Latest works in progress, free reads, stories and books published, etc.
“Where are you going?” Donna demanded. “You love me!”
“Get off me, crazy bitch! I never said that.”
The object of Donna’s affection rolled out of bed, pushing her away with careless hands…
Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart.
Last month, I podcasted four unusual stories for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast. These were the Mundania stories, the only stories ever to appear on Heat Flash that were not science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Yes, I actually wrote four, count them, FOUR contemporary erotica stories, and they were just released for sale today in e-book format from Logical Lust Publications.
You can buy the stories here at Logical Lust, either individually for $1.99 or the entire set of four for $4.99. Not sure if you want to buy these lovely, lusty, scorching tales? Then listen to them here first on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast! The stories are:
A Man in a Kilt – Jimmy’s a rough and tumble Scotsman who thinks he can handle any woman. Then he meets Nan, a friendly domme who teaches him otherwise… (Fem domme; BDSM)
Rapacious Mrs. Horner – Diane Horner is a forty-something divorcee with a serious addiction to gay porn and painful broken heart. When her son’s best friend comes onto her, what will she turn him away or eat him alive? (F/m; older woman/younger man)
Diablo – Spoiled rich kid Randall wants one thing and one thing only – Pony Boy, the hired hand at Polk’s Stables, down on his knees and ready to please. When Pony Boy refuses to be tamed, will Randall break him instead? (M/m; warning – scorching hot m/m erotica but also controversial)
A Room with a View – With the economy in the toilet, Darcy Daniels has lost her job, her car, her apartment, and now her pride as she’s forced to move back in with her parents. Then she discovers her old bedroom window looks right into the window of the boy next door. Is he watching her at night? Is she going to watch him? And if their fathers hate each other, do they even have a chance at getting together? (Older woman/younger man; voyeurism; sex toys; even a touch of romance in this one!)
A note about these stories: if you’re looking for humor, definitely check out A Man in a Kilt and A Room with a View. If you like your erotica edgy and dangers, then go for broke with Rapacious Mrs. Horner and Diablo. And remember, you can also get all four books together in one collection, and listen to them on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast before you buy!
Over the summer, I spent some time trying to do a bit of promo for my work. If there’s one area where I really fall down as a writer, it’s promotion. Yeah, I blog and I twitter and I podcast and I do the web comic, but there are facets of promo that I don’t do often enough, like participate in Yahoo groups or hold contests or send out for reviews.
So I’ve been thinking lately of ways I can improve my promotion plan. Yes, I have a plan, or rather, I should have a plan. I sort of have a plan, but I need to sit down and redo it and make it better – easier to execute, defined goals, etc. The problem is finding time to do all this planning of promotion and executing of promotion and still get my writing done. So I’m looking into simple tasks that I can do that won’t tax my time or my brain. My initial ideas so far are…
Send out one of my books for review every Friday. I have a list of review websites, and if I just took 30 minutes each Friday, I could send these books out and maybe get a slew of reviews. It takes time to get a review done; most places take 8-12 weeks to get a review done. But if I start sending out now, I could have a ton of reviews coming my way in a couple months. That can’t be bad.
Continue to blog. Right now, I’m doing at least 3 regular posts a week here and my weekly post on Oh Get A Grip. I’d like to add one more regular post to this, and then I think my blogging efforts would be complete. A good blog would (hopefully) keep people coming back for more, but a good blog has to be maintained with regular content. I want to be certain I provide that content.
Continue to cartoon. Since the start of school, I’ve set aside one day a week to work on the web comic, and so far I’ve been able to keep a regular schedule. Hopefully, with regular drawing, I’ll get faster and better at producing the comic, so I won’t have to spend an entire work day on it, but for now, I’m willing to spend a day to get this thing done!
