What To Look For In A Writers' Group

What makes a good writing group?

The people.

The timing.

The talent. 

The networking.

The camaraderie.

And the wine, coffee and pastries. :)

Come read my article about writers' groups at The Horror Zine.

https://www.thehorrorzine.com/Special/EABlack/EABlack.html

Being An Introvert In An Extroverted Profession

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Welcome, 2018!

This is my first post of the new year. January brings forth new goals and dreams. It also brought on a lot of snow. We got a foot and a half and I have cabin fever. I'm tired of snow. Bring on spring!

I used to see ponds ice over when I lived in Maryland. Here, the ocean ices over. Yesterday the whitecaps at one of the beaches looked like a slushie. I wondered what flavor it was? I've never seen anything like that before. A pond near home has completely iced over like it does every winter. I saw some kids playing ice hockey on it. That looked like fun.

Writing when you're hunkered down surrounded by piles of the white stuff can be a bit daunting. I need to write two short stories for some interesting submission calls but I can't figure out what to write about. Both are horror, which should be easy to write in this miserable weather. I know what to do when I can't figure out what to write – I read. I'm going to read Teeming Terrors to kickstart my ideas for one of those horror stories.

2018 is turning out to be a good year so far. Granted, we're only 8 days into it, but it's still good. My story Invisible was cited in The Solstice List 2017 The Best In Horror. It appears in Zippered Flesh 3: Yet More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad which was also cited. I won one award before – my Night Owl Romance Top Pick award for my erotic romance novel Don't Call Me Baby. That book is currently out of print.

My main goals for 2018 are to finish and publish Secrets and Lies (my cozy mystery/thriller) and Happily Ever After: A Collection Of Erotic Fairy Tales. I also want to submit more short stories and see them published. I probably will no longer host Into The Abyss With Elizabeth Black because podcasts are a lot of work and I don’t enjoy them anymore. My goals are about my writing now. I don't want to get off track.

Here's hoping 2018 is a good year for me personally and professionally. I'm off to a good start. Let's keep the good mojo going.

Goals Not Resolutions

I read an interesting post on Facebook in which the writer asked everyone for their 2018 goals. Not resolutions. Goals. He said most people broke resolutions or never even bothered to attempt to meet them. Goals? More realistic and more likely to be attempted and fulfilled. So I asked myself, what are my goals for 2018?

Here are a few:

Finish my erotic fairy tales collection and self-publish it.

Publish my two erotic fairy tale novellas in print. These two books are Trouble In Thigh High Boots (erotic Puss In Boots) and Climbing Her Tower (erotic Rapunzel).

Finish my horror novel Hell Time.

Find an agent for my thriller novel Secrets and Lies.

Send out my newsletter more regularly.

Submit to a minimum of 5 submission calls in 2018. Bonus points if I publish at least 5 stories.

Join the YMCA and make an effort to swim and work out this winter and spring. My husband and I are joining the Y next week.

Head to the beach every day in late spring and summer to swim, walk, and otherwise get some fresh air and exercise especially after being cooped up in at home all winter.

Save enough money each paycheck to fund a trip to Europe most likely taken in 2019 or 2020.

Sell more books!

Make an effort to attend more book events like readings and conventions but only when money permits. Those events tend to cost more than I can afford.

Bake more. I didn't bake enough in 2017 which is a shame since I enjoy baking very much. I didn't bake as many cookies this year as I usually do so I shall remedy that in 2018. Here are the last two recipes I made – pumpkin bread and pizzelles. Pizzelles are anise-flavored Italian waffle cookies.

Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 cup olive oil ( can sub with canola or vegetable)

2 eggs, Beaten

1/4 cup water

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Sift together flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda.

3. In a separate bowl combined pumpkin, oil, eggs, water, and spices.

4. Then, combined with dry ingredients but, do not mix too thoroughly. Stir in walnuts.

5. Pour into a well-buttered 9x5x3 inch loaf pan. Bake 50-60 minutes until a thin skewer poked in the very center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn out of the pan and let cool on a rack.

6. Makes one loaf. Can easily double the recipe.

7. If desired, you can use them in a muffin tin as well. They come out just as moist. If you use muffin tin bake for 20-25 minute.

Pizzelles

You need a pizzelle iron to make these cookies. I'm sure you can find one on eBay or at Amazon. I have an electric one that makes four pizzelle cookies at once. It's over 30 years old. My mother gave it to me when she saw how much I loved those cookies. An Italian neighbor made them all the time.

