The Only Winner…

So … contests. In a word: don’t!

(sigh) What IS it with you people? Can’t you just accept the word of an internationally renowned literary authority and acclaimed sex symbol?

Yes, I mean ME. Who else do you think I’m talking about?

Okay … okay … I GUESS I’m going to have to spell it out for you (sigh again). So here goes:

I’ve been seeing a lot of these things lately: send in your stories for this or that competition, and the winner gets published and (sometimes) a bit of cash. The worst of them – and clearly the ones to completely, totally avoid – are the ones that require a fee to enter.

But even the contests that don’t make you pay to play are bad for writers (which means all of you) and bad for writing, in general. Sure, entering a contest might, at first, sound like a good idea: you get to say you won this or that competition, giving you a chance to put a blue ribbon on your resume or in your bio.

But let’s think it through. Writing is hard. Getting a single story published in a magazine, on a Web site, or in an anthology is difficult. Do you need the added pressure of trumping dozens if not hundreds of other writers for a little recognition of (in most cases) dubious authenticity? The odds are not only ridiculously against you, but the rewards are questionable.

It gets worse. Say I’m doing an antho on … oh, I don’t know, sex-on-a-train stories. To get in, you have to submit a well-written story related to that topic. Rarely, if ever, are contests that specific. Most of them are so ambiguous you’ll have absolutely no idea what they are looking for, let alone who actually might be making the final decision and what kind of storytelling they might favor.

Again, think of the odds. As a writer, time is money. Do you seriously want to waste the time it takes to write – or even submit – a story to a contest versus writing something that may, actually, have a chance of getting accepted and published?

Okay, a lot of folks don’t write something new for a contest; most will simply pull something out of their files. But even then, I still think entering a contest is a bad idea. A very bad idea.

Why? Call it part of a personal crusade. Writers always seem to get the short end of the stick – and what’s even worse, we seem to be happy with that short stick, accepting it as our professional lot in life. We get paid very little for a lot of work, far too often have to deal with unqualified editors and publishers, and have to keep going against catty reviews and miniscule pay. Now, a lot of these things won’t be fixed by staying away from contests but think of it this way: are you respecting yourself by entering the shark tank that’s a competition?

Besides, these days even winning a competition means pretty much zilch. There are so many of them, and so many that are practically worthless, that even being able to hang that blue ribbon on your career means virtually nothing. As an editor, I can’t tell you the number of times that a story has been submitted that is … well, in need of a lot of work. But the author has won an award. It’s getting to the point where awards mean that the winner was either the best of half a dozen runner-ups or got themselves a ribbon because their circle or community knew them and not the other entrants.

But the bottom line is that contests really serve one – and only one – purpose, and it’s not to help writers. Competitions are a cheap way to get a person, a Web site, or a magazine a grand dollop of promotion and publicity without having to pay a dime to anyone but the winner. It’s viral marketing under the guise of literary acclaim. Meanwhile, the contest sponsors get all kinds of content that they didn’t have to pay for but from which they will find a way to profit.

You are a writer. That’s a very special thing. Yes, you have to deal with the realities of what that means but there’s no reason why you have to enable people who are only trying to take advantage of your determination and passion. So the next time an invite for a contest drops into you’re in box earn yourself a blue ribbon by doing what’s good for you, as a writer: hit DELETE.

Of all the things to write, I feel one of the all-time toughest has got to be fetish erotica. Gay or lesbian—or straight, if you’re gay or lesbian or bisexual—is comparatively a piece of cake: just insert body part of preference and go with it. For gay erotica, it’s a male body, and for lesbians, it’s a female body. For straights, it’s the opposite. You don’t have to create the ideal man or woman; in fact, it’s better to describe characters that are a bit more … real. Perfection is dull, and can be bad storytelling, but a body with its share of wrinkles, blemishes, or sags can add dimension and depth.

The same goes with motivation, the inner world of your character. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the trick to writing beyond your own gender or orientation is in projecting your own mental landscape into the mind of your character. You may not know how gay sex, lesbian sex, or straight sex feels, but you do know what love, affection, hope, disappointment, or even just human skin feels like. Remember that, bring it to your character and your story, and you’ll be able to draw a reader in.

But fetishes are tougher. To be momentarily pedantic, Webster’s says that fetishes are: “an object or body part whose real or fantasized presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification.” That’s pretty accurate—or good enough for us here—but the bottom line is that fetishes are a sexual interest that may or may not directly relate to sex. Some pretty common ones are certain hair colors, body types, smells, tastes, clothing, and so forth.

We all have them to some degree. To open the field to discussion, I like breasts. But even knowing I have that fetish doesn’t mean I can really explain why I like big ones. It’s really weird. I mean, I can write about all kinds of things, but when I try and figure out what exactly the allure of large hooters is for me, I draw a blank. The same thing (even more so) used to happen when I tried to write about other people’s fetishes.

But I have managed to learn a couple of tricks about it, in the course of my writing as well as boobie pondering (hey, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon). I’ve come up with two ways of approaching a fetish, at least from a literary standpoint. The first to remember that fetishes are like sex under a microscope, that part of their power is in focusing on one particular behavior or body part. Let’s use legs as an example. For the die-hard leg fetishist, their sexuality is wrapped around the perfect set of limbs. For a leg man, or woman, the appeal is in that slow, careful depiction of those legs. The sex that happens after that introduction may be hot, but you can’t get away with just saying he or she had a great set of gams.

