I’m blogging this week at the Erotic Readers & Writers Association blog about being a full-time writer:

Aspiring writers don’t want to hear the harsh realities of the easy and fun job of hanging out at Starbucks all day. They want to be the next Stephen King or Suzanne Collins or E.L. James. They want to be famous. They want that Glamour Shots photo they had taken five years ago (or that photo of them on that yacht that one time in St. Thomas) to be on the back of a shiny hardcover book in the front of Barnes & Noble. They have already chosen their pseudonym, it’s a combination of their mother’s maiden name and their favorite Jane Austen character. They spent a lot of money on a shiny new MacBook Pro but so far the only thing they’ve written are Facebook status updates about their muse and how they love the writing life. Mostly, they play Solitaire and drink $4 espresso drinks and send vague query letters to agents about the book they’re going to write if the agent can get them a three-book deal. When they haven’t gotten a response (much less an offer of representation) from an agent within the week, they write Facebook status updates about how the publishing industry is a clique, a dinosaur, a closed door to talented newcomers. Then they play another round of Solitaire and tell themselves they need to self-publish like what’s-her-name who made all that money on Amazon writing those vampire stories. Except they never bother to learn the ins and outs of successful self-publishing and none of the writers they have emailed randomly will tell them the secrets of being full-time writers. They assume it’s because those writers are intimidated by someone more talented-- they never assume those writers are too busy writing, editing, teaching, etc., to tell them the truth: the only way to be a full-time writer is to find a way to write full-time, even if you also have a full-time “real” job, even if you have kids and a house and a chronic illness and elderly in-laws and, and, and… The only way to be a writer is to write. That is not what they want to hear. So they write a shitty review on Amazon for a book they never read, write a Facebook status update about how author X is a hack and her book is illiterate trash, then they go back to playing Solitaire, smug in the knowledge that when they do finally get around to writing and self-publishing their book, they will have the last laugh.

Does that sound harsh? A hack smut writer in her ivory tower pooh-poohing the brilliant aspiring writers who only need a bit of advice and an introduction to my agent, editor or publisher in order to become The Next Big Thing that I can never hope to be? Yeah, you caught me. Sorry. God knows I make so much money and I’m so wildly successful that any question about how to obtain my fun and easy lifestyle is to be perceived as a threat and immediately condemned. My apologies. Let me make it up to you and buy you a coffee while you tell me about your muse. What’s her name again?

What do I tell those questioning souls who email me for advice?

Read the rest at What It Means to be a Full-Time Writer. (Spoiler: There is no “secret” to becoming a full-time writer.)

xoxo: Sweet and Sexy Erotic Romance
Editor: Kristina Wright
Publisher: Cleis Press
Publication Date: Summer 2013
Submission Deadline: July 15

Payment: $30 per story and 1 copy of the book, on publication
E-mail:

I’m editing my first collection of short-shorts for Cleis Press! For xoxo: Sweet and Sexy Erotic Romance, I’m looking for stories 1200-1500 words that are sweet, sexy and short. I will consider up to three stories per author.

According to Romance Writers of America, a romance must include two key elements: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying, optimistic ending. In erotic romance, the sexual component is critical to the development of the romantic relationship. To get an idea of what I’m looking for, I strongly recommend reading my other anthologies. Stories that do not meet the criteria for erotic romance will not be considered.

The collection will be primarily heterosexual with a female audience in mind. Bisexual or lesbian encounters are welcome. Sweet and sexy doesn’t mean your stories can’t be kinky, too. I’m looking for a variety of flavors from vanilla to rainbow swirl! The usual taboos apply: no incest, nonconsensual sex, bestiality or underage characters.

Please be sure to follow all of the submission guidelines:

Unpublished stories only, absolutely no simultaneous submissions. Stories should be 1200-1500 words. No more than three stories per author.
Double-space and indent the first line of each paragraph. Do not put extra spaces between paragraphs. Include your full contact information (legal name/pseudonym, mailing address and phone number) and a bio of 50 words or less written in the third person.  Please paste your story into the body of your e-mail and attach it as a Microsoft Word .doc file. Send your submission to with Submission: Story Title in the subject line.  Please direct any questions to the same address. The deadline is July 15.

