Robin L. Rotham's Blog

So I finally finished FrankenDom's Monster and released it 7 years to the day after I released FrankenDom. I'm kind of known for my epic episodes of writer's block--in fact, my blog is titled One Writer's Block Party--but I took it to new heights with Monster.

The original FrankenDom took me only 7 weeks to write, from inception of the idea to putting it up for sale, and it was about 10,000 words longer than the sequel. I'd set up Monster pretty well, and I was confident I'd be able to have it up within a year, at most. And I did start writing it almost right away, because the ideas were already percolating in my mind.

Then I ran into a problem--the book demanded a true external plot to complete the main protagonist's arc. To say plotting has never been my strong point would be a massive understatement, so of course I went straight for my favorite parts, the hero's damaged emotions and the healing power of kink. But I kept writing in circles, never able to move the story forward. I changed POV, I started in different places, and tried everything I could to get the story moving. I wrote and wrote and wrote, for YEARS, and eventually I made it to 60,000 words. But the story was boring because it was going nowhere--BECAUSE I COULDN'T PLOT MY WAY OUT OF A PAPER BAG.

But this summer, a friend who's a very good plotter recommended a craft book, Save the Cat Writes A Novel by Jessica Brody, and my writing life was forever changed. It taught me the 15 essential plot points for a successful novel, and compared them to books I'd read and movies I'd seen, and it all finally started to make sense. I read the book in less than 2 hours, and then sat down with that list of 15 plot points and plugged in all the plot elements for Monster I'd had jumbled in my head for literally YEARS...and suddenly I had a coherent rough outline of my plot.

I literally cried. And laughed, because it just seemed too easy. (And it WAS too easy, because my muse is a sadistic bastard.) But that list of 15 plot points helped me start the book over again--and yes, I started all over from the beginning. I only managed to save 3 scenes (less than 5,000 words) from my first 60k partial draft. I actually kept a Cut Stuff document, saving all the large swaths of text I cut in case I wanted to pull them back in later, and that document wound up being 93,000 words, because many times I had to write scenes 2-3 times before I got them right.

But every time I got stuck and started writing in circles, I'd consult that list of plot points and go, "Aha! That's what I'm supposed to be doing with that scene, and this is where I'm going next!" And I'd be unblocked almost immediately.

And in just a few months, the book was finished. Finally. And I love it so much, and it's SO much better than the original draft, I can't even begin to tell you.

So that's the secret of how FrankenDom's Monster finally got written--I learned to plot. If you're a writer and you're having difficulty with plotting and/or writer's block, I'd HIGHLY recommend you buy Save the Cat Writes A Novel. It rescued me from a seven-year block, and now I'll never write a book without plotting it again. 

Yes, at long last, FrankenDom's Monster will release on October 29, 2019--seven years to the day from when the original FrankenDom was released.

For those of you who pre-ordered it on Amazon already...I'M SORRY! I didn't finish it in time to get it edited and uploaded by the pre-order deadline, so the pre-orders have been canceled.

But don't worry, it will be up on the 29th! You can check here or on my Coming Soon page for buy links on release day!

Blurb:


I’d rather die than live as your monster.
That’s what I told my brother Julian, but he ignored my wishes and performed an experimental transplant. Now the real Jordan Kilmartin is dead, leaving me in his place. 
I spend my days hiding in a castle, keeping Julian’s research on a tight leash and searching for clues about my mysterious donor. I’ll never lay hands on another human being until I know I won’t descend into his madness.
Breanna McBride turns that plan on its head when she spies on me in my bath. When I lock her in my dungeon, the sexual energy between us is explosive—and potentially deadly. The only way to ensure we both make it out alive is to negotiate a BDSM scene and call in Hans Hauptman to watch over us as we play—and even that’s a risk, because he’s brutally sexy and determined to bring me back to life, whether I like it or not.
But there are darker forces at work in this cursed castle, and no matter how vigilant we are, someone will wind up dead.
I just hope it’s not one of us.
Reader Advisory: Not for the vanilla at heart! Contains a man on the edge, a nurse on a mission and a gleeful sadist with boundary issues, all of whom practice Risk-Aware Consensual Kink. Their BDSM scenes include breath play, caging, predicament bondage, ménage, m/m sexual encounters, gymnastic positions and cruelty to induce emotional catharsis. Also contains potentially triggering violence. Prepare to bite your nails, wipe your eyes and change your underwear at least once.

Let me start by saying that I've unpublished all my blog posts for the moment, because I feel like the people who are most likely to read them right now are the ones who will do it for all the wrong reasons. I'll go through later and repost all my favorites, maybe leave out all the promotional stuff because it's old anyway.

