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This month on the Heat Flash podcast, I'm podcasting stories about relationships. And there is no relationship more special than the one between doctor and patient. Or at least, that's the way it should be. In the current era of doc-in-a-box, I'm sure we all long for a little TLC from the ones who know our bodies best. So here's a look at an earlier day, when doctors still practiced that healing touch. Enjoy! Bedside Manor Relationship theme, 562 words This week's promo is for Mur Lafferty's Playing For Keeps - a super hero novel that brings out the super hero in us all. Buy Playing For Keeps from Amazon.com on 25 August 2008! Be sure to visit the Erotica Readers and Writers Association theme gallery. The ERWA theme for August is Historical Erotica. Labels: Podcast |
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 For once, I have the cartoon done a little early this week. I pulled an all-nighter last night to get this done. Not the strip I had originally intended to put out, but it occurred to me yesterday afternoon that Mur Lafferty's novel, Playing for Keeps, was going up for a big push on Amazon.com on Monday and... What? Who's Mur Lafferty and What's Playing for Keeps? You mean you don't KNOW? Mur Lafferty is a writer and podcaster extraordinaire. She's the host of the podcast show I Should Be Writing, the podcast for wanna-be fiction writers written by a wanna-be fiction writer who it just so happens now has a published book. For some time, Mur's been writing novels and podcasting them a chapter at a time, gaining an audience in the tens of thousands as she gave away book after book in MP3 and PDF format. Yeah, that's right, she GAVE HER BOOKS AWAY! And in the process gained a HUGE following. Earlier this year, her super hero novel, Playing for Keeps, was picked up by Swarm Press. I had previously bought a copy of Playing for Keeps, one that Mur had self-published, and let me tell you, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I'm looking forward to seeing what the newly published book will look like because guess what? I'm a book junkie and I'll buy the book a second time, even though I already have a hard copy and the PDF and the podcast. And I'm not the only person who will do that. See, here's the thing. Not so many years ago, someone figured out that the way to hook a reader was to give them a story. For free. I think that someone was Tee Morris who podcast his first novel, Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana, for free after publishing it with Dragon Moon Press. Tee is big on promoting his work, and does an outstanding podcast called The Survivor's Guide to Writing Fantasy in which he discusses how authors can promote their books. Podcasting Morevi worked so well for Tee that he podcast his second book as well, and now he has a huge audience all clamoring for his third book which he, along with fellow podcaster Phillipa Ballantine, pushed at Amazon.com on August 8th. Phillipa's book, Chasing the Bard, is another free podcast novel, and a damned good one. Both she and Tee had such huge response on August 8th that they climbed the charts that day and stayed on the charts for a while after. And these are two books published by a small press! Other authors have struck it even bigger than that. Scott Sigler, who landed on the New York Times bestseller list, podcast a number of his novels for free before landing a major contract with Crown. And he started, just like Tee and Mur and Phillipa, by podcasting his work for free. It's an odd concept, and a very uncomfortable one for many writers, giving away your work. We all put so much into our writing, hoping to get published, hoping to make money, so how can we just give our stuff away? Especially when so many of us fall victim to e-pirates who take our books and post them to groups for others to read without concern for the fact that they've stolen our work. And yet, the idea seems to work. Give your work away. Build an audience. And then when the time comes, when you have that audience, you can go to a publisher and say, "Hey, I've got twenty thousand people listening to the podcast of my novel week after week!" Or maybe "Hey, the free PDF of my last novella was downloaded fifty thousand times!" And that publisher might take a long hard look at that built-in audience you've worked so hard to gain and think, "Hey, if I publish this guy, I've got a sure thing..." And then you might just have a contract for a book. I give away a lot of my work for free. Each week I podcast a new erotica