Tag: bdsm

Setting Goals

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

If you only ever do… well, whatever, you’ll never get anything done.

My projects stand as follows: 

At Death’s  Door – complete

Cheating Death -3/4 written and still going strong. I’m just taking today to write a blog post before updating that more.

Death Mask -in planning stages.

Contract Signed -written, not yet edited. I’ve decided to do the second trilogy the way I did the first. As a lump sum, basically. 

Contract Sealed -1/4 written. While I should be working on this project, it is a BDSM erotica involving two men. One of whom is a Sadist. I have no problem reading what I’ve got, it’s quite entertaining, but I am not in the mindset necessary to continue on at this moment.

Contract Delivered -sort of planning stages.

His Grace -I started this as a side project over the weekend just to do something not attached to anything else, but found myself working on it last night when I tried Contract Sealed. So I’ve added it to the table. 

Rebecca – working title only. I think I’ve labeled this Pieces or Fragmented in the back of books. I’m trying to find the time, especially since it seems Masked Intentions isn’t going over poorly.

“Isn’t going over poorly” is as egotistical as I can manage at the moment. 

I could also add Prototype and a new book or two to the Vampires books. As well as two or three to D.o.t.A. 

Basically, I have all the plans in the world, but it’s that beast I’m starting to loathe that’s getting in the way: the day job. 

Let me just be clear on that, I only hate it because it’s in the way. I never quite intended on fully quitting. I want to be able to work part time there and write the rest of the time. Without a part time job, I can’t see me continuing at this pace. Those hours at work, the writing goes on the back burner and boils down or rises up. Like a good stock, or a loaf of bread.

Except I burn myself a great deal less.

So at the advice of Christina Quinn, I’ve set myself a word goal. 3k words a day. On a story, not a blog post or social media. 

It’s really quite easy, a couple of hours for me. I’ve knocked off that many words in the morning before work when I’m really focused, or into it. I can do that on the commute to work, then add some more on the way home. 

A goal set, is typically a goal kept with me. Every day I will aim for 3k words and I will try not to beat myself up when I inevitably fail. 

At that rate, I could write a book in a month, two if I do 3k on commutes and at home. But for now, it’s just 3k total. 

I did that last night, then was going to try another 3k. Then I looked up and spotted the video game controller I purchased weeks ago with the intention of taking a break and playing a game. Instead of pushing forward, I opened the controller  (because it was still in the box) and played a video game. 

I have set a goal, and until I’ve adjusted to it, that’s as far as I’m going. 3k words a day, then work on other things. Marketing, editing, covers, playing video games, even cleaning my apartment. Something besides writing.

I can do this.

Graphic Design

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I have been working for the past two weeks non-stop pretty well. Getting back into the swing of things, which is great.

I’ve completed another edit of At Death’s Door, and that will be my focus until April 1st, which is when I hope it goes live.

I’ve finished writing the first draft of Contract Signed, and gotten about a quarter of the way through Contract Sealed.

I’ve reached chapter 15, or about three quarters of the way through the second book of Wraith’s Rebellion, which I’m thinking of titling Cheating Death, instead of Death Mask.

After some research, some conversations and a bit of work for relearning, I’ve decided to get back into graphic design. I did this as a teen, though not in any sort of a serious sense. Just dabbling on my mother’s computer with Paintshop Pro because the only games we had were solitaire and pinball.

And I was really bored of pinball. I also only had her images to play with, which also got boring. What she had and what I wanted would sometimes overlap, but not always.

Let’s face it: graphic design is the second most expensive part of indie publishing. The first being editing, and the third I think being formatting.

Anyone can do cover design. How nice your cover designs turn out depend on practice, eye, and equipment. Like last night, I discovered that I need an actual mouse pad to do this, because my mouse ‘bounces’ and then ruins my freestyle select two thirds of the way around an image that the smart select can’t find.

It also takes patience. A different kind of patience than what writing or editing or marketing take.

