The first was 25 Reasons That Writers are Bug-F*&$ Nuts. It spoke to my soul. Points 4 through 8 were me to a T. As were points 10, 11, 14, 16, and 17. It basically said writers are liars, and loners, messy, insane and misunderstood. And sometimes addicted to caffeine, alcohol or both.

Then there was the second post I read. It was an author writing all about her writing space. She likes to sit in the garden, or on the balcony, and let the birds’ songs make her think of what her characters might be feeling. There’s talk of feng shui and of the importance of an ergonomic chair for proper support in her fixed writing space, I guess for when she wasn’t visiting with the birds in the garden… No judgement here. That’s her and that’s fine.

Here’s me…

I can hear the washing machine running, the closest thing to birdsong is the sound of something metal scratching inside the washer drum–I think there’s a screw rolling around in there with the clothes from the husband’s workpants pocket.

I’m in bed leaning against a pillow with a cat on my legs probably giving me blood clots, and two more cats snoring next to me on the husband’s pillow, and a dog at the end of the bed. No ergonomics here.

It’s a good day. I not only got around to showering (which happens less often than I’m willing to admit), I even remembered to brush my teeth and eat something.

My bedside table, my bedroom being my office 99% of the time when I’m not working standing up at the kitchen counter while something is cooking, contains all the things a working writer needs. Right now mine contains 2 TV clickers, a pad of paper with my To Do list scratched on it and a pen, a napkin from the last meal I ate while on the laptop here in bed, a box of tissues and a box of wine (don’t judge me! It’s a lovely Malbec from Argentina with aromas of chocolate and black cherries and it’s organic!), the house phone, my cell phone, a bottle of water, lip balm, and last but not least a bottle of nighttime cold medicine I’ve been using to put me to sleep at night (I know, that’s bad. I’ve heard it already). The only reason both a coffee mug and a tea cup isn’t there is because I was exhibiting my typical stress behavior and decided to carry them downstairs rather than keep my butt here and keep writing. I also scrubbed the bathtub this morning rather than finish the book I promised an editor would be done last December.

How’s that for feng shui?

I’d say my life is a little closer to the author of blog A than the author of blog B, but hey, if past sales and upcoming book contracts are any indication, it’s working for me so far, so what can I say. To each his own and wouldn’t this be a boring place if we were all exactly the same? Sometimes you need a little crazy.

Cat

1- Things change. What was true yesterday is no longer true today, and if history has shown us anything, it won’t be true tomorrow. Which brings me to the next point…

2- Never stop learning and never ever assume you know it all. Because, as I mentioned above, things change, but…

3- As much as things change, there will also be things that remain the same. I’m thinking particularly of legacy publishing as I type this, holding on to the way things used to be by the skin of its teeth. Yes, it may be making small concessions here and there, but basically, still the same. But as I said…for the sake of repetition, please refer to point #1.

4- You have to put your best foot forward at all times. You never know who’s watching. Honestly, you really never know, and what you are doing when you think no one is looking could be the defining moment in your life. It could make or break your career. Did you write a free short story just for fun? Did you put in out there for the public to read? Then that piece of writing better be the best damn thing you can put out there. It had better be as good as what you would send to your editor. It better be as good and as clean as it would be if it went through edits and proofing because, as I said, you really never know who’s out there reading it, now do you? The same goes for web presence. What’s out there on the web, be it your own domain, or blog, or Facebook or Twitter (especially FB & Twitter) it better represent you the way you want to be represented to the world, because, you just never know.

5-Luck is nothing without hard work, persistence and talent. Luck may drop an opportunity into your lap but if you let it sit there and don’t act on that opportunity, it will shrivel up and die as surely as that houseplant you forgot to water. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if there is such a thing as luck at all, because it is more likely the hard work, persistence and talent brought that opportunity to you in the first place.

6-When others talk, listen. You can decide whether to accept their opinions/suggestions later, but at least hear them out, because you never know from where the next gems of wisdom will come and because (see #2) you can never stop learning because (see #1) things never stop changing.

