The Breakthrough - I am JK Rowling

I had kind of a breakthrough.  I'm not sure I should jinx it though.  I started all these different things and they had similar scenarios.  I'd get the first scene written and think of something else.  In fact, when I re-read them, I had used some of the same names.  I decided that they were all pieces of one story, which means some names will be changed.  I put them all in one document and started writing the beginning.  Now I have 22,000 words. 

Today I thought about what was working and what wasn't, and I'm ready to make changes and add more.  I try to write a whole scene - dialogue first then I go back and add stage directions and stuff.  The next day I read it all and if it sounds stupid or repetitive, or doesn't make sense, I do rewrites.  It takes a while.  I stop when I don't quite know how to make the transition to the next bit of information.  That next bit will come to me the next day when I'm working out.  I don't know how it does that.  I think my mind relaxes or something.  I almost see it in a waking dream.  It tells me what to say and do, and what it all looks like visually. 

I almost feel like the story was there all along.  I did what made sense - I couldn't build another non-consent BDSM world without referencing Cinderella Club a little.  I am looking at one character in particular who had a spot on the periphery of CC, and now I have her story - sort of, and a number of others that can take place in the same location.

I don't want to share any of it yet because every time I share in real life, someone either copies me or tries to change the idea somehow - they want to be part of my process, which I thoroughly hate.  This story feels like I had written it before, in another dimension, if there is such a thing.  I would like that to be true because I would like to believe that somewhere else there is a Mia Natasha with a slightly different story.  Maybe a better one.

I also hate when people say "Life's too short" and "You only live once".  Life is not that short.  Sometimes it feels like an eternity.  An animal's life is short.  I look at my cat and I wonder what it will be like when we have to cross that bridge.  My cat represents a specific chunk of my life, like the Mayan Calendar.  When my cat is gone it will be an ending.  I will reflect on the time we had together as our dynasty or whatever, and assess my success during that period.  Have I made any leaps in this time?  What the fuck am I doing?  I don't really want to think about that.

When I'm writing, I am so into it - as though it's the greatest thing ever written - unique, original, refreshing....  I get high from it.  Not manic, just - happy.  Content that I am creating and I have the confidence to do it.

JK Rowling had good reviews on her pen named book but sold only a few copies.  So what did they do?  They totally told.  I don't buy that it was uncovered by other sources.  I think it was leaked to the media.  What if I said that I am really Jo?  Of course, no one would believe that, because we sound nothing alike.  Too bad.  Because I have good reviews too.  It's never enough.  You can fool yourself that it is, but it isn't.

I sent paperbacks to specific people hoping for the kind of media attention that is bigger than a random blog.  But nothing yet.  No responses.  Does anyone read blogs?  I know there are a few of you who read this even though you don't comment (Hi, Kelly).  I know I'm not talking to myself because if I were, well, that's a sad face emoticon, which I would post if I knew how.

When I re-read old diaries, I feel like it's a different person but I love that person.  That sounds about as narcissistic as they come, but I do.  I do love myself.  I am strong and courageous, organized and focused, (and I have a pretty fucking great ass).  I love the idea of finding my younger self  (in a time-travel) and sitting her down to tell her that she won't change very much.  And that is perfectly okay. (But oh my god, she's going to love my hair!)  I'm trying to think of a specific point in time that I would change that could change the trajectory of my life.  But I'm not sure I would change anything.  I keep wanting to go back to the night I first slept with The One so I can keep my clothes on and leave.  Would he have pursued me?  I doubt it.  Actually, I know he wouldn't.  I was always going to be just sex.  

Would I go back to high school and go slutty?  Fuck someone?  No.  Because I always wanted the relationship to be adult.  I never thought and still don't, that kids who live under their parents roof should be having sex.  I hate it because they are living children's lives but playing adult games and they are just not emotionally ready.  College students are the same way, let's be honest.  Dorm fucking seems to lead to marriage without even actually having dates, which is so fucked up.  I know women who had never even purchased sexy lingerie or stillettos because their relationships happened in sweatshirts and sweatpants, and one ratty bra that they washed on Sundays!

Which reminds me of the bondage pictures I see that people post on Twitter  - the homemade ones where the girl is roped up and in the background you see dirty laundry in baskets littering the floor, photographs of family on the wall instead of art (not placed there aesthetically either), and cheezy matchy-matchy furniture sets that would make the Architectural Digest editor's head spin while puking pea soup, and it's supposed to be sexy.  Is that sexy to you?