Payment will be $30 per story and 1 copy of the book upon publication.  Contributors retain the rights to their stories. Publisher has final approval.

About the editor:

Described by The Romance Reader as “a budding force to be reckoned with,” Kristina Wright (kristinawright.com) is an author, editor and college instructor.  She has edited the Cleis Press anthologies Fairy Tale Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women; Dream Lover: Paranormal Tales of Erotic Romance; Steamlust: Steampunk Erotic Romance and Best Erotic Romance. Her forthcoming anthologies include Lustfully Ever After: Fairy Tale Erotic Romance and Duty and Desire: Military Erotic Romance for Women. Her first anthology, Fairy Tale Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women was nominated for a Reviewers’ Choice Award by RT Book Reviews and was a featured alternate of the Doubleday Book Club. Kristina’s erotica and erotic romance fiction has appeared in over ninety print anthologies and she received the Golden Heart Award for Romantic Suspense from Romance Writers of America for her first novel Dangerous Curves.  Her work has also been featured in numerous magazines and e-zines and her articles, interviews and book reviews have appeared in dozens of publications, both in print and online.  She is a member of Romance Writers of America as well as the RWA special interest chapters, Passionate Ink and Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal.  She has served as the book club moderator for EdenFantasys Naked Reader Book Club and is a book reviewer for the Erotica Readers and Writers Association (erotica-readers.com). She is also a regular blogger at Oh Get a Grip! (ohgetagrip.blogspot.com) and Good Vibrations Magazine (magazine.goodvibes.com).

This week’s theme at Oh Get a Grip! is favorite colors. My piece went in an entirely different direction than I intended:

I learned everything there is to know about color in photo finishing. How to take a negative and print a perfect replica of the original scene. How to add or subtract magenta, yellow and cyan to balance the tones of a photo. How to darken or lighten an image to take the edge off a bright flash or bring a face out of the shadows. I could hold a strip of negatives up to the fluorescent lights and tell you if it was going to be a bitch to print. Outdoor scenes-- bright, sunny days with a clear blue sky-- were the hardest to print. A cloudless blue sky rarely looks the same in a picture as it does in real life. And dust specks-- tiny little things that you hardly notice when they’re on the tip of your fingers-- look like giant snakes on a picture of sky.

I loathed summer because the beach parties and air shows would drive me around the bend, trying to get all the dust off every negative, trying to make the sky look the same as it did that sunny day. We always added cyan to sky pictures, making them bluer than they were in real life. People like their memories enhanced and no one never complained. If there were trees or sand (or people) in those pictures, they would sometimes take on a blue hue as well, and we’d have to go back and reprint the photo, subtracting some of the cyan. +3, -1, wasting time and paper on a picture someone was going to shove in a drawer and never look at again. You become a perfectionist in photo finishing-- or you find a new job.

I worked at three labs in South Florida over the four or so years I worked in photo finishing and I saw a lot of pictures. A lot. Personal pictures, things I had never seen before then. Some things I haven’t seen since and would have to search for on the internet, if I were so inclined. The photo lab in the upper middle class neighborhood in South Florida was different than the photo lab near Fort Lauderdale beach. The neighborhood customers took pictures of birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, graduations and retirements. The beach customers were usually on vacation and their pictures reflected all of their vacation activities. And I do mean all. People on vacation get… wild. Luckily, I worked in the neighborhood lab before I worked at the beach location, so I had already had my eyes opened by people’s photographic proclivities.

You can read the rest here: The Color of Flesh

Maybe I’m being a little over ambitious this month?

My year of projects got off to a slow start (I didn’t really commit to this idea until mid-January when I realized how many projects I had already started), but it’s working as well as I hoped it would. There is something about completing a project, whether it’s a writing project or something else, that is very satisfying. I still have a bunch of ongoing projects in the works--including three books-- so I’m not going to commit to too many new things in March. But here are this month’s projects, the ongoing projects and the projects I completed in February.