I have the eye, I have enough ability to look at covers for At Death’s Door and be like, “hey, this is how that’s put together!” What I lack at the moment are the practice and the patience. Of course, I have no patience because I want to get At Death’s Door up for preorder, and I have little practice because of the same thing.

There’s at least two more edits and one final read through before it can go live. One of the edits, I’m going to start tomorrow before I read through it and then do the read for the final edit, then read again for problems. Hopefully by then, my beta readers have gotten back to me.

The most I’ve done for graphics was slap a transparency on my header photo for Facebook and Twitter, then add text. So impressive. It also took me an hour to do. Don’t get me wrong, I had a ton of fun doing it, but that was an hour of work from At Death’s Door.

I may use graphic design as a way to unwind, I’m not going to lie.

And while writing this post, I found an image I want to touch and play with. Excuse me, while I go sign up for a website and see if they let me play before purchase.

Just Keep Writing 

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Three weeks, I could not work. Which is now totalling about six weeks out of work. Driving me crazy, is what it is. 

Masked Intentions goes live in nine days and I don’t have the final draft up. Not because I have been lazy or because it needs more work, but because I haven’t been capable of work for six weeks. 

I think I had two days around Christmas before everything went to hell.

I haven’t been on social media or marketing or anything. My sales reflect that. And I can maintain that…

If I can work. 

So now I have to make that all a habit again. Get back to working on all the things.

The moment everything was fixed, I went back to writing. But I’m now six weeks behind on my plan. That really messes with everything. 

I couldn’t even write on my phone, so Death Mask isn’t written yet, it’s in a perpetual state of half-done chapter one. So I’m skipping ahead to chapter two and will return to chapter one later on. 

On the computer, I’m writing the Signed trilogy, which resides in the Contracted world. This is Nate’s story, so m/m and bdsm, and all that explosion of crazy. I completely blame Nate and his Master. They kept messing with me so I figured I’d start the world up again to torment them and it all just came spilling out. 

At Death’s Door will probably have to wait until March for release, so that I can do all the fixes that I was supposed to do over the last six weeks. It’s going to take longer because I can no longer remember what the fixes are. So now I need to read the entire thing before I can start edits so that I can get the bigger picture again and catch all the problems.

So annoying.

Because all I want to do is write. 

Sure, I could ship this work out to someone else, but that costs money I don’t have, and I’m not earning from the books themselves. In the last month I’ve only sold one book.

Probably because I couldn’t do anything or access anything or get my head to work. 

I’m on kdp select, and discovered that Contract Taken was up for free days. I’ve grabbed three and have moved a few free copies with the help of marketing and some from social media.

This morning the book was sitting at #9 on Amazon’s free-romance section. Suppose that’s good, but we’ll have to see how that goes.

A review blog somehow picked up my book and listed it. It’s weird because I don’t recall applying to them or anything of that sort. I’m not certain how I landed on that page, basically. They also made a “review” on Goodreads that was just the description.

I have no idea what their plan is, but I’m afraid to ask.

When everything was in the middle of breaking, Dorian did something stupid. He booked a trip to Cuba for the two of us at at five star resort.

I’ve never been to Cuba, and we all know I’m not comfortable being gifted expensive things. Hence why he’s stupid. 

I appreciate it, I will try my darndest to enjoy the trip, but accepting such a gift makes me uncomfortable. Even if I had purchased the ticket myself, I’d probably be uncomfortable. That’s money I could put into covers or marketing.

I’m starting to sound like Beth. While I’m not certain that’s a bad thing, it does sound a little crazy. If I had the money to go to Cuba, I should go to Cuba. Experience for an author is absolutely necessary.

Who knows, it could spawn a story. I could end up writing a best selling novel because I want to Cuba.

Oh, but think of the promotions I could have bought with that money… Bookbub and ENT and all the things. Such shiny things.

Suppose a beach and all inclusive resort stay will have to do. 

Signed – or Why I Hate How my Mind Works

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I can no longer play games on my desktop, it’s that messed up. It was a free upgrade, and still works for things like editing and writing. Basically, my computer is forcing me to work when I wanted to play video games.

