I don’t know if I’ve posted a definitive “personal definition of erotica/erotic romance” blog here, or not. As I recall, it’s almost standard inagural-post fare for writers who get a contract to publish an “erotic romance.” The first question out of anybody’s mouth is “do you have a blog?” shortly thereafter followed by the need to justify yourself as not a smut-peddler, or alternatively, to claim that you are, and revel in it. Either way, this leads to the need for an ubiquitous “What is Erotic Romance?” post in your blog. I’m usually one who bucks a trend (mostly by not showing up for it, or being at the airport when the ship’s waiting at the dock). Well, this wouldn’t be the first time I’m late to a trend, and it won’t be the last, I’m sure. So here’s my thoughts on what erotica is, what erotic romance is, and as a bonus, you get some reasoning behind it instead of this simply being a post to reassure my mother that I’m not working somehow in the pr0n industry. Follow me below the fold for some thoughts on smart writer’s branding and why a writer’s personal definition for teh_hawt_stuff can be one of the rudders with which to steer a career.

My Take on Erotica

My definition of Erotica–and this is purely subjective and personal, so YMMV.  My personal definition of erotica is a story in which the characters’ growth arcs, characterizations, flaws, and strengths are portrayed through sex, sexual metaphor, or sexual expression. It doesn’t require a happy ending, or a relationship.

My Take on Erotic Romance

Same goes here on the definitions. YMMV. In an erotic romance that I write, the characters’ relationship arc, growth, and completion (to a satisfying ending that is 99% of the time “happily ever after” or “happily for now”) is portrayed with a focus on, but not exclusively focusing on, their sexual relationship.

What About Branding?

I’ll come right out and say it–the majority of the market for erotica and erotic romance has a huge overlap (and a huge overlap with the market for more traditional romance), and one thing they (we, since I do count myself as the “market.” What? I read, too, yanno) do NOT like is to be baited-and-switched.

Every author of genre fiction knows in some way that there’s an expectation that begins when a reader picks up (opens up) a book. That expectation is your contract with the reader. If you give them something that’s not what they were expecting, 99% of the time they will not think it’s cute, clever, or stunning–they’ll just be pissed off that it’s not what it says on the tin. Now obvious randomness aside in the form of things that the author has little control over (covers, shelving location, and sometimes, back blurb), if you claim to be writing erotic romance, then your story ought to be hot.

I’ll be honest–I’m not the best at the branding. I had a cutely alliterative tagline when I published my first novel, and I had it in my sig line. But it was one of what is now thousands of cutely alliterative taglines among thousands of authors, and Lord knows I didn’t pimp it enough for it to become notable. I was too busy writing very slowly, and well, while it was cutely alliterative just like all the others…it wasn’t really me.

My new tagline (“The passion of a thousand burning suns,” in case it’s not clear from the blog header) is a lot closer to “me” mostly because it’s a little bit of a snarky inside joke-slash-play on words that has as much to do with internet memes as it does SF/Futuristic erotic romance. But it’s a lot better because of that–it’s closer to who I am and what I write, and it might sort of indicate an expected heat level.

The other aspect of my branding is my name. Xandra Gregory. I chose it because it sounds a lot sexier than my real name (which gets butchered on a regular basis by telemarketers), because it has meaning to me, and because having your name start with X rather than just about any other letter makes you sound just that much sexier. People have told me this when I tell ‘em my nom de pixel. “Oooh, that sounds racy.” “How sexy.” (Although they usually tell me this when I’m eating something at a party and I think I must be hawt schtuff with my face full of salsa).

So combine a tagline with a pseudonym and you get…an expectation. Set when I published my first novel, and maybe reinforced by my second–I’ll be honest–while the first is het and the second M/M, they’re both near-future and sci-fi in nature, and fit well within my personal definition of “erotic romance.” Subsequent novels are going to have to fit the same bill. My critique partner, Roxy, will be happy to read this, because she’s been hammering at me for years about picking a genre and sticking with it.

But should my writing take me in another direction, then my branding efforts–such as they are–will be diluted, and more to the point, I’ll no longer be delivering a Xandra product (with the passion of a thousand burning suns–see what I did there?). Part of my personal contract with “the reader” is to not bait-and-switch ‘em. If I’m not writing erotic romance, I’m not being Xandra Gregory.