Revamp the website. I’ve talked about this before, but now have finally started to take action on it. On Friday, I set in motion a transfer of all my domain names to GoDaddy.com, because I know GoDaddy plays nice with WordPress (it better play nice!), and because I can host multiple domain names on one hosting package. Once the domain name transfer is complete, the actual website revamp begins. I’ve got the domain name www.cynicalwoman.com, which I’ve used for years for a flash website I did way back when. I love the work I did on that, but updating a flash website is a bitch and a half for me, especially since I no longer understand the latest version of Action Script (a situation I’ll need to correct very soon, it seems). I want an html website with a WordPress blog, and I want the website to combine most of my current websites – www.helenehmadden.com, www.cynicalwoman.blogspot.com, www.theadventuresofcynicalwoman.blogspot.com – into one place. I’ve pretty much stopped posting anything over at www.helenehmadden.com because it’s too much effort to maintain a separate writing website from my personal blog. And besides, I’ve pretty much effectively branded myself as Cynical Woman, stay-at-home mom and erotica writer, so why not go with that?
Once the website revamp is done, I’ll add to my list of promo goals. But for now, I think this is enough. Hopefully, I can get a working website up and running by Halloween. Let’s see what I can do.
Now, I want all of YOU guys to tell me something. If you’re a writer, what kind of promo do you do that works well for you? What promo have you done that turned out to be a huge waste of time? And readers, what kind of promo would you like to see me do? Give me some ideas of things you would enjoy, because one thing I don’t want to do is annoy the crap out of readers with bad promo. (Please, please, please leave comments on this one, because I really do want to know!)
It’s supposedly the question every author dreads – “Where do you get your ideas from?” And I suppose some authors dread it because it can be hard to explain the process behind brainstorming and writing and rewriting and so on. But guess what? It’s not a question this writer dreads. In fact, I’d be more than happy to explain where my ideas come from.
Where do ideas come from? Everywhere and anywhere, obviously. I get my ideas from magazine articles, TV shows, other writer’s books, day dreams, nightmares, and random words. I’ve got a million ideas flitting through my head at any given time. The problem for me is not where do the ideas come from, but how quickly can I catch them and pin them down? And then what amount of work will I have to do to bring an idea into fruition as a story.
I go through story ideas like nobody’s business. At the start of each month, I have to come up with between 4-6 ideas for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast, and I have to come up with them fast. I hate working in a void when I write, so each month I pick a theme for the upcoming month’s stories. For October, I always go with some sort of horror theme, which means I just spent the entire month of September writing five horror stories, and each had to be different from the last. To make things easier, I refined my theme idea to “Lustcraft” and worked on homage stories based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I made a list of all the Lovecraft I enjoyed, and when a few Edgar Allen Poe story ideas snuck into the mix, I went ahead and included them too. It seemed fitting to me, since Poe was a source of inspiration for Lovecraft. Once I had a viable list of stories I could play with, I took the originals apart and had fun putting my own spin on everything from the Dunwich Horror to The Tell-Tale Heart.
But that was last month, and this is this month, which means I’m now working on November’s stories. Since Thanksgiving falls within November, I decided to write about gatherings, because Thanksgiving is always when people come together (to eat turkey, if nothing else). Then I pulled out my handy-dandy notebook and came up with a list of all the kinds of gatherings I could think of – weddings, funerals, parties, spring break, migrations, spawning grounds, etc. No idea was too stupid, too vague or too boring to include. At some point, a couple of these ideas spawned more specific images, and I wrote notes about those. Over the course of the last few days, I’ve continued to make my list, play with ideas, and make notes until I’ve come up with a total of 5 story ideas for the month. Now, at this point, I’m ready to move deeper, spending a day developing each individual idea in my notebook and then when I have a slew of notes and lines of dialog and description, I’ll move to the computer and start banging out a story.
I have a week, sometimes less, to write each story. I’ve found that if I do the prep work in my notebook, developing my idea and writing up all those notes, then when it comes time to sit down and actually write, the process is almost painless. I’ve managed to write entire stories in just an hour, if I do that prep work. If I don’t, and the idea is still rather vague, then I may spend all week agonizing at the keyboard until I finally get the story fleshed out and onto the screen. The stories that I’m prepared to write are usually shorter and more concise, ideal for the podcast. The stories that aren’t prepped tend to be longer and harder to write, though I’ve turned out some amazing pieces by starting with only the vaguest of ideas.
