K.C. Burn – Erotic Romance Author

Whew. Super short post today. I’m still catching up from edits (my ‘cursed’ story and my upcoming release for Carina press) and preparing for vacation.  However I’ll be participating in a huge M/M Chat at Literary Nymphs on Thanksgiving Weekend with an enormous number of fabulous and talented m/m authors, so please stop by!  The festivities begin 9 am (eastern) on November 26 and extend through November 28 on the Literary Nymphs yahoo chat group.

I’m hoping to relax a bit over the next couple of weeks and get started on a new project, which was supposed to have been the first time I did NaNoWriMo.  Ah well, there’s always next year to try!  This story should be less vexing and go more smoothly than the ‘cursed’ one — seriously, never again am I using that word in a working title for a story!  But it is done & submitted, so we’ll see how it goes.   Of course, I submitted it with a completely unworkable title.  If it gets accepted and they don’t make me change the title, I will probably fall over and die from the shock.

And on that happy note, hope to see you at the Literary Nymphs chat!

Probably I should have called this “another one of my neuroses” but that title isn’t very catchy, is it?

Anyway, I write explicit, erotic, m/m romance.  I’ve had people ask how I, as a straight woman, can write gay male sex (I have a great imagination) and what do I do for research (not a lot ).  Authors always have to imagine themselves in another’s point of view, often someone of a different gender.  They have to imagine, and make the reader believe in, a character whose experiences, beliefs, background, culture, family, job and emotions are different from their own.

Romance authors regularly write about men having sex, from the man’s point of view and often quite graphically.  Do I know, truly, what it’s like for a man to have sex with a woman?  Nope.  But as far as I’m concerned, it’s not that much more of a stretch for me to imagine what it’s like for a man to have sex with another man.  If I have questions, I’ve got friends I can ask, and there’s also the handy-dandy internet… hence the porn part of the equation.

Now, I’ve watched porn, both gay and straight (although not as much as you’d think).  Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad and sometimes it makes me terribly uncomfortable.

Good porn (IMO) has a plot and story – hey, I’m a writer!  Bad porn… well, there’s a bunch of reasons for it, depending on taste.

Then there’s the squicky porn.  And I’m not talking about specific sex acts (although I can think of several acts that would fall under ‘squicky’ and ‘bad’).  In the back of my mind ALWAYS is the concern that there’s some sort of coercion or exploitation involved.  So if I see porn where the participants don’t appear to be enjoying themselves… well… that brings the exploitation concerns forward and slaps an ick factor on the whole thing.

But I also feel the same type of discomfort when I’m getting a pedicure.  It feels so ‘lady of the manor’, like I’m oppressing the masses or exploiting them.  So, I get pedicures – I like the result but hate the experience, and I watch porn on occasion, knowing there may be times where I feel incredibly guilty for doing so.

Am I being super sensitive?  Maybe.  Or, maybe I’m just plain nuts!  I could make a strong argument either way. 

And no – not freebies FROM strippers!   I’m guest blogging today at Raine Delight’s Book Nook about which strippers make the most money.  Stop by and comment (any time all weekend) – I’ll be giving away a copy of MIA Case Files: Blood Relations to a random commenter.

I wouldn’t say I’m a game show junkie.  In fact, I rarely watch any.  However, I’ve recently rediscovered the Game Show Network and reruns of my absolute favourite game show, Match Game.  I’m not sure anyone understands my fascination, not even me.  I don’t even think I was alive when it first came out, and when I watched with my grandma, I was too young to understand most of it.

Nevertheless, there’s something endlessly entertaining about the celebrities of the day (which included Richard Dawson and virtually everyone from M*A*S*H*) smoking on set, speaking in innuendo, and shocking the tittering housewife contestants.  And to judge from the attention Richard Dawson got, he must have been some sort of seventies Johnny Depp or George Clooney.  To each his own, I suppose.

This made me recall a Canadian game show, Just Like Mom .  The beginning played out like the Newlywed Game, but instead of “How well do you know your spouse” questions, it was “How well do you know your family” questions.  Mostly boring.  It was the final round that made it all strangely compelling.

The final round was a bake-off.  The kids, which I believe were all under thirteen, were provided with various ingredients and were usually charged with making chocolate chip cookies – without a recipe and under a time limit.  The moms had to taste each one and try to determine which sorry offering her own kid was responsible for.  Sometimes the kids would leave out the chocolate chips.  I mean, you might not have a recipe, but one of the ingredients is in the NAME.

Invariably, at least one kid added ketchup.  Seriously.  Ketchup.  In chocolate chip cookies.  The looks on those women’s faces?  Priceless.

But in truth, watching game shows may merely be nostalgia.  I spent a lot of time as a kid watching with my grandma, which may be why I still have a sneaking fondness for The Price is Right.