story on my fiction podcast, Heat Flash. I get about two thousand downloads a month, which ain't small change. I also publish a lot of free reads on the Erotica Readers and Writers Association, and I know people see those stories because I get e-mails from folks who enjoyed my work. I've got the cartoons which I post each week. I'm working now on a novella to put together as a free downloadable PDF and a podcast. The idea is to offer the PDF at my website and my publisher's website to give people a taste of what I write, and to distribute the PDF via my blog, podcast feed, etc. The PDF of course will have my URL and a buy link to any other work I have available. And the podcast version of the novella will hopefully gain me an even larger audience than I already have, an audience of people willing to spend some money on any current or future books I write. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but I keep thinking, I would be writing anyway (I should be writing, according to Mur), and yeah maybe I could publish a novella through an e-publisher for money, but in the long run a podcast might do me more good. It's an experiment, and one I'm looking forward to trying. In the mean time though, Monday -- August 25th -- is Mur Lafferty's day. If you like super hero stories, if you like a good read, if you want to be a part of publishing and podcasting history, stop by Amazon.com and buy a copy of Playing for Keeps. Help push Mur up the charts. Visit her website - www.playingforkeepsnovel.com - to find out more and get lots of free goodies, including extra stories and video, and enjoy Mur's work. She's a good writer. She's given her readers a lot. Now let's give her some love. Labels: Cartoon, Podcast, Writing Business |
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
50th Episode of the Heat Flash Podcast is this Friday!
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This Friday marks the 50th episode of the Heat Flash podcast. Woo hoo! 50 episodes of naughty stories and sexual weirdness from yours truly! Ain't it grand? But seriously, this week's episode will be something special. My good friend Nobilis and his lovely wife Dee did the reading for me, and they are great! What a team! What comedic timing! What awesome audio equipment! Which reminds me that I sooooo need to upgrade my microphone... So, if you're in the mood (and you know you are), stop by www.heatflash.libsyn.com on Friday to hear Episode 50 - Diplomacy. It's all about one of the greatest cliche's in science fiction erotica - sealing diplomatic relationships between humans and aliens with sex. Only my story isn't cliche, it's GOOD! As Commander Ivanova would say, "Boom shakalakalaka, boom shakalakalaka, hey there, hey there, three bags full!" You Babylon 5 geeks will know what I'm talking about ;) Labels: Heat Flash, Podcast, Sci-fi Erotica |
Monday, August 11, 2008
Insomnia, Inadequacy, and Twitter
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If you're reading this blog, you've probably noticed the Twitter box in the right side bar. Yep. I'm micro-blogging now. It's damned addictive. I signed up with Twitter last week, which may have been a bad time for me to jump into a new social network, (like there's ever a good time). Michael was away for half the week. My youngest, the Pixie, had a fever and just oozed snot all over the place, but kept running and playing like nothing was wrong until she collapsed into temper tantrums. My oldest, the Princess, was actually very good, very helpful. Good thing too, because I was feeling pretty lousy myself. Don't know what I had, but I was dead tired all the time and dragging myself through the days. On top of all this, I started a story that I wanted to finish in time for ERWA's theme weekend this month. The theme was mystery and noir, the deadline midnight Saturday. I had a story idea, a really good one. But I didn't realize until I sat down on Monday to write that the story was probably going to be 12,000 words long. I just churned out two stories in two weeks the month before that were both 8,000 words long, and the thought of doing this to myself a third time on a story that was even longer just about killed me. That's a lot of writing to try and accomplish when you're sick, the kids are sick, and the husband is away. But I struggled onward and managed to get 6,000 words written by Saturday night. Michael came home Friday and royally screwed up my schedule by not telling me what his plans were when he got home. I know, I know. He had no idea he would have a 4PM meeting on Friday after being