The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

by F. Leonora Solomon

Before I was actually working as an editor, I used to watch Sex and the City, and think how cool it was that Carrie worked at home. It seemed dreamy to me that she would be at home or in a coffee shop working on her latest article or researching it.

That was an indication that this was the right field for me to be in, and believe me, there is NOTHING bad about editing erotica for Ravenous Romance! But at the end of the day it is still work and sometimes even being at home with my MacBook on my lap can be daunting.  Luckily for me as a freelancer, my office is mobile and wherever I make it be; though I work best at home on my MacBook.

Editing is not a bubble.  I am responsible for my authors, the delivery of all the necessary materials to Ravenous, developing ideas for upcoming projects, and making sure they start out as close to perfect as they can be for the copyeditor.

As much as a story might be the most beautiful and sexiest idea, they are all like a woman before she puts on her makeup. Sometimes stories just need a little mascara and lip gloss, and they are good to go! Sometimes they need so much makeup that they look like it took hours to apply and might not be recognized once removed. Being a cosmetologist is artistry, but on a deadline, it is a mixture of art and geting the work done as soon as possible.

Editing has made me a different person.  The world of publishing is not the dreamy existence that I used to think it was as a little girl or as when I was watching Sex and the City.

For me it is a dream come true that I have worked in publishing from so many sides -- as a writer, an editor, and production assistant. I know how things are done and how they need to be done. My work ethic is strong, and I am committed to what I do.

As an editor, I have come to respect the craft of writing all the more, and I think that it is going to make me a better writer when I have the time to write again. I'm compassionate about the things that need to be adjusted in other people's writing, because I recognize the same things in my own writing. I understand what writers are like because I am one.

Working at home is different from working in an office, but it is like being a cowboy. My MacBook is the galloping horse taking me everywhere I need to go.♥
  
  
F.Leonora Solomon is an acquisitions editor at Ravenous Romance.  Her latest anthology, GEEK LUST, was released last month.

The Myth of Being A Writer

by F. Solomon

Often being a writer, or being introspective about myself as a writer, usually involves me thinking that I do not write enough, and beating myself up about time that I could have been writing and was not. Thinking that if I prioritized time that I could really finish something. The story that I have been writing in three states and still am not sure if I am in the middle or what is going on....

Enter my friends, who romanticize me being a writer and I have to admit that being a writer for me is like having a bit of fairy dust on everything I touch, taste, see, smell or hear. Everything can be inspiration, I really am a sponge. And my friends--my non writer friends--act like I really am a fairy. It is a charmed existence.

Wandering in museums, a friend of mine sends me an e-mail of a couple in a black and white photo. Surely this couple would have, in our modern times, described their relationship on Facebook as it seems complicated given the caption beneath the photo, and indeed the photo was worth of a story, something that I could make up!

And so there I am in the International Center of Photography looking at their amazing Elliot Erwitt exhibition with the cool black and white photo sent from my friend. The same friend who allowed me to lead as we were walking streets in Chelsea and I am taking photos as I go for the story that I have dragged through almost four states now.

A co-worker of mine tells me "train stories" to inspire me. Today's story of a woman telling the very intimate details of a one night stand did inspire me. Many of her stories have inspired me; plus, I have my own train stories. I watched a couple last week on the train; well, I assume they were a couple. His very avid approach to her. Her train leaves as she looked at him; resisting a kiss and then very definitely accepting, and then kissing him! I was mesmerized and am sure that that scene will come back to me at some later time.

A conversation with another friend, in which I told him something that he thought was surprising, led him to accuse me of making up a word! I said I am not making this up, and he said that I was a writer; he just assumed that I made a lot of things up. Him saying to me that I am a writer, just accepting that even when I have told him of my struggles, gets to me.  He still sees things and tells me about them so that I could make up a story about this thing or that. His stopped telling me about himself; saying he did not want to see his reflection in a story of mine. Which I would never do...

...but I do absorb a lot. Writer goggles on, everything is fodder. Everything has a bit of fairy dust and sparkle. I am so thankful for the gift -- to see a story, to know how to "feel" a story.

Anais Nin said we write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. As a writer I am greedy for experience and blessed for that. Being a writer opens me up as a person to life -- a bud that is never tight --, and I am thankful.


