I suppose I should feel angry or something, but mostly I am just hurt and disappointed. I make plenty of material available for free. I like writing. I want readers to enjoy what I write. I have always appreciated it when writers provide free stories online, so I do the same. Pay it forward and all that.

This is why I am so disappointed to see the one and only story I have ever sold pirated. Right now two thirds of all Bettie Sharpe stories available to readers are free. I would appreciate it if instead of pirating the third story, people spend the $2.80 or $3.50 to buy it outright.

That’s less than the price of a latte.

My royalties from Like a Thief don’t pay for my tuition, or my school books or my health insurance. I can’t quit my day jobs. One day I’d like to be able to make a living on my writing, but I know the realities. My chances are slim. However, the fact that I actually have made money on a story–a story that still sells a few copies a month–gives me hope.

I like romance readers and the romance reading community. My experience as both a writer and a reader has been overwhelmingly positive. I believe the pirating of my novella was an abberation–the act of one inconsiderate individual amidst a veritable ocean of decent, honorable readers.

I don’t think my words here will influence that one person to change her mind. Mostly, I just wanted to give a clearer impression of exactly who gets hurt by piracy. The answer would be me: a woman in her early thirties who works two jobs when she isn’t in school. A woman who loves loves to write, and dreams of one day being able to make a living doing what she loves.

I know we have had our differences in the past. And, ok, I am willing to admit that much of the animosity between us came from me. Me with my mutterings of “It’s so boring and flat!” or “It’s so hot!” and “They should split it into three states just so you’ll feel like you’re getting somewhere when you have to drive through it.”

But this last road trip, I saw a different side of you, Texas. I saw a softer side, a prettier side. I’d like to say I saw a less swelteringly hot side, but you are Texas and this is July–I might as well wish for a unicorn to gallop up to my door with a winning MegaLotto ticket pressed between its pearly teeth.

Anyway, Texas, the point is, even though I know many a kind soul who was born or who lives within your borders, I’d always secretly suspected they were a tad heat-addled when they swore to me that you were “beautiful country” or even “God’s country”. But that was likely because I hadn’t yet been to Texas Hill Country, which aptly illustrates both of the afore-mentioned descriptions. Lovely.

Oh, Texas, I’m so sorry I thought poorly of you. But I’ve changed. I now appreciate your many, many, many miles of smoothly-paved, well-tended roads. Your vast, wide-open vistas, and bright blue skies, and your numerous roadside shrines to oil, cattle and BBQ.

In addition to your many wonderful sights, you are also home to some wonderful people. You are home to the kind yet wise-cracking stock from which sprang my beloved SmartAss, and you are home to the talented and charming Ms Sherry Thomas (who was kind enough to let me talk her ear off for quite a while–Sorry Sherry!) and her wonderful family.

One last thing, Texas: You may not know this, but I once wrote a story that started out in a BBQ restaurant in a small Texas town. The kind with a Victorian-era court house square, and a park with a gazebo and a bronze statue. I gave up the story, or, at least the part that was set in the restaurant in Texas because I figured I just didn’t know enough about Texas to make it realistic. But on this latest trip, Texas, you gave me the town and the courthouse, and the park with the gazebo and the statue. And then, a bit later, you gave me the restaurant, too.

This abandoned Bar-B-Q is pretty much the setting I’d imagined for that long ago story. Everything from the sign to the porch to the windows. The only thing missing is the green linoleum floor on the inside, but I won’t hold it against you, TX. You gave me back a story I thought I couldn’t write. You set my imagination off in a million different directions. When I finish the current crop of Works in Progress on my schedule, you can bet I’m going to dig up that old story. I’m going to resurrect the BBQ, and I owe it all to you, Texas.

I’m sorry I doubted you. Thanks for everything.

