Julie’s Book review has given TBL (Pt1) 4.5 out of a possible 5 stars! Yay!
Robert Fanshaw has also awarded TBL2 a five rating on Goodreads. *performs a slightly clumsy cartwheel to celebrate*
Thank you both!
Happy days.
Find and adore ‘The Bucket List’ books at SteameReads
This week’s Six Sentence Sunday is from the upcoming novella and second Bucket List story, ‘Caught.’
Amber has lured her BFF Lucy to the bed section of a large department store. It’s late in the evening, and no-one appears to be around.
She indicates the largest, softest bed in the store…
“I just love this bed,” she said, “and I wondered how it would feel to share it with you – when we get our own place.”
“Our own – ?” My question trailed off into a dry croak.
“Are we going to have to move?” I was crushed.
I’d grown to love the big house; wandering around its vast space, naked or clothed, I’d experienced a freedom that had been akin to childhood memories, when cares were few and quickly forgotten.
“Move? Nah,” Amber grinned, then she frowned. “You don’t want to move out, do you?”
“Course not.” My eyes stung with relief. “Never…I love…that house.”
I’d nearly said ‘I love you’ but that suddenly felt awkward.
All right, that was more than six…but I soooo wanted you to get the full flavour of the love between Amber and Lucy.
Forgive me?
As some of you might be aware, I spend a lot of my time ghostwriting – creating work that will (sadly) go on to be credited to someone else even as I count the dollars I earned for writing it.
Ghostwriting brings in the cash; it is a short-term gain and can be quite lucrative. However, it can be, if the writer becomes attached to a set of characters or a story idea, emotionally draining. For each story created, the carefully-crafted characters (each of whom the writer has spent several weeks rattling around their heads) are sucked into the infinite vastness of the Internet, never to appear in sequels or author interviews.
They cannot even be traced – not by Googling, anyway. On several occasions, my curiosity has led me to try, but no trail remains; no trace can be found.
It’s a bitter-sweet experience and probably best suited to a writer who can shrug off these characters like a coating of autumn leaves and move onto the next project.
I am not one of those writers. Each story leaves its trace in my mind and I wonder, like a foster mother whose temporary charges have flown the nest, what became of them out in the big, wide world.
What a softy I am.
All this makes my experience with Steam eReads feel like a comforting blanket. What I expected to be just another ghostwriting project blossomed into a full publishing experience. I know what happened to Amber and Lucy and where they can be found on Amazon. I’m able to craft additional stories for the BFFs – plus I can take note of any feedback and comments regarding the stories and know that readers are enjoying my work.
This has become my anchor in my rather frenetic sphere of writing; a bit of stability in an otherwise chaotic world.
Thank you Steam eReads for the opportunity to become a published author. I will continue to ghostwrite for now, but only to pay the bills and perhaps improve my writing style. I have found a new joy in seeing my name on the cover of a book.
Annie
I wanted to begin today’s blog post by telling you a little more about myself, but then I realised that after having changed my on-line name twice to avoid
A) Perverts and Spammers and
B) being noticed (again) by my work colleagues and bosses
that telling you personal stuff would be kind of self-defeating. I’d love to share a little more about me with my friendly followers – it’s beginning to feel like a family here – but I’m risking being exposed (not THAT kind of exposure!) to those who would mock, ridicule and generally hand me my notice.
So instead I’ll tell you a little more about what I do when I’m not rambling away on my blog.
I’ve been very lucky to be found by Steam eReads, an Australian publisher who specialises in erotic stories. However, most of my writing income is still generated by ghostwriting – those short stories that are created in a whirl of inspiration, then sent off into the electronic abyss never to be heard from again. It’s a little sad – rather like fostering children who never write home once they’ve left. That’s why Steam eReads has become a little like a literary anchor to me. My name is on the cover of the book that I wrote and they’ve been nice enough to allow me a say in the cover and the final editing.
Ghostwriting is my bread and butter for now, though. So I continue to trawl for work, fend off those who can’t read what I specialise in (No, I DON’T do web design – where did it say that on my resumee??) and hum and haw over offers of $15 for 10,000 word ‘short’ stories. Do I really need the work that badly?
But this week I put my foot in it. I was asked if I could produce a 6k short story with a gay element – featuring two or more participants. Erotica, I thought. I can do that. I can do gay erotica. After all, my BFF characters Amber and Lucy are always ‘at it.’
I accepted the challenge – and was shocked when the outline arrived. I’d naturally assumed (as you may have) that I would be writing about two (or more) girlfriends.
Nope.
The contractor wanted guy-guy stuff.
Aw, shoot.
Pun not intended.
I credit myself with a pretty good set of imagination neurons, but this was off the beaten track, even for me. Yes, I have a gay friend. I might even have two (I must ask him if he is – just to be sure). But this will take some ‘getting inside the head’ stuff.
The alternative is turning down dollars that I can really use.
*sighs*.
Time to start following more gay (guy) blogs?
Definitely time to start checking the job descriptions more closely.
Any advice, guys and girls?
i.heart.erotica.stories 