Nicola Jane's Blog

Punctuation is so important. The two dots in the title of my new book, the follow-up to Follow your Fantasy carry so much meaning.

It’s taken two years, a few months of writer’s block, about nine months of actual writing, and a year of waiting for the tech to be polished up to make the reading experience as much fun as the reading itself ….well, not quite as much fun ;)

This time we start with the heroine from Follow Your Fantasy, YOU, and go Deeper into the world of fantasy and sexual adventuring sometime soon after she’s met the mysterious Giselle.

I took on the concerns of some readers who wanted safer sex to be part of the Fantasy world and introduced condoms but, hopefully, in such a way that they don’t interfere for people that didn’t want to “see” them –a tricky balancing act I tentatively think I’ve pulled off.

The tech team have made it so the “back” feature allows you to retake your steps from the point of the choice options rather than having to go all the way to the beginning of the previous chapter which is what a Kindle is normally set up to do. That really smoothes out the reading experience as the snap back to reality as you skip pages to get back to where you can go forward (!) wasn’t working before.

And I’ve included a plot map at the back of the book as some readers got lost in an annoying loop and didn’t know if they had actually read the whole book or not. One friend had missed the whole casino thread last time and that was not one to be missed out!

If you’re going Deeper, I can promise you this time it’s a hotter, and, well, filthier ride thanks to two particular story threads, one dreamed up in the library and another in a dark Madrid café while I was pregnant. I can only blame or thank hormones for the latter, a twisted take on a fairy tale.I have no idea where it came from but once it started flowing it felt like this must have been the true meaning of Rumpelstiltskin all along.

Follow if you dare…

Amazon, Kobo, itunes, Barnes & Noble, Google Play

One book, two release days, lucky me!

I joked a while back about the cover for the Spanish translation of Follow Your Fantasy, my choose your own erotica novella. I mocked up a version with my fledgling photoshop skills. But now Elige tus fantasias is here, I have to admit the publisher, Titania/Urano did a much better job.

I have yet to hold my actual paperback book in my hands and the publisher has not called on me, so far, to do any promo events despite my conveniently being here in Madrid so it is a little bit like it’s not happening. But October 5th, today, is the release date and, since, rather less conveniently, I’d have to take a 7 month old baby along to any such smut-promoting event, perhaps it’s as well.

The book was written in Germany as an escape from one of the least adventure-filled years of my life while being a sort of live-out governess/tutor to one family with two girls so it would be the acest thing ever if it had a German version too. A Spanish version is apt though as it was edited and re-worked in Spain and I was here when I got The Call.

Nowadays I have something of an identity crisis regarding future promo of the book as Nicola Jane doesn’t really exist — if she ever did in any real sense. It’s amazing what a couple of photographs and magazine articles can do to create a persona. When the second book comes out in English, I wonder if I’ll have bridged the gap. Loosely scheduled for this autumn, working titles only of Follow Your Fantasy: Deeper (I really like that colon) or Further into the Fantasy, and a yet-to-be-decided cover suggest I have a while to mull myself over.

But for now, you’ll find me trawling the bookshops of Madrid, hoping to find my book and, rather more riskily, sneaking the occasional and escalatingly frequent look at Amazon.es for a fresh round of reviews. Funnily enough, another book I partly wrote caused a national scandal here in Spain only the other week. Which just goes to show you can never predict where controversy will arise.

It’s probably too late for my smut to shock these days, two years almost after the original, but here’s hoping.

With any break up, there are clear stages to get through during the recovery. Navigating them successfully might depend on recognising them. Which is a pity, since no-one ever manages to. Here’s some support for handling the biggest break up of them all — a split from Facebook.

As a survivor, I can tell you: It’s going to be OK.

Stage 1: It’s not me, it’s YOU!

Everything that’s bad in your life either comes from Facebook or is exacerbated by it. The song that twat from work posted is about you. The happy photos posted by those gits you thought were friends suck the life out of your day. Only 14 people liked that post about your cat and they’re all chronic Likers who click everything. No-one commented on your status update because they hate you.

If it weren’t for Facebook, you’d only be friends with actual friends and could drop all these c**ts.

But …what if no-one notices you’ve gone? What if they wanted you to sod off all along? Better stay together and count Likes from a safe distance.

Stage 2: Making the break

You’ve agonized about the decision,  got it all planned out in your head. If it isn’t today, when will you ever be free of the tyranny of Facebook? Besides, it’s not like it’ll ever really be that far away. You can log back in whenever you miss it.

It’s just a trial separation really.

Facebook just shrugs. “Meh, you´ll be back.”

