Friday funnies

Here's your Friday funny:

My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table. My wife asks, "Do you know her?" "Yes," I sighed, "She's my old girlfriend.  I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since." "My God!" says my wife, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"

Have a great New Year.

Jennifer

Is it difficult to write sex scenes?: the ups and downs of an erotic romance writer

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

Jennifer

Friday funnies

This might seem a long ‘funny’ but it is one of my favourites!

A man was working on his motorcycle on the patio, his wife nearby in the kitchen.  While racing the engine, the motorcycle accidentally slipped into gear. The man, still holding onto the handlebars, was dragged along as it burst through the glass patio doors.

His wife, hearing the crash, ran in the room to find her husband cut and bleeding, the motorcycle, and the shattered patio door.  She called for an ambulance and, because the house sat on a fairly large hill, went down the several flights of stairs to meet the paramedics and escort them to her husband.

While the attendants were loading her husband, the wife managed to right the motorcycle and push it outside.  She also quickly blotted up the spilled gasoline with some paper towels and tossed them into the toilet.

After being treated and released, the man returned home, looked at the shattered patio door and the damage done to his motorcycle. He went into the bathroom and consoled himself with a cigarette while attending to his business.
 About to stand, he flipped the cigarette  butt between his legs.

The wife, who was in the kitchen, heard a loud explosion and her husband screaming.  Finding him lying on the bathroom floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks, legs and groin, she once again phoned for an ambulance.  The same paramedic crew was dispatched.

As the paramedics carried the man down the stairs to the ambulance they asked the wife how he had come to burn himself.  She told them.  They started laughing so hard, one slipped, the stretcher dumping the husband out.   He fell down the remaining stairs, breaking his arm.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Jennifer

Wednesday writing

I was helping a fellow author recently by reading her manuscript and doing some reviewing/editing. I can see now why, when editors are asked what they like most about editing, they state helping a writer develop their story. In the process of helping this fellow author I have realised that editing is like gardening:

• You do a lot of weeding and pruning (getting rid of parts of the story that are superfluous, don’t work or are out of place);
• You mow the lawn keeping it nice and short (cutting down those overlong paragraphs or sentences to make nice shorter ones which are easier to manage);
• You add new plants (adding new words or punctuation to established areas to enhance them);
• You plant seeds that you can’t see at this stage (you realise you need to add seeds of thought earlier in the story to make it clear why something happens later);
• You replace plants with others (replacing words or punctuation for other ones that work better);
• You move plants to another area (moving sentences or paragraphs around to make it flow better);
• You take a close look at the red flower in the midst of the green and yellow bank of flowers and try to remember why you planted that there (remembering why you put a certain section in a certain place and making a decision to remove, replace or leave);
• And then you take a step back to see it in its entirety (ignoring the content you look at the presentation to see if the paragraphs are of varied length, they don’t all start with the same words, the font is consistent and so on).

                         

Having done all that you sit back with a satisfied feeling of completion.

Jennifer

Wednesday writing

Following on from Monday’s blog where I talked about word counts I thought I would tell you what forthcoming books I am planning to write:

Friend or Foe is the last in the Friends series and is about Gina who falls for someone she works with despite always being at loggerheads with him. I have finished writing this and it is with a friend for critical reading before I will submit it to Siren Publishing.

Last in the Doms series – title to be confirmed but it might be something like I Submit to You. This is Ellie’s story and she has some erotic photos taken but has trouble submitting to the person who is in love with her. I have only just started this one.

Dragon story – title to be confirmed. About a world where dragons and men live but rarely come into contact with each other and a man falls in love with a human girl who is one of the women who live with a community of dragons as their mates. I am at the stage of plotting this one and setting the world of dragons otherwise known as ‘world building’.

Wolf story – title to be confirmed. About werewolves and a human woman who agrees to an arranged match with a man not knowing at that stage he is a werewolf and what is involved in being the wife of the alpha. I haven’t done more than think up the synopsis and am world building the world of wolves.

Captured in Space – this is the story that Matt and Lissa are writing in Friendly Seduction so I thought it would be a good idea to write it for real! It is a sci-fi story about a girl who has run away from her owner and is captured by bounty hunters. On the way home they fall in love but they have to give her back to her owner. Haven’t started on this one yet.

