Check What’s Up: Where have you been!?

Who me? I’ve been hella busy and hella lazy. Here are all the things that you think you’ve been missing out on.

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If you haven’t heard, the Sisters in Smut and a handful of other lovely authors are putting together a sensually decadent anthology sequel called Chemical [se]X 2: Just One More. 14 authors, 1 idea, lots of smutty sex-positive goodness.

Oleander Plume is a genius and I’m quite thrilled she jumped in head first. Dr. J., Ms. OP, and myself are co-editing and co-designing. We hope to bring you something truly delicious. Keep your eyes peeled in February for the Valentine’s Day Release. (Yes, I’m being punny.)

When you submit to an anthology, you basically send your story somewhere and hope to get accepted. You sit and wait patiently… or I don’t know, get on the next writing project so you can keep your flow moving free and clear of obstacles.

I keep coming up with obstacles. Recently, I invested in a Happy Light to help with my SAD issues. I can’t use it at work (for one stupid fucking reason) so I sit with it in the morning before work and then turn it on again in the evening. I need to get back into regular workouts, but when you get excited about a project, sometimes, moving is moot.

I overshot the word count for Chemical Sex by 2100ish words.

Thankfully, I have my sisters to help squelch some of them. I’m also trying to read the other submissions and send back helpful comments or questions about the story. Which I hope will help them and their story. I did get back comments on my story and have started rewriting it. I still need to look at comments from others, but I wanted to rewrite, then look at the others, instead of overwhelming myself with all of them at once. (I’m a people-pleaser, so I’m trying not to overwhelm with pleasing all the people all at once, but to pick and choose where I please.)

Then there’s the cover. Dr. J., Oleander Plume, and myself have all different ideas when it comes to design and fonts. Fonts I love, one of them hates, fonts they love, I hate. We’re finding fonts we enjoy that won’t take away the aesthetic we want to keep with the design. And the images… oh my. Wait until you see these images. We have been blessed with a photographer who doesn’t mind visiting our smutty ideas and snapping some sultry shots.

So yes, I have taken a little hiatus from writing freebies.

I’ve been throwing myself deep into the Chemical Sex Multiverse – and oh my is it a multiverse! Have you seen the authors who have graciously said yes to writing with us? I feel that we have hit the motherlode* here. Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing.

I’ve been using downtime to play The Sims 4. You know, build houses, create characters, make them do naughty things… hey, it keeps my muse fueled. I mean, when you have Get to Work and you follow the Sim to work (instead of bulldozing their house and building a new one while they’re gone**) the mod that I have… they have some interesting settings… and Sims will just start banging it out right there… like, in the interrogation room. Yep. It’s hilarious and entertaining.

Yeah, so I’m working hard and being lazy. It’s how I roll. I don’t mean to ignore the blog. I don’t mean not to give you freebies. But… you know? I’m a writer with a day job. The day job is exhausting. Winter is exhausting. And regardless of how many story ideas pile up in the queue, sometimes it’s just a Netflix Binge kind of night. There are a lot of freebies here already, too.

Speaking about freebies…

I’ve given away so many freebies… I participate at least once a year in Smashwords giveaways – if not twice (it depends on if I catch the notice or not). But nothing ever gets returned for that freebie. No review, no love, not even a carrier pigeon showing up with an affirmation that someone read the book. It’s quite disheartening to be honest.

Authors live and die by reviews, but erotica authors tend to be widely neglected because… we write about sex. You know, SEX. That thing that was done in order to create YOU, a human being reading this post and reading smutty goodness. If you truly enjoy someone’s work, erotic or not, please let them know. If Amazon takes down your review, write it somewhere else. Email the author. Give them permission to share it. Tell your friends and family and loved ones. Because if you want artists to keep creating, you give them the means to do so (which also means money, btw).

More often than not, I hear the phrases “I don’t pay for books/music/programs/porn/etc.” and it’s painful. People would rather pirate something than give the artist $1.06 (a 99cent title after tax in the US). And then we wonder why artists give up their dreams. We wonder why they go back to day jobs. We wonder why the economy sucks so damn bad. I understand the difference between spending a buck on a book vs feeding your kids. And those aren’t the people I’m talking about. I’ve been there. If I couldn’t get to the used book store or the library, it was heart-breaking. And the used book store was within walking distance at the time.

When was the last time you showed love to creatives?

I’m talking about the people who have not only money in the bank, but the emergency fund, the secondary emergency fund, enough money to live without working for six months or so, depending on if they’re frugal or not. I’m talking about the people that don’t need one more purse or pair of boots. I’m talking about people who look down on creatives for whatever the reason. Hey, that art you paid for at Target for like 25$? Hundreds of other people have it and it was made in a manufacturing plant to look like it was handmade. You could’ve gone somewhere to get actual handmade items, maybe paid a little more, or a little less, and gotten some truly heartwarming items.

Do you have a friend who makes creative things? Whether it be writing, painting, sculpting… do you truly support them or do you ask them for free stuff? If you’re the one asking for free stuff, or being like ‘I can get that at Target for x amount of dollars… why you charging me so much?’ then you’re not a true friend. You just crushed the hell out of their dream by being one of those people. So, instead of going to the big name stores for all those expensive gifts this holiday, why not find someone that makes something by hand? You could’ve gotten something truly amazing.

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*motherlode = Cheat Code on Sims 4 to get 50,000 Simoleons.

**Bulldozing while their gone… well, it pauses the game, so even when you go back to live mode, they’re still gone and you have to sit there and wait, but it’s funny how they don’t seem to bat an eye that they have a completely different home when they get back.

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Music for you… How about Ichirin No Hana by High and Mighty Color (I’ve been on a Bleach kick again…)

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But that’s okay if you didn’t go handmade this year – you have next year to do better. Perhaps that should be the worldwide resolution for 2019 – To Do Better.