What’s doing?
Yeah, I just totally jacked that ‘What’s doing?’ tagline from Butch O’Neil of the BDB. *snorts* My favorite brother…
What’s doing is what am I doing… thought I’d give you all a heads up. The above picture gives you all a huge clue 😉
First, if you’d love a chance to win a KINDLE PAPERWHITE & a massive amount of sexy wicked reads, go *here* and enter. Sinfully Sexy Summer Bonanza Giveaway. A digital bundle of my titles are in the giveaway. Great way to get some summer reading for free!
July 11-15 Restraint & Good Girl will be free on Amazon for the Kindle & its apps. & that is also why you will not be able to purchase those titles on B&N until September. July 11-15 I will also be holding a Rafflecopter Giveaway. Prizes: $35 Amazon Gift Card. Digital Bundle of Erica Chilson titles ($45 value) Restraint-Unleashed-Dexter-Dalton-Queen Omnibus-KING-Faithless-Good Girl. An ecopy of KING & Faithless. (click the pretty blue links to direct you to the free books and the giveaway) I will post on July 11, so it will be a fresh posting!
In preparation for the Free Promotion, I am reformatting/re-editing Restraint & Good Girl. This led me to why I want to tear my hair out. I first published Restraint on April 24th, 2012. I then went back and rewrote it in October and released the updated version on Nov. 1st, 2012. Restraint was my first book, so it has a LOT of major issues. As I’ve grown in my craft, I’ve changed my writing style. This chick has logged in almost a million words in the past year- that is a lot of growth. Wednesday night, I opened up the doc for Restraint, planning on just looking for errors and such, reformatting issues. You didn’t want to be in my thoughts… yeah… you didn’t. So yet again, I find myself REWRITING Restraint, because I feel like it sucks. I want my readers to get the best possible experience from me, and I feel like this was just shoddy writing.
Original Restraint: was only 88 pages in PDF format. I think it came out to be 120-something for Kindle and Nook. It was 52,000 words, I believe.
Revised copy: 217 Kindle & Nook pages. 70,000 words.
Now: I’m about a quarter way thru the rewrite and I’ve added 6,000 words.
I just didn’t like the flow of the story, how the scenes played out, or Katya’s lack of internal dialogue. And when she did think something, her actions belied the thoughts. God, I found that annoying as all hell. It’s doubtful I will add scenes, but I changed the dialogue, sentence structure, added description, and internal dialogue. Katya shouldn’t be a contradiction. I want the story to flow smoothly and with limited errors. I will never be able to find all of those suckers, but each one I eliminate is one less error that will break a reader from the story. You know what I mean, you’re reading along and it’s like hitting a pothole while driving, it jars you.
If you want to reread the newest version, just update your copy or download the free copy on July 11-15. I haven’t updated to the newest edition yet, because I’m not finished, so don’t go looking for it yet. It will also be formatted differently, so that’s a plus
Basically, I just didn’t want to be embarrassed by my first book… it’s the anchor of the M&M of Restraint series, after all.
Good Girl… Willow will get checked for errors, formatting issues, and sentence structure. Not much should change. And if you haven’t started the Playroom series, now’s your chance to get it for free on July 11th-15!
Faithless… is currently being read by the betas. When they give me their questionnaires and edits back and I will get back to work on Syn. The book will be $9.99 on Amazon & B&N. Why that price, you ask? Faithless spans three books: Faith, Faithless, and Syn. Think of it as an omnibus edition. It has 113 chapter… yes, 113 chapter & 330,000 words. Yes, it will take days to read! I promise you will be engrossed! Let’s hope I can find all the booboos in that many pages. Lots of chances for mishaps! My target Release is July 7th! Hopefully before then.
The Good Girl reread/re-edit/reformat is to prepare me for Widow. Widow is currently 75% completed, already over 100,000 words long. I need to add a storyline thread to it and write the ending. My target for book 2 in the Playroom series is the end of August.
I’m leaving on Vacation in a few days for a cross-country trip from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. That’s a long-ass ride, trust me. I will be working the rewrites and on Widow on the trip out. My parents and I, and our little dog, too, are going to Raton, New Mexico (NRA Whittington Center) for the BPCR Silhouette (scope & Iron sights) & the 22-caliber National Championships. My father is the returning 2012 National Champ for the Iron Sights, let’s hope he retains his title and captures the other two! Go, Dad, Go!
Send your positive thoughts to Brian Scott Chilson, because Saturday and Sunday he is shooting in the Pennsylvania State Championship! Aim true, Daddy-o!
Come next week, I will be in higher elevations dreaming of more oxygen and more humidity. This chick may live in the Appalachian mountains, but they be teeny-tiny mountains compared to the Rockies, and I love my thick swampy air. It’s an adventure, but my days are spent outside in the sweltering heat with hundreds of rifles firing. It’s a loud, hot, dirty day… and not the sexy kind. I get a lot of writing and reading done while on vacation. Once my rewrites are completed, I’ll break into my Kindle and nook Apps.
My 35th birthday is rapidly approaching… ugh… if someone could send me a dirty sexy hottie tied up in only a red bow…. yeah… But what I’d really like is for all of my fans to spread the word about my works. I’m trying my damnedest to provide intense entertainment. Word of mouth is a self-published author’s bread and butter. If you could share the links to the giveaway on Twitter and Facebook, add my books on your Goodreads profiles, and quickly tap out a review on Goodreads and Amazon, I would be thoroughly appreciative.
