Now that the RT dust has settled and my fun blog wrap-ups have been posted, I can get down to reality and post what really happens at RT. As Sarah on Smart Bitches mentions, though I can fault the CNBC piece for crediting THAT book with reigniting the industry in one breath while saying how the RT convention has been happening for decades in the next, and for finding and interviewing one of the small handful of (unknown) male erotica authors at a convention where there were easily hundreds of female authors, some making $1 million a year selling erotica, we really can’t fault CNBC for stripping the 4 male cover models that were actually at the convention and putting them on camera, because sex sells.

Want to know the reality? Part of that CNBC piece was filmed in the lobby at  6 a.m. the morning following the Ellora’s Cave party (which want late into the night). That scene was staged. Those authors milling around the hotel lobby with shirtless male models would not have been there at the crack of dawn otherwise. In reality, those models would have been in the hotel gym in tank tops working out before the start of another long day and night. The B-roll of the dancers and party were shot the night before at the EC party.

Yes, there are models (though one tenth of the number there used to be before the death of the Mr. Romance competition), and there are costumes, and fun and games and drinking and hanging in the lobby bar, but much like high dollar deals are so often made by men on the golf course, there’s that at RT too. I came home with a list of 15 items to do, a document with notes regarding ATF agents and bomb-sniffing dogs and another document full of notes I took at the Mark Coker (Smashwords) session with 11 points on how to top the best seller lists. My to do items included following up with the publicist from Kensington I met at the Kensington party, to send her promo materials to start getting some media attention for my book which doesn’t release until April 2013. It including items discussed at lunch with my editor at Kensington that I need to take care of now, again for that new release a year down the road. It included to do items from a discussion I had with the Samhain author liaison in the bar, to email my Samhain editor regarding my next bull rider series book release. On my list is the session I need to pitch to the RT organizers for next years convention in Kansas City in May 2013, and items to follow up with fellow Western authors regarding a reader event we may try to plan for one of the smaller cons happening later this year. On there was how I need to follow up with cover artists for my self-pubbed backlist, and how I needed to send follow up emails to some of the authors I had discussed a possible collaboration with.

So yes, I did post pictures of me in costume with two shirtless cover models holding big swords while wearing kilts, because readers most likely don’t care about my To Do list, or that this RT was the most productive to date for me professionally. But as CNBC and I both know, sex sells.

The New York Times recently ran an article by a celebrity cookbook ghost writer saying that it’s these nameless, faceless writers who do all the actual work while the celebrity pretends they did it all, meaning conceiving of and developing the recipes. Needless to say the celebs named, Gwyneth Paltrow for one, are not happy.

Now I’ll admit that when Gwyneth Paltrow came out with her cookbook it was kind of the last straw for me. She’s a great actress and I love her in that role, but having to listen to her song on the country radio station and on all the music award shows where she got up there to perform and we all had to pretend she was as good as the music legends on stage with her ticked me off pretty good. Follow that up with a best selling cookbook release and I was like Come on, all ready! Was winning acting awards not enough? Now she gets to be a best seller just because of her name? In a field she has no experience or qualifications in? It was nearly as maddening as Snooki hitting the NY Times best seller list with her book.

Anyway, back to the controversy…Gwyneth is insisting every recipe is hers, and not the work of a paid consultant. [UPDATE- just this minute Gwyneth appeared on The Rachel Ray Show to say she did indeed cook every thing and write every word in her cookbook, and I believe her. Of course, I still stand by my belief that if she wasn't a famous actress no one would ever buy her cookbook, but that's another issue altogether.]

My job is not to determine who’s telling the truth. I can tell you this–I think the ghost writer controversy in general really depends on the level of involvement. I think of it this way–when Frank Lloyd Wright or IM Pei or Christopher Wren designed a building, it was their vision, their concept, their creation. And even though it is the actual bricklayers, carpenters, and various construction crews who build that building and make it a reality, it is still the work of the architect.

However those men dictated every detail of that design. If they hadn’t, if Pei had said, for instance, “I think it would be cool to build an extension to the Louvre. Hey, let’s make it shaped like a triangle. You guys handle it. I’m going out for drinks. K?” Then that would have been really pretty shitty, and unfair to the builders who would get no credit.

So if these celebs who want to pretend they are writers said, for instance, “Hey, let’s write a book about a girl who spends the summer at the Jersey Shore and she really likes guidos and to drink and she has really high hair. Can you write that for me? I’ll be over there doing some shots with Mike The Situation, unless my boyfriend Gionni shows up”. Well then, I would say it is a great injustice for Snooki’s name to be on that NY Times bestseller list and not the ghost writer’s. The same with these cookbooks and the celebrities whose images and names grace the covers.

I have no conclusions, just opinions, as usual. I think this cookbook controversy will be a “he said, she said” for a bit, then it will die down and be forgotten. But let’s hope that in future we all give a little thought to the writer behind the writer. I’ve been that person back at the start of my writing career many years ago, and though then I was just as proud on publication day even though my name was not on the cover, but instead buried in the fine print on the copyright page, I can say now that it sure is nice to be the name on the cover.

