Question About Bodice Rippers

I’ve only read one bodice ripper ever. And that was back in high school. I can’t remember the author or the title, but I do remember LOTS of sex in it. Detailed scenes of members journeying into budding love sheaths.

From what I can remember, the plot had lots drama. A strong-willed, yet delicate heroine forced to marry the Alpha of all Alphas. His manhood wines and dines her womanhood many times before they realize they love each other. Then just as things are getting good, they get separated (I can’t remember how).

She gets kidnapped or something and ends up in a harem, where her pleasure garden is tilled by peter and later, by woody. The hero thinks she’s dead and goes on with his life. He hooks up with a gold digging faux virgin, who’ll do anything to get him to marry her. Like burst the vein of a chicken in the vicinity of her harbor of hope so the hero doesn’t realize his boat’s not the first to dock there.

Anyway, the hero and heroine are eventually reunited and go on to live happily ever after.

Critics of erotica call the genre pornography and accused its writers of writing stories heavy on sex and light on plot. I wonder what they would call the bodice ripper I described.

This story has several graphic sex scenes and at least one forced seduction (the wedding night) and maybe another one between the heroine and a secondary character. In my opinion, the plot is more high drama than high conflict. Filler between the nookie passages. 

So can bodice rippers, like the one I read be considered pornography like erotica? Maybe soft porn because of the language used to describe sex organs and the sex act? How do you view bodice rippers?

Parting is such sweet sorrow

*sniff*

When I finally get to the point where I write those longed for words THE END, there is a lot emotional baggage I have to dump. I write long. My shortest mss is about 80K. So I spend a lot of time with my characters. I know them, I love them. I fall in love with my hero every damn time. This time is no exception. I love John Murphy, my wounded bad boy.

I should be finished my WIP. I should. I wrote the last chapter.  And promptly deleted the entire chapter. Why?  It sucked. I had to wonder why it sucked. And the answer was kind of scary. I am not ready to leave John yet. Which goes to show how far I got into my heroine’s mind. Livvy’s mantra during the last half of the story is ‘I am not leaving him, no matter what.’

Hmmm, so how do I do this?

Meet Coe. Coe is my new hero. He came in a dream and is the perfect match for another character I have had in my head for a while, Charly. Charly is a riot and needed a quiet alpha male to steady her. John is more in your face with balled fists than quiet. Should be quite a switch for me. I am starting to get excited about the story.

So altho I hate to write THE END on John and Livvy, I will. Soon. In a few days. *sigh*

Of course I get to visit them during edits and rewrites and what have you. But once their tale is told, I really pull back and move on. I have to. I can’t be in love with more than one character at a time and do them any justice.

But for now, I am sniffling into my kleenex as I plod slowly towards those two bittersweet words. The End.

The Romance Community

How important is the Romance Community to you?  To me, it’s very important.  I’ve found many new friends via blogs or eharlequin.  I’ve found writing buddies and reading pals.  People who are very much like me.  I’m part of Tales because of the community.  If I hadn’t found this, where would I be in my own writing career?

In all actuality, I haven’t been a part of the community for all that long.  I don’t even really remember when it all started.  But, I do remember how it started.  I came across the wonderful site eharlequin.  What’s so funny is that I’m not really a big fan of harlequin books.  I’d been googling writing communities and that site was one of the first I came across.  I signed up & started flitting around the little communities there until I found 20-Something Writer’s.  I thought “Oh, kindred spirits!”  This was about 3 1/2 years ago.

From eharlequin I got into the blogging community.  I started my own blog and began searching for likeminded people.  Found some wonderful authors that I NEVER would have found before the blogs.  I was able to bare my soul to the world and made some wonderful friends because of it.

A group of fellow readers and I are doing a fun project listing our top heroes of all time.  In-fighting, trading, bragging…it’s all in good fun.  And to top it all off, I think I’ve found a brainstorming buddy!  How cool is that?

So, in the end, this blog is more a thank you than anything.  It’s allowing me to say how much I appreciate this wonderful community I’ve found myself a part of & how I don’t think I’d be who I am today without it.

Diggin’ up bones

Randy Travis? Remember him? My CP said something last night that reminded me of his 80s song “Diggin’ up Bones” and it’s been in my head ever since. I seem to recall there being more to it.

