Romancing Alix – 1st Anniversary

Today celebrates one fine, fun filled year on the net. I launched the blog, and @romancingAlix  on the 8th June 2011, and have been having fun ever since.

I raise a glass and *cheers* to everyone who has come by and followed along the way.

Some interesting stats.

I hit 35,000 visits yesterday

The most viewed post:  My Muse Deserves To Climax  with 3,705 views.

Search engines have brought 12, 946 people to the blog, then twitter,  with 811 views.

Since February wordpress tells me 4,333 have come from the United States of America,  1,118 from Australia and 968 from the United Kingdom with another 116 countries represented.

Where did it start?  It started with Romance.

How am I going to celebrate?  By introducing to you, an amazing talent who has started his blog today: Bleu Djinn  …I like the synchronizing and I love him. I worked with him almost fifteen years ago with his visual art and have always known I would work with him again. I believe he is a rare talent, and I am proud to share him with you. He’s a visual artist, a poet and a writer, and he is Bleu Djinn.

He sent me this email the other day. I had written to him and told him about the blog, my writing and a graphic novel idea.

“Jesus you saucy wench…some people get writers block….you get writers blog!

now bare with me [ as you know I am a bit slow ] I am just trying to get up to speed here…I sent you this 2 years ago

Santa Maria – Umbrailpass – Stilfserjoch The scenery was magnificent. Eventually I caught up with your party by using the GPS tracking chip that I had concealed previously on your watch, the expense of which ensured it was close to your person at all times.I saw the cow first. It was very dead. The Porche was next, it had flipped several meters up from the hulking, fresh roadkill. Dangling upside down from the the front seat was the man from the french couple, still dripping blood and wearing the manglled beasts horns in his chest. He was equally dead. It was clear, however, that your body was not in the wreck.

There were several clues as to what had transpired.

Obviously the lone cow had wandered into the middle of the bend in the road, this stretch was notorious for such random bovine obstructions. Taking the hairpin corner at  200 km an hour was madness in the light snow conditions, and even with spiked ice tires the driver couldn’t swerve to avoid this lurking dairy monster, the cows spine was shattered instantly. The driver was pulling 5 g’s inside the cabin but the cows head was ripped off and embedded in his torso, tearing the steering wheel along the way, meanwhile the wife on the passenger side had no seatbelt and was blasted through the windshield. I found her sprawled face down in the snow, the angle of her head was completely wrong. Freakishly her mouth was impaled on the branch from a tree stub, her skirt was riding up her open thighs and I could see her panties, even dead she had a splendid arse and for some reason she was wearing your driving boots. Evidently you both had good taste. The scene was macarbe and intensely stimulating and it was a while before I noticed the drag marks from the inverted car wreck behind me. I could see your body had been pulled from the carnage leaving a trail in the snow that petered off into the steep rocky terrain leading to the woods. When I examined the scenario even more closely I realised there were two sets of skid marks. Another car had been tailing your Porche. I guessed Interpol.

The Umbrailpass was’t merely notorious for intrusive cows. It was a popular smugglers route. Swiss customs officials would often use the tunnels to ambush their quarry.

I followed the trail left from your body into the sloping pine forrest and came quietly upon a frosted glade only to be confronted by a most astounding, beautiful and violent tableau. Without thinking I was sliding into preparation for a close quarter battle encounter. My weapon was already out, 10 and a half inches of brush polished black russian steel. I liked to use the Russian Nagant M1895. So fucking old school it was used to terminate the Zsars family….the suppressor made it extra long but combined with the revolvers original double action gas seal it was the first truly silent hand gun…even modern automatics often reach only 90% of its effectiveness. This was covert iron, and it was built to withstand Russian winters. I love killing pigs and it was swift, brutal and silent.
Still on a rush from the buzzkills I gazed in a kind of stunned rapture at your spreadeagled and unconcious form. The drugs and
cash had not been enough for our enterprising interpol agents. They were opportunistic as well and had other booty in mind. Yours.