I admit, I am much better at coming up with ideas for stories than I am at coming up with ideas for art. I can write a story at the drop of a hat, but I’ve had a lot of times where I’ve sat down with my drawing pad and pencils, looked at that blank page and gone, “Duuuuuuh… what do I draw?” I’ve finally started keeping a little notebook to jot ideas in, using the same process I use for the podcast stories. I’ll be interested in seeing how this works out over the next few months. Who knows, I may turn out more art!
If you’re having trouble coming up with that initial idea, consider starting with something general first (like the monthly theme I use for Heat Flash), and then narrow it down from there. Don’t reject ideas out of hand because they seem stupid or unworkable. Sometimes your brain will combine the stupid with the unworkable and come up with the masterpiece. And maybe get yourself a notebook you can scribble in, something that doesn’t have to be pristine and hold only the best ideas, but can take every single crappy line your brain tosses out. All that crap is fertilizer for story ideas, and you never know what will grow out of it.
And that’s where my ideas come from.
I was going to write about something else for this week’s Writing Wednesday, but after spending a day sick in bed I thought I’d write about writing while sick. Do you write while sick, or not? I tried to get up at 5AM and write, but felt so lousy that I was back in bed after only 500 words, and didn’t get up again until after 10AM. Yeah, I felt really lousy. However, I was still able to pull my laptop in bed with me after I got up the second time and I did get some work done. It was mostly things like answering e-mail and writing blog posts, but not the heavy duty stuff like fiction writing.
I suppose I could have worked on a story. After all, I felt better after I’d had some sleep. But I also had other work that I knew wouldn’t tax my brain quite as much, so I focussed on that instead.
I can write while sick, and will write while sick if I’ve got a deadline coming up. Among other things, I have a weekly deadline with the podcast, and I can’t afford to miss that. Plus, while it may tax my brain to write, it doesn’t tax my body that much. If I can sit upright with a laptop and not have to worry about heaving my lunch all over my keyboard, then I can certainly write. It’s just a question of whether or not I want to.
Today (which is Tuesday for me, since I tend to write blog posts in advance), my weekly deadline wasn’t so pressing, and I had other, lighter work I could do. So I gave myself an easy day, and why not? Most days I’m on the go from 5AM until 10PM. Some days I could use a day in bed.
What do you think? Do you write, create, or work, while you’re sick? Or do you take a break?
A week or so ago, I mentioned on Twitter that I was working out my daily and weekly schedule, using a spreadsheet. The responses I got back on this ranged from, “Holy cow, are you anal retentive organized!” to “Hey, I do the exact same crazy thing!” to “Please don’t post an example of that spread sheet. I really don’t want to see how you obsess over handle your work schedule!” In light of such glowing responses, I felt I had no choice but to share. So here’s a quick screen grab of my daily/weekly schedule, with an explanation of what the hell is going on.
Okay, here’s a small screen shot of the spread sheet. I keep my schedule in Google Docs, so I can access it from anywhere I can get wireless. This is handy in my house because I typically float between three computers all day long. That’s right. I’m so crazy I have to have three computers to get my work done. One computer is a large, super powerful desktop where I do most of my writing and computer graphics as well as all my podcasting and audio recording. That’s in the room above our garage and it has it’s own separate flight of steps from the rest of the house. Then there’s the laptop I often work on in our bedroom, in a sort of mini-office I set up years ago so I could work while breastfeeding my youngest daughter (yes, again, I am crazy). That’s up the other flight of steps. Between the two computers, I’ve got the netbook, set up in the kitchen. This is where I do a lot of my tweeting and web browsing during the day, so if you see me on Twitter, it’s a good bet I’m goofing off in the kitchen. In any event, it doesn’t matter where I am in the house or what computer I’m on, I’ve got access to my schedule.
