Re: here you are!kiixNovember 22 2009, 19:17:06 UTC
Well self publishing is a slow and painful process. However it has been a vast learning curve for me. In my former life, I was a communications officer so I did layouts and junk like that so I wasn't so daunted with it but my editing skills...well they were rather non-existent.
Working with SL Publishing Group to get CAKE ready for mass market consumption, well niche market consumption, has been a boon. A BOON! Number one - they got me in touch with an editor who kicked the crap out of my story. In a good way. It would come back in a rainbow of colors, reds, blues, and greens and basically made me think of what the heck I was really trying to say. And I learned from it! I mean, this nanowrimo thing I'm doing is scads better as a first draft than my earlier stuff. I have a forbidden word list that the editor picked out for me : just, literally, and smirked. I did a find and replace on one chapter. Mind you, one single chapter and I had 326 hits on the word 'just'. GACK! So I'm finding the experience this time around a little more enjoyable and it is filtering into my new creative conscious.
At this moment, Cake was divided into two books because of the length of my story. They are interested in doing the whole series of six I only have 5 written) and since CAKE is the smallest, I will end up with twelve books!
I would love to be the Stephen King of Yaoi/Slash but that won't be happening any time soon so I will keep plugging along.
I enjoy your story. My only wish is that it would update quicker but as a fellow writer I know that real life just doesn't want to cooperate. Oh and as for not getting hand smacked by the mods, they might just have missed me but I do pay for advertising on their site for that might give me some leeway.
Re: here you are!velvet_maceNovember 22 2009, 22:10:18 UTC
I'm not nearly as fast as you are. Partially because I go into funks and think, bah, rather than just writing through it. Partially because my time really isn't my own. It's hard to write when you are interrupted every 5 minutes... well it's hard for me.
I'm so insanely jealous that you found an editor to do that. I could use someone to work with me on making writing better. I work on it on my own, but it's hard without input. Some of my best friends are writers, but none of them will read my original fic, because they are fanfic only, so I don't really get much feedback there either.
I think it's awesome that yaoi is going mainstream. I really hope your series does well. I want the whole genre to succeed, but it's nice to see yaoi that's not carbon copy harlequin romance with guys.
I don't know if I will ever be publishable, even if I improve my writing, mainly because my ideas are so damn unmarketable. I suck at romance which is what the Yaoi market seems to be aimed at. I just can't do a main pairing, it always ends up being everyone x everyone. And I'm way to fetishy and non-conny to taken serious in the mainstream way. Maybe with the next project, I can bring myself back into the mainstream a bit more.
Re: here you are!kiixNovember 22 2009, 23:57:54 UTC
How is it you're non-publicable? Fetish and non-con, people eat them up. Not a market? Can't believe it. Poppy Z. Brite is in print, and I couldn't spend ten minutes alone with that sicko (she always calls the police in the first five minutes). Seriously, let us review Brite's work in breif. Sexualized tumors, gay serial killers, child murder victims-- that's one of her books. A gay tween-bodied century-old vampire discovers and kidnaps his abandoned son 15 years after his birth, then debauches the boy and vampirizes him (for some reason this romance is ill-fated)-- that's another book. She's not the only killer/molester fetishist in print, either. Horror as a genre is extremely sexual and rape/imprisonment/impregnation by monster or murderer is a common and explicit theme. Maybe you're not cut out for romance. Maybe not horror, either, but it seems closer. Look for a fit somewhere, instead of trying to fit in to a popular market, please. Because you're a wonderful writer and nobody else is doing this exquisite thing you do.
Re: here you are!velvet_maceNovember 23 2009, 03:43:30 UTC
Poppy Z Brite is a better writer than I am -- and I imagine she broke through with a much more mainstream novel. Once you are in, you can get away with more.
I don't know. The market for yaoi is just budding at this point. What I've seen of it tends to be of the hallmark card romance variety. That's why people like Kiix make me hopeful.