Lucky for me, there’s a whole phone book of other names out there from which I can craft another diabolical pseudonym and inflict myself on a different subgenre.

Same goes with manuscripts and characters.

My current WIP is in draft status, but it has scented an end of a sort, and my creative engine wants that end to happen as fast as possible–which is fine for a discovery draft. But I’m past discovery draft time and into “let’s make this presentable” time. Once you’ve got a handle on what the theme of your story is, your scenes have to express and enforce that theme in some way. But characters don’t always want to stay on task. There are greener pastures just out their windows, and they can see. And boy, do they want to explore said green pastures.

One of the things they tell you as a young or beginning writer is to play games of “what if.” And those games are great for building worlds and making plots and creating stories. But when it comes time to make sense of those stories, you have to pick a scenario and stick with it. You pick a worldview and the scenes in your story have to support that worldview, so those tangents your characters are begging you to follow–sorry, kids. rest stop only. Back on the bus, because school’s not out yet.

If you don’t yet know what your story’s theme or worldview is, consider asking, as my second grader does constantly, “Why do I have to do this?” Your story, like my second grader, needs to fulfill some requirement. Granted, your story’s requirement will probably be less “basic math and reading comprehension and spelling skills” and closer to “love brings people together” or “luck favors the prepared” (although come to think of it, my second grader is learning that lesson). If your theme isn’t yet clear, feel free to wander off on some of those promising-looking tangents, but once you identify what it is that you’re trying to say with your story, get back on the bus, or you risk letting your story languish on side roads, and readers can’t find you if you’re too far from that interstate.

Today, I’m the bug. On the interstate. I can see a deadline approaching (with the word “Peterbilt” emblazoned across the grille) and I’m flapping my little ladybug wings as hard and fast as I can over the keyboard in hopes that, like a quantum butterfly, I can effect change. Mostly the change from “X words” to “(X+5000) words*2^The End” words.

This one is research-intensive. I’m constantly tabbed-over to wikipedia, and Google Books (and lemmetellya–whatever issues I as an author or the Author’s Guild or publishing companies have with Google Books, it is an INVALUABLE research tool for extant material and out of print primary source material. If I had to plumb the library for this, it’d be weeks and probably more than a couple bucks). Also, there are a hundred and ten other sites I’m constantly flitting to and from, including the library in meatspace.

The trick to researching is that you only research what you need to continue. It’s too easy to dig into something just for its own sake and end up two weeks into the project and not have written a damn word. But I got a handle on this one.  And now I’m gonna go read a little bit more.  For research purposes. No, really, I need this…

Part of the reason we are so on the ball this year is that We Have A Plan. Mr. Xandra and I sat down sometime back in October or November and decided we needed a Garden Vision, instead of a half-assed, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have fresh vegetables and cut down on the grocery bills a little?” idea that never quite pans out. Except in zucchini. Man, if money were measured to the zucchini standard, you could call me Croesus. We drew charts. On graph paper. And we planned out how many boxes we wanted, as well as what would go in ‘em. So after the Snowpocalypse finally melted away and the sun remembered that people live here and kinda need to see it every once in a while, we knew where we were going and we could hit the ground (literally) running (metaphorically).  I’ve recently begun to adopt some of this to my writing, because next to that feeling of  writing “The End,” there’s nothing quite like the feeling of, “yeah, I know where I’m going with this.” When you’ve got headlights in the dark, you can punch the accelerator.

Now, I come from a long history of pantsing. Back when my stories were written in crayon, I had fantastic starts that ended up in really random places, often dead-ends. I still go through multiple revisions, and I think I’ve probably as of now trashed twice as many words as I’ve kept. When I strike out into The Unknown, I usually do it without a map.

But lately, I’ve had to modify my adventuring into the mists. Writing time is always at a premium, and I have a backlog of ideas and a backlog of stories partially written or in varying stages of revision that aren’t doing anybody any good sitting on my home network.  So I said, this time, I’m doing it different.

