Here's a less than hot off the presses flash. I know a lot of writers. Writers know each other. We hang out on the Internet, attend conferences, go to local meetings. We promote our books and/or publishers both on our own and as part of a group. When we're bleary from lack of sleep or celebrating the end of a long day of writing with a glass of wine, yep, we let our hair down.
We gossip. We hang out at 'secret' Yahoo groups where we talk about everything from what the puppy ate this morning to how our kids are doing, to what our editor/agent told us. I'm a member of two support groups where health scares, financial concerns, etc are open books. This is where we sometimes tell each other things not meant for anyone else, not even family.
I mention this because truth is, the majority of our readers don't know the real us. Its the whole public persona thing, the marketing hook. As example, I write a lot of capture/bondage stories (which is what Brought Down is) http://www.loose-id.com/Brought-Down.aspx My website http://www.vonnaharper.com/ is IMO pretty out there complete with flames and hot colors. When I blog, Facebook, or Twitter, a lot of the time I present myself as sexually liberated, a clone of many of my characters.
The real me lives in the country, is owned by two rescue dogs, is married to a man with multiple health issues, has two grown sons and four of the world's most amazing grandchildren. Unlike my characters whose lives seem to revolve around their next sexual experience (it is erotica after all), mine is dictated by all the normal things that dictate all of us. No plunging necklines, huge sex toy collection (just a few), no turning the head of the world's most handsome man (darn it). No being captured by a primitive warrior and carried off to his lair (another darn it even if I'm concerned by the sanitation thing)
Okay, you get the picture. I may dream of becoming the object of a fantastic shapesifter's passion subject to his bondage expertise (pant, pant) but his skills all take place in my mind. Sigh.
Fortunately, I have a vivid imagination. Another example, in Brought Down I go WAY back in time where primitive societies lived by their own rules and standards. When a Hunter warrior is ordered to capture a woman from the Antelope clan and turn her into his sex slave, he does so. Of course things get more complicated than the king hoped because my characters bring their own personalities into the mix. Their needs and expectations. My warrior didn't expect to get hot and bothered but of course he did. My heroine didn't believe she'd fall in love with her captor but....
What I'm saying is, you aren't going to meet the real me between those pages. The same goes for every other writer I know. Hopefully that's okay. As long as the reader gets what she needs from the book, I'm sure it will be.
4 comments:
It's an interesting issue, isn't it? There's very little of me in my books (although guyliner will work it's way in most of them -- I'm a huge fan) that is obviously me. When I started my website, I wondered whether I should be me or a 'character'. Then I decided that playing a character would be too exhausting. Which is probably why my FB & blog posts are mostly pretty tame -- but they're the real me!
There are certain parts of my real life that I have yet to discuss too much in blogs and Fb ... my kids and grandkids. Someday maybe, because they are a huge part of my life and what I tend to talk about on my RL blog and Fb, since I write under a pseudonym. My real name was already being used by a published author. The two personalities aren't all that different and one day they will blend together.
Well, in my real life, I'm tall, slim, blonde and gorgeous. I have fabulous sex with handsome guys all the time,one at a time, two at a time and even three at a time, I've dabbled in everything going, kissed a vampire, had interesting sex with a werewolf, gone into space with a --oops, I'm having difficulty separating fantasy from reality.
I'll try again -
In my real life, I'm...darn it, I've forgotten.
Such an interesting post. It's a balance because to some extent we ARE what we write...and yet, it's fiction, fantasy, make-believe, lies...whatever you want to call it.
As for a public persona...it's a real balance. My interactions are genuine. My followers get the real and unadulterated me (poor things) but it is under a pen name AKA an assumed identity.
I require that...firewall between me and my readership--even as I crave and require that interaction.
All of which goes to confirm my belief that writers are all nuts. :-D
But we would be more nuts without the outlet of our writing.
Post a Comment