Photograph by F. Solomon
  

Mobility

by F. Solomon

Originally, my blog post was going to be exclusively about the phenomenal Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is life altering as I told many friends and people who asked -- even my yoga instructor because I was wearing my Savage Beauty t-shirt in class. Mind you it was not life altering because of the two-hour wait to get in.  I found it amusing actually that there was a brochure that helped you landmark art on your way to the entrance--including the staggeringly gorgeous Joan of Arc and an equally stunning painting of Salome both made more beautiful as you realize you are almost in! Gothic, sexy and intelligent is all I can say about the McQueen exhibition.  It is almost over so you HAVE to go!

I then also saw the new Talk to Me Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA's innovative and cutting edge created an exhibition that is enhanced by using your mobile device...which was where I got really distracted, fiddling with my iTouch and looking at pieces like this one by the Japanese artist Sputniko.

After leaving MoMA, I headed downtown to two of my favorite natural food stores, Integral Yoga Apothecary and Integral Natural Yoga Foods. I was scooping up wakame and poring over natural and raw chocolate when I realized I did not have my iTouch with me. Now I am not the owner of a cell phone, so it's the iTouch I touch the first thing when I get up in the morning. I satellited the store because, as the deep sense of loss filled me that my iTouch was not with me. Blindness comparable to that described in Black Sabbath's Snow Blind came over me as I retraced my steps over and over.  I just could not believe that my beloved mobile device was separated from me. I became lachrymose...then a bit of clarity. I asked a clerk in the store if I could please use a computer in the store to utilize Find My IPhone. The clerk smiled at me and said it's up front.

Reunion.  My iTouch was there and I felt clarity reenter my existence.

I had not left the store because I so believed it would turn up.  I returned over and over to the wakame, where I thought I had dropped the iTouch so I knew it was in the store somewhere. When I had interacted with it in the Talk to Me exhibition, it was not fathomable to me that it would not be with me.

I am very attached to my iTouch.  I know, but that is the world that we live in and I embrace it. Especially since I found it! And additonally it enhanced my view of basic humanity. Someone saw it and returned it, which is beautiful and I am so appreciative...it is why I have never been a jaded New Yorker. I believed especially in the good of people in a natural foods store next to a yoga studio!

Om.

Portrait of a Woman Trying to Read and Write

by F. Solomon 


I fell asleep during sex.

That is I fell asleep during a sex scene in a novel I was reading. I am not going to say what novel I was reading, but I will say I could not connect with the character at all, and it was not pleasing so I abandoned the book--typical Gemini. Amidst all this astrology controversy, I am happy to report that the possible realignment of signs made me even more of a Gemini and not just on the cusp like I am.

So I put the book down. I like romantic erotica best or at least sex that makes sense. Honestly I cannot say that the sex in this story was gratuitous, but I did not care about it. Especially the names of body parts that were given. Spare me.

I was on the train and saw a woman reading Dark Rapture. I love old pulp novels with their titillating (for then) titles and story lines. Her book did not look like a recent acquisition either--I could smell the moldiness of the pages, feel the crackle of the pages that tore as she turned them. The reader was dressed rather retro as well, much like the Kramskoi mystery woman that accompanies this post.

"She sought possession of him, but became his slave instead!"

I read from across the train, happy for my 20/20 vision. I heard someone say that women liked to read historical romances because they like to imagine themselves needing a man in that way, to have a hero to save them. It is their fantasy. I do not dislike historicals, but I like women being able to wear less clothes--I have no energy \to read how long it takes to undress each other in those. So if that is the fantasy, why are novels written like that? Then, I thought to myself, it is someone else's fantasy to be someone's slave and those novels were written to that end.

Fantasies are subjective. I am sure that there are people who would have lapped up the novel I put aside. Maybe it would have grown on me as well. My mom put Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Wolf and the Dove aside, because it did not immediately grab her like Shanna had. She read the book over and over years later, lamented that she had not picked it up earlier so she could have read it more. She'd lay on her stomach reading that book with its crimson edges that almost always tore as she turned the pages, and when I was a teenager she gave it to me to read. No other cover of The Wolf and the Dove will ever be the same for me if it is not that crimson edged book with its orange red cover that I lie on my stomach reading...the fruit does not fall far from the tree.

I read to be inspired, I read what I want to write and I would not have written the novel I was trying to read. The one I started on the train this morning I most likely would not have written either. Reading and writing are commitments.  It is about what you want to see, what you can connect with. I read a lot on the train, maybe the sound of the train rushing is the perfect backdrop to a racing mind. It takes a lot for a book to hold me captive, I am not easily enslaved.

When I cannot find what I want to read in print, should that inspire me to write it myself? Or manipulate my trusty mobile gadget --filled with apps-- that can support me writing a novel on it, even take notes for the outline? Maybe.

Maybe I am too far to catch myself sometimes...