These days there are a gazillion twenty somethings living with their boyfriends on their parents' dime.  Apartments in big cities and jobs that can't pay for them.  And they are playing house.  To me that's not sexy either.

The men in my new book all own their own places except for one.  It's preferable for them to be in some way independently wealthy so they don't have to work in order for their Dom/sub relationship to be 24/7.  One will work from home... I have it all planned.  It's actually much easier to make them all have dead parents so you don't have to deal with them but I won't do that.  I think having the parents in there in small doses grounds the story because you see how the parents see the person and it's always different than the way they see themselves.  Like some people are complete fuck ups at work but their parents praise them galore!  Others work their asses off and their parents think they don't work hard enough.  I may have said this before in another post, but I love when each character in a show has their "problem".  In Star Trek the Next Generation, no one has the kid they want.  Warf's kid is like a Ghandi instead of a this-is-a-good-day-to-die warrior.  Wesley Crusher makes all sorts of stupid mistakes and gets emotional while his mother the doctor is calm under pressure, Jon-Luc had a son in one episode- not sure if he really was or he thought he was, but the guy did not want to follow rules.  In Beverly Hills 90210, every single character had a substance abuse problem or some other "issue".  Donna got drunk at prom, Kelly did coke, David was taking pills to stay up late to do that radio show....

Anyhow, there will be a huge cast of players in my new story.  I will challenge myself to write scenes with lots of people in them to balance the one-on-one scenes that can get repetitive.  Even so, people want the one-on-one relationships.

The other thing about that book from my previous post (On my own blog - http://mianatasha-erotica.blogspot.com/2013/07/thickening-plot.html) that I'd read for "research" :  the guy basically had no friends.  In the next book, which is so short because there is no plot, they go out with her friends and all he wants to do is take her home to fuck her.  The point of going out is to dress up, to be alluring while you are out in public showing off how much your man likes you, showing him to anyone  - look at this sexy fucker, everyone - he's going home w/ me.  Then you think about it, anticipate it and when the fucking commences, the hot liquid magma becomes full blown lava.

In real life, guys have tons of friends because they just hang out without the deep emotional stuff.  They like each other.  And that's the final piece to my puzzle today.  The men in my story will bond.  I'm aiming for epic - but if it is that in my mind only...then I really am JK Rowling.  And you will buy the book.  Should I have put that in caps?

Fifty Shades of Suck

I keep hearing about how bad Fifty Shades of Grey is, how horrible its syntax and grammar, how the atrocious mistakes in point of view, repetitive words and kindergarten-level writing detract significantly from the enjoyment of the story. I keep hearing it, but as of this writing, they're still sitting pretty over at Amazon. They're still front and center at our local Barnes and Noble. They're still selling, in spite of the flaws, in spite of the (mostly true, it seems) criticisms. 

So why should this series of books be all the rage, while there are other books malingering on the shelves that are so grammatically perfect editors everywhere have little orgasms when they read their clever turns of phrase? 

Because the unwashed masses that the elitists in "big publishing" once believed they had to protect from bad grammar, those poor slobs that publishers believed they had to choose for, are now choosing for themselves. They are voting with their dollars. The great big experiment that capitalism is supposed to be is being played out on Amazon, as books that would never have seen anything except the inside of an agent's trash bin are now flooding the Kindle market, and readers are choosing which books they are actually interested in reading. 

It's the biggest market research study in the history of publishing happening right there on the marketplace. 

And it turns out that big publishing was wrong. Readers don't want to read what publishers thought they wanted to read. In fact, publishers were pretty far off the mark, if the bestseller lists are any indication. Big publishing has been surprised to see phenoms like EL James and Amanda Hocking and Tammara Webber flying up the charts. Publishers are aghast at the "grievous errors" in some of these infamously self-or-alternatively published books.

It turns out that readers want entertainment. They want a good story, plain and simple. And they're even willing to put up with horrible syntax and grammar to get it. In fact, turns out those things are just a minor annoyance for readers. In the end, readers want a good story. Not the story publishers think they should read, not the ones agents believe they can sell. They don't want Snooki's autobiography, simply because she's famous for being on television. They want a good story.