It’s that time again… another DIK Reading Challenge review that snuck up on me! This time, I’m reviewing The Dragonriders of Pern. Which I’m taking to mean the first three books, and not all of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern oeuvre — because I’ve read ‘em, I just don’t want to review them all here and now!

The three books I’m including are Dragonflight, Dragonquest and The White Dragon. Dragons and riders protected Pern from a deadly invasion from the skies: Thread. At the beginning of Dragonflight, it’s been 400 years since the last incursion, and not only have dragons and their riders become indolent and lazy, but the people of Pern are beginning to wonder why they should continue to support the riders with tithes if Thread is no longer a threat.

One rider, F’lar, is convinced Thread is poised to return and intends to rebuild the Weyr to fighting strength…. Assuming he can find the right candidate for the queen dragon egg about to hatch.

The trilogy tells the story of F’lar and Lessa (the new queen rider) and their struggles, both within the Weyr and without, to build up a force to protect Pern, as well as develop other ways to effectively deal with the threat.

The world building is stupendous, the characters are incredibly realistic and the telepathic bond between dragon and rider fulfills, I think, most everyone’s fantasy to have an unequivocally loyal friend who always has your best interests at heart. The whole being able to fly on the back of a fire-breathing, intelligent dragon is pretty cool, too. In many ways, Pern brings to mind all the fantasy and romance of the age of chivalry, with the dragon riders as knights (but with a little more equality between the sexes).

I’ve read these books several times over and my copies are falling apart – testament to how much I love them. I don’t even think I read them until close to twenty years after the first one was published, yet I maintain that Anne McCaffrey created one of the best fantasy/sci-fi worlds out there, and filled it with timeless, compelling and emotional stories. I would recommend The Dragonriders of Pern to anyone.

YAY! Today is release day for MIA Case Files: Blood Relations, now out at Loose Id! I hesitate to call it a sequel to Wolfsbane, because I think it could stand alone.  It takes place a couple of years after Wolfsbane, with Cooper, one of Carmichael’s colleagues at MIA, in the hot seat this time. Adam and Carmichael both make appearances, though.

And to celebrate, I’m blogging today at Belinda McBride’s Wyld by Nature for her werewolf party! Okay, that was totally coincidental.  I’m talking about my favourite werewolf movie – if you follow me on twitter, you know it’s probably not the best one out there! Anyway, stop by and leave a comment — you could win some cool prizes.

My editor was fabulous (again), and Croco Designs did an awesome job on the cover art (again)! I’ll post an excerpt shortly.

I’ve been hiding under a rock for the past week or ten days, mostly because I’m trying to wrestle my current work in progress into submission. I haven’t been doing much email, or tweeting, and I sure haven’t been learning Facebook. I did take the time out to watch a couple of movies with my hubby. Unfortunately, one of them was Transformers 2. Two & a half hours of boredom. When Bumblebee (i.e. the Autobot who DOESN’T SPEAK) is the most engaging character, you know there are problems. But I digress.

Wrangling the WIP. This particular one is more complicated than I anticipated. One of the characters is a painter. Some of the pertinent back story occurs during the Great Depression. “No problem,” I say. A quick Internet crawl & I’ll have all the stuff I need to know for that (I’ve already bitched… er… blogged about the whole penis factor for this story & my title woes). “It’s just going to be a novella, I should be able to pop that out pretty quick.” I say. I was soooo wrong. I still love the idea, but I’m starting to kick myself for making my life difficult.

It’s kind of a long distance romance, and the two guys don’t meet face to face until near the end. Trying to have two people fall in love without meeting… I imagine it’s easier to do in real life than it is to write about it. GAH! And, there’s another little twist… which I’m not going to mention here… that is more or less tripling the complication of their developing relationship.

This is also the first time I’ve written scenes out of order. I usually like to write from beginning to end, but because this story has a few flashbacks (and I wasn’t sure where I wanted them), I wrote a bunch of scenes out of order. Which, honestly, has just confused me. So tonight, I got out the whiteboard, and started mapping scenes. Usually that’s a little too confining for me, but since I managed to complicate things for myself, I needed the help sorting things out. Hubby though, came up in the middle of my very serious timeline mapping, and laughed at the fact I’d plotted in “masturbation”. Well, the two guys aren’t together for much of the book — it’s bound to happen AND it’s important to the story.

Despite the laughter, I think I’ve got it figured out — YAY — but it’s going to be rather longer than I expected. Still, I’m hoping for a first draft by the end of the month — which means I’m probably going back under my rock.

I got suckered into watching a Lifetime movie recently. For someone who writes & reads romances, I don’t much like movie versions of them. Generally, I find them too sappy and emotional on screen. I’d much rather watch something explode. However, the sole and single reason I ended up watching? Ivan Sergei. The movie wasn’t bad, but if not for Ivan Sergei, I doubt I would have even given it a second of my time.

