Housekeeping / Health Updates

blackcoffeeandink:

“There is a lesson to be learned here: writing a good sex scene isn’t just about the sex. It’s an incredibly complex act and extremely difficult to properly capture on the page. One wrong word – yawning, slither, puppies – could ruin the entire sequence. Hopefully the next time you read a well-written sex scene in a novel, you’ll have a new understanding and respect for what that author accomplished where so many others have failed…”

Man… sex is hard to write, yo. Because it *is* like… one wrong word and the jig is up.

Puppies?! I can’t even.

I’m tossing my hat in this ring here because *I* am dinged in this article - twice. 

Just a couple of points that context is everything.  I can tell you just about any sentence can look ridiculous when it’s taken out of context - and sex scenes more than just about anything else.

1) I get dinged on using “turgid magnificence” - which is awful. It’s supposed to be. It was a completely tongue-in-cheek scene and I call myself out on using it about two paragraphs later. But you don’t see that in this article because they didn’t bother listing this fact.  In this respect, I technically win - it was supposed to be a wretched example…and here we go. 

(I suppose I have no excuse for using “Velvet rock” - tho I have had several people tell me they liked it, so, whatevs.)

2) Nicole Peeler’s description of seaweed pubes? Not even from an actual sex scene. It’s a tongue-in-cheek descriptor of a kelpie’s mane. Not mentioned in this article. 

3) There’s really no such thing as bad publicity. The day I complain about getting my debut book listed with long time NYT Bestselling authors like Charlaine Harris and LKHamilton is the day I hang up my writing hat.

4) I don’t actually write Paranormal Romance - I write Urban Fantasy, but I suppose that’s a genre mashup.

So there you have it. I haven’t said anything about this article since it showed up on Barnes & Noble’s website about 6 months ago. I don’t know why HuffPo ran it a few weeks ago. It’s an awkward situation where for me to acknowledge the fact that I’m in here either makes me look like some sort of half-witted writer boob or a big-ass whiner who can’t take her lumps when she gets nationally dinged. 

For those of you who get upset at lousy reviews or comments on your fanfic or non-pubbed writing - understand that this is the game. Once you are pubbed and on the shelf, your material is fair game to be loved or hated, sometimes in a very large forum. 

Reacting to such is usually futile - there is nothing some people love more than to watch an author completely implode on a public forum.

You cannot control what other people do or say about what you put out there - but what you CAN do is control your own actions/reactions. 

Haters gonna hate…but taking things with as much grace as you can goes so much farther.

Just my two cents.