Jade's Erotic Awards 2009 - Best Cover

Jade Magazine has voted SARAH'S EDUCATION Best Erotic Book Jacket of the Year for 2009. I'm chuffed!

Here's what Jade has to say:

Book Jacket of the Year: SARAH'S EDUCATION (Black Lace).

The great debate over what constitutes an ‘erotic’ image still rages today and is largely subjective. However, of all the books we received for review over the last year the image for the cover of ‘Sarah’s Education’ by Madeline Moore and published by Black Lace was, for us here at JADE, easily the most sensual and erotic image we had seen adorn a book jacket. Without any bare flesh or body parts the simple image spoke seductive, sensual volumes of what was to come - the essence, we believe, of the perfect erotic image.

Let's have a look at that cover, shall we?



My my, this looks like my favourite kind of erotic book:

Purty on the Outside,
Dirty on the Inside!

Okay, so I didn't take the picture or pose for it or even get to choose it, but I like it! No, scratch that. I love it!

My dear 'friend I've never met', Janine Ashbless, received Jade's Award for writer of the year, 2009.

A;though Black Lace, Virgin Books, gets the credit on Jade's site, we all know it's the parent company that makes or breaks a little imprint.

So congratulations, Random House! From the inside out, you really know how to produce award winning erotica!

Thank You. Thank You very much!

Hello Stranger, Hello Neighbour

Not so long ago, we lived in communities where everybody knew each other.
When a person fell ill, she could depend on her neighbours for food and comfort.
If a fire razed one man’s farmhouse, he could be sure that soon a man, and another, and another, would arrive with wood and nails to help him erect a new one. We lived in communities.

These days we strive to live in isolation. How many people, even those living in apartments, know the people who live across the hall, never mind on another floor of the same building. When our neighbours, people who live near us but are strangers, experience misfortune, we don’t know about it or, if we do, we turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. “I have my own problems,” we mutter defensively. “Life is hard.”

Maybe we’re the ones making life hard.

One day my daughter came to visit me for the first time in my apartment. Her father and I had split up and she’d chosen to live with him. I was understandably nervous when she decided to go for a walk downtown. Although I live in a small town she was only nine at the time and I worried for her safety.

When she returned I immediately asked, “Did anyone talk to you?” And she replied, “Only one man. He lives in that house with the stone fence that is on the corner opposite this apartment building.”

“Oh.” I knew the house, of course, how could I not? I walked by it every day, at least twice. But I hadn’t bothered to wonder who lived in it, though the occupants were my “neighbours.”

No, I’d been too preoccupied with my troubles. Why had my marriage failed? Not so long ago I’d been the wife of a wealthy man with a big house full of things, my own car, and many supposed good friends. Where had everything and everybody gone?

Now I asked my daughter, “What did he say.”

“Well,” she replied, “he said, ‘Everybody’s a fucking asshole.’”

There it was, the answer to all my questions, out of the mouth of a babe as related to her by a complete stranger.
The moral of this little tale is simple.

Everybody is a fucking asshole.

Madeline's Hallucination

Behold, an angel appeared.



And he said, 'Fear not, Madeline, for you and all Black Lace/Nexus authors shall be published. Write author, write! And all will be well.'

Pink Slips and Safe Words

It's early am where I am and I can't sleep. Sure, I'm worried about the whole Black Lace/Nexus thing. Since Felix writes for Nexus and I write for Black Lace, it's like we both got fired on the same day. Or at least, laid off. Although we're still waiting for our pink slips.



I'm wondering if Adam Nevill has a plan? It must be awful for him because he's the one who knows us, by name and by temperment. He hates to write a rejection letter, so this must be a living hell for him. I'm so sorry to think he is suffering.

Adam's been the best editor for me, just the best. He nurtured me. I wrote a piece on this blog not long ago about his non-reaction to my first two books. Honestly, I don't think he even liked them very much, but he must have had faith in me, because he said yes to my proposal for Sarah's Education.

From the very beginning I knew Sarah was the one, the book of mine that was going to be wonderful. And I think it is, and his glowing email after he read it let me know on no uncertain terms that he thought so too. It hasn't been out long, (five days, and only in the UK) but it's on BOTH the erotica and romance books best seller lists. Thank you Adam.

But I am not the best writer in the Black Lace stable. Oh no. For obvious reasons I'm not about to start naming names. Well, maybe they aren't that obvious. First, I'll leave someone off the list and have to come back again, and again, and it's already getting close to dawn around here. Why start something I'm just going to make a mess of? And, you know. sure, Canadians are humble and polite and all that but I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot. So I'll simply say this:

Black Lace publishes a helluva lot of the the best women writers of erotica working in the business today. And, like, tomorrow. After that we don't know for sure...

Where do these writers go for 2010?

Who do these writers submit their ideas to, for 2011?

Does Random House imagine we'll get jobs to tide us over? It's kind of hard to get a job right now, actually, because of that recession we've been hearing so much about. I mean, it's hard for employable people and not all writers of erotica are all that employable, for crying out loud.

And, while a lot of us write female characters who are submissive and get off on physical and/or verbal humiliation - it's a sexual thing. Like, the characters submit to their studly playmates, for the sexual thrill of it all.

We can't be depended on to grovel to the corporate suits at Random House. Oh no.




It is the suits who will need a safe word, not the writers, should it come down to a little scening in the Board Room.

So, there will be a lot of writers looking for work in the coming months. Frankly, I think most of us will find it. Unless we are offered retainers, which I think might be a very good idea for Random House to consider, I don't know how many of us will be *available* if and when the company is ready to take us back.

We shall see, come 2011, who licks whose boots.

IN DENIAL

Don't be silly. Don't be ridiculous. Impossible.
Hear me? NOT possible.
So Hush.
I don't want to hear it.
I don't want to know.