Reboots or rewrites or the same old formula? It doesn't matter. If it's a good story, readers will find it and read it. They will tell their friends about it. "Oh my god, I just read the best book, you have to read it!" It isn't luck that creates a bestseller. Contrary to publishing and all the money they spend on their biggest names, marketing doesn't sell books. Readers do. That's why a backlist is the best thing a writer can have under his or her belt. Because if readers like you, they will read you, again and again and again. If they like your story, they're going to want more. 

The floodgates are open, authors. Everyone's all-in, and if you thought the competition was fierce when big publishing held the reins, you're in for a wake-up call when you send your little boat out afloat into the ocean that is Amazon. There are a LOT of boats out there. The good news is, if your boat floats--if your story is a good one--readers will find you. They will tell their friends. And you will sell books. 

You couldn't do that before. Big publishing controlled the ocean. They had it buttoned up tighter than the Hoover Dam. 

Now, as an author, you can sail freely. Of course, you're captain of your own ship now. In the world of self-publishing, there are no luxury cruises on Big Publishing's Princess line. (But think of it this way--what were the odds you were going to get into one of the VIP suites anyway? You probably would have been relegated downstairs in steerage, like on the Titanic... and if you take this metaphor to its logical conclusion, yes, the boat that was too big to sink? It sank. Big publishing has hit an iceberg and they're too arrogant to acknowledge it... but that boat is taking in water and is hitting its critical tipping point... )

So to all those people who are complaining about Fifty Shades and books like it, where reader enjoyment won out over the Grammar Nazis, you can relax. The world didn't end because of a misplaced comma or the annoying repetition of a phrase or word. And clearly if so many people are reading it, it must be doing something right! You might have thought Fifty Shades sucked, but you have to admit that, first and foremost, it was entertaining. It's human nature to slow down to see a train wreck. Perhaps many of Fifty Shades readers were simply curious about the hype, or wondered if it was "as bad as people said." Still, the blog posts and reviews I've seen about just how awful it was as a book, clearly thought that it was entertaining--even if it wasn't exactly in the way the author intended. 

Now, I'm not condoning sending your little boat out there with holes in it. You should polish your manuscript, have a good cover, do your best to make your book water tight before you send it sailing. Doing so certainly does nothing but help you in your journey as an author. However, as books like Fifty Shades have proven, you never know what's going to appeal to readers until you put it out there and let them decide. And even the dingiest, most beat-up little boat out there in the ocean can still sail, as long as it has entertainment value, however that appears to and for readers. 

Big publishing has been shocked in the past few years by what readers are buying, reading, and telling their friends about. Books that were once denied to the market are being published--and they're being read. So much for the judgment calls, so much for the gatekeepers. They have no power anymore. What sells, sells. It's that simple. 

So while Big publishing might have once snickered and tossed EL James' books aside as Fifty Shades of Suck, they're now scrambling to catch up, looking for more books like it, and seeing how they can cash in on what readers really want. 

Me, I'm cheering for all the little boats out there on the Amazon ocean. I doubt, considering their history, that big publishing is going to wake up and smell the iceberg. But the reality is that the market is speaking loud and clear, for anyone who wants to listen. 

The Long-Term Erotica Game

As a erotica writer, are you in the short-term game or the long-term game? Did you know there was even a difference? There is–an important one.

Even before the Fifty Shades phenomenon, writers were discovering that erotica was a gravy train when it came to writing. The fact that the erotica market supports selling shorter works for more money made it very appealing to writers looking to make a decent living. It also seemed “easy,” at least on the surface. You pump out (excuse the pun) 20-30 short titles in a few months, and you’re suddenly in the money, paying your mortgage with your royalties!

Since Fifty Shades, the erotica market has been literally flooded (excuse the pun again) with stories about billionaires doing naughty, wicked things to their secretaries. Mark Lefebvre from Kobo says “enhanced Romance” (which is code for erotica) sells the most on their ereader and when Mark Coker from Smashwords says “Romance is our bestselling genre,” what he means is erotic romance. When Mills and Boon starts holding erotic writing seminars, you know the genre has arrived.

I know several very mainstream writers–names you would easily recognize if I printed them–who have decided to get their hands dirty and supplement their “real” writing in their preferred genre (be it sci-fi, mystery, “regular” romance, horror or whatever…) with some erotica writing. I find it amusing that many of them, back when Paypal wouldn’t pay for that “smutty stuff,” self-righteously deemed it “too bad, so sad.” Some of them went so far as to say, “Serves them right for writing that nasty stuff!” Of course, their livelihood wasn’t at stake then. Now they have a dog in this fight. Now they’re writing erotica right along with everyone else, discovering that Amazon filters “certain” covers and “certain” content from their main search, that Apple bans “certain” titles altogether, that some smaller vendors deem “certain” subjects unacceptable.

