Notes from the Edge

Helloo Out There! New Title to Announce!

2011-09-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

Wow, I think there may have been two major format changes on this blog site since I last posted! Well, we're about to have a flurry of publications from good ol' Sybaritic Press. I am now announcing two -- one of which is long overdue.

Marie Lecrivain has a new collection of wonderful short stories called Bitchess. Here's the synopsis from the back cover:

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. - Aristotle
The characters in Bitchess, the new collection of short fiction by Marie Lecrivain, are driven by one, some or all of these causes. They are from all manner of moments in time and place and walks of life who have all embraced the truth of their existence for better or for worse. Whether it is the office drone who discovers the terrifying power of simply speaking her mind or the nebbish, long suffering salaryman who learns how liberating one selfish act can be or the powerful, blood thirsty royal who learns that her obedient subjects will only suffer the horrific loss of their children for so long, each must succumb to their true nature no matter where that leads. The results are stories that are funny and tragic and empowering and always riveting.

It's available on Amazon.com in print or Smashwords as any form of e-book out there.

Long, long overdue is the announcement of Brenda Petrakos' Country Fixins', a collection of story vignettes about a small town, lonely housewife drawn to a forbidden love. You can find purchasing info HERE.

Many more announcements to come including work from an exciting new author, another collection of provocative tales from Demon Under Glass and much more! Sybaritic Press is back, baby!

New Title! Demonspawn: On The Run

2008-08-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

It's finally here in print and available on amazon.com. The latest adventures of Simon Molinar, the centuries old vampire and his reluctant companion, Dr. Joe McKay can be found here:

http://sybpress.com/titles.htm#OnTheRun

Find the links for the print and e-book versions.

Enjoy!

The Editrixes

New Title! 'A Soldier's Fate' is Available Now

2008-07-25T03:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a while in coming, but Sybaritic Press has a new title. A Soldier's Fate is available now through Amazon.com. We decided to change distributors with the release of this title wihout calculating the learning curve for submission. we apologize for the delay. Please, enjoy the first of the new titles set for this summer.

Important Plea from the LA Lit Scene

2008-02-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

Dear All:
Please take a moment to read this message, and then to send an email to Bill Rosenthal (cc Rocky Delgadillo) to save Beyond Baroque from closing its doors.

Thank you.

Regards,

Marie Lecrivain PS: Please forward this message to interested parties.

The more response, the greater the chance we have of staying open. Thanks!

Dear Everyone:

Here's the 411 on the situation.

After years of hard work on the part of Fred Dewey and othersadvocating for Beyond Baroque, City Councilman Bill Rosendahl agreedat the end of fall 2007 to extend Beyond Baroque's lease of thebuilding at 681 Venice Blvd. for another 25 years. We on the Board ofTrustees went off into the holidays relieved that the issue hadfinally been resolved and that Beyond Baroque's homestead was secure.I was stunned to learn last night that last week, CouncilmanRosendahl was informed by City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's officethat the City Attorney wants to put the lease to 681 Venice Blvd. upfor an auction process for other non-profits to bid on. This despitethe facts that:1) It is generally up to the City Councilman of a given councildistrict to determine how city property assets are parsed out forpublic use;2) 681 Venice Blvd. has been Beyond Baroque's home for nearly 40years;3) Beyond Baroque's staff and supporters have put their time, money,and talents into not only keeping up and improving the building andits facilities, but also into beautifying its landscape.This new snag may be Mr. Delgadillo's way of playing politics withCouncilman Rosendahl, but he has ordered a hearing to decide thematter NEXT TUESDAY. That's right. Rocky gives us until Tuesday,February 19, to do something about this.We need to take action NOW.Please send an e-mail to City Councilman Bill Rosendahl(Councilman.Rosendahl@lacity.org) to thank him for supporting the 25-year lease renewal for Beyond Baroque and to let him know that yousupport him in his battle to keep Beyond Baroque in its rightfulhome. IMPORTANT! Be sure to cc: the City Attorney(Rocky.Delgadillo@lacity.org) on your e-mail. Large numbers of e-mails WILL get their attention. It does not have to be a long e-mail.You can personalize it by adding a few words about what BeyondBaroque means to you as a resident of Los Angeles.If you aren't from L.A., please tell them that Beyond Baroque is animportant reason for you to keep coming back to Venice and to LosAngeles. If you are from out of state or out of the countryaltogether, please talk about how you know of Beyond Baroque'soutstanding reputation and why it's important for Los Angeles toprotect and sustain its only literary arts center.Be polite and supportive so that both parties understand that keepingBeyond Baroque exactly where it is is a positive move that benefitseveryone.Do this tonight or tomorrow.

The hearing is on Tuesday.

I thank you for taking action.

Much love and in solidarity,
Amélie Frank
Member, Board of Trustees
Beyond Baroquehttp://www.beyondbaroque.org/
http://www.myspace.com/beyondbaroque

Naked Book Reading

2008-01-20T13:09:00.000-08:00

Not the author! Our own Len Richmond is seen here giving a reading from his superbly funny and sexy, Naked in Paradise. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcsq5VxMI8g

Film From Sybpress Author's Story

2008-01-13T13:12:00.000-08:00

And now a message from our own Brenda Petrakos, author of Stories from the Inside Edge:

Just wanted to let you know that our short film COP will be screening at the Cinema Slam event in Park City!

We will have two screenings, one on January 22nd at 11am and one on the 24th at 10am. While we're not in Sundance, Slamdance, or any of the dances, it should be fun to screen on Main Street in the heart of the festival!!!!Details are below. If you are planning to go to Park City, let us know. If not, let your friends know!

For info:

http://www.mandy.com/1/board2.cfm?v=25695150

New Year's Wishes

2007-12-31T13:56:00.000-08:00

From the Staff Of Sybaritic Press (left), we'd like to thank our authors, readers, family and friends for bearing with us through a tumultuous year. Despite the adversity, we released some wonderful titles and have more great fiction, poetry and erotica in store for 2008.

Have a happy, healthy and safe 2008. Don't forget to Celebrate!

Happy New Year!

The Editrix Speaks

2007-12-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

Our own Marie Lecrivain has some wonderfully witty musings on life and Barberella at Media Cake. Check it out at:

http://www.mediacakemagazine.com/cake_spring_07_081.htm

Enjoy!

'Naked" signing in LA!

2007-12-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

Len Richmond will be signing his sensational new book, "Naked in Paradise' at A Different Light bookstore in West Whoolywood on Dec. 13th. For details go to the News section of http://sybpress.com

Hear Him Roar!

2007-11-25T16:06:00.001-08:00

Len Richmond’s website is live. His novel, Naked in Paradise, is doing very well and he has some signings coming up next month. For more info and to read his delightful bon mots on just about any topic, click here.

Markets for GLBT fiction

2007-10-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

Check out the December issue of Writer's Digest. There is an article on the state of GLBT fiction, as well as a list of markets. It also discusses, to some extent, who makes up the market... they (correctly, I think) mentioned that the gay fiction market consists of gay men and straight women (I knew that from 30-odd years of writing slash!) Some of the articles in each issue are available on-line; I haven't checked the site lately to see which ones.

Naked Bestseller!

2007-10-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

Naked in Paradise is number 7 in amazon.com's List of Hot New Gay Fiction and 31st in the overall Gay Fiction bestseller list! Congratulations Len!

http://sybpress.com/number7.pdf

http://sybpress.com/number31.pdf

Book Fair Part Deux

2007-10-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

Read the full Blog at D.L.Warner's Blog

Things I Forgot

I don’t know how I could forget these incidents at the West Hollywood Book Fair. Maybe my mind blocked them out. For those fans of Herman Melville and who isin’t? Marie and I witnessed a performance piece of Moby Dick by a guy laying across two chairs in an all white suit making whale sounds while someone played music and did narration. Unfortunately, there was no Queequeg. One of my favorite statements from the Book Fair was from a woman who went from a consultation on a book proposal to ranting about Opera. ‘I’m so over LaBohem. She should take some panicillin and get over herself.’ I have no idea on how we got on the topic. But the statement of the day belongs to Len Richmond’s mother (she’s the owner of the drunken parrot, Chicky). She’s led quite the interesting life. “You know, I think I’ve handled 10,000 penises in my lifetime,” sbe informed me. Fortunately, I was didn’t have any liquid in my mouth at the time. And she wasn’t a proctologist, either. We were all impressed.

Len Richmond Rocks

Speaking of Len Richmond, Naked in Paradise debuted in the top 50 of amazon.com’s list of hot new books in Gay Fiction. We’ve had inquiries from book stores in the US, the UK, France and Austrailia. It’s also carried on TLA.com, Powells.com and libreriauniversitaria.it . We’re expecting reviews from some really great places soon.

Drunk Parrot, Watergate and Books

2007-10-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

Book Fair and Watergate

for more pics go to DL Warner's Blog

Difficulties in getting boxes of books, magnets, 40 lbs of lube and a 7 by 8 foot sign across town aside, the West Hollywood Book Fair was a success for Sybaritic Press. We were in the same area as last year, but the booths were reconfigured so the sun wasn’t as much of a problem after 12 noon. We had our stock well in advance this year, so we didn’t have the angst over having a sparse spread. Jon’s new signage look great. I was glad. He’d lost a lot of sleep putting on the final touches the night before. Our neighbors across the way were the The Los Angeles Science Fiction Society. They had some really big authors as guests, which was cool to listen in on. But I was amused about how much the volunteers talked about slash between the authors. I tried not to show any reaction lest I get drawn in and distracted from my booth. The organizers of the Book fair were to put us in that area. And as always, they were well organzed and very helpful.

The strangeness began early. We were visited by a goth pair who had a big, fluffy, annoyed kitty in something that looked like a baby coach. There were the West Hollywood Cheerleaders. The one in the photo is the one that shaved his beard. And then there was the well dressed gentleman in the briefcase who passed by a couple of time. Each time, he eyed our booth nervously. I realized that it was John W. Dean, who was speaking at one of the stages. In the name of my journalism professors, I really wanted him to come closer and perhaps, sample some of our wares. Alas, he did not. However, that was not the end of the strangeness at the booth.

Drunken Parrot

We had a drunken parrot in our booth. And that wasn’t the weirdest part. No, wait...I think that was the weirdest part of the day. But there was a lot of strangeness prior to the drunken parrot. Now, I have to clarify, the bird didn’t arrive drunk. He was a little freaked out from the car ride, but he was sober upon arrival. The parrot belongs to Len Richmond’s 80-something year old mother. She owns the sex toy factory that provided the free mini bottles of lube for the table. The African Gray Parrot is called Chicky. He didn’t talk at the booth, but we hear he yacks up a storm at home. Anyway, Len’s mother and brother were in attendance for the debut of Naked in Paradise. I had brought a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate the launch and our pleasant and successful collaboration. I gave a cup to Len’s mother who promptly fed some to Chicky. We thus had a drunken parrot in our booth. And it turns out that Chicky can be a frisky drunk and is apparently gay. He was later making out with one of the popcorn boys I found wandering around the booths promoting Gays on Film. Once I saw them, I had to bring them over to share with everyone.

But back to Naked in Paradise, Len and his friends were a whole lot of fun in the booth. They bring a joy and mayhem that’s a real treat to witness. His book was also well-received. The cover garnered a few sales before he arrived, and it was sold out by the time he and his mom trundled away. The title will be carried at the A Different Light bookstores and a store in London. It’s well ranked on Amazon, and it’s only been out a week or so. We’re very pleased and hope do do more events with Len, his Mom and hopefully, Chicky.

Overall, Sybaritic Press did very well at the fair. In addition to Len Richmond’s title, Brenda Petrakos’ Stories From the Inside Edge did very well. One man bought a copy of all of our homoerotic content and another bought all of my titles. We had a great, if exhausting day and look forward to participating next year.

New Title! Naked in Paradise

2007-09-23T16:29:00.000-07:00

Naked in Paradise

by Len Richmond

THE TRUE STORY OF THREE MEN IN LOVE
Recovering from his break-up with the handsome, hard-drinking Mikey, the author tries gay personal ads—but mostly ends up deflowering curious straight men. Then he meets Kieran, a naive, hot college guy precisely half his age, who’s hungry for new sex, new drugs, and new experiences. The two fall in love and all's going great, until...Mikey comes back, and he falls for Kieran too. Eventually, an affectionate ménage à trois develops between this trio of erotic neurotics, and the question becomes, can they navigate the choppy waters of a three-way relationship without rules? Got to:

http://www.sybpress.com/titles.htm#Naked

For the Amazon link!

An American from Santa Monica, California, LEN RICHMOND created and co-wrote one of the most popular comedy series in British Television. Agony, about an advice columnist whose life is in disarray, has been broadcast in 24 countries (including twice on PBS). The series (starring Maureen Lipman) was nominated for numerous BAFTA and Writer’s Guild Awards, and won the AGLA Media Award for the "Responsible portrayal of its gay and lesbian characters".

Len is co-editor of "The Gay Liberation Book" (Ramparts Press), which had original contributions from John Lennon, William Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Isherwood. It was a landmark book, stocked extensively in libraries, and used as a course text in Universities. It was followed several years later by The New Gay Liberation Book, which Len also co-edited.
More recently, he wrote and directed an award-winning independent feature film. "A Dirty Little Business" (ThinkFilm) is a romantic comedy set in the sex toy business. It stars Michael York, Brian Cox, and Beverly D’Angelo, with an original musical score by Erasure.

States of Independence

2007-09-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

What ARE You Asking?

I’m often asked ‘Why do you do your own publishing?’ The question is born out of genuine curiosity from some of the writers. From others, there is the underlying question of whether or not I had tried ‘traditional publishers’ or whether or not I could hack it in that arena. The answer to the former is yes and involves quite a long saga, and the answer to the latter is, I don’t really know. The messages I got in response to various submissions were, to quote Dracula on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, ‘strange and off-putting.’The reason I’m addressing this subject now is that my friend Bruce (of the hot sauce from last week’s blog) sent me a funny though all too painful note from Neil Gaiman’s. The passage is under ‘Why it’s sometimes better to write it first.’ And it featured a link to a youtube video of a writer’s meeting with an editor. That meeting not only reminded me of the rejection letters I used to received from submissions, it is painfully representative of pitch meetings I have (had one not too long ago) for films. After seeing that this highly successful writer was still having such encounters with those who pay him, I was a little depressed, but even more resolute about the independent path.

Black Like Me?

I went to Graduate School for Creative Writing with a full fellowship. My professors were published writers who enjoyed critical acclaim. Our guest speakers were famous in publishing circles and we were given the opportunity to have them read our book proposals and whole novels. Thus, I did not submit cold to editors at mainstream publishers. I had letters of introduction from my advisors and often from the guest lecturers. One of them, David Rieff was an editor at Farrar Strauss and Giroux when he got John Sayles to read my thesis novel. Both of them gave me lovely letters of recommendation. That round of submissions ended with letters telling me that I was either not Toni Morrison enough or not Terry McMillan enough. One told me that my Black Experience was not quite black enough for the market at that time. Since my non-genre prose is autobiographical, I found this to be very strange, indeed. I had never not been Black enough for anything else in my life. I didn’t know what else to do, so I shelved the novel until fairly recently.States of RealityThe other novel I wrote during those years was about my experience working as a bar tender at Trump Plaza during the 80s and living in a house full of men involved in all manner of shady activities. The protagonist is based on a man I’ve known since my parents rented vacations homes in his neighborhood when I was a teenager. He is a brilliant, irreverent ladies man whose philosophy of life could get him called a pig among the kinder terms. Yet he has a following of women from all walks of life that continues to this day. My advisor on this book wrote mysteries under a pen name that sold very well and he was critically acclaimed under his own name. He gave me wonderful letters as well. One editor like the book but took exception to the protagonist, calling him unrealistic. ‘No man like that could have women with any intelligence and common sense falling all over him,’ she declared. And I had toned down what I had witnessed that summer. I shelved that book as well and refused to give the real life man the editor’s contact info.I was not writing romances or any other genre fiction at the time. My head had been full of the prose I was writing to complete my degree. As a diversion though, I was writing scripts. The Privateers was born then as a Star Trek: The Next Generation script. That got me an agent. A few years later, Jon and I had a script optioned from by an LA production company. Since I was making more headway with scripts, I abandoned the novel until a few years ago.

LaLa Land

Before I continue on frustrating meetings, a word about the city I live in. The mindset here is not like any other place in the US. Here is a prime example of an Angelo. The scariest part of that video is these women have driver's licenses.Jon and I have had over a decade of meetings like the one in that writer video. We have come to prefer finding the money on our own and producing our own films. Recently, we were in the middle of negotiating a very complex relationship with another company to produce the Privateers. They had looked at my list of carefully chosen leading men (people who could handle very formal dialogue and that could get the funding required) and had a better idea: Keanu Reeves. Yep, that’s the name I think of to handle dialogue that is written in very formal English. And when I think of the next Errol Flynn, he pops immediately to mind. In another meeting about The Privateers, we were told our script was too long with too much dialogue, so could we add a 20 minute prologue? I’ve had meetings about our edgy gay detective thriller, Freak Experts that ended when someone said, ‘this is an amazing script, but do they both have to be men?’ I don’t know how the gay part would work if one of them was a woman, so that didn’t get far. Even people I’ve known in the industry who seem wedded to going the studio route occasionally balk at the outrageous. Ron Moore walk away from the WB’s Dragonriders of Pern when they insisted on making the dialogue ‘more Buffy.’ Though we still can’t get him to do an independent production.Currently, we our working with independent funding sources who have produced films recently and who have a good record for selling films. The meetings have been much more productive and far less frustrating....so far.

