Snow, Glass, Apples, and Notes on Lusting for Monsters

I'm switching things up today and, rather than post one of my own stories, I'm providing a link to Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman, which is a horror retelling of a certain old fairy tale (skin pale as snow, lips red as blood). It's not erotica, but if you know the tale you're familiar with Prince Charming's proclivities, and Mr. Gaiman is too...

Begging the question, why do we want to fuck monsters?

Maybe fifty years ago that question would be worth a quick laugh or an ugly look, but we're living in the new millennium where Edward Cullen and Sookie Stackhouse have come and gone, and that sensualist rogue Lestat is over forty at this point. Hell, even Bram Stoker's musty collection of diaries managed to evoke a certain appeal to the Count and his brides that drove poor Lucy Westenra wild. And further back, before Frankenstein's sad creature vowed vengeance on humanity, what did he seek?  

Answer: a wife.  

So it's nothing new for people to be attracted to the creatures that bump and grind in the night. But where does the instinct come from?  

Maybe it's transactional, like the witches dallying with Old Scratch back in the day. After all, if you can't beat the monsters, join 'em. Anita Blake sure did.

But a lot of folks seem less interested in becoming monsters and more interested in, well, coming with monsters. Perhaps it's the appeal of the bad man and the lady of sin: beauty outside the mundane, outside the conventional morality. Walk and dance and fuck where the wild things are, and if the wild things get to be too much to handle, well then you shouldn't have strayed from the safe path, huh?

Or maybe there's a certain pang in the chest that comes with loving the accursed and afflicted. Belle didn't care much for the Beast's macho posturing, or his big, hairy slabs of muscle (mmm), but love bloomed when she found the kindness hiding underneath. Not that they ever consummated anything until he changed back (that we know of...).  

Or it might be the little charge one gets at the thought of being ravished, of being willingly taken by a thing more powerful, more intelligent, more dangerous than you are or could ever be. The part of us that welcomes the incubus and the succubus at night, the one that longs for the vampire's kiss, the werewolf's bite.

Because the monsters are seductive, frightening, captivating, exciting, and ultimately, safely fictional.
 
Maybe.

-Lea

Project Management for Smut Writers, Part 4: Process Groups and Knowledge Areas

Today we're going to talk about the sexiest areas in project management: Process Groups (mmm), and Knowledge Areas (ahh!). These are two overlapping ways of grouping and categorizing processes within a project.

What's a process? Glad you asked! A process is a project management activity that takes one or more inputs and, using appropriate project management tools and techniques, produces one or more outputs. An input can be pretty much anything: an idea, a JPEG, a pile of unedited copy. An output, on the other hand, should either be a deliverable or an outcome, which is helpfully defined as the end result of a process.

Think of it this way: you need to make a cover. Your input will be a cover image, a font, a title, and your pen name. (If you're making a physical book add a couple of blurbs and a description of what the book is about.) Your desired output will be a cover for your book. And the process will vary, but it will probably include opening a book on color theory, firing up GIMP (or Photoshop if you're feeling nasty), scaling, typing, adjusting, swearing, etc. Easy peasy!

So now that you know what a process is, let's talk about Process Groups. A Process Group is "a logical grouping of project management processes to achieve specific project objectives".¹ It's basically a way to organize a bunch of similar processes in a way that makes sense across different projects. The PMBOK (remember the PMBOK?), defines five Process Groups:

Initiating Process Group: Processes "performed to define a new project or a new phase of an existing project by obtaining authorization to start the project or phase".² For a new or self-publishing author, this can be as simple as having an idea and deciding to write it! For more established authors, this might involve a phone call from an editor who wants to commission a work-for-hire book or an article.

Planning Process Group: Processes which establish a project's scope, refine its objectives, and/or determine what needs to be done to attain a project's objectives. This is going to include outlining, character sketches, and world building, but it will also involve stuff like researching a genre and its conventions, pitching (if you're not self-publishing and you don't need a completed manuscript first), scoping out the book's costs (if you are self-publishing), and similar activities. You can certainly write a book without doing any of this stuff, but if you want to sell it then guess what? You get to do it all afterwards!

Executing Process Group: Processes related to doing the damn work, or per the PMBOK Guide, "processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project requirements".³ This includes your first draft, your final draft, and all your edits, including the stuff you get from your editor. For self-publishers this also means writing your blurb, picking keywords and genres, assembling a cover, book formatting, and the other fun details.