Now these writers are discovering how erotica writers really get treated. Everyone reads it but no one wants to admit it. Erotica writers are excluded from certain blogs and groups because of their “content.” Erotica writers are the subject of snide remarks and disdain–yet lo and behold, they’re some of the biggest sellers out there. And now these writers know what it takes to write a good sex scene. Hey, wow, there is really more to it than inserting Tab A into Slot B! At least, there is if you want to sell well, build a brand, and actually make a living at it.

Which brings us back to the long vs. short term erotica game. Many of the people jumping on the erotica bandwagon are in it for the short term. They didn’t start writing it for the love of the genre—they started writing it for the same reason people set out to California in the 1850′s to pan for gold. Short-term erotica writers are looking to cash in, pay off some credit card debt or buy a few new toys, and ride it out until the wave crests and fades away.

Short term erotic writers are watching and following trends. Daddies? I can write about Daddies! Billionaires? I can write about billionaires! Werewolves? I can write werewolves! In fact, I can write about Daddy Billionaire Werewolves! Short-term erotica writers want to make short-term money.

Not that there’s anything wrong with short-term money!

But there are erotica writers who have been doing this for years, who do it because it happens to be the genre they fell in love with (like some writers fall for horror, or thrillers, or romance—it’s just where they “fit”) and it’s the genre they want to write in. These are the writers in the long-term erotica game. We’ve watched the market trend and change. Fifty Shades opened a few more doors for erotica writers, but the basic landscape hasn’t really changed.

The basics are still the same and will always be the same.

**Write a good story.
**Make it hot.
**Write what you love, what turns you on.
**If a certain trend is popular and it appeals to you, then go for it! But if you’re faking it, your readers will know.
**Your characters are real people, and if they don’t act like it, your readers will know.
**If you’re not that into it, your readers will know.

Erotica writers in the long-term game can take advantage of the short-term market, but please, don’t forget to look down the road. This is where you could really hurt yourself if you want to be in this long-term. Those who aren’t in this for the long-haul are near-sighted. Yes, you should pay attention to what they’re doing, but don’t necessarily model yourself after them. They aren’t thinking five, ten, fifteen years ahead.

Remember, if you want to be around and have readers in the future erotica market, you have to build a readership now. If you become some flash-in-the pan writer, spreading yourself thin with a hundred pen names and short, trendy titles with lots of cotton candy fluff but no real meat, your readers will go away dazed with the sugar-rush but ultimately unsatisfied. No one can live on cotton candy forever.

Writing what you love in any genre is important. Erotica is no different. Readers aren’t stupid, and they’re not reading erotica and erotic romance for any other reason than they read mystery or horror. They want something specific, and they want a writer to give that to them. They develop a relationship with the authors they love. Short-term erotica writers aren’t going to build that kind of reader base.

Long-term erotica writers will still be here, still writing, after Fifty Shades has trended and gone. And their readers will remember them and continue to seek them out. Those in the short-term game will have either moved back into their own “real” genres, or they will have found that writing erotica isn’t bringing them the cash it once did, and decide to do something else.

Those who love it, who are in for the long game, will still be doing it. They will be the writers of erotica’s future–as long as they remember not to fall into short-term traps.

Selena Kitt

Erotic Fiction You Won’t Forget

www.selenakitt.com

LATEST RELEASE: Becca (Daddy’s Favorites)

Big Head-Small Paycheck

I've been skirting my responsibilities as a blogger. Mainly because I'm not sure if it is a good use of my time. I received my Q1 sales spreadsheet and I am only making about $150 a month even though I have five novels on the market. It's mainly Cinderella Club selling. Apparently I did not sell a single Cinderella Thyme during the month of March.

So I think- maybe I should be doing more to promote? But that just gets me into more time spent on a dream. The books are available. People will eventually find them if they are good. It's that simple. Writing takes a long time. I can't whip something up and get it out there like the full time authors seem to be able to do. And as you all know, I'm not a people person. I'd rather make the art and let someone else sell it.