Raison D'etre

But, back to publishing. When the technology changed enough that publishing independently was feasible, I thought about writing books again. Musicians make and distribute their own CDs when they start out. Independent film is viewed with great reverence now. I view independent publishing in the same vein. The books are distributed by one of the biggest companies around. They get into brick and mortar stores. In the case of A Soldier’s Choice, the sales keep my ranking to no higher than 300k or so (among millions of titles, that’s not bad). It’s been ranked as high as #8 on the gay erotica list. Independent reviews of all of my titles have been positive. On the whole, Independent publishing has been creatively satisfying. I can’t retire on my earnings, but then Toni Morrison only retired after she won the Nobel Prize. So, I’m doing okay on my own, and I’m not wondering about my blackness.

Book Fair Updates and Hunchbacks

2007-09-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

Cross posted with D.L. Warner's Blog

We’re all busily prepping for the Book Fair. Jon is making new singage while I’m making dozens of book cover magnets (if we have a book cover, it likely has a magnet). Our newest author Len Richmond’s contribution to the promo giveaways is a bucket of tubes of lube with his title, Naked In Paradise, emblazed on it along with our web address (I should have never opened that e-mail at the day job. Suddenly everyone needed to be hovering over my shoulder). Our Exhibitors Schedule is up on the Official Site for the West Hollywood Bookfair . It sort of runs into the Tokyopop schedule, but, what can you do? We don’t know where our booth will be this year. Last year it was next to the LA Coronor’s Office (a cool booth, believe it or not). I’d like to stay where we were, but I’d accept being next to Tom of Finland or the aforementioned Tokyopop. Each has a lot of traffic. In addition to our authors, we may have Nikulainen and Sarianna in costume. We may even have our very own booth hunchback. No, I really can’t explain that, but I’m certain the photos will be really interesting.

New Title! 'Seilschaft' is Finally Available in English

2007-08-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce that the e-book version of Seilschaft, the best selling gay erotica novel in Germany, is now available in English. The print edition will follow soon. This novel was well reviewed and very popular in Germany as you can see below:

"Finally the plot of a fight for dominance - and a very exciting fight by the way - has been put out of the dungeons and darkrooms and set 'under the free sky'".Translated from a review for Seilschaft in "Die Besten" (The Best), a catalogue of recommendations by Bruno Gmuender, Berlin, spring 2006.

"Mountaineering can be so sexy!... With much psychological sensitivity the authors show the 'walk on the edge' between deep friendship and hurt pride. Surprising turns happen, but one thing stays the same: the hot and hard, uncompromising sex they share."Translated from a review for Seilschaft in the biggest Germnan gay magazine, "Maenner aktuell", June 2006

For a link to instant downloads and a peek at the gorgeous cover, go to:

http://www.sybpress.com/titles.htm#Seilschaft

Enjoy!

Mourning Mentors

2007-07-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

I lost another mentor this week. And her passing made me finally address the losses I’ve had this year. Kathleen E. Woodiwiss died this week. She was a romance novelist who blazed onto the scene in the 70s. Her work was groundgreaking because her stories did not end with a chaste kiss on the lips. Oh, no. there was acutal sex in her books. It was wonderfully, sensual sex and there was quite a bit of it. Moreover, the heroine’s had some backbone, and the couples stayed together throughout the novel. That is a style I’ve longed admired and emulate in my own erotic works. Ms. Woodiwiss wrote highly engaging works that kept me enthralled (and thoroughly educated) in my teen years. Her first and most famous novel was The Flame and the Flower, but my favorite was Shanna. That may be because it had pirates in it at some point. And the hero, Ruark Beauchamp (I can remember his name off the top of my head, but still nothing from my economics classes), had a wicked sense of humor. She also inspired me to pick up a pen and give romnace writing a try. I owe her a great deal.

The other mentor I lost was a personal one. He died in January while we were still in the throes of finding an apartment. I couldn’t cope with his passing then. Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist and poet. We met when he was a guest lecturer in my Graduate Writing Program at Temple University in the late 80s and kept in touch for a long time after that. He had seen a great deal of violence in his life covering the war in Angola, the fall of the Shah and Hallie Selassie, yet he was a gentle soul with a dry wit and a great sense of humor. His writing was much more than journalistic coverage of events. They were works of literature. I will always love him for agreeing with me that Jack Keroac had no deep insight into life in the US (what a fight that started during one lecture), and for telling me that I had talent as a writer at a time I really needed to hear it. His advice proved to be dead on. It has taken me decades of living to finally begin writing about a subject I was working on back when we met. Ryszard said I needed perspective to really write well about something close to my heart. It’s taken twenty years, but I’m finally ready to try. I’ll have a Heineken in his honor today to remember the night my fellow students took him bar hopping to talk about jazz and drink beer. It scandalized the Dean which I think tickled Ryszard to no end.

I am aware that these are divergent sources of inspriation, but that is the way of things with some writers. I caused no end of consternation in my graduate program. I think Ryszard admired that as well.

Great New Review!

2007-07-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

Rachel Kahn's 10 for Everything was just reviewed by Mediacake Magazine. It's an amazing review! Check it out at:

http://www.mediacakemagazine.com/cake_spring_07_045.htm

To order the book, go to:

http://sybpress.com

The Editrixes

New Title! 10 for Everything

2007-06-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

We are very pleased to announce that Rachel Kann's '10 for Everything' is now available on amazon.com.

Got to:
http://sybpress.com/titles.htm#everything

Here's what people are saying about this amazing collection:

"Rachel Kann has crafted an addictive parallel universe, where funky little worlds shift and shudder, and characters are deftly etched and blessed with her gleefully skewed perspective. The sharp lyricism of these stories, which practically beg to be read aloud, unmask Ms. Kann for the poet she is, and that unpredictability of language is nothing less than a revelation." Patricia Smith, Teahouse of the Almighty (National Poetry Series Winner,) Four Time National Poetry Slam Champion
"Anyone lucky enough to hear Rachel Kann perform knows that this woman has a Voice. What a thrill to see this voice translated into fiction, into a wide range of other voices, voices that burn right through the page with their yearning for, and fear of, connection. She’s crafted stories that are fresh and surprising, with a true human heartbeat." Gayle Brandeis, The Book of Dead Birds (Bellwether Prize for Fiction Winner)
"Like all genre-tweaking geniuses, Rachel Kann’s work adds a perspective to the aesthetic landscape we didn’t even know was missing. Now that she’s here she seems obvious, even essential." Kotori Magazine

Multi-Media Brenda! 'See' A Story from the Inside Edge

2007-06-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Sybartic's own Brenda Petrakos has a new website for Stories From the Inside Edge up at:

http://www.storiesfromtheinsideedge.com/

Follow the links on the website to listen to a reading of Violet's Bed or this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW7vo0ofPE0

To see a reading of the same story.

Enjoy!

The Tour Begins!

2007-06-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

Come see Brenda Petrakos and Marie Lecrivain @ Highland Perk !When: 6/13/07Time: 8 pmWhere: Highland Perk, 5930 York Ave., Highland Park (1 mile west of Figueroa) (323) 257-0089.Host: James "Sexy Pisces" Maverick

Cost: FREE!

Brenda Petrakos, author of Stories From the Inside Edge, storyteller, actress, entrepid, lovely and amazing all the way around!Marie Lecrivain, author of "Nihilistic Foibles: stories about losers who aren't beautiful, but you love them anyway," editor of poeticdiversity, and one who can occasionally play well with others.Stay tuned for more times and dates for Triune Goddesshead Tour of poetry: Rachel Kann, Brenda Petrakos, and Marie Lecrivain!

Visit Brenda's and see a performance of one of her stories HERE!

Visit her blog here and get a preview of our newest title 10 for Everything by Rachel Kann. The cover is in Brenda's Friend's page:

http://www.myspace.com/petraland

Santa Monica Book Fair

2007-05-30T02:43:00.000-07:00

It was a small event, but it was well attended by those interested in the LA Literary scene. The send annual Santa Monica book sponsored by Beyond Baroque was a great outing for Sybaritic Press. New authors Brenda Petrakos (Stories from the Inside Edge - on Amazon.com now) and Rachel Kann (10 for everything -- out very soon) wowed the audience with perfromances of their riveting short prose. We even had some press coverage that we'll share soon. It was a great day to meet other small press publishers, enjoy some fine talent and sell some books. More is coming soon as Brenda, Rachel and co-publisher Marie hit the road with a series of summer performances. Stay tuned here for details.

Book Fair!

2007-05-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

28 May, Monday - 10:30 AM to 6 PM SMALL PRESS BOOK FAIR at the CHURCH IN OCEAN PARK Join BEYOND BAROQUE authors (to be announced) in a Memorial Day celebration of small presses at this 2nd Annual Small Press Book Fair at the Church in Ocean Park. The fair is from 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM, and Beyond Baroque authors will be reading from 12:20 - 12:35 PM. A donation at the door is suggested, proceeds going to the social justice work of the Church in Ocean Park. Refreshments will be provided. Address: The Church in Ocean Park, 235 Hill Street, Santa Monica, CA. Phone: 310-828-3951

Come, visit the crack Sypbress team and buy some great books. Spread the word.

Book Launch Extravaganza

2007-05-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

On Saturday May 19th, the Staff of Sybaritic Press was invited to help launch the brilliant book of short stories by Brenda Petrakos. The launch for Stories from the Inside Edge was not a typical one. Oh no. Brenda is an accomplished performer and former stand-up comedian who is also a film maker. The audience who came out and filled the Santa Monica venue to capacity was treated to a multi-media performance of selections from the collection. The breadth and dept of these stories was really put on display by the varied performances from an eclectic group of individuals. There was the tired, put upon wage slave thwarted from a long anticipated evening underwear clad sprawl in an easy chair with a TV and the beloved remote by the words men most dread hearing: We Need to Talk. Then there was the wrenching and poignant Steps, in which a woman considers the miracle of sitting on her very own front steps after considering the most extreme action a mother could take against her children in time of extreme crisis. The high point of the performance was a short film of the first story in the collection. Cop is the tale of a man with a most unusual fetish that makes him as intriguing as it makes him sad.

Brenda sold a lot of books and CDs and impressed a throng of admirers. There was good food and drink and a great time had by all. Our newest author will be touring the region this summer, so there will be opportunities to hear some of the performances for those not in Los Angeles proper. Stay tuned for details.

To order Stories from the inside edge, go to: http://sybpress.com/titles.htm#Inside

New Title!

2007-05-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

We are very excited about Stories from the Inside Edge by Brenda Petrakos. It is an exquisite collection of short fiction that is moving on many, many levels. You can find more information at:

http://sybpress.com/titles.htm#Inside

Brenda will be doing a number of performances and signings starting this month. Stay tuned for more announcements.

Co-Publisher and New Author on Internet Radio Tomorrow 5/13!

2007-05-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

From: World Wide Word Radio NetworkDate: May 11, 2007 8:59 PM

World Wide Word Radio Network is proud to present an afternoon with Blog Talk Radio show host Marie Lecrivain, executive editor/publisher of poeticdiversity. Marie will be interviewing the incredible Rachel Kann , and a surprise guest host - this Sunday, May 13, 2007 at 12:00pm PST on Blog Talk Radio!

For those of you who are not sure who the lovely and talented Rachel Kann is, you can visit her at her personal website http://www.inspirachel.com/ or at the poeticdiversity.org website. You'll find a bio and postings of her poetry at both sites.

Rachel is also a fellow myspacer. You can check out her myspace HERE http://myspace.com/rachelkann and subscribe to her blog.

This is one interview you don't want to miss. Be sure to tune in and turn it up Sunday at noon PST!

Rachel Kann's new book, 10 for everything, debuts this month from Sybaritic Press.

Our Vida Locas

2007-04-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

Those of you familiar with my personal blog know that I tend to ramble, but always with an overall theme in mind. This one is about publishing...really. Well, it’s about publishing in general and why things take as long as they do for Sybaritic Press in particular.

Being a micro-media mogul keeps me very busy, but it generally pays...monetarily, it’s micro as well. In 2006, I actually spent the year free-lancing for other producers in the industry doing various pre-production duties, but that pay is erratic and none of the films have left the pre-production level. Thus, we have always had to have day jobs – even when we were shooting the feature film or meeting actors for pricey breakfasts in Beverly Hills or even going to Cannes. Like most in the industrial world, 10 hours of our days, five days a week are already occupied by a full-time job(I’m counting transportation). We do all of those other creative things in the time left.

For a long while, Jon and I were working in retail in the Entitlement Zone (defined as a geographical area from Robertson Blvd west to the ocean and encompassing from Beverly Hills to Malibu west and south to Rancho Palos Verdes where consumers are used to getting everything they want from a retail or service even if they have no idea what that is or are completely unprepared for the transaction. For example, if I went to my post office back in Philly with a brightly wrapped gift and no shipping box or shipping information and announced that I wanted the gift mailed, the postal clerk would not only toss me out of the line, she/he may chase me down the street while flinging the box’s contents at me. In the Entitlement Zone, the clerk selects a shipping box, packs it and helps fill out the label while a line of people wait. This kind of service with endless patience gets old after a few years.

I had been working at Borders Books and Music in Santa Monica. That’s where I met my stalwart partner, Marie and many of my close friends. And that’s where we learned about how much independent publishing there was out there and how it worked. But we were also dealing with the denizens of the Entitlement Zone and tourists. There are many regular customers who were very disappointed that our store didn’t actually have a personal shopper. It was just one employee (me) who preferred to find everything myself and get them out of my hair as quickly as possible. After a few Christmases, that gets tiresome. The resignations got ugly as the years passed for us on the 3^rd Street Promenade or Traumenade. No one left, as often threatened, naked shouting ‘There were FOUR lights’ (if you know what that’s from, you watch too much TV), but there was shouting involved in some of the departures. I left when I found myself snapping at the few customers I actually liked. Marie, well Marie’s attitude by that time was summed up by a drawing by a fellow employee.

Meanwhile, Jon was at Puzzle Zoo which was literally next door to Borders. It is the coolest toy store in the US (honestly, it won an award for that). And the owners were super cool about Jon’s leaving for films and for Cannes and what not. But the Entitlement Zone trumps cool and our appetite for action figures. His departure was not dramatic and it came after ten years. After a long and slow burn out, he left. By comparison, one of his co-workers, a stand-up comedian was prompted to leave after one too many quips at customers with no sense of humor. Our particular favorite was: ‘When you die, munchkins sing.’ Note to retail managers, just don’t put a stand-up comedian on the sales floor in the Entitlement Zone.

Our departures from retail lead to the wacky world of the temp employee. I had some great jobs with great pay. My favorite was a receptionist at USC. The building was next to the swimming pool where the Olympic-bound swimmers and divers trained. I found that to be fine place to have lunch. Jon really enjoyed the law office full of office lovelies who found him to be very charming. But temping gets tiring as well after a few years. I was in the market for some stability while we wrestled with getting the really big films through development.

We found a very interesting job that suits our schedules for meetings and has a laid back atmosphere. And it involves working with books but not with customers. A former denizen of Borders called me about the gig. We work on a massive archive projects with books that are copyrighted prior to 1924. In the last three months, we have learned a whole lot about publishing and the layout and production of books. There were some things we expected. By and large, the quality of paper in books pre- 1900 is amazing. They feel wonderful to the touch (high rag content) and most age beautifully. Some books I’ve processed from as early as the mid 1700s look like they were produced only a few years ago.

However, we are finding a lot of surprising production eccentricities. Page numbers can and do occur everywhere. Sometimes they are in different places within the same book. There is no consistency as to where they turn up. There can be several type fonts in the same book. Headers are not consistent. Some do name of author and name of book, others do name of author and title of chapter. Others just have the author’s name or the title only. Many older novels have chapter headings. Some have header phrases within the chapters to let a reader know what’s going on that particular page (I, who have trouble coming up with titles of novels and names of characters, could not do that). We’d be hard pressed to come up with uniform rules for book production in any era we’ve processed.

While I was surprised at that, I’m really shocked at how little things have changed since the 1800s with regard to novels. There were ads for vanity publishers dating back to 1850 Although publication via advance subscription was more common. Celebrities were the subject of self-absorbed memoirs or tell-all biographies. Back then, celebrities were royals or politicians or generals or clerics instead of athletes, actors and musicians. Romances were formulaic, but the formulas were a lot tamer and ended in marriages. Those that didn’t ended in death. The names for ravishing heroines have sure changed. You don’t find many Myrtles in the midst of torrid romances these days. And when I think romance, I seldom think of the name Gladys.

Aside from the cool thing of preserving books and making them available to readers free of charge, we have been enjoying sheer fun of dialogue from novels of all eras. There was the unfortunate term for interjecting into a conversation one book used over and over. The term ejaculate as a way of joining a conversation in a book about boy scouts who were members of – I swear – the beaver patrol. You think a doctor turned detective is a new phenomena in novels? Read Exploits of a Physician Detective from 1908. Then there is my personal favorite Alias the Night Wind in which a gentleman exacts revenge on those who bear false witness. He seemed to be beating up the police in the illustrations (oh, yes, illustrations in novels were very prevalent and often inexplicable). Anyway, I couldn’t figure out why they could never catch this guy. He was wearing a tux and not a mask while exacting vengeance. I wondered if 'Lady Kate of the Police' who eventually nabbed him was the one who caught Lady Eleanor, Law Breaker – another favorite title. My favorite line from any novel was ‘Percival, bring me my breeches.’ I’m not gong to use the line, but I am going to use that name somewhere.

On the non-fiction front, aside from process Virgil and Homer (not Simpson) I’ve learned that gruel was appearing in recipes as late as the mid-1900s, and that there was such a thing as effervescing gruel. From the same book I learned that different brands of lard were better than others because of purity levels. Who knew? And what the heck does bluing actually do? Yep, there were even recipes for the laundry room and the sick room. Read Tried Foavourites to see.

These three months have given us – aside from gainful employment – a lot of info about how much latitude we have with our book formats. We can say with a lot of confidence that there is not one right way of publishing novels and cite examples until ones eyes bleed. And the books have given Jon some ideas about how to do ours better. And I hope I’ve answered that underlying questions from our authors about why we are always so busy.

Read More About It – go to http://archive.org, one of the search engines that features the texts.

