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Interview with Angel Martinez
Oct 27, 2008
Hi Angel,
I just came from your website. Beautifully designed, easily navigated and packed full of interesting, entertaining, and informational pages to visit.
Did you design your own website? The artwork is very interesting. Did you paint that, or is it a template?
How I wish I could take credit but I missed the drawing gene in my family. While I did put the website together, the background is a template and the header artwork is a piece from a medieval manuscript which I believe was titled “The Art of Love”.
Tell us a bit about Angel, who is she when she isn’t the author of “Erotic Fiction for the Hungry Mind”? What does she do on a Tuesday morning in the dead of winter while a blizzard howls around the house. (I’m assuming everyone lives in the North – if you live in the south – what is a desert winter like? And what do you do on those days when you aren’t writing?)
Angel Martinez, international woman of mystery and playgirl millionaire… Oh, well, a girl can dream. Seriously, I’m a wife and mom with one teenage son (a senior this year, eek!) and my first and only husband of nearly twenty years. I have a day job and have lived in the same town my whole life. Terribly exciting stuff.
We do save our pennies to travel, one of my greatest joys, though this has become more of a challenge since being diagnosed with MS. I do get around quite well still but can’t walk too far or too fast (try keeping up with a 6’2” seventeen-year-old under any circumstances.) Please don’t ask me to pick a favorite city, I can’t. I’ve found new wonders and flavors and marvelous people wherever we go, from San Francisco to Seattle, Ithaca to Italy, Montreal to Munich. Next year we’re slated to visit my sister in Chengdu, China, our most far-flung destination yet.
Winter winds do arrive here in Delaware but unfortunately not enough to keep one inside. When it snows, we wait an hour for the plows to get through and then go to work. On those rare occasions when we have been snowbound, it’s wonderful to get some work done, pull out the Scrabble board or curl up with steaming tea and some catch-up reading.
When I’m not writing? Oh, I’m always writing, even if it’s brain-storage writing. I do like to get a little gardening done, though, and I have a restless husband who has a need for day trips on his days off.
Aftermath is a best seller for Forbidden Publications, and the reviews I read proves it should be. Tell us a bit about this story.
Aftermath is at its heart a love story about two men struggling to stay in a committed relationship but the nature of the conflict makes it unique. Cody is betrayed by someone he trusted and is brutally raped. Victor, overprotective and a bit controlling, struggles to help him recover while his own feelings of helplessness and guilt get in the way. The story explores not only the difficulties of the rape survivor trying to cope but also the difficult task of putting a shared life back together.
Was this a hard story to write? It necessarily needs to be filled with a plethora of emotions that range from sympathy and sadness to outrage, fear and everything in between. How did you find what you needed to portray these things so vividly without becoming melodramatic?
It was a tough story to write; I won’t sugarcoat it. But I also felt it was an important story to write. Male rape is one of the most under-reported and misunderstood crimes. Even though it’s estimated that one out of every ten rape victims is male, most assaults on men are not reported. Most male victims tend to blame themselves for the crime and tend to think no one will believe them.
I’ll confess, I cry with my characters sometimes (yes, I get way too involved with fictional people) and this kind of story can easily slide into maudlin melodrama. The best way to approach it is by treating the characters as real people. There must be calm spots between the storms, a little humor in between the black moments, and all the little ups and downs of a real relationship instead of unrelenting sturm und drang.
You have a blog serialized story – what a unique idea. Where did you come up with this idea and how is it going? Do you have a lot of interest in the continuing story?
How often do you add a new chapter? How can people sign up for it and how much does it cost?
The ongoing story blog evolved slowly from experiments in tandem writing. A writing partner of mine on a gothic fantasy group, who writes under the name Bellora Quinn, decided to write a contemporary piece. This led to me wanting to try one of my own, which became the first scene between Vic and Cody, which then led to the writing of Aftermath. In the meantime, this same writing partner kept writing her stories on her blog and, to my great surprise, Jonathan Kemp’s flower shop showed up from my story.
We decided that since we enjoyed writing together so much and since the characters just happened to live in the same city, we simply had to merge the blogs. It’s fun for us as writers and as long as it continues to be, we’ll keep posting stories.
I post stories once or twice a week and I had wondered about actual interest until one month when I was busy and not feeling well and all sorts of other excuses and forgot to post. Oh, dear, the unhappy emails I received! ‘When are you posting again?’ ‘How could you leave us hanging?’ ‘Please tell us when you’ll be back’ and so on.
There’s no sign up necessary to read the blog. It lives under the name of “Erotic Spice” at http://bellora.sensualwriter.com. It’s free (yes, absolutely free, no catches) and anyone who would like to receive alerts on blog updates can be added to my mailing list simply by sending me a request at ravenesperanza@yahoo.com.
I saw a very interesting title as your next book Lioness on the Knife. Give us an overview of this one. What is it about?