XOXO

bettie

The dyehouse is downwind of every other building, but its location does little to diffuse its smell. The building is squat and dark and windowless. Its roof is pierced with chimneys, like arrows sticking out of Saint Sebastian’s chest. The air around it is soaked in the moist, acrid stench of dyestuff, lye and urine. After a day’s work, I’ll carry that same stench, and everyone who walks within ten feet of me will know I have again incurred an Elder’s wrath.

The work is hard, the hours are long; the dying is no easy task. Pilgrims, still wan and weak-legged from their voyage across the ocean, must bring their garments to be dyed black before they can become citizens of God’s kingdom here on Earth. In so doing, the Elders say, they obliterate the sin of pride, and come into the kingdom humble as penitents.

In the dyehouse, we submerge the aristocrat’s bright velvets and the pauper’s faded woolens into the same steaming, stinking tub of boiling water and ammonia which we have distilled from urine and some other sources. We stew the garments longer than a tough cut of meat, until the threads are weak enough to accept the dye. The dying takes time, but we will wait. Within the wall, time is something we do not lack.

Once the garments have been soaked and softened, we submerge them in a vat of black dyestuff laced with arsenic to help the color stick. We stir this pot for hours before it is time to remove the sodden mass of black clothes. The dye makes our hands rough and gray. The arsenic makes our skin pale and our bodies weak.

There is no punishment worse than the dyehouse, save the tannery and the distillery where our chemicals are made. But that work is heavy and hard—the men labor with their coats removed and sleeves rolled back. I have been told that the sight of men working at such labors would be not purify my soul, but cast me deeper into sin. We women are weak, and must be protected from such sights. Thank goodness.

This is not to say the dying is an easy task. The color fades fast in clean water and bright sunlight, and must be renewed every year or so. The dye does not take to fabric so well here, as it does at Home. The plant we use to make our black is called Miser’s Heart. And like its namesake, Miser’s Heart thrives on cold air and sparse nourishment. It is overfed and overwhelmed by fecund soil. It withers in the warm summers of this foreign clime.

Our plants, like our people, are used to stingy seasons and stony ground. We mistrust abundance. We fear ease. We despise pleasure. Comfort is a snare the devil sets to steal our souls away.

Or so the Elders say.

I believe I would enjoy a few comforts—or, at the least, an easier chore. There is no shortage of dyestuff in this new world, and all of it is a great deal easier to refine that the stingy black of Miser’s Heart. In spring a host of flowers rise in brilliant shades of gold and red and blue, filling the fields beyond the wall like an army bent on conquest.

We could easily attire ourselves in royal blues, imperial purples, or reds as rich as spilled blood. We could be paupers clad in the colors of kings, but we are a modest people; we must work hard so that all who see us will know it. We must attire our bodies in black and never look upon our naked skin. We must hide our hair, lest, tempted by its softness and rich color, we give in to the sin of pride. We must never enjoy softness or beauty, for these are but signposts on the Primrose Path that leads unwary souls to Hell.

This is what the Elders tell me, though nine months of punishment and repetition have not yet cowed me enough to believe it. But I feel myself weakening. My body slows, my mind grows tired. I soften. One day I will soak up the Elders’ words the way softened cloth soaks up the dye. It may take time, but in God’s kingdom here on Earth, time is something we do not lack.

To exorcise the first person present tense from my brain, I sat down and wrote a few paragraphs in it. Overall, it was a good exercise. It helped me make peace with the tense. And when I needed a short story for my short story class, it gave me a nice starting point. However, the ending is rather…open-ended. I happen to like the possibilities of it, but I thought I should warn you.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, part one of Terra Obscura is after the break. I hope you like it.

“Curiosity is a sin, and sinners burn in hell.” Elder Parson’s weak-voiced words are not a threat, or a promise, but a warning, wavering like notes from a reed flute on the winter wind.

I’ve been caught again, looking at the world beyond the wall. When I turn to face the old man, I press my back against the weathered, rough-hewn wood and use my body to hide the place where I scraped out the filling of frozen mud between the logs.