Your wrists and ankles were pinned on tent pegs and you were strechted out and lashed over the charred bearskin seat covers they had pulled from the smoking car wreck, which was lucky as your already pale skin had a slight blue tinge with the onset of hypothermia. I couldnt help but notice your luxurious lingerie and the delicate lace on your fine mesh panties exquisitely stuffed into your mouth. You really had good taste after all, even if your dead girlfriend was deep throating a tree root while wearing your boots. I would fetch them for you later, I thought, wresting your knickers from your tongue.
Snapping out of my delightful reverie I ascertained you were still breathing and my main concern was now to encourage warmth and vigor into your stiff and splayed limbs. At this point I became aware that the blood spray patterns on your inner thighs were infact not yours but those of my first victim who had been on his knees between your legs. Perhaps I had got there in the nick of time after all…and then again, judging by your unconscious pout, perhaps you resented the interruption. I placed the warm gun muzzle on your stomach and went to work.

Which by the way has been further augmented with a much snappier ending and the addition of 10 and a half inches of brush polished black russian steel…

and you still owe me the next bit due to some kind of performance anxiety

!

however, tardy though you are, it appears you have over compensated in your delivery [ No Soft Soap et al ] a publishing site and a new monicker…

Well Alix,

I am impressed.

In answer to your questions…yes

you will receive your due filth…

comix and the like, in addition, moreover there is the question of punishment.

As you are no doubt aware, if there is one thing I cannot tolerate, it is lateness.

Now while your entrepreneurial excellence is to be lauded; and your writing did enlist in me a demon that was surely dealt with,

despite all these accomplishments, and probably due to them…

I know it is with wanton relish that you will accept your chastisement,

like the dirty little ginger punk haired school girl you still clearly are,

baring your alabaster arse cheeks in that musty office all those years ago;

and so your pounding shall be as follows;

and he proceeded to send me some sensational images and writing that I am going to share with you over the next few days.

Sincere Thanks.

Lovers and Friends

It is not often I hear a song that strikes multiple cords with me, but this one is a must share. I was extremely privlegded to see Sean O’Donnell, perform this song live with Battlefield Band , the lyrics are from a traditional Scottish poem.

Lovers and Friends

Ah, battles and wars 
Leave deep wounds and scars
And deep wounds are long in the memory
Where reflecting upon
All that is gone
Your life passes on til it’s ending

But the pleasure and pain
In our memories remain
And by memories, our time will be measured
And the time that we spend
With lovers and friends
Is time we remember with pleasure

So fill up your glass 
To the future and past
In harmony, be determined:
There’s more friendship poured out
In a bottle of stout
Than you’ll find in statutes and sermons

Listen to Sean sing it here… Lovers and Friends

introduce you to a genius: @sixthformpoet

This weekend I wanted to introduce you to a genius, he makes me smile almost everyday. He is so good I just want to share him around.

@sixthformpoet

“I may be a Sixth Form Poet, but fiddle with me and I become a Hot Firm Sexpot.”

“I am seeing a Harley Street therapist to help me with my kleptomania, and I have already taken something valuable from every session.”

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So I have created a SPOTLIGHT PAGE and then introduced him to Anna,
so you’ll meet him more intimately on Sunday. Enjoy!

Hello Darkness by Sam de Brito – Observations

Perception – Taste – and Context

Hello Darkness is the second novel for character Ned Jelli. A stand alone work, it gives the reader an inciteful portrait of a 39 year old man, struggling with how he perceives himself, the expectations he applies and the fact he is a romantic at heart. We join him in the search for the white picket fence ideal of love and life. How will he achieve this dream, and really, is the dream ever actually attainable?

Ned’s story is told intimately, he talks to us, shares the confusion of his thoughts, his reactions and his goals. I know Ned, I’ve meet him at bars, I’ve dated him, I was even married to him for a while. He is a breathing contemporary character, his story a love story, his perceptions confused, and the effects of his drug antics nudging at you throughout the story.

I applaud Sam de Brito for his ability in charactisation. So often you come across a literary bad boy, one dimensional in his narcissism and misogynistic in his control. However, Ned Jelli, is a layered, complex soul struggling to make sense of expectations, social conformities and ideal dreams. His voice is the raw voice of a man, not written to seduce a female reader, nor to be compared to or challenged by another man. Ned Jelli is put out there, herpes and all, allowing him to be your brother, friend, or even ex lover.

