World Domination: Phase II

So, I mentioned the other day that an epublisher offered to buy this erotic novella of mine.

You might have missed it, buried as it was amidst my other angst. I would not blame you if you were skimming at that point. At any rate, I’m signing the contract today and they’ll publish my naughty take on Beauty and the Beast in early summer. I’ll use the pen name Jennifer Paris, which is half of my pron name. And no, I didn’t misspell pron. You pretty much have to use the word that way to defeat the icky-bots that crawl the web looking for that kind of thing. As it is, people search for bizarre stuff on writer’s websites. Here’s an example from Meljean Brook. I just love how she offers the searcher alternate scenes.

I’m sure you know, but your pron name is the name of your first pet combined with the first street you lived on. Technically I’d be Stormy Paris, but that’s just a little too.

My friend Cynthia Eden gave me excellent advice on the pen name question. She said that if I want to differentiate my “Super-Sexy tales” from my other stuff, then go for the pen name, but own up to it, to take advantage of my networks, such as they are. Cynthia delights me that she refers to a BDSM story as a “Super-Sexy tale” – she’s this charming combination of polite Southern lady and frankly sensual writer. Cynthia put it well when she said that, after all, these are just gradations of what we’re writing. KAK also talked me out of my tree, to own this and be proud.

I’m thinking back to a time, must be over ten years ago, when I bought this ebook “Writing Pron for Fun and Profit.” I never got around to reading it. It was kind of dull and the first part didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. But I’ve always had the idea that I should try this. For fun. Profit would be nice. Then Samhain put out a call for an anthology of Red-Hot Fairy Tales. I was between novels, so I wrote up Beauty and the Beast. I always wanted to know exactly what made him so Beastly.

Samhain turned me down on the anthology. Another friend, Dawn McClure, who writes for Samhain pointed me to Loose Id. (She also pointed me to one other high-profile epublisher who turned out to be uncommunicative and unprofessional – very odd.) So far, Loose Id has been wonderful to deal with. I think it’s a good fit.

And, what do you know? Their logo is a lizard, which has become the good luck emblem of our new Santa Fe lifestyle.

Must be meant to be.