away on a trip, but still, trying to keep an eye on a couple of yard apes who were screaming for there father while said father headed out the door for an all afternoon meeting did not help me get any writing done. At least he did come home as soon as he could and take over the kids for me. It was a crap week. And the pressure was only just starting to mount. I felt like I wasn't accomplishing anything, which was a crock because I did write 6000 words and I finished up another cartoon and I got an episode of my podcast out the door. But... Friday while I was on Twitter, I ended up watching two other writers promote their big new releases, and it was **great** that their books were out on Amazon and that all everybody following these authors on Twitter went out and bought the books so they could push these two people into the limelight of the top selling authors on Amazon for that day (and many days to follow as it turns out). But watching writers who are succeeding so well made me feel... well, tiny. Insignificant. Inadequate. And that's when the insomnia started. I had a story with a twisty twiny intricate plot that I needed to finish by Saturday midnight and I knew I physically couldn't do it. I was sick, burnt out, and overwhelmed with kids, husband, and laundry. The 50th episode of my podcast, Heat Flash, was coming up the next week and I had made no real plans for it beyond getting my good friend and fellow author Nobilis and his wife to help me record and produce it. Reaching episode 50 is a huge thing, let me tell you. That means I've written 50 stories since last September, not including the stories for special episodes and other publications. 50 stories in less than a year! And it looked like the milestone was going to pass by with very little fan fare because I didn't have time or wasn't organized enough to promote the event. On top of that, I knew I'd be out of town when the big day came. My cousin's daughter gets married next Saturday. In Pennsylvania. So I won't be home to tweet and blog and promote for most of the week about my wonderful, amazing podcast. Which didn't feel so wonderful at that moment because of how tired I was. Friday night, I got almost no sleep. I think I nodded off in time to not hear my husband get up and shower the next morning. I spent most of Saturday morning at the dojo watching the Princess compete, and then had to spend an hour getting photos taken of her, myself, and my husband in all our karate gear. I really, really didn't want to do that. I hate pictures of myself like that. It seems so phony, posed, and bogus. And besides, I looked like crap because I didn't sleep the night before. Then when I got home, I had to deal with the kids running around screaming, Michael trying to get them out the door and out of the house, more running and screaming, where are their swimsuits, where's the sun block, we don't have any clean beach towels, will they ever get out the door... Michael left with the girls for the pool. I locked myself into the office. I churned out another 1000 words while they were gone. It was painful. The well was full, but the bucket was broken. I gave up when everybody came home and sent out what I had later that night. Around 11PM, I tried to go to sleep. But the story I was writing kept dancing around in my mind, along with worries about all the promo I knew I should be doing, and the podcast, oh gods I had to assemble the podcast the next morning at 0530 and if I didn't sleep I wasn't going to get up to do the work, and then I'd have to struggle all week long to pull this thing together and I hate that. And really, MUST Michael snore when I'm trying to sleep?! Geeze! I just couldn't sleep, no matter what. I tried a glass of wine, a hot bath, reading, meditating... Nothing worked. So I crawled out of bed and hopped onto Twitter. And what do you know? There were quite a few people who couldn't sleep that night. Nobilis was up and running because he'd just finished some really great writing and was psyched to do more work. Another Twitter friend couldn't sleep and was watching bad monster movies on Sci-Fi. Someone else apparently never sleeps at night and was working on a podcast. I started tweeting with people while Michael snored in the bed. It made me feel less lonely (insomnia is terribly, terribly lonely). I had some friends to sympathize with. But I couldn't Twitter all night. I had to do something, something that would take my mind off of my insecurity. Something that would let me go to sleep so I could get up at the crack of dawn and work on my podcast... And that's