There are movies I am more inclined to watch solely because of the actors involved, regardless of whether I’d usually be interested in the genre. There are also a lot of famous, talented actors who can carry a bad movie, and lots of people who’d go see a crap movie with those famous actors. But I’m talking about (somewhat) less well known actors. Anyone watch Dollhouse? I liked it, but not as much as Firefly. However, Enver Gjokaj, the guy who played Victor? Cute, and hands down the best actor on that show. He was incredible, especially since he had to play a different character every episode. Now, I would watch just about anything with him in it. I’ve felt the same way about Ryan Reynolds since his sit-com days, and that opinion is clearly justified.

Cillian Murphy and Oded Fehr are on my list, too. Cillian first came to my attention in 28 Days Later (due to my insatiable love of zombie movies & his hotness) but he made it on my list after playing Scarecrow in Batman Begins – flipping brilliant in that role. Oded Fehr – who could forget him as Ardeth Bay (with those SEXY tattoos) in the Mummy movies? Naturally, I was thrilled he was in the Resident Evil movies (‘cuz, zombies… again!) As far as I know, Ivan wasn’t in a zombie movie, but he did appear briefly in Kindred: The Embraced… vampires are close, right? Now Enver just needs to find a good zombie movie to act in — is that an oxymoron? And if you’ve got any suggestions for talented, attractive actors who are maybe not so well known? I’d love to hear ‘em.

I’ve been so busy with edits and various other obligations that I think I failed to post about my upcoming releases.  Now that contracts are all finalized & whatnot I thought I’d drop a short post about them.  The sequel to Wolfsbane, MIA Case Files: Blood Relations, is scheduled to release this fall from Loose Id.  Although Adam and Carmichael both appear, the story focuses on one of Carmichael’s colleagues at the agency.  I’ve posted a blurb on my Books page.

I also have a futuristic novella due to release in spring of 2011 from Carina Press.  It’s called Spice ‘n’ Solace, and I had a blast writing it.  Quick and dirty?  It’s a case of mistaken identity where a high profile negotiator assumes a brothel owner is his escort for the night.  Hijinks ensue.  Okay, not actual hijinks, but the phrase amuses me.  There’s a blurb for it on my Books page also.

In the past three weeks, I’ve also completed the first round of edits for both, so I’m sure you can understand why I’ve been so busy!  I’ve been pretty lucky, in that all of my books so far are keeping the titles I gave them.  Several author friends have bemoaned the necessity for changing titles.  I anticipate joining them with my next submission.  The name in my head for my current WIP is probably not viable from an editor’s perspective.  But we’ll see… that’s assuming an editor likes the story… *wink*.

How important are titles, anyway?  Do words or titles using other languages create a barrier to book purchases?  Or do they create an allure, a mystique, that entices readers?  I know I’ve bought books based on cover art, and I’ve bought books where I’ve only read the first sentence of the back cover blurb, but I don’t recall if I’ve bought/dismissed books based solely on the title. Will using non-English words in a title lead people to assume the book isn’t written in English?  I’m guessing you can see where I’m going with this.  The title I have in mind is a non-English art term.  I believe it’s a relatively well known term (I don’t care to share yet… I have weird hang-ups about titles) and I’m hoping to have some ammunition when I submit.  Alas, I know I am not the final arbiter of titles — will having to change the title change the way I perceive my book?  Probably.   I’ll keep you posted!

This month has been so busy, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do a review for the DIK 2010 Reading Challenge. Somehow, I managed to squeak it in! I’m reviewing J.L. Langley’s My Fair Captain. This is the first book in her Sci-Fi/Regency series, and it’s a great intro.

In the future, there are at least two planets whose social structure and culture are based on the Regency period from Earth. One is traditional and the other, Regelence, is patriarchal to the extent that the ruling classes are genetically chosen to be male and to be interested in same sex pairings. Nate was born on Englor, the traditional one, but flees to the Intergalactic Navy when his relationship with another man is the root cause of a scandal.

Several years later, when he’s asked to investigate a theft of weapons, he ends up on Regelence, a planet with customs that are familiar and yet vastly different. He meets Prince Aiden, and finds he needs to decide if he’s willing to give up his life as a navy captain for an innocent, untried man who is so obsessed with his art he often fails to see to his own safety. The problem is that Aiden is more alluring than Nate would ever expect a virgin to be, especially since giving in to the temptation would require him to marry the prince. Aiden is equally fascinated with Nate, and they fall in love. However, the thief could spoil their happily ever after when Aiden gets in his way.

This book was so much fun. It combines the rules and tradition of a typical Regency romance with a spicy futuristic twist. Nate and Aiden are very different from each other, but they’re both compelling characters who you can’t help but cheer on, hoping they get what they want. The sex was hot and the love story was beautiful (I could probably say this for all of J.L.’s books, actually). I highly recommend this book, not the least of which because the sequel, featuring one of Aiden’s brothers, is an awesome follow-up.