I love my fans, they offer me endless amounts of inspiration and encouragement. Writing is private. We bleed on the pages… but then we have to publish and be under constant assault. You never know if a message, comment, or email is a good one or one that will wreck you for an hour, a day, or a week. Total inspiration sappers, that. Plus, emotions do not transfer well in digital media. Meaning, I could write something and everyone will take it the wrong way… happened to day, in fact. But that’s how the msgs, emails, and comments are for me. So I thank you for keeping me real, down to earth, and firmly yanking my head out of my ass.
Peace out… off to rewrite Restraint for its betterment! Happy Wicked Reading!
Note to readers
This is within the pages of Faithless.
~Note to Readers~Â
There are a lot of misconceptions on what constitutes Dark Erotica or BDSM Fiction. Many would say that I do not write within my genre. I’ve read a myriad of contradictory statements. Every genre is broken down into sub-genres. But a lot of the misconception breaks down to a lack of knowledge.
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BDSM doesn’t mean you live your life in a dungeon. It also doesn’t mean that your life is consumed with kink. While hot to read, the people of the lifestyle are not sexual beasts. They have lives, jobs, families, hobbies, and friends that do not revolve around kink.
My books are not centered in a dungeon, because life is not centered in a dungeon. I just cannot write one dimensionally. This works for shorter novels or standalone shorts and novellas, but not a longstanding series. I have to show all the facets of life to create a three dimensional storyline with lifelike characters… and sometimes, life just isn’t sexy. Â
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Eroticism in my series: again, people have varying libidos. I cannot write every character as a sexual deviant that runs around dry-humping everyone like a dog. Each book is individually written based on the character. Some of my characters are randy sonsofbitches and others are more passive. I find that the overuse of sex in a book is just as bad as no sex in a book. I cannot connect with a book when it’s punch-you-in-the-face sex from the very first chapter. I need teased and enticed. I want a book to seduce me right along with the characters. Readers may read one hundred pages and find no sex or they may find sixty pages of sexually explicit content within my books. Why? It depends on my characters, my mood when plotting and writing, and the flow of the storyline. I will never write sex just for the sake of sex. If you find a random hookup in my books… it’s never random.
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Mistress & Master of Restraint is the title of the series, and not because it revolves around Restraint. The Mistress & Master denotes that the narrator of each book will be a Dominant. The Restraint denotes it as the common denominator- the link between the characters. You may read a book and never enter Restraint. But all of the books will be narrated by a Dominant and be connected to Restraint.
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Another BDSM misconception: BDSM isn’t necessarily about sex. The lifestyle varies as much as any culture varies. BDSM is always about release: sexual, mental, emotional, spiritual, pleasure, and pain. It could be a combination of one or two, all of them, or only one. But it most certainly doesn’t have to be sexual. It is a hunger that is being fed. As beings, we need sustenance, oxygen, water, sleep, sex, and companionship. Why would BDSM only feed one of your biological needs? And biological doesn’t always equate sexy.
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Dominance: it is inborn. You are either dominant or you are not. You cannot learn it. Often in Dark Erotica or BDSM Fiction, books will portray the Dominant in a very cruel light. I’d heard from many that Dexter wasn’t cruel enough of as sadist. Dominant means you are a natural born leader, not an ABUSER. Cruel is abuse. As a survivor of domestic violence, abuse is never sexy.
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I’ve heard from readers that they do not like children in my books, and a few said they didn’t want marriages and pregnancies. I assume this is because readers want fantasy, and this is too real to life. I cannot connect with a book that is missing major life events. Children exist or we wouldn’t have any adults. Pregnancies exist or we wouldn’t have any more children. What is sex? Sex is a biological need to mate- mate to create children. It blows my mind that my books should be without pregnancy, children, or unions. Seriously?
While real life isn’t sexy… it’s real.
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HEA/HFN: I’ve written blog posting about this subject. My characters always have a HEA, it may not be within their book, and it may not be within a coupling. I believe HEA begins and ends inside of you. If the character is content with their lot in life, then they have reached their HEA. And on the opposite end: Dexter, again, readers felt he shouldn’t have an HEA because he is a sadist. I’ve heard this with Syn, as well. Why not? While fictitious, they are human beings. Only a submissive person should be happy, even if they have a nasty personality?
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Romance: nowhere are the M&M books listed as romance. A few popular series that are listed as Romance, dip their toes in the BDSM or Erotica or Dark Erotica pool. The mainstream readers believe that all these types of novels should read just as those do. They are disappointed when my books do not read like a romance novel. I have another series, the Playroom, which has more romantic themes- less dark. I say less dark instead of light and romantic themes instead of romance, because I am incapable of light and romancy reads. I write darkly, twisted, sarcastic, wounded, raw and gritty, suspenseful and mysterious. Just as I do not write one dimensional characters, I do not write within one genre. I do not write to outrage or titillate or freak out my readers. I just write what my imagination tells me to write.
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I guess the reason for this note is to clear up some of the misconceptions about my writing. I will not write to please specific readers, because it is impossible to please everyone. Hell, I love a lot of books the majority loathes, and I loathe a lot of books the majority loves. What’s the saying… no book is ever read the same way twice and no two readers read the same book.
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Erica Chilson: The Wicked Writer 