Details! There has to be details—but not just any kind of detail. For people into a certain body type or style, the words themselves are important. I remember writing a leg fetish story and having it come back from the editor with a list of keywords to insert into the story, the terms his readers would respond to and demanded in their stories. Here’s where research comes in: a long, slow description is one thing, but to make your fetish story work, you have to get your own list of button-pushing terminology.

The second approach is to understand that very often fetishes are removed from the normal sexual response cycle. For many people, the prep for a fetish is almost as important, if not as important, as the act itself. For latex fans—just to use an extreme example—the talcum powder and shaving before even crawling into their rubber can be just as exciting as the black stretchy stuff itself. For a fetish story, leaping into the sex isn’t as important as the prep to get to it. Another example that springs to mind is a friend of mine who was an infantilist—and before you leap to your own Webster’s, that means someone who likes to dress up as someone much younger. For him, the enjoyment was only partially in the costume and role-playing. A larger part of his dress-up and tea parties was in masturbating afterward: in other words, the fetish act wasn’t sex; it was building a more realistic fetish fantasy for self-pleasure afterwards. Not that all of your literary experiments need to be that elaborate, but it does show that for a serious fetishist, the span of what can be considered sex can be pretty wide.

The reason to try your hand at fetish erotica I leave to you—except to say what I’ve said before: that writing only what you know can lead to boredom for you and your readers. Try new things, experiment, and take risks. In the case of fetishes, it can only add to your own sensitivity and imagination—both in terms of writing and storytelling, but maybe even in the bedroom.

And who could argue with that?

Flexing

I’m astounded by writers who write one thing and one thing only: straight erotica, mysteries, science fiction, horror … you name it. Their flute has only one note. They might play that one note very, very well, but they often neglect the rest of the scale. Not to go on about myself, but my own moderate accomplishments as a writer are the direct result of my accepting a challenge or two. I never thought I could write erotica—until I did. I never thought I could write gay erotica, until I did. Who knows what you might be great at? You won’t know until you try.

A writer is nothing but pure potential, but only if that potential is utilized. If you only like writing straight erotica, try gay or lesbian. The same goes if you’re queer: try writing something, anything, that you’d never in a million years think of doing. Maybe the story will suck, and that certainly does happen, but maybe it’ll be a wonderful story or teach you something about your craft.

Challenge yourself. If you don’t like a certain genre, like Romance, then write what your version of a romance story would be like. You don’t like Westerns? Well, write one anyway: the Western you’d like to read. Of course, like a lot of these imagination games you don’t have to sit down and actually write a Western novel. Instead, just take some time to visualize it: the characters, setting, some plot points, a scene or two. How would you open it? Maybe a tumbleweed blowing down a dusty street, perhaps a brass and black iron locomotive plowing through High Sierra snow? Or what about the classic Man With No Name staring down a posse of rabid outlaws? Who knows, you might be the best Western—or mystery, science fiction, gay, lesbian, straight etc.—writer there ever was, or maybe you’ll just learn something about people, about writing. Either way, you’re flexing, and increasing the range of your work.

This flexibility isn’t just good in abstract: look at the books being published, the calls for submissions, and so forth. If you only like to write stories that one are particular style, flavor, or orientation, you’ll notice you have a very, very limited number of places that would look at your work. But if you can write anything, then everywhere is a potential market. Write one thing and that’s exactly how many places will want to look at what you do. Write everything and you could sell anywhere.

In other words: try! If you don’t try, you won’t know if you’re any good. Some writers only do what they know and like because they don’t want to face rejection, or feel they’d have to restart their careers if they change the one thing they do well. I don’t believe any of that. If you can’t handle rejection, then writing is not the life for you. Getting punched in the genitals by a rejection slip is part of the business, and something we all have to deal with. As far as a writer’s career goes, no one knows what shape that’ll take, or what’ll happen in the future. Planning a job path in writing is like trying to roll snake eyes twelve times in a row: the intent might be there, but the results are completely chaotic. In the same way, a simple little story can turn out to be the best thing you’re ever written, or an unexpected experiment can end up being a total artistic change.

Playing with new themes, genres, and styles is fun. Experiment on the page, in your mind, and who knows what’ll pop up? Go to a bookstore and pick up something at random, read the back cover, and then spend a fun couple of hours imagining how you’d write it. What style would you use? What kind of characters? What settings? Even sit down and write some of it: a page, or even just a paragraph or two. It might suck, but that’s the risk you always take trying something new—but it also could open a door to something wonderful.

THE HARD PART

Thinking of a story isn’t usually the hard part. Sometimes the plot doesn’t work, or it’s too much like everything else I’ve ever read or seen on the big or small screen.

But other times it just works. On those occasions, I can see the story and visualize it as a series of scenes. Parts of it are so clear they feel as though they were written right in the forefront of my mind. I know it’s going to be good. That’s wondrous.