I was particularly excited by the way the sex was dealt with. An honest look, of lust, love and being lonely. I came away wanting to find a work that incorporated de Brito’s frankness in the erotica world. I wanted to read exchanges between the male and female thought processes, something that included dialogue and allowed an appreciation for their differences. I think it would be fascinating, tantalising and highly erotic. I’m yet to find something, but when I do, I’ll let you know.

The hard print copy of Hello Darkness is currently only available in Australia. The cover a montage of newspaper prints and a stock Getty image of a man shaving. The publicity descriptions disclose a man struggling to define himself through his work, not even a faint whisper to define it as a love story.

This throws question after question up for me, are male writers not allowed to be seen as writers of intimate thoughts and love stories, does a love story in publishing instantly then become a romance, but then romances are written by women and always need happy endings. Don’t they? I think the combination of these questions and the debates that ensue become one of the key recommendations I have for Hello Darkness. You get to indulge in de Brito’s art of characterisation and then confont ideas of perception, taste and context. Homogeneously constructed marketing plans and the definitions that pigeon hole works in the publishing world, help to create restraints that I ultimately think keep many works from readers, who would likely become fans.

I would like to see the publishers translate this work and re package it for an international audience. Focusing less on man defined by occupation and more on man living and battling himself while pursuing the romantic dream. Although Hello Darkness is Australian in it’s settling, Ned Jelli could very well be a man in London, Paris, Berlin or New York.

Here is the publishers blurb and links to getting yourself a copy of this work, check it out and let me know what you think.

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In paperback and digital formats, Hello Darkness available through Pan Macmillian Australia‘s website and the Kindle edition is available at Amazon 

In Ned Jelli’s family, journalism and siren-chasing in the news pit of Sydney is in the genes. And everyone knows, you can’t escape your genes, or your family. At 39, Ned’s life has come full circle and he finds himself back in the news empire where he started his career at 19. And for a lost boy like Ned, where 20 years have been spent eddying around the same small course of Bondi, babes, and booze, this is the final sign he’s going nowhere fast. Held back by his own fear and loathing, and searching for the perfect woman to fill the black hole where his heart should be, Ned continues the fatal and often fatally funny trajectory he began in The Lost Boys. Set among the newsrooms of Sydney, Hello Darkness is a sharp, demonic expose of the world of journalism from an insider, exploring the cost of being less than you hoped you would, and wishing for what is beyond your reach.

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Sam de Brito

Sam de Brito is a contemporary artist. His medium the written word. His latest two novels, fine literary portraiture. He captures the essence of a man, trapped by …read more

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From Egghead to Smut Peddler: A Publishing Journey with Ruthie Knox

I have the immense pleasure of welcoming the delightfully talented author Ruthie Knox.  Her newest release, RIDE WITH ME, is available from Loveswept (Random House) on February 13. I have followed Ruthie’s blog for a while and asked her to discuss the influence working as an editor has had on her, and to share with us the synopsis she used for her pitch to both agent and publisher. She has shared with us some wonderful insights, and I have thoroughly enjoyed having her visit.

I hope you enjoy Ruthie Knox as much as I do.

From Egghead to Smut Peddler: A Publishing Journey with Ruthie Knox

When I was seven years old, my family moved to a small college town in Ohio. At sixteen-almost-seventeen, I left for college in Iowa. At twenty-almost-twenty-one, I moved to North Carolina for grad school. And at twenty-five, I got my Ph.D., got married, and moved to Wisconsin.

Had there been any more school to go to, I would have signed right up, but having maxed out, I had to figure out what to do with myself next. I wanted to be an editor, and academics was what I knew, so I became an academic editor. I built on five years’ experience in acquisitions at a university press to launch a freelance copyediting and developmental editing business for primarily academic clients. Which is to say, I became an egghead editor for other eggheads. Perfect.

I did that for a while, and I took up knitting and became kind of obsessive about it, and then I had a baby, stopped knitting, went back to work, and got bored.

I need to be learning new things all the time, or I get restless and dissatisfied. After five years at a scholarly publisher and seven running my own editing business, I wasn’t encountering new challenges anymore. My husband suggested I might want to expand my business into a sort of academic editing empire. Instead, I started writing romance.