This time of year is high stress for me. I want to relax sometimes and just unwind by killing things in a wasteland, or lighting my dolls on fire. 

Instead, I opened Signed yesterday afternoon and started writing. The first chapter took six hours to write, the second two. I was up until almost two in the morning writing when I wanted to be playing a game and taking over the world.

I dreamed of Signed last night. 

This is a problem with me, and I know it is. Sometimes I get caught on tangents and can’t get off until it’s written out. The entire trilogy is acting like that.

All at once. 

I’ve had books overlap before, both playing out on repeat inside my head as I finish one and am going to start another, but never three. And certainly not from the beginning of the first book. Two chapters in, Nathaniel’s Master is tying him up in all kinds of places and doing all sorts to him. 

Half of it won’t even make it into the book, a line has to be drawn somewhere, damn it. 

More just keeps getting tossed onto the pile. And more. 

Then Dorian made a comment, because he’s expressed a desire to be there when I do research on these things. I suppose, so he knows what he’s getting himself into. 

“Why in male/male domination porn does one always where that little strap thing over their shoulders?”

If you saw it, you’d know the one he meant. It’s the kind of thing that might hold wings on for a Halloween costume, except made of leather.

At those words, Mr. Wrightworth popped into my head, grabbed a random male character, slapped one on him and grabbed it by the strap that runs between the shoulder blades. 

“Men typically don’t have hair to tangle a hand it, a grip on a shoulder does not give the control one needs. With this, however…”

Thanks for that thought, Mr. Wrightworth. 

“Aya, why do you have that look on your face?” Dorian asked.

I could only whimper in response. 

It is with great uneasiness that I head into work, worried about what might happen in my errant thoughts. I plot my stories at work. Most  of the time this isn’t a problem at all and all revolves around PG13 type of material. 

Smutt is left for the bus rides or at home. Work is the place to figure out how they say things and what the reaction would be to having breakfast taken away.

Nathaniel and his Master don’t seem to want to obey my rules though. They don’t react to threats to beat them, because they went into this knowing things were not going to go well for them.

So my uttering threats does absolutely nothing. I can’t threaten the other of them, holding one hostage because… I don’t even know why. 

I have two days off coming up. Without the ability to play games I only have one hope: a writing marathon to get as much of Signed written as I can before I go back to work.

That’s right, I’m aiming for a fifty thousand word weekend, if only to shut the pair of them up for a few hours.

Wish me luck.

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Okay. Now I’m really frustrated. 

Nathaniel’s story has changed, which is fine. That’s why I don’t start writing right away. 

The frustrating part is Angel is now put off and I’ve got another book to write before Morgan’s Story. There are not enough hours in my day around the day job for all the things I want to do.

The plus side of that is that I have several books sort of ready to go. I’m going to take the next couple of days or so and plot it all out in my writing app, which creates text based documents for me to transfer if necessary and very easily edit on any computer.

So. 

Nathaniel’s trilogy would be Contracted books 4-6. I swear that’s the end of the world there. Honestly. You can totally trust me when I say I won’t write another book for a world. I’ve never said that and added sixteen more stories, honestly.

Need a sarcasm font…

Contracted 4-6 would be my first published m/m and is very much M/s with BDSM. Anyone who has read Izzy’s Story would probably know that. This series covers Nathaniel and his Master. 

So it’d go:

Signed : Nathaniel and his Master. Not how they met. This begins at the portion where their M/s relationship begins and goes over how in the hell that went. If they could kindly stop throwing sex scenes at me without context, that’d be fabulous.

Sealed : how the community was set up and an introduction to the Sadists. Nathaniel played at being Sadist while still serving his Master. This could also involve the threesome that Nathaniel mentions in Contract Taken as the time line is about right.

Delivered : This may be a two parter (in one book) with the first half dealing with Nathaniel’s time during Contract Broken, including his lessons in there for someone, and the second part would either cover Contract Renewed or would come directly after it and explain a bit about Mr. Wrightworth. The man is never really mentioned “in the future” and it’s creeping me out. 