Rosha

2007-04-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

While she was an enthusiastice participant on the blog, which we appreciated, Rosha is not currently a writer for Sybaritic Press. Hopefully, she will pariticpate in the comments.

Where is Rosha?

2007-04-15T18:15:00.000-07:00

Hi one and all,

I hadn't checked here in a while, but now that I have, I see Rosha had asked me some questions about a month ago! Yeesh! I answered her post, and I seem to remember a profile by that name here before, but now I don't see it. Anybody know what's happened to her?

Thanks much!

Oh and Deb? How is 'Slash and Burn' coming along? Do you maybe have an update for us? :)

Best Wishes,

Shannon Kizzia

Message

2007-03-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

I read the message with interest.
I'd like to know however, how this discontinuing of the review section of the LA Times affects us Sybpress writers.
Do they review us?

Or is it just a loss for writers in general were the section to be canceled?

Not that I ever read it, being non-American; but I'd like to know why you are drawing our attention to this.

Rosha

Important News for Booklovers

2007-03-20T00:40:00.000-07:00

The literary community may be about to suffer a major loss. Please, read the following Blog from one of Sybaritic's editors.

http://blog.myspace.com/mariepoeticdiversity

Thanks!

The muse

2007-03-19T02:54:00.000-07:00

Isn't it the best of all calls, that call from the muse?
Glad to hear you're heeding it, just as I do.
Hope the muse will tell you what to do with your first novel.
And with regards to your new, original work, I happen to know that people who love dark fantasy and tales of stormy passion are in for a treat.
Hope for our sakes you will finish it soon :)

Rosha

Springtime

2007-03-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

Springtime--a season of growth and new beginnings!

Last Saturday I wrote and dreamed, in a room filled with other dreamers.

We gathered together on a foggy morning, up early not to make our way to mundane jobs, but to answer the sacred call to create.

And that's exactly what we did. For four hours we entered a state of trance, each of us lost in worlds of our own making. In between our 45 minute mad writing sessions, we socialized and enjoyed being in the company of others of like mind.

Being in the presence of other writers generates a wonderful energy--fuel to make fingers fly across a keyboard or a pen fly across a page.

Now I need to figure out how to capture and bottle that energy for when I'm alone, staring at the blank page or the blue screen of my computer monitor, trying to muster up the courage to let myself go.

Currently, I'm excited and honored that my work is going to be published in the Demonspawn 3 anthology, alongside stories from other wonderful authors who inspired me to start writing again, after a long hiatus.

I think I lived on spit and adrenaline the past year and a half, hopelessly infected once the writing bug bit me. I sought out writing groups, both locally and virtually. I met people with the same affliction who encouraged me as I climbed the steep learning curve in my writing and suffered through growing pains.

Now, after a pause to catch my breath and nurture my creative child, it's time to jump back into the fray, let myself drown in the sea of another project.

I can't rest on my laurels. Like the Scottish proverb says: "Set a stout heart to a stey brae (steep hill)." The secret is to keep climbing, to see what lies over the next mountain peak.

It's my intention to complete the first draft of an original dark semi-historical fantasy by November, then to resume work on my first love, an unfinished first novel that started out as a Demon Under Glass story. It may not stay that way; I haven't decided yet. Hopefully, by the time I reach that point, with one completed rough draft under my belt, I'll know what I need to do.

To my literary comrades in arms: Write On!

* * * * * * *

"Writing a book is exactly like love. You don't hold back. You give it everything you have. If it doesn't work out, you're heartbroken, but you move forward and start again anyway. You have to.

"You don't hold some of yourself in reserve. It's all or nothing. There are no guarantees. If one book doesn't work out, you figure out why. How can you do things differently next time? If you hold back from the book, it won't fully reveal itself. You write each book, utterly and completely giving yourself to it. Some will end up under the bed, sure. And some just might end up brilliant."

From: Chapter After Chapter, by Heather Sellers.

Curious

2007-03-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

I've been looking at the profiles of my fellow Sybpress authors from time to time and I must say they make me curious.

Some profiles are very mysterious, like the one from Rhianne Aile, some are of people I know more (FE Lin) or less (Laura Baumbach, Jenny Saypaw), most of them have got something I can sympathize with(The Court Jester, Emma,--one of my all time favorites, and, like you, Madeleine, I believe dreams can come true. At least I'm working darn hard to make it so :))and some make me curious for more.

Get away with that whip, F.
One long sentence per post is allowed :)

I love your poem, IO.
I would not dare to touch your book though.
This is one book that seems to be doomed to remain unread lest it will be spoiled.

And the profile I find most interesting is the one from Shannon Kizzia.
You seem like a girl after my own heart: honest, multifaceted and into gay men(and gaiety in general ;)
Care to share more, Shannon?

Like, what do you write? In which fandom, or is it original fic?

I hope I'm not asking a stupid question here and that you already said so somewhere on this site and I was just too dumb to notice.

Anyway, feel free to satisfy my curiosity.

And I'd like to invite my other fellow authors to tell me some more about themselves too.

How about it, guys?

Rosha

Update

2007-03-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

Hello slash-lovers,

Thought I'd let you know how things are going.
I've been ill for a while and I'm kinda back on my feet.
But anyway, the writing must go on and it did.

I had to drop my sci-fi work temporarily for autobiographical essays (Life and Loves of a Slash Writer ;)) and some more serious stuff, but now I'm ready to get back to the thing I love most: slash.

I've decided to leave Blue Knight for a bit, being much more in the mood for romance, so at the moment I'm working on a short, sexy story and another project, a short novel called Penny Romance.
It's really, really romantic and will be a treat, I hope, for those who love nurse/patient stories.

That's all for now.

See ya,

Rosha

Busy

2007-01-23T03:02:00.000-08:00

Hello folks,

This is my first blog.
I thought it was about time for a contribution to our site.

I finally finished my short story 'Lily of the Valley' of which I'm rather proud, since it proves that I am able to write a story that does not contain sex ;)

I'm grateful for F.E.Lin's editing: she always manages to spot some errors in my work, which I would not like to see in print.

Thanks to her I can pretend my knowledge of the language is flawless :)

I also did a lot of revising myself, much more than had in mind when I finished the first draft.
Apparently I'm more of a perfectionist than I thought.

I'm very busy at the moment with all kinds of stuff, and I still have to do some revising on my longest short story that will be in the DS3 anthology.

After that I'm afraid I'll have to take a breather, or actually, spend more time on all the other, boring stuff, which is about everything that is not writing...

When I've worked my way through them, I can finally spend some more time on my own novel, which is so-called original fiction, not fandom-based, and I'm very excited about it.

It's science fiction, but contrary to your regular science fiction, where they haven't caught on yet ;) it will contain graphic man/man sex.
I'm totally in love with my story (if I'm not, it's not worth writing) and I hope I can get really involved in it soon.

It's working title is 'Sir Gawaine and the Blue Knight'.

Preditors and Editors Nomination

2007-01-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

Today I was thrilled discover that my short story "The Midnight Sun", published in DemonSpawn2, has been nominated in the 2006 Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll in the Horror Short Story category. Although I've been nominated for (and won) a number of fannish literary awards, this is my first pro-writing nomination. I happily danced around in circles for several minutes, then notified my publisher (Sybpress, of course) and friends of the honour.

Oops! After settling down from the excitement, I pulled out the book to look at it (okay, and give it a few loving pats). Then I got a shock. Whoever had nominated me hadn't looked at the date of publication. DemonSpawn2 came out in 2005, not 2006. Sigh! So, I assume the Poll's owners will eventually realize I'm not actually eligible for the 2006 Award, but I'm on Cloud 9 that it got there in the first place.

Maybe someone will like one of my stories in the upcoming DemonSpawn3 enough to nominate it properly in the 2007 poll...

Jenny

Sybaritic Press Nomination

2007-01-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

A very kind soul added Sybaritic Press to the nominations for best publisher in the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll. Please, take a moment and vote for us. The exposure will help our authors get their titles out there in cyberspace.

http://www.critters.org/predpoll/ebookpublisher.shtml

Award Winner

2007-01-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

I've got to share the good news with everybody. My short story, "Nevermore", won a 2006 Fan Quality Award for best slash DUG short story. Youpi! It's a story that I have now expanded for Sybpress.

I also won for best slash ANGEL short story with my "Cenotaph" in Horizontal Mosaic Vol. 10.

But the biggest surprise to me was that I won honorable mention for multi-fandom slash artist! I had no clue my artwork was so well received.

What wonderful news to start the New Year with! Now I'm all filled with vim and vigour to start writing something new!

Jenny

Hooters Charity Event and New Book!

2007-01-08T19:53:00.000-08:00

Sybaritic Press Presents

An Evening of Poetry for Breast Cancer Research

at

Hooters in Hollywood (map)

Tuesday, January 23rd starting a 7pm

Featuring:

S.A. Griffen
Carlye Archibeque
Amelie Frank
Iris Berry
Pleasant Gehman
Marie Lecrivain

$20.00 Suggested donation

New Novel from Sybaritic Press

D.L. Warner's yaoi-inspired novel, A Soldier's Choice is now available as an Acrobat Reader and a Microsoft Reader E-book through http://soldierschoice.com. The print book will be available on amazon.com and b&n.com by January 22nd.

Deadline for Slash and Burn

2007-01-04T19:44:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder that the deadline for submissions to 'Slash and Burn' is January 15th. If you have submitted and not heard from us by now, we may have your story and no way to contact you. We changed e-mail servers six weeks ago and lost a lot of the contacts. If your name and e-mail wasn't on the story, we have no way of reaching you. Please, e-mail us at sypress@gmail.com with the name of the submission. Again, the deadline is January 15th. The url for info is: http://sybpress.com/slashburn.htm.

To blog or...

2007-01-01T15:26:00.000-08:00

To blog or not to blog... Whether 'tis nobler to keep up with my commitment to write... or my commitment to edit... or my commitment to illustrate... or my commitment to earn a roof over my cat's head... or my commitment to contribute to this blog site... or... Oh, frag it! I'm going to go write. :-)

Happy New Year from Jenny...

End of the Year Wrap-Up

2006-12-30T23:26:00.000-08:00

This has been a great year for Sybaritic Press. We put out more titles than ever before, welcoming authors from both the poetry and erotica venues. Each division of Sybpress has authors that have earned great reviews and honors. Check out the News section of sybpress.com for all the details. Next year, we have some terrific authors with amazing works in the offing. Keep watching for updates on the webpage and in our newsletter for those announcements.

The past year has brought a lot more submissions, I'm happy to say. We're getting all manner of poetry and erotica from all over the country and the world. It's great to have such interest in our company, and it provides for a number of great opportunities. Unfortunately, we can't put out many more titles per year than we do now. As you can see from the photo, ours is a very small staff. We've just added the marmoset to the crew, but we don't think he can type (he has an in with someone). And we all have other gigs aside from the press. So we're slower than we'd like and we won't be putting out dozens of titles until we can afford a staff (actually, we have to be able to pay ourselves first, and then afford a staff). However, the new authors we are finding and are approaching us may get us to that point sooner than later. For now, those with us or those who want to be, must have patience and a strong sense of whimsy.

I've been very proud of our authors in their individual efforts to advance their works. Our fearless leader, Marie has been tireless in promoting poetry in LA while writing the amazing Nihilistic Foibles. She had a poem accepted by the LA Review, and anthology of the best literary voices in this region, and will be hosting a poetry event to benefit Breast Cancer research in January. Again, full details will be available on the web page and in the newsletter. Meanwhile, our self-described housewife from New York, Laura Baumbach has been turning the romance industry on its ear. Aside from hanging out with great slabs of men and being promoted to goddess, she has developed a method for advertising and promoting manlove romance that is elegant in its simplicity and extremely affective. I point to both of these ladies as examples of how authors for small presses can and should be in control of their sales and promotion.

Sybaritic Press did its first book fair in 2006. We plan on doing more events like the West Hollywood Book fair. And we plan to both speak and have tables at more eclectic venues like Comic Con and Dragon*Con and The Romantic Times Booklovers Convention.

For now, we plan to eat a lot of great pizza, drink bubbly and watch some fun films. We hope all of our wonderful authors and readers will be doing the same.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

NYC Erotic Expo-- What a Trip!

2006-12-22T18:24:00.000-08:00

NYC was noisy, fast-paced, intriguing, fun, irritating, exhausting, confusing, delightful and a hell of a lot of work. Did I mention exhausting?

Thursday: I managed to get all the many luggage bags check in at the train station after a little talking. The train ride was 8 hours, but not so bad. Once at Penn Station I got Red cap to grab the luggage and he took through the underground garage to a taxi stand. Sweet, helpful man, but I have to admit to being nervous when I was the only passenger in the freight elevator and in the dark garage for a bit.

Then a cabbie driving a minivan showed up but tried to to refuse to take me and luggage because it would 'scuff' his upholstery. It's a CAB for crying out loud! The red cap convinced him I was 'a nice woman'. He was still a PIA until he asked me what I did and I told him I was an author and wrote about everyone I met, especially the unpleasant people. He was a tad nicer than, but not less than 3 cops threatened to pull his cabbie license by the time he dropped me off at the hotel and dumped me and my luggage in the street. I ran in, got a bellman to help me and we lugged it all up the steps to the lobby without anyone taking it from the street before we got back.

That night two friends and I went to dinner and then to see the Broadway play WICKED. It was awesome beyond words. I bought the sound track and a green monkey. We walked around Times Square and stopped and had drinks then got back to the hotel around 3am.

Friday: We all did a little foot tour of the city, visited Greenwich Village, the Oscar Wilde book store, a toy store where I got some unique stuffed animals for my youngest, and included seeing the cathedral of St. John the Divine where we were fortunate enough to stumble upon a rehearsal for a concert that night that included Paul Winter. It was amazing to sit in this breathtaking cathedral and listen to this beautiful, music. The man singing was doing it in Portuguese and the clarinet was a mirrored reflection of his tone and voice that was too amazing for words.

We grabbed lunch at the Stardust Dinner where all the waiters and waitresses sing songs from the fifties while you eat. They were all Broadway performers and the music was very cool. One girl was from Chorus Line. That evening we went to see the Rockettes, which was beautiful. The 3-D part of the show was amazing. We were exhausted from walking around all day and called it a night early.

Saturday: I hit the Hard Rock Cafe for a T-shirt and drum sticks for the teenager and got ready for the day. By noon we managed the ordeal of the luggage to another cab who was much more gracious and helpful. We arrived at the Puck Building and spent the next couple of hours setting up the booth. It was a very interesting and productive day. There was a booth with some women who sell exotic lotions and personal sensual items.

All of the men there were sweet, delightful and helpful. But by far the most popular items we had was our scissors. It seems not a single man in the place, of which there were many, thought to bring a pair with them to set up. Our single pair of scissors saw more action then the rentboys at the event did. Word spread like wild fire we had them and men were lining up to borrow them. (If only I had know what drew men during my dating years!)

We saw a good amount of traffic and talked ourselves hoarse. Literally, I'm still raspy this morning. We put on our game face and sparkled and shone, handed out promo items, pushed the books, and talked and talked and talked. I have never been kissed by so many strange men in one evening in my life. Just so you know, it was struggle. NOT! They all smelled so good. Clean sweat and cologne. Yum.

By the end of the day we were all exhausted but very happy with the results.

Sunday: A young man came to us and said he was part of a group that does charity work and hosts events on Fire Island and he was wondering of we would be interested in attending their events and letting them have promo items from us. Then a very professional, attractive man approached us asking if we would consider doing other events. He sponsors expos all over the country and he asked if we would be interested in being a vendor at some of them.

Then the men running the Bitch Bear booth beside us told us about their other project which is promoting. They have drawings and giveaways to promo others during an every 2 week event thing they do and asked if they could have some of our promo items to send out in their efforts. We handed out over 500 cds, most of the flyers and postcards during the weekend, and what was left I gave to them for their various promo things at the end of the day.

A man came by and quizzed me about just about everything. Turns out he runs a radio spot and site at newyorkcool.com. He left with promo items, a ton of conversation and books to review for us and publish on his site. I let him choose whatever he wanted. http://www.newyorkcool.com/

We packed up at the end of the day and Deana and I dragged everything out to the street with the help of 3 sweet young things who got us a cab and helped load it up for us. Bellman helped again to get back into the hotel where I spend about an hour trying to rearrange it for the weight limits for the train. We order Chinese and dropped into bed. The weekend was fabulous but draining.

Monday: Had to redo the luggage at the check-in station after the morning cabbie abandoned us in the street again about a half a block from the station. A kind and helpful red cap rescued us after I walked to the station twice to ask for help. The check-in guy was nice too, letting me slide on some of the weights.

Made it home, at last. It was a great weekend, met a ton wonderful people and loved almost even minute of it--well except the cabbie parts. It should take me about a week to recoop!

The Fine Balance Between Author and Publisher

2006-11-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

I spent a long time as an author before becoming a publisher. I have had rejections that were maddening. My favorite was my thesis novel that passed muster with professor who didn't believe in narrative. Don't ask me why they were teaching English Literature. I think they all needed therapy. At any rate, selling them on a novel that told a linear story was not easy. And one of them actually recommended it to an editor that a big publishing house. The novel was based on an experience I had in one of my many careers and I did not take much license with the characters. It was rejected for being unbelievable. The subject of the novel offered to intervene with the editor in his own Jersey bad boy way, but I felt that being a prison author had been overdone.

My least favorite rejection was from an editor at St. Martins Press who had come to speak to my class. He called my work beautifully realized and a pleasure to read, but it didn’t have a clear enough market. It wasn’t Black enough to be considered Black fiction. Black was still the term at the time. And they couldn’t handle a Black author writing about mainstream middleclass life – nevermind that that was what I was growing up living. I shouldn’t have been surprised at his rejection. In his speech to our class, this editor said that they were looking at authors who would do well on talk shows and morning news shows – even going as far as videotaping a prospect to see how they read on camera.