Mine is both a typical and an atypical background for an erotic romance novelist. On the one hand, it happens so often that woman have babies and start writing romance a few years later to stave off boredom, it’s almost a stereotype. On the other hand, I’m the only freelance academic editor I know whose goal in life is to make enough money writing sexy books that she never has to edit another bibliography.

And yet there is much that is useful about having moved from academic publishing into romance writing. For one thing, I understand how publishing works. Now, granted, I’ve never worked at a New York fiction publisher, but I have spent hundreds of hours assessing submissions, writing rejection letters, offering editorial advice to authors, and taking disgruntled authors off of ledges.

I have photocopied So. Many. Manuscripts.

More usefully, I’ve designed the interior of a book, processed and filed purchase orders from bookstores, written cover copy, and solicited blurbs. I’ve done contracts. I’ve drafted book budgets. I’ve observed how agents shape the author-publisher relationship. I’ve chased down permissions for dozens of photographs and song lyrics. I’ve watched designers make beautiful covers that authors hated and beautiful covers that authors loved. I’ve set up and manned a conference booth, sold books, talked to authors, and collapsed in an exhausted heap at the end of the day.

And, of course, as an editor, I’ve manipulated other people’s words in just about every way possible. All that before I’d written a single word of fiction.

Once I did start writing fiction, in October 2010, I wrote three full manuscripts pretty quickly. The third one was the story that became Ride with Me. I queried at the end of March 2011, signed with my agent in April, and accepted an offer on Ride with Me in July. Zoom!

I know this accomplishment involved some combination of good fortune, skill, and savvy, but as to what proportion of each, I have no idea. My opinion varies depending on whether my id, ego, or superego is operating the helm at any particular moment. Most of the time, I just figure I lucked out in a big way.

But I do think that my experiences as an editor were — and continue to be — helpful in a variety of ways. For one thing, it never hurts to have excellent mechanics. Close-to-flawless grammar and properly formatted manuscripts do have an edge over sloppy ones, particularly with persnickety people who care about that kind of thing. When your manuscript is clean, there’s nothing on the page to distract the person you’re trying to impress from the story you’re trying to tell.

For another thing, my experience in publishing has helped me to stave off any irrational fear of agents and editors. Yes, these people have a great deal of expertise in fiction that I lack. Yes, they are the gatekeepers who control whether or not I get published. But they’re also just people, like all of the agents and editors and authors I’ve worked with over the years. We’re all in this because we’re geeks who love to read good books.

A third advantage is that I understand, roughly speaking, how publishing works. I know what stages a book passes through, how labor is divided, what influences decision making. While there are differences from one type of publishing to another and between presses, there are a lot more similarities. And having been in the shoes of the contracts person, the copywriter, the editorial assistant, the copyeditor, and so on, I can understand and appreciate exactly what they’re bringing to my book.

Finally, being an editor has shaped my self-editing process. I tend to write a book from beginning to end, scene by scene, and I don’t consider a scene “done” and move on to the next one until I can read it through without a hitch. That usually requires a fairly rapid first draft, a slower second pass where I flesh out missing pieces and improve awkward language, a third pass for polishing, a fourth pass for polishing, sometimes a fifth pass for polishing . . . all before I’m ready to let anyone’s eyes on it but my own. I hold myself to a high standard.

At the same time, though, I know that written words aren’t precious. I’ve certainly hacked other people’s prose to pieces enough times to understand that it’s the ideas that matter. So if I hear from a beta reader (or from the whispering voice in my own head) that a chapter isn’t working and it needs to go, I wince a bit, and then I hack it off. If my editor tells me that the beginning of my manuscript isn’t doing what it needs to be doing, I’ll write a new beginning. I can always write more words, and chances are they’ll be better than the ones I had.

Through it all, I continue every day to seek new ways to learn more, to improve, to excel. Smut peddler or not, I’ll always be an egghead at heart.

Ride With Me Giveaway

Ruthie has been so generous to offer one randomly chosen lucky commenter a digital copy of Ride with Me. Winners will pick up their copy through Net Galley. So good luck!

The Beginning of the Synopsis for Ride with Me

Before the training wheels came off her first bike, Lexie Marshall knew she would ride the TransAmerica Trail one day. She just didn’t know she would ride it with a tall, dark, melancholy hermit.