Ten years on type story (title tbc) – I quite like the idea of doing a ten years on story following what happens to the six women from the Friends & Doms series as things don’t quite go to plan and they all have to revisit why they fell in love with their husbands in the first place. That’s as far as I have got so far.

Jennifer

Inspirational Mondays

My inspiration today is what you can find on the internet these days. I had seen on another writers’ blog that she had a word count meter showing what stage she was at with various stories.  So I found (after a bit of searching) this website http://www.writertopia.com/toolbox/meters which gives several different and FREE word counters. I particularly liked the cartoon one which you can change the mood of from frustrated to joyful.

However, I am a very un-techy person (I don’t even have a mobile phone!) and it took me quite some time to work out which ‘gadget’ on my blog I needed to add the link to in order to generate the picture. It was the ‘picture’ gadget which makes sense (Duh!) but I couldn’t work out then how to change the word counts. I realise that I have to remove the picture, change the count (and/or mood of the cartoon) in the link and upload again.

BUT I DID IT! Yeah!!!!! Watch my word counts to see how I am progressing on the next stories.

(PS The competition is still open as per last Monday's blog I am interested to hear from readers from around the world. So email me a paragraph about yourself: your first name, male/female, age range, job, where you are from, if you have read my books and what did you like. And in return I will give the first five people from different countries a PDF copy of one of my books - or the new one in January if you have read both of them).

Jennifer

Friday funnies

A teacher at a polytechnic college reminded her pupils of tomorrow's final exam. "Now listen to me, I won't tolerate any excuses for you not being here tomorrow. I might consider a nuclear attack or a serious personal injury, illness, or a death in your immediate family, but that's it, No other excuses whatsoever!"

A smart-arsed chappie at the back of the room raised his hand and asked, "What would you happen if I came in tomorrow suffering from complete and utter sexual exhaustion?"

The entire class was reduced to laughter and sniggering. When silence was restored, the teacher smiled knowingly at the student, shook her head and sweetly said, "Well, I suppose you'd have to write the exam with your other hand!"

Have a good weekend

Jennifer

Wednesday writing

Originally my stories were all separate, self-contained tales but as I wrote them I realised they were all about women who fell in love with men they were either friends with, worked with or acquainted with – hence the series’ titles. After discussion with the publisher I decided to separate them into two series as the tone of books one and two (Just Good Friends and The Submission Challenge) was quite different from each other, although with overlapping characters between the series and I conceived the idea of a group of six female friends, three in either series each having their own story.

This worked okay until I got to book five (at the time of writing this blog Friend or Foe is in the final stages of being written) and I realised I needed to do a timeline of when each book starts (which was generally when the previous finished, eg, book 1 Just Good Friends was immediately followed by book 2 The Submission Challenge despite being a different series).

For the reader wanting to know the best order to read the books it is the first one of the Friends series followed by the first one of the Doms series, then second one of the Friends series and so on. You can read each series alone, but if you then start to read the other series you  could come across characters you read about previously and you may be confused to find they are married when they hadn’t even started a relationship yet!

So having decided on a timeline it took quite some jiggling around. Only in one of the books had I specified a time of year (Submissive Training) but there were time factors in some of the books relating to how long it took to publish a book so I was limited to this reality when considering the timeline. There were other items like having stated in Friendly Seduction that one couple were married whilst another were only engaged. Having completed this timeline before I got the edits for the latter book I then added in a bit about it taking place over Christmas time since I now realised that Christmas would have come and gone so had to make some recognition of this.

In future I intend to do a timeline from the beginning – even if it is a stand alone book – listing items like time of year and time scale from start to finish. I’ve probably made some continuity mistakes in the two series mentioned above but it can’t be helped. After all I am still new to writing and each time I write I learn a little bit more about being a writer.

Jennifer

Inspirational Mondays

I am astounded once again by the readers I seem to have who read this blog from around the world. It amazes and inspires me how easy it is for my work to travel the globe. I mentioned a few weeks’ ago that I had just found out that I had readers from Rumania, India, Mauritius, South Africa, The Philippines, Finland,  Australia, and Germany amongst other places outside the UK or US. The new countries I am getting readers from include Latvia, Poland, Austria and China. I have one frequent reader (or readers) from Russia. But what I find frustrating is that I don’t know anything about them. Who are you? Where are you from? How old are you (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, older, younger)? Are you female readers or do I have any male readers? What work do you do? Have you read any of my books and if so what did you particularly like about them? What do you like about my blog?