Since exploring this new trilogy, I’ve been assured that he’s alive and well, but what happens to him keeps changing. I swear my characters are fucking with me. 

One explanation was he landed in jail, another that he didn’t land in jail, he landed in jail bait (yes, that’s the way it was put to me) another that he retired to an island and yet another that he stepped down from the Program and started work as a Contractee representative, living mainly off investments but under a new name.

Make up your mind, you guys. 

He can’t be all of those things.

I think.

Book One Launch

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I will not look at reviews, I will not look at reviews.

Not because I don’t appreciate them, but because there’s a massive fear of failure and at some point, some place, people are going to have bad things to say about erotica and romance, there are always negative reviews.

Which readers are entitled to make. And other readers are entitled to read and make a purchasing decision on.

Reviews are not for authors, therefore I will try not to read the reviews and try not to get wrapped up in them or take them personally.

I have Contract Taken in hard copy sitting on my desk. Beth warned me, so I had actually lightened the cover front and it still came out mauled by the printer. There’s a second copy coming, but given the number of hard copies I’ll probably sell, I’d be okay with the cover as is.

However, I opened it up and spotted straight quotes almost immediately. To which I was going to shake my laptop, but it’s now in storage so I couldn’t reach it. The whole point of doing the entire story on the laptop was that it only had smart quotes.

You may be wondering what in the hell I’m talking about. I’m talking about quotation marks from dialogue and apostrophes from contractions. Some where curly (smart quotes) and some were straight quotes. Jumbled all together. Most readers probably wouldn’t even notice. It took seeing it in a hard copy form, professionally printed for me to spot them.

It is a matter of pride, however.

So I blew the cover into the brightness once more, in one more attempt to perfect it to show off the awesome cover, and reformatted the entire inside. Which meant that I had to go back through and redo chapter titles and the full lines of italics, which my word processor during reformatting decided were wrong, more wrong than the freaking spaces after the freaking paragraphs that it keeps insisting I need.

I am slightly computer savvy, but have yet to be able to find how to change this option and the one that keeps insisting that I need to write in 12pt fonts. Who writes in 12pt fonts besides high schoolers who think they’re getting out scott free on a five page essay?

While I’ve been talking to Beth and she’s been encouraging about what’s going on, I have no idea if the launch was great or not. No one’s screaming for my blood and my rank didn’t immediately tank. I suppose in the indie publishing world, that means things went well.

I think.

When I first placed Contract Taken up for pre-order I was told that I should just publish immediately, but I did not. I didn’t get to build a lot right before the launch either, due to illness. I spent my days sleeping and getting better instead.

If you are a new author, I do agree with everyone else, publish right away and start that ball rolling. But I had a small base to start from my free works. The point of the pre-order wasn’t actually to draw in more readers and get a good first boost, but to give my long time readers a chance to get the book on discount.

Without that base, I think I would have had two pre-orders in total. Which would have been a waste of the pre-order, two orders don’t give you a boost, which is the whole point of the pre-order… for most authors.

Beth has been muttering about genre differences. She didn’t have that initial base, however. Family and friends mainly, was her base. Which is great, they can be very supportive. However, she didn’t exactly tell them all at once or shout it from the rooftops. She kind of mumbled it under her breath and ran away.

That’s kind of what Beth used to do.

I, on the other hand, am now giving away two hard copies to bribe co-workers. The one person knew for a couple of months. The other one, I jokingly threatened to quit on because I was going to make it big on my BDSM erotica of course. Except I did it while the first person was there. So when they asked me if I was being serious about having written erotica, the other person responded in the affirmative.

I have done that several times and each time denied because no one knows. … Thanks, lady.

“Why wouldn’t you want people to know?”

“Look around you… now think erotica.”

“… Oh, oh.”

“Yeah, I still have bills to pay.”

Holding the broken hard copy in my hands was the most delightful part of my week. I cannot wait for the second proof to come in, sometime today or tomorrow.