I'm almost done with the art stuff then I can spend the better part of the summer finishing my trilogy. After that I will reassess. It is phenomenal when I think about all the people who have read or bought and plan to read my stuff. I don't exist in the real world as a writer. Lunch conversation with my family turned into who's read Fifty Shades of Grey? I cannot believe how that book has sunk its teeth into American pop culture. But even so the next line is not I write erotica too. I'm Mia Natasha.

It feels so strange. But good strange because I wouldn't do it if people knew. It's like when I make art, there needs to be some element of wow-ie. The same as when you make an entrance into a room looking stunning. If people are looking over my shoulder, I'm out. Out for good.

Try-Fail Cycles and the Self-Published Writer

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Even Academics Aren't Immune From Making The Author's Big Mistake...

The Author’s Big Mistake, apparently, is to respond to a bad review. All that happens is the writer makes themselves look foolish and unprofessional. Witness this spectacular meltdown from Jacqueline Howett over a bad review of her self-published book, The Greek Seaman. To compound her misery, this went viral enough to hit the major broadsheets. Even if they say bad things about us writers, the reviewer is meant to be aloof and sacrosanct. Otherwise it’s just a big circle jerk that helps no one.

What if the reviewer is less than honest in their intentions?

A link to another spectacular author meltdown appeared in one of my social networking feeds. This one saw Mike Coe attempt to break the world record for most consecutive comments after a blogpost following Jane Smith’s negative review of his book, Flight to Paradise. A fellow writer had posted the link as a good example of a self-published writer overreacting to reasonable criticism. I thought the same, until I read down to the part that revealed the reviewer had only read four pages.

Four pages! How can anyone seriously review a book after reading only four pages? That’s like writing a review of a movie after seeing only the first three minutes. I’m sure there are many movies where the film critic would have liked to have walked out at the halfway mark, but they can’t, because they’d be violating their role as a critic. I know Smith has clear rules and a ‘fifteen typos and you’re out’ policy, but her review is four paragraphs long and talks about ‘poor characterization’…from a book where she’s read only the first four pages. I’ve read plenty of books where the main characters haven’t even showed up by then! Slamming a book because the writing is so bad it’s painful to turn the page is one thing, but I’d be peeved too if a reviewer read only the first couple of pages of one of my stories and started to comment on broader issues of characterisation and plot (although not enough to attempt to break the world record for most consecutive comments after a blogpost).

I might be wrong, and I’m prepared to apologise whole-heartedly to Jane Smith if this is the case, but after reading more of her reviews my gut feeling is her selfpublishingreview is a troll site with the main aim of beating up self-published writers for the temerity of going it alone. She also runs a blog entitled “How Publishing Really Works”, which sets my ‘ulterior motives’ alarm bells ringing. A bad book is a bad book is a bad book, and this is true whether it was shat out by one of the Big 6 or a lone, misguided scribbler, but some people are vehemently against the whole principle of self-epublishing in general.

I’m sure plenty will keep on submitting to her for review. They’ll see the carcasses of past maulings and think, That won’t happen to me; my book is good. We’re daft like that. I think I’ll pass on this one, though. I don’t see the point when the game is so heavily stacked it’s impossible to win. Or rather, if someone has an axe to grind, the last thing you want to do is give them an axe.

Oh, and to prove it’s not just us crazy self-published types that go apeshit below the line, enjoy Eric Anderson making the Author’s Big Mistake over Catherine Hakim’s review of his latest book in The Guardian.

-M.E. Hydra
http://manyeyedhydra.blogspot.com/

(Not So) Great Expectations

So you’ve written a book, revised it, revised it some more, had it edited, proofread. You’ve selected a cover, formatted the word file, uploaded it to Amazon. Now it’s up on the internet and available for the whole world to buy. You’ve done it. You’re published. That’s it…right?

Not quite.

In the past, in the legacy world, being published was a finishing post of sorts. A writer picked up the advance cheque and got to say they were Published. The book might flop right on its ass and sell squit all, but the writer could still say they were Published and—more importantly—keep the advance cheque.

In the modern, free-wheeling, self-published world, being published is more like the starting post. A self-published writer might have more freedom and keep a much higher percentage of each sale, but that’s worth nothing if they don’t sell any books.

This is where management of expectations becomes important. That initial euphoria on seeing your work out there in the big wide world can quickly become despair as you watch your Amazon rankings spiral down into seven figures and wonder if anyone out there gives a damn about your book.

