Romancing the Throne, or, The History of a Parthian Love Story by Regina Kammer

Naughty Getaways: Eleven Sultry Stories is out! And it includes my ancient world romance, “An Unexpected Discovery” set in Parthia, the kingdom to the east of the Roman Empire. My heroine, Roedogune, is based on an actual historic figure, a Parthian princess who, along with the Parthian imperial throne, was captured by the Romans during their invasion of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian Empire.

I Met My Cover Model by Regina Kammer

In July, I went to San Diego for the annual conference of the Romance Writers of America. I attended sessions on the craft of writing, the business of promotion, and opportunities in publishing. I hung out with friends at the pool bar, watched a 19th-century fashion show, and attended the Hamilton sing-a-long.

I also watched a faux cover model shoot. With the guy who's been on three of my covers:


His name is Julian Christian. I had suspected he might be the model in attendance since the session presenters were Kim Killion and Jennifer Jakes of The Killion Group, Inc. -- the company which supplied all of the photos in the above covers (and created the cover for The General's Wife). Plus I happen to know Julian is San Diego-based.

I got to the conference room early, wanting to get a seat in the front. The room slowly filled with tittering, excited authors. And then the presenters arrived. With Julian:

He got up on the stage to begin the mock photo shoot:

Then he took his shirt off:

And when Julian took his shirt off, there was swooning, gasps, and sighs.

He posed as he would during a real cover shoot: Brooding,

shooting,

crouching (this drew breathy exclamations from the audience and a bemused look from Julian)

And then Jennifer Jakes walked around the room looking for a willing participant for a romantic suspense shot. As if we all weren't willing...
The young woman was chosen -- it happened to be her birthday! They did a romantic suspense pose:

Then Kim and Jennifer explained how they get male and female models to feel comfortable around each other so they can enact a romantic clinch like this

Another willing participant was sought from the audience for a historical or Amish romance cover. The volunteer author donned historical garb. Julian put a shirt on and played the dashing hero:

Then there was a costume change:

for a Scottish historical cover:

Another volunteer got to participate in a rather intimate historical pose:

After all the posing and the question and answer session, the authors lined up to get their pictures taken with Julian. Of course, I had to get mine taken

(thank you to Tricia Linden for taking my photo!)
Then historical romance author Sherry Ewing joined us for a threesome

I mean, we all just posed together!

It was fun, and Julian was a good sport with all the fawning, swooning female authors. He's super nice. I'm really glad I got the chance to meet the man on my covers!

p.s. if anyone knows who any of the author volunteers were, please let me know in the comments!

About the Author

Regina Kammer is a librarian, an art historian, and an award-nominated, best-selling, multi-published writer of erotica and historical erotic romance. Her short stories and novels make history sexier, whether the era is Roman, Byzantine, Viking, American Revolution, or Victorian. She’s even sexed up contemporary settings, Steampunk, and Greco-Roman mythology. She has been published by Cleis Press, Go Deeper Press, Ellora’s Cave, House of Erotica, Story Ink, The Naughty Literati, and her own imprint, Viridium Press. She began writing historical fiction with romantic elements during National Novel Writing Month 2006, switching to erotica when all her characters suddenly demanded to have sex.

Keep up with Regina on her website

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Inspiration

As a writer, ideas come from all sorts of places.

Two weeks ago, my husband Mark went from having chest pain at work, to an ER visit, to an inpatient stay, to a cardiac catheterization, to bypass surgery. Most of this took place in the span of six hours, and then the change from catheterization to “needs bypass” to surgery taking place was less than two days. As you can imagine, I was completely overwhelmed.

Thank goodness, my husband is doing much better and is healing well.

It was a very long day when they did his surgery, starting with a rush to the hospital when they bumped his surgery up in the schedule, and ending that evening at his bedside. I brought a book, but couldn’t read at first, and I found myself looking at the other people in the family waiting area, and imagining their stories. Who was the loved one in surgery? How did they get along? What did they do in their everyday lives? That middle-aged man. Was he waiting for news about his sister? Mother? Wife? Was he alone because they didn’t have family nearby?

Strangely enough, wondering these sorts of things was a bit therapeutic for me. There was no way I had the concentration to put words on paper, but I was able to let my mind wander, focusing on something else beside my husband’s surgery. And I may have collected the gossamer threads of a story from those mental wanderings.

When Mark was moved to a room and seemed more like himself, my guard came down and creativity sparked. One of his nurses had a unique name and I asked her if I could use her name in a book. She said absolutely, and another gossamer thread of character added itself to the plot, another layer.

