Update: One Shade takes a major step



 Creative Commons License. Some rights reserved by Reinis Ivanovs

One Shade of Red is now in front of its editor!

I have promised to keep you faithful readers apprised of my progress in publishing my second novel. So there it is: now with editor Gary Henry, author of American Goddesses and What Happened to Jory, member of Independent Authors International, literary critic (Honest Indie Book Reviews), editor and communications professional.

February is a month when we think of romance, eros, love ... mostly because of the greeting-card industry’s major success in manufacturing a reaon to buy greeting cards.

And I’ve helped perpetuate it (not that the greeting card industry needs my help in this), at least for one person: my editor. On February 1, I began sending the third draft of my new novel, One Shade of Red, to Gary, in batches of five chapters so as not to clog up his email server.

(Gary, I hope you enjoy the story even as you apply your manifold skills to making it better. And I hope that some of the content doesn’t distract you too much.)

Regular readers of Written Words know that One Shade of Red is my spoof of the incomprehensible best-seller, Fifty Shades of Gray. It was inspired by the thought, “I can write something sexy much better than this!”

Here’s the concept: Fifty Shades of Gray features the woman’s ultimate fantasy male — Christian Gray is immensely wealthy, beautiful, only 27 years old (how many 27-year-olds with that much money are there?), and he has a deep, dark, secret problem for the regular-girl heroine to fix. The heroine is so naive and good down to the toes of her sensible shoes that she’s a virgin at 22, yet has no problem achieving orgasm the first time she has sex.

One Shade of Red turns that completely upside-down. The narrator-protagonist is a young virgin male, Damian Serr. He’s 20, and for those of you who scoff at that idea for being just as unbelievable as a 22-year-old virgin in urban North America in the 21st century, the reason is that Damian has been dating the girl next door since they were both children. And the girl-next-door, Kristen ( ;)) is a very religious girl who resists Damian's efforts to move their physical relationship past the junior-high level.



Christian Gray is what women want. We already
know what men want.
Image source: WeHeartVintage.co
Image copyright Some rights reserved by grumlinas

 The heroine of the story is Alexis Rosse, a beautiful young financial wizard. She has achieved immense wealth by the age of 30 in a much more believable way than Christian Gray: she inherited it from her late husband. Alexis is voluptuous and sexually voracious. And the major difference from Christian Gray: she has nothing wrong with her. There is nothing to fix.

What more could a man want than that?

The process

Because I don’t believe that the first draft of anything is ever fit for anyone else to see, I spent the past month and a half re-writing and editing what started as my National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2012 project.

When I finished writing the first draft, I realized that, in terms of erotic writing, One Shade went much further than EL James had in Fifty Shades. I can be quite descriptive (especially when it comes to something I really like). I showed my prime editor, my wife, Roxanne, some of my second draft. She declared: "It's porn. Good porn, but it’s still porn.”

That’s a label I want to stay away from. I have no problems with porn, per se, but having that label hung on me may just limit the novel’s success where I don’t want it to.



Fifty Shades is about as
risque as
this 1930s pin-up.
Image source: Appletree Days blog

 So, I went through the manuscript again, scaling down the description, making the sex scenes less graphic. What I was trying for was something as graphic, as explicit as Fifty Shades, but more honest, more realistic, without, as I said, straying into the porn field.

It’s a shame, though, to throw out some of those very hot passages. Hmmm ... maybe there’s something I can do to salvage them? Recycle and repurpose?

What do you think?

Speaking of pin-ups, I couldn't resist this one. Should
I try to work this scene into the novel?
Source and copyright: Some rights reserved by grumlinas

NaNoWriMo — How did it go?

I jumped deep into National Novel Writing Month this year. I had an idea during the summer for a book, and somewhere around late September, I decided to make it my NaNoMo project.

The idea: to write a parody of the bestseller Fifty Shades of Gray, but to do it better.

The goal: 50,000 words by the end of November.

The process: I participated in some of the social aspects of NaNoMo, but didn’t actually do all that much other than write the story as furiously as I could.

• Before November 1, I wrote a background piece, describing the characters and outlining the plot. 

I logged into my account on the NaNoWriMo site and updated my word count daily.

I read some of the mail that came into the account, but I realized soon that I did not need the “pep talks.” I was motivated.

