Shh....its a Secret - in fact, it's TWO Secrets!

After two years of being out of print and unavailable, both SECRET SUBMISSION  and SUBMISSION REVEALED are both re-released into the great, wide world!

Secret Submission began life as a series of short pieces I wrote when I couldn't find any BDSM stories online that showed a loving relationship. All I could find back then (the early 2000's) was porn. Now, don't get me wrong - porn has its place. But it wasn't what I was looking for. When I complained to a friend, he suggested I write my own - and Secret Submission was born.

A few months later, I was looking for a home for an historical I'd written (Hardship and Hardtack) and came across a back page for Ellora's Cave. On it, was the email addy of their new Senior Editor. It got me thinking about that sequential series of stories I'd written that explored a woman's struggles to understand the BDSM lifestyle and why she was so attracted to it.

I sent off an email (which sounds so cavalier - in reality, it took me over an hour to write it as I agonized over every phrase!) - to my surprise, I got an answer about three hours later - on a Sunday night, no less. Response? She wanted to see my manuscript!

Not only was the quick reply unexpected, but I was so used to rejections for my historical, I didn't really expect anyone to want to see anything I'd written. Problem was, the manuscript wasn't organized into chapters, it wasn't even formatted well and it could use a good spellcheck - and it was nearly 10:00 on a Sunday night. What to do?

Call in sick to work on Monday, of course! I took the morning, whipped the first three chapters into shape and wrote a synopsis, and then stared at my responding email for a good twenty minutes before I summoned enough courage to hit "Send." I knew better than to get my hopes up - and the website said there was a 4-6 week period before getting responses, so I promptly attempted to put the whole thing out of my mind. The next day I went off to school, taught all day, came home and opened my email without expectation.

So you can imagine my surprise when there was an email from Ellora's Cave, offering to buy my book. I had pitched it as a two-book series and admitted the second book wasn't written yet, although the outline was. Because it was going to be two books, the first book didn't actually have much of an ending. The editor told me I had to change the end of the first book to a Happily Ever After. And they were only buying the first book. When I wrote the second, they'd consider it.

I was ecstatic! No problem in changing the ending to the first book, since I hadn't written it anyway. Oh, I'd made up an ending for they synopsis, but hadn't actually written it. My husband and I discussed a pen name since he is quite well-known in the community and I was teaching high school English at the time. Neither of us was in a position to let it be widely known I was about to be published as an erotic romance author.

I spent every evening and the weekend finishing the book and putting the rest of the short episodes into chapter form. By the following Sunday night (a week after that first email), it was ready to send to the woman assigned to be my regular editor - Pam Campbell. Pam was wonderful and we worked together on almost every book I wrote for Ellora's Cave. I miss her guidance.

Submission Revealed, which was always planned to be the second book, and for which I'd written the synopsis back in that quick week of May, 2004, didn't actually end up getting written until four years later and was released for the first time in May, 2009. Too many other stories crowded in between, demanding they be told. EC's art department was in transition at the time and I never liked the cover they provided. Secret Submission's cover was striking - and I never could figure out why they didn't do a visual tie-in with the covers so readers would know the two were related.

Hence the new covers for both books. While the design of Secret Submission is much the same as the original, the photo is different (I could've used the original, but the photo quality wasn't sharp anymore, so I replaced it). Submission Revealed's cover now aligns with the first book in the series, so you can tell they're partners.

So here they are, re-covered and re-released - all bright and shiny and new again. Both are available in all ebook formats. Happy reading and, as always -

Play safe!
Diana

PS. Submission Revealed is also available in print. Secret Submission is coming soon in print format.

The Great "What If?"

Oh, my glory, I totally forgot to post this Tuesday! See what an airhead the holidays make of me? I'm having so much fun shopping and decorating and writing that I completely forgot to blog! Here it is now...have fun with this!

The Great "What if...?"

This really is the question at the heart of all storytelling. What if Hamlet's uncle killed Hamlet's father and what if Hamlet's heart was good, but his mind wasn't strong enough to carry out revenge? Alternately, what if Hamlet had killed his uncle immediately after seeing his father’s ghost the first time? And what if he had a girlfriend but he was so in love with her he didn’t dump her?

You see where this is going?

Asking the great What if? question gets answers you don't always expect. There are several parts to this workshop, so follow through them all and see where you end up at the end. I'm pretty sure it's not where you think you'll be!

Writing Journal Assignment

Answer four of the following in your journal. Throw some spaghetti!

What if the sun shone only three hours each 24-hr period?

What if newborn babies could talk at one-hour old?

What if the airplane had been invented before the Civil War?

What if we had jetpacks and could fly?

What if there were no more gasoline?

What if there were only three colors in the world—red, blue and yellow—and they couldn’t be mixed?

What if people were never allowed to leave their hometowns?

What if? questions can also be big questions:

What if  the rivers of North America flowed from East to West rather than primarily North to South? What would the expansion of the continent by European settlers look like if that were the case?

What would the world look like if China had colonized America before Europe? Would the world have a different political structure?

What would have happened had the European nations not remained neutral during the American Civil War and had sent troops and support to one or both sides?