For the past six days (and for the next nine) I’m “fast drafting” a new project (modified; Fast Draft calls for 20 pages/day and I can only manage 5, give or take a couple depending upon my dayjob). It’s not detail-rich and has no symbolism or theme or anything at all unless I can count the wintry setting as the source of a motif - and even then, kind of a cop-out if you ask me. I actually find it kind of ugly with the exception of the occasional line of dialogue (”You do not get to be her hero” as a parting line from her former hero - just a hint of the kind of trouble he’s going to get into trying to redeem himself). I complained to my CP - I don’t write this way anymore, throwing words on a screen and hoping they come out salvageable in the end - and she said, “Think of it as assembling bones. You need a skeleton from which to hang the meat of the story” (although we had this exchange late last night so she might’ve said it better - but the gist is there).

Huh. A prose outline. Is that what I’m doing?

I knew a writer who outlined using an excel spreadsheet. She figured a certain number of words per entry in the drafting portion (one excel entry would equal about 250-500 words in the actual writing) and she’d aim for about 250 entries in her outline. I could never envision that until now, but I think I finally get it. She was writing down a few bits of scene, of character action, laying the bones so she could come back and put the meat on later. No wonder she produced so much so fast.

So I think I’m outlining. Prose outlining, which is also what I’ve heard synopsis referred to as. Who would’ve thought? Who knew plotting didn’t have to take place in the context of Roman numerals, index cards or flow charts? Not me. But now I do. What have YOU realized this week?

Show and Tell

K, I’m going to be brutally honest here.  We’re involving ourselves in this exercise today because I have nothing else to write about.  But here it goes.  How’s your goals list looking this year.  This is a show and tell.  I’ll show you mine but you have to show me yours.  I’m not very good with making goals.  I’m a pantzer in every area of my life.  But I did make a couple of goals for the year.  I wanted to try and branch out a little.  So I wrote a humorous shifter story for Samhain’s Tickle My Fantasy anthology.  I don’t know if they’ll be interested but at least I wrote it.  I wrote a Presents last year at the end of the year.  (It was amazing how motivated I was after I saw those dollar signs) and I made a goal of at least getting a request.

I got a request for the full with a three page personalized letter about changes I needed to make for them to want to publish it.  I’m all over that.  It took me a few days to come up with a new idea to replace the plot point she didn’t like but I think I have one and I have until the end of June to get it back to her.

I had a goal of getting Awaken the Devil out to more people.  It’s been at the same major NY publisher for over a year.  I’ve decided nothing is going to happen there.  But it finalled in the Connecticut RWA’s CONNections contest in the romantic suspense/mystery division.  So it went to an editor over at Dorchester so at least someone else is forced to look at it.  Maybe I will get a request.

So how’s your year looking so far?  Getting any closer to living the dream?  Trying some new things?  What’s going on in your world?

AJ

In The Event Of An Emergency

The other night I wasn’t feeling very well. Actually thought I might need to go to the E.R. but my stubbornness and I refused to go. I think I can see this recent episode of illness out without the need of a $3000 medical bill.

So it was a night like any other. I wasn’t feeling well and was about to take one of my prescribed pain pills and try to get some sleep. Now for one, I rarely take my pain pills. I HATE taking pills. But I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the pain either.

I never got the chance…

Our Shar Pei, who has Shar Pei fever (a disease much like my own, oddly enough) grew seriously ill within a matter of hours. We had been keeping an eye on how she was feeling and reacting hoping we could just wait until the next day to see the vet. Sadly, her breathing took a huge turn for the worst. I was in major fear that it was going to come to the point I never I want to think about– putting her down.

I was laying down, with the dog at the foot of the bed, debating on if I should or shouldn’t take my pain pill when her breathing took the horrible turn. I began to panic. She was breathing as if she’d just run a marathon. I was truly terrified! My husband called the our local vet and they recommended a 24 animal emergency clinic that was about 45 minutes away. Guess it was smart that I hadn’t taken my medications.

We loaded up and headed off to the clinic. After we arrive they show us to an exam room and the vet comes in. Unlike most visits she doesn’t exam the dog right there but instead takes her to the back. Ugg, I hate this part. I worry, wait, wonder. Thankfully I had my husband grab my book and a magazine for himself. Reading my historical romance helped me escape my fears for the next hour. Of course the fears of what might happen stayed in my mind, but for the hour, I read the story of two characters and didn’t focus on if tonight would be the last night for Caty.

