Howdy y’all! I’m thrilled to be in such great company here at Girls Who Bite, but I have a confession to make: I really don’t write paranormal. Or f/f. Or straight-up erotica. Writing-wise, I’m normally all about the male-Dom, kinky, spanky, romantic contemporaries with occasional detours into steampunk. And always a happy ending.

So…why the change? I wrote Al Dente in just a few days when I heard about this call for submissions, just to see if I could actually do it. The spirit of adventure! Lesbian vampire erotica? Well…I’m bi. I’ve read Dracula. I’ve never been to Rome, but this is fiction, after all, and there’s always Google Earth. NO PROBLEM. I was thrilled with the result, of course. But what pleased me most was the knowledge that I’d made a conscious effort to stretch outside my comfort zone and write something very different from my usual. That might almost be a theme for a lot of the stories in this collection, actually: going outside comfort zones to do something unusual.

Doing this sort of thing from time to time (writing outside your comfort zone, not about lesbian vampires per se) reminds me how far I’ve come as a writer since I started several years ago. Back then, the big hurdle wasn’t getting published, or braving the submissions process, or even finishing a book; it was starting that book in the first place.

I know several people who would probably be amazing writers except for one thing: they just can’t get started. They might write little things “just for them” or the odd short story, perhaps even a fan fiction here or there…but a whole book is just too daunting, and so they don’t begin at all. Writing something out of the ordinary (for me) is like a reminder that the important part is just to do it. Give it a whirl. Even if it’s a crappy first draft or a cheesy fan fiction or an idea that fizzles out after the first chapter…eventually it’ll be something like a fine story featuring two immortal ladies un-living it up and eating pretty boys in Rome, and that’ll get published! Amazing!

The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t get published, but that’s just part of the writing experience too. Sometimes you get the pretty Roman boy, sometimes you get the wino bum who tastes like a sack of stale blood…but you’ll have to read the story to learn more about that.

For now, though, leave a comment about how you go outside your comfort zones (or just to say howdy), for a chance at winning an ebook copy of my M/f/f bdsm novella, “Roses and Chains“! It’s a heartwarming tale of kink, polyamory and geekdom. And check back on future posts for other prizes as we celebrate the release of Girls Who Bite!