Monitoring and Controlling Process Group: Processes "required to track, review, and regulate the progress and performance of the project".⁴ This includes identifying any places where the project plan needs to be changed, and initiating those changes. This is all the behind-the-scenes work your reader is never going to see: tracking your daily word count (if that's your thing), meeting deadlines, delivering chapter samples if you're working with a publisher or editor who requires it. Edits sorta-kinda fit here, in part: finding a point where a major revision to your plot is needed, and determining what needs to change, fits here, especially if it changes an agreed-upon word count, but actually making the edits goes right back into Executing.

And, lastly:

Closing Process Group: Processes "performed to formally complete or close the project, phase, or contract".⁵ The End, but not the end of your manuscript. This is delivering your final draft to your editor/publishing and having them accept it, making sure you get paid your full advance, and actually seeing your book on the bookshelf. It can also mean kicking off the grand follow-on project called Marketing, but that's really Initiating for a separate project, odd as that might seem.

So that's the official Process Groups. Can you stick with me for Knowledge Areas? It'll be a while before I get back to this, and I wouldn't want to leave you hanging.

A Knowledge Area is "an identified area of project management defined by its knowledge requirements and described in terms of its component processes, practices, inputs, outputs, tools, and techniques".⁶ In other words, it's another way of categorizing project processes, this time by the skill set that's needed to complete them.

There are ten - ten! - Knowledge Areas, so I'll keep this brief:

Project Integration Management: identifying and coordinating processes and project management activities. Basically, managing the project.

Project Scope Management: making sure a project includes all the work required to complete the project successfully, and doesn't include any additional work that's not needed. If you've ever had a short story threaten to turn into an epic fantasy trilogy, you know why this is needed.

Project Schedule Management: everything you need to do to hit your deadlines.

Project Cost Management: keeping your project under budget, and also getting the money to fund your project. You'll be amazed what costs can crop up when you're writing a book, and this Knowledge Area is all about keeping them under control.

Project Quality Management: includes "the processes for incorporating the organization's quality policy regarding planning, managing, and controlling project and product quality requirements, in order to meet stakeholders' expectations".⁷ You're thinking editing, right? I know you're thinking editing! It's not just that, though, it's also about making sure you can read that scribbled note from 11:30pm you wrote before bed, and checking to make sure your eBook looks good on a phone and a Kindle and a PC.

Project Resource Management: determining what resources you'll need to complete a project, and then getting them and managing them. By the way, when you see "resources" think "stuff and people". As a writer, unless you're well down the career track, it'll mostly mean "stuff".

Project Communications Management: includes "the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project information".⁸ Which is a lot, even if you're not working with anybody!

Project Risk Management: planning for any risks (backup your work), planning your response (download your backup), and monitoring risk (how likely is Dropbox to go out of business?).

Project Procurement Management: determining what needs to be done to purchase or acquire products, services, or results from outside the project team. Hiring a cover artist, an editor, or a website designer are three pretty big examples.

Project Stakeholder Management: this is identifying who has an interest in a project, for example you, your editor, your agent, and your publisher; figuring out what their expectations and impact on the project are; and developing strategies to engage with them effectively. If you're in a position where you have to do this, then it's probably one of the most important things you have to do. (And by the way, your readers? Not stakeholders. Not unless they commissioned the work directly.)

Phew! That's a lot for one post, but I wanted to get it all out of the way.

Hopefully that will tide you little project managing authors over for a bit, because next month will be all monster smut, all the time. To tide you over until then, feel free to check out my author page. Just about everything is free to read with Kindle Unlimited, and reviews are always appreciated!

What's Elvira's line again? "Pleasant screams..."

-Lea

1. A Guide To The Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Sixth Edition. (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, 2017), 23.
2. PMBOK Guide, 23.
3. PMBOK Guide, 23.
4. PMBOK Guide, 23.
5. PMBOK Guide, 23.
6. PMBOK Guide, 23.
7. PMBOK Guide, 24.
8. PMBOK Guide, 24.

Review Corner: The Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay

I was introduced to Paul Tremblay's work by Stephen King, which is about the strongest recommendation a horror author can get. A Head Full of Ghosts was his first book that I read, and I found it incredibly disturbing, dealing as it does with a family falling apart and a very disturbed teenage who may or may not be possessed. Based on the title, I thought A Cabin at the End of the World might have a slightly less personal scope that would be easier to take.

I'm an idiot.