To this end I am starting a new competition. I will give a free copy of one of my books (or if you have read both of them then a copy of the next one due out in January) to the first five people FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES to email me with a paragraph or two answering the above questions and telling me about yourself. I won’t put any details on my blog other than to indicate which countries the winners are from. Please email me on Jennifer.denys@yahoo.com and put ‘worldwide reader’ in the subject line.

Jennifer

Wednesday writing

I am at the stage in my current story (Friend or Foe – the last book in the Friends series) of ‘tidying up’. That is where you have written it and it is about the length you are aiming for but you need to check it for consistency. This relates to consistency of words, eg, are you in the correct tense (for instance, inner thoughts need to be first person and present tense) or if there is any repetition of words – I have a bad habit of over-using the word ‘realise’ and have to go through replacing it with other synonyms, and so on.

This provided some laughter when I got my last lot of edits back for Friendly Seduction due out in January. In the space of ten lines I had used the word hand/s eight times. Well, she had arrived at his apartment and was about to knock on the door. The action for that was to raise a hand. Her hand then trembled so she flexed her hand then raised her hand to touch her breast remembering what the hero had done to her last time with his hand. She then dropped her hand as she was getting too aroused but raised it again to knock on the door! You can see how I had repeated it so often so had to work out in the edits the best way of avoiding it with alternative words like fist (for knocking on the door – or just say she knocked), the feel of his touch on her breast instead of his hand and so on.

But it also refers to consistency in the story. It is these inconsistencies which provide the greatest laughs. I’ve just realised (sorry couldn’t resist) that I had my H/H already in the bedroom when he decided to fireman tackle her and stride with her into …. the bedroom…. which he is already in of course!

I nearly had the heroine wearing gloves until I remembered (or indeed realised!) that it was supposed to be the middle of summer.

I’ve had instances where the hero lifts the girl’s skirt/dress but then realised I had said she was in jeans earlier. I’ve had the same person in two different places (easily done with secondary or tertiary characters). Green-eyed in one place but blue-eyed elsewhere and so on.

I do plot my stories before I start – loosely plot them. That is to say I decide roughly how many chapters I want, what I want from the beginning and the end, at what stage action takes place so that I have some build up of sexual tension but bringing in sex scenes early enough and having enough of them. But I try not to make it too proscriptive as I love the spontaneous nature of writing. That is to say I love seeing where the characterisations or the action goes – sometimes quite different from what I had originally envisaged. In Submissive Training due out in February, the heroine turned out much more submissive than I had originally intended. I love starting a story with the H/H confronting each other with no idea of what the action is going to be other than they end up kissing by the end. As I write I visualise it like I am seeing it in a movie which I haven't seen before. It is really quite interesting what happens when you least expect it!

But by doing it this way I leave myself open to inconsistencies which need careful checking before it gets published. Hopefully they are all ironed out before you - the reader - gets to read the book!

Jennifer

Friday funnies

WARNING LABELS:

On a Sears hairdryer -- Do not use while sleeping.

Okay - like I usually use when I am sleepwalking!!

On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine --

"Do not drive a car or operate

machinery after taking this medication."

Okay - like I know lots of kids who drive cars!




AND MY FAVOURITE:

On a Swedish chainsaw -- "Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay so who was the idiot that attempted it .......

Have a good weekend

Jennifer

Fourth book has been accepted

Yeah! My fourth book Submissive Training has been accepted by Siren Publishing for release in February. This is the sequel to The Submission Challenge. So at today’s date I have two books out (Just Good Friends and The Submission Challenge) and two books due out in the New Year – the other one being Friendly Seduction coming out in January.

I actually found the latest book, Submissive Training, the easiest to write. I have no particular reason why it should be. However, when it came to proof-reading and doing the tidying up process of making sure I hadn’t given the same character different names I hit problems.  The main characters are at a conference so there have to be those people/delegates who ask questions that you don’t know and have no idea of their name. My previous books were very limited in the numbers of secondary characters so I hadn’t had this problem before. And now I had tertiary characters in addition to those I had planned as my secondary characters.