Now usually, the career pantser will interject with the horror story of trying, and failing, to navigate by plot outline or something. And in the past, that’s been the case for me. Once a story’s plotted, it’s out of my head, and I have little desire to actually write it.  It goes in the file for “Save for the future when I need ideas.” Only problem is…I haven’t run out of ideas. Ideas are the one thing a writer rarely runs out of. But this time, I’m doing it different. I’m not taking a map.  I’m taking a compass.

Our garden plan is an awesome thing in theory. In practice, well, no plan survives contact with the enemy, as the saying goes, and this is the case with both the garden plan and the WIP outline. What the garden plan did was give us dimensions and boundaries in which to work. It gave us a compass and a sextant to find true north, and showed us the boundaries of our world.  That’s what I’ve taken with me in my WIP. I don’t have an outline plotted to the nth detail.  But I know where the shady spot is, where the swampy bits are, and which bits of green are the weeds.

It won’t tell me the exact path to take, but it will show me which ones are growing in the right direction. The steps I take are part of the discovery.

For some, an ebook is simply a different means of content delivery. They will enjoy the latest bestseller or their favorite author’s latest story in either digital or print form–it’s all the same to them. They want the story, and they want it when they want it. For others, an ebook is an opportunity to make changes in the process of publishing–for them, time spent hunting down out of print backlists of favorite authors, or missed books in a series, or even classics from the next fifteen-year overnight sensation, is only a process they engage in because it’s currently the only way to find that awesome book from 1994 whose title you can’t remember. These readers question why the access to the content requires an expiration date when it no longer requires a physical manufacturing process. And for still another group of readers, an ebook is an opportunity to change the way we experience a story.

No one is sure yet which of these groups has the closest guess to right as to what the future holds. But it would be crazy not to at least try to imagine what could be.

We still see ebooks through the reference lens of print books. But what if it doesn’t have to be that way? What ways could the benefits of instant online gratification find a way to enhance our reading experiences? What makes an ebook a unique experience, and what could make reading an ebook not simply different from reading a paperback or a hardback book, but better?

Playing it safe is a net gain in writing, too.  Writing from non-controversial points of view keeps a writer from offending people.  Sensible shoes keep your toes from getting cold if you find yourself standing in the shadows or away from the sun. And yet…without running that risk, those little piggies don’t have the chance to wiggle in the sunshine, and neither do your words.

It’s always more of a risk to write about something you feel strongly about.  It also takes more work.  It isn’t safe, and it’s certainly not inoffensive (although, honestly, nothing really is totally inoffensive–there’s always somebody around to get offended if for no other reason that they may be having a bad day and you’re the unlucky random target). But the payoffs can make you feel like you’re two inches taller and your legs look hot in skinny jeans and chunky heels (I make my own fashion statement–don’t judge).

The trick is to find a kernel of passion in your writing.  That kernel of passion will often be sensitive if you poke it.  It’ll hurt. It’ll shiver at the thought of going out without a coat to protect it from the world. It’ll definitely try to hide and fool you into thinking that there’s something else you should be more passionate about.  It’ll make you think you look fine wearing the loafers with the jeans, even if your white socks make you look like you’re prone to the moonwalk and should be short one sequined glove.

But I’m wearing strappy sandals today, in spite of my toes maybe freezing off. I’m heading for sunny spots, even if I have to walk through the shade, and dammit, my piggies are gonna wiggle in the sunshine.  I’m putting strappy silver sandals on my writing, too.  My current WIP wanders further afield than I am used to.  But I’m more excited about it than I’ve been in the planning stages of a WIP in a long time, and that, my friends, is what wiggling your piggies in sunshine feels like.

Whether from bad dreams, a too-cold bed–even when there’s a cat curled up on someone’s head, or “I heard a noise, Mom, our house is haunted, I swear.” (and no, the house isn’t haunted, it’s three years old and the place used to be a farm and a pasture, if we’ve got the ghosts of anything, it’s cows, squirrels, and the spirits of soybeans past, now go back to bed), my nighttime visitors will snuggle for about ten minutes, just until they fall back asleep, and then–off come the covers.  It gets me to thinking, these late-night invasions, and I’ve been thinking about covers lately.

Book covers, that is.

One of the persistent concepts I toy with on a regular basis is a question I keep asking myself.  How are ebooks different from print books? Followed up with the more interesting question of how can ebooks be more different from print books?