The peephole is no larger than the circumference of my smallest finger, but it opens another world to my eye. It is like something I saw, an ocean and some years ago, before the war and the plague and the resulting wave of religious fervor that swept my countrymen by the thousands to this foreign shore.

The king—the old one, the heretic whose name we have since blacked from our books—allowed a group of natural philosophers to build a windowless room at the university. The room was shut of all light, save for a pinhole on the southern wall. And where the light from that small hole shone against the opposite wall, an observer could behold an image the world outside—but it was pale and upside down, a phantom of the truth.

A camera obscura, they called it. The darkened room.

I remember the camera obscura as I hide my sorry little peephole behind the limp sweep of my faded skirts. It may seem a silly, petty thing to keep secret and thus risk the stocks, or worse, but the chink I’ve made in the wall reveals a wider world than the one in which I’ve spent my days and nights for nine long months.

For me, there has been only the settlement, muddy and cold, colored with weathered browns and blacks and grays. Beyond the settlement, the land is vast and wide, an endless stretch of uncharted wilderness, the mysteries of which most maps only dare imply with a dark wash of ink and the scrawled legend: Here be monsters.

Within our wall, we are small and weak and safe. Our faces are whitened by short days, and even shorter rations. Our cheeks and hands have been made rough and red by wind and work. We wear dingy white linens and faded black clothes. We have nothing healthy, crisp or pristine, save our immortal souls.

Or so the elders tell us, at each morning’s Meeting.

I do not know if I believe them now—or if I ever did. They say the world beyond the wall is wild, wicked and untamed. But their pronouncements seem as washed out and wrong-sided as an image wavering on a darkroom wall. Beyond our pale of weathered wood and dried mud stretch vast snow-covered fields, sparkling crystalline and perfect in the winter sun. At the fields’ end, the forest looms dark green on the horizon, with the red sunset blazing above. And beyond the forest lies the bright blue sea that stands between here and Home.

There is no freedom here, save the freedom to repent, to toil, and to die. At Home, our packed and teeming capital had long ago outgrown its walls. It stank of sin and sewage; of death and life. It sprawled across the land like an algae bloom in a stagnant pond, consuming the countryside with the insatiable appetite of progress.

There was money to be made and rent to be paid; there were so many bodies, few people worried for their souls. So long as a man professed his loyalty to both God and king, none would question the beliefs he held in his heart.

I know I am too young to wax wistful for the world that used to be, except that I have seen a king killed at the order of his people. I have seen plague, fire, and war. And I have been brought across an ocean for the dubious privilege of helping construct God’s kingdom on Earth.

“…God’s kingdom here on earth!” Elder Parsons is shouting. Little flecks of spittle hit my cheeks, they have turned cold from an instant’s travel through the chill, dry air.

“I pray one day you will find some measure of the penitence and peace your mother has found within these walls.

“You are but lately come to us.” Parson’s voice is fuller than the one he first used. He knows how little difference his lectures make to me, but he is speaking for the audience of black clad colonists who slow at their tasks to watch us from the corners of their eyes. “You do not know what hardships were suffered by those who built this wall to keep us safe within. You do not know what manner of beasts roam without.”

“Wolves,” I say, “I heard one howling a few nights past. It did not worry me. My father’s mother lives at the edge of the woods, back in the Old Country. She told me wolves are skittish and wary with people.”

“Wolves,” Parson proclaims, drawing the word out, letting his tongue linger over the “l” and pressing his teeth deep into his lower lip to pronounce the “v”. “They will hunt you in the night and pounce upon you when you tire of running. They will use their heavy paws to force you from your feet. They’ve sharp claws to rend your garments and bare your flesh for their hungry mouths.”

His beady eyes shine with a zealot’s relish. He spares no detail in his description of the indignities I will suffer as I am eaten alive. He’d the same happy look at Meeting yesterday when he described the agonies of witches on the pyre, and a week before that when he told us tales of sinners burning naked in the pits of hell.

