"The Mummy's Girl": guest spot

Have you ever been tempted to self-publish? Lust Bites friend t'Sade gives us the low-down on what it's like.

Naked, as all slaves were required to be, the woman was not uncomfortable with her nudity. Plastered against her back, her sweat-soaked hair clung to her skin as she strained with the effort not to move. Held above her head, her wrists twisted inside golden chains, trying to break free. They were just tight enough to place a strain on her back, but not enough to hold her off the cold stone ground. Spread out beneath her, her legs quivered slightly with the effort to keep her sweat-soaked knees from sliding on the stone. Between, the naked mound of her womanhood glistened with sweat and fear, and more than a little excitement.

Above is the first paragraph of my novel, The Mummy's Girl, which I had published in December of 2003. You know what? I love that beginning, it represents so much to me, both in a novel I created, but also the first time I held a book in my hand and was able to say "I did this" and have it not mean something I just printed up on a laser printer at work.

This novel came to being while I was watching the movie The Mummy endlessly for two of my Hollywood boyfriends (i.e. men I'd like to meet and... do other things to). In the first meeting between Imhotep and Evelyn ("Evie"), where they are just inches away from each other, there is the dramatic rescue. However, my dirty little mind thought about other What If? scenarios instead. What if he wasn't as... crawling with bugs, didn't have juicy chest wounds, or missing important parts? What if she felt a longing inside him, a hunger that she couldn't explain? What if instead of being rescued, he actually kissed her? What if... what if they just fucked right then and there, gasping and thrusting, like two lovers split apart by death and centuries?

---

The mummy closed the door she had left open and walked heavily over to Nikki. Kneeling down, he brushed her hair off her face to gaze at her. Nikki stirred and moaned. One eye opened briefly and closed. Her hands clenched against the blanket and he watched her shiver for a moment. A whimper of pain escaped her throat as she drifted back into unconsciousness. He stayed next to her, guarding her with a surprising vigilance. When she began to stir, he was waiting.

Nikki opened her eye again, then the other. The clear brown depths stopped Anuset's heart for a moment as memories slammed into him. He remembered those eyes, from so many centuries ago.

"Binis." His voice was almost a reverent rasp as he felt his body grow cold from shock.

A slow smile crossed her face as Nikki spoke in a torn voice. "It's you."

---

That is the story I wanted to hear about. So, I sat down on my daily train ride and began to write a story. When I finished, I was happy since I wrote what I set out to write, a story that I liked. Yeah, it was a bit fan-fictiony but it was still inspired by that one specific scene. Naturally, I told my friends all about it, naughty bits and all.

"That wouldn't happen. Bast and Set would never do that. And, you have it-"

Okay, telling a know-it-all about an Egyptian love story isn't a good way to get enthusiasm. So, I found myself staring at a story that I loved, but it was "wrong". The type of wrong that wasn't really wrong, but it sent a few gears in motion. So, I did what first came to my mind. I didn't want to get rid of the romance and love; and I needed the gods to be what they were because they were part of the story just as the mummy was. Instead of scrapping it, I recast the novel as a fantasy, set down in a world I've used for years in my role-playing games and short stories, and found another, deeper story underneath it. It became something more than just a long fiction. It turned into a story of sex and love, of reincarnated love, redemption, and submission.

And completely my creation.

I also found that master/slave relationships turns me on—hard. Didn't know that when I started, but it was pretty obvious by the time I finished.

---

"If I... please you?"

A ripple of chuckles filtered through the watching soldiers and they danced from foot to foot. The commander grinned and looked around. "Well, we won't stop you, now will we?"

Noises of disagreement filled the air, but there were more than a few smiles on their faces. Sylia found a smile on her own lips as she looked around again, seeing the tent in a new light. She found herself almost thanking Anuset for sparing her and giving her to the soldiers with the strange honor.

"All of you?"

Another ripple of laughter as one of the guards, a thinner man with scars covering his face and arms, spoke up. "Well, most of us share everything anyways. They don't pay us that much and sometimes we need to... combine our pay to get a better deal."

She looked at him and then at his large hands and the obvious bulge beneath his chain. "You even share women?"

