News from Cleis Press

Cleis Press is launching a new erotic romance imprint. Here's hoping it'll be F/F friendly! http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/62927-cleis-launches-erotic-romance-imprint.html#path/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/62927-cleis-launches-erotic-romance-imprint.html

Writing Sex Scenes and Erotica Panel for MinnSpec

Last weekend, I participated in a panel on writing sex scenes and erotica with authors Elise Matthesen and Devin Harnois. MinnSpec is a Twin Cities science fiction, fantasy and horror writing and social group. They did a great job hosting! Lots of great questions and food for thought. :-)

F/F-friendly CFS

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Guest Blog Post: Author/Editor Cheyenne Blue on "Pronoun Hell"

Pronoun Hell

There is a special torture for writers of same sex erotica and romance which doesn’t affect writers of heterosexual romance.  Pronoun hell.

It’s hard enough writing sex scenes as it is. Keeping track of whose hand is on what body part, whose fingertips are walking, strumming, dancing on whose breast, thigh, belly.  More than once, when I’ve been editing my own story, I’ve realized that one of my character’s hands is in her lover’s hair, the second is smoothing the skin of her lover’s thigh, and the third hand is running over her lover’s shoulders. It reminds me of that scene in Galaxy Quest where the alien tentacles come bursting out of the human skin to engulf their lover in passion.

But if your lovers are the same sex, you have to allow for the ambiguous “her”, especially if there are more than two participants in the scene.  Consider this heterosexual love scene.

A swift indrawn breath from beneath her and then he grasped her bottom with both hands, pulling her cunt down on his mouth. She gave herself over to the tongue on her pussy, the speed, the dexterity, how damn good it was. Her thighs, slippery with sweat, locked around his head and more hair escaped from the hasty twist she’d shoveled it into, clinging stickily to her neck. His tongue must be getting tired, but her lover didn’t let up. Flick, lap, moving across her cunt, dipping into her folds, every crease and valley.

Even though it’s only “he” and “she” there’s no confusion about what body parts belong to whom.  Of course it’s easier too when the participants have different parts where it matters.  But if they are both she, if they both have pussies, then that scene won’t work as written:

A swift indrawn breath from beneath her and then she grasped her bottom with both hands, pulling her cunt down on her mouth. She gave herself over to the tongue on her pussy, the speed, the dexterity, how damn good it was. Her thighs, slippery with sweat, locked around her head and more hair escaped from the hasty twist she’d shoveled it into, clinging stickily to her neck. Her tongue must be getting tired, but her lover didn’t let up. Flick, lap, moving across her cunt, dipping into her folds, every crease and valley.

Holy moly, that’s both confusing and laughable—not necessarily in that order.  I wish I could lock my thighs around my head and lick myself where it mattered.  Okay, I wish I were a cat. ;)

When you’re writing same sex erotica, you have to be more specific.  Yes, it means using names more often which doesn’t flow as smoothly, but it’s better than having your readers howling with laughter because they’ve interpreted your character as a mutant contortionist.

An alternative to using names is to use labels: “the blond pilot”, “the nurse”, “the older woman”. Used sparingly this works well; used too frequently and it’s annoying and cumbersome.

A friend has a collection of little rubber people figures. She acts out the sex scenes in her writing, like a plasticine twister: blue man’s right hand on red woman’s left hip; red woman’s right foot on back of blue man’s thigh.  That might be further than you want to go, but her characters never have the wrong number of extremities.

Right now, I’m sifting through submissions for my upcoming anthology “Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire”. And yes, even in the most polished, professional manuscripts pronoun hell can rears its ugly head.

Here’s the final version of the example scene earlier.  It’s taken from “Outback Christmas” which appeared in “A Christmas to Remember” published by Ladylit last December.

A swift indrawn breath from beneath her and then Casey grasped Simona’s bottom with both hands, pulling Simona’s cunt down on her mouth. Simona gave herself over to the tongue on her pussy, the speed, the dexterity, how damn good it was. Her thighs, slippery with sweat, locked around Casey’s head and more hair escaped from the hasty twist she’d shoveled it into, clinging stickily to her neck. Casey’s tongue must be getting tired, but her lover didn’t let up. Flick, lap, moving across her cunt, dipping into her folds, every crease and valley. 

“Forbidden Fruit: stories of unwise lesbian desire” edited by Cheyenne Blue will be published by Ladylit in late August 2014,

Cheyenne Blue’s erotica has appeared in over 90 anthologies including Best Women's Erotica, Cowboy Lust, Best Lesbian Romance, Lesbian Lust, and Frenzy:60 Stories of Sudden Sex. She lives and writes by the beach in Queensland, Australia. Visit her website at http://www.cheyenneblue.com

Signal boost for blogger Rachel Smith and family

Book blogger/reviewer Rachel Smith of Bitten by Books and her family need a helping hand moving across country. They've only got 40 more hours to raise the funds - please boost and donate if you can - https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/fklD5

Guest Blog Post by Editor Sacchi Green

Our hostess and I have been friends for almost as long as we’ve been writing erotica, although we first met doing a signing for a non-erotic fantasy anthology called Such a Pretty Face: Tales of Power and Abundance (edited by Lee Martindale.) We’ve both kept on writing erotica, but for this blog post I thought it might be useful to discuss the editorial side of the writing/publishing equation.

