After this entry, no more whoring for awhile. I promise. It’s just that, after tipping the hat to my short story editors, I’d be remiss if I didn’t do the same for key people who have handed me two successes in my novel writing.
First, an erotic fantasy I wrote placed third in the 2006 Project Queer Lit competition and I want to thank the judges for considering it so worthy. I wrote Initiate’s Rise along the lines of both traditional, contemporary fantasy writing (i.e., it’s long, there’s magic, there’s good versus evil), but I injected both the sense of the omnisexual that Laura Antoniou brings to her Marketplace novels and a strong erotic voice. Some characters have fairly fixed orientations while others are highly flexible. And sometimes the magic, which spring from sexual energy, overrides inflexibility and demands whatever pairing will give it its due.
I intend to rewrite the novel to some extent. The final chapter needs a complete retooling and expanding, and some of the erotic passages might well work better with stronger detail. (It was difficult to gauge how frank sex scenes could be. Queer audiences are usually far hungrier for hot sex scenes than editors and publishers and while I’m unconvinced that the later would accept more concentrated and explicit passages, I’m willing to try it for the readers’ sake.)
Whether the novel ever sees publication is debatable, but I am endlessly thankful the competition judges found it worth a third place finish. Thank you!
During the time Initiate’s Rise wound its way though the competition, I was offered a contract for what I call my dominatrix chic lit novel, Inequities. Thanks to Maxim Jakubowski, editor of the Mammoth erotica books, it will join the Neon Books imprint that will officially launch from the British-based Orion Publishers Group in August 2007. I don’t yet know what month Inequities will be released, but it will be part of the general book trade and, hopefully, will see U.S. distribution.
As you can guess, I’m thrilled to finally see a novel into print. For many years, I avoided British publishers not because of any xenophobia but because the imprints that existed had editorial expectations that either limited what I could write or struck me as too formulaic. Maxim, however, offered what I needed: A strong degree of creative freedom and editorial respect for erotic writing. Thus, I queried him with a novel I had written years ago, then revised to broaden its plot.
And now I proffer my thanks to Maxim for providing us erotica writers with a new avenue.
Some of you readers might remember that I announced Inequities acceptance into the Neon imprint some time ago. To you, it’s not wholly new news. Suffice to say, that the Neon imprint had its fits and starts over the last year, but Maxim doggedly pursued whatever delays and problems arose and committed himself to making sure the line was properly attended to. Consequently, we have the August launch to look forward to and I, for one, am eager to see what results. May grand things come of it.
Today’s kinky virtual book tour link:Sex and Ivy (entry not yet posted at the time of this entry).
