck out because I was tall. I was constantly afraid I would run into a petite Asian woman by accident. When I wrote about my characters being in Istanbul, I made sure to comment on how very diverse the city is. If I had pretended that there were no world travelers in the huge city, I would have been doing my readers a disservice.

Relax, observe, and write. You got this!

Self-Care for the Writer:

Authors tend to treat their bodies as something that carries their head around. We are then surprised when our body revolts with nerve pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, headaches, dry eyes - really, do I need to go on with the number of things that can hurt?

I've written articles on ergonomics (here in particular). This collection of links goes beyond basic good ergo and into the realm of feeling pleasure in your body.

There are an incredible number of suggestions on the web. Here are some of the best.

1. From Raleigh Psychology, here is the most basic List of Pleasant Activities. These ideas are great place to start with doing really cool things.

2. Stanford has a really nice list of small things and ways to score them. This worksheet is more for a clinician's use, but I found the commentary really interesting! It sounds a bit academic, naturally. It is from Stanford, not a place known for their kicky and quirky writing.

3. It's super easy to think of Self-Care as being something to support our productivity. As Admiral Ackbar says, "It's a trap!" Self-Care is a worthy thing in itself.

My personal happiness did not seem like a grand priority. However, now I know that emotional well-being is fundamental to health and stability in general.

Check out this link from www.TheBodyIsNotAnApology.com And don't you love that blog title!?

4. If you are an activist, check out these Self Care Tips from Everyday Feminism!

The most important books for writing romance.

My favorite titles.

I wanted to talk about my favorite books on writing. Every author has her go-to's for inspiration and help, and here are mine.

How can one live without Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing?

People love to denigrate our genre. This book gives an insightful and quirky look at how much and how little attitudes towards women's words have changed. It taught me just what kinds of horrible internalized sexism colored what I wrote, how I viewed other women, and worst of all, what I did to myself.

Find it here: https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/rushow



Making a Literary Life by Elizabeth See.
A far greater writer than I'll ever be says this:

If everyone who wants to be a writer would read this book there would be many more good writers, many more happy writers, and editors would be so overwhelmed by sweetness they would accept many more good books. So what are you waiting for? Read it! Ursula K. Le Guin

Find it here: http://www.carolynsee.com/Books/literarylife.html



Write Away by Elizabeth George.
From Publisher's Weekly:

Here's a useful book for the novice writer battling the fears and insecurities that attend when she contemplates her first novel....George illustrates her points with passages from both her ownworks and those of numerous writers she admires (Martin Cruz Smith,Barbara Kingsolver, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris), this remains more of a how-I-do-it book than a how-to-do-it book. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unlike PW, I'll say that this book is good even for experienced writers. I love her examples - they illustrate her points brilliantly.

Find it here:http://www.elizabethgeorgeonline.com/books/write_away.htm

The most important romance specific book on my shelf is Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women by Jayne Ann Krentz.

"In Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, Jayne Ann Krentz and the contributors to this volume—all best-selling romance writers—explode myths and biases that haunt both the writers and readers of romances.

In this seamless, ultimately fascinating, and controversial book, the authors dispute some of the notions that plague their profession, including the time-worn theory that the romance genre contains only one single, monolithic story, which is cranked out over and over again. The authors discuss positive life-affirming values inherent in all romances: the celebration of female power, courage, intelligence, and gentleness; the inversion of the power structure of a patriarchal society; and the integration of male and female. Several of the essays also discuss the issue of reader identification with the characters, a relationship that is far more complex than most critics realize."

Find it here: http://jayneannkrentz.com/dangerous-men-and-adventurous-women/

I feel that the most important book on my shelf remains Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller. I'm not going to kid you - this is a painful and devastating book, whether you have been a victim of sexual assault or not. But it endlessly reminds me of what I feel is the great gift that romance gives every reader: That her pleasure is central to life, that her consent should never dismissed or belittled, and that each of us deserves to be heard.

Find it here: http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/susanbrownmiller/html/against_our_will.html

Ten Awesome People: The Lunch Project with Kenneth Branagh

The third person on my Lunch Project is the ridiculously talented Kenneth Branagh.

I first saw him in his version of Henry V, released in 1989. I have always loved Shakespeare, but this version was something completely mind blowing! Fast, passionate, relentless - at no point did he let the weight of the "Shakespeare Mystique" drag down the pace. I have been a fan ever since (not rabid, because I'm not crazy that way).

I want to pick his writer and director brain. I'm fascinated with pace and brilliant characterization. I want to know what he's learned about storytelling in his years of work.

