| 234567 | > |
This is number 123 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
LAST WEEK, I got an interesting email from SOL reader Johnny: “Oh, I pass this to you as I think you would do a much better job of presenting it than I could. The topic is creating a title and description that attracts readers. Forgive me if you’ve already written on this. I’ll claim Alzheimer’s.”
Don’t imagine that I never listen to my readers! This email hit me at the perfect time. Just as I was trying to get the perfect blurb for Forever Yours! I don’t know if I nailed it, but it’s better than what I originally thought up.
Back in the old days when my business partners and I started the boutique publishing house LongTale Press, we started receiving manuscript samples and blurbs from a lot of aspiring authors. Most of them were really crappy, so we were invited to several different venues to talk about and coach people on creating a title and perfect pitch for their novels.
There are five levels that I want to talk about.
1. The Title
2. The Logline
3. The Blurb
4. The Description
5. The Synopsis
Each of them deserves a lot of consideration on the part of you, the author. Let’s start with the title and we’ll see if this is a one-week post or two weeks, or more. It’s really a big topic!
Sometimes we get the perfect title when we first think of the story. That is what happened to me when I was struck by the title Living Next Door to Heaven as I was parked on a beach in Alabama in March of 2014. It was perfect and I could immediately imagine the complete story line that would cover some ten or fifteen years. Well, it turned out to be a great series name, but covering that much time and detail, it ended up being nine different books and I needed to come up with an actual title for each of the books. Bummer.
More often, the perfect title comes long after the first—and sometimes the second or third—draft is finished. That was the case with Nathan Everett’s (Wayzgoose) first published novel. We released it as part of an anthology of NaNoWriMo books in 2006 with the title Security and Exchange. Since the anthology was released as a fund-raiser for libraries during Microsoft’s Giving Campaign, a lot of people asked me if it was about protecting email servers. ????
Four years later, when it was released as part of the launch of LongTale Press, it had been extensively edited, rewritten, and retitled: For Blood or Money. That title reflects the contemporary noir mystery that the book actually contains. Much better, and a good seller.
Today marks the commercial release of my newest novel, Forever Yours, in both eBook and Signature Edition paperback. So, why not use it as an example? This book started out with a working title of “Sisyphus, a Modern Myth.” Thrilling title, isn’t it? It was more a reminder to me of how I perceived this contemporary story. I would retell the ancient Sisyphus myth—the guy condemned to roll a stone up a mountain that would roll back down each day for eternity—with my own twists on the story.
After that first draft was completed, which followed my outline exactly, I realized that not only was the title boring, the story was less than interesting. I went out to a nice brunch with my friend and alpha reader Les and his wife, and we talked about what I wanted to do with the story and how the whole thing was really about artificial intelligence and the prospect of creating a singularity in which man and machine were somehow united.
But I was struggling with a title for the new work.
Les had read the entire first draft and a particular phrase stuck out to him: Forever Yours. It was the name of the AI program that became the protagonist’s singularity. The title immediately struck me, not only as a good summary, but also as a guiding light as I re-wrote the novel.
Forever Yours is available as an eBook at ZBookStore. The Signature Edition paperback is available at my own Ingram Spark bookstore.
My newest work, Forever Yours, is now in pre-release on ZBookStore and will be released on Sunday! I know it's been a wait, but I wanted to make sure all edits had been reviewed before I pulled the trigger.
Artificial Intelligence programming prodigy Henry Pascal pulls three other friends with him to create a new company with $billion prospects. Getting through jealousies, college, loves, virtual and physical attacks, takeover challenges, and family life, Henry succeeds in creating a singularity AI--one that can contain all the data from one's life. But how will it be used?
Is this science fiction? Certainly, it is speculative, but the reality of artificial intelligence and the impending singularity are so near, that part may not be fiction much longer. It is not a case of if we get there, but how and how soon?
Is this erotica? If your only definition of erotica is whether the book has sex scenes, then yes. If that's why you choose to read it, you will be disappointed.
Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity Is Near" was influential in conceiving of this work.
Enjoy!
This is number 122 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“WE’RE SORRY. Because of extremely high call volume and cuts to the park service, wait times at The Void may exceed three hours. Try our website at TheAbyss.con which still has a few openings. If this is an emergency, please hang up and scream into your pillow.”
My writing group down in Las Vegas stays together by using a Discord server. We have group write-ins online as well as in person, with an online sprint manager that times the word sprints and tracks word count. There are social events and tips and tricks. And a channel simply called The-Void.
“If you would like to vent, rant, whine, moan, or complain, you may throw your negative feelings into the-void and the-void will accept them as sacrifices. They may be witnessed, but never discussed. If you would like advice, feedback, or comfort, please use the pillow-fort instead.”
I recall numerous times when I worked in high tech that I closed my office door and silently screamed at stupid decisions made by the management or actions by my co-workers. I found out by accident that I often sent my co-workers to their own version of The Void to scream.
It doesn’t seem to make a difference what our situation is, there are times when we just want to scream. But what I’m seeing more of, that might be more concerning, is people getting lost in their thoughts. A grocery store stock person stopped beside me the other day and asked if she could help me find something. I discovered I’d been staring at a shelf of cereal for several minutes.