Parson says his soul is bound for heaven, but I think he loves his tales of hell too much to leave them behind. In this heaven, Parson once told me, man shall know no suffering, nor appetites of any sort. He shall be cleansed of every imperfection; he shall shed every memory of his life on Earth.

I do not think Parson will enjoy his heaven when he gets there. It will seem cold, indeed, without his tales of Hell to keep him warm.

After some minutes he concludes his ecstatic diatribe. “You may now ask me for the Lord’s forgiveness, child.”

I recite the words I’m meant to say. I denounce myself for a sinner. I am prideful and iniquitous, headstrong and hell-bound. Oh, yes. I implore the Elder to devise some act of contrition that will punish my body and purify my soul.

“You must take up the dying,” he tells me. “Four weeks of work, from sunrise to sunset, pausing only for Meetings and meals. Begin immediately.”

*************************************

Continued in part 2.

The prompt: I wanna see a girl tell a guy what she wants. Sexy, zany, crazy, whatever. I wanna see her pipe up and ask for her heart’s desire.

The word count: 400.

The prize: $50 gift certificate from Amazon.

The deadline: 15 May.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: This contest is one of my favorite writing exercises, ever. The word limit, the deadline, the faint whiff of competition–all these things combine to get the creative juices flowing. I’ve gotten two novellas out of entries I wrote for Bam’s contest. One was Like a Thief and the other–you may be hearing about it soon… Point is, it’s a lot of fun, and if you haven’t entered before, don’t be afraid.

And if you’re not the writing type (oh, come on, you know you really are!) you can have fun just reading the entries. I love how a bunch of writers can take the same prompt and produce so many different stories.

So, go forth and enter!

Kate’s post about authorial taglines got me thinking about all the advice authors get to “build a brand”. And, certainly, plenty of authors do just that, creating different pseudonyms for different genres, sub-genres or heat-levels. I guess if you write both erotic and non-erotic romance, a different “brand name” is a good way to let your readers know what to expect from your story.

But what do you do when you don’t even know what to expect from your stories?
I write what interests me, and I have the attention span of a gnat. Maybe I’ve already messed this one up. Ember and Like a Thief aren’t very alike–not genre, not heat-level, not POV or tone. People who wanted something like Ember were probably disappointed by Like a Thief.

And when I look at the WsIP on my hard drive, with the exception of Nieves, which is the sequel to Ember, and Split which features characters from Like a Thief, everything else is very dissimilar. 3 sci-fi in 3 completely different futures (okay, two and a half) and 2 fantasy stories in two completely different worlds. 4 first person narrations. 1 3rd person. 1 scorching erotic, 2 regular romances and 2 that have “romantic elements”. Two of those WsIP don’t even have bad-girl heroines! What the fuck am I thinking?

Anyway, here’s my question: How important is authorial branding. How important is it to get the type of story you expect from an author you know?

Also, last week, Jane at Dear Author wondered whether the ePublishing’s reputation for erotic fare was driving away potential readers. She used Like a Thief in the Night as an example, since neither the interest Ember might have garnered from The Serial, nor Sherry Thomas ‘s public french-kiss–er, enthusiastic review of Ember and Like a Thief last week generated enough purchases at MBAM to put Like a Thief on their top ten bestseller list.

An interesting discussion of the perception of ePublishing resulted. Mrs Giggles blogged her thoughts. Nice Mommy/Evil Editor Angie started a weekly series at her blog highlighting Samhain’s non-erotic romances.

Another interesting result? It’s over there on the left.

What do I think of the whole thing? Aside from being thrilled to see Like a Thief in such great company (Hi Shiloh! Hi Bonnie!) I commented briefly on Dear Author, and in more detail at Mrs. Giggles’s blog. In an overlarge and overlong nutshell, my thoughts are these:

The thing I like about ePublishers is that they seem a little more willing to take risks and break genre rules. Like a Thief has plenty of sex and even more violence, but those aren’t the tough selling points. Like a Thief features a heroine who is, by her own admission, heartless, and the story crosses several genre lines–I call it an a sci-fi paranormal action-adventure erotic romance. Bit of a mouthful, eh? And its only 28,000 words long–roughly a third the length of the average single-title romance.