7- Always check your email spam folder. Sounds silly. Sounds strange. But believe me, Microsoft’s “junk” may be the thing that could change your life. And I’ll leave you with that and the promise of an explanation…soon.

Cat

I’ve been traveling a bit lately. A visit one night to a book club on Long Island. A live reading at the Happy Ending Lounge in Manhattan. This upcoming Friday I’ll be in Albany lecturing for a day on writing panels. But that’s not really all that time consuming–a day here, a day there. It’s the contracts and the deadlines looming before me that have me up at night.

It’s October 18th and I haven’t done the math but December is right around the corner. I somehow have to get my out-of-print holiday eBook out in time for the big it’s Christmas and Amazon has a new $79 Kindle out rush. Then I have to whip out a 50K word novel that I promised to write in a moment of weakness, or perhaps insanity. Then there is still the 5th bull rider book for my Studs in Spurs series that I promised my regular publisher. I want that to be 60K words so critics stop calling those books ’short stories’… sigh. Somewhere in between there I have two super secret projects to work on. One is time sensitive, and one not so much. One is not contracted, the other is, but I tend to work with the same level of dedication no matter what. Then there’s a bunch of book bloggers who were kind enough to ask me to guest on their blogs and I, of course, said yes (please refer to the title of this post).

Now, if November and December weren’t hellishly busy, I might not worry. But of course there’s Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorating, and shopping, and wrapping, and entertaining and visiting. Then if Lyndhurst calls me to play again for their holiday tours, I’ll have to brush up 2 books worth of harp music I haven’t played in a year in preparation for 2 live performances weekly beginning Thanksgiving weekend and not ending until Christmas.

So what has all this taught me? Me, the queen of procrastination, has no time to procrastinate until after the New Year. Maybe that’s a good time for a non-procrastination resolution. I guess we’ll see…

Cat

One day a romance writer who was making a decent living, a better living than she ever dreamed she could by working from home in pajamas each day, read an article. There were vast riches to be made in that land called Self-published Erotica eBooks. Huge riches to be made in the provinces of Nook and Kindle and it was no tall tale. Alas there was proof. Authors who this romance writer actually knew were panning the gold from the erotica waters and coming up with mind-boggling profits. (Seriously folks, I’m talking a million dollars a year or more in their pockets not accounting for Uncle Sam and his evil tax collectors, of course.)

So this author read the million dollar author’s book and declared–I can do that! I will do that! I’ll do it right now! And she came up with a brilliant idea. Why not be who she was now, writing romance, AND be that other writer too, the one who was making a million dollars a year by selling what some critics have called “porn on the page”.

So she took this story she had already written, a story that had been rejected by 3 or was it 4 publishers. A nice little story she really liked about 2 cowboys and a rich girl from Connecticut, and she decided to sex it up. There’d be boys doing boys. Girls doing girls. Boys and girls doing each other, in public, in private, in the barn, in the pool, day and night. Hell, it was already written, and rewritten, and rewritten again, according to the suggestions by the very nice rejection letters she’d gotten so many of. After all, how hard could it be to sex it up? Then she too would have the millions in gold. THEN after that, she’d write more stories. Filthy, dirty stories that would bring even more gold.

And it worked, kind of, for a little bit. Not exactly, and not at all as she’d planned. In fact, not so much according to the plan at all.

Yes, the nice little story sold like mad, crazy sales, but it never really reached the level of filth the author intended, nor the million dollars said filth would have yielded. There was still safe sex. There was still character motivation and reasons for the sex. The characters, once they met each other, still wanted to be monogamous, even though there were 3 of them. There was still a happily ever after ending.

And then the second story wasn’t the filthy dirty one it was meant to be at all. That too ended up being kind of tame to be called erotica. And the happy ending, and the monogamous relationship and the safe sex tried to sneak in again, and the author had to beat them down as best she could, but alas they were stronger than she was.

She had tried…that is I had tried. I really did, but it comes down to this–we are who we are, and no amount of determination or inspiration to change will change who and what we are.

My vow to be the raunchiest writer I could be for my RED line of “erotica” books did not end up exactly as I planned. I put “erotica” in quotation marks because I hesitate to even call it that. As much as I tried to write erotica, it’s still more erotic romance, which is what I have always written, and probably always will write.

