Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Interview on ERWA

Writer Ashley Lister interviews me on ERWA. Read it here.

At Lot Of Stuff Coming Up

Monday (I think it's Monday) May 10th, I'll be at Skylight Books in Los Feliz for the Lambda Literary Awards Finalist's reading series. No, I didn't enter my novel (complicated tale behind that) but I'll read from my short story Don't Fuck With Country Girls that appears in Where the Girls Are.

Then that Thursday I head to New Orleans for Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festival. So looking forward to that. Hope to meet Cecelia Tan from Circlet Press for the first time. Planning to hang mostly with Mel Spencer and DL King, although I'm also looking forward to a few moments with Jeff Mann, Sean Meriweather, Steve Berman, Trebor Healey, Greg Herren ... I wonder how I'll ever make it to the classes. But this is my once a year chance to enjoy their company.

I have a bunch of stuff out on submissions. I can't remember ever having this many stories out at the same time. Why I don't feel as if I'm writing, I have no idea. But if something sells (okay, one already did. sent back the contract yesterday. but it's for a different pen name.) I'll keep you posted.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Send a Big Yohoo Out To The Army!

Thanks for visiting my site, Army dudes!
According to Bling, Usaisc stands for USAISC: United States Army Information Systems Command


From my blog traffic site:

Headquarters, Usaisc (164.66.192.21) [Label IP Address]


Anniston, Alabama, United States, 0 returning visits


Date Time Type WebPage
22nd April 2010 10:00:58 Page View washingtondc.craigslist.org/forums/?act=su&handle=MoodIndigo
kathleenbradean.blogspot.com/
22nd April 2010 10:01:02 Page View No referring link
kathleenbradean.blogspot.com/?zx=5cace5b2c8706ed9
22nd April 2010 10:01:44 Page View washingtondc.craigslist.org/forums/?act=su&handle=MoodIndigo
kathleenbradean.blogspot.com/


Which means they're spying on either the bisexual or queer forums on Craigslist and following threads. Or someone there is goofing off at work. Tsk tsk, soldier.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Something You Never Suspected About Me

On Oh Get A Grip today, I dissect a few scenes from the movie Strictly Ballroom, and confess to a past you'd never suspect.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Twitter Smut

I've been on Twitter for a while. I try to post a short story every day. The 140 character limit is daunting.

Tonight, Stan Kent (of Shoe Leather fame, and host of the monthly In the Flesh erotica reading series here in LA), DL King (writer, editor, and the creator of Erotica Revealed), Jeremy Edwards (writer), and I attempted to co-write a story on Twitter.

There were advantages, such as being able to tell the story in more than one Tweet. But it was an experiment, so we had a few problems. Once we hit our stride, the flow improved, but it's still hard to write when you're taking turns. You can't plan anything, because by the time it's your turn, the story is in a different place. You have to build on what came before. It was exhausting. But fun. Stan is going to read it (eep) in front of an audience at this month's In the Flesh.

We're not the first writers to try using Twitter for collaborative writing. As artists, we're driven to explore mediums, and we learn from the ideas of others. So I call it a success.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Wrong Turns

Somewhere along the way in my short story, I took a wrong turn. It only came apparent when I couldn't write the final scene.

I've written a lot of smut. You'd think by now that I could bring it on home with three humpy, horny vampires primed to jump in the sack and shoot like the fountains of the Bellagio. But no. I couldn't get into it. And I don't mean in a sexual way. I just couldn't type the words.

Every story is a path. It leads somewhere. I thought I'd led my characters to the bedroom, but instead, we were all looking at a dead stop and couldn't figure out how to get around it. Some writers might blast through the wall and make it happen. I retrace my steps. Some paths are false ones. I have to figure out where the misstep happened and get on the right path.

The problem, I finally figured out, was that several thousand words into the story, I switched gears. This short story is part of a connected universe of short stories and novellas. My mind slipped into novella mode, which brings in too much story, too much plot, and way too much talking. Nothing kills short story erotica like characters yakking away when they should be, to put it politely, fucking their brains out.

Oh, how I hate to delete several thousand words. There are writers who tell you to save it, to squirrel away that bit and maybe use it later, but to me, every word has to flow organically through the characters, and trying to force a scene to match up to words written for another situation and other characters doesn't work. So I just erase it. Several days of work, obliterated.

But I was back on the right track. How can I be so sure, considering that I was fooled before? Everything fell into place. It wasn't the sex scene I expected, but it was the right one. And best of all, it effortlessly flowed to the ending sentence I'd hoped for but refused to force. That's how I know.