Guest author Delaney Diamond: My On-Again/Off-Again Affair With Erotic Romance

Delaney Diamond is the bestselling author of African-American and interracial romance.  Her latest books, Worth Waiting For (sweet interracial romance) and The Temptation of a Good Man (sensual African-American romance), will be released this fall. Visit www.delaneydiamond.com or join her at www.facebook.com/delaneydiamond to stay up to date on future releases. 

Everyone knows sex sells. Take a look at ads for GoDaddy.com, Carl Jr.’s hamburgers, and perfume ads, and you’ll agree with me. Because of the sexy nature of the ads, they remain planted in consumers’ minds, and those businesses watch their sales go through the roof each time a new commercial launches.

The same holds true for romance novels. Sex and romance go hand in hand. When I first started reading erotic romance, I have to admit it was thrilling, but the bloom has started to fade off the rose. I’ve found lately that I don’t purchase as many erotic titles as I used to, and I’m less likely to try new-to-me erotic romance authors. The fact is, erotic romance has gotten a little extreme for my taste. It seems authors are trying to outkink each other.

There are basically three heat levels of romance. Sweet (inspirational is sweet with religious content), sensual, and erotic. I read books in all three categories, but my writing remains firmly planted in sweet and sensual.

Below are some of the gripes I have about erotic romance:

• Lack of plot. Whenever I find one that has a good plot and sexy scenes, I’m always excited. I’m tired of sex scene after sex scene. I just end up skipping over them.

• Excessive curse words. Curse words can be used to signal anger, excitement, etc. They can also be used in dialogue to distinguish the speech patterns of certain characters from others. However, if everyone in the book is cursing up a storm, it’s a turn off. I don’t need the f-bomb dropped every three sentences.

• Graphic descriptions. This goes hand in hand with excessive curse words for me. Granted, I tend to use euphemisms in my writing. I realize that not everyone appreciates words like shaft, manhood, arousal, and apex of her thighs as substitutions for sexual organs, but that’s what I’m comfortable writing.

I’m okay reading words like c*ck and p*ssy, but when they show up every five sentences, I get aggravated. And the one word that I absolutely can’t tolerate as a female sex organ is the word c*nt. Ugh. It knocks me out of a sex scene every time, but the word has become more prevalent in erotic romance and gets tossed around more than a frisbee on a sunny afternoon in the park.

• Unbelievable sexual scenarios. I used the word unbelievable because I’m hard-pressed to believe these are part of the billion-dollar genre romance. I think we need a new genre for these types of books. Just a thought…

• A ménage à trois is no longer enough. Now we have heroines sleeping with as many as seven men. Seven. I found one like this. The more the merrier, I guess.
• Voluntary incest. I still can’t believe this is considered romance.

I often run across conversation threads on Goodreads where readers bemoan their displeasure with erotic romance. Some are gravitating toward the opposite end of the spectrum—toward sweet books. I’m not sure if there are more readers reading sweet, or if it’s simply that they’ve become more vocal, but sweet books are taking off.

The Clean Romances Group on Goodreads has over 900 members and continues to grow steadily. My first sweet romance will be published by Astraea Press, a publisher dedicated to offering clean romance and fiction. Even though they only opened their doors in February of this year, they have dozens of published books by approximately twenty-five authors. They’re growing so fast that the owner just hired several more editors and another cover artist to meet the demand of submissions.

I realize this is all about personal taste, and we express our preferences by deciding how to spend our limited income. Anyone who prefers sweet or erotic won’t buy my sensual books any more than I will buy an erotic book that includes the situations I listed above.

So tell me, what are your preferences? What are you getting tired of seeing in the genre(s) you read?

Turning Back The Writer's Clock...

I love being a writer in the modern age with all the technology and gadgets at your fingertips. Computers, Internet, cell phones, iPad or other Pads, PC cams, Instant Chat, Video Chat, on and on. With these things handy, most writers can do all their business and then some without ever having to leave their office.

