Thursday, February 18, 2010

Possibly Ever After


by Cara McKenna

I really thought I was going to spend this post pimping myself like a two-dollar whore, but you know what? I don't particularly want to. Brazen, my debut erotic novella, comes out tomorrow, but all I'm going to say about it is this:

It's short, it's cheap, and it's filthy. The good filthy, obviously.

If you like short, cheap, filthy ebooks, please consider buying and reading it, and if you see fit, please give it an appropriately nice star-rating on its page on the Ellora's Cave site. If you hate it, then I'll just cross my fingers you're feeling merciful or forgetful that day and fail to rate it. Here is a link with details, blurb, opening excerpt, price, etcetera:
http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-8118-50-brazen.aspx

Okay, pimpage is complete.

What I really want to talk about today is erotica itself, as a popular fiction genre. I guess I can use Brazen to illustrate why… Yes, the story of how Brazen came to be. Ah, relevant pimpage. Now I won't feel like such a promo-skank.

I love writing erotica. It's not because I'm a nympho—the sex scenes are actually the hardest sequences to write and I frequently have to put them off… Sex scenes are like soufflés and some days I am just not up to the challenge. No, I like writing erotica because I'm a weirdo. Or so I've been led to believe by industry professionals.

I've completed four mainstream contemporary romances since I began writing a year and a half ago (I know—Awww, look at the baby holding a pen! She thinks she can write!) and I've done a bit of the old submission-and-rejection dance. I wrote Brazen as a lark last summer. The original story (pretty close to the finished product) came out of an air-conditioned one-woman writing orgy during a two-day August heatwave. Although I really liked it, I wasn't invested in it like I was my romances. I hadn't lived with it long enough to construct it a sparkly pedestal and drape it in pageant sashes—Best Book in the Universe! And because of that emotional distance, I wasn't afraid of it being slammed. Off it went into the rejectosphere without a second's hesitation.

I wrote it to Harlequin Spice Briefs' guidelines, or so I thought, but they shortly sent me a polite rejection saying that, as best I could translate, I'm too weird for their taste.

Not kinky-weird. If you read Brazen maybe you can clue me in to exactly what's weird about it. Internal e-mails are confidential so I shan't name any names within Ellora's Cave, but once they accepted it and the contract was processed, my editor sent me a note that both flattered and unnerved me. She said, to grossly paraphrase, "I loved your story—it's so different from anything I've seen us publish before. I actually had to send it to my boss for a second opinion before I could offer a contract." Okay…cool.

A week or two later said boss took the time to send me a lovely e-mail. Again, paraphrasing: "I don't have the luxury of personally welcoming every new author, but your editor had asked me to read your submission before it was accepted because it was so unlike any she’d read. I'll second that. I’ve not read anything quite like it and I fell in love with it."

First reaction: Orgasm deep in the ego center of my narcissist brain.

Second reaction: Wait, she thinks it's different, too? What am I missing here?

I didn't set out to be different or break conventions when I wrote Brazen [then Beautiful Boys. Note to aspiring erotica authors: titles with the word "boy" in them do not sell well.] I'd set out to write something perfectly in line with the genre's guidelines so I could hopefully get published. Something conformist, but good. Now I was hearing that EC was basically taking a chance on my writing. I'm honestly not trying to be enticing, here—I don't know what about this story is so nonstandard. The storyline's racy but no crazier than any other EC title, certainly less-so than many. The orifices involved are your standard-issue human holes. It doesn't read like an X-rated E. E. Cummings poem, so I don't think it's my radical writing style. It's not written from a point-of-view that hasn't been done before in this genre. To this day, I'm stumped.

But what I took away from this was a) I've tried with both romance and erotica to learn the rules and write to them, and in spite of my best efforts, I can't seem to manage it. And more importantly, b) I am so lucky to have found a publisher and genre that not only deigned to forgive me my mysterious transgressions, they're encouraging them.

So basically, I like writing erotica because I'm apparently a weirdo and erotica is the genre that will have me. Its rules are different, and there are fewer of them. No pedophilia, rape, incest, bestiality (shifters are a different story, I guess), no playing with feces. Quintuple check, no problem. But there's no law that says you need a happily-ever-after, no 1 man + 1 woman = luv4eva. And I like that. In a strange way, erotica can snuggle up more closely with literary fiction than romance can, because the "formula" is more ambiguous.

Let's talk about the freedom of not being beholden to the HEA. Not that I'm happily-ever-after adverse, but as many authors will agree, sometimes your characters take over, and it may happen that they just aren't looking for The One. Maybe they're looking for the one who can fill a given night or week or month or the next ten years. I've come to terms in my own life that a relationship that doesn't turn into forever doesn't automatically get tossed unceremoniously on the "wasted time" pile. I don't believe things need to last to be valuable. It took me a long time to learn that, but it's become a personal motto. I've applied it to boyfriends and jeans and jobs and friendships and it's given me a lot of peace of mind over the years. If you can give in to that elusive "present" the Buddhists are always banging on about, a one-night stand can become a thing of great significance. Suck on that, permanence!

Now allow me to get myself torn a new asshole with the way I word this, but I love that since becoming an erotica writer I've been able to do away with my personal fiction bugbear, plotting. Okay, okay, don't jump on me! Of course I'm not implying that erotica doesn't require plot. That and character depth are what keep it on the other side of the fence from its oft-mistaken second-cousin, pornography. Part of what I perceive to be freedom from intensive plotting is simply freedom of length. The shorter you write, the "smaller" the plot can be. If you write longer (I'm looking at you, Michelle Polaris) then you'll want some external conflict to act as a spine for the story, to keep it from turning into a long series of disjointed boinking sessions [read: porn]. But if it's a short story, a glimpse into two [or more] characters' experiences together, you can keep the plot small. No, strike that—intimate. That's a more flattering way to put it. Complex plots versus intimate plots.