Thankfully, they gave her a huge dose of medications and sent us home with several more. Caty will be ok but they recommend more testing to ensure her kidneys haven’t begun failing (a sign of the end).

We arrived home as a very sleepy group. My husband had to work in 5 hours, I not feeling so great and the dog drugged up. Shortly after we arrived, I sat at my desk and just looked at the cover of the book. All my fears of the evening had been eased with the words between the pages of this book.

I know it might sound silly to think so deeply about the book I was reading in such a radiant light, but I can only imagine what kind of wreck I would have been without it. Trust me, it wouldn’t be pretty!

In the end, I want to write a book like this! One that will allow the reader to escape whatever is going on in their lives. Even if there isn’t anything major or dramatic happening, I want them to be able to read about my characters and have the story take them for a ride.

I’m inspired!

Zero To Love

A few days ago, my husband and I watched a movie called Born To Run. It stars Richard Grieco (remember him from 21 Jump Street) And some other familiar faces. The movie featured fast cars, a ruthless bad guy and a romance.

I was digging the relationship between the hero and heroine until the hero tells the heroine (after some drama with the villain) that he knows she loves him. I was light what? At this point, they’ve known each other for two days, maybe three and had sex one of those nights.

I had a hard time accepting their transition from flirting strangers to I-can’t-live-without-you-in-my-world lovers. That quickly wasn’t believable to me. And me made wonder about their happily-ever-after. If they fell into love this easily, how quickly would they fall out of love? Now if the hero had said, “I know you care for me”, I wouldn’t have had any doubts about their relationship or the longevity of it.

I read a similar lightening speed trip from zero to I love you in a book a couple of years ago. The hero and heroine spent a week together, fighting each other and their mutual attraction. Eventually, the sexual tension peaked and they had sex. I could deal with that. But I couldn’t deal with the heroine telling the hero she loved him two days and many sexual romps later. It just didn’t seem realistic to me.

For me, the best part of romance is watching two people go through the process of falling in love. I like seeing them change and their feelings for each other grow. In the movie and the book I mentioned, I feel the characters skipped or missed some steps.

How do you feel about characters going from zero to love in 3.2 seconds? Do you think it’s realistic?

Genre salad

I do not read only one genre of books, either under the umbrella of romance or not(but let’s stay there for clarity,okay?). I actually read whatever my hand falls on and sounds interesting. RomCom? Wonderful and harder to find than you think. RomSus? Cool? Historical Intrigue, not a problem. Dark Fantasy, bring it baby!.

But my favorite books I find are ones that have a more blurred genre, are harder to shove into a slot. A dark fantasy heroine with a streak of humor is great, a comedy that makes me cry even better. I love it when my heart pounds in excitement, I laugh out loud and weep with emotion all from the same story.

BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT… (insert screeching cartoon car crash noise here)

There are some things that I have never seen work. Not saying you couldn’t mix them, just , hmm, yeah, not my taste. Kinda like going to a salad bar and watching everyone pick their ingredients. That lady got beets(EWWW), that man avoids carrots like the plague, that one wants fat free no oil vinaigrette, that one is slurping ranch with a spoon. Everyone has a different idea what should be on a salad. Me? Among other things, I like boiled egg. Drives my hubby nuts. He would rather eat snot. But then, he likes tomatoes and I don’t.

Can you imagine starving, setting down to eat your nice crisp garden salad. You take a bite and BOOM Hidden under the lettuce is liverwurst. Not a good surprise, huh?

Genre mixing can leave that same bad taste in your mouth. You are really getting into a story. You’re in chapter four of a historical with a dashing cowboy hero and a spirited schoolteacher and BOOM, space aliens land from the planet Whozzit. Say what?

You’re reading a light hearted comedy, giggling right along and BOOM hero’s child dies in a car accident. Whoa, talk about whiplash of the heart.

Could these things be done and done well? Sure, I guess. But to me, somethings shouldn’t mix.

Fantasy writers get away with more simply because, well, they write fantasy. If they want a sarcastic dragon who torches a town just for spit and giggles, they can do it. It is fantasy. But even then, the writing has to be strong enough to carry the idea through. A whole plate of toppings with no lettuce is not a salad, it is buffet of snacks for dipping.

Zingers don’t make comedy, a time period does not make a historical and a murder does not make a suspense novel. Just like a cucumber and an avocado aren’t a salad. They are all ingredients. And a dressing choice can change the flavor of a salad. French is zippier lighter (comedy?), Ranch is creamier (sweet?), Russian is bold, biting (Suspense) I once had a black raspberry vinaigrette that made my mouth water (Erotica?).