Inspired by her parents’ stories of their own journey along the cross-country cycling route, Lexie prepares to spend the summer she turns thirty enjoying the greatest adventure of her life. She has the maps, the bike, and the legs to climb any pass between Oregon and the Atlantic. She’s anticipated every contingency and planned out the trip to the last detail. All she needs is a riding companion. Because it’s one thing to be a strong, independent woman on the streets of Portland, but it’s quite another to fall asleep alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere without worrying about axe murderers. She’s tried it. It can be done, but it really sucks.

So Lexie does what any woman in her situation would do: she places an ad in the Companions Wanted space on the Adventure Cycling website, carefully screens the respondents for signs of perviness, and picks out her biking buddy.

When Tom Geiger turns out to be two decades younger and about a hundred degrees hotter than Lexie had any reason to expect, she rolls with the punch but defends herself against her tendency to fall for all the wrong men by telling him she’s married. Which is funny, actually, because with a couple of broken engagements under her belt, Lexie has shoved marriage to the very bottom of the list of things she wants.

All Tom wants is a quiet summer alone, taking in the scenery and watching his front tire eat up 4,200 miles of asphalt. But his sister answered Lexie’s ad in his name, setting him up on the bicycling equivalent of a blind date, and by the time he finds out about it, he can’t stomach the idea of backing out and forcing Lexie to either give up her trip or ride alone. He decides to do the honorable thing and ride with her, at least until he can find her a more suitable companion.

Tom knows too well that this impulse to play the hero is his Achilles heel. Five years ago, it ruined his life. <details redacted> Since then, he’s been working as a bike mechanic, cycling in some of the world’s remotest places, and spending as little time around other people as possible. The last thing he wants is to travel across the country with an uptight, controlling woman who talks too much. Particularly a married woman whose ass looks so fine in black spandex, it’s literally painful to ride behind her.

It doesn’t help that the two of them strike sparks off one another from the beginning. Lexie finds Tom so infuriating, she stops speaking to him ten miles into the ride. To her chagrin, she also finds him so intriguing that when he still hasn’t broken the silence on day three, she challenges him to a hot-sauce-eating duel at a Mexican restaurant in the hope he’ll cave and say something, even if it’s “Holy shit, that’s hot!” By the time six bottles of sauce have bit the dust, Tom and Lexie have begun to play nice — and to worry they may have ignited a blaze they can’t put out.

Click here to find Ride With Me at Random House.

New Spotlight Section

Introducing a new spotlight section of the blog, where I will be posting a profile page of interesting, amazing and talented people I want to share with you.

The first profile is author Ruthie Knox.

Click Here or on her image to check out her profile page.

and on Monday she will be guest blogging with a great  post entitled:

From Egghead to Smut Peddler: A Publishing Journey with Ruthie Knox

I look forward to Spotlighting many different wonderful and amazing people to share with you.

SnapShot 51 – a poem by ridingwild

This week, I was extremely fortunate and came across Wild Ride, the wonderful blog of a very talented sensual erotic writer, he posts under the name ridingwild. He often responds to an image in a poetic form. I have posted one of my many favourites, to show you how exciting his writing is.

SNAPSHOT 51

she loved this game
playing the semi-innocent
quietly inciting things with men of supposed stature
arranging for insidious filth to occur
in perfectly planned moments
while pretending to be the submissive being taken
she had a whirling fierce mind that could slay any corporate dragon
and she knew it was her fated right to own the throne she vied for
she also had carnal skills no man there had ever tasted
in their wildest dirty dreams
and she meant to use all of her stunning gifts
to rise to the heights that belonged to her in this world
in a setting where only the boys thought they should rule
it was their own fault for not playing fair
and she meant to show them the error of their idiotic ways

soon she would have them wrapped about her little finger
and writhing happily under her wet thumb
as easily as her fists clamped these panting desperate cocks
and bent them into spitting submission
after hours of torturous promise
they would indeed kneel and worship her in their own wanton greed
agreeing to do things for her pleasure
and for the brilliance of her oncoming coup
beyond their kinkiest and most devious imaginings
power would soon shift to the goddess
as it was always meant to
and they would become her minions in all things

it was good to be queen, the princess smiled
as she climbed the power play mountain
from the dirty backside
laughing through these orgasmic machinations
all the obscenely artful way