Lucynda Storey-Erotic Romance Writer

Often I’ve been heard to say that I don’t believe in so-called “writer’s block.”  Mason  Cooley once said that “Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.”  I believe it is also true of “writer’s block”.

I probably sound rather harsh and judgmental when I say I don’t believe in this malady.  Maybe I am.  I happen to believe we are responsible for our own actions and that if we are not writing, it is not because we are blocked, it is because of some other reason, or perhaps even a poor excuse.

For the writer, the story must get out.  For the writer, writing is serious business.   When we choose to weed the garden, wash the car, or call Dear Aunt Bertha rather than write, we are using excuses to keep us from our task.

Can there be a lack of words to put on paper?  Perhaps.

Some things are easily remedied.  Perhaps your creative well needs to be refilled.  Perhaps you have been writing so long or with such intensity, you need to read for a while.  Perhaps you are truly physically ill.  If this is the case, you don’t have writer’s block, you have something else going on. 

Be sure of one thing…there are a hundred excuses but not one good reason.  If you are truly lacking the ability to put pen to paper, perhaps it is time to take a look at what is really holding you back and finding a way to deal with that hindrance.

The weekend of September 14-16 I attended the Colorado Gold Writer’s Conference where I spoke on a panel of options for authors with fellow authors Mario Acevedo, Jeff Shelby and Cassy Miles.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of questions that audience members had, especially in regards to electronic books.  Some people didn’t realize it was possible to purchase books from the Internet that were specifically designed for computers or specialty reading devices.

Many members of the audience believed that an electronic book tied you to reading from your computer screen.  Others wondered about the submission process.  More wondered about the payment of royalties and asked about distribution.  A lot of the audience had never heard of Fictionwise.

It is my belief that e-Books are here to stay and they will only gain in popularity.  Print authors need to be aware that they are being woefully underpaid for their electronic rights (often being paid the same royalty percentage as they receive for their print sales). 

I also spent time with Ellora’s Cave publisher, Raelene Gorlinsky.   Currently, EC’s download business surpases that of Ficitonwise which was a nice surprise to hear.  Just more proof that electronic books continue to make inroads on the traditional methods of reading.

Recently I was able to interview author Rob Graham…Rob describes himself as a romantic heretic.  Indeed, he travels a path few male authors venture…that of an erotic romance writer.  

LS:  How long have you been writing and when did you have your first release?  Where and when? 

RG: I’ve been writing just a little over of three years now. My first release was In The Dark, an anthology of vampire stories I’ve written. It was released by Aspen Mountain Press in February 2007. They feature my favourite character to date, Georges Belleveau. It’s a lot of fun chronicling his adventures. 

LS:  Do you have a writing routine?  What is it?  GH: Sad to say, no. I don’t have a writing routine. I am trying to learn one though. Mostly I write when the muse moves me. 

LS:  Do you have a “day” job? or are you able to write full time? 

RG: No day job. I can’t work anymore. Rather I can work, but most jobs consist of things that don’t have much to do with work. That’s where I have the problems. Sigh. So I guess I’m a ‘full time writer’.  LS: Who inspired you and how? RG: My first inspiration was from hanging out at the Author’s Hangout at Literotica. I wasn’t an author and set about fixing that with a story called Fatima. That story by the way will be released in an upcoming anthology from Aspen Mountain Press with the title Gillian’s Place. My single greatest inspiration is probably Colleen Thomas. She was a person I knew over at the Author’s Hangout. A wonderful writer and a very sweet, strong and intelligent person. I say ‘knew’ as we lost her last year to a heart attack. She was thirty-six. I keep her in my heart and hope that my work pleases her whereever her soul rests. 

LS:  Where is home?  Have you lived your entire life in one place? 

RG: I live in Toronto, Canada. I’ve pretty much lived my whole life here. It’s a lovely city. I like being in one place. My family moved at least once a year the first decade of my life and I got really sick of being rootless. 

LS:  What genre do you write in?  Is there one you’d like to try? What is it? 

RG: I’ll write just about anything.  

LS:  What was the most memorable, positive experience of your life? 

RG: It’s not the sort of thing a gentleman talks about. *wink* I’ll extend my thanks once again to the beautiful woman I shared it with though. LS:  What was the toughest thing you had to go through and how did you manage? 

RG: Going insane was a hard thing to do. I ended up in a very dark place for a long time. I handled it by removing myself from the stresses of my life, making sure I took my medication properly and taking a long look at myself to decide who I was and what I wanted. 