Now take a look at the schedule. Across the top are the days of the week. Down the side I’ve listed blocks of time in half hour chunks. I rarely do anything that takes less than half an hour of time, and I’ve learned the hard way not to schedule my time in blocks any smaller than that. Whatever I’m doing, I don’t care what it is, it’s going to take at least half an hour of my time.
Also note what time my day starts – 4:45 AM. This is the only time on the calendar that is not listed by the half hour, because it usually only takes 15 minutes for me to actually wake up and roll out of bed, then stumble to the shower. Unless I fall back asleep and then this whole schedule thing is just crap for the rest of the day.
At the very top of the schedule, I’ve made some notes about each day, a sort of quick guideline to let me know what my priorities are for that day. What kind of exercise am I doing that day? Is there any special tasks to accomplish that day? What blog entry is due that day? I’m anal, and very busy, so I like to keep this check list handy at the very top of the schedule.
You may have noticed, the page is color coded. My special notes and goals at the top are in blue. Regularly scheduled items are in green. Those items in black are the ones subject to change on a regular basis. For example, under “Podcast – writing” is a block labeled “Lustcraft theme stories.” That’s the name of the story theme for next month’s podcast. I’m writing the stories this month, so I just put in what them I’m working on, or occasionally what specific story title I’m writing that day.
Here’s another shot, further down on the schedule:
Pretty much the same thing going on here, except later in the day. I include everything I know I will be doing on a regular basis in my schedule, so in addition to what time I want to wake up and go to sleep, I also include my workout schedule, my karate class schedule, when to take the girls to the bus stop and when to pick them up, when to do my physical therapy, when to get the laundry in the washing machine and when to fold it, etc. Anything I need to do on a regular basis, weekly or daily, goes into my schedule, thus the need for the spread sheet. You’ll also notice at the bottom that this page with the actual schedule on it is not the only page in the spread sheet. I’ve also got pages for weekly goals, routines (because sometimes it’s just easier to list a routine in the schedule and then go to that routine on a separate page), my blog schedule, shopping lists, etc. I have a lot going on, and I like to keep track of things, so I use the additional pages to help me do that.
Feeling overwhelmed yet by all this scheduling? It’s okay. Let me say up front that there is no one way to do a personal schedule, and don’t worry if you don’t want to do your schedule how I do it. YOU DON’T HAVE TO! This is really just a peek into how my crazy brain works.
So where did I get this crazy method of making schedules? From my days in the Army Reserves. I used to be a training officer for a very large unit, and was responsible for schedule all the training events for everyone in the unit. I had to decide who was doing what, when, where, why, and how. The schedules I created for each drill weekend look rather similar to my personal schedule today, only I don’t have to list anybody as the trainer for a specific event, nor do I have to quote which regulation and training manual to reference.
How do I come up with this schedule? This, I think, is the important part, and the part I really want to share with people:
I start by making a list of all the things I’d like to do in a day/week.
I prioritize the list, PUTTING THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS FIRST!!
I start plugging items from my list into my schedule. The important things get the biggest blocks of time, and are usually scheduled early in the day. Did you notice what was the first thing on my schedule after waking up, showering, and starting the laundry? Yeah, the podcast, either writing for it or recording and editing the audio for it. The podcast is a weekly deadline. It has to get done every week, and so it gets done first!
I only schedule things in half-hour blocks. I refuse to break down my day into 15 minute segments, or 10 minute segments, or what have you. I know I could list 10-15 minutes of house cleaning a day, to ensure that my house cleaning gets done. But you know what? It never works for me. I’ve learned the hard way that when I start nickel and diming my day away like that, I lose sight of the important work, the work that actually requires me to focus for half an hour. So I don’t bother putting things on there like house cleaning that would only take 15 minutes, because house cleaning isn’t a priority (getting a shower and folding laundry are, however! At least to me).
