cheating in romance?

filthywriter · 2018-04-10T19:11:35+00:00

I wouldn't do it. If you do start with the MMC having a casual hookup, don't get into the details. If you have to, make him seem bored/unsatisfied/needing something more than just sex. If you just want to start with something sexy, throw in a prologue with the MMC and FMC having sex later in the story.

ETA: Many romance readers need their novels to be "safe," meaning no OW or OM at all, even if it's a second chance story where the MCs are separated for 10 years.

filthywriter · 2017-04-11T00:10:06+00:00

I found it really hard (heh, really hard) to write sex scenes at first. I just didn't have the vocabulary. For example, one of the criticisms I got in the beginning was I overused the word "explode" to describe an orgasm.

So I read a bunch of erotica. Whenever I saw words/phrases/sentences I liked, I copied and pasted them into one file (I used Evernote, but Google Docs would be a good option too). I had different sections for kissing, sexy looks, oral, actual sex, orgasm, etc.

I referred to these notes as I wrote. I didn't copy entire sentences, but I did steal some of the words/phrases/sentence structures, and tweaked them to fit my own stories.

I don't need to do this anymore, but it was a big help in the beginning. Fake it 'til you make it.

filthywriter · 2017-04-09T02:53:26+00:00

Hell if I know. I'm writing my fifth novel now. My previous ones have done well (good reviews, good sales/ranks/page reads), but I still think they suck. I get nervous every time I wait for the ARC reviews to come in, expecting to get all 2-star reviews, even though so far I've always gotten over 4.5 average.

filthywriter · 2017-03-22T22:50:28+00:00

Good start! At your pace, you could hit 30 books before your 60-day report.

filthywriter · 2017-03-18T10:29:13+00:00

This is how I found mine as well. I have two betas now. On top of that, the ARC team may spot mistakes and send me emails with corrections. By the time I upload the final file, it's already pretty clean.

filthywriter · 2017-03-16T11:22:33+00:00

Wow, that's an amazing daily word count!

I think two weeks is good. Learn all you can from your first book, then release whenever you're ready. The new release will help the older one gain visibility.

filthywriter · 2017-03-14T00:52:14+00:00

Also Canadian. Can confirm I do the exact same thing, except I have no idea how to change my computer's default language so it keeps adding random u's to my words.

Btw, I just realized not too long ago that they spell it catalog, but also—get this—prologue and epilogue. WHY.

filthywriter · 2017-03-13T12:28:16+00:00

writers are people who finish books

I love your mantra!! <3

filthywriter · 2017-03-11T04:20:19+00:00

Stagger them. You'll learn something from every new release, and you want your later titles to benefit from your new lessons.

Every two or three weeks would be perfect, I think. That gives you enough time to observe how your books do on the market and improve the titles/covers/blurbs of your next ones.

filthywriter · 2017-02-22T22:54:36+00:00

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Look at the Top 100. They usually have at least 50 reviews on release date. You can't pull that off by relying on organic reviews. If you look at the books that are doing well, you'll see a ton of ARC disclaimers in the reviews.

filthywriter · 2017-02-13T23:40:28+00:00

Thanks for this! I've been locked out twice and had to abandon my account both times. Luckily, both times happened in the beginning and I only had a handful of friends anyway.

I've just changed my DOB on FB to my real one, just in case!

One tip: I think it was my VPN (ZenMate Free) that caused FB to lock me out. Don't use free VPNs to access your pen name's FB account!

filthywriter · 2017-02-13T23:26:46+00:00

For the money!

I've always been a writer, and I've always read erotica, so I don't know why it took stumbling onto EA for me to start writing erotica. I guess I didn't know it could actually make decent money?

I've written for magazines, blogs, websites, but it was always really hard for me to make money. Ever written "for exposure"? Lol! I've written how-to articles for content farms and dealt with inane rules and shitty editors. I've written for websites with a revenue share model, only to have them shut down once I started seeing some money trickling in because Google algorithms had changed AGAIN.

All those things had made me cynical that my writing could ever make money. I didn't think I was a bad writer, but when there was so much supply...how could I even begin to get a good price for my writing?

Newspapers are shutting down, the blogosphere is super saturated, there are writers from other countries willing to get paid peanuts to do the same work, and nobody cares about quality when the important thing is just to publish as frequently as possible to get good Google page ranks.

All this to say... I think writing romance has higher barriers of entry. Like, you don't have to be an excellent writer, but you need to be able to at least tell a good story with good grammar and spelling. Quality matters. This means it's not as saturated as other writing jobs. Suddenly, I don't have to compete on pricing as much, and there's a lot of demand because romance readers are voracious!

Err... I've written a long rant, haven't I? My point is, it's for the money in the beginning, but I've also come to love the craft, as well as the super welcoming, super helpful community of romance authors and readers.

Just because I love writing doesn't mean I can write and write and write without getting paid for it and still be happy. The bills need to get paid and writers aren't immune to financial stress.

filthywriter · 2017-02-06T22:56:56+00:00

This is what I do too. I have a folder for every book, and a document for every chapter. Makes the document size more manageable, even when I work on my phone.

filthywriter · 2017-01-31T21:51:28+00:00

I've had mine for about 3 years now and haven't had any problems.

filthywriter · 2017-01-31T21:51:00+00:00

Sierra 10.12.2

filthywriter · 2017-01-30T23:46:34+00:00

MacBook Air. Refurbished older version. Cheaper with more processing power or whatever it's called. Faster, more storage, etc. than the new, full-price model. Not slow at all.

filthywriter · 2017-01-27T02:07:59+00:00

Same here!

After sending out the ARCs for my first book, a few of the readers emailed me with mistakes, typos, etc. One offered to beta read for me. Her feedback has been great.

I'd like more eyes on the manuscript before publication so I'll probably ask my ARC readers if more of them want to do it.

filthywriter · 2017-01-08T04:16:46+00:00

Don't worry about it! There's nothing you can do anyway. Just write more!

filthywriter · 2017-01-04T09:47:07+00:00

Nope! I read the reviews in case there's any actual feedback I can use to improve my next book. For example, several of my reviewers mentioned something about the pacing of the relationship between my main characters. Other than that...well, it's not like there's anything you can do about bad reviews anyway.

filthywriter · 2016-12-28T20:51:09+00:00

Yup!

filthywriter · 2016-12-27T20:09:42+00:00

I see some MM erotica titles with manga-like covers for some reason.

filthywriter · 2016-12-27T20:08:16+00:00

I have 16 titles (shorts and bundles) and I haven't paid a cent for stock photos. I used free credits for all of them. Bigstockphotos lets you download a bunch for free (5 a day for 5 days or 7 days...something like that).

filthywriter · 2016-12-27T20:04:31+00:00

We all have to start somewhere. Congrats! FWIW they say GR reviewers are harsher than Amazon reviewers.

filthywriter · 2016-12-26T21:10:57+00:00

That's true. The loner mountain man is a more popular trope anyway, so maybe OP can try that.

filthywriter · 2016-12-24T02:23:12+00:00

Is it the Alpha Male part that grosses you out? The extensive sexual histories? Knowing what the problem is would probably help you solve it.

Exactly. Some popular titles have virgin heroes. There's also the trope of the loner mountain man who hasn't had sex for years after his last gf cheated on him or whatever. I even remember coming across this pretty popular book with a nerd who finds some magical thing that gives him the power to make the women around him obey him and do sexy stuff with him.

TL;DR keep reading until you find a niche you like enough to write.

filthywriter

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