“Oh. I was looking for batteries,” I said.
And it’s not just old people. Kids in school are known for staring vacantly into space while the teacher lectures. I’ve even seen the cameras scan the fans at sporting events and land on someone who, amidst the yelling and cheers around them, is staring off into The Abyss.
The Abyss is calling us.
Friedrich Nietzche in Beyond Good and Evil (1886) famously said, “If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” Some of my books are simply The Abyss staring back.
What got me thinking about this?
Oh, yes. I’m preparing another book for my Signature Collection that I plan to release around the first of November. I’ve combined all three volumes of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon into a single massive book. (8.5x11 inches and nearly 700 pages! Published in hard cover.) In addition to having a digitally signed photograph of the author (me) in each book, there is an exclusive interview. Airline thriller author Karlene Petitt agreed to interview me for this edition and set about reading all three volumes.
After reading the third volume, she sent me a message that said, “I just finished your series. Quite fun but disturbing read. I was dreaming of sex trafficking last night!!”
Yes, that third volume definitely looks into the dark. And the dark looks back.
I completely rewrote the third volume and will re-release it as an eBook in October, but the message is the same. There are things in this world that need to be cleaned up. If there was a demon running around, we wouldn’t be happy with the way he started the cleanup.
All three volumes of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon are available as eBooks on ZBookStore. The hardcover trilogy will be released in November. The second edition Volume 3 eBook is coming in October.
By the way, in case you're confused, you are supposed to scream into the Void and stare into the Abyss. People often reverse them, to no one’s harm.
But what’s the point?
Why should a writer of erotica be concerned about sex trafficking, depression, PTSD, and autism?
When Bob attacks a vast trafficking network and destroys it, why isn’t that the end of sex trafficking? When Tony (Model Student series) gets four wives and a successful career with high praise as an artist, why isn’t his depression cured? Why does Henry (Forever Yours) continue to suffer from PTSD years after the attack? Why isn’t Art (Strange Art series) cured of his autism when the dark goes away?
Because that’s not the way life works!
In a recent interview, I was asked “What is one piece of advice you’d give to aspiring erotica writers?” To me, the answer is simple: “Before you focus on sex, story, or world-building, create believable characters that people can engage with.” Believable characters have to act in believable ways. The simple truth is that there is no cure for depression, PTSD, or autism. People won’t stop trafficking in humans as long as there is profit to be made. Governments will always be corrupt. People will continue to exploit others.
Yes, I sometimes write stories in which there is some kind of deus ex machina. The gods ride in to save the day. I consider them light and unreal—and so do my readers. In reality, the gods don’t step in to save the lives of Denise and Lexi and Fletcher and Harper because there are crappy people who interfere even with God’s plans.
And that’s where the stories lie. In elementary writing, we are taught that a story needs a conflict, an obstacle, a reason to exist. Or as I have said on occasion, “There is no happily ever after if it is happily ever before.” No one cares.
And so, when I write a story like Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain, Jett is still dealing with the problem of being a GenZ teen, or a digital native, in a world where hopes and dreams seem to be forever out of reach. There will never be enough money that he can just devote his life to his art. His polycule will have people leave as they find their own path. They’ll have to live through the pandemic without killing each other. They may never have jobs that support their lives, let alone prepare them for retirement.
No matter how escapist the story is, it isn’t interesting if it isn’t relatable in real life.
I have readers who complain that they read erotica to escape from reality, but I shove reality down their throats. Sorry about that. In my daily interactions with people in the real world, I find they are doing just fine at denying reality.
And so, like an ancient Greek playwright, I look at my characters and determine their fatal flaw. Then I exploit it by looking into the dark.
I get some great ideas sent to me by readers. This week I received one from a devoted reader and it struck a chord with me. The topic is creating a title and description that attracts readers. Now that’s something worth considering next week!
This is number 121 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
When you're hot you're hot
And when you're not you're not
Put all the money in and let's roll 'em again
When you're hot you're hot
—Jerry Reed
HERE IN LAS VEGAS, it’s the first of September and the temperature is still over 100º. Why did I think living here was a good idea? Well, when you’re hot, you’re hot. The air conditioning bill is over a hundred, too.
I’ve been working hard on several projects and since getting back to Vegas in the middle of August, I’ve been checking them off. I finished Forever Yours and the pre-release eBook is available today to my Sneak Peek Patrons. I finished my Halloween contest entry (rules demand this stay confidential until after judging) and it is in the hands of my final editor.
I’ve completed the Signature Edition paperback of Forever Yours and it will be released September 14. But that’s not the only one. I’m nearly finished compiling the Signature Edition of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon. All three volumes will be released in one massive (670-page) hardcover tome. The interview to be included in the new edition is slated for September 25 and I’ll release the book around the first of November. I’ll also do a public re-release Volume 3: Current Era (Mostly), since I’ve done a significant amount of rewriting and adding new material to it. (Yes, my faithful editor, you’ll get it first.)
The Signature Edition of the Strange Art Trilogy, another three-in-one volume, will be released near the end of the year. Editing and layout are finished and I’m awaiting the interview questions for that one.