Writing the story can be challenging, but it’s not really hard. There are times when it’s not what I’ve seen in my head, and it just falls apart: the words fail, the descriptions are tired, the great plot in my mind turns to crap on the page … but then occasionally something else pops up, and something that was almost too small to notice in the original story flares up into a brilliance (if I do say so myself).

Don’t ask me the secret, because I don’t know it. Not everything I write is great and not everything is garbage. If there is a literary legerdemain, it might be that you just have to write ten pieces of crud to produce one priceless jewel. That’s a lot of crud, but when you hold that jewel in your hand and know that you made it, the feeling is indescribable. That’s why it’s possible to keep writing, even when so many of the stories turn out to be awful: you know that if you keep working, one of them could be the special one. But that’s not the hard part.

Polishing and re-writing can be a bitch, but that’s not the hard part either. Sometimes it’s quick and easy: my copy editor can’t find any mistakes, my spell checker breezes through the thing without a beep or a hiccup, or maybe something better pops into my mind for a scene. Then there are times when I kick the tires and the engine falls out: I show it to a pal and that wonderful plot device bores him stiff. Beautiful writing suddenly reads clunky and overblown or just flat and lifeless. Sometimes I read it again and realize that what I thought was a jewel is a mud pie. But that’s not the hard part, because I can put the story in a drawer and forget about it, or try again.

Finding a place to send a story can be hard, but it’s not the most trying part of the job. There are times I work to spec: a call for submissions flashes across my attention, and—bang—the story gets written and sent out. Other times I work just because I want to. These are often great stories, but selling them can be a stone cold bitch. Maybe there’s not enough sex, or maybe there’s too much; maybe there’s too much fantasy/science fiction/horror, or most often, not enough. So the story gets stuck in a drawer somewhere, and next time when one of those calls for submissions comes out, the story goes. Sometimes, they never find a home. Orphaned and unwanted, they sit in my various machines and gather digital dust. That’s sad, but it’s not terribly painful, because occasionally I take them out of their electronic sleep and fall in love with them all over again. Knowing they are there, and that I wrote them, somehow makes it all okay.

As for finding those places, I have a network of spies and friends who zap them to me, and I spend slow afternoons crawling the web. I look over publications that I think I might like to write a story for, or I might have a stored masterpiece that could work for them.

The hardest part happens after all the preceding come out just right: the idea gels, the writing flows, a perfect market opens up … and then the rejection slip arrives. I say this often, and I really feel it’s true: writing isn’t for wimps. Unlike a lot of other hobbies or careers, writing is just you and your imagination alone in a little room. When that rejection slip comes you can’t blame the back-up band, the guy who didn’t deliver the package overnight, or even God. When that rejection slip comes it’s your work, your imagination, on trial.

There is a commandment I try to follow: celebrate the story, not the sale. Relish the writing, and enjoy getting it right on the page. Focusing too much on publishing puts your happiness in someone else’s hands. I try to put myself in the editor’s place, but even when I recall some of my own decisions as an editor, and when I remind myself how completely subjective those acceptances can be, there’s still that sting. They didn’t like my story. I failed.

Sniffle.

There is a better solution. It really works, and it’s not even all that complex. You will still feel pain when the rejection comes, but if you do this little procedure I can pretty much guarantee the pain will fade.

Keep On Working. Dab your eyes and start again. Think of a story, write it down, try to find a place to send it … lather, rinse, repeat. Do this enough times and I can all but promise that one day you’ll get a contract rather than a rejection. Work, and try to advance: not in paycheck or status, but in the delight you take in writing. Your stories might sit in drawers, they might take up hard drive space, and they might bounce time and time again from one publication to the next, but if you feel good about yourself and your work, then it’ll all get easier and better.

If all you care about is the sale, your writing career will be nothing but a series of rejections broken by the occasional sale. If you stop, breathe, and enjoy the art of writing, then the only hard part will be finding enough time to tell your wonderful stories.

Very few genres have their writers picking and choosing—often very carefully—what words they can, should, or must never use. In erotica, word choice basically comes down to two questions: what’s appropriate to the story, and how important is it to work around limitations.

Believe it or not, certain editors and publishers have a verboten word list that includes certain slang terms or spellings. The question of whether to argue with them isn’t an ethical one. Your preference for cum rather than come or your use of pussy when the editor doesn’t favor it isn’t really the question. Your main dilemma is simply this: how much you want to see your work published? Editors will insist you take it out or publishers will often change the word without your permission, so really, how attached are you to these words?

For the record, I believe an anthology should be consistent in its spelling—so while I respect a writer’s preference for come instead of cum I don’t blink, or blink that much, when my publisher suggests a change so the word is the same in every story. In the second instance, if an editor or publisher simply doesn’t like a word … well, I suggest the editor go into therapy, and that the rest of us simply try not to sweat it when they take the word out. And we can always just not work with them in the future.

Now appropriate word choice: that’s another matter. Certain words either aren’t correct or don’t feel correct in the context of a story. The problem could be historical. For example, the word sex as a term for female genitalia is tolerable when you’re doing a historical piece, but when your character is a Gen-X, Y, or Z person, how appropriate is it? It might be technically correct, but sex is often used as a safe way of describing what’s between a woman’s thighs. My own rule is to use terms that feel right for the character. If someone is depicted as repressed, using words like cunt or twat is jarring. Same for an older man using clumsy slang for his own genitals, like member.

