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A. Vivian Vane Talks Dirty

A. Vivian Vane Talks Dirty

Category Archives: About Writing

The Old Year In Review…and In Smut

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing, Maintenance, Social/Personal

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A. Vivian Vane, BDSM, erotic fiction, erotic writing, erotica, fantasy, porn, pornography, sex, sexuality, writing

january-pinupAh, 2015. At the time you were “that year I took a massive pay cut,” but in my memory you will always be “that year I had sex with so many people.”

(It’s usually gauche to brag about these things, but I’m an erotica author. All things Sex Life are germane, and more importantly, work-related. You should see the business expenses I’ll be claiming on my taxes this year!)

I actually think on of the most asked questions I get when I disclose my smut-writing career is “do you write about your sex life?” or variations thereupon, and the answer is: it depends.

Do I write about specific partners, or specific dates, encounters, etc.? No. You will not find any AVV lovers, thinly or otherwise veiled, in any of my works.

But do naughty things from my life inform my understanding of How People Do Sex, and What People Find Sexy? Of course! Absolutely. How could it not?

what-she-wantsSo while I’ve never been married and never will be, I’m certainly thinking about the ways I’ve navigated and negotiated my own committed relationships — including the parts where my partners share themselves with others, or depending on the dynamic, I share my partners with others — when I’m writing a hotwife story like What She Wants.

And while the exact acts may not look quite the same, the consensually violent encounters I’ve had certainly inform the beatings, whippings, etc. that you get in something like Battle Babes — to say nothing of my many good friends in the smut biz helping out with the on-set culture and dynamics of the porn shoot in Lights, Camera, Masochism!

DGAround2Do I think it’s vital for smut writers to go out and do the dirty on the regular? Not necessarily. The books are, at heart, fantasy, and you can fantasize perfectly well without having had a related experience. I’ve never met a futa-fantasy “dickgirl” with overdeveloped boy parts, girl parts, and everything in between — because they don’t exist — but there the Dickgirls Around Town and Dickgirl Cheerleaders series are all the same, keeping readers happy and bread on my table.

Still, I’m glad of the wet and wild fun I’ve had all 2015 long, and not just because I like the sex. I really think it’s making me a better smut writer, with a wider range of tastes and a whole lot of naughty fodder for new scenarios, new pairings, and new fiction to keep you all titillated!

Also, I like the sex.

No Sexy Holiday Stories For Me

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

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christmas, christmas stories, erotica, sexy christmas

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and it’s time for every website and business in the world to trot out their holiday-themed kitsch.

I don’t actually mind this phenomenon. I kind of enjoy it. Tacky, campy things amuse me and holidays make me happy, so tacky, campy, holiday-themed things are right up my alley.

sexy-christmas-costumeThat said, I won’t be doing any Christmas-themed stories this year. No way, nuh-uh.

Call it laziness, if you like. I enjoy looking at other people’s Christmas light displays but I don’t put up my own; I’ll read a “Naughty Santa Girls” story but I don’t write ’em.

My family was always big on holidays, so maybe I’ve just gotten used to being pampered for them. Or maybe that familial association makes writing sexy holiday things a little weird for me (know thyself).

Or we could just chalk it up to my general perversity and desire to always be doing something different. Either way, I will not have any mistletoe seduction scenes for you this year, and not a single candy cane is going to go in unusual places!

But I will have a few new titles before the holidays, god willing and the creek don’t rise. I’m not sure any are ones you’d really give as gifts, exactly, unless you’re in a very understanding relationship with someone, but…a little holiday treat for yourself, perhaps? Something to enjoy while you stuff your own stocking, hur hur hur.

I promised a December free of Christmas stories, not Christmas jokes…

The First Plateau

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

erotica, indie publishing, publishing, self-publishing, writing

If you’re someone who’s bought one of my ebooks, and you’re reading this post — thank you!

Those sales have made a lot of difference in my writing career.

graphing-calculator-penisMy first independent title came out at the end of February this year. I won’t go into numbers or trend lines here, because the only curves we care about on this blog are the sexy kind, but progress since then has been good.