when it hit me. Work. Why wait for the morning? Why not work now while I was awake? Sure, I'd be one of the living dead the next day, but I could get at least a little work done on the podcast, make things easier for the next day. I mean, come on, if I'm going to be tired, why not at least have something to show for it, right? I transferred myself from the bedroom to the office, logged into Twitter again, and tweeted while I worked. At one point, I had to wake Michael up when my desktop decided to tell me it wanted to reinstall Vista. I thought the damn thing had died on me and gone to PC heaven, but when Michael came to look at it, it straightened right out. Piece of suck-up PC crap. But aside from that, I got work done. I got lost in my work, even. Nobilis and his wife had done an excellent job reading the script I had sent them. The audio file they sent me was high quality. I assembled it into my show file then started hunting down sound effects. This was a special show after all and had been written with fx and music in mind. I played with levels, edited sounds, arranged and rearranged things in Acid Music Studio. I recorded a commentary, the first I've ever done for the show. It was terrific. Episode 50 is going to be so great! And all along I tweeted with folks online. Nothing huge, but it was nice to know we were all staying up late, working, watching TV, unable to sleep. Misery loves company and all that. I put the finishing touches on my podcast at around 5AM. I crawled back into bed at 5:11, just 19 minutes before I was originally supposed to get up. Now I was tired, now I'd get some sleep. Then the Pixie, who had konked out at 6PM the night before, stood up in her crib and started to sing. Very loudly. It was another hour before she quieted down and I went to sleep. Around 10AM, the Princess ran into my room screaming about pancakes and sausage. I got up. I ate. I checked Twitter. There were a lot of sleep-deprived zombies all tweeting each other, like undead song birds that had didn't care that they'd missed the sunrise wake up call. I had e-mail from a couple of folks. Someone read my story, The Honey Bee, online at ERWA and wrote to tell me that not only did he like it, but he had always wanted to write sci-fi erotica, and he believed I had shown him just how it was done. Someone else wrote in to say they loved my cartoon and were passing them on to their friends. And at least two people told me they enjoyed the unfinished story I had sent in to ERWA and if I didn't write the rest and send it to them, they'd come find me and break my legs. It was just a little bit of love, but it was enough to make me feel not inadequate anymore. I dragged through the day, just like I knew I would. I did the house cleaning, folded the laundry, answered e-mails and somehow gathered enough brain cells to write a flash fiction for Flasher Sunday on ERWA, which was also well received. I drank coffee, twitched and groaned, and plowed through the day. At 8PM I tried to sleep and couldn't. More stories ideas twined through my brain, more promo ideas, and a podcast idea so good I had to get out of bed and e-mail Nobilis about it. You people have no idea how happy it makes me to know I have a partner in literary crime. I stayed up and tweeted, and eventually, eventually, I got tired and went to sleep. Around 1AM. Was there any point to all of this? Yeah. I'm not alone, even when I'm sleepless. And the cure for feelings of inadequacy isn't a little blue pill. It's work and feedback. And I really need a nap. Labels: Podcast, Write-At-Home Mom |
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
I Was Interviewed For The Balticon Podcast!
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Speaking of conventions, I was interviewed this past weekend by Paul Fischer of the Balticon Podcast. The interview is here. Paul talked to myself and fellow erotica writer Nobilis about erotica podcasting, writing sexy stories, family values for erotica writers, and everything in between. We also talked a bit about what we'll be doing at Balticon this coming Memorial Day weekend, where Nobilis and I will both be guests working on the adults' new media track for the convention. We had a great time discussing all the naughtiness we plan to get into, so take a listen to the interview and check out some of the rest of the Balticon podcast. Also stop by and listen to Paul's podcast (one of my all time favorites), the ADD Cast. Labels: Conventions And Appearances, Interviews, Podcast |
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Want Some Stories?