I applaud people for doing research, by the way. Nothing adds a flavor of realism more than slipping in a good word choice for sex or the active biology of sex. One of my own favorites is a 19th century term for female genitalia, Old Hat, because it was frequently felt. Yes, you may wince.

One thing I like to see in a story has little to do with the words of sex and more to do with the view of sex. Assuming that characters in a story set in Nero’s Rome view sex the same way we do today can result in some clumsy word usage. Certain types of sex were rare or seen with disfavor—in the case of Rome, noticing or even admiring women’s breasts in a sexual context was a sign of weakness. Just look at the Pompeii mosaics; the prostitutes depicted—no matter what they were doing—kept their boobies wrapped. Therefore, you wouldn’t want to spend too much time waxing poetic on some Roman woman’s tits if your story was set in that time period.

The bottom line is that certain words and ideas work and others don’t. The trick to picking the right ones has little to do with the power of them at this moment or your own personal preference as it does with their relevance within the story. Naughty words shouldn’t be ones that reach the modern libido but instead be used to continue to keep the reader within and enjoying the story. Because when you get down to it, an erotic story isn’t about the words but rather what you are saying with them.

Writing the story is the most important element of getting your book published, but there’s something right below that: drafting an effective cover letter—or cover email, as this is a digital age.

So here is a quick sample of what to do and not to do when putting together a cover letter to go with your story. That being said, remember that I’m just one of many editors out there, each with their own quirks and buttons to push. Like writing the story itself, practice and sensitivity will teach you a lot, but this will give you a start.

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Don’t Do What “Bad Johnny Don’t” Does: 

Dear M. (1),

Here is my story (2) for your collection (3), it’s about a guy and a girl who fall in love on the Titanic (4). I haven’t written anything like this before (5), but your book looked easy enough to get into (6). My friends say I’m pretty creative (7). If I have not heard from you in two months (8) I will consider this story rejected and send it somewhere else (9). I am also sending this story to other people. If they want it, I’ll write to let you know (10).

I noticed that your guidelines say First North American Serial rights. What’s that (11)? If I don’t have all rights then I do not want you to use my story (12).

I work at the DMV (13) and have three cats named Mumbles, Blotchy and Kismet (14).

Mistress Divine, Goddess of the Multiple Orgasm (15) 

[email protected] (16)

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(1) Don’t be cute. If you don’t know the editor’s name, or first name, or if the name is real or a pseudonym, just say “Hello” or “Editor” or some such.

(6) Gee, thanks so much. Loser.

(7) Friends, lovers, Significant Others and so forth—who cares?

(8) Get real—sometimes editors take six months to a year to respond. This is not to say they are lazy or cruel; they’re just busy or dealing with a lot of other things. Six months is the usual cut-off time, meaning that after that time you can either consider your story rejected or you can write a polite little note asking how the project is going. By the way, writing rude or demanding notes is going to get you nothing but rejected or a bad reputation—and who wants that?

(13) Who cares?

(14) Really, who cares?

(15) Another sign of a loser. It’s perfectly okay to use a pseudonym, but something as wacky as this is just going to mark you as a novice. Also, cover letters are a place for you, as a person, to write to the editor, another person. Put your pseudonym on your story, but don’t sign your cover letter with it.

(16) Email address—this is great, but it’s also very obviously a work address, which makes a lot of editors very nervous. First of all, people leave jobs all the time, so way too often these addresses have very short lives. Second, work email servers are rarely secure—at least from the eyes of prying bosses. Do you really want your supervisor to see your rejection from a Big Tits in Bondage book? I don’t think so.

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Do What Johnny Does Does:

Hi, Chris (1),

It was with great excitement (2) that I read your call for submissions for your new anthology, Love Beast (3). I’ve long been a fan not only of werewolf erotica (4) but also your books and stories as well (5).

I’ve been published in about twelve Web sites, including Sex Chat, Litsmut, and Erotically Yours, and in two anthologies, Best of Chocolate Erotica (Filthy Books) and Clickety-Clack, Erotic Train Stories (Red Ball Books) (6).

Enclosed is my 2,300 word original story, “When Hairy Met Sally” (7). I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it (which is a lot) (8). Please feel free to write me at [email protected] if you have any questions (9).

In the meantime best of luck with your projects and keep up the great work. (10)

Molly Riggs (11) 

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(1) Nice; she knows my real first name is Chris. A bit of research on an editor or potential market never hurt anyone.

(2) It’s perfectly okay to be enthusiastic. No one likes to get a story from someone who thinks your project is dull.

(3) She knows the book and the title.

(4) She knows the genre and likes it. You’d be surprised by the number of people who pass out backhanded compliments or joke about anthologies or projects thinking it’s endearing or shows a ‘with it’ attitude. Believe me, it’s neither: it’s just annoying.

(11) Real name. I’d much rather work with a person than an identity. I also know that Molly is not playing games with who she is, and what she is, just to try and make a sale.

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There’s more, as said, but this at least will keep you from stepping on too many toes, even before your story gets read. If there’s a lesson in this, it’s to remember that an editor is, deep down, a person trying to do the best job they can, just like you. Treat them as such and they’ll return the favor.