All in all, I think being told that I sucked would have been easier than these rejections. On the genre end, I learned from an author who began as a reader at Avon books that the slush pile is even more huge than even I had imagined. Two authors that she read, Katherine Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers, were pulled from the pile at random. Who knows how many good authors relegated there were sent rejections without even being read. It was and is hard to break into the big time. I have had six agents since the late 80s. I have a good friend who recent signed with one after her off Broadway play garnered a terrific write-up in The New Yorker. She’s had dozens of meetings with publishers and producers that have not produced much in the way of results. My final straw with mainstream publishers was when an offer of publication was withdrawn when that editor was replaced with another one.

I learned from the film biz that once you make something that does well or is well received critically, the people you desire will come to you. I learned while working at Borders Books, that authors from tiny publishers or who published themselves sometimes make their way to big publishing houses if their work is well-received or sells well. The technology and that notion is what caused Marie and I to found Sybaritic Press. We founded it to be a springboard for aspiring authors who don’t easily fit in a niche, and to be a place to get out own work out in the arena. We are ‘real’ in the sense that we don’t charge authors to be published. We shoulder the cost of editing, formatting and cover designing. However, beyond getting the titles reviewed and promoting in avenues that are inexpensive or free, we cannot do what the big houses do. That is up to our authors.

This has not been an easy road for us. The hardest part of the job is the selection process. It is very hard for authors to reject another author’s work. Since we are hoping to foster talent, Marie and I have opted not to tell an author why a piece was rejected. The reason is best explained by a quote from Raymond Carver in speaking about his student, Jay McInerney. He was asked by a fellow lecturer why he wasn’t harder on McInerney whose work was not very polished then. Carver replied that he didn’t want to discourage him. It turned out to be a sound course. We don’t want to discourage an author with a specific rejection. What we don’t like, another publisher may love. The lack of polish we see may improve markedly with more practice. This policy has resulted in more than a few really snarky e-mails. In fact, we are most abused in our recruiting efforts. It is more than puzzling to have a call for submissions result in derision. I suppose that stems from the fact that authors, like any creative soul, are flakey.

What I’m trying to say is that we really want to help new authors and we work hard to acquire new titles and see them properly launched. But we are also authors. Sometimes, we are slow in responding because we have our own pursuits. I really don’t like feeling like I’m stealing time to do my own writing. Sybaritic Press will always strive for better ways to fulfill its mission, but remember that we are seeking the same things as the rest of our authors. So patience and flexibility are the keys to working with us. And we promise to never put our authors on videotape to see how they read on camera.

Spankings and Sage Advice

2006-10-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

Before I begin, welcome back Nightowl! It's so nice to see your post and really great to get your latest submissions!

Onto business. On behalf of myself and my partners in Sybpress, I am taking out my studded paddle and climbing on my soapbox to give correction to writers seeking publication in any venue, but especially at Sybaritic Press. At the risk of sounding like the copy in a typing test, I must speak out. Query letters are important, even in an e-mail. The way a publisher is first contacted does a lot to set up how the writer is viewed by the publisher. If we don't get anything that we asked for on the submissions page in the query letter, it leaves us feeling annoyed and disrespected. It makes it unlikely that we will take the time to carefully read the submission. Each bullet point on our submission page stems directly from problems we've had with prospective authors' submissions. Each bullet point was written to make it easier for us to read submissions and make decisions on them. We want to publish more titles. That's how we keep going. We don't want a lot of barriers between us and that next gem we'd love to publish, but we do need some order.

I'm posting a link here with an editorial that's aimed at poets seeking publication in journals, but some of the advice is applicable to Sybaritic Press and to Poetic Diversity and to anywhere else a writer wants to sell his or her wares. You should be familiar with the works published by a publisher. That means going over a website page by page to see what novels or short stories or poems they have published in the past. Look at the tone of the page and figure out if you fit that frame. I was given similar advice early in my screenwriting career. I was told I should know the TV show I want to see a script to inside and out. I was told I shouldn't try to re-invent the show in my own vision. I had a friend that submitted a script to Highlander that was six parts long and didn't have any of the leads in it. Guess what happened? Sending submissions that clearly run afoul of a publishing company's submissions guidelines is just as foolhardy.

So, to our authors who may send writers our way (and we really want you to), just tell them to check out the page. Our guidelines are easy.

Here's the link: http://www.poetrysalzburg.com/Editorial%20PSR%2010.pdf

We are still looking for submissions for the new anthology, Slash and Burn. Details can be found here: http://sybpress.com/slashburn.htm

I now step down from the soap box and get back to my reading. I'm not putting down the paddle. Remember, it's always within easy reach.

I'm Back!

2006-10-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last posted a blog here. I guess I’ve been too busy editing and publishing (an amateur press) to do much writing myself. But with three zines delivered last week (one anthology got so big it had to be split in two), I now have some time to work on my own stuff.

So, I’m back!

On the go for SybPress:

1. “See-Saw, Margery Daw…” -- a Demon Under Glass (DUG) short story that has already been accepted for the upcoming DemonSpawn 3 anthology.

2. “Mine!” -- a sequel to “See-Saw” that was just submitted to DemonSpawn 3.

3. “Nevermore” -- in progress, a rewrite of a DUG story that was originally published in an amateur press.

4. “Siren Song” -- in progress, a man-love short story for the upcoming Slash and Burn anthology.

5. Hell’s Acre -- in progress, a heterosexual love story / supernatural / horror novel set in West Virginia.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch… errrr, high-rise office building, I’m writing scads of QA audit assessments in the high tech industry, but those don’t qualify as fic, although I often feel as though I’m tap dancing to turn marginal compliances into an actual pass. What’s interesting is that I find it far more exhausting to write fic than non-fic, which I seem to be able to just grind out on demand no matter how bored I am doing it. I wonder why.

More later.
Jenny Saypaw

Pushcart Nominee and other News

2006-10-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

Check out the exciting announcement about our latest author kudos in the News section of http://sybpress.com

There is also a call for stories in that same section.

and for those of you who haven't, check out DL Warner's Blog at http://dlwarner.blogspot.com

West Hollywood weekend

2006-09-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

West Hollywood Book Fair was very good this weekend. I'm thinking of doing a manloveromance booth there next year. I met the treasurer of the West Hollywood library and I'm checking to see what it'll take to get print books into the library.

I met a producer/screenwriter doing the current Stephen King horror film and she gave me tips about were to promo my vampire stuff and walked away with one of my vampire books under her arm.

Then I ate lunch with a young lady who turned out to be a journalist for the West Hollywood Reporter and she did a little tiny interview with a friend and I. We gave her business cards so she could spell the names right if she used our chat.

Then I met a woman who lives in West Hollywood who said she was a poet and literary consultant for Simon and Schuster. She gave me her card. We chatted about vampires, (she loves the metaphysical), and then she told me she was planning a TV spot about the subject and asked if she could interview me for it. I screamed yes, of course. Well, maybe not screamed but I did tell her any part of my life from this moment on that she wanted for the interview was hers. She took a copy of my vampire book with her. I don't know if any of these people were serious, but I handed out a lot of cards.

Tom of Finland had a booth with just had a little tiny tiny sign that said ADULTS ONLY next to the chained, gagged, collared, bound, naked man pictures. Cool. I didn't buy any, but I did accept the free postcard. And I spent a ton of money at the LA Coroners booth. I have a thing for chalk lines. There are so many people I think a chalk outline would look good on sometimes. Afterwards, Deana nad I hit Malibu for dinner at Duke's on the beach. The surf crashes up tot he windows of the restuarant while you eat!

Had a delightful evening of chatting and getting to know some local authors Friday night. Saturday was spent shopping at The Pleasure Chest were I ended up giving my cards to the cashier when she expressed an interest in my writing. She promptly said she'd give it to their book buyer to check out.

Then I went window shopping on Rodeo Drive with my friend graphics artist Deana Jamroz. I can't believe any women in her right mind shops in 3 inch heels, so all the females in Beverly Hills are insane. Period. Had dinner with my LA print publisher Sybpress at The Cheesecake Factory and then went clubbing with friends. We hit the Rage, the Abby, and the Voodoo Room in West Hollywood. Soaked up all the atmosphere and fun we could along with a few drinks.

Fun weekend!

West Hollywood Book Fair

2006-09-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

Sybaritic Press has survived its first Book Fair. The heat was how I imagine the Serengeti in mid-summer would be. The morning was quite hot, but the wonderful staff had umbrellas placed so that we were comfortable until shade drifted over our booth. Even when we had the shade, we still needed person fans to keep the air around us breathable. Stickiness aside, a good time was had by all. We sold a respectable number of booths, and chatted up booksellers about our talented authors. I got to hang out with our newest author, Nancy Shiffren, a legend in the LA poetry scene and a protege of Anais Nin. Her title, Game with Variations, debuts next month. And it was lovely to see Laura Baumbach again. She is the energizer bunny of marketing with her eye catching table display that literally stopped people in their tracks. She was always ready to chat up a potential buyer and ,even in that heat, managed to network her way around the fair. Marie worked really hard, and did a great job making new connections for the Press and even found time to do a reading from her popular new title, Nihilistic Foibles. My sales were mostly of Demon Under Glass. We were in the Vampire corner of the book fair, around the corner from a whole booth on the subject and next to the LA Coroner's booth. We got some interesting cross traffic.

My favorite quote of the day was from a panel on specualtive fiction across from our table. It was 'My book is about a time in the future when man and gorilla work side by side on a space ship.' I love LA!

The experience was great, and we definitely plan to be there next year. I'm planning on wrangling a panel for the Press on male/male romance and/or one on how to write and market erotica.More picutres will be up on the web site later this week.

Turning Pro as a Writer -- Dragoncon Part 3

2006-09-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

When Jon and I did a panel at Dragoncon called 'amateur Trek,' our co-panelists were the producers of the on-line Trek series called New Voyages .

It is an elaborate production that has included work of some pretty heavy Trek talent on both sides of the camera. When we started the panel, it was to find out why this group and others like it put so much time and energy into these productions that can never garner them any profit. We expected a defense that included facts like how some hobbies can be just as expensive if not more so (like golf, or model trains). Heck, even following a favorite sports team can end up in the many thousands of dollars over a season.

We didn't get that defense at all. It turns out that this group would like to find a way to get a license from Paramount to air the prodcutions professionally. they would like credit as writers, actors and producers for all that hard and very fine work.

We think that this is also true of prolific fanfic writers. They work really hard on some pretty amazing stories. But they may be afraid of rejection or ramifications from studios. Well, writers face flames each time you post, and a studio could send a cease and disist order at any time to any fanzine or website. We take precautions against that by helping you convert the fanfic into original prose in the genre of your choice.

So, again, we are calling for slash writers to send us your stories for our anthology Slash and Burn which will debut at the 2007 Romantic Times Convention. For details go to:

http://www.sybpress.com/slashburn.htm

Take that risk. You have worked very hard to hone your prose, you should have it seen by a new audience.

West hollywood Book fair

2006-09-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

The Sybaritic Press booth at the 5th Annual West Hollywood Book Fair is numbers 72-73. For the exhibitor Map, go to:

http://www.westhollywoodbookfair.org/images/map_1000.jpg

For general info including how to get to the fair, go to"

http://westhollywoodbookfair.org

Come out and see us! Let us give you a free critique or learn how to write smut!

Dragoncon, M/M AND Independent Press

2006-09-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

We had a good time at Dragoncon both personally and professionally. The panels went over well. I think we may be invited bact to speak to the film program track. And, as always, I enjoyed speaking in the Trek Track. I even had an opportunity to do some Sybpress business while on a panel about Gays in Star Trek. It seems that certain romance magazines aren't the only group unaware of the straight femal audience for homoeroticism. The gay men we were speaking to had no clue who the main audiences for QAF and Brokeback Mountain were. So, while on that panel I spoke about our m/m titles and who they sell to. Meanwhile, after calling me a pervert on stage AND across a crowded Dealer's Room, Richard Hatch (the Battlestar Galactica guy, not the Survivor guy) suggested we do an erotica in sci-fi novels panel. He wants to moderate, naturally.

On the m/m front, I handed out goodie bags with the contents picutred abbove (a cd of samples, magnets of covers and a postcard). I also had a Nikulainen themed goodie bag with the contents in the photos.

We had no idea how many to make. We didn't make nearly enough, so they were used as prizes in the Lord of the Rings adult fanfic panels. I also had more business cards of the erotica covers to hand out. According to the statcounter, we're getting a lot of hits from a relatively inexpensive handout. My panel idea, From Slash to Pro, also went over well. I hope we have the time to do it. I believe we could garner both readers and writers for the Press.

There is more about our trip, of course. There is my husband meeting my 89 year old Grandmom for the first time, old Black superman, the Waffle House and the mystery of many kilts. But those stories will appear in my personal blog later today. I'll post a link here when it's up.

RT Poll on M/M PLEASE GO VOTE!

2006-09-07T15:41:00.000-07:00

RT has rejected my proposal for a m/m discussion panel this year but they are looking for reader support to make an informed decision for the future apparently.
Please go here and vote, no matter what your opinion on the subject is. Let our voice be heard. Let M/M romance for women have it's rightful place in RT's reviews.

Laura

It's a poll asking about interest in m/m
romances.

http://www.romantic times.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4005

RT rejects M/M discussion panel

2006-09-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I just received word from RT that they have rejected the proposal to hold a M/M discussion panel this next year.
It was to be hosted by Kate Douglas, Joey Hill, Emily Veinglory and myself.

Here is their reasoning:

Unfortunately we are not ready to have a panel on this quite yet. Perhaps next year.
We already have a lot of erotica at our convention and we have to be sensitive to the attendees who will view this type of workshop as a departure for us.

My reply was thus:

With all due respect, actually, I do understand. I understand that you are woefully behind the times. This reasoning is inadequate to mask prejudice. Attendees who don't wish to hear about M/M erotic romance have the option not to attend the panel discussion. No one is forced to attend or to listen to anything at RT they don't want to. I'm a straight, married, Christian woman with children, in my 50's and I can't believe RT continues to deny a popular, respected and growing market. I'm disappointed in RT and so will my readers be.

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. But possibly next year RT will be less... restrictive.

Laura

Call for Slash Writers! Anthology for 2007

2006-08-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

We're resurrecting one of the first ideas for a Sybaritc Press. Thus, this is a call for slash writers in any fandom for Slash and Burn. This is an anthology of slash fiction that will be transformed into original fiction. Get the details here:

http://www.sybpress.com/slashburn.htm

Please keep in mind that all submissions must meet our submission guidelines. There is a link on the anthology page to the new guidelines. The deadline isn't until next year.

Please, past this to any slash list you know of.

New Collection by Marie Lecrivain

2006-08-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

Marie Lecrivain's new collection, Nihilistic Foibles is available on Amazon.com. It is a delightful assortment of prose and poetry. Here's a review:

Nihilistic Foibles is a collection of edgy and erotic stories about a young woman's life in Los Angelels. "Lecrivain's dark and deadpan humor is at its height, blending the brilliance of The Day of the Locust and Lost in Translation into a dichotomous frenetic ennui that is all too real..." - Nelson Gary, author of Cinema XXX and A Wonderful Life in Our Lives

It has everything from sex to marmosets. And 5% of the proceeds go to help the will be donated to the Pinde Ridge Reservation in Hermosa, Sout Dakota.

Check it out.

http://www.sybpress.com/titles.htm#Nihilistic

Why do you read M/M romances?

2006-08-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to gather data for a proposal for a M/M erotic romance discussion panel. So if you'd like to help me out or just wnat to express yourself about the topic, feel free to email me at sensualwriter.laura@gmail.com or post your message here and I'll add it to my findings. Every opinion counts! Your reason's are just as valid as the next reader's are so let's hear them!

I write M/M erotic romances because I think the erotic part is HOT! I love men and think two men together is twice as hot. All that raw, sweaty power and muscle twisted around more lithe, sweaty, sinwey flesh, kissing, cuddling, possessing and pounding each other into sated bliss. What's not to love? The romance part is the best, though, where I can write these same hot men as sensitive, caring, romanctic individuals with flaws and strengths and needs and convictions. It's all good.

Now tell me why you READ it.

One ahead of Anne Rice

2006-07-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

I just found out this morning that my M/M erotic novel, A Bit of Rough, is ranked #2 on B&N bestselling erotic fiction list out of 1,366 titles. It puts me one ahead of Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Trilogy! I also was #298 on the entire B&N bestselling list for the entire site for a brief but shining moment today and I have been #1 on their gay erotic fiction list for the last week! I'm so excited! And they say there isn't a market for M/M erotic romance out there! Raspberrries to all disbelivers!
Laura
http://www.laurabaumbach.com
http://sybpress.com

Why Potato Salad Makes Me Cry

2006-07-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

I don't write poetry. I don't have the knack to hone words that succinctly. I appreciate and sometimes envy those who write poetry well. I wish I had Marie's talent for verse. There are many times when my experiences deserve the clarity and potent emotion of poetry. My Mother's spoon deserves poetry.

I went back to Philly in May. During that visit, I had to confront a number of terribly emotional things. My Aunt, my Mother's last surviving sibling, is fading from Alzheimer's disease. I won't be able to call her anymore and while away our time while choopping onions making sunday dinner or talk about how our stuffing is turning out for Thanksgiving. I talked to her because Mom's been gone for over ten years. For all my life, I talked to a Harris sister about stuffing or sweet potato pies or potato salad. I won't be doing that this year.

During that same trip, I unexpectedly encountered boxes of my mother's life that I was going to ship to LA after we moved. I was glad that we weren't able to ship those boxes then. It meant I could give my brother a lot of what was left of Mom's life. He had a home that was a family hub. Those pieces needed to be at holiday dinners again. But I kept my Mother's favorite mixing spoon. When I saw that spoon, I really wished I could write poetry.

No one knows where it came from. It could have been from a set belonging to the rich folk Mom and Grandmom did Days' work for. It could have been from the Strawbridges' or it could have been a wedding gift. She got a lot of nice things when she married.