Stage 3: HA! I didn’t need you ANYWAY!

The fresh air of liberation wakes you with a balmy breeze through the window of life every morning. You go about your day without having to photograph your breakfast or tell anyone you’re at Tesco or get alerted that Simone from school likes a Buzzfeed article about genital-shaped vegetables.

You don’t miss Facebook at all and never secretly log in at 2am just to see what it’s up to while hoping no-one from a different timezone spots you online.

Stage 4:  Superiority

You find an article that says that people who use social media have the mental age of four year olds and are more likely not to wash their hands after they pee. That’s not you anymore.

No, you’re one of the élite few thousand that broke up with Facebook just this week — according to the Guardian piece you saw on Twitter.

In fact, Tumblr had something about IQ levels of non-Facebook users being on average half a point higher than social media drones. And loads of strangers  liked that photo you posted on Pinterest of your footstool preferences and the conversation in the comments was pretty high brow and mostly correctly spelled.

Social media is for losers with too much time on their hands.

Stage 5: Moving on

You’re so over Facebook that you’re ready to …

…start a new account on Facebook.

You take things slowly at the beginning, inviting maybe just new friends you’ve met since the break up, guarding your privacy settings fiercely. Then you take the plunge. Just lunch at first, later maybe dinner. Soon you and Facebook are documenting every meal together. Before you know it, Facebook is the last thing you think about at night and the first thing in the morning. How did you ever live without each other?

Life is so much richer when it´s shared.

I’ve had a Christmas saucy short story published in the Anthology Christmas Nookies.

Nothing so unusual about that you might think…except for where the inspiration came from.

This photo.

Photocredit: @canveymick, model: Steve Prentis https://www.facebook.com/steve.prentis

Not so strange that a photo inspires a story either.

Except…

This picture is of my brother.

He posted it on Facebook after a shoot last year (of which I gather this picture is one of the tamer – I didn’t look!) and we got chatting, riffing off each other over silly Christmas puns and the story was born.

A 1000 words in keeping with the cheeky, Christmas feel of the photo. That’s not so strange.

Anyway, I was very happy to see it edited and in a collection and delighted to find inspiration wherever it comes.

Christmas Nookies (Hot Holiday Reads Book 2) published by Fuse Literary and available on Kindle from Amazon, Smashwords, B&N, Kobo, iBooks.

Finally.

I’ve been so slow writing the sequel to Follow Your Fantasy that even the Diary of Writer’s Block didn’t get much action. It was mostly in the block part of the process. My productive times being Sept for a couple of days, Oct for one and December for a chunk that began with dropping dating and ended with the interference of Christmas.  Which is a pity as my last entry was so optimistic.

The critical thing is that I’ve lost my fear of this book. I’ve got 7500 words done and it’s not perfect but not bad either and I can see where I’m going. The great thing about having a path is that, secure on it, other paths are visible and I can mark them to explore later or have a wander down them as I go. The journey is underway. I don’t even feel the need to write it up here so I only will if there is something interesting to say, for good or bad. Assume all is well if I don’t call in!

All was not well.

January killed everything. I was having a jolly old time of it in 2013 and felt no need for the Big Restart. Trying to ignore the New Year didn’t work either. It ruined everything, including the writing flow I had got into in December.

I extended the no-dating thing which had been working so well and, while I didn’t miss it, the ban had stopped helping with focussing on writing. By February I had another excuse — promo for the Valentine’s Day release of Follow Your Fantasy. That sort of carried over into March when I was nearly on Lorraine Kelly with Morton Harket of AHA. Fate, in the form of extended coverage of the Antipodean Royal Tour, meant I was dropped last minute and the biggest chance the book had of widescale promotion disappeared. Book sales are so much about luck.

Anyway, I wrote sporadically until June, which is to say hardly ever. I was 20,000 words in by May and really struggling.

I’ve since realised partly why. Psychological factors tied up with still being afraid of this book. I wrote about it for Books by Women, which was a nice piece of procrastination in Oct, following a summer of my summer job which never leaves time for writing.

I struggled on in fits and starts of incessant wordcounting through autumn and was much encouraged by my boyfriend’s reading of it (since I wasn’t writing, I figured I may as well go and meet The One). It “works”apparently so that’s very reassuring.

And then NaNoWriMo at about the 5,000 words left mark. I was determined to get it written and edited in the month and amazed myself with some pretty solid scenes that flowed from the spring of inspiration instead of enforced writing — oddly since NaNo is all about enforced writing. I had a magical cafe and a few writing buddies from my writing group and I did it!

