Monday, April 22, 2013

Erotic Romance Calls for Submission - Spring Edition

This week, I broke out my spring dresses for the first time in the year.  It was still a little chilly up here but it felt great to wear a dress again, even if it was with tights.

Bring on the warm weather!

Of course, with spring comes thoughts of love (and sex), so here are a few erotic romance publishers who are looking for your stories.

Loose Id is looking for hot stories about the new boss, whether that's in an office setting or the "new Dom at the club" -- wow.  Submissions should be novella-length, so 20,000 or more words.  Deadline for writers who aren't already working with this publisher is May 25th so get writing!

Entangled wants stories with moderate to high heat levels set in exotic locales.  Story lengths can range from 10,000 to 40,000 words.  Not sure about the deadline for these but the call went out earlier this month so get those pens working.

Ellora's Cave has two calls for submission for 2013: Boys Will Do Boys (deadline: May 1st) and sweet Regencies for a Christmas collection (deadline: May 15th if you don't already write for them).

Lastly, Entranced Publishing is seeking novel length winter and holiday-themed romance fiction.  Deadline is May 1st so this is perfect for any of you who already have a manuscript gathering dust (like me).  Get editing, folks!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

It's Never Too Late

It's never too late to be who you might have been - George Eliot

Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss are two of my favourite classic works of literature.  And Mary Anne Evans was brilliant in other ways as well.

Her quote above is constantly inspiring me.

You see, I've been writing for a long time.  Seriously, for most of that time.  I've only just started getting published in the past couple of years.  My goals are simple: every year, I publish more.

Will I ever become a great writer, like Ms. Evans?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  But I keep trying.  That's the only way to become who I might be.

Monday, April 08, 2013

How to Make Bookmarks Work for You

I have a problem: I'm a multi-tasker.

Back when I was in my twenties, this was a great thing to be.  You, presumably, got a lot more done by being adaptable and able to switch frequently from reading, to emailing, to letter writing (yes, we still did that in my twenties), and so on.

Now, in my thirties, they tell me that being a multi-tasker doesn't work.  But, of course, I'd already learned that.

Multi-tasking doesn't work for me for no other reason than it has significantly shortened my attention span.  As a kid, I could spend an entire day reading.  As a post-secondary student with a part-time job, I learned to snatch bits of text book readings during my fifteen minute breaks.  Later, as a professional, I often had to break up a block of researching or drafting documents with interviews, phone calls and correspondence.  My day-long attention span was suddenly down to minutes-long or even seconds.

Even that solitary activity I enjoy best of all (get your mind out of the gutter!)--writing--no longer engages my attention for long hours at a time.  I can write for maybe fifteen or thirty minutes at a time before my mind starts wandering.  Usually, when this happens, I jump on the internet to do some "research" and I end up clicking through a dozen or more links until I'm playing an online game or reading about some celebrity I've never even heard of.  (I guess that should be "celebrity".)  An hour later, when I finally come back to my writing, it's usually time to do something else, like make dinner.

Recently, though, I've come up with a way of blending my shortened attention span with my overflowing email inbox.  When I have a fifteen minute time slot on hand (sometimes, I'll admit, during boring conference calls), I'll skim through my inbox, concentrating on the emails I get about writing.  I mean to read these eventually, it's just that I never get around to it.  So, instead of letting these emails languish in my inbox, I sort out the articles that look interesting, file them away in my Bookmarks folder under Writing and I come back to them as soon as my interest in actual writing starts to wane.

Now, when I take a break from writing, I read interesting writing articles that inevitably get me back into my own work-in-progress.  Since the articles are short, I can usually finish one in a few minutes, delete the bookmark, and get back into my work without getting up from my desk.  If it's a long article, I just leave it in my bookmarks until the next time my attention wanders.  Now I no longer feel guilty about not reading those emails I subscribe to and I spend less time procrastinating from my actual writing.  Try it out.  I'll bet it works for you.

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Calls for Erotic Romance and Getting Published


Last year, I released my first erotic romance stories, Captive Angel and Country Hearts with Total-E-Bound publishing.  Total-E-Bound produces incredible erotic (and other) romance e-books in a myriad of subgenres.  They have been a real pleasure to work with and, partly for that reason, I have two more erotic romances coming out this year.

Previously, I've posted about Total-E-Bound's calls for submission.

I thought, since I have benefited from these same calls, I would show my work by letting you know that I've used those very same postings to review the guidelines for stories, to submit and, ultimately, to be published.  Yes, really.

In August, 2012, for instance, I posted the following:

Total-E-Bound accepts erotic romance manuscripts between 10,000 and 100,000+ words and has specific calls for submissions going on right now. These include - At Your Service (short stories about domestic staff) deadline: November 1, 2012, Whip It Up (BDSM, obviously) deadline: March 1, 2013, and my favourite, Wanton Witches (Halloween themed for next year's season) deadline: April 1, 2013.

I submitted a story called "A Lady for Two" for the At Your Service anthology since I've had good sales with the other anthology piece I submitted to them.  I sent in my historical piece the day before the deadline, on October 31, 2012, and I received an acceptance about seven weeks later on December 11, 2012.  Pre-ordering starts later this month and general release is scheduled for June 10th.

That means, all together, it's taken about a year to write, submit, edit and otherwise get my story ready for publication.  Total-E-Bound staff has made this a smooth process but, don't get me wrong, the creative process can also be fraught with difficulty.

The message: it's hard work to be a writer.  Keep on top of general calls for submission and try out my publisher.  If you don't send your stories out there, you will never be published.

Take a deep breath, write like crazy, and submit your work.