It’s been good enough that I can think of myself as having reached a sort of “first plateau” in my career. I’m off the ground. I am at a level that is significant. Erotica sales can’t pay all my bills yet, but they have moved beyond the “beer money and novelty” stage of things, and I am confident that, at the very worst, I could keep myself here indefinitely.

That’s not the goal, of course. The goal is to soar much, much higher (or perhaps “sink much, much lower” would be a better metaphor).

But this is a starting place where the book sales are a stable, significant, non-zero chunk of my income. And that’s a better starting place than “from scratch” for whatever comes next.

~

Unfortunately, it does mean that the leap to the next plateau involves a lot of stuff that isn’t just writing sexy stories and getting them out there. I’ve done that part, and I suspect I am close to reaching the limit of what that part, alone, can achieve.

Progress from here involves things like mailing lists, blog tours, review swaps, Goodreads, bundling, promo deals — all the self-publishing things I don’t like, because they treat people who you think of as your friends and peers like potential advertisers or revenue streams.

Which they are. And you can handle that reality with grace and respect, if you choose to. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being someone who is friendly and sexy and wants to sell books. To paraphrase the old joke, we’ve already established what kind of writer I am, and now we’re just haggling over the price.

So I aim to move beyond this first plateau; this stage of accepting “Okay, yes, I can do this and I have done this. I am in this business for real. It can be more than a quaint little hobby if I want it to be.”

But even if I never do, I’ve come to a nice place already. The view from up here is good. Thank you all for being a part of that journey.

What’s In a (Pen) Name? – One Sex Writer’s Overpacked Pseudonym

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

≈ 1 Comment

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A. Vivian Vane, pen names, pseudonym, puns, sex writing, writing

Let’s talk about my favorite subject in the whole wide world — me!

(I know, I know. You like it better when I talk about sex. So if you just gotta have that daily dose of dirty talk, head over to the One Handed Writers blog for my How to Talk Sexy in Bed tips. Skills everyone should have!)

But back to the important thing here, which is me, or in today’s case the not-me me that is my pen name. (Pronouns are going to get kind of complicated today, huh?)

question-mark-girl-mudflap

It should be fairly obvious that A. Vivian Vane is not my real name, although it would be an awesome name if it were. Those imaginary parents would have been pretty sweet.

But no, like most sex writers, I keep up a thin veneer of anonymity, although in my case it is a very thin one — plenty of people who know the real-name me also know that I write as AVV, and it’s not exactly hard to connect the two identities online if you really cared to. (I don’t view sex writing as a dark secret I need to keep, so I don’t go to much trouble to hide the connection. Using two names is mostly just a way to keep my sex writing and my non-sex writing from popping up in the same Google searches, so that I’m not diluting either brand with a bunch of stuff that customers aren’t looking for.)

Anyway, how did I end up writing as A. Vivian Vane? I’m so glad you asked, because I put a lot of (too much) thought into that one!

First off, the initial. (Get it? ‘Cause it’s the first part of the name? First off? Hang onto your seats; it gets worse from here.)

Using a first initial has a big, obvious benefit: it’s gender-neutral. A lot of sex writers agonize over whether to have a “male” or “female” persona; I prefer to sidestep it entirely and let the reader imagine whatever is sexier to them.

293px-A-small_glyphs.svg

The first initial is also a joke for my own amusement: I went with “A” because it’s also an indefinite article. It lets me read the name as “a Vivian Vane,” as if the name were a type of object — which it is, because it’s an entirely fictional concept! I’m so clever.

“Vivian” is several things, none of which are very consequential. It’s a vaguely feminine name, which makes it sound sexy to a lot of people (especially with all those V’s in it — V’s are sexy and sex-related in English; think about vagina, virgin, vulva, etc.).

It also suggests “vivid,” which I like because my writing is undeniably vivid (or at least explicit), and it goes back to an old lit-class joke about referring to critically-acclaimed authors by their initials to show how hip you are: in that construction, Vladimir Vladimirovitch Nabokov would be VVN, or vee-vee-en — Vivian!