The inclination is natural, I suppose: we go to school to learn just about anything else, so why shouldn’t there be a class or book or seminar that will teach you how to be a better smut writer?

Without getting too heady, the idea that there’s a special—perhaps secret—way of getting you from bad to good, or unpublished to published, or unpaid to paid, is a bit disturbing. Ruminating a bit too much on it can make it all a bit like a paranoid fantasy, like there’s a trick or a jealously guarded connection that allows other people to make it and keeps you out. But take my class, buy my book, attend my seminar and you too can learn the secret to successful erotica writing … just don’t tell anyone.

Without gnawing off the hand that feeds me, I feel guilty teaching writing classes. Standing in front of a room full … well, a few dozen, tops … of green writers, all of them eagerly waiting for the secret makes me want to confess it all for a sham, and in so doing spill my guts on the real true way to become a better writer, of erotica or anything else.

Not that a class or two can’t help, especially any classes that highlight some of the less-than-fun elements of a writer’s life. If you’re lucky, you might find the right kind of class, book, or seminar that gives—quickly and honestly—the sad facts of finding a market, writing a cover letter, formatting a story, dealing with publishers and editors, and so forth. Those kinds of books and classes can definitely help with the paperwork side of writing, especially since screwing any of it up can stop your story from even being read, much less considered. But they can’t make you a better writer.

The worst of these kinds of classes and books are what I call Frog Killers. You’ve probably heard the analogy before: you can study how a frog is put together by taking it apart, but you can’t put it together again afterwards. A book or class that focuses on picking apart a story—usually to a ridiculous set of specifications and standards—usually does nothing for new writers but make them hideously self-conscious. They write but then freeze up, panicking that they’ve forgotten the character transformation, that the story isn’t emotionally engaging, that there’s no conflict (man vs. man, man vs. nature, and whatever that other one is), that there’s no clear A-B-C structure, and so forth. With this oppressive laundry list in their heads, yelling at them louder than their nascent creativity, no wonder budding writers can feel like deer caught in headlights. This is why, when someone’s resume indicates that they have a degree in creative writing, I look at them like they’d stormed a hill under heavy enemy fire. It doesn’t make them better writers, though, even though they might be able to tell you—to ten decimal places—why their story is worth publishing.

The other kind of book and class you might stumble across in your search for guidance is the philosophical one. To be honest, I like these much more than the Frog Killers—more than partially because it mirrors my own idea that writing is more magic than science. These kinds of teachers approach writing as art, usually with a series of literary touchy feely exercises that will stretch and tone your currently saggy imagination. The only problem with these is that they can all too often retreat from the idea of writing as being work, taking away the 90% perspiration in exchange for the 10% inspiration. Creativity is one thing, but you still have to get the damned thing down on paper.

As far as I know, the only way to be a better writer is … drum roll, please … to write. Not much of a surprise, is it? Some classes and books might be good for the basics, and for the nuts and bolts of the business. Forums might be fun; newsgroups might be a diversion, but the only thing that will make you a better writer is to do it, and not stop doing it.

It’s a nasty rule, but aside from a few very rare exceptions, your first story will suck. It will suck painfully, forcefully, and with great vigor. So will your next one, and your next one, but eventually you’ll get better: your language will begin to flow, and you won’t be thinking about writing but will instead be telling a story. After that, you’ll find yourself enjoying the process, nodding at little turns of phrase or a well-toned paragraph. Later you’ll feel tears on your cheeks when you put THE END on something that worked out perfectly, beautifully.

Do you get where I’m going? No one can really teach you that, just like a paint-by-numbers kit won’t turn you into Picasso. The only way you can really get better as a writer is to try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and get a bit better, try and get a bit better, try and do something good, try and good something better, try and make something great ….

So what are you reading this for? Get back to writing.

Even before writing about the sex in a sexy story you have to set the stage, decide where this hot and heavy action is going to take place. What a lot of merry pornographers don’t realize is that the where can be just as important as the what in a smutty tale. In other words, to quote a real estate maxim: Location, location … etc.

Way too many times writers will makes their story locales more exotic than the activities of their bump-and-grinding participants: steam rooms, elevators, beaches, hot tubs, hiking trails, space stations, sports cars, airplane bathrooms, phone booths, back alleys, fitting rooms, cabs, sail boats, intensive care wards, locker rooms, under bleachers, peep show booths, movie theaters, offices, libraries, barracks, under a restaurant table, packing lots, rest stops, basements, showrooms — get my drift?

I know I’ve said in the past that sexual experience doesn’t really make a better smut writer, but when it comes to choosing where your characters get to their business, it pays to know quite a bit about the setting you’re getting them into.

Just like making an anatomical or sexual boo-boo in a story, putting your characters into a place that anyone with a tad of experience knows isn’t going to be a fantastic time but rather something that will generate more pain than pleasure is a sure sign of an erotica amateur.

Take for instance the wonderful sexual pleasure than can come from screwing around in a car. Haven’t done it? Well you should because after you do you’ll never write about it — unless you’re going for giggles.

Same goes for the beach. Ever get sand between your toes? Now think about that same itchy, scratchy — very unsexy — feeling in your pants. Not fun. Very not fun.