He nodded purposely and she felt a blush grow on her cheeks. Her heartbeats quickened as she stared at the men. She noticed that more than a few were staring at her body with rapt attention while they fidgeted slightly. She brought her eyes back to the commander as she felt a flush of her own.

---

After I finished, I figured I had the hard part done and it would be fairly simple to get published, maybe a month at the most.
...
...
... okay, I'm done laughing.
That hurt.

So, I thought it would be easy to get published. Didn't even pay attention to the guidelines for sending submissions, just sent out random email queries to various publishers looking for a home. First one came back: "lovely writing but we don't do erotic brutality." Fair enough, the next day, I sent out my second: "send us other stuff, but no whipping." Bah, that isn't a good sign. Three days later, I sent out my third query. Got a response an hour later: "Sure, sounds good, send it."

Yeah, read that one a few times. A year later, I had to read the book contract a few times to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Half a year after that, I had to keep flipping through the book to remind myself I still wasn't dreaming. I kept going to Amazon to look at the page, excited that I got so far. If it sounds really good, a week to get started, it was. Kind of on the order of being too good to be true. But, I got my goal, I was published.

Then, everything stopped. No more responses from emails or letters, nothing. Found out at the end of 2006 that the publishing company went out of business and didn't tell me, didn't tell anyone actually. I felt... violated in a lot of ways, mainly because I tried so hard to succeed and something outside of my control ripped my book from the shelf before it could really get to be known. Also the realization that I probably burned all my luck getting that first publication only to lose it. Last year, I decided that I didn't want to go gently into that good night. So, I decided to self-republish The Mummy's Girl and get it back out there. I don't like to give up, can you tell?

---

Jennifer moaned loudly, as she felt the man pulling at her skirt, rotating it until he found the tie that wrapped it around her waist. With a grin, he worked at the knot until she felt it pull away. There was a soft rustle as the fabric crumbled to the ground and she blushed with the sensation of being bare to Robert and Melinda's hungry gazes.

Melinda's mouth began to nibble down her right shoulder as her fingers continued to gently tease Jennifer's hard nipples. The soft whimpers of pleasure escaped her throat as the woman leaned back against Melinda. All three of their breaths grew faster as Robert gently lowered himself in front of her, looking up at the beautiful body in front of him.

His lips caught her right next to her knee and she jumped at the surprising sensation. Melinda's hands stroked down, teasing her nerves against her sides as large hands gently parted her thighs. Panting, the blond woman looked down to watch as Robert gently eased her legs apart and began to kiss and stroke up her thighs. He moved up a little, then down, gently massaging her in a way that gradually brought his touching up closer to her soaked sex. She opened her mouth to say something, but the intense sensations of lips pressed against her womanhood dissolved any resistance. A tongue darted out to brush against her inner lips and she felt her body shaking from the sensations.

One of Robert's hands slid around her thigh to cup her buttock, while the other brought a single finger to gently brush against the tight mound of her labia. Jennifer moaned again, a soft exhalation that seemed to hover in the clearing. She leaned back, resting her head on Melinda's shoulder as the red-haired woman moved up to suck on her earlobe. She paused for a second to whisper in Jennifer's ear.

"We going to get that bad taste out of you, and then replace it with something very nice."

---

(Of course I'm not using snippets to keep you interested in what I'm saying. Couldn't imagine why you'd consider that.)

Self-publishing is, and should be, a difficult choice. There is definitely a stigma of self-publishing, at least in the publishing world. It is, in many ways, an easy way to get printed since it only takes a few hours to pound out some drivel, package it up in a PDF, and send it out to a vanity press or print-on-demand (POD). They don't check it to see if it is garbage. They don't even check to see if you put actual words on the page instead of just slamming your hands on the keys for twenty minutes. They don't even try to see if you used complete sentences or grammar higher than a child of ten. In short, a POD (or vanity press, but I used a POD) doesn't really care what you print, as long as they get their percentage of the money you might make.

The stigma comes from how easy it is to get published that way. When you get published through an established house, like... say... Black Lace, your little written baby has to survive the slush pile (unless you are lucky, of course) and then turn on a few hundred kilos worth of readers, editors, and managers before they accept your book. You also have to fit the genre, market requirements, and minimum English skill (assuming it is an English book, of course). That effort is a lot more than just sending a PDF and getting it in print a week later. When you get accepted by some place like Black Lace, you have truly accomplished something.