(I am such a nerd, right?)

And all that leaves us with is “Vane,” which is, yes, yet another pun: because the name is self-referential, every time I read it I’m thinking about myself — vanity, in other words; ergo “Vane.” You could also argue that, because people invariably find out about them, pen names are a pointless (vain) exercise.

Is that a lot of meaning to cram into one silly pen name, or what? Good thing I’m such a big fan of making big things fit…

The “Book a Day” Milestone

17 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

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a book a day, ebooks, erotica, milestones, sales, self-publishing, writing

It’s interesting, the things that take on personal significance for you.

I am, as far as writers of dirty books go, both small-time and relatively new on the block (new on the cock?). My first title came out this year, and I’ve only followed it up with three other stand-alones and a series of shorts.

That’s not a recipe for overnight success, which is fine. I was already working several writing gigs when I started trying my hand at porn, and I’m keeping those other paying jobs going, so erotica doesn’t have to pay the bills any time in the immediate future.

But it’s still nice to think that it might someday (or, more realistically, that I’ll just rack up bigger bills and keep on paying part of them with erotica), and so I notice odd little milestones that probably don’t mean much in any practical sense, and celebrate them.

Like, for example, this month: so far it’s been almost exactly a sale a day, or a tiny bit more, chugging along very steadily.

That’s not exactly a career-making number of titles! But it is cool, for me, to think that every single day I’m making at least a little money by writing sexy things.

Is it a meaningless milestone? Almost certainly.

But sometimes, those are the most important to celebrate. So, happy book-a-day progress to me, and let’s hope I didn’t jinx it by mentioning it here!

The Easiest Part is the Writing

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing, Publishing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ebooks, erotic fiction, erotica, fiction, publishing, self-employment, vacation, working from home, writing

I treated myself to a good bit of vacation this summer.

That’s a lovely thing to do, but when you’re entirely self-employed it also means that you’re taking food out of your own mouth — every day you’re not spending working is one less paid day this year.

And you know what? It hasn’t been a big problem.

Oh, I’m a bit behind on administrative things. I only just got the birthing-fetish story Transformed to Breed: A Warrior’s Captivity uploaded to Amazon and Barnes and Nobles yesterday, even though the free Labor Day give-away ended on Tuesday. And I haven’t uploaded anything to D2D since the second Dickgirl Cheerleaders title. Don’t ask me what it is, but my brain just shies away from their entire interface.

But in terms of actual writing? I’m ahead of the game.

I literally have more scenes and concepts kicking around in my head than I’ve had time to get down on paper. The notebook I took on vacation with me is filled to the brim with partial and completed drafts of saleable stories.

The writing is always the easiest part. When you do what you love to do for a living, it’s not hard to stay ahead of schedule.

Now I just have to learn to love publishing and advertising online…

Sickness and Sexiness

19 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

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arousal, erotic writing, sex, sickness, words, writing

sexy-nurseIt’s interesting how much overlap there is between the words we use to describe being sick and the words we use to describe being aroused: shivering, sweating, gasping, aching, throbbing, and so on.

Context is everything, isn’t it?

A busty blonde heroine with tangled locks, her hair plastered back with sweat and her chest heaving with exertion as she writhes and gasps on the bed, sounds like she’s having a pretty good time. Or maybe she just has a bad cough! Could go either way.

I don’t bring this up entirely idly; I spent the last week or so being about as sick as I’ve ever been. Which isn’t saying much, happily — I’ve been very healthy all my life — but while I wasn’t exactly at death’s door, I was still pretty thoroughly out of commission for two days, and not much use for another three.

And since I am such a healthy person normally, and since I don’t have to deal with this sort of thing often, boy was I ever unprepared for the dent it made in my writing schedule, especially my sexy writing schedule.

Turns out there are kinds of work I can make myself do while my throat is aching and my nose is dripping with snot, and there are kinds I can’t do, and making words come out sexy falls into the latter category.

I just can’t do it. I don’t have to feel super sexy to write or anything — I don’t have special Writing and/or Fuck Me Panties — but there’s apparently a minimum threshold of at least feeling like I might conceivably want sex, at some point, maybe.