Both Alien Communion and Jolly Rogered have awesome covers.  Liquid Silver is one of the better houses for providing classy, quality covers, and they did so long before some of the other houses left the Poser-art covers behind in favor of photomanip and original artwork.  Each of my books has an excellent cover, as do many e-only and e-first releases.

But why just one?  I mean, ebooks can be found and “shelved” in multiple places, under multiple keywords, and under multiple sub-headings.  I see reissued print books in stores with updated covers, covers differing between hardback, trade, and mass market paperback editions, and books repackaged with movie stills.  I see books repackaged under different auspices–they started life as one genre or subgenre and after the movie came out or the hype exploded, they re-emerge with new covers to appeal to a larger audience attracted to a more general marketing appeal.

But all that takes time and money in the print world–a publisher has to seriously consider whether or not to create a new print run of a book when the old one might not have sold through, leaving extra stock with older covers on the publisher’s books. But things happen faster at the speed of electrons.

Not to say cover art is free in the world of epublishing–artists should be compensated for their work whether they paint in pixels or pastels. But if you write something cross-genre, say, Science Fiction Romance *cough* ;P then the online sales of your story aren’t limited to one shelf or the other, and perhaps your cover marketing ought not to be limited, either.

Every author wants to attract more readers, and the genre shorthand of visual cues on covers can help to reach a core audience within a genre, who knows what they’re looking for and knows what the cues mean.  But why limit that attraction to a single genre when cover cues can be used to reach multiple genres?  I’d love to know if anyone’s tried a simultaneous release with different covers–with a print or an e-book.  If so, was it a successful or wise decision? Do you feel you’ve reached more readers?  Do you feel multiple covers would give you the chance to reach more readers if you write cross-genre?

As a writer, it is mega-important for you to figure out your own personal flavor and brand of gut-rot.  I know, ewwwww, right?  But writer’s gut-rot can eat into your work and your writing and your career until you wake up one day and realize that this thing you once loved, you now hate and don’t know why.  So many writer-friends have told similar stories about something in their process, their career, their writer’s life, or elsewhere that unequivocally rotted out their passion from the inside. And if something is rotting in there, it needs to change.

That gut-rot might be a step in your process, like plotting (or not plotting, or the way you plot), or the efforts you put into promo (whether or not you’re published yet), a particularly draining critique group, a toxic business or personal relationship, or even unreasonable personal expectations (I’m not saying aim for the ground, but if your goals include “NYT bestseller list” or “XYZ publisher acquires me/puts me in lead title slot/spends millions on promo for my title” you are making your success dependent on factors not wholly in your power to control.

Which brings us back around to my broken streak.  It started last year, when I was whinging to Mr. Xandra about my six whole readers (honestly, I’m not sure if there are even six of you out there, LOL!  And I wasn’t whinging about you, I was whinging about the lack of more of you) and why didn’t I see more traffic to my blog. Pragmatist that he is, shut me up by telling me, “Duh, readers want something to read.”

Yep.  If it wasn’t for the hot air, my head would collapse in on itself sometimes.  I mean, I knew this stuff, I’m a smart chick, right? (Don’t answer that)

So I very quietly made a promise to myself that, come hell or high water, I’d make sure to post something in my blog once a week.  If I couldn’t post on the same day (which I often can’t as schedules for moms of little kids are fluid, at best, regimental at worst, and neither offer much in the way of free, quiet, quality, tranquil time in which to ruminate intelligently a la blog), then I’d use the handy-dandy magical “schedule post” button to make it cleverly look like I was showing up once a week, even if I was neck-deep in edits (which I was at one point) or otherwise occupied (several times).  I have (mostly) kept to this goal, and the goal remained something that would be in my control.  Last week, I should have scheduled my post earlier and been done with it before my troubles hit, but it’s a lesson I shall take with me into this week.  I can’t control how many blog readers I get–that’s up to anybody who stumbles across this out-of-the-way cul-de-sac of the internet.  But I can make it a place where readers have something to read.

Now, speaking of something to read…there’s a story that isn’t writing itself.