I try the schedule out for a few days. I usually end up realizing I forgot to add something in, or I need to take something out. Sometimes I realize that a particular task would be more likely to get done if I scheduled it for a different time during the day. For example. I prefer to workout first thing in the morning after I get the kids to school, but recently I realized that I was getting the workout done, but not the other stuff I had planned in the morning. So I flipped things around. Now I work in the morning on my major projects – the web comic, writing a book, redesigning the website – and then take off around lunch time to swim, attend karate class or go for a run. I was surprised at how well that worked out. I actually got a lot more done, and I still got my workouts in.
I realize that past a certain point in the day, things are not going to get done. That point in the day is 3:30PM, when the girls come home from school. At that point, my time becomes their time. So I make sure to fit in things like my physical therapy before they come home, and I don’t plan to do anything serious after they get here.
If the schedule does not seem to be working, I start a new schedule, or I copy the old one and make any changes as I see fit. My schedules are not written in stone. Things happen, plans change. Schedules need to change too.
So that’s my schedule in a not-so-small nutshell. It’s detailed. It’s anal. It works for me.
It usually takes me a day or two to write the basic schedule out, and then another week or so to tweak it until I’ve got everything I want on it. Then I’ll be able to work with that schedule for a few months, up to six if I’m lucky, before needing to change it for some reason. If you’re having trouble getting stuff done during the day, my suggestion is to pull out a spreadsheet, or even just a pen and a piece of paper, and start making a list of things you want to get done, and figure out when to get them done. You don’t have to be as anal detailed as I am, but a simple schedule could help you go a long way toward accomplishing your goals.
I had a couple of folks express an interest in my idea of doing a semi-regular writing post, and since both writing and Wednesday start with W…
Anyway, I wanted to start with a general topic today, e-books. I’ve had the opportunity to read a lot of e-books lately. I love my netbook, and I love reading e-books on it. I’ve enjoyed a lot more books since getting the netbook than I have in a while. E-books don’t take up a ton of space in my house, and they’re very transportable, and hot diggity-dog! Barnes and Noble has made it every easy for me to get e-books from them online!
Of course, Barnes and Noble, and that mega-giant of e-books Amazon.com, are not the only places to get e-books. There’s also Fictionwise.com, which offers some pretty nice deals, and carries a lot of small e-press published books. And just about every e-publisher sells their own books on their website. My publishers do, I know that. So there are lots of places to go buy e-books.
Still, in spite of the availability and the ease of buying, there seems to be this perception that e-books aren’t as good as “real” books. I can say from experience that reading a book on my netbook is just as easy as reading one in print. So I don’t think the problem is the digital format per se, but the perception that e-books are not as well written. I’m not talking about the books that are e-published as well as print published by the big New York publishers, but the e-books that are put out by all those small e-publishers, the books that usually don’t come out in print.
Is the reputation of poor quality one that’s been earned by these small e-publishers? Maybe yes, maybe no. We’ve all seen the major New York publishers put out books that suck rocks, and I’ve personally seen small e-publishers put out books that kept me up reading all night long. But I’ve also seen the reverse, more times than I care to admit.
The fact is, there are some publishers out there who don’t edit books as well as they should. Granted, most e-publishers don’t have the near the staff that the New York publishers have, so frequently you’ll find one editor doing the work of three. In that case, editing mistakes are bound to happen – the occasional misplaced comma or dropped word – and I understand that. But what about the books I read that I can’t believe got published? You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re riddled with bad grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. The plot isn’t so much a plot as it is an excuse to string together sex scenes, or horror scenes, or action scenes, depending on the genre. The characters might as well be cut out of cardboard, they’re so two-dimension. In fact, the entire story reads like really bad fan fiction (nothing against good fan fiction; I LIKE good fan fiction, and frequently the good fan fic writers go on to become good original authors). When I run across bad books like this, I wince, because I know these books are the reason many people perceive the e-publishing industry to sub-standard and filled with crap. And there are far more of these kinds of e-books out there than there should be. Certain publishers are intent on churning out as many e-books as they can, and I get the feeling they will sign anyone who can string more than a few words together. Quantity over quality is never a good deal. Thus I’m always wary of buying books from a small e-publisher I’ve never bought from before. Will I get a treasure, or a dud? Even reading reviews doesn’t help, if I don’t know the reviewer. Many is the time I’ve seen an e-book with great reviews, only to discover that there are some reviewers out there who like everything and anything they read, while I, a rather picky reader, can not get past the first chapter of this book with the glowing reviews. For some reason, I always figure this out after I get the book and start reading. I hate that, because then I’ve wasted money and time, two things I really hate to waste.