All I knew was that was the spoon that made the potato salad and stuffings for the major events of my life. When it came out, there would be a family gathering of some sort. And wether it was a holiday or a funeral, there would be a lot of good food in a big bowl and there would be a lot of drinking and laughter. Sometimes, there wasn't enough money to make a gathering, but it would always get done somehow. And everyone would have a good time. I was an adult before I found out how much those good times cost and how often our family couldn't afford them. That made them all the more dear somehow. And it explains my pathological need to entertain. It explains why I cry making potato salad.

But I think finding that spoon deserves poetry, not just potato salad. The Harris Sisters deserve verse for bringing civility and style everywhere they went and for finding a way to have celebrations that made people happy and filled memories when they had almost nothing. But I don't write verse well, so I do my best with food that I remember from childhood and celebrations for my friends even when I can't afford it. I only hope that I have inherited their sense of civility and style.

Maybe someday, Marie's great gift will rub off and me. My first poem will be about that spoon.

Divided, We Post

2006-06-13T00:39:00.000-07:00

The Sypress blog has been a bit sparse of late. Thank you Laura for keeping us up with your efforts to spread the delightful news about Manlove Lit. It seems that the fans of Broke Back Mountain are discovering that there is a wealth of reading material of a similar vein for them to enjoy. I chimed in on such a list hoping to attract new readers.

We've been remiss in our blogging because we've been posting elsewhere. I have a blog for my fiction and Marie is posting hither and yon about her poetry zine. Now, we have a newsletter for the Press that needs regular attention. I tell you, it tuckers a body out.

We are up to some exciting stuff. We have a bunch of titles coming out before the end of summer. We have at least one book fair and the possiblility of author readings. As things gel, we'll be sure to cross post here.

I have some more adventures from the edge to report if I can figure out a way to report them and not get in trouble. Or I have one too many chardonnays and report it anyway.

Till next time.

Big Publishers, RT and manlove

2006-05-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

If I found out nothing else at RT I discovered this-m/m erotic romance for women is not a recognized market in the publishing industry. Readers loved it, asked for it and about it, but most print publishers deny an audience for it exists.

Even Harlequin has decide straight women would enjoy f/f romance in their new Spice line more than ones with delicious, hot, primal men in them. I have yet to understand that particular reasoning. I love men. I want men in my romances, and two men are better than no men in a story. M/m readers do exist, by the thousands.

I want to help raise the awareness of the NY print houses to the existence of some of the hottest stories out there, MANLOVE.

Romantic manlove erotic fiction has been around for over thirty years, since the first Kirk/Spock fanfiction was written and it's not going anywhere. There are thousand of sites devoted to slash fiction and hundreds of thousands of readers looking for quality stories, most, but not all, are women. A recent Wall Street Journal article that state 60% of Brokeback's audience is female.

Manlove *is* a part of the romance community. E publishers get it, small print publishers get it. Now we need to have the big guys get it if we want more quality manlove fiction made available to us. Please consider dropping a note to the addys below. Maybe then we could see some action. It would also help to mention and include the link for a certain book's status on Amazon or B&N. Be polite. And numbers count. Let's make our voices heard.

Publishers: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
customerservice@dorchpub.com

Kensington Publishing Corp.
Hilary Sares, Editor
kensingtonmarketing@kensingtonbooks.com

New Author from Slashdom

2006-05-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

I'm very please to announce that we have increased our erotic author roster with the addition of Connie Bailey. She writes under that name and Baileymoyes in lotr, Troy and Brokeback Mountain fandoms. Her work is very fine and I'm really looking forward to what she is cooking up for us. I welsome her to this blog as well. I know we all hope you enjoy reading our sometimes twisted musings and will add some of your own.

Filthy Lucre

2006-05-01T03:42:00.000-07:00

I used to think that writers or other creative folks who refused to do anything for free were arrogant at best and complete jerks at worst. Many times during our struggles in the film biz, we ran into proefessionals who wouldn't even answer a question without a consulting fee. Boy, that would burn my biscuits. Well, my world view has changed. It started when I went out for a gig as a line producer. Despite my knowledge of the job, they passed because my resume for that position was a bit thin. Oh, I had done the job over and over again, but hadn't been paid for it. So, it didn't really count.

Now, the day job thing has been relatively good for Jon and I, but it's becoming more and more difficult to try to develop films while encumbered with working for someone else. Yes, there are cell phones, but that's infringing on someone else's time. And even if that was cool with an employer, there is no way I can carry everything I need to answer spur of the moment questions or avert an unforseen crisis. We needed to start really working as a production company.

So this year, I started asking for pay when someone wanted a script scheduled and/or budgeted. I don't ask for nearly what the job can pay, but it's taking the place of my temp salary. Those few gigs lead to Jon and I script doctoring and likely running the shoot for an ultra low budget horror film. Contacts beget contacts. More work is on the horizon as we develop our own. It's scary because it ain't steady. But it's a step we needed to make. We still help fellow writers nad producers, because karma is very important to us. We got helped a lot, so we have to do the same. But we're also taking steps to be considered full time professional film makers.

Likewise, this year Sybaritic Press ratcheted up it's profile and is adding to it's roster of authors. We're advertising and planning on attending more trade oriented events. We;re also pushing to get our titles into brick and mortar stores this year. Laura made a breakthrough that we believe will be the trend for the year. I still help authors that come my way, and I always will. But I want to make my living as a writer of books and screenplays. Taking myself and my businesses more seriously was the first big step.

When I was in grad school, I used to dream of having a wonder estate in an exotic place. I have to pick up the pace and get it (and the poolboy) while I'm still young enough to know why I wanted it!

I'm a Passionate Plume RWA contest finalist!

2006-04-30T05:17:00.000-07:00

I go the news last week and I couldn't be more thrilled! My m/m erotic romance novel, A BIT OF ROUGH from Sybaritic Press, of course, is a finalist in a RWA contest! I was very honored and so pleased by it, I could hardly think straight for a moment when I got the notification. The full impact of a m/m romance finalizing didn't actually hit me until the congratulations began pouring in and other, more experienced authors began to tell me of outstanding it was for my novel to be included. I'm even more honored and surprised now than I was before. Just plain thrilling!

Laura Baumbach
http://www.laurabaumbach.com

A Different Light BookStore

2006-04-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

While surfing the internet and googling my name for information about myself(I learn many things about me this way) I found my m/m erotic novel A BIT OF ROUGH listed on the online catalog for the LA based gay book store A DIFFERENT LIGHT! Imagine how thrilled I was to see it. I don't know if that means they are carrying it on the shelves, but I loved seeing on their web page. Can B&N be far behind?

Bel Esprit - Writers Sharing

2006-04-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

I've been reading about a great deal about the extraordinary time for some of the world's best writers during the 1920s in Paris. However anyone may feel about Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce and Pound, this was a time the likes of which the world is not likely to see again. I think this is true not just because of the talent represented, but because of the extraordinary way they interacted with each other. The writers of that time read each others' drafts, edited them and often encouraged each other through rough times. They leant each other money, held each other's stashes and even smuggled their banned books into the US (though I doubt I can forgive Hemingway for losing Ulysses onto the US reading public). And in the middle of it all was my own personal heroine, Sylvia Beach. She ran a little bookstore where many of these greats gathered and borrowed books. She acted as a funding source, publisher and support system for many a writer from that 'lost generation.'

I find I admire the generosity that flourished among those writers -- all of whom had their own big egos. I try to emulate that spirit in my own writing world and try to encourage it in others. I was lucky during grad school to have a circle of friends that were as willing to risk their egos and share their expertise. We had a women's writing workshop in addition to the ones that were formal classes. We were all different types of writers with varying levels of experience, but we found something to share that everyone could use. I learned how to refine dialog from their critics and I helped others with creating clear plots. I really believe I owe finishing my thesis novel to their assistance.

Why do I bring this up today? I wanted to remind our bloggers that Sybaritic Press exists in part to share the collected experience of the editors and provide a springboard publishing experience to new writers. We also want to provide support (not financial, of course) to writers who may be blocked or otherwise stymied.

Feel free to workshop your stories on the blog or bring us your writing dilemmas. Your stories are safe here and perhaps we can help work through any problems. Let's keep Bel Esprit alive!

New Novel In Progress -- Hot Cops

2006-03-28T10:22:00.000-08:00

I've started a novel based on one of our films. Freak Experts is in active development with a plan to shoot in the summer. The novel is not based on the script. It's based on how this pair of detectives began their personal relationship. I'm putting out excerpts to workshop them and, of course, to promote both the film and the upcoming novel. The excerpt up today is the pivotal scene between the two men right before they make love the first time. I started here because it's going to be the most difficutlt scene to get right. Infor on the film can be found at: http://freakexperts.com. The excerpt can be found at: http://dlwarner.blogspot.com/.

Opinions welcome!

What is Literature?

2006-03-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

This question has come up a lot for me over the many years I've persued writing as a career. Early on, I thought about what was 'serious writing' versus commercial fiction as I contemplated whether or not to have a pen name. This was seriously encouraged for those wanting to write real literature after making a living writing romances or mysteries. One of my favorite professors in grad school had a pen name writing mysteries that supported his family far more nicely than his 'serious ficiton.' He was so ashamed of the mysteries that his students did not find out his pen name even after he died (I still look).

Grad school fermented my hostility at the notion that serious lit and lit for the masses were from hugely different classes. If I learned nothing from my studies of the greats in English lit was that whether they were deemed serious and worthy of study or pop culture depended a lot on who was looking at the works and why. Many greats fell in and out of fashion in academia over generations. My pack of professors did not seem to think that skill in storytelling made for a great writer. Don't ask me why, but playing with words and tenses and points of view was the thing -- not conveying an understandable plot. This same crew thought Toni Morrison was not a suitable subject for my PhD a year before she won the Nobel Prize. My view of college professors is decidely sideways.

Then one night, I found myself drinking cheep beer by the pitcher with William Goldman (oscar winning screenplay writer and author of ‘The Princess Bride’ and ‘Marathon Man’, two fine novels). He was speaking at our grad school because his daughter was a student there. Here is this man who had achieved everything that I was dreaming of achieving and he was fretting that his works would not be remembered by critics or professors once he was gone. And there I was already very grateful that someone else was buying the drinks and snacks explaining that Charles Dickens wrote the equivalent of soap operas in his days. His stories were meant for the masses to follow easily and were cheap enough that one could be purchased and read aloud to a group. Dickens could have easily written ‘Desperate Housewives.’ Though my example at the time was probably ‘Dynasty.’

This all comes back to me now as Jon and I are exploring well studied authors for our film projects. These writers are on every reading list from junior high to graduate school. There is no doubt in my mind why they are studied. Their use of language is elegance and grace and wit. But they have all fallen out of fashion at one point or another due to improper content (Oscar Wilde) or that their writing was deemed as merely thinly disguised reportage (Hemingway and Fitzgerald).

That is true for all three writers. It’s also true for ‘Peyton Place.’ I believe that all deserve attention in the history of fiction. Writing stories that can transcend all the class and culture differences of a mass audience and strike a cord that resonates and enthralls is a talent that should never be thought of as minor. To find a niche readership that is avid and loyal is not a small feat. I take the artist and the devotee of pop culture or even smut equally seriously. Each has a venerable place on my bookshelf and on my publisher’s list.

In Need of a Neck Brace

2006-02-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't blogged in a bit which is naughty. I've been advised to put up a blog for my erotic fiction, but that's not the only reason I haven't posted here. I've been spread too thin of late especially with my writing. Writing a new blog, writing posts for various romance and erotic mailing lists and writing press releases for my other publishing duties doesn't leave a lot of time or energy for mor writing. My current novel is suffering a bit because of this. I'm wearing a lot of hats for Sybaritic Press. And that doesn't count the array of headgear I wear for the production compnaies. I'm in need of a neckbrace and some sort of mood alteration.

I'm not complaining at this point about the time it takes to nurutre these business. There has been some advancements on both the publishing and film fronts. Each is moving into a higher level. The film business has brought us new partners and associates who are exciting and ambitious. Meshing with them has been fun and educational. I can't wait to work a shoort with them.

I do regret the toll all of these roles is taking on my writing. The Surrender novels had been a way for me to scratch my ficiton itch and relax. They had been a lot of fun to write. Now, finishing Price of Surrender has turned into more of a chore. I find a relatively uncluttered block of time and try to finish, but I'm well and so far, thoroughly blocked. I'm sure that it's because the novels had been a past time. It's hard to think of finishig it as important when I have to take calls from Prague or Zurich about our big budget gamble. Or I'm gently but firmly prodding all sides of the current film to keep the process on track and on schedule. There are a few amongst my film associates who think I need to choose between the novels and the movies. They posit that I can't split my focus and be effective in either realm. I don't know that they're wrong. I hope they aren't.

So this blog is essentially about being on both sides of the creative arts business which all of our authors will have to do from time to time. Ask Laura about the time and attention it takes to promote your title. You will all have to wear extra head gear. I suggest a crash helmet as one of them.

Preditors and Editors Poll Results

2006-02-03T05:58:00.000-08:00

Hi All!

The final results are in for the Preditors and Editors poll!

I want to send out a big hug and a THANK YOU ALL who voted!

I placed in the top ten in both categories I was entered.
I finished in a 3-way tie for 10th place for favorite author and my latest novel A BIT OF ROUGH finished in 4th place for favorite romance!

Poll results can be seen here:
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/vote0510b.htm
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/vote0503.htm

Thank you again.

sincerely (and with a thrilled smile on her face), Laura

Fan Girl Confidential

2006-01-19T17:05:00.000-08:00

It's very easy to get jaded about celebrities in LA. You find that sentences like 'I wish Richard Hatch would put pants on when I visit' or 'Rod Stieger locked me out of the store' or 'Eliot Gould tried to steal my roast beef' become almost common if you live in the right part of town. When I worked retail, Ted Danson thought I was his personal shopper. You get over the allure after a while, because more often than not the star is in the way when you need to get something or they are being a big pain in the nether parts during any given encounter.

But there are always those stars that make you a bit weak in the knees. I nearly crippled a co-worker at my bookstore to wait on Patrick Stewart (who likes to give exact change). And I babbled at Clint Eastwood when I had to call his house to check a reference while I temped at an upscale nanny placement service.

And then there is that perfect storm of circumstances when you are faced with the prospect of meeting an actor that makes your heart go pitter patter and have to be completely professional. It's great to make an 'A-list' personal connection, but you can't a: take a camera to prove the meeting happened to family, friends and former employers; b: you can't babble and c: you can't lick, kiss or grab any part of their person as you have oft fantasized.

Jon didn't think I had noticed the hot men in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in geek speak that's LOTR. Karl Urban wasn't in that one, so he knew I wasn't looking for him. Besides, it's hard for me to think of Karl as sexy. That makes crawling around adjusting his inseam easier. Every time I think of him, I think of how dead on a Walter Koenig impression he does and how danged hard it is to make him smile while in character. But I digress. It wasn't that I hadn't noticed the hot guys in LOTR. At the time we saw the film, I was thinking of firing the second vampire cast for Demon Under Glass before I'd even hired him. I actually left before the heoric gang enter the mines to interview the actor from the lobby one last time before I went to vamp number three. Even with all that, I noticed the hot men. They wore too many clothes, but were hot nonetheless. And among the brave sword weilding heroes making my heart beat faster was Viggo Mortensen.

Viggo has an interesting pedigree in Los Angeles. In many circles, he's thought of as a poet and a photographer more than as an actor. And it's because of that context that I made initial contact with him. I massaged my relationship with the poetry community through my publishing partner Marie to introduce mayself and get him to read two scripts. He loved the scripts but passed on acting in them for various reasons. Still, bcause he liked the work, I had an connection to him that he always responded to. In December, he kindly agreed to my request and donated some of his books to a charity auction run by may partner and a friend. The auction went very well. Last weekend, we had an opportunity to thank him in person. He was doing a book signing at a Santa Monica art gallery.

So on a rainy, cold Satruday, Marie, our set guy Randy and I set off to give him a gift bag of Sybpress poetry and a lovely hand knitted scarf from the auction. Silly me thought that we're years from the last 'Rings' release, it's rainy and cold and how many people could there be? Thus, we arrived a mere half and hour before the event and found ourselves in at least a two hour long line with people who had flown there or driven all night to be there and were all just a little too desperately elated. We had warned Randy that if he wore any part of his Aragorn suit or asked any question about the Flame of the West, we would kill him in the parking lot. I then resigned myself towaiting ina long line and trying to introduce myself as someone who doesn't carry a hand embroidered Eormer purse while in line with a legion of folks who would and hoping that I don't blend in with the rest of the crowd his eyes glazed over. I know it sounds harsh, especially coming from someone who still wears hand crafted t-shirts of favorite actors and who still keeps a little fan shrine. But I needed this man who is uncomfortable with his icon status to see us as publishers and remember me as a writer/producer.

Fates smiled upon us though. Turns out, the line was queued in the wrong place. And when the gent who ran the gallery led the way to the right door, we were among a scant few who followed. The man had previously given us soft drinks and cookies. Such a kind soul would not lead us to the wrong door. That faith put us near the front of the line. The way the signing was arranged allowed us to appraoch him alone and out of eye or earshot of the crowd.

I was a little nervous as I apporached, but we were all nicely dressed. And there is something about wearing black cashmere and leather that gives me confidence. The recognition on his face after I introduced myself carried us the rest of the way. Marie made her public service-style announcement about the fine take the auction achieved with his help. He accepted the small gift bag himself and even invited us to return for the gallery opeing that evening. For Randy's sake, I wish we had taken photos, but I was very happy with the heartfelt handshake and the smile. I even maanged not to sqeal when we reached the parking lot. Maybe the fangirl in me is finally growing up. Nah, given the chance, I would have went for the grope.

gay romance pioneering

2006-01-19T17:02:00.000-08:00

It may be that none of the readers of Romantic Times thinks to ask for gay romance reviews because they've never seen them in the magazine. It was the same case for erotica only a few years ago. Laura's ad may open a door to a heretofore hidden audience withing the magazine's community. I know that a lot of slash fans and writers are also avid romance novel fans. I'm sure that across RT's readership, this interest is well pronounced. I'm glad you're still running the ad.

gay romance prejudice

2006-01-19T11:48:00.000-08:00

I’m running an ad in the May issue of RT BOOKclub promoting my m/m romance novel, A BIT OF ROUGH, for the RT convention in Daytona in May. Part of the packaging for the ad asks you to send in a copy of your novel for review by the RT staff.