I hope 2012 is proving to be a year of accomplishments for you, too!

NEW PROJECTS

Nonfiction Book
Start date: mid-February
Finish date: August 1
This was last month’s proposal project (below) and has turned into a full-fledged book project with a shiny new contract! Which goes to show that finishing things, even if they seem like long shots, is a very, very good thing. I don’t want to say too much about this book yet-- there will be plenty of time to crow about it-- but I will say I’m working with some amazing authors to create a one-of-a-kind book combining nonfiction and fiction. It’s going to be something special!

Patrick’s Room
Start date: Um, last summer?
Finish date: March 31
When we found out we were expecting baby #2, things got a little bit tighter in our previously too-big-for-two-people house. When we had Patrick, we simply converted the third (empty) bedroom into a nursery. Lucas’s arrival meant moving him into the nursery, moving Patrick into the bigger guest bedroom, moving the guest bedroom furniture into the office/room over the garage/storage space and getting rid of a lot of furniture and junk. Because pregnancy is exhausting and things didn’t get accomplished quite as quickly as I would have liked, Patrick’s new bedroom was never completely finished. New carpet, new paint, new toddler bed and bedding (and a very cool window installed in his bizarrely shaped closet to give him a little “secret” room), but the little details-- toy storage, paint touchups, art for the walls, cleaning out the top of the closet of junk, gluing the knobs on his dresser so he’ll stop taking them off-- never got done. So my goal this month is to give his room a more finished look. It really shouldn’t be too difficult, it’s just one of those projects that keeps getting pushed to the back burner because of time. Now I just need to remember to take a “before” picture to go with the “after” picture.

Teaching Project
Start date: Now
Finish date: March 31
I haven’t taught at the community college since 2009 when I had Patrick and I’ve really missed it. Or some aspects of it, anyway. I don’t have the time (or the energy) to commit to teaching multiple sections of English Composition right now but I would love to teach a creative writing class or two. There is a local literary center that offers a variety of classes and I’d like to pitch a class to them. I’m not sure how open they will be to an erotica writing class, but I do have background in a variety of genres and subjects, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to pitch something they’ll be interested in. (I’m thinking this would be a summer or fall class, so this month is really just about approaching them and figuring out their needs, creating a proposal and maybe a syllabus.)

Create a Photoblog
Start date: Now
Finish date: December 31
I’m starting a photo blog of my photo project Two Boys, One Picture and so that I can post my daily photos of the boys somewhere other than Facebook (for longevity). The project itself is a continuation of what I’m already doing, but this month’s goal is to create the photoblog and migrate the photos I’ve already posted on Facebook.

ONGOING PROJECTS

80,000 Word Book Project
Start date: January 1
Finish date: April 1
I can’t say too much about this project right now, but I have a contract and I am writing, writing, writing…

Update: Still writing, writing, writing… The deadline is in one month so this is my big writing project for March!

Two Boys, One Picture: A Photographic Chronicle
Start date: Januaryish
Finish date: December 31
I have started taking daily pictures of the babies. I’m calling it Two Boys, One Picture right now and posting the pictures daily on Facebook. I will likely start posting them onto my mama blog, Writer (With Children), too.

Update: I’m having so much fun with this project. Most parents warned me that I will have far more pictures of my first baby than the second baby-- and I could see that happening after the first couple of months with Lucas. Now I have a daily picture (actually, it’s usually several daily pictures) of both boys. And other people seem to be enjoying the pictures on Facebook, too. My goal for March is to start a photoblog somewhere (Tumblr, maybe?) and move the photos I’ve taken so far to the new dedicated blog.

Good Vibes Sexy Mama blogger
Start date: January 23
Finish date: December 31 (with option to renew in 2013)
One of my projects for 2012 is to do more blogging in a variety of places. I realize not a lot of people find or follow this blog and that’s entirely my fault. So this year I hope to pursue a variety of blogging projects that I can link to from here. One of them is being a Sexy Mama blogger for Good Vibrations Magazine. The motherhood side of my identity is still one that I’m getting used to and making peace with, so my irregular (in timing, not in writing--I hope) blog posts on Good Vibes will address issues of motherhood and sexuality, either personal or societal. My first piece, Ready to Blossom, went up last week. And if you’re a mom, I would love to hear what you would like to read about.

