Sunday, July 24, 2005
A little about PistonI wrote my first book when I was 22. It was a 150k historical romance and it sucked. It still managed, (miraculously), to find an agent, but it never sold. It took me a while to grow and change as a writer to understand why. My first book was my learning book. I made just about every mistake a writer can make when I wrote that one. Luckily, I learned from those mistakes as I rewrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it. (I'm nothing if not persevering...or maybe stubborn is a better descriptor.)
Feeling defeated from my non-sale, I joined RWA and learned more about the writing craft and more about the publishing business. When I felt confident enough, I wrote two more books and entered them in RWA contests where they did very well. My second book was a historical fantasy called Raven's Quest. It's currently published at ImaJinn Books under my other name, Joanna King. My Joanna King web site is http://www.silver-branch.com
At this time, almost three years ago, I was pretty active on a certain paranormal romance list. There seemed to be a marked prejudice against erotic romance on the list at this time. They were denying erotic romance authors the ability to be nominated for one of their writing awards. This offended me in a big way. I wondered what could be so offensive about explicit sex scenes. Seemed like if you didn't like them, you should just not buy books that contained them. There seemed no reason to bad mouth them publicly and thwart the careers of those who wrote them.
My ire piqued and wondering what exactly was so bad about explicit sex scenes, I challenged myself to write the hottest scene I could, just as an experiment. Just to see if I was truly comfortable with them. The sex scene ended up a part of Winter Pleasures: The Training, which I sold to Ellora's Cave.
Since then, I've sold a total of ten novels and two novellas to Ellora's Cave. My eleventh novel, A Change of Season, is scheduled to release in mid-August. I love writing for EC. I love the company, the other authors and, most especially, the wonderful readers.
I write fantasy as well, but erotic romance remains my first love.
This past spring I was lucky enough to finally meet online friends Megan Hart and Lauren Dane in person. We instantly hit it off like we'd known each other forever. I'm so very happy to be in this alliance with them. I can truly say I respect them both deeply and greatly admire their writing.
I'm a lucky little romance writer.