In a short story (or in a very well-written long story by an author who has an exemplary knack for developing meaty internal conflict) the relationship can be the conflict. I write very intimate plots, and I don't mean that in relation to sex. I don't write big-picture plot. No apocalypses, no world-at-stake, not even the old feud-over-the-family-farm or two-executives-gunning-for-the-same-job-type external conflict. My crucibles are small, only as big as the space between the lovers. Circumstances bring persons A and B [and occasionally C] together, they explore the intimacy that arises, persons A and B leave the story different than how they arrived in some way.

Characters + external circumstances + explicit sexual intimacy = character growth

Ta da! That's my entire formula for novella-length erotica. No commitment, necessarily, no thwarting the villain, no gigantic revelations. Not because I don't believe those things are good, but because I simply don't write that way. I write vignettes, not action-packed epics. Trust me, I love to read both, I just don't write the latter. It's not in my author wiring, at least not at this point in my career. I'll leave that to the folks who are doin' it and doin' it and doin' it well.

Part of me fears I'm lazy for embracing erotica and its relative lack of rules, like I've taken up a sport that's easier to excel at because the restrictions are fewer. This isn't true, of course—some brilliant romance authors would probably find erotica impossibly difficult to write, freedom be damned. Freedom can be its own challenge. But experience has shown me I don't necessarily thrive with restrictions, despite my best efforts. So here I am.

I think I'll put this post to bed, now. If anyone reads Brazen and can tell me what about it manages to be so different even in this relatively leashless genre, please feel free to get in touch. I'm dying to know.

Details, excerpt, blurb:
http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-8118-50-brazen.aspx

Brazen's quick and painless book trailer (40 seconds, rated PG): http://www.caramckenna.com/trailers_brazen.html

Many thanks.

16 comments:

Laurann Dohner said...

I have to read this now! LOL. Congrats! Very exciting!

Wynter said...

Congrats on the release. I find it freeing, too that the HEA isn't a must in erotica, although much of what I write does have one. But it's good when the characters can lead!

Michelle Polaris said...

Oh,absolutely no pimpage here, dear (rolling eyes). Everyone and their mother (or grandmother in my case since she's the hipster in the family) will be intrigued by your challenge. Don't worry about the epic plots and HEA's, I'll take care of that for both of us (LOL). I am so buying your book tomorrow. Now, off to remove the word BOY from my current submission's title (grin). It's such a fun word and I was just getting into it. Oh well.

Cara McKenna said...

My goodness, what are you all doing up so early?

Debra Glass said...

Intriguing! Congrats on your new release! And I'd call it Unique instead of weird. Fly your freak flag, girl!

Valerie Douglas aka V.J. Devereaux said...

Actually I wanted to write something of a similar theme to Brazen - not exactly alike of course, with my own slant - but I thought no one would take it... (Actually did write it, then deleted it...)

So, you're not that strange, or weird or whatever!

Cara McKenna said...

Thanks for the encouraging words, ladies. I'm supposed to be writing right now, but I've already got such nasty pre-game jitters, I can't concentrate on anything for longer than forty-five seconds.

And a big thank-you to anybody who might invest a wine-sipping hour's attention in Brazen some night soon. If you don't like it, please consider drinking more. That might help.

Jina Bacarr said...

Cara, I love your "brazen" approach to writing! You have the spunk, determination and imagination to make it work. Keep going...

Congrats on your new release!

StephBeck said...

Very cool. Nice article. Individual voice is a wonderful thing. Congrats on the book!

Hot Ash Romance Novels said...

Congratulations on your first baby!
I thought I was the weirdest of them all.

That's why epublishing is such a wonderful thing. You can be weird, different, a completely unknown quantity, and they'll take a chance on you.

Own your genre and be proud! Weird or not.

Have a big celebration and open the bubbly!

Hugs,
Ash

Cara McKenna said...

Extra big thanks to Ash—she's the one I pestered with annoying questions when I was considering submitting to EC!

Dalton Diaz said...

Cara, it's not weird, but it is a different take on the harem story -one that I really want to and plan to read!

Since I'm leaving this message on Fri... HAPPY RELEASE DAY!!!!!!!!!!

And, oh yeah, in case I haven't mentioned it before a time or two or twenty, you are one of the funniest people I've ever met.

Cara McKenna said...

Thanks, Dalton! So far I'm getting really positive feedback on the EC website. It's ever so validating. Although this is probably the last field one should go into if they're in it for validation…

Naima Simone said...

Hi, Cara!
I'm leaving this on Saturday so I can be the first to shout, HAPPY DAY AFTER YOUR RELEASE DATE DAY!!! Congratulations!!

I for one think you are not wierd. Just brave, funny, individual, creative, unique...wait a minute...let me pull up my online thesaurus...LOL!! They are what make you and your books stand out!

And I don't know what Michelle is talking about...I didn't see any pimpage anywhere *batting eyelashes furiously*

Cara McKenna said...

I'm going to rebrand myself, "Smart Erotica, Relevant Pimpage."

Stephanie Adkins said...

Congrats on the release, Cara! Looks like it's already gotten some rave reviews! :) I wish you a ton of sales! *Hugs*