So here’s my thought. I like to read e-books, good e-books, and I think there are plenty of good e-books out there put out by small e-publishers. But there’s also a lot of dreck out there too. If you’re a reader, I do recommend you search out some e-books and give them a try. Get books from the big publishers and the small, and be willing to do a little research to find books you’ll like. There really are some gems out there, if you take the time to look. If you’re a writer, do your readers a favor and write the best book you can. Don’t just knock out a quick draft and boot it out the door, thinking your editor will catch all your mistakes and fix them for you. You need to do that before you submit, not after. And please, for love of Pete, don’t treat plot and characterization like afterthoughts, something to be added in after you write all the hot sex scenes (erotic romance writers, I’m looking at YOU!). Finally, if you’re an e-publisher, do EVERYONE a favor. Demand quality books; publish quality books. Publisher fewer books if you need to, to make that happen. But make sure the books are good.
I’m not the best writer in the world, but I am a reader, a reader with a wallet, and I know how I want to spend my money – on quality stories. The publishers and writers who produce those stories are the ones who are going to get my hard-earned bucks.
I’m thinking about what I’d like to do with this blog, and among other things, I’d like to do some more semi-regular topics. So I was wondering. I have Move It Mama Monday and Fiction Friday, both of which are about things near and dear to my heart (exercise and reading, respectively). But would anybody here be interested in hearing my thoughts, however strange they may be, on writing? I figure I must have something to say on the subject, since I’ve written over 100 stories in the past two years.
I’m toying with the idea. On the one hand, there are thousands, maybe millions, of websites out there that discuss this very same subject, and I’m wondering what I can bring to the topic that would be original. Would you like to hear about what it’s like to write erotica, or what it’s like to be a write-at-home mom? Or would you like to hear how those worlds collide?
Let me know what you think. I’ll keep playing with the idea. If I get any feedback, I may get started on this sooner rather than later.
I just got back from Balticon 43 and damn I’m tired. Four straight days of fun, frolic, work, mind-bending conversation, fan-girl moments and sundry madness. Here are several of my favorite moments from the convention, in no particular order.
There are many, many more things on my list of favs, but honestly, the whole damn weekend was just about one of the best things I’ve experienced in a long time. Many, many thanks to Paul Fischer for including me on the new media track this year, to Nobilis for recommending me, to Martha for trusting me to moderate her panel, and to everyone who smiled and put up with the annoying tag-along known better known as Helen E. H. Madden. And especially, always, thank you Michael. The Hubster let me run away to the circus for the weekend and did an outstanding job taking care of our children while I was wrong. I love you, stud!
Ya gotta take your inspiration from wherever it comes, I tell ya.
This is something that often happens in our house, at least on the evenings that Michael is home. He takes the kids off my hands for a while so I can squeeze in a little more work. He’s good like that. He gets the girls ready for bed and reads them stories and sings them songs and hands them monsters (we’ve been pulling imaginary monsters out from under the bed and handing them to children ever since Princess first started sleeping in her big-girl bed).
But the girls do not make it easy on him, and quite frequently there’s lots of squealing and screaming and giggling and misbehaving, and that always leads to Michael shouting at the top of his lungs, at which point I usually step in to intervene because I honestly believe that only one of us should ever have to traumatize our children for life and that has been my job since day one.
Anyway, all of this is just the long way of saying this week’s cartoon is drawn from real life and yes, I have actually heard Michael shout, “Get that bucket off your head and get into bed now!”
But only once was he saying it to me };)