And it shows. When you pick up a Black Lace book, you probably have a good idea of the quality before you even crack open the book. You know roughly what you are getting, but you also probably know that the book won't be crap (okay, I'm biased, I like all the Black Lace books I have). When you pick up something from a self-published, you don't really know what you are going to be reading. Unless you know the author or seen parts of it, there are so many unknowns. Yeah, there could be some true diamonds just as there are in any published book, but there is by far a lot more rubbish out there. No minimums, very few requirements.

Despite that, I decided to self-publish anyways. I have a lot of reasons for doing it, many of them were made in the light of the stain that self-publishing would give me. But, in the end, I felt that The Mummy's Girl was best self-published.

The first reason is not giving up. The Mummy's Girl was pretty much sold for less than a year before things went wrong. I didn't want to just give up there, so reprinting it is a second chance for the book. I don't think it will ever show up on the top of the romance lists... okay, I know it will never show up there, but I refuse to give up on something on I worked so hard at... and succeeded.

The second reason is a lot more selfish: I hated the cover of the first printing. I mean, more than just disliking it, closer to nearly bursting into tears when I saw it and then loathing it every time I saw it type of hate. It's selfish, but the original cover was an Egyptian statue of Ra. Which is fine, except for: there is no deserts in my book, the only statue is of a wolf-bear, no one has that beard, it is set in a jungle-like setting, and the culture is entirely wrong. In other words, the cover had nothing to do with the book. It looked like something closer to a nonfiction or National Geographic book than a proper erotic story that it is.

---

Binis shivered in fear and forced her brown eyes to lock onto Anuset's. "Yes, master... anything for you."

"For Akumet, Binis Ki."

Binis nodded but didn't say anything. For a moment, Anuset frowned at her silence, wondering if there was anything to it. A merest moment passed before his smile returned to his face. A growing need asserted itself and he looked down at his manhood, already pushing up the loincloth with its desire.

Binis' eyes followed his, watching the shaft as it twitched and pulsed toward its full hardness. Anuset spoke softly, moving his gaze to the breasts that strained under her deep breathing.

"Because you will not feel my hand nor whip in a year, I'll... allow you to choose your position. For your final night."

The slave looked up with a fierce burning in her eyes, of love and lust, and said, "Master."

Anuset nodded and the slave reached up with one hand. A sly smile of pleasure crossed her face as she gently, almost tenderly, lifted Anuset's hand from the edge of his chair and pulled it to her breast. He watched, feeling his cock grow hard against the fabric of his loincloth, and enjoyed the sensation her smooth breast gave beneath his palm.

Binis curled his fingers around the soft swell and brought her nipple between two of his fingers. Anuset pinched the hardness softly, rolling it between his finger and thumb.

She moaned softly and spoke in a bare whisper: "Harder, please... master."

Anuset increased the pressure, twisting and squeezing the pink nub until she whimpered in pleasure and pain. As one of her hands held his, encouraging him to hurt her, her other hand reached over the armrest of the chair and stroked his shaft beneath his loincloth.

The soft caress of her fingers sent a surge of lust through his length and he tightened his fingers as he twisted harder. Binis leaned against the pinching fingers on her nipple as she wrapped her fingers around the thickness of his shaft and pushed up.

The cloth rippled over her hand until she pushed it aside, revealing Anuset's cock in its full glory. Her eyes shone as she admired his length--longer than three of her hands. A few thick veins bulged out from the surface as the massive cock twitched with fast heartbeats. The head was slightly thicker than the rest, with a narrow ridge before it led into a fat, spongy wedge, already dripping with a clear, slick fluid. The entire length was turning from red to a deep purple with his excitement as his balls, two massive plums, dangled from beneath the huge shaft.

She gasped, as if seeing it for the first time. "Master!"

---

Self-publishing is actually fairly easy to do it badly. At minimum, you have to produce a PDF in the right size with the right margins. The place I used, Lulu, has everything on two pages, one for books to be sold on their site and one for books that can be sold through Amazon or a brick-and-mortar bookstore. If you can follow directions, you probably can figure them out.