Dear ‘Zon… Just no.

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I spent fifteen hours yesterday working over Contract Taken until the editing was done. Only to realize the whole thing was corrupted and I had to basically start over. Then I got it all nicely done up and found out that Amazon strips basically all the formatting out.

I know it’s not because your Kindles are incapable of displaying fonts. I’m looking right at them on my kindle, to which I placed a .pdf. It looks fantastic. It looks like I spend hours working on it (let’s face it, I spent almost a year on this).

So I’m a little peeved. Just a little. Okay, maybe I threatened to light my office on fire, but I was at the end of a sixteen hour work day and it was two in the morning. My Google-fu was also failing me.

I know others have used fonts in their kindle books. Beth was all, “of course it works!” so I grabbed her first book and now she’s also threatening to light her office on fire.

So it is up for pre-order with no inside visible because I desperately want to sort out the fonts before I do that. When it comes time, every other retailer will have the awesome copy and Amazon will have the one that looks like it’s a text book on boring topics.

 

Prep Work

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Me: I need, like, a book to keep this all in.

Beth: So, you need something like a bible?

Me: Yeah, I need a world bible. Look at all this paperwork I have.

Beth: For two books, you have three sheets of paper. Oh, honey.

Me: Don’t ‘oh, honey’ me, like I’m being cute or something!

Dorian: *drops a book into my lap* That one is Beth’s bible for a world she dabbled in one time.

Beth: my favourite world has three books and multitudes of sheets for every time I jotted down random information. That doesn’t even include maps, since the face of the world changes so much.

Me: You mean, this is a thing?

Beth: Yes, it’s a thing. Dorian said you’re planning a masquerade, I’m guessing that’s for a book, since I didn’t receive an invitation?

Dorian and I went to Beth’s to help her set up her desk  While there I continued doing some work, filling out some odds and ends that I might never use in the story itself, but will probably mention at some point. Kind of need that information available, rather than searching for it in the middle of a scene and forgetting where I was, let alone where to find the information.

I can start writing around 2PM today. Why such an odd time? I don’t know, ask Dorian. That’s also about the time that my office gets finished, so that could have something to do with it.

He has promised me alcohol. Something I’ve not had in several weeks and have been craving all this week. Vacation and birthday are drink occasions.

Except when you get real depressed around your birthday and the last time you drank on the day, you ended up bawling your eyes out and drunk dialling your ex while sitting beside your current boyfriend.

Thankfully I had warned Dorian ahead of time, though he didn’t believe me until he had to take the phone from me and put me in bed.

All last night I was planning a masquerade. I’m getting pretty close to done, which is fantastic. The colour theme is white and gold, with trimmings of silver. I was going to go perverted with the servers, but I’ve decided to dress them all in white with Moretta masks.

A string quartet, canapes for food. White and red wine to drink, though the Alphas won’t necessarily be participating in the wine. There will be drugs and other alcohols available because it is an excess, kind of party thing going on. There’ll also be an after party which will probably degrade into an orgy.

Alphas are very sexualized beings. The way they claim things is to come on them, especially people. Beats urination, and apparently there’s this belief that if it stays still long enough for you to come on it, it must have submitted to your will.

Which gets really… tricky… when the females are born because they can’t exactly claim things like that.

I’ve now got the male and female pronouns written up, and the designations for last names. The Alphas take on a bit of a tradition that I heard the Welsh (maybe?) once used, altered of course. Where their ‘last name’ is their father’s (or mothers in the case of female alphas giving birth) with the designations Ap/Ep, Ad/Ed, Ab/Eb, Ag/Eg depending on their status.

Their companions also have the Ip, Id, Ig, Ib pronouns, but are attached to their alphas. There are even special titles for random alphas, though the only one that’s really still in use widely is ‘Da’ which is an alpha’s way of bowing to a stronger alpha and insinuating the alpha is his father, but not necessarily so. Not using the term is an invitation to a challenge.