Lioness on the Knife, released by Forbidden Publications late in 2007, is a collection of eight short stories, some contemporary, some in the historic or mythical past on this world and some in fantasy realms. All eight stories, though, are about ‘women on top’, either women who are accustomed to power or those in the process of discovering it.
There’s Meara, who finds her mischievous night visitor is a handsome pooka, In Aphrodite’s story, she faces her greatest challenge: saving her own marriage. The Amazon General Azeria must find a way to tame her wild, young husband. Sylvia goes to an unusual brothel staffed exclusively by men, but the handsome young man she picks isn't at all what she expected.
Something for everyone in the collection, some deadly serious and some not at all.
When you write do you start with a plot outline, a character sketch, how do you begin? How do you stay on course?
I can’t say I have one method of starting a story. My plots come later, characters evolve as I write. I think the best way to describe the beginning of the process is a seed idea. Some embryonic thought becomes implanted and itches at my brain. It could be from a dream, a conversation, something I’ve recently read in the newspaper or saw in a museum. From the seed idea, a character may sprout and once that happens, I’m out of options. I have to write the story or have it forever keep me up at night.
I don’t necessarily proceed in a linear fashion during the thought process. Sometimes I know where I’ll end up and have to figure out how to get there. Sometimes I have a good start and have to figure out where the road will end. I don’t like plot outlines, they feel too rigid, but I do keep notes, reminders and questions to myself, which prevent the loss of important details.
Staying on course when you work full time and have a household to run is challenging to say the least. I do have time set aside each day for writing (as paltry as the amount of time seems to me) and make certain that I write each and every day. Even if it’s only two or three paragraphs, it’s still progress.
What genre would you classify your work as? How do you decide what genre to write in? Is it your favorite?
I write in several genres at this point in my erotic fiction, contemporary, fantasy and paranormal (though the last two, for you youngsters out there, used to be one and the same.) A writer tends to write what their most familiar with, to borrow the old cliché. It’s true, though. I read mostly fantasy and science fiction when I was young so the genres are familiar and comfortable. The contemporary work is more recent, though I’ve enjoyed that as well, writing about the world I actually live in.
What genre would you like to explore that you haven’t tried to write in yet? Will you? What would you never see yourself writing?
I’ve toyed with the idea of writing horror. Little pieces of horror slip into my work from time to time but I’m not sure I have the constitution for it. I’m still afraid of the basement when I’m alone at night.
Do you have a favorite author or authors? Do you read a lot? Is there an author whose books you pick up just because they are the author?
Oh, dear, that’s like asking me to pick a favorite ice cream or chocolate. All right, I’ll pick one or two…
I do love Ursula LeGuin. Her writing is stunning and her stories always captivating. For those times when I want to be challenged and left thinking, she’s one of my favorites.
For sheer entertainment and a ripping good adventure, though, I adore Lois McMaster Bujold. You’ll find her stories in the science fiction section in the bookstore but don’t kid yourselves, these are space opera romances down to the core and great fun.
When you are in the throes of writing, how do you replenish your well, your artist’s/author’s well where you draw your material from?
In the throes of writing, I have no lack of well water, so to speak. It’s the afterwards, the between-stories times, that can be difficult. There’s a certain satisfaction to finishing a story but then the nagging anxiety sets in. What next? What if I never have another good idea again? Oh, no, what if that was the last one!
It’s not true, of course, just writer neurosis setting in. It helps to read, to go back to old favorites, to return to favorite lines of research and to perhaps even return to the physical world a bit more firmly for a while. Eventually that thought strikes in the middle of the night, ‘what if I…?’ and off we go again.
I know we are directing this interview to the readers primarily, but authors are readers as well. What would your advice be to an author who wants to become a best seller like you? How did you promote to get to that point or was it just the strength of your material that led to word of mouth and many many sales?
I’d like to say it was strength of material alone. That would be wonderful. In today’s marketplace, though, it’s not realistic. There are so many other voices, other titles, competing with yours, you have to play P.T. Barnum to some extent. The best advice is to promote to as large an audience as possible, in as many venues as you can. It’s not necessary to spend a lot of money on promotion, especially these days when free websites and free blog sites, free groups, review sites and forums are so easy to find.
Exposure, exposure, exposure.
Angel thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Can you tell our readers where they can find out more about you, your work and where they might purchase it? Also, give us a blog link and some indication of any social networks you might be on like Ning, facebook, green reads, MySpace.
AM:
Certainly:
For more about my work and upcoming projects, please visit:
Angel Martinez: Erotic Fiction for the Hungry Mind
To purchase either Aftermath or Lioness on the Knife:
And to visit Erotic Spice – An Ongoing Story Blog:
Thank you for having me! It’s been a pleasure.
Interviewed by Billie A. Williams
www.billiewilliams.com
Interviewed by Billie A. Williams
www.billiewilliams.com
View Angel Martinez's Author Page
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