Well guess what? Today I learned through my ad people that a staff member at RT mentioned that while they had received the copy of my book for review, it would not be reviewed because it was gay fiction. She reports that this is not written or printed anywhere. She said that there had been another gay romance submitted (also not reviewed) but that with their current review staff, they (RT) didn't feel well equipped to review this particular ‘brand of romance’.

‘Brand of romance’? Do they think gay men walk around with a mark on their foreheads like a scarlet letter? I can’t believe in this day and age that this kind of unwarranted and out dated prejudice in writing is allowed to exist. Isn’t the literary world supposed to the cutting edge of exploration and new elements? Didn’t anyone there read Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’? I’m not trying to compare my novel to her exquisite writings, but you get the idea.

We need to awaken their awareness of the m/m romance community around them.

On the Importance of Flash

2006-01-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

This is the last post about the trip to France though it is far from my last post about that wonderful (current problems notwithstanding). The topic this time is the poodle. I’m not talking about those miniature creatures that are tightly wound up and often vibrating with rage. I’m talking about the regular sized, normal poodles that were all over Cannes. There was a chocolate brown one with soulful dark eyes who lived in a narrow cobblestone street near our hotel. This little street had about a dozen tiny restaurants on it. This groovy poodle ambled about from restaurant to restaurant begging tidbits with those soulful eyes. And like many of the French, all that lovely food did not affect his trim physique. He was very mellow and allowed us to pet him even if we didn’t share a little of the Carpaccio.

As cool as that dog was, the coolest poodle we encounter actually lived in our Cannes hotel. His name was Flash. This poodle was champagne colored. He was very old, blind in one eye and walked with a pronounced limp. Still, this old guy managed to escape the hotel on a daily basis. My most used French phrase was ‘le chien a disparu.’ Despite his advanced age and crankiness, the dog was friendly to guests. He only barked at his owners. We assumed it was some long held grudge against them that was aggravated when they were late walking or feeding him. Once, Flash looked out of sorts in the lobby and we asked why. The desk clerk said that he had no one to scold. So, he called the Lady of the house on his cell then held the phone up to Flash’s good ear. As soon as he heard the Lady’s voice, he started barking at her. After a couple of salvos and a snort, he settled onto his sleeping pillow. Flash was imperious but endearing. He made the hotel more personal than just a place o stay. He was very much a part of our days then. I’ve often been tempted to send an e-mail to ask how he is faring.

Our experience with Flash and poodles in general mirrored our experiences in general in France. Despite the language barrier and some imperiousness, we found a mellow quality to the experience that made us feel at home. The pleasures are simple ones, good food, convivial atmosphere, interesting scenery. I try to re-create some of that civility at home. I have the lovely cheeses and breads and jams, but it never quite the same. I suspect that I don’t take the time to really relax into the moment. Or maybe I need a poodle.

2005 Retrospective

2006-01-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it’s late. See the above post. 2005’s promise and disappointments can be summed up in my feelings about that photo. For ten magical days were felt like we ran with the big dogs. I cannot adequately relay how amazing it was to be on those red carpeted stairs. Those moments made the disappointments all the sharper. We had made a film, it got sold, we found a lot of the avenues to bigger projects by carefully listening, and mingling and learning. Still, the doors remained cracked, but not really open to the next level. The journey to this point is frustrating and negativity greets you at every turn. Industry veterans are a very pessimistic lot. And they really can spread their negativity far and wide. I reason that the attitude is a rationalization for them not mounting their own productions. But hell, they get paid very, very well doing some of the coolest jobs in the planet, why rain on my parade?

In the end my stubbornness and arrogance keeps us going. We’ve had some progress on a couple of the film projects that make me hopeful once again. I plan to bring something back to Cannes in 2007.

My novel writing will be more in the forefront in 2005. I finally have an author’s page: http://dlwarner.com. And I’ll have at least two novels out this year. It feels really good to write once again. The great reviews for the novel have done wonders for my bruised ego. I’m pleased to say that I look forward to 2006 and the new promise it brings.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-05T14:48:00.000-08:00

Jon and I (and Gary and Collosso) send our wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2006, Yeah, it’s late but I’ve been hung over. However, I did figure out how to post photos!

We look forward to greater success for our Sybaritic Press authors. I'll be welcoming more of them in the next few months.

You can look forward to more strange musings and occasional whining from me right here!

The elusive muse

2005-12-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

With the holiday season upon us all, I'm finding it a little difficult to find time for writing. I had these big plans for getting a short story done inbetween edits of my latest novel, while preparing for the family holiday. My shopping is all done, my wrapping is nearly finished, I have all the necessary items for great stockingstuffers, and I'm all set for the cooking and baking for the actual meal on Sunday. Since I'll be working my night job at the hospital Christmas eve, I have it all orgainized so my husband isn't left doing it by himself. You would think I would have plenty of time to devote to my other job--writing.

But I don't know if it's the cold, or the snow, or the cozy family feeling of the season, but I'm having trouble focusing on what I want to write. I know what I want to say. I have it all outlined and thought out. I have the conflict and climax in the right places, I have the characters all fleshed out and waiting. Yet when I sit down to the keyboard and open the synopsis and outline, my mind wanders. I know I can't wait for the "muse" (whatever that is) to strike. I have deadlines, promises to keep, promoting and marketing plans all screaming for my attention, too.

I hope Santa brings a heaping helping of understanding and patience to my editors, all of them.
I'm going to need it, I think.

Laura

I'm back

2005-12-19T10:38:00.000-08:00

Well I have finally learned how to use this darn thing. Kind of. I think. We'll have to see. I'm slowly, but surely, dragging my old-fashioned butt into the 21st century and learning how to do more than type(poorly) on this fancy computer I have in front of me. It's only taken four invitations and about fifty tries to get me this far. Cross your fingers I don't lose it all in my sleep tonight!

Laura

Returning to the First Love

2005-12-07T01:03:00.000-08:00

I've been working on my novels again. I've done all I can with film projects for the moment. That's a relief. I really thought the next level would involve bloodletting. So I found myself writing things that would only involve me and the characters developing on my PC screen. I hadn't given much thought to how I was feeling about facing a novel again until I started writing the copy for my new author page.

I will digress now. Funny thing. Jon claims that I can't do anything without creating a web page. That may be why I thought of creating smackjoninthehead.com during that chat. At any rate, I've been plugging along as a non fanfic writer for a few years now and didn't have an author page. Laura had to point that out to me. I found myself weirded out by that for some reason. It took me a while to come up with something interesting to say beyond listing what I was up to.

Back to the point. I'm writing a mini bio of my last decade and how I came to writing the current works and realized something about the difference in writing screenplays and novels and why I prefer the latter to the former. While there is nothing quite like hearing words you've written spoken by people you envisioned and in the tone you imagined, there is a lot of compromise in putting a screenplay on film. Many times during rehearsals and shoots I've had well reasoned discussions with carefully chosen performers about how dialogue can be changed while I wonder how to diplomatically ask 'why the hell don't you say it as written?' Even when I've had many wonderful collaborations with actors over dialogue, I've had almost as many fights. And that's afterI don't know how many different department heads have told me what I've written isn't filmable this way or or snidely ask me why did I write it that way. Film making is by nature creativity by committee. Even in the first draft, the writer's mind is on budgets and schedules and who the lead will be. That's a lot of baggage before the first word is written.

It is sheer bliss to only listen to the characters in my head while I write. Mind you, right now the vampire from one novel is on a rampage against my elven fantasy folk from my romance novel and that's just a little weird. But all in all, I'm more peaceful writing at the moment.

And to my utter surprise, especially considering my ego, my efforts have been well recieved. The first three reviews posted on romance web sites have been great. A fourth is about to be posted. The reviewers liked the novel for different reasons which was wonderful. I now feel good about the 60,000 plus words sequel in progress.

Who said you can't return to that first love?

Preaching the Gospel of Man Love

2005-10-31T11:34:00.000-08:00

Our other brand new title, A Bit of Rough, by Laura Baumbach presents an intersting marketing challenge. We know it will do well in the gay erotic lit scene. That should sell us a nice bit of copies. But being the ever evil genius that I am in this arena, I crave the women's erotica market. To that end, Laura has been submitting the novel for review on mainstream romance sites. The response has been very good. And we have a marketing campaign for the huge book fair at the Romantic Times Booklovers covention in May. We know there is a percentage of women that like seeing beautiful men together. and Laura's narrative is so compelling, that I think we can get many who thought they weren't interested to give it a try. Hopefully, we can generate some controversy from the right wing and become a bestseller!

I wanted to take up some space to again compliment Laura and her work. I have dozens of friends who write. I have not offered to publish them. My fondness of the lady has nothing to do with publishing her work. Our company is too small and usually too financially strapped for that kind of thing. Laura has talent worth nurturing. She can do the page turner. With the right breaks, I see her up there on the bestseller list. And she makes me feel lazy.

Anyway, for those peeking at this blog who haven't discovered the delicious diversion of man-love, check out Laura's page and follow the links to an exerpt. Better yet, go to http://sybpress.com and follow the link to buy it!

We Have Arrived!! Sybpress First Signing

2005-10-31T10:08:00.000-08:00

Saturday was an interesting day for me. Our latest author, Stephen Goldman, scheduled a reading/signing for his opus The Canon of the Lone Ranger. This books is a collection of poetry and prose exploring one man's life through pop fiction and historical icons. Sounds literary but it is very accessible and extremely funny. Here's the bit that made me want to publish it.

The silver mine is running low, and late in life the Lone Ranger applies for a job. The ad reads:

WANTED
Masked rider of the plains, capable of returning with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, proficiency with exotic, expensive side-arms a must, able to work in a multi-ethnic partnership setting, activist with a strong commitment to truth, justice and the American Way. Must provide own magnificent white stallion w/ insurance. Bi-lingual and computer literate a plus.

After the interview, the Lone Ranger receives the following letter:
Dear Mr. Ranger:
Thank you for your interest in our organization. Although superbly qualified in your job skills, we regretfully inform you that, after due deliberation, nay, prayerful soul-searching, we have selected from the excellent pool of applicants, someone more exactly suited to our needs as stated in the advertisements and job-description. Thank you again for your interest, and best wishes to you in your puling and pathetic efforts to survive.

Yours truly,
I.M.Ashmuk
I.M. Ashmuk
Exec. Vice President for Personnel
AMERICORP-VERY LTD.

cc: Wotan A. Soul
Recruitment Director

It is a funny, twisted and very witty book. Marie and I wanted to broaden our support of the writing community in LA, and Stephen has quite a following. Thus, began a wild ride. Such wonderfully twisted writing tends to come from a writer with a very ...interesting personality. We should have expected that. However, since the book was 30 years in the making, I thought the need to publish would mitigate any problems the writer had with cover art restrictions and editing concerns. Ha! The months it took for this book to be produce were extremely trying. The deal nearly fell apart on several occasions. Tempers were so hot that I had forgotten why I liked the book.

Marie stepped in and mediated, cajoled, and pleaded the book through the final stages. This meant sitting with Jon and calmly going through the various editing issues while plying me with wine or martinis to keep me from remembering that I was on a seething vat of anger and resentment. While all of this was raging, I was foolishly trying to mount three films. Laura's latest book was also in the final throes of creation. During the last week of editing Stephen's book, I was ready to dissolve the publishing company. And this was before our latest PC meltdown.

Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed (and those were some good martinis). The book got made and all were pleased with the results. We were all weary though. Thus, Jon, Marie and I approached the signing with a bit of trepidation.

It was quite an event. Marie and Stephen and a man named Betto (did you know that Betto is the most common nickname in the world. It's short for Roberto and covers Spanish, French and Italian versions) brought bunches of food and wine. Jon and I helped with the set up. The spread was very nice. The crowd was great. it was a mix of aging flower children, hippies and young beatnik wannabees. All of them loved our author and they all had high praise for the book -- especially the cover. Since the cover was one of the near deal breakers, it was a relief to see that Jon's design sense was validated. We sold almost every copy we had -- our biggest single day sales to date. And Stephen has two more signings! At that moment, I was reminded of my favorite signing event. It was with Toni Morrison. She was wonderful. The crowd was wonderful. That was a moment I hoped to live for myself as a writer.

But then came the introductions and thanks by Stephen. He heaped praise upon the three of us while acknowledging how difficult he had been. And then he said that this was his first book ever published and he was in his sixties. It struck me then what had been done and why there was so much turmoil around the creation of that title. We had his life's work in our hands. I was floored that he was ever able to rise above his worry and misgivings to trust us. I was very glad that we managed to pull it off.

As we were applauded, I realized that we were really publishers. It's scary to think of taking on someone's dreams of creative fulfillment. It was even scarier to realize we'd been outed as publishers in a room full of writers. Kidding. It was an amazing day. I'm not sure what this will mean for next year's list of titles. This realization underscores the fact that we have to be able to focus on our authors while a title is being produced. As we're all distracted by other projects, I believe we'll take fewer titles next year and really work on nurturing and promoting them. Marie and I have our eye on a few already. But all that is for later. Right now, I'm happy in basking in the success.

Characterization Directions

2005-10-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

During a recent online discussion of characterization for Demon Under Glass characters, I threw together a few thoughts on what I feel about working in particular universe and thought I might share them with you here as well.

Personally, my own view of the DUG characters waffles with whatever the current story I'm writing needs. Despite being limited to the amount of exposition that can go into a movie as opposed to a TV series, DragonCor Productions has given us nicely nuanced characters that can be interpreted on many different levels. I think that is what is the most appealing about writing in this universe, leastwise for me -- that the rich canon provided so far can be extrapolated into so many different directions.

A number of people see Simon as sheer evil. I doubt that I'll ever write a purely evil Simon myself, but then pure evil does not appeal to me personally. Since vampirism in the DUG universe is caused by a virus, I like to think that Simon's actions are based on choices rather than on demonic compulsion, thus resulting in interesting emotional and intellectual conflict that can be explored in all sorts of interesting ways.

For me, the fun in writing comes from the challenge of rationally motivating the actions of the characters I write. The why is as important as the what; and I can see the same characters acting in totally different ways under different circumstances. For me, the key to a good story is proper motivation.

Beta'ing vs Editing

2005-08-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been involved in a number of online discussions of what the difference is between the terms beta'ing and editing, with lots of different, often conflicting opinions. I thought Notes from the Edge might be a good forum to share my thoughts on those terms.

My personal definitions come from my background in the high-tech industry, where alpha testing is performed (usually by the programmer or programming team) while an application is getting created, and not only is very preliminary, but only covers certain aspects of the incomplete application; beta testing is performed by a select group of testers on the first version(s) of a product as part of the process of finalizing it and working the bugs out; acceptance testing is done by the client on the supposedly finalized product in order to assure that no bugs have been missed and that the application actually does what it's supposed to do before it's paid for.

I tend to liken my own editing process to the above stages. I throw bits and pieces of my writing out to my close friends while I'm doing the writing and ask for their help to get over whatever problem I'm having or to confirm whether or not I'm on the right track. That's what I personally consider my "alpha'ing" (for lack of an existing term). When the story is finished to the best of my ability (spell-checked, reread and personally edited), I send it to my betas, who are knowledgeable in either writing and/or the fandom in question (and preferably both). I ask them to try and catch anything and everything my alphas and I missed so that I can fix those problems before I send the story on to the public. Finally, when I submit the story to a publisher, if it is accepted, the publisher does the acceptance testing, i.e., the editing, telling me what I need to do to make that story acceptable for publication. I'm expecting my editor to be knowledgeable enough to make the story better and/or more marketable.

And when I'm the one who's doing the alpha'ing, I expect to get a rough draft that needs more work. If asked, I won't do any spell-checking, grammar-checking, etc. at this point, since it will probably have to be done all over again once the story has been rewritten/fixed, risking the possibility of more errors creeping in (although I do prefer to give that kind of feedback even at the beginning, because it helps to keep errors from accumulating). When I'm doing editing on a story that's been submitted to Blackfly Presses, for example, I expect most of the problems and errors to have already been addressed before the story ever got to me. I'm there to catch what may have been missed, add my so-called "expert" advice if the submitter felt their own betas weren't all that efficient, and advise on market-value ("Sorry, BFP's fanfic niche market does not go for wimpy Blair. Could you please give him some spine?")

But as always, these are my own personal definitions and expectations. :-) I know well that many -- possibly most -- writers and publishers have different definitions for the process.

Comicon 2005, Hanging Out With Ed the Maniac, and How I Almost Died!

2005-07-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

I got up early, I and was ready by 7 AM. Ed called, and told me:

A) he'd been up ALL night working on his script to flog at the Comicon.
B) he would be late because the printer function on his computer wasn't behaving.

So...Ed didn't get my house until 9:30 AM (this from the man who wanted to leave at 5 AM, and he didn't even apologise for being late). After he showed up, he plopped himself down on my sofa and demanded, "So, what, don't you even have any coffee?"
I had made coffee earlier for me, but upon hearing that almost wanted to say, "the kitchen is CLOSED!” Yet, I made him a cup of coffee while I was waiting for my computer to finish a virus scan, and then printed out directions to get to:

A) A Washington Mutual so he could use the ATM.
B) How to get to the Comicon.