So, I've been mostly in the closet about my writing career because of my mother-in-law. She's deeply religious, and at the time I started writing, she was also depressed because of the death of her husband three years earlier. Although she retreated into her bible and her faith, she remained depressed for eight years, something she said she didn't even realize until she met her new husband. She'd lost her joy when she lost my father-in-law and I didn't see any point in adding to her sorrow.

Her new husband, as it turns out, is even more religious and very outspoken about it. Although my views have become much more liberal over the years, I've done my best to respect their beliefs while remaining true to my own. I believe this is the only way any family can ever get along. Rather than being confrontational and flaunting my career, I've kept it low-key, both to avoid upsetting my mother-in-law unnecessarily and to keep my writing from influencing the children in the family.

Now, fast-forward to last night. My mother-in-law called my husband and me to her house for a family discussion that turned out to be a confrontation about my writing. To "clear the air" and basically convict me and question my spirituality because I write erotic romance novels that include sex outside of marriage, polyamory and alternative sexuality. It wasn't pleasant for any of us, especially when they began trying to convict Mr Robin too. Both of us thought about getting up and walking out, but ultimately I wound up explaining my views very calmly and rationally, which is amazing to me considering I had no advance notice that I was the topic at hand.
So what do I believe? I believe Jesus preached love and acceptance, not hate. I believe He would be the first to open His arms to a loving "sinner" and turn away from a self-righteous "believer" who's anxious to cast the first stone. I believe He would rather see a relationship built on love and mutual respect between two men, or two women or three people, than a "traditional" marriage where the wife is forced to submit to an abusive husband. I believe that in the end, we'll be judged on how much love we had for others, not how much hate we had for their sins.
My husband and I are each other's first and only loves, and we're happily married and will stay that way until one or both of us die. That doesn't mean our marriage is perfect, or that it's not hard work sometimes. It doesn't mean he doesn't still appreciate the sight of beautiful women or that he doesn't still think about sex more than his mother would be comfortable with. It doesn't mean I don't sometimes long for more emotional talk and more open affection. But these are just minor issues in a strong, loving, trusting marriage based on mutual respect.
This is who I am. Who we are. We're the same people we've always been--time and experience have simply made us more tolerant, more patient, and more loving toward others. If you can't accept that, it's your problem, not mine.

Once upon a time, I was a loyal Ellora’s Cave author and reader. I defended EC on the internet when rumors started circulating, and I even stood up for them at an RWA Annual General Meeting, back when the national board of directors still refused to recognize e-publishers.

If EC hadn’t betrayed my trust so completely over the years since then, I’d still be a loyal EC author. They gave me a great start in this industry, and my checks (when EC bothers to send them) are still very nice—I published only five books with them from 2007-09, three novels and two short novellas, and yet my last few royalty checks averaged around $900 a month. Why would I want to throw that away by speaking out against EC?

Because good money—when it comes—no longer outweighs the harm EC is causing with their words and actions.

When EC’s August 2014 layoffs were announced, I’d already believed for years that the company was experiencing cash flow problems, and the layoffs convinced me they were in dire financial straits. However, I never spoke publicly against EC until they filed their SLAPP suit against Dear Author. Even then I behaved professionally, offering an unembellished declaration of my personal experiences and conclusions about EC for official court records. I didn’t blog about it. I didn't ask readers not to buy my EC books. I let my sworn testimony speak for itself.

The same cannot be said of EC. Even as the owner declined to be named in, or provide any sworn testimony for, EC’s SLAPP suit against Dear Author, she enlisted the help of internet trolls to wage a vicious flame war on authors whose only crimes were going public with their experiences at EC and demanding to be paid the royalties they’re owed. While author after author has come forward with sworn statements, financial records, contracts, emails and other proof to back up Dear Author's claims, EC has ignored the mountain of evidence and offered up nothing but bombastic rhetoric and paranoid conspiracy theories.

So what are the facts?

1. EC has been continually paying me (and most, if not all, EC authors) outside of contract terms since 2009, when they pushed royalty payments from the end of the first month after monies were received to the end of the second month, and began sitting on royalty monies for an extra month. This is a clear violation of the contract terms. EC’s own Accounting clause spells it out in black and white: every time EC pays royalties, they're required to send authors “any amount(s) then owing” “for all monies actually received by publisher”. There’s no provision allowing them to make a partial payment or to withhold royalties for an extra month or two (or six or eight). If they pay royalties every three months, they must pay ALL the royalties owed for those three months. The CEO's sworn testimony that EC had never paid outside of contract terms, that they'd simply paid us “less early”, is erroneous at best. I have to wonder if any of EC's principals has ever actually read their own contract.