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I've been working on the Heat Flash podcast since last September. So far, I've written thirty stories and produced 22 episodes. Episode 23 goes up Friday. In fact, if you'd like to hear a new speculative fiction erotica story every week, by all means subscribe! I post a new episode every Friday. You can subscribe with any of the links below:
So that's the podcast. Now if you'd like to READ some stories, I will be working on adding some of the Heat Flash stories to the story gallery of this website. In fact, I may try to add on or two tonight, depending on how quickly I can get the kids to bed. If you like anything you read, feel free to e-mail me! I loooooooove feed back ;) Labels: Current Work, Podcast, Spec Fic Erotica |
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Today's Work
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I've spent the last couple of days putting together CDs of my podcast to sell at the con. Each CD includes the first 16 episodes of Heat Flash. I made up labels to stick on the CDs once their burned and I've got slip covers to put the final product in. Now I just have to burn and label 100 CDs. I've burned about 75 I think, but haven't labeled any yet. So you know what I'm doing tomorrow. I've also been doing some last minute coordination, making sure everyone from EPIC Virginia who is attending knows what to bring and when to be there. We've got all the shifts covered for the dealer's table now, and we have all our panelists lined up for the erotica and e-publishing panels. I know I've mentioned it already, but the panels are: Friday, 11PM - 12AM BDSM - What it is, What it isn't Saturday, 10AM - 11AM Should I E-Publish or Not? Saturday, Noon - 1PM Is Digital Art "Real" Art Yet? Saturday, 10PM - 11PM Intro to Sci Fi Erotica Saturday, 11PM - 12PM BDSM - Fantasy vs. Reality Again, we'll be at Marscon, 18-20 January (next weekend). Who all is coming from our group? Kathryn Lively with Phaze Books; Sandra Dugas of Asylett Press; Shelby Morgen/Margaret Riley of Changeling Press; Elayne S. Venton; and of course, yours truly. What else have I done? More work on the podcast. Always the podcast. I've got the next episode ready to go, just need to put together the show notes and post it on Friday. Also, two stories that I've written for upcoming episodes will be published in the ERWA galleries next month. One is going in the theme gallery and one in the story time gallery. Now I really need to go to bed. Good night! Labels: Conventions And Appearances, Podcast, Published, Today's Work |
Sunday, January 13, 2008
This Weekend's Work
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Busy, busy, busy. I keep meaning to post before I go to bed, but between handling e-mail for Marscon and trying to get the kids to sleep, I just haven't had time. Or rather, I would have the time if I stayed up, but I am trying to get to bed by 9PM so I can wake up at 5AM the next morning and not feel like a zombie. 'Cause if I feel like a zombie, I ain't getting up. So what have I done since Friday? More Marscon e-mails, although that has slowed down a bit now that I have everyone's bios and I know who's on what panels. I still need to find out who's available to man the dealer's table throughout the weekend. I'll work on that tomorrow. I went shopping, in preparation for the con. We need all sorts of stuff for the dealer's table - a cash box, price stickers, receipt book, pens, etc. The coolest find of my expedition was not Marscon related though. I managed to pick up a bunch of composition notebooks for $1.26 a piece. I use those suckers to keep track of all my ideas, especially for the podcast. Without the Mead composition notebook, there would not even be a Heat Flash podcast! Everything else I bought was for the con. Everyone is bringing their own cash box, so I picked up some index cards and a file box. I figure we can write down the title, author, publisher and price of each book being sold and keep account of how many were sold through out the day. Hmmm... we still have not addressed how to handle purchases of multiple books from multiple authors or publishers. How will we divide that up? Sounds like another e-mail. I also bought blank CDs, labels, and slip covers. My plan is to make 100 CDs of my podcast Heat Flash and sell each CD for $1. Each CD will contain MP3s of the first three months of the podcast, 16 episodes total (if I can fit that many on a CD). The price is low, but enough to offset the cost of the supplies. I'm more concerned with getting out the word about the podcast than I am about making money at this point, so I'm hoping this works. Writing - I wrote another story for the podcast. This one was about 650 words long. February's theme is "Fetish." I write the stories a month out, and record a week out. I also did some work for Inside The Erotic Mind (ITEM) over at ERWA, going through discussion threads from one of the e-mail lists, looking for topics to use for an article. I think I found one, also on fetishes. Can't seem to get away from the topic right now. Podcast - I already mentioned writing a new story. I also recorded next Friday's episode this morning, and did a little clean up work on the audio. And I edited the story for the week after that. I want all my stories to be 1000 words or below, but this one is running a little long no matter what I do, and since I'm on a tight deadline, I'm not fighting with it any longer. Since I'll be at Marscon all next weekend, I need to record the next episode either tomorrow or Tuesday, rather than wait until next weekend. And I think that's about all I did this weekend. Seems like a lot looking back at it. Not bad for three days work. Labels: Conventions And Appearances, Podcast, Today's Work |