A huge relief. OK, so I maybe am happier with the title than the book but I think this stage of loathing for your recently produced work is normal. So, Further Into Your Fantasy is now with my editor and I am free to write whatever the hell I want in the interim.

I have a much better idea of what the promo trail needs this time around, although Nicola Jane’s persona is going to look very different — heavily pregnant. If that doesn’t quite work as well for the erotica, it’s lucky I turned out to be quite good on the radio…

1. Pee sitting down

The biggest advantage to having their bits on the outside isn’t such a plus if it means not being able to Tweet or check Facebook. In some countries, like Germany, it’s almost mandatory to sit when peeing so as to avoid sprinkling when tinkling.

2. Have sex with girls on their period

More than three quarters of guys surveyed by Men’s Health love period sex although 54% said they’d only do it with a serious partner. So, if you’re only saying no because you think he’ll be grossed out, guess again.

3. Plan the wedding

Wedding planning sites found that up to 38% of grooms were significantly involved in planning their special day with as many as 60% ‘somewhat involved.’ It’s not clear if the brides were in the room while they were answering the question.

4. Shave their legs

It’s not only swimmers, cyclists and runners that have baby smooth pins, your regular man about town is popping into the salon for hair removal. Figures from SK:N, a cosmetics chain, show that 1,376 men booked in for laser hair removal last year, compared to 781 four years earlier. Drakes of London gets up to 20 men a month going in to get their legs waxed or lasered.

5. Watch chick flicks willingly

This list on Reddit of chick flicks the users love is like a girlie DVD collection. Love Actually, When Harry Met Sally, You Got Mail, Steel Magnolias…They laughed, they cried, they went all melty in the middle and they even quote. If your guy is insisting on The Fast and the Furious, it’s just because he thinks you’ll tell all his friends he wanted to see Pretty Woman.

5. Ogle eyes not breasts

70 per cent of 1,000 men who took part in a study said that eyes are what they gaze at first, followed by smile then breasts. Again, it’s not known whether their girlfriends were in the room when they were answering the question.

6. Feel insecure about their bodies

Worrying about penis size is a given, but men also worry about flabby middles, not being tall enough and hair loss. If only they could increase their height by shaving their heads, they’d solve two problems. After all, they think shaving their pubes makes their penis look bigger.

Up in the sky, look: It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s SuperCEO! Faster than a speeding retweet, more powerful than his female colleagues, able to leap monumental fuck ups in a single bound. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, has a superhuman task ahead if he’s going to out-fly the PR disaster he created at Thursday’s Grace Hopper Conference where he explained to 500 women how not asking for a pay rise is their special ‘super power’.

During an interview with Maria Klawe at the women-in-technology conference, Nadella forgot who he was talking to and let his audience in on how his world really works. Ladies, mustn’t annoy the men by speaking up. We are good at that, aren’t we? Keeping quiet, not making a fuss, waiting for the universe to bestow balance. Nadella must have been pretty surprised when thousands of women did exactly the opposite, throwing his own words back at him like Twitter Kryptonite.

‘It’s not really about asking for the raise,’ he said, with rapidly disintegrating coherence, ‘but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. That might be one of the initial “super powers” that, quite frankly, women [who] don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back because somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person that I want to trust.’ Who knew Microsoft has Tom Cruise write their CEO’s cue cards?

The cosmically self-correcting system he thinks we should trust has women earning 78% of the salary of men and Microsoft, along with companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo, operating with a ratio of 70:30 male to female employees. Women would need superhuman powers of faith to kid themselves that sitting back and waiting is going to fix that. They’d also need extremely thick skins not to heed the message he’s sending.

‘I found Satya Nadella’s comments extremely perturbing,’ says Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn and vocal campaigner for changing the dominant ratio in the tech industry. ‘He reinforced the age-old belief that women should be seen and not heard; that nice girls don’t put themselves forward, and that to do so is aggressive, abrasive, and will be met with negative results and damage to their careers, thereby reinforcing the insecurity, lack of confidence and concern that most women feel about doing this.’

Catherine Whitaker, former Publishing Director at HarperCollins UK and now COO for tech start up Knowledge Transmission, agrees. ‘Most companies operate on the “don’t ask, don’t get” principle and in my experience of managing mostly women, we don’t ask so we don’t get.’

It’s unlikely that Nadella achieved his own promotion to CEO or his estimated pay packet of $7,668, 952  by following his own advice and writing a cosmic shopping list. More probable is that he asked, he got, as far more men than women are comfortable doing. They can trust the system because they built it. It bends to their rules, endorsed from the top, although usually unspoken – until one of them is caught out onstage.

