i'm doing the 3-day novel contest this Labour Day weekend. this means i will not be on social media or responding to e-mail etc whilst i try to draft a novel in 72 hours. i will get back to you on Tuesday, September 6, if i survive. for more info, or to join the masochism, https://3daynovel.com/
i have spent a few weeks outlining a plot that seems to be workable to me and querying pals on social media for various things i should probably research thoroughly but instead i’ve asked them.
i love reading fiction. i want to write fiction, but i am intimidated by the sheer amount of work and things such as untangling complex plots, consistency and research. the idea of the 3-day novel challenge appeals to me because of the timing: labour-day weekend is typically a slow time for me. also if i turn everything off and just write, what will happen.
If you want to read my first novel, A World of Yes, about a woman who falls asleep during her 35th birthday party and misses an orgy, please purchase it here .
I wrote AWOY for National Novel Writing Month in 2004. At the time I wasn’t sure I would be able to write a long fiction work, so NaNoWriMo, as it’s known, was an opportunity for me to see if I could. But that was 30 days. This is 3 days! It took me over a decade of the work sitting in my digital drawer before i edited the really crappy dialogue and self-published it in 2014. i think possibly four people have purchased it.
Lisabet Sarai, erotica writer extraordinaire writes of A World of Yes: “Amanda Earl somehow manages to keep the sexual heat turned up, even when Bonnie veers close to the edge of ridiculous. Having edited her collection of short stories, I already knew that Ms. Earl could write gorgeous, intense, transgressive erotica, the sort of stories that melt you as you read. I didn’t realize she had such comic talent. Bonnie had me laughing out loud, even though I knew her sexual-existential crisis was fundamentally a serious issue.” For the full review, click here.
I also have a short story collection entitled Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl, available here.
“Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl, edited by Lisabet Sarai, ramps up the heat especially well. Amanda seduces not only the libido but also the mind, sometimes subtly (although the sex is seldom subtle) and sometimes very blatantly indeed. In the editor’s introduction the book is described as “literary—and literate—erotica,” which is quite true. There are frequent literary references, and characters with backgrounds in (or aspirations to) the literary world, but the sure-handed quality of the prose—raw when it needs to be, even brutal, introspective at times, poignant, complex, and memorable—is what makes it both literary and literate.
I was especially intrigued by the variety of points of view in these stories. Often (but not always) female, occasionally older women with younger men, with a nice range of characterization from deliciously dominant to deeply submissive to downright surreal.” Sacchi Green
The work-soon-to-be-in progress and tentatively titled Nothing But Flowers (after the Talking Heads song, without the parenthesis) will address Covid 19 and the change in intimacy in relationships. I’ve already made the playlist in case you care to listen and imagine my torture this weekend while you enjoy great music spanning 1896 to 2020.