Don’t panic!

It happens to most of us. Think of your favourite bands. Most of them started out playing in little pubs with about five people in the audience. This is the same. Unless you’re enormously talented AND lucky, a massive audience followed by bestseller status doesn’t happen overnight. In the meantime stay grounded.

1. Don’t spit in the boss’s eye and quit your day job. You’re likely still going to need it for a while. If my earnings from writing creep past my salary I might consider writing full-time. Until then I’m turning up for work at 9am same as everyone else.

2. Don’t plan to rely on the money coming in. It might not. I don’t factor royalties into my financial planning at all. It’s bonus money. I can use it for savings or splash out on a luxury item, but I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m sweating on whether it will be enough to pay the electric bill.

3. Keep writing.

4. Keep writing! Yeah, I could repeat this one ad infinitum. I have three books out and in each case a new book coming out has boosted the sales of the previous book. Don’t sit back on the first book. Work on the next ones and get them out. Doubts don’t have a chance to take hold if you’re already concentrating on getting the next book out there.

I’m not a massive success story and might never be. Since starting out last October with my first short story collection, A Succubus for Christmas, I’ve seen my Amazon sales creep up from around a book a week to a book a day. That’s still a long way off fame and fortune, but it’s movement in the right direction. It’s encouragement to keep at it and search for more potential readers.

Most of all, I’m enjoying the writing. At the end of the day, does anything else matter?

M.E. Hydra

Self-Pubbed Cinderella

Hi everyone, I'm erotic author Mia Natasha, and today is my first post here on The Self Publishing Revolution.  Apparently the erotica I write is very explicit, more so than the average.  Which means that I have few options for publishing the work unless I do it on my own.  I was lucky to find a fit with Selena Kitt and Excessica.  Cinderella Club is actually doing well on Amazon.com right now because it is in the top 20 bestsellers in the category of rape.  I know, I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed about that or not.  I don't consider non-consent rape, because in my world the men are handsome and sexy and the women are unwilling at first but only because they  feel too guilty to be willing.  It's just a fantasy as all fiction is. 

There are plenty of women who share the reluctance fantasy.  I had read an article in Glamour magazine that said about 65% of the readers polled enjoyed daydreams involving capture-bondage.  It's a way for we independant new millenium women to relinquish responsibilty in our heads.  Not in real life.  The problem is that the book lists under the BDSM spectrum and  there are people who actually live that lifestyle who upon reviewing my book for content are all yuck, yuck.

Not everyone, thank god.  It was a book that took two years to write - from one scene in a dream to 140,000 words of epic novel.  Epic in the sense that I'm not a writer.  Not even an English major.  First generation American from an old country foreign family who has an art degree and paints for a living, thank you very much.

I'm living a dream, quite frankly, and self publishing is a big part of that.  These reluctance stories have always circled my head.  Shamefully, I was only thirteen when I wrote short stories in my room about girls who got kidnapped and boys who rescued them.  There was no sex, mind you, but the content was always there.  Is that weird?  I always knew I would be a writer one day, even though I never pursued it until now and I had never been encouraged so that obviously made it harder.

My book is doing well.  And so I've caught the bug.  I have three other novels finished, two will be published  later this year, one of which I have one chapter to go on.  I should get back to it now so that I can make the deadline.  Since Excessica is currently closed for submissions, the other one, Cinderella Thyme, Cinderella Club's sequel waits in limbo.

I'm not worried.  I believe that everything happens when the timing is right and it will all work out.  If you are the type of person who gets into ruts and doesn't think things will work out, I want you to think of me.  Because this dream of mine shouldn't have happened.  I wasn't even thinking about writing until I had that daydream of a woman (who looks like me, natch) sitting in a limousine.  It came out of nowhere like a magical summons to get back onto the right path.

Now writing is here in addition to everything else I do, not instead of.  Knowing that people all over the world are reading my book is such an unbelievable high, it really makes it all worth it.  Getting a check every three months for a dream come true is not bad either.  It certainly gets me motivated to write more.  That and I have a sick work ethic.

Pleased to meet you.  I plan to make this a regular gig so I'll pop off my glass slipper now and come back for it later - because that's what independant multitaskers do.

Here is the link to my blog - http://mianatasha-erotica.blogspot.com/?zx=418a7ac0ef1a045b