Bestselling Author Delilah Devlin
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A Short Story Challenge
Friday, April 30th, 2010

I’ll admit I have a fondness for writing short stories. I’m an author who enjoys a challenge. Calls for submissions for erotic collections offer me an outlet for my competitive spirit. I’m known as a novelist of erotic romance—not so known in the erotica world. So when I receive acceptance for a short erotic work I feel validated as a writer.

I’ve been lucky to appear in the following collections so far: Zane’s Purple Panties, Black Lace’s Sexy Little Numbers, Cleis Press’s Lesbian Cowboys, and Harlequin Spice’s Naughty Bits.

I also will appear in the following Cleis collections this year: Girl Crush, Fairy Tale Lust, and Lesbian Lust.

Something I’ve done in the past with my local RWA chapter and with the Rose’s Colored Glasses loop, when I find a call that interests me, is offer a challenge to other writers to write a short for that collection. We share ideas and critiques. Writing the shorts can offer an experienced writer a quick-win and sharpen flabby skills. For the unpublished author, it provides a supervised challenge to improve budding skills.

Why should authors consider writing shorts? For one thing they don’t require a huge investment of time so you can work on a short story on the side while writing the bigger book. In addition, writing short requires an author to choose every word carefully and make every one count. It sharpens your skills.

It’s been a while since I chimed in with a challenge to my writer’s groups, but looking at the calls for submission on the ERWA website has me stoked. The site lists many cool, different sorts of projects to dive into. I am going to challenge myself to write a story for four different calls. (Egads! Now you’ll be able to track how often I get rejected! :confused:)

I’d love some company while I write these. If you are an erotica or erotic romance writer, or have thought about taking the plunge, this is a cool way to try it out. If you’d like to join me, let me know. I’d love a partner or five. We could bounce ideas off each other and critique each other’s work. We might not sell, but the effort is never wasted. What you produce could be the start of a longer book, or something you could offer as a sample of your writing for free on your website.

These are the calls I’m interested in:

Due 6/1/10: Big Book of Quickies – No more than 1200 words
Due 6/1/10: Carnal Machines – Steampunk Erotica – 1500-4500 words
Due 7/15/10: Dream Lover: Erotic Paranormal Romance – 2000-4500 words
Due 8/1/10: Lesbian Cops – 2500-6000 words

8 comments to “A Short Story Challenge”

  1. Chelle Sandell
    Comment
    1
    · April 30th, 2010 at 9:44 am · Link

    I’m one of the newbies that would like to try my hand at writing shorts. I’ve tried to send a couple of emails through the Rose loop and they’re not going through. I had a story idea when I read the Dream Lovers sub call. Please keep me in mind if you start a group!



  2. Delilah Devlin
    Comment
    2
    · April 30th, 2010 at 9:50 am · Link

    Chelle! Thanks for letting me know. All new members go on moderation until they send their first email. It helps me weed out the spammers!



  3. Chelle Sandell
    Comment
    3
    · April 30th, 2010 at 9:54 am · Link

    Cool! No prob. I just didn’t want to lose out on the opportunity. I’m in the middle of plotting with some of the girls from OKRWA for a TWRP short series. But my deadline for that is June 1.



  4. Delilah Devlin
    Comment
    4
    · April 30th, 2010 at 10:39 am · Link

    For anyone who’d like to join, I set up the yahoo group. Send a message to this address: Roses_Short_Story_Challenge-subscribe@yahoogroups.com



  5. Gale
    Comment
    5
    · April 30th, 2010 at 10:59 am · Link

    I have a problem writing short but maybe I’ll give it a try. Like you said, it will teach me to tighten up a story.



  6. Delilah
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    6
    · April 30th, 2010 at 11:35 am · Link

    Welcome, Gale!!



  7. Aimee
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    7
    · April 30th, 2010 at 7:23 pm · Link

    The short story was my thing, it’s getting past that, that’s always intimidated me. But, alas, even short stories don’t come easy (or at all) these days.



  8. Delilah
    Comment
    8
    · May 1st, 2010 at 8:24 am · Link

    Aimee! Maybe you just need some Rah-Rahs to get going!



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