visit me at my web site www.annepatriciaroberts.com

 

  Hey all you Rock Stars, Fabulous People & Curious Georgette's,

 

  To the first, love your last single!

 

  Second, you are too sexy for yourselves! 

  Lastly, thanks for sailing along with me on my maiden voyage!

 

  A quick shout out to my book illustrator, Jane Berends. Have you ever met someone of such extraordinary talent and matching humility that you wonder how they aren't famous? This person, for me, is Jane Berends. I tell her what I want her to draw for the chapter heading illustrations, and literally, in less than a fracking half hour, the renderings are better than I could have imagined! I am thunderstruck! Check out the navigation bar about Jane Berends, located on my home page, for a sample of four of Jane Berends original graphic illustrations and her mini-bio. These pen and ink's and many more of her amazing hand drawn masterpieces were commissioned by me to illustrate each chapter lead page of my novel. Surely, the fates have rained good fortune upon both of us!       

 

  Seriously, how do you write a book? Here are the first inklings of exactly how I did it, with more to come on my monthly updates at this site. Keep in mind, that I have completed my first novel in the genre of Supernatural, Erotic Romance, but will share with you my efforts up to this point and through to my first book deal! With detailed, fresh new Blogger updates every month! Starting a month from now, you will be privy to snippets of my unpublished novel!  

 

  First topic of discussion, subject matter. Was it Mark Twain who said, "write what you know"? I write what I have been dreaming about for most of my life. Twenty years ago, I started writing notes about my vivid and evocative dreams. I have always, as long as I can recall, dreamt of vampires and loss of control. Both elements always present. 

 

 Throughout my childhood and equally into adulthood, my imaginative and terrible dreams have scared the ever loving poop out of me, at least weekly. Why? Did I suffer from some unfortunate or desperate lifetime trauma or misfortune? No, not even close. I am, and always have been, so middle class and WASPie it's pathetic! 

 

  However, on many nocturnal occasions, I woke up at night crying and frozen in place in bed, too terrified to move or even go to the bathroom and pee! Sometimes, I would sit straight up in some soporific haze, suffering from a combination of sleep walking meets Tourette's Syndrome, and straight faced, cuss out my poor and very understanding husband and never remember a thing! Creepy, huh? Aside from acting like a possessed sailor on shore leave, after a week long binger, in an opium den, run by free hookers; I am confident that my aberrant, unconscious behavior would make excellent fodder for a case study in stress mismanagement. Maybe I have Mommy issues or some such! Who knows!

 

  But, I do digress! As the result of said dreams, harassing my peaceful sleep for nearly the entirety of my life, and yes, even since before puberty, I started writing poems and short stories about vampires, werewolves and other horror genres. An example is, the poem about the Night Train which seeks out and visits terrible justice on one who abused an innocent. Some of my old writing contains great material, but the writing is so bad, I don't even like to read it. But, practice makes perf-, well, good enough to seek out an agent anyway! If you can't tell by now, I ain't no editor! I am what they call an idea gal, a story teller, and I am full of them!

 

  Why would any sane person write about monsters and blood thirsty, justice reaping Amtrak? The best I can defend my choice of subject matter is, that I grew up!  Consequently, the paranormal, sexual and erotic content of my completed novel, and my other unpublished works, are directly causative of hormones and my love of what men and women can create together in a healthy mutually consensual way. I make no judgments, and believe me when I say, I am liberal in this touchy area of literature. But even the most extreme sex must be consensual to all adult humans and vampires involved! Otherwise, in my book, in my life, I do not call it sex!

  Conversely, I get totally pissed off when I read a book whose author is afraid to 'go there'. What are they, all virgins? I think not. Hey, most assuredly, I am no sex-pert. Equally, I have no fear of details nor of being censured by those who would live in fear of talking about the very things, which they themselves have done with such enthusiasm, that in the telling, would make their Gynecologist blush. It's the whole glass houses principal!

 

  That said, I suppose my writing is very much influenced by a perceived lack of control! I am a woman who really has always detested the main difference between our sexes, that being the physical strength variance between men and women. Going through life knowing that you are less imposing, than probably more than half of the humans on the planet, bugs me to no end. Am I a control freak? Yes! Do I seek the upper hand in nearly all situations? When I can, hell yes! Was completing my book empowering? Honey, I can't even tell you the Herculean emotions that you will experience if you ever write your own material! So, hell yes! Moral to that story being...pick your battles. I knew, by the time I had typed the first ten pages of my novel, I was going to complete my first book. I didn't know how it was going to end, but I believed in myself and my latent abilities. Shoot for the Moon! Hey, you might just bump your head on it! 

 

  Next issue for discussion, content. In the mid-nineties, I began to experience many variations of my nightmares and ultimately, I experienced a sort of evolution of my horrific dreams. The dreams started the same old, same old way as ever. Anne gets attacked by a bad vampire, and/or one or more make me their liquid buffet. The factor of change which developed was that, after being bled dry and dying, I would come back into consciousness, awaken and find myself turned into a vampire. Then, the same dream would repeat only then, after my turning, I evolved into flying or joined up with the vamp. posse. I recall never ever behaving like a blood thirsty demon of the night, but I went along and pretended to participate in their evil deeds. What else are you supposed to do when you are forced to be part of, little better than, a gang member of immortal terrorists? So, I began to dream up little controlled scenarios that were not quite as terrifying. I repeated those dreams so often that I had to write them down. Hence my book content? 

  How do you reach into your own twisted subconscious and dreams and yank out a novel? Sorry, I haven't a clue and frankly, my life long nightmares have hardly been worth it! So, write what you know instead. If you love kids or sailing or computers, then do a little research on line about what other people are writing about in that genre. Then come up with a subtopic that is all new and unique! These poor agents and publishers scream all over their websites and blogs about how, if they have to read one more query letter about a used-to-death topic, they are going out the 17th floor window. Save an agent...be original!!!      

 

  So yeah, this is the world's longest blog. Sorry, it comes very naturally and that beckons my next and final point. Write what you love! If you love Scifi/Fantasy, then think about it and create your own realm, like I did. But start writing today! As you read back on your awful first thoughts from a year or years ago, they will grow and become beautiful things. Write every day, until you have fifty or a hundred God-forsaken pages of crap and then read and reread, revise, revisit and regurgitate it, until you are sick of it, and then write more about it. We humans are geometric learners at the apex of the animal kingdom! You can do it and don't ever, ever let anyone stop you from pursuing your dream!

 

  My ultimate dream? To write Supernatural Erotic Romance novels and be unencumbered by having to worry about getting a damned book deal! Meanwhile, this blog, my web page, my soon to be E-mailed query letter, procuring a reliable and interested agent, getting a book deal, making money and the plethora of other business requirements involved in this process, will have to take precedence. Unfortunately, at this time, my business is topping the writing of my currently untitled and outlined Supernatural Erotic Romance sequel to this first completed novel. Frustrating to my creative impulses, but this is a business and I above all, am a highly motivated business woman.

 

  Thanks for tuning in! Thank you for your interest. Stick with me during this adventure. I shall be blogging again in a month. Jane Berends Email is almost ready for you to chat with her, a real live American Graphic Illustrator and a really amazing woman, unto herself!

 

  Please be patient with me. I answer all inquiries myself, slowly but surely.

 

  Most sincerely and graciously,

 WBCT(Warmest Blood Curdling Thanks)

  Anne Patricia Roberts