I’d made up this long warning label for my RED books, to make sure the readers of my erotic romance wouldn’t be horribly shocked by my new erotica line. It turns out, I needn’t have, because no matter what, I still am who I am as a writer.

Oh don’t get me wrong, the RED stories are hot. Very hot. But there’s still a happy ending, no matter how convinced I was I’d be writing pure erotica without one. There’s plenty of sex, even experimenting with other partners, and same sex, but the characters always seem to end up in a happy committed relationship in the end.

So what am I going to do? Hell if I know. I still have plenty of ideas for some raunchy adulterous erotica stories about a bored cheating housewife who does everyone from the carpenters, to the waiter, to the UPS man while her husband is at work. It was these story ideas that I created the RED line for–and then chickened out miserably. Will these ever see the light of day? I have no clue. If they do I suppose I’ll have to make a sub-line–the REALLY RED line for stories that really are erotica this time, I swear…

Maybe having written for publishers and editors who drilled the HEA (Happy Ever After) into my head, along with the concepts of safe sex and monogamous relationships has influenced me irreparably. Kind of like the lessons beaten into students with a wooden ruler by nuns in Catholic school–you can be sure you’ll never forget them and if you ever do bring yourself to break those rules, you’re going to be twitching while doing it.

So there you go, my tale. I’m happy I wrote Educating Ansley. I’m thrilled with the sales. I’m happy I wrote The EX-Files. Compared to Ansley I’m not as happy with those sales but that’s what I get for hitting it out of the park on the first at bat–it’s a hard record to live up to. I’m iffy on the creation of the RED line. I could probably just as easily have published those stories just as Cat Johnson titles and no one would have been offended or disappointed. And if I ever have a lobotomy or start taking hard core drugs to overcome my romance indoctrination and actually get myself to write the pure erotica I’d planned–well then we’ll have to figure out how to market those alongside the others in the RED line. We’ll see.

And so the author’s coffers are far from empty, but the biggest heaps of gold still belong to the others who dare to stretch beyond, and for now, that’s okay.

Cat

My, how times have changed. Now most of my day (from sunrise to well after sundown) is spent updating web pages, responding to emails, promoting online, social networking, building name recognition, blogging, and traveling to book signings, book club meetings and reader conventions.

Little did I know all those years ago I’d be spending hours online searching for the perfect Mardi Gras costume to wear to the masquerade ball at Authors After Dark 2012 being held in New Orleans. Or that I’d have a pile of odd objects (faery ears and wings, a steampunk gun and holster, a belly dancing skirt) in my bedroom waiting for me to figure out where and how to store them from the last convention. Or that my clothes closet would be overflowing with Cat Johnson promotional items and giveaways. But alas, this is now my career and so I embrace it wholeheartedly and in the meantime try to find some time to write in between all the rest so I have something to actually promote.

So since I’ve bored you with my life, such that it is, let me amuse you with a little something I stumbled upon on Etsy last night while searching for masks. It proves, I think, that no matter how strange I think my life is, there is always something else out there that is a little bit stranger. On another note, I fear Etsy is addictive and I think I need to avoid it!

I give you the strangely beautiful, custom made, Swarovski crystal covered gas mask for the bargain price of $850 with free shipping. How many do you want?

So what’s the problem? This–in the court of public opinion working from home is not considered “working” at all. Case in point, the following phone conversation I have with my good friend nearly once a week.

Her: So what are you doing today?

Me: Working on my ______( fill in the blank with new book, rewrites, edits, research, proofreading, etc)

Her: Oh, well I’m taking so-and-so to the dentist then I’m going to the gym then I have to food shop, then I have to get so-and-so from school.

Blah, blah, blah, more conversation ensues to eventually be followed by…

Her: So, you’re not doing anything today?

Me: *sigh* Nope, not doing a thing.

Her: Okay. Talk to you later. Bye.

Then there’s the husband, and his critique upon coming home from work and finding me still in PJs…

Him: Did you even get dressed and leave the house today?