Like most things, it takes time and effort to do it right. I don't want The Mummy's Girl to be drivel or something I threw together in a few hours. I found a font I loved to set the book. I asked a friendly artist, Mamabliss, to create a cover for the book that matched the contents. Also, because I thought it felt right, I also had them create pictures for every chapter. The black and white images here are from the chapters in the book. You'll also probably notice that the artwork is sketched instead of a photograph; that comes down to my own sense of ascetics. I prefer that style of artwork over photographs, there is a sense of something fantastic that line drawings give me that pictures don't. It also stands out because it is so different, which fits both me as a personality and also because I think it fits the theme much better.

Needless to say, this wasn't cheap. I didn't have the resources that a full publishing company has to making their covers, so I had to come up with the resources for both the author (editing) and the publishing (ISBN, cover and interior artwork) side of writing. To do anything else is to not go far enough, and I want to make sure that this printing is the best one I could possibly do.

The other thing that I, personally, have to come up with is advertising. With Black Lace, you get announcements on the blog and chat. You get to use the channels, connections, and relationships they have to make sure your book shows up in the proper reviews, on the shelves in bookstores, and those little things. I, doing it myself, have to do that all on my own.

Advertising isn't cheap. At least if you go the full page ad in the New York Times. Trust me, I won't do that. But, I can advertise relatively cheaply. Obviously, the first is my signature block on forums. If you can't guess, I'm rather chatty in general because I like to interact with people, so putting in the occasional plug or just making it a signature is a little thing. I just have to honor requests to shut up and not put it in every damn post I make. "You know, I like the methodologies of the Fermilab particle accelerator, but in my book, The Mummy's Girl, where Binis is being double-penetrated while stretched out in a giant ring, that is a lot like how the tension of the magnets interacts with the protons."

Of course, there are other things I can do. I can run random contests, such as the one I had on my forum and the free book to a random commenter of this post within the next week (hah, you thought I would say that at the bottom).

There is also Google Adwords, banner ads on random sites I enjoy, and the basically postings that hopefully will slowly grow the awareness of my book. This is a drawback of self-publishing. With a publisher, you have their entire marketing engines, reader base, and places like their forum or this blog that help bring awareness to stuff. There are also the writing contacts they have, the relationships they forged over the years. Editors, reviewers, and bookstore owners that gets their books out on the shelves faster than I could ever do. I have none of that, so it means I have to do it the hard way.

And the reviews. I'll have to start forging those contacts with reviewing sites to send the book, so they can trash it, I can cry my eyes out, then move on. But, it has to be done, part of publishing yourself and expanding your reader base.

I'll also sign books and send them out. Sounds minor, but I love sending books out in the mail. And, if I can charge roughly the same price as the book, and you get a signature or little saying, and I make a bit more, then I say everyone wins.

Which leads into the next one: money. Writing isn't exactly a bread-winning career with one book. For the first printing, I made $0.32 per book sold. At Lulu.com, I'll make $0.34 per book sold, unless you buy it directly from Lulu.com, then for the same amount, I get a dollar more. One of those things you have to be aware of. It becomes really important when Amazon decides to give it 10% off, you have to decide if you want to use the lowered price of Amazon for higher sales or more percentage by selling directly from Lulu.com. Of course, until Amazon or somewhere else lowers it, its a moot point. One of those things you have to pay attention to, when you are self-publishing.

Unless I seriously get famous, I'm not expecting to break more than even on this. Which is fine, because I'm writing for the future, for the books that I will write and the ones I keep on working with. I'm building up a name for myself, which is why I'm not too worried about the money at this point. Needless to say, I didn't quit my day job.

---

As the leather strap slid down the leg of the statue, the elf was already working on his trousers. Her tiny fingers quickly unbuttoned the opening and snaked inside to wrap around the damp hardness. A soft purr of pleasure vibrated through her throat as she continued to kiss him passionately.

Her fingertips brushed against his soaked tip. She rubbed it between her hands, playing with the slickness as her lips hungered for his. Miguel snapped her belt apart, casting apart the last of her clothing and leaving her naked. She moaned softly, using her hands to push his trousers off his hips, letting them slip to the ground

.