LS:  In The Dark is a special book to you.  Can you tell my readers about how this book came to be? 

RG: The best way to describe this book is that it accreted, grew over the space of a year.  I had read a couple of Colleen Thomas’ stories, Latin and Latin Ch. 02. I found the main character quite interesting and rather revolting, a woman who was falling into evil because of the hurt she’d suffered at the hands of others. She’d discovered power through sorcery and was misusing it. That sparked something in me. “What,” I wondered, “would happen if she encountered something truly powerful and evil?” The first truly powerful and evil thing I could think of was a vampire. I started wondering what a conflict between Colleen’s character and a vampire would be like. In the process I created Georges Belleveau, a vampire, and he grew into something more than just your standard bloodsucking creature of the night. He became, in many ways, an avatar of humanity. Someone with power and dark wants. Unlike most people, he’s aware of this and works very hard not to act on them. He became a perfect foil for Mandy, Colleen’s character, who isn’t aware of how she’s falling and wouldn’t care if it was pointed out to her. She loves her power and what it allows her to do. Eventually the story became Abyss, one of the pieces that comprise In The Dark. I asked Colleen if I could use her characters in my story and she graciously agreed. When I finished it, she loved it! I was very pleased. I entered Abyss in the Literotica Halloween 2005 Contest. To my great surprise it won! A good trick with over 160 entries and some by very fine writers.

That was when I first started to think about getting published. After Abyss I picked up another vampire story that had been sitting on my hard drive and rewrote it so that Georges was the central character. Then I wondered what happened after Abyss, and I got the story Embrace out of it. After that came the story You Can’t Go Home Again, which covered events after Embrace. All these stories ended up on Literotica and all were well received. 

Then, one evening, I was on a chat at Realms Of Love. Cyn was there and she said that her company, Aspen Mountain Press, was looking for vampire stories. I directed her to my work at Literotica. I got to work polishing them up for publication and put together In The Dark. 

She must have liked it as I got the contract the day after I sent the manuscript in. *wink* The rest is history. In The Dark is the best selling of my work to date and has received glowing reviews. How it affected me is that all these events have really done wonders for my self confidence as a writer. LS: Some one or the other questions:

Coke or Pepsi products - Thanks, but no.

Julia Roberts or Kim Basinger - Uhm, no thanks.

CSI or Bones - Never seen either. I don’t watch TV. Movies or Theater - I like theatre, but it’s too expensive for me to go to often.

Rocky Horror Picture Show or Reservoir Dogs - Both.

Nicole Kidman or Drew Barrymore - Nicole Kidman. Mmmmmm.

Spain or France - France.

Leonardo deCaprio or Mark Wahlberg - Uh, straight guy here.

Florida or California - France

The Eagles or The Beach Boys - Elvis Costello

Lucynda Storey has been MIA for the past week.  Rest assured the erotic writer has been found, with her feet in the air and her eyes closed from sheer exhaustion.

What have I been doing?

The insanity started last weekend, Saturday the 25th of August.   We started off shopping for a picnic that commenced at 11.  Clean-up and then we were off to Invesco Field at Mile High to begin preparations for the 7 pm Denver Bronco preseaon game.  The game night was beautiful and the crowds thick.  I was in the back of a concessions booth cooking polish sausage, hot dogs, brats, and pretzels.  When not engaged in those activities I spent my time washing dishes.  Concession stand work is brutal.  Next time you attend a professional game, remember, there is a good chance those workers are volunteers and really don’t know what they are doing.

We got home at midnight, headed out to obligations on Sunday, and then began the week.  Thursday night found a repeat of Saturday, but the crowds were less dense.  Ordinarily, this may be a good thing, except standing puts a lot of pressure on my sciatic nerve.  It was far better to be busy the way were were on Saturday!

We finished up around the same time and found our way home by midnight.  At 3:45 AM (yes, AM) I was awakened to get ready to go to Parent’s Weekend at the Air Force Academy.  We left the house at 5 AM and attended classes.  We took in two Military Stategic Studies courses, a Chinese course and class on Geo-spacial Anyalysis. 

We got home relatively early, but I was up and at it again early Saturday morning (on the road by 6 AM) to work the Colorado University/Colorado State University football game.  The game started at 10:00 AM which meant we didn’t sell many brats and dogs and sausages until half-time.  We got home around 4:00 PM, and I collapsed into bed around 7.

The swelling in my aching feet is finally diminishing!  I’ve asked my family to tie me down if I’m ever in a situation where I have five major events happening in one week.

We do hope all the work will benefit my daughter, who is raising funds to travel to New York City next spring.