Ingredients

3 large eggs

3/4 cup sugar

3/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon anise extract

1 tablespoon anisette liqueur or Sambucca (optional)

1/4 cups anise seed

1 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) melted butter

Instructions

Beat the eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla until well combined.

Stir in the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

Add the melted butter, again mixing until smooth; the batter will be thick and soft.

Heat your pizzelle iron. Grease it as directed in the manufacturer's instructions. As the iron heats, the batter will stiffen.

Cook the pizzelle according to the instructions that came with your iron. In general, they'll take between 45 seconds and 2 1/2 minutes to brown.

Remove the pizzelle from the iron, and cool on a rack. If desired, use a pair of scissors to trim any ragged edges.

Dust cooled pizzelle with confectioners' sugar, if desired.

Now that 2017 has drawn to a close, I'm read for next year. 2017 was a bit of a slow and rather uneventful year for me writing-wise. I need to be more proactive. I plan on that starting today, Jan. 1 with my skin at Night Owl Reviews. I'm in an author chat tonight (Jan. 1) at 8 PM EST. I'll talk about my erotic romance novel No Restraint. Here's the link to join me:

https://www.nightowlreviews.com/v5/Chats

See you there, and have a fantastic 2018!

Writers Retreat In Maine

I'm in Maine for a writers retreat with women from Broad Universe. The location and the house are beautiful! I have an idea for a speculative fiction story that needs more thought before I can write it. I also am working on my erotic fairy tales for my collection. I just beefed up "Riding Little Red" so that it's not so two-dimensional. It's much meatier now and it has more substance.

I like to go for walks at home around the beach or on the esplanade by Gloucester Harbor. Here, I walked down to the bay. There is a picnic area with benches and grills that would be perfect if the weather weren't so damned cold! The air is crisp and clean, though. I saw some chipmunks chase each other up trees. Squirrels, too.

Here is a movie of the bay. The ocean it out beyond it.

New On Blog Talk Radio - Special Guest "The Blacklist" writer Daniel Knauf

Coming Aug. 2 at 4 PM EST on World Of Ink Radio - my guest Daniel Knauf, writer of the hit TV shows "The Blacklist" and "Carnivale". Co-hosting with Marsha Casper Cook. This is going to be a kick-ass show. Be sure to give it a listen.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/worldofinknetwork/2016/08/02/award-winning-show-the-blacklist--daniel-knauf--world-of-ink-network

From Fan Fiction To Hot Gay Male Erotic Medical Thriller

I admit it. I have written fan fiction. Stop laughing!

The first fan fiction I wrote was when I was in college. I used to write Star Trek fan fiction with my cousin, who was five years younger than me. She lived in Iowa and I lived in Maryland, and we scorched the pages of letters to each other with this crap. My favorite characters were Spock and Scotty. Her favorites were McCoy and Kirk. We wrote long-winded and dreadful letters where we were the stars of our own fantasies and the Trek characters actions revolved around us.

Yes, we wrote Mary Sues. You're laughing again!

We were perfect in every way. We were beautiful, genius-level intelligent, vivacious, talented, knowledgeable in our fields (whatever the hell they were), and the entire Enterprise crew was in love with us. Of course, the bridge crew couldn't get enough of us. Typical Mary Sue. I had no idea the concept of the Mary Sue even existed, let alone we were splendid at it. We kept these letters going for over a year, and both of us were hooked on classic Trek.

I had a blast writing those letters. Sadly, I never saved them. I wish I had. I could laugh and cringe over them while downing a bottle of bubbly. I went another ten years before I wrote fan fiction again. In 1993, I became hooked on The X Files. I wished I could have worked on that show. I was in an AOL fan chat that show writer Glen Morgan used to stop in, and he gave me the contact information to send my resume. That was very nice of him. At the time I was working local crew in Maryland doing lighting, scenic art, and makeup (including prosthetics) for movies, TV, stage, and concerts. I worked on Die Hard With A Vengeance, Homicide: Life On The Street, and the movie 12 Monkeys. I loved my work. I had enough of a background to qualify for union work in Vancouver, British Columbia and I was willing to move not only across the continent but to another country. I thought I could live in Vancouver, Washington in the U. S. and commute to British Columbia but that wasn't allowed. I'd have to move there and become a citizen. It was a long shot, but I wrote. Never heard back. But I tried. I loved that line of work and being in that fan chat.