I have practically forgotten what it was like to type books on a typewriter, go to the library for research, go to local bookstores (with Amazon and BN online, among others, pretty much making it a lost art), gather at watering holes to shoot the breeze with other authors and fans alike (can do all that now with my iPhone, iPad, and computer), etc.

Even doing book signings is not what it once was. Readers are not as eager to press flesh with you or get your John Hancock, or watch you read a passage from your book. The thrill is gone now that they can interact with you online, talk to others about you online, review your books online, and most anything else they wish to do with respect to connecting with your book online.

And yet, though I am perfectly at home, fully embracing the ease with which I can write, publish, and promote books in the modern age, I have to admit that at times I long for turning back the clock to the good old days.

I may never admit this to my wife and would never suggest such to my publishers, but I miss (a little) typing my manuscripts on my old true and tried typewriter. Or going to the library and spending the entire day there pouring through books and newspapers. Or chatting with librarians and other users. Or hanging out at bookstores as a writer and reader. With the latter, I loved searching for the true treasure amongst tens of thousands of books. The read was almost incidental.

I also loved stocking my home bookshelves with books I acquired and could pull down whenever it suited my fancy. Now I do much of my reading and shelving virtually, through my iPad, Kindle, or Nook.

If there were a time machine, I just might take a trip down memory lane to enjoy the good old days as a writer old enough to remember and still appreciate.
So long as I had a round trip ticket to return to the sweet life for writers today.

How did you like the old tools of the trade compared to today?

What do you wish was still alive and well in the writing world from yesteryear?

Adaptability

I live a Jekyll and Hyde existence. I just spent three months as a full-time writer. Now I’m back to school and for the next eight months or so I’ll be a part-time writer. Full-time is better but I can’t make a living that way. During the summer I often wrote 5 or 6 hours a day and then spent a few hours on the business end of writing. I did a lot of blogging. Most days now I’ll be getting an hour to write, if that. I’ll be cutting back on blogging. I just won’t have the time. The business end will have to take a back seat to making progress on actual writing.

Making progress. Sometimes, when the writing time gets shortened by life and work, that’s all you can do. A paragraph here. A page there. A few notes taken during a meeting or spoken into a tape recorder on a daily commute. Adaptability is the key, and I’ve become adaptable by necessity. I try to look upon it as a challenge, and I think I manage fairly well.

However, my level of adaptability pales compared to some professional writers I know. There are trends in publishing as in every other field. I have a friend who wrote historical romances until that market softened, then switched to historical mysteries, then took a turn at thrillers while keeping her mystery series running. All were written under different names and along the way my friend had to reinvent certain aspects of her writing style and storytelling style for different audiences. Another writer of my acquaintance changed her writing style dramatically, going from lush, serious prose to airy, light and humorous, and in the process upping her sales dramatically. I’ve heard of other writers doing much the same. It amazes me.

It’s not just that I would find such large scale reinvention difficult from a writing standpoint, but I’d find the whole process terrifying emotionally. I’d find it horrifically stressful, particularly if my livelihood and the wellbeing of my children were at stake. They say necessity is the mother of invention and that might explain why these writers have been able to do what they did and remain successful at a high level. I admire them, whatever the trigger.

Those of us writing now, whether trying to maintain and advance a career, or get one started from the ground up, are living in times when adaptability is becoming ever more necessary. The ebook revolution, with the explosion of self-publishing that has accompanied it, and the rise of social media as a marketing tool are just the most salient examples. The old ways are not dead and gone, but they are living side by side with new approaches. I’ve certainly been trying to adapt, what with my blogging and my Facebook presence, and I’ve even tried the self-publishing route with Killing Trail. So far I’ve not been tremendously successful but in this new world you never quite know what is going to hit and when.

I’d especially urge newer writers to consider adaptability and flexibility among the necessary writer’s tools for the 21st century. For example, don’t reject the possibility of self-publishing, but don’t consider it the be all and end all either. Certainly, I hear much talk about “branding,” about becoming known for doing one thing really well, and that is a way for some folks to make a name for themselves. But remember that trends change, tastes change. When the brand you established is no longer selling, you have to be willing to change to survive. Supposedly, an old curse is: “May you live in interesting times.” In publishing, we’re all living in exactly those times. It’s scary, but a little exhilarating too. In such times, the adaptable have the advantage.