My worry was whether it is too confusing for the reader to have these tertiary characters without giving them all a personality? There was also the problem of keeping track of everyone as there were parallel workshops taking place so not every delegate at this conference was going to be in the same workshop at the same time. In some ways it is a good thing I have experience of events management!

In future if I am going to write my characters into a public situation like this I intend to keep a separate profile for each secondary/tertiary character that I write in order to keep track of them, even if it is something as simple as ‘annoying woman who attends workshop 1’ so that I don’t suddenly make them into ‘kind woman’ later in the story or have them in two sessions at the same time.

(By the way - just had my first reader's review - well, reviews. http://www.myearnestreviews.com/ 

There is one for each of my first two books and I am very pleased with both of them, particularly for The Submission Challenge. The reader says that the first one is not as 'hot' as the second and that is fine as it wasn't meant to be.The first series is sweeter, more romantic. The second series more sexy. Although the reader hasn't quite realised that they are the first two books in two separate series although as you will see when the next two books are out that they have cross-over characters. Anyhow I am delighted.).

Jennifer

Inspirational Mondays

Today’s inspirational blog is dedicated to my editor(s) at Siren Publishing. I have just had the edits for my third book and I was pleased to note that there were not nearly as many comments, corrections and suggestions as there had been in my previous two books.

This is terrific as it shows I am improving. In fact the learning process all along has been incredibly rewarding and I put this down to the super editors at Siren who are very encouraging and offer their recommendations for changes to our stories in a supportive manner. ‘This is a great way to show his attraction to her and the potential sexual chemistry.’

As I am a very reflective person I decided to analyse the edits on all three books to see where I have been consistently good (the pace of the story, good chemistry between the characters with some funny lines and a satisfying ending), the items in which I am improving (including head hopping. After the initial book I only had a couple of minor instances of head hopping on this one. Also I’ve nearly always remember now not to use capitals to indicate emphasis but italics.)

The things I still need to work on which include comma splices (joining together two unrelated sentences with a comma). This is a problem because, as a close American friend  who lived in England for several years told me, the English join together sentences with a comma where the Americans would put in a period so I don’t see there is a problem in the first place.

And things I am getting worse on which include overuse of the em dash (a double length dash used for items like interruptions in speech apparently). I seem to have started using this in place of the comma to avoid a splice and am now over-using it! Note to self – must use a full stop (period) more often!!

My comment to any new authors who may be daunted by the overwhelming edits they receive on their first book is to take what the editors are suggesting and use it as a terrific learning opportunity .

Jennifer

Wednesday writing

I recently came across some old notebooks from my English classes at school - I’ve kept very few things from school but held onto these because I had written several love stories in them that my English teacher seemed to love. I recall ignoring the set homework criteria and writing my stories instead!

You have to realise I was about age 13 then and my hormones were going potty and I had discovered love – not that I had a boyfriend, I just discovered love as an emotion, a concept.

The stories are quite amusing – there is one where the characters ‘kissed for an hour’! That was all they did – just kissed. And I certainly would have been grossed out at that age had I known tongues get involved. My image of a good kiss was something out of the classic Hollywood films my Dad and I loved to watch where the hero placed his lips on hers without moving and they closed their eyes as if swooning in bliss.

Thankfully my stories these days are a little more imaginative...

The extract below also amused me – for some reason I was doing a steamboat story (I had probably just watched ‘Showboat’ or something like it). All I can say is that the kiss must have been really something if they got married shortly afterwards!

Ah!

Jennifer

Inspirational Mondays


If I tell you that Gottfried Achenwall is inspirational you may be none the wiser. He is one of those regarded as the inventor of statistics – indeed, he introduced the word, apparently.

Why should this be inspirational? I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing anything technical (I am probably one of few people without a mobile phone) so it took a lot for me to set up this blog and I am still working out which things do what on it.

Anyway, the other evening I discovered the ‘Statistics page’ – WOW! I am OCD enough to love anything to do with statistics particularly if they relate to me (I’m not interested in how much oil is being pumped out of the ground!). I can now see what time of day people are logging onto my emails for instance. There is a drop between 4-8pm English time interestingly – which fits in when people are going home from work.