Last week, I didn’t. I was too sick to masturbate, which might be my new benchmark for Serious Illness. So not much got written.

The good news is that finally feeling better seems to have come with an accompanying surge of energy — and hormones — so I’m looking forward to a productive week here.

I would say that I’m trembling with anticipation, but that could just as easily be fever. Context, right? She gasped hoarsely…

Travel, Hand-Writing, and Porn in Public

01 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

erotica, hand-writing, journals, looseleaf, porn, pornography, writing, writing by hand

I’m sure it’s going to confuse the keyword searches, but the hand-writing in the title there refers to the act of writing by hand, not to penmanship.

(If penmanship were the topic, this would be a short post. Mine is execrable, and there’s very little else to say on the subject.)

Writing by hand, on the other (heh) hand, is something I do well, at least in terms of generating content. Being able to read and accurately transcribe it later is, admittedly, a problem.

pen-and-letter

For several years I composed the better part of my writing during slow days at work. Taking stock was a small but vital part of the job that required a clipboard and lots of scribbling, and it was easy to get it over with quickly and keep on scribbling, which ended up being very productive for me. (Though not, admittedly, very productive for my employers. It’s a good thing I’m fully self-employed these days.)

That produced an endless stream of legal paper covered in drafts of whatever I happened to be writing, some of which I still have littering my desk drawers.

All well and good. But, as I realized this week during some travels away from my computer, it becomes a bit more nerve-wracking when you’re writing porn!

I don’t actually mind being known as someone that writes porn (it makes for good cocktail conversation, even), but I still prefer to mention it on my terms. The fear of letting a sheet of looseleaf slip and flutter, throbbing-member-paragraph-up, into some little old lady’s lap at the coffee shop was a bit paralyzing.

Looking over the writing I managed to grind out has been an exercise in seeing how much of a difference that nervousness makes. I can’t yet judge whether it made my writing more sexy, or less.

I do know that I enjoyed the physical feeling of hand-writing, however, which is something I do far less of now that I work from home and always have a computer right there when I want it.

But I suppose that stands to reason. Writing porn really should involve repetitive up-and-down motion of the wrist, don’t you think?

Keeping It Real: The Need for Non-Promotional Content

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

blog, blogging, content, new release, new title, promotion, writing

My new publishing schedule has thrown me into a bit of a conundrum.

In theory (and readers know how theoretical it can get, from time to time), I update this blog once a week. But now I’m also publishing once a week, for as long as the Dickgirl Cheerleaders shorts are running, and I don’t want my posts to turn into an endless sea of “New Title” notifications.

cheerleaders2So yes, there is a new title out this week, and if you liked Dickgirl Cheerleaders #1 I obviously encourage you to check out Dickgirl Cheerleaders #2, now available on Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Nobles NOOK.

But let’s talk about something else for a while.

I think it’s important to talk about things that aren’t my own titles on the blog. Otherwise it’s not a blog — it’s just a glorified catalog.

My goal with A. Vivian Vane Talks Dirty was to actually talk a bit, on a more relaxed and personal level than advertisements allow. This is a space where I can unpack some of the thoughts, goals, and real-life experiences that went into making me a purveyor of the smut you enjoy (or don’t enjoy, since for all I know some of you are reading this blog solely for the editorial content, and not for the links to my titles.)

It’s a balance I think every author-blogger needs to work on. If you’re not going to put at least a little time and effort into saying something unique for your blog readers, why bother? My preferred balance is at least a 50/50 split, and ideally a little heavier on the non-promotional side than even that.

(On Twitter I’m even less forgiving — if more than about a quarter of someone’s Twitter feed is advertisements and links, I’m probably going to unfollow them, and I expect the same treatment from others. That’s why mine is as likely to be about, say, summer humidity making my knees break out as it is to be about a new release.)

Is there some business motivation in there? Obviously, yes. I would hope that people who read and enjoy my ramblings here might also at some point take a chance on one of my books. But if they don’t, I’m okay with that. It’s honestly more important to me to maintain a good platform where I can talk about writing, sex, and writing sex (as my favorite phrasing goes) than it is to sell a crapton of books.