Re: here you are!kiixNovember 24 2009, 02:50:13 UTC
I don't recall a mainstream novel by Brite, but it's been a long time since I read her. Like Storm Constantine, Brite never exactly "broke through," but her market exists. Brite and Constantine drew their audience from the horror and science fiction genres, two dock-walking, hello-sailor gals who've always done fetish on the down-low. In the sixties, Tiptree did het, but had a lot of non-con, slavery, furry, tort, and she was a major figure (marketed as a man, naturally). Minor figures really let their hair down.
Yaoi has an American predecessor in those genres; they flew the fetish flag long before it did, and they embraced m/m pairings flagrantly in the eighties, though usually the sex was sublimated. However, the themes were overtly non-con.
If you had to choose between leaving the themes and fetishes you enjoy, or editing your sex scenes to a non-explicit level, which would you choose? Because you sound as if you're considering the former, and it seems the most extreme. I think with the latter approach you should be in print. My personal opinion, of course, but I say it because I'd buy it, love it, keep it.
As for Brite being a better writer, with her experience she should be. I just prefer your prose style, frankly, and prefer your themes.
Working with SL Publishing Group to get CAKE ready for mass market consumption, well niche market consumption, has been a boon. A BOON! Number one - they got me in touch with an editor who kicked the crap out of my story. In a good way. It would come back in a rainbow of colors, reds, blues, and greens and basically made me think of what the heck I was really trying to say. And I learned from it! I mean, this nanowrimo thing I'm doing is scads better as a first draft than my earlier stuff. I have a forbidden word list that the editor picked out for me : just, literally, and smirked. I did a find and replace on one chapter. Mind you, one single chapter and I had 326 hits on the word 'just'. GACK! So I'm finding the experience this time around a little more enjoyable and it is filtering into my new creative conscious.
At this moment, Cake was divided into two books because of the length of my story. They are interested in doing the whole series of six I only have 5 written) and since CAKE is the smallest, I will end up with twelve books!
I would love to be the Stephen King of Yaoi/Slash but that won't be happening any time soon so I will keep plugging along.
I enjoy your story. My only wish is that it would update quicker but as a fellow writer I know that real life just doesn't want to cooperate. Oh and as for not getting hand smacked by the mods, they might just have missed me but I do pay for advertising on their site for that might give me some leeway.
Kiix
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I'm so insanely jealous that you found an editor to do that. I could use someone to work with me on making writing better. I work on it on my own, but it's hard without input. Some of my best friends are writers, but none of them will read my original fic, because they are fanfic only, so I don't really get much feedback there either.
I think it's awesome that yaoi is going mainstream. I really hope your series does well. I want the whole genre to succeed, but it's nice to see yaoi that's not carbon copy harlequin romance with guys.
I don't know if I will ever be publishable, even if I improve my writing, mainly because my ideas are so damn unmarketable. I suck at romance which is what the Yaoi market seems to be aimed at. I just can't do a main pairing, it always ends up being everyone x everyone. And I'm way to fetishy and non-conny to taken serious in the mainstream way. Maybe with the next project, I can bring myself back into the mainstream a bit more.
Reply
Maybe not horror, either, but it seems closer.
Look for a fit somewhere, instead of trying to fit in to a popular market, please. Because you're a wonderful writer and nobody else is doing this exquisite thing you do.
Reply
I don't know. The market for yaoi is just budding at this point. What I've seen of it tends to be of the hallmark card romance variety. That's why people like Kiix make me hopeful.
Reply
Yaoi has an American predecessor in those genres; they flew the fetish flag long before it did, and they embraced m/m pairings flagrantly in the eighties, though usually the sex was sublimated. However, the themes were overtly non-con.
If you had to choose between leaving the themes and fetishes you enjoy, or editing your sex scenes to a non-explicit level, which would you choose? Because you sound as if you're considering the former, and it seems the most extreme. I think with the latter approach you should be in print. My personal opinion, of course, but I say it because I'd buy it, love it, keep it.
As for Brite being a better writer, with her experience she should be. I just prefer your prose style, frankly, and prefer your themes.
Reply
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