The Cerebral Writer

Huge congrats to Trinity Blaico, for winning my The Darkness and the Night contest at Savannah Chase's Halloween Bash!  Trinity received a copy of The Darkness and the Night: Blood and Coffee.  Thanks for playing, Trinity!

My thanks to everyone else who participated.  Add my blog to your RSS feed for chances to win books in my future contests.

I hope you all had a safe and happy Halloween!  Until next time....

Join me on October 30th at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/savannahchase/ from 9 pm to midnight EST (6-9 pm Pacific), for her third annual Halloween bash!  There will be dozens of horror authors, lots of prizes and tons of Halloween fun--hope to "see" you there!

LOVE IN SPACE, a “sweet” romantic revisiting of my erotic short novel, Lust in Space, will be featured on the Home Shopping Network (HSN) on Monday, September 14, along with several other phenomenal paperbacks.  For show times, or to view the beautiful romance collections available before the airdate go to:

http://electronics.hsn.com/escape-with-romance-exclusive-6-book-collection_p-5700283_xp.aspx?cm_mmc=rss*Browse*2*NA

I’m so pleased to be a part of HSN’s romance novel debut.  The stories are top-notch, the covers are breathtaking, and the prices can’t be beat.  If you’ve been curious about my fast-paced space trek, my homage to the great sci-fi space shows of our time, but do not read explicit erotica (or are curious about the new adventures I have added for the colorful and diverse crew of Pandora’s Hope), you’ll not want to miss Love in Space.

About Love in Space

Captain Nora Bradley has full intentions of keeping her relationship with former classmate, and now First Officer, Robert Smith, purely professional, when she hires him.  The two, along with a crew of top professionals in their fields, embark on a journey into regions of space not yet charted.

Along the way, the crew endures a space flu that puts the entire ship in fevered frenzy, alien races that change the crews’ perceptions of size, compatibility, and companionship, and hitchhiking shape-shifters that will do just about anything to keep their sensuous human forms.  As the crew endures, Nora and Robert find it increasingly difficult to hide their love from one another.  Once they profess it, however, can their love survive a mix-up with the shape-shifters, the unexpected takeover of their ship, and intergalactic war?

Escape with Romance Exclusive 6-Book Collection Features:

Paranormal Genre:

• "The Wolfpact" by Jo Atkinson
• "Stilettos, Inc." by Lexi Ryan
• "Twilights Edge" by Jo Atkinson
• "Love in Space" by Lisa Lane
• "Haunted Seduction" by Morgan James
• "Loving Daylight" by Malie Sutton

Don’t miss the two other collections available (as well as a genre sampler):

Historical Genre:

• "Land of Falling Stars" by Keta Diablo
• "Force My Hand" by Em Brown
• "Kiss of Scandal" by Isabel Roman
• "The Mercenary Bride" by Jamaica Layne
• "Dark Desires of the Druids #1" by Isabel Roman
• "The American Heiress" by Roxanne Dent

Contemporary Genre:

• "Ripping the Bodice" by Inara Lavey
• "Nashville Heat" by Bethany Michaels
• "Hot on Her Heels" by Monica Newcomb
• "The Lady's Choice" by Trudy Doyle
• "Once an Obsession" by Bella French
• "Vital Signs" by Jamica Lane

Make sure to check out the Home Shopping Network for further details.  I’m very excited to be sharing this with you, and I’m very proud of this release.

My thanks for your readership and support.

There has been much opinion expressed recently on the appropriateness of certain individuals and groups that entertain themselves by tearing apart the works of their fellow writers.  Knock on wood, my stories have (as far as I know) not fallen victim to such attacks, but I do have fellow author friends whose works have.  This puts me in an interesting position, allowing me a perspective that, I believe, lies squarely between most of the opinions thus far expressed.

 I do not have any firsthand experience with the sites in question, as I refuse to buy into the drama, but the implied level of maliciousness regularly expressed by followers of such groups leads me to believe that there are personal matters behind those behaviors.  Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion.  Who hasn’t disliked—or even hated—a book?  However, does one person’s dissatisfaction with a particular work merit such cruelty?  Might there be a more productive way of offering harsh critique?  Moreover, is a novice or self-published writer really the best person to be critically reviewing others’ published works?  Just because a person has an opinion on something, does that make the person an authority on the matter?  For example, I love to cook, and I cook well, but that does not make me a gourmet food critic.  Is anyone who belongs to #romfail or any similar group actually formally educated in literary theory, let alone remotely qualified to do what they are doing?  What degrees do these people hold?  How many books have they published, beyond vanity presses and self-publishing houses?

Or do they just have opinions—uneducated, demeaning, vicious opinions?

Let’s assume that the works in question do contain good examples of bad writing.  No one is perfect, and even the best of writers sometimes have an off day.  Even more, no one but the author and his/her editor knows just how much of a particular problem in a book is the result of poor editing.  Granted, it is an authors’ responsibility to ensure his/her publishing house employs good editors; for the novice author, this problem is not always as simple to remedy as it would seem.  Is it acceptable behavior to treat an author with such disrespect and nastiness, simply for having a book that was poorly edited?  Is it the intent to embarrass the author (and/or his/her publisher) out of the industry?  If so, do the offending individuals actually believe they are doing anything beyond upsetting and alienating their peers?