Here is the Accounting clause in all my contracts:
 2. EC is now seven months behind on my royalty payments. According to the payment schedule Ellora’s Cave provided when they signed my first book, they should have mailed royalties for monies they’ve received through January 2016 by now. But the last check they sent me, dated November 5th, was for monies they’d received from March through June of 2015. They’re still sitting on seven months’ worth of my royalties.

3. EC made a deliberate unilateral change to the payment terms of my books (and those of many other authors) contracted before the spring of 2008, and as a result, they’ve underpaid my royalties by more than $18,000 since late 2011. Because they’d suddenly made their royalty statements long and difficult to analyze, with many and varied amounts supposedly received from Amazon for each book, I didn’t detect the underpayment until late 2014, when I audited all of my royalty statements. I sent EC a spreadsheet detailing the underpayments, demanded immediate payment and offered to accept the rights to my books in lieu of payment. In reply, EC's CEO claimed they had notified authors about the change of payment terms on the business loop in 2011, and since I didn’t object within 18 months, the statements became final and binding on me—therefore EC owed me nothing. However, there are several major flaws in her argument:

a) Unilateral notification on a Yahoo loop does not meet the contract’s requirements for changing payment terms. The contracts call for any changes to be agreed to in writing by both parties. That could have been accomplished very easily. All EC had to do was post a contract addendum in the business loop files for authors to sign and return—and in fact they’ve done this for other contract changes—but that time they chose not to. They CHOSE to breach my contracts rather than negotiate in good faith. I can only assume they did this to me and the other authors because they were afraid we would refuse to sign the addendum and then EC would be forced to accept less third-party vendor profit on those older books, which in my case had already paid for themselves many times over. Here is the modification clause in all my contracts: 

 

b) The messages posted on the business loop did NOT inform authors EC would be disregarding the contract language in older contracts that prohibited them from paying less than the required 37.5% of EC’s webstore price. They touted a new higher royalty rate on net, which didn’t seem suspicious because EC's publisher had already explained to us at a conference luncheon that EC is allowed to pay authors MORE than the contract stipulates, but NOT LESS. That was why EC came up with their higher “list price” on digital books, so that they could pay Amazon’s cut and still make an acceptable profit while paying royalties in accordance with those earlier contract terms. I have screen shots of their messages to the author loops proving that they said nothing about paying less than the contract terms allowed.

c) Even if the eighteen-month clause did apply (which I don’t believe it should since EC deliberately breached the contract and, in my opinion, obfuscated their royalty statements to hide that breach), EC still owes me more than $13,000 for the 18 months preceding the date I first notified them. When I told the CEO that, she reiterated that their attorneys had determined EC owes me nothing. Since then, I’ve sent EC a couple of reminders of what they owe me, and not only have they NOT paid it, but they’ve actually suggested that I offer THEM $18,000 to buy back the rights to my books.

4. Several of my more recent statements have been incorrect. Print books were paid at ebook rates, ebooks were paid at the wrong prices, and at reduced prices a month before the prices were actually reduced—multiple errors on the same statements. And even after I sent emails to EC’s CFO explaining exactly what was wrong and what the rates and prices should be, the adjustments were sometimes incorrect too. This ongoing lack of accuracy in their royalty accounting flies directly in the face of the owner's claims that, because of the alleged “new accounting system”, EC “must verify and re-verify every statement by hand”. As far as I can tell, no one is verifying, much less re-verifying, anything.

5. EC routinely violates USPS regulations, making it difficult for authors to prove when royalty checks were mailed. For years, EC made a practice of turning off the date on their postage meter machine whenever they mailed royalty checks, and now that they've switched to Stamps.com, they continue to abuse their metering privilege. Section 604.4.6.1 of the USPS Domestic Mail Manual states that, for all metered first-class mail except return envelopes, the meter stamp must contain a human-readable date. Our local postmaster verified this regulation, and confirmed that PC postage is considered metered mail and therefore subject to the same restrictions. Here is the last envelope I received from EC, folded so that both the return address and postage meter stamp are showing:


I have royalty statements, contracts, spreadsheets, envelopes, emails and lots of screen shots to back up all these claims and more.

I’m not responsible for EC’s downward spiral, any more than Ann Jacobs, Cat Grant, Avril Ashton, Joanna Wylde or any other EC author is. In fact, our unpaid royalties are probably the only thing allowing the company to dangle from that crumbling financial cliff by its fingernails.