Beyond the mistake of making a tryst in a back alley sound exciting (it isn’t, unless you’re really into rotting garbage), setting the stage in a story serves many other positive purposes. For instance, the environment of a story can tell a lot about a character — messy meaning a scattered mind, neatness meaning controlling, etc. — or about what you’re trying to say in the story: redemption, humor, fright, hope, and so forth. Not that you should lay it on so thick that it’s painfully obvious, but the stage can and should be another character, an added dimension to your story.

Simply saying where something is happening is only part of the importance of setting. You have to put the reader there. Details, folks. Details! Research, not sexual this time, is very important. Pay attention to the world, note how a room or a place FEELS — the little things that make it unique. Shadows on the floor or walls, the smells and what they mean to your characters; all kinds of sounds, the way things feel, important minutiae, or even just interesting features.

After you’ve stored up some of those unique features of a place, use special and evocative descriptions to really draw people in. Though quantity is good, quality is better. A few well-chosen lines can instantly set the stage: an applause of suddenly flying pigeons, the aimless babble of a crowd, rainbow reflections in slicks of oil, twirling leaves on a tree, clouds boiling into a storm … okay, that was a bit overdone, but you hopefully get my gist.

Once again: location is not something that’s only important to real estate. If you put your characters into an interesting, well-thought-out, vividly written setting, it can not only set the stage for their erotic mischief but it can also amplify the theme or add depth to the story. After all, if you don’t give your writing a viable place, then a reader won’t truly understand where they are — or care about what’s going on.

It may come as a surprise, but far too often authors—people who are supposedly very comfortable with words!—have days when they just don’t want to write at all.

It’s a common mistake writers make when they begin to think about social media, marketing, and all that other fun stuff: this idea that words are the be-all and end-all for them. They force themselves far too often to script tweet after tweet, Facebook post after Facebook post…until they just can’t write another line of original content, even if only to say “Look at my book!” Worse, they come to feel that because they’ve burnt out on writing tweets and posts and marketing copy, they have failed. They think about all the potential readers they have lost; markets they haven’t tapped; piles of beguiling words they should have written—because are they not supposed to be endless fonts of text? (Spoiler: no.)

Fortunately for you if you’re one of these writers, there are some great options for social networking that don’t require you to write a word. They are wordless yet powerful, simple yet evocative, easy yet  poignant.

In short, Facebook and Twitter are not the only games in town when it comes to keeping yourself and your writing in the public eye.

I’m talking about using pictures rather than words. Using Flicker, Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr to make your point, catch your Twitter followers’ imaginations, engage them emotionally in a way that leaves a favorable impression of you in their minds. An image-sharing tool like these can help you reach out to others, and save you a thousand words of writing, every day.

There are quite a few image-sharing venues out there—and while your mileage and social media needs may vary, in my experience they’ve basically boiled down to just one. Allow me: Flickr is ridiculously clunky and doesn’t share well with others—just spend a few minutes trying to either find an image or a keyword, or pass along a photo. Pain. In. The…youknowwhatImean. Instagram is fine and dandy for taking snapshots of your dinner, your dog, your kids, your whatever…but when it comes to sharing what you snap, or using images from other sources, it’s not exactly user-friendly.

This basically leaves us with two choices, if you want to save those thousands of words: Pinterest and Tumblr. I’ve tried both and the choice was extremely easy to make—it comes down to one thing: sex.

Let’s face it, when you’re an author of erotica and erotic romance, you are dealing with—in one way or another—characters having sex. Like lots of erotica authors, I’ve learned to (sigh) deal with platforms like Facebook that will wish you into the cornfield for showing—or in some cases even talking about—something as threatening as a nipple. We deal with Facebook because we have to. But an open-minded image-sharing social media venue is a bit like Twitter: the more the merrier.

Pinterest doesn’t like sex…at all. I used to have a Pinterest account but then I began to get messages, here and there to start, but then tons: each one about a posted image of mine that was removed due to the dreaded Terms of Service. A few were obvious, but then the images they were yanking became and more innocent. Bye-bye Pinterest.

Tumblr isn’t perfect—far from it—but even after being purchased by the search engine deity Yahoo, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times it has caused me any kind of headache. Mostly they will reject anything that really pushes a button—think of the deadly erotica sins, but with pictures, and you know what I mean (hate speech, rape, bestiality, incest, underage, pee or poo, etc).

In a nutshell, Tumblr is easy, fun, and—best of all—a rather effective social media tool that also neatly and simply integrates into Twitter and Facebook…and, no, I do not own stock.

The way it works couldn’t be less complicated: you can create any number of Tumblrs—think folders—(even with an “age appropriate” warning if you want), and then design them with any one of a huge number of themes. From your master dashboard you can see—and tweak —all the separate Tumblrs you’ve created. The themes are a blast, and the interface takes very little skill to navigate.
As for what Tumblrs you should create…well, that’s up to you. Like food? Make a nice edibles Tumblr (and they have an app that lets you to take shots of your meals if that’s what you’re into). Like history? Create a vintage photo site. Love sex? Well, it’s pretty obvious about what you can do with that.