Then there is the stat about where in the world people are logging in from – my blog has been accessed 13 times from people or a person in Russia, 3 times from Romania, 4 times from Germany, several from Australia, 1 from Finland, India, Mauritius and Philippines to pull out some more unusual ones other than the UK and US which I would expect. Now I know that we have some Siren writers in those countries, eg, Finland and Romania but I am not aware of any in Mauritius so I am guessing this is a genuine reader/person interested in my work.

This is fabulous as I had no idea if I am writing my blogs and no-one is reading them. The few comments to my postings have all been from fellow writers to whom I had directed my blog to. It is very gratifying to know that the general public are also looking at this blog and hopefully interested enough to want to buy my books.

Jennifer

Friday funnies

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things
people supposedly said in court, word for word, taken down and now published
by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while these
exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No , I just lie there.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.

Hope you enjoyed - have a good weekend

Jennifer

Extract from latest book

I promised you an extract from my latest book, The Submission Challenge. Here it is:

Jon chuckled. It was nice to get back to the Rebecca he knew. He was used to her having an opinion on pretty much everything. He had missed this, he realized in surprise, when he insisted she be submissive—even missed the times they argued. “Unnatural for you, maybe, but when a sub makes those positions, she is showing her Dom she is willing and trusting and looking forward to whatever he plans to do.”

“I’ll remain unconvinced on that one.”

He smiled, knowing she would have found the activities of the last few hours hard to take—hard to fight off arousal as much as hard to accept being submissive.

She suddenly stated, “You really enjoy doing this, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Hasn’t that been obvious all these years?” He chuckled.

“No, you idiot, I mean the teaching or training side of things.”

“Hm, I’m ignoring the fact you called me an idiot at the moment, but yes, you’re right. I do like teaching new subs.”

Grinning, she seemed pleased to get one back on him.

“Moving on. You’ve also experienced being naked constantly and touched intimately. That opens up limitless opportunities for sensuality.”

“More likely opportunities for hypothermia.” She laughed at his expression of long suffering and teased, “How do you manage in winter?”

“Two words—central heating.”

“Oh, ha-ha!”

He laughed. He was enjoying their banter. Somehow it was different from the past, possibly because of the intimacy they had experienced. It was also different from training new subs who usually had no desire to analyze the experience, they just did what he told them.

Jennifer

Inspirational Mondays

I want to dedicate this inspirational Monday blog and offer lots of hugs to my fellow writers with Siren Publishing who have all been so positive/caring/helpful/insightful/encouraging/supportive - even to virtually slapping my face and telling me it’s happened and to pick myself up.

The reason why? Because I noticed on Saturday that my latest book had got a rating of just 1 on the publisher’s website from a reader. This seriously dented my ego – everything seemed to be going so well to that point. It even seemed to dry up sales briefly! However, I can’t blame readers for being put off buying a book that has a poor rating – I would be put off!!!

The problem is I don’t know what the reason for the poor rating is so don’t know if they feel it is badly written or just not what they were expecting. But I also have to remember that we can’t please everyone all the time – what story suits one person another may hate. In retrospect I also have to accept that if we are going to make our stories public then I have to accept that people are entitled to their opinions, whatever they are.

I’ve had lots of messages from my lovely fellow writers telling me all sorts of stories about reviews they’ve had – some quite nasty ones in some cases. And some unintentionally funny like one writer who said that she had a review once where the reader told her they were disappointed with it and there was too much about the stupid people and their boring story!?!

There were also some very helpful comments like the one writer who had been to a workshop about dealing with bad reviews and was told that you need 7 ‘touches’ for a reader to remember your name and that a bad review can count as one of them.

So to finish, thank you to all my wonderful fellow Siren authors - I am so glad to be part of a publishing house that is so supportive. And I will now pick myself up and continue writing hoping that other readers like my stories (in fact since composing this email I have had three lovely readers who rated it a 5!!! And I am pleased to note sales have picked up again. So whoever you are hugs to you too).

Hugs to all (I was actually looking for a group hug picture but found this one particularly inspiring!)

Jennifer
x

Friday funnies

A psychiatrist was conducting a group therapy session with four young mothers and their small children. "You all have obsessions," he observed.

To the first mother, he said, "You are obsessed with eating.

You've even named your daughter Candy.