What if the Axis forces won D-day?

Currently we can fertilize eggs and create the spark of human life in a test tube. What will happen when we can bring it to term outside a woman’s womb? What will happen to human reproduction?

Writing:

You see…whole worlds of possibilities open up with those two simple words and a punctuation mark: what if?

Use any of the examples above or create a what if? of your own to write a story or create an outline for a story for later development. Let your imagination roam and throw that spaghetti!

If you’re willing, add some What If? questions in the comments below. J

(Some of the ideas in this workshop were taken from Strategic Learning in the Classroom, Dr. Harvey F. Sliver and Richard W. Strong, SilverStrong & Associates, Inc. and from Writing Smarter! by Keith Manos, The Center for Applied Research in Education (1999) )

Getting Started II

Some days ideas are far and few between. You want to write, but you sit down and…nothing.

The five writing prompts below are designed to 1) get you motivated or 2) just to give you some practice. Remember, we’re throwing spaghetti here. Go with one of these ideas and we’ll see if it sticks.

Activity

You can either read through the whole list and then choose one, or take each one in turn and write for ten minutes. The goal here is to write for at least a half an hour.

Writing prompts

1)  It is your turn to pick up the bill for the Friday afternoon Happy Hour with your friends. They’ve all left. You reach for your wallet…and you’ve only four dollars inside. You hand the bartender your credit card…which is denied. Now what?

2)  You’re at a local fair and everyone’s having a good time. Then your significant other slobbers mustard down the front of his (or her) best shirt. While the others rib him (or her), you fume. You told him (or her) not to wear that shirt today. Write the scene you have when you two get home.

3)  Scents often are powerful memory inducers. What kind of person would find their memory triggered by the following scents: lilacs in full bloom, coffee brewing on the stove, fresh-turned earth after a spring rain, a skunk that’s just been frightened? Brainstorm, then write a scene where that scent triggers the memory.

4)  The local church is having a bake sale. An older member of the congregation calls and asks if you’d bake something to sell. You’re not home…one of your family members takes the call and cheerily volunteers your services. But you’re a lousy baker. What happens?

5)  Your siblings excel at sports, winning medals and ribbons and setting various records. You can barely walk without tripping over your own feet. Write a scene where your mother or father consoles you after the latest success on the part of your siblings.

Don’t lose what you’ve written. If you’re working digitally, BACK UP (You’ll discover this is one of my mantras. Experience has taught me well.) Next week we’ll be doing some character work and you’ll need a story you’ve already begun (either something sparked by today’s writing or another piece from your files), so bring it along.

PS. “Backup” does NOT mean making a second copy on the same drive. It means making a second copy on a flash drive or emailing it to yourself. Or even printing it out to have a hard copy. Whatever you do, have a second copy in case something happens to the first. We’ll talk further file management options in a future workshop.

My qualifications

The contents of these workshops are actually my accumulation of several years’ experience teaching creative writing in real-life classroom settings. Each workshop has been tried and tested several times. Additional workshops came from my work in Second Life where I gave many of these workshops in the virtual world (as Diana Allandale). This is, however, the first time I’ve gathered all the various workshops I’ve offered in both worlds and published them in one place.

The nitty-gritty

A new workshop will be posted every Tuesday. Eventually we’ll have the contents of a book about writing. At that point, I’ll collect all the workshops in ebook (and maybe print) form for those who would like it all bundled into one nice, neat place and offer it for sale.

You’ll see a new button below. If you enjoy the workshops and find them useful, please consider sending a donation my way. When the final product is ready to go, those who have donated each time will get a free copy of the ebook as a gift from me. I won’t dun you twice for the content.

Writing workshop #1

Getting Started

So you’ve got a great story. You know the characters, the details of their lives, maybe even the minutiae of what happens to them. You’ve talked about it lots of times over the years, telling it to critique groups, friends, neighbors, anyone who would listen as you refined the plot points and developed the hero.

But you haven’t written it down. It still exists only in your head. And therein lies the problem.

Writing is an art, and just like all the other arts, you create first and sell later. No one’s going to buy that blank canvas just because you say you’re going to paint a beautiful sunset on it. They’ll buy the painting of the sunset once you’re done. No one’s going to buy the music in your head that they can’t hear. But make a sound recording or write it on staff paper and it becomes something real. And saleable.

Same with that story you’ve refined in your head till your significant others don’t want to hear it anymore. The time has come to stop telling your story and start writing it down. It’s time to create.

NOTE: The terms “work” and “play” are nearly synonymous in an author’s life. We “work” at crafting a good story, yet we “play” with language in order to find just the right word. Throughout these workshops you’ll hear the two concepts used interchangeably. Remember, if you’re not having fun writing it, your audience won’t have fun reading it!

Where do you begin?

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

First metaphor:

These first few workshops are designed to get you thinking. To get the words out of your head and onto the page.

Some of what you throw up out of your head and onto the page will be wonderful, like a great spaghetti dinner. Other stuff will be puke.

This is a fact of creation. Accept it and move on.