Nadella awoke the next day with a whole load of bad karma to reverse. He put out a too-little-too-late letter to Microsoft employees stating his revised view that ‘I wholeheartedly support programmes at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap. I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it’s deserved, Maria’s advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.’

His backpedalling email is as effective as his feeble attempt at clarification on Twitter at convincing anyone that he thinks women should ask for a raise.

The parroted advice to ‘just ask’ goes back full circle to the question Maria Klawe had originally asked him at the conference – What should women do who are uncomfortable about making a request for a raise? He hasn’t even begun to give an actual solution from within Microsoft where the 83% male management has most of the power to change their corporate culture.

Cindy Gallop isn’t very interested in any more words from Nadella. ‘What he can do – and now has to do, with immediate effect – is to instigate a system within Microsoft where women are actively encouraged to review their pay, to speak up and ask for pay rises. He has to demonstrate internally he is on the case encouraging that and asking how it’s being received or why it’s not happening universally, for a very long time to come.’

If Nadella wants to really put his powers to use and spin the Earth off its current, male-leaning axis, he can start by answering some questions.’Instead of telling women to trust a system in which there is still pay inequality,’ advises Catherine Whitaker, ‘we should be educating them about how top management makes decisions about remuneration. What kind of achievements or extra responsibilities are likely to lead to a pay increase (if you ask)? When in the year is the best time to highlight these achievements? How should you handle this kind of conversation?’

For women who have been further put off ‘just asking’ for promotions or raises, this breakdown of what to ask, when and how is a good starting point. Monday morning at Microsoft must have been busy for Satya Nadella. I hope he spent the weekend revising his salary budgets.

Karma. It really does come back on you.

About four months ago (late to post) I got news from Harper Collins that they had had an offer in for the Spanish language rights to Follow Your Fantasy. I accepted – of course – but I sort of assumed nothing had happened and it had fallen through.

How I love photoshop. I hope the cover artist is forgiving.

Then I got my first half of half the advance and realised it is happening. Foreign Rights deals, I’ve realised are the best thing about the entire industry. You get actual money. An actual advance on sales. The gamble is all theirs this time and, if they’re right, you get royalties on top (also split 50/50 with the publisher). As far as I can tell you just get the occasional update on what’s going on, no say in anything at all and an obligation on their behalf to put it out�� within a set time, at which point you get the second half of the advance.

It’s still pretty exciting though, opening up a whole new audience and turning on women (and maybe men) in God knows how many countries as this deal means transmission into all the Spanish speaking countries as well as the one I happen to live in. I’m guessing they’ll want it out to coincide with the Fifty Shades film in February 2014 but I really have no idea.

I couldn’t, even if they wanted me to, have anything to say about the translation but I wonder if they’ll tone it down. Will stories have to be softened for the new market? The book is pretty filthy and involves sex with no romance whatsoever. How scandalous. I’m not sure if that concept is appealing to other countries. I’m not sure it’s actually appealing to mine since I suspect the readership for wimpy-heroine-meets-troubled-but-handsome-stranger-who-coerces-her-passive-sexuality-into-fiery-abandon is more palatable.

It makes me wonder what escapism means to women nowadays. After all, guaranteed sex any day of the week is a given. Walk into any bar and, if that’s what you’re looking for, you can secure it before you’ve finished your drink. Men have it a lot harder (!) unless they’re gay and then the scene accommodates them far more than the straight scene does for straight men. I wonder if, therefore, for women the escape is in reading about great sex plus romantic attachment which is so much harder to find than casual sex which is constantly available to us.

But it’s just a thought. Personally I think any book just needs the right kind of marketing so people know what to expect and the right advertising so they realise they want whatever that thing is .

As for the translation of the language, will “fuck” become “shag” for example? Now, they happen to be about the only sex words I know in Spanish thanks to reading Bridget Jones in Spanish years ago. “Follar” means fuck and “hacer polvo” means make dust….of course. And the other day I learned that “francesa” (French) refers to blow jobs.

Sorted.

I’ve forgotten what cock is, but I know you have to watch out when ordering chicken and that in South America you want to be careful talking about shells because they are slang for cunts. And there is something about how you get the bus in South America as it means to fuck the bus if you use the Spanish way. I can remember neither way to say it so I should be OK on either continent. Loud, slow English is clearly much safer.

I have no idea if the word “moist” is as offensive in Spanish as in English. I’ll let you know if I find out.

**Or whatever that would be in Spanish. I can’t think what the imperative of “seguir” would go like.

About four months ago (late to post) I got news from Harper Collins that they had had an offer in for the Spanish language rights to Follow Your Fantasy. I accepted – of course – but I sort of assumed nothing had happened and it had fallen through.