I have no idea when I’ll write this story, as the events are just too close to the surface right now. Still, I can’t deny that my imagination provided a very welcome respite from the stresses of the event.

And that book lingers on the creative horizon.

Thinking About 2016

By Katherine Kingston

Resolutions have always seemed pointless to me. If you need to resolve to do something, it’s probably not going to happen. Important changes require motivation and if you’re motivated to do something, it’s probably already happening. If you’re not motivated, it likely isn’t going to happen.

But I do like to take some time at the beginning of the year to consider where my life has been, where I want it to go, and what needs to happen to get me there.

The year past has brought some significant changes to my life, including two new grandchildren and cutting back on my day-job to part-time. Part of the reason for the reduction in work time is that I want more time for travel and visiting family members, and I want more time for writing.

I also have gotten back rights to all of my published novels from Ellora’s Cave. I’m in the process of self-publishing some of those. Some will be released as part of anthologies. And there are a couple I’m not sure what to do with.

All of them will be re-edited before release. I wasn’t always happy with the language I was required to use for EC and some stories had sex scenes shoe-horned in to meet their guidelines. I hope to restore all my stories to where I wanted them to be.

One of my goals for 2016 is to re-release at least eight of those stories. Another is to finish two novels I have in progress. And then I plan to continue to write new stories for the Naughty Literati anthologies. I already have ideas for two future stories. I intend to stay busy!

Inspiration: A Naked Guy in Zurich by Regina Kammer

In my story "Window Display" in Naughty Escapes, the heroine, Laurie, an American Ph.D. student, trots off to Zurich to finish up her dissertation. Instead of the hoped-for peace and quiet, she finds distraction in a totally hot neighbor who doesn’t bother closing the curtains when he’s naked at home.

Many of my Naughty Literati co-authors chose rather exotic locations for their Naughty Vacation Getaway stories. Zurich is generally not considered an "exotic" or even "sexy" location in which to set a romance! Exotic or not, sexy or not, the story is based on a real-life event. Not my life, though. Inspiration came from an unlikely place.

I’ll go back to the beginning.

I became a National Novel Writing Month groupie in 2006 after I did my first NaNoWriMo that November. Writing a novel changed my life. Quite literally, really. I wanted to give back. At the time I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area — NaNoWriMo headquarters — so offered to volunteer for the organization. They probably thought of me as that crazy older lady who is rather awkward around strangers, but whatever. They were (and are) a great bunch and I met a lot of fun, interesting people.

One such person was Lindsey Grant. Lindsey is the sweetest, most gracious young woman I have ever met. She has said this is due to her Southern upbringing, but I think it’s her nature rather than nurture. I would see Lindsey at official NaNoWriMo events, then later at purely social events, and she would blush at the fact I wrote sexy stories.

Lindsey’s husband Pat works for a large tech company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. About three years ago, Pat transferred to the Zurich office of the company. Now Lindsey, like pretty much everyone who worked at NaNoWriMo, is a writer. Once she moved to Switzerland — a country she knew not much about, where they spoke a language she knew even less about — she began to blog about her move and transitioning to life in a foreign country.

I’ve lived abroad before, so I followed Lindsey’s blog about settling in and navigating a foreign country because it was part connecting with a friend and part connecting with my own memories. Lindsey confronted the basics of everyday life including finding housing with the help of a "relocation specialist". The specialist found Lindsey and Pat an apartment with a view. I’ll let Lindsey tell the rest of the story:

There is a window across the street from us, directly opposite our dining table, of all places, that happens to be paned with frosted glass. Alas, this frosted glass is not very frosty. Months ago, when I was getting pleasantly tipsy with our relocation specialist post walk-through, she had her back to this very window while we chatted. At a certain point, I was distracted from what she was saying by a very clear view of a naked man in the apartment opposite. He seemed to be vigorously styling his hair.
"That’s a naked man!" I blurted.
"Where?"
"There!"
"Oh my god, it is! That’s his shower." She turned and walked straight to the window, while I went the opposite direction, toward my own bathroom, blushing furiously.
"You Americans are so prude!" she laughed. "Look, he’s washing his willy. At least he’s clean."
I was dying inside.
Since then, as if by clockwork, Pat and I sit down to eat and the bathroom light comes on, the shower commences, and we get what we now affectionately refer to as, "the show." Poor guy. Poor us! And he’s not the only one on display. Across from our balcony is yet another building with a poorly frosted window through which we saw another neighbor nakedly doing her laundry. I suppose it can’t be helped. They may very well know that their windows, like the emperor's clothing, are doing little to protect their privacy. But I still feel like Rear Window goes Euro. And I just can’t stop blushing.