Anyway, a couple of years later I attended a science fiction convention as a guest panelist and I met a guy who was helping to put together some anthologies. One was gay, one was lesbian, and one was TV fan fiction. None of the books were ever published to my knowledge. It was a good thing, too, because I didn't know at the time I could have been sued for publishing and getting paid for a short story based on The X Files without first getting the show's permission. I did start the story but didn't finish it. However, I saved my file. I also wrote a lesbian story for the other book and I saved that file as well.

Count about a decade into the future. I rewrote the lesbian story and submitted it to Torquere Press for their Vamps anthology, and it was accepted! I was delighted. I had worked on the X File for another half dozen years or so. I changed Mulder and Scully to two gay men working on an outbreak at a camp around a lake. I finally finished it a few weeks ago, and I submitted it to a Men At Work call I saw at – get this – The Erotic Readers And Writers Association's Submissions Web Page.  Funny how things come full circle. The story was accepted! I called it Roughing It, and it's due to come out in the spring. Although Jake and Lance are two scientists, you can hear Mulder and Scully in their conversations. The story is a cross between The X Files and The Andromeda Strain with a little sex thrown in. The sex works, too. It doesn't seem out of place. I like this story very much, and it's special to me since I have worked on it very hard for nearly 20 years. The story in the Vamps anthology is called Neighbors, and I took the two characters in it – Charlotte and Lina, who could pass for identical twins – and placed them in my work-in-progress Full Moon Fever. I hope to sell it to the same publisher that is publishing my novel Alex Craig Has A Threesome. Xcite Books is publishing that book late summer. If it sells well, I hope to pitch Full Moon Fever to them. I'll do what I can to make Alex Craig sell. I'm very happy to be with Xcite. Xcite has published four of my short stories in anthologies so I'm not a stranger. This is my first novel in several years and my first with Xcite. I need the boost. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I find it amusing I've written a story that originated as fan fiction, and the final result is getting published. Hey, if it worked for E. L. James, maybe it will work for me. Everyone knows those 50 Shades of Grey books started out as Twilight fan fiction. I can only dream of selling as well as she has.

I've also written Once Upon A Time fan fiction, but that's another post. At least I stuck to Belle and Rumpelstiltskin. No Mary Sue in those stories. I won't give links. I'm too embarrassed. LOL Look for Roughing It in April and Alex Craig Has A Threesome in late summer.

Query Letters - The Bane Of My Existence

I'm currently searching for an agent, and I have battled with the dreaded query letter. I thought I did my research, but after attending the Boston writer's conference The Muse And The Marketplace, I discovered I had not written the damned thing correctly. I had written my introduction, named the book, gave the blurb, the word count, genre, and then my publishing history and a little information about my prior movie and TV work.

Turns out I left out an important item – why I am the best person to write this book. The Muse taught me the proper way to write a query letter, and thanks to the conference I did get my first request for a partial. Sadly, that resulted in another rejection, but at least she requested a partial.

I'm not giving up.

According to book developer and principle of The Scribe'sWindow Cherise Fisher, who gave the talk "The Perfect Pitch" at The Muse And The Marketplace, a pitch is "the transfer of enthusiasm from one person to the next. It's like a virus. You infect with your pitch." Books are meant to entertain, educate, and inspire/provoke. A pitch is the foundation for your proposal. It's your contact with an agent or editor. It's also about being as clear and concise as possible to the person you're pitching to.

My mistake was leaving out my backstory – why a have a passion for this particular story. I needed to personalize my pitch. The perfect book is the book only you can write. This includes your life experiences and your perspective, Reveal what is behind you for writing this book. Wny are you so driven to do it? What's the story, and why is it yours to tell?

If you want to see examples of successful query letters, check out Writer's Digest's Successful Queries page. Not only does the page include scads of very good queries, there are explanations from agents following each query as to why it was a good one. I've learned a great deal from reading those examples.

My next step is to subscribe to Publisher's Marketplace for a month, and find all the agents who represent erotica and erotic romance. Then, if I haven't already written to them, send them my updated query letter and anything else their submission guidelines require.

I'm well aware that this book may never find representation. That surprised and disappointed me, since I've always read about famous books that were rejected by hundreds of agents only to finally find representation and then go on to become huge successes. I had hoped that would be my path. It hadn't occurred to me that I may write to hundreds of agents and all will reject the book. I was advised by one agent to write another book if this one doesn't snag an agent, and look for representation for that one. I'm aware of one writer who now has an agent who submitted a half dozen books over a seven year period before she finally found representation. Apparently, that's a path I may end up taking. So, I have hope although I know I have a lot of work ahead of me.