I’ve been submitting manuscripts since 1998.  Granted, I write slow, and many of my submissions have been to traditional publishing (and via snailmail, to boot), so it’s not as if glaciers move much slower than the process. Every time I do this, I get a little thrill of accomplishment and let myself breathe a sigh of relief at a job done.  But the more I do it, the less time that satisfaction at something being finished feeling lasts.  At first, it was weeks or even a month that I could ride the high of finishing a manuscript and putting together a submission.

Now? I take the rest of the day “off” and clean my bathrooms.

By the time I hear back on this one, it will have been old news.  I’ll be mid-way (optimistically) into my next project.  On a different track, and riding a completely different train of thought.  The process of publication is a long one.  An author’s existence is front-loading at its finest.  The bulk of our creative work is done before the process can even start.  Of course, once it does, it’s not a downhill-coast to mad profits by any stretch.  At the same time we’re “resting” on our laurels over a completed work, we’re percolating the artistic coffeepot for the next project, while simultaneously anxiously awaiting revisions, edits, copy, and covers.  And that doesn’t even mention the promo.

A writer’s life is constant running ahead of the curve.  Or trying to.  When there are years between creation and publication (and even more years between publication and payment), you’ve gotta have a few things in the hopper to keep you going.

It almost went unheard amidst the exciting chatter about what it was like to get “the call,” work with an editor, decide whether to hire a publicist, and to do that all-important thing every writer wants to do after the first sale–order swag (oh yes, we love the shinies.  Pens, fridge magnets, bookmarks, little bitty bubble bottles with the name of our book stuck to them, hell yeah, we love that shit).  It almost went completely under the radar amidst the talk about how making the USA Today list or the Waldenbooks list or even, gasp, the Times or the Times Extended can change your career (and simultaneously have no effect on your life, because people still don’t recognize you at the grocery store).

She spoke those quiet words, and silence swept the room for just a second.  Things returned to normal shortly afterwards, of course, but those words tucked themselves away in my brain, only to resurface years later after I’d gotten “the email” and wondered, “what next?”

I knew I wasn’t going to be one of the ones who immediately ordered a bazillion pens (but damn, did I want to.  I never say no to a pen).  I didn’t have the budget, and kept my head firmly on my shoulders–no spending more than I’d likely make, and epublishing being what it was at the time, I knew I wasn’t likely to win the lottery of a runaway hit (and even if I did, the digital version of “runaway hit” does not a millionaire make).  I chose Fridge Magnets (next to pens, I love fridge magnets–my refrigerator keeps ice cream cold and also serves as filing cabinet and art gallery), and I did so acknowledging that most of my promo should happen online, where my books are.

I made a website and started a blog.  I created a sig line and haunted forums where writers and readers gathered.  I joined yahoo groups.  I guest-blogged, group-blogged, and blog-toured.  Guess what?

That’s right.  It ate me alive.  I ran contests–although not nearly as many as others have, and without nearly as many of the hair-raising results.  I participated in chat loops and author chats where the emails flew fast and furious and ate up gigabytes.

And I hated it.

Yeah, that’s right.  I couldn’t stand getting on the loops and talking up because it felt so damn fake.  I wanted to sell my book.  I still do want people to buy my book (and read it and like it!), but I have never been one of those people who enjoys talking myself up.  I feel like a fake and I feel like a dork.  Sure, put me somewhere where the subject matter is something I got something to say about and yes–I’ll talk your ear off.  Eventually.  But only after I’ve lurked forever and feel like I have something meaningful to say.  And reading for me has never been a large-group experience.  I like a book, I’ll tell a handful of people about it, but I don’t gush over it to all and sundry.  Video games, yes.  Books–no.  They’re an intensely personal experience to both read and write.

I didn’t want to be yet another voice screaming out, “Look at me! Look at me!”

That’s why I don’t make appearances on loops much.  Occasionally, I’ll post an excerpt, blurb, or rarely, an announcement, because I feel like excerpts and blurbs have value–they are samples of my writing.

I know that’s probably not the right way to do it.  I should be chatting, getting involved with readers, making connections and making friends.  But friends and connections are about more than squee/agree posts on a chatters’ loop. And they should damn well be a hell of a lot more than thinly disguised marketing efforts.  We all brand ourselves as authors with catch-phrases and taglines (I’m guilty of it myself), but at some point, the advert is over.  What you have left, then, is the writing.

And if you’re eaten alive by the promo, what’s left over for the writing?