Anyone who has ever lived in a dense urban setting knows this sort of naked sighting happens all the time. But usually the sighting is not when the naked person is taking a shower. (This makes Zurich sound a lot sexier, doesn't it?)

The second I read that blog post I wrote up some notes for a short story. I even asked Lindsey for permission to use the premise for a sexy story, because Lindsey writes creative non-fiction, not romance (and definitely not erotic stuff).

So all that was two years ago. Then earlier this year, 2015, the Naughty Literati came up with a vacation-themed anthology. I had a great vacation story already written and submitted to another publisher long ago, but had never heard back from the editor. So I contacted the editor and discovered my (really awesome, I have to admit!) story was accepted but publication was delayed until 2016. Which meant I had to write another story.

Luckily, I keep all my notes and snippets of inspiration in a folder on my computer. That’s when the document called "Zurich" jumped out at me, and thus "Window Display" was born!

There’s a whole other plot line in my story, centered around my heroine Laurie and her academic research. Laurie's dissertation is about the Roman empress Sabina who was the wife of Hadrian (emperor 117-138 CE). I chose that subject purposely. During my research for my historical erotic romance novel Hadrian and Sabina: A Love Story, I discovered there was not much known about Sabina. (The reasons for this are spelled out in "Window Display" so I won’t go into it here.) Which meant I had a perfectly good never-before-done dissertation topic for my heroine. Plus, I got to add a touch of history to my contemporary story, which, for a historical romance writer, is always welcome.

My excerpt on the Naughty Literati website is my version of the first glimpse of the neighbor nakedly bathing.

Naughty Escapes is now available in ebook (only 99 cents!) and print. There are 11 wonderful stories from which to choose!

Write What You Know: Paranormal Edition by Regina Kammer

Beginning writers are often advised to “write what you know,” that way words and stories and emotions will resound authentically. The general public has glommed on to this aphorism and often conflates “write what you know” with “write your actual lived experience”. Erotica and erotic romance writers especially fall victim to this definition. We get a lot of “heh, heh” “snicker, snicker” at parties and such, because of course we’ve all done every blessed thing our characters have done.

Sigh.

The weird thing is that no one asks murder mystery writers if they’ve ever killed a person, or pseudo-medieval fantasy authors if they’ve quashed enemies to garner a throne, or vampire epic authors if they enjoy the taste of blood. Nope. It’s just the sex writers who get asked all the crazy questions.

Someday I’m just going to say, yes, if you’ve read it, I’ve done it, so why don’t you just go out and buy all my books, please, and then we’ll talk about time traveling back to 1777 New York and getting gang-banged by Hessians and a British general.

The truth behind writing fiction is far more interesting and fun. I’ve written about the weird experience of characters who refused to do what I wanted them to do, of characters who utterly drove a sex scene (and again), and having history spark my imagination.

As I delve more fully into unknown frontiers of writing, though, “write what you know” takes on a whole new meaning. I wanted to write Steampunk, but I know nothing about machines. Yet, I do know enough about the Victorian era to tweak it a bit. I wanted to write about Vikings, but my academic background is in the Late Roman-Early Byzantine period. Ah-ha! The Vikings paid a visit to Byzantine Constantinople. I thought about writing paranormal, and...

I got nothing.

I seriously do not understand things like shape-shifters and vampires, and it takes a really good writer to make those things sexy to me. I swore I would never write paranormal for these reasons.

I was taking a writing class a couple of years ago, and we had to post a link to an excerpt. I had only one polished excerpt to share at the time, from Hadrian and Sabina: A Love Story, an epic historical erotic romance, with four intertwining love stories. Upon re-reading the excerpt I suddenly realized: oh my god this is paranormal.

So I had already written paranormal, just not the kind of paranormal (e.g., vampires, shape-shifters) that’s really popular. It was a kind of paranormal I knew, with Greco-Roman gods and goddesses and a dream-like setting. I went back and re-read Hadrian and, lo and behold, there were other light paranormal elements, including a great four-way sex scene.

When the Naughty Literati were planning our anthology Naughty Flings with a springtime theme, I asked myself “what do I know about spring?” (because, um, you know, the whole write what you know thing). Hmmm...the end of winter’s frost brings a rejuvenation of the earth...agriculture...Demeter, the goddess of agriculture...who brings winter to the earth when her daughter Persephone is abducted by Hades...and spring arrives when Persephone is released. I’d written about all of that before, in Hadrian and Sabina. In that book I offered an alternate interpretation of the Persephone myth. And in "Hot as Hades" I offer yet another interpretation.