How I love photoshop. I hope the cover artist is forgiving.

Then I got my first half of half the advance and realised it is happening. Foreign Rights deals, I’ve realised are the best thing about the entire industry. You get actual money. An actual advance on sales. The gamble is all theirs this time and, if they’re right, you get royalties on top (also split 50/50 with the publisher). As far as I can tell you just get the occasional update on what’s going on, no say in anything at all and an obligation on their behalf to put it out  within a set time, at which point you get the second half of the advance.

It’s still pretty exciting though, opening up a whole new audience and turning on women (and maybe men) in God knows how many countries as this deal means transmission into all the Spanish speaking countries as well as the one I happen to live in. I’m guessing they’ll want it out to coincide with the Fifty Shades film in February 2014 but I really have no idea.

I couldn’t, even if they wanted me to, have anything to say about the translation but I wonder if they’ll tone it down. Will stories have to be softened for the new market? The book is pretty filthy and involves sex with no romance whatsoever. How scandalous. I’m not sure if that concept is appealing to other countries. I’m not sure it’s actually appealing to mine since I suspect the readership for wimpy-heroine-meets-troubled-but-handsome-stranger-who-coerces-her-passive-sexuality-into-fiery-abandon is more palatable.

It makes me wonder what escapism means to women nowadays. After all, guaranteed sex any day of the week is a given. Walk into any bar and, if that’s what you’re looking for, you can secure it before you’ve finished your drink. Men have it a lot harder (!) unless they’re gay and then the scene accommodates them far more than the straight scene does for straight men. I wonder if, therefore, for women the escape is in reading about great sex plus romantic attachment which is so much harder to find than casual sex which is constantly available to us.

But it’s just a thought. Personally I think any book just needs the right kind of marketing so people know what to expect and the right advertising so they realise they want whatever that thing is .

As for the translation of the language, will “fuck” become “shag” for example? Now, they happen to be about the only sex words I know in Spanish thanks to reading Bridget Jones in Spanish years ago. “Follar” means fuck and “hacer polvo” means make dust….of course. And the other day I learned that “francesa” (French) refers to blow jobs.

Sorted.

I’ve forgotten what cock is, but I know you have to watch out when ordering chicken and that in South America you want to be careful talking about shells because they are slang for cunts. And there is something about how you get the bus in South America as it means to fuck the bus if you use the Spanish way. I can remember neither way to say it so I should be OK on either continent. Loud, slow English is clearly much safer.

I have no idea if the word “moist” is as offensive in Spanish as in English. I’ll let you know if I find out.

**Or whatever that would be in Spanish. I can’t think what the imperative of “seguir” would go like.

It’s too long since I’ve blogged here. Really written something. But maybe I just haven’t been angry enough.

I find pure rage often makes for that sweet flow of inspiration. My muse is not one of those pretty, floaty tunic wearing male fantasies but a spitting, writhing Medusa. Scorn works well too.

I’m not the world’s most active feminist. Nor do I carte blanche accept everything women say just because they’re women. Just as I don’t discredit men’s position as feminists just because they’re men. And then …and then …some of the latter — well meaning — guys show just how wobbly their act is and I’m not just disappointed, I’m furious.

Men,

You’re not a feminist just because you…

… are married to one.

…let your partner wear revealing clothes and enjoy her being the object of male attention if it happens to occur because of how well it reflects on you.

…attend a feminist literary group.

…get your partner to do the DIY.

…cook.

…take a stand against pronouns.

And by the way,

You’re not a feminist if you…

…think sexual liberation for all is right and fair, but only when your partner doesn’t have it in her past.

…don’t like your partner wearing revealing clothes in case she’s the object of male attention because of how it reflects on you.

…bemoan the lack of women in your workplace, but do nothing to employ them.

…wonder where all the women are at conferences, but don’t turn down offers to speak when the line up is all/mostly male.

…think women should get equal pay, but don’t tell women in your work place what you earn in case they’re on a lower salary.

…think women should sleep with whoever they want, whenever they want, but have a magic number which would be less OK.

…speculate about whether a woman has slept with a lot of people because of the way she talks, dresses or WHAT SHE WRITES ON HER BLOG OR ELSEWHERE.**

…think that the image a woman portrays, or lives, lends logic to gossip on how many people/who she’s slept with.**

…CARE how many people/who she’s slept with.**

You are a feminist if you know and point out how little who anyone has slept with has to do with anything else.

Go back to your knitting group and try again.

**Goes for female “feminists” too.

Choose Your Own Erotica ebook available from Amazon and Harper Collins.

‘Stands out from the crowd.’ – Metro