My Family, My Lovers...

You may or may not have noticed my publishers and I parted ways. It was on friendly terms. I read in their contract that I signed that incest was not something they were interested in publishing. That's the way I remember it today, but I could re-read the contract to be sure. See, I always had in the back of my mind, VC Andrews. She was a best selling author in 1980’s and it was her tool box. She wrote the same story over and over with the exact same theme in all her books, INCEST. Flowers in the Attic told it best for me.

If OmniFic’s position is not to publish family members bumping uglies, well, I need publishers who are willing to put the family lovin’ business out there. Period. It was the missing element to Forced to Change that tied the story up and helped it right,write itself. Once I added that element into the story, it finished telling me where it wanted to go. Just that easy, my head had the answer to what was wrong with my novel and why it refused to feel finished. I couldn’t write an ending that didn’t include that aspect to the storyline. So, now that I’m staring at less than a weeks worth of rewrites and desiring using NaNo this year to flush out the 2^nd book in the series, Changed by Time, I’m goal-oriented with a full plate.

I first got into Literotica because incest/taboo was the most read category there. All the authors I follow have their reasons, but as the #1 read category, I needed to crack that code. I tried my hand at it, but I couldn’t get a ‘h’ rating for my attempts. Though the reviews were good, when my publishers suggested it wasn’t their style, I adjusted. I pulled down my incest stories from Lit. I see that as a mistake now that I’m correcting. So, that’s why the rights to FTC reverted back to me. No hard feelings. When my needs change, so do my working-on goals. Duh, that’s how my life works.

See, my #1 what if question is 'could having sex with my father have saved his life'? But according to the rules I grew up with, he was off limits as a lover. He was always married. I try hard not to disrespect other women, even one's I barely know. In my mind I passed on the opportunity to bed Peter 'MADE MY PANTIES WET' Steele with a note played on his instrument, a single word from his lips because a girl told me she fucked him the day before I met him (work with me here, in my fantasy, I had a shot). She was funny and beautiful for the twenty minutes we discussed her previous evening activities.

I learned the hard way that it ended friendships I valued to go after another woman's man. So my motto became 'PROS before Bros' IE, LADIES FIRST! Ain't nothing wrong with a PROfessional Sex Worker in my book, I pick up tips from them. The fact that my Sperm Donor wished I'd been an abortion and decided to let me know that information because of his addiction made me who I am today. What he ENJOYED, I HATED on principal from that day forward. What he FEARED I tried, including dating white men exclusively most of the time, especially a white cop. My Bio-dad once said, "No WHITE COP babies!" to me while I was dating one...

I respected my mother's fear of pregnancy before I found my way in the world. So I gave him that one. No babies, until I figured my shit out. Condoms. The Pill. And I knew in my heart if I accidentally got pregnant I was keeping the baby. In the meantime, I mothered animals and became friends with a lot of women who decided to step up for the job motherhood. I am PRO-CHOICE & PRO-LIFE at the same time. I only argued the point with my bio dad because he claimed to be PRO-LIFE while making all the kinds of choices that put him in a grave at 64 years of age. 

So Confused Connie is back up on Literotica once again. There are 2 follow-up chapters but it will take some time to get them all posted again. Bare with me, I'm also close to the finish line on FTC and working on getting that published in the coming year. My goals are set, but adjustable for life. Cuz my personal truth happens to be when I play architect in my life, Goddess laughs and sets a different obstacle (life lesson) in my divine path...

So, You’ve Decided To Work With A Publisher

Writers, authors, bloggers, how ever you decided to label yourself on the journey of writing at some point you make a decision whether or not you’re going to publish your work. It’s a scary step forward, one some are not ever brave enough to take. Personally, I just don’t know how many next Laurell K. Hamilton’s or Stephen King’s are out there because they won’t get out of their own way and share their work on a public format. If you never try, you'll never know. The worse that can happen is failure, really failure is not that bad. As my mother liked to say, 'you will survive any failure in your life except skydiving'. Oopsie! Such a bad idea.

How I define publishing is a really simple step to do. I accomplished this big scary hurdle January 22, 2011. It was at the stroke of midnight going into a Friday that changed my life forever. I published my first story to Literotica. That was it. I wanted to publish, I wanted to put myself out there and I’d done it. Woo Hoo! Yeah!

I sat back and watched the numbers. Immediately 10 people had viewed my work, my writing. Me? Wow! Happy Dance! Then it was 100 and within the first 6 hours of my hard work, my baby, my creative's debut to the world I had 3,000 views. Not only that, the comments and feedback were excellent. It had obtained a 'hot status' rating and was being well received. I bounced around my bedroom cheering and celebrating and then I had my first encounter with a Lit troll.