Writers writing for New York know what New York wants. Just as writers writing for ePubs know what sells. I knew going in that M/M and menage were hot categories. I knew Like a Thief’s violence and the heroine might be a turn-off for some readers. But I wrote the story I wanted to write, and Samhain published it, and I’ll always be happy about that.

I didn’t expect to see Like a Thief on that list. It’s my first novella. Ever. And the first thing I ever submitted anywhere. I expected a polite rejection from Samhain. Everything since then has been an awesome surprise. I did rather expect to see The Valentine Effect and Erotics Anonymous on the list on day 1. Both Bonnie Dee and Veronica Wilde have written some excellent and very well-reviewed stories. They have fans (I’m one).

The Strangers in the Night stories came out on the same day as the three stories from Samhain’s Court Appointed M/M anthology. All three stories from the M/M anthology are on the list, along with two menage stories. At the time of this writing, the top 5 books are M/M or menage.

What does that mean for new authors? Or for authors that don’t write erotic, much less M/M or menage? It means we are being subsidized by the more popular categories. The success of those subgenres is what allows ePubs to take chances on the next hot-selling subgenre.

So, while I think it’s a shame some readers are put off by the more exotic and/or sex-centered offerings, I’m won’t complain if my books’ sales numbers get trumped by shapeshifting threesomes or hawt gay lawyers. Popular erotic subgenres fund the risk-taking I admire in ePubs.

I’d like it if more people appreciated the diverse offerings available from ePublishers.
And, like Jane, I’m going to do my best to remind people who think ePubbed books are all erotic romance and/or pr0n that ePublishing offers a diverse array of genres and content.

I’ve heard several stories of writers who entered contests–agented writers, writers who have been published, and writers who IMHO turn out high-quality writing no matter what–and were given good marks overall, but received exceptionally low marks and persnickety, nitpicky comments from one or two judges. And, usually, the judges getting their hate on are unpublished, or have only a couple of publishing credits to their name.

Maybe it’s because I’m new to all this organized writing business, but right here is where I start not getting it. The judges mark all these categories and are supposed to judge the readability and saleability of the submission–but how can they do that if they haven’t sold much, themselves?

And if the writers doing the critiquing don’t have a solid string of sales under their belt, what is their opinion but the opinion of a reader who may or may not like the type or style of story the contest entrant writes? What special insight do they have into the industry that can benefit the contest entrant? Now, if Nora Roberts or some other luminary of the genre were judging the contest, the whole setup would make sense: Experienced, successful expert offers learned opinion and judgment. But otherwise?

If I were judging a contest, my opinion would and should be worth exactly as much as the average reader’s. Sure, I’m a writer, but I don’t have any great string of credits under my belt. I don’t have any experience, except my love of the genre as a reader, that makes me qualified to judge the saleability of a story. And as a reader, I’ve never quit reading a book over minor details, plot points I think should have been included, or the occasional punctuation error.

If anyone reading this has entered a contest, I ask, honestly, earnestly, humbly, “Why?”

1. Are contests helpful?
2. Do you feel like the critiques of the judges are useful?
3. What usually prompts you to enter a contest?

On the subject of re-imagining and retelling fairytales, Eloisa James wrote an article called “My Fairy Godmother, Myself” in which she argues that

Cinderella was never about the prince. It was about the wonders of a magical transformation. [...] That turns out to be the key to rewritten Cinderellas: the heroine learns to honor and appreciate her pre-transformation self, forcing the prince to do so as well.

I’m not really sure if that would be true of Embers, but maybe we can discuss that in the comments.

My first instinct was to post and say that of course it isn’t true of Ember. The second paragraph of the story is:

This is no fairytale. The real story doesn’t even start with me; it starts with the Prince.