Monday, December 3, 2007
I Fell Off The Blogosphere
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What can I say? I've been busy... Since my last entry almost two months ago, I've had a lot of work land in my lap. The podcast has definitely kept me busy. I have to write at least one short story every week, sometimes two, plus record and assemble every episode. Then I had some graphics work that's come my way. I've got commissions for four e-book covers that I'm working on, as well as some website work, plus I've got my own artwork that I want to complete for a competition. I also got the final edits for Demon By Day. That took a month to complete, since I decided to go through the manuscript three times to catch all the small errors. Then there's the Eppies. I signed up to read as a judge, and got seven books in all. Can't tell you what I'm reading, but it's been an eye-opening experience, and I'm glad I decided to participate. And on top of all that, I'm working to put together a dealer's table at Marscon for members of EPIC VA, and I'm putting together the adult programming track as well. I've also been invited to be a writing guest at the con too, which is very nice. It'll be my first guest appearance at a con. Whoo hoo! Throw into this mix the fact that both my daughters and I have been sick (I was sick twice in the last two month, in fact) and it all adds up to a rather hectic time. So hectic that once again I missed my dad's birthday (it was yesterday - d'oh!) and I'm already behind on my holiday shopping. However, things are starting to quiet down, or at least even out. I'm getting the work done. My biggest problem right now is getting out of bed early enough in the morning to work on the podcast. I was getting up at 4AM. That went out the window Thanksgiving week when I came down with a really nasty upper-respiratory infection. Now I'm shooting for a more realistic 5AM. At least it would be realistic if I went to bed at 9PM. See, 5AM would be an ideal time to work on the podcast, especially since Michael cleaned up the office over the garage. I can get in there now, so I've hooked up my USB mic to my desktop computer and loaded up a copy of Audicity so I can record. At 5AM, in that office, I've got the ideal set up for recording and assembling each podcast. Everyone's asleep, and I'm in a part of the house where I won't bother anyone. Plus, the local Air Force base tends not to run any training flights that early in the morning, so I don't pick up any jet noise as I record. It's the perfect time to work. I just have to get up to do it. At least it would be if I went to bed early, like I'm supposed to. The goal this week is to get into bed by 9PM so I get eight hours of sleep and wake up at five. If I can make it a habit, I'll be good to go. The rest of the day will fall into place. After working on the podcast, I can go straight to taking a shower, waking up the kids and getting breakfast. Once Cassie and Michael are out the door, Sam and I can putter around, doing laundry and housecleaning. I might even have time to blog. Then off to the gym at ten, lunch at 11:30, playtime with Sam, naptime at 1:30PM (for Sam) and two hours to write from 2-4. Doesn't that sound lovely? All I have to do is get up at 5AM... and go to bed at 9PM. Wish me luck. Labels: Conventions And Appearances, Podcast, Write-At-Home Mom, Writing Business |
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Another Podcast Up!
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The second episode of my podcast, Heat Flash, is up. I'm running a horror theme this month, so stop by and take a listen. Labels: Current Work, Heat Flash, Podcast |
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Podcast Up!
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I've been working on a special project the last few weeks. It's a podcast called "Heat Flash." The website is up, complete with a promo MP3. Stop by and take a look! Labels: Current Work, Heat Flash, Podcast |
- Erotica Art Demo - Go Fish (part 1)
- Erotica Cover Watch!
- Episode 16
- Demon By Day available in print!
- What is a Demon?
- Free Read On Frequently Felt!
- Episode 15
- Cynical Woman Cartoons Have Their Own Home!
- Cartoon Up! The Adventures of Cynical Woman
- Another test for Zoundry's Rave
Erotica Readers & Writers Association
Erotica Readers & Writers Association
EPIC - Electronically Published Industry Connection
Survival Guide To Writing Fantasy
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