Second metaphor:

When I was a kid, I came into the kitchen shortly before dinner one night to see my mother fling a piece of spaghetti at the wall. It stuck for several moments before beginning a slow descent. She watched it, beaming a satisfied smile as she turned off the heat under the pot of pasta.

Confused, I just had to ask. “What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if the pasta’s done. I read about it in a magazine. If it sticks, it’s done. If it doesn’t, it needs more boiling.”

For the next several months, I had the unwelcome task of wiping the wall down after my mother made spaghetti.

In these workshops I will encourage you to throw up an idea onto the paper, to play with it a while and see if it “sticks”. If it’s good, you’ll know. Like a large family dinner, the characters will talk, the action will move and the story will get written.

If it’s not good—well, you’ll know that, too.

Taking Inventory

Whether you’re a published author or just starting out, stopping to take inventory every once in a while is a great way to gain perspective and spark new ideas.

Activity:

Step One: Gather together all the stories and scraps of stories you have already written down. Whether on the backs of napkins, in piles of spiral notebooks or computer documents scattered hither and yon, find them all. If you only have a few on the computer, print them out.

For those of you with lots of your stories on the computer, gather them together into one file. And make a back up.

Step Two: If your scraps are on paper, get out a ruler and measure the height of the pile. Those of you with digital files, look at the list in that folder. Talk about an affirmation that you’re a writer! Did you realize you had so many pieces?

Step Three: Choose three of the pieces and read them without editing. This is spaghetti you threw against the wall at some time in the past. What do you think of this now? Any new ideas sparked?

Step Four: If the ideas are starting, stop here and go write. Throw more words down on the page and see what happens.

Step FourA: Nothing’s happening? Pick another three and read through. If you get through the entire pile and nothing sparks, it might be time to start something fresh. And that’s next week’s workshop J .

My qualifications

The contents of these workshops are actually my accumulation of several years’ experience teaching creative writing in real-life classroom settings. Each workshop has been tried and tested several times. Additional workshops came from my work in Second Life where I gave many of these workshops in the virtual world (as Diana Allandale). This is, however, the first time I’ve gathered all the various workshops I’ve offered in both worlds and published them in one place.

The nitty-gritty

A new workshop will be posted every Tuesday. Eventually we’ll have the contents of a book about writing. At that point, I’ll collect all the workshops in ebook (and maybe print) form for those who would like it all bundled into one nice, neat place and offer it for sale.

You’ll see a new button below. If you enjoy the workshops and find them useful, please consider sending a donation my way. When the final product is ready to go, those who have donated each time will get a free copy of the ebook as a gift from me. I won’t dun you twice for the content.

New Feature!

Ta Da! The kinks are worked out and today I get to introduce the roll out of a new feature of my blog today…the writing workshop.

We all tell stories, whether around the water cooler recounting the Big Play from the game last night, out on our daily power walk retelling the latest joke we heard, or in the break room discussing dreams for a different life. Telling stories is important to us and we all tell them.

But when it comes to writing stories down, many people back away and say, “Not me. I’m not a writer.” They understand that there are different skills involved in bringing a story to life on the page than when recounting their latest exploit to their friends. Finding the right words and creating a memorable story is part art and part skill. And both take practice.

Which is why, for the next several months, I’m running a writer’s workshop feature on this blog along with my regular (or is that irregular?) posts.

Professional writer or just beginning doesn’t matter. Genre doesn’t matter. Got a great mystery story? How about a true-life adventure? Want to tell the story of your family’s history? In these workshops you’ll find new ways of thinking about some of the skills necessary in crafting a story that will keep people reading and turning the page from chapter to chapter.

The workshops break into four general categories: writing skills, ancillary skills, inspiration and publishing.  Some workshops fall into more than one division. That’s okay, I’ll code each post with tags that’ll help you know what you’re expected to do.

Keep in mind: what you write is for you. I’m not providing a forum through which you can post your writing and because of my own writing schedule, I do not give feedback on manuscripts. Any stories sent to me will be deleted without being read. I’m not an agent or a publisher. I’m a writer who’s gained some insights along the way and who wishes to share them. That’s all. J

That said, there’s no reason we can’t have a good, spirited conversation about each workshop. If you have an additional insight, feel free to post it in the comments. Remember, writing should be fun…and so should talking about writing!

My qualifications

The contents of these workshops are actually my accumulation of several years’ experience teaching creative writing in real-life classroom settings. Each workshop has been tried and tested several times. Additional workshops came from my work in Second Life where I gave many of these workshops in the virtual world (as Diana Allandale). This is, however, the first time I’ve gathered all the various workshops I’ve offered in both worlds and published them in one place.

The nitty-gritty

A new workshop will be posted every Tuesday. Eventually we’ll have the contents of a book about writing. At that point, I’ll collect all the workshops in ebook (and maybe print) form for those who would like it all bundled into one nice, neat place and offer it for sale.

You’ll see a new button below. If you enjoy the workshops and find them useful, please consider sending a donation my way. When the final product is ready to go, those who have donated each time will get a free copy of the ebook as a gift from me. I won’t dun you twice for the content.

Watch for the first workshop coming on Tuesday, October 4th!