“The things you regret are the risks you don’t take.”

I wish I could claim credit for that bit of wisdom but the truth is, I heard it in the movie “Grumpy Old Men.” It was spoken by Ann-Margaret to Jack Lemmon about relationships, and it seemed like good advice.

As writers, we’re obligated to take chances and push boundaries. Some of us pushed our limits simply by finishing that first book and getting it published. That’s not as easy as some people seem to think. It requires a lot of commitment and hard work, and that’s just the creative part. Once you decide to make writing a career, you really have to push your personal limits with regards to promotion and marketing. Some of us also push the limits of our bank accounts.

I like to try new things with my writing. I become bored easily and if I don’t flex my creative muscles, that malaise will find its way into my stories. It also keeps readers on their toes. I’m really happy when I come up with a unique “Gotcha!” that catches people off-guard.

With one of my early books, “The Vendetta Factor” (Nick Seven series), I went retro by using chapter titles. Since it was a pulp fiction-style crime thriller, it seemed like a good fit. One of my romantic comedies, “Anywhere the Heart Goes,” took the title thing one step further. I began each chapter with a quote about love and relationships, to set the mood. Some of them were funny, while others were poignant.

When I wrote the Vic Fallon private eye mystery “Lido Key,” I pushed my limits with the sexual content. I made the female lead bisexual, enjoying a relationship with her cute Latina housekeeper, and both of them are attracted to the hero. Naturally that scenario called for a threesome in a hot tub. In looking back at that book, it’s probably the sleaziest story concept I ever came up with. Not only is the heroine a switch hitter, she’s a former lap dancer turned rich trophy widow. She needs the help of my hero because she visited a swinger’s club and is now being blackmailed. During his investigation, he encounters a nasty strip club owner and a famous writer with a taste for booze and women. As I said, a sleazy concept with a cast of characters to match. I think Mickey Spillane would’ve been proud.

Speaking of characters, that’s another way I push limits. I like creating personalities that are unique and off-the-wall. I constantly study people and make note of their fashion statements, physical characteristics and speech patterns. I don’t limit people watching to those I see every day, but will often pick up on something an actor did and make a mental note. This habit has gotten me into trouble on occasion, when someone I know becomes convinced that I based a character on them. This is patently false, because my characters are composites. What people want to think beyond that is up to them.

I really like to see how many fireworks I can set off when I give interviews. I have a lot of fun when I can be outrageous with my responses, whether it’s print, podcast or TV. It plays into something I learned a long time ago—any publicity can be good if it gets people talking about you. As proof, search the name Kardashian and see what pops up. One print interview I did nearly cost me an invitation to a family reunion, though, because a relative was embarrassed by my answers to certain questions. They dealt with my opinions of sexual fetishes, some of which were unconventional, and I felt obliged to give honest responses.

The biggest limit pusher for me resulted in my becoming a published author in the first place. I had recently gotten out of a bad marriage, I was at loose ends and restless, and I recalled an idea for a story I had always wanted to write. I challenged myself to either write the damn thing or stop talking about it. The result was the first entry in my popular Nick Seven spy series, “Memories Die Last,” which continues to sell many years later and has cultivated a nice fan base.

The second-biggest was my decision to use my own name to publish contemporary erotic romance with explicit sex. That was nearly 20 years ago, and there have been many occasions when I felt I should have ignored Ann-Margaret’s advice. Sometimes I think this was one risk I definitely regretted taking.

By Ashley Lister

 The main hurdle to audiobooks that I’ve encountered is not the technological barrier, or the complexity of packaging an audiobook, or even the difficulty of marketing such a product to a cold audience. To my mind, the biggest hurdle to creating an audiobook was learning to like my own voice.

The technological barrier is not really a big problem. Thanks to the world created by Covid I’ve been sitting in front of a laptop for the past twelve months talking into a microphone and faffing about with controls so I better understand the quality of sound I’m producing. I’m not suggesting I’ve got the skills to call myself a sound technician, but I know which end of the microphone gets plugged into the PC, and which end I’m supposed to speak to.

Similarly, the complexity of packaging an audiobook is not a massive problem. I’m using the ACX Dashboard (so my audiobooks are available on Amazon) and the interface is obscenely user-friendly. If it were any more user-friendly, I’d probably need a condom.

This means that the marketing is relatively easy because the product is available on an international platform and I’m able to point potential buyers in the direction of a legitimate site that gives my audience confidence in the quality of what’s for sale.

But, as I said before, the biggest hurdle involved learning to like my own voice.

Like most people in the world, I’ve always worried that my voice has got too much accent. Recordings make me sound like I’m dumber than a rock, probably because I’m hearing what my voice really sounds like, rather than the melodic harmonies that I imagine I produce when I’m simply talking, rather than listening.

However, it only ever takes a single recording and I’m reminded that my voice is far from the Received Pronunciation of a BBC newsreader, or the RSC edge of a Shakespearian actor.

But I’ve recently learned to live with the imperfections of my voice. Partly this is due to poetry performances. I’ve heard some of my work recorded and, whilst my voice isn’t wonderful: it was getting a positive response from audiences, and I think the audience’s attitude toward my voice is likely to be a lot less impartial than my own jaded opinion.

It also helps that I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts recently and they’re a wonderful reminder that not every voice coming out of a speaker needs to sound like Jean Luc Picard or Hugh Grant. Some of the most inaccessible accents are saying some of the most engaging things.

So, as well as working on my series of horror novellas, which are all going to be narrated by me, I’m also in the process of converting my collected poems into an audiobook. Below, you’ll find an audio-clip of the title poem: Old People Sex.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about how things have changed in the past year because of the pandemic. I’ve gotten weary of reading analyses, op-eds and social media ramblings about what could have or should have been done. It reminded me of something my dear old dad used to say—it’s easy to quarterback the game from the bench.