On a final note, I would love to know what kinds of reviews these “mean girls” are receiving for their books.  I would like to know how these people would feel if it were their books being offered up for sacrifice, and just how much fun it would still be if it were they who suffered the humility and heartache over having one of their beloved books torn apart—with quotes taken out of context—for all the world to see.

Some people need to grow a soul; please don’t feed their emptiness.  These people are mean for the sake of being mean and deserved to be ignored.  Enough said.

Please check out these blogs, which inspired me to write this post:

http://culinarycarnivale.blogspot.com/2009/08/mean-girls-of-romfail.html
http://nlberger13.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-i-spend-most-friday-nights.html
http://mrsgiggles00.livejournal.com/25967.html

Clayton bye of The Deepening on The Darkness and the Night III: Twins of Darkness:

What’s so different about Twins of Darkness? Well… The author’s style makes for effortless reading; Lane’s novel is interesting, variable and complicated without the heaviness often associated with stories of substance, and she balances her many characters and plot lines like a master. Also, this is not your typical vampire story, and although there was enough sex to make my  temperature rise, the story is not just a vehicle for eroticism.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009
Read the full review here.

I’ve known since I was eight or nine that I was a writer. When I wrote my first novel in my mid teens, I was positive that was my path was to follow in the footsteps of the great Stephen King. Back then, had someone told me that my first published works would be erotica and erotic romance, I would have scoffed at the thought: Bashful, timid me? Writing sexually explicit scenes? For others to read?

I have a few friends and family who have purchased my books with full intent on reading them, only to find themselves unable to get past the first bedroom scene. “It kind of feels the same as going through your dad’s sock drawer for condoms,” my father-in-law told my husband, after attempting to read The Darkness and the Night: Blood and Coffee. “You know your parents are doing it, but you don’t really want to know….”

When I began to write erotic works, the first thought that flashed through my head was, “other people are going to read this … and what will they think?” The thought of strangers reading my work was strangely exhilarating, but I do have to admit that I blush when I consider specific people reading certain works. I find myself in a strange position: I want to share my stories with those who are close to me, but some of the content is simply stuff people don’t normally share with their friends, parents, and in-laws.

With that said, it has also been liberating to write what I have. With Lust in Space, for example, I decided to push my boundaries as far as I could. I wanted to take every aspect to the subgenre I was writing and see how far I might take it. I felt that an erotic space opera merited a unique angle, and so I challenged myself as a writer, finding ways to create threesomes, foursomes, orgies, a bisexual getting intimate with her time-paradox double … and even a woman falling for an insect-sized vibrating man. I did it to push the limits of my imagination, let go of my inhibitions as a writer, and most of all to see if I could pull all of it off.

With The Darkness and the Night trilogy, I began with a series of horror stories based on that first novel I wrote back in my teens, with my twin sister, and spiced them up for the erotic romance audience. I found that the sexual journeys experienced by the main characters really complimented the other themes that ran through each of the stories, and it has been such a pleasure to hear from readers and reviewers who “got” all that I worked to accomplish in the multi-layered, heavily intertwined trilogy.

I think about books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen that contain disturbing material, and I remind myself: Someone wrote that, not as something representative of his or her as a person, but as an extension of that person’s creative self. As an author now, myself, I know the process that goes into writing something different, risky, or risqué. It’s not easy, but somebody’s got to do it. After all, what would literature, cinema, and the like be without those who have taken such risks with their art?

There are risks to be taken with all genres, but it seems to me that the biggest risks are those taken in erotic venues. I’ve questioned more than one direction my muses have taken me, but more often than not, when all is said and done, every dark turn, exploratory challenge, and disturbing twist proves its literary merit. I feel grateful that I’ve taken the chances I have, as each has allowed me to grow in my art—and in some very surprising ways.

Who would have thought I would have learned anything while writing a “trashy romance”?! Go figure.

Through the years, I’ve found there are few genres I just can’t write. I don’t write Westerns. I have yet to construct a good murder mystery. I don’t think I could pull off an epic poem. I do enjoy writing just about everything else, however, so many genres that I have considered writing under more than one alias. After all, is it a career shot in the foot for a literary fiction novelist to publish erotica, or an erotic romance writer to publish horror? Maybe a couple of authors have been able to pull it off, but not many.

The thought of compartmentalizing my collective works was strangely disturbing; I felt like doing so somehow cheapened their value. It also felt like lying. Was I to create a persona for each genre? No, that just wasn’t me; it just didn’t feel right. I realized that I had no choice but to market all of my writing under my real name. I am a horror writer, a literary sci-fi writer, a screenplay writer, a narrative nonfiction writer, and an erotica/erotic romance writer. I’m all of those; I have many muses, and I’m proud of every last word I’ve written … even if I did happen to make my father-in-law blush.

Readers and writers, what are your experiences in writing or reading erotica, horror, sci-fi, and others that happen to contain the unorthodox, the uncomfortable, and/or the just plain hot?

Play LOUDLY--low audio level--WORTH IT!