Doing both would be lovely, however, so if you’re feeling moved by my stirring defense of non-promotional writing here, feel free to let it move you over to my catalog…

…you see what I did there?

A Writing Schedule: Once a Month, Once a Week; Once a Day

05 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by avivianvane in About Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Grains of salt out, please.

I read a lot of writers’ blogs. There’s a ton of good advice out there from a ton of good writers, all at varying stages of “made it” (or “haven’t made it yet, as the case may be).

But it’s almost always presented in a monolithic sense of “writers can” and “writers should” and “writers do,” as if we all had the same habits and creative processes, which is just silly.

So please don’t let me do that to you. I thought I’d take a look at how I’m trying to schedule my creative writing these days, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you.

What I do think is generally applicable to all writers, or as close to it as we’re going to get, is that everyone who wants to be serious does need a system or a schedule of some kind. Writing that’s going to happen “whenever” has a tendency to happen “never.” Self-published means self-everything-a-publisher-would-do, and that includes getting on your own ass about deadlines.

To try and help myself with that, I’ve moved to a “Once a Month, Once a Week; Once a Day” schedule:

Once a Month: Publish an E-Book

This was the schedule I set for myself when I put my first e-book out in February, and I promptly blew the deadline in March.

There is lots I could say in my defense there! I am a paid writer outside of my pornographic dabblings, and when big contracts come my way other things tend to fall by the wayside.

But they shouldn’t, and they can’t for anyone looking to build a serious, long-term career.

E-book publishing and e-book pricing has dramatically increased the number of titles an “unknown” author needs to pump out to stay in business. Time was you were a prolific hack if you churned out two or three books a year; now it’s more like two or three a month for the pros.

The word count of those has crept correspondingly downward, so the actual amount of writing done in a year might end up being similar. But you’ve got to be getting titles out pretty steadily, and for my other work/sexy work balance, once a month is a goal that’s both achievable and at least scratching the surface of professional (though more would obviously be better).

Once a Week: Update the Blog

I was not very good about that in March either, was I? I am already referring to it as a “lost month” in my conversations with friends. Things just didn’t get done.

And again, there were a lot of other responsibilities there, including several blogs that I am paid to update. But if I’m not doing this every Monday, am I realistically going to get to it other times? No, probably not.

I suspect most readers don’t actually care that much when I update, or how often (we’ve all got RSS feeds anyway these days, right?), but if I don’t have a schedule I’m never going to get it done.

Sometimes it doesn’t get done anyway — witness last month.

But a schedule means I feel bad about that, and feeling bad about it means I’m less likely to make the same mistake again. Never underestimate the positive effect of shame in your life! Humiliation is not just for sexy-times.

Once a Day: Writing and Writer Maintenance

I haven’t had trouble with the “write every day” advice that everyone gives for a long time. It’s my living; if I don’t do it I don’t eat. That’s usually pretty good motivation.

Unfortunately, having so much writing work also makes it easy to justify not working on any one particular writing project. “I already did like 10,000 words today for my corporate client! I think I can give myself the rest of the evening off on sexy writings” seems very reasonable at the finger-aching time.

And that’s fine to a point, but what I try to do is to make myself do something else that sustains my porn-writing career on the days when I’m not actually, you know, writing porn.

There’s always plenty to do: social networking (which mostly consists of “Oh god, how do I sound like an interesting person on Twitter when I’m not at all?”), editing, website maintenance, account hassles with Amazon, PayPal, et. al. — all the little things that, like scheduling and motivating your publishing, writers used to have editors and publishers and agents to help with.

I find if I’m not dealing with those or writing porn for a couple days in a row, I stop thinking of myself as an erotica writer. Not good for someone that wants to succeed in the biz, eh?

So: once a month, once a week; once a day. It works well enough for me, for now.

I suppose I need something to do “once a year” as well, for consistency’s sake. Maybe get Vegas-married in a drunken stupor? Open to suggestions, here.

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