Me: No, I didn’t. I emptied my email inbox, proofread the ARe Wildfire newsletter, did edits on my own book, wrote a synopsis, wrote 2 blogs, posted excerpts, checked my sales, updated FB and Twitter, tagged my books on Amazon, promoted on x-number of Yahoo groups, made and uploaded a book banner and a video AND paid the bills, did laundry, emptied the dishwasher, fed your dog, cats, horse, birds, fish, and myself instead.

Okay, I’ll admit that last instance with the husband has changed a bit just these few weeks–ever since I self-published Educating Ansley for my new RED line. Now when he looks askance at the fact I’m in the same spot wearing the same thing at 6 pm as I was when he left me at 6 am that morn, I just throw the daily sales numbers for Ansley at him and he shuts right up about it. Apparently I’m allowed to stay in jammies all day now that he can anticipate cold hard cash pouring into our bank account from it.

I still shouldn’t complain. I don’t have children myself, but I know stay-at-home moms have been battling the same situation for generations. Their work undervalued simply because it takes place inside the home, as if only things that happen in an actual office outside of the home count.

On any given day I’ve probably done more work before breakfast than some people do all day in an office, without my getting any credit for it, or even a guaranteed paycheck since I only make money when/if I sell a book. But what can I do about it? Nothing I suppose except sit out here enjoying the birds and sunshine and fresh air while in my sweatpants on my front porch, my hair in a ponytail, my flip-flopped feet up on the ottoman, as I sip on my iced coffee and gaze at my pond, my wifi computer in my lap, one browser open to this new blog I’m writing, another open to the book I’m working on, and a TV show I missed last night playing in the third browser window. It’s a tough life, but somebody’s gotta do it.

“So, you’re not doing anything today?”

“Nope. Not a damn thing. You enjoy that commute!”

Maybe that part of my past, as well as my excitement over the future of publishing and all the incredible changes happening now, is what made this particular publishing project I stumbled upon speak to me. It ’spoke’ loud enough I was inspired to put my money where my mouth is and contribute (along with others) to this project.

I’ll let the experts give you the details. HERE is the article that first spurred my interest. For those blog readers too lazy to follow the link, here’s a quick overview stolen from the aforementioned Galley Cat article (I hope I do it justice)…

“Author Mark Stephen Meadows will use Kickstarter to fund a book of illustrated fables with two very different editions–an interactive narrative for iPad and a limited-print run leather-bound book.”

How perfect is that? The best of both worlds. The beauty and collectibility of a keepsake edition in leather-bound paper, AND the versatility and cutting edge technology of a corresponding app for iPad (iOS now, Android in future). THIS is the future of publishing. THIS is what the big old, stuck-in-the-mud legacy publishers need to embrace. This is a project I want to see happen and succeed.

The Kickstarter project will go through the end of the month. He is nearly half-way to his goal of $9,500. People can donate as little as a $1, or as much as they want. A small price to be in on such an exciting project. And he’s offering some pretty special incentives for donors. You should take a look just to see what one-of-a-kind thank you gifts he’s come up with. Sailing adventure, anyone?

The brave new world of ePublishing and small press has treated me very well and I’m grateful. The changes in the industry of the past 6 months alone is enough to make me excited to wake up and get to work every morning. The least I can do is pay a small bit of it forward for the future of readers, writers and yes, apps developers.

The future is now, folks. Embrace it or be left in the dust.

Cat

In 2006 I’d sold my first romance to a small indie publisher. It was a romantic comedy featuring computer geeks, firemen, and the women who loved them, but what I was reading at the time was military romance from authors such as Suzanne Brockmann and Alison Kent. So I asked my editor if I was to write a military romance, would she be interested in it. She said yes and so I started to research and write. I was fortunate there was lots of info on the internet, and in 2006, just as today, the war and the troops were all over the news. I was lucky enough to find some info on Special Task Force 145 and based my team of SpecOps on them.

I boldly (and probably foolishly) went ahead and published that first book and it was a hit with readers so I of course planned more. It was while I was writing the second book in the series that I stumbled upon a troop support site called Books for Soldier. How absolutely perfect! I had books, I liked soldiers, and I was interested in hanging out with others who did as well. So I started sending packages…everything from flip flops for the showers, to candycanes for Christmas, to books for them to read, both used paperbacks I purchased at the library sale and my own and in every package I’d stick one of my cards so they’d know who’d sent it.