Bloggers and other interested parties like Dear Author, Courtney Milan, Dierdre Saoirse Moen, Tejas and Karen aren't responsible for EC's spiral either, and I, for one, am grateful for their persistence in holding EC accountable.

And while Amazon, with their lowball pricing, deep publisher discounts and self-serving marketing strategies, has no doubt contributed heavily to EC's financial straits, they aren't responsible for how EC has reacted to them.

EC's principals alone are responsible for their actions. Their questionable (and in my opinion, unethical) business practices, their dogged denials in the face of a mountain of evidence, their desperate attempt to silence authors and critics with that SLAPP suit, their habit of “losing” readers’ bookshelves every time they upgrade their website... It's these factors, along with the owner’s flaming attempts to blame EC's problems on some racist, misogynistic, industry-wide conspiracy, that have destroyed Ellora's Cave’s reputation. And now, rather than rebuilding the company’s public image by owning up to its responsibilities and paying authors in full, the owner is openly devoting the company’s time, energy and resources to waging war on romance authors and bloggers—and even the romance industry itself—while portraying herself and EC as martyrs on a level with Joan of Arc. She’s making a laughingstock of both herself and EC, and I can’t imagine either will ever recover from it on a professional level.

So here’s where I finally ask my readers to please stop buying my EC books—not so that I can get the rights to them back, but because I’m tired of financing the owner’s malicious, deluded attacks on decent authors and bloggers.

It’s a sad conclusion to what started out as a wonderful fairy tale, dragging on long after it should have reached The End. I hope for EC’s sake that they finally do the right thing and either pay their authors or give us back the rights to our books and call it a day before it’s too late for all of us.

ETA: I'm closing comments on this post to prevent further flame wars.

Yes, Julian’s Sins (formerly known as FrankenDom) is out today, in both ebook and print formats!

I'm hosting a contest today over at Smutketeers and giving away a couple of gift cards, so hurry on over!

Julian's Sins Blurb: A brilliant woman, a couple of mad scientists, and an erotic experiment with shocking results…

Vascular surgeon Dr. Rachel McBride knows she’d be insane to pass up the chance to work on Julian Kilmartin’s cutting-edge research project. The reclusive neurologist has been the object of her submissive daydreams since residency, and time and distance have only strengthened the dark compulsion.

To complicate matters, a former lover who was all too aware of her attraction to Julian is also on the team. Charmingly obnoxious Dr. Colin Carter was Julian’s protégé back in the day, and nothing appears to have changed…or has it? There’s an earnestness to Colin now, an urgency she’s never before seen in him.

When she accepts the offer and travels to Eastern Europe, Rachel discovers that research is only part of her job description—and her total submission is only the beginning of the sexual excesses Julian and Colin will demand from her.

This book has been previously published under a different title.

Warning: You should assume any Robin L. Rotham book contains BDSM elements, anal play, and every possible ménage à trois permutation. Additionally, FrankenDom contains real dungeons, whips, chains, spanking, a variety of taboo fantasies, mild puppy play, electrical devices in uncomfortable places, humor, and an intimidating ratio of sadists to masochists.

NC-17 Excerpt: For the first time, Colin and I dropped into bed together and simply slept. I awoke sometime in the middle of the night to the feel of cool, familiar hands sliding over my spread thighs. Julian.

“Forgive me, my dear,” he murmured, kneeling over me in the dark. “I need you too badly to wait another moment.”

Still half-asleep and aware only of my endless love and yearning for him, I welcomed him, pulling at his shoulders as he set the head of his cock against my body’s sleep-warmed opening. I wasn’t the least bit aroused yet, and I gasped in discomfort when he pushed partway in.

He swore and then pulled out slowly. “I’m sorry, that was poorly done of me. I assumed you’d still be wet.”

“We were too pooped to party,” Colin mumbled from the pillow beside me.

Julian leaned over me, breathing roughly, his chest squashing my right breast as he fumbled in the side drawer. Apparently finding what he sought, he pushed away from me and I heard a snap and the unmistakable sound of flesh being lubed.

Then his fingers slid into me, spreading the slick moisture into every crevice. “Beautiful little cunt,” Julian whispered. “So hot and tight and mine.”

His crude praise incited a surge of my own natural lubricant and I reached for him again, suddenly unable to wait myself. He fell on me at once, sliding his forearms under my shoulders as he shoved deep, and then deeper. God, he was thick. I could feel every inch of him throbbing inside me—or was that me throbbing? The fit was so tight, it was hard to tell.

Julian kissed me then, a long, deep, inquisitive greeting that felt so long overdue, I nearly cried. When he rolled to his back, taking me up on top without breaking the kiss or slipping out, I gasped against his mouth. Both of his hands immediately roved down to my butt and his fingers zeroed in on the place where our bodies were joined.