Start with a nice bed of fresh lettuce (A plot line), pick your favorite toppings like cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms (Characters, setting, time period, quirks), select a dressing (Tone or feel of the story), top with garnish of bacon bits or croûtons (That hook, the crunch to sink my teeth into). Sit back, enjoy.

And a good book satisfies a hunger and has no calories. Always a biggie!

Training Your Muse to Come

Have you ever taken a face-to-face writing class and felt like you were the only person in attendance who didn’t have a clue?

I have, *shudder* and it’s not an experience I’m keen to repeat.

I vividly recall the first writing class I took after I realized that the novel I’d written—a true work of unblemished genius—would never sell. Talk about feeling lost and humiliated! The teacher, a published writer, clapped her hands a said, “Well…that’s enough talk for now! Let’s write. Everyone free-write for 20 minutes, and then we’ll read a few of your passages.”

OMG! I totally panicked. Write for 20 minutes? About what?

Now, you have to understand, I’ve always been a straight A student, a true Hermione Grainger type. Not do an assignment? Not understand what a teacher wanted? Totally freaked me out!

I think I finally managed to eke out two sentences. Needless to say, I didn’t volunteer to read. Another pubbed writer in the group was asked to read his passage. Eric had nearly completed a flash fiction piece in that twenty minutes!

Even the teacher was astounded. Eric had his laptop along—me, who never writes by hand unless forced, was sitting there with a notebook and pen—so she asked him for a word count. As I recall he’d written a little over 1400 words in the time it had taken me to dither over two sentences!

Eric (who became my first real mentor) was quick to point out that his ability hadn’t come easily; he’d worked hard to train his muse to come on command. When I chatted with him during the break, he recommended a random word exercise. His point was not that I’d get lots of publishable stories, but that I’d train my subconscious to work for me, instead of me waiting for “inspiration.”

Everything and anything becomes inspiration once you train your muse to come when called.

Mind you, my muse and I are still in training…

BUT, if you’d like to try it, here’s the exercise I use:

Create a list of 3-word sets. Totally random, unrelated words. (examples: army-tiger-ring; brother-aesthetic-muddle; zebra-skeleton-barbell)

Each day copy one set from the list to a blank page. Set a timer for 15 minutes and write until it goes off. Your goal is to use all three words in a meaningful way before the timer beeps.

That’s it. Just 15 minutes per day.

Don’t expect brilliance from these timed-writes. Expect to panic and wail, “I can’t possibly use all three of those words in 15 minutes! They don’t have any correlation!”

Exactly. Write for 15 minutes anyway. Don’t think about it; do it. Make your fingers fly and work each of the words in. You don’t have to show these exercises to anyone, you just have to do them…and your muse must answer your call and supply the inspiration. Make her sweat.

Most days, you’ll get drivel, but every now and then a story seed will appear. When that happens, rejoice. But remember, that’s not why you’re doing the exercise. The story seeds are pure serendipity.

You’re doing the exercise to accomplish two things: to discipline yourself to a daily writing habit, and to train your muse to come when you place your hands on the keyboard.

Don’t you think those items are worth 15 minutes a day?

Happy writing!!

—Debbie

P.S. - My first ever Podcast interview was just released at Freya’s Bower! Want to hear me chat about writing? Check it out here.

Housecleaning & names too

Friday night, my amazing CP and I took turns going through our Ws-IP folder and cleaning house. I threw out a premise, how long ago I’d worked on it, how I felt about it at that point, and she gave the Keep It, Delete It verdict. I returned the favor. Have you done this recently? It’s so refreshing - like a good, thorough spring cleaning, windows washed and cobwebs out of the corners.

Now that the dangling projects, the projects I was determined to finish even though I hated them, the everything-else-uninteresting projects are gone (gone!) I’m free to start fresh. I’ve been trying to get to this Clean Slate stage for ages.

If only I could make up my mind about some names. And settings. And whether I really want to keep the flower-print skort I bought last week.

Listen, question: With this new project o’ mine, a paranormal, the paranormal elements are based upon Russian folklore and the paranormal society heirarchy is modeled after the Russian royal lineup of princes and princesses. Would you as a reader be annoyed by the stylized Russian names? Or would they make sense to you? I (surprise surprise) can’t decide.