I would also have added that one of the reasons I wrote Ember was to write a Cinderella story that was not about the cosmetic transformation or the ball or the competition between Cinderella and her stepsisters for the prince, but to explore the line that fairy tales so often draw between good girls and bad women, between virtuous princesses and wicked queens.

But here’s my question and the real point of my post: Do I have any right to comment? Would it stifle discussion?

I’ve talked before about learning to let go of my stories once they’re written. And I’ve talked about how it’s important for me that Ember be a free story, since I would not have written it if I hadn’t needed some content for my website. But now it seems to me that the biggest part of letting go, and of making Ember free, is letting other people make what they will of it without my input or explanations of what I meant.

And yes, I am aware that this post adds another layer of the very sort of explanation I just decided I shouldn’t do. But letting go is a process, people–a journey. I’m working on it. )

1. Moral ambiguity
   I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I like villains. My protagonists aren’t all bad people, but they sometimes do bad things. My goal at the outset of any story is to write it in such a way that if it was told by a different character, the hero would be the villain.
2. Secondary characters with lives
   Another storytelling goal of mine is to write secondary characters with lives and secrets. There are things you don’t know about your friends. There are times when you are just a support character in their story–and if there aren’t those times, you don’t have friends, honey, you’ve got back up singers.
3. Fairy tales
   I love the gory ones. No surprise here, but almost every story I write references fairytales or folktales as a general idea, or a specific comparison.
4. Romance
   But it ain’t all hearts and flowers. Love is a battlefield — violent and explosive. Or an ice-skating rink — cold and treacherous. Or a race track — fast and competitive. Or a waltz — dreamy and whirling in perfect accord. Love is different things for different people. Why should my characters all have the same version of it? Though, to be honest, I really like the battlefield.
5. Multi-racial and international characters
   Why? Because when I was a kid, there were so few nonwhite characters in books that weren’t about race that I used to randomly pretend heroines in my favorite adventure stories were brown girls. Because as a reader I am damned tired of seeing the word “white” used as a description of the heroine’s beautiful skin. Because I want my characters to look like me and my friends. Because I think authors who refuse to write about characters who aren’t their own skin color or ethnic background are wusses.
6. Violence
   Most of it movie-like and stylized. Some of it not. Fact is, I like adventure stories. When it comes to movies, I like car chases and sword fights and Hong Kong style fight scenes. And sometimes I use physical violence as a symbol of emotional turmoil.
7. Strong female protagonist
   Do I even need to say this? I can’t imagine writing a weak female protagonist–leastwise, not one who didn’t end up strong by the end. Those martyriffic heroines who let everyone shit on them for an entire book before the hero realizes that they are pure and virtuous and wonderful are not my heroines. No way, no how.
8. Virtue is NOT its own reward.
   See above. I hate the idea of noble suffering. Usually, characters who spend a whole book suffering nobly could have ended it all by telling a few people off. I also am not down with selfless heroines who will always, always, always sacrifice themselves to help or save people they love–Self-sacrifice like that isn’t noble, it’s co-dependent.
9. A is for “Alpha” and “Asshole”
   I admit it, my heroes are kind of assholish. But all they need as motivation to end their asshole ways is the no-nonsense love of a strong female protagonist (see # 7, above). Just like in real life, right? ;o)
10. Dark
    This isn’t part of my manifesto, it’s just something people keep saying about my stories. Even the sweet ones. I don’t set out to write “dark” they just end up that way.
11. Bonus Feature: References to classic/hard boiled mysteries.
    Not in every story, but in a few. Email me or leave a comment on this post* identifying Like a Thief in the Night‘s references to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet titles by February 1, 2008 and you’ll be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.
    

* Update: I just realized, if you post the answer to the comments, the answer won’t be a secret (duh). So, scratch that part about comments. Email me at [bettiesharpe at gmail dot com] or [bettie at bettiesharpe dot com]. I’ll make sure to check my spam folder so no mail gets lost, and I’ll post a list of entries I’ve received the day before the drawing so people can notify me if their name isn’t there.