Jude's Blog

Ever since my first erotic romance was published in 2009 that is all I have written since.  Why did I make the transition from sensual to erotic romances?  Well, it was actually a very gradual transformation.  When I wrote my first romance novel at 18, the sex scene was very tepid.  I was embarrassed that someone would read it. Yep, I was afraid of blushing at the very idea of someone reading about sex.

Surprisingly, that gets easier the more you write about it. Having experience in sexual matters also greatly increases the realism.  The more i wrote my romances, the more detailed the sex became. I went from hating the idea of anyone reading them, to looking forward to the feedback.  Now, I’m not happy unless someone tells me they had to take a cold shower afterwards.  LOL

What helped me bridge the gap between sensual and erotic sex scenes was joining one of those fantasy role playing sites.  This allowed me to become a male character online as well as interacting with other women’s male characters and let them explore their sexual wild sides.  Doing this not only opened the door, but tore the dang thing off its hinges as far as my ability and enjoyment of writing sex scenes between men and women (no same sex for this gal, unless it’s two guys having fun with one woman).

My last few sensual novels have highly sexual scenes in them, but it wasn’t until I was asked to spice up Painful Reflections to be published as erotic that I ever attempted to cross that final boundary.  For those who don’t quite know the difference, erotic romance not only has the explicit sex but also the explicit language.  All the sexy words that you can’t use in polite conversation can be finally used.  It’s quite therapeutic to be able to say whatever you want and not worry about offending anyone. Afterall, people who read erotica know what to expect from it.

Of course there are many levels and heats of erotica, some of which I will never write about.  This of course includes same sex couples as well as S&M or bondage, though I have played a bit with the latter aspect.  It’s fun to push the envelope when it comes to writing. It is my hope that one day I will write something so wicked that I will need to create a new name to publish it under!  So far, my mother has read everything I’ve written, though I admit I toned down my recent story, Sierra Sky, for her.  There were a few shocking moments, and I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.  ;-)

If you ever met your favorite writer, what would be the first question you would ask?  Let me guess, it would be, “Where do you get all those ideas?”  I’m probably not alone when I say that no writer likes to answer that question.

Why?  Because we don’t know, and it’s very hard to explain that to someone who has no idea what that means.  Book ideas can come from many different places.  They can either be a memory of something bad that happened, and we want to set it straight.  It could be a movie we watched or a book we read that we feel we could do better. It could be something we glimpsed in a park that sparked our imagination.  Or it could simply be as if someone else were writing through us, a muse if you will. We don’t know where we get our ideas.  They just come to us.

Still, I know I would have to bite my tongue if I ever met my favorite author, since the temptation would be there to ask her that dreaded question.  Even though I know the answer, just maybe she knows some hidden truth that has eluded me.  Not likely, but maybe.

I’m pleased to announce that I just completed the second run through of Sierra Sky. It is now completed at a final word count of 48,359 words. I am now ready to begin submissions, so wish me luck.

ETA I have submitted to two popular erotic epubs today. So I’ve got my fingers crossed.

I have reset the scribometer on the left to now show my progress of the second run through of the completed first draft. As I go through it, I will update the pages I have completed editing. Hopefully this won’t take as long as it took to write it.

Hi everyone! Since I have surpassed my goal of 40,000 words with Sierra Sky, I have increased my goal to 45,000 words. I’m nearing the conclusion and look forward to doing the second run through. After that, I will begin submissions. Wish me luck!

Phew! I need to take a cool shower. Just finished writing a very steamy sex scene for my new interspecies erotic romance novel, Sierra Sky. It is now 76% complete. Heck, I might even end up with more than 40K words if this keeps up. I haven’t even gotten to the meat of the plot yet. Hehe Having too much fun writing the sex scenes. Phew again!

After a very rough start, all is smooth over at Fatcow hosting.  They even uploaded my forum backup, since it’s too large for me to do it without tripping the maximum allowed mysql questions.  Jeesh, though it does seem that no host truly knows what unlimited is.  I will have unlimited bandwidth, as long as it’s not related to a database? Seems silly to me, but oh well.

I know I had issues with one of my previous host attempts, and was constantly getting the exceeded error, but I think they had the max set at some absurdly low number, like 5,000.  Fatcow has it at 75,000, which I can’t imagine my little forum will ever use in an hour’s time.

I made the mistake of renewing for another month with Godaddy, so I’m paid up with them through the middle of May.  I figure I’ll keep my eye on the site over at Fatcow to monitor any problems. If it looks good by mid April, I’ll switch everything over.  It should be pretty seemless, since everything is live over there.  Just a matter of transferring the domain over. 

Most of you probably won’t even be able to tell I’ve made the switch.   At least I hope so.

The only other drawback to all this is that it has distracted me from working on Sierra Sky.  I really want to get back to that story and will definitely work on it this weekend.  I promise!  But then it will literally take months of waiting for submissions editors and then actual editors and then the publisher’s waiting list before the book is available.  I’ll be on pins and needles until then, waiting with baited breath to see what my readers think of my new “style”. 

I’ve been wanting to get my books on Barnes & Noble’s website for years.  Never wanted to go through the hassle of being a “Vendor of Record”, so I was relieved when they started offering ebooks (Nookbooks).  Still, I couldn’t figure out how to be vendor without having to go through the same hassle.  Knowing that they offer plenty of ebooks that aren’t in paperback, I figured there must be a way publishers were getting their books on Nook.

So I emailed Barnes & Noble and asked.  LOL  Yeah, it took me years to figure out I could do that.  And they quickly wrote me back and gave me the URL, so now I have 2 of my books in the works: Formerly Brandewyne and Faith’s Portrait.  Once they are available, I will work on getting more uploaded.  I couldn’t make FB free, so it’s listed at 99 cents.  FP will be the same price as on Amazon and here.

Right now only one of my erotic romances are available through Cobblestone and that’s Painful Reflections.  That is my first one, so they are must wait quite awhile before uploading to Nook.  Anyway, eventually all my ebooks will be available through Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. 

Here is the link to my NookBooks on www.bn.com.

Well, according to my scribometer, I am 39% toward my goal of 40,000 words for Sierra Sky.  The story has really taken off.  I need to take notes of the plot line, so I won’t forget to cover all the ground I want to write about.  It’s a bit complicated, but of course, that goes with the theme of science-fiction.  I need to figure out if there is a bad guy, and who he is. Other than the hero and heroine, will there be any other strong leading roles?  How will all the conflict be satisfactorily resolved at the ending?

Though I have to admit, I’m having fun exploring the possiblities of interspecies sex.  The sky’s the limit, so to speak.  I’m trying to push the boundaries of my comfort levels, which means that my characters will do things in this story that I would never dream of doing.  Yes, I have written a menage story for Cobblestone, and no, I have not personally experienced one.  But I’m talking about deeper and more sexual than a meer threesome, though that will certainly enter the equation at some point in Sierra Sky. After all, I intend to make this my hottest and steamiest erotica story to date!

Stay tuned! 

I just finished the first chapter of my newest book, which I’ve titled Sierra Sky.    To keep me motivated and to let my readers know the progress, I have posted a word meter (scribometer) in the left column of this blog.  I will update it as I complete more pages.  I am currently 5% finished, so I have a long way to go.

Keep visiting to watch that progress bar move to the right.    Be sure to visit the forum to read an excerpt.