I had a lot of fun writing the story -- the paranormal story. I hope you enjoy reading it.

About the Author
Regina Kammer is a librarian, an art historian, and an award-nominated, Amazon best-selling, multi-published writer of erotica and historical erotic romance. Her short stories and novels have been published by Cleis Press, Go Deeper Press, Ellora’s Cave, House of Erotica, The Naughty Literati, and her own imprint, Viridium Press. She began writing historical fiction with romantic elements during National Novel Writing Month 2006, switching to erotica when all her characters suddenly demanded to have sex.

Keep up with Regina on her website http://kammerotica.com/
Follow her on Twitter @Kammerotica
Or Google+
Like her on Facebook
Connect with her on Goodreads
See what’s new on her Amazon Author Page

Whipped by WIPs: One Writer’s 6 Step Approach to Binge Writing by Belle Scarlett

My proverbial writer's drawing board is, at any given time, populated by six (6) to ten (count ‘em 10) Works in Progress (WIPs) across multiple genres.  They often exist as disconnected mosaic pieces via various colored Post-It notes stuck to the broken coffee maker, the bathroom mirror, in the black hole that is my oversized purse, on the Cat… You get the picture.

I’ve accepted long ago that my writing process has an ordered messiness to it. (And I’ve just accepted that I tend use parentheticals and oxymorons when describing my writing process.)

Sometimes, a story idea springs forth from my imagination fully formed like Athena from Zeus’ forehead.  When that lightning bolt happens, I turn into a world champion, marathon typist.  It feels like I’m merely taking dictation for a story that is already fully fleshed from characters that are living, breathing people sitting next to me and tipping me off as to what they’ll say and do next.

I love it when that happens. I love it the way I love smelling the flowers before I see them. Or the way easing into a hot bubble bath with a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio makes me feel blissful.

For a writer, it’s pretty cool not to mention super convenient when a story cooperates in such a way that I’m just the hand scratching the magic quill across the parchment, channeling a work that’s already been created and dropped down from the ether for me to ink.

That’s happened to me maybe once.  When I blog, even less than that.

The rest of the time, I’m being whipped 24/7 by six (6) to ten (10) WIPs at a time. The only way I can finish them is one at a time and by binge writing them.

Here’s how it goes down:

1) TITLE

Without warning, a title with a connected theme rudely slaps me like swatter on a fly. That can be really inconvenient when I’m driving in tricky L.A. traffic or trapped in the dentist’s chair with a drill buzzing in my mouth.

For example, the title for my most recent Naughty Literati story for our summer release, Naughty Escapes, literally hit me while I was flying to Miami. The plane I was in hit some of the worst chop I've ever experienced. The overhead compartment popped open, vomiting a couple of laptop bags on my head. The laptops inside them were fine. My head, not so much. But that was insignificant next to the concern we were gonna crash.

Once we leveled out and the stewardess brought me my free Bloody Mary painkiller-slash-bribe not to sue anyone, it occurred to me that the Bermuda Triangle is off the coast of Florida, and wouldn't it be fun to crash my threesome M/F/M characters' plane there so they'd be forced to work out their relationship issues while castaway on a tropical island paradise? Maybe it was the Bloody Mary talking, but I felt that my new romance concept for The Bermuda (Love) Triangle was born thanks to getting a lump on my head. 

Moral of the story: Just like a free lunch, brain-storming titles always comes with a price. It's is a dangerous business; not for the faint of heart. 

2) GENRE

It becomes clear to me very quickly from the title and the theme if the project wants to be born as a romance novel, a mainstream novel, a feature film, a short film, a children’s book, a blog, or a bubble gum wrapper.  In this case, “Whipped By WIPs” just wouldn’t cut it as a Pulitzer Prize-winning erotica novel. So, blog it is.

3) FIRST AND LAST SCENES WRITE THEMSELVES

I know instantly how the story begins and how it ends. But, just like Jon Snow, I know nothing about what happens in between writing the opening scene and, “They all lived sexily ever after.”  The most difficult, 

time-consuming work happens after the twenty seconds it takes for steps 1-3 to occur to me.

4) DEVELOPMENT HELL

When a WIP is acting like a high-riding bitch, it’s hard to make myself sit down and stare at the dreaded Evil Blinking Cursor (a.k.a. EBC) until my forehead bleeds.  Luckily, there are all kinds of productive ways to avoid confronting bratty characters and reluctant plot arcs.  I clean the house from top to bottom. Then from bottom to top. Organize drawers and closets.  Re-grout the tub. Paint the kitchen. Hey, I’ll come over and re-grout your tub and paint your kitchen.  