Welcome to the Grand Tour featuring authors of The Collector series from Loose-Id.

Your stop today is the pirate hide-out of New Providence, a port on the island of Nassau.  Lushly wild, with the heat one would expect of the tropics, New Providence was held as a special meeting place of priate captains running in the area at the time.

It is easy to think that the pirate haven was Port Royal but in Pirates of the Caribbean, the picture of Port Royal as an execution port is accurate.  In the mid 1600’s the pirate Henry Morgan used Port Royal as his base to legally attack Spanish galleons (the English government approved of the pirating tactics).  The end to Port Royal as a base of operations came when the British decided it was no longer in their best interests to have Morgan continue to harass the Spanish.  He was called back to England in 1671.  In addition to the change of heart by the English government, Port Royal suffered a debilitating earthquake in 1690.  The bulk of the population moved across the harbor to Kingston.  As Port Royal recovered, it became known for hanging pirates rather than sanctioning them.

Many of us think that Tortuga was a pirating capital, and indeed, it was for a period of time.  Tortuga is an offshore island near the island of Hispaniola, an island so large it is the home of two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.   In the early 1600’s pirates used the northern and western coasts as the primary staging area for their activities.

By the 1700’s, the bulk of pirating activity moved to the area of New Providence, an island in the Bahamas.  Its location was ideal for attacking vessels traversing the Florida straights. In fact, one of the most famous pirates is Blackbeardwhose ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge is thought to have sunk off the coast of the Carolinas.  Queen Anne’s Revenge is the ship I patterned Red Sky after.

I chose the name Red Sky after the old rhyme, Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. Red Sky at night, sailor’s delight.

Under the Black Flag, the Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates, was one of my primary sources of research.  I also used John Matthews’ Pirates for additional, more interesting information.

The Smithsonian has interesting articles on pirates from all over the world and inclduing contemporary times.  Be sure to check out their interesting articles!

Now for an excerpt of The Collector 7: This Time Forever

True to his word, Rand escorted Skylar to the finest inn Nassau offered. The harbor town bustled with activity. Women in colorful long dresses and fancy matching millinery strolled the streets on the arms of male companions.

The building, a two-story construction, was run by a white proprietor and his wife, plus several black slaves. “

“Society may be different in your time, but not here. To raise a ruckus would only draw attention to you that we can ill afford until Cutler is dealt with.”

He had a point, but she didn’t like it.They approached the innkeeper at the bar.

“Nay. This boy will be fetching my belongings while I retrieve my lady wife from her berth.”Skylar contained her surprise at Rand’s mention of a wife and listened as the two men haggled back and forth over the cost of the room in shillings until both were satisfied. Finally, the innkeeper handed

The impish light of teasing resided in Rand’s eyes. “How else will you obtain a room with a hot bath?”

The thought of warm water washing the blood and dirt from her skin helped make his argument plausible. “Where next?”

“I’ve a lady friend here that should be able to help you with your trousseau.”

In another roundabout way, Rand was talking about marriage. Were the legalities of a marriage a major concern to him? After all, she’d read of his conquests as a pirate. Bedding a woman didn’t require a lifelong commitment. “Trousseau? Isn’t that usually reserved for a bride?”

Skylar stuck out her hand. “I’m Skylar Creighton, a friend of Rand’s. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“A friend of Cap’n Jamison is a friend of mine, to be sure.”

“Miss Creighton will be needing more appropriate attire, Holy.”

The woman laughed and held the door wide for them. “’Tis hard to be a lady and a pirate both. Come in, the both of ya.”

Skylar smiled. Holy’s happy attitude was contagious. “Today, I believe I’d much rather be a lady.” She looked down at her legs. “The stains and the stench are a powerful combination in arguing against piracy.”

Holy nodded. “I think I can find something for ya to wear until you have some proper clothing made.” She guided Skylar toward the back of the house. “

Holy studied Skylar a little longer, took measurements of her bust, waist, and hips, then went to a wardrobe standing against the far wall. After opening the doors, Holy pulled out a plain dove-gray skirt. “’Tain’t much, but will fit ya reasonable well until I get ya some proper clothes made.” She paused. “How long will you and the Cap’n be in Nassau?”

Holy’s question was a good one. “I don’t really know. He needs to resupply the ship and find additional hands to work her. He said something about visiting the governor too.”

At her statement, Holy tsked and held out a stay. “The fever took the governor and his missus not more than a fortnight ago.”