Cat

There are plenty of erotica and erotic romances out there. The theme is not new–uber rich, powerful and handsome billionaire business mogul. The unknown, average, seemingly inconsequential college girl he’s so attracted to he must have her no matter what. Classic romance novel trope, but with the addition of super hot BDSM sex. BDSM isn’t new either. You can find thousands of books with those elements to a variety of extents.

So why oh why did Fifty Shades of Grey, written by an unknown UK author, published by a small press that I had never heard of, sell hundreds of thousands of copies and hit #1 on both Barnes & Noble and Amazon? Why has it been blog fodder everywhere and featured on all the network national morning talk shows, being touted by Good Morning, America and The Today Show as “mommy porn”, and “suburbia’s dirty little secret”? Some doctors and sex experts are debating if the BDSM theme is freeing to women who just want to turn the reins over to someone else in bed after being in charge of the house all day, while other experts are saying it’s dangerous and sets up women for abusive relationships (an accusation which to anyone who knows how to Google and look up the principals of BDSM knows is absurd). Meanwhile, there are plenty of books where women relinquish control to be ravished by the rogue, so why this one book in particular, which grew in popularity strictly by word of mouth and not through marketing or advertising dollars?

Here’s why it shouldn’t be so popular:

-a few very respected and increasingly famous book bloggers didn’t like it. One marked it a DNF (Did Not Finish) last year, long before it hit the media full force. (Seriously, this story is being covered everywhere in the past week, from the NY Times to the Washington Post.)

-it’s based on fan fiction. The author loved the Twilight series so much, she wrote her own little stories using the same characters, published them on fanfic websites, then eventually expanded those ideas, changed the characters’ names from Bella and Edward to Christian and Ana, and published it with a small press overseas.

-the writing style, in my opinion, is annoying. Disclaimer right here I have NOT read the book. I read the beginning of chapter 1 on Amazon.com (they allow samples) and realized I wouldn’t be able to read the entire book because it is written in first person present tense and, though it may be a personal pet peeve of mine, I can’t read books in that POV. I find it distracting, annoying, and amateurish. I fear I would lose my mind and that my internal editor would never be able to get past the POV and see the story beneath.

Yet bookstores can’t keep the print version in stock and I’m sure that is driving sales of the digital formats even higher. Again, the question is why?

Here is why I personally think it is so popular:

-the book has both a title and a cover that is totally tame and mainstream. At first glance, 50 Shades of Grey could easily be a legal thriller or a murder mystery. Had the publisher slapped a picture of some man titty (ala my Cat Johnson novels) on this book, I bet you it would have never sold even a fraction of what it has. Why? Because people don’t WANT to like erotica, or erotic romance, or even the Fabio-esque romances of our mother’s generation. This book slipped under the radar with its innocuous cover.

-inside that boring cover is HOT sex that most likely crept up on the unaware reader (since what I read of Chapter 1 of this book reads almost like a Young Adult novel). Before they could slam the cover shut and say “Oh my God, this is dirty“, the story had captured them and the sex took them by surprise, until suddenly they realized their lady parts were tingling and they were feeling a little bit naughty just for reading it. Who doesn’t want to secretly be naughty? It’s the reader’s dirty little secret. Who would know what she’s reading? It’s just a hardcover book with a boring cover, but inside, their hormones awoke, and these readers couldn’t wait for hubby to get home so they could jump him.

-people like to be the first. The first to know something others don’t. The first to recommend something they discovered to their friends, or even strangers, so they recommended this book to others. “I just read this book. You should see what’s in it! I never knew there were books like this!” the unspoken continuation to that would be…because I am so high brow I would NEVER pick up a romance novel and see that there are thousands of books just like this one and better written too.

-maybe that first person POV I hate so much makes the readers feel what the main character is feeling on a more personal level? Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong and there is no reason that the present tense should make me so crazy. Maybe I’m already crazy. Hell, anything is possible at this point.

And there you are, my personal, unqualified and unsolicited opinion of the trilogy of books (yes, there are 3 in the series) that has taken publishing by storm, the rights to which just sold to the paperback division of Random House Inc., reportedly for an undisclosed 7 figure sum to be rereleased immediately in eBook and in paperback in April with all the fanfare they think it deserves. Coincidentally this is just weeks after PayPal told the owner of Excessica Publishing that stories with BDSM themes amounted to rape for titillation and may have to be restricted…at the same time that other eBook retailers have been told that their PayPal account would be frozen if they didn’t stop selling certain books that they qualified as obscene. Among themes being classified as taboo and being restricted by certain retailers were pseudo incest, bestiality (which can get iffy in the world of shapeshifters) and “barely legal” stories (IE younger of legal age girls, such as college girls, having sex with older men, possibly billionaire playboys even)…but I digress. That is another tale totally.

Today’s lessons– The almighty dollar is king, perception is everything, and it’s very possible that people do judge a book by its cover.

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