He turned to the second Mom. "Your obsession is with money. Again, it manifests itself in your child's name, Penny."

He turns to the third Mom. "Your obsession is alcohol. This too manifests itself in your child's name, Brandy" "

At this point, the fourth mother gets up, takes her little boy by the hand and whispers. "Come on, Dick, we're leaving."

Have a good weekend

New book out

My second book, The Submission Challenge, was released yesterday. It is available on the publisher’s website in a variety of formats for the next month after which time it will go onto Amazon as a Kindle. http://www.bookstrand.com/the-submission-challenge

This is the blurb:

When independent Rebecca derides her best friend’s brother for being a Dominant, he scoffs. She could never understand the lifestyle, but Jon challenges her to be his submissive for twenty-four hours anyway, demanding all that being a submissive entails. Not one to back down from a challenge, Rebecca agrees, determined to show him she can be submissive yet remain emotionally detached.
During the challenge, Jon works all his Dom tricks to try to make her lose, including insisting she be naked constantly, touching her intimately, and using various BDSM techniques, like bondage.

Some tricks Rebecca finds harder to accept than others, but as the weekend continues, they realize they are attracted to each other. But just as Rebecca comes to enjoy giving control to someone else, Jon learns to enjoy having someone who doesn't submit easily. But things aren't that simple.

I promised you an extract today but instead I’ll put it up next week.

In the meantime I will give a free copy of my first book, Just Good Friends, to the first person who can tell me the name of the club that Rebecca visits with Ellie. email me on jennifer.denys@yahoo.com

Jennifer

Inspirational Mondays

My inspiration for today is the importance of milestones in your life. And the milestone I have just achieved is to reach triple figures in my book sales – exactly two months after my very first book was advertised for pre-sales.

Now some authors may reach triple figures for the pre-sales of one book alone. However, I am happy with small steps!

So my next milestone will be to reach 500 sales. Other milestones are to have my first fan mail and to have a professional review (other than from people I know – I had a lovely one from the writer Janine Ashbless on her blog) – and only good ones of course!

http://janineashbless.blogspot.com/2011/09/just-good-friends.html

Have a good day.

Jennifer

Friday Funnies

This is one of my favourites:

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, 'Well, I'm off now. The man should be here soon.'

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. 'Good morning, Ma'am', he said, 'I've come to...'

'Oh, no need to explain,' Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, 'I've been expecting you.'

'Have you really?' said the photographer. 'Well, that's good. Did you know babies are my specialty?'

'Well that's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat'. After a moment she asked, blushing, 'Well, where do we start?'

'Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is fun. You can really spread out there.'

'Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work out for Harry and me!'

'Well, Ma'am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results.'

'My, that's a lot!', gasped Mrs. Smith.

'Ma'am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I'd love to be in and out in five minutes, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed with that.'

'Don't I know it,' said Mrs. Smith quietly.

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. 'This was done on the top of a bus,' he said.

'Oh, my God!' Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.

'And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with.'

'She was difficult?' asked Mrs. Smith.

'Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look'

'Four and five deep?' said Mrs. Smith, her eyes wide with amazement.

'Yes', the photographer replied. 'And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in.'

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. 'Do you mean they actually chewed on your, uh...equipment?'

'It's true, Ma'am, yes.. Well, if you're ready, I'll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away.'

'Tripod?'

'Oh yes, Ma'am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big to be held in the hand very long.'

Mrs. Smith fainted

New book, out for pre-orders

YEAH! The Submission Challenge is now being advertised on www.sirenpublishing.com for pre-orders and it will be available on 1 November. I can now say truthfully I am a multi-selling author (if two books counts as multi?! Well the third is due out in early Jan).

It certainly feels like I am more than a ‘one trick pony’ or whatever the expression is.

I don't know what it is like for authors who have tons of best-selling books out but at this stage in my writing 'career' each book that is accepted, each time I get the edits in, each time it is published, each and every sale is terribly exciting and I hope I never get tired of it.

I will put up an extract from this book next week. Watch this space.

Jennifer

Story extract

Hi

Following on from my blogs last week about my first book I thought you might like some extracts:

This is when Sam discovered Jessie read erotic romances:

Sam chuckled. He decided to play this one a little further. “Will it help if I also admit to reading some erotic romances?” Actually he hadn’t, but he wanted to see how far he could get her to open up about her secret desires.