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There was one other reason I decided to self-publish. I have two other novels, one completed and one in first draft. Unlike The Mummy's Girl both aren't really publishable in the current climate. One is erotic horror and the other was "published" on a website already so it isn't new enough. Both are good stories, I feel, but getting The Mummy's Girl is setting the path for these two; I want to see them in print because I think they compliment my writing and they are good stories to a lot of people. And, I'm kind of setting myself up as a "publisher of one" for my writing. Some day, people will want to pick up books by me because it is by me.

For those who have managed to find my site, you'll know that I write in a very wide variety of different topics, fetishes, and genres. For every type of story that would be acceptable to a classic publisher, there are two more than push the boundaries just a bit further than many people are comfortable with. That is one reason I tag my stories so much, because I don't stick with just pure romance or softer stories.

If you took the entire range of everything you could write about, you could draw a line and make a mark in the middle. Call it gay werewolves if you will. Everything to the left is softer stuff, the type you expect to pick up in a bookstore, find in a Black Lace book, or find somewhere in relative public. On the right, you have the harder stuff, the type you find in adult stores or hidden a box in the bottom of someone's closet. My writing is pretty much balanced on my gay werewolves, for every story I have on left, I have another on the right.

I want to see all of my novels published. My horror novel is a right-side book since it is a proper horror story, while the other is pretty solidly a left-side (or soft or "mild") book, except for it already being available on the Internet. Because of that, The Mummy's Girl is basically paving the way to create a "publisher of one" of my books. And, like other publishers, I'm hoping that some day, people will know my style and pick up the book because I wrote it, just like I pick up Black Lace books because I know I'll like them.

There are some advantages of being a self-publisher. I'm creating a niche market of my writing and that means I don't have to conform to a specific market ideal. Since I'm aiming for representing myself as myself, I can let my vampires be messy fuckers. And there is nothing wrong with my werebears changing shape during sex, not before. And, because I'm poly, I don't have to worry about the girl get the bad boy, the good boy, and her girlfriend in the end.

In the The Mummy's Girl, I wrote a romance. Not Romance, but just a romance between two souls who are parted by death and brought together through reincarnation and a couple gods playing divine games. It is a story of love with a fair amount of sex. However, because of my style, the mummy's doesn't turn into some hot bald guy before kissing the girl. He's a mummy and stays a mummy, and she loves him because of what he is, not because of what he turns into.

And there is a market out there for this type of story. True, it is consider on the edge for many people and I won't see it at Walmart or in the shelves at Barnes and Nobel, but I know there are people who want to read it. It just isn't a large market, as a single book goes. But, if I can write enough of them, then I'm hoping to start appealing to the people who have fetishes for what I write, but represent a relatively insignificant portion of the entire erotic readership base. I know that if I sell a hundred copies, its a hundred copies I didn't have sold before. If I do that enough times, I'll build up a "brand" of t'Sade and people will start buying because I wrote it, knowing what I can do.

Needless to say, self-publishing isn't an easy route. It starts off easy, just send a PDF and get published, but to do it right, like everything else, it takes time and money and effort. I'll be pushing The Mummy's Girl probably for the next twenty years, along with everything else. I won't give up on it, I can't give up on it.

Is it worth it?

Yes, for me it is. It isn't for everyone. It requires taking a path less traveled, one that requires a great deal of time, energy, and money to succeed. But, sometimes, just sometimes, to do justice to your love, it takes a few generations (printings) to do it right.

Will I make millions?

Um, probably not. I write because I love writing. Eventually, I might make a bit, but that isn't why I'm doing this. I just want that second chance, and I'm willing to earn it.

With blood, sweat, and the occasional orgasm.

You can find The Mummy's Girl on Lulu.com. In a few months, it will also be on Amazon.com and other sites. You can buy a PDF of the book for $4.95 or a hard-copy for $16.95. Lulu will print you a fresh copy and send it directly to you, or just send it for the PDF. Or, you can request a signed copy for $19.95 (which includes shipping) by sending me an email to contact@tsade.com and put "The Mummy's Girl" in the subject.

You can also read the first 10 pages from Lulu.com or the entire second chapter.

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And don't forget to comment for a chance to win a copy! - Janine