The Cabin at the End of the World follows husbands Eric and Andrew and their daughter Wen, who are vacationing in the titular cabin. One day four strangers bearing odd weapons show up looking for help to, quote, save the world, and things rapidly go downhill in apocalyptic fashion. Saying much more about the plot would spoil the book.

Tremblay's strengths lie in writing believable characters in bad situations, and setting up situations where you're never quite sure whether something supernatural is actually happening or not, but either option is horrifying. He manages both here with aplomb. Right until the end of the book, it's an open question whether the titular end of the world is actually happening or not, and while the evidence does start to tilt one way it's by no means definitive.

The characters also stand out, and while they fall into some horror movie idiocy it's well justified: Andrew is an atheist with a history of being violently assaulted by bigots, so he rejects everything the strangers say immediately. Eric is a Catholic and more inclined to listen, but he's concussed early on, which prevents him from effectively defusing the situation.

The strangers are also fairly well characterized, some more than others. It's clear none of them are happy with what they have to do, but they either can't or won't stop, and it's never clear which is the case. You'll feel bad for some of them, others not so much, and that's going to change quite a bit for you by the end of the book. And Wen is a believable and likable young child, as anyone who read A Head Full of Ghosts would expect, although as things go bad she gets a comparatively smaller role as a point of view character.

Thematically the story falls pretty heavily against God, if he's present at all, but it might also be a book about the tragic horror of severe mental illness, or the dangers of a family coming apart at the seams. Again, similar to A Head Full of Ghosts, but with the weights of the themes juggled around a bit.

If there is a weakness to the book it's that the cabin doesn't exude any particular menace as a setting - it's just a cabin. The isolation plays its part in events, but the book focuses much more on the growing tension between characters - admittedly, probably the best choice.

I'd recommend this to any horror fan looking for a good read with a lot of tension. Whether or not there's a supernatural element in events, the horror here is all too human.

Thanks for reading, and if you liked the review, be sure to check out my Author Page on Amazon!

-Lea

New Book Day! Cheater's Wedding Night Out Now

After a short delay (that's okay KDP, happens to everyone), my new book Cheater's Wedding Night is now available on Amazon, and free to read on Kindle Unlimited! Huzzah! *throws confetti*

This story is about Dan, his new wife Kelly, and her best friend Lana, whom Dan's been sleeping with behind Kelly's back. Or so he thinks, moo hoo ha ha. Naturally, sexy hi jinks ensue on Dan and Kelly's wedding night.

This was my first stab at writing sexytimes like Judy Kemp does in A Bouquet of Gardenias. It is one of the hottest and most sex-filled books I've ever read, with a unique voice I haven't encountered in any other erotica, so I just had to give the style a try. Your call whether I succeeded or not!

And, obviously, this is not my usual monster smut, but I've got plenty of that coming in October, with details coming soooooon...

-Lea

Review Corner: The Black Room

I warned you, damn it.

The Black Room is a 2017 horror film starring Natasha Henstridge of Species fame. You are probably interested in the film for that reason, so I regret to inform you that she's one of the only women in the film who doesn't get naked at some point.

Still here? Okay...

The gist of the plot is: newlyweds Paul and Jennifer move into a house whose basement is haunted by an evil, horny demon. Technically it's a side room in the basement, although it's not actually Black, just very very dark. The previous tenant was keeping it contained with a dinner plate (yes really) until the demon gave her 18+ granddaughter a wet dream and she died enforcing Morals. Anyway, it's not long before the room starts eating people and possesses Paul, and Jennifer has to put a stop to it.

This isn't a bad premise for a horror movie, and to be fair if this were an early '90s movie the effects and gore would be pretty solid. The demon's not great when you see it, but it mostly stays off-camera and lets its mutilated victims provide the gross-out factor.

The sex scenes aren't bad either, and what makes this movie stand out to me is that the filmmakers weren't shy about cranking up the fan disservice: there are at least three scenes where the sex and the monsters overlap, and they're the standout scenes in the movie. (I didn't lie about Natasha Henstridge keeping her clothes on, but she does turn in some quality heated scenes. Aren't you glad you stuck around?)

But one big problem with the movie is that Paul and Jennifer (and really the rest of the cast) act like a parody of a Lifetime original movie couple, as seen on a television in the background of a soap opera. There's almost no chemistry between them, and the movie is best watched while intoxicated and/or in the mood to mock the hell out of their relationship disintegrating because Paul gets possessed in the first twenty minutes and Jennifer doesn't notice!