Her head shot up so quickly he was surprised her neck didn’t break. Her mouth opened in astonishment. “No way!”

“Yes way… but I don’t think I’ve read any from this publisher,” he blithely lied since he hadn’t read any erotic book from any publisher. “So what’s your favorite type of ‘scenario’ and why?” he asked offhandedly, looking away from her face for a moment in case she guessed his game.

Not expecting this question, she asked hesitantly, “Um, do we have to continue this discussion? Can’t we get back to our original topic?”

“Nope, I want to know more about this passion of yours—forgive the pun.” He smiled wickedly.

“Oh, ha-ha! All right,” she said, giving up any resistance. He noticed her eyes glinting like she was about to plot something. “My favorite scenario usually involves lots of guys—preferably over six feet, fabulously good looking, and hunky—very hunky—all making love to the same woman.” She crossed her arms in defiance.

Sam sat stunned. He would never have imagined in his wildest thoughts that Jessie would be a woman who fantasized about having a ménage.

Have a good day

Submitting stories

You may be wondering after my last two posts exactly what prompted me to submit my story in the first place.

All my life I have written stories or come up with story ideas and it is (was!) in my 'bucket list' to get published one day.

I am an avid reader and everytime I downloaded a book from publishers' websites I kept noticing a tab 'Submissions'. So I decided to see what the procedure was for submitting a story. Each publisher has different guidelines but suffice to say you have to write your story first. After deciding I could do this and wrote my first one I then spent a lot of time 'googling' how to submit it as there is a lot of terms banded about like 'query' letter, 'cover' letter and so on.

Some publishers may like a cover letter or email with your manuscript - this needs to be straight-forward. Don't say things like "I've been writing this for 25 years and have fallen in love with my hero and I will kill myself if you don't publish it." Publishers, understandably, don't like that sort of blackmail!!!!!

Then there is a synopsis of your story. Some give you several pages to write it in, some a few hundred words.

My publisher, Siren, just goes with one email to include the synopsis along with the full manuscript. And that varies - some publishers like the first three chapters and last only. Either way it needs to be finished, proof-read, no spelling and other errors.

Think of it as a step by step process. 1. Your cover letter/email needs to be professional enough and well-written enough that the publisher will want to read the synopsis. 2. The synopsis needs to be well-written enough and with enough of a hook that they will want to read the first page of the manuscript. 3. The first page needs to be well-written enough with no errors and with a hook that they will want to read further.

Clearly something is working for me as they have just accepted my third story (more to follow on that in later posts), although I do keep re-reading their acceptance email each time just to make sure that they did say 'We do want to publisher your story' and not 'We don't .......'!!!

If you are submitting a story for the first time and want further hints and tips do contact me. Happy to help.

Tribute to favourite erotic romance authors

Following on from my first blog yesterday, 'Just Good Friends' was written as my tribute to my favourite erotic romance writers several of whom are listed on my Author's profile on http://www.bookstrand.com/jennifer-denys

It was great fun analysing the types of themes that come up in this genre like Friends who fall in love plots (my favourite and the theme for my current two series of books), Kidnap or mistaken identity plots, Tortured souls or those with past baggage, Hidden Identity, Those wanting to discover more about their sexuality, and so on and working them into my story. The stories my hero and heroine read are based on these themes. Some of you may recognise these plotlines from your favourite stories by other authors.

That's all for today.

Welcome to my Blog

Hi everyone

Welcome to my blog and my first ever blog post.

I became a published author with my first book 'Just Good Friends' which was released on 7 September. This book is published with Siren Publishing. http://www.sirenpublishing.com/ or you can buy it on Amazon. It is only available as an e-book but if you don't have a kindle or e-reader you can still download it as a PDF via Siren's website.

Accidentally discovering shy Jessie’s secret stash of erotic romances, Sam pretends interest to persuade her to discuss her favorite books. Soon they try out scenarios they are reading, like bondage, etc., with laughs, tears, and lots of improvisation. Before long, they realize they are more than just good friends.

It has been terribly exciting becoming an author (a life-long dream). I had to keep re-reading the email from the publisher saying that they were accepting my book for publication!!! Since then it has been a huge and fascinating learning curve.

Watch this space for info on future books!