“Mmmm,” he hummed into my mouth.

I hummed back and kissed him hungrily, squeezing my internal muscles on his restless cock. God, I loved being on top for a change. I was vaguely conscious of Colin moving on the bed and the snap of the lube lid, but it didn’t dawn on me what was about to happen until he spread my butt cheeks wider with one hand and slid the cold, slick fingers of the other into my anus.

Fear and excitement churned through me.

Raising my head, I said, “Um, Colin…”

“I told you we’d do this to you, Rachel,” he said, thrusting inside me in a way that told me this was the only warm-up I was getting. “We’re doing it now.”

I swallowed hard, wishing the light were on so I could see but kind of glad it wasn’t so they couldn’t see me. “Okay.”

Julian groaned deeply. “That’s my good little slut.” Then he clamped his fingers on my cheeks and pulled them wide. “Now means now, Colin. In. I need to feel you.”

There was no hesitation when Colin shifted and put his cock against me. He forged deep on the first thrust and stretched out over me with a groan, pressing his lips against the top of my spine as he pressed me into Julian. Breathless, overfilled and insanely aroused, I felt his arms and Julian’s come down by my sides. I reached down, too, and found their hands linked.

A tidal wave of emotion rolled over me. Love. And fear. They loved each other so much. What did it mean to me? Why did I feel like they’d be together long after I moved on?

“Fuck me,” I gasped, desperate to move away from this state of suspension. “Do it.”

Colin started moving at once and Julian and I both groaned. It felt sooooo good.

Julian’s thighs shifted behind me and his hands grabbed my butt again, holding me in place as he thrust up hard, making me cry out. He did it again and again, in a rhythm that seemed completely unrelated to Colin’s. It was like they were both looking out for number one, like I was nothing more than an inanimate object for them both to get off in.

The idea drove me wild, as did the unpredictability of the stimulation. I couldn’t slip into any sort of internal rhythm with them jarring me haphazardly. Thrilled and frustrated, I tried to move too, but Julian forced my hips down against him and fucked me harder, driving into me like he had only seconds to reach orgasm.

“Don’t move,” he gasped. “You take what we give you.”

I raked my nails up his ribs. Hard.

You can buy it in any format NOW at Amazon!And Nook!And ARe!And Smashwords!

Holy crap, I'm so freaking exhausted that I totally forgot there would be TWO winners of my contest. My handy-dandy random number generated another winner...

Congratulations, Sarah! Email me at robin_rotham.com for you loot!

Yes, I finally finished A Carnal Christmas! It's about 10,000 words more than I was expecting. NEVER AGAIN will I tempt fate by saying a book I'm writing is coming easily...

Anyway, it needs a fast edit, and then I'll get it uploaded, so hopefully by the end of the day or early tomorrow, you should be able to get your copy. Thank you so much for your patience!

And now, at 8:15am, I'm finally going to bed. *thud*

Okay, first things first--the winner of my Carnal Contest is Becky Ann! Congratulations!!! I'll be sending you an email shortly.

And now for the mea culpa...

A Carnal Christmas isn't out yet because it's turned out to be so much more story than I originally envisioned, and with five main characters, so much more complicated. I'm so sorry for keeping you all dangling, but I'm still working away on it day and night, trying to get the final chapters ironed out. My drop-dead deadline for release is tomorrow, the last day of the Smutketeers Twelve Days of X-mas, so I'm going to stop here and get back to work.

Please send me all the clear-eyed, energetic vibes you've got!

I have new release today--but it's not the one you were expecting. A Carnal Prologue went live today as a FREE READ! It's available right here on my website as a PDF download.

So where's A Carnal Christmas? It's still coming, but a few days later, on December 18th (or later in some formats).

Why? Because my sneaky sadistic muse was trying to tell two stories at once. A Carnal Prologue started its life as the prologue to A Carnal Christmas, but it didn't fit with the rest of the story. It was back story, and there was too much of it. In fact, it was longer than a lot of authors' chapters. I tried squeezing it into the main body of the book, but there was just too much significance to the events that took place earlier for me to be happy with telling them in hindsight, either as back story or dialogue. So at the suggestion of my two wonderful critique partners, I cut off the prologue altogether, expanded it into its own short story, and put it up as a free read for you, my faithful readers.

Since I postponed the release of A Carnal Christmas, I'm extending my contest by a few days. There's still time to enter, so if you haven't already, go check it out!

And now that I've updated you all, I have to crawl back into my writing cave and put the finishing touches on the main story, A Carnal Christmas. See you in a few days!