Team writing: what defines a co-author

I have always been a solitary writer. But not all writing is solitary. There are many writers who do team writing, some under a single composite name. Then there are the ghost writers whose great contributions go unrewarded while some (usually famous) person gets the accolades that come with sole authorship.

I recently embarked on a team writing project. How I managed to entangle myself in such a venture is still a mystery to me, but it began with a conversation that went something like this:

“Mommy, can I write a book with you?”

“Sweetie, Mommy writes books for adults not eight year old kids.”

“But maybe we can write a kids’ book now and when I get older I can write romance just like you.”

(Blush, blush, blush) “I’ll think about.”

A few weeks later my first team writing project was on the way. It was a science adventure novel, written for children eight to twelve years old. My co-author: my eight year old daughter.

We first started out brainstorming, and boy was my daughter excited and full of ideas. I must admit, I thought her excitement would have fizzled the moment we began writing the manuscript, so I began the first chapter on my own. I discussed the chapter with her and was surprised when she started making recommendations, contributing to the ideas and rearranging the chapter. Then one day I returned from work and found her on my laptop. When I asked her what she was doing, she proudly showed me what she added to the manuscript… all three sentences. It took her a few hours.

We sloshed through it for about a month, writing back and forth, discussing everything until the third chapter. Then we hit a dead end. Weeks went by without either of us touching the manuscript. That’s when I realized what was missing: an outline. As a solitary writer, my outline is written in my head. But my co-author cannot read my mind. So I sat down and carefully planned out the concepts I wanted covered and wrote a detailed outline of the book. Excitedly I showed it to my co-author.

With a shrug of her shoulders, she responded “ok,” before returning to her video game.

I ploughed along anyway. Having a good outline, I wrote the book within a week. With great excitement I shared the rough draft with my co-author. She immediately started critiquing: “This chapter is too long; I want first graders to be able to read it; the sentences are too complex; how would they know where in the cell they are? Kids aren’t allowed at the museum of Natural History unsupervised...”

Her critique was quite valued and I gladly made the changes. But by the sixth chapter (there are ten chapters), she lost interest. Getting her to even read the rest was a challenge. I threatened to remove her name from the book. After all, how could an author not be interested in the book they have written?

So I share this longwinded preamble to ask the question: What defines team writing? Do both authors have to contribute 50/50 to the writing, editing etc? Is it a matter of idea sharing?

I am going to summarize my daughter’s contribution and then my contribution and then I’ll ask you to be the judge.

My Daughter’s contribution:
• Brainstorming
• Orally suggesting scenarios to set up the story
• Ensuring that the language is age appropriate
• Ensuring that dialogue fits that of a nine year old American
• Critiquing sentence structure, chapter organization, chapter length

My contribution: All of my daughter’s contributions plus
• Writing the story
• Editing the story
• Revising the story
• Checking for scientific accuracy
• Researching the information

Based on this information, should this maunuscript be considered the product of a team writing project or is my daughter’s contribution something that a critique group would do worth only acknowledgement in the dedication? Should her name be included as a co-author on this project?

Finally, what would you do if you were writing as a team and your co-author isn’t contributing as much as you expect?

Is This Seat Taken?

Well, well, well.

We meet again, and it seems as though I’ll be hanging around with you good folk for a while.

A couple of weeks ago, my longtime friend and fellow word pusher Kevin Killiany asked me to join the fun here on a regular basis. I’d already provided a couple of guest blogs over the past year or so and I was actually contemplating a third such invitation from Liane. That’s when I received Kevin’s call to add my particular flavor of madness to an already groovy rotation of fine writers. “Sounds like fun,” I thought to myself, and so here we are.

Some people might view that last sentence as a warning. Go with your gut.