And that's the other big problem, the movie basically runs on having Jennifer be completely oblivious to everything going on around her. It is immediately clear that something is wrong with Paul, but Jennifer either ignores it completely or just gently remonstrates him for being an ass. A character literally has to grab her and explain the whole plot for her to understand there's a problem, with an info dumping flashback that would kill the film's momentum dead, if it had any.

Overall, the film's worth watching if you remember renting bad horror movies because they had a great cover on the VHS box, and you've in a mood to be amused and occasionally squicked. And it's on Netflix, so it probably won't cost you anything extra.

Sure ain't no Species, though.

If you enjoyed the review, be sure to check out my books! They're all free to read on Kindle Unlimited, and The Ritual: A Futa Coven Story features a botched summoning of a horny demon, so at least I'm on theme. :-)

-Lea

Keeping You All Abreast

(Get it? 'Cuz I write erotica, and society conditions us to find boobs sexy, so... fuuuuuck, maybe I do need sleep.)

Just checking in to let you know how things are going. I planned a movie review but I don't want to do two reviews in a row, also I'd have to watch The Black Room again and I'm not sure my soul is properly fortified. (Drinking movie of 2017, folks.) If you'd like to see a movie taken down a peg, I watched a fantastic takedown of Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera movie from Lindsay Ellis this morning.

Right now I'm doing final edits and making a cover for my next book, which will be out by the end of the month. It's contemporary erotica which just might have a happy ending, so: well outside my comfort zone! But I'm proud of what I've done with it so far.

And don't fret, I'm also working on some spooky sexy stuff for October. Not going to go into details yet, but watch this space! Autumn and Halloween are some of my favorite times of the year, and I want to make this one special.

In my spare time, I've been tweaking the keywords for my current books with KDP Rocket. I don't think I'm quite competent to review it yet, since I've only used it for three books so far, but I will say the interface is easy to use and intuitive, which is a big plus right off the bat. Also, it's still available for a one-time payment. Given the number of subscription-only keyword tools online, I'm very pleased.

And keywords aren't the only thing I'm tweaking! The image up top is the new cover for my Temple of the Seducer series, available on Kindle Unlimited. I wasn't entirely happy with the image reuse on my original cover, and I'm very pleased with how this one turned out. If you give it a read, be sure to leave a review!

Until next time,

-Lea

Review Corner: Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Welcome to Review Corner! This will be where I review books, movies, etc. that I feel like talking about, because what else would I do?

Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, is a horror book that was originally published in Dutch, but translated into English and released here because it is, frankly, a pretty awesome book. The translation is excellent, and I didn't notice anything wrong or jarring in the text.

The book centers on the town of Black Spring, a small town in the Hudson Valley that is cursed by a witch. Literally, there is an immortal witch wandering around town, wrapped in chains and with her eyes and mouth sewn shut. You mess with the Black Rock Witch? Ya dead. You let her loose? Ya dead. And if you happen to live in Black Spring and you leave? Ya dead.

Because of the potential body count, the town's leaders keep a tight lock on Black Spring, including preventing anyone from leaking information about the witch outside the town limits. Naturally the younger generation, who are into YouTube and the Tweeters, don't take this well, and the let's say medieval punishments the town council metes out get things escalating to a really bloody conclusion.

There's a long tradition of witch panic stories in American literature, and this definitely falls within that tradition, even though the book is Dutch. While it's set in the modern day, the isolation of Black Spring under its curse effectively sends it back to the time of old Salem, with all the paranoia and trapped hopelessness one would expect. Otherwise intelligent, compassionate people become panicked and make bad decisions, making things worse and causing more mistakes. Cruel people are empowered, and everything goes to hell.

What makes Hex stand out, though, is the Black Rock Witch herself. While it becomes clear very quickly that the witch is dangerous, she's also an old woman who's been bound and left to wander in horrifically pitiful conditions. Heuvelt never allows the reader to become entirely certain of her, alternating between moments where she's sympathetic, sometimes ridiculous, and sudden bouts of violence and malice. And we never get an objective description of her, as she's always seen through the eyes of characters who very much assign their own ideas to her actions.

"If you like Stephen King books..." might as well be a cliche, but if you do, or you're just a fan of horror or witches in general, Hex is definitely worth checking out. And if you ever find out Heuvelt's little secret, do let me know?

Also, tell me if there's any books or movies you'd like me to review here, and if you liked this review, maybe give one of my books a quick read!

-Lea