We actually didn't get on the road until 11 AM, between trying to get money and driving through a Carl’s Jr. staffed by what Ed dubbed '"indifferent morons." Conversation was ok, but he kept confusing names. Example: we were discussing my former roommate, who he called "Erin," instead of "Erik." He managed to remember Jen’s name, but when we were discussing her bi-polar disorder, he kept calling her "crazy" and "psychotic"....sigh...After 45 minutes of driving we switched places so he could nap.
If you are going to drive to San Diego for ANY event, expect to spend the last 85 miles in gridlock. If you look to your right, it's very pretty shoreline. If you look to your left you’ll see sand dunes, and the occasional "watch out for illegal alien families crossing the free-way" signs. After 10 miles either way it becomes soporific.
Finally at 2:45 PM, we arrived. I found parking three blocks away from the convention center. Three blocks=$12.00. We walked over to registration - and into a costume extravaganza.
Favorite costumes:

A) Mini-Me Darth Vader - a small boy/girl(?) wearing the full DV costume, including the adult version of the mask (which is why I am not sure what the gender was), trying valiantly to brandish a three-foot light-saber while trying to keep up with his big sister, who was dressed in 'good' Jedi Robes.

B) The Willy Wonka Man with the Golden Ticket - too much pancake make-up, but his teeth were beautiful - and this Willy Wonka was almost 7 ft tall.

C) The Transformer Trio: Three men wearing at least 60 lbs of metal (each), silver make-up, and underneath their costumes, were buffed out to the max. I asked one of them how they made their costumes, and Transformer # 2 told me that he and his friends were:

1) Welders.
2) Had studies armory technique.

I have pictures, I'll send them later.

Since I'm a publisher and editor, I decided to attend a couple of panels I found interesting:

A) 1st Panel: The Unholy Trio: This is the third time I have been to the Comicon, and because I am a little more adult than I used to be (yes, this can be debated, but not right now), I decided to go attend the panel with three sci-fi giants: Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, and my friend Forrest J. Ackerman. For those of you who don't know:

1) Ray Bradbury: one of the greatest American authors of all time, and one of the big three of sci-fi writers: Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein (note, I don't include my favorite, Ellison, because he calls himself a 'speculative fiction' writer...slight difference).
2) Ray Harryhausen: godfather of special effects. He pioneered stop-motion techniques, and is an inspiration to folks like Tim Burton (ala The Nightmare Before Xmas).
3) Forrest J. Ackerman: editor of authors like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton, and L. Ron Hubbard; writer, publisher, sci-fi/horror movie memorabilia collector, inventor of that famous comic book siren Vampirella, and best known for coining that term for the genre "sci-fi."

Anyway, the history of these men is the stuff of legend. They all met in their late teens and formed the "Cafeteria Club," a literary circle where they and other famous authors from the old school of sci-fi would discuss ideas/plots/etc.
There is too much to put into this, but since the sum total ages of these men is 250 years (I rounded up to the nearest 10), it would've been a CRIME to miss seeing these three giants together. The place was packed! And the conversation was RIVITING.
(Note: Forrey lives in Loz Feliz, and if anyone would like to meet him, let me know, and I can arrange it. He loves to meet new people, and is very charming, erudite, and funny!).

B) 2nd Panel: Science and Technology in Story-telling: This was a panel of seven authors, two of which I was looking forward to hearing. I was late to the panel, but managed to get in for the question and answer period.
1) No one seemed to be paying attention to the actual discussion topic. When people got up to ask questions, they revealed themselves to be members of the Cult of Fanboy and asked questions that revolved around topics like "when" are you going to come out with a sequel to "blank," and "is there going to be a movie made from "blank."
2) Cat fight: The two authors I wanted to hear: Kevin Anderson and Orson Scott Card (yes, he is STILL alive, despite rumors to the contrary) kept sniping at each other like two old queens! Sigh. I lost a little respect for both these guys...but I'll still read their books.
3) Bio-tech is a hot topic for sci-fi writers, so is eugenics and the effects of toxins on the genetics of a population (aka - superpowers derived from radiation, stuff like that).

Comicon should be called "X-boxcon." There were MORE multi-media, and movie studios in the spaces than vendors. The vision of armies of nerds mining their way through cardboard boxes for “comic-book gold" are gone.
The last time I was there (1997), the vendors equaled to about 70%. Now it’s more like 30%. Nintendo and Sony took up most of the center space in the 1st floor pavilion, offering interested parties a chance to play the newest adventure games, view upcoming trailers for movies, or just gawk at the actors who were dressed up for photo opps.
This was sad, because it makes me wonder what will happen to comic books...will they disappear like books seem to be. On the plus side, I didn't come home with as much crap as last time: one book (signed 1st edition), one comic book (signed), an Emily the Strange t-shirt, and some artwork (which I will discuss later).
Bad form: you do NOT; under any circumstances pester a comic book writer/illustrator to read your script when they are in the middle of a signing. I couldn't explain this to Ed, who tried to talk up two different authors in the middle of their signings to see if they would take a look at his script Granted; the poor guy was running on sleep fumes.
Wear comfortable shoes: I'm glad I wore tennis shoes, but my feet STILL hurt after a day of traipsing around on concrete floors, and trying to keep up with Ed - he sure can MOVE fast!
The creator of Sponge-Bob is barely an adult...he looks like he should still be in high-school...and his new cartoon Big Pants Mouse is LAME!
There was an auction for The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I ended up bidding and winning a:

A) A piece of promotional art designed and signed by Jack Kirby.
B) A proof copy of a Hellboy poster signed by Mike Mignola.

I never thought my first art auction would be at a comic book convention, but the money was for a good cause, I got a piece of comic book history and a piece of art that will appreciate in value.
Ed and I left finally the convention, and then got lost trying to find the way back to the freeway.
Things about Ed I found out in a short amount of time:

A) He can cuss like a sailor.
B) He YELLS.
C) He has no problem calling someone “stupid” to their face.
D) He has no fear of cops. When we were trying to find someone to ask for directions, I spotted a cop at the intersection we were at. Ed started honking his horn at the cop, who looked IRRITATED, but gave us directions. Ed didn't bother to say thank you, he just drove off.

Ed decided to stop for food.
He ordered a burger.
He kept telling them he wanted cheese on the burger.
When he got the burger, he checked to see if it had cheese, said it didn't and drove back to the Jack-In-The-Box, where upon looking at his burger again under the light of a streetlamp, discovered it HAD cheese after all.
Ed chews with his mouth OPEN...and SMACKS his LIPS...LOUDLY!!!
He made another stop for a soda and some pumpkin seeds.
He chewed the seeds with his mouth OPEN...for the next 50 miles.
No matter WHAT you discuss with Ed, he will turn the conversation into a political one.

A) He cannot say the word 'media' without attaching the word "liberal" to it.
B) The Fox Network is journalistically responsible and objective, but unfortunately they've recently hired a lot of "liberal" journalists

We tried to have a discussion about how the media keeps perpetuating the fear of the general public to keep up ratings, and he told me that I didn't know what I was talking about.
I asked him if he'd seen any of the post-911 coverage. He said he hadn't, because he's been in grad school, and was too deep in his studies to pay attention.
I asked him if he'd seen any of the coverage of the London bombings, and he said he hadn't been paying attention.
I asked him if he'd ever seen the BBC news reports on the London bombings, to which he replied that the BBC invented Al-jezerra, were pro-Palestine, and that the general public should be VERY afraid of terrorists - they should be terrified.
I fell asleep for almost an hour, but woke to feel the car moving funny. Ed was weaving in and out of the lanes, trying to stay awake - we almost RAN into a guard rail - and then a Honda Civic, and in his haste to get off the freeway after I offered to change places with him, jumped a median strip and cleared the ground by almost 10 feet. Sigh...
I drove us home, and he SNORED all the way back. By the time we got back to my house I tried to wake him, but left him in his ca...key still in the ignition...doors unlocked...snoring away.

and that is that...

PS: I still think Ed is a good guy, and a good friend..., but I will NEVER go anywhere with him again...:)

Moonridge Winner

2005-07-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

There's an annual charity auction held by fans of Richard Burgi and Garett Maggart to raise money to support the Moonridge Animal Park. People offer up various fannish items for auction ranging from fannish souvenirs to original art and fanfiction. You can find more information about the 2005 auction at the Friends of Garett & Richard Moonridge Auction website.

To make a long story short, for the second year in a row, I offered to do a "What's Your Pleasure?" story, where the auction winner gets to pick the fandom and pairing, and then I write a customized story for them. Last year's winner of my offering picked Demon Under Glass, and together we created "Nevermore", which was published in volume 8 of Horizontal Mosaic. To my great pleasure, this year's winner has also picked a DUG story. Her only stipulation is that it be long. We'll be starting work on the plot in August. The story will go to either Sybpress or Blackfly Presses, whichever is currently seeking submissions at the time the story is finished.

Brilliance

2005-07-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

When Jon and I first moved out here, one the biggest things that troubled us as writers was were we good enough. Would anyone in the industry take us seriously. Fortunately, we got an answer right away. Our early pitches went some distance with major production companies and we were always able to get meetings based on these favorable impressions. That was a great ego boost and that response kept us from moving back home. Then, it got a little annoying being told how brilliant we are while nobody's actually buying.

The latest example involves Freak Experts, our gay themed police drama. It has a long saga that's too depressing to relate right now.. Last year, I put it in the hands of a Paramount producer who felt he could get it somewhere. I was just wondering about the status of the script upon here about the programming woes of the new gay channel, LOGO. Then, I get a call from said producer. Freak Experts was indeed pitched to LOGO and it was deemed brilliant -- but too dark for the current programming. I have no idea what that means. I was consoled with the other pitch to a major production company that is quite interested in it. There will be a meeting next week about that. If they value their lives, they'll lead with how much they want to pay for it not how brilliant it is.

Pop Culture

2005-07-09T01:13:00.000-07:00

Believe or not, I do have friends that reside in the 'red states' and I have friends here that consider themselves Republican. They watch the Fox news, don't you know. And they had a lot of opinions about our going to Cannes this year and how we would be treated. I wasn't concerned. I already knew that the French -- very much like Americans in this regard -- like to have their language and culture respected. If they see you are making an effort, they are most accommodating.

But because I was not so distracted this visit, I observed even more about how much American pop culture influences life in Europe. And let me say very quickly that is not because we have a better culture or a more popular culture. It is because Americans have a great ease with expressing their feelings about their every day lot. We are encouraged by our founding fathers to embrace 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' after all. We are very good in expressing our feelings of love and lust and sadness and anger in every media at our disposal. These feelings are universal. And we are very good at expressing them.

So, though I was jet lagged and quite tired, I was not entirely surprised to find an American western themed bar in Paris playing Johnny Cash while a silent TV monitor had Snoop Dogg counting down something or other.

Then there was the European wanna be gangstas emulating folks like Daddy Yankee. The visdeos were bad enough, but seeing the effort in person was nearly painful. It is very hard to take a group of gangstas seriously when they are piled in those very tiny European cars. All I could think about was how the LA equivalent would turn the car upside down and use it as an urban hockey puck. They even had the do rags on, for goodness sake. I wanted to apologize to the appropriate French minister for exporting the nonsense.

<>

Even more striking for me was in our Cannes hotel. One afternoon our entire party sat in the living room like lobby reading. Some beautifully dressed older French ladies were in the private parlor with our Hostess playing cards. It was very much like a scene from a delightful French film' Mister Hulot's Vacation.' Very funny film about a typically French vacation with human situations that any language could understand. Anyway, that very French scene had the musical background of James Brown. It was a great album of his, and the songs were about things the French care a lot about -- love and sorrow. It made sense once I got over the very proper French Ladies bobbing their heads to the beat.

Likewise, Jon and I were walking up that very beautiful alley with the deadly steep incline near our hotel one exceptional afternoon. This alley was out of a fairy tale with the colorful shops and the shuttered windows overhead. It was the essence of old Europe. And all the while we walked, Pat Benatar blared from some window. Again, the most unlikely heads were bobbing. It was fabulous.

We never felt unwelcome. Even in the brutal commute of the Paris Metro at rush hour (New Yorkers have nothing on these seasoned campaigners), we felt at home. I figure they thought if a tourist could keep up, they belonged well enough.

Another note. Morning news is as silly overseas as it is in the US. Though I must say, Jon and I enjoyed the Weather General on the anniversary of VE Day. Yes, the weatherman was in full military uniform with medals giving the weather. He was a joy to behold.

Pity Party

2005-07-09T01:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a shameful while. I've been doing the movie mogul thing and struggling with the day to day drugery of survival in LA. Makes one maudlin and more than a little angry. Doing the DUG short fic helped a lot to clear the cobwebs, and some progress in the overall efforts to make another film has helped a lot.

Despite my genrally sunny disposition, we are generally a pessimistic lot (producers, that is). The game is so difficult and subtle that it saps energy and resolve. Friends help a lot. I have some support from a bunch of profane performers and writers. Victories help more -- even small ones. I had a few of those this week. Those small advances make everything else seem doable. Do I'm f--ing doing it to quote one of my actor boys.

Of course, I can't say more than that at present. Those who have followed us know the projects. That's all that can be said for now.

Blog Red

2005-06-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

Starlight glows dully from the polished surface of the blog rooms many statues. It paints the upper edge of the potted plants in a warm dark radiance. Shadows fill the room, shadows and the scent of secrets long kept hidden.

From the corner a rustling, crunching sound is heard. Fire Frog knows where Gerald is getting his greens intake from this evening, and isn't pleased. Creeping up to the podium she turns on the old brass flashlight she is holding under her chin.

Aaaaah!

She turns off the light, remembering too late that she is an amphibian and doesn't have much of a chin, as such. Little lights sparkle before her eyes until they recover and she cautiously turns the torch on again.

"Good evening," she begins...

***

Horror stories, what makes them frighten us? Fear of the unknown? Suspense? The unexpected and liberal use of blood? Of clowns?

We all find horror in different ways at different times. The ghoulish tale of the axe man beating the boyfriends head on the roof of the girlfriends broken down car terrifies at summer camp, and gets sniggered at in the retelling once back home.

Some fear the dark, some the things that happen in the light of day. The modern story teller gets the most out of their audience when they first achieve rapport with them, then sucker punch the beggers with a nasty twist at the end. Blood and gore must be realistic and anatomically correct or risk being suspense ruiningly laughed at.

Formula horror can, oddly, be just as scary as original stuff. Take a girl, show her perfectly blameless life, introduce evil out to get her who for reasons nobody but the class nerd understands, begins cutting up her friends.

Make the girl likeable enough and despite the bog standard story line, we will care. We will 'hate' what happens to her, cringe, relate, buy the video, t-shirt and coffee mug. Silly us.

Stephen King has perfected the art of the everyday horror. His characters are just people that he breaths into life, people doing ordinary things, things that everybody does. They walk their dogs, go shopping, clean their teeth.

He then slips the horror in casually, more and more, until it gets so twisted you can't sleep at night. That's one reason why his books aren't always translated well into film, the directors just won't let the lead characters be ordinary enough.

The characters don't have to be 'good' people, either. Who here is entirely good? We can still see a reflection of ourselves in even the most wicked person. So the best horror story 'victims' are the ones based as close to real people as possible.

And then there is the rule most horror stories share that the evil can never die. It can be defeated, but it must survive in one form or another. That's how sequels are made after all....

There is this one author who does quite passable horror stories, but her endings are all the same. Heroine survives, close friend dies, boyfriend has near miss - evil slips out the back door scarred but more wary from the encounter.

Talk about revenge of the clones! Good wins, evil wins - why did we bother? Status quo for ever - blah.

In dark horror stories the evil wins. Dorothy becomes stranded in the flying monkey infested forest and is forced to eat Toto then make a defensive weapon out of his skull and a handy tree branch.

She returns to the Farm and her uncles continue the incest that drove her away in the first place. But these stories aren't much fun.

Evil should never win too easily. That's twice as bad as letting the good guys win easily.
It's just not cricket, my dear.

To make it interesting you've got to mix everything up, include grey areas, keep the players sides a mystery. But the players are only the base for the story. What you have to really get right is the fear - the belief.

'And I shall show you something different from either. Your shadow at morning striding behind you. Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you. I will show you fear in a handful of dust' - TS Eliot.

The man had it right. If you can make dust scary then you are a true storyteller. Don't believe it can be done? What's the anthrax scare all about then? It's just baby powder going through the mail, dust with good PR.

What will make the kids of today horrified? Read any of the 'Goosebumps' and 'Bum Face' line of books lately? Someone cottoned on to the fact that kids like to be grossed out and scared. So the authors have gone to it with a will.

Maggots squirming out of your mouth repellent enough for you? And these books are being marketed at and read by the very young!

I had to put down a 'for teens' Buffy the Vampire Slayer book the other day to breath through my mouth for a minute. Yuk, some of that stuff is just anatomy class with fringe benefits.

Muppets springing out of a guys stomach aren't going to cut it with this lot. Intellectual fear is going to have to do the trick for them, or twisted stuff that goes beyond the bounds of current decency to the nth degree.

And to think all Alfred Hitchcock had to do was show red blood going down a plughole to horrify his fans. What will the film makers of the future have to do? Makes you think.

***
This ramble was brought to you by the letters ARRGH and the number O and a racing snail with asparagus fern breath...

The Glamorous Life

2005-06-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging because of the piles of paper I need to get through. Most of my family back east think that the film industry is very glamorous. The view gets reinforced when I go on and on about Cannes and the galas. But the last two weeks have been much more typical of the film life. It's boring. It's so boring. I had a temp job doing mindless medical coding and it was more exciting than scheduling a film shoot. The minutia and repetition is mind numbing. You have to look at each scene and make sure all the characters are there. They you have to come up with a pithy description of the scene and in some cases, make a rough guess on everything that may be seen in the scene. Both films I'm scheduling right now has over 300 scenes.

