Today, I sent a note to a reader, and I wanted to share part of it with all of you out there. I told her that I was going to do this:

Whenever an author puts her/his thoughts out there for the public to judge, it is a scary, humbling, uncomfortable, and NECESSARY experience. Like all authors, I'm somehow compelled to do it. To not only be judged, but to be exposed as whatever I am. I can't help it. If you're an author, let me know if you agree.

Like all other people, I love being praised, and I feel like I've let my readers down if she or he didn't like my book, though I know that some percentage of readers won't like it, and I try to warn them off. That's not a marketing trick, it's fact. I don't write formula stuff with HEAs for the heroine or the [usually male] Dom. I suppose, if I had to make a living at this, I would write formula stories, just because I wouldn't want to starve. But my Hubby is successful, and that allows me to write what I think needs to be said, and not worry about rent, or payments on my car or laptop or food tomorrow.

I don't pretend to be a great erotic author like Anaïs Nin (though one reviewer compared my Oh Claire! to her writings - which delighted me), but I can write reasonably well, and I put the very essence of myself into my writing. As an incentive, my publisher requires the best possible writing and editing from its authors.

That said, like all authors, I'm at the mercy of my readers. I write what I'm compelled to write. I hope my readers enjoy it. But I don't know how to write anything else.

I still think my best book is Eighteen Months. Destiny Taken extends my particular approach to, or takes dark erotica to other areas of personal, exposed, sexual interactions.

All my books are intended to be tough reads. If they aren't, I haven't told my story in enough, artful detail, and I haven't gotten into the reader's gut.

I want to put my characters into your head, so that you have trouble deciding where they end and you begin. I want to drag you, unknowing at first, into my stories.

As for you readers, I want your heart to ache for the heroine; I want it to rip in pain; I want you to feel the gripping agony in your gut a week after you've read it. I want it to haunt you. A year from now, I want it to haunt you.

To me, that is EROTICA, FETISH EROTICA, BDSM (and all my BD is there, but it is DIFFERENT!), and DARK EROTICA. I want my stories to hit you in the face with the fetishes you cannot avoid because they are within you. That is the far other side from your normal experiences.

That is what I write. I hope you can take it. I really hope you can appreciate it. Anyway, I want you to let me know what you think.

I just laid myself out before you, I truly hope you find the fortitude to read my novels, and let me know what you think.

Gi