“The fever?” Skylar wracked her mind, trying to remember what she knew of illnesses and the tropics. Perhaps malaria or ‑‑ “Yellow fever?”

“Breathe in, child.” Holy nodded as she laced up the stays, tied pockets on around Skylar’s waist, and then held out a white petticoat. “Step in.”

Skylar did as asked, then stood still as Holy laced up yet another torture device around Skylar’s ribs. Finally, Holy held out the grey skirt.

 “Mosquitoes,” Skylar gasped. “Keep netting over your windows and beds. Don’t let them bite you.”

“Turn.”

Again, Skylar followed Holy’s order. Behind her, she felt Holy move the skirt and pin it over the lower layered cloth.

“It will do ya. Ya won’t look right fashionable ’til I make yer clothes, but you’ll pass.” She spun Skylar back around. “Thank you for the information.”

Together the women marched to the parlor, where they found Rand sitting, talking earnestly to a white man. “That would be my husband, John,” Holy said.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

World Tour Question: What is the name of the real pirate ship Red Sky was modeled after?

Next stop on the world tour: The Phillipines.

Q: How many copy editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: I can’t tell whether you mean ‘change a light bulb’ or ‘have sex in a light bulb’. Can we reword it to remove the ambiguity?

Q: How many editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one. But first they have to rewire the entire building.

Q: How many managing editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: You were supposed to have changed that light bulb last week!

Q: How many art directors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Does it HAVE to be a light bulb?

Q: How many copy editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: The last time this question was asked, it involved art directors.Is the difference intentional? Should one or the other instance be changed? It seems inconsistent.

Q: How many marketing directors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: It isn’t too late to make this neon instead, is it?

Q: How many proofreaders does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Proofreaders aren’t supposed to change light bulbs. They should just query them.

Q: How many writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: But why do we have to CHANGE it?

Q: How many publishers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw it in, and two to hold down the author.

Q: How many booksellers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one, and they’ll be glad to do it too, except no one shipped them any.

Stay tuned as the nine erotic writers of The Collector begin a virtual world tour chatting about the locations they set their stories.

Curious about The Collector series? Go to the website and see the excerpts and read what reviewers are saying about this fascinating group of books!

Paranormal Romance (PNR) has just given The Collector 7: This Time Forever a great review.  Nicole Harvey says “a strong time travel adventure” and “This was such a strong story. You have Rand Edward Jamison who was a pirate from the past who had been grieving since he had lost his wife Emma. But he hears something from his cabin, and goes in and thinks the woman he sees is his dead wife that had come back to him. When Skylar helps a homeless man she is thrust back in time and into the arms of the man of her dreams, Rand Edward Jamison. This story was just great, you have intrigue, an enemy of Rand that wants all he has and more, so of course then he wants Skylar, right? Yep you’ve got it right. But will Rand let the love of his life be taken away from him a second time? I guess if you want to know you have to go and buy the book, hahahah. No you won’t be sorry if you buy and read this book, I sure enjoyed it.”

Thanks Nicole for reading and enjoying the story.

Book Business - Publishing Past Present Future by Jason Epstein, the former editorial director for Random House is a fascinating look at the business side of publishing, revealing much of the history of the behemoth authors fear, respect and love.

One of the most fascinating items (and there were several gems here) I found was Mr. Epstein’s commentary on the practice of “returns”.   Largely due to the depression of the 30’s, smaller booksellers were unwilling to risk their money on unknown authors and so wanted a guarantee that if a book did not sell, then the publisher would take it back.  This practice was started by Simon & Schuster and remains a thorn in the sides of authors to this day as they wait several months to receive the earnings owed them.

In fact, the practice, which destroys unsold copies of mass market books, is one that defies logic in this day and age when computers help businessess track sales and can  help companies better predict demand and its answering counterpart, demand.  Closely on the heels of this antiquated means of doing business, Print on Demand (POD) from companies such as Lightning Source and others will eventually force changes in the publishing business model. 

Mr. Epstein has gone on to become editorial director of On Demand Books the book company that has the Espresso Book Machine which is the system in use at the New York City library. Several titles are available to its patrons from the vast archives of works now considered a part of the public domain.   Book Business is available there.

The world is changing and faster than a lot of the management at big NY houses would like to admit.  In a day when we are encouraging people to recycle and be more earth friendly, its time NY publishers did likewise and didn’t destroy unsold books to add tonage to our overflowing landfills.

Or how about this one?  Can’t you just hear Will Smith?  Do you think its erotic when a man does this sort of thing for you?  Or is it just considerate, or closer to romantic?