Update: I’m working on a couple of pieces for Good Vibes right now and should have something new up soon.

Erotica Readers and Writers Association blogger
Start date: January 28
Finish date: December 31 (with option to renew in 2013)
Another blogging project I’ll be doing is over at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association blog. I will be blogging there on the 28th of every month, mostly about writing, editing and reading erotica. I’ll direct you to my first post: How It All Started to explain why I’m taking on this monthly project, but to summarize: Adrienne Benedicks and ERWA are responsible for my erotica writing career and I want to give back to this fantastic community.

Update: You can read my latest post: Building an Anthology from Scratch.

Best Erotic Romance 2013
Start date: Januaryish
Finish date: June 1
The second edition of Cleis Press’s Best Erotic Romance series and my seventh anthology for Cleis Press. I am absolutely delighted to be editing this series and I cannot wait to start receiving submissions. (Submission deadline is April 15.)

Update: The submission deadline for BER 2013 is in six weeks! I’m looking forward to reading the submissions.

COMPLETED PROJECTS

The Month of Letters Challenge
Start date: February 1
Finish date: February 29
I am doing Mary Robinette Kowal’s Month of Letters Challenge. (I blogged about it here.) It’s a wonderful one-month project and I’m looking forward to sending (and receiving) “real” mail for the entire month of February. Please do read my original post about the challenge and send me your address if you’d like to receive something from me.

What a fun project. I missed two or three days due to illness (mine, the babies, the babysitter), but I sent 29 pieces of real mail, including cards, letters, postcards and packages, over the course of the month. Hopefully it will inspire me to send more letters and cards all year long.

Book Proposal
Start date: Last summer
Finish date: March 1
This is a proposal that’s been languishing on my hard drive for months. Other deadlines (and having a baby) threw me seriously off course, but I’m ready to finish it. I think I’m about 75% done with it, so I might be done sooner than March 1. Mostly I just want it resolved, so I’m getting it a deadline. I started it, I need to finish it.

I’m happy to say I finished this project on February 10 and was offered a contract within the week. It’s going to be a very fun book!

10,000 Word Short Story
Start date: Januaryish
Finish date: February 6
This is another one I just need to be done with. It’s contracted, it’s started, I’ve just gotten sidetracked in the past couple of weeks. It will be done by Monday, one way or another.

I finished this story in the nth hour and was really pleased with how it turned out. Happily, so was the editor! “Lilith Returns” will appear in an illustrated erotica anthology from Sweetmeats Press.

This week my piece at Oh Get a Grip! is about politics, morality and Violet Gordon Woodhouse.

Just when did women stop being quiet, submissive good girls and turn into outspoken, demanding sluts? Maybe someone can tweet that question during the next GOP debate. I’m sure they will be happy to support legislation to get women back in the home. After all, childless career women are responsible for the breakdown of the family and the downfall of our society. (And here I thought it was all Eve’s fault.) Let’s start by taking away their reproductive rights, shall we? Keeping them barefoot and pregnant should help keep them quiet. Sigh.

Speaking of childless career women, I don’t know when Violet Gordon Woodhouse came on my radar, but I often think about her when I listen to politicians get up in arms about women’s morals or women’s reproductive rights or women’s roles in society. I might have picked up a book about radical women at the bookstore and found Violet there. I seem to recall reading about her along with the likes of Mata Hari and Amelia Earhart. In any case, I had never heard of her until a few years ago. Have you?

Violet was a successful and accomplished musician-- some even called her a musical genius-- but she had a nontraditional personal life that made her a very bad girl by the standards of her era (she was born in 1872). What’s sad is that she would still be considered a very bad girl today, too.

Read the rest of Violet Gordon Woodhouse (and Her Men) at Oh Get a Grip!

Photo montage of Violet found here.