Where do you get your pictures? You can certainly take them yourself or upload them from your various devices, but where Tumblr becomes a real social media machine is in reposting. Once you create your account just look for other Tumblrs by interests or keywords and then hit that little follow button. Then, when you look at your dashboard, you’ll see a nice stream of pictures that you can like, share, or repost to your own various Tumblr incarnations. Plus, the more people you follow, the more people will follow you.

Just to give you an idea, I started—rather lazily—my dozen or so Tumblrs four or so years ago and now my main one, Rude Mechanicals, has over 5,000 followers. You can imagine the reach you could have if you really put some work into it.

And if you want to see how far that reach extends, you can go back and look at your posts to see how many times they’ve been liked or reposted. It’s harder to tell when it’s a reposted picture but it can also be very heartwarming to see that, for instance, when you post about a good review or a new book announcement, dozens of people liked your news or, even better, shared it with their own vast audience.

What’s also fun about Tumblr is the auto-forward feature. It’s not perfect, as there are some periodic glitches, but all in all it works rather well. When you set up your separate Tumblrs you can then select an option where—if you choose—you can also send any image to Twitter or to Facebook.
That increases the number of people your image will potentially reach. It can even go to a Facebook page you’ve created. Neat!

One trick I use is to click the handy “like” button to create an inventory of images and then—once or twice a day—go back into my list of likes to repost them to my appropriate sites…with or without Twitter or Facebook reposting as I see fit. Tumblrs also feature RSS, which means you can subscribe to one of them through an aggregator like Feedly.

What’s also neat about Tumblr is its flexibility: you can post images (duh) but you can also embed video (from YouTube or wherever) and post text, quotations, links, chat streams, and audio.
Let your eyes do the walking and let the images they find do the talking. Image-sharing tools like Tumblr are a super easy way to fulfill your need for social media presence without having to write anything.

Here’s another old favorite. It’s not quite an article but as it is about writing … and the special people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing…

LOVE

“You could have stayed with me,” he’d said the first time I went to Seattle to see him, but stayed in a motel. I hadn’t even thought of it, and so the disappointment in his eyes.

I never went back. After he got promoted there wasn’t any point.

You could have stayed with me evolves into a fantasy in which those four days play out differently: an invitation made earlier, my discomfort of staying in someone else’s house miraculously absent. Fresh off the plane, strap digging into my shoulder (I always over-pack), out of the cab and up a quick twist of marble steps to his front door. A knock, or a buzz, and it opens.

A quick dance of mutual embarrassment as I maneuver in with my luggage, both of us saying the stupid things we all say when we arrive somewhere we’ve never been before. Him: “How was your flight?” Me: “What a great place.”

Son of a decorator, I always furnish and accessorize my fantasies: I imagine his to be a simple one-bedroom. Messy, but a good mess. A mind’s room, full of toppling books, squares of bright white paper. Over the fireplace (cold, never lit) a print, something classical like a Greek torso, the fine line topography of Michelangelo’s David. A few pieces of plaster, three-dimensional anatomical bric-a-brac on the mantel. A cheap wooden table in the window, bistro candle, and Don’t Fuck With The Queen in ornate script on a chipped coffee cup.

Dinner? No, my flight arrived late. Coffee? More comfortable and gets to the point quicker. We chat. I ask him about his life: is everything okay? He replies that he’s busy, but otherwise fine. We chat some more. I say that it’s a pleasure to work with him. He replies with the same.

I compliment him, amplifying what I’ve already said, and he blushes. He returns it, and then some, making me smile. My eyes start to burn, my vision blurs, tears threatening. I sniffle and stand up.

He does as well, and we hug. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Then, break – but still close together. Lips close together. The kiss happens. Light, just a grazing of lips. I can tell he wants more, but I’m uncomfortable and break it but not so uncomfortable that I can’t kiss his cheeks. Right, then left, then right again.

But his head turns and we’re kissing, lips to lips again. Does he open his first or do I? Sometimes I imagine his, sometimes mine. But they are open and we are kissing, lips and tongue, together. Hot, wet, hard.

But not on my part. Wet, definitely – in my mind it’s a good kiss. A generous and loving kiss. Hot, absolutely, but only in a matter of degrees as his temperature rises and mine does in basic body response.

Not hard on my part, but I am aware of his. Between us, like a finger shoved through a hole in his pocket, something solid and muscular below his waist.

Does he say something? “I want you,” “Please touch me,” “I’m sorry,” are candidates. I’ve tried them all out, one time or another, to add different flavors, essences, spices to that evening. “I want you,” for basic primal sex. “Please touch me,” for polite request, respect and sympathy. “I’m sorry,” for wanting something he knows I don’t.

“It’s okay,” I say to all of them, and it is. Not just words. Understanding, sympathy, generosity. All of them, glowing in my mind. It really is okay.

I’m a pornographer, dammit. I should be able to go on with the next part of this story without feeling like … I’m laughing right now, not that you can tell. An ironic chuckle: a pornographer unable to write about sex. Not that I can’t write about myself, that making who I am – really – the center of the action is uncomfortable, because I’ve certainly done that before. I’ve exposed myself on the page so many other times, what makes this one so different?

Just do it. Put the words down and debate them later. After all, that’s what we’re here for, aren’t we? You want to hear what I dream he and I do together. You want to look over my mental shoulder at two men in that tiny apartment in Seattle.