Drawing on the Bright Side of the Brain has become my major creative focus for a while. I expect I’ll get that finished by November or so. I might manage release it in 2025, but I’m not really expecting it until January.
Yeah, when you’re hot, you’re hot.
My records indicate that I began the first draft of Double Twist on the first of May 2019 and completed it at the end of June. 168,000 words in two months. That only told a piece of the story, though.
The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins was a five-volume set that I started in September of 2018 and finished in September of 2019. It was a total of 837,535 words. In one year. When you’re hot, you’re hot. During those years, I also wrote Things I Never Told My Wife and Adams’ Apples. Shorter works, but significant, nonetheless. And I wrote Nathan Everett’s (Wayzgoose) City Limits and Wild Woods, Stocks & Blondes, and A Place at the Table. It was a busy year.
The thing is, I was hot. I was releasing at least one book every quarter. The words just kept flowing. My Patreon membership quadrupled. The scores on my serials were on a constant rise and book sales were unprecedented. I felt my writing was finally maturing to a point I could have a nice supplemental income from it.
Ah, the sweet smell of success. In the next two years, I wrote and published the Team Manager series as well as a number of other books. They continued to sell well and achieve high scores.
All these books including The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins, are available at ZBookStore.
And when you’re not, you’re not.
I have continued to write successful series for the past three years, but the fire seems to have cooled a bit. Neither Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon nor the Photo Finish hexalogy attracted the readership nor attention of my other books. Imagine my shock when my 2024 Valentine’s Day contest entry, “Carousel,” placed last in the contest! It’s the only story in my collection on SOL that rated less than a 6.0. To redeem myself, my 2024 Halloween contest entry, The Key to Eve, won third prize.
Yikes! as alarmists say.
Maybe I should redesign my logo!
No. I don’t want to draw the president’s attention to my erotica. It’s way too woke! (Meaning disliked by right wing bigots. Not all right-wingers. Just the bigots.)
The truth is that readership changes over the years. I know a portion of my most devoted readers are aging and dying. They are being replaced by younger readers who have a different set of interests and a different standard of rating. I can tell this is true as scores on many of my older stories that were highly rated have dropped a little over the past two years as well.
That is not to say that my stories shouldn’t be improved or that I shouldn’t make adjustments to my style. Overall, I believe my most recent books, The Strongman, Soulmates, and Forever Yours, are much better written than many of my earlier highly-rated stories. That doesn’t make them more popular. It just means that I’m not as hot as I once was.
It shows up in the speed of my writing, as well. I guess that is one of the things I need to face. I’ll be 76 years old this month, and many things don’t work as fast as they used to. In fact, one of the basic realities of aging is that things people used to tell me to slow down, they are now hounding me to speed up: Driving, talking, walking, writing, sex. Just get on with it, would you?
Of that list, I single out writing. I began writing Forever Yours, for example, November 1, 2024. Now this month, I am finally getting it released. The first draft of 151,000 words and 45 chapters was finished before Christmas. 2,960 words per day. The second draft took the next eight months. It ended up 257,000 words and 73 chapters. 1,070 words per day. Part of the problem was a simple slow-down in my thinking and part of it was exhaustion.
In 2024, I wrote an average of 2,011 words per day, all year long! In 2023: 2,247 words per day. 2022: 3,808 words per day. 2021: 3,217. 2020 (you remember that year, right?): 993 words per day. 2019: 3,129.
You get the picture? So far, in 2025 I’ve averaged 1,931 per day. I’ve slowed down. Because I’m not as hot anymore. Discarding the year of the plague, I’m writing about 1,000 words a day fewer than my five-year average!
So, the question is: Will I get hot again? Maybe. Seems I’ve had a lot of jumbled up ideas in my head that haven’t shaken out yet. I want to get some of them out on paper. And I confidently think, you want that, too!
I recently received a comment from a respected novelist who had just finished reading all three volumes of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon. She said: “I just finished your series. Quite fun but disturbing read.” Next week, “Looking into the Dark.”
This is number 120 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
MY MOTHER was a Methodist preacher back in the days when it was truly unusual to have a woman in the pulpit. One of the first things she did when she was assigned to her first church was establish a ‘children’s story time’ in the middle of the Sunday service. She invited the children in the congregation to the chancel steps, sat down with them, and told a story that had a moral, or that tied in with her theme for the day.
Adults in the congregation loved it! The stories never sounded like she was preaching at them.
I remember a series of stories she told that had birds as characters. I can’t remember the names of all the birds who lived in the little bird town, but they each had a story connected to them. One stuck with me about a very talkative bird who just couldn’t stay quiet during church service. The choir was singing a lovely anthem but this bird just tried to talk louder. Finally, she said to her neighbor, “I wish they wouldn’t sing so loud!”
It happened that her wish was granted before it was spoken. The choir reached a point in the song where there was a dramatic pause in the music and everyone in the congregation could clearly hear the churchbird’s comment. My mother said, “She quickly looked around for a hole in the floor she could crawl into but couldn’t find one small enough. And then the choir sang the last line of the anthem, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’”
| 234567 | > |