First there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of rejections from queries I sent to agents for my suspense novels. Then when I got an agent, more rejections from editors. “Not what we’re looking for at the moment.” “Like it but don’t love it.” “I could put it down. Not great for a suspense novel.” Sheesh! You want to be a writer? You’d better develop a thick skin. I had three or four finished novels at the time. I could keep writing or try something else—a different genre, for example. Around 2009, erotica was a big deal. Stories of successful erotic romance authors were all over the romance blogs. I’d never even read erotica. Could that be my ticket to publication? How hard could writing a sexy story be? Erotica embraces all the genres, including sub-genres and sub-sub genres—BDSM, gay, contemporary, paranormal, etc. To keep it simple, I needed to write story lines that were as close to what I’m comfortable writing as possible, only with more, um, sex. After all, would Janet Eva...

So we’ve all made New Year’s resolutions, right? My big one this year was to write two thousand words a day. Okay, one thousand. Then family matters caused me to skip a day. I promised myself to get back to my work in progress the next morning. Right? Right. Um, not so fast. I found out friends from out of town were coming. I had to clean the house. You know, that house I’ve overlooked for way too long. Good thing I had the week to do the cleaning because, boy, what a mess. Oh, and all the mail I needed to shred. Bags of it with my name, credit card numbers, bank numbers. Half a day’s worth of shredding mail. The daily junk mail goes in the recycle barrel, so at least I don’t have to shred that. Good. I was on a roll. Uh, oh. I forgot about the critique. My critique partner and I rarely miss our twenty pages, give or take, every two weeks. I wasn’t ready. Now, where was I? Because, you know, with all the family matters, house cleaning, and visitors, I had no time to think ab...