I edit mostly lesbian erotica, usually for Cleis Press (six anthologies published, one in the pipeline, and one more still taking submissions—you can find the guidelines at http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com,) and sometimes LGBTQ speculative fiction for Lethe Press. I’ll describe the technical parts of editing down the page a bit, but you might be more interested what I look for in erotic short stories, so here are a few pieces of advice, most of them applicable to pretty much any genre of short fiction.

1) Tell a story as only you can tell it. Be familiar with other writing in your genre, but don’t imitate anyone else. I look for an original approach and a distinctive voice; something to set a story apart from all the thousands I’ve seen before. Surprise me!

2) Make your characters so real that the reader can tell them apart just by the way they act and speak, even when you don’t specify who’s speaking. This is especially important with same-sex couples; you can only use pronouns like “she” or “her” a few times in a row before nobody can tell who’s saying or doing what to whom. And don’t be reluctant to use their names when necessary to distinguish them. 

3) Pay attention to the rhythm of your prose. Vary the length and structure of your sentences (unless, of course, you use short, choppy sentences or long, rambling ones to make a certain point or define a character.) Try reading your work out loud.

4) Don’t assume that grammatical constructions you see over and over must be correct, or should be used over and over. There’s no need for sentence after sentence, or even paragraph after paragraph, to begin with a participial phrase such as “Opening the door, she crossed the room.” Think about that. Is the room so small one could cross it while still in the process of opening the door? There are other more varied ways of avoiding too many sentences that start with “she” or the character’s name.

5) PLEASE be sure you know whether your character’s movements and actions are physically possible. I’m not talking about superhuman endurance; I’m just considering logistics. Remember whose various parts are where, and don’t tie the reader’s mind in knots trying to figure out how what was up is suddenly down, and why what faced one direction (and was, in fact, tied down that way) is suddenly available for full frontal play. Interrupting the flow of a sex scene is especially, well, frustrating.

6) Use just as much explicit detail as is necessary to elicit the response you’re after. No more, no less. Even in erotica the sex scenes are only one element, however major, in a story that should include characterization and some sort of story arc that makes the ending proceed naturally from the beginning.

7. Pay attention to what you think the editor wants, but not so much that you don’t write the way you really want to. I’ve rejected pieces by some good writers who finally sold to me when they stopped trying to be too “nice” and dug down into what they really needed to say, however dark.

8. Don’t pay too much attention to anything I’ve said above. Other editors will have other tastes and opinions, and yes, it really is a crap shoot of sorts.

 Back to the job of an anthology editor, for those who might be thinking of trying that. My major advice along those lines is to get your own work into so many publications that good writers are familiar with your work and trust you to handle theirs well.  

 

An anthology editor isn’t the same as a line or copy editor, although I do a fair bit of that before turning in a manuscript. What I do as an editor is: a. Pitch a theme to a publisher. b. Get it (sometimes) approved. c. Circulate my call for submissions and answer questions about the guidelines. d. Read and select submissions, conferring with writers on editorial changes if necessary. e. Send out conditional acceptances and (the worst part) rejections. f. Assemble and polish the final manuscript, including my introduction. g. Submit the manuscript. h. Wait, possibly for several months, for the publisher’s formal acceptance; mine have the final say on each part. i. Wait many more months for publication, meanwhile fielding and suggesting more minor changes on preliminary galley proofs, and standing up for your writers whenever you can. j. Publicize the book when it comes out, which includes begging for reviews by any means possible. Well, I haven’t yet offered home made cookies, but I’m seriously considering it.      

Why did decide to become an editor? Well, when I was a kid the other kids assumed that I’d be a teacher when I grew up, just because I was obnoxiously smart and wore glasses and was somewhat socially inept. I was determined NEVER to be a teacher. Maybe editing satisfies a repressed need to correct term papers after all--as long as they’re sexy term papers.

Bio:

Sacchi Green’s stories have appeared in a hip-high stack of publications. She’s also edited nine erotica anthologies, most recently Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories, available on Amazon and at http://www.cleispress.com/book_page.php?book_id=542. Seven of her books, including Wild Girls, have been Lambda Literary Award Finalists, and one, Lesbian Cowboys, was a Lambda Winner. She hangs out on Facebook and at http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com. You can also contact her at sacchigreen@gmail.com.

 

More subs!

Getting ready to send out a new story. Then 3 more to go, plus the novel rewrite. This must be that writing buzz thing I've heard so much about.

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”

― Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

 

But today is not that day. :-)