So, what’s my story? I’ve been writing professionally since I sold my first short fiction piece to Pocket Books’ first-ever Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contest way back in 1997. Since then, I’ve managed to cobble together something resembling a writing career while holding down a full-time “regular” job. I’ve written or co-written more than a dozen novels along with a bunch of short fiction, magazine articles, web content, and a few other odd things along the way. I’ve had a very nice run of good fortune. I keep expecting UPS or FedEx to airdrop the other shoe any day now. Until that happens, I do my best to “pay it forward” when and where I can, which is why I agreed to become a Novel Spacer.

“Oh, come on, Dayton!” I can hear someone shouting from the cheap seats. “Give us some juicy details!” Well, I guess it seems only fair, before I begin my reign of terror tour of duty here at Novel Spaces, that I share some other background tidbits:

• I don’t have an “online persona” and a “real world” persona. I’m the same person in both realms. For better or worse, what you see or read is what you get.
  
  
• There were only three Star Wars movies. I’ve heard rumors about other films bearing the Star Wars moniker, but I refuse to heed such unsubstantiated tripe.
  
  
• What? Something writing-related? Okay, here’s a big one: I don’t believe in “writer’s block” or “finding my muse.” What I do believe is that those are euphemisms for “I don’t feel like writing today.” Other variations on this condition are, “Hey! A Deadliest Catch marathon!” or, “Wow, my DVD collection could sure use organizing...by genre, title, director, and gaffer.” I can sympathize with the feeling, as I have to juggle writing in and around the day job, my wife, two young daughters along with all the activities which come with said offspring, and other demands on my time. I don’t have the luxury of waiting for a muse to show up. A deadline is my muse, as is the paycheck that’s often attached to it. Writing and expecting to get paid for it carries the same demands as any other job. I know there are people who will take issue with my stance on this, but chances are they’re not paying for my mortgage or my kids’ tuitions.
  
  (It’s quite possible this topic will be subjected to further examination in a future column. Stay tuned.)
  
  
• I like Mountain Dew. Okay, “like” is too soft a word. I’m of the unwavering belief that Mountain Dew is created from the tears of the goddess Aphrodite herself. Oral ingestion is my preferred method of intake, but in an emergency where I’m unable to make such decisions for myself, let this blog entry serve as my advance directive authorizing the intravenous administering of this vital fluid.
  
  
• While I certainly don’t want you to feel that you’re wasting your time reading anything I bring to the table, I don’t and won't claim to be an expert in any subject, much less writing. Any advice I offer will usually carry some variation of that disclaimer, even though it almost always will come to you by way of my personal and professional experiences in this business...the good, the bad, the funny, and the infuriating. Your mileage can and will vary. Heck, my mileage varies from project to project.
  

As you’ve hopefully surmised, I lean toward keeping things light and casual. I aim for the same basic tone on my own blog, even if I’m attempting to present thoughts on a serious topic or if I’m just pissed off about something. Ultimately, I want to have fun here, even if and when we might be talking “serious writerly business,” and I want you to have fun reading and commenting on whatever words I sling into this space.

Okay, enough goofing off for one column. Now that my “introduction” is out of the way, we’ll be sure to cover an actual...you know...topic of some sort next time. Until then? Write On, fellow scribes.

Lick, Spit, and Polish

Every writer has her or his own way of writing a story or book. The same is likely true for polishing that short story or book. I know people who leave polishing until the very end, until everything else is done, which both astonishes and horrifies me.

I start polishing with the very first draft.

One reason is that I've spent more than twenty years as a professional copyeditor. Typos, awkward sentences, and not-quite-right words jump off the screen. They distract me so much that I can't focus on the story. Thus, even as I'm writing sentences for the first time, I'm checking the dictionary to make sure words have the nuances I think they do, looking in a thesaurus to find le mot juste, and checking the Internet to see whether such-and-such a food or technology existed in my time period. At the very least, I put a green bar over a word or phrase that I need to come back to.

But I also think revising from the very beginning leads to a better book and that most of the reasons apply to every writer.

• People get used to mistakes if they see them often enough. If you've read your manuscript more than three times, you're probably no longer seeing most of the mistakes and they'll stay in the story forever.

