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Showing posts from August, 2014

The P***S Mightier than the Sword, or How to Approach Sex in Your Writing

It’s no surprise to say that sex sells, in movies, in media, and in books. Despite all the author/publisher rights’ debates recently, Harlequin Romances are still selling; people want to read about others having sex. Erotica, by definition, excites, plain and simple. But how do you handle it in your books? It’s all well and good to want to tantalize your readers or explore a more racy side to your writing, but what about when your friends, and God-forbid, parents and children read the sex scenes in your book? Should you edit them out based on that personal audience, or should those bodices keep ripping? (Excuse me while I choke on my coffee) As an author, you have several options:           1.       Use a Pseudonym           2.      Be Discreet           3.       Refuse to Care Pseudonyms J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, Stephen King, the Bronte Sisters, Michael Seeley. All of these authors have used pseudonyms. Some noms de plume have become far mor

Flash Fiction for Shark Week: "A Nickel's Chance."

  A Nickel's Chance It was about the time my calf cramped the first time that I decided to kill Jimmy King to stay afloat. After she had slammed into the rock and split her bow, we had grabbed what we could before jumping from our little sloop, the Wooden Nickel , into the Pacific. I had snagged a canteen of water and the outdated life-vest which could barely float itself. Jimmy, always lucky, had clapped his hands on a spar, never letting go. Now, he draped his body across it, as if sunbathing like those tourists we often saw in Chile. He grabbed a spar, and because he was well-liked among the crew, and because he was puny — like a wilted cat-tail — and because he had two twin daughters who could melt your heart — because of all that, no one fought him for his beam. Everyone else just bobbed along and scowled with envy. That had been this morning, before the carpenter went mad and drank seawater and before Morrison stopped kicking and drowned. After seven hour