It occurred to me that what we really need right now is more romance and sex in our daily entertainment, especially in the movies. In the past 15 or so years, the romantic comedy and the sex movie have pretty much disappeared. I’m not talking about online porn flicks, but intelligently-written mainstream films aimed at adults that combined romance, sex, and laughs.

Do you remember “You’ve Got Mail,” “Bridesmaids,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” and “When Harry Met Sally”? These were cute romantic sex comedies that weren’t crude, controversial, or obnoxious. They contained humor that people over 21 could appreciate, combined with the realistic ups and downs of contemporary relationships. There was enough sexual inuendo to make things interesting, along with romantic tension and the burning question “Will they or won’t they?” Buried somewhere in the script was a message about what it takes to make a relationship work, but they didn’t beat you over the head with it.

Go back about 50-60 years for even better examples. The sexual revolution in the 1960s gave us sophisticated bedroom comedies like “Pillow Talk,” “Lover Come Back,” “Move Over, Darling” and “Who Was That Lady?” The plots usually revolved around a guy with seduction on the brain chasing a beautiful woman, with some zany plan to get her between the sheets. Adult situations and sexually-charged dialogue abounded, as much as the censors would allow. Luckily, we had charming actors like Rock Hudson, Doris Day, James Garner and Tony Curtis who could pull it off with a wink and a smile, without being offensive.

Most television offerings lately have shied away from this concept as well. Older romantic comedies like “Moonlighting,” “Cheers,” and “Who’s the Boss?” contained enough sexual tension to keep you tuning in every week to find out what happened between the lead characters. While their humor appealed to everyone, these shows were geared more toward grown-ups, as opposed to family fare like “Full House.” An earlier example of a sophisticated romantic comedy is “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (1960-65). The happy couple may have had separate beds because the censors dictated it, but there was definitely something going on after lights out.

What do we have to take the place of these witty bedroom comedies today? Action-packed shoot-‘em-ups that mandate one car chase and one gunfight or explosion per hour. Reality shows with preposterous concepts vie for our attention, along with intense dramas like “Downton Abbey,” “Breaking Bad,” and “The Walking Dead.” Some current network sitcoms may include romance, but there isn’t much in the way of teasing. It’s interesting that recent cable hits with the most sexual content have been set in historical or fantasy worlds, like “Game of Thrones” and “Outlander.”

Romantic sex comedies at the multiplexes have been pushed aside in favor of loud, splashy spectacles featuring buff superheroes and explosive action. Regarding the modern blockbuster, film writer R.S. Benedict noted “Everyone is beautiful and yet, no one is horny.” I used to enjoy films like those when they weren’t so commonplace, and seeing one was like a major event. There was something magical about watching them on a big screen with surround sound. That was a special experience you couldn’t get at home.

Luckily for everyone, romance and sex are alive and well in books, including those written by the talented contributors to this blog. During the past year, e-book and audio book sales increased 51%. The same study that produced that stat also noted that divorce was down 22%. That surprised me, because with all that forced up-close-and-personal time, I’d have thought it would be higher, not lower.

Perhaps those couples read our books or watched a few romantic sex movies and took notes.

 By Ashley Lister

 As I’ve probably mentioned (ad infinitum and ad nauseum) I’ve started self-publishing some horror fiction. It’s been an interesting journey and I’ve humble-bragged a lot on here about lots of what’s happened.

One of the things I haven’t mentioned is how I talked about this to a work colleague. I was asked what I’d be doing in the pandemic and I explained how I’d self-published some of the novels where rights had returned to me, I’d published a collection of original poetry, an original novel and begun a series of novellas.

“The rights had returned to you?” the colleague (we’ll call her Karen) asked.

“Yes. They’d been previously published by other companies but the rights had returned to me so-“

Karen cut me off. “Oh. I thought you’d done something impressive at first, but that’s nothing special, is it?”

“Well,” I thought. “Until I started talking with you, I thought it was pretty fucking special.”

As a matter of fact, I still think it’s quite special. Book covers, content formatting, promo, sales listings, building an author’s website, organising reviews and blog tours, are not small chores. Trying to do any of those tasks to a professional standard is an onerous task. Trying to do all of them involves a steep learning curve and can be overwhelming. And trying to do any of it when people are suggesting your efforts are ‘nothing special’ makes the task much harder work than it needs to be.

I’m mentioning this here because, as writers, we have to face a lot of negativity. It’s not just the one star reviews which spout shit like ‘I’m giving this one star because I can’t give it zero’. And it’s not the pretentious twats who say ‘I would only ever give five stars to Shakespeare, but this one is OK.’ We also have to deal with the hostile passive-aggression that comes from people saying, ‘Oh! You’re a writer. Are you a famous one like J K Rowling or E L James? You must be loaded.’

‘What the fuck are you, Karen? A receptionist at the clap clinic? A disenfranchised administrator who finds it easier to piss on other people’s dreams rather than to pursue your own?’
Writing isn’t easy. Having the self-belief to think your words are worth the attention of others can fuel crippling anxiety. But never let your faith in yourself be weakened by the careless words of someone thoughtless.

There are ways to deal with this. Being resilient is good. Using positive affirmations helps. Hanging with supportive colleagues is always a bonus, as is replenishing your internal energy by being creative. However, if all else fails, you need to get into an online meeting with your personal Karen, find an excuse to turn off your camera and microphone (I can’t stress how important that point is), and then vent your spleen on their image, calling them every expletive and vitriolic name you can imagine. Trust me, as a form of cathartic expression, it’s a good way to bring balance to your personal universe.