And if challenged, one who is supposed to be given the title of Da will… you guessed it, come on the offender.

Fathers and sons never have this problem. If the son stops using Da, the father will put him in his place, but if the son wins typically the father is killed in the process. Sons were once forced out of the home and only returned to claim the territory after their fathers died but in modern times it was altered.

The research going into D.o.t.A is a lot different than what went into Contracted.

For Contracted, I did research some BDSM. Sure I participate, but I’m not an expert and wouldn’t claim that the story is perfectly researched, but I like how it’s turned out. For D.o.t.A. the research has mainly been for masquerade balls. The rest has been set up because this is a whole new world.

It might count as urban fantasy, considering it is in a similar world to ours but different all the same. Contracted was the same world, just about two hundred years in the future. So I could literally write using whatever bits I wanted to and any flaws in the law system, etc, could just be because it’s a new era.

Though, D.o.t.A. is a new era as well.

I ramble about my worlds sometimes. Especially when I can’t write them right at that moment.

Commitment 

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Somehow on the drive down Dorian talked Mary’s friend into spending his last day with us. Mary included, of course. He also talked the friend into letting him pay for everything. Something about us being good hosts and us being such good friends.

The universe brought us together, and all that jazz.

Dorian is used to being in control and is a great deal better at keeping control. Yes, he can be manipulative when it comes to people he doesn’t care about. Which I suppose makes him a bit selfish.

We went to breakfast upon arrival and began exploring a bit. Mary declined to do anything scary, which is really most of the attractions.

Which probably had something to do with her friend teasing and then offering to hold her hand to get her through. 

Offering to protect her from the big scary world.

Mary’s not a damsel in distress, at least not usually. From what I’ve learned she was a D.i.D who got pissed off that her white knight wasn’t showing up, so she suited herself up. Her friend offering to save her constantly is a wound to her pride. He’s behaving as if a woman can’t function without a man.

Not a great thing to say to an ex-D.i.D. If he wanted to save her, he should have done so years ago, when they first met and she needed the help. Not now that she’s on her feet because of her hard work, heartbreak, and scars. 

I frigging love Mary. 

She’s physically taken on men three times her size (though she is a tiny woman) in order to protect those in her life. She moved to a new country by herself for opportunity and because she knew she needed to shed everything else if she wanted to survive. 

A woman like that, you don’t offer to save. You might offer to carry her burden for a while, but never save. She doesn’t need saving or a shoulder to cry on. 

I’m playing with character ideas, can you tell? Rachel is supposed to be an ex-D.i.D. This trip could work in my favor. 

Anyhow. 

After breakfast we did explore, as I had said before. When we got down to the Falls, Dorian quietly excused us and said we’d catch up to them. It’s not the first time he’s done that. Public play, out of sight but with the possibility of getting caught is definitely a turn on for him.

He took me off to the side. Some garden thing. This was my first time to the Falls so I don’t know the name. But there was a nice covered walk and in the back corner was a little pond that almost felt natural, almost like we were alone in the woods.

And he got down on his knee. 

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Three years we’ve been dating on and off, I think it’s about time, don’t you?”

We haven’t had a fight in over a month. I got a little suspicious when he offered to spend the whole week with me, but I never thought he’d be that stupid. 

“Fuck you, Dorian. We’re not even-”

And he produced a ring that I knew. 

I knew it because he had once bought me a candle and the ring had been in the candle. One of those new popular candles with mainly fake jewelry in it. That ring had been too big for me on any of my fingers, but I had liked the colour.

“Go steady with me.”

“You bastard.” 

“I had you going though, didn’t I?”

No more breakups and makeups. We’ll be official as could be. He won’t just be my Sir, but my actual boyfriend.

Hey, in this day and age, who says you can’t have great sex and get spanked by someone for three years before you go steady? 

He’ll meet my family, I’ll meet his. And we’ll see where this goes. 

The ring had been resized. It now fits on my right middle finger. It may not be worth much, but it means the world to me.

Because it’s from Dorian.