Why am I scheduling a film so far in advance and before its funded? Well, before I can get funded, I need a detailed budget. Before I can do that I have to know some basic things like how long each actor will work on the shoot or 'day out of days.' And I need to know roughly how many locations. To know those things I have to fully schedule it. Once that's done, I import the schedule into the budgeting software. Fun stuff. But it has to be done and since there is no money for development of any of these projects, I'm the one who has to do it. There is a side benefit to all the attention to minutia. I sure do know each production backwards and forwards.

Since I'm done one budget, I've let myself blog a little. I may even read a little. I figure that I'm about two or three big tasks from dealing with the actors and their people. That's not boring. It's exciting in that kind of sudden and violent airplane turbulence. But it is exciting. I may even get to meet an actor or two. Of course, that means I have to pony up some cash for a fancy meal. And, no, you can't order water and eat the free bread while they chow down. You have to eat and possibly drink with them. I like to try to convince them that my favorite places are the ultimate new trend -- chic but cheap eats. Sometimes that works.

Okay, I'm done whining. For now.

Sizzler Award Winner

2005-06-06T11:39:00.000-07:00

Notes from the Edge

Whee! I just picked up my Sizzler (Slash in Zine Literary Erotica) Award certificates for items published in 2004 and am proud to announce that I won the Demon Under Glass Best Story Award for "Storm Surge", which originally appeared in Horizontal Mosaic Vol. 6 and is now included in Sybaritic Press's Demon Spawn II.

[Jenny jumps up and down in glee and imitates an Oscar winner: "They liked me! They actually liked me!"]

Con Survival

2005-06-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

Notes from the Edge

Media*West may not have been Cannes, but it was definitely a busy con this past weekend! I spent almost the whole time behind the Blackfly Press table in the dealers' room, with the occasional side-trip to goffer in the art room. Why? Because we (Blackfly Press) debuted six new zines at M*W (our most ever at any con, and three more than we had originally planned), plus brought in two new zines that had only been available online before. The result was a hellish rush and massive effort in meeting deadlines, especially when the printshop failled to meet their deadline and the colour printer ran out of ink only an hour before we were supposed to pack up the stock in the van to drive to the United States. And I hate to admit it, I'd only finished designing the last colour plate just an hour before that and hadn't even started packing until then. I even got my DUG story done in time to be included in "Horizontal Mosaic Vol. 7" (being editor-in-chief does have its privileges when it comes to deadlines) by putting it as the last story and hauling it off separately to a different printshop the day before we left. Anyway, we ended up at the con on Thursday night with boxes of hundreds of unprepared, unassembled zines that were supposed to go on sale that night. So, we (Hauntfox, Bog and myself) spent almost the entire con cutting, collating, punching and binding zines, sometimes selling them directly out of blistered hands as we curled the last bid of spine into the binder...

Still, despite sore fingers and lack of sleep and missing every panel but one, I had great fun meeting and visiting with all my friends and other folks who dropped by our dealers' table to browse and visit while we worked away at the zines. I even had a chance to chat with Lucy, who was the receptionist in the DUG movie, as well as the dentist's hands. :-)

As for "Nevermore," my DUG story, it was a hit with Lasha, who had won it as a "What's your pleasure" story in last year's Moonridge charity auction. She had four fandoms to pick from, and ended up choosing an AU DUG story. We worked out the basis for the plot through instant messenger, setting it in her hometown of Baltimore and finding an alternative way for Joe and Simon to meet. Researching the VA hospital in Baltimore, I found out it was right across the street from the cemetery where Edgar Allen Poe is buried. I wondered what Simon would have thought of Poe if he had met him -- and voilà, my muse gave me the perfect plot. :-) Loopster's illustration for the story was a hit as well.

Okay, rush over, con over, and I can get back to working on my new DUG story that I've promised to Sybpress...

Sam I Am

2005-06-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

My feelings and experiences of French food can be summed up in my relationship with the ham or Jambon I found there. It was surprising and delightful. I loved the raw ham and the country ham and the smoked ham. I had it in many a baguette or just plain rolled up for breakfast. And though there were no green eggs, I did have it on a train and I had it in the rain. Jon remarked that I was having a ham tour of France.

French food was and is a constant surprise for me. Much of it is far simpler than the food shows make it. And it is far more diverse than I expected. Even when I was eating something 'French,' it usually wasn't in an environment I expected. Our first meal in Paris this time was in a rustic bar with US license plates nailed to the wall, sawdust on the floor and Johnny Cash playing on the jukebox. This was a most peculiar backdrop for salade niscoise. Of course, I was also having something called a martini blanc at the time before noon so it hardly mattered. In our defense, our bodies thought it was 3am (neither Marie nor I know what it was, 'cause it had no vodka or gin or olives).

Most of our stay in Paris did not involve French restaurants. We ate at an Irish Pub near our hotel. Incidentally, there were several Irish pubs in that neighborhood called Pigalle which was also the red-light district. More on that later. The food there was really good. In the Latin Quarter, we ate in a Greek restaurant. Jon encountered his first kabob with a riot of dried herbs and strings of garlic overhead. A bored barmaid danced to live Greek music punctuated by shouts of 'oh-pa' and the smashing of small plates. There wasn't really a celebration going on. The shouting and plate smashing was used to attract customers. A restaurant owner just across the narrow alley was smashing plates at passersby as well.

The only 'French' dish I had the first pass through Paris was a 'coque Monsieur.' And while it involved a lovely piece of ham, I found myself disconcerted with a grilled cheese sandwich where the cheese was on the outside of the sandwich.

In Cannes, we ate a lot of Italian food. I've never had better pizzas than I have had there. I found out from a Food Network chef on our last visit there that the region was once part of Italy, so the food isn't surprising. I also had a lot of French fries or frites there. Let me tell you, the French know how to make some fries. The were the best Jon or I have ever had. They needed no condiments and often tasted great cold. I have no idea how that's possible, but we never had even a mediocre batch of fries.

I did manage to have some food of the region. Provence cooking is known for its freshness and its use of fragrant herbs and rightfully so. I had salmon, chicken and beef Provence dishes. They were deceptively simple and absolutely amazing. I shoveled down the lovely green salads and the delicately steamed, tender green beans. All fabulous. Even Jon managed to drift from his usual pasta and bread diet to sample a nice array of food.

The meals were leisurely for the most part and steeped in civility. I loved the little touches like wine that came in little chilled porcelain pitchers and servers who are in no hurry to shoo diners away -- even after the check is paid.

The big surprise of our last trip to Cannes held up on the next visit. We found a steak sandwich that was wonderful -- despite not being from Philly.

For all the food mentioned, I didn't over-indulge. I managed to only have three of my beloved palmiers the entire trip. and because of the way the meals were spaced -- the French eat dinner late by US standards -- I wasn't snacking. In fact, I had all that lovely food and drink and lost weight. But then, our hotel was on the top of a small mountain that we climbed at least twice a day. But that's for another time.

Red Light Green Light

2005-05-29T01:22:00.000-07:00

Again, forgive the spelling. It's late and I'm tired.

In Cannes we were seeking funding for a number of projects that are at various budget levels. of course, we really want the big ones that might get us a gala screening even though all our babies are ones we want to produce.

Finding funding for a full budget film is like playing with that neighborhood kid that always changes the rules of the game as you play. And like that bully, these guys are about keeping and playing with power. It's about wanting to take the project away from the creator and usually for a fraction of its value or without any real credit for producing it -- a most valuable commodity in a business fueled on credits. And they have the advantage. Most film makers don't realize how valuable their projects are and the money -- however a pittance it is compared to its budget -- is tempting. And the ordeal is demoralizing.

I'll use one of our projects, 'Freak Experts,' as an example. We have what is considered an original thriller. It also has controversy which sells tickets. So we're told to find an a-list actor as a lead and we have the funds. As it happens, via the poetry scene in LA we have an a-list actor we can contact. He's a lead in 'Lord of the Rings' and has credits in such thrillers. He reads the script and is very interested. We take it to the funders and a contract is written and approved by both sides. But we get down to the signing and everything has changed. Suddenly, they want more oversight and creative input. Perhaps we should just sell the rights outright and let them handle everything. The cash offer is an insult. Mind you, we would have considered a buy out if it had been an upfront offer and one that was reasonable(like within WGA norms) -- not an obvious play on perceived desperation. We passed and our a-list guy took another film -- which we saw at a gala screening in Cannes. For the record -- after he left, these funders tried again to buy us out thinking we had no other a-list actors in our pockets. Incorrect. We found two more who liked the script. Both of them were at the screening of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. One of them actually portraying a gay detective. In that one moment I was glad I wouldn't be at the party. Imagine the conversation.

As we left for Cannes, we had another such situation with a new script 'The Picture of Dorian Gray.' We're very proud of this faithful rendering of a favorite book. We were told from a trusted source that if we get the packaging of actors we proposed before adapting the book, we would have the money. One of them was our first a-list 'Freak Experts' actor. The other was a beautiful elven co-star from LOTR for Dorian himself. We were game. It merely took a letter and the worse that could happen?

We worked very hard on that script and I worked even harder on those letters. The letters are only a page long and must summarize the project and convey why the actor should want the part and why you're fit to produce it with acceptable margins and font size. Difficult. But we prevailed in getting interest from the actors. But then came the conditions. Our proposed Dorian had a new film coming up. How it did would determine whether we needed more a-list actors to green light. We found out before we got to the festival that the film didn't perform well. Okay. So we are going after other actors that will satisfy those funders. Meanwhile, we have found another source or sources for funding that are not directly tied to individuals or their egos.

Among the finds at the Cannes Markets were ways to get those projects underway the way we'd like.

Is this trip necessary?

2005-05-29T00:14:00.000-07:00

Forgive my spelling. I'm on the fly here.

When you read about the gala screenings and the leisurely drinks on the Mediterranean beach, the question would seem to be a no brain-er. But even artist types like Jon and me have some grasp on reality. The trip was costly in time and money that we don't really have in abundance. Like any other independent film maker, our margins are very slim. Then there is the after effect of such a trip. We have day jobs. Imagine the kind of song and dance necessary to convince a conventional employer to allow two weeks off to go to the French Riviera. Let's just say that we're really good at our day jobs.

Then there is the family to consider. Our family is on the east coast and the question certainly comes up. Why go there and not come here to visit your family? A fair question indeed. We do miss home and family. But it's because we feel that sacrifice so keenly that we also feel compelled to not make the sacrifice a vain one. To avoid that, we must continue to seek success in the field we moved away to pursue. That's the best explanation I have.

To cope with the costs, we managed to get some great deals on clothes for the trip. Formal wear is an absolute must. Even the casual wear isn't as casual as it is in LA. All encounters are a combination of business meeting, audition and job interview. Even usually scruffy directors have to have a bit of polish. I borrowed one dress and found the others at discount department stores. Jon's tux was from a department store. He's slim enough that he looks good in most anything. We found shoes at Payless that passed pretty well -- especially in the evening. The first time we attended the festival, the guys with me thought we over packed. I realized that if we had been able to attend half the functions we wanted to, we hadn't packed enough of the right stuff. This time we were ready. It was a lot of clothes, but we wore everything and had to do laundry twice.

A note about French laundry -- not the restaurant in Napa or the clothing line. The laundromat is expensive. Really expensive. It was 5 euros for one load of wash more to dry. That's about 8 bucks with the exchange rate. That's how much it costs to do three loads of wash and dry at home.

Anyway, we had to spend a buttload of money before and during the trip while alienating our bosses. Then there is the grueling flight, etc. Why?

There are people that are important to people like us that go to Cannes. The distributor of our first feature saw our trailer there. And there are paths to funding future projects there. This time, we represented more that our company. We were there on behalf of half a dozen short film directors and two other production companies that needed fresh contacts. Some of these contacts are in Los Angeles, but it's hard to find them. There is no way to Google search for them and they ain't in the yellow pages.

At Cannes, the contacts are having beers in the American Pavilion at a table you've been sitting at alone for an hour. That's how I found one of my best. I had a few seats empty around me. He sat. We chatted to be polite. He had the contacts I was seeking and was inclined to share. Good karma is valued amongst our set, I suppose. At least for some. It helps to be amusing or in my case, self- effacing. I've got too many miles on me to use my feminine whiles. And it's not good to look desperate. The balance is difficult and it's all very intimidating. It's fortunate that Jon and I have been in so many ambiguous meetings over the years, that we don't go into anything with specific expectations. We're really good at getting what we can from an encounter and enjoying the whimsical elements that often coincide with it.

Some contacts are literally flashing before your eyes on a wide screen at the Pavilion. There were funding sources advertising there in ways I'd never seen before in LA. Even SAG was there as a helpful friend to the Independent Film maker. Nothing impresses these institutions more than a letter beginning with ' I met your rep at Cannes...' It shows that you either have the wherewithal to invest in the next level for your productions or someone has that kind of faith in your company. And making connections there shows that you have enough savvy to play there thus you have enough savvy to make films at another level.

Even at our entry level gala status, I really believe the trip was worth all that it costs and will cost.

Red Carpet Geeks

2005-05-27T01:25:00.000-07:00

It may seem silly to the normal person that with all that was hanging in the balance for us at Cannes, we were so focused on getting into a film that was easily seen at home. But for Jon and I, Star Wars was the film that sparked our imaginations and made us want to go into film. Having the right badge to get tickets was not enough. There was a daily countdown to when certain tickets were available and there was a limited number of seats. You had to go online and reserve the ticket with a badge number and ID code. PC access unless you had wifi and a laptop was limited. I knew one of our party had to be online as the tickets came up or we would be shut out.

Thus, I responsibly scheduled my meetings for that day so I could get back to our hotel's pc in time. I dwadled online for nearly a half an hour to make sure I got in on time. Five minutes before schedule, the tickets went up. I had all of our badge numbers and IDs. Within ten seconds, I had four tickets. They were sold out three minute later. My hands were shaking when I finished. It was so much fun when a crestfallen Marie told me she had missed the window. Her face lit up when I told her I had them.

As Marie so eloquently stated, getting girlie is work. I don't usually wear make-up. I still chew off my lipstick. But for the galas, I made a real effort. Of course, one of my ear rings piercing had closed. Boy, did that hurt. And I don't want to talk about the torture device called a strapless bra. And in the mirror I saw my mother when she was at her best going out on a Saturday night with my father -- saucy and elegant. It was feeling this way with my head held high that we encountered the French mosh pit. There were thousands of fans pressed in what looked to be an impenetrable throng between where the cab dumped us and the palais. Luckily, we are Americans. The four of us pressed insistently though politely through the crowd. It was slow going and I worried because there was a cut off time to getting into the theater. Time was not our friend and the crowd seemed unending. I had Laura's hand tightly. We had already lost Jon and Marie, I didn't want to lose her.

When we finally broke free and made it to the cattle chute for our level (indeed they were the nose bleed seats), they were ushering us toward the red carpet. Somehow, Jon and Marie were beside us. I barely had time to enjoy the cooler air away from the crowd when we were on the gauntlet that passed by hundreds of paparazzi. By then, I could hear the orchestra and the Storm Trooper guards were alongside of us. Marie said, 'okay, this is cool.' I told Jon the only thing cooler would be the oscars. Then I squared my shoulders and held my head up like my mother taught me and sashayed up those stairs in a saucy and elegant way. I was imagining the time when I would walk up those stairs with my own cast.

As for the movie, the geeks like us will debate forever the flaws and hidden messages. I was pleased to sit in the same room as the man who had inspired us and watch the last installment before the rest of the world. And it inspires us still. The next day I set out with even more determination to start a film before the end of the year.

Marie's Red Carpet Confessions: Star Wars

2005-05-27T01:21:00.000-07:00

My eloquent partner, Marie Lecrivain had this to say about the biggest gala we attended at Cannes. My thoughts will follow.

Red Carpet Confessions: Star Wars: Episode #3

This one still needs to be assigned a number:

Wearing a beautiful dress, expensive shoes, contacts and makeup, and then looking in the mirror, but not recognising the person there because it's been so long since you've seen her.

Walking the main thouroughfare and having lots of men smile and flirt with you in a way that is so much better than when L.A. men flirt and smile.

French Mosh Pit: Nearly getting (though politely) trampled by the crowd while trying to reach the Palias. Miraculously, your dress was not marked up.

23 different men in tuxedos request to buy your ticket, and you reply "non," each time with a smile.

The live orchestra begins to play the the movie's theme. You walk up the Red Carpet as 100+ flashbulbs go off in your face. You see yourself on the JumboTron (courtesy of the live feed) while you are walking up the Red Carpet with 100+ flashbulbs are going off in your face. And you know thousands of people can see how great you look at that moment...and wish they were you, though just not because of how great you look, but because they want to see the movie.

Being escorted by a cadre of Storm Troopers while wallking up the Red Carpet Steps.

Getting into the theatre, and being shunted to the nose-bleed seat section, but getting seats in the center row, with an 95% perfect view. The other 5% of your view is obstructed by a shiny bald head, band-aided in two places.

Watching the the movie screen ( again, courtesy of the live feed) and being entertained by the crowds reaction to Natalie Portman's shaved head.. One shaved celebrity head = dozens of fans heads scratched in puzzlement.

Being humbled by the appearance of a 50 ft George Lucas on the movie screen, and then amused as the person who is dressed in a Darth Vader costume comes forward to greet Mr. Lucas, and he nearly takes a header down the steps....hahahaha!

Experiencing the chagrin of having followed the rules of bringing no cameras or cell phones, and spotting a jerk sitting a few feet away secretly photographing George Lucas on the movie screen...does it really pay to follow the rules?

Hearing your friends complain about how thirsty they are, and then being hailed as a momentary savior when you share your bottle of water with them.

Happily, the movie starts only 15 minutes after it's official start time...and there are no commercials or previews.:)

Watching the last Star Wars movie four days before its release at the biggest film festival in the world, and knowing that you will never have another experience like this again...

Other than birth, death, and sex, this experience will take the # 4 slot.

PS: This is actually # 2 in the Red Carpet experience The first was the previous night when I went to see Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, and the last will be tonight's viewing of A History of Violence.

m. lecrivain 16/05/05