Friends who stop by gape at my sparkling clean home and have to sit down in all astonishment.  “I bet Development Hell starts tomorrow,” they guess out loud.

I go shopping for healthy writing provisions like apples, oranges, and peaches. Lots of sparkling water. As back up I add to the shopping cart a bottle of brandy and put the pizza joint down the street on my speed-dial.  

Next, I go through the house, collecting a rainbow cache of Post-It notes crammed with ideas or bits of dialogue scribbled in my Southpaw clawmanship. I clear my social calendar for the next fourteen to sixteen days and call my family.  “Talk to you in a couple of weeks,” I say. 

By now they know this is code for, “If I don’t return your call, I’m binge writing.  No need to put my face on a milk carton or send in the National Guard.”

Finally, there is nothing else left to do, unless you count eternally Facebooking pictures of The Cat to avoid getting started on a new story.  I have this wild hunch my editors would disagree that “Catbooking” is an acceptable use of writing time.  I also wish Tweeting counted towards my WIP daily word count goal, but alas.

I’m finally forced to snuggle up with my laptop on the lounger on my patio with provisions and power cord at my elbow so that there are no excuses to get out of said lounger until I write the final scene.

After a TBD length of time in a stare down with the eternally blinking cursor, I make myself type a sentence. And the next.  If it’s crap, I give myself permission to write crap until the good stuff flows.  It always does, but it usually happens at last rather than at once.  As for the crap I wrote before that, that’s what the comforting delete button is for.

Toilet Humor

Once I’m in the writing groove, my characters stop acting like shy strangers passing notes in gym class and suddenly begin to talk to one another. In fact, I can’t shut them up much less predict what they’ll say and do next.  Plot snarls stop snarling at me. I suddenly know the mid-point plot twist and it’s bullet proof.  I know for sure I’m deep into my literary process when I get really mad that I have to get up to use the bathroom.

Cut to three days later.  I’m still surfing the writing jag pretty much in the same position and clothing as on day one. A periodic shot of brandy.  A couple of fitful snoozes in the lounger where my characters are now insistent guest stars in my dreams with confidential no quote deals all demanding the biggest dressing room. Then I wake from my fitful doze and start writing again.  

Eventually, I realize I’m out of necessary provisions like pizza and Fancy Feast and have been for about twelve hours. The pizza joint stops delivering after midnight and The Cat won't shop for himself.  Slackers.  

Throwing on a trench coat over my candy-stripped PJs and fuzzy slippers, I drive to the “Rock and Roll” Ralph’s.  I vaguely note curious looks from the rock stars who grocery shop there after House of Blues closes at 2 a.m.

Once in a while a kindly musician type finds me wandering in the diary aisle trying to remember what milk is.

“Hey, you okay?” Mickey Dolenz or Bret Michaels asks. 

I de-frag my story-drunk brain long enough to reply, “Yeah… I’m a writer.” 

Instant realization dawns on Mickey or Bret’s face. “Ah.” 

They grab a carton of almond milk or whatever and drift off toward the produce aisle.

5) BE CONSISTENT

Lather, rinse, and repeat the writing jag section for fourteen to sixteen days.

6) WRITING IS REWRITING

I re-surface in the real world and have to look at the calendar to see what day it is. The WIP is no longer a Work in Progress meting out to me forty proverbial lashes per day.  It’s now a fully fleshed story, with a cohesive beginning, middle, and HEA.  My initially shy, reclusive, and sometimes rebellious characters have become old friends I’d want to hang out with in real life.

I’m breathing the rarified air of a writer who just whipped a WIP into shape.  It’s way better than a hot bubble bath with a chilled Pinot Grigio in hand, or smelling the flowers before I see them.

I make myself step away from the story for a bit.  Getting out of my writing lounger is just as hard for me as getting into it.  I actually have to make myself not re-re-re-read it right then and there.  My favorite part of the writing process is in the polishing, finding the exact better word, quip, turn of phrase, or description to tighten and refine the novel, novella, feature film, short, blog, or bubble gum wrapper that I’ve just wrestled to the mat.  But revisions and tweaks will have to wait for a couple of days.  I have to let the first draft dust settle a bit.  And recover my eyesight.

I check my messages and emails.  I’m told by any number of family and friends that I will shower and change my clothes today.  I do, but only after sleeping for thirteen hours straight and updating The Cat’s Facebook status.