I’m a writer; it’s what I do, and more importantly, what I am. So we sit on the couch, he in the corner me in the middle. His hand is on my leg. My back is tight, my thighs are corded. Doubt shades his face so I put my own hand on his own, equally tight, thigh. I repeat what I said before, meaning it: “It’s okay.”

We kiss again. A friend’s kiss, a two people who like each other kiss. His hands touch my chest, feeling me through the thin cloth of turtleneck. I pull the fabric out of my pants with a few quick tugs, allowing bare hands to touch bare chest. He likes it, grinning up at me. I send my own grin, trying to relax.

His hand strokes me though my jeans, and eventually I do get hard. His smile becomes deeper, more sincere, lit by his excitement. It’s one thing to say it, quite another for your body to say it. Flesh doesn’t lie, and I might have when I gave permission. My cock getting hard, though, is obvious tissue and blood sincerity.

“That’s nice,” “Can I take it out?” “I hope you’re all right with this.” Basic primal sex, a polite request including respect and sympathy, and the words for wanting something he knows I don’t – any one of them, more added depth to this dream.

My cock is out and because he’s excited or simply doesn’t want the moment and my body to possibly get away, he is sucking me. Was that so hard to say? It’s just sex. Just the mechanics of arousal, the engineering of erotica. Cock A in mouth B. I’ve written it hundreds of times. But there’s that difference again, like by writing it, putting it down on paper (or a computer screen) has turned diamond into glass, mahogany into plywood.

Cheapened. That’s the word. But to repeat: I am a writer. It’s what I do. All the time. Even about love – especially about this kind of love.

He sucks my cock. Not like that, not that, not the way you’re thinking: not porno sucking, not erotica sucking. This is connection, he to I. The speech of sex, blowjob as vocabulary.

I stay hard. What does this mean? It puzzles me, even in the fantasy. I have no doubts about my sexuality. I am straight. I write everything else, but I am a straight boy. I like girls. Men do not turn me on.

Yet, in my mind and in that little apartment, I am hard. Not “like a rock,” not “as steel,” not as a “telephone pole,” but hard enough as his mouth, lips, and tongue – an echoing hard, wet and hard – work on me.

The answer is clear and sharp, because if I couldn’t get hard and stay hard then he’d be hurt and the scene would shadow, chill, and things would be weighted between us. That’s not the point of this dream, why I think about it.

So, onto sex. Nothing great or grand, nothing from every section of the menu. A simple action between two men who care about each other: he sucks my cock. He enjoys it and I love him enough to let him. That’s all we do, because it’s enough.

He sucks me for long minutes, making sweet sounds and I feel like crying. He puts his hand down his own pants, puts a hand around his own cock. For a moment I think about asking him if he wants help, for me to put my hand around him, help him jerk off. But I don’t. Not because I don’t want to, or because I’m disgusted, but because he seems to be enjoying himself so much, so delighted in the act of sucking me, that I don’t want to break the spell, turn that couch back into a pumpkin.

He comes, a deep groan around my cock, humming me into near-giggles. He stops sucking as he gasps and sighs with release, looking up at me with wet-painted lips, eyes out of focus. I bend down and kiss him, not tasting anything but warm water.

I love him. I wanted to thank him. I hope, within this dream, I have. The night that didn’t happen but could have.

For me, writing is just about everything: the joy of right word following right word all the way to the end. The ecstasy of elegant plot, the pleasure of flowing dialogue, the loveliness of perfect description. Sex is good, sex is wonderful, but story is fireworks in my brain. The reason I live. The greatest pleasure in my life.

And he has given me that, with nearly flowing letters on an agreement between his company and I, between his faith in my ability and myself. He looked at me, exposed on the page of a book, in the chapter of a novel, in the lines of a short story, and didn’t laugh, didn’t dismiss or reject. He read, nodded, smiled, and agreed to publish.

Sex cannot measure up to that. Bodies are bodies, but he has given me a pleasure beyond anything I’d felt: applause, and a chance to do much, much more with words, with stories.

He doesn’t have a name, this man in my fantasy. There have been a lot of them over the years, and a lot more in the future, no doubt. Gay men who have touched me in ways no one has ever touched me before, by making love with my soul through their support of my writing. Each time they have, this fantasy has emerged from the back of my mind, a need to give them the gift they have given me: passion and kindness, support and caring, and pure affection.

I worry about this. I worry that they won’t understand, take this secret dream of mine as being patronizing, diminishing them to nothing but a being with a cock who craved more cock. I’ve confessed a few times, telling a select few how I feel about them, how I wish I could do for them what they have done for me, to be able to put aside my heterosexuality for just an evening, an afternoon, and share total affection together.

Luckily, or maybe there really isn’t anything to worry about, the ones I’ve told, they smile, hold my hand, kiss my cheek, say the right thing and to this day, even right now, make me cry: “I wish we could too, but I understand. I love you too.”

Am I bi? I know I’m physically not – I simply don’t get aroused by men – but that doesn’t mean I don’t adore men, or for the ones I care about, the men who have touched my soul through their support and affection for my stories and writing, I wish I could change. More than anything I wish I could give them what they have given me.

With a cock or a pen, with a story or hours of wonderful sex, it all comes down to one thing: love.