What is your favorite Kenneth Branagh work?

Ten people I'd like to buy lunch for before I die

Aren't they the coolest couple ever?

Writers love writing games. They keep your brain fresh, fun, and stimulated. The other day, I played the 10 People I'd Like to buy Lunch for Before I Die.

I also learned that if you write down what you want to do, you are 42% more likely to actually do it.

I want to pick his writer's brain.

Therefore! Here are my 10 People.

1. President and First Lady Obama
2.  Kenneth Branagh, writer, actor, director, producer
3. Pam Grier, actress
4. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves
5. Gala Darling, blogger, Radical Self Love guru
6. Andy Serkis, actor, known for his motion capture work
7. Fran Walsh, co-writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies
8. Robert Shaye, the founder of New Line Cinema
9. Mel Brooks, comedian, actor, director
10. Gloria Steinem, activist, feminist

So, hey, you awesome people! Let me know if I can buy you a yummy lunch! I promise we will have a fun conversation. :)

Why is she NOT in every movie ever made??

Robert Shaye

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Go, go, Amtrak Residency!

View from the Empire Builder train.

Yesterday, I applied for an Amtrak Residency.

Shah Ismail the First.

My goal is to take the Empire Builder train from Portland to Chicago to work on the first draft of my non-fiction work on the Safavid Empire (1501-1722), then visit the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago for further research and polish.

Back when I finished my first Master's degree, I knew I had a line on a fascinating and important time in history. I want to write a popular history to show the roots of modern Iran.

Another view of the great American landscape.

Wish me luck!

Tag, I'm it.

C. Morgan Kennedy insisted I talk about writing. The nerve!

Here are the questions she wanted answered:

 What are you working on? 
 How does your work differ from others of its genre? 
 Why do you write what you write? 
 How does your writing process work? 

1. I am working on an erotic coming of age novella, tentatively titled "Auntie Vamp." I'm finished with the first draft, half way through the second draft, and I should have the third draft done by March 17th. Auntie Vamp herself is based on Mae West and she shepherds her great-niece Holly into discovering her true strength. 

 2. My work differs because I write woman-centric pleasure, with no coercion and no "bargains" of sex in exchange for something.  My heroine doesn't cook or clean and she wants a life in paranormal politics.

3. I write explicit, complicated stories because I despise books that fear women's sexual and personal power. A woman should be able to name her desires, both sexual and intellectual.

4. I flail a lot.  I hand write my brainstorming, plotting, and tricky scenes. I do have a loose outline at the beginning of the process, but it always goes off the rails by the middle of the first draft.

Thanks, C. Morgan!

Author Speed Dating!

Sponsored by the Library Foundation of Hillsboro!

Ever wanted to just sit and chat with an author? Find out where all those ideas come from; maybe even find out how to bring your own zany stories to life? Well, come on down to the library on Wednesday, Oct 30th and you’ll get your chance to learn more about how the magic happens with a whole room full of Pacific Northwest authors! Light refreshment will be served. Learn more about NIWA at www.niwawriters.com.

Romance writers RULE!

 Back in July, I went to Atlanta, Georgia for the Romance Writers of America National Conference.

I was thrilled to be a part of Kensington Publishing's cocktail party. I drank delicious Kir Royale (Sparkling Wine and Chambord) and got to spend time with some of the neatest people in the publishing industry.

Above, and to the right, Alicia Condon, Editorial Director of the Brava Imprint

Jax Cassidy and Lori Sjoberg.
Ain't they cool??

Lori Sjoberg, Evelyn Adams, YA author Marni Bates, and Jax Cassidy.






Causing trouble is what we do best!

Me showing off my ability with funny faces!

Joe Hill on Writing.

Last week, The Charming Man and I went to Powell's Book Store to see Joe Hill in person.

The Charming Man is a big fan of Mr. Hill's Locke and Key series of graphic novels.

Mr. Hill read from his latest novel, NOS4A2, answered questions, then signed for nearly two hours.



I took notes, and here are some wonderful things he said.

"Just sit down and write one great scene. It's best of you do it in one sitting. Don't think that you have to do two hundred more pages of this. Focus on your one great scene."

"I usually do about five to seven drafts." (What a relief! I get all wound up on how many drafts I write. Instead, I'm on target. Woot!)

"I'm surprised so many people come to these things; there are so many cat videos on the Internet."


I would like to point out that while Joe Hill is over 40, he looks about 25. I think writing horror must keep one young.

Thank you, Joe Hill!