Lit troll: A Litster who will automatically mark a rating of 1 star on any Literotica story. It doesn’t matter the quality, content, genre of the work. They will do this at least twice, once as their Lit username and again anonymously using a different browser. If a troll is really motivated this can be accomplished over and over again through different devices.

A Lit troll doesn’t stop there with their attack on you hard work, oh no. In addition to this vile practice they will also leave a bad critique, rarely constructive in your comments section. Most trolls don’t bother to leave that much when they decided to sabotage your rating and attack your efforts. You just get to watch your rating drop, losing that ‘hot status’ pretty little ‘H’ next to your baby and you have no idea why it’s happening.

Literotica is aware of the troll issue. To me, it seems as if they are saying to the many Lit authors ‘this is a part of your choice to publish on our site. Please pull up your big girl/boy pants and leave us out of the discussion. Thank you’. I can understand that and I even agree with them when it comes to the Lit troll debate. This is just the reality of going public with my work. Not everyone is going to love or even like what I write. It was hard for me to believe, but yes, very true. What do you mean I can’t please everyone and I’m not going to be a best selling author overnight? Dammit all to hell.

In an ideal world, the rating system wouldn’t be flawed, but it is. To sooth my wounded Muse, I gave her chocolate and told her to grow a thicker skin. Now you may or may not have gotten to this point in the reading of this post and you're going, wait a second, Simone, when I think of publishing, I think of putting out a book, ISBN and making money. Not throwing my stuff up on some free website. I want to get paid and that’s what I thought you were going to talk about here.

Oh yes, I’m getting to that my loyal three followers, I’m getting there. As Hollis taught me, the road to a best selling book is a marathon, not a sprint for most writers. I’m sure that someone’s journey down this difficult path was an easy one. I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but I’m sure that rare special talent is out there. It could even be you. The only problem you’re having with being an overnight sensation is you haven’t taken that first step of putting your work out there to the public. Or maybe you say, “I write because I love it. I don’t care about money. I won’t be a sellout. I'm an artist.”

That may be 100% true of you and I know that means if by some miracle your work landed in front of the eyes of a major agent or publisher and they offered you a million dollar advance and contract you’ll be turning that prized opportunity down. Way to go! Not me though, I’d grab that check and sign that contract faster than you can say the first syllable of my name. My momma didn’t raise no fool.

I’m grateful that my journey has been easier than most. But I was lucky on my road to publishing my novel. As you may have noticed, it took from January 22, 2011 to March 1st of this year for me to gain a contract with a publisher. Many writers struggle for years to get to this point or never get there at all. I was prepared to paper my walls in rejection letters and have my little pity parties each time it happened. As it turned out, I was just starting my first pity party after receiving my first official rejection email for Forced to Change with a fellow writer over the phone. He’d beta read FTC and was encouraging me to self-publish it when he thought of someone that might be able to help me out.

A few phone calls and emails later I’d submitted my work to Omnific Publishing. I will be forever in his debt and sincerely grateful to the bottom of my soul for what he did for me. I know and am humbled by this knowledge that my journey is atypical, a divine stroke of luck and networking.

So here I had a contract, a golden ticket and I was told to go over it with a lawyer before signing. Omnific recommended that I wait a full month to decide to sign with them or not. I was so excited, I almost didn’t take that time. I was like yes, yes, yes, I’m ready to do this. So I’m glad they encourage me to slow down. It stopped me from rushing ahead, thinking I knew what was happening, when I really had no clue how the business side of writing actually worked. It’s a ton, a lot, huge amount of hard work. I have to remember to practice patience, daily. Marathon, not a sprint.

Over the course of the month I weighed the pros and cons of signing the contract or going with self-publishing. There are benefits and downsides to both branches and it’s hard to know which path to go down if you’re lucky enough to get to this step. For me what it came down to is that as much as I love you three loyal followers, um, if I’m going to sell a book with the hopes of it being a best seller I need to be seen by a broader audience. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for following me, but I'd like to grow my platform. I still love you guys. Please don't be mad at me.

The gains of working with a publisher far outweighed going it on my own. Just from the services to the resources available to me, that wealth of knowledge they bring to table is priceless in my eyes. Omnific provides a starving porn writer like myself an opportunity I just couldn’t turn down. 

So please, check out these amazing women who are Omnific Publishing if you’re brave enough and want to start your own journey to publishing your book. Some of the resources are available to even you a click away on their website, for example, how to write a query letter. Please check them out, unless you’re that rare individual who only writes for the joy of writing. I understand, you have to be true to you. I ain't mad at ya!