• If you have a critique group, mistakes can throw your readers off track. For example, if you type "Mali" instead of "Bali," your readers will be baffled when your protagonist goes scuba diving in the ocean or sees an orangutan in the forest. Similarly, convoluted sentences and unneeded words can mistakenly lead your readers to think your story boring when in truth raw writing is hiding the great story underneath. I believe the cleaner the manuscript, the better your critique group can focus on your storytelling.

• I edit better than I write. My first drafts tend to be self-contradictory and repetitive, overuse certain words, and have characters named A, B, C, and D.  Given I need to copyedit my first draft before I give it to anyone anyway, I might as well strengthen the verbs and nouns, smooth out obvious bumps in rhythm, and untangle sentences. 

• I want my finished manuscript to be perfectly clean and every sentence to be beautiful. Of course, I'll never achieve that level of quality; we all have to settle for good enough because our lives are finite and we want to publish many things. But the level of quality I'm willing to settle for usually requires ten to twenty rounds of polishing. Doing those rounds at the end would drive me crazy with boredom. Spreading them out keeps polishing fun and also lets problem words, sentences, and paragraphs marinate long enough for good solutions to arise.

• It's easy to forget what you've worked on and what you haven't. By checking spellings, connotations and denotations, and facts right from the beginning, I rarely have a story fall apart because I made an erroneous assumption at the start that affects a crucial plot element.

How do you polish your book, and why do you do it that way?


I'll be back at Novel Spaces again on September 6. I hope you enjoy the end of your summer.

—Shauna Roberts

Relationship Saturday: Novel Spaces

I find contemporary relationships to be absolutely fascinating. After all, we're all here on this earth to love and be loved. Most of my books revolve around family, parents, children, etc., but mainly love and life issues between a man and a woman - some type of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, shifting to boy meets the girl next door scenarios.

Though my first title, May December Souls, was classified as romance, my books are now far from romance and are very unconventional. I'll take on the everyday dramas of real life that involve taboo topics, and twist them into couples's lives. I feel passionate about tackling the edgy characters who take a shot at things that make folks just a little uncomfortable, even the wife who physically abuses her husband - you hate her to no end, yet by the end of the story you understand her dimensions enough to feel sympathy and cheer on her success. And actually cry at her demise. Or the woman who dates her best friend's son, and the payback is for that best friend to date the friend's father.

On my Facebook page, I gather relationship dilemma questions from FB friends who inbox me in confidentiality, and post the questions for my other FB friends to lend their advice, instead of me lending advice (well in some cases I do). It absolutely fascinates me that while you would think most women would feel outrage over a new husband who still pays his ex-girlfriend's son's cell phone bill (not his biological son), you'll find other women who understand the bond between a man and a boy from a supportive mentoring standpoint and think it's okay, suggesting the woman not be so insecure. You might have a man who is upset that his wife won't take his last name once they're married, yet other men would have no problem with it. Every time I think I can predict the responses, someone posts an opposing view that makes you think. I even asked women what they would do if while making love to their husband, he told them it would be their last time together. The responses were shocking, hilarious, and passionate - some simply asking "why" and others ready to Lorena Bobbitt him in a heartbeat.

Love and relationships are complicated and what one person does in one case will be the complete opposite in another. I think that's why writing stories can be so entertaining to readers, yet frustrating as well. We have an opportunity to show them what can happen, and introduce them to the lives of people they otherwise would not have had an opportunity to experience, who might not think like them, but who are dealing with their drama based upon their own make up, issues and experiences. It's like getting dirty virtually without having to play in the mud.

I still believe that true life is stranger than fiction. What we write about has been done before somewhere, and some things we hear about we probably couldn't have made up in a million years. But the blessing comes once we create three-dimensional characters (knock on wood) and allow them to experience the friction of their journeys, even when we don't know how it will end.

Relationships - the heart of our works and the pulse of our passion. Seeing other sides and hearing other views, even on Facebook, has enriched my writing and my outlook on love and life, encouraging me to stay open-minded. On this Relationship Saturday, I just want to say, thank you to my FB friends for their invaluable feedback, and thank you to my readers, for reading the stories of my drama-filled, flawed characters who are just trying their best to, relate.