Then the thank you notes began to come. Some paper, some emails. Among them, two servicemen emailed– one Army from Iraq, one USMC from Djibouti– both intrigued that a real live romance author was sending them books. (They had no idea I had about 3 books out at that time and was an absolute nobody, but they were impressed none the less.)

And so we became pen pals, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect since, as I said, I was writing my next military romance and this time, I had men living in the world I was writing about at my disposal for research instead of just Google and Wikepedia and MSNBC. And not just two men either, but a whole platoon in Ramadi and a whole squadron on the Horn of Africa, plus various military wives and children, became my resource. It made all the difference in the world. I wrapped up my second SpecOp book and moved on to my new passion–GIs. Not the elite BlackOps but the ground pounders. Not the SEALS but the tankers. They were true heroes as well, and they had stories to tell me, which I in turn wanted to tell.

Real life stories from my Army muse from his tank days in Ramadi and later his two tours as ground infantry in Afghanistan became the makings for A Few Good Men, Model Soldier and A Prince Among Men (all currently out of print but rereleasing soon). Real tales of a heavy helicopter squadron deployed at the Joint Forces camp on the Horn of Africa became Crossing the Line. A real life leadership training in Georgia became the basis for my free short read Fireworks. Of course I tempered the reality of war with a heavy dose of romance–Sean often jokes how he recognizes his deployments in the descriptions in my books but he doesn’t remember having any of that sex I write about. My excuse? Who needs 100% reality? Now is the time we need the fantasy the most.

Anyway, these men (the original two and some of their men as well) have become more than research resources, they’ve become friends. Sure it’s real nice to have them on IM (today’s version of speed dial) ready, willing and able to answer all my burning questions, but I’m even more grateful that I can call them friends. And because of my association with these men, the story of the everyday soldier–of mail calls and chow halls, of loneliness and fear, and of great bravery and sacrifice–gets to be told even if it is stuck in there between all the sex in my romance novels.

Cat

As a writer, I find this is true with readers as well. People who pick up one of my books and find it really isn’t for them, will be the first ones online leaving a reader review about exactly how much they hated it. This is especially true for a book that was on a free promotion for a limited time, which means people who never heard of me or may never read erotic romance will read it since it’s free.

The problem is, Amazon uses the star ratings and the reader reviews in their algorhythm to determine what books they recommend and promote, and potential readers who just skim ratings for purchasing decisions do too.

In a perfect world, everyone would take the time to leave feedback, both positive and negative, and even neutral.  But we all know we don’t live in a perfect world.

Anyway, here is my advice, for myself as well as all of you–try and take the time and effort. Click that star rating, take time to write a review, whether you loved it or hated it or even just felt ‘eh’ about it. Don’t let the haters have the only voice.

Sounds like a romance to me. But I’ve seen reader reviews calling it “one sex scene away from being a naughty nooner”, and “hot but NOT a romance”.

Seriously? One sex scene in a 30,000 word story makes it “porn for women”? Apparently so. And so, dear readers, I have become what I’ve been wrongly accused of. A porn writer. I am now writing what amounts to porn with plot. Why fight it when I apparently can’t? And apparently I shouldn’t, based on sales.

I wrote and released, all with no prior promo, a 40,000 word erotica eBook. A RED hot menage with cowboys! EDUCATING ANSLEY went live on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and ARe late Tuesday night. By the end of today, Sunday, I will have sold 1,000 copies of a book that contains scenes that make even me blush.

To protect readers who actually do think my other books are romances, I’ve released Ansley under my new erotica imprint Cat Johnson RED just so everyone knows exactly what they’re getting, what to expect. And you should expect a lot more scorching hot, uncensored, boundary pushing erotica in the RED line.

To the readers who said my sensual romances are porn…I’ll show you porn! LOL I guess I’m just obstinate that way and you know what? I smiled all the way to the  top of  B&N’s Pubit and Erotica best seller lists.