I attended one “write off” event at a café in my town: a bunch of NaNoWriMo participants gathered in the coffee shop with our computers (iPad 2 in my case) and wrote 1,667.7 words in a couple of hours. I felt quite out of place — I was by far the oldest one there. Most of the others were first- and second-year university students, and most were writing fan fiction, science-fiction or fantasy. I was the only one doing a parody. Still, I exceeded my goal, and in two and a half hours, cranked out a little over 2,000 words.

Every day, and I mean EVERY DAY, I wrote more than 1,667 words. A couple of times, I did over 3,000 words per day. What a feeling that is!

Results: One Shade of Red

• I hit 50,000 words more than a week ahead of schedule — November 22. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a complete novel. As of writing this on November 30, I’m sitting at 64,000 words or so and still have not reached the end. I have an outline for the conclusion, and yes, there’s room for a sequel. But there is no way I’m going to write a trilogy about this.
• I think my basic story is better than Fifty Shades. I have more realistic characters:

o My narrator/protagonist is a naive virgin, but there’s a reason for that: he has had a girlfriend, the “girl next door” type, since childhood, and she is fervently attached to the concept of virginity until marriage.

o His wealthy sexual mentor, Alexis Rosse, is young, but not as unbelievably young as Christian Gray: she’s 30 or 31 (a lady never tells, or so my mother used to say — actually, she still says that), and she made her fortune the old-fashioned way: she married into it.

• I also have what I like to tell myself is a better writing style than EL James, but I’ll let the audience judge that — after I finish rewriting and editing.

Work to do: I’ve exceeded the word count required for “success” in NaNoMo, but I have to flesh out the conclusion. And then, I’ll have to do at least one rewrite before turning it over to a beta reader or two and an editor. In other words, there’s at least two months more work to finish this off.

Would I do it again? I don’t think I’ll go to another “write off” event, but I would not turn down an after-party.

Something like NaNoMo is a great motivational exercise for a writer. It’s so easy to procrastinate writing a novel —you can always tell yourself that you’re waiting for inspiration or that there are other things to do. And there’s a little something called life that seems to get in the way of writing novels.

I enjoyed National Novel Writing Month this year. I think I’ll do it again next year. But I’m not going to wait for it: I’m going to continue writing every day, and get as many stories out of my brain and onto the computer screen as possible.

How many of you participated in NaNoMo or NaNoWriMo 2012? Did you succeed?

6 Sentence Sunday: a sample from One Shade of Red

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Today's Six Sunday Sample is another from my National Novel Writing Month work-in-progress, One Shade of Red, a parody of (you guessed it!) Fifty Shades of Grey.

This excerpt comes from what's shaping up to be Chapter 7: The Dinner Date. It takes place in a high-end restaurant in downtown Toronto. The protagonist, Damian, is a student and has barely enough cash for the restaurant bill, but nothing left over for a tip.

The solution: hero and heroine do a dine-n-dash. Don't worry: Damian pays for the food, but leaves no tip.  



Peter Milosevic, Creative Commons



I slammed the door shut and started the car, revving the engine. It jolted as I shifted into forward and cranked the wheel hard to the left to pull out of the parking spot. The tires squealed as we lurched onto Elm Street.

"Careful!" Alexis squealed at the same pitch as the tires. "You don't want to attract the police's attention." But her hand was on my thigh already.

Like it? Hate it? Leave a comment. Then go to Six Sentence Sunday to see more great samples from some great writers.

6 Sentence Sunday: More from One Shade of Red

This week's sample are six more sentences from my National Novel Writing Month work-in-progress, One Shade of Red. As you've probably guessed, it's a parody of the inexplicable best-seller, Fifty Shades of Grey.

The action in this excerpt follows the six sentences from two weeks ago.

I couldn’t look at the pool, because I couldn’t stop looking at her. I felt like I was in junior high again. The only word that came into my mind was: stacked. There were acres of bare skin. The bathing suit barely covered her nipples and pubis, but none of those words made it into my mind at that moment.

She looked at me, eyebrows raised, and I realized that she was waiting for me to say something.

 

Like it? Hate it? Think the whole idea is ill-advised? Can't wait to read it? Leave a comment!

Six Sentence Sunday is a continuing blog hop; authors who have blogs post six-sentence excerpts from their published works or their works-in-progress on Sunday morning, and list the link on the Six Sentence Sunday website. Check it out — there are a lot of excellent writers promoting some fine work. 

By the way, I really enjoyed doing the photo research for this post. Try Googling "red string bikini" yourself someday.